Bye Bye Australia!

Well this is it... eating my last australian salad (spinich, avacado, tomatoes, feta) and taking down pics. i was never good at goodbyes! Heading to New Zealand tomorrow and doing a whirlwind tour of the North Island...
The description of the tour is here, it should be quite interesting. Not really sure what to expect yet! I'm excited for a Polynesian mudbath and some soul-healing hot springs! Taupo is the cheapest place in the world to sky dive (it was invented there), but I'm not going to be sky diving. I may try zorbing -- I saw it on Amazing Race once! And i'm going to try to do some Glow worm Cave Tubing! I'm excited to experience some Maori culture...the British colonization of NZ was a lot different then the colonization of Australia. The aboriginal Maoris were a warrior group and fought back so most colonialists have assimilated into the Maori culture, unlike in Australia where the Aboriginals were meant to be assimilated in British culture.

Anyways, gotta get back to packing!

Travels Downunder

Here is a map of the places i've been in Australia thus far! [Click on it to enlarge] We pretty much saw all there is to see up the Eastcoast, with backpacking and road trips combined. We also saw lots of little towns that arent' on the map! When I come back, I want to see Perth, the Red Center, Alice Springs, Tassy and Darwin. Man, I think I blog more than I study!!

It's happened.

I'm studying right now, and i'm craving a cappaccino. Not a French Vanilla, not a double-double, but a good, bitter, cappaccino. Or a flat white, skinny. I just went to the school store and bought my sister a jumper. Not a hoody, a jumper. I bought a hot pink regulation size footy the other day and I plan to play it in Calgary. Heck, maybe I can even start a minor footy league in loo. You reckon i've become too ozzie in this short time abroad?

Glob

You know that studying for your Reactions Eng exam this Friday is completely and utterly useless when....

YOU ARE LEARNING ABOUT GLOBS IN A REACTOR!!!

I think this one really takes the cake on useless information they make us learn. Damn the institution of engineering! Who's with me?!

globs! bah.

23eena

I am now an honorary member of the "It's Cool to be 23" Club!

Firstly, thanks for all your birthday wishes guys! Very sweet of you all! Birthdays when you are overseas are great...you get a whole bunch of messages from people who remember you are a day earlier and wish you for your "Australian Bday", then the next day when all the celebrations are over you get other people who forgot about the difference wishing you for your "Canadian Bday"! So its like 2 days of birthday, what could be better??

Well the day started off great, right at 12 Ioana and Jenn surprised me with a card, some pictures of our trip, and presented me with the much hated caustic flowsheeting assignment to burn as my candle! So we proceeded to go out into the courtyard with a box of matches and the assignment, attempt to burn it and sing happy birthday. Except for some technical difficulties (the assignment just wouldnt burn...it was kind of freaky, like it had some satanic caustic coating on it or something and Hoadly (choad) was whispering in the air: you are goign to have to repeat this course, i would keep that if i were you...) it was way better than cake!


Then me and jenn just watched movies...Mean Girls, A Walk to Remember...gotta love teeny bopper movies!
The next day got a bunch of mail, which is always nice! Bday cards that arrived right on time and a wonderful parcel my boo put together, with cards signed from my Al-Mustajeeb kids and councillors, and a bunch of our friends and family from back home. Great card from my family, with a picture of a moment in my childhood that brought back vivid memories...drinking milk in my kitchen in Castleridge...making popcorn in the popcorn maker...watching Annie and Alice in Wonderland every single day...my mom painting the back of the closet with our names...only the best of times.
That evening after massive public transportation problems, we got to the place where I was having a little bday dinner. It was at Cafe Sienna, a cute little cafe on Chapel Street, which is a funky boutique part of town. It was fun...good friends, good cake! And i got these hot hot aviators from Maya! After Cafe Sienna we went to Prince Alberts, then Acadia, then to the Crown Casino at this club called Odeon. Didnt get home until 6 that morning! So I basically partyed through to my Canadian birthday :)

The table at Cafe Sienna

Also hung out with the curry friends i go clubbing with. The only good that came out of joining the Indian Students Association that day I got ambushed! (ya they call brown people curry's here! it took me a while to get used to but now it feels odd to refer to a curry as being "brown")

