I just had the funniest lecture. It was for Information Technology Critical Review which is the last core subject I have to take for my degree. The lecturer was a fairly old chinese woman (or so I could gather) named something-Sing-Moo. She has a very heavy accent which made it hard for most people to understand (which is why they got all rude and decided to talk really loudly most of the lecture, arseholes) but the life and energy she brings to a very dry subject is excellent. She really knows her stuff, which is great but most people (and I can already tell) will just think shes stupid cause they can't understand her. I really hate that. Anyway, throughout the whole lecture she seems to have this thing of refering to herself by name, going "Now you probably think, Sing Moo don't know anything" or "Sing Moo is sounding crazy" and so on, normally this might sound annoying but man does it ever sound cute/funny coming from her, it really put a smile on my face :) . The highlight of the lecture was when these guys came into the lecture with about 20 minutes to go (very late) and she says to one of them "Why you show up now? Party almost over dude" in her heavily accented voice, you do not understand how funny that sounded. Classic. I had a chat to her after the lecture cause I had to find out about what I was going to do about work requirements that are due when I'll be away, she helped me out and thought it was cool I was going on this trip. She says i can email her as much as I want about drafts for assignments etc so I can get them in early. I love you Sing Moo!

March 11

GTLS Delegates arrive in Singapore from five continents.
Lodging: Swissotel Merchant Court Hotel

March 12

Morning: I-SWAT projects at various Community Chest not-for-profit agencies across Singapore. Afternoon: Free time. Evening: Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo (optional).

March 13

Morning and afternoon: Free time. Evening: GTLS Welcome Dinner at Merchant Court Hotel. Keynote Speaker – Gerry Oh, Senior VP, Millennium & Copthorne Hotels International.

March 14

Morning: Sessions on “What Makes Singapore Unique?” and “Social Entrepreneurship” at the STB Auditorium. Lunch hosted by Honeywell. Afternoon: Honeywell Aerospace Site Visit, including executive remarks and a plant tour featuring a world class repair and overhaul facility. Late afternoon and Evening: Free time for students. Evening: Professors and administrators invited to I-SWAT Dinner at the home of Eunice Chua.

March 15

Morning: Nanyang Technological University (NTU) visit, including executive remarks and world class facility tours. Hosted lunch at NTU International House. Afternoon: Grand Hyatt Hotel site visit featuring the award winning “Green Energy Management (GEM)” program, including a behind the scenes tour. Evening: Sentosa Beach Boogie & Barbecue, hosted by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB).

March 16

Morning: Fly to Shanghai, Arriving mid-afternoon. Ride world’s fastest train (Mag-Lev) into the city. Lodging: The Bund Hotel. Evening: Shanghai Acrobatic Circus.
Thursday,

March 17

Morning: Shanghai University of Finance & Economics (SUFE) visit, including executive remarks and sessions on “Shanghai: City of the Future” and “Doing Business in China.” Hosted lunch in SUFE Executive Dining Room. Afternoon: Partner university showcase. Evening: Free time.

March 18

Morning: Boeing China and CATIC site visit, including executive remarks and a plant tour. Lunch hosted by Boeing. Afternoon: Free time. Evening: Farewell Dinner at the Peace Hotel.

March 19

Morning: Cultural tour, including the Shanghai Museum, Buddhist Temple, and Pearl Tower. Afternoon and Evening: Free time.

March 20

Morning and afternoon: Free time until departure.

Hello,

Time to let everyone in on what i guess is my little secret (although I didn't really want it to turn out like that). It has all now been confirmed that I will be participating in this The fifth annual Global Tech Leaders Symposium which is to be hosted in Singapore and Shanghai this year from March 12-20.

I applied to be apart of the Swinburne delegation just over a week ago, they were selecting only 10 students to go and I was lucky (although I must say that "Tha G" help me a lot with my application forms! Thank you!) to be selected! So the last couple of days since last Friday I've been tearing around getting all the appropiate offical Swinburne forms, Visas and whatnot ready, its been keeping me quite busy! I also was waiting to hear back on being selected to go to this which is an extension of the GTLS for only 2 students from each university to go visit a childrens orphanage in Cambodia to set up a computer/IT center for them. Unfortuently I wasn't selected (a bit bummed about it really as one of the two women who was going to select who went seemed pretty keen on sending me!) which is a shame because thats sort of the main reason why I wanted to go on this whole thing in the first place, I'd really just like to do some good for the world with the skills I have, and I think doing it in other parts of the world where I would personally appreciate it more to myself than just going out to like, Dunkeld and doing something there, would be better for me. Probably sounds selfish or showy or something but I really don't mean it like that, oh well, I don't get to do it anyway. But at least its started to turn the cogs in my mind about getting involved in these sort of activities more.

Anyway I must get to bed now, I guess I'll write more about this later. Started Uni today which also kept me busy with all the n00bs and organising text books and sitting in Contracts classes, all good fun.

Today was actually the first day in a long time I felt really productive with my time, that actually sorta shocked me and made me feel good at the same time.

