1. F-ing tourists. The week of the Melbourne Cup horse race, they have a huge parade in downtown Melbourne. As I mentioned previously, I have a hard time remembering what a big deal the race is. Thus, I forgot about the parade and scheduled a meeting with some colleagues who work in a downtown office, and also happen to be expats. I hopped the tram into the city (just a couple blocks) and then the tram driver kicked us all off because the street was closed for the parade. I hopped out and started to walk to my destination, but the streets were packed - and with people who don't know to walk on the left side of the sidewalk. "F-ing tourists" I said to myself, "Learn to walk on the left." And then I started to laugh, since some days I still forget to walk on the left. And then I went back to my office and we had our meeting over the phone. "Oh right," my downtown colleagues said, "Melbourne Cup. That's why it's been so busy on the street outside our building today!"
2. Words you don't say, part 1. Australians are masters (or mistresses) of barbeque. They have a chain of stores dedicated to barbeques: Barbeques Galore. They are not grills, as I learned when I was recently shopping for one. If you say, "I'm looking to buy a grill" the sales people are confused. I can tell you this because they looked at me askance and there was a long awkward pause when I said it - the kind of look and pause which usually happens now only when I use words with an O in them. The MN "o" doesn't translate. They also don't say shrimp. If you want shrimp, you ask for prawns. Here's a little ad based on the Melbourne Cup to help you remember not to ask for shrimp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pvzel3Zmdc
3. Words you don't say, part 2. A few weeks ago, a group of our master of evaluation students gathered on campus for a day of presentations about their capstone projects. Afterward, we went out for drinks at a nearby pub. Several of them had been in my first face to face class at the beginning of the year, and had kindly explained all kinds of Aussie-isms to me. They asked me how I was doing with understanding people and generally getting along. "Pretty well." I said. Then someone asked what about Australia still makes me uncomfortable. Without hesitation I said, "Asking for the toilet instead of the bathroom or restroom. Saying toilet just feels rude." And then I told them about my first week in Melbourne, when Janet and John took me out to dinner for the first time. We rode the tram from the office (first time on the tram), and I really had to pee, but I'd been holding it to make sure we caught the tram, etc. So we get settled in at the restaurant and I am bursting, so I ask our friendly Italian waiter where the restroom is - trying not to be too loud, while communicating the urgency of the situation. He begins to tell me the restaurant opened 3 years ago, and it's a family operation, they get all their _____ from Italy (by this point I stopped listening because it was clear he wasn't answering my question and I think my ears had actually filled with liquid). Janet, grasping the situation, said (in what seemed to me like quite a loud voice) "Toilet! She wants to go the toilet!" At which point Janet, John, and the waiter started laughing (I was afraid to) and the waiter pointed me in the right direction. Then we all laughed every time he came to our table for the rest of the evening. Since then, I've discovered it also works to say "I need to go to The Ladies'" which just seems less offensive, somehow.
Saturday, 7 December 2013
Saturday, 9 November 2013
Melbourne Cup, Nov 2013
Last year, on my arrival in Melbourne, my plane landed on the first Saturday in November. I was standing in the Melbourne airport with
John Hattie (who'd arrived to greet me), waiting for Janet (who was
coming in on a different flight). I felt completely bedraggled from the
long flight from LAX, and the flights before that from Kalamazoo that
got me to LAX. My teeth needed brushing. I felt all greasy and stinky.
Meanwhile, the whole airport was filled with men in suits and women
wearing these fantastic dresses, looking all crisp and beautiful. Their
luggage carts were 1/3 hat boxes. I started to think that perhaps I had
made an uninformed choice about my decision to move here - this was not a
fashion standard I was prepared to uphold. I turned to John, who,
thankfully was wearing a polo shirt, shorts, and flip flops, "Isn't
Australia supposed to be pretty casual in terms of dress?" "Oh yes, Amy,
generally, but it's the Melbourne Cup this week." I had no idea what
that meant, but I was really grateful not to have gotten that part about
Aussie culture wrong.
Since I've been here a year, I've had a bit of time to learn about the Melbourne Cup http://melbournecup.com/ . It's one of the biggest events in Melbourne (which is saying something when you consider we host THE TENNIS) - and maybe the entire country.It happens on the first Tuesday in November every year and it's a public holiday - most businesses and restaurants are closed. They call it "The race that stops the nation."
At Melbourne Uni, it's more of a pause - the university doesn't close. But everyone in the Graduate School of Education who didn't take a vacation day [leave day] does gather in the staff lounge to watch the race, drink a glass of champagne [bubbles], have some snacks [nibbles], and check how they've done in the betting pools [sweeps] - all of which are sponsored by the college. It's fascinating.
The whole city is mad for it for several days before - there are races all weekend leading up to the big race on Tuesday afternoon. There's a parade. People everywhere are dressed quite fancily - guys in suits, women in dresses, high heels and "fascinators" which means a non-hat hat for ladies (it's what was in all those hat boxes my first day at the airport). You can check out the fashion here: http://www.vogue.com.au/culture/racing+carnival/galleries/what+they+wore+melbourne+cup+2013,27393?pos=3#top
This year, a friend happened to be celebrating his birthday at a pub not too far from the race grounds. I rode my bike over around 8pm to raise a glass, and found the ENTIRE pub packed with men in suits and womein in spectacularly high heels and feathery fascinators - and they had been drinking all day at the races. I, of course, was nattily dressed in jeans, sandals, and a fleece (it's spring here). Luckily I had tucked my bright green high visibility jacket in my handbag before walking into the bar. At least I had recently showered and brushed my teeth this year.
Since I've been here a year, I've had a bit of time to learn about the Melbourne Cup http://melbournecup.com/ . It's one of the biggest events in Melbourne (which is saying something when you consider we host THE TENNIS) - and maybe the entire country.It happens on the first Tuesday in November every year and it's a public holiday - most businesses and restaurants are closed. They call it "The race that stops the nation."
At Melbourne Uni, it's more of a pause - the university doesn't close. But everyone in the Graduate School of Education who didn't take a vacation day [leave day] does gather in the staff lounge to watch the race, drink a glass of champagne [bubbles], have some snacks [nibbles], and check how they've done in the betting pools [sweeps] - all of which are sponsored by the college. It's fascinating.
The whole city is mad for it for several days before - there are races all weekend leading up to the big race on Tuesday afternoon. There's a parade. People everywhere are dressed quite fancily - guys in suits, women in dresses, high heels and "fascinators" which means a non-hat hat for ladies (it's what was in all those hat boxes my first day at the airport). You can check out the fashion here: http://www.vogue.com.au/culture/racing+carnival/galleries/what+they+wore+melbourne+cup+2013,27393?pos=3#top
This year, a friend happened to be celebrating his birthday at a pub not too far from the race grounds. I rode my bike over around 8pm to raise a glass, and found the ENTIRE pub packed with men in suits and womein in spectacularly high heels and feathery fascinators - and they had been drinking all day at the races. I, of course, was nattily dressed in jeans, sandals, and a fleece (it's spring here). Luckily I had tucked my bright green high visibility jacket in my handbag before walking into the bar. At least I had recently showered and brushed my teeth this year.
Saturday, 2 November 2013
One year anniversary, 2 Nov 2013
Much to my surprise I've already been in Australia a year. Although, technically, since I've been traveling internationally for about a total of 9 weeks, I'll have my "feet on Aussie soil for one year" anniversary sometime in January.
Here's a few notables from the year:
International flights included 4 trips to Manila, 2 trips to the US including Minneapolis, Kalamazoo, Phoenix and DC
Domestic flights included 2 trips to Sydney, 2 trips to Brisbane; Perth and Canberra - all of which totaled up to 77,831 miles flown (more than three times around the world).
Plus here in Victoria Australia I've been to Phillip Island (fairy penguins), Daylesford (hot springs, the Ronins, and truffle hunting), Lorne and Anglesea (Great Ocean Road), and lots of bike outings, a few of which turned into Gilligan's Island style three hour tours. I've got pictures of most of these to share, I promise to post them on the blog one of these days. It amazes me how much I haven't seen of the city and Victoria - still lots to explore!
