One Amazing Weekend

This weekend was pretty awesome, so I figured I'd share it with y'all.

Friday:

Impromptu pub crawl, starting out with free Asahi beer (tasty!) at a swanky pub down the street. They were doing a promotion, and because I knew the bartender, we kept getting additional vouchers to drink more. Then on to a tour of the East End pub scene, basically. I met up with some friends, and joined them for actual pub crawls, and finished the night at a pub I'd been to and didn't remember. It was good to finally see it.

Saturday:

Lazy morning, followed by casual lunch and shopping on Rundle. It's good to just get out and see all the fashions I can't afford. Then, because of the major partying done the previous evening, we sat in to watch movies and tv shows. Once, a movie I'd been wanting to see, and now know that it so lives up to the Oscar it received, and Blades of Glory, for funsies.

Sunday:

The pinnacle of this weekend. It was a perfect day, mid-20s with a cool breeze and not a cloud in the sky. I walked through this amazing arts market that happens every Sunday in Adelaide: food and crafts and great stuff for sale. There's a place called the American Candy store, which sells cupcakes of all varieties. Not quite up to the level of Dozen, but still great. And pofferjees, which are these great Dutch mini-pancakes, which you cover in cinnamon sugar or confectioner's sugar and cream. Yum!

The good food didn't stop there. The walk through the market was shortened so we could get to the real attraction: Cheese Fest '08! It was packed with people. Cheese makers from all over South Australia (and one from Tasmania) came to provide tastings of their best cheeses. There were a few SA wineries that were also there (Nepenthe, check it out, because it's awesome!). Imagine the best cheeses you've ever tasted, in one venue, and you just walk to stall after stall trying them all out, with a glass of amazing SA wine in your hand, the sun shining, and live music playing in the background. We met up with a few American friends, and sat in the grass after we had fully sated ourselves with cheese and drank wine until the sun started setting.

The only downside, if there is one, is that I got sunburned for the first time in a year. It's pretty brutal here (no Ozone layer and all) and so I have to remind myself continually from now on to apply copious amounts of sunscreen before all outdoor excursions. Also, I didn't bring my camera, so there is no documentation of these events. In future I need to do so.

Summer has arrived, and as my mother just perceptively said, "it's good for the soul to be in the sun". If you want to find me in the next three months, that's where I'll be.

OMG: Gas prices increase 5 cents!

While I am no longer in the US, I still try to keep up-to-date on American news. I'm not abroad for very long after all, and since we are the largest exporter of media in the world, it's actually hard to stay disconnected for long. In fact, as I've probably mentioned before, the people I meet here (albeit a highly educated, largely international, and therefore fairly biased sample) know more about American lifestyle, politics, policy, and history than many Americans. Since coming to Australia, I have definitely gained a lot of perspective as regards home; funny, how leaving a place can make you see it more clearly. The price of gas and oil: while its near-constant increasing price is hurting everyone in the US, and will more than likely hurt me when I get home, I doubt it will be nearly as high as here (about $1.50/litre) or elsewhere like Europe, where it is even higher. The minimum wage: we've just increased it to $7.50 per hour, set to occur in 2009, and Australia leaves us in the dust with a minimum wage just increased to over $15.00 an hour! And our election system: is this extended campaign period that the US is known for, which lasts over a year and racks up a bill the size of many small countries GDPs, really necessary?

While it has grown clearer that no government is perfect, and that every country has its problems, embarrassments, and controversies, we could all stand to gain a little perspective. This refreshing snippet from the Senate's Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Bipartisan Energy Summit caught my attention:

SENATOR SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (RI): Gentlemen, we’re in the middle of a near total mortgage system meltdown in this country. We have a health care system that burns 16 percent of our GDP, in which the Medicare liability alone has been estimated at $34 trillion. We’re burning $10 billion a month in Iraq.

This administration has run up $7.7 trillion in national debt, by our calculation. And there is worsening evidence every day of global warming, with worsening environmental and national security ramifications. In light of those conditions, do any of you seriously contend that drilling for more oil is the number one issue facing the American people today?

(Long silent pause during which nobody answers.)

WHITEHOUSE: No, it doesn’t seem so.

While I am certainly taking his soapbox speech with a hefty helping of salt, I do hope that our government, and what's more its people, will open their eyes and focus on what really matters.

My Holy Charge

A friend of mine introduced me to the following article in the latest edition of GQ, and I loved it so much I thought I'd reproduce it here. I hate that I'm missing the season!!!! But I'm going to search for the games on FoxTel and in pubs here, and spawn new Steelers fans internationally. ;)

Because the Cowboys may be America's Team, but the Steelers are God's Team.

A Steelers game is a holy war, a fight for what is virtuous and right. To live here in Pittsburgh, where Heinz Field sits like a fat temple bursting with kielbasa-loving believers, is to know all there is to know. Unflinching, unconditional, ours is a faith handed to us from Grandpa or Great-Grandpa, the guy who first got the season tickets and passed them down through generations. (The waiting list for season tickets is ten years long - you have to wait until someone dies.) Divorcing couples have been known to wage custody battles over season tickets; ex-husbands give in and sit with ex-wives, sharing nachos and a cold Iron. Hey, it's the Steelers.

We are born into our religion, and we are baptized, and we receive our Communion. A Steelers fan never strays. You move to Denver, or to some fancy Sunbelt place, or even to California, you stay a Steelers fan. People say the Cowboys are America's Team, and we think that is so adorable. So very precious. Listen, people: The Steelers are God's Team. Hometown boy Bill Cowher having passed along to sainthood, we embrace a new messiah, Mike Tomlin, trusting in the guidance of our holiest family, the Rooneys (because they're from Pittsburgh). And now, of course, we have big Ben Roethlisberger, who can make us more than a tiny bit nervous, and Hines Ward, with his eternal smile (he smiles, we think, because he gets to play for Pittsburgh), and Troy Polamalu, who embodies the sort of humanity we expect of our Steelers. Good people. Good people. Hey, they play for Pittsburgh - a rusty promised land where there is so little left to be proud of. So we will sit and wave our terrible towels and battle the gray chill that cuts to the bone, wave that towel, wave that towel in praise. We will do this because it is our life's work. We will continue to give birth to baby Steelers fans, and we will continue our charge to take over the world, to convert you and you and you. We are missionaries charged with leading you toward the light of Steeler Nation. It's probably a rule in the Bible somewhere. Oh, it probably is.