Top Ten Things I Will Miss

Yes, I am happy to be returning to the United States. However, Australia is an amazing place and there are a lot of things that I will miss.

10. Birds
Julie was disappointed when she found out there are no hummingbirds in Australia. However; the lorikeets with their amazing color combinations, cockatoos with the exotic plumage, and magpies singing their soothing songs have more than made up for the dearth of hummingbirds. When people think about Aussie animals, they usually conjure up images of kangaroos. I have seen kangaroos in the wild, but they are not found anywhere near the city. Every day I can see and hear these birds and I will miss them.

9. School Uniforms
Carson is in prep (the same as kindergarten). He is expected to wear a uniform every day and it really makes life easy. He knows what he is supposed to wear and getting into his uniform couldn’t be easier. Yes, it has made life easier with Carson, but the real benefits would have been with Zoe. With her in a uniform, getting her dressed would have been a snap. Now I have a few years of me picking out clothes for her and her telling me she doesn’t like what I picked.

8. Public Toilets
OK, this is a strange one, I admit it. However, in my unscientific survey, there are more public toilets readily available and they are much cleaner than I have come to expect after living in the United States. Although I appreciate being able to pee when I have to go, it is even more convenient when I am out and about with Carson and his patent pending just in time potty warning system.

7. Public Transportation
I admit, getting packed like a sardine into a crowded tram at the end of a long day when it’s extremely hot out sucks. There is a big part of me that can’t wait to drive a car all the time again. However, when I’ve had a few after work and it’s time to get home, having public transportation readily available or the option to grab a cab is kinda nice too.

6. Food
America has good food too. The service is much, much better and the prices are lower. So what is food doing on this list? Well, there are some things I will miss that I just don’t expect to find in America. For example, Cheezels are the greatest artificial cheese flavored snack ever invented. Cheetos suck in comparison and are dead to me. Being able to go out to lunch on a work day for dumplings, feel absolutely stuffed, and have the bill come out to $10 a person will also be missed. Lamingtons, hot jam doughnuts, and abundant good coffee will all be fondly remembered.

5. Lack of Homelessness
I think this one says it all. I can walk around the CBD or St Kilda and never see a homeless person or have someone hit me up for change. It’s nice. I don’t look forward to seeing panhandlers and being constantly badgered.

4. Weather
The weather in Melbourne is pretty freaking awesome. There are four real seasons, but it never gets that cold. In fact, when the weather gets down to fifty degrees people go nuts complaining about how cold it is. The Seattle summer is pretty spectacular, but it is short. There are months of freezing weather, rain, and a lack of sunlight coming ahead and I am sure I will miss blue skies and the outdoors.

3. Beaches
We live a block from the beach and have views of the water from our house. That’s pretty awesome.

2. Footy
St Kilda is losing one of their biggest fans. I loved being able to get to the footy cheaply and easily. It’s fun with my kids and it’s fun without them. Damn it, footy is pretty cool.

1. People
Before I came here, I said that I never met an Aussie I didn’t like. Well, I have now met plenty. However, with all due respect to Depeche Mode, people are people. It doesn’t matter where you go. Some people are great. Others not so much. Here, I would like to focus on the people I have met that have made a lasting impression on my life. There are too many to name, but I will miss you. Remember, you always have a place to stay in Redmond.

Uluru

When I first started this humble blog, I anticipated writing a lot about travel. Except I never left Victoria for nearly eighteen months. Now, with my journey here about to end, I have made two trips in the past month. I was lucky enough to make it to the Australian Outback and visit the landmark Uluru.

First, a little background on why, with time enough for one more trip, did we select Uluru? Well, before we left the States, I was at an Outback Steakhouse and saw a picture of it. I thought to myself, “Wow! That is a big rock in the middle of nowhere.” It just sort of stuck in my head as something cool, something that I might actually want to see. So we made the journey over to Oz and we have lived and worked in Melbourne.

(Irony alert: the actor in this commercial is Jemaine Clement who went on to fame with "Flight of the Conchords". Jemaine is a New Zealander and a running gag on the show was the Conchords insulting and being insulted by Australians.)

I do not want to insult the city that has been my home for nearly two years. It can be quite breathtaking.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures I have ever taken...

But... it fails to live up to some of my preconceived notions of Australia. I expected blokey, rugged men. I did not expect the men to wear women’s clothing. I joke, I joke, I kid, I kid - it’s not that bad. But it’s close. Melbourne has a very European feel to it. Not that feeling European is bad, but I wanted to see the “Real Australia” that I had imagined in my head from all the Foster’s beer commercials I had seen over the course of a lifetime growing up in America.

Additionally, I happened to work across the street from an Aboriginal art gallery. I, generally, don’t understand art, but I would wander into the gallery from time to time and look at the paintings. They are really quite stunning and I would leave feeling somewhere between intoxicated and euphroic. Simply said, I love the art. It is worth taking a look at some of the images on Google, but keep in mind these paintings can be on extremely large canvases and the tiny images you see on your screen do not quite do the paintings justice.

