Meetings

I'm currently laying in an extremely fluffy bed in Melbourne, so if this post ends in a trail of zzzzzzzzzzs, it's because I've fallen asleep.

On Sunday Katrina and I flew in together. I so rarely take plane rides with other people these days that it was a treat to have a buddy on the ride. We flew Virgin, and entered through the back door up the steps, which is not strange. What I did find strange, though, was that passengers entering through the front door accessed the door through the jetway, rather than the tarmac/stairs combo. I'd never seen one entrance through the jetway and one on the tarmac before.

Sunday night part of the team went out to dinner at Tax, a restaurant overlooking the train station. I had some delicious rabbit and then headed to bed - I have pictures of both the rabbit and the view out over the city but I am too lazy to upload them right now.

This morning I went for a run. I forgot my sneakers in Sydney, but luckily the Westin offers shoes to guests through a partnership with New Balance. I left my camera at the hotel, but I took a beautiful route along the water. The bridges all had sculptures and the architecture here is just beautiful, so I will probably have to do it again with my camera before I return the shoes.

For dinner tonight we took a taxi out to a beach suburb and ate dinner at this beautiful oceanfront restaurant. For some reasons the bathrooms in Australia don't make sense to me - I walked into the men's toilet tonight and have done that multiple times since being here. They just don't seem to be clearly marked. For example, tonight's bathroom didn't have any words or pictures depicting men or women. The men's was blue and the women's was pink, I found out. Thankfully nothing embarrassing has happened yet, although one guy did say to me, "um, this is the men's." If that's the case, where's the sign?

Desk views

I've finally been home long enough that I've set up and organized my desk, and it's no longer a mess of cords and filled up by my printer. It still has a few too many cords and stuff, but I don't have a good way yet to get rid of them. I also don't really have a good filing system because the desk doesn't have any drawers. It was free, though, so that's a major plus and kind of outweighs the fact that I lack drawers.

Drumroll please.

Haircuts and Bushfires and Noodles and Mishaps

To clarify, I did not receive a haircut from the bushfire. And thankfully I've not really been affected, although you can feel the smoke in the air. There have been quite a few other mishaps this week, though.

Yesterday I did get a haircut (or all of them cut, if you want to make a dad joke) from a local place by my house. It'd been a while since my last one and after traveling for three straight weeks I decided it was time to clean up a bit. There's a shopping centre not too far from where I live, so I wandered over and made an appointment for lunch time yesterday.

Bright spots

Today has actually sucked: my water's been turned off so I couldn't do all my smelly laundry from the trip, Australia Post jacked up their postcard prices on me, and a whole host of other things happened. However, there was a huge bright spot in my day... it's the sun! Yesterday rained but today it's bright and sunny.

Just kidding. I mean, it is sunny, but that wasn't the bright spot today. It came in my mailbox.

I absolutely love the mail and it sometimes going to the mailbox is my favorite part of my day. Today was special because it marked the first mail I received in Australia.*

Check out this sweet stamp? How much does one of these cost?

Outback

The Northern Territory, where I spent the past five days, covers a huge amount of land, much of which is dry, dusty, and sparsely populated – the Outback.

Did you know the outback has trees? 

To get there, you either drive a long, long, long time, or you take the one train that runs north to south through the middle of Australia along the telegraph route, which was the original reason Alice Springs got started as a town. It sits almost directly between Darwin at the Top End of Australia and Adelaide in the south (now is the time where you find Alice Springs on google earth and see that is in the middle of the country). The telegraph line went up through Indonesia and across Asia and the Middle East to Europe, cutting the time needed to send a message to or from London to about three days, compared with mailing a letter on a ship and waiting months for news.

An Outback Sneak Peek

Full report coming soon - I am planning to write it up on the plane back to Sydney. Thank you for the support you've shown: it's lovely to get emails saying, "Hey, I really missed your blog and I'm excited to read about the things you do," because it serves as motivation to write more. Even when my mother leaves me voicemails in the middle of the nights to the effect of, "I really encourage you to write about your trip!"

In the meantime, here is a photo of Kata Tjuta, where you can see the effect of the sun's movement on the color of the rocks. Click to enlarge.

Back in action

It’s been an inexcusably long time between posts. In fact, it’s been so long that my grandparents have emailed me to shame me into writing again. When my grandparents use the computer, they mean business.

I’m happy to report I’ve done too many thing in the past month for a full rundown. Here are some of the highlights: