New Washing Machine

I think the worst part of having had to shift house nearly three weeks ago was losing our washing machine, which belonged to our former house. Granted, it wasn't the world's greatest washing machine. In fact, I have to admit that I often grumbled against it. It didn't really have an agitator so much as just a 'swisher' which moved the load of wash gently clockwise, then anti-clockwise, and then back again. And it totally lacked any kind of lint filter, even the old-school kind that one has to clean by hand. Consequently, I had to utilise 'wash balls'--small plastic spheres wrapped in a kind of velcro yarn that managed to remove at least some of the lint out of the water.

Still, it was better than hand washing. I know because I had clothes to wear yesterday only because of hand washing. I'd washed every unclean item I had the day we moved out with the hope that we would find a washing machine for our new place the week after moving in. We didn't. That was sort of OK because that Saturday I was able to go to the laundromat and do a load of wash. I could only do one because laundromats are rare and therefore expensive in Australia. Virtually everyone owns a washing machine. Even the smallest flats have laundries in them. Canberra, with a population of over 330,000 people, has only three small laundromats. And the one we went to charged $4.20 just to do one small load of wash. Twenty minutes of drying was another $4.00.

This one load of whites got me through another week, but I wasn't able to make another trip to the laundromat this last weekend because of having gone to Sydney to attend the temple. And one can't use a laundromat here at just any old time because, like virtually all businesses, they only open 9 til 5 on weekdays and a few hours during the day on weekends. As a result, I found myself Monday night washing out a few items by hand in the laundry basin. Fortunately, having lived in Indonesia, hand washing laundry is not a new concept for me. I may find it tiring, but I know how to do it.

A ward member actually gave us an old washing machine a week and a half ago, so that should have solved our problem, but it didn't. First the machine wouldn't turn on at all, so we had to ring Bro Smith back and ask him about fixing it. I spent two hours helping him (and learnt more about washing machine controls than I'd ever known before) in order to get it to start. I was excited to use it, but Keiran put in a load first, and that's when we discovered that it leaked water, both from the drain hose and from the pump housing.

I saw Bro Smith this morning when I took the kids to seminary, so I mentioned to him that the washing machine he'd given us--and which had once fallen off a truck--was unfortunately too crook to use. He told me we could take it back to his place sometime and apologised that it hadn't worked out.

Then, later this morning, he rang to tell me that his granddaughter had a newish washing machine that she was willing to lend us until she moves into a more permanent place. This was incredibly exciting news. I was working on my research, but I took a break, and Daniel and I immediately hitched up Troy's trailer, returned the old machine, and picked up this newer one. Since it's in good condition--having never fallen off a truck--it should work beautifully.

And, if all it does is swish the laundry back and forth in the water without removing any of the lint, I suspect that I won't complain.

Chinese Feast

If the ace Chinese food in Sydney yesterday weren't enough, tonight we had another memorable feast. Last Monday a friend from uni invited me 'round for dinner at her flat. She's from a neighbouring ward, and she was hosting the missionaries and three Chinese students that the Elders have been working with.

During the course of the night, I asked them what they thought of Australian food. They agreed that it was painfully bland most of the time. I then asked them what they thought about what passes for Chinese food most places in Australia, and they laughed in agreement when I said that I thought it was pretty much just Australian food with soy sauce added. I told them about the place near the temple which has really good food, and I asked them if they'd discovered anywhere in Canberra where one could get proper Chinese food. 'No,' they insisted in unison.

I asked them why, and they claimed it was because Aussies wouldn't eat real Chinese food. I would, I said. I think they may have interpreted this as a challenge because, at the end of the night, they invited all of us over to their place tonight for a proper Chinese dinner.

And this was definitely not your typical takeaway. We all sat on the floor around the coffee table and feasted communally on rice, pickled jellyfish tentacles, tofu with dried prawns, stir-fried asparagus, fish stewed with pickled cabbage and whole chillies, and rare-cooked chicken served with a dipping sauce full of sliced raw garlic. I frequently say that life's too short to eat boring food; none of this was boring food.

