Consumed

Walking around my new neighbourhood I spotted my very agile 80-something year old German neighbour, Inge. She was making a bee-line for the local shops. She was a blur of floral, knitted cardigan and black opaque stockings, and I hardly recognised her. Now there’s a granny that’s not waiting around, she’s grabbing life by the horns. Every time I see her she’s gardening, washing, taking the rubbish out, spying on my car reversing skills (I drove over a patch of grass on a wet day and haven’t heard the end of it) or doing something else to keep herself busy.  

Just before I saw her I was contemplating what really old people do. Eighty odd years and then some. Oldies would have done and seen a lot. So after all is said and done, do they just hang around, waiting for death to come a knocking? Or are they living their life just as I do every day, trying to avoid the inevitable (taxes and death)?

Then as I was walking up the hill, puffed out, I saw Inge who pulled me out of my depressing reverie. At that moment I became determined to be as agile as she is at that age, perhaps even now! But it’s getting difficult. In this day and age we’re consumed with consumption. If we’re not stuffing our faces with (junk) food, then we’re watching way too much TV, being entranced by our digital devices and social media, or shopping online for more of the same thing we already have three versions of in our over-stuffed wardrobe.

So what’s the answer? For me its awareness. Choosing when I do those things and limiting (not eliminating) the exposure. Maybe I should take a leaf out of Inge’s book and do more gardening.

I’m thinking changes are afoot on this blog. Feeling a bit stale. I’m wanting to sharpen up my recipes and restaurant reviews to make them short, sweet and time effective. Also perhaps provide some parent-friendly food, culture and travel ideas as suggested by my friend Glynis a while back. Got any suggestions of what you’d like to see? Let me know in the comments below.

Before I sign off, I should preface this entry by addressing my ten month hiatus. I’ve been busy baking. I baked a baby bun in my uterus oven. It’s a girl. She’s super cute with a perfectly round bald head and dumbo ears; I want to eat her! And she’s quickly approaching three months. Time flies... in the meantime you can see all the deliciousness and places I visited during my hiatus on instagram and facebook.

Stay tuned, there should be something for all to consume…

Authentic Happiness

Meditative March has made me all thoughtful and stuff. Less talk more action seems to be the motto. I've been busy socialising, cooking and living my life, too busy to be recording it all, which is starting to seem like such a ludicrous concept by the way.

I'm torn between two generations: X and Y. I  was born somewhere in between the two, either the end of X or the beginning of Y, no one is able to decide the exact dates that define the generations. Either way, I sway between the two like a fish being pulled by the tide. As much as I love technology I despise it. As much as I want to be connected I want to disappear.

Is there anybody out there? What is all this for? What's the purpose? The last is the biggest question.

What am I doing all this for? Who am I? Do I have to pick who I want to be? Who cares where I ate at on the weekend?

The last couple of weeks my writing has been inconsistent. I have a backlog of cafes I need to write the reviews for and photos to edit. That shit is weighing me down. When did it stop being fun and start being a drag?

It's Bourdain's fault, that rat bastard. He's got it made. I want what he's got. The traveling and the eating with a big slice of culture in his face.

It was a slow and steady culmination of doing Bourdain-a-thons (watching back to back episodes of No Reservations horizontally on my couch wearing nothing but a T-shirt and my underwear, eating my shitty food while he tasted exotic things and got sloshed), reading my signed copy of Kitchen Confidential and meeting the bastard. Add my constant slutting around Sydney cafes and restaurants the last two months and the last straw of the Taste of Sydney Festival. But what could all this mean?

I've got all Bourdain things that I love on one hand, then all Sydney things which I also (should) love in the other. Shouldn't they all harmonise? Something hasn't been sitting right deep down in my gut, it didn't make sense. Like eating a dodgy meal which is sure to cause you pain later, it festers and churns.

It's what I've been thinking and feeling ever since I stepped foot on this massive island of ours called Australia, 22 years ago. There is no culture. There is no history. So without these two elements, what story are we trying to tell? I knew it back then as an eight year old and I know it now even better.

Food is history, food is culture, it's who we are, where we came from and where we are going.

The only story Taste of Sydney explicitly told me is how to cash in, how to pose like a real Sydney-sider and how desperate we are for something more real and tangible, for something authentic. This is the same story I've been told consistently in every Sydney cafe or restaurant I've dined in. The superficial transactions speak for themselves.

Kooky decor or random tid-bits collected from someones trash can and back yard garage sale? Voila. We have a new theme for a cafe!

Sydney and in fact Australia is asking for anything as long as it has some sort of story or even abstract interest, just to get away from our every day monotony and instead get the opportunity to be sophisticated and cultured and shit.

That's why I'm over it. I've been trolling through the multitude of food blogs out there and every fucker and his dog is a food critic. But they're not telling me what I really want to hear.

I'm putting this down and hope that you pick it up: I'm not a food critic, I don't know the French names or techniques for food. That's what the chefs are for. I just know what I like and what resonates with me deep down in my soul.

Who I am is a Greek raised on farms and living the urban life for a while now. I'm a citizen of the world, taking in different cultures and wanting to find out more. I'm looking to make connections between how I was raised and what my culture and family is about, with how I live my life today. This is a declaration damn it. That's what I want to share with you reading this right now. I want to tell you my story and hopefully help you build your own.

Like any true philosophizing Greek and my forefathers before me, I want to know what the meaning is. I want to search the deep recesses and figure out how we got here in the first place.

