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August 30, 2004
Cough Hack Wheeze
Well, fortunately my headache of Saturday had gone away by Sunday morning, but it was replaced by a bit of a nagging cough. I guess that's a bit of an improvement... So I spent most of the day studying Fluid Dynamics, nothing too exciting. I did pass up an offer to go play footy in the Roberts Hall vs Farrer Hall game because of my cough and my being behind on hw though. Then in the evening it was time to go to MBT (Monash Bible Talks) at Rob & Simone's, and after the "official" part of MBT ended at 9 (a bit later than usual), about a third of us stayed late to go deeper on a side topic that came up in the tape (or rather, wasn't really mentioned in the tape). It was pretty cool, we wound up going all through 1 Timothy and some other passages, and wound up being there till after 11pm, hehe. It was actually quite interesting and very helpful.
Today I haven't done a whole lot either. If anything my cough's gotten a bit worse, sigh. I woke up so many times last night because of it too, KAAAHN! Other than that I went to my two classes and a two-hour prac, went grocery shopping, did a little hw, did laundry (still waiting for it to dry, over 4 hours later... man, the dryers at Monash suck!), and then went to Cafe Night over in the Dining Hall with Sam, Jen, Jake & Greg (all four are from U of California schools and here for a year, and I met the first three on the Grampians trip), where we just hung out for an hour over some good desserts (although I was cheap & healthy, and brought my own apple & orange, but next time I'm gettin a slice of mud cake and a big chocolate ice cream cone, that's for sure!). The topic got onto movies, and they all gasped when they found out I hadn't seen "Shawshank Redemption" yet, just like all my GAC & Cumberland friends always do. They said they were gonna remedy that situation sometime soon (but I've also heard that line before), so we'll see, hehe. :-)
In news, Australian Prime Minister John Howard this past weekend called the federal election, and set a date of 9th October. Now for a brief lesson on Australian government. The Australian constitution mandates that there be federal elections for the office of Prime Minister (and I believe the House of Representatives & Senate as well, but don't quote me on that), at least every three years, and it is the sole responsibility of the incumbent Prime Minister to set the date for the election, which must be on a Saturday. (By the way, voting is mandatory down here.) When he announces the date (which he can do at any point during his term), he must set it a minimum of four weeks away. But the six weeks of the "official" campaign season between now and the election is the longest in the past several elections. By setting the election for 9th Oct, Howard has set himself up to be the first of the "three amigos" of Bush, Blair & Howard to face their electorate since the Iraq war. Also, Howard (Liberal Party) is running for his fourth consecutive term, which would make him the second-longest-tenured PM in Aussie history, and his opponent is Mark Latham of the Labour Party. All indications at this point show that it's pretty much a dead heat, but according to The Australian, on issues of the US alliance (which actually is a big deal down here, it's amazing how much the American election is shaping the Aussie election), security and the war on terror, Howard owns Latham. And in a mostly unrelated note, John Kerry's daughters got soundly booed when they appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, and were booed even louder when they tried to tell the audience members that they should vote for their father. Hmm, is this an indication of potential trouble in one of the demographics that the Democrats had been banking on?
Well, once I deem my stuff to be "dry enough" I'm gonna definitely hit the sack, g'night. Hopefully tonight will be a more restful night.
Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
August 28, 2004
Friday Night Footy at the 'G
Yesterday was pretty cool. During Fluid Dynamics, several profs came in and talked for a bit about what areas they were researching in fluid dynamics, and they showed some sweet movies and computer visualizations of their models. Most of the areas that they're researching actually interest me, with stuff going on in meteorology, geophysics and astrophysics. If I were going to be down here for more than just this semester, I'd seriously consider doing some research with one of them, that all looks like some really cool stuff. But it was also the last day of having David May as our lecturer, for the last seven weeks of the course we're gonna have Paul Cally. Hopefully I can get to know Paul as well as I got to know Dave, so that I'm not just some anonymous student.
After phoning my parents for the better part of an hour on my mobile instead of my super-cheap phone card that's only 2c/min to the States (I had $43 of call credit to use up on my mobile by 12th Sep, now I have $27 to use by then), Jodee (our IFSA coordinator) invited all of us Butler students to the food court in the campus centre for a free lunch, woohoo! Not everyone was able to make it though, only Meghan, Sharon & Caroline were able to come (plus myself of course). It was good to catch up with them, especially since I really don't see them anymore now that the semester has started. After that Rowan & I got together to chat and start a little Bible study of 1 John.
In the evening I went to the footy game at the MCG with Rowan & Mars (their friend Andrea and a couple others also met up with us at the stadium). We didn't get there as early as we should've though, and so we wound up having to sit in the last row of the upper deck. But hey, the ticket was only $11, so I can't really complain (I wish I could go to football games back home for just $US8, that'd be sweet). The match pitted the Carlton Blues against the Collingwood Magpies in the last game of the year for both clubs (they were both eliminated from playoff contention at least 2-3 weeks ago). But apparently both clubs are bitter rivals, much like the Vikings & Packers or Packers & Bears, so no matter what the records are it's a good game. And both club's supporters were out in force, the attendance was over 60,000! Not bad at all for a game between two relatively poor sides. While the play was a bit sloppy, since neither club was very good, it certainly was an exciting back-and-forth match, with the Blues topping the Pies by a single point, 108-107. James (Mars) is a Carlton supporter, so we were all barracking for them. In the photo Mars is on the left, Rowan on the right, and Andrea in front, with myself in the back. The only downside about going to the game was that the buses around here stop running at 9:30 every night, which if you ask me is really stupid. So when I got back to the Huntingdale train station after the game at 11:30, I had to walk all the way back to Monash (25 minutes up Wellington Road to the southwest corner of campus, another 15-20 to Halls on the northeast corner of campus, so a 40-45 minute walk in total). It's the third time I've walked back from Huntingdale, and I've also walked back from the Clayton station once, which is a similar distance away. I've discovered that Melbourne's public transit system is really great, as long as you're not travelling at night or on the weekends. Sigh.
Last night while I was at the footy game I also started getting a bit of a headache, and that's persisted all day today too, only with aches all over and hot/cold flashes as well. Kinda sucks. I was gonna go over to Stuart's house with Rowan & James tonight, but I just wasn't feeling well enough. Bugga! So today I've mostly spent workin on homework, although my focus was less than optimal with my headache. Blah. I'll definitely be heading to bed here pretty soon, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.
Posted by Jared at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2004
USA-Spain
Sigh, I just watched the US men's basketball team beat Spain by 10 points or so in the Olympic quarterfinals. Along with everyone else in the lounge (including a couple of Spaniards), I was barracking for Spain, but everyone was absolutely appalled at the atrocious officiating. I'm not saying Spain would've won, but the refs totally killed a couple of Spain's rallies with unbelievably horrible calls. It was easily the worst officiating I've seen in quite some time. People down here are surprised to find out that I don't want the US basketball team to win, but they agree with me in my reasons, that they're a bunch of overpaid selfish showboaters who really don't care about winning, or who expect to win gold just by showing up. I really don't foresee them getting past Serbia or Lithuania, I highly doubt the US will win gold this time. Maybe that's what they need to give the NBA players a wake-up call to take the Olympics seriously again. That's all for now, g'night.
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2004
Chaba
The days just keep marching on here at Monash, although the last couple were relatively uneventful. Yesterday after relishing the chance to sleep in, I decided to go to MWACS (Monash Weather & Climate Society) at 1pm instead of CBT (Campus Bible Talks). I mean, I paid the $5 membership fee 6 weeks ago but hadn't been to anything yet. It was actually fairly interesting, they had a recent Monash grad speak about her experiences in the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian equivalent of the National Weather Service back in the States. And before the talk they had a chart discussion, which included taking a look at Super Typhoon Chaba, which currently has winds of over 215mph in the Eastern Pacific, and has its sights set on Japan in three to four days time on 29th August, although it will likely have weakened to a typhoon by that point. (A super typhoon is the equivalent of a high Category 4 up to a Cat 5 hurricane, and a regular typhoon is a hurricane of strength mid-Category 4 and lower.) Josh, you just might want to pay attention to this one in the next few days. Then after a couple hours of "studying" (i.e. on and off dozing) in the library, I went to CU (Christian Union) in the evening for the other regular weekly stuff.
