Jared's One Blog

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October 31, 2004

Make the Switch

While for the majority of you that are reading this, Daylight Savings Time just ended and you gained an hour of sleep, for me it just began and I got gipped of an hour. Oh well, not like I'm bitter or anything. ;-) But now instead of being 15 hours ahead of Minnesota/Wisconsin time, we're 17 hours ahead. I had the old system of time conversions down pat, so this new conversion is gonna screw with my head for a couple days probably.

Yesterday I really didn't do much. I slept in, started sorting through some photos that I hadn't named or saved yet, walked down to Pinewood for some groceries and lunch, read some stuff online, and then spent a good chunk of the evening fiddling around with a program called jAlbum. It's a free software program that makes java-based online photo albums for you, and since I have a backlog of big photo albums to compile, and since I was tired of making photo albums the way I've always done (very inefficiently and time-consumingly), I decided to spend a little time figuring out how to make some minor modifications to a new template that I really like. Eventually (perhaps over Christmas break or some other convenient time), I'm planning on just redoing all my photo albums with the new template. It'll just clean things up a bit and make everything easier to deal with in the future, even though it's a bit of extra work up front. I'll let you all know when I get a few new photo albums up so that you can see the new design (and new pictures), but I have no idea when that'll be. Perhaps this coming weekend, perhaps not.

Today I actually got around to a little bit of studying for my Large-Scale Weather & Climate exam coming up on Tuesday morning. I dunno, it's probably since it's my last final, but I'm not exactly motivated to study that much for it. I usually always get this way before the last exam of the semester, I just wanna get it over with so I can move onto more enjoyable things. Tonight it was time for Monash Bible Talks again, and it was the last official MBT of the semester, though we'll be still having a couple of "unofficial" meetings the next couple weeks. So at least I don't have to say goodbye just yet. :-) Tonight we wrapped up a really good six-week series on the greatest sermon ever given, the Sermon on the Mount. Heaps of good food for thought on how to live and act.

Well, the presidential campaign is thankfully in its final hours. And -- October Surprise! -- Osama bin Laden has tried to meddle with our election by putting in his two cents' worth, and all but endorsing Kerry. Osama was clearly taunting Bush and trying to turn the voters against him, but I really can't see how the tape could possibly be construed as hurting Bush overall; I mean, sure, he might be hurt in some voters minds by reminding them that we haven't gotten the SOB yet, but far more people will be reminded that the man most likely to kick some terrorist ass and actually nail that bastard is George W Bush, not John Francois Kerry. So this should be a net gain for Bush on Election Day, because now virtually every single voter that walks into the voting booths on Tuesday is gonna have the issue of terrorism at the forefront of their minds -- and guess who that helps? I've long been cautiously optimistic that Bush will rather handily win the election (with at least 52% of the national popular vote and possibly over 300 electoral votes), but now I'm even more optimistic about that, and that it could truly even be a landslide victory for Bush. But of course there are some kookball wackos out there like Walter Cronkite who are seriously suggesting that Karl Rove is behind the whole Osama tape thing. I mean, c'mon, how can anyone possibly take this guy seriously? And sort of on the topic of Osama, Charles Krauthammer has an absolutely brilliant column on how Kerry has amnesia when it comes to Afghanistan, and why it's such a pivotal issue in this election. Also, liberal Iraqis are hugely in favour of Bush, while the terrorists in Sadr City are overwhelmingly for Kerry. That should be yet another red flag to potential Kerry voters, especially on top of all the ringing endorsements he's received from terrorists around the world. Shouldn't it be absolutely critical that we elect a president who will protect America first?

Posted by Jared at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2004

2 Down, 1 To Go!

As you might be able to guess from the title of this post, I've completed two of my three final exams for the semester. Yet more evidence at just how rapidly the semester is marching on. More on the exams in a bit though.

Back on Monday I decided that I should probably start studying a little. So I got together with BradWa, Simon and Connie to study (we're all in different subjects, we were just trying to motivate each other to study our own stuff) in the afternoon and did a little 'studying' -- and by studying I mean procrastination. Like some frisbee with Simon & Brad, a trip to the grocery store, and then in the evening neither Brad nor I had the willpower to shut off that dang TV, hehe. So all in all, I think I got maybe one Fluid Dynamics problem done all day. Maybe two. Tops. Like the Demotivators poster we have on display back in 202, "Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now." I so love despair.com!

Tuesday was a much better day as far as studying was concerned. In the afternoon for a study break BradWa took both Stefan and I on a drive down to Caulfield, to show us where the Racecourse was so that we'd know where we were going when we had to take our finals. And it was still nice enough to study outside on a picnic table for most of the afternoon, although as evening approached I had to start dodging raindrops a bit. Ever since it's been cold this week, blah. Well, not cold in the MN/WI sense of course, but cold (10-13C much of the time, mid-50s F) compared to some ever-lengthier stretches of temps in the mid 20s (upper 70s F) that we've been getting over the last month and a half.

Wednesday was more of the same, workin through past Fluid Dynamics exams, except I was forced to do it inside, seeing as how it was cold, windy and raining most of the day. But I really shouldn't complain about rain down here, the entire continent always needs it badly. But in the evening it was time to head over to Farrer Hall to celebrate BradWa's 21st birthday! Practically all of CU came over for the BBQ, I think we were all surprised at the turnout. Needless to say it was a very good study break, and I got quite a few photos of friends (Kieran took several with my camera as well, he was havin some fun :-). Oh, and in case you're wondering why he's called BradWa, it's because there's a second Brad in CU, we call him BradWe so that we can distinguish between the two, hehe (they're short for their last names, Watson and Wells). Happy birthday BradWa! After the cake it was time to get back to studying unfortunately.

Thursday morning I got down to the bus loop plenty early to catch the free Monash shuttle bus to the Caulfield campus, only there was a bit of a line, so I had to wait for the second bus to come (they only seat 24, which is rather inconvenient during exam times and hundreds of people from campus are needing to get down there). What's really annoying is that the drivers are so insistent about sticking to their "schedule" that even when we completely fill up the bus and there's still a huge long line of people waiting for the next one, the driver just sits there reading a book for a few minutes before he finally decides it's time to head out. You'd think they'd have the shuttle bus drivers driving basically non-stop in the hour or two leading up to exam start times especially, just to make sure that everyone gets there. That'd be the sensible thing to do, which is of course probably why they don't do that. Oh yeah, and then peak hour traffic is so bad in the morning on Princes Hwy that we end up having to stop at seemingly every traffic light, so it takes forever to get there. But I still got to the Racecourse in plenty of time, so I'm not complaining too much. And despite a couple of nasty problems (I was convinced for the longest time I has gonna have to give up 18 of the 88 points by leaving a couple problems blank), I managed to scratch and claw my way to what I figure is a quite reasonable score, as in the last 15 minutes I managed to salvage all but 7 or 8 of those points, woohoo. The exam was worth 60%, but I think I did well enough on it to secure an HD (high distinction, 80-100, transfers to the States as an A) for the course. At least that's what I'm hoping for...