Woke up that next morning and went straight to the mall, and had some yummilicious brekky at the Pancake Parlour...amazing place...they dont serve you eggs with butter, they serve you butter with some egg...and the most amazing blueberry pancakes with artificial Canadian maple syrup...(that stuff is in high demand here!). Anyways then i bought part of my bday present from my boo, a backpack for backpacking! I am in love with it, it is the hottest thing ever! Although it is the size of me, I am soooo excited to go on my travels now and sew on patches from all over the world! AND i got cowboy boots as part of my present, they are SO hot!! I had to confirm with one of my fashionistas from Canada to see if they were in style there ...apparantly cowboy boots and skinnys are in mags at the moment so it will be perfect for fall!

Overall it was a great bday. I usually hate bday's away from home, because its those times that you miss your loved ones the most. But, alas, the friends that I've made here helped me to make the transition to 23 in style, and it was a bday I wont forget! So again, thanks to everyone here and everyone there for all the well wishes, luv ya all :)

Her Majesty's Gaol

We found our way to The Old Melbourne Gaol (old english way of spelling jail) on Russel St today and it was such a bone chilling and creepily interesting sight to see! I had wanted to see the infamous Gaol since I arrived in Melbourne but kept thinking that i'd do it another time...but my days here are numbered! Supposedly the most haunted place in Melbourne, the Gaol is Victoria's oldest surviving penal institution and it hosts some of Melbourne's most notorious killers.

The spooky Gaol was built in 1864 and closed in 1926. It was the setting for 135 hangings, the most infamous being that of bushranger Ned Kelly in 1880. Now a museum, the old Gaol is rich in history and there have been many reports of strange sights and sounds. If you look closely you might be able to see something in the cell below...

The Gaol hosts eerie death masks and memorabilia of 19th century penal life...it was really chilling to see the tiny claustrophobic cells and know that murderers were actually serving out sentences and being hanged right where you stood a century ago. This is a death mask of a scary looking man! And below is a mask that looks really kkkish, but really they used to make all prisioners wear them to isolate them from one another and make everyone in there unrecognizable. Silence and serpartion were the two foundations of the gaol's system of punishement.

Prisioners began on the ground floor with a period of solictary confinement. They were forbidden to communicate with eachoe\ther and were required to wear a silence mask when they left their cells. They bathed and changed their clothes weekly, and were locked in the cells for 23 hours daily with an hour for solitary excersize.


There is a lot of paranormal activity that occurs in the gaol, as so many people were hanged, buried, and commited suicide there. So if you want, you can do a night tour between 12 am and 5 am for a plush price and conduct real scientific paranormal testing, measuring electro magnetic activity and the likes. Something I'd definately want to do! Who you gonna call...Ghostbusters!

The best part of the gaol experience was finding a set of cells that contained in the first a chinese man, then a filipino man, then an indian man. Jen (Chinese), Vero (Flip) and me quite convieniently claimed cell blocks 14, 15, and 16!

The Best Advice Ever!

I absolutely cannot believe I'll be leaving Australia in less than 2 weeks! How the hell did time fly like this?? So cliche but I must say it...it feels like just this morning that they tore us out of bed after a messy o-week night and got us to walk to Maccers! 2 semesters here would have been perfect...I feel like i'm just settling in! But, as per usual, its time to move out & move on...the quintessence of nomadic gypsy life. Four years later, for someone who despised change so much, I'm almost eeriely complacent...

So i've just had my 4th exam, my next one is not until the 23rd! That means i have five full days of doing whatever I want!! How sweet is the taste of freedom once the grip of exams loosens its hold on my life! I usually like engineering until exam time, when i have this deep rooted hatred for what I do and wonder why i didnt just choose to do a cruisy degree that I would actually enjoy...like graphic design...or art history...or interpretive dance...fashion design...advertising...i could go on. Jenn and I cracked it the other night...no one in engineering really likes engineering...they chose it out of highschool because they were logical people, and engineering is a logical way of getting where you would like to be in the shortest possible time, God willing of course. Its all about efficiency!

