First Impressions: Galveston, not just a Glen Campbell song

We made our first trip to Galveston yesterday. LomL had described it to me as a mix between Rockingham and Mandurah - and that's about right. Those of you who live in Perth know exactly what I'm talking about. Mostly white, middle class, with a vague, uncomfortable undercurrent of prejudice underpinning society. Nothing you can quite put your finger on, just a feeling of unease.

Once you're outside the actual town, it's haunting. Winter in Galveston is despair-inducing. What is clearly a Summer hive of activity becomes effectively a ghost town. Evidence of the Summer playground atmosphere is everywhere; a cross between National Lampoon and a Gidget movie. Pastel coloured, multi-storey hotels, kitsch dining restaurants (no really, check this out Rainforest Cafe) and holiday houses abandoned to the ravages of the cold weather.

It's beautiful, though. In a lonely, wintry way. One imagines staying in the holiday homes, fire lit, large white cable-knit cardigan wrapped around you, sipping hot chocolate or a good red wine. It's the place of long, cold, lonely nights, walks along a windswept beach collecting driftwood and shells, and writing novels. It's where you'd picture Diane Keaton or Meg Ryan in their latest rom-com, blonde hair blowing, all turtle-necks and linen pants. It's where I'd like to own a holiday home for the Winter. Not for the Summer. I imagine the place is chock full of holidaying families, too much exposed flesh and sweltering bodies, too many tailgate parties and bonfires on the beach - or perhaps I'm just projecting the too many cheesy American movies I've seen...

First Impressions: Food Labelling and Ingredients

It's our second day in Houston and I'm trying to be vigilant about making observations about our new home. My love for food and all things foodie is well known by now. Ok, so it borders on obsession, but hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby. So it's no surprise that one of the first points of difference I notice between Houston and Perth is the food.

Yes, it's true that food is generally cheaper in Houston; both restaurant food and fresh food/provisions. If you think about it, that's not surprising. Perth is isolated. Remote even by Australian standards. The capital city of a state that's 3.63 times the size of Texas, but containing a population of just less than 2.5 million people (with about 1.8 million of those people living in Perth and its surrounding suburbs). It's big in terms of land mass, but teeny tiny by world population statistics. And it's far far away. There's a distance of 3301km (2051mi) between Perth and Sydney. That's a long way to transport goods. Add on the comparatively high labour costs in Australia (I'm not griping about the wonderful wage structure negotiated over time by unions, or the taxation system that allows those in need to continue to subsist in something approximating adequacy, but it's a fact that it adds to the general costs of living), and you have high prices generally, with particularly high prices in Perth. But I digress. This isn't meant to be a comparison of the socio-economic structures of Houston and Perth. It's about food.

We hear media reports on a reasonably regular basis about the quantity of additives and preservatives in food in the US, and of the rates of morbid obesity. Watch Dr Oz or The Doctors for more than 5 minutes and there's bound to be some discussion on the unnaturally high levels of chemicals in food, the increasing weight of the populace and how Americans should all be turning towards whole foods or raw foods. It's easy to sit in Australia and think we have it better, our food is higher quality, with fewer additives. It's easy also to assume that if you move to the US, you will have limited (or no) choices about what kind of food you can buy. This impression is exacerbated by shows like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. And I'm certainly guilty of thinking all of those things: the US population is generally fatter, the food choices are limited and there's little or no access to good quality, organic fresh foods. So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I discovered that that's simply not true... well, not true in Houston anyway.

There are plenty of good food alternatives. There are large (warehouse sized) stores that house fresh food markets - Central Markets, Whole Foods Markets, HEB and Trader Joe's for a start. There are also plenty of what we in Australia would consider supermarkets - Kroger's and Randall's come to mind. Yesterday I stopped in at a Kroger's for some ingredients for dinner. This is a store that's about the size of a Woolies or a Coles, but it's the Houston equivalent of a small suburban IGA. Even here, the choices were astonishing. There must have been 25 different varieties of plain/all purpose flour on the shelf. And here's the important part. Each one of those packets of flour was clearly labelled with the ingredients and processing of that flour. You know immediately what grain the flour is made from, what other ingredients have been added to the flour and whether or not the flour has been bleached. You know from the labelling on the packet. That's not so in Australia. Some packages have labelling, others don't. Most have labelling that requires you to spend 40 minutes reading packages before making a choice and some require a higher degree in chemistry to decipher the baffling ingredients.

