Nothing Up My Sleeve

Sydney being a large city has its challenges with parking. Usually the fee for parking on the street is 2 or 4P.  I see lots of motorcycles and scooters parked, but I don’t see that many people driving them, so I guess that people in the suburbs surrounding the Sydney CBD drive them in, park them, and take them home again at the end of the day.  One of Lisa’s co-workers asked her if I rode motorcycles and she told them about my old Captain America, Red, White and Blue  Honda VFR Interceptor, but somehow the description of a ‘Captain America bike where you lay your belly over the tank’ didn’t translate very well.  The co-worker, whose nickname is Beggsey (pronounce the ‘e’ like an ‘i’)did send a couple of motorbike magazines how with Lisa. And No they weren’t the American chopper magazines with busty hotties bending over chrome wearing a little black leather.

Being in the Asian – Pacific region (APAC), there are a lot of Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indonesian, and other cultures living here.  There is part of the city called China-town, most likely a misnomer, but nonetheless I headed over there to explore.

It is located approximately at the tip of Tumbalong Park which is adjacent to Darling Harbor (more on this locate later).

I think the Chinatown part of Sydney is less well-defined than it is in other major cities such at Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver.  My feeling is that as the city grew and larger buildings were built, more and more of the original Chinatown has been gobbled up.  I placed push pins in the map above to indicate where it is located and where the Paddes market is that I will write about a bit later.

So Many Choices

It was getting late into the afternoon and I was getting hungry, so I went into a small Asian mall and upstairs to their food court for some lunch.  In the States, when you go to a mall food court there is usually, a Greek place, a burger place, a pizza place, a Chinese place and a Chick-fil-A.  In this food court there were about 10 restaurants and they all served the same basic foods. How does someone decide if Jen Ma’s garlic pork is better than Chen’s Best garlic pork?

How do you even know if these are really two different restaurants or both owned by the same folks?

For all you know, on even hours, the workers at Jen Ma barker loud for business and on odd hours, Chen’s Best barks loud for customers.  There just isn’t really a way to know, unless you speak one of the various APAC languages being used here.  So you hang back and attempt to observe where the locals are eating and then get into that line. And though you think that is a great approach, you really need to be close enough to listen to what they are ordering, but being that close means you are immediately asked as to what you would like to eat, and then you panic and say somehting like, ‘ er…ah..kung pao.’ Of course, this didn’t happen to me — I had the garlic pork.

Paddies Market in the Haymarket Area

Paddies Market is a cross between a outlet mall, a flea market (definition in used in the States), and a fresh produce market.  On the ground level – the flea market and produce market.  The produce looked very fresh and good.  Since I was lacking fresh ginger root the other night when Lisa and I cooked my Mom’ recipe for Szechwan Chicken; it came out great by-the-way (BTW); I looked for some and found it from 4 different vendors. One of the vendors price was $5 AUD more than the others. i wonder if that has to do with old ginger vs. newer ginger, or flavor of ginger or just someone was more proud of their ginger than the others. I have so much to learn.

I went upstairs to the outlet mall section to make my second attempt at purchasing some t-shirts/undershirts.  My first attempt, at the Woolworth super store in downtown Sydney wasn’t the best success.  I wear a XL in the States, but found out XL at Woolworth was considerable smaller.  Additionally, they had regular t-shirts and “chesty” t-shirts, so I bough one of each.  The later was a tight, classic white, no-sleeve I wife-beater  – nothing up my sleeve.  Back to my second attempt. There was a place in the outlet mall called, I think Cotton, and I was able to pick-up 4 shirts for $24 AUD.  I went with double X this time and was lucky half the time. The unlucky two may have been XXL in China, but outside of there it sure was not.

Leaving on a Fast Plane

I am really short on clothes since I didn’t complete my laundry tasks in Austin before it came time to hop on a plane.  So a lot of my clothes didn’t come with me. Not that I had that much room. C’est la vie.  Lisa’s daughter, Alexander and her husband are due into Sydney later this week and I’ve shipped some socks and shorts overnight to her to bring.  She kindly accepted this duty and I thank her mucho!

Darling Harbor

When I was last in Sydney, I flew in on the night/morning they won the Summer Olympic bid around 15 years ago.  It was pretty much a non-stop party for three or four days.  I was down here to teach a seven day Windows for Workgroups 3.11 course.  One of the side trips I made back then was to Darling Harbor, a pretty large entertainment district on the water with water sculptures, IMAX theaters, aquarium, restaurants, bars, convention center, cruise ship landing zone, nautical museum, and a bunch more. Lisa tells me it is a very happening place starting on date night and thru the weekend.  We were there last Saturday in late afternoon and most of the crowds at the restaurants and bars was pretty dressed up. Of course, being from Austin, Texas where hardly anyone dresses up too much, much of the world can be a shock.

This is a Japanese garden that you can purchase tickets for and catch a Zen moment. Alas, as you can see from the signage below, you know that American commercial imperialism is at work.  You will love Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, The Love Boat, Dallas, and CSI: Vegas.

Of course in the States, we pretend to have Aussie accents, say things like “shrimp on the barbie” and eat at Outback Steak houses.  At some level, I’m guessing that the Outback chain is really an American marketing entity.