Duck's Nuts on Play: Call of the Wild

I've never quite considered myself a city gal, at least while I was in Singapore. Yes, I lived in an urban environment, but I did climb a couple of trees, hiked in Malaysia sometimes with my dad, and read every book written by British veternarian, James Herriot, so I figured that counted for something. But holidaying in countries like Great Britain, Australia and India certainly jolted me out of that false impression.



It looks like the kangaroo is lifting the car!

It's most stark when it comes to animals. In Singapore, getting to see an animal means going to the zoo or visiting your school's garden. My school's garden, so I was informed (though maybe the school's officials were just blowing their own horn - I never got to find out!), was pretty good compared to other schools - it had chickens, terrapins, rabbits and more. I visited the garden daily and especially loved to squeeze the seed pods of the balsam plant and hop on the stones across the pond while the terrapins lounged about in the sun.



I loved squeezing the balsam pods. Photo by Vertigogen on Flickr via Creative Commons

These little creatures, though, are I guess what one would describe as domesticated animals. They were certainly not wild.

A few years later, I was excited beyond belief when I visited England and Scotland. Sheep! Actual live sheep! I'm not dreaming! OMG!!!! I still distinctly remember the gently rolling green slopes dotted with little clouds of white and the three sheep who blocked the small country road we were driving on and didn't allow us to pass.

My best sheep encounter though, was near the bottom of the Himalayas in Kashmir. There, the sheep were herded around by child shepherds and were more than happy to pose for me.



This sheep on the Himalayas in Kashmir looked like it was crossed with a cow.



Again in Kashmir. Very cute!

But the sheep, though, were not wild animals either. They were farm animals, and, as you can tell from the photos, quite comfortable with my presence near them.

So it was only in the past two or three years that I finally saw wild animals (I'm not counting visiting the zoo!) such as camels wandering the desert in the Middle East and kangaroos hopping across large paddocks in outback Australia. There was something magical about watching the graceful creatures move with ease in their favourite environment.



Who goes there? A forester kangaroo at the Bay of Fires in Tasmania.



Are you sure that's not a stuff toy? A wombat at the Bay of Fires.

In those moments of watching the kangaroos, wombats or even multi-coloured wild birds (that I didn't know the first thing about) eat, sleep and graze, my breathing would become more relaxed and my shoulders less tense, while my eyes would soften. It was like I was home - finally reunited with nature and its creatures with whom I had shared the planet all my life, but rarely in the same place at the same time.

Next stop - Africa!

Group Rojak Timeout: Holiday!

Week One of 2011 is almost over, and some of us girls on eat.shop.play.love are still recovering from our year-end hangover. Take a 3-minute virtual vacation with us to the many corners of our lovely earth: Tasmania, Oslo, Barcelona, Turks and Caicos, Vegas and New York.

Duck's Nuts Says:

I usually head overseas this time of the year to visit my family in Singapore and in other countries, but I decided to stay and enjoy the Australian summer this time round. I still find it odd to celebrate a sunny Christmas, but a week-long jaunt to Tasmania to meet a friend satisfied my longing for some time away from Sydney. We visited three national parks at Maria Island, Ben Lomond and Mt Williams, and did some hiking and camping.

Here's a rainbow over Maria Island, which is off the coast of south-east Tasmania. It used to be where some convicts from Great Britain were held, before becoming a site for cement production. It's now a national park.

The painted cliffs at Maria Island, formed through the percolation of ground water through the sandstone.

The water was so still you could see the sky reflected on it. Seeing this made me feel like I was in a painting.

On the other side of Ben Lomond, we walked down a road called Jacob's Ladder, which is very steep.

No holiday in Tasmania is complete without a glimpse of the local wildlife. I think this one is of a kangaroo and her joey at the Bay of Fires. The wild kangaroos and wallabies stare at you straight in the face for the longest time before hopping off when you near them.

Sights like that make me wish I grew up on a farm, with lots of vast open space, rather than a HDB flat!

***

Little Pixy Boots had a lovely Norwegian holiday, sprinkled with a little Spanish excitement in Barcelona.

Dear Santa, I just wanted to say, "Merry Christmas to Chew."

I don't usually have bacon for breakfast, but I couldn't resist.

Jultomten (the Christmas elf) caught taking a break.

"Honey, that's not exactly hiding the presents from the kids."

Enough sugar to power a day of sightseeing in Gaudi's city.

"I've never said that attaining enlightenment was easy."

***

Cirrus Cloud takes not one, but two, vacations to end the year with a bang! First up was fabulous Turks and Caicos. Next, a New Year countdown in Sin City -- Las Vegas.

