...and back to harvest time in the Berkeley Hills...

I got back to Berkeley on Wednesday night, caught up with Barry and the house, ate some tuna salad Barry had prepared and it was bedtime. Thursday I was up early to go back to my over-55's exercise class at the JCC, this time with the regular teacher. Rather more dancing-based aerobics , well-instructed so I managed to follow the routines (except for the line dancing, which I could tell was a simple routine but couldn't quite get the hang of ) and less weight work or mat work than I like, but at least it is 1 1/2 hours when I am doing something active with my body. I signed up for the new semester starting next week. Walking down to the class at a reasonable pace had me warmed up well before we started, and I got very hot and sweaty - decided I must bring a towel and wear a tank top next time! Sonya, whom I met last time and had since read some of the blog and found it unexpectedly interesting, didn't have time for coffee and is off to Amsterdam on the weekend, but we exchanged numbers for when she returns, and I met another few class members and hope I will get to know some of them better in coming weeks.

I did a very small supermarket shop for stuff I like to have in the fridge that was missing, and bought an unfamiliar fish to try also - I asked them for some ice to keep it cool while I walked home up the hill in the sun. This was my first chance to use the debit card that arrived in the mail while I was away. I haven't managed to find a way of using Oz-based credit cards or even taking cash out of ATMs overseas using Australian cards without incurring at least 2.5% on the transaction, plus whatever you lose on the currency conversion. You can avoid an additional transaction fee by using affiliated banks, but that avoidable $4 or $5 charge is additional to the percentage fee. So while Barry is working and earning locally, to the greatest extent possible we live off that cash or a local bank account. Unfortunately, in Mexico last year we couldn't get a local account with electronic access due to his immigration status, so used bundles of currency for most things. Here we have a local cheque account with on-line banking and debit /ATM cards, though the on-line banking seems less intuitive than what I use at home. Also, the "pay anyone" feature I use all the time at home to pay bills and transfer money to other people's accounts here is only relatively simple and free for accounts held with the same bank - there is a $30 fee to transfer funds electronically to an account with another bank, which is way too high, especially when looking at small transactions. Last time I looked, I could transfer thousands of dollars internationally from a Melbourne-based account for $25!

People still use cheques very extensively in the US: it seems an expensive anachronism, but maybe they have cheap labour processing all of the paper? I still recall watching how the ANZ bank processed their cheques maybe 20 years ago; despite the MICR coding (magnetic ink character recognition, those funny looking numbers on the bottom), it was still very labour intensive and involved many steps - at home I only write about 6 cheques a year for both of us and curse every time I have to deposit one, but it seems I will have to get used to it again here.

Away from matters financial and back to the land! The tomatoes are running riot in the garden, especially the cherry tomatoes which are unbelievably prolific, while the various larger heirloom varieties are ripening nicely (the yellow ones seem to be first). There are yellow and green capsicums (I will experiment and see if green ones I leave on the plant will turn red later) , several varieties of eggplants in rich deep purple or variegated purple and white stripes, a kind of cucumber which is round, yellow and slightly spiny (the more conventional ones seem to have finished), string beans which have been left too long on the beanstalk and have mostly gone yellow and overgrown, and patty pan (button) squash, which should have been picked a while ago. Some of them are huge and I assumed they would be pretty inedible, but the ones about the size of a bread-and-butter plate are still delicious steamed , though the football-sized ones need to be peeled first but then cook up fine in a ratatouille style mixture. I gave one to Janet and recommended the ratatouille approach, and she found it worked well also. I haven't used any tinned tomatoes in cooking, I just put in the cherry tomatoes which are bursting out of their skins with ripeness and chop up and add a few of the bigger ones, starting with any damaged ones. I am keeping an eye out now and will be and picking the little ones before they get too big for their boots! See a couple of these with their blossoms still attached in the photos below, along with a dark green squash of some kind, which I haven't tried yet - there are at least 4 more hiding amongst the leaves on the ground, and several more not yet big enough to leave their mother.

In the herb department, Italian parsley, thyme, several types of basil and rosemary from the garden have also enhanced my veggie stews for pasta sauce and side dishes. The various salad greens are largely the rather bitter sophisticated type - I adore rocket (called arugula here) but find most bitter leaves a bit too strong for my taste. Also I have filled vases with flowers (see the first photo of just one vase of about four dotting the house, including lots of fragrant roses) and while I am harvesting, I have been eating the ripest of the blackberries growing through Tom and Janet's fence, and the few pale orange raspberries on the canes. The mission figs (look like the blue figs in Melbourne) are not yet ripe so I can't report on flavour yet, and the apples likewise.

And remember, the downstairs neighbours are also helping themselves to the produce. I am no kind of gardener, so it seems quite an undeserved bonus for me to be harvesting all this yummy stuff from the garden ,which I have lifted not a finger to produce. In response, I do feel obliged to cook it and not let it go to waste. I can see the kind of kitchen slavery that a garden in full production could generate for an industrious housewife! Note that I have cooked all the more deeply coloured eggplants, only a couple of stripey ones are left in this picture.

