Launch Party

Last night I went to this restaurant opening thing in South Melbourne. The sister of a friends flatmate was opening it and I got an invite. Actually I didn't really have time to go due to some stupid deadlines on Tuesday, but I thought I would go for a couple of hours just to meet people and get some free food and alchohol :) Yeah, well the "couple of hours plan" obviously did not work. It was good fun and many people there and in the end I just stayed on until it more or less closed - feeling pretty crap today and guilty for wasting prescious worktime, but it was kind of worth it too. Needed a change of scenerey!

There was even some famous (kind of) people there. A guy from Home & Away (Australian tv series), I have never seen him tho, but someone told me. The other person was a guy from Neighbours (another Aussie series). A bit weird seeng actors in real life, because they look kind of different. Ah...and there were also some cute guys there ;)

Melbourne Zoo

Today Regine and I went on an excursion to Melbourne Zoo. It was a great day for it, perfect weather about 24 degrees and all sunny...we also really needed to get away from the computer and the city for a while. The zoo was not too bad either (im not a fan of caged up animals) I guess it was 50/50, some animals looked pretty confined, sad and lonely, while others had big space and friends around. It is fun to watch animals though. We came across a really funny seal (kid), it was like it had an obsessive-compulsive washing disorder, because it was spinning around in the water for ages, using the flaps to rub the skin and eyes (over and over), it was the funniest thing I have seen in a looong time. Other interesting animals was the Red Panda, from Nepal. It was REALLY cute, it looked almost liked a teddybear. I wanted to take it home. it was very shy tho. We tried to take photos of it, but every time it started to approach the fence where we were it turned its back on us just when it was within a good shooting range. It kept doing that many many times though, so in the end we felt like it was teasing us. "See, im coming, im coming, and ...no..im turning and yes im coming again, and turing again" etc....Maybe it had great fun.

There were lots of various animals though and at the end of the route I think I had had enough impressions as I was calling a Baboon, for Bamboo! ("Is that another Bamboo?") Here are photos of the tiger and the biggest gorilla.





This evening we also went out (so in fact I have not done a single work for school all day! What a great change). We met up with Carolyn and Barry (her husband), we were supposed to meet up with a few more people from the class, but the others could not make it. Anyway we went to eat at a Vietnamese place. The food was fantastic. The most amazing squid. I have only tasted squid which felt like rubber, but this was actually tender. Another funny/unusual thing for a Norwegian is that you can bring your own drink to the resturant. So we went to this drive thru bottle shop which almost looks like a open air gas station, except they sold alcohol and there were no doors, everything was open, just drive your car in and you can almost snatch a bottle while sitting in your car seat...hehe well almost.

All in all a good day wih some social activity for a change. Im still tired from all the work and little sleep earlier in the week though, im still catching up on it. So it was an early night :)

...

Hello, I seem to have run out of interesting headlines since everything kind of revolves around the same old 'deadlines and too much work' issues :) Or maybe it is just my brain being 'mush', due to only 2 hours sleep last night and not much more the rest of the week.

Anyway, once again it has been more or less _work work work_ since my last entry. I managed, just in the last minute to pull everything together (although not as good as I hoped, but at least I managed to keep the deadline). Lots of people handed in extention applications, because they did not get it done, so it is pretty obvious that it is a really intense course. Im so happy I managed to finish though, even though I feel completely shit at the moment....but I guess some sleep will fix that!

By the way, some of of the people in my class are on msn mesenger, and last night that was really helpful, it keeps you a bit social too. Regine (a friend from the Phillipines) and me where both awake until about 5 am and we kept each other inspired and awake by using msn. It is a bit easier to work when you know that there are others struggling with the same as yourself, we could also check with each other if we had done everyting we were supposed to do, email each other stuff too get feedback etc...Very useful:)

I figured out the perfect solution to getting things done quickly when time is an issue though (at least creative things) is drinking some red wine! It really made me less stressed and critical about what I was doing, so I was able to just get on with it instead of fiddling around for hours with detail stuff like fonts, colours, margins etc...

Obviously I need to fine tune it later, but it helped me getting something down on paper quickly so at least I could keep the deadline with something half decent looking. All our deadline are by the way only partial deadlines all leading up to the final deadline for all 3 projects in the beginning of June. It is a good way of doing it actually, because it keeps you on track and on schedule. If it had just been the one final deadline in june and no proper deadlines leading up to it, to keep the things developing inbetween, I guess many people (at least me) would end up doing a lot more at the end of the semester.

