To my devoted readers:
Thank you to all who have been fallowing my blog posts. I had an amazing trip that certainly opened my eyes to the rest of the world. I am now back in the states safe and sound. The flight back was surprisingly uneventful. I am now getting back to reality and getting back to the routine of Americana.
This is not the end of Ryan On the Roam however. I now know that I am a lover of traveling and will be devoting a great deal of my adult life to this pursuit. I am planning on joining the JET program when I graduate, taking me to Japan. I am also planning on spending a great deal of time in Europe after that, to catch up with my newly acquired European friends and to become (hopefully) fluent in German and French.
To those who are planning on studying abroad (particularly at ECU) I wish you all the best of luck. It is a great school that I am certain you will enjoy. A couple things to prepare yourself for though: 1. ECU is nick named Super TAFE (Aussie community college) by those who do not go there, this is not fully accurate, but ECU does have much of the same intimate rapport with professor and relaxed atmosphere 2. The Amplifier on Murray Street is a great club to go to on Friday nights to see good local music 3. Fosters and XXXX are considered second class beers, go for Tooheys and 4. Aussies call bathrooms and restrooms only by "toilets." I was met by many blank looks whenever I asked for the restroom. And 5. Some say that the main spiky building in front of the school looks like a certain piece of female anatomy. This is a stretch, but it makes for an amusing anecdote.
Merry Christmas everyone and may your lives be filled with endless joy and good cheer.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Homeward Bound
The last couple weeks have been filled with wonder and intrigue. Let me go back to four Mondays ago. This day was a glorious day for me, as it marked the end of finals. I was in a state of utter bliss. This was bittersweet as it marked the end of my time in Perth, but also the beginning of my “legendary” trip.
I have become acutely aware that I need to learn how to differentiate my academic life from all other aspects of life. As I have done every semester, I allowed my study stress to take over my life and was becoming increasingly irritable and eating a diet guaranteed to cause malnutrition and gastric unpleasantness. And, as always, the moment I finished my finals I felt human again and returned to a state of normality. I actively celebrated my newly acquired freedom with friends and began the process of packing for my trip and saying bye to all I had met in Joondalup.
During this week in the student village there was a sense of bottled angst-filled pressure building up in the village. This was due mostly to the fact that the majority of the students had finished their exams and found that they could not celebrate on account of a noise ordinance being instituted which threatened expulsion from the village for offenders. Some of my friends and I dealt with this by stealth bombing friends (and unlucky bystanders) with water balloons. This proved to be heaps of fun, but did result in some bruised egos. I mostly found myself filling my days with preparation for travel and my nights with fraternizing with friends knowing the end was drawing ever nearer. Friday was definitely the hardest day we all had. This day marked the majority of us leaving. But luckily I was on my way to three weeks of blissful travelling. I was travelling with Raney and Georg, and would be meeting up with Caitlin (Missouri), Heidi (Finland), and Charlotte (France) in Sydney.
I would like to take this moment to talk about my friend Georg. Georg has this fascinating habit of quoting verbatim phrases from television shows constantly with little to know explanation given to their source. His current line of choice was “It is gonna be legendary” used when describing our trip. I had no clue to the source of this phrase but later found that it originated from “How I Met Your Mother.” This habit became a little unnerving when he kept comparing “Lost” (a show which involves a plane crashing into an island) to our upcoming plane ride. It should also be noted that Georg, an Austrian, had taken to using a surprisingly passable Scottish accent, which he picked up from the character Desmond from “Lost.”
Georg had convinced Supan, a mutual acquaintance of ours to drop us off at the airport in the morning. We spent the night before being rather worried that he would not take us. We had noticed that he was spending the night at several of the parties around the area. We asked his friends if he was still planning on taking us and they replied that he was. He showed up on time in the morning but it became apparent that he had thought our trip was in the PM rather than the AM. It was disturbingly easy to board the plane. I was a tad bit taken aback by the fact that absolutely no identification was asked of me at any point to get my ticket and also that security only took 10 minutes. We flew from the Perth airport at 9:05 am and arrived in Brisbane at 2:30 local time.
It was slightly unnerving set ting foot in Brisbane, for several reasons. Firstly, I was struck with the same feeling of being a stranger in a strange land that I had felt when I first came to Perth. Coming to Brisbane I realized that over the last five months I had begun to think of Perth as home. I had gotten so use to all its odd eccentricities that I had stopped noticing them. I asked Georg and Raney about this and they fully agreed with me. Brisbane is definitely vastly different place from Perth as will be explained soon.
There was I believe that there was a certain degree of cockiness amongst us as we entered Brisbane. We had just spent the last five months in Perth and felt that we had become fully accustomed to the ways of Australia. This attitude led us to the feeling that we could be somewhat critical of the other states as we travelled. We no longer felt like the ignorant foreigners commenting on the inadequacies of a culture, but felt that we were seasoned residents who had earned the right to comment on the inadequacies of inferior cities within the country. At least this was how we rationalized our open dislike for much of Brisbane. To begin with we had booked a hostel that turned out to be roughly an hour outside of town. The hostel itself had an odd atmosphere that we were not all too keen on. There was a sense from the other backpackers that we were intruders on some club. When we walked into the common room we would notice that the conversations would abruptly stop and we would receive annoyed looks. It may not have helped that Georg had taken to claiming to be from Charlotte North Carolina after everyone started mistaking his accent for an American one, and then proceeded to make commentary about Europe around Europeans, or referring to Germans as “the diseased.”
But Brisbane had some good qualities, unlike Joondalup, stores were open past five pm, and they had sushi that was not only edible, but cheap at that. I personally enjoyed the art museum in Brisbane which was a fun house of concept art of a mind bending nature. Things that stuck out in my mind were the dark room full of TV screens of people singing Michael Jackson songs in unison in at an almost comically poor level, the realistic wax sculpture of a middle aged woman in bed that was 10 times the size of a real woman, and the statue of a living statue. The statue of the living statue was great because you would go up to it fully expecting the guy to jump out at you, only to realise that it was indeed fake. But as stated before we had some annoyances with Brisbane, and for me the greatest of these was Surfers paradise.
I had been told by a few Australians that had visited America that Queensland was very similar to Florida. I chose not to fully believe this, even though both states are called “the sunshine state.” They were right. When taking the bus to Surfer’s Paradise started to get close to Surfer’s Brisbane I was struck by how similar the area was to Venice. The buildings, the people, the over population of palm trees all said Sarasota county to me. This was cause for much trepidation, especially as we got closer the landscape transformed to that of Tampa and finally Orlando, or rather Kissimee the trashier sister city of Orlando. I have some open hostilities to Florida (my state of residence) that I had hoped to escape by going to the other side of the world, but alas in Queensland you will find a tacky beachside city full of tanned tourists that looks almost identical to Florida. But I cannot say that I completely disliked the place. I did enjoy going to the bar that was made entirely out of ice.
We had one or two odd occurrences happen to us when in Brisbane. The first was when we got into a city bus because the train was down which was driven by a grey haired man who blared modern dance music throughout the bus whilst speeding. And we kept seeing the same homeless man that I had affectionately given the name of wino Santa, who had the peculiar habit of screaming at invisible people. The third was when we were walking on the bridge in Brisbane only to bump into Thomas from our Exmouth trip. He was travelling with his brother and cousin and we were all understandably surprise and of course pleased to see each other. We left Brisbane on Tuesday morning and made our way to Sydney.
Sydney is an all together different experience from any other part of Australia. Because it is so multi cultural it almost felt as though we had left Australia. We came across far more European accents then we did Australian. We stayed in the Blue Parrot Youth Hostel which is the best hostel I have ever been to. It was a breath of fresh air from the rather creepy one we had just left. Among other things (including the just generally amiable people) the hostel supplied free wireless internet. This was a far cry from the first conversation I had in an Australian youth hostel on my first night in Peth which went as follows: “Do you supply WIFI?” I had asked. “What?” the concierge replied, “WIFI” I said, I was met with a blank look “he means wireless internet” said a man standing next to me. “Ah, oh, no we don’t” said a bemused concierge.” So in some ways we had felt that we had returned to the creature comforts of home, but this was undercut by the feeling that we had also left some of the personality that was inherent in the “real” Australia.
On our first day our group of six did the most obvious thing we could think of, we went to the Opera House. The Opera house is a very weird building. A lot of its style comes with how poorly designed it truly was. When we took a tour of the Opera House I was shocked to see the original sketches that had won the competition for that Opera House’s design. They looked as though they had been scratched on the back of a napkin in a bar. They were just an assemblage of scratchy lines going in different directions. More shocking then this was the fact that they had not completed figuring out how they were going to build the Opera House even when they had already gone well under way into construction. Because of its design, neither the opera hall nor the symphony hall are full size, but medium size. The Opera House look quite different up close then it does from afar. The building is not actually white as one would be led to believe from pictures, it is an off yellow and made of thousands of small tiles. Also it looks quite a bit different when not viewed from its iconic angle. I must say though, I love the Opera House, not particularly for its aesthetic but for what is stands for. This like this should not exist. The Opera House is goes against all our expectations of buildings and how they are meant to be built. I applaud the city of Sydney for being willing to invest $30,000,000 into a building that’s design had much of the same visual style of a bored doodle. This is an odd building.
On a “Jesus Christ coincidences are a creepy thing” note; when touring the Opera House we watched a video explaining how the Opera House was being renovated under the guidance of its original Danish designer who was now 90 and had never actually seen his creation. “I bet he is going to snuff it” I said to Raney. “Jeez Ryan that is bad taste. Anyway people live to a hundred nowadays.” He died the next day.
We took a tour of the rain forest that I did not know existed in the Blue Mountains, only 45 minutes outside the city. These were quite breathtaking rock faces home to a vast array of unique creatures and flora. Our tour guide was an Aussie who bore a striking resemblance to Tom Baker (of Doctor Who fame) in both appearance and mannerisms. The area had been used as a coal mines 60 years ago and had no return almost entirely to its original state. I rather felt that I had walked onto the set of Jurassic Park when we were there; the whole area had a primeval feeling.
We spent a good amount of time during our 6 days in Sydney exploring museums and the different areas of the city. Our trip was unfortunately met by grey weather but I all and all we really enjoyed ourselves. Georg and I hit as many shops as we could look for didgeridoos to play to get our fix. We were quite happy to see Aborigines busking at the harbour in traditional garb and wielding didges. As we watched them a middle aged white man walked by muttering under his breath; “getting back at whitey by taking his money.”
On the 1st Georg Raney and I left for New Zealand. We landed in Christchurch at midnight Tuesday and had an interesting event happen shortly after arriving at the hostel. We were all starving and went into town to get food. For an international hub Christchurch proved to be surprisingly small and only offered a one 24 hour convenience store as a source of sustenance in the wee hours of the morning. We loaded up on junk food and sat outside in the completely empty town center to consume our nourishments. As we sat outside reflecting on the fact that this was the first place we felt safe in after leaving Perth a random man road up to us on a bicycle. “Want to by some pot?” he inquired. “No”
I said. “Well what would you like” he said and then proceeded to list off some contraband goods. I tried a different tactic “Sorry we have no money” I said. He looked down at my half eaten chocolate bar. “I’ll take chocolate” he said. “Sorry no” I said. He looked at us as though we were completely insane and biked off. We decided to leave Christchurch first thing in the morning.
