Moving into 2012

It's been a long week. It took us about four days to move to our new place, including making trips to pick up various 'necessities' that (because of subletting) we haven't had to worry about so far. But as far as moves go, this was pretty easy.

We did, however, have to make a trip to an Ikea and to a local mall. Turns out that we weren't the only people who had the idea of buying things after Christmas. Ikea was basically the same as in the US: like lab rats, we scuttled through the maze of furniture in order to get the cheap food at the Ikea cafeteria, and drove off with more things than we'd thought we were going to get. Getting to assemble the furniture helped take a little of the edge off of the capitalist guilt...

And then we went to a mall called 'Southland.' It was... a mall. With the standardized mall experience, including the long quest for a parking spot. Colin was proud enough of finding one that he took the most boring picture you will see on this blog:

Fortunately, we didn't have to get everything new. Various friends lined us up with various pieces of furniture and household wares. We ended up with a nice dining table, though it needed a little re-finishing:

Here's the table in its new home, with a view of Step 839 of moving in (we promise more apartment photos to  come - when everything is more set up):

By New Years' Eve, we were moved in, and were able to head out to a park by the beach for a picnic of veggie Chinese food and to watch some fireworks with Adam and Tamar (of Thanksgiving fame). We may post some more pictures of that later, but for now - here's us:

Here's Adam and Tamar:

And here are the fireworks, with some Australians in the foreground. The big dark patch on the left below the horizon is the bay. The city's fireworks seemed to be mainly launched off the top of the downtown skyscrapers. Pretty cool:

We spent the first day of 2012 sleeping in, and then went for a walk in our new neighborhood in the 90 degree heat. It's an interesting mix of beautiful old mansions and ugly 60's-era apartment buildings. Just to the east is a block of military stuff:

A little beyond that is a good-sized park that we anticipate picnicking in regularly. We found one lovely spot:

Colin also inadvertently found something else. Here he is cleaning it off the bottom of his sandal:

If today's walk is any indication, then, 2012 will be a year of extremes: flowers and shady picnic spots vs. guns and dog-doo. Here's hoping the former outweigh the latter...

Happy New Year!

Christmas and Boxing Day.

Christmas Eve, in our neighborhood. Nice and quiet, though they forgot to plug in the lights around the palm tree in our local roundabout:

 

It actually was a "white Christmas" - well, at least for a few minutes. There was a pretty heavy storm all day, including lots of rain and hail! We managed to avoid the worst of it while driving, though:

Christmas Day Evening, in our backyard. A fantastic sunset after the storm.

Notice how the above sunset photo has really intense colors? We discovered some new settings on our camera. On Boxing Day (for Americans: the day after Christmas), we took a day trip to the south coast near Melbourne. There, we tried a particularly 'cool' setting on ourselves, by accident:

The area we went to is called Cape Schank, which is part of a state park on the south side - ocean side - of Mornington Peninsula (which defines part of the bay Melbourne is built by). We turned off the 'cool' setting for the rest of our walking around. Under cloudy skies, we took a trail that went along the coast for about 3k, through some light forest:

Our progress was observed by some of the locals (we think there might be some old Aussie song about magpies sitting on a fence post....if not, this picture seems to lend itself to one):

The other wildlife we witnessed included lots of butterflies - which were unfortunately very difficult to photograph - and some strange-looking giant 'ants.'

Then, at the end of the trail was a beach! The clouds even started to part while we were there.

At the other end of the trail was a boardwalk that went down to a different spot along the water. Dramatic colours came from layers of volcanic rock - notice especially the black rocks like on the other beach and just how blue the water was. It really was that color blue:

The basalt layer formed a bunch of tidepools. We spent a while looked down at some of the residents, and taking blurry photos. Here's a blue seastar, which was casually crawling along:

The Australians take their holidays very seriously. We think that because Christmas is in the summer, and really marks the start of summer vacation for school-kids it has a certain importance it doesn't quite have in the US. It also means that Naomi has off from work this whole week. So, that meant that we started moving to our new apartment today. There are a bunch of things to do to get fully moved, but we should have it all done in time to relax on the beach for New Years'...

