Houses and Bills and Internets oh my!

So after moving into a new apartment, a travelling student tends to find a lot of things that need to be done in order to ensure that his/her stay will be both comfortable and practical for his/her needs.
First, one has to find an apartment. The options for international students range from living in residence (with meals provided), living in student housing (which is an option that is NOT explained by anyone, and that I only found because a friend told me was actually an option), or finding an apartment for oneself. When you first land, a lot of my friends ended up just living in a hostel for awhile, others lived in temporary accommodation provided by the university – the really lucky ones (i.e. me) managed to find friends who offered to put them up until they got settled. The first option is probably the safest, since you basically know right when you get there that you will:

• Have a place to stay
• Not have to worry about setting up utilities or internet
• Have meals provided (albeit bad cafeteria food)
  

The downside to this option is that it is quite pricey, around $8000 for a semester. For me, a poor student with no money, this wasn’t a particularly appealing option. I suppose what you’re paying for is the option to be surrounded by native Australians/potentially other international students, but at $8000 that was more than I could conceivably afford.
The next option is student housing, which is housing owned and maintained by the university. The rentals were also fairly cheap, including basic utilities, although internet would have to be set up individually. The student houses were rented out on a room by room basis, with a common kitchen and living area sans stuff like TV’s, cable… but otherwise just like residence except living in a house with a bunch of other people. This was probably the most appealing option and something I definitely considered, as it ended up being cheaper than the option I chose. This is the one that I would recommend to any student travelling to University of Sydney. The deadline for application is December 31 of the previous year, so if I was informed about this choice last year, it would’ve been a no brainer. Rent ranges from $140 – 180/week, which is actually incredibly reasonable for something like this. It’s also usually quite close to the campus, so you don’t have to worry about getting lost or being away from the action.
The final, more adventurous choice would be to go out and find your own apartment. This could potentially be either really expensive, or fairly cheap, depending on what you’re looking for or what you’re expecting to find. I ended up walking all around campus looking at houses, and even taking trains outside of the centre of the city and looking at places where I’d have to commute. Some of them were fairly nice, most were quite dodgy. If you choose this option, I’d probably recommend going through an agency, because although it’s a little bit pricier – you can guarantee that the place will probably be a little cleaner/more conducive to your needs. You end up paying a couple extra fees, but overall not a bad option. The only problem is that rental is usually for an entire apartment, with weekly rent of about $1000. Now usually there are multiple rooms, so if you find other international students who are looking for a place to stay,
For example, basic things like toiletries, cleaning supplies, rags, etc are needed, or at least some temporary concession until you can purchase the real thing. I managed to prepare pretty well for my trip, bringing linens, a pillow, some little bottles of detergent/shampoo – although I did forget a blanket (but I picked one up from Target for about $13.99, which is amazingly cheap considering how expensive everything else is). Another kind of kooky thing about Australia is instead of taxes, they round everything up so nobody has to deal with pennies. Where does the money go; taxes, under the table dealings? If someone knows the answer to this, please let me know. To each his own I suppose.
My apartment is really nice, and even though I am sharing a room it’s something that’s survivable and helps cut down the costs of goods and services i.e. food and internet. And with limited space, it helps co-ordinate everyone so it ultimately becomes easier and cheaper to live in university, especially in Australia where the prices are quite absurd. I’ll probably take a couple of pictures, but since the internet here is so ridiculously expensive, the amount of photos that will be posted may or may not drastically decline, depending on what the house ends up doing for internet.
Last night Jake, Christian (The two Americans), Luigi (The Italian), Andy (The Brit) and I just had some celebratory beers, and although we don’t have internet or some of the other basic things that we need, it’s quite comforting knowing that you finally have a place to stay. I suspect that we’ll need to go out grocery/supply shopping shortly, just because we’ll need a few basic things to make life a little easier. On that note, we’re going to setup the apartment (in terms of costs) like the way I did it back in Hamilton, i.e. via excel spreadsheet. This way we can keep good records of all our expenses and so we can all track our finances. I’m not exactly sure how much money I have left in my account, but it’s something I’ll have to check when I sneak off to the library to steal internet (which is actually quite limited – silly Australia).
We also checked out Newtown, which is a pretty sweet place to go hang out, since it’s a hippy-infested area with lots of cheap bars and eateries – perfect for students. And in one of the more surreal moments of my life… let’s just say the Australian wine that you buy in bags is one of the more dangerous drinks I've ever consumed, ranking it high up there with tequila and lighter fluid. Hopefully I didn’t cause Canada national embarrassment. I also checked out the Mardi Gras festival last night, which was pretty cool. The whole city got caught up in a drunken orgy with puke, piss and alcohol everywhere. Unfortunately (or Fortunately) no photos. Wicked.
I'll post up photos later, as the internets are quite shitty. Probably a post on that subject soon!

