NDBT

Sheesh – I’m barely keeping up with what I’m doing now, much less getting to my backlogged Mad. entires. I’ll work on it. Ok – so. I flew to Perth dragging along the stupid box that the stupid man in Mauritius did NOT send to the US like he was suppossed to – and really this is a very long story. I called my mom and told her my trials and tribulations, and she said – “it’s your giraffe!” (For those who don’t know – my favorite book ever is the Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie. Check it out. It’s also why I bought a wooden giraffe in South Africa when I was living in Cape Town.) Ok so – I was practically last off the plane (movies: Dreamgirls (well, I fast forwarded to the musical numbers since I’ve seen it before), Stranger than Fiction (very, very good), and some of Casino Royale. But then we landed. I’m glad I didn’t start the Apartment, like I had been planning to).

Anyway – last off the plane means last through the international passport control (and explaining that I’m not carrying typhus or yellow fever or anything, despite my having been in Africa), and last through customs, which took FOREVER and a day.

Forever and 2 days later – I’m at the comfort hostel, about 7km outside Perth, which is nice and clean, and has lots of long term people. I’m there for a week (at least). Jobs m,ight be hard to find. I’m going over my budget tonight and making some calls. Luckily the train to Adelaide is cheaper than I thought. Unluckily the bus to Cairns is more expensive, and I’ll need to buy my NZ-USA flight before getting to NZ (and thus, maybe, working). I love my credit cards.  I digress (again – my brain is fuzzy from too much going on). I got into the hostel about 10:30pm. I was going to go right to bed, but I wandered into the lounge and the green mile was on and I walked in RIGHT AS SAM ROCKWELL COMES ON. It’s an omen. Australia is going to be awesome (and Sam should’ve been up for best supporting actor that year). I slept in the next day. MAJORLY – its really the first time I’ve been jet lagged, but I think it makes sense because I’ve skipped about 4/5 time zones this last flight. Read 2 murder mysteries. Watched Anger management (NY pride aside, it was mildly amusing, mostly because you can’t believe Jack Nicholson is doing what he’s doing).

Next day a trucker named John invited me and Eija, a Finnish girl, along to see the South coast. He was dropping 2 German girls off at a farm (they’re doing something similar to Wwoof and seeing where they are for 2 weeks inspired me to go get an Aussie membership.) On the way we saw TONS of birds, including 4 species of parrots (Oz has parrots! Who knew?!), ibis, pelican, a sparrowhawk, what I think was a kookaburra, and John moved a yellow-bellied black snake off the road. Then driving back from the farm we saw EMU!! They crossed the road and hung out near the car for a bit. They are very funny birds. They sort of prance when they run, and their big fuzzy tail shakes back and forth. Then we stopped in Bunbury to look around, and we saw a bunch of wild kangaroos! Yay! My first day out in Australia, and there is tons of wildlife EVERYWHERE! We also stopped at a roadside stand and got Emu pies for dinner. (Yes, this sort of violates my rule of don’t eat the animal you want to see in the wild (people were eating Elephant jerky in kruger, which I found so wrong), but the emus are farmed and I was hungry. They weren’t bad. And now I have “the worst pies in London” stuck in my head. (Doesn’t the picture of Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd look awesome?!)) When we got back we drove up to King’s park in Perthto see the city at night, which was very lovely. All in all, a good days’ drive (at one point they played “a land down under” on the radio. I LOVE hearing country-specific songs on the radio.) 🙂 That night, watched the Shawshank Redemption, which I had never seen (very good, although the lounge was a bit noisy at times, which is very annoying when you are trying to hear something), and John showed us the special features to Ladder 49, which his uncle is in (he was a baltimore FF).

Today I’m in Perth, and I’ve been looking up day tours, train and bus prices, buying books (I kind of went nuts, since I haven’t had any in AGES; 2 murder mysteries (Kathy Reichs and Elizabeth George), Gulliver’s travels, a tale of 2 cities, and middlemarch, which should occupy me for a while). Ate lunch at a sandwhich shop in a narrow alley called “London Crossing” that has been designed to look like Stratford-upon-avon. In Perth. It is very weird. Spent 2 hours mailing above-mentioned box home (grrrAH!). But at least now I’m not carrying it home. I’m seeing spiderman 3 in an hour, despite lukewarm reviews (as predicted, everyone says that the plot tries to do too much. I’ll let you know what I think. Yay! Movie! I haven’t been in a cinema in AGES). Got my Wwoof book, so I can look through it tonight.
I’m having a bit of reverse-culture shock. Its very weird to have been in Mad. and now be in a place that has TARGETS. And kmarts, and blockbusters, and actually, a lot of Perth and its surrounds reminds me very much of SoCal, especially the drives around Claremont. With fewer fish taco stands. I keep having bizarre flashbacks to being an undergrad. But now I am more broke. And everyone has accents here (yup – they say gday and mate all over the place). Also they have hungry jacks, which is actually burger king. And I think its pretty true that Oz is 2nd to the US for people being overweight, but the guys who aren’t are bizarrely attractive as a whole. I wonder if the criminals they are descended from were all of the dashing rogue type?
Question of the day: Since Canada is part of the commonwealth (which I found out in Madagascar – who knew?) why doesn’t it have the union jack on its flag? Oz and NZ do.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.