Blog On The Barbie

keep alive

2012-01-29T01:19:00.003+11:00

Ah memories. The hosting site wants me to keep this active, otherwise it will delete it.

Now that I’m older, the distances on maps have gotten smaller…

2010-01-01T05:41:00.003+11:00

Song: “Heers” by Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin

Date: Monday, June 1st

Whereas, this was the last week of classes, and whereas, the last week of classes is stressful and induces memory loss, I have no idea what really went on this week. I have a feeling there was a paper due, and some homework assignments, and probably a lab report or three due.

This was my last optics lab ever, and I hadn’t missed any, so I didn’t have to make it up. I just handed my last lab in during class. My physics professors at Macquarie were really wonderful. I enjoyed being in small classes, as much as I thought I wouldn’t.

You come beating like moth’s wings, spastic and violently…

2010-01-01T05:41:00.001+11:00

Date: Sunday, May 31st

Song: “Moth’s Wings” by Passion Pit

Last lab report ever for optics due tomorrow! Wahoo! I undoubtedly woke up late, didn’t start working on the assignment until late in the evening, if at all, and then finished it exhaustingly in the morning. Good grief.

Never trust a ho…

2010-01-01T05:40:00.001+11:00

Date: Saturday, May 30th

Song: “Don’t Trust Me” by 3Oh!3

Today was the day of the Australearn vs. AIFS Powderpuff Football game. I’m not exactly sure how I got involved in this because I’m not technically in either program, but everyone knew my loyalty lied with Australearn, so I was playing. Plus, it sounded fun.

I missed out on my senior year high school powderpuff game because of a stupid college dinner I didn’t want to go to, and junior year I never got to play, so I was pretty excited to be a part of this team.

The Australearn guys (our coaches) got really, really into it. We had practices beforehand and plays and huddles. I think there were even notecards with plays written out.

Huddle formation:

Anyway, we played the game after it had been raining for a long time, and I was actually pretty shocked that it had cleared out for as long as it did. There was even a cool rainbow.

Those AIFS girls were obnoxious. And I’m normally pretty easy going, but they came to the game drunk and actually stole some of our celebratory drinks during the game. Uncool girls, uncool.

We played our hardest, but due to some odd calls and our bad luck, the other team won. We were really disappointed.

But it was a good time. Team picture:

Nick and Jon, our fearless coaches. And Mike, our fearless videographer.

Anyway, in our post-loss rage, we decided that we should go our and celebrate anyway, which led to one of my favorite bus rides of the semester. On the bus, we drank steadily, as was our custom, but this time we played drinking games while occupying the back half of the bus. It was nuts, and a lot of fun.

We went out into Sydney, lost half of the people we came with, and went to a few places. One of which, Niki couldn’t get into because the bouncer thought she was intoxicated (not true actually) and another on George that we went to for St. Patty’s Day.

There was a penguin involved:

I’m not sick, but I’m not well…

2010-01-01T05:38:00.001+11:00

Date: Friday, May 29th

Song: “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger

I was sick today. I went to class anyway, sniffly and gross, but I was not pleased about it. I likely was up too late finishing a lab report.

But I didn’t really care, because tonight I was going to the Sydney Opera House to see Brian Eno give a speech.

In the morning it was starting to look cloudy, and some of the birds were going crazy. These few are in the tree by the U@MQ building.

Anyway, but I got ready to go to the Opera House. This was my first time going inside it and I was pretty excited about it. It was raining like crazy there, but I brought my umbrella and all was well.

The lights on the Opera House had started as a result of a festival the Brian Eno was curating (I believe called “Luminous”) and despite them looking gorgeous actually, my pictures are subpar. The rain didn’t help, but I have a few older pictures of them looking better.

Anyway, you were NOT supposed to take pictures inside the theater…which I honestly didn’t read until after I was yelled at, so here’s the inside of the theater I was in.

They didn’t care so much about you taking pictures of the lobby, so I have a bunch of those too. I got there ridiculously early because I didn’t want to miss anything. Brian Eno is a very fascinating person who has led a very interesting life. He is a master of ambient music, as well as having produced albums for The Talking Heads and U2. He also wrote the Windows start-up music. (Ironically, he composed it on a Mac.)

I wrote a lot more about his speech in my aesthetics journal for my Aesthetics class at Macquarie, so hopefully I’ll link you to that when I remember.

Oh right, but the lobby for my opera house theater looked a little like this:

Here’s my ticket.

I also really liked the bathroom:

Here’s a shot of the lighting apparatus that was illuminating the opera house.

After my show, which was very interesting, I walked around to one of the other parts of the opera house, which was a gallery displaying a constantly changing group of colorful geometric shapes on a screen. I sat there until I became bored, which wasn’t long, and then took my sick little self back out into the elements. I walked past the Opera Bar, which is underneath the street level leaving the opera house, but had no interest in staying, except to warm my feet briefly with their space heaters. I then headed up to the Circular Quay stops and grabbed a brownie with gold flakes. The gold flakes added nothing to the flavor, but it looked pretty cool.

From there I tried to find if anyone I knew was in town to meet up with, but pretty much no one was. It was a very rainy evening. I did take a few more pictures on my walk back to the bus though.

More of the Luminous exhibit:

An interesting church on the way to the bus:

And then I went home and rested up.

Listen Natalie, this is your last chance

2010-01-01T05:35:00.001+11:00

Date: Thursday, May 28th

Song: “Believe Me Natalie” by The Killers

This was a less than memorable day. Something tells me I was doing a lot of work and not a lot of fun things. Probably had a lab report due.

Black fingernails, red wine…

2010-01-01T05:33:00.001+11:00

Date: Wednesday, May 27th

Song: “Black Fingernails, Red Wine” by Eskimo Joe

After the crazy evening of before, with all the free concerts and pancakes, we got home fairly late from Scruffy’s. BNO was good as always.

Everyone had people they knew visiting:

Bobby’s brother Jimmy was in town, and together the two were a very interesting pair. Tara’s friend and cousin from earlier were in town, and Kat and Erin’s friend Lily. I got a little bummed that NO ONE visited me the entire time, but it wasn’t really that big of a deal. I had a lot of fun regardless.

The rest of Wednesday was another day in lab which has proven to be incredibly not memorable.

I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush...

2009-08-02T10:55:00.001+10:00

Song: "Orange Crush" covered by Editors originally by R.E.M.

Date: May 26th

Today was an interesting evening. Class was not worth writing about exactly.

But in the evening, I was invited to go to my new friend Kait's birthday celebration at Pancakes on the Rocks, which I was super excited about because I hadn't been there before. I had some sort of delicious chocolate strawberry pancake thing. It was so good. I got there early and waited for the rest of the party. Two other guests also went to Macquarie (the rest were at UNSW) and we all were headed to Scruffy Murphy's after the dinner so we decided to walk together.

It also was the kickoff to Luminous festival in Sydney and the harbor was all lit up as we walked out of Pancakes. The modern art building and the opera house were all sorts of colorful. My opera house pictures were terrible, but these turned out ok.

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

Also in the harbour were lights that you could turn on by riding on a stationary bicycle. The group rode them and it was fun. The people organizing the event gave us glow stick bracelets for doing it. They were sweet.

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

The two girls from Macquarie, Yu-Han and Pang, and I split up with the group at the train station and started walking toward Scruffy's. On the way, we passed the Apple building and saw that something was going on. The three of us asked what was going on and found out that Eskimo Joe was playing a free concert in 20 minutes and we were able to go watch it. Great timing. They also gave us a cool lanyard.

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

We were up on a balcony, but it was still decent. Here's a shot of the stage from our first spot:

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

Here's me all excited about the free concert:

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

Eskimo Joe!:

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

The concert was awesome considering it cost no money and we just happened across it. But we did finally make it to Scruffy's where we had a great time.

Oh the band. I miss them and their early 90's and Kings of Leon covers.

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

Yu-Han, Pang and I met up with Tara and Tara and a whole bunch of others, Bobby and his brother, other visiting friends, and it was amazing.

My face looks weird, but this is a great picture:

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

No clue who those guys are in the back...

From Pancakes on the Rocks, Eskimo Joe and Scruffy's

It was a great time. You know it's a good night when you get into your bedroom with the help of your glow stick bracelet. Free glow stick bracelet...even better.

I tell you what, mathematically, I'm having it. I want to live on science alone...

2009-06-17T22:56:00.000+10:00

Song: "I Am A Scientist" by The Dandy Warhols

May 25th

Today felt like one of those days that lasted forever. It might have been doing my physics lab without Shaheen or not finishing my lab report. Anyway, it was long.

I did my physics lab in place of my optics lab, since I skipped it last Wednesday to do the optics lab tour. It was almost unbearable without Shaheen. I sat there plugging away at things for three hours with no one to talk to except Rowan when I got distracted and drifted into the Zeeman effect room.

I went to the gym, and then came home and watched 30 Rock, this time with Sean, Andy, Bobby and Bobby's brother Jimmy. They all seemed to like it. Also, while we were waiting for 30 Rock, we watched Killadelphia with Louis Theroux, which was basically some British man following around cops in Philly. It was terrifying and incredibly graphic. But that's Australia. No censorship after 10pm, for better or for worse. We saw video footage of a dead man from a heroin overdose and a pile of blood from a murder. Anyway, 30 Rock was a welcome change after that.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore.

2009-06-17T22:22:00.002+10:00

Song: "That's Amore" by Dean Martin

May 24th

Today I woke up at a somewhat reasonable hour, despite everything, and decided to go to the Italian Festival that had been advertised in Sydney.

They actually had a real/fake public Italian wedding in Sydney. It was cool. This couple had been getting fake married here for the past three years and then chose to have their real wedding this year. It was kind of adorable.
Here's Romeo and Juliet (They had real names but I forget them):

From Another Sydney Weekend

Beautiful stuff, ladies and gentlemen.

From Another Sydney Weekend

Cute little Italian street band:

From Another Sydney Weekend

This also was an Italian festival, so I went and got some gelato, watched gnocchi being made, had some risotto, ate a cannoli. Did I mention I love Italian food? It's probably in my top three genres of food.
Gnocchi making:

From Another Sydney Weekend

There also was an Italian cheese shop there, and since it wasn't raining for the first time in awhile, I was psyched to walk around and find their other branch so I could actually buy some (the booth was packed at the festival). I walked past the Australian Museum and into their gift shop, and then left when I didn't want to pay the entry fee. I'm so cheap. I also went to a bar, waited for 20 minutes to order a glass of ice water. No wonder I'm looked at like I'm insane. Whatever, I had an awesome walk to find cheese-land.
I found a cool door:

From Another Sydney Weekend

I found this cool art gallery:

From Another Sydney Weekend

And I found cheese-land:

From Another Sydney Weekend

I bought a tiny thing of goat cheese with truffles, which was delicious. I ate some of it on a unused fountain after hitting up Woolworth's to get some crackers.

From Another Sydney Weekend

I was going to meet up with Sydnee for her guacamole cookoff, but it didn't work out, so I went home. I took this picture, which is one of my favorites, on the way:

From Another Sydney Weekend

I got home and either worked on my last optics lab report or pretended to. Crazy.

Walking on a dream...how can I explain?

2009-06-17T22:21:00.001+10:00

Song: "Walking on a Dream" by Empire of the Sun

May 23rd

Today I decided to see how the other half live, a.k.a. what my life would be like if I was pursuing something I loved and enjoyed.

I went to Sydney's SAE (School of Audio Engineering) Institute's Open House. I took the free candy and I went on a tour. I learned about Foley artists (they make the sound that you can't really record in movies, like footsteps and doors closing, etc.) and looked at all sorts of cool machines and software that was completely foreign and fascinating to me. I don't really know why I did it, except that it looked cool, and I wanted to, so I did.

Here's a pit where they make Foley sounds:

From Another Sydney Weekend

Anyway, free candy. Sweet. I also bought a kebab from the place next to Scruffy's while walking back to the bus stop. Oh how I love kebabs. It started raining, but I didn't really care. I got on the bus, and all was well.

On the way back, the rain stopped a little so the sun could come out and there was a gorgeous rainbow over the opera house. Unfortunately, I was on the bus, so this was the best picture I got:

From Another Sydney Weekend

But still, it was gorgeous.

When I got home, it was time for Mary P.'s birthday party at Lowenbrau. I got ready and then met up with people for cake. The rest of the crew split up and went to the bus, and I went to grab Tara's friends to take them out. A bunch of people were at the Lady Gaga and Pussycat Dolls concert, including Tara. So I told her I'd grab her friends and get them into the city. We didn't take the same bus as everyone else, but we got there. Abbey and her cousin James were a lot of fun that evening. We were going to go to Lowenbrau to meet up with Mary and the rest of the birthday party, but we were given this look by the bouncer that we should go away and come back in half an hour. I feel like bouncers are taught that phrase and "how much have you been drinking tonight?" I think we would have been fine, but we opted instead to go to The Observer and wait it out. The Observer was pretty much just older guys and eighties music. The three of us had a good time though. Good fun. We then found out that the Lady Gaga crew was getting back to Lowenbrau, so we headed back up Argyle street and joined them.

Reunited, post-concert and post-Observer:

From Another Sydney Weekend

The waitresses have to wear ridiculous clothes:

From Another Sydney Weekend

I had my first mango beer tonight. That was interesting. Considering I don't like beer, it was actually pretty good. Beer-lovers despise it.

Anyway, somewhere in there I ran into Greg and we went with Brendan and Elise to Jacksons on George. I believe I met some Australian applied physics major/grad student who followed us around a bit too. Anyway, we were there for a bit, and then split off and Greg and I went back to the bus stop. On the way we found a broken bus stop window thing and took pictures.

From Another Sydney Weekend

That was a long and interesting walk to the bus, but we got there.

Some English MC's get it twisted, start saying cookies, instead of biscuits!

2009-06-17T21:57:00.000+10:00

Song: "Friday Night" by Girl Talk (specifically "Random" by Lady Sovereign)

May 22nd

Note: I had no idea Lady Sovereign sang that line. I just used another one of her songs earlier this week. WEIRD.

Class happened. Sean and Jon were thinking about playing guitar today on the street to get money, but yet again Sydney was raining like crazy, and they had to postpone. I was all sorts of excited about going to it, even in the rain, but I got over it and headed home. I was going to have to go, then come back for the gym, get showered, and then go out again, so I guess it worked out.

I was going out tonight. I thought with other people. I bought cool fishnets and I was psyched about them.

From Another Sydney Weekend

I wanted to visit the We Love Indie night at Madam de Bier's in Kings Cross before I left forever, so I did. I called Hayley to see what she was up to, and she was with Ryan, so I decided I'd meet up with her after I checked out this place. I went at 10pm, and I should have known it'd be dead (apparently indie kids don't dance until AT LEAST 11pm), but I got some water and swayed awkwardly to some Vampire Weekend. Three nice men from the Australian navy invited me over to sit with them, and I talked with them for a bit, made up a fake name and major, and had a reasonably fun time. They tried to convince me to stay instead of go meet up with Hayley. Apparently fake me can pick up men way more easily than real me. Good to know. I left them and caught the train to Central, where I met up with Hayley and Ryan. I got to see Ryan's place and we had a good old time bonding. Ryan's friend Ryan (I know, not confusing at all) was also there.
Ryan and Hayley:

From Another Sydney Weekend

Me ("what is this 'wine' you speak of?" haha I love this one):

From Another Sydney Weekend

After I left hanging out with those kids, which was super fun (peanut butter sandwiches and wine equals great night) I tried to meet up with Shanil and Steven who I'd met earlier in Australia who both told me they'd be around Ivy tonight. So I went to Ivy. No luck finding either.
Ivy:

From Another Sydney Weekend

Shanil told me he was at 3 Wise Monkeys, which I also had yet to go to, so I went there looking for him. It was kind of like Scruffy Murphy's, but just not. Again, no luck, and by this time I was dead, so I took the bus home.

I bet that you look good on the dancefloor.

2009-06-17T21:34:00.000+10:00

Song: "I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor" by Arctic Monkeys

May 21st

Today was optics in the morning, and then I was off to be the student representative for my optics and my physics class for the Physics Student Liaison Meeting (aka I was told there was free lunch and was "elected" to represent everyone's opinions on class).

