Awesome Cost of Living Calculator

Just found this in my preparations for the rest of Asia, very accurate and very useful!

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/

Australia Day 10 - 13: Ironman, White Water Rafting, Fickle Grocery Prices and $80/kg Nuts

Brunch time!

These past couple of days have been pretty chill. Hung out with lots of German (almost) doctors - at one point I joined them in some German polka dance thing and that was jolly good fun. Truly marvelous people, definitely thankful to have met them.

My boyfriend and I discussed why pretty much all the foreign people we meet are so cool and resolved that it's probably because people who put in the effort to travel are already the kind of people that you want to be your friend. The gregarious, open-minded and socially competent type. 

Moral of the story: TRAVEL.

But that's the moral to most of my abroad stories haha. 

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Volunteered at Ironman and that was an interesting and novel experience! The people who did this course are insane. Seriously impressive. So many people were finishing the race with limp-causing cramps and hyperthermia.

Trying to make a psuedo-fancy desert - failing

What is the Ironman?

Well you get to wake up before the sun and then swim 3.8km, cycle 180km and as if that isn't enough, you conclude with a marathon (45km in Cairns).

Casual.

Anyways I worked the medals (organizing them and handing them out to finishers), so that was a lot of fun. Only did it for a few hours because I got bored but definitely a worthwhile experience.

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Went white water rafting! Went with a company called Raging Thunder. The people who worked it were awesome and incredibly lively and engaging. Scored the local discount ($30 for the whole trip) as opposed to the $133 it normally is.
For $30 it was totally worth it.
It was a Grade 3 trip (Grade 1 = your bathtub, Grade 6 = falling down Niagara falls).

There were fun bits for sure, but nothing to really get your adrenaline pumping.

I really don't recommend it if you can't get some sort of discount. Unless you get scared very very easily, then maybe.


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Stores in Cairns have such sensitive supply chains, my god.

The prices in the grocery markets change on a daily basis. So strange since I'm used to prices being relatively stable in the US. Sure I've seen pomegranates range from $2 - $5 depending on the season, but those are variations that occur over months, not days!

One of my friends told me about Cyclone Yasi that made the price of bananas skyrocket to $12-15/kg. The highest retail price for bananas was $17/kg, which was in Adelaide (capital of South Australia).
For reference, I get my bananas for $0.19 each at Trader Joes and Bureau of Labor Statistics sites the average price for a lb of bananas at about $.60. That's $1.32/kg.

Here's an interesting excerpt:

"Category-5 Yasi tore through north Queensland in early February, wiping out 75 per cent of Australia's banana production."

Ironman runners! Love the lady rocking the
vibrant pink haha

There is also really only one grocery store that people go to in Cairns, Coles. No competition = they can price things however they want. There are some smaller grocery stores but they don't seem to get much business, we walked into a few earlier today. 

The health food stores here are outrageous. We went into one and it had macadamia nuts for $80/kg. That's $36/lb. 

Seriously, what?

For reference, here's what a 30 second amazon search brought up:

1lb of macadamia nuts for $15. 

Definitely can find cheaper in a store. 

Peanut/almond/any nut butter is literally twice as expensive here.  Ahh, 7 months without Trader Joe's almond butter will be tough. 

Watermelon, veggies and fruits are all nearly twice as much here. But their minimum wage (I think I've mentioned it before) is $16, more than twice ours.
So it makes sense for them. Just stinks for foreigners.

YUM GELATO

Superman!

Park of the children's water park in Cairns
(Free entry for all)

Volunteers!

Nasty Chip Club (where you put everything
that's on the table onto a chip/leaf/banana/etc
and then eat it)

Love it

One out of 4 people I saw in the mall in a 5
min time span who had no shoes on

Organizing the medals 

Where in the World Have You Been?

I always try my best to read at least 2 news articles everyday (aim for 4 though) and today on The Guardian I stumbled upon this awesome map that the website will build for you depending on which countries you've been to. 

Here's my map (although I cheated and added in China, South Korea and the Philippines, which I haven't been to yet but will go to by the end of August). 

If you want to make your own, click here!

Australia Day 6-9: Reading, Hiking Pyramids and Working Out

I've been reading lots, going to some hospital tutorial things (learned about multimodal analgesia this time!) and just hanging out with the Aussies.

Did the Walsh's Pyramid hike (922m vertical, 12km round trip). Great hike, lots of fun, make sure to bring bug spray. Also lots of water, you will sweat and then your sweat will sweat.

Cool skate park (covered too) at the Esplanade

This dog decided to follow me around :)

Hairy tree!

Lonely tree in the middle of the water

So many fit people on the Esplanade

Just always casually working out, love it

Top of Walsh's Pyaramid!

Australia Day 5: Pretending to be a Doctor and Making Ice Cream

Strange fruit that grows on the streets

Today I pretended to be a doctor (or med student) and went to a info lecture series at the Cairns Regional Hospital. Learned about the joys of gonorrhea - quite interesting.
Also learned about lots of random other things like dysuria, PID and got to see lovely pictures of infected genitals (heavy sarcasm in case you couldn't tell). But overall it was informative and I'm glad I went!

