Boring class 8/18-8/20

8/18

I woke up in the morning to see this great video that I was tagged in; Katie Pearce nominated me for the ice bucket challenge... So, I asked for Jennifer and Sofia's assistance. Jesse (my roommate) coincidentally also got challenged, so he bought some ice for his video, and I borrowed it. It was so windy and cold and drizzling a little.

In the Marine Environment we learned about biodiversity and processes and climate change and stuff.

I had to write a 6 page personal report for management due the next day in the morning at 9. Basically we filled out this survey and learned about our own personality, and then I had to write a long thing about myself with real examples of each personality trait. So here's some ~personal info~ about me (we use the Big Five): For extroversion, I was above average for assertiveness but way below average for gregariousness. For conscientiousness, I got below average for achievement striving and also cautiousness. For agreeableness, I got below average for altruism and above average cooperation. For Emotional Stability, I got extremely low anxiety and average anger. For openness, I got high imagination and very low intellectual orientation.

So basically I wrote 6 pages about how I'm really introverted except when I have an opinion; I'm lazy; I don't care about other people, but I cooperate; I'm pissy; and my mind wanders, and I don't like to think hard. HAHAHA.

I had so much time to write it, and I wrote one page Sunday, and then I wrote all night Monday night until 4am.

8/19

Woke up late because I stayed up until 4am. Wasn't a big deal because I wasn't going to marketing anyway, so management was at 2. In management we learned about organizational structure. It was so boring.

And then in tutorial we had our first pop quiz (!!!) But I totally aced it because I actually prepared for tutorial (we had a debate about whether sports teams are good models for work place teams hahaha). I was on the "they're a terrible model for workplace groups" side, and I totally won the whole debate.

Then I met with my finance group for a bit, and we figured out our case study. Actually I think we met earlier but I don't know which day so I'll just pretend we met this day. It was due 8/20. Nobody in my group wanted to be the intro, so I got "stuck with" the intro... bummer. I had to do so much work for my company overview (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encana ; http://encana.com/)

8/20

In marketing tutorial, we did nothing but a brief review of what happened in lecture.

Then we presented in finance. And I answered so many of the questions after the presentation, and Lynda (in my group) told me that she was "impressed that I had actually done research and knew how to answer so many of the questions" because she didn't. No big deal, I wasn't the deadweight for the team!

Royal National Park! (JK) Bowling at Darling Harbour 8/17

So during the week I planned this whole trip to Royal National Park with Emily and Sofia, and I was SO excited to go on Sunday.

We were going to leave bright and early in the morning. Unfortunately, when I woke up it was early, but pouring out. Sofia cancelled first because she would rather do her essay, and to be completely honest, I wanted to sleep more and also didn't want to get poured on. Because the night before, I went to Woolworth's to get sandwich meat and cheese and some snacks for our trip, but when I walked out of Woolworth's, the rain started pouring out, and I didn't even have a rain jacket so I had to sprint down High Street like 15 minutes and got back to my room completely soaked head to toe, and my shoes were really wet.

So, I didn't want that to happen again because then I would have no dry/unsmelly shoes left.

Emily was pretty disappointed, and then I found out that she had made this killer sandwich and had also cancelled her plans to walk Bondi-Coogee after the aquarium field trip so that she could finish her homework just so we could go to Royal National Park. I felt pretty guilty... And to make matters worse, the weather later actually turned out to be pretty decent, and she wouldn't let me off about how great the weather would've been for a hike. hahaha

She looked up fun things to do in Sydney on a rainy day, and we decided to go bowling at Strike Bowling near Darling Harbour. They had this deal -- Spend $6 on food or drink and get a free game of bowling. Pretty sweet deal!

the ball is my bebe

I got pizza.

And then I discovered this drink they have that is called lemon squash or just squash, and it's kind of like Sprite but just lemon. It's good!!!

Emily and Diane both got ginger beer. I'll have to try it another time.

Oh and I also got some fries which was stupid because I was already pretty full and only ate like 5 of them.

We played two games; I dominated them the first game, Diane got 2nd and Emily got last. In the second game, we changed lanes from the right-most lane to the left-most lane, and Diane claims that since she is a lefty this somehow provided her an advantage. Needless to say, her practice from her bowling game on her phone came to fruition, and she won by a hefty amount. I guttered a few times, but came back in the last few frames and miraculously tied Emily. 

What a great way to end, nobody lost -- everybody wins! (except Emily kind of lost both times.)

It was kind of weird, the whole area was a ghost town, there were so few people walking around. Even though the weather was nice, on a weekend afternoon, in the city.

Quidditch/Aquarium Field Trip 8/15-8/16

8/15

Didn't do too much, just watched a lot of Breaking Bad, and went to quidditch. I also got some mexican food from Guzman y Gomez from downstairs because I was lazy. The food there is not that great. Worse than Chipotle for sure.

