Heat Wave

You're sitting on the couch after coming home on a Friday night at the end of a long, hot week. The weekend has finally arrived. You have plopped down onto your couch to bask in the glory of the air conditioning, the only thing saving your brain from boiling on this 100 degree evening. Pondering the pros and cons of ordering pizza versus taking a catnap, your laptop screen suddenly dims slightly, almost imperceptibly. Before you can investigate, the air conditioning sputters and stops and the fan slows to a halt. The power's out. Crap.

This week has been a record breaking heat wave for Melbourne and the consensus is: it sucks. Monday began with the promise of "high temperatures" later in the week, but, since I never trust weather people (especially in Melbourne -- the gods can't even predict the weather here) I paid little attention. Come Wednesday, I was crying uncle. Thursday was the spike with midday temperatures hitting over 110 F. Walking outside was like opening your oven, but without the delicious baking smells. Just the foul stench of frying concrete and communal sadness. And actually, I believe Alana put it best when she updated her Facebook status to say "Alana now knows what it feels like to be inside a hair dryer". Indeed.

I've been thinking about blogging to complain about the weather for some time, and the weather has really goaded me into it now. At a glance of statistical averages, this place appears to have similar weather to California (or at least where I've lived in CA). The winter is cold-ish, no snow, and the summer is hot-ish. No major extremes and generally similar seasonal highs and lows. Well, though the averages may appear the same, the weather that creates these averages is not. Two 50 degree days averages the same as a 100 degree day and a 0 degree day, and that's the problem we're looking at here. The winter here is cold. For the whole time. No nice respites of warmth or sun like in California; no sunny days that feel-warm-except-for-the-wind; no mercy. Cold for three straight months, night and day. Miserable.

And now we're in Summer where all rules are off. For example, the day isn't necessarily hotter than the night. We've had plenty of days so far where the morning is cool, afternoon is hot, and evening is hotter. This is clearly not allowed and I would like a call from the Ref on this one. News flash: the nights are supposed to be cool, the days warm and sunny -- those are the rules. Some deviation is fine, but flagrant disregard for the Rules of the Weather is not tolerated. And yet here I am, in my undies, sticking to my plastic chair, bowing in reverence to the A/C on a Saturday night.

As for this particular heat wave, apparently the worst in recorded history for Melbourne (they started recording in 1880) [ref], it's been quite devastating for the city. It seems that they're not equipped to handle this sort of occurrence. About a quarter of all train services have been canceled "because of train breakdowns, lines buckling in the blistering heat, or power blackouts" [ref] which basically caused chaos for commuters this week. At least 19 people, mostly elderly, have simply perished in the heat; bush fires are raging and have claimed at least 10 houses so far; and thousands of people were without power yesterday [ref]. Obviously we were amongst the thousands without power and, actually, compared to the other occurrences, I suppose that was not really that bad.

I believe this was our outage: "An explosion at an electrical substation in Melbourne’s outer suburbs cut power to half a million homes overnight while at Crown casino about 5,000 workers, gamblers and restaurant patrons were evacuated when power was lost and a back-up generator failed" [ref]. At least we weren't in the elevator when it happened. I suppose this is the chance we take in giving three million people in a 100 mile radius access to A/C anytime they want; when we all go for the ON button at the same time, things explode. Our counter to this unfortunate-ness was to immediately run crying into Marc and Alana's loving, air-conditioned arms. They were actually going to a concert that night, but they graciously came to our rescue by picking us up in Little Red and depositing us in their cool, electricity-inclined apartment. We watched movies and ordered Indian food delivery for the night to quell our sadness.

It was actually quite amusing because we ran to their house so quickly that we didn't even realize that, with Marc and Alana gone, we had no way of leaving their house as we couldn't lock the doors and actually even had to jump their front gate to get the Indian food delivery since we didn't have the key. Additionally, we had no way to get home for the night. We were duped like kids offered candy from a man in a large, window-less van. Except that our thoughtlessness led to a night in an air conditioned prison with an X-Box and unlimited movies and shows to watch. And that's how Marc and Alana saved Christmas. Or our Friday night, but that's sort of like Christmas, right? And they ended up coming home at a reasonable hour (around 11pm) to take us home. The power was back on upon arrival (excellent) and gauging from my reset alarm clock, it had turned back on approximately 10 minutes after we had left. But, I still think we made the right choice in leaving rather than potentially melting in our sauna of an apartment.

