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Living a double life

I have to admit that I am too lazy to check up if someone already wrote about this. I would assume that some of the other exchange students would at least be aware of this phenomena, if they didn’t write it down here.

Sometimes I feel weird when I go out. I suddenly realize that I am in Japan. I have been here for about three months now, but still from time to time it comes as a shock. This is because, in a sense, I live a double life. Or maybe even triple life since I am from Finland, but I study in Australia, so I have deep connections to both of these countries. I follow the Finnish and Australian news and social media. Therefore, when I sit in front of my computer, I kind of enter my own world that is mixed with Finnish and English language and people from all over the world. I followed the Finnish parliament elections from the internet and felt a bit weird to go outside into the reality after that. In my mind I was in Finland, but physically I was in Japan.

I had the same feeling when I was backpacking in Southeast Asia few years ago.  I used internet cafes in many countries and I always visited the same internet pages and send messages to the same people as I would do in any other location. So I sometimes forgot where I am physically and I realize it only when I leave the internet cafe and enter the real hot and humid world of Southeast Asia again.

So when I sit here in my dorm writing this and listening to my Finnish music I feel like am at home…But what is home? A mental state?

Posted by  |  April 25, 2011 | Categories: Finland, Japan | 1 Comment

Further irish adventures

Luke again, this time posting about my return to Cork for my friend’s birthday.
If the first travel disaster of the trip was Tilly’s flight being delayed so that she arrived on Christmas Day, when there happens, absurdly, to be no public transport in London (even Wollongong has Christmas Day public transport) so that she had to pay seventy pounds for a cab to where we were staying (see ‘Some things that happened in london); and the second was when our train from Edinburgh to Newcastle was about to depart and we couldn’t find the place to print our tickets so we had to buy more on the train (see ‘English hospitality and castle tours’), then my journey to Ireland for my best friend Charlene’s birthday was certainly the third, and the worst yet.
Let me set the scene. It’s Wednesday and I have an assessment due at three in the afternoon and a train to London at three-thirty. Naughtily, I skip my class in the morning in order to finish the assignment and hand it in with plenty of time to print it out, submit it, pack for Ireland, print out my Ryanair boarding pass, and pick up my train tickets which I’d had delivered to the university for my convenience. I finish my assignment and go to print it out, but the university printer network is temporarily down. That’s okay, I think, I have so much else to do that I can come back in two hours when it’s back up again. I ask the guy at the front desk in the library if he knows anything about when they will be back up, and he replies that I’ll have to go and see the IT Helpdesk; he knows nothing abouti t. That’s RIDICULOUS. The line for the IT Helpdesk is twenty-people long. As IF the Helpdesk wouldn’t be in communication with the MAIN RECEPTION so they could answer that question.
Anyway, then I head to the post room, where I’ve never been before. I give the man my student card and ask if there’s any mail for me. There isn’t. Huh, I think … Odd. They should’ve arrived like, yesterday. Then I remember that we paid for the tickets on Tilly’s credit card, so they might have been delivered under her name but to my address, because I definitely put my address on there. I call Tilly because they probably won’t give something addressed to her to me. She doesn’t answer. I call her a further twenty-eight times. She doesn’t answer. Since there’s nothing else to be done, I head back home to pack my bag and write a plaintive status update, which Tilly sees and calls me.
We meet back up again at the mail room and she sees if she has any mail under my address. She doesn’t. I decide to call the train company and tell them my tickets haven’t been delivered, but I’m in the middle of uni with none of my details or reference numbers so the guy isn’t very helpful, and I end up running out of credit halfway through anyway. I buy more credit and call from my room. He insists that they have been delivered. I return to the mail room once again with Tilly and this time we try her address and her name, in case they saw her name addressed to the wrong flat and put the mail in what they thought was the right one. There’s no mail for her at her address either. By this time they’ve seen me three times in like, two hours, and I just decide to explain the whole situation. Then he informs me that for registered mail it’s my responsibility to check a separate list. HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW!?
Anyway, the tickets are there but it’s now quarter to three and my assignment still isn’t printed. We go to the computer labs in case the printers are working there, but they’re not. I decide it’s best to just go to the English Lit office and ask them what to do, since no one else must be able to print their assignments either. On the way I call a taxi to arrive at three to take me to the train station, but the lady on the phone says I’ll want it now if I’m going to make it through traffic by three-thirty. This means I have to bolt to the office because the taxi is on its way. When I get there, the receptionist tells me the library has been taking down people’s details and saving their documents to be printed and collected later, with notes explaining why they’re late. But this doesn’t help me because I have to leave NOW. As a sign that the universe still loves me, my lecturer for that subject somehow happened to be outside the office photocopying things at that exact moment, and I flustered at her until she agreed to accept my assignment by email, thank GOD.
I then RUSH to the place I’d arranged for the taxi to come to, and despite all that, I miss my train by a minute. I thought I was screwed but I hadn’t counted on the politeness of the English. I explained my situation and the lady at the desk gave me a free ticket. Bizarre. That would never happen in Australia. If you miss your train you miss your train. Harden up. Drink some concrete. Rub some dirt in it.
Anyway, from here on out things settled down and started working out for me. Little did I know my good luck wasn’t to continue, but more on that later.
The only thing I was really worried about at this point was that I hadn’t printed my Ryanair boarding pass, an offense for which they make you a pay forty pound fee. I somehow needed to find a place when I got to London where I could access the internet and print it out – but at six o’clock at night? I couldn’t even do that in Sydney, let alone a city I had no idea about. My first objective was to find a cafe that had free wireless, which was surprisingly difficult. A calm had fallen over me, however, because of the way everything had worked out with the previous disaster. I felt at one with the universe (haha), and was enjoying the experience of being alone in London on an adventure.
When I emerged from the Underground, there was a man standing there with a megaphone saying things like, ‘Do not ask questions like “Who created God?” Leave these to the theologians … Please carry on towards your next material purchase’ etc. It was really entertaining and he had a bit of a crowd around him. I recorded some footage on my iPod but I don’t think this site lets you upload mp4s.
I eventually found a Pret cafe (which I really love: they’re really quirky and they’re either genuine or canny in their environmentally friendly marketing) that had free internet, and googled ‘printing internet access London’. I found a nearby internet cafe and navigated my way to it slowly. I think it was called the Galaxy Internet Cafe or something, and there was some pretty cool street art around:
 
