Phillip Island

This comes second only to Great Ocean Road trip. Yesterday Jai bought a new camera. I was happy to choose the model for him. And to do the honours of using the camera almost full-time today.

Mainly there were four spots, each equally awesome.

1) The park where we fed animals, mostly kangaroos, and wallabies, koalas, a few emus, an alpaca, a pony and a ram (the last of which refused to eat food from the same hand that had been used to feed a different animal). We saw some dingos, Tassie devils, peacocks, cockatoos and similar birds and a croc as well. There were roos of all sizes and colours. Here we met Aussie and Desi (pic below, nomenclature - Kartik). We came out of the park, our hands wet with animal saliva.

The bridge, the sole connection between mainland Australia and Phillip Island.

2) The next was Cape Woolamai Beach to the south-west of Phillip Island. I was extremely thrilled here to see the breaking of the waves. Seeing the huge waves develop metres from you and then rushing on to the beach is just breathtaking. Here we saw a lot of surfers, but only professionals were allowed here. Here Piyush claimed that although he might be afraid of animals, he was brave enough with water. However, when a wave broke 2-3 feet from him, it swept off all his confidence as well, as he cried out and ran in full strides as if his life depended on it.

We passed a MotoGP circuit on the way.

3) The Nobbies: Here we saw the coast in a different form. Rugged, specially made for shipwrecks it seemed. We saw blowholes. This region definitely had volcanic origins. The rock formations were suggestive of it. The flora, consisting of was also characteristic of this place.

4) The Penguin Parade. There were galleries made where we waited for the daily natural phenomenon, that has been taking place for millenia. Pingus retiring to their home at the end of the day. They are pretty safe in the sea all day long, if leopard seals are not around. But the coast is where all the danger lay. Many predators, both preying birds and some shrewd reptiles pose formidable threats to these flightless birds. Alone, they rarely stand a chance of making it back, but in groups their chances of survival increases probablistically. As they swim close to land they make 'huck' to call in their mates. Together they make a raft and then are floated on to the land by waves. Here they wait for a while to check if the coast is clear. If they don't think so, they return to the water for some more time. Otherwise they scurry through the open expanse of sand and after crossing it, they rest for a while, before making their way to their nests which are mostly holes in the ground.

Here, under the protection of the Australian government, the pingus are quite safe. Even we are not assured that much safety. By the way, photography was prohibited here. The picture below is from the internet.

These penguins were small, about 1 feet tall, and we followed them to their holes, amused at their way of walking, as if carrying the weight of the world, trying to keep balance with their flaps. Somehow I was reminded of Sukumar ray's 'kumropotash'

Grotesque

The Art Gallery is very close to the Federation Square, just across the Yarra. Here we entered in full 'enthu' to get a taste of art. There were some real masterpieces. Notably much of the European art centred around Christ. Works on canvas, paper, glass, plate. There were old books too. A museum personnel pointed out that the script was Archaic French and had been translated from Latin. But it was still Latin to me.

I was extremely impressed by some of sketches. The fineness of the lines in some of the paintings were unimaginable. There was a small Japanese and Indian section as well.



It was okay for one hour, but then we started getting bored. However, in the end we had some comic relief in the modern art section, much to the annoyance of the curators. It was ridiculous and for art lovers who might like to explain these pieces of bull shit, I too have a 3rd year degree in Fine arts, and I must say it is an insult to the awesome pieces of work in the other sections.



Each of these stuff had one page of detailed information and analysis. The arists (if they can be called one) must have been laughing their hearts out seeing others trying to interpret these things.


"Museum waale 'lu**' hai jo yeh rakhe hai, hum 'chutiye' hai jo yeh dekh rahe hai, par artist ne sahi mein 'chaapa' hai" -Kartik Venkat on the above wall hanging

Post Mortem

The point of concern was that why our theory on attacks had failed (Reference: http://arnabdhabal.blogspot.com/2009/06/plans.html). But it actually hadn’t, we realized. I was supposed to take care of ‘n-2’ people, which was zero in my case!

Anyway seriously speaking, I found some good information which should be sufficient for finding out the ‘shuor-er naati-s’. They emptied my phone balance before I blocked it. And the number to which they called was a number in Syria. For enthusiasts the number was (+963)955132992. I informed this detail to the police, but I wonder if the police would care to do the needful, to find out the SNs.