Much of today has been spent working on my Fluid Dynamics assignment that's due Friday. It's just one problem, but it's taking absolutely forever. I worked on it a bit last night too, and kinda got stuck when I realized I was taking the log of a quantity that wasn't dimensionless (for you non-maths people, that's a bad thing, it can't be done). So I showed it to David (the lecturer) after class today, and he realised that he was doing pretty much the same thing! He couldn't really figure out what we were doing wrong this afternoon, but after a couple more hours of work tonight I finally cracked it, woohoo! Doing homework for that class down here is a lot different than doing physics homework back at GAC, mostly because I'm doing everything completely on my own down here, without any help from any of my classmates. So I'm really looking at this semester as a chance to grow my confidence in math/physics and improve my skills, without being dependent on the hints and help of others. It takes me awhile longer to do everything by myself, but it feels great when you can get yourself unstuck on some problem and figure it all out for yourself! And then when I get done with the fluids assignment, I've gotta get started on one for Weather & Climate (and study for the mid-term that's in one week), write my Aussie Landscape essay about this weekend in the Grampians, and start researching for my big essay in Climate Change that's due in a month. Sigh, and I'd so enjoyed my bludge semester for the first 4-5 weeks down here!
Spring is starting to break through in Melbourne finally. Today it was 20 or 21C (mid-upper 60s F), warm enough for me to break out the shorts! I was probably about the only person on campus who thought it was warm enough for that though, hehe. One more nice warm day around 21-22 tomorrow, and then back to the low teens by early next week. :-(
Oh, and this arvo (afternoon) I bit the bullet and finally bought my plane tickets for my trip to the Reef in a month. The downside is that by not pulling the trigger last night I cost myself a decent chunk of change, sigh. But on Sun, 26th Sept, I'll be flying up to the Whitsunday Coast, hanging out there for a couple days with Richard and possibly a couple of his friends, and then we'll rent a car and drive back up to Cairns to meet up with the rest of his friends for a couple days, before we all fly out of Cairns on Sat, 2nd Oct, and return to uni for the stretch run. It'll be so cool to see the Great Barrier Reef! And I have an offer from someone down here to go to Tassie with me for the overland trek if I get something together. :-) Now if only I could find someone to go with me to see Uluru too...
Cal Thomas has a good article this week explaining John Kerry's many positions on the Iraq conflict. He's been on every possible side of the issue in the last few years, changing his tune whenever it's politically expedient, instead of sticking to convictions. George Will has a column today which is a scathing criticism of campaign finance reform, because in the Wisconsin US Senate race between Russ Feingold and Russ Darrow, Darrow's family is unlikely to be able to run commercials for their car dealerships, for the sole reason that it bears Darrow's name. CFR is almost certainly the most major threat to free speech to date, and the government continues to seek more ways to regulate speech. In humorous news, you shouldn't expect prompt phone service if you go to Romania. This guy requested a phone line 28 years ago, and the phone company finally responded to him, informing him that there were still no lines available! Leave it to a Pollock to steal a 200-meter bridge. And a woman in South Africa is very lucky, after surviving a 3300m skydiving free fall when both her regular and reserve parachutes failed to open. She miraculously escaped with only a broken pelvis. Maybe that's why I'm hesitant to go skydiving or bungee jumping...
Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2004
The Grampians
Well this was a pretty fun weekend, my first-ever real camping and hiking trip. It was the first of two field trips for my Experiencing the Australian Landscape class, and was basically a warm-up for the big four-day trip to Wilson's Prom in mid-September. On Friday afternoon we went to the Brambuk Aboriginal Centre/Grampians National Park Centre. The Brambuk building was pretty cool, it didn't have any straight edges or 90-degree angles in it, it was designed to somewhat resemble a cockatoo, the totem of the nation of Koori people (Aboriginal) that used to live there. We all got another go at practicing to throw a boomerang. I still don't have that down yet, but then again I haven't had much practice since I got here, only about five throws all together. At least I can get it to turn around, hehe. We also got to sample several native Australian herbs, berries and meats, including emu, crocodile and kangaroo. Croc was really dry and reminded me a lot of dry white chicken breast, emu was kinda dry too, and roo had a very distinctive flavour to it, kinda gamey like venison. We camped at a site in the shadow of one of the mountains in the Grampians, and I tented with a kid named Jin from South Korea, he was pretty cool. I didn't bother to rent a camping mat for $3, so after about two minutes I felt the cold ground right through my sleeping bag and the bottom of the tent, oh well. It was not a very restful night either, I woke up I don't know how many times. Halfway through the night I had to put on more clothes as well, it was getting a bit chilly!
Saturday was a beautiful day, mostly sunny basically all day. We split up into three groups and did the Wonderland Circuit, which was over 9km of rather strenuous hiking through the Wonderland Ranges. We got to see cool places like Stony Creek (which we actually walked alongside and over a few times on the climb up), Cool Chamber (an overhang of rock, which also had a nice trickling cold waterfall, it felt so nice to stick my head in that!), Grand Canyon, Silent Street (both are narrow gorges) & The Pinnacle, which is probably the most famous landmark in the Grampians (along with The Balconies, which we unfortunately didn't go see). The Pinnacle (pictured) is, to the best of my knowledge, the highest point in the Grampians, and it offers a spectacular overlook of Halls Gap, Lake Bellfield and a plain, more than 1300 feet (400 meters) straight down a sheer cliff face. Even with the railings on the point of rock known as The Pinnacle, I still rediscovered my healthy respect for heights, especially since it was rather windy up there. I was just concerned about dropping my camera. :-) As hard as the climb up was, the climb down was certainly more jarring for my knees and ankles. When we got back to Halls Gap (where we started the hike), we all hopped in the buses and rode over to MacKenzie Falls, which was also really cool. The downside was having to walk all the way back up (probably another 100 meters of elevation at least), and that I must've also dropped and lost my beanie somewhere along the way. Oh well, it was only $5 at K-Mart, and I can always get another one if I want to. Saturday night after supper back at the campsite we split up into four groups (mostly the same as our hiking groups) and talked about the landscapes we lived in back home, and our impressions/preconceptions of the Aussie landscape (we had to write a short paper on that topic before we left). It was really cool hearing about everyone's home, as in my group we had three people from the US, one from Spain, two from the UK, one from Israel, three from Sweden, one from Germany and one from The Netherlands. Saturday night I slept better, I only woke up a few times, hehe.
On Sunday we packed up all our tents and headed off to the northern part of the Grampians. There we split into two groups, and my group went hiking up Hollow Mountain, which most of us thought was cooler than The Pinnacle actually. Hollow Mountain was a much steeper climb too, but a bit shorter, probably only a 200-300m elevation change. We spent the entire morning up there, it was pretty cool. The picture is of Carmen, myself & Jin most of the way up Hollow Mountain. After having lunch we moved over to Mount Zero and speed-hiked up that. We had a deadline of being back to the bus by 2pm (even though Andrew (our prof, who we all made fun of all weekend long for his incompetence) didn't bring his group back till 2:30), meaning we only had an hour-ten to do a hike that was supposed to be 45 minutes each way. But we were bookin' it up the mountain, we got up there in just 25 minutes! Mount Zero is just a couple kilometers away from Hollow Mountain, so it was cool seeing from Mount Zero where we'd been earlier in the day. It was surprising to see from that distance how far we'd actually hiked. The rain held off until the moment the last group got back at 2:30, that was rather fortunate. But it was a pretty long bus ride back to Melbourne, 5 hours on a cramped 24-person bus with uncomfortable seats full of people very eager to get back to uni to take a shower and put on clean clothes. After cleaning up, I went out to Monash Pizza with Sam, Jake, Jen (who all were on the hiking trip and are from California) and a couple of their friends. It was wonderful getting to eat good hot food that we didn't have to prepare!
