Welcome to Australia, mate!

As you may recall from my post in December, these were the words yelled to me from the boundary of the pitch when the first ball I ever faced in the first cricket match I ever participated in struck me in the neck. Because that... well, in the US, I never would have been afforded the opportunity to have that lovely experience.

And now we have another reminder that this continent/country offers all sorts of different opportunities and experiences. Such as, sayyyyyy, making sure your dog isn't stalked and devoured by a python??!?

Yes. Welcome to Australia, indeed.

I'm sorry, I just blacked out

Was that last post on politics??!? Sorry, won't let that happen again.

This will make it better.

The ultimate indictment of Bush

One of my favorite courses in college was on presidential speechmaking. Taught by David Eisenhower -- as in Dwight's grandson and Camp David -- we studied famous and noteworthy speeches by presidents throughout history. For our final project, Penn paid for us to visit any presidential library to study how a particular speech was conceived, written, debated internally, rewritten, debated some more, rewritten again, debated a little more, rewritten some more, delivered and received. I went to Independence, Missouri* to study Harry Truman's nomination acceptance speech in 1948. I won't go into details on the paper -- if you'd like to read all 30-plus pages, let me know and I'll gladly email it to you -- but suffice it to say it was a fascinating project in a fascinating course.

*Why I went to Independence, Missouri when I could have gone to Los Angeles (Nixon or Reagan), Austin (LBJ), Boston (JFK) or Atlanta (Carter), I'm not really sure. Needless to say, I was the only person in the class of 20 who studied Truman. I'd say at least half the class studied one of those five presidents in those other four locations. Not shocking, I guess.

Five years removed from this course, I've (not surprisingly) forgotten much of what I had learned. Which is unfortunate. But one of the few things that my brain has managed to retain is how the strategies of presidential contenders have shifted as the race goes from the primary phase to the general phase:

During the primaries, the contenders have historically appealed to their party's base. So the Democrats spew on about universal health care, the benefits of stem cell research and why we need to get the flock out of Iraq. The Republicans, on the other hand, go on about overturning Roe v. Wade, closing the borders and deregulating the economy. The theory behind this being, of course, that they need the support of their party's base to win the nomination. But once the nomination is locked up? The candidates move towards the center of the political spectrum in order to appeal to indendents and the moderates in their party, and quickly disavow or "clarify" past statements or supported legislation that may have skewed too far to the left or right and away from these groups' values.

But this year? You're not seeing any of this. Because in the midst of primary season, a moderate Republican, who has to get on his hands and knees for the support of the conservative base, has the nomination locked up, and a Democrat who's less polarizing (if not more moderate) than his rival has built up some serious momentum to win his party's nomination. This is not the normal recipe for a presidential election. But it's exactly what's happening.

I don't think we need to look any further than G-Dub's current 30% approval rating to know that he's not too popular right now. (How he ever was, I'll never know.) But if there was anything that could further prove just how sick people are of the dude and what he's done to the country, it's what we're seeing right now: two moderate politicians with a history of crossing party lines to get the job done are the favorites to win their respective party's nomination. And I have to believe that for G-Dub, who's the antithesis to this, this has to be one of the most damning possible indictments of his presidency as it (mercifully) winds down.

Melbourne -- there's an angle in here somewhere

I've just yet to find it.

You'd think there'd be some way I could cleverly sum up my trip in a title for this post, some way for me to approach my recap, but I'm at a loss. So simply stated, I went to Melbourne last weekend, and it was awesome. Hmmmm, maybe that's it? "Melbourne -- it was awesome!"

But that would be quite a simplistic look at the weekend. For there's no way that all 72 hours of a three-day weekend can be awesome, right? And that can certainly be said of the 72 hours I spent there last weekend. For while I had my fair share of awesomeness, some things were only kind of awesome, and others were not awesome at all. (I feel like Jeff Spicoli would be beaming with pride at these words.)

So let's try that approach.

Melbourne -- the awesome, the kind of awesome and the not so awesome

The Awesome

Weather. So this is what summer's like, eh? You know, when it comes to the Sydney vs. Melbourne, the weather debate is generally ceded to Sydney. Sydney's supposed to be the warm city, Sydney's supposed to afford you year-round opportunities to go to the beach, Sydney's supposed to leave you sunburned after every weekend. But after countless consecutive days of rain in Sydney, it took this trip to get this month's fill of Vitamin D. Honestly, what glorious, glorious weather. Thirty degrees (Celsius, that is) and sunny every day. What a novel concept.

