As of yesterday I’m all done with classes in Australia. My only class yesterday (as with any Friday) was Fluid Dynamics, and even though I know classes are over and done with, it still sorta doesn’t feel that way, it’s strange. I felt the relief of being done much more after my Wednesday classes, since that was the last day I had to turn anything in, so I guess the actual end of classes was sort of anticlimactic, but that’s fine.
After class Friday I went up to the Maths building to talk to Dr. Steve Siems, one of the profs in the Atmospheric Science department here, about the possibility of doing grad school here at Monash. Even though I was only there for like 5 minutes it was a lot of useful information. For instance, the only way I’d be able to swing it would be if I were to get some international student postgraduate research scholarship, otherwise I’d have to pay full fee to come here and that’s not an option I’m remotely interested in. But I can’t even apply for the scholarship until October 2005, so I’d have to be pretty dead-set on trying to come here and forgo trying to get into an American grad school for the Aug-Dec 2005 semester. So while Monash would still be a very good place to come (certainly the best place in Australia, probably in the entire southern hemisphere), there are just enough obstacles in the way that it’s not an extremely serious option at this point. I’d probably be better off at a school like Oklahoma (I’ve dreamed of going to OU since at least 10th grade, for awhile it was even ahead of Gustavus on my list), Wisconsin or Mississippi State.
At any rate, yesterday afternoon James & Ali picked me up and we drove down to the Mornington Peninsula south of the city, between the Southern Ocean and Port Phillip Bay. We were hoping to see a spectacular sunset down by either Sorrento or Portsea, as it was a fine day in and around Melbourne. But once we got close to the end of the peninsula, a thick bank of fog rolled in from the sea for the rest of the evening, preventing us from seeing much of anything. In the picture at right, the rock formation jutting out into the sea is called the Sphinx, and ordinarily we would’ve been able to watch the sunset right over the Sphinx, oh well. We still went around to some of the different beaches down there, and I think they’d be a good place to take my parents, especially if it’s sunny (of course, I say that about most of the places I go, I need to start hashing out exactly where I’m gonna take them in their limited time down here, they won’t have time to see everything). 
One of the cooler sights of the evening was an echidna that was burrowing for ants right next to the car park at one of the beaches. He was so hungry and chowing down on so many ants that he didn’t even care we were there right next to him taking pictures and everything! He even let us touch him, and his spines were pretty sharp too. I took a short movie of him burrowing around too, I’ll get that up on my webpage at some point (whenever I also get a couple of photo albums up, including the one from the Whitsunday Islands).
Oh and Thursday night my friend Pat who lives across the hall from me encountered some strong anti-American sentiment down here. He was at a bar near campus with a couple of his American buddies, and he saw some guys with Yankees hats on, so since Pat’s a Yankee fan he asked them if they were Yankee fans as well, and they replied that they hated Yankees like us and that we should get the bleep out of their country, that their visas were almost up so they should just get out now and whatnot. Then several of these Aussies kept trying to pick a fight with Pat and his friends, who didn’t want any part of a fight, and eventually one of them just blindsided Pat with a solid punch to the side of the face by his eye. (Pat was sure he was gonna have a black eye this morning, but fortunately didn’t). So that started a big fight, but Pat didn’t fight back, instead he just ducked down on the floor, covering and protecting one of the American girls that was with them, but the Aussie guys kept on whaling on him in the back of the head and everything, until the bartenders and bouncers came in and broke up the fight and kicked the Aussie guys out of the bar. That was really the first time either of us had actually heard of true, serious anti-American sentiment down here, at least of it resulting in violence. But we’re both confident that it’s a fairly isolated incident, since it hasn’t happened until now. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t go to the Nott Thursday night after all.
This afternoon I spent a bit of time starting my searches for grad school stuff. Since I need to take the general GRE for basically any grad school I apply to in the States, that was the first thing I checked out. Fortunately for me there’s a testing centre here in Melbourne that has some openings during the second week of November that I’d be able to make it to. I basically have to take the GRE while I’m down here, since I’ll be travelling from late November until close to Christmas, and since many grad schools have application deadlines in early or mid-January. So in short once I’m done studying for my finals, I’ll have to switch gears and start cramming for the GRE. Fun. A potential trip to go see Ayers Rock suddenly got a little more iffy, sigh.
