Greetings from nation's capital! We got here late on Thursday afternoon and have been settling in during the end of the week and the weekend. It's a bit chilly here: in the mid-50s during the day and down to below 32 at night (Farenheit, obviously. I should say "around 13 during the day and down to 0 at night" to fit in with the locals). It was even raining when we landed at the airport. So it's been a bit of a shock to the system after northern Queensland. Boo hoo.
We got settled in our apartment in Liversidge Court on Thursday --- we're in number 4, which is here:
We're right at the top of the picture, to the north of the parking lot. On Thursday afternoon, we went off to the grocery store to stock up on the basics for the next two weeks. For dinner, we had our first home-cooked meal for about two and a half weeks, which was marvelous. It was just pasta with broccolini and tomato sauce, but it was wonderful not to have to eat in a restaurant.
On Friday, we checked in to our office at the Philosophy department, which is located within the Research School of Social Science, which is housed in the Coombs building, which looks like this:
Yes, someone intentionally built an academic building that looks like an organic molecule. Luckily, I have a former chemist on hand to tell me exactly which organic molecule it looks like: phenanthrene, which is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. Now you know.
Back to the building: it's impossible to navigate. There are no right angles anywhere and the middle ring is offset a half-floor from the outer two, so the whole building is a maze of stairwells, balconies, and teeny hallways that go nowhere. The trick is to learn one route from the front door to your office and never, ever deviate from it. Here's a good summary of the experience, from the Unofficial RSSS Philosophy Guide:
Getting around ANU is easy compared to navigating the Coombs building itself. Its 900+ rooms are distributed according to a strange, disorientating floor plan that owes more to organic chemistry than ergonomics. And it’s a 3D experience: the three interlocking hexagons aren’t level with each other, so there’s a warren of half-staircases, 120° junctions and dead-ends. According to folklore, the building’s namesake (a Dr. H. C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs) once got lost inside and had to be rescued. Legend also tells of long-lost academics roaming the halls at night searching for their offices, students who live in the rafters and a mysterious Seminar Room G.
Anyway, our office is nice and the heat works, even though there is only a single power outlet serving the entire room and no hooks on the back of the doors for our coats.
The schedule at RSSS Philosophy is tremendously laid-back, especially compared to the average American department. In particular, there is tea twice a day, at 10:30 and at 3:30, for which purpose everyone gathers in the tea room and its attached balcony. Honestly, a tea room! American administrators would take one look at the place and subdivide it into 75 microscopic graduate student offices and consider it a day well spent. There are also talks twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Friday afternoons everyone goes over to the bar/bottleshop across the street for drinks.
Typical daily schedule:
9:00-ish: Roll into the office. Hope you're not hung over. (Note: You probably are.)
10:30: Morning tea. Buy a long black from the barista in the back of the tea room and sit on the balcony in your coat, glaring at the smokers and chatting with the metaphysicians.
11:00: Work.
12:30: Lunch. Try Vanilla Bean. It's in the medical school building, which was designed to look like a double helix. It's kinda chintzy, but at least there's a nice patio.
1:30: Back to work.
3:30: Afternoon tea. Fight the post-lunch coma with some milky tea and a chocolate-covered biscuit, bought from the barista in the front of the tea room. (Yes, there are two baristas, one for the coffee and one for the tea.) Sit on the balcony to get some sun, and chase off the noisy mynas who try to eat the crumbs from your biscuit.
4:00: Philosophy talk.
5:00: Break.
5:15: Questions for the speaker, who is starting to wilt.
6:15: End of question session. Decamp for the pub.
6:30: Arrive at the Wig and Pen, the best brewpub in Canberra, and your home away from home. Have the Russian Imperial Stout. It's about 10% alcohol and is only served in half-pints. Like alcoholic dark chocolate with a hint of coffee. Mmm!
6:45: Add a side of potato wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce.
7:30: Have dinner.
9:30: Post-dinner pubbing.
Whenever, probably before midnight although not necessarily: Back to office to pick up your computer.
Next day: Repeat.
No, I'm not making this up. We didn't get to the normal schedule, though, because it was Friday and there was a mini-conference on that was sucking up most people's time. So morning tea was a little bit lonely, but I'm sure that things will pick up next week. For lunch, we went downtown to the Asian Noodle House to have laksa, which is a coconut-milk-based curry noodle soup with veggies and tofu. It's the absolute perfect thing for a cold winter day. You can get something close to it in Philly at Banana Leaf, but the flavoring isn't quite the same. In the afternoon, we managed to get a little work done until around 5:30, and then went for the traditional Friday afternoon drinks at Fellow's Pub in University House, just across the street from Coombs. There we met up with Kim Sterelny, a philosophy of biology and our main intellectual contact here and an all-around awesome guy/bushman, for drinks. For the record, this is Kim:
Imagine the shock and awe of the unsuspecting north American graduate student who is sent to pick up Kim from the airport and who is expecting a woman.
At drinks, we met some of Kim's friends, his partner Melanie, and a few anthropologists who work in Papua New Guinea (!). Then we all trooped out to have Indian food for dinner. All in all, a good start to our stay.
On Saturday, we ran a few errands in the downtown area, called Civic, including picking up some odds and ends that we'd forgot during or initial grocery run, buying me a pair of slippers to wear in the apartment since the tiled bathroom floor is impossibly cold, and exploring the new shops that have gone in since our last time here. Two notables: T2 in the Canberra Center mall is an incredibly hip little tea shop with a huge selection. We got some mint tea to have in the evenings. Also, a branch of the Koko Black chocolaterie has opened right next door to the Canberra Center, so we had to stop by there to get some bars of 74% and check out their dessert menu. Oh yeah...
After dropping off our packages and fixing a quick lunch, we spent the late afternoon in the National Botanic Gardens, which are just behind campus. It's a little like getting to the foothills behind Stanford, only with more parrots. I'll post some pictures soon. Then, Kim and Mel were sweet enough to invite us over to their place for dinner, so we spent a lovely evening having homemade lentil soup and chatting.
Finally, Sunday: Nothing much to report. We slept late, got a little work done in the morning, walked around town in the afternoon, made curry for dinner. Dessert was a macadamia tart (think pecan pie but with macadamias) we got at a little bakery in the Canberra Center. Yum.
Future plans: Tomorrow will be a typical RSSS day (see above), but Tuesday we're going down to Dolphin Beach for the third semi-bi-annual-ish Philosophy of Biology at Dolphin Beach conference (aka PBDB). On the schedule: philosophy talks, snorkeling, beach strolling, star-gazing, octo-spotting, grilling, and boozing. The computers are NOT invited, so I'll post the updates when we get back on Thursday afternoon.
Miscellaneous notes: Michael would like me to report that he bought a little torch (flashlight, for those of you not down with the lingo) for using at the beach, and is happy as a clam. It's the little things in life. Also, we took our underwater camera to get its film developed and have some pretty good pictures of the reef and the fish. I will share these in a different post, since it's just about bedtime here and photos take forever to upload.
Fauna of the day (really, leftover from Brisbane): Australian raven:
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