Just a Quick One

So I thought that while I was sitting here in the library at uni (what a surprise there), I might as well do something constructive with my time and do another blog post.
It's still pretty dark and drizzly here in Sydney at the moment, and although everyone my be pretty gloomy because of the bad weather, you really don't see me complaining as much as all the others. The wonderful reason is, that with it raininig so much, people just don't seem to be willing to go outside and wait for the bus at a bus stop with no shelter. Which, as bad as it does sound, is really great for me.
The decreased numbers of people means that the bus time is drastically shorter, something which I am very pleased about, as it normally takes me on average roughly 1 to 1.5 hours to get to uni by bus in the mornings (normally in the afternoons it takes less than an hour). Plus there is more chance of getting a seat to yourself for the whole trip there, which in the morning is just a pure luxury that one does not often come across.
Thankfully, how ever, the crowded busses and trains here do not even compare to the crowdedness in other asian countries. I was kind of watching that video in half horror, I just really could not imagine anything worse than having a group of people trying to push me into a train where, obviously, I wasn't going to fit. So I suppose I should be grateful that we have a pretty small population here and that its alright to stand on the bus. At least you can move your arms about here.
So I think I will leave it at that for the moment, I have to go to my lecture now, but I hope to post a longer blog post tonight!

Wow

I really got a chill down my spine today. It's not often you get days like this where you are chanced upon by the phenomena that is deja vu.
I am, of course referring, to this article I came across online, after some prompting in my Spanish class today. Apparently Ricky Martin had officially come out of the closet. Now, is it just me, or did he not come out of the closet at least a couple of years ago? I thought we saw pictures of him on the beach with his partner a good while ago? I have nothing whatsoever to go on about him being gay, but I just thought that it was old news. Or was it that mystifying deja vu....

It's raining today as well. Maybe Ricky's coming out of the closet made mother nature cry. Maybe not, but it's not just raining, it is pouring down buckets.
So who made the incredibly smart choice to not only not bring an umbrella to university today, but also decided that he would wear thongs (the flippy kind) as well. Yes folks, it was not a very pleasant day for my feet today, trying to avoid all the massive puddles so they weren't going to be drowned in some type of foreign liquid. I think that I am going to wear closed in shoes tomorrow. I'm just getting a shoes type of vibe for tomorrow.

The rain today was so heavy that I really could have used one of these babies. Yes, the umbrella tube, not the subway chin rest. I do reckon that this would be a perfect invention by the Japanese, for the Japanese, but I really don't see the novel idea of the umbrella tube really taking off here in Australia. We like to leave people the option of invading our personal space apparently, and we like to have a chat, so having everybody cut off from everyone else by a big plastic tube just doesn't seem like the greatest idea to me.
Sure the Japanese can really do inventing. I give them massive credit for the amazing technological advances that the Japanese have given us, but when you look a bit further down on that list, there are some things on there that are so obviously crazy Japanese inventions.
First of all, I have enough trouble with choptsticks as it is, so the fan that would connect on to them and make them five times as heavy I just don't think I would be able to work with. I think that I am just going to have to risk it and eat my noodles unfanned, knowing that there is a safer, yet slightly harder to use, alternative.
The daddy feeder to me feels slightly redundant. Why not just use bottles? Surely they would be hardly as cumbersome as having to wear a pair of fake, milk filled breasts on your chest. I just don't really get the point of that invention at all. Again, I think that I would have to say no to this invention and just take the risk of using a bottle with my child. Whatever those risks are...
The only invention that I would actually probably use out of the lot of them would most likely be the butter stick. Now, when I look at this, I don't automatically think 'what a crazy invention' but I tend more towards 'wow, that is probably something that I would be able to use in my everyday life'. Which is, essentially, my understanding of what an invention should be aiming to do. Everyone I know has trouble spreading their butter onto their toast, with its general structure not being condusive to spreading easily, so this one could actually work out.

