Wicket Maiden No More

You’d expect any American’s take on their first cricket match to sound more like Bill Bryson’s take on the sport:

“After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn’t fix in a hurry. It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don’t wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players — more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning.”

Falling for Cricket

I, however, can say with 100% honesty that Cricket is the first thing in Australia that I truly love.  The English will chuckle since of course it’s original an English sport, but the Aussies have changed cricket enough over the last 30 years to have the right to say that cricket is as much theirs as anyone, and India and other countries can make similar claims.

Now, my first match was only a 20/20, which lasts about 3 hours, so just 37 hours short of the potential playing time involved in a 5 day test match.  20/20 was designed to make a match faster, higher scoring, and generally more entertaining.  So a real cricket fan might say I’m not a real cricket fan yet.

The intricacies of the rules, a small event causing an explosion of celebration on the field by the bowling team, and the bowler versus batsman duels all make it a sport I can easily love.  I will have a hard time with all day test matches, simply because I am not a fan of the #1 Aussie sport, alcoholism, which is usually the main event that the crowd is participating in while gents in white are swinging wooden bats at red balls on a green field.

Scoring my first innings

I decided that the best way to have to learn the game would be to score the game.  In baseball, scoring a game takes concentration and quick thinking – remembering that the play was a 6-4-3, shifting to the next batter, etc.   In cricket, it is easily 10x harder, which of course makes me love it even more.   My heart rate stayed high the entire first 90 minutes of the match while I was scoring at Brisbane was batting, just trying to keep up with the action on the field and make sure I was recording it in the score book.  You can check out more details of the scorecards.    When the Sydney 6ers picked up the bat, I stopped scoring just so I could pay attention to what was actually happening.

The match ended with Sydney winning with just a couple of overs to go, which seemed close to me but not to the cricket fans sitting around me.  One of the most interesting parts of cricket is how aggressive or conservative the batters get depending on the score, time left, overs left, etc.

So, it is like baseball?

It has all of the romantic elements of baseball – the grassy field, the bowler embattled with the batsman, diving catches, and in some matches no specific limit on the time.   However, it’s very easy to see that baseball emerged specifically from someone taking a look at cricket and saying “How could we make this better?”  I’m not saying here that baseball is better than cricket (though of course I feel that way since I was raised loving baseball and nothing would change the fact that it’s my favorite sport.  But it’s easy to understand that someone saw the flaws of cricket as the same parts of the game that cricket fans love – there is no limit to balls or strikes, a batter can “carry the bat” and never leave the field for the entire match.  Thus outs are very common and more likely than hits in baseball, and just the opposite in cricket – it’s more likely that you’ll score runs during an over of batting than lose a wicket.

Sydney 6ers

The only painful part of the match is that the 6ers wear hot pink.  The Big Bash 20/20 league is sponsored by KFC, features hard rock concert fireworks, and is largely a commercially manufactured league where it’s clear that team names and unis were chosen by marketing teams rather than players.  The 6ers are named because hitting the ball over the boundary (the closest relative of a “home run”) gives you six runs, thus the 6ers.  Sigh.  I thought maybe a great historical event had happened in ’06, like a day when no one in Australia was publicly intoxicated.

I have been looking for a long part of my life to support a local team – the AFL Swans, I can cheer for.  I cheered for the 6ers, but just can’t wear that ridiculous color.  Or most of the league colors for that matter.

Sign of the Times?

 Pablo vs Harry

This weekend Lisa and I had two exhibits on our calendar – The Pablo Picasso exhibit at the Art Museum of New South Wales (on loan from French Picasso museum), and The Harry Potter exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum.  To see the original masterpieces of Pablo, we walked up and got tickets for the session starting 8 minutes later.   To see props and costumes from the Hogwarts movies, they were sold out except for the final session of the day, and we didn’t want to wait several hours.

Despite being the artist whose works have been stolen the most often, Pablo, you lost the hearts and minds of Sydney to the chosen one.

I struggle with anything non-classical in art – it grabs my attention and my interest, and that’s where it ends.  Some contemporary art in the 90s grabbed my attention and held it for a year or two.  I’m clearly a classicist, as the test I took my senior year in high school told me.

