New office

[Taps microphone] Is this thing on?

More a test of who's still following, so drop a comment if you're reading...

Anyway, my company has moved offices, and I've been loving it, despite being on support for the first week.  My explorer gene has kicked in; I'm never more happy than when I have a new area to explore.

Here's a shot of the area right in front of our new place.  Panoramic shots don't seem to fly as Facebook pictures, or on Imgur; I think no one can be bothered to actually zoom in.  But still, I've added a few annotations...

Nostalgia

Hey family -- remember this commercial?  The jingle popped into my head after... four decades?  That's good jingle.  So I decided to Google it.

Friend

Hamish made quick friends with this dog the other day.  They chased the ball non-stop for twenty minutes and finally took a break.  They were thick as thieves at this point.

Frosty morning

It's been seriously cold this week with no real relief in sight.  Our house does not heat terribly well so we are left to bundle up and shiver.

Olives

Trying to cure some olives that we picked off the tree in the backyard again this year.

Photogenic dog

Maybe we are biased, but we think Hamish is a good looking dog.

Veggies a la Mark

Recipe for Veggies a la Mark

Chop squash, zucchini, okra, water chestnuts, green chili (optional: baby corns, broccoli, cauliflower).  Fry on one side in vegetable oil.  Flip everything, season to taste, add chopped Chinese cabbage or chard, and a spoonful of ground red chili, and maybe a splash of stir fry sauce or rice wine vinegar, and fry for another minute.

I do this a couple of times a week these days.  Delicious.

Nostalgia

An side effect of the genealogy research I've done over the last year or two is an effort to document various things about my own life.  Not because I think it will be important or even mildly interesting to future generations, but just for my own satisfaction.  So I've been keeping (privately) a number of lists of things that stick out in my memory, or more accurately that I want to keep there.  Some examples:

• Concerts I've attended
• Comedians I've seen
• Lectures I've seen
• Plays I was in, in high school
• Addresses I've lived at
• Countries/cities I've visited
• Airports I've flown through without visiting the city
• Where I was when I first heard about various news events

At any rate I've just come across a site called BoardGameGeek that has an impressive catalog of just about every game you can think of, spanning back decades.  So I decided to see if I could find a few that stand out from my childhood to keep as another list.

One in particular I could only remember the barest details of.  It was a baseball game, and was already an old game when I was very young.  All I could remember was that the pitcher would select a pitch via a little slider, and the batter would decide whether to swing or not via his own slider.  The equations were good pitch+swing = hit, good pitch+no swing = strike, bad pitch + swing = strike, bad pitch + no swing = ball.  So I looked over all the baseball games in their database and finally found it behind the last link in the list.  You can see the sliders in the "Images" section.  It actually debuted in 1949!  (Edit: there's actually a version of it made in the 60's that's the more likely candidate.)

I also found this messy and slightly hazardous game that I used to have.  Hard to imagine a kids' game these days that features a heater that heats up a metal washer.  I'm glad the internet can still surprise you after so many years.

Trip hazard

Hamish likes to crash out on the shower mat when you're in the shower.

Baking

Tried my hand at baking for the first time ever, and this red velvet cake was the result.  It wasn't perfect, but not too bad for a first effort.

Kidney

Now that I have a new droid with a decent amount of memory for apps, I can get back into photo blogging at least.  Which means, not a lot of text, but a picture is worth some quantity of words, isn't it?  Anyway, if you know me, you know of my recent kidney stone issues.  So here's my view for the last few days while I was getting the second one lasered.

Catching up

This blog seems to have followed a common pattern, where there's initial excitement that can go on for years, followed by a gradually tapering off, eventually to nearly nothing, followed by the occasional "I'm going to start blogging more" pledge that never actually pans out.  So I'm not going to promise anything.  I do know that I really like having the early days to check back against for reference, and that I'll regret the long stretches in recent years where there was nothing written here despite things happening in our lives.

Rather than try to remember all that I neglected to post about, I might as well just say what's happening now.  Others in my family are having health issues at the moment, which I won't go into (other than to say "Hi!" and "Get better!"); instead I'll talk about my own.

During a recent vacation to Sydney I had a mild attack of kidney stones, so a part of each day there was spent trekking down to a medical clinic for consultations, scans, diagnoses, etc.  Followed up on it when I got back to Melbourne, and after some more tests, it looks like I'm going to have a percutaneous nephrolithotripsy for them, where they jab a needle into my kidney, break up the stone, and suck out the pieces.  Twice, for the two stones.

It doesn't sound like a lot of fun.  I'll probably have to do three days or so in the hospital for it, and a week off of work.  Mostly I just don't like the idea of being effectively stabbed in the back, and worry about infection and such.  But it should solve the problem for the long term, which is good.

First I need to get some x-rays to make sure my stones aren't the uric-acid kind, which would be awesome because you can get rid of them with drugs; this is unlikely though.  I see the doc again next week.

