Australia Zoo

So the Saturday before last, we decided to check out the Australia Zoo. This is the zoo Steve Irwin created and setup. The zoo features almost entirely Australian wildlife and is designed to be “hands on”. The motto there is “If you interract with the animals, you’ll love the animals, and you’ll protect the animals” or something like that.

 

We saw some cool animals like otters, tazmanian devils, crocs, strange giant ostrich-like birds with blue heads [cassowary], echidnas, koalas, foxes, camels, and kangaroos. And there was also a kid’s petting zoo (P’s favorite) with baby cows, pigs, and goats. There were some six week old piglets there that were pretty cute (Dan’s favorite).

We did the usual zoo thing wandering around when it was finally time to go to the kangaroo area.  We went in through a giant double gated entrance and stopped… there was a kangaroo like right there! No fence or ditch or anything. No one else was around and we weren’t sure what to do. Are they nice? Do they punch people? Are we supposed to try and touch them? It was basically a really big area, a few acres, or open grass and trees and hills with a river winding through it. And all around were kangaroos hanging around. Interesting. So we decided to sneak up to the kangaroo and try to touch it. Priscilla slowly krept up talking to it softly, etc and finally worked up the courage to touch it. It didnt even flinch. So she worked her way up to petting it and it turns out it was pretty laid back and friendly so I went over and petted it to. Cool.

Then we noticed over on the next hill that there were like 2 toddler kids yelling and running up to a kangaroo. He didnt budge. They petting him and poked him, etc and he didn’t seem phased a bit. So apparently this is the norm and we weren’t Kangaroo whisperers after all. 

So we wandered around petting various kangaroos and watched them walk and hop around. Then we came across an ’safe area’ where the kangaroos can go hang out and people can’t go. There we saw a few kangaroos with joeys! It was funny because they were just laying around w/ two little back legs sticking out of their pouches. Finally after some waiting we got so see a joey hop out and playing around for a bit. Then the mom stood up which must have been the signal to hop back in because the joey just hopped and dove right into the pouch. Not gentle at all. Ha. 

We have a lot more pics of all the animals and I’ll add them as a gallery in this post later on.

-Dan

Another RAINY day in Brisbane?

The weather has taken a turn. Its now the second day of continuous pretty heavy rain. Brisbane is under a bit of a drought so I guess thats a good thing. Fortunately its supposed to clear up this afternoon for a nice fine weekend.

So yesterday I had my interview. I guess it was more of a chitchat than a formal interview. He never had a position open, I just liked the company and got in contact with him, the CEO.  I was optimistic though that after the phone conversation he wanted to talk in person. It went well, but in the end he basically said that he’d be interested in going further with interviews, but at the time there really isn’t an opening and he probably shouldn’t just shoehorn me in. He did say he’d pass my info around and talk to the other management to see what they think. *shrug*

The good news, though, is that he gave me a contact of his who started up a company a couple years ago designing and building autonymous farm equipment. That sounds awesome to me. i guess it’d be like a Roomba for a wheat field.  So I’m waiting to hear back from that guy.

Last night it was cold and P came home from work soaking wet after a long day so we got take out and stayed in and watched a movie. We saw “Into the Wild”. For some reason I never thought it’d be that great so i’ve been putting it off, but it turned out to be a good movie. So I’d put that on the recommend list as well.

It turns out my brother hasn’t fallen off the planet after all, he’s just been super busy with dental school. His forte isn’t e-communication. It sounds like a really rigorous program and its requiring some pretty serious dedication. The good news is that he did well on his first test and he’s staying on top of things. Its also good that he finallly shipped out my PS3 and camera. I’m going through Call of Duty withdrawl and i’ll be pissed if i get a job before the PS3 gets here. 

My mission for the day is to go to the mall and return some stuff and maybe find P a new backpack. We got one the other day but its proving to be too small for all the junk she brings to work and back every day. The rain looks to be letting up so that’d be helpful. Its about a 12 min walk to the mall downtown.

I’m not sure what we’re doing tonight, but tomorrow we’re going to the zoo. Its the Steve Irwin Foundation Australian Zoo. Should be fun.

