The Final Stretch

This is it. This week is our final week of work. We came, we worked, and now we're just about to get the heck out.

It's been a good time here in Aus, let us recap:

Arrived December 15 2007: acquired furnished apartment
Traveled to NZ March 2008: acquired work and holiday visas
Got jobs in April and May 2008 (Angie and Kane respectively)
Signed 9 month contract and received sponsorship for long-term work visa August 2008
Visit USA November 2008
Visit Tasmania December 2008

And now, May 2009 closes out 10 months of working on our long-term visas and begins our second round of travel adventures.

We will kick off our 4 month vacation with a 3-week road trip up the east coast of Australia. We will drive 3500 kilometers (approx 2500 miles) in 21 days and then fly over to Darwin in the Northern Territory for a short 4-day stint around the famous Kakadu National Park.

After that, in early July, we fly back to Melbourne to take care of any last odds and ends and say goodbye to our awesome Melbourne friends (sad face). On approximately July 9 (happy birthday Kane) we fly to Germany to begin European adventure.

European Adventure summary:
Fly to Munich: hang out with Jon
Fly to Stockholm, witness other blond people for 6 days, return to Munich
Pick up long term rental car in Munich
Road trip with Jon starting Munich: Vienna, Zagreb, Budapest, Krakow
Jon leaves us and we continue to: Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels
Then through the ridiculously expensive Chunnel to England, Scotland, Ireland
Back through rip-off Chunnel: Paris, Switzerland, Italy
Then over to Greece sans automobile.

And that, my friends, is how you do it. Will be blogging the whole way through, please do join us.

How did we miss the Zombie Shuffle?

To my extreme dismay, we found out about the most awesome Melbourne event the week after it occurred. For three years in a row, hundreds of costumed citizens have taken to the streets disguised as the undead for no reason other than to profess their love for brains (yum!) and boast their knack for gruesome makeup. I speak of the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle.

I have no idea how this escaped my attention. As an avid zombie enthusiast, I thought I would be issued some sort of newsletter or email or at least a glimpse of a poster in an alleyway. How does one find out about the shuffle? The facebook page lays down the ground rules. From this information, I would assume this is a pathetic gathering of homely nerds who want to brush up against other would-be zombies (not altogether unlike those people who think they are vampires, maybe?). And perhaps on some level it is.

But, from the pictures and videos that I've seen, it looks awesome. People go all out. It's like Halloween but better - a whole gathering of dedicated people all wanting the same thing: brains. In fact, their slogan pretty much says it all: "What do we want? Brains! When do we want it? Brains!" Ah, rarely does one hear such eloquence as from a horde of zombies.



Basically, it looks like a whole heck of a lot of fun and I'm quite upset that we missed it. After all, I already have so much practice!

The Chop

Last weekend I finally did it*. I cut the mop off. It's been five years since the last time I cut over a foot of my hair off and donated it to Locks of Love. I like the long hair, but it really does get oppressive. God forbid a breeze come up and I'm suddenly entangled in a massive unforgiving spider web of hair. And the amount of hair that I shuffle through in my apartment on a daily basis becomes a task as irritating as it is unnecessary. I can't believe the amount of hair I lose in a day: in the shower, in my brush, on my clothes, on the couch, on the pillow, in my food, etc. etc. etc. And when each hair is as long as my arm, it becomes a problem.

But alas, no more. Not for a while at least. Short hair is so easy, there are just fewer options. And, thankfully, I can still fit it into a teeny spritz of a pony tail if need be. The only thing I don't really enjoy is the continual risk of looking like a child with a cute little bob cut. That's the main thing I've been pondering for the last week; do I look sophisticated and professional or like a 13 year old school girl? It seems to vary moment to moment. Thank you for tuning in for my ramblings about me.

Before:

*Please do note that the top picture is taken from above so the hair looks longer than it really is. It does not reach my shoulders and I'm happy about that. It comes just below the chin. And sorry for the weird expression, I just like the clarity of the picture more than anything.

Comedy Festival

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is one of Melbourne's zillion yearly festivals. And this one is actually worth going to*. They import comedians from all over the world to entertain eager Melbournians for the month of April. It's excellent! Comedy everywhere! We did very well and managed to make quite a few shows. Here is a summary of the shows we saw.

