Let me start by saying that my previews of this post were pure let-downs. Sorry, folks, but I really didn’t go out to celebrate my birthday. And Learn-to-Surf Day didn’t beat me up quite as much as I thought it would. Pictures from that event will come next week, so I’ll save that story for another post. The reason I didn’t celebrate my birthday, however, can be discussed.
I think women need to be on equal ground with men, no doubt. I didn’t do any studies, polls or surveys, but I’m pretty sure more women are getting “in tune” with sports and being “one of the guys.” But women need to pull their weight with drinking, and no, I’m not trying to encourage alcoholism. I just want “Men’s Night” at a bar. You know, discounted drinks for all guys before 10 p.m. No cover charge for men on a certain night of the week. That’d be great.
It’d hold even more value in Australia, where last Thursday, on Ladies’ Night at local pub P.J. O’Brien’s, I spent $7.80 on a beer. The U.S. dollar traded at about 80 cents per Australian dollar, putting that beer at about $6.25 USD… for a beer. It didn’t come in a gold-plated mug or even with a coupon for a dollar off a basket of potato wedges. It was just a pint of beer, 16 ounces.
Even though the pint was pretty good (Toohey’s Extra Dry), I wanted to try and get bang for the buck as well as try something different. I asked about rum and coke because I heard liquor was cheaper than beer in Australia (an odd thought in the States), which it was, at least at this pub - $7. It wasn’t bad either, but at this point, I had spent $14.80 on two drinks. That is the equivalent to a week’s pay at my job – I’ll get to that story soon.
That was the last drink I had that night, one part due to the prices and another part due to the fact that buses only run after midnight on Saturday nights. I don’t mind, though, it’s just nice to have a drink with friends and see what everyone’s up to – overall it was a good (yet expensive) night.
Being with friends is a little harder here, too, mostly due to the fact that the University of South Australia has no residence halls. I don’t have a cell phone here (well, they’re called “mobiles,” but you get the point), making facebook messaging the biggest way of contacting someone. Most of the Australian students in my classes are really great, but it would take a huge planning crew just for everyone to be able to meet up on the weekends at the same place.
For one thing, a lot of the students work and they work all over the place. Secondly, they live all over the place, too. Put those things together and it gets really tough to squeeze in a night of hanging out with a lot of people at the same time. Being at a campus like Ohio University’s is great because everyone is on basically the same class schedule and almost everyone lives within walking distance of everyone else. Even those who have to close down on the night shift are close enough to walk and finish off the night with friends. They’re little things I take for granted.
Since everyone else here has a job and I’m running out of money, I’ve been trying to find a job here basically since I stepped out of the plane and into Adelaide. I’ve been extremely unsuccessful. Recently I found the only call-back to my inquiries – a position delivering a once-weekly newspaper. The terms: $15 per week to deliver 300 papers to residents around where I live. Oh, and I get $6 per insert that goes into the paper. I start next week.
The best part is that I can’t even officially work yet. I’ve been trying to apply for my “Permission to Work” for weeks now and it’s finally coming to a close (hopefully). Just like my student visa debacle, I tried to apply online, but had to settle for the paper application when some number or type of input was incorrect. In fact, I might not even be able to work next week because I won’t technically be allowed to work yet, even though I’ve been trying to get this sorted out for weeks.
Once I finally DO receive the permission, it costs $60, which means I’ll have to work 3-4 weeks just to make up the amount of money that I’m spending simply to have the right to work here. Since we’re taking a two-and-a-half week vacation in September, I’ll be missing two weeks there as well, meaning I will deliver for, at most, 8 total weeks. Here’s hoping the advertisers come out in droves ($6 per insert is terrific, haha).
Even though the buses only run late on Saturday nights, the shops and grocery stores only stay open late on Friday evenings. I still haven’t seen a 24-hour store, except for small convenience stores. I just don’t get why no one would be open for an extended time. I guess Australians don’t really stay up late and just walk around their version of Kroger’s when they’re bored. OK, so most Americans probably don’t do that either – my friends and I are just the special cases.
Restaurants are the same way with an even crazier stance. Most places that aren’t fast food or delis close to the public between lunch and dinner hours. Even if it’s just an hour or two, they’ll close, windows dark until the next meal time comes along. As far as convenience for customers, this move ranks pretty low. When considering overall costs, however, it’s probably a smart move. Two hours of saved wages, utilities and hassles during a time when the customer per hour rate is pretty low.
What really gets me at restaurants is a terrible habit that seems unfathomable to me. Most fast food restaurant patrons take all their trash, put it on their tray and dump it in the wastebasket before leaving the place. Here in Australia, none of the above takes place. We thought it was an isolated instance; just one group of kids who wanted to be jerks to the workers. But over and over we find people finishing their meals and leaving their trash for someone else to pick up – and that usually means the next people who want to sit down.
If not for the consideration of other people who want to sit down and enjoy their meal, why not clean up your spot to help the restaurant workers?? They already work in a fast food place and helped fill your stomach. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like that in the U.S., but maybe I’m just not in the right place at the right time or haven’t noticed. I just like to hope that Americans are better than that. Or maybe the “Obese States of America” are just getting more practice cleaning up after themselves than everyone else.
