Ambiversion

There’s nothing really going on in my everyday life.  Everyone else seems to be so busy and I just do nothing and sit on my ass all day.  Regretting choosing WPI and not getting more involved on campus, but perhaps it would’ve been easier had it been a different school?

I dunno. I’m weird because I’ll do any activity because for me it’s the people you do the activity with that makes it fun.  Sure skydiving would be awesome, but if you do it by yourself, it’s far less exciting.  Life is meant to be a shared experience.  That’s what I think at least.

Even crappy/boring things can be made a lot more fun by just having a friend along.  I don’t really understand what’s brought about this change in me.  I used to be fine sitting inside my ass all day playing video games or watching movies/anime by myself.  I need social interaction.  Extroversion.  Introversion.  Where do I fit?  Am I both?  But by that case, aren’t I really just an introvert who sometimes can put on an extroverted face?   But then why do I get antsy after spending most of my days alone in my room?

Community.  I believe I’m looking for community.  A fraternity would have been a community.  A community perhaps not quite suited for me, but a community nonetheless.

Three years, I tried to find community where I was used to it being.  But I didn’t find it, now I’m just lost.  I have good friends here, yet why do I still feel so alone?  Why am I unhappy? Am I actually unhappy?  I must be because I’m fairly certain I’m not happy. Which I guess means I am unhappy.  Why?  What am I running from?  Am I running or am I hiding?  Something needs to wreck me.  But at the same time, I’m scared of what that will look like.  Do things truly have to be destroyed before they can be made new again?  Sounds so cliché.

Man this it’s like I’m writing poetry, I don’t even know what I’m saying.

Weird faith games.  Weird faith games…

Winter break should prove to be interesting.

Happy Thoughts

I thought to myself the other day.  How come you only write sad posts?  Why such a Debbie Downer/Negative Nancy?  GOTTA BE A POSITIVE PETER. Write when you’re happy/normal, not only when sad!

Gotta get in touch with the reason this blog was started! Write random stories! For the readers! Which I’m fairly certain there’s probably only one still left…  But I mean it’s nice to look back and what I’ve written in the past and remember the good old days.  So this will be a place for me to look back on college in a few years. See how I’ve changed.

With that all said and done… I don’t have any inspiration of what to write…

Is there anything that was extraordinarily awesome recently?  Okay, maybe this isn’t going to work as easily as I thought because the only thing that comes to mind is me gaining my seven pounds back… Which isn’t all that exciting, and not very pleasant either…  I experience what hunger was today for the first time in three days of always being full or bloated.  I don’t even know why I’m so fixated on trying to gain weight/get bigger.

I’ve always been happy with how I look, yet I’m trying to make myself look “better”.  BUT ON THE POSITIVE PETER SIDE OF THINGS, going to the gym is my only source of exercise other than walking to class.  In fact, I don’t think I remember regularly exercising since I played Frisbee, which hasn’t happened since sophomore year.  So I’m being healthier in that regard!  And it’s become fairly routine, going to the gym that is. So when I hit 30 and my metabolism decides to kick the can, I’ll hopefully still have the good habit of going to the gym.  Hell I’ve even started trying to floss recently.

Now I’m just rambling.  But everyone should listen to the new Epik High album. It’s K-pop, well not pop, but kind of.  Well okay I guess it’s K-pop, but Gangnam Style is damn catchy so I’ll link it below.  I can’t promise the quality of your life will improve like it did after the first viewing of Gangnam Style, but it’s a damn good song and I’ve been listening to their new album “99” on and off for the past week or so.

On the topic of music, I’ve been “finding” a lot more new music lately, rather than listening to the same old crap that I downloaded in high school and can recognize after 2 seconds into the song. I just thought of an idea for a story.  I believe the last time we actually visited Dalziel, he was still in high school.  I can go verify that fact later.  But we can have a catch-up story.  It’ll be great.

Right, I was going to link Epik High.  Watch it.  The song starts at ~1:00 if you don’t care about the intro to the music video or have the attention span of a gold fish, which only have a 30 second memory I’ve been told.  Many times.  Too many times.

 

WEEEEEKKEEENNNDDDD which means alcohol

Hurricane

I really like the sound of rain.  It’s so soothing, even when it’s not raining I find I work best under the conditions of rainymood and smooth jazz Pandora.  I don’t really know why I opened up a word document and started typing actually, to completely change the topic.  There’s a hurricane outside and the emails I’ve been getting are making it seem super serious, but if you just look outside… It’s just another rainy day, BUT YOU HAVE TO STAY INSIDE AND CAN’T GO OUTSIDE FOR ANY REASON.

It’s going to be an interesting term.  I can already tell.  It’s only been half a week, but I can feel it in my bones.  The things that happen this term will make or break me.  And the work load hasn’t even picked up yet.  Well that’s probably because I’m not ever too worried about school work because you just do it and then it’s done.  Haha, that actually works with everything.  If you do it, it will be done, because you just did it.

Okay, getting a little weird up in here Dave it’s like you’re talking to yourself.  But isn’t that why I write this blog?  I have all these thoughts and feelings pent up inside me.  And I actually DON’T think I can deal with them.  I can’t just sit here alone and be comfortable just being in my own skin.  I don’t know why.  I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what.  It’s like the worst invention in Harry Potter.  The remembrall or whatever it is.  It tells you when you’ve forgotten something, but of course you’re not going to remember otherwise you wouldn’t have forgotten it.   I’m looking for something but I don’t know what.

Yes, the proverbial God-shaped hole that you try to fill with a bunch of things whether it be money, cars, girls, games, sex, drugs and the like.  But I feel like I’ve been a part of that community for so long.  I’ve never known anything else.  But then that gets into the question of how I've definitely never felt this lost when I was in that phase.  But I also can’t imagine myself going back to be that same person, at least not at WPI.  I don’t know. I really don’t know.

And of course the next logical step at this point in time is to go lose myself in something because it’s rather unsettling to be in this state for too long.  Or I could just wallow in sadness and listen to music and the rain rhythmically splattering on the ground outside my window. We’ll see. We will see.

Just gotta keep on keeping on.

Reboot

I need to get back into school mode and do work, but I don't really want to, but I have to.

Too much independent study and too many freaking letters in equations.  What happened to the numbers in math?

Every group project I'm a part of, I rarely do any of the hard work, I just pick awesome group members.  I assemble the team and I feel like I actually do little work.  I'm just there for moral support.


I need to stop busying myself all the time.  I also need to go to sleep.

Goodnight

Summer Wrap-Up

Man, it seems like just yesterday summer was starting and I was struggling with what to do with myself for three months.   But now it’s over and classes are starting on freaking Thursday.  It’s been an interesting summer, but the past few days have been the most memorable.  Not just the icing on top of the cake, because frankly, I’m not too big a fan of icing.  The last few days have been the extra secret fries you discover in the bottom of your bag, but not of just my summer, but of probably my entire college career up until now.

I can’t really collect my thoughts right now.  But I guess a little back story will do.  I’ve told many people that WPI is not the right school for me, and I think I’ve finally put my finger on why that is.  Though I am studying chemistry and chemical engineering, I’m not exactly a super technical man.  I mean I am, but I still do have a creative side, and the environment at school is so isolated and narrow that only a portion of my personality is “satisfied” so to speak.  It’s the right environment for some people, but for me it’s not quite right.  I feel like I knew that going to school but I thought to myself, “I’m pretty adaptable, so it doesn’t really matter what community there is at college because I can change to fit.”  But after three years I can say that I was dead wrong.  It’s like I’m used to being able to connect with different people, but at WPI only half of my connections are being used and the other half is left in a cage to rot, and when half of something is rotting, the rest of it will start to suffer as well.

Man I get really long-winded sometimes.

So summer, I had a job and work 9-5 Monday to Thursday.  That left me a long weekend every weekend which was really nice.  I quickly got into a routine and started pumping out my days.

Then it ended and I came home to California for a week.  And retreat happened, and I wish never had to leave.  I felt at home; truly a family.  Something I had not felt in a long time.  I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I know God will take care of me.   One more year of school and then I’m into the working world and the rest of my life.

I’ll just keep on keeping on and everything will be alright.

Late Night Thoughts

So I just got an email about a possible job up in Sudbury.  It’s just a quick phone conversation to talk about it if it’s what I’m looking for, but at this point I’m really just looking for anything…  Whether or not I enjoy what I actually end up doing is just a bonus.

Fortunately, I really like chemistry/lab work so where ever I go, if I’m in a lab, I’m gonna have a good time.  I don’t really know where I’m going to be this summer and it’s kind of annoying.  I supposed most people would be anxious and stuff, but that just doesn’t really happen to me.  Well maybe that’s a lie, I am writing this blog post at 4:15 am.  But I just felt the need to talk to someone even if it’s myself in a word document.  There’s something strangely comforting about typing out these blogs to myself and the host of whoever reads these things, which after IQP I’ve found is quite a large number of bored people on the internet, but I guess that’s what I get for making facebook posts about each update I make.  The internet is indeed a super public place, it makes stalking that much easier.

Oh well, it’s the first day of summer and I should probably sleep.  I also should probably call my parents tomorrow, or rather, later today.  But I’m gonna play a little bit of ME3 first.

The things I do… I’ll just set an alarm for noonish tomorrow so I don’t sleep the entire day away.

