Done Exams... and enjoying Australia!

Finally, good lord, I never thought this moment would get here, but I am done exams. Not having a full break for summer was pretty difficult - I wasn't ready to go back to school, so this 2 month traveling break should be really good for me!

I had my last exam on Monday - my immunology final. It was pretty difficult, but at the end I was just glad to be done with it. I enjoy the content, but it's difficult to memorize every single detail, and the difference between CD4, CD8, CD28, CD25, CD80, CD86, CD3, CD16, and yes, I do know exactly what all of those do :S

This Weekend
This past weekend, we did quite a few things. On Friday night, despite not being done exams, and needing to study a lot, I decided to go out for halloween. We had tickets to a club, and it was Jennifer's last night out, so we decided to make it count.

I had decided to be a doctor (since I had the scrubs and lab coat) and Rachael had decided to be some sort of cat (from Mean girls). We got ready, but decided we weren't scary enough, so we dropped by IGA and picked up some cornstarch and food colouring, and proceded to make a huge mess of fake blood all up on ourselves (my lab coat is now ruined).

The cabs came far too early, so there was a lot of binge drinking... Now, I'm not normally a fan of binge drinking, I mean, I don't even drink regularly  maybe like, once every 2 months... But a bottle of beer at an Australian bar or night club, will cost you about 9 dollars, so this is something we had to do.

Anyways, we got to the club, and it was a lot of fun. Our cab driver gave us a tour of the city as we drove around, while the girls snuck a bottle of wine in the back (funniest image ever). We get there, we dance, we speak sign language (BSL) and then basically decide to go home, listening to some cool tunes all along the way. Oh, and we ran through the sprinklers at the end.

The next day we didn't do much of anything. Jennifer and I made some awesome friendship bracelets (mine is the colours of the Swedish flag). But we decided the next day to check out the Caversham Wildlife Park in the north of Perth.

Good bloody lord it was a journey to get there. We missed our first bus and train, so we decided to catch another bus into the city. We got off in a random spot, and walked to Perth-Wellington train station, only to find out that the Midland line wasn't running today (which makes no sense). We ended up getting replacement busses (and it was a bendy bus, so I was excited) and we started heading to our next bus stop.

About halfway through, it just started pouring, but no website said anything about rain - they were all 0% chance of precipitation... >:( Anyways, we get to the bus stop, and find out that we missed the last bus by 3 minutes, so we now have to wait an hour... So we kill the time by trying to lure Jess into a lift, and eventually just picking her up and carrying her in - go teamwork. Long story short, bus comes, and we get there.

When we first arrive, we're greeted by some dude who offers to take us on a bus tour of the park - seemed kind of dodgy, but was actually really nice. Drove us through Whitman Park (10 times the size of King's Park... and King's is huge) and drops us off at the wildlife park.

The flies were awful. All up on your face and everything, I was ready to kill every insect in the world.

Anyways, of course, the first thing we did was the meet the kangaroo exhibit, where I got to lie down in a hole and chill with some roos, which was awesome, but also terrifying, since they have claws that can destroy you. We got to feed them, and they ate out of our hands, and basically it was just really awesome.

After that, we accidentally wandered into some bird sanctuary, and as soon as we got in there, we were greeted by an incredibly territorial bird, which was hissing and yelling at us. You best believe we tried to get Jennifer (who has a debilitating fear of birds) into that cage.

We then checked out the farm area, and saw every animal that we have in Canada, in Australia. We saw some Koalas, Dingos, and basically every other form of Australia wildlife, and it was pretty cool all in all.

This guy right here, new best friends for life.

Exams are incredibly stressful.

How're you going?


So I've currently completed 2 out of my 3 exams and I only have one more to go. Unfortunately it's going to be the most difficult one. I'm also legitimately concerned that I failed Pathology, as it was incredibly difficult not having the prerequisites of histology and histopathology, but hopefully everything works out as it should, and I pass it. I'll update you on that, because I definitely don't want to be screening any more pap smear slides.


Much respect to cytologists, I would never want to do what you do all day.


My last exam is immunology, and arguably I should be studying for it right now. It's my friend Jennifer's last night out in Perth tonight, so we're dressing up like pirates (and a doctor for me, since I have the lab coat already) and heading out into the city, so that should be fun.


