Always Travelling
March 25, 2007
Getting there...
Last week: even though I had crazy working hours, still managed to produce a good abnormal psych assignment but again, put myself through some hairy moments getting it done.
Monday: up at 7.00am and out the door to work at a recruitment consultancy. To uni at 6.00pm for a birthday dinner for a couple of the American students (free food and beer!). Home and study. Had a great sleep.
Tuesday: This day is always a strange, fast-paced day. I have set times with my students to catch up with them between 11.30 and 3.00pm, but the meetings last between 20-30 mins and I find myself doing 10 mins of study or other work here and there. Also have a 45 min class in that time period too. 3-6pm I study in library. 6pm went a got $5 'tight ass Tuesday' pizzas with Phen, another of the SMU students, had a great conversation with some of the other exchange students in campus accommodation.
Wednesday: gym in the morning with Paul, then study and work on assignments all day (really studying, no procrastination) and into the early hours.
Thursday: up early to get resources from library, then 9.00am cognitive psych tutorial, 10.00-11.00am advisors' meeting, 12.00-2.00pm cognitive psych lecture and 2.00pm meeting with some of the Michigan Tech boys. This is where the grind starts. Get home and really start to work on this abnormal psych assignment. Work all the way through to 2.00am, when I need to get ready to go to work, from 3.00 to 7.00am. Okay so if i had planned things better, I would have slept before my shift! Work is physical, unloading airplane containers full of parcels, and I am covered and dripping in sweat at 4.00am in the morning running on zero sleep, about a litre of coffee and a few beroccas at this stage.
Friday: I finish work and head home, and realising that I have a bit of a time buffer, I grab 2 hours sleep. Then up and finish off the ice-coffee I had bought earlier to wake me up, had a quick shower and finished my assignment. In to uni to print it out and proof read for spelling etc, then hand in before 2.00pm. Excellent work! Then of course home and to bed :)
This week:
I have 2 assignments due... (but I'm on top of it!). At the end of this week I'll have done all but one major assignments for the semester before the half way mark of semester. It's crazy how these things turn out sometimes...
Monday: up at 7.00am and out the door to work at a recruitment consultancy. To uni at 6.00pm for a birthday dinner for a couple of the American students (free food and beer!). Home and study. Had a great sleep.
Tuesday: This day is always a strange, fast-paced day. I have set times with my students to catch up with them between 11.30 and 3.00pm, but the meetings last between 20-30 mins and I find myself doing 10 mins of study or other work here and there. Also have a 45 min class in that time period too. 3-6pm I study in library. 6pm went a got $5 'tight ass Tuesday' pizzas with Phen, another of the SMU students, had a great conversation with some of the other exchange students in campus accommodation.
Wednesday: gym in the morning with Paul, then study and work on assignments all day (really studying, no procrastination) and into the early hours.
Thursday: up early to get resources from library, then 9.00am cognitive psych tutorial, 10.00-11.00am advisors' meeting, 12.00-2.00pm cognitive psych lecture and 2.00pm meeting with some of the Michigan Tech boys. This is where the grind starts. Get home and really start to work on this abnormal psych assignment. Work all the way through to 2.00am, when I need to get ready to go to work, from 3.00 to 7.00am. Okay so if i had planned things better, I would have slept before my shift! Work is physical, unloading airplane containers full of parcels, and I am covered and dripping in sweat at 4.00am in the morning running on zero sleep, about a litre of coffee and a few beroccas at this stage.
Friday: I finish work and head home, and realising that I have a bit of a time buffer, I grab 2 hours sleep. Then up and finish off the ice-coffee I had bought earlier to wake me up, had a quick shower and finished my assignment. In to uni to print it out and proof read for spelling etc, then hand in before 2.00pm. Excellent work! Then of course home and to bed :)
This week:
I have 2 assignments due... (but I'm on top of it!). At the end of this week I'll have done all but one major assignments for the semester before the half way mark of semester. It's crazy how these things turn out sometimes...
March 17, 2007
My house on a Saturday night
It's 10pm and I have 3 of my 4 brothers in the house...
Two have just finished playing FIFA '07 on PS2 and have switched over to watching a Man Utd v Bolton game. I'm in the same room reading articles from McKinsey and psyching myself up to listen to ilectures for my uni course. In the next room another brother is on his laptop and in front of an Aussie Rules game on TV. After dinner the parents went off to watch a movie.
I really don't want to study. hmmmm. Got to reaffirm my goals and motivate myself!
Two have just finished playing FIFA '07 on PS2 and have switched over to watching a Man Utd v Bolton game. I'm in the same room reading articles from McKinsey and psyching myself up to listen to ilectures for my uni course. In the next room another brother is on his laptop and in front of an Aussie Rules game on TV. After dinner the parents went off to watch a movie.
I really don't want to study. hmmmm. Got to reaffirm my goals and motivate myself!
Email to a friend...
(I'm too lazy to write an update for this blog alone and so after I'd finished the email I thought it would be a good idea just to post it up. Hope it provides an update for anyone reading my blog. I've edited out their personal info but left most references to mine.)
----------
Hey mate,
How's life? You've finished your degree now? What're your upcoming plans?
I'm finishing my course this year and juggling a few jobs. In January I undertook 2 short projects at 2 recruitment consultancies (2 weeks each) and I am now working at the second recruitment consultancy on Mondays. I am student advising still, and was involved in the organising of 2 study tours in the summer break. During semester and on a weekly basis I advise/mentor 7 students from Texas and 3 from Michigan.