P-P-PEACE

p.s. Daybreak by Michael Haggins is amazing, especially this specific rift from it.

10 min loop that I can listen to for forever.  http://soundcloud.com/sirchr/daybreak-by-michael-haggins

The Last Day

So it’s the last official day of IQP. We had our presentations earlier today and I wore my suit that I brought all the way over here. Another landmark to my college career is done.
But all that’s on my mind right now is what just unraveled about an hour ago. It became apparent over the drinking game we were playing that some of my IQP mates had in fact discovered this very blog. And of course they’ve read all of my inner most thoughts because that’s what this blog is really for. I suppose just in case you guys are reading this now I’ll just take the opportunity again to apologize. I am truly sorry if I have offended you, but believe me when I say when I read back over what I’ve written it’s really just what I’m feeling at that particular moment and I harbor no ill will towards you and I hope that the reconciliation process that briefly began tonight while we were all slightly drunk can continue over the course of our remaining time at WPI. Words cannot express the regret that I feel at this moment for writing and posting what I wrote, but that’s all in the past and I’m glad we’re leaving Australia on good terms.

On the note of apologies, to those of you who eagerly await the Mondays where I update this blog, I apologize for not updating at the beginning of this week or even last week for that matter, I think. It’s just that I typically wrote these blog posts at work when there was nothing to do and it was just a nice opportunity to pass the time, but this past week we’ve actually had work to do so we’ve been working at the library and I didn’t really have any downtime to spend to update y’all on what I’ve been doing. And please, if you really miss me C-term is over at this point and you’ll be seeing my lovely face again soon.

So I guess this post will be extra-long due to the fact that I’ve missed updating last week, and I’ve also had about 1/5 of a bottle of Kahlua and that stuff is loaded with caffeine. Straight Kahlua is disgusting by the way. It’s like drinking syrup and this is one of those moments where I regret being dumb in an attempt to get drunk, but hey it’s the last day of IQP, gotta live it up, right? Three months until I’m legal in the States. Speaking of which, I really have a desire to learn how to mix drinks. I suppose that goes hand in hand with my fascination with cooking. Mixing drinks is basically cooking with alcohol, but without heat, you get to experiment and mix flavors. Perhaps the first thing I’ll do when I’m of age, is buy the components for the Pokémon starter themed cocktails and mix those. Should be a fantastic experience.

Well, IQP is over, all but three of my class mates are leaving tomorrow around noon, and I, oh I, will be leaving on Tuesday. What a smart man I am; booking my flight the way I did, but I really didn’t have much of an idea when I booked it all the way back in like October or whenever I booked it. Well, it shouldn’t be too bad, I cooked all the remnants of food all the apartments had and I have about 5 meals sitting in Tupperware in the fridge, should last me just until I have to leave. Which leaves me with $17 and change in AUD which is perfect because it takes $16 to get to the airport and I shouldn’t be spending anymore money. Oh wait, I need $2 to rent a padlock from the hostel… frick. I need to get one dollar from someone, less than that actually. I need 15 cents to put me at $18 which would be the perfect amount. I’m sure I’ll figure something out. I’ll just look at the ground seeing if anyone dropped 5 cents anywhere. Or maybe the hostel will be nice and let me rent a padlock for $1.85. Who knows? Or I could just suck it up and withdraw a last $20 from the ATM. I’m sure I’ll have no trouble spending money to use all my AUD before I leave.

I don’t really know how organized this post is going to be as I’m still a little buzzed and I can’t really focus on what I’m writing. I just keep coming back to what I wrote and how much I regret posting it. I have plenty of things that I catch before I end up posting them, or filter it after I write and end up deleting. I just wonder how different my IQP experience would have been if I hadn’t been ostracized for the last month or so after they found the blog. But what can I do about what’s in the past. Everyone involved is out clubbing but I’m unwilling to spend $20 to just get into a club. It’s the cheap Asian inside of me.

But I guess since I missed last week I’ll start with that weekend.

On Saturday we went to the Boroondara Sustainable Living Festival to conduct our final data collection for IQP. We got to the meet the Mayor of to the city we were working with, but unfortunately we didn’t have the clarity of mind to take a picture with him; sadness. But we collected all our data and came back. I don’t really remember what I did with the rest of the day; I probably went to the market and did some grocery shopping and just played DS/chilled. But the next day we had a group tour booked for the Great Ocean Road which was fantastic. All of the students, except two who had done it earlier, as well as the professor and his wife came along and we used what was left of the school’s budgeting for “cultural learnings” so the trip was subsidized to cost $40 per person, a discount of about $80 per person if my memory serves me correctly. But basically the Great Ocean Road is exactly what the name suggests. It’s a road that runs along the southeastern coast of Australia and there a lot of landmarks along the way. The tour guide we had was hilarious, and along with the 16 of us from WPI, there were 5 Russians and 3 European girls: 2 Dutch doctors and 1 Swedish? woman. But of course since most of us were from WPI the trip was dominated by the feel of our group there. There were awesome beaches with waves that were unprotected by the bay, wild parrots that were super friendly, cool ocean-eroded rocks and a host of other things. Overall the experience was fantastic and I’d recommend it to anyone who comes down to the Melbourne area.

That pretty much covers that weekend.

The following week was a lot of writing and working on IQP as was this week.

So that covers the last two workweeks of Australia: IQP.

The last full weekend of IQP I don’t remember what I did on Saturday. I think I went to the market again and picked up my last kilo of ground beef. And again I probably just came back and played DS/chilled. But on Sunday I dragged my butt to church and I’m glad that I did. Sadly, one of the main reasons I went was to redeem my free lunch voucher that I received the first week I went over a month ago. But while I was finishing up my free lunch some of the people I had met earlier invited me out to the beach with them and I had a lot of fun just chilling with their cell group. Whether or not their invitation was driven by the sermon topic of trying to be more welcoming towards new-comers or whether it was out of the kindness of their hearts, doesn’t really matter to me. The important thing is that did invite me and I went. I had a lot of fun just chilling at the beach with a large group of Asian, truly an “Asian Invasion” with about 20 of us. Their cell group is essentially the Singapore cell group as all but I think two of them are international students from Singapore. It was a day at the beach where my playing in the sand was not done alone. It was perhaps the most comfortable I have felt all IQP. And that’s what I’m doing for at least one of the days that I have left in Melbourne. Tomorrow there’s the International Student Ministry (ISM) Welcome Night that includes free dinner. Yes I get to meet a bunch of probably mostly Asian students on my last weekend here and then fly across the world back home. Fantastic, maybe I could’ve met my Asian-Australian girl if this had happened at the beginning of the term, but I guess that’s what I get for coming during their summer break. But it’s TOO LATE NOW DAVE. IT’S TOO LATE. That’s really the overarching mood I’m in right now: a mild state of regret. BUT IT’S TOO LATE AND I CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. I suppose I should’ve seized my time here but again it’s too late… I’m leaving in three days.

On the topic of three, I believe this is the first time that I’ve ever reached three pages for a blog post. Well the caffeine is keeping me awake, I’m kind of tired of writing and I want to chill a bit.
Again, I’m sorry. I don’t think you guys will ever read this again, but I’m sure in future I will look back to my IQP experience and smile. Perhaps kick myself a little for my mistake, but I think it was a great learning experience for me both socially and academically. I hope I’ll see you guys around campus.

Well, it’s time to watch a Pokémon movie that I took off my roommate. I don’t think I ever thanked you for having your external hard drive full of goodies that you let me rummage through, so thank you.

P-P-PEACE

Calm

This weekend wasn't too eventful. Perhaps the pinnacle was going to the popular Pho place down the street.

Half of the group decided to travel up to Cairns for a two-thirds day on the reef for an absurdly high price. I think the cost of their trip was at least $200 more than my trip up pre-IQP and their cruise was leaving 3 hours later than mine giving them less time on the reef. But I'm sure they had fun. Actually I know they did. It's the freaking GBR.

The rest of us stayed in Melbourne and had a pretty quiet weekend. It was quite a nice change of pace for weekends. Friday night I made meatloaf and it turned out pretty good, but it reminds me that either I'm too nice, or my roommate is a huge mooch. Probably a little bit of both, though I lean towards the latter. So basically I made a meatloaf and we were splitting it three ways and two of us ate a little over half so it was looking like I would have a little leftover for a snack/half a meal. But the third person, my roommate, was napping when the food finished, so when he did get around to eating his share, he just took the remaining half… and ate all of it… That and he's been mooching everyone's food for all term long. Maybe it'll come up again. Who knows? I don't really like unnecessary confrontation or conflict, but if it gets to a point where it needs to be discussed, I will lay down the law.

So Friday night I just relaxed and watched Akira. In retrospect, that's really all I did this weekend. Sat on my ass and watched anime, played Skyrim, or read Cell. Real cool Dave, real cool. Well that's not entirely true. On Saturday I took a bunch of people on my plan to see Melbourne Museum and eat Pho. Oh man, DAT PHO. So good. So much closer to Vietnam. And it was normal pho sized for $9.50 which is a steal in Australia. Sadly, I again forgot to take a picture even though I went in with the intention of taking a picture of the pho before I ate it. I was just too excited to eat it.