Here's how Monash does final exams. They book the huge Caulfield Racecourse complex (quite possibly the nicest horse-racing facility in Australia) for four weeks, and in each of the large rooms just filled with desks, although fortunately they're facing away from the windows, so that we're not distracted by a nice view of blue sky or green grass. They wouldn't want us to start daydreaming or anything... But anyways, in each room at each exam time slot, there are anywhere from hundreds to sometimes close to a thousand students from all sorts of different subjects taking their exams simultaneously. The doors only open 10 minutes before the scheduled start of the exam, and once they pass out the exams you have ten minutes to read over the exam questions, which is really nice. Then you can't start writing or anything until they announce that the entire room can start. And there are heaps of invigilators (or "the old people," as many of the students colloquially call them) walking around to make sure that none of us candidates are cheating or anything. And there are no lecturers or professors present, so you can't ask anybody a question if you're confused by the wording of a problem on the exam, which kinda sucks. Oh, that and weeks before the exam we get assigned a specific seat we have to be in during the exam. They sure take their exams seriously here.

Thursday afternoon and evening I sure didn't feel like studying. I just read a bunch of stuff online, and eventually walked down to Monash Pizza to get some supper, where I ran into Jane from my Weather class (she's all excited about studying abroad at Penn State next semester and getting to spend a few months in the snow, so if I wind up visiting Penn St in my search for a grad school I'll no doubt stop in and say g'day to her :-), so I talked to her for a bit while our pizzas were waiting. Oh, and I got some stuff from the GAC study abroad office yesterday too, a generic letter about registration and a couple of Weekly's. Thing is, the envelope was sent three weeks ago. What was the holdup? Perhaps it could have something to do with the sticker on it that says "Posten Sverige AB International Mail - if undeliverable please return to:" blah blah blah "Malmo, Sweden." So yeah, for some reason my package got diverted to Sweden for awhile on its way to Australia from America. Sure is an interesting route the post office chose for it.

This morning I went back down to Caulfield to take my second final, Climate Change & Variability. Before classes ended I figured that this would be my easiest final, and it sure feels like it was. What a cake final. :-) We just had to write some stuff for a couple hours on a few different topics of our choice that we already knew like the back of our hands. I really haven't done a whole lot since I got back, basically I've just been relaxing a bit, since my final final isn't until Tuesday. That one could be a bit tricky though, it'll require a bit of studying (Large-Scale Weather & Climate, there's a decent amount of maths and equations that we'll have to remember for it). That, and now I'm officially taking the General GRE here in Melbourne on the afternoon of Nov 8th. So once final exams end, the studying won't. Sigh. But I guess it's good to get it out of the way when I don't have to worry about other classes, papers or tests.

Tired of all the bad news about Iraq that's constantly being spewed at us by the mainstream media? Well, click here to read about some of the many, many good things that are happening in Iraq these days. It's certainly not all doom and gloom like the mainstream media would like to portray it! And related to Iraq this week was the completely bogus story in Monday's New York Times (CBS had been planning a "60 Minutes" on it this coming weekend - October Surprise!), alleging that 380 tons of explosives had been looted from the al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq under the "incompetent" eye of President Bush and our troops. Kerry's been off and running with the story ever since. Thing is, it's totally not true. Stories have been emerging from several places, including NBC & ABC (I guess they'd rather not risk being tarnished by CBS's lack of credibility), that say that the explosives were not only gone before US troops even got there, but that the explosives only totaled three tons, not the 380 that the New York Times and John Kerry still claim were stolen in the presence of American troops. Seriously, how can anyone possibly vote for this man? But this explosives story still needs to be kept in perspective, because we've rounded up and destroyed over 400,000 tons of explosives so far in Iraq. In non-political news, NASA's Cassini probe has been getting some amazing pictures of Saturn's moon Titan over the last couple days. And Josh's parents should take note that now they'll be able to keep track of his whereabouts at all times in Japan now!

Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2004

Surfs Up, Mate!

Well the day sure got off to a rousing start. We were supposed to be in the city by 8 or 8:15 at the latest. So Sharon, Caroline, Krista & I called for a taxi around quarter to 8, which we figured would leave us plenty of time, especially since the cab got to us pretty quickly (much better than the 30-45 minutes we were waiting for a cab last night to take us to the farewell dinner, grr). But first he misunderstood which way we said we wanted to go, so instead of taking us in on the freeway, it was a long, rather slow, traffic light-filled avenue. And then when we got to the city, traffic was snarled and we couldn't get to Melbourne Uni to meet everyone else because practically every street was blocked off, either due to construction or the Nike Fun Run. So we finally just had the cabbie drop us off at some street corner, and made Jodee and the buses come pick us up, somewhere around 8:45. So yeah, all the Melbourne Uni IFSA-Butler kids probably hated us, but it wasn't our fault. Nice relaxing way to start the day, yeah.

So we finally made it out of Melbourne and down to the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road was completed back in 1939, and stretches from Torquay (just west of Geelong) all the way to Warranambool along the southern coast of Victoria. It's one of the most traveled stretches of road in the world, and one of Australia's biggest tourist attractions. Our first stop along the Great Ocean Road was at world-famous Bells Beach, just west of Torquay (strangely pronounced tor'-KEE). In the 1991 movie "Point Break," Patrick Swayze's trying to get to Bells Beach, and finally reaches it at the end of the movie -- only the actual filming location is not Bells Beach of course, but rather some beach in California. Lame. Especially when in the film, they depict Bells Beach as a cove with lots of tall pine trees, when as you can see from the picture at right it's a straight stretch of beach, with definitely no pine trees to be seen. Seeing the real Bells Beach was much better. :-)

We then kept on going down the Great Ocean Road, past some great views, and through the town of Anglesea until we got to Lorne, which was our surfing destination for the day. But first we went up into the temperate rainforest a few k's north of Lorne to take a hike to the beautiful Erskine Falls, pictured at left. I went rock-hopping and log-bridging up the river to get a better view of the waterfall, and managed to get a few good photos. We also took a short hike along the Lemonade Creek track through some eucalypt forests, before having a nice picnic for lunch at Blanket Leaf Picnic Area, at the end of the track.

After lunch we went back down the hill to Lorne, for the day's main activity -- surfing! I had never been surfing before, and was somewhat apprehensive about it. But after putting on a wetty (wetsuit) and being given a surf board, we got about 15 minutes of basic instructions (since most of us had never surfed before), such as how to ride the board and other safety tips, before we hit the water to test out our skills. I was fearing the water would be cold, but it actually wasn't that bad, especially with a wetty on. To start with we weren't supposed to go deeper than waist- or chest-deep, and we had to surf between two posted flags on the beach, as on one side of the flags were rather sharp rocks that the waves could bash you against, and on the other side was a pretty good rip, a very strong current which would pull you straight out to sea. At any rate, I think on my second go of catching a wave I was actually able to ride it all the way into shore, riding flat on my stomach. It was so exhilarating to speed into shore with the wave while having it crash over you! A few more go's left me with varying degrees of success of trying to ride a wave in while sitting on my knees (the next step towards trying to stand upright). Eventually I got a really good one on my knees, but not before taking a few 'nosedives,' and getting spun and tumbled underwater like a washing machine by the waves (but I didn't get owned by the waves as badly as I did at Costa del Sol in Spain in 2000, hehe). Once I even ended up with a large mouthful of saltwater though, that wasn't fun. So even though I never got around to even attempting standing up (since I couldn't reliably get up on my knees without having the board tip over), it was probably the most fun I've had in Australia, it was awesome!! I don't know if I'll make it surfing again here in Australia, but I definitely would like to at some point, now that I've done it once. :-) In the picture at left, it's Krista, me, Caroline, and Sharon (who really didn't like wearing a wetsuit, and so took it partly off as soon as she got out of the water, hehe).

