It's a Cliché for a Reason

So many song lyrics and thrown about quotes remind us to make the most of life since its time is very limited, and seize the day or as the movie Dead Poets Society frequently repeats its Latin translation "Carpe Diem".  These phrases are used so often most of us hear them and maybe reflect on them for a second or two and just let them go right through our ears, not really giving them a chance to get what they are trying to convey to us.  This is of course understandable since it goes against human nature to have the idea of our own deaths salient in our consciousness constantly.  Many times it takes a tragedy to cause people to sit down and really reflect on their own usage of time here and this is very unfortunate.  A tragedy such as the one that occurred at my home university today.  The death of Declan Sullivan was an unnecessary event that could have easily been prevented if the university used common sense, however, as with everything, it is in the past and cannot be changed, only lamented.

Even though I never knew him, I am dedicating this blog post to Declan, a young man whose soul is now in the hands of the Lord and the thousands of prayers that will be said from Domers across the world.  That being said the current mortality rate of the world is calculated to be .883, meaning 1 out of every 113 people died last year (>150,000 per day).  Without trying to sound insensitive, death is a part of life and will happen to everyone at some point.  Our university is making this a huge deal, mostly due to the fact that Declan died while working for them, but (with no disrespect meant for the life of Declan) people die everyday.  Especially people that we don't know.  A large amount of facebook statuses we posted saying that they were praying for him and his family, but many of these people have no idea who he was, their only connection to him was being part of the Notre Dame family.  I am not saying this is a bad thing only that all his death did was remind those with no other connection to him about the salience of life in general.  The tragedy of death lies all within the timing.  Since it is an event all of us will undertake at some point, and when we are reminded of it through events such as this we are confronted with thoughts of how much more that person could have experienced in their lives before it was cut short of all its potential.  After lamenting that person's loss, our thoughts naturally lead to our own lives (not out of selfishness, just the salience of death) and all of the things we want to accomplish and the unknown things that we will accomplish with the rest of our time.  But, with Declan as an example, this time can be untimely cut short, which leads to the overused but often under-appreciated cliché phrases that remind us to make the most out of the time we are given because we never know how much we have. I urge you readers to take this message to heart, at least for the day, and do something special that makes this day different than the rest.

A(nother) Weekend in Southwest Australia

After finishing up classes on Thursday, I was forced to skip my lone friday lecture by the University of Notre Dame in order to go down south to Margaret River for the weekend. It was a travesty indeed.  Instead of staying around Perth for the weekend, waking up early to watch us beat a very mediocre Western Michigan team, and doing homework, I instead got to go surfing, wine tasting, and bouldering (the act of climbing on rocks in a non-intense fashion that would otherwise be called rock climbing).  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Lets go back to last weekend.  I have had a fairly busy week and lament the fact that I have almost gone two weeks without a post.

Right-left: Andrew, Me, Kelly, Kevin, Bee, Mary Kate, Karina, Alan

Anyway. The previous weekend our college had its annual ball. It was just an excuse to get dressed up nicely on a Saturday evening, eat some good food, and dance.  Oh and experience the first open bar event that we were legally allowed to partake in with all my friends down here.  Technically it wasn't an open bar seeing as they only came around with beer, red wine, and white wine (my choice for the night) but it was unlimited refills and some people took advantage of that more than others.  Needless to say that our dorm providing free-flowing alcohol was an experience that I would never get at Notre Dame.  The food was delicious and a welcome break from the over-cooked meat that we get at Tommy on a very regular basis.  The table I was at was filled with Notre Dame people and a super fun group to share the long meal with.  After that it was a short-lived night of dancing with my girlfriend Kelly due to poor speaker quality. But overall an extremely fun night.

Nothing earth shattering went on during last week which was part of the reason I didn't update this sooner since I really only had the ball to talk about.  Just doing normal school work for four days and then headed down to Margaret River on Friday. I am really getting used to this three day weekend that I have effectively had all semester with only one lecture on fridays in the morning.  It is going to be rough going back to ND where almost every minute of my days I will have to be doing something and can't take as much free time for myself like I am able to down here.

