Child-Eating Spiders

Well hello there,

I know I am terrible at updating. To the three of you reading this, I apologize. To the one person out of you three who accidentally stumbled on this site while looking to rent a disc jockey in Australia, I apologize to you as well for two things. I apologize first for not updating my blog regularly enough and secondly, I apologize because you are still reading this even though you just want to find someone who can spin some 'Umbrella' and 'Beautiful Girls' with some old school 'Love Shack' thrown in for a little dose of the nostalgia element at your upcoming party. Carry on with your search and thanks for popping in.

Now back to you other two. Sorry about that, I had to send him on his way. His party is gonna be lame anyway. Since I moved in last week, I have done a lot of lazing around, as I mentioned in my brief post prior to this one. My life is not much more exciting than yours, except it is hotter here and the spiders make you wonder how many small children they have consumed.

I am in school, which is kind of exciting I guess. I have classes from Wednesday to Friday, for a grand total of 12 hours. You could say my workload is fairly light. When we did introductions at the beginning of my classes, most of my peers said they were in their 5th or 6th year at university but "I have my fingers crossed this will be the term I graduate!" Keep in mind the business program here is only 3 years. A lot of students just do part time courses or just take a year or two off to travel or work. The laid back Australian mentality extends into every area of life, including education. I love these people.

Our professors don't want to be addressed as Professor ________, or even Mr. or Mrs. ___________. No, my professors go by their first names. There is no title separating you from them. Students joke with them during class. They make fun of students during class. I do have one terribly nervous, shy professor with absolutely no charisma. I attempted to switch out of her class into the only other class that will fit with the courses I need when I come back to Laurier. Unfortunately, she teaches that course too. So it looks like I am stuck with her. Don;t get me wrong, she is very nice and I talked to her after class for 5 minutes, but listening to her lecture is reminiscent of one professor I had at Laurier named Anne Graham Ramsoomair. And due to her lack of confidence and boring presentation, I ended up attending about 10% of her lectures. Since I have only 12 hours per week this term, I think I can manage to sit through her drone once a week.

One of my professors gave us a quick rundown of how you can read just the first and last paragraph of each section in your book in order to get the gist of it without wasting your time reading the whole thing. Did I mention I love Australians?

(I just went to get a glass of milk in my kitchen and had the nice treat of watching a gecko pick off 2 mosquitoes in a row on our kitchen wall. I love geckos. They are everywhere but you don't even mind having them in your house. They eat the mosquitoes and you get to watch. Everybody wins!)

I am trying to get a job now. I am going to lead a fairly mundane existence until school ends in June and then I want to do some amazing travelling when Ash comes to visit (and Sean too. I can't believe you are coming too, you crazy ass. I can't wait for both of you). I figure if I can get a job now and make some good cash, then I will be sitting comfortably when school ends and travelling time begins. I have been applying for some solid part-time marketing jobs so far, but they have not been bearing much fruit. So I will start applying for any and everything very soon (a job as a waiter will earn you 18 dollars an hour here and the unemployment rate is 4.1% - ridiculously low)

Did you know Australia has been in a drought for 9 years? Well, you do now. They have signs up everywhere advising you to keep your showers under four minutes (which I accomplished easily my first three weeks in the hostel by not purchasing shampoo or conditioner. My hair looked great.)

Anyway, here's my point. Australia may be in a drought, but since I have come, I have made it rain like Fat Joe (obligatory rap reference). The dam water levels have been as low as 14%, but now they are somewhere near 30 or 40%. All because I have made it rain since I got here. Long story short, it has rained more than I expected since I got here, but I don't mind. It is helping the farmers and I am still getting my fair share of sun (i.e the three days in a row last week that topped 37 degrees)

The problem with me is that I am too lazy to keep my blog updated but then when I do update it, I can just go on forever. Going on forever would be ok if I told you about the kangaroo I boxed or the koala that I rescued from a tree (before resident Australians told me that they liked it in the trees) but I am not telling you anything that exciting. Instead I am telling you about the unemployment rate and university professors.

So I am going to stop. Thank you once again for actually reading this if you did. If you just read the first and last paragraph, I commend your strategy. Just as a final note, I want to say that the life I am leading here in Australia is not some stupendous fantasy. I am going to school, looking for a job, dealing with the bank, taking the train, living in a house. None of this is the stuff of fairy tales. But even though I have not yet gone on an outback adventure or anything crazy like that, I still want to say that you should come to Australia if you have the chance. It has the beautiful weather and beaches of any resort destination you may go to, and the people here are the friendliest people in the world. When you are walking down the street with a map, they stop you to ask if you need a hand. That actually happened to me. So if you wanted to come before, let me re-assure you that it is worth the trip.

I am enjoying myself and I miss you guys too.

(By the way, the inflation rate here is probably going to hit 4% this quarter and the Reserve Bank of Australia has warned it could stay above 3% for the next couple years. The country is currently enjoying its longest sustained period of prosperity in 50 years. Economists are worried it is getting too high and the economy could be headed for a letdown, but I am not an economist so let's forget about that part and just remember Australia is prosperous!)

(In my readings on the inflation rate, I surmised that that the reason for the recent rain alleviating the drought is due to the arrival of La Nina weather patterns in Australia. I still stand by my statement that I have made it rain.)