Monthly Archives: December 2015

Foodie mania in Tassie

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After a couple days of antiobiotics, I am slowly regaining my desire to eat, and not just plain food. I didn’t realize before researching Tasmania what a foodie mecca it is, as it is famous for its great variety of fish, high quality oysters, leatherwood honey (among other varieties), all things dairy, particularly cheese and milk, and endless different fruit orchards. We had Tasmanian oysters last night just with a drizzle of lemon, and they were by far some of the creamiest and sweetest ones I’ve ever had. We tried trevalley fish, which is a local type of white fish, and its flesh was very firm and meaty — perfect for a good searing or being coated in batter or breadcrumbs for fish and chips. We had them in both preparations and were stunned by how satisfying it was. In just one day, we visited a honey farm (and saw all the honey bees at work, along with a great education on the different roles of bees. Who would have thought that the youngest bees of the hive actually act as real “under takers,” sweeping out any and all dead bodies to keep the hive clean!); a salmon and ginseng farm (tried hot smoked salmon for the first time, as usually smoked salmon back home is raw smoked, and even had a salad dressing with ginseng spice in it, which we ended up purchasing because of how unique it was); a raspberry farm (I was ignorant of the fact that there are many varieties of raspberries, and not just due to color); an ice cream factory, and a whisky (yes, they spell it without the “e” here) distillery (wow, is hard liquor expensive in Australia!). I lamented at the end of the day that we only have less than a day left here before returning to Melbourne and realized that you could easily spend weeks exploring Tasmania (or Tassie, as everyone colloquially calls it) and still not get through everything. And that was after everyone told us how “small” Tassie was! There are wine trails, endless foodie tour routes you can take, and of course, lots of hiking with incredible bays and scenic trails you can take by car or by foot.

This is the closest we have come to Antarctica or the bottom of the earth, and who knew how overwhelming from a food perspective it would all be?

Throat

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After a day of antiobiotics, I still couldn’t sleep through the night and had to wake up for my coughing fits. But when I finally did wake up fully in the morning, I found that I actually did feel different. Today, for the first time in about five days, I actually could feel that I had a throat. It’s been blocked for what felt like eternity, and now, when I swallow or clear my throat, it actually feels slightly cleared! There’s no thick coating of phlegm there this morning. I still can’t speak properly, as every time I try to speak, it hurts a little unless I increase my pitch, and it comes out sounding like I am croaking or short of breath. It’s been weird to hear my own voice like this and feel myself being challenged to breathe when I speak. But I can already feel that there is light at the end of this dark tunnel.

Tasmanian doctor

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Despite violently coughing and vomiting up food and phlegm, there was no way in hell I was going to cancel this long weekend trip we planned to Tasmania. I could rephrase that again as, there was no way in hell that Chris would have cancelled this trip, too. Being a native Australian, he has been very embarrassed to share with others that he still hadn’t visited Tasmania, but would use the excuse of taking me to finally see it himself. This trip was happening regardless of how sick I was.

Well, we arrived. Then on the very short car ride from the airport to our hotel, Chris had to stop the car so I could vomit up more phlegm. I felt like I was going to pop out all the veins in my face at that point, so we found the nearest doctor and made an appointment. I could barely speak at that point, so every word out of my mouth took effort. At the doctor’s office, after a thorough (and croaking) discussion of my timeline of symptoms, checking my vitals, and the doctor just happening to be there at a time when I had another coughing and vomiting fit (well, she heard through the thin walls since I did this in the bathroom and not in her lap), she determined that I had contracted whooping cough and would need to immediately start a course of antibiotics specific to this highly contagious respiratory disease. I wasn’t sure if I was in heaven or in hell — in heaven because finally, someone had given me a diagnosis that made sense that would rid me of the violent fits that had been exhausting my entire body, or in hell because… who gets whooping cough, especially at my age? And also, who would have given to this to me… back in New York?!

