KIM MADE MAPLE BARS!!

Maple bars are kind of a donuty thing, the best donuty thing in the world. A maple bar consists of a big rectangle of fried dough with a sugary maple glaze slathered on the top. I don’t really know their history, but for some reason they’re a regional food that’s only really common in America’s Pacific Northwest.

And by common, I mean that they are a way of life. People in Oregon and Washington probably eat maple bars more regularly than they eat regular donuts. And in America, people eat donuts A LOT. I boggled to learn that in Australia donuts are considered a dessert, NOT a breakfast food. You can’t even buy them at the supermarket. Or even most convenience stores! If you want a donut here, you have to track down a specialty donut store in the mall, or maybe visit a very posh gas station.

Now, considering the fact that donuts are basically adorable little cakes which have been deep fried, I suppose it makes sense to classify them as a dessert, or at least “a treat.”

But America did not get where she is today be letting logic stand in the way of awesomeness. And donuts are awesome. Therefore, we Americans have ascribed them to a place of prominence in The Most Important Meal of the Day, along with cereals based on robots, “toaster pastries,” chocolate milke and once in a while, I dunno, some fruit or something.

DONUTS! ARE! AMAZING! Glazed donuts, cake donuts, donut holes, apple fritters, jelly donuts, bear claws, tiger tails and other weird donuts named after parts of animals, they are all delicious.

But the maple bar is KING OF THEM ALL!

At least, it is to me.
Because it reminds me of home.

Sure most Americans love donuts (and our national waistlines show it), but outside of the Pacific Northwest, most Americans don’t even know what a maple bar is. I dated a girl from Wisconsin who had never heard of them. It’s like they’re this magical thing that only people from my side of the country understand.

When I lived in Spain, I traveled a few hours outside of the Granada, where I was staying, to a little village in the foothills where many of the people spoke another regional language in addition to Spanish. I first realized this while shopping for breakfast when I noticed that the words on the cereal boxes were ones I had never seen before. Spain is roughly the same size as Oregon and Washington combined, but it’s home to at least ten unique languages, and variations in dialect on top of that. Almost everyone speaks Spanish, but people get fiercely protective of the regional languages that define their communities.

In “young” countries like America and Australia, I don’t think we can really appreciate the deep sense of place, history and culture that are embodied by things like regional languages, which developed over centuries, but every community has its little quirks, like whether you call sweet fizzy drinks “soda,” “pop” or “soft drink.” And then there are maple bars.

Outside of the Pacific Northwest, it’s hard to find them. Outside of North America, forget about it — there’s no chance. Maple bars are something that only really exist in one little corner of the planet.

Well, make that two corners.

Thanks, sweetheart.
xo

It reached all the way across the city, from end to end, clear and bright, like it belonged just in that very spot.
And for five minutes, it was easy to believe that it had had always been there, all along.

Or maybe putting up Your First Christmas Tree Together is just a Hallmark moment for all newly-minted couples. Ewww! Anyway, Kim and I had fun putting up the (fake, K-mart) tree together, and I think it looks really great. No, I am not a girl! I just like Christmas, OK??
(click any of the pictures for bigger versions!)

My family’s tradition is that my parents gave all us kids at least one Christmas ornament every year, to eventually start our own Christmas trees with, and those ornaments make up a big part of the decorations, along with a few that Kim and I bought together while we were in America.
Kim also tied bows to our tree and even made chocolate Christmas ornaments in the shape of Australian animals! Here’s one of them that I haven’t eaten yet. It’s a kookaburra!

We also hung up icicle lights outside our house (scandal?), even though you can’t see them very well in this picture. Our mismanaged garden should give you a sense that it’s summer, though.

But what’s that lurking down the end of our hallway??

RAWWWR!!

Silly dinosaur, it is too warm for a Christmas scarf!

RAAAWWRR!!!

Written and performed by Aussie ex-pat Rolf Harris (of “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” fame), the song is an an Australian riff on Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and The Night Before Christmas. Since reindeer can’t cut it in the Aussie summer, Santa subs them out for kangaroos when making trips down under.

These are kangaroo bucks, or “boomers,” and they’re strong enough that it only takes six of them to pull Santa’s sleigh. Much more efficient than those puny “eight little reindeer.” And since it’s Christmas, and kangaroos don’t come in red or green, well, they might as well be white, the albino variety! Albinism is festive!