Glorious.

Here's a view from my room in Turks and Caicos, when I open my eyes in the morning...

... When I turn to my right whilst in bed, this is what I see.

Watching the sunset, sipping a cocktail. Life is good.

View from our room in the Wynn in Las Vegas, NV.

***

Una Ragazza enjoys Santa's Christmas gift of a snowy blanket that brings joy and havoc (depending on who you ask) to the New York Metropolitan area. Nothing like 30 degree F weather to make you look forward to jumping on a 24-hour plane ride home to the equator!

Overnight, the a/c gets a white cap that is a foot-and-a-half tall.

Kids of all ages and sizes rush to the once-grassy slopes of River Side Park with their sleds. Wheee!

White and serene. A zen Manhattan that we rarely see.

On the 10th day of Christmas... the garbage has still not been cleared!

... two broken washing machines, and a beer bottle stuck in a Christmas tree.

Making s'mores in my fireplace. Delish!

Doing research for our upcoming Singapore vacation in Cafe Lalo, while waiting for Meg Ryan to show up for a cheesecake and an espresso.

From all of us here at eat.shop.play.love -- have a fabulous 2011!

***

Duck's Nuts on Play: The (Aussie) fly

What is fat, noisy, has black netted wings and big bulging eyes?

That’s an easy question to answer when summer comes around in Australia. For, along with the brilliant sunshine, cloudless skies and still, warm evenings, comes the Australian bush fly.

An Australian bush fly. Photo courtesy of Ratabago via Creative Commons, Flickr

It’s just a fly you say. What’s the big deal? But this summer insect is not like the ordinary miniature black helicopter buzzing at your food, trying to land on your plate or cup while you are not looking. Not, this is a super-charged, super-buzzing, super-persistent, omnipresent, super- .... you get the picture.

The flies are so persistent that obstacles like your face are not daunting to them. Stand in the path of one of them and they are quite likely to fly straight into you kamikaze-style, instead of doing the sensible thing and buzzing around you. Why? On your face is where the yummy food is - they love the protein in the moisture that comes from your eyes, nose and mouth. Of course, landing in cow poo (from the more than 25 million cows in Australia) is their first love. But the story goes that dung beetles were brought in to deal with these pesky flies by burying the poo before the flies could lay their eggs in them. Then the drought came, the land dried up, the poo couldn't be buried in it and the flies headed back to annoying the 21 million people on this island continent.

An Aussie's summer essentials - cork hat, beer and beach thongs. Photo courtesy of Mugley via Creative Commons, Flickr

The bush flies are so renowned for their facial attacks that the cork hat was invented. The hat has small corks hanging off the brims - apparently deterring the flies, which don't like flying through things. In fact, the Aussie salute, which Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd explained to his US counterpart Hillary Clinton when she visited the country recently, stands for the windscreen-wiper-style waving of your hands across your face to bat away the numerous little creatures zeroing in on your face.

"See that fly over there?" Australia's Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd asked US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she visited Melbourne.

One cautionary tale: A Singaporean friend’s girlfriend was visiting him over summer in Western Australia. She was having a big, hearty laugh when – GULP – a fly flew straight into her mouth and in the split-second before she realised what happened, she swallowed it. I don’t know how much protein she gained from inadvertently eating that fly, but I’m sure she missed out on the rest of the vitamins and minerals she would have taken in from eating that day as that rather uncomfortable experience would have put her off food for a time.

So what can you do to reduce contact with this menacing little pest? There are two options above – a hat with tassels swinging from it and constantly waving your hands in front of you. Giving that the cork hat is usually only used out in the bush, the “manual” Option Two is usually the one deployed by us city folk.

Fly screen and bug spray - my summer essentials.

Fly screens are also a must. Most homes come with door-like fly screens on top of their front doors, so you can air the home during the hot days of summer while keeping the flies at bay. A fair few also have such screens for their windows and balcony doors, although their presence might spoil the view somewhat if they are fixed and can’t be pulled across or opened out. For those with homes that come with no such screens, such as yours truly, you can buy a ready-made fly screen that opens out to fit most windows.

Bug killers and insect repellents come in handy. Just like in Singapore, manufacturers of insect repellents and killer sprays regularly advertise on television their latest revolutionary breakthrough we-get-rid-of-those-pesty-little-buggers-once-and-for-all products. Do they actually work? My personal experience is that the flies are so numerous and omnipresent that trying to spray them to death would only rake up a huge bill on my part and make my floor very sticky. And other flies would still keep coming. Insect repellents are effective, but you're not able to spray them on your face ... are you?

