Aussie Adventure

IQP = DONE!!! New Zealand Bound!

2009-05-06T01:15:00.000-07:00

IQP IS DONE!!!!

So we made all of our final presentations this past Tuesday. A lot of people said they really liked ours and we felt that it went really well. After the presentations, we headed back to the hotel and packed ... all night ... We got up this morning and flew out to Christchurch, New Zealand at 9:45.

I'll post more later, I'm trying to get my room organized a little right now.

-Tim

The Final Days at FPA and Wrapping Up the Trip

2009-05-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

So my part of the presentation is pretty much set and I'm currently waiting on John and Potts to finish editing our paper so I'll make another blog entry.

Over the past week, we have managed to FINALLY finish up our paper ... for the most part ... and the database is completely done. We had to do a practice presentation to the professors on Thursday and they pretty much tore us a new one. They did say my presenting voice was good though so I was happy about that. We spent the weekend completely rewriting some parts of our paper and we had to meet with our liasion Rob Llewellyn at his house about the surveys we got back. It's almost done now though and I am SO DAMN HAPPY!

Other then that, it's been an interesting week. Thursday, a bunch of us went out to some random Chinese food restaurant. Friday, I got a phone call from Rachel saying that her, Sally and Chris won four tickets to see Wicked at the theater in the middle of the city and they asked me to go, so I went. It was the first Broadway-type musical I'd ever seen and it was really good. Frieay was also Chad's birthday and everyone had a big party for him but we weren't there for it. We got back from the musical around midnight.

Saturday we had to go to Rob's house to talk about our project more, so it wasn't very exciting. After that, I spent almost six hours rewriting my section of the paper. At night, Potts, Rachel, Renda and I went to some Italian restaurant for dinner.

On Sunday, Rachel and I went to the market in the morning (John, Potts and Sally were supposed to go with us but they didn't want to wake up). I bought some more souveniers but I still have some more to get. The rest of the day was spent working on our paper mostly. Around 3, we went down to the tennis court outside the hotel because Arie reserved the area for us to have a "Last Dinner", where everyone brought all their old food for everyone to eat to get rid of it.

So today we're trying to finish everything up. We have another practice presentation at 5:45 tonight with the professors, then we will probably go to Grill'd and go to bed because our presentations are tomorrow. Our group is 6th out of 7 groups to present, which sucks. We are presenting at noon and I just want to get it over with.

We also have booked some stuff for New Zealand. One day, we are doing an ATV tour in some national park I think. Another day is a Lord of the Rings tour where you get to see (on ATVs again) all the places that were in the movie, since it was filmed in New Zealand. I've never seen the movies so I might have to check them out on the plane flight. We also booked a boat tour as well. Right now, it's going to be me, John, Kemal, Potts, Chad and Buttons doing all this stuff, but Jillian, Corinna adn Rachel may jump in on some of them.

-Tim

FPA: Days 24-30 and Stuff In Between ... LOTS of Stuff

2009-04-27T16:33:00.000-07:00

OK I'm going to try and make a post now before I have to get to work.

So over the past week and a half, we've been in a rush to finish our paper. I managed to write my part and so did Potts. Kemal finished our appendices and John put the paper together. While I was writing my part, Kemal, John and Potts entered all our data into the database that I set up. Now I'm currently trying to work on making it look presentable. Then we need to get our presentation made for Thursday.

We had an informal presentation on Friday and the people who went thought our project was very interesting. We spent most of Sunday getting the paper editted and completed and our draft was due yesterday. Now we need to make a few edits to finish it up for next week.

OK, now fun and interesting stuff:

So last week was fairly boring. I think we only went out one night and it was to get gelato. Most of the time, we just hung out in the hotel. Then Friday night happened. I'm not going to write about it now because it was pretty ridiculous and I don't want people mad at me. Plus I can try and explain it better in person. All I can say is that we went to some club that Chris's work told him about and a bunch of people went and Rachel and I left early so we didn't see what happened. but we heard stories.

Anyways, Saturday was ANZAC day (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, their equivalent to our Memorial Day) and we went to the footy game at night. It was North Melbounre (my team) vs. Richmond (everyone elses team pretty much). North Melbourne lost by 40 points but it was still a lot of fun.

Sunday was kind of a lazy day. John, Potts and I went to the market in the morning and I picked up some souveniers. Then us and Kemal spent most of the rest of the day in the library working on our paper. Around 6, we left to head back and Chris, Potts, Maura, Renda and I went to get Indian food. It was really good and I don;t think I've ever been so full in my life after eating that. I thought I was going to explode.

Last night, Kemal, Chris, Rachel and I went rock climbing at some place next door to where we are staying. I had to go through a training lesson first since it was my first time and it took me a little while to get it but I felt better about it later. I managed to get to the top of two of the five walls I tried. Out of the other three, one had a broke hand grip so I couldn't go much farther up, one I just physically couldn't do (Kemal barely did it and he's half my size) and the last one I tried to do, my fingers just couldn't grip, I was so exhausted. Otherwise, it was a lot of fun.

OK, that's it for now. I have to go do work.

-Tim

I've been slacking on this blog lately ...

2009-04-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

I know I need to keep it up to date but our project is due this week and it's been pretty hectic between work and specific events that I wont go into right now. I'll make a post Monday afternoon (or Sunday night at home).

-Tim

FPA: Days 20, 21, 22 & 23 ... and a Relaxing Weekend

2009-04-17T23:05:00.000-07:00

I really haven't had too much time to update this blog in a while and with the end of the project coming near, I may have even less, but I'll do my best.

So this week at work was pretty unproductive. Kemal's part is pretty much done with the exception of editting. I managed to get Dreamweaver up and running and our templates are all set up. Ian at our office has been helping us out a lot. Ian's probably about 24 years old, just graduated from college (uni, as they call it here) at a year ago and has been helping us with all our database problems.

Friday, we went to Brooks, which is a smoke alarm manufacturer for Australia and one of the head guys there gave us a tour of the building and give us some information that we had been looking for for a little while now. We got back to the office and worked on our paper until 3:30, when we were told we would have the leave the conference room because they were going to have a "staff meeting". Apparently, "staff meeting" in Australia is the same as "eat pizza and drink at work" because that's pretty much what it was. It was a lot of fun and we got to talk to a lot of people from the office that we haven't had too much time to talk to since we got there.