Curiously, rather than the night before Christmas, this story takes place on the day AFTER Christmas. After he’s finished delivering gifts (”pressies” as they’re called Down Under) in the Western Hemisphere, Santa spots a baby kangaroo that’s been stolen from its mother and placed in some cold Northern zoo, and being Santa Claus, he knows that the only thing this little joey could want for Christmas is to be reunited with her. Now, because it’s Christmas in Australia before anywhere else in the world, he’s already delivered Christmas pressies to all the Aussie girls and boys, but Santa makes a special trip back to return the lost Joey. Even as fast as Santa’s kangaroo-powered sleigh goes, they can’t make it back until December 26.

Good thing kangaroos don’t pay much attention to human holidays.

Besides having a rousing chorus that reportedly sends Australian children bounding excitedly around the house, the song is packed with charming little details: when Santa gets to sweltering Australia, he takes off his big, fur-lined boots, and the joey hops into one of them. It’s a cute touch, and actually pretty consistent with natural behavior, since joey raised by humans like to be carried around in bags and other things that resemble pouches. And when they fly over the Outback, Harris specifically mentions them passing Marble Bar, a tiny town in Western Australia which is adjacent to a geological site known as … The North Pole.

I find it hard to believe that there’s never been an animated Christmas special made based on this song, since it seems tailor-made for such a treatment. But maybe Aussies don’t go crazy for Christmas specials like the Yankees do. Anyway, it’s a very fun song and I think holds up well against other classic holiday tunes from all over the world. Add it to your X-mas playlist today!

Meanwhile, in Adelaide:

One of the great things about Adelaide is that there are a wealth of great conservation parks and nature reserves literally in the city’s backyard. This weekend Kim and I had a rare mutual afternoon off, and we decided to take advantage of the great, not-yet-scorching weather by hiking at the Black Hill Conservation Park, which is about a 20 minute drive from our house.

Not to be confused with America’s Black Hills (where I worked in 2003), Adelaide’s Black Hill was more yellow than any other color. I’d love to check it out during the spring or winter, but at this time of the year it’s all tinderbox dry. Still beautiful, though. Little lizards scrambled to hide from us, and other unseen creatures rustled through the tall, brittle grass all the way along the hike.

Though it looks more like a turkey, I think this is supposed to be an echidna greeting us on the sign at the trail entrance. Sadly, we did not spot any of the spiny anteaters on our hike.

We did see some Australian magpies, though.

These birds are as common as crows, but I far prefer magpies’ coloring and warbling.

We do still barrack (Aussie for “root” as in “root, root, root for the home team” … “root” as verb has a much ruder connotation down here!) for the Adelaide Crows when it comes to Australian Rules Football, though.

In terms of flora, we saw some small patches of purple wildflowers that Kim will have to remind me the name of. There’s also a part of the trail called Ghost Tree Valley (spooky!), which was home to some big Ghost Gums.

All in all, it was a pretty fun afternoon. We were very glad that we brought sunscreen, though! The sun was out in full force. Hopefully it doesn’t heat up too much this summer before we’re able to take a few more hikes, but already they’ve started to close some trails for the season. Crazy.

Scope out that view one more time:

You can see all the way to the ocean … maybe our next trip should be to the beach!

I used to think all the Winter Solstice trappings of Christmas were odd when I was living in Southern California, when people would deck themselves out in scarves and sweaters to brave the 60° F (15° C) weather, and decorate their houses with big glowing snowflakes and inflatable snowmen. But at least in California it was actually winter, even if you had to look really hard and pretend to shiver in order to tell.

But here, we still have the snowflakes and the fur hats and the icicle lights, even though it is blooming SUMMER, and furthermore, even in winter it never, ever, EVER snows in South Australia. (There are rumors that once, on one day, there was an insubstantial bit of snow on Mount Lofty, but this exception proves the rule, doesn’t it? Also, it is probably a LIE.)

Here, your only chance of having a White Christmas is to head out to the salt plains in the middle of the desert. Like this:

(This is my Christmas present to the Internet: a shirtless picture of me. You’re welcome!)

But Christmas still has most of the cultural trappings that Americans or Europeans would expect. Nothing screams “Nation of Immigrants” more than steadfastly clinging to wintry traditions in the middle of summer, but over the years, the Aussies have managed to develop some of their own Christmas culture more suited for life under the Southern Cross, including their own Christmas Carols.

