Outback Steakhouse

American Food - yum

I was once taken, along with a group of friends, to an excellent American restaurant on Bondi Beach.  We were dragged there, quite unwillingly, by our American buddy, Jeff.  He insisted that we would love it, and sure enough, we did.  It was vaguely Tex-Mex-themed, meaning we drank a lot of margaritas while eating enormous plates of barbequed meats.

My main meal (which Americans call an entrée), consisted of an entire pig’s worth of ribs, half a chicken, more potatoes than I’d ever seen in one place, and a metric shit-tonne of BBQ sauce.  It was delicious, and I somehow managed to eat it all.  This, Jeff assured us, was authentic American food, and a great night was had by all.

Over here in the USA, the place you go for authentic Australian food is Outback Steakhouse. It serves up classic Aussie cuisine, like Alice Springs Chicken Quesadilla®, Aussie Cheese Fries, Baby Back Ribs, Teriyaki Filet Medallions, and of course Gold Coast Coconut Shrimp. Shrimp. Not prawns. Shrimp.

Authentically Aussie

You can whet your appetite for these staples of Australiana by starting out with a Walkabout Soup Of The Day, and for the more delicate eaters, why you can avoid all of the manly, meaty mains (sorry, entrées) by sticking to a good ol’ Classic Blue Cheese Wedge Salad. Ah, the taste of home.

Basically, Outback Steakhouse is the American restaurant on Bondi Beach, with a few cringeworthy ockerisms thrown randomly at the menu.  Its only similarity to an Australian restaurant is that it serves as an uncomfortable reminder that nobody (including Australians) has a fucking clue what Australian food is.

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Appetite For Self-Destruction

Drive-thru everything

There’s a short answer to the question “Why is there an obesity epidemic in the USA?”. Essentially, you can live your entire life without having to get out of your seat, and shitty, unhealthy food is not only ubiquitous, but also incredibly cheap.

Cheap, horrible food

I should say, before anyone stops reading what must look like another high-and-mighty rant about the diets of others, that there is also a plethora of excellent food available here. Praising and gushing never makes great copy, so I’ll do my best to remain acerbic by using the good food as a platform for complaining about Australia. Continue reading

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Clarification

I know my friends have dry senses of humor, so I can’t be sure whether they’re really asking, or just playing along. Let me be clear – I was not actually rectally probed by Homeland Security.

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From Slob To Housefräu

As anyone who’s ever lived with me, visited me, or had me stay at their house for more than an hour knows, I’m not a naturally clean & tidy person. It’s probably fair to call me a lazy, neglectful swine.  In my home life, I could mitigate that fact to some degree through a deft combination of bringing home a relatively high income, making a lot of noise whenever I did any housework, and being both passionately argumentative and mildly manipulative. Continue reading

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Just call me “Sir Reads-a-lot”

It’s nice to have some serious reading time on my hands. I took a year off in the country once before, and tore my way through an entire municipal library. For some people, decadence means cocaine and strippers – for me it means lying around reading all kinds of stuff. I’ve been working my way through Michael Chabon’s catalog, and am currently enjoying “The Crossing” – the second part of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. The first one, “All The Pretty Horses” was amazing…I think McCarthy’s prose is some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever come across, and so far this one is reinforcing that fact.

Up next is some non-fiction – a book about Poincaré and Einstein’s study of time, then a couple of volumes of Dave Barry’s collected columns – I’ve never read any of his stuff, I just know that about a third of all the amusing quotes I read online are attributed to him, so I’d like to get a better look at his shtick.

The municipal library here is very well-stocked for a town this small, and then there’s always the college library to hit up if I run out of interesting titles.

Sigh, it’s a hard life!

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Settling In, Part 1 – The House

I was in love with this place long before I set foot in it. This was mostly due to the tantalizing bird’s-eye view offered by Bing Maps, which sustained me through the last couple of weeks at work in Melbourne. It’s even nicer in the flesh. Continue reading

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A Brief Word About Toilets

I’m fairly content having a vague awareness of the details of my bowel movements. Frankly, as long as I’m having them, I’m fine without any details.

Australian toilets understand this – they are designed so that one needn’t be confronted by the totality of their business every time. American toilets have what I can only describe as a display shelf. It’s not an easy adjustment.

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The Hardest Part of the Trip

Prior to this trip, I’d only taken relatively short flights, the longest being the eight-hour haul to Malaysia from Sydney. That was unbearable, mostly because the budget carrier made up for the low, low prices by cramming everyone into the skinniest seats allowed under the UN’s torture protocols.Strictly no fatties So the prospect of a fourteen-hour flight from Sydney to LA, bracketed between the short flight from Melbourne and the five-hour flight to Cleveland, was frankly horrifying – horrifying enough to book a first-class final leg, just to take the edge off. I needn’t have fretted so much about the plane trip – it was just fine and dandy.  There was just enough video bullshit available on the flight to keep my mind off things, the plane was brand new, with much nicer seats than I’m used to, and I managed to get a decent amount of sleep. “Easy”, I thought as I disembarked at LAX. Then it got hard. Continue reading

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