That morning we rented a car and made our way to Dunedin, a 6 hour drive from where we Christchurch. The ride took a little longer as we spent 2 hours getting lost. We were driving on the east coast of the south island which is devoid of most of the mountains, fjords, and glaciers famed by the west coast. We spent most of the day driving on farm roads with sheep as far as the eye could see. In our guide book I we discovered that in Dunedin there was a hostel named “Hogwartz,” so of course we had to go there. When we got to Dunedin at 6:30 pm we found that most of the town was closed, including Hogwartz. Georg made the executive decision to drive on till we would hopefully find a hostel of motel. At 11:30 we drove through an area that was just populated enough to be considered a town. There were two motels, one of which read “No Vacancy,” so we chose the other motel. The place bore an unnerving resemblance to Baits motel (minus an eerie building on a hill) which I commented on to the lack of amusement of my friends.
We really lucked out with our room. It was fully furnished with four beds, a kitchen, milk, and a nice bathroom. This was our first taste of private living accommodations in a week, and was markedly nicer than our former accommodations at the student village. Splitting the price three ways we ended up paying the same amount as staying at a youth hostel.
New Zealanders are different from their cousins to the North. The accent is an odd combination of an Australian and Scottish accent. I like the accent but it is the first accent that I have ever truly had trouble understanding. They have a strange way of pronouncing “i’s” as “u’s,” putting –as at the end of words, and saying “bru” (as in brother) at the end of sentences. But beyond the accent there is an odd way in which you really feel that you are in a foreign country here. Even in Australia, with all its eccentricities, I still was able to create a semblance of the place feeling like home. This could be attributable to the fact that as we were road tripping rather than staying in one location, it was impossible for me to come to terms with my surroundings or try to grasp the culture. But nothing really prepares you for the vast array of stunning scenery that fills the country.
We had our first experience with New Zealand’s epic landscape when travelling to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is in the heart of the Fjordlands, an area on the west coast of the south island that is covered in mountains, glaciers, and, of course, fjords. As we drove towards Milford we started seeing mountains of a progressively grander scale. This led to an amusing driving style, as we kept seeing greater and greater mountains which we had to stop at and take photos of. Eventually the landscape hit a breathtaking level of grandness that we felt could not possibly be surpassed. I had Georg stop the car so I could go out and walk on the snow (in my flip-flops) as I had not seen snow in four years. Raney and I walked out to the mountain Georg stayed behind and struck up a conversation with a Scottish gentleman. “It is pretty beautiful” Georg remarked. “Just wait” replied the Scotsman. We discovered what the he was talking about when we passed through an unlit tunnel and came out to see a mass of stunning mountains that were so breathtaking that I find it hard to describe. The only way I can describe it is to say that you get the sense that Peter Jackson had to tone down the locations when he used them in Lord of the Rings.
Milford is located in the middle of nowhere at and comes to an abrupt dead end the moment you eventfully see any signs of humanity. We drove to the only hotel in Milford, where we were met by a surly old lady who told us in a rather patronizing manner that the hotel was fully booked and that Milford sound was part of “world heritage.” She suggested that we try the backpackers with the words “where you belong” being strongly hinted at. The backpackers proved to be a charming place (albeit on the expensive side). We were lucky to find that our roommates (despite being strung out hippies and hitchhikers) were not the uptight and uncomfortable sort we had grown accustomed to.
The next morning we took a ferry tour through Milford and were in even more awe of its grandeur. Despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside with heavy wind we stood in the front of the ship to take in as much of our surroundings as we could. It had rained earlier that morning which made the fjords look that much more beautiful as water cascaded down them. We were made even colder when the boat went under a waterfall soaking us to the bone.
We eventually took leave of Milford Sound and made our way to Queenstown, a 6 hour drive away. Queenstown is the only relatively major tourist hub of the south island. Its major attractions are of the thrill seeking sort. You cannot go anywhere in Queenstown without being seeing signs for skydiving, bungy jumping, off road four wheeling, and jet boating. Unfortunately I had booked both the skydiving and bungy jumping for Auckland, thinking that we would not be stopping in Queenstown. Of Queenstown’s big attractions is the world’s highest bungy jump, with a free fall of eight seconds.
When we got to the motel Georg asked the gentleman at the front desk “So do you know of any places here where we can take a Lord of the Rings tour?” The man looked slightly weary of this question and said (pointing at a wall of pamphlets) “well you can take one of ‘these’ tours” he said discouragingly, “but the will just take you out into a bunch of hills and show you what it looked like when Peter Jackson mixed it all together to look the way it did in the movie.” “If you want to have a really good time and still see a Lord of the Rings site I would recommend this jet boating trip.” As he started giving his pitch I began to read the front page article of the news paper they were selling. It read; “A Jet Boats Fatal Left Turn: if Only They Had Turned Right.” Georg booked us for the next morning. Raney decided that she needed to catch up on her sleep so left us to trip on our own the next morning.
The most terrifying part of the whole trip was the drive there. The location is located on the other side of an array of mountains with very vertical cliff edges. The road was just barely large enough for one car which made it all that much scarier when people would pass us and vis versa. Our driver was amiable though had a rather patronizing manner of talking to the Asian couple on the excursion that boarderd on racist. This was exemplified when he was telling the couple how much to the trip cost and he said “It is twenty DOLLA.” The boat ride itself was disappointingly short, though I immediately understood the headline of the aforementioned newspaper. We were sounded by jagged cliff faces and very narrow turns often with only a few inches of water underneath us.
We went to go get Raney and began our breakneck journey to the north island. We had roughly 12 hours of driving ahead of us a ferry ride to the north island at 1 pm. I never get car sick, but after 12 hours of the car going up and down, up and down, and no real breaks, I really began to feel ill. When we got into town it was 3am and no accommodations were open. Raney made the executive decision of taking the 4:30am ferry. We got in at 8:30am, found a hotel, and spent the rest of the day sleeping. We began travelling the next day to where Georg thought Hobbiton was (another filming location from the Lord of the Rings). Sadly the travel guide we were using was horribly inaccurate in its writing and we ended up on a dirt road in the middle of the countryside only to have the battery of our car die. We were in luck that by happenstance a local art exhibition was taking place just by where we broke down and we got the car jump started. We were also told how Hobbiton was located on the other side of the island. So we continued driving. We stopped for the day three hours south of Auckland and forty five minutes north of Hobbiton. This was the same day that I was meant to go bungy jumping, so Georg convinced me to reschedule my tri p for the next day... the same day as the skydiving.
That night when driving to a motel we were pulled over. This was a bit of a white knuckle moment, though we had not been driving at all over the speed limit or erratically. The officer asked us where we got the car and we explained that we got it from Jucy Rental. The officer then proceeded to go around the car on his knees checking the tires for us. “Pardon my French” he said “but Jucy is a crappy service.” “As dodgy as they come.” “They have been known to switch their tires around so that you can’t see how worn they are.” He then very kindly sent us on our way.
Hobbiton is an odd place. It is the only location in New Zealand that contains any remnants of a set from the shooting of The Lord of the Rings. As the name would imply the area is where the hobbit scenes from the opening of the first movie were shot. It is located in the middle of a sheep farm and contains 17 hobbit holes. The only reason these still exist is because bad weather prevented the crew from taking them all down. The owners of the land have set up a very lucrative tour of the area which is what the three of us went on. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone seeking to know more about the making of LOTR then any sane person should want to know. Our tour seemed to have a limitless knowledge of the film that took on an almost surreal nature. The tour was entertaining, albeit rather on the geeky side. At one point our tour guide told us of a seven foot tall German who came on the tour first thing in the morning dressed as Frodo. When the tour was over he was so emotional he almost broke into tears saying “this is my home!” “This is where I am meant to be!” The guides decided to let him stay for the day, during which he was found dancing around the “dancing tree” and hiding in the hobbit holes until at the end of the day he was eventually talked into leaving. At the end of the tour there was a sheep shearing demonstration in which we were shown exactly how sheep are sheared and were then given bottles of milk with which to feed the lambs.
I am noticing as I write that I keep starting each paragraph with something on the lines of “and from there we began driving to...” this is simply because we were pretty much driving all the time. And so from there we began our drive to Auckland. Georg was gunho on us going to the 95 mile island which got us lost in the middle of the country about an hour north of Auckland. We finally found backpackers at 11:30pm and got up the next morning for my bungy jump. We found ourselves stuck in traffic and then got ourselves completely lost going in a giant circle around the bridge. This was rather depressing as the weather was bad and it looked as though skydiving would be cancelled and on top of that I had now missed bungy jumping. But luckily the people at AJ Hackett were very understanding an allowed me to rebook the jump. I went to the bridge and got kitted up to jump. The people working at the site had a very morbid sense of humour and would answer questions about fatalities with responses like “well while it hasn’t happened yet here... there is a first time for everything.” So we were taken under the bridge to a secret lair of sort that was positioned in the middle of the bridge. The area was fully kitted out with a sound system, video cameras, and a motorised door. I was given the run down on safety, asked if I wanted to touch the water (to which I heartily said yes to), and told to jump on the count of five. It was so odd jumping like that. It was only when I was half way down that I realised “holy crap I am actually falling.” It was a very intense feeling. My hands grazed the water and I bounced several times before I pulled the release and was hoisted up. The guy running it asked me if I would like to go again for only $60 ($35 US), I said yes and he said “And this time you are going to do it backwards.” SO I found myself dangling backwards off the edge of the bridge being held by my guide. He said he would let go of the chord at the count of five. My jump went like this “five, four-““what the- AAHHHHHH!” This time my head went completely under.
We walked through Auckland for awhile and made our way back the backpackers to prepare for our flight to Melbourne in the morning. We woke up at 1am and got into Melbourne at 8:30am. We toured the city going to the Eureka Skyscraper, a film museum and finally going to see the film “Australia” (mostly so that we could say that we say “Australia” in Australia). The next day we toured the city some more. I was to leave for the Airport at 7pm. It was sad saying bye to Raney and Georg; I had done so much with them the last five months that is was unreal to think that it was all coming to an end. But to an end it came and now I am on an airplane somewhere over the Middle East, with about 30 hours till I get home.
I have become acutely aware that I need to learn how to differentiate my academic life from all other aspects of life. As I have done every semester, I allowed my study stress to take over my life and was becoming increasingly irritable and eating a diet guaranteed to cause malnutrition and gastric unpleasantness. And, as always, the moment I finished my finals I felt human again and returned to a state of normality. I actively celebrated my newly acquired freedom with friends and began the process of packing for my trip and saying bye to all I had met in Joondalup.
During this week in the student village there was a sense of bottled angst-filled pressure building up in the village. This was due mostly to the fact that the majority of the students had finished their exams and found that they could not celebrate on account of a noise ordinance being instituted which threatened expulsion from the village for offenders. Some of my friends and I dealt with this by stealth bombing friends (and unlucky bystanders) with water balloons. This proved to be heaps of fun, but did result in some bruised egos. I mostly found myself filling my days with preparation for travel and my nights with fraternizing with friends knowing the end was drawing ever nearer. Friday was definitely the hardest day we all had. This day marked the majority of us leaving. But luckily I was on my way to three weeks of blissful travelling. I was travelling with Raney and Georg, and would be meeting up with Caitlin (Missouri), Heidi (Finland), and Charlotte (France) in Sydney.
I would like to take this moment to talk about my friend Georg. Georg has this fascinating habit of quoting verbatim phrases from television shows constantly with little to know explanation given to their source. His current line of choice was “It is gonna be legendary” used when describing our trip. I had no clue to the source of this phrase but later found that it originated from “How I Met Your Mother.” This habit became a little unnerving when he kept comparing “Lost” (a show which involves a plane crashing into an island) to our upcoming plane ride. It should also be noted that Georg, an Austrian, had taken to using a surprisingly passable Scottish accent, which he picked up from the character Desmond from “Lost.”
