A Most Belated Post, Pt. I

All right, it's down to business. Andrei returned to the US and my parents left yesterday, so no more excuses for not writing.

Nearly six weeks ago I traveled to Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city and my favourite city to date. Known for its badass graffiti, cozy laneway cafés, and extremely laidback attitude, Melbourne appears a sleepy city on the surface but emerges as a serious contender for coolest city in the world upon closer inspection. The graffiti really lends a sense of youth and rebellion to the city, and there are some crazy clubs and bars around town. One bar we went to called The Croft Institute was mad scientist themed--drinks with edgy names like "Dope as Fuck" and "Labsinthe" served in test tubes, beakers, and even "syringe shots" of you-name-it. The bathroom had a "sterile" hospital bed in it, and outside the bathroom there was an empty vintage wheelchair hanging from the ceiling and facing a broken television in the CREEPIEST fashion. My favourite part? The tables that we sat at were all lab benches with laboratory sinks!!! I loved the whole package, despite its inherent creepiness. Science major, go figure.

The Croft institute: would go back again, and bring premed friends with me instead :D

Artists at Work

Another highlight of the trip: traveling down the Great Ocean Road to visit the Twelve Apostles (now only eight? of the rocks remain). The Twelve Apostles are a national icon (but perhaps not well known to the international crowd), and apparently it's the most photographed place in Australia (of this I am skeptical, despite its beauty). The drive along the Great Ocean Road was very pretty, but generally uneventful, so we spiced it up by... taking a helicopter ride above the Twelve Apostles! This was my first time in a helicopter, and I was really thrilled with the experience. Something about wearing those silly-looking headsets really pleases me! (Remember how in my previous post I guffawed at people who would pay the money to do scenic flights? Yeah well I am swallowing my words.)

Beautiful view of the 12 Apostles from the Helicopter

Rockin' out in the heli

The last unexpected but delightful experience in Melbourne was a surprise attendance at WICKED, a musical that people have been gushing about forever but I have never had any interest in seeing. Well, the whole thing went down like this: Two of my friends entered a same-day lottery for discount tickets to see WICKED the second night we arrived in Melbourne, and in spite of the small chance of winning, they won! I had resigned myself to not seeing the show since they had no extra tickets, but on the very last day in Melbourne a Taiwanese friend of mine suggested that we enter for the afternoon show... and lo and behold tickets descended from the heavens at the very affordable price of $30AUD for FRONT ROW SEATS (regularly priced seats were $100+ and who knows how much front row seats cost). And that's how I came to serendipitiously see WICKED, which I liked but did not love. (Not being a huge Broadway musical fan might be part of it; but mostly I thought there was SO MUCH! they could have done with the idea of the story of Oz from the Wicked Witch's perspective. Alas, not all that I was hoping for.) But after the show we snuck around to the back of the theatre like the creepers we are and got autographs from the actors, who were surprisingly chill.

In Melbourne we also visited the Melbourne Cricket Ground with my Australian Sports class (ironically the class taught me nothing about Australian sports, as in don't ask me anything about rugby or cricket because I don't know the rules, or the point...). One night we ate dinner and watched the sunset at St. Kilda's where there is a beautiful beach and pier. The next day we ate dumplings in Melbourne's Chinatown (A+). Sidenote: Melbourne's Chinatown is the oldest surviving Chinatown in the world (San Francisco's was destroyed by earthquake and fire in 1906 and had to be rebuilt).

Some other random stuff that happened between Melbourne and my Spring Break trip to Uluru: TropFest (biggest short film festival in the world) and a field trip to Wine Odyssey (an extremely cool wine tasting place in the Rocks that even has an "aroma room" where you can smell all the different aromas you might find in wine, i.e. black pepper, peach, butter, lemon, leather, etc, etc.)

OK, next post on Uluru/the Outback.
Update on my ETA: 4 more weeks in Oz and 3 weeks in NZ.