• The proper pronunciation of Melbourne is “Mel-bin”.
• Tea can mean dinner.
• Toilets don’t flush in the other direction. In fact, water just rushes down in all directions.
• There is the “bush” (rural areas) and then there is the “outback” (out where nobody really lives).
• Kangaroos aren’t as big as I thought they were (at least the ones I saw).
• People in Australia eat kangaroo meat.
• BHP or Broken Hill Proprietary, started in the small mining town of Broken Hill and is now one of Australia’s top multi-national companies.
• Only eight of the twelve apostles remain.
• A stubby is a bottle of beer.
• A scooner is a pint of beer.
• They say “car park” not “parking lot”.
• Bacon in Australia is like Canadian bacon.
• A lot of the cars are the same, but many of them have different names.
• Most clubs play techno and house music.
• Fashion is slightly lame. Some people dress like its the 80s/90s.
• The street signs never say the name of the road that your own, only the ones that you’re crossing.
• Australian people don’t drive that well, or park well either.
• Aussie’s curse a lot more than people do in the U.S.
• Federal Parks are run by the States. yeah wtf.
• And a bunch of other stuff that I seem to only remember at random times…

Places that I’ve visited since I’ve been in Australia:

• Downtown Melbourne
• Downtown Sydney
• Sydney Tower
• Sydney Harbor Bridge
• Sydney Opera House
• Blue Mountains
• Hyde Park (Sydney)
• MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground)
• Apple Store in Sydney
• National Australian Maritime Museum (Sydney)
• Melbourne Museum
• Immigration Museum (Melbourne)
• Victoria Police Museum (Melbourne)
• Old Melbourne Gaol
• Broken Hill, NSW
• Silverton, NSW
• Mungo National Park
• Torquay, VIC
• The Great Ocean Road
• Apollo Bay, VIC
• The Twelve Apostles
• Cairns, QLD
• Mission Beach, QLD
• Rockhampton, QLD
• Bundaberg, QLD
• Hervey Bay, QLD
• Brisbane, QLD

Some things that I’ve done since I’ve been in Australia:

• went on a Ferry Ride
• rode public transportation (trains, buses, and trams)
• rode an overnight interstate train
• drove a car (on the left side of the road sitting on the other side of the car)
• went snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef
• went on a road trip from Cairns to Brisbane
• And a lot of other things.

If you ever get a chance, most definitely visit Australia!

]]> http://prashantkatwa.com/2008/11/21/fun-in-australier-photos/feed/ 0 http://prashantkatwa.com/2008/11/07/i-miss-unc/ http://prashantkatwa.com/2008/11/07/i-miss-unc/#comments Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:22:58 +0000 Prashant Katwa http://prashantkatwa.com/?p=175

Just wanted to say I miss UNC and I’m happy that I’ll be going back soon (not that I don’t like Australia). =)

]]> http://prashantkatwa.com/2008/10/28/queensland-in-photos/feed/ 0 http://prashantkatwa.com/2008/10/24/shanghai-dumplings/ http://prashantkatwa.com/2008/10/24/shanghai-dumplings/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 06:41:56 +0000 Prashant Katwa http://blog.katwapro.com/?p=114 So we get off the tram at Flinders St. Station and walk down a couple of block to Little Bourke St. We’re look for a specific street name. I forgot the name, but we do find it. It’s actually an alleyway-kind of sketchy. It’s in the middle of Chinatown, so the alleyway has a few restaurants. We’re looking for a dumplings place whose name we weren’t quite sure of. All I knew was that it was called something-dumplings. After a few minutes we find it and its actually called Shanghai Dumplings. We get there and there is a line out the door. We decide to just walk around it because we’re supposed to be meeting up with a group of people. When we get to the front, we see a couple of people try to go upstairs. I don’t know if they were going to try to find a table or to go use the restroom or what, but the host, an old chinese man, stops them from going up. This chinese man seems to be running around trying to do like 10 things at once. He asks us “how many”, and we say that we are looking for a group. He appears to hear us, but then walks away. We decide to sneak past him and go upstairs to find our group. We look around for a while but then determine that they’re not here yet. So, we go bak downstairs. We get back in the line that starts our at the door and goes out into the alleyway. We tell Mr. old chinese man that we need a table for 8. He then says “how many? 4?” and we say no 8. He again seems flustered and asks everyone in line, which is now more like a bunch of groups, if there is a group of two. The rest of our group soon arrives.

