Cairns Extended Cut

So my last post was definitely inadequate for the awesomeness that happened in Cairns. I just wasn’t quite feeling in the writing mood when I wrote the last post, and I had internet to distract me so I’ll go into a lot more detail in this one. I have the feeling this post will be a lot longer than the previous one so if that’s what you’re looking for, read on. If not, then don’t read it. I’ll never know who reads this and who doesn’t, unless you post a comment and those are always nice. Lets me know that people are enjoying and actually care about what I’m doing/how I am.

So our flight for Cairns was departing at 7 am so we had to wake up pretty damn early. I basically slept the whole way on the plane because that’s what I do on planes, fall asleep before or during take-off, and wake up when we land. It makes the whole flight seem a lot shorter because I’m asleep the whole time. Now I’m gonna complain a little bit here because I enjoy complaining and if you know me well enough, you know how often I complain just to complain. So this plane is perhaps the most uncomfortable plane I’ve ever been on. The seats were terribly shapes so you’re sitting in this super awkward position with your back pretty far back and your neck push forward pretty far, almost like they want to conform your spine to a nice C-shape. Now after the accident and apparently my years of poor posture, this seating arrangement is super uncomfortable and terrible for my back. Add to that the blasting A/C while everyone is wearing shorts so I’m cold AND uncomfortable. Well that’s what I was thinking when I was awake, which was probably like a total of 30 min of the 3 hour flight.

The flight lands and right as we get inside, it starts pouring rain, the raindrops are huge and the ground is soaked within seconds. But as we continue through the airport and claim our bag the rain has come to a complete stop before we have to leave the airport. As a side note, we initially hadn’t planned to check any bags, but between the two of us we needed to check one baggage to get our liquids like shampoo and sunscreen through the airport, silly security. We get a shuttle to our hostel and drop our stuff off as we’re not allowed to check-in until after 2pm. We do, however get to drop our bags off so we aren’t walking the city with our hands full. Unfortunately, when I dropped my bags off I forgot to take my camera with me further illustrating my inexperience with taking pictures though I am getting better. I do seem to take the most pictures of the random meals I eat though… Something about be and food. But I do think that’ll slowly come to a close because we’re moving into the Milano tomorrow and I get to stop paying out the ass for food to some degree. I know I wrote that in the last post, but eating out 2 meals a day adds up REALLY fast. Over just this week I’ve spent about $400 on food and other touristy things IN ADDITTION to the money I already paid before for accommodations and plane tickets. Pretty damn expensive vacation for one week… and there’s still more things to pay for… Well, I’m only in Australia once, that’s why I picked Melbourne as my 1^st choice.

I think at this point this post is already as long as my previous post and I’ve only covered the damn plane ride. Well, whatever, that’s what the extended version is for anyways. I get to tell you guys every tiny little detail of what I’m doing. Hell I might even include some pictures in this one. Then you people can really see my amazingly amateur picture taking skills.

So we walk the city, and everything is pretty much closed because it’s too early. We walk along the beach and boardwalk and kind of just observe the beauty of nature. The city itself isn’t really cityish. I mean it is, but there are trees sprawled in the middle of the roads and the backdrop is rolling mountains of green in the distance as pictured below.

Really pretty sweet. The beach itself is kind of nasty as it’s kind of marshy, but that makes for lots of cool animals. Different types of birds that can hunt in the shallow waters, crabs fighting for territory and dominance. Then there’s the Lagoon. Because the beach is so nasty, they filter the sea water and remove the brown-ness of the water and you get a nice crystal clear blue saltwater swimming pool along the ocean.

The real ocean is the deeper blue water in the background, that sand you see is what they have on the land to simulate a nicer beach to make up for the nasty one they actually have.

We walk around a little more and come across this building with a large glass dome on top of it. Intrigued we walk over and discover that it’s a zoo on to of a casino. In this casino there’s the most amazing little restaurant. The meals themselves are $12.00 at the most, and the portions are almost American-sized and pretty high quality.

