Yellow Brick Road Part 6 November 27, 2011

Once upon a time, we also decided that given that we would be going to Australia, it would be a good idea to go to the Great Barrier Reef, and so we went to a place called Cairns. It is on the north west coast of Australia, and is generally considered to be the gateway to the great barrier reef. It was during and after this trip, that I got to know a couple of facts about the reef, the bottomline of which is that the Great Barrier Reef is a well marketed place. One, barrier reef is not a continuous coral reef. It is patches of coral reef which range in their diameter, separated by kilometers of distance. The one which we went to would have been ~50m*25 m I think. Two, it is just a coral reef, there are also coral reefs in India, especially around Lakshadweeps, and it looks like they are much more beautiful than the barrier reef. Three, even in Australia, it seems the experience of accessing the reef through the Whitsundays would be much better. Whitsundays are a cluster of islands, and there is a Whitehaven beach there, which has sand that is as white as salt due to the high silica content in it. The water also makes patterns into the beach , which look amazing.

But then again, the experience of the reef was brilliant, it is almost divine. We went scuba diving and snorkeling into the water, and that is how one experiences divinity. For the reef, it is ~2 hours ferry ride into the sea. The sea around the reef would be ~20 metres deep I think. The sea bed has some bald patches too, so the sun rays reflect back up from those patches. You can see the rays coming up from the sea bed. Couple that with the silence around you (cause your ears are underwater, and so you can’t hear anything), it makes for a divine experience. Second, when you go diving , and are ~10 metres underwater, you look up to the sky, and you see the surface of the sea lit up by the sunrays, and couple that with the fact that you are suspended in water, it makes a divine experience. The third is if you do not know swimming and are drowning, it can lead o divinity (provided you have been good in your life). I experienced all three.

I do not know swimming, but that does not stop me from trying to swim. Anyhow, the way it works is that the ferry guys will take you to the reef. They provide everyone with snorkeling gear and flippers, and you can go around the reef to explore it. Those who want to dive, can go diving too, they have the gear for that as well. The boat is anchored for ~2 hours, and diving is ~30 minutes, we had signed up for both.

Anyhow, I have been in water before, and I can flap around, but I cannot breathe. But, I figured that the human body floats in water anyhow, so as long as I can breathe with my head underwater, I do not really need to swim. And the snorkeling gear is meant just for that ! so I wore the flippers, wore the mask and jumped into the sea. The mask covers the eyes and the nose. While it helps a lot in visibility, there is no way one can breathe through the nose with the mask on, cause there is not air around it. The only way to breathe is through the mouth. Anyhow, I jumped into the sea and moved ~10 metres away from the boat. I figured that if I get to drowning, I should be able to wade my way back. So there I was, in the sea, judging my comfort level, flipping the flippers, when I felt someone was tugging at my feet. So I looked towards my feet, and this got the top of the snorkel underwater as well, and it filled up with water. I tried to breathe, but all I got was water in my mouth. Generally it is easy to clear the snorkel, you just need to blow it hard , but with my inexperience, I had not taken a mouthful of air when I decided to look towards my feet, so there was no way for me to clear the snorkel. That was semi panic. Being used to land, and having been dutifully taught to breathe through my nose, that was my next instinctive step. So I tried to breathe through my nose, and I could not get any air. Now I panicked, it looked like a perfect setting to drown. So I decided to shout for help. I flapped the flippers hard, got my head out of water, took the mouthpiece out of my mouth and with all my might shouted “help !!!”. So I got air into my mouth, calmed down, cleared the snorkel, and swam back comfortably to the boat, a little shaken. Clear lesson in the advantages of getting comfortable. Breathing through the mouth is new, not instinctive, the idea of a gulpful of air before a dive was purely habit, and no one was tugging at my feet, the flippers created resistance much more than what I was used to getting with my feet.

So I calmed myself, and 10 minutes on, I was back into the sea. This time with trained divers. Good thing about the introductory scuba dive is that one does not need to know swimming at all, and there is a trained diver always with you to take you around. But it really helped that I had gotten comfortable with breathing through the mouth by then, made the dive experience much more than a ‘survive through this’ exercise.

