Australian Zoos

I've been meaning to post this for a while but I just haven't, okay.  So pretend I posted it like 3 weeks ago.

Right before I left for Australia I bought the most recent album of Compton based rapper Kendrick Lamar entitled "good kid, m.A.A.d. City".  I have listened through it several times while here and have grown to enjoy it.  Although Kendrick Lamar's music is often construed to promote Hedonistic tendencies, his music actually touches on much darker topics such as alcoholism, drug abuse, peer pressure, and gang violence.  Now I know it doesn't really make sense for a 21 year white kid from Upstate New York to garner meaning from someone who grew up in the Southern Californian city known for its gangs and violence, but I suppose the quality of an artist is measured by their ability to relay a message.

Grandma, don't listen to this

I can't really say much about gang violence in Ithaca but alcohol and peer pressure you will certainly find in nearly every college town.  And if D.A.R.E. taught me anything, these are the things that pose the biggest threat to my success in life.  Actually that was the purpose of D.A.R.E.  And I was awesome at it.  But the drinking age in the US is 21 and generally college begins when you're 18.  So as if there was an attempt to create the perfect storm of peer pressure, they made college students wait three years before they could legally drink in a culture that revolves around partying.  But coming to Brisbane where the drinking age is 18 it's a completely different culture.  Drinking is less of a taboo.  It's not something you need to do in the privacy of a Frat Party.

Anyway, this past weekend was Slope Day at Cornell.  For those who aren't familiar with Slope Day it's the last day of classes for the students and the school commemorates it by throwing a big concert on Libe Slope, Cornell's dominating geographical feature.  Basically all of the students skip their classes (unless they have a lab) and start drinking at 8 in the morning and then proceed to continue drinking throughout day.  This year Cornell brought aforementioned Kendrick Lamar to headline the show.  I was disappointed to hear that the only year they bring in a musician I liked for Slope Day I happen to be in Australia.  But I can't complain, I'm in Australia.  So while my Cornellian counterparts drunkenly sang along to songs that scrutinizes alcoholism I had my own celebration Down Undah.

IN THE WILD

I went to the Zoo.  And I know what you're thinking, "ART!  You've already been to the Zoo!"  Correct, but this isn't just ANY zoo.  And I know what you'ver thinking, "ART!  You said that about the last Zoo!"  I know, Australia is really good at Zoo......ing.   I went to the Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast, known for being the Zoo of the late Australian legend Steve Irwin.  This experience was unique as well in that I went with my third cousins (I looked it up): Tegan, Jack, and Chelsea.  I met up with Chelsea, Tegan, and Shan (Chelsea's boyfriend) to go see a rugby league game the night before and then drove up and stayed the night on the Sunshine Coast.  Just a side note on the game: it was Brisbane Broncos vs. South Sydney Rabbitohs.  The Rabbitohs won the game handly but more importantly the Rabbitohs are owned by actor Russell Crowe who is probably best known as lead singer of the Adult contemporary band "30 Odd Foot of Grunts".
Anyway, this was the first time I had met up with the Australian Benettis since I first arrived in Brisbane over three months ago.  It was good to be back at the Williams' household.  The chaos of the family is so consistent you have to question whether the family finds more comfort with the notion that their lives are always moving or that their lives will never stop moving.  Did that make sense?  I guess it doesn't matter.  Since I had been there they had installed a new fireplace (which even they acknowledge gets very little use) and put up a mural of a side street in Melbourne which was so large that no matter where you stood in the room it looked like you were standing in the center of the street.  Cathy told me some of Colin's plans for future renovations of the house and although Colin is the most soft spoken of the family members it's probably his restlessness in stasis that keeps the family in the postive motion.

Okay, back on track.  After a morning of me privately doubting we would ever get to the Zoo, we got to the Zoo at around twelve.  My general approach to Zoos is to walk around aimlessly until I'm convinced that I've seen everything in the park even if it's not worth seeing.  Tegan, Jack, and Chelsea took the more level headed approach of getting a map and noting which demonstrations we should see.  Australia Zoo is awesome.  It's more of a traditional Zoo than the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary because it had animals from all over the world rather than from just Australia.  There was also more of a focus on Crocodiles for obvious reasons.  It's also enormous and still expanding.

Gleam of sunscreen on my forhead and a hat that no young Australian wears.  Living the dream.

*sigh*......crikey

This is what happens when nobody tells you to wash behind the ears.

Tiger.  Possibly named Tony.  Don't ask what is on the window.

The Australia Zoo is a pretty impressive experience.  It offered a lot of demonstrations and opportunities to interact with animals which I think is somewhat rare for American Zoos.

Cassowary.  Like everything else in Australia these birds are dangerous with a history of attacking humans.

