As has been per usual during my time in Australia, I woke up around 11 and left the hostel around 12. I took the metro to University of Sydney to see the campus and relive my glory days as a university student. At first I was a bit salty about the whole thing because the University of Sydney's Wikipedia page claims it was voted one of the most beautiful college campuses in the world, but the source cited failed to mention my alma mater in its review. The Wikipedia page even had the audacity to claim that USyd was conveniently located near the Redfin metro station, though the station is still a kilometer away from campus (known affectionately as the "Redfin Run" by the students of USyd).
But by the end of my visit I had learned to like the campus. The university has a more classical "Quadrangle" than the ones I've seen at other universities, a rectangular courtyard surrounded on all sides by grandiloquent buildings in Neo-Gothic style. The only access to the courtyard is via short passageways in the sides of each building. Like most public research universities, USyd has multiple libraries, but unlike the public research university I attended there are multiple 24-hour libraries (even on the weekends!) and more spacious desks with outlets at every spot for individual work (at least in the libraries I visited, SciTech and Fisher). This BYO philosophy is in contrast to the University of Washington (main campus), which fills up the majority of its only 24-hour-during-weekdays library with large iMacs and unnecessarily many bookshelves, leaving everyone with their own laptop (i.e., almost everyone) to jockey for the few remaining group tables on the first floor -- which often share outlets with other tables -- or the individual desk spots on the third floor, which either lack outlets entirely or only coincide with an outlet because they share a space with yet another iMac. You could argue that this eliminates the dependency for students to bring their own laptop to school and encourages more robust cloud file storage, but when anyone can buy a laptop for the price of an intro level textbook, the reasonable seeming assumption that the proportion of people who forget their laptop at home on any given day probably isn't "the majority of seating spaces in the library", and very few people need the power and flexibility of an iMac for their day to day schoolwork, I hope it's understandable why I prefer USyd's setup to UW's.
 |
| A typical weekday for the students of USyd |
Another interesting trait of the USyd campus is the number of food venues on campus that serve alcohol. The drinking age in New South Wales is 18, meaning that most people enrolled in college are of legal drinking age. You can also order a meal past two in the afternoon, unlike UW's beloved Housing and Food Service restaurants; prepackaged food at Suzallo cafe and the circumferential "markets" excepted.
 |
| The 6th floor of the law building offers good views of downtown Sydney |
Leaving USyd at six after scarfing down some Thai food, I took the train to Circular Quay in anticipation of the performance of La Traviata at the Sydney Opera House. I had bought tickets the night before. It was still a bit early, so I sat down at a cafe just outside the station and ordered a 5 AUD latte. A lone busker harping a slow tune on his saxophone sat just outside the cafe. To my left, Radiance of the Seas blew her horn three times before pushing off from port, out to sea. To say that it felt like I had walked into a bohemian novel would be an understatement.
The performance was a good time -- my first ever opera. We were in the Joan Sutherland theatre, underneath the second largest sail of the opera house. I had a seat in the middle of the upper balcony. I was surprised to hear that performances were nightly, and production runs lasted about a month. When your instrument is your voice, I can imagine performing night after night is a bit of a marathon.
 |
| A view of Sydney Harbor from the upper balcony viewing deck |
The whole thing lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. When it was over I walked uphill to St. Martin's Place to take the train back to King's Cross and the hostel.
No comments:
Post a Comment