Finally, contributing to the completion of one of my challenges, I've found a pretty nifty blog that I'd like to show you guys. It's called Go Green Travel Green, and in my opinion it is pretty amazing. Not only does it give you tips about how you can live a bit greener, something which we all could be doing, it gives you green travel tips, and there are just some really good articles on there, and I know that I would like to read more into it. Would love to hear about any great sites you would like to share as well, feel free to leave a comment and say hi!

Blogging and such

One of the things that I really like about blogging, both reading them and writing them, is that you really get to be involved within a part of a persons life that you wouldn't normally be part of. I absolutely LOVE reading my friends blogs, both from exchange and here in Sydney, just because I get to keep in touch with someone without actually having to talk to them. I know that sounds bad, but it's just a fact that it is really hard to keep in contact with hundreds of people all over the place, so it's nice to have a way to communicate with them all at once.
Plus people are more inclined to say what they really think about things when noone is around to go, 'well i don't think so', or something like that.
Apart from reading my friends blogs, I must say that I am not a regular of any particular blog. Which I think is quite a shame, to be honest. At the moment I have been glancing across Stockholm Street Style quite a lot, which I really do recommend, it is a pretty awesome sight, and a couple of other Swedish sites, but I think this is more just to improve my language skills rather than actual loyalty. Most of my blog readings are mainly for research or just really topic specific, so I'll type something in about a certain thing in google and click the blogs search option, and just read solely about that topic.
So, in an effort to broaden my horizons and learn a little bit more about different things, I'm going to strive to find some blogs out there that I can actually read all the way through and keep reading till the end of time. I suppose I am quite fickle, in this respect, that I really don't have an impulse to keep reading past the article that I am looking for.
So the second personal challenge that I have had on this blog is to find other blogs to read, and share them with you guys out there. Maybe you guys could comment on which blogs you like to read as well, so we can all find those little gems on the internet, because in my opinion the hardest thing is actually finding these cool sites buried within the tonnes of garbage you can get there out on the internet. The proverbial needle in a haystack, if you will.
So for the next post or two I will fill you in on any blogs, or maybe even just really cool websites, out there, and it would be great to hear about your favourites out there as well!

One Thing I Do Like

One thing that gets me incredibly excited are the uber cheap airfares you can get these days, more specifically the amazingly cheap flights with jetstar.
Now I know that there has been a couple of stories about Jetstar leaving their passengers stranded, but for the amount that you are saving on your airfares I suppose you could afford to spend another day or two at your destination. It is the price you pay for not paying a big price in the first place.
The airfares that caught my eyes were the ones to Japan. I was absolutely amazed that there was a flight to Japan for about 500 dollars. Now I know that those tickets would be the absolute bare minimum of service, but frankly, I don't care. With my Japanese course going so well, it would be awesome to be able to go there and test my new Japanese skills out, and just get to grips with the culture and stuff like that. Now all I need is a job to get there...

On the topic of airplanes though, I found this website, listing 10 of the most bizarre airline stories out there. I really love these types of things, just being able to see how stupid and insane some people out there really are.
One of the stories is about a couple of parents who left their child behind at an airport in Tel Aviv, while they were on the plane to a wonderful holiday in Paris. I find this really hard to believe, but I suppose I am one of those people who always think that they have forgotten something before they go on a trip away, so I would probably be less likely to leave any belongings at the airport. Especially any children I had. But I think that most people are like this, which makes me think, how psyched up these people must have been for their holiday away to actually forget their child?
Another one is about a passenger, first class no less, who got frustrated because all of the lesser class passengers were allowed to disembark from the plane earlier than they were. So the guys inflates the emergency slide, and slides his way down and out of the airplane.
Now, just from personal experience, having had to walk down through the first class section, it looks like they have it pretty good. Plenty of leg room, nice cushiony chairs, great service, the list goes on. Now I'm not criticising the airlines, but that kind of thinking just doesn't exist in economy class. People flying economy NEED to get out before the first class passengers, so they can circulate the blood in their legs and to prevent dying from blood clots and other circulatory diseases.