On to Margaret River.  We left Tommy at 7:30 am on Friday and drove down to some mine about and hour south of Perth after picking up Jane, one of our leaders, at her house in Cottesloe.  Friday was incredibly boring and felt like a waste of an entire morning and afternoon.  We basically drove around the Alcoa mine for the entire morning in our bus, since it was an aluminum mine and just harvested it from a couple meters into the earth (not down super far underground like the Super Pit). After having lunch late at around two in the town of Harvey we drove the rest of the afternoon down to the Surfpoint Lodge that we were staying at.  We first visited the town planning committee and listen to them talk for a while.  After that we got sized up for wet suits at a surf shop down the road and then came back for a delicious meal of sausages, kangaroo steaks, and salad.  We barbecued ourselves as a group and I was the one in charge of the kangaroo on the barbie.  It was awesome. After a talk with Martin and Jane it was off for a night walk along the beach and then to bed.

The closest pic I have of
me actually surfing

The next morning we got up bright and early to eat breakfast and catch the world-famous waves of Margaret River.  We met up with our surf instructors at a beach and were divided into two groups. I was in the second group so while the first were out learning how to surf we walked around and out to some rock formation.  I just couldn't wait and was so excited all morning just to get out and experience one of the things Australia is most famous for.  We got taught how to stand up before heading out. It was an awesome experience. I got up multiple times, as well as eating it multiple times as well, and actually had a pretty good runs that I was proud of for my first time.  To be fair we didn't have super-gigantic waves that were on either side of the area we were in but they still got decently sized.  After a spot of lunch we headed over to Wardan Aboriginal Cultural Centre for a talk with an elder and a walk through the bush.  For dinner that night we headed into the town of Margaret River and ate at the Spaghetti Bowl.  The night concluded with listening to a live instrumental band at Settler's Tavern which was a blend of didgeridoo, drums, saxophone, and flute among others I am probably missing.

Sunday morning a group of us went to mass in Margaret River in the morning after catching part of the Wisconsin-OSU game and having a chat with Martin and Jane. Technically these trips constitute a one-credit class so we have to have some scholarly discussion.  After mass we drove to Leeuwin Estates, one of the best vinyards in all of Margaret River (an area of Australia that is known worldwide for two things: wine and surfing).  We got a tour of the wine making process which finished up with wine tasting. This wine was better than the wine I had had on spring break.  I really am not a fan of red wine at all, but these expensive white wines are growing on me.  After that we headed up to Canal Rocks, a place I have previously visited on my spring break trip, but it is still a beautiful place to spend a while.  Alan, Mary Kate, Kevin Bell, Spencer, Kelly, and I swam over to part of the rocks that were only accessible by water and continued our bouldering there.

A weekend experiencing some of the finest aspects of Australian culture. It doesn't get much better than that.  This trip is just making me more excited to get to traveling afterwards. Two more weeks of lectures. I am planning on getting all my papers, lab reports and presentations done with this week and then start studying for exams next week.  Finish up this year strong then head out and see more parts of Australia and then the part I am most excited for: The Kepler Track and Milford Sound among other things in New Zealand.

Looking Ahead

Our final exam schedules finally came out the Thursday in the week before spring break.  The University certainly took its time about this and it hurt us a bit in trying to plan travels after the semester especially since almost everybody I wanted to travel with was gone during spring break.  But we talked friday night before break and got a rough idea, I worked on plans throughout the break, and yesterday we finally were able to go down to the Quantas agent in Perth and extend our ticket home.  Notre Dame has a deal with Quantas that allows us to add stopovers in cities on the way back to LAX for a reduced price.  After a very long morning at the Quantas builing we eventually got all of our flights booked for the way back to the states.  My plans are to fly out to Cairns first and stay there a couple of days, then hit up Sydney for a handful more, and the fly into Christchurch, New Zealand and travel all around the south and north island for 10 days.  This is the part of my study abroad experience that I have been looking forward to the whole semester.  I cannot wait to hike and drive all around New Zealand seeing the one country that I have wanted to visit forever.

