Whitsundays Islands!

So after yet another short work week, (this one is an all-time record of one-day.. Thursday). However, to my credit, I was on my deathbed Monday and Tuesday, and well Wednesday, I got a little over anxious with my health and tried to get up and going, only to find out that after breakfast, I was ready to pass out for another 6 hours. So since my last marathon post, I've been feeling better, still a little cough here or there, but definitely a major improvement. Per the reccomendation of my girlfriend and parents, I did go to the doctor to find out that I had a Upper Respiratory Tract Infection, which I think is a fancy word for moderate cold. Regardless, I was put on some medication for a while, but I am like new now.

So Thursday I had a very productive day in the office, which I should have considering it was my only 7 hours of work of last week. But it didn't last long since we left on Friday for Proserpine, Qld, which is where the Whitsundays Coast Airport is located. This past weekend trip was trip 3 of 3 for our small group package. The other trips included Fraser Island and Noosa River Everglades. But this trip was by far the grand prize of them all, a 2 day 2 night sailing trip to the Whitsundays Islands and the inner Great Barrier Reef. So we arrived on Thursday afternoon without much incident, and checked into our hostel.

We met up with a friend of ours from the program named Jason who was stationed up in Townsville for the summer. So the group grew to 4. Grabbed a drink in Airlie Beach, which is nortiously backpacker-ly, and apparently backpackers are supposed to like wet-t-shirt contests, because we were asked to go to at least 4, luckily, it isn't really the type of thing that we were into, so we opted to go to the local bar, grab a drink, and just relax without the added entertainment.

The next morning, we had time to get a proper breakfast (opposed to the last two weekends where our tour left around 7am or something earlier), so we took advantage of this , and I found some french toast and bacon which was absolutely spectacular. This is the first hot breakfast I'd had since I left the US as far as I remember. Wow, it was amazing.

After the breakfast, we checked in and commenced our boating trip.

So here you can see our ship, a 19-m "pocket maxi" boat which apparently had won quite a few races. It was a nice-yet-modest vessel. No such thing as private cabins on this thing, we all had beds that lined the lower deck, mine was about 1.5 feet wide by 7 feet long, and was an arm's length from the food-service bar and about two leg's length from the bathroom door. not exactly spacious, especially for the 22 people that would be on board.

But the four of us made the best of it! As you can see, we are drinking our classy boxed wine. To our credit, it was a Shiraz, which is a specialty of Australia! So back to more about the boat, there were only two main areas, the top deck, as seen below, which served as our living room during most of the day and into the evening. And the lower deck, where we slept, used the bathrooms, and got our food. I should also note that there was a shower, but none of us used it for the duration of the trip. I just got my first shower in the past 4 days about 40 minutes ago. It felt fabulous.

So its' quite amazing how fast time goes by when you're on a ship and not moving very fast (there wasn't much wind), but over the course of the 2 days 2 nights, we can sum up the trip in that we laidout on the deck and caught some sun, went to Whithaven beach, and went snorkeling to see some of the reef, but that's about it. Yet, those activities were all amazing in their own right, but I guess I am just trying to say the time went by soooo fast. The water and the wildlife were really awesome though, I think we were quite lucky. Even without the snorkeling, we were able to see dolphins, humpback whales, huge jellyfish, sea turtles, schools of tuna, and other fish in the water. While snorkeling, we saw all kinds of exotic fish and even hung out with a turtle for a little while.

The others on the boat were all of a good bunch, the usual suspects however. A majority of peoeple from the UK, a pair of Canadian couples (who played frisbee), a spainard, and a handful of german guys. We all got along just fine though.

Here's a shot from the beach where we set anchor on the 2nd night, we were able to see a very nice sunset over the waters.


I had to put up this shot just for kicks. Our flight today was 2 hours late getting into Proserpine, which was really annoying since I was supposed to have a frisbee game at 8:15pm (that's a little difficult when your plane gets to the gate in Brisbane at 6:45pm).... but regardless, this photo is a picture of the "waiting room" at Proserpine Airport, now I'm used to a small-town airport operation, but their "baggage claim" was a carport where they drive the lugage carts through, like a drive-in, and then you just pick your bag straight off the luggage cart. The waiting room is just as it looks, an outdoor courtyard with your typical airport seating. Hilarious.

And we're back! Noosa, Sickness, and things that comlplicate sickness

So after a few days down for the count, I am about 85% back on the money, but that is well enough to at least update the ole blog for the week. This writing will pretty much be the peak of my intellectual energy since last Thursday. Just as an aside, it's pretty amazing how much you can learn when you have free time on your hands, like all day, for two straight days.

