If you've been wondering where the heck I've been all this time, then this blog post is for you. I've got plenty of pictures of the University of Western Australia's campus, as well as St Thomas More College. Since the first week I got here, I've been telling myself that on a nice sunny day I need to go out and photograph the campus. Well, four months later I finally got around to doing it. I suppose the benefit for you is that by now I actually know what and where everything is. You can see it all right here.
Here is a quick sneak peak of the main building, Winthrop Hall:
Also, as was pointed out to us on our first tour of campus, there is a terrible mistake on the main building's clock. How this mistake was made and why it was never corrected is beyond me. First person to spot the mistake and comment on it wins a prize. Obviously, if you're a fellow Perth program Domer, secretly checking my blog for inaccuracies, embellishments, and lies, you will win nothing.
Oh yeah, on a final note: Happy Halloween! In case you were wondering, they do not celebrate Halloween in Australia at all. However, I bought a bag full of candy at the grocery store today just to feel at home.
*** I've received a complaint that my St Thomas More picture album doesn't include a picture of my room. I'm sorry for this, but after four months of living in it, my room isn't exactly picturesque. Please refer to an older blog post here for some pictures of my room. ***
At one of our pre-study abroad meetings last year, some students who did the Perth program the year before told us about how they all took a trip to Rottnest Island for a few days at the end of the semester. It sounded like a pretty good trip, so naturally we all decided to do the same thing this year. Everyone formed into cabin groups (6 people) and planned their own trips. Because of everyone's varying schedules, we didn't plan the whole trip together. Different groups arrived and left on different days, but for at least one or two days we were all there together. My group was there for four days (Monday through Thursday).
Rottnest Island got its name from Dutch explorers who first discovered it. Little creatures known as Quokkas inhabit the island and were mistaken by the Dutch to be large rats, who named the island Rottnest (Dutch for Rat's nest). While the island does have a terrible name, it is actually a very pleasant place and a popular vacation spot. There are no cars allowed on the island (except for service vehicles), so everyone uses bikes to get around. The island is good for snorkeling, surfing, whale watching, and fishing. The beaches are really nice too, if the conditions are right. Unfortunately for us, the conditions were not very good during our time there. It was cold and rainy on a few of the days. Worse than the bad weather though, was the flies. At the begining of summer in Western Australia and after a good rain, swarms of flies come and bug the crap out of everybody. Nobody told me about this before I got here, but they are awful. They came out the day we left for Rottnest and were there the entire trip. They swarm you and try to get in your eyes and mouth and ears. Obviously they can't do you any real harm, other than drive you mad. Even with the rain and the flies though, the trip was pretty fun. See it for yourself.
After many months in the dark, I was finally able to locate the software on my computer that is capable of turning pictures taken in panorama mode into actual panoramas. You won't see anything new here, but I think these pretty cool either way. Click on the photos to enlarge them.
This surfing post is coming a little late, but I was waiting for this photo (courtesy of Sarah Gray). It was on Sunday, September 27th that a bunch of us went out to Trigg beach for a group surfing lesson. It was pretty much my first time surfing, and it was pretty tough. There were two instructors for about twenty of us, so they couldn't be of much help individually. I think more than a few times the instructor looked at me after I failed to ride a wave and said "Good job!", even though I knew I hadn't done anything right at all. The waves were huge, and it was difficult at times just to paddle out to them. So I found it easier to cheat and just got off my board and walked out there instead. I'm pretty sure that we were supposed to be trying to ride waves post-crash, but most of us paddled out to where the waves were crashing and got destroyed out there instead. I know that I myself had greatly underestimated the shear power of the waves. I remarked later that I had been thrown around so much that I probably was only holding onto my board about 10% of the time (luckily the boards have leases that hook around your ankle). At the very end I did manage to stand up on the last wave in. Unfortunately, this also came at the expense of Sarah Gray, who was also trying to stand up for the first time on her last wave in. I was pretty close to the shore already, and decided to just wait for a wave to come facing forward to make sure I had the correct position. Sarah was riding the wave right towards and had to yell and bail out at the last second. Instead of standing up, she hit me right in the back and actually gave me the perfect boost to get enough speed to catch the wave with balance, and ride the darn thing in standing straight up. I was thrilled. Sarah was not so much. I felt really bad and immediately took the blame for ruining her last chance. She was pretty upset but eventually forgave me. She of course was the only one who had the pictures from surfing, and as much as I wanted to put up a blog post about the experience, with pictures, I was afraid to ask her. It is good though, that it was all resolved in the end. Although, I did ponder later, who was really at fault? Had we been in cars, wouldn't I have been rear-ended?
