Happy New Year! Welcome to 2006...

So we have the whole crew in town, my flatmates Almira and her twin sister Jobina, Almira's boyfriend Mustafa, and their friend Imran in from London. We spent our entire 2pm breakfast discussing jusy exactly how we going to be organized and where we were going to be to get the best view of the Sydney fireworks above Sydney Harbour bridge. Then we got a text from Dougal, a guy I met for about an hour in a bar in Vietnam who lives in Sydney, he and his buddies were doing a slow pub crawl through a suburb very close to ours, called Balmain.

So much for our well-laid plans - we hoped a bus and joined the guys for a drink, and we eventually ended up at one of these great old tile-fronted bar/hotels they have in Sydney. Called the London bar, all the bar staff was dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland (save Minnie Mouse and Pocahontas, but hey) and the front deck had a spectacular view of the Sydney Harbour bridge. You know how it goes - after a few cold beers, I wasn't going anywhere - why fight the crowds downtown when I can hang out on a pub deck and see a great view? I lost Almira + entourage, who had tickets to a local nightclub, so they headed downtown to brave the crowds and try to find a taxi cab.

It was a really fabulous night, the 38 degree day had cooled to a bareable 28 degree evening. We all grabbed our drinks, stood on the balcony and whatched the 10 min children's fireworks at 9pm, and counted down the main fireworks at midnight - toasted happy new year, and it was all over. (and now is when I really hope there aren't any aussies reading this) I don't know what I was waiting for - the fireworks were good... but not great. I have seen much better displays at the Symphony of Fire in Vancouver. These fireworks were over so fast! I guess it isn't fair to compare - we have some world-class entertainment at home. What was interesting, is they loaded up a giant heart light board on the Sydney Harbour bridge itself, which pulsed, and changed colours during the show and leading up to the fireworks. It was a spectacular night over all - and it really is a new treat to be hot and in flip flops for New Year's.

Almira + crew did just fine - narrowly avoided some girls trying to start fights in the streets. The cops were everywhere - making sure there was no trouble as usual, but it seemed like the City really just enjoyed themselves last night.

Happy 2006!

Update on the fall out from the riots in the Shire

Just re-reading my posting from the other week, and it might lean a little too far and sound like I was placing a lot of responsibility within the Lebanese community. Certainly these events don't happen in vacuums, but from the news I heard, there were way more problems innitiated from dissafected "white" guys than the Lebanese community running around spoiling for fights. The riots were being organized via text messaging, and the police set up road blocks and searches to control people traveling to the area just to start fights. Especially people traveling from outside the Shire just to make trouble, not necessarily the residents.

I know news is manufactured, but every single photo that appeared, and all the TV coverage were angry, often drunk, white guys spoiling for a fight. I have actually been quite impressed at how the community as a whole is handling itself going forward. Within the Shire (Cronulla Beach) Muslim, Christian, community and youth groups are all working very hard together to look at ways of building better bridges within the community. The leaders in the Lebanese community have been really active in looking for solutions, especially just being honest about acknowledging and working to control some of their youth that were involved in the debacle.

It's been tough for the community to bounce back - Cronulla has become synonymous with racial tension, cultural intolerance, what Aussies call "yabbos" (drunk, stupid, surly guys) and collective embarassment of poor behaviour. The Lebanese and Middle-Eastern families have come back to the beaches - but not to Cronulla, they have headed to other beaches where they feel safer. Business haven't seen the tourists of the locals flock back to the beach, which is one of the most popular, and even Bondi was quieter on Christmas day than it usually is. At the end of the day, there hasn't been a repeat and things seem to be quieting down for now.

Christmas at 35 degrees

Well! I’ve made it through a 35 degree Christmas, strike that off the to-do list. It’s bizarre to be at the beach on Christmas day, it doesn’t feel like a proper holiday at all!

For Christmas Eve, a friend from Canada put me in touch with a friend and his family over here, and I was invited to a family Christmas Eve event. This was my authentic Australian experience – a Catholic Mass, outside in the churchyard among all the tombstones. All the families were on blankets, Grandparents in chairs, kids running amok – it was pretty unique! After mass, 3 generations of family headed back to the house for chilled prawns, bubbly, cheese and munchies. It was really a fantastic night.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my flatmate Almira’s family and friends were arriving fast and furious. On Christmas morning, Almira, her sister, her cousin, a friend from London and I all (finally) got organized, and headed out to Bondi Beach for Christmas day. We sent the whole day playing in the waves, getting some sun and watching the growing backpackers parties that seemed to be sprouting up as the day wore on. Everyone was wandering around in bikinis, board shorts and Santa hats. It looked like a commercial for Santa’s summer vacation.

For the all-important Christmas dinner, Almira and I had given up trying to find pumpkin pies, and since a turkey wouldn’t fit in our oven, we found stuffed chickens instead. It was a great meal, if we do say so ourselves – heaps of food and great company for the night. The weather was so nice, we grabbed our champagne, apple crumble, forks and glasses and walked down the block to the water to look at the city and toast to good health, friends and Christmas. We would have stayed forever, if the cockroaches hadn’t made an appearance and frightened us all away. I still haven’t got used to seeing those nasty little buggers everywhere.

Now, in Australia Boxing Day isn’t just the best day for after-Christmas sales. The true Aussie would hike it out to Watson’s point for the start of the Sydney to Hobart Sailing race – so that’s what we did. The Sydney to Hobart race is a huge event, it’s just under 2 days sailing for the competitive boats. The race starts in Sydney Harbour, and the boats race around Watson’s point and start down the coast to Hobart. We watched the start in the Harbour, and from where we were, you could run up the heads to see the yachts turn the corner to come down the coast, so we were running up hill with the boats, pausing to take a million pictures, and sprinting again. In the flotilla of sailing yachts, everyone with a dingy or a multi-million dollar powerboat is racing alongside, or even right between the boats – the water is frothing with the all the activity, so the sail boats look like they are sailing on white water. It was a very impressive event – and if you are wondering, Australian super maxi Wild Oats won, taking an hour off the record.

