Cats in IKEA

I have a love/hate relationship with IKEA. I hate the store's layout, I hate the lack of customer service, I hate their cheaply made furniture, and I really really hate assembling their cheaply made furniture*. Okay, so this love/hate relationship is skewed towards the hating. I do like their meatballs and the fact that you can buy a bag of 100 tealights for like two dollars. And to be honest, when you need a new coffee table because a big, drunk guy fell onto yours and smashed it into bits at your housewarming party, IKEA can come in handy.

I also really like this commercial that was filmed when 100 pet cats were let loose in an IKEA after hours. Here's some additional video footage about the making of the commercial. (via Metafilter) If my catphobe mother catches wind of this she'll never set foot in an IKEA again.

*I came up with a new money-making idea to add to the list: become an expert in assembling IKEA furniture and hire yourself out to put it together in people's homes. I would gladly have paid someone $50 (or more) to piece together six of these BÖRJEs.

Peanut butter jelly time!

I’ve always been fond of peanut butter. My go-to breakfast is toasted English muffins with peanut butter: quick, tasty, reasonably healthy and most importantly, dairy-free (nobody wants to start their day with explosive diarrhea). Over the past few months, this fondness has turned into more of an obsession, or a quest, if you will. You see, Australian peanut butter kind of sucks. It exists, but the major brand- Kraft- makes the sugary processed type (eww). I had some hope for the natural food brand, Sanitarium (which sounds like a place where you quarantine TB patients, not something you’d want to eat), but it was disappointingly bland and just not peanutty enough. However, a peanut butter from New Zealand, Ceres, came to my rescue- it’s just about perfect. My parents also brought along reinforcements in the form of Teddie All Natural peanut butter- my favorite, and made in MA! And in case I run out...they also brought me a 3 lb. tub in addition to the jar. Looks like I'll be able to satisfy my peanut butter cravings for a good long while.

Soccer in Melbourne

One of the first things I did when I moved to Melbourne was to find a soccer team to join, figuring it would be a good way to meet people and stay in shape. However, recreational soccer for adults in Australia is much different than in Boston. There’s no equivalent to the BSSC, and all teams are organized by clubs that have their own home field and clubhouse. Each club with have several youth and men’s teams and one or two women’s teams, and historically, most clubs have some sort of ethnic affiliation. We also played against several universities, and at first I was worried we’d get our asses kicked by a bunch of superstar 18 year olds, but luckily it wasn’t like that at all- apparently they don’t have intramurals so all of the mediocre players join local leagues instead. My team, the Port Melbourne Sharks (motto: Our turf, no survivors!), belongs to a Greek club- most of the players aren’t Greek, but the Greek men who hang around the clubhouse drinking wine and the fact that the snack stand features items like spanakopita does give a certain mediterranean flair. The other difference is that although the level of play is fairly similar to what I was used to, teams have practice (practice? We’re talking about practice?!!) and a coach. A coach? I hadn’t had a coach since high school. At first, the idea of running drills and whatnot struck me as sort of silly for a bunch of out of shape adults playing in a social league, but it ended up being pretty fun. I lucked out and ended up joining a newly formed team, which meant that most of the other girls were new to the area, having moved from abroad like me or recently relocated to Melbourne from other cities in Australia, so everyone was keen to make friends. And they also like fun and beer. Soccer-wise, we weren’t the best squad in our league, but we weren’t terrible, and I really enjoyed playing in an organized league and getting to know a great group of people. Although now that the season’s over, I must admit it’s nice to sleep in on a Sunday morning.

Book review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So I finally caved into the hype and read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. In this novel, journalist Mikael Blomkvist is employed by the aging patriarch of a wealthy family to find out what happened to his niece, who disappeared decades prior. The girl with the dragon tattoo is his assistant, the young misfit hacker Lisbeth Salander. It's definitely an entertaining page-turner, but overall not much more than your standard blockbuster thriller, like a Swedish Dan Brown book (albeit with a surprising amount of sexual violence- based on its popularity, I was expecting something a little more vanilla). My biggest bone to pick was with the writing- it seemed so obvious that the intention was to turn it into a screenplay, which kind of gave the book a commercial feel. The protagonist- he's handsome and charismatic and sleeps with beautiful women! There's also some pretty obvious product placement- Blomkvist doesn't type on a laptop; he uses an iBook. In summary, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is am ideal beach or airplane read, but just wasn't enough to warm my cold, book-snobbish soul. I didn't see the movie- was it any good?

