Escaping the cold

Last week was really cold in Australia. On Tuesday Sydney had its coldest day within the past 21 years! It was just around 3-10C but it felt a lot colder because of the wind. I was unfortunate and temporarily had to work at George Street store on Monday and Tuesday. It´s one of those stores that miss one of the walls, so it was basically like working outside. It was freezing :( I was wearing a winter jacket and mittens, which made some customers wonder if I actually worked there or not... It wasn´t much better at home. Even though I had my heater on all the time it was freezing in my room, as well as in the loundry room. Everyone keeps telling me that coming from Finland I should be used to the cold. What they don´t understand is that we don´t have to freeze ourselves inside because our houses are built properly and have central heating. That´s something I´ve always taken for granted but will really appreciate when I return home!

So, to escape the cold I decided to travel to Fraser Coast in Queensland. It was originally Renee´s idea to go there, and when Tim decided to join her I wanted to go, too. I couldn´t change my work roster within such a short notice to go at the same time with them, though. So they flew there 3 days before me to take part in this self drive Fraser Island tour. I got there Thursday afternoon to meet them for a dinner together. Tim flew back to Sydney the next day and I spent the following 2 days with Renee. She left on Sunday morning, when Keiji arrived and stayed with me until Wednesday morning. (I know, lots of people arriving and leaving at different times!) I had a nice trip altogether, and will write more about it later...

Exam results were released last Wednesday, which was a day of dissappointment for me :( I knew my total grade for the Olympic Games, and I since I had messed up that one group project didn´t expect a good grade for Finance. But I had gotten good marks for International Marketing and Global Strategic Management projects (85-92%) and had had a good feeling after the final exams, too. I had written quite a lot to each question thinking I knew the correct answers. I´ve always done pretty well in writing essay answers at LUT. Apparently they except something totally different here :/ I might contact the lecturers of those two subjects to ask what I did wrong at the exams. So here´s a summary of my final grades:

The Olympic Games: 77% (Distinction)
Fundamentals of Business Finance: 72% (Grade)
International Marketing: 77% (Distinction)
Global Strategic Management: 73% (Grade)

Tim did a lot better in his subjects, which means I lost the bet and will have the honour the take him out to dinner at the Sydney Tower. Being so competitive I naturally feel dissappointed loosing the bet, but I´ve decided to be a good loser and make the most out of our fancy night :) The view from Sydney Tower will be worth seeing, and I´m looking forward to dressing nicely and having a good dinner. Afterwards we´ll go somewhere else (cheaper) for deserts and cocktails. So even though the bet didn´t turn out as I had hoped (=winning) we´ll for sure have a good time :)

The spring semester begins on Monday. I spent quite a lot of time deciding which subjects to take. It´s kinda weird since previously I´ve just simply gone through the Study Guide and chosen what ever subjects have been required or have seemed interesting. This time I really had a hard time picking my subjects and kept changing them till the beginning of this week. I´m all set now. I ended up taking only 3 subjects, because I wanna have time to do other things besides studying and working. I´ve got the Finance System, Economics of the Firm and Chinese 1. Starting to learn Chinese may seem as a weird choise, but it actually makes sense to me. Firstly, China is economically an emerging country providing lots of business and work opportunities in the future. Secondly, being here for half a year and getting to know many Asians has risen my interest towards the Asian culture. Naturally I can´t tell where I´ll be or what I´ll be doing in a few years time, when I finally graduate, but working in Asia for a couple of years doesn´t seem like an impossible option. There´re a lot of job openings for uni graduates in Singapore, Hong Kong and even in Beiging, and living in some totally different country seems exciting!

Anyways, I bet I´ll write more about my future plans and thoughts later on (if you for some reason happen to be interested in knowing them lol)... Now it´s time to get ready for a pub crawl from here to the Rocks :D