Limits.
Riddle me this: the on-campus speed limit at Monash University is everywhere 40 km/h. However, every few hundred feet, there are speed humps that are set for 20 km/h. Does this make any more sense to you guys? I may not be a traffic engineer, but I swear these decisions are made by committee.
In other news, I spent the better part of yesterday morning setting up our very own little WiFi hotspot in the townhouse complex. We've finally got a broadband connection and thanks to some previous residents, a wireless router as well. Now I know a little about routers and
network administration. Who knew that was how your internet connection worked when through a router?
Computer is supposed to come today. I'm not getting my hopes up.
I've been listening to
NOVA 100 in the mornings during the commute. The hosts are Hughesy, Kate and Dave. Funny, but often mean, really. I've found that a lot of public humour in Australia (stuff on T.V./radio, etc.) is kinda mean-spirited and often I'm cringing at someone's dig, rather than laughing because it's more cruel than funny. Those of you who know what I laugh at will find this rather disturbing. Subtley, its different than humour at home. Helen was saying that prominent in public Aussie-ness is 'Tall Poppy Syndrome' where the best are cut down because they are better than the rest. We have this too, but I get the feeling at home that its a little more lighthearted, whereas here I'll often get the feeling that its really meant. Not that this reflects on the real people of Australia, who, of course, are much more friendly than you'll ever expect ;-)
A radio example: Kate was ragging on Hughesy yesterday morning because he didn't buy his girlfriend a present for their fourth anniversary. Hughesy said they had a committee decision between the two of them that there wouldn't be any presents this year. They went out for dinner and an IMAX instead and that was it. Kate went on that even when your girl says no presents and the statement is mutual between the two of you, you should still buy her a present anyway. Hughesy said that he didn't want to cause her embarassment by getting her something when she wouldn't have anything for him. Kate says doesn't matter, get her something anyway. They continue on like this and start TAKING CALLS about whether or not Hughesy should have gotten his girlfriend a present. Then, they actually get Hughesy's girl on the line and asked her, on air, what she thinks about her not getting a present. Kate tries to push on her that Hughesy's a dunce boyfriend for not buying her a present, while Hughesy's girl just flat out refuses to agree with Kate. 'He's not exactly a romantic,' Hughesy's girl says, 'but you can't have it all.' Not in so many words, but Kate says: 'Hughesy, you're a bad boyfriend. I think every girl should always get a present on anniversary days, even when the two of you have had a personal and private conversation agreeing there's not going to be presents this time.' Man, I wouldn't want to be on the defensive sharing intimate relationship details on-air, nor would I want to publically discuss my shortcomings as a boyfriend. (Unless, of course, I were a billionaire and such things were unavoidable.) Kudos to Hughesy and girlfriend for standing up to the assault.
Have a listen:
NOVA 100.3. Don't know what will be on when you get to it. It's kind of an everything radio station, bending toward Top 40 in the mornings.
Hmmm, just an observation of public life.
Aussie English
I'll take a look at the bike! It's funny you should find something like that. One of the managers on the Solar Car Team last year actually used an in-hub electric motor on the front wheel of his bike and he kept the many pounds of batteries stuffed in his backpack. Don't think he put a solar panel on it, though.
Apparently Australian women 'fall' pregrant, they don't 'get' pregnant. I heard some advertisement for a mouth swab, naturopathy thingy to try and chart a women's ovulation cycle. Can you believe they put that on the radio? Oh, and 'you can use it until you get the good news'.
Haven't got my computer yet - pictures are up when it arrives.
TTYL
Busrant update: I did a little bit of napkin math this afternoon. All up travelling on the bus yesterday (including waiting for, sitting on, and walking to/from) took 165 minutes of my day. Today, I drove the car. By the time I get back to the house tonight, I will have spent about 75 minutes, all up, making the same trip by car.
Busrant
Forgive me a rant, if you will:
I hate everything about travelling by bus. Waiting for it, sitting in it, stopping every 100 feet for someone else to get on, waiting in traffic in it, freezing my extremities in it, paying for it. It is a waste of life to travel by metro bus here. You have to go by their schedule, hoping during which time the bus is neither early nor late. The LAST bus to leave the university to Tecoma is 1810 on weekdays and there's no service at all on Sundays. Aaaaugh!!
Today, I elected to be environmentally sound and travelled a 30 minute car trip by bus from Andy's house in Tecoma. I got on the bus at 0723; I've just arrived at the university and its 0840. It cost me $8.20. That's about 30 km, probably 112 km following the bus route. Aughh! I ran into my officemate coming up the stairs and he said you could read some journal papers in that time; I said that you could research for and write one. All you'd need would be a couple of seats in the back to set up the experimental gear. By the time you got to the university, the data would be analysed and you'd be revising the first draft.
I now fully understand the convenience of The Car. Environmental considerations aside: Hail, Lord! The personal automobile. Public bus transportation in metropolitan Melbourne is hideous. Utterly frustratingly ridiculous. Aaaaaugh!
