Another Sabbatical?

I guess if we're closing in on the Trip of Mystery (and my stupid 60th birthday) I guess it means that I'm closing in on another sabbatical. My last one centered around a year spent at Zayed University at Abu Dhabi in the UAE, and it was an extraordinary experience both professionally and personally. If this one comes even close to how amazing the other one was I may not survive it (and you can read that many different ways). Actually, I was supposed to be on sabbatical this year, but several of my all-time favorite students dragooned me into postponing it for a year so that I could bring them back to Jordan on another trip; if you're my age and you're postponing anything then you must love your students more than you would ever publicly admit. The plans for still up in the air, and I know that this is the very definition of jinxing the process, but right now it looks like I might be spending the spring semester 2021 in Bethlehem University in the West Bank and then following it up with time at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia (or maybe it will blow up into something even bigger). When I know more you'll know more.So, I'll either be out of the country for eight months or maybe more than a year. As my most excellent friend Cyndi opined, "You're crazy, you know that you're crazy, right?"

Missing Australia

Another craptacular day in Vermont weather-wise, and beat down from end of the semester exhaustion.  Missing the beautiful sunshine and pleasant souls of Australia.  Here's a picture I snapped at the beach, during a great outing with my new friends Ruth and Mikaela.

 The wind was howling and the waves were crashing, and I could have sat there for hours.

Australian UFO?

No, just a really cool exhibit outside the National Gallery.

It did catch my attention.

Big Brekkie

One of my peculiarities - well, one of my many peculiarities - is that I always take a picture of the first meal that I have in a country.  Why?  I have no idea.  It's one of those odd traditions which people have whose origins are lost in the hoary mists of time.  Anyway, I arrived in Canberra last Sunday around noon, and by the time I made it out to my hotel it was early afternoon.  The Tall Trees Best Western was out in the midst of a pleasant but nondescript suburb, and the options for eating were few.  In the end I ate a couple meals at the Ainslie Football Club, which doubled as a casino.  However, my first meal was at a cute little cafe in a strip mall.  Here's the resulting picture of the Big Brekkie.  I don't normally all of my goofy first meal photos, thank god, but I'm posting this one because 1) I love the name Big Brekkie, and 2) every meal I ate in Australia featured a pile of meat like this.  It's normally the Americans who insist upon a small mountain of meat on every plate, but apparently the Australians don't take a back seat to anyone.

After a return to my normal breakfasts of fruit, yogurt and Cheerios I could use a Big Brekkie right now.

Tweet Dreams

At the recent SAFFIRE Festival in Canberra I experienced a new (at least to me) phenomenon at conferences: tweeting.  Now, I've been tweeting for a while, as the hundred people who follow @scuddertravel know (which, I guess, is still more than read this silly blog).  Last year I became quite fascinated with the concept of tweeting, mainly because I started following some really interesting folks from the Middle East, as especially from Yemen.  The immediacy of the views and responses is sometimes startling.  A number of times I would hear about events days before it made Aljazeera or the BBC (I've essentially given up on CNN).  There is obviously a dark side, in that you will often get an almost hysterical overheating on topics, some of which don't really exist and have taken on a life of their own.  For the first time this semester I've incorporated tweeting into a couple of my classes, with mixed results - although I suspect some of that is my fault as well. Anyway, at the SAFFIRE Festival we were encouraged to tweet, even during the other presentations, which was a little disconcerting at first, mainly because I find it rude to tweet or play on the smart phone or tablet or laptop when someone else is presenting.  Still, it did lead to some instant feedback, which I guess was supposed to inspire more conversation.  The tweets popped up continually, in sort of a swirling prezi-like fashion, on screens around the facility, including the big screen at times.  It was a little bizarre to be sitting in the audience and suddenly see your comments spring up on the screens while the person was still talking.  My good friend Cinse tells me that this is starting to become the norm.  I'm not quite certain how I feel about it, but, as with most things, I'm open to the experience.

Of course, it almost inspired me to talk smack about other groups at the conference, knowing that it would splash across the screens.

New Friends Down Under

One of the great things about attending conferences is making new friends, and this is especially true when the conference is an international conference.  I've been really fortunate to make so many great friends overseas, and they have proved to be wonderful contacts both professionally and personally.  And often they are so generous in sharing their time and their local knowledge with you.  I'll talk about my new friends Mikaela and Ruth soon, and the fun day we spent last Thursday travelling all around Canberra and beyond.  In the meantime, let me post a picture of three great folks that I was fortunate to meet and spend some time with.  I met Justin Brow, on the right below, at the SAFFIRE Festival.  He was another one of the featured speakers and we were on a panel together Monday night, and then spent most of Tuesday at an educational jam.  At the end of the day on Tuesday I was heading out to catch a taxi when Justin asked if I wanted to a) go see a kangaroo (more on my quest for kangaroos later), and b) grab some dinner.  The answer to both was yet, and both adventures were a great success.  We eventually made our way downtown to meet a couple, Tina and Roger, who were friends of Justin's.  It ended up being a great time, featuring adult beverages at a couple bars and then dinner at a local Thai place.  I really like Australia, and, as I often say, I suppose there must be unpleasant Australians somewhere, I just haven't met them.  Imagine the opposite of the normally reserved, if not cold, Vermonters and you'll about have it.

