Between my digital SLR and point-and-shoot cameras, I managed to take almost 5 gigabytes worth of photos and movies. And to think that I initially thought that a 4 Gb memory card for the SLR was overkill! HA!!!
I downloaded all the photos the day after I arrived home (a necessity since I couldn't take any more photos unless I did) and started to process them this past weekend (auto-levelling, rotating, cropping, re-sizing). It's taken me about 2 hours to go through all of my Melbourne photos... but that was only 70 or so photos. In some locations in Australia, I took in excess of 200 photos. This is clearly going to take a while, so don't hold your breath for photo CDs or city-specific blog entries any time soon.
In the meantime, I present to you my completely random and mostly useless primer to Australia, thoughtfully alphabetized for your convenience. I may add a few photos later.
American businesses
There are an astonishing number of American businesses in Australia, one of which doesn't even operate in Canada yet (Target). I even saw Krispy Kreme outlets in the Sydney airport! Oddly enough, Burger King is known as Hungry Jack's in Australia because the name was already trademarked by a takeaway shop and the Old Navy/Gap/Banana Republic conglomerate hasn't made its way to Australia yet.
Beer
Australia beer is remarkably tasteless. I tried a so-called premium lager from Cascade Brewery, and as my dad put it, it was more watery than Labatt Light. I recommend sticking to wine or mixed drinks if you would like to consume an alcoholic beverage, but if you must absolutely have a beer, I'd go with Victoria Bitter, which approximates a microbrew ale.
Coins
In Canada and the U.S., the size of the coin is approximately proportional to its worth. Not so in Australia - the 50 cent coin is the biggest, while the $2 coin is just slightly bigger than the 5 cent coin, but still smaller than the $1 coin. Also, pennies have been phased out, so there is no point in a store listing a product at $29.99, but apparently some of them still follow that practice.
Dollar bills
Australia paper money is made of plastic, not paper, which apparently is very good at discouraging counterfeiters. It's colour coded, like Canadian and European Union money. And because everything is so godawful expensive in Australia, the ATMs will spit out two $50 bills (rather than five $20 bills that is the norm in North America) when you take out $100.
Expensive
Because Australia is an island, everything is expensive: up to double or triple what the cost would be in North America. Even foodstuffs grown in Australia or items manufactured there are not cheap, because gas prices are exhorbitant, so moving cargo around Australia costs dearly and translates into higher initial retail prices.
Footy
Australian Rules Football, popularly abbreviated to footy, is one of the strangest team sports I have ever seen. Players have to touch the ball to the ground once every 15 metres (which is usually accomplished by bouncing it off the ground), pass by punching the ball (which isn't round) and score by kicking the ball between two goal posts (which are set rather far apart). And when the ball hits the ground, there is a rather undignified mad scramble for the ball. Footy requires such a bizarre hodgepodge of physical skills that I don't quite understand how it caught on.
G'day mate
Yes, Australians really greet each other this way. I would have been disappointed if no one had said it to me.
Hook turns
If you are driving in Melbourne's downtown (which they call the Central Business District or CBD for short) and wanted to make a right-hand turn, you are required to pull into the left most lane and make a hook turn across 4 lanes of traffic: (1) cars going in the same direction as you, (2) trams going in the same direction as you, (3) trams going in the opposite direction to you and (4) cars going in the opposite direction to you. This setup supposedly prevents cars making right-hand turns from blocking the cars and trams going straight through the intersection, but I was really surprised that I didn't see accidents happening all the time. If I had to drive in the Melbourne CBD, I would just keep turning left until I managed to get to my destination rather than make a hook turn.
Immigration
You have to pass through immigration when you enter Australia - no surprise there. But you also have to pass through immigration when you leave Australia, so I have an entry and an exit stamp in my passport. One of the immigration officers that I dealt with pretended to be surprised that I spent so much time in Tasmania (which is often left off maps of Australia).
