What's so incredible? Why is she so awesome? How does she do it?

I’ve made several journeys in my life (in fact if you haven’t been keeping up I’m still on one) and even more recently have decided to do something about all the massive documentation I have recording them.

Now most people have trouble letting go of the sentimental, and others take it to the extreme and hoard everything “just in case.” I’m far from the pack-rat type, but I do tend to hold onto every little business card, receipt, and photograph I’ve ever taken, and though they may be in neatly labeled boxes or bags, the fact remains that I have hundreds of photographs, ticket stubs, video clips, maps, and other paraphernalia that’s usually just sitting in an old shoebox underneath my bed, waiting to be turned into memorabilia.

Somewhere along the college line I decided to do just that. Freshman year was encapsulated in a 15 minute snapshot video of my life, Sophomore year an epic decoupage calendar project, Junior year a hefty scrapbook, and this year? This year I’ve got too much stuff to just make one of anything. And I’m looking back at all the tonnes of raw material I’ve got in the backlog beckoning me to make it something viewable, sharable, something to evoke my strongest and fondest memories.

Hence all the two-minute videos I’ve been making. Surely they’re not the most original projects I’ve ever made, but I’m not making them to be hyperoriginal works of genius. I’m throwing together scraps when I’ve got the time into something that makes some sense instead of leaving everything sitting in a folder on my hard drive waiting until catastrophe strikes (god forbid). Well, as you may have surmised, I’ve got yet another one.

Looking Through Glass from Leigh Cooper on Vimeo.

This one is taken from the photos, letters, maps, music, and video that transpired over the two-day, 1,600 mile road trip Jeff and I took in May from Los Angeles to Houston. While the 16 hours we spent in a car passed as slowly and painfully as kidney stones, the feeling of elation at putting miles of pavement between the metropolis we fled from and the destination we booked to never really wore off. Even now I look back on the many times I’ve done that drive fondly. It is a beautiful drive to see with your own two eyes, or indeed through whatever glass you may choose: camera, windshield, or even just a pair of sunglasses.

I’ve been watching a lot of Australian road movies in my cinema class here, which is probably what prompted me to go back to the mythos of the many motorways to California I’ve experienced in my own lifetime. Sure the ideology of road tripping is different for every country, but there is something unmistakably alluring about the freedom of a country road, the openness of the interstate, and the rush that comes from making good time and watching borders pass right under your eyes, completely unhindered. The feeling only last for that short while you’re on the road, that brief period when all bets are off and all rules are redefined to a more primordial and liminal state. In some ways, it is the desire to rediscover this feeling that leads me to travel as much as I do, to experience that twenty-first century manifest destiny, the balance between “we control our own destiny” and “anything can happen.”

A Message adapted and updated from Mr. John Cleese:

To the Citizens of the United States of America:

In light of the strong possibility you are about to elect an elderly
gentleman with a bad temper and a lady who thinks she can run foreign
policy because she can see Russia from her house, as President and
President-In-Waiting of the USA and thus to risk Life As We Know It
for everyone else on the Planet, we hereby give notice of the
revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical
duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas
, which she does not fancy). She won’t actually be in charge, but
she’ll greet foreign leaders as necessary and not put her foot in it
or vomit on anyone at dinner.

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for
America without the need for further elections. He will choose someone
who does not have his or her hand in the till and has significant
experience in running Big Things. You have not had one of them for
almost a decade and trust me, it is a big plus.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. They have given away too
much of your money already to rescue incompetent business executives
and soon your American Dollars will resemble Zimbabwean Dollars in
total worthlessness. There is no free lunch you know. Although we
originally let you get away with secession because King George was
robbing you blind, recent events demonstrate that your present leaders
are doing much worse things and unfortunately you have not noticed.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether more
than half of you still believe Saddam Hussein was behind 9-11.
Information to the contrary will again be provided by the rest of the
world and we request you read it this time and refrain from invading
the wrong country ever again if you possibly can.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following
rules are introduced with immediate effect:

You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will
be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’
and
‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’
without
skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the
suffix -ise.

Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable
levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’).

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises
such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and
inefficient form
of communication.

There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on
your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take
account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize. You
will relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. But we have a
lot of Bank Holidays you will enjoy instead.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,
lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and
therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent.

Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to
sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then
you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything
more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if
you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for
your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what
we mean.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will
start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you
will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of
conversion tables.
Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British
sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been
calling gasoline)-roughly $9/US gallon. Get used to it. Your driving
armoured cars to buy groceries is unnecessary, boorish and killing the
planet.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French
fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling
potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut,
fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
11. We will require that people running things, like your government,
are at least moderately competent and not related by blood or bribes
to those who benefit from their decisions. We know it makes you more
cozy when your leaders know as little as you do, but, honestly, it is
short sighted: you need doctors who know more about medicine, pilots
who know more about flying and leaders who know more about leading.
12. We respectfully request you give up this notion that Politics is
Entertainment, and that very complicated things can only be explained
to you in less than fifteen seconds. If you wanted to have a
democracy, honestly, you’d really need to have taken the time to
understand things a bit more before you voted. And may I suggest the
startling notion that politicians don’t need to look good to do a good
job? And it really is acceptable if they are a bit boring, so long as
they do their homework. It’s especially important if evidently you
have not done yours. Poor old Al Gore. Poor old John Kerry. And by
the way, are you happy now you chose a Governor for California based
on his teeth?

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not
actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be
referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted
provenance will be referred to as Lager.
South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the
greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer.
They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for
them.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as
good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to
play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English
dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to
having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind
of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough
will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities
to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every
twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of
nancies). Don’t try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash
you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to
host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played
outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a
world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will
learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first in
their country. The six out of ten of you who don’t own a passport will
need to get one first.

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

16. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s
Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all
monies due (backdated to 1776). Although this will raise your taxes,
remember that the Neoconservatives will no longer be robbing you blind
and so your Dollars will stop shrinking. Didn’t you know that
inflation and government bailouts of huge companies were really paid
for by you? We must do something about your educational system. What
on earth is going on over there? Are you oblivious to the crushing
debt you are leaving your children? You might as well throttle them
now.
17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never
mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in
season.

God Save the Queen. But at least God won’t instruct your President to
invade any more wrong countries.

Adapted from John Cleese.

It has occurred to me that while you have a pretty good idea of what my life was like in Los Angeles and in Tokyo, you probably have no clue as to what I am doing here in Australia. We are now at the point in our relationship where you know a little bit about me, and I about you, but only in the general sense, and you might be ready for something deeper. It doesn’t help either that I seem to have been reluctant to share anything about my life in Australia. So, it is probably long overdue after two months in this country, but better late then never.

I usually wake up decently early, around 8:00 or so and have some breakfast and tea in my room. I check my email, maybe talk to my family, or do some stretching for an hour, then shower and head off to class for the day. Monday-Thursday I get back quite late, so I eat lunch somewhere on or near campus and spend the gaps in my timetable reading in the library (this week Bruce Chatwin). After class I come home and begin to make dinner. Once everything is safely simmering away I change and go for a run just in time to watch the sun set. After the hill Emmanuel is on kicks my ass I do some stretching, shower, and change. Then it’s dinner time and I usually have some work to do or a film to watch for one of my classes. Though sometimes on Wednesdays the Globe does a double screening of cult classics and I can usually finagle myself a ticket with some other devoted film students.

Fridays I spend mostly running errands at the post office, grocer’s, bank, library, and anywhere else my to-do list takes me. There’s always something happening at college in the evening, and all major events have provided buses that leave regularly at 20:00. If we’re not all off for some grog at the ol’ Pig and Whistle, I’m down in the valley for some dinner and perhaps a touch of the night life. Chinatown is especially fun on Fridays.

Saturdays are a bit different. When I’m not away on some weekend adventure I spend most of my time wandering the queen street mall aimlessly, touring the downtown cityscape, or ambling down south bank’s flower-paved pathways. Get there early enough and you’ll catch the parkour traceurs practising frantically by the river, trying to outrace the cops trying to shut them down. After grabbing a cuppa at the Coffee Factory or a gelato at Shlix, I’ve been known to read in the sun of New Streets Beach or practice tai chi in the Royal Botanical Gardens if I get the timing right. I’m almost always tempted to catch a movie at the cineplex, which offers an ultra-cheap concession for students, and there’s a weekend street market on Stanley Street to browse waiting for the showtime to start. Kids from nearby Griffith University are always cooking out all over the parklands too, and if you ask nicely or bring a six pack they’ll usually let you join in to help yourself a sausage and the skinny on whether or not the band scheduled to play at the uni jazz cafe is any good this week.

