Gridder Turned Rugger

Biting Off More Than One Can (or wants to) Chew; alternatively titled, "Boycott Grill'd"

2010-11-28T08:13:00.000-08:00

As the fine city of Perth undergoes hundreds of millions of dollars worth of construction in an attempt to catapult ourselves into the upper echelon of Australian capital cities, there are a few elements that city planners have neglected. Little things like effective networks of public transit, CBD activities after 6pm on nights other than Friday, taking full advantage of the prime real estate along the Swan River, and updating the WACA have been cast aside in favor of the much needed sidewalk widening and tree planting on Saint George's Terrace. Perth probably has to do a lil' bit more work to make it into the conversation with Sydney, Melbourne, or even Brisbane, but one area where Perth holds its own is gourmet burger restaurants.

That's right. Gourmet. Burger. Restaurants.

Perth boasts a collection of fantastic places to get a classy burger and fries including Jus Burgers, Flipside, Australia's Finest Burgers, The Burger Bistro, and until last night, Grill'd was included in that number, but nevermore.

Cate and I went to Grill'd with one goal in mind; have a delicious burger with a side of chips. This is something that we knew Grill'd could achieve for us as we ranked it highly in our personal hierarchy of restaurants-that-are-better-than-fast-food-but-not-quite-real-sit-down-meals. In fact, we first came across Grill'd during our honeymoon in Melbourne and absolutely fell in love with their decor, burgers, and most of all, their french fries. Grill'd employs a unique rosemary/ salt flake dusting on their thick cut chips (for the record, I'm alternating between 'chips' and 'french fries' for variety's sake, not because I'm, "becoming Australian.") which endeared them to us at first bite.

Upon sitting down to our meal, we both ripped into our bacon cheeseburgers with delight, finishing them perhaps a bit too quickly, but this meal had only just begun. We still had two 3"X6"X1.5" bags of french fries to consume and we were ready for the challenge. Armed with our aioli and tomato dipping sauces, we went to work on the chips filled with all of the joy that one could take from eating delectable morsels of salty, fried potato. Then it happened.

I bit into a french fry and almost simultaneously, I caught a whiff of the most foul smelling garbage I had ever smelled. (To put that in context, I have encountered some awful scents; I think the worst was the stench of rotting clothes upon opening the door of a washing machine in a home in New Orleans... seven months after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city with near toxic waste; and I was wearing a ventilator at the time.) I thought I saw an employee leaving from Grill'd at the same time, so I just assumed that he must have been taking out some particularly putrid refuse. But, the smell didn't dissipate after a few seconds and I asked Cate if she could smell it because the odor was so oppressive. And she said, verbatim, "No, I don't smell anything. You are crazy!" Or something along those lines :) I really could not figure it out, I searched the other faces in our vicinity to see if anyone else had caught a whiff of whatever this nastiness was and no one else seemed to be concerned. Then I looked down at the half eaten french fry in my hand and thought the unthinkable. Could this french fry, any french fry for that matter, produce such a foul smell when for the previous 24 years all french fries had brought me was gustatory pleasure? I incredulously sniffed the fry, but couldn't really smell anything different because the foulness still hung around me. So I asked Cate to smell the chip in a last ditch effort to restore sanity to my world.

She confirmed my worst fears. It was in fact the chip that smelled and of course tasted so wretchedly horrible. Naturally, by this point, I had already ingested the devil potato and feared for the worst. I was too stunned to say anything to the Grill'd staff, plus I wasn't quite sure what I would say anyway, "Uh, yeah, I was eating one of your chips... and it tasted like the bottom of a trashcan, outside a fish market, on a summer's day." Or maybe I would just suggest that the manager smell the fry in question and make his/ her own decision?

Alas, all I could do was muster enough strength to walk away from the restaurant in disbelief, never to return to Grill'd.

I encourage you to do the same; boycott Grill'd, unless you want to risk the same fate...

Life.

2010-10-10T03:10:00.000-07:00

So... I usually only like to write when I have a story to tell. It does not have to be a specific story per se, but I want to at least illuminate/ articulate some event, feeling, or emotion.

Today, I have no stories to share.

However, I have been living my life for the past 3.5 months and now that I sit down to think about it, a disproportionate amount of change/ growth has taken place. In this rare moment of thought, I also re-realized that while I like to write fanciful tales of wild adventures, my favorite authors just tell the story of their lives. Not autobiographically, but in such a fashion that ones everyday life is recounted so cleverly that it becomes a thing worth reading. Now, with that said, temper your expectations. Haha, I am already struggling to order my thoughts the way I want to and I haven't even started my "story;" so bear with me, and enjoy!

Let me take you back to the middle of June, just a few days before my last post. I was applying to my 99th job since arriving on Australia's fair shores. Well, to be entirely honest, it was well over 125, but the running tally I had solely relied on the number of covering letters I had saved and subsequently sent out and some jobs I applied for just wanted a resume. But I digress. The job I applied for sounded like it was right up my alley; it was with a not- for- profit non- government agency called Outcare and I would be mentoring young men who had recently left the loving supervision of the Western Australian Department of Corrections. I sent my resume and covering letter and went about my other business (two part time jobs with a third due to start once my police clearance had been returned and looking for more jobs). The manager of the position surprised me with a call a couple of days later and asked me if I might be interested in a different position with Outcare. The role he proposed worked with prisoners to help them develop their careers; to put plans in place to help them achieve whatever career goals they might have. I thought this sounded even more up my alley and coupled with the fact that the person who would potentially be hiring me was suggesting that I apply for this position, I had no choice but to apply. On the morning of the 24th of June, I showed up to Outcare, interviewed with three of their managers for different departments and left feeling pretty confident. Later that afternoon, I would be overjoyed as the Career Development manager called me back and asked, "How would you like to start working for Outcare on Monday morning?" Again, I was overjoyed! After nearly two years of trying to find stable full- time work, I finally had, and in a field/ position that I could actually sink my teeth into!

I began working with the career development team and it was going very well. I learned that I would be working in three different prisons, one of which (Wooroloo, a minimum security prison farm... that's right, a prison farm. Prisoners there could learn all about caring for animals and land as well as the slaughtering and production of said goods for their own prison, but also others around the state. Prisoners here made textile goods like clothes and shoes for themselves as well as other prisoners around the state; I don't want to get too much into what it was like being in the prison, at least not here, I could and might write a book about that one day.) I would become very familiar with during my training as I went there twice a week for a month to observe a training course being delivered by a colleague of mine.

About a month had passed in my role and I was starting to settle in very nicely and in fact, start going out to the prisons to meet clients on my own and I had a bit of a epiphany. I was not actually sure that I wanted to be a career development officer. It certainly would have been a fulfilling role and I was more than grateful to have the opportunity to take on the position, but in observing some of the other arms of Outcare, I was really drawn to the Re- Entry team. This team worked with men and women who were still in prison and sought to help them transition smoothly back into society. I saw Re- Entry as a holistic social work ing agency of sorts that specifically worked with the prison population and I heard rumors that there might be an opening on the Re- Entry team and that it was very easy to switch departments within Outcare. So, I put the process in motion and within a few days was able to join the Re- Entry team! Two different roles within the same organization in one month and figured that I had seen my fair share of adjustment so I would be able to settle down, finally.

Ah-ha.

#1: This is a lesson out there for all of you kiddies, don't ever get too comfortable, or rather, don't think that you have, "made it." That's exactly when God throws you the curveball, or maybe it's a cut fastball, I don't know, but no matter what pitch God is delivering, it makes you take a step back and rely on Him all over again and that takes us to the next chapter in my professional life.

And right behind it...

#2: I am learning things left and right... don't let your professional life consume your whole life. I guess I had never been in a position where my non- work life could be taken over by my work life because I had never actually worked 40 hours a week doing something remotely significant. So, in my first test in this arena... I failed. I wasn't taking work home or even really thinking about it once I left work, but I let it drain me; I didn't have the energy (or at least, didn't make the energy) to really do much of anything outside of work.

Ok, just to recap. Two part time jobs as of June 22nd, then one full time job (plus Drug A.R.M. which I committed to for at least the remainder of the calendar year) a week later, then switching the job to one that fit better with my aspirations, and now we are at the beginning of August.

I have joined the Re- Entry team, hooray! Now the work starts. My title is now, "Re- Entry Case Manager;" there are about 15 of us at Outcare and we are assigned to teams which are in turn assigned to prisons. I work at Acacia Prison, actually, not too far away from Wooroloo Prison Farm (both are out int he hills of Perth, about 45minutes to an hours drive). I drive out to prison with at least one member of my team once a week to meet up with as many of my clients as I can/ needs to in that day. We usually arrive at Acacia around 8:30 or 9am and call up our clients until 11:30 when the prison effectively shuts down for lunch. The prisoners go back to their cells and we go to the cafeteria. Then we work again from 1pm til 3 or 3:30pm then drive on back to Perth. The other days of the week we meet up with clients who have already been released, do research/ paperwork for the issues that our clients would like addressed, and rotate working in Outcare's Emergency Relief (ER) service. What is Outcare's Emergency Relief service you might ask? Essentially, the Western Australian government has given us and several other agencies around the city and state funds to address immediate needs of Perth's low income population. So on Monday (my ER day) the receptionist will call me or a colleague up whenever a person shows up for ER; I'll interview him/ her to assess the situation and act appropriately to provide whatever assistance we can. We have $20 grocery vouchers that can be used at a local supermarket chain, 24 hour transit passes for the Perth transit system, as well as $5 phone cards. In addition to those three, we also can assist people with rental/ utility expenses and we also have a working relationship with a few Christian charities/ aid organizations that can provide fresh food and clothing.

All in all, I am thrilled with my job! There are certainly depressing days when I counsel men who are older than my father that it might not be the best idea to spend all of their government benefits on alcohol and cigarettes before thinking about buying food, or listen to girls younger than my sister tell me about how they are living on the street and have a baby that they need to feed; but there are also such uplifting days when I feel as if I have actually made an impact in a person's life, that God has put me in a specific situation to say some specific things to certain people and there's nothing better than that.

That about covers the professional side of things; I have been doing things from 5pm-8am and on the weekends... One of the best has been our renewed passion for the Donnelly River Holiday Village (DRHV). I wrote a post about it a while back; it is a set of rustic cabins about three hours south of Perth that we were turned on to by Cate's sister's boyfriend (thanks Shane!). The selling point for a lot of people is the semi- domesticated kangaroos and emus that roam freely through the property being fed left right and center; however, the appeal for us is the wood burning fireplace. Not only do I appreciate the aroma and warmth of the beautiful WA wood being consumed in a crackling fire, but I also have fallen in love with the physical chopping of the wood. Not sure if I have already waxed poetic on this subject, but I don't care; I will continue to gush. We even bought our own axe so we can chop the wood more efficiently than if we were to use the supplied metal wedge welded to a lead pipe. Donnelly River is also home to a great cidery and close to one of the finest wine regions in all of Australia, Margaret River (I moonlight for tourism Australia, so if you are thinking about taking a trip down under, let me know :) We really love DRHV in the winter because the nights are legitimately cold enough to need the heat of the fire, but I have a feeling that we might go during the summer as well!

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Sydney for a few days. We just decided to make a long weekend for ourselves and jet over to the east coast and it was AWESOME. We both loved Melbourne because the whole city was essentially like SoHo/ Chelsea/ East Village in NYC, Sydney on the other hand was like 34th Ave smoothly blended with the new money of Tribeca's night spots. Melbourne was filled to the brim with boutique cafes, shops, neighborhoods even and it was great; but Sydney, oh Sydney, was filled with restaurants. Eating might be our second greatest joint passion as a couple, I would like to put sport at number two, but let's be honest. We (thankfully) did some research on places we might like to eat while we were in Sydney and the one that we almost missed was head and shoulders the best! I promise, I'm not being paid by these people, but there is a business group called Merrivale and they know how to design a restaurant/ bar. There are two main streets in the city of Sydney proper, Pitt Street and George Street. Merrivale bought up about a 1/4 of a city block on George and literally developed six levels of gastronomic and imbibing delights! Each one of the restaurants or bars has its own unique theme and design scheme. We went to one called Sailors Thai, which was, surprise! a Thai restaurant, decorated in a, "chic East meets West space with dark timber furnishings." Could not have said it better myself. The food was wonderful and even though there was a bit of a nightclubbish feel, we could converse freely and easily over the table. We were very pleased with the experience and felt very trendy for the experience and we thought that was it. But, on our last day in Sydney, we were able to sneak in a trip back to the Merrivale complex to go to their steakhouse, Mad Cow. It was honestly, the 2nd best steak I have ever been served in a restaurant (in case you didn't know, Cate and I love steak and we always try to find/ try new steakhouses). Just check out their website, but it doesn't even do the places justice (www.merrivale.com) Outside of Merrivale, we just walked around pretty much every square inch of the city, which was actually really nice and something we have always missed since leaving NYC; there just aren't too many places that you can walk to in Perth or Saint Louis, but not so in NYC or Sydney. We of course went to the harbor and saw the famous opera house, but we went on a Sunday night so it was actually relatively free of tourists (outside of ourselves) and we had our pick of five or six restaurants that all look tantalizing, but most importantly, provided stunning views of the harbor, bridge, and opera house.

Our traveling days are pretty well over for the next few months, but that's mostly because we are saving up vacation days and $ for an extravaganza trip back to the United States of America! We are hoping to spend half of the trip in Saint Louis and the other half in NYC/ road tripping around the southern bits of the US. All of these plans are subject to change, but we are hoping to spend four weeks in America either around the 4th of July or in September/ October of 2011; but we'll definitely let you know when we decide what we are doing!

I have exhausted all of my mini stories and my brain with all this writing, but hopefully it won't be three months before I write again so I won't have to say so much :)

22.6.2010 Post

2010-06-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

Good afternoon!

It has been quite some time since I have posted on this blog, and A LOT has changed since November 2009. Just to bring you up to speed if we have not personally communicated since then…

- I became a Permanent Resident (from a visa standpoint) of Australia; on Thanksgiving no less!

- I was informed that the funding had been shifted around with relation to my position as a Youth Worker at the Belmont Alternative Learning Centre. Therefore, I ceased working there in mid- December.

- A contingent of 15 or so Americans journeyed down under between December 13 and 27th to visit us!

- A lil wedding thing on January 2nd, 2010

http://www.paperandlacephotographyblog.com/2010/04/cat-jordan-love.html

- Cate moved into the apartment that I mentioned in earlier entries! We started making our first home together!

- I started working an en education assistant (teacher’s assistant essentially) in a second grade classroom at a grade school in Belmont (the same community that I worked in last year! In fact, some of those young adults I worked with last year had siblings at this school; and we coach a few of them on Saturday’s!

- The education assistant position was just a short term appointment and as a result of budgetary/ interpersonal/ professional qualification conflicts, I left the job after one term (February- April is the first term of the Australian school year).

- Perth endured the worst set of severe thunderstorms in about 50 years! Golf- ball sized hail and torrential rains led to widespread damage and power outages area the region. We returned home from work that evening and the wind whipped the rain against the front of our unit with such force that the water pushed through the screen door AND the solid wood door to pool inside our home! The rainwater also apparently collected above our guest bedroom ceiling and forced its way into the room through the light fitting. I say apparently because we had no idea how the carpet had become soaked since there didn’t seem to be any water on the curtains for the only window in the room. At least we had no idea until the following day when the globe lamp and light bulb fell from the ceiling to reveal a gaping, jagged, moist opening. Lovely.

- We moved out of our apartment. Haha, the timing of the storm really could not have been more perfect. We only had a six month lease which expired in April if you were doing the math at home and the water damage occurred about a week or two before we were scheduled to vacate the premises anyway. Even more fortunately, Cate’s parents had a spare bedroom that they very graciously agreed to let us use!