So you have been warned. If you ever come to Australia during summer, don’t just watch out for the melanoma-inducing sun, the hungry sharks or the kangaroos on the roads. There’s also a little black bush fly that could contribute to your experience of Australia’s unique cuisine.

Some images are taken from the internet.

Duck's Nuts on Play: Mozzies At The Barbie With Our Rellies This Arvo In Freo

There are plenty of stereotypes about Australians and the Aussie way of speaking. I remember one of my neighbours, who had visited Australia before me, saying: "Let's put a shrimp on the barbie." I later realised she had heard the phrase from a Tourism Australia ad featuring none other than Crocodile Dundee himself, Paul Hogan.

Photo: Screengrab of 1984 tourism ad featuring Paul Hogan

What I didn't notice that time, but have become pretty aware of since I start living here, is the shortened word "barbie", which was used in place for barbecue.

Australians have a habit of shortening words - all words. The headline of this blog post should read "Mosquitoes at the barbecue with our relatives this afternoon in Fremantle" but as you can see, mosquitoes = mozzies, barbecue = barbie, relatives = rellies, afternoon = arvo and Fremantle = Freo.

In my line of work, I often have to get in contact with emergency services officers and all their job titles are shortened. So a firefighter is a "firie", an ambulance officer is an "ambo" and a police officer is a "coppa". The same goes for people working in the trades or other blue-collar jobs. A tradesman is a "tradie", a garbage collector is a "garbo" (one well-known example in NSW is politician or "pollie" Nathan Rees, the former premier), a truck driver is a "truckie", a postman is a "postie" and so on.

Caption: Nathan Rees, garbo turned pollie
Photo: Local Government and Shires Associations of NSW via Flickr, Creative commons

Interestingly, this doesn't seem to happen with professional jobs. So there's no short versions of banker, accountant, lawyer or dentist for example, or at least none that I know of. A doctor can be called a "doc", but that's hardly unique to "Oz" (Australia). Journalists are called "journos", but I suppose it wasn't considered a professional job in the old days but more like a trade. (Just a note about banker, there is another word that is sometimes used in place of it or with it - w--ker - but that's another blog post!)

I've found that since I've started living here, I've started to use these shortened words so regularly that I'm not conscious of my use of them anymore. So if I was heading to the shops, I could say I'm going to Woolies (Woolworths) to buy a brollie (umbrella), some sunnies (sunglasses), veges (vegetables) and lollies (short for lollipops, it's a general term used for sweets), before heading to the bottlo (short for a bottle shop, where alcohol is sold) to get some Cab Sav (Cabernet Sauvignon) and then to Macca's (McDonald's) for a quick bite.

Caption: Fancy some Maccas? Photo: Yusuke Kawasaki via Flickr, Creative commons

Even place names or people's names are not sacred. So Brisbane is "Brissy", Tasmania is "Tassie", the Brisbane cricket ground, located in suburb of Woolloongabba, is called "The Gabba", the Sydney suburbs of Sutherland Shire, Parramatta, Darlinghurst and Paddington are called "The Shire", "Parra", "Darlo" and "Paddo", and the Queensland city of Bundaberg is called "Bundy". Personal names are shortened as much as possible. My name has gone from Madeline* to Maddy to Mads to M.

Caption: Watching cricket at The Gabba in Brissy
Photo: Talisen via Flickr, Creative commons

The big question is - why? And why bother? Is it about saying less? Saving time? Being lazy? Or being inventive? A "uni" (university) lecturer, Nenagh Kemp from the University of Tasmania, who is studying these Aussie terms, reckons it might be about "a feeling of companionship or casualness and friendliness".

"You might use that to say, 'hey, I'm on the same level as you. I'm not being too pretentious."

Dr Kemp hasn't finished her study yet, so it'll be interesting to see what she does eventually discover, but it's fair to say that this form of Aussie slang does reflect the image of the laid-back local who likes nothing better than some "snags" (sausages) and a "bevy" (beverage) - preferably a "coldie" (cold beer) - on a warm summer's day while the cricket's on "telly" (television).

Now, whether that image of the laid-back Aussie is accurate or not is also a topic for another time ...

Here are some other examples:
Australian soldier = digger
beautiful = beaut
breakfast = breakie
chicken = chook
compensation = compo
Englishman = pom, pommie
football = footy
kangaroo = roo
lipstick = lippie
pick-up or utility truck = ute
poker machines = pokies
present = pressie
Salvation Army = Salvos
service station (or petrol station) = servo
sick day = sickie
smoke break = smoko
thanks = ta
tracksuit = trackie
vegetarian = vego

*Not my actual name, but the example still stands

Duck's Nuts on Play: The Mystery Above Us

It's a little mystery that's been playing at the back of my mind since I came here. Shoes. Up there. Why?