Julie independently walked into the same gallery and loved the art as much as I did. Unfortunately, neither of us loved the prices associated with said paintings and there was no way I could afford to buy anything in there. It got us to thinking though... Victoria has the lowest population of Aboriginal people of any Australian state. The gallery is in a pricey section of town. Where is the money going? It probably was not going to the actual artists and if we wanted to get Aboriginal art, we would be much better off heading off to the Northern Territory, much closer to the source. So, our shared love of Aboriginal art, my love of the desert, inspiration from the Outback Steakhouse, and the desire to see the real Australian Outback brought us to Uluru.

So why did we pick this particular weekend to go? Good question... Like workers in the US, Australians receive ten paid holidays a year. Some of the holidays are the same as ours like Christmas and New Year’s Day. Some are different but easy to understand, such as Australia Day being analogous to the Fourth of July. Some are perplexing like the Queen’s Birthday. I had no idea that Australia had a queen and that the Queen of England was also Australia’s queen. Speaking of the Queen’s BIrthday, each state in Australia has their own holiday schedule and have different days off. The Queen’s Birthday is, therefore obviously celebrated on different days for each Australian state and is nowhere near her actual birthday in any of them. All of this brings me to the most baffling holiday of them all, the Melbourne Cup.

The ladies really dress like this!

The Melbourne Cup is celebrated on the first Tuesday of November and is the biggest horse race of the horse racing season. That’s right, the people of the state of Victoria get a public holiday for a horse race. No, I am not making this up. It really is quite a big deal. The men get dressed up in suits and the women wear fancy dresses with silly hats called fascinators. WIth everybody so dressed up, they proceed to bet on horses and then drink way too much.

The Melbourne Cup is referred to as “the race that stops a nation”, but my naive mind could not get around the fact that it was held on a Tuesday. I mean who goes to work on Monday and then takes Tuesday off? Exactly! No one goes to work on Monday either. The honest take a vacation day. The dishonest “chuck a sickie” (call in sick). The slightly less dishonest “work from home”. Only the suckers actually go to work.

With a four day weekend approaching, I thought we would have time to fly the equivalent distance of Seattle to St Louis and the trip was on. I knew very little about Uluru before going there. It was once called Ayer’s Rock, but when the government gave the land back to the Aboriginals, it began to be called by its original, Aboriginal name, Uluru. It is the world’s largest monolith and it almost smack dab in the middle of the country in the “Red Center”. As for the Red Center, talk about truth in advertising. It is also quite hot, but I considered living in Phoenix, Arizona for fourteen years to be adequate training.

I have not been shy about voicing some of my opinions about Australia. Australians love to tell me that the United States’ policy of “security by theater” at the airport is a waste of time and money, is really annoying, and doesn’t make anyone any safer. They are 100% right. I love efficiency and having flown through the Melbourne and Sydney airports a few times in the past month, there is nothing that I would change. On Quantas, there are tons of unmanned kiosks with zero wait time. You rock up (in the Aussie vernacular) to a kiosk, put in some information, and the kiosk generates baggage tags. You then take your bags with the newly created tags to a conveyer belt. The bags are weighed and then scanned with lasers which read the barcodes and all the information needed to get your luggage to the appropriate location. Then the bags disappear, but show up fairly promptly at baggage carousels of the destination. At no point do you have to talk to anyone, which is my dream scenario considering I hate people. The kiosks are extremely intuitive and there is no waiting for anything. It is perfect.

Going through security does not involve taking one’s shoes off or submitting to an anal probe like in the US. It is quick, easy, and sufficient. If anyone thinks that Australia does not have to worry about terrorism like the United States does, they would be wrong. Australia has contributed forces to the ongoing battles in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tragically and senselessly, in 2002 a nightclub known to cater to Australians in Bali was targeted resulting in the death of 88 Australians. Australia does have a real terror threat, but have responded to it sensibly. I applaud this.

We left Melbourne and arrived in Sydney an hour and fifteen minutes later. From there, we changed planes for the three hour or so flight to Ayer’s Rock Airport. We got a glimpse of the rock from the plane and it is amazing how flat the land is and then there is this rock in the middle of nowhere just sitting there.

I had tried to set expectations with anyone who needed to contact me that I would be unreachable for several days. Upon arriving at the airport, I was shocked to find that my phone was quite usable and I had 3G coverage that was better than when I was in Telstra in Melbourne. In the middle of the desert. Go figure.

Normally, I rail against Australia’s anti-growth policies, but at Uluru, I think it has been done right. The airport and resort are a short distance from the rock. The resort we stayed at, the Desert Sails, offered an excellent room and nice amenities. There are a few other resort choices that are all connected and offer varying services. Honestly, I don’t know how we wound up at the Desert Sails, but I do not regret it.

