A great beach day :D

Since the weather forecast had promised hot and sunny weather for today we planned a trip to Manly Beach. It ended up everyone else had something else to do - uni stuff and sports - so it was just Carla and I going. But we had the greatest day outside! We took the ferry to Manly and got a map of the area from a visitor centre. It appears there´re quite a few things to see in Manly, like some scenic walkways and Sydney Harbour National Park. We started walking towards the park and when we stopped to take a look at the map these two guys we ran into asked if we needed any help. We asked about nice things to see in Manly and they promised to take us on a guided tour :) Unfortunately they got a call from work and had to leave, but we got a lift to Shelly Beach and they accompanied us for a quick swim. Shelly Beach is a rather small and sheltered one with small waves, opposite to Manly the other bigger beaches. We spent a couple of hours there sun bathing and studying. Then we walked to the main street to look for lunch. We had seafood rolls at a food court and got gelato (really creamy ice cream) from an Italian place called Gelatissimo. My ice cream was huge :P Then we walked a bit along the shoreline before going to lay on the beach. After another hour of sun bathing we took the ferry back home. It was Tim´s turn to make flat dinner. We´ve agreed on cooking flat dinners every week. Everyone takes a turn cooking a meal for the 6 of us. I started with makaroonilaatikko last Sunday and Tim prepared a delicious nacho meal. Oh, and I also watched my new favorite TV-show, Ugly Betty.

Shelly Beach

Flat 3. From left Adrian, Tim, I, Shinae, Renar and Carla

It´s kinda hard getting motivated with studying :/ After arriving here I had 3 weeks of vacation, which set my mind thinking Sydney means relazing and doing just fun things. It´s hard for me staying inside when the weather is good. Fortunately I can do my readings outside but I gotta spend some time in the library and on the computer, as well. I´m almost done with my marketing case study and I´m determined to finish it tomorrow. Speaking of which, I gotta go to bed so I can get up early...

Never ever have I...

Friday was a good party day :) After my lectures I went to the gym to go through my new workout. I had told Michael (the instructor) I´d meet him there, without thinking my muscles might be tired from having done the workout the day before. Fortunately he told me to take it easy, which I did. But I´ll start some real training this week and set my goal to look fit by the next beach season! Anyways, after coming back from the gym I got ready for our ice bar night. Before starting to play drinking games Denise took a set of pictures of me for her photography project. I´ll post some of them here if they turn out pretty. We had heaps of people at our flat playing drinking games and hanging out! We started with a card game, each card having its own function. When you pulled a king you had to pour little of your drink to a shared cup. The person getting the 4th king had to drink the mix. Yes, I did get it and drank a delicious mix of gin tonic, vodka, pop and sambucca (quite gross liqour) Most people thought I handled it as a lady - or as a Finn, I´d say :P After finishing the pack people were already reasonably drunk and I taucht them a game where you have to bounce a coin to a cup. We finished with the "Never ever have I..."-game, and due to our drunkeness some (!) people got pretty excited with all these sex related statements. When it was time to leave for the ice bar some of us stated they were too drunk to get in, so we decided to postpone the ice bar till another night. At that point Cameron and I started having shots of plain vodka - which reminds me of all the good times drinking with the Student Association people in Lappeenranta :D At the end, it was just Carla, Denise, Andrew, Cameron, Adrian, Tim and I going clubbing. Tim left us to with his other friends and the rest of us walked to Side Bar. The rest of the night was nothing special: hanging out at the Side Bar, taking a cap to Kings Cross to meet Tim at a nacho place, walking around, not finding a place we wanted to go to, getting cold, taking a cap back to Geegal, going to bed in time (3.30am)

Playing a card game at our living room

"Enjoying" my mix drink

A group picture (missing a few people): from left Moy, Adrian, Ningning, Helen, Cameron, I, Carlos, Tim, Shinae, Denise and Andrew

Despite of having being drinking so much the night before I felt good on Saturday morning. I went to Bondi Beach with Tim, Carla and Cameron. Because it was a bit windy and not so warm we walked to Tamarama Beach, which is close to Bondi. I spent most of the time reading for my Olympic Games class; this time the topic was the commercialization of the Games. I think I´ll actually be able to connect the subject to marketing for the most part of it. On our way back to the train station Tim bought the biggest ice cream ever! I spent the rest of the day watching the movie Music and Lyrics (Renar had bought it somewhere. It had been filmed at the cinema.) and writing my marketing case.

