I miss UNC
Posted by Prashant Katwa
Just wanted to say I miss UNC and I’m happy that I’ll be going back soon (not that I don’t like Australia). =)
Queensland (in photos)
Posted by Prashant Katwa
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- View of the ocean (at the Great Barrier Reefs)
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- On our way to an island (at the Great Barrier Reefs)
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- Giant mango
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- Visited the Bundaberg Rum factory
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- Biking in Hervey Bay
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- Me, the driver and Timur, the navigator
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- Kangaroo artwork on the streets of Brisbane
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- Brisbane cityscape at night
Shanghai Dumplings
Posted by Prashant Katwa
So we get off the tram at Flinders St. Station and walk down a couple of block to Little Bourke St. We’re look for a specific street name. I forgot the name, but we do find it. It’s actually an alleyway-kind of sketchy. It’s in the middle of Chinatown, so the alleyway has a few restaurants. We’re looking for a dumplings place whose name we weren’t quite sure of. All I knew was that it was called something-dumplings. After a few minutes we find it and its actually called Shanghai Dumplings. We get there and there is a line out the door. We decide to just walk around it because we’re supposed to be meeting up with a group of people. When we get to the front, we see a couple of people try to go upstairs. I don’t know if they were going to try to find a table or to go use the restroom or what, but the host, an old chinese man, stops them from going up. This chinese man seems to be running around trying to do like 10 things at once. He asks us “how many”, and we say that we are looking for a group. He appears to hear us, but then walks away. We decide to sneak past him and go upstairs to find our group. We look around for a while but then determine that they’re not here yet. So, we go bak downstairs. We get back in the line that starts our at the door and goes out into the alleyway. We tell Mr. old chinese man that we need a table for 8. He then says “how many? 4?” and we say no 8. He again seems flustered and asks everyone in line, which is now more like a bunch of groups, if there is a group of two. The rest of our group soon arrives.
I was there with my friend Timur and one of our friends who is in fact from South Carolina, here in Melbourne doing here graduate degree. Actually Timur and I didn’t really know the rest of the group, we were there accompanying our friend. She had invited us to come with here to a going away dinner for one of her friends. So we wait for a while and eventually get seated by a younger guy who works at the dumplings place.
The restaurant was very very busy that evening. In fact, I would surmise that it is busy on most nights. This is mainly because of their amazing dumplings of course. We ordered family style and got tons of dumplings for very cheap. They were very good. Now, many restaurants across Australia are BYO, meaning bring your own (wine, beer, etc.). So, one of the guys in our group when next door and bought some beer and brought it back to our table. Now, because this place was so busy, they had apparently ran out of plates and all we got were these small bowl things, which could fit like one dumpling. Anyway, the other odd things, was that they didn’t serve any water. All they had was this hot tea stuff which I thought was pretty bad, but apparently Timur didn’t have any trouble drinking. But other than that, the evening went well and the dinner was delicious. I was so full afterwards.
Halfway through the dinner, I was looking at the menu again and I saw that there was a picture of some chinese dude on the back. Turns out, it was the same man who was running around the restaurant. I think he must’ve been the owner or manager or someone. Anyway, haha, the menu said his name was Bobby or something. This dude was hilarious. Like no joke. We were like messing with him when we left. haha.
Anyway, I guess there’s no real point to this post, maybe just that Shanghai Dumplings is a pretty good place to eat. In fact, Timur, myself and a few of our other friends are going again tonight for Timur’s birthday dinner. I’ll let you all know if we have another interesting experience.
Trip to Sydney!
Posted by Prashant Katwa
Yes, yes, I know that its been a month since I updated my blog. For that I apologize but I just get busy. I have like 5 blog posts that I’ve been meaning to write. Hopefully I have time to write them all before I forget.
Also, if you didn’t notice, I changed the default image that was at the top of this blog template to reveal a series of real photos from my trip! Every time you refresh the page, you should be able to see some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken while here. In total, there are 15 possible image. Enjoy!
Now, on to my post.