After two months and a bit of being in transition, I leased a great house, my furniture arrived and I started renting out my spare room through airbnb.
I've not done it this semester - too much travel and work. But before I shut it down in August I'd had 13 guests who stayed a total of 58 nights. A great way to meet really lovely people and be able to use my spare room for friends who need transitional housing, and visiting guests!
One stress fracture = 6 weeks in moon boot
Toe laceration = 6 weeks of bandaging (but no stitches!)
Bike incident = 3 stitches (and no, I won't show you the scar)
One sinus infection
One horrid case of the flu
And probably another cold or two. Takes awhile to adjust to a new country's set of germs! I've also been going to the "osteo" for PT on my hip and back, leftover misalignment from time in the boot (and by that I mean on my foot, not the trunk of a car). This involved needles, chiropractic adjustment, massage, stretching... osteo = jack of all trades, as far as I can tell.
Taught three classes class face to face and three online - redesigned two and half of them. I became the academic director for the centre at some point this year, and now am in the midst of scaling up our whole program to go fully online in late 2014.
Got to see a rugby match live - the Melbourne Rebels in one of their 3 wins for the season. There are multiple kinds of rugby leagues and at least two different kinds of rugby. Then there's footy (Australian Rules Football), which basically looks like a bar brawl that spilled out onto a big grassy field. For a long time I couldn't tell the difference between rugby and footy, let alone different kinds of rugby. Now I sort of get it. One of the rugby things involved Australia vs THE LIONS - so there were A LOT of Irish and British traveling all over the country to see those matches http://www.lionsrugby.com/home.php
I've also been coaching part time with the Melbourne University Renegades Volleyball team, which is like a combination of a university club team and a women's USAV league. They're a fun bunch and they are happy to see me on the random Mondays I'm actually in town and not sick or with a broken foot or otherwise.
So here's to a great year in Australia, and a promise to keep on blogging in year #2.
Here's a few notables from the year:
Travel
I felt like I traveled a lot this year. So I did a recap and added it up.International flights included 4 trips to Manila, 2 trips to the US including Minneapolis, Kalamazoo, Phoenix and DC
Domestic flights included 2 trips to Sydney, 2 trips to Brisbane; Perth and Canberra - all of which totaled up to 77,831 miles flown (more than three times around the world).
Plus here in Victoria Australia I've been to Phillip Island (fairy penguins), Daylesford (hot springs, the Ronins, and truffle hunting), Lorne and Anglesea (Great Ocean Road), and lots of bike outings, a few of which turned into Gilligan's Island style three hour tours. I've got pictures of most of these to share, I promise to post them on the blog one of these days. It amazes me how much I haven't seen of the city and Victoria - still lots to explore!
Home
After two months and a bit of being in transition, I leased a great house, my furniture arrived and I started renting out my spare room through airbnb.
I've not done it this semester - too much travel and work. But before I shut it down in August I'd had 13 guests who stayed a total of 58 nights. A great way to meet really lovely people and be able to use my spare room for friends who need transitional housing, and visiting guests!
Broken and sick
One stress fracture = 6 weeks in moon boot
Toe laceration = 6 weeks of bandaging (but no stitches!)
Bike incident = 3 stitches (and no, I won't show you the scar)
One sinus infection
One horrid case of the flu
And probably another cold or two. Takes awhile to adjust to a new country's set of germs! I've also been going to the "osteo" for PT on my hip and back, leftover misalignment from time in the boot (and by that I mean on my foot, not the trunk of a car). This involved needles, chiropractic adjustment, massage, stretching... osteo = jack of all trades, as far as I can tell.
Teaching
Sports
I've also been coaching part time with the Melbourne University Renegades Volleyball team, which is like a combination of a university club team and a women's USAV league. They're a fun bunch and they are happy to see me on the random Mondays I'm actually in town and not sick or with a broken foot or otherwise.
Visitors and Friends
Jean was my first visitor and we had a great time - she really saved the day since nearly everyone I had met in Melbourne fled the city for the holidays. I joined a group for expatriats - InterNations - and met Lucienne, who was the carrier of my TV cabinet, has been the instigator of the three hour bike tours, and is my current flatmate while she's between houses. I feel blessed to have found such a good friend early on. Plus, the folks at work and volleyball, Steve and the Ronins, have really made my first year here fabulous. And, thanks to the internet and cheap international phone rates I've been able to stay in touch with folks at home in the US - and I've gotten some spectacular care packages from Jay, Lindean, Lee and Kelly.
Friday, 4 October 2013
Celebrity Look-Alikes, Manila-Style, mid-Sept 2013
So while I was in Manila a couple weeks ago, I had a few encounters with people who said I reminded them of a celebrity. It went like this:
1. We were prepping for a session with AusAID to demonstrate using speed dating as a way to collect evaluation data. Roy, one of our PhD students who is from the Philippines, was responsible for drafting questions for the stations. When he got them done, we sat down as a group (Amy, Janet, and Tim - our other PhD student on the team) to go through them and see if any needed to be changed. The first few are pretty typical - like "How much more confident do you feel about doing a program logic - Not at All to Great Deal?" Then Roy gets this cheeky grin and reads out: "How important is it that an evaluator is good looking? For instance, Amy looks like Catherine Zeta Jones - Not At All to A Great Deal"
2. and 3. Every time we've been in Manila we've stayed at the New World Hotel in Makati. As I mentioned the staff are super friendly and quite attentive. Janet and I were working in conference room in the executive level Thursday afternoon. I had to go down and get Tim since he couldn't come up to the exec level without a keycard. One of the staff walked to the elevators with me, introduced himself as Steve and said, "I've been wanting to tell you that you remind me of a celebrity." "Really?" I said, (thinking of CZJ), "that's awfully kind of you. Who do I remind you of?" "Linda Carter." Later that day, a different fellow on the executive level, who had been bringing us happy hour drinks all week said, "You remind me of someone - an American actress, but I can't remember her name." I offered the suggestions that had been made so far in the week. "No, No... I'll think of it." 20 minutes later he came over to me and said, "Meryl Streep."
Really?
4. After our night of birthday cocktails and dancing, Janet and Julie (our AusAID partner) were discussing my dancing. I've been compared to a muppet before, so I wasn't expecting it to be flattering. Julie says to Janet, "Doesn't she remind you of Peter Garrett?" Janet's response, "YES! That's who it is!" Peter Garrett was the lead singer for Midnight Oil (an Aussie band from the 80s). Someone else liked his dancing so much they made a compilation of it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd1IMmsOc6g
So, no worries that my head was too big to fit in the airplane. I made it back to Melbourne just fine.
1. We were prepping for a session with AusAID to demonstrate using speed dating as a way to collect evaluation data. Roy, one of our PhD students who is from the Philippines, was responsible for drafting questions for the stations. When he got them done, we sat down as a group (Amy, Janet, and Tim - our other PhD student on the team) to go through them and see if any needed to be changed. The first few are pretty typical - like "How much more confident do you feel about doing a program logic - Not at All to Great Deal?" Then Roy gets this cheeky grin and reads out: "How important is it that an evaluator is good looking? For instance, Amy looks like Catherine Zeta Jones - Not At All to A Great Deal"
2. and 3. Every time we've been in Manila we've stayed at the New World Hotel in Makati. As I mentioned the staff are super friendly and quite attentive. Janet and I were working in conference room in the executive level Thursday afternoon. I had to go down and get Tim since he couldn't come up to the exec level without a keycard. One of the staff walked to the elevators with me, introduced himself as Steve and said, "I've been wanting to tell you that you remind me of a celebrity." "Really?" I said, (thinking of CZJ), "that's awfully kind of you. Who do I remind you of?" "Linda Carter." Later that day, a different fellow on the executive level, who had been bringing us happy hour drinks all week said, "You remind me of someone - an American actress, but I can't remember her name." I offered the suggestions that had been made so far in the week. "No, No... I'll think of it." 20 minutes later he came over to me and said, "Meryl Streep."
