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August 01, 2004
Moonset to Moonrise
Wow, what an absolutely awesome weekend I had! I'd say it was definitely the most enjoyable weekend I've had so far in Australia. It was so fun, but right now I'm completely exhausted! And to top it off, we've had a lovely stretch of weather, it's been gorgeous out each of the last three days.
Wednesday was fairly ordinary, nothing too special. On Thursday I had my first tutorial, in Fluid Dynamics, and tutorials are something a bit different from the American system. Pretty much every class has two or three lectures per week, plus a tutorial. The class is broken up into different "tute" sessions, so that there are less than 20 students in each. Basically, it just allows a chance for some more hands-on instruction, and is also more geared towards asking questions and getting help on problems than the lectures are. What I found kind of humorous is that most of my classes at Gustavus have still been smaller than my Fluid Dynamics tute is. My other classes start up their tute sessions this week.
On Friday afternoon it was such a beautiful day out that I walked back to uni so that I could sit by the fountain between the campus centre and the library and write some postcards. The plan was to write a few, seeing as how I hadn't gotten any written since I arrived in Australia. But I only got the one to my Grandma Siesennop written, because James Ayling (he & his wife Alison are friends of my family who live just a half hour down the road in Narre Warren) stopped by a bit early to pick me up. I went out to eat at an Italian restaurant called La Porchetta with James & Ali and some of their friends from Melbourne that they hadn't seen in awhile. After that I went back to James & Ali's house, watched some Friday Night Footy, and stayed overnight there.
We woke up at 3:45am on Saturday morning to go surf fishing with James and some of his buddies. We went over to Waratah Bay, a couple hours east of Melbourne near Wilson's Promontory, a spectacular national park. The first place we fished at was a surf beach called Sandy Point. When we got there it was somewhere around 6am, and the sun had yet to rise behind us, but the moon was setting over the ocean in front of us. Absolutely beautiful! Anyways, this was my first time fishing (okay, I'd tried casting a couple of times off my dock back when I was in 6th grade or something, but I'm not counting that as actually having "fished"), and only my third time seeing the ocean (the other two being ten years ago at the Gulf of Mexico down by Biloxi and New Orleans, and four years ago the Mediterranean Sea at Costa del Sol in Spain). James taught me how to cast, and I picked it up fairly quickly. What makes surf fishing different than lake or river fishing (apart from different bait, lures, etc), is that you have to time your cast with the rhythm of the ocean waves. About every third or fourth wave is bigger than the others, and you wait for this wave to go back out to sea. Then you run up to the edge of the water, cast the line in as far (deep) as possible, and then run back before the next wave comes in (giving the line some slack so that you aren't dragging the line back to shallower water as you scamper back to a dry part of the beach). You just let it all sit there, either for a few minutes or until there's a bite. That's really all there is to surf fishing. It's kinda fun actually. I didn't catch anything (and neither did James, but Ali always gives him a hard time about how he never catches anything, hehe), but apparently I brought luck to everyone else. They were all catching a fair amount of salmon (but fairly small, only maybe half a kilo or a kilo, maybe up to a foot long, give or take a couple inches). There was only salmon to be caught this time of year (winter), since the currents into Waratah Bay are straight from Antarctica, and only salmon like water that cold. Needless to say I didn't take James up on his suggestion of going in for a dip, hehe (although there was a surfer for a bit in the morning, but even with a couple of wetsuits on he could only hack it for half an hour).
James & I gave up around 11 and went to get some lunch, which actually brings me to a fun fact about Australia: the burgers down here at cafes/restaurants usually will have beet, pineapple and egg on them, in addition to the usual ketchup, lettuce, onion and tomato; it may sound a bit dodgy, but it's delicious! After that I just sat and read "Dune" on the beach while listening to the surf and the waves. Around 2 or 3 everyone decided to move to a different beach, called Shallow Inlet. There was no surf at this beach, and none of us caught anything but kelp and other weeds, oh well. But there were some sand dunes over there, and James decided to come running down one. About halfway down he realized he was out of control and tried to wipe out but couldn't. Finally when he got to the flat part at the bottom he threw himself to the ground, and rolled a couple of times, doing a hard SMACK! right into the side of his car, lol. Hernon and I were in the car watching him come running down towards us, and the look on his face was absolutely priceless when he got to the bottom and realized he was about to run into the side of his own car at full speed! We both were dying laughing, especially when we found out he was okay. And somehow he didn't dent the car either, even though he hit the quarter-panel pretty hard on impact. Now that would've been a tough one to explain to the insurance company!