Tom Gleeson - April 4
Mr. Gleeson is an Australian comedian who we know from his appearances on Good News Week (funny show that's like a mixture of The Daily Show and Who's Line is it Anyway) and from his Red Rooster endorsements. He's never disappointed in the past, so we obtained some freaking tickets. I wouldn't say that he was Jerry Seinfeld, fall out of the chair good, but still good. He's gangly, ghostly pale, and pronounces the word massage the same way Austin Powers does (mass-auge) - how can he go wrong?

Puppetry of the Penis - April 7
Well, this was by far the biggest impulse buy of the lot - we saw the commercial on tv and decided to try it. They can't actually show any of the performance on the commercials, or on the posters, brochures or website, because it really is an entire hour of two completely naked men** making funny "installments" with their genitalia. No two ways about it. We couldn't decide if we should be frightened or proud of ourselves for our bold choice. The answer was somewhere in the middle.

This show was neither appalling, nor particularly entertaining. You've seen a penis, I've seen a penis, and it isn't a far stretch (no pun intended) to imagine someone doing silly things with their reproductive appendages. I mean, I have been to elementary school...and high school...and am basically familiar with the inter-workings of the male mind. You can't really blame them, as these men demonstrated, they are quite versatile bits. Regardless, we were less than amused and certainly not dismayed (I had hoped for at least one of the two) and basically just spent an hour paying to watch two naked men romp around on stage handling their business. And odd experience if nothing else.

Janeane Garofalo - April 12
You may know Janeane from random stuff in the 90's - you've probably at least seen her before, especially if you're my age-ish. I always liked her; she's always had this plain, straightforward way about her. She tends to play the "ugly", sarcastic, smart girl in movies, though she's actually quite pretty. She has the word "Liberal" tattooed on her left arm. I knew I was going to like this show even before we arrived.

She was quite good. Very random - the only comedian, or performer for that matter (save improv), that I've seen who genuinely appeared to have no rehearsed order to her rantings. She is know for being a political comedian, but she disagrees with that claim. She just happens to talk about politics sometimes. And current events. And she uses big words. And she wears tights under bathing suit shorts. Sounds good to me.

Good News Week - April 18
Good News Week is a show that's on here in Australia every Monday. As mentioned briefly above, it's sort of a mixture between a talk show and a game show. There is a host and two teams of three that "compete" in different verbal challenges, all loosely based on recent news. Points are awarded flippantly by the host, and there is technically a winning team at the end, but no one really cares since there aren't any prizes. And, since most of the guests are comedians, it diverges very quickly from the current events into making fun of politicians and Amy Winehouse. It is quite enjoyable and even sometimes mildly informative.

For the comedy festival, the crew comes and films a couple episodes of this show here in Melbourne. Normally they film in Sydney. Kane and I, along with Alana, and Marc's parents*** got tickets to be in the audience (we're circled in the picture, click to view larger). The live show was actually about two hours long, from which they cut significant portions for the one hour show that aired on Monday. We had a really good time; the guests were great, the material was funny, and it was fun to watch the show on Monday and try to remember what they cut out.

Jason Byrne - April 19

Jason Byrne was one of the guests at the filming of Good News Week we saw the day before. Kane and I thought he was quite funny so invited Grace to see his show the following night. He's an Irish guy and is a bit of a spaz, which I believe are unrelated afflictions. He has a ton of energy and is relatively funny, though I found it to be more of a big-smile type of funny, rather than a laugh-out-loud type. He also picks on the people in the audience (though isn't too mean about it) which can be a bit tiring. At least we know he didn't rehearse it. Overall, enjoyable, but not the best show we've seen. He was better on GNW, in my opinion.

Felicity Ward's Ugly as a Child Variety Show - April 23
This was a one woman show in a teeny tiny room at town hall that, my guess was, is used by day as traffic school for all of us sinners. It was such an odd place to have a comedy show! But, 60 or so of us crammed into our little chairs (it was a sold out show!) and were entertained by Ms. Ward as she told us about how ugly and strange she was as a child, and, by extension, how demented her family is. She did impressions, sang a couple songs, and was generally spirited and engaging. At first I thought it wasn't too funny, but I really warmed up to her by the end of it, and was having a really good time. I went to this one with the book club ladies, who also enjoyed the show. Good work Felicity!

