[update] Extra trip to Melbourne.

Today I went into the City of Melbourne, to go to uni. I live about one hour away from uni by public transport. I thought we started today, since the original timetable showed that. But they actually changed it to next week, and I didn't read it carefully, so I came today. I wonder why they want to start it later though; our preclinical year is already only one year rather than two, and yet we start medicine three weeks later than UQ which has two preclinical years. I realize that we have done prerequisites though.

So I wasted a bit of money for traveling expenses by buying a myki pass for a week where I wouldn't actually need to travel. Ah well. At least it was on concession still, so it wasn't too much money. My concession card from biomed expires at the end of February, and "Masters by coursework" students in Victoria, including Melbourne MD students, don't get concession travel; as I discussed earlier in this blog. Nor do any international students. I really hope this will change in the future, to be in line with most other states, where postgraduate and international students are eligible for concession public transport travel.

Anyway. I still got a few things done today. I handed in a few forms in at the Student Centre and got a new student card. I didn't get a new photo though. I didn't feel there was anything wrong with my photo at 17 years of age.

Then I checked out some graffiti artwork of Girls' Generation (소녀시대) member, Jessica (제시카). I read about it online, and it was in Hosier Lane, Melbourne:

It's good to see their influence in Melbourne. I hope they come to Melbourne one day for a concert.

I also bought the workbooks for the Melbourne MD year 1, included with a folder. The folder is quite fancy, although it wasn't that cheap at $40.30.

I also walked through Chinatown today and went to the front of Parliament House just to look at the building. The Brisbane Chinatown is more fancy, with a fancy mall pavement. It might be a bit wider than Melbourne's one, but not as long. Melbourne's one is different among the Chinatowns that I have been to around the world in that cars can drive through. It's harder for pedestrians that way if you want to cross from one side to another.

Anyway, it seems like I will be starting for real next week. A few days left of a break which I didn't really plan for. If I knew that we started next week, I would have enrolled in an intensive course for Chinese at UniMelb's Confucius Institute which ran from January 9th – February 5th, 2012, because as I have commented on this blog a few times, I always thought it was good to learn Chinese, but it wasn't a very urgent thing to do. Ah well, I'll see how things are next year. If I did attend the short course this year, I wouldn't have been able to go to Queensland though.