Pic from here

So I have been subconsciously dreaming of Brisvegas the last few weeks, in light of my quick trip "home" next month.  As I hinted in my last post - having been away for so long,  the city has taken on a bit of a legendary character for me.  The quality of the light, the humidity of the air, the memory of bare feet on hot bitumen when you hop out of the car, the sound of cicadas chirping in the bush at dusk.  You know, all that stuff. It all has a dream-like quality, and its hard to believe I will get a taste of it soon.

I also am yearning to go for a wander around my old stomping grounds - but goodness knows there will be no time for that!  I really wish I had a day or two to go walking the crooked streets of Rosalie and West End, drive down to Pinjarra Hills and out to the green lushness of Brookfield, go and see if there are still pineapple fields in Moggill, if the Valley still has that industrial low-fi charm.

And on that note - I have  a sad, yet cathartic confession to make.  I can't say I'm proud of this - but one place I really, really wish I could visit is Indooroopilly shoppingtown.   Now, as a disclaimer: I have read the articles in anthropology that described how shopping centres are becoming the modern-day town square.  And I totally understand that these gigantic retail monsters suck up small local businesses and permanently change the physical and cultural landscape of city suburbs.  I have watched this process happen quite recently in Riga.  I know the theory on why these places are popular and like magnets for the community.... but I never thought any of that theory applied to ME.  I am usually so "above" shopping centres.  In Riga, we only pop in to our local shopping centre to occasionally do grocery shopping - but that is rare.  Usually we go to the market, or the local grocery store.   Other times we might go to the sales, or to the food court for a bite to eat, but it is not a regular thing, and they are usually short "get in-get out" trips.

But every time I imagine special places in Brisbane, "shoppo" sneaks right into that list when I'm not looking.  Its a no-brainer I guess - I spent lots of time there in my formative years:  having lunch at the Myers cafe with my mum, going to sales and buying fabulous 80s fashion, working in my first after-school job, meeting up with friends there, watching the Tina Arena talent school performing on stage there.  You know, meaningful childhood experiences.  I'm getting teary just writing about it.

And sadly, I have realized that things are just like Charlie Brown (or someone) concluded - you can never go back.  "Shoppo" is all totally different now.  The rocket in the rocket park has been gone for ages.  The Myers cafe isn't on the top floor anymore.  I'll even bet Woolies has been changed around so I can't find anything anymore, and Tina Arena has been replaced by some other Australian starlet who I've never heard of.  So I'm not sure I will include shoppo in my "Brisvegas nostalgia" tour.   You said it, Charlie Brown.  You can never really go back.

Pic from here

The thought of blogging the past few weeks has made me feel....  kinda.... "meh".  Is that a word?  Is it included in any slang dictionaries?  Well I'm hoping you get what I mean anyway.  I guess it could be described as a contemporary form of "blah", I guess.

In my thoughts and dreams I have been travelling down under - I'm flying to Oz for three weeks in November for work, visiting people in all the capitals.  Amazing. I haven't been "home" in five years, and am wondering if Australia is really there after all.  It's been so long, that it all seems like a mirage.

Kookaburras are at the forefront of my dreaming, for some reason.  Maybe because they seem like mythical creatures to Mikus, who was asking me about them - whether I had ever seen one in the wild, or only in the zoo.  So I described to him how they used to laugh in the bush next to our place, and my dad used to kill brown snakes and feed them to the kookaburras when I was little.  My tale seemed  a little mysterious and nostalgic, in a Karen Blixen "I had a farm in Africa...." kind of way.

Then my friend Anita blogged this photo:


...and last night I dreamt  that I was in a suburban acreage part of Australia -  where people have big wooden houses with verandahs on large blocks with manicured lawns and networks of roads with concrete curbs all along the sides.  And I was sitting in an easy chair on this one deck, unable to move, with kookaburras swooping, swooping, swooping all around.  And I was sitting there pondering how quiet life in the 'burbs seemed to be, and how neat, and how easy and sunny it all seemed.  Luminous and warm, with swooping kookaburras. I wonder what it all means?

It is strange to be returning to Oz in this way, on a super-quick work trip, without my family.  The brevity of the visit, and the fact that the boys won't be with me, means I won't be able to enjoy the visit the way I would like to - but hey, I'm not complaining!  It will still be incredible to do face-to-face catch up with dear friends and family.  And to go for a wander in the streets of my town. And visit Perth as well - where I have never been before.