Melbourne Cricket Ground. The most hallowed of sporting venues in Australia, this place holds over 100,000 people. And since I've started to get into cricket, Maz and I did a tour. Did you know that the biggest crowd ever to watch a baseball game was at the MCG? Yup, something like 104,000, during the 1956 Olympics. The only time that record may ever fall? Right back at the MCG, if baseball has an Opening Day there, as I've been told is a possibility.

Trams. They weren't awesome because they were more efficient than other forms of public transportation, but damn, the trams in Melbourne are cool. I've lived in two cities (Philly and Boston) with some semblance of a tram system, but that's just what they are -- a mere semblance of a tram system. Melbourne's tram system, on the other hand, just oozes with nostalgia. Just walking down the street, hearing the bells on the trams as they passed, added a very cool and unique je ne sais quoi to the whole experience. I'm really not familiar with San Francisco or Houston, so maybe their trams can match this, but I somehow doubt it.

The laneways. Much of the center of Melbourne is dominated with wide boulevards lined with chain stores. (See "The Kind of Awesome" section below for more on the chains.) But throughout the city, darting off of these boulevards, are these tiny little streets, called laneways. Generally just the width of one car, these laneways have taken up a culture unto themselves and are populated with really cool restaurants, bars and boutiques. So if I ever needed a respite from the city, all I had to do was walk down one of these laneways, stop in a coffee shop or bakery and hang out for a bit. Two awesome thumbs up.

Federation Square. Just a really cool -- I mean, awesome -- complex, right on the Yarra River. Seems like there's always something going on -- there was a sustainability festival there last weekend and an outdoor film to be shown on Sunday night -- and plenty of bars and restaurants to boot. And it's right across the street from Flinders Station, another old school feature to the city, and a really nice, big church.

Eureka Tower. Tallest residential building in the world. Highest public vantage point in the Southern Hemisphere. Fastest lifts -- ahem, elevators -- in the Southern Hemisphere. (Living in Australia for any period of time, you'll quickly learn that it's quite easy to have the biggest/tallest/fastest/etc anything in the Southern Hemisphere. It's like being Ms. Rhode Island or something.) And, obviously, a fantastic view. Needless to say: awesome.

The Kind of Awesome

Food. This could really be split among all the categories, but as a whole, it was merely okay. Which was actually a bit of a disappointment. Take Friday, for example. Breakfast at Mario's (recommended by the Wallpaper guide book -- more on this in a second) was okay, lunch at Gertrude Street Enoteca (also recommended by Wallpaper) was fantastic and dinner at some random Italian place I chanced upon was crap. Then again, the next day, the mushroom, cheese and spinach crepe that I had in the morning, the muffin that I had as a snack and the chili sausage that I had for dinner were all quite good. And in what was an absolutely shocking and bewildering find, the Ultimate Blended Mocha that I had at Coffee Bean was (obviously) outstanding.* So barring some swings and misses on Friday, maybe the food deserves better than "The Kind of Awesome" grouping after all.

*The whole asterisk thing from my last entry gave me a headache so I thought I'd abandon it, but if anything deserves a bit of a tangent, it's this. So let's recap. I was in Melbourne. And I found a Coffee Bean. To put this in proper perspective, I would have been shocked enough if I chanced upon a Coffee Bean in Melbourne, Florida. But in case any clarification is needed, this was Melbourne, Australia. Thousands and thousands of miles away from what I ever imagined was the closest Coffee Bean. Seriously, do any other Coffee Beans even exist outside of Southern California? (About two seconds of research would answer this question, but it's more fun to continue to be ignorant on the issue.) And there's one in frickin' Melbourne??!? And lest you think it was a knockoff of the real thing, believe me, it wasn't. Same menu, same logo, same taste. Unbelievable. For a good six minutes before I went in, I probably stood on the sidewalk, gaping at the storefront and wondering if I was tripping on some drugs that I had unknowingly taken the previous night.

Subway* and 7-Eleven. I have never seen more of either of any chain store in such a small area as the Subways and 7-Elevens in Melbourne.** Honestly, there'd be a Subway on one block, then a 7-Eleven on the next. And I can't decide if this is a good thing or not. I mean, yeah, they're evil corporations taking over the world... but the convenience! Anyway, exactly how pervasive were they? Take a look at the picture to the left. That's part of Federation Square, which as discussed above, is considered one of Melbourne's icons. That storefront at the bottom of what's a culturally significant building? A 7-Eleven!