Tina, Roger and Justin.  Great folks.

Old Man in Australia

I snapped this odd picture while spending Thursday on a lovely driving tour with my new Australian friends Ruth and Mikaela, which I will have to devote substantial time to documenting.  This unique little rock formation reminded me of its more famous, and now deceased, cousin in New Hampshire.

Maybe Australia has room for another old man.

Yeah, I Was in Australia

And the wildlife gives it away, really before anything else.

And these guys, and around twenty of their friends, were right on the University of Canberra campus.  More kangaroo postings later.

Black swans are the norm in Australia.  Oddly, I had my students watch the entire  Swan Lake ballet in my Heroines & Heroes class while I was out of town.

And this guy was hanging around right downtown outside the amazing Australian War Memorial.

I Think I Was in Australia

Just back from a whirlwind trip to Canberra, Australia to speak at the SAFFIRE Festival, an educational conference focusing on educational innovation and sustainability.  The good folks at the University of Canberra contacted me out of the blue and asked me to fly down and it was a wonderful experience.  It was only my second visit to Australia, having gone there for a couple days seven or eight years ago.  Back then I came back with the worst jet lag I've ever had, and I swore that I would never go back to Australia unless I was going for at least three weeks.  And, of course, I did go back, for essentially a four and a half day visit.  I couldn't be happier that I went.  I made some great new friends, saw some amazing things, and learned a lot (and may even have contributed a bit) at the conference.  Expect lots of posts.  To get me started, I was really struck, as I was last time, by the glaring similarities and subtle differences to life in the US.  I really like the Australians and, as I've said before, I'm sure there are unpleasant Australians, but they must keep them hidden away (essentially I think they just send them to the UAE, although even there I met some wonderful Aussies).  The trip was a blur and I can't believe that I'm back here in my little apartment in Winooski, after my Burlington-JFK-LA-Sydney-Canberra-Sydney-LA-JFK-Burlington odyssey.  Adding in the trip the week before to Abu Dhabi, and I think I covered about 7/8 of the globe in a week.

I guess you know that you're in Australia, or at least another member of the  British  empire (other than the US, obviously), when you come across cricket batting cages.

Or pick-up rugby games in the park.

Reflections on Things at Hand: Australia

First India, and now Australia. Why have so many images from my past come flooding back into my head lately? With India it makes sense because I'm never very far away from India - it is just in my heart. Or, to use a more classically Indian example, I'm sort of like the monkey hero Hanuman from the Ramayana. At the end of the story Hanuman pulls his skin off to show that the word Rama is etched into every bone - I think I must be that way with India. Australia is a little different I suppose in that these reflections may be a result of a series of emails I've been swapping with my good friend Sally Totman from Australia. She's been a big supporter of the Global Modules from the very beginning, and was also kind enough to ask me to write a foreward for book on Hollywood and US foreign policy. Sally teaches at Deakin University in Melbourne, but she grew up in Sydney and tends to view living in Melbourne as a punishment. I, on the contrary, absolutely loved Melbourne. It was one of those places, much like Sweden, where from the moment I got off the plane I knew I could just live there - and it was all I could do to get back onto the plane (and it wasn't simply because of the day plus trip back - which did give me the mother of all jet lag experiences - for over a week I would wake up every morning at 1:30 and be up all night, even if I had stayed up until midnight in my failed attempt to beat it). I've only been to Australia once, sadly, when I presented at a conference in Melbourne in December 2006. I found the Australians just lovely - fun and warm and just as friendly as you've been led to belief. One of the great truisms of international travel is just follow the Australians - you will always run into them because they travel constantly (which defeats the silly American excuse for not travelling because we are too far away from everything) and they always have fun. I love the Australian saying I heard on that trip - "she'll be right, mate" - meaning simply, don't worry about it, it will work out. It was strange being there during the Christmas season since it was high summer. Several of the Australians I talked to complained about how Hollywood had messed them up because of all the movies about Christmas and winter time. It was really neat to stand in line outside a department store in downtown Melbourne, much like in A Christmas Story, and watch the animated displays - including one for the Australian classic adventure of Wombat Divine. It is also a very multicultural society, and my hotel was right next to Chinatown, so I had a lot of great meals (had a really nice lunch at the Post-Mao Cafe). One of my favorite experiences was taking a train outside of town (another advantage - like the Europeans, a great public transportation system) to a much smaller town. I stood on the edge of a rocky beach, looking south, and tried to wrap my head around the thought that, after you leap-frogged Tasmania, the next stop was Antarctica.