Motion

It took a little work to find a unifying theme for this post, so we had to go pretty abstract: Motion. Color ('colour') was also a possibility, but we've sort of used that one before.

1. Motion in Melbourne

If you look close on the right, you can see someone kite-surfing. There has been a lot of it recently in the bay. It seems insane: strong winds pick up, and some group of people react with "I should tie myself to a giant kite and get into the water!" They move incredibly fast, and somehow (as far as we've seen) manage to avoid hitting each other or running into piers.

One can move around the city here colorfully without kite-surfing, though.

These are two scenes from an underpass at a tram station near us. Pretty amazing - it looks like a number of artists came together to do this. The tram station is one we'll probably be using more, because...

2. Moving apartments in Melbourne

Since our last post, we found a new apartment. We feel extremely lucky to have had a few months to get to know the city before having to go on the apartment search. But when we did go looking, we had pretty good luck - looked at five places, applied for two, and were offered both. The new place (which we won't fully move into until later in the month) is further from the bay, but closer to trams, trains, and more cafes. Here are a few pictures:

Stained glass in the entryway to the building.

More colorful glass (though not as intense). This is the door to the bedroom.

This is the living room. It sort of reminded us of our beloved Brooklyn apartment: high ceilings, tall windows, a little bit of a funky vibe, and a fireplace (you can see part of the mantle on the right).

And this is our courtyard. It's in the back of the building, so we can keep our bikes and such back here without worrying. It also looks like a great spot for a vegetarian barbeque.

3. Marmite, imported and non-

As part of our move, we took over some things from a couple friends who are about to leave Australia for England (one of them is a philosopher). They're British, and have strong views on Vegemite vs. Marmite. Turns out that there is a difference between Australian Marmite and UK Marmite. In helping them clear out their pantry, we inherited their supplies:

The UK Marmite is in the middle, the Australian on the right. And, indeed, the UK one was much more pleasant. Colin has acquired the taste for Vegemite, and the UK Marmite went down easily, but he'll have to build up to having the Aussie Marmite regularly (though he can imagine it being good on a veggie burger with avocado... perhaps at a veggie barbeque hosted in our new courtyard?).

4. Flying around the world

Not quite all the way around, but halfway and back. Colin went to a Kant conference in Miami last week. He spent more time sitting in a plane than sitting at the conference, but it was more than worth it. The conference itself was fantastic - 12 fantastic Kant scholars (and Colin) arguing about Kant for two days. It's kind of a blur in retrospect...

(This is downtown Miami, as seen from a cab while going from the University of Miami to Miami Beach, where we were all staying.)

But here's one story: after the second day of the conference, we stayed out pretty late on Miami Beach. At some point, there were four of us left chatting in a bar, all of us glasses-wearers. Four people wearing glasses in a bar isn't a strange site in most parts of the world, but apparently it is in Miami. A beach-y looking couple came up to us, and asked if we were German physicists. They said they'd been trying to guess who we were, and that the glasses somehow suggested that. Close! ('German physicist' isn't that far from 'Specialist in German metaphysics'). They didn't even have anything obvious to suggest the 'German' part - the German part of our group hadn't come to that bar with us.

The lesson being: don't underestimate beach-y Miami types.

Colin made another stop on the same trip. Since, according to his new sense of distance, Miami is 'right next to' Atlanta, Georgia, Colin spent a couple nights in Atlanta with his brother Peter, who lives there. Here are the brothers:

It was a great stay, even if it was too short. Peter was an excellent host. We ate a lot, talked a lot, and drove around the city a bit. Here is a paradigmatic Atlanta scene...

Stuck in traffic, with a Baptist church in the background.

Stay warm, friends up north! We're sending warm thoughts your way...

Thanksgiving. In Australia. With an Australian pineapple turkey.

Being on the flip side didn't stop us from having Thanksgiving, even though the holiday definitely made us miss our families (even more than usual). Australians don't have a Thanksgiving, unlike the Canadians, so us Americans have to band together.

We had two Thanksgiving dinners. The first was a vegetarian meal at our place. It went so well that we forgot to take any pictures of the actual dinner.

