mmm... Chocolate 

www.whitepages.com.au

Over the past couple of days I have been helping the church youth deliver phone books to raise money for NCYC, which is being held in Perth at the end of the year. I've gotten the delivery technique down to a fine art, even figuring out the best way to build a fort out of the books that are on the trailer. LOL. (Yes, I am such a little child) The phone books I helped deliver, were delivered on Monday, and this morning.
Monday night was 18 Plus, as usual. We watched a new "nooma" short film, and discussed it. Kat and Jase brought along their chocolate fountain, so everyone sampled some melted chocolate goodness. It reminded me of the fountain that was at the chocolate museum in Germany, but just a lot smaller. This one was yummier though, cause you could dip in anything u wanted..... even Krispy Kreme doughnuts! (As if they weren't unhealthy enough!)
Tuesday I took a break from the phone books, and went to the city. I stopped off at uni, paying the last $6 that was outstanding on my course fees. I was in the city to draw up a treasure hunt of types. The idea was to draw a path through the city, then go about writing clues based on signs and landmarks along the way. It was freezing outside, and I could hardly hold my pen by the end of it. Cheyne came into the city to have lunch with me. On the way home I had to stop at Swinburne again, so that I could pick up the certificate and prize money from the Weir-Warman competition.
Tuesday night, Chris and I had all the rovers over to watch an international film. It's part of our international month theme. I fell asleep half way through the Japanese film that Tim had chosen, so I have no idea how it ended.

Shopping?

Today we kicked off the day with some shopping.. sort of. We looked at some apartments in the city, not that we could afford to buy any at the moment. The best one we saw, was one near the Shrine, except Chris didn't like the west facing windows. So I'm adding to the wish list: one apartment in the city, with north facing windows, two bedrooms and at least one car parking space.

First day of holidays

Well, the first day of the university holidays was not so relaxing after all. I spent the morning at Chris's place, editing one of his assignments for the course he is doing, then Cheyne rang and asked if I wanted to go shopping. I went home and had some lunch before walking to Knox City.
About half way to Knox, I began to get a pain in my lower abdomen, right where my appendix was. I think it was just a stich, but I'm not sure. I kept walking, but the pain didn't go away. I hope I was not damaging something. Ohh well, it took about 45 minutes for me to walk from my place to Knox City, and by the time I got there I was freezing!
I went to the post office to mail off a phone I had sold on ebay, and by the time I had done that, Cheyne had arrived, and the real shopping could begin. We visited a couple of places searching for music for Cheyne, and then our attention turned to clothes. I was searching for a decent pair of jeans that would actually fit me. After hunting for a while, I decided that there just arent any jeans I like at Knox, let alone ones that actually fit me. I gave up and went home, catching the bus back because it was too wet and rainy to walk home.
I worked that evening, before I went out with some friends to "a bar called Barry's" for Q&A night. The line to get in was massive, but once I got in I could see why, the place was packed! We got in, then tried to locate everyone we had planned to meet there. Then we danced, and sang, and had a great time in general. I would definately go back there again if I got the chance, it was fun and there was no cover charge. *YAY*

Finished exams, what's next?

The Machine Design exam yesterday was my last for this semester. It was sort of the big mamma of the exams, being worth half the total subject, and being impossibly hard. I thought of it being similar to a year 12 Specialist Maths exam; you struggle to earn points and just pray that you will pass. I hope that I will pass, even though I couldn't complete some of the questions, and a couple of the ones I did complete were a little umm..... wrong. Oh well, I really hope I can get some consequential marks.
Following the exam, a whole bunch of us went for lunch at the Hawthorn pub. The special of the day was fish and chips, which I decided was not worth the $10. LOL. The food there is getting more and more ordinary as time goes on. We should take note, and only go there on Tuesdays, when they have a $10 Parma and Pot deal. Oh well, the company was great and I guess that was the point.
Following lunch, Mauris, Linda, Diana and I went into the city to watch a movie. We looked up the showing times while we were on the train, using my mobile phone (what yuppies) and decided on a movie called "Over the Hedge". It's an animated movie, done by Dreamworks, which are the guys that do Shrek. The movie was really funny, I think I laughed through 75% of the film. (I hope the kids around us didn't mind) LOL.
To wind up the afternoon, Linda showed us to a chocolate cafe in Melbourne central. I don't know if I will ever find it again, but the food there was soo good. We bought some waffles (with chocolate) and some chocolate dipping stuff to share, then spent the rest of the afternoon dipping waffles and marsh mellows and strawberries into all different kinds of freshly made melted chocolate. It's the kind of place I would love to take Tegan and Chris to. We all have a self-confessed love of chocolate! HAHA
On the way home, we decided to all cram into a little photo booth, and have our photos printed. It was so much fun!
Today, I am figuring out what to do with my holidays. Top of the list is to find an IBL position, which involves re-writing my resume and sending it to people. The other thing I would like to try is I would love to try to give my blog a face lift. Any other suggestions? (other than sleeping in a generally being lazy?)