"G'day, mate!"

We checked in and had a few hours to relax and unwind before our first booked activity - a walking tour of Kata Tjuta (also known as “The Olgas”) and a sunset viewing of Uluru. I changed into my “tourist outfit” - a San Diego Chargers jersey, matching baseball hat, and an SLR permanently slung around my neck. Julie and I walked to the “town center” to buy some water and sunscreen. I wandered into a t shirt store and fell in love with a leather hat complete with an alligator band and shark’s teeth. I wore it for the remainder of the trip.

As Julie was shopping, I approached an Aboriginal man playing a didgeridoo. I always kind of wanted to learn how to play this amazing instrument and the man was kind enough to let me try. Let me emphasize the word try. Julie video taped my efforts and the jokes kind of write themselves. I am not brave enough to post the footage here.

Kata Tjuta

AKA The Olgas

As we boarded a bus heading for Kata Tjuta, I admit that I had never heard of Kata Tjuta before. According to Aboriginal stories, both Uluru and Kata Tjuta were created by two young boys playing in the mud. Uluru was a fully formed mud patty and the boys moved on to Kata Tjuta. As the boys were making the second patty, their aunties came and pulled them away by their ears. Thus, Kata Tjuta was incomplete.

We arrived at Kata Tjuta and were warned a multitude of times to drink water.Julie and I walked through the canyon and took many, many pictures. I didn’t know what to expect as I had booked the trip on the basis of seeing Uluru, but Kata Tjuta was a great warm up. Before long, we were back on the bus for the sunset viewing of Uluru.

The tour included appetizers and wine. Being me, I didn’t pay close attention to where our table would be set up. There were lots of groups and lots of tables and I attempted to crash a German tourists’ table. Whoops. Anyway, I managed to make my way to our table and found a pathetic assortment of crackers, cheese, and vegetables. The wine was of low quality, but they made up for it in quantity.


They say that the rock appears to change colors during sunrise and sunset. Before the viewing, I would have said that this statement is pure marketing bullshit. Maybe it was the influence of the cheap wine, but I am actually inclined now to agree. We made some friends from Canada and took hundreds of pictures. Did I mention we drank? We did.

We were not the first and will not be the last to visit Uluru

Julie and I

We got back to the resort and decided to eat at the Outback Pioneer. I decided to get the “Aussie platter” and received raw emu, kangaroo, and crocodile skewers. Julie got a steak. We cooked our meat on BBQs underneath the southern stars as we listened to live music. Julie took our food to a picnic table while I went to the bar still in my full tourist get up.

“Hmmmm... I’m in Australia. I should probably have a Foster’s,” I said in my decidedly American accent.

The bartender looked offended. “Mate, no one serves Foster’s here.”

“But, ‘It’s Australian for beer, mate’.” I broke character and smiled. “I know. I’ve been living here for two years. I just can’t help myself. I love ordering it at every bar I go to.”

The food was good and the atmosphere was even better. We finished our dinners and went back to the room as we had an early wake up ahead of us.

Sunday we woke up early to go on a guided tour to Cave Hills in the northern part of South Australia. Our tour guides picked us up and told us a bit about the significance of the site. There are paintings in the cave that have been carbon dated to roughly 23,000 years ago telling the story of the Seven Sisters.

The sheer length of time that this story has been passed down from one generation to the next is simply shocking. The Aboriginal people appeared in Australia roughly 40,000 to 60,000 years ago and lived in isolation from the rest of the world until the late eighteenth century. In the West, by contrast, empires have come and gone and people have worshiped different gods and been ruled by foreign invaders for several millennia. The length of uninterrupted tradition is very difficult to comprehend. Between the timelessness of Uluru and the ancient stories, it is a stark reminder of how short and fleeting our time on this planet truly is. We are born, we grow, hopefully we have children of our own, and just as we actually gain a little bit of wisdom - we die. The Aboriginal people do their best to preserve the wisdom of the elders. As the parents hunt and gather, it is the responsibility of the grandparents to educate the children. It is kind of a cool tradition. Instead of grandparents, my kids get daycare which kind of sucks.

We stopped in a remote outback town to stretch our legs and use the toilets. We saw a flock of cockatoos and I decided to get a Coke Zero. I have a hobby here of complaining about how utterly expensive things are here, but in the middle of the outback the going rate for a small bottle of Coke Zero is $5.20. Sadly, I wound up buying three.

For some reason, this is what I thought Australia would be like

We pressed on with our journey and spent the next two hours on a dirt road into South Australia. Along the way, we could see multiple abandoned cars, mainly Holdens, in varying states of disrepair scattered throughout the desert. It ocurred to me that having a breakdown in the outback would be a very bad idea.

Note: This picture and the girl in the hat are the only ones that are not my own.

At Cave Hill, we waited at a rudimentary shelter made of corrugated tin as our tour guides got the Aboriginal elder. He went by the name of Wally.