Really?
4. After our night of birthday cocktails and dancing, Janet and Julie (our AusAID partner) were discussing my dancing. I've been compared to a muppet before, so I wasn't expecting it to be flattering. Julie says to Janet, "Doesn't she remind you of Peter Garrett?" Janet's response, "YES! That's who it is!" Peter Garrett was the lead singer for Midnight Oil (an Aussie band from the 80s). Someone else liked his dancing so much they made a compilation of it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd1IMmsOc6g
So, no worries that my head was too big to fit in the airplane. I made it back to Melbourne just fine.
Monday, 30 September 2013
Honorary Doctorates in Australia, Sept 2013
So I'm on a list called Upworthy. They point out interesting stuff on the web. The one I got today on my facebook page was Tim Minchin's Occasional Address upon receiving an honorary doctorate of letters from University of Western Australia, in Perth. His address is hilarious, awesome, and very, very Aussie. His potentially offensive language in the speech made me think of sitting around the dinner table in Kalamazoo with my parents and grandma before I moved here, talking about Australia and what I thought it would be like. "You know, they use pretty rough language there, I've heard." Someone (not me) said. Then there was a long pause while we thought about who taught mom what WTF means - or some other spaces where my language hasn't been appropriate. Then we all burst out laughing. "I guess you'll fit right in," Mom said.
You can watch Tim's speech on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoEezZD71sc&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLF9B5176A1498705F
Michael Scriven was just here in Melbourne receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education. His speech was a bit longer, but also worth watching (though I might not have thought of sharing it without the nudge from Tim, above). Michael is one of the founders of evaluation, and my coursework adviser in my PhD. I love him, and being able to be there for this ceremony was lovely, but not as fabulous as watching him adapt to the strict time requirements when we asked him to do some video recording for our online subjects. That footage I can't share, but I wish I could. I always knew he was amazing, but he's even more fabulous than I realized. (For those of you who've had him in class, he CAN answer a question in under eight minutes.) So for a taste of a different kind of fabulous (not the 8 minute kind), you can watch the award ceremony and Michael's speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN6v1IAnI2g&feature=youtu.be
And here's me and Michael after the ceremony
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Meaning of Life Birthday, ± 24 Sept 2013
For the past 10 days I've been celebrating my birthday. Those of you who've read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series will know what number it is. (Well, you and my mom.)
It started off in Manila last week, when our AusAID partner took us out for cocktails at a nearby hotel to celebrate my birthday. It was super hot and sticky - even at 7pm, and kind of rainy, so we all had our umbrellas from the hotel. I'd seen our destination hotel that morning on our way to the embassy, so I knew it wasn't far. However, it was kitty corner from our block on a street pedestrians are not allowed to cross because there's 6+ lanes of Manila traffic. So there were a lot of underground tunnels and wandering around and asking for directions. Basically we could see it for 20 minutes before we actually found the door. I was getting pretty hot, sticky and cranky by that time. Then we walked into the Peninsula Hotel and I immediately forgot to be cranky. The lobby was cool, astonishingly beautiful, and a string ensemble was playing in the balcony. I kid you not. Simply another world.
The we went through the lobby to the Salon de Ning and again - unbelievable. Every room in the place had a different theme - and they were all amazing. We started out in a room that had a giant King Kong looking through the windows into the room, which was modeled like the cockpit of a Hindenburg style airship. If you look closely, you can see KK on the wall behind us in the picture.
The waitstaff (who were dressed in uniforms a bit reminiscent of the original Star Trek) brought us snacks and cocktails. They brought me a tiny birthday cake, with candles, that we all shared (even though it wasn't actually my birthday day - that would NEVER happen in the US). When we drifted out to listen to the fantastic singer and her jazz ensemble, which included a marimba player, they took our umbrellas and stashed them behind the bar. We took pictures in all the different rooms, cheered for the jazz ensemble and then danced for hours to the DJ that followed. We had planned to go out for dinner after the cocktails, but we forgot.
On my actual birthday, I had to work a ten hour day, which was kind of crappy. But Janet, my boss, made sure I got several presents during the day. I'd made the mistake during the Manila trip of revealing how much I'd spent on my latest moleskine notebook. It caused such shock and horror among our team that it got mentioned every time I got out a notebook. "Is that the expensive one?" And if I answered no, then it was "Oh, so this isn't good enough for the expensive notebook?" Etc., etc. So for my birthday, I first got a tiny little book shaped notebook. Then when we were having afternoon tea at the office, I got a full size beautiful cloth bound notebook. Some enterprising soul had written over the actual price to make it one dollar more than my previous "most expensive ever" notebook. John Hattie was at tea and said, "Oh no, it still has the price on it!" Tim (second from right in the photo and our right hand man at CPE), who was in on the whole thing, informed him that it was part of the present. And later that afternoon I got a tiny heart shaped notebook. Oh, and beautiful flowers from Jay, who credited Lucienne (whom he's never met, but apparently recruited via fb) with the assist.
On top of Jay's flowers, the streets of Melbourne seem to be celebrating my birthday - all the trees and flowers are blooming. This must be what it's like to have a May birthday at home in the US (lucky Karen and Sandy Stephens). Other times in my life when I've moved, I've arrived in August, and then my birthday is in September and it's getting darker every day and I hardly know anyone... I must say, this whole springtime birthday scenario is pretty great.
Friday night, at the suggestion of Tim and Janet, I invited a bunch of folks out for drinks after work at the Croft Institute, which is a cocktail bar. It's tucked in the depths of one of Melbourne's "laneways" which is Australian for "alleys with excessive amounts of graffiti." It's so far back down the laneway that the bunch from work that I was with agreed we were glad we were arriving in daylight and with a group.
Croft Institute is all about the test tubes and beakers and drinks that come with syringes in them. You just tell the barkeeps what you like in a cocktail and they make you one. For instance, Lucienne went to the bar and said, "I want a birthday cocktail for my friend." The result was a tall glass with blueberries, strawberries, lemon peel, a giant branch off a mint plant and a significant amount of alcohol. It was AMAZING. Which is pretty much the theme of the night, mostly because I was in the company of a bunch of friends, none of whom I knew before last November, the drinks were delicious, everyone seemed to have a good time, we closed the night out with souvlaki at a place called Stalactites, which actually had stalactites on the ceiling, and I managed to get the birthday flowers home on my bike, arriving at 3:22 am.
So I was laying in bed Saturday morning, sleeping in, thinking about getting up to go to a Tulip festival with Lucienne and some of her dragon boating pals, being surprised I didn't feel worse after 7+ hours at a cocktail bar, and reflecting on my ridiculously fabulous life. I got up, showered, and checked facebook while I was eating breakfast, and my sister Jean had this link posted on her page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/jimmy-fallon-joins-sesame-street-gang-to-sing-shows-theme-song-on-classroom-instruments_n_3993133.html). The tag line sums up the video with "it may be one of the happiest things ever recorded in human history." The song pretty much sings how I feel about my meaning of life birthday.
It started off in Manila last week, when our AusAID partner took us out for cocktails at a nearby hotel to celebrate my birthday. It was super hot and sticky - even at 7pm, and kind of rainy, so we all had our umbrellas from the hotel. I'd seen our destination hotel that morning on our way to the embassy, so I knew it wasn't far. However, it was kitty corner from our block on a street pedestrians are not allowed to cross because there's 6+ lanes of Manila traffic. So there were a lot of underground tunnels and wandering around and asking for directions. Basically we could see it for 20 minutes before we actually found the door. I was getting pretty hot, sticky and cranky by that time. Then we walked into the Peninsula Hotel and I immediately forgot to be cranky. The lobby was cool, astonishingly beautiful, and a string ensemble was playing in the balcony. I kid you not. Simply another world.
