Sunday, August 31, 2003

July 28, 2003 Monday
Today was the start of what is shaping up to be a really busy week. Classes start this week, and we get to play tourist with Gareth for the next 10 days (yeah!). As far as classes go, things are the same, but different if that makes any sense. I’ve always known how lucky we are to go to a) a school in the States, and b) a school with the resources and facilities like UT. Being here really makes me appreciate even our crappy classrooms. The school isn’t dirty or anything, it’s just small with very odd design features. The desks in my first class made me feel like I was in a 747. A row of individual, but connected, seats with a desk that folds down from the seat in front of you. Once you’re in, you’re in…there is no getting up unless you want to make the entire row of people fold up their desks and stand up to let you out.

It’s really funny watching everyone trying to get into the elevators (“lifts” here) before class because no one seems to get the concept of getting to class early so EVERYONE is trying to get upstairs at the same time. I was let in on a little secret by one of the students, though. Turns out that only 3 of the 6 elevators actually works. Fun. The elevators are also the most impatient ones I’ve ever seen. You really have to be on your toes or you could lose them. Some of the students were saying there was an elevator in the library that routinely opens up mid-floor and has sudden drops. Who needs Astroworld with rides like that?

I’ve added another entry on my list of businesses I could bring here and make a fortune (I can’t really remember the rest of the list right now so don’t ask). They really need a system to handle used textbooks. They have a secondhand bookstore on campus (good), but apparently nobody uses it (bad). This kind of thing doesn’t work if nobody uses it. The regular campus bookstore doesn’t buy back used books. You can’t even get your money back if you return books, even the next day! Store credit is SO lame. I still haven’t gotten a good answer as to what everyone does with their old books. They can’t possibly keep them all, and I can’t imagine that every single person puts up little flyers all over the place. The books must end up in the same place as socks from the dryer and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

July 26, 27, 2003 Weekend before School

Nothing much happened this weekend so I’ll take the opportunity to complain, er, comment on some of the things that are annoyingly different about Australia and that make it a backwards country.

Our first experience with this was when we asked for ketchup (tomato sauce here) and the person at the counter replied, “35 cents.” Excuse me?! You are going to charge us for ketchup?!! Now tell me that is not ridiculous. You can’t. You can’t because it is ridiculous.
Next, local phone calls cost around 17 cents per call. That’s simply annoying. Not to mention the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, the hyphen (—) is not used in their phone numbers anymore. So a person could give you 96664189, 96 66 4189, 966 64 189, or any other variation. All the cell phone numbers start with 04 so those are even worse. Though that idea is a pretty good one, I think. And calls from land lines to cell phones cost more, and cell phone plans charge by the minute like ours do, but without the tons of free minutes. Talk about complicated calling plans. 10 free minutes after 7 PM, free mobile-to-mobile calls, first 5 minutes to a land line free, 100 free text messages, etc. At the same time, there’s no charge for incoming calls. How does an industry develop so differently in two similar countries?

Gareth came into town Sunday night. It was good to see him again. It’s hard to imagine that we’ve only known him for about two and a half days. With class starting tomorrow, the girls and I are going to take turns taking him around. It works out that way because they don’t have class on Mondays and Wednesday, and I don’t have class on Tuesday.

July 25, 2003 Friday
Today, the international students and their Aussie mates took a trip out to Manly. It’s a trendy little beach community north of Sydney Harbour, probably like Venice Beach or other places in California. I would know if I’d ever been, but I haven’t :) We took the ferry across the Habour (by the way, that’s the way they spell harbour here…you go ahead and keep spelling it the other way, I know you were wondering), which was really cool. Before we left the house I said to myself, “I have enough battery left in my camera for today, right? Yeah, sure.” This, of course, meant that my camera ran out of juice after one picture. We hadn’t even gotten on the ferry yet. Oh, well…such is life.
Manly Beach had the coolest seagulls. If I dropped one onion sliver on the ground, only the closest seagull would react. The others wouldn’t even turn around. The same if I dropped two slivers of onion. When I threw down a whole handful down, there was only two gulls within ten feet. Seagulls from far and wide instantly descended on the pile of onion, each getting a sliver. It was kind of scary to have 20 seagulls rush at me, but they were like F-16 jets landing on an aircraft carrier the way they stopped right on the onions. OK, maybe YOU don’t think that’s all that great, but I thought it was pretty neat.
At night we had the official welcome party at the Coogee Beach Palace Hotel. Before you get visions of marble floors and chandeliers, let me clarify something. In Australia, they call bars or pubs hotels. It goes back to the days when most of Australia was sparsely populated. Just like the saloons with rooms upstairs in the Old West, the hotel would have a bar downstairs that was the central gathering place for the town. It was right on Coogee Beach. (Where we almost lived, remember?). More meeting, greeting, getting names, forgetting names. We stayed until about midnight, late for us old folks. It reminded me just how much I hate, yes hate, house/dance/techno music and cigarette smoke. And there was plenty of both. At least back in Austin you can’t smoke in the clubs and bars.

