A Venezuelan wacky guy living his Australian dream

Ever since I came to Australia I always wondered what's the look of Melbourne, its spirit and how would you feel living in there

And you probably wonder,


Why? 
Didn't you decided Sydney from the start?
Are you planning to move to Melbourne?

The why is:

Melbourne is an interesting city of Australia (the second biggest) and curiously enough it was our first option when we first take the decision to come down under.

The Sydney decision:
Moving to Melbourne was a short lived dream because after a little research and a bit more of crunching numbers (and understanding the meaning of it) we realised Sydney was better option; it provided more jobs with equal to almost less competition, which meant quicker insertion into the work force and more metropolitan (closer to our taste) lifestyle.

Am I planning to move there?
Nope, I think it was a bit of curiosity but that alone wasn't the driving force for our trip, the real reason why we went there was to celebrate the engagement of two dear friends (it was their Aussie wedding sort of thing... difficult to explain without writing another post... and is sort of private) which allowed us to go there for two days and enjoy the city.

NOTE:

Please be aware, it was a weekend getaway (forced to three days thanks to bloody jetstar) which could be a complete overlook of the entire Melbourne experience. By the way, jetstar is a piece of shit; never fly with them (promotional spot was promoted by Rod’s Rage... and Colgate!).

First impressions of Melbourne

Its architecture is extremely interesting; evolving gradually replacing spaces of the old city without removing its architectural heritage as Perth has done during the last twenty something years... But if you know nothing about architecture or don't care about it, you probably will notice that is definitely cleaner than Sydney.

In my case I noticed both at the same time, causing me instant wonder and surprise.

Would you like to take a look at some of my photos of Melbourne?
Click on the slideshow and it will take you to my flickr photo sets.

Is very easy to find yourself walking on the streets, looking at a Victorian building from 1890’s near by a brand new art-deco or post-modern house with solar panels on its roof and a vintage shop at the entrance; so well done that it refreshes the old Victorian building without breaking its style neither tendency; it just plays beautifully.

Worthy to include: their general dress code.
Melbourne dress style is very European with a hint of hipster; that is, elegant yet including young elements into the mix which makes you think they are outgrown children with a keen sense of fashion (don’t hate me for saying the truth).  Obviously not everybody uses the same style but you can get the general idea with the following image.

Also worth to note on ‘first impressions’ is (with the exception of Mel CBD) the city is two stories high in every direction our eyes look upon, having as consequence zero to none point of reference while you are walking around. This is not entirely a bad thing as Melbourne adapted its flatness to its advantage building up the tram as main transportation system.

A tram gives you the possibility to move around the city easily without losing contact with the surface or the city, resulting in a more appealing, interactive and enjoyable ride towards your destination, although I found myself quite often thinking ‘every tram should be a bit bigger, I feel cramped’. If getting into the tram is not your thing and you are more sport oriented, the city is super adapted for bicycle riders and it has lots of dedicated roads for all of them.

And riding the tram, bicycle or walking around get me into another point of interest, shops and restaurants. Melbourne seems to be designed as a big shopping area with plenty of restaurants established in every corner with music (lived or recorded) to engage your senses with its aroma, texture, taste and sounds. Certainly you could find something to captivate your curiosity to drive you to one of those establishments, spending most of your time in there. In my case I was captivated initially by Flinders street and its multiple parisienne alike galleries with numerous restaurants and beautiful smells (someone told me they are called Flinders’ Hallways, no idea if that is correct) especially after starving for three hours while we were leaving our bags to then go back to Flinders Street to get something to eat.

Finally (and this is what stood up all the time) was the lack of mimes running on the streets entertaining everybody.

At this stage you probably think... WTF is he talking about? (Yes, what the FAQ...)

Everybody (from Melbourne) has told me so many times that the best way to describe Melbourne was with the word... ‘Cultural’

But what does it mean?

I am going to cite a dictionary definition of culture: ‘The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.’

Cultural as in there is lots of history in there just like Greece or Italy? Nope...

Cultural as in you will be able to find people walking down the street dressed and dancing with their own very cultural background? Again, no.

Well... Melbourne does have lots of sculptures every now and then and it does have a huge number of graffiti’s in every single wall of alleys, semi old houses, etc, etc. And the concentration of museums, theatres and public spaces where to demonstrate a play seems to be greater than Sydney... But does it qualify as cultural? I don’t know... I have seen some pretty cool art on the street of Brisbane and tons of public sculptures, drawings or paintings on the far away Perth. (Oh yeah, forgot to mention I went to Brisbane a couple of months ago...)

My expectations were set by Melburnians as if I was going to be received by cirque du soleil acrobats jumping out of hot air balloons, guided by the magical old man with a set of rolling dices in his hands telling me where to go, while legions of mimes walked down the street entertaining everybody.

So, cultural is a word that will apply for every other city in the world as every city in the world as well, as it has the capability to ‘manifest human intellectual achievements’.

Certainly is a refined city, with refined taste for food as well for some fashion (I am not thrilled about the hipster thingo) and undoubtedly exposition to great architectural tendencies. Melbourne is the New York’s fifth avenue of Australia; I would dare to say (just the fifth avenue).

How about that for a first impression! Uh?

Was there anything I didn’t like?

Three things came to my head straight away.

First, the beaches; I am terribly sorry for you Melburnians... but St Kilda is anything but dreamy and any comparison to Bondi beach (which is not nearly one of the best in Sydney) will be more than unfair to Bondi’s crystalline water, soft sands and outstanding panoramic of its surroundings, and apparently surfing beaches are too far away for the discussion of this post.

