Self Call

I wrote a little piece about the 2011 vintage in South Australia for a publication edited by my gorgeous friend Natalie.  Do check it out... the pictures are pretty :)

Worth a Thousand Words

I've recently been batting around sad ideas concerning modernity and culture, specifically how technology interfaces with wine.   I'm seeing wine--which I'm so heavily invested in studying right now--as a microcosm of the world at large.  Perhaps something as simple, widespread, and as perennial as wine could be a useful touchstone in discussions of future.  What makes a wine good or worth money?  What do we consider to be an improvement in wine technology?  Is it machine harvesting as many perfectly ripened and lab tested grapes as possible and producing as much wine as we can make bottles?  Whatever happened to the honed generational skills of the farmer?  What about terrior?  Where does mechanization take the romantic--and indeed appealing--element away from wine?  How much does the romanticism matter, so long as we have the convenience of inexpensive and well-made wine on our grocery store shelves?
From the slow food movement to vintage clothing to handcrafted, biodynamic wine I'm seeing these reactionary trends within my generation that has seen so much technology advance so quickly.  NASA is trying to start a "space tourism" industry, and we still can't grasp the genetic mutations that sometimes occur in grapevines.  We're churning eggs out of chicken-powered factories, and can't wrap our heads around the fact of skyrocketing obesity and cancer rates in the developed world.  It all seems too much too fast, at the expense of complex systems that have developed over millenia...  and cultures that have been in place for thousands of years.

These thoughts swirling after a particularly aggravating viticulture class, I stumbled across this photographic essay on spiritual life in Bali, with commentary from the artist John Stanmeyer: 

"The Balinese culture is under severe stress from development and modernity. How much longer will the Balinese even be speaking their own language? How much longer will people be able to read the ancient Sanskrit texts?
I’m intense and passionate about it because I do feel in some regards, around the world, we’re having cultural genocide. Cultures are vanishing. We’re homogenizing ourselves across the planet. We have language loss on an epic level and we have cultural loss on an equally epic level. And that I find to be tragic, especially when you have rich, ancient cultures that haven’t changed for so long but now are on the verge of a breaking point."

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/high-balinese-ritual-low-holga-technology/

And so, what to do?  When is globalization a good thing?  To what extent....

Spring Pushing Through the Clouds

Once again it's pouring outside.  It was so lovely and sunny 30 minutes ago that I suited up for an afternoon jog.  Now here I sit in front of the computer screen, all dressed up and nowhere to go.

It's been a wonderful week in Adelaide.  At the sunny outset of the week, I was accompanied by great friends to McLaren Vale, the beach, and Barossa.  There's nothing like beautiful days to relieve all sorts of anxiety.  I finally feel like I'm getting a grip on the road that is unfolding for my life.  I'm very privileged to have all sorts of options available, though there's a certain terrible stress in the background: "Don't screw up the opportunity!"
I vacillate between extreme contentment with the blank book I get to fill and acute envy of friends whose path is set for them.  Two gentlemen I know, for example, are next in line to run their families' wineries in South Africa.  How empowering to live life with a sense of duty, directly tied to filial obligations.  "Golden handcuffs," they say.  I too feel responsible to honor my family, my college, my country.... but the "how" is so undefined.  My commission is to go do my "best," whatever that means.  It's not a quick and easy task when the whole wide world holds opportunities and places at which to excel.

We do the best with what we have where we are.

Yesterday was a memorable one.  We headed up to the Clare Valley for some wine tasting, completely ignoring the crazy storm raging up the land from Adelaide.  This has apparently been the coldest, wettest winter in two decades here, and the season clearly means to go out with a bang.  A thunderstorm lingered through Friday night, and by Saturday morning rivers were running high and roadside ditches were threatening to overload onto the bitumen.  But northwards through the fray we drove.  By 2pm, the spitting rain was streaking sideways in blustery wind, branches were flying everywhere, and water was gushing from all corners of the earth to the lowest points it could find.  We were sadly forced to leave the valley early because we simply couldn't turn off the main road or get to cellar doors.  Rivers had washed over the side roads, over bridges, and into the fields, making islands of vineyards.  I do wonder what effect all this water so late in the winter will have on vinous budburst and the coming vintage.

Family, I love you

A friend and I were bantering this evening about our relatives. Or rather, we were one-upping each other with stories about how wonderful our respective families are. At some point talk turned to the subject of gratitude... The difficulty of expressing "thank you for raising me" and "thank you for loving me" puts such a barrier between us and the words we need to say to the people who need to hear it.

Over lunch today (laksa in the central market!) a different friend sighed as she mused, "So few people are in touch with themselves, who they really are and what they want." And that deficit of self-introspective thought launches so much terrible turmoil between the non-mind-reading classes.

