Chinese pop concert

On Monday I skipped my finance lecture to go to a Chinese pop concert with Sharon and her family. First Sharon and I met her two brothers at a Japanese restaurant near Town Hall for dinner. I had delicious teryaki chicken with rice and sallad. Then it was time to take a cab to the Opera House, where the concert was held. Outside the house we met Sharon´s mother and some of her friends, who also came to the concert. It was held at one of the smaller theathers, which was almost full of people - we were the only non-Asians there! Sharon´s mother knew the event organizers, so we got front row seats and some special treatment during the concert.

It was young pop stars from Shenzhen (a city close to Hong Kong) coming to perform in Australia for the first time, and the concert was filmed and broadcasted live nationwide China! Even though I don´t speak Chinese, and therefore didn´t understand what they sang about, I really enjoyed all the music, songs and costumes :) All the artists were good performers and it was easy to tell they enjoyed being on the stage. I guess some of them are pretty big names in China since they had their own music videos playing on screens behind them.

Beautiful singer

This one guy was the Chinese Idol or something and many of the Asian girls went just crazy when he was singing. I gotta admit, he was really hot ;) During his second song many girls climbed up to the stage to give him flowers and get their pictures taken with him. Sharon´s mother encouraged us to go, too, and we finally decided to go when he was already finishing his song. But when we were about to climb to the stage this security lady told us we weren´t allowed to go anymore. That´s when one of the organizers crabbed flowers from this Asian girl who also wanted to go - she looked so disappointed - and gave them to us, permitting us to be the last persons to greet him. So up the stage we went, and I handed him the flowers, but we were kinda confused and didn´t stay long enough to have our picture taken with him. It was such a fun teenager moment, though lol.

The Chinese Idol

One of the last things was a traditional Australian campfire song performed by few of the Chinese singers. The event organizers had asked us (Sharon´s family, friends and me) to join them on the stage to sing with them. So there we were standing, trying to sing the song - which I had never even heard before - on a live broadcast! The eight of us were invited to join all the artists and organizers for group pictures after the show, too. I bet we got such special treatment partly because we knew the organizers, but mostly because we were the only Western people there, kinda representing Australians. We hung around for a while after the concert was over, and I got interviewed for the broadcast. The lady was really friendly, asking me questions such as what I thought of the show, who was my favorite (I couldn´t remember her name so I just described her), if I knew any Chinese or if I had visited China etc... She also said I was beautiful :)

So, that was our moment of fame! It´d be interesting to know how famous the singers actually are in China, and how the broadcast turned out. We might get a DVD of it, which would be so cool. After the concert Sharon and I decided to stay for drinks at the harbourside, viewing the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Two of her friends joined us, and we spent some time sitting there and chatting. We took the bus home right after midnight, still excited about our first experience of Chinese pop music! Now we also have this huge poster of the pop stars hanging on our loundry room wall :)

Res Ball & Good Food Month

Yesterday was the annual UTS Residential Ball. This year its theme was the 20s and it was held at the Spanish Club. I was too lazy to make any effort to find a 20s costume, so I just wore this dress I had bought some months ago. I tried to make my hair wavy but it ended up being too curly so I just put it in simple low bun. The only 20s thing I had was bright red lipstick. Anyways, it was fun dressing up and going to a club! It was quite a few of us going from Geegal, so we met outside for some group pictures before taking the bus to the Spanish Club. Everyone was dressed nicely, more or less following the 20s theme... Some people at the club were wearing some really cool stuff: dresses, headbands with feathers, hairstyles, hats etc. We were given two free drinks - beer, wine or soft drinks - and some small snacks. There was also a professional photographer there. The club was rather small but nice, and it was nice being surrounded by 20s looking people. The only thing I missed was some jazz music to create a true 20s underground athmosphere. Instead they were playing just normal dance music, which was fine for dancing, of course. After dancing, talking to old and new friends and just hanging around Cameron and I decided to leave somewhere else for cheaper tequila shots. We crossed the road to some hotel bar and sat there for maybe over an hour drinking shots of tequila - we both had two - and talking. Then it was time to head to V Bar, where the after-party was held. It´s a nice club with two levels. They were playing Spanish type dance music downstairs, where our group was dancing. I was fairly drunk and felt pretty tired, so I took a cab home with Cameron and Maryse before 3am. All in all, it was a very nice night indeed :)