Once we were all done with our learn-to-surf session we started heading back to Melbourne, and stopped at Point Roadknight Beach in Anglesea to have a nice barbecue supper (or tea, as it's called in Aussie lingo). A couple of us wandered from the beach in search of some cool pictures from the rocky Pt Roadknight, and we were treated with several! Although I must admit that walking out there in my thong-sandals made for some interesting footing on the jagged rocks, especially when my feet and sandals got wet, hehe. The bbq was good too, although there wasn't any bread left for me to put my roo baggers (kangaroo sausages) in, oh well. After being dropped off at Melbourne Uni in the city, we said goodbye to Jodee, since we might not see her again, it was kinda sad. Then we took a taxi back to Monash at 9:30, and fortunately it wasn't nearly as stressful as the one in the morning.

In short, I've decided that the Great Ocean Road is an absolute must for my parents to see, or at least for me to go see again. Next time I wanna make it further down the road, past Apollo Bay and Cape Otway and on to Port Campbell National Park, home of the Twelve Apostles and London Bridge rock formations just offshore from the Great Ocean Road. One of my goals in my remaining month in Australia is to see a sunset at the Twelve Apostles, just like I've seen on so many gorgeous postcards (some of which at least a couple of you have received) and calendars down here.

Well I'm totally worn out from the day's events. I'm gonna sleep very well tonight. One thing of note, in addition to the Red Sox winning Game 1 of the World Series (go Sox!!), is that a federal appeals court has reversed an unlawful lower court's decision that would've allowed Ohio voters to go to any precinct in their county, instead of requiring them to report to their specific precinct's polling place. So thankfully the rule of law has once again prevailed, and the chances of voter fraud will be much reduced.

Posted by Jared at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2004

Mornington Peninsula

As of yesterday I'm all done with classes in Australia. My only class yesterday (as with any Friday) was Fluid Dynamics, and even though I know classes are over and done with, it still sorta doesn't feel that way, it's strange. I felt the relief of being done much more after my Wednesday classes, since that was the last day I had to turn anything in, so I guess the actual end of classes was sort of anticlimactic, but that's fine.

After class Friday I went up to the Maths building to talk to Dr. Steve Siems, one of the profs in the Atmospheric Science department here, about the possibility of doing grad school here at Monash. Even though I was only there for like 5 minutes it was a lot of useful information. For instance, the only way I'd be able to swing it would be if I were to get some international student postgraduate research scholarship, otherwise I'd have to pay full fee to come here and that's not an option I'm remotely interested in. But I can't even apply for the scholarship until October 2005, so I'd have to be pretty dead-set on trying to come here and forgo trying to get into an American grad school for the Aug-Dec 2005 semester. So while Monash would still be a very good place to come (certainly the best place in Australia, probably in the entire southern hemisphere), there are just enough obstacles in the way that it's not an extremely serious option at this point. I'd probably be better off at a school like Oklahoma (I've dreamed of going to OU since at least 10th grade, for awhile it was even ahead of Gustavus on my list), Wisconsin or Mississippi State.

At any rate, yesterday afternoon James & Ali picked me up and we drove down to the Mornington Peninsula south of the city, between the Southern Ocean and Port Phillip Bay. We were hoping to see a spectacular sunset down by either Sorrento or Portsea, as it was a fine day in and around Melbourne. But once we got close to the end of the peninsula, a thick bank of fog rolled in from the sea for the rest of the evening, preventing us from seeing much of anything. In the picture at right, the rock formation jutting out into the sea is called the Sphinx, and ordinarily we would've been able to watch the sunset right over the Sphinx, oh well. We still went around to some of the different beaches down there, and I think they'd be a good place to take my parents, especially if it's sunny (of course, I say that about most of the places I go, I need to start hashing out exactly where I'm gonna take them in their limited time down here, they won't have time to see everything). One of the cooler sights of the evening was an echidna that was burrowing for ants right next to the car park at one of the beaches. He was so hungry and chowing down on so many ants that he didn't even care we were there right next to him taking pictures and everything! He even let us touch him, and his spines were pretty sharp too. I took a short movie of him burrowing around too, I'll get that up on my webpage at some point (whenever I also get a couple of photo albums up, including the one from the Whitsunday Islands).

Oh and Thursday night my friend Pat who lives across the hall from me encountered some strong anti-American sentiment down here. He was at a bar near campus with a couple of his American buddies, and he saw some guys with Yankees hats on, so since Pat's a Yankee fan he asked them if they were Yankee fans as well, and they replied that they hated Yankees like us and that we should get the bleep out of their country, that their visas were almost up so they should just get out now and whatnot. Then several of these Aussies kept trying to pick a fight with Pat and his friends, who didn't want any part of a fight, and eventually one of them just blindsided Pat with a solid punch to the side of the face by his eye. (Pat was sure he was gonna have a black eye this morning, but fortunately didn't). So that started a big fight, but Pat didn't fight back, instead he just ducked down on the floor, covering and protecting one of the American girls that was with them, but the Aussie guys kept on whaling on him in the back of the head and everything, until the bartenders and bouncers came in and broke up the fight and kicked the Aussie guys out of the bar. That was really the first time either of us had actually heard of true, serious anti-American sentiment down here, at least of it resulting in violence. But we're both confident that it's a fairly isolated incident, since it hasn't happened until now. I guess it's a good thing I didn't go to the Nott Thursday night after all.

This afternoon I spent a bit of time starting my searches for grad school stuff. Since I need to take the general GRE for basically any grad school I apply to in the States, that was the first thing I checked out. Fortunately for me there's a testing centre here in Melbourne that has some openings during the second week of November that I'd be able to make it to. I basically have to take the GRE while I'm down here, since I'll be travelling from late November until close to Christmas, and since many grad schools have application deadlines in early or mid-January. So in short once I'm done studying for my finals, I'll have to switch gears and start cramming for the GRE. Fun. A potential trip to go see Ayers Rock suddenly got a little more iffy, sigh.

