On the Bottom Half

A full weekend.

What a fascinating modern age we live in…

This past weekend was the Australia Day long weekend. And I’d like to think that it was served out pretty well. First of all, my wonder at what happens in this age continues ceaselessly… in three short days, I’ve travelled by automobiles, both standard and automatic, airplanes, boats, and trains. All four modes of modern transportation in as little as 72 hours! Not to mention bicycles and feet!

It started off on Friday night when many gathered at the home of an Argentinian student from uni for his birthday bbq down by the sea. The Australian Open tennis tournament was in semi-finals at the time as well, so coupled with the Argentinian sides of cow and pig available for consumption, eye candy of the sporting variety was on the TV. There was alcohol, as there always seems to be alcohol where humans gather in sufficient numbers of legal age and constitution. The evening went late, so I stayed over at a friend’s place. On Saturday, a couple of episodes of Firefly went down nicely in the morning, then two of us departed for the Far Side of the City, going so far as to cross The Bridge, whence come dragons and wither go no sane and courageous knights.

That is to say, we went to the airport in Sunbury for a fly. After a glorious hour of Rotax-propelled Texan-licious play in the approaching frontal turbulence, in which we were at 4000’ above sea level, we turned around Mt Macedon and made a break for home. (Picture is the FlySynthesis Storch I flew in December; we were in the Texan this time). Stopping for a refuel of Powerade in town, we fought the Northron dragons on the freeway back to my friend’s place, ate potato cakes, dim sims, and chips while watching Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 13.


On Sunday, we zoomed off down the Mornington Peninsula in the direction of Portsea for a SCUBA dive outside The Rip at a place called Castle Reef. Andy, Adele, Pat, Yusen, and I, all of Monash, partially filled a dive boat and briefly sank to 17 metres looking for fish and other wet beasts. The water is very nice now at 23 degrees. After the dive, and a crash through some massive waves in The Rip, we were back in Portsea for lunch, which was firther indulgence in transfatty goodness with fish and chips. Following lunch, we loaded up the gear and went to a nearby pier for a shore dive. This dive got spectacular near the end with the graceful glidings of a bull ray, probably around a metre in diameter, swimming around underneath us. There were decorator crabs, cleaner crabs (think the French cleaning crab in Finding Nemo), porcupine fish, sea horses, and hermit crabs aplenty. The cleaner crabs are most fun to play with if you are calm enough. They approach anything living that sits still enough and pick off any danging bits of skin on your hands/nails… kind of weird but definitely unique.

The dinner invite for the evening came by text message in the early part of the day, so Adele and Luke (her fiance) and I went to her parent’s place for roast chicken with smashingly good carrots, pumpkin, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings (!), and ice cream. Yum! The tennis final was on, so we started watching that, but left to go home about halfway through the match.

After some more Firefly this morning, I took the train back to my place and I’m now on the way to Sunbury to make some more Nutella somethings with Bruce and Helen before I head off to Canberra on Wednesday for a 10 day Isotope Chemistry course.

What a weekend!

posted by Kyle @ 23:59