*Since arriving in Australia in September, I had not eaten at a Subway. For those that know me, this is quite a development, because I love Subway. Love it. If Lonely Planet is my marijuana and maps are my heroin (if you're not following me here, check out my previous post) then Subway... my God, I don't even want to know. But for some reason, since I've been here, I've stayed away. I think that's partly because I've been trying to eat healthier, and although a typical fast food restaurant Subway is not, and they at least claim to be healthy, I've resisted. But then Thursday night at the airport happened, when I gave in and scarfed down a foot-long Italian BMT. And then Monday night happened. And now I fear that I'm on the edge and may black out, come to a month later and realize that I've eaten Subway three times a day every single. And if you don't think that could happen (or that I'd be up to the challenge, a la Super Size Me), then you don't know me.

**Possible exception here, if you wanted to count a small area within a city, would be the two Starbucks across the street from each other in Astor Place.

Booze. When Maz got back to the city on Saturday afternoon, we got right to it. Several beers at his place, several more at Federation Square (from where we made a drunk dial to a friend... at 8pm!), then a giant pitcher of Pimms and lemonade and then, ummmm... and then, ummmmm... well, that's really all I can remember. There were other drinks, yes, but things start to get a little hazy after our pitcher of Pimms at Madame Brussels. (What a great name.) So I called it a night a bit early. Meanwhile, Maz and another friend stayed out, and to my horror, I woke up at 7am to 15 missed calls from Maz. That's right, I passed out in the apartment with Maz's keys, and despite 15 calls to me and many more buzzes to the apartment, I was out cold. And Maz was shit out of luck. Oops!

Casino. Got to Maz's apartment at 11pm on Thursday night, and shortly thereafter, we headed to the casino. We sit down at a blackjack table and immediately drop $50. We move over to a three card poker table and drop $50 more. We split up for a bit and I start with another $50 on what might be the worst blackjack table ever. I really don't like to be a snob about it, but everything you might hate about blackjack, this table had. People coming and going. Dealers coming and going. And worst of all, people not knowing how to play.* So why did I stay at the table, you ask? Well, despite it all, I was winning. But honestly, I hated every second of it. And was actually pleased when I went on a mini losing streak and had an excuse to get up and walk away.

*In particular, there was one guy who was doubling down and splitting just for the sake of it. So regardless of the situation, if he had any pairs, he would always split. And the icing on the cake was when he split two sixes against the dealer's 10. I'll never forget it.

Virgin Blue. It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm in a cab heading to a client meeting. My phone rings. It's the airline I'm flying to Melbourne, Virgin Blue: "Hello sir, I'm calling to tell you that your 8:30 flight tonight has been cancelled." FUCK! My heart hits the floor. My weekend is ruined. Are there any more flights this weekend??? The rep continues: "How would you like to get on the flight scheduled before that, at 8:15?" Uhhhh, you have a flight with open seats that leaves only 15 minutes earlier? Wow, that's not so bad. But I was quite busy at work that day, so I ask what's the next scheduled flight to leave after my originally scheduled 8:30 flight. "There's an 8:45." Uhhhh, so on top of your flight with open seats that leaves only 15 minutes earlier, you have a flight with open seats that leaves only 15 minutes later? That's fantastic!* I reschedule for that and my experiences with Virgin Blue for the rest of the weekend are awesome.

*If Virgin Blue did one of those Southwest-type commercials, where they just scroll through all the flights that they have for a route (say, LA to San Fran) in a given day, the version of that commercial for the Sydney to Melbourne route** would last two minutes. Amazing.

**Dammit, really didn't want to do all these asterisks. Anyway, did you know that the Sydney to Melbourne route is the fourth most flown route in the world (851 flights per week), after Barcelona-Madrid (971 flights per week), Sao Paulo-Rio (894) and Jeju-Seoul (858)? The most flown route in the US? You'd never guess it, although it makes perfect sense when you think about it: Honolulu-Kahului (639 flights per week).

The Not So Awesome

Phaidon's Wallpaper. Ahhhh, the guide book that I had so many doubts about. Let me quote myself:

Of course, there are downsides. The amount of information is limited. That means they have to hit a home run on just about every recommendation. And of even more concern is the map situation. For the good folks at Phaidon decided that one simple map of the city, on one of their tiny spreads within the book, would be sufficient. And for me, that's a problem. Where's the detail? Does this map really include all streets? And what lies beyond the end of the page??!? What's out there??!? The uncertainty is enough to give me an anxiety attack.

Both of my perceived downsides became reality. A home run on every recommendation, they did not hit. Maybe I'm being a little too hard on the book, because it certainly did steer me in some good directions, but the limited amount of info proved to be, well, too limited. And the map... yikes. Not only was it tiny and not only did it not include many major portions of or major streets in the city, but I quickly discovered that it was situated with West at the top of the page and North to the left!!! What the hell??!?

