Middle Eastern Scars

Over the weekend H and I decided that it would be fun to try out our new Mormon family sized curry cooker (much cooler than a slow cooker) and make a giant batch of real southern barbecue pork.  We brought home about 8 pounds of pork shoulder on Saturday afternoon and H trimmed it, made a brine and left it to soak overnight.  We woke up early on Sunday to rinse it, make barbecue sauce, and set the pork to cook for 12 hours in the sauce.   About two hours in, the pork started scenting our house with the most mouth wateringly delicious smell.  We kept going to peek through the glass lid to see how it was progressing.  Fortunately, the cooker came with dire warnings that lifting the lid adds 30 minutes to the cooking time, because four hours in, I really wanted a taste but not badly enough to add another 30 minutes to the cooking time.  Finally, we decided we had to get out of the house or the smell would drive us crazy.  We went hiking, we went grocery shopping and we picked up some delicious Savanna Dry cider.  In the grocery store, we were shocked to find Barbican and Maamoul cookies, familiar items from our days in Doha.  And then we drove home where from outside our front door, I smelled the tantalizing scent of true barbeque.  We walked inside our house where the smell blasted us full on.  I turned to H and started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

“I just had an oh shit moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is such a pervasive smell of pork around our property and for a second I worried that someone would come investigate and catch us with 8 pounds of forbidden deliciousness.”

“Haha, you know Doha now gives driving points to people who violate their ‘morality code.’”

“Yes.  I think it’s safe to say that we would lose our driver’s licenses if we were there.”

“It would be a shame too, that’s my favorite driver’s license, with the Emir on his white stallion.”

“Very true.  But seriously, how good does that barbeque pork smell?” 

I Don't Think I Woke Up Back in the Middle East, Did I?

While there may be some positive things about the United Kingdom that remind me of my time living in the Middle East (i.e. late night grocery shopping, kebab shops, Nando's), today I had my first wtf, are you sure I've escaped Doha moment?  Last weekend, I ordered an iron online from Debenhams.  I know, very exciting; I think I might actually be getting closer to 30.  Anyway, given that my wallet was across the room and H was sitting next to me with his wallet conveniently located in his pocket, I used his credit card to place the order.  The prescribed order confirmation timeline had passed so this morning I called Debenhams to check on the status of the order.

Upon request, I provided the customer service representative with:

• The confirmation number, "Great, thank you miss."
• Delivery destination, "Yes, thank you." 
• E-mail address, "Great."
• Name the order was placed under, "Excuse me, may I please speak with your husband?"

"Umm, pardon?"  

"I need to speak with your husband as the order is in his name."

"I have all the information and I actually placed the order; the confirmation is going to my e-mail address."

"I'm sorry miss but I can't discuss any details of the order with you."

"You realize that w're talking about an iron, right?"

"I'm sorry but the order is in your husband's name."

Ok, last time I use H's credit card instead getting up off my lazy butt to get my purse.  What did this guy think?  That I had hacked someone else's e-mail account, found an outstanding order for an iron, and called to find out when they were planning on delivering it to the address on the order?

Wow, maybe I'm missing something (like the iron came with a free person to iron everything, or better yet, a butler) but given that I had all of the order details, refusing to update me with the order status seemed a little extreme.  Sorry H, but you're going to have to add calling Debenhams to the bottom of your million item long to-do list.

While you're at it, maybe you can also do the following:

• Pre-emptively give me written permission to drive in the United Kingdom.
• Order me a sweatshirt that says, "Don't worry, my husband allows me to go outside without a headscarf/burqa/niqab."
• Write me a permission slip for buying Winter Pimm's, Baltika and Savanna Dry.  It can read something like, yes, these items are within my wife's 'allowance' and she is over 18.
• Hire a butler.  Whoops, sorry, I don't know how that line item slipped in.

Many thanks!

Great Success!!!

For the second time today, I shrieked inadvertently.  Unlike in Perth, the screaming was not a result of the squatting roaches in my apartment.  The first shout was in the wee hours of the morning when my very hot shower turned very cold, in the already ice cold bathroom, in the already frosty new location.  Sorry H, I know your shower was even colder, but I disagree that it was a 'good way to acclimatize to our new home.'