-Dan

The Job Hunt

Well I guess i should try to update this often so I can remember what we do when talking to the family back home. So lets see…

I’m still on the job hunt here. My background is as an electrical/computer engineer in the semiconductor industry. Unfortunatley there is zero semiconductor industry here in Brisbane. When I talk to recruiters they seem to think that EE means I do either power or construction work (which there is plenty of around here). If i mention the word “computer” they switch to IT mode and ask about my Windows and web dev skills. Its funny, but not. For fun I applied for a job as a web dev for a department at the University of Queensland where Priscilla works. I’m pretty darn unqualified and I don’t even really want to do it.. but it’d be a job for now and i’m sure i could figure it out.

So I’m pursing the controls avenue of EE which is what i focused on in school and am most interested. It seems tough to break into though without experience. One big company in the area said they’re not hiring, but the CEO said I could call him up and chat. I just did, but he wasn’t there so i’ll try later. Thats good of him and hopefully i can learn a thing or two.

So yeh, I spend a lot of the day on the computer hunting for jobs, cleaning, and running errands.

Last night we went out to eat at a Spanish tapas restaurant. The food was great and the sangria even better. Its right across the street so we’ll surely be back.

We normally aren’t into and haven’t rented a stupid-funny movie in years, but we rented “Walk Hard” a week or so ago. It was pretty damn funny in parts. Especially the part w/ the Beatles. So that encouraged us so we rented “Semi-Pro” last night. It was so retarded we didnt even finish it. So much for that i guess.

Its strange to me to be writing a blog and telling people this crap. I’m not a blogger (or am i?), but my friend Joe says they rule. I’m pretty sure thats all he did/does at work.

AH HA! the CEO guys just called me back and we chatted for a bit. I got an interview for tomorrow. woot!

-Dan

“Another Fine Day in Brisbane”

Ah yes. Its always a fine day in Brisbane. Its funny to watch the weather here. Apparently “fine” means sunny, fair, etc. So they always say that its “fine in Brisbane”, “partly fine in Brisbane”, “mostly fine in Brisbane”, etc. Its also apparently often fine in a lot of cities so as they run down the list of cities you hear the word fine like twenty times. Sort of funny I guess so we decided to call our blog that.

-Dan

RiverFire

So Brisbane has a holiday/event called RiverFire once a year where they have a big fire worlds display on the river. Greg (P’s boss) and his wife Diana invited us over for a RiverFire party this past Saturday night. They live in a highrise on the river so the view is amazing. It was a nice party, they made excellent food and we meet a lot of friendly folks from all over. Actually a surprising bit of them were from NC… strange.  Also surprising is that half the men there were named Dan…

Anyway, the fireworks were awesome. It started off with an F111 doing the thing were it lets some fuel out and then lights it on fire w/ the afterburners.. so it looks like a giant comet of fire flying behind the plane. Pretty cool. Then we all sat out on the balcony and watched the show. It was awesome being as high as the fireworks.  My camera work sucked but here are a few:

Afterwards we went down and walked along the riverwalk and had coffee. It was nice

I think the River Festival goes on for a week or something. Today they had a little thing on a pedestrian bridge where they were having a free BBQ. So today we went down and did that and then went and saw “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden”. Its from Morgan Spurlock who did Supersize Me and the 30 Days Show.   He’s the guy we met at the airport below. It was a pretty damn good movie, i’d recommend it.

-Dan

Noosa Head

So this past Friday Julie, Priscilla, and I drove about 1.5 hours north to Noosa Head. Noosa Head is a national park that is known to have a few Koalas hanging around.  Theyre pretty rare and hard to spot, so our mission was to find one!

We rented a car early that morning and after figuring out why the car wouldnt start (we were in the wrong car, ha) we were off.

Basically there are a few trails at the park and you hike along them and see what there is to see. We hiked for almost four hours and saw………

Koala!

He was just chilling up in the tree sleeping. Didn’t even crack an eye lid at us. Here are a lot more pics:

Koala!

