The Final Stretch

So, I'm back from my whistle-stop tour of Australia. Three capital cities in four days was somewhat exhausting but pretty exciting. Now I only have 10 days left until I head back to the States, and three exams also stand in my way. I have a few days to study, and then I have the three exams back-to-back: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Then, all that's left is four more days before my departure on 16 November.

Final exams are handled in an interesting way here. The lecturers (professors) aren't present at all during the exams. Instead, volunteers come in to proctor the exams--basically, they just read a list of instructions, make sure we fill out our sign-in cards correctly, and cross elapsed time off of a projector or computer screen. These volunteers are probably all in their 70s, and almost all women. For my maths final, I had this adorable grandmotherly lady with a German accent proctor the test. You also have to follow a list of strict directions: you must use pen, you must not bring anything to eat or drink into the room, calculator memory must be cleared, and if your cell phone or watch so much as beeps during the exam, it's a $150 fine. It's all part of education en masse at a big school like this one.

Also of note concerning my trip home are Qantas' latest issues with their A380s. I'm not sure if this is being covered much in the US, but on Wednesday a Qantas A380 (their first one delivered, named "Nancy Bird" after the Australian aviation pioneer) operating flight QF32 from Singapore to Sydney suffered an uncontrolled engine failure a few minutes after leaving Changi Airport in Singapore. Basically, something happened to cause one of the turbine discs in the #2 engine to fail, popping some good size pieces off the back of the engine that landed on some guy's car in Batam, Indonesia, among other places. The wing was also damaged as well. In a testament to the incredible redundancy built into these modern airliners, the crew was able to turn the superjumbo around, dump some fuel, and land safely back at Singapore an hour later. Further complicating issues, once on the ground another one of the engines wouldn't shut off and had to be doused by fire crews. These things don't happen often, but they do happen--it's only newsworthy because it happened to such a new plane. Incredibly, the very next day, Qantas flight QF6 operating Singapore-Sydney with a Boeing 747 also suffered some kind of engine failure and had to return to Singapore. Amazingly, the crew of QF32 were also aboard this flight as passengers.

I took this picture of VH-OQA "Nancy Bird," the A380 aircraft involved in the incident, at LAX in July as I arrived from my Southwest flight from Phoenix.

In response to the uncertainty of the cause of QF32, Qantas has grounded all six of its A380s--leaving one stuck in Europe, one in Sydney, the damaged one in Singapore, and three in Los Angeles. Singapore Airlines (whose A380s also use the same Rolls-Royce Trent engines that blew up on QF32) also grounded their fleet for a time, while Emirates, Lufthansa, Cathay Pacific et al. have kept their A380s operating because they use different engines. I'm sure a planeload of Qantas and Rolls-Royce engineers are in Singapore right now trying to figure out what happened. Of course, since these are the largest planes in the Qantas fleet, this has left the "Spirit of Australia" scrambling to rebook passengers and get aircraft to fly people where they need to be.

This impacts me directly because I'm scheduled to fly an A380 from Sydney to Los Angeles on QF11 on my way home. I was looking forward to the chance to fly the A380 on such a long flight, but we'll see if Qantas has them back in service a week from Tuesday and if my flight operates on time (I'd imagine it should be on schedule, two weeks after the incident, but you never know). It may turn out to be incredibly fortunate that ended up flying that Emirates A380 to Sydney a few months ago, since I might not be getting my chance with Qantas.

Anyway, disregarding that lengthy aside, Air New Zealand and Pacific Blue did a good job of getting me where I needed to go this week. As far as recaps of my latest and last trip, I'm unsure if I'm going to get any posted before my finals are over. I've been doing much more procrastinating than studying today, and that's probably going to have to change if I want to leave New Zealand with my academic record still intact. Therefore, just as a teaser, I'll leave this photo, with promise of more updates to come in the week to follow.

Yep, that's me standing three inches away from a real kangaroo. More later.