Catching up on my first week

So we’re coming up on a week in Oz and I am still waking impossibly early.  They say one day of recovery for every hour of time-dislocation, so I guess I am still within the predicted circadian-rhythm adjustment curve. 

I’ve done a mixture of work and sightseeing all week, still skulking around cafes to download e-mail, because I can’t get my computer to work with the USB-stick cell modem I got from Vodaphone, and I haven’t been able to download the OS upgrade that might be the key to this problem.  At the best of times I can usually handle such techno hassles, but when there are obstacles (e.g., the upgrade is 769MB but the nice Mosman Library has a download limit of 500MB per session), I get into a strange paralysis.  On the positive side, not being omnipresent or 24/7 web-connected has its virtues too, as does the enforced time limitation posed by being a world apart from most of the folks who want to e-mail me. 

I'm immersing myself in reading early Australian history, thanks to the local library’s surprisingly excellent collection--I learned from a preternaturally friendly librarian that this is no accident, as the various branches have specializations, and I happened to have lucked into the correct one!  This has occupied a substantial number of my waking hours in midweek (time has taken on a strange blur for me, again one result of travel but also the obsessive-compulsive nature of my work habits I suppose), and I found myself deeply affected by this introduction to the city and its colonial history.  For better or worse I have mixed some straight-ahead works with some New Journalistic accounts, a combination that is unsettling in itself.  From the point of view of my purported course design (“Writing Australia”) this is perfect: I am constantly reading one account in light of others or in light of my travels around the city, aware of gaping holes or omissions that mask ideological or historiographical underpinnings in unexpected ways.  At the same time I ponder how or whether I can transmit this to my students, whether I can design the classes to cultivate this unsettling critical thinking about thinking. 

Mirroring my experiences in other countries I have found running to be an excellent way to ground myself in a place, to explore and get lost and get my bearings.  Padding along in my non-shoes now I want to avoid pavement when I can, and there are some amazingly wild trails around the various nearby headlands.  No doubt because of their value as naval-battery sites, these bluffs haven’t been subdivided as heavily as their choice views would dictate, I guess because they stayed military long enough for the Harbor Trust and the League of Sydney Walking Enthusiasts (or whoever) to have them set aside as parkland.  My radius has expanded, just as has happened with each new place I’ve lived: my first forays were a mile or two, each time late in the unexpectedly short day, whereas on Thursday I poked farther out, down and up and down and up, passing Balmoral Beach, Georges Head, Chowder Bay, Bradleys Head, and back around to my little corner of leafy yuppie heaven.  Actually the sunset view from the trail near Bradleys Head was so stunning I was surprised at how few other people there were: the Opera House and Harbor Bridge in the distance, the water that burnished gold, why was I almost alone?  Running almost barefoot has made me acutely conscious of keeping my stride smooth and absorbing shocks over my whole foot, not just striking my heels, and I’m glad I have worked up the distance slowly.

Yesterday was my first day with Davis students, with an orientation by CAPA (the international-education agency with whom we are working) followed by an afternoon bus tour.  I’d set out quite early for the 10 AM rendezvous in North Sydney, but stupidly waited for a bus nearby rather than blasting up the hill to the arterial that has more choices; with plenty of time I decided to join the conga line from this suburb to the city center (sorry, centre) and then get back across the bridge by train or ferry.  As usual the grain of the northside manifests itself, as the buses make this weird counterintuitive loop back over first east and then north and then west and then south; along Military Road (where cannons were laboriously dragged to the fortifications on the bluffs) one gets that bleak stream of phone shops, boutiques, estate agents, and nail salons that strikes you heavily when you are a newcomer.  All over the bus, just like at home, everyone is thumbcandying away--I am in the distinct minority having a stupid phone and not a smart one--but shoulder-surfing some of the inane texts and time-filling games quickly convinces me that never has so much technology served so little cognitive activity.  As I have at other times, for example when I commuted from the East Bay to a tech writing job in San Francisco back in 1986, I feel like an anthropologist, amongst a strange tribe but not really part of it; by contrast, on the train to Davis from Berkeley that I’ve ridden now for almost twenty years, I have no such sense of alienation but am myself part of a newbie’s study with my rituals and habits.