On the way back I came across these kind of art exhibition things and nearly went past, but then I made myself go in and have a look and start a conversation with someone. I did it, but once again I didn’t account for the differeing national character. Where the English politeness had helped me before, I now ran afoul of Londoner standoffishness. Pretty sure if someone who was obviously a backpacker came up and started to have a conversation  with someone in Australia they’d be up for it, but they seemed kind of weird about being approached. Still glad I made myself do it though.
 I stayed that night in Stansted because my flight the next morning was really early – like, five or something.  Somehow, because I’d been staying up so late recently, I thought it would be a good idea to stay up all night because it’d be easier than making myself go to sleep early. This was a plan doomed from its outset. I ended up having an hour of sleep and desperately wanting more.
And now, the sad conclusion of my bad luck: I arrived in Cork, met Charlene at the airport and instantly began talking the way we do. While doing so I wandered around taking photos haplessly, not realising what I’d done. I’d lost my wallet.
Appreciating a dew-covered statue of a hurler during those last moments of innocent joy …
Obviously I went all around the airport talking to people but to no avail. And I got really pissed off because of the dismissive way the staff on the whole treated me. It just wouldn’t happen in Australia. They wouldn’t just say ‘Sorry, nothing’s been reported’ – they’d suggest what you should do next, who you should talk to, where you could leave your phone number. So frustrating! Service is so bad on this side of the world!
Anyway, that was a really crap way to start my trip in Cork. But I got over it eventually. It was the credit cards I was most worried about, and they’re all sorted now. I lost about a hundred Euro, but that was the worst of it. In those last minutes before I realised I’d lost my wallet I took the picture below of a crow sitting on a sign, but as I took it, it flew off, which augured my bad luck ‘flying off’ because after that I was all good.
Losing my wallet though, did force a temporary stop to my travelling giving campaign. Right before I left I watched an interview with Australian philosopher Peter Singer, where he talked about his aim to change the culture of giving so that donation was an ordinary thing – something which you would expect any decent person to do. You could meet people, conceivably, and casually say, ‘Oh, so who do you donate to?’ I really like this idea, but if I’m going to donate to one organisation I want to do my research and work out which cause suits me, which one I really want to give my money to, and I haven’t done that yet. I can’t really explain it, I suspect because it doesn’t make sense, but I feel a kind of guilt being in someone else’s country and being better off than them. Here I am, a visitor, a traveller in London and there’s a homeless man whose country this is, and I’m better off than him. I just made a promise to myself that, while travelling, I would give something to everyone who asked it of me – even if it’s just always the smallest coin in my pocket (although I think giving single pennies away is more insulting than anything else). I know it’s irrational, but I don’t think giving can really be a bad thing, so I’m happy to keep doing it. It’s either homeless people, charity workers, or buskers, so the money’s never going somewhere it shouldn’t.
Anyway, onto actual Cork. This was my second visit, and Charlz and I basically fell into our old habit of waking up late, wandering around the city, going somewhere for breakfast, then spending the day until dinner in a cafe somewhere drinking coffees and hot chocolates. I’ve really missed our seven-hour conversation marathons in Gloria Jean’s back home, so we had to take advantage of the time we had. It’s hard spending so much time in cafes, though, because they don’t really have the flat white over here, and back home it’s the standard staple caffeinated drink. Without my flat whites I don’t know what to order. Lattes are pretty close, but they come in big effeminate glasses and I feel like an idiot. And cappuccinos? Eh, I don’t really like froth. Luckily, I think the flat white is starting to take hold. I’ve seen it on a few menus with a ‘New!’ sticker next to it, such as at Eat in London. They had it in the Cork Costa, but it was obviously really new and they were trying to fan the flame of its success. They had a deal where you could try it and if you didn’t like it you could have your regular coffee free, but they wouldn’t let you have it in any greater quantity than a small because of the risk, haha.
 Cafe dwelling.
  Beautiful Cork.

This time I made a point of taking a photo of Mr Connolly’s bookshop. Lonely Planet has named him as an integral part of Cork’s culture, and he’s a very interesting man. He resents being turned into a tourist attraction, and while I was talking to him (because Charlene knows him) he told someone off for trying to take a photo of him without his permission. I was therefore a bit apprehensive about taking this photo, in case he thought that’s what I was doing, but I got away without getting in trouble.

 
 That’s James Joyce out the front, there.
On Charlene’s actual birthday we followed much the same routine as usual, going to cafes and stuff.
 
 
 Entertaining nonsensical tryhard sachets.
A disappointing iced coffee – the Europeans just don’t get it.

We also went out to dinner at Charlene’s favourite restaurant, Scoozi’s, where I gave a brief speech in an attempt to embarrass her.

 
 Antics.

Anyway, I think this post’s gone on long enough!

