Thursday, February 26, 2009

I'm a tourist.

Perth at Night from Kings Park
Went here after The moon cafe' which has amazing moon burgers that fall apart on you. I had a headache from the long day in the sun at Future Music, but fortunately Angiolina had some paracetamol (like advil) along with some fresh air fixed that right up.

Kings Park is the biggest outdoor park in the WORLD. Ya..bigger than Central Park in NY. There was definitly some great views (of all three sky scrapers) and you can see the "Perth eye" ferris wheel along the Swan River.



Future Music Festival @ Wellington Square
March 1st, 2009..It was a pretty awesome festival, It was about 35 degrees and very humid out.

N.E.R.D.

Paul Oakenfold

A complete list of who played and the stage set up.

Little Creatures Brewery in Fremo

We went to Little Creatures for some food and beer, it's actually a pub in the brewery itself! Pretty neat idea, the food was great (I had the lamb and feta pizza) and so was the beer.

That's a lot of beer.

Free Beer Tasting! I reckon the Pale Ale is best.
Tim Tam Obsession Continued...
I'm going to teach you something amazing. Go out and buy some Tim Tams..I hear you can get them from Superstore in Canada. Now, get some coffee, hot chocolate, anything hot really that would go with chocolate. Make sure the cup is full to the top. Now, bit of opposite corners of the tim tam. Use it as a straw..the Tim Tam will absorb all the liquid and then start to fall apart in your hands, quickly put it in your mouth before it does!

.....

Amazing right? Ya.

Aussie words for the week
Rockmelon -> Cantelope
Trolly -> Shopping cart
Grogg -> Beer

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

School's Started

School!
The torture has begun! I have to be honest, before I came to ECU I thought...4 classes = full load? this should be a breeze! Class only 3 days a week? Even better!

Well....I've gone to all my classes and there are definitly some drawbacks to 3 hour lectures as opposed to 50 minute ones. The main problem is (you probably guessed it) staying awake. Some of the lectures are pretty darn boring and 3 hours is a long time to attempt consciousness for. If you've been in any sort of school, you know what I mean.

The other drawback is that you have to work on your classes for the rest of the week, even though you only have class once a week. You have to finish all your stuff and not just forget about it; with 50 minute lectures 3 times a week, you can't forget about it.

The classes i'm taking are:
MAT1114: Introductory Statistics - stats is stats..I just hope i'm on the right side of the bell curve come the end of June ;)
CSG3204: Information Services Managment - Pretty cool, looks pretty challenging!
CSG3308: Wireless Security - I'm looking forward to this one! Watch what you say on your wireless internet ;)
CMM1108: Communication & Digital Technology (zzz...we get to make a blog for our final project..ummm...)

I know, it looks pretty nerdy..math and techy stuff; what did you expect?

Surfing
Going on a full day surfing trip on March 14th! I hope they can teach me how to cut up the waves good without getting beat up by them! I'll be sure to let you know any new bruises or sand burns I recieve from mother nature.

Aussie Words for the week
Dag -> Funny person, nerd
Capsicums -> Green or red bell peppers.
Chemist -> Pharmacy
Tomato Sauce -> Ketchup
Snag -> Sausage
Lollie -> Candy of any type
Dodgy -> Something that is a bit off

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The fun continues..

As the title says, the fun continues..everyone in the Student village has been partying quite a bit and just having fun getting to know eachother. Good times all around. Last night Anand my roommate and myself checked out three clubs in the city, Allure and Minq are in the big fancy Casino across the Swan River which were pretty classy, and then we went to Sapphire which was O.K. All in all it was a good night.

Orientation week

Been having an awesome time with orientation week. Lots of free BBQ's, but no shrimp on the Barbie yet. Stocked up on a bunch of free noodles for when I run out of money, I have enough to last about 3 days. Been going to the beach as much as possible and starting to plan for April break, a group of us want to do lots of things while we're here such as a Surfing trip, Rottnest Island, goto Mandurah, maybe check out FIJI on the 10 day break, goto Uluru (the largest rock in the world) and let's not forget wine tasting in Margaret River.

I've single handedly changed an aussie slang word..
The aussies used to call Fremantle Freo for short, but when I was learning it I called it Fremo (makes sense right?), and it has caught on...one aussie told me it's much better and is going to now use it instead; there's critical mass in action. Go Canada.

Classes Start Tuesday
I'm looking forward to a super slack school schedule..i'm used to 5 days of abuse consisting of atleast 4-6 hours each in Canada, my schedule at ECU is Tuesday (3:30pm-6:30pm), Thursday (9:30am-12:30pm) and Friday (9:30am-2:30pm). A good solid 11 hours per week with a super bonus of a permanent long weekend. Maybe I'll look for a job tomorrow Eh?

Tim Tam Update
So...they are still amazing. I'm working on a few packs of the "Double Coat" now which have double chocolate. I've recently descovered I can buy them at Superstore back home in Canada, so if I were you I would give em a try.

Everyone is moved in
All the roomies are moved in. Anand and Nilesh who are from South Africa, Alex and Anika from Germany and Daria from Russia. 6 of us in total. It's the UN and we rock.