Jackman, Hugh
While I was in Australia, there were posters everywhere for the return of The Boy From Oz, a musical in which Hugh Jackman plays the title character (Peter Allen, an Australian singer/songwriter). It's amazing how much he can change his overall appearance, because in the the photos from the musical that I've seen, Jackman is the polar opposite of Wolverine. And he looks completely different yet again in Scoop, The Fountain and The Prestige. In case there was doubt in anyone's mind, I infinitely prefer Jackman as Wolverine. The female attraction to dangerous boys, I would presume...
[Bonus 'J' entry: Why are some bosses such jackasses???]
Kangaroos
We saw what we thought were kangaroos, but apparently they might have been wallabies. In any case, there are road signs that warn drivers that their cars might hit kangaroos. The animals are considered something of a pest, so thousands are killed each year and you can find change purses in souvenir shops made from kangaroo scrotums. I'm now sorry that I didn't get one.
Left hand side
It took me a while to get used to walking on the left hand side of the sidewalk and looking for oncoming traffic on my right hand side first, and to stop wanting to scream that the car was turning into the wrong lane. So of course when I got back to Portland, I was always running into people on sidewalks and in danger of getting run over by cars because I checked the wrong direction first.
Metric
I've been the U.S. for 3 years, and have not bothered to learn the Fahrenheit scale because I think that it's a stupid, outdated system. There's a postdoc in the lab who likes to tell the weather forecast to the rest of us, and I always make him give me temperatures in Celsius. Anyways, it was nice to be in a country that uses the metric system (temperatures were given in Celsius, distances in metre or kilometres and speed limits in km/hour).
Needles
Many public toilets in Australia had "community sharps" disposal bins where drug users could drop off used needles. I've travelled to some really liberal cities (Amsterdam, Vancouver) and I don't recall ever seeing such widespread disposal facilities for used needles. Kudos to the Australian public health boards.
Opals
Opals are my favourite gemstone, bar none. I dream of the day when I can afford a huge hunk of fiery black opal (and I'll likely dream about it for the rest of my life, given the prices for top quality black opal). Needless to say, I visited many opal shops while in Australia, nearly every single one that I came across (and believe me, there are a lot in Australia) and bought one freeform piece of solid white opal (which I'll have Kythryne from Wearable Sculpture make into a pendant) and three boulder opal pendants. And dammit, I should have bought more - where else can I examine opal before I buy it and pay (relatively) little for it? ::kicks self::
Picasso
Lynn and I went to the Picasso exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Although it could have been more tightly edited to present a more coherent story, it was fascinating to see how a famous work like Guernica evolved and took shape.
Quarantine
Every person entering Australia has to watch a movie featuring Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, on the country's quarantine rules and pass through a very rigorous inspection. It's actually better to overdeclare, because the lines for people who claim to have nothing to declare are longer and it seemed like their luggage was automatically x-rayed. In contrast, I declared all my prescription meds, Gatorade (because it is food, sort of) and even the soil on my shoes, and I breezed through Quarantine.
Rain
During the winter, it rains a lot in Australia, especially in Tasmania, so bring an umbrella if you're walking about the cities, and waterproof clothing and shoes if you're hiking around the parks. And pack hats and gloves and other bits of winter clothing if you plan to travel extensively through Tasmania - it's closer to Antarctica than the rest of Australia, so it get correspondingly colder in the winter.
Snorkelling
Snorkelling is a fantastic way to explore the Great Barrier Reef, which is the first Natural Wonder of the World that I've been to. In the shallower inner reef, snorkelling is actually better than scuba diving and has the added bonus of being considerably cheaper, but I would recommend buying or bringing your own mask and snorkel because (1) they're not very expensive, (2) the mask will fit better and not leak so much and (3) it's kind of gross to use communal snorkels.
