Binarynomad

So my friend Iris decided it was time to take a vacation and it just so happened she knew someone (me) living in Australia, so she decided to fly out and see how things were down-under. I’ve been holding off doing some exploring because I knew I had friends visiting while I was over here and it’s a lot more fun sharing experiences.

For sanity’s sake, I am chopping this up into four separate posts:

1. [Welcome To The Gold Coast][101]
2. [Climbing Sydney][102]
3. [Swimming Through The Forest][103]
4. [Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig][104]

Warning, these are long posts, but I have included photos 🙂 click the “Read the rest of this entry” to venture forth…

Read the rest of this entry »

After being rained out half way through our last visit to Currumbin Wildlife Sancturary we figured it was time to give it another shot.

The additional photos have been appended onto the end of the original “Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary” album

This time around, we headed out early (8:30amish) to catch the “Wombat Feeding Show”. Once there, passed by some Koalas but found that they hadn’t woken up yet. So we continued on along the train tracks (on a footpath) to the other side of the freeway, where the rest of the sanctuary was located. After getting a bit lost (it was the maps fault, I swear!), we finally found the feeding show.

We watched as a trainer coaxed out one of the three wombats in the habitat to get some food. While he was munching away, she took some time to go over the wombat lifestyle, did some Q&A, and then headed out.

At this point our bodies took a cue from the sleeping wombats, and either demanded sleep or coffee, (coffee seemed a much better idea, given the random wildlife wandering around in the area 🙂 ). After discovering all the food/kiosks didn’t have anything better than drip coffee, we caught the train back to the main entrance where cappuccinos and flat whites waited. We caffeinated, played with the brain-eaters, and then back on the train to see the wild life show.

The show was fun, they had dingos, lizards, birds, decapitated mice, frightened children, the usual. Afterwards was a photo-op with the bush-tailed possum and a lizard.

We then grabbed some chips (fries) for lunch and rode the train to kangaroo country (only to find all of them on break, it was mid-day, full sun exposure, no-one was moving), so we decided to meander over to the Tasmanian Devil exhibit.

The trainers dropped by to give a feeding/talk about the devil, which was a good thing, he seemed quite comfy in his log and we wouldn’t have gotten much more of a look other than his little snout. Luckily, since food was about, he trotted out. We learned how they are mostly solitary night scavengers, and how their numbers have dwindled since a strange disease has been spreading since the 1950’s. (some think it is a natural selection disease, keeping down the inbreeding occurring in the population since it is only transfered, by bites, to other devils with the same genetic family).

After all that, it was time to head home and relax.

Today was pretty relaxed, after picking up both Sally and Kristen from the college, we headed over to Broadbeach to do a bit of shopping. They both needed swimsuits and I tagged along to play with my camera. After hitting a few shops in a mall, we decided lunch was in order and happened to be drawn by a wonderful smell to a teppanyaki place. If you’ve ever eaten at Benihana’s, then you’ve had teppanyaki (the only difference was that this didn’t come with a show). After finishing up there, we headed over to Surfers to grab some basics from the supermarket, some ice cream from the gelato store, and coffee from Starbucks.

This last Sunday, Sally, Kristen, and I all headed out to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. It’s a lot like the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary that Kristen and I visited a last month, but this was 30 minutes closer (and without any toll road costs). We were lucky to get there before May 1st, they were running a special on entry tickets, if you paid an extra $5, you get a year long pass (sweet). We got the yearly passes (Sally got one because there was a high chance we’d go again before she left), and headed into the park. Sally got her picture taken with Koalas, we wandered through the reptile exhibits, rode the train over to Kangaroo country, fed the roos, saw some LARGE crocs, and then had to pack up rather quickly because it started to downpour (monsoon floods and such).

Sorry it’s been so quiet lately, recently I’ve been busy working to get a photo gallery setup and hope it will be up and running by Wednesday.

Meanwile, here is a little catchup:

Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

A few weeks ago, Kristen and I gassed up the car, and headed north to Brisbane to visit the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. One of the first things we discovered was to “never again, use (www.whereis.com.au) for driving directions”…..EVER! The site seems to have some aversion to telling the user when you need to change from one highway to another. (it also doesn’t help that they don’t seem to believe in North or South, they use the local suburb names, for example, they don’t say “drive 880 South”, they say “drive 880 San Leandro”, so it helps to have intimate knowledge of the local suburbs). As we tried to find our way around we quickly discovered we need to budget for toll costs for the roads. (We’ve been spoiled living in California with all our FREEways 🙂 ). Eventually we made it. Lone Pine is a great place, one wonderful thing we discovered was that they don’t have a problem with the visitors being up close and personal with the animals (not counting the crocs, dingos, and tazzie devils). There was this one small (unmanned) gate we passed through that led to a fenced in park area, with picnic tables, trees, and tons of Kangaroos. You can walk upto the herd and pet them, unsupervised. We fed some birds, got Koala Hugs, hung with the roos and had a fun day.

Fun In The Sun

Yesterday had a constant rain that ended up in thunder and lightning (god I miss that) into the night, but today I woke up to a right blue sunny sky and decided it was a great day to head out and play in the surf. The waves were perfect for beginner surfers so I grabbed a board from the local shop and paddled out. I caught a few waves, not for extended periods of time, but I was up 🙂 I practiced keeping my balance sitting on the board between waves, and also discovered out that I really need to work out my arms a lot more (you get tired real quickly paddling back to your spot into the waves). Unfortunately I had to end it when my knee shifted while I was trying to push up on by board on a big wave, luckly it wasn’t too bad, but I’m currently nursing it and going soft until it isn’t so tender.

In three weeks I’m meeting with an instructer to learn how to Kite Surf grin

Stitches Are Out

On Friday I finally got my stitches removed and they told me that I don’t have any melanoma cells. (yay) Although I think I’ll take out my own stitches next time, that nurse seemed blood thristy with that talon of a knife that she was using. I had to have bandges put on afterwards becuase she cut into my leg and it was bleeding.

I would have to say that today ranked as “interesting”.

For some reason my body decided (with out consulting me of course) that 7am was the perfect time to wake up and not fall back asleep. So it was an early rise for me, some tea, some toast with chedder cheese, and cartoons. (not too bad). Kristen and I had talked about heading off to the beach in the early part of the day since I had an appointment around 3pm.

We grabbed our stuff, slathered ourselves with sunscreen and headed out. I wanted to pass by a surf shop I knew and rent a body board, but to our dismay we discovered that it didn’t open for another hour or so. (oh well) We headed over to our favorite spot (due to the absence of metered parking and untold hordes of beach goers) on the beach. We set out our stuff and then I decided to explore a few buildings that we had always seen (while waiting for my sunscreen to absorb). Much to my surprise, I found a shop that rents both surfboards and body boards (right at our favorite spot…yay). I quickly made it back to Kristen, grabbed the car keys, headed to the car, grabbed some id and money, went back to the shop, and got a body board. I quickly set upon the ocean, had loads of fun (and exhaustion) fighting and playing in the waves, I met someone called Craig, and we chatted in the surf for a while (about both the states and Australia) and then went our different ways. After I returned, Kristen headed out to play some, she caught some good waves, and then she came back. I played a little more before returning the board back to the shop. At this point we were both ready to head home.

As we approached the car, a dreaded realization dawned on us, I never gave the car key back to Kristen…OH CRAP, IT WAS IN THE OCEAN! To top this off was the fact that Kristen didn’t have any of her keys with her, they were back at the house, but the house was locked and the house keys were in the car. ARGH! Luckly, I had signed us up for RACQ (think car insurance and AAA in one) roadside assistance. (thank god) All we had to do was contact RACQ, get them to break into our car, so I could get my wallet and house keys, then find a way to the house, so we could pickup Kristens keys, get back to the car and finally drive home. (guh). So first we try dialing RACQ, “We’re sorry but this number has been disconnected….” (WHAT?!?) So we try dialing directory assistance, “Yes that number is correct, you shouldn’t have any problems dialing it, try contacting your service provider”. (dialing customer service) “I’m sorry but we can’t help you, let me transfer you to directory assistance” (ARRRGH!!!!). Somehow Kristen gets her phone to dial RACQ and a driver shows up within 10 minutes, pops our car door and we get to our stuff. We tell him what happened and he offers to give me a ride to our house if his next job is in that direction. The job comes in, and I’m on my way home. (there was not enough room in the truck, so Kristen had to wait). I thank him for the ride, get Kristens keys, call a cab back to our car, show up and then get us all home. AND…..I still had 30 min to take a shower and make my appointment. (whew)

Remember the last post where I mentioned the skin cancer stuff. We’ll it turns out that one of the moles tested was “dysplastic”, meaning “is not cancerous, but has a good chance in becoming cancerous in time”. (translation = cut the sucker out). I had to return to the clinic to have the mole removed. Another local ansthetic, larger cutting (required 4 stitches), and a bandage with instructions to leave alone for at least 2 days (2 weeks for the stitches). (oh, and -$200 out of my pocket). It was good that we caught this, but technaclly it is not over yet. 1) They have to send in the cutting, and test for any melanoma, if any is found, I have to go in again and they want to take a bigger cutting to make sure it is all gone. If none is found, I’m all good. 2) when changing the bandage tonight I noticed another mole that didn’t seem right that we missed on the initial scan. I’m going to have to go back and have them check that one out. (I really hope that this is the end of it)

