• Days in Melbourne – 97 (99 on the road)
• Pictures Taken – 9773 (average of 101 a day)
• Pictures Uploaded – 686
• Parmas Consumed – 3
• Australian phrases ingrained in my vocabulary – mate, heaps, adjective-as, flat white, how-ya-goin-all-right?

There were simply too many memorable Melbourne moments, including all the coffee, food, the endless number of activities, public transport, wineries, and Footy! Here is my attempt to give them justice.

The Best Parts of Melbourne

Coffee

Favorite: Flat White, One Sugar
Melbourne has had a large influx of Italian immigrants, and the Italians brought their best espresso machines with them when they arrived. There is an espresso machine in every shopfront imaginable (including bars, Japanese restaurants, and Subway fast food), and it seems as if every barista has gotten the training on how to properly prepare a latte, flat white, long black or espresso shot. The portions are not as large as Starbucks, but you could drink this deliciously smooth god-in-a-cup and have the boost you need for the day. As an additional perk, some coffee shops will put sugar in the coffee for you too!

Food

Favorites: Sakura Kaiten, Cellar Bar, Rockpool, Japanese Pancake Dessert House
Melbourne is a foodie city. While Indian food is lacking, there is no shortage of Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean or Western food. For each genre there is a spectrum of hole in the wall, moderately priced and fancy dining experiences!

• Want to be cheap and adventurous? Duck into an alley way to find great roll-your-own-sushi rolls at Kenzan, ramen at Ramen Ya, or laksa at Laksa Me (creative names aren’t a prerequisite to good food). For those who can’t eat like a rockstar every night, the Cellar Bar shares the kitchen and staff of a highly coveted chef, and Grill’d offers an obesely-sized Mighty Melbourne burger with thick-cut rosemary chips to match.
• Middle of the road? Perhaps a sushi train at Sakura Kaiten, where the best items on the menu, Fresh Fried Oysters with Cream Cheese or the Takoyaki, tease you as they float by on the track. If you’re out late for any number of reasons, the 24-hour Greek resto Stalactites with mass-produced-yet-perfect-lamb always beckons.
• If you have the money to splurge, make sure Rockpool is on your list, and don’t neglect to order the Duck Confit, or head to Claypots with four others and reserve a Chili Crab.

Lots of things to do!

Favorites: Yarra Valley, Great Ocean Road
Theres heaps of fun activities inside the city and if you need a break, just hop outside for the day.

• The Yarra Valley and its world-class wineries are only an hour drive from the city (you really need a designated driver).
• The National Gallery of Victoria has a great mix of contemporary and historical exhibits for free entry.
• For sports, there is Footy and Rugby during the winter, Cricket during the summer, and the rates for entry are a bargain compared to Hockey games at less than $30 for great seats. Don’t forget to get a Four’n'Twenty meat pie!
• On a hot day, venture to any beach and sunbake, admire the surfers, or get out there and surf, bodyboard or kite-surf.
• Get out to the Dadenongs if you want a taste of nature, mountains and epicly-sized trees (think “A Land Before Time”), and make sure you have time for afternoon tea and fantastic dessert.
• Drive along the Great Ocean Road (or take a tour) to enjoy kilometres of the Southern Ocean, and stop by a fish’n'chips shop in Apollo Bay.
• Head farther south and you’ll see the one thing you’ve never expected in Australia: Little Penguins. The price tag is steep but the cuteness is worth the price of admission. Just don’t run them over, okay?

Public transport

Favorites: 96 to St. Kilda Beach.
Melburnians have it pretty good, despite the fact that the trains and trams have a reputation of being below performance ratings (80% on time). The trains do run throughout the city, although not to any major shopping centres or hubs, only suburbs. The trams and street cars are also unique (jump on and jump off at the roads), although the whole ticketing and metcard system leaves something to be desired. If you’re in the city, the best way to get out safely is to take the 96 to St. Kilda Beach – you can’t get lost, because the tram line ends where the beach begins. Just remember to validate your metcard or face the wrath of the ticketing crazies.

Wineries

Favorites: Domaine Chandon and Greenpointe Brasserie
I enjoy wineries, but its not solely because there is wine. In addition to sampling a wide range of wine, a perfect winery includes education and delicious food bundled with scenery and good friends. I was lucky enough to have this experience twice! The Domaine Chandon in the Yarra Valley was my favourite place to go when at the Yarra Valley, as there was a free tour that guided you through the process from the grapes being shipped into the bladders to be pressed, all the way into the Riddling Hall where the bottles were rotated on a frequent basis to settle the yeast-induced bubbles. Then the attached dining hall, Greenpointe Brasserie, has a seasonal menu that always goes well with the Range Wine tasting, consisting of four types of sparkling wines. If the mussels with Chardonnay appear on the menu, you are obligated to order them. Combined with the free wine tastings and the mountains in the backdrop, this is heaven. See more in my Yarra Valley post!

Footy

Favorites: Essendon, and not cheering for Collingwood
Australian Rules Football (AFL) is better known as Footy, and is played during the Autumn and Winter seasons. The game is a bit tough to explain, and its a mix of American Football, Soccer, Ultimate Frisbee, Basketball, and Rugby. Its definitely easier to understand when you watch a match in person or on television – general admission to standard games is only $30! Hopefully you’ll get the gist with these quick notes:

• The objective of the game is to get the most points. There are two teams of 16 each playing on a massive oval field.
• The object of desire is a football. You move the ball around the field by running and dribbling, punching or kicking the ball.
• It is full contact, yet the players do not wear any padding. It is illegal to tackle above the shoulders, yet using opponents to elevate (i.e. jump off a player’s shoulders) and catch a ball is perfectly fine.
• A player gets a mark when someone kicks the ball and the player catches it. A mark means that the player can’t be tackled, temporarily. If the player punches the ball or runs with it, he can be promptly tackled.
• There are four goal posts, and scoring is rewarded by kicking a ball through the poles. If the ball goes through the outside poles, you get one point and the game plays on from that same side. If the ball goes through the middle two posts, you get six points and the ball goes back to the middle.

I’ve only scratched the surface with the above, and I know I’m missing out on a lot more. I sincerely miss Australia. I will return, and when I do, you can bet I will do all of the above again.

I need to give thanks for some of the best mates I’ve met while overseas. Starting with the Americans I was on secondment with, Lindsay and Ruby, my constant company, reality checkers and the largest contributors to my wild experience. Julia and Paul for being incredibly talented and great friends both in and out of the office. Kathleen for being a perfect buddy and having excellent taste for seafood. Maria for being an “unofficial buddy” to everyone, taking us out to the beaches, comedians and spas. Tara for being my very first Australian friend and bringing me to the shoppo. John and Winnie for taking us out to Yarra and trusting me with his Mazda. To Julian for Rugby, ridiculous pranks and sincere efforts to increase my alcohol tolerance. Holly for hiring me, and taking us to Phillip Island and the Dandenongs. Ka-Meng for being a camera nerd and approachable senior manager. Kirk for being Scottish. And especially Ron for being a fantastic host for food, badminton and a good mate. Ta.

Paul (Australian coworker/parma affectionado) – By definition, it can’t be a good pub if there is no decent parma.

And having a great Parma is serious business.

Better known as a Chicken Parmigiana in North America, Parmas are big hit amongst pub eaters in Melbourne. Given Melbourne’s heavy Italian inspiration and roots, a Chicken Parmigiana is always guaranteed to be on menus across the city, no matter how Scottish or English the pub may be. A parma is breaded then deep-fried, and as if that wasn’t enough, a healthy slab of fatty ham is laid on top and smothered with mozzarella and tomato sauce, and is served with a side of salad and chips.

Not simply content of having Parma reviews buried within food review sites like Urbanspoon, there are websites dedicated to Parmas, a pub that boasts it has “Melbourne’s Unique and Best Parmigianas”, and newspaper articles who track those Parmology experts. A common special is a “Pot & Parma”, which is a half-pint of beer with the fried goodness.

And its one of many things Melburnians like!

For the first weekend in Australia, we (being the North American imports working in Australia) decided to head north east to Yarra Valley. We opted to go on the Epicurean tour, consisting of food and wine pairings in addition to the winery visits – while it was steep at $180 per person, it was worth it. I’ve been itching to go to a winery since the first experience two years ago at Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario.

Our first stop was to the De Bortoli winery, where we were given several different pairings of wine and cheese. In the spirit of attempting to preserve our palate, they paired wines and cheeses going from white wine, to rose, to red and ending with the dessert wines. Some of the best pairings were the Riesling with the goat cheese and the Pinot Noir with a brie cheese (surprisingly great with the rind). I honestly wish I remember which wine went well with the extremely creamy and thick cheese, but thats the downside of being a lightweight. I walked away with a Noble One, as I tend to be biased towards sweeter type wines; this thick yellow wine goes well with a blue cheese.

After just under an hour at De Bortoli, we were then dropped off to roam free at Yering Station, where we happened to arrive on the same day as a large farmers market. Yering Station had a two full-fledged restaurants, a tranquil pond, a museum gallery of all its historic wines on showcase, and a bustling cellar door with art lining the walls. Yering Station felt largely like a commercialized sales area, one of the least memorable parts of the tour. Thankfully, we only had an hour to kill at Yering Station.

Lunch time, but not without a little educational experience first. Our tour guide, Steven, brought us to Domaine Chandon, famous for its sparkling wines. We arrived to the aroma of freshly pressed grapes, and were given a quick overview of all the machinery used in the wine making process. The recently-emptied Riddling Hall is where the sparkling bottles of wine containing yeast, used for carbonation, settles. The neck of the bottles are then frozen and the yeast removed, resulting in a clear sparkling wine. We then strolled upstairs to the Chandon Greenpoint Brasserie, the dining room of Domaine Chandon.

We were promptly served an anti-pasto and four generous glasses of wine: Vintage Brut, Chardonnay, Heathcote Shiraz and a Sparkling Pinot Shiraz.

I walked away with a Chardonnay, which was heavily influenced by my choice of main: Saffron Mussels with garlic, chili, white wine and saffron butter, with sour dough bread. The freshness, richness in the colour and juicy of the plump mussels was spectacular. The juices and the butter was so savoury that, at the insistence of our tour guide, that we finish it with a spoon. It was a choice that I definitely did not regret.

After a fantastic lunch, we were then transported to Coldstream, one of the more intimate tasting bars that, while the wines were not grown in the immediate vicinity, did not lack the atmosphere of a cellar door. Definitely wished I bought something from Coldstream, but my budget was well exceeded by this point!

To wrap up the tour, we went to the Yarra Valley Dairy to have more samplings of cheese, coffee and wine. Delicious flat white with caffeine to round off more wine tasting.

Overall, the Epicurean tour was fantastic, and good value for the $180 we put in for it. We met other fantastic individuals on the trip (a mother & daughter life-savers aka lifeguards, and a finance professor born in Canada), and Steven, our tour guide, supplied excellent trivia as we went along our day. Highly recommended.

FYIs for this post:

• Mains are different than entrées in Australia – a main is the “meal” sized plate, while an entrée a smaller portion.
• Cellar Doors are what I think are the sales areas of the wineries, named so because the cellar is where the wine is stored. Canadian wineries do not typically feature their sales areas as cellar doors!
• Wine tastings at most wineries were free (with the exception of the Noble One I sampled) – a sharp contrast to Canada where you pay per sample! A wine lovers heaven, for sure.
• While I have used the term “good value” appropriately, Melbourians have taken this term and have applied it to people – “he was a great person to meet; he is good value”. Imagine my confusion.

