Sunday, August 17, 2008

Death March








We've been trying some "American" foods this weekend. The verdicts:


1. Mac n' cheese: Not the cheesiest. Pretty wattery. Someone needs to introduce Australia to the mac n' cheese with the creamy cheese stuff you squeeze into it. Clearly the US leads the way in fatty processed foods. Hooray!


2. Pancakes: We actually bought pikelet mix, but it had a recipe for pancakes as well. As far as I can tell, a pikelet is a really sugary pancake. Anyway, Australians think pancakes are crepes. Next weekend, I'll try the mix again with half the suggested milk.


3. Pizza: They do deliver, and you're not even expected to tip! The menu is filled with the most bizarre options you could imagine -- perhaps squid and avocado do belong on the same pizza, but not on mine.

They still have us beat hands down on coffee, though. And access to Indian and Chinese take away.

Today we took the train to Cronulla, a little beach town at the end of the line. The desalination plant to whom Eric is being contracted out is in a town near there, and we thought we'd see if he could walk to work from the train station. Four little words the Aussies should learn are "map not to scale." We walked 9.2 km to the little town where the plant is, at which point we were pretty beat. Thank goodness there was a bus to take us back -- oh, wait, no bus on Sunday! I thought I was going to cry as I realised we had to walk another 9.2 km back. Eric still has to decide if he takes the car or the extra $10K/year, but I know in what direction we were both leaning this afternoon...


At about kilometer 18, we encountered the bar you see in the picture above. What you may not be able to read is the fine print that claims that Hog's Breath, in suspiciously familiar font, is "uniquely Australian." As if! This joint was established in 1989, long after 1976, when the doors opened in Destin. Perhaps they think it's okay since they called it a cafe instead of a saloon, but I'm not fooled by their semantic tricks. I challenge all of you who come to visit us from Florida to bring your Hog's Breath t-shirts, and we'll march (okay, train) down there and demand justice! What next, an Australian Lucky Joe's???


If you're wondering why I haven't been posting more pics on the blog recently, it's because we pay by the megabyte or gigabyte or something over here for internet access. Eric swears we're well within our limits, but I'm scared by those fancy computer memory words. I'm having enough trouble with the metric system. Anyway, once we get a feel for how much memory is what, I'll post more. For now, I just added some of our friends from Taronga Zoo. You knew there would be koalas, didn't you?

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