I had no idea that one could even eat jellyfish. I half expected the tentacles to sting my tongue, having once been stung by a jellyfish in St Thomas. Instead, they just tasted great--crunchy, a bit chewy, and pleasantly flavoured. My favourite dish, though, was definitely the stewed fish. The flesh was sweet and mild--and then the chilli kicked in with a beautiful slow burn. The sauce, infused with the chilli and the pickled cabbage, was addictive.

I definitely gave my chopsticks a good workout. I think the three Chinese students were impressed. Near the end of the meal, one of them said he didn't know if I was really an American or maybe just a Szechuanese in disguise. I took that as a compliment.

Temple Trip

We got back from Sydney safely at 6:30 tonight. It was a good trip. We left Canberra at 5:30 last night and had what felt like a super-quick drive up. Daniel went with me, and one of our friends, Wendy, went too. I was so glad to have them along. Last month I drove to the temple all by myself, and I hated that. I was actually OK on the way up because I just used the quiet time to ponder and pray, but coming home I started to see wombats in the middle of the highway that actually weren't there, and, the closer I got to Canberra, the bigger these imaginary wombats became.

This time, the three of us talked together the whole way, the conversation ranging from the funny to the spiritual. There's a particular kind of pleasant intimacy that occurs in a car on a a roadtrip that exists nowhere else. We spotted the lights of Campbelltown (the first Sydney suburb visible from the Hume Highway) far sooner than it seemed we should have. In no time, we were navigating the insane Sydney traffic.

Our first stop was the Hungry Jack's in Smithfield, about 15 minutes away from the temple. We still had some vouchers, so this was a good choice for a cheap dinner. I had a bacon deluxe burger (hold the mayo, add ketchup and mustard, heavy onion, heavy pickle) and large onion rings. With the voucher, the onion rings cost more than the burger, but Hungry Jack's is the only place in Oz to get them, so I splurged.

We then continued up the Cumberland Highway, past the temple (its stained-glass façade glowing), and to our rooms at the temple accommodation. We got there a little before 9:30. We first made up our beds. Then Wendy came next door to talk for a bit before heading back to her room. After writing in my journal and reading two chapters in the Book of Mormon, I said my night prayers and happily crawled under my blankets.

I can't remember the last time I actually got eight good hours of continuous sleep, but I actually got more than that last night. It felt great. I actually felt rested and ready to go when I woke up this morning. We got ready (which at temple accommodation includes cleaning the room) and then left for the temple about 9:00. We were planning to do the 10:00 session, but we all wanted to spend some time at the Distribution Centre first.

It was indescribably good to be at the temple again. Worries melted away, replaced by peace and love. I saw things clearly again. Prayers were answered.

We'd planned to attend the 12:00 session as well, but, unfortunately, the three of us were the only patrons for that session, so the temple president decided to cancel it. It all worked out, though, because they then did a sealing session with us. We did sealings of couples for about an hour an a half. That also felt really good. I was excited when I realised that the second sealing I was proxy for was for a man whose endowment I'd been proxy for last month.

After leaving the temple, we headed to the Asian food court about two blocks away for our mid-afternoon lunch. I love eating at this place. Outside of the temple, it's one of the few things I like about Sydney. The food is cheap, and the clientele is almost exclusively Asian, so the food actually tastes 'right', as well--unlike anything we can get in Canberra.

We had a feast! Each one of us ordered a dish, and then we all shared them. I got Peking noodles with shredded pork and preserved vegetable. Wendy got fresh Singapore noodles with meat, prawns, and steamed baby buk choy. Daniel got chicken in Szechuan sauce with rice. Each one was a huge platter of food. It made a beautiful finale to our time in Sydney.

The trip home also went quickly, filled with more good conversation coloured by the unmistakable afterglow of the temple. These two can be a dangerous combination: Several times I looked at my speedometer and realised I was going over 120 (126 once!) when the highway is posted 110.

We got a beautiful welcome as we came down the highway from Eaglehawk and looked out over Canberra. A stunning sunset behind the Brindabella Mountains had turned layer upon layer of clouds over the city a range of colours, from electric pink to deep purple. It was good to be home.

