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September 26, 2004
Last Post at Age 20
This is gonna be a fairly short post since it's late. Last night I went over to Peter's house with Simon, Joel and BradWa, Rob and a bunch of other people to play "Risk" and some other games for awhile. I didn't win the game of "Risk" that I played, but I still had a blast. While we were waiting for the other game of "Risk 2210 A.D." to finish, they all taught me a new dice game called "Zilch" that's really fun too. Around 3:30am some of em were gonna make a run to Hungry Jack's (the Aussie version of Burger King, literally ... it has the same menu, logo and everything, just a different name) before starting a brand new game of Risk, but I just had to go back to Monash to get some sleep. It was seriously the most enjoyable Friday night I've had since I got here, I'd say.
This morning (Saturday) I got all packed for my trip to the Whitsunday Islands, and Bruce came and picked me up and brought me back to James & Ali's place, where I still am. We watched the Grand Final footy game on the telly, and Port Adelaide shocked three-time defending champion Brisbane 131-71. It was a close game most of the way, it was tied at 62 late in the 3rd quarter before the Power poured it on against the Lions to win their first AFL Premiership. Way to go Port! I couldn't possibly cheer for Brisbane, it'd be akin to cheering for the Lakers or Yankees. But after that got done, I started working on uploading a bunch of Photo albums and a few video clips as well. Basically, I've updated pretty much every page in some way, but the most noticeable changes will be on my Photos and Movies pages, which now have new albums or movies to see!! At least now I'm finally caught up from late July, hehe. Let me know what you think of the new stuff.
Anyway, in the morning, in just over six hours, I'm flying out to the Whitsunday Islands for my 21st birthday and spring break! I'm so excited, I can't wait! James was gracious enough to agree to drive me to the airport, which is why I'm staying overnight here tonight. I'll be getting to Airlie Beach around 1 or 2pm I expect, and Richard should be getting there via Greyhound at about 11:30pm. We'll be in Airlie Beach hanging out at the Whitsundays until Wednesday night or Thursday morning, at which point we're gonna rent a car and drive up to Cairns, and spend Thursday & Friday nights there, before we fly back to uni from Cairns on Saturday morning. I don't know if I'll get internet access up there or not, but it's almost a sure thing that next time I post something, I'll be 21!
Posted by Jared at 12:51 AM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2004
Bowling for Impressionists
This is turning into a really event-filled week for me, and thus into a week where I'm not getting much work done, hehe. Last night I got a ride with Jane and her boyfriend Michael to the MWACS (Monash Weather and Climate Society) Bowling Night at the Strike Bowling Bar on Chapel Street over in Prahran. It was a really cool place, probably the coolest bowling alley I've ever been to. There were two completely separate sections of lanes, one had six lanes and the other had four or maybe six, I didn't spend time over by the other one. It also had a few cool pool tables that were illuminated by black lights all along the inside of the railings; the lighting made lining up your shots a bit interesting at times, hehe. In addition to that it had a full bar, a room for karaoke, and an area for sumo wrestling. So for $5 we were able to bowl two games, have a go at sumo wrestling and have unlimited use of the karaoke room; MWACS basically had the run of the place for the night, it was awesome. Michael took me on in a game of pool, and I managed to eke out a victory somehow, extending my pool winning streak to a personal-best three games (the previous two being against Kevin at my house the night before I left for Australia, hehe). My first game bowling wasn't so good, an 88. Then Michael took me on in sumo wrestling, and I managed to win that too somehow, despite Michael being a fair bit bigger than I am. Man alive were those suits hot and sweaty, they were like an oven. The floor was all padded with foam rubber, but at some point during the match I came down pretty hard on my knee, hard enough to feel the hard floor through the suit's padding and the foam on the floor, so now I have a nice bruise on the side of my left knee that's kinda sore, oh well. Then we listened to a few people embarrass themselves on karaoke before we bowled our second game. It wasn't much better for me, a 94 that game. But it's hard to get any sort of rhythm going when there are 12 people in the game, it's just too long between frames. All in all we were at Strike from 8pm-1:30am, and I didn't get back to Monash till 2am. It actually was a pretty fun way to spend a Wednesday night, but I know it's not something I'd be able to pull off every week. I had quite a bit of fun with everything, and hopefully I'll be able to post a few pictures soon.
Something else funny that happened yesterday was that two of my friends, Carl & Erin, both wished me a happy birthday, thinking that my 21st was yesterday. They were nice thoughts, and I appreciated them, but here's a note to everyone else out there: my 21st birthday is on 27th September, this coming Monday. And I'll be spending it in the Whitsunday Islands, which isn't a bad way to spend a birthday if I do say so myself. :-) Just one more day of class before spring break! Then we have a full week of vacation for break, and when we return we have only three weeks of classes left before finals. Where has the semester gone??
This afternoon after I got done with class I headed into Melbourne to go see "The Impressionists" exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. The exhibition is made up primarily of 91 paintings that are on loan from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris (plus a few that the NGV already had). It had been running all winter but was closing this coming Sunday, so that's why I finally decided to go in and see it. It was amazing getting to see so many famous paintings, from artists such as Monet, Manet, van Gogh, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Malliol and Cezanne. My favourites were several by Monet and Pissarro in particular, but the painting that captivated me the most was "Starry Night Over the Rhone" by van Gogh. Last year I bought a poster of that for my dorm room at Gustavus, so I was thrilled to get the chance to actually see the real thing in person. It took me probably two and a half hours to make my way through the entire exhibit, there was more to see than I thought there would be. 
