tim has arrived!

i guess i’m a sad person with not much happening. or, i guess i’d be writing about nothing happening if nothing had happened, but yesterday the most important thing of all finally happened.

tim came here!

we are having a grand time. went to bondi junction, which is a very cool area and stumbled around until we got tired and then went home. had nice dinner, i think i’m getting another cold or flu, watched a bunch of episodes of house and here i am blogging.

last saturday was kevin’s birthday, and we had a fantastic party, started off with a dinner here, and moving on to dancing at a bar. i made russian meat pies (pirozhki, vegeterian version too), (oh i messed them up so badly. wrote down recipe verbatim from my mom’s email on a post it but i totally forgot to add the part where i need to add yeast because its not mentioned in the original email. so when i mixed stuff i FORGOT TO ADD YEAST WHICH mean that an hour later i realized the batch was ruined. thankfully i had time so i made ANOTHER batch and added yeast, BUT of course i realized i added too little (abt half of needed) too late again. they actually came out fine anyway, but i spent a majority of the evening kicking myself) which were loved and annihilated, and apple pie (also finished), and helped figure out a ceasar salad. LA made a veggie and chicken lasagna, and a swiss roll.

i got my 2nd assignment in AI back, 88%. first assignment, 92%. i may get a good mark in a computer course for the first time in my life. … yeah … right ….

i almost bought a moleskin today. tim gave one as a present to LA when she spent a day roaming the hospitals with me. its *DELICIOUS*. has 5 sections for travellers: facilities, food, places, people, sleep – for keeping notes on great places. i wish i had one in europe!

sydney is looking like a decent place afterall.

assignment end, break begin

she-crab soup

she-crab soup made from this recipe (its awesome)

today was definitely a good day. first off, last night after making triply sure that the assignment works (thank you, dad!), it was handed in with no problems, and i went out to have some drinks – for the first time evah! (the drinking out that is). that was fantabulous fun, and i came home and crashed to sleep.

the morning of thursday was excellent. first off, dad confirmed everything is fine. thus this huge, terrible weight of that unbearable assignment fell off my shoulders. the linguistics assignment was almost done, so i spent my morning cleaning it up. (i also made scrambled eggs. yum!)

the constant question of where to print if you’re not really in possession of a printer can drive a student to do odd things, especially if they have to hand in the assignment by 2pm and its 1:50. i tried printing at the library (which smelled like smoke, and later i found out that it was evacuated!), but ended up crashing their computers. so, on kinda vagueish instructions from LA and Kevin i found the place where all the american students get their sponsored labs – its a gleaming, white, clean room, with lots of big macs with flat screens and pretty mice and fast computers and fast printers. i printed and was outta there under 1 minute. yay!

next problem was finding the drop off box. i got confused between two buildings, both of which intials begin with MB, so i ended up being at the hand in place at 2:10 or so. but they still took it on time!

i also spoke the prof, and wished him a good holiday. yay!

random memories on the walk home, when the world suddenly became bright and assignment free:

a bearded, white, curly haired professor at his desk going “hmmm” in a serious tone to a young naive first year student cowering in front of him.

“but i did everything i could!” “well my grandad was in the navy you know!” (as part of one conversation, very loud argument)

a guy eating a watermelon (like 1/4 of it) on the run.

the feeling joy surrounding the campus despite the rain as this was the last day of classes before the break (actually i felt the joy but didn’t know that second bit).

upon arrival home i found out i have no classes tomorrow, and that elin will be going to the gym 2 hours later, so i snacked, chatted, relaxed, and then went to the gym for a hard core workout!

this was my 4th time. i biked for 20 mins @ lv 5, elliptical for 20 mins @ lv 5, and for the first time, ran all 20 mins at 7kph (before i was 14 mins run and 6 walk, and then 16 mins run and 4 walk). then elin showed me some weights training, so i did about 40 sit ups on the big ball, some leg excersizes with the ball, some back excersizes with the ball, weight training for back and arms and legs, and stretched. it was good!