Pictured above is tempura-battered Barrramundi, which is a local Australian fish. Fish and chips, oh and a beer. As you can see that beer is pretty damn small, it’s a “pot” of beer which I don’t think we have in the states, but then again I could be wrong because I have no knowledge of how alcohol works anywhere. I tried three different beers for the three meals I had here and the one above was Toohey’s Extra Dry and I actually really liked it. From what I’ve tried so far I seem to prefer “dry” beers though I have no idea what that means. I’ll look it up at some point but that beer was pretty delicious. So the meal total comes out to $15.50 which is RIDICULOUS here in Australia. A full-sized meal AND pot of beer for that little? MIND = BLOWN.

And I totally skipped the zoo on top of the casino because we were so hyped about this cheap, delicious restaurant. So yeah, it’s just a big dome with lots of trees around simulating the rainforest. The main attraction is the huge 4m salt water crocodile, most of which actually live in freshwater. But he’s actually pretty boring, just kinda sits there and does nothing. My favorites here were the Kookaburras. They actually have an albino Kookaburra named “Snowy” and they’ve got a nice little family of four of them. Apparently Kookaburras can’t be alone because they get all depressed and starve to death so they have to live together in a family. Also these birds eat meat and swallow chicks and mice whole. It’s really quite attractive.

So I didn’t get any pictures of the croc feeding because I didn’t actually have my camera with me when we were there for that… But I made up for it? No not really, the croc feeding was pretty awesome and I apologize for my noobness in picture taking. To make up for it, here’s a picture of a friendly bird perched on my shoulder.

Please excuse the shiny face. It’s pretty damn warm and humid in a rainforest and it’d been a long day. Also, the events of this dome are spread out among 3 visits as the tickets are for 5 days total, pretty sweet deal if you actually go back as many times as we did. Not really much else to do in Cairns anyways. Most people just kind of use it as a launch pad for the GBR and the rainforest.

Speaking of the GBR, that’s what we did the next day. Now here’s the thing. In Cairns there are three types of shops, food, souvenir, and booking agency. So walking around the city we ‘d seen a lot of different companies that take people out to the reef, but we hadn’t seen the one we booked it with. So we’re pretty anxious/wary for whatever reason that we might’ve been scammed as illogical as it is. We’re trying to reassure ourselves because it was on trip advisor and had a large number of reviews, but the doubts are still there in the back of our minds.

So we wake up bright and early for our pick-up scheduled for 7:15. There are two other groups of people outside waiting for their shuttles and as each van comes up and takes them away, I’m getting more anxious as to whether or not our shuttle will actually arrive. But alas it does arrive and we get shuttled away to the greatest experience of my life. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a water-proof camera. I was very close to buying a disposable one for $20 but I ended up saving my money and not doing it, which I’m kind of regretting at this point. All the photos I have are pretty boring as you can really only see different shades of blue. And I don’t know how my blog is going to like having pictures scattered all over it. I might have to host them all online which would be a pain in the ass so I won’t include a blue picture. (Yes indeed I had to upload all of them so an extra picture would've taken an eternity longer on library free wifi.)

So in my last post I pretty much just went into the most detail of the reef because it was amazing. I don’t really know what else to say but for the sake of not repeating myself and writing even more seeing as I’m at 1600 words and I still have Kuranda to write about, I’ll just refer you to below and reiterate again that the puffer fish was damn amazing. I also have underwater hockey to thank for my mastery of the snorkeling gear. Also the the GBR made me realize exactly how crappy the gear we have at school really is. I was able to freely swim around and not worry about learning how to use the snorkeling gear which made my time that much more enjoyable. I was also unfazed by diving below the surface to get a closer look or chase some fish around. I will never forget the time I had at the GBR and maybe someday I’ll come back and get certified to dive and dive the reef even though snorkeling it was amazing.

