MUMS Trivia Night

Friday (25th of May) was the last day of classes! I still find that kind of hard to believe. I've completed 12 weeks of classes at Melbourne Uni!

But that's not the focus of this entry. It's about what MUMS (Melbourne University Maths and Stats Society) did to celebrate the end of classes. They hosted a trivia night!

My team!

My 4-person team included one person from the Netherlands and one person from America (me!). This was a good thing for us; we had knowledge from different parts of the world! (Or hopefully, that was true.) We had a hard time coming up with a team name, but one of us started to write "Let's get quizzical" after the announcer (person reading the questions) said that. But he never finished writing that, so we became "Let's get quizzi."

Look at all the snacks!

Yay, my first time trying a Tim Tam!

I probably ate too much junk food there, but I had a lot of fun. Some highlights:

• In Pokemon, what is the legendary fire bird in the Kanto region? Moltres! All my years of playing Pokemon has paid off!
• Who is the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter? Hester Prynne! Yay, thank you 11th grade American literature!
• Identify the 4 colors of the buttons on a Super Nintendo controller. Umm... aren't they all purple? It turns out the question was asking for the PAL version. Whoops, I am in Australia after all!

So, how did we do?

We're "Let's get quizzi" which is third on the scoreboard. Top three places received prizes, and we came in... fourth... We scored 48.75, and 3rd place scored 49.25. So close! Off by one question!

But that's okay, I already had enough chocolate that night. It was a great way to end my last day of classes at Melbourne. Now, onto final projects and exams!

Good Friday!

Wow! I'm surprised that I "survived" Good Friday! Here in Melbourne, nearly everything was closed! My parents were surprised when I told them that, and people here are surprised when I tell that Good Friday isn't that big in America.

Anyways, I'm on Easter break! Today was the first day, and I have the entire next week off! I can see myself doing a bunch of work on assignments due right after break. I guess that is part of university life...

But I'm also planning to spend more time cooking, so that all my dishes don't look the same. Which reminds me, I have plenty new cooking pictures that I need to put up!

Since everything was closed today, I spent some time at a park doing some reading for my ethical theory class. I also decided to go for a run. I ran down Smith Street and up Brunswick Street, two big shopping centers in the area, and saw for myself that everything was closed. Well, everything except for a few restaurants, bars, small grocery stores, and... a bookstore!

Yesterday, while I was on campus, there were some Easter-related events.

Some of Melbourne Uni's Christian clubs were giving out hot cross buns. I had no idea what they were until yesterday! I thought "hot cross buns" was just a song! But now I know that people eat these on Good Friday. Except I'm still not quite sure why...

They had boxes and boxes of these!

Also, the Student Union Environment Department (the word "department" is used differently here), organized an Easter egg hunt, with "Easter egg" replaced by "water fountain"! They gave out a list of questions, and we went around campus looking for all the different water fountains, which contained the answers to the questions! The message that the Environment Department was trying to tell us was: bottled water is bad bad bad. In the end, I got a chocolate egg and a water bottle. Yay, environmental awareness!

Here's me with Ruthi, one of the leaders of the Environment Department.

After the MUOSS Night Market...

As nice as the Night Market was, I don't think I'll remember the market itself as much as the little mis-adventure that happened afterwards. I should provide some background information. The night market started around 6pm, and I went there with Tommy, who I met from Melbourne Welcome, and some of his friends. Tommy lives in Trinity College, one of the residential colleges on campus. Before we all headed over to the market, he let me leave my backpack in his room. I didn't want to carry my big backpack around the market since I expected it to be very crowded.

And the market was indeed very crowded. We went around checking all the stalls together, but during one of the times that I was being silly and taking a picture, the others disappeared! Luckily, I ran into them some time later around the Indonesian booth. But then we decided to split off to buy different things.

After I finished eating the two things that I bought, it was already 7:30. I started to look for the others. Not only did I want to find them, I had to, since my backpack was in Tommy's room. I went around the booths once. No sign. I went around again. Still nothing. So I went around and around and in different directions. After the sun went down, it became extremely hard to identify people, even those that were right next to me. But I kept on searching. After 30 minutes or so, I started to become really worried. This was not looking good!

If you're wondering why I didn't just call them, it's because... well, I left my phone in my backpack, which I left in Tommy's room! Argh!! I felt so so so stupid for doing that. Why couldn't I just carry my phone around with me like most people?