Melbourne Museum was also pretty cool. It was a general science museum that was free with our student IDs, pretty awesome. They had exhibits on the forest, the brain, and dinosaurs and stuff. It ate up a good 2-3 hours of our afternoon for free so I'm not complaining.
The rest of the weekend was spent doing one of my three activities, all on my butt, but I watched the entire first season of Avatar: the Last Airbender. It's quite entertaining and given my current rate. I'll probably finish at least season 2, if not the entire series, before the end of the week. On a similar note, I've taken it upon myself to watch all the Pokémon movies before I leave. And Word spellchecked Pokemon into Pokémon, awesome. Again, real cool Dave. Reeeaaaalll cool. But that's what I get for going to a small tech school. I was fighting with my inner-nerd for 1.5 years and now this is what I've become. I'm happier, but I'm much nerdier. But so far I've watched 4 of the thirteen. All of these were taken from the above-mentioned roommate's external hard drive. He's a great person, just when it comes to food/finances he's a bit… problematic.

Yeah, pretty quiet weekend. It's also kind of scary to note that we're more than halfway done with our time here in Australia. It's gone by quickly, but slowly at the same time. I think I'm definitely looking forward to going home, but at the same time I don't really want to leave. But really I do kind of want to leave… This whole trip is definitely an experience that I will never forget, but I think if I sit down and reflect, I have learned and grown a good deal while here.
Melancholy note to end on, but whatevs.

P-P-PEACE

I don't know why I end each post with that, but I do.

Musings in Sydney

Hello again folks. It's that time of the week again. The time where I remember that I have a blog and things to write about and document both for my own sake as well as, at least hopefully if you still read this, your entertainment.

The past week has been pretty eventful it seems, or perhaps not the past week, but the time since I've written the last post. The time between when I write seems to be forever, but it's really only a week. But I guess since I don't have my normal routine set here and I have no homework to do, time seems to pass by a lot slower. I'm no longer in the fast-paced world of being a student on a term schedule and having a million deadlines to meet, no longer in the US where everything is driven by productivity and profits. No longer, at least for now.

It's really a strange feeling being this un-busy. It almost makes me feel guilty, but then I go to the bathroom and see my IQP partner "inconspicuously" browsing facebook at the bottom of her monitor much like I do. But that's only during work. At (my temporary) home, I just really have nothing to do. I feel like there are a lot of things I WANT to do, but I don't really want to take the time to do them, I don't really know what I'm doing. It's like coming to Australia didn't really fix the issues within me. It's just put me in a new environment and changed the circumstances a little bit.

I also don't know why I started writing this when I did because I have a meeting at 11:30 which is pretty far away, but we have to do some prep work before our meeting. And it takes me forever to write these things because they are pretty long and even though I say I don't filter myself too much, I still do make some quick edits as I'm typing. Either way, it takes a pretty long time to write these posts which is good because it takes up time at work, AND I have a word document open and I'm typing so it looks like I'm doing work on the report or something. Overall, it's just a great way to pass time at work without being overly obvious and also I can upload it without wasting my precious 25mb/week I get at the apartment.

Well back to what I did this past week. We went to Sydney this weekend and it was pretty cool. By now you've probably already noticed my new profile picture, and at this moment some of my classmates are at work uploading pictures on facebook and tagging me. It seems that that's how they pass their workdays. They probably have faster internet too, and they can use their own computers… Enough complaining about my work setting, maybe. But actually it's probably not the internet here that's the problem. The real limiting factor is the processing capabilities of this "computer" I won't describe it again because I complain about these things every post.
So back to Sydney, we flew in Saturday morning because if we flew in Friday night we would've had to pay for another night in a hostel which is basically just $45 wasted for nothing. So Saturday morning/afternoon was spent just walking around the city, exploring and stuff. I took a few pictures, my classmates took way more. It was pretty fun just exploring the city and seeing all the iconic landmarks, and planking in front of them. That evening all but 3 of us had purchased bridge climb tickets which give you a 140m high 360 degree aerial view of the city. The only downside is that is costs $188 to get up there. Something I was unwilling to pay. You can't even take pictures up there and have to pay $30 more for just two pictures. Needless to say, I did not want to empty my bank account for 3 hours of amazingness. I'll take a longer tour and eat relatively well thank you very much.

Instead of paying for that I had a pretty quiet evening just chilling and talking with the two others who did not pay for the bridge. We walked a little more around the city, chatted a lot, chilled by the iconic view of the Opera house where I was enlisted by a couple to take their picture. Well that one I'll take a little tangent for. Basically we're sitting their talking and taking a few last pictures as the sun sets over the opera house. A couple comes up to me and has some extremely specific directions as to the picture they want taken. I apply the rule of thirds and take the picture she asked for. I show her and she's elated saying, "Oh, that's perfect! Thank you!" I smile in return with a, "No problem!" and as I'm about to sit back down another couple, younger this time and with a super nice camera, come up to me and say, "Sorry, but I reckon you're pretty good. Mind taking a picture of us?" So off I went again to apply the rule of thirds and take a nice picture because I don't take a lot of pictures, but when I do, they're freaking amazing. But not really. So I take a picture with the fancy camera, which makes taking pictures way more fun, and go to sit down again, but the older couple again realizes that in their first picture they had not asked me to capture the iconic angle of the opera house saying, "I'm realizing that we have the icon of icons here and we'd be silly not to capture it". So I take another picture and everyone goes on their way happy with the photos I produced.

Tangent done, back to Saturday night. Well actually there's not that much left. We basically headed back to the hostel, pooped from a day of exploring out in the sun, grabbed a bottle of something on the way back and relaxed and drank our drinks before calling it a night. Which reminds me of how weird is that when I go to a liquor store and buy a 6 pack of something for way too much I don't even get carded. It’s going to be a weird 3 months back home.
That brings us to Sunday. We booked our flight back for that evening so we had pretty much the entire day left for us. We woke up and checked out of our hostel and headed out to the wildlife sanctuary which is exactly what it sounds like. And of course by now you've probably already seen the 15 pictures that've been uploaded and tagged of me on facebook, and if you haven't yet, you probably just went or are going to check right after this. Basically it's a zoo, but there are animals, namely kangaroos, that you can pet and feed and all the profits go to saving and preserving the wildlife. Basically it was pretty amazing and we played with and fed the kangaroos for a long time and took a ton of pictures. There were also some koalas that we took pictures with, but those are still in fenced areas probably because they can/would probably destroy some annoying little kid if left in an unsupervised environment. Also while at this wildlife sanctuary we ran into one of my classmate's high school friends. It was mind blowing that they happened to both be in Sydney, Australia at the same wildlife park on the same day. That and apparently he had lost a TON of weight since high school.

After the park and copious amounts of pictures, the group decided that it would be worthwhile to check out the Hard Rock Café Sydney. So we departed on our quest to find the Hard Rock Café, which wasn't too hard. We ate lunch and it was super expensive. All my class mates bought mixed drinks along with their meals which doubled the price of their already expensive meals. I just ordered a pulled pork sandwich for $20 and enjoyed it. The serving sizes here were the largest I had seen while in Australia and they had Heinz ketchup. You might think Heinz ketchup is nothing out of the ordinary, but in Australia most of the ketchup here is not Heinz and they're all a good deal sweeter than the standard American tomato sauce, which is what they call ketchup. So a hefty, albeit expensive, meal was eaten and then we embarked out into the surrounding mall in search of souvenirs. By the end of the Sydney trip I picked up a magnet bottle opener that has the Opera House and the Bridge pictured on it and a couple of tea towels. The bottle opener was used the first day of purchase and the tea towels are in my bag of things that I don't use.

Cue airport scene without problems. At least I wish that's what happened. Instead we were delayed in boarding the plane by about 20 minutes, but then when we were all happily seated on the plane waiting to take off they told us that we had to wait for the engineers to come and see if the water in the cabin was anything bad even though they told us it was probably from condensation from the humid climate. So we sat there and I read Cell by Stephen King. In the end the engineer arrived and said it was fine and we took off, but not before having sat on the run-way for almost 2 hours. The entire flight from Sydney to Melbourne only takes about 65 minutes so we were sitting on the runway for longer than we were in the air…
We arrived back at our apartment with no problems, and we took Monday off for Superbowl Monday. I don't even want to go into the details of that game and it's the only sporting event I watched every year.

Sorry if the last few paragraphs seems rushed, but I started writing this at like 10 this morning and it's now 4 in the afternoon and we're leaving in about 5 minutes so it is indeed a little rushed. The term is half way over. Mind = Blown. At least IQP work is picking up and I have something to do at work now.

P-P-PEACE

Australia Day Weekend

I don't know what's happened to my writing mojo, but I don't really find the urge to write like I did during the first couple weeks here.
Maybe I've gotten settled in for real and before writing was my way of dealing with the "homesickness" that I was feeling. I've definitely settled in some and gotten the swing of things down.

This weekend was a pretty relaxing and uneventful one. A lot of my class mates were out traveling. A few went to Brisbane, where it was flooding, and another group went to Tasmania. I just stayed in Melbourne and chilled. It was nice. We had Thursday and Friday off due to Australia Day which is surrounded by a little bit of controversy as some people call it Invasion day. It's the day that white settlers first landed in Australia and it's since, at least publicly, become a holiday to celebrate the diversity of Australia. To show for this there's a parade with tons of different organizations and clubs that all represent a different cultural group that takes place on the day. Of course we went to this because it's the touristy thing to do. And of course it was pretty boring/lame. I mean it's cool and all to see the stuff, but really it was just people dressed up in their traditional cultural garb walking around. Of the guys I talked to who went, everyone seemed to agree on this and as of course as WPI students, the highlight of the parade is when the Star Wars club walked by.