Some folks I also feel sorry for are the people competing in the Australian Open this week; I simply cannot imagine playing tennis in direct sunlight with temperatures over 110 F. It truly seems impossible. Novak Djokovic, last year's champion, opted out of the rest of the tournament because of the heat [ref]. Poor guy. Better than suffering heat stroke, I guess. A guy at work was telling us that he, his wife, and their four kids spent all night at their local mall since they don't have air conditioning at their house. And a woman at work reported almost shoulder to shoulder crowds at the beaches every night this week. I even saw a claim in one of the newspapers that some beaches were starting to lose crowds during the day because the sand was too hot to walk on and burned people's feet! And, worst of all, I was so hot that I actually willingly wore a dress to work on Friday. Clearly this has gotten out of hand.

So that's been our week; an epic battle against an unbeatable enemy. At least we're all on the same side here. That is one notion I've really enjoyed about the heat, at least on a philosophical level: everyone sympathizes with the heat. You don't get any sympathy in the winter, hardly. Everyone's cold, no one seems to care but me. But get the temperature over 100 degrees and suddenly it's the topic of every conversation, the headline on every newspaper, the bane of everyone's existence. We can, for once, all band together to battle a common foe, even though our petty insults and only mildly effective air conditioning units are surely no match. A war without guns or tanks or planes. And we're all in it, all together, with no choice in the matter. That's the Bright Side that I have found in these desperate times.

I think the worst of it is over; we can begin clean up and recovery and finding other crap to talk about. You fought a good, clean fight, Heat Wave, but you can't keep us down that easily.

Tasmania In Ten Website Grand Opening!

I would like to hereby welcome you to my new Tasmania website, because god forbid anything in my life not be fully documented. If there were more time in life, I would almost certainly have websites for every menial task I do - thank goodness the tasks themselves take up all the time I might have to document them. However, this website was made in an attempt to showcase our trip in order to help future Tasmania-goers with their plans. I hope to improve it over time to include additional links and suggestions from other travelers. Either way, it's worth a gander even if you're not planning to head off to Tassie any time soon. If you have any comments - or, heaven forbid, catch any misspellings - please let me know via a comment on this page or from the Tasmania page itself. Thanks and I hope you enjoy!

Tasmania In Ten Days Website
(http://tasmaniainten.weebly.com)

Australian Open

Once a year, tennis gurus from around the world congregate in Melbourne for one of the four Grand Slam tournaments: The Australian Open. Yesterday we cashed in our cheapo tickets and took a walk around Melbourne Park to see some of the elimination matches going on. It was fun and we're glad we went, but we didn't really get to see anything spectacular. Those tickets are far more expensive, apparently. [Above: panoramic of some of the outdoor courts, Below: Kane ponders some tennis players]


The people wandering around the Open are actually just as interesting as the matches going on - some of the Aussies get really into it. Australian flag capes are pretty much a normal sighting, but some people go as far as body painting, Australian flag tube tops and dresses, temporary tattoos, and, of course, a healthy combination of the all of these. Then there are the people who, for some reason, dress in tennis attire like it's a costume party. There are the 80's looking tennis player guys holding old fashioned wooden rackets and wearing headbands, and an assortment of other "tennis player" people who are apparently way too excited about the event and don't really know how to show it. Then there are the crazies who just need to be weirdos wherever they go. These people are in their undies or cross dressing or in sparkly wigs, etc, etc. I suppose this madness happens to some degree at any public outing, but I'm always amazed at the contrast to the happenings of my living room, like a caveman at Woodstock.

We actually only stayed for a short while since we didn't really arrive at a good time (there were only doubles going on when we got there and then there was large break). But we did get to see a couple matches, and we agreed that we will be open to spending more money than we would like to on tickets to a future match, if the opportunity arises (deep breath). Additional note: this event would be more fun if you had a group of people with which to pass the time between matches. Dressing up would probably also add to the hype. I will have to dig out my sparkly wig.