Tonight was the night for our IFSA-Butler farewell dinner. It was the first time that all eight of us Butlerites had been together since back at orientation, so it was a good chance to catch up and share stories about our study abroad experience here at Monash. And I remembered to bring my camera, but forgot to put a memory card in it, argh. So as a result, no pics from tonight, oh well. For dinner we went to Federation Square in the heart of the city. We were planning on going to a Japanese restaurant called the Chocolate Buddha, but it was gonna be an hour and a half before we could get a table, so instead we wandered around and found a Greek restaurant at FedSquare called the Wine Bar or somethin like that. The food was pretty good, I got a lamb shoulder pizza with tsiki ice cream (made with sour cream, cucumbers, chives) for an appetizer (or entree as they’re called down here), and then lamb souvlaki sausages for the main, followed up by some Cyprian custard-filled pastry (which was very good) with a little bit of prune ice cream (which was…… interesting) for dessert. The best part of it all? It was free to us, since IFSA was paying for it. 🙂 The downside? It had to be the longest meal any of us have ever had in our entire lives. It wasn’t even that much food (the appetizer was more filling than the main), but it seemed like our bodies were able to go through the entire digestion process between each course. We had to have been there for close to three hours, it was getting ridiculous. I must say, even though it’s nice that you don’t have to worry about tipping here in Australia, service in America is worlds better (both quality and speed) because we do tip our servers. I think whenever I’m at a restaurant in America after this I won’t complain about tips, and will certainly appreciate good service. 🙂
And now for some links, most of which are of course dominated by the election. Kerry has announced his latest strategy: declare victory on Election Night, no matter how badly he’s losing, and then sue the pants off of several states to drag out the election interminably. So it’s looking more and more likely that we’ll have several Floridas this year, sigh. Much of that is because the Democrats are already screaming that voters are being disenfranchised when they can’t manage to vote for the right candidate or go to the right polling place. Whatever happened to a voter’s basic responsibilities, to know when, where and how to vote? If you can’t figure those things out, you probably shouldn’t be voting in the first place. And the Democrats are just offending various constituencies all over the place. First Kerry offends both Catholics and Protestants by his hopelessly muddled and confused theology, and then his wife offended school teachers, librarians, and all moms, when the pompous kook-ball Teresa Heinz Kerry insulted Laura Bush (the most respected figure in the Bush administration), saying that she’d never had a “real job.” And then the ketchup billion-heiress stepped in it even more with her lame apology, by tacitly admitting that she doesn’t think that being a mom is a “real job.” In other news, earlier this week Japan was hit by massive Super Typhoon Tokage, the most deadly typhoon to strike Japan in a decade or two. The loony ultra-liberal/socialist 9th Circus Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a ruling yesterday that they couldn’t see any reason why dolphins and whales shouldn’t be allowed to sue the US and President Bush. What?!?!? I mean, seriously, what are those judges smoking? And in some good (and much more sane) news, Bill Cosby gave a speech in Milwaukee in which he pleaded with his fellow blacks to take responsibility for raising and educating their children, so that they’ll be productive members of society. Cosby has given several speeches along these lines during the last few months, and he should be duly praised for what he’s saying, because it definitely needs to be said by somebody. Only it has been said before by other conservatives, but when they say it they’re derided as being racists and bigots, sigh. Keep it up Cosby! And finally, conservative firebrand Ann Coulter was giving a speech at the University of Arizona, and a couple of guys ran on stage and threw pies at her before they were arrested. Her response immediately afterward was hilarious, she said, “From that far away they can’t even hit me?” Go Ann!
And let me just mention again just how much I despise the internet quota system here at Monash. I got cut off again late last night for being “over quota” (right before I was gonna post most of this) so I had to purchase another chunk of quota, I’ve spent $44 on internet alone here at Monash so far (not counting the ridiculous $50 connection fee), and I’m really not doing anything except surfing the web. It’s totally bogus, and I’ll be very glad to get back home and to Gustavus, to a world where you’re not jipped on internet services. Maybe I’m just a spoiled American in that sense, but the way Australian universities handle technology issues in general leaves much to be desired. Other than that (well, that and the ant infestations in my dorm room and other dorm), I like it at Monash, but the internet quota thing has bugged me ever since I got here. But anyway, since I bought the quota on a Friday night, my internet won’t get turned back on until Monday, since nobody staffs IT outside of regular business hours. That’s absolutely ridiculous. So as a temporary measure, Pat was gracious enough to loan me his Monash username and password so that I could have internet this weekend, since he has plenty of quota left to use up.
Anyway, time for sleep. I’ve gotta get up early in the morning to go on a surfing trip to Lorne (a couple hours down the Great Ocean Road southwest of the city) with some IFSA students from Monash and Melbourne Uni. It’ll be my first time ever surfing, I’m excited! But I’m also a bit nervous, hopefully I won’t drown or get eaten by a shark. 😉