After much adieu, the photos from the my 'Girls Getaway' to Paris with my mom are up on Flickr for your viewing delight! Click on the photo above, or the "Paris 2010" link on the sidebar. Enjoy!
Monday, April 26, 2010
Paris Photos!
After much adieu, the photos from the my 'Girls Getaway' to Paris with my mom are up on Flickr for your viewing delight! Click on the photo above, or the "Paris 2010" link on the sidebar. Enjoy!
Friday, April 9, 2010
Australia Photos!
The Photo That Must Be Taken. By Everyone.
If you have enjoyed reading my series, Terra Incognita Australis, then you would undoubtedly love to see the photos that go along with it as well! Just click the title of this blog post to visit the Flickr photoset.
Good on ya, mates!
- W
Terra Incognita Australis Post XII: Leaving OZ
Far too many things in life are over as soon as they begin: childhood, high school, college, weddings, The Lord of the Rings, and long-expected travel. Like a man with no memory, we're saying good-bye just after saying hello. When you consider how much energy is expended just getting ready for a major event or journey--the time, the money, the planning--it's hard not to be somewhat let-down by the result itself. These things always end with a pang of disappointment. The question is whether we are looking forward to what comes next or desperately clawing at what lies behind like a man falling off a sandy cliff.
Leaving Australia, I felt more of the latter.
---
Of course, it was a sunny morning. Projected high for the day: 80ºF (85ºF more likely). There was talk that rain could roll in, but it didn't seem likely. My hosts and I took the labs for one last walk up to the dog park. Amazingly, it all felt so natural. Yet, without doubt, it was completely unnatural. As much as Killara felt like Northern Virginia, I had to keep reminding myself that I was actually on the other side of the world...upside down.
After being dropped off at the airport by my amazing hosts, I realized that I was running a little behind on schedule. Thankfully, I had checked in ahead of time online; easily one of the greatest inventions since movable type. Especially so when it seems that at least two families of nine people in which one person speaks anything remotely resembling English would like to check two overweight bags per person. One guy bizarrely insisted on remaining away from the check-in counter somewhere over near the entrance of the airport. His parents--entirely confused--kept letting people pass their entourage in line. When "mystery man" would return he would proceed to rail at them in Arabic and then at his wife in English for not continuing to advance in line without him. Weird.
Thanks to hauling some major butt I managed to make it to the gate in time to get a little snack before boarding. Already it was about 3:15pm (Sydney time). I was taking the time, it being Sunday, to reflect on the trip, write a few blog posts that you all of course will have already read, and to edit my photos. I also was dealing with an important issue (one that would come back to haunt me): when was I going to sleep? What seemed to work best for me on the way to Australia was staying up when it suited, eating at local time, and then sleeping at a sensible local time. I planned to do this again, but the fallacy of this plan would stay with me for the next two weeks for one simple reason: Sydney is 11 hours ahead of London. More on that later.
As I boarded the plane, I took my place next to the window (why did I tell the travel agent that, at 6'3" I prefer the window? It's like that scene in Point Break where Patrick Swayze has a cataclysmic brain-fart and decides to go for the vault, which the Dead Presidents never do because they're too smart for that. Okay, it's nothing like that but you get me). I started to feel the gut wrenching tug of this amazing country. Everyone told me that I was foolish for taking such a short amount of time, and, at this point, I realized how absolutely right they all were. My mind raced with all kinds of thoughts and questions: what if I never get back? what if fires destroy Melbourne? what if I am unable to move my legs when I get to Singapore? I was so involved in reading and ruminating that I hadn't realized that we had left the gate and were beginning what seemed like the longest taxi in the world. It's a little known fact that planes leaving Sydney actually take off from Brisbane. I'm just kidding.
I looked out the window and was shocked to see the Harbour, right there. My mouth dropped open on the spot. Here again, up to the last moment, was Australia making something that is completely unremarkable everywhere else in the world a sight to behold. A golden, antipodean sunset glinting off the wings of a beautiful new airplane while taxiing past the greatest open-water port in the world. Then, as if scripted, a fishing boat--the kind we usually see on the Chesapeake Bay--came racing alongside the plane at full clip; it could barely keep up. A small girl was waving good bye to us, strangers all, from the bow while her dad fought to keep the boat outside the markers. To me, her name was Australia. It is a moment that I will never, ever forget. No other, and I mean no other, country in the world. Period. We reached the end of the taxiway and swung away as Australia raced off into the sunset, water, and red haze.
---
Regarding my plan to beat jet lag, my thought was,
"Well, when I leave Sydney I will arrive in Singapore at 9pm. So I will stay up until the plane takes off at 11:30pm and then go to sleep."
