Portugal - Lisbon pt1

Arrived at 7:00am and wandered around Lisbon airport for a while trying to find the Aerobus to take me to Lisboa where my hostel was waiting. I found out later that Portugal boasts the best price to quality ratio for hostels all across the WORLD. Put simply, this is the best youth hostel I have ever stayed in.

I couldn't check in until 2:00pm so I opted to do a walking tour around Alfama which is a kind of old(ish), really hilly neighbourhood that looks out over Lisbon. It gives a really beautiful view of all the houses, the slopes, the river and the winding streets. The walking tour guide was a fun and eccentric fellow who was pretty cool. His approach was to give us the 'local' angle as he grew up in the area so he gave us some nice tips and stories. Turns out Portugal as a country has been bullied a lot.

       

 One of the tips was how to find a good place for dinner. My aim was to find a place that didn't have an obvious English menu thinking it would be more traditional. Found one, went in, and BAM! The guy whips out an English menu. I order the codfish with cream sauce (Codfish is a big deal here). It's pretty good!

Next day I went around Bairro Alto which is kind of the hill on the other side to Alfama which is where all the bars and nightlife are. During the day it's nice but mostly like any other area but at night the streets are full of people drinking whatever from humorously large plastic cups. Got super drunk. Forget many things. Literally spend the entire next day sleeping and moaning.

I'll do another post super soon about the rest of Lisbon before I go up to Porto.

P.S. Am filled with crushing guilt at ability to speak only English and no other European language. It seems like everyone here can speak English really well and it makes me feel lazy.

New York

My red eye flight to New York wasn't pretty. Turns out a child can cry continuously (continuously!) for roughly 5 hours. You'd think they would literally dehydrate and die. You'd HOPE they would dehydrate and die. In any case I arrived at JFK at about 5:30am in the morning and groggily made my way to Brooklyn to my friend Kenny's place. As a comedian/model Kenny works odd hours so the timing wasn't too terrible. He had passed out the night before so it took some work to wake him. ha.

I've been to New York before when I studied in Miami so I didn't really feel any particular need to see the sights again - instead preferring to catch up with old friends. Having said that, this time I was living in Brooklyn (a suburb just outside of Manhattan) so in a way what I was experiencing in terms of surroundings WAS new. I know in my first blog I said I wasn't going to harp on about people you guys don't know but my main goal in NYC was to mostly see people. I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

I met up with :

Kenny (The nice guy who let me stay at his place in Brooklyn. We had a lot of brunch and ... other stuff)
Dereck (Flew from Chicago to come see me! Spent 24 hours in NYC then flew home)
Grace (Up in NYC working and visiting her boyfriend)
Goob (Just moved to NYC and is currently funemployed. We drank.)
Stef (Originally from New York working for Pandora. Best new relationship story ever)
Rose (Also originally from New York. Recently met Bob Loblaw.)

(This took too long to make)   

Super fun.

Tell you what else was fun? Kenny lives really close to a whole bunch of Hasidic Jewish people. Back in Melbourne I lived in sort of the Jewish centre of town but this was next level stuff. Dereck and I thought it was some kind of holiday but a nice old man just said that it was simply Saturday. I'm trying to word how many there were without being racist or offensive. Nah you get it.

Brunch seems to a big thing in NYC and pretty much just involves people getting smashed on mimosas from about 11am. Some people say it's only brunch on the weekends but I beg to differ. Everyday was a weekend for me. On that note, I found that both my sleeping schedules and my diet did take a turn for the bizarre whilst in New York. I was eating really bad food a good majority of the time and sleeping from 2/3am to 11am or so. Case in point, on the final day Kenny and I woke up late then had fried chicken and waffles for brunch. See? Brunch is a big thing.

(Kenny modelling the meal - not that he needed to it was amazing)

Weather wise it was pretty chilly. I bought an awesome bright red jacket in Portland which kept me warm and highly visible during daylight hours. Generally though I was fine and had no problems wandering the streets which was actually a lot of fun. It was cool to see new places and equally enjoyable seeing and remembering places I had been before last time. Central Park isn't as nice when all the trees are devoid of leaves though I will say.

I was wondering to myself as I walked around the streets whether I could live in New York and I came to the conclusion that I do have the fortitude to pack up and go but ultimately I would probably have to be a teacher and teachers get paid peanuts in the states. Put that with stupidly high rent and all of a sudden it hardly seems worth it. I love Melbourne so at the moment I'll stick to that.