Maybe I'm being too hard on Wallpaper. It did introduce me to some great places. And it is mind-boggling beautiful to look at. But if the second best thing you can say about a guide book is that it's mind-boggling beautiful to look at, I think that should throw up some red flags.

Drunk food. This is really a problem endemic to all of Australia. The quantity and quality of late night greasy food is appalling. And if you chance upon some pizza, don't even think about it. My God. Stick with the chips -- ahem, fries -- and be happy with them. Melbourne was no different here.

Hangover. This was on Sunday. I don't think any further explanation necessary.

All in all, a really great trip. Which, despite the guide book's failings was not surprising. For just as I said in my last post, while I had concerns about the book, I was sure I'd still have a great time. And I did. Overall, it was (in case you couldn't tell) awesome. But three days wasn't enough. So the next time I have a friend whose company is putting them up in a perfect location in Melbourne and I find super cheap tickets, I'll be back there. And you'll get to hear about all of it again, in excruciatingly long detail.

Melbourne and guide books

As I briefly touched on in my last post, I'm taking a day off of work tomorrow and flying to Melbourne* for the weekend. And I'm quite excited. Supposed to be a great city with a very different vibe from Sydney. In the past, I've heard comparisons to LA and San Francisco: Sydney (as LA) is a warm beach city that's very suburban and Melbourne (as San Fran) is smaller, more dense, slightly colder and has a more cosmopolitan feel. So there is an analogy there, although from what I know about Sydney and the very little I know about Melbourne, I don't know if it's perfect.

*For the record, Aussies pronounce Melbourne as MEL-bin. I know, makes no sense. In fact, when Dave and Jack called a month or two ago, I left them absolutely bewildered when I referred to MEL-bin and not MEL-bourne. Well, no, we're not talking Jason Bourne here (or even Mel Bourne), we're talking the name of the capital city of Victoria, Australia. And that's MEL-bin.**

**For some reason, Aussies don't seem to pronounce the "r" whenever it's followed by a consonant. At least that's the rule that John seemed to unearth when he was here in December. Melbourne is pronounced MEL-bin, Forster is pronounced FOS-ter and Cairns is pronounced CANS. Maybe there are exceptions to this rule -- or maybe it isn't a rule at all -- but I haven't found one yet.

***I should also comment on this experiment with the asterisks, which is actually a bit of an homage to Joe Posnanski, who's quickly becoming my new favorite writer. In his blog, Joe loves using the asterisk as a device to allow him to go off on tangents, which are often quite long. I'm not sure this is the best way to handle the tangents, as it can often get quite confusing to follow the main point (as I'm sure it is here), but damn, it's kind of fun.

Anyway, Joe's a fantastic writer. Definitely not for everyone, but if I had to describe his style and the content that he covers, it'd go something like this: take a massive scoop of baseball, toss in a slightly more seasoned version of Bill Simmons, remove the Boston-related saliva, add just a dash of love for Kansas City and the Midwest, drop in a moderate portion of a retarded Bill James and mash it all together. That, my friends, is Joe Posnanski. (And by the way, the "retarded Bill James" comment is meant in the nicest way possible, and I bet that Posnanski would agree with it wholeheartedly.) So if the above appeals to you, check out his blog. You won't be disappointed. Now, if you're not remotely interested in baseball and don't know who the heck Bill Simmons and Bill James are, then stay far, far away.

Anyway, my buddy Maz works for PricewaterhouseCoopers and they've been flying him down to Melbourne every week for the last few months to work for a client. And being the behemoth that PWC is, they've put him up in some swank corporate housing. Which means I have some affordable accommodations.

The plan right now is to get down there tonight (Thursday) and head straight out, possibly to the casino.* But then Maz is at work Friday and then flies back to Sydney for about 24 hours for his weekly cricket match** before he comes back on Saturday afternoon. So I'm a bit on my own for almost two days.

*I know, I know. You're thinking, "LAME!", right? Well, Maz's place is a few minutes away from the casino and my flight doesn't get in until 11pm, so what else am I going to do that late on a Thursday night??!? Plus, unlike the casino in Sydney, the one in Melbourne is supposed to be really cool and one of Melbourne's best attractions, so in a way, I'm getting to experience a key part of the city, right?

