Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff has *fixed* his iBook. This afternoon, I locked
my door, grinded my teeth, and sacrificed four hours of my Australian vacation
to yell at and disassemble my computer. Turns out that it was the extra RAM
that MacMall installed for free. I should have raised my eyebrows the
second they said it was free. I will be sending MacMall a gratuitously
nasty e-mail immediately.

What a pleasure it is to be finally using a computer that doesn't crash. Of
course, without the extra RAM my iBook is very iSlow, but at least it
doesn't crash anymore. Incidentally, Apple just announced that their next
OS, Mac OS X, is supposed to be crash-proof.

Yesterday, I got in touch with the university about summer housing, and it
seems a bit pricey. $50 a night, but it's for a single room with a phone
line, and three meals a day are included. Might be a nice total package,
but I think it might be more affordable and more fun to get a room with the
bare necessities and find my own food at restaurants and supermarkets. I
had enough cafeteria food in my four years at USC.

I had dinner with Felicia's roommate Janet last night, and we talked for a
bit about our travels. Turns out she and Felicia have been travelling all
over Japan and Southeast Asia, and they have been in Australia for two
months. When I mentioned that I was looking for work, she suggested
fruit-picking or laboring in the city. Apparently, it's pretty lucrative.
I'm going to look into that today, along with temporary office work.

I guess my plan is to find work in Sydney, either picking tomatoes, using a
temp agency, or waiting tables in Bondi for a few weeks, saving up money so
I can spend the last week or two of my vacation travelling up the coast
and/or visiting Melbourne, Adelaide, Tasmania, and New Zealand. I'm going
to Fox Studios Australia (where they filmed the new Star Wars movies)
tomorrow. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a job there.

Janet also suggested selling my ticket home and staying in Australia for the
full year that my visa allows. Apparently, Working Holiday visas, the type
that I have, may only be used to visit Australia once. So it might be smart
to take advantage of it now.

I'm back in a double room with Wade. Last night, we talked a bit about how
airlines book their flights. I told him how much I paid for mine, and he
told me that I had been screwed. He gave me several tips on how to visit
Australia much more cheaply the next time around. I wasn't feeling too well
last night, so I munched on a bag of roasted chicken-flavored Lay's potato
chips and turned in early.

I woke up this morning and realized that I got some serious color on my face
from only an hour or so at Bondi Beach. I guess they weren't joking when
they said Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.

A Fijian tourist was shot/stabbed (reports vary) and killed (that part is
definite) this morning in King's Cross.

This afternoon, I took the ferry from Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach. It
looks a lot like Huntington Beach in Southern California, but the weather
wasn't so great so all I really did was eat lunch and people-watch. My
advice: eat before you go. If not, the flies will eat more of your lunch
than you do. It was unbelievable. I got some chicken, fried potato, and
baked pumpkin at a restaurant, and I spent more time waving away flies than
I did chewing. Who needs the outback when you have all the flies you'll
ever need at Manly Beach.

More oddities:

-Australian money can't be ripped.

-People are looking at me funny when I wear my Hobart Baseball cap. Hobart
is a city in Tasmania, and there sure as hell isn't baseball in Tasmania.

-There is a small town in northwestern Australia called Broome, not too far
from Lake Disappointment (probably only funny to friends who know Matt
Broome).

Steve: While brushing my teeth this evening, I conducted a little experiment
in the sink. Turns out that free-standing water will spiral down a drain
clockwise in Australia.

Until next time,

Jeff