Explorer

I realized recently that this blog passed its ten-year anniversary a month or so back.  We started the blog around the time we decided to move overseas, so it's not quite ten years living abroad yet -- not for another couple of months -- but it's some sort of milestone I guess.  We've had a lot of good times but nothing quite touches that early excitement of throwing our lives into turmoil.

I'm pondering a post on "Expat Life: Expectations Versus Reality" but today instead I will talk about a funny trait I've realized have -- my explorer gene.  There's a conceit involved in every such observation,  but here it is anyway.  I'm on a never-ending quest for novelty, it seems; besides the whole moving overseas thing, my explorer gene manifests itself in the following ways:

• My neighborhood dog-walking is always about taking Hamish to somewhere new.  I continually pore over the map of our neighborhood looking for streets that I haven't gone down yet.  Every "walkies" has to have a quest, usually quite minor, such as just walking by a cafe or tiny bit of green space to check it out.  Fortunately Melbourne is famously replete with hidden gems, both in town and in the 'burbs.
• Speaking of maps, I can spend hours with an atlas, mentally exploring a new area, pondering what it would be like to visit there, or live there (usually with the help also of Google Maps and Wikipedia).  Thanks to this I can do things like name all the countries in Africa (the online geography quizzes help too - ask my sister-in-law!).
• I continually explore different lunch options in town where I work.  My coworkers seem to have a regular rotation; I have some regulars, but I'm frequently going off somewhere strange, and have introduced a few new things to them.  Melbourne CBD is great for back alley eateries.  (The weird thing, I think, is that I eat the same breakfast every day, pretty much.)

We're looking to buy a house now, which is that much more scary because I have this trait.  To be worthwhile we're going to have to stay in it ten years, which is longer than I've lived anywhere, other than my childhood home.

The Happiest Place On Earth

Yeah, been a while.  There's stuff I should post about -- my trip to Europe, etc. -- but a maxim I'm slowly coming to realize is that I really need to just post about whatever I feel like posting about even if it means leaving out "important" stuff, just because otherwise it hangs over me and the only result is inactivity.

So yeah, our new place is a block away from the Moonee Ponds race course, and the first race of the season is tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.  I'm a little worried about drunkards, parking, etc. but I'm still up for catching a race.  In general I have no problems with gambling as long as you don't let it get out of hand.  Which brings me to the subject I feel like writing about: Tabarets.  I will explain.

Pubs in Australia are a big part of the culture.  In Melbourne these days there are two basic varieties.  The first is your standard pub, which are homey neighborhood meeting-houses, typically with a few beers on tap and a kitchen which serves up basic traditional meals, with chicken parmesan ("parma") being ubiquitous.  Some have converted to "gastro-pubs", with more upscale restaurants.  But all are generally nice, happy places, with regulars of all ages.

A growing percentage, though, are of the other variety - the Tabaret.  These typically feature a game room with poker machines ("pokies") and the ability to bet on sporting events.  There's typically a room with a high row of TVs, showing various horse races, that looks something like this:

This picture looks bright and cheery enough, but that's only because I can't seem to find a picture that captures their true nature.  From early morning until late at night, you'll find gamblers ("punters") here, usually alone, slowly wasting their lives away.  There is always a sad, blank expression on their ashen faces as they expectantly watch events on the high row of TVs.  There's always an bettable event on somewhere, it seems, and it gets piped in so the slow drain can continue on them non-stop.  But if the punters need a break, they'll come out on the deck for a smoke and a beer (even at 8 a.m.).

Not surprisingly, as close as we are now to the race track, our only local pub is just such a place.  Lately every time we walk by it and look in I turn to Marjorie and say, "The happiest place on Earth!"  I don't know how I would feel about outlawing them altogether, but they seem to me to be one of the few blights on the otherwise generally functional society that is Australia in general and Melbourne in particular.

Our new neighborhood does have a nice wine bar though...

Moonee Ponds

We are all moved in to our new house in Moonee Ponds.  The move itself was hell, as I had a pretty high fever through much of it but no option to take it easy.  But we did it all in fairly short order, and Marjorie's good at motivating us to get all the little things taken care of - I would definitely still be living out of boxes.

The house has three bedrooms instead of two like our last, so we've converted the spare into an office-slash-storage room.  In the backyard there is a fig tree and an olive tree - the olives were ready to pick right around when we moved in, so I picked two big jars of them which are now curing and should be ready for a first try this Sunday.  As opposed to the hydrophobic dust of our last place, the back yard here has a fair bit of rich black soil, which is good for growing stuff I guess but bad because Hamish has been coming in with filthy paws.

It's a longer commute for me, and a good bit longer for Marjorie, but we're still figuring out the ropes.  Marjorie caught the illness right after me, so we haven't been able to explore the new neighborhood much.  Apparently it's the home of Dame Edna and Tina Arena.  We have been taking the dog to different places -- there are a lot of different options, all about a five to ten minute drive away.  Unfortunately, none are really within walking distance, other than the park that's basically across the street, which isn't off-leash.  That's where he typically gets his morning walk.

