Finals

I took my trip to Sydney during that time when all good students were staying back in the dorms and studying. Now, to somebody else, it would mean that I would have to get all that study time in during the time when I was actually taking finals. Fortunately for me, I discovered that study was effectively useless for essay-type finals years ago. This effectively boils down to me studying for approximately maybe one hour this last week for all four of my finals. Don't you just hate me?

Anywhoo, I really have to describe the finals taking process over here, it's really something spectacular. Also, it's so . . . special. . . that I really should just say that it may be only at Massey University; it may not be a whole kiwiland thing. Okay, with that preface, let me begin:

It's like taking the SAT from Nazis in a prison.

They take multiple different classes and sit them together in a large seminar room. The tests are organized (or rather, disorganized) by row and column. And, apparently, since I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, that means that the definitions for row and column have to be switched. Really, they told me the first day that I was in row A column C, so, naturally I went three seats in on the first row and found the wrong final. Then I realized where I was, so I went three rows up and in the first seat was the final for my class. Naturally.

From there I sat down, took out my pencil, and prepared to write. That would make sense, yes? But no, nobody else was writing in the entire, huge hall, so, being the sheep that I am, I put my pencil back down and waited for everybody else to write. But no, writing was not to come for a while yet. Instead, I had to sit and listen to the rules for taking a final:

1. No entering the examination room 45 minutes after the (3 hour!) final has commenced. Oh, and make-up finals are simply not given, it's a university policy. So if your alarm forgets to sound and you get there 46 minutes late, you fail the class.

2. Students can not leave the room until at least one hour has passed. This means that if you have a really easy final, like my friend Joe did that took 20 minutes, you simply have to wait quietly in your seat until the test is over. I don't even know why they have this rule.

3. Reading Time! Yep, you heard me, before you can even pick up a pencil, you get to read the test for 10 minutes. Yep, 10 minutes where you get to look at the test and not even make notes-if you do, they come and take your supplied notepaper away. It's like kindergarten.

4. No cell phones. Okay, this makes sense, yes? But not to the extent that they take it. If you have a cell phone, even though it be off in your pocket, it's trouble. Well, Brandt, how would they know if I have a cell phone? A good question, that. Let me answer it: They scan the room with a device that is purported to be able to sense cell phones. Yep, they scan you like an airport cavity search for your cell phone.

5. No outside tissues. They supply you with tissues in the test for fear that you will have written on your own, personal tissue with notes pertinent to the exam. They're that anal. Of course, for the more inventive of us, we realize that this can make the test proctor our bitch. They have to bring you a tissue if you raise your hand, so you can make 'em run back and forth throughout the exam bringing you tissues! One guess what I did during my last exam. . .

6. Potty Breaks. If you have to go to the restroom, then you have to be accompanied by a test proctor. I wouldn't be surprised if they were required to watch you too. . .

So there you go, finals at Massey University. Wow, eh? Oh, and in case you care, yes, my finals all went pretty well. For 60% of my grade in each class, they seemed really, really easy. It's kinda weird, in fact, finishing one of three essays on the test and saying, "there goes 20% of my grade in a half-hour. Wheeee."

In case you couldn't tell by the thinly veiled sarcasm, I was none too impressed with the final exams here.

Butko out.

The End of a Vacation.

Day 6:
As we are all aware, you never accomplish anything on travelling days. It's a simple fact of life, Butko's Maxim, if you will.


Anyways, the night before my return to NZ, I'd spent the night alone in a 4 person dorm room, something that has never happened to me. It was almost creepy, it had the same feeling that a school gets after dark; the eerie silence of a place that's meant to be filled with people, but is devoid of life. On the other hand, it let me make as much noise as I wanted to without fear of waking up my dorm-mates, which was a good thing considering my 6:00 wake up time.

I again took an airport shuttle to the airport, this time for TEN dollars. Grrrr. Lucky for me, I showed up about ten minutes early, for no sooner had I exited my hostel with baggage in hand than the shuttle showed up. It was driven by some short, stout, communist block guy who adhered very strictly to his schedule. So much, in fact, that we completely abandoned somebody in a hotel because they weren't outside to meet us when we got there. It's a good thing my OCD demands that I get to places early.


My airport experience went somewhat smoother than it did on my trip into the country. Somewhat. I was "randomly" selected for a search though, which was a first. They padded me down, tested me for incendiary devices, and let me go, an all around painless process. What intrigued me, however, is that they actually asked for my permission to do the checks. It makes me wonder, what would have happened if I'd said no?


