17 Degrees South

Picture at Sonasaili resort, Fiji, 2007 Honeymoon.

I passed my Citizenship test. First time. 100%. Boy, do I feel proud of that. One thing to remember is that the head of government is the Prime Minister and the head of State, yes it's true, is the Queen. Queen Elizabeth, that is. Luckily the guy who escorted me up in the lift at the Department of Immigration quizzed me on that one, just to play with my pre-test nerves. It paid off.

Something else to remember if one is not keen to give up Citizenship of your country of birth is to let them know BEFORE you apply for Citizenshipship in the New Country that you want dual citizenship. Otherwise they swiftly remove your original citizenship. Well South Africa does, anyway.

With the Citizenship test under my belt and a new-found sense of strayanism (that's "Australianism" to those not in the know) I embarked on a piece of detailed research about a one-week break (at five months pregnant it's apparently called a Babymoon!) on the Great Barrier Reef. After all, I now live in Australia and I can't be satisfied with just knowing Sydney and surrounds. There's 4,000km in width to play with and 3,700km north to South to explore (aren't I fabulous that I know the stats from my test - although I had to rely on an even newer arrival than me, Anita, to tell me that there are 37,000km of coastline - hah - add THAT to the study book, I say). So the Barrier Reef it was.

I learnt that there are three major sections I was interested in - the Southernmost islands - they have less mountains, and even have some backpacking options. Lady Elliot Island, Lady Musgrave Island, Great Keppel Island. With some snorkeling straight off the islands. Accessible from Rockhampton and Brisbane and the like. But those airports are not that well connected.

Then there are the middle islands - around Hamilton Island including the Whitsundays. The land resort area is Airlee Beach, and all are connected through Shute Harbour. One can fly straight onto Hamilton Island, but that means that everyone does. So it's very touristy, over-priced and crowded. Or so I hear. Daydream Island nearby has mixed reviews, but is another option. It's the one place one can fly straight onto an island, and that is tempting.

Then there's the famous north. Cairns, Townesville, Port Douglas. Port Douglas is very popular with people whose opinions I respect. But the reef is very far away and my dream of being able to walk out onto the reef is just a dream. It's a long time in a boat, and with my pregnancy heading up for month five and a half, I can just imagine getting really sick and that would be awful. The Southern Islands have some snorkeling right off the islands, but that is less likely in the north.

I stand to be corrected on all of this, having never been to anywhere that I am writing about, but hours (literally hours) of internet reading with Francis resulted in a general feeling of nuh-uh about our long awaited trip. The reviews, if one reads the detailed reviews, were filled with disappointment about the amount one pays for the amount you get. It's REALLY expensive. And we just could not find enough positive stuff to make us take the bull by the horns and book Queensland.

So at 1am we decided to give up on the complicated itineraries we had been constructing for an Australian break and choose either to go back to the Yasawa Islands in Fiji (where we honeymooned in 2007 and which we highly recommend - we'd assist anyone with ideas about those) or to take the plunge and go 17 degrees South. To Vanuatu.

And that is what we are going to do. We'll spend a week in Vanuatu - half of it at the Hideaway Island resort (what a picture!) where, yes, you can snorkel right off the sand I am told. And the other half wherever our noses take us. Or your recommendations lead us.

So while I love 34 degrees South (Sydney, Cape Town, Buenos Aires - and maybe one day Santiago in Chile... Francis and I have started lessons in their national dance, the Cueca, so we might land up there one day) this time I have to halve my usual favourite number and choose 17 degrees south. Let's see how it pans out!


Ps - I recommend www.travelonline.com for accommodation deals. Their deal was SO much cheaper than the one we used, but hey, I'd already booked. Nothing to be done about that. Just don't get caught out too.

Citizenship - ten facts for the Citizenship test

I took this photo at the Blacktown Festival. Love the Australian Flag turban!

I just discovered I am free to apply for Australian Citizenship. I thought that was still a few months off, but in fact it is now. There was even an appointment available this Saturday to sit my Australian Citizenship test. So I took it.