Reginald D. Hunter - April 25
Reg was also a guest on the Good News Week filming we went to, though we have also seen him before on the show (as viewed from the safety and comfort of our own homes). So, we grabbed some tickets to see him with Marc and Alana on the last weekend of the festival. He was good - funny, intelligent, interesting. His material was a bit more topical than I had expected, but I liked it for that. He actually lives in the UK and we might see if he has any gigs when we're going to be up there...stay tuned for further bloggage about our upcoming trip.

*Other festivals are also worth going to, but I would say that Comedy Festival rates higher on the enjoyment-meter than, say, the Flower and Garden Festival. For me, at least.
**They had shoes on - there has to be some dignity maintained.
***Marc ended up with a migraine and decided not to go just before the show. Bummer! He felt fine afterwords - go figure.

Sovereign Hill

On the way to the Grampians last weekend, we stopped in a town called Ballarat to see their main tourist attraction: Sovereign Hill. Sovereign Hill is an "open air museum" (says Wikipedia; pretty accurate, I suppose) of a rebuilt gold mining town from the 1850's. It is probably similar to Columbia in California (we did our gold rushes at the same time, isn't that weird?), though I don't remember a thing about that place*.

We pulled up to the entrance, the parking monitor already diverting us to an overflow area since Easter weekend is apparently a madhouse at any place accepting customers. The Lonely Planet guidebook told us that it costs $30 each to get into this place. We were wary of wasting money - this place could be real crap. Approaching the entrance, we found that, our guidebook being pleasantly out of date, the price was $37.50 each. We decided to eat the $75 and do it. It's not like we're likely to ever be in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia again.

The place was excellent. I still maintain that the admission was overpriced, but I tend to do that. First of all, the place was huge. I though it would maybe be a couple of buildings and a creek for panning for gold and that's it. It was instead a huge area (60 acres, apparently) with one main dirt road lined with probably two dozen old wood buildings. The storefronts apparently were made to exactly match the stores that used to be on the main drag of the town. Despite my inherent cynicism, it really was like being transported back to the 1850's - the only catch being the throngs of unruly children who were apparently transported back with me.

Yes, it's a big family place. But I didn't even mind, that's how good it was. Each little rickety shop** was staffed by period-dressed people and all of the items for sale were either made on site or, at the very least, not the run-of-the-mill plastic crap you see everywhere else. They were different. I think that's what intrigued me so much. It doesn't seem to matter where you are in this modern world of ours, there are Tic Tacs, Pringles, magnets, sunglasses, etc. for sale at any store, market, or depot you come across. The boring side-affect of modern production/transportation/globalization and the like. But this place must have been what it was like in the olden days. Actual unique stuff. I was amazed.

Items were being created in many of the shops right before our eyes. There were men with greasy hands doing whatever it is you do to make pans, bells, and other trinkets out of tin and brass and other materials we don't use much anymore. It was incredible. The machines were powered by steam engines that rotate pulleys that push giant leather belts that somehow make things go. There were belts strung all through some of these places to power machines all over the place. The belts were above us, whirling away, doing their part to help us make these precious items. I think I was just as amazed as someone who was actually going through the industrial revolution. More pictures here.

For some reason, I have this idea in my mind that because something is obsolete is doesn't work any more. This is not true. Obsolete ideas and machines and techniques work just fine. They're just slower and more difficult than something we've figured out since. Maybe it's just because I'm an engineer dork, but witnessing some of these old-fashioned processes at work was truly enthralling. As ridiculous and slow and mean as humans can be, we sure are amazing creatures.

*Our parents had a tendency to take us to exciting places when we were too young to retain any permanent memory of them. I don't blame them, for one thing, how were they supposed to know? And for another, you have to do something with your children, right? I'm sure we had a great time in Columbia. And I hope to go back someday to jog my memory. Or just make some new ones.

**On an engineering note, the buildings in Sovereign Hill were rickety. To the point where I was curious how they managed to get them built because they were clearly not up to snuff with any code anywhere, ever. Mexico has safer buildings, I'm certain. Obviously they're fine, they've been standing for almost 40 years, but some of the precariously placed pulleys and wood to wood connections could certainly use some engineering finesse.

Grampians Weekend

Easter in Australia is not like it is in the States. For some reason, even though it is known for being a significantly more secular society than the US of A, Easter is a big holiday here. I guess it has morphed, like Christmas, into more of a chocolate eggs* and vacation thing than a Jesus thing. This is fine with me. My point is, Easter isn't just a Sunday here, it's a day off the Friday before and Monday after. It's a freaking four-day weekend.