As time passed, I felt less and less likely to find them at the market. But eventually I gave up. I thought of two things I could do: I could try to contact Tommy through the internet, or I could go look for Tommy at Trinity.

So I ran (literally!) to the library to try to contact Tommy through the internet. That was unsuccessful. I was tired from running, so I walked over to Trinity. Once I was inside, I started looking for people, so I could ask them "Do you know a Tommy?". Normally, I would not feel comfortable going around doing something like this, but I was super desperate! It was late and there weren't many people outside. The first person I asked didn't know Tommy, but he was nice and took me into the building to his room. Tommy wasn't inside.

There was no one else around outside. I walked around the area, looking inside buildings for people to ask. Then I ran into two girls on their way to the library in Trinity.

"Excuse me, do you know a Tommy?"
"Tommy Chiu?"
"YES!!!!! Would you happen to have his number?"
"Yeah."

Wow! I could not believe how lucky I was! During this time, they seemed pretty amused, and they explained to me why: When they first saw me approaching them, they thought I was Tommy! (Apparently, we look alike?) But when I started talking, it became obvious that I wasn't Tommy. But I asked about Tommy!

Anyways, we called Tommy. I had been worried that he had also been looking for me all this time. (If he had been looking for me, I would have felt that I was wasting his time.) But it turned out that he had been watching the performances. (I had gone over and checked the audience so many times! How did I miss him?) He came over to Trinity, and everything was good again!

That was a tiring night, so after picking up my backpack, and apologizing over and over again, I went straight home and showered and went to bed.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures during that time. Not surprisingly, I wasn't quite in the mood for pictures when I was panicking at the market. In the future, if something similar happens, I need to tell myself "Don't worry! You'll get through this! And you should take some pictures right now in case this ends up being worth writing about!"

Well, here's a picture. It's of me and Tommy at the formal dinner at Melbourne Welcome. Do we really look the same?

Two events by the Melbourne University Overseas Student Service

This week, the Melbourne University Overseas Student Service (MUOSS) hosted two events on campus. The first one was the Student Experience Fair on Tuesday, and the second was the Night Market on Thursday.

The main goal of the fair was to let students know of the different services offered by the university.

There were booths set up by the different departments.

Hmm... I wonder what this long line is for.

Aha! They're giving out free twist potatoes! (Remember these from the Suzuki Night Market?)

Free Red Bull! But I didn't take any because energy drinks scare me

There was also free cotton candy! (An Australian would actually call it "fairy floss"!)

No, I did not stand in line to consume all that sugar! I went to the front of the line, and asked the person making them and to let me take a picture with one. Then I handed the fairy floss off to the student at the front of the line, who probably thought I was crazy.

Anyways, Thursday night was the Night Market. A lot of the student clubs performed and others sold food! There was a nice variety of cultures represented!

Here's the banner in front of all the tents!

So many food booths and so many people!

Taiwanese Student Association!

I think my picture with the Korean booth turned out well!

As you can see by this example (Vietnam), pretty much everything at the market has meet in it. Hmmm...

The Indonesian club had something vegetarian though!

Tahu isi - fried tofu stuffed with vegetables!

Yikes! Here's the wrapper after I finished eating the tofu. I'm not sure why I am smiling...

So much deep frying was going on at the night market! But look! What's inside that pot?

Herbal tea egg! (cha ye dan)

Performances lasted throughout the night.

I ended up only getting the tofu and the egg at the Night Market. There simply wasn't many vegetarian options available. But also, watching the clubs prepare the food also scared me a bit. Maybe watching something being deep fried can make certain people really hungry, but it has the opposite effect for me. Also, I was about to get a cup of sweet potato and tangyuan soup, until I watched the people put a huge block of sugar into the pot. Ahh!

I still had a lot of fun walking around and exploring though! But actually, it turns out the most exciting part of the night wasn't everything I've just shown. I don't think it's fitting to talk about that here, at the end of this entry, so time for another post!

Melbourne Summer 2012 Cube Competition

My first cube competition in Australia was a lot of fun! With around 40 competitors, it was around half the size of Princeton's competitions, but it was still pretty big! And I was the only one from the United States!

Shortly after arrival and registration.

At the scrambling table, practicing 3x3 speed-solve before the competition began.

I spent most of my time scrambling and judging for the competition, but I still got to meet lots of others during the competition. This includes some world record holders!