The we went through the lobby to the Salon de Ning and again - unbelievable. Every room in the place had a different theme - and they were all amazing. We started out in a room that had a giant King Kong looking through the windows into the room, which was modeled like the cockpit of a Hindenburg style airship. If you look closely, you can see KK on the wall behind us in the picture.
The waitstaff (who were dressed in uniforms a bit reminiscent of the original Star Trek) brought us snacks and cocktails. They brought me a tiny birthday cake, with candles, that we all shared (even though it wasn't actually my birthday day - that would NEVER happen in the US). When we drifted out to listen to the fantastic singer and her jazz ensemble, which included a marimba player, they took our umbrellas and stashed them behind the bar. We took pictures in all the different rooms, cheered for the jazz ensemble and then danced for hours to the DJ that followed. We had planned to go out for dinner after the cocktails, but we forgot.On my actual birthday, I had to work a ten hour day, which was kind of crappy. But Janet, my boss, made sure I got several presents during the day. I'd made the mistake during the Manila trip of revealing how much I'd spent on my latest moleskine notebook. It caused such shock and horror among our team that it got mentioned every time I got out a notebook. "Is that the expensive one?" And if I answered no, then it was "Oh, so this isn't good enough for the expensive notebook?" Etc., etc. So for my birthday, I first got a tiny little book shaped notebook. Then when we were having afternoon tea at the office, I got a full size beautiful cloth bound notebook. Some enterprising soul had written over the actual price to make it one dollar more than my previous "most expensive ever" notebook. John Hattie was at tea and said, "Oh no, it still has the price on it!" Tim (second from right in the photo and our right hand man at CPE), who was in on the whole thing, informed him that it was part of the present. And later that afternoon I got a tiny heart shaped notebook. Oh, and beautiful flowers from Jay, who credited Lucienne (whom he's never met, but apparently recruited via fb) with the assist.
Friday night, at the suggestion of Tim and Janet, I invited a bunch of folks out for drinks after work at the Croft Institute, which is a cocktail bar. It's tucked in the depths of one of Melbourne's "laneways" which is Australian for "alleys with excessive amounts of graffiti." It's so far back down the laneway that the bunch from work that I was with agreed we were glad we were arriving in daylight and with a group.
Croft Institute is all about the test tubes and beakers and drinks that come with syringes in them. You just tell the barkeeps what you like in a cocktail and they make you one. For instance, Lucienne went to the bar and said, "I want a birthday cocktail for my friend." The result was a tall glass with blueberries, strawberries, lemon peel, a giant branch off a mint plant and a significant amount of alcohol. It was AMAZING. Which is pretty much the theme of the night, mostly because I was in the company of a bunch of friends, none of whom I knew before last November, the drinks were delicious, everyone seemed to have a good time, we closed the night out with souvlaki at a place called Stalactites, which actually had stalactites on the ceiling, and I managed to get the birthday flowers home on my bike, arriving at 3:22 am.
So I was laying in bed Saturday morning, sleeping in, thinking about getting up to go to a Tulip festival with Lucienne and some of her dragon boating pals, being surprised I didn't feel worse after 7+ hours at a cocktail bar, and reflecting on my ridiculously fabulous life. I got up, showered, and checked facebook while I was eating breakfast, and my sister Jean had this link posted on her page (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/jimmy-fallon-joins-sesame-street-gang-to-sing-shows-theme-song-on-classroom-instruments_n_3993133.html). The tag line sums up the video with "it may be one of the happiest things ever recorded in human history." The song pretty much sings how I feel about my meaning of life birthday.
Monday, 23 September 2013
Same same, but different, again. 23 Sept 13
So I was at volleyball practice tonight for the first time in 3 weeks. After doing some warm ups and running some drills, we were going to scrimmage for the last bit. We had 11 girls at practice, so I stepped in to play. Eric, the head coach, was standing just outside the court and said, "Who wants to go to the net and rock off for the serve?"
My instant thought was, "Can girls even do that?"
Turns out he meant, rock, paper, scissors.
I couldn't stop laughing.
My instant thought was, "Can girls even do that?"
Turns out he meant, rock, paper, scissors.
I couldn't stop laughing.
Saturday, 14 September 2013
Standout in Manila, 14 Sept 2013
Since moving to Melbourne I've been to Manila 4 times - January, February, May and now September. The first was a three day stint, the others were for a week. We stay at the same hotel each time - The New World Makati. They have approximately 1,000 local Filipinos working at the hotel doing things like opening doors, escorting us to a table at breakfast, saying "hello ma'am", pushing buttons in the elevator, saying "hello ma'am", checking us in, getting us umbrellas, saying "hello ma'am"... you get the idea. They are super friendly and helpful, and without fail their English is better than my Filipino.
This is also true when out shopping - 15 people working in a 25 sq foot store straightening shelves and asking if you need help, 5 people behind the counter - one to run the register, one to take your money, one to give you your receipt, one to put your purchase in a bag, and another to staple it shut. No such thing as bag your own groceries. While writing this, I just realized that when I'm here I tend to shop at the places where they are not overly friendly and there's only 1-2 people behind the counter... subliminal seeking of my normal, I suppose.
Since we've been to this hotel several times, some of the staff's faces are starting to look familiar to me, despite the fact that there are so many of them. But apparently not as familiar as mine is to some of them. When we checked in last night, the woman who helped us in the elevator said to me, "Your foot is all better now, ma'am?" Because when we were here in February I was wearing the moon boot. I'm still a bit in shock about being that memorable.
This is also true when out shopping - 15 people working in a 25 sq foot store straightening shelves and asking if you need help, 5 people behind the counter - one to run the register, one to take your money, one to give you your receipt, one to put your purchase in a bag, and another to staple it shut. No such thing as bag your own groceries. While writing this, I just realized that when I'm here I tend to shop at the places where they are not overly friendly and there's only 1-2 people behind the counter... subliminal seeking of my normal, I suppose.
Since we've been to this hotel several times, some of the staff's faces are starting to look familiar to me, despite the fact that there are so many of them. But apparently not as familiar as mine is to some of them. When we checked in last night, the woman who helped us in the elevator said to me, "Your foot is all better now, ma'am?" Because when we were here in February I was wearing the moon boot. I'm still a bit in shock about being that memorable.
Friday, 30 August 2013
The Job. 30 August 2013
A long time ago, a friend posted a comment on my blog that said, "Love to hear about the job..." So here's a day in the life at the Centre for Program Evaluation - yesterday, actually.
7:20 hop on bike. Beautiful morning to bike in - 50 degrees and a bit overcast. I ride by an off leash dog park, guaranteed for at least one smile a morning.
7:45 arrive at office. do some reading online about AusAID's discussion of development effectiveness
8:00 realize i've sent the wrong time info to Michael Scriven in CA and have missed a call with him to touch base on his upcoming visit. Call a bunch of his contact numbers. Don't reach him. Sigh.
8:15 buy the research staff who are in so early a coffee (after arguing with them about whether or not I'm allowed to buy them coffee). They bring me a chai in my mug from the cafe in the next building. The barista says to my staffer, "This is Amy's mug, right?" :-)
8:30 more reading about AusAID, pull open various docs from our evaluation capacity building work with Manila post, rummage interview topics out of the emails, put all the interviews for the next week in my calendar. Send emails to our contact person in Manila to check a couple phone numbers.
9:00 Receive an email that my materials for the workshop have been printed. I'm giving a one day pre-conference workshop on Immunity to Change for Evaluators at Australasia Evaluation Society conference next week in Brisbane.
9:30 meet with my two TAs for Mixed Methods research. We're teaching the subject (which is what they call a class; they also say "paper" for class, which I still find confusing) this semester and re-building as we go, due to a last minute change of instructor roles because two days before the semester the sessional (i.e., adjunct) lecturer found out her 80% job wouldn't let her work for us. The subject had some copyright issues, so we're revising content, building quizzes, setting up online communities, and figuring out how to do some face to face meetings with our local Melbourne students.