Back to New York City

We had made plans to visit my first cousin Jeremy on the way home from the cottage. He has been living in Scarsdale for about a year with his American wife Tara and their four (and a quarter, as they reliably informed us) -year-old twins, Jacob and Jonathan. After cleaning up from lunch and packing, we headed off, computer-generated instructions in hand. It was an extremely scenic drive most of the way, on the Taconic Parkway which winds gently through very pretty country and is a lot more charming than the wider and straighter State Thruways, Turnpikes and Highways. A deer ran onto the road at one point, and survived as the traffic was light, but it was scary. There was a bit of road kill about, the odd skunk and raccoon and bird of prey. After a couple of hours' driving were supposedly about 30 minutes away from Scarsdale when we encountered what looked like a huge traffic jam ahead on the freeway. By quick thinking before we missed the opportunity, Lissy drove across a grassy median strip onto another road, taking a lead from several other drivers who seemd to be in the know, so we avoided getting stuck in heavy traffic the rest of the way. Ben fired up the GPS, avoided its frequent suggestions that we should get back onto the freeway system, and navigated a new route, which impressed the hell out of me.

It was lovely to catch up with the family again – the boys have lost most of their English accents in the year since we saw them last, but are cuter than ever. I had rudely invited ourselves to supper, and Tara obliged with bagels, delicious salads etc, and lots of ice cream (this was the part the boys liked best!). Ben and Lissy spent some play time with the twins and I caught up more with the grownups, particularly Jeremy, who works as a consultant to the Relais and Châteaux group of very special hotels and writes on travel and food for various publications, including the Tatler where he was the food critic.

As it happens, Scarsdale is quite close to the top of Manhattan, where I have been staying in Joan’s Washington Heights apartment. The kids dropped me off at home before heading back to NJ to return the car and get the train back to Grand Central – I was irrationally delighted because with my generally excellent (not!) grasp of geography, I had imagined I would schlep back there with them and be too tired to come all the way back uptown after 11 at night, when subway works on my line mean the trains don’t run all the way and I’d have to walk quite a way or wait for a shuttle bus after a very slow local train ride. What a bonus to get home early and check my emails and make a few calls to get the last couple of days’ activities set up.

On Monday I went down to the Financial District to visit Ben’s work place and meet his boss and colleagues. It was fascinating as a former computer person to see him in his professional context, and wonderful to hear his boss tell me how brilliant he was (I restrained myself from saying “tell me something I don’t know” and settled for the milder statement that I would not disagree). We speculated about the first mainframe computers I worked on in Australia, England and NY in the 1960’s, which took up as much space as their office and probably had less capacity than one of the servers sitting on the floor (or maybe less than the cell phones or iPods in our pockets). Reminiscing about Computer People for Peace is always fun in New York, too! I noted with satisfaction the jar of Vegemite on Ben’s desk and recalled with regret the self-sealing experiment I am still conducting.

Then I went uptown to meet Judy Sloane, an Australian friend unexpectedly visiting Manhattan. She is staying with a recently arrived friend of hers who is consulting here for a couple of years and has taken an apartment on 56th and Broadway, smack bang in midtown, just 3 blocks from Central Park. I've never lived so centrally and was surprised how very light and quiet her corner apartment seemed mid-afternoon. After a cold drink and a catch up, we went off to wander around the Park for a while, but certainly didn't get there by the most direct route. As usual, I got totally disoriented in the Park and came out on the East side instead of the West or South side, so we ended up wandering maybe a bit longer than planned. We stopped at the Boathouse, fantasizing about iced coffee which proved hard to find, so we settled for gin and tonics instead, which pleasantly extended the afternoon. Then I had a dinner date at Jay and Ellen’s, dining on their terrace again with a wonderful salad full of good things perfect for a hot night, followed by ice-cold seriously sweet and juicy watermelon.

When I got back to Joan’s after dinner, took off my shoes and went to the fridge for a drink, I found myself paddling on the kitchen floor. Water was dripping from the ceiling in a most alarming manner. I called building security (no idea who else to call at 10.30PM) and after some investigation they reported there had been a plumbing leak in one of the upstairs apartments. Meanwhile I set up a bucket and a lot of rags to wipe the floor and catch errant drips, waiting for the handyman who was expected but rang at 12.45 AM to say he wasn't coming.

I had hoped for an early night because I was meeting Lissy and Ben before 7 Tuesday morning for a helium balloon ride (or rather, rise - it is a tethered balloon, which climbs 200 feet into the air above Central Park near 72nd St). Her firm does work for the AeroBalloon company so we were able to book a time slot for a free ride - even at 7 there was a queue. In the afternoon the queue can stretch for up to 4 hours, as only 4 people can go up in the basket at a time. It was a lovely morning and very clear, and the view of the park is fabulous. I tried to take a 360 ⁰ video but it is pretty wobbly. I’ll try and post it on a photo web site and give you a link. To upload a video more than a few seconds takes forever using this blogging software, and after trying to load one yesterday I gave up after about 25 minutes. See a photo taken from aloft instead, and a shot one of the balloon guys took of the three of us.

After we came back to earth, we went out for a very ordinary breakfast, I farewelled Ben and Lissy and went over to Elaine’s for a quick catch up and walk. We took her cockapoo (no I am not making this breed up - it's a cocker spaniel/ poodle cross), Sweetie, to the dog grooming place to be brushed. Unlike Jesse, who hates the vet and tries to bolt whenever we visit (though he has never been to a beauty parlour as I bath and groom him myself), Sweetie couldn't wait to get down the stairs and be pampered. While she was being groomed, we walked around the neighbourhood looking in shop windows (lots of places don’t open till 10, 11 or even 12, and this was around 9 AM) . The Upper West Side has certainly gentrified a lot from when I lived at no 20, less than a block from her groomer on W 83rd St, in the late 60’s – then I was mugged a couple of times , now the main danger is that you could get knocked down by crowds of people queuing for ice cream! Here are Elaine and Sweetie on the corner of 72nd St and West End Avenue.