I also helped them make a sketch of one of the guys, but the problem lay with the eyes. Of the 50 odd eyes that I had to choose from, it was difficult. Same had to be done with the nose, chin, forehead. In the end I got a face, and when asked how much I would give it in terms of resemblance. I said 70% but I was 100% sure that the police won’t be able to catch him using that pic. Anyway, I suppose the more determinate way would be the phone number. But frankly, I am quite disappointed by their efforts. I don’t know whether it is lack of professionalism or lack of experience or both, but something is definitely lacking.

Kartik's uncle Prakash helped me apply for a Compensation claim. For that I needed a doc report. The practitioner at the university health centre charged $81 for 5 minutes, but thankfully the University bore the costs.

Chocolate at Max Brenner was excellent. Here we met Randy (Randheer), a student at the Melbourne University, a friend of Kartik, and a holder of dual citizenship of Australia and Srilanka. He is well in course of going to every country of the world. Europe, North America and Oceania almost complete. Been to a lot of places in Asia and Africa as well.

Pulkit Reloaded

Since returning from Cairns, Pulkit is back in form. (Even though he has got a haircut.)
I thought of giving him the miss this time, but really he has been the centre of all our entertainment for the past few days and I can no longer deny him a place in this blog.

When Dillan asked the others how they were feeling ever since the attack on me, everyone answered appropriately, but Pulkit still khoya-hua in the clouds through which he had jumped during his last week trip (skydiving) said “Niiiiiiice”.

From numerous evidences, we concluded that his brain, mouth and ear run absolutely independent of each other. Even the next day, before going to the International Student Support Office, Pulkit had been given clear cut instructions by the rest of us, not to open his big mouth. He was doing well, till he was asked a direct question: “What’s your family’s reaction to this incident? Aren’t they concerned?”
Pulkit (in the most does-not-matter attitude and drooling the words) : “It was okayyyyy”
At least he didn’t say nice this time.
Ashwinny (quite surprised, while others try controlling their giggles) : “Do you have many brothers and sisters? Is it a large family?”
Pulkit (completely unaware that a new question has been put forth) : “Attacks keep on happening…”
We know of his impairment. Ashwinny didn’t and so you could imagine what she might have thought.

Pulkit tries to make peace with ‘sound' in his way, but he always makes matters worse. For one thing, he uses words like ‘zoom’, ‘zing’, ‘dhish’, abundantly in his sentences, and in most occasions inappropriately. Sometimes even the verbs get replaced by these phonetics. A standard road direction from Pulkit: “‘Zoom’ straight till there and then ‘zapp’ to the left.”
Another example: “Just do ‘thish thish’ and you will get the answer”. He meant “just google it.” When no one understood him, he said “Arrey yeh to normal hai.” But we do not blame him coz we know of his screwed sense of normalcy. Whenever he claims something is good, we get convinced that it is no good. (For example he says that it should be normal for people to go around without clothes.)

He tries to sing as well. But we dearly wish that he gives up trying. At any moment, he has this rare ability to catch random songs and distort them beyond recognition. As Jai put it, “Lyrics, music sab ki maa-behn karke chhorta hai launda”

Water

We surprised Kartik by the news today. It's already 2 days. He was at his aunt's.

I had become mentally attached to the camera and that hurt me most. It was a nice gesture from Kartik to hand me over the camera rights for the day. But it was alien to me, and I didn't have time to learn how to use it in the custom mode. So at the end of the day I was pretty dissatisfied with the photos. Moreover the camera ran out of battery, just before the oceanarium.

Jai and I went to St. Kilda Beach first. Nice place. Small beach. Some manmade green patches to lie down on, quite close to the water. I liked the combination of uniform green, uniform yellow and uniform blue. There was a narrow stretch of rocky land extension into the sea. That's where penguins and water rats are bred, but we weren't allowed to go in there. There were lots of yachts, probably used in fishing.

We were joined by Kartik before the aquarium. It was very exciting to see King penguins, Sharks, Ray Fish, beautiful Corals, Jelly Fish, Snake-necked turtles, sea horses, stone fish, blind fish (they didn't have eyes), transparent fish, etc for the first time.

Lion's mane Jelly Fish

There were transparent cylindrical tunnels through the oceanarium, giving the people a good view of the thousands of sea creatures packed within and moving all around us.



