quick update

whether or not you want it, you've got a post coming at you.

"why?", you may ask? because ian thought his class was at 11am, and in fact it's at 2pm. in other words, he's stranded at the library with nothing better to do than to tell the world what he and his friends have been up to.

so here goes.

when we left off, you had heard about the big pub crawl. what you have NOT heard about was the next-day party/barbeque -- what a crazy time! it seems all these scandinavians can't get enough of the partying, and do they ever party hard!

i've been thinking for days about how i'm going to put it well -- this thing that scandinavians seem to enjoy doing when they party. suffice it to say, after having a few drinks they seem to get very... shall we say, FRIENDLY with each other. and this isn't an isolated incident. we're talking hoardes of these people going nuts in public! needless to say, us canadians tend to stand there slack-jawed while we watch all this stuff go down. it's really hard to believe, but i guess it's just a bit of a cultural thing? yeah, i'll chalk it up to that...

following the bar hop was a swedish barbeque. i don't think that's an actual term, i'm just referring to a barbeque run by a swedish girl. it was there that i had my first taste of kangaroo meat! i brought three slabs of peppered beef as well, and cooked them up on a nice grill. it was a great evening, full of wine (for some), meat, and potato salad. evenings don't get much better than that. our canadian crew also had the distinct pleasure of getting to see some individuals imbibing to unheard-of levels, with predictable results -- what a show!

since then, we've had a little movie night at our place to which we invited a big group of (you guessed it) scandinavians! they were tasked with bringing the movies. they thought it appropriate to rent, of all the movies currently available, "the amy fischer story" and "riding the bullet". if you haven't the slightest clue what either of those are about, you're not alone. we were a bit bewildered at first, as both films struck us as B movies from the early nineties. indeed, they were. however, as with any event attended by the canadian crew, good times were had nonetheless.

the big plan now is to go surfing at surfer's paradise this weekend. once we get the internet up and running (legally) at home, you'll be seeing many more pictures from the three of us. hopefully we'll take a bunch this weekend!

i should probably get reading now, as my class is starting in... 3 hours. ok, maybe i'll wait on the reading bit...

> ian

Pretty pink flower. You knew there was gonna be at least ONE in this post. Up next are Al's pictures -- enjoy!

Al hiding in the closet. Actually, it was taken on the bus, but it looks pretty creepy eh?!

A giant pelican bearing down on an unsuspecting surfer. These birds are BIG! I was impressed!

This should be rotated, and it's not that great, but it's actually the runoff from the "tea tree lake" that we visited. All the water is tinted brown from the trees! Looks like tea. You get the point.

Al on the beach at dusk.

The compulsory "sunset in sunglasses" picture. I'll never get bored of these shots -- it's pathetic.

The lighthouse at sunset. Nice place!

A large sculpture sitting at the top of a hill. He's made of metal. Nobody has any idea what it means, but it sure looks... patriotic?

The most easterly point of Australia!

I call this: "Islands, through a fence."

The walk up to the lighthouse (sunset, now).

Yours truly, surveying the new kingdom. All this land is yours, Simba. As far as the eye can see!

Claus, the OTHER Norwegian.

Erik, the Norwegian. He's one stylish kid!

He chilled out, and now he seems happy in his new habitat.

You can actually see Al's "fight or flight" response being triggered as he investigates the new alpha-male in the group.

Our German friend, Erdem. He's a born model.

The sun coming up at the tip of QUT campus.

A campus building being nicely lit by the morning sun.

Early morning in Brisbane. Al and I were walking at about 6:30AM, so we got to see a nice sunrise over the city!

back from byron bay, baby

hey guys!

before i start this up, i'm just gonna read over al's post to make sure i don't duplicate any information. if there's anything we ALL hate, it's duplication...

...

ok, done.

so al certainly gave you the basics of our trip to byron bay! the whole crew was composed of two full coach buses of international students. before long, i was dubbing the trip "meet the norwegians", as the vast majority of international students here in australia are scandinavians that come here to learn english! i've met more swedish and norwegian people in these last two days than, well, they're really the only ones i know. the bus rides were fairly quick, as byron bay is quite accessible from brisbane.

i'm supposed to talk about the food. suffice it to say, i've never eaten so many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my entire life. regardless of what meal you were "supposed" to be eating at the time (breakfast, lunch, dinner), a table was covered with the following items: bread, lettuce, meat, tomato, cheese and peanut butter. when people started realizing how much it sucked to make the same sandwich 3 times a meal for three meals a day, somebody requested that the crew bring out some jelly. the australians had NO idea what we were talking about, and everybody seemed quite flabbergasted that the americans and canadians were eating PB and Js. it was nice to have a little variety in the meals, anyway.