I'd like to make a note on the birds of Australia.  There is a reason why the word bird rhymes with turd.  They have zero respect.  Honestly, the only trouble I've had with wildlife in Australia has been with birds.  The other week at school an Ibis flew into my face.  I was just walking and got hit in the face by an enormous bird like it was trying to lord its ability to fly over me or something.  Then not two days later I was eating in an outdoor cafe, got up to get a fork, and when I came back there were pidgeons eating my food.  Like a lot of pidgeons.  And then even after I had started eating (yes I got new food) the pidgeons kept flying onto the table I was eating at.  I only bring this up now because at the tropical bird enclosure a bird flew into Tegan's hair and Jack told me I should put it into the blog because he thought it was funny.

The Crocoseum.  We forwent seeing a demonstration here to hand feed the elephants.  Still cool to see though.

Tegan feeding a Kangaroo

Chelsea feeding a Kangaroo.

IT'S THE CIRCLLLLLLLE, THE CIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIIIIIFE!!!!!  Those rocks probably aren't real. 

From a distance it's difficult to tell what these are but on closer inspection you can see that they are striped horses and  a couple of backhoes painted with spots.

Cousins

Cousins and giraffes.

This picture does not give justice to the size of the Rhino.  The zookeeper told us that the Rhino is really just a big baby and that they had to shoo away the Zebra that kept trying to eat the Rhino's food, which can be seen in the background.

Kousins and Koals (Chelsea, Tegan, Jack)

Supposedly this is a model of an actual crocodile.

IN DA CLUB

When evening came the Williams (kids) invited me to "go out" with them.  I guess it's not surprising that reserved old me has never hit the clubs but this was a new experience for me.  This was me entering the wild.  One of my goals for this study abroad trip was to step out of my comfort zone and since I had spent the morning doing something I was completely comfortable with it's important that I counter it was something I'm not comfortable with.  And if the city on a Saturday night is my wilderness I guess the Williams clan is my Safari leader.  I probably wouldn't have done something like this if I wasn't comfortable with them.

The first hurdle encountered in the expedition out was the realization that I had inadequate footwear.  I suppose that'd be the same for a Safari but that's beside the point.  I only have two pairs of shoes in Australia (and not in Australia): a sweet pair of Onizuka Tigers as seen in the above picture, and a pair of running shoes.  Neither are allowed in clubs because apparently people who wear sneakers like to start fights and people who wear running shoes just don't have a sense of fashion.  Despite by suggestion to just cover my shoes in duct tape Jack set out to get a proper pair for me.  After trying to fit my clown feet into a number of Jack's shoes, he called Ben (the older of the two Williams boys) who was still at home and told him to bring a pair of Colin's shoes.  Oh and a side thing that is really funny about the Williams...es is that they always party together.  I suppose this is something more common in Australia than it would be in the U.S. because if you start drinking at 18 rather than 21 you are more likely to be drinking with your family.  Anyway, I was set to wear the shoes of a man from my father's generation because they had more aesthetic appeal than any footwear I own in the world.

Now any respectable night out is preceded by a period of getting ready which for girls is a labor intensive process of choosing an outfit, putting on makeup, and getting hair perfect while for boys it's just drinking beer.  My theory is that this 3 to 4 hours of prep time is the real reason people go out because it's the time you get to connect with friends, talk, and listen music you want to listen to.  Before Tegan's friends and Ben arrived, who would be joining us on the night out, me and Jack sat out on the balcony and talked.  In my previous blog I mentioned how Jack was something of a clown, which apparently the rest of his family didn't let him live down and I still stand by, but while talking I got to see some of the non-clown side of Jack.  Jack works construction management for his Dad's company and he discussed how the job requires him to meld both creativity and practicality.  Construction management is often seen as a job meant to bring engineers and architects back down to Earth but we probably don't see how much creative thinking goes into the job.  My Uncle John also works in construction management yet my Aunt Eileen always describes him as the artist of the family.  It's a job where you're required to know how to construct something and I think an artist is only limited by their ability to synthesize, so why leave all of the imagining to the architect or engineer who likely seriously lack some building capabilities?  Jack talked about how architects tend to come up with weird and fantastic and cool designs that are completely impractical.  To make something that's impractical work can require a lot of innovation.  We also talked about the usual stuff: music, travel, culture.  The regular "pre- hitting the clubs" topics.  It's funny that this is where I saw Jack to be the most serious.

Once Tegan's friends arrived, which was a troup of about 5 very friendly Australian girls and one goofy American who was one of the girl's boyfriend, as well as Ben and his girlfriend, there was another round of talking, taking pictures, and you guessed it, drinking.  It was nice to hear the conversations bouncing around the room.  Ben was talking to everyone he could about his racing car.  I had gone with him on a white-knuckle test ride earlier in the day.  Suffice to say, the car moved...fast.  It was obvious he was proud of it.