I was there with my friend Timur and one of our friends who is in fact from South Carolina, here in Melbourne doing here graduate degree. Actually Timur and I didn’t really know the rest of the group, we were there accompanying our friend. She had invited us to come with here to a going away dinner for one of her friends. So we wait for a while and eventually get seated by a younger guy who works at the dumplings place.

The restaurant was very very busy that evening. In fact, I would surmise that it is busy on most nights. This is mainly because of their amazing dumplings of course. We ordered family style and got tons of dumplings for very cheap. They were very good. Now, many restaurants across Australia are BYO, meaning bring your own (wine, beer, etc.). So, one of the guys in our group when next door and bought some beer and brought it back to our table. Now, because this place was so busy, they had apparently ran out of plates and all we got were these small bowl things, which could fit like one dumpling. Anyway, the other odd things, was that they didn’t serve any water. All they had was this hot tea stuff which I thought was pretty bad, but apparently Timur didn’t have any trouble drinking. But other than that, the evening went well and the dinner was delicious. I was so full afterwards.

Halfway through the dinner, I was looking at the menu again and I saw that there was a picture of some chinese dude on the back. Turns out, it was the same man who was running around the restaurant. I think he must’ve been the owner or manager or someone. Anyway, haha, the menu said his name was Bobby or something. This dude was hilarious. Like no joke. We were like messing with him when we left. haha.

Anyway, I guess there’s no real point to this post, maybe just that Shanghai Dumplings is a pretty good place to eat. In fact, Timur, myself and a few of our other friends are going again tonight for Timur’s birthday dinner. I’ll let you all know if we have another interesting experience.

Also, if you didn’t notice, I changed the default image that was at the top of this blog template to reveal a series of real photos from my trip! Every time you refresh the page, you should be able to see some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken while here. In total, there are 15 possible image. Enjoy!

Now, on to my post.

- – - – -

So about a month ago, my sister came to visit me here in Australia for about two weeks. It was good to have family around for a while again. It was around the time that I started to miss home, so I guess it worked out well.

When she got here, we decided to make a trip to Sydney because of course if you’re coming to Australia you have to go to Sydney, famous for its Harbor bridge, the Opera House, Hyde Park and many other landmarks. My friend Timur came along with us as well. Being all students, we obviously looked for the cheapest way to get there and back. Not surprisingly, we found that mode of transport to be a passenger train. Countrylink is an Australia railway that has trains that run from state to state. [The other two railways here run locally (between suburbs - MetLink Melbourne) and regionally (between towns/cities - V/Line Victoria).] We also booked a hostel through STA Travels before we left.

View of Darling Harbor from the Sydney Tower

We took an overnight train and left on a Wednesday night and reached on Thursday morning. The train ride wasn’t too bad. It was like sitting in a plane for 10 hours, except the seats weren’t as cramped. However there was an annoying squeaking noise that came from the bottom of the train car every time it turned. lol. We got there and checked into our hostel, the Maze Backpackers. The room that we got was honestly pretty ghetto. I was half expecting something slightly more accommodating. But whatever, it was a hostel and it had a good location, right near the middle of Sydney’s central business district. We spent the first day roaming around the city. In the morning we found this cool little cafe that all of us liked near our hostel where we ate breakfast. It was a tiny place but had pretty good food. We visited the Sydney Tower and went up to the observation deck. That was pretty cool; we were able to get a 360 degree view of the entire city of Sydney from up there. Later we went down to Darling Harbor. We visited the National Australian Maritime Museum. That was pretty fun because we were able to go onto a retired Australian submarine, the HMAS Onslow and a retired Australian battleship, the HMAS Vampire. In the evening we walked along the harbourside promenade and had dinner.