To whit: Australian Jingle Bells:

To me, this still sounds like an immigrant’s song (”oh we come from the land of the ice and snow …” no, just kidding), since the song is a parody of the original, and to my ears the lyrical theme is basically “Christmas Down Under is hot! Isn’t that strange?” But I reckon that native Aussies might hear it differently. At any rate, it’s a charming reworking of Jingle Bells, with plenty of Australian slang thrown in for good measure (and national pride!) Here are the lyrics, with my translation in parenthesis):

Dashing through the bush
In a rusty Holden Ute (Holden is an Aussie car company, and Ute = utility vehicle, or pickup truck)
Kicking up the dust
Esky in the boot (An esky is a cooler and a car’s boot is what Yankees know as its the trunk)
Kelpie by my side (According to my wife, “Kelpies are THE quintessential Australian cattle dog”)
Singing Christmas songs
Its summer time and I am in
My singlet, shorts and thongs (Reassuringly, thongs here just means sandals. A singlet is a tank top)

CHORUS
Oh, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells
Jingle all the way
Christmas in Australia
On a scorching summer’s day
Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells
Christmas time is beaut
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a rusty Holden Ute

Engine’s getting hot
Dodge the kangaroos
Swaggy climbs aboard (AKA a swag-man, AKA a tramp or a hobo. My wife says this is a reference to the legendary swag-man from the song Waltzing Matilda, and picking up hitchhikers is not an integral part of Australian Christmas traditions.)
He is welcome too
All the family is there
Sitting by the pool
Christmas day, the Aussie way
By the barbecue!

CHORUS

Come the afternoon
Grandpa has a doze
The kids and Uncle Bruce
Are swimming in their clothes
The time comes round to go
We take a family snap
Then pack the car and all shoot through
Before the washing up

So there you go. I can’t quite get over the idea of going for a swim on Christmas Day, but my wife says that this song does a pretty good job of describing her childhood memories of Christmas (minus the kelpie and the swagman!). That’s actually more than I can say for the traditional version of Jingle Bells, which has always made me think of Christmas cartoons and 19th century carolers rather than anything from my actual experience.

In fact, I don’t think I know anyone, even in chilly America, who’s ever been dashing through the snow on one-horse open sleigh.

We brought back quite a few kilos of American food back to Australia, but it’s not the kind of stuff that most gourmets would drool over. We could only bring back the kinds of processed, boxed-up, grocery store food that would withstand a 24-hour transcontinental trip, but fortunately this included one box Life cereal, a food I have loved since childhood.

In America there are whole supermarket aisles dedicated to the cult of the breakfast cereal. As a kid I could rattle off the names of dozens of different sugary cereals and the cartoon mascot associated with each one, even though most of them remained were banned from our household for exceeding my mom’s limit of six grams of sugar per serving. Although we were limited to more subdued fare like Kix, Rice Crispies and Crispix, choosing which breakfast cereal I would enjoy with milk, toast and a glass of OJ was always a cherished part of my morning routine.

Australia has breakfast cereals to be sure, but Aussie youth are not well-acquainted with the likes of Cap’n Crunch, Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam. Australian super markets have about as many kinds of cereal as American supermarkets have kinds of salsa. Which is to say they have 12, rather than 120. And crucially, they do not have Life cereal.

Life is not an especially interesting breakfast cereal. It’s just flat little brown squares of processed flour and sugar. When I was a kid, Life was promoted as being a cereal which stayed crunchy in milk for a long time, but I did not find this to be true. It starts out crunchy, but does not stay that way. The best thing you can say about Life is that, though boring, it is not tasteless. The taste is pleasant, but not particularly memorable.

Crucially, Life doesn’t even have any mascot to speak of. It probably owes most of its market share an almost inexplicably popular commercial which ran from the early 70s clear through to the mid-80s.

I personally don’t think that commercial is as good as this, earlier one, which at least makes an attempt at introducing cartoon mascots for Life. Unfortunately, they are probably the lamest cartoon mascots ever:

Both of those commercials were off the air before I was introduced to Life as a child, but it still managed to become my favorite cereal. I’ve liked this cereal for so long that I couldn’t really tell you why it’s always been my favorite. But I’d hazard a guess that its sugar content, which nearly exceeds Mom’s strict six gram limit, played a large part in gaining my favor in my formative years.