Luke

Posted by  |  April 23, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, Ireland, Rants, The UK | Leave a comment

University of east anglia: a crytoscopophiliac’s dream

Luke Bagnall from UEA, Norwich, UK here, writing about mine and my girlfriend Tilly’s experience of everyday English university life.
You know what’s not the most encouraging thing to hear every time you mention the name of the place you’ve elected to study abroad for six months of your life? ‘Norwich, eh? That’s – that’s really … out of the way. Why would you want to go to Norwich?’ For months, I heard this from everyone – from family in Newcastle to the attendant at the ticket gate in London. Thankfully, their comments were misguided. Norwich is great.
And how could it not be? It comes with the Stephen Fry seal of approval. Apparently he’s obssessed with Norwich. Here’s what he has to say about it:
‘Norwich is a fine city. None finer. If there is another city in the United Kingdom with a school of painters named after it, a matchless modern art gallery, a university with a reputation for literary excellence which can boast Booker Prize-winning alumni, one of the grandest Romanesque cathedrals in the world, and an extraordinary new state-of-the-art library then I have yet to hear of it.’
And I’m pretty impressed with the University of East Anglia as well.
Our first night, we arrived and almost immediately wanted to just settle into our respective rooms, which I speculate is the result of a month of itineracy.
My room, with all the documentation required to go on exchange.

I’m on the top floor of Norfolk Terrace B Block, and Til’s across the field from me on the bottom floor of Suffolk Terrace B Block. It’s kind of cool – I can see into her kitchen from mine because UEA is made exclusively of windows and concrete. The windows are pretty; the concrete notsomuch, but apparently all the buildings have been listed and they’re not allowed to change them.  I think that’s okay, though, because the buildings are so distinctive. Norfolk Terrace was just used on the cover of the new Streets album:

The windows come in handy – I can climb through Til’s when I want to visit. That admittedly isn’t very often because Til lives with four other girls and about seven guys, all of whom are around eighteen, so her kitchen is generally pretty hilariously filthy, meaning we cook and eat at mine a lot more.

Told you they come in handy.
The first couple of days we were a bit too cool for any of the orientation activities. Don’t know why. I guess we thought buying essentials like soap and towels and food in town was more important than a scavenger hunt after six hours of orientation speeches from every official in the damn bureaucracy of the university (not a slight against UEA in particular; I imagine all unis do it). We did however go to Zest that first night, which is kind of like a UEA equivalent to Fuel Silo (which I hear is now just called ‘Fuel’ – ridiculous). They have three or four ready-made meal options every day which are usually pretty good quality, and you can get a drink and a soup or dessert for five pounds. In fact, we’re going there tonight. As well as the scavenger hunt, we missed the guided tour of the university, which bit me in the butt later when I had no idea where any of my classes were. But we’ve taken the initiative to explore it a few times ourselves:
These excursions were necessitated by the beauty of the campus, as you can see above (I think it’s quite similar to UOW’s – lots of space and fields; apparently it was once a golf course), but also by the absurd timetabling system instituted by the uni this semester, which everyone seems to be up in arms about. No classes have stable rooms, but have to move around the campus to different rooms every week. Everyone hates it, but as a visiting student it does give me more of a chance to see the uni.
Every Friday morning there’s a fire alarm test, which is usually really rough ’cause I have a four-day weekend that starts Thursday and I’m usually still asleep. The first week it happened we didn’t know what was going on, and Barbara, another exchange student, and I had a hesitant conversation in the hallway about whether we were supposed to evacuate or not. No one else seemed to be emerging from their rooms, so we gathered this was normal and I went back to bed. Then there’s also our lovely cleaner Debbie who comes in every morning to collect my bin. She really likes our flat and doesn’t report us when our kitchen is messy, I think because they endeared themselves to her last semester with the help of a clean-freak Australian who was on exchange but has since left. She’s really funny and, as my flatmates say, ‘proper Norfolk’, which means I sometimes can’t understand her. She also mops the carpet because the vaccuum (‘hoover’) doesn’t reach down the end of the hallway, which I find hysterical.
In the first half of semester I think I was drinking nearly every day … Everybody always wanted to go to the pub, and there were flat parties every night, and lots of clubs to try out in town. For a while our nights would follow a general pattern of going to the  campus bar or someone’s apartment for predrinks, then going to the trashy on-campus club, the ‘LCR’ (no idea what that stands for) or a flat party and meeting someone who would invite a small group of people back to their flat to continue partying. Once this resulted in being in some guy’s room with four or five other people next to a gigantic pile of prescription drugs. That was weird. I think we were partying so much at first because only international students and first years really live on campus at UEA, and both of those groups are prone to drink quite a lot. Unfortunately though, Suffolk terrace, ‘the party block’ got banned from having any parties this semester, just after we’d been told how legendary the parties of Tilly’s flat were.

At LCR (photo by Kelia Bergin)
And as testament to the trashiness of the LCR, there’s this Facebook group called ‘Get a Room‘, where people take photos of themselves with other people hooking up in the background. We contributed some ourselves:
 The LCR has themed nights every week, and on Commando night our local Creative Writing friends introduced us to ‘death punch’, a radioactive-green poison comprised of great quantities of vodka, energy drink and mixers, that makes you pretty hypo. Luckily I only sampled – my friends Rob, Sam and George on the other hand, had a pretty messy night:

Another time, post-LCR, we went MATTRESS SURFING on the apartment stairs, which is obviously SO FUN:
(Picture by Kate Crowell)
But while they love their death punch over here, they don’t drink goon … Thankfully there’s one brand of cheap cask wine stocked in the UFO (Union Food Outlet), although it’s a paltry three litres as opposed to the mighty five-litre juggernaut that is Berri Estates Fruity White. My American friend Sam and I brought a box to our other, English friend Kim’s house and she actually tried to pierce the sack with a knife because she was so unfamiliar with the concept. What do impoverished students drink if not a good old goon sunrise!?
We’ve been going to Kim’s a lot to watch Dollhouse and Diehard and, on Pancake Day, eat pancakes, which has been great. We’ve also been to see her boyfriend’s band, Late Arrivals Club, play a few gigs, and seen her reading poetry one night too.

(Photo by Kim Sherwood)

Walking those pretty Norwich streets.