I went back uptown to Joan’s, thinking I might catch a nap before my next set of activities, but there was by now a large bucket of foul liquid in the kitchen area and I decided to call the maintenance folk to see what was happening. The upstairs leak had been repaired but they figured they needed to make a hole in the ceiling to enable the trapped black water to escape, pledging to return in several days after it has all dried out to repair the ceiling. I opened lots of windows and doors to try and air the place, but hadn't made much progress by the time I had to head off way down to the Lower East Side to meet Vicki in Tompkins Square Park, and roam around the East Village a bit. We found an “Australian” ice cream store, where the ice cream was nice but I still haven’t figured out what is Australian about it, certainly it wasn't the prices! I caught up with her news, including the free store she runs in the neighbourhood, and took in the many changes in the neighbourhood since I last spent any time there.

On the Lower East Side, I was well on the way to my next commitment in Brooklyn , so with some time to spare I managed to fit in a tour of the Tenement museum on Orchard Street, just South of Delancey, which I would highly recommend. There is an activity centre and bookshop across the street, but the "museum" itself is an old tenement building, and the tour consisted of visiting 3 apartments in it and hearing the tales of the families who lived there. One apartment is in its 1904 configuration, one in its 1936 state, which was when the last families were evicted. Highly recommended! The records they have recovered and some testimonies are really fascinating, and though I don’t know if my family (my paternal grandparents’ siblings) who were briefly in New York before settling in the Cleveland area ever lived somewhere like that, it's not much of a stretch to imagine it.

And thence to Borough Park in Brooklyn, to see my nephew Moshe, his wife Leiba, and their 3 lovely kids, Chayale, Shifra and Yisroel. They had driven in from their home in Lakewood, NJ, for an hour and a half to meet me for dinner at Dougies, a Glatt Kosher institution, with barbecued meats, kebabs, steaks, Chinese food, kids meals, a buffet with grilled vegetables and a couple of salads. I ate too much but considerably less than I could have. Family resemblances are so strong – almost 3 year old Yisroel looks exactly like Moshe at his age; Moshe looks just like my brother (his father); Moshe remarked how much Ben (from photos in my camera) resembles his Zaide (my father)... we can’t help but comment on the similarities whenever we meet. The first time I met Leiba, it was the female side of the family we talked about, with resemblance between me and my niece Esther, and a then much younger Chayale, but tonight it was the boys. One interesting piece of news that I hadn't heard: Leiba has started a match making office, and is doing a great job by the sound of it – I think she’d be really good at it. From what I know of her, she is a very people-oriented person, generous and very warm, also persistent and resourceful. It sounds like a very nice way to do well by doing good, and I wish her every success!

To Massachusetts for the weekend

In Melbourne we don't have a weekender. I find it hard to spend 6 months of the year somewhere other than home base even in one hit, as we are doing currently, let alone broken into small snatches of time, and when I am away I often miss something I left at home. Having two of everything might be one solution, and I suppose one gets used to the driving, but I think I must be more of a stay-at-home person, especially when there seems so much to do in Melbourne at the weekends and I don't really want to be away from friends and activities.

But I finally got to spend a weekend at Lissy’s parents’ cottage in the Berkshires, near Stockbridge and close to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The whole family, Barbara, Bernard and the kids, have been going up there since 1983. They love the house and the Beachwood community they are part of. It is quite a long drive from NJ, and for us it was an even longer trip, as Ben, Lissy and I met at Grand Central and got the train to Summit, NJ, where we met up with Lissy’s brother Drew and had dinner in a local Chinese/Japanese place. We stopped by the family home to collect Lissy’s mother’s car and pick up a few things – a really nice cheddar, which I particularly appreciated as it can be hard to come by tasty cheese in the US, some maple syrup, and a watermelon, before we embarked upon the 2 ¾ hour drive. At least the late start meant we encountered no traffic snarls on the way up.

We got in not much before midnight and spent a little time in front of a log fire with Bernard and Barbara, discussing the myriad places to see and cultural events available for such a short weekend. We even checked the weather forecast to judge when it would be safest to go to Tanglewood, the one Must Not Miss activity on the list, and how and when I could fit in some exercise. As we had arrived in the dead of night, the view from my bedroom window in the morning of the lake lapping right up to the edge of the garden was quite a surprise for me. Just a few water lilies were open, there were boats dotted about, and a few people were visible pottering about their little docks or gardens.

After breakfast Barbara dropped me at the main road so I could walk into Stockbridge without getting lost (those of you who have suffered my sense of direction will be aware how wise a move this was.) I took about an hour to get to the Stockbridge public library to meet up with Barbara again, walking the 5 km and stopping to take some photos. The lushness of the North East at this time of the year impresses me every time I get out amongst it: no brown plains here, but huge trees in every shade of green, lush fields of wildflowers, and working farms visible from the road with barns that look as if a young Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney could stage a musical there.

The main street looks like a picture book US town, lots of touristy stores and an old inn, The Red Lion, that a local entrepreneurial curtain manufacturer saved from demolition and redevelopment, and is now a hotel with a really nice looking restaurant, the public areas stuffed full of local furniture and wooden items like this rocking horse and a carousel in the same style, and antiques including for some reason a very large collection of teapots (most Americans don’t have much use for teapots, really!) We then drove a little way to an arts and crafts fair in a garden setting: 90+ stalls selling mostly handmade stuff, lots of jewellery and pottery and hand knits and milk churns, honey products, plants, and many objets to decorate your country cottage. I didn't find anything I couldn't live without, but found it very interesting. A bit like St Kilda Esplanade market or the Bazaar Sabado in San Angel, Mexico City, some of the same stuff, some local specialties. Apparently it was a weekend without sales tax. In the US, unlike our GST, sales tax is added onto the purchase price of goods after you buy – you need to be sure you have 6-8.5% of funds in reserve, and when I first hit NYC 40 years ago, it came as a terrible shock to be charged more than I expected for everything. I've got used to it now but first time travellers to the US, beware!

