Today was a decent day

This morning Stephen and I had to present our history of pharmacy lecture to the class. It went well and the professor was impressed. We received nothing but positives comments.

This afternoon I took a short walk during my five minute break from grueling pharmaceutics lecture. I wanted/needed a can of coke desperately so I took a walk over to the Ref. The Ref is what everyone calls the cafeteria. I’m guessing that Ref is short for something else because if Australians can shorten a word they will. Anyway, I walked up to the Coke machine and pressed the button for a Coke so that it would tell me the price. Well low and behold… the machine decided to produce a can free of charge. The free coke made my dad.

Stephen and I decided to do something tonight other than studying so we took a couple of hours to go and see “Bourne ultimatum”. The movie was okay. Car chases and fighting nothing too special. It was nice to get out though. By the way, it will cost you $12.00 AUD to see a movie at the cinema here in Perth.

All this biking is such fun

I should start this post by stating that I’m not hurt and I’m feeling okay at the moment.

Today was going just fine until my bike ride home. I was riding along on the sidewalk minding my own business when all of the sudden a black Alfa Romeo (I think) quickly pulled out of the parking lot and blocked the sidewalk completely. I was only a few feet away and there was no chance of stopping in time. Regardless, I hammered on the brakes anyway but ended up crashing into the front fender of his car. Upon impact I was ejected from the bike and ended up on the hood of the car. It was a horrible experience. I’m not exactly sure how it all went down as things are a bit of a blur. I was shook up and trying to gather myself when the driver got out to see me. He asked if I was okay. Luckily, I was wearing my helmet and biking gloves so I didn’t even suffer a scrape. The driver parked his car then came over to get my name and contact info. I got his info also. According to his business card, his name is Joe Ravi, he is a real estate agent, oh and he’s a douchbag! He had the nerve to ask me who is going to pay for the damages to his car. I was still very shaken up and didn’t have it in me to laugh out load at him. What a joke!

My bike now has a bent front wheel, twisted handlebars, and the gears aren’t changing correctly. I might have to go buy a new bike.

Anyway, I feel okay right now. I think I’m going to the university health centre tomorrow to see a doctor just in case something is wrong. Also, I plan to file a police report sometime this week. Great fun!

Lack of New Posts

There is a reason for my lack of posts lately…. my 44 day old Macbook laptop decided to completely die on me. Yes, that’s right my new, top of the line, computer stopped working and would not even turn on, or beep or do anything. I spent over an hour on the phone with Mac trying to resolve the issue. Nothing was working. They refereed me to a local apple store. I gave her my address and asked for the closest Apple store location. She gave me an address for a store downtown, which happens to be very inconvenient for me. I had her check again because I was sure I noticed an Apple store near my house. She once again referred me to the downtown location. The next day, I thought I’d bike past the store I had thought was an Apple store to double check before making the trek downtown. Sure enough, I was correct. There is an Apple store walking distance from my place.

At the Apple store they were able to diagnose the problem and fix it. However, it took five days before I had the computer back. I rely on this computer not only for schoolwork but also for communication back home and entertainment. It was very difficult to get by without it so I’m happy to be back online.

New Mac computers only come with a 90 warranty. They really back their products! This event has made me realize that I’m going to have to purchase the three year Apple care support package so that I will not have to worry about issues for the next three years. Being without a computer is very difficult these days.

Still under the weather

I woke up this morning feeling like crap. I didn’t want to miss class though so I jumped in the shower. The steam had me coughing like crazy so I’m guessing it was liberating the mucous chunks in my lungs. I felt worse after the shower. After stepping out of the shower I could hear a familiar sound – rain pounding on the roof. More rain! I decided to stay home as a bike ride in the rain followed by 4 straight hours of lecture in soaking wet clothes would not help clear this infection. I went back to bed right away and fell asleep until 12:45 giving me a much needed 4.5 hours sleep. I felt much better at this point so I rushed off to school to catch the afternoon lectures as the rain has stopped.

Right now I don’t feel so great. Throat still hurts and I’m coughing. I picked up some "Vicks Vapodrops" cough drops which are helping with the cough. I’m trying to study at the moment but all I want to do is sleep. What I would really like is a bottle of Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa but I don't know where to get any in this farm town called Perth.

One month down

I just realized that it’s the 17^th of August. My plane landed in Perth on the 17^th of July. This means that I have survived here for one entire month now. What an accomplishment. That leaves me with 23 months remaining. Sounds like a prison term when you think about it like that. Unfortunately, there’s no chance of getting a reduced sentence for good behavior.

I’m Sick

Well, I’ve come down with a head cold accompanied by a sore throat. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m actually surprised that I haven’t been sick since my arrival. I tend to get sick when I’m stressed and there has been no shortage of stressfulness lately.