And yet you can still stare at paintings like “Landscape with two figures” and get lost in it for a little while.

Reading the biography of Picasso reminded me of what Kurt Vonnegut said during a talk he gave when I was at Stanford.  ”If you really want to make your parents angry, and you don’t have the guts to become  a homosexual, become an artist.”  Despite being the father of 20th century art, Picasso’s life was a disaster.  Like most artists of his time he aligned with socialism (and was even a member of the communist party), but somehow seemed to exist in all worlds at once.   He apparently cheated on every woman he had a relationship with.   He wore striped shirts stolen from the backs of blind French mimes.  Okay, maybe not that last part.

I really doubt I would have liked Picasso if I’d ever met him.  I’m convinced he would have disliked me.

Cricket, in an upside down country

I’m going to my first cricket match this coming Friday.  I’ve been reading Cricket for Dummies and even making Lisa quiz me from my crib sheet of terms like “double wicket maiden” and “short run.”  I even watched a good chunk of the Aussie vs. Kiwi test over the weekend.  The bowler – batsman battle is much more drawn out than in baseball, which has a lot of appeal.  It’s not a skirmish, it’s a battle.  But the sport has so many ninny aspects to it (the fielders are wearing sweater vests during the match.  Yes, I said sweater vests.  They break for tea twice.  Yes, I said tea).  

This Friday I’ll be going to the 20/20 Big Bash at the Sydney Cricket Grounds, which lacks tea, sweater vests, or long drawn out battles – it’s more about launching the ball and getting the whole thing over with in under 3 hours.  A good introduction for a sepo like myself.

Heisman, the world is back on its axis

The anti-climactic sporting event of the weekend was the announcement of the Heisman trophy winner.  Stanford’s Andrew Luck didn’t stand a chance from the opening game this season, because he was the front runner. With Andrew winning, there was no story to be told.  Nothing sensational.  Nothing dramatic other than a guy who’s played at a higher level all season, though three of his last four games were his worst.

My meloncholy broke when I watched Robert Griffin III’s acceptance speech.  The world is a better place than I had thought.

I’m a massive Luck fan and will cheer for whatever team drafts him unless it’s the Steelers.

What makes me happy

18Ks of fun, 3Ks of pain

Yes, as many of you have noticed, I’ve gone metric. When I return to the states, I will no longer quote energy in British Thermal Units. It’s all kilo-joules now. Last weekend I ran the Central Coast half marathon, in a personal record setting time. So far, this is a good trend. At this rate, by the time I am 80 years old, I will be able to travel in time if I keep getting faster.  Despite having been at the peak of my personal fitness a year ago, and slowly watching all that training and shape disappear over the last 12 months in Australia, I managed to push myself for the last six weeks and focus on running enough to put up a decent showing.  For comparison, the first half marathon I ran 5 years ago was 2:07, within a couple of years of my transplant.  Last year I ran two half marathons, both in 1:58 and 1:59, though one was at the end of the Lonestar 70.3 (half Ironman) and the other was at T3 practice after a 40 mile bike ride.  I was terrified that I’d just squeak out a 1:59 prove how I’ve lost everything I worked so hard for.

My plan was to aim for a stretch goal of 1:45, which is not that hard for a serious runner.  I am not a serious runner.  But I set out on a pace to maintain that, aiming for 5 minutes per k (about 8 minute miles), and I held that for 18 ks.  At the 18 k mark, with 3 ks left, and my watch at 1:30, I needed to hold 3 more ks at my pace to hit my stretch goal.  My body announced that this was not going to happen, by cramping up various muscles in my leg on different strides.  I started shoving extra salt, gu, water, anything I could get down my through.  But my pace fell off, and I was now dodging through all the 10K runners

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/131152346

Despite being right in the middle of the pack for my age group, this is definitely what I love to do.