New Housemate

When I got home late last night, I discovered that we had a new housemate. She had moved in whilst I was at Mutual. Despite her rather large body size, it took me a while to notice her--because she was on the roof of our dinning/rec room.

For those of you who have never lived in Australia, this is a good opportunity to introduce you to the huntsman, a common house spider here, and the species of this particular new housemate. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I've attached a photo which I took after I got back from home teaching tonight.


Unfortunately, this photo doesn't really reveal much about the spider's actual size. For all you know, she's a tiny little thing whose image I've enlarged. I really wanted her to be close enough to something recognisable that one could compare her size to, but she was on the ceiling again tonight (though in the kitchen this time), so you'll just have to trust me that I've sized the photo such that it's pretty much actual size on my computer screen.

I mention that she was on the ceiling again tonight because that is not where she was when I woke up this morning. I know because I specifically looked for her. A spider this size and colour is quite easy to spot on a white ceiling, and she was definitely not there. There's only one thing worse than having a huge spider on one's ceiling, and that's having had a huge spider on one's ceiling that could now be hiding anywhere.

And you'd be surprised where a giant spider like this can hide. I took a break from research about 12:30 this afternoon to make myself a couple of very fine tuna-melts on wholemeal bread. I was busy toasting them in our sandwich press when I noticed something odd and slightly organic looking protruding from under Troy's jar of Chittagong curry powder. Without thinking, I lifted up the jar, and there was our new resident.

How she managed to wedge herself under a glass jar filled with 300g of curry powder is beyond me. I thought she might take this opportunity to shift her hiding spot, but she didn't, so I just put the jar back down over her. What I should have done was get my camera and take a picture of her next to the jar for comparison, but my sandwiches had finished cooking, so I put it off until after eating, and, when I went back to snap her photo, she was gone.

Consequently, I was quite happy to once again find her on the ceiling this evening. Of course, she's already managed to disappear again after I took the photo. And before you ask, I've already checked under the curry jar; she's not there.

Now, if I were a fair dinkum Aussie, none of this would bother me. Having a huntsman or five running around one's wainscoting at night is as ordinary as things come in these parts. After all, despite being huge and hairy, a huntsman is nothing to get excited over--unlike the hundreds of other spiders we have here which can actually kill people.

Tonight, I'm trying to be a real Aussie.

Open-air Bathrooms

There's a funny thing in Australia: Houses tend to be built so that bathrooms and toilets* are continually open to the outside air. This is usually accomplished in one of two ways. The old-school method is for windows in these two rooms to consist of louvers which can overlap when 'closed' but which can't really close to seal the room off from the outside. The newer method is for a window to have glass only part-way up, the top of the window being a metal mesh which allows the fresh air in.

Now, this all probably makes sense if one lives in Sydney, where it's quite warm year 'round, or in Brisbane, where it's hot and and stickily humid nearly every day. It somehow seems to make less sense in Canberra, which is perched high in the mountain valleys of the Great Dividing Range, just a short drive from two ski resorts. As a result, when it's -5 outside on a frosty Canberra morning, the temperature inside the bathroom or toilet is often not much more than that.

This was a definite issue for me in our last house since, occupying the master bedroom, I had an ensuite** attached to my room. The door to the ensuite was a flimsy thing that slid on a track outside the doorframe and consequently did little to keep the cold Antarctic air which was blowing through my bathroom window from blowing right into my bedroom. After just a few weeks of this madness, I finally wised up, obtained a sheet of insulating foil, and closed off the open part at the top of my bathroom window.

In our new house, I also occupy the master bedroom, and once again I have an ensuite attached to my room. Unsurprisingly, this bathroom also has metal mesh at the top of the window. However, I may not have to cover it up this time. First, the doors in our new place are fantastic. Not one of them is a flimsy inside door; they are all constructed of solid wood, just like an outside door would be. Second, though the door to my bathroom is again a sliding one, this time it's one of those cool doors that slides into and out from the wall itself, it reaches clear to the floor, and it's protected by something like a valance at the top.

Consequently, though the cold air still gets into my bathroom at night (and it was two degrees outside when I woke up last Tuesday), none of this cold air seems to make it into my room. What's more, I seem to have been in Australia long enough that it now seems normal for a visit to the loo to feel like one's just stepped outside for a breath of fresh air--even on a winter's morning.