Anyways the point of this post was to give the best advice ever for those of you girls that havn't figured this out yet! Ok so my bday is coming up, and i'm turning 23 which is almost like turning 30 right, so needless to say i'm a bit...apprehensive. Like will i start seeing wrinkles soon? Teeth in a glass?? Will i get *gasp* grey hair?!? Anyways, i find that the best thing to do during times of desperation is dying your hair! Just dyed it a deep indigo, Veronica Lodge style, and I feel like a new person!

Its the best cure for anything! Broke? Dye your hair green! Bad breakup? Grab that bottle and go red to show him what he's missin! You feel like you want to start the year off with a bang?? Go blonde!! Turning almost 30 and you wanna feel like a new gyal?? Go Indigo! As an added bonus, if you've had one to many people mistake you for Sri Lankan, a deep blue black will lessen the look of a perma-ozzie tan!
Ya ok really no point to this post but thats the beauty of it! I can waste time on blogs like this and not feel guilty because my next exam is not for another 10 days!

Great song: Volcano - Damien Rice. If you like this, download the whole album, "O", it is off the hizziky. I reckon he's my favorite artist at the moment :)

It all makes sense to me now...

The exam venue: The Melbourne Racing Club...its so weird to be writing exams at a horse racing track!

This is the first time in my entire academic career that I have walked out of a final not knowing if I wrote enough to pass. It is the first time that I took a whole week studying (usually my average is 2.25 days/exam) and still felt unprepared. After all of that studying, it is surprising that there were minutes on end in that exam when I just didnt know what to do next. And while figuring out energy balances on turbines and compressors in the fking caustic loop, and wondering why there werent ANY questions on pumps and mixers (which is what i studied inside out) it finally dawned on me.

All of a sudden, I realized what it means to do engineering at Monash. I had wondered when I got here why everyone failed everything...and now the answer is crystal clear...and it goes back to the root of all problems...money!

See if this were to happen in UW, the common phrase that you would hear coming out of the examination room is "phew...I can't beleive that was so hard...but as long as everyone found it hard it's ok". Because at UW, we ride the bell curve! So if it feels like the whole class did bad, they wont fail everyone. They will make the class average 60% and off we go on our merry little ways. You pay $4000 for the next semester, and each semester after that, and become an engineer (if all goes as planned).

However here, when you feel like you did bad and everyone else did bad...you say: "Whoa, I cannot beleive we all just failed." Because the Bell Curve doesnt exist here! And you take it again the next year. Which is why when i first got here and about 80% of the class were failed fourth years, I was so confused. The reason it happens this way is because the tuition that the govt pays for each student is only about $1000/year. They call this "HECS", and it is only after an engineer graduates and makes 40 g's that they have to start paying the government back. Even still, if they choose to leave the country and work elsewhere, they may not have to pay HECS back. So then the problem is graduating. So in my opinion, they keep you here and keep you failing as long as possible so that the school gets more money. Might as well just raise tuition and make fairer exams! Then it is not such a waste of valuable time!

Well at least the worst part is over! Management might be a bit yucko but Reactions will be a breeze....and then my adventure in Australia is over! :(

Cramming before the exam

The Roxxanes formerly known as Kanye West formerly known as Group 13 (Monash Whaaat)

Caustic Solution will be the end of me

Soooooo exam tomorrow....CHE 3108, i'm terrified. I dont have the drive to study like i usually do in Waterloo, where i can just lock myself up in a confined space for hours on end and learn everything efficiently. The exam is Process Design Engineering...and basically takes everything we've learned in the past 4 years (5 for me) and puts it together in one course to apply it to actual chemical engineering processes. And its all based on one process...Aluminium Refining throught a Bayer process. Yes, they spell/call it Aluminium...pronounced AL-OOM-IN-EE-UM. it SUCKS. Its a stupid process using bauxide feed and caustic and spent pregnent liquor and we dramatically failed our first assignment after putting so much effort into it. Which is why everytime i hear the words Caustic Solution i cringe.

Maybe it wouldnt be as bad if our professor wasnt such a choad...his name is Hoadly...but we call him Choadly. Choad is a bad word. I wont explain what it means on here just in case my brother is reading this. Wouldnt want to be a bad influence! Everytime i pass him i have to say it under my breath, its become a natural thing, kind of like and instinctal reflex. He's the type of prof that will see you in the halls, and know who you are, but won't acknowledge that you exist...he's the type of prof that tells you (during office hours) that he's not answering any questions because "today is just not my day". Thanks buddy, because I really feel sorry for you. He's the type of prof that after the whole class has trouble with a question and asks him for an explaination, he says "this is so trivial i'm not even going to justify explaining it." Choad.

