Last night I have finally shaved my head. Right now I only have about 1/16" of hair on my head. It looks very different. Hopefully I can upload some photos so that people will be able to see what it looks like.The net connectivity here absolutely sucks!! The delay is a good 10 seconds, and I've already been kicked off once because the connection timed out. This is pitiful. I'm In Sydney Australia, and I can't even get a decent net connection. Maybe it's just this Inet Cafe, and so I'll try another one, but if it isn't, then even New Zealand has better net connectivity than Australia.
I landed in Sydney, Australia around 7:30am on the 22nd. It turns out that we met a school mate of my sisters at the airport named Sid. We hung out together for the first couple days, but he left for Perth just about an half hour ago.
First day we pretty much just walked around the harbor here. We walked by the Opera house (I have a few pictures of it) in our wanderings. We also walked out onto the bridge to get a better view of the city. Nothing that exciting.
Today we headed out to Manly Beach, and pretty much just laid there for a while. The weather so far has been very good. It's been warm, but not to warm, and has only had a few wisps of clouds in the sky. Theresa signed us up for surfing lessons tomorrow upon my idea.
I'll try to write more tomorrow, or later tonight, but I really feel like taking a shower (after the beach), and then heading to dinner. Hopefully I'll be able to upload some photos that I've taken with my digital camera so you can see them.
Last night I have finally shaved my head. Right now I only have about 1/16" of hair on my head. It looks very different. Hopefully I can upload some photos so that people will be able to see what it looks like.
It is funny though. The top of my head had gotten sunburned over the past couple days. The weird part is that it was only right down the center. I really didn't split my hair down the center, but I think it has a habit of doing it with my piggy tail.
The beach was really nice, but I did a stupid thing and forgot to put sun screen on the top of my feet. So right now, both of my feet are quite red. I'll make sure that this doesn't happen with my hair. It'd be really bad to get sunburned on my scalp.
Looks like today we are going to be renting a car and heading to Melbourne. My sister would like to get into Melbourne by Friday, and it is a good 13 hour drive, so we will need to make sure we have enough time to explore the country side.
I finally made it to Melbourne a few days ago. I haven't really had time to write in my journal because of the fact that it looks like my home machine is now down. It's really annoying, but at least I can still check my email.
Melbourne has been fun. Last night I went out to dinner with Benno who is a local FreeBSD person. He told me that just the other day he got his commit bit approved, now he's waiting for the accounts to be created. It's fun to meet another FreeBSD committer on my travels.
I have been surfing a couple times and I must say that surfing is a lot of work. The first time we took lessons we only surfed for two hours, but by the end of the lesson, I was pretty much exhausted. All I could think about was getting some food in me.
Later that day, we headed up to Katoomba and the Blue Mountains. (This is last Wednesday.) When we got up there, we decided to do some hiking around. We went off onto a trail that ended up dropping us into part of the canyon. The number of steps that we had to climb both just on the way, and then coming out of the canyon was very strenuous. It took us around 5 hours to complete the hike, though the distance was only listed at about 5 kilometers. I think that they have seriously uder estimated the distances. It was very cool to be walking down in the canyon. From above it looks pretty dry and uninteresting. Once you get down under the canopy, it is a completely different world. I can't wait to upload some of my photos.
After the hike, all I could think about was a nice juicy steak for dinner. We did manage to find this pizza place that cooked a nice steak for me. I was thinking of ordering the large (as opposed to the small) giant rump steak, but I found out that in the bush, the portions are a bit bigger. The large portion would of been a whole kilo of meet, while the small/regular was only 600 grams (which is about 21 oz.) I did eat almost the entire thing, except for the fat that wasn't the edible. Before dinner we met this nice man who was a local, and offered to by me a beer. I am getting out of order, but who cares. The pizza place was the only/first place to open that night that severed steak, so we had to wait outside for about 20 minutes before they finally opened. While we were waiting, there was this guy with his two kids waiting for the same restaurant to open up. By the time the place opened up, there was another couple that was waiting for the place. shortly after it opened, there were a few more people eating there. The steak was cooked well, half was medium rare, and the other half was rare. It tasted wonderful, but it was probably influenced by how hungry I was.