Because I ate it so much as a child, Life has attained a place in my reptilian brain as a kind of ur-cereal, the original, truest standard by which all others are to be judged. Its very lack of remarkable characteristics is what makes it so appealing. To me, Life is THE cereal.

It’s a comfort food in every sense of the word. I would not recommend it to anyone who does not already love it. But I love it, and I guess I always will.

Life Cereal

And as far as I know, I have the only box of it in all of Australia.

Yesterday I made a trip to the local Medicare office to apply for free, government sponsored health insurance. I walked into the bright, well-lit waiting room and found myself waiting in front of a computer terminal. I told the computer that I would like to apply for Medicare, and it printed out a slip of paper with a number on it for me to wait with. About fifteen other people of all ages and ethnicities were already standing around and waiting, but no one seemed impatient or disgruntled. No children were crying.

I took a seat on a comfy couch and after about ten minutes my number was called. I went to desk number six to talk to a customer service lady. I had brought stacks of papers with me to prove my identity, employer address and tax file number, but it turns out that all she really needed to see was my passport. She made a couple of photocopies and then returned with my new Medicare number on a little receipt and told me that I could use that until my official Medicare card comes in the mail, which should be within a few weeks.

And that was that. From now on as long as I am in Australia, if I break my arm or get sick or need chemotherapy or a CT scan or whatever, I won’t have to worry about paying for everything.

I could have applied for a Medicare number months ago, and I probably should have. But I been putting it off because I for some reason I had been dreading the application process. In the United States we have been conditioned to think of health insurance as not just expensive, but also complicated and frustrating. Even when I was working full time and had employer-supported insurance, I still had to attend an information session, consider which plan I wanted to enroll in, weigh the differing costs and benefits and, of course, fill out lots of forms.

It turns out that the whole process took less than 15 minutes. And now I have free health insurance.

Now obviously, this doesn’t work just like magic. Health care in Australia may not be quite as labyrinthine as it is in America, but it’s still quite complicated. I may not have to make any hard decisions about my health insurance, but other people certainly do. It’s not really free either, since Australian taxpayers (including me) are the ones footing the bill. Plus, visits to a lot of medical clinics still require you to pay partially out of pocket. Wikipedia has a pretty decent run-down of how it works. Still, I think the system here works quite a bit better than it does in America.

Which isn’t to say you can just show up to Australia and be insured. When I was here on a temporary visa I was required to have traveler’s insurance. The the only reason I was able to get Medicare this easily now is because I had applied for and received a spouse visa earlier this year. That process was a lot more complicated, required reams of paperwork (including chest x-rays and a criminal record check from the FBI), took months to process, and cost about $2000. But $2000 would be a pretty good price for a year of health care in the USA.

Back in 2006, Australia’s big tourism campaign revolved around the tagline “So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?”, a phrase designed to invoke Australia’s carefree and informal hospitality. Problem was, a lot of the rest of the world didn’t see “Bloody Hell” as being a particularly tasteful choice of wording, and the ad campaign was banned, censored or restricted in the UK (where “bloody” is a swear word), Canada (where there was apparently concern the use of “hell”) and most of Asia. It’s kind of a shame, because the ad itself is not bad, as far as these things go:

There are a lot of worse tourism slogans out there. Probably the most inane one I have seen was this recent half a million dollar ad campaign for Washington state called “Say WA!”, which was pretty universally disdained, as this NPR report attests..

My jaw is only dropping from the realization that someone thought this would sell … well, anything really. Wa?

“Where The Bloody Hell Are You?” was less of a bad idea and more of a decent idea that just didn’t translate very well, like that (sadly, apocryphal) story about how Chevrolet had a hard time selling Nova cars in Latin America because “no va” literally means “doesn’t go.”

It is funny how some words can be offensive in one country but perfectly fine in another. My brother-in-law-to-be told me tonight how he nearly got banned from a message board for using the word “cracker,” even though he never knew it could be used in a derogatory way. In Australia “cracker” can be used as an adjective to mean “awesome” or “extrodinary.” “Crackerjack,” even.

But I’m honestly not sure whether “bloody” is considered profanity in Australia or not, because swearing is kind of a national past-time here. In the US there are words that you absolutely cannot say on broadcast television, even late, late at night. In Australia, not only can you say whatever the bloody hell you want, you can say it on public, tax-funded television channels!