Sunday I wake up at the crack of dawn and try to be out of the house by 6:00, just in time to watch the sun rise on my way to the ferry terminal. I take the scenic route to North Quay and then catch the 111, then the 576 through to Rochedale, where I’ve enrolled in a basic meditation class at the Chung Tian Ch’an Buddhist Temple. 9:00-10:00 is spent in a combination of walking and sitting meditation, taught by a wonderful monk who has an incredibly loud voice despite her tiny stature. At 10:00 sharp Ms. Elaine Pun starts the Buddhist philosophy class. She’s a middle-aged Chinese woman with a shrill voice and a sharp stare, but she has a remarkably kind way about her and brings us a present every week — melon candies or CDs of chanting or tiny lanterns for good luck. Then we mill about and eat lunch at the temple, where I can usually catch a ride back to the city with someone particularly generous (usually Lynn). I head back home, do my laundry, clean my bedroom, and finish up any outstanding work I’ve got.

At this point I’ve explored pretty much every zone of Brisbane from the boonies of Priestdale to the hubbub of Brunswick and am now slowly working my way outside to the many parks and national forests of Queensland. The people are warm and friendly (and bear remarkable resemblance to Texans), and the area offers a huge variety of people. Brisbane is a city that feels like a small town, though one easy on the eyes. It’s pretty much universally understood that the vibe is laid back and the pace of life is leisurely and quiet, perhaps the largest drawing point for many of Brisbane’s residents. They big fans of just hanging out; in a word Brisbane is chill. Although it’s good to have some free time for once, I’m also ready to take on a bit more. But I will spend my last few weeks squeezing every last to-do from this state before I make my farewells. It should be good.

After a lengthy time crouching in Australia I am but weeks away from my reintegration into America. I’ve only a few things left on my list to do before I can journey across the Pacific, namely polishing off three daunting exams and rounding out three esoteric term papers, booking my heinously expensive aeroplane ticket eastward, and slipping my absentee ballot in the mail for the upcoming presidential election. Luckily, I’ve been able to tick off many of my other goals early; specifically I can strike a fat line through “visit Sydney,” since I spent the last ten days as a Sydneysider with my father, traipsing about New South Wales for UQ’s spring vacation, both of us escaping serious heat (Houston for dad and Brisbane for me).

When you spend the first afternoon gleefully clinging to your caprese sandwich amid the breeze blowing off the harbour you know you’ve successfully escaped. Of course it doesn’t hurt to chow down on the best spring vegetable salad in memory at arguably the city’s swankiest restaurant, especially when your table overlooks a perfect view of the sunset over the harbour bridge. And who wouldn’t enjoy the epic vistas of Hunter Valley, which played background to a gloriously slow set of near-private wine tastings that revealed Verdelo as the region favourite.

For a small city the physical size of Boston with a population to rival Los Angeles, Sydney hosts a decent number of idiosyncratic neighbourhoods and an alarming sprawl of spacious suburbs. While much of the region is inaccessible to those not in the know, the heart of the city is knit close enough to walk freely and easily between neighbourhood to neighbourhood, a fact redeeming the otherwise crippling traffic and inadequate and expensive public transit. In our leisurely week we found the region offered good coffee, solid restaurants, decent wine, fantastic parks (both urban gardens and national reserves), and a number of good views.

As to which view was the most breathtaking, I still cannot decide. I offer a few contenders below:

Hunter Valley - famous wine region three hours north of the city

The Blue Mountains - the eucalyptus vapour turns it blue, and we were lucky enough to gaze at the three sisters, the Jameson Valley canyon, and a cluster of kangaroo also taking their morning tea

Taronga Point - a beautiful view looking back at the city from Taronga Zoo

The Rocks - offered the greatest view of the harbour, complete with skyline, Circular Quay, opera house, and harbour bridge

Bridge Climb - we couldn’t take cameras on the actual climb, but the views from the top of the ol’ coathanger were magnificent

Overall I had a thoroughly enjoyable time, though if I had to paint the tarnish on a silver lining I’ll admit it was expensive, and I found the art severely lacking (though it must be said that the theatrical arts — theatre, opera, ballet, symphony — were in good form, it’s just the visual art museums that fell short). But both of these qualms I take with me back on the plane to Queensland, so you can be sure to add them to the list of Australian shortcomings, rather than Sydney’s, along with poor telecommunications infrastructure and the country’s difficulty to access. Yet even in the face of these frustrations, it is easy to see why so many fall in love with Sydney and so few of its citizens ever leave it. It really was a fantastic vacation.