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Great Barrier Reef

Awesome. First off, here is a picture of the view from our hotel room at sunrise. Like I said, absolutely gorgeous.

So we left early this morning and headed to the piers where we got on the boat. Off we went to the outer reef, about 35km off the coast of Port Douglas which is, I don't know, about 40km north of Cairns. The boat ride out there was about an hour and 20 minutes and it was somewhat choppy and rough. My sister felt queasy the entire way out there and there was about 10 minutes or so towards the end when I was hanging over the edge ready to uh... expel. I was able to hold it back though and we finally got there much to the relief of both of us.

I signed up for an introduction to reef diving so I and a few other people took a brief class and then suited up. We had to get in the water and hold on to a rope that extended from the boat to the floor of the first level of the reef. We had to descend down the rope with an instructor and do some exercises to ensure we knew what we were doing and could handle an emergency. And then we got to the floor about 10m below the surface. It was gorgeous.

The first dive was very quick for me. I take deep breaths, evidently, and used up most of my air descending to the floor and doing exercises. But then the boat moved on to a second dive site and everybody went back out. My instructor asked if I wanted to dive again (as opposed to going snorkeling, which is what my sister did) and of course, I very much wanted to go again. This time she had nobody else to attend to, so it was just her and I. It was awesome. We got down to 10m fairly quickly and then the two of us swam around that upper edge of the reef and it was amazing. She also gave me a bigger air tank so I could last longer down there. The whole time I was swimming around down there, I just kept thinking, "I'm SCUBA diving at the Great Barrier Reef! Jesusfuck, I'm fucking awesome!"

This is a picture of an anemone with some fish living inside of it. From what I was told, clown fish - and only clown fish - live in anemone (and in fact, only clown fish can touch an anemone without getting stung). Clown fish are distinctive in that they have three white, vertical stripes on their bodies. These fish do not have that. So I'm not sure what they are exactly, but there they are, living in the anemone.

My instructor would pick things up from time to time and hand them to me to look at and feel. Then she picked up a seastar and put it on my head and took a picture. I just know she was laughing at me through her regulator.

I went diving a third time with her, but the third time there was also three other chinese kids who were not at all good divers, even for being beginners, and so she had to attend to them very closely. They were all touching the coral (which you're not supposed to do. It disturbs the delicate environment) and descending and ascending when they weren't supposed to. Very annoying. So I just kind of swam around looking at everything I could; reminding myself that I was diving at the reef.

Experienced divers dive at depths of anywhere between 15m and 40m (or deeper yet, I'm sure) so my going down only 10m is definitely very "beginner," but it was still great. I guess at lower depths there are larger and more colorful fish. Sometimes reef sharks. Other such things. I'll be certified before I go diving again, I'm sure.

Tropical Australia

It's been a long couple of days. Long, but very awesome. Yesterday morning we flew into the Ayers Rock resort which is in the Australian state called the Northern Territory but is actually very much in central Australia. Very much in the outback. Very much in a desert. It was great. The first thing you notice flying in is the red ground. It's also one of the most striking features of the Australian desert. Red soil. Red sand. Red ground. Everything is red (including my shoes and socks now).

Yesterday afternoon we went almost directly from the airport onto the first of two tours while in the outback. We went to take a hike into and around Kata Tjuta which is a rock formation in the middle of nowhere. There is alot to learn about Kata Tjuta, only a very small amount I still remember. The important part is that it is a very sacred Aboriginal landmark, so much so that aborigines don't (can't) tell white man (or even Aboriginal women) why it is sacred. Or what kind of ceremonies go on there. Only 20% of the rock is even open to the public. And so we went hiking into one of the gorges.

Kata Tjuta from a distance (but not far enough to see the whole thing):

The gorge we hiked into:

And an awesome picture from inside looking out:

And then this morning we went on a very long walk around another, more popular, monolith called Uluru. You can see for miles and miles and miles out here and right in the middle of all this nothingness is this huge huge rock. I think I heard that it is the biggest single rock on the planet. I also understand that only about 10% of the rock is actually above ground. The rest of it extends for like 15km underground.