And now, getting ready for another week at uni, keeping on keeping on with all that stuff!
Have a good one folks

Sorry for my brief period away, I had a busy couple of days.
Things are going pretty well, at the moment I'm passing all my university courses, and rather than getting cocky and thinking that I don't need to study anymore, all my good scores with all my tests so far, I have got a real surge of determination to study and do even better, which is really great. I love having the motivation to be able to do more studying, because most of the time I used to have trouble getting the motivation to do any work before.
So I was trawling the internet the other day, looking for some interesting stuff, when I found something that got me pretty excited, I must say. Anyone who knows me would know that I am a pretty big Harry Potter fan, so when I saw this news article, I was pretty excited.
Yes, that's right folks, there is going to be a Harry Potter theme park, just in case you didn't know. They must have kept it pretty well hidden from me, because apparently it's going to be ready to be opened on June 18th, which must mean that it was being built for a fair amount of time before hand.
Even though I would say that I am a pretty big Potter fan, I don't think I come nearly as close as this girl from Japan. I can acknowledge that I am a huge fan of Emma Watson, but even if I did get to meet her in the flesh, I would try and refrain from actually putting my hands on her face, and then go on to smell them. I think if it was the only chance I got to meet someone famous, the last thing I would want to do was weird them out. But maybe its just me.

And now we go on to a story about true love.
According to this, a male stork flew all the way from South Africa to Croatia to be with his handicapped stork-ess mate, as he has done so every year.
I think this is pretty amazing, and it really does show you how close the bonds are between animals. The fact that this guy stork could have stayed around in South Africa and could have the pick of any of the female storks there meant nothing to him, all he wanted to do was get back to the girl of his little stork dreams. And he even got back to Croatia a little earlier this year. Because the mother is incapacitated, he teaches all his little storklings how to fly and survive by themselves, and it makes you wonder why more of us couldn't be like this stork here. Just think how different it would be if we all took a page out of the storks' book...

She works hard for the money

So the one thing that has really put a bee in my bonnet lately is the fact that it is SO difficult to get a job here in Sydney at the moment.
In the past couple of months or so, I must have applied to at least 40 different vacancies, and I made sure that my resume was all up to date and was really presentable, and if I was going to give the resume to the store in person, I would make sure that I was pretty presentable as well, just to improve my chances.
And out of all those forty plus applications, I've only heard back from about 5 or so, and I'm not really holding my breath waiting for all the others to reply back to me.
The thing is, these days you can't even get an entry level job anywhere without having worked in the career field for years already, which seems like an oxymoron to me. Surely, if you already had a year or two experience in the field of work you wanted to get in, you wouldn't really be going in for an entry level position, would you?

Now I know that generation Y tends to be regarded as lazy and lacking work ethic, but that is such a sweeping generalisation and surely cannot apply to everyone in that 18-29 bracket or so.
However, by employers not wanting to hire people of this age, how would generation Y be able to develop a good sense of (office) work ethic if all they are able to get are menial, labour-intensive jobs?
This article states that employers are often looking for staff members, but are very reluctant to hire anyone from that age group, which to me sounds a little bit like discrimination. Aren't companies supposed to conduct they're hiring processes indiscriminate of age, gender, weight, sexuality, etc? If someone has the skills to do the job, I think they should at least be given the chance to prove themselves.
One final problem I've found with this scenario is that if noone from that age group is hired into those certain professions, and generation Y-ers find an alternative career path, it just looks to me like it would leave a gap in skilled people for certain business careers, wouldn't it?

Alternatively, we could all become Fortune Cookie writers, or snake milkers. Have a look at this one. You'll find a list of really weird and funny jobs, maybe some different career paths from the ones you're working towards. Other jobs include an Ostrich Babysitter, Dice Inspectors and a Furniture Tester. And we're all spending thousands to go to university when there are perfectly good jobs like those?