 Late Arrivals Club at the Cinema City Bar.
Scrabble before the Late Arrivals Club gig at the Bicycle Shop.
Finding a wizard at Frank’s Bar.
The three ghosts of Checked Church (when Sam, Nick and I realised we were coincidentally all wearing the same pattern).
Kim’s poetry reading at the Norwich Arts Centre.
I met Kim one day after class when she, Sam and I happened to be the last three people in the room and got to talking about Joss Whedon, after which she invited us over to watch the abovementioned Dollhouse. The three of us, sometimes on our own and sometimes with other creative writers, frequently have discussions that go until ridiculous hours of the morning, solving all of the world’s ills through debate. It’s very satisfying. The other night we stayed till six in the morning, despite having class at eleven.
All this socialising has resulted in my perfection of my hangover breakfast – freezing cold iced mocha, freezing cold apple juice, and bacon, egg, cheese, barbecue sauce, tomato sauce, butter, and freshly ground salt and pepper on chewy white rolls. Oh God.

I’ve been fairly disappointed with the food in Britain so far. I didn’t know it was renowned for bad food until recently, but it certainly does live up to that reputation. It’s not TERRIBLE, it’s just of a noticeably different standard to home. I think I might’ve expected it to be better than ours due to that inferiority complex of Australia’s I mentioned in my earlier post, ‘Impressions of the emerald isle’. I have had one amazing meal, though, on Valentine’s Day in the Library Bar and Restaurant. GOD, that was good!:

Another exception to the crap food rule was the amazing ‘Sunday roast’ we had the other night at my friend Rob’s house. I guess it doesn’t apply to home cooked food. I also have to mention Norfolk Apple Juice, of which I drank over a litre in fifteen minutes the other night because it is SO GOOD. But other than my own hangover breakfasts (and even their bacon is weird and spongey), the Library, the apple juice and also pasties, which are amazing, there’s little to get excited about culinarily – at least not in my experience. Even the water here tastes all awful and thin (Wikipedia suggests this may be due to lower levels of fluoridation here) Service in restaurants and shops is really bad as well. I miss the friendly Australian waiters who come over just to check if everything’s all right and if you want more water or anything. I’m REALLY missing Asian bakeries; the English just do not know how to make good bread, or even seem to want to. Barbara hates it as well, and when her boyfriend visited from Austria, she got him to bring some proper bread from home, and we had a little celebration in the kitchen:
As for UK life in general, outside of food, I’m generally loving it. I love that everyone reminds me of characters from Skins or The Inbetweeners. I love the words they use for parts of their houses that we don’t (loft, larder, landing, conservatory). I’m really going to miss never being hot, never having to worry that the bit of blanket brushing your leg in the middle of the night is a deadly spider (many times I’ve flinched, then thought ‘Oh wait, it’s England, nothing can kill you here’), and not having to seal or Gladwrap any food to keep it from cockroaches.
This is the worst I’ve seen so far – no harm from this guy.
Some observations on the British character:
  • Everything you’ve heard about tea consumption and politeness is true.
  • They’re AWFUL at giving directions. Literally every single person we’ve asked has given us a massive spiel detailing every possible route with any additional information they can think of. I’ve never seen a trait so present in every member of any society. And the way they do it is by mentioning landmarks along the way that are just confusing because you don’t know the area anyway: ‘You’ll come up on the fish and chip shop, keep going past that until you get to the paper shop and turn right, then look out for the post office on the right etc etc’.
  • They say things like ‘To be fair’ and ‘In fairness’ on the front of all their sentences, regardless of whether or not it makes sense, and Til and I have found ourselves picking up this and other habits of British emphasis and rhythm in speech.
  • They’re a bit morbid in weird ways. One really strange example is calling ‘op shops’ ‘hospice shops’. Why would you want to make explicit the link between the secondhand clothes you’re buying and the recently dead person who used to own them? Just weird …

  • It’s really strange to me how they don’t have a way. You know how in Australia there’s a way you walk when someone is coming towards you, i.e. left. You always keep left. You drive on the left and walk on the left and if you’re on the right you’re wrong and you have to move left to let the person coming towards you past. Well here they don’t have a way. They drive on the left, but all their tube signs say keep right, but in everyday life they just go whichever way. Apparently, my friend Gilly tells me, this has given rise to a cheesy joke of a man saying, ‘Shall we dance?’ when that awkward thing happens where you both move the same way to let each other past.
  • And finally, they really love their trashy crap. Nowhere is this more apparent than in their general taste in music and TV. They’re definitely not yet over the boy band or the gameshow. I’m starting to think they don’t have any good quality television. Their favourite programs consist entirely of those trashy shows that you guiltily enjoy but only permit yourself to watch one of because otherwise your brain will euthanise itself. These include such stunning televisual works of genius as X Factor, which is almost universally talked about; Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, where rowdy teenagers are sent on vacation and voyeuristically spied upon by their parents; My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (what else is there to say?); Take Me Out, which only ran for about six weeks in Australia before being kicked to afternoon TV, The Weakest Link, which finished, what, TEN YEARS AGO, back home?; and, of course, Hollyoaks and Neighbours.
The untaxing timetable at UEA has allowed us to do work, socialise, be tourists, and yet still have our share of indulgent lazy days, most notably the time we bought a tub of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and added chocolate bits and Nutella. The internet is also irresistably fast over here, which means I’m now up to season 14 of Survivor. I went without internet access in my room for about a month when I first arrived because the instructions explicitly stated to plug the cable into the ‘data’ socket, not the ‘voice’ socket, and it took me that long to just try the latter, which, of course, worked immediately. Luckily there’s some mysterious wireless network called ‘Bryan’s Guest network’ which we’re not supposed to be able to access but which we can from our kitchen because our flat somehow has the password.

