Inside a Student's Mind

Finding a house

2012-01-11T20:03:00.002+08:00

I am currently looking for a house. Well, I say house, I mean any dwelling that I can live in and store my stuff. The problem is that I am still vastly under-prepared for life in the real world and so cannot fathom the steps required to get to the point where I will put ink on a piece of paper that will legally give me permission to live somewhere.

Compounding this problem is my friend Cato who has, in a hilarious lapse of judgement, given me carte blanche in selecting the next place where we will live. Cato is currently in Brazil doing something with animals (helping them I suspect) and so relying on me entirely to find a place. I do hope she doesn’t read this before she gets back.

The main issue I seem to have faced so far is getting the agents to get back to me, whether by phone or e-mail. I am a bit perplexed as I am perfectly willing to give them money to let me live in someone else’s house but they seem incapable of returning a phone call. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a code phrase I can leave on their voicemail that will grant me access?

In the meantime, while I wait for my e-mail to chime or phone to ring, I am composing a list of things I suspect Cato would like in a house.

A roof over at least most of the house - good for rain
A garage - these are handy for cars. Cato does not own a car but I hope she will invest in one soon.
Doors - For safety
Windows - In case we lose our keys to the doors
A fridge - if I know Cato she is going to want a place to put food

I’ll be keeping this updated with my progress. Please chime in if you have advice!

Getting into University

2011-12-29T12:59:00.000+08:00

I have a degree. It’s still in the envelope they sent it in, tucked away in one of my many ‘important document’ drawers and there it shall stay until my living arrangements become more permanent.

The reason I say I have a degree is because this was not always the case. Once, not too long ago, I was in the same position as some of you are in. The grades I’d received were not nearly as good as the ones I had wanted and my future looked quite bleak. I didn’t think I would get in to any University and that I would be stuck working in some job I would hate for the rest of my life.

That’s when my Dad dropped another piece of his, not always but sometimes, excellent advice. Talk to someone at the University. I scoffed at this because I felt that the people at the University probably heard hundreds of cases like mine and were probably used to turning them down. This is just one more example of me being wrong and being happy to admit it.

After some persuasion I sent an email to Murdoch and within a day (bear in mind I was in Zimbabwe at the time) I had a response. The email was very kind in tone and it outlined all my options about the various courses that were open to me, including a few that I had thought I wouldn’t be able to get into. Within 48 hours of receiving my results I had made my application to Murdoch, something I would not have thought possible when I had initially opened the results letter.

So the three important lessons that I learnt were: 1. Your results are never quite as bad as you initially think they are 2. Sometimes your Dad will know what he is talking about and 3. People at Universities (particularly Murdoch) are people. People that will happily help you if you ask.

If you’ve just got your results and are feeling like all the opportunities have gone up in smoke, simply ask for help. In three or four years time you could have a fancy envelope with a degree in it showing up to your house too.

On being a Graduate

2011-06-27T12:18:00.001+08:00

I decided to take an unannounced break from blogging as the end of semester and end of exams really took it out of me and I needed some time to recuperate. Never fear though, I have returned to give you your weekly bathroom reading.

I received my final University results and to the surprise of everyone, especially myself, I had managed to pass everything. For those of you following my exciting story that means I have met the prerequisites for leveling up from undergraduate to, the far more prestigious, Graduate. Upon reaching this new stage in life a number of options become available and I would like to spend this post discussing them.

Immunity from Prosecution

I’m not a lawyer, or even remotely qualified, but I’m pretty sure the number of words in your degree title is the number of days per year you are allowed to act with full immunity from the law. So as I have a Bachelor of Arts in Security, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Studies with a Minor in Journalism and a Minor in International Studies, I get about twenty days a year where I can do as I please. Obviously though this only starts next year as they still need time to put my details into the system.

Instant Knowledge

This one is great. Basically anytime you are involved in a conversation/argument/debate/shouting at strangers in the street you are entitled to say, “Well from what I learnt at University before I graduated.....” and then you fill in the blank with whatever statement you think will win you the argument/conversation/debate/respect of strangers in the street. The best part is that no matter what you say it immediately becomes true because you are a Graduate. It is inadvisable to twist reality too much.

Graduate Surcharge

From now on, whenever you perform any service whatsoever you can apply the “graduate surcharge”. This, again, entails adding up the number of words in your degree title but this time for a percentage. Mine, for example, is twenty percent and I can now add an extra twenty percent charge onto any service I render. The graduate surcharge, unfortunately, cannot be added onto any dealings with family members as they will likely just scoff and remind you that they used to change your nappies.

Though these are all wishful thinking I have enjoyed being a graduate so far. I’m sure, when the realisation that I will have to get a real job and stop publishing rubbish on the internet sinks in, I’ll eventually start to have a predictable panic attack. When I do I promise to document it for you and write it up for this blog.

How I do it (Part Two)

2011-05-29T23:16:00.000+08:00

I do realise the irony of having a blog post about my time management skills go up two days late. Please accept my sincere apologies and enjoy this rather late offering.

Midyear enrollments are fast approaching and Murdoch have asked me to do a post on one of the most common concerns people have when considering enrolling, namely that they won't have enough time to study. In this post I will address some of the issues I’ve faced, trying to balance working at a part-time job and studying full-time.

If you’re an international student you are entitled to work 20 hours a week during the semester and that automatically affects how you balance work and study. Honestly, it can be hard to make enough to live by with the work limit but if you violate the rule you can lose your visa. I have, on occasion, come close to going over so my first tip is make sure you and your employer keep a close eye on how many hours you have done each week. Below are a couple of tips that I’ve found useful for keeping my academic reputation up while making some money.

1. Flexibility

When you take a job make sure it has flexible hours. Having fixed shifts isn’t a bad idea but when you are really struggling with an assignment, being able to swap shifts around can be a lifesaver. This also comes in handy during the exam period.

2. Savings

Save up some of your paycheck every week. I’ve suffered quite badly when I take time off to study and suddenly I don’t have any money coming in. This is a serious problem when rent is due and you don’t have enough to afford groceries as well. Nothing impairs your ability to study like not eating.

3. Avoid the trap

Once you start earning money, life suddenly becomes a lot easier. The more shifts you work the more money you make, until you realise how exhausted you are from working and decide to skip class in favour of sleep. It’s an easy cycle to get into, one that I know quite well.

Finally just remember that balance isn’t something you’re born with, you have to learn it. It sounds clichéd but practice really does make perfect. If you are really worried about if you’ll have enough time to study then perhaps you need to look at alternative options, such as part-time or external studying. All of which can be found on the Murdoch website.

How I do it (Part One)

2011-05-26T19:00:00.000+08:00

Midyear enrollments are fast approaching and Murdoch have asked me to do a post on one of the most common concerns people have when considering enrolling, namely that they won't have enough time to study. This post is more going to deal with balancing studying and having a social life and I will do another tomorrow dealing with work and University and how the two sometimes negatively interact.

When you're doing a full-time degree there is no getting away from the fact that it does take up a significant portion of your average week. On the surface it may seem like you only have to be on campus for your contact hours, whatever those may be, but you also need to account for the time you will spend doing important activities such as tutorial readings, assignment preparation and the extra time actually writing an assignment can take. When you factor in any time you might have to spend working a part or full-time job and a few hours to spend with friends or family it starts to seem incredibly daunting.

For my first few months at University I found creating a balance between the social life of living in the Village and the demands of my degree very difficult. I would either spend entire nights locked away in the library, researching for assignments or I would go to the other extreme and put all thoughts of studying out my head while I went out drinking with friends. Neither extreme was particularly healthy but I did find my balance and from that I came up with a few little rules to govern my behaviour and help me better manage my time.

1. Have a set starting and stopping point

I struggled at first because I would over-study and then be exhausted the next day for class. I would go up to the library around nine at night and not leave until two in the morning. Being tired meant that I was never really studying as much or as effectively as I could and so I never took in as much information as I should have. I did find that if I set myself a set time to start and stop studying that I would be much more productive in that burst, rather than being unfocused for a longer period of time.

2. Keep a calendar

Buy a calendar. Write down the due dates for every single assignment and exam you are going to have for the semester. If someone invites you out, simply check the calendar. If there's a big assignment or exam due soon then you should probably be writing it or studying for it instead of drinking heavily. Combining the two is not recommended.

3. Have a study space

If you share a house with friends, or live in the village, the chances are you are probably limited in your study space. While studying in a common space, such as your kitchen or living room, may work for a little while sooner or later someone will disturb your study flow. I personally like to use the library to study as you are surrounded by like-minded people and during the day there is a whole section devoted to quiet study.

4. Put the books down and go outside

Locking yourself away and studying for long periods of time is fine, provided you also get out of the house and do something completely unrelated to studying. I would often stop studying for an exam and simply go for a fifteen or twenty minute walk. It's amazing how much easier it is to study if you take such breaks. Likewise, after a big assignment is finished, take a day off and go to the cinema with friends, or go clubbing (I'm told that's what kids these days do). Dwelling on what you might have done differently in an exam or assignment is the most wasteful avenue of thought and time.

5. Relax

University is not life and death, though it can sometimes seem like it is. If you don't think, for any myriad of reasons, that you'll make the deadline for an assignment then talk to your tutor. Nine times out of ten they will give you an extension. Though, you should never get into the habit of asking for them. Failing a unit or an assignment is also not the end of it all. There are always allowances to be made and ways of making the failed units up.

I will be putting up the second post on this topic sometime tomorrow. Until then why not tell me what your suggestions for balancing University and your social life are?

Free Comic Book Day

2011-05-04T17:04:00.000+08:00

A while ago I was asked to take part in a new campaign by Murdoch where I basically had to come up with a vow that I would spend the rest of my natural born life trying to fulfill. To some people this might seem a bit rash but to me it seems sensible. After all I am the sort of person who will vow to spend the rest of my life trying to destroy a restaurant that hasn’t given me great service. Perhaps I need help. But more on that later, for now I want to talk about the vow I made which was, “I vow to discover new ways to encourage literacy”

Literacy is a subject very important to me because I believe it forms the building blocks for any kind of learning and creativity. I learnt to read when I was very young and it opened up a whole new world to me, the first time I read The Hobbit I was utterly spellbound by the magic and possibilities it offered. Whenever we would go on long camping trips my parents would round my sister and I up and take us to the second hand bookstore where we would buy armfuls of what would essentially be our only entertainment, apart from the abundant vervet monkeys that would steal everything else. When you are stuck in a hot car for up to ten hours a day you genuinely start to appreciate the value of a good book.

When I went to school I made a rather startling discovery, my love of books and fantastic stories didn’t immediately make me the coolest kid in class. In fact, it had the opposite effect and for years I struggled with peer pressure that was telling me that reading wasn’t “cool” and that I would only be popular if I didn’t spend all day shut in the library reading. Despite all the pressure I have developed a real love for reading and so I am especially pleased when I see initiatives like Free Comic Book Day.

On FCBD, which is the first Saturday in May, you can walk into any participating comic book store and be guaranteed to walk out with at least one free comic that you don’t even have to steal. It’s a great way to connect with your local comic community, get some free comics and generally have a great day. It’s also a great time to get into comics because so many of the free comics are aimed at introducing people to the world of comic books and graphic novels. Importantly there are also usually a selection available for kids and can make all the difference in instilling them with a love of reading.

So this Saturday, the 7th of May, I will be down at Quality Comics picking up free comic books, taking photos of the exciting costumes and just genuinely enjoying life. If you have ever been curious about comics then Saturday is a really great day to see some of them at their finest for free.

The Power of the Zambezi

2011-04-24T14:07:00.000+08:00

Some of my fondest memories are going on family trips to Lake Kariba. Often we would spend a weekend, fishing and game spotting, and simply getting away from the city. Sometimes we would even spend entire weeks up there aboard big house boats and travel far across the lake for many days. I remember it as always being very relaxing to be so close to nature and be able to observe the animals completely at ease. The poem below was one we found in my dad's desk and that is now pinned to the cork board in my room.

The Power of the Zambezi, by J. Edward Woodward

Through the continent of Africa
The mighty Zambezi flows
Over waterfall, through deep ravine
And where dense forest grows.

But such might and power
And so much frantic haste
Through so many generations
Has mostly gone to waste.

So the heads of two great nations,
Engaged with such accord
To Dam this surging monster
And the first skip of concrete poured

Then fifty thousand Batonka people
Had to move from their homes
And the treasure of the wildlife
No more this Vale could roam

As skip by skip the Dam wall rose
Inch by inch did the water.
Animals and Human kind
Would find their lives would alter

But Nyaminyami the River god
Was not pleased by this obstruction
And twice in rage almost brought
Mens efforts to destruction

But in spite of many hardships,
The Dam was at last complete
And now folks from around the world
Come to admire, this engineering feat

So now a mighty lake appears
Where once there was 'a stream'
Filled with many kinds of fish
from Tigerfish to Bream

But this is not the climax
Of this colossal river fight.
For several million people now,
Are getting power and light.

So be at peace Nyaminyami
You have not lost your power
For now millions pay you homage
Each day and every hour

Any many climb the twisting road
Up to the lookout steeple.
To look across that massive lake and see
Matchstick boats and matchstick people.

And so great Lake Kariba
They built a church near you
Not only in memory of the dead
But to inspire the living too.

"Then what?"

2011-04-18T08:39:00.000+08:00

When I was four years old I pretty much had the world sussed out. I knew where wind came from, I knew that girls were icky and I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was going to be a police officer, or a fireman, or an astronaut or some combination thereof. Now, at twenty-two, I've discovered that most of what I held to be true was not as cut and dry as I had thought.

Sadly, time waits for no man and before I knew it I was only a semester away from graduation. The point is driven home whenever I talk to people and they ask about University. Usually the conversation goes something like this;

“So you’re still at University?”
“Yeah, well I’ve only got one semester to go.”
“Oh great! Then what?”

Then it all falls to pieces. The person stands there with their smile gradually becoming frozen and fixed while I stutter and mumble, increasingly desperate to say something that will satisfy them. Lately I've taken to making up complex lies that will get them off my back but if pressed I will confess to the truth, that I don't know what comes next.

But if I've learnt anything so far it's that not knowing what comes next isn't the end of the world. Getting the piece of paper doesn't immediately guarantee you a job in your dream area but it's a start. Sometimes a start is enough, a vague direction instead of an explicit set of instructions. Now if only I could convince the people who keep asking me what I want to do with my life...

Starbucks infographic

2011-04-13T18:57:00.001+08:00

This is an interesting little infographic I was emailed the other day. I was genuinely impressed that they had decided to use a graphic representation of a stomach halfway down. As someone who frequently drinks coffee I used to visit Starbucks a lot when I lived in the UK. They don't really have any outlets in WA though.

[Source: Online MBA]

Why I can never walk home from Uni again

2011-03-17T17:09:00.002+08:00

I think it's safe to say that I have not led a particularly boring life. Most people my age have not had invasive medical procedures, been threatened by a dangerously insane Swede, performed actual feats of magic or gotten into fights with old ladies at the gym. In fairness most of these experiences are hardly things I've sought out and many is the time that I have really hated the situation that has fallen into my lap. True they are usually hilarious in hindsight and hopefully the event of which I am about to speak will become one of them.

For those of you who know me well I don't really need to explain how I get to and from University on days that I have class. But for those of you who don't, strap in. It's going to be exciting. On days that I have class I dutifully load up my satchel, ensure that my fly is done up and then I walk. It's not a long walk, nor is it particularly difficult. There is a minor incline but once I had walked it a few times I feel I built up the stamina needed to get up it every day. The walk itself is not the subject of this little episode, rather it is the people I see.

I like to listen to music, it makes a walk easy and sometimes I pretend I'm Rocky only without all the pointless running and getting into shape. Music also cuts down on the amount of thinking I'm able to do when I walk to Uni so that, when I finally get into class, my head isn't full of the usual crap like "I wonder what would happen if I had laser vision but I couldn't control it." Another feature of music is that it cuts down on the awkward interaction I would usually have to have with the people that are out watering their gardens or washing their cars. Normally I could simply nod, smile and maybe mutter a 'good morning' or a 'garden looks lovely' and then pretend that the song I was listening to had reached a particularly dramatic crescendo and I could therefore be excused wanting to draw out any subsequent dialogue.

A few days ago I was making my way up to campus when I spotted an elderly lady walking out of her house and hacking vigorously away at some weeds. She looked up, spotted me and smiled. My earphones were in so I did my usual; nod, smile and then I made a perhaps fatal mistake. I waved. The old lady, perhaps mistaking this wave for some sort of secret handshake, started to gesture furiously at me. I was rather taken aback but as she continued to gesture I was able to work out that she was calling me over. Normal people would probably have a little alarm bell that would ring at this stage, warning them to simply pretend not to have seen her and continue along on their merry way. Sadly I don't.

I paused my music, took out my headphones, looked both ways, and crossed the road to where the lady was still gesticulating furiously. Immediately she began to grill me as to what I was doing walking along this stretch of road, why I had a satchel and how frequently did I take this route. All of these I answered as honestly as I could, bearing in mind that I was beginning to run late for class. I'm not convinced that my responses actually meant anything to her as she waved them aside and began a five minute monologue about how frustrating her neighbours were and their efforts to utterly sabotage her garden. Like any person raised to be polite I made the appropriate, "Oh I never", sorts of declarations. The sort that indicate you sympathise with the person but that's really where it ends. This was to be mistake number two as she clearly took these to be oaths of loyalty and began showing me all the vandalism around her property and finally extracted a promise from me to keep an eye out for any vandals messing with her trees. Readily I agreed and then made my excuses to leave, thinking that would be the end of that. Unfortunately, as I learned today, it was not.

While walking home from a productive few hours in the library I was spotted by the old lady and once again she furiously motioned at me to cross the road. With a sinking heart I did. When will I learn? It turns out the little old lady had sought legal advice from a friend who had told her she needed to catch the vandals in the act. She proceeded to drag me around her garden showing me hundreds of different cuts on her trees that, honestly, looked all alike and that she could have done herself along with a whole database of photographs of the various cuts. Then she told me all about her evil neighbours who were trying to drive her away and how they had poisoned her trees and were cutting them back. Halfheartedly, I asked why she didn't just report them to the local council and then her true madness was really revealed. While many believe in conspiracies as vast and varied as 9/11 being a hoax, Harold Holt being kidnapped by Soviets and Aliens secretly running the world, this little old lady had set her sights to a far more mediocre one. Namely that the local council was in league with her neighbour to get rid of her. I had unwittingly walked into the plot to an action-thriller except that instead of Bruce Willis and a pretty girl, I had an elderly lady who was probably a little bit senile. But oh how much worse it gets.

During this conversation the old lady had clearly decided I was to be her agent in the black, her silent partner, the ace in the hole. She didn't just want to complain, she wanted to recruit me into her invisible war. So invisible, in fact, that she was the only combatant. She asked me if I knew of any surveillance cameras that she could purchase and I, due to not being google, told her honestly that I did not. Though if I thought that was to be the end of it I was mistaken. The little old lady pulled out a Filofax (who even uses those anymore?) and asked me for my mobile number, so she could contact me once I had researched surveillance cameras for her (something I never agreed to do). This is the point I am most ashamed of. This moment. For when she asked me for my mobile number I couldn't just say no.

From day one I have had manners ruthlessly drilled into me to the point where, if someone were to stab me with a knife, I would probably apologise for inadvertently taking their knife with me. People may know me as sarcastic and sometimes rude but in social situations like this one my manners are the only experience I have to fall back on so when this little old lady asked me for my number I did the only thing I could. I gave it to her. Admittedly I had the presence of mind to give her my old number so, with any luck, I'll never hear from her again but she still managed to get me to write down not only her name, but all three of her mobile numbers and a blind system which would allow us to communicate without her neighbours finding out. Because, as she pointed out, they might open her mailbox and take any letters I leave for her.

Genuinely at this point I feel I have only two options, the first is to simply take part in this insane little war against her neighbours and the second is to fake my own death and then take a different route to University every day.

The really sad part about this story is that every single word of it is true.

Completing your first University Assignment (Part Three)

2011-03-17T13:51:00.000+08:00

The late but final part of this series is here. Any fool can drop an assignment in a submission box but here at Jono's blog we show you how to do it in style.

Cover Sheets

Your epic essay detailing the rise and fall of the fax industry will become an anonymous assignment when it goes into the submission box. Unless you've taken the time to build a close relationship with your tutor (or bribed them) they won't know who you are or what your writing style is. With that in mind you should make sure your name and student number is on every page of the assignment and, more importantly, that there is a cover sheet on there. Without one your assignment might spend days, bouncing from department to department, until it eventually lands on your tutor's desk and they immediately deduct 100000% for being late. Cover sheets can downloaded or found outside of your submission box. Online submissions usually require a cover sheet as well but tutor's are sometimes more forgiving.

Referencing

Remember that great quote you found and included on that fax machine assignment? The one that really brought all your points together in a way that you just couldn't manage? The one you forgot to reference? The one that you're now being accused of plagiarising? The one that lost you your place at University? Always check all your references are in place. Forgetting to reference isn't an excuse that will carry much weight. Also always check you're using the referencing style your professors want. Full referencing guides are available on the library portal.

Turnitin

This is a wonderful program that scans and compares your essay to its huge database and finds any plagiarism. If you simply copy and paste a whole section from Wikipedia then the chances are turnitin will pick up on it and you'll get caught. Not every unit requires you to put an essay through turnitin first but you should always check with your tutor. The important thing to note is that turnitin can take as long as 48 hours to get your essay back to you. Allow for this time because your tutor might not accept it as a valid reason for your assignment being late.