The liaison meeting was weird, because it was me and three of my professors, plus about 4 other professors and about 4 other students. I expressed my grievances and gave my opinions and told them that we all really wanted a stapler in the physics computer lab. They laughed, but that might have been the most serious thing I said the whole day. I was stunned about how panicked I was over the whole thing, and how shaky and not confident my voice sounded. I felt really out of my element. But there were free sandwiches and chocolates, so that was cool.

After that I came home, and waited until it was time to finish up my physics assignment with Jay. We worked and then went to ubar for student night. It was mildly entertaining. Half of our crew never made it, which I found out while texting on my bed to see if the party was still going on elsewhere. I was going to join them, and instead I fell asleep.

It's twenty seconds to the last call, going "hey hey hey hey hey hey"

2009-06-17T21:26:00.000+10:00

Song: "1901" by Phoenix

May 20th

Today was pretty typical. Grocery day, physics lecture in the morning. Oh, and I got to skip lab! WoOT! It actually became even more of a pain because I had to make it up, but at the time, it was great.

The Optics Society was sponsoring a field trip to a local commercial optics place. It was pretty fun. We got to see what they did and the guy told us stuff he was looking for in people he wanted to work for him and they gave us lots of cookies. It was just like tea time with Gina and our physics lab, except there were more chocolate biscuits.

Nem took us all around, and like always got really excited about showing us what was going on. I appreciate his enthusiasm. My whole optics class, well 4/5 of us, rode with Nem to the company and we had nice long chats about everything - optics, physics liaison meetings, grad school, etc.

On the way home, I jumped in a car with one of the other (post)grad students Alex and a crew of folks I'd never met. Somehow we thought driving from near Redfern to North Sydney would be quicker then dropping us off at Redfern during rush hour. Not so much. Anyway, it was raining, so I stopped caring. I missed my gym time, but I got over it. On the train I heard "1901" on my iPod and realized it was that song that I liked/everyone was going crazy over at Purple Sneakers. It's so damn catchy. I got home and worked more on homework with Jay.

I'm-a gonna show the way...18, balding, star...

2009-06-17T21:12:00.001+10:00

Song: "The Bucket" by Kings of Leon

May 19th

I love days when I hear a song and realize I've heard it before. "The Bucket" was that song today. My favorite DJ played it Friday, and I knew it was KoL, but I couldn't figure out which song. Then I bought Aha Shake Heartbreak and while listening to it, it all clicked. Good day.

Today was full of not much. I listened to my philosophy lecture before my other philosophy lecture and tutorial, and quantum was same old, same old in the morning. I did take up re-learning morse code during aesthetics. I vented in Morse in my notebook about everything. It was crazy fun.

Jay and I met up to work on our homework again this evening.

Oh, we're so pretty, oh so pretty, we're vacant, yeah

2009-06-17T20:59:00.000+10:00

Song: "Pretty Vacant" covered by Lady Sovereign (originally by The Sex Pistols)

May 18th

Lab report. No one's surprised.

Today I was 21 and 3 months old. Despite this, no one wanted to have another birthday party on a Monday night. hahahahaaha.

Actually, I went to the gym and was going to come home and watch 30 Rock and I was all excited about it, but the roommates were watching a movie and I didn't have the heart to tell them to stop what they were doing so I could watch my silly TV show. So I bought it on iTunes.

Don't wake me; I plan on sleeping in.

2009-06-17T20:48:00.000+10:00

Song: "Sleeping In" by The Postal Service

May 17th

I did all sorts of sleeping in today. I got up crazy late. I then decided to go to Chatswood Mall and get some retail therapy in. I went to Borders and got When Harry Met Sally on Aussie DVD. Worth it, even though I can't take it home. I also bought the Dark Was The Night compilation, The Wedding Singer soundtrack and Kings of Leon's Aha Shake Heartbreak (definitely worth it). I also bought a pack of Australian sour patch straws and my tongue went completely numb eating them. Anything to procrastinate the lab report...

I'm also pretty sure I came home and watched When Harry Met Sally that night. Great stuff.

Like the circle of fifths you drew in school, the loop line takes you round and through.

2009-06-17T20:41:00.001+10:00

Song: "Osaka Loop Line" by Discovery

May 16th

Didn't do too much during the day.

At night, I wanted to go out again, so I found Greg, met his roommates Kathy and Kaitlyn and then we went and caught the bus. We ran into Cam and Bernie and a few others at the bus stop.

From A Weekend in the City

It was a surprise to me at the beginning of the night, but we were going to meet up with his friend Brendan and his Brendan's friend Elise. They were running a little late, so we went elsewhere. Due to a variety of circumstances, I feel like we went all over Sydney that night. We started by trying to visit Charlie, Katie and Janaki's pub crawl midway through, which led us to Bungalow 8 for a bit. Then I followed Greg to meet up with Brendan and Elise, and we found them near QVB. We left there and went to King's Cross on the train. I'm not exactly sure how we ended up there, but we spent a while at this sports bar watching Manchester United tie some other team. Brendan really hated Man U, so he was not enjoying that. The four of us left there and met up again with Charlie and crew, now plus Jon, across the street at some place where people were pole dancing underwater. I would die. They just went up at the top of the tank and took breaths of air before going back under. I almost started choking up water just watching. I'm really a terrible swimmer. I think it was bringing back scuba diving memories...

Anyway, we left there, got some pizza, and went to this place Iguana which had a bubble machine.
Pizza:

From A Weekend in the City

Awesome Wall:

From A Weekend in the City

Cool lights at the club with the bubble machine:

From A Weekend in the City

I was set. It was crazy crowded in there. We left eventually, and I have no clue where we were headed, but half of our party went off to town and the other half of us decided to go back to the bus. We passed the man who sings with an elk/deer/moose head. Oh the cross...
Kings Cross Coca Cola Sign:

From A Weekend in the City

This required walking from King's Cross to QVB, which was a bit of hike. Greg almost got robbed. Whatever, we made it back...

Brendan and Elise had to get back to Manly, and I was so confused about how they planned to get back. Miraculously, there was a bus out of QVB which got them home. Greg and I took the bus back to Macquarie along with several of our friends who also were headed home.

Here's another song about a gender I'll never understand...

2009-06-17T20:16:00.000+10:00

Song: "Kill The Director" by The Wombats

May 15th

Lab report was due today. I remember because I spent it running around, grabbing my notebooks left behind in my apartment, making copies, going crazy, etc.

I listened to "Kill the Director" on my iPod in my hurried running between buildings. This is relevant later.

Lyrics of this song that I enjoy:

Carrots help us see much better in the dark
Don't talk to girls; they'll break your heart
And this is my head and this is my spout
They work together; they can't figure anything out

So with the angst of a teenage band
Here's another song about a gender I'll never understand
Here's another song about a gender I'll never understand

After going to the gym today, I desperately wanted to go out, so I texted almost everyone I knew trying to find something to do. Didn't have much luck there, so I decided to go to this club called "Purple Sneakers" by myself. I had a most excellent time. The DJ that night, "DJ Johnny Segment" was probably my musical soulmate. Every song he played could have come from my iPod and half of them I played earlier that morning. Singing "Kill The Director" and jumping around like an indie punk was definitely a highlight. One awesome girl who was friends with Johnny Segment screamed the lyrics to "Love Will Tear Us Apart" with me. However, like most times I go to places alone, I get bored quickly, and when the next DJ started playing, I decided it was time to go.

Graffiti I saw before dancing in the bathroom:

From A Weekend in the City

DJ Johnny Segment:

From A Weekend in the City

I went to catch the next bus back and realized I had just missed it and had to wait 30 minutes or so, so I went to explore "that club in the sky" that Justin and Greg and I passed last Saturday while walking along George St. I found out that it was Ivy, the club I had heard a lot about before. It was crazy fancy and had an interesting vibe, but since I had to run back to catch the bus, I didn't stay. I love exploring. I caught the bus home and ran into Jon and Mike who had just came back from King's Cross. I was exhausted, and made it home fine.

The all too familiar QVB bus stop:

From A Weekend in the City

Riverside, motherf@(*@#$@#!

2009-06-12T16:27:00.000+10:00

Song: "Riverside" by Sidney Samson

May 14th

Class in the morning, then a whole lot of nothing.

I left for a bit, then came home to find Christian, another Australian who I will miss dearly, in my apartment attempting to stab a can of condensed milk. Why condensed milk you ask?

Well I make these amazing chocolate truffles, and I had made a batch last week, probably Thursday, which was appropriate, and Bethany and I had eaten almost all of them in record time. Bethany felt bad about it (although she shouldn't have) so she vowed to make more, hence the can of condensed milk. She accidentally bought two so Christian stabbed the extra can with a plastic knife. Sean, Andy and Jeff were all around the kitchen table watching the event. It was pretty epic.

From Uni Bar: Pirate Night

I had vowed to get out of the house for Ubar's Pirate Night. Arr. I was late for reasons I can't remember, but I met up with Tara and the rest of the crew. It was hysterical, good fun.

The gorgeous Tara and Tara, with my favorite bartender in the background actually (haha, not on purpose):

From Uni Bar: Pirate Night

Mo and the girls:

From Uni Bar: Pirate Night

More of the crew:

From Uni Bar: Pirate Night

Me and Tara:

From Uni Bar: Pirate Night

Erin and Berns:

From Uni Bar: Pirate Night

Ha:

From Uni Bar: Pirate Night

Anyway, the evening was insane. I walked with Alex back to her home after the bar closed and we were all told to go away. It was a fun walk and we had a nice conversation. I've decided that I'm giving Alex my Australian fan, because I will have no use for it after I'm gone. She's a good pal, and I'm going to miss her dearly. We were dancing like crazy people, especially to "Riverside" which I now am familiar with because of Ubar.

I went home after dropping her off. Actually, I tried to drop her off, and then she wanted to walk me back home, which was ridiculous, so we walked halfway between and split our separate ways. Crazy talk. :)

You and me and the devil makes three...

2009-06-12T15:06:00.000+10:00

Song: "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby"

May 13th

Grocery day. Oh yeah. Good stuff. Physics in the morning and then lab in the afternoon. Then I came home and went to the gym, and then speedily got ready to go see Cabaret with Shadé. Cabaret was insane, but awesome. Anna and a few other girls from surf camp were in it as dancers and then John was in it as every character ever, which I feel like is what he gets cast as often at Macquarie. Life is a cabaret, old chum.

As always, I had a blast with Shadé. She's one of my favorite Australians for sure and I'm going to miss her dearly when I leave.

I got back home in a reasonable hour and hoped to go out and do something, but yet again that didn't work out. Instead I stayed in and watched O Brother, Where Art Thou? with Sean. It was a good night. Sean fell asleep and went upstairs and I watched Lost. Honestly, I was having such a peaceful time watching the movie that I might have been ok with skipping Lost to finish it.

Karma police, arrest this man; he talks in maths

2009-06-04T17:59:00.001+10:00

Song: "Karma Police"

May 12th

Tuesday. Physics in the morning. Philosophy in the afternoon. I don't even know what during the day. No physics assignment this week, yay! Lab report draft due though on Friday. Grr.

I was going to go out and be social this evening, but that fell through. I was really excited about it and then it didn't happen, so I just went to bed.

If you are what you say you are, a superstar, then have no fear

2009-06-04T17:17:00.000+10:00

Song: "Superstar" by Lupe Fiasco

May 11th

I woke up with that song in my head. No idea how it got there.

Anyway, I went to optics, finished my lab report between class and lab, and did another lab with Rowan. Good times. I finished up and went home, then to the gym.

Another 30 Rock night. Yay.

Sleeping in is giving in, no matter what the time is

2009-06-04T16:41:00.000+10:00

Song: "Rebellion (Lies)" by Arcade Fire

May 10th
Mothers' Day

I slept in today after last night. Totally worth it. I did some attempted lab report writing. Probably some laundry.

I also found the Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg Motherlover video online. Epic stuff.

I sent momma some ecards. Daughter fail. haha. Love ya mom!

Something 'bout you caught my eye, something moved me deep inside

2009-06-04T16:37:00.001+10:00

Song: "Ain't No Other Man (remix)" by Christina Aguilera

May 9th

I woke up in Bondi Junction and watched Disney's Alice in Wonderland and part of a Penguins vs. Capitals game. Great morning. Oh and I was still in my clothes from last night. As I sent thank you texts to my host on the way out the door, I wondered if it could still be called a "walk of shame" if nothing incredibly shameful happened. I decided it's pretty shameful that I was wearing the same outfit from last night, which looks fine in the evening and all, but not especially in the daylight. Regardless, I got home but not until about 2pm due to some lovely public transportation issues.

I decided I needed to go to Trafalgar to get salsa and god knows what else, and while talking with Justin online decided that I wanted to see Star Trek in IMAX in Darling Harbour. I'd walked past it last night in the course of the evening, and the idea was in my head, so I was going to see it. We tried to get more people to come with us, but weren't very successful, so the two of us went to see it around 7pm. I had heard earlier that people were going to Lowenbrau, the German pub in the rocks, and so had Justin, so we decided to meet them afterward.

The movie was mind-blowing. Oh, J.J. Abrams, I love you and everything you touch. Aside from the fairly blatant physics errors, the movie was incredibly entertaining. I knew enough about Star Trek (thanks to Dad) to know a bit about what was going on, so that was fun. The space fight scenes were brilliant in IMAX. Seeing Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine in IMAX wasn't so bad either...

Justin and I left the theater way before the rest of the folks from Macquarie made it into the city, so we went to KFC to kill some time and eat some dinner. The bathrooms were locked up due to vandalism, and there were a group of about 7 guys who came in wearing togas. So confused. Anyway, we left there and headed to Lowenbrau to wait for everyone else. Eventually they showed up, and we all danced and drank and had a good time. Oh and the bar above Lowenbrau is called Über Bar. Sweet, right?

Anyway, out of nowhere, Greg pulls me aside and asks if I want to go with him and Justin to Argyle. So we go. We stayed there for a bit, until we realized the bar was closed (not that I was buying anything there anyway, it's way too expensive) and headed back to go home.

We got back on the bus, and I wasn't sure if it went back to Culloden Rd. or not, so I convinced Justin to get off with me at Macquarie Centre and walk home from there. Greg stayed on the bus, which took him directly to Culloden, while Justin and I walked home freezing. Greg was right and I was cold.

So let me hear you scream if you're with me!

2009-06-04T15:45:00.001+10:00

Song: "My People" by The Presets

This morning was ugly. I did not want to go to class. I also didn't want to go back to my house to get lunch between class, so I went to Woolly's and got some of the Emily's Kitchen butter chicken and a container of ice cream. This all made sense Saturday, but that's not the point. Anyway, I ate most of that between class (yes, I brought a half-eaten container of ice cream to class. I'm straight-up classy like that.) and then went to physics. I went home, and I was exhausted, but I made it to my class at the gym, unlike last week.

It was my friend Sydnee's (from UMD) birthday and she and some of her friends from UNSW were celebrating down in the city. I was up for a change of pace, so I met up with them down in the city. I tried to find Tara and Bernie that night too, but without luck.

Anyway, hanging out with Sydnee's friends was a lot of fun. We went and did sake bombs in a Japanese restaurant. The waiters looked terrified of us.
The concept: drop sake into, well, we used VB.

From Sydnee's Birthday

I found out that I knew a few of the people there by association. One of the girls there, Amy, knew my roommate Sean back at Macquarie. We found this out because she said she was from St. Louis, and I said I only knew one other person from St. Louis. Her friend is friends with him and his family. Crazy stuff. Then later I found a girl Kait who knew a guy I knew in high school, and I knew one who went to hers. The world is so ridiculously small, I can't even begin to explain it.
Group shot!

From Sydnee's Birthday

So after sake bombing, we went briefly to a bar I can't remember the name of. It was called "Asian Bar" the rest of the night. Next we went to Cargo bar, after a brief detour through Darling Harbour's playground. You will never get me off the playground. It made me think of Ground and all the good times playing it.

From Sydnee's Birthday

Cargo bar was a lot more fun this time around, and I had a good time. We left and it was late, so I decided to head back to Bondi Junction with everyone else instead of finding my way back to the bus. We stopped at KFC and people were petting marsupials in Hyde Park, but we made it. I got mashed potatoes, which were in a disturbingly small container. Oh well. People, namely Steve, ran in this fountain and was chased off by security. Priceless.