Perhaps the universe knew that after starting my day off like that, I was in need of some extra warmth.  I was starting to believe it didn't exist, but I finally found the very elusive Pimm's Winter No. 3, accidentally in the last of about a dozen stores I went into today.  Cue second round of shrieking:

I might have confused the checkout boy when I refused a bag and stuffed the bottle excitedly into my purse.  Or maybe he was confused that I was shopping laden down with about 30 pounds of groceries.  Little did he know that I had a half hour walk ahead of me...or that it was totally worth it for the bags full of baby carrots, biscuits that are more chocolate than biscuit, buttries, Fanta Zero, black beans, Savanna Dry, Cookie Crisp, Muller yogurt, chocolate covered Hobnobs, onion rolls with holes and Ben and Jerry's frozen yogurt.  Who needs Whole Foods when there is Marks & Spencer and Tesco? 

Now if only H would stop working long enough to share some Pimm's No. 3 with me.  Perhaps I should try a little first just to make sure he'll like it.  Continuous iPhone photos of the ever decreasing bottle might encourage H to leave the office a little earlier so he can have some warm Pimm's + apple juice deliciousness.  It's a win, win situation. 

Convicts and Beer

H claims that I am going to get into a bar fight if I keep declaring Australia to be the land of convicts and kangaroos. I see this as nothing more than an entertaining declaration of truths. Australia was the recipient of British convicts who opted for life on a new continent in lieu of staying behind bars in their homeland. And despite not seeing a live one yet, Australia is most certainly the country of kangaroos. Where else can you find grocery store meat departments full of ‘roo meat, including “Kanga Banga” sausages, road laws detailing what to do if you hit a kangaroo (stop and check its pouch for a baby ‘roo and if there is one, wrap it in a blanket and bring it to the nearest vet), and statues everywhere depicting these adorable creatures? Kangaroos are even in the news with coverage ranging from what to do about the overpopulation problem to a kangaroo getting into a house and a man wrestling him out in nothing but his “Bondie” underwear.

Today we checked out some of WA’s convict history in Fremantle at Fremantle Prison, a limestone jail built in the 1850s and used as Perth’s maximum-security prison until 1991. We met one of our Japanese friends, K, there and took the Great Escapes tour which led us on an interesting tour of the prison during which time the guide told us some stories of a few of the most notable escapes and escape attempts from the prison. To read about some of them, visit the Fremantle Prison website. After the tour we walked around Fremantle, admiring its 19^th century mostly convict built architecture, and walked through some nice looking cheese, meat, and produce markets, and some tacky souvenir and handicraft markets.

As we walked around, we noticed multiple groups of people collecting money for Sea Shepherds, a whale conservation group that takes it upon itself to patrol a whale sanctuary in Antarctica from Japanese whaling vessels. There is a show that follows the group’s activities on Animal Planet , called Whale Wars, that H and I have enjoyed watching. Recently in the news, we heard that a Sea Shepherd member, Captain Pete Bethune, had been arrested for boarding a Japanese whaling vessel to serve a citizen’s arrest warrant to the captain for ramming and shipping his ship, the Ady Gil. He was transported back to Japan on that whaling vessel and is awaiting trial in a prison in Tokyo for a variety of charges. I suspected that the press coverage in Japan of the group was fairly intense and asked our friend K if he had heard anything about the group. He had and viewed the group as a terrorist organization, a representation that seems to be common in the Japanese press. K saw nothing wrong with collecting whale meat for research and using the remains as food, apparently he views whale meat as quite a delicacy. I disagreed saying that not only are whales endangered species, but they are so cute and so helpless. He asked me if I am a vegetarian and I said no but I don’t eat animals that I view as cute such as sheep, baby cows, rabbit, and whales. He had to concede that chickens and fish aren’t really cute so the argument went to me. The loser should have had to make a contribution to Sea Shepherds ;)

To end the day, we visited Little Creatures Brewery, located on the Indian Ocean in Fremantle, where we sampled some of their great food and tried out some more of their beers and their Pipsqueak Cider. The Pipsqueak Cider was quite good, I like it better than Strongbow, which was recommended by an Australian friend, but my favorite is still Savanna Dry, a South African cider that I discovered in Qatar.