Pogues

So - we're moving, and I will post about that eventually, but first: we saw The Pogues in concert.  This is something that was on my bucket list, or rather would have been, if I thought it would ever happen.  Sorry, but this will be one of those gushy posts that's more for my own archival purposes than for general consumption.

I've long loved The Pogues and recently developed a major obsession with them, despite not coming from a terribly similar cultural background.  They play music heavily based on the Irish cultural tradition, and the lead singer is a notorious substance abuser, from an early age.  But he is an idiot savant, and a true poet I think.  Though Marjorie and I have both liked them for a long time - we even used one of their songs as the opening song of our wedding! - I had a spell a few months back where I went absolutely mental for them; I'd go as far as saying they peaked higher than any other music in my life, and that's saying a lot.  It only sustained itself for a few weeks, sadly; I don't know what happened, but try as I as might I couldn't hold onto it.  It slipped away; the love was still there, just not the infatuation.

Shortly after this fall from grace, I found that they were actually planning a concert here in town.  So of course I had to get us tickets.  I just didn't believe it would happen, as a decade or so ago Marjorie and I flew across the country to San Fran to see him (then solo) at a music festival, but he didn't show (we had to "settle" for just my other great love, Elvis Costello).  So I wasn't really expecting him to show, especially given his past personal issues and resulting bad blood with the band.  Honestly, I didn't believe it until he walked out on stage.  But he did show up this time!

And was in great form - so much better than I had expected.  He seems so slow-witted in interviews these days that I had doubted he could pull off any of their faster numbers, or for that matter, remember all the words to his wordier ones.  But apart from some minor articulation issues, he was fantastic on all counts.  Most importantly, the spirit was there.  And the band still smokes as well.

The next day, I posted a message on a Pogues forum where I know their guitarist hangs out, thanking them for their show, saying how much I  loved it, and asking if by any chance they're working on any new material.  He actually responded immediately - and curtly: "We're quite happy with our old material".  Serves me right.  They played their hearts out for us, and here's me asking for more.

This was the set list:

• Streams of Whisky
• If I Should Fall From Grace With God
• Broad Majestic Shannon
• Greenland Whale Fisheries
• Pair Of Brown Eyes
• Tuesday Morning
• Kitty
• Sunny Side of the Street
• Repeal of the Licencing Laws
• The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
• The Body of an American
• Boys From County Hell
• Thousands are Sailing
• Dirty Old Town
• Bottle of Smoke
• Sick Bed of Cuchulainn

First encore:

• Sally Maclennane
• Rainy Night in Soho
• Irish Rover

Second encore:

• Poor Paddy
• Fiesta

A great set list, I must say; I'm happy with nearly all of the choices.  Biggest surprise to me was Bottle Of Smoke, which is pretty much the song that kicked off my recent obsession, so I was overjoyed to hear it.  Of course it was great to have them play our wedding song (Rainy Night In Soho).  The other highlight to me was A Pair Of Brown Eyes -- a hit for them, but never my favorite before; seeing it live though, I "heard" it for the first time.

Grandmom

My grandmother has died.

Even facing infirmary and dementia of late, she made it 94 years without a harsh word for anyone. 

I'll forever associate this song with her -- she had a little record player at her house and we used to play this one every time we went over.  (Well, this one got a regular play as well.)  These songs definitely swing a bit -- but her usual fare was more Bobby Vinton and Laurence Welk. I made her a CD of that stuff a few years back but found it unlistenable myself, even in a retro-kitsch sort of way :)

She was Polish through and through -- her parents last names were Gąsior and Koczur -- and her married name Thompson was actually anglicized from Tomaszewicz one generation back. She spoke Polish with her relatives and made lots of Polish food, and danced the polka at family events with my grandfather. I tracked her heritage a bit last year and found the Ellis Island document of her parents arriving in 1908, which was very cool. They had her after they arrived -- she was the ninth of ten children (!).

She lived in Camden NJ for most of her life -- a place now infamous for being the most dangerous city in America. Seriously. The Google Maps street view car didn't even go down her street, I'm sure for safety concerns. It was a much nicer place while she was there, at least early on -- Mummers Day parades are my earliest memory of it.

She lived on her own into her nineties -- on the second floor, which required climbing stairs. Pretty amazing. Never learned to drive, I believe, and I don't remember her ever having a job outside the home. She made a mean batch of chocolate chip cookies, and always gave me a few tins of them to take with me whenever I visited.

I am exceedingly glad I got to see her just last month when I was home for my parents' 50th, even if she wasn't "all there".

Helen Thompson 1917-2012

One of those rare days

One of those rare days that I wouldn't mind having over and over.

First, brunch with a friend at Bistro Flor which was fabbo.

Then we went looked at three houses that were having open inspections.  We're not looking to buy just yet, just kind of practicing for when it gets real, maybe in a year or so.  Still it was fun.

Then, fantastic Thai massages at Vigorous Thai Massage.

On to a swim at the Fitzroy pool.

To our usual dog park, Darling Gardens, with perfect timing as Hamish's good friends Banjo, Tyra, and Grover were all just arriving.  Hamish is completely smitten with Banjo (a border collie).

