This isn't the one more post mentioned in the entry below. Just thought it should be included for the semester.

Originally Published in the Sandwich Enterprise, April 2009

"At Home in Australia"

It is a borderline rite of passage that the young adult comes to lament their homeland. The hearty majority of human organisms find themselves, by the age of twenty, deeply longing to break away from their past and all that it entails, and the most logical way by which to do so is generally perceived as the abandonment of the site of upbringing.

This is true even on beautiful Cape Cod, as its youthful emigrants often speak of the slowness and boredom brought on by the peninsula, particularly outside the summer season. I know this because I experienced this and often heard and made the very same complaints while breaking from the Cape three years ago.

Having spent a month now living, studying, and loving life half an hour outside of Perth, Western Australia’s capital, I have developed quite a strong appreciation for my original home. This is not a result of homesickness and a longing to return to the familiar. Instead, this is because I am coming to realize how similar the Cape and Australia actually are.

Cape Cod is a fascinating region. Or, as they may say down here, “We live in a bloody wicked place” (note the shared incorrect use of the term wicked, though I grant that us northeasterners are certainly more keen to use it as an adverb than an adjective).

I understand that the United States and Australia are cousins historically and share a Western base philosophy. However, the Cape’s likeness to the land down under is much more concrete. I see it first in the beach lifestyle. Both areas can be defined more by what they allow for leisure than by what they accomplish in productivity. On Cape Cod and in Australia, the populations are proudly willing to pack themselves away and indulge in a day at the water’s feet ignoring the calls of life left behind. More tangibly, the shared affinities for surfing, snorkeling, fishing, and sunsets are clear similarities.

Along similar lines, the love of the land is a shared trait despite existence in entirely different quadrants of the world. Australians, perhaps as a result of the world’s pollution creating a hole in the ozone directly overhead, are quite conscious about maintaining a clean environment. And why shouldn’t they be? The country is a beautiful one with incredible images to turn the head at every available locale, just like the Cape. Cape Codders and Aussies are both quite likely to take advantage of the beautiful geography they’ve been gifted with. And despite their American status, it is evident that Cape residents do care quite a bit about the land. Take the CapeWind argument, for instance. The greatest controversy on the peninsula in the last few years features adversaries on either side whose primary concern it is to keep the Cape and Islands beautiful, albeit while arguing from entirely different mindsets.

The attitudes of the people from the two spots are also comparable. Comparing the personalities of the Cape to everything past the canal does present a very sharp contrast. Sure, you’re going to find your grouch cashiering at Staples or the occasional bad attitude at the body shop, but our peninsula is far more laid back and pleasant than Worcester, Boston, or even Rhode Island. Aussies are world famous for their happy-go-lucky attitude, and I am grateful to have been brought up in an area that similarly values play as at least equal to work and is happy to go with the pace of the day rather than attempting to control it.

I currently only have a couple more guaranteed months as a Cape resident, and until about a month ago, this excited me profusely. However, I have come to see how valuable it is to live in a region that simply enjoys the thrills and beauty of living life. While it was likely inevitable that I would at least temporarily swear off the Cape, I am happy to realize the fortune we all have in experiencing it day by day.

Blog

I would really really really like to do a blog entry that is about a night out and all its absurdities, a "Fear and Loathing Down Under" type of thing. However, I have relatives that read this and would love to run for public office some day, so I am going to just do a quick tale that highlights one scene from last Saturday night.

"How'd we get ourselves into this again?" Josh asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Boredom?"

"Yeah but, it was so organic. Just out of nowhere pub crawl. No discussion even, it just happened."

"What's that noise?"

"What?" Organs blasted from somewhere. "Oh. That noise. Damn." Deep ominous organs that could only be enveloped within a cold Saturday night.

