Friday, July 21, 2006

Alternative Realities

Alternative Realities


Just touched down in Sydney, we are stuck in a horridly long customs line which looks to have no beginning and no end. Queues, as they call them here are pretty ominous when youalve got multiple bends and turns, with no one knowing where the last person actually is. For some strange reason, people keep peeling off the end of the line behind me, going off to try the other forks presumably, leaving me the eternal last person in line.

Our time in the states was extremely fulfilling. We ate (almost) everything we wanted to eat, and met with (almost) everyone we wanted to meet. The California summer warmed and strengthened us, sending us back to Sydney fully recharged.

Life here looks like a gigantic puddle. They've had the wettest winter in years and it really shows flying in. Oddly, last year was the driest winter in years, there must be great contrast in their weather patterns. On again / off again climates.

School begins next week, I'll be teaching Wednesday nights again. The semester goes until November, at which point we will hope to travel S.E. Asia a bit. I'm hoping that, with renewed vigor, we can check out all the places here still on our ever-expanding list.

Getting back to our visitation reflection, there were a few things that realy stood out. The amount of people, people in cars, people in cars on the freeway was a bit overwhelming. The enormous Hummers looked even larger barrelling down the freeway at 90mph. I haven't seen more than two or three Hummers in the entire continent of Australia, I saw the same amount on the way back from the airport when we first flew in. Explains a lot of the oil dependencies with such excess. Conversely, hybrid cars were everywhere as well, offsetting such gluttonous machinery. My hunch is that such a number of alternative fuel vehicles would be really only be found in the Bay Area.

When visiting our friends in the middle of the day, when the rest of the world should have been working, we still found ourselves in gridlocked traffic. Again, there always is a balance, as riding BART was as effortless and easy as ever. The infrastructure in the Bay Area is really quite impressive.

On a related note, the pollution that is prevailent in California was pretty shocking. In the few short weeks we were home, there were three 'spare the air' days. This meant that air levels were unhealthy to the point of having to get as many people off the road as possible by offering free public transportation. Our brief few days in Los Angeles was absolutely disgusting. How that city doesn't implode and just fall into the ocean is anybody's guess. They should send out free DVDs of the Inconvenient Truth to all city residents who register their cars with the DMV.

On the burrito front, we had a good run. Peggy and I have an idea for when we return next... a Taqueria Crawl. Similar to a pub crawl in Sydney, where a group goes to a pub, has a quick one, then proceeds onto the next watering hole, we're going to do it San Francisco style. Starting at 24th and Mission, we'll order one or two burritos and cut them up into little 'poquenos', handing them out to the group. After consuming that sample, its on to the next taqueria, usually no more than ten or twelve steps away to repeat the affair. Never have I seen a greater concentration of Mexican restaraunts than in the Mission, must have been twenty-five in a span of only a few square blocks . Nail salons on Grand Avenue in Oakland exhibit a similar density.

Today (once we escape this customs line that time forgot) will consist of unpacking, a light lunch and probably a nap. We were lucky to both have been upgraded to business class, which made the plane flight a breeze. Getting out of the airport has been another story. This is worse than Disneyland.

posted by ncawthon at 8:40 AM