8/16

We were supposed to get to the aquarium at 9, so Ally, Emily, and I planned to leave from campus at 8.  I probably should've realized that I was going to go to the aquarium for this class and avoided paying $40 two weeks earlier to go to the aquarium hahaha.... sad life.

We got there early, around 8:40, only to find out that the aquarium doesn't open until 9:30... So we had to sit in the cold for almost an hour!

We saw a lot of the cool animals again, and we had to fill out this packet of questions that were actually a bit difficult. I got some sweet pics of the octopus.

And this giant thing.

And this cool one that looks like it's metal.

Afterward, I went to Chinatown with Peter Nie's cousin, Tianning, and Hwang Gil and two of their friends.

Chinatown was actually pretty disappointing. It was just one block long. And only one street. So small! And they looked pretty overpriced too.

It was so funny ordering food because Tianning is Chinese and the other 3 are Korean. Everything those three said, Tianning was just like "huh?!?" They wanted to order a noodle dish and also a rice dish, and Tianning was like "why would anyone ever do that?!" ahahah. 

We finally were able to come to agreement on these beautiful dishes, here for your viewing pleasure, enjoy:

These sucked^

 Then, we went to Paddy's markets across the street because I wanted to buy a cheap belt.

Hwang Gil contemplating buying some of that weave.

Afterward, we went home. I fell asleep on the bus. I have a tendency to fall asleep on the buses here. It's so odd because I never really fall asleep on the subways in New York, during the day at least.

Chloe/Sofia's Birthday Dinner! 8/14

So, I didn't do much in the morning, as usual. Went to finance at 4, and it was so boring! We learned about pro forma statements for the 3rd week in a row, and my professor messed up his calculations, so then all of the subsequent slides were wrong... The whole point of the lecture was 'teaching' us how to make the calculations for the projections...

I had to leave at 5 to go to the dinner, but I honestly failed to learn anything in that hour and decided that was the last time I was going to finance lecture.

I asked Sofia if she wanted to meet up at the bus stop and go together, but since she lives in Maroubra in the middle of nowhere she told me the bus she was on and hoped I would get on the same exact bus somehow. Oh, and to complicate things more, Sofia's data plan stopped working.

So, I got on the first 393 that I saw and SOMEHOW it ended up actually being the one she was on. But I didn't know that for the longest time. I just sat down on the bus, and there's this camera on the bus to see the seats in the back half of the bus and a monitor for the camera in the front of the bus. After around 15 minutes on the bus, I watched the monitor and noticed this girl that looked kind of like Sofia. Hahaha

Then, we got to the restaurant Burgers & Ribs! Chloe invited a few of her friends, and the food was pretty good!

I shared ribs with Anni and got a vanilla shake that was SO thick and awesome. And we also got those onion rings that weren't even rings, but were tasty.

Burgers & Ribs was in a mall, so we went to get gelato upstairs at Anita.

I think I got Nutella and chocolate or something, but it was good!!! I'm not sure why I got that huge shake when I knew we were getting gelato afterward. My lactose intolerance was not happy with me...

When we were ordering, Chloe saw this pear and wine flavor and legitimately asked the lady "do I need to show ID?" hahaha

Chloe was telling us about her gym experiences, then tried to teach her friend George how to do squats...

So many asians

Then we left, and in the mall there were these chairs with rounded bottoms that you could sit on. SO FUN!!!

Fun night, made new friends, and so much good food!

Class 8/11-8/13

I'm so far behind on blogging!!! So much has been happening! I will try my best to catch up.

8/11

We learned all about all the kingdoms and phyla of marine life.

My fave part was watching this video of barnacles having sex; we learned that barnacles have the longest penis of any living creature relative to their body size.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TnB4dm3KyM

I like to mute the video and play this over top.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=vYMxOzxKYYo#t=48

Seriously my favorite class because it's so awesome and interesting!! Makes me wish I was a marine scientist.

8/12

Went to marketing and realized how boring the class is, mostly because I can't understand a word that my Indian professor says due to his thick accent.

I drew him instead because his slides have way too much information and there's no way to take notes.

http://www.asb.unsw.edu.au/schools/Pages/Forms/DispForm.aspx?ID=80

Pretty good right??

After this 2 hour lecture, I decided to not go to marketing lectures anymore.

In management, we learned a lot of bs about SMART goals and personality and team processes and how making a team agreement can improve how teams perform magically.

Tutorial was much the same.

8/13

For my marketing tutorial, we had to prepare for this not-graded case study, so my group kind of just half-assed it. It was pretty pointless and a waste of an hour.

For my finance tutorial, we learned all about cost of capital and WACC and stuff. So boring.

All in all, classes just are not that exciting.

Cooking class 8/10

Woke up late, and just sat around my room for most of the day.

Chloe, Sofia, Kirsti, and I signed up for an Australian cooking class! Chloe said she would meet us there, so I met up with Sofia and Kirsti at the bus stop and we headed over the Our Big Kitchen.

They gave us a recipe book, and we also got to meet a whole bunch of other people: a lot of exchange students and the volunteers were full-time UNSW students. So many nice people!!!

