Visit to Massachusetts

I got back on Sunday after a long flight and a quickish (8 days) trip back home to Massachusetts. The main purpose of the trip was to spend time with my grandmother, who has been having health trouble in recent months. Currently, she's doing well and it was great to see her as well as visit with the rest of my family and catch up with friends in the area. Fall has always been my favorite season, and there's something about fall in New England that you just can't find anywhere else. My mom had planned a big family dinner and surprised us with Early Thanksgiving- turkey, stuffing, and the whole shebang (otherwise known as "all the trimmings")- it was awesome! I was home for Halloween, but this year, instead of attending (or hosting) a wild party I opted for the kiddie version and took my nieces trick-or-treating. I did wear a costume, though. It was super fun; my nieces had a blast and there were TONS of people out- apparently the parents of America no longer live in fear of malicious neighbors distributing poisoned candy. Thank goodness. Check those apples for razorblades, kids! I was also home for election day, which came in handy because I had forgotten to request an absentee ballot. I voted in Waltham and felt reassured that Massachusetts is still the bluest of them all.
Overall, the trip was great but exhausting- I tried to pack too much visiting in for the time frame, and I also ended up scheduling three work-related meetings. Lesson learned: next time I'll be sure to leave myself a couple of empty days where I can chill out and actually feel like I'm on vacation. Or go the outlets and stock up on clothes and shoes- so much cheaper! My best night out was when I acted like a diva and requested that all of my friends meet me at one of my favorite bars, the Beehive.

I must say, though, I'm starting to get used to the long flight. It helps that I'm now a "Premier" customer on United, so I automatically get seated in Economy Plus (more legroom! woohoo!). Oh, and the red wine + codeine combo works wonders for in-flight slumber. On the way back, I had a 5 hour layover in San Fransisco and journeyed into the city to meet up with my SF friends for dinner; it was great to see them and nice to break up the flights a bit.

As for my next entry...reviews of the 4 books I read on the flight.

And I'll leave you with one last photo- one of the breakfast specials at the fabulous J&M Diner, where I had breakfast with my parents before they drove me to the airport. Nothing says Massachusetts like fluffernutter french toast.

Movies and an update

Oh hello, Neglected Blog. I've had a busy past few days- gearing up for a big two day training session at work and preparing for my trip home to Massachusetts...I leave in about three hours (so I should probably finish packing). I'm really looking forward to catching up with family and friends and enjoying some Dunkin Donuts iced coffee and Mexican food cooked by real Mexicans rather than Australian teenagers.

I have seen a couple of movies recently:

1. All About My Mother. This Spanish film from 1999 comes from the famous director Almodovar, known for his unconventional characters and the fact that most of his movies are about women. I've seen several of his movies, and my previous favorite was Volver. However, I must say that now I consider All About My Mother Almodovar's best. It's a stunning film- interesting and creative and a treat for movie/theater buffs, as allusions to All About Eve and A Streetcar Named Desire pervade the movie. All About My Mother is about a mother, Manuela, whose teenage son dies in an accident at the beginning of the film. She travels to Barcelona to find his father, a drag queen named Lola who never knew that he/she had fathered a child. However, instead of finding Lola, she befriends and unlikely group of misfits: a transvestite ex-prostitute, a famous theater actress in love with her troubled co-star, and a pregnant nun (played by a young and adorable Penelope Cruz). Almodovar's movies aren't for everyone, but one of his strengths is that he portrays the types of people who live on the edge of society, the freaks, weirdos, and misfits, with compassion and without judgement. I thought All About My Mother was fantastic- highly recommended!

2. The Social Network, a.k.a the Facebook movie, stars Jesse Eisenberg (from Adventureland and Zombieland...perhaps they should have called it Facebookland to continue the trend?) as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. It's written by the people from the West Wing, and as expected, features some great dialogue and good acting, notably Justin Timberlake as the egomaniac developer of Napster, Sean Parker. The Winklevoss twins (played by just one guy, I wonder how they did that?) were hilarious. However, the movie didn't do much for me, basically, because Mark Zuckerberg is big jerk. He has a big chip on his shoulder for being a geek, and if that's supposed to make you sympathize with him, it didn't work. Hey, if you're brilliant and go to Harvard, don't expect people to feel sorry for you. In the movie, he's mean to his ex-girlfriend, he steals the idea from Facebook, and he royally screws over his best friend. I guess I have trouble enjoying a movie when I don't like the main character.

Redneck cooking: Buffalo Chicken Sliders

A while ago my sister Eri asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted her to send me. Having recently stocked up on peanut butter, I requested another American favorite that is unheard of in Australia: buffalo sauce. She sent me three bottles of it along with a NASCAR-themed birthday card. I decided to make buffalo chicken sliders and used this recipe- I love the description: "like chicken wings on a sandwich!" Basically, you buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, pull the meat off of it, and stir in some diced celery, blue cheese (I suppose real rednecks use ranch dressing), and buffalo sauce, warm it up in the oven, and serve on little rolls. YUM!! So easy and really tasty- I served them up for dinner with corn on the cob and salad, but they’d make a great party appetizer.