And I was expecting to pay $20 to get in as well, but I decided to try for the $16 student concession (I'm not usually able to get concession prices for things (e.g. train/bus tickets) since study abroad students like myself are not allowed to even apply for a concession card). So when I showed the guy my Monash ID he gave me a ticket for $10, the student after dark concession, woohoo! I think it would've been worth seeing for $20, but it was most definitely worth it for just $10! Afterward I snagged a few cool photos of Melbourne at night again, but this time mostly from over by the Arts Centre, so it's a different angle from the rest that I've taken. And I was really pleased with how my shots turned out too, so I'm hoping to upload some of those soon as well. I would've taken some photos inside the NGV, but they banned all photography, sigh.
In some strange news, never captain a ship while talking on your mobile, it's just bad news. Maybe when Josh is teaching English to some local Japanese students while he's studying abroad, maybe he could also teach them some basic astronomy. Like that the Earth goes around the Sun. It just might be helpful. And what will those crazy Canadians do next? A Toronto man telephoned his own funeral to let people know that he was actually alive. Apparently he thought something was amiss when he spotted his own obituary in the newspaper. And a new land speed(ing) record has been set in Minnesota, as cops near Wabasha pulled a motorcyclist over and issued him a ticket for going 205mph!
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2004
Wilson's Prom
Well I haven't been up to a whole lot the last few days. Tuesday I went to Christian Union as usual, this week it was a study of Jude. Right before it was time to come back for the evening stuff though, I had a coughing fit and re-ignited my sharp chest pain, which had been mostly non-existent for a couple days.
Wednesday was alright, I made it through most of the day and was actually feeling pretty good (my chest was feeling much better), until about an hour before bed I all of a sudden couldn't stop coughing, which caused another flare-up of my chest pain. Argh! This time it didn't totally go away after a night's sleep, but at least it hasn't been as bad today as it was late last night.
There was a staff strike here at Monash today. My Weather & Climate class at 9am was cancelled (Simon told us on Wednesday that it'd be pointless to try to get to uni in the morning), but in true physics form Fluid Mechanics was still on at 10am. I don't think I've ever had a physics class cancelled for any reason, either at Gustavus or Monash. Not snow, September 11th, sicknesses or even strikes can stop the unstoppable force known as physics. Sigh. Apparently Monash is the protest capital of Australian universities, there's been one or two student protests already this semester. Last semester there was a rather violent protest, in which some students staged a hostile takeover of the administration offices. Police were called in to that one, and some students were arrested and are being charged for assaulting police. The fact that the students are being charged is what's caused the student protests this semester. That and Australian students are so used to having uni be free (the gov't paid 100% of everyone's university fees not all that many years ago) that they're screaming bloody murder at even very small increases in fees that they have to pay now. Today's staff strikes were due to their perception that they're getting the shaft on wages. All of the activists, students and staff, always have flyers up calling Monash "Australia's Meanest University." Whatever. I just totally avoid the protests or activist gatherings, I wanna stay as far away from trouble as possible. The only real complaint that I have with Monash so far would be how they deal with technology, e.g. the internet and printing on campus. I'm getting absolutely screwed in those areas.
Tonight after a run to Kmart and Cole's to pick up some cough drops, and Advil for my cough/chest and muffins for brekkies this weekend, I got everything packed up and ready to go for my four-day camping trip to Wilson's Prom. And I must say I'm pleasantly surprised at the weight of my pack, it's several pounds lighter than the one I took to the Grampians a month ago. Even though I'm not 100% with my cough or whatever, I'm still really looking forward to go. I don't wanna miss out on seeing the Prom, and I'm tired of being cooped up on this campus for so long because I've been sick, I just wanna go somewhere and see something new, get out a bit. And maybe getting some exercise (by hiking around with a moderately heavy backpack) for four days will help me get rid of my illness. Sitting around doing nothing for three weeks sure hasn't done much to get rid of it.
With the recent rash of hurricanes hitting the coastal U.S., some people have been wondering if there's a connection with global warming. The answer is most definitely no, as hurricanes have been on the decline since the 1940s. CBS is at long last starting to say that they might be having doubts about the undoubtedly forged documents they aired on "60 Minutes" a week ago. They wanted so badly for the documents to be true so that they could nail Dubya, that they ignored the red flags that were all over the document screaming that they were forgeries. They've quite blatantly been in the tank for Kerry since last fall, they haven't done a good job of hiding it. Not that I really trusted CBS much anyway, but now their credibility level has sunk to a new low. And attention all Packer fans: did you know that the Packers actually play at Lambert Field? Well, they do, at least according to John Kerry.
Well, I should finish a couple things up and then head to bed. I'll be back Monday night!
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2004
All Packed
Well I haven't been up to a whole lot the last few days. Tuesday I went to Christian Union as usual, this week it was a study of Jude. Right before it was time to come back for the evening stuff though, I had a coughing fit and re-ignited my sharp chest pain, which had been mostly non-existent for a couple days.
Wednesday was alright, I made it through most of the day and was actually feeling pretty good (my chest was feeling much better), until about an hour before bed I all of a sudden couldn't stop coughing, which caused another flare-up of my chest pain. Argh! This time it didn't totally go away after a night's sleep, but at least it hasn't been as bad today as it was late last night.