Food price versus food pleasure

After our race, we cleaned up at the beach house, packed the cars, and headed to lunch.  After a long run, I often can’t even keep food in my stomach, much less enjoy a meal.  Essentially what begins is a battle between my need for calories and my digestive system’s desire to reject those calories.  One of our group had picked a “2 chef hat” restaurant (Aussie equivalent of Michelin stars, max of 3) for lunch, so I was equally worried about my ability to handle being at a top restaurant and not even getting to “keep” the meal.  It turned out to be fine.  Over the course of the meal, I got to thinking and realized that my enjoyment of a meal is strongly affected by price. I think this makes me middle class, or possibly even “upper lower class”, and I’m perfectly cool with that.  I’m glad other people enjoy fine food.  It’s simply not even close to worth it for me.

Movember is over

I’ve shaved.  Movember is over.  My fundraising total was simply disappointing (thanks so much to those of you who did contribute – Atlassian raised close to $30,000, which is fantastic).  My only explanation is that my past fundraising events have been a week long tour of Texas on my bike, and a year-long quest to do an Ironman, so maybe growing a moustache seemed petty in return to my normal donors.  I would much rather suffer in the heat and cold on my bike, or wake up every morning at 5 for one year, or spend hours on the physical therapy table gritting my teeth as they torture me, than grow a moustache.  It was definitely the least enjoyable thing I’ve ever done for charity – entirely due to my inability to grow facial hair and Lisa’s open hatred for my mo’.  The camaraderie at work among all of us participating was exceptional, and of course the cause is very close to my heart.

Last person waiting

I think I might be one of the last people I know to see Waiting for Superman.  Despite having waited this long, it’s timing couldn’t be better in helping highlight the need to connect with you passion and find what you love to do.  Geoffrey Canada is such a brilliant example of this – and why education has always been something I care about, despite having barely dabbled in trying to help make things better.   If you haven’t seen the movie (and you live in the U.S. or you care about education) there isn’t anything I’ve seen this good in a long, long, time.   During this week, yet another great Breakthrough Austin video came out.  So proud of the kids and staff at Breakthrough in what they do every day in creating a path to college for kids.

Mo’tastrophe – Day 18

Grovember / Movember / BJRvember marches on, and my mo’ looks worse every day.

I was clearly not born to grow one of these things.  The cause is great, and I’m really happy to be a part of this team effort at the company – just walking through the office and seeing all the mo’s is awesome – it makes you proud that so many people are a part of the effort.  My mo’ simply shows that I’ve evolved faster than my colleagues, as my genes longer require facial hair above my lip to keep me warm in the cave after hunting brontosaurs all day.

What does it look like?

1. Whiskers, not hair – my upper lip looks more like a trimmed cat’s face that a rich soft mo’
2. Growing in waves – the first week, all the hair that grew out was black.  Over the last two weeks, blond hair has dominated, so that at a distance, you see patchy sections of small black hair, and then as you get close, you notice these white blonde hairs jutting out at all angles.  It’s not a pretty sight.  Each time I catch myself in a mirror, it scares me.
3. Missing hair follicles - apparently I don’t have hair follicles in several places above my lip.  I don’t know, if like my legs, my hair never grew back after chemo, or if I was born without these follicles, or if Lisa pulled them out one night while I was sleeping.

Yes, this is really it after 18 days

Trying to make the mo’ look tough. A little facial stubble after a couple days almost dominates the 18 days of blondish mo.

A little closer. Smiling wider to try and make the mo’ look bigger. Looks more like an unwashed face.

Extreme mo’ close-up. Do not try this at home. Do not let this man approach your children.

Support the cause!

If you’ve asked me about my mo’ and haven’t donated, now is the time!  I am suffering for your amusement, so open up your wallets.  You know who you are!!  If not for me, for Lisa.  Don’t let her daily embarrassment and suffering go without supporting a good cause!

Live in the U.S.?  Avoid currency conversion fees – my mo-gifted friend Brian in the states has agreed to let me use his donation page.

Live in Australia?  Donate here!

Wind, wombats, wine and wheels

Happy Birthday

This past weekend Lisa and I escaped Sydney to add another Australian state to our list (yes, they have states here – and also a territory.  How retro!).  South Australia is unlike any of its U.S. “South” first name sharing states; it has none of the pulled pork of South Carolina, and none of whatever South Dakota has.   The weekend had everything, but most importantly it celebrated Lisa’s birthday.