Second and this one could be highly related to a very bad coincidence... but in two days I saw no less than seven drugs consumers, sharing or consuming drugs on the street; leading me to think one of two things: Melbourne has big drug traffic or Melburnians are not discrete at all! For instance, on two and half years in Sydney I have seen two drugs users, definitely not cool.

Third and last thing I did not like, the Yarra River and I think is heavy attributed to my mental image of what a river should look like. Its water is anything but clear; in fact it has a brown turbulent muddy colour giving you the impression of being dirty all day long. At the end of the day, my dislike is more related to its appearance more than anything; can’t complain about bad smell (because I couldn’t get any odour) but there was no connection what so ever to the river.

How do I compare Sydney to Melbourne?

There is no comparison what so ever. Both cities are so bloody different to try to establish a comparison.

Australian cities are so different between each other, so diverse and (at the same time) so into their own fashion and lifestyle that any comparison between each other will be unfair and disproportionate to both.

Melbourne offers an interesting mixture of fashion, gastronomy and architecture compensating a lot its uninteresting beaches, few slopes (or very poor elevation, I should just say lack of panoramic views) or extremely bad weather.

Unfair comments between Sydney and/or Melbourne

I have heard comments from different sources about what to expect from Melburnians or Sydneysiders and I can tell you... there are some nasties in the bag. I will try to show two of them and my counter argument.

Comment #1

"People from Melbourne is friendlier and less interested on how much money or what type of stuff you have. Sydneysiders are d-bags on this aspect" - Shared by some fellow Melburnians.

Dear people from Melbourne, what type of people have you met in Sydney?

Sydneysiders are not classist or segregationist as far as I can tell. On my two and something years of life down under I have bumped with pretty cool people with little pretensions or preconceptions at the time of socialising with somebody. In fact, our conversations will focus on many things but money, class or social  level you're in; they try to avoid it as much as possible!

Now, I know I can't speak in absolutes and it is possible that I have been blessed to be in a circle without awful social activities such as discriminating people because of their monetary/financial status or type of education, but as far as I have seen, that behaviour does not apply here.

Comment #2

"Melburnians are ice cold with everybody other than themselves... a bit boring but definitely cold people... like Europeans." - Shared by a fellow Sydneysider

I have to say, on those two days of my visit to Melbourne and the day at the airport, everyone was kind and curious of our origins; sharing a laugh while we were browsing or walking around.

Those are comments that I have to add to the 'list of things to never apy attention to', I really don't know why people express things like those.

In conclusion

If you are taking into consideration living in Melbourne I think is a pretty good choice. Even though there are things that I don’t like, it offers really nice options when it comes to food (the city is packed with restaurants), nice transport system (trams and trains) and liveable standards.

Everybody has an issue they must live with.

Some people have strabismus... 

Some people have one leg... 

Almost anybody have at least one condition they have to learn to live with... 

What’s mine?

I... I have... sorry to all of you... is difficult to admit it... But I am going to share my terrible problem with all of you. If you suffer hypoglycaemia, bladder control or aspersers’ syndrome, hold on tight to your seat... 

I have... 

two last names!

Reaction of a chipmunk moments after my last name was revealed. 

Hispanic cultures use multiple last names as ‘the last name’ to indicate their origins and pay respects to both father and mother. A better explanation (if you are interested on reading it) is here. In Latin-America is extremely common to meet someone with two last names and in very rare cases they even use more family names (grandparents or grand grandparents). Someone even wrote an article about it.

Now, why am I writing about my last names? 

Because I would like to recognise the person who had that marvellous idea, he or she should be taken to a podium in front of the thousands of Hispanic descendents living on English, German, French speaking countries... and stone him/her to death! 

Who in their right mind thought about prolonging your name until it doesn’t fit on one piece of paper?

To me it wasn’t such a big deal until I came to Australia (in the States is not a big deal because of the increasing number of Hispanic descendents blending in the American culture, and still they struggle with it at first) and it was totally manageable with almost no consequence until today...

Today I was ready to take the knowledge driving test to eventually be able to drive free in Australia... and have proper identification other than my passport, when I get to the RTA (transport and marine services) and an officer calls me by number to inquiry ‘what can I do for you?’ 

After telling him I had a booking for the knowledge driving test and handover my documents and other papers the guy tells me:

‘Well... everything seems perfect. So you are Rod FatherLastname MotherLastname? Good...

Do you have your passport? Good! 

Silly me... asking for everything when I have it all in my hands.

Let me check... let me check... uh! This is interesting.

Why is your last name in here (pointing to the gas bill) with a hyphen in the middle?’

To what I reply kindly ‘the guy at the gas company got confused with the last name and thought the system could find it easier to understand if he used a hyphen to connect both last names.’ 

He looked at me and said: ‘I am very sorry... but that hyphen changes everything! I could take your last name and consider you are stealing the identity of someone else! ...’ (Yeah right, someone on their right mind will steal a last name with 30-ish characters in it) ‘... So I will need a different document as proof of your address. I am afraid you will have to come back some other day...’

I stood there... silent for 25 seconds... to what I replied ‘Are you serious???????? One hyphen changes everything???????? Every other document matches everything, every single letter of my name and one hyphen in a piece of paper will force me to come back later to take the test?’

To what he replies ‘do you have any bank statement on you at this moment?’ 

