The 'Studying' Begins

G’day mate(s),

As you will remember from my previous blog, I had just enrolled and I was officially a UWA student – don’t worry Nottingham people this is only a loan deal, I’m still really a Nottingham student! If this is the first blog you’re reading I suggest you read the other two first (the Thailand one is the first entry).

The day after enrolling (16th July) I had another early start; I had to be at uni for 9 for an orientation day. The day consisted of a series of speeches from heads of the uni, departments, the student union (they call it the Guild) etc. After these speeches we were sent on an ‘O-quest’ which was built up as an epic orientation run around the uni but in reality it was just basically a treasure hunt with no treasure at the end. It was meant to help us get to know our way around campus better, however in reality, it was a waste of time. The O-quest only succeeded in confusing most of us even more about this small campus and I was sure that because of this O-quest I was going to end up walking round the campus in circles in a search for my lecture theatres! Following this treasure hunt, it was lunch which I was excited about considering the previous lunches that had been provided for us international students, however lunch was a major disappointment. It was a Barbeque where the only thing for vegetarians was some skewers with vegetables on them, how is that going to fill up a growing lad like me?! The rest of the day didn’t really improve the next task was to select our faculty that we felt belonged to. Being a Geographer, I chose the faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Five minutes into our talk, I realised I had chosen the wrong faculty, apparently Geography is not a humanity or a social science, it’s a ‘natural science’. These Aussies don’t know what they are on about, even you Geography haters back in Nottingham will agree that Geography belongs in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences because you’ll all claim that “all geographers do is colour in so its surely an Art”!

So, I sat through two hours of irrelevant talks but still signed up to this faculty because I believe Geography is a humanity and/or a social science, not an Art though. Also the sports secretary said the faculty was in desperate need of ‘soccer’ and basketball players, so I had to sign up! After this waste of a day at uni, I headed home for some dinner, some beer and for the first day of the Second Ashes test, COME ON ENGLAND!

After staying up late to watch Strauss and Cook dominate the Aussie bowlers (I think I missed only two overs of the whole day), I had a bit of a lie in the next day, once I was up and ready I headed out to a shopping centre. I was going shopping in the hope of getting a pair of sunglasses which is absolutely essential here (yes, even in the winter) and picking up a cheapish MP3 player to help pass the time on my journeys to uni. The shopping mall was like a baby compared to the Harlequin or Brent Cross, probably about the size of the Broadwalk in Edgware. I walked in and out of the shops looking around for a bit and before I knew it I had been into more or less every shop and not picked up anything. The fashion here is very different to that of England, the Aussies love their surf and skater brands and don’t really have any un-branded cool cheap clothes. I discovered that sunglasses are extortionate here, you won’t find a pair of sunglasses for under $60 which is about £30, I refused to pay this much for a pair of sunglasses and thought I’ll just survive without them (this thought changed a week later after experiencing the suns glare). My mission to find a cheap MP3 player was a failure but I did end up buying a hoody which had the wrong price tag on it so I got it for half the price it was meant to be, bargain! So in typical Mihir fashion I went shopping with an aim to get two practical things and I come back with neither but a new and probably unnecessary hoody! After my shopping experience I again watched the Ashes all night!

The View from the bus on my journey home from uni

On the 18th July I was at home all day and Dilip uncle and Ina aunty reluctantly went to a wedding reception at night. This gave me an opportunity to cook for myself so boys (and Bix) in the flat next year, don’t worry I’ll try and cook regularly here so I’m not rusty when I get back to Notts because I know you’re expecting me to do the cooking for the flat! Something that may surprise those of you that know me well is that I’ve started adding chillies to my cooking and the food I eat, I think it’s the influence of living with Kenyans. After dinner I once again parked myself in front of the TV to watch the cricket and a classic Adam Sandler film, Happy Gilmore.

The next day was a bit more exciting than my previous day of sitting at home all day. We went to Hilary’s marina with some of Ina aunty and Dilip uncle’s friends from here including mini-Mihir (read my last blog). We went to this marina, had lunch drank beer and played a lot of pool which no matter how often I play it, I never improve! I also had the most amazing ice cream at this Marina. There’s a place that claims to offer over 3000 (yes three thousand, that is not a mistake) different combinations of ice cream with sweets and chocolates. I chose to have a white chocolate and twirl ice cream. They have a selection of chocolates that they crush into the ice cream and I have to say the result was amazing, almost as good as Prina’s vanilla and crushed Oreo ice cream! After a day at the Marina, we came home for dinner and yet another exciting day of cricket. Some of Dilip uncle and Ina auntie’s friends joined us for dinner and they had two boys a little younger than me who had just come back from England. The older one was determined to study in London because you get to ‘party all the time in England where as you really don’t here’ his words, not mine!

The 20th of July saw my first real day at UWA. The morning journey was quite amusing for me. The weather had taken a turn for the worse the previous night and it was extremely cold, wet and windy. The Aussies on the bus the next morning were so excited because they saw hail stones and they were all talking about it on the bus the same way we get excited about snow! Before I went away, the Geography department at Nottingham said to me I have to do at least one Geography module and it has to have a field work element to it and I have to do one business module out here as well. Other than that I could do what I wanted so I thought I’d take a history module. I walked into the lecture theatre and it was set up like a classroom at Habs. To my amazement there was only about 30 people doing the module in comparison to about 150 in my Geography lectures and 400 in my business lectures at Nottingham. After my lecture I had a break and then a business lecture. What I didn’t know is that the business school was at the other end of campus and completely hidden away from everything else. However if you saw the business school building, you would understand why. UWA is the oldest university in Australia and this building is the most modern building you could imagine! If it was with the other old buildings it would look as out of place as if you placed Primark in Harrods or Selfridges! I came home exhausted after a two hour business lecture, so I had a few beers and watched England win the Second Test!

