Melbourne - day 1

 

Thankfully, I started getting better in time for this weekend trip. On Friday night I hopped aboard the train from Wynyard station to the airport and flew Tiger Airlines. It's a discount airline...

 

 

...and it shows. Not only are you at the farthest gate, but as you can see, not a ton of leg room. Good thing it's only an hour flight to Melbourne, Victoria (pronounced Mel-bin).

 

I landed around 11:30pm and met up with three other American secondees who are working out of the Melbourne office.

 

On Saturday, I took a tram from their place to Federation square, kind of the heart of the city. My first stop was at the National Gallery of Victoria.

 

 

Nice collection of art. For some more art, I crossed the street to Hosier Lane. 

 

 

Hosier Lane is a street full of street art, or graffiti. 

 

 

 

 

 

Very cool street to take a stroll down. Massive amount of graffiti.

 

After that I just walked around some of the main shopping areas, some restaurants, and around the river walk. 

 

Busting out my phone's panorama feature

 

  Then I took a trip to the Shrine of Remembrance. Apart from its epic name, it looks pretty epic, too.

 

 

It's basically a memorial for veterans, focusing on WWII. To be honest, not totally blown away by it. I guess I was expecting a bit more.

 

 

And on to the highlight of my trip. From co-workers to that drunk guy I met in Christchurch, I've been told that I need to see the Melbourne Cricket Grounds, or MCG. It's the main stadium there. And there, besides cricket, they play AFL games (Australian Football League). Australian football, or footy, has unique rules. 

 

My ticket

My view from general admission

Probably impossible to accurately describe this game without seeing it for oneself. My first attempt at describing it would be that it looks like a game a bunch of kids would make up in a background (I don't mean that as bad as that sounds). The ball is bouncing all over the place. Players are running around, bouncing the ball, kicking, punching the ball (as a forward pass), pitching, catching, etc. 

 

 

 

The object of the game is to kick the ball through those two uprights pictures above. That's 6 points. If you kick it through the wider gap, that's only 1 point (called a "behind"). And don't call that an end zone. I learned that the hard way...

 

It was a ton of fun to watch, although there were times when I had no idea what the penalty was for. From what I've pieced together, if you kick the ball and a teammate cleanly catches it, he gets a free kick. That is, no one can tackle him but have to back off. So if you kick it to your teammate in front of the goal posts, he gets an easy kick for points.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is if you are tackled with the ball, the other team gets a free kick. So as people are getting tackled, they toss the ball (which leads to the ball always bouncing all over the place).

 

Another cool thing, if the ball goes out of bounds "unintentionally" the ref, with his back to the players, tosses the ball in over his head. See below.

 

 

 

 

 I watched the the Blues take on the Bombers. Apparently the Blues needed to win this game to keep their playoff hopes alive. It was a great game, with the Bombers scoring late for the win. A couple things to note. 1) The Bombers are tied up in a PED scandal (yay! not just our athletes who cheat) and 2) I missed the 1st quarter, but the 2nd and 3rd both ended around 30 minutes, so I assumed they are thirty minute quarters. However, during the 4th quarter, with the Blues trying to come back, the game was blown dead at 27 minutes. I thought, huh, that's weird. I later learned that the stadium clock is a running clock, but the actual game clock is stopped and they are 20 minute quarters. What the heck? Don't they think people would like to know how much time is left? Instead, you have to guess that typically around 26 - 30 minutes the quarter ends.

 

Part 2 post coming up next!

 

Sickness update: Feeling much better! Woo hoo! Almost at 100%!

 

Apartment update: Finally have hot water. Sheesh. But then I took a step on my kitchen "tile" (linoleum) and this happened

 

POS...