It’s been a fairly quiet last few weeks, which was welcomed after all the traveling we did in the first month that we were here. There are only a few weeks before the biggest and longest excursion in our time here, so the rest will be needed. And in just one week we hit the midway point of our time here in Australia. When that comes around I’ll bring you a list of “Things I’m Missing” so far. I’m compiling it as I go and I’ll let you know it’s pretty interesting and mostly deals with food.
+Notes: Australians seem to love automatic sliding entry doors. I’ve never been in a place that’s had this many of them. Walking around Rundle Mall is just a long line of automatic doors that are constantly sliding open, then sliding closed. At first I thought it to be completely unnecessary, but I’ve warmed up to it since. That might be because I’ve never had to sit at the front desk in a store and hear the doors slide constantly all day long.
I went from “Men’s Nights” in bars to automatic sliding doors in the matter of just one blog post. If that’s not reason enough to come back for more, then you’ll want to read all about the biggest things I’m missing on this trip, as well as all of the random thoughts from me that I KNOW you’re missing. Plus, I should have the Learn-to-Surf stuff ready to post.
That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back for all the goods.
From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.
If you want to see me soon, start digging.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Beware the Many Stories Contained Within this Post
Last week in my Sport Literature class we had to give a short speech on something we’ve encountered in our sporting lives. It didn’t have to be anything significant, but after the speech everyone in the class had to give suggestions as to how that speech could be turned into a newspaper story. It was meant to highlight the fact that everybody has a story to tell; that it doesn’t matter if the person of interest is a celebrity.
My story had to do with perseverance, something I’ve come across on more than one occasion while sight-seeing across Australia. My sports story dealt with my wrestling career, mainly those matches against Dan Gerritsen from Hopewell-Loudon. He was my opponent in my first official match and he tossed me around like a rag doll. I didn’t do better than being technical falled by Gerritsen anytime I faced him sophomore year, my first in wrestling. Junior year I fared a bit better being major decisioned (winning by between 8 and 15 points) early in the year and finally only being beat by a decision (fewer than 8 points) in our final bout of the season.
Senior year held my best matches against Gerritsen. After being beaten all of those times, probably about 10 altogether, we met in the consolation finals at the league championships. I won with a 12-6 decision to take 3rd place in the MAL. My career had just about come full circle. The next week I wrestled Dan Gerritsen for the final time. It was the consolation semifinals at the Sectional Tournament. Both of us were seniors, so we wanted nothing more than to reach that previously unattainable level of the postseason state tournament, Districts. I had a comfortable lead (5 points) fairly late in the match, until Gerritsen knocked out my post (my right arm, which was holding me up) – perfectly legally, I might add – and I hit my head, blacking me out temporarily. When I came to, I found myself on my back, nearly being pinned in my last match as a Calvert wrestler.
I got myself to turn over and looked to my coaches, Matt Coleman and Mike Steyer. I knew the match was getting close to the end and that Gerritsen’s (and the entire Chieftain team’s) weakness was riding on top. Matt and Mike were yelling, “You need one!!” meaning I had to earn an escape from Gerritsen. I was, to my amazement, fairly calm and found my way out of Gerritsen’s grip within the last few seconds of the match. I got my one.
When my head hit the mat, I basically forgot the score, which is why I got to my stomach and looked to my coaches. I thought my escape at the end of regulation earned my shot at overtime. At this point, I remember being hunched over, uncharacteristically pretty fatigued (I prided myself on being the most fit wrestler in every one of my matches), looking over my shoulder at the scoreboard on the wall. It read 9-8 in my favor. The escape point not only kept me IN the match, it actually WON the match, punching my ticket to the District Wrestling Tournament.
My coaches were ecstatic. I was very happy, though it was tough to show at that minute. I remember looking at Gerritsen, knowing that just over two years ago he had been more than able to flip and flop me to easy wins. I went something like 8-25 in my first year wrestling, but, with plenty of support, I never gave up. I just wanted to get better. I ended up taking fourth at Sectionals and winning one match at Districts – achieving the goal set out by the coaches and me and the beginning of the year.
Not everyone has great stories like that. But the difficulty of achieving that feat for me was what really made it great. I learned how to effectively and intelligently lose weight. I learned new moves, went to summer camps, increased my level of conditioning. I had to sit out some weeks due to injury to my knees which doctors told me probably came from being thrown around all the time. My junior year ended prematurely after I hyper-extended my elbow at the league tournament near the end of the season.
I contemplated quitting, but couldn’t take that threat seriously because I had been voted a captain junior year and knew that, if nothing else, other people really wanted me to be there. For the team to say that I should be their captain really humbled me and let me know that I might not be there for the wins, but maybe for something else. This is “sports” for the 99% of people on this earth who aren’t stud athletes. It’s working hard for some goal that, in itself, might only be really important for a year or two.
With age comes wisdom (supposedly) and I’ve found that I use a lot of those lessons I’ve learned from sports at other times in my life. For example, when vacationing at Rottnest Island off the west coast of Australia, Sara and I rented bikes for the day to ride around the island. We later found out that the island was pretty hilly and not so easy for bike riding. When I got to the bottom of a hill, I felt a NEED to get to the top while pedaling. There was something inside me that told me I couldn’t stop until I got to the top of each hill.
