hey it's 45 minutes before my final, maybe i should start studying?

Hey all,
I've been paper-writing and studying for the past few days.
I'll get around to Melbourne soon!

Xu

wine, cheese, roses, CLASSY

Okay guys, time for another lengthy post.
Let's divvy it up for your reading ease (and so I don't forget anything):

• Australia Day and Dragon Boat Racing
• Born Ruffians concert
• Wine Tour
• Australian Museum
• Valentine's Day

Australia Day and Dragon Boat Races
Note that Australia Day was January 26th, and note that today is February 20th. So.... yeah. Australia Day is celebrated Jan 26th because that was the day that the first convict ships arrived on the shores of Botany Bay/Sydney Harbour to set up colonies. The Aborigines have aptly named the day "Invasion Day." Yikes, the tension in the air was almost palpable!!
On Australia Day thousands upon thousands of people turned up to The Rocks, an area of Sydney near the bridge and the Opera House. There were tons of outdoor concerts and other events going on--it was a massive celebration of all things Australian.

Australian pride!

Random Chair Sculpture by The Rocks--how cool!

We were tuckered out fast, but look how patriotic!

Later that week as a joint celebration of Chinese New Year's and Australia Day, they held dragon boat racing in Darling Harbour. It was an incredible sight and all the boats were marvelously decorated with flaming reds, greens, and golds.

Dragon boats at the finish line

Born Ruffians concert
I sort of forget whether I went to the Born Ruffians concert or the Wine Tour first, so let's just cover Born Ruffians.

Well, Kelly and I had a little bit of trouble getting over there since we took the wrong bus down George St. instead of Oxford St. BUT! when we finally did get to the Oxford Art Factory, Born Ruffians was just getting on stage. Overall the performance was a little above average; they were energetic but not particularly captivating. The music was decent, with my favorite song being "I Need a Life" because of the catchy (ugh) chorus. The band is from Canada, and it was delicious to hear people talking without an Australian accent for once! I wanted to jump up yelling, "Hey we're from North America too! Whoo Canada!!!"

Also let's talk about how incredibly SCENESTER the kids at the show were. Australian scenester kids are pretty similar to American scenester kids in terms of looks: they're adorned with the exact same plaid, skinny pants, and boots. They wear the same amount of bangles, excessive cat-eye eyeliner, and revel in their piercings. Things are pretty much the same except that Australian scenester kids drink a lot more than kids our age (duh, because it is legal here) and they are less stupid and seem to actually be there to enjoy the music. It was a nice crowd to enjoy Born Ruffians with.

For more pics and stuff of the concert and more, visit Kelly's blog: Make War and Peace Down Under.


Hunter Valley Wine Tour
Okay, the Wine Tour. I realize I haven't really explained why (or HOW) I am taking a wine-tasting class and getting credit for it---pretty much I am awesome, that's all you need to know. It's the first year that the course has been offered in the Sydney program, even though back home in Boston there is a School of Hospitality course about wine-tasting as well. Anyway, this class is a little different because it is about the Australian Wine Industry, with emphasis on the industry. So as part of our class we spent two days in the Hunter Valley, a wine region just two hours north of Sydney. There we went around to several wineries and did tastings and walked around their vineyards.

At each vineyard we walked in to each individual cellar door (whose designs ranged from rustic to ultra-modern) and got about 7 or 8 different samples of wine to try. Trust me, I learned very, very quickly that I had to spit out the tastings rather than swallowing them--after all, my friends weren't in the best state to carry me back onto the bus either. The tastings didn't get me shit-faced (because I would not allow myself to get shit-faced on wine), but they did leave me with a tingling joviality and a terrifically embarrassing Asian glow.

Here are the places we visited (I have kindly hyperlinked you to them):
Tyrrell's
Drayton's
Tempus Two
Peterson's Champagne House
Tamburlaine
Nightingale Wines
Margan

My favorite parts of the weekend:

Amazing Hunter Semillon from Tyrrell's

1. The Semillon wines at Tyrrell's. Semillon has officially become my favorite white wine, and it's what the Hunter Valley region is best known for.

Classy tasting at Tempus Two

2. The lush, beautiful tasting arranged for us at Tempus Two, a new and up-and-coming winery that is all about the marketing and the sales of wine. Their wine labels, unlike the paper labels of most wines, are actually made of pewter. And, their cellar door plays host to AMAZING bands each year. In previous years they have hosted Elton John, The Beach Boys, Santana, and Rod Stewart.

