The Beach Bit

There was finally sun today, and we headed out to Bondi Beach. Most people take the train and the bus to get there, which is a weird feeling. In San Francisco we have reasonably good public transportation, but no beach weather to attract large crowds. In Los Angeles, we have great weather and beaches, but no public transportation. In any case, taking a bus to the beach is great, except on days like today when the system is overloaded.

We walked from the train station, which wasn’t bad at all. In fact, walking we discover a Brazilian-owned Mexican restaurant. They served burritos and feijoada. Awesome.

The beach itself was great. I’ve always been too cheap to effectively take up surfing, but I’ve always been a big fan of body surfing where you catch waves by swimming away from the crashing wave and then going into a stiff prone position. In LA it wasn’t that big of a thing, but here it’s crazy popular, which was good and bad, I suppose. Good because it’s fun to be out there with other people maneuvering the ocean together; bad because it’s crowded and you inevitably end up plowing into someone else. Today I got tangled up with a surfer who fell off his board. Awkward.

Fashion at Bondi Beach also seemed to be a pretty big deal. Debating its American equivalent, I posited Miami (though I’ve never been). Luisa agreed, although she said Miami was a slightly crazier place. We agreed whatever it was, it seemed like a bigger fashion show than relatively low-key Hermosa Beach just south of LAX. Yes, Hermosa Beach is still a crazy place, I know. I’m just trying to fit things into a ranking here, okay?

Anyway, there was talk of checking out Manly Beach tomorrow, but Weather.com says it’s going to rain. So now what?

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Going down the escalator in the Sydney subway.

The (long) line for the bus at Bondi Junction. We eventually left this line.

The Royal Hotel on Bondi Street, which totally looks like something out of The Royal Tenenbaums. A "royal" coincidence?

Seeing Stars

During college I made the trek back and forth between Los Angeles and San Francisco a seemingly countless number of times. During one such trip, my friend in the passenger seat, who was taking an astronomy class at the time, spotted the Milky Way draped across the night sky while we were driving through a rural area of Ventura County. We pulled off the highway and parked on the frontage road, and with the headlights off the night sky was an amazing vista of starlight.

Fausaga was like that too. Though Apia is by no means a large metropolis, it’s got enough of a population to put out enough light pollution so star-gazing is muddled at best. But on the south side of Upolu and almost anywhere in Savai’i, the night sky is a sight to behold.

I thought about these things as we entered the Sydney Observatory this evening. The observatory, conveniently located in downtown Sydney (although our guide noted that this is a stupid place to put a space observatory given the same light problems as Apia), is open year-round for night tours, and we went tonight.

We rotated through three main parts of the tour:

• The South Dome, where we looked through Australia’s oldest telescope—still operated by a system of ropes and pullies—to see Jupiter and its 4 largest moons;
  
• The North Dome, where we used the high-tech GPS-operated telescope to look at Rigel and Betelgeuse and the Orion nebula; and
  
• The 3-D movie, which simulated a trip to Mars, and was supplemented with a stargazing walk along the obervatory’s back patio.

When she found out we were from America, our guide tried not to sound smug as she pointed out the various constellations that can only be seen from the southern hemisphere. In situations like this, I admit I feel kinda cool saying, “Well actually I live in Samoa right now.” So there.

Since arriving in Samoa, Dan and a bunch of others have pointed out that Orion faces the opposite direction in Samoa. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference, but our tour guide tonight confirmed those observations, explaining that constellations appear as mirror images of themselves when viewed from the northern and southern hemisphere because of parallax.

In addition to constellations, we saw two shooting stars and a whole lotta fruit bats. And then it was time to go home.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Pizza and beer for dinner tonight. Mine (foreground) is peppered kangaroo. Luisa had the crocodile and spinach.

Australia's oldest telescope.

Liam and Matt hanging out.

Meeting Halfway

We went on a run tonight. It rained all day today, and after going out for brunch, grocery shopping, and sitting through a VHS copy of “The Princess Bride,” we decided to go for a run. I checked GoogleMaps.au, and figured out a route extending 2.5 kilometers from the house we’re staying. We changed into our designer DryFits™, I took the house key off my key chain, laced up my 3-year-old running shoes, and we were off.

