We are here now. In Australia. How lucky I am to get to Perth where temperatures are always near 10 even if it's sunny! How cool it's here! Too fortunate I am to get out of Chennai's deadly summer heat, though the trees on campus alleviated it a little. Verily I am lucky. I used to hate the sun when I was in India, because he was always making me sweat, and I hated sweating. Here, you won't sweat unless you are exercising or having ...
I always write long posts. It's easier to read than to write them.
Perth was excellent when we got there at first. But we began to learn soon that it wasn't really a big city at all. High-rise buildings were prohibited unless they were at the city centre. So, finally you can only see buildings with around 50 storeys at the centre of the city and you can count them on your fingers.
We eat at Currie Hall's dining Hall. Currie Hall, though it ends with a Hall, is not a Hall in our sense, may be in the natives'. It's a hostel in our sense. Students stay during their course of study at Currie Hall. So essentially we eat in the hostel mess. They call hostels colleges here. Residential colleges. What we call colleges, they call Universities. But we have universities too in India. And you know what they call hostels? Hostels are where people put up when they stop in the middle of their long-distance journey. They also call them lodges, backpackers, etc. We stay here in such a place. Beatty Lodge it's called. Yes, we are staying at a lodge, for two and a half months. Incredible, where the University has made accommodation for us. And of course it's costly, being a lodge.
Why couldn't we have stayed at Currie Hall? Can a visitor stay for two and a half months in Jamuna hostel when he arrives on campus two weeks before the end-sems? Yes that's when we arrived. Their end-sems are starting next week. This week is a study week, and therefore a holiday week. They HAVE a week free before exams. And their exams are not on a daily basis, as is the case with our quizzes and end-sems. It's as is the case with BITS-Pilani. They have two or three days between each test. But if that should have been the case in IITM, it would have been a semester with a test every three days, given the number of tests we take and the number of working months we have for a semester. Four months per term and they call it a SEMester! It should have been called a quadmester or something.
Coming back here to the University of Western Australia, it's very good on campus. First of all, they don't have a compound wall all around the campus. They have streets running in and around the campus. But I must say, they haven't got trees on campus as we have got all over our campus. Not more than two buildings you can see at once, when you are on campus at IITM. Hey and you must hear the crows cawing here. They cry like a young country boy screaming for help. Every time I hear the crows caw, I feel like laughing, but I don't. And you must see a crow here. It would weigh twice as much as an Indian crow. SOOOO fat they are! The cats here too are bulky. But I must not judge against the cats' slimness, because I only saw one cat.
My work here is pretty interesting. To say, it's VERY interesting. It's on Image Processing using MATLAB. I am learning a lot in MATLAB now. I'll show them what an IITian can do. I have got an e-mail id here too. Write to vamshi@ee.uwa.edu.au.
What else? Chix ARE SEXY man. Vinay and Leo say they find every girl they see beautiful, but I say I don't. Only few I find beautiful, and fewer sexy. Being fair in complexion alone doesn't make them attractive or beautiful, I say to them. Leave that alone.
I haven't done much shopping here, because I am afraid of spending here, the first reason being the stipend (which is pretty low), and the costs and forex being prohibitingly high. One Australian Dollar costs THIRTY FIVE Indian bucks. They paid the half-funded guys only two K $, and that covers only half our basic expenses. Leave that alone too. I don't want to talk about that.
Let's come to .... FOOD!
I am eating a lot of non-vegetarian stuff I have never eaten before in my whole life. That's because all the vegetarian they serve us here is awful. MAN! You should have seen the mushroom thing they served the veg guys the night Currie Hall guys had this 'end-of-sem' party. It was totally burnt on one side. It looked like they tried to gas-weld it to the rod-like thing at the mushroom's bottom, and failed in it, so they only served us the top part. It smelled awful too. I, being unable to bear the smell, turned it over. AAH! It was a relief when I turned it over. No more awful smell. Then I could concentrate on the events happening on stage during the party. And I can't imagine how Aswin ate that THING! Leo too! Oh my God! That's why I go for non-veg here. Chicken and fish mostly they are. Chickens tastes good here. It's awesome once in a while. You can say I should have brought home-made pickles here. I did. First of all, you must agree that pickles don't make much, and I having only two varieties or pickles, can't survive on pickles alone for 10 weeks. The first week, bringing the pickles to Currie Hall alone was a problem, because of the absence of appropriate containers. I brought them in those three-layered polythene standard packing they do for foreign travellers. Once I cut it open, I won't know what to do with them, since I can't keep them like that in the bag and carry them. Boxes? Yes we could have bought a few, had the costs been encouraging and I had enough money. Luckily, Vinay brought 4 plastic containers used in microwave ovens, from a distant relative he had in Perth here. That was after a week. So we now have pickles with us to carry for lunch and dinner.
I have to go now. Will put in more stuff the next time I write another post.
Bye
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