some images, finally

Many of you have asked me to publish pictures of my environment and I am quite willing to do so. Unfortunately, my new mobile is flawed with a software malfunction and the camera doesn’t work reliably. I haven’t yet figured out what makes it fail so whenever I come across something worth taking a photo of I just take out my mobile and try. Most of the time it will tell me that another application is running which needs to be closed before the camera software will start. A cellphone that’s almost smart enough to replace my computer but isn’t capable of multitasking? Gimme a break! It gets even better: There is no other application running. So either this phone is hallucinating or there is some hidden application running. I can’t tell which case is more scary.

Anyway, I managed to take a few photos during the last weeks. Here they are.

our balcony

our garden

Brisbane River

Cultural Centre bus stop in South Bank

Brisbane Central Business District as seen from the bridge on the previous image

a lake at St Lucia campus

birds at St Lucia campus

iguana at St Lucia campus

Warmington Street in Paddington

big mean guy looking for trouble

Tonight, I got thrown out of a club for the first time in my life. Okay, it has happened before, but always as part of a group with drunk and misbehaving friends, so that doesn’t really count. This time I was on my own and it was all my fault.

The concert was pretty cheap by European standards (AU$ 12). Five Black Metal bands played, the most innovative being Dead Letter Opener. Another band called Forn Valdyrheim proved that Nazi Black Metal is not an exclusively European phenomenon (of course I don’t know for sure but no one else would wear a Der Stürmer t-shirt).

For your entertainment, let’s have a little game. I will not reveal the reason I got thrown out for immediately but in one of the upcoming posts. Meanwhile you are encouraged to speculate on the matter in the comments section. If one of you guesses correctly, I’ll buy you a drink at the next occasion. Keep in mind that I am peaceful, friendly and eloquent.

Australia voted

Saturday was election day. And guess what – it seems that after more than ten years they got rid of John Howard. He didn’t have much to say in the election campaign. His arguments can be summed up as: “We did everything right, if you want things to stay that way, vote Liberal. If you vote Labour, their front-bench with 70% ex-union bosses, who are all anti-business, will slow down the growth of the booming economy.” Boo… what would you expect from a party called Labour? Of course they have a lot of members with a union background and they shall be damn proud of it!

Now it’s Kevin Rudd’s turn to show that Labour still cares about social issues. Some of the people I spoke to fear that he might be almost as unsocial as Howard. He has describd himself as an “economic conservative”. Time will tell and I honestly hope for Australia that their Labour government doesn’t turn out to be as unsocial as our previous Social Democrat government in Germany (not to mention the current one).

It is a pity the Greens didn’t win a single seat in the House of Representatives. Having talked with CH about this, we both think it might be the abundance of natural landscape that makes people so careless about it. In densely populated Europe, where untouched nature is scarce, people value it a bit more. An asumption to start a discussion. If anyone thinks to have a better argument, please feel free to comment. I know there are some people with a background in social sciences reading this blog. I would like to encourage you to share your wisdom.

“You work all day…

you wanna work all night as well?”

call of the wild

Since I originate from one of the rather densely populated countries in Europe and grew up in the middle of a 140,000 people town, I am in no way used to animals roaming the places I live and work in. No wonder living in Brisbane feels like visiting a zoo to me. There are turkeys walking in the streets, as well as all iguanidae and all kinds of waterfowl (including geese and rallidae) around the lakes on St.Lucia campus. Tonight I dined outside on the balcony, watching the geckos in the roof and the possums in the trees and tried not to think of the large (by European standards) spider in front of my window, when a flying insect approached the lamp that was by far the largest I’ve seen so far. It looked like some kind of bug and was probably 10 cm in length. I really wished the Men In Black were there to take care of this critter – but they weren’t, so I fled inside. Something’s wrong with this country, animals just grow too big here.

same shit, different asshole

Some things don’t change over time. Some don’t change over space. Such as racist politics

It’s Friday and I took the opportunity to accompany some of my workmates to a pub after work. They told me about the Australian border control and (anti-)immigration politics. Australia is quite paranoid about everything that might come in from the outside. This does not only apply to pests and diseases, but to people as well. Immigrants, most of which originate from East Asia, are imprisoned in camps upon arrival in Australia. In recent years cooperation with neighbor countries has lead to the camps being outsourced to these countries.

What struck me is that this is just the same as what happens on the border of my home, the European Union. The EU has refugees – potential immigrants – from Africa intercepted on sea by Frontex or in the Maghreb countries and either thrown back into the desert or kept in camps. Thousands of migrants from Africa die each year as they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea in totally inappropriate boats. The irony in the story is that (1) subsidised commodities from Europe keep destroying local markets in Africa, driving people to searching a better life in another place, and that (2) the EU actually needs these immigrants it holds back so determined as its future workforce.