And with these thoughts swirling in my mind, a quick, heartfelt shout-out is in order. Thanks, family (and friends, who count among family), for the emails and calls and facebook notes and well wishes. I've broadcasted some distress in recent weeks, and you have done much to remind me of the ties that bind me beyond the present, fleeting moment. In all honesty, I'm doing just fine, though I am ready for winter to end and resume a happy pattern of productive, inquisitive days. Australia has still got me scrambling through the liminal lifestyle of a non-committal ex-pat. I don't know how to do my taxes here, and I'm rather bored by the prospect of figuring it out when I'm just going to have to go back to America and figure them out there too. This is the same philosophy behind my refusal to learn how to work television remote controls. The day I figure out all the buttons and menus, they'll just update the damn things to new technology. There's always so much to be done, and it's irritating when life gets in the way of more important things (like... say... life? it's a vicious cycle).

Much too philosophical. I should go back to storytelling...

In light news....
This past weekend we all piled on a bus and went up to the Gourmet festival in the Barossa Valley. Silliness ensued. Much wine was bought and enjoyed. New friends were made, and deep conversations were had. Details are fuzzy. Highlights included the glorious sunshine, aforementioned new friends, and a piece of chocolate-shiraz-ganache cake. I've come away with an important message to my fellow Americans: drink more Shiraz! (look beyond $10.... there's some glorious stuff bouncing around in the $15-30 range)

Note to Self

Bacio chocolate: Delicious and hazelnutty. Also includes neat multilingual quote. Wrapped in foil. Foil is sharp.

Slicing lip on foil while eating afternoon Bacio: Not conducive to Cinco De Mayo. Margaritas are best served with salt rim.

Sting!

Question 25

Bruce markets a wine called Bruce's Middle of the Road Medley Red. All the wine is 2006 vintage. It is a blend of the following:
45% Shiraz from Lenswood
30% Grenache from Lenswood
20% Mourvedre from Piccadilly Valley
5% Mourvedre from the Adelaide Plains

(a) Bruce is thinking about renaming the wine, calling it Bruce's GSM, and increasing its price by 25%. The label blurb says in part: “This is a classic Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre blend...” Is this acceptable?

Bureaucracy

It's that time! Taxes! Not for me, of course, but for my personal secretary, accountant, navigator, and psychiatrist, my mother. What a great mom to handle the affairs of her child abroad. In the process of sorting out the patchwork of my employment history so she could file my taxes, she emailed to ask what interest I earned from my bank accounts in the past few months.

Interesting question (pun!!). Here's what I learned:

My checking account is not interest bearing.
On my savings account I earned a whopping:
$1.08 in December
$0.98 in January
$0.71 in February
and.... wait for it...
$0.40 in March

The only thing more excruciating than having zero assets is having a bank statement silently taunt me over the fact I have zero assets. Forty cents? I think that bought me a bus ticket back when I was using my second grade student discount.

Also on today's highlight reel was a trip to Australian Customs and Quarantine. These are not, as logic might dictate, contiguous offices. They are located 15 kms away from each other in very different parts of town. Thus set up to ensure that new migrants wanting to retrieve their long awaited sea freight have no bloody chance of sorting out paperwork in a timely fashion. I was among the fortunate. Being white, I promptly got shuffled to the right desks and offices. I was not, like some of my compatriots in the struggle, sent away to "fill these forms out right. IN ENGLISH, you understand??" My sea waybill and Unaccompanied Personal Effects documents (UPEs in customs slang) were stamped with relative alacrity.

The lovely Quarantine officer who assisted me looked over the papers and glanced at my declared packing list. "Fine, all fine," she said. "There should be no problem with any of this. You're importing a bicycle? Did you use it to ride in wooded areas or farmlands?"
"No, it's a roadbike. The only time it got close to anything wild was when I took a detour and ended up in East Cleveland."
(I didn't add that last part... she wouldn't have understood the joke. They profess ethnic sensitivity in this part of the world.)

She nodded on, "Yes, this should all check out just fine. We'll just send two officers over to inspect the goods when they arrive. Should be very quick and easy, no problem."

Me: "Great, so I'll just call and set up an appointment when I know the shipment is here?"

Her: "Yes, and so we'll just need to charge you $170 for that."

Me: "Um..."

Her: "The Australian Quarantine Authority is a cost-recovery organization. We charge importers for our services."

Importer? Services? The service of showing up at a warehouse in Port Adelaide and watching me unpack my clothes and bed linens. If I pay extra will they have a doggy come along to sniff my underwear? And, let's be real here... I am not an importer. I am a very naive student from the US who foolishly thought it made more sense to ship over the copious clothes I already own than to buy a new wardrobe for 1.5 years of grad school. Silly, under-informed me.

The woman was almost apologetic. "Australia is pretty strict with importation," she said. "I'm sure when you send your belongings back to America it won't be such a trouble."