My Sister and I at Kings Table in the Blue Mountains

Kangaroos in the Blue Mountains

On Friday we also took a stroll in Hyde Park. It wasn’t as big as I thought it was going to be, but it was still nice. We took a look at the ANZAC memorial that was there, as well. After that we visited the world famous Sydney Opera House. It was really nice. We were able to take a tour of the place and visit inside the two large theaters. Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos inside of them. We had dinner another cafe on the way back, before it started to rain. It was a pretty chill day. haha. I think in the evening we met up with some of our French friends who we had met the day before in our Hostel. We hung out with them for a couple hours at a nearby pub.

Saturday was I think the best day we had there, even though “there” wasn’t really Sydney. We went on a trip to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney with a tour company called OzTrails. It was a whole day experience. They came and picked us up at our Hostel at like 8:30 in the morning. We got on a bus with like twenty some other people and drove out into the mountains. Our driver was also our tour guide and let me tell you, he was like the funniest guys. haha. Me and Timur like laughed at like every other thing he said. Not necessarily because he was telling jokes, but because he was one of those people who comes out funny without trying too and he laughs at his own jokes which most people didn’t understand half the time. He seemed to be one of those outdoorsy Steve Irwin type guys. He told us so many stories during the trip, half of which I think he made up. lol. Anyway, we saw all sorts of things – Kings Table, Three Sisters, Eagle Hawk Lookout, a waterfall (forgot what its called, but there’s a story behind that too). We also went down the mountainside on a cable-car and went back up on a miner’s railway car at a 52 degree angle. We went on a nature walk somewhere in the Blue Mountains. One of the best parts of the trip was when we saw real Kanagroos! It almost compared with the amazing hot chocolate that we had at a little cafe where we stopped. lol. But really the Eastern Grey Kangaroos were amazing. Not only because we were like ten feet away from them, but also because they were in the wild. The trip ended with a ferry ride in the Sydney Harbors at dusk. During this trip to the blue mountains we met this guy from Belgian with whom we became friends. After we got back from the trip we went to a local pub called like the Three Monkeys Pub or something.

View of Sydney Harbor Bridge from near the Opera House

On Sunday we checked out of our hostel and went out into the city again. We visited the 2nd largest APPLE STORE which is in Sydney! =) I was excited as you can imagine! It was three floors of ‘applicious’ stuff. We also walked on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I wish I could’ve climbed the bridge. Its pretty expensive to do and we didn’t have much time. Eventually our day wound down and we headed back to the train station. We took the overnight train back to Melbourne and arrived back Monday morning.

It was fun to hang out with my sister for a while, although it did also reminded me of home and UNC. But I think i’ll survive. After i’ve been two months now.

But to my surprise, up until today I’ve probably seen like 4 or 5 sweatshirts on the streets of Melbourne that read “Carolina” or “Tar Heels”. No joke; I was most definitely surprised! I even managed to yell “woohoo Carolina” at two of the people that I saw. Unfortunately, I received no reaction. To my disappointment, the people wearing the Carolina shirts clearly had no idea what it meant. I feel like that’s a common occurrence here. People probably sell/buy shirts of which they don’t know the meaning. It reminds me of India. Except there, people sell bootleg stuff and claim it as real. lol.  

Anyway, I think I did however discover at least one person who knows of the Tar Heels. Although I didn’t meet the person, I found a car, an old Mustang, that had two stickers on the back bumper, one for each of the past two NCAA National Championships that Carolina has won in ‘05 and ‘93! So, that’s how I know there’s at least one Tar Heel in Australia, besides me of course!

P.S. As I was writing this post there was a fire drill, so I had to leave. This is why I hate dorms!

P.S.S. If you haven’t seen it yet, you have to go see The Dark Knight! It was an amazing movie!

    I ride the tram down 2 blocks [Aussieland Photos 3]

    Yo, we going the right way? [Aussieland Photos 4]

Me at the Red Scooter for Monash Abroad welcome dinner.