But here's what the table looked like after the dirty dishes were cleared:

Notice all the unused knives? To an American, this probably doesn't look weird. Except when dining in high society (or eating animals), dinner knives mostly serve for making the place settings aesthetically balanced. Aussies, on the other hand, typically eat with a knife in their right hand, and a fork in their left. So these clean knives represent a testament to American culture.

Since it's us, we did have to take pictures of what we cooked. You can see a loaf of bread above. Here, sitting in tupperware containers right before going in the fridge, is a roast root vegetable dish:

And here, from right to left, is a bulgur/lentil/feta salad, mashed potatoes with veggie gravy, green beans with almonds, and a cornbread/veggie sausage stuffing:

After stuffing ourselves, we and our guests decided to go for a walk down to the beach. It was warmish out and we made it just in time for the sunset. Thanksgiving on the beach:

Then we had the crazy idea of taking a picture with people in it. At long last: proof that we have friends...

From right to left: that's Adam, Tamar, Justin, Jenn and us.

Right next to where the above picture was taken was a small workout station, with a chin-up bar. Here is the inevitable pull-up contest:

You might not be able to tell from this, but we actually looked really cool and super buff while we were doing pull-ups. Really.

The next night we were invited over to some other friends' place for another round. We again forgot to get proper pictures. Our hosts, however, sent us this picture of the settings:

 

And that's an Australian pineapple turkey.

(All the knives in the above picture got used - this dinner was eaten Aussie-style.)

Even though we miss everyone back in the US, we feel deeply thankful for the chance to live in this beautiful place, and to have met so many kind, wonderful people.

Home-made bagels, and 24 hours in Canberra

We've been missing New York bagels. Melbourne has a lot of great food, but bagels are rare, and the ones we've had just haven't cut it. So we made some:

They worked. It takes some work to find high-gluten flour here, but Naomi did. We even did the boiling-bit, without too many burns.

On Thursday, Colin flew to Canberra to give a talk at Australia National University. As it turned out, another American was visiting Canberra around the same time. Here's his plane:

Canberra was filled with federal police in fluorescent coats, and had an (apparently unusual) Obama-related traffic jam which delayed Colin a few minutes getting to his hotel.

ANU has its own hotel:

Traffic jam aside, the hotel was easy to get to. The philosophy department, on the other hand, is hidden inside of a labyrinth. Getting through the labyrinth seems to be a test of visiting speakers. This is the entrance:

Inside are twisting hallways and spiral staircases. With luck and skill, one arrives here:

There are a ton of first-rate philosophers there, so it's well worth the expedition.

The talk itself seemed to go well. Colin at least wasn't laughed out of the room, and only one or two people nodded off. The questions from the faculty and grad students were excellent - sharp and insightful. The paper is going to be much better once Colin revises it in light of all the feedback.

We don't have pictures of any of that, though. It was a bit like being in a philosophical whirlwind.

The next morning, Colin walked around the campus a bit. Lots of space... and birds. Here are some birds:

And here's another bird:

Below is one more bird. You have to look closely - this is an Australian magpie. They make an otherwordly cooing sound, and are notorious for swooping at bikers. This one was hanging out on some chin-up bars that are carefully watched by a statue of Winston Churchill:

A short walk from campus is the artificial lake around which Canberra is built. Here is a view of Parliament House across the water.

On the side of the lake close to ANU is the National Museum of Australia. It's housed in a new, swoopy, modern building. One side:

Here's a sculpture on the other side of the building, seen over a pond at the center of the museum:

The museum is quite large. Colin only had time to see half of it.

Here are two of the more striking items in their collection. The first is a 3000 year-old mummified head of a Tasmanian Tiger (more accurately called a 'Thylacine,' since they used to live on the Australian continent as well as Tasmania). The last Thylacine died in 1936.

The second picture here is a painting from a section of the museum that focuses on the struggles of First Australians (often called 'Aborigines').
It almost feels inappropriate to just throw this in at the end of a blog post... but maybe it would be even more inappropriate not to mention anything about this at all.

For the historical background, see this.