We flew into Adelaide and immediately headed for the Barossa Valley, probably the best known wine region in all of Australia.  The countryside is manicured to precision – and in the middle of growing season everything was incredibly green.  Since our flight arrived late, we visited the Tsharke  vineyard, which was small and new.  The building they use for the “cellar door” (meaning basically a public facing storefront for wine sales) was brand new, and I wish my Uncle Cy could have seen the construction of the perfectly cut timbers and a-frame ceiling.

We hit the B&B that Lisa had reserved- a great place called the Barossa House.  We met Judi, one of the owners, and she’s exactly the kind of person you want to own the B&B you stay at.  Her husband Lee is a gardening savant – in the U.S. their yard would be maintained by a full time staff of 20 people.

Then we hit the 1918 bistro and grill for dinner.  How did I start liking places for the taste of the food?  When did this happen, when quantity and calories no longer dominate my appetite?  I can no longer simply judge a meal using a scale, then deducting points for cream sauces, mayonnaise, and swiss chard.  Regardless, the meal was awesome, the staff wasn’t pretentious, and the place reminded Lisa of the East Side Cafe in Austin, simply the best mix of down to earth character and crazy good food.

We crashed early in anticipation of the next day ahead of us.

Aloft

Lisa wanted one thing and one thing only for her birthday: A Hot Air Balloon Ride.  I capitalize these words because this activity is not even on my list of things I’d ever want to do.  Hot?  Not a fan of heat.  Air?  Sure, you have to have it to breathe, but not my favorite element.  Balloon?  Associated with clowns and other undesirables.  Put them together, sprinkle in the occasional vertigo that I get with unstable heights, and I could see Lisa’s birthday turning into a four hour rescue attempt after I try to exit the basket at altitude.

However, despite my trepidation, from the moment I woke up, I knew the day would be a great one.  We met our balloonist, Michael, a former pilot who now runs Barossa Valley Ballooning, and from there we were off, releasing small balloons with LEDs to determine wind speed.  The funniest part about ballooning is you basically go where the wind takes you.  This seems obvious, but once you’re up in the air, you realize that you only get to land in the direction you’re going.  So you don’t really get to pick where you land except “somewhere along the path where the wind takes us”.

The landing was not soft or gentle – ever see movies where the guy in the parachute is dragged along the ground because his ‘chute is still open?  Every balloon landing is kind of like this if you have any wind at all – the basket will tip, and bounce several times with you in it.  Best part of the ride.

Wombat Rise

After a high class brekkie at the Novotel, we were off to “Wombat Rise“, the house of Bob, a confessed “wombaholic” who rescues all sorts of Australian animals after they’ve been injured or abandoned.  The next hour at Bob’s house was one awesome surprise after another: a baby joey hopping out of the house to see us and jump in a bag held by Bob (essentially a cloth pouch), Bilbo the super-aggressive-tank-shaped digging machine (an older wombat who you would not want to meet in dark alley), a whole yard of Eastern Grey, Western Grey, and Red Kangaroos, and baby wombats that we held in our arms (Fidget and sibling-whose-name-I-can’t-remember).

If you’re ever in South Australia near Barossa and you have a chance to stop by, just phone ahead to let Bob know, and leave a generous donation.  Raising 50+ rescued animals isn’t cheap!

Cycling in Clare Valley

And the day had barely started.  Back in the car we sped over to Clare Valley, checked in, and found the place where I had arranged a bike hire.  We biked the Riesling trail and visited the Tim Adams vineyard (small and awesome), the Sevenhill Cellars (fantastic jesuit church nearby – worth the visit), and Penna Lane wines (where Mark charmed us, and we had to finally scram to bike back to town to return the bikes on time).

Clare Valley Motel

The final surprise of the day was that we ate dinner at the Clare Valley Motel.  Normally “motel food” would mean eating a pack of peanuts from the lobby vending machine or maybe having pizza delivered.  We asked at several places in Clare and each one said “have dinner at the Clare Valley Motel”, which happened to be where we were staying.  We also heard that Andre was an amazing chef, which was confirmed by his food.  Slightly amusing was the fact that the waitress had to keep checking with Andre for things like whether or not we could order a side salad.