Friday night, John, Potts, Kemal, Chris, Rachel, Jillian, Sally, Corinna, Maura, Lesley, Chad and I all went to Grill'd for dinner and then went to some ice bar that EVERYONE is telling us we needed to go to. It was 30 bucks and you can only stay in there for 20 minutes. It was interesting and different, but kind of small. Everything inside was made of ice. From there, we went to the Elephant and the Wheelbarrow again, which was a little boring since that band always plays the same songs.

This morning, John, Chris, Potts, Sally and I went to the market. We all bought our footy scarves. It's kind of like baseball hats for baseball, if you go to a footy game, you need to wear a scarf to support your team. John, Potts and I decided we are going to "barrack for" (root for) the North Melbourne Kangaroos. We are going to see them play against the Richmond Tigers next Saturday on ANZAC Day (Australia and New Zealand Army Corp), which is their equivalent to our Memorial Day. We are also going tomorrow to see the Richmond Tigers play the Melbourne Demons with Jillian, Sally and Chad. Besides the scarf, I bought a polo shirt with the Kangaroos logo on it, I thought it looked cool. I also bought myself a boomerang.

Nothing much to write about here I guess. All the exciting things pretty much already happened, haha.

-Tim

FPA: Days 16, 17, 18 & 19 ... and Vietnamese Food ...and TASMANIA!

2009-04-12T17:52:00.001-07:00

This is probably going to be a VERY long post. Pictures will be up sometime later this week.

So I'm going to try and wrap up the work week pretty quickly seeing as how we didn't do too much. John finished his part of the paper completely except for a few spelling changes and maybe a few word changes. Kemal is almost done with his part so we can review it. Our methodology section of our paper has been turned in and corrected and at this point is in very good shape. Our advisors have had very few comments for us, which is always a good thing. We're done sending out surveys now too so start this Tuesday, we're going to be compiling the data we've collected. In total, we've collected over 60 surveys and our sponser told us we would be lucky to get back 20.

Also, now that the surveys are back, I can start to write my part of the paper. I'm also going to be working on the database for our project. The tech guy in our office, Ian, told us that instead of using Excel for the database, we should check out a program called DreamWeaver, which is like a website-design program. He gave us a copy, so now we are going to try and learn it to use for our final product. Hopefully it works out well for us.

We only worked until Thursday because Easter is huge in Australia and they get Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday off. On Thursday, the people in the office bought hot-cross buns and made them for us. I've never had them before and they were pretty good. They were absolutely shocked when we told them that we had never eaten them.

So Tuesday night was interesting, to say the least. Our advisors are taking everyone out to dinner in three seperate groups, so about 8-9 people go at a time. I went this past week, along with our two advisors and their wives, Renda, Rachel, Sally, Corinna, Chris, Jairo, Sweet and Dan. The food was surprisingly good. We had a six-course meal all paid for by WPI and we got to talk to our advisors outside of the "project environment".

So funny story about that night. In the middle of our meal, some really corny "Happy Birthday" music started playing in the background. The table behind us had about ten people sitting at it and it was one of the guy's birthdays. The waiter walked out and put a plate in front of the guy. On the plate was a fried banana and two scoops of vanilla ice cream covered in chopped nuts and egg noodles ... all arranged in the shape of a certain male organ ... with two sparklers sticking out of the ice cream. To say the least, we were all a bit surprised since this place was supposedly a family restaurant but of course we all thought it was hilarious and tried to take pictures. Joking around, I looked at one of my advisors and said, "Hey, you should tell them it's your birthday" and the waiter came over to me and said, "AWW, YOUR BIRTHDAY TOO!?" I said "Yeah" joking around and he laughed and brought out the rest of our food.

So we're eating the rest of our dinner and we were getting ready to leave when the music comes back on and the waiter walks out with another "birthday dessert". We all were wondering who it was going to this time ... and then we quickly found out. He dropped the damn thing right in front of me and everyone started cracking up. One of my advisors was laughing so hard, he was crying. The advisor then said that if they made a list of the top 10 things that happened on this trip at some point, that moment would be up there. Supposedly people have pictures, but no one has posted any yet, which is kind of a good thing in my opinion.

OK so Thursday night, I was in bed by 8 and I had to wake up at 4 am to catch a flight to Tasmania! Ten of us (me, John, Potts, Kemal, Chris, Chad, Jillian, Sally, Corinna and Maura) spent Easter weekend there. We booked a flight with Regional Express (a small local airline that has flights throughout southeastern Australia) and flew in a small 30-seat plane from Melbourne to Wynyrd-Burnie, Tasmania. The flight was actually one of the smoothest I've ever been on, and it was a propeller-powered plane.

We got off the plane and went into the airport. This was easily the smallest airport I have ever seen. They had a whopping 1 terminal and the ten of us pretty much filled it up. Chris, John and I got the two cars from the rental car place (Europcar). We got two Mitsubishi Lancers: a silver one (which was mine) and a white one (which was John's). Over the course of the trip, the cars ended up getting named. The silver one was called Homicide (I have no idea why) and the white one was Fruit Loop because Kemal spilled and entire box of Fruit Loops in the back seat.

So I was one of the first people to drive and it was surprisingly easy. The hardest part was staying as far right as possible, since I'm used to driving on the right side of the road and staying as close to the left line as possible. After about 15 minutes, it became pretty simple. One of the funny things about Tasmania is that they dont have speed limits everywhere. When you're in a city, they usually will post a speed limit but because the area between cities is usually just outback and farms, they don't post them. Also, speeds are in kilometers per hour so city speeds were 60-80 kph and highway speeds were 100-110 kph.

So we left the airport in Wynyrd-Burnie at about 8:15 Friday morning. I had burned a bunch of CDs so we had music to listen to for the trip. There were three drivers (me, John and Chris) since we were the only ones who were 21, so we rotated drivers every couple of hours. John and I started. Jillian and Potts were pretty much in chrage of getting us where we needed to go.

The first place we stopped was Devonport, which is a small town a little ways away. It was 9:00 and we were all hungry. We found a Hungry Jacks (Burger King equivalent) and ate there for breakfast. After that, we kept driving to Launceston, which is a pretty big city-area kin of like Worcester. It looked like a dump so we passed through it. We ended up at a place called Cataract Gorge. We were actually at the top of the mountain at this point (which by the way, Tasmania has a lot of mountains) and took a chair lift from there to the bottom, where there was a huge waterfall and a river that passed through the area. We walked around for a bit and rode the chair lift back up to leave.