So our walk this morning was around the entire base of the rock. 12km. At sunrise no less, which sounds awesome, and it was, but it was also very very cold. Not to mention early. But it was worth it. The rock shines in the sunrise and sunset.

Uluru has been there for hundreds of millions of years and has many very awesome erosions in it. Many of them are sacred Aboriginal creation stories and cannot be photographed. Others are some ridiculous caves carved out into the sides of it. This is one of them.

Some people climb to the top of Uluru and walk around. The Aborigines hate hate hate that people do it and there is alot of controversy around whether people should be allowed to or not. I'm not trying to get into the whole thing, but this picture of people climbing to the top demonstrates how big the rock actually is.

And then this afternoon we flew to Cairns. The tropics. Couldn't be more different than the desert. Its humid and green and alive. We didn't get to the hotel until after dark, but the view from the hotel room is absolutely amazing. We just look right out into the harbor with the shore line framing it perfectly. I'll have some pictures tomorrow, hopefully. We're also going diving at the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow, so as usual, I'm very excited.

Aussie Rules Football and the Outback tomorrow

Today was a pretty sweet day. We went to an Aussie Rules Football game at the Telstra Dome. The St. Kilda Saints were playing the North Melbourne Kangaroos. From what I've been told by asking locals about the game, the greater Melbourne area has something like ten teams in the league, most of them from suburbs. St. Kilda and North Melbourne are two of those suburbs. When we were approaching the stadium it was obvious that the majority of the crowd were St. Kilda supporters, wearing their black and red and singing the "When Saint's Go Marching In" song (..."oh how I want to be in St. Kilda, when the Saints go marching in"...) so we chose to be Kangaroos fans. We bought blue and white hats and scarves and were all set. We scalped some tickets and we were in. We found the right guy apparently because our tickets were very cheap and our seats were excellent.

So of course neither of us really knew anything about the game or the rules, but I had watched a game last night on TV and I think I understood the basic rules after that. The most obvious thing you'll notice when first walking into the stadium is that the field is oval. The next thing you'll notice is the four goal posts. You can see both here:

They fought the good fight, but the Roos suffered a tough loss. It was great despite that though. We were told by the people sitting behind us (who were very nice and helped explain the rules once we told them we were from the States and that this was our first game) that a tradition at these games was to eat a Four'N Twenty meat pie. It is what it is: meat and gravy inside a flaky pastry. Very British.

Here's a picture of Melbourne behind the hoards of people leaving the game.

And here's a picture of a pretty sweet looking couple of very old buildings in Melbourne.

We leave for the Australian Outback early tomorrow morning. As is the common theme on this trip, I'm very excited. Cross your fingers and hope some venomous plant doesn't kill me.

The Yarra Valley

Saturday, May 27, 8:51pm

Today we had a food and wine tour scheduled in the Yarra Valley which is just east of Melbourne. It's actually only about 40km outside of the city center but you would never know it by looking at it.

I think we both learned alot about wine but more importantly, about Australian wine. I'm not going to say that Yellowtail and Rosemont are below me now, but any wine that is labeled as coming from simply 'Southeast Australia' is less impressive to me than it formerly was.

It is the case that if 15% or more of the grapes used in a particular wine come from a particular region, then that region has to be noted on the label. So a wine can only truly claim the Yarra Valley if it is made from 86% or more of grapes from the Yarra valley. So these wines that claim 'Southeast Australia' have grapes from all over the Southeast; be it from New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia or even parts of Queensland. The grapes are of lower quality and do not represent a particular plot of land. All of this may be obvious to you what with such movies as Sideways and such, but it was all new to me. So there's all that.

In other news, I feel very much like an old man these last couple of days. I was telling my sister about this because I was very tired then and it was only 7:00. She asked me how I slept last night (as I was very exhausted then as well) and then told me that I was dead in the sheets before 8:30. It's already almost 9 now, so I beat last night, but it won't have been by much. And since I've been drinking since 10:30 this morning, I have a horrible headache now and am ready to sleep again. Oh well. I hope to attend an Aussie Rules Football game tomorrow at Telstra Dome. I'm very excited.

