Drongos

Tuesday evening, I had dinner and then went out with Adam to play some basketball. We got to the court around 9pm and there was barely anyone there. It was kinda chilly which most Australians think is freezing so I think that was the reason. Adam and I just shot around and played some one on one for a while. It was kinda lackluster and wasn't all that fun. I miss playing on a real court with a real hoop with a real net and basketball. The concrete court with the drains really gives your legs a pounding and after an hour running around on it my shins were hurting. Afterwards I went back, showered, and just relaxed for a little while before going to bed.

Wednesday morning, I went to work and spent the morning talking to volunteers and trying to finish up the phone survey which at the start of the day had 18 people left. I was able to do four surveys by lunch time and schedule six more for after lunch. I had spinach and feta canneloni for lunch which was really good. After lunch I started working on the survey again. I got through two more surveys and then James called and said that he had heard that the online survey was done and he wanted the data seperated by region to show to the regional managers. This is very easy in excel however in a nice format that is easily understandable for someone who doesn't regularly use excel isn't nearly as easy. I used surveymonkey to seperate the survey data by region. This wasn't so easy because I had to create 20 seperate reports along with 20 different filters for the data. The filters were very frustrating because it took some work in order to get them to filter what I wanted to. For example, I would ask the filter to filter out region 4 and it would filter out region 4, 14, and 24. I had to go back and change a lot of the responses and type out fourteen and twenty four and so on for all the numbers so the single numbers filter out correctly. That along with creating links for each of the regions accessible by the regional managers took me the rest of the day. I actually ended up staying late so I could finish it up. James needed region 13 by the next morning so I had to get it done.

I left work around 5:45pm and I got back home at 7:00pm. I had a meeting with my advisers at 7:30pm and it was the same old story so I won't bore you with the details. After the meeting, I had spaghetti for dinner which was boring. After dinner I just relaxed and watched Anger Management with the guys in my room and some of the girls. I also called Pratt and was able to talk to the woman who had contacted me before about applying. Wasn't much help though. She said that hiring will be going on for the next few weeks and that I'll probably hear from someone soon. After the other girls left Katie stayed for another hour and then left. Not even a half an hour later, she called up and came back down. Apparently some of the guys on her floor were "loud" and she couldn't sleep. So of course she slept in our room again. I woke up this morning and headed into work. I ended up riding the tram with Lemone and Salazar by coincidence because they were going to the CFA for our meeting this morning. Being stuck in a tram with them for an hour = hell.

Lamb-Brained Temps

Last night when I got home I had some awesome sundried tomato and chicken pasta for dinner. After that, I went upstairs with John, Tyler and the other guys and watched V for Vendetta. Afterwards we chilled out and shared a nice cigar that we had all pitched in on out on the porch while we enjoyed the view from the 15th floor. Steve left early to go have his phone interview with Pratt and Whitney. I got back to my room around 12:30am and asked Steve about his interview. He said this year all the internships are being hired by the seperate departments and the one he talked to was apparently one of the first to start contacting people. The guy he talked to said he started early because he wanted his choice of the best applicants. This was really encouraging for me because it means I still have time to be contacted. Also, Steve's resume is nearly identical to mine. His GPA is .04 higher and he does swimming; those are about the only advantages he has on me. So I figure someone will at least consider me for an interview. Well I'm holding out, hopefully something will come along. I do not want to work at Indian Rock again. Anyways, after talking to Steve I went to bed.

This morning I woke and went in to work. Back to the 9am-5pm schedule. In the morning I closed the online survey and worked with the Firefly and Brigades Online people to deactivate links and archive the articles. I updated the online survey spreadsheet for the last time, made a summary using surveymonkey, and exported it to PDF for easy printing. I also used the random number generator to draw the name for the 100$ gift certificate to the CFA Shop, very exciting. I went to lunch after that and had some sort of chicken with capers and scalloped potatoes which was really good. I spent the rest of the day working on the phone survey because I had noticed that the totals were wrong and when I compared what we had on surveymonkey and the spreadsheet I found that we were missing 11 data points. So I made a pivot chart to figure out what demographics they were missing from and to my shock I found that almost 40 data points were either missing or misplaced from their proper demographics. I pretty much totally blame the temps because John typed in caps and Allison put zeros before single digit numbers. It was pretty simple to see who screwed up and they made the large majority of the mistakes. It took me forever to figure out which data points when where. I had to use all the demographics to figure out which one was wrong and had placed the data point in the wrong place. I was able to sort it out in about 5 hours and I was left with the original 11 data points that were just outright missing. I replaced them with new candidates using my random selection process and then headed home at 6pm. Once again the temps wasted my time and I spent another half a day fixing the mistake. I'm not very happy about it. I need to go play some basketball or something and blow off some steam tonight. I'm also going to be calling Pratt tonight, hopefully someone answers this time.