‘Uhms... I don’t know, let me materialise my Tardis to then go to level five where the archive is to get you the frigging bank statement!’.... Is what I thought... But my real answer was ‘I have the electricity bill right here (I think)... but it has written my name as Roderiko and if you complained about a hyphen I don’t want to imagine about Roderiko.’

He turned around and handed me over a piece of paper while telling me ‘that is your new appointment, come back on Thursday with a document or reference properly spelled. I am very sorry, but the last name on your gas bill is totally different to the one on your passport.... Bye.’

Seriously, I cannot understand how someone can be so square.

Dear boys and girls... Madame et Monsieur... if you are an unfortunate soul with multiple last names thinking to move to an English speaking country, please take some of my advices:

First, check every identity documents to validate the full name appears identical in all of them. If your name is Mary Jane Watson Smith where your last name would be ‘Watson Smith’, check all your documents appears as Watson Smith instead of Watson S. or Watson-Smith.

Second, at the time you are getting new services, take the time to spell everything until they actually get it right.

Third, do not follow recommendations of ‘is going to be easier for the system and/or consultants to understand your last name’. That is utterly false, they still get it wrong and now you will have a document you won’t be able to use as proof of address (or anything else).

Fourth, if you can and you are willing to, sacrifice part of your last name and change it to their standard version. In my case I have been thinking about it for a while now; today just gave me another reason to do it.  

‘Until next time’ says Rod With-A-Last-Name-Very-Long-And-Troublesome

Australia is a huge country with long distances; those are the main two things you will listen when you are offshore, but you never grasp the meaning until you have to walk, ride or drive.

As many of you might know by now, Kathy and I love to take walks for hours (main reason of our latest tradition, the seven bridges walk), but for everyday commuting is a bit troublesome to walk 20K, under this hot sun or the little-yet-effusive rain of Sydney.

To travel to and from work you will need to relay on buses, trains, cars or any other type of transport you might think of.

Sadly (and this one is a very hard critic to my follow country men and women) Venezuelans have the wrong appreciation of need; that is ‘you need a car for everything!’ or the very well known ‘Is impossible to live in this city without a car!’ (Wrote down two pages of complains justifying myself, realised later on is not worth it).

Before anyone jump with their fire-on torches in hand witch hunting, I would like to expose my ideas so you could later on tell me yours.

First of all, a car is not a necessity (unless you have offspring); the car as it stands is a commodity. Is a pricy sweetener of your everyday commute and as such you should be able to move around without you needing it.

Second, Sydney’s transport system is pretty good (in comparison to many others such as the NY Subway and NY buses, Spain train system and the list goes on and on. Although is not cheap and occasionally stops for 20 to 40 minutes is a system that I have been using for at least 29 months and I find it fast and reliable.

And Third, even though Sydney does not have an awesome bicycle system as Melbourne or Brisbane is a kind of city where you could easy start riding to and from work.

And, why am I writing all this?

I got a bicycle! WEEEEEEH

Bought it just before Boxing Day and it took 10 days to be assembled and delivered to me.

So now I am going to start training to get to the office (at least 3 days a week), getting more active and blood flowing, maximising my creativity and hopefully my productivity.

At the moment I have done my first try to get to the office from home and totally failed it. After a long uphill ride, my legs started failing, I was panting and lose control of my bicycle; resulting in a less than spectacular collision of my body against the hard concrete (with the later on disapproval look of car drivers passing by).

Next couple of weeks will be intense training (trying to build up resistance and muscle strength) to then perform my second attempt to become one of those guys riding like the wind. Let’s see how it goes.

Cheers and till next time,

Before explaining everything about it, and how to make it (for those interested on try it) I will warn you that I will be using lots of terms and ingredients many has not heard before, as many of these ingredients are widely used on Latin-American cuisine and nowhere else. Every ‘weird’ ingredient will have a reference to Wikipedia; in case I miss some of them, please leave a comment and I will edit the post. 

The Hallaca (if you are trying to imagine the sound it will be like ‘ah jacka’... although it seems that I pronounce it as ‘A jackass’... yes, I know you are giggling) is a traditional Christmas dish of the Venezuelan cuisine. There are different variations such as the ‘Pastel en hoja or Pie in Leaves’ of Dominican Republic, the ‘Pastelle’ of Trinidad and Tobago and the ‘Tamal’ of Peru and Colombia; all of them with similar taste but the Venezuelan is one of those with more refined flavours... And I am not saying this just because I am Venezuelan, just in case.

Its flavour (for those you who have not been fortunate enough to try it) is a mixture between polenta with beef stew with a hint of paprika, the sourness of olives, the saltiness of capers and sweetness of raisins; anyone who had it will have a hard time trying to describe its flavour. (Could you describe the blue colour to a blind guy?)

The Hallaca has a very interesting appearance as is stew filling bright yellow dough protected by layers of plantain leaves, and its intense fragrance combined with the smoked Plantain leaves will definitely overtake any other sense in your house.

A bit of history...

Its origins date to mid 1500s when Venezuela was a dependency of Spain and the big families had a huge number of slaves (Africans or Indigenous people) which were forced to eat the leftovers of their masters and given that Christmas is a very important holiday for Spaniards the leftovers were exceptionally good with plenty of pork, beef and chicken to be used by the slaves to cook their own dishes.

To most of the slaves a common meal was the cornmeal dough (a paste made out of corn and water) as it contains lots of nutrients and provides a considerable amount of energy; and as you probably guessed by now, they decided to mix with the leftovers to make some special Christmas dish served on Plantain leaves (the plantain and banana trees are extremely common in Venezuela).