The other amazing thing is that I’d never had to visit a doctor during any of my international travels until today, so I’d never personally been exposed to medical practices outside of the U.S. Who would have thought my first visit would be here in Tasmania, with a doctor so casual that she didn’t even tell me her last name when introducing herself and only gave her first name? She listened and was extremely patient. I can’t even remember the last time I had a doctor who had given me that much time and shown so much compassion towards me. It’s as though every time I described another symptom in the week and a half timeline, it felt like she was feeling the pain, too. She gave me her phone number and said to ring her office at any time, and let the receptionist know she specifically said she’d fit me in any day I needed to see her in the next week if needed. I was so touched and grateful. “No worries,” she responded and smiled.

And don’t even get me started on the cost. I have no traveler’s insurance, no extra insurance I paid for through my own insurance plan, yet the cost of my visit was so affordable, and the price of my antibiotics prescription so low that I know for certain that every single American back home is being screwed, some even being pushed into debt and bankruptcy because of the senseless cost of healthcare there. If I were a foreigner visiting the U.S. with the same situation, I’d be terrified to know how much my visit would have cost.. and the cost of my prescription medication. Anyone who defends the American healthcare system has zero perspective on the rest of the world and the “true cost” of healthcare. Health is a right, not a privilege. Without health, you don’t have a life.

Choosing health

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When I was a junior in college, I took a development economics course that explored economics and its complexities in third-world countries (I learned in that class that it could be perceived to be politically incorrect to even use the term “third-world,” so instead in our discussions, we had to use the term “developing” countries to differentiate from “developed” nations like the United States or the United Kingdom). In our very first session, our professor asked us a simple question: Take any developing nation in the world where the great majority of people are struggling and living on $1 USD/day or less. If you could choose one area of concern to tackle first, which would it be and why?

A few areas were given as examples, such as education, defense, health, water supply (in terms of cleanliness and ability to drink). I didn’t hesitate for a second and immediately jumped on education and started to build out a case for it. We got into small groups (our class was only about 20) and were organized by issue, and in the end we fought it out. And as important as education was, as much as we all strongly believed that every child should be entitled to formal schooling and learning how to read, write, do math, and learn about the rest of the world, my team lost. Why? Because you cannot succeed in educating a child if the child is too ill or even dying and cannot attend class.

I realized during this debate how naive I was and how I had taken my own life and life’s privileges for granted. Sure, I’d had a cold or a fever or an infection here and there growing up, but access to clean water, nutritious food, and basic healthcare have never been a problem for me. I never had to worry about issues like bugs eating away at my skin at night to the point that my bones were exposed, or suffering from endless infections due to being tested HIV positive at birth, or constantly vomiting hour after hour due to some fatal illness that no one could diagnose for me because I had no doctor within driving distance. At that point in my life, I’d only traveled to one other country — China, and even there I spent the majority of my time in the major metropolitan area of Shanghai and was never exposed to extreme poverty. I didn’t even know what it was. It wasn’t until I traveled to Vietnam two years later and went out to the countryside in the central part of the country when I really saw poverty stare at me in the face.

The reason I thought about this now is that the last two days, I’ve been stuck at Chris’s parents’ home, bed and couch-ridden with extreme respiratory infection symptoms. Every few hours, I’ve had to spend time kneeling in front of a toilet, vomiting up what felt like endless food and phlegm. I’ve actually been sick for the last almost two weeks, but it wasn’t until earlier this week when I realized the symptoms could be far worse than just a cold. People with a common cold don’t wake up three times during the night to violently cough and vomit for ten to twenty minutes at a time. They also don’t break capillaries under their eyes from coughing so hard that it feels like their faces and eyeballs are going to pop out of their skulls. Every time I got in front of the toilet and had tears running down my face because of the severity of my cough and vomit, I thought about how stupid and naive I was to choose education in that development economics class debate and completely disregard health. Would I, in my current state, be able to attend class and learn about World War II or organic chemistry and actually be able to pay attention and take all this information in? Sure, I’m not dying (at least, I don’t think I am). With my current illness, there’s absolutely no way it could be compared to the ill children in sub-Saharan Africa. But I feel terrible every time I think back to that course and think that I disregarded their basic human needs of health because I subconsciously assumed that would be fine (by choosing education), even if consciously, I knew it was so far from it. Times like this are when I check my privilege and remind myself of all my developed world comforts and how I take them for granted, even with broken capillaries and vomiting through the night.

