Bang On

Melbourne, Australia

It’s a hot morning in Melbourne, which is nothing unusual, actually.  Brisbane tends to be even hotter, but forty degree days haven’t been uncommon lately, and that’s 104 where I come from.

I’m staying with my old friend Liz Frencham and her very cool beau Steve.  Liz and I played a small festival near here on Sunday and will be meeting up again at Canberra for the National Folk Festival in a few days. I’ve played the National (or the Nash, as it’s often referred to here) once before, about six years ago, and I’m really looking forward to being back there. 

Vocabulary tips for the day:  ‘firing up the barbie’ has nothing to do with dismissing a blonde from her employment, but rather means grilling out on the barbecue. That’s what we did last night, with Vincent, another muzo friend of Liz and Steve’s, then we pulled a mattress and TV out into the yard, as it was just too hot inside, and watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind under the stars. I liked it, by the way. I can’t believe I managed not to see it until now, but it was worth a rental.

“Bang on” means perfect, not instructions on how to play a Billy Jonas song. “Hoon” can be a noun or a verb, and generally refers to young guys who drive loud cars too fast (though I guess old women could hoon if they want to).  So hoons hoon around. Vincent actually said he hooned down here on his motorcycle yesterday and got here faster than usual. I thought this might have descended etymologically from Huns, i.e. marauding ruffians razing villages, but I think it’s more onomatopoeic than that, and actually just refers to the sound the cars make.

 

The delivery truck dropped off Liz’s new CD of duets yesterday (think she looks happy?), so last night was a bit of a celebration. I’m here for two more days this week before we’ll all head up to the Nash, and we’re hoping to record a duet for the next volume sometime in here. I’ll let you know when we get it together and try to make it available on my web site.

In the meantime, stay cool, as it were.  It’s hard to believe I was in North Dakota two weeks ago…

 

A few more Brisbane pix

Here are just a few more pictures of Brisbane and the University of Queensland:  

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Brisbane wrap up

 

The last day in Brisbane was as good as the first two, taken up mostly by a tour of the city and environs with Judy Magub, who works with the Peace Fellows from the Rotary side, and an evening party where some of the class five Fellows were welcoming the new class six Fellows and answering their questions.

It was great to sit in on that and get a clearer sense of how things will work there in terms of the academics.

Overall impressions:

– The Peace Fellows are an impressive bunch of people, and I’m deeply honored and humbled to be a part of that group.

– This program is going to be seriously challenging for me academically, and that’s good news. It will be a healthy stretch, I think.

– The local Rotary and university folks are incredibly supportive.

– Brisbane is a city. It’s not going to be like living in Black Mountain, or even Asheville. More like Charlotte.

– There is a delightful cultural diversity here, not only around the university but in the city itself. Both Deanna and I love that, and miss it a bit in Black Mountain, though we love living there.

– It’s seriously hot here. To be clear, that’s great news to me, and even better news to Deanna.

– I talk funny. I’ve got lots of vocabulary to learn for daily communication, and I seem to have a strange accent, too.

– This is going to be an absolute blast!

 

Day 2 in Brisbane

Had a great day on campus yesterday with Cassio, a ‘Class 5’ Fellow from Brazil. We rambled all over the campus and had a ball. I met a couple of professors and several Fellows, then went to a class last night, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I took two pages of fairly dense notes even though I’m not in the class.  ;-)Here 20 pictures from the day and the evening before.  

Other Side of the World

So you remember how when Bugs Bunny dug a deep hole he always came out in China? If he was digging straight down, he’d have to come out in the southern hemisphere, no? Ever think about that?

  Me neither. I was just trying to eat up my Cap’n Crunch before it got soggy.  

But here’s the thing: If you figure up the exact opposite side of the world from Black Mountain, NC, where I call home, it happens to come out in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Perth, Australia (the other side of the country from Brisbane).   

Right here: 

  

So if you’re in North America and you want to point at me, it’s not really a question of which direction to point on the horizon. Just point more or less straight down.  

First Day in Brisbane

I suppose this counts as “hitting the ground running.” 

 

After arriving at 7AM, making my way to the hotel and getting settled in, I checked email and found an invitation from Judy Magub, who is the Rotary liaison for Peace Fellows at U.Q. She said there was a Rotary meeting Wednesday night where three of the current fellows were going to be speaking, and that the director of the Peace Fellow program, Espen Malmberg, was in town from Chicago, and that they would be pleased if I would join them. 

 

So I went to dinner with those folks and got to meet three of the current Fellows. I was really taken with all three of them, and sad that they will have all graduated by the time I start. These are pretty amazing people:

 

Cecilia Ndzewe is moving back to Zambia to become the Operations Director for an NGO there. Vikas comes from a family of Ghandians in India and has spent the last ten years working with disaster relief, including work on the tsunami. Cassio Furtado was the youngest person from Brazil to attend law school when he went at sixteen. He now holds three undergraduate degrees as well as the law degree and the Masters he’s finishing now. I could spend the whole time here talking about each of them, actually. Fascinating folks.

 

Cassio offered to meet up with me tomorrow and show me around campus, so I’ll get my first glimpse with a good tour guide at any rate.

 

Note to self: Look BOTH ways before crossing the street. This is a left-handed driving country, descending from the British Empire as it does, so all of my instincts are wrong. I’ve been very careful, but it’s amazingly easy to just walk out into the street with a car coming because I’m looking for cars in the wrong direction.  

 

From somewhere over the Pacific…

Qantas Flight 741, LAX – BNE

12:23 PM (Black Mountain, NC), 2:20AM (Brisbane, Australia)

 

Mmmm… good travel luck: This flight to Australia is a long one, especially on top of flights from the east coast, but somehow I ended up with  a bank of three seats to myself. I offered to switch with  the pregnant woman across the aisle, but she said she was fine with the two seats she has, and pointed out that she’s short.

 

I’ve been traveling for almost twenty-three hours now (Charlotte to St. Louis to Los Angeles to Oz), and I only have four and a half left until touchdown, so I’m on the home stretch.  It really hasn’t been too bad, thanks to the fortuitous seating.

 

I fell into conversation with an Australian woman at the gate in LAX who reminded me of a peculiar idiosyncracy of Australian speech – they have a tendency to shorten words and add an ‘o’ to the end. So ‘garbage men’ become ‘garbos,’ musicians are ‘muzos,’ etc.  Added to the charming accent, it’s irresistible.

 

I just asked a stunningly beautiful flight attendant if I could have some water. Hearing myself ask for “wattur,” and her elegantly clarify “You’d like some wautteh?” made me feel rather pedestrian, but also made me look forward to listening to those lovely accents for a while.

 

Brisbane has been in drought for over ten years, and I’ve been thinking that I might need to shave my head when I move down in January just to be responsible with water (and to mark all of the other drastic changes, I guess). It turns out that it’s been raining non-stop all summer, though (our winter), and the water tables are back up, the farmers have plenty of water and all’s well, according to the woman in the airport. Maybe I should take that as divine intervention to keep Deanna from having to look at my bumpy head (what, are you suggesting that it isn’t all about me?).

 

The Australian woman said all the rain has everyone in Brisbane a bit ‘aggro.’ The forecast looks sunny while I’m there, though, so I’m going to go buy some sandals and enjoy a spot of late summer in my late winter. That is, after I sleep for 24 hours or so.

 

I took these shots of the runway with a three-second exposure from the plane window in LA…