I've been taking little breaks during exam time, and getting out to explore the city. Now that I know for sure that my time here is limited, it's making me take advantage of all of it - funny how that goes - I feel like I'm dying in a sense, it's weird.





Highlights of the Week Include:

• Checking out King's Park and our 2 hour walk through the city to find food in Northbridge
• Getting to ride the bendy bus
• Hiding from Jess at the back of the bendy bus
• Performing magical spells on the bendy bus
• Being forced to sit 45 minutes longer than I had finished in my psychology exam
• Trying not to laugh as the crows outside called for Jennifer to join them
• Throwing my shoes into a pond so Jess could take her pictures
• Jess's phone falling into the pond
• Walking through the architecture building with Jennifer
• Insisting that I knew where I was going, then getting lost because it's like bloody hogwarts. 

To my fellow international badgers...

Hey Badgers,

I just want to let you know, that when international services tells you that you need to have your courses approved before you get on a plane, it really is for your benefit.

Switching from Curtin University to City University in Hong Kong (CUHK) has its difficulties... one of which being that course approval from Brock is a bloody nightmare.

It's 10 times easier for people to ignore your emails if you're not in the country. I'm not saying that people do - because I've had quite a few wonderful professors / academic advisors / administrative assistants get me approved very quickly, but there are some emails I sent months ago that still have not got a reply.

This is my face as I try to figure out which courses I can and cannot take.

So before you leave for your amazing exchange, for the love of god, get your courses approved, and get at least 10 more approved too, because you never know if you won't like something or if there is a conflict (both of which have happened to me already).

Other than that, preparations for CityU are going awesome! I've got to apply for my visa soon, which I've been putting off, but hopefully I can get that done today.



Also, a shout out to my new apprentice of the dark side: Darth Lisa, lord of the sith.
Skype truly makes the world a smaller place.

One minute you're waiting for the sky to fall, next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all.

I'm trying really hard to be productive today, so far I am failing, but there's still time to change!

I'm currently working on my article for this semester's publication of Brock Health. I wrote an article last year, but wasn't too happy with how it turned out. It was good for raising awareness of the issue of the aging Canadian population, but that's in the news all the time. I wanted to write something that Brock students could relate to, so I instead chose to write an analogous article; here's a little sneak peak:



Living on campus in your first year, it’s easy to think that the world beyond the escarpment doesn’t exist – with the exception of the Pen Centre of course. In the spirit of that wonderful callowness, let’s assume for 5 minutes that Brock University is the world and all inhabitants, countries and ethnic groups are equally represented among our 18,000 students. First off, a mere 90 inhabitants are Canadian. These students from Canada enjoy a long life expectancy of 80.8 years, however the 61 students from Mozambique enjoy a significantly shorter life expectancy of 49.7 years. If you’re a student living in Sub-Saharan Africa, you may choose from 1 of 3 doctors, but If you’re a student of Europe or Central Asia, don’t worry; we’ve got 58 that you can choose from.

To get the statistics that I'm including is pretty difficult, and involves quite a bit of math to correct for errors, but I'd say that the end product is going to be worth it, as long as I can draw attention to the fact that the rest of the world does not have the luxuries that we have. I'm basing my influences on this around a number of things, like the 100 people world project, the fictional CJ Cregg's speech, and my own experiences with the Australian health care system.

Let the world know that I should also probably be studying for exams... Probably.

Anyways...

I went into the city yesterday with two friends (whom I'll be travelling with) so we can get our money pouches (the thing with the neck strap that you keep your passport and wallet in, under your shirt). I've still yet to buy a backpack, but I think I'm going to do that today off of ebay.


We started off by heading into the city, looking around, and going to some crazy surplus store. Some fond memories of the day are as follows:

• Purchasing and Eating a "doughnut man"
• The bird fight that happened right in front of us
• Getting stuck in the elevator
• Getting lost in the slanty-floored Target (to which nobody else noticed the slant...)
• This was a serious slant. Alicia Hodgins would have walked upright in this store.
• Walking to the Bus Terminal and instead realizing we can take the ferry
• Taking the ferry = best part of the day.
• Seeing the dolphins swimming next to us at the ferry jetty. 

That's about it right now. I've got to get back to writing this article / studying for exams / buying a backpack off ebay / doing my 3 hours of ushering work for my performance class. 

See ya!