Tonight was the night for our IFSA-Butler farewell dinner. It was the first time that all eight of us Butlerites had been together since back at orientation, so it was a good chance to catch up and share stories about our study abroad experience here at Monash. And I remembered to bring my camera, but forgot to put a memory card in it, argh. So as a result, no pics from tonight, oh well. For dinner we went to Federation Square in the heart of the city. We were planning on going to a Japanese restaurant called the Chocolate Buddha, but it was gonna be an hour and a half before we could get a table, so instead we wandered around and found a Greek restaurant at FedSquare called the Wine Bar or somethin like that. The food was pretty good, I got a lamb shoulder pizza with tsiki ice cream (made with sour cream, cucumbers, chives) for an appetizer (or entree as they're called down here), and then lamb souvlaki sausages for the main, followed up by some Cyprian custard-filled pastry (which was very good) with a little bit of prune ice cream (which was...... interesting) for dessert. The best part of it all? It was free to us, since IFSA was paying for it. :-) The downside? It had to be the longest meal any of us have ever had in our entire lives. It wasn't even that much food (the appetizer was more filling than the main), but it seemed like our bodies were able to go through the entire digestion process between each course. We had to have been there for close to three hours, it was getting ridiculous. I must say, even though it's nice that you don't have to worry about tipping here in Australia, service in America is worlds better (both quality and speed) because we do tip our servers. I think whenever I'm at a restaurant in America after this I won't complain about tips, and will certainly appreciate good service. :-)

And now for some links, most of which are of course dominated by the election. Kerry has announced his latest strategy: declare victory on Election Night, no matter how badly he's losing, and then sue the pants off of several states to drag out the election interminably. So it's looking more and more likely that we'll have several Floridas this year, sigh. Much of that is because the Democrats are already screaming that voters are being disenfranchised when they can't manage to vote for the right candidate or go to the right polling place. Whatever happened to a voter's basic responsibilities, to know when, where and how to vote? If you can't figure those things out, you probably shouldn't be voting in the first place. And the Democrats are just offending various constituencies all over the place. First Kerry offends both Catholics and Protestants by his hopelessly muddled and confused theology, and then his wife offended school teachers, librarians, and all moms, when the pompous kook-ball Teresa Heinz Kerry insulted Laura Bush (the most respected figure in the Bush administration), saying that she'd never had a "real job." And then the ketchup billion-heiress stepped in it even more with her lame apology, by tacitly admitting that she doesn't think that being a mom is a "real job." In other news, earlier this week Japan was hit by massive Super Typhoon Tokage, the most deadly typhoon to strike Japan in a decade or two. The loony ultra-liberal/socialist 9th Circus Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a ruling yesterday that they couldn't see any reason why dolphins and whales shouldn't be allowed to sue the US and President Bush. What?!?!? I mean, seriously, what are those judges smoking? And in some good (and much more sane) news, Bill Cosby gave a speech in Milwaukee in which he pleaded with his fellow blacks to take responsibility for raising and educating their children, so that they'll be productive members of society. Cosby has given several speeches along these lines during the last few months, and he should be duly praised for what he's saying, because it definitely needs to be said by somebody. Only it has been said before by other conservatives, but when they say it they're derided as being racists and bigots, sigh. Keep it up Cosby! And finally, conservative firebrand Ann Coulter was giving a speech at the University of Arizona, and a couple of guys ran on stage and threw pies at her before they were arrested. Her response immediately afterward was hilarious, she said, "From that far away they can't even hit me?" Go Ann!

And let me just mention again just how much I despise the internet quota system here at Monash. I got cut off again late last night for being "over quota" (right before I was gonna post most of this) so I had to purchase another chunk of quota, I've spent $44 on internet alone here at Monash so far (not counting the ridiculous $50 connection fee), and I'm really not doing anything except surfing the web. It's totally bogus, and I'll be very glad to get back home and to Gustavus, to a world where you're not jipped on internet services. Maybe I'm just a spoiled American in that sense, but the way Australian universities handle technology issues in general leaves much to be desired. Other than that (well, that and the ant infestations in my dorm room and other dorm), I like it at Monash, but the internet quota thing has bugged me ever since I got here. But anyway, since I bought the quota on a Friday night, my internet won't get turned back on until Monday, since nobody staffs IT outside of regular business hours. That's absolutely ridiculous. So as a temporary measure, Pat was gracious enough to loan me his Monash username and password so that I could have internet this weekend, since he has plenty of quota left to use up.

Anyway, time for sleep. I've gotta get up early in the morning to go on a surfing trip to Lorne (a couple hours down the Great Ocean Road southwest of the city) with some IFSA students from Monash and Melbourne Uni. It'll be my first time ever surfing, I'm excited! But I'm also a bit nervous, hopefully I won't drown or get eaten by a shark. ;-)

Posted by Jared at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

I've Cast My Ballot

At last! I'm finally done with assignments, papers and tests at Monash! Now all I have left to do are the final exams, which aren't exactly any small task. But they aren't till next week anyway, so I have a couple of days worth of procrastinating to do before it gets to be time to buckle down and hit the books again. I still have two days of classes left, but it's all gonna be review lectures, there's nothing I have to turn in so I can relax. For today I had a paper for Experiencing the Australian Landscape due, an assignment for Fluid Dynamics and a test in Fluids as well, so last night was a busy night.

Sunday night was time for yet another MBT at Rob & Simone's house, we're most of the way through a five-week series on the Sermon on the Mount, it's been really good. After the official part of MBT was done I made myself some Milo, grabbed a TimTam and did my first-ever TimTam Slam! Now if I had been really on the ball I would've had someone taking a picture... After that a few of us played some foosball (in the photo are Rob, BradWa (black), Simon (grey), and Kieran (hidden by Rob)). The table wasn't the sturdiest, and we were all really agressive in our foosball playing, so the table was rocking pretty good! It surely had to be affecting gameplay a bit. :-)

Since I had no classes on Monday I went into the city in the morning to catch the Vikings-Saints football game on ESPN at All Star Sports Cafe. All Star has three big screens in the front of the bar (in addition to several on both sides), one had the Vikings-Saints game; the middle one had the Australia-India cricket test match; and the one on the right had Game 4 of the Yankees-Red Sox series with audio. So it was this sports fan's dream to be able to catch both the Vikings and Red Sox games, especially since they were so good (Daunte throwing for another 5 TDs, and the Red Sox winning in extra innings to avoid the sweep). It was a glorious day outside, and I would've gone for a walk in the botanical gardens, except I was feeling the pressure of all the work I had to do for today.

Tuesday was the last day of CBT and all the other regular Tuesday activities for Christian Union this semester. :-( It was kinda sad, knowing it was almost certainly the last time I'd be with all of them as a big group, and the last time I'd ever see several of them. I wasn't the only one to be saying goodbye though, a few of them are graduating, and another one-semester study abroad student (Stefan) is heading back to Germany. But MBT is still running, so I have a few more times of seeing some of them at least. I got most of their emails though, I'm hoping to keep in touch with them all. After I got back from CU in the evening it was time for work work work on my Fluids assignment, having finished my Aussie Landscape essay in the morning. Bedtime was attained at 2:30am, not too bad I guess, considering how much I had to do.