Georg had convinced Supan, a mutual acquaintance of ours to drop us off at the airport in the morning. We spent the night before being rather worried that he would not take us. We had noticed that he was spending the night at several of the parties around the area. We asked his friends if he was still planning on taking us and they replied that he was. He showed up on time in the morning but it became apparent that he had thought our trip was in the PM rather than the AM. It was disturbingly easy to board the plane. I was a tad bit taken aback by the fact that absolutely no identification was asked of me at any point to get my ticket and also that security only took 10 minutes. We flew from the Perth airport at 9:05 am and arrived in Brisbane at 2:30 local time.
It was slightly unnerving set ting foot in Brisbane, for several reasons. Firstly, I was struck with the same feeling of being a stranger in a strange land that I had felt when I first came to Perth. Coming to Brisbane I realized that over the last five months I had begun to think of Perth as home. I had gotten so use to all its odd eccentricities that I had stopped noticing them. I asked Georg and Raney about this and they fully agreed with me. Brisbane is definitely vastly different place from Perth as will be explained soon.
There was I believe that there was a certain degree of cockiness amongst us as we entered Brisbane. We had just spent the last five months in Perth and felt that we had become fully accustomed to the ways of Australia. This attitude led us to the feeling that we could be somewhat critical of the other states as we travelled. We no longer felt like the ignorant foreigners commenting on the inadequacies of a culture, but felt that we were seasoned residents who had earned the right to comment on the inadequacies of inferior cities within the country. At least this was how we rationalized our open dislike for much of Brisbane. To begin with we had booked a hostel that turned out to be roughly an hour outside of town. The hostel itself had an odd atmosphere that we were not all too keen on. There was a sense from the other backpackers that we were intruders on some club. When we walked into the common room we would notice that the conversations would abruptly stop and we would receive annoyed looks. It may not have helped that Georg had taken to claiming to be from Charlotte North Carolina after everyone started mistaking his accent for an American one, and then proceeded to make commentary about Europe around Europeans, or referring to Germans as “the diseased.”
But Brisbane had some good qualities, unlike Joondalup, stores were open past five pm, and they had sushi that was not only edible, but cheap at that. I personally enjoyed the art museum in Brisbane which was a fun house of concept art of a mind bending nature. Things that stuck out in my mind were the dark room full of TV screens of people singing Michael Jackson songs in unison in at an almost comically poor level, the realistic wax sculpture of a middle aged woman in bed that was 10 times the size of a real woman, and the statue of a living statue. The statue of the living statue was great because you would go up to it fully expecting the guy to jump out at you, only to realise that it was indeed fake. But as stated before we had some annoyances with Brisbane, and for me the greatest of these was Surfers paradise.
I had been told by a few Australians that had visited America that Queensland was very similar to Florida. I chose not to fully believe this, even though both states are called “the sunshine state.” They were right. When taking the bus to Surfer’s Paradise started to get close to Surfer’s Brisbane I was struck by how similar the area was to Venice. The buildings, the people, the over population of palm trees all said Sarasota county to me. This was cause for much trepidation, especially as we got closer the landscape transformed to that of Tampa and finally Orlando, or rather Kissimee the trashier sister city of Orlando. I have some open hostilities to Florida (my state of residence) that I had hoped to escape by going to the other side of the world, but alas in Queensland you will find a tacky beachside city full of tanned tourists that looks almost identical to Florida. But I cannot say that I completely disliked the place. I did enjoy going to the bar that was made entirely out of ice.
We had one or two odd occurrences happen to us when in Brisbane. The first was when we got into a city bus because the train was down which was driven by a grey haired man who blared modern dance music throughout the bus whilst speeding. And we kept seeing the same homeless man that I had affectionately given the name of wino Santa, who had the peculiar habit of screaming at invisible people. The third was when we were walking on the bridge in Brisbane only to bump into Thomas from our Exmouth trip. He was travelling with his brother and cousin and we were all understandably surprise and of course pleased to see each other. We left Brisbane on Tuesday morning and made our way to Sydney.
Sydney is an all together different experience from any other part of Australia. Because it is so multi cultural it almost felt as though we had left Australia. We came across far more European accents then we did Australian. We stayed in the Blue Parrot Youth Hostel which is the best hostel I have ever been to. It was a breath of fresh air from the rather creepy one we had just left. Among other things (including the just generally amiable people) the hostel supplied free wireless internet. This was a far cry from the first conversation I had in an Australian youth hostel on my first night in Peth which went as follows: “Do you supply WIFI?” I had asked. “What?” the concierge replied, “WIFI” I said, I was met with a blank look “he means wireless internet” said a man standing next to me. “Ah, oh, no we don’t” said a bemused concierge.” So in some ways we had felt that we had returned to the creature comforts of home, but this was undercut by the feeling that we had also left some of the personality that was inherent in the “real” Australia.
On our first day our group of six did the most obvious thing we could think of, we went to the Opera House. The Opera house is a very weird building. A lot of its style comes with how poorly designed it truly was. When we took a tour of the Opera House I was shocked to see the original sketches that had won the competition for that Opera House’s design. They looked as though they had been scratched on the back of a napkin in a bar. They were just an assemblage of scratchy lines going in different directions. More shocking then this was the fact that they had not completed figuring out how they were going to build the Opera House even when they had already gone well under way into construction. Because of its design, neither the opera hall nor the symphony hall are full size, but medium size. The Opera House look quite different up close then it does from afar. The building is not actually white as one would be led to believe from pictures, it is an off yellow and made of thousands of small tiles. Also it looks quite a bit different when not viewed from its iconic angle. I must say though, I love the Opera House, not particularly for its aesthetic but for what is stands for. This like this should not exist. The Opera House is goes against all our expectations of buildings and how they are meant to be built. I applaud the city of Sydney for being willing to invest $30,000,000 into a building that’s design had much of the same visual style of a bored doodle. This is an odd building.
On a “Jesus Christ coincidences are a creepy thing” note; when touring the Opera House we watched a video explaining how the Opera House was being renovated under the guidance of its original Danish designer who was now 90 and had never actually seen his creation. “I bet he is going to snuff it” I said to Raney. “Jeez Ryan that is bad taste. Anyway people live to a hundred nowadays.” He died the next day.
We took a tour of the rain forest that I did not know existed in the Blue Mountains, only 45 minutes outside the city. These were quite breathtaking rock faces home to a vast array of unique creatures and flora. Our tour guide was an Aussie who bore a striking resemblance to Tom Baker (of Doctor Who fame) in both appearance and mannerisms. The area had been used as a coal mines 60 years ago and had no return almost entirely to its original state. I rather felt that I had walked onto the set of Jurassic Park when we were there; the whole area had a primeval feeling.
We spent a good amount of time during our 6 days in Sydney exploring museums and the different areas of the city. Our trip was unfortunately met by grey weather but I all and all we really enjoyed ourselves. Georg and I hit as many shops as we could look for didgeridoos to play to get our fix. We were quite happy to see Aborigines busking at the harbour in traditional garb and wielding didges. As we watched them a middle aged white man walked by muttering under his breath; “getting back at whitey by taking his money.”
On the 1st Georg Raney and I left for New Zealand. We landed in Christchurch at midnight Tuesday and had an interesting event happen shortly after arriving at the hostel. We were all starving and went into town to get food. For an international hub Christchurch proved to be surprisingly small and only offered a one 24 hour convenience store as a source of sustenance in the wee hours of the morning. We loaded up on junk food and sat outside in the completely empty town center to consume our nourishments. As we sat outside reflecting on the fact that this was the first place we felt safe in after leaving Perth a random man road up to us on a bicycle. “Want to by some pot?” he inquired. “No”
I said. “Well what would you like” he said and then proceeded to list off some contraband goods. I tried a different tactic “Sorry we have no money” I said. He looked down at my half eaten chocolate bar. “I’ll take chocolate” he said. “Sorry no” I said. He looked at us as though we were completely insane and biked off. We decided to leave Christchurch first thing in the morning.
That morning we rented a car and made our way to Dunedin, a 6 hour drive from where we Christchurch. The ride took a little longer as we spent 2 hours getting lost. We were driving on the east coast of the south island which is devoid of most of the mountains, fjords, and glaciers famed by the west coast. We spent most of the day driving on farm roads with sheep as far as the eye could see. In our guide book I we discovered that in Dunedin there was a hostel named “Hogwartz,” so of course we had to go there. When we got to Dunedin at 6:30 pm we found that most of the town was closed, including Hogwartz. Georg made the executive decision to drive on till we would hopefully find a hostel of motel. At 11:30 we drove through an area that was just populated enough to be considered a town. There were two motels, one of which read “No Vacancy,” so we chose the other motel. The place bore an unnerving resemblance to Baits motel (minus an eerie building on a hill) which I commented on to the lack of amusement of my friends.
We really lucked out with our room. It was fully furnished with four beds, a kitchen, milk, and a nice bathroom. This was our first taste of private living accommodations in a week, and was markedly nicer than our former accommodations at the student village. Splitting the price three ways we ended up paying the same amount as staying at a youth hostel.
New Zealanders are different from their cousins to the North. The accent is an odd combination of an Australian and Scottish accent. I like the accent but it is the first accent that I have ever truly had trouble understanding. They have a strange way of pronouncing “i’s” as “u’s,” putting –as at the end of words, and saying “bru” (as in brother) at the end of sentences. But beyond the accent there is an odd way in which you really feel that you are in a foreign country here. Even in Australia, with all its eccentricities, I still was able to create a semblance of the place feeling like home. This could be attributable to the fact that as we were road tripping rather than staying in one location, it was impossible for me to come to terms with my surroundings or try to grasp the culture. But nothing really prepares you for the vast array of stunning scenery that fills the country.
We had our first experience with New Zealand’s epic landscape when travelling to Milford Sound. Milford Sound is in the heart of the Fjordlands, an area on the west coast of the south island that is covered in mountains, glaciers, and, of course, fjords. As we drove towards Milford we started seeing mountains of a progressively grander scale. This led to an amusing driving style, as we kept seeing greater and greater mountains which we had to stop at and take photos of. Eventually the landscape hit a breathtaking level of grandness that we felt could not possibly be surpassed. I had Georg stop the car so I could go out and walk on the snow (in my flip-flops) as I had not seen snow in four years. Raney and I walked out to the mountain Georg stayed behind and struck up a conversation with a Scottish gentleman. “It is pretty beautiful” Georg remarked. “Just wait” replied the Scotsman. We discovered what the he was talking about when we passed through an unlit tunnel and came out to see a mass of stunning mountains that were so breathtaking that I find it hard to describe. The only way I can describe it is to say that you get the sense that Peter Jackson had to tone down the locations when he used them in Lord of the Rings.
Milford is located in the middle of nowhere at and comes to an abrupt dead end the moment you eventfully see any signs of humanity. We drove to the only hotel in Milford, where we were met by a surly old lady who told us in a rather patronizing manner that the hotel was fully booked and that Milford sound was part of “world heritage.” She suggested that we try the backpackers with the words “where you belong” being strongly hinted at. The backpackers proved to be a charming place (albeit on the expensive side). We were lucky to find that our roommates (despite being strung out hippies and hitchhikers) were not the uptight and uncomfortable sort we had grown accustomed to.
