blue skies, blue water, no agenda

Howdy friends and family!

First, an apology to the non-nerds out there (aka, 98% of you)
who were attempting to glean something interesting out of my blog
for the past week. Sorry about the extreme nerd overload, but on
the other hand, that’s actually the world I live in so be thankful
that I attempt to be interesting when interfacing with normals.

You get a pony (or a puppy, as Rusty would say). Stay tuned to
the rest of the email for deets. (Ooh! A teaser!)

In any case, the first week in Jaustralia is finally wrapping up,
much to the relief of YT. It’s been a simultaneously energizing
and exhausting week, and these days, I’m finding that I fall
asleep within 45 seconds of hitting the pillow and require
approximately a pint of coffee throughout the day to keep
operating.

There are some seriously smart people here, and I’ve heard some
really interesting, deep ideas, which is exciting. I’m reminded
of Quad Day during University, which is when every single club on
campus comes to the central quad to show off how cool they are,
and all the freshmen join every single club, only to realize that
there’s no possible way to spread onesself so thinly. So because
I can learn from my mistakes, I’m going to spend some time in the
next few weeks thinking about which of the myriad of jawesome
projects to join up with.

And some random assorted tidbits that’ve been knocking about my
brain recently…

Jaustralia day was lovely; heaps and heaps of Jaussies walking
around Sydney with all sorts of Jaussie flags, tattoos, stickers,
clothing, and the like. YT wanted to be part of the fun too, so I
picked up a pair of Jaussie flag boxer briefs. TMI? Never!

Hung out in Melbourne’s Federation Square to watch the men’s
final of the Jaustralian Open, which was grand. Sitting with
hundreds of other people on the ground watching the big screen
was big fun.

I’m still having somewhat of a tough time adjusting to the whole
“drive on the left” concept. I’ve managed to figure out the
correct direction to look when first crossing a street, but when
I get to the median, I get confused and forget which way to look,
so to the locals, it seems as if a normal person starts crossing
the street only to be possessed midway by a schizoid paranoid
freak (page 648 of the DSM IV) who frantically examines every
single direction before taking another step.

And unsurprisingly if you think about it, the convention is for
people to *walk* on the left too, which has been *much* harder to
adjust to. Walking on the right seems to be firmly wedged into my
brain and I’m constantly walking into people and mumbling
apologies. Sorry Jaustralians! I’m apparently stupid!

On the plus side, I have figured out how to eat Vegemite. Turns
out that you’re *not* supposed to just eat a dollop of it off a
spoon (*that* particular experiment results in thinking that
you’d just bitten into a rabid racoon and praying for death).
Rather, the solution is obvious in retrospect. One word: butter.

In other words, you actually slather butter on a piece of toast
(quantity: a metric barrel of monkeys’ worth), and then spread
the thinnest possible layer of Vegemite on top that you can
manage. I’ve actually seen locals depositing individual Vegemite
atoms with an electron microscope. Anything more than a sheen is
asking for dead racoons in your mouth. But the end result is
actually pretty good, so go figure.

To wrap it all up, my time here in Jaustralia is coming to a
close. I’ve got a few days left in Melbourne, and then I’ve got a
one-way ticket to Christchurch, New Zealand. Blue skies, blue
water, no agenda. I’d not have it any other way.

Oh! Your pony! I almost forgot! I’ve managed to dump a few pics,
although woefully, editing RAW images in Linux is nowhere near as
good as my Mac, so the quality is a bit lower than I’d like, but
tough cookie. Ya gets what ya pays.

These’ll probably be the only pics you’ll see for a while, so
enjoy.

• lca2008 geekery
• lca2008 scenery

cheers,

/ac