Canberra in the
the springtime
Of all the seasons, none arrives with such exuberance as spring does. In Canberra, the seasons are perhaps more pronounced and distinctive than any other city in Australia, and so it is the perfect place to observe the arrival of spring. Strolling around the lake or around campus, you can see the delicate blossoms of hundreds of cherry blossom trees, and smell long forgotten scents that linger in the air. You can see the changes in the people as well – in their clothes and in their moods. Thick coats and jumpers, in dull shades of black and grey, have been shed and cast to the back of cupboards, where they will lie dormant for nine months. There is nothing like those first few days of spring, where the sky is clear and the suns rays give a soft gentle warmth and everything seems perfect; the kind of day where you want to do all your tasks out in the sun.
The last two weeks were quite hectic ones and so passed relatively quickly. Last Tuesday I delivered another one of those lucrative lectures, this time for a 1st year compulsory stats course. Hearing about my lecture last semester, one of the stats lecturers decided that it would be helpful, for her students, to incorporate my ‘Dealing with Stats’ lecture for semester two, into one of her lecture slots. So after a few meetings and several hours tweaking my slides it came time to deliver a lecture to the ‘STAT1008’ class at ANU.
The lecture was held in the largest lecture theatre on campus, MCCT1, and at least 50 people had shown up. I’d decided to dress up a little, and thought it would be a good time to debut the ‘twin polo shirts’ outfit. I’ve seen it a fair bit in Melbourne, but I’ve yet to see someone in Canberra wearing two polo shirts at once. It sounds kind of a silly outfit now that I think of it. My heart was palpitating wildly in anticipation as I stood in front of the lectern looking out into a sea of sceptical faces. I could imagine that they were thinking: What does this guy know, and why is he trying to teach us these things?
After Bronwen (the lecturer for the course) introduced me, I got underway, rather shakily actually. The problem with the lecture this time compared to last time, was the motivations of the audience. Last time I was preaching to people who had actively made a decision to come along, but this time I was preaching to an audience that probably didn’t want to be there and probably had much better things to do, such as study for mid-semester exams. This is the reason I was so nervous to begin with.
After a while I settled down and got into the swing of things and began to engage and captivate the audience, I could see it in some of their faces. A few walked out, but that was to be expected. I know when I was in first year, if someone tried to teach me study strategies I would have walked straight out. I guess that is symptomatic of human behaviour though: people are quite resistant to advice and tend to only appreciate it in hindsight, when they’ve made the mistake for themselves. So who knows, maybe at the end of the year a few students will think, Hmm what that guy, who looked like Mr. Bean, said really makes sense now, if only I’d listened to him then.
But it made it all worthwhile seeing the faces of the students who I was clearly getting through to; I know that perhaps I’d helped them somehow. At one stage in the lecture I almost burst into laughter. My neighbour, the one who calls me Tee-Rav or Travisty depending on his mood, walked into the theatre late and saw me lecturing. The look of bewilderment on his face was priceless. He hurriedly turned around to leave, but then turned around once more to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. He was spinning in circles, like a dog chasing its tail.
I was in a cheerful mood when I finished my last mid-semester exam on Thursday morning, as it was my last piece of assessment before the break and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I could go back to Melbourne.
On Friday I spent the day finishing off all my errands, packed and then went along to an end of term barbeque organised by some of my actuarial classmates. They’d told me to meet them at a certain barbeque area by the lake, but the problem is, there is a multitude of barbeque areas around the lake, in fact perhaps the stretch of road by the lake has probably one of the highest rates of barbeques per kilometre in the world, or at least the country. I found myself at a rowing club, in the middle of a wedding and in an obscure carpark, before finally finding them.
It was a perfect spot really: The barbeques sat nestled between a lovely pagoda and a bank of pink vibrant cherry blossom trees in full bloom, with the sun setting against the reflective calm lake in the background. But with all my troubles finding the place, I knew it was not meant to be a perfect evening. For one thing, the lovely bank of cherry blossom trees I mentioned, had a sleeping vagrant underneath them, who I woke up as I walked past. He spent the whole time mumbling, cursing and rambling loudly, slowly getting closer and closer before asking us for a cigarette. After the sun set, there was very little light and it became cold rather quickly. I was in charge of bringing drinks and bread, but confusion between our roles resulted in yet another problem. You see, I neglected to bring a corkscrew, as I classified that as a barbeque utensil, which was Robert’s job to bring. Robert classified a corkscrew under the same category as drinks. So in the end, we had wine but nothing to open it with. It didn’t bother me; I wasn’t going to drink it anyway.
