So I still have this awful cough. This makes five days and four nights, and counting. I went to Health Services here on campus this afternoon, but the doc told me that it was just a viral, and not a bacterial, infection. That’s good news in that it’s therefore not as serious an illness, but bad news in that I just have to wait it out, and I won’t get to go on any of the powerful Aussie pharmaceuticals. And I’d really been looking forward to taking some drugs too… 🙂
Back on Tuesday night I went into the city to go to the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of the play “Dinner” at the Fairfax Theatre. It was a really dark comedy, and really none of the characters were likable, they all had huge flaws (which was deliberate of course). I’d give the play itself a marginal thumbs up. For most of the play I was kinda wondering “what’s the point?” and some of the humour was rather crass and not subtle/creative enough. Some of it was really funny though. But I thought the set was really cool, it was on a stack of round but slightly off-center turntables (it was a theatre in the round). The bottom three, on which the top on sat, would move together, but the top one would move separately, and would very slowly rotate during each act. And the set was really simple and elegant too, it was just a red dinner table with six chairs around it off in one part of the circle. And the tabletop was lit too, so that between acts when the other lights were dark, you could still see that and the glittering crystal of the champagne glasses and other china on the table, it was really cool. I nabbed a photo of the set right after the production. And we had great seats too, front row in the “stage” section (“behind” the set), but since everything was slowly rotating anyway, sightlines were only occasionally a problem. After the play Jodee took us (it was an event for the IFSA students at Monash and Melbourne Uni) out to eat at Blue Train Cafe on Southbank (the opposite side of the Yarra River from the Flinders Street Station and the CBD, I’ll point it out on a picture in an upcoming photo album). It was a really cool restaurant, if a bit pricey. All the servers were really laid back, none of them were dressed the same, and many of them even had tattoos or piercings. It was interesting seeing a restaurant that obviously didn’t discourage its employees from displaying all that. But most of us were so hungry for some actual beef that several people got the filet mignon, while I got the bbq porterhouse. [Aside: We were all longing for beef because the meat down here is a bit dodgy, you never quite know what you’re getting. Like I think I’ve mentioned previously, most of the time when you order a hot dog or a hamburger it’ll be mostly mutton, and most of the girls were sick of mutton shortly after we arrived in Australia.] The steak was good, although the beef does taste different down here because they’re fed different things, and the bbq sauce also was different from anything I’d ever tasted (I wasn’t really sure what to make of it actually, hehe). And Sharon and I split a couple of samosas too that had a wonderful mango chutney sauce, those were awesome! And then most of us got cheesecake too, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen bigger slices of cheesecake at a restaurant before in my life, they were soooo good! Jodee paid for the taxi ride back to Monash as well for myself, Meghan, Sharon & Krista, it was a very enjoyable evening.
Wednesday, when I finally got back from my full day at uni (I hate Wednesdays here, they’re soooo long), I basically studied in my room for the two tests that I had today. One was a midterm in Large-Scale Weather & Climate, and I think it went fairly well, although I may have minorly stuffed it up on one part and lost myself a few marks. Oh well. But then I’m pretty certain I spanked the Fluid Dynamics test, it was significantly easier than what I was fearing. Either that or I might actually have a decent command on what’s been taught in the course so far. But beginning on Wednesday the course’s difficulty suddenly jumped, because we got a new lecturer. What we’d done prior to this week was on incompressible fluid dynamics, and what Prof Cally is teaching us about is compressible fluid dynamics, which is significantly harder. Basically he told us that everything we’d learned to that point was a lie, and that the maths in this part of the course are so hard that we’re gonna be crying in our sleep, lol. That kinda sounds like the intimidation that regularly issues from another physics prof named Paul, “Fail em all Paul” Saulnier back at GAC, hehe.
So I’ve been reading most of the speeches being made at the Republican National Convention this week, and I’m totally jazzed! After reading the speeches by people like Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger & Zell Miller, and seeing how amazingly optimistic and conservative their speeches were, well, you can’t help but be infected by that sort of enthusiasm! Oh, and a couple days ago I got my absentee ballot in the mail for the upcoming primary election in Wisconsin. I’ve gotta make sure to fill that out and return it soon. I’m excited to vote, even in the primary!