There was a staff strike here at Monash today. My Weather & Climate class at 9am was cancelled (Simon told us on Wednesday that it'd be pointless to try to get to uni in the morning), but in true physics form Fluid Mechanics was still on at 10am. I don't think I've ever had a physics class cancelled for any reason, either at Gustavus or Monash. Not snow, September 11th, sicknesses or even strikes can stop the unstoppable force known as physics. Sigh. Apparently Monash is the protest capital of Australian universities, there's been one or two student protests already this semester. Last semester there was a rather violent protest, in which some students staged a hostile takeover of the administration offices. Police were called in to that one, and some students were arrested and are being charged for assaulting police. The fact that the students are being charged is what's caused the student protests this semester. That and Australian students are so used to having uni be free (the gov't paid 100% of everyone's university fees not all that many years ago) that they're screaming bloody murder at even very small increases in fees that they have to pay now. Today's staff strikes were due to their perception that they're getting the shaft on wages. All of the activists, students and staff, always have flyers up calling Monash "Australia's Meanest University." Whatever. I just totally avoid the protests or activist gatherings, I wanna stay as far away from trouble as possible. The only real complaint that I have with Monash so far would be how they deal with technology, e.g. the internet and printing on campus. I'm getting absolutely screwed in those areas.
Tonight after a run to Kmart and Cole's to pick up some cough drops, and Advil for my cough/chest and muffins for brekkies this weekend, I got everything packed up and ready to go for my four-day camping trip to Wilson's Prom. And I must say I'm pleasantly surprised at the weight of my pack, it's several pounds lighter than the one I took to the Grampians a month ago. Even though I'm not 100% with my cough or whatever, I'm still really looking forward to go. I don't wanna miss out on seeing the Prom, and I'm tired of being cooped up on this campus for so long because I've been sick, I just wanna go somewhere and see something new, get out a bit. And maybe getting some exercise (by hiking around with a moderately heavy backpack) for four days will help me get rid of my illness. Sitting around doing nothing for three weeks sure hasn't done much to get rid of it.
With the recent rash of hurricanes hitting the coastal U.S., some people have been wondering if there's a connection with global warming. The answer is most definitely no, as hurricanes have been on the decline since the 1940s. CBS is at long last starting to say that they might be having doubts about the undoubtedly forged documents they aired on "60 Minutes" a week ago. They wanted so badly for the documents to be true so that they could nail Dubya, that they ignored the red flags that were all over the document screaming that they were forgeries. They've quite blatantly been in the tank for Kerry since last fall, they haven't done a good job of hiding it. Not that I really trusted CBS much anyway, but now their credibility level has sunk to a new low. And attention all Packer fans: did you know that the Packers actually play at Lambert Field? Well, they do, at least according to John Kerry.
Well, I should finish a couple things up and then head to bed. I'll be back Monday night!
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2004
Prepping for the Prom
SeeNoEvil.org is finally back online! As many of you noticed if you tried to visit my blog, it was down for a few days. The reason was that the webserver ("Smurf") that is hosting seenoevil was moved from Josh's house in South Dakota to Gustavus, since Josh is of course studying abroad this semester in Osaka, Japan. The thing is the webserving software didn't seem to want to webserve when it was brought back to Gustavus, and nobody could figure out why, until during the last day or two Josh & Dale finally figured out the reason (more or less, the software didn't recognize that it had a new IP address). So after getting Zach & Ben to just type in a couple things on Smurf, everything's all hunky-dory now.
So now for a recap of the last few days. The incredibly sore chest that had afflicted me on Tuesday had not improved at all by Wednesday, so that afternoon I went to Health Services in the Campus Centre again. After taking a listen to my lungs with a stethoscope, the doctor said that my lungs sounded downright musical and that I had lung spasms on top of my cough. So he prescribed me some antibiotics, in the form of some pills and my first-ever inhaler. Yay for drugs. It still hurt to move any muscles at all in my upper body, including when I breathed, but at least I had drugs, and therefore the hope of getting better. Given my symptoms and what the doc prescribed, my Aunt Kathy figures that I have bronchiolitis. Hooray. With all my classes and the doctor's visit, Wednesday was a very long day.
On Thursday around lunchtime, in between classes I helped out with the world-view survey that CU was conducting in the Campus Centre. We were just walking around, asking people if they wanted to take a little survey about how they viewed the world, and then invited them to bring it back to us when they'd finished it, so that we could score it for them. There were basically six categories that people could score in, theism, deism, naturalism, existentialism, nihilism, and pantheism/new age, and we found that when people saw their scores they wanted to talk to us for awhile, there were quite a few good, long conversations that were had with people. But since my cough and sore chest prevented me from talking comfortably, I was for the most part just the person scoring the surveys on the computer. I'm trying to remember if I did anything else productive on Thursday, but nothing's really striking me.