A Bit of Gluttony

That's what weekends are for, isn't it? At least sometimes. Maybe. Ok, fine, we're just fat-asses. Friday nights are pizza night, but this week we had an insatiable hankering and stuffed our faces two nights in a row. My love for pizza is only surpassed by Kane's love for pizza. We'll write it off since we didn't receive our weekly pizza for the three previous weeks. Under scrutiny, this statement may be only slightly untrue due to the fact that we did obtain some low-quality, small-town pizza on our last night in Tassie, but that hardly counts. Additionally, I have somehow managed to make it though this weekend thus far without patronizing the gelato stand stationed not 30 feet from our building. How that happened, I do not know.

Either way, Saddam* does make a damn good pizza-pie:


*This comparison is clearly from the days of OG** Saddam; old, haggard, hiding-in-a-hole Saddam would require a beard and no smirk (though the neckerchief could remain).

**OG: Original Gangster - Meaning (in this context): someone who has been around, old school gangster [reference]

Night on the Town

You may or may not know by now that Kane and I don't often venture to a place you would call "out on the town". We are homebodies; boring to the core, forever searching the internet for more interesting places to go and more ridiculous things to laugh at. We work, we eat, we clean, we internet. For the most part, that's the majority of our existence. But we do live in bursts of excitement. For example, we work and save and save and then go on good, solid trips to fun places. And that's how we do it right now: boring boring boring - BAM! - repeat.

But, there are certain unforeseen cosmic circumstances that inevitably arise and force us from our comfort zones and out into the world. Last night was one of those times. Two of our friends, Janna and Dom, were in town for a wedding: they had flown in from Sydney which is about an hour from their home. We met and bonded with this Aussie couple in Thailand on the famed bus ride back from Pai (actually, you may recall the bus ride there being slightly more memorable, or at least I do). We only saw them a couple times in Thailand, but they seemed really cool and we've maintained a healthy Facebook contact with them ever since. Janna's cousin's wedding just outside Melbourne gave them a good excuse to come down to Victoria and see Melbourne for a day, so we invited them to stay with us for the night.

It wasn't a terribly extravagant plan for a Friday night: chat for a while, have some dinner out, drop by the casino, and come home for the night. Certainly nothing that Kane and I couldn't handle. But it proved to be an interesting night nonetheless due to a few unexpected big city surprises.

First of all, I would like to mention the trams. I love the trams in Melbourne. They basically have allowed us to live here without owning a car, which has been excellent. We tram to work each day and can tram most anywhere else of interest, though, as mentioned, you will most often find us huddled in our apartment. We typically experience the trams by day: dignified, relatively clean, full of business people and little old ladies. Nothing to fear. But come night, the trams become packed with the drunk, homeless, drag queens, gothies, rowdy boys, etc, etc. And it's not wholly unexpected; this is a big city after all. I am nevertheless still surprise and bewildered by night time tram rides. At least we were traveling with a group of four people which is nearly impenetrable to any outside forces - sinister, begging, or otherwise.

We took the tram up to try a new Ethiopian place, which turned out to be not as good as our original place in Footscray, but was still nice. It was Jan and Dom's first time trying Ethiopian, so that was fun too. As we pulled up to our stop near the restaurant, we heard the sounds of a scuffle outside and turned to see two men who appeared to be fighting. I initially assumed they were teenagers just playing around, but when one of the men turned, I could see he was older. Shortly after that, it became obvious that they were both quite drunk. They were actually fighting. Dom suggested that maybe we stay on for one more stop to get away from them, but I overrode this decision when one of the men jumped onto the tram. We exited quickly from another door as the man began ranting and screaming in the aisle of the tram among a couple dozen bewildered onlookers.

Dom had graciously shoved his way in front of Janna to get off the tram first - which we proceeded to laugh at him for. The second fighting man was still on our street corner grumbling and making random comments. We were about ten feet away when he yelled "Next time I'll be sober and I'll f'ing kill you!" at the tram-bound man, which provided further entertainment for us and likely many others nearby. Good. Freaking. Times. I love public transport. We proceeded to the Ethiopian place a block away without being accosted by any undesirables, save a mannequin store that had some...anatomically interesting mannequins on display. They served for much amusement also (we're so mature).

After dinner Janna wanted to see the famed Crown Casino so we headed over to Southbank to lose some $$. I think we may have accidentally ended up waiting at the crack-whore/prostitute/Amy Winehouse-look-alike tram stop because it was quite an odd crowd at this particular location. The tram ride down to the casino even proved to be eventful after it was graced by a group of young French men, all of whom decided that it was completely necessary to sing French songs at the tops of their voices while jumping around the tram. It was interesting. Janna and I agreed that we would rather they were singing than bashing people. And with that, we made it to the casino.

I am typically one for the penny slots as I prefer to lose $1 over the course of ten minutes rather than $20. Dom was feeling adventurous and bet on some digital roulette (which I find far less fun that a real roulette table) and actually won $4. Go Dom! With his winnings we did a couple slots and then headed over to a $2.50 minimum real roulette table (this is the cheapest you can find). Dom only had $3 in change but they guy wouldn't give chips to under $5, so I contributed $2 so that we could get two chips. Dom put his on number 35 and I put mine in the corner of the 5, 6, 8, 9 squares, I think. And the number that came up was 8!! I was sooo excited. I won $20, with which Dom and I bet one more time each on roulette, lost, then cashed out $15. It was awesome.

The cab ride home was nearly uneventful, save an encounter with a...less than competent driver in front of us...and then we chatted a bit before going to bed. We had a really great time with Jan and Dom; I'm so glad they came by! Yeay, now we can actually say that we have some Aussie friends. Who would have guessed?

Tas Pics and Videos

We took a ton of photos and a few videos on our trip, and I thought I'd make a special effort to post them on my blog-ula. I'm learning how to upload to youtube (look at me, all posh) and link the videos here. First, I will give my Picasa photo site another plug since I've finally posted all the good pictures and panoramics and added captions to them all for your viewing pleasure.

See here for Tassie pictures!

And here are a couple of the videos we took of the furry cuties we encountered:

First, let's get a close up of my cute friend the pademelon (paddy-melon), even though I didn't know that was his name when I took the video:


Next is a little short video of a couple Devils hanging out and being cute:


And here's another one of me feeding a wallaby:

Tasmania Schmazmania

Back in Melbourne: done! I think I could go on perpetual vacations with about three or four days of "home time" in between to recuperate, organize pictures, wash everything, bother Marc and Alana, and sleep in my own bed. With that schedule, I bet I would be happy to vacation forever and ever. I was reminded that I was in Melbourne and not in backwater Tassie today as I walked down the street of the CBD and found myself passing on my right: a man wearing a fuscia suit (where does one acquire this, I do not know) playing a violin behind an upturned hat on the sidewalk; and on my left: an extremely unconvincing Asian drag queen being ushered down the street by another man who was hard to notice through all this. Welcome back to the friggin city.

Tassie was a good time overall. We had a hard time planning the damn thing because it's extreme-massive-everyone-flee-to-the-south-most-state time of year, and the weather was less than desirable for a good chunk of the time. But overall, Tassie was nice, it was fun, and the animal experiences we got were totally worth it.

I am currently working on a Tasmania in Ten Days website to document our trip and provide travel advice to others, which I will post here when it's more complete. I have posted pictures on my picasa for your viewing pleasure, but I had better give you guys some info on the trip, huh?! I'm feeling a list coming on...

Top 4 Cool Things in Tasmania:
In no particular order...

1. The Wildlife. This actually probably would be #1 if these were in a particular order, which, as indicated from the note above, they are most certainly not. The Tasmanian Devil now exculsively exists in Tasmania, though they used to live elsewhere in Australia also. A massive epidemic of facial tumors has wiped out much of the population and the experts estimate that there will be no more wild devils in 10-15 years since they can find neither a cause nor a cure of the disease. Sanctuaries are gathering up healthy devils and breeding them in captivity such that a genetically diverse population is sustained if a cure is not found. The devils themselves are very small and cute animals and they won't bother you unless you get in the way of their food or get near them when they're in an enclosure. In the wild, they'll just run away from you if you can even manage to find one. They're very elusive, as is most of the nocturnal wildlife in Tassie. Everyone sleeps in the day and dines at night, save the birds. The Roos, wallabies, pademelons, wombats, echidnas, and devils are all nocturnal marsupials (save the echidna which is a monotreme, like a platypus). It's such an amazing difference from the wildlife of North America! And there are really no predators; the Devils are scavengers along with many of the birds, and all the others noted above are veggos. It's quite bizarre; there's not really a food chain like there is elsewhere.