Movie Review: The Town

After hearing how all of my friends and family back home liked The Town, the new movie starring and directed by Ben Affleck, I was looking forward to it coming out in Australia. I saw it over the weekend, and I must admit, all those aerial shots of the city of Boston made me a little bit homesick. The Town, unlike the recent string of Irish-American crime dramas set in The Hub, takes place in Charlestown rather than Southie. I knew that Charlestown was considered a rough neighborhood but wasn't aware of its reputation as a hotbed of bank robbers. The Town centers around of group of friends who make their living by robbing banks and armored cars. Ben Affleck's character Doug is the ringleader and the likeable one- we see that despite his trade, he's not a bad guy. On the opposite end of the spectrum is his best friend Jimmy, brilliantly played by Jeremy Renner- he's tough, unpredictable, and dangerous. Things get complicated when Doug falls for Claire, a bank employee they briefly took hostage during one of their exploits. I could relate to Claire as the suburban girl who moves into an insular city neighborhood. Overall, I enjoyed The Town but didn't think it was as original as his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone (which is fantastic btw). However, it's definitely entertaining and worth seeing- especially if you're prone to smile at shots of Fenway Park and the North End.

Links! (science themed)

A fascinating article about sabotage in the laboratory, which allows me to use one of my favorite words- saboteur! (thanks, Mike)

Fun chemistry video. No, really. (Thanks, JR!)

And now for something a little more sinister- earlier this month, the US apologized for a study run during the 1940s in which Guatemalans were deliberately infected with syphilis. Yikes! I'll try to remember this when I'm complaining about my latest human ethics application.

What I've been up to

Books read:
1. Howards End by E.M. Forster (I'm still following along with my Boston book club, just like a long-distance stalker). Published in 1910, this English novel tells the story of three families from three different classes, whose paths frequently cross. The two Schlegel sisters, the thoughtful Margaret and the beautiful and immature Helen seem like they jumped straight out of a Jane Austen novel. In one of the major plot points, a valuable object bequeathed by a dying woman to a kind acquaintance was hoarded by greedy relatives only to end up, in entirely unexpected circumstances, in the hands of the rightful recipient. This reminded me of the book On Beauty, which I just learned (from wikipedia) was written as a homage to Howards End. I enjoyed Howards End and would recommend it, especially to fans of britlit.
2. Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, by Warren St. John. This non-fiction book tells the story of a New York City journalist and Alabama native who returns to his home state to investigate life and times of diehard college football fans, specifically, those who cry "Roll Tide," worship a man named Bear Bryant, and spend every weekend in red RVs. He spends one football season traveling in motor homes to every University of Alabama home and away game and makes a point to meet everyone in the fans' orbit- the legendary crazed fans who stick out among their fellow fanatics, the reviled sports journalist who makes his living criticizing Bama, and the scalper ("ticket broker") who has the tickets they want. Luckily for Warren (and his readers), his gateway companions, the Bices, are a pleasant couple who just plain like their Bama football and add a refreshing balance to the less savory fans in the mix. I'm not normally a big fan of non-fiction, but Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is both funny, insightful, and well-written, and a highly enjoyable read, even for a Notre Dame fan.

Concert attended:
Cloud Control at the Corner Hotel, Melbourne. One thing I miss about Boston is the abundance of live music venues where you can see good bands for under $30. Melbourne does get a lot of good music, but the international bands (i.e. all the ones I've heard of) all charge $80 or more- and as much as I like Todd Rungren, that's just too much to ask. Imagine my delight when I saw that an Australian band I like, Cloud Control, was playing a show that cost a mere $18. Sold! The Corner Hotel is somewhat of a Melbourne institution, similar to the Paradise (it even has a giant pole obstructing the stage). And the show was great! A four piece band from the Blue Mountains who play mellow modern rock.
Download here:

Gold Canary (right click and save as) - Cloud Control

And what concert is complete without a blurry concert photo? None, I say.

Soccer tournament played in:
My friend Alison invited me to join her North Sydney team in a women's over 30 tournament on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Despite the fact that there were literally monsoon-like rainstorms the entire weekend, I had a fantastic time. The team was full of good soccer players who also like to have a good time, and the weekend was an fun and exhausting mix of soccer and partying. The trip reminded me of the time my old co-ed team went to a tournament in Miami, but at least this time we won a couple of games. Seriously, though, I have never played on a wetter or muddier field, and the tournament organizers ended up canceling the last day of games, which was annoying but understandable considering one of the players in the men's tournament broke his leg in two places the night before. They consoled the disappointed footballers by hosting an open bar at 10:30...AM. Since I didn't manage to get a photo of the team in our uniforms, here's one of us at the surf club and another of the waterlogged field (complete with a giant wooden squeegee that the club used in a feeble attempt to remove water from the field).