Home, and pork chops on the grill with a nice Dal Zotto rosé in the backyard while we watched the lorikeets in the neighbor's tree, followed by "bat o'clock".  For music we dug back into our CD collection for four fantastic chill-out albums that we had neglected for a while.  Here's an sample song from each - each irreproachable, I would say.


Peace Like A River - Paul Simon - from "Paul Simon"


Into Temptation - Crowded House - from "Temple of Low Men"


Angeles - Elliott Smith - from "Either/Or"


Lover, You Should Have Come Over - Jeff Buckley - from "Grace"

Quite the dog park

An impressive dog park in our neighborhood.  Well, it's a dog park when there's no footy or cricket going on. 

(I know the last panorama wasn't really viewable - we'll see if this turns out any better.)

Donor

I'm also a blood donor now!  This was my third time.

Birthday

It was our friends' birthday party last weekend in the park.  Hamish met a friend who is a bit more purebred red heeler - I took a shot of them together just to compare.

Guerrilla garden

Just found this awesome guerrilla garden just blocks away from our house that I never knew was there.  It has compost and worm bins and everything.  Love it! 

Catch up, or not...

The problem with having an ongoing blog is that when you haven't posted in a while, it means you have a lot to post about, which makes putting it off that much easier. So to heck with it. If there's some big things I didn't post about -- like, say, a trip to Europe -- I'm just going to forget about them and move on.

I will at least mention that the book I contributed a chapter to -- Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level -- is out. I think it's even better than the first one (Mind Performance Hacks (that I contributed a couple of chapters to)) and the reviews seem to bear that out.

Not to be outdone, a high school friend of mine has written a whole book, and the reviews have been phenomenal. I knew him when.

Oh, and somehow all the comments you all submitted recently were sitting there waiting for me to approve them for months but I never got email notification. So they're approved now, sorry.

Mid-summer here now but it's been a pretty cool season so far. Lots of fun parties and such, and trips to the park with Hamish. He's settled in and accepts us now as his pack, but is still pretty cheeky. But he has lots of dog friends at the park. His favorite game is chasing other dogs who are chasing a ball, and try to run ahead of them and cut them off. It's good because it means other dogs' owners exercise our dog for us.

Hamish

...is settled in fully.  He's really never uncomfortable in any situation we throw him into.  He's been into wrestling with other dogs lately and has lots of doggy friends.  This is his buddy Cody, who I think is lab + huskie.

Skyline

A panoramic shot I took from the top of the hill in Northcote while out for a jog.  Note the skyline in the background.

My office

We've let the blog languish for a while now, but it's too valuable as a reference for our past that it would a shame to let die...  I'll post some catch-up before long but in the meanwhile I'll get back to posting images.  Here's my office; my desk is right behind the B in building. 

Sandwich

I was lying in my lounge chair.  Marjorie came and laid on top of me.  And so Hamish decided he had to be on top.

New dog

Okay, cobwebs are forming here. Let's dust things off a bit. Even if no one even reads this anymore, it's still been an invaluable resource to refer back to over the years, so I really need to get back on it.

We took a trip to Europe, which was great, but I'll get back to that eventually. As for now, the big news is a new pup in our life!

His name is Hamish, and we got him via Pet Rescue, though they were calling him Roger at his foster home. We think he's painfully cute. He's smart and funny and has lots of personality, but is still rather laid back, especially compared to Laika. He's different in several other ways to Laika too. We're still trying to figure out all his quirks but we like him a whole lot.

We decided to sign him (and us) up for obedience classes, just to be sure we could take him out to cafes and such. We had the first class on Saturday (my birthday). The instructor was good, but strict. So far the biggest result is a lot of stress in our household -- it's hard to be strict and you can bet Hamish isn't a fan either. We're wondering whether we want to even pursue this route. I mean, the instructor was able to get instant results with Hamish (even when we couldn't) but will we still like the dog that he becomes? Or are we just being soft because we don't want to dole out punishment to our cute little doggy? The whole thing is just not a lot of fun.

Since the class yesterday we've been defying our instructor a bit. We've found we've gotten better results with a little bit of sugar anyway instead of the hard line approach. Or maybe that's just us being manipulated. The instructor did say that Hamish is smart and is going to be a handful to train.

Some more pictures!

Trees

On to happier topics.  I got mad recently when the council came and ripped out all the trees on our street. It turns out it was all part of a big replanting job though.  They came back a week later and put new trees where the old ones had been.  Then, this week, they came back again and dug up the street to add even more trees!  They'll look fairly slight for the short term but I heartily approve of the long term plan.

Laika is no more - Part 2

The other horrible thing I had to do on Friday was to dig the hole in the backyard. My hands got fully blistered from the shovel, but I didn't care, and it was cathartic in the end.