My test today in Fluids didn't go too badly. I might've stuffed up one or two of the questions, but I probably faked it enough to get at least partial credit on those, so I should be fine. I had a first for me today, in intentionally skipping the final lecture for Experiencing the Australian Landscape. I can't remember ever intentionally skipping a college/uni lecture before in my life (I've overslept a few accidentally at GAC), so this was a big step for me. :-) I just didn't feel like going today, since I'd turned in my paper earlier in the afternoon, since it was the final lecture, there's no final exam for the subject, and since we were allowed one absence without it affecting our grade. So I chose to take that absence today, and it certainly was more enjoyable sitting here checking stuff out online instead of sitting through a pointless video or lecture. I also voted today and mailed in my absentee ballot this afternoon. I was really excited to get my first chance ever to vote in a presidential election, especially in one that's so close in Wisconsin (and nationwide).

Earlier this evening I watched "Revenge of the Pink Panther" over in Farrer with BradWa, Simon & Joel. It was still funny, but much slower than I remembered it. And then the DVD was scratched badly at the end, which was a pain. That's the downside of renting DVD's, people don't take care of them. And then I noticed tonight on the Gustavus webpage that the Australia blog I'm writing for the GAC site is prominently linked, so I figured I'd better update it quick, it had been two weeks. Oops. But it's cool that my site's linked off GAC's main page. :-)

For all you homeowners out there, maybe you should think about taking out satellite insurance. A Chinese satellite crashed into a house the other day. The house was destroyed, but the satellite was unscathed.

GO RED SOX!! CRUSH THE YANKEES!! Game 7 will happen while I'm at class unfortunately, at 10am Melbourne time. What an amazing series!

Posted by Jared at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

Happy Birthday Mike & Josh!

Happy Birthday Mike and Josh! Having two friends with birthdays on the same day makes it easier to remember them both. Mike's now 19, and Josh is 22. And I know it's not technically the 21st yet back in the States, but it is here, so Mike gets an extra-long birthday! And Josh is of course in Japan this semester, which is only an hour behind Australia, so he gets the shaft with a normal length birthday (sorry Josh, that's just the way the chips fell this year). But now it's the 21st in Osaka too, so he can officially celebrate now, hehe. I can't celebrate with either of them in person this year of course, but we'll make up for that when I get back. :-)

Posted by Jared at 01:20 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2004

Tim Tam Slam

Only one more week of class to go in Australia, ack! Is it just me, or has time seemed like it's been accelerating lately? Like seriously, how did it get to be mid-October?

Thursday was another long day for me. Class until 2, and then Rob & I went out gospel roaming again. After watching and listening to him do the full presentation last week to someone, this week it was my turn to do it for the first time. We wound up talking to a guy who was a pretty strong humanist for about 20 minutes or so, and I was a bit nervous while answering the guy's questions, but I think I did okay, especially for my first time. Even if we don't change people's minds on the spot, we're just glad when we find people who are willing to talk about their beliefs and ask questions. Each time we do it it's a learning experience for all of us.

After that it was time to mail a couple of packages and other things. When I was at the post office, I got to talking to the girl at the counter, and when I mentioned that I hadn't ever done a TimTam Slam before, she was aghast, hehe. So she told me how to do a TimTam Slam, which is evidently the proper way to eat a TimTam. After I test it out, I'll try to give demonstrations to some of you first-hand when I get back (or if you're really nice and ask me I might tell you how to do it before I get back). I'm trying to decide how many packages of TimTams to bring home with me, hehe. Also, on a very related note, when she found out that I'd never had Milo before, she made me a cup of it. Milo is a chocolate powder kinda like Nestle Quik, but a bit different. A proper 'Milo' is made by pouring some milk, adding the Milo powder and stirring it up until it's all nice and frothy, and then adding some really hot water. It was quite good really, better than most powdered hot chocolate mixes I've had back in the States. Either that, or it could just be that it tasted better because I'm in Australia. ;-)

Finally around 9pm I decided to start doing research for my 6-pg essay on frontal dynamics for my Weather & Climate class (I'd been reading tons of online articles about the third presidential debate, which happened Thursday midday Australia time). I just really didn't feel like writing that essay at that point. It's not that the topic wasn't interesting or anything, but I was quite bored and tired while I was writing it. Not a good combo, hehe. I took a break for the night at 2:30am to get some sleep.

My lone class on Friday (Fluid Dynamics) was the last lecture I'll have down here with new info (all my classes next week are review sessions). After that I came back and finished off my paper, turned it in and then wrote a couple more postcards too (how much have I spent at Australia Post since I got here? quite a bit...). In the evening BradWa & I went out to Monash Pizza for some supper, rented some movies from Blockbuster, and watched "The Italian Job" and "Torque." I loved "The Italian Job," it was awesome seeing those three Cooper Minis do their thing! Kieran came down after we got done with that, and really really wanted to see "Torque" (we'd also rented "Revenge of the Pink Panther"), but couldn't keep his eyes open and went to bed halfway through. "Torque" was, shall we say, a B-movie. And a subpar B-movie at that. About really fast motorcycles, mean biker gangs and the FBI. Mercifully it was only an hour-twenty long. It was really late once that was done though, so "Pink Panther" will have to wait for another night.

Today (Saturday) I didn't get too much accomplished. I slept in till 11 (I sooo needed those 10+ hours of sleep though), read some stuff online, figured out one of the problems on my Fluid Dynamics assignment due Wednesday (same day as a test in that class), got horribly stuck on the next one (I'm even clueless as to what Prof Cally's "hint" is actually saying, much less what its relevance is). This evening I went to Pinewood with Stefan to get some groceries at Cole's and some supper at Subway, and after that I did a wee bit of work on a Climate Change assignment due Monday. Sigh, my efficiency index is not good these days. But come crunch time I still get everything done, which is what counts.

In some of my reading over the past few days, I've come across a pretty fair round-by-round scorecard for the third presidential debate that was held the other day. In all the stuff I've read (and I've read both conservative- and liberal-slanting viewpoints), it seems pretty clear to me that Bush won the third debate, and fairly decisively (to heck with the flash polls right after the debate). Kerry seemed pretty much the same through all three debates, maybe slightly on the decline by the third, but Bush steadily improved in each debate. I'd say Kerry won the first debate, the second was a tie, and Bush won the third. As for some humorous news, what happens when your physics professor flips out? Some college students in the Bayou State found out first-hand. And Minnesota police found themselves on a mission from Elvis, only to wind up chasing a Jake Blues look-alike. And it's a good thing Australia doesn't have any giraffes, there are too many killer animals on this continent as it is. I can totally see FOX doing a one-hour special on this.

Posted by Jared at 01:49 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2004

Hump Day

Not a whole lot has been going on the first half of this week. On Monday I went to class, and then spent a decent chunk of the evening revising an article I'm writing for the Gustavian Weekly (the weekly newspaper back at Gustavus) about Australian politics/government and the recent election. I got it down from over 1350 words to under 900 words, not too bad but still not quite short enough to make it into the paper. But the nice weather that started out last Friday continued through today, with a top of about 25 C (79 F).