What's cooking

Now that the weather in Melbourne is warming up, it's grilling time! I made these chicken satay skewers and served them with this peanut satay sauce, basmati rice, and grilled veggies. Yum city.

My other recent achievement was to make homemade pancakes, due to the lack of Bisquick down under. I used this recipe and added a cup of fresh blueberries. Super easy and tasty. I didn't take a photo, but picture some delicious blueberry pancakes and there you go. My parents had brought me some real New England maple syrup so that made them even better than the ones you're imagining.

Science in Darwin

Last week, I went to Darwin to do some lab work with collaborators at the Menzies School of Health Research. Darwin itself is a very unique city, located at the very top of the remote Northern Territories. It's surrounded by beautiful beaches, but you can look but not swim due to crocodiles and poisonous box jellyfish. The heat is sweltering, and the residents are very relaxed and friendly. I was very impressed with Menzies- their facilities and equipment are top-notch, and the scientific staff is both talented and welcoming. The institute does a lot of work with Aboriginal populations, who have high rates of disease and a life-expectancy 17 years shorter than non-Aboriginal Australians (more info here). I went to a seminar on a rare type of cancer that's striking young Aboriginal women in one region of the NT- they did a study on HPV rates in women in the area, and the acknowledgments included a group of tribal elders that assisted in recruiting women to the study.
One reason why I enjoyed the trip so much is that I'm starting to feel like I have an actual career- working with people in my new field (bacterial pneumonia), talking about ideas, discussing projects, making plans for that conference in Brazil we all want to attend, etc...

On my last day in town, they set me up on an eco tour that went to the Adelaide River and Litchfield National Park. The highlight was the jumping crocodile boat ride, where they dangle hunks of raw meat off the side of the boat to attach crocodiles (and the occasional eagle). Here are a couple of pics I took:

Oprah, you've outdone yourself

First the trip to Australia, now this?? I fucking love The Sound of Music.

Magnetic Island

I got back yesterday from a lovely four day trip to Magnetic Island, located off the coast of Townsville in northern Queensland, not too far from the Great Barrier Reef. The majority of the island is a national park, but luckily for me, D has friends who live there and love hosting visitors. And they also have an adorable puppy. It's funny, most people outside of Australia assume it's all beaches and tropical weather, but I hadn't yet experienced that side of it. Magnetic Island is indeed a tropical paradise- beautiful beaches, lush palm trees, and warm weather. And since it's not on the main tourist track and only has 2000 residents, nothing is ever crowded. The landscape reminded me a bit of Hawaii, and yes, a little bit of The Island from Lost (especially with that whole magnetic business). Over the four days, we did a lot of relaxing as well as a bit of exploring, inlcuding a hike up to n old WWII gun tower and snorkeling at a coral reef, where and managed to get a sunburn on my ass, which made for an uncomfortable plane ride home.

Items of interest spotted: tree frogs (even saw one in the toilet, aka a "dunny frog"), sea turtle, mama and baby koala, snake, shark (not a scary one, just this guy), lots of birds (including the Magnetic Island curlew) and last but not least, a Dip Sign!! I can't wait to go back- four days was not nearly enough.

The redesign

So I decided to clean up the blog links sections to remove links to some blogs that no longer exist or have been inactive for months, and while I was at it, I started playing around with the new (to me) Blogger templates- DCoE was looking a little too 2006. And ever since I swicthed from Internet Explorer to Firefox, the formatting has been a little off. So, do you like the new look? I'm not crazy about the birds in the upper right corner but couldn't figure out how to get rid of them, and birds aside, I did like this template the most out of the ones available. Maybe I'll insert a cartoon stick figure drawing of me next to the title shooting at the birds. That would be totally normal.

List #44....Secret Australians

Do you remember how Adam Sandler had that Hannukah song about the people in Hollywood who are Jewish? Well, I feel like Australia could do somethig similar. I mean, everyone knows Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are Aussie, and we all saw Toni Colette in Muriel's Wedding. However, since I moved here, I've been trying to watch some classic Australian films (you know, like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), and in doing so have realized that many actors I had assumed were American were actually from Australia.

So now I present List #44... Secret Australians
1. Cate Blanchette
2. Guy Pearce
3. Anthony LaPaglia (from Without a Trace)
4. Elle Macpherson
5. Olivia Newton-John
6. Geoffrey Rush
7. Hugo Weaving
8. Ryan Kwanten (better known to True Blood fans as Jason Stackhouse)
9. Not an actor, but Rupert Murdoch is also Australian.

and as for Mel Gibson, turns out he's a Secret American.

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!)