I’ve reflected many times that these study-abroad engagements demand improvisation and flexibility even more than planning, and yesterday morning was no exception: at about 8:45 I’d ensconced myself in a cafe a block or two away from Australian Catholic University’s Mackillop campus, where our classes will be held, and when I downloaded e-mail I had one of those “Gulp!” moments: there in my inbox was a note from the CAPA coordinator saying “We are on for 9 o’clock and....”   What the? I was sure things started at 10, but maybe I had airheaded something.  I pounded my coffee, hustled on over, found the classroom, and of course found out that she had mis-typed.  Only later did I think, “You know, you could’ve phoned her to double check.”  On the other hand, you don’t want to be a high-maintenance client, and who knows whether you’ve gotten into phone tree hell anyway?  But that’s the sort of wrongfooting that seems par for the course when you’re doing this sort of program. 

Actually a program like this is pretty different from Summer Abroad, where as faculty leader you are much more front and center on the logistical support.  Debbie had assured me that her office would take care of all the arrivals the day before, and so they had, with the notable exception of one benighted duckling who evidently had ... forgotten.  To buy her ticket, much less to notify us or CAPA that she was bailing!  [But as it turns out, she may or may not be bailing.  From what I gather as of this morning, she is due to arrive Sunday morning.  Money, apparently, is no object.  This is a new one on me.]  By contrast, my first Grand Tour was an absolute whirlwind of details, trying to get students situated in London and then Paris and then Les Houches and then Rome.  Even with an assistant it felt insane.  By contrast, here was this small but efficient little team, running a good and thorough orientation session with not-too-stupid powerpoints covering everything from money matters to culture shock to homesickness to safety, including an excellent video on rip currents that I will make sure Alex watches when he gets here. 

Seven of the 21 students (or is it 22?) are in an apartment situation (paying extra) while the rest are in homestays, and I heard little complaining about anything besides the challenges of making sure iPhones are well and truly unlocked.  As an icebreaker we had to introduce the person next to us (tell us name, major and one thing from the States that that person can’t live without), and a substantial fraction did name their mobile device as that essential thing.  I was pleased at how many names I did remember from the Davis orientation, and I was also pleased to see how friendly everyone seemed.  That said, a part of me was scanning for future trouble--Is this the person who will be chronically late to meet-ups? Is this the human-limpet who will pillory me on the evals for not being more of a buddy? Is this the core of Golden Children whose clothing budgets exceed my per diem total? Is this the Toxic Social Media Schmuck who will be hatching plots and ranting pretentiously until shut down?  I remember decades ago on a mixed snow ice and rock climb in the North Cascades with an experienced Outward Bound instructor, seeing him gauging the entire party’s comfort level early in the trip so that he could head potential problems off before the going got rough--here I was doing a version of the same thing.

After turning us loose for lunch the very capable Rachel and Sarah joined us for the half-day bus tour ranging from the harbor out to Bondi Beach and some places I certainly had not seen yet, with a driver who struck the right balance between blather and get-on-with-it.  I sort of gave myself up to being a passenger and not a trip leader (though I did set up the count-off to make sure we were all accounted for at each stop) and reveled in getting a better sense of the geography of this chunk of the city.  The weather was beautiful--it had drizzled in the morning but cleared up to one of those jaw-droppingly nice days where you can’t believe people actually live here full time.  Very weird to look over world-famous Bondi Beach in slacks and shirt, the full mass of humanity not nearly in full summer mode but still enough people to make you hope to hit less crowded beaches.  At one hilltop overlook I cracked up inordinately when the group-photo gathered and an immaculately turned-out sister laughingly called “sorority lean!” and Assumed the Position (hands on bent knees, head inclined just so, dazzling fake smile saying that this group of Greek letters was absolutely the best of all), a gratifying bit of self-awareness and good humor, but my sensors are on high alert still.

Unfortunately the tour dribbled out into a morass of downtown traffic at the end, which was a slight bummer as it had felt just-the-right-length a half-hour earlier as we traipsed down the path from the wildly sculpted sandstone cliffs of The Gap.  Again I was thankful that someone else took the initiative, steering groups back toward their homestays--I didn’t even think more than twice about whether I was expected to tip the driver and how much, a decision always fraught with peril back in Europe as one supposedly bought future cooperation with bus companies by not ignoring the outstretched palms.  Here I would play dumb and trust to Australian tipping habits and my coordinating team.

