Finance, economics and football

I´m already half done with the spring uni semester :) I had two mid-term exams; in financing and economics. That´s why the past couple of weeks were pretty boring for me. I tried to study as much as possible, but every time I decided to devote my day to studying I got called up from work to do some extra shifts. Which isn´t a bad thing since I´ll need all the money I can get for my major traveling! (I´ll tell about my traveling plans later.) Both of my exams were on Saturdays and I missed two Birthday parties because of having to go to bed early on Friday nights :/ The fun things I did during my (inefficient) exam preparation time include: cooking Mexican food with Moy, going to the movies to see The Bourne Ultimatum, watching some movies at home (recommend Spanglish), going to a Japanese restaurant with Kwan followed by Chinese moon cakes and a few drinks in Darling Harbour and going to the hairdresser. Instead of going to the posh hairdressers on Pitt Street I went to this new place on Broadway. They had an opening sale of $80 for color and cut. All the staff is Asian and even though not all of them speak good English they were very friendly and helpful. I wanted to go for a lighter color for the summer so I got blond highlights. The guy that cut my hair is Korean and spoke hardly any English. Fortunately he had a friend translating for him and the cut turned out alright, even though it´s a bit shorter than I actually wanted.

I´ve got a feeling I didn´t do that well on my exams :/ I underperformed at both of them, which is uncharacteristic to me. I tend to perform well at exam situations, but here I always get distracted by the short answering time (usually 1h30min-2h) and start rushing my answers. I think I passed the exams, though, which is all that really counts. Since I haven´t set any bets this semester I´ve got no need to aim for high grades. I´ll have plenty of time to be ambitious when I return to LUT! We had an interesting way to form project groups at Human Resource Management, though. First we were asked to determine which grade we were aiming for the project, and then we got grouped based on that. I figured I could just as well go for high distinction (the highest possible grade) to get a hard working group to work with. It turned out to be a good choice since our group is doing pretty well. The professor is really demanding, though, and you never exactly know what she´s looking for.

Yesterday after I was done with my economics exam I went to watch a football game with Tim and Loure Lou (an exchange student from France). It was a preliminary final game so the winner gets to play for the championship. The game was at Telstra Stadium and there were over 32 000 people watching it! It was Manly Seaeagles (a Sydney team) playing against a team from Brisbane, Queensland. Since Manly is Tim´s favorite team we all supported them. Even though I´m not a big fan of football - I prefer ice hockey and Finnish baseball - it was fun watching a live game. I wasn´t familiar with the rules so it was good having Tim explaining them to me. I actually got pretty excited cheering for Manly and was happy when they won 28-6! I´m glad I went to see the game, especially since Tim and I had talked about going pretty much ever since I arrived here.

Football game at Telstra Stadium

Today was a day of total relaxation... Moy and I took the bus to Circular Quay and went running around the Domain and Botanical Gardens. It was really nice indeed :) The weather was sunny but quite windy, which was just perfect - warm but not too hot - for sport. There were lots of people walking or just sitting on the grass, enjoying the afternoon. Compared to my last visit in the Botanical Gardens there were a lot more flourishing plants and flowers this time. Summer is coming! After our run we did some sit-ups and push-ups on the grass before taking the bus back home. It was nice exercising outside for a chance, and we decided to keep it up. For lunch I had Japanese miso soup that I prepared all by myself yesterday. Some months ago Kwan invited me to join him and his friends to cook dinner and that´s when I was taucht to cook miso soup. It took me a while to actually make the initiative to try it, but once I did I noticed it´s pretty simple. You can cook miso soup pretty much with everything - fish, meat, tofu, veggies - and eat it with rice. Healthy and tasty :P And now I just finished playing monopoly with flatmates... I was the first one to go bankrupt :( The rest of them are still playing, but I decided to come upstairs because I´m feeling a bit sick. Oh, and I got the cutest postcard from Carla :D She must know how happy I feel getting mail, especially since I don´t usually get anything. Thanks darling!