So after our day on the reef, we came back around 5:30 pm walked around the city a little more, showered the salt off our bodies and grabbed more food at the casino. We then came back and decided to kick it in the TV lounge. As we entered we were greeted by 2 ladies studying for their PADI’s, which is a dive certification course. They were from the UK and Denmark. We spent the rest of the evening just talking to them and chilling. The girl from the UK was actually an engineer and both of them were taking a year off and traveling. It seems pretty popular to do that in other countries, to just travel and backpack around for a year. So we had a nice evening of conversation about music and then they departed and we never knew their names. A lot of meetings like that seem to happen in hostels. It’s pretty cool yet kind of sad at the same time. You meet a lot of people and just talk about stuff, but then you leave and never get to see them again and you don’t ever share your names. It’s just kind of like, ‘Where you traveling from?’ and it goes from there. We’ve met a handful of people and received no names. Such is life, it’s not like you’ll ever see them again. You share the traveler’s bond and go on your way.

The next day we booked Skyrail and our shuttle arrived at a more reasonable hour of 9:00. It takes you basically from Cairns to Kuranda and it was nowhere near as amazing as the GBR but what can you expect? I mean it was still pretty awesome to be about 15-20 meters above the forest floor riding above the canopy and seeing the green spread as far as the eye can see and seeing the water falls. I tried my hand at some more “artsy” photos here.

Got that nice close-up of the ant on the plant with spikes all over it, the stem had even scarier looking spikes and a lot more as well. The trip up was a lot cooler than the actual town itself. Well then again we only had a few hours there and we didn’t really get to go to any of the cool things like the Butterfly Sanctuary. I really wanted to and I even wore red to help attract the butterflies, but it wouldn’t have been worth it to pay for a ticket for only about an hour of time in the place because we had to catch our return bus at 15:00 and the ride back takes about 45 minutes. Most of our time here was spent at a brain teaser stall in the market trying to figure out the puzzles.

Then we grabbed lunch and made our way back to Cairns.

Not the greatest picture, but it gives you a really good idea of what the Skyrail is.

We got back to Cairns pretty early, spent another hour or two in the casino dome zoo then went back to the boardwalk so I could get my pictures. Spent a good chunk of time just chilling on the boardwalk watching the tide come in and the animals do their thing. Really relaxing despite the nasty brown water and litter floating about.

Now we’re back in Melbourne and our holiday is winding down and the project is about to start. I hope you’ve enjoyed this enhanced version of my blog with pictures and everything. I definitely enjoy writing them but I choose to do so at non-ideal times. It’s about 1:00 AM here and I have to check out before 10 AM and I’m on the top bunk with a stranger from Quebec sleeping below me.

P-P-PEACE

The Next Few Days - Cairns, Great Barrier Reef, Skyrail

I don’t really remember too much after I last wrote as we just spent the past 3 days up north in Cairns. It was amazing. It was such a stark contrast from the city life of Melbourne. Immediately upon stepping off the plane the air was a lot more humid and clean, and it rained hard for a short period of time. We arrived in the tropical north of Australia, Far North Queensland.

The landscape was just completely different. The central business district (CBD) is about a quarter of the size of Melbourne’s and there are trees EVERYWHERE, parrots flying around, and insects buzzing around too. We went into the dome zoo in the middle of the city on top of a casino. Saw some pretty awesome animals just flying around really close to you. Witnessed them feed a four meter long saltwater crocodile, “Goliath”. Just pretty sweet in general. Also, the ticket was valid for four days after you initially purchase it so whenever we had some free time we would go back and see the animals again, and it was different every single time.

Then of course the GBR (Great Barrier Reef) was AMAZING. HOLY CRAP. It was so awesome. It was like snorkeling/swimming in an aquarium. The fish are so close and you can just be floating around and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a school of fish. I also went on guided snorkel tours with the marine biologist on board and he would free dive 20m to the bottom and just pick up stuff for us to see. Basically we got to see a lot more things swimming around with him than if we were just blindly bumbling around the reef, even though that was amazing as well. I think I pretty much saw everything the reef had to offer, minus the friendly large fish Frank. I saw sharks, turtles, jellyfish, tons of shiny and colorful fish, starfish, sting ray, sea cucumber, and hands down the best part, a puffer fish.