I took over 200 photos this weekend, and I'll be gradually working through those to get them ready for a photo album on the web. Hopefully I'll be able to get them done this week, and upload a bunch of photo albums this weekend. Fingers crossed. But the hiking trip this weekend was really awesome. I loved it, even though I got a bit sore and more than ready to feel clean again. :-) My one complaint was that we were having to go so fast that I usually wound up needing to pay attention to my footing, instead of being able to pay attention to the landscape and wonderful views around us. If we could've taken it just a little bit slower that would've been nice.
Today I didn't do too much other than go to class. I did have to make a run down to Cole's at Burwood to get some groceries, as I didn't stock up on quickly-perishable things like lunch meat, bread or milk before the camping trip. Then most of the evening has been spent trying to firm up my holiday travel plans with Richard for spring break up at the Whitsunday Islands and Cairns. I'm hoping to buy my plane tickets tomorrow.
Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2004
Camping Preparations
Well I didn't wake up for any middle-of-the-night Olympic events last night, I decided to take a break and just sleep for a change. Good plan, although I was still horrendously tired for morning lectures. Oh well.
This evening I went to the grocery store to pick some some food for this weekend's 3-day excursion to The Grampians (one of two field trips for my Experiencing the Australian Landscape class). This'll be the first time I've ever really and truly been camping, so it'll be an experience for me. I'm lazy and didn't wanna mess with the little stoves they'll be giving us, so I bought some no-fuss ready-to-eat food, like canned tuna, salmon and pineapple, along with some apples and mandarines, so in theory I shouldn't starve. We head out in the morning at 7:30am, and then we'll get back to campus around 6pm on Sunday. The weather looks like it should be fairly nice too, highs around 60 and lows around 40.
Tonight I took some time out to watch the men's basketball game between the USA and Australia. The Boomers put up a valiant effort, and led the Dream Team for three quarters before falling 89-79. I was barracking for the Aussies too, sigh. I actually hope that the Dream Team doesn't get gold. Not getting a medal wouldn't be bad. They need to be knocked down a peg and stop showboating so much. It's time for some other country that actually plays sound basketball and is hungry to win to get a chance, I think. Serbia could actually pose some problems for the US in the medal rounds, they're really good.
As I write this Josh is finishing packing, and will be leaving for Omaha soon, on his way to Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. It'll be cool having another friend from home on this side of the Pacific Rim. Have a safe trip Josh!
And credit Mike with finding this story. A black bear in Washington state has been going on a bit of a drinking binge, and has a definite brand that he prefers, hehe. The bear guzzled 36 beers and got so drunk that he passed out at the campground!
Well, I'm basically all packed now, so I should probably get to bed. Talk to all you blokes when I get back from camping!
Posted by Jared at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2004
Late-Night Olympics Fever
So I guess I've caught Olympic fever. Two nights ago I stayed up till 2:40am to watch the "Race of the Century," the men's 200m individual freestyle final. Ian Thorpe came through in the clutch yet again, and became the only Aussie in history to win a total of five gold medals over the course of a career (Thorpedo got three at Sydney, two so far in Athens). Thorpe beat out "Hoogie," Pieter van den Hoogenband of The Netherlands, and Phelps the American picked up the bronze. It really was a good race, and I was barracking for Thorpe all the way, because I knew there was no way Phelps was gonna beat both Thorpie and Hoogie, and I'd rather have the Aussie winning gold over the Flying Dutchman (I'm vindicated in not wanting Hoogie to win, because he and the Dutch media were huge jerks at the post-race press conference). And then since I was up that late anyway, I stayed up to watch the next three races, which were all swimming finals as well (two of which were won by Americans). It was 3:15am by the time I got to bed, but that was okay, since I had no classes Tuesday and was able to sleep in nice and late. :-)
Tuesday was the usual Christian Union stuff, another fine day of hanging out with friends and studying God's Word. Tuesday evening I spent trying to do more homework while watching the Olympics. I know I'm not getting much done while doing that, but hey, it's the Olympics! But I actually turned in early, around midnight, so that I could wake up at 3:40am and catch the other Amazing Race at 3:51am, the men's 4x200m freestyle relay final (Laura & Liz (two of the RA's) and one of the British exchange students also got up to watch it). Australia has absolutely owned this event the last six years, winning every major championship (Sydney Olympics, Commonwealth Games in '98 and '02, World Championships in '98, '01 and '03, Pan Pacific Games in '97, '99 and '02), plus setting a mere four world records during that span, and they were confident they'd win gold again. But the USA put on a bloody marvelous race and upset the Aussies by .13 seconds! I was so excited (everyone else was disappointed though)! I'd been barracking for Ian Thorpe the night before, but this time I was all USA. But it was such an awesome race, as Klete Keller had a lead of over a body length to start the anchor leg, but by the end of the first 50m Thorpe had pulled even. I honestly thought it was all over there, but somehow Keller held on and nudged out Thorpe for the gold. I'd say it was the best and most exciting swimming race I've ever seen, definitely at least up there. The Aussies are still in shock over having their dominance of the pool and that event shattered. After letting the amazing race sink in for a bit, I went back to bed at 4am, hehe.
And over the last couple of days of Olympic coverage, they've shown some amazing soccer highlights. One came from Italy vs Japan a couple days ago, when one of the Italian players had one of the prettiest goals I've ever seen, a bicycle kick on a deep crossover pass. Beautiful! I think a bicycle kick for a goal in soccer is one of the most amazing sights in all of sports, I really do. And then from today's match between Tunisia and Bosnia were some of the most absolutely bizarre highlights I've ever seen. It was tied 1-1 in the 80th minute, when Tunisia was awarded a penalty kick. They converted, but it was called back for Tunisia players trespassing in the zone. They converted the second try, but got whistled again for trespassing. They converted the third try, but this time the side judge waved it off, saying players trespassed again. On that one the ref gave one of the Tunisians a yellow card. On the fourth attempt, the Bosnian goalie saved it, but the side judge waved his flag again, saying one of the Bosnians stepped inside the zone. The goalie saved the fifth try too, but the side judge waved it off again. The sixth try was blocked by the goalie but then the kicker headed in the rebound for a goal, but the side judge waved it off AGAIN. Finally, on the seventh try, the Tunisians converted the penalty kick, with none of the refs calling it back. The Bosnians tied it up at 2 a couple minutes later though, and the Tunisians had another shot on goal in the 88th minute. The goalie dove and blocked it with his head, but the ball bounced straight down off the side of his head, bounced back up, hit the crossbar and crossed the goal line by an inch, giving Tunisia the 3-2 win. I'm telling you, that has to be one of the strangest games of soccer in Olympic history.
John Kerry can't seem to make up his mind on which version of the Vietnam-Cambodia story he wants to stick to, even though he claims it's an experience that was "seared" -- seared -- into his memory. American Spectator illustrates how he also is unwilling to tell the truth of his involvement in a 1971 plot to assassinate six pro-war members of the US Senate. Granted, he did come out against the plot in the meeting, but he's denied on several occasions that he was even there, despite several eyewitness accounts. And in response to Republicans pointing out that Senator Kerry has an atrocious attendance record at Senate Intelligence Committee meetings over the last several years, the Kerry campaign fired back, claiming on their website that John Kerry had a very good attendance record, and that he was even the Vice President of the committee for the last eight years. Umm, okay. Too bad Massachusetts Senator John Kerry has confused himself with Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, who is actually the one with the good attendance record, and who actually has been the committee Vice President. John Kerry has never been the VP of that committee. He's displaying a frightening pattern of lying, especially about simple facts that can be easily checked. And in other news, a British woman was struck by a meteorite while hanging clothes on the line in her backyard. It's a one in a billion chance to get struck by a meteorite, and to the best of anyone's knowledge, she's the first person ever to be struck by one. Maybe she should buy a lottery ticket.
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2004
Olympics
The Athens 2004 Olympics are finally here, so what does that mean? You guessed it, actually watching some TV, spending a decent amount of time each day camped out in my dorm's TV lounge doing some homework, while watching the Aussies rack up the medals. The time difference only really comes into play if you wanna catch any of the finals of the premier events live. For instance, tonight I'm planning on staying up late so that I can catch the "race of the century," the 200m men's freestyle. Some of swimming's biggest names are all gonna be in the same race, including Australia's Ian Thorpe ("Thorpedo" or "Thorpie") & Grant Hackett, Klete Keller & Michael Phelps of the USA, and Pieter van den Hoogenband ("Hoogy") of The Netherlands. The race is on at 2:45am Melbourne time, or 11:45am back home, but I really wanna see this race live. Seeing snippets of replays of it after you already know the result just won't do it justice.