By Friday I was perhaps starting to feel a tiny bit better. After my lone class I went out to James & Ali's place in Narre Warren for the afternoon and evening. It was wonderful going out there, just being able to relax and get off campus for awhile. They let me use the internet out there, so I started the process of uploading some photo albums to my website (which I can't do from behind the firewall here at Monash). My Photos page unfortunately doesn't show it yet, but I did manage to get three albums completely uploaded: Lake Mountain, The Grampians, and AFL - Melbourne vs Hawthorn. The frustrating thing was that the server kept on dropping me while I was trying to upload everything, so all the stopping and starting cost me a lot of time. As a result, I wasn't able to upload my photo albums for Surf Fishing, the Beaches of Phillip Island, "Dinner"/Melbourne at Night, or AFL - Collingwood vs Carlton. Those will have to wait until the next time I head out to James & Ali's, as will the five or six short video clips of footy action that I'm planning to upload. But James & Ali took good care of me, with some chicken soup and a very nice healthy supper. It was so good to have a home-cooked meal again! Bruce & Joan (Ali's parents, friends of my parents) were there too, so it was good catching up with them as well. And my mom had been being all motherly and worried about how I was doing with my cough and all, and so had sent them a flurry of emails (partly because Joan's a nurse), hehe. James replied to one of them saying that "Jazza" was coming out to their house, which totally confused my mom, because she didn't realize right off that James was referring to me. So he had to explain to her about the Aussie way of coming up with nicknames, hehe. But after supper we popped in a DVD of "Seabiscuit," which I hadn't seen before. But the DVD was kinda scratched up, so we had to skip through probably three or four scenes in the middle of the movie, oh well. I still liked it, it was a good movie.
Yesterday I gave my parents a call to let them know how I was doing, and I was honestly feeling a little bit better, except that I had a rash of coughing fits right before and during my phone call, so that impression was probably not conveyed. I still didn't really feel like doing anything except sitting around, so I just read articles online (of course not articles that I need to be reading for research for my essay!), and then in the evening watched the Geelong Cats vs Essendon Bombers playoff match. The Cats are my team in the footy, and they scrapped out a hard-fought 74-64 win, surviving a hard charge late by the Bombers in slippery conditions at the MCG. The previous night St Kilda knocked out Sydney 107-56. So next weekend in the preliminary finals (final four), St Kilda will visit minor premier (regular season champ) Port Adelaide, and Geelong will face Brisbane, who are the Yankees or Lakers of the AFL, having won the last three Grand Finals. The site of that game is in dispute at the moment, because while Brisbane is the higher-ranked team and theoretically earned the right to host the preliminary final, the AFL has a contractual obligation with the MCG that at least one preliminary final each year must be played there, but they're trying to get out of that. So it's just a big mess right now that's getting a lot of attention in the news here. Brisbane is awesome at home at the Gabba, but Geelong would like to keep it at the MCG so that they wouldn't have to travel, and would essentially have the home-crowd advantage in a match in which they'll be severe underdogs. So with footy in the playoffs down here, and NCAA and NFL football starting up back home, I'd be in a football heaven, except I haven't yet found a place where I can watch any American football on the telly, sigh. I'm tryin to work on it though.
Today I've been feeling a little bit better for the most part as well. Instead of my chest being in sharp pain with every breath, now it's just a bit of a dull soreness that I only feel some of the time. I'm also coughing a bit less too, although I still occasionally have coughing fits. Oh, and over the last few days I've felt like I've been coming down with a bit of a cold too, which has been a bit depressing. Can't I just get better and be done with all this? Anyway, I am somewhat encouraged that I'm improving a bit, although I don't know whether to chalk it up to the antibiotics or just time working its magic. I spent much of the afternoon reading some articles online, this time for research for my essay, although I was quite easily distracted by a number of things, hehe. It's just so hard to get motivated to do work for something that's not due for another three weeks. :-) And then this evening I went to church at MBT, and got back from that a little while ago, and now I'm here typing this.
Some of you may be wondering why I haven't mentioned ants yet, considering it's the topic of this post. Well, over the last two weeks my room has been infested by ants, it sucks. For the first six weeks I was in my room I didn't see a single ant in here, and now they're all over the place. Patrick across the hall has had issues with ants the entire semester, and is starting to reach the breaking point about them. And the toilet (the Aussie term for bathroom), which is just on the other side of the wall from my room, has always had tons of ants crawling on the walls since the first day we got here (so that's undoubtedly where my ants are coming from). We bought some ant traps, and Patrick bought some borax liquid to apply to ant trails, but none of it has seemed to be working. In the case of the bathroom, Pat had put some of borax on the walls, which only seemed to attract multitudes more ants. So we'd both finally had it today, and this afternoon Pat put some more borax in there, to try and attract as many as he could. Then about 15 minutes later when the place was just covered with ants, he sprayed the walls with bleach! Each and every ant was killed instantly when it came in contact with the bleach, it was amazing. Dead ants everywhere, it was quite satisfying. The downside is that for the hours since then, the bathroom has smelled of a powerful mixture of chlorine and borax, haha. In short, and to quote some movie that I forget, "you don't wanna go in there!" Interestingly enough, the number of ants in my room since he did that seems to have declined drastically.
In some of the reading that I've done over the past few days, I've come across a few interesting articles that I'd like to pass along. First, back in the States the Dems are trying for the fourth or fifth time to drag down Bush over his National Guard service. It didn't work any of those times, so it's beyond me as to why they think it's going to work now. Anyway, before any of you fall for the media hysteria about Bush "not showing up" for six months, check out the real story here, by Byron York. He recounts the story of Bush's Nat'l Guard service as a pilot in its entirety, and it's a must-read. Another must-read that I came across (and which took a large chunk of yesterday afternoon to read) is an article entitled "59 Deceits of Fahrenheit 9/11." It is an absolutely devastating critique of the film's veracity, and it is incredibly thorough and well-written. He even includes the responses by Michael Moore's "war room" to each of his points, so it's very fair. And the author is no fan of Bush either, in 2000 he endorsed and voted for Nader (just like Moore, in fact). This one will definitely be going on my Links page next time I make it to James & Ali's house. And one of the more interesting articles about climate change that I've come across during the course of my research for my paper thus far has been one by Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, entitled "The Sun Also Warms." It raises some very interesting questions about just how much the sun -- and even supernovae elsewhere in the galaxy -- could be influencing our climate, right down to low-level cloud formation. I found it quite fascinating, and this article isn't written in all sorts of technical jargon, so it's easy to understand too (it's also not hideously long, unlike most of the articles I'm having to wade through for my research).