Tim Tams
In their original incarnation, Tim Tams are a chocolate-coated pair of biscuits sandwiching chocolate cream. I was introduced to them when Lynn brought a package to Vancouver, and while they are pretty tasty, I didn't go crazy for them because of lactose intolerance issues (it's hard to get excited over chocolate when you have to take Lactaid every time you eat it). However, I knew that my labmates would love them, so I brought back three packages for them. Apparently, it wasn't enough because all three packages were completely consumed within four hours, and not just by labmates - a certain someone became hysterical when I told her that I brought in Tim Tams and called her daughter to come in and eat them. This person also asked me if I'd done the Tim Tam Slam. I didn't know what it was at the time (it sounded sort of x-rated to me), but now that I know what it is, it seems to be a waste of a perfectly good Tim Tam and cup of tea.
Ultraviolet
I met an American dematology resident in Cairns who had chosen to do a 2 month rotation in Australia because the levels of skin cancers are higher than anywhere else in the world. I didn't tell him that I hadn't put on sunscreen that morning.
[Bonus 'U' entry: Why isn't there a 'U' in Qantas? (Or Qiagen, for that matter, but I digress.) Anyways, Qantas has the most comfortable seats of any airline I've been on and serves tasty snacks even on a 1 hour flight from Sydney to Melbourne. They are unfortunately rather expensive, but if I can afford to fly Qantas to Australia the next time I visit, I definitely will.]
Virgin Blue
Virgin Blue is an Australian regional budget airline that is part of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin empire. The flights are generally quite cheap and are on-time 95% of the time, but the airline has ridiculously low carry-on weight limits and charges the equivalent of several body parts for food and drink on board. Also, the ground crew turn over the planes so quickly between flights that they don't always replace the Voyeur magazine, which is annoying if you're trying to solve the Sukoku puzzle in the back of the magazine and someone has already filled it in.
Washrooms
Public washrooms are everywhere in Australia (and catalogued in the National Toilet Map), and they're surprisingly clean. Some even give you disinfectant for the toilet seat, which is vastly more effective than the paper seat covers that you get in American washrooms. The toilets have half-flush/full-flush options depending on well, how much you've filled the toilet bowl. Alas, I was unable to observe the Coriolis effect because Australia toilets use too little water, and because it's apparently a myth (at least when it comes to toilet bowl flushes).
Xenophobia
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of deep-seated racism (and sexism and homophobia as well) in Australia. Although I never experienced any overt racism at the level directed at Lynn, there were a few suspicious incidents in which my travelling group wasn't treated as well as other Anglo-Saxon customers.
Yarra
Yarra is the name of the river that cuts through Melbourne. Many tourist sites are located in close proximity to the Yarra River, including Federation Square, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Southbank shopping mall, whose management thinks is a target for terrorists and has therefore banned photography of the building. ::roll eyes:: The only reasonable response to this unjustified paranoia, of course, is to take photos of the building. Yarra is also the name given to the city's public tram system, which runs frequently and efficiently and gives very generous travel time allowances (activate a MetCard after 5 pm and it's valid until 2 am).
Zoom lenses
I took two zoom lenses for my SLR to Australia because of the 35 mm to digital SLR conversion factor (I needed both lenses to cover a focal length range of 32 mm to about 168 mm), but dammit, they were heavy. Next time I go on a big trip like that, I am springing for the EF-S 17-85 mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens (which has Image Stabilization! I didn't know that) and will just have to give up the 15 mm on the telephoto end (which is not as useful as you might think because I really need to use a tripod with those focal lengths for sharper pictures).
And that constitutes my very brief introduction to my Australia trip. Many thanks to my parents for their excellent company and paying for the vast majority of my travelling expenses, Lynn and Mark for letting me stay with them in Melbourne, my uncle Tergsten Wang for driving all over Tasmania, my aunt Kim for her amusing banter and affection for fish and chips and my uncle Kim Wong and his family for taking us around Sydney. More posts on the Australia trip to follow, of course, just really slowly.
