Last night in Canberra

Wow, so much for a nice, quiet night in--there is so much to do and it is already so late! Between selling our bikes (including Seth's Cannondale he has has for about 10 years!), giving away items, and meeting with friends, there isn't much time tonight for relaxing.

The biggest issue in packing has DEFINITELY been trying to meet Tiger Airways' 15kilo weight restriction (7kilo carry on limit). We shipped via sea two large boxes, nearly 20kilos each, this morning, but now we are having a hard time with the rest... Here are a few quick pictures from the last week.

Coffee with Johns Internationals

Pakistani lunch with Fahad at B&G

Flight with Warren, Antec, and Suzi

Last day at Dash (with Conor)

Finished my thesis!!

Seth and me with Naomi and Rob (my supervisors)

Sydney's Darling Harbour

Waratahs rugby game

Carlos' rugby game

Paola Coluzzi's house (in Bondi)

The Coluzzi family

Running near Mt Ainslie (Canberra)

Someone is watching

Meeting with Stephen and Kim

Last day out in Civic (notice the Starbucks!)

Final trip to Sydney

Our final trip to Sydney ended up being especially fun and memorable. Sunday morning I went with Carmen and Shelden to watch the rugby match Carlos was playing in. (Seth had a late night, schmoozing with celebrities in the Corporate Box at the Waratahs match the night before and couldn't get running by 5am to make it to the early morning game, haha). It was great fun to watch Carlos, with Shelden as the team's assistant coach, especially since Seth and I had been wanting to do so for months now.

For lunch Seth and I went to visit the Coluzzi family. We met them in September after stopping by the wildly popular establishment, Bar Coluzzi, located in Darlinghurst (there is also one in Randwick and one in the International Terminal at the airport). The espresso shop was started 50 years ago by the champion boxer, Luigi Coluzzi, who had immigrated from Italy. There are very few Coluzzis out there, and the ones that we know about are all from a few small towns just outside Rome, so we figure Seth is somehow related to this Sydney line. We went to Paola's house overlooking Bondi Beach, where we met with her father (Luigi), mother (Elena), husband (John), brother in law (Derek), and daughter (Elenore). We had been meaning to see them before leaving Australia, so it was great to finally catch them. Maybe one of them will soon be able to put together the puzzle of their relatedness!

In the evening Seth and I cooked dinner for Shelden, Carmen, and Carlos--a big mix of food from the Americas, complete with quinoa, polenta, black beans, and steak--and that night indulged in some Eurovision!! It is an annual music competition involving all the countries of Europe, and can be best described by one word: Kitsch.

Yesterday morning we said goodbye to Shelden and his family. We are going to really miss those three! They are so friendly, easy-going, and cool about everything, which always makes it great to see them and stay with them while in Sydney.

We managed to go running down the canal, pack up our bags, and hustle into the City with just enough time before our bus back to Canberra to pick up a few buns from our favourite asian bakery, Saint Honore, and grab dumplings with soup from the AWESOME shop, Da Niang. We have to eat at Da Niang at least once every time we are in town, which goes against all our principles of eating out, but when the food is good, all rules go out the window!

It was a great trip, and I will really miss Sydney and hanging out with Shelden's family. We will definitely have to come back for a visit in the future :o)

Back at the Jolimont in Canberra I saw Merick (spelling?), the friendly and soft-spoken bum who would come around every day. He must have spent a lot of time at the map shop next door, because he really knew his geography, particularly of the US. I had to tell him I was leaving to go 'back to Carolina' , and I think it made him a little sad. I will miss him, too!

Now that we are back, we have two days to pack and say good-bye to a few more friends before starting the big move home!

Handed In!

Yesterday morning I handed in my thesis!! I am officially no longer a student :o) However, I also don't have my degree; I still need to wait for up to two months for my reviews.

The past few weeks have been a lot of work but I never really felt rushed or overly stressed. There was no big build-up or dramatic last-minute disaster, so I can be thankful for that. However, I did originally aim to finish a few days early, but it didn't quite happen as planned--and at one point I even wanted to hand in several weeks early so that I could give a final seminar, which for some reason was never required of me...

Yesterday, after I handed in, my supervisor, Naomi, and her partner (who also happens to be one of my advisors), took Seth and me out for a swanky lunch at Cafe Vivaldi, located at the ANU Union. Naomi won't be in next week, so it was the last time I will see her, unless I bump into her at an international conference, so it was a bit sad to say good-bye. She has been so fantastic and gracious to me that I will probably go through some sort of 'supervisor-withdrawal'. At least I will be able to keep in contact with her and get her advice while I try to publish a paper or two and hunt for jobs.

The past week Seth and I have been trying to meet up with friends for the last time. A few days ago I met with my 'field assistant', Julian, for lunch and a good chat in the Union, then ran into Sam, my running/biology buddy. Before this, Seth and I went out for coffee with the international students at Johns, whom we hadn't seen since we left last semester. At first I felt strange about meeting up with them, particularly since our lives in Downer seem so different from what they were at Johns, but once we saw them, I began to really miss everyone and started to regret not visiting. That group of friends has been something else--so happy and generally carefree, yet each person has such a unique background and culture to contribute. For example, on Monday Fahad invited us over to B&G (a self-catered residential hall he recently moved to) and we had some Pakistani food for lunch, which included an awesome dahl and curry. Things like that are always very memorable. Gosh, I'm really going to miss those guys!

Yesterday I met with Warren for coffee for the last time, then last night Seth and I finally got together with Oanh and Hawk for an Italian dinner at probably the cutest restaurant in Canberra. Despite our attempts, we hadn't seen those two since we moved out nearly 16 months ago! That also made me a bit sad because Hawk, in particular, is the neatest guy, being extremely quirky, sarcastic, yet overall a big friendly softy. I wish we got to see him more since moving out :o(

We are continuing our mission to meet with people and so are spending our last weekend in Sydney. We caught an early bus to the city, then had a few minutes to wander around Paddy's Market before going to Darling Harbour to see an old high school friend of Seth's. She had been living near Sydney with her husband and little girl but this was the only time we were able to visit them!