For anniversaries and birthdays, I’m always hard pressed to find something I’d be proud to gift. When thinking of something to give for those big occasions, I’ve always considered an experience to be more thoughtful than a physical good (unless, of course, its an item that will provide more experiences down the road).

So for our second year anniversary, Michelle and I opted for an experience – an Omakase at El’s Japanese Fusion.

An Omakase is the Japanese equivalent for a tasting menu, except that as a patron, you essentially hand over your money and culinary life into the chef’s hands. We’ve been to El’s Japanese Fusion before to have their sashimi and rolls (which we also highly approve of), so we thought that an Omakase was one of our must-trys. El’s offers three tiers of Omakase: $50, $100 and $150 per person, where I assumed the price levels corresponded with different levels of quality, and all three needed to be reserved in advance.

Mike, the chef at El’s, greeted us after sitting down. As we were newbies at this Omakase-thing, Mike pleasantly explained to us that the Omakase was going to be presented to us one dish at a time, allowing us to enjoy each dish sequentially. At this point, we still had no idea of the dishes to come.

To start off, something warm – a seafood Chawan-mushi. Served in a small cup with a lid and a spoon, the Chawan-mushi was a hot egg custard, and set inside with fish, prawns and green onions on the top. Unlike typical custards, this egg custard was not sweet, but had all the savoury flavourings of the prawns and dashi.

Our second appetizer was a Beef Sashimi, layered with a raw egg yolk and asian pears. We’ve both had beef tataki before, so the concept of near-raw beef was not new – having purely raw slices of beef was definitely unexpected. The raw beef was tender, moist, and hardly chewy. Spreading the egg yolk added texture to the beef, and the julienned asian pears complimented with an unexpected light and fresh way to finish the dish.

Perhaps the most “tame” dishes of the Omakase were the last two appetizers, a salad with sauteed oyster mushrooms, seared scallops and roe. The other dish was an avocado halved, with spicy mayo, atlantic salmon sashimi and avocado pieces – Michelle particularly enjoyed unique presentation, and we’re both suckers for all three of those ingredients used.

After we had finished the above dish and our table was cleared, we heard Mike in the background tell the waitress that the dish was a Live Lobster Sashimi. “Excellent” I thought, I’ve never had raw lobster before! Except…

This lobster was still twitching! The lobster was cut in half, with the claws and body presented on the plate – the tail was carved out and the meat was sliced and presented on top as well. I was impressed (and shocked) with the presentation, but nothing drove the point of ultimate freshness better. And the lobster tail meat was, in a few words, amazing, smooth, firm, clean, fresh.

The lobster was soon whisked away from our table. While recovering from the shock that we actually ate something live and twitching, we were served assorted sushi and rolls including scallop sushi and tuna belly. The lobster soon returned though, cracked and boiled in a large bowl of rich and flavourful miso soup (“Hey buddy, you’re back”). The sushi and lobster miso soup effectively stuffed us.

Rounding off the night was some very un-Japanese cheesecake, which we immediately recognized as the cheesecake available in the freezer section of Costco. The cheesecake was decent, but we definitely would have looked forward to something a bit more Japanese (even green tea ice cream).

The Omakase was fantastic experience, which Michelle and I will be raving for years to come. Each dish was creatively presented and tasted just as great, so I give the chef Mike props for a wonderful meal. I just hope that next time, we don’t get cheesecake for dessert!

El’s Japanese Fusion
17-2008 33 Avenue SW
Calgary, AB T2T 1Z4
(403) 217-6796

Sweet! Got my first win on the second day! Taken with the S90 in front of my massive (mini) filing cabinet.

