life in Sydney

G'day everybody!  That's me standing in front of the Big Merino, which is a giant statue of a sheep staring with great dignity out into the distance that was built to commemorate the sheep business of Australia.  Rachael and I stopped by to see it on our way back from a road trip to...

Canberra, the nation's capital!  I was invited to give a talk to the philosophy department at the ANU last week, so Rachael and I drove down for the adventure.  It was simultaneously very exciting and very intimidating, since the ANU seems to be the most prestigious philosophy department on the continent.  But it went very well, and was ultimately a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about how to translate my ideas "into Australian," as some of the philosophers down there said.

Meanwhile, Rachael and I have been getting settled in our new apartment.  We moved in a week and a half ago, and most of the chaos is starting to subside.  Here is Rachael, her sister Jenny and her brother-in-law James helping us move in to the new place:

(In a few days I'll try to put up a post with more pictures of the interior, now that we've decorated and assembled our furniture.)
Since the last time I posted Rachael and I bought a very beautiful car with lots of help from James and I bought a very beautiful bike.  The other day I took some pictures while I was going on a trip to get some salmon at Sydney Fish Market.  Here is my bike in our back yard:

And here is our car:

I also took a few pictures of my trip to the Fish Market so you could see a little bit of Sydney.  I rode by the harbor for part of the way:

(The Fish Market is that low blue building by the water in the foreground.)

The salmon was a delicious success, but Rachael and I were too busy eating it to take any pictures.

In other news, I've been writing up a storm of inspired philosophy in the last day or two, and Rachael has been working with increasing enjoyment on a paper about the great movie Laura by Otto Preminger (one of our favourites) and the perhaps slightly less great movie Vertigo, also by one of our favourites.  It's very nice to both be so involved in this work, and to be sharing it together.

That's all for now.  I hope everything is going well back in the States, and I'll keep trying to connect by Skype when I can, but the internet connection at home is still pretty choppy.

-Throckmorton.