Now the two Williams girls, Tegan and Chelsea, have been ever present in this narrative but I have yet to describe them.  Tegan, the older of the two, is probably the most adventurous of the Williams.  She is the only one who doesn't work for the family's company instead choosing a path in medical research.  She also recently spent 18 months in England working, a trip I view as taking a lot of guts to go off on.  Jack has expressed his awe at Tegan's ability to drink him under the table, an ability I saw the previous night at the rugby game when after several beers she was still able to outpace Chelsea, Shan, and I on the way to the train station.  So Tegan is hardcore.  And Chelsea is sweet.  Chelsea is the Williams child where characteristics of their mother shine through the most; generous, thoughtful, caring.  Despite being the yougest of the siblings she displayed the highest level of responsiblity, which corresponded with the highest level of apparent sobriety.  But that responsibility wasn't only seen during the night out but througout the day where she also drove us all around, bought us ice cream, and generally had a plan for what would happen next.  This isn't to say that Tegan wasn't thoughtful either.  They both made sure I was comfortable with the idea of going out, that I wasn't drinking anything I didn't want to drink, and that I was having fun.  Tegan reminded me often that they were glad that I went out with them and Chelsea made sure I didn't need anything.  That will always be appreciated.  I also had my first shot ever with the two Williams girls, which coincidently Tegan later admitted was the last thing she remembered from the night.  Well I remember, and I blogged the whole thing.

So FINALLY we were "going out".  The nightlife district of Brisbane is in a suburb called Fortitude Valley, and let me tell you, there is nothing fortifying about it.  The first bar we went to was an odd place that smelled distinctly of vomit and alcohol.  The floors were sticky which was weird because it was carpeted and I couldn't help but feel bad for Colin because now his shoes smelled like stale beer on the outside and my feet on the inside.  All of the walls were adorned with family photos which I thought was really odd and there was one guy playing pop songs on an electric-acoustic guitar with a swarm of people trying to dance.  It's hard to dance to an acoustic guitar.
After a bit we moved onto the next place which was a bit nicer.  Like too nice.  Like "Ohhh, this is why I can't wear running shoes" nice.  It was also packed to the point where you are compelled to raise your hands above your head and shout "NO TOUCHING!"  But I didn't.  It's hard to dance in a place where you can hardly move.
The final place we went to was a spot I had heard all of the Williams kids talk about, with descriptions ranging from "a dungeon" to "the diviest dive".  It was called the Bowler Bar and it lived up to the expectations.  It was the kind of place that James Bond would go to kill someone.  Or that bar where Neo meets Trinity in the Matrix.  Alas, I am not the One (or am I?), and I had no secret mission purpose for being there.

But it was good for dancing which, contrary to popular belief, I am terrible at.  But it's fun.  Dancing, aside from spending time with friends, would be the only thing about going out that appeals to me.  I think dancing is meant to be a brilliant display of courage, but a lot of the time it's reduced to some anonymous primal act.
The Bowler Bar played electric dance music, was basically a dungeon, and was very dark.  We were there for a while.  At about 1 AM I started thinking we'd be leaving soon.  I figured I could wait out everyone else.  At 1:30 I began worrying about my sleep cycle.  And at 2 I decide to just go home.  I told Tegan and Chelsea I was heading out.  Chelsea made sure I knew how to get home.  Before I left I asked her when they were planning on leaving.  She said they usually leave around 5.  Good thing I didn't wait them out.

So what am I trying to say about alcohol and peer pressure?  I don't know.  I'm not from Compton.  My life has been pretty vanilla.  And I'm sure most of my readers don't need me to impart wisdom on them about drinking responsibly and making their own choices (Grandma, if the ladies down at St. Francis Xavier are encouraging you to go vandalize the Methodist Church JUST SAY NO).  What I really took away from my night in the Fortitude Valley is that having good friends is what's important to a healthy social life.  And I know that may seem obivous but the magnitude of its importance may not be realized.  Good friends allow for a comfort in the choices you make, like going home before 5AM or not drinking too much.  Good friends allow for exciting conversation.  Good friends allow for exhuberant dancing.  Good friends allow for a feeling of belonging even if you're 12,000 miles away from your comfort zone.

It's A Small World (After All). Sort of.

There's a ride in Disneyland called "It's a Small World".  It features animatronic babies representing various nationalities singing a cheesy jingle in their respective tongues.  You have the Japanese babies and the English babies and the Scandanavian babies and the American babies and the Inuit babies all in a row singing a canon about how the world is not so large and that we are all one internationally united family.  It's more of scare than "The Haunted Mansion" but we go on it anyway because my Grandma loves it and it's a staple of Disneyland.  It's the kind of thing that was designed for children but really only registers in the minds of adults.  By having all of the babies sing the same jingle throughout, the ride is able to capture the common sentiment of peace held by human beings around the world, while still showing how massive the Earth is by making the ride 15 minutes long.  You will do terrible things to get out of the Los Angeles sun.
Anyway, this week I learned the meaning of the ride.  I saw how large and how small the world is.

Oh young me.  So much to learn about life.

