Adventures, Musings, Commentary, and Associated Fun

Updated site on its way...

To describe my recent blogging as desultory would be rather generous.  It's been ages since I've posted anything, which is doubly unfortunate since the past few months have involved tons of activity: a trip home to Virginia for Christmas (first time home in almost 2 years), tryouts for the Australian National team (which I'm very pleased to say were successful!) that will compete in the World Championships in August, and a 10 day trip to beautiful Hawaii for both an academic conference and a fantastic Ultimate tournament. (Yes, I really did present at the conference.) :)

I'm in the midst of overhauling the site, and in doing so I will be adding a bunch of new features including a heap more photos from my travels and life here in Melbourne.  One angle I'd like to also explore would be a section specifically devoted to the Worlds campaign.  I'm hoping to go live with it sometime over the next few weeks, as long as my thesis allows me the free time.  (She - the thesis - is still unnamed, so suggestions are welcome on that front.)  It will be hosted at http://www.chrisfreise.com, so watch this space...!  Cheers, and thanks for putting up with my lackluster updating.

Melbourne Cup

Australians are extremely fond of their sport, particularly when there is wagering to be done on it.  (There's a frequently recited saying that if a pair of Australians noticed two flys on the wall, they would have odds set on which one would leave first before either fly did.)  The Melbourne Cup, commonly known as the "race that stops the nation", was held yesterday.  The Cup is the biggest race (by far) in Australia, is cause for a public holiday in Victoria, attracts over 100,000 spectators (and several million watching on television), is worth over $5 million to the winner, and probably has more sporting, cultural, and historical significance to Victorians than the Kentucky Derby does to a Kentuckian (Mark Twain's 1895 description of the Cup is regularly rolled out in the pre-Cup festivities: "Nowhere in the world have I encountered a festival of people that has such a magnificent appeal to the whole nation.  The Cup astonishes me.")

It's difficult to describe the craziness and the atmosphere of the Cup, which has been somewhat subdued this year due to a nasty October outbreak of equine flu.  As part of the Spring Racing Carnival, I'll be heading to the racetrack tomorrow for Oaks Day.  Apparently it was originally supposed to be "Ladies Day" at the track, but over time the prospect on many fine looking women has enough boys filtering in for the day to be colloquially as "Blokes Day".  It doesn't have the prestige of Cup Day, but as a result the clientèle is more..."democratic" (read: younger, more likely to get silly drunk and do regrettable things - though things do get pretty debaucherous on other days throughout the Racing Carnival too.) :)  There's also a classier side to the Carnival as well.

And in other news, further evidence of the spectacular rise in Australian wine...Australia can now claim to have the world's best winemaker.  Not bad, eh?

c'mon the Red Sox!

That's just the way they say things over here when you want to show support for the team you "barrack" for.  (You don't want to "root", as that is slang for a process that frequently involves making babies.  Australians are endlessly amused by asking fresh-off-the-plane Yanks about the frequency with which they "root" for teams.)  Yes, it's find of funny - but Americans are known for having a few national quirks as well.  (Exhibit A: ask just about any other member of the Anglophone world about a "fanny pack", as gauge their reaction accordingly.)

Unfortunately, the World Series came at a rather inopportune time, stuck as I am in the middle of finishing my teaching for the semester and a thesis chapter that I submitted to my supervisor on Friday.   Though it wasn't as polished as I wanted it to be, it's still a good feeling to get something to him and receive feedback. (This was an early chapter that is sure to be revised quite a bit before I submit; at about 9K words, it's about 10% of the final product.)  Nonetheless, I was able to catch at least part of every World Series game (and the last 4 games of the ALCS), and though it's not nearly the same cathartic euphoria of 2004, it's still an amazingly satisfying thing to be able to say, "Boston Red Sox, World Series Champions".  Phew.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to fly to Boston for the celebration parade, as in 2004, but I'll be there in spirit.  I'd like to think that I'm responsible for the spike in interest in both post-season baseball and the Red Sox amongst my friends over here, but there seem to be a few external factors also at play.  Still, it's been fantastic.