It was a nice trip and the beaches were fantastic. The water was pretty cold, but it was crystal clear and nice and blue.  Best of all the place was practically deserted. While there we saw a pod of dolphins right off the shore, the koala, two lizards fighting, and even some kangaroos on the drive home.

Speaking of which, i drove home and it was my first “wrong side of the road” experience. It was pretty bizarre and even at the end of the 1.5 hour drive home, I was having trouble staying in my lane. You’re so used to yourself being in the left side of the car and thus the left side of the lane.. So when swapped you want to drift off left out of your lane.  Its a lot harder than it sounds!

-Dan

Brisbane

Ok, this will be about the city itself.  Here’s the Wiki link for some reference info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brisbane

Ya know what, i just looked at our city pics and they’re all crap so i’m going to have to give a raincheck on those.  I have a meeting tomorrow, but maybe after that i can go take some. I swear we took some nice ones, but i can’t find them.. hrm. Oh well, this will be updated later then.

-Dan

Internet!

Well we finally have the internet hooked up at home so its time to update this thing.

We’ve now been in Brisbane for almost a month and are getting settled in nicely. We have an apartment in “The Valley” (Fortitude Valley) which is an artsy part of town right outside of down town proper. The apartment is basically a big rectangle w/ a door on one end and a balcony (2nd story of 3) on the other. There’s a bedroom toward the door and a living area near the balcony/porch/deck with the kitchen and bathroom in between. Actually, here are some pics:

Kitchen

Living Area

Came with an HDTV!

Shower w/ ghost toilet

I still need to get some pics of the front of the building. The face is a huge painting by the Spanish artist “Miro”. So each balcony has a set of sliding metal doors that are each a part of the painting. Together they form the whole mural as seen from outside.

So the apartment is about a 7min walk from downtown Brisbane and about the same to the nearest CityCat stop. Brisbane is built around the Brisbane River which winds through the city. The CityCats are ferries used to shuttle people up and down and across the river. Here’s a pic:

CityCat in Brisbane

So for example, every day P walks about 7min down the river to the nearest CityCat stop. Then rides the CityCat down the river for about 30min to the University of Queensland stop. Then walks across campus to her office. Its a pretty nice and relaxing way to travel.

This is my first blog post so i better publish this before i get too far along in case it doesn’t work.

-Dan

We’re here!

We left the US on July 28 and arrived in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia on the 30th.  We’re not sure where the 29th went but it was probably spent at 30,000 ft somewhere in the Pacific.  We arrived and the first exciting thing that happened was that we were standing at baggage claim when Dan said, “Psst, that’s Morgan Spurlock!”  I said, “ha no way, Morgan Spurlock doesn’t look like that.”  Then the more I looked, the more it looked like him, then I finally saw his profile and realized it really was him.  I tried to think of a cool way to say we recognized him when Dan blurted out “HEY PRISCILLA! KNOW THAT 30 DAYS SHOW?  IT’S REALLY GOOD!”  Morgan turned around and said “heh, yeah I like it too.”  We introduced ourselves and shook his hand.  I took his pic on the sly.

He was really nice and helped me get my gigantic bag off the carousel.

After that we went through customs and promised we didn’t have any food on us and they let us through.  We met Greg, the professor I’m going to be working with and loaded all our stuff into his tiny rental car (whose steering wheel is totally on the wrong side).

He gave us a quick tour of the city then we went to our hotel to drop our baggage.  Then he wanted to show us around his apartment (which has an amazing view from the 26th floor).  It’s almost right in the middle of the city and it’s directly on the river.

The Brisbane River is a river that goes right throught the middle of Brisbane and is how most people in the city get to work.  I catch the CityCat at a stop that’s about 15 minutes from my apartment and have a 35 minutes ride to work.  It’s not a bad way to start the day.

There’s some crazy wildlife here.  There are giant white ibises all over campus, as well as bush turkeys, which make huge mulch “nests” and absolutely destroy any landscaping that the University has attempted.  There are lots of eucalyptus trees but they’re seriously lacking in an koalas.  Haven’t seen any kangaroos yet.  Those don’t enjoy the city very much.  We hope to go to the Queensland Zoo tomorrow which has only Australian wildlife.  Will take lots of pictures.

-P