I went to Cairns in Northern Queensland for a week.  Cairns is a hub for international tourism in Australia.  The city's close proximity to the Great Barrier Reef is the driving force behind the international draw, enabling many companies to thrive by offering sightseeing, snorkeling, and scuba diving.  The Great Barrier Reef is what drew me to Cairns.  Heck, it's what drew me to Australia.  When you grow up with a Marine Biologist for a father there will always an invisible force dragging you to the ocean.  Maybe it was the Whale Watching trips on Puget Sound or the weekend stays at Appledore Island off the coast of Maine, I've always wanted to go unda da sea.  So the Great Barrier Reef has always seemed something of a Mecca to me and although I'm Catholic I still wanted to go.

I signed up for a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) diving course with Deep Sea Divers Den.  I've taken a PADI Scuba diving course before at Cornell but I never got certified because the course didn't include an open water dive portion which is required for certification.  They used to offer the open water portion but they stopped doing it because of something about not wanting to jump into Cayuga Lake in the middle of April.  Makes sense.  So I decided to retake the course in beautiful, tropical Cairns.

I signed up for a 5 day dive course, which involved two days doing classroom and pool work to learn how to dive followed by three days living on a dive boat that stays out on the reef to get my certification.  There were three people in my group during the classroom and pool session: Prema and Ben, who would eventually join me on the liveaboard portion and I will discuss later; and Rachel, a very sweet native Australian who ended up doing her liveaboard later in the week.
Altogether the pool and classroom portion went without a hitch and I won't spend much time discussing it.  We'd generally be at the center from 9 to 4:30 with half the day devoted to classroom work and the other half devoted to pool work.  I could spend my evenings walking around Cairns, which was a very touristy town but also very pleasant.  Sounds like a vacation in and of itself.

Look, Simba.  Everything the light touches is our kingdom.

Now I want to preface this section by talking about the people who work at the Divers Den.  They are the some of the most charming people on the planet.  All of the girls call you "Love" and all of the guys call you "Mate".  They have the confidence one only gains from being as comfortable in the water as they are out, and the person-to-person skills of someone who deals with people learning a difficult skill day after day.  And deep down they all share a love of Marine wildlife, which I believe can make anybody a softy.

Luke, I am your father.

My Scuba instructor was a guy named Olly.  Olly is from the UK and sounds exactly like Jason Statham.  It seemed like he had been diving all over the world.  It is a very large world after all.  He had a nerd like passion for Biology and Physics and once perked up with excitement when he heard somebody mention Particle Physics.  I could always ask him questions about different dive locations and marine life and he could generally come up with an answer.  He was also an extremely experienced diver, having spent several years in Central America doing research.  However his most defining quality was his patience in helping us make the transition from classroom to pool to reef.  Olly was a good instructor.

So on the third day me, Prema, Ben and Olly got on a ship called SeaQuest that would take us out to Taka, which is the boat we would be doing the liveaborad on.  We were also joined by a fourth member to our open water certification group, a Japanese girl named Hannah.  SeaQuest is where we would do our first two open water dives before transferring to Taka.  It was also full of people doing day trips out to the reef, snorkelers, and other liveaboard members making their way out to sea.  It was a veritable hodgepodge of nationalities, personalities, and intentionalities, which makes sense; it's a big world after all.

Now I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, to tell you about my other open water team members.  First off, Ben.  Me and Ben are both from the US.  We're both from New York.  We're both from upstate.  Ben's from Albany and grew up about three hours from where I grew up.  He's studying abroad at Griffith on the Gold Coast about 2 hours from where I live now in Australia.  And we met in Cairns taking the same openwater dive course.  I guess it's a small world after all.  Now me and Ben aren't exactly peas in a pod.  He's into extreme sports: surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding.  I enjoy running because it allows me to eat whatever I want.  I would wake up at 6 so I could watch the sunrise.  Ben would wake up 5 minutes before the first dive and let the ocean be his alarm clock.  I guess you could say that Ben was seeking the ocean for the swell and I was seeking it for the calm.  This doesn't mean we didn't get along.  We were dive buddies throughout the trip.  We were both at the reef to learn something and to experience something.  And once you're underwater differences in personality and lifestyle don't really matter.  Ben would always suprise me with insights into his views on adventure, like how he felt other abroad students were wasting their time just going on tour buses from bar to bar, getting wasted.  He really wanted to experience Australia.

Prema, on the other hand, is from the UK.  She was travelling around the world before she started school.  She had this distinct English sweetness to her.  We bonded over our love of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and she would always help me with my crossword puzzles.  We discussed one of my favorite topics: accents; as well as the differences between the UK and the US.  I will never get tired of hearing about how someone from a different country perceives their own culture or my culture.  What impressed me most about Prema was her ability to make the best of a bad situation.  She struggled with pressure equalization, a big part of scuba diving, throughout the trip and it ended up decommissioning her for the entire second day.  Instead of moping, she started snorkeling in the shallower portions of the reef and ended up seeing a lot of animals me and Ben didn't get to see.  Like turtles.  Why didn't I get to see (sea) turtles?

