What's to come

Some loose ends:

My ultimate team (Wombat Combat, for those unaware), finished in first place overall, with a regular season record of 7-3. We won our final six games. Last night, we played the second place team, Trogdor the Burninator, for the championship, and went down swinging, 15-14. Trogdor had a 14-11 lead, but we fought back and scored three straight points to tie it up before allowing that last point.

Basketball also ended last night; St. Mark's played without me, as I was otherwise occupied with a much more important sport. At the time of this writing, I don't know the outcome, but I think that I can safely assume that we lost. We lost every game. I never did score; the only time I actually made a basket it was overruled on a phantom over-the-back call. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

There are only two (!) more weeks of classes, followed by a week off to study, and then exams. Here are the things we have planned:

• Diving the Yongala (a shipwreck roughly two hours off the Townsville coast)
• A trip to Cairns for 3-4 days during the "study" period, during which we'll visit the rainforest and do another dive
  
• A visit from Swarthmore friend and current Adelaide resident Tristan
• NEW ZEALAND for two weeks, starting November 30

We return triumphantly to the United States on December 15.

In which I partake in numerous outdoor activities and sunburn my nose

Wow, two posts in a week’s time? I must be feeling frisky…or at least verbose.

Anyway, this past weekend was sufficiently excellent that it warrants a post all its own. Ever since the beginning of the semester, when we missed a Student-Association-sponsored trip to the nearby Billabong Sanctuary, a zoo/interactive animal experience, Natalie had been clamoring to go. So Friday we once again borrowed Catherine’s car and made the twenty minute journey, taking with us three of Natalie’s closer American girlfriends: Meredith, Tricia, Rachel.

Billabong Sanctuary is, essentially, a tourist trap (or at least I thought so). It’s certainly not someplace that I would be compelled to visit on my own. After paying the $24 (!) entrance fee, seed is available to feed the “wild” animals that roam the main area of the park: geese, ducks, ibises, the occasional kangaroo. There are also various animal information sessions, feeding displays, and, in what was clearly the most lucrative of the park’s attractions, chances to handle/have your picture taken with any number of animals. These cost $10 each. Natalie bought the opportunity to hold a koala and wombat, Rachel and Meredith shared in the koala-love, and Tricia and I saved our money.

Billabong’s animal enclosures contain only natural, native Australian wildlife: dingoes, fresh-/saltwater crocodiles, pademelons (another marsupial, similar in stature to a wallaby), wombats, cassowaries, koalas, emus, etc. The enclosures seemed to be in relatively poor condition, however, which contributed to my distaste for the place. The water in the crocodile pen, for example, was completely green with algae. The feeding of the crocodiles, however, was sufficiently terrifying to keep me from ever getting in an Australian river. Also, I have to admit that the koalas were some of the cutest animals I’ve ever seen. The late, great Mitch Hedberg has a short routine about koalas which kept running through my head while watching them:

“My apartment is infested with koala bears. It's the cutest infestation ever. Way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light a bunch of koala bears scatter. And I don't want them to, you know? I'm like, "Hey, wait, come back. Let me hold one of you... and feed you a leaf. Koala bears. They're so cute, why do they gotta live so far away from me? We should ship a few over. And I will apprehend one. And hold him. And pet him on the back of his head.”

After several hours of looking, feeding and holding, we’d all had enough. My night, on the other hand, was just beginning. The JCU ultimate team had scheduled a glow-in-the-dark game for that night. It was, in a word, life-altering. OK, perhaps that’s stretching it a bit. But it was super-fun. The game took place after dark at a nearby park (a 40 minute walk from campus). Each player was issued six glow sticks: one for each ankle and wrist, and two for the neck. We played with a light-up disc. One team, wearing blue glow sticks, appeared as ghosts from a distance, isolated circles of blue somehow moving in coordinated harmony. Our team, in fluorescent green, was noticeably less ethereal; however, that did not diminish from the entertainment value. The darkness of the game invited sloppy, turnover-filled play and unwanted, unwarranted nudity from two of the more adventurous guys in blue. No one wanted to guard them, so blue dominated. Afterwards, there was a Chuck Norris-themed party.

