Adventures in Australia

Excited

I'm very excited. First, my student visa arrived. A couple things about that. Normally, once you complete your program, you have to leave within 45-60 days. The immigration officer hooked me up with an extra 8 months, which will give me more than enough time to decide on what to do once I complete my masters program.

Second, I am a huge Chicago Whitesox fan. In early May I posted a message warnings of possible rants about how my team was doing. Guess what? Those rants never came, they had an amazing season, they were amazing in the playoffs, and for the first time in 88 years, they are Major League Baseball's World Champions!!!!

What a great week!

Visa

Today I sent an email to the immigration officer handling my application to verify that the two completed medical forms were received. About 15 minutes later I got a response:

Your passport and visa have been sent out via priority mail on 24 October 2005.

Hell Yeah! This means that the absolute last thing for me to do form wise is to simply verify my financial aid in about a week.

Lionel

Well, a couple days ago I posted a post and had a little fun with humor on behalf of Lionel Richie. What happened? I got yelled at! I've offended the legion of Lionel lovers and supporters. BourbonBird gave me a small yelling, but one of my friends from High School happened to read my post and then forwarded it to several other old friends of mine.

I have now gotten over 5 phone calls telling me to never, ever, make fun of Lionel Richie again. To them, I would like to publicly say: bah.

The only problem is that as of today, I have listened to at least 20 different Lionel Richie songs, and I can't get him out of my mind! As of this moment, its All Night Long (All Night) stuck in my head. I've brought on the furry of Lionel. I now know how he became so rich!

Relax

So every night when I go to bed, I throw on my headphones and turn on my iPod. Its one of the few times where I can just lay back and relax, and do nothing but listen to music. I forget about the events of the day and what I have going on tomorrow, and just clear my mind and listen to the music.

Last night I had on a random playlist, and for some reason Endless Love by Lionel Richie started to play. Now, I have no clue how that got on my iPod or why I didn't change it. But, I listened to about 2 or 3 minutes of the song, as much as I could stand before I had to break my relaxing mindset and change the song.

Luckily, I turned on a different playlist that always has the best effect in relaxing me: Its made up entirely of Blank and Jones, slow electronic/meditative music, and it just so happens that many of the songs are from their album, Relax.

Die Paperwork, Die!

That's right. My paperwork is about to fall into the dark deep hole of death. Today I went and got my Chest X-Ray completed. I then got it sealed and then mailed it at the post office. All the paperwork for my visa is done. This completes my paperwork for Australia. My housing forms, financial aid forms, acceptance of offer forms, and my visa forms are now all complete! I feel very relaxed and happy right now!

The last thing for preparation is simply to make sure my financial aid paperwork was completed on Griffith's side, and then to cross my fingers and hope I got an on-campus housing spot which I'll find out about in December. Joy.

Wrap up of the Week

Well, this week has been incredibly busy. On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I was working my ass off as our big monthly meeting where our videos are shown at was on Tuesday. On just those three days I worked a combined 41 hours. While a lot of hours, it allowed me to have the rest of the week off, to just relax and get some errands done that I needed to do.

Next, early in the week I got a package from to Australian Embassy. Simply put, it acknowledged that they had received my application, assigned it to a immigration official, and were requesting me to take the medical examination as well as a chest x-ray, two things I knew about. So, now I'm about to get ready to leave for my doctors appointment for him to fill out the form as I just had a physical less than 3 months ago. I'm not sure when I'd go to the radiologist ad get the x-ray, but I'm sure we'll be setting up the appointment today. Basically, once I can get these two forms mailed back to the embassy, then I'd be basically done with all the steps and just waiting on the approval and for my passport and visa to come back to me.

Books

I realized a couple days ago that I did not own any books on Australia. I've been reading non-stop about Australia on the internet, but you can only gain so much information before it begins to repeat itself. So, I went to Amazon and ordered myself a few books on Australia. Some of them had amazing reviews, some of them had iffy reviews. Obviously, I got the ones with the amazing reviews, and decided to go ahead and get the ones with the iffy reviews either because the price wasn't that bad, or it was something specific to where I'll be at. For example, I got a book on Queensland that got very iffy reviews, but since I am going to be living in Queensland, I thought the purchase would be worth it.

I ended up getting:

• Australia (Eyewitness Travel Guides)


• Lonely Planet Australian Phrasebook


• Culture Smart! Austrailia: A Quick Guide to Customs & Etiquette


• Brisbane and the Gold Coast


• Lonely Planet Queensland


• Living And Working In Australia: A Survival Handbook

I'm really excited about the book Living And Working In Australia as it got amazing reviews. The last edition of it is from 1998 though, so I was a little worried that it may be a little out of date. Well, luckily for me, the new edition of it comes out this month, so I went ahead and pre-ordered the book and can't wait for that one to come.

Looks like I got some reading to do.

Whew

So I ended up calling the financial aid manager down at Griffith. He did in fact get my package and just forgot to email me. So, the paperwork that needs to be completed he was going to do in the next day or two and mail it out to my lender. Now, in about a month, I'll just have to follow up to make sure it got done.

Headache ...

Still no word what-so-ever from the financial aid manager at Griffith to confirm if he has received my financial aid paperwork. I am going to have to give him a call and find out, because it has now been over one month since I mailed it. I'm really hoping that he got it and just forgot to email me and let me know if he got it.

No Half Day!

So my birthday has come and gone. Yesterday, I had to work on my birthday. Now, I knew that in advance. However, we were planning on only working for a half day. Well, we had to assemble the furniture for the new office ourselves, and that took quite a bit of time as each piece came in like 40 different parts! Anyways, I got done at 6PM! I then went home, took a quick 2 hour nap, and then a small group of friends and I went out to a hookah bar and talked and smoked some hookah for a couple hours. Overall, not a bad day.

Today though, I was in pain. I spent most of the day yesterday on my knees building that furniture, and for some reason my legs are in a lot of pain. Nothing has made the pain go away. Now, I'm not in the pain of dental surgery, I'm just moving slowly and a little annoyed. Almost like when you have an itch that will not go away.

I'm really hoping that the medicine I took tonight and a good night of sleep will take care of it, because tomorrow I have to drive 2 hours north to my grandparents to do some quick lawn work before the fall season begins. Then, its off to my other grandparents and various aunts and uncles for a little gathering.