Tuesday I went to Campus Bible Talks in the afternoon as usual, and then just hung out the rest of the afternoon on the shady grass near the Campus Centre, talkin to a few CU people like Ro, Jimmy, BradWe, BradWa, Kathryn & Kirrily. Tuesday was really warm too, it topped out at around 32 C; in real degrees, that translates to around 92 F. I'm definitely not used to that kind of heat yet, it was the hottest day I've experienced since probably July or August 2003! Then in the evening it was time for the last session of growth groups and evangelism training for the semester -- next week is an end-of-year party instead. It's kinda sad to realise that all this stuff is winding down, just another reminder that I won't be down here much longer... After I got back I whittled my Weekly article down to 750 words on the nose, the max length for it. Unfortunately after I sent it to Lyz for final approval, she read it and said it wasn't commentary-ish enough, and so she sent it back to me to rewrite it completely. Sigh, I hate miscommunications and misunderstandings about what's expected of you, but no worries, I'll probably split it up into two separate articles and submit at least one of them for next week's issue. They'll probably be better articles after I rewrite them anyway, but it's still frustrating having it rejected for this week since I'd put so much time into it. Oh well, life goes on.

Today was most definitely hump day. Ugh. I am gonna be so glad to be rid of these Wednesdays where I have class from 9am-6pm, with only a couple hour break mid-afternoon. On the plus side I found out that both of my lectures for Monday have been cancelled, woot! The overnight low last night was the warmest October night in Melbourne in 20-some years, it only got down to the low 70s, but it the temp's been falling ever since then, it's down to 54 now. And it's been raining all day too. But I really can't complain about the rain too much, since all of Australia always desperately needs every drop they can get. Oh, and my official Wisconsin absentee ballot arrived in the mail today, I'm excited finally to get a chance to vote in a presidential election! This evening I've also spent a bit of time reading and doing research for a fairly short essay that's due on Friday for my weather class. It's not gonna be hard to do, but I'm still so unmotivated to do it.

Last weekend's Australian elections seem to have gotten very minimal coverage. Why are American reporters so disinterested in anything that happens outside of American borders? Being abroad I'm really a lot more aware of that, as there is quite a bit of truly news-worthy events around the world that don't get jack for coverage in the American press. The least they could do is cover what the Australian election means for America, like the Spectator's piece from yesterday about how Kerry lost Australia, since Kerry's sister (I was wrong in a previous post when I said one of Kerry's daughters) was actively campaigning to defeat John Howard and to break up the US-led alliance in Iraq. Howard's victory was a major triumph for conservatism. On the topic of American politics, the Wall Street Journal today has an excellent op-ed on how critical this election will be to the judicial make-up of federal courts (namely the Supreme Court) for the next 50 years. The Democrat obstructionist tactic of filibustering the appointment of highly-qualified judges like Miguel Estrada because of their race is despicable (Democrat Party memos said they were blocking him because "he is Latino"), and hopefully the Republicans will remind voters of this. And can any of you believe how the Democrats are politicizing Christopher Reeves' death? It's absolutely sickening. John Edwards was out on the campaign trail today and made what could perhaps be one of the most unbelievable campaign promises in history, when he promised "when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." By implication he's saying that President Bush has put people into wheelchairs and kept them there, which is unconscionable. Making promises about the premise that embryonic stem cells are the key to all ailments, when no scientist will even say that that's a likelihood to happen ever, much less during the four or eight years of a Kedwards presidency, is the pinnacle of irresponsibility. The Kedwards campaign needs to be taken to task for this outrageous statement.

Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2004

Australian Election

Well I haven't updated at all in the last few days, mostly because there hasn't been too much going on. Back on Thursday, as part of the evangelism training course I'm doing with Christian Union, I went out with Rob to give the "Two Ways to Live" gospel presentation to a random stranger on campus. I was kinda nervous about doing that, but since it was my first time going out to do that Rob did most of the talking, which was good. We actually found a guy (a native Iraqi who emigrated to Australia after the first Gulf War in 1991) who was willing to listen to us, and we actually had a pretty good discussion with him. Hopefully our talking to him will cause him to give everything another think-through, but it's highly unlikely either of us will ever run into him again, since this campus has over 20,000 students.

On Friday evening I went over to Stu's place over in Blackburn, Jimmy, Ro and a couple other people were also there, to watch a movie -- "Pumping Iron." For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger, as he prepares for and then competes in the Mr Universe/Mr Olympia bodybuilding contest in 1975. It's so funny, especially in the scene where the current governor of California is smoking a joint after winning his sixth consecutive Mr Olympia bodybuilding competition, lol. Since it was late and nobody really wanted to drive me all the way back to Monash, so I just stayed the night at Jimmy's place.

In the morning before Mars (Jimmy) dropped me off at the train station, I walked to the polling place with him when he went to vote. The lines were actually kinda lengthy, but that's to be expected when everyone's legally required to vote (it's a $50 fine if you don't). It was also interesting to see representatives of all the parties handing out literature and "how to vote" guides at the actual polling place. That's something you just wouldn't see in the US (since it's illegal). In addition, in the lawn in front of the polling building, there were all sorts of political signs and billboards, something that'd also be illegal in the States. It was interesting to see some of those differences. Right after I got back to Monash, I headed into the city to catch the Twins-Yankees game (Game 3) at a sports bar. Man, what a depressing game (especially since it was on a two and a half hour tape delay, and they completely cut out the Twins half of two innings in a row late in the game, just so they could show more of the Yankees batting, that was really annoying). But another couple came in and set next to me, and it turns out that they're originally from Pennsylvania (Yankees fans though), work for Campus Crusade for Christ at Melbourne Uni, know about Christian Union, and also know this kid Andrew from MWACS, the Monash weather club I'm in. Small world! But when the baseball was on commercials, I'd peek over at one of the other big screens, that was showing day 2 (of 5) of the big test match in cricket between India and Australia. I think in order to really understand what's going on I'd have to pay attention to it a bit more. I think I get some of the sketchy broad details about it now, but I still don't really get everything. It's a fairly slow game that literally takes all day (or sometimes five full days); during the entire course of the baseball game, Australia made just 5 outs and 175 runs or so (which apparently isn't a very high run output for that many outs) before calling a break for tea (lunch). Only in a sport like cricket would both sides take a break for lunch. Saturday night I went back out to Blackburn to Stu's place, before going to a LAN cafe to play computer games like Counterstrike or WarCraft 3 with them for a few hours. But since I was either very rusty (I hadn't played WC3 at all since January) or a total newbie at those games, I got frustrated and just watched them play the last game of WC3, which wound up taking forever and a day. Jimmy was nice enough to drive me back to Monash at 3am.

I woke up this morning and was very careful not to check espn.com or talk to anybody, because I was planning on going back into the city to catch Game 4 of the Twins-Yankees series, and since it was on a six-hour tape delay on cable. So right before I was gonna leave I asked my friend Pat, a Yankee fan from New York who lives across the hall from me, if he wanted to come watch the game with me, and he blurted out "oh, well the Yankees just won." Sigh. What depressing news that was, to find out the Twins had been eliminated. At least it saved me the trip into Melbourne, since after I knew they lost I saw no point in watching it. Oh well. Instead I went outside and enjoyed the beautiful day by writing an article for the next Gustavian Weekly about Australian politics, since the election just happened, and America's is just around the corner. And then tonight it was the usual Monash Bible Talks house church thing, it's always good getting together with those guys.