A tax-free day is an incentive to shop, I guess, and there was a tent sale of jewellery in another close-by shopping area also taking advantage of the bonanza. Here we did a lot better, finding a pair of earrings I liked in silver and a reddish agate, and several pairs of earrings and rings for Barbara (who has daughters and granddaughters to consider also). Barbara generously bought mine for me as a memento of the occasion, and I wore them the next day (and have them on now as I type up this draft on the plane back to Berkeley).

It was coffee time and we stopped off at a chocolate company in the same area, where the coffee was fine and I managed to resist anything dangerous to the waistline. Whatever we think about Starbucks (and its recent decision to close most of its stores in Australia is something of a testament to the strength and persistence of our own pre-existing coffee culture), there is no doubt it introduced a decent cup of coffee to much of the USA, and one is far more likely to encounter something drinkable at most coffee places since its advent. Now we need someone to do the same for tea – you still often get a lukewarm cup of water with a wet teabag in the saucer and half-and-half in a little jug or a UHT container on the side! (I have been told by Berkeley locals that the people who founded Starbucks used to work for Peet's, a locally famous store that specialises in fine teas and coffee, and I have met lots of locals who also fail to appreciate the ubiquity of Starbucks. I haven't sampled their tea in any of their cafes, but have tried a variety of their loose teas and tea-bags left here by Sally and Monica, which have all been good.)


There were some errands to run in the nearby centres of Pittsville and Lee, and we took the scenic route, seeing the local theatres and the different styles of the towns. There used to be a very big GE plastics plant n Pittsville but with the decline of local manufacturing there is less employment – I think a bit of urban renewal is happening, but it looked a lot less prosperous than the other places we visited where there is a lot more tourism and cultural life apparent at street level. We were considering picking up something towards our evening meal but a call to Bernard revealed that he, Ben and Drew had had a successful fishing trip on the lake and we would be having fresh bluefin for dinner.

The younger generation had been playing tennis and were running the few kms home when we got back. I know Ben finds it hard to fit in enough exercise while working long hours in Manhattan, so he gets very outdoorsy and active in the country. Lissy had also fitted in a quick trip to the local outlet for some essential purchases – living in NYC without a car, one misses the Mall experience. We had a late light lunch and did some lazing about, chatting and reading before dinner – Bernard (aided by the other anglers) had cleaned, filleted and prepared most of the fish (he left a couple whole on the bone, you can see them on the platter in the photo in case you want to know what a bluefin looks like). We polished them off for supper with lots of salads and headed out to Tanglewood with desserts packed for a picnic on the rolling lawns which surround the “shed”, the roofed area which seats 5,000. The kids took me for a bit of a roam through the main areas, some Frisbee tossing happened and as the sun set we returned to the picnic set up, with our low chairs, a large candle in a can (the lawn was beautifully lit by everyone’s candles, and by the rising full moon). We had ice cream and berry pie before the programme began.

It was an all Russian program, Glinka, Katchachurian and Prokofiev. I wondered if the crowd on the night would have been bigger if not for the recent trouble in Georgia with the Russians. I could only imagine how the place would look with a crowd of 30,000 as there was on July 4, when Ben and Lissy had celebrated Ben's birthday at a tribute concert for James Taylor. Reading through the Tanglewood programme, I am again reminded of the population of this part of the US and how much is available. There is too much on even in Melbourne to do it all, with our 3.5 million people, but the music, film, art dance and theatre around here, in easy reach of NYC and Boston and the many smaller population centres around, is quite breathtaking. Google Tanglewood and eat your hearts out, music lovers everywhere else!

The concert itself was excellent. The soloist in the piano concert, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, had the most beautiful touch. There are huge screens which give an excellent view from the lawn - we could see close-ups of the soloist who was wearing a rather peculiar shirt and jacket, of André Previn who was conducting and has aged a lot from the beautiful young pianist who was married to Mia Farrow, and of the orchestra. The sound seemed excellent too, but Drew, who wandered into the shed for a while, told us how much better the sound was in there. It got a little chilly later in the evening, but I had borrowed a heavier jumper than I had with me and was comfortable in that At the end of the concert, people cleaned up their areas meticulously – I didn't see a single piece of rubbish anywhere on the lawns, what a pleasure to behold. Maybe music hath charms to soothe the troubled breast that leads to littering!


Sunday was forecast to be a sunny day, and we had all managed to dodge Saturday’s thunderstorms, so we were pretty lucky with the weather. After breakfast, Bernard took me out on the inflatable boat and we putt-putted slowly right around the lake. It is quite large, and their house backs directly onto it. It has silted up a lot in the time they have been there and there is a bit of a weed problem, so that one really can’t swim directly from the garden and navigating through some areas is a bit tricky as the weeds foul the propeller. There is a summer camp on one side of the lake with its own beach, and many very large houses which have grown over the years although in the Beachwood community, you may build up but not out, so they can’t increase the footprint of the houses. Tanglewood has its own beach and the estate also backs onto the lake. There is a little island where Canada geese nest and it was absolutely gorgeous to be out there on the water in the sun (with hat and sunscreen, of course!) enjoying the lovely scenery and greenery. I shot some video but my technique is appalling and I won't impose the results on you!