This is Wally - note he is not wearing shoes!

Wally proceeded to walk us through the outback barefoot as he told the story of the Seven Sisters. I think he was talking in English, but I’m not really sure. Our tour guide was either translating for him or clarifying - it’s hard to say. The gist of the story goes something like this:

There were seven sisters who were all hotties. A guy spied them and decided that he would rape one or all of them and started chasing them around. The sisters then fled the would be rapist as chased them. The hotties decided to hide in a cave.

We entered the very cave of the myth and took a good look at the paintings. We were told not to take pictures and I respected the request. Trust me, the paintings were cool.

These are not the Cave Hill paintings, but it is a similar style

The sisters hid in the cave that I found myself lying on my back looking at the painting of the story. Now, this is where the story gets really weird... the would be rapist actually had two penises. He whipped one of them out and flung it into the cave. The sisters saw a giant cock coming at them and decided to run out the other side of the cave. The man in pursuit, apparently, caught up to his large, exposed penis and decided to wait in the cave as he was not aware that the sisters went out the back. He waited there for a long time and the sisters got a good head start on him. I kind of tuned out after the discussion about the two dicks and one of them going into the cave, but later the sisters made their way up to the skies and formed a constellation that can be seen from either hemisphere and transformed themselves into seven rock formations (one per hottie) scattered throughout central and western Australia.

Truth be told, I didn’t really care for the story and I didn’t think that Wally’s story telling ability was that great. However, I loved the art and I could tell that the story was important to him. Maybe it would make more sense on the hundredth telling, but I still treasured the opportunity to be on the site that was important to their culture.

Wally left and the tour guides proceeded to make a fire and cook steaks and onions. We ate sandwiches and talked to another family from Melbourne. The food was great and the company was even better and we eventually had to get back in the bus to go back to the resort. At the resort we had a really good buffet dinner at the Desert Sails. We made it an early night as we had a 4:30AM departure time for a sunrise at Uluru and a walking tour around the base.

Our camp - in the middle of nowhere

Fire! Fire! Fire!

I usually wake up before the alarm has a chance to go off, but when the alarm is set for 4AM, even I can’t beat it. I was rudely awoken from my slumber and proceeded to motivate Julie out of bed. Somehow, we managed to get dressed and make it on time for the bus, but we were both tired.

I think we were both too scared to say something to each other, but we were both worried that we had already seen the rock and that this morning’s tour would have a “Groundhog Day” like feel to it. Only it would be worse because we woke up at 4AM. I have never been so happy to be wrong. We took just as many pictures as we did for the sunset viewing but I think I could look at Uluru every day for the rest of my life and never grow tired of it.

With the sun in the sky, we got back on the tour bus and proceeded to take a bus tour. On the way to the climbing spot, our tour guide gave us plenty of mixed messages. We were told we could climb the rock, but the Aboriginals preferred that we did not. Since the late 80’s there have been almost two deaths a year from climbing the rock and the rock is only available for climbing 70 days a year and it is impossible to know ahead of time whether climbing will be allowed.

There was a part of me that really wanted to climb the rock, but Julie was adamant that we did not do it. She convinced me that it was disrespectful and I think she is right. The Australian government gave the land back to the Aboriginals, but in the eleventh hour insisted that the Aboriginals lease it back to the Australian government for 99 years. One of the conditions of the lease was the continued acceptance of climbing the rock. The Aboriginals really were not in a position to say no and it was a dick move on behalf of the government. I am really not trying to judge here as my government has pulled a lot of dick moves on our Native Americans, but I did have the choice to respect their wishes and not climb.

When we got to the base, I felt a lot better about my decision not to climb as I was wearing flip flops and the climb looked steep. I was pretty sure I could handle the climb up fine, but the thought of trying to go down a hill that steep, in flip flops, did not sit well with me. Regardless, the climb was closed due to weather which seemed odd as the weather was decent - at the time. It became clear to me that the Aboriginals really didn’t want people climbing and would use any excuse to prevent it.

That is one steep climb

We walked around the base of Uluru and I got close enough to touch it with my own hands and learn its history. Australia is one of the oldest continents and although now it is also the flattest, this wasn’t always the case. It once had a mountain range that rivaled the Himalayas. Over the course of millions and millions of years, this mighty range was eroded away. The sediment from this range pooled and there was an earthquake that popped the sediment onto its side like an ice cube from an ice tray. Now Uluru is all that remains of this mountain range and the sediment layers, which should be horizontal, are vertical because of the bizarre way the rock was formed. Cool, right?

Great shot by Julie - does not look like it was taken on Earth

Another Julie masterpiece

Finally, we ended our tour with a visit to the Cultural Center. I was nervous to see how much the paintings would cost but was relieved to see the paintings were roughly 1/8 to 1/10 the price of the fancy gallery in the Melbourne CBD. I walked up to one painting that caught my eye and told Julie I liked it. Julie proceeded to walk around the shop looking at every painting. After over a decade of marriage, I knew the best thing to do when she is shopping is to give her space. I went to the gift shop and read for a while.

