Costumes and electric adventures

I think I missed the memo somewhere that 18th September is Halloween in Australia*. On my morning run I stumbled upon this:

The Weekend

It's officially Tuesday night, which means I have time to write about the weekend! It absolutely poured here which was been great for my productivity - I didn't left the house, or want to, at all. Today the sun came out again so I went out to run a few errands (read: get a smoothie. And then run some errands. Sample errand: buy tape)

The Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, occurred on Friday night and Saturday, so I had a relatively low key weekend. I'd been introduced to some extended family friends who graciously hosted me for services on Saturday and the break fast that evening, and I ended up spending quite a bit of time with them over the weekend.

Yankees/Sox

In honor of the late season, Sunday night Yankees-Red Sox game I'm currently missing (since it's Monday morning and I'm working), I thought this would be a good time to reveal my cap count.

Australian Slang

In the first of what I anticipate to be at least a few posts on Australian slang, I wanted to introduce you all to a some words and phrases I've learned since coming down under. These are all things that real Australians say.

G'day mate = we're starting with the easy ones here. This translates to "hello, friend!"

Oz = Australia

big unit = this means a large, stocky, or otherwise solidly built person. Normally it's a man but it can also refer to a woman.

"Cold"

I'd planned on going on an adventure tonight, or at least leaving my apartment to get some dinner. Then at some point this evening a wind storm started. I'm not quite sure when it started, and it's beautiful to watch the treetops sway, but it's also pretty loud and it's making my room quite cold. It's killing my motivation a bit to get outside, so I made some tea instead and decided to write this. Sadly, "cold" here is 59 degrees F. I think my blood thinned somewhere along the way.

Up until whenever this started, today was beautiful. I was up for a 7 am call with DC, and surprised the person on the other end of the phone by letting him know it was already Thursday here.

Great Ocean Road

I just got back from a delicious "modern Australian" dinner with a few colleagues, which is my excuse for why this post might have more pictures than words. As far as I can tell, "mod oz" cuisine basically means "Western food with a lot more Asian influence than normal," or "pretty similar to everything served in San Francisco except without the delicious tacos." But on to the road.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, Katrina picked me up at my hostel and we set out for the Great Ocean Road. This is a stretch of highway that hugs the coast and gets somewhere eventually, but mostly is just fun to drive and is on a cliff overlooking an ocean, meaning that it's a tiny winding strip of land with a guard rail to prevent you from plowing into the water. In other words, the perfect place to start learning how to drive on the left side of the road!

She drove most of the way from Melbourne to Lorne, a sleepy beach town that was pretty dead in the middle of winter. Just before we got on the beginning of the Great Ocean Road we stopped the car to take a few pictures and generally bask in the road, the water, and the light. Then we switched and I drove the last hour to Lorne up gently curving roads.

We had some dinner on Lorne's one road with commercial activity, and turned in early in anticipation of this sunrise:

I don't think seeing the sun come up over the Pacific is going to get old any time soon.

Sneak peak: the Great Ocean Road

 Spoiler alert: I drove on the left side of the road and didn't crash. Wish me luck tomorrow when it continues to get curvier.

Not a half bad view.

First Impressions: Melbourne

Before I left, a lovely Canadian told me "Sydney is like LA, and Melbourne is the San Francisco of Australia." So far this description, or at least the latter half, has proven accurate.

The approach over Melbourne is pretty fantastic - not as breathtaking as the descent over Sydney, but also not directly comparable since this was as night. The cab ride to the city started the art show - the bridges have a uniquely artistic quality to them, and everything seemed to be lit up like an exhibit. The highway also had a huge tunnel-like structure that reminded me of the Bird's Nest stadium from the Beijing Olympics. I couldn't figure out the purpose, so chalked it up, again, to art.

It's got a bunch of buildings with funky architecture, like this.

Flying in Australia

Quick Qantas focused post before I hop on a plane and jet to Melbourne - my first trip here!

I was delirious and bleary eyed the last time I came to the airport, so the only things I saw in the international terminal were the face scanners to get you into the country. I saw them twice (refer to this post if you're confused) but they weren't really cool enough to warrant mentioning.