Exam stress

This weekend was officially kicked off on Friday afternoon I guess, after the Human Factors exam. The exam ended at 12.20pm, so I caught the train back home to have some lunch. I could have taken a sandwich, but I thought it would be nicer to eat some "real" food from the fridge at home. So once I got home, I cracked open some home made soup and ate that. Friday night, Chris and I went to Dean and Drew's place for dinner. It was quite relaxing, and a good chance to catch up.
Neither Chris or myself worked on Saturday morning, which is quite unusual, so we had a lazy morning. I did have to work at Kmart in the afternoon however. That night we went to see that new Disney Pixar movie, Cars.
We saw the movie with Di & Russell and some of their friends. One of whom has just graduated from the Architecture / Construction Management double degree I was going to do before product design came along. Small world. The movie was excellent, really worth going to see. As with most Pixar movies, you have to see it a couple times over before you can fully appreciate it.
Once the movie was over, we popped over to Mandy's place for a while, because she was having a party. It was fun to see some old friends from high school, and catch up on the gossip a little bit. It's so scary that nobody has changed at all.
Sunday morning I worked the ballooning flight in the city. I took some really nice photos I thought, but I could only sell three. I guess it's ok, because Emma should break even on that. Sunday afternoon I had a nap before commencing study for the Thermofluid Systems exam. The revision was not as hard as I had thought, so I decided that I could afford to go to church that night as well.
Monday (today) was the exam. I helped Dad take Mum's car to the service center in the morning, before heading off to uni earlier than I had to. I arrived at uni around 9am, to find the library empty. I found a quiet spot and continued my study. The actual exam was at 2pm, so I had some time to kill. I was glad I had taken that time too, because the questions I looked at actually turned up on the exam! I guess God works in mysterious ways? I have a good feeling about the test, but don't want to get my hopes up too much.
Tonight is 18-plus, so I am looking forward to taking a break from study to do that. Tomorrow I will make a proper start on studying for the Machine Design exam. It will be my last exam.

Exam two dead.

Ok, so I wasn't the best prepared for the human factors exam. Human Factors could have been worse, but it could have been a lot better too.

Microsoft vs Apple :: Round One...

Engineering Management One - exam completed

Today was the first exam for the semester. I feel it went well, but I'm not going to speculate on the outcome. I feel like I did all of the questions pretty well.