It's Feliks Zemdegs! He is the current world record holder for the 3x3 single (5.66) and average (7.64)! Amazing!

And Zane Carney! He solved 23 out of 25 cubes blindfolded, a world record! Australia has some really awesome cubers!

I told Feliks's father that I came all the way from California to watch his son. Needless to say, he didn't believe me. I am really glad that I got a chance to watch Felik's solves up close. I even got to judge some of them, which meant standing right next to him as he did his solves. And all the other people (competitors and spectators) would form a big crowd in front of him during each of his solves, so we all were very excited.

One of my official solves during the competition. If only I was as fast as Feliks!

Somehow I managed to win 3rd place at the Rubik's Magic event!

The competition went from 9:30am to 6:00pm. What a long day! It was certainly a lot of fun, but actually, the day wasn't over yet!

Dinner afterwards at the Melbourne Central food court to celebrate!

(A lot of images from the competitions were taken from Luke Clarke's album. Thank you Luke for being our official photographer!)

O-Week (Orientation Week)

No, school has not started yet! This week has been orientation week (or "O-week" as they call it here). Most of the activities were meant for the incoming first-year students. (Don't forget that the school starts after the Australian summer here!) Still, the study abroad students were encouraged to attend, so I went to the university every day from Monday to Friday.

I avoided events run by the university, such as "Getting the Most out of Lectures" and "Success at Uni." Instead I went mostly to events by the Student Union and the student groups affiliated with the union. Many student groups had free barbecue lunch -- in fact, there was more than one barbecue took place each day! But for me, after my first burnt veggie burger on Tuesday, I decided I would avoid the rest of the barbecues...

During the week, when I saw a long line like this around lunchtime, I knew it was for a barbecue!

I checked out all the student groups at the Student Union Clubs and Societies Expo. There were so many clubs!

The inside of this room was full...

... so some tables were set up outside too!

Some clubs sounded fun, like Chocolate Lovers Society. Despite all these clubs, I ended up signing up only for the Mathematics and Statistics Society. Why? I didn't know how much time I would have during the semester to commit to all the clubs I wanted to join. And, unlike Princeton, almost all the clubs charged a membership fee, ranging from 2 to 15 dollars! (The Maths Society was free!) This was really really surprising and stopped me from just signing up for everything like I did at Princeton.

In addition to clubs and other university organizations, there were plenty of companies trying to advertise their services. Some of them gave out (or sometimes, forced us to take) some free stuff!

My favorite event during orientation was the Food Adventure Tour, run by MUOSS (Melbourne University Overseas Student Society). It was intended to show international students some different restaurants around the city. In one afternoon, we had two main dishes and two desserts! A little too much food in too little time, but I got to meet lots of other students!

First stop: A Malaysian restaurant. I had some vegetable curry with rice!

Second stop: Frozen yogurt for dessert! (Just as I was posting this photo, I noticed the American spelling of "yogurt"!)

Third stop: An Italian restaurant. This photo makes the pizza look really big!

Fourth stop: Pancake Parlour for more dessert.

Yummy! But... I think it was a little too much food all crammed into the afternoon! Luckily I didn't have lunch before the event, and afterwards, I decided not to have dinner. (I thought of the Malaysian curry as my lunch and the pizza as my dinner!)

In the middle of all these activities, I stumbled upon an interesting sustainability awareness event at the university. The organizers had bicycles set up to generators, and we could go on and pedal for a few minutes to help provide power for the orientation activities!

Hmm... what's with all the bicycles?

They're connected to generators!

Generating electricity, and exercising at the same time! Awesome!

Now that orientation is over, I am so tired! (And scared! Classes are finally starting next week! Ahh!!)

University of Melbourne Enrolment Day and RMIT Cube Club Meeting

The 17th of February (Friday) was "Enrolment Day" (note the British spelling!) at the University of Melbourne. This meant we had to sit in auditoriums listening to people talk and talk. It probably wasn't the most exciting day, but it was pretty important. After all, it was the first day that study abroad students had to be on campus!

A presentation in the morning!

Lunch break!

A presentation in the afternoon!

We have to go back on Monday to enrol in classes. I thought that we would get this done on Enrolment Day, but I guess not...

Anyways, after the afternoon session, I made my way to RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) to attend the university's Rubik's cube club meeting. It was about a kilometer down Swantson street from Melbourne Uni.

