Day #6 - The Cool Factor

If you have ever traveled overseas, you may already have come across the "no ice" syndrome. That's when you order a drink in a restaurant or from a street vendor and it comes (a) in a small glass and (b) without any ice. A request for ice cubes elicits an eye roll and the response "but madame, your drink is already cold. What for do you need ice?" If you persist, they will comply (at a leisurely pace) by bringing you a glass with 2 or 3 small ice cubes in it.

The same is true in Perth, where we have found that cold drinks are rarely served with more than a couple cubes of ice, if at all. We've also noticed that a high percentage of people enjoy hot drinks with their meal instead of cold ones. Dinner guests almost never accept cold drinks when we offer, and they look at us with blank stares when we ask if they would like a glass of iced tea.  Seems most Australians haven't heard of it, although you can find the odd bottle of pre-mixed tea in the grocery stores. Again, not refrigerated.

Why are there no iced drinks in Perth? Vince and I came up with a couple of theories.

1. It's a holdover from the early settlers from England. It's a jolly cold climate there much of the time, and people drink hot drinks to help them stay warm. The cool weather means that stored drinks never get that warm, hence there is no need to cool them down. Consequently, people are accustomed to having hot drinks with their meals.
   
2. Economics. When you purchase a drink here it comes in a 250-350ml bottle (8-12 oz) and if you're in a restaurant they will give you a glass to go with it. Only a few places provide fountain drinks. They do not give free refills, so people usually make one drink last the entire meal. Adding ice would either (a) take up space which could hold more of the beverage in question, and (b) during the course of an entire meal, it can water down the drink, making it less desirable.

In the US we have come to expect free refills in fast food joints as well as restaurants, and it is hard to imagine a place that does not serve fountain drinks. It is hard for us to imagine a watered down drink because, knowing we can have as much as we want, we load the cup with ice which means the cup will be only about one-third full of actual beverage. We can drink that long before any serious ice melting occurs.

Geographically, even the most northern American cities are south of most European cities. Boston is much warmer than London in summer, for example. And Houston is just "damn hot" as Vince says. We need ice in our cold drinks. If we're not cooling our drinks, we're using the cold glass to cool our foreheads.

This difference in approach is well illustrated in the story of my friend Cindy, who recently had reason to purchase a refrigerator for her apartment.  At the appliance store she requested a refrigerator with an ice maker. The salesman showed her a model which had a small freezer with two ice cube trays. "No, no, I mean an automatic ice maker." He showed her a model which had a small freezer section, plus two ice cube trays which were attached to the freezer and which turned over to release the ice cubes into a tub. You still had to fill them manually. In exasperation, Cindy complained "look, I need an icemaker that will make lots and lots of ice. Ten trays worth at least, that refills itself and empties ice itself. Do you have such a thing?" The salesman was stumped. He looked Cindy in the eye and asked "why would you ever need so much ice?" with a huge shrug of her shoulders and an exasperated voice she said "Ice -- it's what separates us from the savages!"

Cindy eventually found a refrigerator to meet her needs. Vince and I have several plastic ice cube trays which we fill manually. We have commandeered the one drawer in our freezer and use it to hold ice. Lots of ice. Ten trays worth at least.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm taking a day of rest. See you back on Monday, for Day #7.

Day #5 - Silver Linings

Another day of rain and I'm missing Houston, which makes it easy to complain about the things in Perth I find less than enchanting.

• Like the fact that their technology is about 15 years behind what I'm used to. For example, when iTunes released all the Beatles tunes, I couldn't download them because iTunes won't make them available to Australia. Hmmm...
  
• Clothing comes in lots of colors, as long as you like black. Shiny black, matte black, black & white stripes (no, that's too daring), faded black and dark black together, black cotton, black wool, and if you're a guy, you can wear a white shirt to go with your black pants. Ladies clothing sizes seem to end at 16, and that's an Australian 16 which in the USA is a 14. Sometimes I can wear them, sometimes not. I've given up on shoes - nobody carries size 12. But the stores are filled with black ones.  Black is the color of business clothing, and the locals follow this code faithfully. I have seen people strolling St. George's Terrace, the main drag of Perth's CBD (Central Business District) in everything from a suit & tie to a sundress (with bra straps showing) and flip flops -- and each person considers themselves dressed professionally. Some days I wear my tomato red dress into town just to brighten up the place.