**Talk about devotion!

This is where the guide books come in. You see, I'm a bit of a guide book addict. In fact, I love guide books. Sure, I can understand how some people just want to go to a new place and find things on their own, but I need a little more structure than that. I need to at least know what the key attractions are, what parts of town are worthwhile visiting, what cafes/restaurants/bars I can't miss and, most important of all, I need a map.* And for years now, my guide book of choice has been Lonely Planet. I might even go as far as to call myself a Lonely Planet Whore.** Their books have helped me for many purposes in many countries and have never led me astray. I highly recommend.

*If I'm addicted to guide books, then they're just my gateway drug. Maps are my heroine. (Does that make sense?) I absolutely, positively must have a map so that I know where I am at all times, what's in each direction and where I came from. My God, I love maps. You know how we joke about people reading the dictionary or encyclopedia? Well I would read a map of books. Correct that -- I have read a map of books. And back in LA, I've often gotten lost in a Thomas Guide. My God, it's fantastic.

**Wouldn't be surprised if the good folks over at Lonely Planet sprinkle each of their books with a little crack cocaine.

So with these two days on my own, I made the decision yesterday that I needed some guidance. And Lonely Planet was calling my name. So I headed over to the bookstore, found the travel section and there it was -- the Lonely Planet Melbourne City Guide. I reached down, leafed through it and it was just as I expected: a thorough breakdown of the city I will shortly be visiting. Perfect. And then I flipped the book over and saw a price tag for $34. Now first, I'm pretty sure Lonely Planet's opus on Europe doesn't sell for much more than this. So that price was quite a shock. But normally, that would be okay; I'd be more than happy to pay the price for information that I know will prove to be invaluable. In this case, however, I'm going to this city for three days. That's 72 hours. So to spend $34 on a guide book seemed a bit crazy to me.

There was, however, an alternative. And that was Phaidon's Wallpaper City Guide Melbourne. Now, I've seen the Wallpaper series before, and it has always intrigued me. Each of the concisely-edited books in the series feature the best that the city has to offer in a colorful, image-rich format.* In the past, I've paged through versions of these books on cities with which I'm familiar, and generally, I feel like their suggestions have been solid. So I have some confidence in them. Plus, there's a suggested itinerary for 24 hours, which will be perfect for me. And most important of all, the book sold for $13.

*I'd go as far to say that irrespective of the information these books provide, they're a piece of art; like my maps, I could page through them for hours with a glaze slowly coming over my eyes.

Of course, there is a downside to the Wallpaper series, and that would revolve around the limited information provided in each book. With so few options provided to their readers, there can be no mulligans; they have to hit a home run on every recommendation. And of even more concern is the map situation. For the good folks at Wallpaper decided that one simple map of the city, on one of their tiny spreads within the book, would be sufficient. And for me, that's a problem. Where's the detail? Does this map really include all streets? And what lies beyond the end of the page??!? What's out there??!? The uncertainty is enough to give me an anxiety attack.

So we'll see how this goes. Right now, I'm cautiously optimistic. For the book, that is. The weekend, I'm sure it will turn out fine. Which is the crazy part: I'm nervous about the book but completely confident that I'll have a great time in Melbourne. If anything, shouldn't it be the other way around? Maybe I don't need the guide book after all.

Eleven Questions

Amy Green recently emailed me with a really random set of questions about the latest in my life, work, future plans, etc, and after inundating her with a point-by-point response, I realized that it would make for a good blog post, especially since I don't write too much about this kind of stuff. So here goes, in the order the questions originally appeared. (I did edit a bit between my original email to her and what's in here, but that's mostly just because I was disparaging Daniel in every other sentence.)

So, do you know how long it takes to get mail there?
From the East Coast, it's been a pretty consistent seven days. From the West, I'd say about five or six.

How is work?
It's alright. Definitely has its good days (or weeks) and its bad ones. I'm still trying to find my way a bit, because the differences between this agency and my old one are like night and day. The old one was small and everyone chipped in to get a job done. The new one is huge and there are so many processes and defined roles that it takes forever to get anything done. It can become a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare, with everyone getting really territorial about their responsibilities. Throw some cultural differences on top of that and it's been a bit of a challenge at times. I'd say I'm 80% of the way there, but that last 20% might take a while to master.

How is life?
Outside of the occasional rough patch at work, things are going really well. I have a great, great group of friends and have been slowly meeting more. Been traveling a lot (I've actually managed to keep up with my goal of one trip a month!) and on Thursday night will be flying to Melbourne for a long weekend. Very excited for that... it's supposed to be a great city. Weekends generally consist of a few drinks on Friday, a run on Saturday morning (or playing cricket with some of my friends in their weekly game) a barbecue in the afternoon, going out to a bar at night and then detoxing on Sunday. Then it's Monday again.