Whether it’s “perseverance” or “stubbornness” is just a technicality. There are certain times during this trip where I almost feel too stubborn to let someone else do something for me. I felt that way during the first big meal with our Asian housemates when we all went out to eat authentic Chinese food. I used chopsticks the whole time mainly because I wouldn’t let that be a barrier for me – if someone else could do it, I should be able to do the same. Sports taught me that if I couldn’t do something well enough, my spot was taken and my basic worth for the team was gone. That’s probably the harshest way to put it.
Wrestling has put its two cents into my life a few times, especially when it comes to food. It was the most grueling sport I’ve ever participated in and it took the most years out of my body. It also taught my body how to go a long time having barely anything on which to run. While my stamina now isn’t at the point it was during wrestling season, it’s still pretty common for me to wait until dinner time to have anything substantial to eat or drink.
Watch me walk around campus at Ohio University on any given day of the week – I probably don’t stop a whole lot. I like to block classes and work together so I can stay on the go and not have to worry about food – though I have been better in recent years at drinking a full bottle of water over the course of a one-hour class (for better general health).
The best part about sports is that any participant can take these lessons away, regardless of which sport it is or age at the time of participation. All it takes is having an athlete who is willing to give her or her right arm to get something done – a willingness to start, dedication towards a final goal and perseverance to connect those two points (amongst many other great things that come out of sports, including the teamwork aspect, etc.).
Participating in sports has also taught me to be pretty resilient, keeping a strong mind no matter what the environment produces to make me consider otherwise. Imagine the concentration necessary of a college basketball player trying to make a free throw during a game while visiting Cameron Indoor. Now imagine that same person trying to concentrate on some task in an office where the boss simply walks in and says, “Hey, this needs to be done today.”
Also during the first meal with the housemates (yes, I learned a lot during that one little trip) I asked the landlady, Susie, what she thought about my chances at getting a job. The conversation progressed to my asking, “How many students get jobs usually??” Susie responded by saying, “It’ll be easier with people like [your housemates] not taking the jobs.”
Daniel is one of the housemates studying psychology at UniSA. When Susie said this, his only response was, “I can’t help it that I’m rich.” That really rubbed me the wrong way and made me feel like I was just some chump. But just a week ago I sat at the brunch table talking with Daniel and Susie (both from Malaysia) about things that are different in various countries. After I had tried my best at explaining baseball to Daniel (he followed really well until I had to try and explain stolen bases), he and Susie went on to give the Cliff Notes version on how the government in Malaysia worked.
I heard stories on how the Muslim regime basically runs the show, “once a Muslim, always a Muslim” and about how torture is used in some instances. Once this part was out there, it made me think back to the “I’m rich” comment with a little less anger. In the U.S. there is the idea of the “American Dream” where anyone can work really hard to build up cash supplies and find true happiness and success. Hearing about how Malaysia worked made me very happy to be an American, living in a country that generally won’t take you off and torture you; a place that holds the unofficial separation of church and state.
Comparing the U.S. to some other places, I find that it would be my choice to live. I’ve lived there the longest and that might be a lot of the reason I choose the U.S., but I feel that there are a lot of things going for good ol’ America despite all the negatives people bring up about political actions (or inactions) in place.
Sara and I just got finished with a trip to Hobart, Tasmania, which, to my surprise, is just another state of Australia. For some reason I thought it might be its own country, but I guess that’s just New Zealand. The Hobart trip was one of the best yet as far as activities go. I really like to hear about and see things that go in two categories – history and natural phenomena. We got a good dose of both in the same day during our trip to Port Arthur, a 19th century convict colony about an hour-and-a-half away from Hobart.
Along the way, we got to see “The Tesselated Pavement.” Because the east coast of Tasmania is located along a fault line, this piece of nature created itself without the assistance of civilization’s hands (whether intentional or unintentional). Water mixed its way into cracks in the stone and then made larger crevices when mixed with the shaking ground. I found it pretty cool anyway.
After that stop, we continued on to Port Arthur, officially Tasmania’s top tourist attraction. Hearing the history of Australia’s largest penal colony was pretty interesting as that topic is considered one of Aussie history’s most prominent. One such story involved the buildings that housed the convicts when the site first opened in 1833. We were told that if the structures were used to house army soldiers today, they would provide living space for between 40 and 60 men. Back at the time of establishment, however, these structures had earthen floors, no plumbing (so waste buckets were a must) and housed over 1,000 convicts!! Talk about horrible conditions. Eventually an old flour mill and kitchen on the settlement was converted to a new penitentiary (seen below), which gave the convicts better living arrangements.
When the convicts misbehaved, they could receive between 25 and 100 lashes to their backs. At first some of them were so damaged by these lashings that they found pass out and had to be revived in a bath filled with freezing cold saltwater. Eventually the prisoners became almost immune to the punishment and the physical injuries didn’t stop them from continuing to misbehave.
This was when the prison officials decided to implement mental punishment, building a completely separate place to house those offenders deemed “worthy” of a new wave of injury. The cells were extremely small and were assigned to individual convicts. All that was in the cells was a small stool and table on which to eat, one shelf on the wall to hold the Bible and possibly one personal belonging and the convict’s bedding. There was nothing but natural lighting, either. The convicts weren’t allowed to see anyone other than an occasional officer who took them out to dump their waste bucket or take them out to the exercise yard, where the convicts spent AT MOST one hour (on the luckiest of days).
If the convicts acted up while already in this separate prison, they were sentenced to do time in the building’s solitary confinement chamber. It was separated from the rest of the building by four doors that were each a meter thick, with no two doors open at the same time. The convict then had to stay in absolute darkness and silence for up to weeks. They had to receive a certain amount of rations (consisting of simple bread and water) for each 36 hour period they were in there, but sometimes the guards would mess with the confined prisoner’s mind by giving them two rations fairly close together in time.
As long as the prisoner received the allotted amount during each 36-hour period, it was still legal. So, for example, a prisoner might go 35 hours without food before receiving that period’s rations. The guards might then bring the next ration within an hour – messing with the convict’s biological clock and forcing the convict to sit with the ration in the cell for a long period of time OR eating them both fairly quickly, then not getting anything else for possibly 3 days’ time. Also, since the prisoner’s in that cell were in complete darkness, often when they retreated back to the normal cells, the natural sunlight was too bright and immediately blinded them. Now THAT is what I consider doing the time. I found these various stories fascinating.
Saturday in Hobart held adventures of outdoor activities. We began the morning by kayaking in the bays and river surrounding Hobart, hearing some history of the harbor and wildlife. We didn’t tip the boat, which was good, but somehow I ended up with the whole back side of my jeans being soaked in water. Sara was completely dry. Go figure.
After a quick change into sweatpants (my only pair of pants remaining), we got on a bus to ride a little ways up Mount Wellington. With our guide and another pair of hikers, we then set off to trek our way up the mountain. Our guide, Jeff, was pretty funny and knew a lot about the natural plants and animals that inhabit the mountain, so we got more little tidbits of information about the area. The views overlooking Hobart from the mountainside are spectacular and I recommend you taking a look through my facebook album “Hobart #2” if you haven’t already. The picture below is shot from a small landing where we stopped to eat lunch (which was delicious, I might add).
At the top it was really freezing and snowy. People in Hobart really never get to see snow unless they get to the top of Mount Wellington, so they were all going crazy. Apparently it’s a tradition to build a snowman on the hood of your car (here they’re called, “bonnets” haha) and try to drive all the way back to your house without losing it, which sounds like a hilarious and challenging thing to try and do, considering the road going from the top of the mountain to the bottom is ridiculously curvy.
Our flight made it back to Adelaide safe and sound on Sunday, the day of my birthday. I had forgot it was August 12 until Sara randomly said, “Hey, happy birthday,” to me that morning at the bus stop. The only birthday I’ve really celebrated in the past how many years was last year’s 21st in Cincinnati (for obvious reasons). Luke Florence put it best when he recently told me, “It's official, we are getting old. 21 was cool and fun, but now, it's just overkill.” I didn’t really celebrate much, though the housemates surprised me by getting a thick chocolate cake and singing for me. Sara and I figured out that we told them our birthdays in casual conversation during one of the first days we were here and they remembered it. That fact will probably be included in one of my future blog posts having to deal with “things that are universal no matter who you are or where you’re from.”
I spent the latter part of my birthday doing laundry, cleaning the room and going to church. It may have been relatively uneventful, but maybe I’ll just belatedly celebrate this weekend. But Saturday can’t be too rough considering I’ll be spending Sunday on the beach at Glenelg for “Learn to Surf” day with the Student Exchange Society.
That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back soon to hear stories from the above two events, as they will likely be enough to fill an entire blog post.
From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.
If you want to see me soon, start digging.
My story had to do with perseverance, something I’ve come across on more than one occasion while sight-seeing across Australia. My sports story dealt with my wrestling career, mainly those matches against Dan Gerritsen from Hopewell-Loudon. He was my opponent in my first official match and he tossed me around like a rag doll. I didn’t do better than being technical falled by Gerritsen anytime I faced him sophomore year, my first in wrestling. Junior year I fared a bit better being major decisioned (winning by between 8 and 15 points) early in the year and finally only being beat by a decision (fewer than 8 points) in our final bout of the season.
Senior year held my best matches against Gerritsen. After being beaten all of those times, probably about 10 altogether, we met in the consolation finals at the league championships. I won with a 12-6 decision to take 3rd place in the MAL. My career had just about come full circle. The next week I wrestled Dan Gerritsen for the final time. It was the consolation semifinals at the Sectional Tournament. Both of us were seniors, so we wanted nothing more than to reach that previously unattainable level of the postseason state tournament, Districts. I had a comfortable lead (5 points) fairly late in the match, until Gerritsen knocked out my post (my right arm, which was holding me up) – perfectly legally, I might add – and I hit my head, blacking me out temporarily. When I came to, I found myself on my back, nearly being pinned in my last match as a Calvert wrestler.