After the hospital I learned lots about emergency medicine (what to do if you're shot, get stabbed, etc) and watched a finger amputation on Youtube.
Why did I do this? I don't know, I've never seen an amputation before, so I wanted to at least be familiar with what it looks like.

Afterwards we went on an absurdly epic trek to get all the materials we need to make ice cream. Could we have just bought ice cream from the store for pretty much zero effort? Yeah, duh, but where's the fun in that?

High school science class throwback via
making ice cream in ziplock bags
(using salt to lower the freezing temperature of ice and
all that fun stuff).

No parking spot? No problem.

Australia Day 4: Water Reserves and German Volleyball

In 1976 this dam was built and this lake was a result of it

Very scenic

Today we went to Copperlode Dam for a hike from there to Crystal Cascades. Unfortunately the trailhead was closed or we just couldn't find it. So instead we had a very leisure 20 minute stroll from the visitor center to a lookout point over the dam.

Not quite our initial goal but it was still a lovely view and the first time I'd ever been to a real dam!

Interesting to think about the ecological impacts of the dam.

The resulting lake (from the dam construction) is a water reserve for Cairns. The place was rather peculiar since it has bathrooms, a play structure, a visitor center, large parking lot etc. Plenty of developed infrastructure meant to handle large groups of visitors. However there wasn't a whole lot to do there and also there was pretty much no one there. Not sure if it's because it's an off season (this is Carin's dry season) or if it was just because it was a midday on Monday.

Later in the night we went to the Esplanade for a free 1 hour volleyball lesson (remember me talking about all the awesome free things on the Esplanade from last summer in my old blog?) and that was great. We started the class at 5:30pm and then played until 9:30pm. So 4 hours of volleyball total!

Played with a whole slew of people but the group we spent that most time with were these 6 or so Germans. (There are a tons of Germans in Australia right now).
We taught each other bits of our languages (me teaching them Russian and them...well German obviously).

Also played with this very interesting mother and daughter and a few somewhat elderly (50-70 yrs old) men. Everyone was such a great sport and I loved how volleyball just brought all these random people together.

Saw a birds nest!

Australia Day 3: Politics, Waterfalls and Deserted Towns

Today we got sort of a late start but still managed to get quite a bit of exploring in!

In the morning I learned more about Australia's political system (voting is compulsory) and about the controversial move to increase required student loan payments for uni (university/college). Watched some morning news show that described this move and sighed at the bs that the politicians were spitting out.

They were asked one question and instead of answering it, they proceeded to regurgitate their talking points and statistics. Great, thanks for the stats, the question still isn't answered and the problem still hasn't been addressed.
Not sure if Australian politicians took a page from American politicians' notebooks re: the non-answering of questions or whether human nature just doesn't permit rational and non-corrupt politics to exist.

Contemplated this for a while, often reflecting back to Hannah Arendt's 'Human Condition' and to random other things I've learned from my Anthropology and American Studies courses at Cal.
I actually used to be very into politics... until I realized that all it does is make me upset and frustrated. So I don't care too much about it anymore.
I'm also quite interested in the notion of compulsory voting in America. So far all I've heard about it in Australia is that it's quite good. Yes it results in ignorant people casting ignorant votes, but it also motivates far more people to actually care about policies and to follow the news. Not so in America where I find that most people my age are too frustrated with their voices not being heard that they don't even bother to put in the energy to be properly educated about various points on the ballot. But is it feasible to force 312 million people to vote? (Australia only has a population of 23 million). Probably not.
Still fleshing out educated thoughts on the matter - will probably return to it in a later blog post. Definitely curious to hear other people's opinions regarding this. 

Made a 'boat' out of trash. Pretty sure Picasso
was my ancestor. Clearly his blood runs through
my veins. 

After the morning news we (Aaron, Fane and I) went to Crystal Cascades where we climbed over waterfalls and then swam beneath them. The water was a perfectly refreshing temperature and I had the lovely pleasure of meeting and hanging out with 3 German exchange students (on a medical program here) and some more Aussie friends.

Afterwards we went out to Grilled, a restaurant near the Esplanade. Man, food is absurdly expensive in Australia but the mushroom burger there was really quite splendid (I gatta figure out what they put in it - want to replicate haha).

We went home, changed and then drove to Kuranda and psuedo-hiked to see Baron Falls. Met up with another Aussie friend (same one from Day 1 beer night) who had just won silver at this insane bike race (out of 428 people). Had a jolly good time walking through the utterly deserted Kuranda. Apparently everything closes pre-3pm in Kuranda so nothing was open. Nothing except for this random pub called Kuranda Hotel ... I think that was it's name. Insane bike race guy (Tim) shouted us some beers.

What does "shouted us" mean? In the strange land of Australia that is rife with bizarre slang, 'shouted' means to 'treat someone'. Ie; 'I'll shout you this burger' means 'I'll buy this burger for you'. 

At Kuranda Hotel I shared a plate of the best calamari I've ever had in my life with Aaron (okay, he bought it and I stole some...so sorta shared haha). The night was filled with jokes that were a cringe-worthy level of corny but nonetheless thoroughly entertaining.

Went home, ate some more paw paw and proceeded to catch up a bit on real life (replying to emails and such).







Tomorrow I will attempt a 12km run!