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.

Late Registration

People have been asking me a lot about school so I'm going to talk about school.  School is pretty good.

Registration was sucky though.  I thought Cornell had a bad system but University of Queensland's is nonsensical.  Without getting too far into detail, because I know you don't care, you basically have to do this weird guess and check to see if classes fit and they don't tell you if class times are conflicting.  And to top it off, the exam schedules aren't set when registering for classes so you sort of go in blind in terms of what is happening where and you can't really plan any adventures or excursions.  Since I'm an exchange student and didn't know how to work the system I ended up having to register late.  Going through learning a new registration process made me almost miss Cornell registration, and I suppose the grass is always greener, but really is it?  As Kanye West once said, "They claim you never know what you got 'til it's gone/ I know I got it, I don't know what y'all on".  I think I get it too Mr. West: College registration systems suck.

Picture of thing at University of Queensland

Anyway, I'm taking four classes while I'm here.  One is a Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer course *snore*, but it should be good to get a refresher in Thermo/learn Thermo.  Let's just say that me and Thermodynamics don't "C" eye to eye.  I'm also taking German 101 and Econ 101 because apparently Cornell Engineering wants me to be a well rounded person.  And I'm taking an Engineering management course, which will probably be more interesting than it sounds, but you're not really setting the bar high with the term "Engineering management".

Mechanical Engineering building.  One thing is constant among Engineering schools around the world: they have the ugliest buildings on campus.

Now Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer (course code MECH3400) is a pretty standard engineering course.  I imagine most of the engineering courses at UQ (cool guy speak for University of Queensland) are set up very similar to this course.  That being said, it is very different from what an engineering course at Cornell is like.  Most prominantly, there are no problem sets due each week.  NO HOMEWORK!  They do give you sets of problems to work on each week and a tutorial session (called Tuts, pronounced Toots) where you can work on the problems with Tutors, however you don't need to hand them in or attend the tutorials.  This has thrown me off because I haven't taken a class since like 1st grade where there was no homework.  How do I learn the material?  There is also only one midterm as opposed to the customary two at Cornell (sometimes three, oft referred to a Prelims).  The way this class is set up poses really unique learning challenges for me because it basically requires me to be even more self directed in absorbing material.  I supposed you're never too old to learn new learning techniques.

I'm only taking German to learn how to pick up German babes.

But seriously, I'm only taking German because it was the only thing that would fit in my schedule.

But really seriously, I'm taking German because I think Germany is where a lot of the great engineering and design innovations have been coming from in the past few decades and it would be awesome to be able to communicate with those innovators.  Was that a good answer Mom?  I've taken Spanish in middle school and high school, but I've forgotten a good amount of it, so I think it would be nice to try and learn a language again.

Economics is something I've meant to take for a really long time but never got around to it.  I honestly know nothing about economics.  I think it's one of those subject that we probably should have spent some time in grade school learning but we never did, or at least not thoroughly.

The engineering management class is gonna be pretty cool.  Basically the project in the class is to make a design proposal for an electric guitar made out of carbon fiber.  Designing a guitar is one of those things I have wanted to do for a while but never got the chance.  While we are largely graded on how we manage the project, the technical aspect is what's interesting me the most.  It's also where I will be interacting with Australians the most, because 5 of my 6 team members are Australians.  It's interesting just seeing how Australians interact in an engineering setting.  Plus they are all cool people.

SoOoOo pretty

As far as extracurriculars go, I've joined one club at UQ: the German Club.  Almost all of the clubs at UQ require like an entrance membership fee which is kinda stupid so I didn't join that many clubs.  German club is pretty cool; they hold get togethers and study sessions fairly regularly.  Their first event of the year was a trivia night, which was awesome because I had been missing trivia a lot since leaving Ithaca.  Because I didn't know anybody in the club I joined the trivia team that looked like it knew the least about what was going on.  This was a good decision because everyone on the team was very friendly.  There were two Australian students who said they showed up mostly for the beer, a German student named David studying Biochemistry at UQ, and two older guys who were best friends: Andy who was from Germany; and Ian who was an Australian taking German night classes at UQ so he and Andy could talk in German.  Our team was well versed in everything from German history to pop culture so we won a few rounds which entailed a free pitcher of beer.  After trivia we sat around talking about sports and American and German and Australian culture.  What I have found very striking is how much everyone else know about America compared to what I know about other countries.  Australians even have to learn American History in grade school, and David told me in Germany he had to learn the states and capitals of the US.  It turns out Andy and Ian had first met doing Battlefield reenactments  and one of the wars they act out is the Civil War, which is odd because you don't really see Americans acting out anything other than the Civil or Revolutionary War, although I'm not well versed on the American reenactment scene.  Anyway, I got to hear stories about growing up in Cold War Germany, German schooling, Australian sports, German sports.  These guys also got me to drink more than anyone else ever has, however that record was previously held by my Dad.

Talking to these guys was a great time.  I suppose these are the kind of people you want to run into while traveling abroad.  Interesting, diverse, and friendly people.  I don't think I'll be seeing them around campus anytime soon, trivia only happens once a semester, and I think they were mostly at German club for the free beer, but if I could quote Kanye West one more time, "They say people in you life are seasons/And anything that happens is for a reason".  I suppose some people come into your life like Lions and leave like Lambs, while others enter like Lambs and leave like Lions.  But I think there's that group of people who are like the Indian Summer, only around for a short amount of time, but while they're there they are delightful.  And I'm not saying I'm fatalistic or anything, but most people you interact with shape your life in a certain way.

To my knowledge those are green beans.  I could be wrong though.