Australian Wildlife

Today, I ran over a gecko with my toaster.

I didn't mean to! Really, it's not something I'd ever aspired to do or would even think was possible in one's lifetime. But I did it. Thankfully, the little gecko was okay, although I did think he was a goner there for a moment. Here's how it went down: I was cleaning up the kitchen and decided to clean the crumbs out from under the toaster. The little crumb catching tray is on the side of the toaster that faces the wall, so I turned it around to pull out the tray and there was the poor little gecko all turned up on it's side like a hip hop dancer doing that trick where they balance on one ear and shoulder. His little foot twitched for a moment and then it was still. I felt really bad for the poor little thing and I started rumaging around for a bit of cardboard to scoop him up with, thinking I'd have to flush him down the toilet. I came back with my cardboard and the little guy sprang up and started running around in circles. With a sigh of relief, I coaxed him onto the cardboard, but then noticed that he was still running around in circles and his head was twisted sideways. I think I might've damaged his neck and he might have a permanent crook, but at least he's alive... Anyway, I took him out to the balcony and put him in one of our potted plants, thinking he might like to hang out and eat the bugs off our little herb plants, but he promptly hopped out of the soil and hid underneath the pot instead. Anyway, I took a picture of him hiding under the plant. Interestingly, when I found him he was a pale, almost translucent yellow/green. By the time I took this picture, he had changed to a dark, brownish with yellow stripes. I'm not sure how he got inside our apartment, although we do have a window screen with a hole in it that would be big enough for the little guy to get in (he's only about 2 inches long, head to tail -- just a baby!).



I've had a couple of other interesting encounters with Australian wildlife. One day, Susan and I decided to eat our lunch out on our balcony. Shortly after we finished our sandwiches, a bird decided to land on our balcony railing. He landed on the far end and then proceeded to move over toward us, until he was staring directly at us from about two feet away. We assumed he was hoping to get a treat from us and would wait a few moments and then fly away. We didn't want to feed him and encourage him to keep coming back, so we stared at him and he stared at us. He sat there looking at us for a good ten minutes! Finally, he got bored and flew away, but I've never had a bird come and stare at me eye to eye like that for so long! Anyway, I haven't learned what sort of bird it was yet -- sort of raven-like in size and shape, but mottled black & white, with a sort of warbly call. One of these days, I'll learn what it is.

Another encounter with a lizard that was much nicer than the incident with the poor gecko was with a juvenile lizard I met on Australia Day. Susan and I had gone to South Bank, which is a lovely park area along the river in the city for the Australia Day activities. As we were strolling along, I saw a little lizard on the wall, which I found to be incredibly cute because it had a gigantic head, feet and a really long tail, with an itty bitty little body. It obviously had not grown into its appendages yet and I just had to get close to it to marvel at its cuteness! Suddenly, it sprang off the side of the wall and ran towards my foot, as if to say "play with me!" However, at that point, I felt the need to chastize the little guy for running up to complete strangers like that. After all, he was obviously just a child and it's a big, bad dangerous world out there...

So far, it seems that both the wildlife and the humans here in Australia are quite friendly. I've found that random people will strike up a conversation with you while you're on the bus or just walking down the street. Everyone here has been really, really nice and helpful. Unless it has anything to do with telecommunications or internet. The mobile phone plans here are horrifically complicated and nit-picky, the internet service is locked down tight, and the phone companies charge an arm and a leg for their services, while making you wait ages to get anything hooked up. But telecommunication services aside, I've found Australia to be a wildly friendly place.

Hello World!!!

Miracle of miracles, we are FINALLY online at our apartment. It's been excruciating not having real access to the internet. There is no such thing as free WiFi in Australia. You have to pay for it everywhere, EXCEPT the library -- which we finally became members of last week. Anyway, it took them 10 days to get around to connecting us, then they didn't send us the hardware until after we were connected. Add to the mix a couple of public holidays (Saturday was Australia Day, but it was also observed on Monday, so no mail on either day) and we finally got the stuff yesterday.