The rest of the afternoon involved driving up and down a lot of mountains. The east coast is blocked off by some pretty big mountain ranges so we had to drive to the top of about three or four. We got some awesome views though. We saw a few signs that said "Large Vehicles Sound Horn Before Curves" and John (being the intelligent, mature one in our group) decided that our Mitsubishi Lancer was a large vehicle and continued to honk the horn about six times. It was a pretty fun trip.

We drove for a few hours and ended up at Bay Of Fires, which had probably the whitest sand I have ever seen in my life. We walked around there for a bit, then got back in and drove to our hostel. For those who don't know, a hostelis basically a hotel for backpackers. It's a lot cheaper and in most cases, not as high-quality, but it usually has a pretty big recreation area where everyone staying there can sit down and make food or watch TV. Our first hostel was called Swansea Backpackers in Swansea, Tasmania and it was definitely the nicest of the three we stayed at.

At Swansea Backpackers, we had two 5-person rooms so Chad stayed with the girls for the night. There was also a big area inside with a pool table, couches, chairs, a kitchen, a TV, books and games. We were really surprised, since we were expecting something like Ned's Other Beds. That night, we went to a restaurant right next door for dinner. I got a pizza and it was pretty good, but expensive. We then went back to our rooms and went to sleep.

The next morning (Saturday), we left Swansea at 8 am and drove down the east coast of Tasmania, but first we stopped at the bakery next door and got some hot-cross buns and raspberry muffins. This was rare to see stuff open, as almost EVERYTHING was closed because of Easter. We started driving to Wineglass Bay, which is supposedly the third most beautiful beach in the world.

After about an hour of driving, we got there and found out some pretty upseting news: Wineglass Bay is on the other side of a huge mountain and the only way to get there is to climb over the mountain ... and there aren't any roads that go there. This meant that we were going to have to hike up the mountain and back down the other side to get there ... then hike back. The entire trip took us about four hours and the beach was really nice and the water was very clear.

After Wineglass Bay, we made our way to our next Hostel, Central City Backpackers in Hobart, which was about four hours away. Along the way, we saw a berry farm (Kate's Berry Farm) that we stopped at to get ice cream and raspberry pie. I was pretty excited for that. We continued on to Hobart and found our hostel. This place was kind of a dump (nothing like the one in Swansea, but it was OK). We then went out to walk around and there was a steak place we stopped at for dinner. It was pretty good. Then we went back to our hostel and went to sleep.

The next day (Sunday - Easter), we left the hostel at 8 and went down to a bakery to get breakfast. Then we started driving back to Wynyrd-Burnie, which was a pretty long way away. We drove for a good amount of time and stopped in Deloraine, which was a little town along the way. We all got fish and chips and after we ate them, we found out that the fish we ate was "flake". We found out later that flake was shark meat (yum ...). Then we HAD to stop at a honey farm because the girls wanted to go there. I wasn't feeling good at this point becuase I was stuck in the middle of the backseat for an hour and a half.

From there, we drove to a Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary where we got to hold a wombat, pet tasmanian devils and feed kangaroos. It was pretty fun. From there, we pretty much drove straight back to Wynyrd-Burnie and found our last hostel, which was called the Burnie Ocean View Motel. This place was the biggest dump I have ever seen. It was literally a trailer park plus two "dorm rooms", which we luckily got. The beds sucked and there was a one inch gap under the door, so we had to put towels and blankets down to cover it during the night.

Once we put our stuff in there, we asked the guy at the front desk of this dump where to go eat and he recommended a place down the street. We drove down there just to find out that this place was literally and old folks home cafeteria. It was the ten of us and about 50 geezers sitting around eating. The food was horrible and expensive. After dinner, we walked to the other side of the cafeteria and found that they had a small "casino" (aka, slot machines). We were bored so we all tried them out. I did the best out of everyone. I put in a dollar and cashed out $28. Chad won $15 and everyone else lost money. I figured I deserved to win seeing as how my meal was horrible there anyways. From there, we went back to the hostel and hung out for a while before going to sleep. We woke up at 4:30 this morning (Monday) and took our plane back to Melbourne. The trip was really fun but I'm glad to be back here. Jillian made a list of all the funny things that happened along the way which she will be giving us soon, so I'll make a new post when I get it.

-Tim

People in the Group

2009-04-06T20:48:00.001-07:00

I just realized I've been throwing lots of names on this blog and half the time, I don't really say who these people are. Therefore, I'm going to do a quick list of who everyone is here and what group they are in:

FPA:

-Me

-John Meklenburg

-Kemal Moise

-Brian Potts

AFAC:

-Jairo Argueta

-Nate Brown

-Dan Mittelman

-Brian Renda

-Rachel Salvatori

-Ashleigh Smeal

CSIRO:

-Jillian Cohen

-Chad Mondor

-Sally Trabucco

ABS:

-Maura Craig

-Corinna Ellis

-Arie Vilders

MFB:

-Greg Lucini

-Ian Monk

-Chris Szlatenyi

BC:

-Tyler Carroll

-Lesley Drohan

-Brandon Sweet

-Mike Zervas

BT:

-Rob McNamee

-Matt Parker

-Sean Philbrook (Buttons)

Now when I talk about people, people will know who I'm talking about ... maybe, lol.

-Tim

Phillip Island, Healesville Sanctuary, Bushfires and Tasty Australian Animals

2009-04-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

This weekend was ... interesting, to say the least. Friday we went back to The Elephant and the Wheelbarrow (this place about 8 blocks away that has a live band play on Friday nights). It was pretty fun except the band played the same stuff that they played two weeks ago so it wasn't as exciting as I hoped it would be. Either way, we stayed until the end of the show, which was like 2:30.

Saturday, we woke up around 9ish and went out for breakfast. We wanted to go to the Big Pancake Place but Greg had to convice us otherwise. Therefore, we ended up buy smoothies, cinnamon scrolls and muffins. We left for Phillip Island at noon. Our tour guide was named Luke and he was pretty cool. He brought us to Moonlit Sanctuary first where we saw a ton of different Australian animals. We saw a few birds, a koala, dingoes and a wombat. Then we walked further and there were a ton of wallabies hopping around loose. We got to feed them and they came right over to me and ate from my hand. They are pretty much like small kangaroos. It was probably the most awesome thing that happened so far. We then saw kangaroos and got to pet them too.

