I am pleased to be able to tell you all that there is finally a new features page about the Great Barrier Reef in far north Queensland. In my defense, you will see when you visit it that there are an awful lot of pictures, and they required unusual arrangement. And, I had to stop working on my thesis to finish it, so if I don't graduate on time, it's your fault.
For people who are supposed to be spending 24/7 working towards graduation, we had quite the eventful weekend. Friday, we celebrated Australia's national "Walk to Work" day by rolling out of bed and stumbling into the living room.1 Then, we so enjoyed giving up our cars on Friday that we continued to give them up on Saturday, when we walked down to the dog park at the canal where Chad likes to ride his bike. The aqueduct near Iron Cove has been converted to parkland on both sides, and one side of the canal has been set aside as a public dog run-- so there are dozens of off-leash dogs gallavanting around under their owners' watchful eyes. Big ones, small ones, cute snuggly ones, and soggy wet ones.2 There's even an outdoor cafe called "Cafe Bones" where you can buy an espresso for yourself or a "puppaccino" for your dog. We picked out a couple of dogs to take home with us, but unfortunately they already belonged to someone else. We were really impressed, though, by how well-behaved they all were.
Sunday we should have stayed home with our noses to the grindstone, since we spent most of Saturday with the dogs. But, Sunday has been on D's calendar for a few weeks now because the University of Sydney Veterinary Society was hosting a Cat Show and open tours of their brand new cat hospital. Of course we had to go. There were plenty of people there, but all in all it was a much nicer experience than the Cat Show at the Sydney Royal Easter show last March. We actually got to meet some of the cats, for one, and the handlers and the judges were much nicer about telling people about the breeds and the cats.
There were quite a few American breeds of cats represented at the show, including a number of Maine Coons. We've suspected for some time that Vina has some Maine Coon blood in her3 and if she does, we learned a thing or two about Main Coons that has us worried. For one thing, they do not reach their full size until they are four years old, and Vina's only just turned three. For another thing, the four-year-olds we met were 20 lbs or larger... so we might very well have a sizable Vina on our hands next year. Sigh.
After the cat show, we attended a presentation/performance by one of D's faculty colleagues of his ongoing research in Bougainville. Paul's "photoplay" work-in-progress boldly blended together performance art techniques and traditional academic research, interweaving ethnography, family history, restorative justice, political history, and post-colonial sensibility. D's been working with Paul in his rehearsal studies class for most of the year, and he's been a friend to us outside the activities of the department as well, so it was kind of neat to get a glimpse of his own work. Plus. we got to sit next to his Mum.
In other news, D's been given the unexpected gift of an extra three weeks to write her thesis, since the rehearsal observation project she was planning to do from now until the end of October fell through at the last minute. She's trying to console herself that the way it happened was as much as learning experience about this kind of research as the actual project would have been, but it's still a disappointment. Of course, thus far she's been a miserable failure at making good this extra time, but there are still five days left in the week.
Eight weeks left, kids-- and now we begin the long and arduous process of extracting ourselves and our lives from our host country. Hopefully, we won't leave too large a gash when we leave...
;)
- D
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NOTES
1Later that day, Chad rode his bike and D took public transport to work, both of which were promoted secondarily by the campaign.
2The dogs were, that is-- although I suppose maybe the owners were too... we weren't really looking at them.
3Of course, both our cats are shelter mutts, so there is no way we'll ever know, but how else can we explain her exponential growth and her massive adult size?
Back to the GAA page!