- Since then my life has effectively been a string of listless days filled with looking for jobs, applying for jobs, watching vast swaths of various sporting events (The French Open, the NBA Playoffs, the Super 14 rugby union competition, the NRL, and now of course, the World Cup), reading, doing laundry, and making preliminary preparations for whatever meal Cate and I cook that night. However, thankfully I have made some inroads on the job front in the past few weeks. I currently am employed by three organizations at varying levels of part-timeness. In descending order of number of hours per week worked:

(16) Constable Care; a not- for profit agency focused on delivering positive messages (similar to D.A.R.E. in the USA) to grade school children all over Western Australia (80% of the grade schools in WA were reached last year for about 180k kids!) I applied to coordinate the travel arrangements/ liaise with the schools and local police departments in the rural areas of the state. I did not succeed in this application; however the organization liked me enough to offer me a different position which I jumped at! I am a member of the sales/ marketing team and all day on Monday and Friday, I call businesses and ask them, “if they would be interested in supporting outreach to students at local primary schools?” Yeah, not my ideal job, but it is a job and I’ll leave it at that.

(12) City of Canning Youth Worker; I have not actually started this position yet because I am just waiting for my police clearance to come back and then I’ll start right away. But in this role I will work with/ mentor/ hang out with young people in a youth center after school three days a week. I am FANtastically excited about this position because it’s actually in the vein of the work that I want to be doing long term… and it also means that I will actually be out of the house working five days a week!

(6) Drug A.R.M.; another not- for profit, this one is Christian and dedicated to its Street Van outreach. We go out on Friday and Saturday nights to parts of Perth that are known gathering places for at- risk young people and seek to engage with/ provide informal counseling/ referrals to professionals to young people who have dealt with or are dealing with physical/ emotional abuse or homelessness (long term or short term) or dependency on alcohol or other drugs.

Ok, I think that catches you up on all the biographical details of my life, and I had no intention of writing that much because the impetus for my posting today has nothing to do with myself at all.

As I mentioned before, I have been gorging myself on sports and one of my favorite treats is international rugby union. The big three southern hemisphere teams (Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa) are playing at the moment and the games have been great! However, an issue that has bothered me since I started following Australian/ New Zealand sports reared its ugly head once again; the creation of teams upon an ethnic basis.

I sat down to watch a game of rugby and although I had heard of this team before, I never watched them play and throughout the whole contest it just kept grating on me, over and over and then I had to stop watching even though it was a good game. It has been a few hours since then and something has just been gnawing at me to write out everything I have been thinking on the subject over the past year and a half or so.

The team in question is the New Zealand Maori and bear with me, but I have to set out a few things for you all because I imagine that you are not too familiar with the sporting culture of New Zealand, but if you are, feel free to skip ahead. NZ is just south of Australia and I know that in America Australians are portrayed as loving their rugby, which is true to an extent, but in NZ rugby is king. Rugby in NZ probably shares the combined love, adoration, and popularity of the NFL, NBA, and MLB COMBINED in America. If you could somehow take the most zealous Red Sox, Cowboys, and Mid 90’s Chicago Bulls fan and bottle that sporting passion, I truly believe that you might approximate your average New Zealander (also, people from NZ are commonly known as Kiwis, this is just an aside because I will use that term later on and I wanted to explain it now. It’s like Americans being known as Yanks or British people as Poms.). Kiwis are well within their rights to froth over rugby, their national team (The All Blacks… a reference to the color of their uniform, that’s right, they wear all black, very inventive) is one of the most dominant forces in world rugby and it has been for decades. New Zealand, like so many other nations bore the brunt of colonial intrusion; the people group that was colonized by the British in the 18th and 19th centuries was known as and still exists today as the Maori. In a 2006 census 3.8 million (out of a total population of 4.1 million) people in NZ answered the question relating to their ethnicity. 2.6 million (about 63%) said they considered themselves “European” ethnically, 565k (about 14%) considered themselves “Maori” ethnically, and interestingly 429k considered themselves “New Zealander” ethnically. I only add those statistics to try to give a clearer picture of what I’m getting at eventually. The New Zealand Maori rugby team requires that all of its members have some Maori ancestry and there is a process in place to prove it (not sure how it plays out, but it was put in place because in the past people who “looked Maori” were eligible to play, so they wanted to make it a truly ethnically exclusive squad. But with that said, by all accounts there does seem to be a good deal of intermingling between ethnic groups in NZ, but I’m getting a bit off track).

In the midst of all of these facts rolling around in my head, I tried to gain a better idea of why this team would have been created, or at least why they still play today. The team was created in 1888 and at that time (and until 1910) was known as the “New Zealand Natives.” I have had a hard time finding out the specific reasons for the creation of the squad (which says something in itself), but I can only assume that given the relative lack of progressive thinking on racial issues in the late 19th century that the team was formed because players from Maori backgrounds were not allowed to play on the same teams as their counterparts who counted themselves as European ethnically. The need for a separate team composed of people from a specific ethnic group that is being oppressed within a nation makes complete sense. In fact, this same issue was the impetus for the creation of the Negro Leagues which was alternative for African- Americans who were not permitted to play in Major League Baseball because of the color of their skin. The Negro Leagues had a proud tradition and produced great players, but when Jackie Robinson broke into Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 it sounded the death knell for the league. This was a positive move because it allowed for all players to compete against and with one another based and skill and team affiliation as opposed to skin tone. Yet, I sat on my couch a few hours ago and watched the New Zealand Maori take on Ireland in 2010.

I can’t quite place my finger on why this bothers me so much. The members of the New Zealand Maori are not relegated to this team, on the contrary, it’s an honor to be selected (and the team is actually good! They beat Ireland and they play England later this week), the squad almost serves as a backup team to the All Blacks. But the fact that they are designated by their ethnic heritage bothers me to no end. Choosing to separate oneself along the same lines that one was, a generation ago, forcibly segregated makes absolutely no sense to me. There are those who claim that it is an issue of ethnic pride, which I can see to an extent, but no one would choose to be in the New Zealand Maori if they had the chance to play for the New Zealand All Blacks. Wouldn’t it make a much stronger statement if you were a part of the larger society and maintained your cultural roots? The All Blacks currently perform a traditional Maori chant, a “haka”, before each game and it has even become one of their trademarks. I just fail to see the logic behind keeping the second tier team based upon ethnic heritage up and running.

Clearly the parallels between ethnic/ cultural separation in sport and in society at large work to a certain extent, but there is a limit to the analogy. And in the process of writing/ thinking this all out, I have realized that my problem isn’t with the NZ Maori per se, it is with minority groups self- segregating after their forefathers ostensibly fought tooth and nail to give them access to all the same right and privileges as everyone else.

I’m not sure why I “came out of retirement” to write this or if it even made any sense; frankly, I’m not sure if it makes sense in my head yet, but everything in me rails against this sort of thing. I can only trace my indignation to one source. In the fourth grade, we had to research a historical figure and then make a presentation as that figure. I chose Thurgood Marshall, the first African- American supreme court justice, but that had very little to do with my selection. I really selected him because he was the lead lawyer in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954. This case changed the landscape of America, and as a piece of jurisprudence, arguably set precedents all around the world. He argued that separate was inherently unequal, contrary to what the legal and popular opinion maintained. In this case he argued for the desegregation of public schools in America which is certainly a fair cry from my concerns with the NZ Maori, both in terms of magnitude and significance, but I cannot understand (I can literally understand the arguments, but I cannot justify/ legitimize them in my mind) the mentality of self- segregation and maybe I never will.

Not sure when/ if I’ll write here again, but thanks for reading this monologue and other things I have written. It truly means a lot to me that YOU would take time out of your life to read my musings.

Shocking.

2009-11-17T18:12:00.000-08:00

Shocker: Australian English (shock-UH); noun, a person, place, or thing that is terrible. "Man, I can't believe how bad that referee was in the footy game." "Yeah, mate, he was a shocker."

Shocker number One: A few years back Cate and I caught a taxi to LaGuardia Airport and our driver was unbelievable. He was an erratic driver to begin with, swerving from one side of the street to the other, apparently disdaining the use of his indicators and instead, preferring to just yell at other cars and, of course, blow his horn. Unfortunately, this asinine style of driving perturbed one of the "Gypsy" cab drivers, who our driver had previously expressed his disgust with. These two gentlemen proceeded to spend the rest of our trip to the airport in some sort of jousting- for- position, nausea inducing, race to the finish. At one point, our driver nearly drove up onto the sidewalk to gain position on his opponent. They were THAT serious.

I recalled this episode from my past this morning as I rode the BUS to work. In defence of my driver, he was running five minutes late once he arrived at the busport to pick us up, so clearly he felt obliged to drive a lil recklessly to begin with. This liberty went to his head as I literally felt like this man was driving a Formula1 racer; he darted in and out of places that no bus ought dart. Then he felt disrespected by another bus driver, who was evidently stopping too quickly in front of us. Again, in his defence, the other driver was stopping to abruptly, but this is absolutely no excuse for tailgating whilst driving a 40 foot metal cylinder filled with people. Thankfully, after an expletive soaked diatribe (I didn't want to say, "expletive laced tirade," but I feat that "expletive soaked diatribe" might be just a cliche... ANYway), he pulled astride and then in front of the his rival bus driver and we were able to finish the trip in peace. Shocking.

Shocker number Two: During the aforementioned bus ride, I passed the Burswood Dome (the premier concert/ event venue in Perth... Britney Spears, Beyonce, Coldplay, Pink all performed there when they came to town) and saw the signs for Hulkamania. Now, I am not one to disparage my new home town, and to be entirely honest, I have no idea what the level of, for lack of a better phrase, Hulkamania is in the US... but seriously? Hulk Hogan still matters to anyone? I was actually curious so I looked up just how old he is... 56. He is also apparently, 6'4" and 302 pounds?! And his real name is Terry Gene Bollea, it's funny what you never think of, but I digress. Hulk Hogan is bringing his seven ring wrestling circus to Perth! And judging by the advertising saturation, we should be excited about it! I guess in my mind, Hulk Hogan stopped being relevant in the mid 1990's... All I can think of is him in his red/ yellow jumpsuit, ripping his rubbery shirt from his ripply chest... These images along with more recent ones of Hogan sporting a two tone moustache/ beard combo ring true with his fans and I have no doubt that however many shows he puts on will sell out. That's Perth. Shocking.

Ok. I promise, pictures of my new home are forthcoming... eventually.

Take care!

Insert Title Here

2009-11-10T21:01:00.000-08:00

Over the past two months I have wanted to write something, anything, but I just could not motivate myself to write words worth reading (don't get your hopes up for this entry, but I'm just saying...). But since yesterday the paper and pen have been calling out to me; and I had to answer.

Cate and I have taken out a lease on our first place together! Cate's family has moved from their family home to a large modern apartment (those of you coming down under in December will get to know this apartment well!) Thankfully, most of the things from the family home do not flow with the contemporary ambiance of the new place so Cate's parents needed to get rid of a few things. Thus the birth of "Operation Scavenge." Cate and I have managed to fit the following items into our two bedroom apartment: Cate's brother's bed frame, her parent's mattress, a couch, her brother's work desk, a bookcase, her family's television, her family's bbq (on the balcony), her sister's chest, and two wooden coffee table- esque boxes with drawers (one of which is the resting place for the television). We also did a couple of IKEA runs and bought another bookshelf and a dinner table with four chairs :) Now, for the fun part.

In order to move most of these items and a few others over this past weekend we rented a "ute," (utility truck; like a pickup truck with bed walls that fold down for easy access) and got down to business. One of our first big attempts was the Taylor family computer desk. It is a beautiful, solid Pine desk with plenty of storage space for disks or documents. Cate and I carried the massive hunk of wood out to the ute and loaded it up into the bed. We drove it the 90 seconds to our new place and looked at the two flights of stairs that we would have to traverse and summoned every muscle fiber Tommy Sheehan finely crafted for us in the bowels of Columbia's athletic complex. We heaved and lugged for what seemed like 45 minutes, but finally reached our door which we opened. Then we maneuvered the desk into position. The desk did not fit. We tried several other arrangements, but the desk was just too wide, deep, and long to fit. Dejected, we took the desk back down to the ute and to the Taylor home where it rests to this very day.

Having learned a valuable lesson in the previous story, we measured the Taylor refrigerator before attempting to haul it over to our place. Naturally, it was too large as well. So we engineered a swap with the Taylor's next door neighbor in which they would get a nearly brand new fridge and we would take their disco- era one and a few hundred dollars to sweeten the deal. We were in no position to complain since we still got a free refrigerator out the deal, however all of this transpired over the past couple of days... a couple of days after our ute rental had expired. Apparently, refrigerators must be transported upright, so putting it in the back of a long car was out leaving us with just one option; putting the fridge on a handtruck and wheeling it over to our place. Now, as I mentioned before, it takes about a minute and a half to drive from the old Taylor home to our new place, but we found out that it takes about 30 minutes to walk whilst wheeling a refrigerator. Undoubtedly, we were a bit of an odd sight in the late evening traipsing through the suburbs of Perth pushing and guiding a fridge down the sidewalk. Goodtimes.

I will post pictures of the completed apartment when I get a chance and I'll try to write more frequently, but who knows how often I'll feel compelled to write on this blog anymore. Like I mentioned in a previous post, this blog was really great when there was a set time on my journey to Australia and my life was very much an adventure, all the time; but now that I'll be living here for at least a few years, the thought of chronicling my day- to- day existence does not appeal to me at all.

But, only time will tell.

Take care!

Hey,

2009-09-11T00:25:00.000-07:00

I just realized that it has been nearly a month since my last post, and for this, I am sorry. But, to be candid, for once, I really enjoy telling stories when I write. Sometimes I can force a story out of some life event that might not otherwise be story- worthy, but I have to be in a pretty special mood. There is also the fact that I have just been busy and crafting a fine blog entry takes time.

With all of that said, I am going to just give a lil rundown of my life events over the past month or so...

- All four of my groomsmen have booked their flights to come to Perth for the wedding! Now all I need to do is find a place to live so they won't have to get hotel rooms! Sweet!

- I had a car crash. I was exiting a freeway and we had a green light, but the car in front of me stopped for some reason. Naturally, I stopped behind him, however the car behind me had other ideas and decided to keep driving right into my back bumper. Thankfully, no one in any of the cars was injured, but, my 20 year old Ford Laser is no longer with us. Although, the crash did highlight one of the little known safety features of the vehicle; upon impact, both of our seats flattened into the back seat preventing us from smacking our heads on the front dash. Ingenious.

- I have applied for temporary permanent residency in Australia! At our interview with the immigration department we were told that everything was in order, except my police clearances. My American background check was not sufficient, so I had to get fingerprinted and mail off the prints and 18 US dollars to the FBI to ensure my squeaky clean-ness. I also had to get a police clearance from the Australian Federal Police; which struck me as odd since I submitted my Western Australian police clearance which said, "Your name does not appear on the records of any Australian jurisdiction." And I had also been cleared for a working with children permit... ANYway, once I get and submit those two clearances, I was told that I should have my new visa and immigration status within a week!

- Because of my current immigration status (one year work visa, but only six months at any given employer) today is my last day for the City of Belmont. However, Monday is my FIRST day with Belmont City College! The great thing about this job transition is that my unused vacation days from the City of Belmont get paid out to me in a lump sum along with my final paycheck!

- Cate and I have booked a photographer for our wedding! http://www.paperandlace.com.au/ Now all we need is: someone to organize flowers and a cake! And there's a chance that both of those aspects might be handled this weekend! Haha, obviously, I'm pretty excited about all of this, but really, I'm just excited for all the planning to be over and to just be married. To go on our honeymoon, to be able to take vacations together, to share a home... just a few more months!

- Cate and I are coming to America! Our flights leave Perth at 12:05am on September 23rd and arrive at 8pm on September 23rd. We are planning on filling nearly every waking moment with friends, food, and fiestas! Shoot me an email if you'll be in Saint Louis from the 23rd of September to the 6th of October or in New York City from October 6th to 10th.

- Both of our basketball teams made it to the playoffs and won our first games, but we both fell in the semi-finals. But looking on the bright side; Cate made the all- star team... without even practicing and/ or playing the whole season! She's just that dominant on defense, in rebounding, passing, and shooting that they had no choice but to select her! Well done.

Ok, I think that covers my life. I hope all is well where ever you are.

See (most of) you very soon!

Jordan

Wilderness Weekend: Through a lens

2009-08-13T01:08:00.000-07:00

A couple weekends back, Cate, myself and five others ventured into the heart of southwestern Australia, to the Donnelly River region. In retrospect, the two days, which seemed to packed to the brim, were really full of nothing and therefore, utterly relaxing. Not that it really matters, but these pictures are displayed in the reverse order that they were taken.