Friday, August 22, 2003

July 24, 2003 Thursday
It’s my birthday today, which means it will last for 39 hours. Today we had to register for classes. Luckily, I because we were law students, we got to skip most of the massive lines everyone else had to wait in. Our day went much smoother than many of the other students. Still, actually getting the classes I wanted took a little doing. The law school was being shady about what classes are available. They were telling us classes were full when they weren’t. Another law student caught them doing that, forcing them to admit they were just trying to save the seats for their own students. I can’t really blame them for that, really. At UT, the state legislature says that 80% of the students must be Texas residents. It’s the same thing, really. They should have just told us. I finally got fed up trying to pick a class they would let me enroll in and told the girl to just enroll (which is spelled with one ‘l’ here in Australia) me in anything because I was just going to change it later. Classes are bound to open up after local students start changing around their classes.
We went out to dinner to a Thai restaurant (there is one every 20 feet here) in the city. Ana, Leslie, and my Aussie mate Angela (the school matches up exchange students with locals). Afterwards, Leslie and I went to see my favorite comedian. Eddie Izzard just happened to be in Sydney with his new show so it was a happy coincidence that all the shows sold out forcing them to add a show on my birthday. All in all, a pretty good birthday.

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

July 21-23, 2003 Orientation Week
We actually have things to do this week. Orientation reminds us that we actually have to go to classes while we’re here…bummer. We were in these sessions from 9:30 AM until 1:30 PM, it was ridiculous. We covered all sorts of information, mostly helpful stuff like schedule for the week, but they also talked about cultural differences. Some of the stuff was pretty funny. Here are my favorite parts of the huge magazine thing they gave us:

There are two stereotypes which can harm male-female relationships between Australians and international students. The first stereotype (held by some overseas males) is that Australian females are always willing to have sex. The second stereotype (held by some Australian females) is that most males from overseas have no interest in Australian females, other than to have sex with them….These…stereotypes…can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding.”

“It is not unusual, at the end of a date, for your companion to invite you into his or her place for a coffee. The invitation does not imply that you are being invited to have sex with your companion. You are not obliged to accept the invitation…”

Eddie Izzard has a whole bit how it is sometimes hard to tell if “Would you like a cup of coffee?” means just that, or “Would you like to do it?” His basic dividing line is that if the President of Burundi asks you if you want some coffee, it means he wants to know if you want some coffee. A good rule of thumb, I feel.

They gave us all these little “gift bags” full of useless pamphlets and other pieces of paper. The bags were supposed to include a condom, but for some reason didn’t. They assured us (just in case anyone was truly worried) that they would come in the next day, the day we were to enroll in classes. One of the younger staff members said, “That way, after you enroll you can roll one on.” They aren’t as uptight about stuff like that here, if you couldn’t tell. We also had a presentation by an Aboriginal group where they gave us a quick history and played the didgeridoo. There was also a surfing demonstration, inside the lecture hall if you can believe that. It was really funny, but in a “you had to be there” sort of way so I won’t bore you.

There were about 140 international exchange students at the orientation. About 30% of UNSW students are from overseas. They say that is the largest proportion of any university in the world. I can’t tell you how tired I got of asking and answering the same questions over and over. Where are you from? What are you studying? How long have you been in Sydney? Ugh. We’re all for meeting new people and making friends, but sometimes you just don’t care.

Friday, August 15, 2003

July 20, 2003 Sunday
It rained today. All day. I got wet. Very wet. We were supposed to have a cookout with all the exchange folks today. People still showed up with their meat (it was BYO meat), though. We ended up walking, in the rain, to a close by area with restaurants and stuff. A ten minute walk is short in good weather, in the rain it’s quite long. We must have looked weird…40 kids holding plastic bags w/ meat, walking in the rain. Oh,well. Back to the mall by the house to do a little grocery shopping.
Grocery shopping. Sounds simple, right? It made me hate this place, for a little while anyway. They don’t have any of the foods I eat back home. None. No Eggo Waffles, no Pillsbury biscuits, no chicken strips, and forget about those microwave Salisbury and chicken fried steaks or marinated fajitas from H-E-B and my beloved Totino’s pizzas. Don’t even ask about Mexican food. Apparently, Old El Paso is the only company to manage to find Australia on a map and send their food here. There isn’t even a section for it. The Old El Paso shelf in the Asian food section, don’t ask me why. You know it’s the lowest traffic area in the whole store because that’s where they put the ladies cooking the free samples. “No one ever buys Mexican food…we’ll put a person grilling meat right in front of the entire shelf. No one will even notice.” I’m sure it went something like that.
They also have this strange fascination with meat pies, something they inherited from the British. It's just like a chicken pot pie, but filled with beef and gravy instead. Pretty messy, actuall, but Gareth loves them.
This was all kind of depressing. I’m going to have to actually cook things. When I’m hungry I want to eat, not cook. Oh, well. Still, this country is so backwards. More on that later.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

