Sun, spring, sweets and the tower of Sauron

Spring is here. Sorry, Northern Hemisphere friends and family... please just take this as an illustrated invitation to visit.

Just in case you've forgotten what we look like, here we are, sitting at the beach on one of the first hot days:

This just happens to be a good photo of us, a rare occurrence. Also, a rare moment of us  looking somewhat "cool."

Speaking of being cool:

Some animals find being cool effortless. That's the stare of a creature who has no qualms about devouring native species.

Speaking of devouring:

We prefer devouring non-native species. We picked these at a farm southeast of the city. There were a lot - some went into breakfast cereal, others are being frozen for the sake of future pancakes, and some got coated in chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate:

All tasty. The winner, however, is that little cookie ('Baci di San Remo'). It's a chocolate macaroon with hazelnut filling. The macaroon parts were sweet and delicate.

Speaking of sweet and delicate:

This rose just emerged this week in our backyard. It's on a small rosebush that sits next to the lemon tree. Out of nowhere, a sudden burst of colour.

Speaking of colour:

This is in a neighborhood we're thinking of moving to. Pink elephants make for good philosophical examples (you'd be surprised how often they're useful), so this seems like it would be a good place to find philosophical inspiration.

Speaking of philosophical inspiration:

Same neighborhood as the elephants. This was an especially good flat white at a place called Dukes, which roasts its own beans - very cool (especially in a town that prides itself on its coffee snobbery).

Not speaking of which:

This is a tower near us that has these weird eye things on top. Creepy and Tolkien-ish.

4 types of street art, 3 types of food

Melbourne seems to inspire street art and food (among other things). Here is an incomplete catalog:

Street Art Type 1: Unintentional Plant Sculpting

There are a lot of low power lines in this city (they could also be phone lines), and many of them are located right above rows of trees. To avoid conflict, the trees are trimmed into 'Y' shapes. This seems to start early, so there are rows of mature Y trees all over the place.

Street Art Type 2: Intentional Street Art

There is also a vast amount of street art in the traditional sense (according to the aesthetician Nick Riggle: art that makes material use of the street). It's everywhere. We need to devote at least one proper post to this, but the above is one especially clever (and subtle) example.

Street Art Type 3: Coffee Art

Two flat whites with feather designs that we drank sitting on Acland Street. One came out better than the other (we've heard about places with fancier stuff too, but this is pretty representative).

Street Art Type 4: Strangely Dressed Americans

Let us explain. It was a friend's birthday party, and we'd promised to bring him brownies. Our plan was to bike over, since there's not a good way to go via public transit. A storm rolled in, though, and tested our resolve. We decided to put everything in plastic bags, including ourselves. This was the result.

And yes: it stopped raining moments after we'd left the house. But by then we were running late, and didn't want to turn back. Also: Colin did put on a helmet.

Food Type 1: Homemade Vegetarian American-Style Food

This is a Reuben Sandwich. The sauerkraut is homemade (all Naomi's work). The fake meat was imitation bacon, but it was more like corned beef than like bacon. The only thing the sandwich'lacked' was thousand-island dressing...

Food Type 2: Slightly Fancier Versions of Australian Junk Food

This was called a 'Tim Tam Slice.' Naomi picked it up at a cafe in South Melbourne. Tasty even without coffee being drunk through it.

Food Type 3: Fancy-ish Desserts Brought Home on a Bike, Getting Only Slightly Squished

A 'Royale' from Brunetti's bakery in Carlton (near Melbourne Uni). Sort of a chocolate hazelnut mousse cake. Colin stayed at the university for dinner recently, but wanted to bring home a dessert.


Here are some words that will appear in upcoming posts: 'grading,' 'garden' and 'Canberra.'

Sweet summer (not pictured).