Classes are going pretty well at this point.  I have most of my assessment work done until finals except for one lab report and one paper.  But other than that I just have three and a half more weeks of lecture and then I am done with classes.  This weekend our Dorm is having a ball on Saturday, next weekend we have our last Notre Dame sponsored trip down to Margaret River (same area that I had gone for spring break) for the weekend (+ friday), and after that I really don't know what but I only have two free weekends left. 

I cannot really tell you where the semester has gone because it seems to be flying by and before I know it, it will be Dec 9 and I will have to come back to the states.  The best parts of my experience down here are coming up though and I will  try to enjoy every moment up until then of my time down here instead of only looking forward to these after-school travels.  Time to head off to psych (this class is terribly boring however and I would rather be managing my three combined 10-2 fantasy football teams or continuing this blog)

A Couple Days in Dunsborough

So instead of going to Thailand, Bali, or up the West Coast of Australia, due to a variety of reasons but mostly financial savings for my travels at the end of the semester, like most of my fellow Domers did, I went down to Claire's, one of my Australian friends, summer cabin in Dunsborough.  Dunsborough is about a two-and-a-half hour drive south of Perth located in the little tip of the Southwest corner of Australia (see the map to the right).  This area around Margaret River is a famous wine location in A

A group of nine of us from Tommy went down: Me, Claire, Maddy (one of Claire's good friends who is pretty cool), Derek (the other Domer that came down), Amaury (A Mauritian from Mauritius), Nessa, Terry, Alex, and Sivam.  We left Tuesday night after dinner and spent the rest of the night playing poker.  I got no good hands at all and only one all hand all night. It was a blow to my card playing abilities.  I think I will stick to Sheepshead and Oh Sh*t.  Wednesday morning we spent deciding what to do exactly and planning our route.  We then headed off to check out these cool caves only to turn around and not check them out for $20.  So instead we drove further down Caves Road and came along Caves Rocks which was just a cool "gneiss" (pronounced nice) rock formation. So of course I climbed all over it. After that we got lunch at a brewery and then started our afternoon of tasting.  We started our tasting tour at the Cove and Liqueur Factory where for only two dollars we got to sample three different liqueur flavors (I went with raspberry, macadamia nut, and lime) and one pre-mixed combination (lemon cheesecake).  They were all delicious.  After that we headed to the Margaret River Chocolate Factory where I did not partake in any of the sampling.  Why anyone would want to eat heaps of different flavored chocolate chips is beyond me.  Next up, cheese!  Coming from the cheese state of course I partook and thoroughly enjoyed all of the cheeses.  We finished the day at a pretty upscale winery (of who's name escapes me at the moment) for free wine tasting.  Since wine is the big drink down here in Australia I have already had some at the formal dinners and such at Tommy earlier and some of the white wines are decent, but I really have no desire to drink red wine ever.  So we went down the list of whites and then I ducked out when the reds started.

The best part of the day however was yet to come.  After going to the local butcher and selecting the meat we were going to grill out with for the night, a group of us went up to Sugarloaf (another rock formation on the coast, but 100x better than the first one) for the sunset.  Climbing rocks is easily one of my favorite activities here and these ones provided the most fun I have had here climbing yet due to a presence of danger most other rocks have lacked.  Nothing I couldn't handle of course but enough to make it super fun.  Not to mention the sunset was gorgeous.  I made it up to the horse head-looking formation and watched it from there.  Got back to the cottage and grilled up the meat for everybody, which consisted of a nice piece of marinated lamb and a sausage for me.

Today we spent most of the morning after breakfast at Yallingup Beach which was a lot better than Cottesloe, the beach up here that we always go to.  A morning of sun and swimming on the picturesque shores of Australia, it doesn't get much better than that.  I am one lucky individual for all of this.  I mean I am sure I am missing out on a fun experience in Thailand as well but spending my spring break in Australia isn't to shabby either.  I have to keep telling myself that and not to take being here for granted. I could be back in the great state of Indiana personally watching our football team struggle or here spending part my spring break on a white sand beach on the shores of the Indian Ocean.  Oceans are super salty by the way. Its gross.  Anyway on that obvious statement I will leave you for today my readers.  I hope to find something fun to fill the last three days of my break. I will keep you posted.  Here are a couple more photos from the trip.