On Saturday the vet was scheduled to come by at 2pm I think, but in the morning Laika seemed a tiny bit brighter so we decided to take her to another of her favorite parks, Edinburgh Gardens. She had a last jump at her favorite tree, the one with the hole in it that she would always check for possums. She didn't have a lot left after that so we just sat in the grass with her for an hour or so and let her sniff the wind while we cried. We eventually took her home, and gave her all the little bits of kangaroo jerky -- the only thing she would still eat -- that she wanted.

The vet came by on schedule, and of course Laika had a bark at the door, which we didn't think she still had in her. We knew we had to go forward with it though; she might've held on for another day or two, but it wouldn't be happy times for her, especially through the nights. Laika went back and flopped down by the back door while the vet explained the procedure to us. She was really outstanding and compassionate; I don't know how people can do that for a living, but I'm glad there are people that are willing. She started things with an IV that first made Laika unconscious, and as she was putting it in, heartbreakingly, Laika put her head up and gave her a kiss. From there we only had a minute or two and so we went out on the back porch while it took effect. The neighborhood dogs gave one last bark at a passerby, and Laika gave a last bark with them, defending her territory to the last. She went to sleep lying on the back porch, with the two of us holding her and telling her what a good girl she is, while the vet came and administered the final shot that would stop her heart. We took a snip of her fur for a keepsake, and each took a last deep smell of her. Our baby was dead.

Such a good dog. Half crazy, but that only made us love her more. I think we did everything we could for her, which is the least we could offer a dog that we had no doubt would have taken a bullet for us. I've had people I love die before, and have been greatly saddened, but this I would have to call my first experience with "grief". We spent days and days afterwards just going through the motions. To me, the world had a weird tilt on it, like everything was shifted six inches, and I had to force myself to do all the little things you do in life that typically come by force of habit. And there is no place within miles of here that doesn't have some memory of her associated with it.

We were, and are, still torn between wanting to run out and get a new dog, just to fill the hole in our lives, and wanting to hold on to her memory and mourn her loss. Marjorie goes back and forth between wanting to wait, and showing me pictures of cute dogs on dog rescue web sites. I suspect after our upcoming trip, we'll go inflict our lives once again on some unsuspecting dog.

Laika is no more - Part 1

(For obvious reasons, this has taken a long time to write. It's not a pleasant thing to relive, and so I've decided to just post what I've written so far and finish the rest later.)

Right. Well. Most of you will have heard the news about our beloved fur-child Laika. Sorry that it took me so long to write about it but I really just couldn't.

We learned she had cancer (of the worst sort) back in August and so knew we could only buy time for her. We kept picking dates that we hope she'd make it to -- first Christmas, which was a happy time, then her birthday in mid-February, by which time she was really struggling. Each new symptom or drop in her energy sent us deeper into sadness about the coming inevitability. By the final days she was not getting up when we'd come home; her breathing was labored and raspy, and she was not keeping her food down. She was still interested in food, largely because at that point shelved the standard dog food and were giving her nothing but the tastiest of treats.

On Thursday the 17th we took her to a nice park we had discovered recently, that had big wide open grounds (good for us to be able to spot problem dogs approaching) that she seemed to like. This place we had started calling the Island of Misfit Dogs as it seems lots of people brought their old or infirm dogs there. We let her do a bit of exploring, and she managed to find a nice pile of semi-dry horse manure to roll in. We can recognize her smile, and we saw it then for the first time in a while, so how could we be mad?

But we knew the end was nigh, so I took off Friday to spend the day with her. We went back to the same park, thinking it would be her last day. Indeed, she seemed a lot more listless than the previous day, and didn't manage to do much more than flop down on the grass. She seemed content enough to sit there and sniff the wind, but we knew things were over.

We had been in contact with the "Doggie Kevorkian", and so we arranged for her to come by the house the next day to put her down. (It's great that there are people who do that, I just don't know how they can do it; it would kill me.)

Jackpot

I had been pondering a subscription to ancestry.com to search out my relatives. They play a ton of commercials for them here (as I hear they do in the States) and it started to wear me down. I was just... suspicious of them, because they give you two weeks, and then it's so many dollars a month -- but they don't tell you that they charge you for a whole year when the two weeks is up unless you look at the fine print. Also, while you sign up online, you can only cancel over the phone, which is never a good sign.

I mentioned this all to a coworker, and he suggested checking out the library - he had heard that a lot of them had free access to ancestry.com. So I looked into it a little, and found that the State Library of Victoria here in the middle of Melbourne offered it. So I went to check it out today, and wow! They have a big beautiful room dedicated to genealogy, with lots of computer terminals, shelves and shelves of books, and a helpful staff of actual genealogists.

I only had a short time to do it today, so I availed myself of the ancestry.com access, and took some "screen shots" (literally, camera-phone pictures of the screen). Found this World War 2 draft registration card from my second great uncle, as well as this 1930 Census record showing my then-12-year-old grandmother and her family. (I found a 1920 record as well that I forgot to take a picture of that had most of the same people.)

