A Broad Reference

12/25/2003

Christmas Day

Up again at 3am, it’s neat to be up while everyone else is asleep. The dark combined with all the crazy bush noises makes me feel like we’re in the middle of nowhere. You can see all the stars so clearly, there’s only one weak streetlight at the far end of the block so the dark is deep velvet. Dad pointed out the Southern Cross, which made me really feel that we’re in the southern hemisphere. Also the toilet and the sink swirl in the opposite direction (I checked). There are these miniature kangaroos called wallabies that come to drink water in our garden (my Dad puts water out in buckets for them since the drought has been so bad). I’ll try and get some pictures of them but I don’t want to scare them. They come by just at dawn, and if I’m quiet sitting on the porch, they’ll come within about 10 feet of me. There are tons of birds that come to visit too- the birdbath is very popular as are the fruit trees (especially the mango trees). There are huge white cockatoos that screech and boss all the other birds around. Flocks of green parakeets fly and wheel around the mango trees, squawking up a storm. The famous kookaburra laughs maniacally from the fence post. We’ve got to compete pretty hard for the mangoes, which are my favorite too. In the morning we pick mangoes and grapefruits from the trees behind the stables.
Here's me picking a grapefruit.

We’ve had fresh fruit from the trees every day for breakfast. We have both pink and yellow grapefruit.
You can see the shadehouse in the back of the paddock. My dad grows his orchids there. But it is so sunny and hot instead of having a greenhouse, he has one made out of shade cloth so that the plants don’t get sunburn. There’s a massive banana tree with baby bananas but they won't be ready to eat for a long while.
We spent Christmas luncheon with friends of my parents. On the way there we had to pass by the beach, which was absolutely packed with people cooking on the municipal BBQs- publicly funded permanent gas grills at each picnic site, which is supposed to reduce fire danger by eliminating hot coal disposal. The garbage bins are really cool, they look like art installations the metal work of sea creatures is so intricate.

It was very pleasant to meet so many of their friends and to put names to faces. After a fantastic meal, we sang carols around the piano. It was so hot that I had to sit on the tile floor underneath the fan. Everyone else seemed immune to the heat. I felt like a wilting flower, or maybe a melting block of fudge.

Posted by Misty at 12:35 AM | Permalink

12/24/2003

Madly shopping for food for Christmas, we waited till the last minute. It’s so hot that food must be very fresh or it spoils. We went to Rusty’s, an open-air market in the middle of town. Very colorful and noisy, it is a destination point for many backpackers. The shiny purple Passion fruit are my favorite!

Lychee are so fresh here that they are an attractive orange peach, I barely recognized them brown and wizened as both fruits are- even in California where stuff is so fresh.

The weakened dollar and high taxes on everything makes prices so expensive I can hardly believe it. My mom wanted us to make pumpkin pie, but we couldn’t find any pumpkin- even though we searched all over. We decided to make an almond tart instead.

I just read Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allande this afternoon. It feels so luxurious just to read as much as I want. That’s something I don’t do often. Great book I enjoyed it tremendously.

Dinner at the Reef House restaurant was great. An old plantation style house was converted into a grand hotel. The restaurant sits next to the ocean, where cool breezes skim off the gently lapping waves. The food was excellent, and since Peter the chef (is the husband of one of Dad’s nurses- Nancy ) , we got special treatment. Dad loves their lunchtime soufflé, which the stuffy French waiter assured us, was NOT available. So Dad went back to say hi to Peter and sure enough he got his soufflé. We had mostly seafood dishes- all fresh from the ocean. We had 2 different types of Australian wine both excellent. It’s hard to pick wrong I think.


Nancy and Peter (both really nice), are from East Timor and Cairns/Darwin, and speak Portuguese at home.

Posted by Misty at 12:29 AM | Permalink

12/23/2003

Things have been pretty quiet. I’m still waking up ultra early 1:30-3:30am local time although I guess it’s sleeping in if I convert it to PST. Today we ran down to the beach and towards the north end of the cove.

There are a bunch of deluxe resorts that direction.

Our housekeeper Jane also works at Angsana. She says it’s very nice and worth a visit (a spa resort-massages, facials etc), which is very colonial style.


Reef House Restaurant (fantastic French food). The restaurant was converted from a beach house. It is one of my parent’s favorite restaurants, so we will probably definitely eat here. (Here's the proof!)

Afterwards we swam in the pool at home. It’s great to just jump in and cool off after the run. Today seems hotter than yesterday, although my mom says the humidity is higher and that it’s going to rain soon. At least in the pool we don’t feel the sticky heat.

Here's a picture of "rain cooking"

Picking breakfast in the garden. Ripe mango anyone?

Went to Mom’s gym to workout. It’s all really old fashioned but the weights are the same. We were planning on working out everyday we’re here but it turns out that they close for the 10 days around Christmas, which pretty much covers the time we’ve got.

My Dad took us up the Skyrail this afternoon. It’s a gondola ride up in the rainforest canopy. As the Skyrail progresses up the mountain you can look back and see the whole plain with Cairns and the surrounding community. It’s changed a ton in the last 10 years since my parents first moved here. It used to be cane fields and palms everywhere, all agricultural. Now there are highways, shopping malls and KFC. Although the cane fields are still there, the urban sprawl is encroaching rapidly.

The base of the ride is set on the plain where it’s mostly shrubbery recovering from being part of the local sugarcane plantation.

