Lazy Waikiki

Our first couple of days have been pretty idyllic, for the most part. While still to get a true handle on just how big everything in the US is (their trucks, food servings, drinks... why is a small beer a pint???), we've had a good run for the first few days of our week in limbo, between Sydney and Seattle.


Wednesday was a day of laze - a walk down the beach, a walk back up the beach, lying on the beach, going for a quick dip at the beach... I'm sure you can see the theme of the day by now :) was incredibly difficult to pass up on the opportunity when the beach in question looks like this:

After a bit of a walk up and down Waikiki, we came to the foregone conclusion that it's very much tourist town here - but that's ok, we knew that when we arrived :) 


Hunting down dinner was the next order of the day, but first things first - apparently there's a free hula show for an hour every evening down at Kuhio Beach Park, which apparently is pretty good, so we went search for it. It was due to start at sunset, however sunset came, and went (if that is indeed the expression), and no sign of said hula show. A little disappointed, we found a Korean place that served ridiculous amounts of food, and got stuck into some cheap and cheerful Asian food. A quick chat to the concierge confirmed that the show only ran every other day, and this wasn't one of those days... go figure.


On the flipside, taking photos near the water at sunset is fun:

Thursday saw the two of us take on Kailua Bay with kayaks, a generous gift from Mrs Firehouse's teacher friends from HWPS. For two people who don't kayak very often (never!), we took on the bay with quite some vigour, and surprised ourselves by being one of the first across the bay! Having landed on Flat Island, we were treated to a nature lesson from our tour guide, before heading back for some hard-earned (and large of course) lunch. 

The evening saw us finally hunt down our hula girls as promised by the concierge - it was quite a good show, fun and traditional, with the added "benefit" of a homeless man who decided to join in the fun, swinging his hips for a song before someone in charge shooed him away with a big stick.

Dinner at a Mexican place that TripAdvisor told us was good - we finally got out quantities right! Great margaritas, spicy and chicken wings and chilli pork made for a fantastic dinner, all of which we polished off with great ease. We've never been a great fan of Mexican food in Sydney, have never been able to find anything that we'd go back for. As the theory goes, Mexican food should be better in the US, and our first experience in Waikiki certainly lived up to that expectation.

Aloha Hawaii

Well, what can I say about Hawaii. It's everything you'd want from Paradise. It's pretty much always sunny here, it smells of the sea and everywhere you look around Waikiki beautiful people are wearing barely there bikinis and pulling it off.
It's the life.
On the flip side everything is ludicrously expensive, there is abject poverty and more homeless people then I've seen in a long time.
We're staying at the Moana Surfrider .

We've walked up and down the main stretch here at is is the most beautiful hotel around. The inside is just as spectacular, decorated in a colonial plantation style.
The hotel courtyard is built around an ancient banyan tree and you step out from the courtyard into the sand. It's idyllic really.

Yesterday was our first day here and we wandered the streets a little after we got here. We finally settled down to a lunch of Vietnamese noodles and rice. Maybe it was the homesickness that had us reaching for the lemon grass chicken and rice.
After lunch we lay on the beach a while, read books and napped. When dinner time finally rolled around we decided to hunt down The Cheesecake Factory.
As we walked in both inside and outside was packed; upon reaching the counter we realised it was because there was a 50-minute wait for a table. Since neither of us were particularly hungry we decided the wait was worth it. We grabbed a buzzer (someone should suggest this to the owners of Iron Chef) and seated ourselves on the rock wall outside. 50 minutes is a long time, we read magazines, I browsed Forever 21 which was in the building next door and we both took turns deciding what we wanted on the menu. When our buzzer finally flashed red we knew what we wanted, entrees, mains and desserts.
As the hostess took us to our table way back in a part of the restaurant you can't even imagine from the street she informed us that the servings are extremely generous.
So, when we got to our table we ditched the idea of the entrees and ordered our meals from Ben, the tallest waiter I'd ever met. Nuwan's BBQ pork burger came out, seemingly innocous and small; it defeated him. Me, I got two salads in place of the one tostada salad I had ordered. Described as a salad of mixed lettuce, spring onions, chicken, beans, avocado, tomatoes, sourcream and tostadas I expected a small bowls with all the above.
In stead I got this, and that plate is like a platter.

So as I struggled through the mound, I appealed to Nuwan for help, he too was struggling with his Kalua pulled pork burger. In the end the salad defeated me, while totally delicious I could only finish half.

In the end, we left The Cheesecake Factory without even consuming a piece of cheesecake!

Milestones

If you'd asked me at the beginning of the year what the plans were for the coming twelve months, moving to Seattle in the middle of the year wouldn't have even crossed our minds. And yet... in ten minutes time we're heading to the airport!

A lot's happened this year already - it's interesting to have a think about what's transpired:

• 125 days since the initial outreach about this job. Us? Seattle? Pffft. Never
• 104 days since the marathon interview, which ended in a job offer. Surely this is still a hoax...
• 87 days since we made the decision to go for it... 
• 46 days since our visas were approved, and dates started to get real
• 18 days since my last official day of employment
• 10 days since we said goodbye to the majority of our friends and family
• 5 days since we said goodbye to our little apartment... hopefully the new tenants will treat it well for us

Now, I started writing this in Sydney, but since then we've jumped on a plane and winged our way to Waikiki, and we're now sitting in our hotel room, getting ready for dinner! A lot can happen in a short of period of time... :)

It's been a busy five months this year - bring on the rest of the year!