So going back to the story, our past weekend was spent at the Noosa Everglades
which is about a 2.5 hour train ride north of Brisbane. Before hopping on the train, I had a fairly relaxed day. Went to the office in the morning, came back did our grocery shopping, and then we were off to the train station. After hopping on our 3:50pm train, I felt a bit tired, but no worries, I napped a bit on the train ride up, and we made it to Noosa (after an hour delay in some random town) around 8:00pm. Our hostel was at a YHA right next to the bus stop (we had to take the bus from the train station, that took about an hour), but since it was dark, and it was Australia and nothing is ever open, it took us to actually locate it's whereabouts. After that, it was then around 8:30pm. Trying to find a meal after 8:30pm in Australia is about as easy as trying to find a person bank teller that is open until midnight. It doesn't happen here. Unless you're a super-expensive-trendy-resort town restaurant. Such like the one we ended up going to and paying quite a bit for an undercooked pizza. But it was a filling meal. No complaints, Australia has been good to me so far, so I should help propel their dominate tourism economy a little bit.

After dinner, we decided to call it an early night, and turn in around 11pm. The rooms we were staying in were true "queenslanders", if I haven't explained this idea to you yet, just imagine sleeping in a screened in porch with no wind. Well when the temperatures drop to 40 at night, it's not the warmest of places, but luckily I had my sleeping bag, so as long as I didnt' have to stand outside, i'd be alright. Well at 4:50am or so, my chance to go stand outside came when the fire alarm went off.

When I was living at Woodruff Dorm when I was at at Georgia Tech, I actually used to like fire alarms, because it was the only chance to see my other dorm mates, I hardly got to see them otherwise... funny

About an hour and a half later, we started getting up so we could be downstairs and ready to go by 7:45am. We were picked up by a nice fella, probably in his early 40s driving a little mini-bus type of thing with a trailer, we threw our stuff in and met the other 9 people who would be at our trip. We stopped at a second hostel and met them all there. Quite a varied group, 2 girls from Ireland, a guy from Scotland, guy and gal from Germany, two from France, and a couple from Canada. All really nice and it made for a good group to travel.

For the trip itself, I'm going to shorten the story into a experience part and sickness part, because the longer I write definitely doesn't make the quality any better.

So from day one, we set off across a large lake, which the name escapes me. But the waters are crystal clear and very still, which makes it mirror almost everything around it. We took a ferry over this body of water to a floating station where we would mount up and load our canoes. From here, we would set off on our approximately 36km over 3 days canoe trip. The canoes were standard, reminding of my midwestern canoe days, but the scenery was pretty remarkable. The Noosa everglades are supposed to be similar to the Australian rainforest, the plant like definately resembles that, we saw some pretty wild looking plants. In terms of animals, I can't say that I saw that many, but I did see a few pelicans, which were enormous. When I say these things are enormous, I mean when I saw a few of them on land, I mistaken them for people. We made camp our first night and then made rest for our second portion of our journey the next day.

Day two pretty much encompassed another 13 km roundtrip, but with a 15km-round trip hike in the middle uphill to the "sand patch" which is a huge sand patch, probably the size of 20 football fields on top of this forested hill in the rainforest. We got up there for some spectacular views of the Noosa valley on one side, and the Pacific Ocean on the other.
I should make note that during all of our canoe time, the views on the river are pretty magnificant, the water is really still, so it is almost eerie passing over it on a canoe, because you can't tell it's distance because it's mirroring so much. I'm not sure if that makes sense. It basically looked like other canoes were floating because the water was so still.

Day three was our trip back. we had to leave the campsite rather early because we needed to make it back to the station by 10am. During our 1.5 hr canoe trip back, it started raining a bit, and continued for about 30 minutes, luckily not a downpour though. At the ranger station, we dried off our stuff, and hopped back in the Ferry where our van and a hot box of chips (fries) awaited us.

