Parents Visit 3/3 - Great Ocean Road

I'll keep this post short since the visit was a while ago (November 12th?) and I have a bunch of posts coming up about my recent expedition: the Great Ocean Walk.  In fact, it was so long ago that I can't really remember anything notable that happened.  It took well over three hours to get to the road—way longer than I envisioned—as we started at the 12 Apostles and worked our way back along the coast.  The day was overcast but the crowds still turned up.

Parents and Apostles.

We made it to Apollo Bay at dinnertime and stopped to eat at Cafe 153.  As I recall the maître d’ vaguely resembled Michael Caine.  My mom and I both had the fish special—perhaps it was grouper—which was fresh and simple.  To drink I had a local microbrew that used rainwater from the region.

A good beer, as far as I can remember.

After the sun set on our way back we decided to cut inland thinking the road would be less windy and shorter, but for the first 50 km it was probably worse.  We eventually made it back to the city pretty late.

I just got back from the 6-day Great Ocean Walk, so over the next week I will post my journal entries from each day along with some of the photos I took (there are over 400 but I’ve already selected the 114 best...).  For the rest of my time here in Australia my internet access will probably be spotty so bear with me if there are long breaks between posts.

Parents Visit Part 2/3

Now that my exams are over I have ample free time to produce the posts about my parents’ visit.  First, though, a note about the exams here.  Most of them are in the 19th century Royal Exhibition Building, about 15 minutes from the campus.  It’s a huge, ornate building that has basically one gigantic room inside.  Lined up in endless rows are thousands and thousands of desks and there are multiple exams going on in both the mornings and afternoons.

Both times I walked to the building for an exam I started out with one person next to me.  At every stoplight, however, we joined up with more and more people as we got closer to the REB.  About one block from the building I was in a group about 50 deep and more students joined until it turned into a steady stream entering the building.  It was kind of like the beginning of the Drew Carey show, but without the singing or dancing. Or happiness.

But exams are over now and I have time to write about the Yarra Valley Wine Country.  It was my third vineyard/wine tasting day in Australia so I’m basically a pro now.  We drove to three vineyards sampling all varieties of wine along the way.  My parents bought a few bottles, one of which we enjoyed during our picnic lunch.  At one winery I learned that sparkling wines like champagne get the sparkles in the bottle when they put more yeast in and a second fermentation occurs.  Then they turn the bottle upside down until the yeast settles, freeze the neck, pop the yeast ice cube out, then top off the bottle.

Dandenong Ranges after the jump...

Out of the city, into the Grampians

“I want to get out of the city.”  Words spoken by my mom, about four hours after my parents arrived in Melbourne.  Maybe she jumped the gun a little bit, but she does have a point.  Melbourne is a great city, but it really could be anywhere.  Much of Australia’s uniqueness comes from the natural landscape (which was reinforced in my Biology of Australian Flora and Fauna exam this morning).

It got a little tight.

So the next day, early in the morning, we got out of the city and headed to Grampians National Park.  Around midday we arrived at Halls Gap, a town near the middle of the park that sounds like it belongs in Middle Earth.  We consulted with the information desk attendant and she pointed us to a number of sights we should see.  First up was a short hike through volcanic-like rocks—unfortunately not as interesting as the ones I visited a couple months ago—to a vista of the surrounding area.

After eating a little lunch we hiked back and drove on to the MacKenzie Falls.  We hiked down a bunch of stairs to get to the waterfall, and it turned out to be a good one.  The day had just started to get nice as well.  I took over 40 pictures of the falls and, even though it was really hard to pick, I’ll include only the best one here.

From there we drove to a nature walk.  Before we even got there my dad spotted an echidna on the side of the road.  By the time we pulled over it had shuffled off the road and stuck its head inside a pile of sticks—a much tamer encounter with wildlife than I had at the beginning of the semester.  The echidna is a monotreme, which means its closest relative is the platypus.  They are the only egg-laying mammals in the world.  To those of you interested, the echidna has a four-headed penis, but only uses two of them during intercourse.  They also form mating trains, with one female in the front followed by several males.  You can pick up some funny facts while studying for exams.

