Update 3/1/2010

I'm not sure why I am inside updating my blog right now because it's 87 and sunny outside and I should be at the beach. I'll chalk it up to guilt for not providing any updates in almost 2 weeks.

A few highlights since my last update:

• Jim and Micaela come to visit
• Parents came back in town
• Olympics
  

Joe-Pa and Micaela arrive in Melbourne
After spending the better part of 2 straight months together 24/7 while they "studied" in New Zealand, Jim and Micaela arrived in Melbourne last Friday evening. Bryan also had a friend - Katey - from NYC who was on a two week vacation visiting friends in Sydney and us in Melbourne. The five of us went to dinner Friday night at a great Italian restaurant on Fitzroy St, just up the block from our apartment. After taking in some delicious risotto, lasagna and wine, Bryan and I gave our guests a tour of our neighborhood and grabbed a few drinks at some bars along Acland St.

On Saturday I took Jim and Micaela on the grueling 5 minutes walk from our apartment to St. Kilda beach. The happy couple had been on a whirlwind traveling/sightseeing tour so as oppose to showing them around the city, we decided to enjoy an afternoon of sunshine, relaxation at the beach. Another source of entertainment at the beach was watching Jimbo try not to get burnt. He was mildly successful.

Bryan, Katey and a couple of the exchange students went back down to Torquay Beach for a day of surfing. After they got back that evening, we went out again in the St. Kilda area for another fun night of dinner and drinks. We finished the night at a low-key beach bar on Acland St.

On that note, I find myself spending more time on Acland St lately (which is about a 5-7 minute walk). There is about a 2 block stretch of cool restaurants/shops/bars and it has a very cool local beach vibe that always has a lot of people enjoying food or a glass of wine at one of the many outdoor cafes. Also, I'm not a huge dessert guy but for those of you that are, there are 4 insanely good bakeries and cake shops on Acland St within a block of each other. Every combination of chocolate, sweets, pies and cakes are on display in these shops. I finally caved after a late lunch late lunch last Sunday and devoured a piece of chocolate cake with mint chocolate chip cream filling. My god was it good....

Sunday was very fun, but full day. on Sunday morning, Jim, Micaela and I headed downtown and walked around the city for a bit. We visited the Australian Open complex which was very cool and came close to sneaking into Rod Laver Arena. We then walked around the Yarra River, Federation Wharf and the SouthGate area where they actually have a really nice casino. Jim and I couldn't let the opportunity to play some cheap $5 blackjack pass us by...so Jim and I sat down at a table for about an hour while Micaela did some shopping in the mall area. Good times.

The afternoon was spent heading to the beach and playing some beach volleyball with some full time b-school students who we met. Needless to say, Bryan and I were a bit rusty to start off, but we got the hang of it the last couple games. Being 6'10" and 6'4" is apparently a good thing in beach volleyball. After getting that good workout in, we went to one of the students apartments where we ordered a bunch of pizza and hung out by the pool and hot tub in their apartment complex. For the UNC folks, think of a scaled down Alta Springs with a hot tub.

We started off the last full day of their visit by watching the US take down the Canadians in hockey. None of us are big hockey fans, but if you don't think we were standing up, yelling and high-fiving after each US goal and big play...then you're kidding yourself. We were 100% locked in and yelling insults at the Canadian team through the TV. It was awesome. You get a cool since of national pride when you are watching the Olympics in a foreign country. After the victory, we went downtown, did some more sightseeing and showed Jim and Micaela Melbourne Business School. We finished up the night with an incredible dinner on Ligon St.

The dynamic duo left the next morning to explore the rest of the country.

Parents back in town
After a two week trip to the wine country in Adelaide, Ayres Rock in the outback, the rain forest near Cairns, and the relaxing beaches of Hamilton Island, my parents finished their trip to Australia in Melbourne. I met up with them on Friday night (their 33rd anniversary) for an awesome dinner at Pearl. It turned out be a 3-hour dinner filled with some tasty Chiraz wine, Delicious food and some celebratory desert.