Current Statistics:
Record: 1 – 2
Spent: $4.77
Won: $2.57
Probability: 26.34%

[RUTR 2010 Progress]

Wonder what kind of meal looks as good as the above?

It is one of the best, ready-to-eat meals available to our nation’s best – the made-in-Canada Military Individual Meal Pack (IMP) ration! Sans the plate, but nevertheless tasted better than the average boxed meal.

We discovered many interesting things as we researched the IMP prior to consumption. For example, a complete meal contains 3,600 calories (enough for a soldier), and lasts three years from the date of manufacture. Our specific ration was a Salmon Fillet, but we had other choices like Cabbage Rolls, Shepherd’s Pie, and the Omelette with Salsa. The numbering on our ration, “07″, indicates the ration was made in 2007.

All rations come packaged efficiently. Our specific ration had everything you’d expect for a well-balanced meal, including:

• Instant mixes of coffee, tea and a raspberry fruit drink
• Cream of celery soup
• Salmon, in a boilable bag
• Bread, also in a boilable bag
• Fruit cocktail
• Onion-flavoured mashed potatoes
• Condiments including whitener, sugar, apple jelly, and teriyaki sauce

True to the spirit of easy preparation, the extent of cooking required was either boiling the salmon and bread within the bag, or adding hot water to the potatoes and the soup. Out of the several flavours in the box, we definitely enjoyed the salmon (given that it was made three years ago). Other top choices included the mashed potatoes and the bread – the bread was an exceptional delicious surprise, with a heavy-brick feel and a sweet taste. Hopefully the Canadian Military has figured out a way to make better instant soup, the only mediocre item in the IMP.

If you are interested in getting your own ration, you can order some from your local military surplus – don’t expect to get any packages made recently, as they are reserved for the troops!

If you haven’t heard, Tim Hortons has a few locations in Calgary that also serve Cold Stone Creamery ice cream. The combining of the stores was an experiment in the USA first, then they started moving into Ontario and finally, Calgary.

Cold Stone Creamery is similar to a Marble Slab – you pick your ice cream flavours, with the option to add “fix-ins” into your dessert. Almonds, graham crust, skors, coconut flakes amongst a dozen other of textured additions.

I personally prefer the Cold Stone Creamery ice cream over Marble Slab. Marble Slab’s ice cream is far too creamy for my taste, while Cold Stone Creamery texture is thick-to-handle but melts smoothly in the mouth. If you’re in Calgary, you can check out one of the three Tim Hortons locations with Cold Stone Creameries in them, all located in the south:

1. 11472 Braeside Drive S.W
2. 12100 MacLeod Trail SE, Unit 400, Lake Bonavista Sq Shopping Ctr
3. 11488 24th St SE, Unit 400

I certainly hope Tim Hortons decides to expand a Tim Hortons to include Cold Stone Creamery in the north side – its a long drive from Country Hills!

For those who are looking for a reasonably good sandwich shop outside the city, check out Guy’s Cafe in Cochrane. They’ve got a behemoth of a sandwich called the “I Don’t Know I’m Not Sure Yet”, stuffed with all the cold cuts on their menu.

Guy’s Cafe and Bakery
6-201 Grande Boulevard West
Cochrane, AB
(403) 851-9955

Well the Hong Kong trip has come and gone, and I’m over my post-vacation-depression period enough to begin writing posts on the blog again. Some quick statistics:

• Days in HK – 19
• Pictures Taken – 3824 (average of 201 a day)
• Pictures Uploaded – 520 (excludes a few family photos)
• Pictures with GPS coordinates – 362 (none are manually geotagged)
• Most pictures in one day – 668 (Tram to the Big Buddha and Tai O)
• Least pictures in one day – 42 (Peanut allergy reaction, saved by a Chiu Chow dinner)
• Number of times camera was bumped by people/objects – Once!