Apparently, several Indigenous tribes used the plantain and banana leaves as a natural way to preserve food by wrapping the food with it and then boil it; and as you might guessed as well, using this technique the slaves were sure its precious Christmas meals could last a very long time (taking advantage to the maximum the leftovers for later on).

Because the Hallaca takes a lot of effort (and numerous hours of work), it was served to friends and families only and with the release of the slaves, the Hallaca made it into the palate of wealthy families (as a way to say thanks to them) which then became a tradition, then a custom in the country.

Leaving history aside

Next I will try to explain the full process (the recipe is for 50ish portions, you could try to scale it down, but there is no warranty it will have the same outcome), as I have to do it from scratch because Australians don’t sell very easy some of these ingredients (such as the smoked Plantain leaves). The process is divided in stages: Ingredients, smoking leaves, making the consommé, making the stew, making the dough, putting it all together and cooking it (again).

The plantain and banana leaves are made predominantly of hard and coarse fibre with a strong and unpleasant flavour when is raw. In order to allow it to be malleable and remove some of the taste it has to be cooked by smoke or expose it directly to fire for short periods of time.

To cook the leaf you will need a barbie (BBQ) on mid to low fire with its grill, pre-warmed evenly.

Take each leaf and place it directly on the grill, notice how the colour of its fibres changes from bright green (or light green depending on which side is up) to a darker and intense olive colour. The Leaf should NEVER change to brown or black (it means you burned it). Make sure the entire leaf is cooked and the colour is consistent and even.

Do not tear apart the leaf because you will need a big enough patch where to place everything later on and bigger patches will be easier to handle than small ones.

Repeat the process for each leaf.

Tip: While cooking the leaf, try to have a humid cloth at hand. The barbie will be hot and the leaf will release a bit of oil (will be hot as well), if you want (and you know you are not going to burn it) use the cloth to handle the leaf as you cook it.

Wash each leaf with soapy water once you have finish smoking it and dry it with a cloth. Be careful with the leaf, it will tore easily. Easy trick to clean it, wipe on the same direction of the fibres.

Making the consommé

Consommé is a very simple soup (my mom would have hit me in the head as I said that). To make it take a pot with 4 and half litres of water and leave it on fire until it boils. Once is boiling take chopped (into pieces) chicken and put it in the water with two table spoons of chicken stock powder (if you want to be a bit more fancy, you could make your own chicken stock), a pinch or two of salt. Let it cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until the chicken is white-ish inside yet soft to the touch.

Once the chicken is fully cooked, take it out of the consommé and shred its meat in long strips. Add to the hot consommé the coriander leaves (you don’t need to chop it). After some good 10 minutes the consommé will be ready to use, just filter it with a strainer to have a clear golden liquid (get at least 8 to 9 cups of consommé).

Tip: If you leave the chicken in the consommé after is done, it will overcook (turning it into chicken flavoured rubber). As soon as the consommé is finished and the chicken is cooked take it out and leave it in a plate.

The stew is the tasty bit of the Hallaca (like the filling of the meat pie, a good meat pie has a great stew, take your time and you will be rewarded). The stew should never be stirred by more than one person and should be the same person at all times; this is a rule and do not ask why?!

In a big enough stew pot (you will be mixing up almost everything here, try to get the side right) you will pour ¼ cup of cooking oil and set the fire to low; slowly melt the butter in the pot.

Once the butter is almost entirely melted, add the chopped onions and garlic. Stir gently until the onions releases its juice.

Then add the chopped green capsicum, leek and chives. Keep stirring for another 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, the capsicum should be almost cooked. At this time you will be adding 100 grams of bacon, let it cook for a little bit to then add pork mince. Stir for 5 minutes, include the chopped pork and let it cook with the lid on for another two minutes.

Add the beef (chopped and mince) and the parsley (about a cup of chopped parsley), giving it a good stir for two minutes to mix it up. Add 2 cups of consommé, 1 cup of water, the mustard and steak sauce and the tomato paste. Put the lid on and let it cook for 30 minutes on mid fire, periodically checking and stirring to prevent the stew to burn.

Then the stew should start releasing all those beautiful smells, when you remove the lid you should get a not very strong bouquet of the beefy stew. Time to add the capers, 300 grams of olives (sliced in rings), bay leaves, wine and the paste of giardiniera (pickled vegetables). Again, stir it to mix in everything, put the lid on and let it cook for 10 minutes. 

Add the chopped tomatoes; stir a bit more (if you decided to add almonds, this is the right moment to add it). At this point you probably have a beefy stew which you could start adjusting the salt and pepper to then let it reduce at low fire. DO NOT PUT BACK THE SPOON IF IT TOUCHED YOUR MOUTH (again, you will have to believe me on this unless you want a very long explanation), the best way to try the stew will be to pour half spoon into a plate, let it cool and then try it. At this point the stew should be 30 to 45 minutes away to be ready. If you have plenty of liquids after that time, you could extract some of it using a clean cup (do not throw away this liquid as you are going to use it later on).

I am tired already and I am just typing the recipe...

As you might have guessed, while the stew is finishing up its cooking process, you could start preparing the dough!

But I will have to write a detour for some of you... 

If you have annatto, you will have to heat up the amount of oil is described below, then to that hot oil you will add the annatto (7 or 8 table spoons for each litre).

If you don’t have annatto, don’t heat up the oil; just use it as is because later on we will add the paprika and saffron.

End of detour.