As the gondola ascended into the canopy, there was a marked change in the ambient temperature. I think it dropped about 5-10oF. Totally unexpected, I always thought that the canopy was steaming hot. But there must be some kind of convection cooling. There were tons of tree ferns and orchids.
We crossed the Baron River Gorge. It didn't look like much because of the drought but in previous years, you would not see any rock here but a huge thundering torrent of water.

Eventually the ride ends in the climax community of well-established rainforest trees. It’s kind of neat to see trees from a totally different perspective.
At the end I'm glad to be in the “cooler” TableLand rainforest known as Kuranda. Our mom drove up via the winding road to pick us up and take us home for dinner at the Reef House.

Posted by Misty at 12:20 AM | Permalink

For their office Xmas party, my mom had arranged for a dinner cruise. What fun, there were 15 of us. The food was tropical, lots of seafood-shrimp, oysters, scallops, great salads and some weird hot food that didn’t really match anything else.
The boat was quite big, I think it held prolly about100 people altho it wasn't packed. It was cool and breezy out on the water and you could see the city lites sparkling in the background.

here we all are, very happy to be celebrating Christmas Hols

Off in the distance you could see other boats moored in the harbor, bouncing on the tiny waves that lapped. I've never seen the conditions so bad that the boats didn't go out but thankfully I've missed all of the typhoons that have passed thro the region.
Definitely fun to put faces to names and stories.

Everyone was dressed up and in a party mood! A lot of fun. Thanks for arranging it Mom.

Posted by Misty at 12:11 AM | Permalink

12/18 The Journey

GT was anxious about getting to check-in early. So I jetted back from work to finish packing. PD took us to the airport. We arrived 4 hours pre-flight and were stuffed onto the 5pm flight. But since they hadn’t told us @ the flight time change we dawdled and shopped thinking we were on the 7pm flight. We realized we were running late when they paged us as “last remaining passengers T please board now”; So much for getting there early.

12/20

17 hours and an International dateline crossing later, we made it to Oz but got pulled out at immigration, (apparently you need visas to get in). Ours were long expired :^( The immigration guy was very chatty and nice, processed us with little fuss after ascertaining that we weren’t trying to move to Australia permanently. Arrived in Cairns where it is sunny, humid, green and a sweltering 34oC(~92oF).

My parents’ place is about 2 acres. There is a stark contrast with the neighbor’s plot to the left- they’ve only got grass and some sporadic plants; Whereas the Rainforest Ranch on the right seems to be surviving the drought. They’ve been trying to recreate a rainforest effect around the house (it’s own micro climate). I think it’s working. Might be a good ecology project to test some variables and see how significantly shade affects moisture in an area, (although it’s probably been done before.)

There are lots of coconut trees on the driveway to my parents place. Mom and Dad have done some renovating since we were here last. The kitchen windows are stained glass, made by a local artist, with animals and plants endemic to their garden.

12/21/03

Our first morning at home, I woke up at 1:30am local time (~7:30am PST). Very jet lagged I guess. Since it was still dark I started this journal. I hope you like it. At 5:30 am local time I woke GT up and we jogged down to the beach near the house. It was bright and starting to get hot already. Wow I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like in the middle of the day…

We passed a flame tree. They are quite big trees, covered in red and orange flowers so that they look like they’re on fire. I remember this kind of tree in Jamaica; it’s one of my favorites. When we were little we used to play swords and joust with the seedpods.

There are a string of beaches north of Cairns which have a quaint local feel (the city itself is pretty touristy). The township is referred to as Clifton Beach. It’s beautiful here, I can hardly contain my excitement over finding the quintessential tropical palm hanging into the water. In the distance you can see stubby green islands floating on the horizon.

GT and I had to rest after our 10 minute jog. The plan was to workout like fiends during the hols and come back tan and slim- utterly transformed! BUT it's hard to work up the energy to exercise 3 hours a day when it’s so HOT!!! Maybe we’ll go swimming in the bay to cool off. ACK! Thank goodness we didn’t because we found this sign warning us that estuarine crocodiles inhabit the water here.

I guess no swimming in the water here, I certainly don’t want to be crocodile food. Luckily there’s a pool back at the Rainforest Ranch.

Posted by Misty at 11:48 PM | Permalink

I love Lists. In fact I find that I'm happiest making lists, checking lists and writing about my lists.

Here's the list that inspired the name of my blog:
Tameri lexicon

and the definition
broad reference - A pronoun referring to a complete sentence, or independent clause, rather than to a specific noun. The broad-reference clause is introduced by which. The demonstrative pronouns this, that, these, those and the personal pronoun it can be broad references.

A grammarian's lexical choice; It's supposed to hint at the variety of topics I cover in my posts (plus my gender). A little convoluted & punny, but it amuses.

Astrid talks about herself a lot; it annoys the other writers.

hahaha I hope you find this as screamingly humorous as I do.

Posted by Misty at 01:31 AM | Permalink

So I identify very strongly as a food blog, but since I cover other topics like travel, creative writing, and various other musings I guess this is a "lifestyle" blog. I'm interested to hear what you think.

I used to allow comments but after being spammed by random horrible porn/sex related and gambling websites, I've disabled the capability. I'd love to hear from you. so if you're human you can see that the blog address is fahying.com

if you write to misty@
that address it will get to me

thanks for reading!

Posted by Misty at 10:58 AM | Permalink