That all seems sensible, right? Of course, until I set my watch to London time. Now 11:30pm becomes 3:30pm.
"No problem," I thought. "Since it's a 13+ hour flight I can just stay up the next five hours and then go to sleep at 8-9pm, GMT and get some reasonable rest."
Now, those of you playing the home game will have realized what failed to occur to me. I woke up at 8am, Sydney time. If I stayed up until 9pm, GMT, that's 8am Sydney time. The other thing--that did not escape you avid travellers--is that this is assuming that I get to sleep.
I didn't. On every other flight we had "Parents of the Year" (or PoYs, as I will now call them). When their little ones would start crying, they would get up, give them a pat on the back and take them for a little walk round the aisles. Brilliant. Worked a charm. On this flight though, we had the anti-PoYs. Their infant was screaming (and I mean SCREAMING) the whole way to London. Yikes. No sleep for Will and a 6am (5pm Sydney) landing was interesting. By this point I was so jet-lagged and backwards, running on years of my life and the folly of youth, that I decided to stay up until that evening. J will admit that by the time 5pm (4am Sydney, 2-days later!) I was falling asleep standing up. All told, I went to bed at 7:30pm, Monday in London (6:30am, Tuesday in Sydney). I had stayed up for 46.5 hours. I am never doing that again.
---
As an epilogue, it would be impossible to thank all the people who made this entire adventure possible. It was everything that I had hoped for from the moment that I took up a studentship funded by an Australian governmental organization. The things that I learned, saw, and experienced will stay with me as long as I live. I know I have said that a lot throughout this series of blog posts, but it is not hyperbole.
I titled this running journal "Terra Incognita Australis" as a corruption of Terra Australis Incognita; "unknown southern land" in Latin, the name given to the posited but undiscovered land that most cartographers assumed must exist south of Asia prior to the discovery of what is now Australia. I did so to emphasize my own ignorance of the place and how, to me, it really was an unknown. It is no more.
As a vain attempt at a summary, here are my final thoughts on Australia:
1) It's big
2) It's hot
3) It's still really far away (from everywhere)
4) It is the most wonderful place on Earth.
Every day of my life will be one that takes me further from this first meeting, and hopefully closer to the next one with this incredible country.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Terra Incognita Australis Post XI: A Beach Called Manly and a Sunset
I ended my last blog post with a thought on how much I love water and how much Australians do, as well. Despite my affinity for all things aquatic, I have spent a strikingly small amount of my life on or around boats of any shape or size. So, when the opportunity arises, I am immediately enthusiastic.
Perhaps the most famous beach near Sydney is Bondi (bahn-dye, people. Believe me, I got it wrong). Bondi, though, seems to be famous for all the wrong reasons. Thinking of beaches that I have been to (or near to), I guess it is more like Daytona or Miami than say the Outer Banks. Most Sydneysiders suggested that, unless I felt inexorably drawn, I should avoid Bondi for the quieter beaches to the North of the harbor. In fact, nearly all suggested that I visit Manly, instead. Being an ardent supporter of all things 'manly' for four years as an undergrad, how could I sensibly pass the opportunity? When it was further posed that I go there by ferry from Circular Quay, I was sold.
Both Bondi and Manly are known for being tourist beaches (predominatly because they are the only two beaches accessible by public transportation). The Manly ferry was jam-packed with tourists, but that was hardly a deterrent. While most people I know would use their weekend to pursue hobbies like golf or gardening, in Sydney it would seem the pastime is sailing. Therefore, the ferry run to Manly was a trip through a forest of sailboats; what I can only hope was typical of all Saturday afternoons in this beautiful city.
One begins to get a feel for Sydney's topography from sea level. To say it is hilly is an understatement. I always used to joke that there wasn't a flat piece of ground anywhere near Charlottesville; one must go further afield from Sydney to find something plain. It just makes the winding coves and cliffs of the New South Wales coast even more striking and beautiful.
When we arrived in Manly, I wandered my way up the pedestrianized mall called "the Corso" (presumably not after Lee) to the bay. All I can say is, what a beach. Gorgeous white sands ringed in by cliffs. It was my first view of the Pacific from the beach and I nearly went into the water. I say nearly because: 1) the beach was closed, and 2) the Surf Lifeguards were promptly issuing an announcement upon my arrival that bluebottle jellyfish had been spotted in the area. For those of you not familiar with the finer points of Australian biological slang, a bluebottle is a Portuguese man-o'-war; one of the most venomous animals on the planet. A single sting will cause searing, almost unbearable pain for 45 minutes to one hour. More than one sting may be fatal. So, despite the surfers' cavalier flouting of the rules, I was staying on shore. Manly, indeed.
