Surprising news

So Jonathan Effgen contacted me earlier today telling me that he's making plans to come to Texas. I couldn't be happier! I hope that he's serious about it, because that would be a fantastic end to my American adventure. He wants to drive (so that we can travel around Texas with more ease, but he's probably going to fly because it's cheaper for him). Moral of the story: Guilt tripping people into becoming your friend always works! I contacted my Professor today and asked him about any possible research positions that might be available to me when I graduate and consider doing a masters. He said that with good grades and good reference letters it's very possible I could do some research directly under him or another professor in aerospace! He warned me that research nowadays involves mostly computer programming. But hopefully by that stage I will have gotten over my fear of MatLab and will have had the patience to learn computing linear algebra. There was a concert on Saturday called "nocturnal". It was staring Skrillex, Pendulum and other major bands. However, it was a 2 hour drive away and I didn't have tickets. However, if I had a car that worked, I would have totally booked tickets last minute (for close to $100) and partied it up. But the weekend was still really cool because I spent the Saturday chilling at a pool party, then went downtown with Vivek and Marissa. I've noticed my roommates absence is becoming harder and harder to predict. Sometimes he is in his room for hours on end playing flash games on his computer up till 3:00 in the morning, and other times he's gone for 5 hours at a time. Oh, and lastly, I've decided that facebook is destroying my academic life :)

Inevitability

One of my favorite lines from the Matrix is: "You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability..." Don't worry, this quote is relevant. I've constantly got the thought of me leaving America plaguing me wherever I go. I've noticed that very occasionally I will randomly get small anxiety attacks or a small wave of depression which completely destroys my normal optimistic outlook. To my friends around me, it must look like I'm bipolar. It's just very strange being almost completely sure that the best time of your life is coming to an end. To remedy this, I'm forcing myself to do more and more activities. For example, I went to a Casey Donahue concert last Wednesday. He's an American country singer, and although he's very talented, I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Today has been really unproductive. I woke up at 1:00pm and walked down to Viveks place to return his shoes which I borrowed last night so I could go downtown. After that I met up with Caroline and studied in the library. But I was unable to get any work done - I was just too hungover, and YouTube is a giant magnet for bored, hungover procrastinators like me. Back to inevitability. I've come to the conclusion that the experience you have in another country isn't entirely dependent on what country you're in, but how you perceive that country. So this implies that my life in Australia can be revolutionized if I just have a new optimistic outlook. This is uplifting news, but it's going to be very tough to get out of the routine that I've developed while I've been in Sydney. It's going to be a great challenge creating a new life for myself when I go back home. Not only that, but the whole 'I'm only here for 1 semester' has really given me an unconscious invincibility mindset to try new things and have no regrets. And that mindset will be the hardest thing to replicate when I go back home. So in summary, the fact that I always knew my time in America was temporary has been fantastic for making me experience life in a new and exciting way, but it's also responsible for anxieties I have about leaving. 22 Days to go :(

Engineering nightmare

I went to bed at 4am this morning because I had to finish an assignment for my Engineering vibrations class. For those who don't know, this class is kind of like the torture scene in Casino Royale - you have to analyze the forces and rotations of objects including pendulums. We were given 1 week to do this huge assignment which was not enough time. To make things more difficult, I was forced to use MatLab to create a computer simulation of a car going over small vibrations in the road. I HATE MatLab! I can't use that program! It's so needlessly difficult and consumer unfriendly :(. Nonetheless, after teaching myself the program from various youtube videos and 'help' programs, I finally managed to finish the report. We were asked to apply analysis on the car which we owned. Out of pure spite of my lecturer, I claimed that I owned the BatMobile and found the various spring stiffness's of various Batman websites - you'd be amazed at how many Batman nerds put up information on the different type of BatMobile cars. Long story short, after I finished programming, I ran the simulation and found out that at exactly 43.5 seconds after the BatMobile hit a speed bump, the car would spontaneously explode with one of the tires firing directly into the air 6*10^78 m. I was contemplating calling NASA to tell them that I found a cheap and effective way to get to the other side of the Universe in less than a minute. However, because of my horrible lecture quality and because I was working with half the class who were experiencing very similar problems, I'm sure that the Prof will mark very leniently. And now for something completely different. I'm quite frustrated at how unresponsive my cousins are being to my emails. It's very tough organizing a trip to Europe if I can't get a hold of them! Also, the more I think about it, the more I want to stay in Austin. I was thinking about traveling up to Dallas sooner to experience another big city - but somehow that seems a lot less appealing than staying in a liberal city with all my friends. I keep asking around for advice on where I can travel around Texas in my last few days, and I get very mixed answers. Some people suggest I go camping in 'big bend' or other similar places. And others suggest I just abandon Texas and move west to Louisiana. I'm not to supportive of either of these ideas because I don't think anyone would really want to go camping with me, and Louisiana is too far away to get public transport there and back. Perhaps I'll just look at backpacking places around Austin and couch surf on some of my friends couches. Either way, time is running out and I need to be more proactive! Fortunately I've got some time this weekend to work things out! If I end up talking to any of y'all on facebook, tell me to stop procrastinating and organize my trip around the US / Europe!

