I had a long lie again on Tuesday morning - no classes for the day so when I got up I had some breakfast and then caught up on the news and latest football gossip. The plan for the rest of the day was to sort out some uni things which I had neglected to do until now and then play football in the afternoon. I had to complete my SAAS student funding application, which basically ensures that my tuition fees at Glasgow are paid for, as well as completing my student registration for the new year at Glasgow. Even though I'm studying in Australia, I still have to be registered at Glasgow and have all my financing in place for the beginning of the semester. I quickly hit a stumbling block however after realising that I couldn't remember my SAAS username and password in order to access the website, but I knew the details were on some paperwork at home - I just had to wait until someone was awake back home to retrieve them for me. Productive plans postponed until later in the day, I went off to play football.
On Wednesday I had classes once more, but my Intellectual Property class still had a reading week which meant I could head home after my first class and have some lunch before returning for the later class. I used the remaining time between my classes very productively, by watching some Ready, Steady, Cook whilst having lunch, followed by some other mind-numbing daytime TV to really set myself up well for the rest of the day. After my second class of the day, I came home, made some dinner - after ANOTHER trip to Coles for some groceries - and watched a few episodes of Arrested Development before going to bed.
Thursday brought about a spur of productiveness - I'm not sure if that's actually a word, but it hasn't been underlined by this spell-checker, so I'm going to stick with it. No classes today, but I got up quite early with the intention of heading to the library and doing some work. After breakfast, a shower and the daily ritual of catching up on the latest football news from back home I got dressed and headed to campus to find myself a spot in the library. I'm sure mum and dad will be pleased to know that I was finally getting round to properly pursuing a job here and planned to write myself an entirely new CV from scratch and start handing them out to local shops and cafes. Just as I found a spot in the incredibly packed library - do none these people have homes to sit in, I wondered - and got my laptop out, I realised that I had left the charger at home and had less than 20 minutes of battery life remaining. Mission aborted. I trudged home after stopping by the bank in order to FINALLY pick up my card. I've been here over a month now and only just got it from the Commonwealth branch on the uni campus - totally crap service, and I'd recommend anyone coming here to use a different bank.
After heading home I sat down to get my CV written; I ended up deciding to make an Apple store-specific version with the intention to try and get a job in the Broadway Shopping Centre. After ensuring that I was happy with the final version, I walked to the library at uni to use a printer, before going to the Apple store to hand it in. Getting to grips with a new library and learning how to print things was quite a task, but I eventually managed it and got my cover letter and CV looking pristine - signed it off and everything. Happy with my efforts and feeling confident that I could get myself a position working at Apple given my experience in Comet and Currys, I headed to the top floor of the Broadway Shopping Centre. After chatting to a member of staff in the shop who had only started two days previously, I was informed that Apple deal with all of their job applications online - I had essentially wasted my time, and my printing credits, so headed home once more.
On Friday we had another really good Commercial Dispute Resolution class and afterwards I headed home to have some lunch before heading out to play football again; the plan was to play for around an hour with the Soccer Society lads in Victoria Park and then immediately up to St. Paul's Oval to play with another group. It proved a little too much and I've been suffering from a really tight right hamstring since, after being forced to head home early from the second game. I don't really get injuries playing football - at least none which actually stop me from playing, so it's been a bit unusual for me. I'll need to give it a bit of a break before I play again, which is frustrating.
Saturday morning was another fairly early rise so that I could tackle a new, generic version of my CV and I returned to the library and printed off a few more copies. The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent walking around almost every shop, cafe and restaurant in the local area attempting desperately to have someone offer me a job. It felt like for every CV which I actually handed over there must have been two or three people inform me that they simply weren't taking anyone else on right now. It was a relentless task and one which brought back memories of doing the same trip around all the local shops back in Falkirk a few years back. It was a fairly unsuccessful trip in general, however the guy in the Nike store said he'd keep me in mind since vacancies often came up in the shop, and a cafe nearby are also taking people on, so fingers crossed. The cafe itself would be my ideal choice I think, since it is really close to my flat and it's also a chocolate themed place! It's called Max Brenner's - I've just Google searched it and had no idea that it was a massive chain of places! They sell all sorts of chocolate which is just right up my street - chocolate pizzas, chocolate cake, chocolate bars, chocolate drinks - pretty much everything you can think up! I think I'd enjoy working there, and it's definitely a place Auntie Jean would enjoy! Haha!
On Saturday night, Jessica, Alex, Jordan and I made our weekly visit to the Morrison for one dollar oysters, before we headed to Darling Harbour to meet up with some other international students and watch the fireworks. Pretty much all year round here, they have fireworks on a Saturday night at Darling Harbour - probably the nicest part of Sydney, where there are countless fancy yachts, lots of cafes and bars, a massive IMAX cinema, as well as the Hard Rock Cafe and other nice seafood restaurants. The fireworks were great and totally free, which meant there was a huge turnout of people to watch them. We ended up going to a few bars afterwards and ended up in Sidebar, which is a sort of nightclub/bar close to Central Station - it's also really handy since it's only a 2 minute walk home at the end of the night!
Here's some photos, some of which even include me!
In order: Alex, Jordan and I, then Jessica and I, and finally Jordan and I - all taken at the Morrison.
This next picture isn't a very good quality, and doesn't really do the place justice, but it's Darling Harbour overlooking the pontoons. The lights around the waters edge are all cafes, bars and restaurants. The next picture is the fireworks, which are very, very difficult to take photos of!
Today is now Sunday and after a long lie from last night, I headed to Bondi Beach this afternoon to meet up with Jordan and Jessica who had made their way to the beach much earlier. I caught the train and then a bus from the city centre out to the coast; Bondi is such a lovely area and exactly like you would imagine it - full of surf shops, everyone wears flip-flops and shorts and it has a real "beachy" vibe to the whole place. First thing I did when I got off the bus was grab an ice cream for a little shop before heading down to the beach to meet up with the other two. The first suggestion which was made was to go to the official Ben & Jerry's shop to get some ice cream; even though I'd just had an ice lolly, I wasn't kidding myself and knew some Ben & Jerry's would go down a treat. The ice cream was really brilliant and the flavours on offer made choosing one or two really difficult. I eventually settled on a tub with a scoop each of Chocolate Therapy and Coconut Seven Layer - both of which were excellent!
This is a photo of Bondi just as the sun was starting to go down and people were heading home. The beach was so busy today and I can't even imagine what it will be like in the summer! You can still see quite a lot of keen surfers catching the last waves of the weekend in the water.
I'm now totally shattered, it's almost 11pm and I can barely keep my eyes open. We had a big dinner in the flat tonight, and I think I overate after skipping lunch - except the ice cream - so I think that's definitely added to how tired I feel now. Here's a picture of dinner - the dish on the left was a kind of spicy noodles with fish, almost certainly the hottest thing I have ever eaten although it was really tasty too. The dish on the right is Korean style fried rice, which was excellent! I'm going to have a brilliant recipe collection when I come home!
Class tomorrow, so I'm off to bed now.
Jamie
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