And with said four-day weekend, Kane and I took a little trip to the Grampians National Park. The Grampians is a nice little mountain area that is only about a 2-3 hour drive north-west of Melbourne. The mountains are pretty, the hikes are nice, and the tiny town of 300 that greets you actually stays open until after dark (amazing). The only problem was that, like Tasmania, we apparently decided to visit this location along with every other family in Victoria.

The place was packed. The tiny strip of "downtown" was crawling with people during the day, the cafes were bursting with patrons, the parking lots had men in orange vests diverting traffic to park ridiculous distances from their original destination (come on, it's not like I'm here to hike), and some of the trails were more like going to see Disney on Ice than a nice relaxing outdoor activity. We spent more time waiting for people to exchange right of way on a narrow flight of stone steps going to see Mackenzie Falls than we did actually enjoying the falls.

But, alas, the trip was still nice. Just being on vacation is nice, no matter how many screaming children are trying to ruin it for you. The other hike we went on was far less crowded and, though more difficult, was more rewarding since the trail was awesome and the view at the top was excellent. Overall we had a really good time and the weather was mercifully mild for us (winter has recently been showing its ugly head, much to my chagrin - time to get outta here!).

See some more of the pics here.

*The other "traditional" Easter food here is hot cross buns. I have only heard of these in the nursery rhyme song (hot crossed buns, one a penny two a penny...) but apparently they're real, and they're here. And, I'm sorry to report, I don't like them very much.

Star Sightings

Ok, I almost didn't mention this on the blog since they're not really super duper A list stars that we happened across this weekend, but it was just so odd that we managed to catch a glimpse of two people who we have previously only seen on tv (they weren't together), that I had to post something.

Our first sighting was at a little cafe on Chapel Street where we went to walk around and tick a classic Melbourne site off our list*. We had a very nice lunch and about halfway through Kane looks up at me and asks, "Is that Phillip?" Though Bill Nighy** has been in lots of movies (Underworld, Valkyrie, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Love Actually, to name a few), you might only recognize him as "that guy" (or, if you're my mom, not at all). Kane and I, however, know him intimately as Phillip from the greatest movie of all time: Shaun of the Dead. We immediately started quoting necessary lines from the movie and joking about approaching him with some of them.

I had dismissed the possibility that it was in fact Phillip by the end of the meal, but, low and behold, it appears that Mr. Nighy is actually present in Melbourne this weekend for an appearance on Rove tonight. This fact leads us to resume our former assumption, with certainty of 100%. He has very odd and distinctive glasses (not pictured here, but shown in his IMDB profile linked above). Shabooya.

Today, we went for a nice brunch at the posh Auction Rooms Cafe in North Melbourne where I sighted JD, one of the top 20 contestants from last season's So You Think You Can Dance Australia. I know, we're pathetic, not only watching this show, but doing so with such dedication as to recognize its contestants on the street. But still, he was on tv. I realize that so was Jerry Springer and Blossom, but I don't care.

And as a follow up, Bill Nighy was very funny on Rove, along with fellow Shaun of the Dead-er Nick Frost. Yeay for Australia where even the lesser stars are bright and shiny.

*We've actually been to Chapel Street once before with Marc and Alana when our friendship was just beginning (ah, those were the days), but we were new to this city and really didn't know where the hell we were at all, so it hardly counts.
**Not to be confused with the great Bill Nye the Science Guy, though their surnames are pronounced the same.

Earthquake Part Deux

Apparently I attract earthquakes. Today we had a quake that was the same magnitude of the one a week and a half ago, but this time we were at work. I felt the shaky-shake from the ground floor and everyone looked around saying the standard, "did you feel that?", and, "was that an earthquake?". I proclaimed loud and clear that I did feel it and it was an earthquake. I do have to pretend to be a bit of an expert being from California and all. Although I've felt more quakes here in the past two weeks that I have in 25 years of being firmly planted on California soil. The irony followed me here too, apparently.