From Sydnee's Birthday

I slept in Sydnee and Kait's apartment on the couch.

and we never even liked him from the start and now he's with that tart...

2009-06-04T15:21:00.000+10:00

Song: "We Get On" by Kate Nash

May 7th

Optics in the morning. Not much productivity the rest of the day.

Jay and I finished up our assignment so that uni bar was a possibility. Tara and Chloe and I went over together and had a good time. I think it was R&B night, maybe. I somehow lost the rest of the group and ended up walking home by myself. I remember the full moon. It was gorgeous.

Our love is blowing all over the streets. You can hear it howling, listen...

2009-06-04T15:03:00.000+10:00

Song: "Eastern Europe" by The Stills

May 6th

Physics class, grocery store, lab day, gym. Jay and I worked on homework briefly, until I ducked out to watch Lost.

I truly can't remember much else about today.

Wore our blank expressions, trying to look interesting...

2009-05-31T15:03:00.001+10:00

Song: "Blame it on the Tetons" covered by Josh Ritter (originally by Modest Mouse)

May 5th

Cinco de Mayo

I went to physics in the morning (I was late because I uploaded more pictures), and nothing terribly interesting happened, except that Jay and I decided that we would start our assignment (due Friday) this evening.

Whoa, what's that? Becky's starting an assignment several days before it's due?

Yes, I was surprised too. I came home and played around on the internet and cleaned up the apartment until Aesthetics. As usual, the tutorial lasted too long. I wanted to do something tonight for Cinco de Mayo, but instead ended up doing physics homework with Jay all night. Worse things could have happened. And Jay made cupcakes. They were a fluorescent, radioactive neon green, with pink frosting, and they were delicious.

So screw California, and ice that will never melt...

2009-05-31T14:45:00.003+10:00

Song: "California" by Rogue Wave

May 4th

Lab Report day. I was exhausted from procrastinating it until the early morning, per usual. I found out that I could in fact upload photos as long as it was before 8am. That didn't help productivity.

Optics went well. Rowan and I did yet another lab. Same as every week.

When I got home, I had a mysterious call from a number I didn't know, until I figured out it was Erin (who got a new number) who was over at Maeve's. Erin needed my help logging onto Blackboard to take an exam. My technical prowess didn't help her out, more my memory (remembering there was a number needed in the password that we set up months ago), but I was glad to help. Soon after that, I went to the gym and watched another episode of the new season of Scrubs.

Nadine and I magically got the internets working and talked to each other on Skype. Man I miss that kid. I caught her up on the happenings of my life, and she tried to catch me up on hers. Steph Glag was also on Skype briefly, which was lovely. Talking to those two made my day. I watched 30 Rock too. A good night all in all.

Too many legs under the table, too many reasons for trouble..

2009-05-31T14:27:00.001+10:00

Song: "Let's Make Out" by Does It Offend You, Yeah?

May 3rd

So strangely enough after going to sleep at 7pm, you wake up relatively early the next day. Surprise. Well, I had seen through some email that Kings Cross was having a food festival today and I decided that since I was awake, I should go.

I walked to the bus stop, and on the way I actually saw the equestrian park being used. There were a ton of horses.

The bus ride was smooth. On the bus I ran into Lisa from my aesthetics class and her friend who were going to the opera house and pancakes on the rocks. They were fun ride companions. After I got off the bus, I saw a sign for a festival going on in Darling Harbour, and since I had nothing better to do, I went to check it out. Most of the stuff happening was in the evening, but it was fun to stroll through anyway. After that, I got to the cross without any difficulties and I found that it was much nicer in the day time.

Fountain:

From Kings Cross Food Festival

I thought it was interesting that we were essentially equidistant from Germany in both directions. The numbers are cut off, but it's about 16,000 km each way to Berlin and Frankfurt.

From Kings Cross Food Festival

rainbow in the fountain:

From Kings Cross Food Festival

The festival was vibrant, and had lots of interesting things to eat. I had some butter chicken, chocolate mousse and a cheese plate. Delicious.

I stayed for a bit and then meandered back to QVB to catch the bus home. The walk was refreshing.

From Kings Cross Food Festival

Then I went home, and at 3pm (1am, EST) I met up with my lovely roommate from back home and celebrated her birthday with a glass of wine "at" her birthday party. Like usual, my video crapped out in 30 seconds, but it was fun.

I then pretended to work on my lab report briefly. Good times. I passed out early and decided to save it for Monday morning.

Bottle of red, bottle of white...

2009-05-29T16:50:00.003+10:00

Song: "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" by Billy Joel

May 2nd

So I slept for one and a half hours, then woke up, got showered and dressed and ran out the door at 6am. I was supposed to meet the bus in St. Leonard's, and I was early so I bought some chocolate mud pie at 6:30am (I eat dessert for breakfast. Get over it.).

Anyway, from there I found the bus, and essentially passed out on the 1-2 hour drive to the Hunter Valley wine country. My iPod was my best buddy for the long drives. The people on the bus didn't really start talking to each other until we started our first wine tasting.

From Hunter Valley

From

From Hunter Valley

The group was a lot of fun. We had a hen's party (bachelorette party), a guy from California on business, me, a couple from Ireland who had just established residency in Australia, another couple, and a group of three folks who knew each other (I think a couple and a sister/friend). And our tour guide. It was a good group.

We went to about 5 wineries. I drank a lot of wine. You're supposed to dump out what you don't want into a bucket, but the hen's party was not having it, and kept encouraging me to drink all the wine because I paid for it, and it was wasteful, etc. They were hysterical.

We went to wine school to learn about how wine is made and how to properly taste it. Something about washing it around in your mouth. I wasn't really paying attention. 1.5 hours of sleep does that.

From Hunter Valley

We also went to a cheese shop. Definitely a highlight for a cheese addict like myself.

From Hunter Valley

Next door was more wine tasting:

From Hunter Valley

Cute couple and me (I think the bartender took this.)

From Hunter Valley

More wine at the last winery. We were all at our finest.

From Hunter Valley

Gorgeous:

From Hunter Valley

The girls of the hen's party. They were a blast.

From Hunter Valley

Here I saw my first, live kangaroo in the wild. It was awesome.

From Hunter Valley

So cool. My Australian life is pretty complete now.

After our last winery we hit up a chocolate shop, which while a bit of a disappointment, was ok. They had some pretty humorously packaged chocolates:

From Hunter Valley

I got some chocolate caramels, which were not very impressive.

On the way home, we played a celebrity game with the drunk bus full of winos. I found out that I know nothing about Australian pop culture compared to how much Australians know about American pop culture. I'm ok with this.

The bus eventually dropped me at Circular Quay and I grabbed a bus back to Macquarie. I was all pumped to go out again because it was Saturday night, but I slept through my alarm and into the next day. It was probably for the best. :)

You've got me feeling hella good so let's just keep on dancing

2009-05-25T02:07:00.000+10:00

Song: "Hella Good" by No Doubt
Honorary Song: "First of May" by Jonathan Coulton

May 1st

Waking up for class was massively difficult. There is nothing like staying up late doing physics to zap all energy out of your body. We made it to class, I'm pretty sure I ate nachos from the student center (Becca, Bernie and Vilde were raving about them over break; I had to try them), and then I turned in my assignment, faked consciousness, then went home and passed out. I swore I set an alarm, but I slept through my class at the gym for the first time here. I managed to hear that people were going to Cargo bar this evening, so I told Tara M. that I'd meet up with her. I found her, and then we grabbed Chloe and met their friend Emily on the way to the bus. We didn't leave until about 10:45PM because we missed the 9:58 bus. This was lame, but no worries.

When we got to the later bus, we actually ran into a bunch of people we knew who were headed down there as well. It was nice to catch up with folks and see how their breaks went. Somehow during the evening someone mentioned the Sydney Comedy Festival, and I mentioned that I was bummed that I missed seeing Joel McHale and I found a few unexpected watchers of The Soup among my friends. That was excellent.

We made our way down to Darling Harbour with no problems. We didn't exactly know where we were going, but we found Cargo after asking a few people.

It might have been the exhaustion, the atmosphere, or my essentially sober state, but I wasn't loving Cargo bar. It was the first time I had been back since my afternoon visit after my Sydney bus tour way back in February. I expressed that I was interested in checking out this place up the street called Chinese Laundry that I had read about in some of the music magazines I pick up twice a week. The only person I could convince to come with me to check it out was Greg, so we went and had a good time. There was a $20 cover charge, but I'm trying to forget that I paid that. I'd probably do it again if in the same situation.

We stayed there until 2:30am, and then decided we should find the rest of the folks we came with and catch the last bus out of the city, which we found out left at 3:10am. I was a bit disoriented, so we briefly got a little lost trying to find the bus stop, but it was a scenic walk. Found a poster for The Soup with Joel McHale wearing an outfit full of bright green sequins. We thought everyone else was at McDonald's so we left the bus stop and went there. We debated walking around QVB, but instead decided to run through the obviously blockaded path through the middle of the building. I saw the security glance at us through my peripheral vision. We ate some food, then went and found everyone else back at the bus stop. We rode home, went to our respective houses, and I fell asleep.

Oh, and I booked a Hunter Valley Wine Tour for the next day that I had to be awake at 5:30am for. So I slept 1.5 hours. More on that next post...

I want you now, I want you now, I feel my heart implode

2009-05-25T01:23:00.000+10:00

Song: "Hysteria" by Muse

April 30th

I went to optics class in the morning. I also found out that my roommates were having a barbecue from people other than my roommates. No worries. I went to Trafalgar and got some chips and salsa for our party guests. After this I did homework with Jay for eternity. We decided that in future weeks we would start doing homework earlier to avoid this problem.

Oh and three of Jay's housemates locked themselves out of their room this evening. Incredibly entertaining. We were up until 2am doing the assignment. This made Friday interesting.

I don't care I'll burn out anyhow...

2009-05-25T01:14:00.000+10:00

Song: "Incinerate" by Sonic Youth

April 29th

Wednesday morning. I was late to class, but this coupled with the fact that we have a new lecturer meant that we unexpectedly changed rooms this morning. So I went to the first classroom, and then was directed to walk across campus. Fabulous.

Lab went along well. It was our second week of the Zeeman effect lab, and we had essentially finished it in the first week, so we made a little magnetic field calibration curve and we were finished. We hung out around the computer until we felt like leaving. Made some graphs, you know.

I believe this evening was when I decided to take a killer nap after lab before the gym, and overslept. Luckily, there is a later class on Wednesdays so I took that instead. There were about seven other people in the class, so we went on to more advanced things and it was hard. There was a lot of pain, haha I mean "discomfort." Oh Pilates instructor Gayle, I will miss you and your witty ways. "Down with grace, elegance and dignity."

This was also the evening that Gayle taught us what figjam meant. I want to use that all the time.

I got home, briefly thought about working on my physics assignment, and then decided to watch Lost, which was essentially Ben-heavy and therefore ridiculously creepy. Then I slept and it was excellent.

Don't want to be your monkey wrench...

2009-05-25T00:37:00.001+10:00

Song: "Monkey Wrench" by Foo Fighters

April 28th
Nicole's Birthday

Went to class, nothing terribly interesting happened. I had caught up on some of my missed philosophy lectures yesterday so I was in shape for class. I also had a presentation today on material we were supposed to have covered before we left. This didn't exactly happen. I spent a lot of last night and today reading Schopenhauer straight. The saddest thing was that my presentation, despite me knowing the material, was terrible. Luckily, it's philosophy, and my version of terrible is actual quite decent.

After class, I came home and through some form or another got a hold of Tara M. She told me that folks were going out to Scruffy's to celebrate our Australian friend Alex's 18th birthday (which happened over break). I was thrilled to be getting back into Sydney again. We had a great time with Alex, Lindsey, Chloe and everyone else, minus a few shoe problems, and got home via taxi. Excellent night.

Will you tell me what you saw and I'll tell you what you missed...

2009-05-25T00:01:00.001+10:00

Song: "Ocean Breathes Salty" by Modest Mouse

April 27th

Monday. Lab report day. Day o' optics.

I went to class today, and then finished my lab - in true Becky fashion, minutes before it was due. I got to lab and I had no lab partner. :(

Rowan was out sick, so it was just me that day. The lab, while being relatively easy, still managed to take me a full three hours. This was likely because our lab facilitator truly enjoys experiments and getting them accomplished correctly, even if that means suggesting improvements to the lab manual as the experiment is going on. Basically, I saw how heat (even so little as the amount from my hand when placed close to the fiber) affects optical fibers of certain kinds. It's also affected by temperature, but I'll save you the details. Anyway, that went well.

I had my first day back at the gym. I watched an episode of 30 Rock at its regularly scheduled time. Then I slept. Today made me want to jump out of planes again.

I want more. Impossible to ignore...

2009-05-24T23:08:00.001+10:00

Song: "Dreams" by The Cranberries

April 26th

4 am taxi rides suckkk. Not missing your flight, priceless.

We boarded our flight back home to Sydney with no problems. I slept a little on the flight, but not much. Luckily the iPod was at full battery capacity. I watched Yes Man on the flight. I saw it before with the family over break, but it was nice to watch again. It was also nice to listen to again knowing some of the music was by Eels.

We landed in Sydney, and caught a taxi back from the airport. We were dead tired. All I really remember is "Dreams" playing and me singing along, even in my exhausted state. I also remember that it was COLD compared to Cairns. I missed the tropics then. The driver told us it had been rainy and gross the last two weeks in Sydney. So at least we missed all that...

I got home and passed out. It was lovely. I had a lab report to do, but like most weekends, I waited to do it until later. I downloaded the "St. Valentine's Day" Episode of 30 Rock that I missed and watched that instead.

Shake your arse, come over here, now scream...

2009-05-22T15:48:00.000+10:00

Song: "Let Me Entertain You" by Robbie Williams

April 25th

Anzac Day

We finished off yesterday evening with dancing to a cover band at the Casino with our Irish pals. Great evening. Bernie and I got back to the hostel, and slept.

Then we went whitewater rafting down the Tully River. It was pretty fun, but very intense. Our guide was stuck with a boat full of six girls.

Here are pictures of us having fun:

During the first half of the trip, we got trained on the different positions we had to take in the boat on certain rapids and how to paddle. We stopped and jumped off of a giant rock into the river. It was exhilarating.

Then we decided to ask the rafting guide "what's the worst thing that's ever happened to you while rafting?" He told us he'd tell us after the day was over. We really should have listened to him, but instead the girls begged him to just tell us. He did.

Two years ago he pulled a dead girl out from under the water.

So that was terrifying to hear.

We then went for our midday break, ate lunch, digested the food and that information and then hopped back on the bus to go to the hard part of the river. Yay...

This time, after hitting probably the first rapid on the second half of the trip, our raft flipped. After hearing the story earlier about the girl who drowned when their raft capsized, this was an incredibly frightening experience. We also tipped over where there was a camera.

Scariest moment of the whole trip, but I floated out well and another raft picked me up. I love life jackets.

So we rafted on in terror after that, and we made it over the rapid where the girl died two years ago. The rest of the trip was quiet, but enjoyable. We got back on the bus and headed back to Cairns for our last night before our plane trip. We were exhausted, but the girls and I went out for dinner and then finished some pineapple.

We had an early flight the next morning, but it was Anzac Day so I went exploring. There was not much to see. There were a bunch of Australian navy people around town. I went home early.

In the jungle, there’s lion and monkey and elephant...

2009-05-19T20:43:00.000+10:00

Song: "Into the Jungle" by Alphabeat

April 24th

Today was jungle surfing day. We woke up got ready and made our way to the bus to jungle surfing. What is jungle surfing you ask? It's awesome.

Before we left our hostel though, there was this super creepy man carrying a stuffed animal unicorn around and another stuffed animal in his backpack. Terrifying. Becca thought he was a pedophile. She was probably correct.

Anyway, we left there and went to jungle surfing. I loved it. We got harnessed up and swung through the Daintree Rainforest like monkeys. The only thing I was mildly upset about was that I had the SpongeBob Squarepants helmet instead of the cooler ones (Tinkerbell, Stifler's Mom, Smurfette, etc.)

Our guides were from Malta and Australia and were incredibly amusing. The Australian used to be a scuba diving instructor for years before doing this jungle surfing stuff. I found this interesting.

