Talent Night and Halloween.
What can I say about IH Talent Night?
Well…as previously mentioned (see post “Do Not Enter: If the fall does not kill you the crocodile will”), I was signed up for the Talent Night by one of my friends, basically because he had been told that I could sing. This led to many people asking what I would be doing and me repeatedly saying “I have no idea” (though I briefly entertained the notion of learning how to make balloon animal kangaroos). My friend Kieran and I talked about a few different possibilities but it wasn’t until the actual night of the show that we made a final choice. And, yes, we decided to sing…in punked-out costume. We did a rendition of the Scissor Sisters Cover of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out.” And it was awesome.
In the weeks that followed, IH residents who I had never before spoken to approached me to compliment our performance (which was really made by Kieran’s uber-dramatic dancing, etc.). The only bad part about doing this so last minute was that we missed everybody else’s performances while we were practicing for our own. A small price for fame?
The Talent Show was followed by a charity “slave auction” in which residents volunteered to sell several hours of their time performing various tasks for others (cooking, cleaning, driving, what have you). The most surprising bit was when a couple of my friends went up to be auctioned and revealed that under their sweaters they were wearing makeshift garments sewn out of old onion sacks. A few of the guys were also convinced that they would go for more money if they took their shirts off. They were not wrong.
Halloween was a multi-day affair. The week before the 31st we had our end of term dinner at IH, which was Halloween Themed. This resulted in the use of Costume 1: Tyler Durden from Fight Club (Brad Pitt’s character). This was particularly fun because my friends Courtney and Tom also cross-dressed which of course led to many inappropriate jokes, etc..
I also found that being dressed as a dude made me dance differently at the after-party (Tom basically accused me of stealing his normal dance moves….which I was). It was a really fun night. I also had my first taste of Passion Pop, a carbonated alcoholic beverage that is sort of like the worst champagne you could ever imagine…popular among underage Aussie drinkers, apparently. The best part of drinking this awful, awful beverage was that with every sip my one friend Courtney kept saying “I like it. It’s pretty good.” And the rest of us just shook our heads slowly from side to side.
The second installment of Halloween was a house party thrown by a friend of a friend. Who, incidentally, is starting his own brewery, so there were several different interesting home-brewed beers to try. One memorable moment was when Court was filling a glass with the one that was labeled “Blood.” It really did have a reddish tint to it and Court just said “Yeah…when I saw the color, I knew I had to stop.” My costume for this party was a little more generic because I was rushed. I mostly told people that I was the Angel of Death…albeit a very upbeat version who enjoys skipping, holding hands, and making daisy-chains. Still, I certainly couldn’t compete with some of my friends’ outfits:
The final Halloween installment was the North American Study Break at IH. We weren’t really sure what qualified as good North American cuisine and since it was Halloween-themed we decided to mostly make sweets. So, we ended up with Rice Krispies Treats, chocolate drizzled pretzels, fun size candy bars and jell-o shots. Our biggest fear was that people would steal the jell-o shots out of the fridge while they were setting, so we left a bunch of threatening signs which did the trick. Also, the worst part of making the Rice Krispies Treats was that instead of buying a couple sticks of butter we just “borrowed” a bunch of butter pats out of the IH kitchen. Guess whose job it was to scrape each butter pat off the foil and make them into one huge mound of butter? Awesome.
"What a fun sexy time for you."
"What a fun sexy time for you."
For demonstrations of our culture we showed some Halloween videos (e.g. Thriller) and Andrew, one of the Canadians, showed some hockey videos with lots of impressive collisions set to music. My final costume for this endeavor was a joint costume with Kieran. We went as the Frog Brothers from the 80’s teen vampire film “The Lost Boys.”
Tom made an excellent vampire foe:
What can I say? I love Halloween.
Spit to Manly
My friend Hugh’s Mum lives in Manly. It’s a beautiful suburb just outside of Sydney. It also has a walking path that winds all along the coast and takes a few hours to complete. Because Hugh has a car, it was pretty easy to get there so one morning Eva, Hugh and I set out to do the Spit to Manly walk. It was full of beautiful foliage and views of the harbor and beach.