So from the sickness point of view. Before I tell this side, I just want to preface, I understand there are plenty of things worse that could have happened, and I should already be thankful of my health, but I thought this would still be an amusing thing to write. On Friday morning, I was feeling a bit rough almost like on the verge of some kind of illness. So, the 4am fire drill and standing outside wasn't the best of help. Then on the way to the floating station, we needed to wade through the lake to reach our ferry boat, and also bring all of the supplies from land to the boat. This was all happening with the notion in my head, if i'm getting sick, this is probably not the best option of ways to spend my weekend. wading in rivers, canoeing, and camping. So day one, I made it ok, after the first 2.5 hours of canoeing, we stopped for lunch and I had a quick pass-out nap (not power nap, because I literally passed out), then we canoed for another hour up to our campsite, where I also turned in for an early night. Day two, I felt a little bit worse, but not deathly, but I was convinced, "I am already up here, might as well make the most of it", plus, there honestly isn't that much to do at a campsite for 12 hours. So I decided against sleeping in the tent all day, and instead making the 12km canoe trip and 12 km hike to the sand patch, where again, I had a pass-out nap on the sand dunes.
So that night, I had every piece of clothing I owned on my body, and was getting up every hour to cough unmentionables. But, during that portion of the night, most of the stress that had come over me, was just that I'd have to wake up the next morning, canoe some more, and then spend another 6 hours in transit before making it to bed.

Well the next morning came, and I wasn't woken by sunlight, but instead my raindrops hitting the tent. Fantastic. By this point, I had acquired the suck it up attitude, which of course while camping is already after the "no bathing", "sand is on everything", and "you smell horrible" attitudes are already in effect.

But we broke camp, and steadily made it into the canoe. At this point, my illness (which I believed to be strep throat) had probably reached near its peak. So I was thinking to myself, what the hell am i doing with this sickness, canoeing on a river, in wet clothes, in the rain. But in due time, I knew I would at least be in the safety and warmth of a warm bus or train to take me to a bed to rest it off.

Well we eventually made it back to Noosa, grabbed a quick lunch and boarded the bus. The ride went pretty smoothly, and then getting on the train went smoothly as well. At this point in the day, my throat was giving me all kinds of problems, so I was trying not to talk too much, which on public transportation is typically pretty easy right?? Well, of course the one person that would like to sit down by me was a well-intoxicated Kiwi. (to her credit, she was very nice), but she didn't comprehend the words "sick", "ill", or "not feeling well" no matter what order I put them in. She continued to ask me questions, sometimes repeating questions if there were any silent moments where I was trying to regain my energy from the previous question. I just thought, the irony of it all. Luckily, that only lasted about 25 minutes, but probably the most draining portion of the travel home.

Finally made it back to Indooroopilly around 6pm on Sunday night and then slept for approximately the next 24 hours. Today, I ventured to the grocery store and am a bit more on my feet, but still not 100%. Hopefully by the end of the week things will be back to normal. But I am much better so thanks for those who had asked about me!, I spoke with my parents and girlfriend back at home and they gave me encouraging words, and Cat even sent me some get well flowers today, so that was fantastic, nothing like people who care about ya to make you feel better.

By the way, if you're ever traveling abroad, you should get an HostellingInternational card, their medical insurance people are awesome!

sick....

I am sick and have been sleeping for the last 24 hours. Once I'm better, I'm fairly sure I can make an entertaining post out of this one.

Feel free to send care packages :-)

Best wishes,
Paul

Pre-Weekend Post

Well it's only Wednesday night, but we'll be on the road yet again tomorrow. This weekend, we'll be doing a 3 day 2 night canoe trip of the Noosa Everglades. I'm really excited about it, with the slight exception that I have no idea how the two aspects of floating around on water, and sub-freezing temperatures will mix. Hopefully, they will not mix very much, but one still wonders. Since my last post, things have been fairly slow here in Brisbane. I arrived back early monday morning from the overnight bus from Hervey Bay. I spent half the morning in bed, and rolled into the office around 1pm. That night, I played my weekly frisbee game for the Chimmichungas (spelling?) over in Yeronga. It's about a 25 minute bike ride from here, but since the quality of my bicycle is hovering near zero, it felt like it was nearly twice that. But the ride is fairly scenic, taking me through St. Lucia, through campus and over a nice cable-stayed bridge


The other side of the river is a little less scenic, which takes me past a fairly creepy-by-night cemetery then an approximately another 2 miles until the Yeronga Football Club where we play ultimate. The game started around 8:15pm, and we played for about an hour and some. Our team was pretty dominate, and we won by at least 10. The games are great fun and everyone on the team is really friendly. I'll have some pictures for next time.

So on the way back, my bike got a flat tire, and it happened about 3 miles from Indooroopilly... great, so since I have so much money wrapped up in the investment, I thought it would be ok to ride the flat tire all the way back over the hills and through the woods back to the lodge. Obviously, if you know about flat tires, and trying to ride/drive on them,... it basically is the worst thing ever. But at the time, I was willing to make the sacrifice. So yesterday, I went to the local K-Mart (they do much better here than in the states) and picked up a new tube, and instead of heading to campus, I decided to do most of my work over at the State Library of Queensland on the river, fabulous place, really great facility, if you're ever in Brizzy, you should check it out. Then I took a quick lunch break and then finished up over at the Brisbane City Council Library before heading home.