While I tucked into a magazine and enjoyed the sunshine, I decided that I would rename Manly Beach to Self-Consciousness Shore. Australians have to be the most favored race of people on the planet. Ample sunshine means an almost year-round beach season; no time for 'fat-pants' then, if you know what I mean. I already have commented about my run in Melbourne and how dedicated Australians seemed to be to fitness. Sydney was no exception. Everybody was well-tanned and well-built. I managed to isolate myself well away to avoid the embarrassment of my UK fluorescent light tan.
Speaking of the sunshine, though, "punishing" takes on an entirely new definition. You have never seen sunshine until you have been in a country with no ozone layer. Spending the entire day outside was really starting to wear on me by the time I got to Manly; I would wear the consequences well into returning to Britain. What sunshine I lacked from the dark depths of English winter were more than made up for in the time I was "down under." Yeah, I was loving it.
About 45 minutes after I arrived at Manly, the most bizarre thing happened: an air raid siren went off. At least, I thought it was an air raid siren. While I considered scrambling for cover and searched the horizon for Japanese fighter-bombers, the Surf Lifeguards came over the P.A. system again; sharks had just been sighted in the water. Immediately, four red zodiac rafts zipped off into the water to round up all the surfers until the sharks had been cleared or decided that a "man-snack" wasn't on the menu. Two surfers whose towels were in proximity of my hearing started chatting. It went something like this:
Surfer A: "Yeah, you know, it just isn't worth it staying out anymore, mate."
Surfer B: "I know. Especially after last year being such a 'sharky' year."
The implication being that, prior to 2009, when the shark alarm sounded it was worth it to risk one's life to catch another wave or two. In 2009, though, it seems the sharks started biting.
---
My host kindly picked me up and we drove up the coast (with the labs!) to Fisherman's Beach. The North Beaches are a part of Sydney that few tourists have the opportunity to visit; Sydneysiders want to keep things that way. There is no public transport up to this mostly-residential part of the Sydney region. The beach crowd starts to thin the further North of the city you go. Fisherman's Beach was all but deserted when we arrived. The world's most beautiful public golf course was hosting a wedding on their terrace that overlooks the Pacific. From Fisherman's Beach, a footpath runs up to Long Reef; a point that offers fantastic sweeping views of the entire coast north of Sydney. It also happens to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth for enjoying a sunset. Some people thought it would be cool to do this while hang gliding on the constant Pacific breeze blowing up to the point; to each his own. As the sun set on my last full day on Australia I couldn't help but feel a tug of longing for what might have been. I managed to run myself ragged on this one day in Sydney, to the point that I had exhausted both myself and my sparse list of things to do. I knew, though, that there wasn't time enough to see everything and that I was only scratching the surface of this phenomenal country. The sun was setting on my Australian adventure, but I knew that this would only be the beginning.
Radar, the Labrador, also enjoyed the view, drooling his assent.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Census 2010: We Don't Count
NNope, sorry, can't see them.
Life comes in cycles. Whether we have established electoral cycles because it is natural, or if this reinforces in us some innate need for repetition, what goes around ends up coming right back around again. Sometimes these things happen annually (i.e. Super Bowl, birthdays, anniversaries...definitely not in that order), biannually (House of Representatives elections... suggestions?), or every four years (presidential elections, the Olympics, the World Cup). Four years is getting on a long time; in some respects, it is just outside the scope of human memory. But how about 10 years? That's right, a decade. By comparison, that seems like a lifetime.
The United States Census happens every 10 years. The last one was the millennial Census 2000. Although it seems fairly droll--it is, after all, nothing more than a questionnaire required by law--it is hugely important. Congressional districts will be redrawn, the shape of the House of Representatives will change for the next 10 years, and federal funds will be reapportioned based on population. It is something that is routinely abused, but it is also one of the last, shining bastions of democracy in our nation that seems fraught by corruption and a disillusionment that comes from an increasingly isolated and hegemonic state. If you stand up (because you are required by law to do so) you will be counted. Beautiful.
Except for us. We don't count. As private-citizens living abroad not under contract to the federal government or in the armed services we cannot take part in the Census. Conceivably because we've unofficially sworn allegiance to a foreign power or something. I am legitimately disappointed in this. We should be sending our best and brightest abroad to represent the country in unofficial as well as official capacities. Those of us who are abroad actually tend to think more about the governance of America and its perception in the rest of the world far more than most Americans living on native soil do. So to find out that Census is taking place and that we can't take part is indeed a let down, if not a tad insulting.
When the next Census occurs we will be 35. Assuming that we are living in the US at that time, it will be the first time that we appear on the record. Who can say whether I will take it so seriously then as I do now?
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