Oh, and following the earlier paradigm, my plane was empty. It's the first time in my life that I've had a free seat next to me, let alone three. Seriously, except for obvious pairs everybody had their own row. I've never seen that.


Anyways, by the time that I landed, retrieved my luggage, waited for the bus, took the bus to town, hiked through town with my luggage, checked in, dragged my Tetrised suitcase up four flights of stairs, and unpacked, I was about exhausted. So I elected to read/finish the first book of Stepen King's Dark Tower series. I had just settled in and read maybe one paragraph when the door opened and that night's dorm-mate came through the door. We talked for a little bit, I learned that his name was Saffir, that he is a Kiwi by birth (something quite rare in hostels, trust me), that he was working on his grad program in physical therapy, and that he was going out that night with one of his mates from college for a little pool. Would I like to come? Exhaustion and intrigue warred within my brain, and eventually intrigue won out.


So I spent the night with two Kiwis playing free pool (the table was broken, which was good because otherwise it would have been probably 15+ games * $2 a game = $30 for pool.), and talking about random things. They were both really awesome people, and by the end of the night it was like I'd known them for years. Thank you intrigue.


Thusly I was prevented from having a single quiet day on the entire vacation.


Day 7:
To preface: Wellington is not a very big city, and, after having spent the previous six days in Sydney, it seemed even smaller. Nonetheless, there's some charm to the city, having equal elements of Reno and San Fransisco with a Kiwi population. But, having already been here a couple of times, I'd effectively exhausted the number of possible touristy things to do. All except one. I had not yet been to the Botanical Garden. So, this probably being the last time that I would be in Wellington for a loooong time, I decided to go.


But they don't' make it easy on you. Trying to find the Botanical Garden in Wellington was like trying to find my way in Sydney's Central Railway system; a mouse, searching for cheese. And, as always happens, after having just decided that I was done looking for the entrance, I found the entrance. So I took the cable car up to the Botanical Garden. Honestly, it was far better than I'd thought it would be. Larger, longer, prettier than I'd anticipated.

The view of Wellington from the Garden.

My personal favorite part, they had this tree. The inside was like a jungle gym with every branch totally climbable. Needless to say, I spent way more time inside of this tree than I should have.


After exploring the garden for a bit, I found that I still had about 3 hours before everybody else was going to arrive in Wellington. Good thing I brought my book with. Yep.

3 hours later, I was walking towards the isite, which was to be our meeting place, when I noticed that the city was more. . . alive than normal. The reason, naturally, was that it was rugby time!

If there's one thing that I've learned over here, it's that Kiwis loooove their rugby. And, what's even better for me, Rodrigo had bought our entire crew tickets for the All-Blacks game that was going on that night! Seeing an All-Blacks game has been on my to-do list since the day that I got here in NZ, and, finally, I was going to get to do it! The last item on my touristy itinerary!

It was weird for me though, because the last week I had finally come to know how one could be alone in a sea of people, and I was starting to get used to my own company. Probably not a good thing, I know, but that's what happened. Soon I'll just grow a long ZZ Top beard and mutter to myself (of course, only the beard will be new, but whatever). Needless to say, it was a weird experience being thrown right back into the center of socialization when my friends came and picked me up for the game. I had actually kinda missed them, but don't tell them that, they'll think I'm going soft.

Anyway, we had all splintered off that week and gone to different places, and we all had different stories to tell each other, so that kept us busy right up 'till the beginning of the game. But before we get to the game, you should know that it's winter over here, we're near Antarctica, and it was an open stadium. Of course, nobody had brought blankets. So I talked Ben and Joe into coming with me to buy some from a closing Warehouse. The store was really, really picked over, and it took us a whiles to find the closest things resembling blankets that we could. Unfortunately, the didn't have price tags. Oh well, we thought, if it's too expensive, we'll just buy one. So we took them to the counter, showed them to the girl behind the machine, showed her the lack of price tags, she typed into her computer for a second, and randomly came up with the price: $6.27 each. Honestly, I think she just came up with it on the top of her head. So I bought 'em and gave 'em away as presents to Joe and, I think, Andrea. But maybe Ben got his hands on the second one, I dunno, he's crafty that way.

Joe and Andrea playing around in my awesome blankets.


So, blankets in hand we headed for the cake-tin, (or Westpac stadium, but who calls it that?) nearly got separated in the waves of people:

and eventually ended up seeing the All-Blacks whoop France 61-3. Yes, that was the final score. I really don't even know why the French even bothered.