Flinder’s Street Train Station

An Old Tram on Flinders Street

Me with Colonel La Trobe near the Victoria Library

The Melbourne Museum

Well the day after I arrived, Monday, I pretty much slept all day. It was mostly a gloomy day. I went to the dining hall thing for lunch. It was, um… okay. lol. Yeah i guess it pretty much sucked. But I also went almost when it was closing so perhaps that had something to do with it. Anyway, on Tuesday the orientation began at 9:00am with what they called “hot drink and yummy pancakes breakfast.” It wasn’t too bad. The orientation began by giving us a brief overview of Australia and it history. It was fairly interesting and the professor giving the mini-lecture was definitely entertaining. He also gave away a few prizes for answering some history questions right. In fact, he even gave away a six-pack of beer to some girl for answering a question. haha. Anyway I should have enjoyed it while it lasted, ’cause after that it was downhill. It got pretty boring. Honestly, I don’t remember half the stuff that was said and most of it was repeated like twice, clearly unnecessary. I won’t bore you with what was talked about.

I met some cool people who I soon befriended this week. I’ve met like a few people from UCLA, someone from UCSB, someone from UCSD, a girl from France, a few others including three students from NC State. I also met people from Japan, Germany, and several other places. So, a group of us have been hanging out with each other going shopping and roaming out into the city. It’s been pretty fun. Because we are exchange students, our orientation was actually like two weeks before classes start, so most of the “real” Australians, if I can call them that, are not even here yet so I therefore haven’t had a chance to meet many of them.

During the week we went to the city almost everyday. For your information Monash University has like 6 campuses in the state of Victoria in Australia. The two main campuses are known as Clayton and Caulfield. They are both in the suburbs of the city as opposed to Melbourne University which is near downtown Melbourne.  Caulfield is probably about 20 mins from the city center and Clayton is probably 40 mins from the city center. Most students live and study on the Clayton campus. In order to get to the city, you have to take like a bus to the train station and from there ride the train into the city and get off at one of like 4 or 5 stations that are on the city loop (including Flinders St. Station, Parliament Station, Melbourne Central, Southern Cross, and I think one more that I can’t remember right now. Anyway, we usually get off at Flinders Street because its near one of the most happening places.

On Tuesday four of us (friends from UCLA and NC State) decided to go get dinner in the near the city somewhere. We got off at the South Yarra Station which is like right before you get to the city. Supposedly its the place to go for fashion and clubs. We eventually came upon this restaurant called Amigos. It was a mexican food place, which surprised some who were told that its very difficult to find mexican food in Australia. Whatever. We decided to get the chefs menu which said it feeds four, but it turns out that we still had to pay individually. Slightly unexpected, but it was very much worth the money, considering we had nachos, fajitas, enchiladas, salad, and dessert. I think Australians take their time when they eat, cause they waiter was taking forever to serve us each time. After that we were going to go out, but all of us were tired so we decided to call it a day.

On Wednesday, Bill, who is the Monash Abroad activity coordinator person, planned a trip to Federation Square in the city. Most of the study abroad/exchange students came and we walked along the Yarra river (near Flinders St.) and took a ride on a Giant Sky Wheel. That was okay. It wasn’t anything exciting. Bill took us to a nearby bar later, but me and the NC State kids decided to go out and wander around. So we did that and eventually headed back to campus. Oh, we also enrolled in our units (or courses) on this day. We visited our Faculty (or School/Dept).

On Thursday evening we went to Chaddy’s!!! (aka Chadstone Shopping Centre). It’s pretty much a huge mall. It has two levels. It has a Meyer and a David Jones which are pretty much like Macys or Nordstrom. It also has a Toys”R”Us, a Target, a K-mart, a Borders, a Coles (which is a popular grocery store around here), and Hoyts (which is a movie theater). In addition, it has two food courts, and tons of stores, including an Armani Exchange. It’s apparently one of the biggest, if not the biggest, shopping complexes in Australia. So yeah it was fun! In fact, I went back there today because some of my friends had to get a few things. Oh and on Wednesday I bought a cellphone.