We spent the afternoon at the Royal Perth Hospital in the pharmacy department. Certainly there is no shortage of infectious agents around there so I’m guessing this is the cause of my sickness. We didn’t even learn anything useful at the hospital. What a waste of time and now I’m sick. The hospital was not impressive to say the least – it looked very run down. To commemorate my extreme dislike towards the royal perth hospital I have created an original piece of artwork using MS Paint. Enjoy!

This morning in our compounding lab we made a simple linctus syrup preparation which can be used to sooth a sore throat. I could use some at the moment. Its sitting in my lab drawer right now at school...

Bugs

Last night there was a mosquito in my room. At the moment I didn’t really care. It kept flying in front of my computer screen so I decided to hunt and kill it. After a few unsuccessful attempts I finally squashed him. Once he was dead I was thinking… It’s the middle of winter here and if there are mosquitoes around now I wonder how many will be out come summertime. I’ll have to see. I’m guessing there will be lots partially because the pool in our backyard is full to the brim with rainwater and I’m sure they’re breeding in there. My next thought was that Australia probably has some deadly mosquito born vector, like westnile, that I don’t know about. I’m going to have to ask the locals. Why is all the flora and fauna on this continent out to kill me? We had a lecture last week by a pharmacist from the poison control centre. He was trying to emphasize how many poisonous plants and animals there are in Australia. It’s frightening to think about it.

Been busy

Wow, I haven’t posted in a few days. There goes my plan to keep this blog up to date. I’ll have to be more mindful in the future. Nothing new has really happened so there hasn’t been much to write about. School work has been keeping me tremendously busy. Its unbelievable how much work they’re assigning. I know that the other students are feeling it too but the unfortunate thing is that the pharmacy programme is not marked on a bell curve. This means that I my undergraduate strategy of trying to know more than my classmates may not suffice any longer. I’m interested to see how I do on the first few tests. All I can say right now is that the workload is heavy.

I’ve been losing weight…

I haven’t confirmed this with a scale or anything but I believe that I’ve lost a considerable amount of weight in the last few weeks. After reflecting upon this observation for a moment I’ve decided there are three main reasons for my weight loss:

1) I’ve been biking everywhere. Literally miles and miles of bikin. I’d like to get one of those cycling speedometers to record my actual distance. My legs are tired and worn out. How are my knees still functioning after all this abuse? To get to school I have to climb a hill then go down it all the way to the bottom. This means its up hill on the way home too! It always feels like the climb is twice as long to get home. Anyway, all this biking has certainly affecting my weight.

2) I’m not motivated to cook much. I’ve been living off of … I’m not really sure. I can tell you this – I’m getting sick of Chunky soup. Also, they have these mint chocolate cookies here and I’ve been pounding back my fair share of them. It didn’t help that Woolworth’s had them on sale last week either.



3)The third possible reason why I’m losing weight… no more wing night with Mike et al.

I’m going to have to start eating more as I don’t exactly have a lot of weight to lose.

Jumper

In Australia a sweater is called a jumper. Except they don’t actually say jumper it comes out more like jum-pa.

Subscribe now!

I just realized that there was no subscribe button on my blog. I’ve added one so now subscribers will receive an email each time I update the blog.

Convenient isn’t it?

Coffee anyone?

Last week I went for a coffee between classes. I just wanted a regular coffee with cream – nothing special. The coffee line-up was only a few people deep, which I found refreshing since I’m accustomed to the massive Tim Hortons line up at the UofA. So, once it was my turn at the counter I ordered a medium coffee with cream. The employee then proceeded to look at me as if was requesting a tune-up for my car or something totally out of this world. She replied with “Flat white?” I had no idea what she was referring to so I simply repeated my order. This lead her to explain what “flat white” means… it means COFFEE WITH CREAM. She then instructed me to order flat white from now on when I want coffee with cream.

I found this entire process to be extremely annoying. I guess at least now I know the Australian way to order a coffee *rolls eyes*

My bubble just got bigger

I’ve been in Perth for about two weeks now. In this amount of time I haven’t been able to see much of the city because I’ve been really busy with school/getting set up and its been raining so much that I haven’t had the urge to go biking around. The only areas I’m currently familiar with are downtown, UWA campus, and my neighborhood.

Today I got to see a bit more of the city because a classmate of mine, Steven, bought a car yesterday. Steven is from Ireland and has only been in Perth about as long as myself. Everything is new to the both of us. The car is a 2000 Daewoo Matiz (pic attached). It is by far the smallest car I have ever ridden in and it’s a real tin can. We drove around randomly just to see where things are located. We even made it over to the ocean. So now I have officially seen the Indian Ocean. It was dark and I couldn’t see much but I can say that the wind comming off the water was incredibly strong resulting in huge waves crashing on to the beach.

I had to get home to hit the books so we didn’t get to do all that much exploring of the city. Hopefully we’ll do some more soon. I’ll keep the blog updated with any new or interesting findings. I might even bring my camera.