Also it is important to note that this surfing experience took place during the stunning fourth quarter of the Notre Dame vs. Purdue game. When I signed up for the surfing lesson, I knew that I would miss the end of the game. However, I had been counting on a healthy Notre Dame offense to "make it rain" so to speak on Purdue, leaving the game well in hand by the fourth quarter. As you probably know, this was not the case. Instead, most of us were on a bus to the beach without a clue as to what the score was or who was winning the game, knowing that Purdue was getting ready to score the go ahead touchdown right before we left. Andy finally decided to call his parents on his cell phone to get an update. The update proved to be pretty unnerving. Purdue ahead 21-17... 35 seconds left... Notre Dame has the ball... 3rd down... on the 3 yard line! It was a crazy way to hear a game, listening to someone who is listening to someone else who is on the complete opposite side of the world and watching the game on TV. But the whole bus erupted when we heard that Notre Dame scored to win the game, and the bus driver, who had no idea what was going on, nearly drove right off the road. Anyway, I know it is kinda late to be going back and bringing up that game, but I felt like it was a crucial part of the surfing experience. In fact, for the first three quarters of the game I thought about faking sick just to get out of my commitment to go surfing, just because I wanted to see the game so bad. It turns out I did miss a heck of an ending, but then again, surfing in the Indian Ocean is a pretty special experience too, which I'm really glad I did in the end. Later I found out that back in Tommy More, the infamous internet had cut out again and nobody that stayed behind got to see the last play anyway.
Here we are waiting to hear what will happen on 4th down, 27 seconds to go
I mentioned in the last post that the Wardan Aboriginal Culture Centre was an especially interesting experience. We got to see how the Wardandi people made fire, and we got to hear the didgeridoo. Here are some videos so you can see what it was like.
First up is the making of the fire. The video is relatively long, but that only serves as a testament to just how difficult it can be to start a fire without using matches or lighters or petrol or anything else like that.
Next we got to hear the didgeridoo. First, our tour guide showed us the basics of how the didgeridoo was used for story telling. Then he had us help him laid down a beat, while he played away on the didgeridoo. He uses circular breathing, so he said he can play nonstop for over half an hour before getting tired.
I think the song sounds a lot like techno, and it's pretty cool too. He definitely made playing the didgeridoo look easy. Afterward, when we went back to Margaret River to stock up before heading down to Walpole, we found some didgeridoos in a local gift shop. Now obviously I didn't dare trying to play one, knowing how many hundreds of people had probably put their mouths on the thing, but a few guys from the group did. Instead of producing the awesome music that we had heard earlier, all we managed to do was sound like a 5th grader trying to blow into a trumpet for the first time.
Poll: I'm pretty sure that I had no idea what a didgeridoo was before coming to Australia, though I often said the word a lot in my head cause I liked how it sounded. Did you know what a didgeridoo was before you read this post?
Well I'm back from our 4 day trip down south western coastline of Australia. The trip was wonderful and a nice break from school work, however, when we got back it suddenly hit that there is only a week and a half of classes left in the semester. It is hard to believe that the semester is beginning to near the end. There is still a week and a half of classes, then a study week, and then two weeks of finals, but that will all be over before you know it.
But anyway back to the trip. Most of the details of the trip can be found in the photo album on picasa, which I will link to at the end of the blog in an attempt to avoid tempting the impatient. Here is a rough idea of what the trip encompassed:
Day one
Tour of Willowdale Mine and refinery
Visit to Margaret River and beach
Learned about town planning in fast developing rural areas
Day two
Explored the Canal Rocks
Wardan Aboriginal Culture Center tour
Wine tasting at Cullen's Winery
Day three
Walpole - Valley of the Giants Treetop Walk
Albany - Mt Clarence and the Anzac Memorial and Whale World
Learned about agriculture issues in Western Australia
Day four
Hike in Porongurup National Park
Tour of Kodja Place indigenous museum in Kojonup
That seems like a pretty loose itinerary when I put it that way, but you have to remember that many of these places were several hours drive apart. We also had to stay at a different backpackers lodge each night. You begin to find that there is definitely a wide range in quality of backpacker lodges, ultimately none of which includes a good hot shower.
