Sun, Wind, and Walking Down Under

Six days of walking and I feel my leg muscles are bigger already...

It's an odd mish-mash of skyscrapers abruptly appearing out of masses of short little buildings rarely exceeding 7 floors or so. That's the Melbourne City Central landscape for you. But the architecture here is so variable and interesting, Singapore seems like a bland, bland, boring contrast.

There are buildings here that look like overblown structural art-pieces...think the Marine Parade Community Centre on a bigger scale (maybe 5 times?), with more colour thrown in...standing right next to classic colonial buildings, grecian pillars and all, complete with bronze statues punctuating the front. Pity we don't have more of those...too bad.

It's easy to get lost, so I have a map on hand all the time. Streets bissect each other perpendicularly, much like in Singapore, but the whole network is like a checkerboard, and it's easy to overshoot Chinatown...Chinatown here is a mish-mash of Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, and Chinese shops, so it's more "Asian-town" than just China-china.

For now Mom and Dad are around; time to treasure our last day together physically, before they fly home. They're exploring investing money here, since the interest returns are much higher, and the property market seems to be booming. I guess actually being here as a student opens a lot of windows...

Panic and loneliness and the discomfort of having left everything familiar and comfortable behind have not sunk in yet, but I imagine they will, eventually, some time within the next fortnight or so.

I'm worried for him...He's probably at a low point now that the prospect that I might build my career here is becoming possible. When one moves and the other stays, things become insecure and unstable...but I have the length of the course to mull it over and figure out my future, all the prospects and options available, and consequences.

The future is like the sunlight here, white-hot and burning-bright.

New & Unknown

Flying to Melbourne 9-plus a.m. Friday, February 9th 2007.

Packing chaos at present. Future unfathomable.

Till November, farewell, home.