Sugarloaf

Yallingup Beach

A view from my perch

Egg-laying and Fire-breathing Mammals

It is Thursday now in a week in which I had very little to do since everything was due last week.  Most of the week was spent just tyring to catch up on readings and things along those lines.  Kayaking on the Swan River was a blast last Friday.  I was under the impression that we were going canoeing but when we showed up, River Gods, the company that we had hired had two full racks of two-people kayaks for us.  While helping unloading, I spied a nice kayak with a rudder and two divided seating areas, instead of one large hallowed out area, and claimed that one for me and Will.  This was Will's first time kayaking and so I let him sit in the back and do all of the steering while I acted as the workhorse in the front.  It took a while for him to get the hang out it down but eventually we were cruising no problem.  We spent the morning on the river, and then went to Success Hill, a park, for lunch and to listen to some city planners about conservation.  After that we hopped back into our bus and headed up to the dam and hiked around there.  The dam and lake created by it reminded me of the one in X2 where Wolverine was tested on.  After that we drove to another park for dinner and hiked around it before eating.  There was a nice lookout over all the area northeast of Perth as well as a nice waterfall.  We capped off the day with a tour of an animal rescue centre where I crossed off another Australian animal that I need to see while I am here; not only did I get to see the echidna, I also got to pet it.  All I have left on my list is the ever elusive platypus. 

That was the excitement of the weekend as I was inevitably let down by Notre Dame's football team again.  I don't really care about the refs seeing as we had our chances earlier in the game and just didn't capitalize on them.  Anyway this is a depressing subject even in two sentences so I will change topics.

Here Wednesday night is the night (or the most popular weekday night) to go out and I decided since I didn't have much to do today besides class this afternoon and a psych experiment this morning for a little cash, that I might as well.  A group of Tommy people were going out to the Leederville Hotel and so we decided to go with as well.  Definitely not as fun as advertised on the Facebook event.  It was a big letdown of a night in general seeing as the bus we were supposed to take didn't show up, causing us to wait an extra half hour for the next train since we missed the one we were going to take.  This caused us to wait in line outside the venue for a while.  The Leedy (as it is known by locals) was actually a pretty cool venue.  It was huge with a couple different environments.  One was a rave type atmosphere complete with strobe lights, cages, and even a fire breather, while the other part was mostly a bar.  It wasn't that fun at all so we all left after about 45 minutes there.  Not one of the greatest Wednesday nights ever.  Oh well. There will be others.

Spring break next week.  While most other people are going to Thailand, Bali, or up the coast, I am currently/tentatively going down south with a couple of Australian friends to one of their houses on Tuesday for a couple of days.  I am trying to convince Claire not to leave until noonish on Tuesday so I can watch the Monday Night Football game.  I really don't want to miss the Bears-Packers game. Should be a good one and hopefully put the Pack in sole possession of first place in the division.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Preface: Alright here it is. After a request from one Jim Waclawik to update it and a threat from one Marilyn Blasingame to stop reading, I have finally gotten around to updating my blog after an absence of 10 days, my single longest abscence yet in order to keep my readers happy.  Marilyn, I just won't be friends with your cupcake shop but I value your following and hope we can get past our differences.

Anyway things at Tommy have been very work-filled for me these last ten days.  In the past ten days I have written two different papers, given a 45 minute presentation on Tuesday, literally just finished taking a mid-sem test, and completed my part of a paper for biology this morning that is due Sunday .  Alright I am done making excuses as to why I haven't updated this in a while but I have been busy.  The only brightside about not having volleyball right now is the freetime it allows me to do all this work.  That is the only brightside. 

