Part 2: We Couldn't Remember Anything, Remember?

After we escaped the Australian Olympics, which were the most patronizing activities since I had to play the pass the balloon the between the legs game at college orientation, I, along with the rest of the group, needed a release. Fortunately for us, the hotel had a Bargain Bin for cheap bottles of wine. Our group bought up every bottle and crushed each one by midnight. The wine, especially the Amberly brand, was so disgusting that the only way I could finish it was to chug the bottle as fast as I could. This fifteen year old girl style of drinking enabled me to forget most of the night, but luckily I brought out my camera, so in the morning I was able to piece it all together. The first awesome thing I did was practicing for Trinity Football 2010 by long-snapping my wine bottle across the lawn. Next, I made friends with the Town BROcals and almost went back with them to their home if not for Sam Viering being the voice of reason and convincing me that it was probably a bad idea that I not go home with these dodgy strangers. Then, I proceeded to have a heart to heart with SV where I spoke for 20 minutes about all my personal issues while he tried to make sense of my incoherent rambling. Finally, I ran around the premises chasing kangaroos. This last pursuit is the one thing I will always regret not putting on tape because the way people described it to me, it probably would have been the biggest YouTube sensation since Two Girls One Cup. Amazingly after this night of debauchery, waking up early the next morning was not a problem for myself and the rest of the group as we were amped to learn about Aboriginal culture.

Day two was an Aboriginal tour where we learned about the native Aussie culture and learned how to toss spears and throw boomerangs. I was not the best at either exercise. The spear throwing champion went to Roger and Matt who chucked the spear as well as our tour guide. Despite my epic fail of spear throwing, I had a chance to redeem myself at the boomerang, but when I finally was able to get the boomerang to come back to me, I was unable to catch it. My one chance at Aborigine glory slowly slipped out of my fingers and hit the ground, shattering my dreams of being the best unofficial Aborigine in history. At night, a few of us were invited to go partying with the hotel manager who was thoroughly amused by our antics the night before. Although he did not drink, he supported our boozing a hundred percent because it made his hotel money and it gave him free entertainment. Therefore, he took myself, SV, Sherry, Maddy and Carly to Club 120 to party. This idea seemed tremendous until we realized that the club he brought us to was all the way back in Perth. Consequently, by the time we made it down to the club, we had sobered up and realized that this was not the best decision to come down here. I tried to make the best of it and mingle with the Aussie locals, but I found out that Perth girls do not love strange men coming up to them and dancing awkwardly, so I had trouble pimping it up down there. On the way back home the cops pulled us over because we had one too many people in the whip, so valiantly Ben offered to get out of the car and had the Paddy Wagon take him to MacKers (this is what they called McDonalds in Australia). Reece, the hotel manager, then drove us all back home and went back down to bring Ben safely home. The next day we went surfing and all there is to mention about that is that Viering was too much of a shredder to listen to the instructor and went deeper than everone else to prove his awesomeness.
We returned home for the weekend and had nothing to do, but find cool things to do so that this blog would be interesting. On Friday Harry, Blake, Sam, Ben and I decided to buy a car so that we would have unlimited access to travel anywhere we wanted to. Obtaining the car was a full day venture because we had to make sure that the car was not a piece of junk and we hit many obstacles on the way to purchasing it. Sherry had his debit card eaten up by the ATM machine because the local authorities reported stolen, so Blake and I had to take out extra money to pay for the car (by the way Ben we are still waiting for you to reimburse us).Plus, we had to bus halfway across Perth to meet the dealer who had our car. Luckily, the bloke selling us our car was not a sociopath and did not pull a Wolf Creek on us American tourists. At the end of the day we had attained the Red Devil, which was the name of our Red Mazda Magna from 1991, and the car came with a bunch of cool things including, surf racks, sleeping bags and a Tom Tom GPS system. When Ben and I rolled back to Curtin with our ride we thought we were the most badass people even though we were rocking a beat up station wagon. We decided to celebrate our purchase by going out to bars in Perth. The journey into downtown was a great deal of fun as we went to one bar to meet up with Sam’s Aussie friend who then took us to one of the cooler concerts I have ever been to. Apparently, it was a concert venue during the day, but at late night it was an outdoor club for all to enjoy, so enjoy the club we did. Will from SMU, Sam and I hit on every girl in sight and we all struck out worse than Jason Giambi off steroids. Pride unshaken we caught the last train back to Curtin University with smiles on our faces.

Saturday we wanted to take the Red Devil out for its first road trip so we went down to Scarborough beach for a little fun in the sun. Unfortunately, that fun in the sun roasted Ben’s back and gave Lindsey and Liza the worst sun burns on the back of someone’s thighs that I had ever seen. When everyone recovered from the intense beach sun, we brought out a handle of Jack and a ton of other booze to celebrate Blake Macklin’s, Sam Viering’s good friend from home, 21st birthday. I myself was separated from these yugs celebration because I went into town with the SMU kids. Nevertheless, both groups, the ones that went out and the ones that stayed in, had an equally wild time. Personally, I was rejected at the first club we went to for being too drunk, so this Australian bloke who thought my rejection was unjust, befriended me and took me to another club where we danced our pants off and met a whole bunch of fun Aussie girls. The only bad news about my night was that I had to pay for the cab ride home all by myself despite my endearing efforts to persuade the cabbie to give me a free ride home. Back at Curtin, Sam, Ben, Blake and the other yugs had an experience that I can only explain by the pictures that they took that night.