Anyway, our first two dives took place in a part of the reef called Platetop.  The first time diving in the ocean is incredible and shocking.  The deepest depth you are allowed to dive at with a basic open water certification is 18 meters.  That may not seem like much but think about it for a second.  According to Google that's about 59 feet.  (Isn't Google great?  Have you guys tried Google Hangouts?)  Imagine 59 feet of water between you and the surface.  Like a 5 story building of water.  And the amount of life that surrounds you is incredible.  I saw more life in those first two dives than I'd probably see in a year at Cornell, granted engineers aren't known for their liveliness (ba dump cha).   I saw a bluespotted stingray settling into the sand for camouflage.  A small black tip reef shark swam by us while we were practicing our dive skills.  We saw Clownfish nestled in some anemones.   A Maori Wrasse, an enormous colorful fish that follows the boat from dive site to dive site that the dive instructors have named "Wally", playfully followed us around.  Olly claims that Wally must have been a dog in his past life because the instructors were able to pat Wally on the muzzle and he would become docile as a tired puppy.  The reef was vast.  Mountains of coral standing over 20 feet high.  Scores of fish I couldn't even name.  The world is pretty big place after all.

So that was my first two dives.

In the afternoon we transferred to Taka, the liveaboard vessel.  We didn't dive for the rest of the day but it was a good time just to relax and enjoy the ocean.  The boat itself had roughly four stories, with the bottom deck containing the passenger cabins, the first deck had the dive floor, the bathrooms, and common area where we ate, the second deck had crews' cabin, and the top deck being an open floor where they would store stuff and where the divers would hang out for the most part.  Aboard the ship you aren't allowed to wear shoes, cellphones didn't get reception, and there is nothing really to buy so you spend most of the three days just wearing swimsuits.  It's liberating.

View FROM Taka, not of Taka.

My roommate was a Torontonian named Robin.  He was doing his graduate work at the University of Queensland.  Robin had a lot of energy and talked a lot, which contrasted my generally silent nature.  He would talk to anybody about anything at anytime.  And everyone would hear him even if not everyone was listening.  We made good roommates.  I'm always happy to listen when somebody is willing to do my share of the talking.  And though it was easy to poke fun of his enthusiastic personality, it's refreshing to see someone with a zeal for life in an often sour world.  The Earth is too small for so much negativity...man.

In the evening was the first night dive.  Since Ben, Prema, and I weren't certified yet we weren't allowed to go on the night dive.  However, we were allowed to stick our heads in the shark infested waters just off the dive deck.  I'm not kidding when I say shark infested.  And I'm not kidding when I say stuck our heads in the water.  We literally put on our snorkels, laid down on the grate, and stared down at the sharks and Giant Trevallys.

Where I stuck my face.

I should mention that part of Ben's reason for coming to the reef was to overcome a fear of sharks.  Good way to do it.

 

Footage I took of the dive deck.

Artist's depiction of my shark encounter

After we pulled our heads from the water and the night divers came back they served us dessert and I talked with some of the other divers.  I met a nice couple named Steve and Sarah who were teachers in Brisbane.  Coincidentally, they got married in Buderim, which is the town where my Australian-Benetti family lives.  Steve and Sarah had the coolness that one can only get by being off duty teachers.  Patient enough to deal with kids all day and interesting enough to have vivid personal lives.  Steve and Sarah, I believe, had a taste for the extreme.  They tried to do a liveaboard at least once a year, both had been skydiving before, and Steve had even been bungee jumping.  And yet they both had that "teacher" coolness.  An almost indifference to cool.  You could even say that they're too cool for school.  I enjoyed talking to them throughout the trip and they offered me a place to stay anytime I was up north of Brisbane.  Steve said he had a rule where he tried to offer up his home to people because so many people had offered up their home to him.  I guess it's those people who make the world seem a little bit smaller.  A little bit more manageable.

Sunset

The next day we had 5 dives.  The first two dives were again guided by Olly at a location called Troppos and completed our certification.  After these two dives we were on our own.  Unfortuneatly, as stated earlier, Prema was having some difficulty equalizing during the morning dives and wasn't allowed to dive the rest of the day and Hannah joined a group of Japanese divers.  So me and Ben went off into the vast unknown by ourselves.  I have a terrible sense of direction.  I could get lost in my own hometown with a GPS.  Correction, I HAVE gotten lost in my hometown with a GPS.  If I recall correctly, which I probably don't, Ben's last words before we stepped off the boat were, "You lead, I'll follow" (this is before we learned the concept of planning a dive).  So imagine me navigating underwater with a visibility of only about 10 meters.  I was lost the second we hit the water.  Fortuneatly you don't have to go far to find life on the Great Barrier Reef.  Just keep swimming.