VoIP

Why would anybody want their house phone line to be Voice over IP? It constantly breaks up worse than any cell phone, even mine. It also frequently drops calls altogether and is not significantly cheaper than a landline. But my biggest complaint (which might exhibit a fundamental misundertanding of network technology) is that it introduces needless Internet traffic when the alternative is to NOT waste an already installed infrastructure (phone lines?) that has been working fine for decades. I know the mantra of "We are all in this together" won't get me too far but at least I'm happy. Am I missing something? I'm guessing that at some point the distinction of phone-traffic and internet-traffic gets muddled, personally using DSL for my home-internet and that goes through the phone line but it's also independent of phone calls, so basically, what the shit is going on here?

Melbourne now

Friday, May 26, 6:21pm

A long couple of days. Yesterday was a beautiful day in Sydney. Absolutely gorgeous. Temperature in the 70's (or 20's as they call it here), blue skies, a nice harbour breeze... You couldn't script a better day for walking around and enjoying a city in a foreign country. My sister and I were talking about how beautiful the weather was for this time of year. We determined that, for the southern hemisphere, it was the equivalent of about our Thanksgiving; which is to say just about a month before the winter solstice. Anyway, it was beautiful. And to enjoy this beautiful weather, we decided to go to the Taronga Zoo which is across the harbour from Sydney. To get there, we had to go to Circular Quay and catch a ferry. Circular Quay is where the very first Europeans landed in Australia in the early 19th century. Aboriginal Australians look on this event with sadness and actually mourn it, but it is what it is, and now, Circular Quay is beautiful. Here is a panoramic picture I took of the Quay yesterday. (click to enlarge)

A koala bear:

Some kangaroos not boxing each other:

And here's a pretty sweet view of Sydney across the harbour from the zoo. Look at just how absolutely beautiful not only the view is, but the day as well.

After the zoo we showered and changed into some nice clothes and had dinner outside at Circular Quay while watching the sunset (and because my cameras battery had died and was charging at the time, I did not get pictures of the quay at night, but it was amazing) and then went to the Opera House to see a play. It was called The Hanging Man and it was brilliant. It was funny and moving and thought provoking. It was great. And plus, now we can both say that we've seen a play at the Sydney Opera House, which of course was the main goal in the first place.

And finally, this morning we said adieu to Sydney and got on a plane to Melbourne. I don't have any pictures from here yet, but I will soon. Its much more evident that its deep into fall here than it was in Sydney. Not even because of the temperature really, but just the way the city looks. Granted, we've only been here for a few hours, but there is a slightly more depressing aire to the city we agreed. Hopefully tomorrow will be nicer. However, Melbourne is about as far south as you can get on mainland Australia, so I can't say as we were really expecting it to be all that nice out. In our initial walking around today we went to the much anticipated (by me) Crown Casino. Casinos in Australia, by the way, are very prevalent. We noticed this from day one in Sydney. I'd say at least one in every three bars have slot machines. And this full casino down the street from the hotel is ginormous. It's bigger than both of the casinos in Niagara Falls combined. And, get this, they had a Casino War pit. I couldn't resist, so I sat down and played for about a half hour. I started with A$100 and left the table when I had A$185. Awesome. Casino War. Gotta love it. And after that we went to the Immigration Museum which I was looking forward to seeing. You figure, Australia is all immigrants so an Immigration Museum is really the story of how Australia populated itself from the beginning. So I'm glad we got there. So that was today up to this point. More tomorrow, I'm sure.

State of Origin

Wednesday, May 24, 4:19pm

Big day today. Kerry Wood makes his second start of the season and I was actually able to catch some of it live. Now, of course, the game actually took place on Tuesday May 23 at 7pm Eastern (US) time, but that was 9am this morning my time, so I caught the beginning of the game. I'm watching the end of it on archive right now, so I can't (yet) celebrate Wood's win. But its inevitable. Anyway...