The next morning we took a ferry tour through Milford and were in even more awe of its grandeur. Despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside with heavy wind we stood in the front of the ship to take in as much of our surroundings as we could. It had rained earlier that morning which made the fjords look that much more beautiful as water cascaded down them. We were made even colder when the boat went under a waterfall soaking us to the bone.
We eventually took leave of Milford Sound and made our way to Queenstown, a 6 hour drive away. Queenstown is the only relatively major tourist hub of the south island. Its major attractions are of the thrill seeking sort. You cannot go anywhere in Queenstown without being seeing signs for skydiving, bungy jumping, off road four wheeling, and jet boating. Unfortunately I had booked both the skydiving and bungy jumping for Auckland, thinking that we would not be stopping in Queenstown. Of Queenstown’s big attractions is the world’s highest bungy jump, with a free fall of eight seconds.
When we got to the motel Georg asked the gentleman at the front desk “So do you know of any places here where we can take a Lord of the Rings tour?” The man looked slightly weary of this question and said (pointing at a wall of pamphlets) “well you can take one of ‘these’ tours” he said discouragingly, “but the will just take you out into a bunch of hills and show you what it looked like when Peter Jackson mixed it all together to look the way it did in the movie.” “If you want to have a really good time and still see a Lord of the Rings site I would recommend this jet boating trip.” As he started giving his pitch I began to read the front page article of the news paper they were selling. It read; “A Jet Boats Fatal Left Turn: if Only They Had Turned Right.” Georg booked us for the next morning. Raney decided that she needed to catch up on her sleep so left us to trip on our own the next morning.
The most terrifying part of the whole trip was the drive there. The location is located on the other side of an array of mountains with very vertical cliff edges. The road was just barely large enough for one car which made it all that much scarier when people would pass us and vis versa. Our driver was amiable though had a rather patronizing manner of talking to the Asian couple on the excursion that boarderd on racist. This was exemplified when he was telling the couple how much to the trip cost and he said “It is twenty DOLLA.” The boat ride itself was disappointingly short, though I immediately understood the headline of the aforementioned newspaper. We were sounded by jagged cliff faces and very narrow turns often with only a few inches of water underneath us.
We went to go get Raney and began our breakneck journey to the north island. We had roughly 12 hours of driving ahead of us a ferry ride to the north island at 1 pm. I never get car sick, but after 12 hours of the car going up and down, up and down, and no real breaks, I really began to feel ill. When we got into town it was 3am and no accommodations were open. Raney made the executive decision of taking the 4:30am ferry. We got in at 8:30am, found a hotel, and spent the rest of the day sleeping. We began travelling the next day to where Georg thought Hobbiton was (another filming location from the Lord of the Rings). Sadly the travel guide we were using was horribly inaccurate in its writing and we ended up on a dirt road in the middle of the countryside only to have the battery of our car die. We were in luck that by happenstance a local art exhibition was taking place just by where we broke down and we got the car jump started. We were also told how Hobbiton was located on the other side of the island. So we continued driving. We stopped for the day three hours south of Auckland and forty five minutes north of Hobbiton. This was the same day that I was meant to go bungy jumping, so Georg convinced me to reschedule my tri p for the next day... the same day as the skydiving.
That night when driving to a motel we were pulled over. This was a bit of a white knuckle moment, though we had not been driving at all over the speed limit or erratically. The officer asked us where we got the car and we explained that we got it from Jucy Rental. The officer then proceeded to go around the car on his knees checking the tires for us. “Pardon my French” he said “but Jucy is a crappy service.” “As dodgy as they come.” “They have been known to switch their tires around so that you can’t see how worn they are.” He then very kindly sent us on our way.
Hobbiton is an odd place. It is the only location in New Zealand that contains any remnants of a set from the shooting of The Lord of the Rings. As the name would imply the area is where the hobbit scenes from the opening of the first movie were shot. It is located in the middle of a sheep farm and contains 17 hobbit holes. The only reason these still exist is because bad weather prevented the crew from taking them all down. The owners of the land have set up a very lucrative tour of the area which is what the three of us went on. I would highly recommend this tour to anyone seeking to know more about the making of LOTR then any sane person should want to know. Our tour seemed to have a limitless knowledge of the film that took on an almost surreal nature. The tour was entertaining, albeit rather on the geeky side. At one point our tour guide told us of a seven foot tall German who came on the tour first thing in the morning dressed as Frodo. When the tour was over he was so emotional he almost broke into tears saying “this is my home!” “This is where I am meant to be!” The guides decided to let him stay for the day, during which he was found dancing around the “dancing tree” and hiding in the hobbit holes until at the end of the day he was eventually talked into leaving. At the end of the tour there was a sheep shearing demonstration in which we were shown exactly how sheep are sheared and were then given bottles of milk with which to feed the lambs.
I am noticing as I write that I keep starting each paragraph with something on the lines of “and from there we began driving to...” this is simply because we were pretty much driving all the time. And so from there we began our drive to Auckland. Georg was gunho on us going to the 95 mile island which got us lost in the middle of the country about an hour north of Auckland. We finally found backpackers at 11:30pm and got up the next morning for my bungy jump. We found ourselves stuck in traffic and then got ourselves completely lost going in a giant circle around the bridge. This was rather depressing as the weather was bad and it looked as though skydiving would be cancelled and on top of that I had now missed bungy jumping. But luckily the people at AJ Hackett were very understanding an allowed me to rebook the jump. I went to the bridge and got kitted up to jump. The people working at the site had a very morbid sense of humour and would answer questions about fatalities with responses like “well while it hasn’t happened yet here... there is a first time for everything.” So we were taken under the bridge to a secret lair of sort that was positioned in the middle of the bridge. The area was fully kitted out with a sound system, video cameras, and a motorised door. I was given the run down on safety, asked if I wanted to touch the water (to which I heartily said yes to), and told to jump on the count of five. It was so odd jumping like that. It was only when I was half way down that I realised “holy crap I am actually falling.” It was a very intense feeling. My hands grazed the water and I bounced several times before I pulled the release and was hoisted up. The guy running it asked me if I would like to go again for only $60 ($35 US), I said yes and he said “And this time you are going to do it backwards.” SO I found myself dangling backwards off the edge of the bridge being held by my guide. He said he would let go of the chord at the count of five. My jump went like this “five, four-““what the- AAHHHHHH!” This time my head went completely under.
We walked through Auckland for awhile and made our way back the backpackers to prepare for our flight to Melbourne in the morning. We woke up at 1am and got into Melbourne at 8:30am. We toured the city going to the Eureka Skyscraper, a film museum and finally going to see the film “Australia” (mostly so that we could say that we say “Australia” in Australia). The next day we toured the city some more. I was to leave for the Airport at 7pm. It was sad saying bye to Raney and Georg; I had done so much with them the last five months that is was unreal to think that it was all coming to an end. But to an end it came and now I am on an airplane somewhere over the Middle East, with about 30 hours till I get home.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Shiney Happy People
Okay this is just a brief update to tell everyone that I am still alive. I have just been through the physical torment of checking in for a flight and going through security, and am now about to board my 2 1/2 day trip back home. I have a giant blog I am finishing typing that will tell of all my adventures in Australia/ New Zealand.
Yours Truley
Ryan Messer
Yours Truley
Ryan Messer
Friday, December 5, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
I Will Survive
ryanontheroam.blogspot.com
Okay so I have quite a lot to go over. The last month has been a chaotic one with much excitement and hair pulling. I came back to Joondalup after the trip with the unpleasant realisation that I had a month of painful studies ahead of me. Let me go over a check list of all the things I needed to do; I had to finish a giant group research project for marketing intelligence, another giant group project for marketing communications, an assignment for Finance, finish my history paper, do an online quiz for Finance, and I had to study for my finals for all these classes. It must be noted that my Finance final was the one thing causing me the most stress. I had to complete an exam that was worth 60% of my grade and consisted of only five questions. So understandably I was a little on the stressed side.
I wish I could say that this all went swimmingly well without a hitch, but that would be a lie. But before I whinge some more about the torment of my academic existence, let me highlight some less stressful occurrences. The week after I got back I went and played open mic at Mojo’s, an eclectic music oriented bar. This went very well indeed. I played several Celtic folk songs and a Fruvous song which I sadly screwed up a fair bit. But all and all it went well. I was given praise and asked to come back. I was accompanied to this performance by my good friends Frances and Matt. Frances was kind enough to take photos and footage of me, for which I was extremely grateful. It was also that week that I decided to go to the east coast with Raney and Georg. I will digress for a moment only to mention that I have gained ecstatic enthusiasm for any and all drops of the US stock market. This might seem unpatriotic, but you must understand that every time our stock market falls our dollar becomes stronger and stronger. So when I bought my tickets for my trip I was pleased to find that I was paying a greatly discounted rate.
Now back to the whinging. I hate group projects. Group projects are a malicious move on the part of universities to add a social aspect to the learning process. This in actuality leads to the burden of dealing with brain-dead slackers of students who seem militantly intent on screwing up what should be a very simple project. I was given two such projects. Our first seemed easy enough. Originally it was just French George and me doing a research project on whether or not Australia would be receptive to American football. But alas the proverbial monkey wrench was thrown into our work in the form of Mike. Mike had the habit of taking on great amounts of responsibility and then not acting on any of it. We lessened his work load and yet he was still incapable of showing up to class, or submitting even the simplest of work. Eventually he vanished from the class altogether, and we were left with one third of the work to make up for. This was after he had failed to submit several important documents.
Now onto my other group project, this was my marketing communications project in which we were meant to create a detailed marketing plan for a business. My group consisted of me, Peter, and tweedle dee (Chris) and tweedle dum (Sara). Chris came up with the original concept of our project, which, at first, seemed good enough. He had taken the class last semester, and failed, but still had his project they had submitted. He suggested that we use that project a starting point and use it to create a new project based on that data. This was how Peter and I interpreted what he said. His actual wording was “Hey I’ve got this project from last semester that we got a 16 out of 25 on. We can just reword it and hand it in.” I will admit that is was ignorant for Peter and me to assume that he was exaggerating. Now enters the ever vacant Sara. Sara would never show up to class and was forced into our group by the instructor. Peter and I decided to give her and Chris the easiest portions of the project as they had progressively proven to us to be incompetent. Yes I know I sound like I am being insulting but as I will finish this story you will understand that I was not dealing with the shining beacons of hope for society’s future. Chris had taken to the habit of setting up his laptop during other student’s class presentations, and would work quite loudly on said computer whilst ranting insults at the screen. This was when he was not actively belittling his classmates and breaking almost every classroom taboo. As our project was not progressing past Chris’s concept of “rewording the old paper” I took it upon myself to create an outline from scratch for our project, and to write out some of the more important parts. Peter, as well started working diligently on the project. We told Chris and Sara their sections, gave them the outline, and sent them on their marry way.
Two days before it was due I received everyone’s sections. This was the night I had designated to finish the project. Now you must understand that I had at this point been near the point of collapse having spent the last week writing a 3,500 word essay for my history class, studying for my final in that class (which for some unexplained reason was two weeks before the exam period), and had to finish and present my research assignment, so I think that my reaction to what I received will seem understandable. I looked over Sara’s work and noticed that she had taken the creative direction of writing in extreme detail about things that had nothing to do with our project. Not only that, but the style of her writing was fluctuating in a wild manner that that caused me, being a wee bit suspicious, to check it out. I ran several paragraphs of her writing (not just sentences) into Google and found identical matches. The stupid thing was she was not that she was just stupid enough to plagiarize, but that she did it really really badly. She simply highlighted the “about us” pages of companies and copied them into the paper. So I had a small nervous breakdown, and the next morning we went into class, had an emergency meeting, in which she claimed that she didn’t plagiarize, and even if she did she deserved another chance, and really it was my fault because I should have told her she was doing it wrong. The upshot was that we received the instructor’s permission to remove her from the group and got an extension of four days to complete her section. This was annoying because I was meant to have the whole project done by that Friday so that I could have the week end to unwind.