came home, made the she crab soup, and that’s where the day ended, basically.

i wont count the evening because i washed all of the dishes in the kitchen again for the 2nd time (not a single. clean. cup. 2nd. time. in. the. day. i washed almost all of them before the gym.) (so before sleep i went in and did a major clean up – washed majority of dishes that were “anonymos” – like not from LA’s baking – and finally cleaned off counters. yay!), and watched wolf creek which was scary. but that’s okay. it doesn’t count.

i want to be a food photographer! so much fun!

hunter valley and recipes

sunset climber pouring wine glass (minimalism) tw215 glass (abstract) baked pretzels

today i have cooked these pretzels. the only thing i changed is that i glazed them with egg white instead of baking soda. they looked and tasted delicious, but i’m getting bored!

lately i’ve been making bread quite often. it started with this recipe, and then i was changing it around quite a bit, until i’ve tried pita breads, and other pretzels, and general experimentation. i AM improving – the kneading of my dough definitely has risen (and speaking of rising, when my dough rises, like today, it looks GREAT. just yummy.)

lesley ann has been asking me quite a lot lately to make this carrot cake, thus i shall do that tomorrow (after gym, heh). last night she made these awesome coconut/chocolate squares which were SO awesome. i can’t wait till she does them again, and i’ll be stealing the recipe.

i’ve also posted some photos on flickr from my recent hunter valley trip, on saturday. it’s been fun! i think the fun is reflected by that i had to fix the horizon on all the photos in the last half of the day – its crooked everywhere! (and i remember trying so hard to keep it straight…)

some statistics

ohmygod update

okay, shame on me about blogging so shamelessly about all the insects and things i’ve seen. about 5 minutes after i pressed “post”, a huntsman crawled out to the ceiling of my bedroom. most. paranoid. feeling. ever. it was a small one – only 7cms in diameter (about same size as a smoke alarm), but i hid under my blanket the entire time oleg was trying to get it. the part that i missed, thankfully, is that after oleg missed the huntsman (not thankfully), it jumped down onto the window sill. it even might’ve went on the bed. its too freaking fast. anyway, after i saw how it squeezed itself completely flat into the crack of the windowsill, i crawled out of bed and far away, until oleg flicked it outside.

lessons:
– no more windows open. ever.
– those things are fast.
– and they can be very small when they want to be. PARANOIA BZZZZZ.

good night! … i hope.

oh yeah. photographs from last 2 parties, and, well, the huntsman.
——————————————————-

university

weeks in sydney: 4
week of classes: 3rd
number of classes i’m taking: 4
number of exams i’ll have: 2
number of textbooks i need to buy: 2
number of textbooks bought: 1

enterntainment

number of times i went to the movies: 2
days off in the week i have: 1 (but almost 3 if i leave after 12pm on friday and skip the tutorial on tuesday)
cost of parking ticket on our first day in sydney: 175$

internet

cost of internet that i get from university: 4.4c/meg (that’s $50 for each gigabyte)

how much have i spent in the first 3 weeks despite not *downloading anything other than pages* (not even photographs): you don’t want to know. or rather my parents shouldn’t know :p

cost of wireless modem that we bought to get away from that: $70
cost of wireless router to connect to the modem to share the internet: $40
cost of monthly plan at 12gig, 512kbps download, 128kbps upload: $90
cost per person: $10 for lesley ann, $40 for me and $40 for oleg
do we actually get that speed? only for australian websites, and even then not always.
is it still worth it? hell yes.

insects

section 1: bites

number of bites on my left arm: 16
number of bites on my left leg: 5
number of bites on my right leg: 0
number of bites on my right arm: 3
is it bed bugs? unlikely, couldn’t find any traces. looks like mosquito bites.

section 2: spiders

number of spiders seen: a lot
number of significant spiders seen: 1, a huntsman in our bathroom. (visualize: i’m walking in without contacts, put my contacts in, look up and see this reflection in the mirror.)