It's difficult to describe the sensation of diving on the Reef.  Here's my attempt: imagine you can fly, but only in slow motion, and everything around you is vibrant and beautiful, and everything you see you've never seen before, and you have to go to the bathroom but you don't because the dive instructors told you not to because they have to reuse the wetsuits and that would be gross.  That's what it's like to dive.

Sunrise.  Or is it the other way around?

In between dives all of the divers would generally congregate on the top deck to talk and tan (or burn in my case) with conversations ranging from politics, to school, to culture, to well...anything.  I guess that's the purpose of talking.

    There was a lovely blonde duo of divers, Beate and Karla, who were on the liveaboard before I arrived and were still there when I left.  They had only actually met on the boat, which was one of the interesting things about diving is that you could be thrown in with some random diving buddy and generally it worked out well.
     Beate is from Norway and is also studying at the University of Queensland (the current tally of UQers on the boat is three).  She had a curious Norwegian passion and was often the center of the more in depth conversations of science and politics.  She also wasn't afraid to speak her mind.  When a German diver came aboard later in the day, she claimed the Germans always sounded angry to which he fiercely replied in a thick German accent, "That's not true!".  Later on she wondered why there weren't more Scandanavians on board.  It's a pretty big world and Scandanavia is a rather small part of it.
     Karla on the other hand is from Northern California and is a student at USC, but is currently spending the semester in Sydney.  This is where the coincidences get really weird.  Her dad grew up in upstate New York, went to Cornell, moved to Sacramento, and now she goes to school in LA.  My dad grew up in LA, went to school in Sacramento, moved to upstate New York, teaches at Cornell, and now I go to Cornell.  And we met on the other side of the planet.  I guess it's a small world after all.  Naturally our conversations drifted towards our homes; Upstate New York and Northern California.  I've always harbored a fondness for Northern California; the forests and the cities, the lakes and the ocean, the mountains and the bays.  Eclectic and lovely, and I suppose that's the best way to describe Karla.  Both her and Ben are journalism majors so I'm sure they will both write great articles about the dive trip.  But hopefully there won't be too much media bias, AMIRITE? (I don't know much about journalism).

When evening fell it was time for my first night dive.  They wouldn't let us go on our first night dive by ourselves, which I'm thankful for, so we were led by Olly whose dives are characterized by a slow and meandering pace through the coral.  The group consisted of me, Ben, Robin, and the German guy whose name I forget but I think it was Irving.  Let's just call him Dr. J.  He doesn't really factor into this part of the story much.  The night dive was awesome and spooky.  Many animals become particularly active at night.  The Giant Trevallys would follow us around and basically use our flash lights to catch fish.  They would even bump into you as they swam past in enthusiastic pursuit.  There were also these small bait fish that were constantly running into you as you swam.  It felt like a bunch of underwater flies were trying to land on you.  During this dive I saw two Lionfish, one of which was a baby.  These fish are known for their extravagent appearance and dangerous venom.  The real highlight of this dive however was the ascent.   The lights from the boat turn the waters below the dive deck a tremendous glowing green.  And as you approach the boat the water begins to fill with life again.  And there you are sitting in an aquamarine aura with fish flying past you and sharks eyeing you and four other human beings just suspended in water.  But the water doesn't seem present.  Just suspended in space.  The fear you had for the animals that swarm you now has melted away because it's too warm on the reef.  And here I am writing like I think I'm an actual writer but really I just experienced something cool.  And that was my second day on the liveaboard.

On the third day Steve, the cool teacher from before, joined mine and Ben's group because Sarah wasn't feeling well.  This was a welcomed addition because he actually had a sense of direction and knew what to look at and what to look for and how to pace a dive.  Basically he was way better at scuba diving than we were.  And we saw way more because of it.  This dive was started by Matty, one of the dive instructors, Spartan kicking us off the boat.  Very cool start.  Steve navigated us through this maze of massive coral pillars and pointed out beautiful tiny sea slugs and enormous camouflaged giant clams.   At one point he swam up through this tight opening of coral and I thought to myself, "There's no way I can do that".  But then I did it and it was cool.  We ran into Beate and Karla who pointed out an octopus that was hiding in the rocks.  And we saw fish.  We saw big fish and small fish.  This was my favorite dive of the trip.  It was beautiful.
On our final dive we were joined up by Sarah and they led us on another wonderful dive.  This dive was marked by a Stonefish sighting, yet another extremely dangerous fish.  I would have never seen it if it wasn't for Steve and Sarah.  The Stonefish is basically the Lionfish's really ugly brother.  Because the Stonefish is so ugly it spends all of its time hiding in rocks while Lionfish is the life of the party and ends up going to prom with Unicorn Fish.  What I'm trying to say is that the Stonefish is well camouflaged.

