Sydney Oct 2010

I've come back to golden yellow and auburn leaves, I'm lucky because its pretty warm for a Fall day.

I ate my way through Sydney. Our hotel was right in the downtown--at The Rocks-below the Sydney Harbour Bridge (which you could climb, but I said, why bother?). Our Procurement team took us to Nick's seafood restaurant where I had a beautiful baby baramundi. From that day on I ate it every day but nothing was as fresh as the first day.

I remember so vividly how David's mother told us Australia was famous for abalone. Fresh abalone. We only get the canned ones here--a staple at Chinese banquets with the big black mushrooms and bitter green veggies (gai choy). We did go to Chinatown when we went to the Olympics in 2000 and I remember eating the large abalone, not the baby. I dragged my co-worker to Chinatown and we each had a fresh, steamed, adorable little baby abalone (looks like a clam), followed by a gigantic snow crab on top of noodles. The crab was so big, the legs had meat bigger than a butter knife--it was so good. So fresh and easy (but messy) to eat. No little shells to deal with. Once you cracked the shell, a whole lump of crabmeat appeared, saying, "eat me, eat me." So I did. I ordered way too much-my co-worker had to tell me to stop eating, how embarrassing, but how often do you get fresh gigantic crabs?

I also enjoyed an afternoon to myself--took the harbour cruise and got off for lunch at Watson's Bay and went to a restaurant called Doyle's. There I had a seafood platter and muscles. Look at the picture, you can see how hot and fried the calamari are. Ummmmm. I climbed to the top of Watson's Bay and looked at the beautiful view and asked all the Japanese tourists to take my picture (thank you). You could see both the city skyline and the Harbour bridge--breath-taking. I found myself thinking how lucky I was to be there and I smiled. Something about these panorama views make you feel worldly, makes you feel like singing, "I believe I can fly........I believe I can touch the sky........." Life is good. How lucky I am to travel all over the world.

I spoke to Dad today and told him all about the trip. I was excited to tell him about my dinner in Chinatown. He asked me what do I do when I go on trips. "I meet with our local team and talk to them about their media strategy. I look and see how much advertising they have on TV, like on ABC or NBC or online, or where it is and I suggest to them different media ideas." His response, "What do you know about that?" My response, "That's what I do for a living."

"How do you know anything about that, its in a different country."
"Media strategy is the same all around the world."
"Oh, ok".

Gee Dad. Two things are universal around the world. Media and eating.