Compared to Friday, Saturday was fairly dull, although I did count cars for an hour as part of an assignment for my transportation engineering class. Oh, and the checkout girl at Woolworth's made fun of me for buying natural peanut butter.

Sunday, however, was another story. I awoke at 5:45. Why would I do this, you ask? Well, the powers that be had organized a little ultimate get-together with students at the School for Field Studies, a tiny institution of 27 students located a few hours inland of Cairns. They spend all of their time doing field study on environmental science issues. We were meeting them about halfway, at a tiny community called Mission Beach, for a day of ultimate followed by a barbeque at the beach. Mission Beach is about 2.5 hours north of Townsville, so we had to leave extra early. Hence, the 5:45 wakeup time.

I hate when people say “it really is a small world.” I absolutely can’t stand it. Coincidences happen, and I love it when they do, but we need to think of something else to say for times when you do something like run into someone from Swarthmore in Mission Beach, Australia. That’s right, folks. In among the School for Field Studies group was one Marshall Morales, Swarthmore class of 2008 and sophomore year first semester roommate of my good friend Ross Littauer. It was surreal. I don’t know Marshall that well, but we have a lot of the same friends, so we’ve spent a little time together. Still, though, what are the odds? I still can’t really believe that it happened. Furthering the string of coincidences was the presence of a girl who goes to Butler, a scant five-minute drive from my home in Indianapolis. Strange.

After that shocker, we drew teams (it was a hat tournament, you see), and played two games in hot, hot temperatures before dying. No, wait. We stopped and ate lunch. No dying involved. After lunch we played JCU vs. SFS and we destroyed them, most likely because they only play non-competitively once a week on Fridays and only one or two of them had actually played for real before (I think). After that, the beach! The water at Mission Beach was actually warm enough that no one froze to death (unlike Sydney, or the pools in Townsville, or anywhere else that I’ve tried to swim in this country), so I stayed in for awhile and swallowed unhealthy amounts of sea water while trying to body surf. A delicious barbeque followed, and we headed home at about 7:00, arriving back exhausted at JCU at 9:30.

It was a good weekend.

What happens when you confuse "tall American" with "good at basketball"

Here is the biggest piece of news that has happened recently: I am on the St. Mark's basketball team.

James Cook University athletics work in strange ways. There is, to my knowledge, little or no inter-collegiate athletic competition. If there is, it is certainly not to the degree that it exists in the United States. I think there are one or two major events each year (the Northern University Games, which can lead to a berth in the Australian University Games). The lack of an inter-collegiate athletic scene, however, is supplanted by a thriving intramural one. The residential colleges compete in multiple sports for the Fisher Shield, which I believe is given to the college with the most overall points at the end of the year. Points are awarded for how successful one is at various sports. So far this semester we've had soccer, touch football (Australian rules), cross-country (one big race, which I missed due to our Whitsundays trip) and now basketball. There are men's and women's games for each sport, and the competition is fairly intense, certainly more so than any other intramural sports league in which I've ever partaken.

I joined the team because of a chance meeting with the captain of the team in the laundry room. Somehow word had got out that I was interested in playing basketball (I had mentioned it to a few people), or maybe he just assumed that I would be good since I was tall and American. Anyway, that meeting led to a one-hour training session that afternoon and a two games the following day. Now, let me stress that I have played only intramural basketball since the ninth grade. There are no set plays, no zone defenses--it's basically every man for himself, and teams are held together by only the loosest of bounds. St. Mark's runs layup and cutting drills, plays exclusively zone, has one or two offensive plays. It's odd.

Our first game, last Thursday, found me on the bench for a majority of the time. There are five clear starters--all of which can handle the ball to some degree, can rebound, play defense, etc. The rest of us have trouble with one or all of these things. I can rebound, maybe play defense, hustle. I am also tall. This combination of "skills" has led to a place as the first man off the bench, mostly because I am the only backup capable of playing any of the forward or center positions. Our starters have to rest occasionally, and I'm the one who takes their place.