I guess that my life here must sound pretty stressfull and mundane at the moment and I in many ways it is, but for every day that passes I realize that I am actually learning loads. It is a pretty steep learning curve. So in that sense the course is really good value for money. However, if you come to Melbourne to enjoy other aspects of the city, DON'T DO THIS COURSE...hehehhe, well, kind of kidding, but yeah, it is really busy and does not allow for much of a social life outside of it.

The good thing is that we have a 7 week holiday fom the beginning of june till end of July. That kind of weighs up for the intensity of the course I think. It is what keeps me insane ;)

Yup, thats it, now Im going to catch up on my sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep :o

Behaving badly ;)

This evening I have actually been out (!) even though I should have worked on stuff for tuesday. But I was so sick of sitting in front of the computer screen that I didn't manage to do anything anyway. So instead I met up with another Norwegian girl, Pernille and an Australian girl, Kathleen and we went to a concert with a Swedish girl rock band > Sahara Hotnights. They were playing at a pub/concert venue only 5 minutes from my house!

We went a bit early though, so ended up playing some pool and almost beat a couple of Aussie guys:) Then we went in to listen to the warm up bands which was actually quite goo, especially one called Canon. Sahara Hotnights was really good too, althoug very loud, so i've gone half deaf now. Ok, thats it, im seriously tired now, so will sleep. Just thought I would add something that didn't involve complaining about how much I had to do :)

Melbourne photos

Here are some images from around Melbourne. I got loads more, but don't have time to put them online yet, but here is a few.

Luna Park - St.Kilda


Lygon Street (The Italian area)


Taxis at the airport


Taxis in the city


Shopping garbage?


Yarra River at night

Wrecked

After another couple of hellish weeks of crazy workhours I am able to write a few lines in my blog again. Im more or less a zombie today though, so I will keep it short.

Last time I wrote I assumed that I would be able to relax for a bit, however I was wrong. I worked all through easter to catch up on things and then after easter we were back on with the frequent deadline thing. It seems like every other week there is more or less two deadlines. It's very overwhelming.

Today we just finished a group research project that had to be presented both as an online document and as a verbal presentation. I had a bit of a bad luck with the group I ended up in as half the time only 2 of us (instead of 4) where there. This affected the research we were able to do. Also, when it came to analysing the data we had collected we ran out of time, so it was not done properly. Since I was the only one in out group who was able to build a website, I was then stuck with that part, which probably took me 4 full days of agony, so yes im pretty exhausted now.

The last week I've been going to bed around 3-5 am. Last night I wanted to go to bed before 12 to avoid looking like a total wreck in class forthe presentation. However I ran into trouble when I was burning off the project and was once again forced to stay awake until about 2 am. This morning I then totally slept in and had to run more or less from my bed to the train, probabaly looking half more wrecked than ever.

How I feel now




It was kind of funny in class during the presentnation though. So many people were wrecked, either half asleep, getting sick and so on. Two girls had been up all night! Poor them, at least I got a bit of sleep.

All the time while stressing with this project we have all been looking forward to this weekend. Me and a couple of the other international students talked about tryingto get out of Melbourne for a day, since we havent seen anything other thatn the city since we arrived 2 months ago. Then a few days ago we realised we have 3 other big things that needs to be done by tuesday and wednesday. So we had to postpone our plans. Lucky me, once again, I will have to work in the weekend :) Hurray!

By now though I figured that it is only about 8 weeks (I think) until our "winter holiday" so Im going to stick out this "having no life'- situation until then and hopefully I will be able to really enjoy my holidays!

Apart from the school stuff there is not much else to say. Well last weekend I went to an outdoor market not far from my house with Carolyn (a girl in my class) and Barry (her boyfriend). We got lots of cheap veggies. That was about it for my excurions of the week. Hehe...well actually I managed to go for a quick run along the river one day, which was actually very nice. But yeah, that is about it. Don't expect too much exciting stuff here in the coming weeks. I have a vague idea that it will be filled with boring tales about my stressfull life as a student! :o

Yarra River (only 5-10 minutes from my house)