You see, there's this odd phenomenon that's happening in Sydney's neighbourhoods. OK, calling it a phenomenon is a bit much. But the question remains - why are these shoes hanging off those power lines?


I took this photo at an inner-Sydney suburb.

But first, before the why - what and how ...

Q: Whose shoes are those? Are they old, new, of a certain brand? Why are they almost all sport shoes?
A: Eh, I don't know. I'm so short that usually the shoes are the size of barbie doll sneakers when I look at them.

Q: Where are these shoes being hung?
A: As far as I tell, in every neighbourhood in Sydney. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you get to see two pairs of shoes hanging off one power line. Most intriguing though, is that when I did a quick google search to see if this happens elsewhere in the world, I stumbled upon photos in Europe, the US and South America.


Photo: Adam Fowler, Edinburgh, Scotland via Flickr, Creative Commons

Q: How did someone successfully get a pair of shoes up there?
A: Again, a good question that I don't have an answer for. I am good at speculating though - one option could be they kept throwing the shoes up into the air from the road below until they finally slung onto the power line. Another option is someone took a very very long stick with a hook at the end and hoisted the shoes up on the lines. Another is that someone leaned out of a high building window and chucked it onto the line below.

Q: When are these shoes being thrown up there?
A: In the dead of the night when no one is watching? Or is it in broad daylight when everyone's walking past but doesn't care (more likely scenario - Aussies are a pretty chilled bunch).


Photo: Ed Kohler, Minneapolis, US via Flickr, Creative Commons

OK, now that we're done with the whats and hows, the question is - why bother. I used to be relatively satisfied with the answer that the hanging shoes mark a drug house, ie. where you can go and buy drugs. But if that's the case, isn't that just an invitation for the police to come knocking on your door? And why is there a pair of shoes just dangling on the street around the corner of my house?

With all these questions floating about at the back of my head for many a year (yes, I suppose I could have done better things with my time), I was delighted to find out that an Australian director has decided to make a documentary on this very topic. He's called it The Mystery of Flying Kicks and it was released this year.



The phenomenon, director Matthew Bate says, is called "shoefiti" and it's something that's been happening since 1890 (though I don't think as many countries had power lines back then.) Interestingly, in Sydney it was apparently a rite of passage for boys who lost their virginity. (So did my neighbour just lose his virginity? Eh actually, I don't want to know.)

Bate does confirm though that the most common explanations for this shoe-throwing/hanging phenomenon is territory-marking for gangs and for drug-dealing spots. Which makes me wonder - do different gangs throw different brands of shoes? What if the pair of shoes thrown up there by another gang are the ones you like? Do you have to resign yourself to throwing up a less-cool shoe?

But I hear you saying - enough questions for one blog post. At least I haven't gone as far as tattooing this on my arm:


Photo: Nick J Webb via Flickr, Creative Commons

Now, that's one territory-marking too far for me.

Duck's Nuts on Play: Playing the Ball Game

There’s no doubt that I inherited my love of football (soccer to American folk) from my (very) Singaporean dad.

An active football player till his late 30s, he would wake up in the middle of the night during the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, blurry-eyed but all excited about the live games being beamed into our living room. From the 1990 World Cup onwards, I slowly took over the mantle of blurry-eyed football watcher in the family and it was during those early hours of the morning that I grew to love the beautiful game.


Some Aussie certainly loved his/her football enough to stick a football icon on this street sign.

But football has never been much of a girl’s or women’s sport in Singapore and while I did a bit of “kickabout” under my HDB flat, I didn’t get to play it at school until my junior college days.

It was only when I left Singapore for Australia shortly after that I got to join a women’s team for the first time. It was an exhilarating experience. In Australia I found a society that embraced sport – not just professional sport but sport at all levels, for toddlers to geriatrics. Sport wasn’t just for men. Sport wasn’t something you had to be excellent at to play. Even if you couldn’t even kick a ball properly (me!) you could still join a team, get decked out in a full kit and have weekly training sessions with a cool football coach ala Bend It Like Beckham (OK, he was not as cute as Jonathan Rhys Meyers but he was still English and pretty hot.)


[Five-minute break to swoon over Rhys Meyers .... Ok, back to reality now.]