Back on this side of the globe, in the "real world", things are getting cosy.  The temp has dipped in the last week.  Its not freezing yet but moving in that direction, and its been raining and raining and raining some more.  The autumn leaves are circling down outside, it's dark when we get up in the morning,  and downstairs is the jangle of wood pellets heating the house.

We spent the weekend consciously avoiding the urge to invite friends over or meet up with people - we so rarely have days where we just hang out at home and don't do much.  We read, watched tv, did odd chores around the place, and generally hung out - apart from going out at Mikus' urging, to a Soviet-era health spa at the beach, for a swim in their pool.  We ran the gauntlet of grumpy pool attendants (see this post for a detailed description of post-Soviet pool trauma) to find ourselves in a very pleasant and super-warm, non-regimented pool, where the boys splashed around for ages.  Apart from having my towel stolen (surely, must have been a case of mistaken towel-identity, found it later in the men's change rooms), the visit was delightful.  I must be getting super thick skin living here all these years.  Or maybe its from the mineral-enriched therapeutic sea water? Or perhaps it was the purposeful social realist bathers-in-bronze out the front?

 

Every year  I have a wild time on the 20th September.  Thing is, according to the Latvian calendar, today is my name day. Latvians (and lots of other cultures, as far as I know) celebrate different names on different days of the year.  Everyone knows who's name day it is each day - probably because they have calendars on the back of the toilet door to remind them - and people make sure that they congratulate each Janis, Ieva, Mara, Peteris or whoever on the appropriate day.  The tradition with name days is that you are allowed go visiting uninvited - with birthdays you have to wait to be asked, but on name's days you can just drop in.  Otherwise they are pretty much the same as birthdays - people buy gifts, have parties, spoil the relevant Janis, Ieva or Mara.

The problem is, that we never really celebrated name days living in Australia.  The only person who ever reminded me of the significance of the 20th September was my grandmother, who would call me.  Otherwise it was just a normal day. So gauging the significance of  name days when living in Latvia has been a difficult thing - because I didn't grow up celebrating it, I just don't FEEL that excited.  Today, same as last year, I had forgotten the importance of today until we got on the tram this morning.  There was Tiss' school friend singing "Happy name's day" with a gift bag of home-baked cookies.  And then the text messages, and phone calls, and chocolates and flowers started pouring in.  Gotta admit I felt like a bit of phoney accepting greetings and gifts for something I had totally forgotten about - but any time is a good time for a party, right?

As it turns out, tomorrow is Tiss' names day.  And in a couple of days, it's Mik.  One year we will have to have a big combined names day bash.  The sunflowers in the pic (Van Gogh would be jealous) were given to me by Jem, when he also realized it was my 'special day'.  The thoughtful guy doesn't even have a name's day of his own - he gets lumped into the 22 May - the day for everyone who is not included in the name's day calendar.  That sucks, big time.  Years ago, Jem decided to celebrate himself on the 29 October - on Elvis day.  That's right.  ELVIS.

This must be the year for "the little tree who could".  First cherries, then apples.  Lordy, lordy - the little apple tree we planted a couple of years ago, is going completely BANANAS!  (I mean, like bananas-crazy, not bananas-the fruit).  Just got back from a weekend in the country with two huge baskets full of gorgeous, tangy, crispy rose apples I picked off the tree.  Only problem is, what to do with them all?  I have a few plastic bags full of windfall apples I am going to juice, make sauce etc with.  But what about all those fresh, crisp lovelies?

That's where the small village charm of Riga comes in.  Realizing I was in a race against time, this morning I loaded a fabric shoulder bag with apples.  And doled them out to everyone I knew.  Friends on the tram got apples, mums at school got apples, my work colleagues got apples, my translating client got apples, and so did 2 friends I met on the way to work/back home.  By the end of the morning I had a spring in my step and an empty bag, and was humming Billy Bragg's "I am the milkman of human kindness... let me leave an extra pint" happily to myself.

This arvo I made a favourite around this time of year - apple pancakes.  Terrifically tasty, even for kids who eat fruit with suspicion. My friend Ieva has a crackpot theory that bad people simply cannot make good pancakes - and I tend to agree with her.  As for me, my pancakes don't always turn out well.  Occasionally they turn out rubbery, or burnt, or like cardboard...hmmmm.  But today - today I must be a good person.  Because those apple pancakes were tremendous.