The Aussies are really proud of their dominance in the pool. I saw a funny commercial yesterday while watching the Olympics, and I think it may have been advertising the Olympics 2004 game for PS2 (but I'm not totally sure), but one guy had a line that went somethin like, "any real Aussie will teach his kids to swim before he teaches them to walk," hehe.
Another thing that's different about Australia is that they like to give nicknames to their sports teams that compete internationally in various sports. Here are a few examples:
men's field hockey: Kookaburras
women's field hockey: Hockeyroos
men's soccer: Olyroos
women's soccer: Matildas
men's basketball: Boomers
women's basketball: Opals
men's rugby: Wallabies
There are probably at least a couple of other ones that I'm forgetting, but that's at least a good sample. How come the United States doesn't give cool nicknames to our international teams?
Yesterday my res hall had another game of footy, this time against Farrer Hall. Farrer's entire team was made up of guys who are on the Monash club footy team, so they were really good, whereas our team had several international players like myself who are still learning the game. They shut us out in the first quarter 32-0, and went on to cruise to a 90-18 victory (somewhere around there anyway, we kinda stopped keeping score after the first quarter). Oh well, it was still fun. And the ground was still muddy, although much better than last week, as it was actually sunny yesterday.
Josh has just three days left in the US! Make sure you wish him well before he takes off for a semester of study abroad in Japan. No fugu for you!
Considering that both the United States and Australia are well into political campaign season, with all the candidates promising big things, we probably all need a quick refresher course in Economics 101 from the incomparable Walter E. Williams. And does the Koran actually condemn the beheadings and other such acts that the Islamofascist terrorists have been committing recently, like some Islamic scholars have been trying to claim? Not hardly, according to a columnist at NRO. And only in Hong Kong would you have a cricket gambling ring. Who knew that insects could warrant such devotion?
Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2004
Snow Day!
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After experiencing the ocean and beaches the last two weekends, today I went up to Lake Mountain with quite a few people from Christian Union for "Snow Day." I got up early, as they were wanting people to be there by 8, but we of course didn't get going until close to 8:45, oh well. But it was raining all morning on our way up there (Lake Mountain is a couple hours northeast of Melbourne), until we got to a high enough altitude, at which point it switched over to snow. Part-way up the mountain park officials made everyone pull over and put tyre chains on their cars because the road conditions were slushy and very slippery, especially when you throw into the mix that most Aussies have little or no experience with snow. It took Kieran, Simon & Brad awhile to get the chains on right. Let me say that I'm very glad that we don't bother with those things back home, they're really more trouble than they're worth. But they're probably good for inexperienced snow drivers to have. Kieran, who was driving the car I was in, was seeing snow for the very first time while he was driving on it! And Herman, who is from Colombia, also saw it for the first time today, along with a couple of the other Aussie CU'ers, so it was cool seeing their reactions to it. They love visiting the snow, but they can't believe how we can possibly put up with snow and cold for 5-6 months of the year, hehe. It was snowing like crazy up there today, with a good deal of wind making it feel rather chilly. But once we started tobogganing we warmed right up. What they call a toboggan I think would be more aptly described as a plastic sled, but they were decent sleds. The run we were on had all sorts of jumps on it, and a couple of times I made it all the way down the hill and even crashed through the snow fence, it was great fun! So was the time I accidentally veered off into the trees, especially since I managed to weave my way between trees on a newfound path, hehe. And it took a great deal of coaxing, but we finally got Paul to go down the hill a few times, since he was actually really really nervous and worried about sledding, as he'd never done it before. He was all worried that it was dangerous, lol! You can tell he's another one that hasn't grown up with snow being a fact of life for half the year every year. But in addition to all the fresh-fallen snow, there was a pretty decent snowpack already on the ground, of about half a meter (roughly 18 inches), continuing what's been the best snowy season in the mountains of Victoria in several years. All the heavy wet snow also made for excellent snowball-making conditions, hehe. When we tried to head back to Melbourne around 4, we were stuck at the resort for awhile, because Kieran managed to bog his car in a snowbank in the car park, hehe. That, and even if we had been pulled out right away, we couldn't have gone anywhere, because the road down the mountain was blocked by a car accident and a downed tree (unrelated incidents), which had traffic at a standstill for 30-45 minutes. We were all soaked and pretty cold, so it felt good to get into some dry clothes when we stopped at Marysville. But it was a really fun day, one that actually made it feel like winter at long last!
I was supposed to go over to Stuart's place in Blackburn with Rowan, Mars and a few other people when I got back from Lake Mountain, but I guess the weather was so cold and rainy for the soccer game that the three of them today that they decided just to go home and sleep or whatever. Oh well, it's probably alright, because now I'll be able to get to sleep at a more decent time, especially considering I woke up early this morning. I'll probably play a little more "Return of the King" before I go to bed.
I just discovered The Australian's News of the Weird page, and it has some fantastically strange stories on it, including: the British man who enjoys walking blindfolded across a tightrope between hot-air balloons thousands of feet up in the air; a superstitious Romanian who requested to stay home from work on Friday the 13th, only to die of a wasp sting in his kitchen; an English cricket club was burned to the ground by a bunny; and how the communist "president-for-life" of Turkmenistan requires his nation's citizens to pass a philosophy test before being granted a drivers license.
Posted by Jared at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2004
Postcard Friday
Ahh, ya gotta love Fridays, only one class... :-) This afternoon I hung out for Rowan for an hour or so, partly to sorta start up a one-on-one Bible study that we're planning on having most Friday afternoons this semester, partly just to talk about stuff, it was cool. After that I wrote five more postcards, woohoo! I'm glad to be getting through those finally. Now I think I've sent out a total of 13 so far, not too shabby. I still have a few left to do, once I find out the addresses of a few people, but at least for the time being I can take a break. And you know what else is nice? It costs the same ($1) to mail a postcard from Australia, no matter what country it's going to, be it China, Japan or the US. It sure makes things less confusing.
Once I got done with that I hopped on the bus down to Burwood to do some grocery shopping at Coles, and I also picked up some cheap gloves at K-Mart, which I'll need for tomorrow's trip up to Lake Mountain for some fun in the snow. I didn't bring my gloves down here when I came, because I didn't anticipate that I'd be around snow at all, and since it's not that cold here in the winter. Since that I haven't done a whole lot, about the only thing I've actually accomplished has been getting my Phillip Island photo album ready to upload. Now there are three waiting to go up, but by the time I actually get around to putting them online in hopefully a couple weeks there'll probably be six or so to upload.
The media seems to be noticing the inconsistencies in John Kerry's war stories. The UK Telegraph points out that when confronted with the controversy about Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" claim, Kerry's spokesmen revised his story, saying that he was in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam. Too bad the delta is entirely within Vietnam. Then when confronted with this, they changed the story yet again, saying that he was on the Mekong while it flowed along the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. Wrong again Mr Kerry! The Mekong flows from Cambodia to Vietnam, and at no point does the border run along the river. The man who wants to be commander of our armed forces can't tell the truth about his own experiences in uniform, which spells trouble for his campaign, since Kerry himself made it the centerpiece. As the American Spectator has put it, he's surrounded himself by a "bodyguard of lies." And at last the rule of law has triumphed in the People's Republic of California, at least for the time-being, as the state supreme court voided all the same-sex marriage certificates that were granted illegally by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom back in February and March. In international news, it's tough being a newscaster in Turkmenistan, with an egomaniacal dictator running the country. The Age reports that a 20-year old Norwegian hacker has broken Apple's monopoly on its wireless music streaming technology. Apparently Croatian teenagers love their foam a little too much, as the government has banned "foam parties." Go figure. And in Odd Spot, there are several stories involving dogs, including one in Germany named Adolf that was trained to raise his paw in the Nazi salute on command!
Now it's time for a little "Return of the King" action before I turn in for the night. Hopefully I can figure out how to knock the towers down on the Walls of Minas Tirith level.