i've contracted a stuffy nose on the trip, but that's about the extent of the damage. i may have lost my aviators as well, but hey, i'm ok with losing a $5 pair of sunglasses.

as al said, all of the activities we were engaged in were pretty solid. we'll post a bunch of pictures following these posts that we both took. the kayaking was decent, but did not exactly meet the expectation of being a "wildlife sea kayaking experience". wildlife? i guess... if you call two canadians paddling their asses off "wild". we saw 0 animals. there was an apparent dolphin sighting which al and i were unable to partake in, but apart from that no turtles (which we were "guaranteed to find") and no whales.

surfing was great! my prior experience in costa rica helped out a bit, and i was able to stand up on quite a few waves and ride them around. the surf was pretty quiet while we were there, so much like any surfing experience, it's about 98% waiting but we all had a great time nonetheless.

the nights out on the town were nothing short of incredible! specifically, our one night at cheeky monkey's, the local backpacker bar. our crew literally invaded the whole place and filled it almost to capacity at about 6:30pm. we had our dinner and were finished by about 8. they started a few competitions on stage and had a little australian trivia challenge, and then the party began. i estimate that things got going at about 9pm, but needless to say i kept doing the math in my head and realizing that we had... 6 hours of partying ahead of us. i've never danced for so long in my life! the bar was set up such that everybody danced on a series of picnic-like tables arranged in rows. what a great time! you'd have a line of people dancing on the seats, facing another group of people dancing on the seats from the table across the way. then you'd have the crazy kids up on each table surface facing in NEITHER direction. the layout hampered my style a bit, as i was confined to wandering in sideways directions, but i made do, as did everybody else. when al and i get ahold of some pictures (we didn't take any ourselves), rest assured that you'll see some great action shots!

one highlight for me was the return home from cheeky monkeys. i hesitate to call this man a street entertainer, but here's the story anyway. as our group is wandering down the road, i hear a guy yell at me from a storefront ahead: "hey, you want some hip hop coffee?" now maybe i'm the only one still in the dark about hip hop coffee, but i was fascinated. i wasn't quite sure exactly what he was offering, so our group continued walking. to my surprise (and supreme pleasure) the guy started freestyle rapping me a storm as i walked past! and it was about ME! so as i strutted down the sidewalk past him, he delivered something approximating:

"yo, you walk the walk
talkin' talk
drop the block
yeah don't stop"

now in reality, i've manufactured that because i can't recall a word the guy said apart from that it all rhymed with "walk". what matters is that i gave him a dollar twenty and am now on the lookout for anybody seeking work in the "rap for ian while he walks down the street" field. there's an opening to be filled.

i think al neglected to mention our little walk up to byron bay point (probably not what it's called, but that's the name i'm giving it). there's a super-big lighthouse at the top of a giant hill that we ascended as a group and got to stand at during sunset. we took some decent pictures, and finally saw some whales in migration blowing their spouties up in the air. the view was phenomenal -- a good 270 degrees around!

apart from all that, i think i'll let the pictures tell the story. oh, but i have one more story to tell first.

i've been trying for days to set up a phone line to our house. the system involved calling up telstra (the bell, but certainly not the belle, of australia). telstra is kind enough to have a little automated voice thing that tries to decipher your voice patterns to see what kind of service you're requesting. when asked "what are you trying to do?" i responded "hook up a phone line", naturally. i was greeted with something along the lines of:

"accounts and billing, is that what you requested?"
"no."
"what are you trying to do?"

now at this point, i'm realizing that it doesn't understand my canadian accent. the following is a phoenetic translation of what followed:

"what are you trying to do?"
"git a fayn lo-wayn."
"phone plan options, is that what you requested?"
"NOI!"
"what are you trying to do?"
"FAYN LO-WAYN!"
"phone connection, is that what you requested?"
"YIAW!"

so i'm sure the people standing around me were entertained by me faking an australian accent to fool the telephone system into understanding me. it all worked though, and now whenever i call telstra i can get whatever i need on demand! yay!

enough text, it's time for some pictures -- enjoy, i know we did!

> ian

brisbane in a nutshell

so i've had some time to settle down!

i'm officially moved into my place and things are going along swimmingly! however, i've been thrown off by some australian-isms that i thought i should warn you about:

- they don't have bagels. anywhere. if somebody happens to have a bagel approximation, it's tiny and not worthy of the title bagel in the first place!

- they don't have marble cheese. matter of fact, they don't seem to have ANY kind of orange cheese whatsoever. things are gonna have to change in the clarkson diet, and FAST!