Alice and the Rock

I will begin by describing the isolated, desolate, parched location of Alice Springs and Ayer's Rock (Uluru) in this fine expanse of utter vacancy that is Australia. First of all, most non-Australians (and probably some Australians) don't register the true size of this country. The stark gigantic-itude of this continent is decidedly underestimated time and time again. The continental United States has an area of 3.1 million square miles, while Australia is 2.97 million square miles; all but the same size, really.

But when you compare America's busting 306 million residents to Australia's meager 21.6 million, you begin to see that this place is freaking deserted - literally. For the vast majority of the flat, dry interior, there is nothing. A documentary once told me that Australia has the most area of land, besides Antarctica, that has never been traversed by modern man. That means that there could conceivably be giant chunks of gold - or anything really - just laying around in the middle of this place where we're just to fragile and uninterested to venture extensively. Imagine what awaits us...

Part of the allure and experience of visiting Alice and Uluru is that they are a couple of the only places nestled safely in the heart of this vast empty place where people have braved the elements and wrestled nature back enough to install a few lousy shacks with air conditioning, which, they realized early on, is the only way to lure more people out there. Here's a map showing Uluru's (Ayer's Rock's) location in Aus; you will notice Melbourne and Sydney safely perched on the south east corner of the continent (their combined inhabitants accounting for 40% of the population).

So, I was happy to explore one of the only reasons a sane person would ever have to venture to this remote place: The Big Red Rock.

And a big red rock it was. We actually didn't do a whole lot with this rock - we viewed it at two sunsets and one sunrise (yes, we're crazy) when it is famed to be at it's most orang-y, but didn't do a whole lot else. You can climb the rock, but the Aboriginals ask you not to; you can walk around the rock, but why walk when you can drive?; and you can take helicopter rides to get a sweet arial view, but we all know that I'm too cheap for that. More pics are here.

About an hour drive from Uluru is a group of similar rocks called The Olgas. Here, there are many rocks instead of just one, though none are as large as the one big rock. The Olgas (or Kata Tjuta in Aboriginal language) makes for good hiking (supposedly better than Uluru itself), so we spent the better part of our single day in this area hiking around here.

The temperature was hot, but since it can easily get up to 120+ degrees, I wasn't complaining about the dry 90 or so that we experienced. It did make for an excellent night's sleep after that hike though, I'll surely testify to that.

Around Uluru there is a singular resort - you must stay here if you come to see the rock. There are a variety of places to stay (hotel, apartment, camping) and a few restaurants, but the place has a bit of a deserted, 1980's-out-of-style feel to it that I found to be a bit creepy. Plus, the only people in the entire area are tourists, which is at once awkward and comforting.

But even stranger than Ayer's Rock itself is the gateway city which lies a cool 400 miles away: Alice Springs. To fly to Uluru, you must first fly to Alice Springs. Flights do not go directly from Melbourne to Uluru - either that or if they do, they're ridiculously expensive, I can't remember. We got a bargain at $500 a person to fly Melbourne-Alice Springs-Uluru and back again. Four flights in four days - good times. A discussion about the current developments in airport security is an entirely different blog entry.

Alice is a tiny little run down town that appears to be barely breathing with a small but apparently adequate flow of tourists to sustain it. Don't even ask me what the 26,000 people who live there are doing, I can't even imagine. The nearest town of a equal or larger population is a clean a thousand miles away. Who does the high school soccer team play against?

I've seen small desert towns in America - this is certainly not a phenomenon isolated to this country, though The Alice is arguably far more isolated than most other similar towns around the globe. Still, this is not the strangest thing about Alice, as I saw it. All around town you find Aboriginal people just lounging around. Understand that in big Australian cities (such as our Melbourne), Aboriginals are a rare sighting. Their plight is similar to that of the Native Americans in that they have sort of been trampled on, tossed aside, and left to the plights of poverty and alcoholism, with no real place in the Western world around them.

And so, they rarely are able to afford life or even a visit to the big cities and remain scattered in tiny communities around mostly the north and middle of the country, where no one else will venture. But in Alice, these people are everywhere. I was hoping to really experience their culture and style with this juxtaposition, but instead it's more like herds of homeless people roaming the town, some selling paintings by the sidewalks, others drunk, and most just minding their own business laying in the shade. I found it a bit unsettling and didn't really know how to deal with it.