I guess living where we do in Kew we have water and trees and hills all around, but Ben says living in a small apartment in the city with not much greenery outside of Central Park, he really appreciates getting out of the city, needs it in fact. I guess his years in Bondi made him more of an outdoorsy person than he was in Melbourne. Before lunch, Ben and I walked around to the town beach for a swim. As on Joan’s lake beach, there is a dock made of decking, but this also has a sandy (presumably constructed) beach with an area in front of the buoy-enclosed swimming space which seemed popular with parents of very young kids for some safe water play. There were boats of various sizes moored nearby, useful for keeping me swimming straight. As a lap swimmer used to an indoor pool, I wish there were lines in the sky to keep my backstroke straight, but apart from Ben, who hopped out and read his book long before I finished, there was no-one else swimming to bump into. The water temperature was lovely but the weeds were a bit of a worry, especially when tendrils wrapped themselves around my goggles and followed me everywhere. I found a relatively clear space and really enjoyed the exercise, and worked up an appetite for the delicious lunch (see photo of part of it).

It is a long way from Borough Park to Washington Heights, but only one change of subway, and quite a short connection so that once I got on the F train just across from Dougie’s it only took a bit more than an hour to get home. Joan says of the A train that it’s a reading train, and it is true that the journey goes a lot faster with a book or the newspaper. They were giving away promotional copies of the Daily News (I’d never buy it, Rupert Murdoch doesn't need my money) but it was an interesting read, so right wing and with such a different slant from the NY Times. They had an easy Su Doku (their spelling) as well as a difficult one: I did the easy one in no time at all but 10 at night after a very long day is no time to tackle a hard one!

I seem to be specializing in getting locked out on this trip (I locked myself on out on the terrace in Berkeley - I added this to my email notifying you of a previous post.) This morning at Joan’s I went to do the laundry in the room which is at the far end of the complex, and when I returned I couldn’t get back into the apartment whatever I did with my key. Off to the maintenance office (all the way back beside the laundry) and after several debates, to-ing and fro-ing, it emerged that maintenance staff had come into the apartment to check the progress of the leak (which I believe has stopped) and enlarge the hole in the ceiling for whatever reason. On exit the security guard had locked the top deadlock, for which I did not have a key, rather than just the lock I have been using. So he had to go back to the office and get that key to unlock the door and let me in. I was outside for about 20 minutes, not in the sun this time, and in the company of two bags of clean laundry. Fortunately I still had 1 ½ hours before the airport shuttle was due, so was able to get packed up and leave things shipshape before I left...

I have been writing this as a draft on Virgin America, where there is a power point for every seat, so I have been able to run the computer beyond its battery span. Amazing how much faster the flight, like the subway ride, goes when you are occupied, but at this point I will either go back to my Australian novel, Love like Water, which I am loving like chocolate, or maybe a brief nap: we land at SFO in an hour and a half.

More time in New York City and environs

On Monday, the kids took some time off work and we had brunch together with Lissy's parents, then all went uptown to look at the Park Avenue Synagogue where the wedding will be held next January. They have recently celebrated 125 years in existence as a congregation, in which time their history, posted in the foyer, shows they have merged several different congregations, moved uptown and across town in stages, and moved through being Orthodox and Reform-Conservative to their current Conservative affiliation. The Sanctuary is quite imposing and very suitable for a lovely ceremony, and it seems a very good plan to hold the wedding party in their reception area after the Chuppah so we don't have to go anywhere else, given how nasty New York weather can be in January. Then we checked out a nearby hotel , The Wales, where Lissy had arranged to reserve a block of rooms for out-of-towners coming in for the wedding. It is just a few blocks north of the Shule, and is a venerable older hotel nicely refurbished. There are not too many hotels in this part of the Upper East Side, and their suites are very nice though the standard rooms are quite small.

Actually, the weather was a bit nasty that Monday also - it was like the weather Melbourne used to be famous for ("if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes"). From somewhat humid sunny weather to dark clouds rolling in, flashing lightning and the drumbeat of thunder, we proceeded into intermittent deluges of pelting rain. Fortunately we were indoors for the worst of it, and able to stay there till it reverted to streets steaming in the sunshine. We just got to Bubby's for brunch as the first thunderstorms hit, and it was not bad to be munching my muesli and enjoying a fruit platter while it was bucketing down outside. Later, as we were about to leave the Wales, it started up again - and again, we were able to sit it out in an attractive foyer until it stopped, peering out at unfortunate pedestrians with inside-out umbrellas and very soggy shoes.

Lissy's parents and Barry had left a bit earlier, before the storm, so I was on my own as the kids went off to work and other activities. On Mondays, the Metropolitan Museum (which is just a couple of blocks from the Park Avenue Synagogue) is closed, so a visit was not on the agenda. But I chose a route home which took me up the buzzing 181st St in Washington Heights, as there seemed to be some pretty spectacular shoes in the windows of some of the shops and I am in the market for a pair to go with the dress I will be wearing to the wedding. Alas, despite my Spanish being up to enquiring about heel height, size and colour, there was nothing available with less than sky-high stiletto heels, out of the question for my feet and spine, which at this stage of my life both need some cosseting. So the quest for stupid shoes continues.