Pour 5 to 6 cups of consommé, two cups of oil, one cup of water and some of that delicious liquid you extracted from the stew (just liquid, if it has chucks remove the chucks before pouring the liquid) into a bowl.

With your hands, mix up all the liquids and start gradually adding the cornmeal; you must keep it consistent all the time, if you find lumps stop adding the cornmeal and massage the mixture to regain control of the homogenous mass (BUHUHAHAHAHA! you are creating Frankenstein monster!). The mixture must feel sticky without watery bits. If you feel is getting dry add more consommé (or water) and more oil (for each consommé cup you should add ¾ of a cup of oil). Add liquid as you need to, keeping the ratio water/oil, do not add the entire cup straight away since you will have to get to the right balance between sticky soft mass and dense paste (you don’t want to eat play dough).

Keep adding the cornmeal until you have added the two kilos (remember to keep adding liquids as you go). At the end add one table spoon of sugar (sweet and salty flavours always play nicely).

Tip: My mom used to use the right balance was ‘if you take a ball of it in your hand, turn it to face the dough. The ball should not leave your hands yet it has to be a little bit soft.’

Back on a detour.

If you added the annatto to the oil, at this moment your dough should be bright yellow. Don’t do anything else until the next step.

If you don’t have annatto, at this moment your dough should be light cream or whitish (although if you used the yellow cornmeal you might get a different yellow tone); so we are going to add two tea spoons of saffron (imitation, do not use the real saffron as you will expend a lot of money!) and 2 spoons of paprika powder and mix it up a bit more. The dough should be bright yellow now.

End of second detour.

Finally, we have to rectify the salt. Because we have a lot of dough we will have to start adding a full table spoon (of salt, obviously) to the mixture. Once is incorporated into the dough give it a taste, you should get a grainy texture of corn-something-like-chicken-and-another-weird-flavour-product-of-the-awesome-liquid-you-added kind of taste. If is a bit pleasant and you like the flavour then you are spot on. If not adjust a bit more the salt until you get it.

Tip: always start with little salt while you are adjusting. It will be extremely difficult to remove the salt once you have added it. If you like, try some of the dough before adding any salt; the dough will need some salt anyway because the cornmeal masks some of its flavour.

Putting it all together.

The moment to combine the dough, the stew and the plantain leaves has come. 

Take one plantain leaf and spray a bit of oil on its centre (prevents the dough to stick to the leaf).

Make a ball of dough (about 8 centimetres in diameter) and place it in the middle.

With a chopping table wrapped in plastic cling, flatten the ball with the table until you get a pancake like shape. It must be close to three millimetres thin; thinner than that and it will be very difficult to get out of the leaves, thicker than that and you will be having a fat Hallaca with the filling on one side. The ball should be by now a 22 to 25 centimetres yellow dish on a plantain leaf.

Place one to one and half table spoon portions of stew in the middle of the pancake. Be aware you must try to leave as many beef stock (or the beefy liquid) out of the Hallaca as possible.

Decorate the stew in the middle with one onion ring, one or two olives, one red capsicum strip, 5 to 6 raisins, a bit of the chopped bacon and one chicken strip.

I am not going to be a critic of the image... but just take it as reference to put together all the components. Image taken from http://chubeza.com

Now one tough part, wrapping it.

I am not going to write the full explanation of this process because it will be extremely difficult to explain without a visual representation, here is a video someone prepared earlier.

I do not use that technique because is a terrible waste of leaves and if you have cooked the plantain leaves as I told you before when you start folding the leave it won’t crack.

As you fold the Hallaca be aware of the fibre, fold it following the same lines made by the veins on the leaf. Then gently compact the content by pressing your hands on each side towards the middle and finish up ‘the present’. You will need some cord to tie it down so the next stage goes perfect.

Cooking it again.

You are now close to taste it! 

Take a batch of hallacas (depends on the size of your steam cooker); lay down certain number of hallacas in your cooker and let it cook for 40 to 45 minutes, this will seal the dough and preserve everything in it.

Once done, let it rest for 10 minutes before cutting it open as the cooked dough is fragile after those 45 minutes. Don’t worry; it will get tougher after an hour or two.

The hallaca will not expire as fast as other type of meals because of its multiple layers of plantain leaves and the dense dough. But you will have to store it in the fridge if you want to eat it in the next couple of weeks or in the freezer if you are planning a longer term for its consumption.

Serving it is easy if you are careful; once the hallaca is hot, cut the cords and unfold the plantain leaves. Then eat the dough with its filling (do not eat the leaves).

If the hallaca is cold (most likely to be after refrigeration) heat it up using steam for 5 to 10 minutes or sprinkle some water on it and nuke it (whack it in the microwave for 2 minutes) then serve.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy! 

Hope you like my mom’s recipe, enjoy it!

Cheers.

This is a public announcement.

Good Lads and Ladies, please... chill out! 

There is nothing to be afraid.

I know the latest news has been confusing and rumours spread fast, out of control.

But I assure you everything is and will be OK.

There is no reason for mass evacuation (or the other type of evacuation, nobody wants a shitty situation) and the police is having a hard time trying to control the chaos.

Please, do not compare with September 11; do not call homeland and security, eventually the crisis will be over! (Now my blog is probably being tracked by 6 agents just because I said that).

So I am going to say it again without prelude (in case you freaked out before getting to the end of the previous post)

I AM NOT CLOSING MY BLOG

I was rambling about why people decides to shut it down because one of my mates (frank) decided to close his and made me reflexive, pondering about the reasons and motives. 