(The last 3 photographs weren't taken by us).

Finally Attacked

In the end it had to happen to me. I was after all vociferous that these weren’t racial attacks. Mine wasn’t either, but being an Indian I am expected to be weak. I just proved that right.

Firstly, had I known that my mobile could be recharged over the internet I wouldn’t have gone out to the city. When I realized that I had to recharge it by tonight, or my money won’t be carried over, I went out alone. In the hurry I looked up the internet Google maps for Optus shop locations, took a pic and took the camera along if I required directions. I got the recharge and I bought a new camera pouch, pretty happy to have bargained the price to $10 from $30. If God exists, She might have smiled from above.

Got onto a 59 no tram. I noticed them right when they boarded at QV. They simply looked like hooligans. They were short men but muscular. Looked like Mexicans. High cheek bones and skin colour browner than me. I was sitting alone. Another wrong step in the series of wrong steps that I took over the course of events. And so they chose me as the target. They wanted to make sure that I was meek enough. They asked me my name. Had I said, “How the f*** does it matter to you, asshole?” the story could have been different, but I was unprepared. They marked me. The next stoppage was mine. I got up to get down. As I got down I found them getting down as well. I was thinking of reboarding the tram, when I saw one of them run to the other direction. I thought I was making too much of my suspicions. The North Melbourne Serviced Apartments’ entrance is just 50 metres from the tram stop. When I was about 10 metres from it, fishing my pockets for the key, someone called from behind. By this time the hooligans were out of my mind. I waited. When he came up and asked me, if I wanted an Ipod, I smelt trouble straight away. I looked around but at this moment there was no one. They asked me if I could give them some money. I said I didn’t have any. The next moment “Wham!!” I got one straight and square on my face from the other guy, who was hiding till now. I don’t remember much as I fell flat. I have never been hit so hard in life. I tried to get up, but my head was too badly hit for me to be successful at first attempt. I just wished that they didn’t hit me further. By then they had fled. I fished my pockets, saw my wallet and mobile missing. Later on I found out that my camera was taken away as well. It’s ironic that I had gone out to buy stuff for my mobile and camera only. Anyway, my specs were knocked out by impact. And I am half blind without them.

I went upstairs somehow, did the necessary,… card blocking, calling Gail to call the police. Jai searched for my mobile and specs. Got the specs. I washed my wounds and applied ice on my head. The police called me to the station.
Gail gave us 50 bucks to go by taxi. First time in a police station, I found that it was quite similar to what I heard about them back in India. Large tummied people. Bringing food to the police station, merrying around. They took a long statement, in which details such as whether I was facing forward or backward in the tram was noted. But the policewoman was pretty frank about the fact, that there wasn’t any hope getting back what I had lost. I even asked if my phone can be tracked down by calling. She said that’s too costly for such cases. She asked me what would be the nationality of the people. In that respect, it was news for her that Spain is in Europe. Anyway, my insurance company also said that they didn’t cover electronic items. So my loss was pretty huge, but thank God, it’s not worse.

In the whole course, everything linked to the other. It would not have happened if I knew that I could recharge over the net, if I had gone out slightly early, if I hadn’t stopped by a camera shop for the pouch, if I had somehow caught the next or earlier tram, if I didn’t sit alone in the tram, if I showed some temper at those guys the first time, if I didn’t get off at my stop and rather got off at some other more populated stop, if I had not turned around and waited or even if I had given my wallet the first time he asked for money. But as Morpheus said “what happened, happened and could not have happened any other way.”

The differences are now further reduced.

Weather Prediction

That's quite impossible. Even the best supercomputers will fail to predict Melbourne's weather for the next 6 hours. But a safe bet would be for the weather man to say that it would be a partly rainy, partly cloudy, partly sunny day. Yes, that happens everyday, multiple times, just that the ordering of events is pure random.

Nowadays the max is 11 and the min is 6. It remains cold throughout the day. This week has been particularly windy as well, which somehow gives me the strange sensation of feeling hot and cold at the same time, when I stand in the sun. But I still go to the rooftop, whenever I succeed in solving some problem, which had been troubling me for sometime. It's a good view of the city from there. You can see the main streets, the University square, the Eureka tower, two bridges over the Yarra, the huge roof of the museum sheltering the rainforest, Melbourne Central tower, Parliament house, a giant ferris wheel which had been abandoned after it developed a crack, and thousands of cranes strewn over the city at work. The Melbourne cityline follows a Gaussian curve. Once you go ouside the city you would see it rise to the clouds over a small area, and everything around is flat.

