On the left is our host Jen , with Benoite on the right.
In LA I'm in Book Club. Every month we all get together and we discuss the chosen book. Ok, Ok, we discuss the book for maybe 10 minutes and then we move on to chatting about anything and everything else while drinking wine and feasting on the food everyone has brought. It's a fabulous group of intelligent women with an amazing array of opinions and viewpoints. They were set to meet last week and I have to admit I was missing my monthly dose girl talk.
By a lucky coincidence, Jen, one of the girls at AGSM, happened to plan a girl's night the day after the book club meeting I missed. She invited all the girls in the program and all the partners as well, so it was great chance to know people. Jen arranged the evening as a pot luck and there was a fantastic spread of food -- from Indian, to Greek, to pizza, to a lovely cheese plate. I do love cheese! It was hard not to ravage the table.
It was a really nice evening. What makes it even better is that our good time benefitted a good cause. For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Cancer Council here in Australia has been promoting these Girls Night In Events. The idea is that you get together with your friends and everyone donates the cash they would have spent going out to research for women's cancers. Jen simply had a vase discreetly set up on the mantle into which everyone could drop in there donation at their leisure. By the end we'd raised over $400.
Yay Girl Power!
Kate with Juliana and Michelle
Shradha, Maria, and Me
P.S. LA Girls, we should see if anything like this exists in the states and maybe throw one ourselves.
There have been several evenings devoted to pool and poker since we've arrived.
I've already mentioned that Kate and I headed out to play pool at a pub one night in Bondi. By our place there are also several hotels with pool tables and we've taken advantage of those on a couple of occasions. Odd little side note, you'll find that a majority of the bars in Sydney are in "hotels." This is due to an old law that only allowed liquor licenses to establishments that also offered rooms to travelers. Therefore you see a lot of bars that look nothing like hotels -- maybe there are a few rooms hidden someplace -- but are labeled as such. By our place and walking down Anzac Parade towards UNSW there are several places that also have small casinos and billiards.
Once night, after we'd first moved in, all the roommates headed down to Churchill's (maybe the biggest and the cheesiest of these establishments) and had a few rounds of pool and beer. Day and I ended up on a team together and it proved to be a great partnership. He was a great coach -- perhaps a much better coach than a player that night. His game was a little off but gave excellent direction. I played a lot better than I had in ages. A few more lessons and maybe I'll finally become a halfway decent player.
We've also had several poker nights. This is a lot easier because it doesn't even require us to leave the house. I haven't had much experience playing at all, but I really like the game and since Day and Kate have both played for years I asked them to teach me a thing or two. I think I've made some considerable improvements -- pretty soon I was coming out ahead in our friendly home games.
Last Tuesday I got a chance to try out all my new learn'n. The AGSM crowd held a poker tournament up at the school. About 24 people competed and some of them are really very good. We split up into small tables (for the record, G and I were not at the same table) and while I floundered on my etiquette a bit every now and again, I held my own. I had a lot of ups and downs, but I got lucky breaks whenever I was in real trouble. (Try two sets each of pocket J's and A's. The last set of pocket Aces edged out another player's set of pocket Kings, earning me a decent pot.) Eventually, I found myself at the final table. Also at the final table were Day, Kate, G, and two other international students -- I think the players from the regular program were regretting inviting the international crowd. I started out short stacked at the table, and figured I'd be out soon, but instead I caught a few Hail Mary passes and made a come back.
Ultimately, the only two left standing were G and I. It seemed silly to keep going, so we split the pot. Not too shabby!
However, I don't think Kate and Day are going to want to give me lessons anymore . . .They don't realize that it will be a while before I get that lucky again.
I still had a cold, and the cold medicine had not kicked in. We had planned to catch one of the free lunchtime tours, but the tour was nowhere to be found. 'Why the hell don't any of the websites in this country have accurate information?! This is ridiculous!" It turned out we'd come in through the wrong entrance. I was cranky.
It even took a while for the fact that it was finally gorgeous out after weeks of rain and clouds to register; but slowly it did, and ultimately the sunny weather and spectacular views began to shift my mood. Then we saw this little guy and things began to change.