LETS PLAY BALL!

One thing that I have really wanted to do for a very long time is to play a team sport, or get involved in something along those lines, but essentially, just playing some type of sport.
Unfortunately for me, this is where the sloth comes in and proceeds to jump rest its slothful self on my aspirations of ever joining a sports team.
I suppose its because of the fact that I know that I could play a sport, I have just always been a little bit apprehensive about joining in the first place, perhaps fearing that I would never be able to keep up with the rest of the players on the team.
All through my life I have kind of shyed away from team sports, most probably because I am not nearly as fit as I would like, and now it seems almost infathomable to me to just simply rock up to a training session one night, with a bunch of guys who have most probably been playing that sport for most of their lives.
So, once I find a sport that I might seem to be the remotest bit interested in, I subsequently go around making excuses for why I couldn't possibly do it, like "its too far away, the training is too late at night or early in the morning". Blah. Blah.
However, in light of my realisation of my slothfullness, I have decided that I am going to try to find a sport that I enjoy and that I would be able to become committed to. In the next month, I am going to aim to find some type of physical activity that I can take part in, and just see how it goes. If I can work it into my routine, there should be no problems.
In the spirit of this, I've decided to do some research on a few lesser known sports, just to give everyone a taste of what's out there to discover.
First of all, there is Fistball, which pretty much just looks like volleyball, except the ball can actually hit the ground. Here is a little youtube bit for you to see what it looks like.
I think it could well be a possibility if it were more popular here. Trying to do a google search for fistball in Australia did not really yield an astonishing amount of results.
Then of course there is the Finnish Wife-Carrying competition, which always sounds like really good fun, except that I dont really have a wife. Strike that one out too then. But just to see how much fun we are missing out on, check out this.
After looking at both of these, it just proves to me that anything can be a sport, and there has just got to be something out there for me to enjoy, so I'll keep the search going on, and hopefully by the end of the month I'll have something going on!

Do as I say, not as I do

I was recently going through one of the blogs that I read, Stockholm Street Style, and it really made me realise how much I know in theory about fashion, due mostly to the many fashion and design shows you find these days, but how very little I actually put that knowledge into practice.
Let's face it, when it comes to fashion, I'm no supermodel. It really doesn't worry me if I don't have the latest clothes and trends, but when I'm out in public, I'm so aware of what other people are wearing, and I constantly make a collection of mental notes regarding what works and what doesn't.
I find Stockholm Street Style is really great, and does give a great idea as to what the Europeans are doing with their clothes these days. One of the outfits really caught my eye, and I don't know what it is in particular about that suit, but it is awesome. And we are now paving the way to a little bit of a sook now.
The particular suit was a part of the Laitinen Collection, and immediately I thought to myself that it was obviously a Finnish fashion collection, from the name. So when I found out what the name of the brand or collection was, I performed a trusty google search, and trawling through several political leaders and other famous people with Wikipedia pages, I saw the website that I was looking for.
The Laitinen Collection, as their website seems to show, is apparently a very minimalist collection. In fact, they seem to think that the nude mannequins in the store windows are the way to go. Looking at the site, and then looking back at the picture, I was kind of disheartened not to see a single image on the website. A major bummer, but I couldn't ever have afforded any of their clothing, if it was priced like any of the other designer collections in Helsinki.
I must say though, one thing that the Swedes and Finns do really well are blogs, I have a list about an arm length long of ones that I love to read, and I pretty much spend most of my time at this site, it's an awesome starting point for a lot of blogs that I've found, as long as you tell it what it is you want to be reading about.
I was thinking about starting a Swedish blog as well, but I just don't know if I'm really up to that type of level. I know that I could do it, and it would keep up my swedish, so I think that I might write up a few posts before hand and see how they go.

ON a completely different final note, I recently stumbled across this slightly humorous article, where a guy was fired for "not removing his hood at work", because of his Jedi faith. I heard that Jedi was apparently the fastest growing religion in Australia a couple of years back, but only now have I realised that these people aren't joking.
But no worries mate, just take your jedi hood and head over to Stockholm, work the street style. I'm sure it would be much more successful there :D

AWESOME?!