So, yes, we have an apartment. We met our goal of finding an apartment before Susan was to start work on January 14th. Unfortunately, the day that we got the keys to the apartment was the day that Susan got admitted to the hospital. She contracted a case of Brucellosis, which is a blood-borne bacterial infection. Basically, she had constant headaches and a fever until she started her treatment of three different antibiotics (one by injection), which immediately caused her extreme nausea (apparently her liver went a bit haywire for awhile) and she spent nearly a week in the hospital to receive IV fluids and anti-nausea meds. She needs to take the antibiotics for a total of six weeks. Anyway, it was a bit ironic that she ended up a patient in the hospital the weekend that she was supposed to start work there. Her doctor keeps suggesting that she should write up a case study on herself -- she doesn't seem too keen on that prospect. Thankfully, Susan is feeling better (tho not quite up to her usual self yet -- still gets tired easily) and she started work yesterday.

Anyway, we've got a little two-bedroom apartment that's about a 15 minute walk to the Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, and a short jaunt to the train station and various bus stops. It's about a 10-15 minute bus ride into the city, so it will be easy for me to get to school when I start at the end of February. Now, we just need some furniture. We have a sofa, a dining room table & chairs and two chests of drawers (which we'll use as bedside tables) on order. Luckily, we happen to live across the road from a shopping center full of furniture stores. Right now we have a bed (thankfully no more air mattress) a coffee table and two folding camping chairs. The camping chairs have taken their toll on our lower backs, but at least we have something to sit on. We ordered our sofa from a place called Freedom, so Susan's been singing "Freedom's just another word for f*cking hurry up and give us our sofa..." for the past week.

I was pleasantly surprised with a $3500 scholarship from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which is now the school I've decided to attend. I was going to go to Central Queensland University until I realized that it's campus consists of one building and it caters to international students. This was what first attracted me to the school, since I am an international student, but then I realized that I would be stuck in one building with a bunch of foreign students and I would rather be immersed in the Australian culture on a real university campus. I'll be going to the QUT campus in the Central Business District (CBD, i.e. downtown) right next to the Botanical Gardens, which are quite lovely. I've enrolled (paid) at QUT, but haven't done the student visa stuff yet. I have to do it online and couldn't do it until I got a Certificate of Enrollment from them anyway. Now I'm good to go and plan to start on that this week.

Well, that's all for now -- I'll try to write more soon! For now, here's a pic of the view of Brisbane from our apartment balcony. The Royal Brisbane hospital is in the right side of photo (just beyond the telephone pole in the lower corner).

Last Stop: Brisbane

Hello World!

Susan and I made it to Brisbane on Tuesday -- it's been pouring with rain the whole time (which is a good thing, since there's been a drought here) and we haven't really had easy access to the internet. We've been trying to get around to look for a place to live, but it's been a bit messy waiting for buses in the rain! We've been staying with Susan's friend's father who has the big family home to himself and he seems quite glad to have our company. He's been very generous for opening his home to us. They don't observe daylight savings here, so it gets light very early in the morning and there are lots of different sounding birds, so poor Susan has been waking up way earlier than she wants to, but hopefully she'll get back to a better sleep schedule soon.

Last night, we had dinner at Susan's colleague's (David) house -- he's the guy that picked up all our stuff that we shipped from the U.S. We met him and his wife and two of his colleagues -- they were all very nice and I felt right at home with them. David and his family lived in Pittsburgh for 10 years, so it was fun talking with them about my home town. We were reunited with our U.S. shipment and I checked to make sure that one of my bass guitars arrived in one piece (it did) and we retrieved some of our summer clothes so that we have more clothes to wear.

I've been visiting the schools that I applied to -- I decided that I'm not so crazy about Central Queensland University and may go to Queensland University of Technology or University of Queensland instead. I went to QUT to talk to the folks there today and I like it much better. I haven't gone to UQ yet to check it out, but will probably do that on Monday.

Currently, we have very limited access to the internet, so I will keep this update short, but just wanted to let folks know we're here and doing fine -- the Aussies are very friendly and have been quite generous. Hopefully, we will be able to find our own place to live soon so that we can get settled in.

Hello from Melbourne!

Yes, we have landed safely in Melbourne, Australia -- just got in the night before last. It's about 9:30 AM on Thursday here now (16 hours ahead of EST). The weather is warm, but not quite sunny yet. Yesterday, there were a few sprinkles of rain mixed in with sunny spells. This morning we're getting some nice thunderstorms (I do like a good summer thurnderstorm). Yesterday, we wandered around St. Kilda, where Susan's brother Joff lives. It's a nice little section of Melbourne with it's own beach -- the water is quite calm and there weren't really any waves coming in. We didn't go swimming, but it seemed the water is quite warm, the way folks were just standing around in it. We sat along the beach for a picnic lunch and had dinner at a veggie restaurant called Soul Mama that Joff's girlfriend Min recommended. You choose a bowl size and then go to this buffet and get to select a number of items (depending on which size bowl you bought) from the buffet -- it was hard to choose and it was all very good! I had a nice ale (Mountain Goat Ale) to go along with it. We're still a bit jet lagged, so had an early evening.