Considering the state of our team, it is probably not too surprising that we have started the season 0 for our first 3. The first two games we took on more talented colleges with a larger residency from which to glean their rosters. We fought hard in each game, but ultimately fell short. Our third loss, in which we took on a clearly inferior St. Paul's team, was embarrassing; we played poorly and squandered a late lead. To illustrate, let me recount the score after the first quarter: 1-0, Mark's. That's right. 1-0. Quarters are eight minutes long, but we somehow managed to net only a single solitary free throw. I was forced into starting duty due to the absence of our small forward, who had been in Brisbane for the weekend and had not yet returned. My line for the night read a lot like our season to date: 3-4 missed shots (put-backs, no less), some untimely turnovers, but the 7-8 rebounds, some gritty defense, the occasional screen or hard foul kept us close until falling short at the end. It was incredibly frustrating. Luckily, I had an ultimate game to attend to later on that evening, which we won, a victory that sweetened the bad taste of the unfortunate outcome. But this post is about basketball, not ultimate! Let's end it with these two thoughts:

1. During our second game, fans/residents of George Roberts Hall heckled me by quoting Napoleon Dynamite. Way to be original, guys, I've never heard that one before. Besides, Napoleon doesn't have my sweet facial hair.
2. There is nothing better than completely boxing someone out and getting the rebound. Nothing.

Lecure Recess Part II: Sydney

We were met at the Sydney airport by a pickup service staffed by an enthusiastic Turkish man who gave us Werther’s candies. Our hostel was located in Coogee, one of the many beach suburbs of Sydney. Originally, we planned on staying in King’s Cross, because of its relative proximity to downtown, but a St. Mark’s Sydney native advised us that it was not a very good location, and to switch to Coogee instead. She was right. Coogee is a small, peaceful, beautiful beach community with lots of great restaurants (more on that later) and other amenities (including the beach, of course) within two or three blocks of the hostel.

Since we arrived in the late afternoon, it wasn’t really feasible to do any major sightseeing in the city, so we just wandered around Coogee, found a place to eat (Natalie had been craving pizza for several days now) and went for a short night beach walk. The most important order of business was sleep, of course, for we had a busy next few days.

A bunch of Americans from JCU (including our friends from St. Mark’s) were staying in the same hostel, and we ended up doing a lot of our sightseeing with them. The first order of business was to see what everyone comes to Sydney to see: the opera house. I don’t know why, but I sort of went crazy with pictures of it, shooting it from different angles, with people posing in front of it, all that stuff. I imagine I would have a similar reaction to most other instantly recognizable world landmarks, but I think part of this was that it’s in Australia, somewhere that up until last year was a place that I never really thought I’d be in my life. I always assumed that I’d go to Europe someday, and back to Vietnam, maybe some other places, but never Australia. So seeing the most recognizable building in this country (continent, even!) was a little bit of a thrill.

Later, we explored the Royal Botanic Gardens. While there were no black swans to attack us here, it did have beautiful views of Sydney Harbour, a large indoor orchid and carnivorous plant exhibit titled “Sex and Death” and trees full of giant bats. Really. We found out later that these bats were flying foxes (which I think are bats anyway, but I’m no winged rodent expert). We split up with the others at the Sex and Death exhibit, and spent another hour or so in the Gardens killing time until our Harbour cruise.

We had reserved a spot (but not paid for) a 3:30 cruise earlier in the day, but the directions on the location of their office were not wonderful, and we (read: I, mostly) panicked and bought some tickets from another company, who we actually thought was the company we had called earlier, but wasn’t. It was confusing and frustrating, but everything worked out and Natalie wasn’t charged for the other booking, so no harm was done, but I still got flustered. Anyway, the cruise was interesting. There’s a lot of history in the Sydney Harbour, from the Opera House to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, even the Prime Minister’s house, but for some reason the pre-recorded explanations related an inordinate amount of stories of people (and schoolchildren) dying, either in the construction of the bridge, or on sunken ships. Despite this unnecessarily macabre recording, though, it was a pleasant ride.

