more Paris, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and home!!!

In our last few days in Paris, Rachael and I visited the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, which was extremely lovely, and I took a lot of pictures.

The Cathedral is especially noteworthy, from my point of view, because it is where Blaise Pascal is buried, and, from Mom's point of view, because it had a little box where offerings could be made under the patronage of St. Therese.

From Paris we flew to Singapore for three days.  On our first real expedition in Singapore, we got on the top of a double-decker bus in order to get to the Little India neighborhood, but my navigating efforts failed, and we ended up in Chinatown instead.  A very friendly Chinese-Singaporean woman helped us find it.  The Chinese community in Singapore is gearing up for the Chinese New Year, and there were decorations for that all over.

Slightly to our surprise, McDonald's is trying to cash in on the Chinese New Year fever by pushing a seasonal "Prosperity Burger," which I did not try.

Rachael and I visited the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown and, frankly, found it quite off-putting.  The temple was full of shiny Buddhist bling in a way that seemed irreverent, perhaps partly because it is only a few years old, so all the gold shiny things haven't had a chance to become charmingly worn.  Anyway, it seemed painfully materialistic to me, and deepened my resolve never to become a Buddhist.  I didn't take any pictures.  However, before we left, I took a picture of a Buddha statue on sale in a store with a swastika on its chest.  It was nice to see a swastika functioning as a symbol of something good instead of evil.

Later that day Rachael and I took a walk by the Singapore River.

This building is commonly referred to as the "Durian building."

And, speaking of durian fruit, we saw lots of them all over Singapore, although I didn't try it.  Our hotel even had a durian policy:

The most exciting thing about Singapore, we decided, was the culinary aspect.  We eventually did make it to Little India and had a lot of delicious pratas (more commonly spelled "parathas", which are discs of fried dough, sort of like pancakes); to the glitzy shopping district and had some delicious dumplings; and to the Middle Eastern neighborhood for some delicious "Murtabaks", which are kind of like pratas stuffed with meat.  Also, we went to a fancy tea house for delicious tea and scones.

 Last but not least, on our way from Sinapore to Sydney, we had a layover in Kuala Lumpur (in Malaysia).  I wasn't expecting to encounter anything bloggable there, but lo and behold, in the middle of the airport there was a Jungle Walk, where you can leave the indoor area and walk around inside some real jungle with plants and tropical birds and a waterfall. It was hard to take a picture that really conveyed the jungleness properly, but I did my best.  (Rachael says I look crazed in this photo; I think she looks beautiful.)

Bonjour from McDonalds!

Hi everyone! Rachael and I are in a McDonald's in Paris taking advantage of the free wifi to do some internet tasks.  Rachael is having a Sprite (in lieu of orange juice, which was unfortunately "indisponible") and I had a McTimber sandwich.  There is a rivalry in French McDonalds's between the McFarmer and the McTimber sandwich, and I've made my choice.

More francophilically, Rachael and I have been doing a lot of exploring and investigating.  Yesterday we went to the Museum of the Middle Ages and saw The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which were quite something, although I didn't get any pictures of them.

Also, a few days back, we finally saw Proust's apartment in the museum dedicated to the history of Paris.  We tried to go there last time we were in Paris, but the part of the museum with Proust's apartment was closed off.  Then we went there with Rachael's sister, brother-in-law and friend Ainslie over the weekend, but it was closed off again!  But I asked the museum attendants when the exhibit would be reopened, and they said we could see it if we came back on Tuesday, which we did.  Even then we had to wait an extra hour.  Here I am, in front of the bed upon which world literature reached its apex.

We've also been enjoying and photographing lots of French food in pretty cafes.  Voila:

And we've been seeing some of the sights as well.  Here we are touristing in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame:

A major highlight of our trip was a trip on New Year's Eve with Rachael's sister, brother-in-law and friend to the top of the hill with the Cathedral of Sacre Coeur.  It was really wonderful to ring in the new year with so many friendly Parisians.  As we were leaving a drunken Italian was wishing us all "bonne Anee!" and when he found out I was American he kissed me on the cheek and said "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" I'm not sure what he was thanking America for (the cotton gin? Louis Armstrong? The laugh track? ...), but it was very sweet in any case.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of that evening.  But I did get a picture of a cute French car we saw parked on the street:

Happy Epiphany!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi everybody!

Yesterday Rachael and I hosted a Thanksgiving bash for Rachael's sister Jenny, her brother-in-law James, and some friends of mine from Pittsburgh named Markos and Lissa who live in Sydney with their little girl.  I was in charge of preparing the turkey, which was a fun challenge.  I took a few pictures of the process.

That was the turkey before cooking. Here was the turkey post-cooking.  (Don't ask why it's in a frying pan.)