The sign pretty much says it all; Victorian era technology AND million dollar views! While we did not actually make it to the lighthouse because of time constraints (and getting lost), I have to wonder exactly which part of the lighthouse featuring the Victorian era technology, and more to the point, is that really something that you want to advertise?

This was the scene outside of our front porch each morning. Kangaroos and Emus that have been around people so much that they just know where to go to get food. In a way, this was nice, but after feeding the beasts for half an hour or so, it was inevitable that they would need to... remove the waste. Needless to say, this created a stinky minefield as we left the house.

Roaring fireplace. Logs and fire itself courtesy of yours truly (more on that later).

Go Catie, go!

Even though our axe was essentially a dull metal wedge welded to a lead pipe, I think chopping firewood just might have been my highlight of the weekend. Once I started, I could not stop. I chopped enough wood to last a winter... but we were only there for two nights, whoops.

Beer tasting at a local cidery (like a winery, but they work with apples to make hard ciders and apple juice). Not sure why I took this picture, especially since this was not a cider tasting, but, to be honest all the ciders pretty much looked the same and I'm a sucker for a great photo op.

Not sure if you can tell in this shot, but Andie (Cate's brother) is riding a bike with no front tire. Actually, that's not true, it has a front tire, it's just not attached to the wheel. Good times.

Ugh! Yeah, I grunt when I get my lift on. It's so everyone can see how jacked and tan I am.

"This weighs, like, 15 pounds."

I'm not a huge fan of domesticated animals, let alone pseudo- wild ones in our vacation village, but this old kangaroo seemed harmless enough.

"Eat the seed from my mouth! Do it! DO IT!"

Alright, that's it. Take care!

Jordan

Rollin Along

2009-08-11T08:27:00.001-07:00

Where have the days and weeks gone? In a few days, I will have been in Australia for SEVEN months! This is the longest that I have ever been away from Saint Louis! I was planning on making preparations to come back to the STL right about now, but instead we are making plans to set up our life :)

Ok, it has been a while since I have posted so there's probably lots of stuff to catch you up on; however, I'm not going to just spill all my beans. I'm just going to give you a snapshot of my weekend.

- Cate and I are back in the groove of coaching the future basketball stars of Australia! Sadly, because a new "season" has just begun the teams were shuffled and I had to get used to a whole new crew of ten year olds. My new kids, who, in an ironic landslide, have chosen to call their team, "The Redskins," are pretty cool. I mean we won our game 29-2; but they just lack some of the pizazz of my old kids, maybe they'll grow on me. An interesting observation though: these kids are cut throat. First of all, let me clarify that we coach in a basketball league fully run and staffed by a local church... and these kids are ten years old... yet in the second week of the competition they are talking about how they'll win the championship and stomp everyone in their way. I gently remind them that we are here to have fun, learn about basketball, and display good sportsmanship, and one young man's reply was, "Just win, baby!" Nah, I'm just kidding, but that's their mentality.

- Saturday has become a full on basketball extravaganza. We coach the kids in the morning (Cate does two teams, one younger, one older) and I do one, then we zip off to Lakeside sports complex to compete in the Baptist Basketball competition with our church. This league is actually pretty competitive, especially for a basketball loser like myself. But it is wonderful to be back in an athletic context with Cate and getting to watch each others games again. Cate's team, which has ten members, yet at most is able to get seven people to show up for a given game struggles with conditioning (as do all the teams in this competition, because, really, it's not that serious) and it cost them their game on Saturday even though her team was far superior from a talent standpoint. As for my game, we had a rematch against a team that beat us earlier in the year; we lost the earlier game because we were caught off guard by one of their players who is so sneakily fast that he appears out of control, yet he always makes his shots. This weekend was different. We brought our A- Game. We put on our game face(s). And we recruited an athletic center to block shots, run the fast break, and dunk. We won by 20.

- Later that night we went to watch a friend's State Basketball League (SBL) playoff game. The SBL is one step below the professional basketball league in Australia so it's a pretty high level of competition (how many times have I used that word in this post? 6? 8? ugh, I'm out of practice...) Even though the SBL is pretty serious (each team has an "import" player who is paid and also usually a washed up mid major division 1 American export), the stadiums in which the games are played creates such a feeling of insignificance, at least from a fans point of view. I would wager that most American high school gyms are larger than that of the SBL teams... and the place wasn't even full!

- While I'm on the subject of Australian people... for some reason, certain events just seem to drag all the most redneck or in Aussie lingo "derro" (short for derelict) people; you know like Nascar or Nebraska. Well, in Australia one of those places seems to be SBL games. This isn't really worth noting except for the fact that it reminded me about the dress code at the high school where I work. Nearly all Australian schools (high school, middle, primary) have dress codes and/ or uniforms. This can be as stringent as full on slacks, tie, jacket, skirt, dress(all in the school distributed colors and styles) or as casual as a school polo that must be worn with dark colored pants, skirt, or shorts depending on the season. This brings me to my school, definitely on the lenient end of the spectrum, but now in a wicked backlash to modern fashion trends, this EXACT announcement was sent out to the students, obviously targeting the young ladies, "Tights are not pants. Tights with belt loops and pockets are still tights. Tights are meant to be worn underneath skirts, pants, or shorts. That is all." Priceless. Haha!

- Late Saturday night! Wallabies (Australian National Rugby team) game at home! Unfortunately, the team lost, after a fast start, lots of sloppy play and frankly, weakness, gave the game to the South Africans. Thankfully, the Wallabies will have two more chances to redeem themselves in this "best of the Southern Hemisphere" tournament; and Cate and I will be taking in one of the contests on August 29th!

- Sunday! Visa red tape. Cate and I spend many hours this past Sunday collecting old letters, emails, and pictures to compile our case for the Australian immigration service... to prove that we are actually in a relationship. Part of this visa process is the procurement of a medical examination to prove that I do not have tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis B, or any other undesireable physical ailment that I would have been spreading around this fair land for the past seven months... So two weeks ago I went to the local medical clinic, got my blood work done, gave a urine sample, went to a different location to get my chest x-rayed, thought I had finished the whole process... and then I got a phone call telling me that I needed to do it all through Health Services Australia. Ugh. So early this morning, I got up, went to the right doctor and had them perform all the examinations. I have to go back NEXT Thursday to get the results and have all the work sent off to the government so Cate and I can finally move forward with applying for my visa!

- My new house is great in the sense that it's cheap and still pretty centrally located, BUT, it's very large and often empty... and pretty much reminds me of the type of place where people are savagely murdered. It is honestly so scary to come home each night because no one else will be home so all the lights are out and I think, "Oh! I'll use the flashlight on my phone; that will certainly illuminate this vast darkness." The phone light only brightens the scariest bits of the house until I can get to the light switch! I have to take some pictures so I can describe this better, but basically, my room is situated near the back of the first floor of the house. Before you can enter into my room, you must first cross a large empty room. The light switch is on the opposite wall of the room as you enter, and this panel controls both the large room and my bedroom. This is pretty embarrassing, but I usually just sleep with the light on because it really is that creepy to venture out of my warm little room in the dark. Yes I am 23 and getting married in January. Moving right along...

Actually, that's pretty much all I've got, that and it's 12:22am so I need to go home to my house of horrors and get some sleep. But, I hope that YOU are getting excited for our trip back to the USA because we definitely are! Take care!

Ramblings 27.7.09

2009-07-27T17:52:00.000-07:00

- When I started this blog, I was of the belief that I would be coming to Australia for a fixed period of time, which would be ending around August. Therefore, a blog seemed like an appropriate way to keep in touch with people back home and to have a means of writing consistently. However, now that my time here seems to be more permanent, I wonder what will become of the function of this space? I never wanted to be one of those people who just kept a blog about their everyday life… I was going away to the other side of the world for nine months and I would keep friends/ family abreast of my situation for that time, but now I am faced with the dilemma of finding an appropriate way/ time of ending the blog; OR do I become one of those people who just writes incessantly about their life. It would be one thing if I were writing a memoir and some publisher were going to pay me to do so… but that is clearly not what is happening here.

- I have been sick with some sort of cold/ flu on and off for the last five days. I have missed two days of work and did not get to participate in my basketball game this past weekend. I am not pleased.

- On a slightly related note, I have a medical examination tomorrow. I need to get a chest X-Ray (for Tuberculosis) and an HIV/AIDS test for my visa application. Once I get the results from tomorrow we can FINALLY lodge the application that will determine my “temporary permanent residency” status, haha. The official word is that the process could take six to eight months to complete, but friends in a similar situation heard back (favorably) in about a month. So hopefully, we’ll hear back in a month or so and I’ll be able to continue working with the young people at the alternative learning centre, but if not, then I guess it’s pretty clear that I need to go in a different direction.

- I am moving… for the fourth time! Our lease runs out here on August 7th, but thankfully I was able to find a co- worker who has a two story house and they are renting out one of the rooms on the bottom floor! It is actually quite a perfect situation since I only wanted to rent a place for about the next six weeks because we’ll be coming back to Saint Louis on September 23rd! The new place is a little smaller and older, but it’s also cheaper… and just for six weeks.

That’s about it, but take care and start your countdown for our return to the northern hemisphere!

Welcome to my Head

2009-07-16T02:52:00.001-07:00

That's right kiddos; for a whopping two days I had a mohawk. Just hold your breath til Halloween when I break out my masterpiece. Two words for you, "Mister" and "T."

Frankly, I just thought this little sticker was pretty funny.

This is a picture of us before we headed out to the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO, in case that ever comes up again). Dapper swagger; or as I like to call it, dap swag. Ugh, sorry.

I thought it fitting to don my knitted cap to match Cate's and I let my facial hair grow out a little as well.

If you are expecting a coherent stream of well thought out paragraphs, you have come to the wrong place (at least for today); this is just an attempt to update ya’ll.

- I’m listening to “Once Around the Block” by Badly Drawn Boy right now (on repeat), here’s a link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAtcJ954TjQ check it out, then buy it; really great song that has been applicable in multiple phases of my life.

- Today is one of my off days during the school holiday program. Yesterday we took the kids to an indoor rock climbing center; three to four of them managed to break a cement slab covering a hole in the ground before we were even strapped into our harnesses. Goodtimes. Tomorrow we are heading to the Perth Zoo if the weather cooperates; if not to, “museum,” they don’t tell me anything except when to show up.

- With all my free time I had begun my visa application to grant me, “temporary permanent residency,” which will be rolled over into permanent residency in two years; so that’s pretty exciting. This whole process is a little silly though, we have to gather up all our emails, pictures, statutory declarations of people who know us and can vouch for the legitimacy of our relationship, then present our case to the immigration authorities so they can tell us that our partnership is, “genuine, monogamous, and long-lasting.” Thanks.

-I am also in the process of filing my first Australian tax return, however because I have been in the country for such a short period of time (exactly 6 months today!) there are no agencies (governmental or financial) with which my personal details can be matched against yet, so I have to wait a few months to file. Don’t you just love beauracrcies?

- I’m about to go head to the gym for some nice cardio work followed by three to six sets of some sort of pectoral exercise. After that, I’m going to come back home, shower, and drive up to Joondalup Mall with Cate to enjoy one of the two nights of “late night” shopping so graciously afforded to all Perthians (on Thursday nights shopping centers outside of the city are permitted to stay open til 9pm, the ones in the city stay open til 9pm on Friday nights; all other nights of the week most stores close between 5pm-6pm); so naturally, we take advantage of our opportunities to get out of the house on Thursday and Friday nights.

-Saturday is a day I have been waiting for since I arrived in Australia; the start of the Tri-Nations (Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa) Rugby competition. Six matches for each nation, three against each of the other two countries in a no- holds- barred smashmouth affair betwixt the three greatest rugby playing nations on this planet! And I just found out that I can actually watch the matches at Cate’s house instead of trying to scrounge around Perth to find a place that is showing the game each week.

- So… a guy that my track and football buddies and I used to regularly outsprint just won the 100 meters at the US Championships. In case that means nothing to you, this man, Mike Rodgers, is the fastest individual in the United States, also meaning that he is one of the fastest people in the WORLD. Big congratulations to Mike and all the work that you have done over the past six years or so!

I think that’s about it and it’s time to go for my run, so take care and keep in touch!

P.S.- depending on when I post this/ when people read it, it might be my father’s birthday (July 17th), so Happy Birthday Dad!

Independence Day.

2009-07-07T07:25:00.000-07:00

That’s about as patriotic as I get on the fourth of July.

I have always been somewhat conflicted about the best way to celebrate the American day of independence. On one hand, we managed to wrench ourselves from the grip of our British oppressors and in doing so craft a nation around the highest ideals; on the other, we stunningly massacred, raped, and pillaged hundreds of tribes of people who lived here for generations and generations and there was that little slavery thing going on too. So, yeah, a soccer jersey and a six- pack of Bud is all the fourth of July celebrating you will get out of me.

In lighter news, Cate and I did have a lovely day this past Saturday, especially since I have just begun the July school holidays. I am essentially off work for the next two weeks (I’ll still work three days each of the next two weeks, but only in the capacity of a camp counselor for the activities that we’ll be running at the youth center)! We grilled up some bacon cheeseburgers (burgers in general are apparently a very American food, I guess I have never lived in any other country, but it’s fascinating what one learns away from home) and washed them down with our frosty Budweisers.

Speaking of Budweiser, for some reason those old “wasssssssup?!” commercials popped into my head and I showed them to Cate. They are JUST as hilarious nine years later… don’t believe me? Take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDTZCgsZGeA&feature=related

ANYway. In my musings about the fourth of July, I was really trying to come up with something clever/ witty/ not too cliché to write, but for some reason, all I could think of was a miniature list of Australian words/ phrases that amuse and/ or confuse me.

Enjoy.

1. “Sweet as!” commonly followed by, “bro!”

- Contrary to my initial impression, my backside was not constantly being complimented, and this is just an expression of deep approval. Like, ‘That car was as sweet as brown sugar, bro!’ But, the phrase is just shortened to sweet as, bro; in all fairness, this one might be of New Zealand (Kiwi) origin, but I hear it here, and not in the US, so it stays on my list.

2. “Fella.”

- Clearly the word ‘fella’ is heard in America, but generally not out of the mouth of someone under 65 years of age. Yet in Australia, many of the young people I work with use the word fella every day. In case the context is lost on you, “fella” is like the movie Goodfellas, or perhaps Rocafella for any hip-hoppers out there. This one is used most prominently by my Aboriginal students and often as a racial term, like blackfella or whitefella, no distinction made for gender might I add.

3. “Reckon”

- Not a force to be reckoned with, but rather, ‘I reckon that if we don’t round up these kangaroos, they’ll cause some serious problems for those koalas.” Haha, sorry, that was a stupid sentence, but I don’t care, I’m just flowin now. Reckon is one of those words that is again, a babyboomerism, if not older; like it’s the sort of word that my 85 year old grandfather who was born and raised in a small town in Mississippi uses frequently, yet here I am in Perth, in 2009, and it’s everywhere. Crazy.

4. Usage of the word “the” in a sporting context.

- Certainly we all know that the name of the team that Michael Jordan played for was The Chicago Bulls, however, if we were exhorting the team on to victory in the stands, we would shout, “Go Bulls!” In Perth, and I believe all of Australia, they would say, “Go The Bulls!” Perhaps we do it all wrong in America, but I had never heard of such a thing before I got here and no one I talk to can give me an explanation as to why the, “the” is left in front of the team’s name when cheering. Sweet as, bro.