Exercise is a climate-specific enterprise, and no time during this trip has the difference in mine and Luisa’s current residence been more apparent than today’s run. Luisa still lives in San Francisco, which is freezing right now. I live in Apia, which is ungodly hot and humid this time of year. And here we are in Sydney, which provides an (un)happy medium.

My body cried for the first half the run, and I finally crawled “uncle” when we got to the turnaround. See, as profanely hot as it is in Apia, the humidity makes the air rich with oxygen. By the end of a run, I’m sweating a small estuary and my cheeks are hot enough to heat Helsinki for a day, but my lungs are all smiles. Despite Samoa’s lack of emission standards, I can breathe easy.

Here in the cold weather and dry climate the air can’t hold nearly as much oxygen, and my poor alveoli burned as the run continued. My spoiled lungs aren’t used to this whole “do more with less” concept, and though my body enjoyed the cool climate and the opportunity to run without all the sweating, my chest screamed.

Luisa was the opposite. When, at the turnaround, I whined about the cold, she only responded by rolling her eyes. A rainy early January evening in Sydney is far warmer than an uncharacteristically temperate January night in San Francisco. For Luisa this weather is hot—almost to the point it was unbearable.

But we kept on, each of us a refugee in our own personal anti-climate. This area, the lower north shore, is quite hilly, which only added insult to our respective injuries. My body whined as I sucked as I took the deepest breaths I could to supplement the thin air. Luisa seemed dazed by the heat.

Crossing the finish line (at the end of the driveway), we were both clearly zonked by the run, though for completely different reasons.

Whatever. Props to us for running in the rain.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Steak, red potato hashbrowns, and red wine for dinner.

Taking the subway from Sydney to North Sydney on Wednesday.

Ruane and her family introduced me to the way Kiwis and Aussies refer to canteloupe as "rockmelon," but it all seemed like a slightly strange family quirk until it was confirmed in the produce section at the local supermarket this afternoon.

Save it for a Rainy Day

New Year’s Eve’s literal hangover was short, but New Year’s Day always seems to be steeped in a figurative hangover. Growing up we’d always stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning to bang spoons on pots and pans, and the next day would inevitably spent sleeping or lazily walking around the house in a fog. This year is only different in that the haze seems to be lasting longer than usual.

With the lousiest New Year’s weather Sydney has seen in 20 years, there’s been little incentive to get out of bed in the morning, let alone leave the house. The place we’re staying has a comprehensive DVD collection and a well-stocked kitchen, so there’s been a whole lot of nothing going on lately.

There’s been tentative plans to head out to Bondi Beach the last 2 days, but overcast skies and occasional rain showers have quashed that plan twice.

Australian TV is a strange Bizarro version of American TV. Everything is the same, and yet it’s all different. Diapers are referred to as “nappies”, the channel identical to America’s Bravo network is called the Arena network, and for some reason the [V] network has all kinds of commercials specifically aimed at people that will attend many music festivals this summer, which seems like a ridiculously specific demographic.

My favorite part of Australian TV has been a commercial for Chex breakfast cereal in which a child ponders how they put the holes in the Chex, and finally decides that echidnas with special spikes have done it. Sure, Aussie kid. Sure.

The Weather Channel, which has a function that allows cable subscribers to get specified weather reports catered to their neighborhood, has been atrociously inaccurate. The one day it called for rain was the only sunny day we’ve had.

But all in all, it’s been a nice couple days. It’s been a nice break from Apia’s heat and humidity, and being able to watch TV and music videos and use a hi-speed Internet connection is a sweet change of pace.

I’m sure BusyCorner is annoyed, but whatever. The plan is to go to the beach tomorrow.

Unless it rains.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

We met up with PCV Erin and her brother and his friend for dinner and drinks last night.

Luisa spotted this wild lorikeet while we waited for the bus this afternoon.

We went to see "Fantastic Mr. Fox" this evening... aka Mr. F

This is the traffic sign that means "look out for pedestrians," but Luisa pointed out tonight that it looks more like "look out for Michael Jackson."