*sigh* how sad...this is how a chemical engineer tries to be a rebel...by fake spray painting on a process flow diagram and feeling better. what has my life come down to!

The Clean Room During Exam Time Phenomena

Well the time has finally come...full on finals. I'd rather skip this part...why can't the measure of what we have learned through the term be assessed through assignments and participation?!

Anywho, usually during this time i become quite the recluse, hunting down parts of libraries that people never knew existed in order to get some absolute silence so i can hear myself think. What i loved about DC in UW is the free ear plugs! I'm missing those dearly right now, as I try to study in my room...studying in Farrer Hall is like trying to pay attention in Reactions...useless!! Also, another minor point, libraries at Monash close at 5:45...and the university locks up....wtf?! No wonder everyone fails! Man i am such a geek at heart. But i did find a key room...the Music Room in the Arts library...why would a music library be quiet you may ask?? Well the answer is simple...who in the Music faculty would study?! In a library!? So its this little room with study carols and the door is usually closed. Its like a secret society of hardcore nerds that study in there! Music Library..simply genius!

Ok so the more time i spend in uni, the more i realize the affect of the Clean Room During Exam Time phenomena. Sounds complicated, i know, but really it is quite simple. It is only during exam time that my room stays of the cleanest it ever is! I have 2 hypothesisis (is that the plural?) to explain the reason for this peculiar observation.

Hypothesis 1. I feel as though if my room is disorganized, my brain is disorganized so i cannot concentrate. Thus, i feel the need to organize my room and get that part out of the way and then move on to less trivial parts of my life, ie, passing 70 - 85% exams.

Hypothesis 2. Cleaning my room is simply yet another means of procrastination. And my, how I love procrastination.

So what is the point of this post? To show where I spend most of my time during exams! And my wonderfully clean room where I have been living for 4 months! Oh and, ahem, to procrastinate of course.

So this is the hallway in front of my room, with some tarzan/crocodile dundee like bushman wrestling a croc...and how fitting indeed...i have myself wrestled many a croc in my day living in the bush that is Clayton.


This is my door!


This is my bed that I like to take frequent naps on during study time. I brought my pillow case from home because you all must know how much I like my animal print. koalaroz is resting nicely in his regular spot.


This is where I do most of my work, when i'm not taking it to my bed and convincing myself I will stay awake while doing work there. Top shelf contains food...had to stock up for exam time! Books, shells, Canada hat, Vitamens, Oranges, Nutella, all the good stuff!


This is my billboard I use to organize my life! Numbers, quotes, schedules, grocery lists, tasbihs, postcards, agarbati, and a random maple leaf i found on the ground one day! Above it is a charcoal drawing i made at the begining of the term when i was going to join art classes.


My really small closet in between concrete walls! I guess its good that I have a small closet...it stops me from buying clothes b/c if it doesnt fit in my closet, it probably wont fit in my suitcase! Notice how my blanket is folded. Thats when you know i've REALLY been procrastinating.

Ok so now i've spent a total of 16.35 minutes on this post and it is time to go back to studying. And hell week begins!

Byron Bay, Miles Away

Just got back from Byron Bay, these airplane rides are getting tiring! We left early Thursday morning and flew to Ballina, which is about a half hour away from Byron. So the first day we sat on the beach and read our books, then walked around some of the shops and had some great thai food. I wasnt feeling too good so I was in bed by around 11 while the rest of the girls had quite the night out!

Friday was a beautiful morning, we had a great breakfast at a neat little place overlooking the main strip of Byron. Then we headed to the beach where the temperature was perfect and we spent the time baking.
In the afternoon I met up with one of my friends who I've actually never seen before, we are pen pals of sorts, and we've talked continents away over msn for the past year! She lives in Coff's Harbour, which is about an hour south of Byron, if I have my geography straight! We had a great afternoon, having lunch and ice cream and going around "alternative" health stores and buying yummy organic soaps! I found a smell in a soap that I have been looking for for years, it was an old Lush product that was discontinued! That just made the day so much sweeter. The similarities between our personalities and our experiences were uncanny...what a small, small world it is.