If you look closely you can see the water:

From Cairns

Basket fern:

From Cairns

Rainforest feet:

From Cairns

Me, upside down. Whee!:

From Cairns

I really enjoyed swinging through the rainforest, if you couldn't tell. We did have to leave though, and once we got back, we rushed down to Rainforestation for our meeting with the animals. I took a few pictures on the way.
Cassowary warning signs:

From Cairns

Kangaroo warning signs!

From Cairns

We made it to Rainforestation without hitting any of those things. Once there, we held some koalas. All our Australearn friends from Macquarie did it, and we did too. Someone told me koalas smelled bad, but this one just smelled like eucalyptus. And it grabbed my shirt with its claws. Too cute.

Then we saw the other animals. This was a perfect picture:

From Cairns

So was this:

From Cairns

Yep, that's me feeding a kangaroo. My Australian life is now complete.

After we saw the animals, we did a tour on an army duck boat thing. Um, this:

From Cairns

It was ok. We learned a lot about tropical fruits and saw a few lizards of different varieties.

Once we got back, we bought a variety of tropical fruits and tasted them. Some were much better than others.
The girls picking fruits:

From Cairns

We left there and hurried back to Cairns because we had to hand our rental car back in. We were kind of worried that we had gone over out 2200 km limit, but we were much more worried about cleaning out the car. We took it to fill it up with gas and spent a good 20 minutes getting a car wash, vacuuming the insides, and doing some interior cleaning. We made that thing look spiffy. Bernie had fun with the vacuum.

From Cairns

After cleaning it to our satisfaction, Becca smoothly drove it in to the rental car place, where we were given the ok to head off. We clocked in at exactly 2200 km. Can't even believe that. We caught a taxi back to the hostel and hit up the market that happened right behind where we were staying. I bought an avocado and ate it along with free tomato samples. Delicious. Then we all decided to buy two pineapples and have them cut for us and eat them together. Great decision. They were delicious pineapples.

From Cairns

These things were at the market too. This picture turned out well. I think they're a type of fruit. Rambutan, maybe?

From Cairns

We then got dinner at a sushi place and ran into Erik, from Fraser Island. Our Fraser Island friends kept popping up all over the place. We saw him again that evening at our hostel's bar. We also met up with Barry and Lisa, the awesome couple from Ireland there as well. Barry had been to Cairns before and told us stories of this place called The Woolshed, where people dance on tables. We decided we wanted to go to there. So the four girls and our Irish friends went there.

Barry and Lisa, Ireland's finest representatives:

From Cairns

Dancing on tables. I love my life.

From Cairns

We eventually called it a night. Sort of. It was the night before Anzac Day, which is a major holiday in Australia celebrating the Australia New Zealand Army Corps and a battle they knew they were going to lose but fought together in anyway back a long time ago. Anyway, it's a pretty sacred holiday, so all the bars in Cairns closed at midnight. Sort of. Except the Casino, so we went there...

And I'm free, I'm free fallin'...

2009-05-19T14:16:00.000+10:00

Song: "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty

April 23rd

This morning, I went skydiving.

I know, I know, I wouldn't have thought I would either. But it's Australia, and I'm sort of a different person here. Hopefully, in a good way.

I was terrified, but it was really too early in the morning for it to have an effect on me. We weren't really supposed to do it so soon after scuba diving because of some sort of pressure related thing, but we already booked it and no one was able to clearly tell us if our heads would explode or not, so we just did it.

About a month ago, when I was freaking out about going on this trip in the first place, a very wise friend of mine quoted some reassuring words from Dune for me.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Despite having heard the litany against fear before (*cough* Jamie's away messages *cough*), Jay's incantation of it stuck with me. I kept uttering all that I could remember (the first two sentences) in my head all morning - while riding on the bus, getting my harness on, getting on the plane - until I jumped out.

Then, appropriately, I got "Free Fallin'" stuck in my head.

Skydiving, while pretty indescribable, was the coolest thing I've ever done and I highly recommended it to everyone who can. The first few seconds it was hard to breathe, but the free fall was such a rush, and gliding down to the ground was so serene. And I got to land on a beach AND see The Great Barrier Reef from the sky on the way down. Excellent day.

Yes, I landed here:

From Cairns

My skid marks:

From Cairns

Me, after landing:

After that was accomplished, I waited for Becca and Vilde to land. They did a great job. Becca even stood up on the sand without getting her bum wet. I was not so graceful.

This front page of the newspaper was on the back of the toilet door. I enjoyed:

From Cairns

Once we were finished, we came back to Cairns (skydiving took place about an hour or two south of there) and we met up with Bernie. We decided to next head up to Mossman Gorge, which was recommended to us on our Whitsundays sailing trip.

It was gorgeous. Haha get it? Gorge-ous.

From Cairns

We swam in the river for a bit, and then headed off to Port Douglas, which came highly recommended to me from Ms. Cindy. We tried to find a restaurant called "Going Bananas" but it had apparently shut down. We then drove and parked and wandered along the beautiful, classy streets of Port Douglas. It was a nice town. Tones from the Whitsundays trip said this would be the place for us to pick up a sugar daddy. He wasn't kidding.

We went to this cute little store with trinkets and jewelry called Imagine on one of the main streets. Cute stuff. We also peeked in at Nautilus, a place that was way too fancy for us in our cover-ups.

We then settled on a nice restaurant that wasn't too nice. I got some form of duck and a margarita. Yum.

From Cairns

After dinner, we headed off to Cape Tribulation, and we made it in time to catch the ferry, which took you not even a quarter of a mile across a river. I guess they didn't want to build a bridge.

We drove for what seemed like forever, but we finally made it to our hostel in Cape Trib. We ran into Olivia and Sabine again, which was crazy, and then we headed off to sleep.

The underground drip, it's just like her scuba days

2009-05-12T22:46:00.002+10:00

Song: "Stella Was A Diver and She Was Always Down" by Interpol

April 22nd

We made it to Cairns at the end of the last post. Here's where we stayed.
I found it appropriate that the "el" from "Hotel" didn't work.

From Cairns

This morning we had our scuba diving trip. I would just like to say in advance that all I did the night before was stay awake to be on the lookout while Bernie drove; nothing else.

That being said, this entire boat trip I was incredibly seasick.

I've never been an ocean person, but I had a rotten time on our scuba boat. It was terribly choppy water, and I was rocking all sorts of back and forth, and even after taking the seasickness pills, I still felt terrible. However, that did not stop me from scuba diving. At least not the first time.

Scuba diving was actually pretty cool, and once I figured out the breathing it was ok. I got to see Nemo and this giant blue fish that was bigger than Becca. So the first trip, which was about 20 minutes underwater, went well enough. Then I came back onto the boat, felt terrible, barely ate lunch, and then passed out on the top deck of the boat because sleeping was the only thing that made the nausea go away.

I have a few pictures with the underwater camera from dive #1 and my Whitsundays snorkeling, but they're not developed yet. Hopefully soon.

Here's one of Becca and Vilde's pictures:

I can proudly say I did not throw up once, although that might have helped.

The second dive, I got suited up, got in the water, and later was told that I looked blue by several people. Anyway, that didn't stop me from attempting to go diving. About a meter down, I choked on some water, and came up. Our dive instructor Mike asked me if I was ok. I was not ok. I gave up being stubborn and went back on the boat and fell asleep. Luckily, I slept the rest of the trip and didn't have to endure the rocking back and forth when we were anchored, or the infinitely worst rocking back and forth faster while traveling at warp speeds.

When we got back, I wanted to kiss the ground. I restrained myself. Also cool was that we saw Olivia from our Fraser Island trip on our scuba boat. She was really cool, and gave me a much better seasickness pill after my second dive. It really helped so much; I still can't thank her enough. We also met this really cool Irish couple on board who we kept running into in Cairns. Lisa and Barry were a lot of fun, and on the boat, Lisa was really nice to me when I looked blue and like I was going to blow chunks. She didn't have the easiest time with the scuba diving either.

Anyway, finally on land, loving life, we got in the car and head back to Gilligan's. We had a trip meeting with us girls and we plotted out how to best arrange the remaining days of our trip for maximum happiness and fun-having. We drink a little and grab a little food, and I pull a major nerd move and go watch Lost upstairs in the common room. They pushed it back a half hour so I also got to watch Russell Brand's Ponderland with some British girls. Then some Canadian guy (I always find the Canadians) and I watched Lost. I then went to sleep.

But we got sea legs and we're off tonight...

2009-05-12T21:05:00.004+10:00

Song: "Sea Legs" by The Shins

April 21st

I woke up on the top of a boat. So awesome. It was our last day on the Condor (that was the name of the boat) and we hadn't showered in awhile so for that reason alone I was ok with leaving. We met a lot of really cool people on our boat, and it was all in all a great trip.

I slept here the second night:

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

I slept here the first night:

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Crazy.

Anyway, we got back to our dock and went our separate ways, with our car full of girls heading off to Cairns. Our first stop though was at this little waterfall right by Airlie Beach that we were encouraged by Tones, the deck hand, to visit. It was gorgeous. I climbed a tree.

From On the way to Cairns

There also was a skinny dipper in the back stream we kept trying to get a picture of, with no luck. We brought cheese and crackers to the waterfall and had a nice little picnic before beginning our 8 hour journey to Cairns.

On the drive, a giant bug flew in the window causing Vilde to scream at the top of her lungs. The entire car freaked out, Bernie pulled over, and we took care of the situation. After everyone stopped screaming, we laughed and went on our way. Bernie wanted a cow picture.

From On the way to Cairns

On the way, we passed many large fruits. No joke.
Big Mango:

From On the way to Cairns

Big Watermelon:

From On the way to Cairns

Big Tractor, near the big watermelon:

From On the way to Cairns

I feel like later on I saw a giant thing of bananas, but we were pretty exhausted from pulling over at the mango and the watermelon. I really thought there was a fruit market at the watermelon stop, and I was sadly mistaken.

We finally got to Townsville, where we went to Castle Hill Lookout and saw the sun set. The drive up was filled with pedestrians and bikers going either up or down the hill. We were a bit worried we would hit one of them, but we made it safely up and back down again. We grabbed dinner at this cool restaurant where we had both regular and chocolate nachos. Did I mention how psyched I was that I could eat chocolate again?

From On the way to Cairns

Anyway, all was good and we arrived in Cairns safely, the bright lights of Gilligan's telling us we made it.

Everybody look at me 'cause I'm sailing on a boat!

2009-05-12T20:28:00.002+10:00

Song: "I'm On A Boat" by Incredibad (The Lonely Island) feat. T. Pain

April 20th

Woke up on a boat. Crazy talk. I couldn't really sleep when I woke up from the hull of the boat, so I listened to my iPod for a bit.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

The other boat from our boat:

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

We had breakfast and then got off the boat to go look out over Whitehaven Beach, the number three beach in the world.

It was gorgeous. The sand was so white and everything was picturesque.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Anyway, gorgeous. We left the lookout and played on the island itself and it's 99.6% pure silica (quartz) sand due to a volcano nearby. We learned we could use the sand to brush our teeth, which was an interesting experiment. We had to swim in the water with our stinger suits on so we wouldn't get stung by any terrible Australian wildlife.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Unfortunately, we had to leave the beach and get back on the boat. I was content with staying much longer. Our next destination was a spot for snorkeling. I was terrified of this after my kayak snorkeling experience, but I tried again and it was much better this time. I also got cool photos with my underwater camera (I think, I need to develop them). The reefs we looked at here were just amazing. The fish were just as bright and exotic as you would expect. Even the reef, which I knew wasn't going to be as bright as the fake stuff in the Baltimore Aquarium, was still impressive. I was so worried that I might accidentally kick something the first half of the snorkel that I didn't enjoy myself, but toward the end I got a lot better. It was probably my favorite water related part of the trip.

After snorkeling, we went to a sand bar near where we were going to spend the night on the boat. The sand bar disappeared at high tide and we were about two hours away from it disappearing, so I ran to one side of it to take pictures.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

I got a funny one of the other girls on the other side when the water was coming up.

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Bernie stole my camera for this one:

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

Ahhhhawfawjefnkwffbaweflkwfet. I love sunsets.

I chose this evening to sleep on the deck of the boat. Greatest idea ever. It was so much less stuffy, and I got to fall asleep with the stars and wake up with the sunrise.
Correction: Ahhhhawfawjefnkwffbaweflkwfet. I love everything about the sky.

The damn thing gone wild (bam ba lam)

2009-05-12T00:31:00.000+10:00

Song: "Black Betty" covered by Spiderbait

April 19th

This morning, breakfast happened somehow, and I went with Bernie on a quest to find an underwater camera. I felt like we drove back and forth down Airlie Beach's only highway and main drag at least three times. Actually, that's not much of an exaggeration. We did end up at Target, where I got a funny picture of Bernie attempting to sleep on the display bed.

From Airlie Beach

Good stuff. We also took a photo shoot with the disgusting front of the car, which was completely covered in bugs.

From Airlie Beach

Anyway, we didn't have much luck with the camera. We picked up Vilde and Becca and prepared for our sailing trip. We got on the boat, met some of our companions for the next few days and sailed off into what eventually was the night.

It was bring your own alcohol, and the boat's system for refrigerating was so funny I have to write about it. There were two large coolers with giant bags of ice and one was for beer and one was for wine (goon - in the bag) and everything else. After the alcohol was chilled, we were allowed to put water bottles in. Australians are great. They have priorities.

Our crew was hysterical. Ange and Tones were our deck hands (and master chefs) and Wombat was our skipper. Whenever I referred to him as our "skipper" everyone looked at me like I was crazy. Apparently no one ever watched Gilligan's Island. Geez.

Anyway, we were supposed to be helpful on deck for sailing, but the wind wasn't strong enough or something, so we only raised the sails once. I was supposed to help with the "grinders" but I wasn't even needed for that. "Grinders." haha.

We got to the cove where we were going to be sleeping, ate dinner, drank with some new friends, and then I went to sleep in the hull of the boat. It actually wasn't that bad, except for being a little stuffy.

The boat:

From Whitsundays Sailing Trip

More pictures from the trip soon. Today's were a little weak.

Le camembert, Jacques Cousteau, Baguettte!

2009-05-11T22:49:00.000+10:00

Song: "Foux da fa fa" by Flight of the Conchords

April 18th

Recovering from the night before, I decided a nice peaceful kayaking trip would be a good plan for the day. The other girls were going on a three person jet ski, which probably would have been fun for me too, but: I had done it before, I was trying to save a little money, and it might have been too much for me, oh and I wanted to go kayaking.

I booked a trip, and got picked up to go on my kayaking tour. On the bus, I met a very nice couple from France who were backpackers as well. Once we got to the kayak place, we met another couple from France and the man's sister. There were six people in the tour: me and 5 Frenchies. I loved them all so much for speaking English the whole time. That was really nice of them.

Our kayak guide was a Kiwi (originates from New Zealand) and he was pretty cool. I thought kayaking would be just like canoeing, but it's not. I mean, minus paddling a lot.

Well, for one, the paddle has two ends, and two, you don't steer with the paddle. The person in the back of a two person kayak (me) steers it with pedals. I was in a kayak (hey, "kayak" is a palindrome! sorry...) with the sister of the second couple. She was a lot of fun. They call the two person kayaks the "divorce boats" because most all couples leave the kayak wanting to kill each other because they can't paddle in sync. We did ok. I kept wanting to pull a canoeing move and use my left side to go right (incorrect) with the pedals, so we got a little sidetracked more than once.

We paddled to one of the islands, which is actually small enough to be considered a rock, and is one of the only ones not part of the national park system there. So we just chilled on this cool island made of coral. I attempted to snorkel around the island with everyone else, but I was not coordinated enough. I really do not like being underwater, as we will see much more of in later Easter break posts. I enjoyed swimming around, but I preferred walking and climbing around the island. Oh, and they had snacks. Lovely snacks. Brie and crackers, apples, juice boxes. Yum.

I really enjoyed myself on this little excursion. It was incredibly peaceful and it was my first glance of the Whitsundays and I loved it.

Ok, pictures:

From Airlie Beach

Kayaks!

From Airlie Beach

The whole island looked like this. I actually stabbed myself in the foot on one of the pieces of coral.

From Airlie Beach

Lovely day.

When I got back, and when the other girls got back, we decided to go out to eat. Nachos were involved. We had a lovely dinner. The bathroom sign and the "Albert Einstein/Marilyn Monroe" picture was cool.