3. Peterson's Champagne house was also lovely, and the cellar door at Margan was probably my favorite of all time because it was like being in a really nice home of a friend's, complete with little modern design pillows and sweet lighting. Tamburlaine Wines was the first and only organic and biodynamic winery we visited, and the whole place was very rustic and you could tell (and smell) the natural fertilizers being used. Finally, the tour through Nightingale Wines really showed us the behind-the-scenes making of wine:

Behind-the-scenes action at Nightingale winery

Overall the trip was a huge hit with me. I increased my knowledge of wine about ten-fold, and now I know which kinds of wines I like to drink and which I don't. Plus, I got some sweet pictures of the vineyards:

Me among the vines

Fountain in the Gardens of the Grand Mercure Hunter Valley Gardens (our SWANK overnight accommodation). Also notice how Matt is a total gay pimp in the picture.

Australian Museum
Okay, I'll keep the last few words on the Australian Museum and Valentine's Day short:

The Australian Museum had great exhibits on Aboriginal art, Australian wildlife, and Australian geology. It was VERY similar to Harvard's Museum of Natural History if you've ever been (except the Australian Museum is much more modernized--I swear some of the stuffed animals in the Harvard museum are older than my grandparents, and they definitely look in desperate need of updating).

The BEST part, hands down, of the Australian Museum was the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 Exhibition. The exhibition showcases the best wildlife shots from professionals (Nat. Geo. photographers, mostly) and amateurs (kids from as young as seven). It was a breathtaking exhibit, and made me seriously lament my point-and-shoot camera skills.

Australian Museum top floor

Valentine's Day
Finally, Valentine's Day. I have the greatest friends here who really went all out for VDay and exchanged flowers, candy, cards, and kisses, etc. etc. everything that makes Valentine's Day special. That night we went to dinner, where I had a chicken schnitzel and Sav Blanc Semillon for dinner, and then we went planning to see He's Just Not That Into You, but that was sold out so instead we saw Rachel Getting Married. I'm still not entirely sure if I liked the movie--it was great acting but not the best VDay movie. Dark stuff. In Melbourne we did eventually see He's Just Not That Into You, but I'll review that in the next post.

Some final pictures from Valentine's Day:

Gerbera Daisy from Becky, the fellow Kansan. I put the daisy in a beautiful bottle of Botrytis Semillon desert wine from Tempus Two.

And of course, roses from the boy, who was ingenious enough to arrange a local florist to deliver them:

Roses 1

Roses 2

And... that's it folks. Next time I'll cover my trip to Melbourne this past weekend, including my helicopter ride over the Great Ocean Road and how I got to see WICKED performed in Melbourne (a total random but extremely enjoyable experience)!

VOGUE, anyone?

Ah, okay, so I'm still behind on my posts. And it doesn't help that I just returned from a 4-day trip to Melbourne, Australia's second largest city. (There I took a helicopter ride over the Great Ocean Road and saw a performance of WICKED, among other things. That's another post, of course.)

But can I interrupt your reading pleasure with the following exciting news??

I am officially interning at Vogue Entertaining & Travel starting March 10th!!!!

Can we talk about this for a second?! Me--at Vogue? I went for my interview today and the editors there are super nice--they assured me that it would be nothing like Devil Wears Prada (at which point I think I did breathe a huge sigh of relief because let's face it--I am not Anne Hathaway or anywhere near as awesome). Let's also preface this by saying that this is not VOGUE as in fashion Vogue, but just Entertaining + Travel. I'll also be saddling responsibilities at another next-door magazine called delicious., which is a HUGELY successful foodie magazine. MMMMM I have a feeling between my wine-tasting class and this internship, my palate will be much improved by the time I return to Boston!!

So more or less, this internship will be AWESOME and I can officially say that I worked for Vogue (Entertaining + Travel).

Is life cool or what?

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's Feb 14th. in Australia, so HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY EVERYONE!!!!

Posts are still on their way... urgh. We had a paper due today for our Australian Culture and Society class. (A good excuse, I think.) I wrote on anorexia in Australian female athletes --- why do I choose the most depressing topics on earth for papers? Who knows.

Have a great day everyone, and of course,
With lots of love from Down Under,
Xu

the post you've all been waiting for (or not)

I just got back from my wine-tasting field trip, but am I writing about that? A resounding NO!

Oy, this blog writing has become a strong love/hate relationship for me--I love that it saves me the trouble of mass emailing everyone, but I hate that it takes me nearly an hour to recollect the adventures that have slipped through the sieve of my memory like sand between fingers at the beach. Honestly, I think the perpetual sunshine is getting to me; most days I'm lazy as all hell.