July 19, 2003 Saturday
Moved in bright and early this morning. We are never going to be able to fill up all this space. We kept having to remind ourselves we are only going to be here for one semester so that we wouldn’t buy all kinds of knick-knacks and furnishings. “Rubbish” as Gareth would say. FINALLY got to unpack our suitcases. Good feeling. My closet has the oddest arrangement of shelve compartments. There are 3 sliding mirror doors, and some of the shelves can’t be accessed easily no matter which door is opened. This will prove to be a pain in the arse.
First order of business was to hit the mall for supplies. We planned on making two trips since we could only buy as much as we could carry. Luckily, we ran into Sean, Michelle, etc. at Target and they offered to take home what we had bought already. They are being really great to us. We are starting to feel bad when they do things for us. This helped out a lot because we wouldn’t have had time to come back to get groceries like we had planned. Everything here closes so damn early!! Stores close at 5:30 or 6 PM during the week. Thursday is know as “Late night shopping” day so the stores stay open until 9 PM and judging by the number of people out, it’s a BIG deal. Second order of business was to clean. The place was recently renovated (it had just been painted a few days before). That took a bit of work. No one had ever cleaned on top of the cabinets…until me, that is.  Mom would be proud.
Houses here don’t have any central heat or air conditioning. It is winter here, remember. It still gets pretty cold at night. We all bought a blanket (for $5 Aus., not bad), but that wasn’t going to be enough. Michelle left us an electric heater, which is great, but the girls get to keep that in their room. Luckily, Michelle also brought down some old comforters which did a great job…as long as I stay in bed. The rest of the house is still a freaking popsicle in the mornings. Colder inside than outside. And the way the house is oriented, it gets virtually no direct sunlight so the house never warms up. That’s good in the summertime, I imagine, but sucks right now. Only the back extra room (we have so many rooms some of them don’t even have names) gets sun so that one room is warm in the afternoon, while the other side of the house is freezing. I’m going to have to buy a little heater. I hope they aren’t too expensive.

Saturday, August 09, 2003

July 18, 2003
FINALLY went out to see Sydney. We decided to hit the Harbour. So far, much of what we had seen reminded us a lot of the States. The houses in our neighborhood would fit in with the houses in any working class neighborhood in Kansas City or Chicago. The mall near our house is very American in concept, if not in design, down to gaggles of roaming teenagers. But riding the bus into downtown Sydney…NOW we felt like we were in Australia. We got off at Circular Quay (pronounced ‘key’) and walked down towards the Opera House. To be honest, it was kinda underwhelming, but then again, I’ve never been one to be awed by buildings. It was probably because we didn’t actually get that close, much less go inside.

MORE WALKING…We walked around the Royal Botanical Gardens for a few hours. That was nice, despite there not being much in the way of flowers. Mostly green trees and bushes. The highlight was watching the biggest f*cking bats I’ve ever seen. These suckers must have weighed at least 7 lbs. with bodies around a foot long! And yes, the were flying around.

Last night at the Randwick Lodge. Tomorrow is move-in day.

July 17, 2003
Slow day. Got bank accounts, we all called home. They had a little thing for us international students. Met MY Aussie mate, Angela. The girls are making me share her. As soon as she said she like to shop, I knew she was my Aussie mate in name only. Simon and Shereen in the exchange office are cool. Met a couple of folks, a few characters. It will be interesting to see what the law folks are like.

I’m really hoping I stay up past 10PM tonight. Hey, don’t laugh. It will be harder than it sounds. Our bodies can slowly adjust to the seasons, but doesn’t do so well when the sun sets at 8:30 PM one day and 5:30 the next. 8PM feels like 11PM.

We’re moving in on Saturday! With a perfect script written by me and perfect execution by Leslie we were able to get Sean to pick us up from the Randwick, including Ana’s luggage! This was a big deal for us. By this point, though things hadn’t been going bad, we were still very grateful for small victories like this. Michelle called and said they needed the deposit tomorrow. We thought that was a bit weird, especially since we were moving in Saturday. We ended up just writing up a receipt and hoping for the best.

