australia

Life, the Universe and Everything

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In contrast to yesterday, I had a rather easy day today. I slept in until 4 pm and woke up to
get some dinner. A solid 12 hours of sleep. Jimmy was saying that it’s equal to wasting away 1/2 of
my life and I agree. Perhaps I should tone down on the shuteye a bit. Anyway, since I’m doing my
final year of university, I’ve decided to go visiting around this year. Thus, I’ll be going to the
Grampians [visitgrampians.com.au] next
Saturday.

It’s a day trip organized by MONSU (Monash University Student Union) so it should be pretty fun.
It will go through the big five of Grampians – Halls Gap, Boroka Lookout, MacKenzie Falls, Zumstein
and the ominously named Jaws of Death. I wanted to go to the Great Ocean Road day trip as well, but
it was already sold out. No worries, I’ll take one of the travel deals offered by YHA [yha.com.au]. I feel an urge to go around Victoria since it
will probably be my last year here. After I graduate, I’ll be going to the United States to do
my Masters, so it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be coming back to Australia. To work I mean, of
course I’ll be coming back for holidays and such. I’ve always found it depressing that time
seems to pass by so quickly. Why, I can still remember the good times I’ve had in primary
school. That is life I guess.

Sleep is good

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I saw this Cultural Carnival going on at the campus grounds this morning as I was on my way to
class. I didn’t get to really check it out coz I was in a hurry, but there were some food being
prepared and a group playing bagpipes on stage.

The Korean booth at Cultural Carnival.

Anyway, I got my gym membership card today and a reciprocal card so I can use any of the gyms in
the campuses (there are six in Melbourne alone) of Monash University. Which reminds me (I won’t
know why it reminds me, it just did) I have to wake up tomorrow at 7 am to prepare for a client
meeting for my Industrial Experience project. That leaves…lemme see…about 4 hours of shuteye if
I prepare to go to sleep now. Sounds like a good idea. I had an issue very recently. As it turns out, it was bed bugs. Thankfully I was able to find do it yourself treatment options online so it wasn’t too much of a hassle, but still a little gross to find out. At least that’s taken care of now. I’m not sure how long I dealt with it to be honest, but it was a pretty long time if memory serves. I’m going to be more mindful of that from here on that’s for sure.

I hunger. I eat.

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The worst thing about taking the shuttle is being the 26th person in the
queue for a 25 person capacity bus. If only I had walked a little
faster, I would have been the 24th person instead. I got into the line
just slightly behind two girls. Oh well. I took the Oakleigh bus
instead since it was already docked and ready to leave. Oakleigh is one
station in front of the Huntingdale bus that I usually take.
Unfortunately my 10 trip Zone 1 ticket got wet during the
snow-in-pocket fiasco during my trip to Mt Buller and it didn’t quite
work on the validation machine. Good thing the kind bus driver let me
on anyway. I’ve only been to Oakleigh station once before, because the
nearer stations are Huntingdale and Clayton. There is a lot of
community artwork on the station wall, which looks slightly depressing
and dodgy.

Well, I had my first supervisor meeting for my Industrial Experience
project today. It was with Ashley Cambrell, a very likable guy who also
happens to be the person who wrote the program we’re supposed to be
updating now. Mmm…inside information. =D Oh, something rather
embarrassing happened to my during the IE lecture. I haven’t had anything
to eat since last night and I was chewing gum during the lecture. People
who have done this before can attest to the fact that this is a big no no.
Apparently, the chewing action produces a reflex where the stomach
produces digestion acids (can’t be bothered to check for the correct
terminology) in anticipation of the meal. However, with a piece of chewing
gum, there is no tangible “meal”. The stomach does not like being tricked
like this and will tend to protest with a loud rumbling. I swear it was so
loud, my friend looked at me and asked “Are you hungry?”. Sheesh…what
loud rumblings my stomach make. It wasn’t just a one off thing too, it was
so loud the row behind me could hear it. Heh. I finally excused myself and
got a chocolate milk and some spring rolls from Merlins to satiate the
beast.

Mt Buller Postmortem Part II

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It has come to my attention that Vivien, my classmate from high school,
has set up a blog. You can visit her
here [blogspot.com]
and someone should tell her that she doesn’t need to do 100 push ups after
just eating 4 cookies. Heh. =D

Anyway, I had a one hour break today and decided to pop into the campus
bookshop with my film developing slip to see if it has been processed. I
was told to check in on Thursday and the price lists states that APS film
takes 6 working days to develop. Well, guess what? They were erring on the
side of caution, because it was already done today! Woo hoo.

The pictures didn’t turn all out well. There were only a couple of
good ones in the bunch. I was pretty impressed with the girth of the
photos though. I took most of them in the panoramic setting so they turned
out really long. It seems that APS film can be developed either in C
(normal size), H (sized like a 16:9 television) or P (panoramic). APS
seems to be a pretty interesting film format. I’ve heard about it before,
but didn’t really know the specifics. If you’re interested, have a read
through the summary of the format

here [kodak.com].

Well, developing APS film wasn’t as expensive as I thought, but it’s not
cheap either. The processing costs for the 25 exposure roll cost me A$21.50. That comes with 2 index
prints and a Kodak Picture CD though. Added to the cost of the disposable
camera (A$25), that comes to nearly A$50. Tsk tsk…sounds slightly disturbing,
because I’m used to taking pictures with a digicam. Anyway, here are the
pictures from Mt Buller on the day my digicam had a near death experience.

A panoramic shot of me at the bottom of Blue Bullet 1 quad chairlift. This
picture was scanned from the prints.

Carving up the slopes. This picture is taken from the Kodak Picture CD.
The quality of the images in the CD is really bad, you can get much higher
resolutions by scanning in the pictures manually instead of getting a
Picture CD.

This is the friendly manager of YHA in Mt Buller.

Ripping the blue Summit run.

A really grainy shot of the village from the chairlift. A lot of the
pictures turned out badly because there was condensation on the lens of
the camera, and I didn’t realize it. Furthermore, a third of the pictures
have been slightly obstructed by my gloves. The viewfinder of disposables
are not exactly the most accurate things, because I could have sworn that
I see the glove in the viewfinder.

Read Mount Buller Part I.

Mt Buller Postmortem Part I

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I just arrived back in Melbourne an hour ago, hurting all over. Heh. It
was a very good weekend, I got a lot of runs in and it was snowing every
day too.

It’s snowing!

I actually only skied 2 out of the 3 days I was there, because I
only arrived at 1:30 pm on the first day and couldn’t justify paying for a
full day lift ticket. I just walked around the village and slopes during
the first day because I could only check into YHA at 5 pm.

This is where I stayed.

I skied the second day and boarded on the third.

Skiing down Bourke Street.

It was pretty punishing
because I was really out of shape. Loved it though. =D I did a couple of
runs down Bourke Street (a green run) on the first day and then went down
the blue Shakey Knees run. I didn’t know it was a blue run until I was
halfway down, and thought…hey, this is pretty steep. I was enjoying
myself so much, I went into an aggressive alpine crouch to pick up speed
(woo hoo adrenaline rush) and wiped out towards the end in an effort to
avoid a stopped skier. Very nice run, but a bit embarrassing on the lift
up. It was a T-bar lift and I unconsciously sat down on the T-bar and
tipped it (I was riding alone) while it was going up an incline. Bourke
Street seems rather anti-climatic after that.

View from Blue Bullet 1 quad chair lift.

I did catch the Quiksilver
GP at night but couldn’t take any photos because it seems that my digicam
does not like snow. I put it into my pants while skiing and forgot to do
up the zip, and as a result, snow got into the pocket and got the digicam
wet. It won’t even start up after that, but after a day of drying out, it
can be started up and the view pictures function is still working and I
can still copy out the pictures, but some buttons seem to be disabled. Doh!
I should have done up my pants zipper but I must have forgotten after
taking it out to snap some photos. (Update – I just tried starting up
my digicam and everything works now. Damn, the Nikon 885 is one tough
motherfucker.)

Blue Bullet 1 chair lift area.

Anyway, I got a disposable film camera on the second
day before I went boarding. Oh, one funny thing happened today. I went up
to the blue Summit run even though I’m not that good at boarding. I went
for a regular aligned board even though I’m a goofy on a skateboard. I was
carving up the slopes of the summit when the fog rolled in and I
accidentally went down a wrong run. I saw a black diamond flash past and
stopped near the Howqua black run. I had the choice of taking the Kofler’s
T-bar which goes up a steep incline (I do not like heights), taking a long
trek back up the blue Chute run or try to carve black Hawqua. If you’re
not familiar with the color codes, greens are easy runs, blues are for
intermediates and blacks are for experts only. I’ll rather go down black
diamond Hawqua
than take the T-bar up the steep Chute incline coz it will only take one look
down for me to piss my pants. Heh. The end of Hawqua wasn’t really hard
actually, but there are several hazards, including one steep turn that
only has netting between you and a drop down the slopes. I didn’t do too
good though, coz the powdery snow was pretty hard to navigate with my
board. I accidentally did a hard toe edge brake and started losing my
balance. I had the presence of mind to do an ollie to compensate for the
drift but ended up carving my toe edge straight into the power and I must
have flipped 5 meters and ended up face first in the snow. Oh boy…I
couldn’t stand up for a full minute. Heh. I had the wind knocked out of me
and I felt like I cracked a rib. That’s a nasty way to fall, I
reckon…falling ass first is okay, that’s not painful, but going face
first is pretty horrible. Anyway, that’s it for today. I have to wake up
at 7 am tomorrow for my ITPM group meeting. Stay tuned for Part II
tomorrow. I still have a bunch of pictures that’s not up from the
disposable film camera. I’m going to get it developed tomorrow.

Enjoying the fire in the main village.

Read Mount Buller Part II.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

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I picked up my Mt Buller V/Line [vline.vic.gov.au] coach transfer ticket today.
It’s A$103.60 return. That’s pretty steep but it’s the cheapest coach transfer to Mt Buller that
I could find.

Anyway, one Good ThingTM happened today. I bumped into my IE Project coordinator
today and got enrolled in the subject. =D It turns out that you can’t start IE in summer starting
from this year, so I can either do it now, or wait till March ’03 to do it and graduate November
’03. IE takes two consecutive semesters to finish, and it requires ITPM as a prerequisite.
Unfortunately, I only took ITPM this semester due to failing SDI the semester before, and SDI is a
prerequisite for ITPM. I hate these “chain prerequisite” subjects. Fail one and it could fuck you
up. But I did pass SDI last semester, so I took ITPM this semester. Back to the situation, since I
only took ITPM this semester, it seems that I’m doomed to graduate in November ’03. However, the IE
Project coordinator was kind enough to enroll me into IE even though I haven’t done ITPM because I
would have graduated in July ’03 if I wasn’t held back by IE. Woo hoo. =D Apparently, you can get
special consideration for IE if you’re going to graduate otherwise. Cheers to my mate Vivek for
informing me about the “no starting IE in summer” rule.

Well, I can’t overload while doing both IE and ITPM at the same time, so I’ve dropped one of my
subjects. The IE weekly meeting clashes with my ITPM tutorial too, so I was hoping to go to one of
the earlier tutes to see if I can get myself into one of them. But even better than that, I just
happened to log into Allocate+ (our tutorial allocation system) and found a space for tomorrow’s 12
pm ITPM tutorial! There wasn’t space in those tutes a couple of hours before. Heh. It seems to be a
day of Good ThingsTM today. I shudder to think of tomorrow when Newton’s Third Law will
be invoked. =D

Zzzzzz…

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I only had about four hours of sleep last night, so it was a record 30 minutes after waking up
before I started nodding off again, in the shuttle no less. I dragged myself to the first lecture
of the day and had several micro sleeps, which prompted the guy beside me to look at me smugly
while taking conspicuous sips from his Coffee HQ mug. Hmph…I got myself a large latte (which I
downed in three long swallows – my poor, scalded tongue) and a Chunky Kit Kat during the break.
It’s either that or fall asleep on the nice carpeted lecture theatre floor. Perked up a bit after
that and even managed to catch a bit of the really interesting lecture about the different
grades of twisted pair cables. Long day today…I had two tutorials after the lecture with a one
hour break in between. I grabbed a turkey ham/pineapple/raw onions sandwich on sour dough from
Merlin’s Cafe and camped outside my course coordinator’s office during my one hour break to discuss
some course issues with her.

