Saturday, May 19, 2018

Sunday: Being Tourists

After our arrival Saturday morning, our walking tour to QUT and Southbank, and our initial City Cat trip down the river to our cookout at the O'Donovan's, Sunday was our big touristy day.

We began with a visit to the MacArthur Museum,  where we connected with Sally, one of Rumintha's students. Everyone took the elevator to the 8th floor, where MacArthur's Office was during the Second World War. The elevator only held small groups, and the leadership team went up last where we discovered our American students chattering very loudly in the reception area. This building was essentially the Pentagon of the Pacific during the war. It was chosen for this purpose partly due to its size, and all floors were occupied by offices supporting the U.S. and Australian armed services. The building as also deemed to be more secure in case of bombings - a genuine concern - because it wa constructed with new techniques using brick, steel, and reinforced concrete.

Our excellent volunteer tour guide Paul kicked off our visit with a film about Brisbane during the war, which he stopped a few times to add supplemental information about what we're were seeing and the wartime experience of the  Brisbanites. We then moved to the very large table where MacArthur and his staff met to plan the Allied actions for the war in the Pacific. Paul presented a fascinating history lesson about the geopolitical history of the region, the significance of the South China Sea, the connections between Japan's ambitions and strategy in relation to the war in Europe, and the various bombing campaigns and attempted attacks on Australia.

We didn't have time to read and digest all of the museum displays, but we did get to visit MacArthur's actual office which is outfitted with a replica desk, period furniture, and the General's actual chair, table, and cigar box. Paul also took Roberto and me into Lieutenant-General Richard Sutherland's office across the hall, which is not officially open to the public. There, his actual desk is still in use by museum staff today.

After lunch we took a bus from the hotel to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. Lone Pine is more than Koalas. It is a little zoo-like, with environments for many native Australian animals. Aside from Koalas, we saw wombats, dingo, Tasmanian Devils, crocodile, kookaburra, emu, other birds, and - of course - kangaroos. I realized after I left that I completely missed the platypus.

We watched some Koalas sitting in trees, watching us. They seem pretty stoic and sedentary, which might not be true, but it looked like they were lazily enjoying lounging around in the eucalyptus trees. We later got to hold a Koala to have our photo taken, and it was fun to see all of the celebrity photos of those who had been there before us doing the same thing.

We bought food to feed the kangaroos, but they weren't really that hungry after having tourists feed them all day, day after day. A couple of them ate from my hand, and we had some good photo opportunities and a chance to pet some kangaroos as they lounged around. One of the highlights was when we discovered a kangaroo with a small on in its pouch. The little one climbed in and out, moved around, and generally looked cute. Little children were delighted interacting with the animals, with one little boy bravely (or naively) petting, patting, and pulling on ears and whiskers. He wasn't too rough, though, and the Kangaroo was permissive.

Before leaving, many of us watched a demonstration of an Australian sheep dog doing its thing. That dog was full of energy and an expert at moving the sheep around the pen, over bridges, and through gates at the guide's command. As we left, it was lorikeet feeding time. The staff set out foot in holder that visitors could pick up, and then everyone was swarmed by a brilliantly colored flock of screening birds, fluttering around the crowd, landing on people's heads, on the feeders, on shoulders... we had a lot of laughs and a lot of fun taking some great photos.

Earlier today we all went through customs and indicated that we had not touched livestock or walked in pastures... well, not recently anyway.

After Lone Pine, we went up to Mt. Cooth-Tha, the highest hill in the area, in a national park, where there is a magnificent lookout point. From there we had a great view of several sections of the river, the surrounding hills, the distant port and the ocean, and - most spectacularly - the tall buildings of the CBD reflecting the golden sunlight of the sunset behind us. It was a beautiful way to end our day as tourists in Brisbane.

As I wrap up this post, we are approaching Bloomington's North Walnut Street exit. We still have six students with us, and although everyone is tired we have been talkative and relatively energetic. Some of the students have mentioned they cannot believe the trip is already over - it seem like the just applied to go, and now the class and the immersion tour are behind us. In spite of some tension and glitches, I know everyone learned a lot, and I'd say that on balance we had a great time. More Posts to come, including photos. But first, a reunion with Barry and our dogs, a shower, dinner, and rest. Our 30 your travel day is nearly compete.