From Airlie Beach

I think this was the evening where I did laundry and met the people in my hostel. The other girls were supposed to join me when they got back from jet skiing, but something went wrong, and we got split up. I enjoyed meeting the people in my room. One was from Leipzig, one of the few obscure towns I know in Germany (because Ben's studying there). She was cool. The Canadian and the Brits were also lots of fun. I also was supposed to use the shower in the 8 person room I was staying in, but I was used to the nice place next door we booked the night before, so I just boldly walked over and used that shower. MUCH nicer. The Canadian kept talking about how the bathroom smelled like cat urine, but I really don't think it was that bad.

Next day we were off for our sailing trip, so I rested up instead of going out. Probably a wise decision. And I had clean clothes to boot.

This was important because for two weeks I brought one backpack and my purse, and forgot a towel. Well done, self.

Stop and stare, I think I'm moving but I go nowhere...

2009-05-05T20:49:00.000+10:00

Song: "Stop and Stare" by OneRepublic

April 17th

So, after a lovely three hour sleep on the beach, I woke up and got on with my day. Bernie slept a little longer, but I met Becca and Vilde for breakfast. I liked this place's tip jar.

From Airlie Beach

We got our accommodation straightened out for the night and then decided to go parasailing. It was quite fun. I hadn't done it since I was younger with my family, so it was cool to do it again, especially with the beautiful tropical islands all around. Becca and I went together.

From Airlie Beach

One of the guys working on the boat (in the picture helping me and Becca into our harnesses) had his 18th birthday today and he really enjoyed having four young ladies on his boat for it. We took a ton of pictures with him, on our cameras and his. Too funny.

After parasailing, we were already in our bathing suits, so we just chilled at the pool of the resort we were not staying at. It was gorgeous.

From Airlie Beach

There was a little wedding reception going on next to the pool. Beautiful place to have one.

After the pool, we went back to meet up with Hilde, who was in Airlie Beach too with her tour. Hilde had also met Dulce, who Bernie and Becca and I knew from Surf Camp back when we all first met, and we ate with all of them at a nearby restaurant. Someone probably ordered nachos. I think I had pasta.

Dinner was delicious, and afterward we decided to go hit the town for the evening. We drank some of that bottle of rum liqueur I bought back in Bundaberg. We started at the beer garden of the place we were staying at and then went back to the place we ate dinner at, which transformed into a bar after a certain hour. It was entertaining enough. Bernie and I decided to leave and go to a place called Mama Africa's that we had read about in Cam's Lonely Planet book and had heard stories about from a bunch of other people. It had very nice decorations, but sadly my pictures were too blurry.

Eventually I got home and went to sleep. It was a wild evening.

Pay my respects to grace and virtue. Send my condolences to good...

2009-05-03T18:59:00.000+10:00

Song: "Human" by The Killers

April 16th

Bundaberg!

Bundaberg is a little town up the coast of Queensland, Australia which known for two things.

1) Having a sugar plant (there is lots of sugar cane grown in the area)
2) Making Rum (with the molasses from the sugar plant)

From Bundaberg!

It's really known for number 2. Bernie wanted to go to the Bundaberg Rum Distillery, which was an excellent idea. Here's me and the girls with the giant bottle of rum:

From Bundaberg!

I had no idea how rum was made before the trip. It was pretty neat. We saw a giant barn full of hot molasses, the leftovers from the sugar refining process. Along the trip we saw giant vats of rum with millions of dollars worth of rum inside. We couldn't take pictures because the batteries were fire hazards. (You better believe that I'd keep sparks away from million of dollars worth of highly flammable alcohol too.) Also, we were told that the government of Australia takes about 2/3 of their money from their alcohol sales. No wonder liquor is so expensive here!

After the tour, we came back and got two samples. My favorite was the Bundaberg Royal Liqueur, a deadly blend of chocolate, coffee, and Bundaberg rum. I bought a bottle for the trip. More on that bottle later.

We got our taste tests and then decided to hit the beach in nearby Bargara. I was still recovering from my sunburn from day one (today had the added fun of peeling!) so I tried to stay under my towel/cover-up as long as possible.

Puppy on the beach!

From Bundaberg!

These tiny shells on the rocks kept sticking in my flip flops:

From Bundaberg!

Sand crabs going crazy again:

From Bundaberg!

Another one of my favorite pictures:

From Bundaberg!

The beach was fun for a bit, but since I wasn't laying in the sun, I got bored and started to wander.

I found a windmill.

From Bundaberg!

Also, Bargara got a little cocky with this one:

From Bundaberg!

We left Bargara after a bit and decided to make one of our most interesting drives up the coast. Here are some lovely pictures.
Giant cow!

From Bundaberg!

Sugar cane on the side of the road, with a blurry speed limit sign:

From Bundaberg!

We stopped in Rockhampton to get something to eat. Cam's very helpful Lonely Planet guide to Australia was a lot of fun to use in Rockhampton. We stopped at one place which had cheap meals, only to realize they were selling $10 men. It's a joke; check the picture.

From Bundaberg!

Rockhampton was not alive at whatever hour of the night we stopped in, and eventually we ate some food (at either Macker's or Hungry Jack's, can't remember...) and Bernie had some energy drinks. Here's a nice shot of me brushing my teeth in the fast food bathroom, with Bernie's energy drink nearby:

From Bundaberg!

After that, Bernie drove that car into the night, Airlie Beach or bust. I couldn't have done it, but then again, I am not Bernie. We had some petrol and toilet breaks along the way, but we made it into Airlie by about 3am. We saw a terrifying creature on the side of the road (some sort of night animal), and then a sleeping guy at the bus station.

From Airlie Beach

Oh yeah, and Bernie wanted to sleep on the beach once we got there. Actually, this idea sounded pretty fun so I decided to join her, but first we had to find the right beach. The first one we found was too grainy. We were a bit spoiled after the beaches of Fraser Island, so Bernie drove us around for almost two hours trying to find a better one. Here's the thing though; there wasn't a better one. Or at least a better public one, so that's where we ended up at 5am to sleep. Becca and Vilde slept in the car. Bernie also decided that 5am was the perfect time to start drinking the wines. We did this for an hour, then the sun rose, Bernie climbed a tree, and then we slept for three hours. The pictures are as follows:

From Airlie Beach

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/h_fT4htUYU78rOl13tzFhQ?feat=directlink

From Airlie Beach

"Bernie, where'd the stars go?"

From Airlie Beach

The stingray!

From Airlie Beach

Bernie conquers the tree, at 6am. Give that girl a medal:

From Airlie Beach

The view up from where I was sleeping:

From Airlie Beach

Ok, although those were essentially in the morning, they were my night, therefore they will remain on this entry. The rest of Airlie Beach I will save for the next few. :)

Look inside, look inside your tiny mind and look a bit harder...

2009-05-03T17:16:00.001+10:00

Song: "Guess Who Batman (F You Very Much)" by Lily Allen

April 15th

Mommy's Birthday
U.S. Tax Day

So Day 3 of our Fraser Island tour started out well. Jeff took us to the Dragon Tree, which, well, looks like a dragon.

From Fraser Island

And for the first time in ages, we had blue skies!!

From Fraser Island

Jeff also told us about the scribbly gum trees, which are eucalyptus trees that have little scribble marks on them from inscriptor moths, or scribbly moths.

From Fraser Island

Then we went to Lake Wabby, which was one of my favorite lakes on the island:

From Fraser Island

Here you can see the ocean, a sand dune, the forest and a lake all in one picture.

From Fraser Island

And despite this sign,

From Fraser Island

we did run down the sand dune into the lake anyway...

Glorious.

After the lake, Jeff talked to us about "bush tucker" or "forest food" in American. This berry tasted like oregano, which Jeff pronounced "or-eh-GAH-no" instead of "or-EG-eh-no" like I'm used to. Did you like those phonetics there?

From Fraser Island

Note: My macro mode wasn't cooperating with me (user error) on half of this trip, apologies for the strange camera focus.

When we got back onto the "highway" we saw a plane land on the "runway." Pretty neat stuff.

From Fraser Island

We then went to our last destination of the trip: yet another lake.
It was very pretty. Bernie wanted some "I'm in a field by a lake" pictures.

From Fraser Island

Jeff went snorkeling and looking for turtles while the rest of us swam around. It was really nice.

From Fraser Island

We left Fraser Island after 3 long days there, and took the ferry back to Hervey Bay. The ferry ride provided me with the greatest sunset pictures of the trip.

From Fraser Island

Yay sunset.

After my crazy picture taking, we took a taxi from the ferry to go pick up our car from the rental agency. We finally got the car! Bernie bravely got us out of town, where we got mildly lost due to my crappy map, and we had to ask for directions to Bundaberg (our next stop) from an Aussie guy outside of Woolworth's, and believe it or not, we got to Bundaberg, no problem. We ran into the world's creepiest bug on the way:

From Bundaberg!

We stayed at Oscar's Motel, which looked sketchy, but not sketchier than your average motel. It actually ended up being one of our best places for accommodation over the trip. The girls were really sweet and let me indulge in my Lost obsession that evening, and then we went to bed. :)

This is the rhythm of my life...

2009-05-03T16:13:00.000+10:00

Song: "Rhythm of the Night" by Corona

April 14th

After yesterday's dreary weather, we started off our Tuesday with fairly low expectations for the day. I was pleasantly surprised with how the day panned out.

We started at an overlook where you could see a typical "sand blow" which is like a sand dune which moves drastically based on the wind. It was early, but I managed to take a picture:

From Fraser Island

We couldn't go to the next part of our tour because we couldn't drive on the highway due to a cyclone hitting the island a month earlier. Now when people say "highway" on Fraser Island they mean this:

From Fraser Island

Yes, the beach. Seventy five mile beach actually. Yet again, Australia is calling beaches by their length in miles not kilometers, because 120.7 kilometer beach doesn't have a great ring to it. But the beach is their highway, and since the cyclone hit, part of their highway now looked like this:

From Fraser Island

No fun to drive on, not even for a giant 4WD buggy. Oh, and the highway was also an aircraft runway.

From Fraser Island

No worries.

We left the beach and went to our plan B tour spot of the day, which was a lovely sand blow area around Rainbow Gorge. In my opinion, it was pretty gorgeous, even with the weather. Our tour guide Jeff was a great sport all day. Here's Jeff doing typical tourist poses on the way to the gorge.

From Fraser Island

I was a bit ahead of the other girls I was traveling with, and I got this really cool picture of them walking up the hill. Look how tiny they are!

From Fraser Island

And then we got to the sand cliff (or maybe that was the gorge); anyway, it was awesome. It's hard to express how neat this was, but the sand had blown into the forest, so it was covering everything below the canopy of half of this section of trees. And it was really really steep. I jumped off of the cliff into the sand, and slid down it on a plastic bag. Super fun.

Here's me sitting on the edge.

From Fraser Island

Some people from our trip after jumping down:

From Fraser Island

Erik climbing up after sliding into the trees:

From Fraser Island

It was a really neat place.

On the way back to the bus, I took a picture of this awesome red mushroom that grows around here:

From Fraser Island

Here is a cool sand crab I found by the bus. He blends in really well:

From Fraser Island

Our next stop was another lake. I got out here, without the intention of swimming, and instead ventured on an exploration into the woods. It was good fun, and I ran into another tour group and followed them back to my own on my return. When we got back we had cookies and muffins, which were my favorite snack break on the trip.

We then made it back to camp, where we got cleaned up for dinner and the chaos of the Dingo Bar. I decided to take a picture of the inside of our freezer, where a million ants were falling into the crack and freezing to death:

From Fraser Island

Anyway, to the Dingo Bar.

From Fraser Island

Happy hour was amusing. Bernie and I got B-52s, which were pretty delicious. Look at the layers! Yay properties of liquids!

From Fraser Island

We had a great evening at the Dingo Bar, and Bernie and I stayed for awhile with our Austrian friends Olivia and Sabine. We out-danced the Dutch girl who was getting on our nerves, and danced with the bartenders, who had the dances down to the song "Rhythm of the Night." If you ever want to be entertained, get a group of people to watch that music video, and do every dance move in it.

If you be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal...

2009-04-26T21:08:00.001+10:00

Song: "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon

April 13th

We left the hostel early in the morning and headed off to our Fraser Island tour. One of the guys from the hostel, Shanil, was on our trip as well. We had an interesting bus ride to the ferry.

Oh, and I forgot a towel. I was going to bring two. That's what happens when you oversleep alarms. I bought one at the ferry station.

Today was a very rainy day, the rainiest of all our travels. It was raining pretty heavily on our ride across the water to Fraser Island, which is the largest sand island in the world.

Our tour guide's name was Jeff and he was a lot of fun, even with the terrible weather. "It's liquid sunshine" and "I just checked the weather report and the weather is going to be great today...in Perth" and other ridiculous comments kept our spirits up as best as possible.

We walked through a gorgeous rainforest and saw a beautiful lake called Lake McKenzie. It would have been more glorious in the sun, but even in the dreary weather it was beautiful. The coolest thing about the island is that all of the vegetation - and there was a ton of it - grew in the sand. Jeff tried to explain how this works, something about a mineral coating on the darker sand, anyway it was neat.

Also, apparently Fraser Island is home to a ton of dingoes. Yes, the baby-taking kind. We didn't see any, sadly.

After our tour through the day, we came back to our accommodation, which was similar to the hostel we stayed in except there were free towels and soap. Classy. We then ate dinner, and hit up the Dingo Bar, which is conveniently located right next to dinner. While waiting for the Dingo Bar's happy hour, a group of us went back to where we were staying and played an excellent game that Olivia taught us where everyone in the group has to turn around and take the ugliest picture of themselves possible, then the group picks the people with the prettiest pictures and they have to drink. My face wasn't ugly enough, so that was me and Sabine this time around. It was quite fun and it was an interesting way to meet our neighbors.

We had some pitcher of blue something at happy hour. It was not the best drink ever, but it was relatively cheap and cool colored. The Dingo Bar also played music videos all night long, and for the second time in our trip (but not the last) we heard Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" which is a definitely favorite of Bernie's. Good times.

We ended the evening relatively early because we had to get up relatively early the next morning. Now that I think about it, we rarely ever slept in on this trip.

I only slept an eighth of the day away instead of half the day away in Dad time. :)

I'm pining for the moon...

2009-04-26T19:52:00.001+10:00

Song: "Nightswimming" by R.E.M.

April 12th

Easter

WAHOO! I got to eat chocolate today. Oh, yes, and it's sacred and all that too. The thought of going to church today did at least pass through my mind, but not enough to make me go.

Our taxi left at 5am this morning, and after I had stayed up until midnight before (to eat that lovely Tim Tam I was craving...) I wasn't too surprised that I overslept my 4:00am-ish alarm. I wanted to shower and make sure I was fully packed, but that didn't happen. Vilde called me early, Becca reminded me to grab my passport and with my giant chocolate egg and a tiny jug of milk in a bag, the girls and I were off to the airport.

It was too early for words. We got some finances straightened out and ate a little food before flying off to the lovely land of Hervey Bay, Queensland.

View from the plane as we took off from Sydney:

From Hervey Bay, Easter Day

We got in early in the morning and checked in to our hostel. We then decided to go to the beach, where I got the worst sunburn that I've had in years. I put on 30 SPF sunblock all over, but Australia has no ozone so you really need 30+ or 50 or something. Regardless, it was a very relaxing Easter on the beach. There was some sort of sailing party going on.

From Hervey Bay, Easter Day

We grabbed some food at an Irish pub. Nachos were involved. Nachos were a big theme of this Easter break, as I'm sure I'll mention later.

After food, we walked around, went to the drive-thru liquor store on foot (I know these exist in the states as well, but don't they sound like they're encouraging the wrong thing?) and walked back to the hostel. We chilled there most all evening, buying the all you can eat pizza and meeting all the different people living in the hostel.

I really enjoyed staying in the hostels when we did. We met people from all over. England, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. This trip just makes me want to travel more. Toward the end of the evening, after a few drinks, we got the bright idea to go back to the beach and go swimming. The moon was gorgeous and the people were entertaining.
I'm on the left, and severely burned. (picture courtesy of Vilde)

When we got back to the hostel, I stayed up a little later and talked with some people who were living in the rooms next to us in the kitchen. Also, I really think that America needs to a) have college/university last only three years and b) needs to encourage a gap year after high school for traveling, soul searching, etc. Some of the people I met had done some wild things in their time off. So who wants to go backpacking with me around Europe? :)

Anyway, I eventually went to sleep. It was quite an evening.