I'm in the process of (finally) getting my tickets for my flight back home, and it's looking like I'll leave here on Dec 3 and return on Jan 10.  The plan is to spend a few days in California on both ends of the trip, so friends and family that are out that direction, consider yourself forewarned... :)

Along those lines, for those of you that know my fellow UVA classmate and all-around character Adam Reno, he's just launched a new website, VIMBY.com (Video In My BackYard).  The site looks pretty amazing, and I dare you to check out this clip and not be impressed.  Tell your friends about it!

frisbee and such

It's been a shamefully long time between posts.  Unfortunately, I've fallen into the mental habit of trying to make each post quite lengthy and comprehensive, and the past month hasn't allowed for much in terms of free time.  I'm hoping to be better about keeping posts short and sweet, with perhaps longer ones thrown in when the opportunity presents itself (i.e. procrastination gets worse than normal).  With that in mind...

Basically, the past few months have been extremely busy, in a way that has rather significantly surpassed the enjoyable (and self-required) level of having several different things to do.  It's been hellaciously busy.  The next few weeks before my arrival back home (Dec 4, tentatively) don't offer much prospect of a break, unfortunately...but at least next week is the end of the semester, so no more teaching.  I love doing it, but I can't say that I'll be upset to see the end of this semester.  More on that later, I hope.

Frisbee: University Games was a great time, though our team finish (9th) doesn't really do justice for our overall performance.  I managed to get myself on to the Green and Gold team (essentially, an All-Star team for the tourney) for the 2nd year running, which was a pretty satisfying result.  It might have been because we were such a tough team, as the photo clearly demonstrates. Grrr.  :)  We had Mixed Nationals in Sydney the week after that (Oct 5-7), and I played with a very good and very fun team of fellow Victorians named Station 59.  (We were sponsored by a pub of the same name, which itself was named after - wait for it - a fire station, hence the red/yellow color scheme.  Each time we scored, the receiver had to stop, drop, and roll.  Safety first, boys and girls).  We finished 4th, which was a tad disappointing since we were solid contenders for the title, but it was a great tournament overall.

The biggest news within the Ultimate community over here, at least from the past week, has been the announcement of the Australian national team squads.  From these squads, the final teams for the World Championships in Vancouver next August will be selected.  Good news is that I made it, along with the 3 other Chilly boys that were trying out.  Final team selections will be made in late Jan/early Feb, which means that my December in the US will involve lots of fitness training.  The selection camp will be held in Canberra (ugh - NOBODY likes Canberra, which I suppose makes it a reasonable spot for the national capital) at the Australian Institute for Sport, which is roughly the Australian equivalent of the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.  Our training sessions are being part-sponsored by AIS, which is a pretty big coup for Ultimate.  Competition for spots is going to be very fierce, and I know that I'm not the only one that is galvanized with nervous excitement.

So much for a short post.  Thesis calls...need to get a chapter to my supervisor by next week, and unfortunately "I've been busy writing overdue blog posts" won't carry much weight if I don't get it to him.

To the Gold Coast!

I'm looking forward to a week away at University Games, despite - or perhaps because - this particular forced vacation coming at a ridiculously busy time.  As I think I mentioned before, teaching, thesis, and frisbee responsibilities have come together at once.  At the same time, I can imagine why you might consider a week playing ultimate (social program here) while staying at this luxurious hotel in a place called Surfers Paradise - yes, that's really the city's name - as something less than a "perfect storm" of work/responsibility...yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Still, it doesn't mean that life will be particularly easy once I come back to reality.  Don't even ask about how things look for next month...yikes.  The fun news is that I'll be giving a couple of lectures: one about US/Indonesian relations (which according to my thesis topic, I'm supposed to know something about), and the other about the US Presidential race.  Irrespective of my time in Washington, I'm starting to think that my accent makes people assume that I've got the inside scoop on who's going to be president. 

It's quite funny actually - and I won't try to tell you the number of people that have asked me if Hillary or Obama is going to win.  (At this point I usually mention that one, not both, is likely to win...but that Republicans, for all their considerable faults, might still actually win it all, despite a proclivity for shooting themselves in the foot while their foot is in their mouth.  Internationally, and particularly amongst a University-oriented group, this typically leads to a deflated, dejected reaction.)  I suppose I could make a comment about the dangers of group-think, but in my experiences, it would seem rather redundant.  I didn't expect to come across too many of my fellow (but diminishing) right-of-center moderates as a postgraduate student.  Trotskyites, who generally make me laugh, seem much more common.