As our departure time approached, Julie found me.

“You’re going to laugh,” she said, “but I think I like the one you pointed out.”

I smirked but somehow managed not to perform the “I told you so dance”. I’m not proud of this, but we held up the entire tour bus as we completed our transaction.

We went back to the resort after having spent seven hours taking photographs, staring at the rock, learning its history, and buying our first piece of art. We were tired as it felt like we had already put in a day’s worth of activities. We took a nap and spent some time at the pool. I kept on trying to order Foster’s as it never got old. By mid-afternoon, we came to the conclusion that our last activity, dinner under the stars, was going to be cancelled. After a six month drought, the Red Center finally got its first rainfall. The thunder was loud and the lightning flashed brilliantly as we made our way back to the room for a quiet dinner watching a magnificent sunset from the resort.

All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a better last trip in Australia. I have heard plenty of people say, “but it’s just a rock in the middle of the desert!” To which I say, “It’s an amazing rock in the middle of the desert with a rich history, culture, and significance.” Uluru is a reminder of the beauty of nature and the short time that we have here. Entire mountain ranges have disappeared. Cultures have risen and fallen. The rock and the Aboriginals have endured and being around that kind of timelessness gives some good perspective.

Dissent is Patriotic

“Don’t bet against the United States of America.” - Warren Buffett

Sometime in the late nineties, my heroes changed from Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Warren Buffett has a public, proven track record as the single greatest investor of all time. He has doubled the return of the S&P 500 over a course of nearly fifty years. His results are so astonishingly good that if I were to find out that Buffett was from the future and had built a time machine in order to capitalize on his knowledge of future events, I would not be the least bit surprised.

The quirkiest part of Buffett’s success is his lack of sophistication. Good ol’ Warren and Charlie get together and analyze businesses. They look at balance sheets. They look for sustainability. They try to buy good companies that have fallen out of favor for great prices. They believe in buy and hold. During the go-go nineties, Warren and Charlie refused to buy in to the dot com hype. They were laughed at and called dinosaurs. Warren Buffett wrote several published pieces discussing how equities would offer sub par returns for the coming decade, warned against the increasingly obvious stock bubble, and made many defensive calls. Warren and Charlie went against the common wisdom and instead applied common sense and were 100% right in their assessment.

Immediately after the dot-com crash, Buffett warned of the impending housing bubble. He referred to derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction”. Experts including the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, publicly disagreed with Warren’s assessment. The Wall Street Journal, most economists, investment banks, and Americans themselves declared, “This time it’s different!” It wasn’t.

I recently told some friends on a cruise of the Yarra River and Port Phillip Bay that we had made the decision to return to the United States. As we were enjoying the sunshine and free alcohol, many people looked at me as if I had lost my mind, “But the US economy is in the shitter” was the common refrain. And if one were to read Australian newspapers, one might get that impression. However, any who knows me knows how I feel about Australian newspapers...

Let me explain the miraculous growth engine that has powered Australia’s economy for the last twenty years and how this is all going to end. I am American, I am from the future.

Following the last recession in 1991, due to limited zoning (ironically applied to nearly unlimited land), house prices gradually started to increase. For those that owned homes, they now had the ability to “tap into the equity of their home” by refinancing. This started happening a lot and a bunch of newly rich Australians purchased consumer goods (for way too much money, but that is a different rant). As house prices increased, it attracted more people with the lure of easy money. Interest rates decreased attracting even more people. WIthout any worthwhile stocks to invest in (seriously, name one ASX 200 company you would like to have ownership in) real estate became the only way to build wealth. More buyers than sellers led to higher prices. Higher prices led to home equity loans. Home equity loans led to consumption further increasing economic output. The overall wealth effect and the near religious belief in property as a means to wealth led to more buyers. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

For fifteen years, this went on with property prices increasing some years almost 20%. Then the Great Recession or the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) or whatever you want to call it hit. The unspeakable happened. House prices went down. Declining house prices had the potential to throw off the entire economy that depended on house pricing going up, consumers taking out home equity loans and spending the money, and the government collecting piles of money in the form of stamp duty (5% of the home’s sale price goes right to the state). So the RBA lowered interest rates to all time lows and started giving away money to first time homeowners.The allure of free money proved to be so powerful that getting a free grant of $15k to buy an astonishingly crappy two, cramped two bedroom apartment for $500k seemed to make sense. It doesn’t. Australia has some of the most expensive real estate in the world at the same time it is one of the least densely populated nations. It doesn’t add up.