Wedding RSVPs

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We brought dinner over to Chris’s friend’s house last night. This friend and her husband recently had a baby in July, and despite that, they are planning to come to our California wedding — with the baby, a car seat, and a whole lot of diapers in tow. It’s a heart warming thing to think that despite all the people who have declined that these new parents will be coming, even when it is harder to travel with an unpredictable infant with unpredictable needs. I was so happy when I saw our wedding invitation posted up on their fridge with magnets. Our wedding invitation is being loved!

Since we have made our wedding date and location official, we’ve heard all kinds of reasons for declining, everything from cost (understandable), limited leave time (unfortunately, understandably), having conflicting international non-profit work travel at the time of the wedding (that sucks but at least someone is doing something to help others with his life), being due for a baby the week after our wedding (very unfortunately understandable), having three kids under the age of five and being too difficult to travel (well, I just feel sorry for them and having three kids to deal with and no life outside of being a parent, which is one of my many life nightmares), and scheduling an extended holiday right before our wedding (not so understandable, but I’ll get over it). At the end of the day, our wedding will be what it is with the people who will show up. The ones who don’t show up, it will be their loss. The best thing to know is that of the people who do show up, they are proving that they care enough and are willing to make the effort. The others won’t matter as much. On the morning of my wedding, I won’t be lamenting that these people didn’t show up; in fact, I won’t even think about them at all and could care less.The only person in the world I will be really sad about not being there is my Ed. And in his case, he really had no way of making it.

The mango man

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I was so overwhelmed with how fragrant and cheap the mangoes were at the Sydney Fish Market yesterday that I decided to buy three fat ripe ones from one of the market stands. Little did I know that we’re technically not allowed to bring fresh produce over state lines, so if we were to strictly follow Australian laws, I was not supposed to go from New South Wales back down to Victoria with my mangoes in hand. Chris informed me of this when I met him at the end of his work day, and I was devastated. I told him we needed to eat one of them and just risk getting the remaining two confiscated through airport security later that evening.

We went back to our hotel, where I went up to the hotel bar and asked them if they had plastic cutlery to give us. The bartender politely gave us some after some wait time. I returned back to Chris where he was sitting in the lobby, and he asked where the plates were. Silly me, I had forgotten we needed plates! So I went back to the bartender with my mango in one hand and the cutlery in another, and I asked him if we could borrow some plates. He looked at me from one hand to the next and asked me how I was planning to cut that mango. “With the plastic knife you gave me?” I said, smiling back at him. He smiled and laughed, shaking his head. “No, no no,” he replied. “I will cut the mango for you.” Someone who looked like the manager said they could not give me a real knife to cut, but they’d happily cut it up for us. I got so excited at this; this man was going to cut a mango I brought in from the outside just like that, no charge, no nothing! Most places would never do this for you. He cut it neatly, cubed the mangoes and peeled the skin back so professionally (“Of course he knows how to cut a mango; he’s Indian!” Chris exclaimed). He presented it to me and told me to enjoy, and I thanked him and brought them back to Chris.

As an American, I felt a strong need to tip him or give him some sort of compensation. He just did this service for me and expected absolutely nothing, but I felt compelled to do something, anything for him to show my gratitude. I know he would not accept a tip given local customs, so I thought about what else I could do.,. I could give him one of the two remaining mangoes! I took one of them after we finished eating and presented it to him. He laughed again. “Do you want me to cut another one for you?” He asked. No, no! I said to him. “This is for you to take home. Thank you for being so kind as to cut my mango for me.” Of course, he said it was unnecessary, that he was happy to cut it for me and could not accept my gift. “I have many mangoes at home,” he said. I insisted again and said he must take it, so he did. He thanked me profusely and I said goodbye to him.