Why are you moving?
[Guess I should preface the answer to this question to announce on the blog, that yes, I'm moving houses soon. That's all you really need to know in advance of my answer.]

I never intended to stay at this place for more than a few months, so I've always been keeping an eye open for other places. But then a week or two ago, my landlord tells everyone in the house that she's moving in with her family at the beginning of March! That would be her, her husband, her niece, her daughter and her deranged little dog. And that really doesn't appeal to me. So the search is on. Right now, I'm trying to decide if I want to move into this place (assuming the two guys already in there offer it to me) or move in with some friends for about half the cost. The first place is amazing (check out some of those pictures!) and in a nice area, but a bit pricey. My friends' place is a bit run down and isn't in as good of an area, but it's half the price, and most of my other best friends live in three other houses that aren't more than a three minute walk away. So I've been struggling a bit with this decision.

[For the record, Amy has since emailed me with the following on this topic: "You definitely should take the one bedroom apartment. It looks AMAZING!!! Definitely way better than sharing a run down place with a bunch of guys. You are not in a frat; you are an adult with a good job, and you should have a cool place." Does this sway my opinion? Perhaps.]

Has your family come to visit yet?
My uncle and aunt were here for about a week in January, but no one else. The parents might come in March or April but that's looking increasingly unlikely. We'll see.

When can I come to visit?
Whenever! Well, almost whenever. My friend Sarah is coming in July and then I'll be in the US for most of August, so avoid those times. But any time up through June or September onwards should be fine. There are others who are also thinking of coming, but no one has actually booked their flights, so the way I see it, first come first serve!

When are you coming home to visit?
Uhhhhh, see above. Fly into LA on August 1 and then out to New York sometime around August 6. Will spend about a week there, then a week on Martha's Vineyard for my uncle's 70th birthday party, then back to LA for a few more days until I fly back here around August 23. Nothing is booked yet except for my flight from Sydney to LA, but that's the general plan.

What do you wear to work?
Sadly, this is another one of the big contrasts between this job and my old one. It's a suit. Every. Single. Day. Well, almost every day. Friday's are casual, so I guess I can wear khakis or jeans then. But other than that, it's a suit all the time because my client's offices are literally a five minute walk from mine, so you never know when you're going to have to hop on over. Annoying.

What do you eat for lunch?
Among a group of random questions, this one reigns as being supremely random! Where did this come from? Anyway, I've been in a mode for the last few months where I'll go to the market on Sunday afternoon, cook a big dinner that night and then eat that food throughout the week. It's generally a pasta dish, and for lunches, it generally lasts me for two or three days. The other days I generally buy a salad from the food court close to my office. Home-cooked pasta dishes, salad... what's happening to me??!?

Who do you hang out with?
Beyond the aforementioned group of friends with whom I spend most of my free time, I also hang out with an American that I actually used to work with in New York as well as some other Americans who I met through a mutual friend. I'll also go out with my housemates every once in a while, but generally, we all just do our own thing.

What do you do on the weekends?
I'm getting tired here, so fortunately I can refer to my answer to How is life? on this one. Pretty much covers the general weekend activities.

Hmmmm, that worked pretty well. Do I dare play around with this format and open it up to other questions from other people? What the hell. Feel free to ask any other questions in the comments section below, and if I get more than three, I might even answer them in a future entry.

...and some other stuff happened

This is Part Five and the final installment of my thematic recap of my trip to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef.

So yeah, I did a road trip from Brisbane up through the Great Barrier Reef to Cairns, and this, this, this and this happened. And in a perfect world, I would have also already written about everything else we encountered: the deadly stingers (as if the cassowaries didn't freak me out enough), how a bar in Cairns actually managed to allow the potential excitement of girls dancing on the bar get boring, the breathtaking drive between Cairns and Port Douglas or my newfound love for premixed bourbon and coke or the Aussie Breakfast. I may find time for an ode to the premixed bourbon and cokes in a future post, but for the others, they weren't meant to be.

In what's (mercifully) my last post on my trip, I leave you with two special encounters that John and I had with some, ummmmm, interesting Aussies. Which, of course, won't sound nearly as interesting as they would have if I had written this four weeks ago when the details were fresh in my head.