There are fewer students in the campus now because they are having their exams at the Old Parliament House. So the Union House is relatively empty. That's where I have my food. I like sitting outdoors on the wooden benches to eat, but the seagulls and pigeons literally fight with me over the food.

Coming back to the weather, there is another thing you can convincingly say, -that it won't rain cats and dogs under any circumstances, however threatening the clouds may look. But when there are showers and water fills the irregularities, creating pools, the comparer in me thinks "the differences are reduced now".

The Australian Body Factories

Rod Lever arena and sometimes Hisense Arena are where australian Open is played. Here we walked the places where tennis stars roam at a certain time of the year. Some of them are superstituous about the lockers they are alloted. These lockers (for sports equipments) remain marked. Nadal's lucky number was 21. Federer's was 1. (I am not trying to make any point here)

Press conference room. This is where the likes of Federer face the reporters from.

The MCG

Cricket is becoming a minority game here it seems. Footy, a form of rugby is played very regularly at this venue. Presently the AFL (Aussie Footy League) is on. Besides, this is the ground where the Australia Japan Soccer world Cup qualifier will be played as well.

At the players' dugouts

2003 and 2007 World Cups in original

At the National Sports Museum, within the MCG premises, we saw a lot of gears used by famous sportspersons. The Blackham Ball, The Ashes trophy, Dennis Lillee's Aluminium Bat....







This is a short clip from a 3D Warnie show. The 3D effect brought about was just unbelievably awesome.

Hopeless

If anyone sees my daily actions, it would be as good as Mr. Beans’. On most days I have a tough time trying to set my window shutters to the proper height, and I tell you it’s not at all easy, with 3 strings, nothing to differentiate between, and each of them not only act differently on changing the azimuth and elevation of pulling but I am also starting to have the feeling that they act differently at different times of the day. I basically suck at this.

If it is not the window, then it is the key. It is very easy to lock yourself from outside at my apartment. And for a person of poor memory like me, it is easier. In such a case the procedure is to call the landlady who would give the duplicate key. Her name is Gail (she pronounces it ‘guile’) and I suppose the best word to describe her would be ‘bubbly’. Anyway, it is good that she was early to realize that I was a hopeless case, and from the 2nd time onwards she gave the duplicate key as well to hide somewhere else.

The action just beefs up when I am at the cooking table. Jumping up every now and then as I unmindfully touch something hot. One day a cooked Salmon in a can just won’t open. I brought out all my artillery, a set of 6 knives of different shapes, bottle openers, cork openers, and some others (I don’t know their names, neither do I know what they are for). It was a sort of a puzzle -trying to figure out when to use what or in which combination to break into the can without destroying its contents. The fight lasted 45 minutes, and then I somehow scraped through, battered and bruised.
One day, when I opened the oven after cooking meat, suddenly a strange high pitched beeping started. I looked around but couldn’t figure out the source or reason for sometime. It was the fire alarm, just a few puffs of smoke was sufficient to turn it on. One thing you can’t miss here is the number of warnings against fire and what to do such an emergency. The warning symbols were everywhere, in the university corridors, to the right and left of the entrance to my room, the apartment lobby… It was as if a fire was about to break out any moment. Fires are actually common here. And still it is beyond me why many of the walls of the houses were wooden. Even the roofs of the common man’s houses are tiled, no terrace.

Extended Weekend

Weekends are something very prominent in the lives of Australians. On Friday evenings, people specifically ask everyone around what are you doing over this weekend. Thanks to the queen’s birthday, Monday was a holiday as well.

Saturday was spent at the Melbourne Museum at Carlton gardens. Entry was free(for students). Here I saw dinosaur skeletons/fossils for the very first time.

Look closely. There's a chameleon eating unsuspecting ants.

CSIRAC, a first generation computer. Aussie built. Still functional. The array of wires and connections were too much for me. It was beyond me to visualize how people could visualize the whole thing and how could the contraption have worked??

The indoor rainforest was impressive, and so was the mind section. But recorded Australian history is short, only a couple of centuries old, so most of the things on display other than those giant reptiles didn’t have the grandeur associated with ancient items. It was big though and was full of items, which were well-displayed, thereby making not-so-impressive articles look impressive.

