Mike

Hotness

Carrie didn't know that she started a meme, but she did.

Cote de Pablo - As Mossad agent Ziva David on NCIS she can kill you with a  well-placed thumb.  I can't think of a better way to die.

Roselyn Sanchez - If only all FBI agents were that beautiful.

Paz Vega - I wish the Bi-Lo had a grocery clerk like her.

Salma Hayek - Her dance with Ashley Judd in Frida is as sensual as it comes.  She's also the only reason I watched some episodes of Ugly Betty.

Paula Garcés - A star in the making.

[At this point Briar, Isaac, and Justine are laughing because they know that I have this thing about latinas even though I never married, or even dated, one.]

Laura Harris - See, I like blonds, too.  And she's a Canadian, which gets her extra points.

Katherine Moennig - As Shane on The L-Word there's a reason that lesbians, gay men, and straight men like me want to sleep with her.

Redhead? - Our own Heather - "Shine like a star, shining so bright like the star that you are."  -- Shine by Aswad.

Aishwarya Rai - Once voted the most beautiful woman in the world.

Joan - The greatest smile ever, and another Canadian.

I could keep going but now it's your turn.

Is MSM admitting defeat?

"You can blog and watch television at the same time."

--CNN's Anderson Cooper tonight

Hillary crosses one line too many

I haven't been a Keith Olbermann fan since he left Sports Center but I have to admit that he's right.  Listen to all of it. The money quotes come at the end.

Better late than never, some random observations about my trip to Australia

This was the first time I’d been below the equator and over the International Date Line.  I know it’s not a big deal but it felt like it.

I didn’t kill anyone while driving on the left side of the road but I did scare the crap out of Justine multiple times every day.

The fine for parking too long in Byron Bay is $79.  I swear that I didn’t see the sign until after I got the ticket and even then how the hell was I supposed to know what 1P meant.  Hertz didn’t give me a guide to traffic signs.

Gold Coast Australians are the most polite drivers I’ve ever encountered.  Unlike NYC, where I hear horns honking 24/7, I only heard two people honk their horns during my two weeks there.  Both times it was a driver honking at me because I did something stupid before Justine could tell me not to.

Speaking of polite,  Australians on the Gold Coast are as polite as we Charlestonians are.  Trust me, we know polite.

Australians love to talk to foreigners, even Americans.  Ask a simple question and along with the answer you’ll get a recent family history.  One night after we ordered a supreme pizza the guy behind the counter told us about how he’d spent time in jail after he’d run from police and killed his best friend in a automobile accident and how he’s turned his life around since then.  He had just starting telling us about how he goes to Florida to compete in drifting competitions when our pizza came out of the oven and we escaped.

Australians abbreviate many words in both conversation and print.  Breakfast is breckie, university is uni, McDonald’s is Maccas (no apostrophe, they aren’t big on those either),  Brisbane is Brissy (pronouned Brizzy), the Salvation Army and it’s stores are Salvo.  I feel sure that Justine can list many more examples that I forgot, or never heard.  They also leave similes hanging as in “He’s as fast as”.  Evidently you are supposed to get the rest of it.

No one said “G’day, mate” to me while I was there.  The most common phrase I heard was “No worries” followed by “Good on ya’” and “How ya’ going?”

Australia, at least the Gold Coast, is expensive.  Very, very expensive.  Partly it’s because the US dollar is in the crapper (the US dollar is now roughly at par with the Australian dollar) but mostly it’s because Australia is very, very expensive.    Bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast will run you $12 to $13 in the cheapest restaurants.  Just toast and coffee runs you $6.  A burger costs $12 before you add fries.  Dinner for two at a not-so-great restaurant, as we discovered, runs anywhere from $60 to $80.  The exception to this is McDonald’s.  Their meals cost about the same as they do in the US.  Justine is convinced that it’s part of their plot to conquer the world.

Part of the reason things cost so much is that wages are high.  Justine says that waitstaff in restaurants make $18 to $19 an hour before tips.

Speaking of high, I saw a poster in the window of a bank offering 7.75% interest for a 3-month certificate of deposit.  I hate to think what mortgage and car loan rates are.

Everything is extra.  Want ketchup with those fries?  20 cents a packet, although some places, but not all, give you the first one free.  Tartar sauce with the fish and chips?  $1.20 for a small plastic tub of it.  If your server asks you if you would like bread before your meal arrives, make sure that you ask “How much?” before you say “Sure”.  The price runs from $2.50 to $5.00.  At least no one charges for the butter.  As we discovered in one restaurant even gravy can cost $4.50.

