WAAPA in The Park

There was a free outdoor musical theater and big band jazz show withing walking distance so we decided to go check it out. It was pretty impressive, all the students go to the WAAPA school. Check out the album, there is a video in there to give you a better idea!

Website: http://www.waapa.ecu.edu.au

I forget what song they were singing here...

Anand, Michael & Colin during intermission

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Australian words for the week
Heaps -> Lots

Sweetas -> Sweet ass
Used in a sentence: "Waapa in the park was sweetas".

City Beach!

Michael and I went to City Beach. It's just south of Scarborough beach and just north of Cottesloe beach. Ahh beaches everywhere!

Old lighthouse, the surf was huge because of these rocks!
Michael got taken down..I laughed, and then also got taken out.

If you enlarge this you can see heaps of kite surfers.

Kite Surfers up close

I <3 Beach

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I'm Torn

I would rather be on the beach. I have so much damned homework to do. 2 assignments and a statistics test due by Sunday at 11:59pm. It is 32 degrees out and I want to not do my homework and just go to the beach. Can I? no..I'm way too much of a geek to do something like that.

I will go to the beach on Monday, I don't care if it's only 25 degrees.

I miss you beach.

University of Western Australia

I went to UWA today to represent the University of Calgary at their exchange fair. The campus is AMAZING. U of C is just starting an exchange agreement with UWA so I could have went there next semester!! oh well, everything happens for a reason..the campus alone is incentive enough for me to want to do a Masters.

Website: http://www.uwa.edu.au

Winthrop Hall

P.s. I still love U of C
...it just needs to install a beach in Mac Hall.

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Australian Surf Life Saving Championships

This was a pretty cool event! We got there just in time to see the start. This was a type of relay team event, one person would paddle out and then back in and then tag the next person to swim the course. The surf was massive!

Website: http://www.aussies2009.com

Ladies getting ready...

It was a good day to just lay around...

Mens...click to enlarge this one!

Me on the back of the sea-doo getting towed in from being out in the rip. Some kids were yelling help and nobody noticed them so I ran out with a body board and tried to help them..before we knew it the ground disappeared and some giant swell was pounding us. Lost the body board and couldn't swim back in because the rip (the reason the kid needed help in the first place). Needless to say the life guards came out, towed the boy in and then came back to pick me up since we failed at out-swimming the rip and since it was much easier; and before you tell me..I did try to swim across the rip.

Slideshow...

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Penguin Island!

Penguin Island Running Man...

We took a ferry to Penguin island and then we got to walk around the whole thing which took about an hour...

45 minutes of that hour was spent on the beach..it was a pretty small island. After the walk around, we went on another boat to tour around Seal island because you can't land on it. We saw seals, pelicans and an eagle.

I miss home

A spider hanging from the tree about 10 feet up during lunch..I think he wanted my sandwich.

The little penguins! They look like they are flying when they swim.

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It's cooling down...

Today is only a high of 27 degrees...it's comfortable but by no means hot, I really hope it warms up a bit..I'm not ready for winter Perth style. Maybe I'll go to the beach today.

I found a job and school seems to be getting pretty full on now but I'm lovin' it. 23 days until Melbourne!

Australian words for the week
Windscreen -> Windshield

What am I upto?

You may be asking yourself..what the heck is Shawn doing down unda'? Well wonder no more..
I've pubished a calendar of all the fun things I'm doing in Australia! You can just add this to your Google Calendar (by clicking +Google Calendar in the bottom right) or just come to this post whenever you want to know! Remember, it's in Perth time. I didn't include my boring school or work schedule.

New Address

The site has a new address! It is: http://www.shawnfreeman.ca
It's pretty easy to remember, all you need to know is my name and that I'm from Canada!

:) Enjoy.

Surfing Trip!

Our surfing trip was awesome! We got picked up in the city at 6:45am which was way to early...but well worth it. The drive to Lancelin which is north was about an hour and a half. Once we arrived, we got into our wet suits and rash vests, got our boards and then they gave us some basic lessons and sent us out into the water! We were out there from about 9:30 until 12:00. Lunch was great and then we got back out and tried some harder stuff...like going out further to catch some bigger swells.

We went with http://www.surfschool.com.au who were obviously great!

Surfing running man

No caption needed..

Yeah, we surf...

Unit 12 ppls

Shawn, Alex, Anand, Anika
The people representing unit 12. 2 Missing..what a shame they couldn't come.

Oh I almost forgot to mention...

We all got up...quite a bit.

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Australian word for the day

Surfs up! -> Look behind you..surfs up!

Fremantle Prison Torch Light Tour

Friday, March 13th 2009
The tour in nineteen photos! I'm going to do this in mostly pictures to make it easy for you since it's going to be long. It was pretty neat.

Website: http://www.fremantleprison.com.au

The entrance...

We got our tickets!

Spoooky

Anand doing the running man...or is he trying to escape already?

I was volunteered to demonstrate the search procedures..

I really needed a shower afterward...don't drop the soap!

I dare you to climb...

Looks pretty creepy!

The guard house in the dog pen, a place for all the very bad people.

Levels 2-3

Moondyne Joe's cell

Anika in her small cell..she's liking it so far.

The crazy guy in solitary confinement.

Alex getting her Cat-of Nine-tails lashing.

The hallway to the Gallows.

The Gallows

The crew at church...

The Church..

The Church windows..the only windows without bars.