After the parade there's a bunch of other activities going on in the gardens on the outskirts of the city and we wandered down to see the woodchop. Yes, a woodchop. They have lumberjacks race to see who can cut through the log the fastest both with axes and chainsaws. It was actually pretty entertaining.

To most Australians, the holiday is just about kicking back, relaxing, throwing some food on the barbie and drinking some beers. To commemorate this there was a reddit meet up on Australia day in one of the nearby parks. I invited all of my classmates to go as well, but I was met with ridicule and how meeting people from the internet sounds like a good way 'to get free candy from a van and never see the United States again'. Mmmhmm, feel free to live in your WPI bubble while on the other side of the world and be too scared to meet locals. Yes I'm a bit angry, but whatever, not my problem. I'll go explore the city and meet locals and hear about the hidden gems, you can socialize internally with people from the States and be closed-minded.
So I went to the meet up and there was a good number of people there, about 15ish as a ball park. The event was BYO and of course being a cheap student, and given the fact that alcohol costs way too much here, I didn't BMO. I was just looking to meet some people. And that I did. It seemed that everyone there was pretty much a mix of a group of friends that regularly meet up about once a week via reddit. They all have their own friends outside so it seems, or maybe not since they're redditors, but they congregate and chill.

That evening one of the sponsors invited us over for post-dinner drinks and snacks. Naturally, free alcohol and college students go hand-in-hand so we all went over and had some drinks. Now his house is near Chapel Street which is supposed to be a ridiculously awesome place to be on a Friday night, so since we were already out there we decided to check it out. Unfortunately the place was pretty dead as a lot of people had work the next day so it was a failed excursion. Most people were flying out the next morning so it was extra sad because they stayed up late for the "legen-wait for it-dary", night for nothing.

That brings us to Friday, and I guess my motivation to write is gone, but once I start writing everything just kind of explodes out onto the paper. So back to Friday, I don't really remember what I did during the day… Oh right, I just kind of chilled at the library and played some Terraria and tried to get details for what was happening that evening because I got invited out for some drinks with the redditors I had met on Australia day. So afternoon was spent at the library, but I started to get hungry so I starting thinking of what to make for dinner because I had plenty of time and was in the mood for cooking. So I start thinking of what we have in our fridge/freezer which is dictated completely by the price of things since most meats are in the ball park range of $15-25/kg, which roughly translates to $8-12/lb which is RIDICULOUS. But at the Queen Victoria market there are ground beef bulk specials and it's $10 for 2 kg of ground beef, which is awesome. So we have a lot of ground beef in our freezer, and as usual potatoes are always cheap no matter where you go for whatever reason. Ground beef+ potatoes = shepherd's pie of course. So I look up some recipes and throw together a MEAAANNN shepherd's pie. I was so happy with how it came out and it was so delicious, it's definitely being made at least once a week if not more.

Friday evening comes upon us and I invite a couple of my classmates out to the bar. We go and meet up with them and just generally have a good time chatting with them and stuff, and they're all young professional who have money so they buy a couple round of drinks for us, again free alcohol is awesome. It was a relatively quiet Friday night, but still enjoyable nonetheless.
Saturday, uhhh, afternoon disappeared to I don't know what. Maybe grocery shopping and wandering? Not too sure, but the evening I went to the International Student Ministry they have at the church I went to on Sunday, met some more people and went out to dinner with them.

Sunday I went to church, went to the market, bought another 2kg of ground beef as I ate most of what was in our freezer over the course of about a week and a halfish. Pick up a few kangaroo steaks to cook and eat for dinner. Go to the beach and chill, the water was so warm, but it seemed like as soon as we got there the sun decided to hide behind the clouds. We came back I cooked the kangaroo steaks for dinner with a side of mashed potatoes, perfect medium doneness on the steaks. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures until the last bite of the kangaroo so it's a rather messy, unflattering picture of my cooking finesse. Then the Australian Open final was on and it was a hell of a long game. Nearly six hours and each set was ridiculous. Nadal looked like he was going to get stomped on, but then every time he would stay in, fight and win the game. He was down 40-0 and he came back and won the game. It was RIDICULOUS and I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish watching the match.

Sorry for the cop-out in writing after Friday, I was hungry and took my lunch break and I discovered that pieces of my bread were moldy, I was about to bite into it and I notice that there are these black splotches on my bread. And I just bought that bread like 3 days ago. Ridiculous, I'm going to start storing my bread in the fridge. Oh and I guess I was going to explain that the lunch break destroying my writing mojo. Man, I never want to read over/edit these, following my thought processes must be so difficult.

Oh well.

P-P-PEACE

Full Week #1

So it's about that time again at work where I don't have anything to do. Oh wait, that's all the time…

Well it's about time I updated my blog with what I've been doing. I know there are some fans of my blog out there dying to read about what I've been up to.

So the work week was the work week: me mindlessly trying to get through the day without looking too relaxed. It's quite hard to switch screens with the machine they've given me. There isn't enough processing power so sometimes the window of facebook lingers on the screen a little longer than I'd have preferred when someone is walking by. It's also funny to see that almost everyone else takes the time at work to upload their pictures.

But moving off the subject which I feel I've beaten to death and onto my weekend! So the Australian Open is in Town. There are banners and advertisements scattered across the city. And since I' m already across the world, why not go? So I bought a ticket that I had a classmate print out at his office. It was around $33 total which I guess isn't too bad because it is a grand slam event and you can pretty much stay there for the whole day. I woke up pretty late on Saturday due to the previous evening's festivities which I will go into detail later. I quickly ate some of my leftovers for breakfast and headed out to the open. I arrived there and got lost in the crowds trying to find where everyone else already was. Then I waited in line for about 30 minutes before I got into the courts and watched the 2nd half of Cirstea vs Errani. Of course while at the Open I took some pictures to prove that I was actually there because that's what this super expensive IQP is all about, right? Fly across the world just to take some pictures and say you were there and have done things! Who knows, something in the next few weeks might make me fall in love with Australia and move here. Apparently there are at least three WPI alumni who have moved here after their IQPs.

­But moving right along. After the women's singles game there was Ferrer vs Chela. I don't know any of the names I'm typing and frankly, I'm surprised I even remember them at this point. But Ferrer is ranked 5 and Chela is ranked 27 so Ferrer pretty much dominated the match. It took him a while to get into the groove and he doubled faulted the entire first game, but after a few games he started owning the court. Oh and Errani won the previous game. So after Ferrer beat Chela I'd had about 4-5 hours of tennis, which is a large quantity for someone who doesn't really follow tennis and really just went to say he'd been there. So I left and just chilled the evening away, which is what happens a lot. Watch some TV, watch some anime, play some games, the usual.

Now Sunday I actually made it to church. Relatively large church with a cool name, Cross Culture. Think about that for a bit. There's the whole diversity part of it as the church is pretty diverse, lots of Asians, got some Caucasians too, and Indians, and it's in general pretty diverse, but mostly Asian. But then the name has another connotation, the culture of the Cross, what it means to be a Christian, to carry your cross daily. And there are way too many commas in that sentence because I like to use commas instead of periods because Word puts that ugly green underline in if you use periods instead of commas. Enough about the name of the church. So the service was pretty generic, albeit long. And I slightly disagree with the order of their actual service, but that's a completely unrelated topic and perhaps it's not my place to even be criticizing that aspect. I met some people there and pretty much spent my entire afternoon with them. It was quite interesting.

I didn't exactly feel the most welcome at the church except for this one oldish guy who pretty much showed me his little cultural snippet of Melbourne. His name is Nigel and he immigrated to Australia 25 years ago, but still has an extremely heavy Lebanese accent. Along with us were Jim and Neal, two young men of Asian descent. I don't remember which name goes with which person… but I can just arbitrarily assign them and it'll be okay. So Jim moved here 13 years ago from China and now works in a small law firm. His English is good, but he also still has a pretty heavy Asian accent. Neal finished his contract for work in Taiwan and decided to take a year off and work somewhere that wasn't Taiwan so he made his way to Australia and he's now on his 5th month here. Neal barely understands English and because of that keeps quiet most of the time. I'm sure the three of us could have easily carried on a conversation in Mandarin, but that would've been quite rude in the presence of Nigel who was pretty much the guy who brought us all together.

So I met Nigel because he happened to sit next to me during the service. Whether or not he chose to sit next to me because he noticed that I was new I have no idea, but I have the suspicion that he didn't know I was knew because when he asked for my name he said, "What was your name again?" implying that he thought we had met at a previous engagement and he had forgotten my name. It must be because all Asians look the same so he was confused. After he found out I was new, he half-followed me around after the service and invited me out to lunch at a Lebanese bakery. So we ate falafel and Lebanese pizza. It was really good and tasted and felt really authentic, and it must have been because this man has been living in Melbourne for half his life, he damn well must've found the best Lebanese bakery in town. That and it was pretty popular. Then after dinner he brought us to get some sweets: baklava. And oh my goodness was that baklava amazing cuz I mean, half his life. The four of us ended eating half a kilo of Baklava and the layers of pastry were so thin and crispy and the filling was sweet and the overall feel was just freaking delicious. I wish I had brought my camera with me to take pictures of the falafel and the baklava, but alas, I'm a camera noob so I didn't even think to bring my camera with me when I left the apartment.

