Inside the Mind of Her... (redux)

I don't blog anymore.

Domi visited two weeks ago and we traveled to Sydney and Uluru. It was a fabulous time, but went by too fast and made miss home immensely.

About a month ago I did a trip down the east coast of Australia. I saw a lot in a short period of time (getting scuba certified and Fraser Island were the highlights). I met some cool and not so cool people there, but overall it definitely introduced me to the beauty of Australia. I'm in the process of uploading photos of it to Flickr.

I'm in the process of planning more two more trips: Thailand and New Zealand. The former has been a headache, the latter I booked in about 45 minutes, as I'm going alone and doing this tour.

It should be a good fun.

Back from my trip down the east coast of Australia.

Lost my cell, and booked the wrong flight home, but I'm in one piece.

Updates later this week.

That's right, Amateur Night. It looks like I might get dragged out drinking regardless. It can't be as bad as the B&T crowd in NYC, right?

Well, scratch that above schedule and replace it with this:



It took me 15 minutes into Environmental Politics and Management for me to realize I was in way over my head. It was not necessarily difficult, it was just completely about the Australian political system, which I know nothing about. As soon as it was over I bolted and got an add/drop form (can't do it online here) and dropped that shit. I added The History and Theory of Photography, which actually seems good. Outgoing professor, raised interesting questions - it might be a pleasant surprise.

Behold my schedule. It sucks because at the university basically all the classes are large lectures, creating mandatory recitations, or tutorials (tutes for short). This just allows for more useless class time.

Speaking of which, my class "From Graffiti to Terrorism," an intro to criminology class, will have both the class notes and audio online. I'm almost offended by this. At NYU having the class notes online for large lectures is somewhat of a common practice, but to actually have the professor's lecture to listen on your iPod I find ridiculous. Of course this will allow me to skip my Monday lecture, which may get in the way of some of the traveling I plan on doing while I'm here.

Oh, technology.

I tried to plug in my Wii here and the AC adapter literally exploded, rejecting my outlet converter. Nintendo is telling me that it is user error, costing me $25. It exploded because I need a special converter to use the Wii in addition to a compatible TV, one that has a NTSC signal, whatever that is. Sigh.

This past weekend my internet went out for 48 straight hours because the ISP moved its offices. They sent me an e-mail prior to this telling me service would not be affected, but of course it was. After sending an irate e-mail to them they replied: "As sent out to all e-cable users, we advised that there would be disruptions to the service as we were relocating offices."

Hey bitches, that e-mail you sent out stated, "Note that network and service availability will not be affected by this relocation and only telephone contact will be unavailable." This is war.

As blogged earlier, during this outage I was stealing internet from a restaurant in The QV. My battery was getting barely 1 hour of life under its most energy-efficient settings. I called up Fujitsu and they're going to replace the battery, only charge me for shipping. However, they won't ship to Australia, but told me to try their Asia Pacific hotline and perhaps they can assist me with that.

Ugh, customer service.

My internet has been out, so I have been quite irritable.

Right now I'm sitting in the middle of The QV, realizing that my battery of my laptop has progressively gone to shit. I think I'm going to call them and bitch. Hopefully Fujitsu can rectify this situation like they have done to the rest.

Friends have been made here, which is promising. Tomorrow school starts with my only class being "From Graffiti to Terrorism." The class better be super good, if not I'm going to switch into "The History and Theory of Photography." Enrolling in that would allow me to not have class Monday and Friday. Score?

Hopefully all will go well.

Once I get the real internet back I'll make sure to post my schedule.

So it's been over 100 degrees Fahrenheit everyday since I've been here. Somehow, up until today, I've been OK with this. I'm coming from a freezing New York and have been desperately wanting to see some sun. I was definitely feeling some Seasonal Affective Disorder in New York and saw this as a type of cure.

Despite my apartment having no air conditioning, I've been able to sleep fairly well up until last night. I laid in my bed, almost in a panic, thoughts racing about how hot it was. At 02.30AM I had it and ran into the bathroom and took a cold shower. Towel still in my hair, I fell asleep within 5 minutes.

Today was not much better. I got my ass over of Fitzroy (the East Village of Melbourne) and found a cute pizza place called Bimbo Deluxe. I have been craving pizza the past few days (it doesn't really exist here) and this gave me enough motivation to go out in the heat. The pizza didn't fully satisfy my craving, but it did well enough. I walked around a bit in Fitzroy, but was so overwhelmed by the heat I ended up back at my apartment fairly soon thereafter.

I want to do a bunch of exploring here in Melbourne, but this heat has definitely stifled these plans. I wrote a desperate e-mail to my mother earlier to evening for her to buy me a portable air conditioning. We'll see how well that goes down.

Other things? Well, I don't really have any friends here. Yet, at least. I've been waiting on Tuesday, where UniMelb has orientation events for new students. Since I've been here I've met a few jackasses in my building and an online acquaintance. It's odd, I think of myself as an outgoing person, but I'm totally not the type to just walk into a bar and have a drink by myself. I feel like that's totally a guy thing to do. If a girl does it, to me it's like asking for someone to have sex with her.

Hell, maybe I'll do it. I'll go to a bar, read a book at my stool and see if anyone thinks I'm interesting enough to talk to. Meh.

Australia is beautiful.

I have a vendetta against the Internet Smileys banner ads that can now talk.