- burger king is hungry jack's -- the decor/logo is identical, they still serve whoppers, but under a different name.

- rice krispies are rice bubbles. they still have snap, crackle, and pop on the front, but a different name once again.

that's about it, i guess. people don't really say "g'day" like they're supposed to, they say "how ya goin'?". the city is really nice, and although cold at times, is a place i don't think i'll mind living in for the next few months! lots of shopping and nice-looking things around. i'm installing linux on my computer as i type this (from an internet cafe), but i still won't have the internet for a while: it's expensive here! but hopefully i'll have something to keep me occupied at home now.

al should be arriving at our place tomorrow morning, so i'm sure you'll be hearing from the BOTH of us soon.

no worries!

> ian

a little more time now...

hey hey hey, it's fat albert!

i've moved into my house! i have no phone, no internet, and until this afternoon i didn't have toilet paper (trust me, 24 pound paper really doesn't work as well) but i'm there! once again, i haven't really been taking pictures yet because i'm still just kinda getting into brisbane and trying to get my bearings. i now know how to walk to school, and a few of the buildings on campus -- hooray!

i've already met a bunch of really cool people! a whole TON of american students doing a program called "australearn". there's a good ... 18 of them, i'd say. then i met the two norwegians, and two germans. so far, i'm the token canadian. we all went out last night to some various places in "the valley". the valley is properly called fortitude valley, and is basically a big pedestrian walking strip of bars and clubs. it was a bit crappy, because i forgot to bring my passport and a lot of places don't accept driver's licences. they're pretty dickish about it too! i guess they must get hoardes of people trying to get in with fakes, but it's frustrating when you have student cards, credit cards, aeroplan cards, etc. to back it up and they won't even glance at them. they just don't care! but we DID spent a fair bit of time at this one club, whose name i cannot recall. i should be able to grab some pictures from the people who had their cameras there, and i'll put it up later.

moving from fortitude to fortuitousness, i am the proud owner of a desktop computer. where did i get it? the side of the street, of course! as i was walking to my backpacker place one day, i noticed a big stack of monitors and stuff on the side of the street. upon closer inspection, i noticed a sign saying "it all works -- help yourself". i cried twice, and then the looting began. before long, i was lugging monitors, keyboards, mice, and towers up the hill to my backpacker place where i put them into temporary storage. after moving into my place yesterday, they are now set up! the problem is... well, it's nerd talk, but basically everything technically WORKS i just have no operating system. but i'll fix that soon enough, and then i'll be nerdin' it up on my computeris gratis. you wait and see!

finally, one of the british girls i met in kuala lumpur is now in brisbane! i'm gonna do my best to meet up with her and hopefully our groups can all go out for a night on the town again. who knows what adventure awaits?! once i manage to get the internet at my place, i will become a real human again. and a phone line. and cable. and a sombrero.

> ian

safely in brisbane!

hey y'all!

i've safely managed to land myself in brisbane, with almost no trouble at all. the problems arrived when it was time for me to find a house. i could only stay for so long at our backpacking place, and i was paying a fair bit for it, and i was also tired of carrying around my backpack... you get the idea. however, today i found a place! it's in the woolonbagga subburb of brisbane, and it's about a 25 minute walk from school. everything around here has those funny australian names too. it all sounds like "kookaburra", it's great!

i've already met a fair number of international students: claus and erik from norway and a bunch of american girls. we're going over to their place for dinner: we bring the drinks and they bring the stir fry -- decent! i'll try to grab some pictures once i get my stuff moved into the new place, but at this point things are still pretty hectic. i ended up attending an orientation at 9:30am after arriving in brisbane at 6:30am. i was tired, but i couldn't sleep. then i took an afternoon nap (smooth move, ian) so i couldn't sleep at night. add to that the fact that i was FREEZING in my room (it's only about 15-20 degrees here, but nobody has heaters because i guess... well really i have no idea why they don't have heaters) and you realize that i had a crappy night. things are looking up though, and it seems like brisbane may turn out to be a decent place! there's a great bridge i'll get to walk across to get to school, so that's already pretty cool.

in another 5 days, al will be arriving. i'm going to sign up for some of the orientation activities, so i should keep pretty busy doing all of that noise. once again, pictures will come in good time.

i love you.

> ian

oh singapore, how i'll miss you

hey there!

this one is gonna be super-quick.

in fact, there is no purpose for this email other than to tell you that i'm writing it from the changi airport in singapore -- they have free internet?! what ELSE am i supposed to do while i wait for my flight?

the bad news is that my seat isn't a window seat. or an aisle seat. i'm stuck in between what i can only envision as two fat, smelly, old men. hopefully they won't mind me drooling on them when i fall asleep.

i think i'm gonna grab some food here and then i'll be headed down under! my first challenge will be to find some decent housing for myself and the boys, but once that's done we should be good as gold for a good few months.

from asia with love,

> ian

The ferry ride back to the mainland!