On Saturday, we rented a car and drove 1.5 hours down to the Mornington Peninsula where we visited Willow Creek Vineyards. It was a beautiful layout and was really cool to explore outside the city of Melbourne. After a wine tasting where we learned about the history of the winery and the reason why much of the vineyard had netting over it - they have problems with kangaroos eating the grapes - we had a very nice lunch at the restaurant at the vineyard. The restaurant had floor to ceiling windows that looked over the vineyard...really something to see.

We then decided to tour around two of the beach towns in the area, Dromana and Rosebud. Both were very small, quaint towns right on the bay side of the peninsula. While on the pier at Dromana, we noticed a boat race going on down the pier at Rosebud so we headed down there to check out the action. The water in the bay everywhere (in Melbourne and down on the peninsula) is very clear and quite shallow. Down on the peninsula, you had to walk a couple hundred yards in the water to get into water above your head....or at least my head.

The last night of my parents trip to Australia was spent on Bourke St at a restaurant called Bottega which is a Australian-Italian-Mediterranean fusion restaurant. You might be asking, "what does that even mean?" and I would not have an answer for that question. There were a few things on the menu that I hadn't seen before but that's part of the fun. I ended up having some incredible Ox Cheek which i didn't even need a knife to cut.

After saying my goodbyes to my parents, who were leaving the next morning, I checked my phone to see that one of my friends was at a bar just around the corner. I joined her and about 5 others at this alley-way bar called Double Happiness (weird name I know). There are A TON of these cool little bars in alleyways all over downtown Melbourne. Every one has a ton of character and each one seems to be very unique. This particular bar had 3 levels, of which we ended up on the top level which had the "velvet rope" treatment. Apparently i was meeting up with some important types.

There are no menus, and thus no prices, but you can order whatever you want. The waiter asks the following questions:
Q: "what type of liquor do you want?"
A: "bourbon."
Q: "would you like your drinks to be sweet, sour, or neutral?"
A: "We'll go with sour."
Q: "Do you mind if we get creative with it?"
A: "Why not. Go for it."

Off he goes. Five minutes later he comes back with a concoction. It tasted kind of like a whiskey sour except had some other flavors in it that I couldn't figure out. It also had some sort of egg white fizz thing on the top. Whatever it was, it was tasty.

After ordering one more drink I decide to catch the tram home before it shuts off at 1am...thus causing me to take an expensive cab back to St Kilda. Since they were still going strong when I left, and their were not menus/prices, I left my friend a $50 bill and said "i hope i get change back but my guess drinks are $20 each so just let me know." This is a perfect time for me to restate how incredibly expensive drinks are here....its nuts. You can't get a mixed drink for less than $12, and most places they are $16 (and not healthy pours). Beers are generally around $6-7. Not sustainable pricing...at least not for a grad student using a depreciating US dollar.

Olympics
Thank god one of the 6 channels we get here is the one that shows the Olympics. Its on in the morning when I wake up and at night when I get home. They obviously show the Australians when they are competing but actually provided a great deal of American coverage as well.

I am updating the blog shortly after we just lost the Gold medal game in OT but it was incredibly exciting. Bryan and were still a bit groggy watching it (we actually thought it started at 9am here, turns out it started at 7:30am) since we didn't wake up until the 3rd period was starting. When the US scored the equalizer with 20 seconds remaining, Bryan and were running around our apartment yelling and high-fiving. It was awesome. I definitely get a extra sense of national pride watching this stuff abroad.

Sorry for the long blog and the lack of pics. I'll update this post with good pics once my parents get home and upload their photos from their camera. Also, if Jim is reading this, post your pics fool.

Booked my 5 day trip to the south island of New Zealand last night. Heading out in 3 weeks. I've heard nothing but great things from everyone whose been there so can't wait for that trip.

Cheers,
Paul

Update 2/15/2010

You would think that with the amount of free time I have (or time not in school) that I would be able to update this blog more frequently. We'll call it a rookie mistake for now, but apologies for taking 10 days or so for an update. As you can imagine, Bryan and I have been pretty busy and having a great time over the past week and a half.

A few highlights that I'll get into with more detail later:
1. Who Dat? Saints win the Super Bowl!
2. We started classes last week
3. A group of exchange students went back to Torquay Beach for more surfing
4. My parents visited

The Apocalypse
The Saints winning the Super Bowl surely is a sign that the end is near right? It has to be. I'm still in disbelief. Having been a Saints fan since I was bout 8 years old, I was speechless when the game ended and the team celebrated on the field. It was honestly a surreal feeling. Lucky for me, I was able to watch the whole game at the Oxford Scholar Hotel & Bar, not too far from school.

It was pretty wild to watch the Super Bowl live at 10:30am on a Monday morning, and it became apparent that the table we reserved at the bar would prove to be completely unnecessary because nobody in this country cares at all about football. I walked in at 10:25am and was one of the 3 patrons in the bar. After ordering a pint of Carlton Draught to ease the pre-game jitters, about 10 or so other exchange students arrived to join me. I thought I was going to have a fun rivalry with one of the girls from Duke, who was from Indy and claimed to be a big Colts fan. When she mentioned how loud the RCA Dome gets and I had to inform her that RCA Dome was demolished and hadn't been in use for 2 years, my desires of friendly trash talk during the game burst in flames.

Another group of undergrad exchange students also found the same bar and it ended up being a decently exciting environment to watch the game. I got excited when the bar filled up around halftime, thinking "wow, alright the locals are interested in the game." I then realized that it was simply their lunch break on a Monday work day.

Anyways, you know the rest of the story; I had a few more pints of Carlton with the exchange students and the Saints came back to cap off a fairy tell story that has led every citizen in New Orleans to partying for the past week and a smooth transition into Mardi Gras.

Back To School
After a two month vacation that consisted of stints in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, California and Australia, Bryan and I started class last Tuesday. We each are taking 3 classes, all of which fall on Tuesday and Wednesday - leaving us with 5 day weekends. Not a bad gig for 3 months right? I'm taking Business and World Trade, Leadership and Change, and Mergers & Acquisitions. The teachers seem to be very accomplished and I think I'm going to learn a lot, even if its only 2 days a week.

Classes here are structured a bit differently with each class being 3 hours long, once a week. Two of my classes (Leadership and M&A) are 6pm-9pm classes and as a result have a lot of part-time MBA students who come straight from work. The part-time program here is very popular and contrary to the US, I get the sense that the quality of the part-time MBA students is arguably better than the full-time students. In fact, there are approximately 3x as many part-time MBA's here than full time.

Torquay Beach: Part 2
Eight of the exchange students, including me and Bryan, ventured back down to Torquay Beach for a 2 day trip. After hurting my shoulder surfing last week, I decided to take a rain check on surfing and rented a body board for the day. About half of the crew went the body board route with the other sticking with surfing. Bryan is picking it up pretty well. He's definitely figured out the "getting up on the board" part and is now exploring the "do something sweet while up on the board" phase of surfing. I'm having doubts I ever get to that stage...

We rented 2 places by the beach to accommodate all 8 of us, a cottage right on the water and a hostel not too far away. I volunteered to stay in the hostel. There were 5 of us from school and one random guy from South Africa who was really nice. The next morning before I left, I had a "this is why I did study abroad" moment - I had just had a great time on the beach with people I had just met and stayed in a hostel in a beach town in Australia with people from:
South Africa
Austria
Bulgaria
Canada
France

Pretty cool stuff.

Visit From the Parents
It's not often you get to meet up with your parents on the other side of the world for a couple days of sight seeing and great meals. I was able to do this the past couple days and it was really cool. I met up with them Saturday around noon at their hotel and we spent all Saturday and Sunday doing some really fun site seeing tours around Melbourne. On Saturday, we grabbed lunch at a nice European restaurant downtown and then I we walked around a bit and I showed them Federation Square, the HUGE cricket stadium (shown below) and Australian Open complex before taking the tram down to St. Kilda to show them my place and the beach (pic below).





After a few drinks and good Thai dinner on Ligon street, I let them crash after their 30 hours of traveling.

