Snack-and-Chat is My New Favourite Pastime

Today was a really excellent day, and I’m not entirely sure whether that was surprising or not. I usually love Info Days and Careers Markets for Sprouts, because it’s a nice social occasion where I get to meet and talk to insane amounts of people, but this morning I guess I was pretty tired and all that when I woke up. Still, that did not seem to matter, and I had lots of fun! I spent most of the day between the animation theatre and the games lab, because the rostered people weren’t very organised, so I just hung out with the games people and helped them out. I also ran around organising lunches and, of course, encouraging prospective students to study at UTS. Oh, and I even got to test out my Spanish skills! There was a guy interested in IT, but he didn’t speak any English, just Spanish. So between my broken Spanish (I could actually understand him very well, just not speak to him much) and Jess’ translator on her phone, we managed to get across what was needed. Fun!

I was kind of bummed when we were finishing, not because it was over (man, I was tired!), but because my evening plans were cancelled. I was supposed to be hanging out with Lexie, but she bailed in order to study. Still, it turned out to be almost a gift in disguise, as I instead spent the evening with Bill, my flatmate, and Andy, who is a 2nd year BIT and was also helping out at the Info Day. Turns out Andy had seen a fair bit of Firefly, but never Serenity, so we decided that it was a must to show her the brilliance that Serenity is. And, well, it worked.

Also grabbed some delicious pizza and beer to enjoy with the movie, and it turned into some sort of fairly short movie night. Not bad for a spur-of-the-moment visit, right? But that was not all. Bill and I walked Andy to the station, but it was a little while until her train came so we decided to make a quick trip to the pub (can’t remember which one, but just the other side of the Devonshire St tunnel). ‘Quick trip’ turned into ‘extended residence’, and Andy missed a couple of trains while we chatted and Bill and I played Buck Hunter. I assume she eventually got home safely though. Hopefully. Our little outing didn’t end there, though! Almost, but Bill and I stopped by McDonald’s (I know, I know) for a quick snack-and-chat. Fun times by all.

Um, yeah. My day!

Nice Day for a Walk in the Park

Oh I forgot! Yesterday was a pretty wonderful day. I woke up with a bit of a hangover from the aforementioned Tom’s parrrty, but managed to drag myself off to Spanish in a reasonably timely fashion. I even managed to enjoy myself (being up early is hard, but it sure makes for more productive days). After class, we were going to watch a movie again, but a last minute suggestion (from me, no less!) changed our daily activity to a picnic in Victoria Park with the birds and ducks and eels and grass and sun and mmm. Except we way overdid the dessert part of the food-buying, and I think we all went home feeling a little too chocolate-heavy (but also delicious-heavy).

Picnics in the park is actually one of the things I’ve felt I’ve missed out on during my time at Uni – I’m pretty sure this is the first proper one, actually. Or maybe second or third, I don’t know. The point is, they’re awesome! Should do more.

Your Tongue is Sharp, But I Miss the Taste of It

So today I think I’m going to write all about Wednesday. Among other things, it was Tom’s birthday and one of the busiest days I’ve had in a long time. It started off a bit slack – staying a bit too long at Lexie’s, which was fun, but left me rather strapped for time to complete all the work I had due that day. I managed to get some of the PMP stuff done on the train, but it was mostly left until the few hours I had before class.

Steve and I caught up for a short while to discuss a certain ethical dilemma, which I also then wrote about (man, PMP is a lot of work right now!). As a result of my tardiness in completing things, I was a good 40 minutes late to our hour-long Games Development class, however I’m pretty sure I got almost as much value out of it as anybody else. And thank you to Tom, for being so excellent with the Breakout game (no longer Snakeout, even!), so I could just hide in the corner and say nothing because I really need to learn stuff. It ended up running over time, because one of the guys in the class likes to talk so much. I mean, sure, a lot of the stuff he has to say is interesting, but gosh, when I’m there for 40 minutes and one student talks more than the teacher and all other students combined, it’s getting a bit out of hand. It also made me late for the Internation Exchange get-together at the Agincourt, although that wasn’t such a bad thing, as many people didn’t come until later.

I was actually of the impression that it was just a meeting for people going to and from Sweden, but alas, I should’ve known better, and it was everyone going to or coming from everywhere. I only met one other guy (Paul) going to Sweden at first, and mostly talked to people I already knew (thank gosh I knew Tim, Martina and Michelle from Housing, or I would’ve been lost!), but after a while we were herded into groups of fellow country-people, and I was able to meet the rest of my fellow Swedes (ahem).

The thing about Swedes is that, except for some people who look completely and utterly Swedish, it’s incredibly hard to tell who is from where. One guy actually came up to me and started talking in Swedish, and after looking stunned for a while, all I could do was apologise and say I’m from Australia. I also met a guy called Anders, which was kind of a giveaway for being a Swede. I think I will be known as Anders when I go. I mainly talked to Sara, though, who I recognised from Housing. We were chatting away nicely next to the Mexican group when one of them decided to speak so incredibly loudly that I kept having to stop what I was saying and wait until he’d finish. Awkward much? I’m hoping I might be able to score some Swedish lessons, though, maybe in exchange for coffee and English lessons (not that they really need any help). I’d feel kind of terrible going over and not speaking a word. The people I talked to assured me that most Swedes would enjoy the chance to speak English, but that’s not really the point, is it?