It's technically not summer here yet. But we had a couple gloriously summery days recently. Colin even broke out the shorts once this week when he went into his office (not pictured). But here's a view of Melbourne Uni campus:



We went out for ice-cream last week to a place called 'Jock's Ice Cream' in Albert Part (the neighborhood north of us). Apparently, when Obama won the election in 2008, they came up with a flavor ('flavour') called 'Obamarama' that was a smash-hit. They didn't have any of that when we went, but we did get some scoops of a flavor called 'Triple X Chocolate' (not pictured). Here's another dessert, though:



That was the packaging, promising great things. The inside looked like this:



They were profiteroles in a chocolate sauce. Not bad, but it didn't quite live up to the packaging.

There's a small lemon tree in the back yard. It has produced two lemons so far. They were both very sweet - you could pretty much eat them straight. No pictures of those, though. But here's a bee pollinating some of the new blossoms on the tree:



We're starting to think that the basic premise of Melbourne is eating and drinking outside. There are sidewalk cafes everywhere (not pictured). But here's Naomi eating vegetarian dumplings by South Melbourne market:

Bread and bottles

Yesterday we fasted for Yom Kippur. So we've been thinking about food, for a change. Here are some highlights from the past week.

This was some especially good-looking and good-tasting sourdough bread:


But what does one have on bread? Butter? Sometimes. Peanut butter? Often. Cheese? Sure. But in Australia...

Colin finally got the nerve to buy a little jar. And he's decided he likes it. Naomi, not so much. "...yet," says Colin. For those who may not know: Vegemite is a yeast-based spread, apparently a by-product of beer making. It's extremely salty and, yes, extremely yeasty. The internet tells us that it is less intense in flavor ('flavour') than the British equivalent: Marmite. We're not sure we believe this.

Speaking of products of beer making:

This is from a local brewery, from the Melbourne suburb Richmond. It's very good - better than some of our earlier Australian beer experiences. It has a lot of fruity flavors ('flavours'), but without losing its identity as beer.

Our last close-up photo for today:

We were given this by the Melbourne Lyceum Club.

The Melbourne Lyceum Club is a long-standing women's club based in central Melbourne. Several of their members run a philosophy circle, and a few months ago they decided they'd like to have someone present on Spinoza. Since Melbourne isn't exactly brimming with Spinozists ("...yet," says Colin), they were eventually directed towards Colin.

The presentation was a lot of fun. Naomi came along. The club members were a fantastic bunch, and the club itself is beautiful... quite a treat.

Returning to yesterday: we went to High Holydays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) services at Kedem, a progressive, lay-led congregation. The services were lovely, and the congregation was unbelievably welcoming (as in: lots of invitations to meals at various people's homes).

Food isn't the only thing we think about. Really. We'll prove it in the next post...

Spinoza, cookies, rain and spiders

Colin recently got back from his first trip to the US. Yes, it was weird 'visiting' America. This was the occasion:




For some reason, Colin was invited to present. When he got the invitation several months ago (when we were still in New York), Hopkins was a short train-ride away. At this point, it was a somewhat longer trip - but well worth it. In a whirlwind, jet-lagged week, he heard 15 talks on Spinoza, delivered his own, caught up with some very good friends, saw a bit of Baltimore, spent an evening with Naomi's family (Naomi was able to join us for a bit on Skype), flew to Albuquerque, saw his parents for a couple nights, ate a chile relleno burrito in Madrid (Madrid, New Mexico), did a little mud stuccoing, met his mother's new cat, started a new Spinoza paper, survived a 10-hour layover in LA, and came back to Melbourne. It was hard not getting to see a lot of friends, when they were so close... but he'll be back again before long.

After the long, trans-Pacific flight, arriving home again in Melbourne was sweet. Very sweet:



Naomi made a pile of these. They're insanely tasty... orange Florentines.

There hasn't really been a consistent theme in our lives since then.

There has been a consistent amount of rain, however. Out the window, one sees this:



Just inside the window, one sees this:



We've been told the spiders have been unusually prolific this season. These types seem pretty unconcerned with us - they just want a corner to hang out in. Unfortunately, their aesthetic sensibilities (pro-cobwebs) and ours (anti-cobwebs) don't match, so we've had to usher them along...

family & food

Naomi's parents just flew back to the US, after a two-week visit. It was great having them here. We got to show them some pieces of the city we knew, and go exploring with them.

