Two Up and 8 Months of Whatness?

As my time in Australia winds down - with 3 weeks left - I am taking stock of my last 8 months here. 8 months is an a long time, but not that long. For Gus, my Melbournian friend, it was long enough to quit his job, travel throughout North and South America move to Sydney and get a new job (as he pointed out to me I was still here when he got back from doing all of that) for my cousin Seta it was enough to go from flat abs to medium baby bump - i'll miss the due date by 1 month - For some it isn't enough time to find a job, and we know it hasn't been enough time for the US economy to bounce back from the abismal state that it is in. While better - not fixed. But who wants to talk about the crappy economy anyway. Not me but then again it was fairly easy to ignore being here, in Australia, they have faired remarkebly well. Construction, I can tell you, is booming. Subcontractors are turning down work which says miles for how busy they are. This is a fact that is difficult to ignore as the impending return to the United States job prospects are bleaker. How much so is still to be determined. Anyway I didn't start writing this to talk about that. The Cairns airport was under construction when I got here and almost finished when I was there two weeks ago. I'm just trying to figure out what my 8 months out here has meant to me beyond a bleap on the screen of my life. What have I done? I can tell you I have scuba dived and drove tractors on a banana farm, learned to drive a manual car - something I have long wanted to do, I have visions of myself as Angelina in Gone in Sixty Seconds...sexy - I have ridden the greyhound far more than I ever care to again and reconciled the privacy and sleeping issues that come with living in a hostel. Met 90 percent Europeans, 10 percent Australians, discovered that Canadians really have a problem being mistaken for American and gotten to know some amazing family. I have worked in construction, different words, same bullshit. And above all else I have learned to be alone with myself. To be clear this doesn't mean I have found myself. I don't think I was looking. What I was looking for was a point in the right direction. An offer I couldn't turn down, a person/man (there I finally said it out loud), a dream job, a new hobby to pursue above anything else. Any or all would have done but no such luck. Instead I am left to wonder if that's too much to hope for. It happens in movies, it happens to people I have met but I suppose they aren't sitting around waiting for it to happen. So I've done a lot. Learned a lot. Slept a lot. Drank a lot. There's no denying Australians are drinkers. Tomorrow I will enjoy my second Australian national holiday, the first being Australia day, this being Anzac day. A memorial for those who fought and died in the battle of Galipoli. They take it seriously here. Which in Australian means there are Anzac cookies to be eaten, a large memorial gathering early in the morning that gives way to a day in the pubs where Two Up (basically a game of heads or tales) is played and bet on because it is the one day of the year when it is legal to play this otherwise forbidden game. Random. Then they have Monday off to recover.

So in 8 months I have experienced Australia, not the outback but farm country and city alike. I have done what's important to me and while there is a lot more I could have done I leave knowing Sydney, a city to love, better than many that have lived here for years. If I tell you what I am going to miss the most is the beautiful way coffee is served here. A cappuccino with a little chocolate and a foam leaf. A flat white with a heart in the foam or a long black served just right with the crema on top. Will you think me crazy? Certainly the loss will not be as painful as the absence of Mexican food has been. But there's that anyway. Pretty coffee and some invaluable experiences and maybe just knowing now that I need to meet my own country the way I have met Australia. So you'll see it seems those dots after Hot Mess may remain for a while longer. See you next week. Wish me luck tomorrow I am going to place some bets and have a few beers.

*The photo above is rowdy game of two up in Sydney. I don't know if I am ready for that!!