Justine and I still haven’t figured out what Australian cuisine is.  Several restaurants on the Gold Coast say that they serve it but their menus consist of little more than chicken, lamb, beef and prawns prepared in unimaginative ways.  Oh, and pumpkin soup.  Evidently you are an Australian restaurant if you serve pumpkin soup.  I’m hoping that if I ever go to Sidney or Melbourne I’ll find out what Australian cuisine really is.

Asian restaurants - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malaysian - dominate the Yellow Pages.  Italian restaurants lag far behind.  We found one Chinese place that has great noodle bowls.  I love noodle bowls.

When I first went to a bookstore looking for mysteries by Australian authors (a sub-genre American publishers have yet to discover) I almost had a heart attack.  Small-format paperbacks, the sort that sell for $6.99 to $9.99 here, go for $21.99 to $24.99 in Australia.  Trade paperbacks start at $34.99.  Hardbacks?  $45.99.

Despite what the TV ads here in the US say, Foster’s isn’t “Australian for beer”.  When I didn’t see Foster’s sold anywhere I asked a liquor store clerk about it.  He said that Foster’s is one of the worst-selling brands in the country.  VB (Victoria Bitter) and Tooheys Extra Dry are two of the most popular beers.  Again, Justine can fill you in.  She has experience.

Snopes is right.  Water drains whichever way it wants to on both sides of the Equator.  I filled the sink in our hotel bathroom and when I pulled the plug the water drained clockwise.  Ever the scientist, when I got back I filled the sink in my bathroom and the water in it drained clockwise, too.  It is true, however, that high-pressure systems below the Equator rotate counter-clockwise and low-pressure systems rotate clockwise.  A cyclone (aka hurricane) formed far north of the Australian northwest coast while I was there and it fascinating to see satellite photos of it spinning the wrong way.

I was hoping to see what the southern night sky looked like - the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds.  Unfortunately the light pollution along the Gold Coast is so bad that even at 4 AM all I could see were a few of the brightest stars.

I didn’t meet anyone named Bruce.

Sorry for the delay. I'm easily distracted.

[You can make all photos larger if you click on them.]

If I ever go back to Australia I’ll explore as much of it as I can but on this trip all I wanted to do was spend time with Justine exploring the Gold Coast and getting in some quality beach time.  First, a little background info.  I thought that Gold Coast was the name of a region, and it is, but it’s also a city in the State of Queensland that formed in 1960 when several towns merged.  It encompasses 540 square miles stretched along the east coast and has a population of around 500,000.  It has 43 miles of beautiful beaches that stretch from South Stradbroke Island in the north to Coolangatta on the border with New South Wales.

The Gold Coast likes to brag that it has 300 days of sunny weather a year.  Justine had already warned me that since she arrived at the beginning of January (the beginning of summer there) it had rained a lot (even with flooding rains in parts of Queensland) so I wasn’t surprised that it was overcast and spitting rain when I landed at the Coolangatta airport.  I hit more light showers on my drive from the airport to the Bond University campus.  Then a miracle happened.  While Justine was packing her stuff in her dorm room the sun came out.  The weather remained sunny for the entire two weeks that I was there.  What can I say?  I’m the Sun God!  The daytime highs ranged between 21 and 28 degrees C.  (Your brain probably needs the exercise so I’ll let you convert C to F.)  The water temp was a constant 23 C.

Justine and I spent a lot of time on the beaches and each beach we visited has its own character.  Burleigh Heads is a lot like Folly Beach here in SC but with better waves and more restaurants.

The beach at Burleigh

Broadbeach is like Hilton Head.  Multi-million dollar homes and tony shops and restaurants.

Broadbeach

Surfers Paradise, where we stayed, is like Myrtle Beach on steroids.  If there’s a tourist trap, fast food restaurant, souvenir shop, surfer shop, tattoo place, or titty bar then Surfers has it.  Surfers is also blanketed by high-rise hotels and condos.  At 80 stories the Q1 is the tallest residential building in the world.  (At least until Donald Trump hears about it.)  Just down the street is a hole in the ground that will eventually be Soul, a 77-story residential building.  The penthouse at Soul, which won’t be completed until late-2010 at the earliest, already sold for $16.8 million.  More, but smaller, buildings are under construction.

The beach at Surfers

The condos at Surfers

This is when I knew I was no longer in South Carolina

When we weren’t at the beach we were exploring the Gold Coast.  Since we weren’t going to the outback or the rain forest we visited the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary instead.  It has one of the largest collections of wildlife in Australia.

