Well I’ve had a couple of pretty interesting last couple of days. Yesterday afternoon Uriah, one of Rich’s friends from UW-Eau Claire that I met on our trip up to Cairns a little over a month ago, was down here in Melbourne and came over to Monash to pay me a visit. We went back into Melbourne for a little while, and walked around all sorts of places, such as Federation Square, Swanston Street, the Greek Precinct, Lygon Street (“restaurant row”) in Carlton, and then back down Russell Street to the Last Laugh Comedy Club on Collins Street. We had thought that the Last Laugh was up on Lygon Street somewhere, because that’s what our Lonely Planet guides said. Unfortunately when we got up there and couldn’t find it, nobody we asked knew where it was either, so we gave the club a call again. I asked what number they were on Lygon Street, and the lady said, “188 Collins Street,” which was way the heck back in the CBD, near Flinders Street station, where we’d started from! Apparently they’d moved since our Lonely Planet’s were published. Sigh.
The comedy club was great though. There were three acts (if you count the emcee, who was up there for about as much time as either of the other two guys), headlined by a guy named Tommy Dean, originally from America, but who has lived in Australia for 12 years now. He was absolutely hilarious, and surprisingly clean with his jokes too! When he got up on stage he said, “You know, I feel a little weird saying that I’m from the United States. I’d rather say that I’m from the superpower, so I’d really appreciate that, if you said I was from the superpower,” which everyone thought was a riot. He had the perfect balance of making fun of the States (superpower, airline security, etc) and Australia (cricket, footy, the fact that Aussies call beer “piss,” etc), it was great! Uriah & I both thought it was well worth the $25 to have a good night of laughs. After that we both got a beer from Young & Jackson’s pub on Flinders Street before catching a train back to Monash. Uriah stayed overnight in my room.
We both slept until noon, and it was the longest either of us had slept in probably all year. Uriah went back into the city to do some more sightseeing, but I stayed at Monash with the intention of doing a little studying for the GRE. But before you know it I’m over here at James & Ali’s place workin on putting several new photo albums online — ten, to be exact. Plus, I also uploaded a new video clip of an echidna burrowing for some ants. Check ’em out! While I’ve been here I’ve also been doing a little bit of planning of the itinerary for when my parents come down in two weeks. There’s too much to see and too little time!
Both New Zealand and Canada are reporting spikes of American visits to their immigration websites in the days since George W Bush was re-elected. I wonder how many of these people are serious about leaving. I say let ’em go, it’ll increase our majority! 😉 Most reports are indicating that Yasser Arafat, the terrorist leader of the PLO, is brain dead in a Paris hospital. Trouble is, Yasser’s the only one who knew where the money was. In other news, IBM has just smashed the world’s supercomputing record, with it’s BlueGene/L machine reching a stunning 70.72 teraflops, twice as fast as the world’s current fastest computer, the NEC Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan, and 100 times faster than any desktop computer. And in weird news, a naked Canadian really really wanted to go to Australia, by jumping into the wheel well of the Qantas jumbo jet that was moving down the tarmac. And ya gotta love stupid criminals, especially when a burglar leaves his name and photograph behind.