When I got home I went out for a walk round Fort Tryon Park in my comfortable Berkeley-purchased Brooks. I followed a pair of young women down a totally different path than I have taken before, and found myself at the very farthest end of the Park, almost on the street. I was able to get back home by following the signs to the Cloisters till I was back on more familiar territory. It is a very hilly park, a great workout for the calves, quads and glutes whether climbing or descending by turns. They are running an anti-litter campaign with amusing signs in English and Spanish, and I still get a kick out of understanding the Spanish. With the wet summer, it is all pretty lush and it is good to see so many people out enjoying it. I also enjoy seeing all the dogs - this walk took me past the dog run I have visited in the past with Joan and her dog, and I do find it very amusing to see Great Danes, pugs, chihuahuas and every kind of mongrel playing together - the doggy melting pot, I guess, very appropriate to New York's ethnic and cultural history.

Barry returned to Berkeley on Tuesday around lunchtime. As he had very little luggage, he decided to take public transport to JFK- the A train from Joan's goes all the way to connect to the Air Train, but not all A trains go all the way to the end of the line - so it took a bit longer than expected. He made it just on time, apparently, though he had left home before 1.30 for a 4.40 flight. He always likes to be early for flights, so it was a bit fraught.

After hanging out with him till he left and wasting time on the computer, I headed off for another long walk in the park. It always lifts my pace to have music with a strong beat, and I couldn't find a 60's rock station. So this time I was listening to songs on a couple of Spanish language stations on my radio. But while searching, I did also encounter a long diatribe about 9/11 and a conspiracy theory about explosives having been laid all along the central core of structural steel in the buildings, with a coalition of engineers and architects presenting evidence of this - I guess if you want to know more about it, you could Google. It was rather nice to hear that the loony conspiracy theorists are not all on the Right, took me right back to my days in NYC in the '60s!

On Wednesday I took the Broadway subway to Marble Hill in the Bronx, which is just half a block away from the Metro North Station on the way to Emily's. I suspect it may be quicker to go way downtown and get an express from 125th St, but I like this neighbourhood connection. I expected the fare to be more than the $3.75 I was charged as a Senior off-Peak one way, and paid with a $20. The machine gave me a whole lot of lovely shiny new dollar coins in my change - I felt like I'd hit the jackpot on the Pokies! But ever since I have had to convince people to let me pay using the coins - they seem to prefer the tatty old greenback. Coming from Oz where we haven't used notes for smaller denominations than $5 for decades, it seems peculiar that people should mistrust coins. Surely they must be harder to forge than the very old-fashioned paper notes which have not yet been plasticised, hologrammed, clear-windowed or in any other way updated for yonks.

Emily met me at the station and we hung out at her place for a while, giving me time to eat large quantities of really delicious apricots from her farmers' market and to compare gazpacho recipes. Then we headed off to visit Joan's summer cottage. It is part of an old socialist bungalow community called Three Arrows - they still have the Norman Thomas Social Centre where they have film nights and all kinds of get-togethers. It was a gorgeous day so we got in a swim in her lake, Barger Pond, where you swim off a dock with life guards, kayaks (with lifejackets) and assorted other recreational equipment. The swim was very refreshing , the water warm and cold in patches, but it is quite brown - not milk coffee like the Yarra, whose colour comes from finely suspended colloidal clay particles, but more like weak black coffee from algae. I had my goggles on and couldn't see anything at all through the water, but Joan says the algae are really good for her curly hair! Afterwards I donned a life jacket and joined Joan and Emily on a trip across the lake to view the wetlands. Never having kayaked before, I discovered it was way less uncomfortable than it looks, and apart from a few dodgem car type snarls, the others were very kind to me as I wobbled my way in their wake.

We had a few nibbles and a glass of wine after returning from the pond and showering, then went for a bit of a wander round the estate. Joan is considering moving up to a bigger house than her bijoux cottage, so she took us past it to check it out. She had invited us to stay for dinner of grilled chicken and vegetables and salads, but the gas bottle ran out so she transferred from the outdoor BBQ to the indoor broiler and we had a delicious meal anyway, all working harmoniously on the vegies for grilling, the potato salad and the caprese salad with wonderfully fragrant basil Emily had brought up from her garden. Then Emily went home and Joan and I spent some time lazing about reading before heading off to bed. See photos - I didn't take any by the lake - as Joan said, why would you take photos of 3 women of a certain age in bathing suits!

Dogs are not allowed in the swimming area, so we had left Joan's small Maltese Terrier Lille Ting behind when we went to the dock. When I changed into my bathers, I had unwisely unpacked my small backpack and left my travelling tube of Vegemite alone in the house with the dog. I went to get it for breakfast in the morning, only to discover tooth marks in the tube - and at last Joan understood why the dog had been so thirsty the night before! I intend to experiment with Vegemite's self-sealing properies (I am sure the amount of salt in Vegemite doesn't permit many living things, including bacteria from a dog's mouth, to survive) and may update you later on whether I actually decide to discard the tube or press it back into service!

New York, New York

We decided on a flying visit to New York City from Berkeley to see Ben and Lissy for the first time as an engaged couple. Barry could only spare a few days as his semester starts in a couple of weeks, but I decided to stay for 10 days. I find that my trips to NYC are a bit like merging onto a freeway on-ramp: you have to get up to the speed of the traffic, and it always takes me a few days in the City to get moving fast enough to get up to the pace of New York, let alone pack in all that I want to do. Fewer than 10 days is just not enough time to catch up with family and friends from when I used to live here in the late 60's and early 70's.

It is great to be in New York again. It is so good to catch up with old friends, though now we are spending more time in the Northern hemisphere, we are seeing our US-based friends a lot more frequently than in past decades.
We are staying at Joan's - she is at her summer house in Putnam Valley so we have the place to ourselves (I say "we are" - in fact I am writing while I am still here, but Barry has left - he has already returned to Berkeley to get set up for his semester's teaching.) We went to Jay and Ellen's for brunch on Sunday, all-American blueberry pancakes, sausages and maple syrup. We last had the pleasure of their company in Melbourne in February, when they finally made it down under to Australia and New Zealand . Ben and Lissy joined us for a while when they returned from visiting Lissy's sisters and their families in the Washington DC/Maryland area. Here are Jay and Ellen and Lissy, sitting on the deck, and Ben and me in a tiny video Barry shot by mistake, .