I do appreciate the idea of European unity very much and hope I will live to see something like the “United States of Europe” some day. But at certain times it filles me with shame to be an EU citizen.

sweet bitterness

The problem with soft drinks ist that almost all of them are ridiculously sweet. Since I have enjoyed soft drinks for almost two decades but have matured in the meantime I have been looking for the ones with a more “adult” taste. Bitter Lemon and Bitter Orange are a good choice. But it was not until I came to Australia that I learned about the so-called bitters. These are concentrates that barkeepers pour into common lemonade in order to – as the name suggests – give it a bitter taste. A number of companies sell pre-mixed bitters and after a short survey I found my current favourite: Angostura. Apart from the pure concentrate there are two mixes available. They go by the names of “Lemon Lime & Bitters” and “Bitters Lime & Soda”, the last of which is my favourite.

No, they don’t pay me any money. Although I think they should. My landlord is calling in the rent these days…

moving

Yesterday I moved out of SV’s spare room and into the house I will hopefully live in until I leave. I used to live in a 49 m² flat in Stuttgart, sharing it with another person. I share this place, too, but estimate it to be almost triple the size, plus a 15 m² balcony and a >100 m² garden. We even have a spare bedroom to accomodate guests (hint, hint).

My new home is situated in Red Hill, one of the rather wealthy suburbs of Brisbane. The shops and Restaurants are considerably more expensive than the ones in St.Lucia where there’s a lot of students around. There’s a deli (food shop) selling some expensive cheese and antipasti, several art galleries and antiques shops in Paddington, which is just a ten minutes walk. They also have a supermarket over there where I shop for my daily needs.

My housemate CH is just as much a socialist as me and I expect the two of us to get along with each other very well. He took me to a party at one of his friends’ place yesterday night which was very amusing. I once again found out that Australians are very extroverted and honestly interested in the person they talk to. On the way to this party I recognized a song on the radio: “Raining Blood” by Slayer! On a common commercial radio station! I’m seriously starting to like this country…

bread & butter

I recently promised to update my readers about bread and organic food in Australia. Organic food definitely made its way into Australian society. SV took me to a marked that was crawling with young people in colourful clothing and rasta hairstyles clearly marking them as leftists (some may even say “hippies”). There was plenty of organic food on display and it seemed not prohibitively expensive.

My colleague CC (who is from France and to whom high quality food is very important) told me that there are a few good bakeries around. I did not yet find them but at least they are around here somewhere.

Brisbane Part II

Now that I wrote a lot of negative things that I noticed rather quickly, I feel a bit compelled to write about the positive aspects of life in Australia. I don’t want my readers to get the impression that Brisbane is a bad place to live.

First I need to mention the people. We love making fun of the stiff-ass Brits in Europe but compared to Australians we’re all Brits. Nearly every Australian I meet is very outgoing and talkative. Colleagues at work and clerks at stores ask you how you feel and they actually expect an answer! At work we chat a lot more than back home in Germany. It may happen that people walk into someone and hold each other up for a good 20 minutes – neither of them gets jumpy, wanting to get back to their task, just fine. This should not get you thinking Australians wouldn’t work as hard as Europeans, it just seems that they value human relations a bit more.

The desk at my workplace is huge. I have a lot more space than I need even though I’m only a trainee. Once again it’s the complete opposite of what I’ve been used to in Europe. Those of you who worked with me in Stuttgart know what I’m talking about when I say that the most positive way in which to describe my previous workplace is “cozy”.

Despite the fact that Australia hardly has some kind of national dish of its own there’s plenty of good food around because they have a lot of immigrants from all over the world here. I’ve had Thai, Greek, Chinese and Indian food so far, but there’s a lot more available. One of the few dishes that could be described as local is the Australian meat pie. I would like to cite my colleague and current host SV’s response to my remark that I know meat pie as a Polish or British dish: “That’s right. But we make them better!”

When it comes to sports, a lot of Australians are interested in rugby, Australian football (“footy”), cricket and horse racing. Wednesday was Melbourne Cup day, the day of the most important horse race in the country. It is a statewide holiday in Victoria. Nearly everyone at the office stopped working for an hour and bets had already been placed in the morning. A lunch and public view had been organized for all the staff, as well as a hat competition. Amazing enough that the actual event, the race itself, took only three minutes to finish. No 90 minutes soccer game, just a three minutes horse race. My colleague HD commented on the puzzled expression on my face: “Welcome to Australia.” Anyway, this particular Melbourne Cup was different: The winner was a horse named “Efficient” – to the professional environmentalist that I am this seemed like a divine hint.