I sort of automatically turned on "homeless person defense mode" when a man tried to coax me over to view the painted canvas he had spread out next to him on the red brick cobbles of the city square. I'm not sure how good their English is, in general, and they're all dressed like vagabonds. I sort of felt sorry for them, but really only because I couldn't discern if they were happy or not. I felt very awkward being one of the "rich white people" arriving to exploit their land and give them superior smug glances. I need a book about it to learn what's really behind the blank faces and unkempt persona of the meandering Aboriginals of Alice. Or, if I weren't such a weirdo, maybe I could have just talked to them.

But alas, it was certainly an interesting experience. And even if some of the Aboriginals of Alice are down on their luck, I know that there is a rich Aboriginal culture surviving around the country, which people are starting to grasp, respect, and attempt to preserve. Alice and the Rock, thanks for having us.

Uluru Pictures

We returned yesterday from our four day weekend trip to Uluru, way out in the middle of this gigantic, barren country. I will post more about our experiences and (my) thoughts, but for now, I thought I'd upload some eye candy for anyone who's curious about the great expanse that is the-middle-of-freaking-nowhere Australia. Here is the link to my most recent Picasa album. And here is my favorite pic from the trip, taken at a quirky bar in Alice Springs.

Earthquake!

Last night was the end of a long week of work and entertaining: Kane's dad and stepmom were visiting from Monday to Thursday (as shown above). We had a really good time hanging out with them every night, but by Friday, we were rather tired. Watching The Wedding Singer on tv, I felt a vibration sitting on the couch. Now, we're on the 14th floor, so there aren't many conceivable explanations for the floor of our apartment vibrating. "What is that?" I asked Kane worridly. After a few seconds there was a medium sized lurch of our building - a definite sudden movement and then everything stopped. I stood up and swore that it must have been an earthquake. I'm not from California for nothing.

Approaching the internet, my well-informed, everpresent friend, I went to confirm our experience. But alas, nothing turned up on my google search. I did, however, know something was up when the geological site for Australia wouldn't load. The masses around Melbourne were doing the same thing I was, clogging the site right up. About an hour later (what century is this anyway?) I finally found the articles appear on the news sites: a 4.7 quake hit outside Melbourne. And then the "breaking news" began to accost us from the tv set. Finally. Well at least I'm not a crazy person, making up earthquakes.

It is rare for an earthquake to happen in Australia - it's nothing like the geological madness of California. But, upon searching the internet, it appears that there are a number of 2.5-4.5ish quakes a year around the country. So, I guess the earthquakes chased us all the way around the world. I'll tell you though, a 14th floor earthquake is far more scary than a ground floor earthquake. Not that I was terribly scared, but I think that was the most worried I've ever been from a quake - because we're way in the heck up here and I know they don't design for earthquakes very well here. Not in a real good position if something were to happen. But, our building held strong and all is well. It seems to be natural disaster season in Melbourne. I didn't sign up for this crap.

Melbourne Mews

That was my attempt at using alliteration to be cute. Sorry, it won't happen again. I will, however, deliver the intended message: an update on some local news. To start us off, the bushfires are still going, though I'm not sure if any of the ones currently burning are left over from the original fires. I do know that new ones have been lit and that there's a suspected sort of copycat arsonist thing going on here. I have hypothesized that it is a phenomenon not unlike the Columbine shootings in the States; it becomes a sort of "fad" for a while. Sad, but could be true. I'm pretty sure that no one has died from the fires except on that first day, though the count from then is up to 209. Firefighters have been flown in from all around the country and internationally to help fight the fires, and they're still hard at work.

Kane's dad and stepmom were in town for one night last week and will return next week for a couple more nights. They are finishing up a cruise that went around New Zealand and ends in Sydney via Melbourne; we were able to have dinner with them on the night they docked in Melbourne. After the cruise they will drive back down to see us for a couple days next week. It was really good to see them and we're looking forward to hosting them next week as well.

Work has been pretty good; our office is still very busy even with the downturned climate of the economy. Kane and I put in our three months notice and advised our bosses that we will be leaving in June. We haven't sussed out the dates yet, but we intend to do our East Coast of Australia road trip in June, then head over to Europe in July. We have only been doing half-assed planning for both of these trips up until now and we'll need to get it together in the next couple months. We will surely keep you apprised, beloved reader.