After that I found a very welcoming tree, and I had no other choice but to climb it . . . and you really can't feel too grumpy when you're sitting in such a fabulous tree.
From that point, the day just got better and better. We saw cool things everywhere! We sat by a pond for a while and watched some adorable moorhens building a nest in the middle of the pond and tending to their chicks.
We also saw an eel and there were bats hanging from trees everywhere, even in the middle of the day. Luckily, they were far up above trying to sleep and didn't really bother with anything going on below them.
We grabbed lunch at the Botanic Gardens Cafe in the center of the garden, which was fairly reasonable priced. My chicken wrap was little dry, but luckily G's tasty chicken schnitzel had enough mayo to spare a little for my lunch.
After lunch we were a little drowsy, so we lounged for bit on bench under a tree before continuing to explore the park -- and there is enough here to explore for days. This is a city with A LOT of park land. The Gardens begin just beyond the Opera House and they just seem to go on and on. Where the Botanic Gardens end, the Domain begins and offers up even more grasslands and recreational areas. Just as with Centennial Park, there are bikers and runners everywhere. We just go on strolling around, taking it all in.
Some of the best views of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge can be seen from the eastern side of the park along the water. They get even better when you hit Mrs. Maquarie's point. Mrs. Maquarie was the wife of an early governor of New South Whales and she enjoyed this area so much that a chair was carved into a rock so that she could sit and look out over the harbour. To get the most spectacular views though, it's best to walk down to the rocks by the water.
From here we started to make our way back, however, we were sidetracked by a flock of cockatoos. If the little guy we saw at the beginning of the day was cool, this was just jaw-droppingly awesome. Soooo many cockatoos just chilling under a tree.
These guys are making out on top of my map!
There were other beautiful birds as well, and they're all clearly very used to people because none of them seemed at all fazed by all the spectators that had gathered to watch them. This Rainbow Lorikeet came right up to me and hung out on my jacket and purse for while.
At the center of the flock of cockatoos was this very zen gentleman just calmly feeding them and giving them water from a water bottle.
G and I were sprawled out taking millions of pics of all the birds, and eventually the guy came over and gave G an handful of nuts to feed to the cockatoos. Within seconds he was covered under flock of feathers.
A few moments later, the guy comes back and hands me some nuts and an in an instant I'm covered in birds. This was simultaneously amazing and completely overwhelming!
Full disclosure, you are absolutely not supposed to this. There are signs everywhere warning you not to feed the birds because they bite -- and they do, although thankfully, not hard. The second the nuts were gone, I closed my hands so that they wouldn't nibble my fingers; but those little guys are determined and don't give up right away. Still, they are so cute and have such clear personality that I would not have traded getting mobbed by them for anything.
I have slight hesitancy around birds because one once nosedived at my head -- this is huge for me!
So the day started out a little rough, but turned out to be one of our most fantastic days in Sydney so far.
P.S. I really don't know anything about birds. It's not like I was just able to recognize all of the species by name right away. I just found a couple of sites that were really helpful at identifying Aussie Birds: http://www.waratahsoftware.com.au/wp_birds_birds.html#row-5a
Last Sunday Kate and I headed over to the Powerhouse Museum. We thought this museum was supposed to be something like the Observatorium in San Francisco, where you get to poke and touch everything around without having to think too deeply about anything. Still feeling foggy from my cold, this seemed perfect for my low attention span. Now I know you're thinking I'm a terrible person for spreading my germs around to children, but the cold was on it's way out and I made sure to wash my hands a good often and used lots of hand sanitizer. In any case, apparently, neither of us had really looked at a description of the museum because it wasn't what we expected at all.
There definitely are plenty of interactive and kid friendly exhibits, but they are far more in depth than the touch and play installations I had in mind. A quick visit to their website tells you that the focus of this museum is science + design. According to Fodor's Sydney's 25 Best the museum is divided into five themed areas: Creativity and the Australian Achievement, Decorative Arts, Everyday Life in Australia, Bringing People Together, and Science, Technology, and People. This wasn't clear to me from the museum map so honestly, for a while I couldn't figure what this museum was about. It seemed like the craziest mix of exhibitions to have all in one place. On top of that, the various exhibits kinds of run together, flowing from one to the next.
