Getting sporty in Melbourne

Since we couldn't be around for yet another Jays home opener, we decided to get sporty, Australia-style over the weekend. We'd previously caught bits on TV of the strange spectacle that is the Australian Football League (AFL), and since Melbourne is true heart of the league, we figured it was about time to check out a live game. And people are REALLY into it here...

Basically, this version of football (or "footy") involves two teams of 18 guys each wearing tank tops and short-shorts, running around a gigantic circular field and kicking a ball through the goalposts (not to mention beating each other up along the way). The season runs from late March to early September, and it's by far the most popular and well-attended sport in the country. The league began as a solely-Victoria league, which is why many of the 16 teams are Melbourne suburbs-- only recently did the other state capitals get their own teams in the league. Naturally, we have to cheer for Carlton, not only because we live here, but because they're pretty much the worst team in the league (yay underdogs!). So we got on our Carlton Blues scarves and watched as our guys nearly beat the Essendon Bombers... but then lost.

The game itself is surprisingly not at all boring and pretty easy to follow, unlike American football. Aussies often ridicule American-style football because of the players' padded suits-- "That's not real football, mate!"-- which we can now understand, since these guys play just as, if not rougher, in outfits fit for the beach. Luckily, it's not too hard to understand: there are four fast-paced 30-minute quarters and a few strange rules about how to pass the ball. Our favourite scenario is when one player has the ball, and everything's on pause as he readies himself to boot it, while members of the other team stand a certain distance away and do jumping jacks in his line of sight (presumably as a distraction). Quite funny to watch from the nosebleeds!

At the end of the game, the winning team's "song" comes onto the staticky loudspeakers, and the fans sing along. In our case, we got to hear Essendon's song, which was very 1940s/WWII/creepy. Perhaps time for an update? The best part is how much people get into the game. We sat behind two moms and their teenage daughters-- one mom had a hand-knitted Carlton-colours scarf on-- and they were screaming louder than the jock types sitting on either side of us. From what we've heard, the rivalries run deep, and the queues to score a seasons' ticket or a member's seat will commit you for decades- word is locals sign up their kids at birth! Seeing as many of the teams have been around since the 1800's (Carlton's club dates back to 1864), there's a bit of that old-school Yankees/Red Sox legacy flavour, where fans wear their scarves proudly and take every win and loss very seriously. [You can read a little of the history here!]

Although attendance was more than 64,000, there were still many blocks of seats empty in the MCG on that chilly autumn evening (isn't SkyDome around 50,000 at full capacity?). The Melbourne Cricket Ground (or the "Mc G", as we call it, waiting to stand corrected) is an enormous open-air stadium, and shares with the retractable-roof Telstra Dome for all of our local games. It was definitely a good time to be part of a cheering, excited mass; almost-- but not quite-- a substitute for baseball!

The 1st Rule of MLB is -- You Don't Talk About MLB!

I was on my way to a snazzy office building in the CBD (central business district), to drop off some paper work to my 'handler'. Nothing big, just business forms and such, the usual paperwork anyone goes through when signing up with a temp agency. Like most days in downtown Melbourne, it gets hot and bright, so naturally I have my water and my Jays Cap on, pushing through the crowded streets.
In heat this bad no one smiles, it's all looks that cows make when they're cooped up in a pen. Blank stares, slow blinking, anything to save energy really.
You relish the time you have to stop at the intersection while the lights are changing, take a swig of warmer-than-pee water that was ice cold when you left the house. It's in these weird moments time crawls by, giving you what seems like eons to glance around and realize that you're the only one glancing around, studying all those jack-arsed faces - looking forward, slack mouths, blinking slowly, and trying to save energy.

On my return glance across the street is where I saw him, staring right into my eyes. It's the intrusive stare, the kind you first look away from but peek back to see if they've caught you. Yup, you're caught, next it's confusion; "Why me? Is he staring at me?! Maybe he's looking at someone behind me!".
The last thing you want is to be stopped by some crazy in the street that pulls you aside to preach about Mother Mia the Moon Goddess - especially in this heat. So you stare ahead like the others, focus on the walk light. But he's there, staring. Determined to make eye contact again, you can see him just out of the corner of your eye, staring you down like a mean old bull.

