Forgive my laxity in posting, but I seem to be caught in a strange combination of having too much and too little to say at the same time. Since I’ve been here a month, I’ve started to settle in and I’m just not seeing and hearing so many completely novel things any more. Aussies are starting to seem normal to me. J But at the same time, I’m embarking on my two months full of travel, so I’ll have a great deal more to say. I’m just not sure when I’ll have the time to say it, between being gone every weekend and having ultimate and research during the week. My life is full of opposites at the moment. During the week, I’m living a typical graduate student life like mine in Boulder: lots of work with nothing really to show for it at the end of the day. But on weekends, I’m seeing the wondrous things that make up this great continent.

What are those pairs of animals doing there? I swear I saw a guy building a large boat. (That’s a Bible joke, for you heathens out there. *wink*) It’s done nothing but rain for 40 hours straight (I’m writing this at lunchtime on Wednesday the 26^th of February). We’re not quite at 40 days and 40 nights, but I’m already sick of the rain. At least they’ve got one thing right—the weather is supposed to clear up for the weekend. I know I complained about the heat, but the weather didn’t have to jump from 108 and sunny to 60 and rainy. I’d be perfectly happy with 75 and sunny, but wouldn’t we all?

My first hashing song encounter in Oz: I did not hear it at a hash, as you might think. I haven’t made it to one of those yet. (ASIDE: For those of you who don’t know what hashing is, the general description is a drinking club with a running problem. The history of hashing can be found here. WARNING: the description at that website is rather long and involved, as are many of the hashes I’ve attended *cough* Summer Solstice *cough*. Also, I can’t guarantee that there are no offensive words on that link. Here’s a simple description of the current state of hashing: a couple of people (known in hash lingo as “hares”) lay down a trail typical using pinches of flour to mark it, ala the bread crumbs in “Hansel and Gretel”. After giving them a head start, everyone else (“the pack” or “the hounds”) tries to follow the trail and catch the hares. At the end, we sing songs that would make more reserved people blush and drink beer. No, last Friday (Feb. 27) at the NUChES (Newcastle University Chemical Engineering Society) BBQ, they chose a first-year representative and sang the song “Here’s to <insert name here>, he’s true blue, he’s a hasher through and through, he’s a pisspot so they say, tried to go to heaven but went the other way.” Instead of “hasher”, they say “pisspot” the first time, too. Personally I like the hashing version better. J

Free food galore: Did I mention how much I like the free food that’s available at a billion different events at the beginning of a semester of classes? J

The tragedy of the commons: I’ve found that working in a laboratory environment in which every group shares equipment and supplies almost equally means that I can never find what I need. Since the equipment and supplies are bought with grant money, technically they belong to specific groups, but for all practical purposes they belong to whomever is currently using them. It’s difficult to work in a lab where I have to beg, borrow and steal the things I need. Back at the ChemE department at CU, equipment and supplies are owned and overseen by a certain group or groups, which makes it easier to know who to ask for what. Also, my groups there seem to be much better stocked on supplies than my group here. Part of that is due to the size difference between my groups at CU and my group here. My group here has swelled to an overwhelming six, if you count the post-doc and an undergrad and me. At least I share an office with multiple groups, so I don’t feel too isolated.

LJ’s in Oz: Yay, I get to spend time with LJ seeing all kinds of cool stuff in Australia. I’m sure that many of you find it amusing that he and I live hundreds of miles closer together here in Oz than back in the US of A (quite frankly, I think it’s a bit odd myself *grin*). The good part of this arrangement is that while we’re here, we can see each other pretty much every weekend. LJ arrived here on Friday, February 27, so I went to Sydney last weekend.

A couple of yanks in Australia’s largest city: LJ and I spent last weekend doing all the touristy stuff: walking around the Circular Key area (where the Opera House and the bridge are), checking out the Botanic Gardens and the Aquarium and the Zoo. The Botanic Gardens were just as nice as the last time I saw them, a few weeks ago. I could tell that the summer was ending, though, since fewer plants were in bloom. This time we went in the tropical gardens, which are enclosed in greenhouses.

We found Nemo, or product placement in Oz: Some marketeer at the Aquarium obviously saw the profit potential of a tie-in with “Finding Nemo”. The aquarium itself was pretty cool, with lots of pretty fish and turtles and even a platypus. (I can see why, centuries ago, when the platypus was first brought to England, the English people thought someone had sewn a duck bill onto a furry creature. I’m guessing that at about 11:50 p.m. on the 6^th day, God had a bunch of parts left over and needed another animal, so he threw them all together.) I also really liked the Plexiglas walkway (edge visible in this picture) underneath the Great Barrier Reef fish tank, although the tunnels had a bit too much of a “Jaws” feel to them for my taste. But from the very start until right near the end, the place was simply plastered with signs for Nemo and his friends. In one of the last tanks we saw, the staff had gathered together about 20 representatives of each kind of fish that was prominently featured in the movie. We went to the aquarium late Saturday afternoon, but I’m sure earlier in the day there are mobs of kids just staring at “Nemo’s friends:”.

I wonder if the New Zealand tourism board has realized the potential of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. I’m sure that they have.

I love the Zoo! Any zoo, but especially one with lots of Aussie animals: Sunday we went to the Taronga Zoo. To get there, you take a ferry across the harbor to the zoo and then a gondola up the mountain to the top where the zoo entrance is. I had seen my $30 worth in the first ten minutes I was there. We stepped off the gondala and right up to the area where they let you get really close to the koalas. (Note: I’m much closer here than in the pictures from the Blackbutt Nature Reserve. Ain’t it amazing what a good telephoto lens can do?) I was still happy to see lots of other animals there. I tried to get some good pictures from the giraffe pen, where you can see across the harbor, but unfortunately the haze was pretty bad.

Bureaucracy at work (is that an oxymoron?): Every place I’ve worked has their own little form of safety training. Here the safety training took all of ten minutes on my second day of work and consisted mainly of making sure that I knew I had to wear closed-toe shoes and where to evacuate from the building. I thought I was through with safety stuff. But wait! There’s more. This week, since we got a new undegrad in the group, Kevin realized that I had not filled out a Risk Assessment Form yet and would need to do so. He seemed to indicate that it was an example of yet another safety formality. I had to write up a description of my experiments and what chemical and physical hazards were involved. I’m working with small vats of a reasonably harmless lubricant. Unless I decide to DRINK the fluid or BATHE in it, it’s not like there’s much that can go wrong. Gotta love the strict adherence to policy.

A whiner by any other name…: the other night at ultimate training, I got accused of being a whinger, the Aussie word for a whiner. I wasn’t really whining, I was just giving my teammates a hard time for the typical huck-away-the-disc offense that’s played at coed training. But now I’ve been called a whiner on two continents.

Digital camera thanks: I’d just like to publicly acknowledge LJ and Mom and Dad for helping me to go completely digital. Having digital cameras makes posting pictures from my trip much easier. Thanks again. You’ll see more and more pictures from them in the coming months.