So far, I'm liking it much better than Liverpool. Good food, real coffee (I had some really bad coffee experiences the last few days in England), real beer, and people living "alternative" lifestyles... Ah... it's good to be in a normal environment again! Today, we'll venture into the city and get some SIM cards and some cheap flip-flops for me (I have no sandals here).

No pictures yet, but I'll try to take some after the weather clears up a bit. In the meantime, here's a link to a website with some pics: http://www.melbourne.com.au/stkilda.htm

Wales: Snowdonia & Caernarfon Castle

The weekend before last, we went to Wales again with Susan's classmates from the School of Tropical Medicine. The University of Liverpool owns a cottage in Snowdonia (a region of North Wales) that students can reserve. It has 18 bunks and a kitchen, but unfortunately, very poor heating! We filled the place up, but on Friday night (the first night we arrived), it was below freezing outside and even though the place had heaters in the bunk rooms, the things were totally worthless. I was very, very grateful for the nice down sleeping bag that Susan borrowed from a classmate for me. In fact, it was so cold that one of the Australians in the group decided he couldn't take another night there and left with another classmate who had to leave on Saturday evening.


Anyway, we hitched a ride with classmate, Ray, and we joined a car-load of others on Friday afternoon for a late afternoon hike up Mt. Snowdon. Although it is only about 3,500 feet high, it is the highest peak in Wales and all of Great Britain. Also, apparently, Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Snowdon as training for his climb of Mt. Everest (which seems a bit absurd, considering that Mt. Everest is literally almost 10 times higher!). We started up the trail at about 2-2:30 PM and got to the top at around sunset (which is about 4:30 PM in these parts!). Although I was feeling a bit winded on the way up and I was definitely the slowest (and, pitifully worried about climbing back down in the dark), it turned out to be a lovely hike. I don't recall which track we took up, but it was a bit steep and somewhat challenging. It was a beautiful, clear day (very rare anywhere in the UK, as far as I can tell), so it was great that we were able to take advantage of the weather. The pinnacle is also reachable by train, and it was a bit odd to come up to the top ridge to to find a train track up there. Once we got to the top, we took in the view and some photos and hurried back down the much easier Pyg and Miners Tracks. We were happy to find that it was a full moon that night and we were able to find our way back in the moonlight. The view of the moonlight on the lake was quite stunning. Susan was our photographer that evening and she did not take pictures of the moonlit lake, although Ray took some beautiful ones. We're hoping he'll share them with us.

After our hike, we went to a pub in Llanberis to meet up with some other classmates and then we went to a restaurant (Pete's Bistro, I believe?), which was a family-owned restaurant that serves Tapas-style meals. Their menu had a description of their dreams to have a big bed & breakfast type place and that the restaurant was only the beginning. We were given a room all to ourselves (as there was about 16 of us) and at one point, the "grandson" who was to take our order came in the room and said, "Are you ready to order, or would you like to write it down yourselves?" We all had a good laugh over that, but in the end, it turned out to be the best way to handle it. As it turned out, the food there was quite good. Afterwards, someone suggested that we delve into the board games that she saw on the way into the restaurant and so we started on a game of Jenga (well, a knock-off version really) on one end of the table and a "Don't Lose Your Marbles" type game on the other end of the table. We're all getting pretty rowdy and having a good time, when all of a sudden the owner (the grandmother) brings out a GIGANTIC version of Jenga ("Four Feet Tall!") for us to play. Then, someone else in the group group found a gigantic version of "Connect Four" and they started playing that. Overall, it turned out to be a fantastic place to go -- with great food, fun and extremely welcoming staff, despite our large group.


On Saturday, Suze and I took off on our own with her friend, Jo, who came to join us for the weekend on Friday evening at Pete's Bistro. She had her trusty little red car, Francesca, so we were free to roam on that rainy Saturday afternoon in search of... castles! Acutally, we only went to one castle, Caernarfon Castle, which, as it turns out, is the castle where Prince Charles was crowned as Prince of Wales in 1969 (We learned this little factoid at the castle). I was quite happy because I was catching a cold and was NOT in the mood to be cold and wet that day! It was a lovely castle and had been all fixed up with roofs and floors in some of the towers, which was very neat to see. One tower even had a cinema in it, with a very badly overacted but somewhat informative film about the castle's history.