And even if I am a world away – no one can commit to one activity on New Year’s – we are watching the fireworks, and I am letting Almira + entourage argue about what else. Sometimes, nothing changes.

So much for the season of brotherly love

Well - I think it's made some of the papers in Canada, but its on everyone's lips in Sydney - the race riots on the beaches.

Basically - the feelings have been fermenting for decades... young, male on the lower end of the income scale white aussies, and young, male, on the unemployed end of the scale new immigrant and refugee Lebanese. Tensions flare... the "Surfies' vs. the "Lebs." Surfies claim the Lebanese aren't repecting the women on the beach, or connecting to the community and 'invade' their beaches, the Lebanese claim they are fighting back to defend themselves and they have every right to use the beach, and all of it is connected to under-employemnt, mis-understanding, male testosterone and ignorance of cultural issues, with a little police and government neglect to sweeten the pot.

The recent riots were touched off by the bashing of a couple lifeguards by a group of Lebanese guys - but from talking to Aussies over there, some from the rioting Shire itself, these's a lot more to the story than that. It's safe to say most people in the city are beyond scandalized, John Howard and the other Australian politicians are trying to dance around using the term "race riots" and everyone is doing a lot of naval searching trying to figure out a-how it got this bad and b-what are they going to do about it. There have been some really interesting developments. After the major riot, the "Bra Boys" (biker gang) and another Lebanese gang got together and held peace talks. Seriously! Most of the lifeguards are white-ish, so they have started a special drive to recruit some Lebanese lifeguards, who are currently undergoing training, to patrol the beach together. There is still a lot of emotions running high, the riots are being organized by SMS (text messaging), and everyone in Sydney is being warned away from lots of the local beaches.

There are a lot of blaming fingers, but it is disturbing to hear some of the fomenting factors in this race riot, are very close to what's happening in some neighbourhoods in Canada. Now we never think it would happen at home, but I was talking to an Aussie last night who said - he never thought it would happen in Australia either, until the tensions boiled over in the last few weeks.

Certainly as a traveler, it is an interesting window into the psyche of Australians... because everyone is trotting out their stereotypes and beliefs, and challenging assumptions about "what is an Australian" and where is the line between cultural sensitivity, cultural coddeling and putting up with bad behavior. It's also shedding a lot of light on their humanitarian and refugee programs, and how effectively the government supports people for the culture change of a new country, when they didn't want to leave their home in the first place, and how employment factors heavily into a community's affects its social life. Yep - I am reading a ton of newspapers - can you tell?

...On a lighter note, I am working at bank, believe it or not, and I have just had my contract extended until almost the end of January (they like me... they really like me!) OK - so it's not that melodramatic, but their communications stuff is in shambles, and I have managed to insinuate myself to put out fires over the holidays and to support their group until they hire a proper communications manager early next year. And the timing is perfect, because then I have friends coming to stay, and my parents, my sister and her boyfriend are all coming out to the Rarotonga in the Cook Islands for a delayed family Christmas in early February.

For Christmas, I have 4 Muslims for dinner (I still find it funny!) - Almira's boyfriend, her twin Jobina, cousin Sheena and a friend Imran are all going to be at our place for the holidays. We only have 2 bedrooms - I think this is going to be fun :-)

My flatmate Almira and I are determined to have a proper Christmas dinner, with turkey and pumpkin pie. And everytime I mention we eat pumpkin pie all the Aussies start sniggering. I can't, for the life of me, find bloody canned pumpkin, and I am about to give up and make it out of sweet potatoes. The Aussies eat cold meets, cold ham, chilled prawns, salad, etc. It's so hot here, it doesn't make sense to have the Canadian version, but since none of my dinner guests eat pork, and one allergy to crustaceans, Canadian Christmas it is! We had also planned to head out to Bondi on Christmas day, but with the rioting issues, we might be stuck closer to home.

That's about it - we are finding our way around all the neighborhood pubs and lounges, trying not to shop, having ridiculously long coffees at the cafe on weekends and tanning at the non-rioting beaches. Not bad for December!

Happy Holidays everyone.

Sydney - now home sweet home.

Our little apartment is sandwiched right between two hostels, one with a huge outdoor courtyard, so there are heaps of travelers hanging out, and the smell of pot is always in the air... reminds me of home! Work is boring, but runing out the door at 5 on the dot is a lot of fun for a change, but I am working with some really fabulously nice people. I can't find many Australian's in Australia - mostly Bristish and South Africans. But since everyone is from somewhere else, we are meeting heaps of great people, getting to know our way amoung the after-work bars in the city. Each new person has their set of clubs, or beaches, or neighbourhoods, and we are getting quite the tour!

So... I guess I wasn't paying attention in my dream of living in Australia where I forgot about the life part of life... you know the cooking and the cleaning and the working during the working hours bit. Life in Sydney pretty rapidly feels a lot like home. Although technically, I only ever cooked on Friday nights or weekends, because it was the only time I had off to get groceries. Now I am making Thai green curry and tabouleh and all sorts of stuff I forgot I knew how to make. It's actually been a pleasant surprise that I am not as hopeless around a stove as I thought.

We are slowly visiting every one of the Northern beaches... We have been hit by a lot of thunderstorms and nervous weather over the last few weeks, but we found time to get sunburns on Coogee on Sunday, and when it rains we just visit the bars that overlook the beach. Not bad, eh?