There were several highlights of the weekend for me. The first being the Wardan Aboriginal Culture Center. Our tour guide showed us many of the traditional aboriginal tools and weapons and how they are used. He demonstrated the technique they used to make fire. The best part was when he got out a didgeridoo and threw down a good old fashion didgeridoo jam session around the fire he had "made from scratch."
Another highlight was the treetop walk at the Valley of the Giants. Although these Red Tingle trees don't grow quite as high as the Red Cedar trees in North America, I've never seen those ones so the Australian version was just fine for me. The Treetop Walk was amazing in that it took you up 125 feet in air. The walk was built when park rangers realized that having loads of tourists trample the ground around the trees was crushing the roots and killing the trees. And when trees are hundreds of years old, you can't really replace dead ones very easily. The walk keeps tourists off the ground as well as offering a spectacular view.
Probably the best view of the weekend came from Castle Rock. This was a rock formation at the top of Porongurup National Park. It took quite a hike to get to, as well as a little bit of tricky rock climbing, but it was well worth it. It wasn't sunny at the top, and the wind was out in full force, but the rocks were massive and you could see the land in all directions.
So those are just a few things you should definitely look for in the pictures. Also expect to see some video from the trip coming soon as well. I'd put it all up at the same time, but uploading the videos can take forever and oddly has a low success rate even when they are loaded.
Poll: Will the #25 Notre Dame Fighting Irish finally turn the corner and beat #6 USC this weekend?
Bright and early Friday morning, we will all be embarking on our second weekend trip of the semester as part of our Notre Dame 1 credit class. Last time we went inland to Kalgoorlie, but this time we're goin' south along the coast to various places I can't remember. Let me look at the itinerary. Okay so it's Margaret River, Walpole, and Albany. Not that that really means anything to you. But then again that's why you come to this blog anyway, because you don't already know this stuff yourself. This trip is a little bit longer than the last one, as we won't be getting back to Perth until Monday night. So that's a whole extra day for the folks playing along at home. I'm sorry. I've wanted to say that all day, and I have no idea why. I guess I'm babbling because I don't really have anything to say other than that I'm leaving. So I'll just leave it at that.
The annual Tommy More Ball took place last weekend, and it was a really fun time. Everyone from college got dressed up in suits and dresses, and after a huge group picture on the quad, we all got in buses (double-decker no less) and headed off to the Parmelia Hilton Perth hotel downtown. The theme for the ball was Arabian Nights, though the only noticeable expression of the theme was the center pieces, which were nothing more than misshapen vases spray-painted gold. It was excusable though since there isn't much people could wear themselves to represent the theme. Although one guy (who's actually Colombian) wore one of those head things with his suit and looked something like an Arabian petroleum businessman.
Myself, I wore the dark brown suit I got last Christmas and matching brown tie. Luckily, I have many brown ties in my repertoire since seemingly every girl I went to a dance with in high school was determined to wear a brown dress. Anyway, something quite interesting happened when I started to get dressed for the night. I put my pants on and noticed they didn't fit at all. They were too dang loose and barely stayed up on my waist. Of course though, I knew my belt would fix that problem. I slid the belt through all the loops, and then I pulled to tighten it and watched in horro as each knotch slid through the buckle until even the final knotch of hope had come and passed. Even the last knotch on my belt was too large. Apparently, I've lost a bit of weight since I came to Australia. I've developed a few theories as to why that is, unfortunately none of which includes an increase in exercise. I'm pretty sure it is a combination of the lack of junk food in the dinig hall as well as almost no access to food outside of dining hall meal times. Originally, I thought these were horrible things, but I suppose they're good from a health perspective. In the dining hall I am forced to eat mostly fruits and vegetables (and meat mush as it has come to be called) and drink apple juice at every meal. On the other hand, back at Notre Dame I partook daily of french fries and cheeseburgers, only to wash it all down with a drink I refer to as "The Bulldozer", 2 parts Vault and 2 parts Mr. Pibb (I know, I know but I tried 1 and 1, it just isn't the same). Also with Reckers open 24 hours a day and conviently located right next door to Dillon Hall, I would frequent the place for late night smoothies and BBQ chicken pizzas (which are sorely missed). Nonetheless, I'm probably much healthier now than I was before, and in actuality I didn't really notice my pants being loose at all throughout the night. So in short, my pants didn't quite fit, but it wasn't a big deal. Dedicating this much blog space to the pants story probably wasn't worth it. I guess I thought it was interesting though. Moving on...