Saturday night, we stayed at the cottage and utilized the available kitchen facilities where the whole group feasted on fajitas. Later, we played silly party games like a convoluted version of Charades (Secret Telephone Charades) that involved us splitting into groups and pairs having to convey Charades to the next pair until the last pair has to figure out what the topic was. It was pretty funny. We even did the Limbo with a broomstick (which, sadly, despite my short height I'm terrible at because I also sit at a computer WAY too much!).


Sunday, we did another day hike with everyone up Mt. Tryfan. However, this time, we split up into two groups -- one that went the steep way, which require lots of scrambling and climbing and one that went the "easy" way, which required much less scrambling. I was quite happy to be in the easy and slow group, as I'm usually the bringing up the tail-end on these excursions! At one point, our guide for the hike tried to use me as a "guinea pig" to try to convince me to climb up a harder path, but I made them turn around and go the easy way. Yes, I'm a wimp. Anyway, the hike took us about four hours and it took us nearly as long to go the long, easy way as it it did to go the short hard way, so we found the other group on our way back down. A few folks decided to stay and do more climbing, but the rest of us continued down the mountain, headed off for some lunch (leftover fajitas, yum!) at the cottage, cleaned it up and headed back to Liverpool.

Here's the link to more photos of the weekend: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/WalesSnowdoniaCaernarfonCastle

Viva Barcelona

The weekend before last, Suze and I went to Barcelona to visit her cousin, Nicky. Since it cost us about the same to fly to Barcelona as it would to take a train to Edinburgh or London, we figured this was a good deal. So, we booked ourselves an EasyJet flight direct from Liverpool to Barcelona and Nicky gave us the details on how to get to her place from the airport. Oddly, it was the first time we'd ever been to the Liverpool airport, but it's pretty easy to take a bus from our place to the airport. Once in Barcelona, we were to take what we like to call "a train disguised as a bus" (or a train-bus) from the airport to Estacion de França. So, Susan asked a helpful airport staff member where to get the train and we wandered around until we found the bus stop. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the bus was free, even though it was a good 30 minute ride to its destination. We got to the station and eventually found Nicky there and she explained that the train line was under repair for so long that people were upset about it, so they made the train free. There's nothing like being in the right place at the right time -- lucky us!

So, we followed Nicky back to her flat after a stop at the nearby grocery for some breakfast food. She lives only a couple minutes walk from the train station and her flat is literally across the street from the Santa Maria del Mar, a gothic church built sometime in the 14th century, I believe. She lives in the heart of El Born, which is apparently a hip tourist attraction -- so we were right in the middle of it all! Her flat is up several floors, with a spiral staircase and a very low ceiling (which poor Susan kept bonking her head on). It's a small 2-bedroom flat with the quintessential tile floor that one would expect to find in a Spanish flat.

After we got ourselves settled in and then we went out for dinner at a place called Origen 99'9%, which is a restaurant that serves traditional Catalan food. There was a waiting list, which we put our names on and then we went to a wine bar for a drink. We went back and were seated and found that the menu is really more like a magazine, with articles, recipes, full color photos, and full descriptions of the food in Catalan, Spanish and English. I went to their website and found that you can read the menu online in PDF format if you like (the bad English translation is quite amusing!). It was quite comprehensive reading! So, we picked out about six dishes and some different glasses of wines to try. The food was very unusual to my palate, quite good but very rich, so not something I'd want to eat on a regular basis because of its richness. We had Cannelloni, stuffed squid, rabbit and sweet potatoes (my favorite, tho it was the first time I'd tried rabbit!), a bean dish, a lamb stew and some courgette (zucchini) dish. After a long and late (it is Spain, after all!) dinner, we headed back to Nicky's flat for the evening.