Today was spent most in the office, and I won't pain you with the details of sitting and reading documents about brisbane transportation aside. However, I did mange to pull up a 1965 Wilbur Smith document that specifically recommends to the city of Brisbane to rid itself of all trams and trolleys in favor of Diesel buses and to commence building multi-level highways alongside the river front....lovely. Well Brisbane at least knew better for half of that plan.

Tomorrow, we'll be on our way to Noosa and leaving around 4:30pm. So I may not have a chance to write until Monday. So until then, hope you all have a great weekend!

The Weekend & Fraser Island

So for those playing along at home, I haven't even gotten a chance to show you my room yet! Well actually, since I've been in Brisbane (Brisneyland, Brisvegas), I have actually had three rooms, my first in the City Backpackers Hostel downtown, and then two rooms here in the Indooroopilly Lodge. I had a nice place upstairs, but for some reason, they decided to move me downstairs (which is a worse room basically), claiming that someone needed my room upstairs, but strangely enough, I have yet to see anyone move in up there. hmmm.. At any rate, here is my place. As you can see, I've filled it up pretty nicely. I am typing this very blog sitting in a 70s -era lawn chair that I scavaged from outside my room. It's not the best of quality of accomodation, but it works.
So let's go ahead and move on and talk about the weekend! So much has happened and I've seen so much in the past couple of days , but I'll try to sum it up as quickly as possible, for your benefit, and because I am getting really tired.

Well we left Brisbane on Thursday on a 2pm bus headed north to Hervey Bay. The bus was like any other you could imagine., similar to a greyhound experience in the US. We made plenty of stops on the way up, and the entire bus trip took approximately 6 hours. Of course they played a few movies on the way up to Hervey Bay, but naturally, they are about the most non-offensive yet, IQ dropping movies that are out there. (daddy day care and legally blonde 2). Actually they threw in Cheaper by the Dozen, and I actually appeal to that one because of my midwestern roots :-).

So we arrived in Hervey Bay in darkness around 9pm. Check into our hostel, and since it's still relatively early, we (My friend Oli and Rob) decide to go explore the town. As many of you know Australia as a country, tends to replicate the business hours of my hometown of Gibson City, nearly everything is closed by 6pm, and if you're lucky, you'll find a grocery store that stays open until 11pm. So we had a rather exciting trip in search of the town's only event going on , the local grocery store. After that, we tried to get a drink, but were turned away from the first bar since they close d at 10pm... luckily, we were able to convince a local hostel that we were guests, and they served us at their on-site bar. But it was an early night, we needed to be up by 6am the next morning for our pre-departure briefing.


So Friday morning, 6:50AM, this raspy -voiced Aussies walks in , and looks like he's done this about 100 times too many, starts speaking to us. "Hey guys, I'm gonna put in this DVD, it's got two parts, so when the first part finishes, go ahead and someone get up and start the second part", then he walks off. ... hmmm, good start. Well the DVD is quite informative about how to drive in sand and not kill yourself and your group, the second part was all about how not to anger a dingo (which we never saw btw), and camping tips. After this meager breifing, we got assigned to a group for our Land Cruiser (which we fit 11 people into, as opposed to the original 9 which we were told), but we had a fantastic group including myself, and four other guy friends, 2 scottish girls, 2 british girls, and an older couple from barcelona.

Just a brief on what Fraser Island is, it's the largest sand island in the world. We had booked a 3 day - 2 night camping trip which included a 4x4 rental, and a bunch of camping stuff.


These first two pictures are actually on the 3rd day on the island when I woke up to see the sunrise (6:40am), It's pretty cold during the night and into the morning, hence the gloves and woollie hat. But by 10am, it warms up to about 70 degrees.


Here's a photo of Lake Wabbie, this place was RIDICILIOUS!, I've never seen anything like it in my entire life. To the left, you see all of that sand, it was a complete desert., then on the lower right, you can see the small lake, which has of course the clearest water you could ever imagine. This is one of the two lakes which we visited on the island (Lake Mackenzie and Lake Wabby), both were absolutely pristine and had fantastic beaches.