Push Bike

On Friday, I ducked out of work early to go play some footy with everyone in a park near the apartments. We played for about an hour and I was absolutely exhausted. It was probably a really bad idea for me to play. I couldn't breathe very well because I was sick. I couldn't run for more than 10 minutes with out being entirely out of breath and almost dead. By the end of the game I was very dizzy and I didn't feel well at all. When I got back, I showered and went to talk to my advisers about seeing a doctor the next day. They gave me a couple places to call. They were all closed and I didn't want to go to the hospital so I just decided to stay in for the night and get some rest. I watched TV while everyone went out and I went to bed early.

I woke up the next morning feeling much the same as the previous night. After I ate some breakfast and took a shower I actually felt much better. I still didn't feel great so I called the clinics and discovered that they were booked for the weekend. I didn't want to go to the hospital and I was feeling a little bit better so I decided to wait it out and see how I felt on Monday. Putnam and I spent the day at an anti-scientology protest just for fun. Putnam had been to the previous one and said it was fun so I decided to see what it was all about. We wore masks and handed out flyers that other people printed out. We talked to other protesters and spent most of the day doing that. After the protest, we went with some of the protesters to a pub and had a couple drinks. Then we went one of the protester's house and hung out for a while. It was cool to hang out with people our age for once. We met some interesting people for sure. At around 10 we decided to head back into the city and meet up with the other guys to go to a club. We barely missed the tram and were dismayed when we saw that the next one wasn't for another 30 minutes. Two girls with bikes walked up to us and asked us for directions. We had no idea where we were and told them we weren't from around here. One of the girls introduced herself as Tommy and asked if we were American. When we said yes she said that she had a friend studying in New York. She said that she and her German friend were going to her friend's birthday party and asked us if we wanted to come. Not wanting to wait for the tram, we said why not. She got a call from her friend who gave her rough directions to the house. She still didn't know where it was so she asked if one of us wanted to ride the other bike with her and find the place. So I decided to take the bike with Tommy to find the place and Putnam decided to walk with the German girl. After about a 2k ride on a bike that was older than me, we found the place. Tommy stayed and I took the bike to lead Putnam and the German girl back to the apartment. The whole ordeal was pretty fun. It was Tommy's friend's 20th birthday. They were all our age and went to the same university. They were very friendly and just real people. It was refreshing to hang out and chill in a home environment with normal people our age. After about an hour the group decided to head into the city to find a club. Chris and I had to go into the city to get back home anyways so we decided to join them. The group took three cabs into the city. The club was exactly what we had been looking for our entire time in Melbourne. It had good music, people our age, it was packed and had cheap drinks. The people in our group paid for the cab, my cover, and my drinks. They were pretty much the nicest people I'd ever met. Tommy was all over Putnam and he wasn't liking it so he left early and went back to the apartment about an hour before I did. At about 3am we left the club and everyone wanted to go to another bar. I told them it was getting late and I would head back to my apartment. I said goodbye and thank you to everyone and walked in the direction they pointed me. After about a block, I knew exactly where I was. Surprisingly, the club was only about a half mile from our apartment. When I got back Steve and Zan were still up and we talked about our nights and then headed to bed around 4am.

We all slept in Sunday till about noon. We went down to the market to buy groceries for the week and then spent the day relaxing and doing work our projects. We had some burgers for dinner and everyone went to bed early in preparation for the work week. By this point, I felt much better compared to Friday and I was sure it was just a cold that had gotten out of hand. I decided to not waste the time or money going to a doctor.

Monday morning I woke up feeling refreshed. My sore throat was gone and my cough was barely still there however I was still congested. It seems like my cold is slowly going away. I spent the day working with my spreadsheets and calling people. By the end of the day we had less than 10 people left to call in the phone survey and over 370 responses to the online survey. It seems we will complete the survey by our goal, which was Wednesday. Today was John's last day as well. We thanked him for his help and headed home at 8pm. We'll spend almost the rest of the project analyzing the data and writing our report. I hope to be booking all tours and flights for after the project with in the next couple of days. It's also time to get souveniours so if you think you'll get one let me know what you want.