The news updates for one of the channels has the same bumper music as the NBC Nightly News…weird. Another station has the same slogan and very similar opening video as ABC. They only have, like, 4 broadcast stations here. Apparently, they only got cable TV eight years ago. And it is all subsidized by the government…strange.

The birds here don’t “sing.” They yell and scream like old men arguing about politics or children fighting over a toy. It is quite disconcerting.

July 16, 2003
More agonizing…beach or ‘burbs? We got Patrick to drive us to the suburb in the daylight (Ana’s request), then drop us off in Coogee. He and Lenka were so nice. After a quick lunch of fish & chips (again), we decided to take the grown-up house.
We did MORE walking around Coogee. The beach is really nice, and the weather was beautiful. It has been easy to forget that it is Winter here.
Michelle, her husband Sean, and their two kids Amber (7) and Lockland (1) live upstairs. They have a separate entrance in the back. All of us are hoping this doesn’t turn ugly. Michelle assures us she won’t be butting into what we do because she “remembers what being at uni was like.” I wonder what they do?
Bought my Eddie Izzard tickets. All the other shows were almost sold out so he added a show on my birthday. I had to decide between tickets for all three of us in the upper balcony, or 2 tickets in row J. It’s my birthday, the girls don’t even know who Izzard is…I went for row J. I figure I’ll try to find a nice British girl who knows Izzard to go with me.

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

July 15, 2003
This whole money conversion thing is a pain. It doesn’t help that apartments are list rent by the week, not month and utilities are billed by the quarter. Stupid Australia.
Spent all day looking at apartments. First place looked really dodgy (another piece of British slang I've picked up). It was a 5 bdrm house that didn’t seem to have been kept up very well. 2nd place was old w/ a fairly nice old lady to match.
3rd place was really nice. Pauline (the rental agent) picked us up which was soooooo good after spending all morning walking. It was only 2 bedrooms, and a small 2 bdrm at that. The big selling point, besides being clean, was that it was 2 blocks from Coogee Beach. After seeing the first 2 places, the apartment in Coogee looked like Heaven. The girls thought is was “really cute” so of course they liked it. The only problem was that it was small. Probably wouldn’t be comfortable for the throngs of people that will be visiting the girls. (Family and friends, you gutter brains :) After seeing the place, I voted to cancel the later (6:30 PM) appointment we made. I figured it was a waste of everyone’s time if we were just going to take the Coogee, anyway. Patrick (not Patrice, not Petrie, which I thought his name was due to his thick accent), the housing office guy, said he wouldn’t bother going to see it because it was way out in the suburbs. We decided to visit anyway, just to see it.
We had a grumpy bus driver. The situation wasn’t helped when Ana decided to give him a $20 instead of paying w/ exact change just b/c he was being grumpy. After getting on, we realized we didn’t know where to get off, and now we couldn’t ask the bus driver b/c Ana had pissed him off. Thankfully, b/t the 3 of us we are able to figure out most things so there weren’t any problems.
Michelle was outside sweeping when we came down the street. It was a HOUSE. An honest to goodness, place for grown-ups, house. Michelle and her family had lived in the ground floor before deciding to build a second story and move up there. The house has hardwood floors that look nice (minus the paint spots). It’s HUGE! This created a real dilemma. This place was MUCH bigger, not to mention cheaper that the apartment in Coogee. I don’t know if Michelle was sensing our hesitation or just really nice, but everytime therewas a pause she would throw something else in. She had already said she would furnish the place w/ new renal furniture, but she also said she would give us her extra dishware, sheets, and stuff. All stuff we would have to buy. Looks like too much to pass up. Most of dinner was spent thinking about which place we should take.
Stepping back, having 2 places to choose from after only being in town 2 days isn’t too shabby.

Sydney
July 14, 2003
The airport is definitely the most trendy/posh one I’ve ever been in. They force int’l arrivals walk through the duty free shop…that’s pretty shrewd.
People were acting like it was cold. Felt like a beautiful spring day in Austin, around 65 degrees. Found out later it was the warmest temperature for that date in history...go figure.
Taxi to the Randwick was another one of those ubiquitous (outside the US) little vans w/ a hair dryer engine, complete w/ a surly E. European driver.
Randwick IS cool…run by the Kelly’s.
I will be VERY happy when I can stop lugging my bags (not to mention Ana’s 75 lb. monster) up stairs!
Made it up to UNSW today. Turned out Ana and I weren’t actually registered yet so we had to go see the folks at the law school. Jen was nice enough, but I caught a definite vibe when we (mainly I) were trying to pick classes that weren’t on the short list she gave us. I asked if there was anything like the “forcing” we have, and she answered with something about limited class space and the fire code. I knew right then I was going to have to do this myself.