We were nearing Clancy's and our minds were not quite clear. We turned the corner on the outskirts of Fremantle's main strip and the pub sat before us just down the street, on the left. Directly opposite on the other side of the street stood in gray stone a large church, medieval in its appearance. It was not the church you see built in American suburbia today, red bricked and inviting. This was a church that could only have developed more than a century ago in order to set straight a penal colony that happened to play home to a prison ranked amongst the most notorious in the history of the British Empire. This was the kind of church that exemplifies why people don't go to church anymore. The church was horrifying.

"That explains it," Josh said.

"Quick," I said. "At once, we must move to the bar."

"No," he said. "Let's go in." Josh took a few steps towards the church, whose sounds permeated throughout a night laced in sin, across the street to a crowded bar and around the corner past the young women whose skirts were more revealing than some bikinis. In spite of the noise, the church was dark. No lights shone from within and no lights shone on it.

"No," I said as Josh took a couple more steps. "No, no." I turned on my heels to begin following him. "We can't go in," I said.

"Nonsense! How could we not?"

We began nearing the threatening building and the deep cries of the organ and of all the souls in purgatory drowned out my complaints. Suddenly, on a particularly long and melodramatic note from inside, a massive light flashed in front of the church, lighting it in its entirety.

Josh and I turned to one another and without a word turned away and made our way to Clancy's.

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Also, this week, I watched my American friend Mike play didgeridoo in the city and make a bunch of money and be commended by Indigenous people for his prowess on the instrument. There was something very cool about that and I enjoyed it immensely.

One more blog post to come before this thing undergoes some major changes and becomes a means by which for me to talk about things other than travelling.

Cheers!

The Bucket List

The movie referenced in the title above stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. This blog post, on the contrary, stars only the written voice of yours truly and is not about the stuff I intend to do before I die but rather about the stuff I intend to do in my last three weeks in Australia. Yes, it is strange to see that typed out before me, but this semester is very much so nearing its completion and in three weeks I will board a plane and travel to Boston via Sydney, LA, and Phoenix, the exact reverse of my trip here. Meanwhile, I have only one exam remaining on the schoolwork tracker, meaning that I essentially have copious amounts of free time. This is good, because there are things left to be done.

I aim to visit the Fremantle Prison within the next week or so. This prison was home to convicts for nearly 150 years, closing in the early 90s, and was for some time considered one of the most ominous prisons in the British Empire (which, I hear, the sun never set on). Being in a country that was, if we allow ourselves to marginalize the marginalized, founded as a penal colony, it seems quite prudent that I spend some money to go to jail.

Riding a camel has been a priority for a couple of months now and I've been very slow to act upon this desire. However, there is said to be quite a petting zoo within striking distance by public transportation wherein a camel ride is quite doable. Hence, I will do it. I also understand that in this petting zoo I can feed kangaroos. This sounds like a worthy type of thing to put myself towards.

I want to jump off a cliff again. In order to do so, though, I am banking on this weather getting better. It is cold here in Australia these days as the seasons march towards winter. Jeans and sweatshirts are the usual attire. At night, when outdoors, I shiver.

I want to go to the aquarium to see fish. I want to go to the casino to throw money down the drain and enjoy every second of it.

There are said to be some sweet museums in the area. The art museum is supposed to be pretty cool, the Freo Maritime Museum is said to be one of the more distinctive spots of the city and has a shipwreck gallery, and the history museum also seems muy caliente. I was thinking of a better word than cool. Muy caliente is the opposite of cool. Literally and figuratively, perhaps, unless you think it is cool (figuratively), in which case I can't really dispute that due to the subjectivity of the phrase. In a literal sense, though, muy caliente and cool deeply oppose each other and would give each other the middle finger if placed opposite one another in a jousting arena. I will get to each of these museums before I leave.