If things go well and I can get the details sorted, I'm hoping to record one/both lectures.  If I'm able to sort out the technical details, I'll post them here.  Fingers crossed...and for Melbourne University at Australian University Games!

Oh, and cheers to Carrie Brown for stopping by and saying hello to "THE Rog and Barb" (my official titles for the 'rents), and then calling me, through the glories of Skype, at 703 - 879 - 6470 while she was hanging out...(suggestive wink)... :)

Travel writing...

I came across this list rather accidently, via Writtenroad.com - a website devoted to travel and writing, which I happen to consider two of my most significant passions.   The article is from Conde Naste Traveler magazine, and discusses 86 Great Travel books.  (I recommend clicking "print" button to get a single-page view.)  I'm rather embarrassed to admit that I've only read 3 books on the list, though due in part to a big Paul Theroux push at the moment, I have another 4 books with me, as of yet unread.  The only problem is that the queue on that particular list is frighteningly long. 

I was particularly happy to see Bill Bryson's book on Australia (In a Sunburned Country), which I read within my first 2 months in Melbourne, on the list.  It's a quality book, as is Theroux's Dark Star Safari, which is one of my most recent reads (and a wonderful gift to receive before I left on my present Australian adventure).  It has had a lot to do with some of the "big picture thoughts" I've had recently about the direction that I see myself going after this...that particular question is a hopelessly unanswerable one at present, stuck as I am in the  interim between the heady enthusiasm and uncertainty of early PhD candidature and the unimaginable stress and soul-searching panic of pre-submission.  While I suppose I should be enjoying this uniquely liberating time - as busy and imminently combustible as it feels - the big questions never seem far away.  Such is the life of the student, I suppose, particularly one that is one a path designed for professional advancement within a particular field.  On the positive side, it allows a calendar and lifestyle oriented along the University calendar, which can be quite a positive thing.  This was undeniably a key component of my own decision-making process in wondering whether I wanted to be part of the University community again.

I'm not sure that posting twice within 12 hours makes up for a month's silence, but I hope that it helps...present reading includes a Paul Theroux novel about the British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese(Kowloong Tong), and listening to a fair amount of The National and Aussie favorite Missy Higgins - you have to be in the right mood to listen to either, but if you are, the results can be quite incredible...

Update

Unfortunately, life has been a few degrees busier than I would like over the past 6 weeks or so.  Since I came back from my brief jaunt around SE Asia (and Sydney/Brisbane), life has been been full-on and hasn't offered much in terms of a rest.  In no particular order, the main culprits have frisbee, thesis, teaching, and random assorted things I've managed to get myself involved in.  In my experience, taking on a few too many responsibilities has less to do with the inability or unwillingness to say "no" when asked to do something, and more to do with a genuine, repeated underestimation of the amount of time required by such things.  Of course, that also plays a role in why I seem to be constitutionally prone to lateness.  Oh well.

New toy!  I just picked up this beauty of a 20" LCD monitor from LG.   In addition to getting a good price, I figured that the amount of time that I spend staring at a computer screen allows for such indulgences.  I set it up the other day, and so far it's pretty sweet.  At the moment I have my MacBook open, allowing for 2 screens - just drag the mouse off to the far left of one screen and it pops up on the far right of the other one.  Pretty cool, really. :)

Melbourne University is officially on break at the moment, with this past Friday marking the beginning of a 2 week holiday.  I will be marking essays for most of this upcoming week - something I am less than enthused about, needless to say - before heading to the Gold Coast in Southern Queensland for 2007 Australian University Games.  I've heard the GC referred to as the "South Florida" of Australia on a few occasion, and I believe we're staying in Surfers Paradise.  It's not exactly shaping up to be an idyllic, bucolic, Thorovean retreat...but that's OK too.  Think of a (slightly) classier, more built up, and newer version of South Myrtle Beach with bigger waves and higher buildings, and you have my rough preconception.