Barossa and Clare?

You couldn’t find two places that are known for the same thing, yet that are more different.  Barossa is all about presentation and Clare is all about hiding the good bits.

Barossa has giant white arches welcoming you to town, which are cheesy and overdone.  Every vineyard is manicured and the entrance is dramatic, with roses or some other pastoral eye-candy, and the cellar door feels more like a marketing campaign than someone inviting you into their home.

Clare is, honestly, quite ugly in places.  The small town isn’t much to see.  We had flashbacks to parts of the Southern U.S: about 50% of the adults that live there are seriously obese.   The vineyards are hidden – yes there are signs on the road, but the vines aren’t on display – in fact the Riesling trail takes you along a path where you see rusted equipment, tin shacks, junk yards, and you have to leave the path to find the vineyards.  But once you get there, they are family owned,  personable, and excellent.

On to Adelaide

After a long night’s sleep, we scrambled to find breakfast in Clare (not easy), we headed back to Adelaide.   We had heard that Adelaide was in the top 10 most livable cities in the world.  I found the source (the Economist), and well, Melbourne is #1, Sydney is #6, and Perth is #8.  I think the criteria might have a slight Aussie bias.  Though the Economist also described Australia’s political system as “a non stop Punch and Judy show.”  Regardless, we found Adelaide excellent.  The day before, we had asked our balloon flight companions from South Australia what we should do in Adelaide.  After Henley Beach, they ran out of suggestions and began to offer shopping malls, and continued even after we said we didn’t want to shop.

When we discovered Adelaide for ourselves, we loved it.  Even though the weather was brutally hot, the CBD (central business district: “downtown” is an American term) is the best in Australia (that I’ve seen) – an open plan, wide streets, not dominated by tall buildings which choke out the sunlight, and surrounded by great parks, museums, gardens, and galleries.  While it doesn’t have the amazing Sydney harbour, just trot a few k’s South and you’re at the aforementioned Henley Beach, which runs forever in either direction, and so there wasn’t a crowded spot to be found anywhere.  Bike lanes ran out of town in all directions and traffic wasn’t nearly as insane as we’ve seen in the other cities.

The atmosphere is much more relaxed, the population is about 1 million, and it’s the capital of its state.  Austin, anyone?

While I don’t know if visiting Adelaide for more than a couple days would make sense, it’s by far the most livable city in Australia – but Perth, Brisbon, Hobart, Darwin and others are still to be seen!

Mogress Day 7

My decision to join Grovember (our company’s version of Movember) seemed harmless at the time.  But already, there is a darkening of my upper lip, and Lisa has stopped kissing me (just yesterday, not years ago as many of you have recommended).

And yet, the cause is great, and the reward is having pictures of me that look ridiculous.  It’s only Day 7, and you can just see the signs of the mo’.

Bryan, Bryan, quite the fine-man, how will this mo grow?    There are so many possibilities:

Will it look dark and scary? (And too close?)

Will it look creepy? (Current odds-on favorite)

Perhaps it will look heavenly?

Perhaps it will look French? Maybe? Mais oui!

Or maybe my being will collapse on itself

Donate!

This is your chance to give something that won’t require major surgery or the walk of shame to return your specimen.

For my mates in the states, please donate to my friend Brian’s profile (will avoid any potential currency conversion fees, and I’ll still be notified!)

For my home-wallabies in Australia, please donate to my profile.

Australia shuts down for a horse race

The Melbourne Cup

Last year, when we were at a critical juncture in our visa application process, the person in talent (my company’s term for HR) told me, “unfortunately if you need anything tomorrow, the company will be closed because of The Melbourne Cup.”  I asked the most natural question, “What’s the Melbourne Cup?”, and she told me, “It’s a horse race.”  Even after reading about it, it didn’t make sense to me.   And even after experiencing the day of the event in Australia, I think it’s one of the hardest things for an American to understand.

First and foremost, this event is simply tradition, and people don’t really have to work, despite actually going to work.  In Melbourne, it’s actually a holiday.  In most other parts of Australia, apparently people still go to work but don’t really do anything after lunch except eat, drink, and watch the race.  So, I guess for the average worker, a day where you show up to work but basically get to goof around in the afternoon isn’t such a bad thing.  And it’s the tradition that seems to fuel the event – no one can explain why the day is actually this important – it just always has been.