First up is Airlie Beach. It's Christmas Day, we had just finished an epic drive throughout the night and nothing is open. A town full of backpackers and no one knew what to do with themselves. After some exploring, we find what seemed like the one caravan park that actually has someone in the office. So we pay our fee and get settled. Shortly, a bald-headed Aussie, armed with a XXXX Gold (the standard white trash beer in Queensland), comes over to us to inquire about our ridiculously-painted van. He's quite bemused. We start talking, he introduces himself as Mike and is thrilled to hear that John is in law school and I'm in banking. (The latter of which, of course, isn't true. But Mike couldn't seem to wrap his head around the fact that I work for an advertising agency whose client is a bank. So I gave up correcting him, and for the rest of the night, I was "the banker".) Armed with this knowledge about our careers, Mike goes off on a ten-minute diatribe about law, his children and property investments, often contradicting himself. John and I are, of course, bewildered.

Mike invites us over to his camp area, where he and his friend Paul have assembled a menagerie of characters: another Aussie girl, an English girl and her French boyfriend, two German girls and a group of Brazilian dudes. They all seem friendly, so what the hell, right? We grab the very few beers that we had the foresight of buying the day before and sit down with them. Meanwhile, Mike and Paul start to work on straight rum and are clearly on the fast track towards shitcannery. (Yes, a technical term.) Paul, who's missing his right ring finger and has some sort of form of Tourrette's that makes him yell out prick! dude! every other minute, is playing the guitar with one of the Brazilian guys. Which attracts over another Aussie and his guitar. And this new guy is far too eager to play for us. So he starts getting at it, and he's pretty good. But absolutely ridiculous. Imagine a caricature of Bruce Springstein, with the raspy voice and scrunched up face. Then multiply that by ten. That was this guy. And he would not shut up. So whatever, we let him play and continued to drink.

It all began to devolve right about when Mike disappeared (which, of course, went unnoticed by the group at the time) and it came to light that the Springstein wannabe had just been released from a Japanese prison. For what, we don't know. Paul tried to find out, believe me, but Springstein wouldn't oblige. So Paul pressed. And Springstein got testy. And a bit confrontational. So Paul, in one of his few rational moves of the night, backed off. Shortly after, Mike announced his location as he began heaving onto the ground a hundred feet away from us. And with that, we called it a night. Except for Springstein, who continued to wail away for a few more hours as we somehow forced ourselves to sleep.

We met our second ridiculous Aussie in a gas station outside of Ayr, on our drive from Airlie Beach to Mission Beach. As we're pumping, this piece of shit van pulls up across from us on the opposite side of the pump. And out walks this quite hefty man in a shirt two sizes too small, some short shorts and no shoes. Fine, whatever. But of course, the dude wants to talk to us. Because, yes, we are driving a ridiculously-painted van. (I feel like this refrain is turning into a Matt Foley-esque "Van down by the river!" shtick.)

We begin talking and it very quickly turns out that this guy is a millionaire several times over. That's right: crap van, crap wardrobe, millionaire. Many, many times over. How, you ask? China, of course! I wish I could remember what the profession was, but basically, this guy moved to some random city in China (I'd never heard of it, but of course the population is apparently like 8 million people), started up a business and boom!, he's a millionaire. So he's bragging about how he's sooooo important in China, he's buddy buddy with local governors, and John and I are just looking at this guy, absolutely bewildered. Yet again.

Five minutes into this conversation -- strike that, there was no back-and-forth here -- five minutes into this monologue, John and I are itching for a way out. And that's when I notice that the guy is still pumping his gas. Not because he has a massive tank or anything; instead, he's filled his tank up to the absolute brim, to the point where gas was leaking back out of the van. But every time the pump automatically stops, he turns it back on, as if he can somehow squeeze just that much more in there. Even if it all just trickled right back out of the van. But really, even if that gas somehow did make it's way in there, do you really need that extra little bit? Is it even worth it? How much further will that get you? Ten kilometers? It's at this point that I decide that I don't want to go the way of the Zoolander gas fight crew, so we wrap up that conversation in a hurry, hop in our van (have I mentioned that it was ridiculously-painted?) and we peaced out of there.

Done and done.

There are cane toads, there are kangaroos... and then there are cassowaries

This is Part Four of my thematic recap of my trip to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef.



It's been one month since I finished my trip to Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef with John, and this is my fourth of what I was hoping would be many more entries on the trip. So it's time to get on it and combine a few entries, because, well, the details are fading. Fortunately, the one set of memories that will be engrained into my memory for perhaps the rest of my life is night driving on this trip.

We've all driven at night. We've all probably had close calls with animals while driving. We've all driven during rainstorms. And I'm sure we've all done looooong night drives, all the while fighting fatigue.

Combine all of those and you get the drive that John and I did on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day.