This morning we went on the acclaimed Bridge Climb where we climbed to the top of the Harbour Bridge. It was pretty awesome. I had my doubts and Ann was extremely nervous and you might even say a little scared. Her fear of heights, as she made a point of telling our climb leader, is outshadowed only by her fear of bridges. But it was actually quite awesome. Climbed to the top, had a look around, came back down. They wouldn't let you bring cameras, or anything else for that matter, with you, so you'll just have to imagine the view.

Also tonight is the State of Origin rugby match, about which I know next to nothing but am very excited for. It's kind of like an all-star rugby match between New South Wales and Queensland. The best National Rugby League (I guess there are many different rugby leagues in addition to the Australian Rules Football and just plain old futball) players from the two states play in a yearly best-of-three set of matches for bragging rights. The first of these three matches is tonight at 8. The next one isn't for almost two weeks, I believe, so this is our only chance to see it live on TV in Australia. Like I said, I'm very excited.

"The DaVinci Code" Is Just Fine

I saw the DaVinci Code yesterday. I enjoyed reading the book. I enjoyed critiquing the book. After a little while I enjoyed critiquing people who critiqued the book. For me the bottom line is this: people read it, people are going to see it, I believe it is breaking box office records as we speak, and it just might get someone interested in real history which would be a triumph.
Could I take Dan Brown in any kind of manly contest? I certainly could, but would that impress any of the girls we were competing for? No, no I don't think it would.
The only real thing I came away with was that there will probably be a lot of people crying at that World Trade Center movie, I was really surprised by how it made me feel to watch that event dramatized, didn't realize it had such an impact on me.

In other news, TicketMaster is still a bunch of bastards.

Hassles with the internet

Tuesday, May 23. 10:01pm

You don't even know how difficult the internet has become for me. But I persevere and do not complain.

So we had breakfast this morning at some place near the hotel and I was very much looking forward to a true Australian breakfast. Thick toast, bacon that looks like fried ham, coffee thicker than syrup. It was great. I actually took a picture of it because I thought it was worth noting, but it didn't really come out well. After that we went to the Botanical Gardens to see more of the natural side of Australia.

A eucalyptus tree:

Oh! And yesterday I bought a pretty sweet pair of sunglasses. I was looking for a pair of aviator glasses that were one-way. Where I could see out, but nobody could see my eyes. Check these shits out:

The Botanical Gardens lead right to a little place near Sydney Harbour called Mrs. Macquarie's Chair. Lachlan Macquarie was one of the first Governors of New South Wales and just about half of everything is named after him (the other half is named after Ralph Darling, but that's another story). There exists a Macquarie Harbour, Macquarie Island, Macquarie River, Macquarie Fields, Macquarie Pass, Macquarie Plains, Lake Macquarie, Port Macquarie, Macquarie's Point and a Macquarie's town (not to mention a bank, a leading University, the national dictionary, a shopping center, an ice rink and one of Sydney's principal streets named after Macquarie as well). Mrs. Macquarie's Chair is a lookout over Sydney Harbor with phenominal views. This picture was taken from this spot and is for my mother:

While in the area I also got other awesome shots of the opera house.

And finally, this is an elephants skeleton:

I'm in Australia.

Monday May 22, approximately 4:22pm

I can't believe I survived that flight. Five hours to LA, an hour and twenty minute layover and then fourteen more hours to Sydney. Ridicurous. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting though and Marco will be impressed to hear that I did not have to shit on the plane. Come to think of it, I'm yet to shit since I was in New York. And it being Monday afternoon now, my last shit was technically sometime Saturday morning. However, there was a twenty-four hour period there where I failed to exist in any kind of physical sense. So there's that.

Ubiquitous - yet necessary - shot of the Opera House:

My sister and I arrived at the hotel sometime around 9am local time, took showers, and then hit the streets. We had lunch at a sports bar in Darling Harbor where we learned a bit about Australian Rules Football and ate fish with a nice Toohey's Bitter beer. Then we went to a shopping district known as Queen Victorias Market.

I was anxious to get to Sydney harbor and take a close up look at the Sydney Harbor Bridge (below) and the Opera House. It really hits home that you are in fact in Sydney, Australia when you see these two icons. I still can't really get over the fact that I'm here. I love it.