We were a little bored while waiting for people to show up and to start cooking, so we took some selfies.

ME~~~

+ Sofia

+Kirsti

Greg, the president of PhotoClub, was volunteering at the event and saw us taking selfies and kind of laughed and offered to take a picture for us. OMG it was like having Kobe offer to shoot a 3 for you, so of course I said yes.

This shot was taken by a ~PROFESSIONAL (on my iPhone though):

Such a well-composed picture with perfect exposure. Couldn't have done it better myself. :'D

After a bit more waiting, Carly did a bit of a welcome speech and then we commenced the chopping!!!

Some peepz we met.

While we were cutting the onions, Kirsti couldn't handle it and just kept crying. She walked out twice to wipe her tears. She only ended up cutting half an onion, and then decided it would be best to move onto something else.

We cut a bunch of veggies and then also some fruits. I also found out that peppers are called capsicum in Australia.

So... it turns out that "cooking class" just meant we chopped all of the ingredients and then let the volunteers do the rest. After we chopped enough, they let us go back out and eat some appetizers and drink. They had toast with vegemite, and I was surprised there was so much on the bread.. way more than I put on it. And they had chips with a few dips and they were the bomb.

After a bit of mingling with new people, the food was ready!!! And we were excited!!! On the right is Gil, from Korea. I met her a couple times before that, she laughs hysterically at everything I say. On the left is Anne, who is also from NYU actually. She is doing her own study-abroad program (not IBEX).

We made potato salad:

We made meat pie:

We made coleslaw:

We made Anzac biscuits:

We made a bunch of pavlovas, I don't even know what was on all of them:

I got the one with melons on it. I had never had pavlova but its basically meringue with cream and fruit on top. It was delicious.

I put the camera really close to the pavlova to create the ~illusion that it was bigger than my body, but it's really just one slice. I think Greg would be proud of my photography skills.

Harbour Bridge and Luna Park 8/9

Right now I have a midterm in 2 days, and I am procrastinating, so I will blog instead. (I'm a whole month behind)

Like the blog post title says, Jennifer, Sofia, Emily, and I planned to walk across Harbour Bridge and then go to Luna Park.

We took the bus to Circular Quay.

There were a lot of people playing music and didgeridoos and performing and this guy was using pastels or something to make this picture. He was pretty good but not as good as some of my own work.

The view of the opera house ~~

So we used google maps and sometimes google maps can be really unreliable, maybe because the data service isn't perferct. BUT we found the bridge!!

Then we had to find out how to get onto the bridge...

We walked around a bit and found the Circular Quay Saturday market!

It was actually pretty big. And they had so many cool/interesting things. Mostly jewelry, kangaroo-shaped toys, candy, clothes, soap, etc.

There was also a lot of food, which we ended up going to afterward.

We found the stairs to climb up to the bridge. I decided to take a selfie at the top because they were slow.

Ignore my finger... This guy has a ballin' rooftop pool by the harbor. Or it might be a spa or something. But I would totally live there.

Postcard-worthy photography

After we crossed, we arrived at Luna Park!!!!

Us & the creepy entrance gate

The garbage cans were interesting :D

So Emily and I decided we wanted to go on the rides, but Sofia and Jennifer were lame and said it was expensive, so they didn't want to. So Emily and I made a deal that she could pick one and I could pick one and then we would just go on 2 rides. (They sold tickets for 1 ride, 2 rides, or the whole park.) Emily wanted to go on the Wild Mouse, and I wanted to go on this one that is like the pirate ship but it also goes all the way upside down and looked really fun, but Emily said she would throw up if she went upside down or spun too much hahahhhahaahhahahaha... So we went on a different one that spun kind of, not really.

Artsy~

Boatz

There was this kiddie area that had these huge slides. The one in the back is like extreme or something and only adults can go on it but honestly the ones on the right seemed much more fun.

ME ~~~ & my bracelet. I wish they let me keep it, but after 2 rides the guy took it from me D';

So after riding our rides, we walked back across the bridge and were starving. We walked back to the markets, and even though all the stands had delicious looking/smelling food, we decided on a cafe instead because we wanted to sit too :D

We went to Playfair Cafe, which didn't even serve coffee... ? and also did not serve fries with their burgers.

I got a steak burger. I don't know why they made this because it's pretty much impossible to take just one bite since it's an actual steak on the burger and nobody ever just bites a steak; they usually have to cut it. But it still tasted good of course.

We sat for a bit, then we went back home.

For dinner I finished my lamb chops! I made them perfectly medium rare!! ~~~iron chef level ~~~

Then, later I was still hungry so I made a kangaroo steak. The first bite was alright, it tasted just like beef. Then I kept chewing it, and after every chew the flavor turned worse and more gamey. I only ended up eating half of it and threw the other half out because it got cold and tougher and then I had to chew even more times and it was just a disaster.

I also skyped my parents for a bit!!