Our marine biologist found and caught a puffer fish, made it puff and we passed it around. It was so cute, soft, and cuddly all puffed up. I’d always imagined them to be hard and pointy when puffed up but it’s the exact opposite.

I could write all day about all the amazing things I saw at the GBR but that’d be kinda boring for you guys. All said and done I will never forget the things I saw and experienced at the reef but I did get sun-burned moderately on my shoulder and calves. But that’s what I get for over-estimating my Asian skin.

The next day we took a ride on Skyrail, which is a 7.5 km lift over the canopy of the forest to Kuranda, the village in the rainforest. That was also pretty sweet, a stark contrast from seas of blue to seas of green which are both pretty different than seas of grey/buildings here in Melbourne. Now we’re back in Melbourne and everyone else is arriving on site in two days. And tomorrow I can finally stop spending ridiculous amounts of money on food as we get to move into our campus housing and I can buy groceries, which also cost a lot more but are still much cheaper than eating out every meal, and cook my own food.

GBR was amazing…

PEACE

Days Two, Three, and Four - Exploration

Disclaimer - The following posts were written on a previous date. Day one was 29/12/11. I have just now gotten reliable access to internet as the library has been closed since the 25th. Also just in case you don't actually read all of this. This will not be a daily update once my project/work starts, probably closer to a weekly update.

- - -

Walking, walking, walking. Lots of it. It’s all we’ve been doing for the past few days. That or standing that is. A new city, lots of new places to explore and walk around. New Year’s was pretty cool too. Just hustling and bustling just like any of the other Melbournians. Going to all the different shows and performances they had on. Yeah. Don’t really know what to say, just lots of new experiences flooding in.

Also I’ve discovered that I absolutely suck at having a camera. It’s always in my pocket and I just kind of stare in awe at things thinking they’re cool and then I don’t take a picture. And then the pictures I do end up taking I don’t think are too stellar. Pretty boring in general, but I guess that’s cuz there’s no one in them except the occasional Gaffey as he stands there.

I really supposed it helps to write these on a daily basis so I kind of remember what I did that day, but I mean, who’s really going to read all of these? But then again I guess it can’t really hurt to write them for me. A way to reflect on my time here in Australia, remember and document all that’s going on. Let’s see… Arrival and I wrote about that… OH HOW COULD I FORGET. Yeah totally writing stream of consciousness here, deal with it.

Day 2 we went to the St. Kilda beach as our hostel had a free shuttle there in the morning. Unfortunately when we went to sign up for it there was only one seat left so we had to pay $7 for an all-day tram pass not too exorbitant considering all the other expenses Australia has to offer. Yeah, we walked all day for that and I got sun burnt. Not too badly as I did put on SOME sun block and caught the burning as we were chilling and then applied sunblock to prevent it from getting worse. But when we go to St. Kilda beach we totally found a trail and just followed it down the coastline taking in the beautiful scenery and whatnot. Ate lunch at some nice café type deal.

All the restaurants seem to be pretty classy. There are two types of places to eat, or that I will allow myself to eat at. There’s the “cheap” $8-12 place where there’s usually no service of any kind and you just walk up to the counter order your food and they either bring it to you after your order number or it’s handed to you. Then there’s the $14-22 place where it’s almost like a sit-down restaurant with waiters and everything, but from our experience so far bringing you the bill is something they don’t really do. Maybe it’s seen as rude as it’s almost like asking you to leave their restaurant? But Gaffey and I have totally finished a meal and had the waiter clear our dishes and sat there waiting for the bill and observing how other people pay. It’s definitely different here, a lot more relaxed and laid back. Not as busy as the east coast. For the most part a lot of businesses seem to actually shut down over the holidays of Christmas and New Year’s.

