Anyway, latest life installment. I guess you haven’t had one of these in a while, so some of you might even be interested in what I’m doing. Because it’s nigh on the end of the year, I need to think about which universities I want to go to next year. For ages I’ve been okay about going to the <a href=”http://www.anu.edu.au”>ANU</a>, even if it’s not the best uni in the country, expecially when it comes to Computer Science. But in my grand tradition of Spur of the Moment decisions, I’ve applied to go to <a href=”http://uow.edu.au”>Wollongong</a> instead. So I dragged my family up there last Friday along with <a href=”hosting.php?hostid=5”>Steph</a>’s family (she’s the one who put the idea of Wollongong in my head in the first place). There’s a bloody big windy mountain road between here and there, but it’s very pretty. For those of you who don’t know, ‘Gong is about an hour’s drive down from Sydney, and it’s on the coast. The town’s a bit of a hole – kind of Australian Industrial Country Town-ish – but the Uni is really nice; it’s all very new and everything’s mauve and teal. It also has (I think) the highest proportion of overseas students studying there of any uni in Australia. We arrvied a bit earlier than Steph, so we grabbed out Tour Guy (Bruno) and he began showing us all the pretty facilities. Point One: Wollongong Uni has the biggest and best theatre on the South Coast, they show cheap, new-ish release movies there on Wednesdays. We ran into Steph’s family and their Tour Guy (Vlad) in one of the Informatics buildings, so then we dragged each other around giggling like idiots.
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After the tour of the buildings, we tripped off to see the uni’s accommodation, most of which is off campus. I liked Campus East the best; <i>and</i> it’s located in the suburb of Fairy Meadow. Now <i>that’s</i> pretty damn cool. It’s run by this Scary Lady, but she seems nice, and there are dogs and birds and worms and goats and vegetables and all sorts of crazy things. The Scary Lady runs a pretty well-organised college from the looks of things, and all the
CompSci people get put into the one block (it’s the block with Internet access), which is a good way to find more people doing the same degree as you. I hope I get in…
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After than we had lunch in the Wollongong town centre. It’s a very different place than Canberra; kind of hard to get used to, but I suppose I’ll have, like, five years to do it… Scary.
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Fortunatley, though my parents were kind of reluctant at first about me going away, they seemed to be impressed with the uni once we got there. I don’t think they have so many hangups about me going there anymore, and I don’t either. It’s actually kind of exciting. Whee! Beach! And Steph might be joining me the year after unless she does a Patented Alison Last-Minute Change Of Mind as well…
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Now all I have to do is get accepted…