2008 June Archive at Jordan, ‘10

Archive for June, 2008

Port Douglas and other places…

My parents arrived last Thursday and since then it has been one non-stop puddle-hop. On their one night in Melbourne, I showed them the sights and gave them a grand tour in the pouring, FREEZING rain.

Then, we started our great Australian adventure in Kyneton, a tiny Australian bush town. We stayed at a wildlife sanctuary and saw tons and TONS of kangaroos, parrots, Aussie magpies and wallabies (including some babies much to my mother’s delight). We also made friends with a local possum my mother aptly named Apple. AND I found the largest mushrooms I have ever seen. They were circling a large eucalyptus tree and were easily easily four feet tall each!

We also visited Bendigo where one of the area’s gold mines had been shut down and renovated into a tourist exhibit. We were able to go down into the mine to about thirty feet under the surface and watched as our tour guide (who looked stunningly like Richard Gere) operate the old, prop machinery in the tunnels. Then we got a chance to mine for gold ourselves, in a little gold panning setup they had on the property. It was great fun. The water was hand-numbingly cold (I should know) and only my mom found the yellow specks everyone was searching for, but that’s never what trully matters in the end.

One day, I begged my parents to take me on the Great Ocean Road, which stretches along the coast of at least Victoria (I don’t know how much farther). It was incredible. It was drizzley and cool and the water was slate grey–the perfect Ocean Road color. We saw the 12 Apostles and stopped in for lunch in Apollo Bay.

Finally, on Thursday I returned to Melbourne to take my final final–for Microbiology and Immunology. I think I aced that three-hour exam and deservedly I celebrated with my friends and my parents at my favorite local pizza joint, Bimbo’s. Yesterday, we arrived in Port Douglas, which is north of Cairns in Queensland. It’s seven hours south of the tip of Australia, which we plan to visit in the coming days. Although prices have quadrupled in the last five years, the town is still as laid-back and fun-loving as ever. I love it here. Today, we took a trip up to the Daintree rainforest and hiked several trails into the mangroves and walked a few miles on beautiful golden beaches. The beauty and intricacy of nature, especially here, never ceases to amaze me. There are few places more exotic and still so connected to the modern world. Even now I miss the misty green hills and crocodile-harboring streams of the Daintree. We saw a massive spider and ate ice cream at the Daintree Ice Cream Company.

The entrance sign across the river, in the Daintree!

…a croc-infested river…

Oh…and I also ran into a ninety-year old man named Kenny that I befriended back when I was fifteen. He’s still kickin’ it, dancing up a storm with all the lovely young ladies and he’s still as sweet as ever.

hum in the forest,

Jordan

Quote of the week:

“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”

- Charles M. Schulz

Published by Jordan on June 28, 2008 in Study Abroad and Miscellaneous. 2 Comments

Disconnection

I’m glad my mother not so subtly reminded me about Father’s Day (two days ago for me). I would have completely blanked, which I did until she gave me a blank to fill. “Hmm, what could today possibly be, Jordan?” hehe. I appreciate her sometimes.

I watched a comedian, Dylan Moran. He was talking about Eastern religions and he said:

“You know, I’ve always found the parables from eastern religions dense and hard to penetrate. Two monks were walking over a bridge, cherry blossoms falling down around them. One monk says, ‘I’m quite thirsty.’ and the other monk replies, ‘yes, but I’m quite tall.”

I love it. Guess you have to see him perform the piece for it to be funny but it is. This is how I occupy my time between binges of studying bacteria.

My parents leave on Tuesday to come to Australia and they’ll get here on Thursday. I’m actually excited to see them. Thought I would still be on a Melbourne high at this point in the trip, but I’m ready to head up to the Great Barrier Reef and go snorkeling.

On the tram coming back from St. Kilda the other day I ran into a Canadian actor and his wife. Obviously he was trying to avoid being identified (probably by me because I was snapping pictures of him without permission) because he only spoke in whispers and looked at me several times to make sure I wasn’t going to say anything. I did take a picture, though, when he wasn’t looking and I’ve posted it. Shame on me. Yes, I’m sneaky…and silly come to that. His name is Bruce Greenwood and he starred in such movies as: National Treasure: Book of Secrets (as the President), I, Robot (the guy who owns the Robot-building company), The Core (the commander before Hilary Swank), and Double Jeopardy (the husband who fakes his own death and sends Ashley Judd to prison for his murder). Yeah, I watch way too many movies, but it was ABSOLUTELY him. AH! Pretty cool.

This is my quickly taken picture of Bruce Greenwood. It’s pretty bad, but it was definitely him.

In other school-related news, I completed my first final on Friday. Eighteen questions and 70% of my grade later, I think I did pretty well. But we’ll have to wait until July to see just how well.

