I awoke this morning, got dressed and wandered down the main drag or St. Kilda. I found a nice inexpensive cafe and had a sandwich and coffee. Then I cruised down to an internet place and caught up on some email and such for an hour. I took another good hour digging up Arcadia staff phone numbers, trying to arrange my rendezvous with the orientation group tomorrow. I could just go to the airport and meet the group flight there, but it’s a good 45 minutes outside of Melbourne and I don’t fancy going back and forth twice.

Having grown accustomed to the freedom and spontaneity of the backpacker habits, I loathed the idea of living a week by tour bus and head counts. Oh well. I’m sure Arcadia has fabulous activities planned for us.

I didn’t do much else all day; it was pretty dreary outside again. I did some laundry, caught up on these journals, and started researching digital cameras (looking at the Canon Powershot SD500). I wanted to watch the Wimbledon semi-finals but all the sports bars were showing cricket.

Bob parked his van in front of the hostel and we all sat in it for a while, brainstorming his upgrade options. The more popular ideas were a solar heated water supply piped to a shower head on the back. There would be a drop-down shower curtain that would serve as privacy for both his shower and the toilet seat bolted to the bumper. Of course, disco balls and Chinese lanterns were also discussed.

I woke up early today, got my stuff together, checked out, and took a train to the airport. My flight was delayed an hour due to fog in Melbourne. This was a good thing, as I was delayed at a security check point. After x-raying my backpack, the security officer said, “Is this your bag?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“Please remove the scissors,” he said.

Scissors? I don’t have any scissors, what is he talking about? “Ahh, I didn’t know I had any scis…”

“Remove the scissors or check this bag,” he sternly interrupted.

I was racking my brain about what I had in there that might look like scissors in the x-ray machine. I almost asked him which part of the backpack the scissors were in, but he looked like a rugby player with a stubbed toe and might take it as a bad joke.

Just as I started opening the backpack it dawned on me: first aid kit! I handed him my surgical scissors that have one tip rounded so as not to snag any tissue under the skin. He slowly examined them for a good twenty seconds before proclaiming that he needed to keep them. “Go for it you friggin bruit,” I thought to myself, “I don’t plan on performing surgery any time soon anyway.”

Eventually I arrived in Melbourne and was delighted that it was a domestic flight; no customs, no interrogation, no lines! I sat down with my Lonely Planet book and had another “Now what?”

I decided to stay at the Coffee Palace in St. Kilda. I rang them up, confirmed a bed, and hopped a shuttle to town. I booked two nights, as the rest of my time in Melbourne is organized by the Arcadia orientation staff. The Coffee Palace is a very nice place. The guy talked me into upgrading to a nicer room with a private bathroom; the extra $2 per night was a hard sell (I’m stuck in that backpacker mentality), but I went for it.

Speaking of frugality and the backpacker mentality, I have lost ten pounds since being here. The miles of walking are great for the legs. The food budget can help you or hurt you; in Italy last summer I opted for beer, pizza, and gelato. This time I’m eating well and feeling healthier than when I left.

The Coffee Palace has a lovely rooftop terrace. I went exploring and found five people socializing up on the roof. Again, a wonderful diverse group: a French girl, a Canadian Jew, an English punk rocker, an Alaskan guy, and an Irish redneck named Ross who turned out to be my room mate.

We all sat around chatting for a while before it got too cold to stay outside. Melbourne is on the southern tip of contiguous Australia and is thus the coldest in the winter (recall that I’m in the southern hemisphere).

Lucile (the French girl) and Irish Ross were going out to buy cigarettes, so I tagged along to see the town and socialize a bit. We ended up at an amazing little restaurant that had a room off to the side with couches, very avant guarde paintings, a chandelier and vines on the ceiling. It was very much like something a San Diegan would find in Hillcrest, or a San Franciscan would find on H&A.

In fact, Melbourne seems to be very much like San Francisco: foggy, large, liberal, a center of commerce, with street cars everywhere. A very cool city, I would like to return when it warms up a bit.

Back in the hostel Lucile made pasta for Ross and I (it’s weird typing that). Ahh, another French chef. Later we headed back to the roof of the Coffee Palace and passed a guitar around. Someone asked “Hey Ross, do you play?” I picked up an ashtray, dumped it out, and hacked out some Robert Johnson with it. If you want to make quick friends in a hostel, play guitar with an ashtray. A shot glass or beer bottle will also suffice. And make sure you play blues: it’s a refreshing change from Sublime and Ani DiFranco. Then Lucile started playing a song in French and stole my thunder.

Soon thereafter Bob (the Canadian Jew) burst up to the roof, excited about the camper van he just bought for $2900, so we went down to check it out. We ended up sitting in it for an hour watching the pimp and prostitutes on our corner. Again, this is St. Kilda, and should not reflect Melbourne as a whole.

Eventually we headed out on the town. We went to Espy’s, one of the famous old time bars of Australia (like the Slimms of Melbourne). A couple mediocre bands played, which was good fun anyway. At 1:00 AM they kicked everyone out and we headed somewhere else. I didn’t stay long, as I had been up all day traveling. Ross rolled in around 5:00 AM, and I was even more glad to already be asleep.

I lost my Canon Elph Powershot S400 today. This has been the only negative part of my trip so far. I have an ugly gut feeling that someone nicked it, but I have no idea who it would be. I trust most of the people in my room explicitly, and have no way of interrogating the others. Oh well, it will set me back a few hundred dollars but most of my pictures were already transferred to my laptop. I feel terrible because it was a nice camera and a gift, but in the end it’s no catastrophic loss.

Around 2:00 Mark and I took a walk to the Ryan Botanical Gardens, which were amazing. They have vegetation from all over the world, and a curious bat population. I looked up at one point and was astonished to see hundreds of bats in the high tree branches. We wandered around for an hour or so then headed back to the hostel.

There was a $4 pizza special at the hostel that night, which is dirt cheep in Sydney, so I signed up. By the time the pizza was supposed to arrive we were all starved. You can imagine our disappointment to hear that it was delayed at least an hour! But the hostel workers are good guys, and bought us a ton of beer to ease the pain (which it did).

Eventually we got our pizza, and by this time we were in a pretty good mood. We decided to get a large group together and head to the World Bar, which was having 2 for 1 specials and other deals on Wednesday nights.

This was the last night for both Mark and myself, and a big group of us had become pretty tight, so we went all-out. There was a Killer Pool tournament at the bar; my friend won and was awarded a $150 bar tab. How convenient!

Most of my friends stayed at the World Bar until 3:00 AM but I was exhausted and had a plane to catch the next day, so I turned in around midnight.