• It is nearly impossible to go out to a restaurant on the spur of the moment. They take "bookings" (reservations) days, even weeks, in advance and have no problem turning people away if their book says the restaurant is full. When you book a table, you get it for the entire evening, regardless of how long you actually stay. So... the good news is that you can stay as long as you like, but the bad news is that many people are turned away when, if they had arrived 20 minutes later, they might be able to get the table once the customers finish their dinner.
  
• After 18 months here we still haven't found a place which sells anything like a burrito, taco or enchilada, let alone a proper Mexican restaurant. Gotta make them at home, which we do on a regular basis!
  
• House prices are through the roof. The average price for a 3-bedroom home is about $500,000. That's around 2,700 square feet. The bedrooms are small, small, small and the bathrooms are tiny. Guess they save it all for the living room and patio. Gotta have room for the barbie.

But... even these inconveniences aren't all bad. There's just one Freeway, the Kwinana Freeway. And while one fender-bender can tie up traffic for an hour, we live just one exit from the office, so we have been spared most traffic grief. And... I have saved lots of money NOT buying clothing and have managed to do just fine on my existing wardrobe. Nobody really looks at what you're wearing unless it's a real dress-up occasion (or it isn't black).  So nobody knows I'm wearing last year's sweater, and I can use the extra money for more fun things, like a vacation! And I really do have enough iTunes for the moment -- I still have a box of CDs in storage in Houston that I can load into the computer and onto my iPod.

The hardest thing of all about being in Perth isn't the weather, or the food, or the traffic. It's being so darn far away from y'all - our family and friends. I'm sending lots of hugs your way and thinking of you today. See you tomorrow for Day #6 - I gotta go crank up the Brooks & Dunn and make some enchiladas.

Day #4 - The Good, The Bad and the... Different

It's Thursday June 16th, the fourth day in a row of rainy weather.  Farmers all over WA are delighted since their crops will grow better and their livestock won't suffer. My neighbor's parents, who own a farm about an hour's drive north of Perth, have been paying $1,000 per week to have water trucked in for their cattle and for home use. I expect a big thank you from them all -- it was our shattered windshield that triggered the storms, I'm sure. :-)

Cold, wet weather makes me want to cook comfort food, like beef stew and cornbread. My recent marketing brought to mind several observations about things that are really good about living in Perth.

** Car insurance is really cheap compared to Houston. $584 for a whole year, and that's for the super premium version. Only $300 deductible (they call it "excess" here) and the service is fabulous. It only took one phone call to report my incident and they arranged everything else. The problem was fixed within a couple of days. The glazier actually came to my home and did the work on the spot. 

** There is no tipping here. When you eat at a restaurant, the price you pay is all you pay. Granted, it costs a bundle to eat out, but servers are paid a living wage (approx. $20 per hour) and don't expect gratuities. I thought this would mean that service is poor, but it doesn't. These kinds of jobs are highly sought after and people work to keep them. Great service and no need to leave a tip - wow.

**  Golf is incredibly inexpensive. On weekends it costs $20 per person and only $15 per person on weekdays. The courses are beautiful and well designed. I'm going to get in as much golf as I can in the next 2-1/2 years! In theory, I could golf every day...

** The price on the tag is what you pay. No extras. I LOVE this. It makes it easy to figure out whether I can truly afford something or not. How does this work? There's no sales tax here. Well actually there is, and it's called GST, but it's already included in the price of whatever you buy.

** And my favorite thing... non-food items in the grocery store cost the same as they do elsewhere. Such a balm to my pet-peeved soul, which always hated that a tube of toothpaste at HEB or Kroger costs twice as much as it does at Target. Now I don't have to make a separate trip to buy cleaning products, lotion and shampoo, or nail polish. I can get it all at my local Coles or Woolies.

Writing about this has put me in a most cheerful mood. Who cares about a little rain? See you tomorrow for Day #5. Yup, I'll probably winge (complain) about a few not-so-great things in Perth, but I'll be sure to include some good things too. Until then, cheers!