If you can handle the profanity, check out this send-up of the Where The Bloody Hell Are You? campaign from one of my favorite Aussie TV shows, a comedy program called The Chaser’s War on Everything:

That airs on ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is entirely state-funded! Australian citizens pay, on average, roughly 8 cents a day in taxes to fund a station that sponsors programming where people mercilessly mock the federal government by unceasingly swearing at random tourists.

Where else on Earth does that sort of thing happen? Seriously? That by itself is enough to prove that Australia is awesome. Well, that and the shampooed camels.

xoxo

As they say in the hip hop world, I am about to DROP SCIENCE.
Or something?!

Basically, I didn’t even know Aussie hip hop existed until I heard this song on the radio late last year:

The track is Nosebleed Section by Hilltop Hoods, a group from Adelaide who have probably become the biggest name in Australian hip hop. This was a watershed song back in 2004 the first breakout hip hop hit to originate in Australia. I have to admit that the part that sticks with me the most is the Melanie Safka sample, sounding like an old, scratchy record in the very best way, but it’s a fun song.

I think the title is clever, too. “Nosebleed section” usually refers to the budget seats in a stadium, far up and away from the action, where the joke is that the altitude is thin enough to cause nosebleeds. Hilltop Hoods might be able sell out huge stadiums these days, but they certainly weren’t able to when they recorded this song, when the audience for Aussie hip hop was mostly underground. So in this case, “nosebleed section” means way up at the front, where those dedicated fans were likely to be bloodied and bruised in a moshpit. This song is dedicated to them … and to drinking, partying, hot babes and hard work.

Drinking, partying, hot babes and hard work seem to be, unquestioningly, the most common themes in Aussie hip hop. Though it should be noted that Aussie rappers are less likely to rely on these themes than their compatriots in the pioneering Australian rock band AC/DC, it should also be noted that, well, that’s not saying much. It is only the most temperate Oz Hop albums which are restrained enough to include only one jubilant anthem to the act of getting blitheringly drunk. Such albums are, indeed, hypothetical and may in fact be too temperate to actually exist.

Drapht, who provided the song which inspired yesterday’s post, has two exceptional examples of the alco-hip hop genre, the maudlin (I almost wrote “sober” … ha!) Drink, Drank, Drunk and the bouncy Boom Boom Boom), but I’d rather talk about his song Jimmy Recard, which is mostly, but not ENTIRELY about drinking. Plus it actually has a video clip:

Jimmy Recard uses the common rap motif of an unstoppable alter ego, though from the beginning Drapht spins it as a conceit, a “what-if” scenario based on the idea that being given a different name could give anyone a different life, one that could possibly be infinitely cooler. Unlike the typical boast song, where the listener is invited to idolize the narrator, here the narrator himself is just fantasizing about being someone worth idolizing. What I find funny is that his aspirations apparently aren’t really that high — his hypothetical Jimmy Recard is referred to most frequently as “the king of the bar.” He may be “practically the man of the millennium,” but in Jimmy’s world “king of the castle” is no different than “king of the barstool.”

Jimmy Recard would, in fact, be a terrible name to grow up with, so dangerously close to Jimmy RETARD that it would like low-hanging fruit for school kids looking for someone to pick on. So I think that even the hypothetical hero of this song must delusional. Scarred from age seven onward, he now spends his days drowning in each pint he downs, imagining a crown on his head and a multitude of lacy brassieres at his feet. Hoorah, hoorah!

Finally, one last Aussie hip hop track, just because it has an amusing video clip. I found this one while trying to track down Where Yah From? earlier this week. The song is called Where You At? by the Astronomy Class, and it uses basically the same lyrics as the chorus Where Yah From?, though the rhythm is different. I can’t decide which song is catchier. Any opinions?

Actually, the is only Aussie hip hop song I’ve heard so far that features more than just thin, pasty white dudes on the mic. It’s nice to see a bit of diversity. One of the chicks in the video calls herself Africa-Australian, and my first thought was “Oh, interesting!” but then I remembered that I have a good friend who is Africa-Australian, and he is a thin, pasty white dude. So there you go.

And that is everything I know about Australian hip hop. All or none of it may be true.

xoxo