I know my posts aren’t short and most of the time confuse people with bladder control problems... but read to the end before cursing my mom.

By the way, to the anonymous (who sent me an email this morning signing as Anonymous but his email address has his last and first name... yeah, clever!) my mom said 'Thanks!', and she is fine. You probably won’t understand the sarcasm, but it doesn’t matter... you probably won’t read this either and jumped of the balcony screaming ‘this is the end of the world!!!!!!!!!’

I repeat, 

I AM NOT CLOSING MY BLOG

Cheers.

In the next few words (or paragraphs) I will try to explain in my point of view why some blogs die and why you should not be upset about it. I understand the feeling and that is why I am writing down some of my digested thoughts.

Ever since I started reading blogs (mostly from people whom I have not met until later) I wondered what kind of motives they would have to write it down and then publish it?

Why these people share their thoughts in such a personal way in an open media such as the Internet?

That is the question. Image taken from creativeeducation.co.uk

When I started Uni (at the end of the 90s) I was the kind of guy who was totally comfortable being anonymous; my facebook was closed to everyone except those very few close friends (although facebook as much much later) as well as my IM or any other type of contact. In other words, I was the most asocial person you could probably meet. But that never stopped me of being curious, frequently checking the Internet for interesting and appealing stuff with my rampant 128kbps modem (translation for the new generation that was the fastest broadband you could get at that moment, at least in Venezuela).

One of the first blog I started reading frequently (by adding it to my bookmarks) was in 2003 and those posts were written from Florida, by a photographer on his mid fifties who decided it was about time to retire and take lovely pictures of kids buying ice cream, eating lollies or running around in playgrounds, which at the time was a big deal with lots of paedophiles on the loose and people complaining about strangers taking pictures on public places. I guess he was trying to protest or argue with control freaks, more than fighting with angry and concern parents... 

He used to post every Friday or Saturday about his life and how society had changed on the last 30 years in Florida, but after a while the blog posts stopped; very few people were following him (or understood the concept of virtually follow someone) and 16 months later, his blog was shut down by his son with a final and explanatory paragraph indicating a fatal blow to his father’s heart; it was just out of the blue. Not long after, the blog was deleted from wordpress and with it, the incredible tales of his author. The content of the blog and the blog itself died with his author.

Image taken from andrewcaldwell.org

At that time I was reading more and more blogs, each of them with different topics; from silly poetry to music, videogames and software development.

There was one in particular I remember the most; it was themed on cakes and desserts, called Caroline’s Cakes blog... but in reality the blog talked about anything but cakes and it was a way to vent different situations in her life (business decisions, life, friends, etc), and the reason of why I remember this blog in particular was because I always felt ashamed of reading it in public with its bright pink and yellow pastel colours and corky midi music in the background, which by the way made its way to the internal speakers of the computer, at loud in the laboratory; it happened once and I said it was one of those frigging pop-ups and I was trying to kill it... yet no one believed me.

But somehow I felt connected to her; connected as if I was her close friend like if I knew her, her thoughts, her way of writing and her silly jokes.

That is one of the many reasons why I felt offended when she decided it was about time to move onto different things, closing down her site and erasing her blog without warning, excuse or the expected ‘that is all folks’ sort of thing; she just closed her blog. To me it was a ‘facebook un-friend’ sort of deal, where someone just decides to take you out of their lives. But who the bloody hell was I? She knew nothing about me! Not even a single peep; never left her a comment or let her know I was reading her gobbledygook. There was no reason for me to be upset, and yet I felt she killed it.

Why would she dare to share feelings and mood to total strangers? 

How did she realise that is better to keep her life to herself after almost two years of constant bickering

When did that happen? 

And why did she remain silent when she had followers and cyber friends?

There was a missing piece in my puzzle, why would someone take the effort of opening their world, putting it into words and writing it down then close that chapter in their life and pretend it never happened?

Radicalised on not spending more time reading someone else useless mumbling I decided to stick to just tech blogs. It was the safest approach as very few IT people, writing down code and ‘best practices’ decides to shutdown their blog to do more entertaining things. 

Let’s face it, we communicate better with a keyword than with our mouth.

But my radical solution started to fall apart as I took the decision of leave Venezuela behind to move somewhere else, making our mind to choose our destination and familiarise with the culture of our soon-to-be home; reason enough to invoke the-daemons-who-find-it-all and browsed for hours any related story about Australia, filling up my head with more stuff than I could possibly remember, keeping me busy and distracted from many problems and situations of Venezuela.

It was amazing how much people have had shared when it comes to migrating to Australia. Is at that moment when you realise it does not matter the differences of culture as long as you find something in common to start a conversation, which later on leads you to friendship.

Sadly enough, very few of all those blogs were active; in fact, half the blogs were already dead! And the cause of death seemed to be Australia (arriving to it or settling in it), causing the flow on entries to dwindle for several months until total stop or the expected ‘we are going to close/end/finish blogging, it was a lovely experience but... [insert-excuse-here]’ blog post.

Could not understand why it happens. I could not possibly understand it because I was not living in Australia and the blog was an escape pod from the atrocious reality of Venezuela.

But you know, eventually I got my visa, moved here and started my life all over again and after a year of adaptation I begun to understand the motives behind the desertion of those moving to Australia.

It was like meeting with an old acquaintance whom you have not seen for a very long time: Greetings, profuse conversation about family, parents, exes (strangely enough someone will ask you about that someone who everyone knows but him/her should not be named), business or bad decisions in life and that is. End of the conversation, both parties look awkwardly to the sides and cheers goodbye.