Girls picture: Renee, Sharon, NingNing, Claire, Kamilla, Inger, I and Maryse

Anders, Claire, Cameron, I, Sharon, Loure Lou, Renar and Tim

Today I slept in till 11am and had late breakfast with my new coffee. It´s caramel flavored Irish Cream coffee from Gloria Jeans and I just love it :P It was a beautiful day so I decided to go to The Festival of the olive to Elizabeth Farm in Western Sydney. (It´s Good Food Month in Sydney this October, and there´re lots of different events going on in the city. On Thursday I went to Hyde Park to Asian Noodle Night Markets. There were lots of stands selling Asian dishes at very cheap prices and the park was decorated with colorful lights. There were some Chinese dance performances, as well, and tons of people. I only bought two small things, but really enjoyed the athmosphere of having the fest right in the middle of the city centre, all those people coming there straight from work still wearing their suits, just relaxing, chatting, sitting or walking around.) Well, back to the olive fest... It took over an hour to take the train and bus there, but it was worth the trip. The Elizabeth Farm was commenced in 1793, and it contains one of the oldest European buildings in Australia, surrounded by a beautiful garden area. I wandered around in the historical house, which was furnished like back in the 1800s. The farm was a perfect location for the olive fest. There were lots of stands selling olive oils, bread, spices and some artcrafts. They all had free sampling, too. Then there was a main stage, where different bands and dance groups were performing. I liked especially this Greek Dancers group. And in the taste tent some top chefs gave food preparation demonstrations. I watched one of them. This lady prepared ricotta, lamb and salsa. I wish the taste samples had been bigger, though. After wandering around and enjoying the sunny weather and food sampling for a couple of hours, until the festival ended for the day, I walked around in the neighbourhood for a while before taking the train back home. There were some really nice (and posh) houses. Now I´ve been just sitting on my computer writing this story. Soon it´s time to go outside to celebrate Kamilla´s and Inger´s Birthday. They´re having a barbeque in the court yard.

The Elizabeth Farm House

By the way, I didn´t do that bad on my finance mid-term exam, either. I got 82%. It´s funny how well I´m doing with my studies considering how little time I spend on them...

Boooorriiiinggg

It´s thundering and pouring rain! I´m happy I decided to skip this party at Circular Quay tonight and stay home instead. I bought chocolate, so I´m just gonna lay in my bed eating it and reading some magazines Sonja sent me. I´ve got Finnish Cosmopolitans, Trendi and Aalef. Receiving them really made my day, thanks darling :)

I´ve been working tons this week. Giordano is having tables at the centre court of the shopping centre, which means we´re selling clothes at two different places. I´ve been working down at the centre court and have actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It´s a lot of people down there so it doesn´t get boring at any time. Also, Mel has been happy with me making quite a lot of sales :) Hopefully I´ll keep getting enough work shifts to earn money for all the traveling I´m planning on doing.

Besides work and uni, I haven´t actually done anything worth mentioning this week. I went to Chris´ party on Saturday. It was in his house in Newtown and his flatmate, who´s a chef, prepared some delicious barbeque food for everyone. It was around 30 people there; just hanging around, making new friends, eating and drinking... I hadn´t planned to drink anything but the 2 Smirnoff Douple Blacks I had brought with me, but ended up going to a nearby bottle shop to buy some Bacardi Breezers, too. I get drunk so easily nowadays. I think it´s because I drink so seldom compared to how often I used to get drunk. Anyways, the party was good - we were actually dancing in the living room - until the police showed up. It had been just a regular party with music and no fighting or anything, but I guess in a way it´s kinda unfortunate living opposite to the police station, apart from the safety it provides.

I can´t believe how fast this year has gone by! It´s already October and I´ll be back in Finland in 3 months. In a way I feel like I´ve been here for a long time already and it´s time to go home soon. I haven´t been this happy for a long time, though :D It feels good waking up in the morning feeling excited about the new day and all the activities ahead, instead of feeling just indifferent and stressed. But I believe at the end it all depends on your attitude towards everything - Your life is how you make it be!

