Honey I Shrunk the Van

Some Oz favorites:

• Tiny, tiny cars (See picture of van above). Most car manufacturers offer very compact vehicles – yes, even the American companies that refuse to offer them to the U.S. market.
  
• Sitting in a park and being enveloped in a spinning flock of wild cockatoos: squawking loudly, and back-lit by the setting sun, their pure white feathers and sulphur colored crests glowing as though internally lit.
  
• Surfing with penguins: Manly Beach is the home to a species of miniature penguin called a “fairy penguin”. One of these cute little aquatic birds caught a minnow so close to me I could have reached out and wrestled it away.
  
• SBS: This is Australia’s equivalent of PBS (U.S. Public Television), but it is better. Their news program is the best I’ve seen: concise, thorough, international, non-bias. In addition, they offer international news programs from around the globe in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Arabic, and possibly other languages. The other programming is varied, but of high quality: documentaries, comedy, movies. They play a movie most evenings – unedited, without commercial interruption, often international. Last night I watched a very good Croatian movie. This month is “Kubrick Season” with a documentary about, and the complete works of, director Stanley Kubrick (2001 A Space Odyssey, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, etc.). This is television with substance.