The results are in from the Australian election, and John Howard was re-elected to a fourth term as Prime Minister. That's good news for President Bush and everyone else who hopes that we win the war on terror, since Howard is a very staunch ally of the US in general, but in particular with the war. Challenger Mark Latham had campaigned on a promise to pull out the 900 or so Australian troops from Iraq before Christmas, but voters obviously trust Howard with the job more. One of John Kerry's daughters had been down here for a few months campaigning for Latham, and essentially campaigning for the unraveling of the US-led alliance (translation: she was campaigning for the US to lose the war), and thank goodness nobody really listened to her. With regards to the presidential debate back on Friday night (Saturday midday for me), it sure seems like Bush did a much better job, to the point of pulling out what I think was a close win in the debate. But having read quite a bit about the debate, the audience questions were very good. Definitely way better than anything the media's been asking of the candidates. And on National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg has a biting column on the Kerry/Edwards (or "Kedwards," as he calls them) attitudes towards the war that's definitely worth a read, especially if you disagree with the Iraq war for whatever reason. And Saddam's weapons program has been found -- the UN Oil for Food program, the largest corruption scandal in world history, with our supposed "allies" like France, Germany and Russia (the same nations Kerry wishes to subordinate our foreign policy to) lining their pockets with millions of dollars by keeping Saddam in power and repressing his people. Even though it's what the mainstream press has seized on, the real news of the Duelfer report isn't that there were no WMD -- we already knew that. The real news is that the lid has been blown off this scandal, and that it's damning to Kerry's foreign policy preferences - Saddam still in power, sanctions still in place against Iraq, and having France approve our decisions (paraphrasing John Kerry, 'screw Australia, Britain, Poland, Italy, and all our other allies! I want France on our side at all costs!'). End rant. For tonight anyway.

Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

October 07, 2004

Twins Win! Twins Win!

Well, as I predicted, I haven't had time to post the last few days because of assignments. But I did manage to get my Climate Change research essay done on Sunday night at 2am (I didn't actually start on it till 2 in the afternoon, even though it meant that I had to wait to do the lab report that was also due until Monday afternoon. I love how Aussie lecturers often handle due dates, they let you hand it in anytime until 5pm! It's great! Back home it's almost always "at the beginning of class." Monday evening was spent mostly working on a lab report for Weather & Climate that was due Wednesday. On Tuesday I did all the usual fun stuff with Christian Union -- Campus Bible Talks, hanging out in the Den, growth groups and evangelism training (plus supper), with an interlude of "studying" (i.e. sleeping) in the library for an hour or two somewhere in there. After CU in the evening, I came back and studied Fluid Dynamics for a bit since I had a test coming up in it today. I really had no idea what to expect on the test, but I did alright. I didn't ace it, but I didn't fail it either.

My spirits were really lifted when I got back to my room after the Fluids test, and I saw that the Twins had beaten the hated Yankees 2-0 in Game 1 of the ALDS!! Go Twins! This Saturday midday (Friday night in American time) I might have to find a sports bar somewhere that'll be broadcasting Game 3 from the super-noisy Metrodome. Man, I wish I could be at that game, it's gonna be rockin! By the time I get done with class tomorrow, hopefully the Twins will have won Game 2 as well.

Most of my evening has been spent fiddling with ecto, the program I use to post these entries and upload photos one at a time into the posts to make them look cooler. I've been having issues with it the last two-three weeks, but I finally got everything working again tonight, so I went back and put photos in the past few posts of mine, check em out.

In some exciting news, the X Prize has been won at last! Now that a private group has built a ship that can go back and forth to space, it will be exciting to watch space tourism take shape in the coming years. And what's the issue that could wind up tipping Saturday's Australian elections to incumbent Prime Minister and US-ally John Howard? Tasmania's forests. Yesterday Labor party challenger Mark Latham announced his plan, which basically was to ban logging almost everywhere, and he was criticized by just about everyone except the Greens for that policy. I mean, it seems to really have damaged Latham, and he was already narrowly behind Howard in the polls. Howard came out with his counter-plan today, which is aimed at saving timber-industry jobs, and I think that will resonate more with voters here, as the economy (which is actually doing quite well) is the #1 issue, which benefits Howard. Back in America, the Vice Presidential debate happened this afternoon (Aussie time), and it seems like Cheney won that round. As Jonathan Goldberg put it in the conclusion of his column, "If I inhale some asbestos, Edwards is my guy. If I want someone to 'stand up' democratic regimes in the Middle East and obliterate jihadist terrorist groups, I'll go with Cheney." And is Iran on the cusp of revolution, and throwing off the shackles of the Islamofascist totalitarian regime of the mullahs? It's looking more and more that way, and let's hope the people do successfully revolt and form a democratic government.

Posted by Jared at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2004

Whitsunday Islands & Atherton Tablelands

Well I'm finally back from my first-ever vacation that I've taken on a spring break, up to the Whitsunday Islands and Cairns, and it was an awesome trip! This post's gonna be a bit long, it's pretty much inevitable.

I got up to Airlie Beach early Sunday afternoon, and then just bummed around until Richard arrived around 11:30pm on a bus from Cairns. After dropping his stuff off in the hostel we went to one of the bars at midnight so that I could have a couple drinks to celebrate my 21st birthday, wheee! Airlie Beach is pretty much a resort town, and is really geared towards backpackers, which was cool. Pretty much everything in the town was on just one street, which meant it was really hard to get lost. The beach itself at Airlie Beach wasn't anything too special, and was actually an ugly muddy bay at low tide. But the town built a very nice artificial lagoon that's suitable for swimming pretty much at the shore, it's pretty cool.

Monday morning Rich & I did the first part of our Whitsundays Experience package, which was parasailing a couple hundred feet over the bay. I'd never been parasailing before, but I loved it! It was so fun soaring in the air like that, and even after they dunked us in the water before sending us back in the air again it was still really warm (after most of the ride they slowed way down so that we'd slowly dip down into the ocean, at which point they'd speed up again, which would take us right back in the air, it was sweet). The view was magnificent too, neither of us wanted to come down. We had the rest of the day free, so we just bummed around town again, and relaxed in some shade near the beach.

