Brisbane... Day One and Two

Welcome to Brisbane, Queensland... the capital of the Sunshine State of Australia. So this is the part of the trip that I've been waiting for. Brisbane is where I'll be spending the majority of my next two months researching for the University of Queensland. It is also the only place in Australia that i've been so far where it's actually been warm AND sunny. Right now, it's a beautiful sunny 74 degrees. To give you the quick update, I arrived yesterday from Canberra and got in around 12:30pm. From the airport, I was joined by my friend Ying who will also be staying in Brisbane for the summer. Being a student of transportation, I'm naturally attracted and curious about public transportation and things of the sort. We arrived at the Roma Street Station downtown, and I was super impressed by how high-quality and well integrated the transportation infrastructure is here in the city. I arrived at my hostel, where I'll be spending the next three days around 2pm. I briefly threw my stuff down and went to go explore the city.


So its hard to compare Brisbane to any city that I've previously been in... If you could imagine an Atlanta hits Boston kind of design, if that is even humanly possible. But my first item of business, was to find myself a cell phone. Which chose and purchased in the course of about 8 minutes (I'm not much of a shopper), but for any of you that know my history with cell phones, I bought the cheapest one I could find, in hopes that it will last me or that I won't lose it before August 12th, 2007. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera during my trips downtown, but downtown Brisbane has a very lively feel and was full of people. I'm curious to see more of the feel on a typical weekday. I'll have my chance tomorrow when I head to the Ministry of Transport of Queensland for some initial contacts for my research. After a long day of walking around and a short time acquiring a phone... I made it back to the hostel to meet my roomies, I've gotten to know three of them a fair bit. One guy is a computer programmer from the UK, and the others are two good friends from the UK. We had a pretty in depth conversation yesterday about global opinions of both countries, obesity, regional accents in both countries, and the origins of the words soccer and why americans drive on the right.. (which I know the answers for both now btw). So it was pretty good evening, afterwards, I took the train to the Indoorpilly station to meet up with Ying and Greg (another US student) to check out the area around campus. I had the chance to look at two places where I may be staying for the summer. And I think I've made a decision on where I'll end up.


Fast forward to this morning, I woke up around 8:30am and went on a run around the river, (South Bank), which was absolutely beautiful.
Here are some pictures along my run, with scenery shots embedded in random shots of Bus Rapid Transit... (thrilling... I know)
So this is the small beach that is located near the riverfront. When I went by the second time, I think they were playing kayak water polo here. But it really feels like a small resort along the river. Props to Brisbane for creating such a nice place.
And again, check out this hot busway! But for now, I've been taking care of odds and ends around the hostel. I need to spend a good bit of time emailing all of my contacts to setup appointments throughout the week. I'll probably spend the rest of the day going down to check out campus and to go workout somewhere. I'm also pondering how to spend my weekends and thinking about taking some road trips... We'll have to see how it goes. But for now, that's it. Hopefully you all are doing well, I am doing great so far. Until the next post, Good day.