Australia Day 2008 - One month on...

Hi Everyone,

This is the first of a month's worth of blogs to catch up on all the busy things Ali and I have been up to lately. I guess it's one of those situations in which you're too occupied doing stuff to keep the blog on. Enough whingeing, here's the news:















A nice little Australia Day party was held in the apartment a month ago to celebrate all the greatness of Australian culture and achievement, and for the purposes of introducing Ali to some of my work colleagues and showing off the house. We managed to keep people distracted by painting up a traditional venetian mask in Aussie flag colours (just in time for carnevale!) and passing around the unofficial Australian Citizenship test (if you haven't done it yet let me know and I'll email it to you). Being mostly chemists, they came up with the other standard definition of "mole". Anyway that was just a primer before the food came out...



















A proper selection of Australian food was of the utmost priority, the only problem being that we didn't have an oven available! That cut out all the favourites (you know, pavlova, pies, roast barramundi, Anzacs, roo tail...) so we had to improvise. Our Aussie culinary experience consisted of vegemite on toast, Cheese-Ham-Pineapple stacks (which were a bit too much because we foolishly used Gruyere in the absence of plain old cheddar), Macadamia nuts, Garlic prawns and Chocolate crackles, accompanied by Coopers Pale Ale and Stouts (found on the website of a beer shop in Milan!). All that was finished up with some Tim-tams posted by my parents, but sadly we didn't have Milo to drink with/through it.















A bit of poetic license was applied to the chocolate crackles, which we re-named "roo-poo" given the similarity in colour if not size. They came out a lot more chocolatey than we wanted because you can't get Copha in Italy and we couldn't find vegetable shortening so we had to use a chocolate-butter substitute...so they were more like chocolate crackle brownies in the end, but tastey nonetheless. A bit of a shock to have leftovers but they were all eaten the following Monday by Ali's italian language schoolmates...















Ali and I were pretty happy with the spread but it's funny that just one month later we've learned so much more: that you can get Copha, Tim tams, Coopers, Little Creatures and Milo online from shops in the UK; that you can buy kangaroo from the London Borough markets; that the Italians have a creation similar to chocolate crackles but using molten mars bars instead of chocolate/butter/copha type coagulating agents, and that italian toasters do a really crap job of making toast. On the flip side, we're now very happy to be able to say that our government has apologised to the stolen generations and ratified the Kyoto protocol and moved to advance other similarly intelligent and morally decent initiatives.

Since Australia day we've "cooked" ceviche, tried out Venice's only Argentinean restaurant, experienced Venice's Carnevale, gone to the UK, Ali finished her language course and started working and last weekend I did some cross-country skiing! Hopefully it'll all appear in blogs soon.

Ciao, Paul.

The re-birth...

Paul and I have decided that a great analogy for my experience here so far is, well, starting your life all over again. OK. Probably a bit of an obvious analogy but let me take you through it....

First you start in the womb (the aeroplane) where it's warm, the air is filtered, you're crammed in but generally pretty comfortable, food just turns up in front of you, and the sights and sounds of the outside world are buffered. You are completely dependent on your carrier....ain't no getting out until they let you!

And then all of sudden, you are getting ushered out!! You don't really know where you're going, you just go with the flow and head towards the light. Through the gates (ahem) and you are confronted with all these people who are excited to see you.....but the light is too bright, it's too noisy, it's cold and nothing looks familar - apart of course from your dependent other who is strangely familiar! All you want to do is sleep and eat at strange times of the day whilst your dependent other is intent on introducing you to everything and everyone.

For the first week, all you can do is make noises - not even intelligible words, and you can't understand anything going on around you. You are completely reliant on your "dependent other" to navigate your way around.

In the second week, you move into two-word utterances.....telegraphic speech if you will. Then before your know it....

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

Excitement. Fear. Packing your backpack the night before. Separation Anxiety as your dependent other leaves you at the door and you have to try to communicate all your needs to strangers. And then you meet your teacher!! And you're instantly in love!! Funny, considerate, SPEAKS SLOWLY, young and handsome. He will be your saviour! He will be your guide in this crazy world! He will bring structure and meaning! Instant bonding! Hurrah!!!

