Foot-E

Breana, once again being the great girlfriend that she is, scored us tickets to the last footy game of the season. This game pitted the Dockers of Fremantle against the Magpies of Collingwood. Naturally we rooted for Fremantle as they are our neighbors to the south. Furthermore, the magpies hail from Queensland and we just can't have those east coasters coming in here thinking they own this place... Needless to say, Fremantle was able to pull off the upset against one of the best teams in the league. The game was played at the Subiaco Oval where the attendance was about 35,000. Now you might be thinking to yourselves, "What is footy?" Well, fortunately for you, I have the answer to that question.

It is, by American conventions, known as Aussie Rules Football. Basically, there are two teams of 18 players playing in a giant oval-the diagram below provides the visual for your understanding. The game begins when the ref bounces the ball in the middle of the smallest circle, very similar to a tip-off in basketball. From there one of the teams gains possession and proceeds toward their goal posts. The ultimate goal is to kick the football-an oblate speroid-through the two big posts for 6 points. If, by chance you miss and the ball goes between a big and a small post, then your team will recieve 1 point. The ball is advanced by running with it, hitting or throwing it to somebody else, or punting it to another player. If you should choose to run, you must bounce the ball on the ground every 15m. You can run, throw, or kick the ball in any direction. Generally, players will kick the ball as the most productive means of advancing it up the field. This is for two reasons. First, it is a giant field, up to 185m long and 155m wide, and the ball goes much farther being kicked than anything else. Secondly, if the ball is kicked over 15m and caught before hitting the ground, it results in a free kick. Otherwise it's just like a giant game of Manball as far as fighting for loose balls goes. There are fouls for high tackles and maybe some other things, but play continues uninterrupted, for the most part. Also, when a ball goes out of bounds, a ref stands with his back to the field and tosses it straight back into play. Now you're all a little bit more cultured. We can add some footy to the Baby Jesus Bowl next time. Oh, and two more things, I don't really know what the boxes on the field are, but the 50m line is simply a reference point, nothing special.
Unfortunately, both Breana and I forgot our cameras so I don't have any pictures of the game. But you can see an artists rendering of me scoring a goal...

By the way, Wall-E was amazing.

Rabbit! Rabbit!

Go Ahead, Whistle the Next Part

Editor's Note: This is the third post in a three part series that chronicles my adventures to the great city of Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields of Western Australia.

With the gold mines and the salt lakes behind us, the last thing to learn about was the local agriculture. We began by taking a walk around Boulder, the neighboring city to Kalgoorlie, to see the markets and just wander around. There's nothing really spectacular about this place, but it was a nice day and they had a statue of a mining dude that I liked. Also below is a picture of St. Barbara, the patron saint of miners. St. Barbara was actually found in Kal.After Boulder, we went on to a pastoral property to learn about sheep and goat farming. I think it's a lot like raising any other livestock. The sheep shearing shed was pretty cool, but the best part was definitely the kebab barbecue that we had for lunch. We got to eat goat, kangaroo, and beef. The kangaroo was really good, though I couldn't really tell a difference between it and beef. The goat was really chewy.We finished off with a desert of brownies and pavlovas. As we came to learn, a pavlova was actually created by an Australian chef to honor the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova on one of her tours through Australia and New Zealand. Wikipedia claims that there is actually some controversy surrounding the dessert and may have actually come from New Zealand. Anyway, the pavlova is a cake that has a marshmallowy center with a merengue topping sauce and strawberries. It's very light and fluffy and delicious.

Leaving, the sheep farm, we headed back to Kal to meet with some Aboriginal women. However, unbeknownst to us, they decided that we would go out to their place and meet them. So, we got back on the bus for 45 minutes until we got to a road that the bus was not to going to be able to go down and their camp was still at least 5k away. So, the indigenous affairs people that we met in Kal to arrange this drove ahead in their ute (Australian for truck) to get the couple Aboriginal ladies while we walked down the road some ways. We ended of sitting down in the middle of the road to talk to them. They told stories of the past and kind of gave us a sense of their history, but because we had a flight leaving at 6, we had to get going pretty quickly. It was unfortunate how this was set up, because it could have been a lot better and more informative. Oh well, I suppose.Then we hopped back on the bus, jumped on the plane, and headed back to Tommie More and UWA for another exciting week of school.

Warning! No Socks.

Because they're just gonna get rocked off! Or something to that extent... Breana, being the wonderful girlfriend that she is, scored us two free tickets to a show on Wednesday night. The band was Panic at the Disco and they were pretty cool. I personally had never really heard of them, so I asked around and got mixed results. They were described to me as emo pop, which didn't get me too excited. However, that was their first CD. Their second one, Pretty. Odd., had recently come out and when I got to listening to that, I liked it a lot better, much less emoness. I didn't give them a listen until the morning of the concert, but I liked it and we had a really good time. Anyway, go ahead and give them a listen. The first band that opened for them was Cobra Starship and the second opening band was The Academy Is, both pretty good. Actually, Cobra Starship was awesome. If you've seen Snakes on a Plane-great movie might I add-their big song is the theme song to that movie. Oh, and I forgot to mention their sweet chick keytarist.