I got myself to turn over and looked to my coaches, Matt Coleman and Mike Steyer. I knew the match was getting close to the end and that Gerritsen’s (and the entire Chieftain team’s) weakness was riding on top. Matt and Mike were yelling, “You need one!!” meaning I had to earn an escape from Gerritsen. I was, to my amazement, fairly calm and found my way out of Gerritsen’s grip within the last few seconds of the match. I got my one.
When my head hit the mat, I basically forgot the score, which is why I got to my stomach and looked to my coaches. I thought my escape at the end of regulation earned my shot at overtime. At this point, I remember being hunched over, uncharacteristically pretty fatigued (I prided myself on being the most fit wrestler in every one of my matches), looking over my shoulder at the scoreboard on the wall. It read 9-8 in my favor. The escape point not only kept me IN the match, it actually WON the match, punching my ticket to the District Wrestling Tournament.
My coaches were ecstatic. I was very happy, though it was tough to show at that minute. I remember looking at Gerritsen, knowing that just over two years ago he had been more than able to flip and flop me to easy wins. I went something like 8-25 in my first year wrestling, but, with plenty of support, I never gave up. I just wanted to get better. I ended up taking fourth at Sectionals and winning one match at Districts – achieving the goal set out by the coaches and me and the beginning of the year.
Not everyone has great stories like that. But the difficulty of achieving that feat for me was what really made it great. I learned how to effectively and intelligently lose weight. I learned new moves, went to summer camps, increased my level of conditioning. I had to sit out some weeks due to injury to my knees which doctors told me probably came from being thrown around all the time. My junior year ended prematurely after I hyper-extended my elbow at the league tournament near the end of the season.
I contemplated quitting, but couldn’t take that threat seriously because I had been voted a captain junior year and knew that, if nothing else, other people really wanted me to be there. For the team to say that I should be their captain really humbled me and let me know that I might not be there for the wins, but maybe for something else. This is “sports” for the 99% of people on this earth who aren’t stud athletes. It’s working hard for some goal that, in itself, might only be really important for a year or two.
With age comes wisdom (supposedly) and I’ve found that I use a lot of those lessons I’ve learned from sports at other times in my life. For example, when vacationing at Rottnest Island off the west coast of Australia, Sara and I rented bikes for the day to ride around the island. We later found out that the island was pretty hilly and not so easy for bike riding. When I got to the bottom of a hill, I felt a NEED to get to the top while pedaling. There was something inside me that told me I couldn’t stop until I got to the top of each hill.
Whether it’s “perseverance” or “stubbornness” is just a technicality. There are certain times during this trip where I almost feel too stubborn to let someone else do something for me. I felt that way during the first big meal with our Asian housemates when we all went out to eat authentic Chinese food. I used chopsticks the whole time mainly because I wouldn’t let that be a barrier for me – if someone else could do it, I should be able to do the same. Sports taught me that if I couldn’t do something well enough, my spot was taken and my basic worth for the team was gone. That’s probably the harshest way to put it.
Wrestling has put its two cents into my life a few times, especially when it comes to food. It was the most grueling sport I’ve ever participated in and it took the most years out of my body. It also taught my body how to go a long time having barely anything on which to run. While my stamina now isn’t at the point it was during wrestling season, it’s still pretty common for me to wait until dinner time to have anything substantial to eat or drink.
Watch me walk around campus at Ohio University on any given day of the week – I probably don’t stop a whole lot. I like to block classes and work together so I can stay on the go and not have to worry about food – though I have been better in recent years at drinking a full bottle of water over the course of a one-hour class (for better general health).
The best part about sports is that any participant can take these lessons away, regardless of which sport it is or age at the time of participation. All it takes is having an athlete who is willing to give her or her right arm to get something done – a willingness to start, dedication towards a final goal and perseverance to connect those two points (amongst many other great things that come out of sports, including the teamwork aspect, etc.).
Participating in sports has also taught me to be pretty resilient, keeping a strong mind no matter what the environment produces to make me consider otherwise. Imagine the concentration necessary of a college basketball player trying to make a free throw during a game while visiting Cameron Indoor. Now imagine that same person trying to concentrate on some task in an office where the boss simply walks in and says, “Hey, this needs to be done today.”
Also during the first meal with the housemates (yes, I learned a lot during that one little trip) I asked the landlady, Susie, what she thought about my chances at getting a job. The conversation progressed to my asking, “How many students get jobs usually??” Susie responded by saying, “It’ll be easier with people like [your housemates] not taking the jobs.”
Daniel is one of the housemates studying psychology at UniSA. When Susie said this, his only response was, “I can’t help it that I’m rich.” That really rubbed me the wrong way and made me feel like I was just some chump. But just a week ago I sat at the brunch table talking with Daniel and Susie (both from Malaysia) about things that are different in various countries. After I had tried my best at explaining baseball to Daniel (he followed really well until I had to try and explain stolen bases), he and Susie went on to give the Cliff Notes version on how the government in Malaysia worked.
I heard stories on how the Muslim regime basically runs the show, “once a Muslim, always a Muslim” and about how torture is used in some instances. Once this part was out there, it made me think back to the “I’m rich” comment with a little less anger. In the U.S. there is the idea of the “American Dream” where anyone can work really hard to build up cash supplies and find true happiness and success. Hearing about how Malaysia worked made me very happy to be an American, living in a country that generally won’t take you off and torture you; a place that holds the unofficial separation of church and state.
