This newspaper in the Australian resort city of Cairns has a section with text messages to the editor, published with all the misspellings and abbreviations. 

We saw this show at the Sydney Opera House in one of the smaller theaters. It is a difficult, ingenious, intermittently entertaining work that surely has the smallest set of any show ever staged (a box about 7 feet on each side). 

One of the choir members was wearing this shirt. 

A boutique in Sydney. 

Showing that life itself is based on licorice. When I was buying my black licorice, the shopgirl said it was very "more-ish" meaning that when you try it, you want more of it. 

When in Australia, eat what the Australians do. 

From a series of pictures at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art. They evoke pulp fiction in a very funny and very Australian way. 

The Pantheon in Rome is still my favorite building, but the Opera House in Sydney is a close second. 

Every morning in Sydney I could get coffee from this wonderful machine. "Flat white" means coffee with unsteamed milk. 

Australian toilets have two buttons --- one for a half-flush, and one for a full flush. They have a water shortage. 

This young lady was feeding wild lorakeets in Sydney Harbour. 

Our whole group with the Sydney Opera House in the background. 

Town Hall in Sydney looks just like City Hall in Philadelphia. 

This fountain is at Darling Harbour, Sydney. 

You can see through Australian money! 

Everyone on the Quantas flight gets their own little screen and can watch whatever they want. I watched three movies and all the Australian World Cup matches. 

Sweaty paradise

We waved a sad goodbye to Sydney which nearly all of us will never see again. Of course, one of the reasons it's so unspoiled is that it's not that easy for Americans to visit!
We are now in tropical Cairns which reminds me somewhat of Montserrat, my last English-speaking rainforest.
I still haven't heard anyone say "mate." It may just be that the accent prevents me from hearing it. I have heard "no worries" many times which is a delightful expression.
Jay and I were very happy to see that the hotel has a ping pong table. Jay used to play tournaments in his youth in Denmark. After we played, I was quite sweaty and the girl behind the counter said, "You're all sweaty?! This is winter, dude! I was wearing a jumper [sweater] earlier and tonight I'll be wearing a flannel nightie." I certainly wouldn't want to be here in summer... I understand it gets up to 100 degrees Farenheit and is quite humid.
The outing of the day was to a aboriginal cultural center. I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of people presenting their culture as a tourist attraction, but if it's okay with them, I guess it's okay with me. We saw a dideiridoo exhibition which was amazing. Real didgeridoo playing involved circular breathing which all by itself is a major accomplishment. Then on top of that there is the embouchure and then all the sound effects. At the highest level it's a whole rhythm section by itself.
Interestingly, the didgeridoo is not native to the rainforest tribe who was giving the exhibition. It comes from the desert areas, where termites hollow out the middle of hardwood trees. The bush name for the instrument is something like "yiggi yiggi". The name didgeridoo was coined by a Scotsman.
We also got to throw boomerangs and spears. I dimly remember throwing a boomerang a long time ago. I never had expert coaching before, though, and this time I got quite a good result.
We saw a film about the truly abominable treatment of the aborigines by the English settlers. Of course, if that hadn't happened, we probably wouldn't be enjoying this trip to Australia, since it's much more pleasant to visit an English-speaking country. It is sobering to admit to oneself how many of the pleasures of life involve the suffering of someone else.