And about the top pic - I have realized that apple season coincides with the start of school - in this part of the world, anyway.  Kids doing their homework and crunching on apples.  Maybe that's where "an apple for the teacher" concept came from??

Do you see those ripe figs I picked up at the supermarket the other day?  Aaamaaaaazing.  Made me think of how far this country has come, shopping-wise, in the last few years.  When we first moved, the situation was dire, and we had friends and relations bring us all manner of substances from overseas. Most things were not heart-stoppingly important - just those little things that you miss when you don't have them.  Really early on we couldn't get toasters in Latvia and got used to having sandwiches for breakfast. There was no household bleach, or nappy liners, or takeaway coffees, or decaf coffee, luxury items like snap-lock bags, or spices like cumin, curry paste, brown sugar.  English language books used to be hard to come by, and at Easter time, you couldn't get chocolate Easter eggs anywhere. Reasonably priced Chinese takeaway food is still a distant dream.

Things slowly started improving, however, and the expat community would share information on where to get highly sought-after items: coconut milk, cranberry sauce, choc chips for baking.  For a long while, Jem said that he would be completely satisfied with life here when he could get "big" toaster bread instead of the mini rounded loaves of white bread; and when he could by a kebab for lunch.  Abracadabra, zippety zoo - and lo and behold, both the requested big bread and turkish fast food showed up. So apart from Vegemite, we can pretty much get everything and anything in Riga now, as long as you have the cash to pay. Shops full of iced cup cakes. Bath bombs, sushi bars, even beauty spas where little fish eat the dead skin off your feet - you can pretty much get it all.  And that, I'm happy for.  Especially the ripe mangoes that turn up in the supermarket occasionally.  On those days the emails between like-minded mango eaters spread like wildfire.


Another thing that reminded me of how far Latvia has come lately was the art festival we went to on the weekend.  Obtuse installations from local and foreign artists, the best one was an interactive steam-punk labyrinth all the way from some good folk in Barcelona, which brought a bit of  old-school mechanical fun to Riga.  The labyrinth had doors all through it, which you could only open by working out various puzzles attached to the opening mechanism. Games with magnets, blocks on rope, combinations like on a safe.  Everything was wooden, or welded metal, completely touchable, incredibly simple and awfully appealing.  We all played and played in the labyrinth, totally enchanted by the clunky physicality of all of the parts.  Made me wish I lived near a spanish artist's workshop/studio, so I could tinker with these things all the time.  Maybe one day.

Dame Edna and Morrissey should have been Latvian teachers.  They would love the gladiolas - the most popular flower to give your teacher on the first day of school. I don't know why. The first day of school in Latvia is a big celebration for students of any grade or university, everyone gets all dressed up and has a party after assembly, then goes home!

This one was an extra special beginning for us, because Mikus started grade one. We all woke up super early and super nervous.  Put on his linen shirt and tried to talk him into tucking his shirt in. This year I certainly didn't have the "should my son wear a mini-adult suit with a bow tie?" dilemma, like I recorded in this post - I've lived here long enough by know to be confident in which traditions we follow, and which ones are, well, just plain silly. And interestingly (and predictably) enough, it turns out that your kid couldn't care less what they wear, as long as their parent seems confident with the option.

Then we went down to the market to get some flowers for the teacher.   In my boys' opinion, the bigger the flowers, the better.  Typical males.

We only spent about a short time at school watching the opening assembly, where the grade ones are brought into the room, holding hands with grade nines - kids who are starting their last year at the school.  The whole time they come in, a bell is rung.  A solemn celebration, where the big, frightened eyes of the littlies make you get teary and smiley at the same time.


In the meantime, Tiss was with his class of fourth-graders.  Too cool for school.  Relaxed, joking, jostling mates who had been through it all before.  And in the blink of an eye, with the comparison of first grade and fourth grade in front of me, it brought the realization of what a long way Tiss has come, and also the calming revelation that Mikus would be ok.  That there was still a whole lot of learning and growing up to do, and it would all happen in the space of this lovely small school we have chosen to be ours.

PS.  No, contrary to popular belief, I didn't cut those fringes myself.  But I can confidently say we're never going to the local hairdresser again!