Only, he's not your teacher afterall. He was just your teacher for the orienation. Separation anxiety all over again. New teacher scary and strict. And what about all those "friends" I made in the orientation? Now I have to start all over again. Will I be accepted?

Day 2. Meet teacher number two who will teach half of your classes. In love again! Like a primary school teacher, sweet, pretty, wears funky clothes and SPEAKS SLOWLY!! Ahhhhhh. Better. Exaggerates her speech and gestures...."Vaaaaa beeeeene?? Okaaaay? D'accorrrrrdo?". And you're covering all those basic subjects - family, clothes, types of work, animals etc. No dictionaries allowed.

What's really frustrating is knowing that your teachers and the whole class can speak English (these Europeans speak English better than me - not hard, I know) but we can only hope to understand the meanings of Italian words through our teachers' explanations in Italian, gestures and pictures.

Anyway - I'm in week 3 at the moment. I imagine I've learnt a lot but everyday I'm confronted with how much I still don't understand. One of the students gave up trying to conjugate a question with the correct tense, subjects and articles today in our class (strict teacher), so she just said "biscotto" instead. It was hilarious because it wasn't relevant at all to what we were discussing. I feel like that often too. i.e. "Here's a word I know in Italian - you figure out the rest cos 'biscotto' is all I have to offer right now - leave me alone".

After school I often go home, have lunch and watch my favourite show "Ciao Principessa". Yes, it's a children's show....but it's at my level! And she has a dog called "Scruuuf". I like Scruff. Of course, Scruff doesn't speak.

Okaaaaaaaaaaaay. Vaaaaa beeeeene. Only one more week of school left and then I enter the real world. I'll keep you posted!

Ali

Yesterday Mirano, Today Murano, Tomorrow Merano?

Hey folks,

Just a quick update to let you all know what we've been up to. After Capod'anno we were chilling out back in Venice before I had to go back to work and Ali started her intensive italian course. We took a daytrip up to the ski resort of Cortina d'Ampezzo, which was very nicely covered with snow that made the whole place pretty, but slippy. Ali has fallen in love with snowflakes and the amazing way that they actually look like what they're meant to look like on tv - all 120º angles , inverted hexagons and the like. We went up a cable car to one of the ski lodges, crazy fashions on display and brave parenting - people sending their youngest children down olympic slalom runs with nonchalance - now we know why italy is suffering negative population growth!

Ali's halfway through her intensive italian course, which she can tell you about in another blog, and I'm busy at work, preparing lectures and constructing a cleanlab for the rest of my project. We're planning an Australia day celebration and maybe going to visit Ali's rellies in the UK next month.

In the meantime, Carnevale is coming up real soon - more or less from the last weekend in January to the first weekend in February - Cassius will be playing the opening party! I was hoping to write a little bit about the Naples rubbish hoo-ha and the University of Rome's Physics Department cancelling a visit by the pope, but it's just too complicated, and as I mentioned, we're off to Murano soon. Oh, yeah, the post title refers to three different places here in the northeast of italy, all exactly the same title except for one vowel, and painfully easy to confuse...yesterday we went to the town on the mainland called Mirano, where Ali went boot-shopping, today we're going to the Island of Murano here in the Venetian laguna (famous for it's glassmakers being kicked off Venice for starting too many fires) and Merano is a city up in the Alps on the way to Switzerland, which we're not planning to visit tomorrow, by the way.

OK, so now the blog is up-to-date and the website was updated yesterday, so drop us a line and let us know what you're all up to...

Ciao, Paul.

Cappo D'anno

Buon Anno Nuovo!

After the usual pre-New Year's Eve shifting, moving, negotiating, haggling and bargaining, Paul and I decided to take-up an offer from one of his Venetian friends (Marco) to hang-out with his crew in Trieste. Trieste is a pretty coastal town near the border of Slovenia along the north-east coast of Italy and was formally a part of Austria until WW1. Vodaphone was first to notify us of our proximity to Slovenia by incorporating us into their Slovenian network.....so welcoming!

