Escaping Paradise

December 16, 2001-On The Mark
(photos:Echidna Crossing,
Big Pineapple & Me)

Last night we tried the Korean BBQ restaurant we’d written about. Each table has a built in charcoal brazier with its own exhaust fan and pipe venting it out underneath the table. There’s absolutely no smoke or odor in the place at all. The menu was in Korean with an English description of the food. We only know the Korean names of the foods we like, so we ordered them by name. The server was impressed. We told her we couldn’t read Korean, but learned the names from the Korean written out in English letters on menus at home. Two of the dishes were disappointing. The pancakes were bland & the beef needed to be marinated before cooking. The sauces weren’t enough. If we go back we’d order differently.

We stopped at our downstairs refrigerator, the IGA store, & bought ice-cream bars for dessert later. We enjoyed them while watching an hysterical interview of Billy Connelly & Sting. They’re close friends & did a duet with Sting on the guitar & Connelly on banjo. Connelly went off on one of his tangents about Romans & their vomitoriums. He wondered if they had places to go to vomit during meals so they could continue eating, did they also have mastabatoriums?

Here’s an example of being so organized that it causes disorganization. Saturday morning I wrote a thank you note to our hosts for Shabbat dinner the previous night. We were walking over to the shopping center across the street & the library isn’t far. I decided to return a book that wasn’t yet overdue. I stuck the addressed & stamped thank you note into the book for safekeeping. The library closed at noon. Now, this was a Saturday. It’s a day when you’d think they’d have story time for children. It would be a day when students were available to do research & use the facility. Evidently there’s no such concern. You can guess what happened next. I slipped the book into the book drop. It wasn’t until I was home that I realized what I ‘d done. I wrote a note to the library telling the librarian what had happened & asking them to please mail the note. I put the note to the librarian into the book drop today.

Getting Set-Up

We left for Frasier Island after David’s adult education class today. He left for temple early & took our luggage in the car. I was to meet him there a few hours later when his course on Jewish Mysticism began. I do this every Sunday & take the bus to the temple. The plan was to leave directly from the temple for our trip. However, I had an assignment before I left the apartment. His cell phone needed recharging & that was my mission. He’d bought a card for that purpose that morning & tried to recharge the phone, but he’d failed.

Let me explain one thing to you. Cell phones here are only charged for calls made, not calls received. It sounds really great until you realize that calls run about $A 0.90 each plus a charge per minute used. We didn’t know it, but although our phone still had $A 25 left, the time had lapsed for using that amount up. When the phone notified us that it had “expired,” we thought it had run out of money. When you run out of time, you can’t re-charge the phone automatically. You have to call customer service & have them do it. One thing they needed to verify is that David was the owner of the phone. Well, he isn’t. We borrowed it from the Bruces & the temple is paying the charges. We called the Bruce’s home & got Janet. She thought it was her phone & gave us possible passwords. We called the phone company & they told us she didn’t own the phone. They hinted around & we guessed that it was Daniel Bruce’s. Daniel was at work, so we called Janet again & asked what his password might be. She called him at work & he made a stab at it. He was wrong. I was then told I needed his full name, address, driver’s license number, expiration date, & his birth date. After I got that information, I called the phone service back. They said that Daniel needed to call & that I couldn’t validate it for him. By then, I’d had it & told them to get some consistency in staff training. I called Janet once again & she said Daniel would take care of it after work.

We were half way to Frasier Island when the cell phone rang. Evidently, it was accepting incoming calls. It was Daniel. He’d tried to activate the phone & was told he needed the last 3 numbers that were called from that phone. It was really ridiculous, but I was able to recall that information from the phone’s memory. At last we were up & running! Now, do you really care?

Going

On the way to Frasier, we passed several things that gave me pause. There was a huge billboard advertising White Lady Funeral Home. It pictured a Caucasian woman wearing white. As I’ve said, aborigines are invisible here. We’d never see that in the U.S. We passed a “refuse tip” where garbage was dumped. A sign on a school said that classes “recommenced” in January. It impressed me that their students would understand. On the road side drivers are advised that “overtaking” should be done on the right. They would save a lot of black paint if they used the words “pass on right.” On our way through Maroochydore, we pulled over to take a picture of an echidna crossing sign. An echidna is related to a platypus, but has quills.

The two-lane highway ran between the sea & mountains. In one area, the landscape erupted into nine cone-like protrusions piercing the skyline at irregular intervals. This 20 million year old range is called Glasshouse Mountain. It reminded me of the formations of Meteora in Greece. The only thing missing were the monasteries at the top of the peaks.

David had been waiting all day to see one of the most famous sights in Queensland. It’s not known how Australians developed a proclivity for things huge & tacky, but the country is plastered with big replicas of common objects. There’s the Big Oyster, the Big Lobster, & the Big Fish. We wrote to you about the Big Rocking Horse in the Adelaide area. The premier giant object of note in Queensland is the Big Pineapple. It’s a tower of fiberglass sculpture unrivaled in its tastelessness. I mean that literally & figuratively, pun intended. It rises out of the lush rolling hills near Nambour & looms over the cars zooming past on the highway. It’s as the Sirens were to the sailors. Instead of enticing mariners to their death on the rocks, the mighty Pineapple lures tourists to their economic doom. Entry into the Pineapple is free of charge. They actually have a 3-level pineapple museum inside. The rest of the attraction is a humongous gift shop, restaurant, & pineapple farm. Theer’s a train tour of the farm & a petting zoo. The Pineapple is the only thing that is free. We arrived at closing time so were able to escape with our wallets intact. I don’t think I could have resisted the pineapple condiments or pineapple bedecked beer can holders.

We detoured to a town called Montville known for its artists & architecture. It was very picturesque & had a combination of Queenslander, English Tudor, log, & stone structures. Why it didn’t occur to us from its name, I don’t know, but it sits on top of a mountain. Since it was getting late, we just drove slowly through as we picked our way back down the narrow mountain road.

We wanted to get to Noosa in time for dinner. The son of temple members here has a restaurant there. We just missed him at his eatery, so we grabbed a bite & kept going. We’re now in Gympie at a Best Western. By the way, I don’t make up the names of these towns.

Toby