Another week is in the books, and it’s already September. How did it get to Be September already?!? I’ve been down here for very nearly exactly two months, and the semester is already half done. Time sure is flying! Last Friday night I went to a footy game at the MCG with my friends Rowan & Mars (a couple of their friends also met up with us at the game). Despite the game being in the last week of the regular season between two crap teams, their rivalry is such that 60,000 people still turned out to watch what turned out to be a great match. It was an exciting back-and-forth game, but the Carlton Blues hung on to beat the Collingwood Magpies by a score of 108-107. We sat up in the very last row of the upper deck since we didn’t get there as early as we should’ve, but I still can’t complain, the ticket was only $A11 ($US8). I wish I could go to an NFL game back home for eight bucks! By Saturday I had come down with a bad headache that stuck with me all day among other aches/pains, which made me kinda miserable all day. But then on Sunday the headache had been replaced with a cough, which at the time I thought felt like an improvement. Little did I know that I’d still have the cough five days later. Argh! Four nights in a row of cough-interrupted sleep is really starting to wear on me. I went to the doctor today, but they said that antibiotics won’t help. Oh well. Hopefully I’ll get better soon, I’ll just keep trying to get to bed at a decent time.
On Tuesday evening I went into Melbourne with Meghan, Sharon & Krista, (some of the IFSA students here at Monash), and met up with some of the IFSA students from Melbourne Uni to see the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of the play “Dinner.” It was a dark comedy, and I’d give it a marginal thumbs up. The plot and story left me wondering “what’s the point?” most of the way through, but I loved the set. It was a theatre in the round, and the set, which was very simple and elegant (a red dinner table and six chairs, off in one part of the circle), was on a turntable, which itself rested on three larger turntables beneath it. The topmost turntable would turn very slowly during each act, so sightlines usually weren’t a problem for more than a couple minutes at a time. After the play Jodee (the IFSA coordinator for Monash & Melbourne) took us all out to eat at Blue Train Cafe on Southbank, a really cool (if a bit pricey) restaurant that was pretty laid back. We all jumped at the chance to get real beef steaks, they were so good. And the slices of cheesecake were the biggest I’d ever seen at a restaurant, they were soooo good! And then Jodee paid for a taxi ride back to Monash for us too, so the entire evening was very enjoyable. Today I had two tests, a midterm in Large-Scale Weather & Climate, which I think I did fairly well on, and the second test in Fluid Dynamics, which I feel like I nailed. The further I get into Fluid Dynamics, the more I feel like Gustavus Physics prepared me really well for being able to take a class of this difficulty essentially on my own, without the support network that I had automatically built-in back at GAC. And starting this week we have a new lecturer for the subject. Dave May took the first half of the semester on incompressible fluid dynamics, but now Prof Paul Cally is teaching us about compressible fluid dynamics, which is a good deal tougher. So far I really like Prof Cally’s teaching style, it’s fairly similar to the style of instruction that I’m used to at GAC, it actually reminds me a lot of the style of Prof Paul Saulnier in the physics dept at Gustavus.
Oh, and with the US election all over the news back home (in addition to down here), the Australian election has finally been set. Last weekend Prime Minister John Howard set the date of the federal election to be 9th October. Here’s a quick lesson in Aussie politics: an election for the Prime Minister (and I believe the Senate and House as well) must be held at least every three years. At any time during the PM’s term, he may call for an election, so long as it falls at least a month after his announcement, no more than three years after his last inauguration (although I think there might be a couple ways around that), and the election is also required to be on a Saturday. So the six weeks of campaigning are actually the most that’s been had in 20 years downhere. It’s kinda different being in a place where six week long campaign is termed “long,” as opposed to our campaigns, like the current one, which seems like it’s been going on forever. The only debate between the two main candidates, John Howard of the Liberal Party, and challenger Mark Latham of the Labour Party, will be televised this Sunday, and I’m gonna try to watch it, since I’m a bit of a political junkie (in addition to being a sports junkie, hehe). Howard’s going for a fourth consecutive term, which would make him the second-longest-serving PM in Australian history. The polls are tight here too, but last I heard Howard had a slight lead, just like Bush does back home.
Well, I’ve got a couple of papers to either start writing or researching this weekend, hopefully I can force myself to start on those. But I should really get to bed, I’d like almost nothing more than to be rid of this awful cough at long last.