I want to break free..Oh how I want to be free

2009-04-11T23:56:00.002+10:00

Song: "I Want To Break Free" by Queen

April 11th

I woke up at 7am and worked on my paper non-stop until 4:30pm, when I got it printed out at the admin building, stapled it and walked it over to the drop box to turn it in.

It feels so good.

I came home, started packing for my two week long adventure where I will be without internet in the northern area of Australia in Queensland. I leave tomorrow at 5am.

Holy cow. It is now Easter. I gotta go eat a TimTam. Byes!

The street heats the urgency of now...

2009-04-11T23:41:00.002+10:00

Song: "1979" by The Smashing Pumpkins

April 10th

Good Friday

I essentially slept off Thursday and awoke early to my legs covered in ink pen. I stuck to my guns and didn't get on the computer until I finished the reading. I then loaded up my iPod with some Robert Sinnerbrink and went back to sleep, hoping osmosis would be useful for paper writing.

I woke up, cleaned up and then spent all day listening to all the relevant lectures for my paper topic and writing up sheets of notes for them.

I took a break around dinner to investigate if anything around was open. Nope, nada. I then ordered Pizza Hut because I felt like it. Margherita pizza with pineapple is delicious. I also got bread sticks with cheese that came with a creamy garlic sauce (disgusting) and BBQ sauce (good but seriously? where's my marinara?)

By the end of the day I had a giant paper full of notes. Tomorrow's task was then to put them together. Blergh.

The district sleeps alone tonight after the bars turn out their lights...

2009-04-11T23:15:00.005+10:00

Song: "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" by The Postal Service

April 9th

Play ominous music here. Both my lab reports were due today. We had our last optics class with Alex today. It was a very nice review session and again, I learned so much. I've been really lucky with professors here; they're all great. I turned in my completed lab, freshly printed from the physics lab, and all was good. One down, one to go.

After class, I went back to the physics lab and worked on my other lab report until it was finished.

From Shots around Macquarie

Oh wait, and then I realized had to copy pages of my lab notebook that I didn't have. Then I began the walk back to the Village, got the notebook, ran to the library, made copies, attached them to the new lab report, and voila! lab report complete. While I was leaving the library with stapled copy in hand, I ran into Jay, who was still ill, but looking better at least. I am so glad I haven't gotten sick here yet. I'm attributing it to the 3 liters of orange juice I drink each week.

Ok, two down. Now to tackle my aesthetics paper...

I started working and I was getting productive for a period of time. During this, the maintenance folk returned our couch which was lovely.

I began to lose my productivity and I restricted myself to no Facebook until I read the entire reading of Hegel. I got about 10 pages away from finishing when Tara called me and asked if I wanted to go out. As a reward to myself for finishing those lovely lab reports and instead of working on my aesthetics paper all night, which was my original plan, I decided to go out to Uni Bar with Tara and Tara. It was a good plan. We came, we saw, we conquered. We met an Aussie named Angus "who brings the beef" (to a BBQ last week, long story) who has EXCELLENT taste in music. Seriously though, we bonded over his iPod until my purse broke and I went home. I also found out that some of my lovely Australearner friends also enjoy The Postal Service as much as I do. This was great news.

Obligatory picture:

That's Angus, Lindsey, Janaki, Kathleen, and me on the end.

Oh, and when I got home, in my lovely stupor, I forced myself to read the ending of Hegel. I got three pages away from finishing before I quit, likely because of this little incident with my pen:

From Shots around Macquarie

I'm not going to lie. I have no idea what the hell I was doing, but it was damn fun.

Well the sky could be blue, could be grey, without you I’m just miles away...

2009-04-11T23:11:00.001+10:00

Song: "Strawberry Swing" by Coldplay

April 8th

I was late to class. I took a picture of the marsupial laboratory anyway.

From Shots around Macquarie

Today was our last physics 301 lecture with Mike. It was a good one though. We covered all our material and went outside to look at the polarization of the sun. I had read up a little on the subject, since he told us to go look for ourselves with polaroids (sunglasses, or in Australian: "sunnies") but I do not have any sunnies. The coolest thing about the polarization of the sun's light: Bee's use the polarization to communicate to other bees where they need to go to do their bee business. I had heard about the dance of the honeybees in my Philosophy of Mind class and I always sort of wondered how that worked. Anyway, we found that at ninety degree angles to the sun, it's polarized in different directions because of components of the E field being perpendicular and you probably don't care so I'm not going to explain. Well I thought it was cool...

A little break, where I came home for a bit, and then off to more lab! On the way out of the Village I checked my mail because I've been waiting for a package from my mom (In Australian: mum) and I got a package notification saying to pick up my package from the admin building before 5. Lab was until 5, booo.

Lab was entertaining though. This time Shaheen and I were working with the Zeeman effect lab. Look, pretty TV screen!

From Shots around Macquarie

Luckily, we finished early enough that after sprinting back to the Village, I got my package!!
It was awesome. Thanks mom so much.
Pictures:

From Shots around Macquarie

My mom is cooler than your mom because she writes "crap" on the customs label like a BAMF.

From Shots around Macquarie

This was awesome. I totally needed it today, because I was going to spend all night on my lab reports. Whee!

Jay was absent from both parts of physics today, and after Jay's lab partner Josh didn't see him in lab, I was the next on the list for giving him his assignment. Jay was obviously not faking it when I went over to drop off his work. He had the flu. Sucks to have it so close to spring break.

Take these broken wings and learn to fly...

2009-04-11T22:47:00.001+10:00

Song: "Blackbird" by The Beatles

April 7th

Physics class in the morning was fun. I was late again (really sorry about that).
We got to my favorite slide on the notes so far:

From Shots around Macquarie

I love how the Sinatra song is cited. Michael Steel, you will be missed in our 301 classroom.

Oh, yeah. I may not have mentioned this but in both my physics classes we lose our lecturers halfway through and get new ones. Shaheen tried to explain why this is to me, but I got confused. I think it's so that lecturers with specific interests or expertise in certain topics can teach them or something. Anyway, at the end of this week I won't have Mike or Alex teaching my physics and optics lectures, respectively. I'll miss them both. They were really good teachers and they actually seemed to care if I was learning or not.

Anyway, we had our last tutorial with Mike and after the class looked around puzzlingly for a few minutes, I let him know that we didn't have the Tutorial 4 handout. I'm not sure why none of us mentioned this to him last week, when we also didn't have the handout throughout class, but it might have been because it was raining. I felt bad, but yet again I left tutorial feeling like I knew a lot more than when I came in.

I went to the store to grab a few things. Namely, Easter candy. I figured the stores on Easter weekend would either be closed or open at inconvenient hours so I got all my post-Lent sweets today. Good decision. Also, I feel like Australians are obsessed with chocolate. This may be due to my current Lent stipulations, but still, everywhere I go there is a giant display or full aisle in the store devoted to chocolate.

Here are some examples of the Easter setups:

From Shots around Macquarie

I got myself one Kinder egg because those toys are so damn fun to put together. No Kinder bunny for me. Also, the Kinder commercials here have the world's worst jingle. I can't find it on YouTube, but I am not a fan. The bunnies reminded me of

Here's another aisle of the store:

From Shots around Macquarie

So...much...chocolate...

I had aesthetics class, where I thought we were going to go over the material I was doing my midterm paper on, but instead we reviewed all the old boring topics involving Kant that were really easy to write papers on. I spent my tutorial attempting to outline my paper. Our entire aesthetics class was bonding over the frenetic paper writing we had to do over the next few days. I was intending on doing my midterm online quiz right after lecture, and when I asked how much longer the quiz would be open, Robert (the lecturer, who is super awesome) looked at me and chuckled a little and then informed me that it closed before class. My roommate Sean and I had both planned on doing it afterward, and Robert, as always, was really cool about the whole thing and said he'd open it up for us again. I felt like an idiot, but these things happen. Also, in Australia when you're reviewing the topics in class it's called a "revision exercise" instead of "review exercise." It took me awhile to catch on to this.

After class, Tara told me she had exciting news and pictures from last Thursday so she came over and we chatted about things for awhile. Girl talk, love it. I also remembered about my tendency to chuckle and say "laughter" out loud while laughing. It's ridiculous, and similar to when I say "sad face" in response to bad news. I had kind of forgotten about it since I don't use it too often in public. :)

I took my aesthetics quiz (I got a 9/10 on the quiz. Not too shabby.) and worked more on one of those physics labs I had due Thursday, then called it a night. Sleep is great stuff.

Your hair was wild, your eyes were red, you were in a rage...

2009-04-11T21:55:00.002+10:00

Song: "I Don't Blame You" by Cat Power

April 6th

Eh, I didn't finish my lab report this morning. I got close enough, but Rowan and I were so confused we couldn't turn it in on time.

We went to visit the femtosecond laser lab on campus and it was super cool! The folks who work there are obviously awesome because of signs like this:

From Shots around Macquarie

Check out the bangin' glasses, this very well could be my future:

From Shots around Macquarie

One of the many neat things the micro-machining lab did was help design the 2000 and 2004 Olympic torches. They need certain tiny cuts in them so that the flame keeps burning but doesn't go out so they cut it with high powered femtosecond pulse lasers. Fascinating stuff.

From Shots around Macquarie

Rowan and I hurriedly attempted to finish our lab between the lab tour and lab class but we didn't quite make it. Thankfully, Alex is a swell guy and he gave us until Thursday to fix it up. Unfortunately for my time management, that was the same day my other lab report was due. Eh, whatever.

I attempted to work on the late lab after lab class was over, but midway through I got a worried message from Bethany that our couch was gone. Out of pure curiousity, mixed with a little sentiment of "ah, I'm so confused on this lab," I came home and found that indeed one of our couches was no longer. If I could sum up the feelings of the room it would involve the word "flabbergasted." After my Nancy Drew skills kicked in, I realized that someone had fixed the broken chair that we've asked to have repaired since day one, and my next thought was that "maybe maintenance took our couch." It was after 5, so I couldn't call them this evening.

Instead I went to the gym, where my pilates instructor gave us chocolate eggs for being good all term. haha, the torture! I came home and gave it to Sean in exchange for some of his homemade guacamole, which was much smoother than mine. I like both kinds. I watched 30 Rock and did other unproductive things. Good day.

Sunrise, sunrise, looks like morning in your eyes...

2009-04-11T21:39:00.000+10:00

Song: "Sunrise" by Norah Jones

April 5th

Today was the end of Daylight Savings Time in Australia. This really had no effect on anything, but it happened.

My goal for this morning was to go see the sun rise. My train was getting in really early around 6 am and I wanted to go to the beach and see it. However, my train was delayed so I saw it from the comfort of my seat.

Still pretty. Once I did finally make it back to Central station in Sydney, I grabbed a ham and cheese croissant from a sandwich shop in the station which was not on par with the one I had in Melbourne. Sad face. However, it was definitely nourishment, which was necessary. I hopped back on the train to Macquarie and made it back in time to take a severe nap and then wake up and do my homework and post some pictures on Facebook.

Nothing terribly interesting here. I may have done laundry.

Underneath this adolescent sky...we will not grow old

2009-04-11T21:28:00.001+10:00

Song: "We Will Not Grow Old" by Lenka

April 4th

I woke up on the train to the faint sunrise and fields that looked a bit like home:

From Melbourne Excursion

That was nice. I had slept a little, but not a ton on the train so I was a little lethargic. Once I arrived at the station, I left with no other thought in my mind besides "get coffee, get coffee, get coffee." I don't even really like coffee, so this was fun. Also, Australian coffee is not served delicious. I don't know what it is, but it sort of just tastes like warm milk soaked near espresso beans to me. A mocha here is like warm milk sprinkled with cocoa powder. Anyway, I got my coffee and a delicious breakfast quiche thing and was on my way. Not much of anything was open at this hour (8:00 am) except cafes and parks. The next thing I found was a park. My sister says those things on the trees look like those cardboard contraptions that go around your drink at Starbucks. I have no idea what they're for.

From Melbourne Excursion

The park was essentially empty, minus some really motivated people exercising. I saw a team of people wearing the same shirts, but never caught who they were. Anyway, here's motivated guy number 1 and the team of who knows what players.

From Melbourne Excursion

Oh right, it was called Flagstaff Park because before they built up the area around the city, it was used as a look out onto the water. Anyway, here's pretty church number one of several that I will come across today.

From Melbourne Excursion

Also "open" at this hour was the Victoria Royal Mint, which may or may not have been interesting if I went during its operating hours. I went in the gate, but there wasn't much to be seen.

From Melbourne Excursion

Here's the next church of the "churches Becky took pictures of in Melbourne" series:

From Melbourne Excursion

I had my handy dandy map of Australia, which had a little inset map of Melbourne to guide me around the city until I reached the visitors center. I walked past the Victoria Library. Note: Australia likes its public sculptures. I have never seen cities so full of them until I came here, and my university campus is a whole other story in itself.

From Melbourne Excursion

I'm also not sure why they had what looked to be a corner of the library in the side of the sidewalk (behind lamppost)

From Melbourne Excursion

Anyway, my first goal of the morning was to get to the visitors center. On the way, I discovered it was the first weekend of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

From Melbourne Excursion

Here's one of the street theaters:

From Melbourne Excursion

Unfortunately, it was mostly kids shows, but they had awesome titles:

From Melbourne Excursion

My favorite was "Axis of Awesome" and Super Mega Maths Battle was pretty good too.
I left there (Town Hall) and got closer and closer to the visitors center. Along the way I passed this perplexing set of benches. Really?

From Melbourne Excursion

On the other corner across the street was one of my favorite buildings in Melbourne, the Flinders Street Train Station.

From Melbourne Excursion

Across the street from that was the visitors center!
It actually wasn't as helpful as I wanted it to be, but it was good to look around in anyway.

From Melbourne Excursion

It was 9 a.m. when I got to the vistors center, and the place I wanted to go next was the observation deck at Rialto Towers and that didn't open until 10, so I walked around some bridges trying to find a place on my map called "Batman Park." I found some interesting things along the way, like my new favorite cafeteria. It wasn't open sadly.

From Melbourne Excursion

I crossed some bridges

From Melbourne Excursion

and then crossed back over them

From Melbourne Excursion

The one above was a aboriginal conceptual bridge which celebrated the cultures of all Australians. Very artsy. The artist is quoted as saying:

"Let's declare, all of us as one, with free will and full heart and clear mind. We swear to the fact that we are equal Australians."

I liked that.
I took a picture of the USA section of the bridge:

From Melbourne Excursion

More bridge pics:

From Melbourne Excursion

I have no idea what this building was, but it looked cool:

From Melbourne Excursion

Ah, finally. I did make it to Batman Park, which was sadly nothing other than an odd looking pigeon cage and a helicopter pad. Yes, those sounded like bad ideas to have next to each other to me as well.

From Melbourne Excursion

Also, along the way I found this on a pole:

From Melbourne Excursion

I especially like the question mark.

I made it to the Rialto Towers without much trouble (ok, I got disoriented and crossed the bridge unnecessarily, but I made it there) and got my student discount and went up. It was pretty gorgeous up there, but I didn't really know what anything was. I used the little guides by the windows to spot where I had walked earlier and where I wanted to go later. It was an informative trip. Like a giant map, but really high up.

These were my bridges:

From Melbourne Excursion

and here was the train station I came in on (in the bottom left hand corner):

From Melbourne Excursion

Also, since it was early in the morning (10:15am) no one was there and I watched the included Melbourne movie by myself. It was kind of fun.

From Melbourne Excursion

I left and my stomach told me it was time for lunch, or something like it. I stopped in a random cafe and got the best $2 croissant of my life.

From Melbourne Excursion

and passed a pretty chandelier behind bars:

From Melbourne Excursion

After eating that delicious croissant, I was thirsty and in my stroke of momentary genius I decided to buy a large container of orange juice instead of a several small ones throughout the day. I meant to bring my water bottle when leaving the apartment, but it slipped my mind. While buying the orange juice at the 7-Eleven (I know, so Australian), I ran into a group of Americans about my age. I think they were studying or backpacking around, but we didn't talk long.

