Moving to Australia
I mentioned in a previous post that I was moving to Brisbane, Australia, for a postdoc position. The short of it is: I’ve arrived in Brisbane and have started work. The long of it is the rest of this post.
Sunset on the flight from Toronto to Los Angeles It’s a long way to Australia. I left my parents’ Windsor on March 19 at noon (Windsor time) and arrived at my hotel in Brisbane on Saturday March 21 at 9am (Brisbane time), or equivalently Friday March 20 at 7pm (Windsor time), for a grand total of 31 hours of travel. I flew from Windsor to Toronto, had a 4-hour layover in Toronto, then flew to Los Angeles and then on to Brisbane. The flight over the Pacific ocean was the longest, obviously — 14 hours — but did not trouble me greatly. As soon as the plane took off Thursday night from Los Angeles, I took a couple of sleeping pills and went straight to sleep and stayed asleep for probably about 7 hours, with another couple hours of being half awake and half asleep. Then it was time for some in-flight entertainment — I finally ended up seeing The DaVinci Code (the movie was entertaining if unlikely; I have not nor do not plan to read the book) — and food. By the time we arrived in Brisbane, I was glad to get off the plane and a bit tired, but ready enough to face the day.
Since I arrived early Saturday morning in Brisbane, I had the whole day ahead of me. I made my way to my hotel, took a shower, unpacked a little, and then was off into town to run some errands. First things first: get some money. Then I proceeded to get a SIM card for my mobile phone, sign up for a bank account, buy a bicycle, and buy groceries. The rest of the weekend I relaxed and watched Battlestar Galactica.
Information Security Institute (126 Margaret St) Monday morning was my first day of work at the Information Security Institute at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). I’ll write more about my job and QUT later. For now I’ll just say that work has gone as expected: I’ve met the people in my research group, am learning about the projects going on here, and putting together plans for my research projects.
Rock climbers on Kangaroo Point Cliffs Wednesday evening I made my first try at rock climbing. QUT doesn’t have a bouldering room like the Outers Club at UW, but the QUT Cliffhangers is a group on campus that runs climbing sessions at the Kangaroo Point Cliffs across the river from the campus. I had never climbed outdoors or on real rock before. By the time we got around to climbing, it was also well after dark, although the area was well-lit. Still, I was pretty nervous and didn’t make it too far up. Climbing on real rock is much harder and much different than climbing indoors. The main thing you’re doing when climbing indoors is trying to convince your body to match the handholds on the wall. When climbing outdoors, there are no predefined routes: it’s just you and the rock. I spent a long time fumbling around trying to find handholds. I expect it gets easier with time as you learn to read the rock better, but for now, it’s hard!
Also this week I’ve been running. Both my runs this week were pretty hard on me. Sunday’s run was horrible; I believe it was the worst time ever recorded for a 10km run, but that’s probably due to the fact that it was 26°C by the time I was finished. I will soon be setting up a detailed training plan that I will write more about later.
Later this week I’ll take you on a guided tour of Brisbane, or at least the parts of Brisbane I’ve taken a camera to so far. Check back soon!