It's just before the light changes that I get the guts to look him in the eye with all the machismo I can muster.
Finally I clue into what's going on. Melbourne city dwellers hate wearing baseball caps. With all the heat baking my brain I wonder how I could've missed it. Looking over all those blank faces you'll never see one baseball cap - let alone an MLB cap.
The sea of colliding people stream toward each other from opposite sides of the street, bringing with it the staring dude-- wearing an Oakland A's cap, the green one with a bright yellow 'A'. A giant smile cuts across his face, mine too, our unspoken 'secret handshake'. Before the two sides meld, we both exchange a quick nod, then we're lost in a fury of people pushing, crossing, you have to keep up or be lost in the mess. On the other side safe, I look back briefly - nothing.
And for the 6 blocks I can't stop smiling.

Hangin' at the Grand Prix

Melbourne Grand Prix
Originally uploaded by bigquestionmarks.

Last weekend we both worked at the Melbourne Formula1 Grand Prix- both for the cash as well as well as for the experience. At $99 a ticket, there wasn't much chance we'd be going as fans, anyway!

For two kids who aren't much into cars, it was actually still really cool. Adrian was the guardian of the corporate box for CAT, where he schmoozed and hobnobbed and ate lots of free food, and watched bits of the race where he could. Dayle was placed right on the Grandstand, checking tickets (and busting people who tried to sneak through), and getting to run to the track once in a while to watch. She was ecstatic to find she was right between the start and finish lines!

The weekend was hella hot- we're told quite unusual for March in Melbourne- Friday and Sunday were the worst, wearing thick uniform shirts (to quote Adrian: "I now know what it must feel like to wear a burqa") and sweating like crazy in the 40-degree heat. At least it was sunny! We saw many a drunk sunburned Aussie hiding in the little scattered patches of shade. Dayle actually had a zombie scare (and had begun comtemplating climbing the grandstand frame) when a dude in an orange t-shirt did a loping zigzag shuffle, hands out front, right towards her gate, and then promptly tripped on the first step and fell on his face. She realized then with relief he wasn't a brain-thirsty zombie, he just had a few too many VB's. Phew!

The crowd was really all for Ferrari- maybe it's all about the name?- and there were fans in red everywhere (or perhaps because Kimi Raikkonen won the race here last year). Lots of people wore flags as capes (quite the Aussie sporting tradition it seems) and there were even a few gladiators (check out our pics on Flickr). The band Kiss was closing the weekend, so on Sunday there were also many weird-looking people in black and silver, limping around the grounds of Albert Park in their moonboots.

But the coolest part was the noise- even while wearing earplugs there was something exciting about the vrooming engines on these machines. If you had to take a earplug out, even for a few seconds, the Formula Ones would rattle the teeth. Insane! We were told by some fans that the cars go 300 km/h or so... just unbelievable! (Especially since we have a van which barely does 100 km/h!). We also watched the V8 cars racing, an Aussie tradition of Ford vs. Holden (the big car manufacturer over here, which we heard is going to make a go for it in North America). There were also some miniature-- but super-fast-- races by the "Aussie Racing Cars", that were so tiny the driver's head was seen where the back seat would be, in these little rounded cars. Cute! (No pictures of those but they're probably online somewhere) Then it was the usual fighter-jet shows and people drinking lots of beer that seems to come with such events... that about sums it up.

Word on the street is that the Melbourne Grand Prix continues to lose tons of money and might not be here past 2010 (it came here from Adelaide just a little over a decade ago). Kind of sad, since there's a cool track for it around a lake and people get pretty excited about it. We didn't even realize there's a Grand Prix in Montreal, but when we're back we definitely want to go! Sure, it's terrible for the environment, the blue clouds of exhaust, but there's something so cool about these terrible beasts vrooming around a track with fire coming out the sides. There were even these handheld TVs you could rent for the weekend (called Kangaroo TV I think) which looked like PS3's but fed you live camera footage of each racing team, in the pits and in the cars, aerial views on the track and so on. You could eavesdrop on whoever you want and actually follow what's on when it's too fast to keep up. Pretty cool!

Now we're working on recovering our hearing and are heading out for some camping along the Great Ocean Road. There's a big surfing competition on at Bells Beach, so we plan to hit that, just chill out a bit and eat chocolate eggs on the beach. Happy Easter everyone and thanks for reading! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! xoxox, D&A "?"

Deuce!

Yesterday we took the day off job-hunting and went to the Australian Open tennis series. We'd been pumped about it for ages, watching on TV a series held in Perth (Western Australia) in the weeks leading up to the Melbourne series- just trying to figure out the rules of the game and scoring, which seems like the most random pile of numbers sometimes (though people probably say that about baseball, too).

Adrian caught a few more matches than Dayle (who was at a quasi-job interview in the early afternoon, learning all about the techniques of scooping gelato, while contemplating this new career path). With us at the matches was Nathalie, a Parisienne who was our tennis tutor for the day. It was great fun!