Night lights on The Treehouse deck.

White things on Ko Chang.

The main deck at The Treehouse. It's actually really big -- you can only see about a sixth of it here. Yes, that's an exact fraction. One-sixth. No more, no less. I apologize for the slanted horizon, but I have no photo editing software here so you're just gonna have to deal with it.

The coolest bathrooms ever at "The Treehouse". It was sooo Gilligan's Island there. Nothing like taking a pee in the Secret Garden!

Another view of my front porch, and the beach. There was an actual sand beach about five minutes away. I have a picture of it somewhere -- I'll show it to you some other time.

My hammock, on my front porch. Two Canadian dollars buys you a lot on Ko Chang!

When I first arrived at my cabin, it was a huge ant party. I realized that somebody had previously tied a piece of a tree to my cabin for no apparent reason. After removing the hanging branch and waiting about 12 hours, the ants were nowhere to be found! Mission accomplished.

Pre-sunset on Ko Chang. It was too bad I didn't have my camera out for the REAL action! The sunsets only got better, but when I finally hauled my camera out on the last night things weren't quite as spectacular.

A sign on the pier where we left Trat and headed to Ko Chang. No idea what it says...

Big flower. Pretty flower.

Did I give myself a combover? Yes. Was there much else to do on a 24-hour sequence of bus and ferry rides? No.

the return of the prodigal son

hola,

i'm officially back in bangkok (for one night -- yes!). it's very strange coming back to khao san road again. everything is very... flashy here i guess. i DID have a great time on ko chang though. i'm gonna try to put up the pictures later tonight, but the stupid computers here don't seem to like my camera that much. i didn't take very many, but i'll try to get a few up anyways.

the happenings in ko chang aren't very newsworthy. i got to ride on the back of our two-seater cab through some windy mountain roads! the roads are actually in pretty good shape, because they're all brand new, but it was pretty cool hanging onto the back of a truck and standing on a small metal platform while we were going 70 along the coast. i must have looked like a dog with its face out the window to all the locals!

tenna and i ended up meeting a bunch of people from canada, holland, and scotland and hung out with them for our last two nights there. it was a great time!

other than that ko chang was mainly about winding down. i read a whole bunch of my book (atlas shrugged), and sat in a hammock a lot. ate some crispy fish last night, which was basically a giant fish on a plate! i don't think i really ate it properly, but i wasn't overly hungry afterwards so i must have done something right.

today is now the third of july, and i leave from bangkok to singapore tomorrow, and then from singapore to brisbane the day after! i arrive in brisbane on the sixth of july, and orientation starts the next day. should be fun!

i really can't wait to get settled down and put my clothes in a DRESSER for once. i'm pretty tired of opening my backpack and just basically giving up because it's so deep. there's just neither the time nor the inclination for me to actually open the thing up and dig for some new clothes. oh well, i won't be dirty too much longer.

latah.

just a quickie...

hey there!

i made it safely to ko chang, but i'll have to make it quick as internet is hard to find here, and is twelve times more expensive than in bangkok -- yikes!

i really can't describe how beautiful the island is! ko chang is actually a national park comprising fifty-seven islands on the southeast of thailand. the greatest thing is that the whole beach i'm on faces west, so you can only guess as to the quality of the sunset.

i'm staying at a place called "the treehouse" -- it's full of hippies, dreadlocks, and jack johnson music, but it's gorgeous. it's fairly secluded, on a place called lonely beach. i'm staying in a small, single bamboo hut on the beach. when i say on the beach, i mean i could jump from my deck onto the beach. i get a hammock and everything, for the exorbitant price of two canadian dollars per night. each meal i eat here is more expensive than my accomodation! the treehouse also has a big huge deck at which most of the community convenes in the evenings to dance and be generally merry. i'll be heading back to the mainland by ferry tomorrow, and after that it's basically just a sequence of connecting flights and sleeps until i'm in australia! i'll try to get some of my pictures from ko chang up, but in general i haven't taken too many. the weather during the day has been generally overcast, but not rainy. it's nice because the crowds are so tiny in the so-called "rainy season", and there's never more than about five people swimming on this huge beach.

i celebrated canada day here, in case any of you were wondering. i met another canadian guy from vancouver, and a group of us had a nice night out on the deck. nothing like the festivities you kids are enjoying in ottawa, but nice nonetheless.

hope everything is going well with all of you!

bye for now,

> ian