Thanks!
Idiot-less Roads
Andy took off to Papua New Guinea yesterday morning, so I'm now in charge of his cat and therefore his house. Bonus: his car is mine to use! Haven't driven anything in 5 months, but everything turned out okay. Just a couple of small fender benders and one injury accident... Just kidding. I didn't even make for the right hand side of the road... Can't get used to driving on the right hand side of the car though. In a dramatic twist, there was an utter lack of idiots on the road!!! There we were, thousands of mice all migrating toward the city centre and the traffic was going at or very near the speed limit, no one cut me off - it was amazing!
Did you know that there are houses made without central heating?!? Andy's place doesn't have it! There's a built in heater unit thing in the dining room that blows air into that room, but the rest has to be done with fire places. Completely ridonculous. It is nice to have a cat though. Her name's Meg and she likes attention, in fact demands attention.
Recent mail deliveries: Thanks for the post cards, you two. I laughed and laughed... There's something funny no matter how you read 'The World's Largest Ukrainian Sausage' in Vegreville.
Pretty plain weekend. I went into town to shop for a really expensive digital camera for Andy's research group. They want something for $1400 - $1500, but I can't find a non-SLR camera that fits all the other necessary criteria for anything more than $899. I like it when you can choose between electronics saying: 'too cheap, too cheap. too cheap'. Then I cruised to Melbourne Central to check out the Shot Tower Museum - they built the mall around a Heritage Listed shot tower building because you can't legally do anything to heritage buildings. Rather than leave such prime real estate, they made the inside into a couple of levels of shops, enclosed it in a huge glass pyramid and built the rest of the mall around it. They maintained a section of the tower for a museum and you can read about Melbourne history and how the shot tower worked.
It goes a little something like this: at the top of the tower, lead is melted and ladled onto a fine grate that stands above the central axis of the tower. The lead flows through the small openings in the grate and atomises, much like fuel does when sprayed through an injector. As the lead now falls the height of the tower, the very small droplets coalesce into somewhat larger ones and become spherical because they are essentially experiencing microgravity as astronauts do in space. Any newtonian fluid in microgravity/no gravity does this (correct me if I'm wrong, please) for reasons I won't discuss here. The free fall also cools the lead droplets, which are then cooled further when they land in a water trough at the base of the tower. The cool water firmly solidifies the now spherical shot pellets and prevents any flattening. Someone standing near this carnage then shovels the shot out onto a tilted tray. Properly shaped shot pellets roll straight down the tray, while misshapen ones roll off one side or another; ones that are not at all spherical simply don't roll, but slide into a specially cut slat near the base of the tray to be taken out of the production line. They are remelted with another batch later.
They then roll the useful shot over sizing grates and pack them into bags for shipping. Cool huh?
After all that, I went to Federation Square and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and watched some of their short films in the Memory Grid until close.
There are links to these places in previous posts. I'm trying to acclimatise to a Mac and the one I'm using right now is incompatible with Blogger so I don't have the link-making options that I have otherwise.
Miss you all.
Ho Hum A Reader's Bum
The first week of phd candidature has nearly rolled to a close and I find myself with sore eyes and a flatter bum. My computer, ordered and paid for by Monash and my very generous supervisor hasn't arrived yet, but I'm assured that it should be here next week or the week after; maybe the week after that. It's going to be a
MacBook Pro 17" (upgraded to 2.16 GHz Core Duo, 120 GB hard drive, and 2 GB of ram). I know, I know - it's a Mac... My supervisor uses one though, so for me to stay true to my PC roots, he'd need to buy the most expensive bits of software new to go into a PC. I thought I'd 'compromise', get a really powerful (but not yet proven) Mac, and emulate any PC stuff on VirtualPC or Boot Camp - both are Apple programs that allow Windows XP to run on a Mac.
The jury's out for a little while...
The highlight of the week had to be
Lakme, an opera put on by
Opera Australia. If you go one hour before the performance, you can get student rush tickets that are $37 for A Reserve, which have a normal price of $140! It was transcendant! Some songs gave you goose bumps, they were so pretty. I'd reccommend it, but I think you have to have a desire to go first, then you can accept someone's encouragement. There's reading involved, though, if it's sung in anything but english. However, they're called 'surtitles' instead of 'subtitles' - they appear on a board above the stage.
The adventure of the night was losing my ticket. I put it in the front cover of the program and it slipped out at some point minutes before curtain... Of course. I rushed around looking lost and concerned and confused, then went to the box office and they said that my ticket had been returned to the Supervisor's Office. I found an usher, waited while she sorted through hundreds of last minute arrivees, got my ticket and shot through the door with minutes to spare! Cool. I felt kind of silly in the dressed up crowd with my nice black dress pants, black short sleeved dress shirt and Merrell hiking shoes, but the tickets are for 'poor', underfunded students, right? Now about that refresher flight next week...