5. Usage of the word “colored,” but since this is Australia, “coloured.”

- I debated whether or not to include this one, but like I said, I’m on a roll. Yes, coloured, is used here, by both whites and non-whites to describe non-whites as a group. No, it is not 1950. Clearly, coming from my background as an African- American who majored in African- American Studies, who may or may not have a tendency to passionately pursue an argument or two, it is a struggle to hold my tongue when I hear people using the word. However, in the wisdom of my old age, I have learned to listen and think before launching into a verbal assault because we all know that I am more than equipped to wage that war. But, why is the usage of the word coloured so offensive? OK, by calling all non-white people ‘coloured’ a direct assumption is inherent, that all white people are in some way grouped together and that all non- white people are all grouped together. The deeper implication is that “whiteness” is the standardized, maybe even “pure” racial category and the other group (us coloured fellas, ha, that was good hey?) has impurities; that whites are normal and everyone else is somehow abnormal. Now, we all know that ALL of that is a load of garbage, which is why the word “colored” is no longer used in America (except by ignorant folk). Today, we use words like, “minorities” or my favorite, “people of color.” Really, what this all boils down to (hold on, I’m about to get off my soapbox) is a need for us as humans to stop classifying people by “racial” groups, because let’s face it, “race” is something that was constructed by those in power to tighten their grasp on those whom they oppressed. That is not to say that we shouldn’t acknowledge and appreciate cultural differences because, I wholeheartedly am in favor of that, we just need to stop worrying so much about lumping people into groups for the purposes on classifying.

Thanks for taking time to read through all my thoughts, I appreciate it.

Take care,

My life be like...

2009-06-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

I have no idea why I decided to title this blog post the first line of a song that I don't even like, but, you know, it just fit.

What have I been up to as of late?

Nothing too much really, just slogging through the winter months of Australia (the seasons in the southern hemisphere are opposite to the northern hemisphere, just a little geographic/ climatological info for ya :) This winter really isn't that bad, especially compared to some of the subzero (Fahrenheit), snowfilled days in NYC; but it's still down in the 40's and upper 30's, plus this is the RAINY season. Sorry, I'm talking way too much about the weather and that's how you know I'm bored, but I'm going to keep ranting for just a few more lines.

I hate rain.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know we need it to sustain life on this planet, but in my mind, I thought coming to Australia would be just about the closest thing I could get to my ideal climate, namely, hot and dry, year round. The fact that Australians have deluded themselves into thinking, "it's only cold for a few weeks a year... we don't need insulation in our homes... or heating," doesn't help.

ANYway.

It has come to my attention that I use the segue, "ANYway," more frequently than most, some have even called it a trademark of my informal writings. It's not a conscious thing, it just happens, but now whenever I DO use it there is some mental awkwardness for me... in case anyone was wondering.

But I digress; I met some African- Americans the other day. Where, you ask? On the basketball court, of course. It was actually pretty funny because one of the guys is the ex- husband of my coworker, so I had heard a good deal about him. However, that's where the humor stopped. These two were the worst kind of Americans, OK, not the worst, they weren't jumping around in cowboy boots waving confederate flags; certainly the worst kind of American basketballers. First of all, this game was in a church league so you would expect a degree of civility even though everyone who participates is not necessarily a believer, but why join a church league if you are a loud- mouthed, trash- talking, braggart, who can't even back it up? Secondly, these guys only had four players, their fifth was suspended because he lashed out at a referee last week by calling him a feminine hygiene product; yeah. So, we decided to play the game 5 on 4 rather than have them take a forfeit and it just wasn't fun. We won by about 30, but the whole game was just an exercise of self-control. They complained about every single call the refs made, which was pretty impressive because they never got out of breath. Even during free throws when everyone else was taking a breather, these two brothas kept on flapping their gums. But like I said, we won by thirty so that was a bit of vindication, except that it didn't even feel that great because they complained that they only had four players so of course we should have beaten them so badly. Some people just don't know how to lose with dignity, but thankfully, we get to play that team again and I can just hope that they will be at full strength, allowing us to administer a proper beatdown :)

Well, that's about it for now... Everyone back in America, make sure you set off some extra fireworks for me this weekend, apparently for some reason, they are illegal here. On a related note, how about the US men's soccer team? Beating Italy, Spain, and Brazil (for a half) in one week? Watch out world...

Bye? How do you end a blog post? It's not really a letter or a message, it's just floating out there in cyberspace...

The End.

Party Time.

2009-06-16T04:54:00.001-07:00

Not sure if you have heard... but Cate and I are getting married!

So, Cate's parents decided to throw us an engagement party (several weeks ago... sorry for the late update) at our favorite Aussie restaurant; Mela, an Indian restaurant.

The photographic evidence follows.

This cake was actually made for us and presented by a friend before the engagement party, but I just thought that I would throw it in too.

These are two of the approximately five glasses of champagne consumed at our party. We thought people would want to celebrate with some bubbly, so we bought TWELVE bottles; whoopsie daisy.

The two of us with a comically angry Vono and cheery Shannon.

Bryan, Cate, Jordan, Annabelle. Happy family :)

Jess and Jenna Haak (cousins) demonstrating the elusive awkward face/ T-Rex arms combination.

(1) Us with church friends; Aleesa, Seb, and Giles. (2) Us with work friends; Jorge/ Allison (the hosts of the Latin American dinner mentioned in the previous blog), Jane, Jen, and Wavey.

(3) Me with the guys from church; Phil, Ben-O, and Kieron. (4) Upper corridor shot.

Cate with three out of four brisdesmaids; Kate, Rae, and Jess.

Excellent chocolate cake... looking forward to more at the wedding? Maybe? Hm, I guess I actually have a say in that, hey? haha

Lower corridor shot.

BIG Weekend

2009-06-15T06:26:00.000-07:00

Man, it is pretty difficult to believe, but as of tomorrow afternoon I will have been living in Perth (on the other side of the planet from Saint Louis!) for a full FIVE months! This is just about the longest I have ever been away from home and I'm starting to miss the little things (I've been missing the big things all along). I'd also like to take this time to apologize for not posting more frequently or with updates about my life here... I'm busy living it... but I really will try to write on a more regular basis about more general topics instead of my deep musings about life and sociocultural cycles that are playing out here.

Without further ado, my weekend.

Friday Night!- We meant to go to a friend's birthday party, but we were tired, so we just went home and played Scrabble with Cate's mom. Haha, a great start to a jampacked weekend!

Saturday Morn- I picked Cate up and we drove deep into the heart of Belmont to coach our little basketball kids (she coaches the under 8's and I coach the under 11's). Somehow, I was roped into running the show for one of the under 8 teams, and funnily enough, my team was matched up against Cate's. It was certainly a battle of coaching prowess as we cajoled our respective teams of five and six year olds to, "get off the floor... you can't be sleepy," or warmly remind them that, "there's no reason to be afraid of the ball." Needless to say, these kids are cute. Frankly, I think the result of the game could also go without a mention, but I'm too petty! I won 12-1! Yeah baby, yeah! My older kids aren't as cute or funny, but THEY think it's hilarious to use me as their personal jungle gym... but we won that game too and we are on a hot streak (three out of the last four games, gearing up for the playoffs!)

Saturday Arvo (Australian for "Afternoon")- I dropped Cate off back at home so she could go fabric shopping with her mother and jetted off to play some basketball of my own. We squared off against another team from our church, and to be entirely honest with you, I have no idea what happened. Somehow, I managed to hit five of six jumpers in the first half! I have never shot that well in my life, but I just couldn't miss. Sadly, I thought that my streaky shooting would continue in the second half, but I just kept bricking. Oh well, we won that one too!

Saturday Evening- Cate and I geared up to head down to Mandurah to have a slumber party with Rae and Shane (the genders were separated, no worries), but first we made a stop at an Irish pub to watch the Australian national rugby team (the Wallabies) manhandle the Italians. Because neither Cate's family nor my housemates and I have the requisite cable package, we are forced to go out of doors to watch some high quality rugby... but for some reason the concept of sports bars (a la Buffalo Wild Wings) has never taken off here! I have gone on this tirade before, but it really doesn't make any sense that a country which prides itself on its love of drink and sport could have gotten this so wrong, but I digress. After the game we joined Rae and Shane at a Mandurah cafe called Moka (great hot chocolates and potato wedges for those of you taking notes for when you come here in January for the wedding :) to watch/ listen to a friend perform. Her name is Cherith. She was awesome.

Sunday Morning- Back to Moka for breakfast, wonderful and not that pricy! We drove back up to Perth, changed, and then prepared for that afternoon/ evening.

Sunday Evening- We pre-empted church last night because one of Cate's co-workers invited us to a Latin American themed dinner party. Her husband is Venezulan, so we knew it would be too legit to quit, hey, hey. We decided to prepare a spicy chilli con carne, which turned out alright for our first effort. But at the party we had shredded pork, black beans, chicken with a chilli/ chocolate sauce, nachos, and of course, rice. It was all very tasty, but I think the best part of the night was the pinata. Becaue several of the couples had young children a Dora the Explorer pinata was purchased. The kids gave it their best whacks, but just couldn't break through. However, one of the mommies had a few swings and before you could say, "Dios mio," off flew Dora's head. High comedy.

Ahh, and here we rest on Monday night just counting down the days til we touch down on American soil. Another post is coming within the next couple of days, so stay tuned!

Love/ miss you all!

Jordan

SYG

2009-06-07T08:18:00.000-07:00

In a lot of ways, my life has been pretty busy lately (planning a wedding in Australia and parties to celebrate beforehand in America, work, coaching little kids basketball, playing church basketball, Bible study, and hanging out with my fiancée and other friends), but I also manage to have a good deal more free time since I left the rugby pitch; thus I have returned to my writing ways.

Last weekend was three days because in Western Australia it was ‘Foundation Day,’ or in other words, the day to commemorate when Europeans first settled Western Australia. While I was not celebrating such a momentus occasion, I did reap the benefit of a day off work by attending SYG (State Youth Games). SYG is a pretty big event on the Western Australian Christian calendar as it is a three day festival that draws its competitors from churches all around the state. I went with a friend’s church and signed up for Badminton, Dodgeball, Indoor Beach Volleyball, and of course Scrabble.

Badminton was an interesting selection for me since my experience with the game is limited at best, however, I had a great deal of success against all comers from the Taylor family a couple of years ago so I thought I would be decent. What I did not realize was that there were actually people my age who apparently play this oddly named sport as more than a backyard leisure activity. I managed to run into a church that featured three teams of two such players, needless to say, they thrashed us and in the process forced me to explain on multiple occasions that just because we played some very good badminton athletes who happened to be of Asian background, that in fact, all Asians did not possess some badminton/table tennis superiority gene. Ugh.

Dodgeball is a game in which I possess many talents at a very high level thanks to my years of working with annoying children who loved to play the game (leaving me with no choice but to hone my ability to the highest possible levels so as to maintain an air of invincibility… it’s true). Unfortunately, I am not quite sure that all of my teammates took quite the same approach to the tournament. We took a loss in the first game which I will chalk up to rustiness on the part of my brethren and sistren, but then we reeled off four victories in a row until we played our final match of the preliminary round. Now, for those of you who know me at all, you know that I play to win, no matter what the game/ sport, I always give it 110%, but with that said I never play dirty or trash talk. Being the fantastic dodgeballer that I am, I must have rubbed some of the people on the opposing team the wrong way because they jeered me! They actually shouted taunts at me at a Christian sports festival! I tried to play on pure adrenaline alone, but alas, it was not enough, my team fell in the contest, and narrowly missed out on a spot in the quarterfinals.

Meanwhile, Cate had just led her team to the final of the basketball competition, but had come down with a terrible migraine. That night, we contemplated heading home so Cate could sleep in her own bed, but she decided to stick it out for the second day which began with Indoor Beach Volleyball. She made a full recovery for our last day :)

The premise of Indoor Beach Volleyball is an interesting one for me, but I guess there are people who must play beach volleyball year round even if the weather would not usually permit it. This event was primarily a mess around one for our team since none of us actually play volleyball, let alone beach volleyball. Yet somehow, we managed to compile a 3-2 record, which again, left us just short of advancing past the prelim round.

In my final event, I planned to make up for the rest of the weekend’s disappointments by shutting up all of the critics and winning Scrabble. Yes, I actually had critics; for some reason, I suppose I do not strike people as the Scrabble loving type of individual, but whatever the reason, I felt like I had something to prove. The preliminary rounds consisted of six 20 minute games, which is really quite taxing on the brain and nerves, but I pushed through the first four games with an unblemished record. My fifth game was against a formidable foe who was one of the few others who had yet to lose a game, I thought I could handle her because she challenged the word, “spurn,” which led me to believe that she could not possibly beat me with such a limited vocabulary, and yet I lost. My final preliminary match was against a chap who seemed particularly nervous and fidgety, but he played the game with a great deal of strategy and skill, so I knew it would be close; and it was, but he won. 4-2. Not a very impressive record, but I managed to squeak into the quarterfinals only to face, the anxious fellow again. He knew he was in for a big match and I was more than ready for the challenge, but as with scrabble and life, sometimes things just don’t go your way, and I lost again.

Oh well.

Dreams

2009-05-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

It is 12:24am, early Thursday morning. I should be dreaming right now, but instead I am taking a break from stuffing envelopes for work (long story). The combination of my recent upgrade to a brighter, yet somehow more environmentally friendly, coiled light bulb and the stark whiteness of the sheets of paper I was folding caused my mind to drift and wander; all the way back to this afternoon.

The teacher, Marnie, of the classroom in which I work asked one of our students, Claude, about his dreams and aspirations. He mentioned wanting to move on to TAFE (a program that seems to fall somewhere on the spectrum between American community colleges and universities) and playing wheelchair basketball in the Paralympics. Marnie quickly threw in that she wanted desperately to head back to the US for a vacation, namely to New York. I said that I wanted to cover college football for Sports Illustrated and instantly I realized that I was not following this dream with any degree of passion.

In reflecting on that little conversation, I took pause to look back over my personal history of dreams.

2nd Grade:
Jordan the Weatherman.

5th- 10th Grade, with a brief flirtation at the beginning of college:
Jordan Davis, Attorney at Law.

10th- 12th Grade:
Jordan “Ice/ WRbooyah” Davis, Collegiate Football Star Extraordinaire.

Freshman-Junior Year at CU:
?

Senior Year at CU:
Jordan P. Davis, freelancing, blogging (how is “blogging” still a spelling error in Microsoft word? Get with the times…), journalist.

And here we are, May 2009. What are my dreams now? I know my goals, hopes, and aspirations, but have I let my dreams die? I definitely put writing aside because I was unable to find gainful employment in said field, but trust, if for some reason Sports Illustrated, or even ESPN came a callin, I’d come a runnin.

Maybe I’m not dreaming because I’m living THE dream. I could not have even foreseen the life path that I’m headed down before I left, heck, I still don’t even know the exact path I’m traveling. But I’m here on the other side of the world with my beautiful fiancée at my side and I can’t complain about anything in my life. I have stable housing, employment, entertainment, sporting pursuits, and friends… I live in Australia! Just 15 minutes from the beach; I’m getting married in about 7.5 months! Why am I yelling?

This is exciting.

My life is exciting and challenging; maybe for the first time in my life, my dreams are not about some career I want to pursue, but they are about settling down with Cate in a community and becoming part of its fabric; changing lives and cultures; showing/spreading the love of Christ everywhere we go and in everything we do.

I guess that’s a pretty good dream afterall?

I should probably stop messing around and get back to stuffing envelopes, but to paraphrase a great man, Larry Kindbom,

Keep dreaming of championships, in whatever you do.

Or maybe a far greater man, Paul, would be a more appropriate approximation,

If we live, then it is to the lord. If we die, then it is to the lord. So, whether we live or we die, we belong to the lord.

Yeah.

Engagement Photos 1.0

2009-04-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

Pretty self explanatory set o' pictures here.

It's hard to believe that it has only been a week since we got engaged because SO much has transpired in these seven short days....

This is only the beginning :)

NEWSFLASH.

2009-04-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

After four long years, Cate Taylor is no longer my girlfriend.

Let that sink in. Those thoughts rolling around your head right now. Although, chances are if you are reading this you already know the beautiful news I am going to share in the next line :)

She's my fiancee.
We are engaged!!!
And therefore, we are getting married!!!

Ok, the real reason for this post is to share the proposal story because I am already tired of telling it, haha, just kidding, I don't think I'll ever get tired of telling it :)

Once upon a time, it was actually this past Tuesday, a dashing and clever young man named Jordan gallantly rode into the city to pick up his gorgeous and gifted/great/ generous girlfriend Cate. He suggested that they go sit on the beach and read the bible together. Because they were in the process of trying to develop a habit of reading the bible together at the beach, this struck Cate as a wonderful idea and not at all suspicious even though both had full evenings planned.