It's Off to Work We Go

Editor's Note: This is the second post in a three part series that chronicles my adventures to the great city of Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields of Western Australia.

If only I had actually gone off to work at finding a gold nugget, then maybe I'd be laying on the beach right now without a care in the world... But as it stands, I did not put much work into that at all and I'm still a student trying to get money the old-fashioned way--or at least trying to get to the point where I can. Anyway, I don't mean to keep any of you waiting because if you thought Day 1 was just awesome-and I know you did-then you are just going to love Day 2! The day started off, as Mom would say, at the crack of dawn with a warm shower and a nice breakfast. (I'm not sure where to put this little side-note, but here looks good. Anyway if it weren't for Dad always saying, "We'll have to get going, as your Mom would say, 'at the crack of dawn,'" then I would never know that she says that. The end.) We left the school for a place called Menzies, a tiny town of about 100 people in the middle of even more nowhere. Here we met with a town planner who told us about stuff and then looked at some Aboriginal art. The art was pretty cool, and it looked something like this:

Figure 1 Aboriginal Painting. The first image that appears when you Google image search "Aboriginal Painting."





Figure 2 Menzies. A look down the main road through Menzies.







From Menzies we continued on about 55km to our next stop, Lake Ballard. Now, Lake Ballard isn't your run-of-the-mill-let's-go-out-and-waterski lake, it's a salt lake. But that's not all. It is also a dried up salt lake. So really it's not a lake at all... just a vast empty space. But a cool vast empty space. The ground was covered in salt that actually tasted like pretty good salt. It looked like snow at some points and felt like walking in squishy clay with a little crunch on the top. We walked around barefoot and it felt like a marvelous foot massage, at least what I imagine a marvelous foot massage to feel like... Anywho, Lake Ballard isn't your run-of-the-mill-dried-up-salt lake either, it's home to an exhibition titled "Inside Australia." This exhibition features 51 statues made by the world-renowned artist Anthony Gormly-maybe you've heard of him. These 51 statues were made using laser scans of the people from Menzies. I don't know about you, but I have no idea how they got the statue below came out of a laser scan of a real person, but I guess it did. All of the statues pretty much looked like this, unless they were dudes. And no, I am not wearing capris... just trying to keep the jeans clean.The dried up salt lake was actually a lot of fun, believe it or not. The only bad part was cleaning off our feet at the end, though it was totally worth it. Once we were finished here, we went on to some random place to go on a little bit of a nature walk through the bush. This is what the outback looks like for the most part; red dirt and bushes.
We returned home after about a 2.5km walk and went out for dinner about an hour later. Dinner was wonderful and Day 2 came to an end.

Hi Ho! Hi Ho!

Editor's Note: This is the first post in a three part series that chronicles my adventures to the great city of Kalgoorlie in the Goldfields of Western Australia.

First off, Kalgoorlie is a small city about 400-500 km East of Perth that is known for its prostitutes and mining. While I did explore the former, I got a very good taste of the latter. We left from Tommie More at 4 30 am on Friday to catch a 6 00 am flight out of Perth to Kalgoorlie. The great thing about this flight was that they actually served us a meal on a flight that only took an hour and fifteen minutes max... they treat us right here... Anyway, the first thing we did once we got there was really, really exciting. In fact, I'm just getting so excited about it that I can't even contain myself. This is what we did - We went up to the reservoir that holds the water for the city and looked out over the city. So Cool... And that's not all, apparently there's a pipeline that runs all the way to it from Perth carrying fresh water for these poor souls out in the bush-- I suppose I shouldn't call them poor because just about everybody is in the mining industry and making way too much money. That being said, I would personally rather have a little less money and be closer to civilization. And back to the pipeline, at the time it was built it was the longest freshwater pipeline in the world and an engineering feat. Maybe that still holds today, but I don't really know. There really isn't anything picture-worthy so far, but go ahead and read the plaque for yourself. After taking in the breathtaking view, we moved on to the "Superpit," the largest gold mine in Australia and the fourth or fifth biggest in the world. The Superpit is a massive gold mine just on the outskirts of Kalgoorlie that measures something like 2km x 4km and is very deep. You can see in the picture a truck carrying a bunch of rocks. These rocks are taken to be crushed up in order to get to the gold that is speckled throughout the rocks. The process used-something to do with anodes and cathodes and fun stuff like that-is capable of extracting something like 80% of the gold that is in the rocks, if I remember correctly. And what that comes down to is this, for each of the seven truckloads of rock that is brought out of the quarry, there is only about a golf ball sized portion of gold that is extracted. While that may sound ridiculous, with gold running at $1000/oz., it's not so bad after all. The specks on the ground in the bottom right corner of the photo are holes in the ground packed with many tons of explosives to expose new rock. They do about three of these each week and we missed this one by only a couple hours. For size reference, I added a green stick figure of me to the picture below on the far left hand side... These trucks were absolutely massive.From the Superpit we moved on to a museum and the Mining Hall of Fame, not to mention the world's tallest bin! Each of these activities were about as exciting as you could imagine them to be. We saw a gold pouring at the hall of fame... at least that's what we thought it was until the gold pouring man told us that it was just copper and nickel and other boring thinks like that. Then we went down into an old gold mine which was actually pretty fun. I mean, who doesn't love a good time 30m or so under the earth? It turns out that at one time there had been thirteen levels to this mine, but all but the top level has since flooded.Finally, at the end of it all, we returned to the school we were staying at and prepared a marvelous Aussie barbecue. When everyone had had their fill, we ended our night at the local horse races where I lost $5 betting on Lady Megagold.

