Last Monday I got up at the usual time for my Anti-Discrimination class, which turned out to be one of the less interesting ones and it dragged on a bit; I may still have been feeling the effects of a tiring weekend. My next class, Intellectual Property was back this week having enjoyed the first reading week and it was a good class once again. I really quite enjoy it, in terms of a subject area and the classes themselves are interesting and engaging. The lecturer is also someone who has a bit of personality, which makes a massive difference I think. Whilst I had been in Anti-Discrimination law on Monday morning, I had read a post on Twitter by StrettyNews looking for someone to do live text commentary for the football that night. Basically, StrettyNews is a Manchester United-dedicated website, where blogs, articles, discussions and analysis are posted - as well as live text coverage of games. I responded to the tweet, pointing out that my experience of doing such things amounted to zero, but that I would be keen to do it. A few messages exchanged back and forth and I was set up and raring to go.
The game wasn't kicking-off until 8pm at home, which wouldn't actually be until 5am on Tuesday morning for me over here. So, after my third and final class of Monday, I walked home, made myself some dinner, watched a truly brilliant new episode of Breaking Bad and had a reasonably early night. It seemed like barely a few minutes later when my alarm erupted in the darkness but I quickly remembered why I was getting up and was instantly awake and alert. The game itself was David Moyes first league match at Old Trafford as the new manager and it was against Chelsea, managed by Jose Mourinho - huge! The match was a bit quiet and less dramatic than predicted; it finished 0-0 but my text commentary was well received. Pretty decent night - or morning, to be more accurate - and I headed back to bed for another few hours sleep.
On Tuesday I had a few things on my "to-do list" but no classes as usual so it was a fairly quiet morning before I got showered, had some breakfast and headed out. First task was to go to the bank in order to activate my card and choose a pin number - even though you're able to activate your own card online, it requires a registered mobile number with the bank in order to do so. Since I hadn't received my Australian sim card yet, it meant that my mobile number wasn't registered with the bank, so I had to return to the branch to do it there - a bit inconvenient, but all sorted now. Afterwards, I walked around a few more local shops, cafes and restaurants to hand out some more CVs before I returned to the chocolate cafe which I spoke about in my last blog post. I spoke to the manager of the cafe and he said that unfortunately he did not have any positions available for new staff at the moment, which was a bit disappointing, however I'll keep searching for a job somewhere! Too many expensive things I'd love to do to not be able to get a job - I've looked at prices for skydives, bungee jumps and diving, so it would be great to do some cool stuff here! After heading back to the flat I filled out my profile page on the Apple jobs website and submitted an application for a position in the local store here - fingers crossed.
Wednesday brought another day of classes for me and when I came home I cooked and watched some TV for a while. Later on I watched "The Dictator" which is the latest film by Sacha Baron Cohen and it was totally brilliant - absolutely hilarious - well worth a watch but not for the easily offended! Haha! Weather has been gradually getting better the past few days and it's set to continue for the rest of the week - I guess this is the start of Spring now. It's been consistently in the 23-26 degrees range, lovely sunshine and hardly a cloud in the sky; picture postcard weather every day of the week, which is great! On Wednesday night back home, Celtic pulled off an incredible result to reach the Champions League group stages for the second consecutive season - didn't expect them to manage it at all, great achievement. On Thursday I had another day off so had another long lie and a chilled out morning - in the afternoon I had to go and try and chase up my Australian sim card which still hadn't arrived! I managed to get it sorted to be sent to me express post and it arrived the next morning - over a month in Australia and I've just sorted a phone number, not exactly what you would call organised.
On Friday I got up early and headed into uni for my Commercial Dispute Resolution class and just before reaching the campus it dawned on me that we had a reading week. Wasted journey, up early for no reason and a minor annoyance. I decided to make the most of my morning and headed to the library to begin one of several essays which are due in the coming weeks - I managed to smash out around 600 words of it in a couple of hours, which was a good start. Also on Friday, a few of us booked up a hostel in the Blue Mountains for the weekend of the 21st September, which should be really good - it's one of the nicest, most picturesque areas in this part of the country, so there will be a lot of great photos to post when we come back!
Saturday was another quiet morning filled with breakfast in front of the TV and catching up on some of the latest transfer news from back home, before I headed out to get my haircut. This would be my first haircut since coming here and I was a bit unsure of what to expect - it ended up being a pretty decent job by the guy though and only cost me $10 at a local barbers. After lunchtime, Jessica and I took a walk around Paddy's Market in Chinatown, which is just an absolute haven for stalls selling rubbish, but there are a lot of Australian themed items such as t-shirts, towels and other novelty items which will be great for souvenirs. I'm also needing to buy myself a beach towel but didn't manage to see one unfortunately. Later on we met up with Alex and headed to Bar Broadway - just next door to my flat, and they do student discount drinks at any time - and had a few drinks. The night continued to a karaoke bar close to uni, which was totally empty and the hosts attempts to coerce us into singing to a deserted bar were unsuccessful. Sorry, I'm not that drunk, pal. After a quick stop at Subway to refuel, some of the lads came back to my flat and brought a box of "goon" - the name given to cheap, box wine here. It's basically $14 for 5 litres of quite sweet white wine, popular amongst students for obvious reasons. We eventually headed back out to Star Bar before heading home late.
On Sunday I had a long lie before getting up and making myself some breakfast. I was totally starving having skipped dinner on Saturday and only really having the Subway to eat since lunchtime - pretty much the whole of Sunday was spent eating and chilling out. I watched two films on Netflix and read some previews and analysis of the Man Utd game against Liverpool which was kicking off at 1.30pm back home - 10.30pm over here. The game turned out to be a total disappointment as we lost 1-0 and played really poorly. I went off to bed in a raging mood.
It's now Monday night and we have a reading week for all classes this week, which means lots of free time, although I will need to push on with the essays and assignments which I have due. There is also an online exam which I need to complete for Anti-Discrimination law before the Friday deadline, so that will require some studying for before I do it - it's optional when we start the exam, but once we begin then there is a time limit on completing it; hopefully it goes alright since it'll count towards the first 25% of my grade in the class. Again tonight I've caught up on the latest episode of Breaking Bad which was brilliant - the show is heading to a massive finale! As I said at the start, it's transfer deadline day so I've spent the night watching Sky Sports News to find out the latest happenings at home. I also made some French onion soup for dinner, with enough left for lunch tomorrow - and strong compliments go to the chef, it was great! That's all I've got for now.
Until next time,
Jamie
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