My weekend had been planned out to a very precise level. I quite literally had no time to spare with the amount I had packed into this weekend. You see this was the weekend to celebrate the end of the semester. After this weekend we had a week of studying on our own, and then finals. So my weekend schedule went as follows; I spent Friday studying finance and that night at the end of semester party on campus, I went to sleep at 4 am and woke at 10:30, I met Heidi and went to Fremantle with her Christophe and Thomas. In Freo we went to the prison tour and spent the afternoon wondering aimlessly around the city, from there we went to the Mt. Lawley campus (where Thomas and Christophe reside), while there we picked up Roy (the Norwegian) and several token Germans. We then took a bus to Northbridge to go to the night clubs. This was the weekend of Halloween, and I must admit Australia tends to seriously half a** the moment. There was this feel (from the one in five people dressed up) that people really wanted to celebrate the holiday but could not bring themselves to fully embrace the event. The atmosphere felt like that moment when someone goes to clap at the end of a speech and realises that no one is joining him. We went to the Mustang club which had a surreal American theme. I have come to know how Australian’s in an Outback Steakhouse feel. And the place was far too overcrowded with a house band playing the most homogenous blend of top ten music imaginable. From there we went home, but because of the taxi service in Joondalup I did not get home until 4am. I then woke up at 10:30am to go to the Red Bull Air Race with Frances. At the train station a youth who looked to be 15 came up to me. “Hey mate, would yuh buy me some smokes?” “No” I replied. “I won’t dob on yuh,” he replied earnestly [dobbing is Aussie slang for tattling on]. I declined again and got on the train to Perth.
I met Frances in central Perth and we made our way to the races. We chose to watch the event from King’s Park, which is at the top of a seriously large hill. Really the word “hill” lends to the situation a level of insignificance that is undeserved. It was freaking massive. I normally would not have minded so much but at this point I was feeling just a little like a zombie. The air race was quite nice, though I commented that it would be much more interesting if the pile-ons were made of cement rather than paper. I am taking this opportunity to say that King’s Park is the most beautiful park I have ever been too. It is a surreal experience to step out of a busseling city right into a well kept forest. The juxtaposition was a bizarre one, and its beauty was not lost on me. This park has parks within parks. And at its highest point they built a DNA shaped tower to make you that much higher than everything else. This was the perfect vantage point to see planes flying directly over your head.
After walking several miles we made it from central Perth to UWA (France’s uni). I had lunch with her there and learned of the Melbourne Cup “The Race that stops a nation,” which several of my colleagues at uni attended that week. After lunch I went home. I got back at around 6pm and started to work on the marketing communications project, only to discover that Chris was quite serious in his intention of rewording the former paper and discarded all my work, but on top of that wrote on a level unfit for a fifth grader. I had another small nervous breakdown, as he had written ten pages in this manner. I got to work trying to fix his problems. Eventually I realised the futility of this task, and simply labelled everything that we all did by who wrote it so that we could be graded accordingly. But I still had to format the entire paper and fill in the big gaps (which included calculating an entire budget). Peter, it must be said, did a superb job. His work was well written and I only wish that the other two members had been of his calibre. I received four hours sleep that night. I spent the entire morning rushing around trying to finish the paper, as it was due at five o’clock. Eventually I got it to look something like a report and handed it in. This was not the end of my adventure though, quite the opposite in fact.
That night I had already scheduled, four weeks prior, to play at Mojo’s. And now I think is the perfect opportunity to say I was a zombie, not just a little bit, I did not just have a smidge of grogginess, no, at this point I was finding standing to be a challenging exercise in willpower. So this made the notion of playing in front of a bar full of strangers in a venue located an hour and a half from home at 10:30pm a little daunting, but I persevered. I had planned to do some more complex songs but by the time I got there I was spacing out so much that when I played my first song, Ghost Riders in the Sky, I could hardly get the chords right, so instead I played the simplest songs I knew, ones that I had played to death. This was an odd night. The crowd seemed to enjoy my playing, though a young woman did comment when she was complimenting me that I was allowed to smile. I sauntered on back to the train station (located outside) in a rainstorm. The place was full of police officers which made the next event that much more unusual. While I was waiting for my train (which had 40 minutes till arrival) a young man came up to me and offered me marijuana for train money. This seemed a tad bit ballsy, what with all the police being just a few meters from us, I politely declined. I took the train to Perth to catch the last train to Joondalup at 12:30am.
While waiting for the train to come I was approached by an aboriginal man. I will not lie, I was made uncomfortable. From what I had heard and witnessed about the nature of city dwelling Aborigines they were a poor lot who either wanted to beg for a dollar off of you or mug you. This is not me being at all racist, every single aborigine I had seen had been dressed in a homeless nature, and they begged quite frequently. I also had heard many stories about their violent nature. There seems to be a tragic self fulfilling prophecy about aborigines (particularly those of the city) that, while not PC, still seemed to have a certain amount of validity. But I really wanted to keep an open mind on Aborigines, and I quite honestly had a longing to have a proper conversation with one. But from what most of the white Australians had told me this was unlikely to happen.
So here I was in the middle of the night, alone in the train stations with a poorly dressed, grungy stranger of the aboriginal persuasion sidling up to me. “Whatchyah reading?” he said, referring to the book in my hand. The book in question was “The Third Policeman” by Flann O’Brien, a surrealist Irish tale of the exploits of a murderer. “The Third Policeman” I replied. “That’s a good one. I am reading this,” he said pulling out “The Shadow of the Sun” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the real life story of a journalist in Africa. “Here just read the back he said,” proffering the book to me. I gave him my book and we both looked over the other's books together, waiting for the train. “Do you know what his other names actually mean?” he asked me referring to the pseudonyms of Flann O’Brien aka Brian O’Nolan. I was startled by this man’s knowledge of obscure Irish literature, that he would know that Brian O’Nolan used pseudonyms with meanings in Gaelic. I was now pleasantly intrigued by this man. He had successfully blown apart the stereotypes that had begun to ferment in my skull and seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature. Just his sheer upfront nature alone was almost hypnotic.
As we sat in the train he continued to read my book. He then did something odd. It is funny how we have social norms that we live with so thoroughly that when they are broken it feels as though someone has just thrown a brick threw our mind. He began to read, in a train full of people, “The Third Policeman” outloud and dramatically. He read the words with bristling enthusiasm. The words of Flann O’Brien, written in their very Irish rhythm, being read by an aborigine with a thick Australian accent at 1am in a train full of people was the second weirdest thing to happen to me that night. The first weirdest thing to happen was when he then stuck the book into my hands and said “okay now you read it.” Did I mention already that I was a zombie? Yes? Well now I was at the point where I decided to just go with it. I began to read. He sat in front of me on the ground with his arms around his knees as a child would and finagled the elderly gentleman next to him to do likewise. As I read he started giving me helpful advice on the lines of “NO! Not like that! Stick your arm out as you read it adds drama” and "pronounces your words more clearly.” After ten minutes of this, and him asking me to repeat several paragraphs over again because he enjoyed them, he introduced himself to me as “Eddie” and left the train at its next stop. That night I slept.
This would seem like a good dramatic place to stop but of course there has been more. I had two exams this week. And on Monday I have one more exam and I am done! Today I was visited by Frances and her father who came to say goodbye to me. They gave me a sweet letter, vegemite, and a money purse made of a kangaroo’s scrotum (these people know me pretty well). I was deeply touched, and I am forever indebted to them for their kindness and for teaching me so much of the Australian culture. I am now packing for my trip in seven days and feel unimaginably blessed.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
Okay so I have quite a lot to go over. The last month has been a chaotic one with much excitement and hair pulling. I came back to Joondalup after the trip with the unpleasant realisation that I had a month of painful studies ahead of me. Let me go over a check list of all the things I needed to do; I had to finish a giant group research project for marketing intelligence, another giant group project for marketing communications, an assignment for Finance, finish my history paper, do an online quiz for Finance, and I had to study for my finals for all these classes. It must be noted that my Finance final was the one thing causing me the most stress. I had to complete an exam that was worth 60% of my grade and consisted of only five questions. So understandably I was a little on the stressed side.
I wish I could say that this all went swimmingly well without a hitch, but that would be a lie. But before I whinge some more about the torment of my academic existence, let me highlight some less stressful occurrences. The week after I got back I went and played open mic at Mojo’s, an eclectic music oriented bar. This went very well indeed. I played several Celtic folk songs and a Fruvous song which I sadly screwed up a fair bit. But all and all it went well. I was given praise and asked to come back. I was accompanied to this performance by my good friends Frances and Matt. Frances was kind enough to take photos and footage of me, for which I was extremely grateful. It was also that week that I decided to go to the east coast with Raney and Georg. I will digress for a moment only to mention that I have gained ecstatic enthusiasm for any and all drops of the US stock market. This might seem unpatriotic, but you must understand that every time our stock market falls our dollar becomes stronger and stronger. So when I bought my tickets for my trip I was pleased to find that I was paying a greatly discounted rate.
Now back to the whinging. I hate group projects. Group projects are a malicious move on the part of universities to add a social aspect to the learning process. This in actuality leads to the burden of dealing with brain-dead slackers of students who seem militantly intent on screwing up what should be a very simple project. I was given two such projects. Our first seemed easy enough. Originally it was just French George and me doing a research project on whether or not Australia would be receptive to American football. But alas the proverbial monkey wrench was thrown into our work in the form of Mike. Mike had the habit of taking on great amounts of responsibility and then not acting on any of it. We lessened his work load and yet he was still incapable of showing up to class, or submitting even the simplest of work. Eventually he vanished from the class altogether, and we were left with one third of the work to make up for. This was after he had failed to submit several important documents.
Now onto my other group project, this was my marketing communications project in which we were meant to create a detailed marketing plan for a business. My group consisted of me, Peter, and tweedle dee (Chris) and tweedle dum (Sara). Chris came up with the original concept of our project, which, at first, seemed good enough. He had taken the class last semester, and failed, but still had his project they had submitted. He suggested that we use that project a starting point and use it to create a new project based on that data. This was how Peter and I interpreted what he said. His actual wording was “Hey I’ve got this project from last semester that we got a 16 out of 25 on. We can just reword it and hand it in.” I will admit that is was ignorant for Peter and me to assume that he was exaggerating. Now enters the ever vacant Sara. Sara would never show up to class and was forced into our group by the instructor. Peter and I decided to give her and Chris the easiest portions of the project as they had progressively proven to us to be incompetent. Yes I know I sound like I am being insulting but as I will finish this story you will understand that I was not dealing with the shining beacons of hope for society’s future. Chris had taken to the habit of setting up his laptop during other student’s class presentations, and would work quite loudly on said computer whilst ranting insults at the screen. This was when he was not actively belittling his classmates and breaking almost every classroom taboo. As our project was not progressing past Chris’s concept of “rewording the old paper” I took it upon myself to create an outline from scratch for our project, and to write out some of the more important parts. Peter, as well started working diligently on the project. We told Chris and Sara their sections, gave them the outline, and sent them on their marry way.