We even saw a couple of Water Dragons. The trip was also enhanced by the Ginger Beer that Hugh brought, and the Mr. Whippy’s Ice Cream truck that we found about halfway to the end.
Hugh will shortly be making fun of me for complaining that the instructions to invert the bottle before opening it were not plainly visible on the cap.
We went for a swim at one of the smaller beaches and I found a few good pieces of beach glass. When we made it to Manly we hit the street market, where I got a nice pair of earrings and Hugh got the infamous beach-towel shorts (exactly what they sound like) which later prompted the three of us to buy cheap beach towels that we attempted to make into shorts modeled on the first pair. My mom later had to try and salvage mine…I made poor construction decisions.
A few weeks later we returned to one of the Manly beaches to celebrate both Hugh and Tom’s birthdays with swimming, soccer and a picnic. Tom and I found heaps more beach glass, some of which even had the lip of the bottle as part of it. Makes a pretty cool beach memento that isn’t a biohazard.
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving this year was strange. It was my first away from home which, for me, is doubly significant because I was born the day before Thanksgiving so it also meant the first time that I was not home around my birthday. However, two things helped to make this better. First, my professor, Des, and his wife hosted Thanksgiving festivities at their home in Pymble (a suburb of Sydney). Second, my friend Kieran is fantastic at making people’s birthdays wonderful, and he went all out. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
We ended up having to work for our Thanksgiving dinner, not only because the meal was pot-luck (I made the mashed potatoes…but not very well), but also because of my friend Kate. Kate’s father has a rule that every year before they sit down for Thanksgiving dinner the family must run a mile. This year he informed Kate that just because she was overseas was no excuse for her not to do that year’s ‘Turkey Trot.’ However, he also promised that if she could convince a few gullible individuals to run the mile with her that he would make t-shirts for everyone. Well…I was one such gullible individual. So, before we had dinner at Des’s house (which we already had to ride the train to get to in the first place) we first walked the few blocks to Centennial Park to run our mile. Unfortunately, the track around Centennial Park is less than a mile long so we had to devise a very convoluted, occasionally overlapping route in order to make the necessary distance.
Before I discuss the run any further I should state the following: I hate to run, I’m using the word hate here…about running. The last time I ran any distance, in fact, was when Emily and I were going to be late for the ferry to Alcatraz while we were in San Francisco. We ran about 2 km in say 15 minutes or so. The first words out of my mouth when we made it to the wharf: “I think I taste blood.” Anyway, suffice it to say, running and I don’t get along. So, as soon as we were about 3 minutes into the Turkey Trot I started to have thoughts such as “Good God, I’m dying.” This feeling was probably exacerbated by the fact that I was stupidly wearing long jeans as well and it was a very hot day. Even so, I managed to push through the worst part until I reached a more mild level of horridness punctuated by the perpetual thought “Just keep going, just keep going, just keep @%$#-ing going.” At one point I got really excited because the finish line was in sight, but then I remembered that we still had to double back around in order to make the track a full mile…well, crap. But, in the end, I did make it and my competitive streak led me to sprint out the last 30 seconds or so to secure fourth place rather than fifth out of about 12 runners. Three or Four of the competitors actually got lost on the track and ended up coming back from the wrong direction…according to Kate’s Dad they were disqualified.
The Competitors
Dinner was delicious. My mashed potatoes left something to be desired, probably because I had trouble figuring out the best way to transport them so I ended up cooking the potatoes, refrigerating them overnight, reheating and then mashing them at Des’s house. They tasted fine, but the consistency just wasn’t right. I think my favorite dish in this very eclectic meal was my friend Snoop’s Curry Vinda-Roo, made with kangaroo meat…very tasty.
