Year of the Dragon

Putting the job search on hold was like turning over a new leaf. No longer preoccupied with the daily web-crawl through Seek.com, or whether anyone would realize I was wearing the same pink shirt for my daily resume drops, I now had more bandwidth for travel planning and special events.
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The public library continued to be a reliable friend, with plenty of travel books on the shelf. I found the enormous All-Australia edition of the Lonely Planet guidebook, thicker than a kangaroo tail and packed with useful information. I started reading up on my dream destinations – Kakadu, Uluru, and Perth – these lofty goals now made more tangible by the weight of the book. Among the library’s selection of travel books was the hilariously named “Melbourne for Dogs” – a new segment of the tourism market?

​Furthering the sense of renewal was the start of a new lunar year – the Year of the Dragon. Melbourne has a prominent Chinatown, right in the heart of the CBD, and about 8% of the city’s population has Chinese ancestry. It was a hot Sunday morning and I ventured out to see the festivities.

​The morning performances included an impressive lineup of dragon puppets, lion dances, and drumming. The crowd was densely packed, to the point where mobility was limited, but I squeezed my way into a shady vantage point. Between the heads, phones, and kids on their parents’ shoulders, I could catch glimpses of the spectacle. It helped that the dragons and lions were often held aloft. The dragons spun in circles, swirled in corkscrew patterns, and at the end of the routine, coiled into a ball for a pose. A bald character with a papier mâché head ran across the stage, helping tell the story. 

Next were the lion dancers, the most impressive I’d ever seen. The pairs of strong young men maneuvered over precarious benches stacked on the road, stood on each other’s shoulders so the lions towered in the air, and all in the sweltering heat. Also striking was the sheer scale of the event – there must have been 7-8 dragons and 10-12 lions in total! The morning ended with an aggressive round of firecrackers, battering everyone’s ears, and sending red flakes into the air. Many parents had the foresight to bring earmuffs for their small children, a sign of good parenting.

​After the performance began the parade – the sea of dragons and lions flowed out through the archway, and the platform with the drum brigade rolled behind. The crowd control was quite an ordeal. A vanguard of security staff walked ahead of the dragons, yelling at people to clear a path and get out of the street.

​Also part of the parade was the Dai Loong dragon, an absurdly long float carried by hundreds of people. I believe it's one of the longest dragons in the whole world! I happened to see it at two points on the route, the main square and the terminus of the parade. At the last stop, it did a tricky “parallel park” maneuver, backing up through an archway and towards the Melbourne Chinese Museum, its permanent home.

​Of course, there were lots of other elements to the festival – food stalls, a temple for prayer, a giant inflatable dragon for photos, a stage where people in suits gave speeches, a live rock band, and roaming lion dancers that were blessing local businesses.

​In a different part of the city, another major festival was running in parallel: the Midsumma Block Party, a Pride event. It was held along Gertrude Street and Smith Street in Fitzroy, a trendy area with a large queer community. Both streets were closed to traffic, and it was a vibrant scene with crowds gathered around outdoor music stages and bustling neighborhood bars. I strolled through to soak up the energy, but it was too hot and crowded for an extended stop.

Life around the apartment complex continued to be chill. I watched the Superbowl -- my patriotic duty as an American -- though it was a Monday morning in Australia and the US commercials were replaced with local ones. I figured out how to get packages held at the local post office, as my apartment didn’t have a secure package area, enabling me to place some online orders. I made fried rice for dinner, and chatted with a new resident from Saudi Arabia, a project manager. Ahmed was a little hard to figure out – it sounded like he had flown to Melbourne on short-notice, leaving his wife and daughter at home, and had some vague plans of studying. But he was clearly open to dialogue, and it was interesting to hear his frustrations at being personally berated by Western strangers for his society's treatment of women. We talked about housing and family; he didn’t own a house, and it was something he strongly desired. He made a passing comment that in the event of a divorce, the wife would be kicked out of the house. He loved his daughter but also explained his culture’s expectations that kids are supposed to take care of aging parents, regardless of how they were treated. Listening with a charitable ear was required to keep the conversation going. I also briefly met a nice photography student from Mexico City.