Oh Friday! So, on friday night we had a welcome dinner at a place called the Red Scooter located in the suburb of St. Kilda (which is near the beach). The Monash Abroad dept rented out the place. It was like a really nice venue! Supposedly its used for private events and wedding receptions and stuff. [It's sad that I kept thinking how great this venue would be for an afterparty. lol.] They served us an Aussie BBQ and drinks. They also played the US anthem in recognition of July 4th! Oh and there was also some dancing. After that, we all (including much of the Abroad coordinators) went to a bar in the city. Yeah we learned on friday night that drinks here are mad expensive (along with everything else for that matter). I could probably write a whole post regarding US vs Aus price comparisons. lol.

And lastly on Saturday, my friend from NC State and I went to the gym for a while. So apparently we have to pay for the gym too. It figures, since we got to pay for everything. I should have just gotten a membership that day since I paid like a quarter of how much it would cost for a month just for one day. Some of us went out later that night and went to a club near Chapel St. It was an interesting experience. We were planning on going today too for someone’s birthday, but its been raining so we decided to just hang out in the halls tonight. 

But, yeah overall its been pretty fun. Melbourne is a really nice place. We’ll see how busy I get when classes start and how often we’ll be able to visit the city. I have some photos on facebook. The links are below. Until next time, adios!

Aussieland Photos 1
Welcome Dinner and More! [Aussieland Photos 2] 

-pkat

12:45 PM (Australian time- whatever the abbreviation for that is)

So I made it to Australia… finally.  I’m in my room in the dorms or “halls of residence” as they call it here.  The flight was good.  It actually wasn’t that bad. 

Although the flight from Los Angeles to Sydney was 14 hours, it wasn’t too terrible.  I actually got a good seat, in that I was sitting behind a bulkhead separating first class from economy so I ended up with a little extra room and nobody sitting in front of me.  I also had a window seat and therefore the best option for taking naps.  I watched bits and pieces of several movies.  I think they showed like 5 movies.  I also slept several times.  The Sydney airport is actually pretty nice, based on the little bit that I was able to see.  I had to chill in the Sydney airport for a couple of hours before I re-boarded United flight 839 (I believe it was a different plane than the first tho).  We were delayed for a little while in Sydney while we waited for planes to clear the way and planes to land.  But we did go up and an hour later we were in Melbourne.  In Melbourne I had to go through immigration, wait for a significant amount of time to pick up my baggage, and then clear customs.  By this point it was over an hour past the time that I had informed the University that I’d be arriving.  But luckily there was still a driver for Monash there who was picking up another individual, so I was able to get a ride as well.  I then arrived, checked in, listened to and got a bunch of information and was handed my room keys.

——

10:25 pm AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time)

So I met up with one of my parent’s friend’s cousins who lives in Melbourne.  He’s a fairly young guy who’s been living in Melbourne for almost 3 years.  He met up with me near my dorm and we decided we’d head to the city.

Apparently Melbourne’s vast network of transportation is a quite common way to travel.  [Oh quick note: It was pretty cold outside, colder than I though it was, probably mainly due to the wind.] We got on the 703 bus where we proceeded to purchase a metcard for me, a day pass for me to be able to travel on any bus, tram or train.  We rode the bus to a bus stop near the Clayton train station.  We went to the station and waited a while for the train to arrive.  Once it did we got on and traveled on it for about 25-30 minutes until we arrived at Melbourne Central Station, which is actually one of three underground stations that are part of the city loop.  Anyway we spent some time walking around the streets of downtown Melbourne, I suppose.  We drank some coffee and later met up with his roommate and watched a movie at the theaters there, which may I add are much bigger than those in the US.  Anyway, after that I had to make the trek back to the Monash Residence Halls myself, because it would be impractical for them to accompany me when the route to their apartment is different.  So I took the Pakenham train and after 25-30 mins got off at Clayton.  Unfortunately, since it was Sunday and past 8pm or something, the Bus back to Clayton Campus had stopped running.  Yeah not too good.  But I managed to, after waiting for quite some time, catch a taxi along with an asian dude back to the residence halls.  So yeah, I think that was enough of an adventure for my first day in Australia.  I’m really tried so I think I’m going to sleep now.  Goodnight!