On the way back to Melbourne, we stopped at another beach in Walkerville, only about 10 km from Sandy Point. We didn't fish at all there, but we found a beautifully situated caravan park on the rocky beach there. You can bring a caravan (camper), or set up some tents, and the sight you wake up to in the morning straight across Waratah Bay is Wilson's Prom! It's absolutely gorgeous! And it's really cheap at that place too. James & I both think that that'd be a wonderful place to bring my parents for a night when they come down in November. When we were there, the sun was setting behind a hill behind us, but the moon was rising straight ahead over the Prom and the ocean. Spectacular! I took a bunch of pictures, hoping one would turn out in the low light, but then I just had to stare at that beautiful sight for a few minutes to take it all in. So all told, we spent moonset to moonrise at the beach. We were all amazed by how wonderful a day God had given us that day.
Saturday night after we got back to Melbourne, James dropped me off in Blackburn, at my friend James' house (from Christian Union). There were a few other people from CU there, including Stuart & Rowan, and a few of their other friends from New Zealand. We just sat around the fire in the backyard and had a good time. They had tried to rent "Fargo" (Stuart wanted to see that when I told him I was from Minnesota, and that this movie basically made fun of the accent), but couldn't find it, and so got "Pumping Iron," that 1977 classic starring the Governor of California. Unfortunately the tape was broken when they put it in the VCR, so instead we all went down to this place in Box Hill for a LAN party. I didn't play, mostly because I was very tired by that point, and too rusty at Warcraft III to deem it worth spending 2 or 3 bucks an hour. I mean, c'mon, if I wanna get creamed in a computer game I can do that for free back at Gustavus! ;-) Fortunately after a couple hours one of them gave me a ride back to Monash on his way home. So after being up for 23 hours, I finally got to go to sleep at 2:45am (I would've ridden a bus back before the LAN party, only all public transit in Melbourne stops running at 9pm on weekends, how lame is that?). A really long day, but incredibly fun!
Today was yet another first for me, as I got to attend a footy game! It was at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground), between the Melbourne Demons, who were in a four-way tie for first at 13-4 coming into the weekend, and the Hawthorn Hawks, who were dead last in the AFL at 2-15 (one of their wins incidentally coming against Melbourne in Week 1 by 40 points). It was actually a close game through three quarters, but then the Demons pulled away in the 4th to win easily 107-63. With the win Melbourne took over sole possession of first place, as the other co-leaders Brisbane Lions (the three-time defending champs), Port Adelaide Power and St Kilda Saints all lost. St Kilda lost 101-94 today to the Geelong Cats, who are in fifth place at 12-6, but are red-hot, having won 11 of their past 13. I've decided to barrack for the Cats first, and have the Demons as my second-favorite. I would've loved to have been in Geelong today for that game, but it was sold out, so I went to the 'G instead. Jodee organized it for us, a bunch of IFSA students from Monash Uni and Melbourne Uni went. And they were great seats too! I took two or three short video clips of the game today on my camera, and I'll let people know in a post when I get around to uploading those, along with the photo albums from surf fishing and the footy game. I went grocery shopping in Oakleigh on my way back, but since buses only run once an hour on weekends (very lame!) on most routes, I decided to walk back from the Huntingdale train station (that's a 25-30-min walk to the edge of campus, 45 to the dorms) instead of sitting there for 40 minutes waiting for the bus. I was a bit too exhausted from everything this weekend to go to church tonight (CU has a thing on Sunday evenings for the people living here in the Halls).
Before Mike had his surgery back on Thursday, he said that his mom's heart surgery went well and that she was okay, so that's good. And apparently Mike's nose surgery went well too. Hopefully they both have speedy recoveries, although Sue's is gonna take a couple more days in the hospital, and then a few months of no work, so that'll be tough. Mike should be able to work and do stuff by the end of the week hopefully.
In other news, apparently John Kerry is a long way from getting the military vote. Kerry, seeing a chance for a photo-op with a few Marines in a crowded Wendy's restaurant in Pennsylvania, went up to them to ask them questions, but instead got dissed! In another Kerry story, I read in the news that his campaign was outraged last week when NASA published some photos of him crawling through the space shuttle Discovery wearing a funny blue suit that made him look a bit like a sperm. They called it a "dirty trick" and bullied NASA into removing the photos from its website. But now comes the revelation that the Kerry campaign told NASA at the time of Kerry's visit to Kennedy Space Center that they wanted the photos put on the web as soon as possible. Only when they saw that the public was laughing at the photo did they get outraged and claim NASA's posting of them was a "dirty trick." Yet more reason not to trust John Kerry or his staff, they're bald-faced liars, although perhaps not quite as pathological as the Clintons. But give them another couple months, I may have to alter that last sentence, and delete "although perhaps not quite." Also, many liberals seem to be downplaying the horror of Saddam Hussein's atrocities, but this op-ed from The Australian brings it all back to the fore. And for some humorous news, check out Oddspot from The Age. Here's an example of a story from there (dated 14th July): "A British man who accidentally shot himself in the testicles after drinking 15 pints of beer has been jailed for five years for possessing an illegal firearm. The man had intended to shoot a friend." There are other great ones on Oddspot too, it's hilarious!
Posted by Jared at August 1, 2004 11:50 PM