Chris, a nice guy in a batman t-shirt that I’d just met, said he’d heard that if you wrap a towel around the bottle and bang it against a tree, the cork will pop out. We all failed to comprehend the physics behind why it would work and I couldn’t recall a ‘Mythbusters’ episode where that had covered it, but these guys looked in need of a drink; their eyes were flicking side to side in desperation. So I volunteered to be the fool who would bang the bottle against the tree. Thwack, thwack, thwack… Nothing. The cork didn’t pop out, but truthfully I was just glad that I wasn’t covered in wine, with shards of glass lodged in my hands.
The next brilliant idea was to push the cork into the bottle. That failed. When it came to combining the two ideas and smashing the bottle against the tree after half pushing the cork in, I felt it was time to leave. I said goodbye, used my phone as a torch, and walked back to my car. All in all, it was an amusing evening and probably was more enjoyable than if everything had gone smoothly.
I’d decided to surprise Sherly by showing up a day earlier than I’d said I would, so I drove through the night after leaving the barbeque and ended up outside her door with ‘Krispy Kreme’ doughnuts in hand. By the big smirk on her face, I could tell she was happy to see me, or maybe just the doughnuts!
The next night I took my Dad to watch an A-league football match for his birthday. We were part of the record breaking fervent crowd at the Telstra dome that saw Melbourne Victory beat Sydney FC 3-2. It was quite a fun evening actually and Dad seemed to enjoy himself.
It is great to be back again and I’m looking forward to spending the next two weeks down here, even if I will have to do several assignments.
Until next time,
Take care.
the springtime
Of all the seasons, none arrives with such exuberance as spring does. In Canberra, the seasons are perhaps more pronounced and distinctive than any other city in Australia, and so it is the perfect place to observe the arrival of spring. Strolling around the lake or around campus, you can see the delicate blossoms of hundreds of cherry blossom trees, and smell long forgotten scents that linger in the air. You can see the changes in the people as well – in their clothes and in their moods. Thick coats and jumpers, in dull shades of black and grey, have been shed and cast to the back of cupboards, where they will lie dormant for nine months. There is nothing like those first few days of spring, where the sky is clear and the suns rays give a soft gentle warmth and everything seems perfect; the kind of day where you want to do all your tasks out in the sun.
The last two weeks were quite hectic ones and so passed relatively quickly. Last Tuesday I delivered another one of those lucrative lectures, this time for a 1st year compulsory stats course. Hearing about my lecture last semester, one of the stats lecturers decided that it would be helpful, for her students, to incorporate my ‘Dealing with Stats’ lecture for semester two, into one of her lecture slots. So after a few meetings and several hours tweaking my slides it came time to deliver a lecture to the ‘STAT1008’ class at ANU.
The lecture was held in the largest lecture theatre on campus, MCCT1, and at least 50 people had shown up. I’d decided to dress up a little, and thought it would be a good time to debut the ‘twin polo shirts’ outfit. I’ve seen it a fair bit in Melbourne, but I’ve yet to see someone in Canberra wearing two polo shirts at once. It sounds kind of a silly outfit now that I think of it. My heart was palpitating wildly in anticipation as I stood in front of the lectern looking out into a sea of sceptical faces. I could imagine that they were thinking: What does this guy know, and why is he trying to teach us these things?
After Bronwen (the lecturer for the course) introduced me, I got underway, rather shakily actually. The problem with the lecture this time compared to last time, was the motivations of the audience. Last time I was preaching to people who had actively made a decision to come along, but this time I was preaching to an audience that probably didn’t want to be there and probably had much better things to do, such as study for mid-semester exams. This is the reason I was so nervous to begin with.
