More food oddities: “salad” sandwiches: Aussies love to have salad on their sandwiches. Salad, though, is not just your standard lettuce and tomatoes. It includes things like carrots and beets. They put it on every kind of meat- or vegetable-containing sandwich. I think that as long as it’s identified as a vegetable, it gets thrown on as a topping. They even put salad on salad sandwiches (egg salad, chicken salad, etc.).

Bike riding the wrong way: I was able to quickly figure out which way to look when crossing the street here. (Right, left, right, in case you were wondering—opposite to the US.) But riding a bike on the wrong side of the road is a whole new ballgame. I think I need to get proficient at bike-riding before I try driving a car. I had some severe problems with trying to cross intersections on my first bike ride Monday morning (09 Feb). Elizabeth offered to let me use her car to pick up a package, but I’m not really ready to drive quite yet. Maybe after I ride in a car a few more times I’ll feel more comfortable.

Oz’s version of The Tonight Show or David Letterman: Rove Live: Rove Live actually is broadcast live, unlike Tonight or David Letterman. However, there are some striking similarities between Rove Live and The Tonight Show. (I have much more experience with watching Jay Leno than David Letterman, so I’m using him as my benchmark.) Rove starts with his intro monologue. (ASIDE: I have to say that I think that the best way to learn about a culture is to listen to their comedy. The things that a culture recognizes as being a bit off or hilarious are very telling of the nature of the culture as a whole. Maybe I can go back to school for a master’s in philosophy on the topic “Humor as a Benchmark of Cultural Processes”. Or maybe I should just hurry up and graduate and get a job. *loud cheering from relatives and LJ*) I can’t specifically remember the things I found funny, but I know that I did find it funny. Rove himself reminds me of the guy who plays “JD” on Scrubs. After the monologue, which included some joking around with his two sidekicks (think the type of interaction that Leno and Letterman have with their respective band leaders), he started to bring on the guests. The first guy was Ross Nobel, a British comedian who reminded me strongly of Jason Lee, the actor. The most memorable bit was when Nobel ripped off his shirt pocket to reveal a silver star around his nipple, ala Janet Jackson and the Superbowl. Then the there was the bit where they started talking about using it as a ninja star and they decided that any conversation could be diverted by saying something about ninjas. (Okay, so it was much funnier when they did it, but I really liked the ninja bit because of an inside joke from college about ninja badgers.) Later Rove had a live interview from the US with Pink, who’ll be touring here in Australia later this year. I also find it fascinating how much of our culture overlaps with Aussie culture. Anthony, one of the grad students here, says that Australia “pinches” everything from somewhere else.

Oddly enough, I learned today (Friday) that Rove also does the morning talk show on one of the radio stations.

You know it’s hot when…. the reason that I can instantly convert the temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit is that it’s the same as human body temperature (which I hear about in Anseth group meetings, when people talk about growing all kinds of cells). This week we’ve been having highs of 37 and 38 degrees Celsius. That’s really hot when the lab is a warehouse that isn’t air-conditioned. According to the thermometer I have, it was only 34 or so on Wednesday in lab. That’s still really hot. That’s also problematic when I’m doing experiments in a fluid with very temperature-dependent viscosity. The temperature can go up 4 degrees over the course of a day’s experiments. The stuffy hot air feels an awful lot like the CU summer when hood work was being done on our building and the AC was out for two months. (Anyone else from the ChemE dept. remember that horrible summer? That’s what working in the lab is like here for the moment.) At least here I can go up to the air-conditioned office every 5 or 10 minutes to cool off.

Air-conditioning optional?: Okay, so I’m a spoiled American. But I can’t believe that air conditioning is still considered an OPTION on new cars. I haven’t gone to look at any new cars recently, but I’m pretty sure that in the US it’s hard to find a new car that doesn’t come with AC as a standard option. Here I saw a commercial on the TV about a new car and they specifically mentioned that the model shown came with the optional AC. The Forum (the rec center here at the Uni) does not have AC. How is that possible? How can they have “world class facility, offering the best in sporting facilities and activities that the Hunter has to offer” and not have air-conditioning? It’s inconceivable!

Okay, so I’m obsessing about the lack of air-conditioning here. You would be, too, if you had to spend day after day in a sweltering lab, trying vainly to make your experiments work, only to realize that the excessive heat and its unpredictability is throwing an unexpected variable (the change in my fluid viscosity with temperature) into your work.

Internet addiction: Hi, my name is Michelle, and I’m addicted to the Internet. I think it’s less that I’m addicted to it, and more that I’m so used to my wireless broadband connection in Boulder that I don’t know how to function without it. I have to rethink so many things. Here’s an example: the other night at home, I wanted to find dive shops in Newcastle. My first thought was, “How am I ever supposed to find them without the internet? I would normally just use the Yahoo Yellow Pages search.” *gears grinding in head* “That’s right, the yellow pages also come in a print version. Maybe we have that at home.” Sure enough, we DID have a copy of the yellow pages, and I could look things up in it. What an amazing concept. J

I’m off to enjoy the weekend now, even if I don’t have an internet connection at home. -Michelle