I have been pretty anti the Citizenship test. I have had dire doubts as to whether it's a good idea. However, having just booked my test, I started reading the preparation booklet for Citizenship, Becoming a Citizen. It provides some useful information and hey, it's not that bad. In fact I think I could've done well to read it the week I arrived. It would have saved me some wonderful dinner table boo-boos over time! I have yet to get all the way through the 46 pages, but I am now sure, if I wasn't before, that:

1. The national flower is the Golden Wattle
2. Humans have inhabited Australia for 40,000 to 60,000 years and Australia's Indigenous Culture is the oldest surviving culture in the world
3. More than 700 languages were spoken by Aboriginal people pre-settlement and 250 remain today
4. Voting is compulsory in Australia
5. There are three levels of government: Federal (national), State and Territory, and Local (councils).
6. There are 21 million people in Australia (a similar population, by the way, as Shanghai)
7. 22% of Australians were born overseas (where I live the figure is way past 50%)
8. The country is predominately Christian (64%), with the other all having less than 2.2% each (Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism). The Jewish people, which is where I identity, make up just 0,4% of the population. Interestingly, Aboriginal people make up just 2,3% of the population, just 0.1% more than any of the minority religions.
9. The median age is 37 years
10. There are eight states and territories: Western Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland (that's where you find the Barrier Reef), New South Wales (where I live), ACT (where Canberra is), Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania (I have to admit I thought Tasmania was a country when I got to Australia, but then many people here don't know South Africa is a country, they think it's a region).

So Citizenship can't be that far away. Once I pass the test and lodge my application, it's about three months til it gets approved. I think it might be just a bit too short a time to manage before the Spud is born, but I will try. After all, I can't officialy change my name to Shapiro-Liu until I am a citizen, and it would just be so much more convenient to have this sorted before Spud Shapiro-Liu arrives.

I hope that I get to attend a Citizenship Ceremony where my own choir sings. I don't know if I can arrange to attend Canterbury (where 120 nations are represented, sometimes 60 at a time) or whether I will be in Ashfield. I'll wait and see.

My greatest excitement about being an Australian citizen is being part of an incredible multi-cultural nation, expressed so wonderful in the song We Are Australian by Judith Durham:
We are one
But we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We share a dream
And sing with one voice
I am
You are
We are Australian.

Ten Years of Tango

Midnight at a Tango Salon in Buenos Aires, March 2004

It's ten years, to the week, since I took part in my first intensive Tango experience. There is nothing quite like the International Week held at Tango El Corte, in Nijmegen, Holland. Some weeks before, in May, I had attended a few tango lessons by the incredible tango maestro, Eric Jorissen, in Cape Town which had been arranged by Rodney, Sally and Mark. I had been dragged there, kicking and screaming, by my friend Neil. At the time I had said "I think tango is ugly, and the music is funny". Seriously. I said that.

Neil's then partner had been unavailable for three out of a four-session course. At the time I was Neil's dance teacher in other forms of dance, and a good friend. So I went along.

I loved it. I was hooked. I was going to be in Holland that August to fundraise for NICRO, so I arranged with Eric to attend his International Week. He was "pretty sure" I'd be fine.

Yeah, right!

In July I made my way to Nijmegen, found his out of the way studio under a railway bridge, and had my first of many, many experiences around the world of opening an arbitrary door and hearing the strains of tango welcoming me in. There, at the very back of El Corte were couples seamlessly moving around the room, legs wrapped in legs, bodies wrapped in close embrace. A room of lovers, I thought. How was I ever to be part of it. Then the music stopped, and these tight couples drifted apart, re-formed with other people, and started again, weaving webs of tango magic around the room. I backed off. I would never make it. A wonderful woman told me everyone felt that the first time, and I should stick with it.

I did. It was one of the hardest weeks of my life. I spent a lot of up a ladder at near the roof of the studio where there was a tiny one-person balcony where I could observe the dance from above. As I learn well by watching, this was a great strategy, especially after one chap was particularly irritated in a class that I didn't know how to turn, or what a giro was. I was new. He was not. I have since learnt that rudeness is not essential in those kinds of settings, but that it is slightly irritating being partnered with an absolute beginner when you have traveled far and paid lots to learn advanced stuff.

It was good that Eric had such trust in me - that I could survive International Week. But also a huge leap of faith, and one I just HAD to live up to. Many people there had been dancing up to 11 years, and some were dancing six nights a week.

Interestingly, when we got back to Cape Town in July 1999, Mark Hoeben and I had been exposed to more tango than our Cape Town tango friends, so it was fitting that he continue to teach and that I start to teach tango. And what a fabulous few years that was - teaching and facilitating tango, running la Vie en Rosebud (a free milonga in Green Point) and arranging mad places to dance inside and outside along with others. A fantastic group of friends, and the licence to dance in other places, including the five continents I tangoed on in 2004 on my tango trip around the world. It was on that trip that I met Francis in Spain.

