Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

The daily journey into the city has been a bit of a nuisance. Fifteen minutes waiting for a perpetually late bus which takes half an hour to get to campus. I'm, like, so done with that, man.

It’s week 9 and I’ve finally sorted out both my life and a bike. (Zeugma.) Better late than never, right? A great thing about res is being constantly surrounded by helpful people. With the aid of a few res-mates, I now have a third-hand bike complete with helmet, seat, and working brakes – all without spending a cent. I bought some lights and a lock for a total of maybe $40, and, after a few chicken-outs, am finally on the roads.

I’ve never cycled in a city before. In St Andrews, I’m never on the road for more than fifteen minutes at once. There are two lanes and some nice shortcuts through the park. Here we’re a clattering crocodile of uni-bound cyclists as lorries zoom past the bike lanes of main roads. We set out in sunshine and came home in pouring rain. It’s real city cycling.

From my so far limited experience, Melbourne is very cycle-friendly. There’s almost always a bike lane. Helmets are a legal requirement. We left res as a group of four, but by the time we were nearing uni we were part of a flock. Melbourne is not really a public transport city – I’ve never been somewhere before where I’ve actually seriously wished I could drive. But though it’s a car city, it’s also a bike city. I hadn’t realised until this week how much I’d missed having my own wheels.

I’ve spoken a little about how things are different in Australia to the UK. But it’s not all external – I’ve noticed I’m pretty different in Australia, too. I’ve had a chat with some other internationals about this, and found that, in different ways, we’ve changed.

Or maybe we haven’t changed – maybe different aspects of our personalities are just emphasised. It’s funny how malleable you are depending on the situation. Priorities change when you’re somewhere big, when you know your time is limited.

In St Andrews, I’m rushing everywhere. I leave the house at eight thirty in the morning and return home no earlier than ten at night. I’m active and outgoing, my days meticulously planned and constantly busy. I thought I’d be like that here, if not even more so.

Instead, I’m quite happy just soaking it all up. I’m floating slowly through life, enjoying the little things: cooking in the shared kitchen on a busy weekday evening, wandering through the city with no clear purpose, spending time with the friends I’ve made rather than being constantly on the lookout for new people. It bothered me when I first noticed it, this newfound quietness and slowness. But it’s an appreciation for the small things, I’ve decided. Quality over quantity. In St Andrews, you have to seek out entertainment – but Melbourne itself is entertainment enough for me. 

Every week, the uni hosts two bands. Some of them are local, some from further afield. There's free beer and a barbecue - with classic Australian hot dogs made from sandwich bread. Broods, an up and coming New Zealand band, played in one of the first weeks, and I've been listening to them a fair bit since. Lend them your ear - this music video landed the same day I did.

Off to Tasmania tomorrow. Have yet to pack or even write a to do list in preparation. I don't even know what time the flight is apart from somewhere in the broad region of 'afternoon.' Time for an adventure.

Busy busy busy

I am not going to write about the referendum here. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. It’s all I’ve been talking about. It’s all I’ve been worrying about. So I’m going to write about something else.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been so busy. The mist of coursework fell heavy across the land, and my home became overshadowed by the stormcloud of important political decisions. But I still found time to get mobbed by parakeets, stalk Tony Abbott on his University of Melbourne visit, acquire a rickety yellow bicycle, see the Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road, compose a nightclub anthem, book a holiday to New Zealand, and buy a tacky little landmark ornament, my signature tourist purchase for every city I visit abroad.

Today we went to St Kilda and had lunch at Lentil as Anything. Lentils is a chain of five vegetarian restaurants run entirely on donations: rather than paying a fixed price, you give however much you can afford or think the meal is worth. The food is delicious, so well worth the suggested price of (to my memory) around $15 – but the donation box means that you don’t have to feel bad if you can’t spend that much. We also had a wander around - and lie down - at the Veg Out Community Garden.

I am midway through the semester and my days are spent in the library, my evenings in the city, my nights in the shared kitchen, and my money on coffee. (Zeugma.) Summer is on its way. My time is beginning to run out. I’d better make it count.

Simple steps to creating an Aussie nickname:

1. Shorten the word to one or two syllables.

2. Add 'o' on the end.

That's it. Congratulations. Servo, bottle-o, Johnno. Works every time.