section 3: cockroaches

last night, on the way to the movies, how many times i jumped from my own shadow (thinking its a cockroach or some huge crawly animal): about 70
last night, on the way from the movies, how many times i jumped from my own shadow: 0
last night, on the way from the movies, cockroaches seen: 4
(biggest one was about 6cms long. right next to my foot.)
did i jump? yes.

food

amount of times i made bread from skratch: three!
carrot cake: once, and very very good
oladushki: twice, also very very good
ate honey mustard chips: endless. very VERY good
drinking: water, lots of awesome juice, green tea
coffee: once (at home)
cappuccino: 5 times. it is amazing here.

my room

things on the wall: only 3 4, all 3 are calendars (hesi’s, ansel adams, and UNSW’s). can’t find posters! aaargh. and sometimes a huntsman.
pillows: 2
lamps: 2
spiders: 0 (so far). funnily i typed that 5 minutes before a huntsman crawled in. make that 1.

night under the stars, movies and the rain

the night that tim left australia, sydney had a movie festival of short films. one of our new friends’ friends actually worked on one of the films as a producer and sound manager (or something like that), a lot of the people went there early during the day to catch a spot, kevin, elen and i joined the rest later during in day, when the crowd was bursting the park to the seams.

as the sun was setting down, the weather seemed to become worse, and when it started raining lightly the announcers finally stopped pimping sony and other supporters and announced that the screening of the winning 16 short films will now begin. the movie that our friend produced had to go last.
8 movies later there was a break in the festivities for people to stretch, and that’s when i shot these photographs.

the movies were cute, funny, poignant, weird, interesting, different, and all of them were under 7 minutes, and included the theme of this years fest – bubbles – in some shape or form. we saw a lot of bubblegum popping.

when the second half of the event was coming to a draw (we were about 3-4 movies away from the end), the rain started pouring harder and harder until elen, oleg and i decided to leave, as we were becoming soaking wet – everything, down to our wallets, and all that we had with us. earlier, newspapers covered us, but at this point after 30 seconds of this rain, this monsoon, they would fall apart.

as we were leaving the park (with the beginning of the torrent of other people as well), they actually stopped the event before our friend’s movie played anyway. thus, we ended up not missing it. (the guy actually brought the dvd to our apartment later, so the end was a happy one, mostly. they didn’t win any of the awards).

the walk and the ride home was entertaining. on the way to the bus stop there were people dancing in the fountains near the park, giving up all hope of staying dry and getting soaked by both the rain torrents from above, and the fountain water. strong streams of rain water were flowing underneath our feet (very unhygienic :) ), and this completely soaking wet crowd of happy, young people was squeezing their way towards the bus stop.

after some difficulty (the bus drivers here are incredibly stubborn and will not pick you up, in pouring rain, 3 meters away from the bus stop, when you’re next bus is 15 minutes away. bastard.), we got on the bus, which was full of aforementioned young happy wet people. and here perhaps the most awesome scene of the entire day occured – the back of the bus started to sing.

first the singing was repetitive bon jovi “oooh we’re half way theeeeere, oooo–oohhh, living on a prayer…” after a few times of repeating that cuplet along with some more words, the crowd got a bit tired. a few minutes later a voice called out from the back – “thank you everyone, the back of the bus will be here until thursday!”. i was thinking all this time that they should sing something like a *whole* song, so i called out “do you take requests?”. some laughter followed, and a random hidden voice called out from the back “what did you have in mind?”. “queen!”

a pause followed, and then a very awesome thing happened.

they, and then i, and then the rest of the bus started singing the bohemian rhapsody. if you know the song (and you should), it is sung in multiple voices, which made this all the more awesome as the different voices all were acted out by different people in proper succession. we sung the entire song, and incredibly in tune (for a bus, it was magnificent). we finished exactly as our party was exiting the bus, and i shouted out “thank you!”, to which i got a reply of “we’ve got our first fan!”

the entire experience was reminicent of the fish scene in finding nemo (hmm okay should be more specific with regards to which fish scene – the one with many fish forming signs and symbols for dora and nemo’s dad to follow), where a conversation was held between an individual and a single entity composed of many singular units.

i think that a singing bus should be mandatory. once a week, have people gather at a pub, and then depart on a certain route, prepared to sing songs together.