And here was our dining area:

Rachael, Jenny and James helped with the side dishes:

Here you can see Jenny, James, Markos, Lissa, and their daughter Irene during the distribution of Thanksgiving foodstuffs.

Irene really liked our hat collection, but I didn't get any pictures of her playing with them.

Rachael lit some candles in the middle of the table:

That jug you can see on the table had some egg nog that I improvised by mixing a carton of what they call custard here with some sugar water.  It was a pretty good imitation of real fake egg nog from the States, but a bit thicker and a bit too sweet, although Rachael suggests that maybe it only seemed that way to me because I'm losing my American sweet tooth.


Last but not least, we had a pumpkin pie that Rachael made, with some whipped cream from Jenny.

Hope Thanksgiving has been going well back in the heartland.  All the best from the Antipodes.

life in Sydney

G'day everybody!  That's me standing in front of the Big Merino, which is a giant statue of a sheep staring with great dignity out into the distance that was built to commemorate the sheep business of Australia.  Rachael and I stopped by to see it on our way back from a road trip to...

Canberra, the nation's capital!  I was invited to give a talk to the philosophy department at the ANU last week, so Rachael and I drove down for the adventure.  It was simultaneously very exciting and very intimidating, since the ANU seems to be the most prestigious philosophy department on the continent.  But it went very well, and was ultimately a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about how to translate my ideas "into Australian," as some of the philosophers down there said.

Meanwhile, Rachael and I have been getting settled in our new apartment.  We moved in a week and a half ago, and most of the chaos is starting to subside.  Here is Rachael, her sister Jenny and her brother-in-law James helping us move in to the new place:

(In a few days I'll try to put up a post with more pictures of the interior, now that we've decorated and assembled our furniture.)
Since the last time I posted Rachael and I bought a very beautiful car with lots of help from James and I bought a very beautiful bike.  The other day I took some pictures while I was going on a trip to get some salmon at Sydney Fish Market.  Here is my bike in our back yard:

And here is our car:

I also took a few pictures of my trip to the Fish Market so you could see a little bit of Sydney.  I rode by the harbor for part of the way:

(The Fish Market is that low blue building by the water in the foreground.)

The salmon was a delicious success, but Rachael and I were too busy eating it to take any pictures.

In other news, I've been writing up a storm of inspired philosophy in the last day or two, and Rachael has been working with increasing enjoyment on a paper about the great movie Laura by Otto Preminger (one of our favourites) and the perhaps slightly less great movie Vertigo, also by one of our favourites.  It's very nice to both be so involved in this work, and to be sharing it together.

That's all for now.  I hope everything is going well back in the States, and I'll keep trying to connect by Skype when I can, but the internet connection at home is still pretty choppy.

-Throckmorton.



Independence Day

Rachael and I celebrated Independence Day with our Australian family on Monday.  Here I am in my red, white and blue outfit:

Rachael's parents very sweetly decorated the dinner table with red, white and blue balloons and American flag place mats and put some Bruce Springsteen on the stereo.

I was in charge of grilling up the hot dogs and getting other hot dog supplies ready.

Meanwhile, Rachael's parents prepared red, white and blue cocktails while Rachael marinated some mushrooms and made Waldorf salad (which Rachael's family strongly associates with America because of an episode of Fawlty Towers).

 After dinner Rachael's parents surprised us with an apple pie that they had made.

Here is my sweetie with American flags in her hair:

We also played with sparklers after dinner, but I didn't get any pictures of that.  It was a very sweet celebration and made me feel very welcome in this new country.  I hope the American branch of the family had a lovely Independence Day as well.

trip to the mountains and Kangaroo Fua

Yesterday Rachael and I went on a little road trip to the Blue Mountains, which is a mountain range immediately to the west of Sydney.  The Blue Mountains seem a lot like how I picture Colorado, since there are a lot of cute little towns where hippies live, sell antiques, and drink very good coffee.  I liked it a lot.  One of the major sights of the area is called the Three Sisters--a striking and famous rock formation in the Megalong Valley, which is itself quite a magnificent sight, a lot like the Grand Canyon but with more trees.

The other big piece of news is that today I was in charge of dinner and decided to make Ching Hu Fua with kangaroo instead of beef, a dish that I have christened Kang'Roo Fua.  It worked very well, and came out tasting almost exactly like normal Ching Hu Fua, except that for some reason it was perhaps slightly more bitter.  Here's the Kangaroo:

This was my workspace:

Step one was marinating the meat:

Followed by a lot of stir frying:

Dishing it out:

And finally serving it to hungry Australians:

The victorious chef reviews his achievements with pride and gustatory expectation:

All the best from Down Under,
Throckmorton.