out into the wild

reflections in the sand
im in the process of trying to upload photographs. cant remember my ftp password! grr

we are in brisbane, which is the last real large city before the “end” of our trip, in cairns, which is about 3 weeks away. isn’t that crazy?

we left on sunday afternoon, almost evening, and spent our first night at a rest stop on the side of the road. it is surprinsigly awesome, squatting. the van has a sink, a stove, a microwave (that operates only if we’re connected to a power supply), a fridge, and 2 benches + a table that fold into a bed. plus 2 shelves for storage, and storage underneath each bench. all in all, pretty damn spacious for 2 people. we still have to shuffle stuff around, but its not really all that painful.

we’ve bought around 11 or 12 books at a salvation army shop, each for around $2, $1 or $0.50. (total: $16). some of them turned out to be total garbage (same author as “i know what you did last summer” … finished it in about 4 hours, blergh), and some are totally sweet (“no, we don’t have neutrons”, about failures of science to be proper science). each evening we spend reading books and drinking wine until we fall asleep.

sleep is incredibly comfortable, especially given how i haven’t slept on a properly wide bed in like … AGES. i packed my pillows with us (will just throw them out in cairns before our flights), so we’re super comfy.

tonight we’re staying in a campervan park site, which is essentially is a huge parking lot, with plug points where we can get power (that way we’ve got electricity for laptops, and microwave power), and water points for refilling our water tank. there is no sewage system as its only a sink that we have, meaning that whenever we use the sink there’s a tiny puddle that forms underneath the van. everyone seems to be pretty used to that thought!

our initial plan today was to go to brisbane downtown, but i felt incredibly tired and weary after sleeping poorly last night (shows me to not think of water supply in advance… i got thirsty and all we had was coke, so i slept terribly due to all the sugar and such in my system). good go too, it started raining 10 minutes after we parked.

the campvervan site has internet, unfortunately as it turns out only one computer can log in, and once you’re logged in another computer can’t log in, even if you are logged out. since tim logged in first, he has internet, and i’m stuck with copying pictures over usb key.

regardless of that inconvinience, life is awesometastic. australia turns out to be an incredibly pretty place, and people are ridiculously nice to us. i’m not all upons it as i’ve heard some first hand accounts of racism in this country.

some memorable highlights so far include:
-> FINALLY LEARNING TO LIKE MUSSELS. mom, dad, i hope you’re happy. it only took 10 years after i first tried them :D
-> seeing some magnificent skies over the ocean
-> catching some whales at a few different points (no pictures, they were too far away anyway, still… so cool!)
-> not getting a tan :( yet. i hope.
-> HOLDING A KOALA (see pictures!). they are as soft and fuzzy and warm and adorable as they look. seriously. i officially want to be a koala when i’m reborn. they are loved by all; all they do is sleep and eat. too awesome.
-> feeding kangoroos!
-> seeing surfers’ paradise – what an adorable town! touristy, yeah, but ohmygosh its all so cute
-> buying some awesometastic strawberries at a road market
-> one of the most awesome parts so far was the awesomeness of tim who has cooked breakfast (eggs, bacon and toast and coffee!) each morning. i wash the dishes afterwards, but there were occurances where his cooking was … leaving me speechless. example: we wake up at 10am in some campersite lot somewhere between here and sydney. i’m sleepy, hungover, tired, and more like a stone than a person. we pack up quickly, get out by 10am (check out time), and i fall asleep at the back. tim drives us to a beach (!), cooks breakfast and makes coffee, and then wakes me up to the view of the ocean, blue skies and smell of coffee. i believe i may have found the last perfect man on earth.

quoting from overheard

light in the valley

Old Chinese lady: Ex-see-cus-see me.
Old Chinese lady: Ex-see-cus-see me!
Gangsta: Man, what are you excusing me about? Fck you!
Old Chinese lady: Fck me? Ok, take-a off the pant.

Stairway in silence.

Old Chinese lady: Ex-see-cus-see me!
Gangsta: Sure thing, ma’am. I’m sorry.
Chinese kid: And that’s why we respect our elders.

