Where am I now?

This is coming many months after the last post on this blog, but I am now over at http://mathaftermath.wordpress.com/. You can also find me on Twitter @christopherdrup.

Epilog

Well, I'm back home in the United States now, so I guess that means I'm done with this travel blog.

I heard Marketplace on NPR on the radio last night. It was strange to hear an NPR program on an actual radio instead of on the computer. And I drove a car last night. I never did any actual driving while in Australia, so I didn't have to adjust to being on the right side of the road again. I may have to work a little harder, however, to get used to walking on the right and not the left side of the sidewalk.

The internet is faster at home than it was in Australia. I had gotten used to some American web sites loading very slowly if at all. Now it seems luxurious to have WashingtonPost.com or TheDailyShow.com open so quickly.

Did I learn a lot in Australia? I dunno. At the least I might have gotten more material read while in Sydney than I would have if I had stayed in Maryland or Virginia. That might not be saying much, considering that if I had remained in the United States for the summer I would have been apartment-less for a month and a half, and that certainly would have impinged upon my productivity.

Barbecue and walk

Jie hosted a little barbecue at his house this afternoon. I got to meet his three year old son Andy. Andy and I didn't talk very much, partly because Andy is three years old and I am twenty-six years old, and partly because Andy was mostly conversing in Chinese. I think I heard him say one English sentence.

The barbecue began on Jie's back patio, and the weather was fine for a while, but them some clouds moved it and it got noticeably colder. When it started to rain we moved everything under the carport, and when it started to rain harder we moved inside. (I think it has more or less stopped raining by the time we got everything in the house.) In the house, I had some tea from Jie's trip to Tibet last summer, and Jie told us about his ten year plan to perhaps build a second story on his house. (By the way, Jie said he paid about AU$700,000 for his modest house a few years ago, and this was probably the median home price for houses in his area now. Home prices in Australia have not fallen yet the way they have in the United States.)

After the party, Jie dropped me off at Coogee beach on his way to UNSW. He was going to spend a few hours this afternoon making edits to the DDPW book. He said that Brian, Bangming and J.P. are all waiting on him to make these edits before they can submit the final version of the book to the AMS. (I think the deadline for the book was August 8, but obviously they're going to be submitting it later than that now.)

I walked along the coastal footpath starting at Coogee beach, past Gordons Bay, Clovelly beach (which looks a lot different during the day; I had only seen it before at night), Waverly cemetery (the graves go almost up to the cliff edge), Bronte beach and Nelson Bay, Tamarama beach, and finally Bondi beach. From Bondi I caught the 380 bus back to the city.

I took a number of pictures of Coogee beach, and then my camera batteries died just before I got to Gordons Bay. I had not brought my spare batteries with me today. (In fact, probably the only time I ever bring the spare batteries with me is when I'm trying to take pictures of Nick running a marathon, because that was the occasion when I bought the spare batteries.) I was still able to take a few more pictures over the course of the walk, but I had to refrain from using the LCD display, and I had to periodically turn the camera off and let the batteries rest.

Swans vs. Dockers

Last night's game between the Sydney Swans and the Fremantle Dockers at the Sydney Cricket Ground was much more exciting than the game I went to five or six weeks ago at ANZ Stadium. This time the Swans actually won. They were down by eight points and we were already 20 minutes into the fourth quarter, so the game as far as we knew in the stands the game could've ended at any second. Then, in the last two or three minutes of play, the Swans scored two six-point goals, defeating the Dockers 112-108. Australian rules football is much more exciting than gridiron (i.e., American rules football).

Cheer, Cheer the Red and the White
Honour the name by day and by night
Lift that noble banner high
Shake down the thunder from the sky
Whether the odds be great or small
Swans will go in and win over all
While her loyal sons are marching
Onwards to victory

Physics and Firebird

This afternoon I went to Kristen's talk for the Electrical Engineering department at UNSW. Kristen works on third generation solar cell technology. Presumably the work she talked about today has some application to developing more efficient solar cells. It was all a bit beyond my knowledge of physics.

