LLM Graduation and Austin, Texas (May 2017)

Hey Everyone!!

So I haven’t published a post in a while and that’s because school and work were absolutely crazy the last couple of months.  So get ready though, this is a biggy.

On 13 May 2017, I finished law school (again!).  Graduation day was lovely albeit slightly strange because of the culture differences between AUS and USA. I got some lovely pictures before the ceremony.

While Josh was taking my picture,  a lovely stranger offered to get a picture with the two of us.

Can I just comment on how perfectly he timed this photo? I mean look at the red bus emblazoned with SAN FRANCISCO. Amazing. So my graduation was interesting. One thing I absolutely did not like was this weird plastic bit on my tassel.

It made me feel like I was getting ready to go to a New Year’s Eve dress up party. That wasn’t the worst bit about it. Because we all got dressed at home, all of us turned up to the ceremony with weird bat wings.

That’s my friend Lis from Scotland who graduated with me on the day. Here is a nicer photo of us.

So the university provided some refreshments (no booze) in the hour before the ceremony.  A really strange thing was they made these single cakes you could take your photo in front of and pretend like it was a cake for you.

There were two types of cake, normal and gluten free. So of course I got my picture in front of both!

What really spins me out is they have a gluten free cake, but no one is going to eat the cake! Hilarious!

After this, the graduates (me and Lis) moved into the hall to get ready for the ceremony. THIS is where we learned that we’d been wearing our gowns wrong. In fact, I had my gown back to front and that my sleeves were inside out. It turns out that we were supposed to have the zip of our gowns in the back (how are we supposed to do them up??) and then reach our hands into those bat wings to pull into our gown so that the copious amount of material would puff out our sleeves and weigh them down.

Okay, I think I’m a pretty smart cookie and you know what? If a graduation gown isn’t self-explanatory, then it is a RIDICULOUS GOWN!!!!! It turns out all the LLMs wore it the way I did. The JDs didn’t, they had different gowns. Sheesh! I’m just glad I fixed my sleeves before I got on stage.  I went through the ceremony and got my piece of paper, yes yes, with my gown still back to front, but my sleeves were fixed so no one could tell.

So, an interesting thing is the university makes you go through the ceremony without knowing whether you’ve even passed your exams.  In fact, as I write this post I still haven’t got the results of my exams from three subjects.  The piece of paper they hand you is…

…. yay….. So anti-climatic.  After going through this ceremony and giving back that horrendous gown, Josh and I returned home to prepare for our trip to Austin which we booked to celebrate me graduating.

AUSTIN DAY 1

For the first time ever, I used airbnb to book a place to stay because all the hotels in Austin are horribly expensive. We found a cute little unit which was very very cozy on the inside.

But it was only for a couple of nights so we got over it. We arrived in Austin on Sunday evening of Mother’s Day around 6 o’clock. This is when we decided to start exploring.  Firstly, Austin was hot. And humid. Josh and I walked two blocks before we decided we needed to get out of the heat. We stopped off at an oyster restaurant and partook in some refreshments.

You can see from the picture above that we set on the counter right up against the guy who was shucking oysters. Strangely, with the oysters came these.

These are a type of savoury cracker.  Josh and I looked at them confused not knowing why the waitress gave it to us.  When she came back to clear away our empty oyster dish we asked her what the Saltines were for.  She said that some people place the oyster on the cracker and eat it that way.  WHY??? Yeah, I don’t get it either.

After the oyster we had some amazing ceviche.

I am giving this ceviche my highest compliment: it was like the ceviche from Chin Chin. You know the one I’m talking about.  Okay from there,  we decided to brave the heat again. This time we made it about four blocks before we broke down again. We needed another refreshment. Really funny was that all the bars were spraying water on their guests sitting outside. I wonder if you can see the mist coming from the fan.

From there we decided to brave the unbearable heat. I think we made it about three blocks before we stopped at an Italian restaurant for dinner.  After that the sun had gone down somewhat, we made it at least 4 blocks before we stopped off at a cool bar which specialised in old fashioneds.

The bar had some really great artwork and I was really tickled by this next one.

The Albert Einstein picture amused me because it had C2H6O in the corner.  For those of you who don’t know, this is the molecular formula of ethanol. As I was taking this picture, one of the bartenders came up to me and asked if I knew what was so special about ethanol. I said no and he said, rather sagely, “Well, ethanol is in alcohol”. Out loud, I said “Interesting!”. In my head I said “Really mate? If I can recognise the molecular formula of ethanol, then you can bet your arse I know that ethanol is in alcohol.”  Josh and I pretty much left soon after and went straight home because the heat was still killing us.

AUSTIN DAY 2

So on our first full day in Austin, we left the airbnb early because I had planned a special treat for myself.  On the way to my treat however, we decided to visit some landmarks along the way.

This is a famous record store in Austin. We bought some vintage LPs as memorabilia of our time in Austin. Our next landmark was…

This is a hoity-toity supermarket that the rich and famous shop at. And it began here in Austin. This is their flagship store. Very exciting. After this, I went for my treat.  My favourite online store is called Modcloth.  It does vintage-inspired clothing.  They have a single physical store and its in Austin. Full disclosure: I requested we go to Austin for my treat after graduation but didn’t tell Josh why until the day of the flight. Hehe! The store was really pretty.

