Koalas who aren't Mc

With this post, let's skip the story and move right to the good stuff:



All together, awwwwwwwwwwwww

Little joey there sticking out of his mum's pouch.

Here's my best wallaby shot



And another pretty good 'oala.



So the only true tourist thing I've done is visit Phillip Island, which is about 2 hours southeast of Melbourne. Phillip Island is most famous for the "penguin parade". A large colony of fairy penguins live there and hundreds of people go to see them return from the sea and a day of fishing as the sun goes down. I was only on Phillip Island in the morning and saw no penguins, but I did visit the Koala Conservation Center.



They basically have preserved a little eucalyptus grove and built walkways about.



A koala, as I learned apparently spends about 20 hours a day just sleeping. This is largely because there's not really that much energy in eucalyptus leaves, so they just rest all the time. At night they come down from the tree, climb up some new tree, and then go back to sleep. Ok, I guess the eat some, too. The "rangers" walk around each morning and find where the koalas are that day and put a sign there.



A couple of the koalas were at a level pretty close to humans, but many can get way up there. Here's a young but independent koala. See that ball way way up there?





This one was particularly high, but all were at a fair distance.



And then I used my camera's zoom lens to get a decent view of them.



They also had black wallabies, possums (supposedly, never saw one), and tons of birds that are common in Australia, but funky outside of it.

Here's the famed kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree.



Here's a few more pics of the proud mum and the joey hiding progressively further into the pouch. I wonder if those claws hurt in there, the same way children kick their moms inside the stomach.





And, finally, just to prove that I was there... The koala behind me is the one right near the top of this post who doesn't have the baby. (And to answer clothing questions, the answer is Nashville Predators ice hockey).

Driving Miss McKoala

So...

I did make it to Kiama, found a lighthouse, found a blowhole



Unfortunately, to my great disappointment, no matter where I looked around here, I just could never find the legendary McKoala. I had a pretty decent idea what she looked like, but just... she wasn't there.












However, quite bizarrely, I did run into McKoala's very good friend Shona. Shona had with her Mr. Shona, Boy Shona, and Princess Shona as well.

It wasn't McK, but I decided to make do with this group, and so off we went to watch the blowhole semi-blowing, more like the sniffling hole today, and then off to find lunch.

For lunch, I did get to learn all about sports clubs that have slots in them. Apparently, they rake in money this way and so end up supporting lots of sports teams. As I understand it, you can only eat in these clubs if you are a member or you live sufficiently far away so that you can become a temporary member. So temporary members we became and then we were able to feast upon sausages and mash, octopus salad, chicken sandwiches, chicken nuggets and a couple battens of chips.

Yay, I used "batten of chips". I learned this lovely phrase from my extensive petrol station dining over the first three days. More on that soon.

As you might expect, it turns out that Shona and clan are quite nice people, easy to get along with, have lovely smiles, and are just generally a winning bunch. You would only expect this, of course, because McK would never choose someone for her close friend if they were not like this.

Princess Shona did a dance for me, Soccer Boy Shona discussed the midfield position, and the adult Shonas filled me in on all sorts of things.

And here's what you've been waiting for. Most of the clan in front of our new favorite church.



After the first Minions Down Under Meet, I jumped back in the car to race south about 5 hours to beat my next hotel's reception closing time in Eden, New South Wales.

Australia becomes quite rural not too long past Kiama, and it stays that way until you hit some towns getting close to Melbourne. It's farm land for a long long time with a whole lotta cows and sheep. Eventually that switched to 2-3 hundred kilometers of eucalypt forest. Here's a little country road off the main one inside these forests.



And a massive field of flowers somewhere in Victoria. This is just one piece of the pasture.



Life is real quiet in these parts and half of the vehicles you pass in the forest are either logging trucks or caravans, i.e., campers.

Here is my beautiful Hyundai Getz that has been getting me around. It's a beast.



These forests continued for a long, long time with periodic watch for kangaroo signs, watch for wombat signs, and one boring old watch for deer sign.

Apparently, leaping roos and wallabies are a real hazard, and I was warned by both Bernie and Mr. Shona. They are big enough that slamming one of them can hurts your car by a thousand or more easy.

But for me, I couldn't wait to see some creature. I did see something hunched over and munching plants in the late afternoon, and then another something hopped out of the way of an oncoming car just as I got there. Finally the next day I managed to pull to the side of the freeway ans capture a pic of this one.



I can tell you with some confidence now that this is not a kangaroo but a black wallaby. Works for me. Tomorrow/later I have better pics of wallabies but they were at a nature conservatory, while this was a real wallaby living in the bush, so that's cool for me.