There were fireworks, how cool is that? And they had a little girl's choir sing the respective national anthems of each country. This will sound dumb, but I didn't know that La Marseillaise had words. Ooops.

Before every Rugby game, the All Blacks do what is known as the haka. For those of you that remember, it's basically a Maori war-chant, and I believe that there are few things in life that are more intimidating that a bunch of Massive-as Kiwi Rugby players screaming at your face that pain is good. I was ready to storm the French players after hearing it. I can't imagine how charged the Kiwi players were, which is probably reflected in the score. . .

A gametime picture.

The crew during the game, drinking from their plastic beer bottles.


After that travesty of a Rugby game (for the French) Ben did the 2 hour drive home, the girls passed out in the back, and I was actually happy to be back in "balmy" Palmy.

Day 5: My *sniff* last day in Sydney.

Yes, it's true, I only had 5 days in Sydney. Let me tell you, if you really want to do everything in that city, you'll need far more than 5 days. Yes, I did fit more into 5 days than most people do in a week and a half, but it still wasn't quite enough. Oh well, I guess that just means that I'll have to go back. . . shucks.

Also, if you'll look back at the previous days post, you'll notice something about the weather-it gets steadily worse throughout the day. That can only mean one possible thing: I was going to do something outside the next day. And yes, in fact, that's exactly what happened.

Before going onto the tour the day before, I had called ahead and made a booking to do the Sydney Harbor bridge climb. Naturally, that means I had this kind of weather:

Torrential downpour.

Nonetheless, I decided that I would go to the bridge climb spot on the off chance that they took people up on the bridge even in inclement weather. Well, lucky for me, they did. Not only did they go up, they went up in style. Honestly, this was one of the poshest outfits that I've even been with for this kind of thing. They gave us a full body suit, a weather fleece, a raincoat, gloves, a beanie, a baseball cap, and a handkerchief. They attached us to a line that runs all the way across the bridge with some really awesome looking latch that was developed by a blind sailor because he was tired of falling off of his boat. I figure that I see somewhat better than a blind sailor, so I was probably pretty safe with the latch. They even supplied us with this amazing headset that was apparently originally created for the military. It has two metal clamps surrounded by plastic that clamp onto your cheekbones and the vibrations travel through the cheekbones to your ears, allowing you to hear both the ambient sounds of Sydney with open ears and the guide when she was giving details of the Bridge. It was simply posh. I've tried to come up with other words for it, but posh really is the best. They introduced the six of us that were climbing together (2 kiwis, 3 brits, and me), and we set off to climb the bridge.

Sadly, there's some city ordinance forbidding us to take loose items with us on the bridge climb. I guess they're afraid that I'm going to drop my camera on a car or something. They even made me spit out my gum for fear that it would. . . hell if I know, that was just anal. Anyways, basically it boils down to the fact that I have no pictures of my climb, so you're just gonna have to take my word for it. Sorry.

The climb itself was not difficult in any way, shape and/or form. It was basically just a whole bunch of steps up the outside of the bridge, we stopped at the top, looked around a bit, and walked back down the other side. The view, of course, was amazing, and the inclement weather didn't detract from the view at all. In fact, seeing the Opera House staring at me through a veil of rain was a pretty amazing sight. I rather enjoyed it.

Oh, and because it always happens this way, look at the weather in this picture, guess when it was taken? Yep, right after I got done climbing the bridge. Naturally.

Well, now that the bridge climb was done and my flight was nearing up, I really had nothing to do. So I bought a ticket and got on a ferry to Sydney's other famous beach, Manly Beach.

You know that this just means that somebody actually did put their kid on the bow. . .

There was no more precipitation, that much is true, but that doesn't mean that it was blue skies and rainbows. Far from it in fact. It was pretty darn nipply. This means two things:

1) The ferry ride was like being on a roller coaster:

2) Manly beach was deserted:

This let me see Manly Beach's true face, and I found the Beach unworthy of its moniker; in fact, denuded of people, it was really much more of a sissy beach. So I read a little bit of my book there (Perfume, the story of a murderer) and returned to my hostel so that I could get at least a little bit of sleep before my 6:00 wake up call. Eyuck.

Day 4: Go for the Gold

Now that I knew my way around the rat warren that Sydneysiders call the Central Railway Station, I decided that I would start my fourth day in Sydney at Olympic Village. As we all know, Sydney was host to the 2000 summer Olmpic Games, and I'd heard that the buildings that they had created for the competition were awesome. Thus, I woke up somewhat early (7:00ish) and found my way to Olympic Park.