Otherwise you've finished your first University assignment. Once you put it in the box do your best to completely forget about it. Stressing over what result you are going to get won't do any good. My advice is; clean up the mess from the hours of sitting in front of your computer, eat a healthy meal and then go out and do something fun. Regrets about what you should have done can wait.

Interlude: The hot hot heat

2011-03-04T14:16:00.001+08:00

It has been incredibly hot in Perth these past few weeks. Hot and humid. You toss and turn every night, trying to find the coolest spot on your bed and then wake up covered in perspiration. The rare breeze brings a brief respite that is gone all too quickly and you soon forget the feeling of being cool.

Air conditioners can slow the problem, turning your room into a cell that you don't dare step out of, but they shoot your electricity bill through the roof so you become afraid to turn it on. Scared to step outside for fear of melting and scared to stay indoors for fear that the heat madness will force you to turn on the A/C and live out your life in cool poverty.

The weather people keep telling us that it's a record heatwave, as if this is some kind of comfort, and that it will break soon. I have long suspected them to be simple charlatans who really have no idea of what something as mercurial as the weather will do next. That, or the one's in Perth are just terrible at their jobs.

This weekend will apparently bring us light showers that will perhaps tide us over until winter is ready to hold us in her tender embrace. The phrase, 'beat the heat', is blared out in so many different adverts that they seem to forget that you cannot. All you can do is endure until it goes away, much like toothache or the flu.

I, for one, will be lying in a bathtub full of ice until the situation remedies itself. I recommend you do the same.

Completing your first University Assignment (Part two)

2011-03-02T22:37:00.001+08:00

Welcome back to the topic that is most likely to put you to sleep. Unfortunately assignments don’t go away, no matter how hard you wish. They also don’t disappear with any sort of animal sacrifice and then all you’re left with is the stain in your carpet and the cloying scent of incense. But I digress.

This part of the series will hopefully illuminate a little more of the processes that you can choose to try when you’re writing your first assignment. You can also choose to completely ignore the advice given here and opt for the pressure cooker method.

Research

I used to find this the hardest part of being a University student as, before I came to Murdoch, the most research I had to do for essays was to glance through my textbook. I learnt the hard way when it came to writing my first assignment. Thankfully the University doesn’t just hand you off without any sort of support. The library has a stack of easy to access online materials and there is the Student Support centre where you can be shown how to access it all. Add Google Scholar to the mix and you should have little problem finding relevant data for any assignment.

A big part of learning to do proper research is learning correct referencing styles. The University has handy referencing guides up and it never hurts to ask your tutor which style they prefer. If you don’t reference properly you can lose marks or even end up accused of plagiarism. So, try to avoid that.

First Draft

A legal studies professor once told me that I should simply write an introduction and then never read it again until I’d finished the essay. That way I could delete the introduction and write a much more appropriate one when I was done. The hardest part of writing is actually getting started and with a first draft you just need to keep plugging away until it’s done. It doesn’t have to be perfect, or even good, once it’s finished you can start the distilling process.

This is an important part and if you use a first draft you usually end up with a higher quality essay. It also helps you see what areas of your argument need to be improved and what areas don’t work at all. Write it, leave it for a few hours and then read it with a fresh mind. Failing that get a friend to read it and ask them what they think. Be prepared for sometimes harsh criticism.

I’m in the middle of my own assignments at the moment so this post will be briefer than the last. In the final post of this series I’ll hopefully talk about final drafts and submission. I might also bore myself senseless with those tasks and end up talking about more animal sacrifice. Half the fun is in the anticipation!

Completing your first University assignment (Part One)

2011-02-28T23:51:00.004+08:00

So hopefully you’re settling into the new and exciting world of University. By now you’ve probably already eaten at all the places on campus, argued with at least one person in a tutorial and felt the temptation to skip lectures. In my first few weeks at Uni I managed to completely overdose on energy drinks and ended up shaking so badly that I couldn’t take notes during one of my Foundation unit lectures. So, yeah. Don’t do that.

By now the first deadline for your first University assignment is probably looming just over the horizon and you might be beginning to feel the pressure. Well, in the words of an immortal guide book, Don’t Panic. This series of posts will hopefully help you prepare and write your first assignment.

Read your question

This seems really obvious and you don’t think it’s necessary but half of the process of writing the assignment is knowing exactly what you need to write. The wording of the question is key to how you plan and write your essay. We’ll discuss plans in a bit but first you must ensure you understand what your tutors are asking you for. The best part about being in first year though is that your tutors welcome any questions regarding assessments. They get a little less forgiving as time goes on so make sure you use this grace period to answer any of your questions.

Plan your essay

This is really only applicable for an essay so feel free to stop reading here if your assignment is different. When I was in my second year, studying Power of the Media and Public Opinion, I had the luck to be handed a formula for planning almost all essays I would be given. This was given to me by Dr. Ian Cook at Murdoch. In my role as mentor I now share this formula with you.

There are four basic types of directive words that can form an essay question:

1. is / can / does
2. explain / outline / why / account for
3. discuss / critically assess / critically evaluate
4. to what extent

The basic directive words are each accompanied by four basic essay structures:

1. yes case - no case - my case (not necessarily in this order)
2. list
3. model & analysis
4. continuum

The structures explained:

1. There are only 2 answers available for an "is / can / does" type of question - yes and no. Both the yes case and the no case need to be explained but in the end an essay must make clear that its author thinks either yes or no or possibly both. This can be referred to as my case

2. Explaining something might be to provide a set of reasons that it occurred or a set of things that someone needs to know about that thing in order to understand it. Outlining something involves indicating its identifying characteristics or principle features. When we are asked why something is so or why it happened or account for - we are usually being asked to provide reasons. Therefore we are providing a list.

3. To effectively discuss/critically assess/critically evaluate something we need to provide an explanation of what we think that thing is. This explanation or replication is referred to as a model. Try to present this in an as convincing manner as possible. In the second part of the essay you will examine and focus on making sense of your model therefore analysing the first part of your essay.

4. This is a fairly unusual type of question as it resembles the "is / can / does" type of question but does not require the simpler yes/no response. The responses available to a question of this type belong on a continuum. The simplest of which is one that includes 'to a minimal extent' at one end of the continuum and 'to a maximum extent' at the other end. A recommended approach to answering this type of question is by replacing the 'yes case' with 'reasons that the answer lies toward one end of the continuum' and replacing the 'no case' with 'reasons that the answer lies toward the other end of the continuum'. 'My case' should then be replaced with a section which establishes where on the continuum your answer lies.

** (The above structures must always be accompanied by solid introductions and conclusions) **

- Dr. Ian Cook.

This formula might not work for you but if it does then feel free to use it and share it with others. The next post in this series should be up on Wednesday the 2nd of March. Also remember you can email me at any time with anything you think I need to write about or anything you think I have forgotten. I also will try and respond to comments on the blog itself.

Where were we?

2011-02-24T22:44:00.002+08:00

Hi there.

Maybe it's time we talked.

We've drifted apart you and I and perhaps it's time for an explanation.

After my last blog post I promised I would update and tell you what had happened in the interim, to explain why I hadn't been updating. Now you see clearly. Perhaps you always saw why and only now can you acknowledge. Maybe now is the time to truly look down that dark corridor and face the horror you have turned away from. The truth.

I lied.

I said I was going to update and then I didn't. I can throw excuse after excuse, blame work, the start of semester or even a really interesting book that I started reading. All of these would be true but they don’t excuse that I broke the bond of trust between you and I. Anything I write from here on in, no matter how good, will never be able to wipe away that tarnish. I could promise to try to do better but I think we both know the value of my word now. All I will say is that if you decide to stick around, and nobody would blame you if you didn't, you might get to see some cool stuff.

With that out the way, lets move onto a real blog post.

I'm back at Murdoch for another semester. This might sound confusing as I was supposed to finish last year but, with everything that happened, I was offered a retrospective withdrawal which I gratefully accepted.

A retrospective withdrawal is kind of like a magic wand that gets waved over your grades and makes the units you have done simply disappear without any kind of academic or financial penalty. Understandably they are only granted under exceptional circumstances which my case fell under.

What this means is that I will be graduating a whole semester later than I would have otherwise but I also see it as a second chance. I have to do all new units but that's a small price to pay for getting to stay at University a little bit longer. It also means I get another semester of material to write blog posts out of, something I am quite looking forward to doing. For those of you that have decided to stick around it's going to be a fun year and you'll get the chance to read all about it here.

The Stress Less Guide to Studying in Australia - Part Three

2011-02-06T23:23:00.002+08:00

Orientation Week

This one is coming a little later than I would have liked but I promise there will be a full explanation. Later. As always please leave a comment or email me if you have any questions or feel that I've missed something.

So now that you’re in Australia, you’ve moved into what will probably be your home for the next three years and have met other people who are about to start University. O-Week starts tomorrow (or maybe today at the rate I’m writing) and soon you’ll be so busy attending introductory lectures and orientation events that stressing about the semester to come will be the last thing on your mind. This will be the conclusive post of this trilogy so pay close attention.

Put your address on MyInfo

One of the conditions for holding a student visa in Australia is that you let your education provider, a fancy name for the University you attend, know where you live. This is also kind of useful for you as it means the University can send you important notices and the like. It’s really easy to simply go to MyInfo on the Murdoch portal and pop your address in. All you need to login in is your student number and password that you should already have.

Get your student I.D

It’s a handy little card that entitles you to the various discounts that students are offered. It also allows you to gain access to certain buildings in the University grounds after hours depending on your unit choices. All you need is your student number and the library will sort you out with a picture and a card. It does not, however, allow you to get concession on public transport, that requires a separate smart-rider card and to have registered for the concession on MyInfo.

Enroll in Units and Activities

Part of being at University is attending lectures and classes. To that end it’s a really good idea to enroll in the units that your major requires. The sooner you enroll in units the sooner you can enroll in activities (the classes that go with every unit) and the sooner you do that the better the timetable you end up with. It’s only logical.

Buy your books

This can be the most painful part of your University career, having to shell hundreds of dollars for University textbooks and readers. There really is very little I can say that will soften this blow. (Again email me or leave a comment if you have something to add) Check the Guild shop for second hand books and sites like the Book Depository and Amazon will sometimes have cheaper books. Good luck either way.

Conclusion

If you’ve read this far and feel that there is still something that is worrying you then I encourage you to send me an email about it. Otherwise, follow your timetable, always read your Unit Guide, always take notes in lectures and always start your assignments on time. Also, stress less.

Good luck!

The Stress Less Guide to Studying in Australia - Part Two

2010-12-20T13:36:00.007+08:00

Pre departure - Still
Now that you have all the paperwork sorted out its time to start giving some thought to what you need to take with you. Again this won’t be an exhaustive list but feel free to leave a comment or send me an email about any suggestions you have.

I like to travel light. If I can’t carry both my suitcase and my hand-luggage at the same time then I usually like to repack them. It’s a rule that’s served me well in the past, though it does say a lot about my life when I can fit it into a backpack and small suitcase. Luggage allowance on the flight to Australia will vary from place to place and airline to airline but I usually have about twenty kilograms to work with. Keep that in mind when you come to packing.

Clothes

The agreed upon rule on this seems to be pack the minimal amount. You’ll want summer clothes if you’re arriving in February and warmer clothes for June and July. The clubs usually won’t let you in unless you have smart-casual clothes and close-toed shoes, so pack appropriately. Anything you don’t bring with you can probably be picked up reasonably cheaply in one of the many clothing stores. There’s even a warehouse outlet called Harbour Town in Perth but I’m cheap when it comes to what I wear so rarely go there.

Toiletries

I honestly didn’t give them much thought but I have been told by both my mother and sister that this is an important section. You should take fresh bottles of all your shampoos and conditioners. It gives you a bit of breathing space for a few weeks and can also be a bit comforting when you first arrive. You’ll probably be able to get the same products or something very similar in the supermarkets and pharmacies but it’s still nice to have the same product as what you’d use at home.

Computers

Laptops are fairly cheap these days and are really easy to transport. I knew a guy that flew his entire desktop computer over with a printer and it cost him a fortune. If you plan to live in the Village at Murdoch then you’ll most likely have internet access through the ethernet port in your room but you can also get wireless on campus and in lectures. I like to use my laptop to take notes and often end up checking Facebook at the same time. Presumably you’ll be more industrious than me. Printers are also fairly cheap and you can get them in Fremantle and Perth.

Books

Unless you are really dedicated you probably won’t have any of your unit textbooks when it comes to fly across. The books I’m talking about are the sort you read for pleasure rather than the much dryer academic texts, unless that’s your thing. I usually travel with four or five books because I read so quickly but it can add to my hand-luggage weight. I suggest taking one or two books that are special to you, I know someone who has a treasured copy of Atlas Shrugged, and keep those with you throughout your University career. If you plan to go the Village route most of the rooms have good bookshelves in them, though you will probably have to sacrifice space to the dry academic texts.

Mementos

The most important thing you can take is something special that reminds you of home. When my sister went off to University she took her favourite stuffed animal, I took a few photos and my guitar and I know a friend who took enough photo’s to fill a wall. These objects are important for two reasons, first because you’ll need something familiar in the first few months and second because they can be very comforting if you get sick so far away from home.

That, as far as I can see, is most of what you should think about packing. I’ve probably left something very vital out so please don’t try to use this as a checklist. If you decide to use this as a checklist please don’t blame me if you forget something. If you decide to blame me please don’t kill me. If you decide to kill me please at least have the decency to not dump my body down a mine shaft. I get nervous in dark, enclosed spaces.

Stay tuned for part three where I will show you how to make a cat out of macaroni!

The Stress Less Guide to Studying in Australia - Part One

2010-12-16T01:40:00.002+08:00

Pre Departure

You’re on the cusp of moving to Australia for University and at this point you might be panicking just a little bit. Fair enough. This series of posts will hopefully help to set your mind at ease. It’s hardly exhaustive so there might be some omissions, if you notice any glaring ones feel free to make the addition in the comments or send me an email!

Coming up to Christmas there are three things you’ll have needed to sort out that are very important. The first is your electronic confirmation of enrollment or “eCoE”. This is simply a document from your chosen University confirming that you definitely have a place. Good to have. The second thing is your student visa. Put simply this allows you unlimited exits and entries into Australia for the length of your chosen degree. If you don’t have one of these in your passport you probably won’t get into the country. Likewise good to have. Finally, something to sort out, is Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC). Going off personal experience having OSHC was a condition of having my student visa so I presume it still is.

If you have any questions regarding any of this I recommend contacting your education provider. For future Murdoch students, all your contact options are here.

Once you have those squared away it’s time to give some thought to where you are going to stay. Most Universities offer some kind of on-campus accommodation and the Murdoch University Village homepage can be found here. Just remember that there are other options available to you, such as those found here at Perth Student Accommodation (here) . I am not endorsing any of these choices, I personally lived for two years in on campus accommodation before I moved out. I liked living in the Village but, and I stress I heard this second hand, it has gotten quite expensive.

If you’ve got all the documents sorted out and you know where you’re going to be living then you can breathe easy for a bit. There’s still a bit to do but most of the important stuff is out of the way.

To be continued in Part Two - Packing for a different life.

From the Horses Mouth

2010-11-22T00:23:00.003+08:00

On the 30 of October 2010 I received a phone call from my mother while I was at work. My father, Charles Jeffery Gurney, had suffered a fatal heart attack. A week later I stood under the hot sun in a garden in front of more than a hundred people and stumblingly read out a small speech I had written. These were the words I wanted to say, the words I needed to say. I’m going to put the speech, in its flawed entirety, below. I’m going through a tough time right now and it probably won’t get any easier any time soon but I promise you that I will make every effort to put up blog posts whenever I can.

Dad

I can honestly say that I never believed that one day I would be standing here saying goodbye to my dad.

Unsurprisingly it’s one of the hardest things I could never imagine. How can I really say anything that will capture even a fraction of the loss I feel right now and will probably feel for the rest of my life? So I think instead I’d like to just share with you a few things about my dad.

In Form Two we were asked to write about one of our heroes. I remember sitting in the class room looking up at the whiteboard trying to decide if I would write about Nelson Mandela or Terry Pratchett when a little thought popped into the back of my head, “What about Dad?”. So that’s who I wrote about, because to me he was just as influential and just as heroic as those people. Three years later, in 2006, the old man proved me right when he flew all the way to the UK simply to surprise me for my Eighteenth Birthday. I wouldn’t have been any the wiser if he decided that it was too expensive or that he couldn’t take the time off but my Dad made the trip, because that’s who he was.

Dad was a generous man who once explained to me that charitable giving was best done anonymously, because then you knew you did it for the right reasons and not for the recognition. Dad also had the mischief. He would look for the best ways to stir people up, whether it was dreaming up the Gnome Liberation Front to harass people at Cabs or convincing Auntie Karen, as he called her, that Zimbabwe didn’t have the moon.

So when it comes to saying goodbye the word gets caught in my throat. I’ve lost my father, my teacher and my friend. Today I mourn him. Tomorrow and every other day I will celebrate his life.

I love you Dad.

Guest Post - Jennifer Louise Morgan

2010-11-15T04:53:00.000+08:00

My father passed away two weeks ago so the blog has gone on a bit of a hiatus. Luckily my friends have provided me with some guest posts in my time of need.

This next post comes from Jennifer Louise Morgan who had the pleasure of sharing a unit with me this semester. I teased her, annoyed her and generally made her wish she had never met me. Jen is an accomplished writer who has her own blog at Miss Jen and I really do encourage you to check it out. She also makes a superb Ramona Flowers.

Remember to thank Jen in the comments or by sending her positive Karma!

The real world says hello

Finishing university can be described as both a wonderful and terrible thing. It is something that all students have to face at one point or another (there is a limit to HECS after all). The strange thing is I haven’t given it a lot of thought until now.

For those of you who may not know me, I am Jono’s friend Jen. I have been asked to write a guest post for him while he is away (gaining his ultra secret super powers). There are many things I could tell you about myself, but I think the most relevant would be that I’m about to finish my degree.

The awful realisation is dawning on me that I will actually have to find a real job- that buying Harry Potter paraphernalia and watching 30 Rock will no longer be a valid way to spend my evenings. The fact that I am about to walk into a world where I can no longer use student concession scares me to no end.

Studying at Murdoch has been a fantastic, eye-opening experience for me. My degree has given me the room to learn, and explore all that I am genuinely interested in. I have met a diverse range of people, and made some good friends (Jono included).

I am comforted by the fact that I am now taking away invaluable skills, ones which I hopefully will be able to put to good use (besides my mad ninja skillz, they didn’t need much development).

If you hear about a local Perth girl in the next few months however, who has broken the record for eating the most chocolate, or claims she has successfully recreated all the spells in Harry Potter, you will know I have probably failed.

But then again, if Murdoch has taught me anything, it is about finding new life experiences.

Here’s hoping the real world is kind.

Guest Post - Matthew Ledger

2010-11-09T23:31:00.006+08:00

My father passed away last week and so the blog has temporarily gone on hiatus. Thankfully, in my time of need, some of my friends have come forth with excellent posts to keep you entertained. Hopefully we will resume regular service soon.

This first post comes from Matthew Ledger who I met in 2009. I had the pleasure of calling Matt a friend for the duration of his semester at Murdoch and am lucky to have the blog graced by his presence. Please thank Matt for this awesome post in the comments.

Hey there my Australian friends, former Murdoch uni student Matt Ledger here, providing a guest shot of blog-writing from the state of Wisconsin in the United States. We’ll return you to your regularly scheduled writer, Jonathan Gurney, the cutest ice cream eater in all the land, shortly but first I’d like to confess something to you all: I’m jealous of you. Super insanely jealous of you. Why you ask?

Because you, my friends, have all reached the end of another wonderful semester in Australia studying at Murdoch University while I am stuck with five weeks left to go til mega-massive-learning-death induced by final project overload. Meanwhile the temperature here continues to plummet like an all-too-revealing neckline, and the Sun keeps refusing to answer our calls. This is the time of year when I question what part of me thought it would ever be a good idea to leave Australia and Murdoch University. What do I miss most about uni studies in Perth? I’ll tell you:

Study Breaks – Oh sweet, sweet study breaks, how I loved thee! Every four to five weeks students are granted a break from school which, although the professors say is for us to consolidate our studies, we all know is better used for week long vacations and leisure reading and sitting around in Fremantle eating far too much gelato. Back here in the States, most students are forced through fifteen straight weeks of study with a three day break at Thanksgiving which leaves just enough time to become stressed out about all the work we didn’t do while we were driving back and forth to see our families. The word break in “study break” doesn’t mean vacation in the U.S.; it’s what the professors hope to do to our spirits.
Studying at the Beach – I know, I know. “Who actually gets studying done at the beach?” The fact is, I did. I did a lot of my class time reading on the beach shores in Fremantle, reading about the habits of criminal offenders while taking in the salt air (Side Note: I’d highly recommend taking Criminal Behaviour with Jaimie Zander if you can; she’s quite fun.) I wrote one of the short stories I’m most proud of up on the Roundhouse. The beach made studying bearable and oftentimes even enjoyable. Compare that to my now usual studying routine of taking refuge in the university library from the frigid outdoors and trying my best to find a window which lets in just the tiniest bit of light and you tell me which one is more conducive to retaining information about material.
The People – This extends to just about everyone I met, be it professors, fellow students, or friends in the Village. While this may just be my memory glorifying my Australian experience, I cannot remember a single person that I met that I actively disliked. Not one. The fellow writers in my writing workshop, the actors and actresses I stage managed for, the people that I had to come back to my flat and live with each day, all of them were creative, welcoming, and kind. So much so that when given the chance to tell you about what I miss about my studies in Australia, these people were the first thing that came to mind. I chose to save them for last for dramatic effect though.