Here's us on the vehicle ferry heading over to Fraser Island

Just to give you an idea of what the driving was like, mostly single-track and on the island, the fastest we would usually get going was 20 km/hr (slow)...., driving on the beach you can do up to 80km/hr, but it's WILD driving on a beach, I just went to a place in the states where you can do it (Oceano Vehicular Rec Area, - Pismo Beach, CA), but I've never seen this anywhere else.
This shot is through the wreck of the Maheno which is on the eastern coast of the beach.
Here's a nice shot of my feet hanging over the ledge. It's probably a good 70 feet down to the bottom. Strange though, this was probably one of the only cliffs I saw on the island.

So all in all, the trip was awesome, you should check out the photos , maybe they will help paint a better picture. We took the nice bus from Hervey Bay so we got back to Brisbane around 6am this morning. it's been a rough and groggy day. I just got back from our Ultimate Frisbee league tonight and now I'm destroyed... I got a flat tire on the way back as well, so tomorrow will be a fun day putting the bike back together, as well as mending my foot wounds from ultimate... hmmm, good night!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/supawanich/

Missed Buses, Ultimate Frisbee, and Australians

So I started off this week with a fairly busy Monday morning. So it all begins around 7am when my alarm goes off (typical on the weekdays), but the alarm clock is only in collboration with the sunrising directly through my window and into my bed at approximately the same time. But I was up and stirring and noticed it was a little bit colder in my room than usual, and that my heater had stopped working. This is of course was not that far fetched since I paid $6 for that heater, and only half of it worked... but the thought that I would 1) spend the following nights in my 20 degree sleeping bag unless I found a new heater 2) need to figure out how to buy another heater for less than $20, crossed my mind, and I just didn't want that kind of stress to start my day off. But luckily, the heater, the lights, and the computer all had lost power. So luckily, my junk heater was not the culprit.

My first item of business of the day was a trip downtown to the Executive Annex of Queensland Government to watch a presentation about urban design in Ireland... turns out the presentation had very little Urban Design content, but was somewhat interesting nonethless. The best part of that 1.5 hours was when I actually got to chat with the Office of Urban Managment lady who has a good deal of knowledge of what goes on in city planning in Brisbane. After that meeting, I headed down to the BCC Library to catch a bit of the NY Times before heading down to Griffith Uni for some afternoon meetings.

So being the clever transportation student that I am, I saw that the next bus didn't leave for Griffith until 12:40, so trying to overcome this system, I decided it would be in my best interest to catch a different bus, heading for a different part of town, somehow thinking that I would take me to where I needed to go. So to put things into Metro-Atlanta perspectives, imagine you were trying to get to Kennesaw State, and all of the sudden, you see Six Flags pass out of the corner of your window, with the only bus stops around being signposts with a little patch of matted down grass where a person probably stood a week prior.

So back to Brisbane, once I realized that I was on the brink of rural Australia, I hopped out of the bus, and headed back in the other direction. Through this confusion, I actually managed to make it back to Griffith and only cost me $1.10 more and 40 minutes. Of course this was 30 minutes past when I was supposed to meet my contact at Griffith, but he's a laidback guy, most Aussies are, and he was content meeting up at 1:30pm. At 2pm, I had another meeting with a gentleman who is originally from Florida but had a bit to speak about on land pricing.

Zooming forward, I had yet another meeting at 4pm back downtown with a lady that does network planning for the transportation network of regional brisbane. Whew, so my workday ended around 5:10pm, and I hopped back on the train for Indooroopilly.

I managed to squeeze in a trip to the gym that literally lasted 20 minutes, then went back to the lodge to suit up for my cross-town bike adventure to try to find the Yeronga Football Club, where I had message passed to me, I could find an ultimate frisbee league there.

The first 20 minutes of the bike ride went pretty smoothly, which took me back to the UQ campus at St. Lucia. Once there, the new and unknown journey began by crossing the river via bridge, and then passing a large cemetary (this is all at night btw), So I'm sitting there cruising on my $0 bike that weighs probably 80 pounds, along a dark road, with water on my right, gravestones on my left, and no friends for miles. After about 7 minutes of that, I finally started to see life and civilization again. And in approximately the location I expected, I saw bright field lights. But upon closer inspection, I realized no one there was playing frisbee, I waited around a bit, but became more convinced that this was the wrong field. After asking for directions, and getting miserable results, I pointed south and started biking. By looking at my map, there are only so many large swaths of green which would be worth of playing frisbee in this town. So I headed to the next one, about 10 mins away. Upon arriving there (the Yeronga High Schoo), I found no lights, not people, and no frisbee. Luckily, there was a scout troop which was holding some kind of meeting next door, and of course. You can't go wrong asking a boy scout. So they were able to point me in the right direction (which naturally was only 3 minutes from the first field), and I finally found little white discs floating through the air, just as I'd imagined. I met up with a girl named Maylin who was my contact, and jumped on their team called the Chimmichungas (sp?). The group was mostly guys of varying ages, and a few gals. Played some intense disc for the course of an hour. The team was a great group of people, and I found out that most of these individuals were somehow involved with the Australian National Team., Wow, cool. When the game is over, both teams circle up arm in arm, and the captains from both teams speak and talk about the game and compliment the other team etc..., it's really a cool sight, very Rugby-esk.

