The Zoo!

Nothing much to report this time really, haven't done anything beside visiting a few shops and doing school work. However there was one major event this weekend, a trip to the local zoo!

This zoo was kinda in the middle of nowhere.

 Saw a lot of familiar animals, here we have Timon!

Ninja Turtles

I don't know, he just looks cool.

 The greedy bastard stole my bag with all the animal food.
They had reindeers and cows here too: Didnt find those so
interesting :p

Loved this guy though, a red panda!

And I guess this is one of the animals everyone wants to see.

Awwwwwwwwh, they're quite cute!

 Herroh!

I can see what you did there! I backed off when he eyeballed me.

 

Hell yeah, kangaroos equals awesome!

 Oh yeah, and in the middle of nowhere we stumbled upon a Hindu temple,
we were not allowed to take pictures inside. But, it looked like crap inside.
Fun to see anyway, and it was crowded, jeeez. Looked like every person of the Hindu faith
was congregating there.

Oh btw, this is like a normal lunch at uni. A pint, and potato wedges
with sour cream and sweet and sour chilli saus. This epicness will
cost you around eight dollars. (I'm gonna get so fat)

First weeks at UNI

Sorry for the long wait between the updates, but there has been so much going on down here. The workload at UNI her is horrendous, that is, since I haven't done all the pre-reqs, I have some prework that needs to be done before eash assignment basically. Luckily thought the subject are really interesting and the professors in two of the classes are awesome! Sadly though, two of the other professors, not so much. They're from Asia somewhere so their English is pretty bad :p

Anyhow, as a true student, we dont get any work done until the last possible minute, so here's what we have been doing instead of studying!

I guess this is the mandatory picture when you're in Sydney.

 

A park in Sydney quite nice!

 Harbour Bridge

 The Sydney skyline as seen from the Opera

Apparently Batman and his followers lives in a Botanical garden close to the Opera

 Winter in Australia is awesome!

 Just a normal Saturday at campus east, beer and BBQ 1min away from the beach.

Having fun at the playground

We also had an open mic evening, and Casandra here played three pieces, it was awesome!

 This is from last night, Sydney Pub Crawl, got four outta four pubs! 

So the last two weeks has pretty much been a timesink for the stuff above, and of course
some new and old tv-shows has demanded some attention. Warehouse 13 is back on, awesome! I also Started watching a show called Combat Hospital, it's about a  surgical hospital in Iraq or something it's is not a modern version of MASH though, this is a drama and not a comedy. However it's quite entertaining.

Anyhow the largest timesink so far I guess have been:

1016 pages of epicness!

Anyhow, can't really tell when I'm gonna update again, I got to study hard the following weeks. I already got three assignments of varying size. The worst is however one due in one week. Which is I'm actually running in the background now. It's in System Administration, which so far has been Operativsytemer/Datateknikk med fyskk light, but the assignments have nothing to do with the lectures. The first assignment is as follows:

Install FreeBSD
Install Apache and MySQL
Install Nagios (Monitoring tool)
Configure all this so if something happens you'll get an email and an sms
And all the services you monitor, is also gonna be available on a website where you can check the status.

Happy times!

The two other subject though are quite ok so far.
In Introduction to enterprise computing, we're going to make a java application which talks with a JPA database. Where you create, update, delete cars etc in a register.

And in Information and Communications Security we've to write a research paper, regarding some
computer security issues.

I guess that is it for now, dinnertime! I mean, studytime....

First day at UNI etc.

Well, since last we spoke (If i can call it that) I've gone hiking, bought some more crap (a Australian simcard and such), enrolled in my classes, been at uni, been out partying, and met quite a few new people. One of them hit me as kinda weird from the very beginning. The first thing he said to me was his name, followed by "and I'm a virgin" and then "I have no idea why I said that" Well neither did I, I was utterly clueless.


Anyhow, moving on, I also met some really great mates I went hiking with on Mt.Keira. It took us about hmm a total of four hours give or take, including the BBQ at the top. The way up was steep as hell, and frankly a rainforest.

Some places were so steep you had to climb like a monkey!

Me and Nora at the summit lookout point.

We also checked out the beach/ocean located about five minutes from our accomodations

Nice beach for a run, its also about the same lenght in the opposite direction I guess.

Quite vast.

And one of the big happenings this week was the infamous Disney party, dress up as your favourite Disney character, and go balls out.

So, this is Mrs.Incredible (one of my roomies),  Friar Tuck, Lilo, and some random Fairy

I choose Friar Tuck simply beacuse it was cheap, like 21$, and I could wear whatever under the costume , cause it can get quite cold here in the evening.

The first day at Uni was simply an orientation day, nothing special, got free lunch though, so that is quite nice. And they had some lectures on the fauna and stuff in Australia, what animals to look out for, how to behave while you are in the water surfing/swimming etc. Quite enlightening.

 

 They had brought with them some of the wildlife to campus.

 These strange birds is kinda like the local pidgeons I guess.
They weren't especially afraid of humans.