They dropped us off in Leichhardt, and as we waited for Shelden, Carmen, and Carlos to return, we enjoyed a FANTASTIC mocha at Bar Italia (on Norton St), one of our favourite places. It struck me then how comfortable I feel in Sydney and how much I will miss it. However, Seth ensured me that Boston will be even nicer, so at least I know that I won't be missing out when we leave Australia.

We finally met up with Shelden, and he and Seth took off for a rugby match (apparently it is a big one), and Carmen and I had dinner in, while Carlos (her nine-year-old boy) went out to watch the new Indiana Jones. It was great to hang out with Carmen--I hadn't realised it sooner, but it has been a really long time since I had a chat with a girl! I hope when we move to Boston that I am able to make some good friends, or at least visit Bo while she is there!

Catching up

To begin, Seth returned from the US last week! Also I want to congratulate him on his second big job offer—this one, for Brandeis University, is even more exciting than the first! Not only is it in a great location, just outside Boston (where it is academically stimulating and also full of friends and family), but the job itself is tenure-track (which is pretty exceptional for a new graduate in the field) and the university’s music department is among the strongest in the nation. This would be one of the highest appointing jobs for a recent graduate of UNC’s music department in recent memory. Wooo!

After this, everything else that has happened seems rather dull, but here goes:

Yesterday a friend from BoZo, Warren, invited me and another girl, Suzie, for a flight around Canberra, piloted by a friend who wanted to keep his flight hours up. The plane was a tiny Cessna, which was barely able to seat the four of us (the interior was smaller than that of most cars), but it was actually really smooth and not too scary. We just did a few loops around town, getting a surprisingly close glimpse of the Inner North, the Telstra Tower, Parliament House, Woden, and many other of those dazzling Canberran icons. I will post pictures asap!

I have also finally started to purchase flights for our trip at the end of the month. It is an exhausting and extremely time-consuming search, but when planning for a big trip and dealing with that amount of money, it really needs to be thorough. However, it felt GREAT to have a few dates and tickets set in stone, and I feel more excited than ever about traveling and going home! I should, with luck, be back in Raleigh by July 7^th, less than two months away :o)

An additional, yet unnecessary, distraction keeping me from writing my concluding chapter has been major computer problems, such as having to re-install Windows, plus all my programs (many of which I won’t bother with because my computer is probably on its last leg anyways). Thankfully, however, I didn’t lose any work!

But besides this, a major consumer of time has been working at Dash a few nights a week—however, tonight was my last shift! I helped myself to a few Dash keepsakes, and as the icing on the cake, tonight we had a crazier-than-normal guy come in to the Jolimont. Even though it is located in sleepy old Canberra, the Jolimont is still a bus station, which naturally attracts some really nutty people. We get TONNES of junkies, ‘agros’, and general loose screws, and tonight was no exception—a guy mumbling and yelling to himself rather aggressively. At one point he yelled at Conor that he was “going to jump over the counter and rip [our] ***ing heads off”. A bus driver thankfully called the cops and they took him away. Not all crazy people episodes end with cops, but I wish more had.

In honour of my last day at work, here is a list of the top 5 most memorable crazy people who have come to Dash:

1) Guy who recently got out of jail who kept trying to sneak in the back door (which does not lock from the inside) and would whisper things to Conor every time Conor would have to go outside. I don’t know what he said to Conor, but he was freaked out and tried blocking the door with milk crates. We were tempted to call the cops ourselves before leaving work.

2) Pair of jail birds who hung around the station for about three weeks and would try to get free food from us every night after closing. One spent a lot of time looking for his pet mouse.

3) This guy we had tonight *see above**

4) Man who tried buying a hamburger with chocolates. When asked if he had cash, his answer was, “It is in the bathroom, let me get it.” He went to the bathroom and when he returned, he had cash.

5) Woman who totally flipped out when she bought a veggie sandwich and discovered the eggplant inside was marinated and not fresh. After a long bout of yelling back and forth with Conor, she shouted, “I want to see your supervisor!” He shouted back, “I am the supervisor!”

Just working

Last night Brian had a party at the house to celebrate his birthday (the big 28!). I am not much of a party person and usually try to avoid them, so it was weird wanting to go to bed but not being able to escape it. At least it was mostly people from BoZo, so I recognised a lot of faces and said hello to a couple of people. Brian was cool about trying to keep the house from getting too out of hand and he started kicking people out at a decent hour so I was able to get in a good amount of sleep despite the revelries.

Lately I have just been pretty much trying to get as much work done as possible. Now that 98% of my stats are worked out for my thesis, all I have to do is write. The bulk of my intro has been done for a while, and last week I handed in a full draft of a chapter to be read by my three advisers. I hope to finish my second big chapter within a few days, then all I will have to do is the discussion chapter, revisions, formatting, and other odds and ends. It will be only four chapters, but they will be pretty darn meaty :P

I have also been working at Dash Thursdays and Fridays (unfortunately, no weekends). Yesterday I put in my two-week notice, which I don't think the new owner noticed (seriously, no joke!). It will be interesting to see what will happen when I leave, and Conor, who works every day, will probably leave soon after as me. I realised the other day that besides Conor, I have been working at Dash the longest. When Michael took over, everyone quit and he didn't bother to hire any new staff; there used to be about 12 or 13 working, now there is only 7, including myself! If they don't hire some new people to be trained by Conor before he leaves, they will surely be in a pickle :P

Now back to work!