10:30 check in with our research staff who are madly writing away on a report for the contract we have to evaluate the implementation of the national teacher standards in Australia. Remember that I need to mark proposals from our Capstone students. We're offering that subject for the first time and I'm coordinating that. Thank goodness we only have 12 and Brad and Janet are helping.
10:45 prep for my interview with one of the counsellors at AusAID Manila. We've been engaged with them on evaluation capacity building since last December. We're prepping for our last week-long visit in September. We go up and deliver lectures and workshops and consult with staff on their evaluation work. During that week we have a 1.5 hour strategic planning meeting with their Senior Management Team, and I'm interviewing each of them individually over the next week to ask them questions about success and what they pay attention to in order to understand how they're making progress (or "how they're going" as Aussies say).
11:00 Call Sam at AusAID, no answer. Try a different number - wrong number. Double check numbers again, find his number in a old email, try again. Contact!
11:35 Skype fail when my auto-replenish doesn't auto-replenish. Throw some money in the skype meter, call Sam back. Much laughing about Skype fail. More laughing about "Speed Dating" on our agenda for the visit - it's how we're going to have staff share the projects they've been working on with each other.
12:15 Greet our brown back lunch guests, Anthea and Zita, who are coming to get some feedback on their one day workshop for the Australasia Evaluation Society Conference next week. Realize there isn't time to go get lunch and be back in time for their presentation. Grab a cliff bar from my desk drawer.
12:30 Sit in with Brad, one of our teaching staff, listen to Anthea and Zita, eat their delicious snacks instead of my cliff bar, give feedback.
1:30 Interview with Peter and Julie from AusAID Canberra (the home office) to prep for the visit to Manila in September. Bring Peter into the vision/indicators discussion.
2:30 Check my 3 phone messages and call back one of Michael Scriven's former students living in Melbourne to arrange for them to have dinner when Michael is here in 10 days.
2:40 Marion (our fabulous administrative assistant) stops in to tell me she's got a student who wants to add Mixed Methods and it has to be done today because the census date (end of possibility to drop/add without penalty) is tomorrow (Saturday)
2:45 Call that student and then our student services office to get that sorted out.
3:00 Check in with our research staff who are madly writing away on a report for the contract we have to evaluate the implementation of the national teacher standards in Australia.
3:00 Remember I saw an urgent email from Janet (the boss, who is working from home recovering from surgery) about a student. Check the email, realize that somehow he's enrolled in a subject we aren't running and we missed getting him into the one we are and that has to get sorted today. Call the student service centre again, get his phone number in Thailand, call and leave him a message, send and email to get him switched.
3:30 Meeting with someone from the Provost's office, our Grad School of Education Marketing person and representative from Melbourne Uni Commercial and three folks from Open University Australia. Fun conversation about the possibilities for teaching through them. Agree to pilot test for the university, then think about how the heck we are going to get all my work covered so I can get our curriculum revised and ready to go online by February. And pause a moment to be amazed by how I've arrived here at the right time for this work. Hah. God is good.
5:00 Glad handing with the online folks. Then checking in with the staff writing the report, they don't need me yet. Check emails, wrap up some details for Michael's visit, get ready to be out of the office all next week in Brisbane at the conference.
6:00 Start helping the report writing team on revising the discussion section of the report. Hand out the last of my all time favorite peanut butter pretzel cliff bars (which have become a staff favorite, along with dried mango from the Philippines) for some brain food. Work until 9:45 when the report is wrapped and out the door.
10:00 Arrive home after a beautiful bike ride - breezy, 40 degrees, only one pedestrian who jumped in front of my bike and tried to get run down.
10:15 Chuckle in amazement at my life. It's awesome to be living here in a great apartment, doing a job that is chock full of stuff I love (a bit too full on a day like today), with great people, and crunchy, fascinating problems to tackle. And how hard work means I'm ready for opportunity when it shows up. Did I mention God is good? Surely what's coming is far more than I could ask or imagine!
7:20 hop on bike. Beautiful morning to bike in - 50 degrees and a bit overcast. I ride by an off leash dog park, guaranteed for at least one smile a morning.
7:45 arrive at office. do some reading online about AusAID's discussion of development effectiveness
8:00 realize i've sent the wrong time info to Michael Scriven in CA and have missed a call with him to touch base on his upcoming visit. Call a bunch of his contact numbers. Don't reach him. Sigh.
8:15 buy the research staff who are in so early a coffee (after arguing with them about whether or not I'm allowed to buy them coffee). They bring me a chai in my mug from the cafe in the next building. The barista says to my staffer, "This is Amy's mug, right?" :-)
8:30 more reading about AusAID, pull open various docs from our evaluation capacity building work with Manila post, rummage interview topics out of the emails, put all the interviews for the next week in my calendar. Send emails to our contact person in Manila to check a couple phone numbers.
9:00 Receive an email that my materials for the workshop have been printed. I'm giving a one day pre-conference workshop on Immunity to Change for Evaluators at Australasia Evaluation Society conference next week in Brisbane.
9:30 meet with my two TAs for Mixed Methods research. We're teaching the subject (which is what they call a class; they also say "paper" for class, which I still find confusing) this semester and re-building as we go, due to a last minute change of instructor roles because two days before the semester the sessional (i.e., adjunct) lecturer found out her 80% job wouldn't let her work for us. The subject had some copyright issues, so we're revising content, building quizzes, setting up online communities, and figuring out how to do some face to face meetings with our local Melbourne students.
10:30 check in with our research staff who are madly writing away on a report for the contract we have to evaluate the implementation of the national teacher standards in Australia. Remember that I need to mark proposals from our Capstone students. We're offering that subject for the first time and I'm coordinating that. Thank goodness we only have 12 and Brad and Janet are helping.
10:45 prep for my interview with one of the counsellors at AusAID Manila. We've been engaged with them on evaluation capacity building since last December. We're prepping for our last week-long visit in September. We go up and deliver lectures and workshops and consult with staff on their evaluation work. During that week we have a 1.5 hour strategic planning meeting with their Senior Management Team, and I'm interviewing each of them individually over the next week to ask them questions about success and what they pay attention to in order to understand how they're making progress (or "how they're going" as Aussies say).
11:00 Call Sam at AusAID, no answer. Try a different number - wrong number. Double check numbers again, find his number in a old email, try again. Contact!
11:35 Skype fail when my auto-replenish doesn't auto-replenish. Throw some money in the skype meter, call Sam back. Much laughing about Skype fail. More laughing about "Speed Dating" on our agenda for the visit - it's how we're going to have staff share the projects they've been working on with each other.
12:15 Greet our brown back lunch guests, Anthea and Zita, who are coming to get some feedback on their one day workshop for the Australasia Evaluation Society Conference next week. Realize there isn't time to go get lunch and be back in time for their presentation. Grab a cliff bar from my desk drawer.
12:30 Sit in with Brad, one of our teaching staff, listen to Anthea and Zita, eat their delicious snacks instead of my cliff bar, give feedback.
1:30 Interview with Peter and Julie from AusAID Canberra (the home office) to prep for the visit to Manila in September. Bring Peter into the vision/indicators discussion.
2:30 Check my 3 phone messages and call back one of Michael Scriven's former students living in Melbourne to arrange for them to have dinner when Michael is here in 10 days.
2:40 Marion (our fabulous administrative assistant) stops in to tell me she's got a student who wants to add Mixed Methods and it has to be done today because the census date (end of possibility to drop/add without penalty) is tomorrow (Saturday)
2:45 Call that student and then our student services office to get that sorted out.
3:00 Check in with our research staff who are madly writing away on a report for the contract we have to evaluate the implementation of the national teacher standards in Australia.
3:00 Remember I saw an urgent email from Janet (the boss, who is working from home recovering from surgery) about a student. Check the email, realize that somehow he's enrolled in a subject we aren't running and we missed getting him into the one we are and that has to get sorted today. Call the student service centre again, get his phone number in Thailand, call and leave him a message, send and email to get him switched.