–Canal St station

from overheard

1 essay down (philosophy, was okay i think), 1 exam done (math, i seriously hope i was okay). ended up staying up for about 24 hours. that’s what you get for not having drink coke in like a year and then having half a liter in one night.

float on

hump

vertigo

beware gap when boarding

tilted rocks

my new favourite song of the moment is modest mouse – float on. totally.

ai assignment has been submitted; 5 days to write an essay and prepare for an exam. i’m having a quiet evening in the super clean living room – kevin and smita cleaned it up while i was doing the assignment today. lesley ann, mike, and La’s friend cheryl left on a trip through the outback, and the apartment feels considerably more empty.

last night was a big out night – the last one with all the people that i have met here. james, a guy from wales has left australia, and he was one of the major people who we hung out with here. we ended up staying out until about 6am… and i finished the ai assignment in 7 hours today :)

it feels excellent to be done with classes. even though i still have 2 essays and 2 exams left it truly does feel like the semester is over. :D

all about study

were_on_our_way in my AI class we’re learning how to design a program using a naive bayesian method that would build a most efficient tree to solve problems. we’re learning about how designing a min-max tree for a battle with an opponent can give us more or less possibility for higher scores, but with more risk. basically, we’re learning how would we go about giving a computer a chance to beat a human opponent in some game.

in my philosophy of mind class we’re learning why should humans presume they are playing a human being when they are playing a chess game on a computer, instead of trying to break it into lines. essentially, we’re learning why is it that we assign intentionality to other things, even when we know the computer is not really a human opponent.

this is all a little crazy. all the courses i took, all the information that i paid to study and learn, its all coming together, and its a bit freaky to study two sides of one problem during one semester in two different classes.

oh, also, additionally, submitting my 3rd AI assignmnent, just on time:

: -bash-3.1$ ~cs3411/bin/classrun give ass3 ass3.pro

Period: 06s1
Submission: ass3
------------------------------
Files found: ass3.pro
------------------------------

Submission datestamp:   Wed May 31 23:59:54 2006
Assignment deadline:    Wed May 31 23:59:59 2006
This submission is on time.
Submission accepted

and now, i’m off to write my philosophy test. yay!

full of fantastic fun

haunted eyes

funny faced tim

bobblehead olya

bobble head tim!

(get a flickr account and let me add you as family to see above photos)
it is week 12 here in unsw there are 3 weeks left of studying, and then 2 exams, and then tim and i are off to drive up the australian coast.

hesi is arriving tomorrow! and so i will finally drag her and tim to see various sights around sydney and in sydney.

last night smita, lesley ann, tim, roshan and moi went out to sushi to some local place. it was the first japanese experience for lesley ann and smita – i was promising lesley ann to take her to sushi for a while and this was it. they both seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, liking the small rolls and nigiri sushi the most. (they did have problems figuring out how to eat the larger rolls – i’m still unconvinced, are you supposed to eat it in parts or just stuff it in?)

i realized i haven’t been writing much about my so called “australian experience”. to be honest, looking back at the past 3 months since tim has left it doesn’t feel like there was much of an experience, at least towards the beginning. the last month and a half were better in terms of fun as i have gotten closer with my flatmates, and thus ended up going out and doing interesting things far more.

the brighter experiences up until this moment was the day of the “races”, which i still failed to blog about. let me make a short attempt at it here.

the races

racing seems to be a huge australian phenonenon. apparently, there is this melbourne cup when the entire country shuts down to watch that race. of course, there is a huge race track just north of the university. and on one particular weekend in april, there was a large race occuring there, or rather a number of important races, to which barker apartment number 9 (that is the apartment in which i live) decided to head out to see. it was actually me, lesley ann, kevin (all of us from 9) and a bunch of other people who they have met from their earlier residence here in sydney.

in case you are not aware of the general things that happen at races, here is the approximate list of interesting and notable moments:

  • everyone dresses up. the most traditional form of uniqueness to the races is the hat which should be elaborate and odd and fantastic. while being the poor students we couldn’t figure anything out, many girls have arrived in fantastic contraptions.
  • drinking before noon is mandatory. champagne is $3/glass (or something like that), and betting on your horse while holding a pretty sparkling glass is oh-so-classy!
  • and of course, the betting! we bet; we lost. alas. our horse knowledge is not successful. however, mike and james (LA’s friends) who have researched the chances the night before, have won something atune to $100.