Then I decided to walk from the drop-off at Central Station to the ferries, which got more than a little purgatorial: just a hint of the Asian-urban crowded-canyon feeling, with a continuing frisson of "is this really north that I am walking?" until in a confirmation of faith I did end up at Circular Quay and was able to get the Mosman ferry through the gorgeous dusk and finish in darkness on the bus, trusting I knew where to get off.  I am totally a fan of the ferry system here, I have to say, and I am a long ways from taking the water-level views for granted like the bulk of the commuters.  The skyline against the sunset light, the strange jungle-y growth on some of the points, the yachts bobbing in the wake--you can’t quite hear the self-satisfied clink of glasses on the terraces of those lucky enough and wealthy enough to have that drop-dead view on Cremorne Point or Old Mosman, but you can definitely imagine it as the ferry rumbles up.

It was a little strange to be returning home at night, I have to say--I’ve been pretty much a homebody except for my evening runs, so joining the end of the commute was a little different.  I’ll be teaching an evening class on Wednesdays, the first of them next week, so I will have a fair number of these to make, although I suppose they’ll do Daylight Savings soon.  I ducked my head into the dark back entrance of the same cafe I’d spent an enjoyable hour earlier in the week, and punked off their non-password-protected wifi just to be sure there were no mission-critical e-mails, before I headed down the hill, made my leftovers, and watched a little too much TV thing.  I suppose I can call it Research, watching with some perplexity as the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles lost ignominiously to the Melbourne Storm in the Rugby League semifinals; having played Rugby Union back in grad school I had never actually watched League, which is a totally different rhythm, and it definitely fed my anthropologist’s thirst for Cultcha to hear the announcers’ plainspoken (not to say ruthless) analysis of Manly’s futility and the incompetence of the referees.

So I will head up to the Library and post this catch-up of the blog, with or without photos, and check out a couple more DVD’s.  If I have the energy I’ll blast through some more of another long deferred writing task (some analysis for the Federation of non-senate academics at UCD), and organize my photocopying for next week.  The other item on the agenda is to take another good long run like the one I did on Thursday. 

Thanks for reading!

This is just a short post to get me started from Sydney.  Photos to follow, as I don’t have my cable to download ‘em, and I haven’t decided which package to purchase to facilitate my Internet connection: there’s no wi-fi in this expensive apartment (unless I can strike a deal with a neighbor to grab a password, probably not 100% legal), so I’ll be buying a USB-dongle modem thingie and trying to figure out what data plan to choose.  Meanwhile I make do with libraries and cafes, the latter of which get a bit expensive.

Yesterday was surreal: pretty agreeable flight (if 15 hours on a plane can be agreeable--actually I was lucky to have been put in an exit row at the jetway, which meant more legroom despite a bulkhead on the right), actually slept some, perhaps worn out by a humongous walk from the international-terminal drop-off LAX bus that’d scooted amidst the giant aircraft and seemingly endless taxiways.  Before succumbing I mostly read the novel I’d been given (The Art of Fielding, highly recommended) and then yakked with a very nice couple who run a cattle station about three hours west of Sydney and who had just spent four weeks RV’ing around the Southwest.  We arrived just after 6 AM after an extra orbit of the city so that the flight could land without violating the curfew imposed by geographically vulnerable homeowners, cleared immi and customs with no problems, and as advertised the transit system is truly impressive: mostly clear instructions, friendly people (even on a Sunday morning) and generally effective.  I even took care of the mobile-phone SIM card thing (hoping I haven’t misread the fine print in believing what the charges will be for various types of calls) at the airport, and bought my 90-day transit pass right there too.  Seems like a great deal, 5 bucks a day for unlimited trippage within Zone 1 which is seemingly the size of Rhode Island.