On the road again

After much procrastination, I've decided to finalize and post my travel plans. I use the term finalize incredibly loosely, because I'm not exactly sure of anything beyond December, but it's definitely what I hope to do. This plan will probably change, but it's all I have for now.


Today is my last day of classes at Curtin, and I don't believe I'm going to be returning for another semester. It's been fun, but after a lot of thought, there's one thing that everything keeps boiling down to:

"Life is short".

Think of it in any way that you want to, Yolo, Carpe Diem, but I feel the need to get out there, see the world, and define who I am before I get any older. You've gotta take advantage of the things in front of you before you die, right?

Anyways, here is my plan thus far:

 Early November: Backpack Indonesia

Late November - Late December: Backpack Thailand and Cambodia

January - May: Go to City University in Hong Kong for one semester

May to June: Backpack New Zealand, Possibly Australian East Coast

July and August: Backpack England, France, Spain, Holland, Sweden

September: Return to Brock!



For the first part of this journey (Up until Hong Kong) these are the homies that I will be traveling with, all from the UK, which I think is pretty cool.

I don't want to really overplan the trip, but I'm still waiting on acceptance from my HK uni (and acceptance into res there), as well. Oh, by the way: anyone who would like to join me for backpacking is more than welcome - the more the merrier. 

Anyways, that's it for now!

Alabama Arkansas, I do love my ma and pa, not the way that I do love you

What up my bloggers?

Play the song at the bottom as you listen to this blog... It's what I'm writing it to.

I'm sitting here late at night, 95% done on my project, but finding it difficult to get over that last 5% bump, and it's got me thinking... I seem to do a lot of that these days.

I watch videos on youtube of people who just spread hate everywhere they go, and those that are so anti-human rights it's not even funny. Sometimes it's got me sad that no matter how much we try to improve the world, there's always going to be people like Ann Coulter trying to resist it. You could argue that it's just a difference of opinions between me and her, but I don't think that's true. When you use hate speech and warp facts to turn other's to your opinion, you go beyond free speech into hate speech - and that just don't fly with me yo.

It's times like these that I struggle to find what I can do as one person, and how I can attempt to change the world for the better. Society tries to do what's best for it, but it needs a little push sometimes - and what I feel is best for society, is equality. It may sound pretty dumb, or it may sound pretty smart, but it's what I think the world needs most. There's plenty of things in the world to improve, but I'm gonna start with this one. I'm gonna work through social change, social media promotion, and maybe use some of my graphic design skills to leave something good on this earth, you know?

I put the R-Word campaign as my facebook banner today. Back in Canada I was really adamant about when other's used it in front of me, but I've gotten really lax about it here (due to overwhelming use by the Australian population). Hopefully I can change at least one person's mind in the short time I have here.

I really missed the boat on liking this song, but I think it's good either way.

Aquarium Adventure

 After lots of re-scheduling, we finally went to the aquarium. It was kind of funny how it worked out, because we rescheduled it to accomodate for more people, but it turned out that it was just myself and DJ Sweden who could go... but we had a lot of fun anyways.


We both woke up in the morning late, and ran to catch a bus. I didn't really have time to look at the directions before we left, which proved to be an unwise decision, but we were in a hurry.

 We started off catching a bus to Canning Bridge train station, just like the regular going into the city, but I couldn't stop sneezing, so we stopped off at Hay street so I could get a fruit smoothie (I'm not sure why I thought this would help, but it did).

After running to get it, we ran back to the train station, because our next train to the North was going to depart. Both of us had never been to the North of Perth before, since there's not much really up there but houses (or so we thought). Anyways, the train arrived, and we jumped on it, expecting (because of google maps) a 15 minute journey.

 30 minutes later, we arrived at our "destination" which was Clarkson station. We walked out to the bus terminal, and attempted to catch the 456, but it was nowhere in sight... The only buses available were in the 480 range...

Being a little bit confused, we eventually asked for assistance.

After talking to someone from Transperth who helped us, we figured out that we had in fact missed the station we meant to get off at - 6 stations ago, and we were at the end of the line... Which probably explains why we were seeing the outback from the side of the train.

It also explains why we were on the train for 15 minutes longer than we intended to be.

We then proceded to get back onto the train, and travel the extra 15 minutes to go back to the correct bus stop.

 After getting on the correct bus, our excitement began to increase. We hadn't really researched the aquarium before we went to it, we only looked at the prices, and opportunities, because we didn't want to spoil it for ourselves.