I will always remember this man as the bartender who cut my mango and expected nothing from me. This completely made my day.

Sydney Fish Market

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I walked about half an hour from the Circular Quay area this early afternoon to the Sydney Fish Market, the second largest fish market in the world in terms of diversity of seafood (after, of course, Tsukiji Market in Tokyo). I was so excited; we ran out of time three years ago to come this market, and so this time, I came ready with a big appetite and my DSLR in hand. What I had not mentally prepared myself for were the hoards and hoards of mainland Chinese tourists running around with zero order or awareness that other people were shopping and eating at the market other than themselves and their own traveling groups. I saw tourists yelling at each other to order food in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Teochiew, literally running with large trays of massive stir-fried king crab and rock lobsters, trying to frantically get tables to sit at. I watched as others squabbled with each other in a variety of dialects for cutting each other in the “queues” (they were not true queues, just crowds of people trying to push and shove their way to the cashier to order and pay). I almost witnessed two different men crash into each other with their large trays of crustaceans — that would have been one extremely expensive and smelly mess. I was so overwhelmed with the crowds, the rudeness, and the variety of seafood and things to order that it took me over 45 minutes to decide what I wanted to eat and sit down.

I enviously stared at groups of five to six tourists, all gathering around a massive tray of rock lobster over noodles, animalisticly digging their fingers into the shells of the crustaceans, slobbering away at their prized seafood and licking their fingers clean of the delicious juices and cooking sauces. Here, you can hand pick your fish or crustacean of choice out of a tank and have them stir fry, fry, boil, steam, or saute in about eight different methods, all Asian style or “fish and chip” style. Little petite me could never eat a three-kilo lobster over noodles by herself (and I also wouldn’t have paid what was probably over $450 AUD for that lobster or crab, either. The prices here were NOT cheap). In the end, I settled on half a fried lobster tail, one Singapore chili-stir fried prawn that was the size of my hand, and a delicious “wok hei” fragrant plate of stir fried seafood mein with fatty, crispy skinned salmon, prawns, calamari, chicken and egg. Those salmon bites were some of the fattiest, richest pieces I’ve had in my life. And the bits of seared skin were crackling in my mouth. That meal was worth every dollar I paid. The lobster tail was slightly overcooked, but the flavor was buttery and very sweet. And the chili prawn was perfectly cooked with a sauce that left me wanting more. That was probably the biggest prawn I’d ever eaten in my life.

And as there were just a few bites left of my beloved noodle dish, to disrupt my intensity with my food, a group of five Cantonese tourists barged over to my table and spoke in loud Cantonese, saying “This girl’s almost done. Let’s get her table.” I looked at them and glared and pushed their stuff away from my bag as they encroached on my space. I made sure to stay there and whipped out my phone as they tried to move me out of my seat. This was my space as long as I was here, and there was no way in hell I’d let some ill-mannered, loud-mouthed tourists from Guangzhou, my fatherland, take my space here.

As I was selecting my food earlier, a Chinese tourist made eye contact with me and noticed we were both using the same model of Canon DSLR. He asked me in Mandarin if I was from China, and I responded back in the same language that I was from the U.S. He let out a big relieved breath and laughed. He revealed that he was here on holiday from Guangzhou, but he came here to Australia thinking he would have escaped Chinese people. Yet ever since he’s arrived, all he is surrounded by are more Chinese people from the mainland!

I’m fine with them being here — I am of Asian decent, after all — but I just wish they had better manners and self-awareness, and left me to my seafood eating alone. And I thought this after I passed a table with a foot-high pile of prawn shells and lobster shells. These weren’t even on plates — just on the table itself. As they would say in Chinese, “yi dian limao dou mei you.”