I grabbed the first train I could to Central Station, and then the next toward North Sydney, not too encumbered by my two rolling suitcases (“really, not all of this is mine, I swear”), although as I went north I found myself surrounded by ... spandex, lots of it.  Just the sort of hale and healthy folk that Bryson hates, but it turns out Sunday was the Sydney Running Festival, with 80,000 runners converging on the bridge area to do anything from a marathon to a half to a 10K to a fun run.  They open up public transport to anyone with a bib, so I barely needed my BART-like card.    But I decided to taxi to the rental agency in Cremorne and thence to the apartment, figuring rightly that bus service would be very spotty on a weekend.  I had the access code to the lockbox, though it was inexplicably situated low on a wall next to the office, such that I was forced to kneel in abject anxiety as the first half dozen times I tried the combo the latch would seem to register my code but then not work.  Various scenarios played themselves out in my head, but eventually I got my packet and got back in the taxi.

I’d heard from a colleague that by going for this area (we’d chosen it because an acquaintance from Berkeley had moved here, and it was closer in than the situation the agency had proposed for more money) we were renting a place in the Beverly Hills of Sydney, or what an Ozzie friend told me was “a pretty spendy part of a spendy city,” but I’d say it was more La Jolla than BH, an odd mixture of upscale British style burbs-brick, some ultra-modern gated architect-y stuff for lawyers in Beemer SUV’s, along with palm trees and exotic birdsong, with the promise of gorgeous bay at the bottom of the street.

After I’d moved my stuff and put as much away as I could, I made a pot of coffee and read on the terrace for an hour, then sallied out and explored.  Up on the ridge is a huge long strip of shops and restaurants, not exactly Rodeo Drive but with some impressive casually expensive stuff on display, as well as plenty of options for food.  I found the local library, the local school where we might try to get Alex admitted, and a couple of decent maps.  With gentle spring in the air it was hard not to be optimistic and upbeat despite my lack of sleep, and I kept thinking of other first-mornings in various other cities, the excitement and intimidation giving way to familiarity and routine, a welcome transition.  So odd not to worry about is-this-the-best-place-to-buy-dish-soap and the like, but just to run through my rudimentary list to render the apartment livable and even home-like.

Today I had my first meeting with the folks at CAPA, the international-ed outfit that will coordinate the ducklings’ internships and homestays.  I will attempt to describe that, and my enjoyable peregrinations afterward, and this apartment that’ll be home for the next three months, in my next post.  I want to head home from this cafe, maybe throw on running togs, and overcome this jet lag that is sending me into a stupor...

Starting From Down Under

It’s an interesting feeling as I sit in an unexpectedly quiet part of SFO, starting up this blog I fitfully kept in previous years, usually when I was traveling and thought family and friends might be interested in updates.  All the doubts come back--why bother, don’t take yourself seriously, don’t waste your own or others’ time, etc.  I don’t follow many blogs myself (still reading new on dead-trees, at least occasionally), though I have noted some patterns that I want to avoid and some I’d love to cultivate (at least occasionally I have laughed out loud reading some of the funny people out in the blogosphere, but there sure is a lot of drivel, too)--more on that anon. 

Enough navel gazing.  Time for me to take my own writing-teacher medicine, “don’t get it right, get it written”--though perhaps without enough of the concomitant “and then revise like crazy.”

Ideas as I sit here at SFO in strangely quiet corner: I struggle with texting on new-old phone, never that good at it anyway--but I’m struck at how strange it is, this contrast between constant connectivity (and the expectations both ways--of connecting and being connected to) versus the old way (snailmail, expensive landline calls, long gaps where no one actually knows where you are in your journey, etc).

I’d like to put in something on the aerie, our temporary home for a few weeks because we sublet our regular house.  Strange transition, not home but just up the street, far less traffic noise, far more nature noise (and yappy dog noise), someone else’s choices of layout / furnishing / books etc, living out of a suitcase in effect, but all of it also making me realize how much STUFF I don’t actually need--hence more trips to Goodwill are in my future. 

Here're some pix, no time or energy to format 'em:

 

Fears and anxieties in response to all the people who’re saying “Oh you must be so excited” and all I can think about is being petrified... about unfinished business from the previous year, about logistical details still unsettled, about the courses I’ll be teaching, about possible idiocies / idiots to deal with amongst the students--hell, after my experience in Summer 2011, about the students themselves, about Alex and whether we can get into a regular school here or whether we’ll be having home-school struggles in an alien environment--will this be a nightmare of arguments and teenage sit-down strikes, as part of our Europe time has been of late. 

But hey--this is the adventure and I am on it.  I can do anything if it's only 90 days long...