On Sunday, we packed a lot in. In the morning we hit up the Melbourne Museum which had some great exhibits about the history of the city and many of the key events that has formed the fabric and culture of Melbourne. We then walked over to the Old Melbourne Gaol (pronounced "jail" but spelled differently...don't ask why). The self-guided tour around the jail was really interesting and had a bunch of really interesting stories about the history the jail, inmate accounts of their time there as well as stories about famous Victorian (Victoria is the state that Melbourne is in) criminals that stayed there, most notably Ned Kelly. Feel free to google him, but needless to say he did some serious damage in Melbourne back in the 1800's.

After a late lunch, we headed over to the Melbourne Aquarium. Both the Melbourne Museum and the Aquarium are very new and modern with great exhibits and layouts. The aquarium had a few really cool exhibits of note - namely the King and Gentoo penguin exhibit and oceanarium.

After a long day of sight seeing, Bryan and I joined my parents for an awesome dinner at Borsari Restaurant on Ligon St, which is a great Italian place. We had a long, but entertaining and enjoyable dinner that lasted 3 hours. As a tip, order as much veal and lamb as you possibly can when you are down here - it does not get any better.

My parents left this morning for a 2 weeks journey all around Australia which will include stop in Adelaide (and the surrounding wine country), Alice Springs and Ayres Rock (in the Outback), the rain forest up near Cairns and a relaxing trip to Hamilton Island before spending their last couple days in Melbourne. I'm incredibly curious to hear about their trip and how I can do a dumbed down college-student budget version of their trip before my time here is up.

This week I have classes tomorrow and Wednesday and then await the arrival of Jim and Micaela who come to visit Melbourne for a long weekend. Can't wait to see some more good friends and show them a great time in Melbourne. Hope all is well and talk to you all soon!

Cheers,
Paul

Week 1

I've never done the blogging thing before, but inspired by a ton of free time and realizing that it takes forever to write long "update" emails to all my family and friends, I've decided to give it a go.

Bryan and I arrived in Melbourne a little over a week ago and have had a great time exploring the city and getting settled in. Before I give some details from our trip so far, I have some general thoughts on Australia:

• The people here are as advertised, unconditionally nice, welcoming, and funny.
  
• I'm mildly obsessed with the one liner's they use here, such as "give it a think", "no worries mate", "you're a good bloke" amongst about a dozen other that I won't bore you with...yet
  
• Their terms for different sizes of beer needs to be universally adopted. A quick run down:

Stubbie = bottle
Pot = ~10 oz draught beer
Pint = 16oz draught beer
Jug = pitcher

And now on to our adventures in Melbourne to date...

Tuesday
The 24 hours of traveling from the time we got to LAX to when we landed in Melbourne was pretty exhausting, and needless to say, the first day in Melbourne was a struggle to stay awake.

We didn't have housing lined up when we landed so mission #1 was finding a cheap hotel/hostel to stay in for a couple nights. After striking out at 3 or 4 hostels which were all full, we found a nice/cheap hotel in the South Yarra area of the city. The room was tiny but we each had our own bed.

We got internet access at the hotel and immediately started scouring real estate websites in search of a sublet. Bryan took a commanding lead for "Trip MVP" when he found a great 2 bedroom place 2 blocks from the beach in the St Kilda neighborhood (which is the place to be in the summer here). Bryan set up an appointment with the owner of the place for the following morning.


After finding a cool Mexican restaurant down the street for dinner, we watched the Australian Open on our tiny TV until 930pm when we both crashed from our never ending day of traveling across the world.

Wednesday
Within 24 hours of landing in Melbourne, we somehow were able to lock up a place to live. Given that I was expecting to be staying in a hotel/hostel for a week or more, this was a huge win for Team Buter/Wolfert. Not only that, but the place was exactly what were looking for. Two bedrooms in St Kilda only 2 blocks from the beach.

After having the huge burden of finding a place off our shoulders, we explored the beach and the city and just enjoyed the great weather. Not surprisingly, summer here is gorgegous with temperatures in the low 80's most days and we've had 3 or 4 days in the 90's since we've been here. A tad bit better than the 20 degrees and snow/ice that covered chapel hill last weekend.


We celebrated our first full day in Australia by buying tickets to the Australia Open. The tennis complex is right downtown and is really nice. We walked around and watched parts of a few matches (although the big match we wanted to see was sold out). We ended up posting up in this cool lawn area where a gigantic big screen showed all the big matches. It was great people watching and very relaxing.