That night I had the best meal of the vacation, and maybe of the entire time that I’ve been here, at a Thai restaurant/noodle car in Coogee. There are an overabundance of Thai restaurants in Coogee (4 or 5 in the two block walk to the beach) and in Sydney in general. Actually, I saw more restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney than I’ve probably ever seen in my life. Large Australian cities seem to have blocks upon blocks of eateries, each with nearly identical menus and prices. There’s really no way to tell whether or not a particular place is worth your money, so you just have to wing it and hope for the best. Luckily, we were usually able to make delicious choices.

Thursday morning we made the trek to Bondi, another beach suburb to Coogee’s north. It was an incredible two-hour walk along the coast, with view after view of the ocean and beaches and coastline. Midway through we passed a huge coastal cemetery. Along the way two things happened: one, since I did not speak, all of those American girls started to believe that I was not capable of forming my own opinions about things and two, they got into a heated discussion about, of all things, affirmative action. I don’t like controversy, so I stayed out of it (even though I disagreed vehemently with some of their opinions), but Natalie, always the firebrand, got right into it. After the walk we left the girls to sunbathe at Bondi (they were also going to an opera at Sydney’s most famous landmark that evening) while we headed to Chinatown and Paddy’s Markets.

It turns out that Paddy’s Market is just like every other market in Australia: cheap, kitschy souvenir shirts, produce stalls, fake aboriginal art, that sort of thing. What was much more interesting was the mall above it, which at first seemed like every other mall, but actually was dominated by Asian stores and groceries and fast food. We explored an Asian IGA, and I continued to search in vain for yomilk (I had found the ginger in Melbourne), but I did make a super-important discovery: sticky rice cakes. Sticky rice cakes were somewhat of a staple, albeit one I did not particularly enjoy, of our life in Vietnam. When I saw them in this grocery store I had to purchase one for old time’s sake, and to see if my taste for rice, mung beans (I think), and pork fat, all wrapped in a banana leaf had changed over the past seven years. Turns out it hadn’t. I couldn’t finish it.

Next on the list was a meetup with Natalie’s childhood friend Alex, who is studying in Sydney for a year. These two knew each other and were very close when Natalie was growing up in Oak Park, but hadn’t really seen each other very often since Natalie moved to Indianapolis at the age of eight. They were reunited briefly in the Los Angeles airport, and during the IFSA-Butler training weekend. After some wandering around, we finally made it to the designated rendezvous point, the Newtown Hotel, which is a gay bar. That was a completely new experience for the both of us. We spent about an hour there watching Alex and her friends play pool, but we weren’t getting a lot of attention from either Alex or her friends, so we ended up leaving to go find dinner.

Friday was our relaxing day. Yes, the trip was a vacation, and one could even argue that the entire semester has been one of relaxation, but we had been so busy sightseeing that we needed one day of doing nothing. So we spent all day at the Coogee beach, reading, swimming, talking to our two favorite Americans, not doing anything of consequence. The water was teeth-chatteringly cold, but I braved it anyway for about twenty minutes of wading and body-surfing. I normally hate the beach (sand is one of my least favorite things in the world), but this was tolerable. Also, don’t read Borges on the beach, it’s too complicated. You need some Stephen King or John Grisham or Matthew Reilly (the Australian Tom Clancy) because then you don’t even have to pay attention and you can still be entertained.

We had planned on hanging out with the full complement of girls that evening, but ended up just staying in and watching the cinematic masterpiece that is A Knight’s Tale on television. That film is just plain bizarre.

In the morning we had some time so Natalie and I jumped on a bus and headed downtown to yet another market, this one in a neighborhood called The Rocks. Once again, I bought nothing.