Anything is peaceful from 975 feet.

These past two weeks, Friday evening has become my Sabbath. I’ve finished uni after the last bus and headed into the city, walking down Swanston Street and breathing everything in. I don’t know how I will go back to my small quiet town. I love it here. The glass towers reflecting a sunset concealed by skyscrapers, the warning ring of the trams as they creak along their tracks towards you, the sense of insignificance which is so freeing, so welcoming, so calming. There is no pressure on you when nobody knows your name.

We climbed to the top floor of RMIT University and found a balcony. Through a gap in the fence I gazed out at the yellow streets below me. Trams slipped by, ringing gently as they went. A group of skateboarders hurtled down the hill. We were at the corner of the city grid, where the map tilts forty-five degrees and the blocks shift from rectangular to rhomboid. Night had fallen, but the city still shone. 

*

It's been a weekend of vantage points. Twenty hours later I was looking down at the city from the Skydeck, 975 feet above the meticulous grid of the CBD. Things move slowly when you see them from above. I leaned my body against the glass and thought, the world is quiet here.

*

I have 99 days left in Melbourne as of today.

Did I ever mention that I'm a National Gallery certified artist? No? Good, because that would have been a filthy lie, and lying is wrong, kids. Well, lying is usually wrong. We can debate that point some other time.

I  call this one Self-Portrait on a Friday Afternoon. (Don't worry Mum, don't worry Dad - I slept until ten today! Score!)

“I love Melbourne. I love it so much that I’m going to name my future daughter Mel, and then she’ll get my surname, and she’ll be called Mel Bearn.”

Lecturer, mid-slide: “I’ve played over 440 hours of Skyrim.”

Residence manager, after a 17 degree day: "Cold outside, isn't it?"

Mondays and Fun Days

Today was one of those Mondays which just wouldn’t cooperate. You might as well call me Garfield. I woke up to a spotlessly clean room, having scrubbed it the night before, only to knock all my food off the top shelf. I hoovered it up, but then I had an altercation with my cooking oil – all over my clean laundry. I missed four buses, handed a book back overdue, got fined, missed both a capella and an Aboriginalities lecture, and made zero progress on the two essays I have due on Friday. The day hit a record low at 3pm when I made an important phone call from up a tree in the pouring rain with a poorly chosen cup of iced tea, soaked through.

Then I went home and complained.

Here I am again complaining now, but I promise there’s a point to my gloom. I’ve talked about the good side to study abroad: the excitement, the bustle, the tall buildings, loud evenings, new faces. Study abroad is utterly wonderful in countless ways. But this episode is about a couple of things study abroad is not.

Study abroad is not a holiday. I suppose it’s kind of in the name. Uni keeps me constantly busy. I’m in the library most days. I still haven’t been up the sky tower. I sat in Fed Square for the first time just this Friday. Two hours of each day is spent on a bus. Study abroad isn’t time out from normal life. It is life.

Study abroad is not a chance to reinvent yourself. New country, new me? Nah. Sure, maybe you’ll try out that lipstick you never quite had the guts to wear at home. Maybe you’ll go to that society your friends thought was stupid, because here, nobody can judge you. The anonymity is very freeing. But at the end of the day, if you’re the kind of person who stresses over deadlines, you’ll still stress over deadlines abroad. If you’re not a party person, being away from home won’t make you magically become one. You’re in a foreign country and nobody knows you and you can do whatever you want - but you’re still you. Those little negative traits you wish you didn’t have don’t just disappear. That’s okay though. because nor do the positive ones.

Basically, study abroad is not just the highlights reel you see here. I blog once a week (ish) because that’s how often something exciting happens. The rest of the time I’m just living life. Some days are good. Some days are less so. All the good bits of life, and all the mediocre bits – just further away. Life isn't perfect, but when was it ever?

I love this new normality.

I had a little moan, so I’ll make up for it now. Things have been pretty fab. I went to the 1000 Steps in Dandenong National Park, a walk which felt easy enough at the time but by the next day had definitely made a lasting impression on my calves. I went to Brighton Beach and posed in front of more beach huts than I can count. I decorated my bedroom and put my postcard arrivals (thanks Sarah, thanks Sani!) in pride of place against my upside-down wall map (about time the southern hemisphere got to come out top). I finished a long week in the library by soaking up the city down Swanston Street and sitting in Fed Square under streetlamps like stars. The sun is emerging. I have always loved second semester. Summer is coming and the sky smiles, not long.