Post the dive, me (and a couple of other non swimmers) tied a floating belt around the waist ( more like a boxing championship belt, but made of foam), help on to a floating tube ( similar to a tyre tube) and were tugged around the reef by a ferry guy. But given that I had figured out the logic in my head, I did not hold on to the tube but tried going around the reef by myself, got the snorkel underwater and all those other things, but always remained within one breath distance of the floating tube. Well, as it turns out, logic works, but does need some experience to get used to the logic. It was fun.

Next day up, and we were on our way to the other things to do there. We hired a car, and drove up to the Daintree river, we had to see crocodiles in the river. Got onto a river tour there. Crocodile fact: saltwater crocodiles do not really live in the sea, they are mostly along the beaches, and in the rivers just as they merge into the sea. .. so much for nomenclature. Crocodile fact: they can live up to 80 years, but they never stop growing ! Crocodile fact: they get their pray by feeling the water waves than through smell or visual methods…so no point in wearing perfumes or dressing up if you are to be eaten by a croc. We got multiple croc facts, and got to see one croc only in the half an hour. We had gone out in the expectation of a river bank full of crocs. Turned out that it was the mating season, and all the non alpha male crocs had hidden themselves to avoid being killed by the alpha male croc. Croc fact: they spend 99% of their time regulating their body temperature, so that they can do with minimum energy. .. talk about the heights of laziness.

And we went further upto Port Douglas and cape tribulation. The drive was amazing, and the beach was really good too, cause these were he beached where you have a rainforest right next to the beach. So if you want, you can tie up a hammock and chillout on the beach. We forgot to take our hammock. The highlight of the trip for me was the drive, for those who did not, it would have to be the icecreams. There are two ice cream shops around Cape Tribulation. Home made icecreams, with ~30 flavours, and most of them were quite unique. W reached one shop at 5 pm, unfortunately, the closing time was 5, and they had emptied out the stock. So we drove to the other shop, which was open till 5:30 luckily, and had a good assortment of icecreams. Ginger and passionfruit (good), sweet potato (not so good), honeysuckle, blueberry, jackfruit, and other like that. A good last stop before the drive back to Cairns.

That was the day after the dive. The day before the dive we went quadbiking. A 250 cc bike on four deep tread wheels, running through the Kuranda rainforest track. I would have expected all offroad vehicles to be four wheel drives, but quad biked are two wheel drives… but good fun. And we met a guy who lived there, was a butcher by profession, but god .. what an interesting discussion we had with him on international finance. On the dependence of Australia to Chinese growth, the employment imbalance in favour of mining and the rise of the exchange rate. He was very well informed, I would not expect that from a person in his profession. A surprise.. a huge surprise.

You get to meet people you would never expect to meet, sit down and talk, Sydney is interesting.

Yellow Brick Road Part 5 November 27, 2011

And then there was Diwali. It’s a fun festival in India, and in the past few years I think I have come to figure out that I would prefer to spend the Diwali in India, with friends, if I cannot make it to the family in Amritsar. But here I was, in Sydney, celebrating Diwali in a piecemeal basis, cause here the weekday takes precedence over Diwali. Diwali was on a Wednesday, I attended one Diwali function the previous Saturday, on the day of Diwali I prepared for an exam, and after the exam on Thursday, I went for a ’Diwali ‘with the others from the university. The funny thing is it does not hit you till it gets to the evening. So it was all fine till the afternoon, studying and all, but towards the evening it starts to get get on to you. The houses are not lit, and neither is the sky. There are no sweets in the house, and the like.

