Taco bell...(November 4, 2001)

here sucks. You might be wondering why I'm all the way in Australia and eating at a Taco Bell anyway. Or why I'd be eating at a Taco Bell anywhere for that matter. You know that saying that you always want what you can't have? Since the moment I stepped onto this continent I have had this non stop craving for Mexican food. After ordering a burrito the other nite that I
swear had tabouleh in it, today I went to search out a Taco Bell that I had mysteriously come across when I was here last April but was way too hungover to eat at at the time. So this afternoon, after another fruitless morning of job searching, popped in to try it out. I have to admit, my expectations were unfairly high but damn, the food sucked. My bean burrito tasted
like sour cream wrapped in cardboard with a few whole chili beans thrown in and while the chicken taco was a bit more satisfying, it too was dripping with sour cream and what I swear was tomato sauce. Ah well, at least I satisfied my pathetic Australian Taco Bell curiousity.

The last couple of weeks have been quite interesting to say the least. Before Laura, my partner in crime, left to go back to Cali in order to save money to come back to me in January, we managed to "play tourist" for a few more days in between efforts to help me find work (which included my first hitchhiking experience...was driven to Panavision by two nice salsa dance instructors where Laura somehow managed to spill half a bottle of water on their backseat in a
matter of seconds). We took a speedboat ride in Sydney Harbour complete with death defying spins and bumps (ouch is all i can say), saw "The Magic Flute" at the Opera House (in German), ate mountains of sushi (damn it's good here), hit some clubs complete with unisex bathrooms, were asked if we were Canadian way too many times (apparently the Canucks get very insulted when asked if they are American, so the Aussies find it less emotionally painful if they stick with the Canada thing), and most disturbingly fascinating...decided to buy tickets to see an interesting work of theater (if you could call it that) entitled "The Puppetry of the Penis." Use your imagination. Let me just tell you that I will never, ever look at Ayers Rock, a piece of KFC chicken, a snail, windsurf, the Australian coat of arms, a diggeridoo or the Aussie Prime Minister the same again.

So this past week was a bit less uneventful as I signed up with temp agencies, handed out my c.v.
(resume) to anyone who would take it, and waited for work. In the meantime my flatmate and I bought some funky furniture for the place, a couple of plants to talk to until we make some more local friends, have almost mastered the city bus and rail lines, attempted to run for the first time in a month along Bondi Beach (made it about 1/4 of the way before hyperventilating and swearing to myself that I would not take one sip of alcohol for an entire week...this lasted about 6
hours), met a ton of slimy, wasted travelers at local pubs (where I was told by a Will Ferrell look alike that I'd be a lot more attractive to men if I'd stop yawning and that I should go home, go to sleep and try this whole "going out thing" again the next nite), met a cool Welsh guy and his gangster rap/90210 obsessed never thought I'd find those two things in the same person) Kiwi friend which we brought back to our flat to check out our courdoroy couch and then totally freaked out with the picture of the dead wombat on my bedroom door (the word "psycho" was flown around way too many times to be good for any one person's self esteem), and caught a great Aussie movie called Lantana.

Which brings us up to today as I sit here on a somewhat overcast day, watching the waves crash onto the jagged cliffs across the way, the surfers coming up from the water (got to get me one of
those...surfboards), fat men in Speedos buying sweet corn from a cart on the sand, sarong wearing hippies, and a pigeon with an oversized head picking up crumbs off of the grass. Life is funny. These next couple of years will definitely be interesting. Australia is quite a unique place to be having my quarter-life crisis. Wishing you all well.

Oh, one more thing that I almost forgot, a little life lesson that I recently

learned and that you should all keep in mind in your future endeavors. NEVER, EVER trust car racing, 19 year old mechanics.

Word to your mother.
xoxoL