Studying...boring

Let me think what I´ve been doing this week... Nothing but studying :/ I think most exciting so far has been this visitor lecturer at our Olympic Games class. He came from the US and travels around the World to collect information of cities having hosted the Games. It was interesting listening to him but the exciting thing was that he was SO hot :P I can´t recall when was the last time I saw such a good looking guy! Anyways, the Olympic Games has turned out be quite an alright subject. (I chose to take it so that I wouldn´t spend too much time studying while I´m here. My logic is to have 3 "real" subjects and one "fun" subject.) It´s being taucht in Kuring-Gai Campus, which is a 30-min drive from the City Campus. UTS provides students a free shuttle bus to get there and back. The Kuring-Gai Campus is so nice! It´s a rather small campus in the middle of a national park so it´s surrounded by beautiful nature. I always get there a bit before the class starts so I´ve got time to sit outside drinking morning coffee. The class discusses the Olympics from different points of views: history, interference with politics (e.g. World Wars, the Cold War, the Great Recession), economics, impact on the hosting cities, media (especially TV), sponsorships, culture etc... I´ve got quite a lot of reading to do at home, though. I´m still wondering if we´re going to do a field trip to the Olympic Park or not.

I´ve been writing my case all day today and it´s a pain in the ass! I´m making alright process but it´s so slow writing in English. I´m hoping to finish it tomorrow so I can enjoy the weekend. I was so happy to get my gym program done today, after sitting home for hours. Michael, the gym instructor, made me a really cool workout! It´s lasts only for half an hour but it´s really intense. It includes a bit of running on the treadmill and muscle exercises (push ups, chins, cleans...) Hopefully I´ll get fit following it :)

Now I gotta start reading for my Global Strategic Planning class, that I´ve got tomorrow morning. They actually expect you to read the course book, articles and some additional stuff during the course. I think it´s going to be easier studying for exams having read the material before hand but it takes up a lot of time. By the way, sorry for my bad English. I´ve been trying to write good, academic English all day so I´m feeling too lazy to care at the moment. Tomorrow we´re gonna play drinking games and go to this ice bar, but more about it later...

Gays and lesbians rule...!

On Friday afternoon Carla and I decided to check out Victoria Park, which is kind of like our backyard (2min walk from Geegal) and found out it´s a really nice park indeed. There´re quite many grass areas there for playing sports and games, a small pond, benches and a swimming pool. We were laying by the pool, getting in there every now and then to cool down and doing some reading for our classes. I think I´ll develop a habit of going to Victoria Park to do uni work so I can enjoy fresh air while I study.

There was a party at the Gumal roof top on Friday night. Tim bought us a bottle of liquor (something cheap, really sweet and Australian - tasted yummy with coffee :P ) and vodka. I´m glad Cameron joined us for the vodka because otherwise we would´ve been wasted. Well, we were anyways ;) This time it was Tim´s turn to make me drink. We started drinking at Geegal and walked to Gumal at around 10pm to spend a couple of hours on the roof top enjoying the beautiful view of night time Sydney. At mightnight (they´re pretty strict about ending parties in time, apparently because of some complaints last year) Tim, Moy, Cameron and I headed to central and ended up going to Star Bar. We had a blast dancing for hours! I can´t remember the last time I´ve danced that much. We had shots of tequila, which is always as exciting as it was the first time I had one when I was 18. Tim was dancing on a small table... At around 3am we walked home, stopping at this bakery for some chocolate pastries on our way, and played some card games in our flat. After Moy and Cameron left Tim and I kept talking till 6am. We were actually agreeing on more things this time.