Helping my massive shot count was attributed to my camera setup, now using a modified R-Strap, which lets my camera hang close to me while trekking around and could be summoned whenever I needed! Never again will I use the standard camera strap! My D300 never hit any walls, and someone only bumped it once during the entire trip.

Also a wonderful change of pace was using a Nikon GP-1 to automatically geo-tag my photos (i.e. embed GPS coordinates directly into my pictures), so I could retrace my route at a future date. Check out where all my geotagged pictures were taken in Hong Kong, and I think we can agree that geotagging pictures is a fairly nifty technology!

Back to the recap. It is very hard to pick some of my favorite experiences out of the trip, so from the top…

• For tourist traps, Victoria Peak and the Big Buddha are the best not-to-miss choices. If you are going up to the Big Buddha via the 360 Tram, the Crystal Tram isn’t entirely worth it unless you like seeing the water and forest beneath your feet. A trip to the fishing village of Tai O near the airport has speed boats to take you out to the dolphins for only a few dollars. Walk Of The Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui is recommended for the view at night but not for the immortalized hands of famous stars, and the beaches are just that – beaches.
• For food, eating congee and Chinese doughnuts in the morning, Dim Sum or noodle soups in the afternoon for lunch, and briefly sampling the seemingly infinite variety of Asian and Japanese dinners is the best way to go. Just don’t forget to get a snack with the Little Egg waffles (雞蛋仔, gai dan zai) or Fish-balls-on-a-stick from the street vendors.
• Shopping is everywhere you look, so just remember to stick your head in every store and be curious. If you like big chains, look no further than Sha Tin and Ocean Centre (in Tsim Sha Tsui), and for the smaller stores, Mong Kok for clothing and random goods, and Sham Shi Po for the Golden Computer Center.

Some learned lessons that I will do on my next trip, and hopefully you will too:

• Bring a tripod! While a monopod is the best option on the top of the Victoria Peak, a tripod is the best way to get pictures of Hong Kong island at night. Yes, I did not take my own advice from my Toronto trip…
• The Hong Kong Moleskine book was the best touring guide ever. Not only did it contain MTR maps, but it also contained city maps and enough blank pages to plan out and record my travels. Be advised: it contains no recommendations, so you can plan your own journey!
• Camera equipment is marginally cheaper (up to 10% off), except for authentic batteries – authentic Nikon batteries were almost 50% off North American pricing. I bought most of my camera gear from Wing Shing Photo Supplies. Hat tip to my D700-toting uncle for the recommendation!
• Leverage VIP cards when shopping at big chains. If you’re spending almost $1000 HKD at a store, ask if they have a VIP membership. These memberships usually entitle you to 10% to 40% off your future purchases, so savings can add up fast!
• Skip Ladies Street (女人街). Goods there are extremely overpriced, even after bargaining! Everything sold there can be found cheaper elsewhere in the city.
• Most shopping malls look the same after awhile. Try to hit all the smaller shopping complexes with several tiny stores, as that is where you’ll find the most variety and less of the staple chain stores.

I promised my family and friends that I would be back in two years. I’m certainly looking forward to it!

[Flickr: Hong Kong 2009 and Map]

Hong Kong-style Milk Tea (top right of the picture) is one of those things you must experience in Hong Kong, alongside a good solid bowl of fish-cake noodles and egg-shaped waffles.

Milk Tea (奶茶, lai cha) is made up using black tea, evaporated milk, to which you add your own helping of sugar. It is one of my favorite hot beverages, which is as enjoyable in the summer as in the winter.

Introduced by my dad, one of the best places for Milk Tea in Hong Kong is in Mong Kok (Kowloon), at the “tea restaurant” shown above. Apparently this place has won Milk Tea competitions (probably similar to the Barista championships in North America), and the price for a milk tea is only a few Hong Kong dollars with your meal. Add it to your “must-do” list of things to consume in Hong Kong!

Located on Sai Yeung Choi St., between Argyle St and Nelson St, beside a Wing Shing Photo Supplies store