Food in Australia (Part 3)

We're on the final flight of the trip, en-route back to Indianapolis from L.A. Wheels up at 10:20 a.m., actually two minutes before we took off from Sydney "earlier" this morning. Anyone reading this must be rolling their eyes at me rambling on about food, but we spent most of our time either working or eating, so this seems like a good non-chronological way to reflect on some aspects of the trip. Also, since the food culture in Brisbane doesn't seem particularly unique, I'm writing about the meals to help me remember some of the interesting things I had and to help me remember my experiences and feelings throughout the trip.

Our trip itinerary included a number of days where we were supposed to have "lunch on your own" or "dinner on your own." This didn't turn out to be the case more often than not.

I received a travel advance from the University in case a need for cash came up related to group expenses. But since the MacArthur Museum accepted a credit card payment for the student entry fees, I had no need for cash other than my own expenses. We had very generous hosts, though, so our meals were frequently covered and I'm expecting that I will need to pay back IU for unused per diem.

Our first lunch was provided at the hotel. The first night I went out to dinner with Roberto to a place near the hotel called Santa Monica, and he was kind enough to pay. (I had a nice craft beer with my dinner, Stone & Wood Pacific Ale, from southern Australia.)

On the second day we grabbed a quick Vietnamese baguette sandwich (actually on our own) at Thao's suggestion, which we ate on a bench on the Queen Street Mall while people watching in the pleasant sunshine.

On the third day, though, the leadership team joined Rumintha and Mako for a very nice lunch at the Gardens Cafe near campus, hosted by QUT Assistant Dean, International Andrew Paltridge. Once again the weather was perfect and we sat outside overlooking the beautiful gardens. I had a good salad and a lemon lime bitters, but in hindsight I should have had the Barramundi "burger."

The next day, Tuesday, we had a full day of business visits and the intent was to grab lunch on our own at the Queen Street Mall. Naturally, Rumintha offered to buy lunch for the leadership team at one of his favorite places. I had two errands to run and needed some alone time, so I passed on the opportunity. Thao kindly offered to bring me a take-away meal, however. My errands complete, I returned to the meeting spot and waited. And waited. Rumintha's quick spot was busier than anticipated, so the meal generously purchased for me arrived just as we began our walk to Boeing. Thao carted it around for me the rest of the day and I took it back to my hotel room to the fridge, but I never had the opportunity to eat it. I suspect housekeeping threw out a perfectly good, complete Singaporean meal this morning.

On Wednesday we had more business visits, this time away from the CBD so we had a coach for the day. For this "lunch on our own," Rumintha took the leadership team and Mako to his absolute favorite place: Glamorous Wok. Set in suburban Sunnybank, Glamorous Wok was situated near a busy intersection with several strip malls filled with Asian food restaurants of all types, as well as McDonalds, KFC, Woolworth's, and Aldi. Thao and I had some giggles as we sat in the booth and watched some of our students walk back and forth looking for a suitable place to eat. Our food was fine, and I think all of the students eventually got something to eat, as well. I had to duck out of lunch early to go across the busy intersection to the liquor store, where Rumintha correctly predicted I would be able to find Patricia, the wine he recommended I pick up to take home.