This is a statue to commemerate the "Evil Duck" Apparently there was especially one mean duck that came up and stole food from students. They're actually so accustomed to it, so if someone drops a heap of bread on the lawn, they eyeball it for a long time before dare to venture close.

So, just to close it off for now, here are some pictures from Campus East (my accomodation), nearby nature and other goodies.

 Campus East

 Campus East

 Mt. Keira a tad to the left

I'm in heaven!

Oh yeah, guss I should mention that on Uni campus they have a bar, game room, duck pond and some really nice grounds, similar to the grounds from Campus East. Oh, one thing that baffled me a bit, was the amount of Americans here. At the orientation, they listed all the nationalities attending, and they had to stand up. Well 80-90% were Americans, hell, if I wanted to meet Americans I would've applied for a Uni in the US. Alright, I guess that is it for now. Again, it's time for more beer, looking forward to the classes already, maybe I'll get some time off then, from all this partying and other stuff :p

The first few days continued

Day number two.

We (me and the four girls) went downtown Wollongong to get hangers, blankets, toothpaste, shampoo etc etc. And that was about it, we were supposed to leave for the party at 2pm, so we didn't have that much time.

Well, we met up with the peeps that were going to take us to the party and headed for the trainstation. About 45 minutes on the trained and we arrived, at the before party. Here we were just shown out to the terrace and seated. A few mins laters, the dude arranging the party comes out with a few sixpacks and just hands out. Then he proceeds to get crackers, cheese, chips etc. And we were like 15 people, getting free booze. An hour later or so though, five more people arrive, and by then his parents had ordered pizzas for us. One huge stack from Pizza Hut! So far, free booze and free food, awesome! By then I was getting kinda chilly, so we went inside.

Oh, did I mention he had a pool table and a foosball table?
Anyhow, we where going to a club in Sydney called Scary Canary, and this dude he knew the owner or something, so we got free entrance, and a free drink.

 

What we didn't know though, or at least I didn't was the the douches from the British version of Jersey Shore was coming down there so MTV was there filming and stuff. A side effect of this however that was quite pleasant was the Wet t-shirt competition. Apparently this one girl was hell-bent on winning, so she stripped down to her undies, no need to say, she won, titties yeah!




So far nightlife Australia  > nightlife Norway

http://munky.com.au/photos/549754

Yeah, check that out, creepy.

We were supposed to leave at 0030, cause that's when the last train was going home, but we goofed around and missed the last one. So we stumbled upon the rest of the group on the trainstation and we all headed back to where we were at the before party, and crashed there.

 On they way home, waiting for the train to depart.

We were like 18 people, I shit you not, and his parents had put out sleeping bags etc. So we crammed together on sofas, beds, on the floor etc. But, I shared room with a dude, whos last words before going to sleep was: "I can't wait to get my snore on"

It was worse then a sawmill, I could not sleep for shit. So at 0600 the fater in the house wakes up and comes into the kitchen/livingroom to make breakfast. And Im like, morning mate!
So he asks if I want to have, toast, tea, and freshly pressed orange juice from their homegrown (they own a farm) oranges. So we sit around eating and talking for a while and I asked him for the names of the trainstops I should jump off at to get back to campus. And he offers to drive me down to the trainstation, and of course I take him up on that. When we get down there, get his, he asks me if I got money for the train, I just met this guy a couple of hours ealier. ANyhow, I had money, so I got back at 0900, went to bed, slept until 1600, dinner went back to my room, watched movies and went to sleep.


Hospitality Australia > hospitality Norway

The first few days

Alright lets see if I actually can be arsed to keep this updated. Anyhow, this was after a wish from one of my classmates so I hope this will make her happy!

Anyhow, where to begin?
The flight down was 27 hours of traveling, it was pretty ok, entertainment system on the plane, saw a few movies, read some and slept. Had to go through three security checks in total though, one for each terminal, I mean, wth am I supposed to manage to pick up while walking from one gate to another.

It went without a hitch, except they had to check out the Camelback waterbottle I brought though, it looks like a pipebomb or something I guess on the x-ray.

Upon arrival I got picked up by someone driving for the university, so they drove me all the way from Sydney to campus in Wollongong. Got my linen, keys and such and got shown my room. On the way there however, the dude giving me the tour said: "Alright, so this is the slums, this is where you live" All I could think was, well, it really looks it part.

This however is the sight that greeted me when I got to my room. Well, minus all the stuff (I thought I had a before picture)

Anyhow, it was dark, windy and freezing and I thought, what have I gotten myself into. It's winter here in Australia now, so it's like 14degrees outside, or more in the sun ofcourse, but the rooms are freezing.

Anyhow, after this I just went around exploring and check stuff out. When I got back to the reception where I got picked up to begin with, I met four Norwegian girls who had just arrived, and so happens they where all from Trondheim, or studied there at least.

After some more stumbling around we all ended up at some peeps from Australia and talked garbage for some hours, and we got invited to a party the next day, so all in all a good first day, all that remained was to go back to bed in fetal position and try to keep warm.