Oh no, lady, in America, we have plenty of our own bureaucracies to pay off. I almost said that out loud. It occurred to me as I was opening my mouth that she might not appreciate that line of humor either. I would have been backpedaling like mad to compliment her pleated khakis or government-issue abstract-kangaroo-pattered scarf/tie thingy. "Florescent lighting does marvels for your skin tone!"

I'm a little proud at myself for biting my tongue. For realizing I needed to bite my tongue. Maturity does bring some benefits. Less discretion, and my skivvies may have found themselves in indefinite, solitary-silence-treatment quarantine. With a salaried guard dog.

The Cost of Living

I just bought a car! A good car! One that won't crap out on me in a week like the *ing Volvo. That is what we call it, me and my roommates, the "*ing Volvo." It is sitting in our driveway at the moment with plastic shopping bags over the window to keep rain out. It is absolutely distressing. I hope to construct a lawsuit starting next week.

Meanwhile, I've purchased a beautiful little blue Toyota Corolla. With much help from the parental units, I must note. I will name the car Peter. He's sort of a pastel color. I got him on Easter weekend. Easter... bunny... rabbit... Peter Rabbit... it makes sense in a loose sort of way.

All the car talk got me thinking about the differences between American and Australian costs of living. There are so many things I took for granted in the States that are simply unavailable here. Everything costs. I go to buy shampoo that in the States would cost $4.50, and here it is $12.00. The eyeliner I buy in Florida for $6.00 cost me $18.00 at a Target here. My face moisturizer... $20 or so at a department store... $60 here. And shisha tobacco (for a hookah)? $90 here versus $12 in the States. Quite a disincentive, and there's no free lunch.

Even the little things like paper clips or pads of paper come at a cost. One never finds them simply lying around for the taking. Phone calls on a land line are $0.40 a pop. A couple weeks ago I was thoroughly thrilled over the discovery of a trellis in someone's bulk trash. You must understand this in context. There are no "extras" lying around in Adelaide. It's as if ants have descended on a picnic and snapped up all the crumbs. There are no scraps of paper for note writing. No buckets lying around to use as trash cans. No extra pens on offer anywhere. Of course it doesn't help that I'm building my world from scratch, but the mentality here seems to be: If you need something, you buy it. Often at a cost.

The only thing I've found to be reasonably priced in Australia is produce, provided you buy local at the market.
It is no coincidence that the bulk of my diet these days consists of vegetables.

Why I Haven't Written

I've been under the rock of academia, fretting about my personal belongings (which are still MIA, though they were shipped from JAX in January and due in Adelaide a month ago). Rumor has it that the company I paid has just recently put my boxes on a boat. I have a Bill of Lading. That's a good sign. And then, in my problem set for International Wine Law, I get this question:

Question 16
Bruce shipped three containers of wine to his agent Maureen in Basra. The wine was shipped aboard the Sedentary Duck, another ship in the service of RAFOFF shipping. In the straights of Malacca the Sedentary Duck was attacked and boarded by pirates. The pirates set fire to the ship. The damage was such that the Sedentary Duck needed to divert to Singapore for repairs. These occupied a month and delivery of the wine at Basra was delayed accordingly. While the ship was in Singapore the first mate unloaded and sold one of the containers and disappeared with the proceeds. On eventual discharge at Basra it was found that the heat from the fire had affected the contents of one of the remaining containers so that the wine shipped in it was unmerchantable. The other container was unaffected, but the wine was only saleable at half the price it would have brought the week before because of a sudden glut in the small Iraqi wine market due to the importation of a large amount of US Cabernet Sauvignon the previous week. Bruce had insured the three containers with All Risks & No Cares Insurance under a marine cargo policy.

The policy covers:
Loss or damage cause by perils of the seas, rivers, lakes, or other navigable waters, fire or explosion, stranding, grounding, sinking or capsize, collision with any external object other than water, discharge of cargo at port of distress, earthquake, volcanic activity, lightning, and any loss or damage cause by general average sacrifice, jettison or washing overboard, entry of sea or river or lake water into the vessel, hold, conveyance container, liftvan or place of storage, total loss of any package lost overboard or dropped whilst loading or unloading, piracy, barratry of master officers or crew, BUT IN NO CASE COVERS any loss or damage caused by willful misconduct of the insured, ordinary leakage or wastage, ordinary wear and tear, insufficiency of unsuitability of packaging, inherent vice, unseaworthiness of the vesel or unfitness of conveyance containers where the insured is privy to the unfitness at the time the goods are loaded, delay even if the delay is caused by an event insured against, loss or damage resulting from insolvency or financial default of the carrier, use of any nuclear weapon, civil war, rebellion or resulting strife, hostile acts by a belligerent power, actual or attempted capture or seizure or arrest or restraint or detainment (piracy excepted) or the consequences thereof, derelict weapons of war, strikes, lockouts, labour disturbances, riots, civil commotion, terrorism, or any any by a person with a political motive.