Also as a random side note, these will not be on a daily recap as soon as I started my project. I’ll be at work from ~8-5 so there won’t be a whole day’s worth of exploring to do. Maybe it’ll be a weekly thing once my project starts. Who knows? I sure as hell don’t. At the moment I’m just kinda kickin it in my room at the hostel, with no internet. Munching on some grilled chorizo and caramelized onion crisps and Tim Tams, relaxing, putting my feet up, and writing this diary/blog entry.

Well enough random thoughts. I guess this is what happens when I have no internet to keep my occupied.

Day 3, NYE

We slept in a bit to compensate for the last little bit of jet lag left and needing to stay up to welcome in the New Year. Spent the afternoon walking around the various gardens a short distance away from the city, along the Yarra River which runs along Melbourne and is why it’s a city in the first place, a large trading port. The big thing we were trying to get to was the Royal Botanical Gardens which has tons of different plants from all over the world. It’s really pretty amazing walking 20meters and being in a different country plant-wise.

Welcoming in 2012 was never a really big celebration in my past with my family. Asian families just aren’t really too big into holidays once the kids grow up. So spending it in a different country along with around 100,000 other people is pretty… err… different. A lot of hustle and bustle and more walking, which my legs and feet are in no way accustomed to by the way, but I’m manning up and my legs are strengthening. It’s kind of sad actually that I can’t walk all day. It kind of gets me thinking that if society were not as advanced as it is, I’d be screwed. Little to no athletic ability and can’t even spend the whole day walking without being in immense pain. I’d totally get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger in a heartbeat. But yeah, probably the first New Year’s Eve ever that I haven’t watched the ball drop, even if it is just on TV… Instead we had a pretty amazing fireworks display. There were spread out all along the river on different roof tops around the city and synced up so around 10 different roof tops were all shooting off the exact same array at the exact same time.

Day 4

We slept in again with regards to the fact that we’d been up til probably close to 2 or 3 the night before. Went to the Immigration Museum. It was actually fairly interesting seeing all the immigration history of Australia. See that they had their own anti-Asian period and all the tragedies of history. Definitely something I don’t see the rest of our group doing. That’s really the name of the game here. Find things to do as a pair that the rest of the group probably won’t do and if some people do end up going it’ll be likely that something else will be going on as well. Don’t exactly wanna shoot ourselves in the feet and do things now that we’ll likely do as a larger group. The more the merrier.

Then with much of the evening left we explored the city some more, walked some of the streets we hadn’t walked before on the first day and actually *gasp* went INSIDE some of the buildings!

I miss internet. Though we did grab a little free Wifi inside the McDonald’s we went to for dinner. I just emailed my parents and took care of some email business. Connect with the world. I also had a McOz sandwich. It was quite interesting, just a standard burger but with a large slice of beet. Apparently it’s back by popular demand so I thought I’d try it. Portioning here is much smaller as well. I can finish almost every meal I order and the medium value meal was the same size as a small American value meal. Oh and the daily value is 8700 kJ. Which I guess is pretty damn close to 2000 kcal. But I think the recommended amounts of fat and protein and everything else is a little lower because a double quarter pounder with cheese is over 100% daily value in a few categories while in the states it just hits 98% in the fat category.

As amazed as I am to say it. I kind of miss home/school a bit already. It’s just fleeting thoughts here and there, but when they were mentioning it during IQP Orientation I kinda just brushed it off cuz I normally don’t experience it, but I guess being here with just the two of us in a completely different environment is something I’m not used to. I’m sure once everyone else gets here and we move into the Milano I’ll be fine.

Cuz you know. You just gotta man up sometimes.

Day One - Arrival

It’s been a long day. I made the silly mistake of staying up for as long as possible on the plane and watched a ton of movies. Just straight up back to back; finish one movie, before credits are over, switch on another movie. I watched Contagion, Kung Fu Panda 2, Cowboys and Aliens, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Change Up, and Red Riding Hood. Nothing was too spectacular except Kung Fu Panda 2. Do not watch Red Riding Hood.