3:30 Meeting with someone from the Provost's office, our Grad School of Education Marketing person and representative from Melbourne Uni Commercial and three folks from Open University Australia. Fun conversation about the possibilities for teaching through them. Agree to pilot test for the university, then think about how the heck we are going to get all my work covered so I can get our curriculum revised and ready to go online by February. And pause a moment to be amazed by how I've arrived here at the right time for this work. Hah. God is good.
5:00 Glad handing with the online folks. Then checking in with the staff writing the report, they don't need me yet. Check emails, wrap up some details for Michael's visit, get ready to be out of the office all next week in Brisbane at the conference.
6:00 Start helping the report writing team on revising the discussion section of the report. Hand out the last of my all time favorite peanut butter pretzel cliff bars (which have become a staff favorite, along with dried mango from the Philippines) for some brain food. Work until 9:45 when the report is wrapped and out the door.
10:00 Arrive home after a beautiful bike ride - breezy, 40 degrees, only one pedestrian who jumped in front of my bike and tried to get run down.
10:15 Chuckle in amazement at my life. It's awesome to be living here in a great apartment, doing a job that is chock full of stuff I love (a bit too full on a day like today), with great people, and crunchy, fascinating problems to tackle. And how hard work means I'm ready for opportunity when it shows up. Did I mention God is good? Surely what's coming is far more than I could ask or imagine!
Monday, 19 August 2013
BICYCLE! Part 1, Dec 2012
Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GugsCdLHm-Q
When I first arrived in Melbourne, I didn't have a bike - it was in the shipping container. When I was staying at University College, it didn't matter too much since it was a 20 minute walk to work. When I moved to Steve's it was a 40 minute walk to work, or two trams, which often ended up taking 40 minutes anyway. (I just realized recently that I could have done it on one tram in 20 minutes by walking an extra 5 minutes...) Anyway, Steve's place happens to be right next to Southern Cross Train Station, which is one of the hubs for the Melbourne bike share, http://www.melbournebikeshare.com.au/station/southern-cross-station
So I thought I'd give it a try one morning in December.
Here's how it works: You bring along a credit card. If you don't have a helmet, you can get one for $5 from a vending machine, because you are required by law to wear one. This is really handy if you happen to be riding your bike home from the bar at 3am and your helmet is at home and your bike is at the office... not that I would know anything about that. Anyway, when you're done with the helmet, you can return it to a 7-11 where they'll give you $3 back. Or you can just keep it and use it because no one is going to steal your $5 blue helmet, and if they did, so what? You can just get another out of a vending machine.
Once you have a helmet, you swipe your credit card at the bike share station, it gives you a code, and you get to choose your steed. If you follow the link above you can see how they've got them lined up by the train station. You adjust the seat (or if you're me, you ride 5 blocks and then adjust the seat), strap your bag on the front if you'd like, and you're off to the races. And hopefully no one is going too fast at the races because the bikes are sort of ungainly. But good enough, three gears, sturdy and completely unglamorous - not unlike the helmets. Totally not worth stealing, even if I hadn't given my credit card info.
I chose a helmet from the vending machine, picked a steed, loaded on my giant green tote, and hopped on. I rode successfully to work through the CBD (Melbourne's downtown Central Business District), riding on the left hand side of the street in the bike lane, ("stay to the left, the left, the left," I chanted to myself the whole way) and parked my bike at the bike share station 2 blocks from my office. Sweet! I took a picture with my phone to commemorate surviving my first bike ride - so here's my trusty steed, and me.
Later that week I had the grand plan to get a bike share bike and ride to work (which I did), then use the bike share bike to go look at a place to rent. The viewing was over lunch and the location was sort of close to work, but not walking distance for a middle of a workday adventure. So I walked up to the bike share with my code, only to discover that if you want to use the bike again ($2.70 AUD is good for all day as long as you don't have the bike for more than 30 minutes at a time) you have to have the same credit card. Which, of course, was safely back at my office - a 10 minute walk away. So much for the lunch time apartment viewing. Maybe I should have stuck with the biking and then I wouldn't have broken my foot... although for as hard as I had to concentrate to stay on the left back then I think walking was probably less risky overall.
When I first arrived in Melbourne, I didn't have a bike - it was in the shipping container. When I was staying at University College, it didn't matter too much since it was a 20 minute walk to work. When I moved to Steve's it was a 40 minute walk to work, or two trams, which often ended up taking 40 minutes anyway. (I just realized recently that I could have done it on one tram in 20 minutes by walking an extra 5 minutes...) Anyway, Steve's place happens to be right next to Southern Cross Train Station, which is one of the hubs for the Melbourne bike share, http://www.melbournebikeshare.com.au/station/southern-cross-station
So I thought I'd give it a try one morning in December.
Here's how it works: You bring along a credit card. If you don't have a helmet, you can get one for $5 from a vending machine, because you are required by law to wear one. This is really handy if you happen to be riding your bike home from the bar at 3am and your helmet is at home and your bike is at the office... not that I would know anything about that. Anyway, when you're done with the helmet, you can return it to a 7-11 where they'll give you $3 back. Or you can just keep it and use it because no one is going to steal your $5 blue helmet, and if they did, so what? You can just get another out of a vending machine.
Once you have a helmet, you swipe your credit card at the bike share station, it gives you a code, and you get to choose your steed. If you follow the link above you can see how they've got them lined up by the train station. You adjust the seat (or if you're me, you ride 5 blocks and then adjust the seat), strap your bag on the front if you'd like, and you're off to the races. And hopefully no one is going too fast at the races because the bikes are sort of ungainly. But good enough, three gears, sturdy and completely unglamorous - not unlike the helmets. Totally not worth stealing, even if I hadn't given my credit card info.
I chose a helmet from the vending machine, picked a steed, loaded on my giant green tote, and hopped on. I rode successfully to work through the CBD (Melbourne's downtown Central Business District), riding on the left hand side of the street in the bike lane, ("stay to the left, the left, the left," I chanted to myself the whole way) and parked my bike at the bike share station 2 blocks from my office. Sweet! I took a picture with my phone to commemorate surviving my first bike ride - so here's my trusty steed, and me.
Later that week I had the grand plan to get a bike share bike and ride to work (which I did), then use the bike share bike to go look at a place to rent. The viewing was over lunch and the location was sort of close to work, but not walking distance for a middle of a workday adventure. So I walked up to the bike share with my code, only to discover that if you want to use the bike again ($2.70 AUD is good for all day as long as you don't have the bike for more than 30 minutes at a time) you have to have the same credit card. Which, of course, was safely back at my office - a 10 minute walk away. So much for the lunch time apartment viewing. Maybe I should have stuck with the biking and then I wouldn't have broken my foot... although for as hard as I had to concentrate to stay on the left back then I think walking was probably less risky overall.
Wednesday, 31 July 2013
Shagadelic. Sometime in February 2013
On the corner of my block, the way I come home from the tram stop, there's a house where the greenery has taken over. The house is barely visible through all the bushes and trees. It reminds me a bit of the end of Logan's Run.
I don't mind greenery, but walking through this at night on my way home from work is a bit creepy. Particularly when I consider that something like 80% of the world's poisonous spider breeds live in Australia.
I had considered fighting my way through the brush to their door and asking them to trim things back. Then one day as I was walking up the sidewalk, I saw a young guy (late teens) ducking through the back gate into this place. He had an ENORMOUS afro. I realized it could just be that as a family they don't believe in trimming. Period.
I don't mind greenery, but walking through this at night on my way home from work is a bit creepy. Particularly when I consider that something like 80% of the world's poisonous spider breeds live in Australia.
I had considered fighting my way through the brush to their door and asking them to trim things back. Then one day as I was walking up the sidewalk, I saw a young guy (late teens) ducking through the back gate into this place. He had an ENORMOUS afro. I realized it could just be that as a family they don't believe in trimming. Period.
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
Winter, July 2013
Shortly after I moved into my townhouse in January, the gardener paid me a visit. He said the depth of winter would be the time to do a major cutback of the front and back garden, which was pretty overgrown.
