Qld

So it's been something like two and a half months since my last blog post. Due to some reason which I have yet to think up.



  I'm sitting in the University of Queensland Biological Sciences Library writing a blog post, after doing a bunch of stuff off MasteringBiology, which is apparently a very valuable resource to biology students, but lags for me. Oh well. The air conditioning is in the typical library style, so cold that it almost seems to be trying to drive you out into the sun after two hours.



  The first few weeks at Brisbane were... well, I survived. A million things got broken though. The internet (yes its TPG, because it's included in the rent) was down for the first week of uni. My guitar broke while I was restoring it after five years of misuse and one year of non-use, so I had to fish around shops for a machine head. Now my internet browsers won't connect, even if my MSN can connect, for some reason. Ah wells. Shopping is quite the thing. The first time, I bought way too much food, but now I'm averaging around $30 of groceries per week. But that's because most uni days, I have lunch at uni. The first week of uni was intense, but I think I overreacted, such that up until now it's been much more relaxed.



   UQ is actually very pretty (Google image UQ for fun and profit!). It's kind of peaceful if you know where to look for peace. The main shopping/eating/whatever place is always jam packed. I think Subway maintains a line of around 20 customers for most of the day. I joined this group called Campus Christian Movement. It's mainly Singaporean and Malaysian. The church is really loud, but that's really cool. It's quite weird, I've never actually known any Singaporeans/Malaysians in Sydney. Apparently, they all speak at least 500 different languages. I was considering joining the table tennis club, but you have to pay something like $170 for an annual membership, and each time you want coaching you have to pay as well, so yeah. I went to the introductory free session (and got smashed) though.



  I live in a house around 2.4km's from uni, which is a reasonable walking distance if the suburb wasn't so hilly. There are 30 degree inclined roads, I kid you not. And they are quite common. So I take the bus wherever I go. It's pretty convenient, 5 minutes to Uni, around 25 minutes to the city, around 15 minutes to a Westfield. The house is shared between five people. Theres a PhD guy, a Malaysian curry guy, a Korean Biotech/accounting guy (who doesn't play Starcraft!), and another first year Bsc/MBBS guy (who got me addicted to DotA - why did people have to quit now??!). My cooking skills have improved exponentially, such that I can enter the rs cooking guild without a chef's hat and steal the 400gp green apple. But they're still limited to like, stir-frying everything I buy. Which is okay because stir-fried stuff taste nice. I brought my black guitar Jet with me, and picked it up again. I have to re-learn all the songs.


  I haven't really gotten to know anyone over here yet. The CCM people are very nice, and the housemates are cool. I ran into Lisa and Jess Hou a few times. I've chatted with a few people in my prac and tute groups.



  Brisbane's a nice city. But it's got nothing on Sydney, really. Except for the Brisbane public transport and roads in general. That's quite ownage. The buses are all new and have aircon, and so do the trains. Instead of paying a fare each time, you can get this Go card which you scan each time you come onto a bus/train and scan when you get off. You put money into your Go card and yeah. It's much faster and saves heaps.



What's the false vine? Security? Pride? How does one cut it, if there's not much else left once it's been cut?