Presentation and walking in Sydney

Here on my second day in Sydney.Today was good. There was a small group at the workshop and it was low pressure and the people were friendly. They asked good questions. Afterwards, I went out for "tea" with one of the workshop participants, and I got an iced chocolate.

After that I wandered around campus for a bit before catching a taxi to my friend K's house. It so happened that the taxi driver was Indonesian, so I spoke with him in Indonesian the whole time after I realized. 

Then K and I went for a walk along the river trail. We saw some birds, and he showed me the patch that he tends along the river, dedicated to only letting native Australian plants grow there. He also pointed out the architecture of the houses.

Here are a few pics of the stained glass in the house I'm staying in.

The venue of today's workshop

After the workshop and the iced chocolate, I wandered around for a little while.

Seemed like there was a graduation celebrated at this building

A bird mingling with the graduates and celebrants

I wandered into an area dedicated to biology, and I took some pics of the specimens in a cabinet

Each bottle is like a blogpost, preserving something of the day, a specimen

I thought W would like to see this, since he recently found an abalone shell. They're worthy of being museumized buddy!

I took a pic of these students, standing in white coats below skeletons of what look like flightless birds. I don't see enough students studying in white coats.

I went to the art gallery, which was not extensive, involving only this one wall covered in a big painting.

The stairs up to (or down from) the gallery were fun

Once I got back to K's house, we started in his yard and he showed me this indigenous violet

And this other indigenous tree

This is a former feral cat that he tamed

In his back yard

Now walking in the neighborhood

I wanted to stop to get a pic of these Federation-era tiles 

K tells me this house was on the market for quite a long time, probably since there are trees so close to it, and property owners need to apply to a council to be able to cut down trees in their yards. And K suspected the council had turned down the request, so potential buyers may have worried about buying the house and having the tree fall on it.

I told K that this kind of house (minus the pink paint) would be called an arts and crafts house where I'm from. He said that here it's called something like a California bungalow.

These purple flowers looked like they were soaked in foodcoloring

With these large furry-looking items in the tree, I imagined I was looking at a tree full of koalas 

A eucalyptus 

Squiggly designs in the bark

This house had been a classic Federation house, but then at a certain point it was remodeled by a Greek family, and I imagine the orange tree was their addition as well

We got to the trail along the river

This pipe had a lot of birds on it, including a pelican and some cormorants

The pipe was part of a larger apparatus designed to catch debris/pollution floating down the river.

A bit of particularly cuddly pollution.

We crossed a bridge

Looking back at the cormorant drying its wings

The papery bark on a tree

Night heron and pelican

We walked by some wetlands, recently restored to the area

Lucky day! Magpies

Sometimes stucco houses don't seem to fit into the character of a neighborhood

This one had a wooden addition to the back

At the area along the river that K tends to

A tree broken off during the recent storms

Native grass

A small tree propped up after the storm

Billowing 

And this home was remodeled with Spanish architecture

There was a front yard planted thick with banana tree. Bad pic, but I wanted to remember seeing it

Some other remodels

K's barber is from LA

The barbershop walls are decorated with items related to African American culture