And that was pretty much my Sunday. I had planned to go to the beach with some of my classmate as it was pretty hot, but I'm glad I spent some time with the local people here. I want to spend more time with locals and meet more of them. I mean, we're on the other side of the planet. I go to school with my classmates. Sure I don't really talk to them much at school, but I'm sure it'll happen more often now that we have time together here, well at least for some of them. We're in Melbourne, I want to meet new people, have them share Melbourne's secrets with me. There's some bars and places I found via r/Melbourne that I'm gonna try and bring some classmates with me to. I wouldn't mind going alone, but there's still that barrier of being a foreigner. Go to a reddit meet up on Australia Day and perhaps go to the bars they frequent. Speaking of which, I found this awesome bar here that I'm definitely going to visit and take pictures of before I leave. It's called the Mana Bar and it's as nerdy as it sounds. It's a gaming bar and they have TVs and consoles scattered around the bar and have the nerdiest cocktails you can imagine. There's the Princess Peach, Health Potion, and the Mana Potion to name a few. Biggest nerdgasm ever.

And I guess since we're on the topic of alcohol, I can go into the details of Friday night. What a smooth transition that was just ruined by this sentence. Well Friday night we pre-game because alcohol is SUPER expensive here. The cheapest thing you can buy here is a $2.50 bottle of wine. And that's pretty decent. I mean it's probably really crappy wine, but I don't know wine too well and it doesn't taste too bad. I know the red variant is pretty gross, but the white version isn't too bad. I even bought a $12 bottle of Pinot Grigio just to taste and to my untrained taste buds the $2.50 white tastes better initially. The $12 tastes like vinegar when you first drink it, and it does for the entire first cup which is absolutely horrid, but the next day I decided to try it again it tasted a hell of a lot better and was actually quite enjoyable. But then I took a couple days off from the "expensive" stuff and had another glass with dinner yesterday and the same vinegar flavor of the wine came back and it's just so unpleasant. I don't think I'll understand wine while I'm here, maybe later in life, unless someone can explain it to me, or I might actually just try and look it up later because there's still a good deal of time left in the workday.

Now where was I? So we were pre-gaming and we played a little bit of slap cup, then we started to get too loud and we were on the same floor as our advisor, so we decided to move the party upstairs away from the professor. When we got upstairs we started playing with a deck of cards. Various drinking games that I had never played before because I don't drink or party at school. Well after the pre-gaming was over I had consumed almost a full bottle of cheap wine and I don't know how wise it is of me to be posting this information on the internet for the world to see. It'll be the dark side of the Sun I guess. But yes, almost a full bottle of wine + 120 lbs of small Asian don't mix the greatest. But I'm very glad that I don't have Asian-flush nor do I ever plan on vomiting due to drinking stupidly. Even when drunk I'm surprised at how much control you have over yourself. Makes you wonder about all those people who use drunkenness as an excuse. Then again I've never been ridiculously drunk because I don't ever want to reach that point.

Pre-gaming done, we went to Eurotrash. It was a really small club and the music was not bad. The crowd wasn't the greatest though; a lot of dudes and the chicks there weren't too attractive. Man I sound like a douche when I'm writing about partying and clubbing. But after awhile we decided to leave and go back to the Lion, the second club we went to last weekend. It's a pretty decent club/bar and it's got no entry fee and is a block away from our apartments. At the Lion is where things went down. I got threatened by a small Vietnamese dude. He threatened "to smack [me], and [I didn't] want that to happen bro. I'll do it." So what had happened was that in a club it gets pretty crowded and you get pushed around a little bit and of course the natural reaction is to push back. And apparently this guy didn't like it. I didn't turn around or even acknowledge his existence but I could tell that the voice was coming from the down direction so I could only assume that he was even shorter than me. It's kind of funny thinking back on it and I'm sure if anything did end up happening, my WPI crew ( haha that's funny because there's someone who rows here…) would've had my back, but fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, it didn't end up that way.

Speaking of the rower here, he got a free drink from a gay guy. He beat me to my own game. There are details there of course, but you can ask me because I'm at 2100+ words already.

Tl;dr: Work->clubbing->Australian Open->church

P-P-PEACE

The First Week and its End

So everyone arrived on site about a week ago and I guess it's time for an update. Especially since this is a word document and I'm typing and I'm at work. So it must be something pretty important looking in regards to my report. The words are just flying out as if I've just read a super relevant paper and now I'm trying to get all of the information down before I forget it all.

As you can probably tell, "work" is pretty uneventful so this will probably be a longer post if I have enough to write about because there's really nothing else I can do at this point. We're waiting for our sponsor to decide on what they want us to do and that was really apparent on Friday, which we informed after the fact that it's casual. But hey, maybe my new "casual" is the business casual dress, all grown up now. Speaking of which, I've been wanting to upgrade my wardrobe for awhile now, but clothes are too expensive. I did, however, take this opportunity of IQP and Christmas sales to pick up a few more "fashionable" clothes towards my future new wardrobe once I have the funds in a few years. It's not like I'm growing taller or fatter anytime soon either.

Well that's all unrelated to IQP at all and just random thoughts that stem from me starting to write about IQP. And to think I used to make fun of people who wrote like they talked. But then again, I think a blog is the time and place for something like that and not some academic paper. Even still I become more articulate and eloquent when I'm typing, it's like that extra half second I get to think before the words appear makes me awesome. But when am I never awesome? :D just kidding. Kind of. But not really.

I've gotten about half a page down and I've still written nothing about how IQP is going. I guess I'll start with the most recent and relevant topic regarding life here which is sharing an apartment with people who aren't really your friends and not brothers in Christ. It's a bit different to put things lightly. First of all the apartment is really small and maybe sometime I'll take pictures of it and upload them while I'm at the library. But the way the apartment is set up, it lends itself very much towards sharing food with your flat-mates, but as this weekend would have it, my dreams of simplicity and camaraderie would appear too lofty. I originally wanted to share all of the food in the apartment equally and split the receipts pretty much equally amongst the four of us. Very similar to how my apartment functions at school, again with me primarily doing most of the cooking which I'm totally okay with. But we seem to have hit a road block and we've now since converted to only sharing milk and eggs. I've paid the most for food so far because I like food so now I "own" a lot of the food we have around the apartment even though we've eaten most of it. I pretty much got a little shafted on the money side of things in regards to food, but it's not too much money and I'm not about to poke a sore spot over $5-10. Hopefully after last weekend it should be nothing but smooth sailing and blue skies ahead.

Now onto less touchy subjects and the fun stuff and of course my writing momentum gets kicked into a corner as we have the weekly office Monday morning coffee pow-wow. Then of course I have to look up how to make chili for our apartment dinner only to find out that it takes a damn long time and we don't have chili powder. I guess it'll be chili powderless chili. And I also guess we're eating really late too as it takes at least an hour if not 2 of simmering to develop the correct meld of flavors. Ah what a productive work day.

On a more exciting topic, this weekend we went out to a few different places. On Friday night we went to a couple clubs. Nothing really too exciting there, except one of my classmates trying to set me up with girls all night. Tapping on their shoulders and pushing me towards them. Really quite embarrassing to say the least, then add to that my extreme noobness in this type of environment. Yup, really awkward. Just imagine that happening for a few hours in loud clubs and him yelling over to me every couple minutes, "Dude just pick one out!" I'm totally a wuss and we'll see if that changes in the next few weeks I'm here. I may even discover that "clubbing" isn't really for me. I'm not too sure of it at this point. It's just really loud music on a crowded dance floor bobbing to the beat of the music. Music that is only mediocre. I mean it definitely fits the environment of a club and everything, but that doesn't mean that music isn't that great. Then again we only went to two clubs as we're reluctant to pay for any entry fees.

Saturday we went to the zoo and that was pretty cool. I took some pictures, but I forgot to charge my camera, so about 10 minutes in, it died. I was so upset but I did get some pictures of the kangaroos. Also the kangaroo exhibit is pretty much open air with a small fence that people can easily cross. There are emus and kangaroos kind of just chilling. Luckily while we were there one of the baby kangaroos walked out of the enclosed area and I got to pet it. Unfortunately there were so many people around so I didn't get to take an iconic profile picture. That kangaroo was pretty much an attention whore, but I can't blame it. It's a freaking kangaroo living in a zoo. There were also a bunch of other animals from around the zoo. Typical ones you'd find a t a zoo of this size. There were elephants, zebras, giraffes, all different types of monkeys, tigers, lions, seals, penguins and the list goes on and on. I did get to see a platypus though and those things are pretty damn ugly.

After the zoo, one of our sponsors here invited the whole group over for dinner and we sat around for awhile as they told us about themselves and then we ate and just kinda chilled because that's what you do at dinner parties. It was good, free food and company. Then Sunday morning I had planned to go visit a church down the street, but I'm kind of lame and couldn't exactly wake myself up in time that and one of my flat mates took the bathroom for about 15 minutes starting at 9:35 so I couldn't exactly wash-up in time for the 10 am service. All excuses I know, but I'll definitely go next week and maybe that'll be a better environment to meet people :D.