Sickie

So yesterday was pretty miserable. I was sick as balls the entire day. I did the usual in work and was able to make it through the day without dying. The entire way home I was dreading our meeting with our advisers and decided to play "I'm sick so lets move it along" card. We got back and I tried looking as sick as possible for our meeting, which wasn't that hard. Our advisers said exactly what I thought they were going to say about our paper. Of course they're also things that can't be fixed until we complete the survey. So what's the use in talking about them? I have no idea. Conversation was slow and uninspiring, at one point Lemone said "Oh I'm usually braindead by this time at night." and all I was thinking was "Lady, that has nothing to do with the time." Finally after some coughing fits they showed some mercy and let us leave.

I went to global gossip afterwords and made a last ditch attempt at getting an internship. Luckily, I found out that Pratt & Whitney is still in the process of choosing interns and hasn't made any of its selections known yet. We'll see I guess. I also updated the spreadsheet while I was there so I wouldn't have to do it in work. The rest of the night I relaxed and tried not to die as I watch some awful Law and Order: SVU. I went to bed and woke up around 10am the next day to get ready for work.

I still felt really sick when I woke up this morning. I got ready though and headed for work. Luckily for me a tram broke down on the tracks in front of us and I was stuck for an hour while they got another tram to tow it away. So I got to work an hour late and immeadiately found out that Allison had screwed up again and called several regions without marking them and now we were getting angry responses. At this point we had probably 90 surveys left to conduct. I decided that I would dumb down my spreadsheet and put it online so I could supervise Allison's activities. She's dumb as a rock, her resume is false, she has the attention span of a puppy. If I had hired her, I would have ripped her a new one. Under the new system she knew she was being watched so she actually made phone calls and actually marked the sheet. It was a pain for me to update the master spreadsheet based on the online one but as the number of candidates left went down the easier it was. Allison left early because of her dumb kid, who I'm sure is a great addition to the world gene pool. Under the new system we completed 33 phone surveys during the course of the day. Even though Allison left halfway through the day, this was the most was had ever completed during one day by a margin of 7 surveys. So it was a productive day. We only have 65 surveys remaining to complete. Max and I decided that tomorrow will be Allison's last day and that we will keep John on until we finish the survey. That made my day. Plus for the first time in days I can breathe in without coughing up a lung. I think I might be getting better, which is good because I dunno how much more I could take.

Thanks for all the comments, I'll be sure to take the advise about the pictures. I hope you all enjoyed the survey, Steve definately had the best answers. Steve what's this about you working in New York all summer? Who's gonna help me make fun of Ben all summer? Who am I supposed to hang out with? Ryan!?!? Well, I will be turning 21 soon. I guess Mike and I will have to hang out more. Any ideas of what I can bring back for our basement aquarium/petting zoo/my mom's nightmare?

Chemist

Yesterday, I brought in some chili from the night before to have for lunch which I ate around 12:30, pretty much when I got there. I spent the first half of the day updating spreadsheets, calling Captains, and fixing stupid Allison's mistakes. To hold me over until dinner I went and got some sushi again, salmon and avocado this time. I spent the rest of the day replacing sample subjects who were no longer in the CFA, had moved, etc. and calling more Captains. I had pretty good success calling Captains as I think there were less than 10 left that we had been unable to reach. We hit the halfway mark about halfway through the day for the phone survey. Hopefully working after hours more will allow us to pick up our rate of surveys completed per day. Throughout the day, I got progressively sicker and sitting in the chair all day definately did not help my back. By the end of the day, I was pretty miserable. I slept on the tram ride home. I got home at 9pm and ate some stir fry. I really wasn't that hungry because I didn't feel good so I packed it up for lunch the next day. I layed on the couch the rest of the night trying not to die coughing. I went to bed around midnight.

The next day, I woke up sick as ever. I woke up at 8:30am because we were going to work 10am-6pm today because we have a meeting with our advisers at 7:30pm. I was moving pretty slow but I knew I had to go into work because no one else knows how to work the spreadsheets. I decided I'd go in late and to fight this sickness and kill it with fire. I walked down to the chemist to get some ammo. That's what they call a pharmacy here, a chemist. The chemist was really nice and hooked me up with the Australian version of Dayquil and some potent cough drops. After that I went next door to the Aldi's and picked up a Power-C vitamin water. I'm not messing around. I took them one after the other and headed into work. Hopefully I can make it through the day and my cold/flu whatever passes before the weekend.