I have seen plenty of people comment in The Age and other sources that it doesn’t matter if house prices stay flat (never go down - house prices couldn’t conceivably go down). Owners simply will not sell until home prices go back up so it doesn’t matter. Except it does. Over a million households (out of a population of only seven million households) are “negative gearing”. Negative gearing means losing a lot of money every single month in the hopes of making it back in capital gains.If the hope of capital gains disappears, so will the willpower to keep throwing money away every month on a deflating asset. Refis will disappear. Spending will grind to a halt. The wealth effect starts to work in reverse. Lack of spending leads to increasing unemployment. Increasing unemployment leads to foreclosures which leads to lower house prices. So the cycle feeds upon itself, but in reverse this time.

The RBA has now painted themselves into a corner. Interest rates are currently near all time lows. Sadly, this is actually starting to reinvigorate the housing market. Over the next year or two, the RBA has the ability to bring interest rates to zero, as it is in the US. However, at the first whiff of inflation, any increase in interest rates will set off a wave of foreclosures as the average Australian buying at these prices absolutely cannot afford it. I cannot forecast accurately when this will happen, I can only assure that it will happen. It has happened before and to ignore the lessons of the US, Ireland, Spain, and the UK is simply willful ignorance.

This viewpoint is not popular. Commenters in Australian newspapers who espouse views similar to mine are accused of “talking down the economy”. Seriously. As if our tiny, unpopular opinion can cause the entire economy to fall (it is the gravity and magnitude of the bubble itself that will cause its inevitable collapse). It is eerily similar to what happened in the US prior to the second Gulf War. You could hear the phrase “dissent is patriotic” amongst the liberals. At the time, I thought they were wrong. Now in hindsight, I can see clearly the US had no authority, cause, justification, or plan in invading Iraq. It was a huge mistake and the dissenters served a purpose. We should have listened.

I cannot emphasize enough how privileged I feel to have had the opportunity to live and work in Australia. I am not writing this to be negative or because I have an axe to grind. My dissent is a form of patriotism, a warning to my friends I have grown close to in my travels here. The road ahead is going to be difficult. Reading macrobusiness or Steven Keen, saving money, and speaking out against property “investment” is not tyranny. It’s patriotism. Like Buffet, avoid common wisdom and pay attention to common sense.

Top Ten

“If you're down and confused

And you don't remember who you're talking to

Concentration slips away

Because your baby is so far away

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove

And the eagle flies with the dove

And if you can't be with the one you love, honey

Love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

Don't be angry, don't be sad

Don't sit crying talking good times you've had

Well there's a girl sitting right next to you

And she's just waiting for something to do

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove

And the eagle flies with the dove

And if you can't be with the one you love, honey

Love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

Oh yea oh yea, yea

Lord, love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

Why don't you love?

Turn your heartache right into joy

She's a girl and you're a boy

Did you get it together and make it nice?

When you ain't gonna need anymore advice

Well there's a rose in a fisted glove

And the eagle flies with the dove

Sometimes you can't be with the one you love, honey

Love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love the one you're with

You gotta love, oh love

You gotta love, oh love

You gotta love, love the one you're with”

-Crosby, Stills, and Nash

It is hard to write publicly that Seattle wanted you gone and then a year and a half later, you wind up writing that you will be coming back to Seattle, but I have heard Julie sing this Crosby Stills and Nash song every morning for years. “If you can’t love the one you want, love the one you’re with.” In my self imposed exile, there are things I have missed about Seattle. Here are my top ten.

10. Rainier Cherries
If you think I am being frivolous by listing a piece of fruit on this list, then you have never tried a Rainier Cherry. Rainier Cherries are so good that other cherries ought to be embarrassed to call themselves cherries. Grown only in Washington state, there is a small window of time when these little nuggets of perfection are available, but they can be found just about everywhere from grocery stores to roadside vendors.

9. Mountains
Everywhere I have lived, with the exception of Chicago and Melbourne, have been surrounded by mountains. I miss looking at them, especially on a Spring day when the sky is blue and the mountains are still covered with snow. If you like looking at mountains, you can do a lot worse than sweeping views of the Olympics and Cascades.

8. Good Beer
Australians pride themselves on their beer drinking. Unfortunately, the beer sucks. I will admit that I have never seen an Australian drink a Foster’s, but I have seen plenty drink Victoria’s Bitter or Carlton Draught. Both are awful. The Northwest is known for its microbrews and any grocery store can offer more choice and quality than I have seen in a long time. However, my favorite beer in the world is made in Redmond, WA and nothing beats a cold Mac and Jack’s - anytime of the year

7. Red Robin
What the hell is Red Robin doing on this list? Occasionally, I like mediocre food at outrageously low prices. For the last year and a half, taking my family of four out to dinner has set me back $80. I have literally sat in restaurants trying, unsuccessfully, to send telepathic messages to my children. “Don’t order juice. Don’t order juice!” They order juice and I just took $8 out of my wallet and lit it on fire. Going to Red Robin, I can get in and out of there for $35 including a 20% tip for the server. Additionally, I know the minute I walk in the door my kids will be given a coloring book and crayons, the service will be prompt and courteous, and FREE drink refills. I plan on taking the family here and drinking about six or seven sodas in one sitting.