23 – feb 10: frans joseph to hokitika

the day began with the bad news that my bag still has not arrived. after some phoning the YHA in haast, it turned out that my bag is still in haast as of this morning. wtf mate… it was sitting there for a whole day? argh!!!

anyway, the choices were put as follows:

  • for an extra charge get the bag delivered to the glacier today (what i especially don’t get is that it was supposed to arrive *YESTERDAY*. okay, maybe same-day is impossible, so then *TODAY*. but if i did not pay, when in the world would it get here?! like 10 days after i leave new zealand? i don’t get it AT ALL. cause the guy who i spoke to initially definitely understood that i was leaving this place in 2 days) after 1pm. when after 1pm? no one knows.
  • for a doubly extra charge get it sent to hokitika, where it might – might – get by tonight.
  • leave it in haast and waste 4 hours driving there and back to pick it up.

    after some hesitating and deliberating i decided to wait here and try getting it here. if it doesn’t come today then i will leave my chirstchurch address (the hostel), and try to get it delivered there asap. argh. i miss my toothbrush, glasses, shampoo… FLIP FLOPS! dang it.

    the nice thing about this town is that its so small, and the gas station attendant is doubling as the post office guy, and the hostel owner actually knows him (in the sense that she said “oh he’s a nice guy, you can talk to him and give him your cell number). after talking to the post office guy, further positive information came along – he said that the package should get here by 1:30pm. so, for now we’re hanging out in the hostel. it is 11:26am – we had breakfast, and at this point anja is reviewing photographs on oleg’s computer, and i decided to blog. i am 8 days behind!

    some hours later…

    so, upon spending the next 2 and a half hours blogging, at 1:30 (half an hour after the approximate 1pm deadline) i went to the post office/friendly local gas station/mobil. unfortunately, the guy said “another half an hour”, and i demurely went back (having bought an ice cream to celebrate the shiny blue skies and warm weather and to cheer myself up in general) to the hostel.

    some minutes later…

    20 minutes later a postal truck pulled into the hostel with a MAGICAL SINGLE PACKAGE in his hands! yup! my bag has ACTUALLY FOUND ME. apparently this whole concept of “mailing” “stuff” is not entirely flawed.

    in joy and celebration we have jetted out of the hostel on the road to hokitika, which has been described as the jade capital of new zealand (and possibly THE WORLD, although i’m not sure). another waterfall of flyers describing things and places as “the best kept secret in new zealand” has accompanied the visit to this town. remind me to not really trust new zealand with secrets, as they tend to publish them in official visitor guides.

    hokitika also greeted us with rain, and thus we have decided to hang out at the very posh, very large, very cool looking hostel, with a very calm and friendly australian sheepdog, sid. (funny that i can remember dogs’ names but not people’s…) here i’ve found a book by grisham, “the broker”, which addicted me right away. around 11:30pm the realization that i just won’t finish it (and i can’t take it cause the hostel libraries work on the principle of take-one-leave-one), so i went to sleep in our 3(people)-for-1(room). anja hasn’t been able to find a place in that hostel, but they very nicely made her a bed on a mattress on the floor, and other than that was a bunk bed, leading to generally cozy accomodations.