But back to the lax timetable (eight hours a week). It’s really different academically here. That four-day weekend I mentioned has done wonders for my sleeping pattern, NOT, but that might make life easier transitioning to the late-night lifestyle of Europe, when we go over there, and then also with jetlag when we come home. The quality of teaching here, I think, is largely on par with UOW, but the style of teaching I’m less keen on. It’s really self-directed, and there’s this attitude of, ‘By third year, we’ve taught you all we can and now it’s up to you’, which I find laughable because there’s ALWAYS something more to be taught. And you know, you pay a lot of money to get taught at uni, not to just do your own independent work. I also have to say I was expecting a higher quality of writing from my third-year Creative Writing class, just because of the university’s reputation in Literature and Creative Writing, but it’s largely no better, if not worse, than the standard at home. I think it’s because they don’t have a full degree in Writing here like they do at home, so they necessarily can’t devote as much time to honing the craft as you can at UOW. I think the Masters program is the one that might deserve its reputation. Sadly I see UOW has just overhauled its Creative Arts degree and almost halved the number of Creative Writing subjects on offer, making the model more similar to UEA’s and possibly diminishing the quality of future students’ experience.

But if the quality of writing coming out of the undergraduate program isn’t extremely high, the attitude to the arts and study is much better here. There’s a real culture of appreciating literature and art that just doesn’t exist back home, where you often feel embarrassed saying you’re studying Arts or Creative Arts. Never in my life have I met so many impassioned people, had so many amazing philosophical/religious/political conversations with truly intellectual people. I think at home we cringe if we talk too much about that stuff, or we worry people will think we’re wankers.

Early on in the semester we got a visit from Gilly and Elisa, the latter of whom is also posting on this blog, which was great fun. It was our first real exploration of Norwich, and we got totally lost despite Brian Blessed’s GPS contributions. I’m still not quite sure what went wrong, but I think it came down to not taking note of which carpark in which shopping centre we parked in. The visit was cut short, though, by Gilly’s need to renovate her house and by Elisa’s thinking that her flight was two days earlier than it actually was, which you can read about below in her own account of that weekend.

That about sums up my experience of living on campus in the UK so far. I thought I’d leave you with this striking image of me on an aptly named street in Norwich:

Posted by  |  April 23, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, Rants, The UK | 1 Comment

Mardi Gras in New Orleans

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On the 4th of March we headed up to New Orleans (Nola) for the annual Mardi Gra festival. This well known party is known all around the world. My friends who came to Miami on ecxchange last year told me I had to go, the organising was a bit last minute as we did not have a hotel booked or flights. On the friday morning we packed our stuff, hired a mini van and left at about 11pm for New Orleans, Louisiana. This was our frist road trip and an epic one at that as its a 14 hour drive.

The next few days were filled with excitement, joy, colours, alcohol, beads, more beads, partying, screaming floats, and NO SLEEP! March was a crazy month which started off with Mardi Gras then Spring break then ULTRA music (festival)!

Nola is a realy nice city and i enjoyed every aspect of it from Bourbon St’s frezy to the live jazz bands and dancing on the street in the French quarter. The music, the people, the city made Nola one of my favourite experiences in the United States.

Fried chicken is a must in Louisina as they are known for making some of the best in the country, I got a chance to try it which was a treat and it sure tasted yummy!

Posted by  |  April 22, 2011 | Categories: Festivals, The US | 1 Comment

BULA from Fiji!!!

As I look through this blog I see so much snow, cosy jackets and other signs of freezing weather. While most other exchange students have to deal with acclimatising to the cold of the northern hemisphere, I’m slowly getting accustomed to the sweaty temperature of the tropics. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to actually believe that I’m studying in Fiji.

When boarding the plane to Fiji I was surrounded by honeymoon couples and families already wearing their sarongs and sunglasses, ready for the usual one to two week holiday to this beautiful country. When asked by other passengers how long I was staying, I still remember the shocked looks I got when I said I was staying in Fiji for five months. Before I left people just could not understand that there was more to Fiji than palm trees and cocktails. The most common response I got was “is there really a university in Fiji?” Yes, the University of the South Pacific and what an amazing university it is. Each and every day that I am here I am realising that this is one of the most fascinating places to study.  The University of the South Pacific is extremely unique as it is a regional university. This means that there are not only students here from Fiji but students from the other 12 partner countries. These countries include Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Samoa. It still gets confusing trying to figure out which countries all my friends come from (and I learnt very quickly to make sure not to mix up Samoans and Tongans).

It is so amazing to study development in a country described as ‘developing’, surrounded by students from all over the region. In the very first ‘Geography and Development in the Pacific’ class I had, the lecturer told us that for our research project we had to do our own research. He gave the example that we could go to the squatter settlement just 200 meters from the classroom. Literally I can almost see a squatter settlement (and also the ocean) from my classroom.

One day I was sitting with a close Samoan friend talking about marriage and weddings. She casually stated that she wanted to wait until her father had passed away before she got married. I was shocked at the casual way she said this and asked her why. I ended up finding out that she is the daughter of a head Samoan chief who is also the associate Minister of Health in the national parliament. Because of this her wedding would be like a national event. She explained to me just some of the complex rituals that would have to take place. Sitting on the floor of the dorm at midnight just chatting to these Samoan girls was probably the most interesting anthropology lesson I have ever had.

