eureka!

(Bear with me for quite a long post, but that just means more entertainment for you, and much excitement this past week for me, yah?)

We've been at Monash Uni for over a month now and had not really had a chance to visit the main Monash campus at Clayton. Therefore, on Thursday we decided to take a long lunch and walk through the campus when classes were in session.
Upon arrival, we quickly found out that there was this Multi Cultural Festival going on, it was much like Library Walk when all the clubs table, but this was inside a tent and there was a stage with activities going on. We got there just in time for a children's choir! The little kids were all sooo cute, and they definitely brought back good memories. (CCC -S2- remember those first few performances when we wore those white CCC shirts that are now oh so ancient)
And then Heather tried a kangaroo sausage that one of the clubs was selling! Supposedly it tasted meaty, like beef.
The campus centre was reaally big, and I guess equivalent to our Price Center. There were many many food choices, and lots of places to just chill. There was even a hippie place called Whole Foods where everything was vegan, pretty eclectic, and just chill.
And the science club was out on the lawn promoting an upcoming formal.
The lawn they were on was called Boob Lawn! Just one, not two.
Walking around we even found this random lake in the middle of buildings. (I love Heather's expression :P )
And after looking far and wide for something bioengineering related, our search yielded results. Yay bio(med)engineers!
Then off to the sports complex we went - there were many squash courts - turned ping pong courts with bleachers up top for viewing. Also outside was a humongous field with several practice footy and soccer fields! Why don't we have open space like this? (This is only half of it)
Walking back toward the bus stop, I found the music building. there was a large portrait of a cello player on top. I really wish I had kept it up all this time. I go home, and I really want to play, but it just sounds so horrible! Maybe this next year I'll decide to bring my cello down at some point and enroll in that orchestra class again..
Anyway, there was lots of random artwork all around campus too - just like UCSD!
Basically, the whole Monash Clayton campus reminded me of UCSD, but without the hills and not as big. I'm not complaining though - I could definitely do without the hills. Upon return to the Caulfield campus, there was a rainbow! I guess it was sunny and showering. Look carefully - it's really faint.
Last time we were at the casino, we found out that there was Rockstar Karaoke at one of the clubs on Thursday nights, so we decided to check it out. But first, here's the main entrance of the Crowne, which we hadn't seen before.
So Rock Star Karaoke is basically karaoke..
.. but with a live band playing behind you!

We wanted to try it at first, but it was all booked. Good thing because everybody was rocking out on the stage, and many were regulars, and all the participants were so good! At the end of each set, there was a winner, determined by applause. Talk about crazy hardcore! I don't think I could eVER go up there and do it. And look who joined us! Michelle's mom and sister are here for about a week, so we haven't seen that much of Michelle outside of work, but here she is and her sister, Lisa.
Oh, and by the way, we missed the train that night because we left too late. Oops! But no worries, mates, there were still plenty of taxis around as a last resort, but luckily, we hopped on the last tram out which actually took us to the edge of "our" park on Toorak Street. From there, it was about a 15 minute walk back to the Claremont. It wasn't bad, but we learned our lesson, and the next night we made sure to leave early enough to catch the train back.

