Mardi Gras and the first midterms

As promised in my last posting I said I would come back with a report on Mardi Gras and some pictures. The pictures can be viewed below:



In hindsight it's really too bad I didn't get more close up photographs of the parade but the reasons why will become more obvious as you read further ;-) That late Saturday afternoon I met up with some friends (6 of us in total) at Town Hall station around 5pm and we headed towards Hyde park, which is a 5 minute walk. The celebration/parade goes right past this park so we figured it would be a great spot to hang around. Before entering the park we decided to get some drinks so we headed for the bottle shop and picked up some reasonably tasty Sauvignon Blanc that was on special. Each of us had a bottle and we found ourselves a nice place on the grass near the entrance of the park.
Before we knew it we'd each finished our bottles and the party hadn't even started yet(kickoff time was 7:45 pm), so we went back to the liquor store and stocked up just in case. Upon entering the park again, a park guard told us that we wouldn't be able to drink any alcohol in the park since it's an alcohol free zone. Failing to do so would be an automatic fine of 300 AU$ and as we didn't want to walk around with lots of wine in our bags, we drank some more outside the park before going back in. The party itself was very colorful with lots of people-filled carriages riding from Oxford St. to the final destination near where we were.
Because I didn't have anything else to eat besides breakfast that morning, the wine hit me pretty hard and me and a German friend named Ronny ended up at Burger King (called Hungry Jacks in Oz) shortly after the festivities ended. I remember ordering a Whopper, taking it outside and then dropping it on the street, after which I played some soccer with it (the way my shoes looked the next morning made me remember what had happened). Still being hungry, I went back inside and ordered another burger and made sure I ate it INSIDE this time since I had by then figured out that I was in no condition to be roaming around Sydney while trying to eat at the same time.
Needless to say, the next morning I didn't feel as energetic as I normally do after 8 hours of sleep but I hit the books anyway and actually got quite a bit of work done since I was too tired to be distracted by anything else. When I spoke with my brother Arvid later that day, he actually brought up a very valid point and that is to use caution and not to get too much out of control in a place that's still relatively new to you. I made a mental note of this since he had actually called me on Mardi Gras evening and I couldn't recall that moment in my memory, which obviously says something about the level of intoxication that was reached...

Since Mardi Gras I must say that I have been a good boy as the focus has mainly been on my study and it's paid off it seems. Last week Friday I took my finance test and I heard today that I received a score of 6 out of 10. Normally that sort of grade doesn't impress much I must admit but in this case I was fairly happy with it since the test had too many questions for a 50 minute exam, which resulted in me having to skip a whole page of compound interest problems. If the examiner had allowed for an additional 10 minutes, then my score should've been more like an 8. Conclusion: I need to increase the speed of my thinking/working process so I can do more. However, I am certainly glad that at least I did all of the equations correctly, which shows me that I do have an adequate understanding of what the various calculations mean.
After the test on Friday night it was weekend so I headed for Darling Harbour where I had drinks with some people until 01:00. Saturday I went to the 3rd official Q-dance event ever held in Australia. Although this organisation's parties regularly sell out in home base the Netherlands, here it is still a very new thing and so I was excited to be a part of it. It really was an excellent party and the performances of most of the DJ's gave me an opportunity to release some built-up energy. Since the week prior to the event had been fairly exhausting, I left the party at 03:45 and was home half an hour later.

Last week has been about more studying and lots of homework, which just keeps coming back every week. I did a marketing midterm last Tuesday and although I don't have my results back yet, I know that it went very well. For the upcoming week I have 2 more tests, which are accounting and macro-economics midterms. Accounting consists of some basic definitions and principle theory, but mainly the trick is to know how to post transactions into journals, ledgers and to know how to create various financial statements. I expect little problems with this exam since I have worked on accounting consistently and have discovered only very few/small errors in my homework up to date. This weekend I should be working mostly on my macro but luckily I have plenty of time to prepare for it since it's only on Wednesday. In the meantime the weather forecast is OK for both Saturday and Sunday (24 degrees and mostly sunny), so it looks like I'll be enjoying one of the many beaches of Sydney again this weekend. I've heard some good things about Watsons Bay, so I will probably explore that region.

Hope I didn't bore you too much with the school/study talk but that's what life is about for me these days :-) Thanks for checking in, and to be continued soon!