The last post talked about our Great Ocean Road/Grampians roadtrip. Here are the four mighty explorers, posing in front of the Twelve Apostles:


Emboldened by the success of that trip, last weekend we took a day trip up into the Yarra Valley for some wine tasting. Colin was driving, and so made use of the elegant spitting buckets at the vineyards (he got more comfortable doing it after he saw the technique illustrated by a sophisticated-sounding British wine-sophisticate with a sophisticated scarf).

The weather was a little cool and rainy. But it was all very pretty. Along these lines:


Our original ambitions had been to visit 4+ wineries. But we were hungry after the first 1.5, and so headed for lunch in a nearby town. We had pizza, followed by Toblerone cheesecake. This shows the cheesecake:


And this shows our feelings about the cheesecake:


Our last stop was a brewery, where we split a tasting paddle of beer. Several of them tasted like passionfruit. Colin had a machiatto (strictly for safety reasons).


Our final dinner was at a place called Rumi, which several people had recommended to us. It was a sort of modern Lebanese/Persian place. Intensely yummy. We got so wrapped up in dinner that we forgot to take pictures until the end. The end was two desserts. One was 'Persian fairy floss' - a sort of hand-made cotton candy, made out of sugar, flour and vanilla. It looked a bit like fiberglass or fur, but that didn't slow us down. The other was an almond milk pudding, with cherries and some sort of jam. You can see them here, along with a pot of rose petal tea:


The end
(of this post)

"The Bush"

To all you loyal readers, we apologize for the delay in posting. But, fear not as this will be an epic one.

Naomi's parents have been visiting for the past week. This gave us the opportunity (the excuse) to explore a bit out of the city. We made our first escape into "the bush" this past weekend, heading west along "The Great Ocean Road," then north into the Grampians mountains before heading back east through some gold rush towns on the way back to Melbourne.

1. The Great Ocean Road is basically what it sounds like - mostly a coastal road (with a bunch of great cliff-coast views) going through various little cute towns.

This is a view of 'Bells Beach' (near the town of Torquay), which is known for great surfing:

We saw a couple surfers, but they seemed half-hearted. The waves didn't seem very impressive, at least to die-hard surfers like ourselves.

This is the cute fishing town of Apollo Bay, where we spent the first night:

Going inland a bit from the coast, there is a lot of temperate rainforest, which includes fern gullies and waterfalls. We stopped at one of them, Erskine Falls:

Another unexpected, amazing thing we saw in one of the towns were...

...bunches of calla lilies growing wild, like weeds!

The best-known site on the Great Ocean Road is "The Twelve Apostles." These are rock formations jutting out of the water, along the coast. I don't think there were ever actually 12, but some have collapsed and now they're down to about 6 or so...


This part of the coast is also known for having had many shipwrecks (particularly of ships that came from England). This was the site of one. We're sure it's less beautiful if you're approaching it from the sea during a storm.



2. The Grampians. On the way heading straight north from the end of the Great Ocean Road, we could see our destination looming in the distance:



The town we stayed in, Halls Gap, is known for having kangaroos grazing on front lawns (at least according to our guide book). Behold: the guidebook didn't lie. We woke up to a bunch of 'roos grazing in the grass near our cabin (and walked by some at night on our way to dinner, in the dark!). Although they are in town, they still seemed on guard when they saw people coming to take a photo of them:


The Grampians also include some waterfalls as well as pretty views from above, looking at the landscape around:


They are also supposed to contain many varieties of wildflowers that are not found anywhere else in the world. I assumed these were some of them:

The Grampians are also significant to the Aboriginal people who have lived in the area - we visited an Aboriginal cultural center in Halls Gap explaining the significance of the land to the cultures. There were also numerous ancient rock art sites around the park, of which we visited one:


As one would expect, the history of the area in the past couple hundred years is tragic. The Europeans changed the landscape very quickly with logging and grazing animals (not to mention the introduction of non-native pests like foxes). So it's kind of hard to know what to feel about it all...

More to come.