It was nice to meet some of the cubers in Melbourne. We sat around and cubed for a while. It's been so long since I last practiced! We also discussed the competition next Saturday, which I can't wait to attend! More cubers!

When I entered the RMIT cafeteria and saw all those cubes, I knew I was in the right place!

Some of us went to a pub afterwards. I've never been to a pub before! (How did I get dragged into this?)

Melbourne Welcome Orientation Program

I've just gotten back from the Melbourne Welcome program, and I am so glad I participated. I met a lot of other study abroad/exchange students and got to try a bunch of new things!

For the four days that the program lasted, I stayed at Newman College, which is a residential college affiliated with the university.

Standing in front of the Newman College chapel. This reminds me of Princeton's chapel!

Inside, in the quad.

Arrival

I got to campus Friday morning, and first got settled into my room.

(This was only my room for the duration of the program. I'm not staying here for the entire semester.)

Then we had a barbecue lunch, which included a burger! There were chicken and beef and... kangaroo! But I opted for a veggie burger.

Eating by the fountain! (There were more people to my left.)

Vegemite!

Here are two pictures from breakfast on Saturday morning.

"So excited! I wonder what this will taste like!"

"Umm... too much saltiness for me..."

Hopefully my next attempt at Vegemite will be more successful?

Surfing at Ocean Grove Beach

We left early Sunday morning to spend the day at the beach! Part of that time included surfing! I can't quite say I was quite successful at surfing. The instructor helped me a few times, but I was never able to stand up on the surfboard while riding a wave. This means that I must return to the beach and master the technique! Although, I guess I could do that in California as well. (Isn't there a stereotype that all Californians go surfing all the time?)

I didn't take many pictures at the beach because I didn't want to get sand in my camera. Here are two, and they some important lessons:

Before heading down to the beach!

Back in my room with sunburnt ears...

The lessons are: (1) The sun in Australia is very very strong, so use lots of sunscreen! (2) Put sunscreen on everywhere, including on your ears!

I was aware of (1), so I applied sunscreen at least three times during my time at the beach. Unfortunately, I forgot about my ears. It doesn't help that they stick out the sides of my heads, completely free to catch all the rays of the sun.

I guess some other people were worse off than me, but burnt ears were bad enough for me. I had trouble sleeping that night, because my head had to lie flat on the pillow, facing up. If I turned a little to the left or right, one ear would touch the pillow and hurt.

Pokemon Snap at the Zoo!

The Melbourne Zoo reminded me of the San Francisco Zoo, which I went with my family last summer. (By "summer," I mean summer in the U.S.!) This is probably because most of the animals were the same.

I decided to entertain myself by pretending to play Pokemon Snap while I was at the zoo. (That's a video game for the Nintendo 64 where you go around and take pictures of Pokemon, and get scored by how well the pictures turned out.) So I went around and obnoxiously tried to take pictures of all the animals!

The meerkat is centered, but I lost a bunch of points for size...

Good size, but the tiger is looking away, which means I lose points for pose...

Same Pokemon bonus! Or, "same animal" I guess.

Peaceful sleeping gorilla! And it's centered, so bonus points for pose and times two for technique!

?? - This cannot be identified.

At this point, you might be bothered by the lack of kangaroos and koalas. Well, here they are!

Kangaroo!

Koala!

But wait... I traveled all the way to Australia, only to find these animals in Australian zoos!? (My ignorant tourist side thought they would be all over the city!) I now have another goal: Go into the bush and find these animals in nature!


Formal Dinner

Our last dinner of the program was a formal dinner. And by formal, I mean really really formal! Yikes! I've never had anything like this before! There's a rule that the bread should be on the left? And the arrangement of the utensils is fixed?

Everyone was quite dressed up!

Some other activities

Getting ice cream while exploring the city!

Viewing the entire city from the Eureka Skydeck 88!

The Shrine of Remembrance is such a nice and peaceful place! And all the clouds make the perfect background!

Going through the laneways in Melbourne. (All the busy shops in the narrow street remind me of Taiwan!)

Some alleys in the laneways have been decorated quite extensively!

Partying?

I didn't go to all the parties and late night events that the hosts organized, but I did get to try some alcohol for the first time. (But just a little bit! And guess what? It's actually legal here!)

Wine and cheese tasting during the first night. Tried out both red and white wine! (What is that kangaroo doing there?)

More wine tasting at the Queen Victoria Market.

Champagne before the formal dinner.