My Birthday
So I mentioned earlier that my friend Kieran is fantastic at making people’s birthdays a wonderful experience. He did this for me in several ways. On my actual birthday I had dinner at a gourmet pizza place in Sydney near IH with a bunch of IHers.
The place was pretty empty when we got there, which helped contribute to the fact that the guy who owned the place was super friendly and catered to our every whim, even giving us some raw dough to play with, something they usually do for little kids. He may have regretted this decision.
I think it was supposed to be some kind of bird, GPK was the name of the restaurant.
I think it was supposed to be some kind of bird, GPK was the name of the restaurant.
My friends also arranged for him to bring out a piece of cake with sparklers in it for me. It was a nice meal. Kieran couldn’t make it to dinner, but we were hanging out in the third floor IH kitchen when he showed up with an ice cream cake that had sparklers and ninja turtle action figures on it. It was totally rad (the ninja turtles now live on my desk in Wellington).
We hung out in IH for the rest of the night, with plans to really go out on Thursday because my huge paper was due the next day so I needed to get a full night’s sleep.
Thursday Kieran had something special planned, but wouldn’t tell me what until we got there. We had dinner at a Chinese food place first and then walked down the street. It turned out that he had gotten tickets for a bunch of us to go see a production of “Little Shop of Horrors.” This was especially significant because one of the first things we bonded over was watching the film version of this musical. The production was really fun and it was the first time that I had heard the songs which the film version cut out. Afterward we went to Kelly’s down the street (all of this was in Newtown) where we had some drinks and some karaoke. An all around great night.
This, however, was not the end of my birthday extravaganza. Lastly, K got us tickets to see the Mountain Goats (my favorite band who I had only seen once before, in Cambridge) perform at Sydney Uni the next week. We took the bus down together, watched a bit of the opening band before deciding to go get some food at Oporto and then returning to see John and co. give probably the best concert I have ever seen. It was amazing. Perhaps most awesomely, however, was the fact that Kieran suggested we stick around for a minute after to see if John would come out. He did and I got him to sign an Australian 5 dollar bill for me.
I told him that I had seen the concert in Cambridge and was surprised by his candor when he said that he was sorry I had seen that performance, that it had been a rough time-period and was almost the last concert that the band ever performed. Very rarely do I get the opportunity to meet musicians who I admire, so this was a really special experience for me.
Whale Watching
Des organized this trip for our class. It was a little odd that he was so keen because he always, always gets seasick. None of the pills and things work for him. Still, he and his wife (such a lovely woman) were waiting for us at the waterfront near the Opera House when we arrived early in the morning to catch the boat. The ride out was windy but sunny and there were lots of Petrels and other seabirds to watch. It didn’t take long for dolphins to start cavorting through our wake, something I had never experienced and which was pretty amazing. When we reached our whales it was a mother and calf (or possibly two adults and a calf). They were humpbacks, the traditional whale-watching whale. We weren’t super close (there are regulations on how close you can get), but the calf was very fun. He kept breaching, again and again, showing off his light belly and his flukes.
He was huge! We never really saw much more than the side of the adult, but it was impressive to think how big she must be considering how large the calf was. I would definitely go whale-watching again, hopefully in a place where there are other species of whale as well. I would like to see a non-baleen if I get the chance.
Melbourne
The only other major city that I hit while in Australia (besides Sydney) was Melbourne. As I understand it, these two cities are fairly competitive (both were candidates to become the capital of Australia, but the animosity was side-stepped by choosing Canberra instead). Many people from Melbourne will tell you that Sydney is a ‘tip’ (a rubbish dump). Having spent most of my time in Sydney, I would be hard-pressed not to pull a Tyler Durden on anyone who insulted the city to my face…that is to say…I love Sydney.
That said, Melbourne has its charms. The flight was cool because we went over the Australian Alps. They aren’t very high as mountains go, but made for some interesting viewing out the plane window.