Day #3 of 30 - Scrapbooking

It's kind of like Kindergarten on steroids. You get to color, draw, cut out stuff, glue things to paper, and make a really big mess. You can even take a nap when you get tired. About two years ago my friend Jean introduced me to the Lone Star Scrapbook store, a wonderland of paper, ribbon, stickers, buttons, and creative ways to document one’s life. From that moment I was hooked. 

What I didn't know at the time was how consuming this hobby can be. One moment you're taking out a few sheets of paper and a couple of photos and next thing you know five hours have passed, you haven't made anything for dinner and you're late for an appointment. And then there's the associated paraphernalia. For example, there is a little machine to do almost any measure, cut and/or paste action imaginable. I used to use a little die cut machine called an "Epic" to punch out alphabets and borders for my scrapbook pages. I got it on sale because a newer, fancier model was coming out but I still invested over $100 in the machine and the die cuts. Then it was $10 here, $20 there for the cutest little flowers, alphabets, geometric shapes, etc. 

I considered myself queen of the scrapbook heap until word spread about an even cooler machine: the Cricut. It's a little computer that does all the stuff the Epic did, except you don't have to crank a little handle round and round or even line up die cuts to get the most number of die cuts from your paper. This critter does it all for you. It works on a system of software cartridges and you feed a sheet of 12"x12" paper into it, then tell it how big you want your lacy border, palm tree or whatever to be. It calculates everything for you, cuts it, and shoots it out ready to peel off and put in your scrapbook. Even better, Cricut has collaborated with Disney, so now I can make enough Buzz Lightyear cutouts to keep my grandson Owen happy. I waited a year before investing in the Cricut, and again I was able to snap up a bargain because... yes, there's another version due out in any week now. Oh, I forgot to mention the "Gypsy," which lets you plan out a scrapbook page and then it tells you which shapes you will need and the name of the cartridge they're on. It is possible to spend huge bucks on these conveniences. More than once I have heard a lady in a scrapbook class whisper to me, "I couldn't bring myself to tell my husband how much I spent on scrapbooking this month. He wouldn't like it if he knew." Oh right, Vince, you're reading this? Well, I only bought a few pieces of paper and a glue stick-- didn't spend more than $20... really.

Fortunately for me, my favorite scrapbook store here in Perth ("Just Scrapbooking") has set aside a day every month to teach people how to use these very cool machines, and the best part... they let you use all of their cartridges for free. At around $30 a pop, you can save serious money by coming to "Bug Day" and cutting out as much stuff as you think you'll need until the next time. You still have to buy your own machine, though. The next version of the Cricut is supposed to print things in color for you, so you don't have to buy colored paper at around 60 cents a sheet ($1.10 in Australia). Sounds like a bargain, but haven't we all been seduced before by cheap printers with cartridges that cost almost as much as the hardware? So I think I'll stay at the cro-magnon stage of die cut machines for a while, and maybe pick one up in two or three years when the next version comes out -- the one that makes dinner for you too!

So far I have completed two scrapbooks - one for Vince's daughter Sharon and one for Owen, who turns five years old on Sunday (Happy Birthday, sweetie!). Here's a sample page in his honor. See you next time, on Day #4.

Day #2 of 30 - Mahjong

Today is Tuesday, June 14th - a happy American Flag Day to you!  It's a safe bet that most Australians are oblivious to this holiday. Here in Perth it is a cold, gray day and currently it is pouring down rain. (Murphy's law again -- no rain for a year and two days after our windscreen is broken it rains...) The good news is that the winter equinox is only 8 days away. I'm already looking forward to those long sunny days.

On Tuesdays I play Mahjong with a terrific group of ladies. They are the first people I met in Perth and collectively they have helped me to do more than adjust to life here, but to really enjoy it. Julie, who grew up in Western Australia (or WA as everyone calls it), knows where to find everything from the freshest tomatoes to the best physiotherapist. Gaylene, who is from Victoria, or "Over East" as Perthians call everything on that side of the country, has explained many Australian expressions to me such as "drop by this arvo for a cuppa" (stop by this afternoon for a cup of tea and a chat). Here are a few more:

Chook - chicken. "The chook at Cole's looked beautiful. I bought some to cook for dinner."

Beautiful - great, fabulous, lovely, wonderful. If a dish tastes especially delicious, they'll say it was beautiful.

Arvo - afternoon. Many words are shortened to end in either "o" or "ie".

