The days just keep marching on here at Monash, although the last couple were relatively uneventful. Yesterday after relishing the chance to sleep in, I decided to go to MWACS (Monash Weather & Climate Society) at 1pm instead of CBT (Campus Bible Talks). I mean, I paid the $5 membership fee 6 weeks ago but hadn’t been to anything yet. It was actually fairly interesting, they had a recent Monash grad speak about her experiences in the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian equivalent of the National Weather Service back in the States. And before the talk they had a chart discussion, which included taking a look at Super Typhoon Chaba, which currently has winds of over 215mph in the Eastern Pacific, and has its sights set on Japan in three to four days time on 29th August, although it will likely have weakened to a typhoon by that point. (A super typhoon is the equivalent of a high Category 4 up to a Cat 5 hurricane, and a regular typhoon is a hurricane of strength mid-Category 4 and lower.) Josh, you just might want to pay attention to this one in the next few days. Then after a couple hours of “studying” (i.e. on and off dozing) in the library, I went to CU (Christian Union) in the evening for the other regular weekly stuff.
Much of today has been spent working on my Fluid Dynamics assignment that’s due Friday. It’s just one problem, but it’s taking absolutely forever. I worked on it a bit last night too, and kinda got stuck when I realized I was taking the log of a quantity that wasn’t dimensionless (for you non-maths people, that’s a bad thing, it can’t be done). So I showed it to David (the lecturer) after class today, and he realised that he was doing pretty much the same thing! He couldn’t really figure out what we were doing wrong this afternoon, but after a couple more hours of work tonight I finally cracked it, woohoo! Doing homework for that class down here is a lot different than doing physics homework back at GAC, mostly because I’m doing everything completely on my own down here, without any help from any of my classmates. So I’m really looking at this semester as a chance to grow my confidence in math/physics and improve my skills, without being dependent on the hints and help of others. It takes me awhile longer to do everything by myself, but it feels great when you can get yourself unstuck on some problem and figure it all out for yourself! And then when I get done with the fluids assignment, I’ve gotta get started on one for Weather & Climate (and study for the mid-term that’s in one week), write my Aussie Landscape essay about this weekend in the Grampians, and start researching for my big essay in Climate Change that’s due in a month. Sigh, and I’d so enjoyed my bludge semester for the first 4-5 weeks down here!
Spring is starting to break through in Melbourne finally. Today it was 20 or 21C (mid-upper 60s F), warm enough for me to break out the shorts! I was probably about the only person on campus who thought it was warm enough for that though, hehe. One more nice warm day around 21-22 tomorrow, and then back to the low teens by early next week. 🙁
Oh, and this arvo (afternoon) I bit the bullet and finally bought my plane tickets for my trip to the Reef in a month. The downside is that by not pulling the trigger last night I cost myself a decent chunk of change, sigh. But on Sun, 26th Sept, I’ll be flying up to the Whitsunday Coast, hanging out there for a couple days with Richard and possibly a couple of his friends, and then we’ll rent a car and drive back up to Cairns to meet up with the rest of his friends for a couple days, before we all fly out of Cairns on Sat, 2nd Oct, and return to uni for the stretch run. It’ll be so cool to see the Great Barrier Reef! And I have an offer from someone down here to go to Tassie with me for the overland trek if I get something together. 🙂 Now if only I could find someone to go with me to see Uluru too…
Cal Thomas has a good article this week explaining John Kerry’s many positions on the Iraq conflict. He’s been on every possible side of the issue in the last few years, changing his tune whenever it’s politically expedient, instead of sticking to convictions. George Will has a column today which is a scathing criticism of campaign finance reform, because in the Wisconsin US Senate race between Russ Feingold and Russ Darrow, Darrow’s family is unlikely to be able to run commercials for their car dealerships, for the sole reason that it bears Darrow’s name. CFR is almost certainly the most major threat to free speech to date, and the government continues to seek more ways to regulate speech. In humorous news, you shouldn’t expect prompt phone service if you go to Romania. This guy requested a phone line 28 years ago, and the phone company finally responded to him, informing him that there were still no lines available! Leave it to a Pollock to steal a 200-meter bridge. And a woman in South Africa is very lucky, after surviving a 3300m skydiving free fall when both her regular and reserve parachutes failed to open. She miraculously escaped with only a broken pelvis. Maybe that’s why I’m hesitant to go skydiving or bungee jumping…