Upon their arrival at the beach, Jordan guided the couple to the approximate spot where she first took him nearly two years ago. They spread out the beach blanket and plopped down to start their study. As Cate fumbled through her purse in a vain attempt to find her bible, Jordan seized the opportunity to surreptitiously slip the engagement ring from its box into his pocket. After several minutes of searching, Cate dispiritedly told Jordan that she didn't have her bible, but Jordan retorted,
"Don't worry, that's not why I brought you here." He then took out his own bible and read Proverbs 31:10-31 (from the NIV),

"A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value. She brings him good, not harm, all the days of her life. She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar. She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family and portions for her servant girls. She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks. She sees that her trading is profitable, and her lamp does not go out at night. In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle with her fingers. She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of them are clothed in scarlet. She makes coverings for her bed; she is clothed in fine linen and purple. Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes. She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: "Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all." Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate."

He then told her that the woman described was the woman that he saw in her. That she already possessed so many of the aforementioned attributes and would grow into others and THAT was the sort of woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with; her. He then asked her for a hug and told her how much he loved her, but the hug was rather awkward, as he knew it would be because they were sitting on the sand. So he had them stand up and embrace, then he knelt down on one knee and said, "Will you marry me?" She sank down to him on the sand and started kissing him and crying as the small group of people seated relatively nearby began applauding. Jordan, with no answer yet for his question, inquired, "Is that a yes?" Cate laughed and replied, "Of course it is!"

The two happily cuddled on the beach and watched their first Australian sunset of 2009. For they had attempted to see several others on the beach, but were thwarted by cloud cover and long lines for fish and chips. The happy couple, now engaged, set about calling just about everyone in the world to let them know of their changed status. And they started ACTUALLY planning for their wedding, which they are still doing to this very day.

The End.

:)

Things In My Life

2009-04-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I have managed to put 1750+ kilometers (1088 miles) on this beaut.

I haven’t had a single problem with my car that is most likely older than my younger sister (I know how old Nicole is, but I have no idea when in 1989 my car was manufactured, but it might have been before February 24th or even in 1988, but this is a silly tangent).

However, in the time that I have put the bulk of those kms on my car I have: grown another inch or two of dreadlocks, moved into a new (semi- permanent) house, started to get comfortable at work, and played enough rugby to realize that I know absolutely nothing above an elementary level, and maybe not even that much.

Rugby. Considering that the name of this blog is “gridder turned rugger,” I have certainly been skimping on the rugby commentary. There are a few of very good reasons for this. 1) I was just using rugby as a device to document my experiences here, and I will write more about the game and my transition into its ranks as the season progresses. (Last preseason match this Saturday, regular season begins next Saturday!) But, just as I tried not to view my gridder-ness as my defining character trait, I could not even begin to primarily identify myself as a rugger now. 2) Going into this trip I expected to have as much leisure time as I did back home and therefore be able to write on this blog as frequently as I posted on my other sites. I was clearly wrong on both counts. 3) I drastically underestimated just how much one must know about a sport to accurately and legitimately document it. With the exception of my foray into tennis writing, I have only written about sports and subjects that I was intimately familiar with. Yet, I am coming dangerously close to an even games watched/ played ratio. I couldn’t even begin to count how many football or basketball games I have watched and when juxtaposed (gotta find a way to use juxtapose more consistently and less pretentiously, but is it possible?) with my relatively vast game experience in both my watch to play ratio must be around 10 or 15 to 1. Alternatively, I have now played in exactly four rugby games (including sevens and one match at Columbia) and watched five or six. What’s the problem? You might ask. Well, I’m glad you did. The problem is that I watched probably half of those football or basketball games before I ever played in one. Football and basketball are arguably the two most popular sports in America, pretty much every red-blooded male knows them inside and out, but I’m way behind the curve when it comes to rugby, even in the lukewarm rugby state of WA. I am trying to attend as many matches as possible and watch on television with commentary so I can soak up the little details. Right now, I am playing a simple version of a simple game, (on that note, one of my teammates was terribly confused and told me he thought that rugby was a lot more complicated than American football. I rationally demonstrated the thickness of our playbook with my fingers and he began to understand that football is some sort of super-computer chess to the checkers of rugby) essentially just running fast and hard forward when I get the ball and running hard and fast into my opponents when they have the ball. My biggest problems occur when set plays break down, I understand the concepts but to use a Maddenism, I have a low rugby IQ; but in case any of my opponents are reading… it’s growing. Exponentially. Watch out. Haha. But seriously, don’t blink.

Work. Goodness gracious. I could probably write a memoir about my experiences over the past nine months about working with at- risk young people; but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet here. Like I mentioned before, my job is split into three parts: community service coordinator (boring and tedious, paperwork galore), drop-in attendant (lots of fun, just hanging out with kids), and youth worker in the Alternative Learning Centre (definitely the most difficult, but, then again I never thought it would be easy). My thoughts about my primary position, in the ALC, are not fully formed and I don’t suppose they will be for quite some time. With that said, there is one striking difference between my time at the Boys and Girls Club back in Saint Louis and the ALC; genuine, meaningful cultural differences. In America, for the most part, the vast majority of people are reading from the same cultural script. Sure, there are different accents, food preferences, styles of dress, etc, but none of these things severely impact the interactions that people have on a daily basis if both parties are open minded. Another way to look at it is that I might have come from a different background than another person, but generally in an American context, we will hold similar baseline values and traditions (obviously, I’m generalizing here, but you see my point, I hope?). This is probably the case for most western nations, including Australia; honestly if you didn’t hear people speaking or pay attention to centRe’s or coloUr’s you couldn’t tell the difference between mainstream Australia and America’s beachy cities. This is where the indigenous or Aboriginal peoples of Australia and the rest of Australia have an issue. Before I really delve into this touchy subject that I will admit that I am not fully informed about, I just wanted to clarify that these are all personal observations and inferences drawn from behaviors and texts I have read. Over the past six or seven years since I started working with the kids from Aim High then moving on to working with at risk youth in the Bronx to the Boys and Girls Club, I have developed different techniques for dealing with the children I was to teach/mentor. When I first started, I was just about 16 myself so I was never more than a year or two older than the oldest students I was interacting with so I pretty much just looked at the position as me hanging out with other kids from a different part of Saint Louis. As I grew older and gained more responsibility I began to understand the kind of impact I could have on these kids who were craving a role model, particularly one who was male and looked like them. My perception of my role shifted into mentor and role model more than friend, even shifting into the disciplinarian at times because I saw something (lots of things actually) lacking that my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents had instilled into me from the start; respect, courteousness, discipline, a love of learning, motivation, perseverance, civility, and did I mention respect? I thought that these kids had plenty of friends, but what they didn’t have was an older male figure to help them along in life, to be a mentor, heck, even just to throw around a football with. I certainly got static from lots of kids at first, but when they realized that I wasn’t just being hard on them because I could, but because I cared about them and wanted to see them succeed, the friendships came in time. These principles I put forth in my childcare experiences were crystallized at the Boys and Girls Club because it was really the first time that I spent more than just a few weeks consistently with the kids. The kids still liked to poke fun at my lack of ebonic speech, but there was a constant mutual respect that was developed over time. I was all for having a great time with the kids, but they knew never to cross that proverbial line with me because I meant business. ALLLLLL of that brings us to the present day in Perth dealing with predominantly indigenous children in the ALC. These kids are very much like the young people I dealt with at the Boys and Girls Club; many are from single parent homes, lots of drug/ alcohol/ physical abuse, high teenage pregnancy, low literacy, poverty, you name it, they’ve got it. But the literature I have read and the people I have talked to explicitly state that the relationship one forms is paramount when dealing with indigenous young people; this genuinely leaves me at a loss sometimes because it is damn near impossible to build a relationship with someone who has absolutely no respect for you as a human being, let alone an authority figure in a classroom. One of the things I read dichotomized the western educational/social model versus an indigenous Australian model. This in itself was problematic for me because a teacher cannot have a separate set of rules for one group of students and a different one for the other. Even if a socially marginalized group is the exception to the rule, this is not conducive to leveling the playing field in education. One of the most troubling differences that the document drew out was that in the western system, children are expected to follow their parents’ commands, whereas in the indigenous system, children have far greater autonomy (this point was to illustrate why indigenous students might get up and leave a classroom setting without notifying a teacher). This document was extremely biased in a way that seemed to excuse and justify the behavior of indigenous students, rather than looking at real problems and real solutions. Indigenous students might have a greater degree of autonomy at home, but it’s not because this is a cultural feature that differs from western society, it is because so many indigenous children are just being raised by their mothers who are statistically very likely to be an alcoholic or a drug addict and/ or have many other children to look after.

There really is too much to process with all of this. As of tomorrow, I will have been working in the ALC for three full weeks, haha. My background experience and Columbia degree focus on an entirely different situation with a different set of variables; I want to apply what I have learned and what I already know to this time and place, but I’m just not sure that I can. However, I have been praying that God would show me to best way to communicate with and ultimately be effective in the lives of these young people. I started doing this sort of work out of a desire for social justice, but as my faith grew, I realized that, yes, this is about social justice, but more specifically, it’s about showing young people the love of Christ in all of my actions and thoughts. Maybe that means that sometimes the kids will just need a swift proverbial kick in the pants and other times they will just need someone to talk to. No matter how God wants me to love these kids, that’s how I’ll do it.

I’m finished writing now; I have gotten myself in enough trouble already; then again, I still owe that confederate flag waving car dealership a phone call…

Take care.

Peace.

Blog Post 18.3.2009

2009-03-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Well, since the last time I posted I have been to zero concerts and zero sporting events; heck, I haven’t even played a rugby game. The past week and a half might have been the least busy since I have been here, yet the most full because I actually started work! When I last posted, my understanding of my position(s) was not quite as clear as it would be become. It turns out that I am not working three days a week as I previously was told, but in reality, five days a week, in three different positions. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I work in the Alternative Learning Center (ALC) with young people (they are not to called kids or children, but young people, ugh) who have been away from a formal school environment for several years and are now trying to get their academic/ vocational lives back on track. On Wednesdays I work at the local high school (Belmont City College or BCC) that the ALC young people would go to if they were not in our program. I am helping to coordinate a community service initiative for BCC’s students; the thinking behind it is interesting since the young people must complete 20 hours of community service or they will not be able to graduate. I don’t have a problem with community service in general, we had to do it at Burroughs and many high school students must do it as a part of their school’s set of beliefs, but here, it is a government requirement. At any rate, because it is such a firmly established fact that by law the students must complete the 20 hours, I hope that such a solid threat will make my work in that capacity fairly easy, but I’ll keep you posted. Finally, on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons I work in the Youth Centre in my most relaxed role by far. The job description for this position is pretty simple; engager of young people. We just play video games, foosball, ping pong, air hockey, pool, and whatever other activities a middle or high schooler might want to do with an older, cooler friend (me). So far my job(s) have been great, there is always a period of feeling out which I am still going through with the young people, at least the ones in the ALC because I actually have to be an authority figure in that role, whereas with the youth centre young people I can just hang out with the kids, be a big brother. As is always the case with young people, they say the darndest things.

Exchange 1; I had been playing table tennis/ interacting with this young man for ten minutes when the following things were said after we had already established that I was in fact American and not Jamaican.

Young Person A: You look Jamaican… But you sound American.
Jordan: I don’t know what to tell you, son.
YPA: Are you sure you aren’t Jamaican? There’s no Jamaicans in your family?
J: Uh, I’m pretty sure but I’ll let you know if I hear otherwise.

Exchange 2; I was walking through the youth centre with my supervisor who was showing me the emergency exits/ fire extinguishers when a young person I had never met engaged me as follows.

Young Person B: Hey! Can I touch your dreadlocks?
Jordan: Um, maybe some other time…
YPB: Well, what if I never see you again?
J: Then I guess you’ll never get to touch them.
YPB: You’re mean.
J: And you are an ignorant little brat.

Haha, oh children. Just for the record, I didn’t actually say that last line, I shrugged and kept it movin’.

But this really is the best case scenario I could have hoped and prayed for; I get to continue doing work that is very similar to what I was doing back at the Boys and Girls Club in St. Louis, but I also get to see many of the same issues present in St. Louis, that I studied at Columbia played out in a completely different social/ cultural context. I do not mean to make my experience here with these young people sound like an anthropological project, but ever since Cate and I started discussing issues with and within the indigenous peoples of Australia years ago, I have wanted to learn and try to do whatever I could to be a part of their lives and show them Christ’s love… and here I am with that opportunity!

Outside of work life has been a little unsettled. I finally moved out of the Mandurah house and into the Nedlands house. The Nedlands house has a pretty central location for Perth as a whole, is right down the street from our church, right down the street from my rugby club, but most importantly just a 15 minute drive from Cate’s house. This all sounds lovely, but because of some miscommunication and waffling on my part, I will only be living in the Nedlands house for the next week and half until the permanent roommate will move in. The other drawback to the Nedlands house is that my room is completely unfurnished and I thought it would be foolish to furnish it for two weeks, so I’m living out of my suitcases/ off the floor; good times. HOWEVER, I have managed to secure yet another living arrangement, this one will be set until August! One of Cate’s family friends and her roommate have been looking for a third roommate for a while because the two of them have been paying the rent that should have been split between three people. This house is also pretty centrally located, but the drive to Cate’s house is less than five minutes and it will certainly cut down on the drive to work, so yay!

Somehow, my little 1989 Ford Laser is still chugging along! I driven a little over 700 kilometers (435ish miles) in it and I haven’t had a single problem. In fact the other day, it was pretty warm, but I was on the highway so I didn’t want to let the windows down. I thought I would see if the car’s AC could at least blow a little air on me; the AC works perfectly and quickly! Honestly, this car has the best AC out of any car I have ever been in, haha, and one morning it was pretty chilly, so I tried out the heat, which also works perfectly. The only drawback is that the radio/cd player shorts out sometimes when I stop at a red light or when I put the car in reverse; the car is also very loosely sealed, meaning that with all of the doors and windows closed, if I drive above 60 or 70 km/h it sounds like the Leave it to Beaver theme song… you know, with all the whistling… Ha. Sometimes a horribly corny joke/metaphor/simile pops into my head and I just have to employ it, sorry.

I think that about covers it. If anyone is thinking about doing some serious travel soon, keep Australia in mind; my new house has two guest beds. Think about it…

Ments

2009-03-10T01:39:00.000-07:00

Disappointment.

a) I am in the midst of long job application process with Belmont City College (a high school in a lower income area of Perth) for a youth worker position. I have received lots of positive feedback from BCC, but no official word that I have been hired or of a start date; however with all that said, they checked my references and I am scheduled for a pre-employment medical screening, so there’s definitely optimism on my part. I just wish I could have heard something more definite from them.

a.5) Well! My disappointment has turned into joy! I wrote the rest of this entry yesterday but did not have time to post it and today I received a call from BCC informing me that I had been hired and I start on Wednesday! I am working in two part time positions, one which is two days a week as a youth worker and one other day as the community service liaison for the students at the high school! Haha, I really could not have been any happier about this position unless it was full time and they paid me more, but whatever ϑ Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement!

b) I was debating whether to put my serious disappointment here or my funny one, but I chose to go out with a laugh… Tonight, Cate and I went to a music festival, which was great, but one of the food vendors, “American Fast Foods,” plastered the sign below above their booth.

In case you can’t tell, the flag on the left is the confederate flag. I have also seen multiple advertisements for a local car dealership called, “Southside Mitsubishi.”

Again, in case there is any confusion, the cavalryman is carrying the confederate flag. I am nearly certain that neither of these usages of the incendiary flag was meant to oppress or create fear and that they were both seen as general “American” images and used as such out of ignorance. However, I would have expected a little more tact out of the Australians; if your business is going to have a logo from another country’s set of images, one would think that you might, I don’t know, check the context of the image you are using. But, maybe the upside to all of my free time while waiting to be hired is that I have a wonderful opportunity to courteously express my vehement disgust with both of these fine establishments.

c) My favorite Australian fast food chain, Chicken Treat, has a combo meal called the, “Hawaiian Pack.” The pack includes a quarter chicken, French fries, a drink, and of course, to add Hawaiian authenticity, a couple of slices of Pineapple. Now, Chicken Treat is currently running a television promotion to drum up sales for the Hawaiian Pack by giving away a trip to Hawaii. In the commercial, a cartoon chicken talks in an unmistakably Jamaican accent about the wonders of a lush Hawaiian getaway. Hawaii is certainly tropical, as is Jamaica, but come on Aussie ad exec; really? There are SO many advertising teams who need to give me (as a fifth grader) their jobs because clearly, I (even at the tender age of 11) could do wonders for them. Ha.

Excitement.

*The following section (until the break) is also an addition since I wrote the bulk of this post. I am moving out of my Mandurah house this weekend! I’m moving into a house in Nedlands, about a ten minute walk from my rugby club, with two other guys for a couple weeks and then hopefully finding a new and permanent residence for the next nine or so months. I would have stayed in the Nedlands house, but I thought I would be able to find a cheaper place to live… this might have been a mistake, but I suppose you live and you learn; and then you get Luvs, haha, I couldn’t resist. At any rate, I am looking forward to settling into a real routine at last. I commented to Cate that over the past few weeks I have secured two out of the three things I needed while I was here, a home, a car, and a job, but never all three and never the same two. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Cate and I have just finished the last of our jam packed weekends for a while. Just to recap, last weekend, we saw Coldplay… COLDPLAY! It was a great show with awesome energy from the band and of course the crowd (Pictures below)

A couple of days ago, we saw The Cat Empire, another show with greatly enthused participants; except for me, but it was still a good time and I can appreciate the band for their musical worth. On Saturday, Cate coached her little kids in basketball, and then we rushed over to my first Aussie rugby game! After the rugby, Cate and I came home thinking we had several hours before we would leave to attend an Aussie Rules Football match between local rivals (Fremantle Dockers and the West Coast Eagles), but it turns out that we had about five minutes. So I sprayed on some deodorant (yikes, sorry mom) and changed clothes as we ran out the door. But this footy matchup was well worth my funkiness. The Eagles have traditionally beaten up on the Dockers, and the Dockers seemed to play with this knowledge casting a long shadow over their abilities. The Eagles were up by 25 points, but somehow the Dockers pulled off a furious come back to win the contest!

Finally, today, we joined one of Cate’s friends for a breakfast cookout before attending the aforementioned music festival featuring Kings of Leon. The KoL show featured wonderful emotion from the standing crowds that had been waiting around slogging through the average performances of filler acts before their heroes performed; yet KoL just didn’t really bring their A game in my opinion. At any rate, another excellent weekend, but I’m just looking forward to some down time with Cate next weekend as we celebrate our four year anniversary. ϑ

Statement.

1) I hate to brag, but I like to think that I made a bit of a statement during Saturday’s rugby matches. Our team played in three 7’s (seven on seven as opposed to standard rugby which is 15 on 15) matches, each lasting 14 minutes. In the first game, I just got to play for a couple of minutes, but we won handily; so resounding was our victory that our coach decided to rest all of the starters for the second game and play us second stringers. While definitely more than a little nervous, I was thrilled to finally get back into some competitive, physical sport after my three year hiatus. Somehow, I managed to make several big runs (including a try complete with me stiff-arming a would be tackler… in the face! FYI, a try is approximately the rugby equivalent of a touchdown in American football), a few tackles, and a great defensive play that would be too complicated for me to explain right now, but just know that it involved me sprinting nearly the length of the field, and I did it in impressive fashion. Our team has several weeks of trial matches coming up before our real season begins, but these next weeks are integral in deciding which players are established at the different levels called grades; 1,2,3,4, and 5 where 1 is the highest level). Of course, lest I get too cocky, our team was humbled in my final game of the day. I was just unable to keep up with the players on the other team, and to top it off, at some point in the game, an opponent stepped on my thigh and ripped my spandex shorts! But that last game really was a crucial one because it showed me just how far I have to go if I want to make it to the first grade team, let alone be successful if selected for it.

2) OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I saw this hat on the head of an Australian in front of us at the music festival today, haha. I have also seen t- shirts emblazoned with the face of the American president in the Australian equivalent of a forever 21. Small world.

ANYway. That’s enough out of me, hope all is well wherever you are. Please keep in touch; as busy as I am being unemployed and having a great time with Cate, it is always so refreshing to hear from a fellow Davis or Parker or Burroughs/ CU alum. Take care.

My Life is like a Whirlwind

2009-02-25T23:55:00.000-08:00

That’s right. A whirlwind.

The kind that blows around for five minutes about ten feet off the ground in a dusty patch of Nebraska; in other words, utterly mundane.

Obviously, it has been wonderful to meet Cate in the city for her lunch hour and to spend time with her and the fam for dinners, but that’s about all I do these days. Since the disappointment of Fake-Sports-Marketing-Job-2.0 a couple of weeks ago I have entered mild crisis mode. After rebuffing the offer from the company which shall not be named (I feel kinda bad for belittling what they do/did so much in one of my previous entries, so I’ll just never mention them by name again), I applied for a series of jobs in cafes, restaurants, and retail establishments. One of my favorites (sarcasm) was for a management training position at Hungry Jack’s, or as American’s and Australian’s on the east coast of the country know it, Burger King. If accepted in this role I would be trained to manage a Hungry Jack’s franchise, certainly not an ideal way to spend my time here, but it would be better than operating the fry-o-lator. A couple days ago, a representative from the company called me and said he would email me the details for the interview; namely the location. Yet, the interview is meant to be tomorrow, and I have not heard from them, I also have no means of calling them back because the call was from a private line. Alas, so I sit and wait to hear back about other positions for which I have applied and continue looking for new opportunities.

Of course my life isn’t really as boring as I make it seem; just last Friday Cate and I joined her parents to see Roberta Flack accompanied by the West Australia Symphony Orchestra (WASO) in Kings Park. I’ll include some pictures of the event and the park itself, both exuding class and style. The WASO does a series of outdoor concerts every year with pop artists then charge an arm and a leg (I heard tickets were going for $100!). But no matter what the motivation of the WASO, the concert was handled very nicely. Roberta Flack only sang a couple of her own songs, but rather, opted to cover more well known contemporaries like Stevie Wonder. Cate and I splintered away from the business talk of her father and met an African- American man who had married an Australian woman! He and his wife have lived in three Australian cities over the past ten years and when prompted to give some advice to someone in a seemingly similar situation give this pithy reply, “hang in there.” Thanks, guy. ANYway, this chance encounter (only my second with another African-American male in Australia) was a reminder that I didn’t really need, but was and is good to keep in mind. Just because we are both African- American males does not mean that we would instantly hit it off or have all these points of connection. But that really is another topic for another time.

OH! Before I forget, happy birthday Nicole Patrice Davis, 20! Wow, so old, so mature, look at you go/ grow/ glow? I’m not sure when I will actually post this entry, but know that I was thinking about you on your birthday even if I did not call you (I was going to, but I figured you would not want a 6am wakeup from me J ) I love you and miss you!

Now, other than my quartet of lunch dates with Cate each week, Roberta Flack, and finding a job, there has been just one thing that has been consuming my mind. Rugby. It has come time to see whether or not rugby is just a new sport to add to my canon of those that I follow doggedly OR if it will become something much bigger than that, my new sporting passion. Football took hold of me the final couple years of high school and the first two of CU and in many ways, I gave a good deal of my life to it as well. I missed out on family vacations because I was so dedicated to my training schedule, not a drop of alcohol ever passed my lips until my football career ended, and to top it all off, my right shoulder, both knees, and my feet are not quite right (100% functional, but definitely well worn, haha, it’s an eBay ad for my body). To make a long story short, I’m diving in head first. Rugby is the next athletic summit I will attempt to climb and it’s going to be a slow process, but ultimately one which is already paying dividends. For starters, I belong to an athletic team again. Unless you have been a part of a sports team that takes itself seriously you really would not understand the significance of joining up again; and if you have, then you already know the thoughts of sacrifice, championships, and camaraderie that are dancing through my mind. Secondly, and very closely related to number one, I have a uniform again! I’ll be able to proudly don the Blue and Gold (again! J) of the Nedlands Rugby Union Football Club. Finally, and I’m not sure how high this actually ranks on my scale of importance, but it warrants mentioning; I will be in great physical shape again. I did a lot of work to get to this point, but the past few days of sprints with Cate got me pretty sore through the hamstrings and when paired with today’s first practice on grass it reminded me exactly why I loved and yet disliked football. In sport, there’s a constant tension of, “God gave me these tools, how can I best cultivate them and use them to His glory?” And, “God, do we really have to run eight more windsprints?” The soreness I’m feeling right now is the good kind, when you know that you’ve put in a hard workout and your body will be better for it in the end; but trust me I’ll keep you posted on my soreness quotient as the season picks up speed.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got… Except that Cate and I are going to see Coldplay live and in concert on Friday night! Yes! There will DEFINITELY be pictures from that show! Hope all is well with you in whatever corner of the globe you are reading this, and by the way. Thank you for taking the time to peer into the inner spewings of my brain, I really appreciate it. And if I ever get too narcissistic, please, please call me on it.

Zip it up.
And zip it out.

Oh, and just for fun, below is a picture of my house in Mandurah.

Picture Time

2009-02-16T17:54:00.001-08:00

This is my first of many picture updates and naturally, this set is very "Cate/Jordan" heavy, but deal with it. Hm, these pictures are a lil bit out of order, but, this is the way I uploaded them and it would be a lot more trouble than it's worth to arrange them correctly so... enjoy! :) I'm including two captions under each photograph; "a)" matches the photo on the top and "b" corresponds with the bottom.

a) Australia Day fireworks at the Perth foreshore. b) Not really sure what, if any, particular significance this picture has, but it looks pretty nice.

a) Durty Nelly's? Wow. Impressive work for our boy from tha Lou. I know he spells it, "Derrty," and I also know that this is an Irish Pub in Perth, but it's still pretty awesome. b) This is one of the beautiful coastal/ sunset shots that was captured about five minutes from my house in Mandurah.

a) This is the interior of Greens and Co, an obviously cool place that we often frequent after church. b) Hanging out on the beach.

a) Uh, not really sure, but I like it. b) Gorgeous backdrop at the Emirates Western Force rugby game at the Subiaco Oval.

a) Proud force supporters! The force behind the Force. A sea of blue as powerful as the Indian Ocean. A congregation of believers worshipping at the altar of sport. The most dominant sporting entity in the worlds most isolated capital. I only made up about 40% of that stuff... b) More fireworks on Australia Day (January 26th).

a) Happy Australia Day! Ah yes, while I was wearing this outfit (Australian flag boardshorts and the Australian national soccer team jersey) I was harassed by a drunken fool who felt the need to inform me that, "It's Australia Day, not Jamaica Day!" Ugh. b) Rugby boots and ball; they just kinda fell like that... I didn't arrange them so perfectly, how big of a dork do you think I am?

a) Beach fun, mere days after Cate's wisdom teeth extraction (hence the puffy cheeks). b) "What part of Jamaica are you from?" "Right down by de beach, mon!"

a) I asked her permission before I took the photo and one could only assume that eventually any picture I take might end up on my blog... On second thought, she probably was still groggy from the anesthetic, but oh well, it's too late. b) :)

a) So cute! Pop Rocks! She loves em! b) This is the first picture we took together after being apart for seven months, flying to the other side of the world (both of us, she was in Austria), and not having showered for 24 and 16 hours respectively. Awesome. No, seriously, the best collection of moments in my life :)

Jampacked Weekend

2009-02-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

Friday: Night; Western Force professional rugby. Awesome! My first live pro rugby match! Sadly, Western Australia, but mostly Perth let me down. Rugby isn’t really a big deal on this side of the country; over here they fancy sports like cricket and Aussie rules football. As a result of this apathetic feeling towards rugby the stadium was only about half full for the season opener! For those of you in America, I’m having a hard time trying to explain how shocking this was to me. The Western Force play in the “Super 14,” this league is comprised of 14 rugby clubs in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (arguably, three of the best rugby playing nations in the world, at least judging by the number of rugby world cups won between the three: five (there have only been six rugby world cups contested, the next will be held in New Zealand in 2011… but I digress)). Following the preceeding logic, the quality of play in the Super 14 should be just as good as, if not better than any other rugby league in the world, yet, the only professional rugby team in the western 80% of Australia cannot even fill up its stadium for their home opener? Take a walk into my imagination with me… let’s say there were only 14 teams in the NFL and these franchises were spread pretty evenly through the US, Canada, and Mexico, can you imagine EVER being able to find tickets to one of those games? OK, I know that such a comparison isn’t really fair since the sporting culture in America is, dare I say it, much stronger than it is in Australia; plus there are a lot more people in the state of California than all of Australia, so I guess I can let the seeming lack of fan support slide, I just expected more from you Perth. Anyway, the game was very exciting right down to finish, but sadly the Force weren’t able to pull out a victory.

Saturday: Morning; Cate and I helped to coach some little kids basketball teams and it was great! I miss all my children from the Boys and Girls Club so it was nice to get back into that groove again. My team was comprised of eight-ten year old boys and girls and after a heated discussion, we named ourselves the cheetahs. I had to leave my kiddies to referee another game, but apparently I had prepared them so well in the 15 minutes that I knew them before the contest began that they were able to soldier onward to victory. Afternoon; Cate was scheduled to play a basketball game with friends from church so we drove over to the gym, Cate in full uniform ready to go, only to find that her game had been forfeited due to a lack of players. On the upside, Cate and I got to play some three on three basketball with four random guys who were at the gym (this is good news because Cate, understandably, does not like playing pickup with just anyone since many of the pick-up players at CU were so out of control that she feared for her health. As a result of this general precaution we rarely actually get to play basketball together unless it’s one on one, which really is a limited amount of fun for both of us. Cate is a MUCH better basketball player (dribbling/shooting/ you know, basketball stuff) than I am, but I’m a really good faker so I can get by playing basketball because I’m faster and stronger; so we end up tweaking the rules for me to level the playing field and it’s a pretty good time, but we would both rather just go all out in a non- one on one setting. Night; Valentine’s Day? Oh yeah! Cate and I got moderately dressed up and headed out to a wonderful steakhouse near the docks in Fremantle (suburb of Perth) called Char Char Bull. The evening was really lovely and we were just finishing up our meals (surf and turf featuring prawns as the surf bit with lemon, lime, and bitters (llab for short) which is a delicious drink composed of bitters, lime juice, and lemon-lime soda) when a waiter brought us two more glasses of llab. He set the tasty beverages down on the table and said they were compliments of the two gentlemen sitting about 15 feet away from us. Now upon receiving our round of llab, two thoughts wrestled in my head 1) Um… guys don’t buy other guys drinks unless they are interested in said guys, however, I am clearly taken… by a woman. 2) Maybe they overheard me talking to Cate about how they seemed to be a little too playful with a female member of the waitstaff and they felt bad for presenting themselves in such a bad light and as such, felt compelled to buy us llab to make up for it. Cate and I just could not get over what these two guys might be trying to say/ do, so we asked our waitress (the one whom they were being overly- friendly with) what their deal might be and she just told us that they were two nice guys who came in the restaurant all the time. This lowered my guard enough that I thought we should go over to the table and thank them, but they were gone by the time I had actually decided to get up. So, we will never know the mystery of the llab, but instead will always be left with the question, “why us?” Sure, we are a fantastically cute couple… but it was Valentine’s… at a restaurant…there were plenty of cute couples that night, heck, one couple got engaged right next to our two drink buyers, but they chose us. Freaky. Oh well.

Sunday: Morning; Delicious eggs (with chilli powder)/ham/ OJ breakfast. Mid-Morning/Afternoon; Cate has invited three co-workers over for lunch so we frantically rush around the house and to the grocery store to prepare our lunch feast. Grilled chicken, nicely spiced, with roast potatoes, and a garden salad. Nothing really happened at lunch, just eating and talking. Evening; we were meant to go to church, but instead decided to just relax at home watching The Office (America), good times.

Mini Update

2009-02-12T14:34:00.000-08:00

Today is Friday, February 13th, 2009; the time is 7:35 in the am.

