A Month Down Under

I’m fast approaching the one month mark here in Australia, and I wish I had more exciting tales to tell. Arguably my most exciting moment came on my way over, fainting on the Qantas flight. I could make up some exciting adventures like how I tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the long dead corpse of Steve Irwin, but even I know when I’m getting a bit too fanciful.

There have been smaller incidents like seeing HORSE the band in a distant suburb of Sydney, admiring Marshall’s cranberry cotton briefs, finding myself in an executive board room on the 45th floor of Australia Square (oddly a circular building), discovering a male masturbatory device in the shower at the Perth YHA, bowling with someone in Perth that I had met weeks before on a train in Sydney (who had lived in Lafayette, Indiana for three months and was familiar with one of my favorite professors at Purdue), and getting (white) goon thrown in my face by a young, impolite Scottish girl who I swear I did not touch or leer at very much at all.

My reasons for coming to Australia, previously discussed in “What am I doing here?” were not to find excitement. I suppose I’m more doing something a bit odd and not too common so that I can brag about it later, while not needing to get any vaccinations or worry about terrorism the way we Americans like to worry about terrorism. I am safe on this English-speaking continent. Of course there are a number of more deadly things on this continent than most, but I’ve yet to even see a koala bear.

Now I’ll admit that being all alone in a hotel room halfway around the world with slow, often pricey Internet and only a handful of TV stations to choose from can be a little lonely, if not completely and utterly boring. And to be candid, when it is in the early hours of the morning and when there is no one looking, I tend to experiment with things I don’t normally do and things I would never consider doing in the presence of another human soul. I stack furniture. Usually against the door. It’s not that I’m particularly afraid of a burglar or rogue housekeeper. It’s more that I’m really just that bored and all the bottle shops have been long closed.



Drinking is something the Aussies do well, though not always of the quality of alcoholic beverages that I prefer, but they do drink a lot and drink a lot often and I have been happy to join them under the tables of their establishments and stumbling around parks and throwing my silver at what may or may not be more fucking birds. One of my favorite pastimes is finding a pub with free Internet and going there during happy hour and sitting down at a table or on a couch and doing very much a similar thing as I would have done at home—just on the other side of the world.

I would like to assure you that while I may not consider this “excitement,” I do consider it a good time. As I have previously written, I am fortunate enough to know some great, generous and friendly people here, and any time spent among friends and people you care about is bound to produce a multitude of good, even great, times. It’s a simple concept, if not cheesy. No matter where in the world you are, friends can provide all of your excitement or happiness or contentedness—choose whichever abstract noun you want. (I prefer happiness.)