chrisdellavedova.com

Laying in the sand eating fish and chips while the Southern Ocean lapped at my toes I remembered why I wanted to come down here. It was all about quality of life. It was about being a quarter of an hour away from the beach. It was about having a little bit more living space than the UK offered and a little bit more social liberalism than the US offered. And while I watched my little boy becoming a fast food junkie and beach bum before my eyes as scavenging gulls crept in all the minutiae about lack of internet and sketchy public transportation and that feeling if being lost was washed away. That’s the power of the beach.

Back at the library today, though, and it does still suck not to have reliable internet. Hopefully we’re going to have that sorted out on Monday. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we get connected because I’m struggling with this internet scavenging. I must be a picture hunched over my laptop, pirating bandwidth in the suburban shopping malls of South Australia. I just don’t know how to do much of anything without the internet - searching for jobs, finding an address or phone number, staying in touch with friends and family. It’s that last thing that’s hardest here in a new land and blogging has become a great way to stay in touch. I miss it. The worst thing is that with this intermittent blogging the words don’t come and the sentences come out stodgy and forced. For me, writing requires regular practice and as you can probably tell by the state of this post, I need a good workout.

Zach is adjusting to Australia with his typical aplomb. He’s right on the verge of moving under his own power. He’s babbling like a talk radio host with everything out of his mouth sounding a lot like “Da Da”, much to Ma Ma and Na Na’s changrin. He’s taken to chomping down on lamb bones while wearing only a diaper, so he’s pretty much fitting in with the locals. The dog is back as well, completing our little nuclear family unit. He played at being pissed off but a good walk and a run on the beach put things in perspective for him as well. He’s now back to following your underwhelming narrator’s every move.

So, we’re getting there. Beyond the beach the what has really started to endear me to Australia is the Australians. We’ve had no end of startlingly generous offers of assistance from family, friends and strangers. This stands in stark contrast to our move to Britain a few years ago when we could barely get any English people to even speak to us, nevermind offer us the use of their cars.
The place is starting to grow on me.

“The ocean breathes salty, won’t you carry it in?
In your head, in your mouth, in your soul.
And maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll both grow old.
Well I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I hope so.”

 

 Sun Kil Moon - "Ocean Breathes Salty" [4:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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 Modest Mouse - "The Ocean Breathes Salty": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Thank goodness for the library! After a week in Aus I’ve found a source for free, reliable, internet. We joined the library at Noarlunga yesterday and I spent an hour in wireless surfing bliss. It would have been more than an hour but apparently there is a download limit that I exceeded fairly rapidly. I had a lot of music waiting…

But it’s a daily limit and I’m back at a lovely little suburban library this morning. While the stated purpose of this child-free jaunt was job searching, I couldn’t resist a little update. Don’t tell Dr. O’C.

I’m slowly finding my feet. Every little accomplishment - finding the bus to town, sorting out my mobile phone, getting a library card - makes me feel a little bit more grounded. This adventure today, on my own is another minor victory. This isn’t my first intercontinental move but it’s much harder than the one to Oxford. For that one, I arrived and went to work pretty much immediately. Dr. O’C was left with the trivia of getting all the things we needed. For this one, I’m intimately involved and I’ve got to tell you I’d rather be headed to work on a daily basis.

Lack of work is part of the uncertainty and discomfort. I haven’t been jobless for any significant period of time for the past fifteen years or so and I haven’t a clue what to do with myself. I also seem to have this reflex reaction of emitting a grumbling sigh every time we spend more than about $5 on anything.

So, I guess I should get on with it. Here’s a picture from our successful trip into the city center the other day. Look for more pictures coming down the pipe as I conquer jet lag and the hills of the southern suburbs.

 

 Jane's Addiction - "Pigs In Zen": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hello from an internet cafe in the Adelaide city center. You may have guessed from the lack of news here at chrisdellavedova.com that we have not yet sorted out our internet situation. It seems that our new home in Happy Valley, a perfectly normal looking suburb in the hills south of the city, is actually smack dab in the middle of a time warp. It appears impossible to get a telephone or the internet or cable TV. We do, and for this I’m truly grateful, have hot water and that fancy new fangled electricity.

So, bear with me a wee while longer. Hopefully things will be back up to the underwhelming standards to which you’ve become accustomed in a matter of, well, weeks.

Sigh.

We’re here. It’s been a couple of days of physically painful, bleary-eyed jetlag. I don’t even know if I can do it justice. The trip was, well the trip is over. Let’s just say that I am not traveling back to the States or Europe until the trip here is somehow erased from my memory.

I’m currently scavenging someone’s free wireless from a shopping mall somewhere south of the Adelaide city center, so no music or photos. If I’m being honest, I’m not yet enamored. But, I’m open minded, with the full recognition that the more sleep I get, the better things will look.

Impressions so far - bone dry, lots of birds (including wild cockatoos), more American than British.

Zach and Dr. O’C are slowly coming into Australian time. We get Timmins back on Friday - I think things will start looking a lot better by then. Hopefully we’ll have our internet sorted by next week and your underwhelming correspondent will be back like cooked crack.  Until then, I’ll be trying to keep me kangaroo tied down.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that I saw some kind of exotic Australian marsupial crossing the road last night but everyone is trying to tell me it was a cat.

Current conditions - 16°C and raining. Welcome to sunny Australia!

“Runway 4, Flight 209
teardrops fall we start to climb
this window seat proved a poor choice
it shows a dream that’s been destroyed

Little baby starts to cry
Hey, I would to if not for pride…”

-Dwight Yoakam - “1,000 Miles”

First leg done. The Orlando to L.A. flight was pretty much a breeze, with the exception that the whole plane reeked of urine due to a broken toilet. Way to go American Airlines!