These were artistically placed poles that randomly had speakers playing radio broadcasts from the Olympics or had little markings on them representing world records. It was a truly Olympian Forest.

Apparently they lit the Olympic Torch inside of this fountain.

I would just like it known that I love and respect the Aussies for what they have done with the buildings. When I was in Barcelona, I was lucky enough to visit the stadium (it was pretty awesome, it was all stonework, and looked like some Neo-Roman Relic) that the Spanish had erected for the Games. The only trick was that it was unusable. They had decided to keep it around mostly to remind themselves that they had, at one point, played host for the Olympic Games. The Aussies, on the other hand, have been kind enough to keep their buildings open to the general public for continued use. For example, the Aquatic Center:
I saw children playing in the slides on the left, I saw aged nobles taking a dip in the hot tubs, I saw young bucks actively swimming and racing. In other words, I saw a center that was not dedicated to the past (as Barcelona's is), instead I saw an Aquatic Center that was living vividly in the present, still playing host to competitions, though maybe not quite as noble as the Olympic Games. It was a sweet, touching sight. And the scent of chlorine will always take me back to my brief stint on the swim team. It was enough to make me regret not bringing my togs with me on the train. Oh well.

Speaking of competitons still going, while I was there, there was actually a high school track meet happening in the Olympic Athletic Center. They were using all of the same equipment that was used during the Olympics, and I think that's a pretty awesome thing to do for a simple High School track meet. It was kinda touching.

Unfortunately, other than the people inside of the Aquatic Center or running at the Athletic Center, Olympic Park was dead. Seriously, here's a picture of the main throughfare in Olympic Park:
So I elected to return to Sydney and play around in Darling Harbor, which was one of my favorite places in Sydney. Yes, it was a litte yuppie, almost certainly out of my modest student budget. That didn't stop me from visiting one really awesome shop, where I bought a particular musical instrument, spent some time with the aboriginal proprietor learning how to play it, talked with the guy for a whiles, and left for my evening tour of the city.

Darling Harbor.

The tour was mostly meh, but it was rather interesting to have somebody explain the history of the buildings that I had been walking by for the past four days. So, in that respect it was quite worthwhile. Oh, and it also took me through King's Cross (effectively the Red Light District):

Stopping by at MacQuarie's Chair. Apparently the old govenor of Sydney, Mr. MacQuarie, decided that he wanted his wife to have a nice chair in which to watch the sunset. He thought, Hell, since they're all convicts anyways, I'll just have 'em cut a chair into the rock in this cliff. Yeah, awesome. And so Mrs. MacQuarie's Chair exists to this day.

From there we stopped by some place, I forget the name, that had an amazing view of the sunset. Truly gorgeous.

Lastly, we went down to one of Sydney's two most famous beaches, Bondi Beach. Honestly, I'm still none too impressed. It has all of the prerequisites of a beach: sand, waves, and people, but it lacked any trait to make it truly impressive. It wasn't very big. The sand was nothing special; it wasn't like walking through silk, it didn't retain the heat of the sun, and it didn't shine my shoes.

But it did have a couple of walls that they enouraged taggers to draw on, resulting in this:

After my last walk on the beach, the tour bus drove away and dropped me back at Darling Harbor. Having nothing more on the plan for the day, I walked into the IMAX theater that they have at Darling Harbor and picked up a ticket for Spiderman 3. I really have to say, the movie was much better the second time around. My initial misgivings still stand, but the extent to which it underwhelmed me was less this time around. And the screen was large enough that I could see the pores on the actor's noses. . . Not necessarily a good thing.

I got out of the theater in a really strange and dangerous mood. I think it's becuase I was so tired before I got into the movie, but, for some strange reason, I elected to walk home. In hindsight I realize that I walked home in the hopes of getting into a fight. I don't usually get into these moods, but when I do it's not a good thing. To my, and other's, benefit, however, I apparently put out some sort of get-the-hell-away-from-me hormone that made everbody drop their eyes when I met their gaze on the street. I really don't know what brought it on, but I'm glad that it left after the night's sleep. Still though, it was yet another good day in Sydney.

Come back for day 5, same Brandt time, same Brandt channel.

Day 3: Blue Mountains.