Friday night we headed out with some more new friends. A couple German students doing an internship are staying at the Claremont as well for the rest of our stay in Melbourne. (They're leaving a couple days after us.) Anyway, we met up with them at a pub located underneath a Greek Orthodox Church.
But not before posing with some statues on Swanston Street. I believe this one is called The Three Businessmen Who Brought Their Own Lunch. There is so much random public art on the Melbourne streets!
Anyway, back to the Greek Orthodox church. It was a little trippy because behind the band that was playing, there was a wall FULL of Jesus portraits. I liked the design aspect, but the concept was a little strange to me.
Saturday morning rolled around and we met up with Michelle and family at the Southern Cross station and hopped on the V-line train out to Ballarat. The V-line is a little like Amtrak, because it goes long distances.
Ballarat is a suburb of Melbourne about 1.5 hours by train out in the middle of the desert. We sped through many suburbs, green grass with sheep(!), construction sites and large plots of land before arriving. In short, Ballarat is to Victoria (the state that Melbourne is in) as Sacramento is to California. Like that analogy? It was one of the first sites in Victoria to be settled because of the gold that was found. The gold rush in Australia was several decades later than the one in California, though. Since this suburb is so far away from Melbourne, many buildings were still in the style of the 1800's, and there was a park called Sovereign Hill that remained preserved so that visitors can get a feel of what life was like during the gold-mining period.
On a side note, because Ballarat is located in the desert, it gets eXTREMELY cold! It was crazy, I got back to the City later and felt that it was actually warm at a whopping somewhere around 9degC! Good thing there were little fire pits and furnaces all around the park.
There was even a special tour given in Chinese! I guess lots of Chinese people come to the park. Generally speaking, it's pretty trippy because given that I'm in Australia, you'd think I'd hear and see less Asian people, but no. I actually hear more Mandarin here than in Cupertino (which I thought was pretty Asian already), and it's pretty interesting to pick up random bits of conversation as I walk along the street.
All the buildings were so cute - it almost made me want to live in the days of the gold mines, but I'm sure I would not have looked at it in the same way had I lived back then.
There were many shops along the main street that we could go into. Some of them were actual shops, and others were for display, or a combination of both. I guess this is how they sold medicine?
Everything, though, was in the old style, and even the people working in them were dressed up and reenacting what people would have done during the time period.
Quite the fashionable they are, no?
I can't imagine having to wear these dresses in this weather.
And then there was a mine tour that took us underground, and had displays showing what miners did. Here is our tour guide.
Apparently all the miners in the area were Cornish, which is somewhere in Europe, and had been tin miners in their home country. So when they got here, they were experienced in mining and therefore were pretty successful. It's quite crazy - gold is found in quartz, and basically what the miners did was look for quartz. Then they'd hollow out the quartz from underground and maybe get half an ounce of gold from half a ton of quartz! It seems like a really small amount, but even such a small amount is obviously very valuable. The mine they took us through initially was of course one that they had made especially for the purpose of taking visitors through, but surprising thing is, when they were creating the attraction, they were digging and unexpectedly stumbled upon a real mine that had been privately owned! How exciting! So we got to see and actually be in a real mine. Here we go!
Just kidding, there's not really any pictures from actually inside the place because it was too dark.

We walked around for a bit and came across a bowling alley! It was a little different because there were no holes in the ball, so you basically had to heave the solid wood ball granny style down the lane. There were pins at the end of the lane that you had to knock down, but thing is, the highest scoring thing was to knock down everything except the front center pin! How strange. The ball wasn't that heavy, but me having not worked out in a while, had a little difficulty and the ball didn't even make it to the pins.
But hey, the lane was veerrrrry long.
And then when we were waiting for the stagecoach ride, the redcoats came!
And then here we are on the stagecoach. It took us around the whole place, so we got to see all of Sovereign Hill without having to hike around in the mud, although we ended up doing that anyway.
I mentioned that there were people dressed up in olden style just walking around, right? We found a family with these adorable little children! They were counting how many pictures they had taken in total that day - we were number 5.
The time was just wandering around the town and exploring all the different buildings and things.
Outhouse, anyone? Too bad it was locked..
Uh oh..
Time for school!
Hard at work sewing and ironing and conversing.
This is how we roll -- Stagecoach.
-- Horse.
-- Rocking horse.
Then it was almost time to leave Sovereign Hill.

In the interest of time (and the cold), we did not stop to pan for gold, although we did watch some people try to strike it rich.
Off to the Red Hill Mines we went. Heigh-ho! Actually, this was a self-guided tour, which was pretty neat. We followed a voice over and it basically told us the story of a man and his nephew and how they found gold. Pretty exciting stuff, because there were also 3D holographic images that appeared at one point on the tour. However, the voice over stopped working midway through, and so we had to find out way back to the surface in the dark. Quite the experience - did not expect to be trekking through a "real" mine guided only by cell phone lights.

