Back to school (for real this time)

I am now officially off of my long vacation. My last final was December 3^rd and, for me, two and a half months is way too long for a break. Most of my Norwegian class mates are almost halfway through their semester at this point, for crying out loud!

So, back to school then and I’m actually quite excited. I’m finished with the first week at this point and while some of it seems like it’s going to be a lot of work, it seems like it’s going to be rather entertaining. My schedule is quite weird though, although I have no right to complain. It goes as follows:

Monday: Human Resources Issues & Strategy from 18:00 to 21:00

The teacher is a very eccentric man, who sort of resembles Robin Williams, just without the ridiculous amount of body hair that Mr. Williams possesses.

Tuesday: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from 15:00 to 16:00 and tutoring from 19:00 to 21:00

The teacher here was, to my surprise, an American from Boston. Very nice lady, and her class was easy to follow except for the fact that she’s so nervous it looks like she’s going to drop a brick at any moment.

Wednesday: Management from 09:00 to 12:00 and Global Business from 12:00 to 15:00

So this is that one day. From being spoiled with Monday and Tuesday, this is the day that will make me suffer. Both are quite hard when it comes to workload and are a lot less personal than the other two classes. Management is lectured in the biggest classroom I’ve ever been in. It resembles a theater hall more than a classroom to be honest. And Global Business has (and I’m not making this up) 970 student enrolled. Over 2% of all QUT students are in this one class. We’re not all in the same lecture, mind you, but still, holy crap!

Thursday to Sunday: Me time!

So all in all a rather decent schedule if I may say so myself.

In addition, because I’m feeling generous today, here are some pictures from right outside the Business Faculty and of other places in Brisbane, including my house.

From the door at the Faculty of Business, looking out over the botanical gardens

The Casino, which is along my route to school (as in, on the way to the bus stop)

My house!

Brisbane at night

Road trip!

After more or less a week here in the Down Underverse I am getting slightly more accustomed to the heat. Mind you, I will still lunge for the nearest air condition like a lion for a gazelle (or a Texan for a burger), but when I’m not in earshot of the fabulous, divine hum of that most fantastic of machines I actually don’t mind the heat all that much. That said it is still freakishly hot down here and, according to a weird, yet entertaining, cab driver named Dave; it will stay this way for at least another month before we’ll see a noticeable drop in temperature.

So since last update, which unfortunately was in Norwegian (I still can’t figure out how that happened. Trust me, the ones responsible are being hunted down as I speak), I have gotten myself some accommodations down here. Somehow, though, I managed to pick the house that has two Swedes, a German and another Norwegian. So much for being international… If I live in Brisbane, an Australian city, is it too much to ask for some freaking Australians?! Oh well, I guess it could’ve been worse. There could’ve been Danes here! Or, gods forbid, Vålerenga supporters…

So what has been going on since then? Well we got it in our heads that it’d be a good idea to go to IKEA. However, IKEA is a good 30 kilometers south of the city and, conveniently, there are no buses there. So in our infinite wisdom we rented a car. What is special about this you might think? Well, for the unenlightened Australia has decided to follow Britain’s example and rebel against logic and reason by driving on the wrong side of the road (when it comes to driving it is right/wrong, not right/left). So off we went on our little adventure, with me behind the wheel for some reason. Although never having driven on the wrong side of the road before, I found it to be not that challenging as I had been expecting and only half as painful. As in losing one arm is less painful than losing two.

Our car!

Are tries desperately to cling on to some sense of reality...

As you might have concluded we survived our little excursion and even got some decidedly not-Swedish meatballs at the store. So now we had a car for two days. What to do? The natural answer was of course “Go to the beach.” And so we did. We drove north along the M1/M3 motorway till I saw signs towards a smallish town with the almost-to-good-to-be-true name of Mooloolaba. Being way too geeky for my own good and a frequent visitor of the internetz I thought to myself that a town with “lol” in it must be a good place and decided that was where we were headed. It turned out to have a wonderful beach and we promptly sat down and got sunburned. An hour or two later we decided that we were properly roasted, so we grabbed something to drink then headed back to Brisbane.

Unfortunately my place still haven’t gotten its internet connection up and running yet, so I have to head into the city to go online. This, for example, is being posted from a Starbucks in the financial district. So updates will be sparse for now, but it’ll be here sooner or later (I hope…)

In the Down Underverse

Så da har man vært i Brisbane i et par dager. Dette er en fantastisk by og er kort sagt ganske annerledes enn Oslo og Halden. Det er en herlig atmosfære overalt og du har inntrykket av meget vennlige mennesker uansett hvor du går (”Hey mate, how’s it going?” kommer fra alt og alle).

Er jo lov å melde om temperature også da. Er en gode 28-30 grader om dagen med en luftfuktighet så høy at du neste forventer at fisker skal svømme forbi i skulderhøyde. Kommer jo da kanskje ikke som en overraskelse at en kar fra litt mildere Norge går rundt å svetter litt i begynnelsen. ’Klam’ er vel kanskje ordet ett visst menneske fra 1413 ville brukt...

Er relativt god temperatur om natten også da. Sitter for eksempler nå i t-skjorte og shorts på taket på ”hotellet” mitt (Chill Backpackers hvis noen er intresserte) og skriver dette. Komfortabelt annerledes kan det vel beskrives som. Noen dager til nå så er jeg kanskje akklimatisert til temperaturen, så slipper jeg å gå igjennom to t-skjorter om dagen...

Ellers har jeg i dag vært innom skolen min her, Queensland University of Technology, Garden’s Point Campus, og registrert meg. Fikk også skole-ID med like dårlig bilde av meg som det er på alt jeg har av plastikk. Skolen er enorm og tar opp to-tre kvartaler av byen her. Skolen ligger bokstavelig rett ved elven, men enda bedre er den botaniske hagen som ligger vegg-i-vegg. Her er det nydelige områder å slappe av på og jeg kan lett se meg ligge her i pauser å ble litt i bøkene. Fugler og små øgler er overalt og på visse steder kan du lett glemme at du faktisk er midt i Australias tredje største by.

Jeg glemte jo selvfølgelig å ta med meg kameraet runt i dag (unnskyld mamma), men skal sørge for at det blir et bilde eller to innen et par dager...