I can't wait to go back. Clearly this is my obsession at the moment; I don't know why. I'm just fascinated by history, and researching my ancestry is just a good excuse. Like the commercial says, it's like being a detective. I will note that I'm doing this all with two main rules:

• No pride (or shame) at anything I find. My ancestors were all individuals who made their own choices through life and there's no reason I should take any credit for their successes any more than I should feel ashamed at their failings.
• No bias towards the patrilineal paths. The women in my family tree contributed just as much to my genetic makeup as the men, and I'm sure worked just as hard if not harder for their families.

Tidbits

A few more tidbits have trickled in from my mother, which seem to confirm that the ship's manifest actually lists my great-grandparents. She says that they came over twice, and that only one of their children was born in Poland. She said this before even noticing the "Were you ever in the United States before" column in the manifest, which shows them in the US from 1899 to 1905 (which were ages 24-30 and her ages 20-26). The date ranges lists for the children only show the dates they were alive, so this gives some indication of their birth dates too. The youngest child listed on the manifest, Wojciech, would have been born during the two years they were back in Poland, which agrees with what my mother said about only one child being born in Poland.

She remembers hearing that they didn't come through Ellis Island, but now we're pretty sure they did. She assumed they came through the port of Philadelphia, but I'm thinking this is probably where they came through the first time. Which means that maybe they did actually see the Statue of Liberty for the first time when they came for good in 1907!

Huddled masses yearning to breathe free

More on the family tree. Years ago my Uncle Bill tracked down the genealogy of my father's side of the family, all the way back to the 1600s, and found that most of my ancestors there come from Krov, Germany. He flew out one year, then many times after that, and I ended up going out for a wonderful family reunion as a result.

Lately I had been considering tracking down my mother's side. I did this once back in the '80s, interviewing all my relatives and drawing up a family tree. This still exists somewhere in my parents' house, but I wasn't able to find it last time I was home.

So recently I asked my mom to fill me in on some of this information, figuring that once I had a few names I'd be able to fill in a lot more with the help of the internet. So I was able to fill out a lot more of the family tree that I posted a link to yesterday as a result (it doesn't show you much there unless you become a member of the site).

But there's more. Searching on a few names on the internet, I found some discussion on a genealogy forum dating back to 2001 that let me fill in a few more names. But then I hit the jackpot (I think) on the Ellis Island site.

I wasn't able to find my mother's father's parents, but searching on my mother's mother's parents turned up this awesome find: the ship manifest that I'm pretty sure shows them arriving in America from Poland. Lines 4 through 9 show Agata and Jan Gasior and their entourage; these are my grandmother's parents, I'm convinced. There's actually quite a lot of information on the manifest, and combined with other information I've gathered previously and with some help from the internet, I can piece together the story pretty well:

They had already spent six years on a previous visit in Camden, New Jersey where they would eventually settle. They went back to Poland for two years, then decided to come over for good. Probably they waited until their fourth child (Wojciech) was born - he's listed as age 0. They brought along a housemaid, Kunegunda (great name), presumably to help with the children; she was twenty and shares the same last name, so was likely a relative. No doubt some tears there, leaving all of her friends and family at such a young age.

And so Jan (age 32) and Agata (age 28), their maid, and the four kids (ages 7, 4, 3, and 0) would have packed up all their belongings and taken a train from their small farming village of Będziemyśl, Poland to Hamburg, Germany to catch the transport ship, the S. S. Amerika, leaving on 8 May 1907.

Arriving in New York twelve days later, the Statue of Liberty would probably have been a familiar site to Jan and Agata, having taken the previous trip over, but the maid and the kids would have looked on with interest. At Ellis Island they would be interviewed by the guy whose handwriting you see on the manifest, and asked a number of strange questions, including, "Are you an anarchist?" Jan had the princely sum of $320 on his person. (Actually, is that a lot, for that time? I don't know.) From there it would be another train to Camden, NJ, to join their uncle Josef Pilas, according to the ledger.

The names (parents Jan and Agata, children Josef, Marianna, Anton, Wojciech) seem to match the family information supplied by my mother - though each of the names has been anglicized (parents became John and Agatha, children Joseph, Mary, Anthony, and... Walter?). It also matches that Joseph is the oldest. Combined that all with the destination of Camden NJ and I'm pretty confident this is them. They went on to have eight more children, including my mom's mother Helen.

I find this all tremendously fascinating.

Rellies

My cousin has been posting old family pictures of my ancestors (on my dad's side at least) to the share genealogy website where I keep my family tree. Some of the shots I don't think I've seen before.

Here are my dad's parents. His mother lived until I was in my twenties, but his dad died when I was only six. I remember visiting him in the hospital.

Frances Rose Schnitzius (Szymanski)

John Alphonse Schnitzius

Here are their parents, comprising four of my eight great-grandparents:

Alphonse J. Schnitzius

Catherine Schnitzius (Schick)

Felix "Phillip" Szymanski

Margaret Szymansi (Basinski)

Any of them look like me?

Our Christmas

Woke up, exchanged presents, walked the dog. Marjorie started a pork roast with homemade mac-and-cheese. Per Christmas tradition, we exercised, to assuage a little of the guilt of gorging ourselves the rest of the day. Made a pitcher of blue curacao margaritas and had the pork roast, which was really, unbelievably good.