From there, our tour guide brought us to a winery. Apparently Australians love going to wineries, since we always end up at one on these tours. Anyways, Potts, John and I ended up eating a ton of grapes and Corinna and I smuggled a ton out. I was surprised we didn't get caught. We then stopped at this beach and had pizza for lunch.

From there, we drove to Phillip Island. Apprently it is illegal to take pictures of the penguins coming onto the beach, so I have no photos of them, except for a few after they made it to the beach. Although it was pretty cool, a lot of us were expecting more. It was still worth it though. A lot of people got on everyone's nerves though on the ride back.

Sunday, we got up pretty early and Potts, John, Kemal and I took the train out to Lilydale, which is one of the ends of the line. We met our receptionist Lauren there and she drove us out to Healesville Sanctuary, where we had our own private tour guides. It was a pretty cool place, although we have already seen most of the animals already. The best part was the Bird of Prey show, where they had a bunch of huge birds flying around the crowd. At the end of the show, some other guy came up and showed everyone how to throw a boomerang. I'm going to have to buy one before I leave.

She then brought us to a bakery for lunch and I got a bacon, egg and cheese "toastie", which is pretty much a toasted sandwich. Then she drove us to where all the bushfires were and it was absolutely insane. The town was almost completely burnt down. In some spots, the only things standing were chimneys. The bark was burnt off of all the trees and signs were black from ash. You could also still smell the smoke. The weird thing was there were still people walking around the town as if nothing had ever happened. There was a man pushing his daughter on a swing set and a burnt-down gas station was in the background. Apparently it exploded and destroyed everything in the area. There was a story in the paper about how a pregnant lady died from the fires not from burns or smoke, but from the heat. Seeing all this in person was just so weird. We then we to the receptionist's house and she showed us some photos her father took of the fire from their doorstep. Then she brought us back to the train and we rode back to Melbourne.

On the way back, we got a message from Jillian and Corinna. They were trying to find a place to eat tonight that they heard about but they were having a hard time. They ended up heading back to the hotel without any luck. We got back and Potts and Renda went to look instead. Apparently they found it and they said it was a pretty fancy place. John, Corinna, Jillian, Sally, Rachel and I got ready and met them there. What follows is probably one of the most interesting things I've ever done.

So this restaurant specializes in Australian food, as in food from Australian animals. That being said, we all ate a lot of stuff we never ate before. John and I split some kangaroo, wallaby and emu, as did Jillian and Corrina. Potts got crab and they gave him a whole crab on a plate, almost like you would get when you buy a lobster in Maine. Sally got crocodile. Surprisingly, the food was all really food, but really expensive. The entire bill was over $300, which would probably be about $275 American. From there we all went to a place that sold crepes and I got one with vanilla ice cream, strawberries, cream and chocolate syrup. It was really good. Then we went back to the hotel and John, Sally, Corinna, Chris and I hung out for a while and tried to figure stuff out for Tasmania. We still need to figure out more of that this coming week.

There should be a bunch more pictures under "Healesville Sanctuary", "Phillip Island" and "Bushfire" under the slideshow.

-Tim

FPA: Days 12, 13, 14 & 15 ... and Places We Eat At

2009-04-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

Once again, not too much excitement going on here.

Tuesday, we met at AFAC in the morning with our advisors and our liasion Rob. He gave us even MORE people to contact (great ...) so now our list of people is still growing. Wednesday, we stayed in the office and worked most of the day, as we will today (Friday). Thursday, we had an interview with the CEO of AFAC Naomi Brown. It went pretty well and we're going to discuss it more with Rob on Monday. Over the past week, I've been doing most of the research in the socioeconomic area of our project along with working on the database. John has been writing up the warning tones section, Kemal is working on technology and Potts has been rewriting our methodology. Nothing too exciting.

Night time has been pretty slow too. Tuesday night, Potts and I went out to eat and then we hung out in the girl's room for a while because John went out to eat (will explain later). Wednesday, we went down to the tennis court on the seventh floor and played tennis for a little while. Ten of us then met about going to Tasmania. We are still working on getting everything all straightened out for that, but currently we have our cars at least (Mitsubishi Lancers, it's the only thing they would give us).

We're still working on places to stay and what to see. Thursday night, we were REALLY bored and Chris, John and I decided to go to the top of our building. Unfortunately, the elevators will only go to our floors so we walked up the stairs from the 12th floor to the 38th floor. The view from up there was amazing. Then we walked around outside for a little while and tried to find new things that we haven't seen yet.

Back to when I talked about when John went out to eat Tuesday, our advisors are doing group "dinners" with us. They broke all 26 of us into three groups and on Tuesday, they pick one group and bring us out to dinner with them and their wives. John and Kemal went last week and they had Italian. I'm going this coming Tuesday and I guess we're going to have Vietnamese, which should be interesting. It's going to be me, Chris, Jairo (one of the people stuck in San Fran with us), Brandon (one of my roommates), Sally, Rachel, Renda, Dan and Corinna. Very interesting group. Should be fun though.

Ok, now for fun stuff. I've been thinking and I've noticed that I haven't really been keeping track of what I've been eating out here so I'm going to do a quick run-down of the places that we eat at while we've been here:

-Hungry Jacks - It's basically Burger King but with a different name. When you go there, they automatically assume you want a Coke with your meal and that you want regular size unless you specify. Also, "salads" means lettuce, tomato, pickles and onions and "relishes" are tomato sauce (ketchup) and mayo. Therefore, since I like everything plain, I need to ask for burgers, "without salads and relishes" as opposed to "plain".

-Licks - This is a little gelato place across the street from the library. Geltao is basically ice cream except less creamy and more flavorful. They also have shakes and smoothies.

-Grill'd - Probably my favorite place on this list. They give you GIANT burgers and supposedly, they are healthy. You can also get hot chips (fries) that they make right in front of you, as in they aren't frozen and thrown into a fryer. I went there last night and I think I'm going again tonight.

-Rose Garden - This is a really small Chinese restaurant down the street but they give you so much food. I usually get beef and vegetables with egg noodles. You also eat with chopsticks, so now I'm an "expert" at that too.