Kristen and I decided to head out and check a few pubs (being St Pattys day and all). We cleaned up a bit and decided to walk to this one place that was nearby (so we didn’t have to drive home). It was an “ok” place, live music, but small, and it seemed much more of a “locals only” place to me. While we were standing around, Kristen got about 4 visitors, and I found $150 on the ground (woot). We decided to head into Surfers Paradise after we finished our drinks (especially now that we have cab fare, and I was now buying 🙂 ). We wander around, tons of people, so much so that most of the pubs we tried were rejecting new people because they were full. We settled on this one pub, pretty nice place in my reckoning, good mix of people, room to sit or stand, optional food if needed, live music (except the band didn’t show up that night so management was pissed). We asked for rum and coke, and pretty much got rum with coke coloring (the bartener even asked if that was enough rum or not) Kicked back for a while, and enjoyed the scenery. After a while, we decided to wander some more, debated on coffee or home, and home won. After some failed attempts at calling a cab company, we cornered a driver that had pulled into a gas station for a break and got a ride home.

So over all it was a really good day, a few twists and turns, but no real stress.

Hope you all enjoy yours. (It so weird being in the future (this timezone) like this, we pretty much experience everything before the rest of you.)

During Kristens orientation, she found a very disturbing fact. Statistics show that (1 in 2) people in Australia get some form of Skin Cancer. This is a pretty sobering fact for me, you see I grew up in Cyprus (nice sunny greek island) where I ran around most of the time bare backed. I always hated (and still do) sunscreen because it was so slimy and oily, but I only remember getting really burned a few times in my 10+ years there. One price I ended up paying was that I have a large number of freckles and moles (compared to most Americans). Then a few years ago during a checkup, a doctor mentioned to me that he saw a few spots he was concerned about. We decided it would be best to remove them and do a biopsy, and much to my happiness, nothing was found. Well the other night I noticed one very dark mole on my leg that got me concerned and I figured I should to the smart thing and have myself checked out. Since skin cancer is so prevalent here, I wasn’t too surprised to see a number of “Skin Cancer Clinics” while driving around, so today I picked one to visit in Surfers Paradise. I didn’t know if they could do anything for me since I was not covered by Australian health care, but it turns out that a full body check was only ($60 AUD), so I dove in. After a full body check, the doctor said I was pretty healthy and that most of my spots are pretty normal. She did find (3) that she wanted to check out, so she gave me a local anesthetic and then cored out each of the spots. I am to call back in a week to see what the results are (wish me luck).

Over all I’m very glad I decided to have this checkup, it only cost me a total of ($160 AUD which is only $117 USD) for a better piece of mind.

BTW: nowadays, they have non-oily (not really, but close enough) sunscreen which I wear anytime I play in the sun. Take care of your skin, it is one of the most abused organs of your whole body.

…Better, stronger, faster…

Life is good again, we are finally connected (as my desktop hungrily devours our bandwidth with over 150mb+ of downloads for updates). You should start seeing my IM and Skype active again 🙂

Lately we (Gold Coast) has been battered by a major storm, huge waves, beaches closed, tons of rain, the works. It isn’t really cold (72f), I’m still walking around in shorts and sandals (but Kristen is wrapped up in sweats). If this storm keeps up, you can expect to see me online for the next few days.

Today Kristen and I wandered around a bit, we first went shopping and then decided it was a good day to hit the movies. It’s amazing how mixed up the schedule is here. On one hand they are showing “Munich” which was just released as we left the states, but on the other hand “Aeon Flux” is due out soon (that was out in early Dec 2005). We settled on seeing “Firewall” which was pretty much your standard Harrison Ford movie, family man who gets involved with people because of his job and then ends up saving/defending his family at the end. (no surprises). Afterwards, we drove over to Surfers Paradise and (indulged in a minor cure for home sickness) visited Starbucks. We found (much to our surprise) that it was open every night until 12am AND that they will take our American Starbuck Cards (woot). I enjoyed a white chocolate mocha while Kristen found comfort in a vanilla latte. (aaah comfort food).

After we headed back home, we found that the internet connection had been provisioned, so I got everything setup and finally closed off the night watching “Back to the Future” and “The Borne Identity”