2009 Retrospective

Here’s a look back at pictures from 2009.

January 20. Watching Obama's inauguration at the Charge d'Affaires's house.

January 27. Putting together the school schedule on the library chalkboard

February 3. Akanese and me.

February 9. Daily tea and "scone".

March 9. My year 13s.

March 14. Lizard in my sink (bottom left) while I wash dishes.

March 21. Tafale and Tone in Fausaga.

April 18. Akanese drinking a niu.

April 23. Boys practicing for their Culture Day dance.

April 30. Kid sleeping in my class.

May 6. Cutting up esi at Culture Day.

May 9. Akanese and my dad wading in the ocean.

June 16. Sports day.

June 29. Me and chick in my front yard.

July 3. Congregationalist schools athletics meet.

July 27. Joanna wearing a Swine Flu mask.

August 29. PCV Joey running in the 64-mile Island Perimeter relay.

September 3. Amanda with starfish at Faofao Beach Fales.

September 5. Miss Samoa Australia at the 2009 Miss Samoa Pageant.

September 7. Soles sitting along the seawall watching the Road Switch.

September 14. The Mary apparition on the side of the Christian Congregationalist Church of Samoa's offices.

September 30. Searchers look for bodies on the beach in Lalomanu on the day after a tsunami ravished the southern and eastern parts of the island.

October 3. A family displaced by the tsunami poses for the camera.

October 27. 5 classes of students are crowded into the open air hall at my school when one building on campus is temporarily set off limits after it sustains damages in the September 29 earthquake.

October 29. Tui and Marie in my year 13 class laugh during a Saturday class. Classes were also late into the evening during the Year 13 Camp.

December 6. The snorkeling pool at the Original Maliu Mai in Pago Pago, American Samoa.

December 24. Sunset.

New Year's 2010

I’ve never been to see the ball drop in Time Square, so I admit I don’t have a great frame of reference, and I know I’m gonna get all kinds of flack from you New Yorkers out there, but judging from New Year’s Eve in Sydney, I can’t imagine the holiday being as big anywhere else in the world. Though New Zealand is an hour ahead and Auckland is technically the first “big city” to usher in the new year, but Sydney’s bigger and its proximity to the International Dateline is a source of civic pride.

The entire city gets into it. Port-a-potties appear around the harbour a week in advance, and an expected 1.5 million people show up to scream along with the countdown and watch an awesome display of fireworks. With those big crowds, there stands the claim that “there’s no bad seat in the house,” but certain vantage points are better than others. And so it goes Luisa and I showed up just east of Circular Quay at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning. The grounds for our site opened at 10 a.m., and there we sat for 14 hours.

The first hour was pretty easy, but there was steady rain from 11 to 2. Once again, neither of us packed for rain, so we sat there waiting for the weather to pass.

The balmy summer climate and the big New Year party make Sydney a draw for people from all over the world. In the groups surrounding us, there were Germans, Dutch, Brazilians, Columbians, Brits, French, Americans, and more.

I spent much of the day reading my book, Joseph O’Neill’s “Netherland”. This proved to be very confusing for those sitting around me. At one point I caught the Dutch lady next to me eyeing my book suspiciously, and later the Dutch guy behind me struck up a conversation in Dutch. I stared at him blankly.

The whole thing was incredibly organized. There were ample bathrooms and semi-reasonable food vendors. There was no glass allowed, but the bar tent sold bottles of wine and champagne. $5 was built into the price of these bottles, which you could get back if you returned the bottle once it was empty. It was a clever incentive scheme.

There were 2 fireworks shows: one at 9:00 p.m., one at midnight. It’s difficult to describe the coolness of a fireworks show, so I’ll just say that it was worth the wait.

It was a long day, but I feel like it was all part of the experience. It was cool.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The line to get in at 9:30 a.m.

We were right behind the Opera House. This was our view.

Rain.

Fireworks were everywhere, it seemed. Off the water, off the bridge, even coming off skyscrapers around town.

Boats in the Harbour get into the spirit.

Fireworks off the bridge.

We went to The Rocks area after midnight. Getting there was swimming upstream.