Long weekend and weird dreams

Well, since I last wrote a lot of activity has occurred. One of the reasons I haven't had the chance to write is because I have been very busy with work. I worked on Thursday night, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, and Monday morning. Hopefully that will help the bank balance.
Friday was spent at home, reviewing material before my Engineering Management exam. Peter went for his hazard perception test in the morning, so Mum took an ADO to be able to spend the day with Peter and I. Matthew came over to list his phone on ebay, so I spent part of the day helping him use ebay. We are hopeful to get $300 for the phone. Matt stayed for lunch, which gave us a good chance to catch up properly.
Friday evening, Chris and I went to Craig's birthday party. It was alot like last year's birthday party, held in the backyard of his house. I didn't remember half the people there, but I am sure they were the same people as last time. LOL. Anyways, it was quite enjoyable and despite being cold, I had a good time.
Saturday morning I managed to sleep in a little. When I did manage to get out of bed, I began getting ready for Ken's wedding. Ken and Cathy have been coming to church for as long as I can remember, so it was really sweet to see them so happy. It was a really special service, and was surprisingly un-traditional. The service was led by Helen, one of our previous ministers. It was so good to see her still around, even if she does have some health problems.
Following the wedding, I went to work at Kmart. It was pretty un-eventful. That evening, Chris and I went to the Pancake Parlour for dinner. I never realised that you could get an entire meal there, I always had just thought that they did desserts. Both Chris and I had chicken wrapped in a pancake. It was really quite good.
Sunday morning I spent trapped at work again. Kmart's highlight for the day was helping a blind lady choose a stereo system. After work, I went to visit the Rovers at mud bash. It was just past Yea, but took a lot longer to get to than I had anticipated. I got to drive Chris' BA, which I probably was not supposed to do. I really enjoyed catching up with everyone at Mud bash, and managed to see people who I hadn't seen for about two years! Lots of fun.
Chris and I stopped at the Glenburn pub for dinner, which was actually quite nice, even though it was in the middle of no-where.
Public holiday Monday was spent at work. Typical. Following work, I helped Chris clean out his room. We decided to go through the closet, and managed to fill five garbage bags full of clothes for charity.
I had the weirdest dream on Monday night / Tuesday morning. I was somehow living with my brothers (no parents) and I discovered writing on the wall in the bathroom. When you looked at it under black light (ah la DaVinci Code LOL) the words made sense. We were then off on a quest to find an ancient credit card on a giant elephant. Somehow there were mice with magic flying carpets, and all of a sudden the elephant turned into an ostrich. We were time travelling too.... forward in time. How I thought we might find an ancient credit card in the future is beyond me. So I've concluded that my dreams are weird and random.
Most of Tuesday was spent studying, boring I know.

I did something very grown-up today. I helped Cheyne move house. I was quite impressed, we managed to move all of Cheyne's things with one trip! I love the way Bruce can fold down his seats and have a completely flat floor in the back when he needs to. Cheyne didn't think we would be able to do it in one trip. After we unpacked his things at the new house, we went to Chadstone, and bumped into Roger and Chris. They were out shopping, very exciting. lol 

Study Sessions

Well, being Wednesday, it's half way through SWATVAC (study week). So today I decided I needed to get to work actually studying! Shock, horror, I know. Don't worry, I still managed to fin in a fair amount of procrastination in the mean time.
The morning started off with a trip to the hairdressers. That's right, I got my hairs cut. I've been going to the same hairdressers for over a year now (I think) and every time I visit, a different girl cuts my hair! How many hairdressers can one salon possibly employ? They always do a good job, so that's all I really care about.
I arrived home about 10am, and decided I needed to clean up a bit before I could get stuck into study properly. One needs a clean environment to be able to think clearly. So I spent about an hour cleaning up, and chatting on MSN... OK, so most of the time was on MSN. lol
Finally, just before lunch, I pulled out the sticky flags, and started marking the chapters I have to summarize for the two most wordy subjects I have ever taken at Swinburne, Engineering Management and Human Factors. I'm not used to all this reading! I quite like using formulas and maths to pass my exams rather than wordy answers, because you actually know if you are getting the answer right or wrong.
It's nearly dinner time, and I have summarized one chapter today. Only 14 more to go! I am planning on getting two or three done each day. I have one more to do after dinner tonight. So depressing.

Week 13?!!

Usually there are only 12 weeks of university to worry about each semester, but this semester we managed to have a day of classes in week 13! The justification for this is that ANZAC day was on a Tuesday, so we should have an extra Tuesday at the end of semester to make up for it. I guess all is fair in love and war, and the same can be said for educational institutions?
Anyways, today we had a test in Thermo fluid Systems, and I managed to get a score of 70% without too much stressing and studying, so I am happy with that. The next great hurdle for that subject will be the exam, which is worth 60%, so I shouldn't stress out too much.
Engineering management lectures are evil. Three hours long, and not exactly the most interesting of subject material. I still maintain that the three hour long lecture should be banned. Today, the lecture was all about how to guide your career through the stages of life. Quite amusing. I kept trying to apply what she was saying to my everyday life, but somehow couldn't. I don't know if that's normal, or if it's a bad sign.