After the exchange get-together, I raced to the PMP lecture in time to watch another rather interesting lecture from the Slaughterer and his… Friend? I say interesting, because, well, they really are. Odd for UTS IT, no? I guess they need to make it interesting, though, or the failure rate would be even higher.

Between the lecture and tutorial, Laura and I (because everyone else is in a different tute!) and Matt snuck down to the Glasshouse for a shot of something called a QF. I can’t even really remember what was in it, but it was both insanely easy to get down and made the tute a lot more fun (presumably, because I did actually enjoy it). Laura and I were very thankful that we found other ‘good’ people in our tute, as we were worried that everyone we knew was in a different one. But no! Haichen, another Wang (William!), and some other guy called Jason are now amongst our ranks, and we also seem to have a really good tutor, who is less likely to Slaughter us than a certain other somebody.

After class we went to the Bavarian to celebrate Tom turning a whole 21 years old! It always amazes me that I’m the youngest of he, Steve and I, actually. Not sure why. Bavarian was fun, and backwards, in that we started with schnapps (Wild Raspberry followed by some Golden Herbal one) and finished with beer (Franziskaner, of course!).

Oh look, I somehow ended up writing another essay-length blog! Sometimes I really think I should cut them down, but I kinf of enjoy it. Sorry?

I Thought You Were Moving To Sweden

So I know it’s been a (long, long) while since I last posted, but I thought this warranted a return to the blogosphere (well, posting on it; I’ve still been reading!):

First semester next year, I’ll be studying not at UTS, but at Uppsala Universitet in Sweden!

There was a lot of back and forth and numerous considerations that went into the decision to drop International Studies (and therefore my year in Chile), and it was a hard choice to make, but I’m really excited about what has come about. I mean, Chile would be (really) good, but my enthusiasm for it has waned greatly this year, and after considering different options, including deferring my degree for a year, I decided upon Sweden. It kind of resonates with me, and I think I’ll learn many more useful things (to both my life and my future career) than I would in Chile. I’ll be studying things like User Interface Programming and Human-Computer Interaction, which will be very interesting, and they aren’t things I can do as much of here. It’s just a shame I’m not going for an entire year, although that could turn out to be a blessing too. It means I finish my degree at the end of next year, anyway, instead of the year after.

I also plan to travel around Europe in the summer, and even come back via the US, if I can afford it, so it’ll be an experience and a half. I have International Studies friends in Spain next year, so we’re planning to do a road trip between there and Sweden, with plenty of stops in between. What better way to travel around Europe? Hehe, not that I would know. I will also have to pay a visit Andreas in Germany, of course.

So maybe you want to know about what else has been happening for the past month, too? I guess I could run over a few things, if you insist. You see, I’ve been back at Uni for two weeks now, and guess what? I’m actually rather enjoying it. I’m only doing three subjects instead of four (and will be, for the last three semesters of my degree), and I’m already seeing the difference. I can put a lot more focus on each one, and I’m enjoying them more because of it. I guess it also helps that I’m doing Spanish as a non-award subject; no pressure to do well plus an excellent social situation is amazing, and surprisingly productive. My group of Spanish friends has even got to going for breakfast / lunch after class, and last Thursday we watched Pan’s Labyrinth and played Rock Band. Could it get nay better?

My other two subjects are Project Management for the Professional and Games Development for Mobile Phones. PMP sounds boring at first glance (and could well be), but it seems very well run, and quite challenging, so I’m putting in more effort than usual (ie. going to lectures), and feeling better about it than most ’soft’ subjects in the past. Just kind of sucks that we have three 3-hour lectures to start off with. GDMP sounds very exciting, and will hopefully be another outlet for my current interface-design obsession. That said, as exciting as it sounds, it’s also very scary. Most of the people in our class (all seven of us) seem like they’ve all done some development on mobile platforms before, so we might have some space to make up. We’re supposed to make a version of the game Breakout this week. Eek! Still, I’m sure we’ll learn a great deal.

Um, so yeah, that’s Uni. How about work? My proper job is a little boring lately, just because we’ve hardly had anything to do and I’ve been spending most of my time installing operating systems and service packs. Exciting? Not particularly. But other (Three Ring Solutions) work has been rather excellent. I keep surprising myself what I can do with relative ease in Flex (like, what I can now do, not necessarily what Flex can do), and our Whitsundays project is coming along really nicely, and Anthony should have a nice demo to show off to prospective clients later this month. Our other project, HomeCost, on the other hand, is not quite successful. Well, it’s successful monetarily, but it’s frankly pretty boring (essentially a glorified calculator, I think somebody said), and as a result nobody seems to be enthused about working on it, and then we don’t have much to show each week. Oh well, shouldn’t be a long project, at least.

Social life is excellent.

Bye.