Eventually, I did make it all the way around, about 1100 kilometers from Sydney to Melbourne. I managed to eat nothing but gas station food all the way, with the exception of the Shona meet-up of course. So I can tell you all about meat pies, pepper steak pies, "massive sausage logs" (That's what she said), vegie pasties, chikitos (actually still don't know what that was), salt and vinegar chicken tenders, and battens of chips either with salt shaken on top or "chicken" which appears to be some sort of freaky chicken bouillon mix. I don't think a vegetable other than the potato passed my lips for 72 hours.

Tomorrow / later: Phillip Island

The wrong side to Kiama

Well, here I am in Melbourne. Presentation is tomorrow, so while I delay practicing the presentation, I will post about the trip.

The first three days of this trip were almost all about driving.

But first things first. It's an 11 hour flight to Sydney from Honolulu, which, sure, it's long, but Honolulu to Houston was 9 or 10, so this is really just a consequence of living in the middle of the Pacific. Of course, for all my mainland and European friends, it would have been longer.

The Australian people have truly been embarrassingly friendly so far. I mean, the whole lot of them have been at worse neutral and most seem happy to give advice of any sort. I spent my 11 hours with Bernie, a bloke from South Sydney who's in his early 60s or so and just coming back from 3 and a half weeks in the USA. Bernie's so dang friendly, he's either the nicest man ever or a serial killer. He's in a "big brother" type program where he meets periodically with a 17-year-old whose dad has been gone for years, and so he tries to do 17-year-old type things with him like going jet skiing. He's the kind of guy who met the American family in the rows behind us near the bathroom and so spent a while writing up a list of tourist attractions at all their destinations for them. I've got his card as well, so that I can call him if I have any troubles or just to report how I am when the trip is done.

More normal Bernies have been everywhere from the construction guys looking after a big lost dog to the dad from Canberra who chatted with me about the Big Reds (kangaroos) and AFL (Australian Football League) games in Melbourne to the guy in the toll booth in Sydney who gave me directions. I do find myself saying, "I'm sorry?" repeatedly because I didn't understand something, but that's my issue not theirs.

As I said, however, most of my life pre-conference revolved around the Australian freeways. I'm hanging in there now, but, boy, was I having issues the first night.

My entire job was to get from the Sydney airport to my hotel just outside City Center. With normal traffic, it should be a simple 20 minute drive in a northeasterly direction on one of the main "freeways" with a simple turn on one road.

Two and a half hours later, I made it.

There was no one thing that got me, but put it all together and I was wandering, just hanging on for dear life. Of course, Australians drive on the left side of the street and the driver is on the right side of the car. They've got the blinker on the right as well, and the windshield wipers on the left, where an American would expect the blinkers to be. I also rented a standard transmission, which is no big deal by itself, since I drove a standard transmission for several years, but it gave me one more thing to think about. I had no map, but I did have Google travel directions.

Unfortunately, none of the roads by the airport actually had names that one could catch, at least not while trying to stay in the correct lane and turning one's windshield wipers on and off in attempts to turn. I swear I followed sign after sign for "City" or "City Centre", but soon I was in some area called Ramsgate. Maybe I had gone too far and missed the city and was now in North Sydney? I pulled into a petrol station and asked to buy a map. He didn't have maps, but I did learn that Ramsgate was in the opposite direction that I needed to be going in. I wasn't in North Sydney. I was southwest and headed in the opposite direction from the one I thought I was going in.

I managed to get back on highway 1, this time headed towards the city, looking in vain for a way to turn right on Williams St. to get to the hotel. After seeing no signs for William St., I hit the toll booth and ask how much further. Apparently, I'd already missed it. But if I just go up here, turn left and then left and then.... I will be right there. But downtown Sydney is not a calm and peaceful place on Saturday night. One cannot look at tiny little blue street signs hidden in the corners because there are leaping pedestrians hoping to be run over by Americans on every block. I need all concentration to not kill anyone, including myself, and so soon I'm just driving in circles around downtown Sydney having no idea what road I am on nor the direction I'm headed in, but as long as I haven't mowed anyone down, I'm at least still legal. I spent about an hour doing this. Since it's downtown, one can't just pull over and ask someone. There's no place to stop.

Somehow I finally ended up heading back south into neighborhoods and finally turn around... about 6 kilometers north of the damned airport where I started an hour and a half earlier. This was almost my third trip to the airport for the evening. I then end up back on the freeway, back at the same toll booth I was at before, still looking for the mythical Williams St. Okay, so this time I do a left and a left and a left and a I don't know, where the hell is this damned Williams St. I might just die going in circles in this damned city and it's hopeless and oh! I'm on Williams St.! How did that happen?

So I made it.

