Green balls

I am now officially part of the 2010 Commerce Revue, titled, industrious basterds. They first had to explain me what exactly a revue is, since if I googled it, I just got a bunch of cancan dancers. As it turns out, it is a series of satirical sketches, ranging from lynching the Australian prime minister while singing an adapted version of the circle of life to dancing on a boybandmedley.
There will be three performances, starting on the 25th of August already. This means I will have an intensive but fun rehearsal schedule for the coming weeks. At most three times, on Thursday, Sunday and Monday.

The first rehearsal was a lot of fun and I met forty Australians in one go. They are theatrical (meaning loud with a lot of arm movements) and funny. After rehearsals we went to the Broadway bar. Afterwards some people were so kind to give me a lift home, but it was quite a hassle, as there are many one-way streets in Sydney.

The next day I had a good night's and a good morning's sleep. I had set my alarm clock, but somehow it failed to go off and I woke up at ten to one. After a hasty breakfast I went to Cockatoo island with Harm. This is the biggest island in the Sydney harbour and it was hosting a free contemporary art exhibition. It was quite impressive due to the cloudy day and the abonded industrial site look of the island. Most of the artworks were videos. They ranged from people pingponging over a naked woman to transvesites appearing out of mushrooms.The one I liked best was actually quite simple,it was a room full of green baskets hanging from the wall.


All in all it was an interesting afternoon, but I must say that I prefer oldschool art above contemporary art.

When we got back we made some delicious pasta with homemade sauce. In the evening we went to the cruise bar, which looks over the harbour including opera house, because a girl we met here was celebrating her birthday. Today we will be preparing for our own party, which I hope will turn out to be great (and leave our house intact) and leave me with a voice so I can still sing when auditioning for songs on the revue on Sunday.

Ethics and tea

Every Thursday at 12.30, my weekend starts and continues until Tuesday. If that isn't a great schoolweek then I don't know.

I now have actually had the first lecture of three out of four lectures and I really like the courses I have chosen so far. On Wednesday I have ethics twice. The morning one has a great enthusiastic guy who keeps walking up and down the isles of chairs. The second one lasts for three hours and we are only with a very small group. The first hour will be the French woman talking and the rest of the time we will be discussing and studying cases. Since I take these two similar courses, it will be easier to study for projects and exams, but also I will be able to compare them. The discussions in class so far are already interesting. One guy in the second class makes my blood boil by his blatant immorality. I never thought that such people actually still existed (he came to class in a suit, then you alreayd look like a prick to me, but ok). He honestly believed that the sole purpose of a firm was to make as much profit as possible, and he thought that making use of sweatshops was completely acceptable, since those firms had to compete with low cost Chinese firms. What I will really learn from these classes is not just to say something is good and right but give proper arguments why firms have to be social.

Today I had PR and the woman who teaches it seems to be on a permanent sugar rush. She has a wacky sense of humour and I am sure I will enjoy her classes. What I noticed so far is that the classes here are smaller (but not by much, also depending on the course) and more about interaction. The profs are also a lot more informal, they all walk around in jeans and casual clothing.

I didn't have Thai food, instead I had simple dinner with Lisianne twice in a row, after which we have a fun evening full of tea, cookies, chatting and movies. I am truly happy to know that there is always somebody to stay at home with.

This evening I will go to the first rehearsal of the commerce revue, which as far as I understand will be dancing, singing and acting, while making fun of business. The last two years they had a show 'men in tax' and 'nightmare on Wall Street'. I am quite curious and I hope it will be a lot of fun and a decent level. I must admit that I do enjoy being on stage, so it would make an interesting extra activity. Let the show begin.

Great start

After a great night, but too little sleep, I woke up to go to my very first lecture today. A tiny bit sleepy, but with a healthy dose of curiosity I went to what was meant to be my first class in marketing communication.

After half an hour, there was still no sign of a lecturer and even taking into account possible cultural differences, that is just plain rude. As it turned out that after all the infosessions on safety and transport, they forgot to mention that we have a blackboard just like back home. Course information and announcements can be found there, including the announcement that my first lecture was actually cancelled. Great. I could have stayed in bed.

I found out all about the blackboard pages with three German girls and we spent the rest of the lecture time in a computerlab looking through the course info. For the interface I wrote an article on plagiarism and how they deal with it at the Erasmus, so I found it very interesting that when I opened blackboard for the first time, there were big red letters stating I hadn't done the academic honesty test yet. When I browsed through my course descriptions, this test was also mentioned. If I didn't get 80% or higher for this test, I would not get a pass for my subjects. In the end I first had to watch an interactive film on the topic of paraphrasing etc. before I could get to the second step. This included three topics, each with a text to read and a test I had to fill out compeltely correct before I could see the next topic. After this came the test itself, containing twenty obvious questions such as 'I paraphrased the paragraph, so I do not have to worry about referencing'. I can now say I am academically honest, woohoo.

Something postive I found out was that I only have to buy books for two out of four courses. The other two are just articles online. At 11.30 we went to the free tea and cakes organised each week by Unimates and just chatted with some other people.

Right now I am still not sure what I will do tonight, as I am a bit tired and I do have an offer to go eat out at a thai place (but as I have never really learned to eat spicy food, I don't think that's a very good idea). One thing is for sure, even though I still have the feeling I am still on a holiday and resits of second year aren't even over, I have started my third year and actually have homework to do.

Reggae in the Irish pub

As I only have classes on Tuesday till Thursday, I could still sleep in on Monday. During the day I mostly tried to figure out which clubs I want to join and if I could find a job. Unfortunately that last thing turns out to be quite hard. To be a waitress you need a permit to serve alcohol, which costs about a hundred dollars. Since I don't feel like spending a lot of money before I can possibly start earning it, I will not be walking around with a notepad and plates anytime soon.
For tutoring most people want you to have certain Australian diplomas and a lot of jobs are also just for permanent residents or are in the middle of nowhere.

I guess I will either become a receptionist of some sort (I applied for something like that already) or handing out flyers, the kind of promotional work I swore I'd never do again. Oh well, never say never.

In the evening Harm and I met up with an old teacher, Faith McGirr. She taught us visual arts for five years in high school, but she is originally from Australia, born on Crown street, which is a stone throw away from this place. She was travelling to visit family and thought it would be fun to see us again. We went to the local and chatted about old times.

After a lovely salmon pasta, we went to the Apple store in the city centre where Angus and Julia stone were performing for free. I am quite a fan and so I was very frustrated when I could see them, but not hear them. The glass framework of the building kept in all the sound and 'I'm sorry, but we're packed mate' we were not allowed in the building. We could see a lot of open space, but the guy at the door would not give in. A bit sad I ate a brownie went we went to Gloria's coffee. A bit later we met with some people from UNSW to go to an Irish bar where they were having a reggae night. It was a live band and they were very good, I especially enjoyed it when they started playing Brazilian carnaval music. I also met some new people, including a Texan girl who is offended if you call her a republican and has now been taught to say 'Lijpe shit ouwe!' Whenever someone asks her for an opinion.

Palm beach

Normally Sunday is the resting day. I however, spend the day running around and 'bushwalking' as they call walking anywhere that is not the city in Australia.

We were meeting up with about twenty others in the city at quarter to ten, but we were running late. That meant we had to run to get tickets and still make it to the bus. Those who had the privilege to witness me in gymclasses know that running isn't exactly my strongest point. Panting we arrived on time, only to figure out that two others were still not there, meaning I might as well have saved myself the effort.

Luckily I had plenty of time to rest, as the busride to the Northern Palm Beach took an hour and a half. Once there we took in the image of a beautiful almost deserted beach. We decided to walk through the sand towards the lighthouse. Since the group was following Lisianne and me, we took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead end (a beautiful rock formation though) and had to walk a bit longer.


That I truly have no stamina to speak of became painfully clear when we had to walk all the stone steps to the top where the lighthouse was. The view was amazing though, and definitely worth it. We weren't able to spot any whales, but we still had a great time enjoying the sun and the blue waters surrounding us.


When we got back we cooked our housemates typically Dutch food: mashed potatoes, carrots, meatballs and homemade apple sauce. It took quite a while due to the amount of food and the lack of good pans, but they all enjoyed it very much.Seems like Dutch food is tasty after all.

BBQ and la bamba

On Thursday I went to the uni to join the city tour, which was just a fancy description of visiting two bars. No, hotels. While I associate hotels with rooms filled with beds, the hotels here do offer crashing facilities, but they are mostly just bars.

I met some a lot of new people, including Singaporean art students, Swedish exchange students and a lot of Germans and Dutch people. All in all I can say IBA spoiled me, since I am already used to going to school with an entire range of nationalities. I'd prefer to meet some Australians, but I guess I have to wait for my classes to start. However, I must say there are also a lot of nationalities here that are not well represented in Rotterdam. There are a lot of Scandinavian students, as well as British and American,

That evening there was a welcome party at Manning bar, which is on campus. It was a party with free pizza, which Harm and I managed to miss twice. First we were having hot chocolate somewhere and when we came back the pizza was already eaten. When we were out to get some food, we missed the second round of pizza. Despite of the minor foodcrisis, we a had a blast and enjoyed the conversations and dancing with our newfound friends.

The next day there was a free BBQ at the university, which I smuggled Lisianne to. After chilling in the grass with our free sausages we ended up in the same place having coco with Linnea, Sarah (Swedish), a German girl I unfortunately forgot the name of (but remembering all the faces, places and names of all the people I met is a massively hard job), A german guy named Laurens I think, A French guy with the perfect last name Salmon (no first name needs to be remembered) and a Chilean (nano, as in the iPod).

During the evening we had a drink in another hotel, which looked far less classy than what you would expect with the name Coogee Palace. Met some more people, including two Norwegian girls both conveniently called Kirsten, but other than that it was not very spectacular. Funny was the moment when Salmon lied to the busdriver about where he had to go so he had to pay less and then got reminded by the busdriver he had missed his stop at some point, so he was forced to get out in the middle of nowhere, far from where he actually had to be.

This morning I had a voice more fit for a eighty year old male, so I took it slow. We visited the Paddington market, which was filled with stalls of self-proclaimed Australian designers (meaning still very expensive) and we looked at hidiously ugly dresses and we tasted liqoirice coated with chocolate. This was properly explained as an accident happening in your mouth by Lieke.

On our way back to get groceries Lisianne and I got completely lost, but with la Bamba stuck in our heads we made it home. We watched a movie in the living room and had the scent of popcorn (ours) and weed (our American roommate and co) fill our noses. For now I wish you all a good night, while I dread my early morning to come.
Boa Noite

From skippy to sniffy

Yesterday's orientation was already a lot better. I still find it extremely hard to get out of bed early in the morning, but I don't think that will ever change.
Information sessions ranged from the activities of the student union to internships and a long session that could best be explained as advertising, as two organisations explained us all about their very overpriced trips.

We also got information on our enrolment, which allowed us to pick up our student card. Not only am I now officially a Usyd student, I can also travel with concession and I look eternally sunburned on my picture because printing issues resulted in two reddish lines over my face. I also had a problem with my courses, as the lectures of two of my subjects clashed. Back in Rotterdam this wouldn't be much of a problem, but here there is mandatory attendance. I also had two other courses I really wanted to take, but I was not approved for them because when I had applied I had not yet passed marketing, which was a prerequisite for both. Dreading all the work it would take to figure out timetables of different courses and seeking approval with the different faculties, it turned out to be surprisingly easy. After sending my renewed transcript I got enrolled in all the courses I wanted. Fortunately this also resulted in a three-day school week, with Fridays and Mondays off and class no later than five in the afternoon.

I will be taking PR, Marketing communication, Management and organisational ethics and Ethics in international business decisions.

Before leaving for home Harm and I registered for the Student Union, meaning I can now possibly join the magazine or a drama club of some sorts. On the way back we stopped by the post office so I could pick up my birthday present from Pedro (A box filled with happiness). After another fun meal we went to grab a beer at the pub around the corner called the local. I normally don't drink beer, but it almost seems rude to order wine in an alehouse and a beer called sassy blonde sounded like something I should try.

Today I am having a bedbugday, as outside it is cloudy and cold and I have a massive cold which leaves me sniffing like a customs dog hunting for drugs. Sometimes a relaxing day like that is good for a human being. Reading in bed and just figuring out what is in store for me the next couple of days (and taking measures to prevent getting lost on campus when I have to go from class to class). Tonight will most likely contain popcorn and a movie with my lovely housemate Lisianne, who is an awesome late-night-conversation-partner and brings me tea. It is on calm days like these that I realize I am happy.