The four seasons in Melbourne

The four seasons are quite distinguishable in Melbourne, and I wanted to give a try to capture them through my lenses. Here are the shots I took at the same place - the student square of the University of Melbourne, during Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The Spring

The Summer

The Autumn

The Winter

The Myki Puzzle

The so called smart card technology based Myki public transport ticketing system of Victoria was introduced in later part of 2009 as the most advanced ticketing system to make the commuters' life easy. Even though I had some reservations and opted out from using it at the beginning, after a year of operation of Myki, I expected maturity of the product and thought to give a try.

After few weeks of use, I wanted to verify the usage by checking the Myki transaction history online. To my amazement, I found that Myki system has been designed to give an extra feature - Myki puzzles, to the commuters.

This is how the puzzle works: Myki provides few figures here and there and leaves the rest to be filled by user to figure-out the usage and remaining balance by considering touch on and touch off times, dates, weekends, holidays, the special time-slot schemes for Myki charging, etc, etc. The reason for mentioning "the special charging scheme for Myki" is that if you follow the rules of Metcard you can not successfully complete the Myki puzzle (Eg: See how Myki's 2-hour system works in the screen shot given below). It is a great brain teaser indeed!

"The Myki Puzzle"

Now I have decided that instead of looking for Mx for Sudoku puzzles, I would take printouts of the Myki transaction history whenever I want to kill some time.

St. Kilda Beach, Melbourne

St. Kilda is a famous inner city suburb of Melbourne known for its beautiful water front / beach, theatres, restaurants, festivals, theme park (Luna park), etc and is on the top of the list of destinations for short breaks among Melbournians. The common recreational activities at the beach includes strolling, jogging, cycling, sunbathing, fishing, rollerblading and sailing.

The easiest way to reach the beach by public transport is getting on a tram of route number 3a, 16 or 96 towards St. Kilda beach (zone 1). And, route 96 is the only one where Bumblebee trams are in service.

A Bumblebee tram in St. Kilda

Brooks jetty and St. Kilda lighthouse

Skating area

Beach Badminton

St. Kilda beach and the pier

People come here to relax...

... with their gears

St. Kilda Pavilion - a 100 years old kiosk

View of St. Kilda suburb from the pier

Sailing boats @ St. Kilda pier

Sailing boats in action

St. Kilda breakwater

Part of the St. Kilda break water is a home for a colony of Little Blue Penguins (a.k.a. Fairy Penguins) and the area has been fenced off from public access. Another protected species, Rakali - native water rat, also share this place as its home.

Melbourne's skyline seen from St. Kilda beach

Luna Park - St. Kilda's iconic amusement park

Palais Theatre - a live music and concert venue