Unduwel - Panni Walalu

These are delicious crispy fried swirls of dough dunked in hot kithul treacle. Yumm. My mum is famous for making these and makes them for special family events and for Sinhalese New Year.
The original recipe came from a family friend and in typical mum fashion she's made it her own.

I'm going to go against my better instincts and not write this as a procedure text type. Just to live on the edge...you know how I roll.



First we soaked a cup of urid dhal, the white version with the black skin removed. We left it to soak over night.

In the morning placed the drained dhal into a blender and added just enough water to make it into a smooth paste. We made sure to add the water a little at a time, the object being to make the mixture as thick as possible.

When it was blended we added 1 cup of fine rice flour. We mixed the two together and left it to rise in a warm spot for approximately 6 hours.

After six hours we headed a frying pan with about 2 inches of oil. In a seperate pan we warmed up about 100 grams of dark palm sugar, half a cup or kithul treacle and a bit of sugar. Once the sugars have melted turn the heat off. For the purposes of absorption this mixture must be hot but never boiling. We tend to turn the stove on for a couple of minutes every 10 minutes of so as we are making these treats.

We spooned the dhal mixture into a square piece of cloth with a small hole sewn in. This is used to squeeze loops into the hot oil.

Which is what you do next. You squeeze loops of the dough into the hot oil. When it is brown and crispy you pick it up and dump it into the hot treacle mixture.

You can see the hot treacle seeping in. Once it has been sitting there for a couple of minutes move it out of the treacle and onto a plate.
Keeps for a few days but best eaten hot, fresh and crispy.

The last few days

In typical Chath fashion, I've spent the last couple of days cooking with my mum. I wanted to use the opportunity to not out some recipes that only she makes.
So for dinner last night we had
* unduwel
* chinese rolls
*vade
and
sausage rolls.
Not to mention lots and lots of tea!
There were also about 100 sausages that we'd bought for the farewell and failed to use. They were shared out, made into pork and fennel sausage rolls, chinese rolls and meat patties.

This is your life....in boxes

When we were planning our last full week in Sydney and telling people, on Wednesday the removalists are coming, I doubt we actually had any idea about what the reality of it would be.
On Wednesday morning at 8, as we were finished our breakfast, of something sweet and process from the ready-made section at Coles, there was a knock on the door.
In marched Levon and Luke. They introduced themselves, shook hands politely and then disappeared for about 20 minutes. In that 20 minutes they parked about 100 boxes, reams of paper and 2 giant rolls of bubble wrap (I know what you're thinking, this wasn't the fun popping kind) outside our door. As they bought it in it occurred to Nuwan and I that we were woefully underprepared.
You see, we had the option of a sea shipment which would take 6-9 weeks and an air shipment which would arrive almost as we arrived in Seattle. If you've been to our apartment you'll realise that we lack the "space" to actually sort these things out. We were hoping to point them out as we went along.
WRONG ANSWER
These guys moved at lightning speed, one minute we had a living room with shelves and cupboard the next we had furniture wrapped in bubble wrap and boxes galore. We barely had time to think about where it was going and pull items from under their noses before they were packed away for two months at least. There was a moment as a I pulled my poor broken mixmaster out of the cupboard that I thought, I might as well leave it here because it's broken. Too late, the bowl and the whisk attachment had already been packed.
We saved the rice-cooker but alas the laundry basket full of the dirty tea-towels and hand-towels I'd been using to wipe things all day disappeared into the millee...I am not looking forward to opening that box!
At the end of day one our house looked something like this

We had a bed to sleep on and sofa to sit on. We could access the fridge by a tiny margin on the side and thankfully still use the toilet. Everything else, including the BBQ was bubble wrapped beyond recognition.
Day 2 was the day the container arrived. We watched as everything in the house was packed deftly into a huge container. It was surreal as the apartment slowly emptied. I finally discovered why I am constantly buying hair elastics and bobby pins, they were all under the bed!
The kitchen was about 15 boxes all up, Luke commented that he'd packed a 5 bedder that had less kitchen stuff.  I'm proud of that statistic.
So here it is guys; our life in a container.

Seven days to go!

So after all the uncertainty around dates, visa application processes, countless forms to complete and people to liaise with, here we are - one week from today, and we're on a plane to Hawaii. What a thought...


Now that the two of us are no longer working, we've turned our attention to our little apartment... and basically torn it apart. As we are sadly not allowed to take any foodstuffs (which means no wine or tea, *sniff*), we've had to purge the entire kitchen of its contents, and distribute the items that are still useful. To that end, we hijacked a dinner last night and brought along our kitchen remnants, and had a car boot sale in our hosts' foyer - I think our parents would have walked away with things they weren't even expecting!


As a consequence though, we have virtually nothing in the house to eat or drink... including tea... which makes it very difficult to get started in the morning...


The next couple of days are going to be even more crazy - more cleaning and tidying today, and then the removalists come in to pack all of our stuff and load it into a truck. It's going to be a busy couple of days...