Kangaroos Ho
Not much to tell today, except that I did take myself to my fourth movie in as many days right after work yesterday, The Good Liar starring Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren, and it was . . . fine. Solid B. No regrets on seeing it on my part, but no need to insist anyone else go out of their way to see it. Which is kind of too bad, given the caliber of those actors.
I left work ten minutes early and caught a bus downtown, which got me to the movie right on time twenty minutes later. The guy who scanned the QR code on my AMC Stubbs A-List app has now done so many times, and recognizes me on sight, and so never asks to see my ID to match with the membership. This time he even addressed me by name: "Enjoy your movie, Matthew!" I'm always find it kind of jarring when people I don't really know do that.
I also rode a bus the rest of the way home, just in the interest of saving time. I thought I really did not want any of the cabbage-based vegetable dish Shobhit had made, because it frankly smelled awful. But, once it was reheated in the pressure cooker and I had my fried-up frozen naan with it, it was actually surprisingly good. We ate while watching episode 2 of season 3 of The Crown on Netflix, which was even better than the first episode, which was excellent. God, I love that show. And Helena Bonham Carter was born to play Princess Margaret. But also, Olivia Coleman is predictably excellent as Queen Elizabeth. I'm finding it really quite easy to accept all the re-casting of the characters for the third and fourth seasons.
Shobhit and I both speculated as to whether Helen Mirren would be cast as Queen Elizabeth for the fifth and sixth seasons, which would be perfect. I do wonder how the show will deal with the death of Princess Diana, given the movie The Queen—starring Helen Mirren—already covered that. Of course, that was released in 2006, when Helen Mirren was 61 years old (playing Queen Elizabeth at age 71). And two years from now, when "oldest Queen Elizabeth" is cast for The Crown, Helen Mirren, who has always looked great for her age, will be 76. Hmm. That actually lines up relatively well, all things considered.
I really like watching this show with Shobhit, because he always has the answers to questions I might have about British politics and the British monarchy. Not only is this in line with his vast working knowledge of the political systems of countries the world over, but it should come as no surprise that he has particularly detailed knowledge of the British parliamentary and royal systems, given that Britain had control over India for 89 years before Indian independence in 1947. (With apparently British-related influence and control of different sorts for many years before that, which upon cursory glance on Wikipedia seems rather convoluted.) In any case, the history of British oppression over another country is far more recent with India than it is with the United States, having ended with them less than a century ago. That said, I got the sense from Shobhit some time ago that Indian citizens generally do not have the same obsessions and fascinations with British royalty as Americans do, but that also sort of makes sense as India had already long been its own country and culture long before the British came along, and in America, Britain is literally the country that birthed us. Still, Shobhit has himself been an American citizen since 2010 and lived here since 2000, so between that and his natural interest in world politics it makes sense that he would have probably a much more intimate knowledge of the British royal family than probably most middle-class Indians do.
I retired to the bedroom after that episode was done, to write my relatively short review of The Good Liar, after which I returned to the living room and we watched Sunday's episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, their last of the year until they return again in February. Wouldn't it be nice to get a three-month winter vacation every year? On the other hand, it just occurred to me to wonder how many people employed on that show's crew have to come up with some other source of income during that time. It probably varies depending on what position they have, how much they get paid, and how good they are at budget management the rest of the year. God knows, most Americans don't even think the phrase "budget management," let alone actually implement it.
Did I mention that we have made new strides in our Australia planning? I may have. Over the weekend we finally booked both a two-night hotel in Melbourne and the flight from Melbourne to Adelaide—Uncle David is not only insisting on picking us up at the airport, but also on driving us everywhere we want to go in both Adelaide and Kangaroo Island, where he says it's best to stay two nights instead of just the one we were originally intending. This way we also do not have to pay for a car rental or deal with driving on the left side of the road. And honestly, I'm really glad we're all going to Kangaroo Island together, because I would much rather maximize the amount of time we spend with them.
In fact, after several email exchanges, it's basically settled that Uncle David and Mary Ann are taking the reins completely when it comes to planning our time in Adelaide and Kangaroo Island—which was fine with us, even though they are insisting on paying for a lot of it, which makes Shobhit uncomfortable. (Not me, because I am shameless.) They have already made a couple of activity suggestions which, once I indicated my high interest, Uncle David was like, "I'll book them now!" Sheesh. So, it turns out there is a very cool roof climb on the Adelaide Oval that is very similar to the Sydney Bridge Climb I already fully planned on doing. In fact, there are now no less than four panoramic view / observatory activities planned for the whole Australia trip:
Sydney
Sydney Tower Eye (this being Sydney's observatory tower, their equivalent of Seattle's Space Needle, much taller but not nearly as pretty in architecture) Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb (which may very well have even better city views than Sydney Tower, even if it doesn't go quite as high)
Melbourne
Eureka Tower Skydeck (88th-floor observatory on a 91-story, 975-ft tower that is Australia's second-tallest building—second only to the residential "Q1" in Gold Coast, which reaches 1,058 ft only because of a spire, its roof height 902 ft—but both the country's tallest roof and its highest observatory . . . well, apparently with the exception of also-Melbourne's 100-floor, 1,039-ft "Australia 108" building, currently under construction but topped out just this month; it won't be open by March, maybe not even with its own observatory, and thus Eureka Tower's observatory will remain the country's highest)
Adelaide
RoofClimb Adelaide Oval (similar to Harbour BridgeClimb, but instead of up a 440-ft bridge, this is atop the 164-ft roof of their sports stadium—the equivalent of about 14 floors, but still plenty high for panoramic views of the City of Adelaide)
And actually, there is also an observation wheel in Melbourne, the 394-ft Melbourne Star, which I would also love to ride, but we'll have to play that one by ear, given all the other heights I will already insist on doing and the fact that we're only in Melbourne two nights.
Anyway. I will try to back off on any more activities I insist on doing, and be open to other stuff that's not tower-centric. Such as, for instance, going to Kangaroo Island, which was Shobhit's idea. I don't know why he was so interested in that, but he was, and I said okay. Presumably there's a lot of kangaroos there? Uncle David also suggested swimming excursions, one of which can be done with dolphins, and I was all about that. So, that was the other thing he said he'd book now (the other being the RoofClimb at the Adelaide Oval). He also asked us about dietary restrictions, to what extent we are vegetarian (completely—but not vegan), saying we'd be eating most of our meals out and they'd be paying for most of the meals, "no arguments!" Well okay fine, if you insist.
We'd never bother putting Adelaide on our list for an Australia trip if Uncle David and Mary Ann did not live there, but I still expect it to be a perfectly interesting place to visit. And the fact that they live there is the entire impetus for my desire to visit the country now. I've always wanted to see Australia regardless, but the presence of family does give it a different angle. Setting family aside, I am also very much looking forward to attending Sydney Gay Mari Gras, although knowing metropolitan Sydney is only about a third larger than metro Seattle (5.2 million vs. 3.9 million), I am beginning to suspect that even with their marketing claims of it being "world famous," it probably won't actually be much bigger than Seattle Pride. But! It'll still have a different feel in a different country with a slightly different culture, so there's that. And they'll all be so much sexier with Australian accents!
[posted 12:39 pm]