One down, two to go

Yesterday morning I had my first of three final exams - Politics 304: International Peacekeeping.

It was a fascinating course and I really enjoyed it. I spent the week preceding the exam in the library most days, from opening at 8am (9am on Saturday, 10am on Sunday) for a minimum of 5 hours and a maximum in one case of 11 hours 40 minutes.

Despite all this studying, I didn't feel fully ready for the exam. However, after three forearm-numbing hours of essay writing yesterday morning, I came out of that exam quite satisfied with my effort. My arm was still sore last night, but today it's better.

To celebrate my first exam completion, I cooked a steak. Pre-marinated by some company (Teriyaki flavour), I had to defrost it in the microwave (yeah I know freezing quality steak is a no-no, but I'm a student - I buy meat on sale and freeze it), then pan-fried it. I added a few spices and such, and of course used a bit of beer for that special taste.

I decided I had to take photos of my gourmet meal. It may not be the combination you'd find at an upscale restaurant, but it sure hit the spot:

Steak:




Toasted bagel with sliced dill pickles, tomatoes, onions and lots of sour cream:




Raspberry and Cream yoghurt:




Tasman Bitter beer:




It was delicious.

And after eating, I found we had yet another avian visitor. Prash says there was a bird in the house earlier in the day, and now we had a smaller one again, trying to fly out a window that doesn't open, right beside the open door it must have come through!




I opened the door a bit wider once the bird gave up on the window, and he finally realised it and flew out, poor confused (and probably concussed) thing.

University Student Antics, Part the Second

I said I would explain the other prank on the other German in two days' time, and it's been 5 days, but I spent 9 hours in the library yesterday and 8.5 hours there today, so I feel I have ample justification for my inability to fulfill my promise.

Righto, so here's the prank:

Prashna and I decided to fill Julian's room with newspaper. And when I say fill, I meant fill. Turns out Prash thought I meant cover the floor. I meant FILL. Julian was out tramping on the Kepler track, and was schedule to return from his three day trip around 8pm.

We started at about 5pm by going around to different flats collecting newspapers, and having accumulated a fair volume of neatly stacked papers, we set to work in Julian's room. This is what it looked like before we got moving:







After about an hour's work, and with sudden-onset crumpling-induced acute carpel tunnel syndrome slowing my production pace, we had filled about a third of the room's volume with balled up newspaper.




We also grabbed a CD with an annoying German children's song, Schnappi the Baby Crocodile, and put it on repeat under all the newspaper at the halfway point, so that Julian would have to listen to it until he had emptied his room of the paper.




As you can see, we were getting closer and closer to our goal as the minutes ticked by.




Mae kindly took a photo from outside, showing the view of Julian's window:




Suddenly, just after 8pm, with about half an hour's work left to go, Julian showed up. We evacuated his room before he could see us, and I got this pic of my hands in Elliott's room.




Julian was not particularly surprised, as he had seen the newspaper in the window from outside, but he enjoyed the prank nonetheless, and proceeded to jump around like a hyperactive toddler for some time.




I played with my face like a hyperactive toddler for some time, and ended up with a newspaper-print war mask.




As for the 2.5 hours worth of crumpled newspaper, what did Julian do with it? Why, he moved it all into Tyler's room next door, timing the entire process at just 16 minutes.




Tyler arrived home a few days later and duly moved all the newspaper to the front entry, essentially making the front door inaccessible at best.

And now, more studyhing and 7 hours sleep awaits me. Tomorrow morning I must once again arrive at the library before 8am opening time, and sprint in the Great Library Race to get a seat when the doors slide open.

Gnite.

University Student Antics, Part the First

On the 14th, we had our end of year dinner for residents of Toroa Int'l House, at Etrusco's restaurant a few kilometres down the main street here in Dunedin. It was a good meal, though a bit light on meat, and a nice restaurant in general.

Unfortunately I only have three not-so-good photos of the night, so I won't bother putting any pics up until/unless I get some of the good ones that other people shot.

However, last week was not entirely uneventful. Marcus's parents came to Dunedin from Germany for a visit, so Prashna and I decided to have a little fun. While Marcus was out with his parents, before they had visited our flat, we spent half an hour shuttling back and forth from his room to Sigrid's old room (vacant this semester), moving all his stuff to her old room, and arranging it all in the EXACT same positions, guided by photos I took before we started.








Marcus and his parents arrived at our flat literally 30 seconds after Prash and I had finished the last touches on his room. Marcus's father, Mr Aengenheister, was carrying a promising case of beer under his arm.

After some introductions and a bit of smalltalk, Marcus took them upstairs to see his room. Of course, as soon as he opened his door, all they saw was an empty room. We had also set the bed on its end with the sheets all made. It took him until he returned downstairs to figure out where his room had moved to.

His dad seemed to appreciate the humour, and gave Prashna and I each a beer for our effort :-)



Not long afterwards, we set out to pull off a different prank on a different German. More on that in two days' time...

Incensed part 2

No one could see the lady in the smoke, so I have labelled the photo to help you see her. If you still can't see her, I'll start worrying about my sanity.

Incensed

Well, I finally found something to blog about - incense. Not the sense of anger and astonishment, but the smokey, smelly stuff.

When I was in Chiang Mai, in Northern Thailand, I bought a cool incense burner. Ian got one too. They're dragons wrapped around wood, and they're really nifty.

I take an incense stick (or three in this case, since I wanted to make more smoke for better photos) and stick it in the base. when we bought our incense burners, the guy selling them on the sidewalk at the nightmarket took a hammer and nail and poked a hole in the base for holding the incense sticks. I make my own with my Swiss army knife.




Then I light the tip of the incense stick and if it doesn't put itself out, blow the little flame out once the incense is glowing orange and starts smoking. After that, I carefully lower the dragon onto the base, and the smoke starts coming out his mouth.




When the incense stick is done burning, which might take between 5-20 minutes depending on the type of incense stick, it looks like these:




Isn't it cool how the smoke comes out the dragon's mouth?




Is it just me, or do you also see the figure of a lady looking to the left in this smoke?




The reason I just started burning incense in my room (not too frequently mind you, I don't want to smell like a hippie) is that until a week or so ago I thought the smoke alarm would be set off, as our flat handbooks say that incense will set them off. Turns out they aren't sensitive at all to smoke, even cigarette smoke, but according to some residents in these flats hairspray WILL set them off. I'm glad it's only a 10 foot drop from my window if a raging fire blocks my doorway and the smoke alarms don't go off to warn me!

Vancouver wins again

Over the years, Vancouver has placed at the top of several rankings of best city in the world to live in. Looks like this year is one of those years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1584864,00.html

Hmm

Blogger was down for maintenance (supposedly for one hour, it lasted for several days) so I haven't been able to post, but nothing interesting has really happened around here anyways lately.

Next week is the last week of classes, and I have final exams Oct 26th, Nov 5th, and Nov 11th. On Nov 12th, Tom, Egbert and I are starting a 3 day road trip up to Auckland via Christchurch.




I'll chill with Tom there for a couple of days and then fly to Singapore on Nov 18th to start another month backpacking in Asia.

It's pouring rain outside, I got rather wet on my walk home from class just now, and it's time for my daily ration of Mi Goreng instant noodles.