I called McK to find out the arrangements for our next day's meet-up. We are supposed to meet in Kiama, which has a lighthouse and a legendary blowhole. It should take about an hour and a half. With my experience driving, I left about 2 and a half hours early and was still 10 minutes late.

I got to Kiama and did indeed find a lighthouse



and a blowhole, not much blowing today

but....

It looks like you will have to wait to see more since blogger will not accept any photos for about an hour now. I'll finish the story later, blogger willing.

Off to the Land Down Under

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Oz. Since there's a 20 hour difference between Hawaii and Sydney, the 11 hour flight will turn into a 31 hour flight, getting me in Saturday evening. The good news is I arrive about 10 hours before I leave on the way back. I'm taking my laptop, so I might be around. But then I might not.

I guess I will have pics of both Australia and Kaua'i when I return the following Sunday.

Take care.

Oh, and Yes! I am scheduled to meet Ms. Koala and Mr. Koala for lunch on Sunday.

Lion head on tree

Lion head on tree? New exhibit at MOMA?

You never know, but not yet.

A couple years ago when N was away for a business trip, B and I hatched a crafts project. In general, I don't do craft projects. That's entirely N's responsibility. But B was into Chinese lion dancing at the time, so I decided the two of us would create a lion costume. I knew I couldn't create a real one nor did I have enough money to do so, so instead we devised an idea where we'd cover ourselves in Hawaiian aloha fabrics and then the person in front would hold a lion head made of cardboard on a stick.

The two of us in fact did make the lion head through paints and scissors, but never actually got around to sewing together the fabric we purchased, largely because I don't know how to sew and I got lazy. So the only lion dancing we did was in just one piece of fabric on top of us with the sides never attached.

The lion head then sat around for months on end, finally ending up near the garbage cans getting rained on, and the fabric got turned into some curtains by N and her maman. Last night I finally took the lion head to the street to have it taken away by the garbage trucks.

This morning I went out to bring the garbage can back in and discovered this:



It appears that someone pulled the lion head out of the garbage can, and then tied it to the palm tree near our house using the straps that cinch a garbage bag together, having pulled them out of some bag. It's possible that the garbage collector guys were in a fun mood, but more likely, it was one of the people who go through trash every night looking for 5 cent recyclable bottles and cans.

Turning into my... mom!

I spent many teenage and college years encountering the following scene:

I'm sitting on a sofa reading a book. My mother would walk through the room and turn on the lamp next to me so I wouldn't ruin my eyes.

I just did that to N.

Karaoke night

This is another pic I stole from Facebook of my sister's wedding. After the wedding, we went out to a karaoke bar. Maid of honor on left, bride, me, groom. You can see that I'm being my normal crazy self; the other three can barely contain me, but you guys already know how absolutely crazy I am. We are singing Love Shack by the B-52s. Other lovely items which I serenaded the crowd with included Hey Hey We're the Monkees with my sis, You Can Call by Al by Paul Simon with the killer llama (who almost none of you know anymore), and Anthem from the musical Chess all solo and all. This was the first time I've done karaoke in front of people since I got dragged up around 199...6 or something?

Know your viral videos: Web Site Story

Web Site Story, created by College Humor. My favorite line at the end, "I can't wait to read about me later on your blog."

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Twitter ... is a woman

I came back on Tuesday but I've been absolutely swamped with getting ready for the conference in Australia. I leave next Friday. Ugh. But today I accidentally signed up for Twitter, even though I vowed not to. I stumbled across the fact that Papa Nez (Michael Nesmith) is on Twitter and apparently even says stuff. So I signed up. But I'm not sure how it works. Will I get an email when someone I'm following says something? I'm not going to bother saying anything myself unless someone's listening to me. So, um, I guess, please tell me in a comment if you are on Twitter and I'll follow you or something. I think WW is on there. You will be shocked to hear that I am "pacatrue" on Twitter.

Who's Michael Nesmith you might ask? Here's a video using one of his better songs from the early 70s. And here's another where I discover that the lead guy from one of my fave bands ever, lambchop, was guesting on one tune on the new, now no longer new, Nez album. OMG! OMG!

Anyway, here's a video of one of lambchop's tunes called "...is a woman". It is very peaceful and quiet. Don't click on it planning to rock-out. The lyrics do word painting more than anything else.

To the Garden

I keep intending to do one large rant blog post, and then another video, and other things, but I never do them. Apologies for that. Instead, I've just been working on the conference paper that I'm still behind on.

However, I do have interesting news, which is that Paca and Pack are headed to Kauai on Thursday. One of the great virtues of living on Oahu is that you can hop a flight to Kauai for $45. The hotel room is far more than our tickets. So we will be gone to Kauai, the Garden Isle, from Thursday to Tuesday.

Catch people on the flip side.