Outbound: Learning the world
I’ve spent the first few weeks of 2013 adjusting to life in Australia. On paper, you’d think moving to an Anglophone, Westernized country with a developed economy would be straightforward and, for the most part, it has been. The adjustment hasn’t been so much in the big things – bank accounts, property leases, tax codes and so on – but in the details of everyday life. For my money, it’s a feeling best captured by William Gibson in Pattern Recognition, even if he’s writing about an American in Britain:
Mirror-world. The plugs on appliances are huge, triple-pronged, for a species of current that only powers electric chairs, in America. Cars are reversed, left to right, inside; telephone handsets have a different weight, a different balance; the covers of paperbacks look like Australian money.
I still catch myself quoting prices in pounds, not dollars and I won’t even get into the whole beer size thing. There’s certainly some specific technical adjustments required for bar work – spirits are generally served in 30ml measures and it seems it will more than a week to train a decade worth of pouring 25ml measures out of me; glasses of wine are generally smaller (150ml vs. 175/250ml in the UK) – and then there’s the question of what’s available in terms of product. Things that I’d taken for granted in the UK are seemingly tougher to come by here, which is equally useful (in terms of forcing some creative re-thinking) and frustrating.
Of course, it’s not all quibbling about measurements and what kind of vermouth is in the shops. The weather’s OK, I guess.
New for this year: the war on tips, at least from those with strong views on God or taxes.
Don’t expect a win for the plucky underdog: I Played A Drinking Game Against A Computer.
With the re-emergence of Tanqueray Malacca just around the corner, is now a good time to bring up edible geography’s excellent musings on the impossibility of historical flavour?
Bacardi UK just named the Savoy’s Chris Moore as their 2012 Legacy Cocktail Competition winner and named the three finalists for the 2013 title (recipes for the 2013 drinks in the link).
Some guy made a drink for the 2013 Bols Around The World competition. Seems OK.
You appear to have moved to Australia. I appear to have missed this, until now.
Er, jolly good! I found New Zealand to be weirdly like Scotland and yet not quite…
I await further dispatches from the antipodes. Also we’re going to check out the Kelvingrove Cafe as it seemed like our sorta place, and we spotted your face on the FB page. Friends of yours?
Yeah, I kind of stealthily stole away on New Year’s Day. The relative difference in climate took some getting used to.
Let me know how you find the Kelvingrove – it’s run by Mal Spence who used to be head bartender at the Blytheswood Square Hotel and is a genuinely lovely and knowledgable fella.
And talking of feijoa, one of the innumerable oddities of Australian life is that it seems remarkably difficult to get fresh fruit year round; it’s possible we’re spoiled in that regard in the UK.
Also I notice you mention feijoa in your bar tally. If you can get them in Oz, they are fab frozen and then served straight from the freezer as icy slices.