Festivals

Here I am, writing again... I had a great day at Bondi Beach :) I went with Sharon, Cameron and Kath and we stayed there for over 5 hours; just laying on the beach (it was windy so we got all covered in sand), walking around and most importantly enjoying the sunshine and hottness! We also had lunch at a sushi restaurant that I´d rate as overpriced. Now I´ve got a good base tan, which I can keep working on :)

I promised to write more about my weekend. I spent Sunday in Victoria Park, laying by the pool in my bikinis and trying to read some articles for a finance assignment. Suprisingly I was more interested in reading this silly book about an airhostess, though. I was supposed to start writing the essay in the evening, but I felt too tired because of being outside for so long, so I joined my flatmates to watch a movie instead.

On Monday Moy and I met in the morning to go to Manly for a jazz festival. It was the most beautiful day again! We took the ferry to Manly. Even though it´s pretty expensive, especially without concession (I still cannot understand why study abroad students don´t get concession even though exchange students do), I enjoy it a lot. It´s nice sitting outside on the deck looking at the views: some posh houses and nice apartments, private beaches, boats and of course the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. When we got to Manly we checked out the different stages - there were four of them - where jazz bands were performing. There were bands from high school groups to nationally recognized artists. Moy knows quite a lot about jazz, and even though I know almost nothing I had a good time listening to the music, too. Some day I´d love to go to a sophisticated underground jazz club, like the ones you see on movies and TV-shows (especially on Sex and the City). The main stage was right on the beach, and there were heaps of people sunbathing and listening to the bands. We walked in the water, too, which felt refreshing. Then we went to get ice cream from Copenhagen (one of my favorite ice cream places) and sat on the grass in front of another stage on the main street. At some point when we were just walking around Moy noticed his cell phone was missing. We tried to look for it, but with no success, so we went to report it missing. He ended up getting it back the next day from the police station, but we had to run to catch the ferry back.

The main stage at the jazz festival

It was a day of festivals, since we went straight to Darling Harbour to Latin Fest, which was a rather big festival with music, performances, food and other stuff from Latin countries. Moy performed there with his capoiera group. He has learned so much since I first saw him trying the moves in February, when we went to check out the capoiera class together. It´s funny how I initially asked him to join me for capoiera and ended up not going back, but he´s kept training it all this time. The capoiera teacher is so skilled; he can do all kinds of cool tricks! After Moy´s performance we both were starving, so we bought lunch/dinner from the food stands. I got a thick pancake with some kind of salsa topping, and Columbian coffee with these sweat sticks for dessert. By the time we were done eating most of the performances were over. There was still a band performing on a removable stage that was floating on the water, and we sat there listening to them to watching the view over Darling Harbour as it got darker. It was a warm and beautiful summer night. Just sitting there and looking at the Sydney skyline with all the lights made me think of my dream about coming to Australia and how wonderful this year has been so far! I´ve never regretted deciding to spend a year of my life here and there´re so many things I´ll miss after I return home.

Capoiera show - Moy doing a hand stand

A Latin band performing

Darling Harbour and Sydney skyline

It was another hot and sunny day yesterday, but I decided to be a good student and stay home working on my assignment. So I wrote it till noon, when I went to the gym where Michael taucht me some new things. He tried to teach me this exercise where I gotta throw a ball and catch it, but I missed it and it hit me straight on my face lol. It was a 5kg ball, so I was lucky not to get any bruices. After lunch I went back to the UTS to get a second shot of the cervical cancer vaccination. In the meanwhile they´ve started charging international students $150 for it, but since I got the first shot when it was still free I get the whole treatment without having to pay. I think I´m lucky since I believe the vaccination would be even more expensive in Finland. Then I decided to go for a short walk and just followed a road towards the Anzac Bridge, to a neighbourhood I had never been to before. I found this little park and some round stone statues in front of it. I sat on one of them and watched the traffic on Anzac Bridge, aeroplanes taking off and landing and an empty sports field behind some buildings. I spent a moment thinking about my goals and dreams. At the moment I don´t have any set goals, apart from graduating and wanting to work for an international company doing something challenging and exciting. I also doubt I´ll stay in one city - or even in one country - for any long periods of time. There´s still so much to learn and experience in the world! I guess the best way to pursue my goals is to finish my studies and in the meanwhile keep my eyes open for any career (and other) possibilities to be found. In my opinion it´s important to gain experience and network with people while you´re still studying, so that you´ll have something to build on when you graduate. I don´t think one should have any too specified plans - about the field of business or the location of the job - in order to be fully able to reach her full potential when an opportunity comes to her. This means I´ve got almost no idea what kind of company I´ll end up working for and in which country - or even in which continent - but I feel pretty confident I´ll gain some sort of success at some point of my life :)