Two days before it was due I received everyone’s sections. This was the night I had designated to finish the project. Now you must understand that I had at this point been near the point of collapse having spent the last week writing a 3,500 word essay for my history class, studying for my final in that class (which for some unexplained reason was two weeks before the exam period), and had to finish and present my research assignment, so I think that my reaction to what I received will seem understandable. I looked over Sara’s work and noticed that she had taken the creative direction of writing in extreme detail about things that had nothing to do with our project. Not only that, but the style of her writing was fluctuating in a wild manner that that caused me, being a wee bit suspicious, to check it out. I ran several paragraphs of her writing (not just sentences) into Google and found identical matches. The stupid thing was she was not that she was just stupid enough to plagiarize, but that she did it really really badly. She simply highlighted the “about us” pages of companies and copied them into the paper. So I had a small nervous breakdown, and the next morning we went into class, had an emergency meeting, in which she claimed that she didn’t plagiarize, and even if she did she deserved another chance, and really it was my fault because I should have told her she was doing it wrong. The upshot was that we received the instructor’s permission to remove her from the group and got an extension of four days to complete her section. This was annoying because I was meant to have the whole project done by that Friday so that I could have the week end to unwind.
My weekend had been planned out to a very precise level. I quite literally had no time to spare with the amount I had packed into this weekend. You see this was the weekend to celebrate the end of the semester. After this weekend we had a week of studying on our own, and then finals. So my weekend schedule went as follows; I spent Friday studying finance and that night at the end of semester party on campus, I went to sleep at 4 am and woke at 10:30, I met Heidi and went to Fremantle with her Christophe and Thomas. In Freo we went to the prison tour and spent the afternoon wondering aimlessly around the city, from there we went to the Mt. Lawley campus (where Thomas and Christophe reside), while there we picked up Roy (the Norwegian) and several token Germans. We then took a bus to Northbridge to go to the night clubs. This was the weekend of Halloween, and I must admit Australia tends to seriously half a** the moment. There was this feel (from the one in five people dressed up) that people really wanted to celebrate the holiday but could not bring themselves to fully embrace the event. The atmosphere felt like that moment when someone goes to clap at the end of a speech and realises that no one is joining him. We went to the Mustang club which had a surreal American theme. I have come to know how Australian’s in an Outback Steakhouse feel. And the place was far too overcrowded with a house band playing the most homogenous blend of top ten music imaginable. From there we went home, but because of the taxi service in Joondalup I did not get home until 4am. I then woke up at 10:30am to go to the Red Bull Air Race with Frances. At the train station a youth who looked to be 15 came up to me. “Hey mate, would yuh buy me some smokes?” “No” I replied. “I won’t dob on yuh,” he replied earnestly [dobbing is Aussie slang for tattling on]. I declined again and got on the train to Perth.
I met Frances in central Perth and we made our way to the races. We chose to watch the event from King’s Park, which is at the top of a seriously large hill. Really the word “hill” lends to the situation a level of insignificance that is undeserved. It was freaking massive. I normally would not have minded so much but at this point I was feeling just a little like a zombie. The air race was quite nice, though I commented that it would be much more interesting if the pile-ons were made of cement rather than paper. I am taking this opportunity to say that King’s Park is the most beautiful park I have ever been too. It is a surreal experience to step out of a busseling city right into a well kept forest. The juxtaposition was a bizarre one, and its beauty was not lost on me. This park has parks within parks. And at its highest point they built a DNA shaped tower to make you that much higher than everything else. This was the perfect vantage point to see planes flying directly over your head.
After walking several miles we made it from central Perth to UWA (France’s uni). I had lunch with her there and learned of the Melbourne Cup “The Race that stops a nation,” which several of my colleagues at uni attended that week. After lunch I went home. I got back at around 6pm and started to work on the marketing communications project, only to discover that Chris was quite serious in his intention of rewording the former paper and discarded all my work, but on top of that wrote on a level unfit for a fifth grader. I had another small nervous breakdown, as he had written ten pages in this manner. I got to work trying to fix his problems. Eventually I realised the futility of this task, and simply labelled everything that we all did by who wrote it so that we could be graded accordingly. But I still had to format the entire paper and fill in the big gaps (which included calculating an entire budget). Peter, it must be said, did a superb job. His work was well written and I only wish that the other two members had been of his calibre. I received four hours sleep that night. I spent the entire morning rushing around trying to finish the paper, as it was due at five o’clock. Eventually I got it to look something like a report and handed it in. This was not the end of my adventure though, quite the opposite in fact.
That night I had already scheduled, four weeks prior, to play at Mojo’s. And now I think is the perfect opportunity to say I was a zombie, not just a little bit, I did not just have a smidge of grogginess, no, at this point I was finding standing to be a challenging exercise in willpower. So this made the notion of playing in front of a bar full of strangers in a venue located an hour and a half from home at 10:30pm a little daunting, but I persevered. I had planned to do some more complex songs but by the time I got there I was spacing out so much that when I played my first song, Ghost Riders in the Sky, I could hardly get the chords right, so instead I played the simplest songs I knew, ones that I had played to death. This was an odd night. The crowd seemed to enjoy my playing, though a young woman did comment when she was complimenting me that I was allowed to smile. I sauntered on back to the train station (located outside) in a rainstorm. The place was full of police officers which made the next event that much more unusual. While I was waiting for my train (which had 40 minutes till arrival) a young man came up to me and offered me marijuana for train money. This seemed a tad bit ballsy, what with all the police being just a few meters from us, I politely declined. I took the train to Perth to catch the last train to Joondalup at 12:30am.
While waiting for the train to come I was approached by an aboriginal man. I will not lie, I was made uncomfortable. From what I had heard and witnessed about the nature of city dwelling Aborigines they were a poor lot who either wanted to beg for a dollar off of you or mug you. This is not me being at all racist, every single aborigine I had seen had been dressed in a homeless nature, and they begged quite frequently. I also had heard many stories about their violent nature. There seems to be a tragic self fulfilling prophecy about aborigines (particularly those of the city) that, while not PC, still seemed to have a certain amount of validity. But I really wanted to keep an open mind on Aborigines, and I quite honestly had a longing to have a proper conversation with one. But from what most of the white Australians had told me this was unlikely to happen.
So here I was in the middle of the night, alone in the train stations with a poorly dressed, grungy stranger of the aboriginal persuasion sidling up to me. “Whatchyah reading?” he said, referring to the book in my hand. The book in question was “The Third Policeman” by Flann O’Brien, a surrealist Irish tale of the exploits of a murderer. “The Third Policeman” I replied. “That’s a good one. I am reading this,” he said pulling out “The Shadow of the Sun” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the real life story of a journalist in Africa. “Here just read the back he said,” proffering the book to me. I gave him my book and we both looked over the other's books together, waiting for the train. “Do you know what his other names actually mean?” he asked me referring to the pseudonyms of Flann O’Brien aka Brian O’Nolan. I was startled by this man’s knowledge of obscure Irish literature, that he would know that Brian O’Nolan used pseudonyms with meanings in Gaelic. I was now pleasantly intrigued by this man. He had successfully blown apart the stereotypes that had begun to ferment in my skull and seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of literature. Just his sheer upfront nature alone was almost hypnotic.
As we sat in the train he continued to read my book. He then did something odd. It is funny how we have social norms that we live with so thoroughly that when they are broken it feels as though someone has just thrown a brick threw our mind. He began to read, in a train full of people, “The Third Policeman” outloud and dramatically. He read the words with bristling enthusiasm. The words of Flann O’Brien, written in their very Irish rhythm, being read by an aborigine with a thick Australian accent at 1am in a train full of people was the second weirdest thing to happen to me that night. The first weirdest thing to happen was when he then stuck the book into my hands and said “okay now you read it.” Did I mention already that I was a zombie? Yes? Well now I was at the point where I decided to just go with it. I began to read. He sat in front of me on the ground with his arms around his knees as a child would and finagled the elderly gentleman next to him to do likewise. As I read he started giving me helpful advice on the lines of “NO! Not like that! Stick your arm out as you read it adds drama” and "pronounces your words more clearly.” After ten minutes of this, and him asking me to repeat several paragraphs over again because he enjoyed them, he introduced himself to me as “Eddie” and left the train at its next stop. That night I slept.
This would seem like a good dramatic place to stop but of course there has been more. I had two exams this week. And on Monday I have one more exam and I am done! Today I was visited by Frances and her father who came to say goodbye to me. They gave me a sweet letter, vegemite, and a money purse made of a kangaroo’s scrotum (these people know me pretty well). I was deeply touched, and I am forever indebted to them for their kindness and for teaching me so much of the Australian culture. I am now packing for my trip in seven days and feel unimaginably blessed.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
Saturday, October 18, 2008
What a Trip It Has Been
What a trip it has been
So I am now going to relate to my loyal reader the events of the last week. These events have mainly involved me being trapped in a small van on our way through the vast nothingness of Western Australia to Exmouth. My trip started on Sunday morning on the 28th of September. My friends and I had spent the last month trying to figure out what we would do for our Mid-Semester Break. This is the Australian equivalent of the Spring Break with the only real difference that its name carries with it less connotations of psychotic partying, and most of the Aussie student just go back to see their family.
For our spring break Georg and I spent a great deal of time juggling ideas that would involve us traversing the outback with a few other students roughing it on our own and getting to see the barren stretches of endless road and bush for ourselves. Our original plan was to take a plane up to Broome, the northern most point of WA, rent a car, and road trip back. Georg and the few others that wanted to go with us had the suicidal urge to go offroading. It must be understood that everyone who was planning on travelling with me was from Europe and had not the remotest inkling of a glimmer of the notion of how big and open a track of nothing there is after you leave Perth. Not only is the bush in WA as big as I have noted but unless you have a really good grasp on your map (or GPS), you would still need something on the lines of a Jeep or Dune Buggy to traverse the rough terrain. The real downfall of this plan, however, was when we added up the price of fuel for the 1,000 mile trip back. So after throwing this plan to the wayside we looked into a flyer that had been going around campus advertising a bus trip to Exmouth. For only $770 we were promised seven days of adventure, full meals, and a place to sleep. None of the days were without an excursion to some interesting location, plus we would have an experienced tour guide to reduce our risk of death via dehydration after succumbing to drinking our own urine, o’natural. I am only slightly exaggerating the danger of the trip. The only reason I believe that our original plan was on the ludicrous side was because I could tell that no one else in the group had the faintest idea of what we would be doing. And you do need to stock up on water at every opportunity (as we did) because you do find yourself travelling for four hours straight before seeing a road house.
So we shelled at the money and left for our trip. Our tour guide was 28 year old Aussie named Sara, who had live more countries than I could keep track of, including living in Borneo to try to save the Orang-utans. There were 37 students on the bus, half from our village and the other half from the Mount Lawley Village. And they were way too many German speakers. Not that I have anything against the German language (in theory), more that you are made abundantly aware of when you have been cut out of a conversation when you are talking to two friends and it goes like this:
Thomas(German): Hey, did you have a good time last night?
Christoph(Austrian): Gut, erhielt ich vollständig betrunken!
One the first day we visited the Pinnacles. These are thousands of tall pointy rocks in the middle of the desert. As rocks go they did their job very well. While I cannot say that this was the most exciting part of the trip I appreciated it none the less. One the way there we saw a shingle-back on the side of the road. Sara stopped to show it to us. It is a rather ugly lizard whose tale looks like its head. When it gets annoyed it opens its mouth to twice the size of its head and sticks out its tongue.