Pictures here are from when I moved in. Pretty much all of the plants in the back are supposed to be shrubs - the one in the clothesline is a topiary - the kind that are supposed to be cut into shapes like globes or ducks.
And then you'd have to squeeze past the hedge to get into the house. Super fun with suitcases, late at night, in the rain, after international travel.
This weekend at Joel's church, the priest preached on the scripture where the friend knocks and knocks until the homeowner gets out of bed and gets the guy what he wants. That has pretty much been me trying to get the the landlord to agree to have the garden cut back. Today, after three months of persistent knocking, the gardener came back and did the cut back. When I was showed him the back yard, I asked him what all the green stuff was that had cropped up over the last few months.
"Is it clover or something?"
"Oh. That's winter," he said.
Winter looks a bit different here.
And then he proceeded to trim EVERYTHING in about 90 minutes. Amazing what a man with a good set of tools and know-how can do. Fantastic. Most of it looks pretty tough at the moment, because after he left, I trimmed some more. I have a tendency to prefer a more dramatic cut back than most people are willing to do - ask my parents about how I handled their shrubs that were in front of the kitchen.... So I'm not posting evidence of my most recent effort on the web. But the car park is quite tidy looking, thanks to Michael the gardener. Wahoo!
Pictures here are from when I moved in. Pretty much all of the plants in the back are supposed to be shrubs - the one in the clothesline is a topiary - the kind that are supposed to be cut into shapes like globes or ducks.
In the front garden, this is a really lovely rosebush that attacked every person who tried to get out of their car when it was in my parking spot (which Aussies call the car park), so their other choice was to squeeze up next to the overgrown hedge on the opposite side.
This weekend at Joel's church, the priest preached on the scripture where the friend knocks and knocks until the homeowner gets out of bed and gets the guy what he wants. That has pretty much been me trying to get the the landlord to agree to have the garden cut back. Today, after three months of persistent knocking, the gardener came back and did the cut back. When I was showed him the back yard, I asked him what all the green stuff was that had cropped up over the last few months.
"Is it clover or something?"
Winter looks a bit different here.
And then he proceeded to trim EVERYTHING in about 90 minutes. Amazing what a man with a good set of tools and know-how can do. Fantastic. Most of it looks pretty tough at the moment, because after he left, I trimmed some more. I have a tendency to prefer a more dramatic cut back than most people are willing to do - ask my parents about how I handled their shrubs that were in front of the kitchen.... So I'm not posting evidence of my most recent effort on the web. But the car park is quite tidy looking, thanks to Michael the gardener. Wahoo!
Monday, 27 May 2013
Aussies and Gun Control, The Sequel - 23 May 2013
I've been airbnb-ing for a couple months now. My current guest, Dean, is an HPER guy who's in town to work with John and Janet on a grant proposal. For those of you who are wondering, HPER looks the same but it's said "Haych P. E. R." The h's are bigger down here.
Wednesday night Dean introduced me to an Australian TV series called "Offspring." It's filmed here in Melbourne and the promo ads for last week's season premiere have been running nonstop for a month already. I quite liked it even thought I didn't catch all the dialogue - he had to translate a few expressions for me. Some he refused to translate; I suspect those were the best ones. We were about halfway through the episode in a long commercial break (they are just as long here as they are in the US - maybe even longer) when Dean asked if I'd seen the John Stewart series on gun control in Australia and the US. I hadn't. He started to describe it, then grabbed his laptop and pulled up the YouTube clips. What proceeded from there was a multicultural media barrage: Offspring, then during the commercial breaks, John Stewart's English pal John Oliver interviewing Americans and Aussies. (Dean stopped the John Stewart bits IMMEDIATELY when Offspring came back on. I think he may have some Gullickson genes.) The John Stewart bit was fantastic - it will take about 20 minutes to watch all three bits if you haven't seen it. Definitely worth the time. Here are the links, in order:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pOiOhxujsE
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYbY45rHj8w
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVuspKSjfgA
The next night, I was teaching my last session of a face to face class on "Recent Approaches in Research and Evaluation." Somehow this video series came up. Those of us who had seen it started talking about it, and then someone said - "Put it on the screen!" Since we have projectors, internet and two video screens in the classroom, that's just what I did. In this particular class I've got students from Singapore, the Philippines, Chile, and Australia, from all different professional sectors and ranging in age from probably early 30s to early 50s. They were all hooting with laughter watching these videos. After each segment I'd say, "You're sure it's ok to keep watching?" "YES!" I managed to bring it back to evaluation at the end by talking about the whole series as a way of presenting evaluative findings - I was pretty pleased that I pulled that out of my hat as a way to justify 20 minutes of John Stewart.
Today I got an email from one of the non-Aussies in that class, who is a lovely, very serious student, and speaks precise English. This was her post script: "P.S. Many thanks for sending us the group photo for our RARE class! Whoop dee do!" (Whoop de do appears in Part 2, if I remember correctly.) Some things are funny no matter what your first language is.
Wednesday night Dean introduced me to an Australian TV series called "Offspring." It's filmed here in Melbourne and the promo ads for last week's season premiere have been running nonstop for a month already. I quite liked it even thought I didn't catch all the dialogue - he had to translate a few expressions for me. Some he refused to translate; I suspect those were the best ones. We were about halfway through the episode in a long commercial break (they are just as long here as they are in the US - maybe even longer) when Dean asked if I'd seen the John Stewart series on gun control in Australia and the US. I hadn't. He started to describe it, then grabbed his laptop and pulled up the YouTube clips. What proceeded from there was a multicultural media barrage: Offspring, then during the commercial breaks, John Stewart's English pal John Oliver interviewing Americans and Aussies. (Dean stopped the John Stewart bits IMMEDIATELY when Offspring came back on. I think he may have some Gullickson genes.) The John Stewart bit was fantastic - it will take about 20 minutes to watch all three bits if you haven't seen it. Definitely worth the time. Here are the links, in order:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pOiOhxujsE
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYbY45rHj8w
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVuspKSjfgA
The next night, I was teaching my last session of a face to face class on "Recent Approaches in Research and Evaluation." Somehow this video series came up. Those of us who had seen it started talking about it, and then someone said - "Put it on the screen!" Since we have projectors, internet and two video screens in the classroom, that's just what I did. In this particular class I've got students from Singapore, the Philippines, Chile, and Australia, from all different professional sectors and ranging in age from probably early 30s to early 50s. They were all hooting with laughter watching these videos. After each segment I'd say, "You're sure it's ok to keep watching?" "YES!" I managed to bring it back to evaluation at the end by talking about the whole series as a way of presenting evaluative findings - I was pretty pleased that I pulled that out of my hat as a way to justify 20 minutes of John Stewart.
Today I got an email from one of the non-Aussies in that class, who is a lovely, very serious student, and speaks precise English. This was her post script: "P.S. Many thanks for sending us the group photo for our RARE class! Whoop dee do!" (Whoop de do appears in Part 2, if I remember correctly.) Some things are funny no matter what your first language is.
Thursday, 25 April 2013
Mail, 23 Apr 2013
My mail comes in a mailbox at the end of the driveway near the street. I really have no idea if mail gets delivered every day or a few times a week. I do know the mail-person will not pick up a letter from my mailbox - I had one sitting in there for about two weeks before I finally took it to a street side drop box in my neighborhood.
At any rate, my mailbox is basically a dark cement hole. The kind of place the Scotsmen I met in my first week here warned me not to stick my hand into because of the deadly spiders that live in Australia. I think about this on the odd occasion when there's mail in the box.
We're well into autumn; it's full dark here now by 6:30pm. So it was dark when I walked home from the gym the other night at 8pm. My street is fairly well lit - neighborhood style, not I-94 through Minneapolis style. Enough light to see where I'm going generally, but not enough to read by. As I walked up to the driveway, I remembered that I'd seen mail in the box when I arrived home from work. Since I was on my bike, I hadn't stopped to get it. Now, in the dark and heedless of the Scotsmens' warning, I stuck my hand in the box and grabbed the stack of mail.
Nothing bit me.