Sydney Life

I'll be in an internet deadzone for a few days, so I'll just do a quick post while I can!

So since I’ve been in Sydney for about a week and still living with my host family, I guess I should show off some pictures of the sort of antics I’ve been up to while I’ve been here. My host family, which I cannot describe how awesome they are, have taken me out with them to family dinners. One thing I learned about Chinese families are that they’re the same everywhere, and I guess you could extend the generalizations to everyone’s family. Grandparents are always warm and friendly; fussing over their grandchildren while making sure everyone’s having enough to eat/is comfortable. It’s these touches that always make a person feel really comfortable in an unfamiliar environment. I’ll try to avoid it being a generic photo dump, but I’ll show off some pictures of a typical journey from my host family’s house to the campus. The campus itself is really nice – being a history/philosophy major going to school that evokes traditions of Oxford or Cambridge is just awesome. There are also super modern/slick looking buildings around as well. One of they crappier things is that internet on campus is actually limited – you have to pay if you using over 100mb. That means if you open up any document online, via databases like JSTOR, then you’re pretty much screwed because they’ll bill your account. Comes with the territory I suppose.

So everyday I either hitch a ride with my host family or walk myself to the train station. It’s pretty cool because a lot of the train stations look really historic, while some of them are pretty new and modern.

After going from Wahroonga to Redfern, I take a short walk from the station to the campus. The area that I wake through is a little dodgy, with a few homeless people and sketchier elements walking around. But otherwise, pretty nice area. While looking for a place to stay, I ended up looking at a bunch of places around this area, and some of them were actually quite terrifying. Regular houses in Hamilton (for my Canadian readers) look like upper-class mansions compared to some of the places here. But, this is an old area so I can’t knock on it too much, it’s just the places aren’t particularly well maintained by its residents.

I’ve also managed to get an apartment with a motley crew of exchange students. We have two American, one British, one Italian, one Japanese and one Canadian (me!) living in a pretty huge three bedroom apartment. We’re sharing rooms, but that’s okay because it’ll be just like living in residence again – not exactly a problem since it’s a relatively short stay and pretty cool to have such a diverse group living under one roof. I talked to the British dude (from Manchester) about the Smiths and the Japanese dude about Pride Fighting. It’s awesome that in the “new” world everyone is so connected and things that are normally locally known are actually really common or at least people have knowledge of them. We all went to Bondi Beach the other day, which was fantastic and lots of fun. The waves are super strong, and the salt was awesome for my skin (get jealous!).

Hopefully I’ll do another post about my new flatmates soon, just because they’re all pretty interesting characters.

Cheers,

Rick

Din-AH (Transl.: Dinner)

So in order to pay back the family that has been so generous in putting me up, I volunteered to go out and cook them dinner yesterday. It was a small token of appreciation for picking me up from the airport, giving me basically free room and board, and helping me out with any questions I had about Sydney. And also considering that I didn’t know them beforehand, and they did this for a complete stranger – just unbelievable kindness.

So I took a short walk to the local shopping area and found all the stuff I needed to make my dinner. I went with the one thing that I’m very comfortable making that also looks and tastes great – Risotto. I also thought about a meat course, and since I’m in Australia, I settled for local lamb. There was a really nice butcher who recommended me some nice chops and I brought them back and started my prep work. I also managed to sneak a couple photos of the indigenous supermarkets... pretty riveting stuff (in a not at all kind of way).

This will become relevant at the end of the page,And yes, technically the last one was from a pet store AND its placement in this set of photos is misleading, but even the dogs eat kangaroo around here!