Wednesday night Thao, Roberto, and I were invited to dinner by Rob Webb from Cook. Our reservation was at 6:00, but by the time we returned to the hotel on the bus and completed our very long class meeting in the lounge, Rob had come to the hotel to meet us and we didn't leave for the restaurant until 6:45. We had a pleasant walk across the bridge to the Southbank and on to the restaurant which we had seen on our first-day walking tour: Stokehouse. It was a sleek, upscale place right on the riverbank with beautiful views of QUT and the CBD. We started with a beer (Kosciusko Pale Ale) before moving on to two bottles of an excellent Shiraz from New Zealand. We shared some chili chips with "aeoli" as a starter... <if this guy next to me on the plane rattles the ice in his empty drink cup one more time, I am liable to smack him> ...before moving on to entrees and mains. I had a crab meat ravioli before my entire of venison. The food was quite nice and very tastefully presented, with smallish portions on oversized plates. I think we had desserts, too. In any case, it was a very good, very fancy, and very expensive meal, so it was very generous of Rob to treat us. But it was a long meal. Not only is Rob very talkative, but the laid-back culture in Australia means the wait staff does not rush things. We finally received the bill at 11:10 p.m., long after the other patrons had left the restaurant. We made it back to the hotel at Midnight, our 16.5 hour day finally complete.

Thursday and Friday we actually got to get lunch on our own in the QUT food court, which had some really good options (Greek, Mexican, sushi...).

Last night was our closing dinner. We left the hotel at 4:30 p.m. to catch the City Cat ferry downstream to Eagle Street Pier for the 5:30 reservation at George's Paragon. There we sat at two long tables with an overflow table for Roberto, Rumintha, and Rob Webb. The place had gorgeous views of the river and the Story Bridge, lit in blue, but it was very loud which made conversation challenging and any celebratory remarks impossible. We had a four course meal (I had snapper) and once again the staff was pretty casual about delivering each course. The long dinner gave me time for nice conversations with Rob O'Donovan and some of the students seated near me, but it was probably a bit more time than any of us needed. As soon as the desserts had been mostly consumed I requested the drink checks so we could pay and depart.

Thao and I walked back to the hotel together, taking the slightly longer route along the river and we accidentally ended up going through the City Gardens (which we had been advised to avoid after dark), and past the Gardens Cafe. We found the path through the Gardens to be well-lit, so it was fine, but while we were walking along the river in a relatively dark spot we looked up and noticed the Southern Cross in the sky. It was a nice and unexpected treat to see on our final night in Australia. We made it back to the hotel at 10:30 p.m., merely 6 hours after the dinner excursion began, and 4.5 hours before our designated meeting time to head to the airport.

Food in Australia (Part 2)

We are in Los Angeles, where we landed at the same time we took off from Brisbane. Our flight leaves an hour and eight minutes from now, 17 minutes before we left Sydney. I actually didn't write anything on that entire flight. I slept some and watched two movies: I, Tonya and Murder on the Orient Express.

There is no Krispy Kreme in this terminal, so I still haven't had a Reese's donut, but I did get a Duncan Donut, and a banana. Our hotel didn't have bananas, so it was nice to finally have one again, and I look forward to getting back to a regular diet.

(Random aside: I've now seen 5 dogs in this terminal. Does everyone fly with dogs now?)

I was hoping to enjoy some Barramundi in Brisbane, since we saw it on the menu a few times and everyone raved about what a delicious fish it is. I kept passing on it, thinking I would have it at the closing dinner, since Roberto had already had the Barramundi at George's Paragon Seafood Restaurant on the river. Unfortunately we had a set menu and Barramundi was not an option.

I also missed out on the Kangaroo sausages at our opening night cookout. We had a lovely dinner at the riverfront home or Rob and Moya O'Donovan in New Farm. They had starters, salads, hot dogs, and really way too much food, but it was all very good. They had some kangaroo sausages, but not enough for everyone and I was too late to the game. To make up for it, I bought some kangaroo jerky at the Sydney airport, along with way too many TimTams. (I had to use up my Aussie dollars, and the TimTams did the trick.)

We had two great food discoveries at Rob's house. One was Solo, which was a delicious sweet lemonade. I ended up consuming a few more Solos through the rest of the trip. The other discover was Pavlova, a delicious, light cake made of, essentially, egg whites and sugar. The cake is topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. I ate too much of Moya's pavlova, and then we had it again the next night when Roberto, Thao, Prof. Makoto Kanda and I went to Rumintha and Celia's  home for dinner. (Mako was visiting from Japan, to lecture to our class in Thursday.) Celia even sent pavlova with me when we left, so I ate it again on the third night. (At the closing dinner, I skipped the pavlova in favor of baklava.)