There’s something energising about living in a country that is so mad about watching and playing sport. I’ve played just about every sport in my years here, and watched plenty of live games in packed stadiums. On television, there’s a regular diet of sport to watch, and Aussies love their live sport so much there’s an ongoing tussle going on between free-to-air channels and cable TV providers over who gets to broadcast which tournaments.

There’s also a culture of teaching children to play as many different sports as possible when they are in primary and secondary education. All my Aussie friends learnt to play at least three or more different sports, a new one each year I think. As a result, they take to any physical activity like ducks to water. I’m always a wee bit envious though in the end I’m just happy to be alongside them playing too!


A Sydney women's football team.

In terms of professional sport, Australians take pride in the fact that many of their top athletes are also amongst the world’s best. They turn in excellent results at the Olympics and are usually one of the top two teams when it comes to rugby union and cricket. Of course, there’s plenty of debate too about whether Australia as a country is spending too much money on its professional athletes. Have they got their priorities right when there are plenty of other pressing issues to tackle, such as the welfare of indigenous Australians, and the needs of healthcare and education? But perhaps for a young nation still defining its identity, sport is an apt unifier that can give its citizens something they can be proud of.

As they love to chant in stadiums and beyond, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi! Oi! Oi!


Duck's nuts trying her hand at outdoor climbing just outside Sydney.

Some images taken from the internet.

Duck’s Nuts on Eat: Feeding the Tassie Devil in Me

It was left out of the map of Australia during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and is the butt of many jokes by Aussies living on the mainland.

But the island of Tasmania, Australia's most southern state, is full of beautiful delights -- and importantly to the Asian expat, home to probably the best seafood in the country.

Yes, Australia isn't quite know for its cuisine (and neither is New Zealand, for that matter), but there's no doubt that in Tassie and NZ, there's plenty of great, fresh and cheap seafood to be had.



Really yummy fish and chips in Launceston, Tasmania's second-largest city, located in its north-east

I went to Tassie a few weeks ago to visit a good friend. It was a rushed trip, just four days, and we were more focused on hiking and exploring the countryside and the bush rather than on food. But when I reached there and saw all the wineries, and cheese factories, and chocolate factories, and fresh fish, oysters, and everything else, I couldn’t help but go "AAAWWwwwww.”

So why is Tasmania so good for seafood? It's simple, really. It's a wee island (though I'm sure heaps bigger than Singapore) surrounded by clear waters full of all sorts of fish and other slimy stuff.



Salmon, trout, tuna, crab, oysters, abalone -- you name it, they've got it.



A prawn-peeling competition at a big seafood restaurant by Hobart's main wharf. We stumbled across the comp when we popped in to eat some fish and chips. The winner peeled 14 prawns in one minute.

To be honest, I sometimes find it hard to find good seafood in Sydney that's not ridiculously expensive. I'm a big fish fan, but I often have to resign myself to some Tassie salmon once in a while and a tad of herring. In Tassie though, perhaps because the cost of living is a lot lower, fish is heaps cheaper and waaaaaay fresher. There's fish and chips everywhere, unlike Sydney (where it's here and there and usually just frozen stuff in pubs), and it's under $20. Now, I'm on a pretty tight budget because my pay's rather low. My usual eating budget is preferably less than $5 a meal, though I could stretch it to $10 if I'm desperate for food. But under $20 is not too bad for some of the best fish I've ever eaten.

So back to Tassie again, and besides its tasty seafood, it has some lovely wines and cheese and chocolate factories. The eastern and south-western areas of Australia have some good wineries -- think the Barossa Valley in South Australia, the Hunter Valley in NSW, Margaret River in Western Australia and the Yarra Valley in Victoria. But so has Tassie. We managed to try out some wines, though unfortunately, I didn't take photos of those bottles, so you'll have to make do with this photo we took at Bicheno on Tassie's east coast. Kinda cool name for a wine eh? It's from South Australia, my favourite place for wine, and a good one too.



Sumptuous wine, not so sure about the name

What I think was unexpected for me was how English and Irish (if I'm not wrong, most of the convicts were from Ireland) the architecture was. Most of the villages or small towns were like villages and small towns in the UK. So of course, we found plenty of English-style food and snacks, like scones, pancakes, and lots of cream.



Fresh, warm pancakes at Tasmazia, a large maze near the spectacular Cradle Mountain in the north-west

We dropped by Tasmazia, which purports to be the world's largest maze. It's in the shadow of Cradle Mountain (super wow), and also home to the Village of Lower Crackpot (no kidding!). We tucked into some fantastic pancakes and toasties -- a fitting end I think to a short but fun trip that turned out to be more about food than we expected.



Ah, toasties

(Some pictures taken from the Internet)