Maybe you can't see me, but I can see you.

But the echidna was just the first course.  Hmm, poor choice of metaphor?  Anyway, at the nature walk we saw many more animals, including but not limited to...

Couldn't miss the Melbourne Cup

It seems like I update this blog in waves, and I think another one of those waves is coming.  My parents visited me in Melbourne for the past few days so I have plenty of activities to blog about.  First, though, I should write about the Melbourne Cup.

It’s described here as “The race that stops a nation” and it at least stops the Melbourne area because there is a public holiday on race day.  I wasn’t planning on going until the night before, but I figured that I shouldn’t miss such a spectacle.  I hopped on the computer and bought a ticket online for $58.

Front row standing room.

Sure enough it was quite a scene.  I think I arrived sometime between noon and one o’clock and the stands and grounds were packed.  The Australians I showed up with were all members of the track (there are some pretty well-off people at the residential college where I live) and I tried to get into the members section with them, but I couldn’t sneak in.  Rather than risk getting kicked out, I found some fellow Americans and took my place on the grass right next to the track with the rest of the plebs.  My account of the race is after the jump.

Strategy to Get My Blog Out There

So I'm still procrastinating.  In light of my last post, I thought I would try something to see if I could get more people to read my blog.  I googled "how to get more readers" and this web site called technorati came up.  I'm not exactly sure what it does, but I have to verify that this blog is mine, so I need to include this code in a post:
6CQVMHV4G5MG
We'll see how this little experiment goes.  I think people type in keywords to the technorati site and if they match with keywords that I use to describe my blog then they link to my blog?  Something like that maybe.  Just thought I'd give it a try.

Procrastination. And a Tale of Conflict Mitigation.

I have a final paper due on Tuesday so I’ve been procrastinating a lot lately.  One thing I stumbled on during my endless surfing of the Internet is the “stats” for this very blog.  As a reader of this blog, I thought you might be interested in these statistics so as a way to further procrastinate I will outline a couple of the more interesting numbers.

• 1,723: Total pageviews.  This number is probably skewed, however, because I just found out how to not track my own pageviews.  So the total should probably be halved.
• 639: Pageviews during my busiest month, August.  It only went down slightly to 617 in September, but then plummeted to 384 in October.
• 44: Number of referrals I have gotten from Edacious Eatings.  "Have gotten" must be terrible English.
• 26: Number of pageviews from South Korea, the most of any country besides Australia and the United States.  Russia is catching up, though, with 13 in the last month (24 all time).
• 104: Views of my most clicked-on post, “My First Blog Post. Ever.”  In second with 63 views is my first post about Australian Rules Football.  Looks like I peaked early.

Alright I should get back to writing.  My parents arrive in Melbourne on Tuesday, so I have to get a lot of work done before they get here.  I just signed up for Google Ads too, so when those go online feel free to click on a couple.  But don’t tell anyone I said that.

The story of the Gravy Fiasco is after the jump...

A Paying Gig

A few weeks ago at Ormond, my residential college, we had one of our college-wide events/parties.  For the first hour a jazz combo—half of which were Ormond students—played jazz standards for the slowly growing crowd.  A few drinks deep, I struck up a conversation with the clarinetist and told him I played the tenor sax back home.  He pointed to a case at the back of the stage and asked if I wanted to play a little.  “What the hell,” I said to myself and jumped onstage and grabbed the axe.

They were in the middle of a tune so I yelled back at the pianist “What key are we in?” and I think he said, “G.”  I wasn’t sure if I heard right or whether he was talking about concert pitch, so I just started playing.  For not touching the sax for about six months I think I sounded all right.  I played on a couple songs (don’t know what they were) and took a couple solos, and the next day I got a number of compliments, so it couldn’t been too bad.  And it was good enough for the clarinetist a couple days later to ask me to fill in on a gig for him.  He said there was $30 involved so I was in.

At least I look like I'm good, right?

The group was a full big band made up mostly of Uni students with some older players thrown in.  I made it to the last rehearsal before the concert/gig and sight-read through about half the charts and managed to keep up on most of them.  The show was last week, on Thursday, at the Penny Black, a bar with a small stage for live music that we all crammed onto.  My account of the performance after the jump...