-*Some Pizza Place* - Ok, I forgot the name of this place, but they have the best pizza around, and that's a huge compliment coming from me. They are about 4 or 5 blocks away.

-"Giant Pancake Place" - Also another place I can't remember the name of. They are two blocks down the street and they are pretty much like a 99's-type of place. They also have the HUGEST pancakes I have ever seen. I ordered one and couldn't finish it.

-Dumpling King - This is a Chinese food restaurant in Box Hill where we work. A few people from our office brought us there last Friday and it was pretty good. I still prefer Rose Garden though.

-Box Hill Mall Food Court - I didn't feel like writing about each place we've eaten at in the food court so I'll just list them off. There's a Subway, which is self-explanitory. They also have a McDonalds. Donut King is pretty much like a Dunkin Donuts. Italiano has pasta and pizza, but it's pretty expensive. There are two Chinese food places: Oriental Hut and Asian Delicious. Finally, Snappers is seafood, so I usually get fich and chips there.

I think that's everywhere. I pretty much go out to eat every night now, since the only things I buy at the grocery store is milk and Tim Tams. Oh well, it's good food.

-Tim

Videos up finally ...

2009-03-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

... for the zoo, Grand Prix, and The Who concert.

The Who videos I took ...

2009-03-30T02:39:00.001-07:00

... apparently aren't working right now. I'm going to try and get them up tomorrow.

FPA: Days 10 & 11 ... and the Melbourne Zoo, The Grand Prix and The Who

2009-03-30T01:15:00.000-07:00

So I am absolutely exhausted from this past weekend. There should be pictures up under "Grand Prix", "Melbourne Zoo" and "The Who Concert", as well as a few more under "Melbourne" of our room.

Friday was casual Friday at work so we got to wear our regualr clothes, which is always a good thing for me, since I hate wearing khakis day after day. At this point, we have back about 42 surveys out of 110-ish.

Saturday, about 10 people went for surfing lessons about an hour away and another group went on a tour of the Great Ocean Road, which is what we did the previous weekend. I spent Saturday at the Melbourne Zoo, which is about a 20 minute train ride from where we stay. This zoo is absolutely HUGE. Unfortunately, I didn't charge my camera the night before and therefore, I only took pictures of about a third of it. I'm probably going to steal Kemal's pictures at some point and post them up. I almost got attacked by a spider monkey (well not really, it was in a cage) but it jumped at me. We got back around 3-ish and I just hung around for a few hours and watched TV. Everyone else was still out surfing and didn't get back until about 8.

Sunday was a very, very long day. Chris, John and I left the apartments around 11 am and took a tram WAY down to the end of the line near the Gran Prix track. We got to the event and it was packed. There were so many people there and we had no idea where we were going. A Grand Prix race seems very similar to a NASCAR race when it comes to the amount of people who watch it. Some major differences however are that most people only by general admission tickets, so no one really has "seats". W just stood on a hill and tried to watch the race from there (we were realy close to the track but we couldn't see anything ove he crowd of people. Also, the cars are at least twice as loud. Finally, hardly anyone speaks English. Everyone there was from either Italy, Brazil, France or some other non English-speakig country. We walked around for a while and saw a lot of really nice cars. Most of them were very expensive European cars put out for show.

One thing that was really cool was that the "garages" where the team works on the cars were literally right outside the track where people can walk by. There were tents lined up with the cars inside and mechanics working on them trying to get them all set up for the race. You could touch the cars, you were so close. Also, in some cases, the drivers were sitting right in the tent. Apparently, the big car manufacturer for the Grand Prix is Ferrari.

The race is only 58 laps long but the track is pretty big (2-3 miles maybe) and it's a road course. Apparently, they try and make the race about 100 minutes long so that's where the 58 laps came from. The winner was a new driver from England named Jenson Button. Second place was a Brazilian driver named Rubens Barrichello and third was a British driver named Lewis Hamilton. All three drove Mercedes cars. When they were announcing the winners, the entire croud rushed onto the track and ran to the start/finish line where they gave out awards. It was definitely an experience.

After the awards, the three of us ran down the track to the other side to get to the concert. The concert started around 7:30 and lasted about two and a half hours. I don't know much about The Who but they were awesome. I recognized about half the songs they played. I tried to record some clips of each song (in some cases, I recorded the whole song). After the concert, the three of us struggled to get home because all the trams were packed with people. We ended up walking a few miles to a tran station, which was completely empty, and taking a train back to Melbourne Central. I went to bed as soon as I got back and I did not want to wake up this morning. Oh, and I'm almost completely sunburnt.

Today, we had to stop at AFAC to talk to our project liasion Rob. He basically added on to what he wanted us to do and gave us a ton more contacts. We made a list of all the things we need to get done and realized that we have much more to do then we thought we did. The net two weeks are going to be crazy but we're hoping to get as much done as possible before Easter.

-Tim

FPA: Days 7, 8 & 9 ... and Wandering Around the City at Night

2009-03-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Over the past four days, not much has happened. As far as work goes, our group has gotten a good amount of work done. Monday, we needed to go and meet with our advisor at AFAC (another group's sponsor, our liasion works there). They told us how they want the final project to look so now we have a better idea. He also added Japan and Israel to our list of countries. Our survey rate is around 35% now. Our advisors originally expected 10% and told us if we got 15%, it would be a miracle.

Tuesday was a regular day really. We've been going through our info from the interview we had last week and I've started setting up our database. Wednesday, we went back to AFAC and needed to give our presentation YET AGAIN via teleconference. Apparently our sponsers feel our project is the most important but we feel it is too easy. We want to be eligible for the President's Award but it's not all that exciting. We're trying to find ways to make our project more interesting. Today, we will probably work through more stuff involving the datatbase and our background section, which is due next Tuesday.

Oh, and now our sponsor wants our project done two weeks before it's actually due. Oh boy.

Outside of work, things have been kind of boring. Monday, we were bored so me, John and Brian walked down to the Docklands (waterfront of Melbourne). There are pictures in the slideshow under the album "The Docklands". Tuesday, we decided to jump on a train and go wherever it took us. Luckily, it took us to the furthest point possible from Melbourne, called Frankston. This place was one of the sketchiest places I've ever been. We managed to find a Safeway and hung out there for a while before leaving. We didn't really want to continue walking around the street there. Last night, six of us (Me, John, Brian, Kemal, Chris and Rachel) walked back down to the Docklands again and circled the city. Tonight, I think we are going next door. There is a rock climbing wall that everyone wants to try.

