Emperor’s New Clothes

This is either a post about the world changing or about things staying just the same.

On the side of fuzzy familiarity is the breakfast scene. Just Fran Kelly and I, no waiters harbouring nuptial intent hovering about, an opened bottle of Glenlivet in my line of sight, cockatoos squawking, lots of laaa di daaah morning light reflecting off the water and lighting up the buildings across the , comforting low-level domestic squalor, a few cockroaches and yesterday’s paper.

Flicking through the foodie section in order to work out where I need to eat dinner to fit in, I happened upon an article about Kopi Luwak. A cup of coffee for $50?* It must be good. So I read all the way through an article about what is apparently a legitimate contendor for Next Big Thing in the coffee world, kopi luwak beans. Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?, you eagerly inquire.

Kopi Luwak is made from coffee beans that have been eaten and excreted bu the
Asian palm civet, or luwak, a mongoose-like mammal native to the jungles of
South-East Asia. The flesh of the coffee cherry is digested, but the bean
passes through intact and is deposited in piles of scat that are collected by
hand from the jungle floor.

Now my head has been spinning since I returned to Sydney: I’ve been running around like a dervish, sleeping insufficiently, moving boxes and boggling a bit at it all. I might still be able to squeeze a drop of credibility from the excuse that I’m jetlagged ergo confused. All the same, it sounds rather like another hideous joke is being played upon the gourmets. Civets are more closely related to cats but they look like big rats. What we’re talking about here is coffee that has been shat out by a rodent after its digestive system has corroded the fruit. I pride myself on an open-mind and a broad palate. The consumption of post-intestinal coffee beans is, however, a step too far. Enough’s enough.

What did confuse me was that the article was written in such a po-faced manner that I couldn’t quite tell whether the author was taking it seriously or not. Is an article about kopi luwak beans a great prank designed to put the food porn (ah, vice, so nice) into ironic perspective? Or is written to appeal to status hungry Sydneysiders looking to impress their friends and clients with a crazily expensive tipple that doubles as a talking point. Either way, coffee whose first filtration has been through the digestive system of a civet is not on my list for 2008.

* If it costs $50 for a 250mL cup, kopi luwak is more expensive than Glenlivet, most Granges, brachetto, all but the best balsamics and extra-virgin olios, and most snake oils.

Plus ça change…

I’ve been here before. Real estate agents and removalists on the phone, respiratory system full of dust, oddly positioned bruises, no available hair-bands, crumpled coffee cups scattered all the place, a slight crackle of manic urgency in the air. Laura and I moved into an apartment located less than one hundred metres from my Onslow Gardens fiefdom and even closer to my Roslyn St stronghold of old. There remain many boxes to be unpacked and whitegoods to move; a truck containing useful items like my bed is yet to arrive from Seven Hills. Nevertheless, it is not without a little sniff of panic that I sense my supply of excuses for getting my act together, for getting in touch with the world is rapidly dwindling. Pre-emptive apologies.

Not much seems to have changed in the 2011 precinct. Spray tans, yapping small dogs, a disapproving sigh constantly on the wind. I didn't need to walk past the new diamante studded petcare shop on Macleay St to realise how far I from the dreaming minarets of the Mughal empire. There are, however, great sprawling street trees and cocktail bars here. You can purchase odiferous cheeses after midnight and the butcher who plies his trade next to the dogshop is a portrait of joviality. These things are important to me. Happily I find that none of my favourite bars or restaurants have shut and that a few newbies have opened.

I must, however, note with disapproval that the tellers at the National Bank have rebranded themselves as Listeners. Is this an Australia-wide innovation?

Festival life

Holy cities, I’ve seen a few. It’s a low year for the Magh Mela festival in Allahabad. Here, where the Ganga meets the Yamuna and the invisible, underground Saraswati rivers, the enormous Kumbh Mela festival is held every twelve years and tens of millions of people descend on Allahabad to bathe in the holy confluence under the full moon. The Magh Mela is the humdrum annual festival. It lasts for a month and my guide told me that around 400,000 pilgrims are currently in town. The dusty tent city between the rivers stretches for kilometres . I picked up a discarded copy of the Bulletin a few days ago and read about the upcoming World Youth Day in Sydney; the dimensions of the Sydney event do pale in comparison. Still, a Sydney full of pilgrims seeking not sporting jubilation but spiritual fulfilment is an exciting prospect.

Life is short and art is long

It might be that my longish absence from Sydney is adding a certain lustre to the lily gilding process. Still, it seems like there’s been an explosion of new theatre in Sydney over the last year. My inbox is full of blurbs about shows, shows, shows. Hurrah! To wit, my outrageously talented friend Cait and her collaborators are staging Persephone’s Wolf at the Carriageworks, right now. If the stars, Malaysian Airlines, the real estate agents of the inner East and my immune system are working with me on the night the curtain falls on the show for the last time, I’ll be there, as should you be.

Raise the Bar

Everybody knows that NSW liquor licensing laws give the state a bad name. Bars always get raised in tedious and interminable Sydney v Melbourne debates.

Sydneysider: Well, Sydney is an international city and it has beaches and better weather and the locals are far more attractive and intelligent and better-dressed.
Melburnian: Oh, that’s so superficial. Sydney people are sooo shallow. Melbourne has a better bar scene. We can drown our sorrows with style
Sydneysider: Well….so….maybe…well. (Splutters and struggles to find a response.) It’s because of the licensing laws! It’s the government! I blame the government!
Melburnian: Ha. (Puts on coat. Goes to charming small pokie-free local bar. Drinks smugly.)

It’s true, the paucity of small nook-dimensioned bars in Sydney and abundance of chrome-fitted pokie palaces can be slated home to the licensing laws. The NSW liquor licensing laws are being voted on in the next few months and you can lobby your local MP to do the right thing here.