One of the best things about this university is the field trips. The most memorable one so far has been a three day village trip for my “Agriculture and nutrition in the developing world’ class. The first day of the trip we spent stopping along the way to visit different commercial and subsistence farms. It was so fascinating as I have never learnt much about agriculture and what a better way to learn then standing in a hot (never been so hot in my entire life) cassava field with a farmer, in the interior of Fiji. Arriving at Lutu village and meeting the family I was staying with was so wonderful. The next day I spent the morning with the elderly women of the village as they taught us how they weave mats. It included collecting the pandanus leaves, scrapping of the hard edges, drying, boiling the leaves, drying them again, smoothing them, cutting and then finally beginning to weave. They also explained to us the importance of the mats and how much they mean to women in Fiji. That afternoon one of the men in the village took a friend and I to his dalo (taro) plot, were we helped him dig up some dalo for dinner. Later that night us students held a cultural performance night. It was amazing to see dances from Tonga, Kirribati, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Fiji and French Canada, and they were all people in my class… Amazing! Throughout the time we were there they were always trying to explain to us about their livelihood and culture. They were so proud and content about their lives. I learnt once again that communities like these are the ones with so much wisdom. They live life the way it was meant to be lived. They in many ways are developed, we are the underdeveloped.

I realise that there are three things that are important to Fijians; Kava, Rugby and Church. What surprised me at the beginning was that Islanders can be very shy especially around international students. Many presume (and sometimes they are right) that the international students are more than happy to stay together and they are shocked when you actually show interest that you want to do more than just be acquaintances. Some of the highlights of the exchange experience is the moment were you transfer from being that Australian exchange student to being part of the group. And every time that it has happened, it has been while doing one of the three things mentioned above.  Yesterday I was playing a game of touch rugby with some friends and like usually failing pretty badly. Then it was announced that due to the fact that we had been playing for so long, the sun had almost disappeared and that no one was bothering to score that whatever team scored next would be the winners.  The game went on and I was trying so hard not to completely stuff it up for my team, as the guys especially were getting extremely competitive.  As  I was concentrating on the guy who I was meant to be defending I surprised everyone (including myself) by intercepting the ball and charging towards the try line (or the invisible line between a pair of thongs and a fallen coconut :)). Unfortunately my little legs couldn’t run fast enough and I was touched before I scored. But as I turned around every player was on the ground in hysterical laughter because I took everyone by surprised. As I left to go home every single one of them, including all the guys shook my hand and high fived me saying goodbye Katie. Suddenly I was no longer the white girl, I was Katie.

Kava is also a massive, massive thing in Fiji. Approximately 10 kava ceremonies down and I still cannot understand what is the huge appeal of drinking dirty looking water that taste revolting and makes your mouth go numb. But I’m slowly learning to block out the horrible taste and enjoy the amazing discussions and moments that occur around a Kava bowl.

Sometimes I feel like exchange is a bit like a balancing act. I’m still trying to figure out how to balance study and all the other things an exchange experience has to offer. Some weekends I choose to stay back in Suva to finish an essay and not go travelling with the other international students. I feel sometimes that I will end up regretting studying when I could be snorkelling on an island. But other times I realise how much I am learning and that studying human rights in the common room with a girl from Tonga and another from Vanuatu is experiencing the true life of a university student in Fiji. Other times it also is a balancing act between working hard to build friendships with Fijian and regional students or hanging out with the other international students. Sometimes I feel guilty that I am spending too much time with the other international students and therefore I am missing out on other cultural experiences. Then I realise that spending time with the other international students, who are mostly from the USA can be at times more of a cultural experience than hanging out with friends who live in Suva. I’ve learnt so much about Americans while I am here. Some of them I love and others are so different from me in their attitudes and goals for their time in Fiji.  I’ve actually begun a list of crazy things other international students have said. At the top of my list and my current favourites are “is Wales in New Zealand?” and “Katie, why don’t you have an Australian accent?” (still don’t understanding what accent they think I have).

One of the biggest things I have had to adjust to is what is commonly referred to as “Fiji Time”. As a person who is usually pretty punctual, it has taken a while to actually force myself not to be on time to things. But still I seem to rush to the place I need to be, overtaking about 100 people to get there on time, realise that I’m in Fiji and no other Fijians are yet to arrive. Then I wait around for half an hour or more. But then occasionally something will start on time and all the Fijians are there on time. I still haven’t figured out when a set time is a vague suggestion and when it actually is going to start on time.  Luckily it never really bothers me too much and is really teaching me the true meaning of patience.

Another 3 important things to islanders are family, laughter and generosity. One of my favourite things to do is go to the cinema in Suva to watch a movie. I don’t go just to take advantage of the $3.50 prices but to hear the Fijians hysterically laugh. Even in the most serious movies they still find moments to laugh at. I also have had to stop complementing my friends on their appearances or one of their belongings. I’ve already got a collection of bracelets, necklaces, a fan and even offered a shirt all because the moment you say you like it they take it off and hand it to you and no matter how many times you offer it back they won’t except it.

I like a recent comment made by another exchange student- “Fiji softens the heart and hardens your feet!”. I’m only half way through my exchange but already know that Fiji and the lessons I have learnt here will always be a part of me

Posted by  |  April 19, 2011 | Categories: Fiji, Time to reflect, Transition phase | 6 Comments

Winchester II: return to gilly’s

Luke Bagnall again, writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom about mine and my girlfriend Matilda’s visit to our friend Gilly’s and our daytrip to Oxford. It was a while ago, so I can’t actually really remember the order in which we did a lot of things, so I’m just gonna spew them out.
Typically (since I love food so much) I remember having a lot of good dinners – a massive roast and some spaghetti bolognese in particular. So good!
We also went around town on a pub crawl where Gilly’s frequent proclamation of the superiority of English pubs to Australian pubs was finally and resoundingly proven to us. The first thing about English pubs: there are so many of them. Every tiny little town has them. A couple of posts ago, I mentioned Alnmouth, a tiiiny one-road village on a tiiiiny peninsula. Even it had at least three.
Winchester has so many that Gilly has a different pub for every mood. Another thing is that a lot of them have charming, vaguely racist names that I assume must be relics from an earlier time, like the Saracen’s/Arab’s Head or, the best one we went to, the Black Boy. It was absolutely crazy in there – junk everywhere. In retrospect, we should’ve taken some photos. And the third English pub fact is that they’re really tolerant of dogs. Welcoming, even. We saw at least two or three, and the Bishop on the Bridge (I think) even had snacks for them.
Another night we went to see The King’s Speech at the cool Winchester cinema, which is an old barn or church or something. Obviously the movie was fantastic, and it had sold out the previous night, apparently due to the posh Winchester viewing public (the conservative old folk behind us took indignant exception to the lesbian scenes in the preview of Black Swan).
We also did a day trip to Oxford with Gilly as our fearless guide. First stop was Alice’s shop, a shop where the supposed real-life inspiration for Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland bought sweets.
We then continued on to the Church of St Mary the Virgin to go up its tower and see Oxford from above. Having just seen The King’s Speech, we were obliged to practice our royal waves as well.
 
