Starlight:: Mensaweekend 8 was nothing but relaxing and enjoying the glorious weather:: rain. the rain would not let us go anywhere. we did not feel like going anywhere. so, we sat at home and revised most of our movie collection while munching on steaming hot curry-puffs and finger food. mmm!!
so, since i don't have much to yak about, let me tell you about this black-tie dinner we attended a few weeks back. apparently citrix made a substantial contribution to this charity called the starlight foundation, along with many other companies. to pay compliments to the companies, and to attract more fund raising IT companies, starlight had organized this dinner along with a quiz contest:: well, mensa-type quiz (which is not really real quiz anyway imo). the event turned out to be a big success with 61 companies attending the dinner, with one or two tables each. we ended up being somewhere in mid twenties, e-bay won the contest. hey now, atleast we were ahead of apple, google, and microsoft. the reason i went ranting about the whole thing is coz i have some pickies from the event and wanted to show you some of the guys at the sydney office. martin, the head of sydney office (and the head of CTO office) and james (director of communications) were there as well. check the photo tags. will probably upload more pickies of the eng group [later] from some of the group lunches, but untill then, this'll do.
Jenolen Caves:: Week 7jenolen is an amazingly colorful cave system with a multiple layers of involved exploration:: that was the gist of what most people in the office here had to say. the caves not only stood up to that explanation displaying a plethora of contorted decorations but also catered to the inquisitive explorers with a system called adventure caving. its practically loading up on a few basic necessities, like a rope, a set of clutches, a pickax, and a few energizer bars, and start exploring for new caves.
since most part of the cave system is relatively unexplored, the area is yours to explore. you now have the chance to creep through any small dark hole you find in the mountain or an existing cave and figure out if it leads anywhere. if it does, well, you've got a cave named after you. if this motivates you enough, then consider the risks. the hole might be a small opening at the roof of a big, grand giant of a cave (like the mines of moria) and one wrong step, you come crashing down in a near-abysmal pit before some stalagmite-filled rockbed breaks your fall. or the hole might lead you through a long tunnel of air gap, and into a labyrinth of openings that are difficult to maneuver with your current abseiling skills, in which case, good luck with those energizer bars for the next few months before some one, who might accidently make the same mistakes you did, rescues you. the whole 'unsupervised crawling into miniscule dark holes without much knowledge of what might have made it' kinda thing is not for me. so, i stuck to 'site-seeing' the already explored ones.
of the bunch of caves that we could trip through, we chose the lucas and the temple of baal. the lucas cave is one of the largest in the cave system and was named after the person who found it. it is also the most famous one for its broken column (pic above). the river which runs underneath displaces rocks from time to time and the numerous columns that are formed from the stalactite-stalagmite combinations are broken due to the rock movements. you probably also notice the borders of the rock sheets in the above pic.
the temple of baal is the most colorful one. its nameology is intricate and fascinating, but difficult to explain without pickies. so, i've added a bit more detail in my pickies' decription. all-in-all, it was an equisite panorama to withhold.
the funny thing was:: i was walking a few steps ahead of pj in the lucas cave, and i suddenly hear laughing and excited talking. i look back to see that he is deeply involved in a conversation with someone in nepalese. while in the cave, pj manages to meet his old nepalese chum from high school. wtf? they both haven't seen/kept in touch/talked/emailed or even known each other's whereabouts for the past 16 years. and now, they meet inside this creepy little cave, recognize each other in the dark, and pickup where they left off. no, really... wtf? *shake my head* unbelievable!!