Alright, this is making no sense anymore lol. I bet you´ve fallen asleep already - I almost have. Speaking of pursuing ones dreams and experiencing all kinds of new things, my brother Heka has just begun his exchange year in Kanazawa, Japan. You can read his blog at www.claudelin.net/blog (in English) if you´re interested. And another thing; I got 88% for my Economics of the Firm mid-term exam, which was a positive suprise.

Summer is here!!

I had a really good long weekend :D (It was Labor Day on Monday.) The weather has been excellent during the past week and I´ve spent a lot of time outside. It´s been hot (20-30c) and sunny but a bit windy on most days. Now I remember again why I love Australia! Seriously speaking, I was feeling a bit concerned earlier. Our new boss at work wasn´t giving me enough shifts. Holders of student visa are eligible to work 20hours a week, and I was used to working almost that full amount, until I was given less than 10hours for last and this week. Fortunately I got an extra shift this Sunday and I hear the roster for next week looks promising, too. I really need to earn as much money as I can before the end of the semester. I´ve got some major traveling plans (that may end up not being so major, depending on my financial situation) for December and January. Anyways, things tend to work out :) And thinking positively, I was lucky getting to work a lot during the cold winter months, and if I keep getting less shifts these upcoming months I´ll just have less money but more time to spend outside and with my friends.

Now, speaking of my traveling plans... I´ll definately do some more traveling in Australia in December, but haven´t quite figured out the route or dates yet. Perhaps flying to Alice Springs to see the outback and then flying to Cairns and renting a car to drive down to Sydney along the east coast. It all depends on who I´ll be traveling with and how much money I´ll have to spend. But I booked my return flights to Finland! Since STA Travel no longer operates in Finland I went to the Quantas office, where I got excellent customer service :) The lady who served me was so friendly and spent almost an hour looking for best available flights for me. Since I didn´t really get the flights I wanted she didn´t charge me anything, but I can keep calling them to ask for any added flights/seats or cancellations to get better flights. I think I´ll keep the flights I´ve got now, though, to avoid having to pay the fee that would be around $150. So first I´ll fly to Bangkok on New Years Eve. I´ll arrive there at 23.10, meaning that I´ll spend New Year at the airport. (This was the part of my flight schedule that I didn´t like. But even though I hear the fireworks in Sydney are fantastic I´m not feeling too bad about missing them, since after all I´ll get to travel in Asia!) Then, my next flight is 14.1. from Hong Kong to London. So I´ll get to spend 2 weeks in Asia, and also have to find a flight from Bangkok to Hong Kong, which souldn´t be too expensive. In addition to visiting Bangkok and Hong Kong I´m planning on flying to Phuket for a couple of days to enjoy the beaches. My final flight from London to Helsinki arrives at terminal 2 at 16.20, if anyone wants to come and see me :)