We also had lunch in The White Horse pub where we were entrusted with a talkative Englishman’s electronic goods, and spent a bit too long in a cavernous bookshop.

One of the things I’m loving about England is the historical/architectural/artistic sites just scattered casually about the cities:
 
The Bodleian Library was one of the highlights of the day. We went there early on and went to a free exhibition about the Shelley family featuring information, letters, first editions and diaries relating to Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, which was fascinating. We came back later for a short tour.
The other two places we visited were the museum, where I saw a couple of familiar faces from my days of Year 12 Ancient History:
 and Magdalen college with its mythical statues which supposedly inspired the stone garden scene in CS Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
 
Tilly and I were so jealous of the students riding around the city on their bikes. We felt like we were missing out on something – this community of academic supremacy and aristocratic wealth that we were sitting outside of. Gilly wasn’t jealous, though, she said it would probably be so snobbish, which is probably true. At one point we saw this couple walking down the street and the street and they just looked SO RICH. And aryan. They were blonde and brown and dressed from head to toe in cashmere haha.
During our stay at Gilly’s we had been watching episodes of Gilly’s favourite, the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. On the  night before we left, she and I stayed up to some ridiculous hour watching all of them, despite having to travel to uni the next day. Worked out for the best though, ’cause I was to study P&P this semester and I hadn’t read it by the first week when we were discussing it, so I at least had the adaptation to fall back on.
That’s all for now. My next posts will be about university life in Norwich this semester, and then a detailing of my further adventures in Ireland!
Luke Bagnall

Posted by  |  April 16, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, Only in..., The UK | Leave a comment

Hey all, Luke Bagnall here, recording mine and my girlfriend Matilda’s travels through Europe during our exchange trip to the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom. Here’s my account of our trip to Bath.
Somehow the eleven-hour car/bus/train trip to Bath from Grandpa’s in Newcastle wasn’t too bad. I dunno. The coach probably had a window ledge. Or it could’ve had something to do with the rest at Grandpa’s and the FEAST they gave us to take on the road.
You know that moment on a plane or a bus when it stops and you’re waiting to get off. And you’re standing there, and standing, and standing, and you’re like, ‘What could POSSIBLY be taking the people in front of me this long!?’ or ‘How hard is it for them to just open the doors and let us off now!?’ I hate that moment. But when we were getting off the coach in London to get the train to Bath it was ridiculous. I joked about going out the fire exit, which was right next to us, and it turned out that we had to ’cause the bus driver couldn’t get the door open.
Bath was the worst backpackers yet, I’d say. It smelled really bad, I got bitten by bedbugs, and it was full of weirdos – the dude on the bunk below me was like, obsessive about his space and he would throw my blanket back up onto my bed if it dangled off the edge a little. But on the upside, it incentivised us to stay out all day seeing the sights of Bath. The first day we went to Bath Abbey (below), which was free except for a ‘suggested donation’ of two pounds that they guilt you into paying (good old fashioned Catholic guilt; they also give you a pamphlet masquerading as information about the abbey, but it’s really just religious propaganda).
The Roman Baths cost a whopping eleven pounds, so we wrung it out for all it was worth. I swear we must’ve listened to ninety per cent of the audio tour items, including the special guest items recorded by famous travel writer Bill Bryson.
I thought this (below) was cool, how they have the extant parts of the famous Bath relief on display and project onto it what it would’ve looked like if it was still intact, and then what it would look like with colour:
Our diligence in listening to everything ended up paying off because you come to the main Roman Bath last, and we came to it at exactly the right time of day. It looked spectacular in the twilight:
Stalagmites forming like fried eggs
The next day we’d planned to go on a tour to nearby Stonehenge, but we’d used up all our travel diligence the day before and left it too late to book. So what did we do instead? That’s right, sat in Starbucks for about five hours catching up on the internet. Rousing.
We did end up going to this really nice, expensive restaurant that night though, called the Hole in the Wall because it’s kind of … subterranean? And has a tiny little door in a wall.
Neither our wallets nor our palates being robust enough for the desserts in the Hole in the Wall, and wanting to delay our return to the stinky Bath Backpackers by any means, we went out in search of a (cheap) ‘clean, well-lighted place’ where we could stay long into the night in the shadow of the leaves, annoying young waiters and omitting adjectives from our speech (I’m referencing a really good Hemingway story here, for those of you who don’t do Creative Writing). Til was hesitant about wandering the streets at this time of night due to the murder of that girl in nearby Bristol (it turned out later that they arrested a guy in connection with the case and he worked in Bath), but we eventually found the Cafe Rouge and were safe. There we had a delicious brownie sundae or something and fiddled with the DSLR:

