What a Week!

Here I am finally blogging away again, with so much happenings.
For starters, I went to Melb for a few days and came back on Vday. Melb was rather smoky and hazy cause of all the fires and TY was so busy with loads of stuff that it was probably a bad time to head down... I flew back on Vday cause the flights the next day were too expensive, plus I couldn't stay till Monday because I had my compulsory orientation course workshop to attend. Anyway, went to the airport to catch my flight back to Syd and found out that due to bad weather in Syd, my flight was the last flight out of Melb Airport. It was also delayed for about an hour and a half... was supposed to fly around 7.15, but we departed at about 9pm. And when I got to Syd, I thanked God that I landed safe - the flight was just really rocky and so turbulentic that I actually remembered praying almost every minute on that flight at least after the first 10 mins of takeoff.

Got back and had a lot of mail - most were bills - haha, the "unwanted" mail. The Internet and home line was still not working, so I had to use my 3G mobile broadband that I bought from Melb - rather expensive to recharge every time though, cause I use up quite a lot of GB... weird that I'd use up so much especially when I don't do massive downloading and often check emails and FB. Well, contacted an electrician who came over and realised that T-e-l-s-t-r-a didn't put a tag on the wires in the main distribution system, so they couldn't tell which wired port was connected to my home phone. So the electrician suggested I ring Telstra instead of him trying to find it which would cost me a bomb. He was rather nice and didn't actually charge me. Rang T-e-l-s-t-r-a and they eventually came. They found out it was the main distribution to the street. So now my phone line works and home Internet which is great! And I don't have to pay because it's a street fault.

So one problem down, another to go... Went to uni and managed to sort out all my applications and student card, so that was all good. Then we had this 3-day intensive orientation workshop - and intensive was intensive! The first day was 8.30 to 5.30, second day was 9-5 (which was better), and third day was 8:30 till 7:30 (that was just insane). But it was great meeting new faces and old. Knew some people from last year, but there were already groups forming.

The semester schedule was released to us on day one. I saw that I had a class test on the Mon morn at 9am on 16 Mar! That's when I head back from M and D's wedding. So yeah, I immediately panicked and emailed my flight agent to ask him if I could change my return flight date, but he checked and the only flight I could come back on, with low-cost fees, reaches Syd at 7:30am in the morn on that Mon. I thought, by the time I clear customs, I'll miss my class test. My flight agent also suggested going to the actual websites of Msian Airlines, Tiger etc... but that same moment, I was at the comp lab and received an email from my course coordinator saying I have to sit a compulsory practical workshop on the Wed, the week during M and D's wed. This meant I had to change my flight going into Spore... was thinking of going to Spore first and then to Msia on my going flight. And because of compulsory attendance in that workshop on that Wed, it means I can only go to Msia from Thu to Sun, but my course coordinator also suggested I not miss the Thu and Fri classes either. It was just all wrong timing... And my course coordinator wasn't too pleased. Sadly enough, I had no choice - tried my hardest, and just had to tell M and D that I couldn't make it to their wed... =( I really wanted to be there - bought the dress, kinda prepared my speech, and wrote up a little poem... I guess I could do a video thing... My cam's got a vid function. By the way, have never done a vid before so I wonder how it'd turn out. But will get a friend to help me hold my camera. Hee hee!

I didn't quite mention the intro workshop of 3 days... One word to describe it - intense! We even have a handbook for this particular course which states all assessments for the year! Not even just for the semester, but for the year. You'd think the probs would have ended, but there were other minor probs such as me forgetting to date my clinica al forms and also not being able to find one of my units on the WebCT... they call it Black-board at Macq. Another minor prob - wanted the student diary and went to get it twice, but they ran out... it was only the third time that I got it. Then Centrelink hasn't paid me yet because I am apparently still earning too much (that's what they reckon)... so until I am earning really really little, then I guess they'll pay me then.

Apart from the 3 days of workshop from Mon to Wed, we also had to attend this P-h-o-n-e-t-i-c-s bridging course the next two days. Actually a surprise P-h-o-n-e-t-i-c-s test was thrown at us on day two, and a lot of people complained, especially the ones who have done P-h-o-n-e-t-i-c-s. They were saying why we still had to do the P-h-o-n-e-t-i-c-s bridging course when we already did one whole sem of it. Some people weren't very happy and marched to the course coordinator to share their concerns... and the end result was that the course coordinator realised it was a mistake, apologised, said this is the first time ever this year that we were handed a surprise test and it won't happen again, and then said that those ppl who handed the paper in won't have to sit the phonetics bridging course - basically they gave us a choice to hand in the paper, and they said the solution was derived because the ones who handed the paper in would have had the confidence to think that they'd do well anyway, and that's why they're exempted from the bridging course. I wasn't too concerned, but yeah, I handed the paper in, so I was exempted from Thu and Fri classes this week! But I was still busy - Thu, ran some errands, did some groceries, organised for the electrician to come over. On Fri, I had a h-e-a-r-i-n-g test done by a 2nd year student, booked in for the T-e-l-s-t-r-a technician to fix up my phone, and went for my TB skin test too at the hospital for my vaccinations.

Uni officially starts next week, but am so drained from last week, and I know I still have lots to do. This weekend am working both days, plus a friend is staying over - she's bringing me to H-i-l-l-s-o-n-g-s church on Sun. I'm also hoping to go through my lecture notes for Mon and also do more grocery shopping, and try to sort out my weekly planner... Next week, my housemate returns from her c-l-i-n-i-c-a-l placement; it's uni O-week; I have lectures Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri; have to go for doctor check-up; have to go back to hospital to check TB skin test results; have to submit a few c-l-i-n-i-c-a-l documents to my c-l-i-n-i-c-a-l coordinator; watching a light-hearted movie with friends on Tues; donating items to Bushfire appeal at uni... so yeah, plenty plenty things. Hopefully things will get easier...