The first night we were meant to sleep at a farm house but, by an amusing serious events, we got to stay at a beach house. The beach house and farm were run by an amiable sheep farmer who hunts kangaroo on his ranch. And guess what was for dinner! Yes we had kangaroo stew for dinner. This meal was a pleasant one and tasted similar in many ways to deer. The next morning we had sand boarding which meant that we had to wake up at the ungodly hour of 5:30 in the morning. Two psychotic students from Mt. Lawley, one a Norwegian name Roy the other a German named Thomas, took it upon themselves to jump in the ocean every morning. They did this, despite the fact that the water was 45 degrees and far too shallow to actually swim in. That morning we did indeed go sand boarding which was much better than the first attempt of sand boarding we had two weeks before. The problem with sandboarding is that, unlike snow, sand does not melt. It gets into every crevice of your face, your pockets, and fills your shoes. This was the start of Ryan the sand man as I progressively gained more and more sand about my person every day till by the end of the trip if I shook myself slightly a small beach would fall from my person. However the sandboarding was an interesting excursion and we all had fun.
Our next stop that day was to the Kalbarri coastal gorges. These were breathtaking gorges on a beach. We saw dolphins jumping in in the water bellow. After this we drove to the Murchison Gorges which, while smaller than the Grand Canyon, where nonetheless of a similar degree in awe-inspiring. It was during this excursion that I learnt the German phrase for damn flies “Verdammen Fliegen” which I used in excess on the trip. The flies were relentless and covered us at any opportunity. Our last excursion of the day was to the aptly named Shell Beach. What the beach lacked in sand it made up for in shells. It was at this stop that I found the error in my ways of leaving my thongs (flip-flops) at home. My rational had been “well these will just take up more space in my backpack if I will only were these on the beach and on the beach I might as well just be barefoot. So while on the beach I went barefoot. The shells hurt a little but I ignored it. While talking to Jed I absentmindedly started picking at a sand covered rock with my foot. As I started dig deeper I noticed this odd red substance in the ground. I started picking at it more to figure out what it was. The deeper I got the more of it I saw. Then I looked at my big toe and realized that I had cut open my toe and was making the gash deeper and deeper. This made the rest of the trip much more interesting as I could not put my sneakers on because my toe was cut and I had no thongs so I went of the trip barefoot everywhere.
We spent that night (after eight hours of travel) at Monkey Mia, a beachside community renowned for its prevalence of human friendly dolphins. In the morning there was a little show on the beach in front of the hostel as dolphin handlers fed the dolphins. From there we went to a quasi-aquarium on a beachside where we were shown all the local aquatic creatures. I was terribly amused at how this pissed off our environmentalist tour guide. The people running the aquarium considered themselves environmentalists because they were catch the creatures in a friendly manner taking care of them for a year or two, feeding them well and torturing them and then releasing them. This was done with the idea of demonstrating the beauty of the local environment so as to promote conservation. But Sarah was under the impression that these heathens were merely taking creatures out of their homes pissing them off in cages and then discarding them. I personally found the aquarium to be very pleasant and the animals all seemed content and well treated. From there we spent many hours on the car only to stop at barren roadhouses in the middle of nowhere to buy overpriced deep-fried food. We spent that night at coral bay and luckily had the next day to stay there and not do any traveling.
For our Coral Bay day we had tree options. We could either spend $160 to go snorkeling with manta rays (roughly the size of a bus), spend $40 on kayaking and going snorkeling about a mile off the beach, or just hanging out. I opted for the $40 trip much to the needling off certain friends of mine who thought I was copping out when I could be snorkeling with manta rays. I felt very vindicated when I went kayaking and the guide informed me that there had not been any manta rays spotted for the last four days. And sure enough those friends of mine that went on that trip did see no manta rays. I must say I had great experience with the snorkeling. Having never kayaked before I found that part a little trying, but I persevered and made it with the rest of the group. I was a little nervous because the only times I had snorkeled before had been with a life jacket on so when I first got into the water I had to talk myself down as I was panicking a little. But once I got use to it I found my swimming skills were far better than I gave myself credit for and not only was I able to stay on top but I was also diving bellow to the bottom. We saw all sorts of fish, turtles, coral, octopi, and even a shark. I strove not to tough any of the coral, as I had been informed of how I could potentially kill it just by touching it. This did not deter Jed however from standing on a mound of coral and diving off.
After two hours we made it back home and spent the rest of the day hanging out in the town. That night I walked off on my own onto the beach to play my guitar by the moon light. To my consternation I was discovered by some of my friend who made me perform for them. This went on for about an hour ant then we went to leave. As we were leaving we bumped into another group of our friends from the trip who were miffed with my friends for going to the beach without them. They had an epic story to tell about the last half hour. Apparently Christoph, Roy, Thomas, and Heidi were looking for the group I had been playing for because they heard that they were on the beach. Unfortunately, they went to the wrong side of the beach. It was pitch black and Thomas stepped on something sharp and organic. He screamed “I stepped on a sea urchin” he was convinced that he was going to die but was informed by the biologist Heidi that sea urchins would just cause him a huge amount of pain but not kill him. They couldn’t see the creature because it was too dark so they used their camera to take pictures. Down the beach they bumped into a group of teenagers and told them of what happened . The teenagers went to look at creature and came back telling my friends that what Thomas had stepped on was not a sea urchin but an echidna. Echidnas are mammals not unlike the platypus in the way that they are prehistoric mammals that lay eggs. They almost never show up on beaches so this was a very unlikely event to have happen.
After we were told this story they were still upset that they had not been there with us. The first group of my friends left but this second group saw me with my guitar and made me play for them… for another hour. After we were done we went back to the hostel. At the hostel we met many many Germans. We also met three Irish backpackers. I started talking to them about my affections for all music Irish and was able to use the only Gaelic phrase I knew on them to which the corrected all my pronunciation. They seemed rather intrigued by some of the obscure Irish bands I knew. Though I think I began to annoy the one as she started to describe me as “obsessed” with Irish music. I mentioned I was a fan of the Dubliners and the one said “you heard that Ronnie Drew just died recently?” “No” I replied. “That is a real bumber.” She retorted with the sarcasm in her voice that only an Irish accent allows “Yes that is a ‘bit of a bumber’ I think.”
The next morning we set off to Exmouth. It was another break neck day of travelling. We made it to Exmouth at 2:00pm and went snorkelling. It was a tranquil beach but the water was just a little too chilly for my blood, remember we are just getting out of winter here. That night we threw a surprise birthday party for Elisabeth with a plethora of sound makers that we took full advantage of for an hour until he were out of breath. I left as the drinking games started and woke up to find that Christoph (who had been sleeping in a top bunk) had become completely intoxicated and vomited on the head of Thomas who slept on the bunk underneath him. So of course we relentlessly taunted Christoph for the rest of the trip. From Exmouth we were homeward bound and travelled none stop to the farmhouse we were meant to sleep at the first night. On the way Sara was telling me of how the original aboriginal settlers killed off all the giant birds and lizards that once inhabited Australia. To which I explained my philosophy of evolution karma, in which mammals spent millions of years being stepped on and eaten by dinosaurs only for the dinosaurs to evolve into big stupid birds and lizards and be killed off by the descendents of the aforementioned mammals. At the farmhouse that night we had more kangaroo and sat by a camp fire. I was asked to bring out my guitar and spent the night trying to play songs that people would enjoy and found that no matter where I go one person in every bloody group asks me to play “Wonderwall” by Oasis.
The next day we made two pit stops the first was at the Hutt River Province. This was a giant ranch that had seceded from the federation in the 70’s when the farmer now known as King Leonard was annoyed at the quotas put on his crops by the government decided to remove his land as an entity from Australia. King Leonard is a charming old man of 82 who is the archetypal grandfather figure and dresses in plain clothing. He rather reminded me of an Australian version of my great-grandfather. His micro nation even had its own currency and postage. He had a church and he had an Easter Island style statue of himself in his front yard. The country also offered authentic passports was had a legal system. From this intriguing trip we were onto the Greenough Wildlife Park. The park was a rehabilitation center for hurt animals and had kangaroos roaming freely on the premises. It had everything from emus to donkeys to chickens to camels. While there we were allowed to handle giants pythons.
After another six hours of travelling we finally made it home and I collapsed feeling as though I needed a week of rest from my break. It took me several days to clean out all the sand I had accumulated. But I must say I had a wonderful trip and met many interesting people.
Well that is it for now. I am currently trying not to scream as I have several assignments due and finals are coming up in three weeks.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Ye Jacobites By Name
So I played at Mojo's on Monday. Here is the vid of me playing a Scottish song. Sorry about the lack of posts lately I have been swamped with finals.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Weekend Wars
Hi everybody! Here is an update of what I have been up to.
The past two weeks have been quite hectic, but generally in a positive way. Last Saturday I tried my hand a busking in Freo. For those who do not know busking is the art of attaining currency through street performance. On Saturday morning I took the train to Freo (with guitar in hand) and set out for Fremantle, and hour from Joondalup. Fremantle is a very beautiful city (or is it a suburb?). I was told by my dear friend Matt that I need to hit the market if I wanted to do some good busking. When I arrived in Freo I had an amusing predicament of being told very very bad directions by several people that ended with me being on a bus that was heading out of town. It turned out that in actuality the market was just down the road from the train station. After making my way back into town I set up in the market and started crooning. My set list was a vast array of different genres that I chose expressly because these were the only songs I had played to death enough to feel comfortable playing in front of the public. As I was playing several friends from ECU happened to pass by and failed to pay me any money at all though they seemed quite entertained none the less. Immediately after this Matt and his entourage came whirring by on bicycle having just biked ten miles. They did not pass by with the express intention of seeing me play but did give me several dollars which I was thankful for. At the end of the day I made $15.50 for one hours work.
The next day was sports day between the school villages of Curtin ECU and Murdoch (three of the four main universities). This was a free event of fun and sports akin to the field days of elementary school. The signs advertised free food which sold me on the event. At our village roughly 20 people signed up of whom 5 actually arrived. This did not harm our school as a whole however as the Mount Lawley campus had 40 plus students arrive. I had a great time and made many a new friend and discover that while I suck at foosball I am not half bad at volley ball. ECU managed to lose everything except for tug of war which we won will amazing ease. Seriously, we just gave one tug and they all fell over. This could be on account of the fact that our team had several behemoths. I only hope that I did not blemish the view these students had of Americans these student had that day as I took to shout in a guttural voice “ER! CAN YOU FEEL IT!” at the opposing team every time (after just having missed ten consecutive balls,) our team made a score.
That night I was informed by my friend George (of England/France) that our marketing group had an essay due the next day that astoundingly we all managed to forget. He also informed me that he would be of no help because of work in the morning and our other team mate is a slinky (not very useful but fun to push down stairs). So I was up until 4 in the morning writing like crazy with one 1/3 of the necessary information at hand. When I woke up (feeling like a zombie) I finished the paper sent it in and crossed my fingers. I was pleased to receive an email from the instructor telling me that she quite liked the paper and that we were the second group to submit our paper.
This Friday Matt invited me to see his The Chemists and Pathway play. These are two local up-and-coming bands that he promised to know personally because he went to high school with them and played in a few bands with them. It was a very enjoyable night. As it turned out he did not only did he know these guys but they were all close friends. The bands themselves were pretty good, at little on the pop side but talented musicians. The great bit was that Matt made a point of introducing me to all of them. And they all thought it was awesome that I was from America and kept chatting with me. One guy even told me about a venue in Freo that has open mic.