12 Apostles:: Loch Ard Gorgethe north-western segment of the great ocean rd playes host to the famous natural rock formations called the 12 apostles. the standalone limestone rock structures were once a part of the protruding shore line heads (maybe some of them even had look-outs). the waves of wind and water (both from ocean and rain) took its toll from the sides and back of these heads to wedge out the apostles. we won't see all 12 of them from any point on the shore line. quite arguably, there were never 12 of them. they attained this name as a mere dignified replacement for a more sheepish previous title 'the sow and the piglets'. i like the name 12 apostles:: its more befitting their ipseity in my opinion. besides, who would drive 3hrs from melbourne to see piglets anyway.
one of the first signs we saw after entering the park, or rather the first that we paid attention to, was this one:
no, we haven't seen any, but this was the first sign of seeing one. :)
a few minutes drive from the apostle view point was the shipwreck coast. it is called so, beacuse of the famous loss of loch ard. neighbouring the wreck site, are other formations:: the ever falling london bridge, the blowhole, the gibson steps, and the grotto.
eeh, let me not bother with the tragic story now. you guys can read it here if you are interested. took a bunch of pickies again and posted them here.
Phillip Island:: Penguin Parade573:: that was the number of penguins that swam out from the ocean and marched to their burrows on phillip island on the day we visited them.
phillip island is a small, well connected island off the coast of melbourne bay. and we probably wouldn't have made the 1.5 hr drive from melbourne, if it weren't for this collegue, who was good enough to mention the pengiuns. and boy, would we have missed it.
sunset time every day this time of the year, a whole bunch of miniature penguins swim to the shores of the island to take a long 100 m walk to their burrows. they almost always swim out around sunset time, which is i guess their way of saying that they are done with their day's work:: fish hunting and fasting/feasting (depending on how their day went). now, if it makes any of you over-stressed, cubicle-dwelling, nerdish workaholics feel any better, the penguins, and not the sun, damn well decide when they end the day:: mostly, after sunset. their biological clock makes that decision for them, brings them home before the last glimmers of sun's rays fade away.
we took a walk through the burrows, on a small wooden padestal walk way, no more than 2 ft high, and had an up-close view of the birds. photography, unfortunately, is not allowed: not because the flashes would scare the penguins away, but because they would come closer and hurt you. you see, penguins are cute to look at but when we approach them within 1-2 ft, they begin to peck us with their beaks and sometimes, quite furiously so: especially near their burrows. so we couldn't take any pictures, but if you feel like you need a peek, check this out.
Surf Coast:: Great Ocean Rdtruely: the great ocean road!! just when i thought california's hwy 1 was unbeatable!!
on the second day of the melbourne trip, we out towards the surf coast. the coast spreads wide from geelong to lorne, facing tasmania. in case you haven't guessed yet, it is famous for surfing. due to the arguable confluence of the indian and the pacific oceans, the waves here in summer are phenominally attractive to surfers and surfing contest organizers alike. though we saw a decent number of surfers in angelsea and torquay, having found little evidence to overshadow santa barbara's surfing enthusiasm, we resigned to the fact that its winter, with unamicable weather, and no contests. the scenic beauty through the journey there was compensating enough nonetheless.
the great ocean road starts at surf coast and for most part, hugs the oceans:: first the pacific and then the indian, all the way till adelaide. much like hwy 1, it passes along numerous cliffs, beaches, and small towns. what makes it even more beautiful is contrast of the colors around:: the ocean is a pale transparent green in some places (near beaches), but mostly it is bright blue: the rolling hills are covered with freshly grown light green moss and bright green trees: the cliffs, since the land is young, display peachy yellow sandstone:: making the view greeting-card perfect. dont believe what i am talking about? check this out, or this one, or this one for that matter.
there have been many beautiful towns on the great rd, like the lorne which hosts the erskine falls, lavers hill which has the johanna beach, or cape otway where one of the famous light houses is located. but the one place with exceptional location and unsurpassable beauty that i have ever come across is appollo bay. this place holds so much beauty and instantly captivating warmth that i felt like settling down here. the calmness of the mountains, the grace of the valley, the beauty of the beach coupled with the glory of the ocean made the place magical. this was taken on the way back when we were approaching it from the mountains. *sigh* some day, i'll return.
after we crossed appollo bay, we entered the otways:: vast greenlands with interspersed rain forests. apart from its scenic beauty, the otways boasts of having the worlds longest tree-top walk. yeah, thats exactly what it sounds like, a walk that takes you from the top branches of one tree to another on a man made canopy. though we did not walk it, we took a bunch of pickies of the otways and the great rd:: you can see them here.