So, this is what I've found. Yes, there's a lot of talk in the US about the ingredients in food. Yes, there's a problem with increasing weight and morbidity as a result. Yes, we all need to be more attentive to what we're shovelling in our mouths. No, things are not better in Australia; food labelling is not clearer (actually it's more obfuscated and confusing) and choices are actually more limited. If carbon miles are something you consider when buying food (as I do), then you're more able to make informed decisions in Houston than in Perth. Not all supermarkets in Perth label where food is sourced from, or whether it's organic (as confusing as that term is - I mean really, the debate that rages over what constitutes organic is migraine-inducing).

Perhaps there is more to be concerned about in the US. Or perhaps there's more concern because there's more information already available from which to make a comparison. I'm not sure yet, but it does bring another perspective to the argument.

Bidding Farewell to our Home

Our household contents have finally been packed up and removed. I watched the last of the boxes be loaded onto the truck, ready for shipping to the other side of the world. And it felt ok. The emptiness of the house didn’t really strike me. There was still so much to do. The mess left behind still needed to be dealt with. Besides, we’d recently had all the carpets in the house replaced, so it had been emptied of its contents just a short while ago. This didn’t feel any different.

B2 and I got to scrubbing while B1 was spending the day with a friend. We vacuumed, we cleaned cupboards, we cleaned bathrooms, we dusted, we picked up all the last bits of rubbish. Then B1 arrived and helped with the last few things. When we were done, I went from room to room, closing blinds and doors and saying goodbye to this home. I hadn’t expected the wracking sobs building from my gut, or the fat wet tears streaming down my cheeks. They took me somewhat by surprise. I thought I had rationalised it. After all, it is just a house. A building. A place to stop and rest. Why this sudden emotion?

B1 came in to find me in the kitchen, patting the countertops and sobbing. He hugged me, asked me why I was crying and said “but it’s just a house”. That’s when I was able to articulate what I was thinking and feeling. This was not just a house. This was the first home that LomL and I had ever owned. It was the home where both my children lost their first teeth. It was the home from which I sent them off to their first day at school. It was the home in which I home schooled them. It was the home from which they started at their new school, the one in which they had both been so happy. This was the home in which magic had been woven and letters from the Toothfairy, the Easter Bunny and Bilby and Santa had been received. It was the home where both children learned to ride their bikes, fell, grazed knees/arms/faces. It was the home where they learned to be pirates and climb trees and make fortresses out of branches. This was the home where a hundred parties were thrown, a thousand arguments were had, a million meals had been cooked. This was the home that both LomL and I had celebrated our 40^th birthdays in, where both the boys had achieved double-digit birthdays. This was the home from which both LomL and I had completed yet another tertiary qualification. This was where new friendships had been made and old ones renewed - friendships that transcend time and continent.

This home had housed us, the dog, chickens, geese, goldfish, rabbits, guinea pigs, frogs, bobtails, monitor lizards, gallahs, corellas, black cockatoos, herons, wattle birds, magpies, 28s, red-caps, splendid wrens, bronze-winged pigeons, tawny frogmouths, kookaburras, geckos, spiders and the various “pet” insects the children captured. This was the home in which I learnt so much about Australian indigenous flora and fauna and ecology. This was the home where we truly established ourselves as a family. And cleaning her felt like performing the last rites. It was my gift to her for having housed us so well, for having allowed us to grow. It felt very like my final gift.

 

Oh, I’ll go back before we leave the country. There are still things to be done. But last night was my farewell to her. I leave her with wonderful memories and immense gratitude for our time there.