It's All Greek To Me

Or at least it was, just a little while ago, as my family and I sat with our best friends, wonderful enough, as always, to have invited us out to dinner at what was a great restaurant. The name was hardly the result of someone having been up all night thinking of the title - The Greek Tavern - pure & simple, it was more than enough to amply suggest what lay inside - sumptuous food and plenty of it, done extremely well.
It had been a good while since I had eaten Greek food, in so much as going-out to a restaurant to do so.....the last time would have been in Cairns, oddly enough, and almost certainly 1998 (or whichever was the year that 'Saving Private Ryan' was released here at the movies.)
I know this with great certainty & enough precision: just as music, movies or other things we surround ourselves with can so often enable us to accurately timeline our lives, this was a fine enough example of same. 
I was married at that time to a previous partner - she was then expecting our daughter, now a whole 12 yrs old. 
We had dined at this large Greek place in Cairns, staying there on one of the many weekends we would spend, driving-up from Innisfail, our home at the time, and checking-in to one of our favourite hotels.  
At this particular Greek place, I recall quite well that we had baby char-grilled octopus and mussels in a tomato & wine sauce, with plenty of great bread for mopping-up, amongst other fineries & trimmings.
After what was a delicious meal, we went to see the newly released SPR at the movies - we were no more than 15 minutes into the film.....and as anyone having seen the movie will well-know, it's that first 30 minutes or so that are particularly intense, with very harrowing stuff as the marines stormed the beachhead - gut-wrenching & still hard to watch........it was so intense that particular evening, with the Dolby Digital doing it's thing so well and all, that my wife of the time could not,  stay a moment longer. 
It had deeply upset her, had Private Ryan, and she was worrying such a lot about how the explosions and noise, along with her own physical & emotional upset was being 'felt' by our then unborn daughter. As many a mother to be would, and quite understandably, really, she went into foetal protection mode.......this badly chosen movie, well, it was all too much, and we simply had to leave the theatre, something I could fully understand, as much as I had been hanging-out to see the film on the Big Screen. Pregnancy can cause all manner of upset, on many levels, and this degree of audio-visual onslaught to the senses was just too emotionally overwhelming for her - it even messed with my own head and emotions quite a bit, and I'm a man who's seen several men's share of blood, snot & gore via my 'bloody, gory & snotty' profession.
Perfectly time-stamped, then was this life-event - and I can report that the daughter seems none the worse for wear for what little exposure she did have to SPR that evening, and is already a Black Belt in Taikwondo as if to prove as much (or possibly as a response?).
But I have digressed somewhat - this evenings meal was something to behold, and as well that we had brought along with us what was a very reasonable appetite. 
The 'specials' that my good friends had ordered were just that.....very special.....with dips as fresh as it's possible to be, followed by all manner of goodness......marinated pickled octopus, giant beans in sauce, beans in Giant's sauce, calamari, sausages sliced and grilled to perfection.......and then came the meat.......2 huge platters of lamb, chicken, meatballs......accompanied by, naturally, the very finest Greek salad, a type of fried haloumi cheese (the exact name of which I forget), but all of it superb, superb, superb..........we loved it to bits.
It was my wife & daughter's first foray into Greek dining, and I'm very sure it won't be their last, since they enjoyed it so much. I only hope we can find one locally that does things as well up in the Far North, which might be a big ask - I will, though, no doubt, be attempting to build a little more Greek technique into my cooking repertoire, and we'll simply have to see how that one goes.
Right now though, it's back to the packing.

Struggling & Battling - The Big Push North

The stresses & strains of moving home, along with, from recall, a precious few others including but not limited to Death, Changing Jobs, Divorce or Marriage, Serious Life-Threatening Illness........yes, there are more but I forget them.....all of these are major stressors taking the most valuable of time off the end of our lives.....or so it is said.
Being ever the optimist, I am hopeful that, instead of this, the truth lies more along the lines of 'What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger' - I must believe in this latter one, or I'm a dead man several years ago - ergo it must be so, problem solved QED.
However, married, as I am, to a beautiful Chinese woman, and having a beautiful mid-teens daughter, both of whom 'enjoy' clothing, it's very hard to get them into 'cull mode', that mode we all should enter but seldom do, as deeply as we should, when we relocate. With the daughter especially, she has so many clothes, many of them, granted, that have been 'gifted' from cousins, and most of them high-quality goods -  the sheer quantity of them is staggering. And the pairs of shoes.......Mon Dieu.....brand-name shoes that any teenager would die to have & wear - all of them have uber-high mileage, but none gained through actual wear, but that combo of frequent flyer miles within their boxes......I'm sure I'm not alone, but man, it feels that way as I fight yet another losing battle.
We have already dragged said shoes & clothing from the depths of Northern China, around Melbourne and so-on, only to have it all reside within wardrobes or drawers, never seeing the light of day, and for me, further proof is not required of it's necessity or value, ie it's lack thereof.
No......It has managed to be display goods for some 4 years now, and hidden-away display goods at that, and enough is enough.
If only it were all that easy.........in the end, they will do what they will, these women, and once again, we will transport - this time at many hundreds of dollars cost, I should add - items of clothing that will go-on to live-out their lives in cupboards & drawers.........now in Totally Tropically Style.
Of course, being a guy, and more yet, not exactly a 'clothes horse' of any kind, having that most functional of kits, 4 good pairs of jeans, perhaps 4 pairs of shoes, (2 pairs of which are Birkenstock Sandals!) and maybe a dozen T shirts, well, that's about it, underwear & socks aside - oh, I almost forgot my suit and 2 jackets....and that really IS it.
My wife keeps showing me attractive yet very heavy knitted items of hers, saying 'do you think this one will be ok for up there', and having that look of both disappointment and disbelief when I remind her of the true meaning of The Tropical North, where even the cold is warm. Sure, it can get a little less mild-weathered in the depths of Winter, with temperatures sometimes dropping to a dreadful 8 degrees C.....in the midle of the night for a few minutes on a very bad and unusual day.......of yes, I can see that they'll be in for more than a few shocks on this and other levels - I'll have the camera nice & ready!
So yes, I am suffering that kind of stress where my family seem unable to let-go in an appropriate manner befitting a 3000Km-plus relocation - and I have decided to simply let it go, and watch upon arrival, as we either over-stuff built-in robes with clothing never to be worn, or as they throw-out perfectly useless, but now outrageously expensive items, their value having quadrupled due to the cost of freighting them the full length of Australia's Eastern Seaboard.
Or am I being unreasonable here?