I had to go into uni for 9am the next morning, this journey again was interesting for me because not only did the talk about the bad weather continue, I chose to wear my England cricket shirt to uni which provoked a lot of comments from the Aussies and lead to a heated debate about Freddie Flintoff apparently being arrogant because of his celebrations after taking a 5-wickets in his last ever test a Lords. However, one out of maybe 12 Aussies who commented on my shirt did say that England deserved to win! I had a two hour Geography lecture (I’m not used to early starts and 2hours of lectures in a day let alone one lecture being 2hours!). I walked into the lecture hall and felt as if I was at a UN convention. I can’t really explain it but I shall try and get pictures of this to show you all! The lecture was actually quite interesting until I found out that this was a third year module and so was the other Geography module I had chosen! After the lecture I decided that two third year modules was far too much for me so I went to change my other Geography module to another history module which is a second year module about the history of Africa which should be interesting! Changing the module was pretty easy but the result was that I was now doing more history modules than Geography or Business modules and I now had a huge clash in my timetable which I didn’t notice until I got home! The rest of my day consisted of opening a bank account and watching neighbours!

Over the next two days I only had one lecture but had to sort out this clash of two lectures and a tutorial. The business school were so unhelpful and told me that I could just skip the lectures and watch them online and it would be fine as long as I turned up to the tutorials. As tempting as this sounded, i had mum’s voice in the back of my head and the conditions of my student visa making me feel guilty at the prospect of missing two hours of lectures a week so I dropped this business module and swapped it for a more interesting module that doesn’t clash! I’m hoping the clash is now sorted but I won’t know for sure until Monday! These two days involved me having to walk from one end of the campus to the other to get bits of paper signed by various people. The only advantage of this is that I got to see the true beauty of the UWA campus. In my last blog I made a reference to the UWA campus being more beautiful than that of Nottingham and Warwick. A follower of my blog and a Warwick student decided to defend her uni by saying that the Warwick campus is better than UWA because they have ducks on their campus! Well Anjali Dattani, not only do we have ducks on our campus at UWA, we have black swans and several peacocks including an Albino peacock, so if your ducks are the only thing that makes your Warwick uni good, then you may as well go to a pond than to Warwick! (No offense to other Warwick students past or present)

My timetable has worked out so that I have Fridays off so I think Fridays will be the day that I venture into Perth and see the sights of the most remote city in Australia. Yesterday was the first of these excursions. I went to Freemantle Harbour (known as Freeo by the Aussies) with some mates from uni. In my last blog I suggested that Freemantle was literally just a harbour, well 10days I’m retracting that statement because it’s actually a really cool place with a lot to do. It was initially an industrial town due to its proximity to the sea but in addition to that its home to the largest remaining prison in Australia where they used to send the British convicts. The prison was decommissioned in 1991 and is now open to the public to go and see.

<--Me being made an example of by the tour guide at the prison

So yesterday (24th July) we went to see the prison, cue the jokes from the Habs boys “Ghetto Mihir has finally gone to prison” etc. We went on a tour around the prison and from the very start the tour guide decided to pick on me. It’s probably my fault that she victimised me because she was complaining that she was cold despite it being 17degrees and very sunny and I just laughed at her for complaining at their mild winter. The prison is pretty big, housing 400 convicts at its peak and it was a prison where the death penalty existed until the late 1960s. The prison was really interesting and seemed to be just how you would imagine a prison to look, long rows of small cramped rooms and the yards surrounded by high walls. We also got to go into the chamber where the people were hung, although no one had been hung there in about 50 years, it had a really weird feeling about it!

The Hanging Chamber

After this slightly eerie experience, we all felt that a pint or two was required, so we headed to Little Creatures (described in the previous blog entry) for a few pints of the creatures brewed Pilsner! It was a good day; I got to know the Nottingham exchange students a lot better. We all went our separate ways and headed home, however I ended up going out for an Indian meal with Dilip uncle and Ina aunty before coming home. It was nice to get a fix of paneer and other Indian club style food.

Many of you have asked me what uni is like here and the truth is I can’t really answer that yet because I’ve only had a week of orientation and a week of introductory lectures. However from those two weeks, I think that the focus is less on the lectures here but more on the tutorials and workshops. Lectures are much smaller than they were in Nottingham and students don’t party as hard as we do back in England! I’ll try and give a more insightful description of uni life here in the next blog. As for Perth, I think it’s a great city to settle down in and lead a life of socialising with other families. However, it’s not really a student friendly city!

For the select few of you who are counting down the days until I come home, there is only 6months until that date, which also means there is plenty of time for you to book a holiday to Australia to come and see me!

Finally, in the last entry of my blog I advertised my older brother’s blog but realised I didn’t supply you with the link to the website, so if you are interested in reading about his experiences here is the link: http://www.nihalhariashah.blogspot.com/

Until next time, much love to you all!
Mihir