*Australian houses tend to segregate bathing facilities from toilet facilities, having two separate rooms for these tasks. This presents its own concerns since toilets rarely have their own wash basins. After using the toilet, one has to exit that room and then locate the bathroom (which is usually next door) for hand washing purposes. Fortunately, our new home is flash enough to have a wash basin in the toilet. It's built into the wall like an old-school drinking fountain and has a cool tap with handles one above the other.

**This is the Australian term (borrowed from French) for a room which contains both bathing and toilet facilities. Usually one only finds these attached to a master bedroom.

Early-Morning Lawn Mowing

It's genuinely beautiful to live in a house the backs directly onto a public park, but the nicest things have their drawbacks. This morning I discovered one related to having a park as one's back garden. My alarm had not quite gone off when I was jolted awake by the roar of a giant ride-on lawnmower directly outside my window. This was not just a temporary disturbance, either.

The park runs through the centre of our entire neighbourhood and actually curves around the side fence on the west of our house as well, so it was pretty much non-stop lawn mowing for the next hour--throughout my morning prayers and my shower. Oh well. I don't reckon that the park will get mowed that often considering how severe the drought currently is. And I still like having the park directly outside my window.

New Contacts

After months of knowing that I needed them, I finally got new contact lenses last week. It's so good to be able to see again. I'd reached the point where I couldn't even read roadsigns with my right eye, so I suspected that my prescription had changed quite a bit, and it had.

During my exam, the optometrist had me take my old lenses out and then asked me to read back to her the top line of text on the eyechart. I had to admit to her that, not only could I not read the line to her, I couldn't actually see a line of text. Normally I can at least see a dark smudge that I know must be a line of text, but this time all I could see was a totally white square.

I guess spending 40-50 hours per week for several years staring at tiny text and a computer screen eventually takes its toll. Thank heaven I can at least still get my vision corrected.

New Furniture & Helping Strangers

Daniel and I took off early this morning (well, early for a Saturday, anyway) on a furniture run. As fabulous as our new house is, it came fully unfurnished (a dishwasher being the only white good included), so we've been trying to acquire various bits of furniture the last few weeks. Today, Daniel was after a bookcase, and I wanted to find a bedside table or a small chest of drawers.

We first headed to Revolve, which is a fabulous second-hand shop next to the rubbish tip. People can drop usable stuff off there instead of paying to take it into the tip, and then it's resold to the public. They had tons of various furniture items to sort through today, but the only good bookcases had already been sold. I did, however, find a small chest with three drawers just the right size to go next to my bed.

It's not in the best of shape, having scratches here and there and a rather serious gouge on the left side, but it also has the distinction of being made of real wood, none of this particle-board-clad-in-wood-like-vinyl-veneer crap. Another interesting feature of Revolve is that nothing has a price on it; one has to dicker over the price with the employees. Fortunately, I'm pretty good at this after nearly a year and a half in Indonesia. I got the price down to $10 (currently USD $7.50).

I was disappointed we didn't get Daniel a bookcase, so we next headed to the Salvos at Jamison Centre. I'd been there twice already this week, and I hadn't seen any bookcases, but op shops turn over stock quite quickly, so I was modestly hopeful. Fortunately, they had a fabulous, almost-new bookcase on the floor for only $30, so Daniel bought that.

Whilst we were moving some other furniture to get the bookcase out, one of the employees asked us how we were going to get it home, and I told her we'd brought a trailer. At this, a little old lady came over and asked us if we did indeed have a trailer. When I told her we did, she asked if we'd be willing to take the bed she'd just bought to her house in the next suburb. This seemed like a great opportunity to help, so I said sure. We left the bookcase and went to get the bed for her.

She told us that she would pay us $20 for making the delivery, but Daniel told her we didn't need any money, and I agreed. I was just glad to help. We all need assistance now and then, and the world's a better place if we jump in to give that help when it's needed. Anyway, we got the bed out to the trailer, and, whilst I was tying it down, Daniel went back into the shop to get the address. The lady had written it on a sheet of folded paper for us. She'd also slipped a $20 note into the fold of the paper.