Well you've all probably had more than enough of me talking, so I'm gonna stop, and go back to doing a little research before I head to bed. I sure hope I keep getting over this cough, I've had it for fifteen days now, I'm getting very tired of it.
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2004
Bleach Kills Ants Dead!
SeeNoEvil.org is finally back online! As many of you noticed if you tried to visit my blog, it was down for a few days. The reason was that the webserver ("Smurf") that is hosting seenoevil was moved from Josh's house in South Dakota to Gustavus, since Josh is of course studying abroad this semester in Osaka, Japan. The thing is the webserving software didn't seem to want to webserve when it was brought back to Gustavus, and nobody could figure out why, until during the last day or two Josh & Dale finally figured out the reason (more or less, the software didn't recognize that it had a new IP address). So after getting Zach & Ben to just type in a couple things on Smurf, everything's all hunky-dory now.
So now for a recap of the last few days. The incredibly sore chest that had afflicted me on Tuesday had not improved at all by Wednesday, so that afternoon I went to Health Services in the Campus Centre again. After taking a listen to my lungs with a stethoscope, the doctor said that my lungs sounded downright musical and that I had lung spasms on top of my cough. So he prescribed me some antibiotics, in the form of some pills and my first-ever inhaler. Yay for drugs. It still hurt to move any muscles at all in my upper body, including when I breathed, but at least I had drugs, and therefore the hope of getting better. Given my symptoms and what the doc prescribed, my Aunt Kathy figures that I have bronchiolitis. Hooray. With all my classes and the doctor's visit, Wednesday was a very long day.
On Thursday around lunchtime, in between classes I helped out with the world-view survey that CU was conducting in the Campus Centre. We were just walking around, asking people if they wanted to take a little survey about how they viewed the world, and then invited them to bring it back to us when they'd finished it, so that we could score it for them. There were basically six categories that people could score in, theism, deism, naturalism, existentialism, nihilism, and pantheism/new age, and we found that when people saw their scores they wanted to talk to us for awhile, there were quite a few good, long conversations that were had with people. But since my cough and sore chest prevented me from talking comfortably, I was for the most part just the person scoring the surveys on the computer. I'm trying to remember if I did anything else productive on Thursday, but nothing's really striking me.
By Friday I was perhaps starting to feel a tiny bit better. After my lone class I went out to James & Ali's place in Narre Warren for the afternoon and evening. It was wonderful going out there, just being able to relax and get off campus for awhile. They let me use the internet out there, so I started the process of uploading some photo albums to my website (which I can't do from behind the firewall here at Monash). My Photos page unfortunately doesn't show it yet, but I did manage to get three albums completely uploaded: Lake Mountain, The Grampians, and AFL - Melbourne vs Hawthorn. The frustrating thing was that the server kept on dropping me while I was trying to upload everything, so all the stopping and starting cost me a lot of time. As a result, I wasn't able to upload my photo albums for Surf Fishing, the Beaches of Phillip Island, "Dinner"/Melbourne at Night, or AFL - Collingwood vs Carlton. Those will have to wait until the next time I head out to James & Ali's, as will the five or six short video clips of footy action that I'm planning to upload. But James & Ali took good care of me, with some chicken soup and a very nice healthy supper. It was so good to have a home-cooked meal again! Bruce & Joan (Ali's parents, friends of my parents) were there too, so it was good catching up with them as well. And my mom had been being all motherly and worried about how I was doing with my cough and all, and so had sent them a flurry of emails (partly because Joan's a nurse), hehe. James replied to one of them saying that "Jazza" was coming out to their house, which totally confused my mom, because she didn't realize right off that James was referring to me. So he had to explain to her about the Aussie way of coming up with nicknames, hehe. But after supper we popped in a DVD of "Seabiscuit," which I hadn't seen before. But the DVD was kinda scratched up, so we had to skip through probably three or four scenes in the middle of the movie, oh well. I still liked it, it was a good movie.
Yesterday I gave my parents a call to let them know how I was doing, and I was honestly feeling a little bit better, except that I had a rash of coughing fits right before and during my phone call, so that impression was probably not conveyed. I still didn't really feel like doing anything except sitting around, so I just read articles online (of course not articles that I need to be reading for research for my essay!), and then in the evening watched the Geelong Cats vs Essendon Bombers playoff match. The Cats are my team in the footy, and they scrapped out a hard-fought 74-64 win, surviving a hard charge late by the Bombers in slippery conditions at the MCG. The previous night St Kilda knocked out Sydney 107-56. So next weekend in the preliminary finals (final four), St Kilda will visit minor premier (regular season champ) Port Adelaide, and Geelong will face Brisbane, who are the Yankees or Lakers of the AFL, having won the last three Grand Finals. The site of that game is in dispute at the moment, because while Brisbane is the higher-ranked team and theoretically earned the right to host the preliminary final, the AFL has a contractual obligation with the MCG that at least one preliminary final each year must be played there, but they're trying to get out of that. So it's just a big mess right now that's getting a lot of attention in the news here. Brisbane is awesome at home at the Gabba, but Geelong would like to keep it at the MCG so that they wouldn't have to travel, and would essentially have the home-crowd advantage in a match in which they'll be severe underdogs. So with footy in the playoffs down here, and NCAA and NFL football starting up back home, I'd be in a football heaven, except I haven't yet found a place where I can watch any American football on the telly, sigh. I'm tryin to work on it though.