Gonna go study now. Being responsible is hard for the last week of my study abroad experience. But I will be responsible, I guess, hehe,

Jordan

random picture of St. Kilda…bye!

Quotes of the week:

“For peace of mind, we need to resign as general manager of the universe.”
- Larry Eisenberg

“When your sense of self is no longer tied to thought, is no longer conceptual, there is a depth of feeling, of sensing, of compassion, of loving, that was not there when you were trapped in mental concepts. You are that depth.”
- Eckhart Tolle

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the ‘atomic age’ - as in being able to remake ourselves.”
- Gandhi

“If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you. The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
- Rumi

“Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake.”
- Paramahansa Yogananda

“Meditation is not a way to enlightenment, Nor is it a method of achieving anything at all. It is peace itself. It is the actualization of wisdom, The ultimate truth of the oneness of all things.”
- Dogen

Published by Jordan on June 16, 2008 in Study Abroad, School work and Miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Sherlock Holmes and St. Kilda

Hey there,

My first final project is completed, my friends, and I am exhausted. Yes, yes. I deserve a break, but I won’t get one until June 27th. And even then I have to wait two weeks to find out how I did on all this stuff. I swear all my hair will have fallen out by the time I get back to Richmond. But bald is in right now, right? hehe. Sure it’s sexy, but I think I want a little left over for the tropical fish on the Great Barrier Reef to nibble on when I go snorkeling.

Anyway, a few minutes ago I completed my 50% final essay for Victorian Crime Writing. And, surprisingly since it’s due tomorrow, I think it’s pretty good. Writing about Sherlock Holmes can be frustrating, let me tell you. There are so many stories and each time I write about a different aspect I feel as if I’m going to confuse one criminal for another and my teacher will read it and have to flip back to that short story. She’ll scratch her head and say, “Hmmm, I don’t remember Selden wearing a mask on his face.” Because he didn’t. No, no. I didn’t make those kind of mistakes. I just hope my argument is logical and coherent. If I can get away with that, I’ll be very happy with myself. And an A couldn’t hurt.

My next final is on Friday and I start that studying adventure tomorrow. That final is worth 70% of my grade.

This weekend, though, I took a lovely long break on my black rock at St. Kilda. Yes, yes I know I should be study, study, studying. But it was 75*F out on Sunday! How could I pass up an opportunity like that? I didn’t even need my gloves, sweat shirt, and hoody to be warm. There were no waves and it was an extreme low tide which means that I could see the sand on the bottom and it was stained the turquoise green of the sea. Three exciting things happened there that made it one of the best days in Melbourne so far.

First, a man in a full-body, black, leather motorcycle outfit walked to the rocks, climbed down to the water’s edge, and released eleven bunches of yellow flowers into the still water…and then he left. As little ceremony as that. And here I was thinking I could just jump into the water–it looked blessedly refreshing. But I guess better not…at best he’s fulfilling a personal goal and at worst it’s like one of those roadside flower displays marking the place where someone met their end. Only this one was taken with the tide. Well, actually, it floated in my direction and then just laid there in front of me for a good thirty minutes (and formed a gigantic M) before moving on and then coming back again when the tide moved in the opposite direction toward the shore. It was a spectacular beginning to a vividly wonderful day.

Second, I am now a part of St. Kilda. Or at least I left a piece of myself there. Well, okay. It was a few drops of blood. And it was accidental. But anyway, when the flowers drifted back by my spot, I decided that I wanted one of the flowers for my journal. So I climbed down onto this particular rock covered in mussels and tried to reach my hand out without toppling into the water. But I couldn’t reach it. So I took off one of my shoes and used my toes to fish out one of the bundles from the water. Each of the bundles was made up of fifteen or twenty little flowers so I took one of the little flowers (ever so respectfully) and returned the rest of the bundle to its watery bed. In the process of bringing my foot back in, however, I accidentally stabbed my big toe on a piece of sharp dry coral on the top of the rock. Yes, I’m brilliant. Anyway, I went chumming for the day. If there weren’t any sharks before then there were a few minutes later, hehe. It was bleeding pretty well so I didn’t want to put my sock and shoe back on, so I slowly (very very gingerly) maneuvered my way back to my rock and cleaned it up with a spare napkin I happened to have (don’t ask me why I had one, I certainly couldn’t tell you). Along the way back to my rock, however, I found an amazing colorful shell. It’s pretty flat but still one of those coiling ones and the inside is the color gas makes when it’s on the street–all rainbow sheen. Beautiful.

Third, I saw a ten-ray starfish as I was leaving the pier for the day. The sun was setting and I figured I should be getting back. At first I thought it was a big piece of coral and the surrounding coral made it look like it had sharp ends. But no, it was a starfish. Gorgeous it its big, multi-armed glory.