Last day in Sydney

It's been a long time since I've been in a city where I thought, "I could live here." Sydney has the charm of Seattle or San Francisco, world-class culture, and great weather. it bustles, but it doesn't seem frenetic. And it's clean.
yesterday I went with my mother to the Art Gallery of New South Wales which is the main art museum here. While we were waiting for it to open we were talking about tipping, when an Aussie broke in and told us that tipping is not customary in Australia. Then she surprised us by saying that based on her experiences, Americans are more service oriented and more polite!
The museum is almost entirely Australian artists. They have a large permanent collection covering from the 18th through 20th century but also had a big installation of the Sydney Biennial. In a main hallway was a big piece all about surveillance. The flourescent tubes in the ceiling were mounted on servos and they moved in response to people walking down the corridor like ripples on a stream. In the entrance hallway was a huge installation of almost 7,000 small canvasses each one of which had a phrase in New Zealand english written on it. Funny and amazing.
After that we rejoined the group and took a tour of the famous Sydney Opera House. I always say that the pantheon is my favorite building but the SOH is a close second. The choir was miffed that they hadn't managed to arrange a performance there but they got a consolation prize by singing one song from the seats of the opera theater during the tour. The tourguide seemed genuinely impressed.
Then we went to an opal dealer. This was for me the low point of the trip... this seemed like a classic tourist trap. We first sat in a little room done up to look like an underground mine (there were even miner's helmets you could wear). The video was so old that they still gave temperature in Farenheit, which Australia hasn't used since the sixties. At the very end, the walls of the room shook to simulate a mine collapse.
Lots of people bought opals, though, including my mother, who bought some earrings for over $800! She says that when she dies, Rachel can have them.
Then we had dinner in the Sydney Tower, which is a high rotating restaurant like the Space Needle. It has a really mediocre buffet and a photographer was going around taking everyone's picture and trying to sell the prints. Again, a tourist trap.
After dinner, about a dozen of us went back to the Opera House, three for opening night of Turandot, and the others for A Large Attendance at the Anteroom, an off-the-mainstream piece about a 19th century scientist who founded eugenics. It was funny and thought-provoking in parts and had by far the tiniest set in theater history but was a little too self-referential for my taste or maybe I was just tired. Anyway, he's performed it hundreds of times all over the world and it was well worth seeing and we were at the Sydney opera House!
This morning we're taking the bus to Cairns, which is pronounced "cans" by Ozzies and "Cairrrns" by our Irish/Scottish tourguide.

A look inside

Yesterday we did a concert at St. Anthony's, a huge Anglican church not far from our hotel. The acoustics and the piano were great, but only about ten people showed up (perhaps wandered in by mistake).
Afterwards Paul Donnelly, who we met in San Francisco a couple of years ago picked us up and took us to the Powerhouse Museum. It's quite an old museum, about 125 years old, and covers the history of technology and design. The exhibitions are gorgeously laid out and they have more electronic and interactive displays than any other museum I've seen, even the tech museum in San Jose. It's even better than the Science and industry museum in Chicago or the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
They also have some great historic objects like a real Nazi Enigma coding machine, part of Charles Babbage's difference machine, and an incredible astronomical clock which we were lucky enough to see strike the hour.
After that we went down to the Botanical Gardens where, with the Opera House in the background, we saw fruit bats flying around. They are huge; "possums with wings" as Paul's wife tiffany described them. Jennifer saw one eating fruit up close and exclaimed, "Oh my God!" Some teenage girls sitting nearby echoed, "Oh my Gawd" making fun of her accent. "Terrible American accent," Jennifer said and walked away.
Then we went to Paul and Tiffany's flat. Tiffany is a Vice Principal of the Women's College at the University of Sydney, so they live right in the residence hall in student housing. It's small but incredibly convenient to everything. Paul and Tiffany have a ten-month-old son and Paul's half-Lebanese daughter from a previous marriage and Tiffany's parents were also visiting. We had quite a lively discussion comparing our societies. I'm afraid America came of slightly the worse. They were especially horrified at our lack of a national health system.
Today we're going to get a tour inside the Sydney Opera House. I also hope I can get to the main art museum... it's my last chance.

Some notes on brekky

Breakfast in the hotel includes the choices of powdered eggs, canned beans, canned spaghetti (shades of Franco-American) or some extremely pink bacon. On the other hand, there is an industrial-strength commercial toaster with a slow-moving conveyer belt. Perfect toast is as inevitable as death or taxes. Plus, they have some really cool automatic coffee machines that can make capuccino, short black (small, no milk or sugar), long black, or my favorite expression, "flat white"!! which means with unsteamed milk. I want to paint my bedroom with flat white.
Sydney is considered to be the most ethnically diverse city in the world. Asian food is huge here. In fact, a headline in the paper yesterday declared that PAD THAI IS THE NEW SPAG BOL. Our tourguide later explained to me that spag bol means "spaghetti bolognese", i.e. with a tomato and meat sauce.