Pea Risotto with Grilled Lamb Chops and Asparagus

Pea Risotto
2 cups Frozen Peas
Fresh Mint
2 cups Arborio Rice
2 small onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 glass of white wine
2 cups vegetable stock
Generous knob of butter
Salt & Pepper

Grilled Lamb
Salt + Pepper
Lamb Chops
Dried Oregano and Rosemary

Method:
For the risotto, start by blanching the peas until tender, season with salt and pepper. Then take out the peas and reserve the cooking liquid. Put the peas into a blender and add the mint and a bit of the cooking liquid and blend until smooth. Add a bit of butter if you want and season. Set aside.



For the rice, you can either parboil the rice with the cooking liquid (which I recommend) or you can do it the old fashioned way, but I chose to parboil it to save time. And using the cooking liquid is good because it imparts some of the pea flavour (ha!) into the rice. Then set aside, preferably spread out over a tray so it cools down quickly.
So to finish the risotto, sweat off the onions and garlic in a thick pot, making sure it doesn’t over-caramelize (aka burn). Then add the pre-cooked rice and fry it for a bit, just until the rice starts to become translucent. Add the wine and cook out the alcohol, before slowly adding in stock and letting the rice absorb it. Depending on how much you cooked the rice before hand, this should take no more than 5 – 10 minutes. Just before finishing, add in the pea puree with a little bit of water. Finish with a little bit of butter mixed into the rice and top each plate with Parmesan cheese.

The lamb chops were just cooked in the oven via the broil function, but you could just as easily grill them outside or pan fry.
The asparagus was blanched and then refried in a little bit of olive oil.


And the finished product:

So here are some action shots of me doing the prep work and final cooking:

the deconstruction of an onion

And finally, here’s my host family sharing my first experience with Vegemite.

Life in Sydney: Prologue

Apologies for the delay, it’s been a little hectic in Sydney right now, so this will be my first post in a series of back to back posts that I’ve been slowly hammering out. So as you may/may not have figured out, most of the time I end up just typing out long articles on Microsoft Word, editing it a little bit and then posting it up. I guess this is like that episode of the Office where Ryan makes the blog for Creed. It’s pretty good because it catches most of my spelling/grammar mistakes, but as you know, some of it slips by my weary eyes. But hopefully you guys will all get a chance to read this sometime soon.

So during my flight I met a German medical student who was also flying with me from Hong Kong to Sydney. She went from Frankfurt to Hong Kong (11 hours) and then ran from one side of the airport to the gate that was later flying to Sydney. We ended up talking about healthcare in our respective countries and the differences between Public and Private Options (apparently Germany has a two-tier system! Fun fact) She ended up giving me her contact information so hopefully I’ll get a chance to meet up with her later, and she also suggested a German host family that may/may not hook me up with a place to stay, but we’ll see if I end up taking that offer.

I met my contacts at the airport and they kindly drove me back to their house to stay for the next couple of nights. On the way I passed by Chatswood, which is a suburb north of Sydney where I stayed the last time I was here with my aunt and uncle. It was kind of surreal to see the big Vodofone building that was near my aunt and uncle’s place five years later. I met my contact’s kids and they were really cool and awesome, and we talked about the differences in accents/culture/indigenous life forms.

I think something has to be said about the generosity of my hosts while I’m in Sydney. Not only did they offer to pick me up and host me for a couple of days (although they graciously offered to extend it as long as I needed), they also helped me find accommodation outside the city. While I’m searching for places within the limits of the campus, it seems more and more likely that commuting won’t be such a bad option, since I’ll still be close enough to the campus that I’ll be able to go quite frequently, and the cost of the tickets end up being discounted since I’ll travel at non-peak hours (My classes run from 11am till about 3pm – 4pm. But before that digression, my host family has also graciously prepared dinner for me as well; after a week of living out of a suitcase, worrying about accommodation and arranging other essentials and hoping that people at my new school will like me, something as mundane and simple as a meal prepared by someone’s (who could easily be my!) mom goes a long way.

So I’ve also managed to set up a phone in Sydney, and tomorrow I’m going to get my bank account setup so I won’t end up carrying wads of cash with me and run the risk of getting mugged by vagrants and other hooligans that are apparently swarming all over the campus. Oh and watch out for those landlords, they’ll try and steal your soul if you let them!