Unfortunately, about halfway from Sydney to Melbourne, I started to feel a bit under the weather. This escalated soon after my arrival at the hostel into a full blown sensation that all of my insides were either leaking out through my nose, or accumulating in my lungs. Nevertheless, knowing I only had a limited time in the city, I headed out to walk about town.
The first place I went was the State Library of Victoria, which I had actually only meant to see in order to buy a print of a particular ship to mail to Alan back in Boston. Sadly, they don’t keep prints of that ship on hand, but rather print them by request, so I had to re-evaluate the best way to accomplish that task. The cool thing, however, was that the library had two neat displays going while I was there. The first was a sort of history of the printed word, with lots of cool first editions, including the Origin of Species.
awesome
I took photos rather furtively because it seemed like the type of thing you weren’t supposed to photograph, even though after thorough searching I didn’t see any anti-photo signs. The other display was on the famous outlaw bush ranger, Ned Kelly. Kelly is, perhaps, best known for an altercation with the police during which he wore home-made full body armor. This armor, among other things (such as Kelly’s deathmask) was on display.
I couldn’t help but think of Clint Eastwood and Marty McFly with their improvised ‘bullet-proof vests.’ Sadly, Kelly’s didn’t save him and he was captured and later hanged. But, the good news is that he lives on as a folk hero, much like our Billy the Kid.
I had wanted to go to the Australian Rules Football Hall of Fame, which my guidebook said was right next to the State Library, but it turns out that they relocated it. Someone at the STA Travel that is now at that corner was able to tell me where it relocated to, but it was too far to walk.
Next I hit Chinatown. This was a bit of a disappointment. Mainly because, after having recently been to San Francisco with Emily, my expectations were high. Chinatown in Melbourne is really only a couple blocks long and mostly consists of herb, souvenir, and clothing shops. I bought a two dollar pair of earrings, tried on a few pieces of clothes, none of which fit right, and then moved on. Still, the archway is cool looking.
In one of the main squares I also saw this:
which reminded me of its sister tree in Sydney:
Being from Michigan it was very, very weird to see these types of decorations in the midst of hot summer weather. It really did not feel like Christmas. Even some of my friends in Sydney long for white Christmases and I’d have to say that by the time I left I was feeling that way too.
As I continued to wander I happened upon one of the main theaters, which was showing the musical ‘Wicked’ (based on the Gregory MacGuire novel by the same name, the story of the Wicked Witch of the West from the film ‘the Wizard of Oz). This is a musical whose cd I listen to avidly, whose songs I sing at karaoke whenever possible, but which I had never seen on stage. The longest part of the decision about whether or not to buy a ticket was figuring out where I wanted to sit. With about an hour and a half to kill before the performance, I didn’t have time enough to return to the hostel to get a sweater, so I ended up checking out quite a few shops on the main drag, looking for something cheap and long-sleeved in case the theater was cold. I finally found a fairly theater-inappropriate zippered hoody which was affordable and something I thought I would wear again (I have). I then scarfed a Subway sandwich just in time to head back to the theater.
The performance was fantastic. There was only one time where the main character fudged a line in her song (sadly, in my favorite song of the show), everything else was spot-on. My seat was great too, though I could tell that the middle-aged Australian couple next to me was not digging it as much as I was. It was all I could do to keep from singing along, even as I attempted to stem the continual flow from my nasal cavities.
Another cool thing about this theater was that you could bring your intermission drinks with you to your seat. I did not partake, but many people had martini glasses balanced on their knees during the second half. I thought of Lindsey and Kari most of the time I was there, they would have loved the show.
The walk back to the hostel afterward felt a little dicey. I stopped into a shop to pick up something to drink, some Ramen noodles, and a couple packets of travel Kleenex, and then just tried to get back by taking the least-dodgy looking streets possible. That was the main disadvantage of the fact that I was in Melbourne alone. It’s much easier to be cavalier about new places when you’re with a group. It’s the same reason that I booked an all-women’s room at the hostel –better safe than sorry and all that. Anyways, I made it back just fine, despite a little uneasiness, and went to bed straight away, pretty much feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, but happy nonetheless from seeing ‘Wicked.’
