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...

Strange Rocks

Spring break started on Saturday so the majority of the college has gone home or off traveling.  Since I don’t leave for Perth until Wednesday I spent the day watching movies and basically sitting around my room.  I didn’t want to repeat this on Sunday, so I checked out the Parks Victoria website for a natural place to visit.  With the criteria that this place be close to the city and near a bus or train station, I eventually settled on the Organ Pipes National Park.

After a healthy brunch Sunday morning I took a half-hour train ride out of Melbourne Central to Watergardens.  I saw a Safeway from the train station so I headed over for some trail mix and granola bars to eat on my hike.  The supermarket was at the end of a huge shopping mall called “Watergardens Town Centre.”  I’ll leave discussion of that name up to you.  It had to be almost a mile long, and absolutely full of people.  It took well over five minutes to walk the length of it, and the experience was overwhelming and a little disturbing, not to mention disorienting.  I don’t mean to be melodramatic or high and mighty, it’s just that walking through the mall was not at all what I envisioned for my nature walk.  (I checked the directory and it has two Safeways.)

This field didn't look as big on Google Maps.

Almost there.

I finally made it out of the mall and headed towards the Organ Pipes.  It turned out that the walk to the park was way longer than the actual hike.  It took over an hour to get there and I had to walk along railroad tracks, cut across fields, make it over a couple drainage ditches/streams, climb over barbed wire, climb under barbed wire, and cross the highway.  I think I trespassed three separate times, but I eventually made it to the park.

What I found there after the jump...

Weekend at the Beach

This past weekend I went with my frisbee team to Phillip Island for a training weekend.  There are 18 of us—10 guys and 8 girls I think—that make up MUtation, Melbourne University’s Ultimate team.  We’re training for Uni Games, which is coming up in under two weeks.  It's like the Olympics of Australian University sport.  But back to the weekend.

I went down early on Friday with a couple of my teammates.  On the way we picked up and dropped off a few chairs for an uncle who had recently moved.  He gave us a tour of his compound, which he had purchased a few months ago from a manic depressive potter who apparently had to sell after 35 years of residence because she ran out of money after repeatedly ordering custom furniture then getting it redone when she wasn’t satisfied.  I think he said she redid the kitchen five times.  Regardless, the property was gorgeous; it was situated on a hill surrounded by scrub pines and the four structures were all made of a mud/stucco material.  I wish I had taken photos but I had left my camera in the van.  The uncle also said he had got it cheap because last year the forest fires passed within five minutes of the property and buyers were scared.

Also during the hour and a half drive to the island we stopped at the Wildlife Wonderland, but after we found out the Giant Gippsland Earthworm exhibit was no longer running we elected not to enter the park.

I hate to be the grammar police, but...

That evening we checked out the sea lion sanctuary on the island.  There were no sea lions to be found, but there were plenty of sea gulls.  Multiplying as we watched.  The visit was worth it though, because we arrived right as the golden hour started.  The ribbon light was pretty perfect.  Photos after the jump...

From Frisbee to Footy

This weekend I finally got out of Melbourne for the first time.  On Saturday I traveled to the city of Ballarat with a couple members of the uni frisbee team and a few other people to play in a frisbee tournament.  It took about an hour and a half to get there.  Apparently there was gold discovered around Ballarat a while back so there used to be a lot of wealth in the area, but now it’s just like any other small city.  I was all set to play a bunch of frisbee, head to the local bar where the tournament had a small tab, crash on someone’s floor, then play some more games on Sunday.

That is not what happened.  On our way to Ballarat it started to sprinkle.  When we got there it started to rain.  While we warmed up it started to pour.  When we played it started to whatever comes after pour.  Hands down worst conditions I have ever played in.  At one point I think it started to hail.  The entire field turned into a puddle and in some spots the water was ankle-high and I ended up running around in cleats full of mud.  The school where the fields were at had a small wind turbine, and it was going absolutely berserk.  The blades were only a couple feet long, but I’m pretty sure it could have powered the entire neighborhood that day.