And back to my long weekend... (Sorry, I keep changing the subject with no logic.) On Saturday morning I went to the gym where I did an easy workout because of still having the flu. Then I prepared a ceaser salad for lunch and took the bus to Circular Quay, where I sat on the grass watching a street performance and eating my salad. There´s a Starbucks Cafe right next to the bus terminal, so I bought a tall douple chocolate chip iced coffee and I slowly enjoyed it sitting outside in the sunshine. Even though the sun was shining it was a bit too windy so I decided to walk to Pitt Street to check out some of the stores there, and Myers and David Jones, as well. I had been wanting to go properly shopping for the longest time - my mind was getting too limited constantly seeing only Giordano clothes - and I had a good time just admiring the expensive clothes without actually buying any. I missed Carla´s company, though. We used to go shopping almost every Thursday, and being in Myers without her felt a bit lonely. Anyways, I´ll just have to get a pair of these very short shorts to wear with or without black tights. I found a cool pair from Country Road - too expensive, and another from Kookai - not small enough sizes. So I´ve got a reason to keep shopping lol. Oh, and I found an international candy shop selling Fazer chocolate (including Geisha), Turkish Peppers, Marabou chocolate and a good variety of American sweets. I bought just a can of Cherry Coke to drink at Zain´s Birthday Dinner, which he hosted that evening. He had prepared the most delicious dinner with many different Indian dishes. For dessert Renar and Sharon had picked a chocolate mud cake from Michaels Patissaire :P Having the dinner, hanging out with people and watching The Simpsons-movie was a good end for the day.

Macquarie Bank

Pitt Street Mall

I know, this isn´t everything about my sunny weekend. But I got tired of writing last night, so I´ll just post this for now and write some more later today. Now I´m off to the beach, adios!

Cocktail Party :P

Ever since I remember I´ve wanted to organize a cocktail party. The idea is to have every guest bringing a different bottle of alcohol, and have a bunch of juices, soft drinks, fruit, berries, cream etc to make all kinds of cocktails. I finally implemented my plan on Wednesday, when we had a cocktail party in our flat. I used facebook - what an entertaining but addicting website - to allocate different alcohols to guests and we ended up having a good variety of them: vodka, bacardi, gin, jägermeister, baileys, kahlua, banana liquor and strawberry liquor. I spent the day carrying different mixers home from Coles and went to buy a big bag of ice from an liquor store on Abercrombie Street. Almost everyone I had invited showed up and we had around 20 people here making cocktails, experimenting different things, drinking them and having a good time :) I brought my laptop downstairs so people could search for different cocktail recipes online, and Tim´s blender was in constant use.


Our bar :P

In the beginning of the party it seemed like we had such excess of alcohol, which of course wasn´t true ;) I tried my best not to get too drunk, that was hard because of having all the cocktail ingredients there. I kept throwing away half of my drinks after tasting them but I ended up being fairly drunk by midnight anyways. Fortunately I wasn´t the only one! I made two cocktails worth mentioning: The first one was vodka, bacardi, cranberry juice, pineapple juice and small chucks of orance and lime. The second one was baileys, banana liquor, milk and a bit of kahlua. Zain was our master bartender, though. He remained sober but mixed the most delicious and pro looking cocktails for everyone. Besides preparing cocktails we listened to music, played never-ever-have-I (people still think it has to be sex related lol) and just hung out. And ran out of alcohol at 2am! The party ended actually pretty early, the last guest leaving already at 3am. I cleaned most of the common room before going to bed, and for some reason - I think it was Jamie - my laptop played this stupid Finnish excursion song Tahdon simpanssia koskettaa in repeat, which was perfect for cleaning lol. All in all, I had a great time and people have told me they liked the party, too, so it was definately worth organizing :) Maybe we´ll have another one before I leave...


Girls: I, Shannon, Kath, Maryse, Jamie and Monica


Kwan, I and Hiro

Even though I had mixed just everything at the party I had no hangover on Thursday! Maybe waking up to drink water throughout the whole night helped, but apart from having a sore throat (because of having the flu) I felt ok. I spent the day working on a group assignment and went to Victoria Park to read a book for a couple of hours. It was Renar´s graduation day - he´s now a master of science! - so we went out to dinner with our flat people. We went to Pancakes in the Rocks, which is a famous pancake restaurant in the Rocks. I had been planning on going there ever since Tim first told me about it in February, but for some reason I had never been there before. I just love the place! Sharon and I shared two dishes: a Greece crepe thing with spinach and cheese and two big pancakes with walnuts, marple syrup and vanilla ice cream :P After the dinner we spent some time in Circular Quay taking pictures of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge at night. It was a beautiful and warm night. Renar and Zain headed to some clubs but I decided to join Tim and Sharon to go home to sleep.