+1 post!

So I've really been falling behind in my blog posts this semester so I've decided to make a blog with the bare minimum amount of information necessary for me to make another post. I'm not going to rely on Jonathon Effgen making any plans to see me before I leave Texas. So I've decided to make plans without him.

gay bar

I've got one month left so I've really decided to lose any inhibitions that were keeping me back. On the weekend I went downtown with Etienne, Vivek and a friend of theirs who is also doing a PhD in Aerospace Engineering. Their friend, who has a name so hard to pronounce I won't even bother trying to spell it, is gay so we all decided to go to a gay bar. As soon as I walked in I was offered a drink by a drag queen. Without thinking I accepted the double shot of jagermeister. After an awkward 5 minute conversation the drag queen and his friends asked me if I was gay or straight. I mentioned ashamedly that I was straight and they left shortly afterwards. An hour passed pretty slowly and soberly and I decided that I'd create some entertainment. And that's when my life reached a record low. I made a deal with Etienne and Vivek that I'd line up at the bar, trick a bloke to buy a drink for me, and just before the guy attempts to talk with me Etienne and Vivek would chime into the conversation and pull me out. Or at least that's how the plan was meant to go. Just as planned, I lined up at the bar and managed to get a random guy from Chicago to buy a whiskey coke for me. But right when I expected Etienne and Vivek to chime in and help me out, I looked around and they were in a corner laughing at me from afar. Because they abandoned me I was forced to have a very awkward 1/2 hour conversation with this guy until I faked a phone call and left the club at full pace.

Travel plans

For those who don't know; I finish my last exam on the 14 of May, I get kicked out of Moore Hill on the 17th of May and I've got a flight to catch from Dallas on the 22nd of May. So I've got about 8 days of freedom to travel around Texas (or another state) before I travel to Europe. There is a lot of planning involved in this trip so I'm finally treating this trip with the seriousness it deserves. I'm prioritizing organizing my trip to Europe above organizing touring Texas. This is because I've got a few friends who told me they can drive me to Dallas and a few friends who told me I can crash on their couch. I don't have these back up plans in Europe - once I get there, if i don't have a place to stay, I'm probably going to starve on a street. Not only that, but my cousins are being quite unresponsive to my emails or facebook messages, so I need to put in a better effort to get their attention. Once I get to London, I'm probably going to stay there for a few days then head up to Scotland to visit an old friend of mine - Kelly Thow. She told me that she would be more than willing to travel around Scotland with me for a few days. After that, I'm going to head back to London, then get ready fly to Spain on the 8th. Which reminds me I should probably buy plane tickets. I've decided that I probably won't visit Etienne in France. It would just be too rushed to travel directly from London to France just to meet up with him for a night before he heads back to Texas. I'm feeling very guilty about the influence my traveling is having on the environment. Ah well, I'll just donate a dollar to green peace or put a useless vote towards the 'greens' when I get back to Australia to rest my conscience.

New social circles

So I'm gradually pushing my way into a different social group. They're cool people. They live in a different dorm and they are all aged 19-20. But at least they have fake ID's, so I can trick myself into thinking they're as old as I am. Also, just a brief side note - hangovers are hitting me worse and worse every weekend. I'm not sure if this is a symptom of drinking consecutively every weekend or if it's a symptom of my old age (probably both, eh?), but either way it's very frustrating and very damaging to productivity because all I feel like doing in the morning is lying in my crappy Moore Hill bed and listening to the Beatles or the Eagles. Ok, back to social groups. Oh wait, before I talk about them just a brief side note - OK, so I've downloaded a few great songs which I've heard at a few different parties / radio stations. We are young by Fun and Gold Dust Remix by Flux Pavilion are just a few songs that I'm into at the moment. So yeah, these people I've met are analogous to marijuana. Let me explain. You see, marijuana is infamously known as a 'gateway drug' - a first step to more deadly and addictive drugs. So these new friends are not only cool in themselves and great to hangout with, but because they have very few mutual friends with me, they can open me up to more people and more parties that will be going on around campus. I'm excited that I've found cocaine equivalent of a social life. I've got LESS THAN ONE MONTH HERE!! FUUUUUUUUUUUU. I haven't even finished my American beer flag yet. I've got 48 beers to go! (which is symbolic because there are 48 mainland states in America). It hasn't really hit me that I've got so little time left. I just get small, short lived bursts of panic. Also, I'm organizing a centurion drinking competition with a few friends before I go. That should be fun