-Tim

FPA: Days 4, 5 & 6; Great Ocean Road & Grampians National Park

2009-03-22T15:59:00.000-07:00

Alright, I have a lot to write about, since I haven't posted in a few days. There are new pictures posted if you click under my slideshow in the album Great Ocean Road.

Last Thursday, our group needed to dress up, as we needed to present our proposal presentation YET AGAIN. I'm getting really tired of this. I want it behind us so we can move forward in our project. We also got back about 8-10 more surveys, so our total amount received is somewhere in the 30s. We practiced our presentation a few times and did the actual one around 4:30. It was definitely our smoothest presentation to date. Our professor was there to watch us and said it was very good and specifically told me I had excellent pacing. I kind of needed to hear that, since my last few presentations were not the best.

Friday, we got to take the day off from the FPA since we had an interview set up with Dorothy Bruck, an expert of smoke alarm warning tones. We stopped at a restaurant in the morning for breakfast, went to the library to check our emails and then took a train our to Werribee, which is out west. The ride was about 45 minutes. The train dropped us off in the middle of no where ... literally. We had to walk down the street a few blocks until we got to Victoria State University. We talked to Bruck and another expert in the field Ian Thomas. They were very informative. Since we were pretty much done for the day, we decided to play mini golf before leaving for Melbourne. Here was the final rank:

1. John

2. Potts

3. Kemal

4. Me

Yup, I came in dead last. Also, it was the first time Kemal had ever played mini golf ... and I lost to him ... how embarrassing. That night, we went to a place called The Elephant and the Wheelbarrow. They had a live band playing and we stayed for a few hours. It was a lot of fun.

Now the fun part. Saturday, ten of us had to get up for 7:00 AM for our bus tour of the Great Ocean Road. Here's a list of the people, not that it really matters but whatever:

-Myself

-John

-Brian

-Kemal

-Brian Renda

-Greg Lucini

-Ashleigh Smeal

-Chad Mondor

-Sean Philbrook (aka. Buttons)

-Matt Parker

Besides the ten of us, there were 14 other people on the tour. They included a Canadian couple, two Dutch guys, three Germans, two Belgiun people, two french girls, a Japanese girl and two people from Alabama. Our tour guide was named Kurt and he was awesome.

The first hour and a half of the trip was mostly driving. Then we made it to a beach area where we stopped for "tea and biscuits" around 10 AM. There are a few pictures of the beach in the album. We continued on and saw some houses that were built right on the mountainside looking over the ocean. Kurt told us the houses range in value from 3 to 7 million dollars. We then made it to the Great Ocean Road sign, marking the beginning of the road. The Great Ocean Road is 243 kilometers long, or just over 150 miles.

From that point on, we drove for hours right along the coast of Australia looking out over the Pacific Ocean. It was absolutely amazing. We stopped after a while because the tour guide saw a koala bear in a tree outside, so we all got out and took pictures.

Next was Mait's Rest Rainforest. It is a temperate rainforst and has a mile long walk inside. The tour guide highly recommended that we do it barefoot to get the full experience so a few of us did. It was nice and cool inside the rainforest, but we didn't really get to see many animals. There were some huge trees though.

Next up for the day was the "big attraction" for the trip: The Twelve Apostles. The Twelve Apostles (despite its name) consists of seven huge rock formations on the beach that have been formed over a span of millions of years. There used to be ten rock formations but three have fallen over the years. The Twelve Apostles used to be called the "Sow and Piglets", but Australia chaged its name so it would seem "more appealing" to tourists.

Following the Twelve Apostles was London Bridge, another rock formation in the water. You used to be able to walk out over it years ago but apparently the first section of it collapsed.

Finally, we stopped at the Bay of Martyrs, which is a very violent beach. Some of the people went swimming but came out pretty quickly because of the waves.

After swimming, the tour guide drove us to a Safeway (supermarket) to pick up food. Our group decided to walk down the street a bit and we found a Subway, so we got food there. A few of the people in our group (mainly Buttons) bought alcohol and decided to drink all the way from Safeway to where we were staying, which was a two and a half hour drive. It was a very entertaining leg of the trip. We got to where we were staying around 10:30 at night.

The place we stayed at was called Ned's Other Beds and was probably the strangest place I have ever stayed at. There was a main house with a kitchen, two bathrooms and three bedrooms. Then there was a shed-type building outside with two bedrooms. We got stuck sleeping in the shed. There were three bunkbeads in each room so twelve of us ended up out there. It was definitely an interesting experience. We dropped all our stuff off in the "shed" (our room) and Kurt asked us if we wanted to go kangaroo spotting. Most of us decided to go.

There was a cricket field (kind of like a baseball field) next door to where we were staying. Kurt led us towards it and there were a few shadows on the other side of the field that we could barely see, which were Eastern Grey Kangaroos.

Since it was so dark out however, they were really hard to see. We tried to sneak up on them but Buttons, being completely drunk, decided to make a lot of noise and chase them around for a while. We decided to go to sleep and try again in the morning.

When we got up, we got ready and went back to the cricket field and there were (no word of a lie) 26 kangaroos hanging around eating grass. I managed to get really close to them and take a lot of pictures. They ranged in size from two and a half feet tall to at least six feet tall. It was really awesome to see that many kangaroos in the wild, especially when we were able to get so close to them.

After leaving Ned's dump (23 bucks to stay there), we made our way north to Grampians National Park. Our first stop was a huge waterfall area called MacKenzie Falls. A bunch of us decided to climb a huge rock in front of the waterfall so we have some really nice pictures of ourselves in front of it.

From there, we drove up this huge mountain and went to two different lookout points: Boroka Lookout and Balconies Lookout. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy out on Sunday and therefore, our pictures were not as good as we had hoped.

After we were done at the Grampians, we went to get lunch and half of the bus jumped on another bus to continue the tour while the rest of us headed back. We were very happy that the Dutch kids left because they smelled really bad. Honestly, the reeked. They even took a shower at Ned's and they still smelled horrible. Everyone on the bus had their windows open.