  • 22 – feb 9: at frans joseph

    our cozy group of three – anja, oleg and myself – have all booked ourselves some day trips for the day at the glacier.

    the craziest trip was booked by oleg – ice climbing. this is when climb a chunk of ice using boots with very sharp points, and a pair of axes. the safety is a top rope that’s hooked to you, and a guide belaying you. of course, i think that’s the reasonable part – the part that is very UNreasonable, is the part where they gotta start at 7:45am.

    the next craziest trip was booked by anja – a full day (8 hour) walk on the glacier, with 6 hours spent on the ice, and start time at 8:15am. walking on the glacier entails putting on special shoes with spikes in them (“ice talons”), and then following the guide around the glacier using paths that are created especially for you.

    and my calm trip was the 3/4 day trip, which is longer than the half-day trip, but not as grueling as the full day trip. to quote from the brochure “with lots of photographic opportunity” – so given how tired and under the weather i’ve been feeling, i decided to take this “opportunity”. the fact that there were two starting times – 7:45 (right…) and 10:30

    thus, my morning was fairly calm – given how usually at 10:30 we have to be packed and out for 30 minutes, and the only thing i had to do was dress, eat breakfast, buy a bottle of water and be there.

    on that note: dress.

    basically, the choice of wear on the glacier is something that dries quickly on the bottom, and 4 warm layers on the top. well, the warm layers part wasn’t tough, because i was pretty prepared on that aspect . but the quick dry pants wer an issue, cause i only had 2 pairs of pants (pyjama, and cotton brown ones). i also had 3/4 length pants, which in hindsight is what i should’ve worn despite them not being quick dry (jeans and cotton), and lastly i also got a pair of shorts. like, summer shorts. which is what i was told to wear on the glacier.

    while being slightly sceptical, we do what we gotta do, so in shorts and 3 layers (it was a very sunny warm day) i went off, making it about 3 minutes before our group of 26 people has launched.

    after outfitting us into super waterproof jackets and big boots (you don’t wear your own shoes cause you will be outfitted with the afore mentioned ice talons, i.e. a big set of spikes attached to the foot) off we went on a bus ride to the bottom of the glacier. of course the bottom of the glacier is really about an hour’s walk from the parking lot (with ice talons in a bag, and i took my wide angle (attached) and kit lens for the polarizer filter, cause i had no clue how shooting all that bright white snow will work out, and 1.25 liter water bottom). so, that was a nice, brisk start to the day.

    at the bottom we’ve split into +adventurous and -adventurous groups, where i went for the slower paced -adventurous. in the end we covered pretty similar terrains, and given all the stuff i was carrying and my generally not-the-best shape, i was pretty happy with my choice.

    the hike up the glacier’s face was fast paced and tired us all out quickly. later on, in the evening, oleg remarked that the initial climb was tough for him as well. after that initial push, the adventure began.

    the advertising said that we’d feel “refreshingly surprised at the sense of your own achivement”. that was indeed true, as we have spent an insane amount of time climbing into, out of, and going over cracks and crevices in the ice. at one point, the friendly old british man (who, together with his wife, has already been on an iceberg in the canadian rockies), asked me after we went through a particularly long, narrow, twisty, ice passage – “so, are your legs quick-dry?”. apparently they were, as they rarely felt cold, and my biggest concert through the hike was when should i stop and shoot, and when should i hug the camera and squeeze. since everything went well with only positive remarks from the well equipped guide (“how are the papparazi doing back there?” when me, and another british couple, where the guy was also shooting with a DSLR, started lagging a bit behind)
    anyway, the evening was spent with some food, some rest, some spa, some beers, and oleg and me aching from the excersize. oleg was totally aching, where as i was totally aching mostly in lower body. anja was totally fine from her experience. :)

    i advice looking towards the photographs for the way it looks. but, lessons learned for today:

    • glaciers are made out of ice
    • ice is cold
    • therefore, glaciers are cold (sometimes)
    • bringing the thin, light, synthetic pad that my dad gave me made me the only person who sat in warmth ON the iceberg during lunch
    • ice melts. making squeezing through crevices possible.
    • those spikes on the bottom of our shoes saved us many times today
    • climbing through big ice cracks and hiking over big chunks of ice feels like climbing within an icecube, but cooler
    • glaciers are made out of big ice cracks and big chunks of ice
    • therefore, glaciers are cool (always)

    coogee beach


    coogee beach

    Originally uploaded by olya.

