Australia: Custard Apples and Asia Pacifc Week at ANU

Here's a summary of my last two weeks in OZ.

Last week of exploring Cairns:

• Copperlode Dam hike: Tim (remember the crazy local from a previous post?) showed us this great hike by Copperlode Dam, so we ventured there. There's no way we would have ever found this trail if we hadn't been instructed how to get there, so hurray for local benefits!

• Townsville: Journeyed to Townsville and made a pit stop on the way there to grab some cambodian melon, toad melon, custard apple, and mango melon. 



Fancy Desert at WaterMark in Townsville

• We didn't specifically stop for these but we did see a fruit stall on the highway to Townsville and I decided to buy the weirdest fruits I saw. 
• To be honest none of the melons were really special, they just tasted very melon-y. BUT THE CUSTARD APPLE? Holy guacamole, it was the sweetest most succulent thing I had ever tried. I didn't know nature could make something so marvelous.

Cambodian Melon

Mango Melon

Toad Melon

En route to Townsville - hurray 4 hr drive

Asia Pacific Week Conference:

Parliament House

Hosted by Australian National University, this conference was amazing.
The caliber of human beings that I encountered was seriously marvelous. Every person I spoke to had an interesting story to tell and had been on just as many (if not way more) adventures than I had. I learned so much, not only from the speakers at the conference but from the delegates themselves who had lived so much of life. The delegates were largely students working on their Master's although there were some undergrads and PhD's as well.

I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in the Asia region. The premise of ANU APW 2014 was what role Asia plays in today's global schema. After the conference, not only do I feel far more prepared and excited for Korea + China but I'm also very seriously considering a career that pertains to Asian relations or a career in Asia.

Scallops at the Gala Dinner

The conference was packed with fascinating discussions but no one wants to read a million-word blog post, so here's some nifty one-liners:

• Nationalism is on the rise in Asia – Peter Drysdale
• Australia is a former colonizing power in Papua New Guinea so PNG is very attuned to Australian media and politics (I didn't know that previously)
• When companies go abroad they bring with them their business practices and their corporate governance - Veronica Taylor
• Issues thus inevitably arise when, say, China with it's poor labor practices, goes into PNG and decides to mine there. It uses PNG locals as a labor source, but the locals don't understand Chinese labor customs
• Apology brokering is an everyday toolkit of the Asia region
• In China there is a surprising decentralizing of command
• India has been moderinizing and militarizing at the almost same rate as China but no one is making a fuss about it while the world is hating on China - why?



Some of the wonderful people I met

• Many factors discussed
• Sex/Gender
• In Thailand women do the heavier labor. The notion that women are weaker and more frail is utterly Western
• Pre-WWII names in Thailand weren't gendered and men and women dressed the same and wore the same hair styles. It wasn't until the Western powers came in (the UK) and claimed Thai women to be 'ugly' because they looked like the men and had short hair. 

There's lots more, but those were some I particularly enjoyed learning about