Next day I felt a little better in the morning but knew that I shouldn’t push myself too much if I wanted to feel better later in the week so I decided to explore Queen Victoria Market, a large covered but open-air market that was a short walk from the hostel (only a couple blocks). I had seen Australian markets before (one on my trip to Hervey Bay, one in Manly, one at Bondi Beach, but there are tons more in the Sydney area that I never ended up hitting), but this one was huge. The other street markets could have been its asexual offspring, budding off as little nubs that separated and then drifted vaguely northward before coming to settle near the coast. It was big.
I spent hours there, determined to at least glance at every stall. What I realized was that a lot of them were selling the same sorts of things, with a bit of variation in prices. I was mostly able to hold myself back, getting a gift or two and a replacement set of headphones (which actually broke on my way home, even though they were a decent brand) and, perhaps, the most touristy item that I bought during my whole trip: a Kangaroo leather hat. I also got some strawberries and apples at the produce portion of the market and had to really tell myself ‘no’ as I passed the live poultry stall, chickens are cheap!
As I left the market it started to rain, and then it started to pour. By this time I was starving as well because it was mid-afternoon and I hadn’t really eaten. It took a fair bit of wandering around the area, but I managed to find a restaurant/café/pub that was open and didn’t look too dodge. I proceeded to order the all day breakfast, which was huge. I lazed about for a while hoping that the rain would let up. When it didn’t I back-tracked to a dollar store and purchased a hugely tacky Australian flag umbrella (I take it back, that was the most touristy item I bought) for about 5 bucks. I then proceed to walk into the city center to the nearest pharmacy so I could pick up more Kleenex and some cold medicines (the pharmacist was very helpful which is great because none of the drug names in Australia are the same as the ones at home). From there I managed to hoof it back to the hostel. What with the weather being so crummy and the fact that after a long morning out I was feeling much worse than I had the night before (getting wet probably didn’t help), I decided to just stay in bed at the hostel the rest of the day. I managed to nap quite a lot and did a fair bit of reading as well (I think this was when I was reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but I can’t remember for certain).
Next day I felt much better again so even though it was still rainy I decided to take a serious hike across the city center to go down Brunswick street, a little street on the north-east side of town that was supposed to be pretty hip, with cool cafes and boutiques, etc. It was well worth it. There were heaps of cool little places to pop into. I ended up spending a fair bit of time reading at a little café (the Retro Café), where I had a latte and one of the best muffins of my life (I believe it was cranberry nut).
There were cool shops and an awesome little record store, but there was also a lot of eye-catching street art, some of it by a guy who tags things “Ghost Patrol.”
On my way back towards the hostel I accidentally stumbled on St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which had some really beautiful architecture that I admired for a while before continuing.
By then I was getting pretty tired so I decided to ride the free City Circle streetcar the long way round so I would get to look at some of the places I probably wouldn’t get to by walking. It was pretty cool, even though the first one to pass me didn’t stop.
Here’s where I ran into a bit of a snag. When I started feeling ill on my first day I had decided to change my flight back to Sydney to 1 day earlier. This changed how many nights I wanted to stay at the hostel. They were nice enough to give me a one night refund, which they don’t usually do. Unfortunately, when I got back to the hostel on the third night, I found out that the woman who had given me the refund had cancelled the wrong night and that my room had been given away, with no spaces left. Needless to say I was pretty upset because it was about 9:30 at night and I didn’t want to lug my stuff around town in the dark, when I was sick already, looking for a non-sketchy hostel. Fortunately, the guy who had to give me this news must have had an eye to customer reviews because he gave me a refund on my last night, called their sister hostel down the road to book me another all-women’s room, called me a cab to take me there and gave me 10 bucks to cover the cab ride (which ended up being more than enough). In the end, it turned out to be better because the sister hostel was a lot better environment for me. The first one had a big bar as part of it and just wasn’t very clean. It felt like the sort of place that twenty-somethings go to get trashed and hook up if they don’t throw up first. The second place was much more my style, cleaner, quieter, more chill. They gave me a coupon for a drink at the bar next door, which I used to get a beer that ended up being so vile tasting that I didn’t even finish it. Instead I repaired back to the hostel, watched a bit of whatever the other people in the common room had on the tv (some western I’d never seen) and then went to bed. The only annoying thing at this place was that the two women who showed up to share my room showed up quite late and woke me up, one around 12:30, the other around 2 am. The girl who showed up at 2 was quite annoying actually because she brought a couple of guys in with her at first (hello, all women’s room! Grrrr), but they left quickly and she didn’t return at all that night, though she left her stuff. Good riddance.