Here's a photo of my room in the Halls.

Friday, June 27 2008

11:00 am (EST)

So I’m sitting here in Washington DC right now, when I’m supposed to be on a flight to Australia.  Why? Well take a guess.  My flight was late.  My flight from Washington-Dulles was supposed to leave at 7:05 pm on Thursday, but it was delayed by 2 and a half hours, thereby making me most definitely miss my connecting flight out of LA. So, instead of flying to LA and arriving there late only to spend the night there and wait all day for the only flight to Melbourne which is at the same time everyday, I decide to stay at IAD.  We have some family friends here who were kind enough to pick me up from the airport and let me spend the night.

Now I have a flight from IAD to LAX at 2:51pm. I just hope this flight isn’t delayed, but just in case, I have up to 5 hours leeway.  So 5 hours flight TO LAX, 5 hours IN LAX, and another 15 or so hours to Melbourne.  Fun stuff.

——

3:00 pm-ish (EST)

Yeah, so now I’m on my supposed-to-leave-at 2:51 flight to LAX, but lucky me – IT’S DELAYED!  But this time, I’m actually in the plane.  We had been taxing for a couple minutes when we stop and we hear the engines turn off.  Then the captain comes on the intercom (i think this is the first time I’ve flown on a flight with a female pilot), and she says that air traffic control has put a stop on our plan because of weather on our route.  Apparently other flights experienced the same thing.  So, we’ll be sitting on the runway for about 30 mins.  But I don’t think this will affect my flight out of LAX considering I gave myself 5 hours in between the flight, in case something like this were to happen. 

——

6:15 pm (PST)

I have arrived in LAX after my 5 hour 20 min flight from IAD.  The flight was quite boring.  What was interesting was that everyone around me seemed to have those Bose headphones.  The two guys beside me, one guy in a row in front of me, one guy in the row behind me, and another dude in my same row on the other side ALL had Bose headphones.  I mean seriously how can everyone have those?  Were they like giving them out for free or something?  It was interesting.  Anyway I just at at some mexican grill food place in LAX.  It was pretty crappy.  Can’t believe I spent over $10 on it.  I guess thats what you get at any airport – overpriced food.  Whatever, I’ll just get some Starbucks later, at some point during the next 4 hours that I have to kill at LAX.

It sucks that in over 24 hours I’ve only gone from Raleigh-Durham to Los Angeles.  And its gonna be another 24 hours until I reach Australia.  My flight leaves here at 10:26 pm or something.  The flight actually goes via Sydney; so, of course we’re going to be stopping there.  It’s something like 14 hours to Sydney and another 1 hour or so to Melbourne.

I don’t think there’s any free internet in this airport; at least no wireless where i’m sitting right now.  I’ll check somewhere else later.

——

8:45 pm (PST)

I found internet, but its T-Mobile and you have to pay for it, which I don’t want to do.  Blah.  I just realized that 14 hours is a very long time.  Yeah, hopefully I’ll be able to sleep for most of it.  If not, I’m going to be extremely bored.  By the way, if you’re wondering how I’ve been writing all of this, I’ve been using my phone to write it, except since I’ve gotten to LAX – been using my laptop.  So, I’m just sitting here now at a nearby gate, listening to music on my laptop; watched a video earlier that I had on my laptop.

Surprisingly I received my visa less than a day after I applied for it.  It was all done electronically. Apparently, you don’t even need to have a stamp or paper in your actual passport. When they scan your passport, the visa shows up on the computers.

Now that I got my tickets booked, I have to figure out what all I need to take with me. Since Australia is in the southern hemisphere, it has opposite seasons. This means i’ll be arriving at the end of winter and leaving in the summer, spending most of my time in their spring. It should be interesting.

I’ll try to keep everybody updated on what I’m doing via the internet of course. Check back here at my blog to find out what I’m up to. In fact, I put up a theme specifically for my Australia posts. You’ll see what I mean if you click on the Australia category. You can also keep up with me on twitter. And of course facebook.

I leave on June 26th! Wish me luck!

A bumper sticker someone gave me on facebook.