For some reason, the tour then went to Best's Winery, which was probab ly the most boring part of the tour. We walked around this guy's house and say giant wine barrels. That was about it. Greg and I tried to run into the grape vines and steal grapes but our tour guide told us we would get in trouble.

That was pretty much the trip. We then had a 3-4 hour drive back to Melbourne where we played Catchphrase most of the way with one of the French girls. The tour was great; a lot better than I thought it would be.

-Tim

FPA: Day 3 ... and other random things.

2009-03-17T21:01:00.000-07:00

So today we really didn't do too much. We sent out follow-up surveys to the people who haven't contacted us back and now we really don't have much to do for the rest of the day.

I figured I would make a list of random things that I've noticed are very different over here compared to the U.S.:

-In the United States, we have Burger King. In Australia, they have Hungry Jacks. The food is almost identical to McDonald's food.
-McDonald's burgers over here are much smaller then American McDonalds.
-Not surprisingly, Australians don't have "American cheese"; they have "Tasty cheese".

-If you order food at a fast food restaurant, they automatically assume you want a Coke unless you specify otherwise.
-Australia has two types of soda called Lift and Solo. Lift is a lemon-flavored soda and Solo is lime-flavored. It's like Sprite split into two different sodas and it's less sugary.

-Besides McDonalds, Australia also has Subway and KFC.
-Apparently sliced cheese is not common over here. There was a very small area of the supermarket that had sliced cheese.
-Milk comes in 3 liter jugs instead of gallon jugs.
-The best cookies over here are called TimTams.

-Melbourne HAS to be 90% Asian.

-Every electrical outlet has a switch next to it. This switch turns the power on and off in the outlet. I still have no idea why it matters.

-Melbourne has been experiencing a serious drought lately and their water supply is down to only 30% of its maximum capacity. Therefore, if you use too much water per day, the water company can limit your water usage to 25 liters (6.5 gallons) a day. It is also illegal to use a hose to water plants or run sprinklers on your lawn.

-A "bathroom" is just called a "toilet".

-The typical response to "thank you" is "no worries".

-Australians watch a really weird version of baseball called cricket. I still haven't figured it out but from what I've gotten out of it, you have two teams like in baseball. One team has a "bowler", or pitcher, who throws the ball at these two wooden spikes in the ground which has a board balancing on top. He is trying to knock the board off the spikes. At the same time, a batter on the other team is trying to block him from knocking the board off. It's really confusing.

-"Lettuce" here is called "salad".

-"Fries" are "chips" in Australia and American "chips" (Lays, Pringles, etc.) are "crisps".

-They have very few supermarkets down here. Almost all food is bought at meat, fruit and vegetable markets.

-The most popular car brand down here is Mazda.

-"Parking lots" are called "car parks" here.

-"Cheese pizza" is called "Magaritah pizza".

-From what I've seen, no one wears khaki pants down here.

-Computer paper in Australia is narrower than American computer paper.

I'm sure I'll think of more later.

-Tim

FPA: Day 2

2009-03-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

Hello,

Today was a short day for us, since we had to do our presentations to our sponsor. We went into work in suits and ties and hung around for a few hours practicing our presentation. Then we jumped on the train back to central Melbourne and met up with the AFAC and MFB groups (other groups we went to Australia with) at the AFAC building. There, we presented in front of fire protection officials from all over the country. I think they liked us. Now we have to do one more presentation on Thursday and a teleconference next week.

So right now, we've got plans to go on a tour of the Great Ocean Road this coming weekend. Here's a link about it:

Great Ocean Road

There are seven of us going, I think (Me, John, Potts, Kemal, Renda, Greg and Ashleigh) so it should be a lot of fun. Also, one of the other groups (CSIRO group) has a sponsor who is taking us all to a "footy" game, which is like a cross between football and soccer. Here's a link:

AFL

It looks like it should be a lot of fun.

I'm still pretty lost around this city. I need to try and figure out the names of all these streets so I know where the trams are going. The city streets are made up of four lanes. There are two lanes going each way: one lane is for cars and the other for trams. Also, everyone drives on the other side of the road.

A typical tram in Melbourne. They are all over the city.

Train map. We live near Melbourne Central and work in Box Hill.

Tram network. It still confuses me.

Anyways, the Internet is slow right now so I'm going to head back to my room.

-Tim

Oh, and quick note ...

2009-03-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

... a group of us has been trying to set up some trips as well. At this point, we are planning to go to Phillip Island in three weeks and New Zealand after the project is over. We also want ot go to Sydney for a while. Right now, we have booked trips for the Great Ocean Road next weekend and Tasmania over Easter break.

-Tim

FPA: Day 1

2009-03-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

Hello,

So today is kind of a slow day, since we are just starting. I just wanted to make some random posts.

1. Myself, John and Brian have been on a hunt to find cell phones for the past week. Out of desperation, we went to a store called Dick Smiths (it's kind of like a small Best Buy) and bought the last three prepaid phones. After purchasing them, we looked on the side of the box and noticed that they were "Valentine Pink". Therefore, the three of us have hot pink cell phones.

(The person to the right of me is Dan. He looks very unenthusiastic.)

Until further notice, the phones must stay pink but we are going to be looking for some black spray paint ... oh, and they have flowers on them too.

2. Vegemite is the most disgusting stuff you can eat. It's like taking break, turning it into a paste, adding a LOT of salt, then spreading it back onto bread. Absolutely horrible. Avoid at all costs.

3. The hotel we are staying at has a camera that points towards the entrance of the hotel and can be watched on the TVs in the rooms. That being said, we're having a lot of fun with that.

OK, I'll explain:

So one of the rooms (Room 1010, to be exact) constantly watches the channel with the security cameras to see who's coming into the building and who's leaving. It's kind of creepy. Two nights ago, about 16 of us were sitting in a room and someone came up with a "great idea". They made a sign that said, "Call Room 1010 for a good time".

Then they sent someone down to hold it up in front of the camera. Guess who that "someone" was.

Anyways, time to do some work now. Later.

-Tim

Australian International Airshow ... AND PICTURES ARE UP! ... and other stuff

2009-03-14T23:32:00.000-07:00

Hey,

So today we took a trip to Avalon, Victoria, Australia to the International Airshow. We took a train ride for 45 minutes before we realized that our tickets were no good for the train we were on. Luckily, they never checked our tickets. We got there and were told we were breaking the law by riding on the train without a ticket but they let us off the hook ... probably because they think we're "stupid Americans".