Sunday was Blake’s official birthday so we went down to Cottestloe to show him a proper time. What we soon found out was that Sundays are one of the biggest party days in Australia. People do not care that they have work on Monday or that they were hung-over from last night. They nut up and go the pubs for an amazing time. While at the pub, I had a woman come up to me because she and her friends met me last night at some club. I guess I showed them such a good time that they wanted a little more TK. Even though this incident was a rare occasion and I was extremely flattered by it all, I had to separate myself from them and enjoy the rest of the Sunday Session scene. The pubs at Cottestloe on Sundays are full of beautiful women scantily clothed embracing the last day of freedom before the work week. Everyone has smiles on their face and each pub has both an inside and outside area to party. Our first Sunday Session was fun, but only wetted our appetite for the Sunday Sessions yet to come. On our car ride home we stopped at a Chicken Treat Fast Food restaurant for some grub. Inside the joint, the female employee told us there was no chicken left. This comment sent me into mass confusion because it does not make sense that a restaurant that only serves chicken is out of chicken. Our new founded member of our wolfpack, Nick Hunter from Sydney, explained to me that she meant that there were no more whole rotisserie chickens left, but we could purchase the other products. As a result of her poor communication skills, I demanded that I obtain a job application in order to turn the establishment around. Sadly, she already hated me for my blatant disapproval of her overall incompetence so she flat out denied me an application. I faced this rejection like a man and went back to Don Watts where we drank our Goon Sacks, Aussie for box wine, and watched the TV series that led to creation of the infamous Summer Heights High. I would tell you more about our time in Perth but I have to pay for my internet and I am running out of megabytes, so this is Paul BROgan signing off and telling you When in Perth, Get Some Dome.

Arrival: Perth, Yanchep and Back, Part 1

Finally, after a month and half of winter break and 20+ hours of flight, I have made it to Curtin University in Perth. The trip over went smoothly. Qantas Airlines, despite their egregious grammatical error of having no U after Q, was a tremendous airlines because it had complimentary wine, personalized tvs with the best movies and the nicest flight attendants. Additionally, I was able to stop at the Duty Free Shop in SFO and buy a handle of Crown and JD for 50$, one of the last times I would buy booze that was not unbelievably overpriced. On the connection from Sydney to Perth, I sat next to a beautiful girl from New Zealand named Larissa. After flying with her for four hours, I thought to myself if all the New Zealand girls were like her, I may have a made a huge mistake by going to Australia over New Zealand. At the Perth Airport, I was approached by an Australian who ask me if I was Twig. I looked at him with amazement since what kind of country has people named Twig? Sensing my confusion, he said, "Tommy Kilgore from Trinity?" Quickly, I realized that he met Tweek and that Sam Viering has already taken the liberty to popularize a new nickname for me. For those of you who do not watch South Park, Tweek is a character who is always overcaffeinated and bouncing off the walls. As much as I dislike the nickname Tweek, it is extremely fitting, so I will just accept that in Perth most people will call me that. The man then introduced himself as Sean and was sent to pick me up and bring me to Curtin.

Soon, I was at Curtin University where I saw Sam and Da One and Only, Harry Melendez, kicking it out front of building 599, our program's headquarters, and I couldn't be happier to see some familiar faces. They introduced me to two girls in our program, Atlee and Carly from SMU, and told me that they had talked me up big to the group, so I couldn't disappoint them. Great, I have been here for two seconds and I already had pressure to perform. Next, I went inside to the 599 and Amanda Rickman, one of the directors of the program, showed me around and introduced me to Daniel aka The Best Advisor Ever. Later that night, Dan took myself and the rest of his advisors out to the beach for swimming, beers and fish and chips. In the pub, Carly asked two Aussie locals who seemed to have been there for awhile, which beer to get and they quickly replied, "Tequila!" Although they were on a fast track for a raging hangover in the morning, I took easy as the jet lag was starting to hit me.

Back at my dorm, I was lamenting how cramped and hot it was until I met my roommate, Lindsey Van Clear. She was not only an SMU girl in our program, but she was also roommates back at school with Kristina Theleen, a longtime friend of mine from SF. Immediately, my situation improved exponentially as she offered to make me bed while I showered, making it seem like I lucked out with the greatest roommate. In the morning, I had to sit through one of the most brutal housing orientations. To give you a quick snippet of what it was like, he told a ten minute long story of why driving on the left side of the road was the correct side just to warn us to look the other way when crossing the street. This presentation was followed by a safety one that was similarily aggravating. Once I finished with all those compulsory meetings, our group headed off to Yanchep National Park for a two day retreat. Yanchep is about 50 miles from Perth, a distance that you should remember as it would come into the story on the second night in Yanchep. When the group arrived in Yanchep, we saw our first Kangaroos and Koalas. The Kangaroos were Grey Kangaroos, so they were smaller than the Red Kangaroos, which are the ones that are traditionally thought about seeing in Australia. Nevertheless, these kangaroos were fun to watch as they fought each other, hopped around the premises and tried to act tough when we approached them. The Koalas were much cuter but all they did was chill in the trees, ate and slept- not a bad life. The coolest animal in Yanchep was the Drop Bear. It is a relative of the Koala and hunts by dropping down on its prey from the trees. The only way to prevent being a Drop Bear victim is to rub vegemite, a salty and repulsive Australian black spread, on your face. A few members of the group used this method, which must have worked because we did not run into a Drop Bear the whole time we were there.

The other great thing about being in Yanchep was that all our meals were paid for, all you can eat and delicious. We all took full advantage of this feast and even tried the Kangaroo filets that they made. It tasted like beef but a little gamier. After dinner we had the Australian Olympics, which was like one of the team building games that you played at summer camp when you were like 12. The competitions consisted of Australian Trivia, making the longest strand out of an Australian mint candy wrapper and moving Jaffers, an M&M type candy, from one plate to another with chopsticks. The big finale of these phenomenal games was a relay race where we had to run ten yards, pick up a disgusting vegemite cracker with our mouths and run back. Since it was a competition, my team named the Killer Quokkas of course dominated.