This evening I went with Kristen, Chris, Samantha and her husband Kyle to the Sydney Opera House to see the Sydney Symphony perform Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op.23, and Stravinksy's The Firebird - ballet fantastique. Our seats were in the first row of the choir section, immediately behind the orchestra. We sat directly behind the timpani player. I don't have any pictures of the concert hall. (Photography during the concert was prohibited, of course).

Kurnell to Cronulla

I had decided that once I had given my talk at UNSW, I would not make any particular additional effort to do any further mathematics in Australia. So, with the talk done, today I hiked 12.5km (about 7.7 miles) along the coast from the town of Kurnell to the town of Cronulla.

The train ride from the city to Cronulla took about an hour. The sky was fairly gray when I left the apartment this morning, but by the time I got on the train it looked like the weather was improving. Alas, by the time the bus from Cronulla to Kurnell dropped me off at the start of hike, it was pouring rain. Thankfully, the rain didn't last very long, but, with the exception of an hour or two right after that downpour, the sky remained gray for the rest of the afternoon, and I was perpetually afraid of being caught in another rainstorm.

My hike began near the site of Captain Cook's first landing in Australia. Cook must have arrived at low tide, but the rock on which he is thought to have first stepped is surrounded by water at high tide, and he would have gotten wet walking the rest of the way ashore. I did not go out to read the plaque on the rock, because I did not want to get wet myself. (It was not low tide.) The guide book said there was supposed to be a concrete pylon marking the anchorage spot of the HMS Endeavour, but I couldn't spot it.

My hike continued into the southern portion of Botany Bay National Park (the northern portion is on the other side of the bay), and eventually wound its way along the cliff tops on the eastern side of the Kurnell peninsula. I was trying to follow the directions in my guide book, Walking Sydney by Jeff Toghill, for the Cape Baily track. This hike winds around the cliff tops, past the Cape Baily lighthouse, past some discharge pipes for the Caltex oil refinery, and then along the Cronulla beach back to town and the train station.

Finding the start of the Cape Baily track was easy. Following the trail was hard. Near the beginning of the trail were a few wooden posts with arrows, and these first few posts were always spaced within view of each other, so it wasn't hard to follow the beginning of the trail. But then the posts disappeared, and I was left to my own devices to guess which way the trail was headed. I got turned around a bit near the beginning, but I eventually managed to find a rut in the sand seemingly created by a bicycle tire, and I more or less followed this rut for the rest of the hike. When I couldn't spot the rut, I tried to follow footprints. And when I couldn't find footprints, then I had to guess.

I think I made a wrong turn somewhere around Potter Point. (I'm not exactly sure where Potter Point was. That's where the guidebook said I should have seen the discharge pipes from the oil refinery.) The guidebook said nothing about scrambling over rocks and boulders while walking along the shore, but that's exactly what I ended up doing. I think the correct trail was located higher up on solid ground. When I found a good place to climb up off of the rocks, I think I found what must have been the actual trail.

I eventually made it to the very very long Cronulla beach. By now the sky was completely overcast, and I was convinced that I was going to get rained on before I made it back to Cronulla. That did not occur. But the wind picked up a bit, and I got hit with a fair amount of sea spray.

I finally made it back to the Cronulla train station around 4:40, just in time for the 4:50 train back to Central station. I was exhausted. I guess the hike took me about 4 hours in total, since I picked up the bus to Kurnell around 12:10, and I probably didn't start walking for at least another half hour after that.

I expect to go on two or three shorter hikes out of this book between now and next Tuesday. But tomorrow at least, I'm going to stick to something a little closer to home.

My Tuesday talk

My talk yesterday went fine. We had a little trouble at first interfacing my laptop with the overhead projection system. I think the first video cable we used was faulty. Later, I made a few mistakes in the examples I presented. Someone pointed out the mistakes to me privately after the talk. Aside from all that, I think it went well.