We bought the $29 ground passes, which allows you to check out almost all of the games, less the really big-name matches held in two grand arenas, Vodafone and Rod Laver. But since we're not exactly tennis experts, it didn't bother us too much that we missed people like Federer and Baghdatis. We were hoping to catch the Williams sisters playing a doubles match, but the stands filled up way too fast for us. Adrian tried to catch Canadian player Daniel Nestor, but the game wasn't anything special. He and Nathalie watched a ladies singles match between French player Aravane Rezai and Taiwan's Su-Wei Hsieh, which was most notable for its very spirited, flag-waving Taiwanese cheering squad (perhaps what helped Su-Wei to victory?).

We did, however, end up watching a couple of really (surprisingly!) captivating men's singles matches. When we couldn't get in to see Venus and Serena whip some ass, we joined Nathalie is cheering for Frenchie Paul-Henri Mathieu, who duked it out to win a FOUR HOUR marathon match vs. Austrian Stefan Koubek on Court 3. And what a match it was! It was great fun just being in the crowd, close enough to hear the players' grunting. But as the Rolex clock in the corner of the court kept ticking and we found it painful to just SIT for that long, our respect for these players/tennis players in general grew and grew. What endurance this battle must have taken! We got quite hungry around the 2 1/2 hour mark and had to tuck into our buns and peanut butter stash... but we didn't see these guys snack on anything. Yikes!

And just when it looked like Koubek (see pic above left) was going to take the match, somehow Mathieu (right) would come back. It went on and on like this for five sets. While much of the crowd was cheering for Koubek (perhaps the locals mixed up "Austrian" with "Australian"), there were several France flags floating around as well, and the occasional French singsong cheer made us giggle. Tabernac!

We must have been almost as relieved as the players when it finished at 4:00 on the dot. We stuck around for the next match, but the pair of mixed doubles contenders just looked really amateur after that tense contest we'd just seen.

By then, the big lights had come on, and we heard a hubbub coming from the Margaret Court Arena, where we found American Mardy Fish facing off against Jarkko Nieminen from Finland. As soon as we saw a group of eight shirtless American guys spelling "F I S H F O O D" on their bare chests, we decided to cheer for Jarkko. It wasn't long before the rain started (our first rain since we've moved to Melbourne, nearly a month ago!), and the whole match got moved indoors to the Vodafone Area- one of the big stadiums our ground pass didn't let us into! So we got to watch this match in style-- we sat two rows from the court, got to analyze replays on the Jumbotron, and watched a more enhanced version of the game, with players having the opportunity to challenge tough calls with the big screen. So cool!

We sat in a confusing mash-up of fans-- mostly Finns cheering for Jarkko and waving Finnish flags, but there were a couple loud American-sounding dudes (or shudder, they may have been Canadians) in our area who kept cheering, or almost commentating, for Mardy. "Ace in the place, Mardy," etc; WHATEVER that meant. The umpire had to keep saying "THANK YOU." loudly to shut the excited crowd up. There was plenty of good tension in this match, which went to 2:36 on the clock but by the time it was over, it was nearly 11pm! Mardy's fun to watch, as he's a bit of a hothead and wears a really silly-looking headband (see right photo). Jarkko is kind of gawky-looking but liked to challenge the calls, which always made the crowd cheer. (The tennis grunts were better in the Mathieu vs. Koubek match, though.) There were lots of comebacks and very even scoring between the pair, which was exciting. Jarkko finally beat Mardy (see left, the win!), proving that America is NOT #1. But most of all, we felt quite sorry for the ball-running kids on the court-- they looked exhausted by the end of the night. And by the end, we became totally hooked on tennis and actually understand the game now! (We may even go back next week!)

So that's the wrap-up on our first live sporting event since we left home almost a year ago. Melbourne's a big sporting city, so we plan to hit plenty more events-- Aussie Rules Football (AFL), surfing comps, Grand Prix (good news-- we are both hired on to work at the Grand Prix, March 13-16, we just found out! Insider reports to come, of course). One thing that was funny about the fans here is this crazy Aussie patriotism--ie. large groups of people wearing the Oz flag as a cape, and other Southern-Cross-adorned garments. Singing "Waltzing Matilda", no less. There were also many people with yellow-and-green face paint, wigs, and outfits, which we think is an Aussie thing too, but we haven't the foggiest why they'd choose yellow & green. We do think it might be a preview of how nuts it's going to get next week, on January 26 or 28th (depends on the state), which is Australia Day. Our first also! Woohoo!