Today I've been feeling a little bit better for the most part as well. Instead of my chest being in sharp pain with every breath, now it's just a bit of a dull soreness that I only feel some of the time. I'm also coughing a bit less too, although I still occasionally have coughing fits. Oh, and over the last few days I've felt like I've been coming down with a bit of a cold too, which has been a bit depressing. Can't I just get better and be done with all this? Anyway, I am somewhat encouraged that I'm improving a bit, although I don't know whether to chalk it up to the antibiotics or just time working its magic. I spent much of the afternoon reading some articles online, this time for research for my essay, although I was quite easily distracted by a number of things, hehe. It's just so hard to get motivated to do work for something that's not due for another three weeks. :-) And then this evening I went to church at MBT, and got back from that a little while ago, and now I'm here typing this.
Some of you may be wondering why I haven't mentioned ants yet, considering it's the topic of this post. Well, over the last two weeks my room has been infested by ants, it sucks. For the first six weeks I was in my room I didn't see a single ant in here, and now they're all over the place. Patrick across the hall has had issues with ants the entire semester, and is starting to reach the breaking point about them. And the toilet (the Aussie term for bathroom), which is just on the other side of the wall from my room, has always had tons of ants crawling on the walls since the first day we got here (so that's undoubtedly where my ants are coming from). We bought some ant traps, and Patrick bought some borax liquid to apply to ant trails, but none of it has seemed to be working. In the case of the bathroom, Pat had put some of borax on the walls, which only seemed to attract multitudes more ants. So we'd both finally had it today, and this afternoon Pat put some more borax in there, to try and attract as many as he could. Then about 15 minutes later when the place was just covered with ants, he sprayed the walls with bleach! Each and every ant was killed instantly when it came in contact with the bleach, it was amazing. Dead ants everywhere, it was quite satisfying. The downside is that for the hours since then, the bathroom has smelled of a powerful mixture of chlorine and borax, haha. In short, and to quote some movie that I forget, "you don't wanna go in there!" Interestingly enough, the number of ants in my room since he did that seems to have declined drastically.
In some of the reading that I've done over the past few days, I've come across a few interesting articles that I'd like to pass along. First, back in the States the Dems are trying for the fourth or fifth time to drag down Bush over his National Guard service. It didn't work any of those times, so it's beyond me as to why they think it's going to work now. Anyway, before any of you fall for the media hysteria about Bush "not showing up" for six months, check out the real story here, by Byron York. He recounts the story of Bush's Nat'l Guard service as a pilot in its entirety, and it's a must-read. Another must-read that I came across (and which took a large chunk of yesterday afternoon to read) is an article entitled "59 Deceits of Fahrenheit 9/11." It is an absolutely devastating critique of the film's veracity, and it is incredibly thorough and well-written. He even includes the responses by Michael Moore's "war room" to each of his points, so it's very fair. And the author is no fan of Bush either, in 2000 he endorsed and voted for Nader (just like Moore, in fact). This one will definitely be going on my Links page next time I make it to James & Ali's house. And one of the more interesting articles about climate change that I've come across during the course of my research for my paper thus far has been one by Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, entitled "The Sun Also Warms." It raises some very interesting questions about just how much the sun -- and even supernovae elsewhere in the galaxy -- could be influencing our climate, right down to low-level cloud formation. I found it quite fascinating, and this article isn't written in all sorts of technical jargon, so it's easy to understand too (it's also not hideously long, unlike most of the articles I'm having to wade through for my research).
Well you've all probably had more than enough of me talking, so I'm gonna stop, and go back to doing a little research before I head to bed. I sure hope I keep getting over this cough, I've had it for fifteen days now, I'm getting very tired of it.
Posted by Jared at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2004
Vorticity Day
The title for this post comes because MWACS (Monash Weather & Climate Society) had a guest speaker today, Dr Greg Holland from Aerosonde and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, come and talk about vorticity, in an event that MWACS had dubbed "Vorticity Day." Vorticity is a rather complicated subject, so I won't go into much detail about it here, other than to say that it's a property of fluids that is related to circulation and rotation (although a rotating fluid need not necessarily have vorticity). Simply put, vorticity is the curl of the velocity field. I know that statement just lost most of you, but that's why I'm not gonna be talking any more about the nuts and bolts of it. Anyways, the talk was really interesting, and afterwards there was a bit of a Q&A session in the maths building, where I sussed out from him things like why he chose to go to Colorado State University for his Ph.D. in meteorology. Among other cool things, he also told us some stories from when he was stationed in Darwin as a forecaster and Tropical Cyclone Tracy struck and devastated the city on Christmas Eve 1974. After that there was some wine & cheese too. Gotta love Australia! Wine & cheese at an academic club meeting, that's just awesome.
Then this evening I went to the usual Christian Union Tuesday evening stuff for awhile. I'm still really liking CU, it's quite valuable for me.
