Perth So Far

Me & my mates from Unit 14 (and a Wallaby at Caversham)

Well it's been a month, and everything seems to be going pretty well. I've done almost everything I wanted to do in Perth e.g. see and touch the natives such as the koalas, kangaroos and other Australians. Walked around town in different times to experience the foreign weather (the 20-16°C temperatures are just nice.... to sleep in...).

However after a while there are also unanswered questions left in my list e.g. why is the 2 dollar coin bigger than 1 dollar? or which way the toilets here spiral? (can't tell, the flush here is so aggressive and splashes every direction). Made a few connections with the locals, especially the food sector (fingers crossed can get discount :p).

I also have started to value the food here after not converting them with the 3x currency exchange rate, I mean 3 dozens or 18 eggs/carton for $4 is cheap! And the random item they put up for offer are always welcomed. $1.99 2 liter Pepsi? $0.99 Snickers? $2.99 for a large Cadbury caramello? (Well they are cheap because they are near expiry). Those are really sweet to fill in the gaps in between meals because I've been eating more since the weather cooled down. And no I'm not gaining weight because they get burned fast because I do 99% walking from my house to campus and the not so nearby shopping centers.

As for campus life, the fact about low class attendance was true after all. I remember stressing out a day before Week 1 because some of the classes I want and CAN enroll in have 0-1 vacant spots left. But as the week progresses (now entering Week 4), a full 32 pax seminar is now attended by only 15-20 people and the number is expected to decrease over time. I should've forced myself into already full classes so that I can have 2-3 days-only of classes per week. But never mind, the current timetable scheme of Mon-Thur class is okay by me.

The capped bandwidth here is a killer. After I reached the 500MB usage after 2 weeks (got the 1.5GB home use for 3 months) I became more apathetic of the bandwidth because 1.5GB for 3 months is seriously unfeasible. A round of case study, research and journals download can take up to 60MB per session. Looks like I have to top up soon to 5 or 10GB to survive the coming weeks. Gonna fork out the bank again. Haihz, the supplies expenditure is okay with $70 per week. But it is these external expenditures on services that contributes to stress and a lot of sighs. Like what a Bruneian comrade here said "money here is like water"... some of you should see how Irwin reacts when he receives the bill; like receiving results and delay opening the mail until tomorrow, and if possible never...

Speaking about cash, I've decided to pause my search for a part-time job because I no longer have a unit that requires me to (apparently I don't appear in the Perth's unit list, and the class was already full so I had to swap to another unit to graduate). Apart from that there's the distance issue and balancing time with studies. So what do I do now? Make my own laptop servicing and online web-designing to earn some cash from home. Some of the local laptops here are amazingly advance I dare not to cut them up to service them to avoid legality issues. I mean, have you seen a 22 inch screen, i7 processor with CUDA Dell? Hardware-wise is a no-no, and even software-wise I might think twice considering all the stuff here are authentic and non-lanun :p

Well I better get busy again, next week is Week 4 with a portfolio due and a midterm paper to score. After that it's 2 tuition free weeks with vague plans of doing some more sight seeing around Perth. Itadakimasu!