My parents' visit to Oz

It's been a busy week and a half here at DCoE, with my parents coming to Melbourne for a visit. Well, my father technically came here for a conference, but my mom tagged along and a fair amount of visiting was accomplished. While my dad was working, my mom and I checked out some of the local sights, including the National Gallery of Victoria art museum and the Melbourne Aquarium, which has awesome penguins. Anyone who doesn't like penguins must be a sociopath. One thing Melbourne has going for it is great food, and we enjoyed dinners at a steakhouse, a fun Greek restaurant where there are no menus and Greek men tell you what to eat, and a traveling dinner on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant (which my parents, being fans of trains in general, LOVED). D handled The Meeting of the Parents quite well, even when crammed into a tiny table on a moving tram.

Over the weekend, we headed down the Mornington Peninsula, which is only a couple of hours drive (on the left!) from the city and has a lot of beautiful beach scenery and vineyards. Kind of like Cape Cod, only with better wine. The photos below are of us at Cape Schanck and a picture of one of the many vineyards we stopped at.




The next stop was a trip to Scottsdale, Tasmania where father had planned a visit with some Australian work colleagues. Scottsdale is a small, agricultural town and since they don’t get many visitors, especially at this time of the year, they went out of their way to keep us entertained. My mom and I drove out to the forest and hiked to St. Columba Falls (see photo) and then returned to town to join everyone for dinner at Barnbougle Dunes, which is apparently a links golf course (whatever that means) and made the list of the world’s top 100 golf courses. It was night time so we couldn’t see much. After that, we spent another couple of days hanging out in Melbourne, and then my parents headed off on the long flight home. I really enjoyed their visit- it was great to see them and nice to have a few days off from work with the opportunity for some sightseeing and whatnot.

A few of my favorite things

Melbourne is a great city, full of cool cafes, bars, restaurants, and shops where people like me end up spending loads of time and money. But my favorite things in the city aren't museums or landmarks or hipster hangouts, they're the quirky little details, like this old vinegar sign- apparently I'm not the only fan of the skipping vinegar girl.

Here are some more examples:


These neighborhood watch signs- they're all over the place, and something about the logo is just so 1970's, I can't help but love them. They also remind me of the old girl scouts logo. Tagalongs and samoas, anyone?


Melbourne in general and my neighborhood Fitzroy in particular are known for street art. I really like this one of a girl in old-fashioned clothes peeking around the corner.


An lastly, here's giant coin purse sculpture (and yep, that's my mom and I sitting atop it).

Things I found in my boyfriend's record collection

Many years ago in Australia, a teenage D collected records. I recently had the good fortune to peruse this gem of collection, which is essentially a treasure trove of 1980s nostalgia and hilarity. Here are photos we took of my ten favorites:

10. My sister Kerry had this on cassette and it ruled.

9. You know, I still dig Huey Lewis.








8. Bette Midler and the cure on the same album? Throbbin'!

7. Some music from this decade did age well.








6. Others, not so much. And now I have "Shake Your Love" stuck in my head.

5. D claims that Wham and Debbie Gibson belonged to his sister...






4. But he fully admits to purchasing the Dream a Little Dream soundtrack.











3. And now for something gayer than Wham- the English techno group Man to Man performing their club classic "Male Stripper." I love the cover art on this one...what goes well with shirtless men smoking? I know! The Leaning Tower of Pisa!








2. The first time was a great time, the second time was a blast...




and finally,








#1. U Can't Touch This.

DCoE's Return to Glory (coming soon)

Remember how my blog used to be awesome? (okay, my words) And now I hardly ever update anymore, and it's kind of lame? Well, all that's about to change with the arrival of....drumroll, please...my new laptop! See, my new work environment doesn't really allow for internet tomfoolery, and my old personal laptop has been on its last legs for months now...it's so slow I can barely send and email, let alone post pictures and blog entries. And I do have some ideas...like a photoessay pertaining to a certain boyfriend's hilarious record collections. And there are still durians to be had.

But for now, you can amuse yourselves with this collection of bad yearbook photos. (thanks, Jos!)

Quitting in style

Did you hear about the JetBlue flight attendant's dramatic exit? Fantastic. (except for the fact he may end up in jail...but maybe the chance to pull the emergency slide was worth it)

And now this story about a girl who quits her job via messages on a dry erase board that she emails to the office. I'm pretty sure it's fake (the girl looks WAY too much like one of those beautiful models who don a ponytail and glasses so they can play a misfit in a high school movie), but it's still pretty entertaining.

Links!

