Thanks to this quick little tool, you can see the point directly on the opposite side of the Earth from where you stand. Under the left-hand crosshairs is where Emma and I live, just east of the Hudson River.

It turns out that digging straight down through our back garden (notwithstanding the molten core and all that) would lead us to a point in the Indian Ocean, off of the southwest coast of Australia (right side of the image above). Next time I talk to my relatives in Adelaide I’ll take comfort in the fact that they’re really only 8,000 miles away, just about straight down.

A friend just sent me a great clip of Aussie cricket star Andrew Symonds flattening a streaker during a series final against India.

I was very pleased to see the news this morning that the Labour Party’s Rudd has defeated Howard in the race for Aussie PM. One of Rudd’s first moves will be to sign the Kyoto pact, leaving (cough cough) the U.S. and Kazakhstan as the only signatories who haven’t ratified the pact.

Peter Garrett (of Midnight Oil fame) will soon step in as Australia’s Climate Change Minister.

Now all that’s left is to count down the 400 or so remaining days in the Worst Presidency in U.S. Historyâ„¢, and we can all breathe a little easier.

We just received the fantastic news that my sixteen-year-old cousin, Kieran, won the Australian National Championships in Sydney with his barbershop quartet, The Fishbowl Boys.

Kieran’s third from the left in this band photo.

The boys worked incredibly hard to raise the funds to fly from Adelaide to Sydney for the competition, from busking in Rundle Mall (Adelaide’s main shopping district) to holding fundraiser barbecues at their school. (Note: I’ve heard rumors of groupies known as “Fishlings.”)

Here’s a clip from the local radio coverage of the Fishbowl Boys coming off of the plane at Adelaide airport, wherein they sing a 1925 song by Ray Henderson, “Sitting on Top of the World.”

Excellent stuff, Kieran! Big congrats from NY.

On one of our last days in Australia, I took Emma across Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach, a place my sister and I sometimes visited as elementary school kids. We used to love the retro funhouse and the massive shark tank next door that opened up to the sea on one side. Good times.

Sadly, the funhouse and shark tank were gone, and Manly had definitely taken a turn for the sketchier. Emma and I stopped by the public bathrooms, where we practiced our mouth-breathing and one-legged balancing while changing into our bathing suits, hoping in vain that the muck on the floor wouldn’t rise above the edges of our flip-flops.

As we made our way toward the sand, we happened upon the following sign, very much in the spirit of the bather’s rules from our wedding weekend:

Unfortunately, they left out “No Spitting on the Respect Sign,” as evidenced by the feedback someone deposited just to the right of the list.

Australia, the Cricket World Cup defending champs, beat Sri Lanka today in the finals. As I noted in my write-up on the 2006-2007 Ashes Series (which took place during our December trip to Oz), it’s nearly impossible to find any cricket news in the U.S. So, I had to make do with intermittent headlines on the World Cup website, and knowing that somewhere, ten thousand miles or so away, my uncle is jumping out of his seat, punching his fist in the air.

107-year-old Australian woman Olive Riley has a brilliant new blog (or “blob,” as she endearingly calls it). It’s charming, sweet, funny, a bit rambling at times, and just plain fascinating—just what you’d expect from someone who’s lived for over a century. I hope both Olive and her blob are with us for a very long time.

Here’s an excerpt about the time Olive decided to get dentures at the ripe old age of thirty-one:

Olive:
I went down to the dentist and he said; “Oh yes, you’ve got a couple of decayed teeth there.”

Mike:
Just a couple, though?

Olive:
Yeah. So, I said take ‘em out. “What, now???” He said. (I was on me lunch hour, yer see.) And I said yes, now! And so he took ‘em out. Then, I said; while you’re about it, you might as well take the lot out.

Mike:
But the thing I don’t understand is, why you would have asked [the] dentist to take everything out? It’s so drastic.
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We spent New Year’s Eve in Sydney, at a party in a hotel bar overlooking the Harbour Bridge. I’m not usually that excited by fireworks, but being that this was the 75th anniversary of the bridge, they put on what was easily the most insane pyrotechnic display I’ve ever seen. Apart from that, the night was marked by amazing food, free-flowing champagne, and a neck-and-neck race between me and my father-in-law, Malcolm, to take the title of most “celebratory.” Thankfully (or possibly unfortunately), there are photos to fill in the memory gaps.

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We spent a fantastic two weeks with my family in Adelaide. We stayed with my Uncle Denis, Anne (who will kill me if I call her “Aunt,” as she’s not even ten years older than I am), and my cousins Kieran and Ryan. I’ve been lucky enough to see them three out of the last four Christmases: ‘03 in Oz, ‘05 in L.A., and ‘06 back in Oz.

One of the family traditions is to go up to see the X-mas parade at Lobethal, a historic German township in the Adelaide Hills. It’s a place that’s hardly lacking in characters, as the pub scenes that follow will reveal. The night ended up in a balloon portrait extravaganza. » Keep reading »

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One of our first stops in Adelaide was Cleland Park, an animal reserve, and easily one of my favorite places in South Australia. There are walled exhibits housing some of the less people-friendly animals: wombats, dingoes, and Tasmanian devils. The more docile animals, however—kangaroos, wallabies and emus—wander freely, and are anything but shy.

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