Exchange Semester in Sydney 2014 Pt. 7

Blog 12

The 26^th of December 2014 at 13:00 at Pink Bungalow, Koh Phangan, Thailand.

By: Christian Ljungbeck

(Reading time: 10-15 minutes)

Classes Ending

At the end of October all classes had ended and the exam period was about to begin. One of my courses; however, had an exam on the 29^th of October already, which was just 2 days after returning from Brisbane after almost 2 weeks off from school work. So I had a bit of work to do to prepare for it. And of course on the 28^th there was an evening seminar in Sydney on the psychology of wealth by Martial Peter, which I had to attend. And wow, I am glad I did so. I had never seen anyone else do what he could do. We were just a few people that day, and Martial could practically read people like an open book to an extent that I feared he knew what I was thinking the whole time. Amazing! More on Martial and his extraordinary ability and gift will follow later in this or the next blog, as he was doing a 2-day-seminar in November, which I later participated in.

On the day of my exam I spend the whole day studying from early morning to late afternoon. At 5 pm I left my apartment to get some food and be ready for the 6 pm exam start. At 5:50 after eating my food I walked up the stairs to what I thought was the room where the exam would take place. But to my big surprise I was at ‘Matthew Theatre’ and not ‘Colombo Theatre’. Ups! Such a small detail that just makes all the difference. I quickly asked around and the few people who were present could not help me, so I ran to the library to find help. The person even had to look at a map to find it, and apparently it was located right next to my apartment. So I ran from one side of campus back to my apartment all sweaty and stressed. As I entered the building I saw everybody walking in the doors to the room, so I still made it on time, but not in the best mental conditions after the running and stress. However, the exam went well I thought.

Exam Period Beginning

I had my first exam on the 11^th of November, so I took a few days off at the end of October to do some fun stuff. This included a ‘Halloween Harbor Cruise’ from Darling Harbour around the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge at night time on a big party ship with 3-400 people with a club in the middle of the ship. On the first of November I initiated my ‘From Geek to Freak’ experiment, which you can read about in a separate blog.

2 Day Trip to Canberra

On the 5^th Frederik from Germany and I decided to take a trip to the capital of Australia, Canberra, which was a 3-hour-drive from Sydney. Apparently many Australians say it is a boring city with not that much to do, so the expectations were rather low, but both Frederik and I wanted to experience it anyway. We arrived at Canberra early morning and went for a walk through the city, which was fairly small. We then went to the parliament buildings – both the old one and the new one and we got to see the Senate and the House of Representatives both places. Although I am not known for my interest in politics, it was great to see and experience it myself. First is the New building

After our visit to the political locations we went to the State Library and the High Court of Australia, which was the highest court in all of Australia. We even got to witness a live court case. There were five judges in long dark clothes facing everyone in the room. Surprisingly both the prosecutor and defender were wearing long white wigs. I thought that tradition was discarded at least 2 centuries ago, but apparently it is still alive here in Australia.

The following day we went to the War Memorial Museum and got a free guided tour, but the museum was extremely huge and since we weren’t the greatest history fans we left the group to experience the museum on our own at a faster pace than the group did. The museum had exhibitions from every single little battle Australia had every participated in – or at least so it felt. That being said it was a very modern and interesting museum (especially if you have a little more interest in history than I did). After the War Memorial Museum we went to yet another one, this time the National Museum of Australia. Thus museum contained everything from painting, sculptures, statues, old artifacts etc. from many different periods. As we walked around the museum we encountered a huge painting by Pollock. One of the employees asked us how much we thought it was worth. We said around 5 and 10 million AUD. But no, not even close. It was a staggering $400 million AUD. Wow! He continued by saying that it wasn’t even the most expensive piece of art they had. Downstairs they had 2 sculptures worth $450 million AUD. The painting was unique, but the sculptures didn’t look that unique.

The Psychology of Wealth

On the 8^th and 9^th of November I flew to Gold Coast to participate in Martial Peter’s 2-day-seminar on the psychology of Wealth. Even though it had only been a short while since the introductory event in Sydney I was very much looking forward to spending 2 full days with Martial and learning more about myself, Martial, and the human mind. The information shared by the participants in the room during the seminar is confidential and I cannot share that. Instead I will explain the even in broader terms. I should also mention that the following is my interpretation and understanding and therefore the accuracy of the information might be inadequate. Martial uses a combination of several tools and techniques which coupled with his fantastic understanding of the human mind and behavior enables him to get his lessons across and teach them very effectively to people. It wasn’t just an intellectual understanding he gave us, but also an emotional one – unlike traditional education. He used his techniques to create what is referred to as a breakthrough session. A breakthrough is when a person reaches a threshold in their mind on a particular subject, and when that happens this is the point where you can create lasting change – changes that most people believe take years to do. Using breakthroughs Martial created more changes in record time than I have ever seen or heard anyone do before. It sounds unbelievable and it sure seemed like that until I witnessed it myself. It was much like seeing Tony Robbins in action – both men with an extraordinary understanding of human behavior and sensory acuity. Only very few people can do what Martial and Tony does. As far as I am aware they are the only two people in the world I know of. Again, I cannot go into specifics about the event, but it was an absolutely amazing experience and a fantastic weekend in which I learned more about myself and how the mind works than I had in a long time. I give Martial my deepest recommendation. You can learn more about Martial on his website: www.martialpeter.com.