**How well do you know me?**
In my fifth grade play of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which dwarf did I portray with stunning accuracy?

An Olympics Without Bob Costas

The Olympics without Bob Costas are a little bit lame, but Lopez Lomong is pretty cool. As you may know, he was the flag bearer for the US, but as you may not know, I actually raced against him in high school. And I think that's pretty cool. Once I shook his hand after he beat me... That's all I really wanted to say here. I haven't been doing much besides going to class so that's why its been awhile since the last post now. Chemistry and biology are kind of boring to write about, so I hope you'll excuse me on that part. Otherwise, Happy Olympics!

Nearer to Nature

For a small, lovely fee of $25, the International Studies Office set us up with a day trip called "Nearer to Nature" so that we could, presumably, get nearer to nature... that means looking at kangaroos and fun things like that. This actually occurred on the Saturday before classes began, so I'm a little bit slow. On with the story...

We left the college at about 10:00 am to take an hour bus ride out of the city and into nature. Shortly after we arrived, we were split into two groups and I went to go see the animals. From what I understood, this was actually like an animal shelter and nature center mixed into one. One of the ladies working there showed us all kinds of animals ranging from two baby kangaroos to the spiky echidna. I even got to hold one of the baby kangaroos. As you can see, there are pictures of many of the Australian animals here and a video of the echidna at the very bottom of the post. From here we moved on to the next part with Leonard, who taught us how to make some indigenous tools. We all made what he simply called a knife, but more along the lines of what I think is a battle ax. The ingredients: one stick, one piece of quartz, resin, charcoal, kangaroo poop (mmmmmmmmm). The procedure: the resin, charcoal, and kangaroo poop were all mixed together in about a 12:2:1 ratio, respectively, to create the orange stuff that you see in the picture. This was the put on the end of the stick and heated over the fire for a few moments before more of this was added and then heated. This process continued many times until there was a large gooey mess on the end of the stick. At this point, the quartz was placed within the gooey mess and the whole thing was cooled so that it hardened in place.

After this we had lunch and then proceeded to go to a presentation given by a man about birds. It wasn't anything too exciting because they were many of the same birds - eagles, falcons, and owls - that we have in the US. Apparently this bird to the right can read the text of a book from over 1 kilometer away and its talons are remarkably strong.

Finally, we finish our day with Leonard as he took us on a short walk through the bush describing how the aboriginals lived in the olden days. I learned that there are actually two kinds of boomerangs. The one that you and I are familiar with is a small one that you throw and, if done correctly, will some back to you. These are used to scare birds out of a tree of to get them to start flying away. It mimics the sound of a hawk flying through the air. Once a whole flock of birds are out, then the second boomerang is used to bludgeon the birds down. It is much bigger and does not actually come back when thrown. The rest of the walk was just little things about how they lived and what different parts of the bush were used for. It could have been a lot cooler, but we were a little pressed for time at this point. Oh well. Enjoy the echidna!

Rabbit, Rabbit!

Once upon a time, I had a fifth grade teacher named Mrs. Varga (also known as Miss Kapral, before she got married). She taught us that being the first to say "rabbit, rabbit" to someone on the first of each month will bring you good luck and bestow bad luck upon the other person for the rest of the month. I'm not trying to curse all of you for the month of August, but everyone can use a little good luck every now and again (it is currently now and again for me). In addition to receiving bad luck, you may not repeat the phrase "rabbit, rabbit" to anybody else in hopes of regaining your good luck. So if you are reading this, and it's August the First, I apologize for giving you all bad luck. And if it makes you feel any better, virtual "rabbit, rabbits" probably don't even count for anything. Now go "rabbit, rabbit" yourselves into some goos luck!

Figure 1 Not a rabbit, but instead one of his close bouncing buddies... Your first look at a kangaroo!