I downloaded all the photos the day after I arrived home (a necessity since I couldn't take any more photos unless I did) and started to process them this past weekend (auto-levelling, rotating, cropping, re-sizing). It's taken me about 2 hours to go through all of my Melbourne photos... but that was only 70 or so photos. In some locations in Australia, I took in excess of 200 photos. This is clearly going to take a while, so don't hold your breath for photo CDs or city-specific blog entries any time soon.
In the meantime, I present to you my completely random and mostly useless primer to Australia, thoughtfully alphabetized for your convenience. I may add a few photos later.
American businesses
There are an astonishing number of American businesses in Australia, one of which doesn't even operate in Canada yet (Target). I even saw Krispy Kreme outlets in the Sydney airport! Oddly enough, Burger King is known as Hungry Jack's in Australia because the name was already trademarked by a takeaway shop and the Old Navy/Gap/Banana Republic conglomerate hasn't made its way to Australia yet.
Beer
Australia beer is remarkably tasteless. I tried a so-called premium lager from Cascade Brewery, and as my dad put it, it was more watery than Labatt Light. I recommend sticking to wine or mixed drinks if you would like to consume an alcoholic beverage, but if you must absolutely have a beer, I'd go with Victoria Bitter, which approximates a microbrew ale.
Coins
In Canada and the U.S., the size of the coin is approximately proportional to its worth. Not so in Australia - the 50 cent coin is the biggest, while the $2 coin is just slightly bigger than the 5 cent coin, but still smaller than the $1 coin. Also, pennies have been phased out, so there is no point in a store listing a product at $29.99, but apparently some of them still follow that practice.
Dollar bills
Australia paper money is made of plastic, not paper, which apparently is very good at discouraging counterfeiters. It's colour coded, like Canadian and European Union money. And because everything is so godawful expensive in Australia, the ATMs will spit out two $50 bills (rather than five $20 bills that is the norm in North America) when you take out $100.
Expensive
Because Australia is an island, everything is expensive: up to double or triple what the cost would be in North America. Even foodstuffs grown in Australia or items manufactured there are not cheap, because gas prices are exhorbitant, so moving cargo around Australia costs dearly and translates into higher initial retail prices.
Footy
Australian Rules Football, popularly abbreviated to footy, is one of the strangest team sports I have ever seen. Players have to touch the ball to the ground once every 15 metres (which is usually accomplished by bouncing it off the ground), pass by punching the ball (which isn't round) and score by kicking the ball between two goal posts (which are set rather far apart). And when the ball hits the ground, there is a rather undignified mad scramble for the ball. Footy requires such a bizarre hodgepodge of physical skills that I don't quite understand how it caught on.
G'day mate
Yes, Australians really greet each other this way. I would have been disappointed if no one had said it to me.
Hook turns
If you are driving in Melbourne's downtown (which they call the Central Business District or CBD for short) and wanted to make a right-hand turn, you are required to pull into the left most lane and make a hook turn across 4 lanes of traffic: (1) cars going in the same direction as you, (2) trams going in the same direction as you, (3) trams going in the opposite direction to you and (4) cars going in the opposite direction to you. This setup supposedly prevents cars making right-hand turns from blocking the cars and trams going straight through the intersection, but I was really surprised that I didn't see accidents happening all the time. If I had to drive in the Melbourne CBD, I would just keep turning left until I managed to get to my destination rather than make a hook turn.
Immigration
You have to pass through immigration when you enter Australia - no surprise there. But you also have to pass through immigration when you leave Australia, so I have an entry and an exit stamp in my passport. One of the immigration officers that I dealt with pretended to be surprised that I spent so much time in Tasmania (which is often left off maps of Australia).
Jackman, Hugh
While I was in Australia, there were posters everywhere for the return of The Boy From Oz, a musical in which Hugh Jackman plays the title character (Peter Allen, an Australian singer/songwriter). It's amazing how much he can change his overall appearance, because in the the photos from the musical that I've seen, Jackman is the polar opposite of Wolverine. And he looks completely different yet again in Scoop, The Fountain and The Prestige. In case there was doubt in anyone's mind, I infinitely prefer Jackman as Wolverine. The female attraction to dangerous boys, I would presume...
[Bonus 'J' entry: Why are some bosses such jackasses???]
Kangaroos
We saw what we thought were kangaroos, but apparently they might have been wallabies. In any case, there are road signs that warn drivers that their cars might hit kangaroos. The animals are considered something of a pest, so thousands are killed each year and you can find change purses in souvenir shops made from kangaroo scrotums. I'm now sorry that I didn't get one.
Left hand side
It took me a while to get used to walking on the left hand side of the sidewalk and looking for oncoming traffic on my right hand side first, and to stop wanting to scream that the car was turning into the wrong lane. So of course when I got back to Portland, I was always running into people on sidewalks and in danger of getting run over by cars because I checked the wrong direction first.
Metric
I've been the U.S. for 3 years, and have not bothered to learn the Fahrenheit scale because I think that it's a stupid, outdated system. There's a postdoc in the lab who likes to tell the weather forecast to the rest of us, and I always make him give me temperatures in Celsius. Anyways, it was nice to be in a country that uses the metric system (temperatures were given in Celsius, distances in metre or kilometres and speed limits in km/hour).
Needles
Many public toilets in Australia had "community sharps" disposal bins where drug users could drop off used needles. I've travelled to some really liberal cities (Amsterdam, Vancouver) and I don't recall ever seeing such widespread disposal facilities for used needles. Kudos to the Australian public health boards.
Opals
Opals are my favourite gemstone, bar none. I dream of the day when I can afford a huge hunk of fiery black opal (and I'll likely dream about it for the rest of my life, given the prices for top quality black opal). Needless to say, I visited many opal shops while in Australia, nearly every single one that I came across (and believe me, there are a lot in Australia) and bought one freeform piece of solid white opal (which I'll have Kythryne from Wearable Sculpture make into a pendant) and three boulder opal pendants. And dammit, I should have bought more - where else can I examine opal before I buy it and pay (relatively) little for it? ::kicks self::
Picasso
Lynn and I went to the Picasso exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Although it could have been more tightly edited to present a more coherent story, it was fascinating to see how a famous work like Guernica evolved and took shape.
Quarantine
Every person entering Australia has to watch a movie featuring Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, on the country's quarantine rules and pass through a very rigorous inspection. It's actually better to overdeclare, because the lines for people who claim to have nothing to declare are longer and it seemed like their luggage was automatically x-rayed. In contrast, I declared all my prescription meds, Gatorade (because it is food, sort of) and even the soil on my shoes, and I breezed through Quarantine.
Rain
During the winter, it rains a lot in Australia, especially in Tasmania, so bring an umbrella if you're walking about the cities, and waterproof clothing and shoes if you're hiking around the parks. And pack hats and gloves and other bits of winter clothing if you plan to travel extensively through Tasmania - it's closer to Antarctica than the rest of Australia, so it get correspondingly colder in the winter.
Snorkelling
Snorkelling is a fantastic way to explore the Great Barrier Reef, which is the first Natural Wonder of the World that I've been to. In the shallower inner reef, snorkelling is actually better than scuba diving and has the added bonus of being considerably cheaper, but I would recommend buying or bringing your own mask and snorkel because (1) they're not very expensive, (2) the mask will fit better and not leak so much and (3) it's kind of gross to use communal snorkels.
Tim Tams
In their original incarnation, Tim Tams are a chocolate-coated pair of biscuits sandwiching chocolate cream. I was introduced to them when Lynn brought a package to Vancouver, and while they are pretty tasty, I didn't go crazy for them because of lactose intolerance issues (it's hard to get excited over chocolate when you have to take Lactaid every time you eat it). However, I knew that my labmates would love them, so I brought back three packages for them. Apparently, it wasn't enough because all three packages were completely consumed within four hours, and not just by labmates - a certain someone became hysterical when I told her that I brought in Tim Tams and called her daughter to come in and eat them. This person also asked me if I'd done the Tim Tam Slam. I didn't know what it was at the time (it sounded sort of x-rated to me), but now that I know what it is, it seems to be a waste of a perfectly good Tim Tam and cup of tea.