I took a bunch of pictures, but I’ll try and upload them when I’m not eating up my hosts bandwidth (more on the third-world country that poses as a respectable place that is Australia later!).

Although I suppose it’s good to note that while Sydney/Australia is a third-world country, I don’t knock on it at all because it’s very fun and exciting, even if they overcharge for everything ($3 for a pack of gum!?)

Transit complete!

Greetings! Apparently people are actually reading this. It’s actually pretty exciting/terrifying that people (aka my friends) are interested in my shenanigans, meaning:

a) People are interested in my (somewhat) spontaneous adventures through places I don’t particularly know

b) I’ll probably be more horrified when reading through old entries and see all the ridiculous spelling/grammar errors.

But, hopefully I’ll get better at it as time goes on and I’m not writing like a gimp.

Anyways, so not too many pictures taken today, which is actually a good thing; for the technologically-backward (me) Blogspot makes it ridiculously difficult to add pictures into the post, despite having an uploader built into the site. Although yesterday after formatting HTML code, (which I understand less than French, more than Elf), I discovered the site has a regular composition format which is more like Microsoft word, and for me that’s just awesome. Hopefully more pictures later in Sydney.

Here's my uncle and I wandering through the street markets in Wan Chai, please note that these cars are moving and the drivers are super pissed.

So yesterday (I guess today for those back in North America), I went to go meet my great grand-uncle for Dim Sum. To the uninitiated, Dim Sum which like brunch on steroids, with more pork and seafood. In Markham/Toronto, I’d actually vouche for the Dim Sum being not bad, as it’s pretty comparable (although a bit different) then the legit authentic stuff in Hong Kong. But my great grand-uncle is part of a rather large and confusing family tree who is the brother to my Great Grandma (who is turning 104-5 pretty soon? I doubt she remembers either!). I haven’t seen him in like 5 years so that was really nice, and he commented on my improving Cantonese, which is something I’m going to try and work at since I don’t know the language particularly well. Plus when our Chinese overlords come to take over the world, I can tell them how awesome they are (They speak Mandarin?!)

So after eating Breakfast my uncle took me to a local hobby shop. I think if you know me well enough then you know what I’m talking about when I refer to “the hobby”. It’s pretty embarrassing but I’ve been doing it for pretty much 10 years and it’s kind of kooky that I stumbled onto this place. I also noticed everyone in the store had American accents which was also a nice change. Anyways, this place was actually really cool and had tons of space, so when I get back I suspect this will be my Heroes World in Hong Kong.

After geeking out over the toys that I left back in Canada, I went on the subway and met up with my Aunt and cousin Joshua in the subway station. We then went to Mong Kok, which is a district (I hesitate to call it a suburb) in Kowloon, one of the islands that make up Hong Kong. I think the best way to think of Hong Kong is probably like New York, down to the ridiculous number of taxi’s and crazies roaming around. We did a bit of shopping and I ended up finding a little street vendor who was hawking Vans. As my dear reader will know, I love those slip-ons. So after inspecting the sketchiness of the place/shoe I haggled the lady down to $120 HK, so a little under $20 for a new pair of shoes. I figure it’s all made in China anyway, so how sketchy is it really? Here's a picture of my aunt and her husband via my mom's side. The uncle I'm staying with is via my dad's side. I suppose I should have put that into the narrative that is my life a little better!

Also, I think presenting scale is important, so here is a side-by-side of my cousin Joshua while we were eating lunch, (Roast Duck with Noodles and a curious/bizarre drink that I guess should be called Almond Milk – surprisingly good!).

For dinner, my uncle treated me to the previously mentioned Amuse Bouche, a pretty swanky French restaurant near his apartment/workplace. I ended up going all out and ordered the tasting menu, which was a ridiculous 8-course meal that lasted a fair bit of time. Having never been to a fancy restaurant that had a sampling of salts to wet the palate, or a place where the staff explain how to eat the food, I was in for a real treat. I think I’ll write a formal review of the place later, as I think it provoked a number of interesting reactions for me. Here’s a couple of the courses (Also excuse the amateurishness of the photos, I know some of those Food Blogs out there present some absolutely ridiculous [see: pornographic] pictures of food, but the dim light/me having no idea what I’m doing might detract from these pictures):

The one on the left is sea salt, and the one on the right is Volcanic Ash Salt (Neat!)