After a while I settled down and got into the swing of things and began to engage and captivate the audience, I could see it in some of their faces. A few walked out, but that was to be expected. I know when I was in first year, if someone tried to teach me study strategies I would have walked straight out. I guess that is symptomatic of human behaviour though: people are quite resistant to advice and tend to only appreciate it in hindsight, when they’ve made the mistake for themselves. So who knows, maybe at the end of the year a few students will think, Hmm what that guy, who looked like Mr. Bean, said really makes sense now, if only I’d listened to him then.
But it made it all worthwhile seeing the faces of the students who I was clearly getting through to; I know that perhaps I’d helped them somehow. At one stage in the lecture I almost burst into laughter. My neighbour, the one who calls me Tee-Rav or Travisty depending on his mood, walked into the theatre late and saw me lecturing. The look of bewilderment on his face was priceless. He hurriedly turned around to leave, but then turned around once more to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. He was spinning in circles, like a dog chasing its tail.
I was in a cheerful mood when I finished my last mid-semester exam on Thursday morning, as it was my last piece of assessment before the break and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I could go back to Melbourne.
On Friday I spent the day finishing off all my errands, packed and then went along to an end of term barbeque organised by some of my actuarial classmates. They’d told me to meet them at a certain barbeque area by the lake, but the problem is, there is a multitude of barbeque areas around the lake, in fact perhaps the stretch of road by the lake has probably one of the highest rates of barbeques per kilometre in the world, or at least the country. I found myself at a rowing club, in the middle of a wedding and in an obscure carpark, before finally finding them.
It was a perfect spot really: The barbeques sat nestled between a lovely pagoda and a bank of pink vibrant cherry blossom trees in full bloom, with the sun setting against the reflective calm lake in the background. But with all my troubles finding the place, I knew it was not meant to be a perfect evening. For one thing, the lovely bank of cherry blossom trees I mentioned, had a sleeping vagrant underneath them, who I woke up as I walked past. He spent the whole time mumbling, cursing and rambling loudly, slowly getting closer and closer before asking us for a cigarette. After the sun set, there was very little light and it became cold rather quickly. I was in charge of bringing drinks and bread, but confusion between our roles resulted in yet another problem. You see, I neglected to bring a corkscrew, as I classified that as a barbeque utensil, which was Robert’s job to bring. Robert classified a corkscrew under the same category as drinks. So in the end, we had wine but nothing to open it with. It didn’t bother me; I wasn’t going to drink it anyway.
Chris, a nice guy in a batman t-shirt that I’d just met, said he’d heard that if you wrap a towel around the bottle and bang it against a tree, the cork will pop out. We all failed to comprehend the physics behind why it would work and I couldn’t recall a ‘Mythbusters’ episode where that had covered it, but these guys looked in need of a drink; their eyes were flicking side to side in desperation. So I volunteered to be the fool who would bang the bottle against the tree. Thwack, thwack, thwack… Nothing. The cork didn’t pop out, but truthfully I was just glad that I wasn’t covered in wine, with shards of glass lodged in my hands.
The next brilliant idea was to push the cork into the bottle. That failed. When it came to combining the two ideas and smashing the bottle against the tree after half pushing the cork in, I felt it was time to leave. I said goodbye, used my phone as a torch, and walked back to my car. All in all, it was an amusing evening and probably was more enjoyable than if everything had gone smoothly.
I’d decided to surprise Sherly by showing up a day earlier than I’d said I would, so I drove through the night after leaving the barbeque and ended up outside her door with ‘Krispy Kreme’ doughnuts in hand. By the big smirk on her face, I could tell she was happy to see me, or maybe just the doughnuts!
The next night I took my Dad to watch an A-league football match for his birthday. We were part of the record breaking fervent crowd at the Telstra dome that saw Melbourne Victory beat Sydney FC 3-2. It was quite a fun evening actually and Dad seemed to enjoy himself.
It is great to be back again and I’m looking forward to spending the next two weeks down here, even if I will have to do several assignments.
Until next time,
Take care.
posted by Travvy at 9:45 PM
2 Comments:
U got me that nite, trav! U really really made me think that u're gonna return to melb the next day!!!! LIAR!!!!!!!!!hehehehe
Twin polo shirts? You wanker...
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