    today while walking back from the bus from the beach, i went through the university. i saw a small, adorable 4-5 year old boy walking amonst all the undergrad and graduate students, in hurry to get to their class. white pressed shirt, neat shorts, proper backpack, neat shoes… one shoelace untied. heading, completely alone towards a long row of stairs down.

    he noticed me noticing him, and when i started walking on the stairs i decided that i couldn’t not do anything. so, i turned around, made eye contact again, and asked if he’d like me to tie his shoelace. surprisingly, he didn’t say anything, just looked at me kinda sadly, stopped and put his untied shoe forwards. i carefully tied it into a knot, stood up and said “here you go”. he looked at me without saying a word, and after just-a-bit-too long pause i said “take care” and walked away, listening for sounds of someone stumbling, just in case. nothing was heard.

    when i reached the bottom of the stairs, a minute later maybe? a rushed, in-tears young girl asked me in a very worried voice “do you know where the library is?” thankfully that i already learned, so i pointed her on her way, with traditionally olya description “big building with at least 10 floors, says UNSW on it in big letters, go this way”. she seemed relieved, and thanked me as she started to run off.

    thus, today i’ve spent 4 hours on a beach, read almost a whole book, ate some ice cream, learned some matlab, cleaned my room and the kitchen, and helped two people. not a totally wasted day right?

    and, with posting this i’m breaking free of my dry-phase of blogging. i have something typed up. it’ll be coming soon. its just tought to get back into the typing routine.

    tim goes all “manly”


    (see all the photographs for this entry here and here.)

    after having been forced to watch women’s figure skating short program the night before, tim had decided that he needed to do something manly, thus we went to manly bay.

    the view off the ferry was AWESOMETASTIC as you can see in these photographs (courtesy d70).

    upon arrival to the bay we walked around, and fussed with their 24 hour tourist center. in the photograph you can see the pad for operating on the screen on the left, and the screen is on the right, and in the middle is tim trying to make it tell us where we can find japanese food.

    after more walking and stumbling around, we found an acceptable japanese place where we had an excellent all-around japanese meal (sashimi, sushi, tempoura prawns, teriyaki chicken, rice, edamame, miso soup, ice cream, all for 2 plus a bottle of nice wine at 26/person! like, wow.)

    the ferry back was equally pretty, and the bus from the quay to unsw was eventful as it was *full* of crazy drunken frosh students who were singing out loud the entire time. it was like a school bus, not a city bus.

    note: for some reason anything from www.olya.org isn’t loading now. i dunno why. it was working earlier and ftp is okay. i guess it will work later again?

    more updates have came along!

    so, i’m in sydney.

    before ya’ll go all crazy on me, tim is going to be here in 6 hours, and i’ve just postd 10 new posts!. that still leaves me like 10, if not 12 days behind, but i don’t think i’ll keep up this intense daily bloggin here (unless someone can present me with an argument like “well i actually read all of this”).

    anyway. its 12:30am here, and i’m tired, and i’ve formatted 10 entries with photographs! thus, i present the next 10 days after where we left off:

    10 – jan 28: kaikoura to geraldine – long drives and changing cars
    11 – jan 29: geraldine to twizel, the day hike that killed us
    12 – jan 30: sunrise over mountains (twizel to all day bay)
    13 – jan 31: all day bay to dunedin, penguinds and internet
    14 – feb 1: dunedin to fjordland
    15 – feb 2: milford sound sea kayaking
    16 – feb 3: full of doubtful sounds
    17 – feb 4: fjords to queenstown
    18 – feb 5: queenstown to wanaka
    19 – feb 6: whole day in wanaka

    aand, photographs are here, although not all of them have been blogged yet.

    our new zealand trip map

    and that’s the map!

    what’s coming:
    days 20-25 in new zealand
    days 01-06 in sydney (that’s today)
    more photographs (way more. i’m slow at processing and its already a lot, i think).

    leave me commmeeeentttsss nooooobs. otherwise i feel like i’m writing into the V O I D.

    yours,

    – attention needing child.