Byron weather is peculiar as it is hot in the mornings and cools off around 3:00. By evening it is as cold as Melbourne! We were bundled up and we decided to go to Cheeky Monkeys, after many recommendations! Cheeky Monkeys was truely a backpacker's place, lined with flags from all over the world, cheesy games and prizes, and dinner menus for $2.00! But we were so tired we decided to be party poopers and we were in bed by 10:30!! So much travelling does that to a gyal!

We were planning on going to Nimbin one of the days but decided not to...maybe if we had more time. We loved Byron too much! Today we trekked to the most easternly point of the Australian mainland, to this lighthouse that I will definitely be painting when I get home! (That is my plan, if i dont find a job for the month of August I am going to spend all my time painting pictures of Australia!) We saw dolphins from the look out point and watched surfers riding the waves. It was amazing!




All in all Byron Bay was such a relaxing little town with a very positive and energizing aura. I feel relaxed, rejuvenated, and ready to conquer my exams! Can't say i'm not disspointed to be back here in Melbs facing round 2 of Reactions Engineering wrath this Wednesday...but hey thats life! Back to life, back to studying!

Sydney - The Harbour City

And it begins...Crocodile Dundeena's adventures in New South Wales!

Initially our trip to Sydney was supposed to be a road trip...a 12 hour drive from Melbourne to Sydney on Friday morning, and a 12 hour drive from Sydney to Melbs on Sunday. This was all so that we could study for our Heat and Mass transfer test this Wednesday! But Jen and I changed our minds on Friday night when we realized how much there was to see in Sydney. We decided to be troopers and instead booked a flight to fly out of Sydney on Monday night. Essentially this gave us 2 extra days to explore! It was very spontaneous and very un-meenaesque, but definitely something that I am trying to do more often (go with the flow)!! Of course this also means that I only have tomorrow night (Tuesday) to study for Heat and Mass...but my motto this term is "Get your priorities straight! Do not let school get in the way of experiences!" Fair dinkum mates!

Anywho so the drive on Friday morning was heaps of fun...we stopped off in this small town called Albury, where the average age of citizens was probably about 64.3 years. It was cute! Then we stopped in a random little town based on a submarine in the middle of it...seriously this town is known for a random submarine, but its not even real its a replica from WWII. "We all live in a yellow submarine..." is what we were singing. We also stopped in front of a huge marino (baa baa black sheep have you any wool...) ya it was quite random! Thats the best thing about road trips!

Well it seemed like we were driving through the prairies in Canada but the landscape had random trees scattered through it...pretty boring roads! Considering that Melbourne is rainy every single day, I do not know how the country is in drought. But you could finally tell the influence of the drought when we were driving...the grass was NOT green! it was a yellow-green-brown and looked like how my backyard at home looks from about Sept to June. Apparantly, there was a lot of roadkill, kangaroos in particular, but Blake was driving and was kind enough not to say something like..."oh look a kangaroo"...and have us turn around excited only to see cute-used-to-be-hopping-roadkill *tear*.

We got to Sydney and it was CRAZY...so much traffic, lots of nice cars, lots of people everywhere! Just a beautiful place. We got to our hostel called WakeUp! and it was just pure class, the nicest place i've stayed in so far in my travels! We were on the African floor, and there were different themes on different floors.

We had dinner in this HUGE china town, i seriously felt like i was in Hong Kong again! So much bigger than the Melbourne China town! Then we met up with the girls (Jen, Sarah, Ioana) in the city and we went to this lounge called 5 below. So the concept is the same as upper floor of Mynt in Calgary, with the Ice Bar. You pay a certain amount to stay up there for 30 mins, they give you parkas and ugg boots and gloves and you go in this cold lounge and take pictures and hang out and "chill" ahha. sorry i couldnt help it. it was really "cool"! excuse the pun, these jokes suck! Anyways it was sooo refreshing to feel the cold again and see my breath in the air! Even though it was only minus 5 and i could probably have done it without the gloves, its like a health hazard for these australians to be in there longer than 30 lmao but it was fun. There were lots of ice sculptures, including one of the opera house. That night i danced to reggae for the first time in SO long it was amazzin!

On Saturday we walked around to the harbour, what a beautiful sky line it is! I REALLY wanted tickets to the ballet at the Sydney Opera House for that night, they were showing Giselle and i have never watched a ballet in my life! Those of you that know me knew what my obsession with ballet was when i was young! I always wanted to watch Nutcracker but i though Giselle would suffice...sadly tickets were sold out save for standing room...and no one would come with me in a standing spot for 2.5 hours :( So we ended up taking a tour of the opera house which really wasnt as impressive from the inside as it was from the outside. This is primarily because Utzon, the one who won the competition for the design of the structure, was not able to finish off the inside of the house b/c of budget restrictions and change in governments in the 60's...so the outside was developed by him but the whole inside of it was different from the original plan...you can see the 70's style in it which isnt too classy...wood panelling, concrete...just a bit dissapointing! Apparantly they need to do remodelling and renovations but it will cost them way too much to shut the venue down...in any case it was neat to get the whole story! One thing i found interesting is seeing the outer shells of the Opera House up close...I never realized it was all tiled like a mosque! Utzen was inspired by a lot of middle eastern design, and you cant tell from the ground. Definitely a sight to see!

Sunday would have been the day i was supposed to leave, but instead we went to Manly. "7 miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care"...it was a beautiful little suburb that we got to through a ferry ride from the harbour.

Cards on the beach and shopping, what could be better? The weather has not been amazing here, it was probably only about 18oC, but it was still ok. After that we had the most interesting experience at a particular hostel we were supposed to stay at...Nomads Beached at Bondi...i do not recommend it!

We got there and we had requested a 6 person room for us girls, so we could have a slumber party like back in the day. And the guy was seriously a stoner or something and he didnt understand there was a difference between a 4-6 person room and a 10 person room...his exact words were...."well...uh...sometimes things dont work out u know...it happens..." and "well princesses you can fit 4-6 people in a 10 person room..." and of course the classic "well this 8 person room has 5 spots in it so you can all fit so I dont know what your complaining about" (there were 6 of us). Anyways then after some "conversation" he told us he would just give us 4 rooms and we could decided whatever we wanted to do with them "just to get us out of his hair"! By this point i was ready to punch something. We asked him for keys and he said "Why would you need to lock your doors?". Thats when we turned around and left lol it was the most amusing hostelling experience i've ever had.

Anyways we spent the night at Bondi Beach having quality girl talk time and today we just walked around the shops! it was a bit too cold to stay on the beach, but the houses along the water looked so very mediterranean against the torquoise agains the sea! It was beautiful.

Now i have a day to study, then Heat and Mass test on Wednesday, then I leave for Byron Bay on Thursday morning! Byron is apparantly amazing and it's also in New South Wales. We are flying back on Sunday then I have to cram for another test on Wed in Reactions Eng! Its going to be a busy week :)


Pictures soon! Miss you all :)

Under the Sea

Pictures from the Great Barrier Reef along with quotes from The Little Mermaid (1989) (yes it really was that long ago) for your viewing pleasure!


Ariel: [singing] Up where they walk/up where they run/up where they stay all day in the sun/Wanderin' free/wish I could be/Part of that world...

Ariel: Is he - dead?
Scuttle: [Opens Eric's eyelid] It's hard to say. [Puts his ear against Eric's foot]
Scuttle: Oh, I - I can't make out a heartbeat.

Scuttle: I haven't seen this in years, this is wonderful.
Ariel: What is it? Scuttle: A banded, bulbous snarfblatt.
Ariel & Flounder: Ooooooh.
Scuttle: Now the snarfblatt dates back to prehysterical times when humans used to sit around and stare at each other all day. Got very boring. So they invented this snarfblatt to make fine music.


Scuttle: It's a dinglehopper. Humans use these little babies... to straighten their hair out. See? Just a little twirl here and a yank there and voila. You've got an aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair that humans go nuts over.



Ariel: There he is! Isn't he handsome? [Scuttle looks at the dog and scratches his neck]
Scuttle: I don't know, he looks kind of hairy and slobbery.
Ariel: No, not that one. The one playing the snarfblatt.


Life can be better down where its wetter take it from me!