Comparing the U.S. to some other places, I find that it would be my choice to live. I’ve lived there the longest and that might be a lot of the reason I choose the U.S., but I feel that there are a lot of things going for good ol’ America despite all the negatives people bring up about political actions (or inactions) in place.
Sara and I just got finished with a trip to Hobart, Tasmania, which, to my surprise, is just another state of Australia. For some reason I thought it might be its own country, but I guess that’s just New Zealand. The Hobart trip was one of the best yet as far as activities go. I really like to hear about and see things that go in two categories – history and natural phenomena. We got a good dose of both in the same day during our trip to Port Arthur, a 19th century convict colony about an hour-and-a-half away from Hobart.
Along the way, we got to see “The Tesselated Pavement.” Because the east coast of Tasmania is located along a fault line, this piece of nature created itself without the assistance of civilization’s hands (whether intentional or unintentional). Water mixed its way into cracks in the stone and then made larger crevices when mixed with the shaking ground. I found it pretty cool anyway.
After that stop, we continued on to Port Arthur, officially Tasmania’s top tourist attraction. Hearing the history of Australia’s largest penal colony was pretty interesting as that topic is considered one of Aussie history’s most prominent. One such story involved the buildings that housed the convicts when the site first opened in 1833. We were told that if the structures were used to house army soldiers today, they would provide living space for between 40 and 60 men. Back at the time of establishment, however, these structures had earthen floors, no plumbing (so waste buckets were a must) and housed over 1,000 convicts!! Talk about horrible conditions. Eventually an old flour mill and kitchen on the settlement was converted to a new penitentiary (seen below), which gave the convicts better living arrangements.
When the convicts misbehaved, they could receive between 25 and 100 lashes to their backs. At first some of them were so damaged by these lashings that they found pass out and had to be revived in a bath filled with freezing cold saltwater. Eventually the prisoners became almost immune to the punishment and the physical injuries didn’t stop them from continuing to misbehave.
This was when the prison officials decided to implement mental punishment, building a completely separate place to house those offenders deemed “worthy” of a new wave of injury. The cells were extremely small and were assigned to individual convicts. All that was in the cells was a small stool and table on which to eat, one shelf on the wall to hold the Bible and possibly one personal belonging and the convict’s bedding. There was nothing but natural lighting, either. The convicts weren’t allowed to see anyone other than an occasional officer who took them out to dump their waste bucket or take them out to the exercise yard, where the convicts spent AT MOST one hour (on the luckiest of days).
If the convicts acted up while already in this separate prison, they were sentenced to do time in the building’s solitary confinement chamber. It was separated from the rest of the building by four doors that were each a meter thick, with no two doors open at the same time. The convict then had to stay in absolute darkness and silence for up to weeks. They had to receive a certain amount of rations (consisting of simple bread and water) for each 36 hour period they were in there, but sometimes the guards would mess with the confined prisoner’s mind by giving them two rations fairly close together in time.
As long as the prisoner received the allotted amount during each 36-hour period, it was still legal. So, for example, a prisoner might go 35 hours without food before receiving that period’s rations. The guards might then bring the next ration within an hour – messing with the convict’s biological clock and forcing the convict to sit with the ration in the cell for a long period of time OR eating them both fairly quickly, then not getting anything else for possibly 3 days’ time. Also, since the prisoner’s in that cell were in complete darkness, often when they retreated back to the normal cells, the natural sunlight was too bright and immediately blinded them. Now THAT is what I consider doing the time. I found these various stories fascinating.
Saturday in Hobart held adventures of outdoor activities. We began the morning by kayaking in the bays and river surrounding Hobart, hearing some history of the harbor and wildlife. We didn’t tip the boat, which was good, but somehow I ended up with the whole back side of my jeans being soaked in water. Sara was completely dry. Go figure.
After a quick change into sweatpants (my only pair of pants remaining), we got on a bus to ride a little ways up Mount Wellington. With our guide and another pair of hikers, we then set off to trek our way up the mountain. Our guide, Jeff, was pretty funny and knew a lot about the natural plants and animals that inhabit the mountain, so we got more little tidbits of information about the area. The views overlooking Hobart from the mountainside are spectacular and I recommend you taking a look through my facebook album “Hobart #2” if you haven’t already. The picture below is shot from a small landing where we stopped to eat lunch (which was delicious, I might add).
At the top it was really freezing and snowy. People in Hobart really never get to see snow unless they get to the top of Mount Wellington, so they were all going crazy. Apparently it’s a tradition to build a snowman on the hood of your car (here they’re called, “bonnets” haha) and try to drive all the way back to your house without losing it, which sounds like a hilarious and challenging thing to try and do, considering the road going from the top of the mountain to the bottom is ridiculously curvy.