At the beginning of a frisbee game there is the equivalent of a coin toss.  I called it and lost, but miraculously the other team elected to receive.  Baffled, Ben and I quickly chose to pull downwind.  Unsurprisingly, we broke the other team on the first point, and no upwind points were scored.  It was just too hard to work against gale-force winds.  With that advantage we naturally ended up winning the game by one point.  I think the final score was 5-4.  I caught two scores, one of which was the final point.  (Yeah, I’ll stick to frisbee.)

That ended up being the only game we played and since it was so early I took a ride back to Melbourne.  The day wasn’t a complete loss, however, as I met Toby, who had an extra ticket to the quarterfinal footy match at the MCG that night.  He ended up having great seats, too; only about ten rows back from the field in the members section.  

Best seats I've had.

The game was a complete blowout but I still had fun and the atmosphere was great.  Since it was a big game there were over 65,000 fans there.  The reason there were so many empty seats in front of us was because most people were back in the covered seats, afraid of the rain starting again.  It held off for the entire match.  The weekend didn’t go as I had planned, but I still had a good time.

Australian Rules Football Part 2

The Magoos season is officially over.  That means, among other things, I can now wash my jersey, or jumper, as they call it here. Magoos is the nickname for Ormond College’s seconds footy team.  Footy is such a big deal around here the college has not one, but two teams—firsts and seconds.  Think of it almost as varsity and JV.

The season was four games long and I played in every match.  The level of play was right for a beginner like me.  Anyone was welcome to play, and while everyone on the team wanted to win, no one took it too seriously.  In fact, the drinking was more serious than the playing.  To give you an idea of the team’s priorities, the first practice I went to we started on a warm-up run.  After about 30 meters we stop and our captain yells to get in a circle for push-ups.  “Count ‘em out boys!” he hollers to the team.  Now, I take pride in my pushups and using proper form, so I’m ready to bang out a set and form a good impression.  We get down on our hands, bend the elbows, the team calls out “One!” in unison, then everyone gets up.  “Good work boys,” our captain calls out as the team applauds itself.  Practice starts.

My Jumper: I couldn't wash it for the entire season.

In the first game my biggest highlight was when I went up for a mark (Refer to Part 1 for an explanation).  I had the ball in my hands but an opposing player hit me from behind and I landed in the mud (without the ball).  The ref awarded me a free kick and the kick went pretty far but the other team got a mark off it, and I think it led to one of their goals.

Over the next few games my touches steadily increased as I became more comfortable with the game.  We won our third match pretty easily after a quick start in the first quarter.  The other college was coming back strong in the fourth quarter until the ref stopped the game to count the players, and it turned out they had emptied their bench and had 24 players on the field (instead of 18).  The ref called the game after that.

 In the last game I had a number touches, a decent run, one or two tackles (probably one), a couple handballs (and a throw that went unnoticed), and two decent kicks of the ball.  In the end I’m glad I laced ’em up for the Magoos.  The thrill from playing was worth it; every time the ball came my way I pretty much got rid of it as soon as possible.  It was a great experience, but I think I’ll keep Ultimate Frisbee as my main sport.

Bipolar Weather

You've probably heard the phrase "If you don't like the weather, wait ten minutes and it will change" before.  It seems like locals always want to boast about how quickly their weather changes.  I've done a modest amount of traveling and I know I've heard this one a few times.  But I will tell you, in my experience, this has never been more the case than during winter here in Melbourne.  One day last week, at about midday, it started to hail relentlessly.  After 15 minutes it abruptly stopped and the skies clearly to mostly sunny.  Half an hour later it was completely overcast.  During my footy game last Sunday it started to pour at halftime.  After ten minutes the sun came out and there was a rainbow and I thought, "woah, that's a full rainbow, all the way."  During the fourth quarter it started pouring again but after five minutes it abruptly stopped.  Then this afternoon I check my weather widget and I see this:

WTF???

