Dank Drank?

Well the last Saturday night before classes start got a little silly, right after I ate a bowl of fried rice. The rice has nothing to do with the silliness, but I just thought I would include it. The picture for todays post is the poem that I wrote on the white-board in our kitchen. Im not going to explain it, as I dont really know what the hell its about. I think it has to do with Nick Duke's delishious drink (drank) and my need for it at that time of the night. I was umm, well... a little silly. Click the picture to enlarge, so you can get down with my poetry.

Today we went to Sunday Session at Little Creatures, which is in Freo. Damn, we are always going to freo, arent we? Thats where those pictures of glasses on a table and stuff are. Sunday Sesch here is HUGE. Its the aussie way to just get drunk 7 days a week. You go to a coastal pub, and get hammered starting around 2:30 in the afternoon. You had better be there no later than 3, because the lines (or ques as they call it here) are hugemongo! Then everyone is out of the pubs by like 6:30 in the winter, and later in the summer... as the sun sets later in the day.

Yikes- classes start tomorrow at 10am for me. I am going to brush my teef and get to bed soon. I havnt woken up before 11am in like a week.

This Week's Pictures

Freo.

Taken by Anna Tolnake'

"Free Breakfast"

A few nights back I was giving Anna Tolner a ‘piggy-back-ride’ and threw her onto my bed. Well, apparently the force of that snapped one (of my 6) supporting pieces of wood from under my bed. Too much junk in the trunk I guess….

Holy shit me’ mate from tha’ states is getting here on Saturday! That’d be Mr. Jeb Brown from VA. Hopefully this shitty weather will go somewhere else while Jeb is in town. Otherwise, looks like we’re going to need to find lots of indoor stuff to do.

Today after yet another orientation meeting, we decided to check out a “free breakfast” we had heard about. I guess it would have been pretty cool and all… if it wasn’t ALL 40 YEAR OLD INDIANS. I’m not talking about native Americans here, I’m talking about the not-so-friendly folks that are usually on the other end of tech support. The group of like 8 of us Americans stuck out like a sore thumb whilst we dined on some sort of strange Danish and fake orange juice. But there is more. Just as I did the “scoot out your chair a little bit to see if anyone else is ready to go” thing; 6 aboriginals came trotting through the door and everyone began to clap. Oh shit. I recalled from Yanchep that you don’t want to get too close to them, or you have to dance and make a fool of yourself. So we left. Sorry for the anti-climatic ending. Alright, so my story telling is a little off today. I’ll just post pictures then.

"I feel like I'm in Asia"

July 25, 2006

Who knew that Curtin University is 80% international? Damn. You really start to get the feel for that as the campus begins to come to life again. The past two weeks here, its been pretty dead- as students have been on a 3 week ‘holiday’. I would say that conservatively, the campus is 50% Asian. I guess that makes since with us being so close to…well… Asia. Humm.

Sometimes I feel like Western Australia is really technologically advanced, but sometimes I feel like its stuck about 1990. OK, here is my justification… when was the last time you saw that Bic pen that I posted a picture of? The dual color pen, with the ‘double clicky’ action? Yeah. I know. Fuckin’ 1990. Do they even sell those in the states anymore? However, professors here send you text messages instead of emails all the time. For instance, my buddy James (ninja photographer) got a text from his advisor saying “Astronomy cancelled. Meet with me asap.” Weird as hell, right? I think its neat, but just… strange. It bridges that weird gap where like you’re not sure if your teachers are real people or not? Like when you see your teachers out in public, its always so weird.

I straightened my hair yesterday. I’ll post pictures when I get them from Maggie. Heh. I look like a Japanese rock star. So I should fit right in…

I miss my 4runner. Oh, and the title comes straight from Anna's mouth.

Internet? More like, inter-not!

Thats Aussie Rules Football
Thats me doing a badass ninja kick.

Taken by James Mickley - Kalamazoo

Thanks Curtin University for your overwhelming technology know-how, and ability to keep the internet running approximately NEVER. I am writing this post in Word, and I guess it will find its way to the internet someday when my internet returns to its rightful owner (that’s me).

We checked out some Aussie rules football today in Perth. That shit was crazy! Basically the sport a combination of the following sports in order of their relevance to aussie-ball: Football, Rugby, Soccer, Basketball, [the fights from hockey], and bob sledding. Well, maybe not bob sledding. These blokes threw the ball around at a million kilometers [miles] an hour, and aimed for 4 huge posts. I cant even begin to explain how the scoring works. The only thing I really got into were the BADASS fights. There are no ejection rules in this crazy Aussie football, so the brawls were abundant. We’re talking headbutting, punching, kicking, shoving. Oh word. It was sweet. I believe that Ted got some of it on video? I don’t know, but it was excellent.

We finally have all 6 of the room mates living in flat 41 now. Aussie Aaron arrived today, drunk as hell. “Sunday sessions” are the big thing here in WA. A Sunday session is basically getting as drunk as you can starting at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, and up until 6:30 Sunday night. Only four sweet hours to get smashed. Don’t worry- people seem pretty good at it. Clearly Aaron is a large proponent of the Sunday Sessions. He brought a PS2 to go along with our rented TV that’s about $15USD a month. So now we don’t have to buy a DVD player. Nice.