And that's how diving on the Great Barrier Reef ended.  In the afternoon we packed our stuff back onto the SeaQuest for our return journey, said goodbye to the lovely blondes, and the talkative Torontonian, and Hannah our Japanese group member, and Dr. J, and Olly, and headed back to the mainland.  Me, Ben, Prema, Steve, and Sarah were able to score prime seats in the Captain's Cabin.  Ben and Prema slept while Steve, Sarah, and I chatted.  The boat arrived back in Cairns and the trip was over.

Prema

Ben

I will try to refrain myself from waxing poetic in my reflection of this adventure.  I won't pretend to know which experiences and which people will go on to shape my life, however I'm too young to allow myself to walk away from an experience like this and not feel like it has been influential on the way I see the world.  Some people on the boat probably just left feeling it was just another trip, just another day at work, and that's fine.  More than likely they've already been through the learning experiences I went through on the boat.  I'm just too darn young for some things not to be profound.  Like the realization of how lively the ocean floor is.  Or how massive the reef can be.  Or how interesting strangers can be.  Or how liberating disconnecting can be.  Or how small the world is (after all). 

Oh present me.  There's still so much you have to learn.

I give the Great Barrier Reef two thumbs way up.

Tired Of Being Alone

KOALA SANCTUARY

They say that before you get in a relationship with someone you should really get to know yourself.   On the TV show Parks and Recreations one character, Ann Perkins (portrayed by the lovely Rashida Jones), decides to date herself in an attempt to get to know herself.   This involves her doing things she wouldn't normally do, like skydiving and trying new foods.   Now this idea got me thinking: I should date Rashida Jones.  However, I currently live in Australia and the long distance thing might not work out, but I had another idea: while I'm on my own in Australia I should date myself.  Now me and myself have been going steady for about 21 years, but we've never really been on "date" date.  This solitude is a great chance for me to just spoil myself and do the things I want to do.   So I went to the zoo.

But not just any zoo.  I went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  Their website points out that it was ranked one of "Top 10 Zoos In The World" by AOL.  That's right, AOL.  Online powerhouse from the early 2000s.  I have an email account with AOL so I can sign up for stuff without getting spam in my real email account.  If candystand.com thinks I read their emails everyday, they have another thing coming.  I'm only registered for your site so I can get the highscore on mini golf, Candystand!  Aol joking aside this really was a cool zoo.  It's uniqueness is what sets it apart from most other Zoos.  It focuses primarily on Australian fauna, particularly on Koalas as the name suggests.  If I could quantify the amount of Koalas in the sancutary my estimate would be about a buttload (a metric butt tonne in Australia).  They were all situated in these cute little habitats where they can sit around and eat Eucalyptus all day.  It's a common myth that the Eucalyptus makes the Koalas "drunk" or "high" or "loaded" or "tanked".  But the real reason is that Eucalyptus is low in energy so they have to sleep like 19 hours a day.  They spend most of their 5 waking hours eating bon bons, drinking Sangria and watching "Days of Our Lives".  I was fortunate to come at a time of day where most of the Koalas were active.  They are adorable animals despite their freeloading lifestyle.  I had a cuteness overload when I saw Koala baby, called a Joey (source: Wikipedia), holding onto the back of it's Mom, called Chandlers (source: Made up).  I had to listen to twenty minutes of "A Prairie Home Companion" to overcome the adorablephylactic shock.

Collective awws.  People love marsupial babies.

Queensland is one of the only places where you can actually hold a Koala, so the sanctuary has this thing where you can hold one and get your picture taken.  It was a little expensive so I opted out but they had a bunch of pictures with celebrities holding Koalas.  It's actually pretty amazing how popular Koalas are.  People come from all over the world just to see these little guys and all they do is sit in trees and eat Eucalyptus.  They are basically the Kim Kardashians of the animal kingdom.  But...we have to save the environment...symbol of Australian conservation...blah blah blah.

They have a marketing campaign directed solely at Danny Sullivan

Pope John Paul II placed tastefully below Taylor Swift, Hayden Panettiere, and Slipknot

Drunk and disorderly.

After paying my respect to the Koalas I went to see some of the other animals.  There was one section devoted to Australian farmland which was actually pretty cool because they did stuff like sheep shearing demonstrations and dog herding shows, which was fun to watch. There was one dog that would walk on top of fences and over the backs of sheep to the amusement of the crowd.   I wondered why my dog couldn't do that but then I remembered that he is an idiot and weighs like a hundred pounds.  He could probably succeed in knocking like five of them over before herding the rest into a pond.  Anyway, the demonstration took place on a small little pasture and the guy running the show had a great Australian accent so it was a delightful homage to Australian sheep herding.  And in case you were wondering, I made a ton of "Babe" references in my head.