You see, we had taken our time driving north our first few days. Noosa was fantastic (and mostly rain-free!) and Rainbow Beach was a compulsory stop because beyond being our gateway to Fraser Island , we found a great campsite right on the water. But after taking our time, we realized we had to get on it. So after spending Christmas Eve Day on Fraser Island , we hit the road at 8, hoping to make it to Airlie Beach (959 kilometers north) by the next morning. After a brief detour through Tin Can Bay (read: we got lost... again), we were back on the main highway and heading north. And pretty quickly, as it became dark, we were blindsided by a cacophony of dangers:

• It began to pour. Not a drizzle, not a steady rain, not heavy rain. No. It was pouring.
• Driving down the road, it quickly became apparent that we weren't alone. Nope, standing on the side of the road every few kilometers was a kangaroo, just waiting to hop on out in front of us.
• And what beings were on the road with us? Hundreds -- nay, thousands -- of cane toads.
• Finally, heading down this two-lane "highway" at 100 kilometers per hour, we had 18-wheelers flying by us in the opposite direction, kicking up water and wind as they flew by.

So there we were, crouched over the wheel, as dusk turned to the pitch black of night, trying to look past the rain-soaked windshield to (a) stay in the left lane (a challenge that was difficult enough in its own right), (b) keep an eye out for kangaroos ready to hop in front of us and (c) trying to keep control of the van as big rigs flew by us.

Fortunately, the one thing we didn't have to worry about were the cane toads, for they absolutely riddle the road (they've completely overrun Queensland and the Northern Territory -- think The Simpsons episode where Bart unleashes them in the country), so there's really no sense in trying to avoid them anyway. Instead, every minute or so, we'd simply make some cane toad pancakes.

Anyway, as the night wore on, the weather calmed down. The roos and cane toads were still out, yes, but at least the visibility was much better. And it being Christmas Eve/Christmas, the roads were pretty much empty. So, in between the many stops for coffee and other artificial products to keep us up and listening to some ungodly talk radio, we started making good time. That is, until about 5am, when the sky opened up and unleashed a torrential downpour the likes of which I've never seen. I thought earlier in the night was bad? Nope, this was bad. And so there I was, on a highway with a speed limit of 110 kph, going maybe 30.

Now, I'm rereading my post up to this point, and it really doesn't do that night justice. So I'll pass on Exhibit B, with photographic evidence. For a few nights later, John and I headed into Mission Beach. And what do you know, but we were facing pretty much the same exact conditions: rain, roos, cane toads and big rigs. But this time, there was a twist. For we were driving through one of the only places in the world where cassowaries are still native. What's a cassowary, you ask? The photo to the left... that's a cassowary. And it is the ugliest thing you have ever seen. Honestly, John and I had seen one face to face in a wildlife park only a few weeks before this trip and I had to divert my eyes. It's absolutely huge (some grow to be over six feet!) and has a gigantic bone protruding from its head, a nasty turkey-like wattle and a piercing, intimidating stare.

Oh yeah, and then there's this video and this lovely quote from the Wikipedia entry on cassowaries: A cassowary's three-toed feet have sharp claws; the dagger-like middle claw is 120 mm (5 inches) long. This claw is particularly dangerous since the cassowary can use it to kill an enemy, disembowelling it with a single kick. They can run up to 50 km/h (32 mph) through the dense forest. They can jump up to 1.5 m (5 feet) and they are good swimmers." What the hell is this beast??!? Some sort of a freakish cross between the T-1000 and a velociraptor??!?

So driving down the winding road to Mission Beach, imagine the same scenario again: rain, roos, cane toads and big rigs. But now, thanks to signs like in the picture on the left (!!!), we were all too aware that there was some sort of beast looming in the forest besides us, just waiting to step out onto the road, demolish our van and then disembowel us with a single kick! So there we sat, bracing for what I quickly talked myself into believing was an inevitability.

(Quick sidenote on this last picture. Really? Really??!? You're worried about the cassowaries? I mean, I know they're a protected species, but let's reread this passage from Wikipedia again before we jump to conclusions on who exactly we're protecting.)

Of course, the inevitable did not come to fruition. And after driving probably 20 kph to get into Mission Beach, praise be to whoever the praise is due, we survived without any encounters with (let alone seeing) any cassowaries. For which I am -- and always will be -- supremely thankful.

We ended up staying in Mission Beach for two nights because, during the day, it was frickin' gorgeous. However, come the day we left, we hightailed it out of there in the very light of day. And for the rest of the trip, we never drove at night again.