*side note* forget my space heater. That thing sucks

Orientation week officially starts tomorrow (Monday), so it will be fun to be like a freshman all over again. Only like one activity per day- so that leaves lots of time to do nothing at all. Ahhh, yes- I <3>

Midget Wrestling

An email from my brother, Brandon 23, who lives in Chicago. Im flying back to the states for his wedding on September 30, and missing out on some rad Australian beach time. But its going to be way worth it. Anyways- heres the email. haha

"I just got back in from a bar. I missed my flight back to Chicago on July 10 and had to wait around for like 4 hours at the airport and I met this dude from Price Waterhouse Coopers who just graduated from college as well. He called me up to hit a bar with some of his friends from work last night. It was awesome. Why you ask? because there was MIDGET WRESTLING!!!!!! And they had a staple gun match.... I shit you not. These were the most hardcore midgets I have ever seen in my life. They, and I cannot stress enough that this was for real, took staple guns (like the kind Dad has in the garage) and stapled whatever money the crowd threw at them to each other's bodies! How do I know it was real? because they BLED everywhere. One guy got a $5 stapled to his tongue by the other guy! and then a $1 stapled to his forehead! These were some crazy midgets. There was a flying elbow drop from the top of the bar onto another midget standing on the ground. Mind you, the bar was probably close to 2 feet taller than the midget - long drop. The lead midget sang the Umpa Loompa song with dirty lyrics and at the end grabbed a (normal) girl he was next to and shoved his tongue down her throat, a surprise make-out if you will. It was seriously nuts. Go to http://www.halfpintbrawlers.com/ you won't regret it."

Mario Mario?

July 21, 2006

Update from last post: The devil-camel from the last post, Ja-bootie bucked off a kid from Simpson College. Hahaha. SUCKA! Oh, and my broskii Ted Magdzinski from Kalamazoo (somewhere in Michigan?) just informed me of some unfortunate news. He, too, was blessed to have a camel with diarrhea for the 2 hour trek. Oh god! What if there is a camel plague going around, a pandemic even!

Earlier in the week- all international students had the honor of going on a “Race Around Perth”. The name led me to believe that it was going to be some sort of wild 10k race or something, but nope, just a strange strange scavenger hunt that made for plenty of awkward Americans-Stick-Out-Like-Crazy moments.

The challenge was to find stuff, and take pictures of it- but you get bonus points for taking random pictures. So the pictures to us students were like the floating gold coins to Mario and his Brother Luigi.

Side Note: Did you ever realize that Mario’s name is actually Mario Mario? If he and Luigi are the Mario Bro’s then, that would make them have the same last name, therefore making Mario’s family name, and surname: Mario. Creative Japan. Way to go.

Anyways, I digress. So we took pictures of keg-stands around Perth. We started our mission behind the Tavern. The Tavern is Curtin’s on campus bar, for all the Aussie Alcoholics. The keg-stands continued on to the city, in the streets, in front of restaurants. Whatever. We wanted those fucking gold coins. Turns out that if you get enough “gold coins” the prize was merely movie passes for everyone in the group. GAY. Mario got a whole ‘nother life if he got 100 coins, and we just get whack movie passes? We didn’t even win, so I don’t know what I’m being bitter about really.

I flip for Yanchep.

Now that I’ve been in lovely Perth for a good bit, I can start posting my pictures. I didn’t want to just put up silly ones of oh say, Nick in a luggage cart, or Nate having sex with a kangaroo. Eh, what the heck I'll put those up too.

Students from Elon, Kalamazoo, Simpson (and Wes and Kaitlin) all were clearly blow away after our trip to Yanchep Camp, which is about an hour North of Perth. Or maybe that’s south to you guys in America? I don’t know.

Day One: BRRRR.

Nothing really says “Australia” like staying in a creepy and nearly dilapidated house exquisitely decorated with all of this year’s Christmas lights and streamers. Oh it gets better. After a fifteen minute battle to get my bent key into lucky room #8, I discovered that it, too, had perhaps been decorated by a color blind person from 1900. Sea foam green, turquoise and red really warmed the place right up. Actually, no, no it didn’t. Nothing could warm up the 2 degree Celsius mornings at Good ol’ Yanchep. You know what might have helped? A HEATER…ANYWHERE. ANYWHERE AT ALL!

Day Two: Aboriginal acid trip

We all gave surfing a shot the first morning, thanks to the mates over at surfschool.com. It went pretty well I guess, seeing as most of us have never even given it a shot before. That day turned…well, weird as hell right around 2pm. That would be when we first met our akward axe maker, Rafeki (I cant recall his real name). He demonstrated how to make a lovely bag out of kangaroo hide, or even how to turn shit + tree sap into glue! Also we got to see first hand some one play the digery do. Essentially a digery do is a big hollow tree branch about a 4 feet long that you make fart noises into, and you get this neat outer space noise. I’m telling you: Australia is like in the future, man.

I wouldn’t really say the day took off until we went over to the Aboriginal dance/music/story telling section of Yanchep. Lucky for my group we got Simba (again, no idea on real name) the awkward dancing stoner from god knows where. He made some bad jokes and wore a loin cloth. That’s all I really care to reminisce about him. Oh, and he was a local at the pub in the prestigious Yanchep Inn.

Day Three: OUCH.

OUCH. Two hours on a camel with chronic diarrhea and an attitude problem was not exactly my idea of a good time. I don’t think camel rides were really anyone’s idea of a good time come to think of it.

Luckily the MVP’s of the day, Ms. Anna Tolner and Ms. Maggie McHarris took on the challenge like champs. All of the camels were tied together like in a prison chain gang, but camels. Shelly (from Kalamazo) and I were on Seeka -- the aforementioned camel from hell with irritable bowel syndrome – but at least we weren’t behind him, like our MVP’s. Not only did they suffer the rank smell of camel butt for tow hours, but Anna was constantly being violated by Michael and Maggie’s Camel: Jabootie. Incase your wondering that’s pronounced just like it looks: JA-BOOTY.

I think that’s enough adventures from the week for this post. I’ll make sure to write about having fun with kangaroo’s soon. Later yallz!