I put together Marjorie's Christmas present - a turntable that's capable of recording to USB - and we broke out our albums that we haven't heard in ten years or so (and argued a bit about whose were whose!). But it has stereo output cables and our only speakers are for the computer and only take a headphone jack. Tried to play it through the TV but it would only play really quietly -- needs some sort of amplification obviously. And the USB output (which is made to record to a memory stick) wouldn't work with my Linux-y memory stick. So we have to wait a little longer to hear our vinyl!

All week they were saying the weather was going to be nice. Then yesterday they changed it to "becoming cloudy". Still way off -- it was grey and cool all day, save for a half hour in the evening that we spent out watching the rainbow lorikeets in our neighbor's apricot tree. Nice day, altogether.

Cherry Hill

Found some pictures on a real estate site of the house where I grew up (ages 0-10) in Cherry Hill NJ. Very evocative!

Front view - my bedroom I shared with Kevin on the upper right.  There used to be those super tall bushes in front of our window that I used to plan to jump out to and slide down in case of fire (fire was my big fear as a child).  Otherwise it all looks pretty much the same!

The view as you walk in.  The red color scheme is all new.  The biggest memory this dredges up is Danielle sneaking out of her bed and sleeping on the steps when my parents had dinner parties.

The kitchen has been remodeled too.  The phone hung on the wall beside the door in the right rear.  Memory for this one (among many): burning my finger on a popcorn popper next to the sink on the left (after being told not to touch it).

Family room, remodeled as well, but they kept the fireplace (even if they've painted the wood).  This was the fireplace where I tied the screen shut one Christmas eve with a piece of yarn.  When the yarn was still there in the morning, I KNEW.

The downstairs bathroom.  How's this for an early memory: I remember asking to use it shortly after being potty trained, and being told by my mom that I didn't need to ask.  Revelation!

The living room.  Piano was against the left wall.  Couch against the back wall.  Ceramic elephant and various chairs to the right side.  My parents used to have bridge parties here with folding card tables.

That's all!  Wish there were more, like pictures of the yard, or my bedroom.

Amazing Australians

Here are four Australians that are amazing, in my opinion.

Chris Lilley - Creator of Summer Heights High (which was picked up in the States by HBO) and several other Australian series. Amazingly creative in his writing, but on top of that I think he is maybe the best actor I've ever seen. He completely inhabits his roles like no one else I know, so much so that he can even play a schoolgirl and pull it off. Here's a sample, but be warned, lots of colourful language... clip

Terrence Tao - Mathematician. More than that, he's a mathematician's mathematician. A child prodigy, he's now at a level where other mathematicians compete to interest him in their problems. I read his blog but to be honest, don't understand much. Thankfully he sometimes writes simpler stuff for dilettantes like myself. He may be the best mathematician working today (though he would probably tell you that non-working mathematician is tops).

Tommy Emmanuel - Australia is also home to maybe the top acoustic guitar player in the world as well. I'm not usually a blues fan, but this clip is typical. My hands hurt just watching.

Tim Minchin - Comedian usually situated at a piano, and with eye makeup and no shoes. Marjorie might disagree with me here; we first saw him a couple years back and he was decidedly unfunny. But I've seen some of his recent work and it's amazingly clever. Some samples (be warned, plenty of off-colour language here as well): Storm, Taboo, If I Didn't Have You.

Home invader

Today's wildlife rescue. Got trapped in our house but just hopped on my finger when I tried to rescue him and didn't want to let go.

BTW, that's not snow on the ground - our backyard tree is dumping pollen like mad right now.

Vote count

Results of my soccer team's vote count night, where the votes that we gave after each game are tallied up and presented. Moved up two places from last year.

Balloon

So, yeah. We went ballooning for Marjorie's birthday, and it was amazing. Spent almost exactly an hour in the air, taking off from Fisherman's bend and flying over our old neighborhood. Totally peaceful in the air and not scary at all, despite ranging from maybe twice the height of the skyscrapers in the CBD (which we skirted just South of) down to almost street level. We practically landed on the roof of one of our favorite restaurants and then continued straight down the street it was on, to the amusement of many passers-by and people having breakfast on their deck. The city was particularly quiet since the previous night was the (Australian Rules Football) Grand Final (which ended in a tie). We set down in Elsternwick Park leaving several dogs nonplussed. This was followed by a champagne breakfast at the cafe in the botanical gardens.



More pics to come.

Hoddle Street massacre

A tragedy that occurred in our neighborhood 23 years ago. We walk Laika through this same area several times a week.

View

The view from my desk in our new office:


Looming up above is the highest office building in the Southern Hemisphere, the Rialto Towers, which used to have an observation deck (that Marjorie and I went to on our first visit to Melbourne) which is now apparently a restaurant.

Office

The startup Mark is working for finally has an office:


Quite grateful to be back working in the CBD - I wasn't too keen on working from home. Here's my desk:


I love that the windows actually open; that's rare in an office building. There's a little balcony out there too but you have to go out the window to get to it.