Posted by Jared at 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2004
Spring Break Planning
I haven't been up to a whole lot lately. Monday after class I basically just sat around all evening and wrote some emails to people, some of whom I haven't talked to in ages. Hopefully they respond. And if any of you feel like dropping me an email, I promise I'll try to write back to you too! Everyone likes something (non-spam) in the mailbox, be it email, voicemail or snail mail.
Tuesday was CU day once again, and we had a guest speaker from Sydney give a talk at CBT entitled "What If God Really Exists?" It was a really good talk, and helped reinforce several things. After the growth groups and all that stuff in the evening, Rowan, James, Brad We & I got some food at KFC (yeah, they have those down here) and brought it to Rob & Simone's house, and just hung out with a bunch of CU people, it was cool.
Wednesday was a really long day of class. But I had my first test in Fluid Dyanamics, and I think I did well on it. Too bad it's only worth 5%. Apparently quite a few people stuffed it up though. I didn't think it was that hard, but that's probably just because I actually took the time to study for it. But it's good having David back lecturing. Last week he was gone and we had Simon in his stead all week. Simon lived up to his reputation for going through material at a hundred miles an hour and confusing the heck out of everyone. I also have Simon as the lecturer for one of my weather classes, so last week I had a double dose of him every day. What fun! And if it weren't for the field trips to the Grampians and Wilson's Prom that we're gonna be taking in Experiencing the Australian Landscape, I'd probably drop it because it's such a huge waste of time. The prof rambles on and on about pointless things and goes off on totally unrelated tangents. That, and he doesn't speak clearly, but rather slurs and muffles all his words together. It's a struggle for me to even understand him, and none of the foreign students who are learning English while they're here don't ever have a clue what he's saying, I feel bad for them. He has horrible time management too. Case in point: after rambling and reading this Aboriginal story that none of us could understand for quite some time, he realized that he hadn't had us go practice with the stoves that we'll need to use to cook in the Grampians, and there was only 10-15 minutes of class left. So he still had us go outside to learn how to use the stoves, and we all had to stay a half hour late; we were all quite annoyed and didn't care about the stoves at that point. My only hope is that the field trips will make that class worth two hours of abject pointlessness every Wednesday evening. Is it any wonder that this class is in the "education" faculty (department)?
Wednesday evening CU had a BBQ at Rob & Simone's house, because Philip, the same guy from Sydney who spoke at CBT on Tuesday, was there to give another talk, "What If God Really Loves?" If any of you want to know the answer to that question, go read Romans 5:8. And if its meaning doesn't come to you immediately, I urge you to camp out at that verse until it does. That's what Philip's entire talk was on, that one verse and its significance. For any of us to demand that God show us something more as proof that He loves us, something in addition to the fact that He sent His only Son to die on a cross to save us, is the highest insult, or at best a gross misunderstanding of the unthinkably immense price of that gift. And by reading the verses around that, it's clear that there's no middle ground when it comes to God: we are either His friends or His enemies. I don't know about you, but the thought that I was an enemy of the Creator of the universe before being saved is immensely frightening.
Today I've spent much of the afternoon and evening trying to track down the cheapest airfare/busfare up to Cairns, Townsville or Airlie Beach to go see the Great Barrier Reef over spring break (the last week in September). Rich and some other UW-Eau Claire people who are at Southern Cross Uni over in Lismore this semester are heading up to Cairns for break, and I'm gonna meet them up there. Now it's just working out whether we'll be wanting to just stay in Cairns and go out and see a bunch of stuff from there, or if we'll want to go down to Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands for a couple days, because that'll have a big influence on my choice of airfare (in terms of price and destination). Hopefully we can get everything pretty much set within the next week.
And there are several links that I'd like to pass along. First, House Speaker Dennis Hastert has proposed a dramatic overhaul of the US tax system, and President Bush should definitely listen to Hastert's good economic ideas. Just why is Kerry's Vietnam war record a central issue of the campaign? Oh yeah, because Kerry and the Democrats made it a primary issue during their convention! And Kerry's making some key mistakes in his campaign now, like answering questions. And to all of you Bush-haters out there who have been Michael Moore-ized, did it feel like a sucker punch to the gut when Kerry said that knowing what we know now, he would've gone to war in Iraq as well? I thought that was the keystone issue in your crusade against Bush, and now your candidate has betrayed you. How does it feel? It's just more proof that Kerry can't be trusted with the leadership of the world's most powerful nation. Some schools in Alabama are making it so that boys and girls can no longer study each other in core classes. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute have found that we're in a period of unusually high sunspot activity, which is a cause of at least some of the warming we've experienced in the last 150 years. In somewhat lighter news, an unknown tour bus dumped its load on unsuspecting passengers on a boat in the Chicago River; so who did the passengers blame? Dave Matthews. Memo to Josh: don't be tempted to take Wilson on the plane to Japan with you. And Microsoft is at it again. It seems they're releasing "XP Lite" in select Asian countries such as Thailand. You know, an operating system that's designed to be so crappy, it can't even print! Way to go Microsoft, releasing crap software! I thought it was a joke when I read it initially, but it's true, at least according to CNN (which isn't necessarily a guarantee of veracity). More proof that truth is stranger than fiction. And in satirical news from The Onion, it seems that President Bush is going a little overboard with his blog, hehe.
Oh, and with the little weather widget that I added to my webpage on the sidebar (which gives Melbourne time and the current temp in both F and C), now all of you back home can see that it's been as cold in Minnesota and Wisconsin this week, in mid-summer, as it is down here in Melbourne in mid-winter. I find that kind of humorous actually. But it's more fun seeing the Aussie reactions when I tell them it's the same temp back home right now, and that it's the middle of summer there! I'm probably not encouraging them to go visit MN/WI by telling them things like that though, hehe.
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2004
Muddy Good Times
This weekend was pretty good, despite being bogged down with a cold and sinus headaches that have kept me a bit lethargic. On Friday after I got done with class, I sat outside by the fountain between the campus centre and the library and wrote four more postcards. Slowly but surely I'm making it through them. When I was writing the first couple, the weather was pretty nice and mostly sunny, but by the time I was doing the last one it had clouded up and I was being chased back inside by sprinkles! They say that Melbourne can have "four seasons in a day," and on several occasions I've noticed how it can very quickly alternate between partly-mostly sunny and warm to cold, rainy & windy, even multiple times in a single hour! The weather here is just very schizophrenic, although the dominant "personality" this time of year is definitely rainy. It's rained every single day for the past week at least. But I digress. After writing the postcards, I went to play some ultimate frisbee with some other American students that I'd just met. We played on one of the footy ovals on campus, and it was incredibly muddy. It was really fun getting to play frisbee again, it was my first time since I got to Australia. I got to the game a bit late, but when I jumped in the game my first toss was a 40m forehand strike for a score, which made everyone think I was some sort of pro or something, hehe. As the game wore on and the disk kept getting muddier and muddier (and accordingly more slippery), I returned to my usual crap throws, oh well. But it was so fun getting down and dirty in the mud and intermittent showers! I think I was the only one not to slip and fall in the mud, but I was still covered in it. And of course I wore my white running shoes there too, not knowing it would be so muddy. After taking a nap (my cold had sapped me of energy), I then spent a good chunk of the evening playing "Return of the King," the game that Josh sent me in the mail a week ago. It's really cool, but also pretty difficult. Thanks Josh!