After the match, I was invited over to one of the guy's house for a team dinner, which consisted of lasagna, salad, desert, literally the entire works. They were fantastically friendly, and I will be playing on their team every Monday night until I leave now. In addition to the pickup frisbee on Wednesay nights.

After the whole dinner thing, I started on my bike ride home which lasts about 40 minutes back to Indooroopilly, passing all of the same solemn sights as I saw on the way in. Made it back around 10:30pm, and did some odds and ends.

Today (Tuesday) has been really boring to be honest. I've been in the office and working about 30% of the time. I'm waiting on some contacts to get back to me about property values and real estate, and I have very little motivation to start writing my report. In actualilty, I'm still at the office, it's 3pm, and I'll probably be here for another 30 minutes, unless I have some kind of breakthrough. Let's hope that happens. But things are great otherwise!

The Weekend! (5 of 11)

So the weekend has already come to an end, It's hard to believe that I've already been here in Australia for over a month, it's gone by really fast so far, and I think based on the next few weekends, it's gonna pick up, and go by even faster. So I just wanted to put in this first picture to make a note on how there are so many cultural things that are interchangeable between Australia and the US... for example, going to the DMV. (they dress up the name and call it the Queensland Customer Service Centre here), but for all practical purposes, it's the DMV. You walk in, you become disgusted by the length of the queue, you grab your number and take a seat , patiently waiting to be served like you are a little slip of paper with a number on it. It even has the typical person arguing about how many points they missed on their drivers test, and someone demanding to speak with a manger over some kind of traffic dispute. I forgot to mention why I was even at the DMV, I mean the QCSC. I was paying my $30 traffic infraction for "purposefully disobeying a traffic signal" the traffic signal of course was the little flashing man that shows up at crosswalks... ridicilious. But I paid my $30 and was on my way.
So moving onto the weekend! Weekends here are fantastic except for that for they go by way too fast. This weekend, we wanted to immerse ourselves in a little Brisbane Culture. By the way, we think we're nuts about sports in America, they're REALLY in love with their sports here. Whether it's aussie rules football or Rugby, everyone has an opinion, and everyone ha s a favorite team. They call rugby or AFL by the playful name of "footie", so we went to catch the footie game between the Brisbane Broncos, and the cross-region rival of the Gold Coast Titans. So by the looks of the pictures, you can tell that we didnt' exactly pay for the best seats in the house, but definately could get a good view of the rugby (league), and the 80 minutes of a bunch of guys beating the hell out of eachother, without pads. This sport is serously brutal, I don't know how these people have families that would allow them to have such a profession. A few of the players wear helmets that probably have the equivalent protection value of wrapping a t-shirt on your head. But nonetheless, the game was a blast to watch. I love the sport too because they are completely no-nonsense about it. They walk out onto the field and within 30 seconds, they start playing. No warm-up, no starting lineups, they just go out and start playing. If you ever have a chance to watch rugby, or AFL (which is a completely different ballgame), I would highly recommend it. It's also great because fans will heckle eachother to death, then after the game, exchange hugs and go on their separate ways. Maybe it was a super unique case of what I witnessed, but it was pretty cool regardless.
Our original plan for the following day was to head to the Sunshine Coast, which is north of Brisbane, but since that would entail an approximate 6 hour transit ride , we decided against it for a closer, easier trip to North Stradlebroke (Straddie) Island. I went with one of my housemates from the UK and hopped onto a train to a ferry to a bus. That all took about 1.5 hours , but at that point, we had made it to Straddie and started our venture around the island . Like most scenic places, photos cannot really capture how cool this place was. I've never seen such violent waves in my life, they probably were only 10-15 feet high, but they were probably moving in at about 15-20 miles an hour, every 3 seconds. We hiked around the coastal trail, doing some climbing and observing here and there. We spent about an hour of that time just watching these waves obliterate everything in their path (notice all of the whitewash in the pictures below). After grabbing a quick lunch, we continued on our walk around the island on the beach, seeing surfers, plenty of dolphins and even a few whales approximately 100m off the coast. So around 5pm, it started to get dark, so we made our way back home, and by 7pm, we were back in Indooroopilly Lodge.