They have an amazing tablecloth made for table with an umbrella. As well as a hole in the centre to accommodate the umbrella pole, half the cloth unzips to open out so you can take it off the table while the umbrella is still up! I was impressed with its ingenuity: though I have cut a hole in the middle of a cheap plastic cloth to use at home, I can't say I ever shopped for an outdoor cloth equipped with a hole so it may not be anything new to the frequent outdoor diners amongst you!

Later we came uptown to Joan's apartment and I gave the kids some stuff we had brought for them, including a photo album from Ben's childhood, which we all enjoyed looking through. Ben and Lissy had taken their first ever Zip car to Maryland (a short-term rental, modelled on bike pools in European cities) and found it a great success and reasonably priced. They had to return the car to its garage in the Chelsea area - not the nearest to their apartment, but the closest place which actually had a car available at the late stage they had booked). The fuel and tolls are included in the tariffs, paid for by a card which comes with the car, and you are meant to leave it at least 1/4 full, so we detoured via a gas station to fill up. I forgot to note the price of petrol, which is still considerably lower than in Melbourne, I believe, and way lower than anywhere in Europe, of course. We are considering using a zip car in Berkeley, but there are no garages close to where we live, but maybe with further research we'll find somewhere more convenient to our house.

Bob and Emily met us at the garage after their day's activities which had brought them into the city, and we walked down and randomly chose a restaurant that looked good for dinner together. With Daylight Saving, it doesn't get dark till nearly 9, and it was a balmy evening though we did encounter some thunderstorms on and off during the day and when we were on our way home. I decided to go all Sex and The City and ordered a Cosmopolitan as a pre-dinner cocktail. It was very ordinary, certainly not worthy of its delicious reputation: the food was also very ordinary, the great quantities not compensating for the lack of any flair in the cooking or presentation. We won't go back there again! The kids walked home, and we dropped Bob at Grand Central to catch the train back to Briarcliff while Emily brought us back uptown to Joan's, where she spent the night with us, as she needed to be in the city the next day anyway. Sorry, no photos as I forgot to take any!

Settling into Berkeley

We had a busy day on Wednesday. We walked down to Cal (which is how the locals refer to the University of California at Berkeley) campus, which took us about 25 minutes, then found our way to the right building by a combination of consulting campus maps and asking people. Barry had to go into the History Department to fill in a lot of forms. This may not sound difficult, but the Dwinelle Building reputedly has undergraduates who have been wandering about for years trying to find the room they need. It is a rabbit warren, rather like those old hospital buildings in Melbourne where wings have been added over time and the same floor is referred to differently in different lifts. Rooms in one direction are numbered in the 100's and around a bend on the same level are suddenly in the 3000's, and there are rooms off other rooms and corridors off rooms and rooms off corridors. And at least one wing has a peculiar smell that transported me directly back into the Old Arts Building at Melbourne Uni in the 1960's.

The campus is very hilly and really lovely, but very large and confusing. You really need a map to tell you where the maps are. The admin staff were all very helpful, but as it is vacation time, and summer school is still in progress, no space is yet available for Barry's office in the History Department, though later in the day when we visited CLAS (the Center for Latin American Studies) where he is also affiliated for the semester, he was assigned a very nice office complete with their Mexican library, so he will feel right at home. There is an extensive programme of visiting scholars, seminars and activities at CLAS, and again, the staff were very helpful and welcoming. It is located just off the campus, around the corner from the hotel we stayed at when we were here briefly last November, so we had no trouble finding it.

Likewise, the local bank branch where we added me as a co-signatory on the account Barry has had since we were in San Diego about 25 years ago was a couple of short blocks away in familiar territory. The quirks of the US banking system, state-based rather than national, always confound us. For example, when we tried to access account details earlier this year at a bank branch in Philadelphia, they couldn't find out whether I was a co-signatory already as those details were only available in California. At least there are now branches on the East Coast, but unfortunately I won't have my own ATM card before we head off to New York tomorrow.

We consulted the Yellow Pages a the bank to find an AT&T office, a bit further afield but near the Berkeley BART station. As we usually visit the US for short periods, a mobile phone contract doesn't really work for us, so we get pre-paid SIM cards to use in our tri-band GSM phones. There are few GSM suppliers, and coverage is not brilliant, so though we are not wild about AT&T's service,there are not many options. It is annoying that in the US you get charged for incoming as well as outgoing phone calls, so our phones ending up costing more than they do at home, even though Australia is notorious for having expensive mobile phone services. At least with the chips we now have, we can call each other free, but there is a daily charge for using the phone at all.

We wandered home via the supermarket: Barry was planning to take the bus home with the weighty stuff (not much of it) and I the very light stuff. We stopped off to check out the JCC, and somehow walked off in the wrong direction. This would be par for the course for me, but Barry is usually much smarter. And also he didn't realize that the bus turned off Spruce St rather than continue all the way along it to and from campus, so when we eventually got back to Spruce after quite a (hilly!) detour, there were still several uphill blocks to negotiate before we found a bus stop. I carried on walking uphill all the way home, taking photos of neighbourhood homes and gardens on the way (some posted here, other shots of the 'hood yesterday yesterday - this bear a couple of blocks away is carved directly from a tree that must have been there before, while all other garden sculptures I saw were metal), and Barry's bus passed me about half way back. It was a very warm and sunny afternoon, and I only got home just in time to change out of my sweaty top and head to the party next door.