New Car!

After nearly eight years without, we finally have a car!


2010 Subaru RX hatchback. We're looking forward to the change in lifestyle.

Heart

After our last soccer match of the season, I went with a couple of teammates to watch Melbourne's new soccer team, the Heart, play against Perth Glory in Melbourne's new dedicated soccer stadium:





Small crowd but it was good fun and the stadium is fabbo. Bummer was that Former English Premier Leaguer Robbie Fowler scored a penalty kick equalizer for Perth in extra time, and the match finished 2-2.

New car... almost

So last week we went by the Subaru dealership and ended up putting some money down on a car that they had in stock at a different location, on the condition we could still reject it after it arrived and we had a test drive.

We had the test drive today, and everything was great, except that when we went to switch drivers, we smelled something burning. So we checked the oil, and it had way too MUCH. Some must've been spilling out onto the engine block, or something.

What can that do to a car? I'm not exactly sure, but now we are going to have an independent mechanic check it out before we buy. Bummer.

Soup

Had this soup at an Indonesian restaurant:


Any guess on the mystery vegetable? It was about as appetizing as it looked, and the flavor stayed with me all afternoon.

Balloons

Spotted this balloon hovering up the street:


Wow, that's really close, I thought. Then I looked up over our house and saw this:

News

We recently got some scary news about a family member, which I won't go into details on, but which today we were overjoyed to learn is not as bad as it could have been. It's an enormous relief. Enough said.

Running almost simultaneously to that drama we have been dealing with a tumor on our dog Laika. She got it removed two weeks ago but all the signs were bad. Last week we learned she had a stage 3 mast cell tumor, which is about the worst kind you can have - very aggressive. And today Marjorie took her to a specialist to find out more. An aspiration of her lymph node indicated that it indeed had spread, and so she got her first round of chemotherapy straight away, and has to go back maybe five more times. This will give her a 60% chance of surviving a year. We are still reeling from this, but will do whatever it takes to give her a full life in the time she has left.



So, whatever the Chinese calendar may say, we're declaring this the Year of the Dog. We've actually bought a car (contingent on a final test drive we'll take on Saturday) that will let us take her around.

Stephen Fry

We caught a talk given by Stephen Fry yesterday, which was fantastic. Just him on stage with a microphone for two hours and ten minutes. He was lured to Melbourne by a grassroots campaign, and the show we saw was a second one that was added after the first sold out (in a pretty big venue). Here's the article from the local paper about it, which is a little overly-fawning (but then so am I).

Did you know he played Lord Snot in that famous Young Ones game show episode? Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson are also down there with him.

Tortillas

I made these! Using actual lard. They rocked.

Trip

The more I have to blog about, the less inclined I am to do it. So you know this long hiatus means that a lot has been going on.

I'm still going to be brief about it. After Montreal we went down the Florida to see my side of the family plus Marjorie's sister's gang, including a fun day at Blizzard Beach, and the USA's awesome win over Algeria in the World Cup. Then to Atlanta to see Marjorie's parents and our old friends. I got to see USA get knocked out of the World Cup with a bunch of my old friends in a bar that was wall-to-wall people. Finally, we spent one last day in Los Angeles filling up our suitcases with cheap and hard-to-find-in-Australia goods.

My birthday was soon after we got back. Marjorie got me a slow cooker, which I'm excited about, though it tends to require a major grocery shop beforehand, which is difficult sans car. That's the other news, we're back in the market for getting one. It's been too long without.

I'll be posting various pictures from all this when I get around to it.

Montreal

We are in Montreal now, and enjoying it muchly.

We're hoping to have a refresher on our high school French as much as possible on our visit, and it's certainly a good place for that. I wasn't sure exactly how French it would be, but it certainly seems to dominate. What makes it a great learning opportunity is that just about everything that's written comes in both French and English versions, so it's like having flash cards everywhere. My vocabulary has been skyrocketing in just a few days here. And people typically will greet you in French, so you always have the opportunity to respond in kind. Unfortunately, we've typically been getting the polite thanks-for-trying smile followed by a response in English.

Yesterday was rainy and so we mostly just putzed around and did some shopping. In the evening we went to a lovely French restaurant, Restaurant Le Mas Des Oliviers, chosen largely because their menu posted on the street had no English translation, but again we were spoken to in English. They were very nice though - we have yet to encounter the notorious French snottiness - and the food was delicious.

Today we walked to the Parc du Mont-Royal overlooking the city. We had lunch at a Montreal institution, Schwarz's Deli, then hired public bikes and rode down to Old Montreal.

It's a shame that the winters are so harsh here; it might otherwise make a lovely place to live.

Pickles

Marjorie and a plate of pickles at Izakaya Den:

Bikes

I love this!


Rental bikes hit Melbourne.

Vet

Laika at the vet, for an ear infection:


Not her favorite place, of course, but she copes okay. I think it's the liver treats they give her.

Balloon

Spotted from the train station in the early morn: