Perth-tacular? Perth-fect? Perth-eriffic? I'll stop now.

On particularly nice days in Berkeley, I used to wonder why people lived anywhere other than the bay area, and now i know why - it's because they haven't been to Perth. It's got hot days (highs of 41C, which don't bother me nearly as much as i expected), cool nights, and you can't swing a cat without hitting a gorgeous beach. It's part SF, part Boston, and even has a little Marshfield (small Massachusetts town with the ancestral Gallup beachhouse) in it. It's greener and cleaner than Sydney by yards (meters? metres?), and even has some hills. That's perhaps the one strike against it so far - It's not hilly enough, which is a minus for the biking and motorcycling prospects. Another strike may be that otherwise, it's too awesome. Interesting tidbit, Perth is the most isloated city of its size in the world. Qualified metrics like that (blah blah of it's size) are always a little screwy, but it's more than 2700km to Adelaide (the interweb tells me that's about the same as London to Moscow, or Boston to Houston), which - any way you slice it - is still a hike.

The condensed reader's digest version of the past few days goes like:

Awesome.

The slightly expanded version:

On Friday, the second day in Perth, a friend from MIT - Scott Torborg - finally calls me back. Scotts in Perth for diving, I meet up with him and some of his Australian dive buddies - Chris, Mark and Steve, to name a few. Good people, Scott's friends. It felt like I finally met actual Australians - most of the Aussies i met in Syd were really tourist-adapted. Real Australians, as far as I can tell, are equal parts hilarious and hilariously foul, so it was a grand old time. I got a crash course on how rebreathers work (specifically Scott's top secret prototype rig), which was damn cool. Steve hooked me up with a pimp old phone of his, so now I might actually be able to receive calls. You should test this - don't worry about waking me up, I figure I'll sleep when i get back to the states. Dinner at the Indian Ocean brewery and watching the sun set into the Indian was damn cool.

I crashed at Chris's place for the next two days, which was huge. Best nights of sleep I've gotten in Oz - hostels kind of cheap out on mattresses. We had breakfast at the Wild Fig near Hillary's, great food, but even better people watching. Herb Alpert's "Music to Watch Girls Go By" must've been written for the Fig. After that, I went for a dive with Chris. In the Western Australia Aquarium. With sharks. And rays. And turtles. And awesome. It was my first dive in nearly five years, and it took me a few minutes to calm down and remember how flippers work way too well. There's a series of swim reflexes you really just need to shut off while scuba diving if you want any prayer of controlling your attitude. We ended up at a barbecue (yes, someone called it a barbie, but they may have just been putting on a show for the yank) and I had a ton of great food and great conversations - about Australia, America, travel, motorcycling, to name a few. One fact that stuck with me I learned was from a Dutch guy - Dennis, I think, but I'm crap with names - apparently Amsterdam is over 50% immigrants due to super lax immigration requirements - one of the reasons Dennis expatriated. Oh, and on the ride home, I almost killed Chris and I. Right hand turns are the more complicated here, not left in the states. You look right, and then left out here. And I did! But paused for a split second, wondered if I did it right, decided I did, and went. Cars had moved during that pause. Nothing absurdly close, but cose enough to be entertaining. Lesson learned. Look right. Multiple times. I think the mistake was more from not being used to cars - compared to motorcycles - than a right-hand-drive thing. Anyhoo.

Sunday I dug up a hostel in Freemantle, the port town at the mouth of the river that gets to Perth proper - the Swan River. I bummed around Freo (Freemantle) for the day, read some, and listened to some music. There always seems to be a movie on at this hostel, and they just suck me in occasionally - although watching movies feels almost criminal when I'm here to explore. I dig this place - Old Firestation Backpackers - but the movie thing's a downside.

The unix computers here don't play well with my card readers, I'll toss some pictures up later. I want to make word things about the hostel and the day trip to Rottnest as well, but now, Ben needs food.