We're in Sydney until Friday so there's alot to been seen and done. We'll be climbing to the top of the Harbor Bridge on Wednesday and taking in an opera on Thursday. Very exciting.

Go Cubs. Punch the White Sox.

The PBF and Maxim

As some of you know, I used to write a comic strip in college. Sometime during my junior year I was invited to a party thrown by another comic strip artist (I think I can accurately qualify him as an 'artist' as opposed to myself) and at this party I met a bunch of other comic writers from the same paper. One in particular was Nick Gurewitch and his five co-writers. They wrote an extremely clever and hilarious strip called The Perry Bible Fellowship. Now, when we first met at this party, they had had maybe three strips appear in the paper so far; it was a very new strip. Mine had been running for about a year, if I remember correctly. It was a very surreal moment - our meeting - because I'm not sure I'd ever met any people who were bigger fans of my strip than these six guys. "Gushing" isn't the right word, but its the first word that comes to mind. They knew every one of my strips by heart, found them all hysterical and told me about it for a long time that night.

So fast forward a few months...

and the PBF (as they took to calling their strip) became one of the most popular comic strips in the paper. It also became my favorite. It really was the best, most original comic strip I think I have ever read, save for maybe Calvin and Hobbes. At some point Nick dropped the rest of his crew and started writing the PBF on his own. He was clearly the brains of the operation as the strip didn't miss a beat with this consolidation. I admired Nick for his ability to consistently write an original comic strip and for making it funny for every reason I couldn't.

Since school we've kept in touch. Emails here and there. He's got a book deal for his archive of strips while continuing to write new ones. He's had some published in a few small publications, I believe. (You can get a shit ton of information and details, as well as an archive of all of his strips, on his website.)

The point of this whole story is that last week I received my new issue of Maxim magazine. I threw it in the bathroom and told it to wait there until I had to go. Well, two enchiladas (and the cheese, rice and beans with it), I was ready to take a look at it. When I saw Nicks name above one of his earlier strips, I shit. Luckily, that's what I was there to do anyway. But I was amazed, ecstatic and excited for him. How unbelieveable! Maxim magazine? That's ridiculous. So of course I sent him an email congratulating him and telling him how excited I was for him and all the usual compliments. He replied and in his reply, among other things, this kid, he says to me, he says, "Thanks for all the encouragement, man. I blow my friends minds when I tell them I've heard from you." This mutual admiration we have for each other is fun. I just wish I could hold my end up a little.

From what he tells me, his strip will be running monthly in the magazine for the foreseeable future, so check it out. Also, keep your eyes open for a Perry Bible Fellowship book soon to come from Dark Horse Comics.

movie Review of An American Haunting

Will someone please make another sweet ass western like Tombstone so Donald Sutherland won't be forced to do crap like this? In fairness to An American Haunting, it is the only scary movie to actually make me spill my popcorn. Most scary movies will give you a break between scare scenes to build up the tension for the next one, this movie went from scare scene to scare scene with hardly any break between. The terror is repetitious however, and the only horror symbol we are given - a little girl with blackened skin, is never really explained except in a single vague clue tossed in at nearly the end of the film. You can only see so many exploding fires, smashing windows and girls being dragged about their room by an unseen force before it loses its mystery. I jumped about once a minute and yes, actually spilled my popcorn I was so scared but its a blunt fear that left me feeling empty. Hate to say it but Silent Hill is the better film. When the hell is A Scanner Darkly coming out?

Movie Review of Silent Hill

Say what you will about this film, every expectation I had was completely satisfied. Silent Hill reminded me that I like horror movies. The storywas very well played out and made what turned out to be a mundane plot seemed inspired as it was slowly being revealed to us. A lack of nudity sufficiently distinct from a gruesome evisceration scene will hold this back from lasting success in the genre. Particularly disappointing was the busty cop who managed to keep her clothes on all the way up to her gruesomely depicted death. The directors managed to salvage her role by prominently displaying her smoking corpse in the background of the entire following scene. Two of the roles I noticed in the credits were "Armless Man" and "Slashing Dark Nurse". I'm pretty siked for A Scanner Darkly.