The next morning was my last in Melbourne and I didn’t have much time because I had to be on the bus to the airport in the early afternoon. I checked out of the hostel but left my big bag in the luggage room and went for a walk down to the river nearby. I crossed the bridge and got a coffee to walk with. It wasn’t long before I came across a groovy little art fair, where a bunch of artists were displaying their wares for sale (ranging from paintings and prints to jewelry and hand-made stuffed animals). I managed to do a fair bit of Christmas shopping and was particularly intrigued by a woman who made earrings out of old watch components. There was also an acrobat nearby, but he wasn’t very good.
ok, here he looks good.
On my way to the bus station I wandered back through the city center and saw the other famous Cathedral, St. Paul’s.
Before I got on the bus I had my first and only meal at Hungry Jack’s, which didn’t taste as good as the Burger Kings at Home.
Tuatara Research
Well, I suppose I should end my Australian adventure notes with an explanation of the research project I actually did while in school (reading through this blog you’d hardly know that I was in school at all). One o f the main challenges of the project resulted from the fact that I found out when my animal ethics committee application would be due about 2 days beforehand. This led to a rather rushed experimental design with a lot of inherent problems. Basically I conducted a pilot study (a preliminary experiment used to assess efficacy of methods, etc.) examining the use of olfaction in prey detection by the tuatara. Tuataras differ from their near relatives the snakes and lizards in that they do not have passages between the roof of their mouth and their nasal cavity, so they do not pick up chemicals from the environment by flicking their tongues. Their olfactory epithelium also differs. Observation of tuataras has led to the general assertion that they are visual predators who are mainly attracted by movement. However, these little guys have also been known to eat bird eggs and carrion, both of which suggest that scent may play a factor in locating food sources.
My study was conducted on the 3 female tuataras at Taronga Zoo. I offered each individual a choice between 6 sealed plastic tubes, some of which contained live or dead crickets, and some of which had been scented on the exterior by being rubbed with a live cricket.
which to choose, which to choose...
Each tuatara was given 10 minutes to “choose” one of the tubes by either biting or licking it. Whichever tube the tuatara bit or licked first was considered the animal’s choice, regardless of whether or not they interacted with any other tubes afterward. Once a choice was made, the tubes were removed and the next trial was run on a different individual.
Examining the results, I had to conclude that I didn’t have a large enough sample size to make firm assertions, but that visual stimuli are essential in prey detection. However, contrary to popular belief, motion is not a key factor (e.g. on multiple occasions the tuataras chose tubes which contained motionless dead crickets). More study is certainly necessary and I remain unconvinced that scent is irrelevant to tuatara feeding.
Perhaps most importantly however, after a full semester of study, with a fair few frustrations, I still think tuataras are wicked rad.
Some differences between Australia and the States:
Meat Pies replace Hot Pockets (though Hot Pockets are still available for sale). Fyi, do not eat a meat pie with a knife and fork, Aussies will make fun of you for it.
Burger King is called Hungry Jack’s
Liquor Stores are called “Bottle shops”
You never say ‘tons’ or ‘lots,’ you say ‘heaps’
You never say ’sketchy,’ you say ‘dodgy’ or ‘a bit dodge.’