Of course, to a “Yank”, the idea of paying any attention to a horse race, unless you live in Kentucky, North Carolina, or have a serious gambling problem, just doesn’t make any sense to begin with – but racing is actually a big deal here in Australia.   In our first couple of months here, Lisa and I were riding a bus back from the beach, and near one of the racing grounds, bunches of couples dressed in their finest boarded the bus, heading home after being at the track.  Several of our friends here talked about how cool it would be to go to the actual races, which ranks slightly below watching the Occupy Sydney people sit around and protest greed by demonstrating sloth.

In Style

My Melbourne Cup day was actually excellent, largely because my company makes it awesome.  For starters, our general company dress code is a t-shirt, and depending on the weather, jeans or shorts (an hopefully not not jeans shorts, since the Aussies, like myself, are a pale lot).  On Melbourne Cup day, this batch of super bright engineers, some of whom are still working on eye contact, show up at work with a suit, and many with a full windsor.  The ladies (many of whom are also killer developers) are sporting dresses and fascinators (fancy hats – yeah, when I first heard that the women would be wearing fascinators, I pictured what would fascinate me, and it wasn’t a hat).

We took a ferry from work around the harbour, and the weather cooperated nicely.  We ate lunch and watched the races from a dining hall ideally suited for a wedding reception – glass walls on all sides with views of the harbour bridge.  Each person was given a 50 cent tri-fecta racing ticket, and two of the guys had organized “sweeps”, essentially where you put in a couple dollars to get assigned a random horse, and if you win you get a share of the total pot (closest Yank equivalent is buying squares during the Super Bowl).

A lot of the guys visited a TAB to place a bet.  The TAB is essentially a government-controlled-but-now-privatizedmonopoly of where you can place bets – which by the way, no one I talked to could tell me what TAB stands for, which turns out to be the best thing about a TAB.

Our event started at 11 AM, we returned back to the Sydney CBD at 5, and then an after party and after dinner lasted late in to the night (I bailed on the last two to meet Lisa for dinner, and I was already starting to feel sick – thanks to sick co-workers coming to work just to partake in the Melbourne Cup!).   So I tip my hat (though I didn’t wear one, I just accessorized with a favorite pocket watch and my fake glasses.

The Finish

 The race itself and this year’s finish was incredible – the race is a long race (3200 meters, or 2 miles for my mates in the states), so having a photo finish and even some doubts if the actual winner was the winner, made for a great race.  Since I love sports, put any two or more things against each other to cross some line first and I’ll watch.

Despite the 10 other races that day, but no one watched  a single minute of the other races.  Tragedy, I say.  And that during the main race, given how loud it was, you couldn’t actually tell which horse was which, except by the readout of which horses were in the top four, which was constantly changing in the last 200-300 meters.  It felt like we had taken a day off to watch the Olympics and only paid attention during the 200 meters.

 

Melbourne Cup?  It’s horse-tastic.  Or horse-tascinating.

You can go home again

This post should have gone out in early October.  Just found it unpublished.  Yeah.  Keeping on top of things.

A Return to Austin

As a part of a trip back to the states that was part-work, part-holiday, I stopped by Austin, Texas.   At first I was slightly disoriented, and my mind was trying to piece together the locations of restaurants and the last names of acquaintances, but quickly I settled into the unmistakable feeling that “this is where I belong.”  It’s not a shocking revelation, though I had always feared that leaving Austin would somehow strain my connection with the city.

In a lot of ways, being in Austin highlighted what’s so different about Sydney – the customer service at cheap mexican dives was better than the expensive restaurants of Sydney.  I laughed as the waitress split our check three ways across three credit cards, an act that would be considered a miraculous feat in any Sydney suburb.  While shopping for clothes, the store attendant sought me out at least five times to help me out.  She must have thought I was a freak because I started laughing again and again.  I had forgotten what the experience of customer service feels like.