Since we last spoke

Well, since last time we spoke, I have had a... different... weekend. It started off with Dean, Chris and I heading down to Di and Russell's place in Geelong to celebrate Russell's birthday. I had never been to Russell & Di's place before, so it was really nice of them to let us stay the night. (Chris hadn't quite gotten around to organizing where we were going to sleep after the party)
Sunday morning we got up bright and early.... ok, so it was around 8am.... so that we could goto church with Russell and Di. The church was big and old, and like most churches of it's time, really cold. After church there was a "car event", which was basically a treasure hunt on wheels. It's not allowed to be called a car rally because of insurance issues. Chris and I made up team Sophia, and I thought we were doing pretty well, until we arrived at the second checkpoint so late that there was nobody left at the checkpoint. Russell called us and told us we should just open the envelope, so we had little choice in the matter. Opening the envelope is like looking at the answers, you get all your points halved! I felt like we had lost, and was not happy for the rest of the car trip.
When we found out our score, I wasn't so unhappy. We scored 160 points (without the half points for opening the envelope), and that was only the first two legs. Had there been no time limit, I think we could have done really well. But unfortunately we didn't quite finish within the time limit.
Arrived home around 9pm last night and went straight to bed. I was so tired. This morning I haven't really done much, just tidied up a little bit around the house and uploaded photos and videos.

Looking suspiciously like the walk man in Germany. 

The "car event" was fun, but lunch afterwards was REALLY COLD!  

Yay team Beverly! 

Gav and Anthony, our toughest critics. 

Just before our first run. 

Beverly is such a beast. 

Even Beverly's seeds were special! 

Mauris made a beautiful ratchet for Beverly, to stop her from backing over the line.  

Beverly's second run

Beverly had her second run later in the day, and didn't do so well. I
didn't get the chance to watch her the second time around, due to the
fact that I was busy printing up the report to accompany Beverly when
she is finally submitted.
The second run didn't score as highly as the first, but we still
managed to place 10th over thirty other contestants. Not bad,
considering that Beverly was the only device raced on the day without
any electronics. I've got a video to put up later on, with her
complete second run.
After everyone's races were over, there was a short awards ceremony.
This was to award the top three contestants of the day. To my great
surprise, after the third prize was announced, there was another
certificate handed out. This was a certificate for encouragement, and
was accompanied with a $100 prize money! Beverly only cost $50 to
make, so we made a small profit on our work.
To celebrate our performance, we all decided to goto dinner at "red
silk", in china town in the city. The food there was really quite
nice, and I think we should go back there sometime. Mauris got to "red
silk" early, and thinks he possibly might have witnessed a drug deal
going on. Mauris should leave the story as a coment.
After our nice meal, we went to ICON in flinders lane. I had never
been there before, and so we have to wander around a little before we
found it. ICON is one of these bars that is all about the show. They
still do that fire across the bar thing, and they encourage everyone
to dance on the bar. (Movie to be uploaded later, lol) I danced on the
bar, and had a fantastic time!
This morning (Saturday), I spent cleaning the store room with rovers.
We found about 40kg of drinking cans, and took them to the recyclers,
earning $38 for our crew! I was so impressed. Thats enough to take a
trailer of stuff to the tip.
This evening, I am heading to Geelong for Russell's birthday party.
Tomorrow is a car rally.

Beverly's first Video

Beverly's first run.

Beverly just had her first run. She did really well, scoring us a total of 36 points. I was pretty excited, but I soon discovered that we were about 2cm away from scoring 46 points (I think). Anyways, I will be working of getting the video footage up here as soon as I can, so you can all share in our success.

Beverly

Well, the past two days I have been working with Mauris, Diana and Linda on the weir warman seed distributor project. The idea is to invent a device that will run through a track and distribute a 'seed' into each of the areas along the sides of the track. Our device is pretty basic compared to many of the other groups. Our device is made from blue foam and other found objects, so she's full of character! I named her 'Beverly' about two weeks ago, and the name has just stuck. Beverly is doing quite well at parts of the course, but she is still experiencing some technical issues. We have done so many test runs I have forgotten what improvements we have made, and what improvements still need to be made. It's a tedious process, and is beginning to frustrate me.
What frustrates me more is the fact that the day before the major project is due, the university is unable to extend the opening hours for the race track, so we had to make our own. Our special track is marked out using masking tape in the student union building. We found the floor of the old bistro to be quite a good running surface, so we have taken over this space, using it at a test track and temporary office/workshop. I really hope the union does not mind.
The union has no use for this space apparently. There is very little activity in this building. I guess it's because of the VSU bill that Mr Howard has insisted on. It's not good news for student services. Anyways I guess I can gripe about this later. I really should get back to work now. LOL.