Celia's meal was wonderful. We had cheese and crackers, cut vegetables, and two kinds of oysters for starters. The Sydney Bay oysters were creamy and particularly good. We had some lovely red wine (some of which also went home with me) and some nice sake in honor of Mako. For mains, we had chicken, delicious duck, and the most tender, fantastic lamb chops with a homemade mint sauce. The Australian lamb has a milder taste than what we are used to in the U.S. and everyone loved it.

One evening Thao, Roberto, and I had a progressive dinner. We went to a new restaurant I had read about, the Munich Brauhaus, to get started with some German beer and pretzels. We could have stopped with that, but we also devoured a yummy sausage platter complete with a schnitzel, potatoes, and cabbage.

Our next - and final - stop was Popolo Italian restaurant, which came to us highly recommended by our students. It did not disappoint. We had some ravioli and calamari, but the star of the show was the creamy amazing mushroom lasagna. We were glad to have a bit of a walk from the Southbank back to the Ibis Hotel to help burn off some of those calories.

We are about to board, so it looks like I will have to extend this culinary story for another post.

Friday, May 18, 2018

Food in Australia (Part 1)

It's 9:12 am Saturday. We are in Sydney, and in about 20 minutes we will begin boarding the flight to LAX. I came to question, on this trip, why I try to maintain a travel blog. This trip was the worst in terms of finding time to write. The blog will be less of a real-time journal and more of a reflection on whatever I happen to remember.

Right now I am thinking about food and meals. On the way here we stopped at a Krispy Kreme stand in the other terminal, and we passed it again on our way through now, but we didn't have time to stop because we needed to transfer by bus to the international terminal and go through security. I had my heart set on a Reese's donut but, unfortunately, the international terminal didn't have Krispy Kreme.

It just struck me that I didn't get McDonald's on this trip. It's not my favorite restaurant, of course, but I usually try to go in every country I am in to see or taste the different menu items. I hear they had some unique things here, including an incredible breakfast sandwich.

I did get to have Nando's the other night. I had been talking it up, so Thao and Roberto wanted to go. Fortunately, they liked it. That evening I had a Jack Daniel's Soda in a bottle, which is something I had never seen before. It wasn't special.

Well, I was about to write about the nicer meals we had, including one with Rob Webb from Cook and last night's closing dinner, but we are about to board, and then the WiFi will be going away. So I'll have to get back to it another time.

Next up is our 13 hour 50 minute flight back to the States. Maybe I can write on the plane...

Oh - on the flight here from Brisbane I got to finish Ladybird, so that was nice. I'll watch a couple more movies on this flight, and get some sleep. We have already been in transit for nearly 6 hours.

Monday, May 14, 2018

Saturday in Brisbane

After checking in to the hotel, we barely had time to shower before gathering on the first floor for the buffet lunch the hotel had prepared for us. At 2:30 we met in the first floor lounge for a quick meeting before heading out on our walking tour of the area.

Although it was sunnier compared to Sydney, our walk through the Central Business District put us in the shadows of some of the taller biding and it was surprisingly windy, making it a little cool even with a jacket on.

From the Ibis we walked South down George St. to the Queen Street Mall - a pedestrian mall lined on both sides by actual malls which even extend underground. Some of our students exchanged money there before we continued down George St. to the lovely City Botanic Gardens. With the sun out and the wind died down, it was actually a pretty nice day. It was a beautiful walk through the Gardens down to the edge of the river and around the bend to the Goodwill Bridge. From the bridge we got our first great views of the river, the South Bank, the CBD skyline, and the Maritime Museum.

Across the bridge we walked through the Southbank Parklands, former site of the World Expo 88 and now a major entertainment and tourism district. There were busy bars and restaurants, a man-made beach, and a long path under a bougainvillea-covered arbor. All this ad up to the Brisbane Wheel, museums, and a performing arts center, which we did not reach because we stopped to board a City Cat ferry down the river to our next appointment, which I will have to write about tomorrow.