It was located in a really nice neighbourhood... Two story houses (which are a big thing for Perth), bricked driveways, and nice cars. It kind of felt strange being on a bus going through that neighbourhood  Anyways, we get off the bus and discover that we are not only at the aquarium, but the aquarium is located at this awesome marine harbour / boardwalk thing, with at least 2000 people there as well.

Needless to say we were really excited. There was a food court, with at least 10 different shops, as well as cafes, restaurants, tons of shopping stores, and plenty of stuff to do. There was even a beach, waterslides, a ropes course, it was awesome.










We said to each other "I think the train derailed and we were killed, because this place is heaven".

We chilled on the peer again, and then decided to go looking for the aquarium. It was 20 bucks to get in on a student concession, so not too shabby.

Once we got in, it was actually an incredible amount of fun. We spent a lot of time looking at fish, and it was right on the ocean, so it was pretty relaxing. The best part, was shared by two experiences.

The first was this ocean tunnel room. We went down a bunch of stairs, and then got on a luggage conveyer belt (the type you see at the airport). The conveyer belt took us into this glass tunnel that went through this ocean tank. Fish were swimming all around us, and the look on our faces in the picture was basically glued to our faces for the entire duration. There were huge sharks twice as big as me swimming around, and sea turtles bigger than me. There were tons of big and little fish, and the entire experience was just awesome.

The other highlight of the aquarium was something that I think was designed for kids (although I had a lot of fun with it). It was a touch tank, where you got the opportunity to touch starfish, sea cucumbers, Fiddler rays, and some time of shark which I forget the name. We spent quite a bit of time touching the fish, and they were a lot different than what I expected them to feel like. The shark had a rough skin, which it looked like it had, but the fiddler ray felt almost furry when you touched it. It kept coming up to the surface of the tank, and flapping around, which was incredibly cool.


After seeing plenty of fish and other marine life, we left the aquarium, got some food at the food court, walked around, explored a little more, fought off birds, and then caught the train back home. All in all it was a pretty awesome day if you ask me. I wish I had discovered this place a lot earlier. If you're in Perth, make sure you check out the Aquarium of Western Australia.

My Accent

This is also my new favorite hat.

Are you trying to tempt me? Because I come from the land of plenty.

What up my homies? I've recently decided - since this is after all a travel blog - to update it more often with my plans and travels, and keep the personal stuff to my personal blog.

Jennifer (this really awesome Swedish girl) and I had a tourist day a little while ago - and we're planning on going to the aquarium Saturday, which I'm super pumped for. Basically we went into the city, took pictures of fancy moving clocks, and checked out this place called Sci-Tech.

 First we went into the city, and checked out Murray and Hay street, which was actually surprisingly fun. We didn't take the train, but instead took a bus, which was nice, because the kind of people you see on the train are usually of a strange caliber. Considering we were taking selfies, we were probably the strangest two on the bus.

Anyways, after walking around, checking out London court, and getting lost in a fancy church / shopping centre (seriously, it was both) we met up with James and went off to Sci-Tech, since our trip to the aquarium was post-poned.

 Long story short... it wasn't exactly the place for people of our age group... that is what we weren't told before we went there.

Don't get me wrong, I love science, and I love teaching science to kids, but being there, the three of us, with a mean age of 20 years old, was a little strange, considering the mean age of the establishment was about 7.

Needless to say, we made due with whatever we could... We paid 10 dollars, and damnit I was going to learn about science. My favorite is the camouflage wall, since we are clearly the best dressed people in the place. There were many other attractions, but I didn't take too many a picture, so I didn't run the risk of looking like a seedy 20 year old.


Later on, I hung out with the British Bunch, who I will be going traveling with. The original British bunch names are here: Lady London, Madame Manchester, The Waterloo Woman (or Dame Darby?) and Bubble Bath... featuring DJ Sweden. DJ Sweden won't be on tour in Thailand, which is upsetting, but all the rest of the British Bunch (plus two I haven't made names for yet... but I will) will be attending. These other pictures basically highlight what I do on a regular basis. Party with friends, and push them around in shopping carts... Straya.



Anyways, that's it for now. I'm probably gonna post this on facebook, since what's the point in having a blog, if nobody reads it!
I'll update on Thailand soon, once I figure out what's going on.