Those kangaroos are as vicious as they say.

On Saturday night I went to see Patrick James live. He was fantastic, as were his support acts, Winterbourne and Gena Rose Bruce. For his encore (or as they say back home, One More Tune) he and his band came into the crowd and performed approximately a meter away from me. No biggie. Another day, another celebrity throwing themselves* at me. Here’s my favourite song of his, complete with lyrics for your karaoke convenience:

*I utterly adore “they” as a singular gender neutral pronoun, but could we have some consensus as to what the reflexive form is supposed to be? “Themselves?” “Themself?” What’s a girl (or rather a person of unspecified gender) to do?

Time for bed, I reckon. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

Weddings, Singers

Ten years ago, some key words were added to the Marriage Act. Marriage was formally and legally defined as a `voluntarily entered-into union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others'.

This weekend I attended a rally organised by Equal Love to commemorate this law and call for change. Standing in the crowd on the steps of the State Library, I listened to several speakers, including Tony Briffa, the world’s first openly intersex mayor. Briffa made sure to point out an often-forgotten yet hugely limiting aspect of marriage inequality: as an intersex person who identifies as both male and female, they cannot legally marry without defining themselves as either a woman or a man – they cannot marry without lying. The term ‘same-sex marriage’ does not cover the problems faced by intersex people, nor trans people, who, when marriage is not equal, must annul their marriage for their gender identity (NOT necessarily sex) to be fully recognised in law. Equal marriage is not as simple as 'same-sex marriage'. And while we’re at it, the idea of sex as a simple binary doesn't take into account all the variables: sex can be defined through chromosomes, hormones, and both external and internal genitals.

After a performance by Monique Brumby (video below), we marched to Parliament, signs aloft: the serious (‘Marriage Equality is a Priority’) and the scandalous (‘I love vagina, but Tony’s too much of a c*nt even for me.’) When we reached Parliament, a collective illegal marriage ceremony was conducted on the grass, each set of vows the couple’s own. “Say what you want,” the conductor said ruefully. “It’s not legal anyway.”

Despite the absurdity of having to protest this injustice, the rally had a sense of optimism, I felt. With 72% of Australians in favour of equal marriage, and plans for two bills on their way, Australia seems to be reaching a turning point. I can only hope change happens swiftly. Equal marriage is just one rung on the ladder to dismantling our societies’ shared homophobia and heteronormativity. Both Australia and Scotland are climbing – slowly.

Disclaimer: word count approximate.

Ever since deciding to study at St Andrews, home of The Other Guys, I’ve wanted to do a capella – but, for some reason, it’s never made it to my weekly schedule. Until now. I can now call myself a member of Ring of Choir.

Ring of Choir were going to be called Student Union Voices, but it sounded too much like the socialist political campaigners who stand outside the library. The campaigners are just as loud as us, but have a slightly different focus.

Sunday was the University of Melbourne Open Day, and we spent our morning flashmobbing campus, lining the echoing stone pillars of the Old Quad and greeting prospective students with Vance Joy’s Riptide. If you don’t know it, here it is. Obviously our version is far superior, but it’s the kind of spiritual experience a video wouldn’t do justice to, even if I had a recording.

Here, neds are called bogans.

Barbecues are shockingly common. To the point where it’s not a special enough occasion to buy hot dog or burger rolls. A burger, two slices of white bread, and Bob’s your uncle.

Tim Tams are Australia’s answer to Penguins. I’m not being snooty, they actually are.

CBD, MCG, ETC.

I worked far too hard this week. Tutorials freak me out: eighty pages of reading, eighteen classmates, and the presence of an eminent professor combine into enough pressure to make me miss high school. Fortunately, I completely overestimated the intensity of these classes, and next week will be a much more relaxed affair. But, by Thursday, I was extremely ready for the weekend.

Thursday took me to two Central Business District clubs: Utopia and New Guernica, resulting in some mostly flattering photos. Thursday was also the day of a major tagging-and-bagging purge in which I gained six points and lost them all in the space of two hours.