So this was one of the more hilarious dishes just because it reminded me of canned tuna and chips. (Tuna Mousse with Crispy Bread)

This suspicious looking beverage was Black Truffle Soup, a pretty decadent little Amuse Bouche (I'm witty aren't I?). The one on the left was a truffle custard with a little bit of chicken stock. The one of the right was just straight up salty/savoury truffle goodness. Despite being placed in shooters, I tried taking a shot of both but ended up scalding my mouth. Who said the customer is always right?

One of the signature dishes at the restaurant; suckling pig done three ways.

And the delightfully surprising dessert of Chocolate Gateau with a Lime Sorbet and Fresh Berries

I promised my uncle I’d take him to Bo Innovation, which is another restaurant nearby that has had some pretty critical acclaim (Apparently it had 2-Michelin Stars at one point? Plus the chef looks like he’d kick the shit out of you if you said you didn’t like the meal), when I got back.

So right now I’m sitting in the airport, taking advantage of the free wireless (Pearson Airport, take note!) and watching the Powerpuff Girls on a TV. I also noticed the PS3 that you can play on while waiting for your flight at the gate. I guess there may or may not be another post for awhile, since It’ll be pretty hectic between

a) Getting a place to stay

b) Finding internet

c) Opening a bank account so I can actually have some money

Oh and happy Valentines Day! I just realized that that movie that has everyone in Hollywood in it, so someone tell me how awesome/terrible Taylor Swift is in it.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Rick

P.S. After doing a Google search, I realized that Google/generic websites have ALL switched to Chinese. So I imagine my surprise trying to use Google/Wikipedia and having it default in an unintelligible language. I also like how Wikipedia is a real word now. Crazy times we live in folks!

Hong Kong pt. 1

+16 hours later, I arrived in Hong Kong. Local time was 4am, and my uncle picked me up from the airport and graciously offered to put me up for a couple of days. After arriving at his apartment, I managed to receive a couple of goodies that I’ll need for my trip. He gave me a pretty awesome camera, which will help me document my trip a little better since the more I write the more likely I’m going to make an embarrassing error i.e. forget a word in a sentence. You, dear reader, will probably notice this as time elapses. He also gave me a phone that I could use in Australia, so all I'll need to do is get a new SIM card and away I go.



Anyways, despite arriving at 4am, my internal Canada clock told my body that it was 4pm, so I was wide awake and stoked to go on an adventure. So I took a quick powernap to compensate for the non-sleep courtesy of the babies screaming into my face and stealing my cutlery on the plane.

Conveniently, I arrived in Hong Kong in the middle of the long Chinese New Year holiday, so my uncle and most people didn’t have to work and there were a couple of things to do around town. But obviously, the first thing you want to do after being on a long flight is eat real food (after brushing your teeth, taking a shower to get rid of that sterile dentist smell/I-haven’t-showered-in-16-hours-smell and trying to breathe atmospheric air). Although the truth is, the flight wasn’t particularly bad; I will always vouche for the legitimacy of Cathay Pacific as a really comfortable airline. There were tons of movies/TV shows available (30 Rock?! Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations?!?!), so I was able to somewhat catch up with all those movies/TV shows I’ve always thought about watching but never got time too. The food was also really good, and I read somewhere that Gordon Ramsay was brought in as a consult for their airline food. I also saw the business-class seats and they were pretty sweet. Mental note for when I’m not a poor starving student.

So my uncle decided to take me to grab a bite to eat, and then to his office to grab a couple of maps so I could go exploring. We cut through the Wan Chai market, which is a really cool market filled with people buying vegetables and meat and seafood, and pretty nuts as cars/supply vans/Chinese military compete with market-goers/suppliers for space and the best prices/goods, which kind of sums up the sort of insanity that is Hong Kong. My uncle was also darting in and out of traffic, so I had to run to keep up with him. We would walk down a street and then he’d suddenly turn and cut in front of a car down an unassuming road and we’d end up someplace else. It was pretty cool, as we walked by a number of cool looking restaurants, including one called Amuse Bouche, which is headed up by a protégé from Petrus i.e. Gordon Ramsay.