Anyways, the airshow was pretty cool. There were lots of planes from all over the world (US, Australia, UK, Germany, France, New Zealand, etc.) and there were stunt pilots putting on shows all day. If you click on the pictures running through the slideshow right now, you will go to a site where you can click on "My Photos" in the upper left corner and see everything. The photos scrolling in the slideshow are from St. Kilda.

Other then that, nothing else exciting has really happened. We're all still trying to get used to the money. Here are some pictures of the money they use in Australia:

The first two coins are copper 1 and 2 cent pieces and aren't really used anymore. The silver coins are 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent coins and the gold ones are 1 and 2 dollars.

Okay, library's closing, must go now.

-Tim

St. Kilda

2009-03-13T19:07:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, a bunch of us took the train to St. Kilda, which is a huge beach just south of Melbourne. The weather was nice but the water was disgusting. The shore was lined with dead jellyfish and seaweed. We walked over to a pier where you could see over the water towards Melbourne. The a group of us walked down the street and found a restaurant, where we ordered dinner. From there, we went back to the pier and waited around because supposedly at sunset, penguins show up. Unfortunately, we really didn't get to see them.

Today is going to be a lazy day. Myself and my roommate Chris will be going to the local outdoor market for food and a few other things. Tomorrow, we are supposed to be going to the Melbourne Airshow.

I keep forgetting my camera in my room whenever I come to the library so I'll have pictures up ASAP.

-Tim

Finally to Melbourne

2009-03-11T22:18:00.001-07:00

G'Day!

It's been a long past few days but everyone finally made it to Australia. We spent Tuesday in San Francisco because we missed out flight Monday night. Nine of us were given hotel rooms and meal vouchers. Tuesday, we took the BART train into the city and walked around. We saw the Golden Gate Bridge, Alchatraz, Fisherman's Wharf and many other things. We ended up walking around in Chinatown and Little Italy for a while and found a hobo who told us we should eat at Joe's Crab Shack, so we all went there for lunch.

We then stopped by the Ghiradelli's Chocolate Factory and got free chocolate. By that time it was getting late and we took the cable car up the hill to get back on the BART train and headed back to the airport. The flight from San Fran to Sydney was HORRIBLE. Fourteen hours of flying and I didn't get any sleep. After the flight, we got to the airport and took a taxi (nine of us and all of our luggage fit into one taxi) to our hotel (The Milano).

A group of us were walking around a bit. Melbourne has a huge outdoor farmer's market down the street so we spent some time in that area. We are still in a hunt to find cell phones that work since the store is out so we may not have them until next Tuesday. Then last night, our advisers had a big BBQ for us and we got to meet our sponsor.

This morning was the first day my group had to go to our sponsor's office. We took the train from Melbourne to Box Hill (east of where we are), which was about 20-25 minutes away. From there, we had no idea where we were going so we spent 50 minutes walking around trying to find the building. Luckily, we found soomeon who directed us where to go.

One other note: Australia has everything the U.S. has, except it's different. They have Burger King, except it's called Hungry Jacks. They have Walmart, except it's called Big W. Dunkin Donuts is also called Donut King.

We are going to St. Kilda today, which is a beach, and hopefully over the weekend, will be going to the local Melbourne Airshow and Phillip Island. I will post pictures later on.

-Tim

Detour in San Francisco

2009-03-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

So our flight from Boston to San Francisco was delayed 18 minutes and by the time we got on the plane, the crew spent another 30 minutes de-icing the plane. When all was said and done, as we were pulling into San Francisco airport, our next flight to Sydney was leaving. Therefore we missed our flight.

Now there are nine of us "stranded" in San Francisco (we got free hotel rooms and food) for an extra day. We went to IHOP for dinner at 2 AM. It's definitely not what we were expecting to happen to us but we're making the best of it.

Other then that, the flight was alright. It was just really long, which is a bad thing since our next flight is 14 hours.

-Tim

Proposal OFFICIALLY Done

2009-03-04T18:33:00.000-08:00

The proposal is printed and bound. All that's left is to pass it in tomorrow.

Only five more days!

-Tim

Proposal is DONE!!

2009-03-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

As of approximately 10:45 pm, ur group's proposal is completely written. All that's left to do is print and bind it. We are quite happy.

-Tim

Presentation...

2009-03-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

...went pretty well. Glad it's over. Slipped up once but I saved myself. One thing out of the way for this term.

-Tim

Presentation Tomorrow

2009-03-01T16:35:00.001-08:00

Our group has a presentation all set and we're pretty ready to present tomorrow night. It's supposed to snow a lot tonight though so we'll see how things turn out. Wish me luck!

-Tim

Preparing For The Trip

2009-02-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

Hello!

So this is my first of hopefully many blog posts that I will be making in the coming months. I am very excited about going to Australia and I've been looking forward to it for well over a year now. Now it's only nine days away and the pressure of the end of this term is starting to set in.

I am going to Australia to work on a project with the Fire Protection Association of Australia (FPA or FPAA) regarding smoke detectors. I am working with three other people: John Meklenburg, Kemal Moise and Brian Potts. The four of us have spent this past term writing up our proposal for this project before we get down there. Basically, we are researching different types of smoke detectors to find out which ones work best in which situations. Then, we sent out surveys about smoke detector legislation to fire officials in all 50 US states, all the provinces in Canada, the states in Australia and 21 other countries. In the end, we need to get all these surveys back and compile the results into one big database and summarize our findings. Compared to some of the other projects, our group kind of has it easy right now but we'll see how things go when we get there.

Our group has a presentation this Monday in front of our advisors basically reporting on how we've been doing all term. Our advisors feel as though we are in pretty good shape so we're excited about that. Then we need to make a few changes in our proposal that we've been writing and submit it by Wednesday. After that, I have one final to take and then I need to pack up all my stuff to bring home. Then I have the weekend to pack and get all my stuff together to leave on March 9th.

I probably wont be posting much more on here over the next week but I will definitely keep up to date with it when I get down there. I'm going to be posting any pictures I take on Picasa as well, which you can click in the upper right corner of this page under Slideshow to see. If I take videos, I'll probably upload them to YouTube and link to them from my posts.

-Tim