    • after returning home, we have ate, relaxed, and went out dancing! and as the tale goes, we danced the night away, and it was good.

    st patrick’s day
    while it was not any different from many parties i’ve been to, it was awesome because:

  • i live with 2 irish people and st patrick is the national saint
  • everything was green. we bought green food coloring and it went everywhere. people wore green head to toe. milk was green. water in the toilet tank was green. beer was green. water was green. anything that could be coloured green, was. windows were green. the room was decorated with green lighting.
  • and of course, people drank :D

    • kevin’s party
    one of the most notable things about kevin’s birthday party was that it was 4 days before tim’s arrival here. (and i think that sentence summarizes how i felt the entire 3 months he wasn’t here). of course the dinner, the drinking and the dancing was also notable – and a load of fun!

    there were many other moments. i tried curry (made by smita) – she made some specially for me without the spicy part. and she used all authentic indian ingridients. tonight, she’s making curry again – and this time tim has a chance to try it too!

    each monday night lesley ann and i (and lately smita too) watch desperate housewives while eating a shared dinner, and having dessert afterwards.

    before i got really sick at the end of the vacation week (end of april), i went to the gym, loads, together with LA again. unfortunately it stopped because there were 2 bad weeks which i spent mostly entirely in bed. after a few doctor trips, everything is now confirmed as being fine, which makes me very, very, happy.

    baking – bread, cookies, carrot cake, my mom’s apple pie.

    i got everyone here hooked on “oladushki” – thin slices of apple dipped in batter made from my grandma’s recipe.

    i guess food was a major part of this experience. i really love food and cooking now, and bubble over with excitement of trying new recipes. in the last 2 days i learned how to make a kick ass goatcheese salad (add small cubes of peeled apple), and fettucine carbonara.

    and of course, today tim has been here for more than a week. while sharing a tiny room as opposed to a whole apartment is interesting, thankfully he doesn’t have much clothes (although now the whole closet is taken up, and not just half ;) ), and we’re compatible people.

    i’m very happy. life is falling back in place again; the next 3 months look to be full of fantastic fun again (how’s that for alliteration). almost a month of study and party and fun in sydney; then almost a month of travelling around australia and 10 days in japan, and then a month back in toronto, together with my friends and family who i miss oh so much.

    tim has arrived!

    i guess i’m a sad person with not much happening. or, i guess i’d be writing about nothing happening if nothing had happened, but yesterday the most important thing of all finally happened.

    tim came here!

    we are having a grand time. went to bondi junction, which is a very cool area and stumbled around until we got tired and then went home. had nice dinner, i think i’m getting another cold or flu, watched a bunch of episodes of house and here i am blogging.

    last saturday was kevin’s birthday, and we had a fantastic party, started off with a dinner here, and moving on to dancing at a bar. i made russian meat pies (pirozhki, vegeterian version too), (oh i messed them up so badly. wrote down recipe verbatim from my mom’s email on a post it but i totally forgot to add the part where i need to add yeast because its not mentioned in the original email. so when i mixed stuff i FORGOT TO ADD YEAST WHICH mean that an hour later i realized the batch was ruined. thankfully i had time so i made ANOTHER batch and added yeast, BUT of course i realized i added too little (abt half of needed) too late again. they actually came out fine anyway, but i spent a majority of the evening kicking myself) which were loved and annihilated, and apple pie (also finished), and helped figure out a ceasar salad. LA made a veggie and chicken lasagna, and a swiss roll.

    i got my 2nd assignment in AI back, 88%. first assignment, 92%. i may get a good mark in a computer course for the first time in my life. … yeah … right ….

    i almost bought a moleskin today. tim gave one as a present to LA when she spent a day roaming the hospitals with me. its *DELICIOUS*. has 5 sections for travellers: facilities, food, places, people, sleep – for keeping notes on great places. i wish i had one in europe!

    sydney is looking like a decent place afterall.