2013.02.27 The Amazing Race

For study abroad and exchange students, Swinburne University's Abroad Office organized a scavenger hunt beginning on campus and ending in inner city.  The race was scheduled to begin at 10:30 am, but I woke up a couple hours earlier to get a few things done early.

For starters, after orientation on Monday I was supposed to fill out formal enrollment paperwork, officially securing my spot in the classes I had a space reserved in.  I completely missed that - oops!  So I took a walk over to the Swinburne Faculty of Business and Enterprise office to get it sorted out.  They took care of me, and I was set in less than 30 minutes.

Next I headed over to the Student Services office to get a Transit Concession Card application.  Victoria Public Transit allows higher education students to ride all public transit (including tram, train, and bus) at a reduced rate, about half-off from what I've noticed!  So I got an application and had the form signed by the office, received a verification letter from the abroad office, and got my concession card.  Now, it was time to head over to the Amazing Race.

We were given the rules: We were to go to each of the mandatory locations listen on our brochure and take a picture with each of our team members in it.  We are awarded one point for the picture at each, and bonus points for making the photo creative.  Additionally, there were bonus locations to go to, many of which were time dependent (i.e. get a video of the clock at Melbourne Central playing its chime at the top of the hour).  To be considered for the prize, you must get every mandatory location.

Here is a list of the locations that I can remember off the top of my head:

Mandatory:
Queen Victoria Market
China Town
Bourke Street Mall
State Library of Victoria
Parliament House
Southern Cross Station
Melbourne Central Station
Visitor Center
Crown Royal Casino
South Bank
Degraves Street
Melbourne Arts Centre
National Gallery of Victoria

Optional:
Get a video of the Melbourne Central Station Clock playing at the top of the hour
Get a picture eating a hot jam donut at Queen Victoria Market
Get a video of the Gog and McGog clock playing at the Bourke Street Mall
Take your most creative picture under the giant donut by the Royal Crown Casino

After splitting into six teams, we were off to the Glenferrie train station less than a block away.

On the train we started looking up each location and marking it on a map.  By the time we arrived at inner city we had an entire route planned, and headed straight to Melbourne Street Station - it was almost 11 am, and we could catch the clock playing.

We got off, immediately found the clock (it was hard to miss) and waited for five minutes for it to play. Unfortunately, I still do not have all of the scavenger hunt pictures (they are scattered throughout my teammate's phones) but here is a YouTube video of the clock going off.

Melbourne Central is the northern-most stop in the inner city loop, so we started off by walking north to our furthest location, the Queen Victoria Market.  The plan was to work our way south and east from there, ending at Flinders Street Station.  It was a six or seven block walk to the Queen Victoria Market, only to find that it was closed!

Throughout the day we made our way south, snapping pictures at different iconic locations throughout the city.  The architecture continued to amaze me, and we noticed a few buildings that were a little hard to explain, like this one by RMIT University.

We even passed a few alleyways that are intentionally designated for graffiti, and actually look pretty cool (and a bit trippy to walk through).  I snapped a shot of these two works, although there were several possibly more impressive ones.

Continuing on, we hit China Town about midway through the inner city.  China town made all of us hungry, and we started scoping for somewhere to eat.

We decided to first continue East to the Parliament Building before getting food.  It was another few blocks walk, but we were there before we knew it.  Unfortunately, construction consuming most of the front of the building stopped me from getting a great shot, but here was a section that had been untouched by the construction.

And finally we were off to get food.  We walked a bit further southwest towards Flinders Street where food would be less expensive (hitting a couple more locations on the way).  Eventually, we settled on a Japanese restaurant suggested by a French exchange student, Philippe. 

I ordered a bowl of Chicken Katsu Don and a prawn sushi roll (prawn is shrimp).  The cost of living in Melbourne is pretty high - food is generally more expensive, housing is ridiculously expensive, and alcohol is usually at least twice the price.  A bottle of Smirnoff here, not a handle, a bottle, costs over $40 USD!!  But of all things, sushi is extremely inexpensive.  It costs just $2.50 for a roll!  Granted, the roll is only about 4-5 pieces, but still, I would never be able to fill up on $10 worth of sushi at home like I can here.  I will be eating a lot of sushi while I'm here, and I'm very happy about that!

Now by Flinders Street, we collected to visitors center picture and got a snap of the Eureka Tower from the distance.

This is the same statue I posted a picture of in one of my earlier posts.

Our hands were a bit off, but it's the creativity that counts right??

We continued south of the station now, and outside of the inner city loop, to many of the locations I had previously explored such as the National Gallery of Victoria and and Melbourne Arts Centre, trying to grab creativity points with each picture.

Pretending to surf the modern art grabbed us an extra point!

We only had a few more locations left: the Crown Royal Casino, Southern Cross Station, South Bank, and our most creative picture under the giant donut.  So, we headed straight to the Casino and grabbed our creativity picture there as well.

We grabbed a shot of the southern back of the Yarra River and had only two left: the most creative and Southern Cross Station.

I am still trying to get our most creative picture from Carol's camera, but we won the most points of any team for it: we made a Harlem Shake video underneath the donuts!  For those of you that don't know, it is a current  YouTube sensation, and is a 30-second video featuring the same song in each video.  It starts with one person dancing, and 15 seconds later everybody in strange outfits dancing strangely.  

As an impromptu attempt, with no props or plan, it turned out really well!  Check back again to see our Harlem Shake video!  In the mean time, for those of you that haven't seen one, here is an example of the Norwegian Army making a Harlem Shake video.

UPDATE (2013.03.05)

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My friend Carol got the video to me, so after some quick editing and adding in the audio track it didn't turn out bad at all.  Considering we had no costumes or props, and that many of the international students didn't even know what a harlem shake is, I'd call it a success.  In the future I want to make a really good one though.

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Finally we headed to the final spot, the Southern Cross Station.  We walked back to Flinders Street Station and caught a train to the station, got off, looked for the first sign with the station name on it.  Our photograph is a good representation of how we felt.

My team had finished just in time after getting every single location, including all bonus pictures.  We headed to the post-race meeting point, an outdoor bar just beside the Yarra River to have a couple beers, meet up with the other teams and compare pictures for judging.

After about 30 minutes the pictures were judged and the winners were announced - my team and another tied for first!  I was hoping for some free drinks as a prize, but instead we got a heap of Australian chocolates and snacks.  Not quite as exciting, but after that tiring day I'd take it.