Rudy Rucker's Blog, page 64

Australia #8. Happy Holidays from the Queensland Jungle!

Merry Christmas to all! And Season's Greetings. And a great 2010. I'll be taking a week or two off from posting now.

Unreal that we've already polished off the first decade of the 21st Century.

We flew to Cairns in Queensland on the northeast part of Australia. Keep in mind that in Australia "north" means warmer, as in "closer to the equator." So Queensalnd's winter is like summer in, like, Mississippi or Louisiana or even Florida in the US.

It was weird to see the (plastic) Christmas...

Australia #7. Sydney Swimming.

Sydney is all inside a harbor, with a mouth like the Golden Gate with steep cliffs on either side (but no bridge), and the beaches are on the outside. We took the ferry to Manly Beach to the north one day, landing on the harbor side and walking across the little isthmus to the ocean side. Quite a few surfers on a beach break, and on a point break a little further out. Really big waves, coming off the Tasman Sea. Odd that the ocean has a different name here.

[Surfer at Manly Beach.:]

I went ...

Australia #6. Sydney

The people in Melbourne kept trying to express the difference between Melbourne and Sydney. Maybe it's like the difference between Philadelphia and New York or between San Jose and San Francisco. That is, Sydney feels a little more sophisticated and happening—and, like San Francisco, they're on the ocean instead of on a muddy river or bay.

Speaking of my fair home city of San Jose, today I saw a Chinese-made T-shirt saying, meaninglessly, "Western Conference. California. Ten Years. San H...

Australia #5. Oz Slang, More Art, Oz SF

Leon and Yolande taught us some Australian slang, and we also learned some from our old Melbourne friends Robert and Margaret Mrongovius, who had us over for dinner at their house. They lived in the neighboring apartment when we were in the University Guest House for a year in Heidelberg in 1979, thirty years ago.

[Reading room in the Melbourne main library, where we went to do our email for free.:]

Here are some tidbits I gleaned from the locals.

A buff jock type guy with short hair drinking ...

Australia #4: Lord Casey and my Talks

We settled into the Casey House in Melbourne. It was an elegant 1864 townhouse near Fitzroy Park, owned by an 80-year-old woman who lives in Sydney, in another of her properties. This place was originally built by an eminent Melbourne painter, and passed into the hands of Lord Richard Casey (1890-1976).

[Spooky front hall.:]

He was born rich, and active in Australia politics—in the 1960s he was the Governor-General, that is the representative of the Queen of England. The present owner is L...

Australia #3. Aboriginal Art.

As I'm going to reprint some Aboriginal art images in this blog post, I need to caution that some Aboriginal people prefer not to see art by their people reproduced, particularly if the artist is deceased. So be warned, and don't view this post if you're sensitive to these issues.

The heart of Melbourne holds a large art museum complex in what's called Federation Square. All the buildings in the complex are patterned with irregular Penrose-like tiles on the outside. We saw some galleries...

Australia #2. Seeking Platypus Bill Implant

Leon Marvell is the head of the film program at a public college here, he's on the Burwood campus of Deakin University. He was able to get me grant money for the trip here, both to give a talk at a conference on media art, and to be a "Thinker in Residence" at Deakin for a week.

Here's Leon with a wild parrot. Leon and his partner Yolande live in an area that's slightly like the Santa Cruz mountains—there's lots of eucalyptus trees, and tropical birds. They drive on the left side of the...

Australia #1. Going to Melbourne.

I'm just back from a nearly month-long trip to Australia with Sylvia. It was, in part, an academic speaking gig. We were in Melbourne, Sydney, Cairns, and the Great Barrier Reef. I'll blog some of my travel notes and trip photos over the coming days.

[Carved "fairy tree" in Fitzroy Park in Melbourne.:]

Flying into LA at night on the trip down was impressive. It's an image I've seen in films, the great grid of lights— but to be there in person felt…epic. In a plane you can also look...

Three Talks in Melbourne, Australia

Hey, I'm in Melbounre, Australia, for a couple of days.

I'm giving two talks at the Burwood campus of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, this week. Both the Deakin talks are in the "Moot Court" room on the Burwood campus of Deakin University, Building C, Level 3. Here's a map.

* Tuesday, Nov 24, 4 to 5 p.m., "My Life as a Writer"

* Thursday, Nov 26, 1 to 2 p.m., "Life is a Gnarly Computation"

And I'm giving a talk on with Leon Marvell at the "Re:Live" conference at the University of ...

Taking a Break

I'm going to take a break from blogging for a few weeks. Heading down the foggy road.

I sent in version three of my autobiography to my publishers, and I've written a new outline for my novel, Jim and the Flims.

And now I'm ready for a break from the computer.

By the way, I took today's pictures near the Skyline trail above Los Gatos and Saratoga. It's good to get out into the woods and away from the keyboards.