Then we went to the market and picked up groceries and the wonderful discussions took place, well not exactly then but the problem came up. We shelved it as people were going to the beach and so we went to the beach. The weather wasn't even all that great. It was warm when you laid down and got out of the wind, but with the wind blowing it was actually pretty cold. I basically spent the whole time digging a hole because that's what you do at beaches. You dig holes. It's much more exciting than just lying down and getting skin cancer. It's also hilarious because all my pale, white classmates are lathering on the sun screen and still getting burned and I don’t think I applied sunscreen until we were leaving and I didn't burn at all. There was also free ice cream being handed out and we totally abused it. I got two free ice cream bars and they were delicious.

And I guess that wraps up the weekend. It's Monday and we're back to the grind. Maybe we'll actually get some progress on our project this week. We should definitely be a little more proactive about our project because that is kind of why we're all the way down here in Australia.

On another note, with all the free time in the evenings I've been playing a lot of Terraria and Desktop Dungeons. I know I'm really cool, but everyone else seems to just be watching TV or other shows they have. Maybe I'll join in on some shows with people, but evenings here are going to be a large block of free time as we have no homework. This is what it must be like to have a job. *Gasp*

P-P-PEACE

First Day of Work

Being in an office setting is definitely weird, especially for project work. It’s like we have the whole workday to work and research things for our project, but there isn’t really all that much to do yet as the main supervisor isn’t even in today. Also unfortunately, my laptop is unable to connect to their internet because it’s the government and all they have some type of server set up and I’m working on a remote desktop computer for the next 2 months. It’s running on XP and it’s pretty slow seeing as everything has to be remotely accessed. Oh well.

Another thing is that the work day is pretty damn long. There’s only so much I can do during the workday at least today being the first day. I’m also pretty damn bad, already ‘slacking’ on the first day and writing this. But really there’s nothing I can do. I’ve been reading all morning and I’m “settling in” so to speak.

Other random things that I’ve been thinking about: I still need to butt my way more securely into one of the groups of people. I’m fine chilling by myself and all but I think it’d be nice to foster new friendships and do things in a larger group. Completely unrelated, we need to learn how to shop better. For whatever reason we only decided to buy half a kilo of ground beef which was the cheapest thing at the market at $4 a kilo, but half a kilo is almost nothing. I used all of it in one cooking session and now we have no meat left in our apartment. A lot of starch and other things, but we probably need to pick up some cold cuts or something for sandwiches other than peanut butter and vegemite, which has quite an interesting flavor. I tried a little this morning but after tasting it I decided against covering the whole slice with it and just opted for the more familiar peanut butter.

Excuse the randomness of thoughts but that’s how my brain is functioning right now. But our supervisor totally looks like Natalie Portman. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it when I first saw her, but there was some familiarity about her and then it hit me. She looks very similar to Natalie Portman. So that’s that.

I can’t believe there are almost two whole hours before we leave, although it is nice that the sun sets really late so you don’t feel like you’ve spent the whole day at work. I’d imagine the feeling to be terrible when you get home from work and the sun’s set and it’s dark out. Man sounds like New England winter. Well perhaps it’s about time to get back to research and actually being productive for the last stretch of my first day here at work. We’ll see what ends up happening tonight. I have to actually try and be social and make friends. Who knew?

Checking In

So now everyone has arrived on site in Australia. It’s all really exciting and fun, but I’ve already been in Melbourne for 10 days and I’m actually severely regretting coming early. I underestimated the cost of living here by a ton and now I’m down in the dumps and have to somehow manage to still have fun while being down basically 2 weeks financially than everyone else who just arrived on site yesterday.

Maybe I shouldn’t talk about financial issues to everyone, but meh. Well everyone has arrived and there are a lot of us. 15 people form a large group and I don’t know how the groups are going to break up into smaller circles. I can kind of see how it’s going to function, but it’s really far too early to see what social circles are going to form. Also I have no idea if any of the people here are aware that I have a blog and I don’t know how everyone would react to my thoughts that the rest of the world is seeing. I think it’d be interesting to know if anyone here in Australia reads these… I know some other people are writing stuff, but I’m also fairly certain that they aren’t publishing them on the World Wide Web for the world to see. I also probably need to butt my way into one of the groups because currently I’m sitting alone in the apartment and people are out doing things, library, maybe some at the beach? I don’t really know, but I’m already kind of tired of dealing with people for a bit. This is probably the first alone time I’ve had since flying out where people aren’t sleeping five feet away from me. Why are social workings so difficult? I also feel like I need to break up this large paragraph into smaller ones but I have no idea where to do it. But I guess since I just said that I might as well just

Start a new paragraph randomly. But then this is just a completely random thought so I’ll have to break again to keep the flow of ideas similar within the paragraph.

So I finally got some laundry powder, there was like a 2 kg box that was cheaper than everything else. The only downside is that I thought it would come with a cup measure in it, but I don’t think it does. Just a small set back because the apartment-hotel comes with cup measures so I can measure out the required amount of powder. I basically spent the morning alone while everyone else is still excited to be in Australia to take care of some various odds and ends. Went to the grocery store and picked up oil and salt for the kitchen, I sorely hope we make it to the market to pick up groceries because I sorely need to stop eating out every meal and walking through the grocery store, the amount of food you can buy at the store with the amount you pay at a restaurant is astounding. And there I go again about the finances.

I bought a prepaid phone for use here Down Under and it’s a “dumb” phone pretty similar to my phone in the states except that the buttons are much harder to press and the layout is different. It’s an experience trying to relearn how to use the phone. It’s particularly annoying because the delete button on my US phone is nothing on this phone and the actual delete key shares a button with the end call with up as delete and down as end call. I haven’t been texting too much but I’ve already accidentally deleted whole texts trying to delete a mistake. Also the change t9 option is the space button on my US phone, it’s all discombobulated.

Well we’re about to organize some type of group outing so I’ll leave this here and find a time to upload it cuz we only get freaking 25 mb/week here at the apartment. It’s ridiculous.

Cairns Extended Cut

So my last post was definitely inadequate for the awesomeness that happened in Cairns. I just wasn’t quite feeling in the writing mood when I wrote the last post, and I had internet to distract me so I’ll go into a lot more detail in this one. I have the feeling this post will be a lot longer than the previous one so if that’s what you’re looking for, read on. If not, then don’t read it. I’ll never know who reads this and who doesn’t, unless you post a comment and those are always nice. Lets me know that people are enjoying and actually care about what I’m doing/how I am.

So our flight for Cairns was departing at 7 am so we had to wake up pretty damn early. I basically slept the whole way on the plane because that’s what I do on planes, fall asleep before or during take-off, and wake up when we land. It makes the whole flight seem a lot shorter because I’m asleep the whole time. Now I’m gonna complain a little bit here because I enjoy complaining and if you know me well enough, you know how often I complain just to complain. So this plane is perhaps the most uncomfortable plane I’ve ever been on. The seats were terribly shapes so you’re sitting in this super awkward position with your back pretty far back and your neck push forward pretty far, almost like they want to conform your spine to a nice C-shape. Now after the accident and apparently my years of poor posture, this seating arrangement is super uncomfortable and terrible for my back. Add to that the blasting A/C while everyone is wearing shorts so I’m cold AND uncomfortable. Well that’s what I was thinking when I was awake, which was probably like a total of 30 min of the 3 hour flight.

The flight lands and right as we get inside, it starts pouring rain, the raindrops are huge and the ground is soaked within seconds. But as we continue through the airport and claim our bag the rain has come to a complete stop before we have to leave the airport. As a side note, we initially hadn’t planned to check any bags, but between the two of us we needed to check one baggage to get our liquids like shampoo and sunscreen through the airport, silly security. We get a shuttle to our hostel and drop our stuff off as we’re not allowed to check-in until after 2pm. We do, however get to drop our bags off so we aren’t walking the city with our hands full. Unfortunately, when I dropped my bags off I forgot to take my camera with me further illustrating my inexperience with taking pictures though I am getting better. I do seem to take the most pictures of the random meals I eat though… Something about be and food. But I do think that’ll slowly come to a close because we’re moving into the Milano tomorrow and I get to stop paying out the ass for food to some degree. I know I wrote that in the last post, but eating out 2 meals a day adds up REALLY fast. Over just this week I’ve spent about $400 on food and other touristy things IN ADDITTION to the money I already paid before for accommodations and plane tickets. Pretty damn expensive vacation for one week… and there’s still more things to pay for… Well, I’m only in Australia once, that’s why I picked Melbourne as my 1^st choice.

I think at this point this post is already as long as my previous post and I’ve only covered the damn plane ride. Well, whatever, that’s what the extended version is for anyways. I get to tell you guys every tiny little detail of what I’m doing. Hell I might even include some pictures in this one. Then you people can really see my amazingly amateur picture taking skills.

So we walk the city, and everything is pretty much closed because it’s too early. We walk along the beach and boardwalk and kind of just observe the beauty of nature. The city itself isn’t really cityish. I mean it is, but there are trees sprawled in the middle of the roads and the backdrop is rolling mountains of green in the distance as pictured below.