In my ADHD state, it took me a while to shift gears. I was eventually able to focus though, and there is some very cool stuff in this museum. It's family friendly, with lots of stuff on subjects that would be interesting to kids, like trains and space. Then on the flip side, there are is also plenty that appeals to adults and the variety means there is something for everyone. Along side all the science, there are exhibits on social history and even fashion throughout the ages. After some discussion, Kate and I decided that the layout -- which seemed so weird at first -- actually is kind of perfect for short attention spans. If you find an installation that really enthralls you, you can delve deeply into that subject and read as much about as you want since they tend to provide A LOT of info. However, if you want to bounce from one thing to the next, there is something new around each corner and tons of corners to weave around.
There are plenty of interactive exhibits, although I have to admit that a few here and there didn't work for us. Still Kate and I did get the chance to poke, pull, and bash at plenty. I think we were pretty good stand-in's for ten-year olds.
The idea of this exhibit was kind of cool. It was meant to demonstrate how a computer might be able to approximate human responses and carry on a conversation with a human interacting with it. Problem was, she was very easily confused.
They had one more experimental, interactive exhibit called Artifact H10515. It looks like a giant alien cube with suction cup eyes and it incorporates content fed into the installation from the public. It requires planning ahead, but you upload content to the Artifact's website -- either from home or at the museum -- and that gets added to the video feed, appearing through the creature's eyes, so that the installation is constantly evolving. (If you do it from home, you're told the date on which your content will begin to appear on the Artifact.) The installation didn't blow me away, but I thought it was a cool way to get kids involved and an interesting way to capture the tastes of a population.
The section that most captivated my attention was a spectacular photographic journey through space that begins with images of the of our solar system, then the milk way, and finally moving into the universe beyond. I just found these pictures to be so surreally beautiful. I spent an age gazing at the pictures of stars and different galaxy formations.
I might have spent a little too long staring at the stars because I ran out of time to see all of the social history and design exhibits. I really loved what I did get to see of these, but seeing as how admission was a very reasonable $10, I might just come back somewhere down the line to finish checking these sections out.
After the museum closed, we were hungry -- big surprise. Luckily, Hannah's Pies was right across the street to ease our hunger and allow us to continue our survey of Australian Meat Pies. I ordered a "bacon and cheese" pie, however, there wasn't much bacon or cheese to be found in there. That said, the gravy was quite delish and there were some nice meat chunks in the pie. With a little chilli sauce on top, it definitely hit the spot.
After G and I left Paddington Market, we started out to find a bus stop, but then we just kept going until we ran into Centennial Park and we decided to go on and keep walking.
It's a beautiful park with extensive grounds and lots of trails for walking, running, and biking. We stuck to the Western edge, wandering vaguely in the direction of home. We didn't get too deep into the park, but nonetheless the route took us past many spectacular trees and a beautiful duck pond.
The little wood block print of the two birds we bought at Paddington Market actually turned out to be rather prophetic. There were bird couples and fowl families everywhere! The number of cool birds to be seen in Sydney struck me from our first few days here. During our stay Sinclair's crazy bird calls I'd never heard before would wake me up early every morning, and every now and again I'd catch a glimpse of birds flying about that I'd previously only seen in cages. Here at this park, a lot of those cool species are visible in one place.
And what's even better than lot of pretty birds and ducks and geese? Baby birds and ducks and geese!
And an entire black swan family!
G had a field day taking pictures of all of these adorable birds and the wonderful winding trees. Eventually, we had to tear ourselves away and decided to walk the rest of the way home. Why not? We'd already walked this far and had such an awesome afternoon.
View Larger Map This is our entire route for the day, starting in Hyde park, walking down Oxford St. where we went to the Paddington Market, Centennial Park (Point B here), and then finally home.
the museum is divided into five themed areas: Creativity and the Australian Achievement, Decorative Arts, Everyday Life in Australia, Bringing People Together, and Science, Technology, and People. This wasn't clear to me from the museum map so honestly, for a while I couldn't figure what this museum was about. It seemed like the craziest mix of exhibitions to have all in one place. On top of that, the various exhibits kinds of run together, flowing from one to the next.
