Phew, what a day!

Well, well, well... today has been a delightfully interesting! :p
But you don't get to find out why. Yet. Lower down. Ha. ;)

...

First, more on Fahrenheit... After multiplying his buddy's system by 4 so that there wouldn't be any fractions and each step wouldn't be so big, water's freezing point should have been 30 and body temp should have been 90, but he bumped them to 32 and 96 so there were power of two differences (2^5 between 0 and freezing, 2^6 between freezing and body) so when he made his thermometers he just had to repeatedly bisect the intervals. Ah. Sneaky.

...

As usual, my paranoia about being late for a flight and/or something going horribly wrong in the whole check-in/security process made me very early for my flight, haha. After bringing Tuck back to his owners (good thing I had insurance... summer here means perpetual road maintenance, just like home... which means a considerable length of road in the process of being re-sealed... which means flying rocks... which means a crack in Tuck's "windscreen" ... which I don't have to pay for. ;) Also, the "implies" symbol is wonderful... I'll keep the many repeated "which means" for the non-mathy people, but "⇒" is so much shorter...), the Apex people dropped me off at the airport. The driver had been to Canada - they took a scenic bus tour from Calgary to Kamloops. It snowed the whole time and all he saw was low cloud and snowy forest. :p

Chilled at the airport for a while, at a delightful cheese scone (which came with a packet of butter... I mention this for a reason), listened to a surprising number of people being summoned in that too-patient "we are very annoyed with you" voice to go to their gate, as they'd checked in but didn't get on the plane (and everyone on the plane was waiting for them to show up to leave). Eventually, my flight rolled around (flew around? Technically the plane would have rolled to the gate...). A lovely three-and-a-bit hour flight (filled with National Geographic on wolves and the ocean... not the same episode, that would be an odd mix :p) brought me to a new continent! (Unless you're of the camp that Australia and NZ are both part of the continent of Oceania, but I would consider nz to be an isolated island.)

I'm sure you've all seen this by now, but it makes me smile. :)


Unrelated to anything really - something I wanted to mention weeks ago but never got around to it (or maybe I did and I just forgot :p - if so, well... we all know I'm a bit scatter brained...) One of the real-estate companies down here is called "Hoamz" ... which to me anyhow, sounds like they're trying to be super "cool" or "gangsta" or "hipster" (I obviously to not have a very good grasp of those definitions :p) but mostly makes me think of phloem. Z.
ALSO. Veggies. Veggie singular, or occasionally veg. Not here. Its vege. Which I'd pronounce "veeg"... not so.
And "brekkie" is a widely used and socially acceptable form for breakfast, which makes me very happy. :D

Okay. Australia. IS HOT! Yeeeeesh! No wonder everybody spends all their time at the beach! Arriving and getting customs/baggage/phone/internet/transportation all went ridiculously smoothly (when we got to Auckland, it did not :p )! I had kept the little butter pack that came with my scone... thus I declared that I had "fruit/nuts/dairy" on my form. The lady at customs didn't even make me pull out my hiking boots or anything, just sent me on my merry way, butter or not. Awesome. Before long, I had stashed the bag with my sleeping bag and warm clothes at a storage place in the airport and was following the "Train" signs through the airport.

If you thought Vancouver had good transit (I have no idea if you do. I did. But it is true that I haven't got much to compare it to. Until now.), its got nothing on Sydney! They've got trains going pretty much everywhere - skytrain type trains (half underground, half not). Except they're WAY longer and DOUBLE DECKER! (as in, the train has two floors... not two trains driving on top of one another. Just in case anyone was confused :p ). Also, the underground skytrain stations are usually pretty cold. These ones are rather warm (but cooler than outside, I guess... not saying much :p ) Screens and l.e.d. signs everywhere saying when the next train is coming, where its going, what the next stop is, etc. Scan you ticket to get in - don't loose it - scan it to get out again. Sweet. (Not honour-system transit like Vancouver haha). A few minutes brought me from the airport to Sydney Central Station, which, by the way, is huge.

This is where the fun beings.

I had booked a few nights at the Sydney Central YHA, which is right across the street from the train station (okay, the train station is huge, but it is technically across the street :p )... so I crossed the street, and walked into the Lobby.

I'm greeted by a cheerful man swinging his feet as he sits on the counter. "Hello! Welcome to Sydney! Do you have a booking? As you can see, its not a normal day here at the yha. We've experienced a massive electrical fire and the whole building has been evacuated!" Except apparently the lobby. :p Nobody was hurt, they just don't have any power or fire system in place any more, so people can't stay there. Now, all the hostels, even the big ones, in New Zealand were pretty small. This is not how the Sydney hostels work. There are two YHAs within a five minute walk of each other, and numerous other (equally large) hostels also along the same two streets. Since nobody can stay at the Central YHA, they poor people there have found themselves with the logistic nightmare of relocating over 500 (yes, five hundred) individuals to other accommodation in the area. So the lovely people at Sydney Central sent my around the corner and down the street to the other YHA in the area, who get to sort everyone out (lucky them ;) )!.

I've got to hand it to their people and whoever is in charge - they're doing a fantastic job. Sydney is a pretty popular place, so it isn't as if there is a large amount of space (if any) at any given hostel in the area. Some people are being sent off to other YHAs - "The Rocks" (near the Opera house), or down to the Bondi Beach YHA, while others are being depositted in the non-yha hostels closer by. So the two people here who were expecting a quiet night at work this evening have instead been relocating several hundred rather confused individuals. (Not just the two of them haha - pretty much everyone who works here is here right now.)


Currently awaiting the bus they've arranged to take those of us bound for Bondi on our merry way. :)

Cheers from the land of Oz!

(my camera is buried somewhere in my backpack and I haven't taken very many pictures anyhow :p )