wanderings

The Crowne Entertainment Complex is this gigantic casino on the Yarra River. So after leaving the lab on Friday, we went to the casino to see what was going on. We walked through a row of lighted trees, and it totally reminded me of the Christmas season. All that was missing was some lively Christmas music and maybe some light-up reindeer on the sidewalk. Here's a picture of the place, but it's really dark.
We got dinner at the casino, and here's Michelle with some Japanese food. There are these sushi places that sell just sushi rolls for pretty cheap, but every time we want to find them, we can't find them! but seriously, they're EVERYWHERE - one of those things that are there when you don't want them, and not there when you do. It's one of our goals to find one when we want it, one of these days.
Oh, and here's our own version of okonomiyaki, like the Japan PRIME-rs had, although theirs must've been better.
The inside of the casino was pretty huge - we didn't really walk on the actual casino floor much, but I noticed that the air was pretty good. It's because on 7/1/07, Australia passed a law that bans smoking indoors. Awesome. (: But other than that, it was pretty similar to the Vegas casinos, although it was newer. There was a full-on cinema inside, weird thing is, pretty much all the cinemas only play American movies. There were a couple of show rooms, and clubs, as well as a couple of bars inside the casino. We visited a couple of the pubs, and it was interesting seeing all the different people. There was a live band that played oldies at our favorite one.
The lobby of the casino hotel was very nice and spacious as well. I'm not sure if you can tell, but the ceiling is basically a whole bunch of glass - it kind of looked like rain.
We lost track of time, but luckily hopped on the last train out of the city.

On the way back from Thomas's seminar at Clayton last week, which is the main campus of Monash Uni, we passed by a large mall called Chadstone Shopping Centre, and decided to visit and see what a shopping mall in Australia is like. Actually, it was more like Saleh really wanted to go and dragged all us girls along. :P [on the train]
And then we had to figure out how to actually get there, and got a little confused by the bus system and which side of the road we were supposed to be on. After more than a month we're still a little confused by the road system, but by the time we leave, we'll get it down. We got off the train at our beloved Caulfield campus and had to ask a taxi driver for specific directions on how to get to the mall.
We figured it out and got on the bus. We'd never gone on the bus before, but they're pretty similar to the ones in the States, although the seats are slightly cushier and more comfortable, and the whole vehicle is higher up.
The mall was pretty similar to malls in the states, but the shop interior designing and overall design aspects were very unique. Here's the outside of a shop dedicated entirely to tea, and we got to sample lots of different kinds including one that tasted exactly like hot apple cider!
We wandered around the mall and came across a Target! It was really big and seemed a little more high-end than the Targets at home. Then we headed back to the Claremont to get ready for dinner at our friend Anil's apartment.
Anil is this guy from India that we met at the Claremont. He studies IT at Monash so we bump into him sometimes in our building. Here's all of us squished on the couch.
He made us a lOT of Indian food, and it was all very very good. There was rice with chicken, and naan with this spinach stuff and this eggplant stuff, followed by this desert of sponge-like pastry substance in rosewater syrup with tons of fresh fruit.
He kept wanting us to finish it ALL, and it was all so good that we were stuffed.
We had decided to bring our special microwave cake to add to the mix of delicious food, but this time, bundt cake with the lemon frosting and Milo! :P
Sunday left us all lazy and so we slept in. However, early afternoon Saleh and I decided to go into the City, since we couldn't find anyone else. Apparently it was just bad timing, and the rest of the girls had just stepped out of their rooms for a short period of time. It was a beautiful day in the City, and we basically just wandered around all afternoon. We are both extremely bad at directions, as evidenced last week too. xP Anyway, we strolled by (really fast) many places that we hadn't before.

Quite interesting were the Public Baths, which we had been very curious about. Inside it was actually just a gym and several large swimming pools. They're just called Public Baths because in the 1800's, the water in the River was very polluted, so they constructed this building for people to swim in. It's now over 100 years old and party of Melbourne heritage, so they can't change it and the name stuck, but it makes for an interesting structure.
We also passed by the Melbourne Gaols, which is actually the old Melbourne city jail, much like Alcatraz. Didn't want to go in because it might be haunted. oOooOO... just kidding! Es[ecially since the little girl I accidentally took a picture of is so cute! (:
Here's a view of the City from an angle we hadn't seen before.

Last time we passed the Royal Exhibition Building on the way to the IMAX movie, it was night time and there were strange night creatures hiding in the trees. In the day time, it is beautiful in the middle of a park. There are so many random parks in Melbourne - I love it!
Behind the Royal Exhibition Building was the Melbourne Museum, which is actually free with a student ID card, but we didn't go in since someone forgot his ID card..
And there were guys of all ages playing hockey on unicycles in front of the museum! How they do that, I'm not quite sure since riding a unicycle would be challenging enough.
And I love how there are random old buildings, mostly churches, in the middle of busy city streets, but they pretty much all look the same..
There are sidewalk artists just like in San Francisco! This piece was amazing, and then we walked a little further, and there was this old man drawing tiny pieces on the sidewalk, which was a little sad.
We decided to head home, after snapping a couple pictures of the City at dusk.
The work is going fine, although slowly. My mentor, Anushka, returned from her Bulgaria trip and we heard back from her today. I'm making good progress on my Matlab code, and am running jobs on Nimrod, although sometimes it takes a long while, so there's lots of down time. However, I think I may have found parameter values that stabilize the model, and I'm waiting to hear back about my results. (: