Everybody’s Screaming

[Untitled – Simple Plan]

You know, the whingey one. Now, I haven’t written about yesterday, and since I have some time to kill before I gotta go shower, so I’ll write about both days.

Yesterday was my first O-day thing at Melbourne. I took the train up with Elmo (…Did I call her Jackie or Elmo? Who cares. It’s Jackie now.) and met up with Jen at Melbourne Central. She texted me saying “see you UCMC.” I replied, “Wtf is UCMC?” Now, who here remembers that blog post where I wrote “I invented a new acronym for ‘under the clock at Melb Central’ so it’s easier and faster to type”? Yes, I failed at remembering my own code.

Took the tram up to Melb U, and went to get my ID and concession cards done. I managed to look like a gimp in mine. Yes. I’m now stuck with it for 3 years.

Made it to my Host group just on time, despite getting lost and having to call my Host. Didn’t really know anyone there, quite a few of the other students in my group are doing Art as breadth or something, as a 2nd year transfer, or something like that, so I felt pretty small.

Oh, but there was this Norwegian guy in my group who closely resembled Cory Monteith from Glee. I may or may not have been walking close to him for the rest of the tour, just to hear his accent.

After the Host tour, I caught back up with Jen, Jackie, and then met up with Nay. We went around trying to get free stuff. We went to the Nando’s stall, thinking they’d hand out free Peri Peri sauce packets. We did get a packet. On the front it said “Not for soft cocks”. It took a good 20 seconds for us to realize we were each given a condom.

Got more free stuff walking around; lined up for 20 minutes for pancakes that came with really good strawberries, and then lined up for 20 minutes for the free BBQ. While we were eating we bumped into an old face from back old VET days with Nay. To cut a long story short, that was a very bad meeting.

Then lined up for snow cones. I wanted a massage too but you had to show that you were in the Student Union, not just lying and saying “yes I am” to get a free snow cone…

Caught up with more MacRob girls, then went home with Jackie. Hung out at the Glen for a bit before taking the bus back, just ‘cos there was nothing else to do.

Anyway, that was Tuesday. Now onto today.

Took the train up with Jackie again, and dropped her off at her building, which was pretty far away from the rest of the buildings. Went to my building which took a good 5 minutes to find, with many rotating bodies and maps.

Caught up with Spanna, who I hope doesn’t mind but from now I’m going to call Annie, her actual name. Then the Asian friends she made the previous day arrived, so I introduced myself. Thus I met Kristie (Christy? Christie? You know what I mean) and Josh. Josh, who was from Scotch, turned out to actually have many mutual friends with me. Also saw Pris, who looked really tanned, still.

Fast forward through a rather boring lecture, and we were lined up for the free BBQ (I love Uni having free BBQs all the time. Apparently later on they’ll have more, but with alcohol instead of soft drinks). Jen and Mai appeared, and smoothly we let them cut in line with us. Introduced Jen and Mai to Josh.

There’s a Facebook event called “Make things sexually awkward” so I decided to bring that up. It resulted in Annie asking Mai to hug Josh, because Mai has…rather…well…endowed assets. And Josh’s response was bloody funny (Let me clarify now that it was all in good humored fun, good humored and platonic fun, there was nothing there and it was all a joke):

“Wait, why are you hu-…WOAH!”

It was fantastic. And. Very awkward. So, mission accomplished.

As we were eating our lunch later, Dom and D.P. came along. Dom ditched us to hang off his MHS buddies (literally), so Josh was the only guy sitting with us. Had a pretty good lunch (I also remember an instance where Mai was holding my sunnies, and Josh pointed at them saying “Woah they’re HUGE!” But Mai was holding my sunnies around her chest area), and thank God we sat in the shade.

Went to another lecture thing later on, and it was so boring and patronizing. After that, Jen and I went to a final lecture, and I nearly fell asleep, or I did fall asleep, I can’t remember. Afterwards caught up with Annie and Josh who’d ditched us for something else. Jackie found us again, and then we took the tram back down to Melbourne Central.

At Melb Central, I managed to bump into Catherine and all, and it was fantastic to see them again! They were coming back from their Swimming Carnival (haha high school carnivals). Got home with a blister on my foot, from having to walk so much. Yes I am complaining.

So that’s my first 2 days of O week – two more days after this. There’s something happening with the Arts camp I think but I don’t know what. It’s rather confusing. Maybe I should rephrase: Arts “camp”. Yes, that does sound more suss. Good.

Will keep you posted.

Alex.

I Love That Thing You Do

[That Thing You Do – Busted]

Might have used the song already. Anyway, I’m writing this on the eve of my first University orientation day. Am I excited? You bet. Am I slightly nervous? Actually, no. I’m not nervous about the Orientation stuff, I’m more nervous about actually starting Uni. I suppose going to those Orientation lectures about how to deal with lectures…will help, hopefully.

There is a blog for first year Melb Uni students to write their adventures. I tried logging in but um, apparently, you have to register properly. I got a bit annoyed that I might have to go with 2 WordPress accounts. Still. Wouldn’t hurt to keep a track on both blogs right? It’s just THAT one won’t contain stories of my personal life.

Whenever I mention that I’m about to head off into Uni, whoever I talk to, granted they’re older, all say “Oh Uni was a crock.” But I’m pretty set on doing well in Uni so I can get a good head start into the career path I want. Is Uni really that much of a bull?

