Category Archives: Pictures

Welcome 1

This entry was posted in Australia Pictures on by .

After becoming settled, the next adventure was to go on a Welcome Program. The idea of the program is to group international students together to make friends but also learn and enjoy some things Australian.

The program was hosted at one of the university residential colleges — a generally all inclusive place to live. However, the college is built in a very classic style, and ours was extremely reminiscent of Harry Potter. I’ll have to look for a picture of our dining hall, but you can see the tower and a pathway below.

ZOO

We went to the Melbourne Zoo for the program. Of course, we saw kangaroos. Many of the animals were not really fenced off which was a pleasant change to be able to feel that much closer to the animals. The parrot had a few signature calls include “hello” and a cat whistle that frequently causes those passing by quite a chuckle. The day we went it was pretty warm (like most days here in Melbourne), so many of the large animals just hid in the shade — probably also due to being put in relatively small cages. Not exactly the sprawling terrain lions are used to.

SURFING

Ocean Grove is a nice beach near Geelong about an hour and a half from Melbourne. We went for surfing lessons and a day on the beach. My last experience surfing ended with coral cutting my foot quite deeply in Hawaii — this time went much better. While the waves were pretty small and crashed close to shore, it was a great time learning to surf. I stood up a number of times, however, by the time I would stand, the ride was mostly over, and I don’t know if I’d have enough momentum (or talent) to really turn the board.

CRICKET

We found ourselves at a state level cricket match one day. It is widely believed that cricket can be boring in a way similar to baseball, a long game with relatively infrequent action and lots of standing. Cricket is in fact far worse at this then baseball, a typical cricket match takes 5 days. When we showed up at the stadium with our group of ~100, we roughly tripled the total fan attendance. The actual game can be exciting occasionally but generally there are many pitches between any spurts of action. In an effort to create the game more appealing, there are apparently often now shorter games with more audience appeal. Also, international games are much more widely watched.  I think the game is a bit of an acquired taste, playing with some friends for a brief game at the beach or picnic might be more appealing than a real match.

Check often for updates 🙂

San Francisco

This entry was posted in General Pictures on by .

So I’m now in Melbourne, Victoria Australia, but before I came I stopped to visit my brother Matt for a few days in San Francisco. You might have noticed that based on a previous post about baffling airplane ticket prices…

Anyway.. San Francsisco was a really good time, and we really did a whirlwind of things in a short amount of time. Coming in on Friday we had a relatively relaxed night, grabbing some local burritos and hanging out with his friends.

Saturday. We went all over the city, we started in the high end city center — all the household designers fighting for retail space. Louis V, Gucci, Armani, etc… It’s pretty nice, surprising how “big city” it felt and tall the buildings were for an area so prone to earthquakes. We soon made our way to Chinatown, and it happened to be the time for celebration of Chinese New Year (I thought it was a few weeks prior? But they were celebrating it just now). It was quite remarkable, the blocks were full, the markets buzzing.

We worked our way to Lombard Street, known for an incredibly steep section with crazy turns, and on to the Golden Gate bridge. The view from the bay was beautiful, the water full of sailboats and hilly terrain providing a nice backdrop. It’s quite a site to behold.  We eventually made our way to Alcatraz, the notorious prison.  It was quite an experience and the tour was masterfully done, providing a good balance of roaming and history of the island.

On Sunday we went to Sonoma Valley for wine tasting. I can’t say that wine is something I know much (read: anything) about, but the trip was certainly exciting. We went on a tour at one place and learned a bit about their process for making wine and found a very helpful guide at a second. The passion that these people have for their wine is impressive to say the least, wine making is an interesting combination of art and science.  While I certainly believe that some of the wine conversation is a thinly veiled placebo effect, the wine could convey a lot, and the complexity is impressive. Even for the self proclaimed know-nothings.

All in all, while it’s impossible to know a city in a weekend, my whirlwind tour was a blast.

I’ll post about Australia soon…