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.