In an about face, I decided not to take the raffle-ticket-selling job, but of course there was no backup job waiting for me. Over the past several days I have redoubled my efforts and have resigned myself to the fact that some of the things I really wanted to get involved with (namely a bible study group at Cate's church (which I suppose is also my church now, haha) and rugby) might have to be tabled for a while because initially, I was just looking for 9-5 type jobs that would allow me to participate in those activities, but now I have to cast a wider net.

In less sombre news, this will be a BIG weekend! Tonight Cate and I are going to the Western Force (Super 14 rugby, some of the highest levels of rugby in the world) season opener! Tomorrow we are helping to recruit local kids to play basketball, then Cate has a game of her own, and then we have valentines day/night dinner at a restaurant with which Cate is surprising me! On Sunday morning I am watching the NBA All Star Game with some guys from church then rushing back to Cate's house to help her host a little bbq lunch, then church, and finally, I'll head back down to Mandurah.

I promise to try to get some pictures up on the blog at the beginning of next week!

Zip it up. And zip it out.

Here. We. Go.

2009-02-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

At the request of my mother; I am not remotely in the path of the myriad Australian natural disasters. Rest assured.

The past week has been laid- back, to say the least. Because I was still unemployed I spent my days reading ("About a Boy" and now "The Best American Sports Writing of 2008") and then I would take the bus into the city and meet up with Cate for lunch. We would usually finish lunch around 1:30, she'd go back to work and I would have 2.5-3 hours to kill. These afternoons spent roaming the central business district of Perth were pretty fun, although, there really are just two or three long streets of shops to explore and within that number, there's a limited number of shops I would even want to enter. In the evenings, Cate and I have been spending out time running, cooking dinner (limiting our eating out, really and truly), and watching television shows... on DVD, haha.

This lifestyle has been pretty relaxing, and it has definitely been nice to have some time off work since I went straight from the Boys and Girls Club to The Container Store before I got to Australia, but it was/ is time to get back to work; Taylormade Sports agreed. I found this company on a job-seeking-website and they billed the position as a combination of sports marketing and retail which led me to believe that I would be working in some sort of Australian Sports Authority-esque environment, which is actually a pretty exciting prospect. The company gave me a call and we set up an interview for last Thursday. I arrived at the office building, which had an eerily similar feel to the set-up of the "sports marketing" job I got and then rejected immediately after I graduated from Columbia. I was even talking to Cate on the phone as I sat outside the place telling her that the layout of the office park that the interview was taking place in reminded me of that horrible experience, but she reassured me and I realized that, surely, Taylormade Sports would be a legitimate place for me to work.

As I walked into the actual office of Taylormade Sports, my fears reached new levels as the layout/ atmosphere ( two supposedly attractive female receptionists in their early twenties sitting in an alcove of sorts; neither of them actually appeared to be working as facebook, myspace, and/or some sort of internet chat program was displayed on their screens; their top 40 pop music station was playing way too loud for an office where any sort of meaningful work could possibly be done; blah blah blah...) nearly identically reflected that of my previous foray into this field; but again, I left these irrational comparisons at the wayside of my mind and focused on the interview. I impressed my interviewer (and owner of the company) enough that he invited me back for a second round interview, which would be more of an experience with some members of the company out in the real world (just like the aforementioned job I had to refuse).

So... the first interview was on Thursday. On Friday, I came into the city to have lunch with Cate, then we got a drink to celebrate the weekend. A few hours later we went to a friend's house for dinner, great food and company. On a related note, it is very interesting to be confronted with sheer naive ignorance. Let me say that this family was very outgoing and personable, as am I, so I think they perceived a comfort level that might not quite have been there for me; or maybe they are just SO outspoken that they would have said what they said at any rate. The middle daughter of the family, 20, asked to no one in particular (which was odd since I was sitting at the table), "why are they called Afro- Americans? I thought an Afro was a hairstyle?" A legitimate question, especially since no one calls us Afro- Americans anymore, for that very reason, haha. The father commented on the, "particular largeness of the Afro- Americans playing in the Super Bowl." I guess he missed all the particularly large white men also playing in the game, but I guess people see what they want to see. And finally, my favorite; the mother. She certainly takes the cake, but she is definitely one to say whatever is on her mind. The second thing she said to me after our introduction was, "Oh my! Do you work out?" At the protest of her daughter who saw how such a comment might make me a teensy bit uncomfortable, she retorted, "What? Look at him, he obviously does!" That was cute. Later in the evening a discussion broke out about the mother's lack of understanding of 50 Cent's "Candy Shop." Again, much to the chagrin of her daughters, she protested that, as a girl, she would go to the candy shop and get lollipops all the time. I politely told her that I was pretty sure that Fitty had something else in mind when he wrote that song and she replied, "So! You DO understand that ghetto slang! You knew what he was talking about! Say something from tha' hood! Talk ghetto!"

As is often the case in situations like these, I am reminded of a Dave Chappelle stand-up act. Once, Dave had just finished performing in the south and he went a Ponderosa-style restaurant where you order at the front and they bring your food to you at your table. He was looking up at the menu and prepared to order while still deciding saying, "I'll have..." And the white cashier interrupted him by interjecting, "The chicken!" Dave's response, "What the %$#@?" The clerk's retort, "Look here buddy, it's no secret around here that blacks... and chickens, are very fond of one another." Dave continued in his mind thinking, "Wow, that was really racist. I'm not even mad, just stunned that someone could be so blatantly racist." These are the things that churn through my mind in real life situations, haha. Hm, that's pretty interesting, three of the most blatantly racist things to ever happen in my life have a) all been in the last 2 years b) twice involved white Australian women asking me to speak ebonics and c) not happened in the US or involved white Americans at all (the third involved an Indian cab driver in Toronto)

ANYway. Saturday rolled around and Cate and I prepared a delicious feast of bacon and eggs. Just as we were sitting down to eat, the doorbell rang and guess who it was! The Jehovah's Witnesses! I'm going to keep THIS story short, but basically, these guys using the same Bible as protestant Christians came to the Taylor at 9am on a Saturday morning picking and choosing verses to support their outlandish claims. What they failed to do was, I don't know, read the verses in context? All I can say is that I hope our chat with them gave them some things to think about because they really would pluck three verses from the middle of a chapter to support a given point, but LITERALLY would not have read the verses before or after it to contextualize what they were saying; or maybe they did and were in denial about them? But, after we talked to them for a good 30-45 minutes, we finished breakfast and then walked around for a bit before Cate's basketball game (they lost, but she starred!). We then went our separate ways as I joined some friends from church to watch a professional Aussie Rules Football (AFL or footy, there will be more about this in a later post) game while Cate joined friends from work to say goodbye to a coworker. We reconvened late that night to catch a bit of the England/ Italy rugby match that was being broadcast live in a few pubs at midnight. Sunday. Beach. Church. Coffee/Tea/ Cake.

Monday, Monday, Monday! At last, the day of the interview had arrived (sorry for leaving you get-jordan-a-job people hanging for three paragraphs) and I prepared myself to dazzle my potential employers. I walked into the office and my heart dropped out of my chest and onto the floor, SMACK! It was 7:50am on Monday morning and the company from which I was hoping to secure employment was having a dance party to motivate their employees. Those of you to whom I have told the story will recall that this was EXACTLY how they started the day at the horrible job that I did not take back in St. Louis. At this point I was mired in the deepest denial, I think I was telling myself that these things must all be coincidences, they could not possibly be related. Maybe even worse than all of that, all the guys who worked in the office were somehow exact replicas of sleazy New Jersey guys who use way too much hair gel, have orange tans, diamond stud earrings, and workout too hard (basically, just imagine the guy from the "My New Haircut" youtube video, if you haven't already seen it, I might not recommend it because of some coarse language, but I cannot control what you do on the internet...). Thankfully, I was teamed up with a guy who seemed pretty normal. He asked me if I drove and I told him that I did, so then he asked me if I could drive us to the site where we would set up, I told him I could (for those of you who do not know, nearly this exact same thing happened with the freakishly similar job before. Granted, in St. Louis, I was asked to drive because my interviewer's car broke down, whereas, yesterday I was asked to drive because I would need to drive back to the office by myself while they stayed at the site for the rest of the day). We arrived at the mall and set up our post. Keep in mind that this is a sports marketing job, and to be fair, we were dealing with sports and marketing, but not in the way that a rational person might think. Their task, and mine if I were to be hired, was to sell raffle tickets in a cross promotion with a local AFL team. Proceeds from the ten dollar raffle tickets went to youth sports foundations (and to us as the marketing company of course) and there are some pretty swanky prizes. My interviewer goes to different malls, airports, sporting events, and grocery store from day to day and sells the same raffle tickets. But here's the huge double whammy. He, and all the other associates at Taylormade Sports, sell the tickets between 9am-5:30pm, when most people are at work, (but then again, malls close at 5:30pm everyday but Thursday when they close at 8pm or 9pm for late night shopping). The second half of the whammy is that my interviewer, his assistant, pretty much everyone else in the company, and myself if hired all work on commission. 20% of each ticket goes into my pocket as commission... and that's my only salary. At this point I was internally beside myself because I could not believe that I had managed to get myself into nearly the same situation, but at least I would not be selling car wax at gas stations this time! Almost immediately after I had that thought, my interviewer took out a booklet with the company's structure/ business plan. They are a part of an international corporation called The Cobra Group (TCG). TCG has several different arms, one is Allsport, Taylormade Sports falls under that umbrella. As I was looking through the description of TCG, for the second time in two hours my heart stopped beating. None of the "coincidences" that I had been dismissing existed at all, they were not accidents. One of the five arms of TCG was "Fastwax," the EXACT company that I was given a job with nearly nine months ago! How could I have been so stupid?

I was freaking out pretty hard at this point, but I had to finish up the day. I went back to the office, had a little chat, was offered a position with Taylormade Sports, but told him that I would need some time to think about it. Thus commenced the longest several hours of deliberation. Clearly, this was a crappy job, but equally as obvious was the fact that I didn't exactly have people knocking down my door to hire me. So after all of this thinking through the different scenarios, Cate and I came to the conclusion that I should take the job for a few weeks, frantically look for a legitimate position, and by legitimate I mean one with at least an hourly wage, preferably a salary, but beggars with Ivy League degrees can't be choosers.

So there you have it. I have a job and I start bright and early tomorrow morning. 7:30am with a techno dance party; yes, this is actually my life. I'm off to enjoy my last day of freedom.

Peace

Super Bowl XLIII

2009-02-01T21:36:00.000-08:00

As you all know I'm a pretty huge football fan. The Super Bowl is the climax of the season from a playing standpoint, but clearly the game is about a lot more than just football. There are commercials, parties, hours and hours of coverage, picking a team to root for (assuming that your team did not make it), and general festive attitude everyone one goes.

This Super Bowl was very different.

Obviously, I'm in Australia or else no one would be reading this. Because I am here in Perth, I just finished watching the "live" coverage of the game (it is 2:40 pm on Monday February second). Sporting events during the daytime just do not hold the same excitement factor as those in the evening or at night. As a result of the 10:30 am game time in Perth, I watched the big game alone, with minimal excitement, or even snacks, but this was the least of my worries.

A factor I had failed to consider when being reminded that I would be able to watch the Super Bowl in Australia was Australian announcers. As the pre-game hype began JUST half an hour before the game kicked off, I became terrified as I listened to the "commentators" talk about football. First of all, I never noticed just how different of an atmosphere is created when broadcasters and commentators dress professionally. The four guys that were in the studio for the Super Bowl discussion were indistinguishable from blokes taken off the street. This is surely not some laxity in Australia because over the past two weeks I have been watching quite a bit of the Australian Open and the broadcasters in the booth and studio dress as one might expect, but this is really a trivial issue because, thankfully, these fellows did not attempt to handle the play by play duties and left that to the American legends John Madden and Al Michaels who handled the game for NBC. But seriously, have you ever watched a sporting event spanning over several hours with someone who does not really grasp the essence of the action and therefore asks inane questions until s/he finally realizes that their behavior is getting annoying and just sits quietly and enjoys the game for what it's worth? These guys were like that, except, ostensibly, they were getting paid to keep talking and since none of them really knew what they were talking about, they just kept on making ridiculous comments laced with hyperbole about America and American football.

ANYway.

I'm not going to talk about the game because I'm sure most of you saw it, but I will offer my candid commentary on some of the other elements of Super Bowl Monday Mid-Morning/ Afternoon for me.

1) It's cute that some NFL players are apparently more proud of what high school they went to than what university; perhaps a good many of them did not graduate from said universities and thus it makes sense that they might use their high school in place of their college when introducing themselves in the traditional NFL broadcast style. However, Ike Taylor, cornerback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, took his game to a new level. When introducing himself, he said, "Ike Taylor........... Swaggin." In case anyone in the billion person viewing audience missed that, Al Michaels cleared it up by quipping, " No, 'Swaggin' is not the name of an institution of higher learning; but Taylor is referencing his, 'swagger.' And he'll have to play with a lot of it tonight because he's covering Larry Fitzgerald." Priceless. Even though I was banking on Fitzgerald having a big game, Ike Taylor increased that desire and thankfully I was rewarded as Fitzgerald absolutely punked Taylor, catching a touchdown right above his opponent's head. Gotta love it.

2) Brenda Warner got a new hair-do. Good for her!

3) I did not get to watch many of the famed commercials during the broadcast because these commercials are just tailored for the American audience, so I was forced to watch the local commercials that would have normally been running at 11 am on a Monday morning. A couple gems:

a) The other day Cate and I walked by a Subway and I asked her what the deal was with five- dollar- foot- long- sandwiches in Australia because they use the metric system here and, surely the price must be different. I imagined something along the lines of, "Six. Six dollar. Six dollar 30 centimeterrrrrrrrr." However, the reality of the situation was SO much better, and by better, I mean the most awkwardly worded commercial jingle ever. It had the exact same tune and melody but with these words, "Seven. Seven Dollar. Seven Dollar Subway Foot Long Subbbbbbbbbbbbbs." Perfect!

b) Everyone in America is quite familiar with President Barack Obama's (speaking of which; as I typed that spell check informed me that both of his names were spelling errors. Will the next edition of Microsoft Word include 'Barack' and 'Obama' as words? Just throwing that out there...) campaign rallying cry of, "Yes We Can." Apparently, the rest of the world is quite familiar as well. A commercial for the local GM dealership used a font that was nearly identical to that used throughout Obama's iconic campaign posters and advertisements. They also played a voice replicating Obama's in tone and cadence in the background as cars drove into the shot that said something along the lines of, "Can we get you a 2009 Jeep Cherokee for under $38,000 off the lot? Yes we can." At the conclusion of the commercial, the screen read, A Price CHANGE You Can Believe In.

Outside of my disappointment that the Arizona Cardinals could not secure a victory, that pretty much sums up my 2009 Super Bowl experience. Now, I'm back to reading, training for rugby, and looking for a job.

"Baywatch"

2009-01-29T17:13:00.000-08:00

At the mention of this television program from the mid 90's several things might pop into your head, but the first thing that comes to my mind is slow motion running on the beach. Unfortunately, I felt like I was stuck in a slo-mo beach running scene for the vast majority of my first rugby practice in Perth (last night).

When I signed up with the Nedlands Rugby Football Club I knew that the first several weeks of pre-season practice would actually just be conditioning sessions. This was/ is not a problem, seeing as a) all sports need time to condition before the season begins and b) I am particularly out of shape (at least from a playing a competitive sport standpoint). The one factor I had not accounted for was the beach, or more specifically, the difficulty of running in sand.

Anyone who knows me knows that running in and of itself is not, nor has ever been a problem for me, especially short sprints. Rugby is similar to football in that there are short bursts with rests in between so I figured I would be in pretty good shape with our conditioning program. But, the agility drills and jogging we did on the beach was some of the hardest running I have ever done. After the running portion of the program, we switched to the strength side of things, which I also did not anticipate having trouble with; THIS was a mistake.

The coaches brought five metal pipes about two meters in length by three inches in diameter and assigned four people to each pipe. Two held the pipe on either end while one did various pull-ups and chin-ups and the fourth would sit behind doing abdominal exercises. We rotated through the different positions two or three times and my body had literally just shut down, the lactic acid had built up in my arms and I couldn't hold the pole, let alone do a pull up, so I had to sit out for a bit. Flat out embarrassing. A rookie, and an American gridder at that, couldn't take the work out.

I caught my wind a bit and joined the group a few minutes later to close out the session with wind sprints and more ab work. I walked away from the session, pretty exhausted, but armed with a new resolve to get fit and become a leader in this club. I took the first step (no pun intended) this morning as I went to the beach, jogged and ran sprints... in the sand. I intentionally ran in the unpacked loose sand further away from the water because that's what they had us running on at practice. I really have no idea how people get used to running in sand, but I guess I'm going to find out.

Outside of my rugby quest, life has been pretty ho hum. Still trying to find a job, haven't really moved into the place in Mandurah, and Cate's back at work so I've been watching a lot of the Australian Open and reading! Yay. Haha, but, whatever, it's just about the weekend now and I'm officially moving down to far, far, away Mandurah tomorrow and hopefully I'll have a job soon enough.

That about wraps it up, take care.

Happy Australia Day!

2009-01-25T15:01:00.000-08:00

I'd like to welcome you all to MY first Australia Day, haha! Today is the celebration of Australia's independence from Britain and we plan to celebrate by: kayaking on the river right alongside the city, bbq-ing, and finally watching the HUGE fireworks display (I'll post pictures sometime :)

ANYway.

I have been here for about a week and a half and it has been nearly that long since I have written on this blog, so there's a fair amount to recap.

1) God is SO good! I have been given several leads/ connections for jobs through people I met in church! The two most exciting prospects are a) a youth worker position with underprivileged high schoolers (almost identical to what I was doing with the Boys and Girls Club!) and b) Cate's friend's dad owns a Christian newspaper and they just happen to be looking for a sports writer RIGHT NOW! haha; so hopefully, one or both of those options works out, but I'm just so grateful that there are actually opportunities for me to do what I am passionate about while I'm here instead of potentially just working to make money.

2) God is SO good! haha, I am in Australia with Cate and she is not going back to work til tomorrow! But, the REASON she isn't going back to work until tomorrow lies deep within her mouth, or rather, it did about a week ago when her wisdom teeth were still firmly in their places. Her recovery has been pretty steady, but she still has a good deal of bruising on one side of her face and as the day progresses, so does the throbbing pain in her jaw. Medicine and ice packs only do so much, but Cate has been a real trooper because the only real limitation her surgery put on our activities was that we could not play basketball or run together. However, we went to the beach (Cate was FANtastically burnt; silly melanin deficient people, sunshine is for me!), walked around the city, walked around Fremantle (Freo) which is like SoHo in the sense that the area is funky, trendy, and filled with shopping and dining options, and have pretty much just hung out every way possible in the Perth metropolitan area.

3) As I was mentioning earlier, I have only been to church twice here, but the people are pretty awesome. I'm not sure how much contact you all have had with Australian's or maybe you just haven't noticed, but they LOVE to abbreviate/ nickname; my favorites from Cate's friends at church are: Sezzy Bear (Sarah), Af (Aaron), Paddo (Daniel), and the best one yet, "The Bamboo Banger" (Rishi). I have two potential nicknames floating around, "Milo," which I can only assume has been foisted upon me because I am brown just like the popular Australian powdered malt mix, but I will get some clarification from Cate's sister's boyfriend when I see him. The second was created last night after church, "Sparky." Jordan-Jordin Sparks- Sparky. Definitely one of the better options put forth, especially in light of other nicknames I have had, or at least that people tried to give me, booyah, chilli, mister hot chocolate... haha, I'm just kidding about that last one. Or am I? To completely switch gears, the sermon at church last night was pretty good. The guy preaching (the church is waiting for their pastor to get his visa so he can move with his family to Australia; pretty interesting that there are at LEAST two thriving churches in Manhattan with Australian pastors and multiple churches in Perth that have looked outside of their own nation for preachers, but I digress) focused on Titus 2:11-14 and when he was illustrating verse 13 (you need to look up these verses because I don't want to just slap one or two up here and have it be out of context :) which talks about joyful anticipation for the triumphant return of Christ, the guy put up a picture of the crowd in Grant Park in Chicago on the night of November fourth as they waited for Obama to come out and make his acceptance speech. Now, I understand what the preacher was trying to do, he certainly was not making a direct parallel between the American president and Jesus, but to even put them in the same sentence like that (as happens quite often in secular circles) is pretty disturbing to me. I voted for Obama and I think he will be a great president who will affect a good deal of change, however, people really, REALLY need to lay off this whole savior business. He's just a guy, granted he's the president of the USA, but still, just a guy who has to work through the same bureaucracy of government that every other president has to; he's just a politician, not a transcendent earth moving force. I have very few problems with Obama himself, but I have a plethora of issues with the perceptions that people have created of/ around him. OK, that's my little American politics rant for the week, feel free to email me at jparkerd@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

4) My semi- permanence here is more and more real each day. For starters, I bought my rugby boots and a ball... now I just have to find a club to start practicing/ playing with, but again, everyone and their mother seems to have a club that they recommend I join, so that won't be an issue; the real trouble segues into my next point beautifully. I just moved my stuff down to Mandurah (MAN- DRUH) where I will be living with Brett, Candace, and some other guy (sorry other guy, I'll learn/ know your name soon enough). This is a great living situation and a beautiful house that we are all renting together, BUT, this place is an hour drive from Cate's home and therefore even longer from her church, the job opportunities that I have found thusfar, and of course the rugby clubs that I have looked into joining. Clearly, being an hour away from Cate is much better than being on the other side of the world, but obviously I didn't come all this way just to see her a few times a week, so once I actually get a job and get some money flowing INTO my bank account, then I'm going to have to look into finding a place closer to Cate and all the action! But again, God is SO good! There's a guy we met at church who will be in need of a roommate in about 9-10 weeks and hopefully I'll be able to make that move and be only about 20 minutes from Cate. Back to the main topic: I now have a mobile phone (they don't call them cell phones here, they don't even call them mobile phones, just "mobiles," so I have a mobile.) and the icing on the "holy-crap-I'm-living-in-Australia-for-the-foreseeable-future" cake is that I have been driving quite a bit. Initially such a statement is not so significant to those of you who knew me before college because you most likely saw me driving all the time, but let me remind you that in Australia, they drive on the other side of the road! Haha, it really isn't that big of a deal to be entirely honest, but sometimes I do sorta slip back into American driving mode when I pull out of a parking spot, whatevs.

I'm sure that I have left out plenty of little things that I have done/seen/heard/ experienced in the past week and for that, I sincerely apologize. Haha, I will also try to update the blog more frequently, but I"m kinda busy trying to live my life, not document it! But with that said, I have taken tons of pictures that I will post here once I get my laptop up and firing!

Hope all is well in New York, India, Florida, California and anywhere else you might be reading this from... but especially in Saint Louis; let me tell you how depressing it has been trying to describe where exactly Saint Louis is... someone asked me to list off a few states around Missouri and I said, "Illinois, Arkansas, Kansas, and Iowa are to the East, South, West, and North." To which the individual responded, "I have never heard of any of those." Quickly prompting a discussion about how they didn't know all of the Australian states (there are seven; off the top of my head... 1) western australia 2) new south wales 3) victoria 4) queensland 5) the nothern territories 6) tasmania and 7) southern australia? maybe? i don't know) nor the American states and we should all learn a song with the state names and capitals, haha.

One last thing, G'Day Mate. So cliche, yet classically Australian and I cannot bring myself to say it because it sounds SO forced coming from my lips. Even just, "mate," sounds awkward, haha. The other day I went out to run and I said,"good morning," to a man with whom I crossed paths and he smiled and wanted to say, "G'Day!" SO badly, but because I caught him off guard with MY greeting, he just kinda spat out, "Good morning." Haha, the struggles of my life.

FANtastic Voyage

2009-01-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

I have flown from St. Louis, Missouri to Los Angeles, California to Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and finally reaching my destination in Perth, Western Australia, Australia. I left my hometown at 7pm on January 14th and arrived in Cate's at 4pm on January 16th.

The trip started about as well as it could have. I had a six seat row all to myself! I planned to stay awake for the four hour duration of this flight to better prepare myself for the oncoming jetlag, but, of course, I fell asleep shortly after takeoff. Thankfully (sort of), a very special child in the row in front of me decided he would single-handedly assist me in my quest to regulate my internal clock. Naturally, this was no ordinary child. From my estimations he was at least 40% banshee and about 30% coyote. This little boy of six or seven literally yelled, screamed, hyperventilated, and seized in and out of his parents arms and their row for AT LEAST 40 minutes straight. I was not even mad, just in a state of disbelief! After about ten minutes the boy yelped, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" Yet the boy's self-induced asphyxiation was not enough to end his reign of terror. His parents seemed utterly powerless to control this most magnificent of temper tantrums, even the unsolicited stares and help of motherly and grandmotherly strangers did nothing to quell the fury. I just put my headphones in and before I knew it, the child had stopped yelling and the plane was on the ground in L.A.

After waiting for a bit in the airport I was all settled in for the longest chunk of the journey, 13 hours and 25 minutes in the air and because we would be crossing the international date line, this one flight spanned three separate (yet very muddled) days. Even though I spent so much time on that plane, I honestly do not know how I passed all of those hours. I know I watched, "The Dark Knight" and an Australian movie, "Newcastle" but aside from reading and attempting to sleep, the rest of that leg is quite blurry in my mind. However, one thing that does stick out is the food. Perhaps Qantas airlines serves legitimately good food, or maybe the fact that I was stuck tens of thousands of feet in the airplane with no other options biased my thoughts, but I genuinely enjoyed the food I consumed on my Qantas flights. Mediterranean chicken breast for dinner, egg frittata for breakfast, and then lemongrass Halibut for lunch. ANYway... clearly nothing exciting happened here and my journaling stopped once I landed in Sydney and I anxiously prepared to board the four hour flight to Perth. To Cate.

Knowing that I was a mere five or six hours away from Cate allowed me to actually begin to get excited, but almost as if on cue from some sort of diabolical stage director in the play of my life (I do not actually believe that this happened, just to clarify for anyone who might be furrowing their brow; rest assured, I do not see God as some sort of cruel puppet master... in case anyone was curious :) my flight was delayed. The crew was attempting to restore our in-flight-entertainment system, sadly they did not succeed and I would be left to somehow stop myself from going crazy on this final and most adrenaline pumped leg. Qantas Airlines must have read my mind and gave every person on the flight a $20 voucher to one of the book/magazine shops in the airport. Unfortunately, nearly every single person from my flight crammed into one little shop and I was too afraid to venture far away from my gate because our flight was meant to board at any minute, so I just decided to be content with what I had. Unfortunately, no one else shared my sentiment of not wanting to hold up the plane. Once the flight seemed to be fully boarded the captain told us that we were being forced to wait on some of the people who were still shopping in the bookstore. Great. But, that issue was handled and we all thought we were about to taxi away from the gate when the captain informed us that we were being held at the gate because a young lady who mistakenly had her bag checked through to Perth was actually staying in Sydney. Airlines cannot carry luggage for people who are not aboard said flights for security purposes, so security officials went into the cargo bay and checked through all of the luggage to find her bag and finally we took off, just an hour late!

Again, I do not really remember what I did on this four hour flight, but I do remember that it seemed to take about eight hours! But at last, our plane circled over the brown summer vegetation of Perth and the captain made my day when he told us that it was 38 degrees outside (100 Fahrenheit)! I jumped out of my seat when he turned off the seatbelt light, dodged and juked my way through the crowds only to be forced to wait another 20 minutes to see my luggage snake around the carousal. Cate had also been traveling the past day and a half or so and was waiting for me in Perth's international terminal so I took a fifteen minute cab ride that, again, felt like it took six times longer and finally I hopped out of the cab (unthinkingly tipping the cab driver 11 dollars; this was unthinkable because a) my fare was 24 dollars but more importantly b) salaries in Australia are actually reasonable so people in service industries are not dependent upon tips like they are in America, therefore NO ONE tips except for actual exceptional service... but I was pretty amazingly excited at this point so I was not thinking about ANY of this at the time) and dragged my luggage into the arrival terminal and started frantically looking around for Cate (who had been expecting me thirty minutes earlier) and I caught a blur out of the corner of my eye and turned just in time to see my beautiful girlfriend planting to jump into my arms.

:)

And then we lived happily ever after. The end.

Haha, now the REAL journey begins.

Background.

2009-01-03T22:12:00.000-08:00

First of all, ten days til I depart for Perth! These might be the longest ten days of my life, haha, but it will all be worth it when Cate is in my arms again :)

Maybe the little title-intro at the top of this blog gave enough background for my story, but in case it didn't... I played wide receiver on the Columbia University football team for the first two years of college then I quit because the coaches wanted football to be the number one priority in my life. I could not do this. My relationships with Cate, the people in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and being in New York City had all become more important to me than football... heck, maybe they had been all along and I was just dividing up my time and not throwing myself fully into either of those spheres. But to make a long story short, I stopped playing football and started a very different phase of college.

During the second half of my time in New York I immersed myself in the relationships I was developing and doing it all in the context of the largest city in America; pretty amazing. But while I was enjoying being a normal college student, my passion for football never really died, I watched our team have their best season for the first time in ten years or so. I ached to be back in the action with them, but I knew that I had made my decision and needed to move forward.

Basketball was my first avenue of an attempted athletic renaissance. I had fun playing pickup and intramurals whenever I got the chance, but there were two problems. One, basketball is just not physical enough (this is a good time to mention that when I stopped playing football I weighed 195 pounds... the combination of little cardio because I was trying to rehab some nagging knee injuries, continued heavy lifting in an attempt to, "stay sexy," and terrible eating habits led me to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 225 pounds heading into the winter of my junior year right before I started playing basketball regularly) and two, I suck at basketball.

Dating an Australia and seeing the high rate of football-rugby attrition got me thinking about joining Columbia's rugby club, but I didn't until mid-spring of junior year. I practiced with the squad several times, learned the basics of the game and was preparing to play my first contest... and then sprained my left ankle the day before.

That summer, I went down to Australia and fell even deeper in love with rugby and set my mind on playing that fall. Sadly, rehabbing that summer was painfully slow because of all my added weight (probably hovering around 225/230lbs at this point) and lingering ankle problems which limited running activities. Coming into senior year, I promptly sprained my right ankle and got pretty close to 240lbs and realized it was time for some changes.

I rested and healed my ankle and then started running. Little bits at first, but I worked my way up; bought ankle braces, kept playing basketball with no ankle injuries. I even joined up with the rugby team again in the spring of my senior year, practiced for a couple weeks, even got in a game. But, as a result of my "enjoying being a regular college student" I was taking 23 credits my final semester of college and decided it was probably a better idea to, you know, try to graduate on time as opposed to pursuing rugby at that time. Haha, I did not graduate on time. I took my final course at home this past summer and for the first time in my life dedicated myself to exercise just to get in shape (as opposed to lifting/running to prepare myself to be better at football).

So, after a summer/fall/early winter of running and light lifting I have whittled myself down to 205 pounds and several miles (or should that be kilometers now? haha) behind being excited about going to Australia for Cate, I am incredibly ready to join a rugby club in Perth. I'm not really here to toot my own horn, but in a way isn't that what a blog is inherently? I feel as good athletically as I have since my sophomore year of college. I have certainly lost a step, but I have gained a wealth of stamina AND explosion. I clearly have no idea how this third stab at rugby will go for me, but I am very excited to see how it turns out.

10 days left; man, this has been a LONG time coming :)

Excitement.

2008-12-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

It is early Christmas morning 2008.

Merry Christmas!

I'm pretty sure that anyone who would ever read this blog knows the number one reason that I am so pumped for my trip to Australia (I'm leaving in exactly 20 days!)...

Cate Taylor (the young lady pictured next to me above).

My girlfriend of nearly four years and I will finally be reunited after being apart since late June. Perhaps this is why I am still awake at 1:30am on Christmas morning; hoping that she might wake up early and give me a call, haha.

Soon our distance will be measured in minutes, not hours; in suburbs instead of time zones; train stops instead of plane layovers... you get the picture. I should probably get some sleep, but it's hard when you are this ready to make such a big change, haha. I want to start packing right now! But, I will restrain myself.