I'm now in Lisbon, Portugal. I realised on the plane that I had, in no way, prepared for my stay in Portugal aside from organising a hostel 2 days beforehand. Every time I want to speak another language my brain just throws Japanese at me which is possibly the LEAST useful language to be using here. I've got some awkward fumbling of words ahead of me!

Portland

Ahh Portland...

(You got it)

Fun facts about Portland:

- Portland's soccer team are the 'Portland Timbers'.
- Portland is the largest shipper of Wheat in the USA (because everyone is gluten-free??)
- Portland is the 29th most populous city in the United States.
- Everyone in Portland loves Portland.

- Portland people love their Portland microbrews. Portland.

- Portland Portland roses Portland.

(PORTLAND!)

This fair city is split into 4 quadrants because apparently it lies on a Cartesian graph. Cara's house is in the North East and is a really nice and spacious abode she shares with her boyfriend and some Capoeira do-ers; Because people do that apparently. They're a really cool and fun bunch of people. On the night of leaving in fact they had a grass roots party at their house with a keg. I, meanwhile, was on a plane to New York battling no sleep and time differences. You win this round Portland.

(Me at coordinate (3, 5.5) near the Northwest Coalition of Neighborhoods)

Portland is quite similar to Melbourne in that it has a lot of cool bars, restaurants, cafes etc. but nothing really major to see. As a consequence I just sort of moseyed around the streets during the day. On one of those days I spent a long time in a coffee shop finishing off a book that had been sitting on my list for ages. It was really good (just as well!). Another day I got doughnuts from the famous voodoo doughnuts, I walked around the bridges, got a jacket from an op shop. It's red. So you can kind of guess that I've just been hanging out for the most part. Not that that's a bad thing.

My pal Justin (who lived opposite me when I studied Miami) was in his last two days of living in Portland and still offered up his time to show me some cool places. Justin drinks a lot so I think we shared some similar goals.

(How humiliating)

As far as the comparison of Portland to Portlandia goes I can see where they're coming from with the whole hippy/alternative people but it wasn't really anything out of the ordinary. Which was a little disappointing! I don't know what I was expecting but everyone is really nice and will generally smile at you on the street as they're walking past... So here's another Portlandia sketch instead.

I've started growing a (pretty shaggy) beard which is due, in part, to necessity as my shaver is a bit on the fritz right now.  It's beard central up in hurrr!

Seattle

I'm sitting on the bus between Seattle and Portland ($8 a ticket. Score) and I'm taking advantage of the onboard wifi to smash out this blog. Therefore I'm hastily throwing in pictures and not checking for spelling. Apologies. I want to give massive thanks to Travis for letting me stay at his place. Feel free to send him money.

I was wondering whether I should mention the dramas surrounding my flight to Seattle as it's a little embarrassing. However I've decided that I shall as it's not that much of a big deal ... I missed my flight simply because I got the day wrong - ha. For some reason I had organised everything with everyone in terms of departures and arrivals ok but managed to book the wrong ticket. Awesome. Realised the night before and frantically had to buy another ticket for the next day. It cost a lot - that's all I'm going to say. Barring that though everything else went along smoothly.

Met Travis at his work and it was pretty much good times from then on! We immediately started drinking at a place overlooking the bay with what is apparently the coldest beer in Seattle. I've gotten into a terrible habit of not planning what I actually want to do in the cities I visit as I'm kind of just visiting to see friends, yeah?

(This is what I've travelled around the world to experience)

I was joking that the trees/foliage made it look like the town of Forks and that we were living in the world of Twilight. Turns out Forks isn't too far away but I didn't really have any interest in going. It was one of those moments when a joke is real and one is left feeling unsatisfied. On that note though we did go visit a Native Indian Reservation (Snoqualmie - heaps of fun to say with an American accent) where we saw a cool waterfall, stood around in the drizzle for a while and had a buffet lunch at the casino. Turns out that the stereotype of casinos on Indian land is totally true. I'm going to show you a picture of the waterfall and a plate of food from the buffet. The food was terrible.

     

How long are you supposed to look at waterfalls for? What is an acceptable time frame?

The weather started off being a bit sub par; It's cold here people. Did Kris bring a jacket? What, and carry it around the whole time? ... No. Kris did NOT bring a jacket. So I've been rocking the thermals which include my stripy tights and a turtle neck skivvy type thing. I feel like Steve Jobs. Funny though that the main competitor of Apple, Microsoft, is largely based in Seattle. They've got like a Microsoft TOWN where all the employees and their families live in a Microsoft community doing Microsofty things. The weather later  cleared up though and I got some pretty cool views.

