Week 3- Downtown Perth and Cottesloe Beach

---

Hello once again! It's been a busy week here! Each day at work, I've been working on getting this new task finally up and running, and I think it is now all ready to go! I am being given instructions on participant recruitment and payment tomorrow, and then I am ready to start actually collecting data. Outside of my Australian lab responsibilities, Huchao (one of my friends from the lab in China) and I have been making good progress on our manuscript and I have been working on my other-age task that is part of my dissertation. In terms of some humorous work-related news, last Thursday night, Cathy and I were Skype chatting about my data and I started noticing an odd smell in my room. Then, I heard a loud "pop!" and I looked over and my laptop charger was smoking and there were sparks shooting out of it! I quickly ripped it out of the wall, but the damage was done and my Australian power converter and laptop charger were destroyed. I don't know what caused it to suddenly catch on fire when it had been working fine for the past 2 weeks. Cathy's explanation was that it was the brilliance of her ideas. My alternative hypothesis is that it was a function of my stress levels rising as I realized that I was going to have to run more experiments before I finally have a decent story for this series of studies, haha.

This past Saturday, I was invited by my friend Louise to a BBQ celebrating the "footy " grand final game. Footy is Australian football, which I quickly discovered is vastly different from American football. Now, given that I really don't understand American football either, I did not deem this discovery as a disappointment and instead viewed it as an opportunity to perhaps actually learn the rules of some form of football-related activity. From what I could ascertain, footy basically consists of a bunch of guys kicking an oversized football around and tackling each other; then, add in a bunch of lingo like "mongrel punt," "speccy," and "barry crocker" and you've got yourself a game! It was actually wildly entertaining to watch even if I didn't quite understand the rules, and I learned that in Australia, you never "root" for a team- you "barrack" for them.

After the footy game finished, I decided to head to downtown Perth to do a little exploring and walk along the waterfront. I hopped on the train and put on my ipod, knowing that there were only a few stops until I reached the downtown Perth underground station where I was to get off. I must have really got caught up in whatever playlist I had going because I suddenly looked up and realized that I didn't recognize any of the surroundings outside my window. I waited for the next station to appear and realized that I had completely passed the Perth underground station and was way south of Perth...oops! So I hopped off at the next available station and then had to wait to catch the next train back into the city, which added a lovely extra 40 minutes and double train fare to my travels for the day.

When I finally made it back to Perth, I ventured off to the downtown shopping district and then to the waterfront. Along the way, I stopped at the Perth bell tower, which contains one of the largest sets of bells in the world. The bell tower overlooks the Swan River and contains bells which were originally cast in the 14th century (although of course placed in a more modern piece of architecture). There are some great walking trails all along the waterfront, so I walked along there for awhile amidst all the gardens. The whole city of Perth is currently gearing up for CHOGM, which is an international meeting for the Commonwealth heads of government. Thus, all the gardens are in immaculate condition and the city is at its very best!

In terms of weather, Saturday was the most beautiful day I've had here since I arrived and I was pleased to discover that Sunday was equally lovely. After doing some laundry and tending to the house (Therese was away all weekend visiting family and Stefan moved to another apartment closer to his job site), I decided it was the perfect day to head over to the beach. I chose to go to Cottesloe Beach west of Perth because my friend Nadine recommended it as the best (although she might be biased, given that she lives there). It was a fairly simple train ride there (only one transfer and I was careful not to get too caught up in my music again!) and then about a 10-minute walk to get to the actual beach. On my walk over, I encountered a little girl who was all alone and had fallen off her scooter and seemed to be very upset. So, I was detoured for a bit as I got her all cleaned up and calmed down...not part of my initial plans but I was happy to help. Then, I was back on my way again and made it to the beach, where I spread out a towel and read for awhile. I then decided it was warm enough to get in the water; however, I went in up to about my ankles and was frozen! The water was SO cold! Given my tendency to be in permanent ice-cube form, I think I will need to wait until it warms up a bit more. As the day progressed, I started noticing the clouds getting darker and a storm starting to roll in from the ocean- something that made for cool pictures but not something I would want to get caught in. So I quickly packed up my things and made the trek back home, getting to the house just before the downpour.

And so ended my weekend! In terms of other news, I have been assigned a new temporary office-mate for the week until they relocate me to a more permanent office down the hall. He is a visiting post-doc from Germany and in an odd twist of fate, works with the same 3-D camera system I have been battling for the past year! Apparently, the camera does not discriminate against who it chooses to terrorize and prematurely age, because he has encountered similar issues with it- a fact that made me feel much better about all the problems I've encountered!

I hope all is well at home and you are enjoying some lovely fall weather! Crunch some leaves under your feet and drink some hot apple cider for me! 😊

Love from Australia!

---

Comments

[Sarah]

You seriously cannot get away from this camera (or other people associated with it), can you? ;)