Anand and his bus pass.

Alex

Anika & Nilesh

North Beach & Wild Fig Cafe
Went to Wild Fig Cafe today (Feb 22) which is across the street from the beach with Angiolina. About an hour away from where I live by bus and train. It was pretty amazing, even though it was a bit windy. I recomment the Mad Monkey smoothy..bananas, chocolate, coffee - what else do you need in a meal?

Angiolina & I
Pictures
I've been putting all my pictures up on Picasa because I don't want Facebook to "Own" them. You can find them here: http://picasaweb.google.ca/shawnfreeman/

Aussie Words for the week
Arvo -> Afternoon
Ginger-Ninja -> Ranga
Fanta Pants -> Ranga (they like to make fun of red heads here)
Crèche -> Daycare
Fair dinkum -> True
I reckon -> I think or I believe
Hey -> Eh (in Canada), even though when they say Hey it sounds like Eh and I think they say Hey more than I say Eh.
Prawns -> Shrimp (aussies hate this word)

Friday, February 13, 2009

Tim Tams - The Obesession

I have recently come down with an addiction, an addiction to Tim Tams. They are absolutely amazing. Thanks to the wonderful Claudia, I am now obsessed with them. So far I have tried the Original, Dark Chocolate and Cookies & Cream flavours - I have only scratched the surface.
Here is the Tim Tam website if you want to read about them: http://www.arnotts.com.au/products/TimTam.aspx

GOOD NEWS! I can still order Tim Tams when I return to Canada through this website: http://www.greataussiefood.com.au/

That's all, I'm going to go eat one now.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

So it has been 9 days...

I've been in Perth 9 days!

My flight here was absolutely boring. I thought it would never end..but it did and it was SO worth it.





Everything has gone so perfectly. From thinking about applying to come here way back in November of 2007..to applying and getting accepted, to booking everything...to flying here (all my luggage made it)..to moving in and meeting tons of new really cool people..it has all worked out much more perfectly than I could ever have imagined.

The Singapore airport was absolutely gigantic! This place has 3 terminals, connected by it's own train system and each terminal if I had to guess would have as many shopping stores as one of Calgary's biggest malls. Duty free smokes and liquor? Those are the small shops...if you want you could pick up a 46" LCD TV from the Sony store. During my flight here I read a book called "A long way gone"

This is my place in the Student Village! I was one of the first people to arrive on February 2nd because my flight got in at 7:30am. I didn't have any roomates until the following Monday but I still managed to meet a ton of people. We're still missing two roomates!








I arrived just after another guy named Michael (who has the same last name as me) and so the housing lady said that my brother had just shown up, and so I made an instant friend. We hit up the Galleria shopping center the first day for groceries. The day I arrived the temperature was 38C.


This is the campus I'll be studying at starting February 23rd.

The day after I arrived I went on an adventure to Fremantle (a.k.a. Freo) with my friend Claudia which was pretty awesome, on our way down we walked around the CBD (Downtown) of Perth and saw the "Perth Eye" as she so cleverly named it. To the left are the Swan Bell Towers.


We then took the train to Freo to have fish & chips by the docks followed by some amazing gelato. At this point we were being baked by the sun which must have gotten to atleast 34C that day so we headed back north to the CBD and then back to Mount Lawley the suburb I live in.


They have Christmas trees in Perth...for real!

Even the elevators and trains are backwards..when you're walking on the sidewalk and someone is coming towards you, you are supposed to go left - NOT right! It's not just driving a car..it's a way of life.
The Beach

The first beach I got to go to in Perth was Scarborough beach on Wednesday Feb 4th. Michael, Rachel, Katherine and myself all drove there late in the afternoon. We are obviously new to town so we didn't know that a light breeze (called the Fremantle doctor due to it's cooling effect) usually comes in the early afternoon just after the sun is its hottest. We got to the beach and it was basically a sandblaster with a small puddle of water beside it known as the Indian Ocean.. If you could run across the beach without having all your flesh torn off by the blowing sand you were alright until the massive surf with a strong rip current got you. We played in the water until we got the nerve up to run back across the beach.



I'm not complaining whatsoever - but lesson learned.


The evening continued with a night out on the town aussie style with Harold (Andre) and Kumar. The VB brand beer is not bad at $10 a jug. Enough said. (Picture left to right: Kumar, Harold, Me, Michael)


Following day..Cottesloe Beach - Michael, Paige and myself went to cottesloe beach the next day..again we went in the afternoon (you'd think we would have learned?) but some people just take forever to get ready!

Again, windy but worth it. We'll tell Paige we're going at 6am next time so we make it there by noon.

Perth Zoo

A Kangaroo!! They are so soft..


More Beach
Just can't get enough of it! Even after the sandblasting we return. By this time I'm pretty red and I have been using sunscreen.




Aussie Words for the week
The Boot -> is the trunk of a car..
Ranga -> a redheaded person...like orangutan
Cotton Bud -> Q-tip
Rubbish bin -> Garbage can
Dunny -> Washroom
Doona -> Blanket
Feral -> Disgusting
Bogan -> A Feral aussie
Mozzie -> Mosquito