My cough seems to have gotten worse today. I've been coughing so much that my chest has really hurt for the last few hours, to the point where it's not exactly comfortable to breathe and I really can't cough very hard, even though I feel like I need to. A very very unpleasant and rather painful feeling to say the least.
And I also shaved off my goatee this morning, which will make some people back at Gustavus like Heidi and Sara rather pleased. I just kinda decided it was time for a change, I'd had it for a year and three months anyway. If I decide I want it back, it'd only take a couple weeks anyway. But since the weather's due to start warming up soon, let's just say it'd be preferable not to have one. The reaction down here was rather positive too (after the initial double-takes), most people said I look a few years younger now. Let me know what you think, whether the goatee should stay gone, or make a comeback after a little while? (Note my shameless ploy to get comments on my blog, I haven't had any in two weeks!)
Time to crawl into bed and try to sleep away the pain...
Posted by Jared at 11:01 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2004
Cats Declawed
Well yesterday morning I rang my parents to chat for awhile, but also to wish my dad a happy Father's Day, since yesterday was the day that Australia holds it. They don't hold Mother's Day until May though, pretty much the same as the US. In the afternoon I watched the Port Adelaide Power smoke the Geelong Cats by 55 points, 117-62. Ouch. Port's a very good side, they didn't have the top record in the regular season for nothing. Well, that means Geelong will be playing Essendon on Saturday night at the MCG, but since I've already pretty much made plans to go to an Answers In Genesis conference that night, I don't think I'll try to get tickets, as much as I would like to. I just might be tempted, we'll see... In the evening I went to MBT for awhile, got back around 9:30 and started putting the finishing touches on my essay for Aussie Landscape that's due on Wednesday.
Today I went to class, and officially picked a topic for my essay for Climate Change, and started doing some minimal research for it. It's gonna be a bit of torture, but at least it's not a completely boring topic. The topic I picked (and there were five or six we had to choose from) looks at the evidence for rapid climatic changes in the past, primarily Heinrich events (rapid cooling) and Dansgaard-Oeschger events (rapid warming). Lectures have only briefly touched on either of those things, so I'm actually learning on the go when I'm doing my research. Other than that, I went to the grocery store tonight, as much to pick up cough drops and ant traps as actual food. The thing is the cough drops don't taste nearly as good as the ones I had before (now they taste more like actual cough drops), and the ant traps aren't sticking to the wall as good as they should (another one just fell down a few seconds ago). The other downside that I've discovered about these particular ant traps have given my room the distinct and lovely aroma of borax. Let's just say tonight is definitely an open window night, to try and get rid of the stink.
Yesterday Josh also had the pleasure of experiencing his first two earthquakes. They were fairly minor, only about 4.0 where he is in Osaka, but the two quakes were 6.9 and 7.3 at their epicenters, and struck only hours apart. Oh yeah, and there are tsunami warnings now too for certain prefectures in Japan. Let's just say that earthquakes are one thing I won't have to be worrying about while I'm here in Australia, one of the most geologically dead places on the planet.
Today's the two month anniversary of my arrival in Australia. It's kind of scary how fast it's going. The semester will be over before I know it.
Day nine of the cough and counting. At times today though it seemed like it might be getting better, but then I had some pretty violent coughing fits too, so I'm not really sure what's going on. I just want it to end soon.
Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2004
Footy Footy Footy
Sigh, I'm at the end of day seven of this stupid cough. How much longer is this gonna last? I'm really frustrated that it's now cost me two weekends of really doing anything with other people, and that I've been pretty much miserable for now the last eight days. If you could pray that I would be able to regain my health as soon as possible I would be grateful.
So yesterday after reading the text of President Bush's wonderful convention speech, I turned my attention to other important issues -- the footy finals! Yes, this weekend is round 1 of the AFL finals (playoffs). The AFL does its finals a bit differently than sports back home, so here's a quick rundown. The AFL is made up of 16 teams (10 of which are from Melbourne and its suburbs), and the top 8 make the finals. The top 4 are granted the all-important "double-chance," which means that they can lose once in the first round and still hope to make the grand final. The first weekend only eliminates two teams. The top 4 play each other in qualifying finals (1-4, 2-3), and the next 4 play each other in elimination finals (5-8, 6-7). The winners of the qualifying finals get a bye the second week, while the losers of the qualifying finals host the winners of the elimination finals, with the winners then moving on in the third week to play the winners of the qualifying finals in what are called the preliminary finals. The winners of those two games will then play the AFL Grand Final on Sept 25th at the MCG in Melbourne. Got it? Good.