6. Marymoor Summer Concert Series
It might have started out small, but so far I have managed to see Sublime with Rome, Flight of the Conchords, and Slightly Stoopid in my own backyard. Every year, the acts seem to get better and it is a real festival atmosphere - it’s good enough to bring the people from Seattle over to the Eastside. I haven’t seen a concert since Marymoor and I am looking forward to seeing many top notch acts over the coming years.

5. Traffic
By now you might be thinking that I have lost my mind, how can I possibly look forward to Seattle traffic? Well, there are two things I have missed - sensible speed limits and right turns on red. I recently got a speeding ticket for doing 53 kmh in a 50 kmh zone. Americans, imagine getting a ticket for doing 36.5 mph in a 35 zone? It would never happen! I have driven down vast four lane highways doing less than 50 mph. It turns out the US has the second highest speed limits in the world. Sadly, we will probably never beat the Germans in this category, but we’re number two! We’re number two!

4.The Seahawks
Yep, I’m a sucker for punishment. Growing up a Phoenix Suns fan has brought me a lifetime’s worth of sports pain. After the debacle that was Super Bowl XL, there is no reason to think that the Seahawks will end my suffering any time soon and that’s just how I like it.

3. Night Snowboarding/Day Snowboarding
I have had the pleasure of leaving work at 5:30, arriving at Alpental at 6:15, putting plenty of runs in, grabbing a beer, and getting home before 11:00 on a work night. That’s pretty cool.

If I have time on the weekend, there is a plethora of mountains to pick from. Snoqualmie and Steven’s Pass are both less than an hour away. Crystal Mountain and Mount Baker are further, but still doable for a day trip.

2. Affordability
Have I mentioned that Australia is fucking expensive? It is. I stood paralyzed in a gas station recently really wanting a soda, but could not rationalize paying $4.50 for a 16 ounce plastic bottle of Coke Zero. Hello 48 ounces for $1.50! Three times the amount at one third the price. No, I am not moving back to the United States for cheap soda. It’s cheaper everything. Cheaper houses. Cheaper cars. Cheaper gas. Cheaper groceries. Cheaper luxuries. We have been fortunate to make better money than we ever did in the US and I have never felt more broke. A friend of mine once said after living and working in four different OECD countries, in two languages, on three continents for a period of at least seven years each, “America is the only country where it is even possible to get ahead in one generation.” He is right.

1. People
What can I say? I missed my fellow Seattleites. There are too many to name, but I can’t believe I’m going to say this publicly, I miss my mother-in-law. I miss Jenny. I miss friends, co-workers, and Julie’s extended family. I miss the degenrati (except Mike Moroney and Steve Lee- I hate you guys for life, you no-good suck-out artists). See you guys soon.

A Heritage Worth Preserving?

Eccentric and brilliant comedian Eddie Izzard does a joke about America’s relative youth. He says that in America, people will point to a building and say with great pride, “This building looks like it's fifty years old!” As if a fifty year old building is an accomplishment. Europe has many buildings that are centuries old and some that even pre-date Christianity.

Australia is even younger than America, and yet… Many of the buildings look much older. America, as a country, is all about building something bigger, newer, and more spectacular. If a building happens to be occupying the space the new building would go, it is out with the old and in with the new. Cities change and evolve over time. For example, the strip in Las Vegas has seen old buildings imploded to make way for newer, crazier hotels on a routine basis for the last thirty years. There is an entire website dedicated to videos of Las Vegas hotel implosions, feel free to check it out here.

A typical house in Garden City.

Australia, on the other hand, wants to preserve its heritage as much as possible. I became familiar with my current neighborhood, Garden City, shortly after moving to Australia. At first, I thought, “OK, this is where the poor people live.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. From the outside, the buildings look, well, old.

The neighborhood itself is modeled after a town in England. The houses themselves are made of bricks and the architecture looks antiquated. Constructed in the 1950’s, it looks like the neighborhood has not aged particularly well. Strangely, at one point, no one wanted to live in Port Melbourne. Then one day, people thought to themselves, “Hey, this neighborhood is right by the beach and 5 kilometers (roughly 3 miles) from the CBD (Central Business District or downtown)!”

Prices went up. Significantly. This part I understand. I like living by the beach and there is a limited supply of land by the city and by the beach. The part I do not understand is the heritage laws that govern an owner’s ability to remodel their own home. I have seen what the houses look like on the inside that have not been remodeled and these homes are going for close to a million dollars. In the States, they would be considered tear downs. However, here that is illegal.

The LEFT HALF of this home just sold for over $900k. This shot contains both halves of the house which are owned by separate people.

As if the outside of the house was not ugly enough, check out the kitchen. Keep in mind this is a professional photo used to market the house and it looks this bad!