Spring Break, Couple Extra Days

Uni Games officially ended on Friday night so most of the team left on Saturday.  The rest of us hung around Perth and watched the footy Grand Final replay (the week before the two teams tied at the end of regulation, so rather than go into overtime, the rules said they had to replay the game the next week).  After that—Collingwood demolished St. Kilda by the way—I read in a park and then ate fish and chips with a couple teammates.  We stayed the night in a hostel and then everyone left on Sunday morning.  Except me.

 To get the cheapest airfare I booked my flight home on Monday night at about 11 PM so I had some time to kill.  Luckily, a couple fellow Exchange students from Ormond who played on the baseball team at Uni Games had the same idea.  So on Saturday I met up with them—Tripp from Wisconsin and Augusto from Mexico—and we rode the train down to Cottesloe Beach and then rode the train further down to Fremantle.

Fremantle is the shipping port of Perth.  It’s right on the Pacific Ocean while Perth is about 10 miles up the Swan River.  All the tankers arrive at Fremantle, and all the business goes on in Perth.  You’d think they’d do it all in one city and save some trouble, but I guess that’s the way things happen sometimes.

This place was bustling. With people in their late 20s/early 30s.

Fremantle is a small city with lots of quaint brick buildings.  It’s looks kind of like a college town, like Cambridge or Princeton.  We went for the Little Creatures Brewery (/Bar/Restaurant).  Even for a Sunday night at about 6 PM this place was packed.  We enjoyed a pint of the Pale Ale—best I’ve had in Australia—but the price tag was so high ($9) it stayed at one pint.  Me and Tripp's island adventure after the jump...

Spring Break, Week 2

Now to the actual tournament.  Monday started out pretty slow—we only played one game—but over the course of the entire five days we played twelve total games that were almost an hour and a half long each.  It was a lot of Ultimate Frisbee.  I didn’t play as much as I wanted to, though, because I was injured on the second day when I landed with all my weight on one knee and hyper-extended it (maybe a minor ACL sprain?).  I had to sit out the rest of that day, but on Wednesday I got it checked out by the physio and he cleared me to play.  Just needed an entire roll of tape around the knee for the next three days.  The hairs are actually just starting to grow back.

Hammertime!

Nonetheless, I still made meaningful contributions.  Like when we played Newcastle, who ended up finishing fourth in the tournament.  The day before (Wednesday) was our game against Macquarie, who we needed to beat to keep our medal hopes alive.  We ended up losing on Universe point (next-point-wins) and handed Newcastle our would-be spot in the semifinals.  So on Thursday against Newcastle we played for pride and a little revenge.  After falling behind early and down a couple points at half we fought back to tie the game at ten.  Then the hard cap went off (the time limit was reached) so it turned into a game to one—next point wins—the same situation we were in the day before.

I took myself out of the game because I thought I was a defensive liability.  I couldn’t move very well because, on account of all the tape on my leg, I couldn’t bend it more than 70 degrees.  Not ideal for sticking with your man.  So for the beginning of the point I watched from the sidelines.  That changed when one of our guys took an elbow to the nose and I got the call.  The rest of the story after the jump...

Spring Break, Week 1

Time to start tending the blog again.  I’ve been back at school for two weeks now since my two-week spring break.  It’s been a pretty busy two weeks so I haven’t been able to write about the break, but I’ll take a few posts now to do that.  The vacation got off to a little of a slow start (see the last post) but really picked up when I left for Perth early on Wednesday morning.

The main reason for going over to Western Australian was for the 2010 Australian University Games as a member of the University of Melbourne Ultimate Frisbee team.  The competition was the second week of the break, but I headed over to Perth a little early to spend some extra time over there.

The city of Perth, from Kings Park 

Without having any real plans, the week actually worked out pretty well.  A couple teammates had flights over on Wednesday as well, and we spend the morning walking around the city before taking a bus south for three hours to the Margaret River region to stay for a couple nights with another teammate, Jimmy, in the little town of Cowaramup.  That was a lot of prepositional phrases.

Vineyards and house parties after the jump...