Our flight made it back to Adelaide safe and sound on Sunday, the day of my birthday. I had forgot it was August 12 until Sara randomly said, “Hey, happy birthday,” to me that morning at the bus stop. The only birthday I’ve really celebrated in the past how many years was last year’s 21st in Cincinnati (for obvious reasons). Luke Florence put it best when he recently told me, “It's official, we are getting old. 21 was cool and fun, but now, it's just overkill.” I didn’t really celebrate much, though the housemates surprised me by getting a thick chocolate cake and singing for me. Sara and I figured out that we told them our birthdays in casual conversation during one of the first days we were here and they remembered it. That fact will probably be included in one of my future blog posts having to deal with “things that are universal no matter who you are or where you’re from.”
I spent the latter part of my birthday doing laundry, cleaning the room and going to church. It may have been relatively uneventful, but maybe I’ll just belatedly celebrate this weekend. But Saturday can’t be too rough considering I’ll be spending Sunday on the beach at Glenelg for “Learn to Surf” day with the Student Exchange Society.
That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back soon to hear stories from the above two events, as they will likely be enough to fill an entire blog post.
From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.
If you want to see me soon, start digging.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
My "Get to Camp!!" Rant
It’s amazing what things can change when expectations go awry.
“When [Brady Quinn] talks about the draft, he focuses not on draft position but on his excitement to simply know where he's headed,” said SI.com's Adam Hofstetter in an article I pulled from a Brady Quinn “support” website listed below. [It should be noted that due to insufficient information on the site, I cannot determine who actually runs the website and, therefore, its credibility.]
Despite this, one thing is clear: the Brady Quinn fans in Cleveland came to love on draft day is not the same man seen donning the #10 orange and brown during team activities in late May and early June. The fans aren’t the only ones who have to reassess Quinn’s status with the team because even his Browns teammates (well, not yet, technically) are counting him out for an extended period of time, no matter how they try to skip around it.
“You have to be on top of your game and know your plays and not have any doubt so when you get up there you're prepared,” offensive lineman Lennie Friedman said in a story from clevelandbrowns.com staff writer Jeff Walcoff titled, “Tempo new priority in practice” (posted 08-03-07).
Remember back when Braylon Edwards held out beginning his time in Cleveland. “It could very well take him a full year because he has missed this much camp,” head coach Romeo Crennel said in a 2005 ESPN.com article stating Edwards had just signed with Cleveland. While the wide receiver did miss TWO weeks, Quinn is headed there, with his holdout already at nine days. What needs to be remembered, however, is that Brady Quinn is a quarterback, the mental and vocal leader of the offensive unit on the football field.
I’ll bet Lennie Friedman doesn’t know what Quinn’s voice sounds like in the huddle. I can almost guarantee Friedman knows what Ken Dorsey sounds like more than Quinn and Dorsey has had his bags packed and ready to roll to a new team’s number three quarterback position ever since the draft took place.
Braylon Edwards finished his rookie campaign with just 32 receptions. How much Brady Quinn needs to catch up with is dependent on his holdout length, though he has assured reporters that he is studying his playbook.
Walcoff’s story from the team website describes the Browns’ use of a play clock on the sidelines at the practice field in Berea, Ohio, as well as using headsets to relay plays from offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski to quarterback coach Rip Scherer. Scherer then uses his headset to send the play into the quarterback’s helmet in the huddle. Apparently it’s being done to make practice more like a game situation and though I’m not sure how many teams do this kind of thing, ALL of them should.
Coaches set the play clock to 14 seconds during practice, hoping that will allow the quarterbacks to almost over-adjust during regular season games. It’s also set up that way so the quarterbacks and linemen have to make their defensive reads quicker because, as the article states, there is a “large amount of pre-snap reads and movement made in Chudzinski's offense.” I know Photoshop does wonders, but I’m pretty sure Brady Quinn’s playbook doesn’t have X’s literally moving around on the other side of the O’s.
NFL players do not just play a game anymore. There’s no doubt that they operate as pieces of a multi billion dollar machine and should get as much money as they want and think they deserve. After all, it wasn’t the fans that had to constantly hit the weight room. Fans didn’t have to miss every big party of the year because alcohol violations would sit them for a game or two. Fans don’t get told how to do THEIR job.
When it all boils down, however, it’s those butts-in-the-seats that keep the players employed. This is especially true for the blue-collar fans who get paid 10 times less to do a job that can be widely considered as 10 times worse than any other. It’s easy to hate when you’re in that position because, well, no one really hates them for having the job that they do.
Think of the dedicated garbage man who bleeds orange and brown. He does a job that not many people would like to do and, to my knowledge, doesn't build a mansion on his annual income. Brady Quinn pays a few bucks a month to have his trash removed, while the garbage man pays upwards of $70 or $80 a game to support that same player.
One word blends these two separate worlds - respect. A lot of people see it as disrespect (to them) that Brady Quinn (and all other holdouts, for that matter) is off the field trying to make an extra million dollars or more because it comes on top of tens of millions already – it weakens the importance of their jobs. Many blue-collar workers do not get to negotiate their contract terms, if they sign a contract at all.
Maybe this is a huge mistake diagnosing a socio-economic problem. Perhaps I’m just blowing this whole thing up. I just like to think that in an ideal society it wouldn’t really matter what job you do, as long as you respect everyone else. I understand that people have every right to try and earn as much as they think they’re worth. But Brady Quinn’s holdout is hurting him doubly. The obvious way is that he’s not practicing with his teammates getting ready for the regular season. The longer lasting effect is that he’s doing that to try and earn more money for himself when it is pretty obvious that this Browns team is nowhere near complete for a Super Bowl run.