(Saw the Space Needle. Didn't go)

I was able to meet with a friend, Whitney, from Japan and some of Travis' friends which was really nice. We had a Russian themed dinner night, went to several bars and even had a dance party. Gotta say though that there is a noticeable Japanese presence here. It kind of caught me off guard to have to whip out my Japanese but it's been fun! Very なつかしい。 Everyone in the USA so far have been lovely. I've been telling all the touristy places that I've just enrolled in the nearby university but don't have my student card yet so I've been saving a few bucks from that.

Seattle is a super hilly city though. After a visit to the highest tower in Seattle I did a tour of the underground in a poetic fit of vertical differences. I won't go into details but after a massive fire, some of Seattle just kind of moved up a level. A building's first floors just became like a basement and the street was on the same level as the first floor. Turns out there was a lot of prostitution in those underground areas. Who knew?

(Closer to god)

(Some say you can still hear the prostitution)

So now I'm off to Portland to see Justin and Cara who are friends from Miami. Portland has been a big thing on my list as I've been watching a show called Portlandia aaand I'm pretty sure it's super accurate. Tell me what you think.

I'll let you know. Until next time!



(I'm collecting these public transport cards like crazzzy.)

(All of them are better than Myki)

LA

My trip, or my 'OE' as the Kiwi guy on the plane exclaimed, began in Los Angeles. After cursing customs for taking foreverrrr (forever) I was finally able to meet up with my friend/gemstone Christal who was extremely lovely to let me stay at her place and drive me around a lot. If you see her in the street then please give her a present or something. Thanks.

LA = celebrities right? Well I didn't see any. Stop reading now if that's a problem for you. I did spend a lot of time doing movie stuff though! If that's your cup of tea then read on friends ...

Turns out that looking at the Walk of Fame requires a whole lot of looking down at the street which is a shame as there is a lot to see at eye level and up along the Hollywood Boulevard - There's heaps of advertising and people dressed up and whatever. I was told that almost all the restaurants and bars in the area are staffed by people 'trying to make it' which makes sense as frankly if you're not a tourist or a future star I have no idea why you'd ever want to go to the area.

(William Shat'n'er hand)

You could see the Hollywood sign from on top of the nearest shopping centre but we opted to do a proper hike around the Hollywood sign. It's free to do and it actually doesn't take that long at all. Granted you don't get to physically touch the sign but you DO get to touch the sturdy looking gate surrounding it! 

(DOOWYLLOH)

There's also a mean looking communications tower up there that you just KNOW is bouncing off celebrities' text messages like crazy. There's a pretty high chance I may have had some data waves of Kim Kardashian's latest utterances shudder through my body.

                                               

(Kim and I share a 'K'. Twins!)

The weather has been cooler than Melbourne but it's been pretty consistently sunny. We went for a ride from Hermosa Beach to Venice Beach which is probably most famous for hosting Muscle Beach which is essentially an outdoor gym. To use it you have to A) have a membership, B) Work out in front of hundreds of people walking by and C) ENJOY working out in front of hundreds of people walking by. There wasn't much beefcake while we visited but I did catch this guy close by. It's like he's posing for YOU GUYS!!

(This photo was taken without permission. He'd love it though, right?)

To be all cultured and relevant we visited an interesting movie studio one night to watch a series of short films because one of Christal's friends played a crazy cat lady for about 7 seconds in one of them. We hung out afterwards for a bit and listened to everyone talk about the movies but soon bailed for pizza. This experience was followed a few days later by a tour around the Warner Bros studio. I bought some Ellen underwear (for $20. Worth it).

                                               

(The Anamaniacs are long dead apparently)

The tour itself was really interesting and entertaining but I tell you what, getting public transport home was MURDER! The buses kept terminating for no reason that I could discern with my English ability. I ended up catching the same bus (the 210 as I recall) three times on the one trip just because we had to get off the bus and wait for the next one. I had a burger as compensation. I've also been eating a lot of Mexican food.

I'm currently in Seattle at my friend Travis' place. Seattle is pretty rad so far but I'll put that in the next blog.

Pre-Europe Update YEAH BOIIII

Welcome friends, family and internet strangers to this revitalised travel/culture blog of mine. You may or may not have noticed I've changed the side bar from red (Japan) to green (Europe) and very little else. I read through some of my old posts and noticed some of the pictures aren't working; and then noticed that I didn't care. Let's get on with it.