But the stack seemed weirdly heavy on one side. Since my mail is typically at least 50% menus from restaurants, I thought maybe one of them had gotten clever and attached a magnet to their menu. I looked and there was a round thing on the corner of the menu... not exactly magnet shaped. Maybe a crab apple from the nearby tree had gotten into the mailbox? I touched the strange thing and - SLIMY. Ok, so either a rotten crab apple or something else entirely. I took the stack of mail over to the landscape light at the side of the driveway and... it was a snail. On the menu. So I brought him (or her?) in for a photo before I took him back out to the flowerbed. Snail mail! This is the exact spot on the menu where I found him - apparently snails don't read.
I was telling this story at work the other day during afternoon tea. I started with the Scotsmen and the spiders and my mailbox. As I carried on a bit more I got that sense that I have so often here that I am not conveying what I mean to convey. And in fact, I might be unwittingly committing some kind of social faux pax. So I paused. And someone piped up, "Do you mean a post box?" (Because mail here is "post" - which actually makes sense, if you think about it. You send post at the post office.)
"Yes. Yes, I do... I bet you guys were thinking the other kind of male when I said 'mail box.'"
General laughs from the group and nods of agreement. "OK, well, this story is not going to be as exciting as you may have thought."
FYI "snail post" is definitely not as funny a punch line as "snail mail" but the story still got a good laugh.
Sunday, 14 April 2013
Holy Toast, 14 April 2013
Toast has been one of my staple foods for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I would come home from school and eat at least two pieces but usually four. Typically with margarine, then cinnamon and sugar or Tang powder (sounds disgusting but was REALLY delicious, plus fends off scurvy). My mom did not believe in butter.
When I was in college, my BFF Bethni (who also loves toast but doesn't really believe in putting things on it) was living in the big city - St Paul. On one of those big city radio stations, she heard a song by someone who loved toast as much as we did. When I visited, we kept the radio on all the time just in case it came on. (This was waaaay before you could just look it up on the internet.) And then we heard it. My life was deeply enriched. To this day, it ranks up there as one of my all time favorite songs of all time, Heywood Banks: Toast! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7NqSu1Wk0Y)
Here in Australia, I began with the halcyon days of fruit toast every morning at Uni College. Since then I've been on a bit of a toast hiatus. Buying a loaf of bread never ends well when I live alone. Plus, I didn't have a toaster and I was trying to decide whether or not I needed one. My kitchen is pretty small, so I engage in the internal need/want conversation anytime I'm considering adding an appliance. After 3 months in my house, I decided I wanted toast. I want a quick piece of peanut butter toast before running off to kettlebells or vb training or a bike ride. I want toast with my scrambled eggs. So I made a Sunday plan that involved church at Joel's place and then a trip to Kmart just down the street to purchase a toaster.
I'm sitting in the pew at Joel's church, surrounded by respectable Catholic folks (alas, no super heroes this week). The Gospel reading for the second Sunday after Easter in the Catholic lectionary was John 21:1-19. In it, Jesus appears to the disciples when they are fishing after his resurrection. As soon as the tall, serious priest started reading the passage, I almost laughed out loud, but I'm sure I at least snorted. Here's what this passage reminds me of every time I hear it: Back when I was at Luther Seminary, Mary Anderson, another toast lover, was reading this very gospel and shouted, "Listen to this: 'When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread.' Bread on the fire means toast! Jesus made toast! It's in the Bible!" I was grinning like an idiot through the entire reading of the gospel. Having that gospel on the day of my toaster buying expedition practically made it a holy mandate.
I did get a lovely, white, wide slot toaster, good for 6,000 slices - or so it said on the box. I thought about getting a red one, but I decided I didn't need a toaster that looked like a race car. I also got 2 kinds of bread - white and fruit toast. (It has sultanas in it.) I've had 4 pieces of toast so far today, and will have more before practice tonight.
Yeah, Toast! Holy Toast!
When I was in college, my BFF Bethni (who also loves toast but doesn't really believe in putting things on it) was living in the big city - St Paul. On one of those big city radio stations, she heard a song by someone who loved toast as much as we did. When I visited, we kept the radio on all the time just in case it came on. (This was waaaay before you could just look it up on the internet.) And then we heard it. My life was deeply enriched. To this day, it ranks up there as one of my all time favorite songs of all time, Heywood Banks: Toast! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7NqSu1Wk0Y)
Here in Australia, I began with the halcyon days of fruit toast every morning at Uni College. Since then I've been on a bit of a toast hiatus. Buying a loaf of bread never ends well when I live alone. Plus, I didn't have a toaster and I was trying to decide whether or not I needed one. My kitchen is pretty small, so I engage in the internal need/want conversation anytime I'm considering adding an appliance. After 3 months in my house, I decided I wanted toast. I want a quick piece of peanut butter toast before running off to kettlebells or vb training or a bike ride. I want toast with my scrambled eggs. So I made a Sunday plan that involved church at Joel's place and then a trip to Kmart just down the street to purchase a toaster.
I'm sitting in the pew at Joel's church, surrounded by respectable Catholic folks (alas, no super heroes this week). The Gospel reading for the second Sunday after Easter in the Catholic lectionary was John 21:1-19. In it, Jesus appears to the disciples when they are fishing after his resurrection. As soon as the tall, serious priest started reading the passage, I almost laughed out loud, but I'm sure I at least snorted. Here's what this passage reminds me of every time I hear it: Back when I was at Luther Seminary, Mary Anderson, another toast lover, was reading this very gospel and shouted, "Listen to this: 'When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread.' Bread on the fire means toast! Jesus made toast! It's in the Bible!" I was grinning like an idiot through the entire reading of the gospel. Having that gospel on the day of my toaster buying expedition practically made it a holy mandate.
I did get a lovely, white, wide slot toaster, good for 6,000 slices - or so it said on the box. I thought about getting a red one, but I decided I didn't need a toaster that looked like a race car. I also got 2 kinds of bread - white and fruit toast. (It has sultanas in it.) I've had 4 pieces of toast so far today, and will have more before practice tonight.
Yeah, Toast! Holy Toast!
Friday, 12 April 2013
Summer is Coming (for those in the Northern Hemisphere), 13 April 2013
Pretty much every post on facebook from the Midwest over the past week or so is about the snow that doesn't seem to let up. I remember one year getting a blizzard on April 25 in South Dakota with about 3 feet of snow... really fun for 4 wheeling. Crap for shovelling.
I started collecting these pictures for my aunt JoAnn who is a gardener extraordinare, just like her mom, Marcella. It seems like now is the time to share them, and see if I can brighten my northern readers' outlook with a few photos of flowers and greenery.
Most of these are from my treks around the city while house hunting in November and December. Now, every time I bike with Lucienne, I'm the one who navigates us through the city neighborhoods. A side benefit of the quest I thought would never end!
Hope that eases the winter blues for you northerners. You can return the favor (or "favour" in Aussie) when I've had three months of dark and damp with no snow. Just looking at these photos, I'm amazed by how much the quality of the light has changed here over the past month. Even the sunny days are not so bright - but they're still pretty glorious. Just short and getting shorter. We're off daylight savings and it's dark by 6:30. Winter is coming!
I started collecting these pictures for my aunt JoAnn who is a gardener extraordinare, just like her mom, Marcella. It seems like now is the time to share them, and see if I can brighten my northern readers' outlook with a few photos of flowers and greenery. 
Most of these are from my treks around the city while house hunting in November and December. Now, every time I bike with Lucienne, I'm the one who navigates us through the city neighborhoods. A side benefit of the quest I thought would never end!
 |
| And one random act of crafting found in Brunswick! |
Hope that eases the winter blues for you northerners. You can return the favor (or "favour" in Aussie) when I've had three months of dark and damp with no snow. Just looking at these photos, I'm amazed by how much the quality of the light has changed here over the past month. Even the sunny days are not so bright - but they're still pretty glorious. Just short and getting shorter. We're off daylight savings and it's dark by 6:30. Winter is coming!
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