Later that night, I went down to a bar that I've been hearing quite a bit about from locals, called Regatta (like a crew competition) The place is right along the river, and to be fair, it is quite a nice place. I went down to meet a buddy of mine from when I first moved to Brisbane, we were living in the same hostel and just got to know him from that. At any rate, had a good time, got to catch up with my friend, but I wanted to make note of the Regatta bathrooms... so men will know what I'm talking about, so the urinals here, they're typically not a little ceramic fixture on the wall, they usually have these big metal sheets with flowing water, and a little platform you stand on (think big sporting venue bathrooms)..., so the Regatta restrooms were the same, except of having a big metal plate, they had a glass back... they looked out onto the entrance to the bar.... So I'm sitting there doing my business, looking out and thinking to myself... this is kinda awkward., as a big group of girls walk by and are looking in at me relieving myself. So come to find out, it's a one-way mirror. What a brilliant way of designing a bathroom.

So today was pretty relaxed and local, I got up around 830 and a group of peopel from the lodge were heading up to Mt. Coo-tha to take some photos (its a big overlook of the city), For an overlook, it's really not that high, I'd imagine maybe 600 feet or so, but its a Mount nonetheless, so I decided it was close enough that I'd try to run there. I made it up there in about 40 minutes of running, but it wasn't without its challenge. There was about a portion equivalent to running the (Berkeley Fire Trail, or the GT Freshman Hill) but at that grade for about 1/2 mile. But the view on top was definitely worthwhile, after my morning run, I went back to the lodge for a while to freshen up, and then head downtown to check out the Queensland Muesum and Library. Also to pick up a pair of cleats from a guy so I can use during my frisbee game tomorrow.

So that's been about it, no dinner served on weekends, so I filled myself up with a bowl of soup, some bread, and then my habitual bowl of cereal. This week should be a busy one, and we're leaving for Fraser Island on Thursday!

Until again,
Paul

Happy Fourth of July!

So here is my 4th of July installment of the SupaAbroad07 Blog. I would say not a ton has happened in the past three days other than planning for the future. In the past three days, I've spent mainly booking trips and figuring out tours, flights, and bustrips, and it looks like every weekend from here until August 10th will be booked. So that's good to have that all said and done, it will start off with a leisurely trip to the Sunshine Coast this weekend, followed by a trip to Fraser Island, then Noosa Everglades, then the Great Barrier Reef, the following week I'm going to run the Bridge to Brisbane 12K, then I'll be on my way to Sydney for my last weekend in Australia. So things are gonna be pretty hectic. This Friday, I'll be going to my first Rugby Match of all time, you bet I'm excited... the local faves the Brisbane Broncos will be taking on the Gold Coast something or another, should be a good match. Rugby is much faster than Aussie Rules football, so that is another thing to look forward to.

So what's been going on in my life recently, my research has becoming slower, and when i say that, I've kinda come to a standstill at the moment. I've learned about as much as I can about the operations and planning of the BRT system here in Brisbane... but oh yeah, I don't know ANYTHING about real estate and property valuation. Hmmm.. let's take a step back. So I spent today and yesterday trying to brainstorm (while looking up random things on wikipedia, checking my email, and searching for flights).... for ways to get plugged into the real estate market here in Brisbane, which brought me to a few online forums which actually seemed pretty interesting. So I think I may try to learn a bit about general real estate knowledge while being here. Probably couldn't hurt. Oh yeah, I got yelled at by another dude yesterday on campus. Apparently you're not supposed to ride bikes on the sidewalk? But here's the catch, I wasn't really riding it, I was coasting it (while on it) from the bike rack to the street ( a seperation of about 15 feet), I really think this guy waas just having a bad day, apparently my apololgies "weren't good enough". So much for making academic connections while being here.