I wonder how I’m going to fare, making new friends tomorrow. From what I can gather, all the people in my host group are strangers – and looking around on AAD I would guess that all of them will be strangers of the white ethnicity. I might be the only little tiny Asian girl walking around with them. I hope they’re all strangers to each other, otherwise I’d have no friends! Oh come on, cheer up Alex, you’ll make friends.

Who said that?

I suppose I’ll have to get to making that new category called “Uni” and start blogging more frequently now. My holiday of slobbing out in front of the computer is pretty much over. Time to kick my brain into gear again (although something tells me that this might take a while).

Alex.

P.S. I somehow managed to edit my subject timetables early. So. Because of some stupid full classes I have to go in 4 days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and on Friday only for 2 hours in the morning.

Oh hello Med students.

Breathe In So Deep

[Fall For You – Secondhand Serenade]

(I’m pretty sure I’ve used this song already.) Yesterday was the Melb Uni AAD and my audience participation in TAYG! So it was a long and very tiring day.

I got up at 7 so I could be at the Glen by 8:30 (it takes a while for Mom to get ready even though she seems to be okay to go back to work now). Why would I want to be at the Glen at this ungodly hour, you ask? Yes because Jenny said she’ll meet me there at that time. In the end she was 40 minutes late.

Took the train up to Melb Central with Jenny and walked around Borders while she tried to find the book that she wanted for her birthday. Couldn’t find it (I think if Borders didn’t have it…then…I mean…seriously…).

Waited under the clock for Pris who was 10 minutes late and made me worry a lot because I didn’t want to be late to our Info Session. Saw MacRob girls already, which was a prelude to how many we’d see throughout the day. Said bye to Jenny, as she was going to RMIT [insert giggle here…just kidding!] so Pris and I went up.

Saw some Brentwood people upon arrival, such as Huey, Swin and Jonga. Looks like the 2 parts of my life is going to join at Melbourne!

Then went on to Redmond Barry hall, and said morning to Mai and Jen. Went into our lecture theatre and there was greeted by the surprise of the month.

Spanna yelled out my name as I walked in. I had not known (despite apparently everyone else being clued in) that she was going to be in course, so you can imagine the speed with which I bounded up the steps to hug her.

The Info Sesh itself was pretty boring, and the lady and the guy more or less told us what we already knew. It was strange to see Esther from the previous year in our Info Sesh though. Asking around later I found out she’d deferred a year which is why she is now in our “year level”. It’s quite weird to think about that!

After the Info Sesh Spanna stayed in the Redmond Barry hall place, and Jen and I went to Union House with Pris. Pris left when we got to Union House and I met up with Mai and Jen again, and sat with them. Failing to remind me that there was a free BBQ, I bought lunch.

Oh, this is the point where I gloat that I managed to make one friend! (Yes, one.) There are probably around 6 Asians in our course, two of whom are males. So it was easy to notice the other Asians in the room. I saw a girl who was sitting by herself two rows ahead, and later on at Union House when I saw Sab- and Esther (different to the one doing my course) I saw that girl tagging along too. Her name is Anna, and turns out we have mutual friends! So there. I made a friend.

We saw many many MacRob girls there (and I saw Clare there too. I’d forgotten she was doing BA as well). So many, in fact, that we took up two picnic tables with our awesomeness (there were numerous MHS guys as well).

After lunch Jen went to a Diploma of Languages lecture and Spanna and I went to this lecture for Chinese. Saw Pam-, Andy, Theresa and many many other Chinese folks (duh). The guy who was in charge of the lecture was, as he reminded us many times, “only an ACTING consultant” as the real guy was on some “China Trip”. So in all senses he had no idea what any of the details were.

For example, when asked a question regarding which sort of classes to be in: “I really am not the person to ask that question. If you ask me I would probably say go to the website.” Pause. “Did that answer your question?”

No.

After that I found Jen again and we went to Brunetti’s near Lygon St and met up with her friend Martin. We had a drink, and talked about university, and then I had to leave to meet up with Swin so we could go to TAYG.

It was stressful to make sure that Mani and Michelle were at Southern Cross properly because, when I asked Michelle where she was, as I saw her train pull up a few moments ago, she replied, “the station.” Well d-fucking-uh.

Took the tram up to Docklands and went to the Channel 10 Studios. We waited outside for a bit, then got ushered into the audience foyer. Everyone was dressed very colorfully as the invitation suggests.

As we were going into the actual recording studio, we had to pair up, and since we were a group of 5, Wilson didn’t have anyone. So one of the security guards grabbed Wilson and shouted out to the rest of the audience: “THIS GUY DOESN’T HAVE A FRIEND! HE’S ALL ALONE IN THIS WORLD!” (Or something hilarious along those lines.)

The filming itself took over 3 hours. There was a guy called Michael who warmed up the crowd with some jokes and stuff. Then all the cast came out and greeted us. We cheered, applauded, whooped and pretended that we heard some jokes for the first time. I won’t give away what happened; you’d just have to watch it (it’s the 3rd episode of the new season). They threw lollies at us (and missed) and tried to get our cheer maintained so we were an awesome audience.

The show ended filming at around 8:30, and we stayed outside until Michelle got picked up by her family friend. Then we took the tram and trains back to Glenny. On the way back, Swin kept on making fun of me because I couldn’t hear her through my music. I COULD STILL TELL SHE WAS LAUGHING AT ME!

Today I went to Spanna’s house for her birthday, but that would be a different post which I am too tired to write right now. Tomorrow I have an interview at a Telemarketing company for a job (yes I know the irony is many layered), and going to one of Jenny’s friend’s house to hang out and have dinner. It will be a hectic day tomorrow as well.

Wish me luck!

Alex.