So there you have it, the reasons that I jealously hate each and every one of you reading this blog entry. I go now to either once again take to the Wisconsin outdoors and trudge my way to class or to surf over to Qantas air and buy the next ticket out of this dump. I really haven’t decided yet.

Breaking down the Barrier

2010-10-27T21:50:00.001+08:00

People often tell me that they’re surprised I’ve lived as long as I have. I’m not sure if this a reference to the amount of exercise I do (none), the number of people I seem to offend (lots) or simply a dig at my diet (questionable at best).

The truth is I generally try to eat well. I’ll spend hours in my head planning out exquisite meals, full three course banquets that tick every nutritional box and should, in theory, make me a better person simply by eating them. I’ll settle, however, for a can of chicken soup and some toast made with bread that isn’t completely mouldy.

A big part of how well I eat comes from how much time I am willing to devote to my meals. While Jamie Oliver might be able to knock out a decent curry in thirty minutes and still have time to lecture people on the importance of eating well, I’m lucky if I’ve managed to find a clean fork after a half hour of rummaging. Finding clean crockery and cutlery is only a tiny amount of the time I use. I need to factor in time to allow things like potatoes to boil, to allow time for swearing when I realise I’ve forgotten to turn on the hob and boil the potatoes and finally time to allow for the amount of helpless weeping I’ll do when I scald my hand on boiling potato water. By the time I’ve cleared the potatoes off the floor, dried my tears and attended to my hand, my stomach is empty and I can hear the siren’s call of the tin opener.

Truth be told I am not really that bad a cook, though I have scalded my hand on hot potato water and developed a healthy respect for fire. I can make a variety of meals and I can make some of them quite well but still I find it hard to eat healthy. I’m certain much of it is laziness. I can make a pizza if I want one but I can also buy a frozen one for a fraction of the cost and that takes a fraction of the time. Factoring in the time washing up takes and you’re left choosing between something delicious that takes four or five hours and something that’s average and only takes twenty-five minutes.

So really, while the home-cooked meals can taste delicious and are much healthier, what it boils down to (get it?!) is that during exams and assignments I much prefer to eat the quick unhealthy food followed by a handful of multivitamins than take the long path. There is also the chance, however slight, that the multivitamins will react with the chemicals in the quick food and either kill me or grant me mutant powers.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go and run my poor scalded hand under the cold tap.

The Jitters

2010-10-18T21:32:00.000+08:00

Around this time in the semester I start to get nervous and I don’t mean slightly uncomfortable or a little bit worried but actual, full blown anxiety. This may sound strange as I am usually happy go lucky and don’t worry about anything until its much too late. Whenever someone talks to me about Global Warming the chances are that I’ll cheerfully zone out and imagine which mutant power I would most like to have. This isn’t, you understand, because I don’t care about the problems facing our Environment, but rather it is because there are so many people who are so much smarter than myself doing so that I rather feel I would get under foot and annoy them. Also while they are worrying over that no-one is left to worry about which mutant power I would like to develop.

The real reason I become so concerned at this moment is because so much of my free time will seem to be devoted to assignments and researching for them. I’ll spend so much time staring blankly at Google Scholar or at word documents that it will start to feel like my entire existence is based on a little flashing line that dictates where the next word I write will go. So the long and short of it is that I get a little stressed over assignments, that’s normal and I should just deal with it. This year though I have one little tiny morsel more on my plate, this is my last semester of University.

After I pass that final unit I will be a free man and due some unforeseen financial problems (post-grad is a little out of my budget) I will be looking for full time employment. These however are not issues I wish to burden you with my dear reader, instead I was hoping to share my strategy of dealing with stress. Every semester the Guild holds a Stamp Out Stress day where there is a petting zoo, drumming lessons and free herbal tea. It is the greatest invention ever and humankind shall never ascend to the dizzying heights required for such an idea ever again. This semester though I will be unfortunate enough to miss out on it and the therapy that feeding a fuzzy lamb brings. Instead I will be working in the relatively non-stress-free environment of the commercial cafe.

So that is why, in my hour of need, I am turning to you, the people I try to entertain here. Please let me know how you deal with stress, is it exercise? Screaming pillow therapy? Semi-legal narcotics? Keep in mind that my sanity is in the balance and, while reading about me becoming dangerously unhinged would be enjoyable, you would be saving me from an inevitable breakdown.

Shearing the Locks

2010-10-12T22:56:00.002+08:00

I usually use Hairess on campus to get my hair cut. When I say usually I mean that I have gone to them to get my hair cut for the past 3 years. I’ve not been wholly faithful, in fact there have probably been as many as 3 other hair dressers in my life in this time, but on the whole I prefer Hairess.

I guess most it has to do with trusting them. If someone is going to be waving scissors around my head I really feel that I need to be able to trust them. I was not always this paranoid but like so many of my phobias I developed it after a painful experience. It was 2008 and my hair was getting a little out of control, so I wandered down to Hairess only to discover they had no free appointments. Being the carefree youth that I was I simply thought, “Oh well, I’ll just go into Fremantle and get one there.” How I would regret that.

I can’t quite remember the name of the place that I walked into but I remember thinking that it looked a little run down. I sat down in the chair and went through the usual routine of explaining what I wanted and the barber went through the usual routine of ignoring every word I said. Nothing really seemed out of place and we made small talk while he snipped away, I’m not usually the best conversationalist when someone is cutting my hair but I think its important to make an effort. The snipping stopped and I was expecting the clippers next. What I was not expecting was the barber to pull out an old fashioned razor and start hacking away at my hair.

This continued for about five minutes and I just sat in horror as chunks of hair fell from my hair. Nothing in my prior life experience had really prepared me for this so I just sat there and smiled weakly while the barber continued his butchery. Finally he brushed the copious amounts of hair off my shoulders and let me get out of the chair with a haircut that looked like something I’d have gotten for joining the army. Nevertheless I paid the gentleman and stumbled out into the sunshine. I’d have paid more than $20 to get out of that place.

So after that incident you’d have thought I would’ve learnt my lesson. Which is why I found myself in Fremantle on Monday looking for a hair dresser and hoping that I wouldn’t stumble into the same place as last time. This time I was lucky enough to find another place, a much more respectable place. The hair dresser at this new place was great but she had one small flaw; she didn’t talk at all. A hair-cut without chatter is simply fifteen to twenty minutes of being forced to stare at your reflection while someone cuts your hair and occasionally moves your head. It’s a form of psychological torture and I would not condone using it on anyone ever. Not even the barber that attacked me with a razor.

I guess the point of all of this is that I’ve learnt my lesson about going to hair dressers that don’t work at Hairess and apparently people will sometime cut your hair with old-fashioned razors. Avoid these people.

Jobs

2010-10-06T23:44:00.001+08:00

The world runs on money. If you have money then anything you need or want in the world can be bought or rented. If you don’t then go away and come back when you’ve found some money. Finding money can be accomplished by many varied activities; you can beg, borrow, steal or earn. As I have too much pride to beg, no rich friends to borrow from and my ability to steal is only matched by my ability to update a blog on time I am forced to seek out gainful employment.

Work can be a deeply demoralising experience which is why its so odd that finding a job can be so difficult. If you’re at all like me then you probably have an updated resume that you can print off to give to prospective employers. So you print out a couple and then spend a day wandering around to stores you quite like, making sure to hand them out to people who will hopefully give you a job. Each time you will probably be politely told that they have no vacancies until the rejection begins to make your ears ring.

So you print off a few more and resolve to slightly lower your standards for a part-time job. After all, you’ll reason with yourself, working at a comic shop would be great but a book store is just as good. Sadly these places will also be overstaffed and you’ll return to your flat with a bag full of resumes and broken dreams.

Finally you’ll break down and start applying for the hospitality jobs that you’ve so desperately avoided. Usually these involve long hours, fairly low pay and dealing with some of the rudest people in the world. The likelihood of getting one of these jobs is much higher than it is of getting one of the jobs you want. Strangely enough though these jobs can also be the most rewarding. When you go out of your way to help someone or fix their order so its just right it can be a good feeling to be thanked by someone who really means it.

I guess the morale of the story is that you shouldn’t shy away from the hospitality jobs as they can be great. That and you should plot to kill employees anywhere you want to work ahead of applying for a job there.

The Proper Care and Maintenance of a Mouse Trap

2010-09-20T14:41:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, I like to take a break from saving the world to actually attend some lectures. However I've noticed that a lot of people tend to be breaking the unwritten guidelines of behaviour during these sacred times. So what follows are some of what I consider to be the more important ones.

Snoring

Falling asleep in a lecture is pretty common. Sometimes it's because you've been up studying all night and other times it's because a darkened room is very conducive to sleep. I have nothing but respect for the noble state of the sleeping scholar. Their gentle nods of the head, the hunched way they sit over their notebook and the startled look on their face when the lights come back on at the conclusion. However the snoring scholar is something I believe every lecture can do without.

Eating

It's five p.m. You've spent the whole day in the library desperately scribbling away to get your paper on 19^th Regency era Romance Literature finished before your next class. You haven't had time to eat because you've barely had time to sleep. Finally you drop the assignment into the box and head to the final lecture of the day. You sit down, barely able to keep your eyelids open, and someone sits next to you. They pull out a sandwich they have obviously just purchased from the food court. Its smell is intoxicating. You believe that you could subsist entirely on the mere idea of this sandwich. You lean over and gently bash the owner of the sandwich unconscious and claim your reward. This is why I advise against eating delicious food during lectures.

Keyboards

I am actually guilty of this one myself. I like to take my laptop into lectures so my notes don't devolve into doodles of penguins and spaceships. I respect that some lecturers dislike seeing laptops open during lectures as they believe, sometimes quite rightly, that students will fritter their lecture time away by idly clicking 'refresh' on Facebook. I have no problem with this. My problem rests with the personality type known as the “aggressive” note-taker. This person will tap away at their keyboard as if every single key has committed a grave sin against them and must be punished. It would be an exaggeration to say that it can be hard to hear the lecturer but honestly it's still pretty intrusive.

Talker

Finally we come to the talker. This person hasn't seen their friend in forever and will engage in an energetic conversation with them about topics as diverse as politics, literature and whether or not one of them saw what was on the telly the previous night. Catching up with friends is an activity I wholeheartedly endorse. Catching up with friends when the lecturer is attempting to explain the finer points of a topic is a crime I would welcome the death penalty for.

So there you have just a few simple rules that really do make me sound like an old man complaining about the kids on his lawn. I only have this to say in my defence; in at least one lecture in all my time at Murdoch I've been in breach of all four of these guidelines. And yes, the title is completely misleading and unrelated to the topic.

Help is on the way

2010-08-30T10:48:00.001+08:00

However you look at it Murdoch has some very unattractive courtyards. There are some beautiful areas, such as the Peace garden, but overall there is definitely something missing in the bigger places. With that in mind Murdoch contacted me and asked me to do a series of installations that would hopefully raise the profile of the institution. Given my fantastic work with the chalk drawings and the very inspirational believe banner it would seem like I was a logical choice for such a big endeavour, but I was quite busy so they decided to go in a different direction.

Murdoch have asked the artist Kyle Hughes-Odgers, also known as Creepy, to do a series of seven installations for around campus that will be going up this week. Creepy is an internationally renowned street artist who is based locally here in Perth and does some fantastic work. I really don't know much about art but I do know what I like and Creepy's work falls neatly into the latter category. They are a blend of vibrant colours and contemporary themes that I think will click nicely with the student population. Below is a time-lapse video of the largest piece being done and it is really fascinating to watch.

help is on the way from Chad Peacock on Vimeo.

I think this is such a great idea, not only because Creepy has created some amazing pieces but because these will now become a part of the Murdoch University art collection and will inspire so many of our future artists that study there. It's also part of a much larger effort to refurbish one of our biggest courtyards, something that is long over-due, as well as a great opportunity to show-case how fantastic the Perth artists are. You can find out more about Creepy at his site here, or by heading to the Turner Gallery where his exhibition “You just have your eyes closed” will be running until the 13^th of September. If you don't need to go to campus this week but live close enough I think it would be worth it to pop down and see them go up.

Murdoch Open Day 2010 - Review

2010-08-25T13:28:00.000+08:00

It can sometimes be hard to write this blog. As I've mentioned in previous posts and I have clearly outlined, or at least I hope I have, in the disclaimer Murdoch does officially endorse the blog and compensate me for certain posts. This doesn't mean that I am going to necessarily always be positive about them and Murdoch have stressed to me that they will not attempt to censor me. With that said I will now discuss my opinions on the Murdoch Open Day on August 22^nd.

When I was 17, all those years ago, I was given the day off College to attend the Sussex University Open Day. It was pretty cool being given a day off to wander around a campus for a couple of hours and I had made plans to meet some friends in Brighton afterwards. I hadn't given any thought to University at that stage so I was thoroughly unprepared for what to expect. I had no idea what major I wanted to pursue and next to no clue if I was even going to be living in England for University. As you can imagine this made the whole open day experience less than pointless as all I did was walk around with a group of friends and complain, if I remember correctly, about how boring the whole process was. In short I was immature, annoying and completely unprepared to even think about University.

Murdoch's open day, compared to the rather subdued Sussex one, was more like attending a carnival or festival. There were tea-cup rides, face-painting, competitions and a fairly impressive band line-up. If anything it seemed like there was so much to see and do that the prospective students didn't really have a reason to engage with the lecturers which is the whole point of an Open Day. Luckily the people attending this event seemed to be a bit more mature than I was on my first Open Day and I saw a lot of lecturers being asked questions and a lot of information being given out. All in all Murdoch gets points for being very informative and that's really what these days are about.

The razor in the candy-floss though is that all the attractions kind of distort what a typical day on campus is actually like. There aren't always tea-cup rides and petting zoos on campus, we seldom get bands performing live on Bush Court and you'll be lucky to get churros on any day other than the Open Day. I know the attractions are fun and only meant to be a diversion and I am not saying Murdoch put them on for any other reason, but if Sussex had a similar show I'd likely have tried harder to get a place there and perhaps regretted it as I would have missed out on my Australian experience.

The reality of campus life is that most of the time you won't be able to simply lounge around on Bush Court and enjoy the sun. You have work to do, often a lot of work, and when you're out on Bush Court its likely that it will be to read something for an upcoming tutorial or to do a last-minute bit of studying. Sometimes the Guild will put on an anti-stress day and it can be fun to visit the petting zoo or get a free drumming lesson but like I have said, these days are few and far between.

So in my own roundabout way I am telling you that you shouldn't base your decision solely off the Open Day. Universities will use them to put on their best face, and who can blame them? If you choose Murdoch simply because 'it had the best attractions' or 'was the most fun' then all I can do is caution you to re-think. If you came to the conclusion that Murdoch is the University for you through research and backed that up by attending the Open Day and talking to the relevant Unit and Degree Co-ordinators then I think you've got the point and are a very different person to me when I attended my first open day.

Open Day

2010-08-18T21:24:00.000+08:00

Many rumours abound about the going-ons at Murdoch Campus. Do they really have a chocolate river? Is the gummy-bear tree as awesome as it sounds? Does every student really get a little oompa-loompa to carry their books for them? Well once a year Murdoch throws open its majestic golden gates and allows the common folk to roam freely around its diamond encrusted buildings. In light of all the rumours out there I thought it wise to do a post that answers some of the more pressing questions about Open Day.

What's the point?

For a lot of people the open day is something their parents will drag them too when really they could care less about which University they enrol in. These poor attendees will spend the day trying not to be embarrassed by their parents and avoiding the eye of other people being dragged around in much the same way. They will not get the most out of the open day and will quite possibly regret going to it. They have missed the point. The idea of this open day is to get a chance to rub shoulders and ask questions of the people that might be teaching you without having to enrol first. If you're not sure what you want to study or even if university is the right choice then this day will help you make up your mind.

What's there to do?

Lots. Firstly check out the events schedule here. You'll be able to wander around the whole campus and see some of the really cool presentations being put on. Most of the degree chairs will be there to take questions and help you make up your mind about what degree suits you. Besides that there will be a lot of activities and distractions to help you spend the day. Sunset events will also be holding a competition to win a Nintendo Wii and tickets to One Movement for Music. There is also a lot of live music that I will probably be watching from a bench in the tav.

Is it really worth it?

The open day isn't for your parents. It's for you. Only you. If you want to get the most out of it, ditch your parents, seek out the lecturers and ask them questions, check out the learning points for the various disciplines, meet other prospective students and then enjoy the live music. I'm not saying your parents shouldn't have a say in your future but you should certainly take some responsibility and seek out your own answers. That's part of University, seeking out your own answers and taking responsibility for your learning. If you really want a taste of that then the Open Day is for you.

Will there be pony rides?

Yes. The pony in question also has a PhD in Quantum Mechanics.

Early Mornings

2010-08-11T15:55:00.000+08:00

My alarm will usually go off at seven and my brain will spend a panicked few seconds trying to get my arm to move and turn it off. I've talked before about my sleep schedule and how I'll often suffer from bouts of insomnia that make the early classes a form of torture for me.

The odd thing is that during the break I had no problem getting up at seemingly ridiculous hours to get to work on time but as soon as I need to haul my ass out of bed for a nine thirty lecture all of a sudden the snooze button on the alarm starts to be abused. Perhaps it's because I now live off campus and actually have to walk for about twenty minutes to get to class or perhaps its because I get paid to show up to work, either way today I had an 8:30 class and that inspired this little post.

Campus is an interesting place first thing in the morning as it is virtually abandoned. If you're lucky one of the cafe's will be open and you can get some life-giving caffeine. There are also some coffee machines on campus now that actually dispense halfway decent coffee for only $2. On Wednesdays the Guild gives out free slices of toast so if, like me, you have to skip breakfast because you've been a bit generous with the snooze button you at least don't have to go into your lecture hungry.

Other than that campus is a serene place before the buses start dropping students off, the long procession from the village begins and the car parks begin to fill up. If you get there really early, as I have on some occasions, you can simply relax on bush court and perhaps get some readings done before your tutorial. When the sun is shining and you've got a free piece of toast getting up early doesn't seem so bad.

Semester Two 2010

2010-07-31T13:44:00.002+08:00

Without even realising how quickly it had gone by the break is now over. Next week kicks off semester two and, as always, I find myself grossly unprepared. Partly I think it’s because I’ve been working so much to save up some money before I go back to the 20 hour limit but I also think the break made me lazy. That being said, here are some predictions for the semester to come.

I will buy all my books and only find half to be useful

This is probably one of my biggest problems. Every semester I spend roughly $300 – $500 on text-books and readers and every semester I only really seem to use one or two of them. I could very easily wait till about the mid-point in the semester to get a good idea of which books would be useful and then purchase them but every semester I get into a mild panic and decide to simply trust in the wisdom of the booklist.

I will get sick

Universities are the modern day plague pits. I know that sounds a bit melodramatic but allow me to illustrate it with a small tale that I am sure many people can relate to.

Student A is an over-achiever and refuses to let anything stand in their way when it comes to academic progress. Student A unfortunately catches the flu one cold night in the library. However, rather than simply take a few days to recover, Student A rushes to Uni the next day and spends the entire lecture coughing, sneezing and spluttering. Jonathan is usually seated next to Student A.

I’ll usually spend the next week huddled in bed with a fever and praying for a wrathful God to smite down Student A.

I will lose all the pens I buy

We’ve talked before about how absent-minded I can be. I have often walked into a room and completely forgotten what I was doing. I don’t wish to imply that I spend most of my day in a dazed state but rather I seem to be overcome with bouts of forgetfulness. Before class I usually remember all the important things such as putting underwear on before pants (Superman could learn a lesson from me) and that shirts are important in preventing a nipple faux pas. After class however all bets are off. I personally blame the lecturers because they obviously fill my brain with so much knowledge that I cannot keep track of small details, such as picking up the pen I’ve just been using to write my notes or draw my doodles with.

I will make a calendar with all of my assignment due dates on it

Every semester I sit down and painstakingly plot out when my assignments are due. Then I spend more time working out the best time to start work on each assignment and how much time I’ll need to spend on each essay or project. Every semester I’ve turned out to be completely wrong, the assignments that I have thought will be easy turn out to be modern-day exercises in torture. Even though I am always wrong I live in hope that I will one day get it right so I will be picking up a calendar on Monday when I go to get all my textbooks.

I realise that all of these sound negative but that honestly isn’t the case. I know I will have fun this semester just like I know that at some point I will hate all my units and not believe that I am capable of doing them. I also know that I will get all my assignments done and submitted on time (relatively on time). I am really looking forward to this semester.

Also, here is a picture of a koala in Taronga Zoo:

The Great Train Ride Part 6

2010-07-11T19:13:00.000+08:00

Day Four – Arrival

Well we survived a trip that could have driven us insane. We travelled 65 hours, 4352 kilometres and roughly 20 muesli bars. We are actually very lucky that the trip is ending today. The carriage we were on has turned feral in the one night since it was cleaned with every drain in every bathroom becoming clogged and garbage beginning to spread all over the aisles.

Also it seems someone had broken into the carriage last night and replaced my usual impeccably groomed self with a red-eyed maniac who stank of travel and cheap meals. My joints ached like they had been wrenched around all night, which they essentially had, and I couldn’t face myself in the mirror because of the unusual angle my neck was stuck at.

Our last night aboard the train had been great fun as we’d met two students from Queensland who, thankfully, lowered themselves to playing our ridiculous ‘train’ games that we shamelessly stole from Callum. They also told us some fun stories about the people they’d travelled with in their carriage, some of them sounded as bad as the one’s we had met. We also got to watch the implosion of the UTS students who were having some huge row over politics or economics or possibly religion, we weren’t quite sure but a huge row was going on and those words were thrown around a lot. In their defence all of them really did show a lot of passion for the argument and that is quite important in life.

Falling asleep was harder to do because of the excitement of arriving in Sydney and it was nearly two o’clock in the morning when I finally dozed off. Sadly the attendants saw fit to wake us up at 5:45 to announce the birthday of a 66 year old passenger. Even she looked slightly put out by the loud congratulations over the P.A system. We were then informed we had half an hour to grab breakfast before they would stop serving it. At around ten the train began to pull through the main suburbs of Sydney and we began to see what we had travelled for four days to get to.

I can’t say I will miss the India Pacific but I can’t say I didn’t really enjoy the trip either. It takes a long time and is probably a fair bit more expensive than a plane and apparently the service has been greatly reduced. But I still don’t hesitate to recommend it to everyone as a great way to have a ‘new’ experience.

The Great Train Ride Part 5

2010-07-11T19:11:00.002+08:00

Day Three

We arrived in Adelaide early in the morning and were eager to jump off the train and get a proper cooked breakfast. We were advised by the married couple to get a taxi into Adelaide as it was faster and more reliable than the coach service that operated from the station. We jumped into the first available taxi and were immediately taken for a ride by a cabbie who knew we were from out of town and decided to teach us a valuable lesson about being specific when a running meter is involved.

Actually he did, to his credit, drop us right in front of an excellent cafe where we got a good breakfast and some life-giving coffee. Once we had fed the body it was time to feed the mind and we strolled through the CBD of Adelaide, pausing to admire some of the handsome old buildings that had been excellently preserved. Being the so-called “Festival City”, there was a lot of beautiful art to see from the streets; from the coins embedded in the pavement to the big steel balls proudly erected in the middle of the walkway. Sadly our time ran out and we had to hail another taxi, this time being very specific as to where we were going.

A lot of new people had boarded the train since we’d arrived in Adelaide. One fairly large group seemed to be travelling together and turned out to be a group of students from UTS (University of Technology Sydney) that had been attending a sustainability conference. For the most part they were polite but one of them, and I single him out to be the target of my irritation, developed a habit of dropping into our chairs whenever we got up to go to the dining cart and then pretending not to notice when we came back. The little git.

We got into Broken Hill in the late afternoon and were treated to a nicely preserved city centre. Broken Hill is another mining town but it rates higher than Karlgoorlie for the number of artists that call it home. There is a touching memorial to soldiers lost both in World War I & II as well as a smaller, but still handsome, memorial to those lost in the Vietnam War. There is also a rather eerie restaurant that is based on a big hill over-looking the city. It looms over the town like some Bond Villain’s hideout and feels a bit out of place.

Tomorrow we shall arrive in Sydney and once more sleep in comfortable beds!

The Great Train Ride Part 4

2010-07-11T19:09:00.001+08:00

The People

I could devote an entire book to the people I’ve met so far on this trip but that would take a long time so instead I will devote a single post to 4 people that have really stuck out. These individuals have introduced themselves to me, usually while I’ve been sitting in the dining compartment, and each of them can definitely be described as a “Character”

Satan Gilbert Fox

This was the curious individual I mentioned earlier. Mr. Fox is of the belief that he is a direct descendent of Satan. I hesitate to challenge this assumption as he also seems a harmless sort whose only crime is to attempt to sell his various artworks to people sitting in the dining cart.

Mr. Fox approached me while I was working on some other writing project. He introduced himself and shook me by the hand before launching into a lengthy explanation about how he was a direct descendent of Satan and was considered a prince by some. Sadly this would not make him the strangest person I’ve ever met so I didn’t really think much of his behaviour. Unfortunately he then pulled out some very interesting art-work that he attempted to sell to me. I have a lot of trouble saying no to people who are trying to sell me stuff or ask for money so I felt like I was in a very awkward position where I would end up purchasing most of his art. Luckily I was saved by the duty officer who politely asked Mr. Fox to follow him out of the cart where they could have a polite chat.

Apparently it’s not legal to attempt to sell goods or services to passengers onboard the Indian Pacific and Mr. Fox had run afoul of this rule. Luckily for him he was simply reprimanded and given a free meal but he could have been put off the train at our next stop. Not a desirable outcome.

The Proud Nanna

I have sadly forgotten this lady’s name as Kieran and I had been having a few drinks when she approached us and introduced herself.

For the purpose of this post we shall refer to her as the ‘proud nanna’ because that is just what she was. Nanna started by asking us where we were from, before debating with us as to whether we were being honest. Then the usual disbelief followed when she found out I was in fact old enough to drink and Kieran was not my father. Finally she settled down into the booth opposite ours and began to tell us her life story, punctuated with extremely expressive hand gestures.

It was Nanna’s first trip on the Indian Pacific and she had loved every minute of it. The joy of being able to wander up and down at will instead of being confined to a tiny airline seat was the very peak of technological achievement as far as she was concerned. It also turned out that she was travelling with her youngest daughter and her husband who was back in the carriage snoozing. Her youngest was very well behaved, unlike some of the other children onboard, and, apparently, her grand-children.

Nanna was full of stories, many of them unfortunately unprintable, but she did keep us thoroughly enthralled for a few hours and did not kill us (always a plus).

The Married Couple

These two empty-nesters joined in our discussions with the Nanna and introduced themselves as frequent travellers on the Indian Pacific.

They were full of some interesting anecdotes about the train itself; their first trip aboard, the various tricks they use to secure a cheaper sleeper, their habits and methods to deal with the boredom that eventually sets in and their plans for the holiday.

I make no excuses for the fact that I am fairly out of shape. I can run up a hill and not die but push me beyond that and I’ll break down into one of the ‘before’ candidates for the Biggest Loser. With this in mind I was put utterly to shame when the couple described all the jogging and extreme sports they were into. They white-water rafted and quad biked in between all the hiking they did and still found time to work successful jobs, one as a rail engineer and the other as a mad scientist (I kid you not).

The sadder story they told us was how much the Indian Pacific had changed in just 4 years. Apparently the train used to have a lot more services available to the Red carriage passengers. They spent a bit of time talking about the lounge car that used to be available which had big comfortable couches and a fully stocked bar. After a day and a half sitting upright these stories sounded like a paradise that had been cruelly snatched away by a cruel and budget slashing devil.

Ultimately all of these people will get off at Adelaide and, though new people will replace them, it will be hard to replace the bond that we’d somehow created.

The Great Train Ride Part 3

2010-07-11T19:08:00.001+08:00

Day Two

Well we arrived in Kalgoorlie late last night and the entire town was completely dead. The only pub we wandered into had already called last drinks. Kalgoorlie is primarily a mining town so I’m not sure what we were expecting but I don’t think we expected to be as disappointed. Interestingly enough we saw three brothels and one was actually disguised as a museum. I have no moral objection to brothels or the service they provide but I can’t say I liked seeing a ‘specials’ board displaying the girls like they were dishes to order.

The first night of sleep was actually pretty easy, the constant rocking motion making it easy to nod off, and we didn’t pick up nearly enough people at Kalgoorlie to make it noisy. The seats were not the most comfortable beds but they were miles better than airline seats for getting a good rest in and although I woke up a bit sore the pain quickly faded away. The Indian Pacific is equipped with showers that actually have decent water pressure and fairly hot water. You strip down and lather up which is when the trouble begins. The first problem is that the train is still moving at a fairly good pace while you are standing in what is essentially a slippery cubicle so the slightest bump or jolt sends you flying around the place. The second problem is that the water pressure will drop without any real warning, going from a gentle mist to a stinging spray in less than a second. By the end of my first shower I felt like I had been gently water-boarded and had the bruises to prove it.

It also transpired that we had somehow lost time while we were travelling. The track is big but it can still only support on train at a time so there were frequent points in the night where we’d apparently had to stop and allow a freight train to pass. This put us about forty five minutes behind schedule which meant that we could only make a short stop in Cook, a semi-ghost town.

Cook is described as Australia’s “loneliest” town as the population stays static at 2. The only visitors the town ever sees are the passengers from the Indian Pacific and they only stay long enough to take photos of the abandoned hospital and school. It is a bit of a stark reminder of how empty Australia can be and how the tiniest change to a train route can mean the difference between life and death to a small town community.

Tomorrow we arrive in Adelaide and bid farewell to most of the people we’ve been sharing our carriage with.

The Great Train Ride Part 2

2010-07-11T19:06:00.001+08:00

Day One

We got on the train without much incident besides Kieran nearly leaving his travelling hat in the departure terminal. Our home for the next three days is two upright red chairs that recline a bit. They are quite comfortable but in that way that will become uncomfortable in the next five hours. Luckily we have a dining car a short walk down the train that we can go and relax in and we are forecast to stop in Kalgoorlie this evening.

This wouldn’t be an Australian train if it wasn’t also a licensed venue so we will be able to purchase beer and wine on board should we feel the need. The advertised food sounds very good but we are pretty sure it will turn out to simply be glorified airline cuisine. The Gold Class carriages have proper chefs (they walk through our carriage to get to their jobs) but we have a very friendly crew manning the canteen so I don’t feel we’ve been wronged.

I did manage to make myself look a bit of an idiot by simply handing the nice man behind the counter my debit card in order to pay for beer and wine. Without any prompting from me he had copied down my passport number, copied my card and opened up a tab for me. I have a nearly paralysing fear of debt and the like so I would have confronted the man about it but he seemed so happy about it that I didn’t have the heart to.

We sat in the dining car and enjoyed a quiet drink while the landscape sped past in an almost hypnotic fashion. I was drinking the classic Carlton Draught and Kieran was sipping at a small bottle of house red. The beer was nothing remarkable but Kieran did insist that I let everyone know just how bad the wine was, comparing it unfavourably to vinegar.

The earlier problem with the account reared its head as we discovered that we couldn’t close our account without spending at least $20 so we ended up with a few cans of coke and some twix bars. The dining car is small considering it serves three carriages but none of the carriages are even close to full yet so we have space to stretch out. More passengers are due to get on in Kalgoorlie tonight.

The current complement of passengers is interesting and we have quite a few ‘characters’ on board. One person in particular seems to think that he is one of the direct descendents of Satan. I haven’t really seen any evidence to support this claim but by the same token there’s none to refute it. Nonetheless we shall be keeping an eye on him and I will keep everyone updated.

The Great Train Ride Part 1

2010-07-11T19:03:00.002+08:00

I’ve been living in Australia for two years now but the furthest I’ve gotten out of town is the weekly jaunt to Fremantle for work or a visit to Joondalup to see family. With this in mind when the chance came up to visit Sydney I seized on it and the chance to see a different side of Australia.

The original plan was to drive from Perth to Sydney, a trip that would likely take us three days if we drove 9 – 12 hours every day. Unfortunately we decided to scrap this idea as the cost of fuel, food and accommodation would put it out of our budget reach. So the other option seemed to be fly directly to Sydney, it was cheaper and quicker, but ultimately we also decided against this as it wouldn’t really allow us to see much of the outback. Thankfully there was a third option; hop on the transcontinental train from Perth to Adelaide and then Sydney.

The Indian Pacific was the first uninterrupted transcontinental rail train linking Perth to Sydney from late February 1970. The train measures 711 metres, weighs 1375 tonnes and travels a total of 4352 kilometres (roughly 65 hours). The passenger accommodation ranges from the luxury sleepers to the ‘cheap’ seats which are very reminiscent of Airplane seating.

What particularly attracted me to this method of transport was that one of my heroes, Bill Bryson, had made a similar trip and had commented that it was a good way to see Australia. Unfortunately with no publishing company to pay for our voyage we had to choose the cheap Red service seats. Even with a fairly hefty student discount it was still much more expensive than flying.

The train leaves Perth at 12:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday the 7^th of July and arrives in Sydney on Saturday the 10^th of July at 10:15 a.m. We’ll be spending most of our time on the train but there are a fair amount of stops; including a quick stop-off at the semi-Ghost town of Cook, in the mining town of Kalgoorlie, a morning stop in Adelaide, an afternoon trip into Broken Hill and finally we get to Sydney. I probably won’t be able to upload these till I actually arrive in Sydney but know that they will be written on the train.

The Big Freeze

2010-06-30T22:56:00.000+08:00

It can’t have escaped your notice that I’ve not updated much lately and I hope to rectify that in the next few days. In the past week I’ve booked the tickets to Sydney, moved house and nearly frozen to death in the grip of winter that has seized Perth.

Whenever I used to think of Australia, before I moved here, all I could really picture was the Sydney opera house and a kangaroo in a red desert. Oh of course I was aware that there were cities in Australia but there never any really useful information available about any of them so my mental picture went unchanged. Upon arrival I wasn’t exactly surprised to discover how big Perth was but it was certainly very different to what I had pictured. What I had also failed to take into account was how hot it was, how very hot.

So my first few months were largely becoming used to the Australian climate and learning how to survive 40 degree days. Then, just when I got the hang of the heat, nature seemed to flip a giant switch that turned the temperature from hellishly hot to unbelievably cold. People will chortle or snicker and say that they don’t feel the cold and I used to belong to that group. Living in England I’d sometimes go for a few days without seeing the sun come out from the dreary band of grey and the temperature at night could plummet to as low as -4 Celsius. But the big difference between England and Australia is that the houses in the UK are constructed to hold as much heat in whereas the houses over here are built to release it.

The freezing cold aside this holiday has been perhaps one of my busiest. This time next week I will be boarding a train that will take 3 days to get me to Sydney and I am getting quite excited. I’ve had a few suggestions about what I should do while over there and I will try to get as much done as I can.

Climbing the harbour bridge

I have no head for heights but this did sound like an amazing time. Unfortunately it will out of my budget so I won’t be doing that. I might try to chip a piece of bridge off as a souvenir. That’s legal right?

Visit the opera house

This was already on my list of things to see but I think I’d like to chip off a piece of the opera house as well; it’s kind of developing as a theme to the trip.

Interview the head of the notorious SHTRS gang

This one actually makes me a bit nervous as I have gotten into contact with their shadowy leader who has agreed to let me interview them. I was warned that if I make them look stupid they will kill me. I might dress Kieran up as me just in case.

Visit the Aquarium

Penguins.

Everything else

There is a lot of other stuff I want to do while over there and I’m sure I won’t get through half the list but I’m sure I’ll still have a great time.

Break This

2010-06-15T22:58:00.001+08:00

So we’ve arrived at the end of another semester. Exams are done and now all that’s left is the tense wait for results. It’s a time of tension, celebration and sadness. On the one hand you’ve come out of the semester alive and mostly intact but on the other hand some of the friends you’ve made will probably return to their home countries. Even temporary partings can be a bit sad and it’s going to be a few months before you get to see some of your friends again.

But one the plus side it’s the holidays!

The first obstacle this break will be moving into the new house. I’ve finally had enough of the Village and secured a room on the outside. So in the next few weeks I need to box up my entire life and move it 20 minutes down the road as well as tidy the flat I’ve been living in. Moving is always a bit of a drag but I am actually quite excited this time. I’ll be moving in with some old friends so there hopefully won’t be that awkward adjustment period when they discover how many bad habits I have.

Secondly is the exciting Supanova expo coming to Perth. I think everyone that reads this blog, all two of you, know how big a geek I am and therefore how big a deal this is. Supanova is a pop culture expo with some pretty cool guests and activities that will be hitting Perth in two weeks. I’ll actually be volunteering at the event so I might end up kidnapping most of the stars that are visiting, we’ll just have to see. I encourage you to check out the website at: http://www.supanova.com.au/

Finally I will be making a trip up to Sydney! This was originally going to be a proper road-trip but time constrictions mean I have to force everything I want to do in Sydney into one week. I’ll be travelling with Kieran, the friend I’ve privately nominated as the least likely to murder me in my sleep, and he knows the ins and outs of Sydney but if you have a suggestion of something cool to see/fun to do/good to eat while there then please leave it in the comments below!

If you’ll excuse me I really should be getting off to bed as, while this is the break, I still need to be up at 5 tomorrow morning for work.

University Myth busters part 3

2010-06-07T23:27:00.002+08:00

It’s come to the stage of the year when Murdoch starts accepting the mid-year enrolments. A lot of students who take a break after high school find this to be the best time to get into student life. However it can still be a pretty intimidating time and you probably have a lot of worries and doubts. With that in mind Murdoch asked me to write three articles tackling the most common worries you guys face. If you have any questions about enrollment I advise you to check out Ask Murdoch.

“I haven’t studied in a while and I’m lacking confidence.”

I’m told that 60% of Murdoch students are over 19 when they enrol. Maybe this statement could apply to you? Maybe you took some time off between finishing school and enrolling to travel or earn some money. Perhaps University didn’t seem like your first choice when you wrote your last exams but now it seems like a pretty attractive option. But you’ve been away from studying for a while now and you’re not sure if you could write an assignment or research a paper. I was in the same place when I first started at Murdoch, although admittedly my exile from the books had only been for 8 months. Thankfully there were a few things that helped.

Foundation Units

When you enrol you are required to take a foundation unit in your first semester. These are usually aimed at teaching you to write critically about a myriad of different subjects. My foundation unit was FDN130 or “Age of Information” and was basically about how different communication technologies had influenced our development. It sounds pretty full-on but in reality these units are really there to make sure you develop the research and writing skills you need to succeed at Uni. Provided you go to your tutorials and you do the readings you shouldn’t have any major problems getting back into the swing of things.

Workshops

Throughout every semester there are always a lot of voluntary workshops run to help students deal with issues such as stress, essay writing and research tips. These workshops usually don’t last longer than an hour and they cover a wide range of topics. If you’re having trouble with something the chances are there is a workshop that can help. More importantly these can help refresh skills you’ve already learnt and that can give you a bit more confidence in your assignment writing.

Other Students

When all else fails it can be really useful to talk to the others doing your unit. These guys will probably be going through exactly the same stress with the material that you are and a problem shared is a problem halved. It’s easy to feel alone when everyone else is going on about how easy an assignment is going to be but most of that is just posturing. The person that boasts about how quickly they wrote 5000 words is either lying or just super smart. Talk to others and their support will see you through.

Student Learning Centre

I mentioned in the last post that Murdoch has an entire department to help people succeed. The Student Learning Centre has people on staff that will help you. It’s also a great place to find out about the workshops I mentioned and get one-to-one sessions to help you out. These are the kind of resources that you can really find useful when you reach the end of your tether but they are best used throughout the semester. A stitch in time saves nine and all that.

Overall

It’s really easy to feel like you’re an idiot the first time you sit in a lecture and that’s not a feeling that goes away quickly. The turning point comes however when you realise that everyone else feels like an idiot, whether they’re willing to admit it or not. So however long you’ve been away from study it’s very likely that there are at least 20 people in your class or on your course that are in the same boat. Studying is like riding a bicycle, to dust off that old chestnut, and though you might be a bit wobbly at first it will all come back to you.

University Myth busters part 2

2010-06-06T23:42:00.001+08:00

“I don’t know if I can balance work and study”

Earning money is fun isn’t it? Sure you maybe have to give up a couple of days in the week to get that money but once it’s sitting in your bank account the possibilities seem infinite. Working can also be quite fun because of the simplicity of the equation. More work = More money. I know a few people that used to go out to the mines, work solidly for two weeks and come home utterly exhausted but $2000 richer. Money also makes life easier to live because you don’t need to worry so much about how you are going to afford your next meal and an impulse buy won’t bring angry debt-collectors to the door. So when you’ve accrued enough money and have decided to give tertiary education a shot it can come as a nasty surprise when study time is replacing all the free time you used to have for work. You find yourself cutting your shifts because you need time to write the lengthy assignments and re-write the hastily scribbled lecture notes. So what’s the solution?

Balance

In the ideal world you’d work enough to pay your bills with a bit extra, have time to finish your assignments and still be able to go the pub every night with your friends. Realistically though you need to work hard to achieve this sort of life-style. Balance doesn’t mean getting everything done at the last minute but actually being able to create, and work in, specific blocks of time for each activity. So how can you do this?

Prioritise

I know it sounds like I’m channelling the inner Dr Phil but you need to sit down and work out what is important in your life. Your part-time job may seem really important and fulfilling but working 35 hours a week while your books gather dust is a dumb idea. The purpose of going to University, for me certainly is to get a strong qualification that will open doors for employment. This means that getting my degree is right at the top of my list of priorities. That being said I still find the time to work; I just need to be smart about which shifts I can and cannot do. Prioritising can be the toughest part of this process. Sometimes you need to cut certain things out of your life, maybe you won’t have time to play cricket with your club every night and that can be sad. But University isn’t forever so don’t look at some short-term sacrifices as the end of the world.

Plan

Proper Preparation and Planning Prevent Piss-Poor Performance. From week one you will have a detailed list of what assignments are expected from you and when they are due. If you know that there is a 2500 word assignment due in week 14 maybe you should approach your boss in week one to secure time off so that you have that buffer to work in. If your boss isn’t sympathetic then at least you know that you’ll need to start work on the assignment earlier than you may otherwise have thought. Likewise if you know that you have no assignments for a couple of weeks then you can temporarily take on some more shifts or use that time in some other manner. The worst thing in the world can be getting some free time and having absolutely nothing constructive to do in it.

Rest & Relaxation

Balance is a two way street. If you spend the whole semester buried in books your health will suffer and that is not fun. If you have a good timetable for your assignments worked out and you are confident that you don’t need to work on anything then you should go out and enjoy the company of friends. This can be the best part of University, kicking back between assignments, because it allows for some much needed breathing room.

Overall

All the fancy words will come as little comfort when you’re up at 4 a.m desperately writing an essay before your class at 8. Sometimes you can’t balance work with study or sometimes things go wrong. A seemingly simple assignment suddenly morphs into a 5000 word catastrophe and you feel very alone and a little bit frightened by the deadline. That’s why it can be a great comfort to know that there are safety nets in place for you. Tutors will grant extensions if you show them that you have worked all semester and you should never be afraid to ask for help. In fact Murdoch has an entire section of the library specifically aimed at helping people complete their assignments and do the best they can. But learning balance rests on your shoulders and it is certainly a skill I have learnt while studying at Murdoch.

Mid-Year Enrolments Part One A.K.A University Myth busters

2010-06-06T23:10:00.002+08:00

Note: This was meant to go up yesterday but due to internet problems did not. This means the one scheduled for today will also go up today and the third article will go up tomorrow as planned.

“I’m not sure I can survive on a student budget”
If you want to survive at University and, by survive, I quite literally mean ‘not die’ then you need to have at least a vague idea of where you are spending money and why. While it can be fun to wake up in a tree in the middle of the Village with no recollection of the previous night and a completely tapped wallet it can also lead to problems when you cannot afford bus fare to get to work. I am hardly qualified to give budgeting advice but I can at least tell you the mistakes I have made and how you can avoid them or at least make new ones.

Creating a budget

It’s boring and time-consuming but it can be great to keep a record of how much money you have and where you plan on spending it. I’ve seen students use spreadsheets, complex pie charts and iPhone apps to keep track of their finances and these methods are great. A student can track exactly how much money they have and adjust the budgets to new circumstances. I usually scrawl my budget on a napkin from work but you don’t have to follow my example. Creating a budget is as easy as working out your income and then planning out how you need to spend it. So what kind of expenses are you looking at?

Books

University textbooks can be really expensive and there is no getting past that. If you are extremely lucky there will be a second-hand copy available of your book available in the guild shop for a fraction of the book-shop price. Murdoch University Book-Shop is many things but cheap is not one of them so you might find it helpful to buy books online for cheaper prices. If all else fails and you feel you can’t afford to purchase your books then there is always a chance the library will have a copy on reserve. This is less than ideal as you can’t take these books out but if you are desperate it can be a life-saver. Also, because this is very important, just because a book is listed as “Essential” doesn’t mean it is. Take the time to ask your tutor or lecturer if the text-book really is vital to passing the unit before you buy it. This can save you shelling out $100 on an expensive paper-weight.

Food

We all need to eat. Some of us, especially me, actually quite enjoy eating and want to do it every day. Thus a student budget can come as a nasty shock when we suddenly discover that we cannot afford the frozen pizza and wads of cookie dough that form an essential part of our food pyramid. It’s rather a bucket of cold water when you realise that all the health food is about the same price as the junk food but will only last about half the time in the fridge. I spend roughly 3 hours a month trying to work out what the lump at the back of the fridge shelf is and whether it is still safe to eat. However there have only been a few times where I have gone hungry. Everyone eats a different amount but it can still be a lot easier to make shared meals that everyone can eat and share the cost around. This way you can also have fancier meals than a solo budget might allow for.

Entertainment

All work and no play turns you into a pretty successful person academically but you tend to lose your sanity. So there should definitely be space on your budget for entertainment. The occasional night out with friends or new DVD won’t utterly ruin your budget provided you keep these in moderation. Drinking in Perth isn’t cheap and a good night out can set you back anywhere from $50 - $200. Back in the UK I was paying around £3 – 4 for a pint whereas in Perth it’s closer to $9 – 12 depending on which club or pub you pick. Pre-drinking is a good way to get around this as you can get about 4 litres of cask wine for roughly $12. You do need to budget additional health-care money if you go the cask-wine route.

Overall

Student budgets are tough. You scrimp, you save and often you suffer but it’s still possible to survive. Budgeting can also give you a wake-up call when you realise how much money you are spending on stuff you don’ t need. You also learn to do more with less. When you realise you can feed 6 people on half what it would cost to order fast-food then you are on the right track. If you really believe that you can’t afford University on your own dollar then perhaps you can look at some of the funding options available or see if you qualify for student loans. As always you can email me any questions you have or leave comments below and I will do my best to answer them.

End of Time

2010-05-28T00:42:00.002+08:00

Yesterday I submitted my final assignment for this semester finally ending my two week long binge of research, writing and sobbing.

It’s weird when the semester comes to an end. The routine you’ve drilled into your brain for the past 14 weeks suddenly stops because there are no more classes to attend, no more readings to do and no more assignments to stress over. My brain tends to panic at this point because it has been so conditioned over the years to expect the worse that it doesn’t quite believe that I’m on holiday. This means that for the next three weeks I will not be able to sleep past 8 in the morning without waking up in a complete panic over missing classes.

For everyone else there are exams. Exams breed stress. Stress breeds anger. Anger leads to the dark side. In recognition of this I thought I would share some basic exam and studying tips.

1 -Eat as much as you can
I’m bad at forgetting to eat when studying and this really impairs my memory. The best thing you can do is have a steady supply of healthy snacks to munch on throughout the day. Fruit is good for this. Strawberries, mandarins and bananas are great. Sugar and chips aren’t so great but sometimes you need sugar and grease.

2 – Sort out your sleep schedule
Classes are over so a bit of a lie-in is very tempting. When you’ve stayed up till 3 a.m studying this lie in begins to feel essential. The problem is that these long nights and late mornings can make getting up for a 9 a.m exam tough. Get your sleep sorted before the semester ends and you should be on track for exams.

3 – Take a break
This one seems obvious but when you’re caught up in the books you forget what time it is (and to eat). The best thing to do, or so I’ve found, is to put the books down and go for a walk or something. Watching TV isn’t such a good idea as I’ve found I tend to find it really hard to go back to the grind.

4 - Triple check your exam timetable
Last year I nearly missed a law exam because I thought it was in the afternoon. If I hadn’t checked after finishing studying I’d have been screwed. Write your exam time-table down and arrive early to all of them!

5 – Don’t Panic!
At the end of the day exams aren’t meant to be torturous. Even for vet students. If you’ve done your studying, attended at least 80% of your classes and you keep a cool head then there is no reason you won’t pass. If you start to panic just take a deep breath and think of the kitten video I posted last week.

Otherwise I wish everyone writing exams good luck. Also if anyone else has some tips please add them in the comment form!

Also just to be consistent!

Meet the sloths from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

Assignment Clock

2010-05-14T14:46:00.002+08:00

With one week to go until this semester comes to an end I am racing against the clock to finish all my assignments.

What I have to do by this time next week:

Write a total of 5000 words.
Prepare a photography portfolio.
Present a photography portfolio.
Write a test for Media Law & Ethics.

This is a super short post and for that I do apologise. Embedded below is a video I hope you will enjoy and accept as my apology. (I just searched the word ‘cute’ on youtube and picked the first video that came up)

Video Blog e02

2010-05-03T15:48:00.001+08:00

Episode 2 of my vlogging experiment

Relevant links!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leoshier/sets/72157623906681674/ - Group portfolio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCBD - Free Comic Book Day

Coffee

2010-04-21T12:28:00.000+08:00

I woke up about half an hour before my alarm this morning. This doesn’t happen very often but I was completely awake and half of my brain was desperately trying to find a way to justify getting up earlier than usual while the other half was quite content to simply slump back asleep. I was literally falling asleep when the wakeful half of my brain shouted (mentally) “If you get up early you’ll have time to get coffee before class starts!” This was a dirty trick and resentfully I got up and went through the motions of getting ready for class.

Last year I had a stomach problem that essentially meant I had to avoid coffee which made early morning lectures hell on me. I tried all the alternatives, eating an apple, drinking a glass of that fizzy vitamin stuff that’s meant to be good for you and even drinking 3 cups of tea but none of them worked. So it came as a bit of a surprise when I found myself coping better and better without my coffee fix. I was able to focus in class without constantly sipping at my caffeine drip and slowly but surely I stopped falling asleep in lectures. I’d broken the back of my addiction and would never again need to be dependent on a stimulant to keep me going through the day. I had won.

Sadly for me I started work at a cafe that provides free coffee for its staff and after only one day there I caught myself with a coffee in my hand. I hadn’t even been fully aware I was drinking it until it was far too late. Like a recovering alcoholic I fell off the wagon and I fell hard. Sure I rationalised that it was only one latte to help me get started in the day but soon I was getting coffee between lectures and then after lectures. Now all it takes is the promise of coffee to get me to wake up half an hour before I even need to. I am even sipping at a mug of coffee while I type this.

I guess what I’m saying is that it may seem like a problem but really there’s no problem here at all. If you’ll excuse me I need to go and peruse the bean selection at the grocery store now.

Video Blog e01

2010-04-18T01:07:00.004+08:00

If this works and people enjoy it then I will make every effort to improve on the production values. Otherwise I apologise for what follows.

Murdoch Encounters link: http://www.murdochencounters.com.au/

Please let me know in the comments if this is something you would like to see more of!

International Student Welcome Event

2010-04-15T21:41:00.003+08:00

(Click poster for larger version) You can find more information on the Perth Youth Advisory Council website.

Blues & Roots by Callum Smith

2010-04-08T21:03:00.004+08:00

The same disclaimer found here applies to stuff in this post. Callum is a good friend of mine who kindly agreed to do a review of Blues & Roots as I was unable to attend. This festival was organised by Sunset Events who are in partnership with Murdoch University and provide cheap festival tickets to Murdoch students. Please thank Callum in the comment bar!

Blues & Roots

Having been first exposed to music festivals through some of the more rowdy weekend long affairs of festivals in the UK, entering the friendly and laid back atmosphere was quite a shock to the system although an entirely pleasant one. Despite the estimated 20,000 strong crowd the day was a perfectly chilled blend of musical passion, sunshine and ill advised chilli dogs.

Now for the exciting bit, my poorly informed and subjective reviews of the acts I saw!

Dan Sultan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKRJFz3BV94&feature=related

Kick-starting events was Dan Sultan and his band, providing an energetic and bluesy welcome to those at the Dark Stage. The palpable enthusiasm and raw power in Sultan's voice were an excellent beginning to the day and helped distract me from the fact that I had neglected to put on sunscreen and was quietly turning a fetching shade of pink.

High Point: The old style rock and roll best show cased in 'Cadillac and a Mustang'

Low Point: Ensuring a healthy red glow for the rest of the day through a mixture of forgetfulness and laziness

Lisa Mitchell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIPR6KRrMKc&feature=related

Before getting in place to watch Lisa Mitchell I had only heard her song Coin Laundry and was rather sceptical as to how well her delicately folk-pop style would translate to a live event. My concerns were quickly dismissed when she proved herself a confident, fun and lively performer, working the stage well and spreading an infectious enthusiasm throughout the crowd. In fact, she was good enough that although I had become only too aware of my encroaching shade of lobster I chose to hang around to see more of her set. I still stood by this decision a couple of days later even when peeling in a wholly attractive manner.

High Point: Hearing 'Oh Hark' a song which proceeded to stick itself in my head for the remainder of the day

Low Point: Narrowly missing getting my hands on an egg shaker that her band threw into the crowd. That shall haunt me to my death bed.

The Swell Season

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLIHpJFyMqw&feature=related

As a real fan of the film Once, starring both Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová of the Swell Season, my expectations from this set were pretty atmospheric. It gives me immense pleasure to say that all my preconceptions were shattered and I was utterly blown away by the passion, power and good humour of this performance to the point where I couldn't stop smiling for about half an hour after the performance was over. The sense of euphoria arising from the crowd was intoxicating and given the effort and skill present on stage The Swell Season deserve every single bit of the adulation that they are fast accruing.

High Point: Difficult to pick out just one, although 'When Your Mind's Made Up' and 'Astral Week' still give me goosebumps to think about now. Glen Hansard has freakishly powerful lungs is the lesson I took away from these songs.

Low Point: The set being over?

Newton Faulkner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpfzoKMAu_4&feature=related

Newton Faulkner made the most of his one man show, chatting the crowd and refusing to take himself seriously in a engagingly surreal way. The songs were excellent but the real magic occurred in the midst of them when he made use of the large screens to weave increasingly elaborate and surreal stories for the crowd. Watching hundreds of audience members, at Faulkner's command, pretend to be pirates with rabies out to regain family honour was an absolute pleasure to see and that alone was well worth turning up for.

High Point: Mother-kissing barbarians and the genuine excitement building in the crowd as his pirates story came to a close.

Low Point: Me forgetting the words to Bohemian Rhapsody and so being largely unable to sing along to his closing song. Sob.

Taj Mahal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtDnYflF504&feature=related

According to my exhaustive research (Wikipedia and gut instinct) Taj Mahal is 67 years old. Given the nimbleness and zeal with which he played I find myself doubting this, as he was able to outperform many other acts half his age. Demonstrating an excellent rapport with the crowd and performing many old favourites, Taj Mahal proved himself a sharp and enjoyable act.

High Point: Responding to a request from the crowd and playing Fishing Blues

Low Point: The disturbing old lady in front of my friend and I, who insisted on rubbing herself up against him, even when we politely moved to give her more room. Actually, I think that may have been a highlight.

Matisyahu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIz1dIscWmk&feature=channel

Upon the recommendation of a friend I turned up to see Matisyahu with no knowledge whatsoever about what I was going to see. The glee spreading across my face when a skinny, heavily bearded man began to throw himself across the stage to energetic reggae beats is hard to describe. The crowds reaction was pretty ecstatic and I find it difficult to see how any other response could have arisen. The sheer amount of fun I had seeing Matisyahu ensured that I promptly tracked down several of his CDs and I encourage you all to do the same now, if not sooner.

High Point: Watching Miller cartwheel and jump around the stage with boundless enthusiasm and cool

Low Point: The strange man next to me shouting out increasingly unpleasant statements about Israel and Jesus. Luckily they were mostly drowned out by the music but casual racism at concerts leaves a fairly bitter taste in the mouth.

Jeff Beck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHaRAfxLd7g

I was taught as a child that if I didn't have anything nice to say then I should say nothing at all. So ends the summary of my feelings on Jeff Beck.

High Point: N/A

Low Point: The excruciatingly self indulgent encore that lasted for the longest twenty minutes of my life.

Gogol Bordello

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWYTyfQe-o8

A joyous explosion of insanity brought the day to a suitably epic close. Having seen Gogol Bordello a couple of times before I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from this set but still found myself completely swept away with the dazzling amount of energy and bedlam on the stage and in the crowd. The manic drive with which the band throws themselves into the performance is truly awe inspiring, as the level of interaction with the crowd, when they began to stand on disassembled bits of drum kits to launch themselves into the crowd near the end it made strangely perfect sense within the unhinged logic of their show so far. If you haven't seen these guys before you really do owe it to yourself to rectify this as soon as possible, I promise you won't regret it (note: promises made during this review are not actual promises and the author refuses to be held to any of them)

High Point: The swelling roars of hundreds of people around me shouting 'Start Wearing People' until they were hoarse

Low Point: Looking at the pain on the stage manager's face as the band trashed mike stands again and again.

All in all the day was a real joy, an excellent variety of acts, beautiful weather and no lasting illnesses brought on by any of the food, sunburn aside I think the the 2010 West Coast Blues and Roots Festival can be chalked up as a triumphant success.

Murdoch Encounters Continued

2010-04-07T01:22:00.003+08:00

I was busy solving global warming this morning when one of my trusty agents within Murdoch sent me a coded pigeon message. Some kind of countdown had appeared on the strange coloured blocks on bush court and I was the only one that could get answers. Using the skills I learnt from watching zero episodes of 24 I broke into Murdoch’s office of Corporate Communication and interrogated one of the nice ladies about it. Despite asking as politely as I could all De was allowed to tell me was that something big was going to happen at three o’clock. I called Barrack and told him I needed to cancel our lunch, I had a much more important appointment to keep.

Jono’s blog has a sophisticated array of communication technology that allows us to go on scene anywhere in the world and report live. We have a news van with a satellite on it, a helicopter with a satellite on it and even a satellite with a satellite on it. Unfortunately the van was stolen, the helicopter is effectively useless as it can’t take off with the heavy satellite welded to it and we lost our satellite satellite when the Martians invaded last month. This meant I was forced to simply take my laptop and a camera up to campus and use twitter to annoy almost everyone who had no idea what was going on.

As my twitter feed will show Callum and I spent an entire hour trying to guess at what was going to happen when the countdown was finished. Our two prevailing theories were that it would either turn out to be a WMD or it would open up and release a drunken clown. Either way we were prepared to document the event and possibly fight a drunken clown to the death.

It would be fair to say that things were tense as the numbers entered the final countdown and we gripped our improvised anti-clown weapons tightly. Finally, the countdown and the words disappeared only to be replaced by....more words? Yes it seems Murdoch have not yet seen fit to give us all the pieces so we must wait for more information. Rest assured however that we will not rest until we manage to solve Murdoch’s version of the Da Vinci Code.

Murdoch Encounters

2010-03-30T22:02:00.016+08:00

When I'm not battling the elements or hunting mythical University creatures I occasionally go to class. Sometimes on my way to class I encounter strange stuff such as the chalk drawings I put up pictures of. Those pictures were part of a larger campaign entitled “Murdoch Encounters” and yesterday the first major installation in this campaign went up.

Regular readers will remember that at the end of last year there was a blogging assignment to do a chalk drawing and it was tied into personalised freethinking styles. My friends and I had a great time with this and our results still stain the wall to this day so it was pretty exciting to see more chalk drawings starting to pop up around campus.

Following the date Callum and I headed up to campus on the day to see what our “Murdoch Encounter” would be. We were a bit befuddled by the strange assortment of garbage assembled on Bush Court, none of it really resembling an encounter, but we persevered and were rewarded when some workmen came and set it all up.

I call the installation ‘it’ because I’m honestly not sure what ‘it’ is. It certainly seems to raise more questions than it answers and I have heard more than a few people express a small amount of frustration about the lack of a clear answer. The statements broadcast across the three screens probably didn’t do much to help as they were also quite cryptic.

Personally however I think this is better. We’re university students and we shouldn’t be spoon-fed the answers. The installation raises some interesting questions and paves the way for more exciting exhibitions on Bush Court which is empty far too often. Plus it looks pretty cool after dark when it transforms into a neon monster that is actually quite a bit of fun to photograph.

Thunderstruck 2 Revenge of the Thunder

2010-03-25T23:52:00.010+08:00

So recently we got hit by a massive storm. Considering what happened the last time we had a bit of lightning I think my panicked reaction was completely justified and I don’t think unplugging every single appliance I own was overkill. Thankfully the storm seemed to miss the Village and chose instead to wreak vengeance on the surrounding neighbourhoods, leaving some suburbs without power for up to three days.

So the survivors of the so-called “Great Storm of Perth” were understandably dismayed when another storm warning was issued the next day and it got more and more tense as we approached the afternoon. Obviously Perth weather really likes to mess with people as it was a beautiful day with only a few fluffy clouds floating about in the warm breeze and not a storm in sight. The point I guess I’m trying to make is that A) you can’t trust the weather people and B) you can’t trust the weather, people.

Otherwise Murdoch seems to be going on pretty much as normal. You may have noticed the chalk drawings in the photos below. I have been asked if I have anything to do with them and I can honestly say I have not. From what I have pieced together it is part of a Murdoch initiative called “Campus Encounters” that will presumably give away more information on the 29^th of March as suggested by the date in one of the photos.

Finally I thought I would end this update by talking about an exciting project called 365 postcards. Some of you may remember Kacy Mateljan from the blogging competition last year. Kacy has embarked on a pretty cool new project where she plans to send out one postcard a day for an entire year to anyone that sends her their address. Please head over to her blog and read up on it 365 Postcards

Also on a serious note some stuff has changed with the blog. Please check out this page for some important news.

Sightings on Campus

2010-03-22T20:25:00.006+08:00

Curiouser & Curiouser

Knowledge - Blogging assignment 1

2010-03-14T14:10:00.002+08:00

This is an assignment for the University and the topic was, “What do you wish you knew before you started University?”

It’s a pretty broad question and one I do sometimes consider, if I could go back knowing everything I know now would I find it easier or do anything different? Obviously I’d find the earlier University assignments a lot easier and I would probably be smarter with my money so I wouldn’t spend so many nights eating mi goreng. But would I be any better off?

Actually I probably would have a much better GPA and be able to afford a new laptop so maybe that’s not the best example. But if I had known how to research journal articles before I came to Murdoch I wouldn’t have stayed up till 4 a.m being shown how to by my friend Cameron who also taught me all the shortcuts to make it so much easier. Knowing that the books Murdoch sells are really expensive wouldn’t really change the prices but it has made me appreciate their value that much more.

When I look back at all the really dumb mistakes I made when I first came to University it can actually be hard to not laugh about it all because those mistakes are some of my best memories and I think I learned more from making them than I would have learnt without making them. If half my life has been spent making stupid mistakes then the other half has certainly been spent laughing at them and learning from them.

Truthfully I think that’s what University is about, learning stuff you didn’t know before and then seeing the world in a new way. That doesn’t mean I don’t have any advice for you and if you check the video below I think you will find it very useful in dispelling a few of the myths surrounding University life.

R.I.P Barry 2009 – 2010 You were taken from us too quickly

Thunderstruck

2010-03-03T20:26:00.004+08:00

Recently we’ve been hit by a heat-wave that has made living basically impossible. Normally I’m alright with heat, I mean I don’t like it but I can live with it. Sure without air-conditioning the flats in the village basically become cheap saunas and being inside for too long might bring on permanent brain damage but it’s just heat right? Well unfortunately my flatmates and I were destined to find out just how deadly a heat-wave can be.

Thursday night seemed just like any other night that week. Sure it seemed like the day hadn’t cooled down when evening came but at least at night you aren’t subjected to the piercing intensity of the Australian sun. I had elected to sit out on the balcony and do some reading before turning in for the night so I was feeling quite happy with the world as I drifted off to the land of nod where my dreams rose up to meet me like an old familiar blanket. At about 4 a.m my dreams began to twist into nightmares with resounding cracks and booms that drove me right back to the edge of wakefulness, no mean feat because I have a knack for sleeping through loud noises.
I lay in bed with my eyes barely open and was still nearly blinded by an intense flash of white light that seemed to sear its way across my eyeballs. This was it, I decided, the aliens had finally come and it was time for the real adventure to begin. Of course once I was fully awake I realised my mistake because Aliens would never announce their arrival in such a showy fashion. Rather it was a thunder and lightning storm with better special effects than most Hollywood films. I love watching lightning and thunder so despite the early hour I stared out my window for about half an hour until the storm seemed to die down and the rain began to fall in fat splatters. Naively I thought this would signal the end of the heat-wave so I climbed back into bed and drifted back to sleep.

My first sign that something had gone wrong should have been that my alarm clock didn’t go off in the morning which made me late for class which meant I didn’t have time to check my email in the morning. This series of unfortunate events meant I didn’t fully comprehend the significance of the thunderstorm until much later in the day when I was already worn out from Uni. So when I finally did get home and was sitting down with a cup of tea to check my emails and my bank balance I was confronted with the horrible truth. My internet was gone.

Truth be told this actually isn’t that uncommon in the Murdoch Village. The internet provider they have is slightly less reliable than simply plugging your Ethernet cable into a sand pit and hoping that it will magically give you broadband. So when my browser returned with the error message I’ve come to associate with Star-tech I wasn’t that fussed and simply returned to my book hoping to get some reading done before I could veg out in front of Today Tonight, my bad news show of choice. This was sadly to be part two of the bad news, the TV reception was out. I am pretty good at getting bad news these days after having extensive training throughout my life but this was still enough to make me curl up into a ball and whimper a little bit.

I was still on the floor in the lounge when my flatmate, Ariel, came through and asked me if my internet was working. This was to be a recurring theme throughout the weekend. Thankfully I worked for most of the weekend so I was at least out of the flat even if I did debase myself by using the customer wi-fi to check if I had new mail. My flat on the other hand rapidly began to resemble something out of Lord of the Flies as we are all confirmed internet addicts who really miss their regular hit of bandwidth.

Finally, when it seemed like we were all about to give up on civilisation and begin the inevitable devolution to Cro-Magnons, the lights on our routers began to flicker to life and our email accounts began to show renewed life. Slowly we put out the fires we’d started, unchained the residents we’d planned to sacrifice and life returned back to normal. However I don’t think I’ll ever look at a lightning storm again without recalling how it nearly destroyed the lives of four innocent people whose only crime was relying on technology for everything.

A new year (of uni)

2010-02-23T00:40:00.002+08:00

There seems to be a recurring theme for me of being completely unprepared whenever a new semester starts. One week I’ll spend waking up really late and playing video games in my underwear and then all of a sudden week one of University starts and I have to go back to wearing pants. That’s not to say that the date classes start isn’t made very obvious just that it always seems to take me by surprise no matter how many post-it notes and phone reminders I set myself.

Part of the problem is that there is always so much stuff that I need to buy and my brain deactivates in order to protect me from the realisation of just how much money I need to spend. The other part is that by the time semester starts I’ve really adapted to being on holiday and it takes me all semester to break out of the bad habits.

The point is that semester has started and I have been running around buying books, signing up for classes, showing up for classes and completely forgetting that I have a blog to update. This year promises to be quite interesting as I am focusing solely on my journalism minor so I get to take some pretty exciting sounding units such as Literary Journalism and Digital Photography. The down-side is that I know absolutely nothing about those units so I will have to work twice as hard to simply achieve my usual average.

Another feature of this year will hopefully be the appearance of some guest blog posts; I will try and get some other students to share their stories and their impressions of life in Perth and University. I’m hoping that some people will find this useful as they are probably getting a bit sick of reading my usual stuff.
Now I know this has been short but I am afraid I now have some reading to do before my lectures tomorrow.

Lundone!

2010-02-06T20:31:00.003+08:00

London is a city that I love and hate. I love everything there is to see and I hate that I never have enough time to see it all. I was pretty busy while in the UK but still managed to make time to make two trips into London. On both trips I was fortunate enough to have good friends show me around otherwise I’d probably have ended up on the news after being mugged and left for dead.

While in London I got to see Big Ben, Buckingham Palace (a bit tacky), the London Eye, Parliament House and my two favourite attractions; a haunted house at County Hall and the British Museum. I had my camera out most of the time and even the grey sky and constant drizzle couldn’t keep me down. What did get me down was getting lost. People in London, lovely though they are, do not like being stopped in the street. Perhaps it is the prevalence of begging and magazine subscription sellers, I ended up buying a book off a Buddhist Monk-in-training, which makes them walk on and pretend that they haven’t heard you talking to them. Honestly though once you make them realise that you aren’t trying to sell them anything they are quite happy to point you in the right direction, which is often the opposite to where I’ve been heading.

I think one of my favourite features of London is the statues and plaques on what seems like every corner. Some of them aren’t exactly exciting but others, like the statue of Winston Churchill, are amazing pieces of history. The old buildings also serve to make the skyline something attractive although sometimes only from a distance. It was pretty cool visiting 221b Baker Street where a certain famous detective was purportedly from, although it was full of slightly creepy statues that were just life-like enough to freak me out.

Sadly I couldn’t afford the zoo so that still remains on my list of things to do but the British Museum was amazing, sort of the treasure rooms of a now defunct empire and filled with all the associated spoils. The museum, like most of London, probably requires more time than I could give it but I still felt like I’d seen enough to satisfy me till the next trip. If you’re in London then visit the museum, you will not be disappointed.

But all too soon it became time to hop on a train home and I remembered why I hate London. One day I think I will have to make the time to truly appreciate it which may take months or even years but I think it would definitely be worth it.

2009, a review

2010-01-07T05:08:00.002+08:00

I know the year ended a couple of days ago but I need more time than that for reflection. So here are my belated feelings about 2009.

2009 was the year of the horrific bush fires in Victoria and the news was full of heart-breaking stories of families torn apart by this disaster. But rather than let the disaster define them I saw a side of Australia I’d never seen before as the people opened their hearts and gave so generously that I think a surplus of money was raised. We had a fund raiser at the Village and as one of the top donors I got to shave my boss completely bald, he was a good sport about all of it even the leg waxing he had to endure.

This was also the year when I got to meet some truly great people; Josh, Kat, Matt, Brittany, Andi, Adam, Callum, Cato, Cheri, Shradha, Simon, Sam, Rebecca, Sarah, Emily, Mana, Michael, Kara, Carole, Kitin, Helvin, Clarence, John, Dannia, Avi and many more. I also deepened existing relationships and although some people aren’t in my life as much anymore I still think that it was a good year for me in terms of getting to spend time with some pretty exceptional people.

Sadly this was the year that Dome cafe and I parted ways. It was an amiable split as my health wasn’t great and I was finding it a great strain to keep two jobs as well as study. Dome is a great cafe and the people there made it feel more like a family than a simple job so I did feel a lot of regret over leaving them. I feel pretty special because I can walk into Dome and get such a warm welcome and I think it really reflects well on the great people there.

2009 also saw the inauguration of Barack Obama which is, politics aside, a pretty historical occasion. I remember being up at like 2 or 3 in the morning with Avi to watch his speech and feeling so inspired by his words. Thumbs up Mr. President.

We also lost some pretty special people this year which is always sad especially when they have touched so many lives in so many ways. Michael Jackson, however you feel about him, was a spectacular entertainer. Edward Woodward was the original, and best, Wicker Man. Those two really stuck out for me, Michael Jackson because I followed his career and the much publicised trial and Edward Woodward because I really liked him as an actor.

This was also a pretty exceptional year for cinema as we had the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s excellent “Watchmen”, the re-boot of “Star Trek”, the boy-meets-girl-but-not-love story of “(500) days of Summer”, the tongue in cheek ‘historical’ film “Inglorious Basterds”, the touching story of “Up” which had me in tears and James Cameron’s simply all around excellent “Avatar”. I know there were also a lot of bad films released in 2009 but I’m trying to focus on the positives here.

In musical terms I got introduced to a heap of new bands in 2009, Davy Knowles & Backdoor Slam, Kate Miller-Heidke, Mumford & Sons, The Temper Trap, The Wagons, Art Vs. Science and many more. I love to listen to music as a form of relaxation and even meditation sometimes and learning about bands I haven’t heard before simply broadens my options.

Finally 2009 saw the blogging competition which really challenged me to write in different ways and pushed me to try untested ideas. Before this I’d never uploaded a video to youtube or really saw the value of twitter but now I’ve been show how interconnected all the social networking sites and programs really are. I didn’t win the competition which was a bit disappointing but I will wholeheartedly acknowledge that Jessica, http://unstable-stability.blogspot.com/, deserved the honour because she really showed what she was capable of. Thumbs up!

Overall I think 2009 was a mixed year, I had to deal with a lot of issues that affected my life and there were a lot of moments where I felt completely overwhelmed by circumstances that felt out of my control. There was also a profound sense of loss as some very special people in my life moved away or returned to their home countries and I certainly miss them a lot. However I think if 2009 taught me anything it’s that I am capable of a lot more than I realise and I really hope that in 2010 I will get a chance to prove it.

Happy New Year everybody, thank you for the kind words, the support and the emails. I hope each and every one of you has a great year.

Arrival

2010-01-07T04:16:00.002+08:00

So the plane had touched down safely in London and I wobbled to baggage reclaim to pick up my suitcase. Customs and passport control was easy enough as I just had to show them that I carry a British Passport and all the barriers seem to magically lift, this makes a nice change from Australian and South African customs where I always feel like I’m about one shifty look away from a full pat-down and cavity search.

I strolled out of the terminal feeling rather proud of myself for managing to stay awake for the entire flight, something I would later come to regret. Anyway despite having lived in the UK for as long as I had I still felt like I was in unfamiliar territory and so the smartest course of action seemed to be asking the information desk for the easiest way to get to Burgess Hill. There are few times when I’ve really felt like I’ve made a mistake I will regret for a long time, the first was when I thought it would be totally cool to cut my own hair, the second was when I thought I would be a smart-ass and argue with a particularly un-hinged teacher and the third would have to be when I took the advice of the person behind the information desk.

The route they suggested involved taking the train to London Paddington station before transferring to the tube and making my way, via a very strange and change-filled journey, to London Victoria. Bear in mind that it was 6 in the morning and I had a large suitcase with me so this hardly seemed like an ideal situation but my sleep deprived brain couldn’t really come up with a better alternative so I shelled out the twenty pounds and shambled onto the train.

By now I hadn’t slept for more than twenty four hours and the strain was beginning to make itself felt but I still felt a bit of excitement as I was off on an adventure that would see me brave the dark world of the underground and make my way to Burgess Hill. On the train to London Paddington I did nearly pass out a few times but a very kind lady promised to wake me up if she thought I looked in danger of succumbing to a catatonic state. I also sought assurances from a ticket inspector to make sure I was heading the right way he assured me that I was on the right path and that getting through the London train stations would be easy even with luggage as they provide trolleys. It sounded almost too good to be true and I would learn upon arrival in Paddington why that was.

There were no trolleys and it really wasn’t easy getting around with a big suitcase. I learned from a rather upset gentleman that I was interrupting the flow of traffic during rush hour and that I would make a lot of people late for work. If that’s true and any of them are reading this I really would just like to take the chance to say that it was the information desk at Heathrow Airport’s fault.

My fear of the underground and my reasons why shall be discussed in a future post but I can only imagine how I appeared to the London Commuters on that cold Tuesday morning, an exhausted and shivering travel-worn guy looking around in a wild panic every time the train stopped for no real explainable reason. Obviously, from this post, I eventually made it to my grand-parents. I won’t say I wasn’t changed by my experience or that I didn’t learn anything. In fact upon arriving at my grand-parents house and regaling them with the stories of my morning adventures my grandpa turned to me and said “Why didn’t you just take the shuttle from Heathrow to Gatwick and catch a direct train to Burgess Hill? It’s only 2 stops”. I paused and silently cursed the information desk at Heathrow.

More to come including my adventures in London!

Happy New Year everyone!

Travel

2009-12-29T04:32:00.005+08:00

The suitcases were packed, the tickets booked and my visa was all in order. All that really stood between me and my vacation was an 18 hour flight to the UK and I didn’t really have to do much on that trip, just sit and watch a few movies. My first flight was from Perth to Malaysia and I eagerly awaited my boarding call in the departure lounge of Perth International. Now, most people hate air travel but I am certainly not one of those people. I love just about everything about flying, the meals are usually exciting, you can drink as much as you like, there are usually good films showing and you get to meet some genuinely interesting people.

In my case I was flying Malaysia Airways for the first time and I was unsure what to expect, remember I’ve flown Air Zimbabwe so I’ve put up with some pretty bad airline service. I was pleasantly surprised to find professional and polite service, the seats were comfortable and the entertainment was up-to-date. I did miss the complimentary toiletries pack that most airlines choose to provide, if only because I like to be able to brush my teeth whenever I arrive in a new country.

As for travelling companions I sat next to a guy my own age called Zack, a native Malaysian, and we spent the five hour trip to Malaysia geeking out over everything from Lord of the Rings to Watchmen. It’s always gratifying to meet someone you immediately get along with, especially when travelling, and it helped put me in a much more optimistic frame of mind about the rest of the trip. It was almost a bit sad when we pulled into Kuala Lumpur as we knew that our time was coming to an end but the splendour of KL airport soon put a stop to that.

Describing KL and the feelings it invoked is difficult because I was so giddy with everything I saw. Bear in mind that it was nearly midnight and everything was still open, there were cafe’s serving travel-worn customers, electronic stores selling a vast array of shiny items and bookstores doing business with an almost hushed reverence. I’ve been to a few airports in my life but I cannot remember if this was how they did business and certainly KL was the most memorable because of the friendly atmosphere.

This is why, in my defence, I believe I acted in the way I did. I took out my camera and started photographing everything in sight, eager to try and capture the atmosphere in photographic form so I could point to people and say “This is how an airport should be!” Unfortunately as friendly as KL is there are certain rules to be followed that were explained to me by the smartly dressed security guards who calmly asked me to put my camera away. After it was stowed they seemed to believe that was the end of the matter and let me go with a friendly nod. Had this been Heathrow I would have been knocked to the floor under a tidal wave of security forces before being whisked off to a detention centre where I would quite likely be executed.

Sadly almost as soon as I had arrived in KL it was time to board my next flight and begin the next leg of my journey. It was going to be my first journey on an Airbus and that elicited fresh excitement from me as I contemplated what mad luxuries I would witness. Truth be told I needn’t have gotten my hopes as far up as I did as it turned out that the Airbus merely has more seats than the Boeings. A lot more seats. I had to walk the length of the plane to get to my seat by which time a kindly old lady had settled into where I was supposed to be sitting but once the stewardess shooed her out I was able to collapse into what would be my home for the next 13 hours.

Airplane seats are oddly not built for comfort. At least they are not built to provide anything resembling comfort for any period over 5 hours. I always find that any period longer than that tends to reveal all the iron bars used in the chairs constructions. After 6 hours you are convinced that the chair in front of you goes further back than should be legal and when you attempt to mimic it you discover your chair only goes a quarter of what you think it should. 7 hours in and your legs begin to ache in an unusual way but of course the issue is that there isn’t anywhere you can really stretch them out without prompting an air hostess to follow you around with a can of mace in case you try anything dangerous. By hour 9 you are convinced that this is really the most subtle form of torture that any government could employ and you must have slighted the government in some unknown way to have earned it.

Finally the plane lands and you stand up only to discover that your legs no longer respond to the brains commands so you sort of flop out of your chair and stumble down the aisle to baggage reclaim. Eventually you recover enough to walk like a reasonable human being but there is still an unseen predator lurking outside of your awareness. Jet Lag.

But that’s probably enough for one update. I’ll put the rest of what I’ve written up in the next couple of days. Thanks for the continued support!

Creativity

2009-11-29T15:22:00.002+08:00

Murdoch has set up a sort of quiz that determines which of the four dominant thinking styles you use is. I took this quiz and was rather surprised when it told me I was creative.

You see I’ve never really considered myself to be overly creative, while it is true I love to write I always thought creativity had more to do with painting beautiful pictures or composing a melody. This got me thinking about the true nature of creativity and what it meant to me, so without any further delays I present my thoughts on creativity.

As I’m writing this post I’m surrounded by the cardboard boxes I’ve been using to pack up my room. When I say surrounded I mean I’ve constructed a crude box fort at my door to repel any would be invaders of my realm. It sounds a bit stupid, and perhaps it is, but this is exactly what being creative means to me. It’s about taking a look at something mundane and choosing to instead see something spectacular.

With that in mind and with chalk in hand I headed up to campus with some friends and we drew a pretty cool chalk mural. Despite all the stress from packing and the left-over tension from exams I really had fun with the chalk and I think our end result speaks for itself. I wanted to show you how I see the world, a place that’s exciting and full of inspiration, even in the most unlikely places. Perhaps it’s a side-effect of having an over-active imagination but I honestly believe that my creativity comes from all around me and I need look no further than my window to be inspired.

Of course there is a down-side to all of this as I often catch myself day-dreaming in lectures and doodling all over my lecture notes. Last year during one of my foundation unit lectures I completely blanked out the lecture and instead spent the time sketching a penguin riding a motor-bike. By the end of the lecture I was none the wiser on the topic that was being talked about but I had come up with an entire back story for this penguin. He was a loner who hated the snow and ice and always wanted to escape, finally his chance came in the form of a lone hells-angel whom the penguin mugged and stole the motorbike from. It seems whimsical and pointless but I never let that stop me because if I did ideas like this blog would never exist.

Creativity also means facing every obstacle with a new approach; you don’t want to solve the problem like the hundreds of people before you have. This can lead to some fun and inventive solutions that a lot of people perhaps wouldn’t consider. It can also lead to a great deal of frustration if your solution doesn’t solve the problem or small details de-rail your efforts. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had a great idea or plan that has not come to fruition because of a small detail, or numerous small details, that I’ve overlooked. The trick is to not be discouraged by these set-backs and instead apply what you’ve learned each time to your next grand scheme and sooner or later you’ll exceed even your own expectations.

Essential Items for the Purpose of Travel

2009-11-26T22:24:00.005+08:00

Travel Essentials
Originally uploaded by JonoGurney

When I came to Murdoch there were a few essential items that I brought with me that I am now gathering together in preparation for my holiday.

Notebooks

I usually travel by myself so in a bid to keep myself sane I tend to write an awful lot. This free-form writing can take many forms and I don’t show people the result out of shame for how bad it is. This year I’ve bought two notebooks and they will serve two unique purposes. The black notebook will be used to record my vacation in the event I contract amnesia, the red notebook will be used for my free-form writing and I don’t plan on showing it to anyone.

Passport

Everyone always says “Jono don’t forget your passport” but honestly how much do I really need a passport? I’m sure if I asked nicely customs and immigration would have no problem letting me into another country. I think I will take it anyway but that’s just because I think it’s a nice travel accessory.

Earphones & Headphones

I actually do need 3 pairs, extravagant though that sounds. The earphones are obviously for travel as they are convenient and I take two pairs in case the first pair has an accident. The headphones are a little sentimental to me as they’ve accompanied me on my major journeys and I find it really relaxing to listen to music on them while I write. They are Stagg headphones according to what’s written on the side of them.

iPod Touch

I came to Australia with a 30 GB iPod which I’d bought in the UK the year before. It was a faithful companion on most of my trips and it kept me entertained in a variety of situations, which is why I was sad when it eventually gave up the ghost a few months ago. The iPod that has replaced it has quickly found a place in my heart because of its least touted but most important feature, the ability to read books on it. If I didn’t have that ability the photo above would have a veritable library of books I would be taking with me to read on the trip.

iPod Cable

This is essential so that I can charge the iPod. Duh.

Batteries

The stack of batteries is for my camera (not pictured for obvious reasons) so that I won’t run out of juice at a vital moment. I’m hardly a photographer but I know the frustration of missing an important moment because my batteries died.

Spare SD Card

This is a small, 32mb, card for my camera. I generally use a 2GB in the camera which can hold about 400 photos or 20 minutes of film at highest resolution. I like to keep a spare around in case I run out of room when photographing something important but to tell the truth 32mb is not nearly enough and I will probably be buying a card with more space sometime this week

Mobile Phone

I think the most crucial piece of equipment is the one that allows me to stay in communication with people who can come and rescue me if needs be. Sim cards are pretty cheap the world over so I don’t foresee many problems with picking getting one for the duration of my trip.

Pens

These are as important to me as the iPod. The parker pen I have had since I arrived in Australia as I bought two to take notes and stupidly left one in the Lecture room. Since then I have kept its brother safe. The second pen was actually a gift to me on my twenty first Birthday a few weeks ago from my Uncle and Aunt who live in Australia. I usually remain pretty loyal to the parker pen but this new pen has earned its place in the photo.

So that is pretty much what I will be taking with me to the UK and Zimbabwe. I’ll probably take some clothes and stuff as well but really these are the only important items.

Exams & end of year

2009-11-24T19:49:00.003+08:00

A dark pall hangs over Murdoch these days, students look harried and dash furtively from the library to the cafe and back again clutching precious mugs of coffee. Meals go uneaten, dishes go undone and blogs don’t get updated. Yes, exam season is underway and with it comes all the stress and anxiety that comes from your entire future being decided in two hours of frantic writing.

It may surprise many of you to find out that I am actually very productive during the exam periods. I tidy my room, play noughts & crosses and even find the time to update the blog. This is merely a very productive form of procrastination as I avoid the stacks of textbooks and lecture notes that I know I really should be reading. Revision is a dirty word that must not be uttered in case the crushing despair descends once more.

This is also the part of semester where everything gets confused, you want to feel happy for the upcoming holiday and the chance to see old friends again but on the other hand it’s a bit sad to say goodbye to the people you’ve lived with, especially those you’re unlikely to see again. There’s also that stress I mentioned earlier over whether you have passed the year or if you will get a letter from the University politely asking you never to return. All in all it’s a pretty busy part of semester so I feel completely vindicated spending my time dealing with these issues instead of revising.

Students who don’t live in Perth and that don’t plan on spending the long summer in WA are scrambling around trying to find storage units and trying to pack 50 kgs of stuff into boxes built for maybe half of that. If you’re staying over the summer expect a lot of anxious friends to show up in the coming days with an over-flowing box and an apologetic look on their faces. Gradually your own room will begin to fill up with so much other people’s stuff you will be forced to close the curtains and pretend you aren’t in. Not that I’ve ever done that.

Anyway this summer I will be heading to the UK to see friends and family for the first time in over two years before heading home for a Christmas in Zimbabwe. This will involve a lot of long flights and longer layovers in South Africa but I’m confident it will all work out alright and when things go horribly wrong I’ll be sure to put it up here for everyone to enjoy.

Now I think I’ve spent enough time writing this and it is time to do some actual studying, or I might read a book. Expect to see my assignment entry this upcoming Sunday, I don’t want to give away too much but there is going to be a LOT of chalk in it.

Passion Project

2009-11-08T16:47:00.008+08:00

If the video is anything to go by what I am most passionate about is not getting hurt which is certainly true, however I believe the real question to me when I started thinking about this assignment was “What is passion?”

Passion is a loaded word that covers both good and evil. We see people who are passionate about causes they support and we see people commit crimes of passion. Therefore passion, to me, represents a powerful driving force. Whether we use it to build or destroy is entirely our own individual responsibility. I also strongly believe that passion is mutable, it can shift and change over time but it will always be that powerful flame within us that drives us to excel at our chosen tasks.

So after answering those questions, at least to my own satisfaction, I needed to seriously ponder what career my passion would drive me to pursue.

I’ve lived in a lot of different places, studied a lot of different things and wanted to do a lot of different jobs. I studied Law, Psychology and English Language when I was at Varndean and I was really passionate about each of those subjects so when it came to University I tried to pick a degree that would allow me, in its own way, to pursue those options. I wanted to be a lawyer, a psychologist and a writer all at the same time so it was clear to me that I’d need more time before making a serious decision on my future career.

Fast forward two and a half years and here I am, still trying to decide what I want to do with my life with only one year of university left. Thankfully a lot has happened in those two years to help shape my life and give me some direction to follow. The simple answer now is that I want to be a writer.

Writing to me represents the art of language, whether in songs, poetry or even stories. I certainly find that I am better at expressing myself in written language and I find writing sincere prose to be easier than public speaking. I also have a very active imagination and writing allows me to tap into it and express it in ways that mere spoken word could never do justice. I also really believe that writing is the most honest and open way of communication I know. It isn’t easy to put your most personal thoughts into words and share them with others but the fact you do gives weight to anything you say.

Whether it’s writing my own books or for a small newspaper is not the concern for me, the point is to be doing something that I really love and managing to turn it into a career that I can make a living out of. I have no illusions about the difficulty of this and I am willing to take on extra classes, do post-graduate studies and work as an un-paid intern all for the chance to make this happen. It’ll be a long and difficult journey but that’s usually the case when you set out to achieve something worthwhile.

This kind of undertaking also isn’t possible without friends and family. They are the ones who you trust to be ruthless with the red pen as they look through your work and highlight what works and what doesn’t work. Sometimes their criticism can hurt and learning to take it on board is hard but if you’re too afraid to show your work to the people close to you then it will be even tougher to show to the whole world.

Of course success isn’t guaranteed either, the publishing market can be fickle and so is inspiration. Thus we see the darker side of passion, you want desperately to be a writer but you aren’t published or you cannot seem to find the words to express yourself. This is a risk that cannot be idly discarded but you cannot let it paralyse you either. I know the likelihood of being a successful author is slim but I will still give it my best shot.

Also, just because I am always honest with you guys, I do my own stunts and they hurt.

One Movement

2009-10-27T00:44:00.006+08:00

Only a week and a bit late here is my full write-up for the One Movement festival that brought summer to Perth for a weekend before disappearing back to wherever it came from.

I honestly had no idea what to expect from OM, I’d only really heard of a couple of the bands that were billed to perform and even then there was only one that I was really keen to see but the sun was bright and the only alternative was to sit inside a dark room and do my assignments so I slapped on some sunscreen, slipped on the thongs and joined my friends on the bus to the train station.

Joining me on this adventure were three very good friends and seasoned music fans: Callum, the world renowned hand model, is a die-hard festival goer and was well versed with the various pit-falls we would face, Sam, our easygoing giant, was an expert at using his height to spot gaps in the crowds which we could use to navigate closer to the stage and finally Simon had an excellent idea of which bands were good to see and which bands we could safely miss. To be honest there was a lot more of the former than of the latter but I’m getting ahead of the story.

One Movement was being held on the banks of the Swan River so we had a beautiful view of the Perth Eye and the Bell Tower and the hundreds of billboards from the sponsors of the festival. This also meant that getting there was as easy as taking a train to Perth from Murdoch and hopping off at the Esplanade station before taking a short walk to the entrance and getting ourselves all wrist-banded in preparation for a wild weekend of music.

Our first stop after getting in was the drinks tent which was already doing good business despite the gates having only opened an hour before we arrived. A round of beers before making our way to the big stage seemed liked the just the plan. I always hate standing in line for drinks, no matter where I am, because I look so young. OM was no exception as I got asked for ID twice while standing in line and then had to produce it again when I was buying beer tickets. I’m sure I’ll be laughing about when I’m thirty and I look twenty but I’ll probably still be getting asked for ID then as well so we will see.

As I mentioned earlier the festival brought the summer that had been absent from Perth for so long and by early afternoon we were all quite eager to get into the shade and away from the burning Daystar. Luckily the festival organisers showed great foresight and there was a nice big tent where about half the festival crowd was hiding while the other half slowly burnt to a crisp. It was a great tent actually as they had set up a stage inside and we got to witness our first act while we enjoyed our beers.

The festival was divided into 4 stages with different acts from different genres taking place simultaneously which meant there was always somebody setting up or some band playing their hearts out. There was also a myriad of stalls and other activities that you could do to keep you occupied while the bands you were waiting to see got set up. One such activity was the silent disco which basically involved putting on a pair of wireless headphones and dancing like a loon to music only you could hear. I’m not going to say that I do this a lot but the practice I’ve had definitely helped an awful lot.

Murdoch University also had a stall up where they were giving out free stuff, I was a bit let down when I found out they were not handing out degrees but the free shirts were nice too so I will make do. I’ll be honest that it was around this stage that the festival fever took us and we spent most of the day dancing to bands, asking bands to marry us and just generally having a great time wandering around the place. A few key moments from Saturday stood out, number one was Davy Knowles and Backdoor Slam performing, they were spectacular. The second spectacular moment was grabbing food to eat after we realised it had been rather a long day without any sustenance other than beer. Festival food was expensive but oh so good, spring rolls have never tasted so springy than when you eat them freshly made. The third moment was The Wagons front-man mouthing off at the Perth skyline and what he believed it represented. After that we spent some wind-down time in the Village playing Tekken in preparation for a wild night at the after-party.

This may not be fair to say but One Movement did not have that many big names bands performing. But this, in my humble opinion, was probably for the best because it meant that there weren’t massive egos that needed to be stroked for every performance. All the bands that I saw seemed gratified with the response they got from the good people of Perth and from what was being said it sounds like a lot of them will be coming back which is means only good things for Perth’s future.

After we were done with the festival on Saturday we decided to really up the ante for the after-party. V energy drinks were handing out these interesting little concoctions called “Pocket Rockets” which are for all intents and purposes a normal V drink on a much smaller scale. The girl handing them warned me about drinking two in a day so I decided to be a responsible rock-star and follow the warning labels. Pocket Rockets don’t taste nice and I probably wouldn’t buy one if they were for sale and I think I understand now why they warn you about drinking more than one.

Anyway after we all stopped shaking from the energy hit we piled into Simon’s car “Lucy” and headed for the Georgia in Perth to see Davy Knowles and Backdoor Slam again. It was another spectacular performance and we ended the night with a 4 a.m run to McDonalds before all collapsing out of exhaustion. On a scale of one to ten I would rate that day as being somewhere in the 100 zone.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end. For me this meant I had to spend most of Sunday working on important assignments and making sure I didn’t miss any deadlines. Thankfully I got enough done to head into Perth in time to see the end of the festival with three amazing performances; Art vs. Science, Kate Miller-Heidke and Hilltop Hoods.

I was already a fan of Kate Miller-Heidke and seeing her perform live was quite spectacular and it’s always nice to find that the bands you like aren’t simply over-produced to sound good on their albums. Hilltop Hoods were really good fun, I hadn’t really heard much of their stuff before but that didn’t stop me from breaking out all the dance moves from the silent disco all over again. I did get punched in the head by a friendly fellow who was likewise dancing like no-one was watching but I do not begrudge him the few head taps or the light concussion that followed.

So overall it was a really great weekend. I got to hear a lot of bands that I would have otherwise not have known about, spend some time in the sun and just generally have a great time with friends which really in my mind is what a good music festival is all about. There will be a small selection of photos up on Flickr with more going up next month when my limit is reset.

10 Things Murdoch Means to Me

2009-10-25T17:03:00.007+08:00

As part of assignment 3 for the Murdoch Blogging Competition we were asked to think of 10 things that Murdoch meant to us. I grabbed my camera and renowned hand model Callum Smith and headed up to campus to give you guys an idea of the things I like to see when I am on campus.

There are islands of peace on a busy campus

This should speak for itself really. Campus can get a little bit claustrophobic at times with so many people around so it's nice to have the option to retreat and find a bit of peace and quiet. This photo was taken at the Murdoch Peace Garden, there's a small open gazebo with a waterfall behind it's here I occasionally go when I'm feeling overwhelmed by assignments and the press of the crowd.

2. There is an honest-to-God Bank on Campus (I think)

I may be the only person who thinks this is cool but if you decide you desperately need to apply for a bank account and you happen to be on campus then you need go no further than the Refectory. I don't personally bank with Bankwest but I still get a lot of use out of the ATM they have installed just outside their branch, many is the time I would have starved were it not there.

3. Beers between lectures!

Perhaps one of the best/worst things about going to University is discovering that there is a bar on campus and that it is open during the time you are on campus. It can be a huge temptation to drop by in the gap between lectures and tutorials to have a few beers with some friends. I will neither confirm nor deny that I have ever done this but I definitely think it's a great part of Murdoch.

4. You can access the library 24 hours a day! (Sort of)

Again this is a bit of a double-edged sword. If you have any studying that needs to be done then you can access the library with your student card at any time. This has occasionally led to me being there till 4 a.m so I do advise only using the library in moderation because it can be habit forming.

5. Steamed BBQ chicken buns!

You may notice that the photo doesn't actually have any steamed BBQ chicken buns but I promise that is just an optical illusion and I didn't eat them. The steamed buns are perhaps my favourite food from the Refectory and for the price I could probably live off them for a semester. I won't for obvious reasons but it's nice to know that the option is there.

6. There is a lot of weird/cool art on campus

Case in point the photo above. I can't honestly say that I know what the sculpture is about/of but I still think that it is pretty cool. There is also a statue further down from Bush Court that regularly gets new clothes from willing donors. Most recently it was dressed in really colourful garments as part of Pride Week.

7. You can book a ticket home on campus!

Murdoch has a travel agent on campus and they are all really nice and helpful. I was able to book my entire flight home these coming holidays and pay for it on campus without any major dramas. They are also used to dealing with students who don't have much money so they try and find you a decent fare without making your flight a ridiculous series of stop-over's.

8. Students without Borders and Social Justice Centre

Feeling like you want to make a difference in the world? Look no further than the Social Justice Centre. They offer a really wide range of volunteer opportunities and ensure that you'll have a great experience. They are also there to help out any students who experience any sort of discrimination which still happens these days.

9. Wide variety of native flora and fauna

On my second night at Murdoch I got to meet a Southern Brown Bandicoot, also known as a Quenda, as it hopped around outside my flat. Murdoch is surrounded by lots of common Australian plants and gum trees so as an international student it is pretty cool getting to see some of the weird and wonderful plants around.

10.Chance of encountering Pirates!

There is a pirate flag hanging up at Murdoch University Village. Statistics show that you are 90% more likely to run into a pirate at Murdoch than at any other University in Western Australia and not the kind of pirates who use the internet to violate copyright law but the genuine article.

So that is my top ten list for why I like Murdoch. This kind of task is very subjective so there's a good chance that a lot of you won't agree with me on the particulars but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Assignment 2

2009-10-06T12:35:00.009+08:00

For this assignment we were required to make a banner in the style of the learning to love you more project.

Let me be honest here, I am not even slightly artistic. I don’t say this to be modest or to make my banner look more impressive but rather to communicate the sinking feeling I got when I read what the assignment would be.

Anyway the first order of business was to come up with something that would be inspirational but not hackneyed or condescending. This involved a long session of lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, my mind completely blank of all inspiration. I really didn’t think I could do this assignment and that self-doubt was the biggest obstacle I faced. Lucky for me that I have really great friends who were prepared to help out any way they could. They endured a few pointless brainstorming sessions with me before I finally settled on something I felt was helpful to understanding University and the people who attend it. But before I could give the idea a place on campus it still needed a physical shape.

Last week was the final study break before the end of semester and, predictably, I didn’t get much studying done. Rather the time was spent sourcing arts and crafts material in preparation for a marathon session of banner building. My original vision for the banner was a simple affair that was made from paper and illustrated with simple felt pens. It was only when I was in the Craft store that the possibilities and options I had really became apparent and my vision for the banner began to take on a life of its own. Without giving too much away big sheets of cardboard and tubes of finger-paint were purchased and the construction began.

So with the banner taken care of the next issue was where I would hang it. Bush Court was not allowed under the competition rules so I had to really think about my other favourite spots on campus. I could’ve picked the Tav where I’ve shared more than a few drinks with friends, the peace garden where some pretty brave ducks swim or one of the many places where I’ve passed the time between classes. In the end I picked the Peace Pavilion because it was there, during my orientation week last year, that there was a free sausage sizzle for all the humanities and social science students. I met a lot of new people that day and the realisation of how big University actually was began to sink in but it wasn’t that scary because I was surrounded by people in the same situation as me and if they weren’t panicking then I didn’t need to. This all relates back to my banner but we’ll get to that. So after making sure that the University wouldn’t mind me hanging up a big banner the location was settled. We set B-day to be Monday the 5th of October, yesterday in other words, all the preparations were completed and we hung the banner up in the flat to prevent any damage occurring over-night. That was when I first realised how much bigger the banner was in comparison to the one I had in my mind.

I think at this point a bit of explanation about the banner is in order. I do owe my long-suffering art teacher from primary school a great deal of thanks for the finished product. She would always walk around the classroom and ask the students what they were up to, I never understood why she would approach me at all as it was a chore for the both of us but to her credit she persisted in trying to educate me. The most memorable time was when she walked up to the easel where I was industriously working and asked me what I was up to. I don’t quite remember what the painting was meant to be and I doubt I knew at the time either so I launched into a very creative explanation of what it was trying to be that she listened very carefully to. Then she took out a pen and wrote on my paper “K.I.S” which stood for Keep It Simple. In the army of course it has an extra “S” for “Stupid” which I think she would have dearly liked to have put in but her professionalism did not allow her to. It’s one of the few lessons from primary school that I really took to heart and I believe my banner benefited from it.

My banner simply reads “Believe in” and has two blank sheets of cardboard underneath for people to give their own opinions on what they believe in or what their passion is. The idea was that instead of just telling you guys what inspires or motivates me and hoping it would work for you, rather get everyone who wanted to contribute to tell you what motivates them. University is scary and a lot of people worry that they won’t have anything in common with the people there so I also wanted to show just how normal and down-to-earth the students actually are. It was also a great excuse to sit out in the sun for a few hours.

Anyway B-Day came and brought with the first day of spring, I don’t want to say the two are related but it’s too convenient to be ignored. Our first attempt to hang the banner did not go as planned as we had not counted on the wind that tried very hard to tear our banner down from the poles. More hole-punching and twine threading later and the banner was firmly tethered and B-Day had officially begun. It was great fun. I got to meet such a huge cross-section of the people who studied at Murdoch and each of them had something to contribute to the banner. We got some pretty interesting answers and not all of them serious but that was kind of the point. It was the student banner and therefore it needed to cover both sides of the student psyche, serious and fun. However no matter what people were writing they were all smiling and I would like to believe they all enjoyed the experience. As for what I believe motivates and inspires me, I think it would be all my friends. They are very special people who helped me out with the project and I don’t think it would have come off without their help and encouragement.

End of the day, originally uploaded by JonoGurney.

Oh and we also did a little video to show the project as it developed:

Sleep

2009-10-02T00:49:00.003+08:00

A whimsical creature, it comes not when summoned but is known to creep up on the unsuspecting. Nobody is completely immune to its soft siren call although some can resist for days on end often with chemical help. It’s also one of the most valuable resources a student has and must be hoarded whenever possible.

When I was in my first year, all those months ago, I got very stressed out about University. I would spend all day in class, go back to the village and eat dinner and then go back up to the library. At about 3 a.m I would walk back from the library, exhausted and not any more confident in myself, only to get up early the next day and repeat the cycle. It was inevitable that the sleep deprivation would catch up with me and on the night before one of my exams it did. I had been studying too hard and getting very little memorised when I just collapsed, luckily I was in my room studying on my bed. The next day I slept through the alarm I had set, waking up feeling very groggy at 9 instead of 7. My exam was at 9:30. Even today I get a little frightened at how I nearly decided to go back to sleep, luckily I glanced at my watch and my brain did a little scream propelling me out of bed and into the shower. I did pretty well in that exam but that’s not really the point, from that day forward I vowed to never let myself get so sleep deprived.

It’s a vow I’ve broken many times, sometimes because of exams, sometimes because of assignments and sometimes because I just didn’t want to go to sleep when I could be hanging out with my friends instead. I think the last one is perhaps one that a lot of people can relate too. I didn’t exactly have a curfew when I lived with my uncle but they had work in the morning so there would come a time when I would be alone in the living room while everyone else was asleep upstairs. When I started at Murdoch I could wander into the living room at 3 a.m and find my flat-mates watching the television or simply talking for hours about nothing. It was amazing for the first few weeks but after I started dozing off in lectures I kind of realised I would have to start being a bit smarter about when I went to bed.

At first I got around the sleep I was losing from late-night studying by simply drinking a lot of coffee. This seemed to work for a week or two but I still did have trouble focusing when I’d pull all nighters on my assignments, until I discovered No Doz. I’m not going to list the numerous problems I had with No Doz, nor do I think it necessary to tell the story about the time it made me shake so much in a lecture that my notes were illegible. I think if you learn anything from this blog let it be that No Doz is not a good idea. Ever.

I guess the point is that sleep is very important to your average student. I would like to believe that I can build up a ‘bank’ of sleep over the holidays and on the weekends but really that’s more of a temporary measure. Sometimes you will just lie in bed and stress out over exams and assignments that you know are going to be there when you wake up but sooner or later you learn to just push it all aside and relax. A lot of people I know find that the early hours of the morning are their most productive; perhaps the removal of other distractions helps their concentration. Personally I find it helps with mine but you might find it just makes you tired.

So at the end of the day you’ve got to decide when you go to bed. Maybe you’ll want to stay up to read that final chapter in your textbook, or have one more beer with a friend but at the end of the day I hope you guys don’t neglect your pillows as I did in my first year. Also I hope you learn the lesson about No Doz without having to find out first hand.

Student Health

2009-09-30T00:56:00.005+08:00

We’ve all had days when the alarm goes off and we wake up feeling like death warmed up. The causes of this can be manifest. Sometimes we’ve simply had too much to drink, sometimes it was that extra couple of hours you decided were worth sacrificing to get that assignment done and sometimes it is simply because our fragile student immune systems have been over-powered by some virulent virus that seeks our destruction.

Admittedly it is far more likely that we’ve simply come down with a simple case of the snuffles or a little bit of food poisoning but when you have an 8:30 lecture everything feels worse. A bit of a headache suddenly feels like a herd of elephants in your skull, a slightly sore throat feels like sandpaper and your bed feels even more comfortable than it has ever felt before. There is a lot of debate over the best move to make at this point. Some recommend going to the doctor and others suggest shrugging it off and heading to class. I’m a strong advocate of lying on the couch, sipping Lemsip and watching Dr. Phil till I feel better. If whatever I’ve got hasn’t gone away by the next day then it’s time to head up to campus to make an appointment to see a doctor.

International students should breathe a sigh of relief here as OSHC makes it free to see a doctor on campus. They also partially cover the cost of some of the medicine you might get prescribed so keep the receipts and take them to the International office on Monday, Wednesday or Friday to be compensated. OSHC does not cover an ambulance unless there’s a serious emergency so unless you want to fork out $500 for a trip to the hospital you’d be well advised to take out separate ambulance cover when you arrive because you never know when you’ll use it.

As far as hospitals go Murdoch has one right next door, St John of God. However, it is a private hospital which means OSHC does not cover getting treatment there. In an emergency I’d recommend heading into Fremantle as the hospital there IS covered by OSHC, at least partially, so at least you won’t be stuck with a big bill after treatment. I do not recommend hanging out in the emergency room without a friend or two as some of the people that wander in can be rather scary especially at 3 a.m. on Halloween.

For sexual health and counselling services you can go to the Health & Counselling centre. Generally speaking the nurse is always on hand to help out people without needing an appointment. The nurse is very nice and won’t laugh at you when you have a minor freak out during a blood test, not that I’ve ever done that. I haven’t had any one to one time with the counsellors but they ran a workshop on shyness last semester and I found them to be very pleasant. There are also regular STD screenings that students can get if they feel they need it as well as free condoms available to help practice safe sex. All in all it’s a very useful service on campus.

I think students have pretty decent health services on campus apart from some problems with OSHC. If you can afford it then perhaps checking out some private alternatives wouldn’t be a bad idea but not essential. That’s probably enough rambling on this topic but I might blog a bit more about student health later in the semester, especially with the village being a breeding ground for flu, but more on that later.

Blogging Competition

2009-09-28T00:18:00.003+08:00

I think if you’re reading this then there is a good chance that you were directed here from the blogging competition website, this post isn’t directed at you. Rather this is directed at people who may have simply stumbled across this blog through Google or even Bing.

Firstly I believe some explanation is in order. This blog is one of many that are competing to win the title of Murdoch Blogger 2010. Aside from the obvious prestige of winning such a title there is also the opportunity of an internship at Sunset Events and being paid for a year to blog about student life. I will not lie to you dear reader, I would very much like to win this competition. If the sound of this competition has caught your attention then I suggest checking out the official website: http://bloggers.murdoch.edu.au/bloggers/

From there I think having a good look at all the other bloggers competing would be a very good idea. Maybe you will decide to vote for one of them, maybe you’ll decide to vote for me. Either way I think it’s a unique idea and deserves checking out.

Regardless of whether I win or lose I will probably keep writing the stuff that I enjoy writing. I hope you decide to stick around.

The Year 2015

2009-09-20T16:23:00.004+08:00

I’m sitting behind my mahogany desk, one of the few left in the world, staring out across New York City. My executive office is located in one of the beautiful skyscrapers and though I am a little bit scared of heights the view is no less breathtaking. On my wall, placed so visitors can easily see, hangs my framed degree. It is a simple piece of paper that reads:

Jonathan Gurney, Bachelor of Arts in Security, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Studies.

I look up and smile at it before turning back to the blog entry I’m composing and...Freeze. None of this is real. Let the desk vanish, taking with it the fancy office and skyscraper view. My real desk is actually located in an open-plan environment; I have my own computer and company phone line (extension 8859), a rather nice desk lamp and a whole 1 metre of extra space before the next guy’s desk starts. My computer is currently showing a really boring screensaver of the company logo. I tried changing it a week ago but the IT department insisted that I keep it the same.

Pinned to the wall of my cubicle is a picture of a rather dirty looking dog chewing on a forlorn teddy bear. This is my dog Dickens, I have to pick him up from the kennels when I’m done here as I can’t really leave him to his own devices around the house. Underneath the picture is a post-it which simply has the word ‘milk’ on it in a very untidy scrawl. I gave Dickens the last of my lactose free milk this morning because I was sure I had another carton under the sink. I didn’t. No milk means no coffee which means a much slower day. I could grab a mug from the employee lounge but I will be leaving early today anyway, Tuesday’s always end early because the upper management has late lunch meetings with the competitors. It’s a civilised way to do business and as we all get the rest of the day off I sincerely hope it continues.

Let’s talk about my job. Am I a best-selling writer or an international super spy? The cubicle environment should really have given the answer away. I actually work in an advertising firm doing research on the impact some of our previous campaigns have had. Thus I have joined so many other graduates in the great tradition of doing something completely un-related to your degree but I’ve still found a lot of the skills that I picked up during University to be very useful, particularly the research practice I used to have to do. I’m also not very senior in the company, I have at least 3 bosses and each of them seems to want something different which is another thing University prepared me for as I used to have to take 3 different units at once. I guess the people in charge have taken notice of this also as they are hoping to give me extra training and give me more responsibility, there was even some talk about giving me the chance to help develop an actual advertising campaign. If nothing else the extra money would help take a bit of the pinch out of mortgage payments.

My salary is decent enough at the moment to have allowed me to take out a reasonable mortgage on a small house. It is by no means my dream home but it’s comfortable and it has a small garden for Dickens to run around in. Also it’s quite handy for a small park that is only about ten or fifteen minutes walk away. On days like today, when I get out of work early, I generally walk Dickens down to the park for a good long game of fetch. It tires him out nicely so by the time I am getting ready to go out with some friends he is fast asleep in his basket. I think we will be going to dinner and then karaoke tonight. Hopefully I won’t be expected to sing, although I guess most of my friends were there for my hugely drunken performance of ‘Build me up Buttercup’ when I was still at University so it’s not like I can really embarrass myself more than that.

As for writing, well I haven’t let that fall entirely to the wayside. I contribute the occasional article and opinion piece to a local newspaper. It doesn’t pay at all but I like it, although one of my recent opinion pieces drew the ire of a local resident who proceeded to send me some very angry letters but they have since apologised. I think one of my greatest achievements was brought about through the newspaper. There was a plan to demolish the local park where I walk Dickens and I was asked to do an article on it. I think it would have been very easy for me to simply write a scathing denouncement of the construction company, but really for them it was simply good business so I didn’t. Instead I tried to come at the issue from a different perspective, simply reminiscing about the good times I had enjoyed at the park and how I would miss it. I could not have predicted the vocal response that this article would get as it seems a great many of the elderly residents in this area also have very fond memories of the park and were horrified to find out it was going to be built upon. The sight of a hundred old folks picketing a construction company is something that I will never forget. The article was so well received in fact that, according to the editor, the newspaper was contacted by a much bigger publication asking for the details on the writer. I haven’t been contacted yet but it was still quite exciting.

So that’s really a snapshot of my life as it is right now. It may not seem like I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to when I was in University but now I am in a position where I actually know how to accomplish those goals. If I could give myself some advice I wouldn’t waste my time by telling him to work harder, he never listens to anyone that says that so why would he listen to me? Instead I’d tell him that his degree isn’t magical and most of the harder work comes after University, but if he completes University he’ll be a lot better prepared to face it. Now if you’ll excuse me I can see my boss getting up from his desk with his jacket, this is usually the signal that the rest of us can go home. I mustn’t forget milk.

Jonathan

The Village

2009-09-14T00:46:00.010+08:00

For most International Students the Village is a fairly intimidating place. When I was first making my preparations for departure I had no idea what would await me when I arrived. I had visions of cramped dormitories and guys who didn’t understand personal space in the shower, mainly due to what I had seen in college movies so I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be a little bit apprehensive. In this post I’m going to hopefully set some things straight about what life is like in the Village. It’s entirely possible that some of this stuff might change next year but at least this way you’ll some sort of idea.

First things first: Arrival.

So you’ve taken the taxi/bus/been dropped off by a family member and now you’re standing in a car-park that looks scarily similar to every other car park around. In front of you is a cluster of squat brick buildings that look virtually identical except for the numbers stuck to some of them. To your right, depending on the car park you’ve chosen to arrive in, are three tall white buildings. That’s the new village but we’ll get to that later. For now what you need to do is follow the signs to the Admin building. If you’ve arrived after 11 p.m don’t panic, during check-in periods someone is always on call to help you get sorted out.

Basically during check-in the 3 big things you need to do are; 1) Sign a key contract, 2) Pick up a welcome pack and 3) Pick up a room inventory list.

1) This is basically a contract that makes you responsible for your key. If you lose it you get charged for a new one and the cost of replacing your lock. Try not to lose your key.

2) This one varies every semester. There is always a letter from the Village Director, a map of the Village, a list of the events that will be run over orientation and sometimes a USB key with the Village handbook on it. This stuff doesn’t really seem that vital but it can be useful to have an idea of what there is for you to do when you’re in an unfamiliar place.

3) I reckon this to be the most important item you can get. Essentially when you first move into your room there might be an awful lot of broken stuff. Filling out this form means you won’t get charged for any damage that was already there before you moved in.

When you’ve done all that you’ll have reached the stage known as; Orientation.

I consider this part to be the most important thing you can do in your first few weeks. You should try and get to know your flat-mates, find out what they like and don’t like, compare movie tastes, argue about music or sports and get legless together make every effort to meet as many people as you can. This isn’t the time to worry about your degree, whether or not you’ll do well, whether you need to take a folder or a laptop into lectures and if you should be a financial guild member or not (do it!).

I realise this might be the last thing parents want to read when they come to this blog but honestly these first weeks before University starts are crucial to how you’ll live. People who get on with their flat-mates are less likely to argue or fight with them over trivial issues and they tend to always have someone to watch TV with or share dinner. Your flat-mates are your family while you live in the Student Village. These are the people who will look after you when you’re sick, loan you some cash when that bank transfer has been delayed and be there for you when you get stressed about exams and assignments. Of course they will hopefully be able to rely on you for the same kind of treatment when things go wrong for them.

Finally after the exciting and hopefully fun orientation the boring University stuff starts. But as this post is primarily about the Village I think there are possibly a few misconceptions about what is and isn’t provided upon arrival.

For starters the brochures, at time of writing, advertise that every apartment has a phone. This is not the case as every phone was removed at the beginning of 2009. This is a little bit irritating but not a massive problem if you have Skype or a decent cell phone but it’s still something to be considered by International Students.

Secondly the internet is not free!! If you want to use internet in your room you’ve pretty much got to choose one of the ‘plans’ from the ISP the Village uses; Startech. The cheapest plan is $5 for an hour and the most expensive is $60 for a month. Honestly the internet isn’t so bad, there have been a lot of problems but I’ve had much the same experience with that of the University Internet. Again it’s not a deal breaker but some students are often a little put out by the fact they need to pay for, what some consider is, a basic need.

Finally upon arrival some students decide to purchase the linen pack. I might get into trouble for this, though I doubt it, but I’d advise against that. It’s probably cheaper to simply purchase the stuff individually from K-Mart which is about a 15 minute walk down the road; this goes for the cutlery pack too.

Overall I’d say the Village can be a great place to live. There are some fun events that you can attend, and some less fun ones that you can probably avoid, great people to meet, an easygoing environment to make friends and meet people from other countries, a pretty useful support network from the RA’s (my completely unbiased opinion as an RA there) and access to some handy facilities. If I hadn’t lived in the Village I probably wouldn’t have made as many great friends as I have nor had nearly as many of the exciting experiences. Some day, when I’m not liable to get sued, I’ll tell you guys about the naked Swede incident. But for now I think I will end this post here.

Student Nutrition

2009-09-05T19:01:00.003+08:00

Last night I was sitting in front of my computer, researching the hundreds of sources (well at least ten) than I need to be able to write my assignments. This isn’t that unusual, generally speaking I do use the computer to do most, if not all, my assignments. What was unusual was the open punnet of strawberries that I had absent-mindedly been grazing from.

I don’t wish for you to think that a magical punnet of strawberries had appeared and I was shocked by it, rather I was surprised to find that I was eating healthy food while doing an assignment. On average I have perhaps 10 assignments per semester. They vary from group project work to online quizzes to the essay that I am currently working on. For the most part I find the assignments to be easy or at least easy if I have been keeping up with the readings and attending lectures. This all changes when the assignment in question is an essay. I don’t know what it is, some people call it laziness and others call it procrastination but I genuinely find it difficult to work on these sorts of assignments unless it’s in one great block. I have friends who do a bit of work in week 1, a bit in week 2 and finish it in week 3. I feel very jealous of their pain-staking preparation but no matter how hard I try to emulate their good study practices inevitably I find my concentration slipping away until I end up on Wikipedia doing random searches and reading articles on super-volcanoes.

I don’t wish for you to think that I never get my assignments done or that the essays even require that much preparation. Generally speaking I have only had 2 extensions and I always make the greatest of efforts to meet my deadlines. I also say with no small amount of pride that I have never failed an assignment. But that does little to mitigate my great feeling of shame that I do not seem capable of planning anything in advance. Murdoch actually offers seminars and workshops on dealing with procrastination and managing your time but I’ve never found the time to attend any of them and I hesitate to skip lectures to make the time. Anyways that’s not really the purpose of this blog post; rather I would like to take this time to explain why I found the strawberries so shocking.

I try to eat a balanced diet. I cannot say with any truth that I have ever really succeeded at this as, no matter how much I tell my body that broccoli or spinach is good for it, I still buy my fair share of snack foods. Usually this is because of my unusual appetite while I’m writing assignments. I tend to enter a sort of fugue state where I ignore everything including the passage of time, anything my flatmates say to me and my need to eat. Of course this rather upsets my stomach that then begins to whine and bitch about the lack of sustenance, so I fetch a packet of chips or some chocolate or some such trash to placate it. However as the night grows long the fugue state grows worse. I begin to eat things that can hardly be described as food until eventually I am chewing my pen into nothingness. Eventually I will leave this state and stare in amazement at the devastation that has been visited upon my desk, empty chip packets, chocolate wrappers, pyramids of empty cans and a very forlorn pen that looks like rats got to it. Sadly I never really have time to properly lambast myself as the assignment is then due.

After submitting it however I vow to never eat junk food again. From then on it will only be dry crackers, healthy fruit, and a 5km run every morning. This vow will have been completely forgotten by the time I’m next visiting the supermarket and I see the great specials on chocolate (3 for 2).

I guess what I’m trying to say is that practicing good nutrition is hard if you tend to favour the crucible method of essay writing so for part of the semester you may be susceptible to a mild case of scurvy (this actually isn’t a joke I know a student who has suffered from this after he attempted to survive solely on mi goreng) but every now and then your brain will make the right choices for you and you’ll look down and find strawberries.

Open Your Mind

2009-09-02T13:41:00.003+08:00

This past Sunday was Murdoch’s “Open Your Mind” Day. Essentially it was a very fancy version of the typical open day that many of you may recall from past schools. A big difference was the sheer amount of attractions on offer: tea-cup rides, a petting zoo and (my favourite) a candyfloss vendor.

Fortunately for my maturity, I couldn’t linger for too long at the tea-cup ride as I actually had a job to do. Another R.A, Callum, and I were going to be giving the tour of the village to any interested parents and prospective students. We figured it would be an easy case of showing maybe 5 or 10 people around the place and answering any questions they would have. We really underestimated the interest in the tour. By one o’clock the time had come to lead the group down to the Village, I did a quick headcount and estimated there were maybe 20 people. What I didn’t realise was that the big crowd of people standing behind the 20 I’d counted were also part of the tour.

Completely oblivious to the huge group that was following me I was amiably chatting to the people at the front of the line about Uni life and how badly Australia had been thrashed by England at the Ashes. I did notice a few strange looks by some friends of mine from the village, looking back I must have appeared as some modern interpretation of the pied piper, but again I didn’t make the necessary connections. Callum had already realised how big the crowd was as he had been responsible for the stragglers (the result of a lost coin toss on my part) but it was a bit late to warn me by then.

The first inkling that something had gone horribly wrong began to creep in when I climbed up some steps and turned to address my audience. I’m not terrible at public speaking, I’ve given presentations at Uni and for the village where I’ve had to address as many as 20 people, but the sight of 40 or 50 people waiting in breathless anticipation (or so I’d like to believe) for what I was about to say was un-nerving to say the least. Regardless I drew on all the Lessons University had taught me, preparing to launch into a hilarious account of living in the Student Village, peppering the account with useful information to help the prospective make an informed decision. Instead I pointed shakily at one of the security call buttons and explained in a stuttery voice what purpose they served. It didn’t improve from there.

Luckily I was able to procure a megaphone by the second stop on the tour so everyone could hear me trying to explain what the deal with the administration building and study centre was. Callum eased the pressure by effortlessly leading the rest of the tour and generally doing everything I’d wanted to do, only better. I, of course, take full credit for all of it as I’ve always considered myself to be his teacher and therefore any good that comes from anything he does I can shamelessly take credit for. He may not agree but that’s just the usual backchat you expect from your pupils. But in all honesty I think the tour did go smoothly overall and I hope there will be a few people who found it useful enough to make a decision on.

The rest of Open Your Mind looked just as successful. Murdoch really brought its strengths to the game in the Unit co-ordinators and lecturers who always seem so passionate about the subjects they teach. There were even a few live music acts scattered around campus, providing a nice atmosphere that reminded me a lot of the market days on Thursdays.

Anyways my final impressions were that, as nice as Open Your Mind was, it isn’t necessary to attend it. I don’t feel International Students are particularly hard done by if they don’t get to speak to the lecturers and unit co-ordinators before they choose Murdoch as the majority of the stuff being explained didn’t differ one iota from anything available online. As nice as the candyfloss was I would’ve felt gypped if I’d flown all the way from Zimbabwe to experience it before choosing Murdoch.

Returning Home

2009-08-24T13:03:00.005+08:00

So recently I made the perilous plane trip back to Zimbabwe. I've lived in Australia since February '08 so it had been over a year and a half since I'd last been home, which immediately raised an interesting question for me to ponder while being patted down by security at the airport; Is Zimbabwe really my home? It's certainly where I was born and where my parents live but I haven't really lived there since 2004. Regardless I still love seeing my parents so I was prepared to make the trip.

I like flying. I know a lot of people don’t, my mother in fact gets so panicky on a plane that she has been known to sit stock still and glare ferociously out of the window as if this were the only way to keep the plane in the air. As for myself I generally find it easy to relax, sometimes I’ll read a book, listen to music or even just watch the landscape blur as the plane accelerates to take off. If I needed any more proof that I am a bad cook it was provided when I got excited about the food they were serving on the plane.

Anyway we arrived in South Africa at about five in the morning. It was cold, dark and quite cheerless. However South Africa has obviously been hard at work to get the place ready for the 2010 Soccer World Cup as I discovered when I went to one of the many cafes that have been built since I was last there. To my delight, and I kid you not this memory still keeps me warm at night, one of them was a lovely open plan buffet with comfortable couches and a welcoming atmosphere even at 5 a.m. Displaying my usual ineptitude I proceeded to try and pay in Australian Dollars and was politely told that they would prefer rand but could accept Au$ if I was unable to pay any other way. The mere fact that they were willing to allow me to pay in another currency just so I would not be inconvenienced by walking 100 metres to a Forex stand was heart-warming and quite a change in attitude since the last time I’d visited. They firmly won my business however when they gave me a free refill of my hot chocolate and gave me first pick of the fresh muffins that had arrived. I had a five hour layover in South Africa but it seemed to go a lot quicker with such a nice place to relax in the airport.

I was home for about a month and managed to do some pretty cool stuff while I was there. Anyone who knows me knows that I am stupidly scared of heights. I cannot even look down from tall buildings with a fluttery feeling in my stomach which is why I thought it would be smart to jump off a cliff, just to see if I could(turns out I can). I saw far more than my fair share of warthogs and vervet monkeys (maybe one day I will share the story on why I dislike them so much) and got to see lions, civet cats and hyenas. Being back in Zimbabwe also allowed me to experience the thrill of having no electricity for days on end because someone at the power station was wondering what a particular lever did. Fun fact; my parents haven’t had municipal water at the house in over 10 months but they still have to pay the bill or we’ll get cut off.

If that last paragraph seemed jumbled or quick that’s because it’s exactly how the entire trip felt. Before I realised it I was already on a plane back to Australia. I’m told that home-coming can be the most emotionally draining experience that a University student, and indeed their family, can have. But when you get back to your house in Australia and collapse exhausted onto your bed you’ll think back to the time you had at home and smile.

Plus, let’s not forget free food and free laundry! How can you go wrong?

G'day

2009-08-23T15:59:00.006+08:00

This is going to be my first blog post on this pristine new blog. The old one that I maintained unfortunately got hijacked so often that I have decided to simply abandon it. If you were a reader of that last blog then I welcome you back and you are excused from reading this next post. For new readers, strap in because it's going to be a wild ride.

First things first, I don't work for Murdoch. You might have found your way to this blog from their main page but they do not endorse anything I post here. If something I post offends you or you feel it is inaccurate please feel free to email me on the address listed and we can discuss it :)

Right housekeeping out the way now for some introductions. Without giving too much away my name is Jonathan and I study at Murdoch University. The full title of the exciting degree I'm doing is: "Security, Terrorism and Counterterrorism studies" and much of my time is occupied trying to get through the vast amounts of reading necessary to get that shiny piece of paper. I live in the Village on campus and work there as a Residential Adviser. If you use this information to stalk/spam/kill me I will be very disappointed in you.

Anyway it should be simple to tell that I am not overly qualified for the job of telling people which University is the right choice for them which is why this blog won't be about that. Rather I aim to show people what life is like as a student. It might not sound like it will make for gripping reading but I seem to have incredibly bad luck with everyday events so hopefully some of you will be entertained by the stories I have to share. That being said I am fully willing to answer questions about Murdoch and student life but I am not anywhere near qualified to help people with visa applications or degree choices. Please don't ask me for that kind of help as there is an entire department in Murdoch that will help you far more than I ever could.

So in the next couple of days I will be working hard to get content up here that is both interesting and entertaining. Please feel free to comment and let me know what I'm doing right and what I'm doing not so right!