Before I had jumped onto the ferry for the Taronga zoo, I went to the Sydney information center in The Rocks. They told me that lots of tourists, when they come to Sydney, take a day trip to the Blue Mountains. I thought, "heck, I'm a tourist, I'll do it too," so I had them book me a place on a bus in the Blue Mountains. After they had called ahead and booked me a bus, they decided to tell me that the bus didn't actually leave from Sydney. No, the bus takes you around the Blue Mountain area, but it doesn't take you to the Blue Mountains. For that, I had to take a train.


Armed with this knowledge, I found my way to the central railway station for Sydney. There was a weird ticket machine in front of the turnstiles that took me a couple of tries to figure out, but eventually I walked through the turnstiles, ticket in hand, ready to get on a train. Of course, that's not entirely how it worked out. You see, I'm convinced that psychologists have designed the central railway station in order to see how very much alike humans and mice are in mazes. Seriously, after walking around in there theoretically following the correct signs for about 20 minutes, I expected to see a big piece of cheese around the next turn. It was like living in a Escher painting.


Eventually, however, I proved to be more than a match for the maze, and I sat on the correct train mere minutes before it was set to take off for the Blue Mountains. Phew.


The train ride itself began rater unremarkably; it could have been a suburb in any city that ever existed. It was lacking any intrinsically Australian quality. Or so I though. About an hour into the ride I found myself looking avidly out of the windows at the surprisingly beautiful countryside. I've personally always pictured Australia as the Outback and nothing more, (Which is not entirely inaccurate, most of the continent really is the Outback.) I'm happy to categorically state that I was wrong.


The Blue Mountains get their name from the blue haze that surrounds them, day and night. Apparently this is because there's an enormous amount of Eucalyptus (or, if you prefer, gum) trees in the area, and there's some substance on the leaf that, when it evaporates, results in a small blue haze. When you multiply that by the number of Gum trees that are in that forest, you get Blue Mountains. And you get beautiful. If you took the grand canyon, inverted it into a mountain, and added trees on every possible surface, then you'd get the Blue Mountains.

Anyways, there's a variety of lazy yet awesome touristy things that you could do there: Take a tram up and over an extremely deep chasm, ride up the world's steepest tram, take quick half hour hikes, that kind of thing. I began my day with every intention of doing those kinds of things, but when I got off of the bus at the wrong stop, the priorities of my day shifted abruptly. I decided that it would be good to hike, so hike I did. I walked pretty much every inch of the mountains that I could reach. These are the views that I was privileged to witness all day long:







The surrounding native bush. Needless to say, it were purty.



This little waterfall is known as Witch's leap. Apparently the word "leap" in a Scottish tongue means "waterfall," so it's not literally the leap of a witch. In fact, they got the witch word from the face that you can see in the rock if you look closely.



Katoomba falls.



The view from the top of Katoomba falls. With my innate fear of heights, this was as close as I was willing to get. Sorry.



Perhaps the most famous part of the Blue Mountains are the three sisters. Apparently they used to be the seven sisters, but the other four either fell down or got married or something, but they're not there anymore. Anyways, this is a view from the top of Furber Steps looking across at the sisters.





This is a view of the Three Sisters from underneath, which is where the track took me.



When one finally gets to the top of the Giant Steps, one is allowed to walk over to one of the sisters. The view is amazing, and it's a loooong way down. You'd have a loooong time to wave goodbye.





My parting view of the sisters.



That day, I did more stairs than is healthy for any human being.

These are the Furber Steps.



In fact, I did the Giant Staircase:



which was, indeed, giant. It's effectively a massive as staircase that takes somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes to climb. I was one of only 3 people that I saw going up, the great majority were smart enough to go down. Oh well, I tend to take the path of most resistance, even when given a choice. Anyways, the Giant staircase ended up at one of the famous 3 Sisters (Which apparently used to be 7 Sisters before erosion got in the way). Oh, and in case you're wondering ('cuz I was), no, you can't actually climb any of the three sisters or surrounding cliffs, c'est interdit. They have some logical hippie excuse about how climbing prevents plants from growing which makes the Sisters erode faster. Or something like that. Oh well.


That hike, and others, effectively ate up both my supply of daylight and my supply of energy, so I took the bus back into town, arriving into Sydney at approximately 7:00. I realized that I was really tired, that there was nothing to do on a Tuesday night anyways, and that I was still sick, so I elected to spend the night reading a novel, eating home-made Pad Thai from an awesome Thai joint close to my hostel. I then proceeded to cough myself to sleep, which I'm sure didn't make my dorm-mates very happy. Oh well, I'd just buy Dimetap the next day, that'd kick it.


Stay Tuned, Day 4 To Follow.