We went a day earlier than the rest of the crew to do some sight-seeing, taking-in Miramar Castle, Roman ruins and a quaint afternoon tea in one of the oldest cafes in the town operating since the early 1800's, "Cafe degli Specchi" (cafe of the mirrors).

We then met up with Marco and his friends....two of whom live in Trieste - Marta and her partner Lorenzo. After witnessing a nasty scooter accident in the street (I wanted to offer assistance but realised that communicating first aid needs through mime would not have been useful), we spent a few hours in Marta's apartment before heading off into the mountains to a restaurant specialising in "food from the forest".....i.e. deer, snails, frogs, goats etc. My italian was under a lot of pressure but luckily one of Marco's friends, Daniele could communicate at my level....his main topics of conversation seemed to revolve around when we would be eating, how much, when sweets would be served and when we would sleep.....my kind of Italian.

So I tried some frog legs....tasted like chicken. Trieds some snails....tasted like garlic butter... chicken. Ahhhh but all the food was truly amazing! I think about 8 courses in total. One of Marco's friends was very convincing in lying to me that we would then all have to do a second round of all 8 courses as it is a New Year's Eve tradition. I was freaking out.

From there, things got interesting. After welcoming in the new year with champagne and double the usual amount of kisses, everyone disappeared outside. Now I'm all for firework displays, and call me wuss if you will, but the idea of drunk unsupervised people randomly letting off explosions in a carpark makes me a little uneasy. The display was of course spectacular (after I stopped screaming, laughing and running around the carpark looking for cover......hmmnn. Pick the tourist).

Then, the cultural experience got even better. Next stage, drunken dancing and singing to popular Italian songs, English pop songs circa 1989, ABBA, and Eurotrash (categories by no means mutually exclusive). We were all mesmerised by one man in particular....imagine what Bono would have looked like in the 1980's but as a 40 year old wearing a lemon yellow waistcoat and doing drunk semi-provactive dancing. He looked a bit like a mattador with no bull - but you get the idea.

After "Il Mattador" initiated a few trains through the restaurant and kitchen, enter stereotypical ridiculously 'hot' and sassy Italian woman. I might blush if I describe in too much detail what she looked like....but let's just say she was wearing a dress that I'm pretty sure was meant to be a jumper. Then the music went too classy and instrumental and she along with everyone else left the dancefloor. When ABBA was cranked again, they all returned and "Il Mattador" decided to impress a new female entrant with his quasi Cossack dancing......but managed to impress himself more on the tiles when he subsequently put a hole in the floor. Ahhh it was brilliant.

So after much laughter, some Grappa (had to try it but probably won't again) and a debate with Daniele as to whether one of the Italian pop songs uses the same melody as "Let's get Physical" (I think I offended him), my first Italian New Year's Eve was over....and definitely one to be remembered.

Bracing for another wave of administration...

Hey there, a brief venice update: 

Today was a splendid Santo Stefano, gloriously sunny and dare I say even warm here, particularly so when you're walking down a calle and there's just a spear of sunlight coming down illuminating all and making you feel blessed...

Santo Stefano is the saint associated with December 26th - in the Italian/catholic calendar there is a saint for (nearly) every day. Today we didn't do much, just (!) visited the Basilica di San Marco, wandered around a bit and saw an organ concert at Chiesa dei Frari, one of my favourite churches in Venice. Some fantastic singing and just a wonderful ambience to be in a centuries-old church listening to a 250 year old pipe organ being played alongside effortless sopranos.

The title of this post relates to tomorrow, when I have to help Ali with stage 1 of the italian administrative circus, signing her up for a cartavenezia (cheap vaporetto tickets) and the most important number in italy - one's own codice fiscale...Ali can let you know how it goes...

Ciao tutti, hope christmas went well!

Paul.

Woah...

Hey everyone (tutti quanti)!!

Well, I appear to be in Venice! Such a bizarre and exhilirating experience to be hurtled across the hemispheres in a sterile, domesticated pod with only daylight, darkness, passing clouds and in-flight GPS tracking on the screen to discern your whereabouts and then to seemingly instanteously find yourself surrounded by a different climate, landscape, culture and language!