Brief update for those wondering what I've done in the last couple of years since coming home from Japan.

I was accepted into the Monash Diploma of Education course (one year) to become a teacher.

(Learning!)

Then I was offered a job at Narre Warren South College as a mostly maths teacher for a year.

(Teaching!)

That's about it! I've been living in the most amazing share house with the best people EVAR, I also had a great time at Narre South as well. I'm super sad to be leaving both places but these things happen.

To be precise, my trip will commence on February 15th and to save you all wondering, my general plan is as follows.

USA:      LA for 6 days  >>  Seattle for 6 days  >>  Portland 3 days  >>  New York 5 days 

Europe:   Land in Portugal  >>  make the rest up later for about 9 months >> Teach in the UK.

As you can see my Europe plans are a little vague but I've done that quite intentionally. The advantage of putting aside so much time for travel is that I can god damned take my time. If I'm enjoying myself then I can hang out longer, yeah?

Here are answers to some of the more common questions:

- Maybe two years? Travel and then teaching in the UK.
- Staying with friends in the USA and then hostels etc in Europe.
- Errr I suppose?
- Bus, train, plane? How else do people get around?
- That's amazing...
- My brother's fiance's backpack. It's smallish but it'll be perfect.
- Haven't really looked yet but I don't want to take too much.
- I'll be sure to go there...
- Just a one way ticket, I'll buy the return ticket when I need to.

You can work out the questions.

So get ready for some BLOGGING EXTRAVANGA(S). In Japan I was relatively stationary so I suppose there wasn't a whole lot going on. Therefore I'm hoping with all this moving around I'll have some more creative things to comment on. As much as possible I'm going to avoid these three things.

1. The whole "... Then I went here and did this, then went there and did the same thing. Then I ... " format.
2. I'm hoping not to harp on about people you've never met.
3. I will not upload a gajillion photos on Facebook for the two seconds I spent at a bar or whatever.

You're welcome. Ha.


Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kris.burridge
Skype: kris.burridge1
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KrisComma

Still not sold on Instagram yet. If I jump on I'll let you know.

Earth Song

Australian music is pretty awesome I think. I'm not actually sure which of the bands on GoldFM/oldies are actually Australian and which aren't, but right NOW I think Australian bands are good. Sometimes I wonder why they don't achieve more of a mainstream appeal in the likes of America but then I'm happy to have them the way they are. They can be our little secret. Even in Japan I sometimes like to stream Triple J so I can keep a vague grasp on what's happening down under but I don't expect I'll ever hear it (Australian music) on the radio.

(The plural in 'hits' confuses me a little)

In fact, when I actually turn on the radio it's rare to hear much English at all. Most of Japan's pop music is, like its TV shows, from Japan. 'J-Pop' as it is recognised around the world is pretty much only popular in Japan... and in the computer room of Japanophiles. I like Japan don't get me wrong, but I don't like Japanese music. It's not that I can't understand it (although that's definitely a factor) it's just the sound. It's like ... cheap pop.

Much of Japan's hit music comes from groups, more specifically, girl bands and boy bands. Pre-packaged for maximum enjoyment amongst teenage girls/boys. Mostly girls. Only girls. They are always dressed in accordance with each other, always amicable, sort of talented and charming. Every time a boy or girl band is on a tv show they smile and are fun to watch and usually they throw a performance at the end.

These are the bands that can feasibly fit onto a talk show environment, that is.

What could that slightly cryptic last sentence mean? Ladies and Gentleman, I'll dive straight in and introduce you to AKB48. AKB stemming from it's origin in Tokyo, AKihaBara ... and 48 referencing the amount of members. There are 48 performers in this group. Forty Eight. They have split the group up into 3 teams (Team A, K and B) so they can perform in several places and not over crowd each other. Further to this, factor in appearances on other TV shows with only a few members from each team and you literally have a military force to be deployed at a whim.

(Soldiers of DEATH)

This phenomenon of creating miniature armies is possibly due to EXILE, a boy band featuring approximately 14 members. The strange thing here is that only two of them sing, another two of them sing a little AND dance, and the remaining ten are exclusively dancers. Their songs are quite popular amongst teens and their concerts are usually sold out. It stands to reason that a band featuring ten dancers would put on a hell of a live show... but I'm still not convinced.