Really pretty sweet. The beach itself is kind of nasty as it’s kind of marshy, but that makes for lots of cool animals. Different types of birds that can hunt in the shallow waters, crabs fighting for territory and dominance. Then there’s the Lagoon. Because the beach is so nasty, they filter the sea water and remove the brown-ness of the water and you get a nice crystal clear blue saltwater swimming pool along the ocean.

The real ocean is the deeper blue water in the background, that sand you see is what they have on the land to simulate a nicer beach to make up for the nasty one they actually have.

We walk around a little more and come across this building with a large glass dome on top of it. Intrigued we walk over and discover that it’s a zoo on to of a casino. In this casino there’s the most amazing little restaurant. The meals themselves are $12.00 at the most, and the portions are almost American-sized and pretty high quality.

Pictured above is tempura-battered Barrramundi, which is a local Australian fish. Fish and chips, oh and a beer. As you can see that beer is pretty damn small, it’s a “pot” of beer which I don’t think we have in the states, but then again I could be wrong because I have no knowledge of how alcohol works anywhere. I tried three different beers for the three meals I had here and the one above was Toohey’s Extra Dry and I actually really liked it. From what I’ve tried so far I seem to prefer “dry” beers though I have no idea what that means. I’ll look it up at some point but that beer was pretty delicious. So the meal total comes out to $15.50 which is RIDICULOUS here in Australia. A full-sized meal AND pot of beer for that little? MIND = BLOWN.

And I totally skipped the zoo on top of the casino because we were so hyped about this cheap, delicious restaurant. So yeah, it’s just a big dome with lots of trees around simulating the rainforest. The main attraction is the huge 4m salt water crocodile, most of which actually live in freshwater. But he’s actually pretty boring, just kinda sits there and does nothing. My favorites here were the Kookaburras. They actually have an albino Kookaburra named “Snowy” and they’ve got a nice little family of four of them. Apparently Kookaburras can’t be alone because they get all depressed and starve to death so they have to live together in a family. Also these birds eat meat and swallow chicks and mice whole. It’s really quite attractive.

So I didn’t get any pictures of the croc feeding because I didn’t actually have my camera with me when we were there for that… But I made up for it? No not really, the croc feeding was pretty awesome and I apologize for my noobness in picture taking. To make up for it, here’s a picture of a friendly bird perched on my shoulder.

Please excuse the shiny face. It’s pretty damn warm and humid in a rainforest and it’d been a long day. Also, the events of this dome are spread out among 3 visits as the tickets are for 5 days total, pretty sweet deal if you actually go back as many times as we did. Not really much else to do in Cairns anyways. Most people just kind of use it as a launch pad for the GBR and the rainforest.

Speaking of the GBR, that’s what we did the next day. Now here’s the thing. In Cairns there are three types of shops, food, souvenir, and booking agency. So walking around the city we ‘d seen a lot of different companies that take people out to the reef, but we hadn’t seen the one we booked it with. So we’re pretty anxious/wary for whatever reason that we might’ve been scammed as illogical as it is. We’re trying to reassure ourselves because it was on trip advisor and had a large number of reviews, but the doubts are still there in the back of our minds.

So we wake up bright and early for our pick-up scheduled for 7:15. There are two other groups of people outside waiting for their shuttles and as each van comes up and takes them away, I’m getting more anxious as to whether or not our shuttle will actually arrive. But alas it does arrive and we get shuttled away to the greatest experience of my life. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a water-proof camera. I was very close to buying a disposable one for $20 but I ended up saving my money and not doing it, which I’m kind of regretting at this point. All the photos I have are pretty boring as you can really only see different shades of blue. And I don’t know how my blog is going to like having pictures scattered all over it. I might have to host them all online which would be a pain in the ass so I won’t include a blue picture. (Yes indeed I had to upload all of them so an extra picture would've taken an eternity longer on library free wifi.)

So in my last post I pretty much just went into the most detail of the reef because it was amazing. I don’t really know what else to say but for the sake of not repeating myself and writing even more seeing as I’m at 1600 words and I still have Kuranda to write about, I’ll just refer you to below and reiterate again that the puffer fish was damn amazing. I also have underwater hockey to thank for my mastery of the snorkeling gear. Also the the GBR made me realize exactly how crappy the gear we have at school really is. I was able to freely swim around and not worry about learning how to use the snorkeling gear which made my time that much more enjoyable. I was also unfazed by diving below the surface to get a closer look or chase some fish around. I will never forget the time I had at the GBR and maybe someday I’ll come back and get certified to dive and dive the reef even though snorkeling it was amazing.

So after our day on the reef, we came back around 5:30 pm walked around the city a little more, showered the salt off our bodies and grabbed more food at the casino. We then came back and decided to kick it in the TV lounge. As we entered we were greeted by 2 ladies studying for their PADI’s, which is a dive certification course. They were from the UK and Denmark. We spent the rest of the evening just talking to them and chilling. The girl from the UK was actually an engineer and both of them were taking a year off and traveling. It seems pretty popular to do that in other countries, to just travel and backpack around for a year. So we had a nice evening of conversation about music and then they departed and we never knew their names. A lot of meetings like that seem to happen in hostels. It’s pretty cool yet kind of sad at the same time. You meet a lot of people and just talk about stuff, but then you leave and never get to see them again and you don’t ever share your names. It’s just kind of like, ‘Where you traveling from?’ and it goes from there. We’ve met a handful of people and received no names. Such is life, it’s not like you’ll ever see them again. You share the traveler’s bond and go on your way.

The next day we booked Skyrail and our shuttle arrived at a more reasonable hour of 9:00. It takes you basically from Cairns to Kuranda and it was nowhere near as amazing as the GBR but what can you expect? I mean it was still pretty awesome to be about 15-20 meters above the forest floor riding above the canopy and seeing the green spread as far as the eye can see and seeing the water falls. I tried my hand at some more “artsy” photos here.

Got that nice close-up of the ant on the plant with spikes all over it, the stem had even scarier looking spikes and a lot more as well. The trip up was a lot cooler than the actual town itself. Well then again we only had a few hours there and we didn’t really get to go to any of the cool things like the Butterfly Sanctuary. I really wanted to and I even wore red to help attract the butterflies, but it wouldn’t have been worth it to pay for a ticket for only about an hour of time in the place because we had to catch our return bus at 15:00 and the ride back takes about 45 minutes. Most of our time here was spent at a brain teaser stall in the market trying to figure out the puzzles.

Then we grabbed lunch and made our way back to Cairns.

Not the greatest picture, but it gives you a really good idea of what the Skyrail is.

We got back to Cairns pretty early, spent another hour or two in the casino dome zoo then went back to the boardwalk so I could get my pictures. Spent a good chunk of time just chilling on the boardwalk watching the tide come in and the animals do their thing. Really relaxing despite the nasty brown water and litter floating about.

Now we’re back in Melbourne and our holiday is winding down and the project is about to start. I hope you’ve enjoyed this enhanced version of my blog with pictures and everything. I definitely enjoy writing them but I choose to do so at non-ideal times. It’s about 1:00 AM here and I have to check out before 10 AM and I’m on the top bunk with a stranger from Quebec sleeping below me.

P-P-PEACE

The Next Few Days - Cairns, Great Barrier Reef, Skyrail

I don’t really remember too much after I last wrote as we just spent the past 3 days up north in Cairns. It was amazing. It was such a stark contrast from the city life of Melbourne. Immediately upon stepping off the plane the air was a lot more humid and clean, and it rained hard for a short period of time. We arrived in the tropical north of Australia, Far North Queensland.

The landscape was just completely different. The central business district (CBD) is about a quarter of the size of Melbourne’s and there are trees EVERYWHERE, parrots flying around, and insects buzzing around too. We went into the dome zoo in the middle of the city on top of a casino. Saw some pretty awesome animals just flying around really close to you. Witnessed them feed a four meter long saltwater crocodile, “Goliath”. Just pretty sweet in general. Also, the ticket was valid for four days after you initially purchase it so whenever we had some free time we would go back and see the animals again, and it was different every single time.

Then of course the GBR (Great Barrier Reef) was AMAZING. HOLY CRAP. It was so awesome. It was like snorkeling/swimming in an aquarium. The fish are so close and you can just be floating around and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a school of fish. I also went on guided snorkel tours with the marine biologist on board and he would free dive 20m to the bottom and just pick up stuff for us to see. Basically we got to see a lot more things swimming around with him than if we were just blindly bumbling around the reef, even though that was amazing as well. I think I pretty much saw everything the reef had to offer, minus the friendly large fish Frank. I saw sharks, turtles, jellyfish, tons of shiny and colorful fish, starfish, sting ray, sea cucumber, and hands down the best part, a puffer fish.

Our marine biologist found and caught a puffer fish, made it puff and we passed it around. It was so cute, soft, and cuddly all puffed up. I’d always imagined them to be hard and pointy when puffed up but it’s the exact opposite.

I could write all day about all the amazing things I saw at the GBR but that’d be kinda boring for you guys. All said and done I will never forget the things I saw and experienced at the reef but I did get sun-burned moderately on my shoulder and calves. But that’s what I get for over-estimating my Asian skin.

The next day we took a ride on Skyrail, which is a 7.5 km lift over the canopy of the forest to Kuranda, the village in the rainforest. That was also pretty sweet, a stark contrast from seas of blue to seas of green which are both pretty different than seas of grey/buildings here in Melbourne. Now we’re back in Melbourne and everyone else is arriving on site in two days. And tomorrow I can finally stop spending ridiculous amounts of money on food as we get to move into our campus housing and I can buy groceries, which also cost a lot more but are still much cheaper than eating out every meal, and cook my own food.