Scienceworks was where we went on Sunday. We were clean bowled to see the whole population of Melbourne seeking entry to the place. The reason, it turned out, was a new Star Wars exhibition. The tagline said “Where Science meets Fiction”. I didn’t quite see them meeting though, but all the kids were enthralled to see the original movie costumes and models of space ships etc. For myself, everything was alien.

Guarded by tube lights ;)

There were other things as well. Some science shows and some more general science exhibitions. But everything taken together, Science City and Birla Museum are definitely better.

That day while returning, I saw GPS being used in Car Navigation. It was absolutely ‘bakait’. Kartik’s uncle picked us up in his car and he just had to type in the address of our place. GPS did the rest.

At night we went to Docklands. It was a posh area, and some light festival was going on. Pretty cool it was. SM joined us there. He and Pulkit tried to rope us in to go to a place called Ballarat Mines, where only the two of them were going on Monday. We refused. [And here I might as well slip in something about the Gentleman’s Club thing. That day, the two of them returned saying that it was a good experience but inconsistencies in their narration of versions of the events there led to some suspicion in Kartik’s mind, who closed in on them and then the truth was out. I will not expand it much, but in short they had a horrible experience there.]
While returning from Docklands we saw the Etihad stadium from outside and the Southern Cross Station. Both were a treat for the eyes.

The Etihad from Docklands

Queen’s birthday was zoo day for us. It is at walking distance from our place. Here I saw Meerkats and Wombats and Platypuses for the first time. But for Jai, other than the elephant, everything was new, - Tigers, Tortoises, Bears, Baboons, Kangaroos, Crocodiles, Chimps. Basically he has never been to a zoo or a museum in India. Infact he has seen neither mountains, nor seas before coming here. So his feelings were beyond my imagination.

Meerkats in their signature pose

Here most of the animals were separated from humans by a glass plate, and at places you are actually allowed to enter the enclosure, through a two door system, as in the case of birds, butterflies, and kangaroos.

At one enclosure, there was this funny situation with an ostrich running after a zebra followed by a giraffe.

At a lot of public notice boards local names of animals were given.

Just see the attitude!

Lemurs trying the 'sadhu' pose
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As expected all the three places were very well planned and managed. The Calcuttan equivalents of all three are actually richer in content, but the Calcutta museum and zoo will not figure anywhere near when maintenance and planning are taken into account.

Plans

Let me tell the reader here that what others possibly think about me. It is that I am very explanatory at times, trying to expound each and everything to the greatest detail possible along with all possibilities and variations, making sure that the audience understands all that I want to say, so that there can be no ambiguity over anything, and with full reasoning and examples if possible, until the audience gets frust to the level that they feel like saying ‘ab baas bhi karo’. I suppose you have already got the point, or do I explain again? ;)

So we had it all figured out. The plan was simple. If there are ‘n’ Australian attackers, Pulkit will frighten away one. Jai and Kartik would bring down one. And I will take care of the remaining ‘n-2’ by giving them ‘funda’.

Plan B: Produce the butcher’s knives that we have amongst our kitchenware as the currency of our country, when asked for. (The original idea was to use pepper spray as our currency, but sprays are illegal here, while knives aren’t, hence…)

There was supposed to be a talk organized by Indians against racism, and all Indians in Melbourne were requested to attend it. But Jai’s mind raced far ahead of the rest. He said “yeh ek ‘chaal’ hai” by the Australians to do a Jallianwala Bagh!!!

An Indian at an Indian shop

He has been in Melbourne for 10 years. Probably was in his late 40s or early 50s. He works in some decently big firm here and in the evening runs his store. His wife won’t allow him to keep non-veg items in his shop.

Pulkit and I chatted with him for some time. He said that in Melbourne there is a lot of money and a lot of material pleasures and ease of lifestyle, but….there was a but. The but is almost inexistent in the first 2 years but gradually it builds, and then you start missing the Indian culture, the festivals. You miss the people. It would feel like “I wish I could bring my whole ‘khandan’, friends and everyone here” but you know that is not possible, and after a few more years the but builds strong enough to take a decision that you must return home. However here comes in the countering X+1 factor, which makes you postpone the return by one year every year. Not all manage to come out of this cycle. I wished him luck in his quest to return.