Finally, I wish to visit the grave of Bon Scott, the original lead singer for AC/DC. I don't like AC/DC very much. However, a quick scan of Wikipedia tells me that when East Coast Australians travel the country, they make a point of ending their trek by visiting said grave. Bon Scott was a favorite son of Freo (via Scotland and Melbourne), doing great things with his early life such as being a delinquent that nobody thought was a good person. Then he made some of that rock n roll music and people loved him. Then he partied to hardy and died in London one night. After that, he was buried and now has a grave. I'll visit this grave in one of my final days here to pay homage to the Australian tradition of doing so.

On my last day, I'll go to Little Creatures and watch the sun go down over the harbour and perhaps order a pizza. Pizza is a great thing and this is recognized universally.

Then it'll be good bye to the Commonwealth of Australia and hello to a demanding two days (though technically one thanks to time zones) of travel and the United States of America. Common means common and wealth means wheel. Somehow this comes out to "for the good of all," although I think if you just kept it as wealth and didn't go to wheel, that would make a whole lot more sense. I learned this from good ol' Janice Dudley, my Australian Government lecturer. She believes thoroughly in creating a Bill of Rights for Australia and breaking away from the Monarch, and she also thinks men are awful beings while women are the greatest beings. Except for the Queen. She thinks the Queen is a slut.

Hm...

text/writer/fault line/author/story

A Quick Word

In a week wherein I have done little more than homework and my social life has consisted primarily of taking trips across the street to the service station to acquire junk food in hopes of a break from said homework, I would like to take a moment to express the excitement I feel from 12 timezones away as a result of both the Boston Bruins and the Boston Celtics and their respective playoff runs. They have resulted in a beard. It is still a weak one but it is the best I've ever had. Baby steps. I will be awaking at 7 in the morning to watch both games tomorrow if the website I have found is to be believed with regards to workability. It must be some kind of energy in Boston at the moment to be extending this far.

Anyway, here is the expression of excitement promised above: YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Leftdate Rightdate Downdate Update

Hello again to all. Here I am preparing a blog entry. In this blog entry I will speak of some of the things I have been up to of late.

ANZAC (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) Day was approximately 2 weeks ago (this converts to 2 American weeks ago). What happens is at dawn across the Commonwealth of Australia, the people of the various cities get together solemnly in parks and listen to speeches and watch wreaths be placed on monuments. It is like Veteran's Day, only Aussies tend to take it seriously. It was a bit of a cultural experience, as they say, to watch Perthlings honor their fallen soldiers after an all-nighter and amidst a beautiful sunrise.

By the end of that day I began to feel very run down and that manifested within the next couple days as legitimate sickness. I had another cultural excursion when I visited a hospital to get me some drugs. Note: It was very similar to an American hospital. I had tonselitis but not the kind where they cut stuff out of your throat. It was the kind where you swallow antibiotics for a week and then feel better. This happened and I was glad it did. I enjoyed being sick, as I watched several movies, drank tea frequently, and got out of having to give a presentation (though I had to give it yesterday anyway). However, it was a week essentially spent in my room which is really a waste of time while traveling and hence I am glad it's over. In any case it recharged me.

IFSA is a pretty expensive program to travel with and I am always keen to be hatin' on the man, but after this past weekend I have nothing but gratitude, as we have very much gotten what we paid for. Last weekend, the 6 of us at Murdoch as well as our 3 peripheral characters at UWA took off down south to Margaret River which is WA's surfing capital of the world. We went there for rock climbing and abseiling and spelunking and cave exploring though. It was an incredible time wherein I had to push myself to do things that made my knees sort of weak and that made me happy while also providing shots of adrenaline that tend to excite given their nature. We stayed in an incredible lodge where I used a Queen size bed (I took advantage of this by sleeping diagonally) and at night we played Jenga. Margaret River, 3 hours south of Perth, seems reeeeeeaaaaaaally cool (I do think an exploration of it could easily result in my declaring it my favorite spot I've been to so far) and I think I'll make an effort to get down there without guides and for a longer period of time before leaving.

