Unfortunately for those of you who have gotten used to reading about my breezy and charming exploits in a savage and beautiful country, I've spent most of this week in the office, working. To be specific, I finished up two paper drafts and sent them off to my co-authors, and Michael submitted an NSF grant proposal. Play hard, work hard.
There are a few interesting tidbits to report on, however:
On Wednesday evening, we met up with Ellen (Brit, philosopher of biology) and her boyfriend Simone (Italian, logician; it's pronounced "si-MON-eh") for dinner at Wagamama. We definitely need one of these in Philly: fast, fresh, Asian food with lots and lots of noodles and good veggie options. May I humbly suggest that Penn installs one of these into the currently vacant storefront at 38th and Spruce (Stouffer Commons, next to the SaladWorks (gag)), instead of yet another in a long line of utterly disgusting dining-services run flops?
So dinner was nice, although nothing particularly special. Afterwards, we wanted to find somewhere to get a drink, but we were all a little sick of beer by this point. On a whim, we headed across the street to a promising-looking and very hip bar called Tongue & Groove. This place is definitely a winner; if you're in Canberra, go there now. Have the pizza. You won't be disappointed.
We had to sit outside on the patio at first, under the heat lamps, since it was too crowded indoors, but we were able to get a table in the dining section after our first round. The bartender (experimental jazz pianist doing a music degree at ANU) really knew his stuff. He mixed me an acai berry mojito to start with and also did some expert sidecars for all of us at the end of the night. Yummy. We ordered some desserts and a cheese plate, too, to take the edge off: baked pear with walnut baklava and honey ice cream, chocolate ganache and hazelnut praline tart, and the cheese platter. Super yummy. Plus, our waiter was from Philadelphia. What are the odds?
Since we were the last degenerates sitting in the bar, sipping cocktails at closing time on a Wednesday, the owner came up to see how we were getting on. He's American too, from California, and is justifiably proud of the place. All in all, a fun evening.
On the way home, we bumped into a trio of brush-tailed possums, nibbling grass and bugs off the ground near our apartment:
Here's one of them, hiding in a wattle tree:
That one actually had a baby in her pouch. We couldn't see it directly, but we could tell by the way the pouch was bulging down. Naturally, we did our best to keep our distance so as not to alarm her. Standard wildlife protocol, right? But she didn't seem to mind our presence at all. In fact, after we'd been there for a while, snapping pictures, she came right up to us to see what was up with these new additions to her environment. First she went sniffing around Michael's shoes, and then she came over to me and starting sniffing at my shoes. And then she bit my toe! Not hard, certainly not hard enough to break through the leather, but definitely hard enough for me to feel a pinch. It wasn't meant to be a threat or an attack, since she wasn't aggressive at all --- it was more of a "Hey, what's this? Can I eat it?" kind of exploration. Needless to say, I was not too happy about her eating my toes, at least not through my boots, so I twitched a little and she backed off. Maybe there was something sweet-smelling in the shoe polish that attracted her? Or maybe her eyesight was kinda bad and she mistook me for a very strange tree? The world will never know.
Goodnight, possum:
Aww. I love those ears.
Thursday was more work, afternoon tea, a philosophy talk, some pubbing, and then Brett picked us up from the pub for dinner at his new apartment with his girlfriend, Liana. We got some lovely Turkish take-away and enjoyed it with some delicious and very un-Australian (read: subtle, less than 17% alcohol) pinot noir made at Liana's parents' vineyard outside of Melbourne. Pick us up a case if you can find it in the States, won't you? After dinner, the three of us bullied Michael into playing a board game called Pandemic. Think Risk meets swine flu. It's a great game, and the structure is very different from anything else I've playing. Rather than competing with each other, the players have to strategize and work together to beat the game. The premise is that four diseases have broken out in various places all over the world, and the players have to find cures for them and eradicate them before they take over. We did, so we won, and even Michael enjoyed it (do I get to say "I told you so"?).
Friday was our last day at ANU (sniff, sob), so we made the most of it by observing the traditions: morning tea, lunch at Vanilla Bean, afternoon tea, and Friday night drinks at Fellows' Bar. Kim and Melanie very generously invited us over to their place again for dinner on our last evening. We had Indian food from Blu Ginger and some truly great port, which Kim insisted on serving in gigantic chalices:
Seriously, look at that thing! It's like I'm drinking out of a flowerpot!
Mel and Michael:
Me with Uncle Kim:
Unfortunately, we couldn't prolong the evening, much as we wanted to --- our train to Sydney was due to leave at 6:37 am the following morning. Yes, I agreed to that voluntarily, but you'll have to wait for the next post to find out why.
In the meantime, here are a few more birds we spotted on campus. This is a (slightly blurry) magpie-lark:
Two galahs (pronounced guh-LAHs):
And a currawong, which sounds like this:
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