Getting excited

2010 is gearing up to a great start. I feel it seeping into my bones, this is going to be a good year! My best evidence of this is that I'm starting to get my excitement back. For a while, my life hasn't felt like it's terribly exciting and although I've been adjusting to a new culture, land, way of being, it hasn't seemed like much of anything newsworthy has been happening. It felt like my child-like wonder got lost somewhere on the other side of the globe. But it may have been rediscovered!

The most recent appearance of my recovered joy was in China town last night. I have resumed reading "Dragon Fighter" much to the chagrin of my overly vivid imagination and empathetic system.

"It was as if the walls to our cells were closing in on us a bit more every day. We Uyghurs already felt like we had been locked up, but the confinement was getting even tighter. If a Uyghur boy wanted to learn boxing out of a simple interest in the sport, he was detained as a separatist. If a countryman with a mustache applied for employment, he was forced to shave it off. If someone recited a Uyghur poem, he was considered a fundamentalist.

This was a time during which those in power dropped their masks. The high functionaries decided that our Uyghur nation was a part of China and should therefore be settled by even more Chinese. There were scenes in the streets where Chinese would beat Uyghurs, forcing them off sidewalks or buses with the words, 'Get out of here! This is our land!' Women working in civil service were prohibited from wearing long skirts because that garment was considered a symbol of religious values. In the job market there were positions offered exclusively to Chinese--it said so on the signs."

This is all in the late 1990's. The book is filled with atrocities, but I can't stop reading it, it's too real not to. (Go figure, it's a true story. Can't get much more real than that.) I'm still very much of the opinion that these kinds of books should find their way into high school English classrooms.

Anyway, what does this have to do with excitement, you must be asking? Well, I was reading through my favorite Australian food blog (http://www.notquitenigella.com/) looking for some kind of new, cheap restaurant to explore. I stumbled upon a review of a Uyghur restaurant down in China town. The food and prices looked good so I sent the link to Marcus and we made a date for the next night.

We showed up at the restaurant and seated ourselves underneath nets of plastic grapes and foliage and next to a stretched out replica of what I can only assume is a traditional Uyghur painting. The Uyghur lands (currently under China's rule) share borders with Tibet, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Krgyzstan and Kazakstan. So within the culture there's a mix of Turkish, eastern European, Indian, and Chinese. The food was sort of a Mediterranean/Chinese/Indian fusion. We ordered lamb skewers, hand-made noodles (the plate was HUGE and we only paid $7.50 for it which is a steal in Sydney), pumpkin samosas, and "special Uyghur meat" dumplings. We also tried the imported bottle of prune juice, which tasted un-prune-like and actually quite tasty. The food was absolutely delightful, I kept on looking up at Marcus during the meal with disbelief written all over my face. We can't believe our luck at having stumbled upon this place, but we'll definitely be making our way back there frequently. I'd say it's my new favorite restaurant. We were the only white people at the place, too, so I'd say its goodness will stay under wraps for a while.

My other bit of excitement came on Sunday as Marcus and I did a bit of exploring in our new neighborhood. The area is quite large and there are lots of parks, nooks and crannies that we have yet to discover, so we went on a walk. We ended up at Ballast Park, Sydney's version of Gasworks Park. It's a former fuel depot for Texaco, but on prime real estate. The government bought the land and turned it into a public park--very industrial and modern. We literally stumbled upon it. It's sort of connected to an older park in Balmain that must have been there for some time, but Ballast Park just opened in July of 2009, so it's relatively unknown. We passed maybe a dozen people while we wandered through the park.

One day I'm going to create a coffee table book entirely filled with pictures of the Harbour Bridge. Because let's face it, there are about a million different ways to capture it and I'm well on my way. :)

The day we went to Ballast Park was also the last day of Marcus's holiday beard:

Goodbye, fuzzy visitor, and hello smooth friend. :) The holidays are officially over and it's back to work!