That pretty much sums it up right there.  Not once, but three times in one week there is rain coming out of the sun.  What does that even mean?  I don't think I've ever seen that symbol before.  I mean, it's not actually possible for it to rain when it's completely sunny, right?  I think you need clouds for the rain to come out of.  All I know is it must suck to be a weatherman in Melbourne.  Or maybe its great... At this point they probably don't even bother checking the doppler and just say, "Partly cloudy/sunny with a chance of rain" every day.  I could do that.

Australian Rules Football Part 1

This is the first in a two-post series on Australian Rules Football, or “footy.”  Down here in Victoria footy is the most-watched, most-played sport, with something like eight of the twelve professional teams of Australia centered around Melbourne.  Supposedly the colonists wanted something to play during the winter (cricket is the summer sport) so they started playing this footy game on the cricket ovals.  In my mind I can see the founders of the sport playing a game of soccer, then one of the Aussies gets frustrated with the pace of the game so he picks up the ball and runs with it.  Another Aussie gets mad because the game of soccer was disrespected so he chases the other player down and tackles him.  And thus new sport is born.  Now this probably isn’t how it went down, but it puts a nice image in my mind.

"Put the ball down you bastard! This is soccer!"

[Clarification: This is actually a statue depicting the first documented footy game.]

We actually have a version of the game in the states, but it’s called Kill the Carrier.  The difference is we stopped playing after middle school (I have fond memories of playing off to the side during high school football games) but the Aussies never did stop playing.  To get down to details each team has 18 players spread across the oval (that’s an astounding 36 players on the field at once) who want to kick the ball (a cross between a rugby ball and a football) between the other team’s goal posts.  You can run with the ball, but every 15 meters you have to touch it—or bounce it, if you’re daring—against the ground.  To pass the ball to a teammate you have to “handball” it, which translates roughly to "punch it with a closed fist" (think one-handed volleyball bump).

They just had to be different.

You can also kick the ball to a teammate.  Kicking is preferable because, for one you can kick the ball a hell of a lot further than you can punch it, but also because of this thing called a mark.  If someone kicks the ball and it travels 15 meters (which translates to any sizeable distance in the air) without anyone else touching it and you catch the ball, you get a free kick on that spot.  This rule leads to many feats of gravity defiance around the goal posts.  Players even jump off their teammates’ backs to try and get marks.

Who the hell came up with this system?

That leads me to the goal posts.  The scoring system makes absolutely no sense, so bear with me for this one and refer to the diagram whenever necessary.  If you kick the ball between the two middle posts you get six points, but if anyone touches it, you only get one point.  If the ball goes between the outer two posts or hits a post, that’s also only one point.  In the pros a team can rack up over a hundred points.  Point system seems a little random and overcomplicated, with part soccer, part American football, part completely arbitrary, but who am I to judge.  Anyway, in the next post I’ll detail my own experiences playing footy, so stay tuned.

My New Digs

Most students at the University of Melbourne are commuters—they are from the area so they just live at home.  (Does this ever happen in the U.S.?)  As a result, there aren’t many living options around the uni.  There are a few student apartment complexes, but mostly international students live in those and I really wanted the experience of being around Australians (what’s the point of studying abroad if I’m just gonna live with other Americans?).  That’s why I chose to live in a college.

I made this because I was bored.

There are 12 residential colleges affiliated with the uni, each with 100-300 students.  I chose Ormond, which turned out to be the biggest and the best.  College life is pretty sweet.  Every couple weeks there’s a huge all-Ormond party called a Smoko (no idea why) where the booze flows and the dance floor’s hoppin.

Main Building. I don't live here.

I get three meals a day at the dining hall, and I literally gasped the first time I saw it.  I’ve been told that it’s based on the dining hall in England that they based the dining hall in Hogwarts on.  I can believe it.  Shit’s old too.  Apparently each of the chairs is insured for $3,000 and the tables for $6,000.  That’s over a million dollars in furniture.

Where's the starry sky?

Makes you wonder why they have this tradition called “getting spooned in” where if a sports team does particularly well the members will line up outside the hall, and when they enter at dinner everyone bangs on the tables with their spoons as hard as they can to create a big ruckus.  But I guess it's because they're Australian.