Classes Begin Tomorrow!

11am tomorrow begins my ingression into the world of the languages of Indonesian and Arabic. While I find my gi-normous Arabic text to be slightly intimidating, I have no fears that I'll be able to hold my own in Indonesian by the time I return to Thailand. If anyone shows interest in learning along side me, perhaps I will offer weekly lessons? Perhaps if no one shows interest, I may still offer weekly lessons? We shall see my faithful reader(s), we shall see.

I spent most of the last two days roaming around the city with some friends here. I saw Constantine and I enjoyed it. Last Thursday I went to my Japanese club again at this nice little place called Robot Sushi I met a lady who works at the Japanese consulate here and she told me they have a rather nice culture center with a free library with plenty of good Japanese stuff. I plan to head there this week.

I wrote an email tonight to the manager of the international house. I mentioned that half of the machines in the gym are broken, there are pool balls missing from the table and I offered some very inexpensive improvements. I've looked over the IH's web site under facilities and found it claiming a number of things we don't have. As long as they respond nicely to my pleasant request for repairs and minor inexpensive upgrades, I won't go crazy. Otherwise I may have to champion another attempt at mutiny. I kind of like getting people riled up over such things.

Pop's birthday was on the 26th. I sent her a stuffed kangaroo and I called her yesterday.

I've somehow managed to develop what seems to be a smokers cough. This is rather distressing as I haven't smoked in nearly 5 years. The air is much cleaner here than in Chiang Mai and I've done my best to avoid second-hand smoke, but I've been coughing up a rather scary amount of crap in the past few days. I sometimes double over from the force of it. It doesn't cause as much pain as it did back when I quit smoking, but if it continues I may run into some serious problems. I exercise daily and eat very healthily and I quit smoking long ago, but I have a sinking suspicion that I will die fairly young because my lungs are shot to hell already. Bollocks indeed.

I've been in a number of pictures lately, but nobody has given me them yet. I'll get ahold of them eventually and post them. Also, I think its about time I started thinking about backing up my blog. I've written quite a bit and I'd hate to lose it.

On another frustrating note, my laptop is having big internet problems again. This makes my language studies considerably more difficult as this computer sucks.

Thats all for today team! See you after class or something.

Mystery Bus Tour

So tonight was the Mystery Bus Tour hosted by Deakin during O-week (orientation). We all paid $7 to wait for a long friggin time to be loaded onto buses that took us to 4 different (mostly shitty) bar/pub/nightclub-type places. I went with Jada (Singapore), Anthony and Ayu (both Malay). The first place was filthy. The second place sucked. The third was filthy and sucky. The last place was almost fun I think, but it was too crowded. We had exactly one hour in each place before the buses would return and ship us to the next crappy spot. The real shitty part was that while there were 10-12 buses that took us out, only 4 came back to bring us home. They told us 1am, but we got there at 12:45 and the last bus was leaving. A whole mess of people had to get a cab home. Luckily a 10-person maxi-cab drove by and I found enough people to fill it in a few moments. Could have been worse I guess. We took a bunch of pictures tonight and after I get them I will post a couple as long as I look good. Should work out alright ;-).

I bought a couple books today. Arabic, Indonesian and the music class. The music books look ridiculously easy for me. The Indonesian stuff looks fine also. The Arabic is a bit intimidating, but it will be fine I'm sure. No word on the Chinese book.

Where do babies come from?

Andrew's brother Stephen and his girlfriend Tiffany just had a baby girl! Ryan Madison Hart was born 2/17 12:42PM weighing in at a very fit 6 lbs 14oz. Here they are in their slightly exhausted glory.

Beach Party and School Clubs

So its O-Week at school. Monday was pretty boring. They gave out lots of junk. The food wasn't to appealing. I joined the Taekwondo club as well as Duff, the beer club. Hopefully,the pain of one will help cancel the other out.

There was a beach party at night and it was decent I guess. I've met a couple more international people, but I've yet to meet an Australian. I can't say it matters really. I certainly will next week.

My books will be rather expensive. $18 for 3 Indonesian, $101 for Arabic, $95 for music class books/software and Chinese has yet to post required books. It could be over $300! Argh. Must work soon!

I went shopping today with Madhavi. Bought some sleeping pills and some groceries. Sleeping has been rough. I've been having to take naps almost everyday and I'm not feeling too well about it. I doubt I will have time to take naps once school starts.
Heres Madhavi and myself.

My Room! and Other Super-Exciting Stuff

Here you have it folks. The cell in which I reside within my globalized compound.


I find myself eating and exercising hardcore as of late. Having a kitchen is a blessing and a curse. Having a "fitness center" within a 20 second walk from my room is wonderful even if it is a bit small. They have this wicked full body machine where I can burn 200 calories in 20 minutes. Good stuff.

Last night I went to this lounge in an area called Toorak. There was a hip-hop party and myself and about 10 or so others from the compound crashed it. It was a small room on the second floor of this very posh bar. But there was a $10 cover for entering the small room. We hung out downstairs until it got more crowded than I used my Thai haggle skills to get us all in for $5/head. It was relatively fun. Afterwards I walked back to the compound with one friend while everyone else took a taxi. The walk was about 10km. Took a while, but interesting enough.