​​Around this time, Gail had two different rounds of Servas guests, and invited me to join their outings. The first guests were Peter and Hana, a couple from Denmark. Peter was a hospital perfusionist for cardiopulmonary bypass (naturally we chatted about medical devices!) and Hana was a professor at an architecture school. Another former Servas guest, Emilie from France, also joined for the evening. Together, the five of us walked to the Gasworks, an industrial brick building now serving as an arts hub, for a Friday night pop-up market.

​The highlight was a live music performance by Charlie Needs Braces, two young women who used a loop recorder to create rich and funky tracks, with layers of percussion, trumpet, and vocal harmonies. One song (“yanoo”) was inspired by a robot waiter; the chorus involved some audience arm-waving. It was quirky and fun.

​We walked through the neighborhood in search of food, and found a bustling corner pub. The interior was full, but there were tables outside, and we braved the chilly evening with help from a blanket and a  flame heater. I ordered a “parma” (short for chicken parmesan), a classic Aussie pub entrée. The portion was quite generous! And according to Gail, not even the largest parma in town. I also had my first pint of Carlton Draught, a nod to my new home. The company’s logo, two red and white horses, is a regular sighting throughout Melbourne.

​It was fun chatting with Peter, Hana, Gail, and Emilie throughout the evening. Or “Gail’s Servas Club,” as we started to call it. Peter and Hana were headed to Chile next, and Emilie was headed to Bangkok – two exciting destinations that I'd also visited. On our walk through the dark South Melbourne streets, we spotted an owl on a lamppost and possums on the powerlines. After the group split, Emilie and I were taking the same tram, and continued chatting. I heard a rare story of a Servas stay that didn’t go well, when the host tried to take advantage of Emilie’s online marketing consulting skills without paying.

One day, a pattern of unusual weather hit. It was a hot day, reaching 95 Fahrenheit, but there was also hail, thunder, and lightning. Downed tree branches wreaked havoc on the grid, with lots of power outages through the city. Trains and trams were disrupted, and everyone was a bit discombobulated. The next day, it was cold and gray. The magpies in the Carlton Gardens investigated the piles of branches.

Soon, the newest member of Gail’s Servas Club was visiting from London, and I was invited to join the two of them for an evening in the beach suburb of St. Kilda. I arrived at Gail’s place and chatted with Pete, a Churchill scholar and wheelchair super-user, on his first stop of an Australia-New Zealand tour to connect with disabled innovators and researchers. His rolling suitcase had lost a wheel, and I helped attach two replacement wheels from the hardware store, a desperate repair job before his trip to Sydney.

​Pete was very amiable and open to my curious questions. I had never spent time around an experienced wheelchair user, especially one so active and outgoing. The day before, Pete had been wakeboarding! I learned that he was planning on driving a car in both AUS and NZ using a system of hand controls. He was kind enough to pull them out and explain how they worked – an interesting overlap between the medical device and automotive world! For our St. Kilda outing, he attached a motorized third wheel to the front of the chair, and handled the tram boarding and footpaths with ease. A really inspiring person – you can see his TED talk here.

In St. Kilda, we had dinner at the Esplanade Hotel, aka the “Espy.” It was a large venue with multiple interlocking bar and restaurant areas – one with pub trivia in progress, others with cozy tables set up for Valentine’s Day. The concierge lady was super accommodating and helped us get a table despite not having a reservation. We sat in a back seating area near the pizza oven, with neon lights in the shape of a pizza slice and a disco ball. Naturally, I ordered a tasty pizza!

​We just missed the sunset, but it was still a lovely time to stroll along the beach promenade. The lampposts were projecting colorful shapes onto the footpath. We walked out onto the pier for views looking back towards the city skyline, and checked out the entrance to the Luna Park, a classic beachside theme park complete with a wooden rollercoaster. Finally, we walked along Acland Street, one of the arteries of the suburb, and peeked at window displays of cakes that would have been more tempting if we weren’t stuffed from dinner.

It was really nice of Gail to include me in the two outings (Gasworks and St. Kilda). Not only did it build on our connection from my initial stay, but it was a great way to meet fellow Servas travelers and see new parts of Melbourne!
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As you can see, the Year of the Dragon was off to an auspicious start.