BAH RAM EWE

Dog on Wire

I then headed over to the Kangaroo enclosure.  This was coolest thing in the park.  You were allowed to just walk around in this large enclosure full of Kangaroos, Wallabies, and Emus.  I was astounded at how unregulated the place was.  I didn't see a single park attendant in the entire enclosure.  Not only that, you were encouraged to feed and pet the Kangaroos and Wallabies.  I was nervous about petting the Kangaroos because I'd always heard about how they were potentially dangerous animals and you can never really know with undomesticated animals (or domesticated ones for that matter).  The Kangaroos however were totally cool.  There were even kids running around petting them and getting pictures taken.  I was just waiting for someone to step on a Kangaroo tail or get between a Joey and its Mom, but it never happened.  I even saw, to my horror, one person petting a Joey while it was in it's mother's pouch, an activity explicitly stated on the gates to the enclosure not to do.  But the Kangaroos were fine with it I guess.  I eventually gathered the courage to pet a kangaroo and it mostly expressed indifference in my normally exquisite ability to scratch behind the ears.  I guess my nerves got to me.

I generally kept a large bredth between the emus and the larger Kangaroos.  Funny enough, the only thing you weren't allowed to pet in this part of the park were the Wombats, which I guess are quite ferocious marsupials.

Asked him for tips on working my tris.  He said bench and whey protein.

The rest of the park was comprised of reptiles, birds, tasmanian devils, dingos, and one platypus.  I will show you most of those through pictures and funny captions.

Tried to speak Parseltongue but I couldn't understand his thick Australian accent.

Straight chillin'

ALL TOGETHER NOW: MAYBE THE DINGO ATE YOUR BABY

Tasmanian Devil

They were doing a feeding demonstration while I was there.

Mom won't buy him a new pair of cargo shorts.  Total bullcrap.

I never got a great picture of the platypus.

GOLD COAST

The next weekend I decided to continue my solitary excursions and I headed down to the Gold Coast to take a surfing lesson.  Gold Coast is probably one of the most popular travel destinations in Queensland as it is known for its stunningly beautiful beaches.  I had been surfing before in Los Angeles with my Uncle John.  If you get into the water on the West coast of the United States expecting to be warm, you have another thing coming.  It was the middle of summer in Southern California and the water was like 50 degrees.  I even had a wetsuit on and it was debilitatingly cold.  I felt bad for my Uncle John, who is probably one of the manliest men I know, who went without a wetsuit.  It took him out of action for the rest of the afternoon.  Despite the cold it was a cool experience and I wanted to try it again.

Australian beaches are a bit warmer than Californian.  Gold Coast is even home to a beach called "Surfer's Paradise", granted most surfers don't surf there.  My lesson took place at a beach called "The Spit", which was up the coast from the Gold Coast downtown.  There were only two other guys in my surfing class so the teachers were able to give us a lot of help.  We mostly stayed in the shallow portion of the beach, catching waves in water that was waist deep.  In California me and my Uncle just went out to where we were floating on our boards way offshore and caught whatever wave looked good, so this shallow water lesson was a good way to learn.  I was actually able to stand up on the board this time.  Gnarly.  And I didn't get hypothermia.

Sand Pumping Jetty with the beach I was surfing on in the background.

After my lesson I decided to walk down to Surfer's Paradise.  You could see the city from the jetty so I figured it would be a nice 20 or 30 minute walk down the coast.  It turned out to be about a 4.5 miles. Who can complain about walking a sandy beach though?  Later on I found out that the tops of my feet can complain, or rather, they can get sunburn.  It was a really nice walk.  It's pretty amazing how much pristine beach there is.  As someone who has spent most of his life in Upstate New York, most of the beaches I've seen have sand that ranges from large pebble size to large boulder size.  Once I reached Surfer's Paradise, which is really like a designated swimming area, I headed into the city.  Gold Coast is really......touristy.  Which is great if you're a tourist.  Which I was.

Getting sunburn 101

Gold Coast

There's a lot of kitschy shops and open air restaurants.  There was even a Ripley's Believe or Not with an animatronic band playing in the store front.  I only walked around for a little bit because it was starting to rain.  I went to a restaurant that seemed nice a got some food that sounded good, and it was.  Turns out they call shrimp here "Prawns", so Paul Hogan was lying when he said he'd cook up some shrimp on the barby.



By that point I was tired and headed home after getting lost for twenty minutes trying to find a bus stop.

I think it's okay to get tired of being alone but it really shouldn't stop you from doing interesting things.  Being by yourself it a great opportunity to try something.  You can do stuff that you would normally not do in a larger group of people, like walk 4.5 miles of beach on a whim (accident).  And when you finally come back to your friends and family you appreciate their company all that much more, and you have a unique story to tell.  One of the guys who was in my surf group decided to take the lesson on an impulse.  His wife and kids had just left town for a week or so and the first thing he did was to call the surfing company and signed up.  I guess some would call it a mid-life crisis, but I would probably refer to it more as seizing the day.

Remember that most of the people you care about are just a call away.

And Rashida, if you're a reader, feel free to contact me at farturohaha@aol.com.  WAIT! NO!  Call Me.