Some have you may remember the fascination I developed last year for the juggalos. Well, it hasn't faded. The infomerical for this year's "Gathering" is out and is as absurd as ever. Coolio and Gallagher at the same festival? Snap. And check out this news- juggalo culture has spread to Australia- I swear, I'm not responsible! (thanks for the link, Cupcake)

And now for something entirely different:

A travel article from the NYT about a guy traveling in Nicaragua with his parents. (thanks, Dan)

Concert Review: Band of Horses

I've been a fan of the band Band of Horses ever since I heard their first album, Everything All The Time, but I had never seen them live. Last night, I saw them play at the Palace Theater in Melbourne, and they were fantastic! The guitars sounded great, and I was really impressed by the vocals of frontman Ben Bridwell. He smoked a few cigarettes during the show- I guess you can break the rules when you're a rock star, but I'm surprised it hasn't ruined his voice, which is high and clear and sounds exactly like it does on the recordings. They seemed relaxed and happy on stage and bantered a bit with the crowd. They played a long set that featured mostly songs from their first album, including The Funeral, which rose to popularity partly because of this video. I liked the venue as well- there are a couple of balconies and the whole building is tiered in a way so that you pretty much always have a good view without blocking anyone behind you. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I don't have any blurry concert photos to post. In closing, if you like Band of Horses and get a chance to see them live, they're definitely worth seeing!

Weekend Report

I had a busy weekend in Melbourne, which included the following activities:

I went to see Tim Burton: The Exhibition, which has traveled to Melbourne from MoMA in New York. The exhibition featured a plethora of delightfully creepy drawings....and one Batmobile!

Checked out the State Library as part of Melbourne Open House. We went to see the normally closed Queen's Hall but were far more impressed with the massive reading room.

Made fresh margaritas from squeezed limes! Apparently margarita mix doesn't exist in Australia, so I resorted to the do-it-yourself method. They were really easy to make and quite tasty but a bit on the dangerous side. The margaritas were followed by a soccer club fundraiser at a Brazilian restaurant- it was one of those cheesy dinner show places, but the food was good (meat on giant stakes, oh boy!) and we all good time (the margaritas probably helped with that). I ate a chicken heart. And since D won a dinner for 4 in the raffle, it looks like we'll be back.

Aggressive agressive notes?

Someone, angered by the state of my building's rubbish room, decided to share their concerns by writing them on the door in permanent marker. It makes me laugh every time I see it. And when I'm done laughing, I throw my trash all over the floor. (just kidding)

I'd consider sending it in to Passive Aggressive Notes, but it doesn't seem very passive, does it?

Movie review: The Secret in Their Eyes

I just saw The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos), which won last year's Oscar for Best Foreign Film. I had high expectations, as I love a good crime drama, and anything that's been described as "a really long, really awesome episode of Law & Order set in Buenos Aires" is bound to be my kind of movie. I was not disappointed. Benjamin Esposito is a retired legal attorney who decides to write a novel based upon the one case he never got out of his head, the brutal rape and murder of a young woman, in which the political corruption of the times (the mid 1970s) interfered with justice. He is not the only one haunted by the case, and soon he reconnects with his former colleague and unrequited love, as well as the victim's still grieving husband. I don't really need to say anything more, but if you are at all intrigued, I strongly recommend that you see the movie- a captivating story, great characters, excellent acting, and enough plot twists to keep viewers intrigued for a full two hours, especially the one at the end (yikes!).

Adventures in Strange Fruit

I went to the market on Saturday and saw an unusual fruit for sale at several stands- the custard apple. First of all, terrible name choice. From the outside, they don't look at all like apples, and if anything, resemble puffy artichokes. On the inside, custard apples have white flesh with big black seeds. They don't taste like apples either- the one I had was slightly underripe (I think) as the firmer sections were a little tough and bland, but the mushier parts were quite pleasant- fruity with a slight tartness. So I imagine that the custard part of the name is probably apt, as it seems you're supposed to eat them when they're squishy.

And don't worry, strange fruit fans, the durian is still next on my list.


As a bonus- here's a simple and delicious recipe for oven baked chicken parmesan. I made it the other night with garlic bread and a salad- so good!!

Links!

Animal hijinx in the news:

Woman who fears monkeys attacked by...monkeys. (thanks, Ry!)

Drunk Australian injured in an attempt to ride a crocodile.

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem got married- I had no idea they were dating (I can't believe they didn't tell me!) but it makes sense: they're both from Spain, incredibly talented (both have won Oscars), and very very very good looking (not counting Bardem's unfortunate haircut in No Country for Old Men). For movie recommendations, Bardem was fantastic in The Sea Inside and I loved Penelope in Volver.

Lastly, just when I thought that the splendors of the internet had all been revealed to me, I stumbled across this (incredibly extensive) collection of photos of people with slide rules. Enjoy!