Our house - a Garden City home after a remodel. Hardwood floors, modern appliances, granite island, and 270 degrees of glass to view the Westgate bridge and Port Phillip. Hey, even Spiderman dropped in to hang out here.

The remodels that I have seen, I will admit, do their best to preserve the look and feel of the neighborhood. The house we currently live in was recently remodeled. The original façade remains, but an additional level was built on top. The linoleum was ripped out and replaced with hardwood floors. We have a beautiful deck that overlooks Port Phillip Bay. Our stove is new and stainless steel. I love living here and having friends over.
However, this update did not come easily or cheaply. The owner spent over three years creating plans and working with the “heritage committee” to get her plans approved. She spent in excess of $35,000 to hire a “heritage consultant”. During this three year process, she received pushback from the committee on design decisions such as, “Does your closet need to be this big?” Why the committee would give a shit about the size of a closet in a homeowner’s home is beyond me, but I feel like America went to war against England for less than that. Compromises were made.

My deck. Notice how the fence is pretty far from the edge. The deck could be much bigger. Thanks heritage committee!

As a parent of young children, I love the glass fencing on our deck. It ensures that we have a good view, but I know my kids are safe playing outside. What I could not understand when we first moved in was why the deck was smaller than it needed to be. The roof extends several more feet and it would seem fairly trivial, from a design perspective, to fence around the boundary of the roof. I found out later that our deck size was dictated by the “heritage committee”. They felt, at the time, that the deck should not be too big because it would make the neighbors feel bad about their own houses if the deck were too big.

So the “heritage committee” is a bloated bureaucracy that makes decisions that affect the lives of citizens as to what they can do their own homes, but at least they preserve the look and feel of the community, right? Wrong! Exhibit A:

One of these houses doesn't look quite like the others. One of these houses doesn't look the same...

Every other house in the community is made of brick and is red. Except this one, and yet somehow the plans got approved by the heritage community. Even worse is this eyesore:

You want a bigger deck? No! You want to put a trailer on top of your house? Um, sure, no problem...

The “heritage committee” looked at plans some bloke drew up that said, more or less, I would like to stick an object that looks like a trailer on the top of my house. Apparently, the “heritage committee” yawned and said, “Sure. Whatever.”

The “heritage committee” makes completely arbitrary decisions about what can and cannot be done to an owner’s own house. They take years to make decisions and the experience is so complicated that most would-be remodelers go out and hire “heritage consultants” to get their plans approved on what they want to do to their own homes. But it gets worse… The members of the “heritage committee” DO NOT EVEN LIVE IN THE COMMUNITIES THEY ARE MAKING DECISIONS ABOUT. Literally everything about them stinks. They do nothing but add massive delays and costs to an already difficult and stressful process of remodeling.
Which brings me to another point, why is it necessary to preserve the heritage in the first place? Immediately adjacent to my somewhat loved Garden City, the ghetto of Port Melbourne, sits the “Bank Houses”. Quickly and shoddily constructed in the 1970’s, these homes were literally owned by the bank. These homes, built of stucco with minimal yards, looked shitty in the 1970’s. Today, they look even shittier. Fifty years from now, they will still look shitty. Yet, they are preserved by “heritage laws”.

The bank houses. For a mile along Williamstown Road, all the houses look exactly like this. Shitty.

Once upon a time, I actually lived in an American community similar to Port Melbourne. It may be hard to believe, but Hermosa Beach was once a rundown little town tucked away in the shadow of Los Angeles. Overnight, many Los Angelinos looked upon my beloved Hermosa Beach and declared, “Hey, there is a rundown little town here that is pretty close to LA. I can buy up a house, remodel it, and still commute to my job!”

And throughout the nineties, that is exactly what happened. Some owners tore down their homes altogether. Some kept just the foundation. Some didn’t change too much about their new property. What was once a town of small, quaint beach cottages was quickly modernized. Only old black and white photos preserve Hermosa’s legacy. As a resident of Hermosa, how did I feel about all of this change? I freaking loved it! People spent a lot of money fixing their homes and making them nice. The money brought in more services, restaurants, and shops. For the home owners, what they did with their own houses was their decision and although there were some planning hoops to jump through back in the States, the process takes a few months, not years.

Old Hermosa Beach

New Hermosa Beach - progress!

To be fair, there are older buildings that I love in Melbourne.

The iconic Flinders Street Train Station.

Yet I feel the “heritage committees” are completely out of control. They make arbitrary decisions over incredibly long periods of time and often times completely fail at preserving the heritage they have decided to protect in the first place. There are neighborhoods that seem burdened by heritage laws, such as the “Bank Houses”, that would be much better off if owners could tear down and start over instead of preserving what was and will always be architecturally horrible homes. Taste cannot be legislated or protected. Taste changes over time. Dictating what an owner can do to their house seems draconian and has proven to be pointless.