On Saturday after I went grocery shopping I went out to Phillip Island with James, Hernon, Oscar and a few other people (mostly the same group I went fishing with last Saturday). It was rainy and miserable in Melbourne, but by the time we got to Phillip Island (an hour and a half southeast of the city) it was mostly sunny and beautiful out. We basically went on a tour of a bunch of the beaches on the island, including the "Punchbowl" and Woolamai Beach (both of which they've regularly fished at for years), and we wound up at The Nobbies to stay and watch the beautiful sunset. The Nobbies is one of the main places where penguins and seagulls nest, and so we saw all sorts of penguin holes in the hillside, and there were literally thousands of seagulls flying around. I even got crapped on by one. Yippee. What luck. But we didn't see any penguins, because they don't come in from the ocean until after sunset. And the island is free and open to the public during the day, but right after sunset they kick everyone out unless they wanna pay the $20 entry fee to see the world-famous Phillip Island Penguin Parade. Every night hundreds and even thousands of fairy penguins make their way up the beach from a day of fishing in the ocean to their holes in the hillside, to go spew all over their young. What a lovely way to feed your kids. But we didn't stay for the Penguin Parade this time, because we didn't wanna pay the entry fee. At some point I'll go see it though, but maybe I'll wait until Mom & Dad come down here so that they can see it too (and that way I don't have to pay more than once). After our afternoon at Phillip Island we went back to James & Ali's house to watch "I, Robot." I thought it was a really good movie, it was very well done with a few really good twists in it. Will Smith's been in some pretty good movies over his career, but this is definitely one of his best performances so far.
This afternoon I played in my first-ever game of footy! It was Roberts Hall vs Richo (Richardson Hall), and we (Roberts) came out on top by 3 points. Today the footy oval was even muddier than it was on Friday, it was great! Everyone was slipping and sliding all over the place (I slipped once and my entire left side got covered in mud), or diving for the ball or getting tackled or whatnot, it was pretty cool. I guess it's a good thing I hadn't washed off my shoes from Friday, because they got really muddy today. Let's just say that the webbing on them won't ever be anywhere close to white again, oh well. And then this evening I went to supper with the Christian Union people who live in the Halls, and after that we all went over to Rob's house for a service (CU has supper and a house church service, called Monash Bible Talks, every Sunday evening). It was pretty much just like the house church services back home, so that was pretty cool.
And in odd news, a German inmate in Spain tried to prevent his extradition by gluing himself to his girlfriend, using industrial strength glue. Also, when you call 911 you expect the responder to at least be paying attention to what you're saying, right? Well, in Annapolis, Maryland, a 911 dispatcher fell asleep during a call. As a 911 dispatcher in a fairly large city, one would think that there would be enough excitement to stay awake, especially while you're on the phone with someone who's having an emergency! And finally, the story of the week. In Los Angeles they've uncovered a huge education scam, with several schools being shut down by the State of California. Apparently these schools were scamming immigrants by teaching them that the US has 53 states (and saying that the "Republican branch" of the federal government is disenfranchising minorities by refusing to put the stars of the three newest states on the flag), four branches of government (the fourth being the "administrative" branch, which includes the Treasury Dept), two houses of Congress (with all the Democrats going to the Senate and all the Republicans going to the House), and that World War II lasted from 1938-1942. This isn't just limited to LA though, apparently there are 77 locations across the country, including places like Iowa and Nebraska, and tens of thousands of immigrants have been sold phony diplomas after a paltry 70 hours of classroom "instruction." The teachers would even read the answers to the students during tests! Maybe this can help explain all the maddeningly stupid people Jay Leno finds during his Jaywalking segments that don't know anything about basic American history or politics.
Posted by Jared at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2004
Lygon Street
Wow, does Lygon Street ever have a ton of places to eat! It's just north of the CBD (central business district), and it has any type of food you could ever want right there in the food district -- Indonesian, Nepalese, Thai, Italian (including a place that's frequented by tennis great Pete Sampras during the Australian Open), Japanese, Greek, and so much more! But anyways, tonight I ate at an Italian restaurant called DiMattina's, on Lygon Street in Carlton. It was a pretty cool place, and IFSA had organized a travel info night for us with this guy named Safari Pete. He showed us a ton of photos from different trips and tours that we can take all over Australia. I got lots of good tips and ideas of cool places to go, including Tassie for a few days (I might try to do that during spring break the last week of September possibly, I dunno), as there's an option where you can hike across Tasmania in something like three or four days. That'd be sweet! And sometime I also wanna go see Sydney (of course), and make my way up to the Whitsunday Islands between Brisbane and Cairns to see the reef while snorkeling and catch some rays on two of the world's top ten beaches! I'm considering those as my "must-sees" at a minimum. Beyond that, I'd of course love to go into central Australia to see Uluru and Kings Canyon, that's probably next on my list. And now after that Western Australia has crept up there, particularly the tours between Perth & Darwin (and shorter tours to and from cities between there, like Broome and Exmouth), to go see Karijini National Park in particular, which I've heard a couple people say is the most amazing national park in all of Australia, which is really saying something. That one's between Broome & Exmouth. But then there's another very cool one between Exmouth & Perth called Kalbarri National Park that I'd also like to go see. And apparently the WA coastline is stunning too, with lots of cliffs, and even a few good reefs that you can get to just by swimming/snorkeling from shore! But being realistic, and considering my time and money that I have to work with, it's not too likely that I'll make it over to WA. But a guy can dream, can't he?
And the day wouldn't be complete without some weird news. For all you who grew up watching Winnie the Pooh, you might enjoy reading about Tigger on trial! And suppose you're a fisherman up in Siberia, just relaxing and enjoying a vodka, when out of nowhere a hippo pops his head out of the water. How would you react? And when the Brits get mad, they take some serious action: they ban peanuts. And in case of you are having a rough go of finding a good job, the UK is offering some ... interesting ... opportunities.
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2004
Merry Christmas from Monash!
Wow, what an absolutely awesome weekend I had! I'd say it was definitely the most enjoyable weekend I've had so far in Australia. It was so fun, but right now I'm completely exhausted! And to top it off, we've had a lovely stretch of weather, it's been gorgeous out each of the last three days.
Wednesday was fairly ordinary, nothing too special. On Thursday I had my first tutorial, in Fluid Dynamics, and tutorials are something a bit different from the American system. Pretty much every class has two or three lectures per week, plus a tutorial. The class is broken up into different "tute" sessions, so that there are less than 20 students in each. Basically, it just allows a chance for some more hands-on instruction, and is also more geared towards asking questions and getting help on problems than the lectures are. What I found kind of humorous is that most of my classes at Gustavus have still been smaller than my Fluid Dynamics tute is. My other classes start up their tute sessions this week.
On Friday afternoon it was such a beautiful day out that I walked back to uni so that I could sit by the fountain between the campus centre and the library and write some postcards. The plan was to write a few, seeing as how I hadn't gotten any written since I arrived in Australia. But I only got the one to my Grandma Siesennop written, because James Ayling (he & his wife Alison are friends of my family who live just a half hour down the road in Narre Warren) stopped by a bit early to pick me up. I went out to eat at an Italian restaurant called La Porchetta with James & Ali and some of their friends from Melbourne that they hadn't seen in awhile. After that I went back to James & Ali's house, watched some Friday Night Footy, and stayed overnight there.
We woke up at 3:45am on Saturday morning to go surf fishing with James and some of his buddies. We went over to Waratah Bay, a couple hours east of Melbourne near Wilson's Promontory, a spectacular national park. The first place we fished at was a surf beach called Sandy Point. When we got there it was somewhere around 6am, and the sun had yet to rise behind us, but the moon was setting over the ocean in front of us. Absolutely beautiful! Anyways, this was my first time fishing (okay, I'd tried casting a couple of times off my dock back when I was in 6th grade or something, but I'm not counting that as actually having "fished"), and only my third time seeing the ocean (the other two being ten years ago at the Gulf of Mexico down by Biloxi and New Orleans, and four years ago the Mediterranean Sea at Costa del Sol in Spain). James taught me how to cast, and I picked it up fairly quickly. What makes surf fishing different than lake or river fishing (apart from different bait, lures, etc), is that you have to time your cast with the rhythm of the ocean waves. About every third or fourth wave is bigger than the others, and you wait for this wave to go back out to sea. Then you run up to the edge of the water, cast the line in as far (deep) as possible, and then run back before the next wave comes in (giving the line some slack so that you aren't dragging the line back to shallower water as you scamper back to a dry part of the beach). You just let it all sit there, either for a few minutes or until there's a bite. That's really all there is to surf fishing. It's kinda fun actually. I didn't catch anything (and neither did James, but Ali always gives him a hard time about how he never catches anything, hehe), but apparently I brought luck to everyone else. They were all catching a fair amount of salmon (but fairly small, only maybe half a kilo or a kilo, maybe up to a foot long, give or take a couple inches). There was only salmon to be caught this time of year (winter), since the currents into Waratah Bay are straight from Antarctica, and only salmon like water that cold. Needless to say I didn't take James up on his suggestion of going in for a dip, hehe (although there was a surfer for a bit in the morning, but even with a couple of wetsuits on he could only hack it for half an hour).