The next day we started on our drive to Melbourne. Pretty much the entire day we drove. Just as we were about to leave Eden (on the coast in NSW), we got hit by a flash rain. It started raining really hard, so we headed back to Eden to check into this hotel to spend the night. In the hotel, they had a pub, and we spent some time there, drinking after the long drive, and having some food for dinner. Some of the locals struck up a conversation with us, and it was interesting to talk with them for a good part of the evening.
Then on Friday, we got an early start from Eden, and drove the rest of the way to Melbourne. We met up with my sister's friend Miles and Skye (sp?) for a BBQ that we only stayed at for a half an hour due to the weather. Then we went out for some food and drinks.
Since we've been in Melbourne, it's been pretty relaxing. On Sunday we went out wine tasting in the Yarra valley which was good, and we also dropped by the Healesville Sanctuary to see the native wildlife to Australia. It was cool to see the more exotic animals like the koala, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils among other animals. At the kangaroo exhibit, you were allowed to get close enough to touch them if you wanted to.
Monday we went driving out onto the Morington Peninsula to relax on the beach. After a couple hours on the beach we went to find a place to go surfing. We ended up going the the Portsea Surf beach. The surf on that beach was really rough. I don't think I've ever experienced such rough surf before. There were sells of a meter or so that was only 10/20 meters from the beach edge. I spent more time fighting the surf than actually surfing. It was still fun to be out though.
Tomorrow, my sister is leaving, to we are having a relaxing day today. Just going to spend some time wondering around the city, and of course writing this journal entry.
I've actually been back for a couple days now, but finally got around to getting the time to write about the last few days I was in Australia.
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I really didn't do that much. I was waiting to make sure that I had the money to be able to fly up to Cairns. I did drop by Williamstown and St. Kilda to check them out. Nothing that exciting really. The ferry ride to Williamstown was nice and relaxing, but that was about all. I did take a few pictures that I hope to merge into a panoramic. We'll see if I ever get around to doing it.
Friday night was pretty cool. I went out to the movie What Lies Beneath with some people I met at the hostel. It was pretty cool, I stayed out drinking a bit afterward, and decided that I might as well spend the rest of the night up so that I could make sure I make my flight to Cairns that was learning the next morning around 6:40am.
While I was in Cairns, I managed to book a trip to go diving on Saturday. I had never been diving before, so they walked me through an introductory dive. It was very cool to be down under water floating about. It definitely takes a bit of getting used to breathing through a regulator, but it isn't too bad. We didn't go down to deep, probably only a few meters. There were couple huge clams and we also saw a silver head shark. Snorkeling was actually quite a bit more colorful than the diving. I'm not sure if it was the part of the Great Berrier Reef that was were diving on or what, but the snorkeling was just as good as the diving.
On Sunday, I took a tour up to Cape Tribulation. Our tour guide was quite well informed. We got to see just how amazingly diverse ecosystem that Australia has. He pointed out green ants which were edible. I decided to try one to be adventurous. They were actually not bad, and tasted like lemons like he said. I wasn't able to take many photos as the batteries in my digital camera had run out of juice. I did get one of the ocean near Port Douglas.
Sunday night, I ended up going out to dinner and have a few drinks with some people that I met at the hostel I was staying at. This time my flight to Sydney (to head back home) was leaving at an insane 5:30am. I again decided to stay up all night to make sure I'd catch my flight. We were enjoying ourselves at this club, we checked the time and it was only 2:15am. Then about an hour later we checked the time and it was 4:15am! My cab was suppose to pick me up 4:30am. The problem was though, that both of us (the person I was drinking with) were a bit to drunk to remember how to get back to the hostel I was suppose to catch the cab at. So, we find a cab to hop back to the hostel, I ran upstairs to grab my stuff, and head out to the cab. Luckily I make it to the airport in time.
The plane ride was actually quite interesting. I think I ate some bad food or something, because shortly into the flight after having some orange juice, I start to feel really ill. I get up, and sit on the toilet for a while slowly recovering my composer. I finally get out of the toilet and then spend the next 20 minutes or so talking with the flight attendants as they do their work. They were nice enough to provide me with plenty of water, and some bread to help soak up some of the alcohol. It was really run watching them work, and being able to talk with them. One of them had even been to San Francisco before. It's not often that you get to stand back and watch exactly what the flight attendants do.
I must say that the trip was definitely a ton of fun. I will definitely head back to see Western Australia and a bit more of the interior of Easter Australia.