Just back from a Lunar New Year trip to Sydney. And gosh, was it nice. Cosmopolitan (ergo est enough Asians to make it feel like a real city) with a different kind of food every meal and all sorts of people hanging around doing interesting things.
The more I travel in Australia the more I have a sense that Australians aren't all bad and that it's the special cocktail of white middle-class anti-vaccination NIMBY hippies, bankrupt farmers, meth addicts and dispossessed Aborigines that makes our particular region so fucking annoying. The F-word assures me, though, that where we are is really terrific in terms of Country Australia, which cross-country car trips and stays in Shepparton, the Victorian dump the F-word hails from, both back up.
All of which is a long way to say that I'd probably like Australia better if we lived in Sydney, but if we lived in Sydney we'd need to be rich, and if we were rich we'd live in a better city somewhere else, like Singapore.
Nonetheless it was a good trip, during which we got to see a so-so exhibition of Alexander the Great crap from the Hermitage and a really nice Francis Bacon exhibition at the NSW gallery. The Bacon exhibition was just gravy. We had no idea it was there, just stumbling across it in its closing week. Not as good as the one we saw back in 2008 but still very good and it made me feel like I was part of the wider world again to just stumble across something like that and be able to see it . . . sigh . . . oh, wider world, I miss you.
The most important outcome of the trip, however, was watching Godzilla spend it being as good as gold, looking around calmly during the exhibitions, and gawking at all the skyscrapers and trains, and charming people in restaurants. He slept better in all the hotels than he does here. I know babies change every day but I can't help be hopeful he's gonna be a good traveller - heaven knows the poor mite will be doing enough of it by hook or by crook.
The more I travel in Australia the more I have a sense that Australians aren't all bad and that it's the special cocktail of white middle-class anti-vaccination NIMBY hippies, bankrupt farmers, meth addicts and dispossessed Aborigines that makes our particular region so fucking annoying. The F-word assures me, though, that where we are is really terrific in terms of Country Australia, which cross-country car trips and stays in Shepparton, the Victorian dump the F-word hails from, both back up.
All of which is a long way to say that I'd probably like Australia better if we lived in Sydney, but if we lived in Sydney we'd need to be rich, and if we were rich we'd live in a better city somewhere else, like Singapore.
Nonetheless it was a good trip, during which we got to see a so-so exhibition of Alexander the Great crap from the Hermitage and a really nice Francis Bacon exhibition at the NSW gallery. The Bacon exhibition was just gravy. We had no idea it was there, just stumbling across it in its closing week. Not as good as the one we saw back in 2008 but still very good and it made me feel like I was part of the wider world again to just stumble across something like that and be able to see it . . . sigh . . . oh, wider world, I miss you.
The most important outcome of the trip, however, was watching Godzilla spend it being as good as gold, looking around calmly during the exhibitions, and gawking at all the skyscrapers and trains, and charming people in restaurants. He slept better in all the hotels than he does here. I know babies change every day but I can't help be hopeful he's gonna be a good traveller - heaven knows the poor mite will be doing enough of it by hook or by crook.
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We bundled up the Boy and drove him 12 hours to Tampa, Florida when he was six months old. Then every couple of month we had long trips in the car. Now to him, being in the car for hours is just normal.
Don't know why it would be any different for Godzilla...he'll have itchy feet too I reckon.
Well he dealt beautifully with the twelve hour drive. Of course the big thing is gonna be the 15 hour Auckland-Vancouver flight. And the jet lag - not sure how that hits babies.
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