I finished my photography class the week before last and I think it was really good for me. I learned the basic functions of all the buttons and gadgets on my camera and how to set them to "standard" settings. We then learned when to deviate from these settings and why, etc. Photo shoots and sharing helped emphasize the points the teacher was making. I feel that I got a lot out of the class and am hopeful that I can use some of the skills that I learned in our upcoming travels. Here are a couple shots (some in collage format) from a shoot we did in the class at Montsalvat.


Next weekend is our big trip with Marc and Alana to Uluru! Will certainly have pics and news (not mews) after that.

Babies Everywhere!

And now for some lighter news...my sister, Jenny, has just given birth to a healthy baby girl: Taylor Veronica Avila. She was born on February 16 at 12:10am (keeping everyone up late already!) and was 7 lbs 15 ounces and 19.5 inches long. And her social security number is...

She has a full head of hair, which is an amazing sight. I was so bald and alien-esque that my dad deemed me an E.T. look-alike. But not baby T here, she's rocking a sweet hair-do and she's already a total cutie pie just like her momma. See pictures below.


In related news (quite literally, ha), my gorgeous cousin Adele also just gave birth to a tiny little bundle of adorability named Isaac Xavier Jorissen on February 14 at 6:30 in the morning. He was 6 lbs 2 ounces and 20.5 inches long. We've got a little basketball player on our hands! Isaac is googling for us below.


And, to complete the reverse-chronological order of this report, another beautiful cousin of mine, Monique, welcomed Henry Liam Mulvany into the world on November 12 of last year. He arrived at 11:23am and weighed 6 lbs 14 ounces and was 20 inches long. He is no doubt far larger than that now that he's gotten used to having a bit more space than when he was inside Monique's womb. Cutie number three (or number one, depending on how you look at it) shown below.


Congratulations to all the pretty ladies turned mommies and the supportive and happy daddies. We're all so happy to be aunties, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, and the other awkward, long winded technical names that are used to describe our relationships to this new generation. I can't wait to meet the newcomers and wish you all rest, health, and happiness (though you'll probably only get two out of three for a while...).

Bushfires: A Tragedy

"Australia's Darkest Day"

"The worst natural disaster in Australian history"

"The greatest loss of Australian life during peacetime"

These are a few of the many jaw dropping headlines floating around Melbourne as the bushfires continue to rage through Victoria and New South Wales. It all began on Saturday, when the scorching temperatures combined with tremendous winds created a perfect haven for this hellish destruction.

While the causes of many of the fires are still undetermined, arson has been suspected for at least some of them and is only now being confirmed in a few cases. Anyone convicted of these crimes is to be considered a mass murderer as there have been 181 confirmed deaths up to this point. They expect this number to "rise steeply" as more towns are uncovered. The coroner is expecting 300 bodies.

Arson has been ruled out for the largest fire so far in Kingslake, and for many smaller fires around Victoria. Kingslake and Marysville are reportedly completely destroyed. Kane and I went to Marysville for our birthday last year. So it goes.

It seems that most people have died either while trying to escape (crashing their car in the smoke, smoke inhalation while trying to escape, car being overtaken by flames while driving) or as the fire approached their town too quickly to escape. One man's account described a huge crash sound that was the fire coming over the nearby hill, and only seconds after that he was being burnt by the flames. He somehow managed to escape. Obviously many others did not.

One woman said she heard someone describe the sound of the fire as being like a locomotive. She corrected this by saying it was like a locomotive the size of the horizon; a great roaring that consumes the universe. She huddled in the river under a wet blanket with her daughter. I cannot imagine the fear, intensity, or heat.

Many of those who have escaped with their lives have lost loved ones, pets, homes; entire lives. News hour on tv this week has been grim.

The outpouring of support from the community has been tremendous. Large companies are donating millions, and the Red Cross is collecting from civilians. Over $46 million has been raised so far, which is incredible. I encourage anyone who can to make a donation to help the people affected. Over 750 homes have been completely destroyed.

As mentioned previously, Kane and I are near the fires, but far from any real danger. They are still burning today, but many of them are now under control. The majority of the casualties happened in the first blast on Saturday when the weather was so heinous and entire towns were overtaken. The weather is cool now, even a bit of a sprinkle today, which hopefully is helping the firefighters. All those affected are in our hearts and thoughts for the weeks to come.

Bushfires - We're Fine

I just wanted to quickly post that Kane and I are safe and far outside any viable path of the horrible bushfires raging through Victoria. I have gotten a couple emails of concern, so I thought I'd better post an entry to assure everyone of our safety.