(You don't really need to waste your time actually looking at all of them)

Arashi (Storm, in English) only have 5 members so it's a lot easier to remember who they are. These guys are popular because there is only five of them and it's easier to manoeuvre them around... Also because of their songs. Despite their raging name they're extremely poppy and zero in on the 'girls that like pretty boys' demographic. Some of the guys are also stars in various TV shows and movies so they're pretty much constantly accessible. I remember seeing them on a show with the next group in the list, learning how to do the dance for the song 'Chocolate Disco'.

(Showing their versatility - Moody and happy. Nice job guys)

PERFUME is a group featuring 3 woman but with their powers combined they sound like an over produced pile of auto-tune. Originally all three members had a Chinese character in their name which meant 'sweet smell' (香), hence the name, but then one of them left and the replacement had a different name. Sort of ruined it but it was only after the swapping of people did the group actually become famous. I must admit though I have a bit of a soft spot for this group. They're just so cute! Part of their marketing ploy is that they dance (almost eliminating the need for singing) and it's just mesmerising to watch them. Go on. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaatch.

(Can't actually embed this youtube clip so I shoved a picture and a link in there.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W63nzvIoFJU

They wear the above clothing when performing this song live... I like the hats.

SMAP is another artist that demands capital letters. They're a very successful band that also have a TV show titled 'SMAP x SMAP' just in case once wasn't enough. They do all the things on TV that I mentioned in my last blog post about Japanese TV (minus the porn) and even have a wide variety of guests on it too. I showed a clip of SMAP performing with Coldplay to my students last year (as part of the last class with my 3rd year students) in a vain attempt to show the students that learning English can yield a positive result - results were varied.

It should be noted though that I think this is a wonderful demonstration of culture exchange. Chris Martin took the time to learn some Japanese songs when he performed here and SMAP did quite a reasonable performance of this popular song too.

Angela Aki is a popular singer songwriter who speaks and performs in both English and Japanese. She has a particularly famous song loved across the country as a graduation song. She is popular as I said, but I mention her on this blog because a friend of mine in Otawara looks a lot like her.

(Right??)

Hatsune Miku is different from the above stars in that she is not actually a real person. A voice actress had her voice completely recorded and re-programmed into some music making software that can then 'sing'. This proved to be exceptionally popular in Japan, because they're weird like that, and has resulted in a huge following. People have created songs using her voice and some of these songs have actually reached the pop charts here. This has lead to a live concert of her. The results are mind boggling.

(It's in equal parts mesmerising and terrifying.)

It's not actually a hologram, it's an image projected onto a screen. If you look throughout the performance you can see the screen I'm talking about. Still kinda weird isn't it? This has lead to several spin-offs with lots of disproportionate characters singing in their super high pitched voices. Splendid.

Of course all of the above examples are sort of the extreme side of Japanese music. It should be noted that there is quite a lot of 'regular' or 'standard' music in the Japanese music word, too. The kind of artists that don't feel the need to be odd in order to be interesting. These artists are quite good, but as I mentioned earlier, they sing in Japanese so I can't really understand them very well.

(and lord knows I am DYING to know what SHE'S talking about ...)

When my friend Brendan came to visit me last year he had a goal to buy some Japanese hip hop music. Being a bit of an aficionado with hip hop he managed to choose quite a good group/guy who I have since put onto my mp3 player. Eelman. That's the name of the guy. I like his song called 'Unity'. If you're interested you can look it up but I worry I have forced to much Japanese music on you throughout this blog so please take your time...... It's not on youtube.

In fact while I'm on the topic, there's this wonderful music place up in the nearby mountains that I go to with my accomplice Hayley. During the day it is small shop that sells silver-based jewelery and delicious burgers, but during the night it transforms to this cool little acoustic place for live music. The artists that play are actually fairly famous and have performed on the stage at some of the biggest music festivals around Japan.

(Exhibit A.)

It's a nice sort of feeling to go to one of these nights (they happen throughout the year at fairly common intervals) and even if we don't understand the music, it's still nice to go through the motions, if that makes sense. It's like when you walk in the doors they have the fireplace happening and the music is cool and the food is great. It's the sort of thing you don't really find so frequently in Japan.

Which I guess is where I want to finish this blog. If I think about it, the music that is considered pop music in Australia isn't actually super popular amongst my friends there. It's the laid back genre of music that strikes more of a chord and that's why I wanted to let everyone know that it's here. Japan has some weird stuff going on but at least now we know that at it's core, it's OK.

Japan is OK everyone.