Tiredness sets in, so I must go to bed - still two full days behind on the blog.

I'm Alive and I'm on the Other Side of the World

Finally, essentially half way through this trip, I'm able to write something for this blog. It makes me wonder why I even try to maintain a travel blog.

Anyway, I have a disincentive to post from my phone, like I am doing now, because the app freezes up any time I try to post a photo. I have a lot of good photos to share, but my loyal readers are stuck with text. The laptop is currently out of commission with a low charge. It's now charging in the bathroom, since there are only two accessible outlets in this hotel room.

I did attempt to publish a post Saturday at 9:10 pm, but my efforts were thwarted by the app glitch and exhaustion. Here is what I wrote Saturday:

Exhaustion

34 hours of travel to get here. 8.5 hours and 5.6 miles of walking later, I am absolutely exhausted and unable to write anything descriptive or meaningful for this blog. I will be asleep in minutes.

So, about the 34 hours of travel: we left Bloomington Thursday afternoon around 12:40 and met up with the rest of our students at the Indy airport. One student was late but connected with us just as the rest of us finished the rather slow check-in.

We had an uneventful flight to LAX, during which I got a little corps board work done. We had nearly a 5 hour layover in Los Angeles where I had a nice Mexican food dinner with my colleague Thao. I also bought new noise-canceling headphones for the trip.

Our next leg was a 15-hour flight to Sydney, on a fancy new-ish plane with just not quite enough leg room. This plane had nice huge windows with electronic shading rather than plastic blinds that slide up and down. As expected, it had a wide entertainment selection on seatback, touchscreen monitors. It had spiffy restrooms with motion sensor faucets - and there were ashtrays both inside and outside the restrooms. I was pretty confused by that, since I didn't think smoking was allowed in flight on any airline.

On the plane I watched The Greatest Showman, Call Me By Your Name (again - just as good as I remembered), and Ladybird. Well, I got through all of Ladybird except the last 9 minutes, so I'll have to look for that one on the flight back.

Customs in Sydney was a bit chaotic and confusing, because there was very little signage or instruction about what we were supposed to do. Once we got through the glitzy duty-free shops, we found the actual Customs agents. They were friendly and quick, and then we got to the baggage carousel where there was more chaos. Eventually we all found our bags and a nice woman pointed us in the right direction for the exit.

We had been told that we would drop our bags at a different location inside customs, then transfer to the new gate inside security and check in there for new boarding passes. That was not at all what happened. Instead, when we got to where I would have expected to re-check the bags, we ended up standing in line to wait for the k-9 to come around and check everyone for contraband. Once cleared, we exited the doors and found ourselves in the middle of the airport outside security. We followed the signs for domestic connections and actually ended up walking outside to another terminal to the Qantas check-in counter. Fortunately, the staff there was super helpful and they printed and distributed our boarding passes without even needing to see our passports. We dropped the bags there, went through security, and took a shuttle across the tarmac to another terminal before boarding our flight.

I had a nice chat with a young entrepreneur on the shuttle. He was inquisitive about our class, and had interesting insight into the energy sector and doing business in Asia. At the new terminal we discovered our flight was delayed, so we got coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts while we waited. Finally we boarded the hour and a half flight representing the final leg of our trip,  and we arrived in Brisbane about 45 minutes late. Prof. Garcia and our host Ramintha met us at the airport and helped us find the bus to the hotel. We pulled up around 12:40 Saturday afternoon, our 34 hour trip complete.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Here We Go!

I'm one the way to Brisbane! We left Bloomington just over half an hour ago. My colleague Thao and I met six of our students and joined two colleagues and three students traveling to Dubai to share a bus to the airport. They're going on to O'Hare, but we're getting off at the Indianapolis airport and meeting the rest of our group there.

This morning I got to spend about three and a half hours in my office, so I was able to take care of a couple pressing tasks before leaving. That felt good. And I was packed by 11:15 last night, so I got some rest and I'm feeling ready for this.

If only I knew all of the students' names already...