My next goal was to find the Arts Centre, which was in my little Melbourne video, and from there I wanted to find the National Gallery of Victoria. This trip, while essentially just for fun and exploring, was also for my aesthetics class in a way. We're supposed to write a journal of our aesthetics experiences, but I really was coming up short for examples. What better way to tackle an art assignment than by a field trip! A very long field trip I might add. Melbourne to Sydney is about the distance from Chicago to Washington, D.C. (a little shorter, but not by much). Regardless, it was totally worth it.

I found the Arts Centre. The building was pretty and it was conveniently located right next to the gallery.

From Melbourne Excursion

Also, it was a gorgeous day out, and the forecast had called for rain today all week. Some days I feel crazy lucky.
The gallery was a lot of fun.
In it was my favorite ceiling of all time:

From Melbourne Excursion

I laid on the carpet with the mother and her three toddlers and stared at it longer. I don't care if you think I'm insane; that's just how I am.

From Melbourne Excursion

Ok, love it. Here's just a bunch of picture.

From Melbourne Excursion

That was fun. I also wanted to briefly see Victoria's Royal Botanic Gardens. I liked their clock.

From Melbourne Excursion

I tried many times to get pictures of the government house. Then I decided I didn't want to get deported. This one turned out ok.

From Melbourne Excursion

My legs were exhausted after walking all day. I took a picture of the exit since I was so happy to see it.

From Melbourne Excursion

I left the gardens and made my way over more bridges back to the city. Here's a nice picture of the city skyline across the Yarra River.

From Melbourne Excursion

I stopped at the Federation Bells, which were interesting. They were played by a man on a keyboard I think which hooked up to each bell. It was fascinating.

From Melbourne Excursion

I stopped and got some wedges with sweet chilli and sour cream and a glass of wine (Victoria apparently is known for its wine) when I returned to Federation Square, the area with the visitors center. I relaxed there and watched part of the comedy festival. Sadly, the acts themselves were not very funny. The master of ceremonies was entertaining. Here are pictures:
Amusing MC:

From Melbourne Excursion

Unamusing act one (it wasn't funny. she just made silly faces and twirled around.)

From Melbourne Excursion

Unamusing act two (this was just terrifying. they mimicked each other.)

From Melbourne Excursion

After that, I was done and I bolted out of there to another wing of the National Gallery of Victoria in Federation Square. This museum had the aboriginal and other Australian art. It was also amazing.

This piece is in response to one of Australia's past Prime Ministers refusing to issue a national apology for the country's treatment of the aboriginal people. The next (and current) Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, issued the statement later in 2008.

From Melbourne Excursion

This one was titled "Starry Night in Jimbala Country". The left side depicts an area where there are sharp stones for making jimbala, or spearheads. The right is the starry sky.

From Melbourne Excursion

The next wing was other Australian art. My favorite from it was the one depicting the Australian spirit in sports:

From Melbourne Excursion

Accurate enough.

I really enjoyed the next part of the exhibit, which was award winning Victorian high school art students work. It was pretty incredible.
My favorites:
Terrifying

From Melbourne Excursion

Phenomenal

From Melbourne Excursion

Yeah, that's painting. Crazy, right?

I left there, unsure of whether I was going to look for dinner or go back to the Queen Victoria Markets. I decided to look into the markets because they might close at 5pm. They closed at 3pm and it was 4pm, but I didn't know that, so I walked across town anyway. I took one of my favorite pictures of the trip down this side alley of commissioned street art:

From Melbourne Excursion

State funded street art. I love it.

Here's Australia throwing sculptures in the street again:

From Melbourne Excursion

Also, here's an Australian slang lesson for you. Heaps = many or much.
Like this one, "The Queen Victoria Market: It's heaps better than school!"

From Melbourne Excursion

Notice the hours. :)

Well, I sat down with my map trying to find a place to eat using the pamphlet I got at the tourist center, and realized there was nothing near Queen Victoria Markets, so I hopped on the free tourist bus (Yeah, Melbourne! way to go with this one!) and went back toward the center of town again. I didn't realize the bus came with a bit of a tour...I might have gotten on it sooner. Anyway, it dropped me off at The Docklands, which seems to be a new developing area around the city close to the water. It's also near some studios where they shoot the show "Neighbours" but I didn't find out if they had tours or anything. It was getting to be after 5pm, so I looked around at the little shops. My main desire was a travel blanket for the train since I was so cold on the way here. I found one reasonably priced. It was a "cashmere like blanket." I also saw this set of souvenir license plates with my name and my sisters right next to each other. I didn't touch it or anything.

From Melbourne Excursion

Daw.

The Docklands had a sweet ferris wheel, but I was not going to pay that much to go in it. Plus, I had free entry back into the observation towers, so I wanted to do that.

They had a set-up to honor famous people of Melbourne. Dame Edna has a statue!

From Melbourne Excursion

Kylie Minogue's didn't look real and John Farhnam's just looked silly. Oh and Dame Nellie Melba, who I think was who the toast was named after. Note: Looked it up on Wikipedia, she was a soprano, also from Melbourne.

I went and got dinner at this relatively fancy restaurant. This knife was next to me by the window and I thought it looked cool:

From Melbourne Excursion

Oh, yes and I had an excellent view.

From Melbourne Excursion

Here was my Chicken Involtini. Scrumptious.

From Melbourne Excursion

I left there and made my way back to the observation tower. I got a picture of my favorite Australian television station's (they show 30 Rock and Lost) Melbourne headquarters:

From Melbourne Excursion

I went up to the tower hoping for a gorgeous sunset picture. It was a little cloudy, but here's what I found:

From Melbourne Excursion

I left there and ran to the train station, picked up my ticket which I had booked that morning while bridge-walking, and sat down to leave. My legs were killing me. It's amazing what 11 hours of walking with your belongings on your back will do to you. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

These adventures in solitude never done...

2009-04-10T14:05:00.003+10:00

Song: "Adventures in Solitude" by The New Pornographers

April 3rd

I woke up this morning and decided I was going to go to Melbourne this weekend. It wasn't planned out exactly; I had bought a $300 unlimited train pass to Melbourne, Canberra, Broken Hill, and Brisbane from Sydney for the next three months the day before, and I woke up itching to try it out. So I booked a train.

Melbourne is in Victoria. I was so glad to be getting out of New South Wales. I've loved NSW so far, but I had to leave. Plus, I heard Melbourne was great. I contemplated asking people to come with me, but the tickets without the pass were a little steep ($180 round trip), so I decided to go it alone.

But first I had to go to class, then I came home. I also had decided that I needed a sweatshirt with things starting to get chilly around here, so I headed into the city to the store I wanted to buy it from.

My sweatshirt essentially looks like this, but as a sweatshirt:

The store was gorgeous and I loved the designs. I wanted to stay longer, but I decided instead to go run through the Museum of Contemporary Art. I saw a really cool exhibit on Yayoi Kusama. I briefly wanted to title this entry as "Modern Art Gallery" by Cheese on Bread, but I'll save that for the next time I visit since this trip was about a 10 minute walk through with periodic glances to the side. I took the train home and got back in time for my class at the gym. I'm that good.

After the gym, I went home, packed up my suitcase and new sweatshirt and headed down to Central Station in Sydney to catch my train. It was pretty exhilarating.

From Melbourne Excursion

I picked up my ticket, after a decently long talk with the guy in the booth about how he was understaffed and I should have come earlier and blah blah whatever until I got my pass and my ticket. We ended on good terms, mainly because he got to go home I think. He was fairly understanding about my situation (that I didn't bring my passport because the lady on the phone told me I didn't need it) and I got ready to go on the train.

I had decided that this weekend would be one of catching up on Aesthetics. I wanted to get material for my Aesthetics journal that I'm keeping. I also wanted to finish my readings. And of course, I wanted to see Melbourne. My train left Central Station at 8:40 pm and was due to arrive in Melbourne around 7 am the next day. I read for awhile, but then decided I needed to sleep. The train was freezing and I had a really hard time finding a comfortable position. Eventually, I became so exhausted that I was able to sleep for about 2 hours, then I woke up and slept two more hours, etc.

The train!

From Melbourne Excursion

I was doing a lot of pondering on the trip, like about how insane I was for doing it, how proud I was of myself for doing it, and how alone I was. I had my iPod on shuffle while attempting to sleep when "Adventures in Solitude" came on as either the first or second song. I teared up a bit. Thank you higher powers behind shuffle. After this, I constructed a beautiful playlist which had "Stars" by The Weepies which was another strong contender for the award of "title of this entry." The stars were gorgeous from the train.
Here's me, looking ridiculous in the bathroom of the train:

From Melbourne Excursion

Every day it comes to this, catch the things you might have missed...

2009-04-10T12:27:00.006+10:00

Song: "Catch the Sun" by Doves

April 2nd

Sweet Thursday. Optics class in the morning and then day to myself. Today I decided I was going to the place on the train map that sounded the silliest. The winner: Woy Woy, NSW.

I hopped a train with my backpack full of a large bottle of water and swim stuff and attempted to make my way there. I however had to stop for about 45 minutes in Berowra. Rather than sit and do nothing while waiting, I decided to explore Berowra. I have come to the conclusion that there is NOTHING to do in Berowra. I got a meat pie at a local bakery. I wanted Chicken Curry; they were out. I asked for a veggie pie, I got steak and mushroom. Whatever. As always, the meat pie was delicious and artery clogging.

I found a bathroom in this sketchy strip mall which was only sketchy because it looked so abandoned for 2pm on a Thursday. I went to investigate the quiche shop only to find they only sold whole quiches, which would have been a little strange to carry around all day.

Berowra, at its finest:

From Woy Woy and Ettalong Beach Adventure

So many things wrong with this:

From Woy Woy and Ettalong Beach Adventure

Finally, I caught the train to Woy Woy and arrived at Woy Woy station. I hadn't exactly planned what I wanted to do once I got there, so I attempted to find a map of where I was. I stumbled across their mall and went inside asking different retailers if they could point me toward a map or tourism center or something. I eventually was directed to the travel agency in the mall, where I found a woman who actually cared about helping me and printed me out a map of Woy Woy, Umina and Ettalong, all areas around where I was. I cannot thank her enough. She then told me to catch the bus from the station to Ettalong, where there was a beach and shops and such. I went back to the station and started my bus adventure.

I got on the bus with my handy dandy map and rode along, following the map to see where I was. I eventually got close to my destination, but assumed the bus might stop a little closer. I was so wrong. The bus kept going, and going, and it's next stop was across a river and past a mountain, and in my brain, I just kept whispering "shit, shit, shit, shit, shit" repeatedly to myself. I was kind of freaking out.

I asked a nice lady next to me how to get back to Ettalong and she looked at me worriedly and started to explain how to do it. We stopped the bus driver and she pointed me in the direction of the bus stand going toward Ettalong. She shouted at me "just flag down whatever bus stops there first." ok...

The view from the bus stop:

From Woy Woy and Ettalong Beach Adventure

So I sat at the bus stop, waiting for any bus to come by, and the first one to do so was a school bus full of primary school students. The driver first tried to tell me that this wasn't a public bus, but I think he saw my general distress and terror at being lost and caved and let me on. Then I rode the school bus for the first time in probably five years.

When I got on, every single kid on the bus just stared at me for about 20 minutes until they forgot I existed and played like they were before. The school buses in Australia are just normal public transportation buses, except they hold children and act as a jungle gym on wheels. The seven year old boys in front of me were passing the time by playing with crumpled pieces of construction paper and trying to throw them out the window. I enjoyed watching them.

From Woy Woy and Ettalong Beach Adventure

Eventually I got to the beach, by this time it was about 4pm, and most of the sun had set. I didn't care. Damnit, I got there and I was going to lay on the beach. I didn't really want to touch the water because it was pretty full of seaweed, but whatever. I enjoyed myself.

From Woy Woy and Ettalong Beach Adventure

It started getting chilly, so I packed up and caught the bus back from Ettalong to Woy Woy station. I hopped on the train back and while I was waiting some rebellious kids were jamming to "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend. I smiled.
Pretty sunset at the station:

From Woy Woy and Ettalong Beach Adventure

I spent the train ride home listening to the soothing sounds of Robert Sinnerbrink's Wednesday Lecture (my aesthetics class) like I do every Thursday and read a little more of my Aesthetics material.
View from the train (Subtitle: "Experiments in Sepia"):

From Woy Woy and Ettalong Beach Adventure

I thought my train was going to stop at Epping, where I could transfer back to Macquarie Uni, but this was untrue. The map just looks that way. I ended up riding all the way to Central in downtown Sydney. Blergh. I caught the yellow line train to Chatswood and made my way all the way around to Macquarie again. I took a very long round trip.

I got home later than I intended (**shakes fists at gods of public transportation**) but it didn't really matter. I didn't have anything to do the next day, so I called my friend Tara and inquired as to her plans for the evening when I got off at the station. We decided to go to Uni Bar for their bad taste party. I bought some $5 clothes at the Australian Wal-Mart (The Big W) and ran home to get clean and changed. The outfit was ridiculous. Here's me and Tara looking fine in our mismatched prints (me) and brown with black (Tara):

We had a blast there, which was surprising considering my last few times there weren't so fun. We met a bunch of people there, a few we already knew, and then a few we'd never met. One guy bought both Tara and me drinks which was pretty cool. I like freebies. He also then told us that his mother was psychic and that in Australia, plumbers make as much as doctors. I lost interest, but he seemed nice enough and Tara talked to him for awhile.

We ran into Greg, Janaki and Lindsey and a few others, and since I had been doing work for so long, it had been awhile since I'd seen them. It felt so good to get out and be social. Also, the bar there closes at some strange hour like 12:30am, or 11:30pm, either way, we left soon after that happened, which was probably a smooth move since I had class the next day. I came home, got changed and went to bed.

You're as cold as ice, willing to sacrifice our love...

2009-04-10T11:42:00.003+10:00

Song: "Cold As Ice" by Foreigner

April 1st

Happy April Fools Day! I will write this post as seriously as I can. Nothing terribly pranky happened today. Except for this on Australian Google and this on Expedia.

Class in the morning was uneventful and I went to the mall to get some groceries and things.

Then lab. Lab was fun. Shaheen and I got to play with dry ice! Good stuff. After lab, I went home, went to the gym, debated leaving the house and stayed home to watch Lost instead. Good plan.

Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where...

2009-04-10T11:34:00.000+10:00

Song: "The Only Living Boy in New York" by Simon and Garfunkel

March 31st

Today was very rainy. I associate "The Only Living Boy in New York" with rain. We had physics anyway, where I thought my assignment was due. The one I was working with Jay on all last night. The one with lots of errors. Turns out, although it said it was due today, our professor thought it was due tomorrow, so he gave us an extra day to work on it. Oh joy.

Then I came home in the rain, and there was lots of it, and got ready for aesthetics. Aesthetics was dreary. Too much rain. We talked about some interesting things though in class.

I got home and decided that despite all the work I had due (like the assignment, again) I was going to attend the possibly mandatory fire safety seminar, which ended up being not mandatory or very informative. I used this time to delete text messages from my phone and stare aimlessly into space. After notifying my friends that it was absolutely not mandatory and saving them an hour of their life, I ate my free sausage and bolted out of there. I also came out of the experience hating fire drills and skipped the one we were having out of vengeance for the lost hour of my life. I instead went to the library and read some Hegel and glanced back at my physics assignment. Good times. Sean came with me, but he wasn't as angry about the fire drill as I was.

I finished up my work and went to bed.

I like it, I'm not gonna crack, I miss you, I'm not gonna crack...

2009-04-07T00:24:00.002+10:00

Song: "Lithium" covered by The Polyphonic Spree (originally by Nirvana)

March 30th

Lab report day. I spent all morning working on my optics lab for the tunable diode laser lab where we were working on analyzing the spectrum of a lithium crystal.

Went to class, had lecture, finished lab, printed it out.

Went to lab, messed around with a Nd:YAG laser. Rowan and I had to stay an extra half hour to finish the experiment. No fun.

What was fun was the ridiculous poster about safety glasses in the lab.

From Shots around Macquarie

The rest of the day was pretty blah, went to gym, came home, slept. I had an assignment due for physics tomorrow, so I worked on it with my friend Jay until some awfully late hour. We also found some errors in the assignment, but did it the best we could.

Well the landslide will bring it down...

2009-04-05T20:55:00.000+10:00

Song: "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac (no cover versions accepted)

March 29th

Today, Hilde and I decided that we would go on our first bushwalk through the university's bushwalking club. What is bushwalking you ask? Well maybe I should tell you what the bush is.

The Bush, according to Wikipedia's definition: A term that describes any wooded area, generally where eucalypts are present. Honestly, I'm not sure what eucalypts look like, but I can normally smell them.

So let's do some song translation:
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, (Awesome bird (see zoo entry) sits in eucalyptus tree)
Merry, merry king of the bush is he, (King of the forest)
Laugh, Kookaburra, Laugh, Kookaburra, (Laugh, awesome bird, laugh)
Gay your life must be. (Your life is happy.)

Congratulations! You now know some of the meaning behind an Australian song for kids.

Anyway, to go on the bushwalk we had to be at the bus station by the train at 7:30am. After last night's adventures, this was difficult, but we made it.

We met our trip leader, Matt, who is insane. In a good way though, I guess. We made it to Katoomba, which is the train stop closest to the Three Sisters section of the Blue Mountains where we were going to be walking. We hopped on a bus and went to Scenic World. I enjoyed this title.

Once we got there, we checked when the last railway from the bottom of the hills was so we wouldn't miss it and have to climb all the stairs. This was very useful information. For the first part of the walk, I was really confused. I thought we would be bushwalking, like in the bush. We were hiking up a road. We even stopped at the scenic lookouts along the road.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

The Blue Mountains look blue if you're far enough away from them.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

(I think this is a eucalyptus tree.)

I took much better pictures of the Three Sisters (a rock formation with an aboriginal history) later so I'll just put those up later. One of the lookout points was called Hilda's Point. Hilde was excited about this. Here's Hilde on the lookout at Hilda's point. (Pronounced the same, but Hilda is the more German spelling.)

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

We finally made it to the Golden Stairs, which actually was in the bush. Yay!

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

We went to all the places on this sign. It was quite a hike.
Hilde walking in front of me:

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

The Golden Stairs were a lot longer than this (all the way down the mountain) but here's a section:

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Going down.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Big cliffs, tiny Hilde.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Giant termite mound

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

After the Golden Staircase we made our way to the Ruined Castle climb. It was crazy steep.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Here's the hole we climbed through to get to the top. I did not think I would make it, but I did.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

This part of the trip was totally worth it. It also was where we ate lunch where I had the best sandwich of my life, only because I had worked so hard to get it. I went to the top of the "castle," which the Germans noted was definitely not a real castle, and found this little guy on the way. I think this lizard was about 4 inches long.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

This bird also stared at me while I walked up.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

The view from the top was phenomenal.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Right below the tallest point, sneaker shot:

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

I switched rocks halfway.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

By the time I got to the second rock, I was really tired. I actually took a little nap on the rock.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

We finally dismounted from the castle and made our way to the foot of the golden staircase again and then back down a path we hadn't traveled before through the Landslide area. Apparently, there had been a landslide which hit the mountains in this area awhile back throwing the rocks at the bottom into a configuration that was hard to walk through. The cliffs were gorgeous. I'm beginning to think I have a thing for cliffs.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

From below the cliffs we could also see where we had walked earlier in the day at Ruined Castle. Yeah, wayyyyyy over there in the middle of the right hand side. I felt pretty proud of myself.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Here's a picture of Matt (far right) our fearless trip leader (not tour guide, as he would mention many times). Matt liked to tell us stories of things that aren't real like Drop Bears, a terrible creature that looks just like a koala but jumps down from trees and kills people. It is fictional, very very fictional and despite us knowing that, it did not stop Matt from retelling us of the perils of any encounter with a drop bear. Matt also knew a lot about D.C. from playing the video game Fallout 3. Like, he knew the entire layout of the National Mall essentially. This was eerie, but it was fun to test my memory of the city against his Fallout 3 knowledge. I missed D.C. a lot then.

Also, the Blue Mountains have a lot of coal in them but it can't be dug up any longer because it's a National Park. There was some coal in our trail.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Ok, back to the Three Sisters. My first pictures were too sunny and didn't turn out well. I think this one's my favorite:

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

We luckily did not miss the last railway up to the top, and it was totally worth the $10 to ride up the hill instead of having to climb the stairs. Matt wouldn't stop telling us that this was the steepest railway in the world. He wasn't joking.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Don't leave your infants loose, people.
Hilde on the rail:

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

It was incredibly steep.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

When we finally left scenic world, we ended up missing the train back to Sydney by about 5 minutes, so we had to wait another hour. Hilde and I decided to go get some food. We went to a little Greek place and had tzatziki and spanakopita. Delicious.
We boarded the train with the rest of the crew in Katoomba. I liked their signs.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Why this sign is in feet instead of meters, I may never know.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

We caught the train and rode for 2 hours or so and through a series of misguided suggestions, made it home to Macquarie. Essentially, Matt told us to catch a bus in Paramatta and it would take us to the mall near campus. We missed the last bus so we had to get back on the train and get to campus that way. Then when we got to Epping station, we missed the last train to campus, and luckily, oh so luckily, we caught a bus from Epping back to uni.
We initially thought the bus wasn't in service, but we were hopeful it would turn into the bus we wanted. The driver was laughing a little at us as he turned the sign on.

From Blue Mountains Bushwalk

Public transportation home was exhausting, especially considering we were already incredibly exhausted, but we made it home, and I went straight to sleep, despite having a lab report due the next day.

On the back of a hurricane that started turning when you were young...

2009-04-05T17:18:00.002+10:00

Song: "When You Were Young"

March 28th

Today I went to Australia's V Festival, which is essentially the exact same thing as the Virgin Festival in the United States (which I went to for the first time this past summer).

Hilde, Vilde, Amy and I left around noon to get to the festival. We met up with Vilde's friend from Norway and then got to the gates around 2pm. When we got there, the old schedule was being handed out as the official schedule, so I ran over to where I thought I had missed 45 minutes of Jenny Lewis's concert. I had not. Instead, I had missed 5 minutes of Duffy's concert. I stayed for that show which was pretty amazing. Duffy had a lot of good quips in between her songs and I really need more of her music. She also sang with the megaphone a few times.

From V Festival

After Duffy, I went and explored the merchandise table and got a little food before the Elbow concert.

From V Festival

Elbow was also great, but I left their show a little early to get to the actual Jenny Lewis concert across the park. True, I really like Jenny Lewis's non-solo work (Rilo Kiley, The Postal Service background vocals...) better than her actual solo work, but I still knew most of the songs and really enjoyed myself there. Her boyfriend Johnathan Rice, famous in his own right according to me, was also on stage with her.

From V Festival

After that, I went to what I thought was the M83 show, but the festival had YET AGAIN changed the schedule. Grrr... I'm sure there was a reason for it all, but it was incredibly frustrating. I found the M83 show and the whole 15 minutes I got to see of it was really good.

From V Festival

I then grabbed food. I decided to get something to eat next to a concert so I could hear something while I was in line (or in the queue as Australians would say). The Italian flatbread station looked good, but its line went epically slower than any other line. About halfway through I contemplated switching lines, but I was too stubborn. I had been in that line so long, I was attached to it. The concert I was next to was Razorlight, which I enjoyed from the side.

After that, I experimented with The Kills show and I didn't enjoy it very much, so I left and got something to drink in anticipation for the Kaiser Chiefs show. I then got my concert shirt between stopping for hydration and Kaiser Chiefs.

From V Festival

I didn't stay there very long because I was too excited about going to the Snow Patrol show but it was cool while I stayed.

Snow Patrol was phenomenal. Gary Lightbody is one of my favorite singers and was incredibly entertaining to watch, especially when he forgot his words and just giggled.

From V Festival

He also stopped mid-song to tell these guys behind me that they looked way too muscular to be at this show and they definitely hadn't been drinking enough beer at the pub. He then took off his shirt and told us that next time he comes back to Sydney he's going to have a six-pack.

Why yes! I did get pictures.

From V Festival

It was also Earth Hour at 8.30 pm so Gary was obliged by the festival to tell us about how we should be responsible with energy, etc. He pretty much just said, "hey, if I tell you to do this, I'm a major hypocrite as a musician who uses tons of this energy at every show, so go read about it on the internet instead." He then sang "Run" in the dark (with a flashlight on him) until halfway through when the lights lit up (at "light up, light up as if you have choice"). It was phenomenal.

From V Festival

I have most of it on video but due to many problems with my computer, I can't get it to the internet just yet. I think it might be coming.
UPDATE: It has arrived!

After Snow Patrol wrapped up, the crowd made its way to see The Killers, who were the official headlining act of the festival, and unlike the festival at home, it didn't completely conflict with the other top acts (um, like when Jack Johnson played in the exact middle of the Foo Fighters set last summer. Uncool American Virgin Fest, uncool.) I didn't miss too much of The Killers act, and I'm glad I didn't because they put on quite a show, complete with fireworks and fake palm trees! (They might have been real palm trees, I wasn't close enough to see.)

From V Festival

After the show, Vilde, Hilde, and co. left to get home. We left out the wrong gate and then had to pay for a bus instead of catching the free one, but whatever. It actually took us to Circular Quay, which is where we wanted to go anyway.

We were going to meet up with a group of friends down at The Rocks. On the way, I ran into Laura and Brooke, two other UMD girls on the street as we got off the bus, and then into Cam and Maeve as we got closer to The Rocks. Our utter exhaustion got to us before we made it all the way and we ended up going to McDonald's instead. Leaving McDonald's we ran into a few more people we knew from Macquarie. We then caught the bus and went home.

Go on, pull up, I know it's tough...

2009-03-31T22:42:00.001+11:00

Song: "Raise the Dead" by Phantom Planet

March 27th

Note: I specifically chose this song for the title because while I was writing my lab report Friday morning I was thinking of the song "Do The Panic" also by Phantom Planet on the same album, but decided that "doing the panic" was not helpful for lab report writing. This song got me pumped for lab report writing.

Today I believe was the day when Alex, our optics lecturer, couldn't make it to class, and so we instead got to tour one of the optics labs on campus. It was neat and I enjoyed it.

Today's entry is notably boring. I finished the lab report and turned it in at 2pm, two hours before it was due because I was sick of looking at it. Shaheen's was much nicer and prettier than mine, but by today, I didn't have enough time to care. "Noise" sounds like such a simple lab report by the title, but it was incredibly difficult. Boo.

Anyway, I finally finished up, took a nap, went to the gym and ran into Vilde and Amy in class. They were both going to the V Festival tomorrow so we all figured out when we were leaving. I went home and did nothing all night in preparation for my big day at V Fest Saturday. Most of my roommates went to surf camp for the weekend, so Dimitra and I had the house to ourselves. She invited me out for drinks, but I needed to catch up on some serious sleep.

All is fleeting; yeah, but all is good...

2009-03-31T22:28:00.000+11:00

Song: "Give A Little Love" by Noah and the Whale

March 26th

Usually I love Thursdays. This is different on Thursdays with lab reports due the next day.

I went to optics, and then came home and worked on my lab report from 2pm until some ungodly hour on Friday.

I've also decided that my roommates are amazing. They were going to have people over to hang out but they moved somewhere else instead. Also, Sean and Andy, my awesome roommates, and Bobby, who is also awesome, were all incredibly supportive of me while I was stressing out over the lab report. Thanks guys; I needed that.

This was sadly all of today.

Life just passing, flash right through me...

2009-03-31T18:36:00.004+11:00

Song: "Nothing Ever Happened" by Deerhunter

March 25th

Class happened. Then, instead of weekly grocery shopping, I went to the science computer lab to get things done. And by "get things done" I mean, look into spring break.

I then made my way to the optics seminar. It was really fun. The speaker was from the University of Sydney and spoke on the environmental impact of the internet and how optics can, in theory, make this impact smaller. It was an interesting talk. There was also some delicious pizza. Most everything had pineapple and chicken on it, which I love, and there was that delicious passion fruit soda. I met one of the postgrads there and we talked about his research and I tried to tell him all I could remember about my optics experience (yeah, the three weeks of it I had). It was interesting trying to hold my own in comprehending what was going on. This is the one of the parts I enjoy about physics. Also, the guy who has been convincing us to go to this for weeks now didn't know I was American, so that was kind of cool. Either I say my name in a non-accented way, or I'm blending in well.

After that, I had some spare time until physics lab, where Shaheen and I took on the rest of the semi-conductor experiment. We get to play with dry ice next week! Shaheen was incredibly sleep-deprived from all the work she was doing this week, which made me feel bad about how little I had started on our draft lab report that was due Friday. Shaheen + sleep-deprived = incredibly entertaining. Also, we found out from Gina that we had to have copies of our lab book turned in with the lab. The lab book that Ewa had told us we needed to redo. Upon hearing this information, I was in a state of panic to say the least, but I made up my mind that I was way past panicking and needed to just get stuff done.

Knowing my "tendencies" when it comes to doing assignments, I had decided earlier in the week that I wasn't going to go on the 70's Love Boat cruise this evening with everyone else I know in The Village and instead that I was going to stay home and get stuff done. I hate making decisions like this, but I knew I had to. When I got home, I productively procrastinated the lab report due Friday by typing up some of the semi-conductor lab data from this week for Shaheen. (We put all the data in my book instead of copying it twice during the actual lab; we needed as many hands as possible.)

I worked on the lab, but not as much as I probably should have. And then I watched Lost (the episode from Feb. 25th in the states). I only missed one episode total while I was gone, which worked out better than I expected.

Overexposed, commercialized, handle me with care...

2009-03-31T18:20:00.001+11:00

Song: "Handle with Care" by Traveling Wilburys

March 24th

This morning was physics. I really enjoy this class for some reason. I made it to class and we talked more about electric fields and magnetic fields. Then we had tutorial, which I really enjoy because it's just doing problems without the stress of having to get them correct (although it feels really good when you do).

After class, I needed to hit up the grocery store. Typically I go on Wednesday with Justin, but I was intending on attending an optics seminar smack in the middle of my break Wednesday, so I shifted to Tuesday instead. On the way over, I got some free energy drink juice. I enjoyed their label:

From Shots around Macquarie

"Drinking this smashes fatigue in the guts so you can rock out."

I also remembered to bring some coupons I had to the center and use them before they expired. For lunch, I got this Chicken Laska dish which reminded me of the Vietnamese phở I've eaten at home, except it was crazy spicy. It's a noodle soup, with chicken, that is incredibly spicy and delicious. I have no idea how I ever finished a bowl of soup this large at home; even the smalls are massive. The reason I got the dish was because it came with a free drink for my coupon. My free drink: fruit cocktail with shaved ice. It sounded much more appetizing when I ordered it. Anyway, I couldn't physically eat it all so I took a picture of my leftovers.

From Shots around Macquarie

I got my shopping done and trekked home. Then on to philosophy where we spent an interesting hour talking about "the sublime" and another interesting hour talking about "purposiveness without purpose." After that, I had a desire to find our campus radio station, so I did. I peeked in and didn't stay. I saw this pretty flower though in the courtyard.

From Shots around Macquarie

I made my way back home where no one was doing anything particularly interesting. I also met up with the girls I'm going on spring (ahem, autumn) break with to plan our trip. I brought my cool maps.

We gotta live on science alone...

2009-03-27T19:12:00.001+11:00

Song: "I Am A Scientist" by The Dandy Warhols

March 23rd

Lab day. Turned in lab on time, made it to optics on time, did another lab which is due in a week. Whee! While procrastinating, I looked at cars I want to buy when I get home, making no particular decision.

Everything went horribly wrong in our lab today, to the point that after calling over all three of our instructors, we still couldn't get it to work. We were given data to do calculations with. Science!

Quote(s) of the day (from lab):

"There's something really fundamentally dumb going wrong." - Instructor

"It should be going ballistic." - Instructor

"There's something deep and fundamentally wrong with it today." - Instructor

Rowan and I were very pleased that it wasn't our fault.

After lab, I came home and found the apartment inspector lady in our place. She said essentially that we had at least tried to keep the place clean and she noticed that I mopped the floor in my bathroom, so I was happy about that. I napped for a bit and then went to the gym, watched Scrubs on the treadmill and then came back to my apartment.