But today is the 4th of July, and I am a bit sad for not being in the states right now. If you didn't know, the 4th is by far my favorite holiday, BBQ and hanging out with your friends, not a bad way to go. The past two years I've spent my 4th of July actually with high school kids (of course having BBQ and then going to a baseball game, how much more American does it get?), but basically high school kids, where I had to be on my best behavior and chaperone... and then before that I was in Asia... so I'm not 100% sure where I'm getting this image of a perfect 4th of July, but nonetheless, I miss being in the states for the 4th. But if you're reading this, Happy Independence Day! But I did manage to have an enjoyable day regardless, I took an hour break from the office to go layout by the lakes on campus today, and of course thought about my many freedoms as an American among other things. Tonight, I had my chance to play some pick-up ultimate frisbee, which that statement does not even scratch the surface of how much enjoyment that gave me. It's a gift that I haven't had since I left Georgia Tech. Berkeley for whatever reason does not have enough green space to even throw a disc without injuring someone or causing some kind of leftist-demonstration. So I played ultimate tonight for the course of 2 hours and met some nice bloats (guys) who are gonna try to plug me in with the frisbee league which is going on this summer, which would be awesome.

Speaking of meeting people, it's been slow meeting many new folks. Most of the people I speak with on a social basis are my fellows here at the Lodge (which I've found a group of guys who I hang out with a bit), but some of the crowd here is a bit quiet and hesitant to go out on a friday/saturday night. I've also had a chance to see a few regulars at the gym where I say my causal hello to here and there. I guess I have also had all of the interviews, but I don't think I'm going to ask my friend the busway station architect to grab a drink with me and watch the game.

Spoke with Catherine a good bit today and it looks like our New Zealand trip at the end of this summer is shaping up pretty well. Should be an awesome time, and I'm really glad she likes planning, because she has taken a bit of the responsbility for that part of the trip. She also got up this morning and ran the Peachtree 10K, I was quite proud when she told me she was going to do it!

At any rate, my left leg is feeling like its going to fall off, and my eyes are starting to droop. So I think my note is coming to a close.

Weekend 3: Surfers Paradise, Koalas and Kangaroos

limited to the same thing everyday... (e.g. 4 types of cereal, 3 of which cause sugar rushes within moments of consumption, various jams and spreads to be applied to a toasted piece of bread that has already been pre-soaked in one type of butter, peaches and mixed fruit that at one time came from a can, but from its presentation in a ceramic-nicely-patterened bowl makes it look much more appealing. So I typically (when I saw typically, I mean 7-days a week), sit down with my bowl of Nutrigrain cereal and boSo this weekend started on Saturday morning, where I rolled out of bed around 8:20 am in time to catch my normal breakfast (which iswl of peaches and prepare my body for the day. This particular Saturday, I was back on my way to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast for a few more hours of Surfing... the funny thing is, for my 2 hours of surfing, it takes me at least 2.5 to get to the beach and then another 3 back. So I hopped on the typical bus to take me down to the train station. It actually got me to the station, so I missed my train, but no worries, there would be another in 30 mins, so in my downtown, I thought I would go search for a morning snack... I've developed this skill in finding grocery stores by backtracking the reusable green bags that I see in people's arms as they're walking around the city,... So by using this mechanism of food-hunting, I luckily found the Coles (grocery store), problem was, it took me 20 mins to get there, so I ended up having to run all the way back to the station (with backpack and sandals)... but luckily, my gym membership paid off, and I was able to run all the way back and make it in time for the train. So besides the fact that I was already starting my day behind, they were also doing track work... which means, we (Translink of Brisbane) will take the 300 people that were swiftly moving on the train, and try to gracefully and efficiently put you on 8 or so buses, and drive you from one station to the next... Well to say the least, it happens neither gracefully, efficiently, but most of all, it does not happen quickly. So I arrived at the surf shop approximately 3 hours after my journey began, but I was pumped and ready to do some surfing.

Surfing went great, I love getting out on the water and pretty much flopping around and standing up just a few times, but its worth it. I made my way home and had a relaxing evening with the other residents, grabbing a drink and watching the Tri-Nations Cup, Oz was playing NZ, and luckily for us, the aussies pulled out a victory.

So today we decided to go to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where we saw... you guessed it. Koalas. These little guys are just flat out hiarlous. Yes they're soft and cute and all that, but they literally sleep ALL of the time. This little chap on the right for example. We were really impressed by how quickly he moved from one tree (not in picture) all the way across his little habitat, then got over to his new place... and then, fell back asleep (while holding on for safety of course), But I saw tons and tons of Koalas today. They're great, I did get a picture with one, but it's on my friend Yings camera. At this place, there were all types of anmials though, Koalas, Wallabys, Snakes, Kangaroos, birds, everything. It was really a good experience, not far too. We were able to bike there from our place. But heres a shot of me hanging out with the Kangeroos, they're pretty fantastic too. I think I like them the best. We both have in common enjoyment of jumping I guess?