We got the bed to the house OK and carried it up onto the front verandah. I was then going to suggest that we leave the $20 somewhere the lady would find it, but just then she pulled up in her car, so that plan fell through. She thanked us profusely for helping her out. I told her we were happy to do it and tried to give her the $20, but she wouldn't take it. I guess sometimes one has to let people do their thing.

On our way home, we stopped by a servo and used half the money to put some petrol into Keiran's car (which we'd been using all morning since mine doesn't have a towing hitch). After that, we used the remaining $10 to buy us lunch. Since we had Hungry Jack's vouchers, we were able to buy two whoppers with cheese and two bacon deluxes with it. That made us a nice lunch!

ANU Back on Top

It's official: After slipping a few notches in its global rankings last year, ANU has returned to its spot as the world's sixteenth-best university according to London's Times Higher Education Supplement. This is not bad for a small Australian university--especially considering that the top fifteen places are taken by institutions such as Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, MIT, Yale and the like. ANU is ranked just below Cornell and many notches above my old alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (no. 79).

The crazy thing is that very few Australians get just how good ANU is. This year, we launched a new consortium under our leadership--the International Association of Research Universities--which teams ANU in research and academic endeavours with Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Berkeley, Tokyo, Beijing, National University of Singapore, the University of Copenhagen, and ZTH Zurich. At the same time, we had to lower our entrance cut-offs for domestic students to try to encourage more Aussies to enrol here. That's nuts.

I blame this at least partially on a lingering influence from Marxism in Australian higher education. Many in the sector don't want various universities to been seen as better than others because that would introduce 'inequity' into the system. I'm not just making this up, either. Earlier this year, the university started talking about introducting oral defences for PhD theses, and, as a student rep, I actually met with students who didn't want this to happen--not because they were afraid of oral examinations but, by their own admission, because this would make an ANU degree 'distinctive.'

Frankly, I feel blessed to be at one of the world's best universities. I walk through the corridors of my building, and I'm amazed at the concentration of expertise in all things Asia-Pacific that I have access to. And I'm happy that, when I finish my PhD next year, I'll carry for the rest of my life a 'distinctive' degree.

New House

It's now been one week since we've moved into our fantastic new home, and I like it more and more each day. Let me give you a few details:

We previously lived in a busy residential street which had 24-hour traffic noises and a streetlamp directly outside my bedroom window. Our new place is in a much quieter street, and, morever, it's on a battle-axe block--meaning we're about 15 metres back from the street--so traffic noises are gone, as is annoying light from streetlamps.

Another reason the house is so quiet is that it backs directly onto a reserve. We don't even have a back fence. Our back garden is the reserve, which is green and filled with trees. I love opening my drapes in the morning and looking out into greenspace. There's a footpath that runs through the reserve, so occasionally people walk by with dogs or children in tow, but that's the kind of traffic I don't mind.

This footpath leads directly to the neighbourhood shops. I can walk out our backdoor, and, in four minutes, without ever setting foot on a street, access an IGA, a bakery, a butcher, a chemist, a video hire shop, a newsagency, and a takeaway.

In addition to its excellent location, the house has a great design. The front (north) of the house is all open plan, with the kitchen, dining/rec room, and lounge room all a single space only partially separated by brick walls. This area is lighted with massive skylights during the day and also includes a funky circular fireplace for heating and ambience. Enormous floor-to-ceiling windows on this side of the house allow the winter sun to pour in whilst large eaves shade it from the summer sun.

In fact, the house is very 'green' that way. We were still using our central heat in the old house every day last week, and I was using the gas log in the lounge room during the day as well, but we haven't turned on any heat in this house yet, and I don't know that we will have to until next winter. The walls and ceiling are both insulated--a rarity in Australia!--and we even have a solar water heater. The tiled floor and interior brick walls in the front of the house have been designed to absorb solar heat during winter days and release them during the night. The bedrooms are all on the south side of the house--looking into the reserve--and consequently should be cool and shady even in January.

I'll try to take some nice photos and post them soon for visual effect.