And the Police Get Involved...

Well before I get to the title of the story, I'll go ahead and fill you in on what's happened since my last entry. Well its my third day in Brisbane, and I still think it's a pretty fantastic place. I took some of these pictures on my walk back from the bus stop. I've managed to get some of the basic things taken care. As I mentioned before, I have joined the rest of Australian society and have gotten a cell phone, with a genuine Aussie phone number. Yesterday, I spent most of the day exploring after I wrote my blog. I walked from my hostel over to the campus where I'll be spending a good deal of time this summer doing my research... well I never actually made it to the campus, but I made it close! In the last few km. to the hostel, it got hilly, I got discouraged... you know. At that point, I had been walking for nearly 1.5 hours, and I had to be somewhere, so I decided to walk eastwards more towards my direction. But a very quaint neighborhood and area. (I am talking about the University of Queensland at St. Lucia), I'll take a picture of the sign for those of you know about my college sign interest... I also got a gym membership yesterday, so all of the fish and chipperys in this country don't make me pack on too many pounds. Last night was fairly quiet, I came back to my hostel and cooked dinner, and spent about 2 hours chatting with a relatively interesting french guy who spent the last 2 months working at a winery near Adelaide and a Hong Kong girl who can't seem to find a job here in Brisbane.
Oh yeah, I forgot that I put those pictures there, I took those before all of the above happened just for a chronological reference.

So as for today, another fairly productive day. Woke up this morning, and spent a bit of time online trying to get things sorted out for my contacts. I met my first contact for the summer at 11am this morning, and had a great meeting. He was the architect who designed all of the busway stations and terminals for the southeastern busway ( this was super interesting to me.. but i will leave out the boring public transit-related details ), This afternoon, I ran into a problem with my housing... so before, I was worried because I couldn't find a place., now I have TWO... well almost. I was trying to cancel my first place, but then he pulled the "i'm going to charge your card $792.00 if you don't stay" card on me... so I didn't want to get too fiesty. But I am going to see if I can stay there for a short time , before moving onto another place that I found for much cheaper. This afternoon, I took the bus back to the UQ campus to get situated to the campus and to my academic building. Beautiful campus, and relaxed atmosphere, they're currently not in session right now, so maybe that's why it was so quiet. But I checked out of my office, and my office-mate is a Singaporean named Brendan, Super nice guy, he showed me around the campus a bit and let me know where the "tea-room" was. After that, I went back for another round at the gym, and then finally meeting up with a girl who was going to give me her bike (she was moving, and I replied to her ad online), the bike was free, so I had no complaints.

I saw it, and was excited that it actually fit me and wasn't a power wheel. Unfortunately, I didn't get any free advice on that Australians MUST wear a helmet, so when I was giving my new bike a test ride along the road, a nice police patroller came along side and yelled "are you gonna walk that or do you want a ticket"... (this was much more dramatic since it was at night, and he shined his spotlight on me)so of course since I had no idea what I was doing wrong at that point, I just played ignorant american, and told them that I had just bought the bike, Luckily, they're very laidback here in Brisbane, and he politely told me that I needed to purchase a helmet., so there went my bike ride for the night, So that story probably could have been told much better, but I'm getting tired, and my back hurts because I lifted weights today after being basically stagnant for the past week. There's my reason. Enjoy! and goodnight.