Think of Brady’s holdout in five years when he’s begging for more help on the offensive side of the ball. And after this holdout is said and done, I don’t see him as being the kind of guy to restructure his contract. Fans can only hope that becoming a veteran in the league will change his mind in that sense.
“When [Brady Quinn] talks about the draft, he focuses not on draft position but on his excitement to simply know where he's headed,” said SI.com's Adam Hofstetter in an article I pulled from a Brady Quinn “support” website listed below. [It should be noted that due to insufficient information on the site, I cannot determine who actually runs the website and, therefore, its credibility.]
Despite this, one thing is clear: the Brady Quinn fans in Cleveland came to love on draft day is not the same man seen donning the #10 orange and brown during team activities in late May and early June. The fans aren’t the only ones who have to reassess Quinn’s status with the team because even his Browns teammates (well, not yet, technically) are counting him out for an extended period of time, no matter how they try to skip around it.
“You have to be on top of your game and know your plays and not have any doubt so when you get up there you're prepared,” offensive lineman Lennie Friedman said in a story from clevelandbrowns.com staff writer Jeff Walcoff titled, “Tempo new priority in practice” (posted 08-03-07).
Remember back when Braylon Edwards held out beginning his time in Cleveland. “It could very well take him a full year because he has missed this much camp,” head coach Romeo Crennel said in a 2005 ESPN.com article stating Edwards had just signed with Cleveland. While the wide receiver did miss TWO weeks, Quinn is headed there, with his holdout already at nine days. What needs to be remembered, however, is that Brady Quinn is a quarterback, the mental and vocal leader of the offensive unit on the football field.
I’ll bet Lennie Friedman doesn’t know what Quinn’s voice sounds like in the huddle. I can almost guarantee Friedman knows what Ken Dorsey sounds like more than Quinn and Dorsey has had his bags packed and ready to roll to a new team’s number three quarterback position ever since the draft took place.
Braylon Edwards finished his rookie campaign with just 32 receptions. How much Brady Quinn needs to catch up with is dependent on his holdout length, though he has assured reporters that he is studying his playbook.
Walcoff’s story from the team website describes the Browns’ use of a play clock on the sidelines at the practice field in Berea, Ohio, as well as using headsets to relay plays from offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski to quarterback coach Rip Scherer. Scherer then uses his headset to send the play into the quarterback’s helmet in the huddle. Apparently it’s being done to make practice more like a game situation and though I’m not sure how many teams do this kind of thing, ALL of them should.
Coaches set the play clock to 14 seconds during practice, hoping that will allow the quarterbacks to almost over-adjust during regular season games. It’s also set up that way so the quarterbacks and linemen have to make their defensive reads quicker because, as the article states, there is a “large amount of pre-snap reads and movement made in Chudzinski's offense.” I know Photoshop does wonders, but I’m pretty sure Brady Quinn’s playbook doesn’t have X’s literally moving around on the other side of the O’s.
NFL players do not just play a game anymore. There’s no doubt that they operate as pieces of a multi billion dollar machine and should get as much money as they want and think they deserve. After all, it wasn’t the fans that had to constantly hit the weight room. Fans didn’t have to miss every big party of the year because alcohol violations would sit them for a game or two. Fans don’t get told how to do THEIR job.
When it all boils down, however, it’s those butts-in-the-seats that keep the players employed. This is especially true for the blue-collar fans who get paid 10 times less to do a job that can be widely considered as 10 times worse than any other. It’s easy to hate when you’re in that position because, well, no one really hates them for having the job that they do.
Think of the dedicated garbage man who bleeds orange and brown. He does a job that not many people would like to do and, to my knowledge, doesn't build a mansion on his annual income. Brady Quinn pays a few bucks a month to have his trash removed, while the garbage man pays upwards of $70 or $80 a game to support that same player.
One word blends these two separate worlds - respect. A lot of people see it as disrespect (to them) that Brady Quinn (and all other holdouts, for that matter) is off the field trying to make an extra million dollars or more because it comes on top of tens of millions already – it weakens the importance of their jobs. Many blue-collar workers do not get to negotiate their contract terms, if they sign a contract at all.
Maybe this is a huge mistake diagnosing a socio-economic problem. Perhaps I’m just blowing this whole thing up. I just like to think that in an ideal society it wouldn’t really matter what job you do, as long as you respect everyone else. I understand that people have every right to try and earn as much as they think they’re worth. But Brady Quinn’s holdout is hurting him doubly. The obvious way is that he’s not practicing with his teammates getting ready for the regular season. The longer lasting effect is that he’s doing that to try and earn more money for himself when it is pretty obvious that this Browns team is nowhere near complete for a Super Bowl run.
Think of Brady’s holdout in five years when he’s begging for more help on the offensive side of the ball. And after this holdout is said and done, I don’t see him as being the kind of guy to restructure his contract. Fans can only hope that becoming a veteran in the league will change his mind in that sense.
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