2. Animal Sanctuaries. Though this is related to the first item, I think it should get its own category. The wildlife of Tassie is amazing, but we would not be able to appreciate it nearly as much without the many, many sanctuaries functioning throughout the state. Some are excellent, and some aren't so great, but either way, they're pretty much all in the business of preserving the un-infected population of devils, having the nocturnals in enclosures for us day walkers to observe, and most of them also do rehabilitation and/or re-release for injured wildlife. Two of the four sanctuaries that we visited were top notch, one was pretty nice, and one was like a hick-park as far as we were concerned. The two excellent ones were The Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park and The Trowunna Wildlife Park. I would especially not miss the latter of the two if I were to go again, since it's where you get an excellent and informative 75 minute tour around their park and where you get to pat a koala, hold a wombat, and pet a devil while learning all about them and why these particular ones are ok to hold/touch (you can't do this with just any animals). It was really excellent. Go sanctuaries!

3. National Parks. While we didn't do quite as much outdoors activities as we would have liked due to the unpredictable inclement weather, the National Parks on offer to visitors are plentiful. They have a whole system set up whereby you can buy a pass to all the parks in the state for 24 hours, 48 hours or 2 months (yeah, nothing in between, not sure why). It's not cheap, but that's because the money goes toward the pristine upkeep of the parks. They have nice car parks, well marked and signed trails, and the trails themselves are very well kept and debris-free. There are hand rails, photo points, and even raised platforms if the terrain is too rough or sensitive. Most parks have staffed visitors centers with informational displays of wildlife, facts about the parks and all the walks/hikes, and post cards and other goodies for sale. It's quite a nice system and much of the state is natural reserve, so there's a lot to enjoy.

4. History in Abundance. Tasmania was one of the first places that the British settled and yes, it was mostly used for penal colonies. Like all around Australia, bits and pieces of the old settlements remain in scattered parts of the state. Perhaps because it has not been developed nearly to the extent of the other original cities (Perth, Sydney, Melbourne), a good amount of the original buildings remain in Tassie and are now preserved as historical marks and tourist attractions. Since Tasmania was used almost exclusively to house convicts in its early years, there are a large number of prisons and related structures still standing. The most notable historical stronghold is Port Arthur, which was a secondary prison situated on a large outcropping of land on the south-east coast of the island. The only way into this part of the island was (and is) by sea or by a tiny 300-foot wide strip of land that connects it to the main part of the island, which assured a more effective Alcatraz-esque isolation area. Certainly a highlight of the trip.

Ok, and to be honest, I originally had this as a top five list but I made my top four so damn broad, I couldn't think of a fifth. So there you go. During our trip, Tassie threw a few curve balls at us (rain/snow, extremely difficult to find accommodation, overpriced everything, etc), but we bobbed and weaved as best we could and made it through unscathed. And now I have pictures to fuss with, a new website to make, and journals to finalize (yes I actually still keep a journal in addition to all this business) which should keep me busy for another few weeks! Yeay, it's like I'm still on vacation!...except the returning to work part...

Summertime In Tasmania

There is definitely something wrong here. Yes, that is a snowman, albeit a small one. And no, I'm not quite as happy as I look about it. It is the dead of summer and there is snow on the mountain tops. Down below the mountains, it's been raining off and on with highs of around 55 and lows near freezing. A flimsy fleece is the warmest clothing I brought, a "light jacket" in case of "cool summer nights". You will find Kane roaming the nearly frozen lands in shorts. At least he's upgraded the flip flops to athletic shoes and ankle socks.

The first half of this trip looked promising (weather-wise), but the latter half has turned on us, betraying us with our short sleeved shirts and swimsuits in hand. Rain and cold forced (ok, maybe coerced) us away from our intended hike around Dove Lake yesterday, and last night was completely sleepless for me since we're in a tiny, non-heated room with bunk beds (hence I don't even get Kane to keep me warm). But alas, we continue on.

I am complaining now because I am currently experiencing this blight of cold, but I'm sure it will not define our trip. We've seen some really cool stuff and have a lot to report about Ol' Tassie, which, as mentioned before, will be more thoroughly blogged upon our return. For now, I thought I'd send a Tas update and complain to the internet a bit about how freaking cold I am. It makes me feel better, ok? ;-)