The food and service at the ball were excellent. A live band was there to play music, which turned out to be pretty good, though unfortunately for me, I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit where everyone was "hood" and only hip-hop music is played at dances. So I'm only familiar with the hip-hop dances, while Australians seem much more interested in live bands and rarely listen to hip-hop at all. Either way, the ball was really fun. Since I didn't take any pictures of the night, I've stolen a few from Vanessa.
Piyush, Kate, Me, Vanessa, and Kelsey at the Hilton
Piyush, Me, Tom, and Luke
After the ball, which ended at midnight, there were three buses giving everyone three options: go back to Tommy More, go out to the clubs, go to the Burswood Casino. Now I am not a betting man. But, I have heard that the Burswood Casino (the only casino in Perth) is a really nice venue and worth at least one trip. The casino was indeed a popular choice (at least among the Notre Dame students who had never been) and many of us piled into the Burswood Casino bus.
Arriving at the casino, it wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. To start off, the outside of a casino at around one in the morning on a Saturday night is not where you will find the friendliest and the cleanliest of people. I also expected more theme and presentation, having seen casinos mostly in movies about Vegas. All I really got to see was a big room full of casino games, which I suppose is all a casino really is. In truth, we spent little time exploring, and I have no idea if there were restaurants or bars or more rooms full of games in the rest of the place. Anyway, when we got there we headed straight for the cashier to exchange our money for coins and play some games. I knew that we had a few hours to burn at the casino since the Notre Dame game would start at 3:30am, and there wasn't much sense in sleeping before then. So, I decided to put just ten dollars in (which gets you a lot less then $10 US anyway) and the cashier gave me ten shiny one dollar coins, with which to play the various games with fancy blinking lights and whistles.
Now before I tell the rest of this story, I must say that I do not condone gambling. It is a waste of money, and it can be addictive. Casinos are super profitable because the odds are in their favor, and even when people win they usually gamble the money away again. I don't think anyone should ever gamble. I'll be the first to admit that of course this makes me a hypocrite, being a story about gambling and all. But try to remember it was only $10.
*** After reading back through this post a while later, I noticed that the previous paragraph comes off as a bit more harsh than I had intended. I suppose when I wrote that I was worried about the effect my story would have on young impressionable minds, perhaps overly so. ***
Anyways, so there I was with ten dollars in my cup and a world of new and confusing games all around me. They had the standard casino games with poker, black jack, and roulette, but I don't like those games because they require some skill rather than blind chance. Instead, I went looking for the slot machines, nothing but chance there and all you have to do is push a button. I also sort of have a previous history with the slots. They had a casino on my cruise ship on senior spring break (see now it is beginning to sound like I gamble, but I can assure I have a strict policy of no gambling). I avoided the casino for most of the week, but since my friends were always in there, I decided one day that it wouldn't hurt to grab a handful of quarters (just 4) and maybe drop a few in a slot machine, just to pass the time. To my surprise the first quarter I played won me ten more quarters. A few minutes and a few machines later, I had of course lost a few quarters. Down to the last one of those ten victory quarters, I won again. This time it was 400 quarters! So in short, my first time gambling I won $100 playing on just one quarter. But I knew that it would be pretty unlikely for me to win like that again tonight, my second time at a casino. Still, I knew the slots were the only game for me.