But overall it was a pretty uneventful past week and a half.  In my vertebrate zoology lab i dissected a fetal pig for the third time in my life. How many pigs must a person cut up before they graduate school?  A group of Notre Dame students went out to Rottnest Island for this past weekend which would have been a bunch of fun, but seeing as I had all this work to do I passed.  I do intend to get out there in one of the weekends after spring break, since it is supposed to be super nice, with a group of us that stayed in this weekend.  But by not going out there I did get to wake up early again and watch our great football team choke another game away to Michigan.  In all honesty I was not at all suprised at the outcome after we completed that 95 yard play to Rudolph.  It was typical Notre Dame football.  Anyway I wasn't really expecting our team to do much with a first six game prediction of 3-3.  I mean don't get me wrong I want our team to win as much as any other kid on Notre Dame's campus (except for maybe Jim Waclawik or Steve Walsh)  but I just didn't think we would be that good this year.  NFL kicked off this week though to a very favorable start for the Packers (a win and a Vikings loss) but I am a bit concerned over the loss of Ryan Grant for the season.  Hopefully the Cornhusker Brandon Jackson can step up his game and provide Rodgers with the run support he needs.

We get to go on another one of Notre Dame's trips tomorrow which will be a nice break/reward for these past weeks. Good thing I only have one class on Friday, and this certain lecture happens to be recorded.  Instead of being a whole weekend trip, this one is just a day excursion in Perth.  We are going canoeing on the Swan River during the morning, spending the afternoon at Mundaring Weir (a dam and lake) and a night time walk at Karakamia Wildlife Sanctuary.  It should be a great time.  Just going out on trips like these is one of the best things about being down here in Australia.  Going out into the land and escaping any thought of actually being in school is a great feeling. 

As always I am looking for new music to get off DC++ so if anyone has any suggestions of some good stuff let me know.

For all those Dad's Out There

It is currently 9:34 pm on Sunday night and I am totally burnt out and unable to do anymore school work so I figured I would blog some.  I am in this state because I woke up this morning at 3:15 am in order to watch the opening game of the Notre Dame football season against Purdue.  Most of our group gathered in the Senior Common Room at Tommy and hooked up a Slingbox to Derek's computer in order to watch the game.  A slingbox is this cool device that Alan had configured to his television back home and allow us to stream whatever the tv was on back in Texas over the internet to the computer hooked up to the TV.  Needless to say it was awesome.  Not even close to as much fun as game days back in The Bend but still entertaining.  There were basically two camps of people: one that stayed up all night as well as went out before so they were sufficiently intoxicated throughout the game and those that went to bed at 10 pm and got five hours of sleep before waking up.  Bet you can't guess which one I was in at all.  Not that is was good sleep with everyone yelling in the halls of the dorm throughout the night but it was still some sleep.  I chose just to eat breakfast and start my day after the game instead of going back to bed like most did.  Since I have a bunch to do these next two weeks, I am glad of the decision I made. I took the opportunity to do some bio studying in the morning and working on a sports psychology project in the afternoon, as well as go on a walk, mass, dinner, more work, and here I am....eyes closing.

I was able to fall asleep at 10 last night because of the awesome time I had that day however.  A group of 17 of us ventured out to John Forrest National Park at 10 am for the day.  We hopped on a bus, a train, and then another bus out to the park.  All that public transport cost about $2.50 roughly.  Saving money, awesome.  For the rest of the day we hiked all around the park starting with hiking to the visitor centre.  We had to walk through the official entrance where normally cars just normally enter and got charged as two large vehicles.  We then proceed to hike to Hovea Falls, which despite its promising name, was not a raging river waterfall but more a dried up, gradual decent of the resulting stream.  This provided great rock bed that would normally be covered with water and our spot for lunch.  Throughout the day we lost part of our group until we were down to nine.  After climbing up the first of many boulders on the day, our group moved on to the Eagle View Trail.  We took this trail for several kms, part of the way with the trail winding between bush on both sides.  Then up a valley side to a lookout of the whole park with the city of Perth in the distance.  Made out way back to the road eventually (after what seemed like hiking uphill the whole time) and took the bus back to the city where I got my first taste of Mexican food since I've been here which was much welcome.  All this was made possible by the careful planning of Kelly, the girl I found myself on a date with the previous evening at a Vietnamese restaurant, which was delicious.

Anyway in Australia its Father's Day today to I just wanted to give a shout out to Randy Rehberg for being the best dad a kid could want.  Doing so much for all of us Rehbergs all the time, I just wanted to say he deserves a ton of credit for me being who I am today.  Don't let the flamingo-filled fruit bowl fool you.  (By the way it was Father's Day when I started this I just didn't post it last night)