Saturday took seven of us to St Kilda for a picnic of Mexican soup and flatbread and a walk down a teetering driftwood pier. Next was Aussie Rules Hawthorn vs Melbourne, a game Harry described fairly accurately as “rugby crossed with football crossed with quiddich”. We newbies picked our team on the day, but our #alwayshawthorn Instagram looked genuine enough to feature us on the big screen at quarter time.

That night was another CBD night out: Wah Wah’s is small, sweaty, and smoky, serves vodka slushies, and is my favourite place so far. The night ended with sushi in China Town and singing Wonderwall with four drunk Uni Lads from the colleges, who topped up our water with goon from their goon sack* and pretended to be Irish, fooling nobody.

Sunday was spent at Melbourne Museum, taking in the Aboriginal exhibition, dinosaur skeletons, and some cool rocks. We then went to Lentils for dinner, a restaurant deserving of its own blog post. Lentils is a thirty minute full moon walk away through the park along the Yarra. I can now attest that werewolves are not native to Australia.

*Disclaimer: No Mum, no Dad, I did not drink this strange drink from these strange men.

*Disclaimer #2: footnotes not included in word count.

“I really like that white thing you have on your front…” “Thanks! You mean my dress?”

“Wait, I thought Schlampe was the German for ‘see you later’…”

“Plagiarism? I go by traditional Spartan laws. Sure, you can do it. But if you’re caught you suffer the consequences.”

My scrapbooking ventures include a spot of Ovid's Actaeon, some of this week's events, and a very relatable poem about university.

There we go. That's a wrap.

Hitman, Batman, Upperclassman 

It’s the beginning of Week Two and I’m still getting lost on campus. The University of Melbourne’s base in Parkville is an urban mixture of old and new: tall buildings with glittering windows climb towards the sky, and the older buildings sit comfortably off paved paths lined with silver-barked trees. As I walk from class to class, I lift my head to the sky and feel at home in the long shadows. St Andrews is beautiful, but it is so wonderful to be somewhere tall.

Classes here are different: a combination of reaching Honours level and being somewhere new. Lectures are fast-paced and busy. My Latin class is around ten people, taught by a kind, soft-spoken man who, in addition to Horace, is guiding me through the Georgics. I had forgotten how much I love Latin, and along with this lapse, I have forgotten much Latin. In both cases, my memory is returning.

Between classes, I head to the library and do my reading to the soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Lunchtime is often spent with my friends from res, whom I now know sufficiently well for small talk and pleasantries to be replaced by sarcasm, gossip, puns, and other low forms of conversation. Today, however, I discovered the joy of a capella, rediscovered the joy of Imagine Dragons, and took part in a flashmob in the Union dining area.

I watched Wolf Creek.

Don’t watch Wolf Creek.

Definitely don't watch Wolf Creek if you're going hiking two days later.

Around forty residents, myself included, are currently living out our own personal horror stories: the brutal, Hunger Games-esque Tag ‘Em and Bag ‘Em which has swept like a disease through the hallways, sentencing the fearful to their rooms and the foolish to their demise. Each person is assigned someone to track and tag; once tagged, you are out, and the tagger goes after whomever you were tracking. The game lasts two weeks. There is only one survivor. The centre of the mayhem, Suzanne Collins’ cornucopia, is the Games Room, where the most residents can usually be found. I can neither confirm nor deny my own plans to venture into that cannibal’s den. 

 Fact: Melbourne was nearly called Batmania. In 1835, John Batman bought 500,000 acres from Wurundjeri elders – the only time on record, alleges Wikipedia, that European colonisers actually bothered to negotiate land occupation with locals first. However, due to language barriers and Batman’s concept of land ownership being entirely European, the treaty was far from cross-cultural, or, one might say, actually a major scam. The official British objection to the treaty, from Governor Bourke, was that the Treaty had 'no effect against the rights of the Crown': rather than criticising the treaty's glaring flaws, Bourke placed the rights of the empire above the rights of the indigenous population, but is anyone really surprised? Anyway, I digress. Batman called Melbourne Batmania. But not many other people did. Sadly.

That's it for now. Back to the books - tutorials start tomorrow...