So before I launch into describing Fraser Island from last weekend, I'll recall the Hyde Park Barracks field trip. I realize that I've written zilch on my current classes, Australian Culture & Society and The Australian Wine Industry. Eh, who really goes away for academia, anyway? But a bit of educational interruption here: For those who don't know, Australia became a British colony after the American Revolution and was colonized as a place to dump British convicts (since our American founding fathers were having no more of that). The first fleet that arrived in Botany Bay and then Sydney Cove consisted of over one hundred convicts, who settled in this unforgiving land with a sense of well-warranted foreboding. And so my culture and society class took a field trip to the Hyde Park Barracks, the first and biggest convict prison in Sydney. (Ironically, it was later turned into a women's shelter/depot? in the 1900s. Let the feminists, including me, chew on that.) Long story short the condition of the barracks was abysmal, and the barracks stand today as a memory of Sydney's convict history.

The roof of the barracks. Still original, possibly.

Sleeping hammocks in the barracks. Stories tell of convicts who would often piss and shit in buckets, but those buckets would spill, seep through the top floor, and muck up all the hammocks on the floor below. Charming thought.

The "Edge of the Trees" exhibit outside the Museum of Sydney, another stop we made on the field trip. The wooden poles are to symbolize the trees that the Aborigines stood among as they watched the first British ships pull up in the cove. When listening carefully, one can hear Aboriginal voices whispering from speakers implanted within the structures. Pretty cool.

And now a recount of Fraser Island.

We flew to Hervey Bay Airport, possibly the smallest airport I have ever encountered. It had one single gate, and we de-boarded the plane presidential-style: walking down the plane's stairs and waving graciously at our awaiting crowd (the impatient travelers waiting boarding our plane back to Sydney).

We then took a ferry from Hervey Bay to Fraser Island.

A picture of the pier on Fraser Island. This looks eerily like a scene out of LOST, am I right?

We sauntered into the resort around 9AM and spent the rest of that day poolside. It was glorious. The entire west side of island has only one real place of civilization, and that was the Kingfisher Bay resort. Here's a picture of the architecture of the Kingfisher Bay Resort from the inside; it's awesome.

Kingfisher Bay Resort

The place was quite posh, and 3 of my friends stayed in the actual resort for the first night while my friend Lisa and I stayed at a hostel/dorm accommodation up the road. The 3 friends were on a 1-day tour while Lisa and I were on a 2-day/1-night tour with a company called "Cool Dingo." It turned out to be very cool, and we did indeed see a dingo, among other wildlife.

The first day of the tour we visited Basin Lake and then walked through the rainforest. OH IMPORTANT DETAIL. Fraser Island is the largest SAND ISLAND in the world, meaning that the entire island up to hundreds of meters deep is sand, and the rainforest on the island grows right out of dry sand. Our guide explained how it worked: once upon a time one very hardy plant took root on the island, died, and decomposed, providing a thin topsoil for more vegetation to grow on. Thousands upon thousands of years later, and after an adaptation in which plants symbiotically grow with mushrooms (strange), an entire rainforest now occupies the island. COOL, yeah? Now the island is listed as a World Heritage site. For purposes of comparison, Stonehenge is also a World Heritage site.

So that first day we visited Basin Lake, walked through the rainforest and watched lizards scamper up trees and eels glide through freshwater creeks.

Basin Lake

Australia's famous eucalyptus trees. Beautifully white and straight, just how I like 'em.

Rainforest

Then we went to Lake Mackenzie, which is the most beautiful freshwater lake I have ever stepped foot in. You know how American lakes are usually algae-covered, dirty brown or green, and crawling with who-knows-what? Well apparently the water in Lake Mackenzie is so PURE and too acidic for anything but the hardiest algae to live in. Result? A beautiful, perfectly clean lake with water the bluest blue color of the Carribean. And best yet, the entire lake is surrounded by sand so white it's blinding. The freshest water I've ever known--I felt like I could drink straight from the lake with no repercussions. Really, no pictures can do Lake Mackenzie justice, but here's an attempt:

Lake Mackenzie

The second day we drove along 75-Mile Beach. What, you ask, driving... on a beach??? Since the entire island is sand, it makes driving incredibly hard if roads aren't paved. And frankly, to pave all the roads on the island would take more money and more manpower than I could imagine (the entire fucking island is SAND!). So the only way to navigate the island is on 4-Wheel-Drive (4WD) vehicles, but even small 4WD vehicles can often get stuck in sand that is soft. As in the following picture:

I felt so bad for these people pushing their car since Lisa and I were on a giant 4WD with an experienced driver/guide. Keep in mind that it was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit too.