So we, being me and Gaffey, arrived at the airport at around 9 AM Melbourne time. Waited in line to pass through customs and randomly saw Josie. After going through customs we figured out how to get to the apartment that WPI will be providing but we can’t live in yet. So that brings the time to about 11 AM. We walk around the city from the apartment and make our way over to the hostel where we will be staying to drop off our stuff so we can wander the city a little more freely. The time is now roughly 1:30. Okay, maybe my times are a little off… but then again we were walking pretty slowly taking in the many sights that a new country has to offer. Oh wait, along the way we also stopped to get cell phones. So I’m not losing random hours.

We try and find a place to eat lunch, lamenting the fact that most of the restaurants seem to be running an average entrée price of $18 AUD, which is basically the same in US give or take a few pennies. We settle on this cozy little café shop that is selling sandwiches for an average of $9-10, considerably less than $18, but still on the high end of things. But on average everything here seems to be costing about 150-200% more than in the states. A 450 mL bottle of coke with a discount of BOGO for $1 costs $2.35, but on the plus side, all the soda here is made with real sugar and not the stupid high fructose corn syrup garbage so it tastes considerably better.

And then we basically spent the rest of the day walking around exploring the city and just chillaxing. And our only source of free internet, the library, is closed from Christmas to the 2^nd of January, so it’s been a bit difficult to really plan anything to do. We have to rely on the old school method of brochures and word of mouth, completely prehistoric. . It’s really just kind of an inconvenience, but the next couple days until the library re-opens shouldn’t be too bad. We’re planning on going to St. Kilda Beach tomorrow, spend the day down there, scouting everything out. Then it’s New Year’s Eve so there’ll likely be some sort of club to go to, meet some people ;). But of course that’s in the evening so during the day we’ll go to some of the gardens around the city, maybe take a trip to some of the museums and see if there are some free or cheap/interesting ones. Really wished we had been able to get to go to Sydney, but I’m sure we’ll find things to do. Maybe meet some cool people. Hopefully.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m currently writing this post at around 20:30 on 29/12/2011, and it’s ridiculously bright outside. The brightness is as if it were 2 or 3 in the afternoon on the east coast. It’s completely messing with my head and probably psychologically extending the length of this day. I don’t even. I’m really pooped. I’ve been awake for way too long, probably close to twenty four hours and it’s really bright outside, and I don’t have internet. It’s expensive to have fun too. It also hasn’t really set in that I’m in freaking Australia. Man. The heck. Around 70 days in Australia. LET’S DO IT UP!

Six Days Away

My flight leaves for Australia in 6 days. That's kind of mind-blowing. Sure my flight's been edited so I have like a 5 hour layover in LAX, but hey airports are kinda fun? Other than that this will be the first long flight I've been on for a long time. I'm no stranger to flying, but sitting on an airplane for 20 hours is going to be quite an ordeal.

And then I get to spend New Year's Eve in Melbourne. A different country, a completely different atmosphere. It's all very exciting. And there the drinking age is 18. Our local liason emailed all of us and told us to buy alcohol in the airport. Man this writing sucks compared to my stories, it's like an actual blog post. What is this?

Well Australia is going to be pretty sweet. Great Barrier Reef, kangaroos, ah man.

Hopefully these posts will stop sucking when I have actual events to write about instead of just writing about random crap that's semi-related.

PEACE

Edit: there's a lot of old crap on this blog. Feel free to read it. I probably won't. They're just the rantings of an adolescent boy. I guess they're pretty entertaining.

Scarred

So it's been awhile. But I wrote a story for my humanities capstone and I've been meaning to post it for awhile and I'm at work waiting for the scanner to be free.

Disclaimer: it's long. ~20 pages

Edit: So I realized that having a 20 page story copy-pasted here was kind of disgustingly long so I copy pasted it into a google doc. The formatting is a bit ugly since there's no tabs at a new paragraph, but it's not bad.

Scarred

Hello

There will be postings soon if anyone still reads this. Though I highly doubt it.

BYAAHH