Merlin’s Cafe

No sign of her though. Oh well, at least I got 10/10 for my graded exercise during my last tute.
I’m going to catch an early night and pick up my Melbourne -> Mansfield -> Mt Buller V/Line
coach ticket tomorrow after my single lecture. I can’t wait…I’m chomping at the bit for some
winter sports action already. Heh.

Slops

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Tomorrow is Monday again. It seems that the weekend has slipped by without
me realizing. Cliché, but true. Since I didn’t manage to go to the city
yesterday, I’ll have to wake up early at 12 pm tomorrow to head down to
the city to pay for my Mt Buller accommodation. My class only starts at 5
pm, which I take is a pretty good start time for Mondays. =D I’ll be in
classes till 9 pm though. Not as bad as my 8 pm – 10 pm lecture last
semester, but 9 pm is pretty late coz I need an hour to get back from my
campus. Anyway, I haven’t been up to much today…just read my lecture
notes for a bit. Pretty hardworking huh? I had dinner at the halls dining
room. Saw a tempting cheesecake but decided to eat (relatively) healthy
and settled for fried noodles with fish and a fruit salad. Heh.

Halls dining room aka slops

Oh, and my
newest Mirror Project submission
[mirrorproject.com] is up. This one is pretty uninspired, but hey, I’m
feeling pretty uninspired today.

Outback Passion

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My workload this semester is depressing. I’ll even go so far as to say that there’s a shitload
of work this semester. I don’t know the empirical value of a shitload versus a normal load, but
I’ll postulate that a shitload is significantly more than a normal load. One of my subjects even
has a graded exercise starting from Week 2! After my dismal grades last semester, I have decided
that I need to bunker down and study hard this semester if I’m going to do well. Tell you what, I’m
even going to read through one set of lecture notes after this and I’ll sleep early and wake up
early and sync another set of lecture notes to read on the train tomorrow. In fact, I’m even going
to START MY ASSIGNMENT TOMORROW NIGHT! *gasp* There you go. Seriously though, I’ll have to work
harder this semester. It is my final year of university after all. Anyway, I’ll be heading down to
the city tomorrow to pay for my accommodation booking at Mt Buller [mtbuller.com.au]. Yeah, I’m heading for the
slopes next weekend. =D I’ll be there for 3 days and 2 nights, which should be heaps of fun,
considering that my trip coincides with the Victorian Uni Championships and the 3rd Quiksilver
Interschools GP. It’s not the Mountain Dew Shredfest, but it’ll be entertaining nevertheless.
I’ll be staying at the
YHA Lodge [yha.com.au], which is probably the cheapest on-mountain accommodation at A$55 per
night. It’s the peak season and I can’t afford anything better. It will be a fun three days up at
Mt Buller and I’m already looking forward to it. Heh.

Images taken from McDonald’s Australia [mcdonalds.com.au]

Anyway, my friend Adrian came by today to download MP3s and burn some CDs. We headed to
McDonald’s after that and I tried the new Outback burger on their New Tastes Menu
[mcdonalds.com.au]. The McDonald’s here has this New Tastes menu, which changes every month to
give a bit of variety. I’ve had the Pavlova Passion before but I couldn’t fit an Outback burger
into my stomach that time, so I’m glad I had that today. Pretty nice, there is an egg in there
too. I love burgers with eggs.

The real thing doesn’t look so vibrant. Outback burger meal with Pavlova Passion dessert.

That is some damned brisk walking indeed

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There I was, walking to the bus loop to catch the shuttle to Caulfield, when I caught sight of
the line. It was really long and I started counting before I reached the loop. There was 24 people already waiting in line and the shuttle fits 25, so I picked up my pace a bit and walked briskly to the bus loop. When I was about halfway to the waiting bay I saw this guy walking from the other end.

He caught sight of the line too and started to trot a bit as well. Not to be outdone, I started to walk faster as well. I needed the stability whilst running but must keep the pace too so the shoes I had on proved to be very helpful. Unfortunately, the waiting bay is closer to the other end of the bus loop so naturally he reached there first. Grrr…I had to take the bus and the train to
Caulfield. Oh well.

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