Ultraviolet
I met an American dematology resident in Cairns who had chosen to do a 2 month rotation in Australia because the levels of skin cancers are higher than anywhere else in the world. I didn't tell him that I hadn't put on sunscreen that morning.
[Bonus 'U' entry: Why isn't there a 'U' in Qantas? (Or Qiagen, for that matter, but I digress.) Anyways, Qantas has the most comfortable seats of any airline I've been on and serves tasty snacks even on a 1 hour flight from Sydney to Melbourne. They are unfortunately rather expensive, but if I can afford to fly Qantas to Australia the next time I visit, I definitely will.]
Virgin Blue
Virgin Blue is an Australian regional budget airline that is part of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin empire. The flights are generally quite cheap and are on-time 95% of the time, but the airline has ridiculously low carry-on weight limits and charges the equivalent of several body parts for food and drink on board. Also, the ground crew turn over the planes so quickly between flights that they don't always replace the Voyeur magazine, which is annoying if you're trying to solve the Sukoku puzzle in the back of the magazine and someone has already filled it in.
Washrooms
Public washrooms are everywhere in Australia (and catalogued in the National Toilet Map), and they're surprisingly clean. Some even give you disinfectant for the toilet seat, which is vastly more effective than the paper seat covers that you get in American washrooms. The toilets have half-flush/full-flush options depending on well, how much you've filled the toilet bowl. Alas, I was unable to observe the Coriolis effect because Australia toilets use too little water, and because it's apparently a myth (at least when it comes to toilet bowl flushes).
Xenophobia
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of deep-seated racism (and sexism and homophobia as well) in Australia. Although I never experienced any overt racism at the level directed at Lynn, there were a few suspicious incidents in which my travelling group wasn't treated as well as other Anglo-Saxon customers.
Yarra
Yarra is the name of the river that cuts through Melbourne. Many tourist sites are located in close proximity to the Yarra River, including Federation Square, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Southbank shopping mall, whose management thinks is a target for terrorists and has therefore banned photography of the building. ::roll eyes:: The only reasonable response to this unjustified paranoia, of course, is to take photos of the building. Yarra is also the name given to the city's public tram system, which runs frequently and efficiently and gives very generous travel time allowances (activate a MetCard after 5 pm and it's valid until 2 am).
Zoom lenses
I took two zoom lenses for my SLR to Australia because of the 35 mm to digital SLR conversion factor (I needed both lenses to cover a focal length range of 32 mm to about 168 mm), but dammit, they were heavy. Next time I go on a big trip like that, I am springing for the EF-S 17-85 mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens (which has Image Stabilization! I didn't know that) and will just have to give up the 15 mm on the telephoto end (which is not as useful as you might think because I really need to use a tripod with those focal lengths for sharper pictures).
And that constitutes my very brief introduction to my Australia trip. Many thanks to my parents for their excellent company and paying for the vast majority of my travelling expenses, Lynn and Mark for letting me stay with them in Melbourne, my uncle Tergsten Wang for driving all over Tasmania, my aunt Kim for her amusing banter and affection for fish and chips and my uncle Kim Wong and his family for taking us around Sydney. More posts on the Australia trip to follow, of course, just really slowly.
4 comments:
shyte - that was a good laugh. nice work on the alphabet.
and really, that was a great version of australia.
and i suspect us going to sleep at 8 or 9 pm did not do wonders for your picture taking.
The reason 'Qantas' doesn't have a U in it is because it's an acronym. It stands for
Queensland And Northern Territory Air Service.
Ah. That makes sense now. Thanks so much for the explanation!
indeed, excellent summary. what about J?
can't wait to see those photos.
indeed, excellent summary. what about J?
Oops. My omission has been fixed, with my profuse apologies to the letter 'J'.
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