Aerial Ping Pong

So during lunch time, I went to K Mart (yes they have them here) and I bought some cheap athletic pants and some other things I've been meaning to get. Spent the whole day calling people and updating spreadsheets again. At 4pm about a dozen of us met in the field behind the CFA and played some footy. Footy is ok to watch but it's really fun to play. It's sorta like soccer but you can use your hands and still hit people. I was pretty good at it compared to the others because I used to play soccer and I could place the ball reasonably well. We played for three and a half hours and we were all dirty and bruised by the end of it but it was a great time.

Friday night we decided to check out a place that Professor Barnett had told us about. It was called Frostbite and it was supposedly a place where there were cheap drinks and people our age. It was in St. Kilda, on Chapel Street. We had bad luck there before but Professor Barnett had been coming to Melbourne for years. When we got to Chapel Street we asked for directions and started walking. Putnam was tired and just being a general pansy. Zan wasn't helping either as he was just complaining and whining the entire time. After walking down Chapel Street for about 20 minutes we found the place. It was boarded up with trash bags over the windows. It was closed for redevelopment. This was just our luck. Putnam and Zan wanted to go back into the city and they were dragging the some of the expedition with them. Steve, Katie, Cara, Tyler and I decided to find a place we had heard about called Revellers. We found it and went inside without telling Putnam, Zan or the rest of the quitters. It was a very small place but it was packed and had live music. The drinks were prohibitably expensive, we stuck to the cheapest drink there, five dollar shots of cheap vodka. We didn't have many because they were so expensive. We hung out and listened to the music for a couple hours and then we took a van cab home.

On Saturday, We went to the market and spent the morning looking at souveniors. I never really buy anything cause I'm waiting for like the last weekend because I'll prolly lose everything if I buy it now. It's fun to walk around the market though and see what's going on. After the market, we relaxed for a while in the room. Steve and Putnam went to the library and I decided to take a nap. I woke up around 5pm and I got ready for Barnett's party that he was having at a bar somewhere. It was with all of his old colleages and our advisors. He invited the Theta Chi guys as well. Putnam and I decided to go because the price for food and drinks was definately right, free, and as Barnett put it, you might see your advisers drunk and then you'd have a story to tell. The party was at 7pm and Putnam and I got there at 7:30pm. There was some pretty good asian finger food even though I had no idea what it was. Free drinks are good drinks and the footy game was on so we had something to do. Most of the people there knew quite a bit about Barnett and WPI, though most of them were Australian, so we had something to talk about besides the usual cultural differences and sports. Of course we did talk sports as well because a visibly drunk Salazar wanted to talk baseball. Salazar is much much cooler when he's drunk. He's actually a pretty big Yankees fan. Lemone was her usual annoying, dumb self. At one point I remember her saying "My social life is not that good, so this is fun" and I almost laughed right in her face. Hmmm, I wonder why that is. Most of Barnett's friends were really cool. Almost all of them had something to do with the fire protection field so they were all reasonably intelligent, which was quite refreshing after the work week I had. We watched the game and talked until about quarter of ten and then Putnam and I headed out to meet up with the rest of the guys. Steve had picked out a bar he found online that said it was the number one bar for people 18-25 years of age. Putnam and I get less than two blocks away when we get a phone call from Steve telling us NOT to go in. We get to the entrance and there is Steve and the rest of the group looking like they had just seen a ghost. Apparently the place was a gay bar and they had all paid the cover and gone in. Oh man, Steve is NEVER going to hear the end of this. We decided from to hit up CQ again as it was maybe a block away. When we got there we found out it was a members only night. Foiled again, we went to the Joint. We had a couple of beers and eventually found our way to the dance floor. It was packed and it was pretty fun. The rest of guys made fun of Murdy and John the entire time because Murdy dances like a caveman and John dances like a hippie on drugs. During one of last songs we were dancing to, a midget walked up to Cara and sorta pointed and nodded at her; and then he flashed her his nipple and walked away. It was really funny and we laughed about it pretty much the entire way home. When we got back, we watched a movie while Cara and Steve had a shaving cream fight.