This is how a girl is treated in Australia :P (Tim, I and Moy)

On Saturday I woke up rather early considering I had gone to bed so late and went to Bondi Beach with a bunch of people from Geegal. The weather was just perfect - sunny and so hot! Unfortunately we could stay only for a couple of hours because the Mardi Gras Parade was on that night. It´s an annual parade of gay and lesbian people and a big thing that as many as half a million people go to see. Most dedicated spectators go there hours earlier to reseve good spots. We didn´t leave until an hour and half before the parade was about to start (the more people you´re going with the more you have to wait for everyone to be ready). Despite of getting there late and standing at a wrong place at first Carla and I managed to get fairly good spots and see most of the parade just fine. It was lots of different groups - political parties, sports teams, work groups (police, firemen), religious groups - walking and showing their best in great costumes. Most groups had also decorated trucks following them and playing music. The parade was definately a thing not to miss!

Beach is an alright place for studying

Rugby team´s truck and motorcycles

A truck sponsored (?) by Ikea

Today I had a nice morning helping Denise with her photography assigment, as a model :) Then we went to a few travel agencies to ask for information about New Zealand and Fiji. I bought my flight tickets to New Zealand, which means I´m going for sure! I and Denise will fly there together on the 10th of April but I´ll have to come back a few days earlier to do a mid semester exam. It really sucks but the exam counts 30% of the grade so I can´t miss it. I also did to a body pump class. I wonder why I´m using considerably less weights here than I did in Finland even though the class is almost exactly the same, following the Les Mills concept. The only possible explonations I can come up with are that it´s either too hot (and humid) there or that we do a lot more singles. From one thing to another, I´m not doing well with my marketing case. I just noticed I´m not using the preferred kinds of references - journals and magazines instead of old books - and I´ve got too little theory. Well, I´ll keep writing it, trying to keep in mind one failure (meaning one low grade) isn´t going to completely ruin my studies.

P.S I´ve added a few pictures to some of my older posts from February.

Back 2 school

It´s Sunday and I´ve got the first week of lectures and tutorials behind. I don´t think I´ve linked my university here yet, so if you´re interested in finding out more about it go to www.uts.edu.au There´re so many international students here! 30% of business students don´t speak English as their first language and some of the lecturers aren´t native speakers, either. It´s going to be interesting working with people coming from so many different countries - just like it´s going to be in the real working environment, as well. So far I´m grouped mostly with Australians for team projects, though, which I think is fine. At the moment I´ve got a good feeling about all of my subjects. It´s going to be a lot more reading than I´m used to, though. I even bought my course books from the student association´s second hand bookstore. They´re pretty expensive (over $100 each) as new but I didn´t pay close to that much. So, we gotta read one or more chapters from the book and some additional articles for every lecture. I´ve also got individual and group assingments for all of my subjects.

I really like the library here! I just spent a couple of hours there today searching for references for my International Marketing case study. There´re heaps of books for marketing, including just any specific topics, and many databases for journals, too. I´ve got a feeling I´m going to improve my information searching skills during this year. There´s no way I can go through everything that looks promising! Besides, our cases and projects are limited to be quite a lot shorter than those at LUT, which means we gotta be more consice and really stick to the main points. My marketing case is due in a week and it counts 20% of the grade. I´ve done hardly any writing yet so I gotta spend a lot of time inside working on it this week, no matter how nice the weather is going to be :/

Besides going to lectures and tutorials I haven´t done much this past week. Just going to the beach, spending some time outside, watching movies, running and going to a few fitness classes. I had a consultation for my gym program on Thursday and the instructor used this informative scale to find out various kinds of things about me. For example, almost 43kg of me is muscle and 2,3kg bones, I´m 60% hydrated and I consume a bit over 1300KCal a day. I´ve got another meeting with him and that´s when he´s really gonna test me and make the workout program.