My workload is starting to overwhelm a bit. This weekend I have to make a movie. I have a paper due next Friday. The movie isn't due until June 1 but after I shoot this weekend there is a ton of work that will go into it even still. I also do not yet have my lines down for a bloody play I am in in 13 days. I have a test a week from Tuesday and I have an exam on June 3. Actually now that I've typed that all out it's not that bad. The paper is the stupid part though there is a lot of info. on the topic I am doing so that is good. The good news is that the June 3 exam is the end of schoolwork and my junior year for me. This will leave me with 12 days to have fun and enjoy my final days in Australia after schoolwork has died before I return to the United States of America and the H1N1 Continent.

Faithful Readers, I Now Return To My Blogging Duties

I apologize for leaving you all hanging and toiling in misery and self-loathing for the last 20 days. I now return to the blogosphere, where I shall resume my Messianic duties.

As prophecised in my last entry, I spent ten days in the northwestern Australian outback. While I could go with a run down of day-to-day operations, which seems soooooooo February, I think I will instead attack this behemoth in a style akin to the great and noble David Letterman.

Top Ten Things Learned in the Australian Outback

10. Never Go On A Date With A Dolphin
Before we shot inward to the red dirt of the outback, we drove along the red dirt of the Indian Ocean coastline. Along the way, we stopped at Monkey Mia, home to several trillion dolphins. Early in the morning, dolphins gather along the beach to be fed fish by their homo sapien friends (and descendants, if you're a flaming liberal heathen). Of the several hundred touristeers (that is tourists who volunteer, only doesn't sound as good as voluntourists), approximately 8 were chosen to do the feeding. The dolphins played very nice while the fish were in their hands, but then they shocked me and I should hope several others in licking their chops and booking it back out to sea. Not even a kiss on the cheek. The ol' dine n' dash. No good. I have crossed all dolphins off my list of potential suitors.

9. I Love Technology
I tried to deny that I did but I do. The first five or so days without digital access to the world proved easy enough, but certainly by day 7 I was starting to feel a bit disconnected and perhaps even a bit anxious. I attribute some of this to the fact that I was very out of the loop with regards to the Boston Red Sox, who just played and swept one of the more entertaining regular season series I've ever seen by the way against the New York Yankees, but regardless, if such feelings are common it does not bode well for the human race from a Wall-E/The Matrix/Terminator perspective.

8. Kangaroos Are Idiots
As a result of my summer '06 deer incident, I've neither sympathy nor patience for any living organism that thinks it's a good idea to run into a swerving car. As a result, the facts that we ran over more than one on this trip (read: 2) and that our tour guide, Barry, claims to have probably run over at least 300 in his driving career receive a disinterested "meh" from me.

7. The Australian Outback Is Amazing Looking. And Will Put You Right To Sleep.
It's a beautiful and obviously massive stretch of land. If you put on the right songs at sundown, you can have a surreal experience. But after that trip, where I would estimate 25 university students spent about 80% of their travel time dead asleep, I'd wager you wouldn't last 20 minutes.


6. The Stromatolite War Cometh
At one of the places we stayed, we were introduced to Stanley, who represented the Stromatolite Empire. While Stanley acted as a gracious host in giving us a tour of his people's breeding grounds (he told me exactly what they were but upon my realizing their true plans I decided I no longer cared for what they were, valued, or wanted, as our former President taught me to do) but made several cheeky comments with regards to the human race and its "wasteful" ways. Also, Stanley told us that his people have been around a lot longer than us and the picture below made it quite evident that they intend to come back to dominance.
Nonetheless, we stuck around on Stanley's pier, as we were treated to quite a nice sunset.

5. Emus Are Hilarious
In a laugh-at kind of way.


4. Aussie Flies Are Annoying
I suppose that would go without saying. However, flies here are certainly a bit more aggressive than I'm used to back in Massachusetts. They don't just buzz around you. They bounce into you over and over and over like the ultimate little brother that thinks it's funny and impressive to do so (sorry Dan, no offense. Think more when you were destroying the Lego sets, that's my point). I'd noticed this even just in Perth. Up north, there are about 20 of them per square foot. I don't even think that's an exaggeration. Yes, I spent much of the trip wearing a fly net.