It’s really interesting actually. The way the store works is that you can try on anything in the store in every size they have available but you can’t walk out of the store with the clothing. You order it online from the website like you ordinarily would and then it gets delivered to your doorstep. This was convenient for me because I bought a bunch of clothes and then had it shipped to Oakland. In fact, my parcel arrived a couple of hours before Josh and I returned home. After my little shopping expedition, Josh and I decided to brave the heat (still hot, still humid) in search of BBQ.

We ended up walking to Terry Black’s BBQ which is the third best bbq in Austin. The first best required a 3 hour wait in line, the second best was a 30 min drive outside of town so third best it was.

With eyes bigger than our stomachs (that is entire cow rib you see nearest to you), Josh and I ordered way too much food. After only eating a third of it, we came to a revelation. We don’t really like BBQ . While a little goes a long way, Josh and I didn’t understand why they serve such heavy sides to go along with such rich heavy food. We didn’t throw the food away though, we packed it up and took it back to the room for a much needed nap to wait out the heat of the afternoon.

After waiting for the heat to die down (and for my migraine to go away), Josh and I made our way to Easy Tiger, a German bakery and bar.  I tell you what, the Germans know what they’re doing.

Still feeling the effects from the heat (me with a migraine and Josh feeling nauseous), we decided to have some tacos for dinner and then head home. This is where we came upon a revelation.

In this picture, you see deep fried avocado tacos on a bed of corn and green salsa with a sprinkling of mexican cheese. On top of that, you have red pickled onion, radish and mushroom bacon.  And it was amazing!  We had squid and fish tacos as well but the avocado tacos were hands down the best. After dinner, Josh and I walked home and just before heading back to our airbnb, I finally saw my first cactus.

Josh and I went to sleep hoping the next day would lead to some real cowboy stuff.

AUSTIN DAY 3

When day 3 dawned, finally it was cloudy. The extreme heat had disappeared and finally, FINALLY Josh and I could be tourists properly.  So with the ability to walk long distances, we first visited Graffiti Park.

One thing I noticed was that Austin had a lack of graffiti and wham, it’s all in the one place. Pretty funny. This was good to look at for about 45 seconds. Then we moved on.  Our next stop was the Capitol Building.

This was actually a really funny place. They had heaps of monuments however Josh and I started noticing a trend. First we found a plaque describing a lake.

However when you look for the actual lake…

It’s gone because of all the rubbish and bugs that used to be attracted to it. Our next plaque refers to a fountain.

However when you look for the actual fountain….

Yup that’s been removed as well. That’s when we started to really notice that all the monuments were replicas of the original.

Moving on, this was the next monument we noticed.

Have a read of the plaque above. Very interesting.  A friend of mine who has family that fought on both sides of the American Civil War said that people in the South don’t refer to the Civil War as the Civil War, they refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression….. This topic is way too emotionally charged (for Americans) so I’m moving on.

From here we decided we needed to do something cowboy-esque. We walked down to South Congress where they have a nice tourist shopping trap. There we found Allen’s boots.

So, in this quite famous shop there were cowboy boots that were simply revolting (not pictured), and they seem to be the ones that cost about $2000. Josh and I didn’t buy boots, but we did buy…

After our successful shopping endeavour with the hats, we decided to look around some more. That’s when we discovered a cute lolly shop (or candy shop as an American would say).

Josh got an orange soda shake which I think is like a spider except they use cream.

And I got some ice-cream to cool down from the hot weather.

We then headed home to dump our purchases and we forayed out again this time searching for an institution called the Mean Eyed Cat. We were walking in built up clinical suburbia past yoga and barre studios and in the middle of cookie-cutter apartments we found this sign.

This was the kind of sign you see outside of a business park.  I had no hope that we would find a cool bar but behind this sign was the Mean Eyed Cat.

It looked like all the housing development happened around it and developers just haven’t been able to move it.  I looked up the history of this place and it used to be a chainsaw repair shop but was abandoned. After hobos started living in it, a guy bought it and turned it into a shrine to Johnny Cash.

This wasn’t a great photo but it was such a cool place and I didn’t want to look too obvious behaving like a tourist and taking a photo.  It was a really great bar.  We then moved on to another institution, Donn’s Depot.  This is a piano bar that was built around a train carriage and once again has been there for ages.

Here, Josh and I listened to some ole timey piano tunes by Donn and his band.

Looking around there were a lot of regulars who were really old. Check out this chick magnet.

Don’t judge a book by its cover because when this guy got onto the dance floor, he had some serious moves. Completely put Josh and I to shame because we were constantly looking at our feet, shuffling nervously and trying not to bump into the other dancers.  Looking at all the other regulars however, it was clear we had no idea what we were doing.  The art of dancing has truly been lost on our generation.  The regulars who got up every song were doing the waltz, the box step and the 1-2-step like it was second nature which meant they could enjoy the company of their partner and chat to them at the same time.  Josh and I however were pretty silent and probably didn’t enjoy it as much. Makes me really want to learn how to do a couple of proper dances just so I can enjoy myself more in situations like these.

And that brings me to the end of my enjoyable visit to Austin. I’ll be going radio silent until the end of July as I hunker down and study for the bar.  I will however be back to blogging regularly once that ordeal is over.

Wish me luck!

Talk soon,

Sim (& Josh)