Dwight Yoakam was on our flight, I saw him getting off and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey, aren’t you Dwight Yoakam?” He looked annoyed and said “What’s left of me.”

Rock and roll.

“All this plane ride holds for me
is a 1000 miles of misery.”

Sanity still largely in tact.

 

 Dwight Yoakam - "1,000 Miles" [4:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“Adelaide
On a plane
Far from the United States
Of LA
Dropping in from outer space
Takes a day…”

-Ben Folds - “Adelaide”

Tomorrow is the day. The last leg of our trip, the longest and probably the most painful. Orlando to L.A. to Sydney to Adelaide. We’ve managed to avoid, and I’m knocking madly on wood, the horrifying stomach contents ejecting virus that’s been making the round of my family. So if all goes well we’ll at least be healthy for the 30 plus hour trip Down Under.

Pretty much all the anxiety that I should have been plagued with for the last six months has blown in like a hurricane in the last few hours. I’m having sporadic minor panic attacks. This move seems vastly more permanent than the move to Oxford a few years ago. I know that there are flights from Australia as well as to, but I also know that I don’t have another intercontinental move in me. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I have this one in me.

I haven’t a clue what to expect when we finally stagger off the plane in Adelaide. I know that Dr. O’C’s mum has found us a house in a place called Happy Valley. That’s got to be a good sign.

Internet access could be sketchy for a while, thus there may be a bit of radio silence here at chrisdellavedova.com. That being the case, I’d like to leave you with something to listen to - here’s my traveling to Oz playlist. Just click and enjoy:

MP3: Ben Folds - “Adelaide”

MP3: The Pogues - “South Australia”

MP3: The Beatles & Rolf Harris - “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”

MP3: Warren Zevon - “Mr. Bad Example”

MP3: The Shins - “Australia”

MP3: Larsen & Furious Jane - “Australia”

MP3: Townes Van Zandt - “A Song For”

MP3: Men At Work - “Down Under”

MP3: John Cale - “Adelaide”

MP3: The Pogues - “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”

Before we go, here are some photos from our Florida trip:

When I was a younger man I lived in Athens, Georgia and worked behind the counter of a popular coffee house. It was a wonderful job because built into it was the opportunity to meet and chat with the illuminati of the Classic City. One of them, the lead singer of a rock band who shall remain nameless, used to come into my coffee shop when he was in town. He was a shameless flirt and when I crossed his path, he would turn his twinkling blue eyes on me. I was well rooted into heterosexuality by that point in my life so I considered it little more than flattering.

OK, that’s not exclusively true - this guy was one of the biggest rock stars on the planet at the time, so flattery is an understatement. As for my heterosexual roots, I’m not sure how far my protestations and denials would have stretched.

I used to get teased incessantly by friends and co-workers about this incessantly. They would call me Mrs. Rock Star X, they would turn on some of his more suggestive songs as soon as he walked into the coffee shop and so on. One late Friday night I had been drinking in the way I drank, immoderately, at the bar next door. I stumbled over to the coffee shop to try and straighten up a bit. I came up to the counter and asked one of my coffee-slinging colleagues for a perk me up. My barrista buddy started giving me the business about my rock star paramour and, in a fit of frustrated drunken rage, I loudly proclaimed: “I will not fuck Rock Star X!”

The rest happened in slow motion. My friend’s face dropped and his eyes focused on a point behind me. I knew before I turned, but I turned anyway and saw not only Rock Star X, but his manager, lawyer, and another well known chanteuse of the day, let’s call her “Ophelia”. I couldn’t actually tell you the expressions on their faces as I was sprinting in shame out of the shop.

From that point on whenever Rock Star X came into the shop, I would dart to the back and swap with whoever was doing the dishes so I didn’t have to deal with my shame. I did that for months.

There’s a happy ending. One day, whilst I was washing the dishes, Rock Star X poked his head around the corner and said in his inimitable voice, “Hi Chris, long time no see. You OK?” That’s why I still buy their albums even though they haven’t done a great one since 1996.

—————

There is no point to this story other than to say that “New Adventures in Hi Fi”* is one of the all time best albums for travelers. It was written and recorded on the road and that sense of moving while standing still pervades the record. It is the perfect soundtrack for this drawn out circumnavigation. This morning, I woke up dying - in pain, voiceless except for the muscular contractions that forced out mucus and tore the lining of my throat. My slightly weakened physical state made my defenses just porous enough for that little germ called anxiety to slip in.

And, while my immune system is busy with other matters, that niggling anxiety has multiplied to full borne fear. If the truth be told, I am scared shitless. I mean what kind of idiot moves his family half way around the world with no job and no house. What kind of pater familias am I? Is this all going to crumble around us like an illusion? More importantly can I keep it together? It was one thing when I was flitting around the U.S. in a pick-up truck with a steamer trunk. Wandering the world with a family in tow - well that a whole different box of spiders.

“These corrosives do their magic slowly and sweet
Phone, eat it, drink
Just another chink
Cuts and dents, they catch the light
Aluminum, the weakest link…”

-R.E.M.* - “E-Bow The Letter”

R.E.M.’s essential “New Adventures in Hi-Fi” is available from and Amazon.

* This should not necessarily be taken to imply that Michael Stipe was Rock Star X. The pictures, of course, are just gratuitous showing off of my new toy.

 

 R.E.M. "E-Bow The Letter" [5:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download