Last year I was able to save most of the money I earnt from working various jobs but now I have to pay my way for most things and thus my expenses have gone up considerably. I am going to Pakistan in August for a wedding and so in addition to student advising and the consultancy work I have also taken up an early morning shift at the airport, performing freight processing. I start on Thursday and basically air freight comes in via Singapore and we scan it and sort it into postcodes ready for pickup and delivery. It's a 3am to 8am shift but it will work well with my class schedule. I can do a shift, go the the gym at uni, and then go to class - as none of my classes this semester start before 12noon.
So I'm keeping myself pretty busy. But AIESEC conditions us to utilise our time well and to achieve a lot with our day - 9am to 5pm means little to us, we can see our day as much more than that! :) There are 24 hours in the day....
I am also saving for an English teaching course, which I am keen to do as Pascaline and I are keen to travel and work in the future. Pascaline has been back in Mauritius since August last year but visited recently for 2 weeks - those 2 weeks were awesome, as you can imagine. After 6 months apart and talking on the phone, and given that when she left we didn't know when we would be together or where, only that we would work something out, it was fantastic. Pascaline has just got accepted into a masters of accounting course here and is in the process of getting a loan from a bank in order to get back here for late June / early July. A master in accounting will enable her to get permanent residency in Australia.
What else? I'm looking at doing an @ internship after my final exams in November. One in Beijing through ACYLP or in a Muslim country (Turkey, Jordan, Bangladesh are interesting options), would be great. I'd be looking at 3 or 4 months duration. Then coming back to Perth and starting a graduate position - in a HR grad program in the resources sector ideally.
Well mate, that's a pretty good run down of where I'm at and what's ahead of me.
Cheers and talk to you soon,
Nic
----------
Hey mate,
How's life? You've finished your degree now? What're your upcoming plans?
I'm finishing my course this year and juggling a few jobs. In January I undertook 2 short projects at 2 recruitment consultancies (2 weeks each) and I am now working at the second recruitment consultancy on Mondays. I am student advising still, and was involved in the organising of 2 study tours in the summer break. During semester and on a weekly basis I advise/mentor 7 students from Texas and 3 from Michigan.
Last year I was able to save most of the money I earnt from working various jobs but now I have to pay my way for most things and thus my expenses have gone up considerably. I am going to Pakistan in August for a wedding and so in addition to student advising and the consultancy work I have also taken up an early morning shift at the airport, performing freight processing. I start on Thursday and basically air freight comes in via Singapore and we scan it and sort it into postcodes ready for pickup and delivery. It's a 3am to 8am shift but it will work well with my class schedule. I can do a shift, go the the gym at uni, and then go to class - as none of my classes this semester start before 12noon.
So I'm keeping myself pretty busy. But AIESEC conditions us to utilise our time well and to achieve a lot with our day - 9am to 5pm means little to us, we can see our day as much more than that! :) There are 24 hours in the day....
I am also saving for an English teaching course, which I am keen to do as Pascaline and I are keen to travel and work in the future. Pascaline has been back in Mauritius since August last year but visited recently for 2 weeks - those 2 weeks were awesome, as you can imagine. After 6 months apart and talking on the phone, and given that when she left we didn't know when we would be together or where, only that we would work something out, it was fantastic. Pascaline has just got accepted into a masters of accounting course here and is in the process of getting a loan from a bank in order to get back here for late June / early July. A master in accounting will enable her to get permanent residency in Australia.
What else? I'm looking at doing an @ internship after my final exams in November. One in Beijing through ACYLP or in a Muslim country (Turkey, Jordan, Bangladesh are interesting options), would be great. I'd be looking at 3 or 4 months duration. Then coming back to Perth and starting a graduate position - in a HR grad program in the resources sector ideally.
Well mate, that's a pretty good run down of where I'm at and what's ahead of me.
Cheers and talk to you soon,
Nic
March 16, 2007
The Machine is Us/ing Us.
March 13, 2007
An interesting weekend...
More to come... once I get myself in order...
March 07, 2007
Reading list
I find myself making headway, slowly slowly slowly, through a number of books:
- The Hungry Spirit by Charles Handy :: Argues the limitations of capitalism and the free market system and suggests a 'better capitalism' and probably much more than this but I have only started it recently so if it's good, I'll probably post up more about it.
- Absurdistan by Eric Campbell :: Author was a foreign correspondent who has been 'stoned by fundamentalists, captured by US Special Forces, arrested in Serbia and threatened with expulsion in China... negotiated dating rituals in Moscow... and injured in a suicide bombing in Iraq'. Should be an interesting memoir - again I've only just started it.
- The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell :: Classic book on social epidemics that everyone should be aware of.
- Why Do People Hate America? by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies :: I work as a student advisor to US exchange students from Texas, Nth Carolina, Ohio, NY and Michigan.
- The World From Islam by George Negus :: The author is a well known and respected Australian journalist. Book is about personal encounters and exploring current issues - his aim is to demystify common misconceptions about Islam and the Islamic world.
March 03, 2007
Apologies...
for not posting at all recently... I am really looking forward to updating with 3 months worth of photos and text, what I'm up to now and my thoughts for the future. Stay tuned...
Photo Update
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