Canbrrrrr!

Alright, so maybe a career of writing puns just isn’t for me, but it is surprisingly cold. When you think of Australia, what do you imagine?

It’s a reasonable guess, although not quite right. I’ve been reliably informed that the landlocked state of Canberra is the coldest state in the whole of Australia. It maxes out at about 10°C, then drops rapidly towards 0°C when night falls (not helped by the fact that Australia never has twilight – I never realised how much I enjoyed that time of day where the Sun is just gradually creeping away). But, there is hope to be had! In a couple of months time, I can expect it to warm to a pleasing 30°C upwards. By mid-December, which is real summer time, temperatures will probably peak at 42°C or 43°C. Now, I didn’t pay a lot of attention in Biology, but I know that’s hotter than my organs ever want to be.

The observant amongst you may have noticed that no-one has been able to get onto my blog for a couple of days. Don’t worry, that’s not your PC breaking, but rather the Awardspace servers are having some issues. As they’re hosting it free of charge for me, I can’t complain if it’s a little unreliable. Awardspace seem to think they’ve fixed the problem, and we are back up for now, but it might go off again over the next week or two. If I can find anywhere else to host, I’ll move it over, and hopefully redirect the www.boromadloon.co.nr address, so you’ll never know the difference. If that rapidly started to make less sense to you, don’t worry, it’s relatively unimportant.

Now, this week has been all about Orientation! However, since I’m trying to keep my blog interesting, I won’t go into any further detail beyond being welcomed to ANU by the registrar Tim Beckett. From there, it was a day of meetings, greetings, and things that make you go sleepings…

But, onto finally exploring the city. I maintain that it’s a bit too well planned, and too formal. It needs someone to build something small, cramped, and old-fashioned. At the moment, there are huge, glass-fronted office blocks towering down almost every wide and well-planted avenue, most of which have “For Rent” signs in the window. Interspersing these is a shopping centre across three levels, crossing at least three roads. It’s huge! Every shop Australia has to offer is in there somewhere, which sounds like a good idea in principle, except that you then reach a situation where the Centre is very busy, while the rest of Canberra looks like a ghost town. What it needs is a few critical shops:

• The Mid-life Crisis café. You know the sort; someone has got to 40 or 50 years old, left their job, and decided to do what they always wanted – run a small café of affordable and tasty sandwiches, with cups of tea readily available.
• The 100 year old Tat shop – Not necessarily selling all the things that other shops are too embarrassed to sell, but any kind of place boasting a family-run, ancient shop that has somehow beat off all financial crises to keep going today.
• Greggs – or indeed any cheap bakery.
• Pubs! Apparently there was some sort of tax initiative a few years ago in Canberra which effectively closed all of the pubs in the city. What remains are those who increased prices to carry on, and a few who have re-marketed as clubs.

But I apologise. This blog is getting rather long, and I haven’t even yet got around to how the week has gone.

I’ve spent most days exploring nearby areas of the city, generally with other people who are on exchange here in Australia, taking in the sights of the various Captain Cook monuments, the nearby Australian National Exhibition (an interesting museum explaining the key points of designing the city), and the Australian National Museum, a truly 21st Century Museum which is truly engaging. I’ll go into a little more depth about those in a future post.

Most recently, Bushweek has begun! The Australian equivalent of Re-Freshers, it’s an opportunity for all new students to meet up, and get to know each other. Last night was spent at the on-campus artificial pitches where there were a couple of games of football (I sadly, was not involved, with my footballing stuff being approximately ten thousand miles away), but they did have a free BBQ on beside the pitch. Bede College, take note – adding a permanent gas BBQ beside a football pitch pleases everyone. After this, a group of us who had got to know each other (including myself, a Scot, two Americans and a German amongst others – I feel so international!) spent the remainder of the evening in the main building at our halls of residence.

Finally, to bring us right up to date, I spent almost four and a half hours of today in enrolment – a process which is mainly geared towards seeing who can form the longest and slowest-moving queue, regardless of where those enrolling should actually be going. ANU, listen up: your organisational skills are lacking, and your website is so very confusing! Anyway, I think I’m finally heading towards understanding where I should be, although the lecture I turned up for this afternoon had been cancelled without my knowledge, but at least I do now know where it is.

Now we’re in the present, I would point you in the direction of my “Recommended Links” section, over on the right hand side, particularly my Photobucket account. I’ll be adding photos as often as I take them, but for the captions to make any sense, you might be best starting with the last photo, and working backwards.

Finally, two more things to add. Thanks to Michelle at Bede, who kindly bought the well-intentioned, but ultimately useless for a Study Abroad year in Australia, American dollars from me. And lastly, I bought my very first Australian beer the other day – a pint of Coopers Sparkling Ale. Lovely stuff.