Anyway, it's just school like it's always been, except for the lack of classes. I've already been asked to 'demonstrate' in a first year lab. Apparently most grad students do those kinds of things - the extra cash can only help my flying. Ah well, I'm treating it like a contract job and that seems the best way to fit it into the 'life-arc' that I'm desperately trying to figure out. I've contacted the Aussie Defence Force about flying here and there's real anecdotal evidence that you can have unperfect vision, yet still be allowed to fly. More on that as it happens.
My cereal has taken an interesting swing - they have this wonderful granola stuff here that resembles some granola we got during the solar car race from the Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S: Vanilla Almond Granola Clusters. The Aussie stuff may be made by a company called 'Sanitarium', but if it tastes anything like what we had in Texas - it'll be the sex of breakfast cereals. I have to wait until I get through the open stuff first, though. More on that later.
Well how about that, I go from pictures of an alpine landscape in central Tasmania to discussing qualities of breakfast cereals, all in one blog! Life takes interesting turns.
R-man: by the way, I just got your card in the mailbox this morning on my way to work! Thanks buddy - it really made my day!
Doldrums.
Compared to the last several months, these past few weeks have been doldrums.
I do have a real and permanent address now and those of you who I haven't phoned yet will have it shortly. Just takes time, you see...
After the underwear escapade, I've really just hung out. Biding my time even, one could say. I took a bike ride to Moorabin airport to check out what needs to be done to fly here. The flying school recommends that I get the three month special flying permit that's available to Canadians, then just go ahead and do the flight test after that to get my Australian license! Cool! However, first I need to get a red pass/security screening from the government, which might take a couple of months. Ridiculous. You need a red pass to access the airside at ALL airports in Australia! Even a grass strip! So, I'm going to wait until I get paid, then pay the $100+ to do the screening, then start flying again!!!
Earlier this week I went to
Chadstone Shopping Centre and bought just a couple articles of clothing because it costs more than my designer-fashion-label-filled closet is worth to ship it here, even by sea! I've been into the city a few times, with the most recent being two days ago. I went to the Australian Defense Force Recruiters to ask some important questions about which y'all have guessed already. However, rather than getting a deserted centre as one oft finds in the Harry Hayes Building in Calgary, there were about 30 or 40 people all hanging out, very unmilitarily I might add, what with their legs dangling above them like that.
But seriously folks, I didn't get to the front desk, so I took a cool 'How to become an airforce officer in 5 easy steps' pamphlet. If only it were easy... Actually, being easy would take away from it. Anyway, I ended up doing my questioning from the telephone and was redirected to a website and phone number for the head office chaps in Canberra and am pursuing that now. It sounds like their vision requirements aren't as stringent as Canada, but more on that when I find it out for sure.
After that, I went through the city to the Philatelic Museum at the Post Office, but the new exhibit wasn't quite ready yet. Then I caught a tram to the
Shrine of Remembrance and spent the rest of the day there. It's a wonderful forces museum and Shrine paying homage to the fallen especially from WWI & WWII, but also for every conflict serviced by soldiers from Australia since the Boer War. It was a good day.
The past few days I've sat about reading my book and trying to prepare myself for yet more schooling... I bought a keyed door handle for my room and a file box, etc., etc. Today I've booked my bike in to get its brake pads replaced and the shifting system serviced. I've tried a bunch to adjust it myself, but I think it needs the hands an experienced bikesman.
Wah-hoo, huh? Loved hearing about the Seattle trip, boy that would have been awesome! Can't wait to take a trip on the 787!! Go Boeing!
The outlook for the next couple of days: Aussie Rules Football game tomorrow night, Bruce and Helen's for dinner on Saturday, start school on Monday. Actually, I'm going to call it 'work' because I want to view it more like a job than going back to school.
A palace all my own.
So I'm moved in now and have spent dollars on some of the gear required to run a house. Most important, however, is the fact that I bought enough socks and underwear to go a week without having to wash either. (No out-of-context quotes from that one... Ed...) Who knew underwear was so bloody expensive?
Oh, for the benefit of my Aussie readership: the word 'thong' to any North American means a racy article of women's underwear. 'Flip-flop' would be the North American word for an Aussie 'thong'. Although, 'flip-flop' would probably well describe a woman wearing a 'thong' on a Canadian beach. Gotcha Sarah ;-)
That was a test.
Other than that, I've been reading a book called 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant'. Its quite long so I haven't got through very much of it. Last Friday I was out for the traditional end-of-week beer with the academic crowd from the School of Geoscience. I've been burning eucalyptus essential oil to give my room a unique Aussie scent. Oh a suggestion to anyone travelling to Aus: if you want to get some eucalyptus oil, go to a supermarket and find the medicinals aisle. $5 for 250 mL instead of $5 for 50 mL.
Good to hear from you all, I miss everyone...