You just ran out of conversation topics.

Of course, you could mention any funny anecdote of sometime ago but you don’t want to delay the inevitable... So you stay quiet, tapping your glass to make the other one a bit more uncomfortable to then say ‘hey, there is Mary! Has been so long since we talked! Let me check her out!’ Ending the conversation without the nasty and impolite ‘I think we don’t have anything else to talk about... off you go!’

Yes, we know... Mary was part of the plan all along. She was your escape pod from that dangerous situation of uncomfortable silence. You told her to stay there and call you out or wave hello in case you started looking to your right and left. Or even better, you just had enough beer and have to go to the loo.

Finally I was getting it, why blogs were dying! I was not because the authors decided to regain privacy of their lives... It was because they got to the point where they would have to share the private details of their mind and lives, the little details they were hiding all the time and all of the sudden, without any new source of events will be forced to share their precious intimate moments!

So the best tactic to apply is run for Mary or escape to the loo, killing the already dying blog.

To those who gets angry at the authors (like I did) whom leave their blogs in a painful state of abandonment, this post is for you. Learn to forgive and move on.

To those who decided to abandon their blogs. Respect your readers and send them one final post. Dolphins would say ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ although the mundane crowd won’t understand it. Eventually it will be appreciated.

As you might notice by now... my blog is not dying given the amount of gibberish I just wrote.

If makes sense, good onya!

If it doesn't, eventually you will get there.

Until the next time.

As some of you might know by now, I have decided to switch to a different ISP motivated to find better speeds, awesome browsing experience and compelling customer experience...

Cultural parenthesis on; 

Do you know what ISP is? I am going to stop here to explain what ISP stands for (just to be on the same context).

ISP stands for Internet Service Provider... Or at least that is the definition I am going to be using on this post; actually is going to be the only definition I am going to be using on this blog as I could check with urban dictionary... 

Some other usages of the abbreviation are ‘international shit provider’, ‘inscribed signed photographer’ or ‘I suck penises’ as I could find on urban dictionary.

Cultural parenthesis off;

But before getting into deeper waters, why did I want to switch to a different company?

My initial contract (the very first service I acquire in Australia, after my mobile of course) was my Internet service; a must-have-service to track and hunt down the desired and needed job to bring food to my table, and I set it up with Optus.

Why Optus?

When you arrive to the country there aren't any references on quality of services, how they treat their customer or how great their networks are... In fact, you got to be glad to get some response from some of these companies because they will ask for those marvellous 100 points to open up a contract.

Now, 100 points are kind of easy to get: You need a credit or debit card (it will be 96 points out of 100... demonstrate you can pay).

Identity document showing your pretty face and names (if you have an Aussie driver’s license you are done... but remember you gotta pay... In my case was my passport... so another point to the bag).

At least one bill with your current address. Electricity and gas could be among your first set of bills, was not my case; I was more interested on getting Internet than electricity. Now I wonder from where would I get power for the modem? 

Finally but not least, your lease agreement; they need to know you are connecting services to a valid address where you have access to. Obviously!

I know... I know... 100 points does not explain why Optus, but I have to build up the expectation, isn’t? Plus, it is related.

Initially I was going to sign contract with iinet; someone told me about their great service and excellent rates, but after a call in which they asked me if I had an active phone line to do the installation and enough money to pay for installation, activation, connection, fornication, insemination and gestation of whatever they wanted to charge me for I decided to look a different horizon. I must be honest here, I was trying to get any service for very few money, and the fact they were asking for a$350 dollars just on equipment was a big deal in my budgeted and super planned future.

Someone else recommended TPG as ‘They are cheap but not great’. What I heard was ‘they are cheap and awesome-because-they-will-fit-on-your-tight-budget-and-they-are-utterly-awesome!’ so decided to give them a call.

The initial conversation was a bit confusing, partially my fault because I did not say ‘I would like to set up an account with you’ but said instead ‘I don’t have Internet and I would like to...’ to which the representative asked me if I had username... username of what???

Took me 12 minutes to fall into the realisation, the guy thought I had connectivity problems instead of trying to set up a new account. This was the very first lesson when dealing with sales representatives: ‘be direct and concise’; had to hang up and call again because the guy stood blocked when I told him I did not have an account with TPG.

Now... I want to explain why it took me 12 minutes... I am not an indigenous bloke extracted from the middle of the tropical rain forest with no social skills... I think... The representative did not ask if I had an existing contract (to which the answer would have been 'no'), did not ask me about any pre-existing connection in my unit and finally (an probably more important) the building manager told me 'some services will be pre-connected for you and all you need to do is to call and set up your name to start the proper billing'... I thought the Internet was one of those services.

Second attempt was better in comparison, this time I got to the right representative to which the guy asked me if I had land line (home phone) for my naked broadband. I don’t know many things about networks but to me ‘naked broadband’ meant I don’t needed a land line to get Internet connectivity, so as you might guessed by now, the conversation went very wrong as the guy kept saying I needed a phone line to hook up the modem to it and I kept refusing opening any contract to get a phone I was not going to use at all.

After a third call and my negative to open a Telstra contract for whatever months, I decided to talk to someone else.