(a) Bruce wishes to know if he can successfully claim against the policy for the total loss of the two containers and the partial loss of the third.

(b) Suppose the wine had not been insured and the Australian amended Hague-Visby Rules applied. Would Bruce have any claim against RAFOFF? If so, then what would be the extent of RAFOFF's liability?

...................one empathizes with poor Bruce. As legal council, I suggest he pay closer attention to vessel names in the future.

Backtracking: Danang Shrooms

As I endeavor to pull my life together in Australia, I think back to the weird and exciting events of my recent travels. There's a particularly good story that took place during the exodus from Hoi An.

We left Hoi An in a rush so that I could attend a hastily scheduled doctor's appointment at a Western-quality, Western-doctor-staffed medical clinic in Danang. I had forwarded my parents a number of horror pics of my engorged leg, and their distress quadrupled when Jacksonville-based doctors said the leg was in a state of cellulitus (ick) and I was probably harboring a staphyloccocal infection that could cause permanent disfigurement or amputation. These are awesome things to hear about one's leg while one is trying to enjoy the charms of the developing world.

Dad emailed to remind me that I'd be uglier with an indefinitely mottled leg. Mom emailed to tell me that she'd researched every medical facility within 500 miles of me. Their scare tactics worked. Thank you, Parents. Off to a doctor I went, knowing nothing they could do would be as harrowing as getting the first stitches of my life on a newspaper-covered "operating table" in a government hospital from a doctor who spoke nothing like English. As it unraveled, a cool $114 (US dollars, please) got me in with a doctor who confirmed the Jacksonville diagnosis and out with two weeks' worth of knock 'em dead antibiotics.

Multiple choice: Complete this sentence.

Moms are always:
(a) right
(b) omniscient
(c) badgering
(d) irreplaceable
(e) all of the above

We had several hours to kill before our plane to Hanoi, so we asked the nurses for a restaurant recommendation, and were soon in a taxi headed to someplace called Ashira or Asima or something like that. They had said something about mushroom soup. Sounded appealing. We walked in the door to find no less than thirty waitstaff occupying a space that could accommodate maybe 60 wealthy customers, of which there were currently five, plus us. Picture that we are carrying our backpacks, dressed for a morning of milling around Hoi An. We don't smell particularly bad, but I'm not exactly wearing strappy heels that show off my perfect pedicure. And we certainly can't communicate. Andrew mimes scooping out of an imaginary bowl to indicate we want soup. We are seated on the second floor.

When the manager came to deliver our menus and our peanuts (appetizer? garnish? to be eaten with chopsticks?), we learned that the restaurant had opened the night before, hence all the bustling fanfare with the waiters. There were no less than four people servicing only our table, and no less than ten guys at anytime lined along the wall staring, watching, waiting for us to flinch so they could whisper comments to one another. My nerve-wracking travels in India herded themselves into my mind. We opened the menu, and found... mushrooms. Page after page of pictures of mushrooms. When I master wines, then cheeses, I'll have to turn attention to mushrooms. Apparently there is huge variation and variety, and certain Asian restaurants revel in it. When it came to ordering, we were befuddled. The manager helped us to select a "very nutritious broth" and three different types of mushrooms, as well as some cabbage. I ordered a bottle of wine (which was terrible).

The meal proceeded thus: A huge steaming pot of broth was placed in the center of our table over a purpose-built burner. Plates of mushrooms and cabbage arrived at intervals. A waiter whose sole purpose was to watch us eat mixed the shrooms into the broth, and theatrically ladeled this soup into our individual bowls. Three sips later, when our broth levels got low, she scooped more in. In case there was a moment this dedicated scooper couldn't handle, there were also individuals devoted to refilling our wine and water glasses at least once every minute. Thus the next three quarters of an hour passed: Bite, bite, scoop, flourish, guys along wall snicker, bite, sip, eat a peanut while wine is topped off. Andrew, who embraces awkward moments, enjoyed himself thoroughly. I tried to focus on earthy flavors.

Oh, but it wasn't over. After the broth went away and our dessert of fresh pineapple was gone, the bill came. And not only was the bill breathtakingly high by Vietnamese standards, but we didn't have the cash to pay it. The restaurant did not accept credit cards. I start to imagine what it would be like to spend some time washing dishes for this place. Once again we summoned the manager and explained our predicament. Ten minutes later, Andrew, I, our backpacks, and the manager were all cozy together in a taxi, combing the city center for an ATM. One that would take an American bank card.

We arrived at the airport with time to spare, thank heavens, and as I hobbled onto the Hanoi-bound plane, I could almost hear South Vietnam breath a collective sigh of relief that my bumbling self was headed out.