Asianized Sydney

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Chris has to be in Sydney for work the next two days, so I decided to go with him and explore the city on my own. The last time I came, it was almost three years ago when we came at the end of 2012 to see New Year’s fireworks at the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The city seems even more Asian than it was when I was last here. Chinatown looks as though it’s expanded quite a bit, and there is an even wider variety of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai shops, ranging from simple grocery stores to clothing boutiques to even milk bread shops. There are stores along George Street that advertise selling just beauty and home items exclusively from Japan and Korea. And when I stepped into the Din Tai Fung off of George Street just past lunch time, there was a decent number of non-Asians dining there. Sure, the table of white people next to me made sure to order fried rice and generic noodles, but hey, they made sure to order the xiao long bao and other dumplings that Din Tai Fung is famous for. The “Asianizing” of Sydney seems to be rampant.

Aunt and uncle catch ups

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Today, we went to visit Chris’s paternal grandmother for about two hours, then spent about five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home nearby. The funny thing is that we spent five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home, yet we didn’t even realize that time had passed that quickly because there was so much to talk about between running around with their grandchildren, who they were babysitting for the weekend.

I thought about my lunch with my aunt last Tuesday before we left for Australia, and I realize how much of a far cry these conversations today were versus the very shallow conversation with my own aunt. My aunt is a well-meaning, happy, good person, but she just doesn’t have it in her to have a conversation with me past very surface level topics. She will ask me, “how is work?” But if I were to say anything more than “good” or “okay” or “terrible,” she wouldn’t know how to react or respond. She will ask me if I am planning to have children shortly after the wedding, and I will respond yes, no, or maybe, and that would be the end of that topic. There’s no deeper digging, no topic that develops past the first question and answer, and some answers are too complex or painful or long for her to fully be interested or engaged in. Tonight, we discussed our wedding preparations, everything from how we chose a photographer to the questions that he would ask us leading up to the wedding to prepare for the wedding day. I could never have that conversation with my aunt… or any of my aunts or uncles who are on my side at all.

As Tolstoy once wrote famously in his epic novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” All families have problems. All relationships have problems. But not all families and relationships see the same issues as “problems.” I’m positive my aunt doesn’t see our shallow conversations as a problem, but I do. I feel like she will never really know me. Even my dad asks me deeper questions than my aunt.

But this is my family. They are who they are, and our relationships aren’t going to change. So, as per usual, I have to keep reminding myself that I need to accept these situations as they are — not capable of change. And that’s okay because I can find deeper conversation with Chris’s family members and a select few of my own friends.

Vietnamese food in Melbourne

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I never realized how large the Vietnamese population in Melbourne was until my second visit here in 2013, when Chris took me to two different Vietnamese neighborhoods, Springvale and Richmond. It shouldn’t surprise me given Australia’s proximity to Vietnam, but it was more just intriguing to me to think of Vietnamese people speaking English with Aussie accents and living in the land Down Under. This morning, I had a craving for pho, so I asked Chris to take me to have some. We decided to go to Springvale, where we passed by a handful of Vietnamese butcher shops one store at a time. I’ve never seen a Vietnamese-specific butcher shop, nor have I ever seen Vietnamese-only barbecue restaurants and takeout counters for classic dishes like heo quay (Vietnamese roast pork belly). Here, there are pho shops that open at 8am, which I also hadn’t seen before outside of Vietnam. Traditionally in Vietnam, pho is a breakfast dish, and here, people actually do have it for breakfast… and queue up for it!

The original place we wanted to go to have pho had too long of a wait (I have never seen a queue for pho, nor have I ever had to wait for it anywhere), so we settled on a place a block away, which ended up still being quite satisfying with a side of jack fruit shake. These shops serve pho and only pho, and they are bustling. I wish New York had Vietnamese food like this and quality that was as easy to find as this.