The Southern hemisphere time-warp has given me plenty of time for fun stuff, at least.  Last Saturday I finally did a typical Melbourne tourist activity: I took a day tour to Phillip Island to see the penguin parade, a sunset extravaganza in which little penguins come in from the sea to their nests and attempt to cross the beach without getting eaten by seagulls.  It’s sort of like a game of frogger, with predatory birds instead of cars.  The trip also included a visit to a “wildlife sanctuary” (read: petting zoo) which was home to the saddest koala in the world.  So of course this had to happen:

facedown, saddest koala in the world, originally uploaded by lynnith.

I came home from the trip around 11pm to find my housemates getting ready to go to a house party down the road.  This is where my planning obsession comes in handy – I’d picked up a couple bottles of emergency wine for exactly this sort of situation!  One emergency beer later, we headed for the party, stopping only for glamour shots with a large piece of construction equipment.  (I think there are pictures somewhere of this on Facebook)  Inexplicably, the party had quite a few people dressed in costume, which left my Kiwi housemate and I feeling rather unexciting in our normal outfits.  So we decided to pretend as if we were dressed up as divas – I chose Patti LaBelle, naturally.  The next day we discovered we’d taken quite a few clothespins and festive bits of ribbon from the party, so perhaps we should have gone as crows instead.

The week was pretty standard, as far as work-weeks go.  Monday I cooked lamb for the first time, braising it in a tomato-fig-spice sauce, which was just as delicious as it sounds.  Tuesday was basketball; we lost, but I played reasonably well.  On Thursday the housemates & I ventured out to find a good local pub, and ended up at a spot with a nice courtyard and low-key crowd.  The previous week we’d gone to a student dive, complete with a creepy cover band that kinda seemed like an incestuous family, and a pair of snow leopards on the prowl.  So the discovery of a decent local was a welcome one!

On Friday I went for drinks with one of my work friends, and met a bunch of her friends.  A lot of them work for one of the major ad networks here in Australia; it was cool to hang out with some younger ad folks for a change.  Her brother, an avid cyclist, was also there, and told me of a mystical place north of here where bikes cost $40.  I walked up there on Saturday afternoon and discovered what I can only describe as the North Pole for bike hobos.  There’s a giant bike workshop/co-op in the middle of an educational environmental park and/or hippie village; people donate functioning or broken bikes and the folks who volunteer there help you get yours into riding shape once you buy it.  It’s a great deal – I’ve got one sitting there with no brakes, and if there aren’t any nicer ones next week they’re going to help me fix it up!  So in a week I’ll have a sweet ride for cheaper than a slab of beer!!

Today I went on a day hike with the YHA Bushwalking club, which ended up being lots and lots of fun.  We went to a place called the “You Yangs”, which is basically a few hills plopped down in the middle of an endless expanse of flat farmland.  The folks on the hike today were mostly in their 20s and 30s, and all really interesting.  So I’ll definitely be going on more hikes; they meet every Sunday morning at the same time so I don’t have to actually commit to going until the day of… definitely my kind of club!  I mostly hiked with the same group of girls, who were all pretty sarcastic, especially about my American tourist-ness.  I started giving them a hard time on the way back about not having seen any kangaroos in the wild, when all of a sudden we saw one by the side of the road!  So now I’ve seen kangaroos in their natural setting, which is basically like seeing deer at home, except a billion times more awesome.

So all in all, things are still going really well here!  I think this about covers my life in Melbourne at the moment; I’m having a great time, and the city really suits me.  And next week I should have a bike, as well as a really interesting (and potentially excellent) story about work that hasn’t quite played out.  So stay tuned…