Bikie  - motorcyle rider, with the implication they are in a gang. A bikie gang = Biker gang. As opposed to a biker, which is a cyclist.

Salvos - The Salvation Army

Freo - Fremantle, a port town about 15 minutes southwest of Perth.

But I digress... Our ladies mahjong group is a mix of people from Australia, Canada, India, Singapore and the US. We meet every week to play Mahjong, have lunch and indulge in conversation. Some ladies are more competitive than others - Cindy, a fellow Texan, competes passionately for each week's title of "Mahjong Queen" (you get to wear a plastic tiara and have bragging rights until the next session) and gets quite miffed with herself if she does not "Mahjong" (win the game) at least 5 times in an afternoon. Me, I consider myself successful if I achieve Mahjong once during the day, although I usually do better. We usually manage about 20 hands between 11am and 3pm.

The most important part of the day is lunch.Today is my turn to be hostess and I'm serving beef and vegetable stew, corn muffins and apple crumble - hearty fare for a cold winter's day. Because it's really not about the Mahjong. It's about getting to know people, make friends, and help each other. My life in Perth is better because of my "Mahjong Ladies."

A typical mahjong setup. It's a fun game to play - I look forward to teaching y'all when we return to Houston!

Let's Try This!

A bright Monday morning to everyone! I've come to the pathetic and overdue realization that you cannot be a perfectionist and maintain a blog at the same time. So, in a desperate effort to break my prolonged writer's block I present to you: 30 Blogs in 30 Days. These will be shorter and without so many photos, but there will at least be something. I apologize for not keeping my promise to keep family and friends informed about Australia and up-to-date on our comings and goings. Most of the time our life is just not that interesting, but... Australia certainly is, and I will endeavor to share more of it with you.

Okay, Day #1 - Golfing Again.
After almost five months of classes, our instructor says we're ready to try golfing on an actual course. Yippee -- we finally get to be "real" golfers! I've joined a group of ladies who golf once a week. They are wonderful, especially for putting up with my floundering efforts as I make the inevitable beginner's mistakes. I've been on the course three times, survived 9 holes and managed to keep my score, well... let's just say it's improving. I scored 76 on my first attempt (on a par 36 course), and I am thrilled. I thought it would be closer to 100.

Golf class at 8:00am on a Saturday morning. Mostyn, our instructor, is the man in black not holding a golf club. He's awesome.

Hard at play!

Yesterday, Vince got on the course for the first time. He has an incredibly powerful swing, although his accuracy still needs some work. I didn't realize how fast the game goes once you're on the course. And there are people only a few minutes behind you, waiting for you to take your shot and get out of the way so they can play. We managed to keep up the pace by playing "Ambrose" style, which is like "best ball."

After an enjoyable 9 holes and a coffee at the end, we returned to our car to find our rear window smashed -- by an errant golf ball! Other golfers who saw us stopped to exclaim they'd never seen such a thing happen before. What are the odds, right? (I'm thankful for good insurance!)

See you tomorrow, for Day #2.

Fremantle

Vince met a former client (and a Texan) on the street recently (actually, that happens a lot here). He and his wife had just moved to Perth, which provided me a great opportunity to do some more exploring. This is how I know I've acclimated: I think "Oh, it will always be there. I can visit another time." Spoken by the same girl who lived in Southern California for almost 20 years and only went to Disneyland once. It's still summer here, so a trip to the ocean seemed in order. Fremantle is a charming coastal town, reminiscent of Galveston and parts of San Diego in that it has a large port, quirky personality and a lovely coastline. My new friend Silvana and I spent an afternoon moseying through shops, had a coffee, and then toured Fremantle Prison. She had a friend visiting from Texas, so all three of us took the "Doing Time" tour. 

Fremantle Town Hall and clock tower. This part of town (the West End) is known for its Georgian and Victorian style architecture. 

A spot of welcome shade on a blistering hot afternoon. In the distance is the Port of Fremantle, where the Swan River meets the Indian Ocean.  The port is named after Sir Charles Fremantle, who captained the ship of English colonists who settled here in 1829.

On the weekends you can usually find several craft fairs / flea markets, some of which are set up here, in the courtyard of the Fremantle Arts Cente. Even better are the permanent "Fremantle Markets," known for wonderfully fresh fruits and vegetables. You can find almost anything there. Both Perth and Fremantle have quite a bit of outdoor sculpture around town. Here is a work by Greg James - a tribute to his friend and fellow sculptor Pietro Giacomo Porcelli.

A close up of Mr. Porcelli at work.

Enjoying a coffee and a salad before exploring the prison. 

The Roundhouse, site of the old Fremantle prison. Like many buildings in this area, it is made of limestone. The prison itself was built by the convicts who eventually lived there. Our guide told us that the original plan for settling a colony in Western Australia (WA) did not include a prison. The idea was that with enough land and food for everyone, no one would commit crimes and prisons would not be needed. But human nature being what it is, it wasn't long before they had to lock up people for everything from stealing to murder. The story goes that there was not enough labor in WA to construct the building, so Captain Fremantle sent away to Mother England asking if they had any extra prisoners they could send over.  As it happened, during that time England's "gaols" were overcrowded and they were thrilled to jettison off a few hundred convicts to Australia. When the prison ship arrived, the men had to continue to live on it for over a year, AND they were forced to quarry and cut the limestone, and then build the prison themselves, in blistering heat as well as wet winters. You can get an idea of how tall the building is from looking at the ants - er humans - below.

There is some gruesome history attached to this place! The mesh you see above is not soft. It's made of hard wire and will slice through anyone who tries to throw themselves over the rails in an attempt to either escape or kill themselves. Ouch!

 The prison was in operation from 1855 through 1991. Conditions were harsh. Prisoners were only allowed showers 3 times per week, even during the hottest times of the year.

 The kitchen, which was run by prisoners. There were 27 positions available and it was considered a dream job. Prisoners working with food had to meet hygiene standards, which required them to shower every day before starting work.

 The barbed wire here is so sharp it can slice clothing into rags in seconds, not to mention body parts.

 Our tour guide explains that the beautiful chapel was never occupied by convicts. It was built for the prison warden and his family. 

 The prison contains four wings, and is four storeys high. The walkways are made from local Jarrah wood.

 The prison cells were so small that a man could not spread his arms out completely without touching the walls. Sleeping was on a hammock-style bed. Each cell held one prisoner, and had a heavy door. There was no opportunity to socialize after coming inside for the day. Conditions were so poor that a journalist described it as not merely discipline, but suffering. In 1890 they doubled the size of the rooms by removing a wall between two cells to improve conditions there.

 And if that's not enough to make you behave, there's always flogging. Our guide describes the use of the cat-o'nine-tails. That's where we get the sayings "cat got your tongue" and "room to swing a cat." The person performing the action had to be able to whirl the instrument around his head a couple of times prior to each lash. The highest number of lashes that could be sentenced was 100. The usual number was 10 or less. In a horrible but interesting aside, she mentioned that if a prisoner could not tolerate the full sentence, they would be taken to hospital, allowed to heal, and then return for the remainder of their punishment. I left here vowing never to even think about breaking the law, ever.

The ultimate punishment - death by hanging. Fremantle Prison was the only place of legal execution between 1888 and 1984. During that time, 43 men and 1 women were executed here, all for murder.  Maudlin but interesting - Most executions took place on Monday morning at 8:00am. The method of hanging was considered exceptionally humane. The trap door and subsequent drop into the pit below ensured the prisoner would die quickly, avoiding a slow painful death by asphyxiation. <Shudder>

In 1988 there was a fire followed by a riot at the prison which lasted for two days. This led to an investigation into conditions at the prison, followed by orders to close it down. In typical bureaucratic fashion (the same the world over), it took three years to comply. Today the site is clean and prisoner-free, and it hosts thousands of tourists each year. The building is now part of the National Trust and is considered an important part of Western Australia's heritage.

It is a bit out of character for me to write about such a gruesome and depressing subject. But I have the same idea in mind -- Australia was settled mostly by convicts shipped over from England, some of whom were arrested for stealing a loaf of bread or piece of fruit to feed their families. They're not all innocent of course, but the tough conditions they endured has helped shape the psyche of today's Ozzies. Fearless. Team spirit. Physical strength and fairness. Time for play as well as work. Camaraderie. Humor (usually bawdy).  Survivors and pioneers.