Classes are going well so far. The prof for the Animal Behavior course I’m auditing is pretty funny. Wednesday night I went to Coogee Beach with a few of the ladies from my MConBio program since it was one of their birthdays. She found out about a place where you can get a free 300 gram steak with a $4 drink. The steak wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it was pretty good, especially for $4 ($7 including fries and salad). I made it back to campus just in time for the Thai students’ Study Break at IH. Basically, the story behind these is that each nationality chooses a Wednesday night in the term to present something about their culture (as well as some of their traditional food) to the rest of the residents (We North Americans will be doing a Halloween study break in October, of course). One of my Aussie friends was saying that the last time there was a Thai Study Break a lot of the Australian students went running out of the room trying to find water because the food was so much spicier than they expected. I ended up eating an eggplant dish that was spicy, but not too spicy (which is good because the nearest water might have been in the courtyard pond, and it’s pretty sludgy. Even the fish look like they are considering hauling themselves onto land to get some fresh air.).
We’re getting a rather slow start to the semester, with my first assignment not due until the 18th. Friday was my first meeting for my Conservation Project course, which our program head (also the Prof. of most of my courses), Des Cooper, decided to have in his office rather than the appointed classroom. One of the aspects of culture here that some of the American students (including myself) have had to adjust to is that alcohol (or ‘grog’ as Des calls it) is an aspect of most social and/or business-type gatherings. So, basically our whole first day of class for the project was sitting in the bio building’s 4th floor lounge, drinking white wine while Des asked us about ourselves, and about what we wanted to do our projects on. For some of us (particularly those who did their undergraduate degrees at Dry Campuses) having drinks as part of a class was an extremely foreign experience. As far as the actual project is concerned, the guy who is helping to coordinate them is going to check into a few avenues for reptile and amphibian study, but it looks like I may have to settle for studying behavior of kangaroos or potoroos at Cowan field station because of the length of time that it would take to get a new type of research approved by the ethics committee. I should know by the end of the week. Either way, as long as I’m doing behavioral study, I should be happy. For some reason I have been developing a bit of a passion for ethology (maybe it’s the Dawkins I’ve been reading).
In the evening on Friday we had Foundation Dinner at IH. Apparently, this is usually only a semi-big affair at the start of Semester 2. However, this year is the 40th anniversary of UNSW’s International House, so it became a much bigger deal. It ended up being a semi-formal dinner with instrumental and dance performances and a few speakers. Several of the original IH residents from 1968 showed up, including the first Master of the house who is now 95 years old. But, the best part of the evening was the current residents’ after-party. Even though the stereo’s speakers were so bad that all of the vocalists sounded like R2-D2, I still managed to spend a good amount of time making an idiot of myself on the dance floor, followed by hanging out and chatting with one of my new friends (the one whose 30 gigs of X-men comics I have begun to read and thoroughly enjoy. Who knew that Cyclops’ original name was Slim Summers, rather than Scott? Good change Stan, good change.).
Saturday night was another chance to get onto the dance floor as one of the women in MConBio had a friend with a birthday, so we headed back to the place where we got steaks earlier in the week, called the Palace. The upstairs has dance music and, although I only recognized songs sporadically, the dj was pretty good. Possibly the part of the evening that made me smile the most, however, was that on my way home I saw my first Flying Fox (for those who don’t know, this is a giant fruit-eating bat). Apparently they are quite common, but this was my first sighting. It flew out of one of the trees at the edge of the parking lot by IH and it was huge! I felt quite a child-like sense of wonder as it flapped around the tree, probably looking for a better perch. It’s amazing how animals that some people take for granted as common can be so amazing to those of us who have never been around them in their natural habitat before. I wonder if Australians have this experience with any of our fauna at home……………….Wowwee! A raccoon!