Ok so I guess I'm not finishing the BDO blog, to put it short I the rest of the bands I saw in no particular order: The Streets (Really good, atmosphere was excellent and they really mixed up there sound live), Powderfinger (You couldn't get a more boring band, seriously), Le Tigre (Really really awesome stage show, there sound was very suited to the indoors venue it was in, although that was small, it was bloody loud too, and when I say its loud, I mean make my ears bleed loud, lucky they were entertaining), hear about 5 minutes of Leroy from the prodigy in there, wasn't impressed, The Beastie Boys (Were good, wish I coulda got closer to the front and wasn't so bloody tired, Chemical Brothers (Never got near the boiler room for this cause the crowd was so huge, was standing outside in the chaos and what I heard was ok), Concord Dawn (Awesome Drum'n'Bass outfit from New Zealand, really got the crowd going and it was only like midday or something! They even played some old jungle sounding tracks in there I knew), and there was probably some others in there too i forget right now. All in all looking back on it, it was a good time.

So whats been happening since then? Well I got my stitches out of my back and now I am pretty 100% functional, the skin and so forth is taking a while to heal. Glad there out!

Had to pick my sister up the other day coming back from Perth. She was good, seemed very happy to be home but was happy for the experience to go over and do some learning and shit over there. Maybe it helped her open her eyes a bit to the world, when you live with other people for so long like she has and only stay in Victoria your view of the world is a bit one dimensional.

Went out the other night to see one of my favorite artists of the moment James Holden the other night for a 3 hour DJ set, it was pretty awesome although I felt super tired and felt quite ill during the night (I pretty much always do when I go to clubs these days) . He played a lot of new stuff which I was digging and was a big departure from what he played at St Kilda Fest the next day. His set really didn't go anywhere though, he seemed like he really wanted to pump out the new border community tracks, which of course, actually was the main reason he was out here on tour.

So I start school again on Monday for another year. This year I plan to get better marks and get more involved with extra curricular activities that my uni has to offer, as I'm going to be out of there before I know it so I better try and make the most of it. I'm actually commited to something at the moment which is pretty exciting but more on that later when details are finalised and i'm not so tired :) .

Tomorrow I am hopefully going to catch up with an old school friend of mine whose in Melbourne on business, will be great to sit down and have a chat and forget about going back to uni and all that other pressing stuff for a while.

Hopefully tomorrow I will bloody go to the bookstore and sell my old text books if they'll have them! I've been in striking distance of that joint all this week and haven't gone! Better get cracking.

So what have I been doing lately? Lets see shall we?

Somewhere around the 24th Jan I went up to Bendigo to see my parents, the primary purpose for this trip was to take a look at a mole that is on my back that was a bit of a concern the last time i had all my moles scanned. I thought we were going to just keep an eye on it to see if it got any worse, but it would seem my dad basically wanted to take it out since he saw it at Christmas time :/ . So we rescanned this mole numerous times while I argued the case for not taking it out, this didn't work and I ended up having to have needles and slicing of my flesh and seven stitches applied to the upper left region of my back, so after this happened I did some general fixing of Pcs for my dads workplace and installing some new hardware etc, went back to there place and relaxed by playing with the cats and watching their foxtel, its a hard life to lead :P, its a real shame that my parents are working hard and hardly ever get to use any of this crap! (ie. the foxtel).

Anyway, I ended up leaving Bendigo later that week, hunched funnily over the steering wheel all the way home due to the searing pain of anything touching my stitches or around my stitches. I stopped in Malsmbury on the way home for the first time ever, that was pretty chaotic as when I pulled up about 3 buses full of tourists did at the same time and swapped the 3 or 4 stores they have there. But I persevered and got the present for tha G I was looking for and left. I will have to stop there for food one day, the pies and stuff look delightful.

So got home, mucked around for a few days doing not much (I actually can't remember what I did apart from going to Pancake Parlour for eats one day, mmmmmm) and then I went to the Big Day Out on Jan 30th.

It was the first time I've ever been to the BDO, we ended up meeting up with Tha G's friends easily in the city and then got on the train to the showgrounds and got into the venue in a much quicker time than I anticipated, which I was happy about because the sun was piercing my skin with its heat/light.
I think we got there around midday which was about an hour after the first bands started to play. I stopped at some hat stand to buy a hat cause I don't own a hat but I figure I'm sure as hell going to need one for today if my scalp/face/neck is going to have a chance to survive getting hella sunburnt. After doing that, We headed over to some bar area cause Tha G's friends needed a drink to calm the nerves or something, Then we all split up and we headed to the closest music area from that bar where RJD2 happened to be starting to play his set. we hung around for about 15 minutes and then left, this was due to the fact that this area was inside a small shed, we were right at the back of the crowd, the sounds was pretty bad where we were standing and the atmosphere for his type of music is not really to be standing in a darken hot shed with too many people and crap sound, its much more a chill out type of deal, so we left.
Next up was the Boiler Room which we ended up finding by mistake as we were looking for another music arena as I just wanted to go around and check them all out. But I welcomed it because it was a big tent that had SHADE and when i walked in there a cool breeze was happening, oh yeah, anyway when we got there my ears were assualted by the awesome music of Decoder Ring, I had never heard of these guys before beyond hearing one or two words mentioned of them on Triple J months and months ago when I actually use to drive my car, but like what I was hearing I was liking, they are like a 5 or 6 piece electronic group (i guess you would call it) with guitars, variety of keyboards and efx, live drum kit etc. We only caught like the last song and a half i think (i think they just layer the transition of songs with effects) but it was just this awesome wall of sound feel, and the vocals sounded good, I'm now in search of some CDs of theirs so i can try and find the song that I heard right at the end of their set to see if it sounds anything like it did live in the studio.

Continuation of this blog later...