I’m done with exams for the semester! Woot woot! And sure enough, true to form (and true to my predictions), the Large-Scale Weather & Climate exam this morning contained no questions that weren’t on one of the three years’ previous exams, hehe. Let’s just say that that exam was money, totally cake. It was a three-hour exam, but I was out in half that time, woot. I hung around for a bit afterwards to say bye to Chris, Jane & Jess, although I’m hopin to see them all at least one more time before I leave. I’ll almost for sure see Jane & Jess again though, since Jane’s studying abroad at Penn State next semester, and Jess is studying abroad at Oklahoma (both doing meteorology stuff), and since I’m planning on visiting both schools as I go through my grad school search.
After that I went down to Flemington Racecourse to catch the Melbourne Cup. It was warm, bright and sunny when I left Caulfield at 1pm, but by the time I got to Flemington half an hour later it was pouring, cold and windy. That meant that the indoor areas and the concourses were packed to the gills with people — so many people! Tens of thousands for sure. Despite the rain I was pretty excited to see my first-ever horse race live. And I also threw caution to the wind and wagered a couple of bets on horses for the big 3:10 race, the actual Melbourne Cup race (there were other smaller races going on all day at Flemington). I put $10 on both Vinnie Roe (6:1) and Elvestroem (12:1) to win, hedging my bets a bit (I would’ve been satisfied with any winnings, no matter how small :-). Unfortunately for me the favourite and defending champ Makybe Diva (4:1, pronounced MACK-uh-buh) pulled it out over Vinnie Roe, who came in 2nd. (In the photo in the article from The Age that I linked to in the previous sentence, I’m not in the photo, but during the race itself I was somewhere along that flowering hedgeline amongst the umbrellas.) So I’d say that the Melbourne Cup, “the race that stops a nation” (quite literally, it’s a public holiday in Melbourne and all life across Australia pauses to watch the Cup), was not a bad place at all to watch my first live horse race or place my first bets on anything. 🙂 And I sure didn’t let the rain stop me from getting down close to the rails at the edge of the course. I got to see the horses go by twice during the long 3200-meter (2-mile) race on a grass track, it was pretty exciting. I got completely soaked and freezing cold in the process, but it’ll probably make the whole experience more memorable. 🙂
Well, it may be midnight here in Australia and just starting November 3rd, but it’s 7am back in Minnesota & Wisconsin on this very important Election Day. So much is at stake, just get out there and vote! And vote Bush/Cheney ’04! Four more years! When I wake up I’ll be eagerly checking up on the latest exit polls to show how it’s going. Polls start closing on the east coast at noon Australia time, so if I don’t know the winner by the time I go to bed tomorrow night I’ll be slightly miffed. VOTE!