And of course we had to check out how the miners actually got to Australia in the first place.
And THEN it was time to leave. We hopped onto the coach which took us back into the town of Ballarat, and walked around in the cold for a bit. Here we are at the train station, warming up before heading back out.
And even parts of Ballarat itself was kept in old 1800's style.
Walking around, it seemed like there was just one main street through the town, and most of the shops were closed. Nonetheless, it was fun just exploring. I can now say that we are pretty much pro at the cars-on-the-other-side-of-the-road business, after almost getting run over many times. And there really was a St. Patrick! Happy Birthday, Heather. :P
Here's my store - whee! Well, kind of.
Michelle and her mom and sister went on a Chocolate Tour the other day all around Melbourne, and we want to do the same. But chocolate is always tempting, and here was a store devoted entirely to chocolate, complete with a chocolate sculpture!
After a day of walking around in the cold, we decided to get dinner at Hog's Breathe. Yum.
The portions were pretty large, and Liz and I wanted to take the rest of it home. However, we soon found out that in Australia, it's illegal to take leftovers away from a restaurant unless the place specifically mentions that there is take away available. Also, tipping is neither required or expected, although we almost always tip a a little anyway, just to make things easier. And you always have to go up to the cashier to get and pay the bill - none of the bringing the bill to you and paying at the table business that exists in the States. Some random restaurant facts for you.

Anyway, across the street was the biggest Macca's I have EVER seen! It spanned the entire block with a full on McCafe, bakery and of course the normal items with TONS of comfortable seating.
Then it was time to head home after a long and cold, but good day.
After a good night's rest, Sunday was another day spent at Caulfield (Monash Uni). This time, though, not to work, but to help out with Open Day, which is basically Admit Day but for people that would like to apply to the school, not those that are already admitted. So I guess a better way to say it would be that it's Open House for the Uni. We were to help out with the demonstrations, and talk to people that dropped by, but the room we were stationed at was a little out of the way, and thus we didn't get many visitors. We demonstrated VTC technology - on the screen are shots of our lab members at the Clayton campus.
It was kind of amusing because people would walk in and from our end, get unnerved at the fact that they were on the screen, and the people at the other end were a little confused as to where our voices were coming from. Here we are sporting our stylish purple IT Open Day shirts.
And then it got so "busy" that we ended up playing frisbee.
I'll admit, it wasn't the safest thing to do, but after Open Day, I decided to walk around the City and poke through some dodgy alleys. Inspired by some photographs I had seen on display in Federation Square, I decided to try taking my own artistic photos, although they surely are not on par with those on display. With just a couple minutes of daylight left, I walked through a lane that Wojtec suggested and found a quaint little alley street bustling with locals and some unique graffiti artwork.
Other dodgy lanes turned out dodgy indeed and I was left staring at a blank walls.
However, as the day turned to night, I meandered my way down Swanston Street and stopped at various buildings and spots we had walked by countless times. I have always found these pink birds in the tree on the corner of the City Square somewhat intriguing, they remind me of Peeps, no? This sculpture is actually of 200 hot pink pigeons, called Pigeons of Melbourne, created especially for the winter season to bring some "winter cheer" to otherwise gloomy days (http://www.adonline.id.au/news/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1181540048&archive=). Pretty random, and ironic, because there are already waaaay too many pigeons in Melbourne.
The State Library was pretty nice inside, although when I got there, it was just about to close - perfect timing, eh?
And then Melbourne Central station is actually the bottom floor of a rather large mall with a dome roof and a tall brick building called the Shot Factory. I believe the Shot Factory was used to make ammo for shotguns, once upon a time. Someone might have mentioned it in passing.
Anyway, it was dark by this time, so I took the train from Melbourne Central back to Flinders Street Station.
But then, I decided to take a walk along the Yarra River. The night view of the City is absolutely amazing as well, although my pictures do not quite do justice.
Anyhow, back to work now. Pretty much, I messed up a little running my experiments, and now I need to rerun a lot of jobs and be a lot more careful. It's been good though - I'm getting more proficient in writing Matlab code and using UNIX. Our seminar is next Tuesday, I hope I'll have something constructive to present.