But I did manage to view some fireworks in Sydney. I was told that in the months preceding Christmas (and no, not all 12 months before Christmas), there are fireworks in at Darling harbor. So I checked out the website (that’s a good thing, all info is available online), and figured out a day to go. That day arrived, and went, I missed it. So I checked the website again, and noted down another date. That day arrived, and passed too. This led me to go to the website and note down the next few potential dates, and then I watched them go by, one by one, till finally one day, I landed at Darling Harbour, in time to watch the fireworks. The fireworks were supposed to start at 9 pm, and I know that the firangs are a punctual lot, so I reached there at 8:00pm (also because the alternate was to reach there at 9:30 pm). I looked around to figure out where would the fireworks be, and then I placed myself at the centre of the bridge. Advantage1 : I could see both sides of the bay, so I would catch the fireworks whichever side it took place. Advantage 2: there was a good breeze there , Advantage 3: I could get a good view of not only the sky, but of the entire harbor, so seemed appropriate. 8:30 pm: I tried to figure out a good side of the bridge, I could not. So I waited at a side that offered a view of the sea. 8:45 pm : I see that folks are congregating on the other side, so I changed my position to the other side. 9:00 pm: nothing. 9:05 pm: I see people are looking at their wrists now, instead of the sky. So I look at mine, I find my wristwatch there, and figure out that people are getting impatient. 9:10 pm: I figure out that the firangs are not such a punctual lot after all. 9:15 pm, I hear a whistle, I look up and see a rocket going up .. yay !! the fireworks have stared !! In the very limited area of the sky that it occupied, it was a good show. There fireworks were being launched from three different rafts in the bay, and were nicely coordinated. But I think I like the Diwali sky better cause that lights up the entire sky, and because it lasts a lot longer. This one lasted 10 minutes. And then everyone went home. So did I.

Now let me rewind a little to the story of how did I land up at the harbor that evening. I first got up at 6 am that morning. We were supposed to go to Hunter valley that day. Hunter valley is ~3 hours drive from Sydney (and 3 and a half hours if the drive is an 80 year old veteran). It’s a wine growing region, the plan was to go to a few vineyards and taste wine, and I had to reach the university at 7:30 am for that. Anyhow, so I got up at 6 am, then I got up at 6:15 am, and then I got up at 6:30 am, and then I got ready and reached the university at 7:40 am. I turned out that I was the second last to arrive there (the last on e was my housemate who arrived there at 7:50 am. The others were not very happy, and I reminded myself that firangs are a punctual lot, and the Asians in firang land become unpredictable, they are not punctually late.

So we got on to the bus and got to the first vineyard. It was long and slow ride between the ‘got on’ and the ‘got to’ part. The first wine tasting session, 8 types of wine, 4 white ones followed by 4 red ones but the last one was amazing. It was a red wine with brandy in it, and it tasted really good and smooth. The first was a light fruity sparkling wine. Quick lesson on how to taste a wine: swirl the glass (to let the wine breathe), take a sip (you cannot do without it), and then swirl it in your mouth (to let it touch all parts of your ‘palate’), and then spit it out. Well, apart from the few people in our group who were the local maxima in wine tasting, the rest of decided to skip step 4. We were supposed to go to four vineyards, and by the third vineyard, all wines tasted the same. And no, it was not because we got drunk, but in general. I tasted 34 wines that day, 15-30 ml each, over the course of five hours. I used to like white wine, and now that desire has been killed (damn the abundance). I’d like to drink Tawny though (the one with wine + brandy), which bring up the point.. do I like wine or the brandy ?

While coming back to the university from the vineyard, I had to take a call, either go back home and then come back, or get off at Darling harbor itself. I chose the latter; the former would have been cutting it too close. So I also explored the central business district a bit, and it is quite a good place.

It is debatable if we are known for efficiency or not, but there is a good story on efficiency that I have, not necessarily the most recommended one. I have a cousin sister in city that is ~1.5 hours by train from Sydney, and I have gone there on some weekends, and take the Monday morning 7 am train. The first weekend, I got to the station at 6:58 and the train arrived as soon as I got into the long queue. The queue disappeared as people must have rushed onto the train with/without tickets, so I was able to get a ticket and rush into the train. The next weekend, I got there around 6:55, and the train arrives just as I got my train ticket. I got the ticket and rushed. The weekend after that, I went to the station early morning, got a ticket and came back home to have a comfortable breakfast. Thus, from efficient ways of getting onto a train I moved to using the systemic efficiencies available. The house was 2 minutes walk from the station.