So the entire island is sand and a nightmare to drive, but the easiest way around is to... DRIVE ON THE BEACH! Since the water compacts and flattens the sand, it's much easier to drive along the wet sand of the beach than on the soft sand of the inland. Or, at least, less bumpy. Driving on the beach too fast or recklessly can actually cause cars to barrel roll into the ocean, NO JOKE! But the beach is infested with sharks, so it's not much good for anything but driving on (or barrel rolling on), anyway.

We drove all along the beach to visit a shipwreck (the Maheno) and then took a detour to Champagne Pools and Indian Head.

The Maheno shipwreck on the beach. The history is too long and complicated for me to explain. Something about Japan, scrap metal, storm?

Champagne pools.

The rock formations around the pool block and filter the powerful, crashing waves from the ocean, making the resulting water in the pool bubbly and fizzy like champagne. So strange and enjoyable!

Oh, and here's a dingo!!! Which is a very unsafe animal, despite its resemblance to a typical dog. NOT DOMESTICATED! WILL TAKE YOUR BABY!

Indian head is another amazing rock formation on the island that juts out into the ocean and ends with a dizzying cliff drop. From the top, one can spy rays, turtles, and sharks in the clear blue waters of the ocean.

Me at Indian Head

The cliff at Indian Head.

Driving back from Indian Head we watched several small planes take off from the beach to do fly-over tours of the island. For a 15 minute plane ride over the island, it would cost you $70 Australian bucks. (Approx. $50 US dollars, which works out to be about $3.25 USD/minute). Guess which poor college student didn't do it. Still, how cool!

Plane taking off, FROM THE BEACH!

We then made a photo stop at Red Canyon, a large fiery red-orange sand mountain (from iron oxides in the sand). It was incredibly beautiful, as you can see for yourself.

Red Canyon

Our penultimate stop was a tiny very cold creek called Eli Creek. I lay on my back in the shallow creek, and the current was strong enough to pull me almost out to the ocean! As lame and shallow as this creek was, it was probably my favorite part of the day. Eh, I'm all for the cheap thrills!

The last stop:


Fraser Island is notable for its juxtaposition of 4 very distinct ecosystems, 3 of which I have already discussed: lake, ocean, and rainforest. Can you guess the fourth? DESERT! Of course, where would an island of sand be without a desert? Way back when, winds started violently blowing sand from the beach into the rainforest, killing the topsoil and any vegetation and eventually turning patches of rainforest back into dry deserts. The eeriest thing to see is the forest of dead trees that still jut out from dunes. It truly looks like something out of a Van Gogh painting.

Overall I had an amazing trip. I was worried that the tour would be lame, but we really lucked out and got an extremely entertaining guide who has lived on the island for 13 years. He's also a well known photographer of the area, and his website is *HERE*. We sang cheesy (mostly American) songs on while driving, and I met people from all over (London, Tokyo, Toronto, Finland, Holland, Austria, etc.). Of course, now I have drinking buddies all over the world who insist I call them up when I'm in their neck of the woods so they can get me really really trashed.

Three words: What a blast.


PS: Um, okay I realize that I still haven't gotten around to posting about Australia Day (Jan. 26th), which is the Australian analog to the 4th of July. I'll do that later this week along with a description of my wine-tasting field trip from this past weekend.

Next time I'll also write more about the Born Ruffians concert I went to last week, including my interactions with scenester Australian kids. Three words: Egregious plaid observed! (Much like here, I'm afraid.)

That's it, the end.

it's thursday and i've got nothin'

So it's Thursday and I've got nothin'.
No pics uploaded from Oz Day, no stories about Fraser Island... yet.

Sorry peeps, I'll try tomorrow/Saturday.

Sidenote: Tonight I'm going to a concert in Sydney (Paddington to be exact). Check it out: Born Ruffians.
I have medium-high expectations.


Correction: the concert was in Darlinghurst at the Oxford Art Factory. Paddington and Darlinghurst are adjacent to one another, whoops!

return from a traveling coma

Hey all, I just got back this morning from a four-day trip to Fraser Island and there are pictures and stories to look over, cull, and then write up. My goal is... Thursday? Who knows.

Just wanting to pop in and announce that I haven't died.

PS: I am in the computer lab and eating a bowl of Uncle Ben's Instant Rice (2 min. in the microwave and it's cooked!) and it is DELICIOUS. Or, I may be biased because I haven't had a grain of rice touch my lips in over two weeks. Probably the longest rice withdrawal OF MY LIFE. I've gotta do something about this.

PPS: I have also been introduced to the writings of Tucker Max this weekend, and I have entirely mixed feelings that one blog post probably won't be able to cover. Any one else heard of him??? If so, DISCUSS.