More than halfway

This Wednesday marked the halfway mark of the trip! Yay! Downhill from here on!
We celebrated by me getting some massive stomach upset, kinda traditional for visitors here I think.
Been less than comfortable for the last few days, but it's no biggie 'cos it doesn't hamper my TV watching, book reading, computer playing... and yes, maths text booking.

It's quite a challenge to do some of the questions. The straight calculation stuff isn't so bad (good practice with no calculator) but the worded and more advanced problems are sometimes hard to work out what the heck it is they're actually asking. Still, we might look for a uni text somewhere, although it's been ages since I did straight maths, I kinda do a quarter of the book a day, so that even though I've only spent a little time on it, I've just about finished.

After the triumphant rain last post it hasn't really rained since. There's been a little sprinkling a couple of nights, but it's been back to dry and hot, which is not how it's meant to be so people are grumbly again.

Not half as grumpy as these guys:

Came out from dinner and saw the pavement moving. Was lots of little frogs. Or toads. My education in this area has been sorely lacking, apart from a book I remember when I was a kid called "Frog and Toad are Friends". In which case all you need to do to tell them apart is talk to them and work out if they're grumpy (toads) or cheerful (frogs). Unfortunately they hopped away when we got near and wouldn't submit to psychological profiling.

Speaking of dinner, here's the club resto:

You can see how crowded it is. Waking up at 4 in the morning means that TJ gets back from work pretty tired, so we're usually having dinner by 5:30 or so. They have a buffet style thing that starts at 7, but since it's costing us all of $4 to have a full meal whenever we want of whatever we want, we just have an early dinner. There are two things of great importance in the picture. One of them is obviously Tari, the other is why I also have VERY long lunches there. Yes, the air conditioner.

But what about breakfast? I hear you ask. Outdoors while it's nice and cool. I'm typing this just after breakfast today, it's a lovely 29 degrees, so nice to be so cool outside! I'm sitting in the lobby, I've found it's the only really stable connection. And yes, stable doesn't mean the same over here, but it's far less painful than any other method I've found so far!

Selamat Pagi (good morning) is just one of the many Selamat's you have to use, there's about five in total, for different parts of the day. Good morning, good day, good afternoon, good evening, good night. See, back home I have a g'day that kinda does all of that for me. Apparenly it's good for my learning and more polite to learn the whole rainbow.

Oh, and Clayton, about the whole guru thing, here's a picture of the epitome of scholarly learning, you'll see these guys all over schools and university campuses (campi? campusi?). So before you go denigrating "slippers"...

This one is actually one of a pair at the front of the university club. Charlotte and MacKenzie, make sure that Mummy or Daddy (or both) show you what noise an elephant makes (and take a photo of it if they do that thing where you put your arm in front of your nose to pretend it's a trunk).

Now I've had several emails wanting to know what our room looks like. I realise I kinda described it, but forgot to show you pictures. Well, for the last half a week we've been watching a crack in the ceiling expanding slowly. Other than that, it's a really nice room. here's a panorama...

Firstly, here's the kitchen/pantry/study area. Most importantly, you can see the two power points in this shot. No fridge, so we kinda buy stuff a day at a time rather than stocking up, and go down to the club for a cold drink. There are no appliances except... wait for it... an electric kettle. For all those hot drinks you want over here. Needless to say, it hasn't ever been a worthy contender for one of the power points.

Eagle eye readers may note the bright orange extension cord. One of the best purchases made on this whole trip. Except for maybe the cold root beer  I had in the mall, that was pretty good. Oh, and the lounge chairs are there because we watch West Wing on the laptop on the counter there, so we switched the chairs that were there for the chairs in the "lounge"...

Here we have the lounge. Um. Yeah. That's about as exciting as it is. Oh, there's a carpet/rug on the floor here. Moving on...

The bedroom, massive king sized bed. Obviously I've been "working" hard on something there, probably Evil Genius. The DS is there too, Scribblenauts, Giana Sisters and Mario Karts are the three most on rotation at the moment. I alternate between the bedroom and study depending on the light coming in through the windows.

So there you go, really huge room compared to most other hotel type accomodation I've been in. If you want to feel more a part of it, those three pics were taken from one spot so you could digitally stitch them together if you wanted to. Oh, wait, you all have lives! Sorry, I'll do it when we get back and I find my photoshop disc.

As always I have other photos, but unless you're keen to see a crack in the ceiling at different stages of development or the air conditioner I'll leave it be at the moment.

Well there are only really two other pieces of news before I sign off. My stomach has meant that I haven't been able to wander too far from the room so there's nothing else to tell you about I'm afraid.

News story 1: Tari got confirmation that she's made the shortlist for the Harkness post-doc fellowship! That puts her in the top 8 candidates of the country! They only pick 1 or 2 a year though, so it's a super amazing honour, confirming her general and specific levels of awesomeness. She's too humble, so I'll take any chance I can get! We'll head up to Sydney in early December for the final interviews. She'll be there among the sort of people who get Australian of the Year for researching amazing stuff, it's that prestigious a fellowship. If she gets it they pay a really nice amount of money and we go to the US for a year. Anyway, can't get hopes up because it's still a really long shot.

News story 2: After watching more ads on TV I can confirm the rough proportions mentioned earlier with a few clarifications. I saw a car ad once. Still no ads for stores or insurance etc. I also had it pointed out to me that the cosmetics ads are just about all for skin lightening cream. My theory is that they have a massive centrifuge that they put in barrels of cosmetics. When they spin it up, the skin darkening stuff settles on one edge, the skin lightening stuff settles on the other. To maximise profit they skim off the darkening stuff to sell to US, Europe, Oz etc. and the lightening stuff to places like here. Some people suggest theat it's evil the way that the companies play on humans by using models with darker skin and tans in Oz, and people with milky skin over here. I'm sure that really they're just trying to waste not want not because of their centrifuge.

Well, only two an a bit weeks to go now, so next time I post it'll probably be less than two weeks to go!

Happy Birthday if I don't post before then Paul.
Happy final bits of holidaying Mum and Dad.
Have a GREAT trip Dave and Tori.
Hope the girls are letting you sleep more Clay and Mandy.
Juni, hope you're feeling MUCH better and that the puppies aren't making you spoil them TOO much =)
Uni and School studyers, hit those books hard! Look forward to the MASSIVE holiday you get after the exams =)
For people I've forgotten, sorry, but my battery is just about dead and I need to visit our room again.

Everybody, enjoy the last bit of October and be nice to any trick or treaters!


P.S. Juni, if you read this before Halloween, feel free to buy some lollies for any kiddies that come by, we'll reimburse you when we get back. (And buy ones that you like so if there aren't many kiddies you get a bonus lolly bonanza!)