I can’t wait till Summer when we’re backpacking through Spain, France, Italy etc and we can find real clean, well-lighted places to go and have coffee in at three in the morning.
We had a brief stop at the Jane Austen museum, which was interesting, and I nearly bought an ‘I heart Darcy’ sticker to send to my friend Clancy back home, who we joke has a bit bromance with another friend named Darcy. Should’ve at least taken a photo, but oh well. On our last day we also had breakfast in the oldest house in Bath, Sally Lunn’s (below), makers of the famous Sally Lunn Bun, the recipe of which has a very romantic story of being brought from France and hidden in a secret cupboard and discovered after her death. Just tasted like a regular bun to me, but the British have crappy bread standards.
We had a great time in Bath, although it was strange because it’d been built up so much in our minds that it still managed to be the tiniest bit disappointing. The whole trip up till Bath when we were travelling we would tell people where we were planning to go and they’d always be like, ‘Oh, you’ll love Bath. Bath’s gorgeous. You’ll have an amazing time in Bath.’ Which we did, but, you know, it wasn’t SPECTACULAR. Our Europe on a Shoestring book said if you’re only doing one city outside of London in England it should be Bath. Don’t know if I’d agree with that. The old bits are amazing but the new bits in the heart of town are all exactly the same and really … labyrinthine. But then there were some charming little alleys as well (below), as well as some great shops (especially for chocolates and doorknobs).
Luke Bagnall

Posted by  |  April 16, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, The UK | Leave a comment

Cheap flights: a warning for unwary travellers

Hi

Thought you might like an Irish look at cheap flights – but I think it’s a universal message! (It’s not finished until the bodhran player walks off stage)

Jan

Posted by  |  April 15, 2011 | Categories: I wish someone had told me, Ireland, Rants | 1 Comment

Grocery shopping and Doritos: an outsider’s experience

Grocery shopping in a foreign country even if that country is America, is a unique and confusing experience. Apart from the obvious problems with locating familiar brands at a grocery store, there’s also that feeling you get when you realise you aren’t going to find what you’re looking for, because it doesn’t exist.

Like Doritos for example.

Doritos Australia market a total of four Doritos products to their consumers; Cheese Supreme, Nacho Cheese, Original and Mexicana. The U.S market for Doritos has a remarkable 19 different flavours (remarkable to me perhaps) among them; Jalapeno, Fiery Buffalo, Spicy Nacho, Pizza Supreme and even Cheeseburger.

To my disappointment, this list of 19 doesn’t include one of Australia’s most commercially successful (and incidentally my favourite) Doritos flavour; Nacho Cheese. The yellow packaged Doritos (Nacho Cheese is actually packaged red in the United States and tastes completely different, just to be confusing). The experience of not being able to find Nacho Cheese is not the most impressive cultural slap across the face, but it’s still pretty mind-blowing. People tend to think of Australian consumers in much the same way as American consumers, and to be fair we are reasonably comparable; we eat fast food, we watch Hollywood films and listen to American produced music. But geographical and cultural influence still drives the market for some things, and I find that many of the goods available here in the States, would probably not enjoy a successful launch in Australia. Due to the Mexican influence here in California, the market for spicy foods is very wide. The standard flavour is almost always some variety of seasoned chilli, and as a white person with very limited tolerance to spicy food, I’ve suffered at the hands of Mexican cuisine. But of course, Americans love it. Spicy food in every form; sweet, savoury, cold-serve, warm-serve is available in excessive abundance.

Fortunately for me, Australia’s limited knowledge of Mexico and the wide variety of spices found there, means that we will remain with a single spicy version of Doritos, (which I didn’t know existed until I sought help from Google), and that’s okay by me since I can’t obtain any benefit from heterogeneity in spicy corn chips anyway.

Posted by  |  April 14, 2011 | Categories: Cultural differences, Mexico, The US, You eat what!? | 4 Comments

Oops..

O man I was just reminded of this when I got sent the link for the survey…

Anyhow, I’ve been in Germany for almost a month and a half and heaps has happened.

I found out that I actually like having my family around when I was travelling alone to Erlangen. It was a week. Horrible jet lag in London, followed by my tour of said city had been screwed up somewhere in the system. It was fun shopping though. (I’ve been told my sisters are thoroughly enjoying the video games, that although in pounds, were still half the price of the same ones back home). It was ironic that the day I flew out the sun came out. It was pretty sweet to see Stonehenge, but I found it funny that when in Bath the tourguides made no mention of the fact that King Edgar, first king of England was crowned at Bath Abbey, and instead went on about the Roman Baths.

So I flew to Germany, arriving in Frankfurt am Main about 7pm. It was dark and wet and you physically walk down the stairs onto the tarmack. I felt like JFK and then wet, as it was raining. I took a taxi to my hotel, and absolutely failed, almost got in the driver’s seat because everything is on the wrong side of the road here. Then in the pooring rain, in a Mercedes taxi, on the wrong side of the road, I decided I could never drive in Germany. My buddy here in Germany told me all about how hard it is to get your driver’s license. The way these people drive, I can understand why. Maybe they can drive the way they do because they had to be so well trained to get their licenses in the first place.

The language wasn’t too bad for me, I could confidentally say “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” and understood basic numbers so I functioned. Well, my impressions of Frankfurt weren’t so good, but that was probably because I had issues with getting money on my Travelex Card. (I did manage to forget that I had about 150 pounds on me, that could have easily converted to a larger amount of euro). O and also the language barrier is bad when, in a somewhat large city, lots of people refuse to, or just can’t speak much English. However, Nutella is huge here, so I’ve got a comfort food from home at my fingertips.

An exact week after I left Australia I arrived in Erlangen. To say I was impressed with the rail network is an understatement. Slightly expensive but when it seems to work so damn well, why wouldn’t you pay for it? I woke up on a sunday morning, my first morning in Erlangen, and there was snow all over the ground. I was so impressed. Here’s a picture of a frozen leaf.

I had heaps of fun, tramping around the town in the snow.

Apparently there is a saying about Erlangen. “They say that Erlangen makes you cry twice, once when you arrive and once when you have to leave.” Let’s see if the second half of the saying will come true too.

Posted by  |  April 11, 2011 | Categories: Fish out of water, Germany, I'm not from here | 2 Comments