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So about a month ago, my sister came to visit me here in Australia for about two weeks. It was good to have family around for a while again. It was around the time that I started to miss home, so I guess it worked out well.
Tar Heels! …in Australia?
Posted by Prashant Katwa
Okay so I’ve been in Australia for a little over three weeks now. Australia is probably as far as you can get from the East Coast of the US. So I thought that I’d never really see anything related to the East Coast or North Carolina or even UNC here.
But to my surprise, up until today I’ve probably seen like 4 or 5 sweatshirts on the streets of Melbourne that read “Carolina” or “Tar Heels”. No joke; I was most definitely surprised! Read the rest of this entry »
Photos from down under!
Posted by Prashant Katwa
Although I’ve only been here for like three weeks, I’ve taken over 200 photos. I’ve uploaded most of them to Facebook and I’ve provided the links to view the first two albums on my last post. The main reason I’ve added them to Facebook instead of like Flickr or my blog itself is because I have to pay for my Internet per gigabyte used here, and Facebook’s upload feature actually drastically compresses the photos and reduces upload size. Read the rest of this entry »
Orientation Week!
Posted by Prashant Katwa
Sorry I haven’t written a blog for like a week, but I’ve just been busy doing things here and there. This past week was orientation week for the Study Abroad / Exchange Students. It was alright, pretty boring as I would expect any orientation to be. But now I guess i’ve “settled in” if that really means anything. So let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve been up to.
First Day in the “Halls”
Posted by Prashant Katwa
June 29, 2008
12:45 PM (Australian time- whatever the abbreviation for that is)
So I made it to Australia… finally. I’m in my room in the dorms or “halls of residence” as they call it here. The flight was good. It actually wasn’t that bad.
Although the flight from Los Angeles to Sydney was 14 hours, it wasn’t too terrible. I actually got a good seat, in that I was sitting behind a bulkhead separating first class from economy so I ended up with a little extra room and nobody sitting in front of me. I also had a window seat and therefore the best option for taking naps. I watched bits and pieces of several movies. I think they showed like 5 movies. I also slept several times. The Sydney airport is actually pretty nice, based on the little bit that I was able to see. I had to chill in the Sydney airport for a couple of hours before I re-boarded United flight 839 (I believe it was a different plane than the first tho). We were delayed for a little while in Sydney while we waited for planes to clear the way and planes to land. But we did go up and an hour later we were in Melbourne. In Melbourne I had to go through immigration, wait for a significant amount of time to pick up my baggage, and then clear customs. By this point it was over an hour past the time that I had informed the University that I’d be arriving. But luckily there was still a driver for Monash there who was picking up another individual, so I was able to get a ride as well. I then arrived, checked in, listened to and got a bunch of information and was handed my room keys.
I’m Here! (in Australia)
Posted by Prashant Katwa
So below are some bits of writing that I did on the way to Australia. Enjoy!
Friday, June 27 2008
11:00 am (EST)
So I’m sitting here in Washington DC right now, when I’m supposed to be on a flight to Australia. Why? Well take a guess. My flight was late. My flight from Washington-Dulles was supposed to leave at 7:05 pm on Thursday, but it was delayed by 2 and a half hours, thereby making me most definitely miss my connecting flight out of LA. So, instead of flying to LA and arriving there late only to spend the night there and wait all day for the only flight to Melbourne which is at the same time everyday, I decide to stay at IAD. We have some family friends here who were kind enough to pick me up from the airport and let me spend the night.
Now I have a flight from IAD to LAX at 2:51pm. I just hope this flight isn’t delayed, but just in case, I have up to 5 hours leeway. So 5 hours flight TO LAX, 5 hours IN LAX, and another 15 or so hours to Melbourne. Fun stuff.
—— Read the rest of this entry »
Going to Australia!
Posted by Prashant Katwa
So, I’m headed to Australia during the last week in June. Back in February I applied to UNC’s study abroad program and was accepted by UNC about a month later. However, I did not find out whether I was accepted by the actual host university until mid-may. Yes, that’s a long time to wait, considering all my summer plans depended on it. Anyway, I’ll be studying abroad in Melbourne, Australia at Monash University.