Donkey Kong

Exams have kept me busy since my last post and for the whole time I actually wasn't even thinking about this exchange at all. However I just finished my last two exams two days ago and had the meanest sleep in the day after; I woke up and planned to write this post when alas, the electricity had been cut off. It seemed there was a "failure of equipment" and we didn't get power back until about 9 that evening. Dinner by candlelight was nice.

It was just as well I didn't blog yesterday otherwise it would have been a "still waiting" post. But I happened to get my housing placement notice by email late last night, so now I can actually share some news.

Going with the trend of not getting my first choice, I have been placed in DK House Warabi. Every time I see the name I think of Donkey Kong and I feel like I'm gonna live in a video game or something. But it's all good; it's a little bit cheaper than Azalea house (taking into account the extra transportation cost) and the room doesn't have its own kitchenette or bathroom, but it looks like a nice place. Although Tokyo is notorious for its せまい or small rooms, the room I have is actually twice the floor area of my room at home (we have a small house!) so claustrophobia shouldn't be a problem at all.

DK House is in Warabi city, in the south of Saitama, which is part of the Greater Tokyo Area, but not part of "Tokyo" per se - kind of like how Papakura is in relation to Auckland maybe? It's an hour away from uni by train and walking - nothing that really is foreign to me given that it takes me that much time to bus into uni from where I live anyway.

And according the last year's placement, there were 38 Sophia exchange students there amongst a total of 146 people who live there, which should make for good company.

In other news, I met three of the other Sophia exchange students from Auckland at the 360 Auckland Abroad departure party at the beginning of the month. They seemed pretty cool, though we didn't have much time to chat. Ben (a friend who went to Sophia for a year) was also there on hand to impart words of wisdom as a requisite 360 bot.

Some other good news. The UoA kindly selected me as a recipient for the Languages and Literature Study Abroad Scholarship which I'm definitely happy about. It's only a small amount but it all helps. Still waiting on JASSO, I have fingers and toes crossed for that one.

Some disappointing news. Those tickets that I thought I was snagging for a bargain dropped by $170 a few weeks after I bought my tickets! I wrote to Qantas and rang their help desk asking for a refund of the difference. They wouldn't budge. It didn't hurt to try.

And lastly I bought a new camera to document my travels - the Panasonic Lumix TZ-10. It's a compact camera with a nice zoom, manual controls and HD video recording. I'm definitely gonna get into learning all about aperture size, focal length, shutter speed, f-numbers and all that cool stuff. Although a DSLR would have been nice, I wanted something that was travel friendly so I think I will go for a DSLR later.

I'm free until leave for Japan so I'm hunting for jobs now - mainly to save up, but also because I need to complete my engineering work hours (which I'm severely lacking in at the moment).