Koalas

He's a dingo, Joan

Since I’m a horticulturist I couldn’t resist visiting Tropical Fruit World if for no other reason than to show Justine that horticulture can be fun, or at least taste great.  We got to sample tropical fruits that even I’d never heard of.

The Big Avacado

Since I’m a Kentucky boy with close relatives in the thoroughbred business we had to go to the Gold Coast Turf Club to see the racing.  Unlike in the US, all of the races are run on turf instead of on dirt and the horses run clockwise around the track.  I bet on Gun Salute to win in the 5th race.  He broke into the lead out of the gate and maintained it for 1600 meters.  Unfortunately the race was 1800 meters long.

Gun Salute ran 4th. That's Surfers Paradise in the background.

Rugby League (as opposed to Rugby Union) is the most popular professional sport on the Gold Coast so on the first Saturday that I was there Justine and I went to Skilled Park in Robina to watch the Gold Coast Titans play the New Zealand Warriors.  The Titans are currently tied for first in the National Rugby League.

Titans 36 - Warriors 24

One morning we went for a cruise on the Broadwater.  The Nerang River runs parallel to much of the Gold Coast, sometimes as close as a few hundred meters from the ocean, before emptying into the sea at the Southport Spit.  At Surfers Paradise it broadens into an estuary known as the Broadwater.    Around thirty years ago developers realized its potential and dredged much of the Broadwater to make artificial “canals” on which to build waterfront houses that now sell for multimillions.  Lately people are buying some of the original homes in order to tear them down and build even bigger ones.  (Gee, that sounds a lot like the SC coast.)

One of the canals with Surfers in the background

One of our last day trips was to Byron Bay, just over the border in New South Wales.  On the south end of the bay is Cape Byron, the easternmost point in mainland Australia.    Byron Bay was once a busy seaport for loading timber and agricultural products.  Today it is an odd mix of surfers, backpackers, and millionaires.    One side street we walked down was totally devoted to the needs of backpackers - internet cafes, hostels, stores selling phone cards, and travel agents offering cheap bus and plane tickets.  On the main street we saw real estate agents offering million dollar condos and multimillion dollar houses for sale or rent.  The surfer community was like a throwback to The Endless Summer (available on DVD at one surf shop in town).  I saw more vintage VW microbuses drive by that day than I had ever seen near campus in 1968.  While the Gold Coast can be compared to the SC coast, Byron Bay can’t be.  Cape Byron, with it’s lighthouse, looks like something you would see on the Maine coast.  Stretching for miles both north and south of the cape are sandy beaches, largely deserted except for the surfers.

Byron Bay from near the lighthouse



The Cape Byron Lighthouse



The beach south of the Cape



Justine on Byron Bay Beach

I mentioned at the start that I picked Justine up at her campus dorm. During my last full day in Australia I helped her move into her new digs - a 5-bedroom townhouse near campus that she shares with four other students.  I took some photos but due to an oversight by both of us they were never burned onto the DVD that I came home with. I’ll post them when Justine emails them to me.

I’ll be back later with some random observations about the trip and with a link to more photos.

A dog's life

Father's Day is coming up

Amazon has Season Three of Two and a Half Men on sale.

I'm just saying.

Overheard

When the flight attendant said that we could turn our cell phones on the woman sitting in front of me phoned someone and said, "We just landed and are taxiing to the gate.  Pick me up in the Jag, not the Porsche."  The Embraer 145 that we were on is a small aircraft and I feel sure that the other 48 passengers heard her, which is probably what she wanted.

Australian Sidewalk Graffiti for Joan

[You can make it bigger.]

Champ is in the house

He's sporting his new bandanna that Justine bought him in Byron Bay.

OOL to AKL to LAX to IAD to CHS

It took 28 hours to get to Australia but because I had long layovers in Auckland and Los Angeles it took 38 hours to get home again.  I am unable to sleep on planes or in airports so by the time I got to Charleston yesterday morning I had been awake for 42 hours.  As much as I would have loved to climb into my bed I knew that if I did it would screw up my internal clock more than it already was so I kept busy and managed to stay awake for another 11 hours.  Needless to say I was asleep seconds after my head hit the pillow at 9 last night.  I feel great this morning so I hope that I have avoided the effects of jet lag.  I'll know more after another good night's sleep.

I have over 300 photos to sort through and I hope to have them posted on Flickr later this week.  I'll also post a recap of the trip on the blog in the next day or two.  For now I have to rescue Champ and Psycho from the kennel.