On Saturday, we decided to go see some Gaudi architecture and I wanted to go to the Sagrada Familia, which is the cathedral designed by Gaudi, which has been under construction since 1882. It's quite an impressive thing, not least of which is the fact that they've been working on it so long! Nicky advised us to look long and hard at the outside and then decide if we want to pay the money to go inside. Well, the tourist in me won out and we paid the 8 Euros each to go inside. Unfortunately, there was a wedding under way, so most of the cathedral was blocked off and the rest was, well, unfinished. For an extra 2 Euros each we could go on the lift to the top of one of the towers, but the line was super long and we decided it really wasn't worth the extra money. It was quite amazing to see the pillars and ceiling that Gaudi designed to look like trees, with the holes in the ceiling allowing the light to come in just like a canopy of trees would. Beneath the church is a museum, which used to be Gaudi's workshop, where they had some interesting displays and original Gaudi plaster molds of the church facades and the like. That was worth seeing, I think, but soon we got a text from Nicky and we met up with her to go to lunch at a cafe.


Later that day, Nicky took us to Park Guell, which is a park that Gaudi designed near where he lived. The house he lived in is now a museum, which we did not go into, but there was plenty to see in the park! There were all sorts of musicians playing music in different parts of the park -- a very entertaining sort of gypsy brass band in the plaza area, a saxophone player in the cavern-like archways, acoustic guitarists, and jewelry and visual artists selling their wares. The park is quite amazing, with columns built like palm trees, archways shaped like waves, and a two tiered plaza area with lovely tiled benches all around, supported underneath by amazing columns with tiled decorations on the ceiling. That Gaudi guy was quite ingenious and the park obviously continues to inspire local artists.

Saturday night, we went out with Nicky, her friend Ana and her friend who was visiting from Norway. We went to a tapas restaurant and had a lovely assortment of "pinchos", salads, calamari and other stuff. Later we went out to a couple of bars to get our drinks on. At the first bar we had to fend off an older fellow who wanted to befriend us -- luckily, after some rather blatant discouragements, he left us alone. We went to a second bar and had a good time and before I knew it, it was 2:30 AM and we were headed off for one last drink with some of Nicky & Ana's friends at another bar. On our way to the last bar, unfortunately, Ana had her purse snatched and soon we were running and screaming down the narrow tiled streets of Barcelona after the purse snatcher. Nicky pursued him the longest, but was still unable to find him. So, that put a rather dour mood on the evening. I found it a bit ironic that Ana was the only Spanish native in the group and hers was the purse that was taken. So, Nicky called the credit card company and whatnot to cancel Ana's cards and then we went and met up with the others, now at closing time at the last bar and Ana and her friend decided to join the others at an after hours bar, while Nicky, Susan and I decided to call it a night.


After our late night of drinking, we had a slow start to our Sunday. Susan and I decided to go tour the Casa Batllo, another architectural wonder by Gaudi. This one was a private mansion and again displayed Gaudi's incorporation of light, air and designs taken from nature. It was well worth the hefty entrance fee (I think it was 16 Euros each?) and was quite beautiful. Afterwards, we joined Nicky for lunch and then we borrowed her neighbor's bike and utilized one of the ample city-provided bikes (which can be used by residents with a rental card) to ride around the city and along the coast. Still feeling a bit hungover, we spent a quiet evening at Nicky's flat and watched a few episodes of "Bro'Town", a popular cartoon about Islander and Mauri kids in Auckland, NZ (somewhat like the Cosby Kids) that Nicky had on DVD and then we packed and got ready to leave for Liverpool in the morning.

Here are the rest of our photos from the weekend in Barcelona:
http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/Barcelona2007

Photos from the Lake District - Part 2

Now for some "real" photos from the Lake District. From the weekend on which we actually went hiking. The fall leaves were just coming into full color and we even had one sunny day! Saturday was a bit moist and we got quite wet by the end, so mountains and hills were in the clouds, but Sunday was lovely.

Thankfully, we did NOT get locked out of our youth hostel, although we nearly did. On Saturday night, we decided to go to a late movie (we saw "Control" about Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division) in the nearby town and didn't realize there was a CURFEW at which time they LOCKED the doors of the hostel. We pounded and screamed at the door, to no avail. Luckily, I had the Youth Hostel phone number programmed into my cell phone and someone actually answered the phone at around midnight when we called! They contacted the person with the key to let us in (who was just next door, looked half asleep and not very happy, unfortunately). We were quite grateful because it was very wet, cold and windy that night...

Anyway, we had a couple of nice day hikes amongst the Herdwick sheep and saw some fantastic views on Sunday from the hilltops. Here are here are the photos we took of our hikes around the Langdale region.

http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/HikingInLakeDistrict