So I was sitting in the library at uni and doing a little bit of studying for Spanish and Japanese after my lessons today, I came across this little nugget of gold on my home page which made me stop and stare a bit.
Basically, to get to school each day, the kids would have to take a zip line or flying fox from one point to another on a daily basis, all just to get them to school. At first, I thought this looked like a really neat and nifty way of getting around, like, you could say to all your little classmates that you essentially flew to school this morning.
But then I got to thinking, that after something like the second week, it'd probably get pretty annoying, having to go to all that extra effort just in order to get to school for the day. I mean, if some little one just wasn't in the mood for his scheduled exam that day, what's to stop them cutting down the cable connecting the two points?
Obviously, there is no way that one could just simply come and go with bags of groceries or whatever, but it does make you think, how would you hold up taking a flying fox to work or school everyday. Sure, you could go in for the dramatic entrance, come sailing through the open window of your classroom if everything goes to plan, but honestly, it must get really old real quickly. Kind of like Superman I suppose. I mean, sure, he can fly, but after he has established that he can do it, and has kind of played around with all the ins and outs of it, surely there can't really be anything left for him to do with that particular party trick.

On a more personal note, I'm pretty sure that this is my fifth week of university this week, and I am still surviving. I must say, it has been really good to be able to get into a routine with studying and everything, and I am really enjoying it, meeting all these new people and actually learning new things.
I'm really loving my Japanese and Spanish courses for precisely that reason. I find that with my language courses I can really get a feeling for how much I'm learning and building up my skills, whereas with my history subject, I know that information is going into my brain, but it's just not registering sometimes. But it is getting there slowly which is awesome.

Oh and finally, i thought I might just add that I am craving some pancakes now. Don't really know why, and nor do I have the facilities here in the library to actually make them, but maybe just talking about the pancakes will make the craving go away. :D

What $47 dollars can buy you these days

When you think of all the things you can get for about $50 these days, many things spring to mind, like a couple of good DVDs and some popcorn to relax with on a Friday night, or a nice meal. But did you ever consider being able to purchase two ghosts for your money?

According to this news site, the owner of a property had two ghosts exorcised from his house, no doubt because of their incessant hauntings keeping him up at all hours of the night, and he managed to dilute the ghosts down in holy water and locked them up in two glass vials.
Now, it might just be me, but offering the ghosts for sale online just seems to be a bit defeatist. Surely you wouldn't want to risk someone opening the vials, and owing to a ghosts keen sense of direction, much like a homing pigeon, risk the ghosts returning to haunt you. As unfamiliar as I am with the protocols of storing captured ghosts, I think one of the main principles is that you really should be handing out said ghosts to random strangers, which actual directions on how to restore the ghosts to their previous spirit-like selves. Apparently, to release the ghost's full potential, you just have to release the holy water into a dish and simply let them evaporate away into the air of your house.
Perhaps they can be a form of low cost pets, the require no food, no looking after, so perhaps bottled ghosts are the new companions for the lonely in the near future?

I'd rather the DVDs and popcorn over two bottled ghosts anyday :)

The First Blog Post!

So I've finally gotten around to starting one of these, it seems like all the cool kids are blogging these days so I thought that I might as well too.

I'm not exactly sure where I want to go with this blog, but I'll try and keep it as entertaining as possible^^

So yeah, went to Michael's St. Patricks Day party last night, and it was so nice to see all my old friends again after having been overseas for the year and stuff like that, and it just felt really nice to have everyone kind of in the same place at the same time for once, because now that we are all studying in university and getting on with life, it's been pretty hard to coordinate a meeting when everyone was there.!
I think that I can safely say that fun was had by all, and it was an all round pretty top friday night to be honest.

I think I'll leave it there for the moment, pretty short and sweet!
xmatty