Tom and Janet are our new downhill neighbours and had offered to host a welcome party for us to meet them and the other neighbours in their garden. It was a lovely idea and we spent a completely delightful few hours, getting to know the people in the immediate vicinity and eat delicious food (we had brought some Australia wine to complement the supplies laid on by our hosts), including a home made san choi bow using turkey mince. Several more people arrived after this photo, including Krista and Mike with their 3-year old Kit, who took a while to warm up and after many people had left, kept the stayers in stitches. Monica (one of our landladies) is on the right.

Thursday morning I got up early and walked down to the over 55's exercise class at the JCC. It was fun but harder work than I am used to, and I am a bit stiff today (probably be worse tomorrow). The class members were pretty friendly, and I met a woman who lives in our street, so if it is pouring rain I may be able to cadge a lift in future. I also had a coffee at Berkeley institution Peet's with Sonia, who will also be travelling over the next few weeks but I hope will turn into another new friend. With her help and advice from a friendly merchant in a shoe shop nearby, I was directed to a store close to campus where I bought the new Brooks shoes I needed. The guy in the store gave me a pair of socks as a wedding present when I mentioned my son was getting married during this trip! He also offered to call me if end of season stock became available in my size and model at sale prices. This is what I call customer service! He is across the road from the Berkeley Sports Centre, so I checked out the facilities and membership options there before wandering though campus, getting lost for a while, then walking back home.

I raided the garden for some beans, pattypan squash, cucumber, tomatoes and herbs, and got to know the kitchen a bit better as I made pasta sauce and a salad for dinner. I am still totally blown away by the view from the kitchen window, and have pretty much taken up a spot at the kitchen table where I can view this spectacular panorama as my workstation. It is nearly 2PM as I write and the sun has only just come out, and I can even see the San Francisco skyline mist-free. Time to get out amongst it.

Here we are in Berkeley

Ah, jet lag! It is 3.38 AM Wednesday in Berkeley and I was unable to keep sleeping off my travel weariness, so I am eating cherries, drinking chamomile tea from a fine china mug, and looking over the East Bay towards San Francisco through the kitchen window in our rented Berkeley house. We arrived early this afternoon, driven expertly through light traffic from San Francisco airport by an Ethiopian taxi driver equipped with a large enough cab to fit our 5 suitcases and using the GPS on his phone to find a very direct route to our door. It looked like a great neighbourhood from the cab window: attractive individual houses, the hilliness encouraging some interesting architecture and making for wonderful streetscapes.

Sally and Monica, owners of this lovely house guarded by a Xi'an warrior, are shortly off on a sabbatical trip to Brussels, and were here to greet us and show us over the house, which is high up in the Berkeley Hills area. Like the apartment we love to rent in Coyoacan, it showcases the advantages of choosing to rent a place which is someone's home over living in commercially rented accommodation. Sally and Monica have done a much better job of clearing out space for our stuff than we have done for Rob, Kirsty and their kids, who are minding our house and pets while we are away. They have cleared several metres of shelf space for books in the study, emptied drawers, cupboards and wardrobes all over, and left us a nice starter supply of teas, herbs, spices, sauces and staples in the kitchen. The garden is in full bloom and the veggies are spectacular: we must eat an artichoke before the ants do, and there are plentiful yellow and red cherry tomatoes as well as ripening larger varieties, cucumbers, squash, beans, berries, eggplants, different types of basil, parsley and salad greens, peppers, potatoes, a tangerine tree, several not yet ripe apple trees ... and a wireless network for which we now know the password. I hope I remember how to blog - at least I am having less trouble inserting photos than I did on Barry's Mac last year in Mexico, though I have been less than careful about placing them.

Sally also drove us around some key routes, showing us more than we can possibly absorb in such a short time - best restaurants, take-aways, groceries, hairdressers, banks, etc. We are going to try and get by in California without a car, though we will be able to drive hers on occasion, and we'll look into the various zip car/smart car options in the area for special needs. So she showed us the best walking routes to the key shopping and eating areas, and to and from the Berkeley campus. Unfortunately I kept nodding off in the car, but with the aid of a local map and a bit of practice, I'm sure I'll learn how to get where I need and back again despite my notoriously poor sense of direction.

We had some of the garden produce for a snack lunch, with crackers and my own imported Vegemite and cups of tea once they left us to get settled, then Barry napped while I unpacked partially (I had intentionally prepacked one suitcase for our trip to NYC in a few days, and left most of this in place) then I had a very short nap. Around 6.30 PM we walked out the door and headed for the shops, Barry navigating, of course. Our first impressions from the cab ride were confirmed - the very individual styles of the houses and the gardens, where Obama placards sprout alongside apple and lemon trees and all kind of colourful and sweet-smelling flowers. It is pretty hilly, the steepest downhill streets hard on the knees and uphill great for the heart and glutes. We picked up a very few things from the supermarket, noticed the Jewish Community Center which I intend to explore for activities, and had supper at a deli where I had chopped liver and chicken soup with a huge matzo ball and Barry had a pastrami sandwich (really good pickles!)

Because of the hills, the views are gorgeous, and as we took a different route home through the sunset , we had a fabulously red sky, just the perfect start for what we expect will be a very interesting and pleasant 5 months. I have posted just a few of the gardens and houses I photographed on our second day here to give you an idea of the neighbourhood, hoping it will encourage you to visit us!