Depth

Even with only being in Austin for a minuscule amount of time, each minute spotlighted how shallow my existence in Sydney is.  I spent time with Barry Aidman of Breakthrough Austin, someone I am proud to call a mentor and a friend.  Breakthrough Austin has done incredible things since I left the board of directors nine months ago, including a successful start of a new Breakthrough program for Manor school district – I should have left earlier if this was the effect!  We talked about our lives and what’s ahead of each one of us, and I’m so excited about what lies in store for Breakthrough Austin.

I posted an event on Facebook that I’d be in Austin one night, and several friends dropped by – two from my days at Trilogy, two from my days at MessageOne, two friends from Ironman training.  It felt like I had just left – the connection with each one was immediate.  While I’ve only been gone nine months, there are friendships in life that don’t survive a six month absence, so I don’t take this for granted.

At one point, Neel, Mak, Dan, and I were talking, again as if we had just seen each other a week ago – and I wanted to capture and bottle that moment.  Dan had brought Bear, my stone dog, to our meeting place, so i could see him.  While each of us is going through a number of changes in our lives, there’s a common language and understanding that I miss terribly, that I don’t think I can replicate in another part of the world, because it’s a big part of what defines Austin and the people who chose to live there.

I also realized that being a couple in Sydney, i.e. Lisa and I together, actually limits the depth of relationships – there are simply subjects that don’t come up in a social setting and that only happen with individuals, and we spend most of our time interacting with other couples.  That said, I wouldn’t trade the closeness that Lisa and I have as a result of being “two people against the city” that we’ve experienced over the last several months.

Family

Dinner with Neel’s family was the most important part of my visit.  His parents have always treated me like a son rather than a friend of their son, looking after me and welcoming me into their home and lives.  Neel’s dad and I share an affinity for naps before and after holiday bbqs, and his mom always has a smile for me that makes me feel safe and loved.  With the loss of my father over a decade ago, men like Neel’s father have played a more and more important role in my life, and when I had to say goodbye at the end of the night to “Mom and Dad,” it tore me apart.  I didn’t understand it when I was a kid, but that’s the sign that you are lucky enough to share a bond.  It is not an empty feeling nor a feeling of loss – it is the feeling of simply being separated from the people you care most about.

So whatcha gonna do?

My last trip to the states gave me a new resolve to change our lives in Sydney, and we definitely have.  We are no longer barely scraping by.  I would no longer use one of my three wishes to transport us back to Austin and erase the choice of moving.

Now, it’s time to elevate our game.  Life is still too one-dimensional (i.e. work and errands), and there are few elements of being actively involved in any kind of community.  My health is one of the five things that still hasn’t fully come back since moving.  As a result I’m in poor athletic shape and feel like a fraction of myself.   So there’s plenty of new things to focus on when I get back to Sydney!

It’s time for Grovember

Right on the night of Halloween here in Sydney, I’m announcing something even more chilling: BJR is growing a moustache.
BJR Grows a Mo

That’s right, I’ve decided to jump in on Grovember, a month of fundraising to support Men’s Health.

My dad passed away over 10 years ago, due to prostate cancer, so this issue is very personal for me.   My dad also never had a moustache in my memory, except after he retired.  He grew one out, and with the silver, gray, and black mix of hairs, it looked like he had a caterpillar on his lip as seen through a 1960′s television set.   My mo will likely be much patchier, with bits of red, blonde, and brown.  Yes, I care about this cause that much to look like that.

What can you do?

1. If you’re in Australia, my fundraising page is here!  If you’re in the US, please donate to my friend Brian’s page, so you won’t be charged foreign credit card processing fees (I’ll be notified of your donation). I’d love your support.  Since I’m not doing an Ironman or a bike ride this year, this is the only time in 2011 you’ll hear from me on a fundraising mission, so I would really appreciate your support.  My page features the only other time I’ve had a moustache (and you can probably tell it’s a fake).

2. If you’re 40, talk to your doctor about a PSA test or ask about the right thing to do for early detection.  Vic (whose awesome wedding I just attended in LA) and I have a pact where we make sure the other person gets checked once a year.  My dad would have had a better chance with early detection.  Don’t wait on this.  Every time I bring Lisa home to meet my family, I wish my dad could have met her.

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