Well this is gonna be a rather short post, since it’s late and I need to get to bed soon. Last Friday I went out to James & Ali’s house (some family friends), it was a very relaxing day, and very good to get off campus for a few hours. While I was out there I spent a little while working on getting some photo albums uploaded onto my regular blog, but didn’t get that process finished. We also watched “Seabiscuit,” I thought it was a pretty good movie, I liked it. Saturday I just took it easy, and watched some of the footy playoffs in the evening. My team, the Geelong Cats knocked off Essendon 74-64, and get the honor of taking on three-time defending Grand Final champion Brisbane this Saturday. A tall task indeed. The winner of the game plays the winner of the St Kilda vs Port Adelaide match next Saturday (Sept 25th) in the AFL Grand Final here in Melbourne.
My bronchiolitis has been slowly improving overall since Friday or Saturday, now I’m not coughing quite so much and my chest hurts a bit less.I’m very eager to get well, largely because I’m tired of having been mostly cooped up here on campus for the last three weeks. I’m looking forward to getting out and doing stuff.
Class was class this week, not much to say there, other than my first class this morning was cancelled due to a staff strike. It appears that Monash is the protest capital of Australian universities. The staff were protesting what they perceive as low wages compared to other universities around Australia, but the student activists (of which there’s a fairly large number, and they’re quite vocal) regularly protest a lot of stuff, including some fellow student protesters being charged with assaulting police officers after a clash last semester, but most commonly the protests are about student fees. Not all that many years ago the Australian government paid 100% of everyone’s uni fees, so it was totally free to everyone. But lately the gov’t has started to go a bit bankrupt through that scheme, so they’ve started instituting small fees, so that the students are at least paying for a small portion of their education. Needless to say that’s sending all these whiny activists through the roof, and every time there’s a tiny increase in some fee they scream bloody murder. The student and staff activists have posters all over the place all the time calling Monash “Australia’s Meanest University.” Whatever.
I’ve been getting ready today for this weekend’s 4-day/3-night camping and hiking trip to Wilson’s Promontory. The Prom is a national park about two and a half hours southeast of Melbourne, and it occupies the little peninsula (promontory) that is the southernmost point on mainland Australia. It’s an amazingly beautiful place too, from what I’m told. I’m gonna be sure to take lots of pictures, and I’m sure I’ll have a blast, even though I’m still not feeling 100% yet. Maybe hiking and getting some exercise will help me finally get over this stupid cough. It’ll probably be fairly cool though most of the time (50s), what with sea breezes off the Southern Ocean, and always the threat of a passing shower. But after getting everything packed in my backpack, I was pleasantly surprised with how much it weighed. It’s several pounds lighter than what I packed to go camping with in the Grampians a month ago, so that’s a definite plus. Well, I should get some rest now, but I’ll tell all about how Wilson’s Prom was next week!