Royal National Park

Saturday was a good day of outdoor sports! We woke up rather early to catch a train to the Roayl National Park. It took us almost an hour to get there and there were no signs to the park from the train station. So we crossed a highway (scary!) and walked on the side of it till we found a path going to the right direction. It wasn´t the right one, though, since we discovered we were trapped by a fence. After walking back to the highway we found the right path easily and followed it to the visitor centre. It was a lot of steep steps going down and some nice views, as well. We had decided to rent bikes and sticked to the plan even though the amount of bicycle paths was a lot smaller than we had assumed when looking at the map. They told us not to ride on main roads with cars because it´s too dangerous. So we did a 10 km long Lady Carrington Drive along Hacking River. We would´ve prefered doing a loop instead of riding back and forth, but we got to see some nice views anyways. Especially trees having suffered a bit during bush fires but being still alive and growing were interesting to see. It took us almost 4 hours to drive the 20 km and have several breaks for eating, taking pictures and just hanging out. Our bikes were good and confortable mountain bikes. After returning to the bike rental we had to walk aroung 3-4km back to the train station. Instead of climbing the stairs we decided to walk along a car road, which ended up being a smart decision because it started thundering. I guess it´s common here it can be thundering and lightning right above you but it´s not raining. We were both lucky and unlucky getting back to the train station. Lucky because it didn´t start raining a lot until we reached the station. Unlucky because we missed the train by 2 minutes and had to wait for half an hour for the next one. When we finally got to the train it was hard trying to stay awake.



Rainforest

Me and big trees

Since it was Silja´s last night here she wanted to buy me a nice dinner, and I decided to get us some dessert :) It was raining and when we got the Redfern (the closest train station to Geegal) and we found out there were some railway constructions going on and most trains were substituted by busses. So after taking a train to Central Station we had to take a bus to Circular Quay. We found a nice restaurant there and sat upstairs facing the harbour, overlooking the ferry station. I had a delicions meal with marinated prawns and rice! I just really enjoy eating at nice restaurants. After our main courses we wanted to get some Kogenhagen Ice Cream but the kiosk had been closed a couple of minutes before we got there. So we went to this Italian restaurant and probably drove the waiter nuts ordering the cheapest possible gelato they had. It tasted good, though, had we got to sit on a nice table outside eating it. Since the weather wasn´t that great we decided to head home and go to bed.


We had planned to go see the Dragonboat Race of Chinese New Year on Sunday morning but since we had had such a long day on Saturday we just slept in and had a lazy morning before Silja had to leave to catch her flight. I took her to Redfern. Carla and I had thought of going to see the dragonboats but we decided not to because it was raining. I went for a run instead. I found Centennial Park alright but couldn´t find my way back home :/ I guess it wasn´t too bad after all running for a bit longer. (I went running there today, too, and got lost again on my way back. But I blame the people I asked for help because they kept telling me to go the wrong way.) It felt kind of weird not having Silja here anymore. Because we had been doing so much all the time I had felt like a tourist in Sydney, as well. In a way I had this empty feeling that you have when something that you´ve been looking forward to has just ended. But at the same time I was a little tired and felt like starting to do normal things: studying, seeing my flatmates etc... So all in all I´m happy I got some major sightseeing done before the start of the semester.


Yey! I´ve finally written everything about THE tourist week :D Once I write about my first week of lectures I´ll have catched up with this blog. But now I gotta go to bed, so I´ll do it tomorrow...

"Useful" information

Friday was a kind of mid day for us because I had compulsory uni sessions. First I had to go to a Housing Information session and spend 2 hours listing to some things I never could´ve figured out by myself: keep common areas tidy, don´t make too much noise, be considerate towards your flatmates, take part in activities etc... The best part of the session were the cookies they gave us at the end of it. Then Carla and I went to do an IT @ UTS session, where he told us how to activate our email account (which we had done before arriving) and how to print out documents (the only useful thing). When he started talking about the library we decided to leave. I also attended the Business Faculty welcome. They had some of the faculty staff presenting themselves, a few speeches of how great the faculty is and a fun professor throwing candy to us. The faculty has been recently awarded internationally for its good quality of teaching and research.

After I was done with uni things I met Silja and we went to Geegal together to prepare some dinner. Then we went to Darling Harbour with Carla and Denise to have a few drinks. It was nice and relaxing just sitting there at the cafes/clubs and talking about everything.

Darling Harbour at night

Carla, I and Denise