3. Stuff Looks Cooler Red
I am now the proud owner of an authentic Bruins Outback Edition hat. It's neat, I think.

2. Karijini National Park Is The Most Beautiful Place I Have Seen and Likely Will For A Good Long Time
This was a part of the trip that I was certainly happy to take on but it was also a part that I was not overtly looking forward to. I suppose this is a good thing, as its sneaking under the radar to become the best aspect of my Australian experience thus far is better than if it had had to fulfill expectations, but in retrospect, I was stupid. Karijini is a huge area of land that is best denoted for its gigantic natural gorges. These gorges offer several trails to be hiked at varying levels of difficulty. Some of the stuff we passed along was pretty legitimately difficult hiking, though nobody died or lost any limbs which was a good thing. At the bottom of many of these gorges lie beautiful pools and waterfalls with water much cleaner and refreshing than you'd find in any swimming pool. I think my lasting image of the trip, arguably (see number 1 for its main competition), involved me leaning against smooth black rock walls while wading in a pool and looking upwards to warm sun seeping past the red upper edges of either side of the gorge; I did not get a picture of this. Perhaps it's better that way. Here is a picture from Karijini, though, taken while I was not in water and therefore my camera was not at risk of destruction.
Also, waterfalls feel good on your back.

And last but not least, coming in at number 1 and sounding much dodgier (dodgy=sketchy) than it actually is...

The Number One Thing I learned in the Australian Outback: When A Middle Aged Australian Stranger Thousands of Miles From His and Your Home Asks You To Walk Across the Bush To Party With Him and His Friends Who Are Away On A Camping Trip In An Area Surrounded By Sixty Square Miles Of Nothing, You Damn Well Get Off Your Ass and Do It.
While sitting around the campfire and enjoying a few drinks after dinner on an early night of the trip, a man came rustling from the woods behind us. Colby introduced himself to us as a man from Perth and, after striking up some casual conversation, asked if anybody would like to wander across the bushland to enjoy the night (again sounding fairly dodgy...) with him and his three friends, who were enjoying a week of mateship away from home. Most of our crew, save for two of our more adventurous who jumped right on the opportunity, were at first reluctant. They went with Colby and it was not long before we heard them belting out sing along songs from across the way. A short while later, Colby returned. He had brought his harmonica, and he played us some songs. Then we all sort of sat quietly for a few moments. Realizing the futility of the night if no other avenue were taken, I announced that it was time to get to Colby's. Upon arrival, we were quick to learn that Colby played the role of the goofy guy whose friends keep around for entertainment value (I don't think this is as demeaning a role as it probably reads). This was made particularly apparent when they all started to yell at Colby when he tried to take out his harmonica, saying things like, "I thought we sent you over there with that thing hey!" Nonetheless, Colby was very excited, and it is, as referenced above, arguable that my lasting image of the trip and my trip to Australia at large is Colby standing at the head of the deck with a beer in one hand and his harmonica in the other, his head cocked back and his arms spread wide and high, shouting lyrics to a great many songs at the top of his lungs while his friends sat around the table wondering how they'd come to be surrounded by ten or fifteen American university students. His friends included one aging fellow who seemed unwilling to discuss anything but politics unless he was busy singing along to Bob Dylan songs, a skeevy-looking fellow in the corner who I don't think I heard talk once, and a monstrous, monstrous fellow who likely stood about six-foot-seven and must have weighed two-hundred-eighty pounds and wore an AFL jersey. The last of the listed provided indirectly a particularly comical moment when he stood up, as it resulted in a friend of mine saying in seeming bewilderment, "You're a monster!" The night, as would be expected, became absurd quickly. As we entered the early morning, some friends rolled upon the ground while I went off and hit golfballs into the desolate northwestern Australian wilderness.