Yesterday I went to the Perth zoo. I went with Georg, Simon (from Germany), and Jed (from Australia). We got there with only an hour left so we decided to stay a half an hour after closing and if anyone was to give us a hard time we would have the German speakers do all the talking and speak English badly at that.
Today was sand surfing. We were promised that for $5 we would be taken to sand dunes with sand boards and spend the day sliding down them at high speeds. Today I learned that weather conditions that everywhere else in the area or a little on the brisk and damp side are nightmarishly brutal in the dessert. On our way there, there was some light rain and some wind. The guys at the boarding renting place said that (because of the weather) if we returned the boards with in the hour no charges would be given. Having lived in Michigan most of my life I spent the bus ride there with all the bravado a guy well weather in the cold of negative degree weather and lighting storm blizzards would understandably show in the face of some wind and rain. I had my ego put in check. Not only was it really cold and I do mean cold the wind was blowing the sand at us at an intensity usually used for cleaning industrial structures. As I got to the top of the surprisingly high dunes I realised that my board was working as a sail. To onlooker I must have looked as though I was impersonating Charlie Chaplin. I kept walking forward and finding myself either staying in the same place or moving several feet backwards. I could not see because the sand would blow into my eyes and I could only try to remove it with my sand covered hands. On top of all of this I had dressed as though I was going to the beach with a t-shirt swim suit and flip-flops. The sand boarding was itself heaps of fun. Because of the rain the dunes had taken on the consistency of wet concrete so as I would go down half way to the bottom my board would stop and I would tumble head first down a fifty foot dune in the manner of a barrel. After 20 minutes of this (and losing all the blood in my feet) I rushed back to the bus. After getting there I noticed I had left my soda at the top of the dune so I ran back to the top to retrieve it. A few student had been smarter and dressed in warm clothes so they lasted 10 minutes longer than me. On the way home I assumed the fetal position.
Yours truly,
Ryan
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Makes No Sense At All
Hi everybody! Alas it has been awhile since my last post. I apologize for this. So let me get you up to speed. Two weeks ago I celebrated my birthday. It went swimmingly well. I set my expectations very low and they were more than exceeded. My entire plan for my birthday was to do nothing but watch movies. If any of my friends so chose to watch them with me they were more than welcome. Four friends joined me (two others came later towards the end). We watched Eurotrip, Mad Max, and Run Fat Boy Run. And my good friend Vanessa even brought an ice-cream cake. So all and all it was a good day.
Annoyingly my friend Georg decided to get me into the television show “Lost,” which has had the adverse affect of taking up all my television viewing. The show is basically a modern take on The Prisoner. It isn’t that it is an exceedingly great show, it is the fact that every episode ends on an extreme cliff hanger which makes you say to yourself “oh I will just watch one more just so that I will know what happens.” This tends to go on for several seasons.
Last Friday I went to a party with the theme of Freaks and Geeks. I chose to go as a goth. My rational for this was to pick a costume that was opposite to my personality. I had a great time disturbing all my friends. I had a razor blade that I had sanded down, which I would run up and down my tongue. This was great fun for me.
This week I have discovered that I was de-enrolled from USF. So my darling parents are helping me deal with all the paper work that this entails.
I know that this is a short post but I am rather busy at the moment writing an three thousand word essay for my history class.
Yours truly,
Ryan
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Getting Better
More tales of life in the southern hemisphere… I have had yet another eventful week. I had to analyze a commercial for my Marketing Communications class and present my findings to the class this week. I chose a fairly disturbing commercial for the Scion xB that had absolutely nothing to do with the commercial. I believe that I did well. I finally received my approvals for the rest of my classes and only have a few more flaming hoops to jump through to receive my financial aid. It has been a royal pain in my backside but I feel relieved knowing that it is all coming together. I will take this opportunity to give a shout out to Rene, my advisor, for helping me through all my problems, thanks Rene! But let me refrain from commenting on the mundane elements of dealing with the bureaucracies of academia, and instead focus on the exciting elements of the Western Australia. Mayonnaise!
Yes mayonnaise. I now understand why J. Maartin Troost wrote in his book The Sex Lives of Cannibals “I don’t know if the mayonnaise tastes this way because it has gone off or because it is Australian." Australia mayonnaise is a supervising experience. Instead of being creamy and mild in taste, it is gooey and sour. This was a surprising sensation for me as I was making sandwiches. My reaction was of “BLAWH!” Not that is actually tastes bad, not as such; it is that when you are trained with expectations it is rather off putting to have them not met. If the product was labeled something different this would not be a problem at all. Another interesting event that occurred at the same time was finally seeing what canned Salmon looks like. My mom use to make me salmon sandwiches all the time when we were poor in Kansas City. I thought to myself whilst shopping that since I am a poor student here why not emulate some of my dietary habits of my childhood. I was a little shocked to see that can salmon is not at all diced like tuna but just a soled chunk of salmon (bones and skin intact) stuck in a can. It was still tasty but I did not need the visuals.
Now on to didgeridoos; several days ago Georg and I returned to the Didge shop. We both purchased some really nifty looking painted didges (painted by a local artist). We spent the rest of the night knocking on our fellow village dwellers doors and serenading them with our musical prowess. While this never got old for us, it got old for our some of our roommates rather quickly.
Last night one of the villagers (Kuzi) threw a black and white party at the Dusk Club. Black and white was not referring to race but to dress attire. The party was pleasant and was your standard “we are all here to party with the excuse of a birthday” deal. But the real fun came this morning when I went to my first footy match. Footy (also known as Aussie Rules Football) is an interesting combination of rugby and American Football, played without any padding. I went with Georg and George at noon today. The sports play is fast and very violent. I was noticing players getting clotheslined as they walked off the field. And the football is kicked into the audience quite frequently. The team we were rooting for lost pathetically but the game was still entertaining.
And that is my short update for all of you as to my week.
Yours truly,
Ryan
Yes mayonnaise. I now understand why J. Maartin Troost wrote in his book The Sex Lives of Cannibals “I don’t know if the mayonnaise tastes this way because it has gone off or because it is Australian." Australia mayonnaise is a supervising experience. Instead of being creamy and mild in taste, it is gooey and sour. This was a surprising sensation for me as I was making sandwiches. My reaction was of “BLAWH!” Not that is actually tastes bad, not as such; it is that when you are trained with expectations it is rather off putting to have them not met. If the product was labeled something different this would not be a problem at all. Another interesting event that occurred at the same time was finally seeing what canned Salmon looks like. My mom use to make me salmon sandwiches all the time when we were poor in Kansas City. I thought to myself whilst shopping that since I am a poor student here why not emulate some of my dietary habits of my childhood. I was a little shocked to see that can salmon is not at all diced like tuna but just a soled chunk of salmon (bones and skin intact) stuck in a can. It was still tasty but I did not need the visuals.
Now on to didgeridoos; several days ago Georg and I returned to the Didge shop. We both purchased some really nifty looking painted didges (painted by a local artist). We spent the rest of the night knocking on our fellow village dwellers doors and serenading them with our musical prowess. While this never got old for us, it got old for our some of our roommates rather quickly.
Last night one of the villagers (Kuzi) threw a black and white party at the Dusk Club. Black and white was not referring to race but to dress attire. The party was pleasant and was your standard “we are all here to party with the excuse of a birthday” deal. But the real fun came this morning when I went to my first footy match. Footy (also known as Aussie Rules Football) is an interesting combination of rugby and American Football, played without any padding. I went with Georg and George at noon today. The sports play is fast and very violent. I was noticing players getting clotheslined as they walked off the field. And the football is kicked into the audience quite frequently. The team we were rooting for lost pathetically but the game was still entertaining.
And that is my short update for all of you as to my week.
Yours truly,
Ryan
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Highway to Hell
Yet another interesting day in Oz. Today Georg (Austrian), Rainy (American), and I (also American) put it upon ourselves to go see Bon Scotts’ grave. For those who do not know, Bon Scott was the original lead singer of AC/DC. He was from Fremantle (a suburb of Perth). So the three of us took a train this morning to Freo (Fremantle). It took us about an hour to get into Freo and when we got there we realized that we had no clue where the cemetery was. Georg went about being our navigator. He started accosting unassuming vendor with the question “could you please tell us where Bon Scott's grave is?” While waiting at a bus stop we discovered a Didgeridoo shop. Georg had been in search of a didge for some time so we entered the shop. This is a very very cool shop. Most of the free space is lined with didgeridoos of all styles imaginable (and some quite unimaginable). The space not filled with didges was taken with aboriginal art. This was not however some musty hole in the wall. This was a sleek and clean operation. We were greeted by a guy who looked very similar Bret of Flight of the Conchords. This store was unlike any music store I had ever been to before. Customers are encouraged to play as many of the instruments they would like. No dirty looks are given for touching the very expensive piece on the wall. On the contrary, I found myself enthused to play a $750 didge. And even more amazing no pressure was put on me actually buying said instruments by the clerks. The guys working their just seemed happy to jam out. I was able to demonstrate, the amazement of my friends, my abilities on the didge. There was another guy in the shop who was doing some serious didge playing and was at the side making surreal noises that I have only heard before on meditation CDs. The Bret lookalike showed the three of us how to do circular breathing, which mostly involved making silly raspberry sounds while inhaling. This came very much in handy later, when waiting in buss stations, much to the puzzlement of onlookers. By the end the other two were able to make passable buzzing noises on the didges.
From the store we made our way by bus to the cemetery. As it turns out it is very hard to find Bon Scott’s grave. There are no signs up and with the surprising number of people mulling about, all of whom knowing exactly who he is, none know the whereabouts of the actual grave. This led to many conversations that went as follows.
Georg walks over to a person either tending to a grave or paying their respects.
Georg (being a very blunt Austrian): Do you know where the grave of Bon Scott is?
Mourner/volunteer: We get that question a lot. You know, they just built an archway for him.
Georg: Do you know where it is.
Mourner/volunteer: Sorry I have no idea.
This was when they were being polite. On several occasions we found ourselves accidently causing car to speed off as we walked up to their window. And dirty looks were made at us more than once. In the end we spent two hours searching the grounds and bumped into two other tourists on the same hunt. This is a very large cemetery. In the end it was a woman that had just finished paying respects to a relative and who mistook us for muggers that showed us where that grave was. We knew that she thought we were muggers when she said “I thought you were fucking muggers!” Petulant is a word that would accurately describe her demeanor. When Georg first asked her the directions her response was “all I know is that he died thirty years ago of alcohol. I know that sound cold but it is true.” Surprisingly she knew exactly where it was, that is roughly one out of thirty people asked. And yes there was an archway in his honor. As it turned out we needed to walk on the side walk outside the cemetery to its side. This is where a large bronze archway stood reading “Bon Scott” and displaying the AC/DC emblem. His plot is actually very small and surrounded by many others. I was curious what the reaction would be for all those non AC/DC fans buried in such a flamboyantly heavy medal laden area. We showed our respect for the deceased by getting some snapshots and made our way back to the bus stop. At this point the bus very stubbornly chose not to come. But a fleet of out of service busses did pass us every few minutes. This just worked to add insult to the injury of us spending or entire evening waiting for a bus. In the end it took us two hours and walking to three different bus stops before we found our bus. But I still found the entire experience quite amusing.
Yours truly,
Ryan
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