Now, exactly ten years later to the week, Francis has taken himself off to intensive tango workshops with the lovely Lucia Mazer from Buenos Aires. He did three night sessions and four sessions over the weekend, with a milonga in between. I managed just two sessions on the weekend and the milonga - it was good to be back on the floor, complete with a 21 week preggie belly. I was thrilled to see the level of the participants and the excellent ethos bred by Hosanna and Paul at their exciting warehouse venue in Redfern. and it's a plus that Francis is fast becoming a tanguero. It's time to celebrate ten years of tango for me, and many years ahead for Francis and me.

You can join 810-strong Tango El Corte, Nijmegen group on Facebook which I started to link whose lives El Corte has touched. We're with those at International Week in spirit this week.

Social Media - good or not?

What a strange, strange day the 25 June 2009 was. Michael Jackson (50) died in Los Angeles. Farah Fawcett (50) died in Santa Monica, California. However, Jeff Goldblum did NOT die in New Zealand as some online hoaxes claimed. Twitter, Facebook, blogs and online fora get news out fast, but this is not always an advantage.

Why would anyone put out a hoax that someone is dead when that person certainly is not? The "falls to his death in New Zealand" is apparently not a new story. It has re-emerged after many years. There was one attempt, according to Seven News, to say that Tom Cruise had met his fate this way too. Of course he hadn't.

Personally, I find online tools the most incredible thing since sliced toast. To live in Sydney, so far from my native Cape Town, would be that much harder without daily contact with friends and family from the home country and news from the home world. I would find my distance from Buenos Aires so sad - how I loved my tango days there in 2004. With the help of posts on Facebook, particularly, I can follow tango all around the globe. And be part of it.

With a large belly, and a Spud on the way, I can't do those inter-continental flights that could connect me to the rest of the world. My computer, and skype, will just have to do it. And they do, for me. However, this this fantastic technology goes hand in hand with the risk of false news reports. I find Hoax-Slayer really useful to check these things out.

RIP Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett.

And Jeff Goldblum - you continue to live a long and healthy life despite any online hoaxes.

Sydney's diversity of music, song and dance

One of the most wonderful things about living in Sydney is the incredible diversity of music, song and dance (and food, but that goes without saying) from a multitude of nationalities. Francis and I feel privileged to be included in Chilean and Bolivian events, to be able to eat out and listen to local music at the Cyprus club, to try to count the complex beats of Greek music at Steki in Newtown, and to be part of folk festivals and choir events, political and other, all over Sydney.

On Sunday afternoon Mary-Jane Field, our special friend, had another of her Penas. A pena is a concert, a community event, and when Mary-Jane arranges them, they are always of the finest musical standard and supported by a great number of people, most of whom volunteer in some way - to sing, to perform, or to help with food and raffles....

Sunday's Pena was no exception. Mary-Jane would like us to believe it was her last, but I doubt that. It might have been the last in a series that celebrated the Cantata por Domitila, a cantata that Mary-Jane wrote in celebration of the life of Domitila Barrio de Chungara. On her website, Mary-Jane describes the Cantata as

a work featuring a fusion of musical styles blended with traditional and modern Bolivian folk music. The Cantata tells the story of Domitila Barrios de Chungara, a courageous Bolivian woman who has dedicated most of her life to the struggle for the rights of the tin miners of her country.

The Pena was filled with choirs including the Bright Stars led by Mary-Jane, a church choir Mary-Jane sings in and her incredible daughter and granddaughters singing as the West Girls in close harmony and a capello. There were folk singers and other performers. But for me the highlight was a tango demonstration. Not because I am completely crazy about tango and dedicated five years to it, but because this particular performance was enormously challenged by the music breaking down over and over again, and the resultant miracle performance was one of the most moving I have seen. Miguel, Heatwole, a well-known choir leader in Sydney, came to their rescue. Accompanied only by the steady clicking of his fingers, he took the mike and in a velvety tango voice, slowly and deliberately sang a tango for the dancers to perform to. The audience was mesmerised, and their quiet clicking fingers were testimony to their will to make the performance work. I take my hat off to the dancers, Margarita and Guy from Tango Embrace, and to Miguel for their quick thinking and their gut-wrenching performance.


Mary-Jane has once again woven her magic in the Spanish and English musical world. Her Bolivian friends' performance of Bolivian folk music with it's contagious beat rounded the evening off. The proceeds went to the Auntie and Uncles charity in Australia and to a Bolivian charity. And once again we had had the privilege of being part of the extraordinary mix of cultures that is so very Sydney.