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Australian word for the week
Torch -> Flashlight

Real Sushi & Mad Mickey

I found real Sushi!
Claudia recommended I go to a place called Jaws Kaiten in the city...it was great! They even had raw fish in the sushi! yummm! I went with the two Helena's from Sweden! They are leaving on the 23rd :( I'll be back to this place for sure.

You should go here if you're in the area...View Larger Map

After sushi we wandered around and found a very angry mickey mouse. I later found out that you're not supposed to take pictures in clothing stores here! Good thing mickey didn't beat us up.

Then we went for coffee at the Belgium Beer Cafe on Murray Street.

That's all

I'm starving and going to go eat now so this is the end of this post.

Australian words for the week
Nappies -> Diapers

Australian Money

Money, Money, Money, Money....Monayyy
I thought I would post this because I think the Australian money is cool!

Coins are available in denominations of 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents, as well as $1 and $2. Pretty Standard - except one small thing....February 1992 signaled the death of the 1 and 2 cent coins;
I think it's about time Canada follows suit.
Also, you'll notice that the small coins are worth the most..weird.

Notes are available in dollar denominations of $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. They are also different sizes but not like the coins; here the largest bills are worth the most.

In 1998 Australia issued a new $10 note - the world's first polymer banknote. Plastic money! Polymer note technology was developed by Australia, and Australia prints polymer notes for a number of other countries

I guess I'm an eternal optimist...

The Facebook Status

Why do people complain on their Facebook status with things like "...says today is going to be a really long day..ugh" or "....can't believe they have to work so early"? I don't get it.

Is this really the best use of a social networking tool? To tell hundreds of people that your day sucks or you are assuming that it is going too? Facebook is a tool to use to market yourself, connect with people, improve your image (please correct me if I'm wrong).

If I was hiring for a position and saw a status that made me think all you did was complain (now's the time to check your privacy settings, chances are anybody can check your status out) - there's no way I would give you the job, even if you were far more qualified than the less educated optimist competing for the job. Do you ever go into an interview and tell the person your day sucks?

...not to mention the thoughts all your friends have about you when they constantly see you complaining (on facebook, not to mention if they had to see you everyday).

A long day to me is a good day - especially since it could always be your last.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; it might improve other people's perception of you, not to mention that if you expect to have a bad day - that's exactly what you're going to have.

Now go put something on your status that will make your friends smile.

(now) I would rather text you than call you...

Txting skills > before today
I've never had a phone with predictive text before and up until now I have been hopeless sending texts with this new phone - until now. Angiolina (the non-computer geek) has taught me this very handy skill which I may add to my resume. I will be in the txting Olympics in no time.

I can txt clearly now..

Upcoming Events
Friday March 13th - Fremantle Prison Night Tour
March 14th - Surfing Day Trip
March 20th - Cirque Du Soleil - Dralion
March 21st - Penguin and Seal Islands cruise
March 28-29th - Rottnest Island tour
April 3rd - Caroline's birthday
April 4th - My birthday
April 10-20th - Easter Break

To-do List
AQWA (http://www.aqwa.com.au/)
Margaret River Wine tasting
Outdoor Movie
Monkey Mia Dolphin Resort (http://www.monkeymia.com.au/)
Uluru - the biggest rock in the world (http://www.uluru.com/)
Mandurah (http://www.visitmandurah.com/)
and of course...the East Coast
Real Sushi @ Jaws Kaiten in the city
The Hipe Club in Leederville (http://www.hipeclub.com.au/)
Indian, Italian, Thai and Seafood somewhere good
Phantom of the Opera

Australian words for the week
Arcade -> Small shopping mall
Maccas -> McDonalds
Abbos -> Aboriginals

Sushi, Tanning & Sharks

Scarborough & So-called Sushi

Saturday March 7th, Anand and I went to Scarborough beach because we wanted to try this sushi place (Peko Peko: http://www.pekopeko.com.au/) near by..so we go there. Long story short, the place was NOT sushi..it was ¿cooked sushi?, if you can even call it that. The fish was cooked! To be fair, it wasn't bad, just not what we expected.

Mission: find out if they have real sushi here..isn't Asia close by?

Tanning Skills

In Perth, the sun is hot... but my tanning skills are even hotter.
I call it the four-finger tan line.

OH and let's not forget the shark sighting!
Apparently they saw a shark near scarbs, they had the helicopter hovering over the water and about 4 boats driving around along with a non-stop siren that came on and had everyone scrambling to get out of the water..it looked like the beach patrols were trying to scare it off since they weren't moving too much at first. We didn't see any fins above the water.

Everyone on the beach and the helicopter in the back.

Once the siren went off about 25 minutes later, everyone jumped back in..I was cooking by then since it was 32 degrees and so I joined but just made sure a few people were out further than me; us Canadian's aren't as dumb as we look. I never thought I'd be on the beach when there was a shark sighting, apparently if it's really dangerous they close the beach entirely.

Good news is I'm still alive, but I think even if the shark came after me I could have wrestled it down and then we would have had some raw meat for our real sushi.

Nightlife
Anand and I went to Onyx (http://www.onyxbar.com.au/) in Subiaco on Friday, pretty nice club...I reckon.

Dave, Me, Shaloni, Anand

Aussie words for the week (in order of importance)

Bottle-o -> Liquor store
How ya goin'? -> How ya doin'?
Uni -> University (they never use this word in full)
Carpark -> Parking lot
Ta -> Thank you (or something like it)
Scar-bra ->Scarborough