Since our trip was, at this point, effectively over, I’d like to give my thoughts of Sydney. Great food (better than Melbourne, for me at least), beautiful scenery, absolutely terrible, awful, inconvenient public transportation. Maybe it would have been different if we had stayed somewhere besides Coogee, but the Sydney bus system is in need of revamping. First of all, a one-way trip from Coogee to downtown Sydney cost A$3.70. We could go anywhere in Melbourne as often as we wanted for that price. Second, the buses make innumerable stops, so trips end up taking 45-60 minutes depending on where you go and when you’re going. I realize that buses are meant to stop and it’s probably not really worth complaining about, but after the wonder that is the Melbourne train system, the Sydney buses were intensely aggravating. Other than that though (and the issue of our company, which was not a problem to Natalie, but my personality and lifestyle was so far removed than the people we with whom we were spending time that it became uncomfortable and at times unpleasant), the trip was a success, although coming back to Townsville was more of a relief than either of us thought it would be.

Pictures from our adventures can be found HERE.

Lecure Recess Part I: Melbourne

We left for Melbourne on Friday night, 8:30 PM. Someone that we don’t even know drove us to the airport; she was going there anyway. Thanks, anonymous transportation provider! Anyway, the flight was somewhat delayed and we didn’t arrive in Melbourne until almost midnight. One fifty-dollar cab ride and thirty minutes later, we were at our hostel, where we had to call the office and wake the owners so that we could get in. It was also very, very cold, something that we did not prepare for at ALL. After two months in the tropics, we’d kind of adjusted to eighty degree days. Melbourne, however, would have nothing of it, insisting on fifty degree temperatures at noon and low forties at night. I was lucky that I brought a sweatshirt, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have any appendages anymore.

Anyway, our first full day was spent walking around. Natalie dragged me around Bridge Road, a nearby shopping district held in high regard by our Lonely Planet guidebook. I bought nothing. Next, we walked to the Royal Botanic Gardens, where we were almost attacked by an overly aggressive black swan, but all was forgiven when we discovered Ferngully. OK, so maybe it wasn’t really Ferngully, but it was an area called “Fern Gully.” (Sorry, adults and other people not named Nora or Grace, that anecdote is mainly an inside joke). By that time, we had probably walked seven or eight miles, so we took a bus back to our room, and took a quick nap before heading to the Vietnamese district (only a few blocks away) for dinner. The street was amazing; there were more Vietnamese restaurants than I’d ever seen in one place outside of Vietnam. My meal was only adequate though, and the spring rolls couldn’t compare to the amazing taste sensation that are the spring rolls of Indianapolis’ Saigon Restaurant. Also, it was here that I began a moderately fruitful quest for two staples of my Vietnam experience: sugared preserved ginger, and yomilk (I eventually found the ginger, but yomilk remains elusive).

But the night didn’t end there. Natalie, who is the queen of planning, had talked to St. Mark’s students about what to do in Melbourne; one of them suggested a trip to the city’s casino. So we headed downtown. Let me tell you: this was one of the strangest, most disorienting moments of my entire life. The Crown Casino is huge; the inside is one of the most garish, sickening, crowded, depressing places I’ve ever been. It represents all that I disagree with about the way people should live their lives and how they spend their money. Natalie lost a dollar in the slot machine, and we bee lined out of there and headed back to the hostel, exhausted.

On Sunday morning we were awakened by the arrival of our good friend Emma, who is studying is Adelaide this semester and was also on break. She had just finished a weeklong trip to Uluru and the outback, and continually regaled us with horror stories of that trip. In the morning, we all checked out the Queen Victoria market, which is an enormous, messy complex where you can buy everything from fresh seafood to touristy t-shirts, fake aboriginal art to donuts, heavily marked down clothing to bongs. Yup. It was rainy and cold, though and even though everything was covered, we made a decision to head to a different market at the Arts Centre downtown. This was a much more interesting one; local artists were selling their work. It was a good place to buy presents, but I didn’t, because I am indecisive. Sorry, everyone.