Frisbee has been going well, but has been quite busy over the past 2 months.  Similarly to last year, Chilly (i.e. my Melbourne-based club team) has been playing at the same time as the Melbourne University team.  The Chilly season began in mid-January, so all in all it's been quite a long season - with the exception of a week off here or there, I've been playing at least 3 times a week since then, with 4 trainings per week the routine over the past 2 months.  Once Uni Games and the National Championships for the Mixed Division (Oct. 5-7 in Sydney) are over, I'll be able to enjoy a break of a few weeks.  I'm actually looking quite forward to it, as my body is starting to remind me that it needs a rest, and I can feel the initial warnings of "frisbee burnout" starting to appear.  We had a tournament here in Melbourne last weekend that was a large part of the selection process for the National Team.  The first cuts will be announced in a few weeks, and while nothing can be guaranteed, I feel pretty good about my chances of making it to the next stage of the process.  The final team that will go the World Championships in Vancouver next year (the equivalent of the Ultimate World Cup) will be announced in late Jan/early Feb.  Here's the main document detailing the timing of the process.

Apologies for the long delay in posting - hopefully this week of non-teaching will allow for a few belated updates.

Yea!

Funnily enough, that's actually the name of a town.  I'm heading there in a few hours with a couple of mates.  The rough plan is to have a few beers tonight, then stick around for another friend's (Steve Wealands, a fellow Chilly player that I've mentioned before on the blog) birthday BBQ tomorrow afternoon.  It's about 2 hours outside of Melbourne in country Victoria, so it should make for a reasonable if somewhat bite-sized road trip.  The plan is to be gone about 24 hours in total.

More to come, including overdue pictures and wrap-up from my Asia trip, to come very soon.  In the meantime, an interesting article about Indonesia's success in fighting terrorism...

home sweet home

I arrived back in Melbourne Sunday night after what seemed like much more than 3 weeks of travel.  For all of the bouncing around and adventure, it's good to be back home.  And particularly good since the Melbourne International Film Festival just started.  For all the liveliness and energy of Sydney, and the laid-back vibe (and sunny warmness) I felt in Brisbane, it's events like the MIFF that remind me of why Melbourne is such a great city.  Tonight, once I finish teaching at Trinity, I'm heading to see "Time", a South Korean film about a girl who disappears in order to have plastic surgery...and her boyfriend, heartbroken and left without any answers, who begins dating someone who seems strangely familiar...

A report on that, plus a more thorough run-down on my trip (including a few belated thoughts from the SE Asia leg of the trip) and some photos, to follow...

to Brizzie...

I'm slowly getting used to the colder weather.  It's amazing how quickly your body can acclimate to summer heat and humidity.  The first two days I was back in Australia were brutally cold...or so it seemed, as my body wondered what had happened to wonderfully warm (and very humid) weather of Singapore.

NTC (National Training Camp), the reason that I cut short (to a measly 24 hours) my time in Bali was really successful.  Typically, the only time we get together as an entire frisbee community is at tournaments based around club play, such as Nationals.  This weekend, the first step in the process for selecting the Australian National Team, was quite different.  Saturday was devoted mostly to drills and exercises, while Sunday involved 8 different games (each about 30 minutes) with players mixed up and swapped around for each game.  The result was a chance to play with a bunch of different people, most of whom I've only played against before.  It was also a great chance to chat and socialize outside of the normal club-based structure, which can be limiting.  I'm surprised at how sore my legs are from the weekend, but then again we all were running very hard...and I'm not very good about taking a sub, so over the weekend I probably played more points than most.  Oops.  My thighs are grumbling at me as a result. 

In 3 weeks, we'll be in Sydney again for a weekend of "real" games (i.e. based around our club teams), followed 4 weeks later by the same in Melbourne.  After this, the Australian "squad" team will be announced, and it's from this group of players that the "Dingoes" (men's team) and "Barrimundis" (mixed team, also a type of Australian fish) will be chosen.  (I'm not sure what the ladies' team is called, but safe to say it's probably some sort of exotic Australian wildlife.)

Off to Brisbane tonight for a tournament on the weekend, then back home to Melbourne late Sunday night.  It will be good to be back home and into a routine again, though I'm less than excited about having my first classes to teach within 12 hours of touching down.  Photos and more commentary about my Asia trip once I get back.