I said Australia has no culture or history. The reality is, it has almost if not all the cultures in the world living under one roof. What an awesome collective?! It's evident in the faces of its inhabitants, in the cuisines they dish out and the themes and ideas they prop up. We are truly spoilt for choice and opportunity and perhaps smaller collectives like Melbourne and Adelaide are becoming so successful at it (the authentic food thing) because they are able to stay true to this vision of sharing their experiences authentically. Luckily Sydney is catching up, especially with cool and fun initiatives or groups like 6 Degrees of Preparation.

This is our time, where we the invaders bring our influences and traditions and create a mish-mash for this, our new world. It's us creating out own story. This is our time of making history or at least understanding it.

So this is my vow. No more boring posts of "this is a cafe I ate at and the service was good and the coffee tasty". Fuck that boring shit, let Simon Food Favorites wade through that dredge. It's time we took it up a notch and explored ideas and what that cafe really means, what lies underneath the surface, find out what the real story is. It's time to reinvent myself and this blog. Its time to start a conversation with some real people.

Existential crisis number two complete for this year and it's only March. Stay tuned.

KONY 2012

The last 48hrs or so have seen the KONY 2012 campaign spread like wildfire. A viral phenomenon.

It’s complicated. There are many sides to the story; just depends what angle you’re coming from.

Let's get one thing straight. Killing, kidnapping, mutilating or exploiting children or any human being for that matter, is not on. That’s clear and any sane person would support this. Equal human rights to all, damn it. Shouldn’t we all be able to sleep at night, minus the fear of getting kidnapped, and with the knowledge that our next meal is in the bag?

What’s unclear to me is what happens after Joseph Kony is captured, killed and mutilated (ironic much)?

Photograph: AP via The Guardian UK.

I know, I know, one thing at a time. But was I the only crazy person looking down that list of the UN’s public enemies, when it appeared on the Kony video? The second dude on there is also from Uganda, no doubt running his own shindig of a child army, waiting in the wings, prepped and ready to go and be crowned in the number one position once Kony is eliminated. A fact not further verified, but if its not another crazy Ugandan that takes prime position, then it will be another crazy fucker from a dirt ditch somewhere.

Ask yourself: why does Kony have so much power in the first place? He promises hope, direction and a future to an otherwise powerless and unhopeful children. Plus he has lots of guns and an army you can belong to. Strenght in numbers. Surely its better being the tyrant than the one being tyrannised?

The real problem is not solved by the barrel of a gun. The real problem is not targeting one crazy mother fucker.

Uganda needs education, health care, sustainable farming practices, housing, etc. They need to be shown the tools to lift themselves out of poverty. Not a temporary bandaid solution fuelled by gunfire and hate, making us just as bad as Kony himself.

Education exposes people to new ideas, it opens their eyes, it inspires them, it makes them drive for more, it gives them a future, and it gives them options. Education raises the standard of living.

The solution is targeting the masses and fighting poverty through education.

You’ll tell me Invisible Children are doing this too, helping rebuild schools and shit. Good for them. But that wasn’t the point of the video. Let’s look at the big picture, the cheat sheet if you must, the cliff notes: the video makes KONY public enemy #1. Kill and eradicate him using US military support, by 31 December 2012. Tick-tock, time is running out.

My first reaction was to repost the video on Facebook and share it with all my “friends” and networks. I don’t regret it. I think it’s horrendous what’s happening to those little kids and people, in fact everyone out there should know about it. There are a lot of us living in our own, blessed bubbles, so to start with, awareness is paramount. It's what happens next that counts.

So many of us felt good spreading this message, becoming now not only a spectator of evil in the world, but a contributor to a greater, bigger cause that promises to eliminate this evil and unite the world.

Bullshit. I feel more helpless than ever.

I just told you what I think the real solution is (scroll up five paragraphs). I just don’t know how to go about it.

Others felt well, finally informed about one baddie in this world.

In this digital age, where the internet and our lives are swamped with an enormous amount of meaningless crap, it’s refreshing to see some emotive content with substance that spreads awareness about important issues such a child abuse and slavery. If I saw yet another Rihanna video of her rubbing herself on an automobile, or rolling around in a bed, I was going to scream. So I’ll give Invisible Children that much.

Where to next?

There are many other causes out there in this wide world of ours that we must become aware of. Sometimes you wish you didn’t know, because then you won’t have to do anything about it. So you either look no further, or if you stumble across it (an issue) like the KONY video because every fucker out there is sharing it, lucky for you there’s social media. Just re-share that video, cough up some cash and switch the TV channel to reruns of the Kardashians. It’s as easy as that. Problem solved.

On the other hand, I consider myself a citizen of the world, which with it comes some sort of global awareness. Hence why I feel so overwhelmed by all the bad in this world. It's so complicated, it's never black and white. Like a big fucking corporation, there are always so many politics and agendas involved and things at play, persistently lurking underneath the murky surface and influencing.

So for me, I think I need to break it down to one small and simple step at a time. I’m going to finally write that letter to my sponsor children. Before this I never knew what to write to them. Now I do.

I will tell them what my migrant parents told me my whole life: keep studying and make something of yourself. It’s hard but persist. Keep working towards building a brighter future for yourself and those around you.

Then I’ll figure out the rest. Like actually helping build a school or something.

WHAT WILL YOU DO?