Later on that day, walking on the mall I was engaged by one of the Optus sales person, inquiring about my inexistent connection, imaginary broadband speed and low desire of opening a contract with Telstra (as it was shown to me to be the very devil in Australia). The guy asked me if I had the papers with me, which I did, and pulled the contract; checking with me with possible installation dates. I was marvelled, it was so easy that I was almost in love. The guy told me I need a phone line, but they were going to provide it for me and there were no huge costs upfront, everything was going to be paid with the monthly fees and I had not to worry, just enjoy the ride.

Needless to say I signed up a contract for 24 months without reading in details the contract; just skimmed the doc trying to find the words ‘your soul is ours’, ‘you are automatically an organ donor and we are going to get it out soon enough’ or ‘Buglabu’ (you will probably won’t understand this last one... is an internal joke and I won’t write it down here... just you know is pretty bad... very very bad). Everything was set with Optus, in 7 working days I was going to have Internet connection at home, and in reality it took just 6 days to finally have everything connected and fully functional. It was a 20 GB data transfer with unlimited calls within Australia (that I used to the maximum until I start working, later on the phone was as decorative as a picture frame), it was good but you got to be careful not to exceed the data allowance; otherwise I was going to be paying 2 extra dollars per MB in exceed... Now that I think about it, the contract did specified the buglabu section!

But... If everything was pink love story... what happened? Why did you decide to move away from Optus?

They sell you the kind of relationship exhibited on the graphic below.

As any relationship, you got through different stages: 

The everything-is-perfect stage: there are no flaws, you like and love absolutely everything from it. They could be getting you impaled but you love it.

The is-all-good stage: you are digging the service or the relationship; is not entirely perfect but there are a couple of things that would be great if improved.

The meh stage: you don't really care as long as it works. This stage is also known as 'the cheap-prostitute-from-the-bar-after-you-came-back-from-three-years-of-solitude stage'

The there-is-something-better stage: unsatisfied complaints and poor performance has dug a hole in your mojo; you could choose to complain with what you got or start moving to a different provider.

The I-am-sick-of-this-friggin-shit stage: you know it is hell. If you open up your mouth to express yourself is going to be shut quickly by two tons of manure freshly produced. Most users never get to this stage because it requires constant abuse and very poor ethics from your provider.

With Optus I moved to the second stage within two months with very few details every now and then but inconsistent Internet speed, staying on stage two for almost 14 months. I was pretty happy with them (even though the $99 plan really costs $102 because they will charge you printing your bills or administrative fees – that is 3 extra dollars a month). Needless to say, I became a compulsive reviewer of my Internet consumption, knowing what to download and when to download it just to be within the plan avoiding costly mistakes.

One day close to the year and half of signing contract with them, a mate tells me he is on the same plan with Optus (freshly captured by their offer) to which I noticed we have the exact same plan with a tiny difference, his broadband had bigger cap than mine expanded to a 120 GB broadband allowance.

I thought to myself that I would be great if I could get that ‘upgrade’ in my plan, eliminating my concerns of exceeding my data quota.

Calling Optus was very challenging... they changed their data centre to a voice recognition system in which you had to say the motives of your call to later on be redirected to a proper representative. My faith with the company was going downhill but my determination of getting a more appealing deal was stronger than their complex and confusing system... It took me at least 6 minutes to talk to a real human (with strong Indian accent) but I was finally exposing my interest of upgrading my plan, charge-free on exchange of renewing the plan for another 24 months.

I must confess... to the guy, my proposal must had been confusing and difficult to understand, he asked me several times if I was going to cancel my current plan to move to another company or if I wanted to pay more money to be upgraded on the data allowance. The conversation continued for another 25 minutes to end in my realisation of not a chance in my wildest dreams. Apparently Optus needed to cancel my current plan to open up a new one, but since my plan was still 6 month to be over I had to put on the table money for early termination fees plus the money I was supposed to pay Optus for the next 6 months... that was a grand total of 700 dollars to be upgraded to a plan with them... Seriously... What the funk?

That day I thought I did not want to spend any more time and money with Optus... If they were willing to treat me as rubbish, I was going to move my money to a different company.

Checking again on the Internet, noticed TPG and iinet had pretty good plans. Decided to call TPG first (given some refreshed recommendations at the time) to check rates and plans, but after 5 minutes I was complete convinced with their service (the representative even explained to me what to say to Optus to cancel my current contract waving any residual fee).

So... new love story begins?

Erm... no. The conversation with the first representative was awesome, their guy explained to me they were a bit collapsed with the demand, but he was going to book a day to my convenience to perform the installation of the new service and enjoy wonderland. But the technician never called or arrived to my place on that day. Calling tech support I received the news their guy called me to the wrong number and because of that they were going to charge me more for whatever reason... the conversation went for another 20 minutes, with me raging full of anger super volcano style and ask them what’s missing in my connection, when was I going to be connected again to the cyber world?

I had to call private technicians and understand technical issues related to the line and details that I really don’t want to get into my head!

Story short, it took 3 weeks after the period they claimed everything is going to be operational and some serious blows to my wallet to get my Internet connection working... at last!

At least I got some money refunded after complaining a lot.

What do I think about TPG?

Some of their technical support is good and some others are a total mess.

It was hell to get everything working and I recognise is partially because of their lack of commitment or extreme bureaucracy between contractors, providers and Telstra; I was requested multiple times to contact different specialist with zero or close to zero promise of any resolution for my problems. Guys... come on... I am paying to get the service working, I don't want to know what a MDF is or who's part of the cable isn't working, just get it working!

After everything was connected there have been no flaws or downsides. I am still waiting for the first issue to pop but only time will tell. Until then I will keep posting my funny incidents and stuff worth sharing.

Later!