{"id":6072,"date":"2011-07-29T07:05:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T11:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=6072"},"modified":"2011-07-29T07:06:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T11:06:50","slug":"thunderstruck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/thunderstruck","title":{"rendered":"Thunderstruck"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2003, I took a 2-week vacation to New Zealand<\/a>. During that trip, I bungee-jumped, jetboated through river-canyons, took my first helicopter ride (over a rain-forest, onto a glacier), table-danced to AC\/DC, and otherwise had the time of my life. The most daring thing I did on the trip? Drink with Australian men.<\/p>\n

My last night in NZ, I partied with some Aussies who were in Queensland for a friend’s triathlon. They introduced me to what I thought was the most evil mixed drink ever: the Flatliner<\/a>. For nearly a decade, I hadn’t come across a worse idea for a drink. When I finally did, it came from an Australian.<\/p>\n

In edition 108 of Monocle’s weekly podcast<\/a>, Australian food writer Jill Dupleix<\/a> talked about Sydney’s restaurant, bar and coffee scenes. She had a neat observation about the way the 1996 summer Olympics induced an entire generation of youth to drop out of school and go into the hospitality industry. “It was like the national service,” she said. “Like they’d been conscripted.”<\/p>\n

And then she mentioned what has to be The Worst Drink Ever: the Lagerita<\/em>. “A massive amount of beer, ice, tequila and lime juice in a great big glass tankard,” as she described it. I’m sure there are more terrible ingredients in the mix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My point \u2014 and I can’t stress this enough \u2014 is never drink with Australians<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2003, I took a 2-week vacation to New Zealand. During that trip, I bungee-jumped, jetboated through river-canyons, took my first helicopter ride (over a rain-forest, onto a glacier), table-danced to AC\/DC, and otherwise had the time of my life. The most daring thing I did on the trip? Drink with Australian men. My last … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Thunderstruck”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[1319],"class_list":["post-6072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand","category-travel","tag-jill-dupleix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1zW","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":113,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/next-adventure","url_meta":{"origin":6072,"position":0},"title":"Next Adventure","author":"Gil","date":"December 3, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"The tour wrapped up last night. Now I have two days in Queenstown, during which time I'll take a lengthy hike, sit out by the water (Lake Wakatipu), and not drink. I've consumed more beer in the last 10 days than I have in the previous two years. That's what\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":111,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/greatest-adventure","url_meta":{"origin":6072,"position":1},"title":"Greatest Adventure","author":"Gil","date":"December 5, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Sure, I've taken a helicopter ride up the side of a glacier, climbed a mile-high mountain, jetboated the Shotover canyon, and bungee-jumped off a 155-foot platform, but nothing prepared me for the experience of my last night in New Zealand: drinking with a bunch of Australian guys.I have a newfound\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1444,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bigger-than-tina","url_meta":{"origin":6072,"position":2},"title":"Bigger Than Tina","author":"Gil","date":"April 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"On the heels of yesterday's announcement about Faiz K.'s new baby, another dutiful VM reader has great news to share: my favorite Australian is getting hitched! No, not Jacko! He's washed up! No, not Michael Hutchence! He died under weird circumstances! No, not Paul Hogan! What happened to him, anyway?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Zealand"","block_context":{"text":"New Zealand","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-zealand"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":400,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/weather-with-you","url_meta":{"origin":6072,"position":3},"title":"Weather With You","author":"Gil","date":"November 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"A year ago today, I embarked on a 15-day trip to New Zealand (click over to the 11\/03 and 12\/03 archives for the wacky details). At the time, I was struggling pretty badly with a broken heart. During my two weeks on the other side of the planet, I discovered\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "New Zealand"","block_context":{"text":"New Zealand","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/new-zealand"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":467,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/happy-new-year-2","url_meta":{"origin":6072,"position":4},"title":"Happy New Year","author":"Gil","date":"January 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The official VM girlfriend and I spent New Year's Eve watching the first two Lord of the Rings flicks. No, seriously. She loves those movies, but I'd never seen them before, and after our disastrous attempt at watching all three Matrix flicks back in November on Showtime, we decided to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":79,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/no-beef-with-wellington","url_meta":{"origin":6072,"position":5},"title":"No Beef with Wellington","author":"Gil","date":"November 26, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Cut me some slack; I'm buzzed and I can't come up with any good puns. We drove most of the day, in cold rain, to get from Rotorua to Wellington. The terrain's absolutely gorgeous. Can't wait to share some pix with you, via one of my wacky slideshows (the captions\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6072"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6075,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6072\/revisions\/6075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}