He brought me to a small, hole in the wall (literally) restaurant. It was the kind of place where working class people get a bite to eat, and the kind of stuff I really like. Despite the perceived expense of living in a major city i.e. Hong Kong or Sydney, there are always good places to eat, if you’re willing to look and take a chance. Also, a small amount of honest dirt never hurt anyone.




Afterwards, we hustled over to my uncle’s workplace and he grabbed me a couple of maps. I then pretty much wandered around Wan Chai without any particularly plan or sense of where/what I was doing, but just grabbed my camera and the map and checked out the area.





So my uncle recommended this little bakery, for their Egg Tarts and their Chinese Doughnuts. I saw about a dozen little bakeries and restaurants that looked like they had good eats, but I decided to try this one. The name is a little misleading, as it’s actually a baked custard (hence the egg) in a flaky-sweet pastry base. Much more appealing? And the Chinese doughnuts were pretty interesting, and great with their little sugary dusting. And ONLY for $9 HK (CDN = A bit of a dollar)




I also decided to do the “thing” in Hong Kong and grab bubble tea. Apparently this is big business in Hong Kong, as each cup is about 11 Hong Kong Dollars (under CDN $2) but each of those ships can net like $2 million Hong Kong every year. The next Starbucks? I also thought it was pretty cool/funny that they served hotdogs. In the words of Anthony Bourdain, every enlightened culture eats meats of indeterminate providence in tube form.


I wandered into one of the many-multilayered levels of a Chinese shopping centre, with this one focused on computer goods. This rabbit warren of technologic madness was pretty cool, and was pretty much like Pacific Mall, but with less room and less lights. A younger, nerdier, less-hip version of me would have geeked out and wanted it all. But as we all know, I’ve clearly moved onto bigger and better things…

Then, I finally found this cool little park with basketball courts and just sat around for a bit while I waited for my uncle to get off work, and meet my aunt for lunch.

We went to another little restaurant that you could have totally missed if didn’t know it was there (and I think I did wander across from it like a dozen times while wandering around), and had one of my favourite things to eat; beef brisket in a noodle soup. It’s really pretty delicious and occasionally you can ask for tendons, which I’m crazy about.



I also stumbled upon this little restaurant, which was featured on No Reservations: Hong Kong. Despite meals reaching upward of $3500 Hong Kong (CDN $500), definitely a place I want to check out when I return.


My uncle had to go back to work, but my aunt took me to Times Square, which is kind of like the Mecca for shopping. Obviously, I was uninterested until I bumped into Hermione Granger hawking Burberry.



My aunt then took me to a Chinese New Year Fair (in a place called Victoria Park) where you could get all sorts of tasty snacks and buy some pretty neat things. Despite hating touristy things with a passion, it seemed like a lot of locals were doing it so, why not? However, to say that a lot of people were there is an understatement. There were more people rummaging around, bumping into each other than the girls searching through hotel trash trying to find the Jonas Brothers bedsheets. There were high school kids hawking goods left and right singing songs through loudspeakers like at a Miley Cyrus concert. There was a terrifying selection of snacks boiling or frying away in pots that looked like the historic predecessors of where they would grow the next batch of Disney stars. I hope this trend of Disney-related jokes has related some insight into my opinion of the kids these days.
Anywho, here are some pictures of the shenanigans that went down:





We then took the bus to go pick up my little cousin Joshua from his school. He was a little rowdy and insane but he was pretty fun. He is also tiny and only reaches a little above my knee.

And finally, to cap off what was turning out to be the longest day of my life, my uncle took me to a dinner for one of the pre-eminent Horse trainers/stables in Hong Kong. In one of the more surreal moments of my life, a singer/dancer who looked like if Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga ever adopted an Asian kid ala Brangelina, and took badass lessons from Male Figure Skaters took the stage and serenaded the crowd with his version of hardcore gangster rap. There may or may not have also been pyrotechnics/self-immolation/confetti flying out of his jumpsuit-frilly-leotard.

By know my internal clock told me I’d been awake for 20 hours. My uncle took me pack to his place and I basically passed out on the couch. I woke up like 7 hours later and now I’m blogging! I’m sure I’m missing some details but, I figure I’ll remember/update later on any missing details.

Today is my last day in Hong Kong so I’ll try and cram some more fun-tivities before my flight towards Sydney and school.

Cheers!
Ricksen