Circular Quay and Harbour Bridge


Tim, I, Zain and Sharon

Blue Mountains Trip

It´s Vice-Chancellors Week, which means no lectures and tutorials. A break feels good indeed, after the hectic last couple of weeks. On Monday I took part in this uni marketing research group discussion. UTS is continuosly aiming to improve its services and marketing to international students, which makes sense since education is one of Australia´s major exporting products. It was a group of 10 international students - all from Europe - discussing about our expections, impressions, positive and negative experiences, opinions etc concerning Australia, Sydney and UTS. The discussion lasted for an hour and half and was constructed to be pretty free - this marketing guy was just kind of providing guidelines and asking some questions. It was interesting noticing how similarly other European students think about many issues. We all had noticed the formation of groups based on nationalities, good service at the uni, not being able to choose the most interesting subjects, interaction and focusing on local issues at lectures etc... Many of us viewed Sydney as a diverse, vibrant and friendly city with lots of space and variable activities. I enjoyed the discussion, and we were given free lunch and $60 cash :) Afterwards around half of us went to Darling Harbour to get coffee from Starbucks and sit outside chatting and enjoying the sunshine. We exchanged contact info, and some of them took part in my cocktail party yesterday :)

We had been planning a day trip to Blue Mountains already for months, and finally did it on Tuesday. It was me, Tim, Renar, Cameron, Kath (Cameron´s (girl)friend from Tasmania), Sharon and Anders (an exchange student from Denmark) taking part in the trip. We woke up at 5.30am to a beautiful morning. Unfortunately not everyone was that excited about the early departure and we missed our train at the Central Station by just few minutes :/ So we sat at the cafe there for almost an hour, reading newspapers and maganizes, before taking the next train to Blue Mountains. The train stopped at almost 20 stations and it took close to two hours to get to Katoomba, from where we took the bus to Echo Point. First we took some pictures of the Three Sisters, which is an impressive rock formation and one of the main attractions. Then we started our hike by going down some 2000 steps! On our way we got to go to one of the sisters before getting all the way down to rainforest. We walked this pretty short loop in the rainforest, where Sharon and I discovered a jungle swing (a bendy branch of tree hanging like a swing) and we had a cookie break. Then we walked past the Three Sisters again, this time on the bottom of them, and continued our way towards the cable train station. Most of the path went along the edge of the rock providing some nice views of the mountains.

I´m holding the mountain together lol

When we got to the cable train station, after walking around 11km, we split into two groups. Tim and Renar took the cable train up to the visitor centre, while the rest of us decided to climb up some thousands of steps! I had already taken the train before when I visited Blue Mountains in February with a tour, so I didn´t want to pay to do it again. Besides, there were some good lookouts on the way up and I took some good pictures. When I reached the top Tim and Renar were there already, taking silly pictures of these naked statues. They persuaded me to join them for some stupid shots, before a school teacher told us to behave in fronf of his group of kids. The others joined us a bit later and we had our picknic lunch. We had brought bread rolls, ham, chicken, cheese, cookies and chocolate, that made up a good meal. And we bought ice cream for dessert. The weather was beautiful and we spent quite a while just laying in the sun before starting our walk back to Echo Point.

The Three Sisters

Anders, Sharon, Tim, I, Cameron, Kath and Renar

This time we walked on top of the cliff so we could see over the mountains. The walk was a lot shorter, too. We stopped for a rather long time at one of the lookouts; just to hang out, take some photos (people liked playing with Cameron´s pro camera), and Tim and Anders climbed to the roof of this little rock cave thing. It wasn´t a long walk back to Echo Point, from where we took the bus to Katoomba. Just to repeat the morning, we missed the train by a couple of minutes and had to wait for an hour for the next one. So we headed to the nearest pub for beer and coke. Our train trip home was entertaining, people playing with cameras etc. Once we got home I just took a shower and pretty much went straight to bed and fell asleep instantly. It was a really nice day altogether to spend outdoors :)