After an entire lap around this casino, I realized that they didn't even have slot machines in the Burswood Casino. There wasn't any kind of spinning, matching games. Instead they had several strange games on computer screens that had strange images appear and if you matched some of them you won sometimes. I had no idea what the rules on any of these games were or how I could possibly win, but I decided they were better than video poker nonetheless. I walked up to one of these strange games and put my first coin in. The screen flashed, some objects appeared, the machine played some tones, and I won ten dollars. Well that was pretty easy, I thought. Now I had some insurance, and I could just play with my winnings and leave the place even no matter what. Not much later, however, I'd burned through those winnings and then easily convinced myself to start playing with the original money again. I decided to find a better game, though, hoping there was one that I could understand. After some searching and a strange belief that I had the special ability to sense a winning machine, I was intrigued by these two game machines that had been stuffed awkwardly in the corner of the room and just barely fit, as if the casino was trying to fill every possible open space with these money making machines (as if). The game was called Mr. Cashman (a coin with a top hat) and resembled a computerized version of plinko, the game where balls drop down hitting pegs and fall into certain holes at the bottom. The machine on the left was occupied by a guy, hesitantly standing more between both of them, so I crept my way onto the machine on the right, and he backed off a little. I put my coin in hit the button and watched as the virtual balls came down. I checked my winnings, 60 cents. But then something strange happened. All of a sudden a door appeared on screen. The door began to open, and who of all people should emerge but Mr. Cashman himself! Mr. Cashman began to dance around on screen as music began to play. I was wondering what the heck it all meant until the guy next to me remarked, "Wow, you're lucky. You're about to win big." Then Mr. Cashman went away and suddenly hundreds of golden balls began to fall. I watched in amazement as my winnings meter began to shoot up quicker than a pay meter at the gas pump. "I can't believe that. I was trying to decide which machine to play, and I picked the wrong one," the man said. The golden balls finally stopped falling and my winnings meter finally came to rest at $65. Happily, I collected my winnings and was ready to cash out, and as I did the man next to me casually remarked that this was the plot of the casino: you win big the first time and then it never happens again and your addicted for life. I didn't tell him that this was my second time playing and my second time winning big, but I did completely agree with his theory. Lucky for me Carnival Cruise Lines and the Australian casinos must not be in cahoots yet.
Anyway, I cashed out and kept the winnings and then waited around for the rest of my friends to finish. Sitting in a casino for too long with a pocket full of money is a bad idea. They did end up getting a little back, as I waited I may have put two or three more dollars in. Eventually, I found a machine that was a guaranteed winner every time: the coffee machine. It just made more sense to drop a dollar coin into something and know for sure you'd actually be getting something back. I got a black tea with sugar (cause I like things to actually taste good thank you), and hoped it would be enough to keep me up for the Notre Dame game. At this point, it was almost 3:00am and my friends were finally ready to go, so we piled in a cab and headed back to Tommy More.
We set up the projector in the Tommy More conference room as usual, but noticed that this weeks numbers were down. Only about 10 of us actually stayed up for the game, with the rest being unable to make it out of bed, either too tired or otherwise inhibited. Of course the Notre Dame football game again, for the fourth week in a row, came down to the final minute. And of course, for the third week in a row, the Tommy More internet frustrated all with its slowness and ability to shut off at the absolute worst time. We ended up having the watch the last minute on gamecast (no video, just updates), as well as overtime. In the end, we were happy for the victory, though the celebration was pretty weak given the state we were all in. We all went to breakfast in the dining hall afterward, by this time the sun had already been shining for a few hours. I ate some stuff and tried not to fall asleep on the table. Then I crawled into bed, knowing that it would take days to recover from the severe damage I had just inflicted on my sleep cycle. It had been a long night but a lot of fun. I laid my head on my pillow and closed my eyes, victorious.
Poll: This is a fairly lengthy blog post. I had only intended to write a paragraph or two but then I just kinda took off, which gets me thinking. If they made this blog post into a movie, do you think it would be appropriate to cast Shia LaBeouf as myself?
So it has been a little while since the last post, I apologize. I was going to talk about surfing and the Purdue-Notre Dame game, but I've been waiting for the sting of that loss to settle in a little bit. So that will not be mentioned in this post. Nope, I'm not even going to bring up Jimmy Clausen's touchdown pass to Kyle Rudolph with 25 seconds left in the game. It would be just plain mean to discuss that on here, so don't worry.
Anyway, I recently took a stroll through Kings Park to get some pictures of various flowers and plants and things. Not that I am into that sort of stuff at all, but I figured maybe some of you were. I think the title for this post is clever, though ironically almost all of the flowers I took pictures of were in the Botanic Garden in the park. But I mean how do you really define a wild flower anyway? Does the flower itself even know whether it is in the wild or not? I don't know but check out all the photos I took and maybe you'll find out.
Poll question: Do you think flowers in a botanical garden qualify as wild flowers?
WALTZING MATILDA Australia's unofficial national anthem. Means: Slang for traveling by foot and carrying one's goods on his back in a "Matilda", slang for bag