Our next stop was the Art Museum, where we spent several hours in a unexpectedly lengthy Picasso exhibit that examined his work from 1935-45, as well as his relationship with photographer Dora Maar. Included in the exhibit, among many of Picasso’s own works, were Maar’s photographs on Guernica in progress; the painting itself was one of the first large-scale pieces to be photographed during the creative process, as well as the first in which the final result was directly influenced by these photographs (I think). We had planned to go to the rest of the museum that day, but the Picasso took a lot out of us, and we made plans to come back the next day and see everything else.

That night we made our way to Melbourne’s Little Italy for dinner. What ensued was absurd. As we walked down Lygon Street, examining menus, trying to make a decision on where to dine, we were continually hassled by someone standing outside each eatery. Every place had a person stationed in front of their door who would plug his own restaurant. The conversation usually went something like this:

Guy: “Hello, eat here, it’s very good, you don’t need to go any further. Our prices are reasonable, our food is wonderful.”
Us: “Thanks, but we’re just looking at the moment. We might come back, though.”
Guy: “FIVE DOLLARS OFF ANY PASTA DISH!!!”
Us: “Um, thank you, but we’d like to look at some other places before we make a decision.”
Guy: “Why? We’re clearly the best restaurant on this street. If you go any further, the prices will increase and the food quality will decline.”
Us: “We’d like to see for ourselves, though. Thank you.”
Guy: “FREE GLASS OF WINE!!!!!”
Us: [nervously] “Um, bye! We might come back.”

This happened at literally EVERY restaurant, and eventually we succumbed, just to make the madness stop.

Since we had only seen the Picasso exhibit at the Art Museum, we decided to go back and check out the rest of it on Monday. There was a lot of interesting stuff, but what was almost as impressive as the art was the way in which many of the rooms were designed. They were just really attractive—the whole museum is very well organized. It’s also enormous, and we saw just about everything in it, because Natalie is crazy and wants/needs to see everything in museums. She even wanted to go to the other building where most of the Australian art was housed, but Emma and I both agreed that we had seen enough Art Museum for one day. After lunch, I separated from the girls because they wanted to go back to Bridge Road and buy things. I decided to walk around the area where we had eaten, a several-block stretch of ethnic restaurants, second-hand book and music shops, and weird clothing stores. I bought a hot chocolate with chili powder, which was an experience that, while I’m glad I did it, will probably not happen again. Sweet and spicy is a strange mix.

The next morning we said our goodbyes to Emma (it really was wonderful seeing a friend from home) and walked a short way to Fitzroy Gardens, a smallish but quite beautiful park two blocks from our hostel. The parks is the site of Captain James Cook’s home, which was originally located in England but was purchased by an Australian who transplanted it to Melbourne and then reconstructed it brick-by-brick. I got the feeling, however, that some liberties had been taken in the reconstruction process. Did you know, for example, that the Captain had a fully functioning gift shop in his stable? Me neither.

After the park, it was time to head to the airport. Bob, the owner of the hostel and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, had arranged a bus to take us there. During our stay he also had given us heaps of suggestions about where to go and what to do in Melbourne, and also let us keep our bags in our room even though check-out time was 9:30 and our flight was not until 2:15. If any of you reading this ever go to Melbourne and want a great, cheap place to stay, the Freeman Lodge is where to go. It was a little cold because our room didn’t have a heater, but it was really a wonderful place.

So: my final thoughts on Melbourne. It was cold, but that can be attributed to the time of year, so I won’t hold that against it. It has a good art museum. The public transportation system is absolutely fantastic. We could buy a full day pass, which could be used on buses, trains, or trams, for A$3.20 (student discount), and would take us to just about anywhere we wanted to go. For the first few days, the city reminded me a little of Seattle, but that might just have been because of the rain and cold, but now I’m not really sure if it compares to anywhere that I’ve been in the US. That can likely be attributed to the fact that I’ve been very few places on my own or with friends, without full-blown adults present, and that really changes one’s perspective on traveling.

Next up: Sydney.

(By the way, I’m fairly confident that this piece of writing is the longest thing I’ve written all semester.)