Though the fires are not terribly far from us, we live right in the city center and are in no danger of being directly affected. The closest fires are probably 100 miles from us; there is an advantage to living in the concrete jungle.

I will be posting an extended entry tonight or tomorrow including more details about this disaster. Please check back in the next couple of days if you are interested in further information. Thanks for your concern and support.

115° F - Come On

I think this is the beginning of the apocalypse. At least, I imagine that it might feel a bit like this. The heat is unbearable, just like last week but now with an added symptom of world-endliness: extreme winds. I made the mistake today of asking Kane to accompany me to the City Museum. It's right in the CBD and it's one of the many "tourist" attractions in this city that we've never bothered to attend.

We have Marc and Alana's car, so I thought it wouldn't be too bad since we'd be in the air conditioned car on the way there, a quick stint in the open to get into the museum, then we'd be exploring the undoubtedly air conditioned facilities for a couple hours, then repeat backwards. The assumption that this would be tolerable may have been correct if it were, say 95° outside, maybe even 105° with a breeze. This assumption was incorrect with 115° temperatures and body-slamming, bird-inhibiting, volcano-blast-like winds.

Second mistake: parking the car about 3 blocks from the museum. Seemingly an innocuous choice, but again, in the conditions, nearly fatal. Getting into the museum wasn't too bad since we caught the free tram from the car. The museum was not air conditioned as far as I could tell, but it was relatively cool since it's the old Treasury building; a stone bunker from the 1800's (mental note: probably not a bad place to be during an actual apocalypse). The place was nice but really nothing terribly special.

As we left to head back to the car we were accosted by continual bombarement of head-on, fire-hot wind. Kane's hat blew off. Dirt was lodged into my eyes, nose, ears, etc, etc. Airborn leaves, sand, and other debris pelted us vigorously on our three block journey back to the car. We couldn't really speak for fear of opening our mouths and having a bird or plastic bag blow in. I felt utterly helpless.

It took, quite honestly, about seven minutes to trudge from the museum to the car and as we pried open the locks and melted into a smaller, more personal oven, we both started sweating. The massive winds had kept any previous sweat instantly evaporated before we could detect it. But now that we were in the car we were both completely drenched. Walking for seven minutes in this weather was equivalent to riding a bike up a hill for hours. I rarely can understand how someone can die of exposure. It's not hard to imagine on a day like this.

Amongst all this, I had a variety of thoughts, most of which included, "Dear Lord, get me to the car, get me to the car now", but some of which included things like, "How can those pigeons be fighting over a hamburger bun when it's this hot outside?", and "At what temperature does metal start to melt?". Actually the person I felt most sorry for on this fine day, was the pretty asian woman stepping out of the fancy car in her wedding dress. This miserable day happened to be the one she and her mate chose to remember for the rest of their lives. I think that's guaranteed. I commented to Kane that I would personally rather have monsoon rain on my wedding day than heat/wind like this*.

On our way home one of the traffic lights was off, which made me start to fear the power going out like last Friday's heat wave madness. And that's how my brain stumbled onto the whole apocalypse thing - what if the power went out, then the water? What the heck would we do? I live on the 14th floor in a huge city with millions of people, not exactly a situation where you can make it too long without a visit to the grocery store. City people effectively have no survival skills outside the confines of our urban environments, which is a bit odd and a bit scary.

But since the world was not ending, we proceeded to arrive safely back at our apartment, worship the air conditioning, take multiple showers to cool down (and get the dust off), and continue with our internet-based, happy lives. This extreme heat did inspire me to do something I had never done before: put ice in my orange juice. They always offer ice in your OJ on planes, and I'm like, "Uh, no, the juice is already cold, why do I want to water it down?". But today was good cause for change. I still don't know why they offer the ice in your milk on the plane though, why would I ever want to water down my milk? That's just gross.

To be fair, the rest of this past week has had particularly fine weather; it's been sunny and warm (you might have considered it to be hot, but certainly not life-threateningly so) with generally no awful surprises. Today was just another freak spike in temperature, a fad that I hope is rapidly going out of style here in Melbourne.


*Note to the wedding gods: For my hypothetical wedding in the distant future, I would technically prefer to have perfect sunny 80° with a light breeze, not either of the aforementioned heinous weather conditions.

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]