Last night I went over to Farrer Hall to watch the Brisbane-St Kilda qualifying final (2 vs 3) with BradWa (there are two Brad's in CU, so we call them BradWa and BradWe). Anyways, the Brisbane Lions have won the last three Grand Finals, and are looking good to go for their fourth consecutive premiership flag. They absolutely destroyed a very good St Kilda squad 149-69 at the Gabba (in Brisbane), in a game that wasn't even as close as the score indicates. The Saints scored some meaningless goals in the closing minutes to get the margin back to under 100 points to lose my a more "respectable" 80 points (hehe). Earlier this year Brisbane annihilated the Adelaide Crows by 141 points. Simply stunning. It's gonna be tough for anyone to dethrone Brisbane. And then this afternoon, while doing some reading for class, I saw an incredible elimination final, pitting the Melbourne Demons against the Essendon Bombers (5 vs 8), an all-Victorian final at the MCG. Each side had huge runs through the first three quarters, but then the lead changed a number of times in the 4th, before Essendon pulled out victorious, 104-99. In the other elimination final tonight, with the Sydney Swans hosting the West Coast Eagles (6 vs 7) in a torrential downpour that hampered play, Sydney won 75-34. I didn't watch that game though, as instead I watched the Roberts Hall Saturday Night Movie, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." Such a good movie, even after seeing it several times! But tomorrow afternoon is the other qualifying final, and the one I've actually been waiting for, with the Port Adelaide Power hosting the Geelong Cats (1 vs 4). There are quite a few Geelong fans here in Roberts, so it should be fun to watch it with them in front of the big screen down in the entertainment centre! The loser of that match will play Essendon next week, and St Kilda will play Sydney. I'm such a sports nerd...
And yes, despite all this footy I have gotten a start on my paper for the Aussie Landscape class, I should hopefully be able to finish that before the Geelong game tomorrow afternoon. I might even have newfound energy and motivation if I were to suddenly not have this cough tomorrow. A guy can dream, can't he?
Posted by Jared at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2004
Aww, No Drugs
So I still have this awful cough. This makes five days and four nights, and counting. I went to Health Services here on campus this afternoon, but the doc told me that it was just a viral, and not a bacterial, infection. That's good news in that it's therefore not as serious an illness, but bad news in that I just have to wait it out, and I won't get to go on any of the powerful Aussie pharmaceuticals. And I'd really been looking forward to taking some drugs too... :-)
Back on Tuesday night I went into the city to go to the Melbourne Theatre Company's production of the play "Dinner" at the Fairfax Theatre. It was a really dark comedy, and really none of the characters were likable, they all had huge flaws (which was deliberate of course). I'd give the play itself a marginal thumbs up. For most of the play I was kinda wondering "what's the point?" and some of the humour was rather crass and not subtle/creative enough. Some of it was really funny though. But I thought the set was really cool, it was on a stack of round but slightly off-center turntables (it was a theatre in the round). The bottom three, on which the top on sat, would move together, but the top one would move separately, and would very slowly rotate during each act. And the set was really simple and elegant too, it was just a red dinner table with six chairs around it off in one part of the circle. And the tabletop was lit too, so that between acts when the other lights were dark, you could still see that and the glittering crystal of the champagne glasses and other china on the table, it was really cool. I nabbed a photo of the set right after the production. And we had great seats too, front row in the "stage" section ("behind" the set), but since everything was slowly rotating anyway, sightlines were only occasionally a problem. After the play Jodee took us (it was an event for the IFSA students at Monash and Melbourne Uni) out to eat at Blue Train Cafe on Southbank (the opposite side of the Yarra River from the Flinders Street Station and the CBD, I'll point it out on a picture in an upcoming photo album). It was a really cool restaurant, if a bit pricey. All the servers were really laid back, none of them were dressed the same, and many of them even had tattoos or piercings. It was interesting seeing a restaurant that obviously didn't discourage its employees from displaying all that. But most of us were so hungry for some actual beef that several people got the filet mignon, while I got the bbq porterhouse. [Aside: We were all longing for beef because the meat down here is a bit dodgy, you never quite know what you're getting. Like I think I've mentioned previously, most of the time when you order a hot dog or a hamburger it'll be mostly mutton, and most of the girls were sick of mutton shortly after we arrived in Australia.] The steak was good, although the beef does taste different down here because they're fed different things, and the bbq sauce also was different from anything I'd ever tasted (I wasn't really sure what to make of it actually, hehe). And Sharon and I split a couple of samosas too that had a wonderful mango chutney sauce, those were awesome! And then most of us got cheesecake too, and I don't think I've ever seen bigger slices of cheesecake at a restaurant before in my life, they were soooo good! Jodee paid for the taxi ride back to Monash as well for myself, Meghan, Sharon & Krista, it was a very enjoyable evening.
Wednesday, when I finally got back from my full day at uni (I hate Wednesdays here, they're soooo long), I basically studied in my room for the two tests that I had today. One was a midterm in Large-Scale Weather & Climate, and I think it went fairly well, although I may have minorly stuffed it up on one part and lost myself a few marks. Oh well. But then I'm pretty certain I spanked the Fluid Dynamics test, it was significantly easier than what I was fearing. Either that or I might actually have a decent command on what's been taught in the course so far. But beginning on Wednesday the course's difficulty suddenly jumped, because we got a new lecturer. What we'd done prior to this week was on incompressible fluid dynamics, and what Prof Cally is teaching us about is compressible fluid dynamics, which is significantly harder. Basically he told us that everything we'd learned to that point was a lie, and that the maths in this part of the course are so hard that we're gonna be crying in our sleep, lol. That kinda sounds like the intimidation that regularly issues from another physics prof named Paul, "Fail em all Paul" Saulnier back at GAC, hehe.
So I've been reading most of the speeches being made at the Republican National Convention this week, and I'm totally jazzed! After reading the speeches by people like Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger & Zell Miller, and seeing how amazingly optimistic and conservative their speeches were, well, you can't help but be infected by that sort of enthusiasm! Oh, and a couple days ago I got my absentee ballot in the mail for the upcoming primary election in Wisconsin. I've gotta make sure to fill that out and return it soon. I'm excited to vote, even in the primary!
Posted by Jared at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)