Thursday
We moved into our apartment Thursday morning and made the necessary trips to the grocery store to stop hemorrhaging money on every meal. Its kind of bizarre how things are priced here. A coke, coffee, or Gatorade are probably 2 or 3 times as expensive as in the US and wine is pretty cheap. At an Italian restaurant down the street, they had a special which included the entree with your choice of Cola or Wine....for the same price. Not sure how that works.

After spending most of the day getting settled into our new home, we went out Thursday night on Fitzroy Street (one of the main streets in St Kilda) which is just a block away from our place. There a bunch of bars and restaurants all along the street and so we bar hopped for a while before calling it a night.

Weekend
With our body clocks getting back to normal and feeling settled in at our apartment, the weekend was spent having fun, going to the beach and meeting some our fellow exchange students.

I've gotten into a good routine of running here and continued the routine by getting good runs in over the weekend. There always a bunch of people - and incredibly attractive women - running on the boardwalk so motivation to walk a block to the beach and run becomes very easy. Not to mention its also a great way to see different parts of the city.

Saturday served as the first day of legitimate social interaction with other people. At a certain point, Bryan and I began to run out of inside jokes and our attempts at Australian accents were becoming less funny to each other by the minute. Luckily, we met up with a number of the other exchange students saturday evening for drinks at Riverland Bar & Grille, which is a really cool spot right on the Yarra River (which runs through the central business district). The other exchange students seem like really fun people and so far have met students from: 3 from Duke, 1 from Cornell, 2 from McGill (Univ or Toronto) and 1 from INSEAD (Paris).

Despite beers here being quite expensive, we managed to have a great time and ended up at a fun bar close to the tennis complex.

We finished off the weekend by spending Sunday at the beach for a while, and then headed downtown to watch the Finals of the Australian Open at a public area called Federation Square. The area is actually where one of of the bars was the night before, and is a relatively new space where they have a huge big screen TV and sound system for locals to watch big sporting events. It was a great environment and an awesome setting with the sunset in the background (see pics). There must have been a couple thousand people there cheering for either Federer or Murray very vocally. Lots of Scottish flags were draped around Murray fans.


Monday and Tuesday
Monday was highlighted by a trip to Chinatown for some dip sum (think chinese topas) and meeting up with the other exchange students for drinks at some "local" pubs off the beating path. It was great change of pace to be in some cool, old pubs even though it was extremely obvious that we were not locals.

Tuesday marked our first trip outside the city. Bryan and I, along with 4 other exchange students, rented a big van for the day and headed down near Bells Beach. For the "Point Break" movie lovers out there, this is where they filmed the famous last scene. Bryan courageously volunteered to drive, which on the surface doesn't seem like a big deal. However, as you may know, they drive on the "wrong" side of the road here. Its unbelievably disorienting. When we rented the van, Bryan went to get in the driver seat and as a creature of habit sat down in the passenger seat. He quickly realized he was on the wrong side of the car to drive. Laughter and fear of the 2 hour drive ahead ensued.

After picking up the other exchange students, we made the trek down the "Great Ocean Road" to Bells Beach. It's one of the best surfing spots in the world (from what I'm told) and all the big surfing companies have huge stores there. Luckily we stopped at one of the stores on the way into town to realize that Bells Beach is really dangerous and that Torquay Beach would be a much better spot for us. Luckily, Torquay Beach was only a couple minutes away. We rented a couple surfboards and wetsuits and headed to the beach. We spent the rest of the day playing in the waves and attempting to surf. Surfing is really fun, but incredibly hard and exhausting. I'm confident in saying that I am not a "natural" surfer. Something to do with being 6'10" and trying to have a low center of gravity just doesn't work.


Melbourne is a great city and I'm really excited to spend another 3 months here. I'll do my best to give an update at least once a week, and will try to include as many good pictures as possible. In the meantime, I found out my old teammate Brad Bridgewater is playing pro ball over here in Melbourne and am planning to meet up with him tonight or tomorrow.

Cheers Mate,
Paul