Great Taste, Less Filling

Seems appropriate, especially with this blog I created one day to start telling everyone of my happenings here, and then the only post made to it was a note a friend wrote in the text field while I was out of my room. My original goal was to bring my personal journal up to date and then fill you all in with the fun bits, but seeing as the hard copy is falling further and further out of date, I decided to bite the bullet and give you all a little something now.

The problem is that so much has happened (about a quarter of it interesting to anyone besides myself) that I cannot write about it in one fell swoop. As such, we are going to use the Momento style of story telling, and tell you about the end first. And by end, I of course mean what's going on right now.

Nah, instead we're going with general information. Let's see - I am currently in Adelaide, city of 1.2 million or 1.4 million, depending on who you ask. The metric system and Celsius temperatures run rampant in this place, and the weather while I have been here has ranged from over 40 C during the day down to a couple of chilly nights where I have no idea what the temp was, but the sheets and blankets in my room were not enough. People here do drive on the opposite side of the road. It is mind boggling, though is becoming less so only recently. The sun is a beast. You can feel yourself baking in the 15 minute walk to Uni, and I know people here that have gotten sunburned in transit.

Speaking of 'here,' I am staying at Lincoln College, a residential college of just over 200 people, where Kinnear seems to have assured that all the oldies (people who have been there at least a year) knew my name. For those who are curious, I am staying in Hambly, third floor. The food, while not anything really less in quality than Grinnell, has a distinct disadvantage in much fewer options being available in much smaller quantities (you get one serving, period). Suffice to say, I have been assaulting the salad bar in order to keep my figure. And for those of you who didn't know already, the internet the college provides costs $.05/MB downloaded, apparently instituted to attempt to control torrenting and various other downloadings. Luckily, local traffic is ok, so we can steal each others movies with no consequence to the pocketbook.

I am now entering my fourth week of classes at Adelaide. I am taking International Trade, Computer Architecture, Artificial Intelligence, and Migrants & the Making of Australia. The amount of PowerPoint lectures has been at 100%, making taking notes difficult. All of the classes except for also draw 100% of what is in the PowerPoint from the text, making taking notes difficult. There are weekly readings/problem sets for various classes, but half the people seem not to do them, as they aren't graded (yes, parents, I am doing them). The Migrants class is very interesting, I try to pay attention in my two CS courses, and I have given up getting anything from my econ course, though I heard the last lecture he did was good (the one that I missed, of course).

Now, the important bits. Yes, I have petted a kangaroo--soft fur, reminds me a soft lab. Yes, I have petted a koala--falls somewhere between afro and shag rug. No, none of the Australians look like Aden--it must have been genetic engineering. Yes, all of the Americans have been taking advantage of the lowered drinking age (examples to follow in my retrospective), but what is most important at this point is that you all know that alcohol is a LOT more expensive (Bindman, your Malibu runs about $30; Olson, a 24-pack runs $30-$40 for the cheap stuff; Fenster, they don't even have 40s, though they do have 750ml, which is kind of fun to say). The High Life of Australian drinking is boxed wine (goon), bought in 5 L boxes for around $11 a piece. Two of the Americans took up a gauntlet on St Patty's, when some of the oldies said that they couldn't do a power hour with goon. Of the three participants, two were ill and passed out by 9 pm. On a completely unrelated note, there is a nice beach 40 min from the college that we can take a tram to, and many a hot day has been spent there, though our frisbee attempts have been battered by winds.

I have joined the Adelaide team, and starting this week I am playing ultimate four days a week, with leagues on Monday and Wednesday and practices on Tuesday and Thursday. I am hoping this will put me back into shape after having a terrible number of run-ins with Christmas cookies over break. We even have a version of Jesse (meaning player who looks much older than us, but still plays as well) who introduces himself as Wombat, and he coaches the men's team.

Most importantly, they do not put shrimps on the barbie here. They just don't. Aussies are all about 'snags' (read: sausages), which come in both beef and chicken varieties. I'll let you mull that over until my next posting.


Down Under Ian (as opposed to Greenleaf)

PS: Yes, I did pick this background just to imitate Ian's and blur the line between us even more.