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July 19, 2004
First Day of Class
On Saturday we had our last activity for Monash Orientation, a trip to a wildlife sanctuary in Healesville, about an hour north of Monash. IFSA paid for our $20 tickets, otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone, but I'm really glad I went. It was kinda cold (upper 40s), and raining off and on, but that was good because most of the animals were out and about; apparently in warmer weather many of the animals don't come out during the day. And apart from the obligatory kangaroos, koalas, wombats, emus, wallabies, deadly snakes and Tassie devils, we also got to see quite a few other animals, including lyrebirds (with elaborate tail plumage, and also one of the finest songbirds around, as they can imitate upwards of 15 other birds, plus car alarms and things of that nature, hehe), helmeted honeyeaters (a yellow bird about the size of a grosbeak back in the States), lorikeets (very colorful parrot-like birds), dingoes, platypusses (platypi?), Australian pelicans (pictured) and more. It was fun getting to see a different variety of animals than I'd seen at the wildlife sanctuary in Ballarat last weekend.
I didn't do much else Saturday after I got back, other than working on my photo stuff. You'll notice some of the fruits of my labor in my last few posts, going back through the July 4th post, as Josh kindly helped me figure out how to use this program called Ecto (which I've been using for awhile to write my posts) to also upload a few single pictures to spice up my posts a little bit. Each of them is linked to a larger version of the photo too. I'm still unable to post entire photo albums from on campus here at Monash at this point, but I'll try to get some albums ready to go, and then head down to an internet cafe some day in the next week or two and put them online. I'll probably even have a couple of short videos available for download too! No promises, but I'll try to work on getting those ready to go on the net as well.
Sunday was a pretty lazy day. Around midday I called Mike for a bit while he was at his Saturday night shift working at the radio station. After that I went exploring around the campus to find out what buildings all my classes were in. All the buildings were locked though, so I wasn't able to scope out where the rooms were. What's bizarre about classes here at Monash is that they meet at a different time, room and sometimes even a completely different building, depending on what day of the week it is. That's a very noticeable change from back home, where each class meets at the same time and same place every session. Just as an example of how different things are down here, my Fluid Dynamics class changes buildings that it meets in on Thursdays in the second half of the semester. Very bizarre, and a bit dodgy if you ask me, but I'll get used to it. Then in the evening was the Roberts Hall Welcome/Welcome Back BBQ. Even though it was dark and about 45 degrees they still had it outside, and they even had ice cream. Nothing beats free food!
Today was my first day of class in the second of my three consecutive "spring" semesters. It was pretty much the normal first day stuff, just going over the syllabus and stuff. I had two classes today, then I have none tomorrow, but four on Wednesday, two on Thursday and one on Friday. After a couple of weeks each class (except Australian Landscape) will also have a weekly 2-hour tutorial or lab, I have one each on Monday, Wednesday & Thursday, which will fill up my schedule a bit more. Today after my Large-Scale Weather & Climate class I signed up to join MWACS, the Monash Weather And Climate Society. I know, it sounds kinda nerdy, and it cost $5, but I'm excited to get the chance to meet some people with similar interests. And I'm starting to meet a few other people from my res hall too, so that's nice. Some are from Australia, but some are also from places like Japan, Maylasia and Singapore. Did I mention that this is an incredibly culturally diverse school? Anyway, one of the Australians I've met (Andy), was explaining to me the rules of cricket today, and it actually sounds like a reasonable game. He's also trying to convince me to barrack for the Geelong Cats of the AFL ("footy," Australian Football League), instead of other area clubs that are doing well this year, like the Melbourne Demons or St Kilda Saints. (Since I'm only here for a semester I'm wanting to pick a team that's doing well this year and is also from the Melbourne area, which leaves those three as my options.) There are several students here in Roberts Hall that barrack for Geelong (pronounced juh-LONG), so I'm probably gonna end up choosing them (the Demons are still in the running though too). Some of them are planning on heading over to Geelong (a southwestern suburb of Melbourne) in a couple weekends for the big match against league-leader St Kilda, and I'm hoping to make it to that too. Footy really is an awesome game, and I'm looking forward to learning how to play it eventually down here too, in addition to going to a few games! And it's cheap too, tickets to most games cost only about $15.
Other than that I haven't been up to too much. But I found a couple interesting articles today that I'd like to pass along. First, from The Australian comes an op-ed that reminds people who are critical of Bush's foreign policy decisions (some of which admittedly haven't been exactly stellar), that President Clinton's foreign policy was absolutely atrocious (eg, Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, North Korea, Al-Qaeda, etc). In other news, don't go to Bucharest, Romania if you need testicular surgery. You might lose some other body part when the doctor undergoes a "fit of madness." And it appears that the Terminator is borrowing a page from the SNL skits about him, calling the Democrats in the California legislature that are obstructing the passage of a budget bill "girly men." Go Arnold! I admire politicians (like "The Terminator" and "The Body") who aren't afraid to speak their minds, who are willing to risk offending a few people who are way too uptight anyway.
Posted by Jared at July 19, 2004 10:55 PM