James & I gave up around 11 and went to get some lunch, which actually brings me to a fun fact about Australia: the burgers down here at cafes/restaurants usually will have beet, pineapple and egg on them, in addition to the usual ketchup, lettuce, onion and tomato; it may sound a bit dodgy, but it's delicious! After that I just sat and read "Dune" on the beach while listening to the surf and the waves. Around 2 or 3 everyone decided to move to a different beach, called Shallow Inlet. There was no surf at this beach, and none of us caught anything but kelp and other weeds, oh well. But there were some sand dunes over there, and James decided to come running down one. About halfway down he realized he was out of control and tried to wipe out but couldn't. Finally when he got to the flat part at the bottom he threw himself to the ground, and rolled a couple of times, doing a hard SMACK! right into the side of his car, lol. Hernon and I were in the car watching him come running down towards us, and the look on his face was absolutely priceless when he got to the bottom and realized he was about to run into the side of his own car at full speed! We both were dying laughing, especially when we found out he was okay. And somehow he didn't dent the car either, even though he hit the quarter-panel pretty hard on impact. Now that would've been a tough one to explain to the insurance company!
On the way back to Melbourne, we stopped at another beach in Walkerville, only about 10 km from Sandy Point. We didn't fish at all there, but we found a beautifully situated caravan park on the rocky beach there. You can bring a caravan (camper), or set up some tents, and the sight you wake up to in the morning straight across Waratah Bay is Wilson's Prom! It's absolutely gorgeous! And it's really cheap at that place too. James & I both think that that'd be a wonderful place to bring my parents for a night when they come down in November. When we were there, the sun was setting behind a hill behind us, but the moon was rising straight ahead over the Prom and the ocean. Spectacular! I took a bunch of pictures, hoping one would turn out in the low light, but then I just had to stare at that beautiful sight for a few minutes to take it all in. So all told, we spent moonset to moonrise at the beach. We were all amazed by how wonderful a day God had given us that day.
Saturday night after we got back to Melbourne, James dropped me off in Blackburn, at my friend James' house (from Christian Union). There were a few other people from CU there, including Stuart & Rowan, and a few of their other friends from New Zealand. We just sat around the fire in the backyard and had a good time. They had tried to rent "Fargo" (Stuart wanted to see that when I told him I was from Minnesota, and that this movie basically made fun of the accent), but couldn't find it, and so got "Pumping Iron," that 1977 classic starring the Governor of California. Unfortunately the tape was broken when they put it in the VCR, so instead we all went down to this place in Box Hill for a LAN party. I didn't play, mostly because I was very tired by that point, and too rusty at Warcraft III to deem it worth spending 2 or 3 bucks an hour. I mean, c'mon, if I wanna get creamed in a computer game I can do that for free back at Gustavus! ;-) Fortunately after a couple hours one of them gave me a ride back to Monash on his way home. So after being up for 23 hours, I finally got to go to sleep at 2:45am (I would've ridden a bus back before the LAN party, only all public transit in Melbourne stops running at 9pm on weekends, how lame is that?). A really long day, but incredibly fun!
Today was yet another first for me, as I got to attend a footy game! It was at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground), between the Melbourne Demons, who were in a four-way tie for first at 13-4 coming into the weekend, and the Hawthorn Hawks, who were dead last in the AFL at 2-15 (one of their wins incidentally coming against Melbourne in Week 1 by 40 points). It was actually a close game through three quarters, but then the Demons pulled away in the 4th to win easily 107-63. With the win Melbourne took over sole possession of first place, as the other co-leaders Brisbane Lions (the three-time defending champs), Port Adelaide Power and St Kilda Saints all lost. St Kilda lost 101-94 today to the Geelong Cats, who are in fifth place at 12-6, but are red-hot, having won 11 of their past 13. I've decided to barrack for the Cats first, and have the Demons as my second-favorite. I would've loved to have been in Geelong today for that game, but it was sold out, so I went to the 'G instead. Jodee organized it for us, a bunch of IFSA students from Monash Uni and Melbourne Uni went. And they were great seats too! I took two or three short video clips of the game today on my camera, and I'll let people know in a post when I get around to uploading those, along with the photo albums from surf fishing and the footy game. I went grocery shopping in Oakleigh on my way back, but since buses only run once an hour on weekends (very lame!) on most routes, I decided to walk back from the Huntingdale train station (that's a 25-30-min walk to the edge of campus, 45 to the dorms) instead of sitting there for 40 minutes waiting for the bus. I was a bit too exhausted from everything this weekend to go to church tonight (CU has a thing on Sunday evenings for the people living here in the Halls).
Before Mike had his surgery back on Thursday, he said that his mom's heart surgery went well and that she was okay, so that's good. And apparently Mike's nose surgery went well too. Hopefully they both have speedy recoveries, although Sue's is gonna take a couple more days in the hospital, and then a few months of no work, so that'll be tough. Mike should be able to work and do stuff by the end of the week hopefully.
In other news, apparently John Kerry is a long way from getting the military vote. Kerry, seeing a chance for a photo-op with a few Marines in a crowded Wendy's restaurant in Pennsylvania, went up to them to ask them questions, but instead got dissed! In another Kerry story, I read in the news that his campaign was outraged last week when NASA published some photos of him crawling through the space shuttle Discovery wearing a funny blue suit that made him look a bit like a sperm. They called it a "dirty trick" and bullied NASA into removing the photos from its website. But now comes the revelation that the Kerry campaign told NASA at the time of Kerry's visit to Kennedy Space Center that they wanted the photos put on the web as soon as possible. Only when they saw that the public was laughing at the photo did they get outraged and claim NASA's posting of them was a "dirty trick." Yet more reason not to trust John Kerry or his staff, they're bald-faced liars, although perhaps not quite as pathological as the Clintons. But give them another couple months, I may have to alter that last sentence, and delete "although perhaps not quite." Also, many liberals seem to be downplaying the horror of Saddam Hussein's atrocities, but this op-ed from The Australian brings it all back to the fore. And for some humorous news, check out Oddspot from The Age. Here's an example of a story from there (dated 14th July): "A British man who accidentally shot himself in the testicles after drinking 15 pints of beer has been jailed for five years for possessing an illegal firearm. The man had intended to shoot a friend." There are other great ones on Oddspot too, it's hilarious!
Posted by Jared at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2004
Moonset to Moonrise
Wow, what an absolutely awesome weekend I had! I'd say it was definitely the most enjoyable weekend I've had so far in Australia. It was so fun, but right now I'm completely exhausted! And to top it off, we've had a lovely stretch of weather, it's been gorgeous out each of the last three days.
Wednesday was fairly ordinary, nothing too special. On Thursday I had my first tutorial, in Fluid Dynamics, and tutorials are something a bit different from the American system. Pretty much every class has two or three lectures per week, plus a tutorial. The class is broken up into different "tute" sessions, so that there are less than 20 students in each. Basically, it just allows a chance for some more hands-on instruction, and is also more geared towards asking questions and getting help on problems than the lectures are. What I found kind of humorous is that most of my classes at Gustavus have still been smaller than my Fluid Dynamics tute is. My other classes start up their tute sessions this week.
On Friday afternoon it was such a beautiful day out that I walked back to uni so that I could sit by the fountain between the campus centre and the library and write some postcards. The plan was to write a few, seeing as how I hadn't gotten any written since I arrived in Australia. But I only got the one to my Grandma Siesennop written, because James Ayling (he & his wife Alison are friends of my family who live just a half hour down the road in Narre Warren) stopped by a bit early to pick me up. I went out to eat at an Italian restaurant called La Porchetta with James & Ali and some of their friends from Melbourne that they hadn't seen in awhile. After that I went back to James & Ali's house, watched some Friday Night Footy, and stayed overnight there.
We woke up at 3:45am on Saturday morning to go surf fishing with James and some of his buddies. We went over to Waratah Bay, a couple hours east of Melbourne near Wilson's Promontory, a spectacular national park. The first place we fished at was a surf beach called Sandy Point. When we got there it was somewhere around 6am, and the sun had yet to rise behind us, but the moon was setting over the ocean in front of us. Absolutely beautiful! Anyways, this was my first time fishing (okay, I'd tried casting a couple of times off my dock back when I was in 6th grade or something, but I'm not counting that as actually having "fished"), and only my third time seeing the ocean (the other two being ten years ago at the Gulf of Mexico down by Biloxi and New Orleans, and four years ago the Mediterranean Sea at Costa del Sol in Spain). James taught me how to cast, and I picked it up fairly quickly. What makes surf fishing different than lake or river fishing (apart from different bait, lures, etc), is that you have to time your cast with the rhythm of the ocean waves. About every third or fourth wave is bigger than the others, and you wait for this wave to go back out to sea. Then you run up to the edge of the water, cast the line in as far (deep) as possible, and then run back before the next wave comes in (giving the line some slack so that you aren't dragging the line back to shallower water as you scamper back to a dry part of the beach). You just let it all sit there, either for a few minutes or until there's a bite. That's really all there is to surf fishing. It's kinda fun actually. I didn't catch anything (and neither did James, but Ali always gives him a hard time about how he never catches anything, hehe), but apparently I brought luck to everyone else. They were all catching a fair amount of salmon (but fairly small, only maybe half a kilo or a kilo, maybe up to a foot long, give or take a couple inches). There was only salmon to be caught this time of year (winter), since the currents into Waratah Bay are straight from Antarctica, and only salmon like water that cold. Needless to say I didn't take James up on his suggestion of going in for a dip, hehe (although there was a surfer for a bit in the morning, but even with a couple of wetsuits on he could only hack it for half an hour).
James & I gave up around 11 and went to get some lunch, which actually brings me to a fun fact about Australia: the burgers down here at cafes/restaurants usually will have beet, pineapple and egg on them, in addition to the usual ketchup, lettuce, onion and tomato; it may sound a bit dodgy, but it's delicious! After that I just sat and read "Dune" on the beach while listening to the surf and the waves. Around 2 or 3 everyone decided to move to a different beach, called Shallow Inlet. There was no surf at this beach, and none of us caught anything but kelp and other weeds, oh well. But there were some sand dunes over there, and James decided to come running down one. About halfway down he realized he was out of control and tried to wipe out but couldn't. Finally when he got to the flat part at the bottom he threw himself to the ground, and rolled a couple of times, doing a hard SMACK! right into the side of his car, lol. Hernon and I were in the car watching him come running down towards us, and the look on his face was absolutely priceless when he got to the bottom and realized he was about to run into the side of his own car at full speed! We both were dying laughing, especially when we found out he was okay. And somehow he didn't dent the car either, even though he hit the quarter-panel pretty hard on impact. Now that would've been a tough one to explain to the insurance company!
On the way back to Melbourne, we stopped at another beach in Walkerville, only about 10 km from Sandy Point. We didn't fish at all there, but we found a beautifully situated caravan park on the rocky beach there. You can bring a caravan (camper), or set up some tents, and the sight you wake up to in the morning straight across Waratah Bay is Wilson's Prom! It's absolutely gorgeous! And it's really cheap at that place too. James & I both think that that'd be a wonderful place to bring my parents for a night when they come down in November. When we were there, the sun was setting behind a hill behind us, but the moon was rising straight ahead over the Prom and the ocean. Spectacular! I took a bunch of pictures, hoping one would turn out in the low light, but then I just had to stare at that beautiful sight for a few minutes to take it all in. So all told, we spent moonset to moonrise at the beach. We were all amazed by how wonderful a day God had given us that day.
Saturday night after we got back to Melbourne, James dropped me off in Blackburn, at my friend James' house (from Christian Union). There were a few other people from CU there, including Stuart & Rowan, and a few of their other friends from New Zealand. We just sat around the fire in the backyard and had a good time. They had tried to rent "Fargo" (Stuart wanted to see that when I told him I was from Minnesota, and that this movie basically made fun of the accent), but couldn't find it, and so got "Pumping Iron," that 1977 classic starring the Governor of California. Unfortunately the tape was broken when they put it in the VCR, so instead we all went down to this place in Box Hill for a LAN party. I didn't play, mostly because I was very tired by that point, and too rusty at Warcraft III to deem it worth spending 2 or 3 bucks an hour. I mean, c'mon, if I wanna get creamed in a computer game I can do that for free back at Gustavus! ;-) Fortunately after a couple hours one of them gave me a ride back to Monash on his way home. So after being up for 23 hours, I finally got to go to sleep at 2:45am (I would've ridden a bus back before the LAN party, only all public transit in Melbourne stops running at 9pm on weekends, how lame is that?). A really long day, but incredibly fun!
Today was yet another first for me, as I got to attend a footy game! It was at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground), between the Melbourne Demons, who were in a four-way tie for first at 13-4 coming into the weekend, and the Hawthorn Hawks, who were dead last in the AFL at 2-15 (one of their wins incidentally coming against Melbourne in Week 1 by 40 points). It was actually a close game through three quarters, but then the Demons pulled away in the 4th to win easily 107-63. With the win Melbourne took over sole possession of first place, as the other co-leaders Brisbane Lions (the three-time defending champs), Port Adelaide Power and St Kilda Saints all lost. St Kilda lost 101-94 today to the Geelong Cats, who are in fifth place at 12-6, but are red-hot, having won 11 of their past 13. I've decided to barrack for the Cats first, and have the Demons as my second-favorite. I would've loved to have been in Geelong today for that game, but it was sold out, so I went to the 'G instead. Jodee organized it for us, a bunch of IFSA students from Monash Uni and Melbourne Uni went. And they were great seats too! I took two or three short video clips of the game today on my camera, and I'll let people know in a post when I get around to uploading those, along with the photo albums from surf fishing and the footy game. I went grocery shopping in Oakleigh on my way back, but since buses only run once an hour on weekends (very lame!) on most routes, I decided to walk back from the Huntingdale train station (that's a 25-30-min walk to the edge of campus, 45 to the dorms) instead of sitting there for 40 minutes waiting for the bus. I was a bit too exhausted from everything this weekend to go to church tonight (CU has a thing on Sunday evenings for the people living here in the Halls).
Before Mike had his surgery back on Thursday, he said that his mom's heart surgery went well and that she was okay, so that's good. And apparently Mike's nose surgery went well too. Hopefully they both have speedy recoveries, although Sue's is gonna take a couple more days in the hospital, and then a few months of no work, so that'll be tough. Mike should be able to work and do stuff by the end of the week hopefully.
In other news, apparently John Kerry is a long way from getting the military vote. Kerry, seeing a chance for a photo-op with a few Marines in a crowded Wendy's restaurant in Pennsylvania, went up to them to ask them questions, but instead got dissed! In another Kerry story, I read in the news that his campaign was outraged last week when NASA published some photos of him crawling through the space shuttle Discovery wearing a funny blue suit that made him look a bit like a sperm. They called it a "dirty trick" and bullied NASA into removing the photos from its website. But now comes the revelation that the Kerry campaign told NASA at the time of Kerry's visit to Kennedy Space Center that they wanted the photos put on the web as soon as possible. Only when they saw that the public was laughing at the photo did they get outraged and claim NASA's posting of them was a "dirty trick." Yet more reason not to trust John Kerry or his staff, they're bald-faced liars, although perhaps not quite as pathological as the Clintons. But give them another couple months, I may have to alter that last sentence, and delete "although perhaps not quite." Also, many liberals seem to be downplaying the horror of Saddam Hussein's atrocities, but this op-ed from The Australian brings it all back to the fore. And for some humorous news, check out Oddspot from The Age. Here's an example of a story from there (dated 14th July): "A British man who accidentally shot himself in the testicles after drinking 15 pints of beer has been jailed for five years for possessing an illegal firearm. The man had intended to shoot a friend." There are other great ones on Oddspot too, it's hilarious!
Posted by Jared at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)