The trip started off with the good news that Paul's contact at Emirates had managed to wrangle me an upgrade to business class!! That was a ridiculous luxury! I got to say goodbye to Perth sipping on champagne and being referred to as "Miss Brown". At least they didn't call me "m'am" which really freaks me out and makes me feel like a burnt out old spinster. I had the pleasure of 'supping' on some fine lobster medallions for appetizer, followed by chilli prawns then a lemon tart.....well I could keep talking about the food forever but let me just say, that I will never accept substandard food in economy again! I thought airline food had to be tasteless and rubbery as a result of the pressurised cabin.....ahem. Apparently not.

Dubai airport was awesome - reminded me of one of the space stations from Star Wars - thousands of people with different cultures and languages all in transit....a lot of families sleeping on the floor....and that's where Erika and I ended up towards the end of our four hour wait. Oh yeah, and of course I had a hilarious moment where I got stuck on the travelator but that goes without saying.

So on to Venice. My first experience of Italian culture was at the baggage claim where Erika pointed out a verbose and unintelligble sign in both Italian and English explaining why Venice airport was not responsible if your luggage didn't turn up. One of the carousels was actually painted like a roulette wheel which we found pretty amusing - maybe your luggage will turn up, maybe it won't. It's a gamble!!!! Had my first Italian coffee at the airport and that alone was better than anything I have had in Perth so the bar has been set high from the start!

From here on, it is difficult to describe the full gamut of experiences and emotions I have felt since arriving. Amazement, shock, bewilderment, relief, excitement, and generally just out-of-body type stuff!! The first two days just felt surreal. I have never seen a place like this before - it just seems like a fairytale land!! Our apartment is part of the "Molino Stucky" Hilton Hotel complex. "Molino" means mill - it used to be an old flour mill set up by some dude called Stucky. Amazing location.....we just hop on a traghetto (ferry) and we are on Venice island in less than five minutes.

So......been wandering around all over the island......with jet lag....been trying not to stand to close to the edge of the canals. Had my first Italian pizza and have been enjoying the cafe / bars where you can buy pastry goodness, have a coffee and wash it down with a shot of whichever alcohol you so choose!! Tried a cafe corretto (means 'corrected' coffee with a shot of alcohol of your choice) - so I had a shot of whisky.....mmmmmn.....buzzy.

The language barrier is a little intimidating at this point......I've certainly got my "ciao, grazie, comme si chiama questa, uno, and due"s down pat. Ahem. Long way to go. Paul and I are going to stick post-it notes all over the apartment so I can increase my vocabulary. I asked in Italian what the name is for post it notes in a shop....felt pretty stupid to be told "post it notes". Yo. We then went to a butchers where they do their butchery a la 'grass roots'.....chopping up a huge chunk of pig, cow, small child etc in front of you. Paul was searching for a type of lard for pasta fagoli.....we now have a kilo of pig fat in the fridge. Great. I'm going to be trying hard enough not to put on a ridiculous amount of weight as it is let alone with a kilo of pig fat to use up.

It's Christmas Day today....so we've been to check out a full-on Italian Catholic service in one of the many chruches here. The organist blew me away! I think that I'll become a regular church goer here because they give you a transcript of the service and speak really slowly so it's a good way to learn the language, see some amazing churches, be absolved of your digestive sins, and listen to virtuosic keyboardists! Yo.

Well this is the end of the blog post. Congratualations if you managed to read all of this. I'm sure as I get busier and less blown away by every second that passes I'll write more concisely.

Rock on

Ali

Link to Project Venice website

Here's the link to the Project Venice website where we'll be putting up pictures and stuff. I've got a crazy idea for a bit of sound art but that'll happen when it does...here's da link:

http://web.mac.com/paulval77/iWeb/ABPV/Home.html

Here in Venice it's a beautifully sunny day, even if it is only 8º outside...I'm hoping the sunshine keeps on until Saturday morning, when I'd like to go to Lido for a cycle!

Cheers, Paul.