Reviews: one book and one movie

The Book:
So, Oscar Wilde is like, super famous and stuff, but I've never actually read anything by him, until I picked up a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. As an aside, how much do I love Penguin Books? A lot. At least here in Australia, they've greatly expanded their line of cheapo orange and white paperbacks, which comes in handy because regular paperbacks go for like $30 down under. At the beginning of The Picture of Dorian Gray, we meet the three main characters- Basil, a mild-mannered artist, has become enthralled/obsessed with a young, handsome man named Dorian Gray, whom serves as something of a muse to him- gay subtext much? Basil's friend Lord Henry is a natural mischief maker who likes nothing more than stirring up controversy at dinner parties, and upon seeing Basil's portrait of Dorian, Lord Henry blathers on of the fleeting power of innocence and beauty. Dorian makes a wish for the portrait to grow old, rather than him, and it comes true, and the story turns into a gentlemanly horror tale. In spite of a few tedious sections, I did enjoy the book, and found Lord Henry particularly entertaining- full of quotes like this: "To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."

The movie:
The Cove, is a 2009 documentary about the killing of dolphins in the small Japanese fishing town of Taiji. Considering that I eat meat and have "sacrificed" rodents in the name of science, I may be somewhat of a hypocrite for siding with the filmmakers, but overall, it's a very informative, powerful, and well-filmed documentary. Ric O'Barry, who captured trained the dolphins for the tv show Flipper, eventually determined that dolphins suffer in captivity and has spent the majority of his life as an activist working on their behalf- protesting their capture and risking arrest to free them. The majority of captive dolphins come from a coastal village in Japan, where they are herded into shore and netted- however, only a small percentage are sold live, and the rest are brutally slaughtered in a hidden and heavily guarded cove. O'Barry and a team of activists and filmmakers (and free divers) aim to plant cameras and capture the slaughter in action, hoping that video proof of the killings will help put an end to the practice. In addition, the film also devotes time to the political aspects of whaling, painting the Japanese government as the clear villain and the International Whaling Commission as imbeciles for refusing to regulate dolphins and other small cetaceans (word of the day!). The Cove is certainly not a cheerful movie, but it is an interesting and effective one.

Giant microbes!

I learned of Giant Microbes, a company that makes stuffed animal versions of viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms several years ago, but I was pleased to discover last week that they have greatly expanded their catalogue. I even found two of the bacteria I work with- Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus. So of course I bought them. I was tempted to buy Neisseria gonorrhoeae and mail it to someone as a gag gift, but I managed to restrain myself.

Weekend in Sydney

I had a great weekend with Kris, Rodd, and Dean in Sydney- the weather is still fairly cool, but at least the sun was shining. We arrived Friday afternoon and spent most of that time wandering around and bar hopping in the Chippendale (heh) and Glebe neighborhoods. Saturday, we went to a local food market for breakfast and then flew kites at Sydney Park, which is built on top of a former brickworks. Well, one of the kites flew quite readily whereas the other one seemed to prefer crashing itself into the ground. Saturday night, we ate dinner at the delicious thai restaurant Spice I Am- where we saw a contestant from Masterchef Australia, a super popular cooking reality show. Later that night, D and I went to a joint Canada Day/4th of July party.

On Sunday morning, Kris and I went for a 7K run through the city, which made me feel a lot less guilty about the pig-out that ensued. We had lunch for the 4th of July at the Blue Plate Bar & Grill, an American restaurant with offerings such as Chicago deep dish pizza and Philly cheese steaks on the menu. And they even serve Sam Adams! (I had one.) We ordered three appetizers (hey, don't judge- it's not every day you can find buffalo wings and potato skins down here) and I had the gumbo for lunch. The whole meal was quite enjoyable.




My conference began last night- highlights included a seminar from a nobel prize winner, the society president announcing my name as Elaine when he handed out my travel award, and a lady who touched my face because she thought my black eye was smudged makeup.

In other weekend news, the four of us are now officially hooked on True Blood, because nobody does vampire smut quite like HBO.

4th of July

Last year, I spend the 4th of July frolicking in Newport and staging murder scenes at the polo grounds. (What?) This year, I'll be attending the Australian Society for Microbiology's annual meeting in Sydney, where my black eye and I will be giving a talk on Tuesday. The fun part is that I'm heading up a couple days early to hang out with Kris and Rodd, and D is coming along to meet my friends. Kristy's made us reservations at an American-themed restaurant (not McDonald's) for the 4th, and it Looks delicious! Nachos and wings and po' boys, oh my.

Have a great holiday weekend, everyone!