Mmmm I see that my attempts to write a decent and regularly update blog are failing miserably. I'm going to try and attempt to rescue it
We've been in China for about 4 weeks now, and wow, are things soooo different here. After we got set up and were given a place that the foreign guest house (the 2 start hotel that I was talking about.) We had about five days to get settled in. We did a tour around the campus the first couple of days, and there were lots of surprises in store for us. The first thing was the plane graveyard. It was awsome. There was about 8 MiGs, some light aircraft and 4 choppers, including a Huey! Granted, most...okay, all the aircraft there were older than most of my lecturers, but they were amazing to see non less.
The campus itself was pretty 'take you breath away' stuff. However, that was only along the main roads through the Uni, once you got around a bit you actually found some pretty dodgy stuff. (Like the cleaning guy that lives under the Compressed Air tanks for the Supersonic Windtunnel..he has a stove and everythin, and a little tarp for a roof!) But compared to RMIT, things were amazing for us. The labs (on the most part) were full of cool and interesing gadgets equipment (Although some of the buildings they were housed in were shockingly derelict...think: Maxwell Gym, or a Ghetto...or the buildings in that little town in 'Saving Private Ryan' ...some had puddles of water everyehere, broken ..everythings everywhere. But once you got where the equipment was, thing were suddenly sparkling new...didn't mean they worked though,but at least they looked good. We found this out when our Experiemental Aerodynamics teacher was showing us somestuff in a water tunnel [windtunnel that uses water for you people that understand not engineering...and all Art students...lol..Stez, Karma...smile!] and he turned in on, and started talking to us. The next this we knew there was water running down the wall, and there was a massive puddle all over the floor. lol.)
(Okay the brackets have confused me...looks like maths gone wrong I'm starting again)
The greatest thing about the campus was that there was actually alot of space, and alot of it was gardens. I know the concept of space is one hard to grasp when you think of china and 1.3 billion people, but some how the uni had done it. It was still croweded by Australian standards, ...but.we do have a country the size of china, with a population about 1.8% of that of China. Oh and the other cool thing about the campus was the fact that all the roads where lined with trees, so at night, with all the lights on, it was pretty beautiful. The newer buildings were also stunning. Like our Aerospace Building was 12 stories high, with a courtyard in the middle, with glass windows...duh...windows are made from glass. I mean big massive class windows.
The only really nasty thing about the campus is the moat (from the old Ming Palace) that runs around the campus, and the river that runs trhough it. 'Runs' probably isn't the best word, as I have yet to see it move. I swear some of the stuff (animals / bodies / trash) in it must be leftover from the Ming Palace. If its hot day and the wind is blowing the wrong way..... Nasty man!
That aside, it was a pretty decent uni, especially considering that we were in China. From a Aerospace Engineering piont of view it had everything we needed including a hypersonic windtunel!! Yay. (thats a tunnel that can get wind up to Mach 6-12....Mach means speed of sound...so like 12,000km/h)
That first week we also met our dorm buddies, a bunch of Nepalese guys (We now call them the Nipples...derived from the word Nepal's which means to reside in or hold the citizenship of the Kingdom of Nepal) They were a awsome bunch of blokes, took us out to play soccer that first week. Oh yeah another funny thing. The soccer 'field' is actually astro turf, with sand in it, so your cleats have some sort of grip. Good luck in sneakers. every second step seems to send you 'Arse over Head' as Mike likes to say. And in this normal sized football pitch they manage to have about 200!!!!!!!!!! people playing soccer at the same time!!!!!!!!. (They divide the pitch up into lots of tiny rectangles and squares and play about 7-10 a side.)
We also got to meet our lectures that first week, and had a look that the courses that we had to take. The first words that came out of my mouth probably can't be repeated here, but we had Six (6) courses to take! Our time table was chockers! On Thursday we had 10 hours of class with only a 2 hours break in the middle started at 8am and finished at 8;30pm.
That scared the heck out of us, but the classes actually looke really interesting. In one of them, we even got to design and build out own Electrically Powered Autonomous Areial Vechile (EP - UAV), and found out that we would only have exams in three of those classes, so it wasn't that bad.
( Dude...this is soo funny, i'm listening to a Chinese version of that famous Cranberries song song...'Ode to Family'....Every second song here seem to be a rip of some popular old school song. Even the Backstreet Boys got ripped off...lol.)
(I'll get started on my I HATE HOW CHINA RIPS EVERYTHING OFF speech later...i can gpo four hours on that one....i even saw a Ripped of Version of a Toyota Echo and Russian Planes...lol.)
Neway, once we got classes started, we've been pretty busy. I don't think i have everworked this hard in my life. its getting normal to spent 8-12 hours sitting in the cubicles that they gave (how cool it that!! its like 'Office Space!'...without the fire....although with the OHnS here.....) I've actually developed a twitch under my right eye that comes and goes now..i feel like little blond kid from Southpark
The city of Nanjing is pretty nice. We've been out and about a bit, to the Fuzi (Confucious) Temple, Downtown, and the Clubbing district...lol. There is actually a whole city block that is like a designated clubbing area, full of clubs, like hundreds of them. And most of the ones that we saw were as good as, if not better than most Aussie Clubs. The musical tastes leave comthing to be desired though. Its not that cool to dance to Britney Spears or Ronan Keating.
The shopping has been great here. everything is soooo cheap. I've looked around, but haven't actually picked up much. There is so much I want to get though. The scholorship money came through last week, I'll actually have some money to spend. After that all I need is some free time. I had to turn down going to the observatory this morning with Mike and Jas, and our Chinese friend Carrie, cause I had to look over my Aerodyamics notes (it took me about 6 hours to actually uinderstand 35 pages of the book! the thing is 600 pages!...I could be readying it for the rest of my life!) I think i'm the slowest out of these four with my work. I always seem to be miles behind. Mike went over the same notes, and even wrote them out his computer in about 2 hours!
Neway all this talk of work is reminding me how much i have left to do.
Au Revoir....Zaijian....and again excuse my spelling