We woke up on Sunday and went to the market to buy food for the week. You get the best deals on Sunday because on Monday the market is closed. After the market, we went to the cricket grounds to see another footy game. We found out that if you buy tickets at the stadium, you can get them for only 20$. I've decided to barrack for the Essenden Bombers. It means to support a team. You can't say you root for a team here because it means something entirely different which I'll leave to you guys to figure out. The game was a rivalry, Collingwood Magpies vs. Richmond Tigers. It was a great atmosphere with about 70,000 people in attendance. The game was a blowout by Collingwood. We went back to the apartment around 5pm and I spent most of the night flat on my back. Between being really sore from footy, watching the footy game, and riding the tram my back had just about had it. I could barely walk without being in pain. I'm pretty sure I strained a muscle just like I did in high school playing soccer. It hurt pretty bad but I was still able to do work on my laptop and I had a lot of time to rest as I'm working from 12pm-8pm this week because reaching volunteers during work hours is tough. I went to sleep after I was done typing my paper, around 1am.

Monday morning, my back felt much better but it was still pretty sore. I also woke up sick; sore throat, cough, etc. It was nice to wake up and have time to make breakfast. I made myself some eggs and then headed off to work. The tram ride wasn't very kind to my back as it was killing me by the time I got there. I checked surveymonkey and was really happy with the rate we're collecting responses. We have so far collected over 300 online responses and over 100 phone responses. Hopefully we can at least double that by the end of the project. I updated the spreadsheets and then I called people the rest of the day. I had a ham sandwich I had brought around 3pm, but by 5:30pm I was hungry again. Max and I hopped on a train in the opposite direction we had been going to see if we could find some new food places to eat. Three stops down there was a Subway, a McDonalds, and a sushi place. Max went to the Subway and I went and got some sushi. I've had it several times here in Melbourne and I gotta say I enjoy it. My tastes have definately expanded here and I'll have to share that with you guys when I get back. Anyways, I had a spicy salmon roll and prawn and avocado roll. The great thing about sushi is it tastes good, it's filling, and it's cheap. At most places around here a roll will cost you $1.50-$3.00. After my sushi snack, I called people the rest of the evening and headed home around 8pm. I got home around 9pm and had some awesome chili that Putname made. I relaxed and watched TV for a little while and then headed to the internet cafe, Global Gossip, for the rest of the night. I uploaded about 2/3 of my pictures on a website that Murdy had set up to archive everyone's Australia photos and I also set up a dummy survey for you guys to look through. It's fully functional and it is identical to the one volunteer fire fighters take online. I came back around midnight and went to bed. I woke up the next day did the dishes for about an hour since it was my turn and then headed off for work. The weather around here has been beautiful as of late, 75F and sunny. I've enjoyed working the 12-8pm hours thus far. The commute doesn't take as long and it's not as crowded. The weather is much nicer at 11am as well. I definately don't mind the extra sleep either. I'm still sick but it's just a nuisance really.

In other news, Murdy came up with a travel plan after the project that I might go on. It includes 5 days in Cairns and a 15 day tour of New Zealand. I'm going to research it more but I most likely will do it. So far it'd just be Murdy, Brian, and I on the trip but that's fine because smaller groups are easier to travel with. I'm hoping to do some shark cage diving in Cairns and some glacier hiking in New Zealand. The price comes to 126$ per day so it's pretty reasonable. It would put me home around the 20th of May. I'll let you know more details as I get them.


Here are the links to the photos and the dummy survey
http://australia.enu87.com/v/cmrogan/?g2_page=1

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=KB5IARKONySl7boI0FDMTw_3d_3d

Plonk

Yesterday, I woke up and went in to work. I spent the morning working on updating the spreadsheets. We had a meeting with our advisers and sponsors at 10am. Again, it was a total waste of time. I spent the time before lunch typing up the minutes from the meeting since it was my turn. Had a chicken slouvaki for lunch which was pretty good. I spent the rest of the day calling people. I was really tired by the end of the day so I slept on the tram back. Putnam cooked shrimp linguini for dinner which was really good. After dinner, Adam and I went to the basketball court to see if we could get a pick up game. Adam is the tallest guy on the trip. He's probably 6'4" or 6'5". We got there and we ended up playing a full court five on five game. Adam was a good foot and half taller than anyone else on the court. We were both on the same team and playing with 8 Asians. It was sad, we just destroyed them. The standard of basketball around here definately is sub par.

After basketball, I showered up and headed out with the guys and Cara to the bar. Since it was Thursday a lot of bars had really good deals. We headed to the Joint and just had a couple drinks while relaxing. We left after an hour and a half and when we got back, I just went sleep. I woke up late this morning and I totally forgot that we're playing footy at 4pm today at work so I forgot all my athletic clothes. Hopefully someone will have extra. Maybe I'll just take the tram to the shopping plaza and grab some shorts. We'll see what happens. Not many plans for this weekend except another footy game on Sunday.