Tuesday was part two of the Whitsundays Experience, an Ocean Rafting trip. They boat we were in was basically an unsinkable yellow raft that could hold 20-30 people, and we'd cruise through the ocean at speeds of up to 30 knots or so, it was fun. After a bit of a cruise they took us to Whitsunday Island (the largest island in the group), to climb up to a lookout to view world-famous Whitehaven Beach from above. It was amazing! Then we had a picnic lunch (included in the tour) on Whitehaven, it was so cool. The sand at the beach is incredibly white, and so reflects so much sunlight that it stays cool even on a hot day. It is made of 99% pure silica, and it's so pure that it makes an otherworldly squeak when you walk on it, it can take scratches off of jewelry or watch faces by rubbing it on them (if you're patient enough), and the silica sand from Whitehaven was also used by NASA to make the lens for the Hubble Space Telescope! After lunch it was time to head to a bay by Hook Island to go snorkelling at some of the fringing reefs there. The reef and fish were really beautiful, although not as colourful as they would be further out (60 km from the mainland) at the Great Barrier Reef, or if you would scuba dive instead of just snorkel. When we were snorkelling the tide was getting pretty low, so the reef was well lit bit the sun, making for some cool pictures on the one-time-use underwater film camera that I bought. But on the way out to Whitehaven we saw a couple of huge green turtles mating on top of the water, and on the way back we saw a few types of dolphins, including a rare one that one of the guides said he had only seen three times before in his life (and not in the last couple of years at least).

On Wednesday we booked another day tour called Sundaze, which took us out to Whitehaven Beach again, and also for another couple of snorkels. This time we were on a bigger, more sturdy boat that left from Shute Harbour and went a more southerly route to Whitehaven, via Hamilton Island. We got to spend a lot more time at the beach this time as well, which was fabulous. I swam a bit, but not as much as the previous day, and I spent most of the time sunbathing, trying to get rid of my pasty white northerner complexion. But that combined with two snorkelling sessions and a hole in my sunscreen coverage left me with half my back burnt to a crisp, it was definitely lobster red. I'm hoping it'll mellow into a nice tan eventually. ;-) In between the two snorkels we had a marvellous BBQ kebab lunch, and the prawn kebabs were definitely the best shrimp I've ever had in my entire life. The first snorkel of the day by Border Island wasn't as cool since the tide was high (and therefore 2-3 meters over most of the reefs, making them less brilliant/visible), but the second one over by Hook Island was much cooler, as the tide was going down. After we got back to Airlie Beach Wednesday evening we caught a Greyhound bus up to Cairns overnight. We had been planning on renting a car and driving up, but it was going to be prohibitively expensive; the rental agencies were going to force us into a minimum three-day rental, plus an additional $300 relocation fee if we left the car in Cairns. What a ripoff.

So anyways, the bus arrived in Cairns 10 hours later at about 6:30am Thursday morning. Rich & I tried to get ourselves booked into Gilligan's hostel (where a bunch of his friends from UWEC were staying), but they were full so we went a couple blocks over to the YHA (we were also at the YHA in Airlie Beach, so the memberships we bought really came in handy and saved us some money). But since it was really hard to get any sleep on the bus, we just decided to take it easy and bum around Cairns. We met up with Rich's friends Lee & Uriah, and the four of us went to a cinema in the mall across the street from the YHA to see "Dodgeball," which was a pretty funny movie. Not great by any stretch, but still worth some good laughs.

On Friday we got up early and rented a car from Thrifty for about a hundred bucks (split between the four of us it wasn't bad), and drove around the Atherton Tablelands, a beautiful countryside region just southwest of Cairns across the Great Dividing Range. It was so fun getting the chance to drive again, I discovered that I'd really been missing doing that while I've been down here. And it only took me a minute or so to adjust to driving on the other side of the road, it wasn't bad at all. We stopped to see a couple of ginormous fig trees (Cathedral Fig Tree and Curtain Fig Tree) and Crater Lakes National Park (Lee & I swam for awhile in Lake Eacham, it was so nice finally swimming in freshwater again). After stopping for lunch in Atherton (we were all ravenous for some Mackers (McDonald's)), we did the beautiful waterfall circuit by Millaa Millaa (Millaa Millaa Falls, Zillie Falls and Ellinjaa Falls), drove through the Misty Mountains (which weren't too misty, it was a bright clear day out) and then on the way back up to Cairns, north of Innisfail we went up to see Josephine Falls and The Boulders. We started driving around 8:30am and got back to Cairns about 7:30pm, so it was a good full day of driving. But it was very relaxing, since we were going about at our own pace and not be hurried about by a tour guide on a tight schedule. It was also significantly cheaper than if were to have booked a tour doing that same loop. And I only had one little mishap of driving on the wrong side of the road. It was late in the afternoon after we had seen The Boulders, and we were driving along this country road when we saw a peacock in someone's yard. So I pulled into a driveway down the road to turn around, and when I was pulling out a doberman started chasing us, so I was paying attention to that (I didn't wanna run him over) and not which side I was on. I think the oncoming van got a pretty good idea that we were Americans, hehe. But at least I got that mistake out of the way there when it was basically harmless and not at some busy intersection in a city, right?

And then this morning we woke up a bit before 4am so that we could drop the rental car off and get to the airport by 4:45 or so. Rich, Lee, Uriah and the other UW-Eau Claire people (who are all studying abroad this semester at Southern Cross Uni in Lismore) had to catch a 6am flight down to Brisbane, but my flight to Sydney wasn't until 7am. At the Sydney airport I very nearly lost my camera. It was only about 10 minutes before we were supposed to board the flight to Melbourne when I realised I didn't have my camera anymore. So I ran down to lost & found to see if they had it, and then I realised that I also didn't have my mobile phone either (or my keys), which made me remember that I'd forgotten to pick them up at security after putting them through the x-ray machine. So I ran all the way back there to pick them up, and then went back down the stairs towards the gates, when I noticed that I didn't have my boarding pass anymore. So I ran back up to security, and found where I'd set it down when I had picked up my camera and phone. I'm sure the security lady thought I had premature Alzheimer's, always forgetting everything. But I made it back in time to board the plane, and at that point I was more than ready to get back to Melbourne. The plane was delayed a bit, and so it was around 3:30 before I finally got back to my room at Monash. My ears are still popping from the descents into Sydney and Melbourne today (they were also painful for both descents into Sydney and Proserpine on Sunday), so my hearing is currently only at about half of what it normally is. But it'll get better over the next day or two as my ears pop fairly frequently. This afternoon when I got back I also picked up the birthday package that Mike & Kevin had sent me in the mail from UW-Green Bay (thanks for the card & gift guys, they're awesome!). And thanks to all the rest of you that also wished me a happy 21st during the week!

Well, that's about all for me. I've gotta get crackin on a 2000-word research essay for my Climate Change class that's due Monday (I also have a lab report for that class that's due Monday too). I think I've done most of the research that I need to do, but I probably have to take some notes on a couple more sources to get up to the minimum number Dr Beringer wants. I so don't feel like doing work, but I'll have to force myself to do so. Maybe I'll just go to bed early tonight (since I'm sorta worn out from travelling) and then wake up bright and early tomorrow. Hmm, the thought is alluring, especially since it involves a bit more procrastination. ;-) I'll most likely have to resist the urge to even upload my Whitsundays/Atherton photos from my camera to my computer until at least Monday, probably until Wednesday after I'm done with my Fluid Dynamics test (posting the albums to the web won't come until next weekend at the very earliest). These last three weeks of class (you read that right, only three weeks left) are gonna be busy-busy-busy for me. Spring Break's over and now the stretch run is here.

Posted by Jared at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)