GBR was amazing…

PEACE

Days Two, Three, and Four - Exploration

Disclaimer - The following posts were written on a previous date. Day one was 29/12/11. I have just now gotten reliable access to internet as the library has been closed since the 25th. Also just in case you don't actually read all of this. This will not be a daily update once my project/work starts, probably closer to a weekly update.

- - -

Walking, walking, walking. Lots of it. It’s all we’ve been doing for the past few days. That or standing that is. A new city, lots of new places to explore and walk around. New Year’s was pretty cool too. Just hustling and bustling just like any of the other Melbournians. Going to all the different shows and performances they had on. Yeah. Don’t really know what to say, just lots of new experiences flooding in.

Also I’ve discovered that I absolutely suck at having a camera. It’s always in my pocket and I just kind of stare in awe at things thinking they’re cool and then I don’t take a picture. And then the pictures I do end up taking I don’t think are too stellar. Pretty boring in general, but I guess that’s cuz there’s no one in them except the occasional Gaffey as he stands there.

I really supposed it helps to write these on a daily basis so I kind of remember what I did that day, but I mean, who’s really going to read all of these? But then again I guess it can’t really hurt to write them for me. A way to reflect on my time here in Australia, remember and document all that’s going on. Let’s see… Arrival and I wrote about that… OH HOW COULD I FORGET. Yeah totally writing stream of consciousness here, deal with it.

Day 2 we went to the St. Kilda beach as our hostel had a free shuttle there in the morning. Unfortunately when we went to sign up for it there was only one seat left so we had to pay $7 for an all-day tram pass not too exorbitant considering all the other expenses Australia has to offer. Yeah, we walked all day for that and I got sun burnt. Not too badly as I did put on SOME sun block and caught the burning as we were chilling and then applied sunblock to prevent it from getting worse. But when we go to St. Kilda beach we totally found a trail and just followed it down the coastline taking in the beautiful scenery and whatnot. Ate lunch at some nice café type deal.

All the restaurants seem to be pretty classy. There are two types of places to eat, or that I will allow myself to eat at. There’s the “cheap” $8-12 place where there’s usually no service of any kind and you just walk up to the counter order your food and they either bring it to you after your order number or it’s handed to you. Then there’s the $14-22 place where it’s almost like a sit-down restaurant with waiters and everything, but from our experience so far bringing you the bill is something they don’t really do. Maybe it’s seen as rude as it’s almost like asking you to leave their restaurant? But Gaffey and I have totally finished a meal and had the waiter clear our dishes and sat there waiting for the bill and observing how other people pay. It’s definitely different here, a lot more relaxed and laid back. Not as busy as the east coast. For the most part a lot of businesses seem to actually shut down over the holidays of Christmas and New Year’s.

Also as a random side note, these will not be on a daily recap as soon as I started my project. I’ll be at work from ~8-5 so there won’t be a whole day’s worth of exploring to do. Maybe it’ll be a weekly thing once my project starts. Who knows? I sure as hell don’t. At the moment I’m just kinda kickin it in my room at the hostel, with no internet. Munching on some grilled chorizo and caramelized onion crisps and Tim Tams, relaxing, putting my feet up, and writing this diary/blog entry.

Well enough random thoughts. I guess this is what happens when I have no internet to keep my occupied.

Day 3, NYE

We slept in a bit to compensate for the last little bit of jet lag left and needing to stay up to welcome in the New Year. Spent the afternoon walking around the various gardens a short distance away from the city, along the Yarra River which runs along Melbourne and is why it’s a city in the first place, a large trading port. The big thing we were trying to get to was the Royal Botanical Gardens which has tons of different plants from all over the world. It’s really pretty amazing walking 20meters and being in a different country plant-wise.

Welcoming in 2012 was never a really big celebration in my past with my family. Asian families just aren’t really too big into holidays once the kids grow up. So spending it in a different country along with around 100,000 other people is pretty… err… different. A lot of hustle and bustle and more walking, which my legs and feet are in no way accustomed to by the way, but I’m manning up and my legs are strengthening. It’s kind of sad actually that I can’t walk all day. It kind of gets me thinking that if society were not as advanced as it is, I’d be screwed. Little to no athletic ability and can’t even spend the whole day walking without being in immense pain. I’d totally get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger in a heartbeat. But yeah, probably the first New Year’s Eve ever that I haven’t watched the ball drop, even if it is just on TV… Instead we had a pretty amazing fireworks display. There were spread out all along the river on different roof tops around the city and synced up so around 10 different roof tops were all shooting off the exact same array at the exact same time.

Day 4

We slept in again with regards to the fact that we’d been up til probably close to 2 or 3 the night before. Went to the Immigration Museum. It was actually fairly interesting seeing all the immigration history of Australia. See that they had their own anti-Asian period and all the tragedies of history. Definitely something I don’t see the rest of our group doing. That’s really the name of the game here. Find things to do as a pair that the rest of the group probably won’t do and if some people do end up going it’ll be likely that something else will be going on as well. Don’t exactly wanna shoot ourselves in the feet and do things now that we’ll likely do as a larger group. The more the merrier.

Then with much of the evening left we explored the city some more, walked some of the streets we hadn’t walked before on the first day and actually *gasp* went INSIDE some of the buildings!

I miss internet. Though we did grab a little free Wifi inside the McDonald’s we went to for dinner. I just emailed my parents and took care of some email business. Connect with the world. I also had a McOz sandwich. It was quite interesting, just a standard burger but with a large slice of beet. Apparently it’s back by popular demand so I thought I’d try it. Portioning here is much smaller as well. I can finish almost every meal I order and the medium value meal was the same size as a small American value meal. Oh and the daily value is 8700 kJ. Which I guess is pretty damn close to 2000 kcal. But I think the recommended amounts of fat and protein and everything else is a little lower because a double quarter pounder with cheese is over 100% daily value in a few categories while in the states it just hits 98% in the fat category.

As amazed as I am to say it. I kind of miss home/school a bit already. It’s just fleeting thoughts here and there, but when they were mentioning it during IQP Orientation I kinda just brushed it off cuz I normally don’t experience it, but I guess being here with just the two of us in a completely different environment is something I’m not used to. I’m sure once everyone else gets here and we move into the Milano I’ll be fine.

Cuz you know. You just gotta man up sometimes.

Day One - Arrival

It’s been a long day. I made the silly mistake of staying up for as long as possible on the plane and watched a ton of movies. Just straight up back to back; finish one movie, before credits are over, switch on another movie. I watched Contagion, Kung Fu Panda 2, Cowboys and Aliens, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Change Up, and Red Riding Hood. Nothing was too spectacular except Kung Fu Panda 2. Do not watch Red Riding Hood.

So we, being me and Gaffey, arrived at the airport at around 9 AM Melbourne time. Waited in line to pass through customs and randomly saw Josie. After going through customs we figured out how to get to the apartment that WPI will be providing but we can’t live in yet. So that brings the time to about 11 AM. We walk around the city from the apartment and make our way over to the hostel where we will be staying to drop off our stuff so we can wander the city a little more freely. The time is now roughly 1:30. Okay, maybe my times are a little off… but then again we were walking pretty slowly taking in the many sights that a new country has to offer. Oh wait, along the way we also stopped to get cell phones. So I’m not losing random hours.

We try and find a place to eat lunch, lamenting the fact that most of the restaurants seem to be running an average entrée price of $18 AUD, which is basically the same in US give or take a few pennies. We settle on this cozy little café shop that is selling sandwiches for an average of $9-10, considerably less than $18, but still on the high end of things. But on average everything here seems to be costing about 150-200% more than in the states. A 450 mL bottle of coke with a discount of BOGO for $1 costs $2.35, but on the plus side, all the soda here is made with real sugar and not the stupid high fructose corn syrup garbage so it tastes considerably better.

And then we basically spent the rest of the day walking around exploring the city and just chillaxing. And our only source of free internet, the library, is closed from Christmas to the 2^nd of January, so it’s been a bit difficult to really plan anything to do. We have to rely on the old school method of brochures and word of mouth, completely prehistoric. . It’s really just kind of an inconvenience, but the next couple days until the library re-opens shouldn’t be too bad. We’re planning on going to St. Kilda Beach tomorrow, spend the day down there, scouting everything out. Then it’s New Year’s Eve so there’ll likely be some sort of club to go to, meet some people ;). But of course that’s in the evening so during the day we’ll go to some of the gardens around the city, maybe take a trip to some of the museums and see if there are some free or cheap/interesting ones. Really wished we had been able to get to go to Sydney, but I’m sure we’ll find things to do. Maybe meet some cool people. Hopefully.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m currently writing this post at around 20:30 on 29/12/2011, and it’s ridiculously bright outside. The brightness is as if it were 2 or 3 in the afternoon on the east coast. It’s completely messing with my head and probably psychologically extending the length of this day. I don’t even. I’m really pooped. I’ve been awake for way too long, probably close to twenty four hours and it’s really bright outside, and I don’t have internet. It’s expensive to have fun too. It also hasn’t really set in that I’m in freaking Australia. Man. The heck. Around 70 days in Australia. LET’S DO IT UP!