I knocked off work at five, after a busy, stressful, but very productive week. After my 15 minute ride in rush hour traffic to the airport (during which my cabbie asked me who I was going to vote for in the prime minister election tomorrow - did you voting is compulsory in Australia? Now you do. I actually had a whole post planned about the strangeness of being in another country during an election season and not having any of the background to decipher the press reports, but it looks like I couldn't pull it together in time to be relevant), I breezed into the domestic terminal and checked in for my flight.

To find my reservation I had a choice of using a bunch of traditional methods (card, booking number, passport) but I chose "use your name" because it was such a novel concept. Apparently with only 24 million people, airlines aren't worries about passengers with the same name traveling on the same day. I'd booked a 7:30 departure, but the computer asked me if I'd like to change my flight to the 6:30 departure. Why not? It was 5:15.

I then checked my rolling bag because I just didn't want to deal with it, so the lovely computer printed out a baggage tag, then spit out my boarding pass (after warning me my new flight might not have a catered dinner for me because I was a "late change"). I walked over to the baggage drop point, scanned my boarding pass and sent my luggage into the dark tunnel.

Security took exactly one minute (no one looked at my ID the entire time), so I was left with a lot of time to explore Sydney's Terminal 3. Qantas has a museum here, but unfortunately it was closed. I settled for trying "cheese and bacon balls" and tasting some wine. I also bought a new mini-notebook and chatted with the saleslady - we have the same wallet.

Time to board!

Good morning, 5774.

Have a happy and sweet new year. Shanah tova!

Taking it all in

One of my colleagues sent out an email to the whole international team today, and it eloquently captures what I love about traveling, working, and living elsewhere. The writer is an RN by training based in the US and worked closely with this colleague before she joined the international team.

I think all of the travel options you are having will definitely change your life. My own visits to the UK, Schweiz, Germany, Austria and Italy living with locals and trying to blend in gave me a real appreciation of how we are all the same and yet all unique both personally and culturally. On my last trip to Zollikon, outside of Zurich, we went to the Alpenfest in the Romansch area of the mountains, and while experiencing a lovely thousand year old tradition of singing the Ave Maria to the cows before releasing them to summer pasture, an elderly man named Emil Buchli had a heart attack. His wife had just died and his health was poor but he was determined to climb to the fest one more time, and he died there. I gave him chest compressions for nearly 40 minutes waiting for the ambulance to get to the top, but at one point, he sat up and looked me right in the face, and then collapsed. I knew that that moment he was telling me he was going to leave. I can still hear the enormous cow bells, the men singing, see the wildflowers blooming in the fields, and taste the cheese from those huge wheels that were aging in a cool concrete and wood shed in the midst of a alpine high meadow. Things like that go with you always and connect you to people who you get to share a bit of life with - so keep remembering every possible experience you are having!!

New York Times, why have you failed me?

This is hands-down the saddest thing about Australia I've found:

It's unclear to me why the New York Times website won't load here. Whatever the reason, it makes me really sad and I don't know how I'm going to get my daily dose of New York mania. On the bright side, maybe this will help me break my addiction to NYT and try a new long-term news source for once. Traditionally I've spurned other newspapers because I love the Times so much, but maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. 

Fathers' Day Sports

Happy belated Fathers' Day!

For those of you who didn't know (this included me until less than a week ago), Australians celebrate Fathers' Day on September 1 or the first Sunday in September. I'm actually not sure which one it is, but it happened this past weekend, so it's one of those. 

I participated by going out to lunch with a coworker's family - her mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew were all present. We joined them at a Chinese restaurant and had "yum cha," which is what Australians call dim sum. Lunch was delicious but we had to hurry out of there because the men were going to the Roosters game as a gift.

A brief history of the last week

Whew! I'm way behind on posting, and I'm pretty exhausted for a Sunday evening, but for good reason. I'm trying to find the line between living and blogging, and when I double, I'm choosing doing rather than writing.

However, it's September 1st, and it's almost Rosh Hashanah, so what better way to ring in the new year than diving back into the blog. I'll throw some pictures in for those of you who are here to skim.

When I arrived last Friday, I struggled through customs (15 hours on a plane will do that to you). Australia has a "fast pass" where you can scan your passport (if you have a electronic passport) and get a ticket, then go to a quicker line where a computer scans your face and lets your into the country. After 3 tries, I got my passport to scan, got two tickets, and eventually made it through the gates without a passport stamp.

I know some of you are bored already. Have a photo of the Sydney Opera House.