Trading Justice Podcast and First Speech at Toastmaster’s

With my trip to Canberra and Gold Coast the 2 weeks I had before my exams were almost over and I hadn’t been studying a whole lot before my first exam on the 12^th of November. And of course I had also volunteered to do my first speech at Toastmaster’s on the 11^th of November – the day after returning from Gold Coast. On the morning of the 11^th I had my weekly online webinar with people from the US on trading stocks and options and the financial markets. I had a question for my instructor, Tim Justice, after the webinar, so we spoke on Skype afterwards. He then asked me if I wanted to join him and his both Matt Justice on their Trading Justice Podcast. They usually do 2 podcasts a week on the financial markets on everything from trading opportunities, trading strategies, currencies, financial politics, global economics new etc. They are always super good, so for sure I was happy to be offered to participate. Since I appeared in this episode and taking my age into consideration the topic was on the evolution of a young trader. We talked about my story and how I got involved with Robert Kiyosaki’s company Rich Dad and when I started having an interest in the financial markets. We then progressed talking about trading strategies and the differences and challenges of being non-US-based and trading the US markets. It was super fun and exciting and hopefully I will be back again in the future. For some reason the sound was all perfect when we recorded it, but on the final file there are some lags and short periods with silence. You have to create a free profile to access the podcast. The podcast can be found here (I appear until around 40:00): https://www.tackletrading.com/trading-justice-39-christian-ljungbeck/

Recording the podcast took a while and I then only had a short time until I had to leave my apartment for the Toastmaster’s meeting. I spent that time rehearsing my speech so I would be ready for my very first official speech.

We were around 20 people at the meeting and after the first half it was now time for me to deliver my speech. The first topic every speaker talks about is themselves, their life, and interests for 3-5 minutes. After the initial nervousness which according to the audience wasn’t visible I got back on the right track and in my opinion I delivered a very great first speech.

Exams and Goodbye

The following 2 weeks passed with exams and a lot goodbye BBQ’s and other goodbye events:

12^th: ‘Financial Institution Management’ exam.

14^th: Ria Dev from my ‘Managing and Leading People’-class graduated. I wanted to see an Australian graduation, so I went and say congratulations. Since I was about to graduate from my exchange semester at UNSW I figured it would be appropriate taking a picture with a graduation hat on.

In the evening we did a BBQ in Coogee and went out for drinks at Coogee Pavillion and the Hotel.

15^th: 2 Danish girls hosted a big party with close to 100 people in a very small apartment connected to a small garden.

18^th: I had spent the last few days studying for my ’E-Business’-class. I started reviewing everything from week 1 of classes and finally made it to week 12. Then on the very last slide of the whole course the teacher had specifically indicated from which chapters the 7 exams questions would be coming from and in 4-5 of them she had also indicated the topic within the chapter. As soon as I saw that slide I remembered that she had talked about it during the last class – I had just completely forgotten about it. Doh! I had spent a lot of time reviewing all the course material, and most of it could have been saved as a lot of the chapters and lectures would not appear in the exam. Well, it was all sunk costs at that time, so I spent the next few hours reviewing only the relevant chapters.

Since I was about to leave Sydney soon my Toastmaster’s club had given me the opportunity to do my second speech on the 18^th. I really wanted to do that, but I didn’t feel I had the time to prepare for it, but I had volunteered for it anyway. So I went and did my second speech on ‘The 6 Human Needs’ in front of about 20 people again. I tried to think about the areas of improvement from last week and focus on those points. And it went extremely well! And people were happy about the topic as it also related to them and not just me.

19^th: ‘E-Business’ exam

20^th: Goodbye dinner with Kathrine, Saina, and Nathalie in Coogee and playing pool at Coogee Bay  Hotel.

21^th : ‘Real Estate Economics and Public Policy’ exam.

In the evening Åsmund, Erik, Laurens, and I went to the city for dinner. We walked around the city and went to Glenmore Hotel where Laurens’s girlfriend Lauren was working. They had a rooftop bar right next to the Sydney Harbor Bridge overlooking the water, the city, and the Opera house. We then decided to go on a rooftop pubcrawl, so we continued to Shangri-la Hotel and went to their bar on 36^th floor with an amazing view over Sydney. Laurens and I were both wearing flip flops which made it very difficult to enter any bars, but when the employees in the door were looking the other way, we quickly went inside. We all purchased one of their very delicious drinks and enjoyed it watching all the lights in the city. We then continued our pubcrawl, but we quickly discarded that as we were rejected 4 different places because of our flip flops. But then all of a sudden I got the fabulous idea that Laurens and I could just turn our flip flops upside down so that we would be walking on our feet but the flip flops would cover the top of our feet until we would get into the bar. That way the security persons would not be able to see the white skin on our feet and only if they were to look down on our feet specifically would they see it. We decided to try it. We got in line at a bar and after showing our IDs we were allowed to enter. It worked, Haha! We had to take 5 steps up before we could enter and both Laurens and I were walking like penguins on the stairs half laughing still trying to act normal. We went on to several other bars later on and surprisingly it worked every single place. Only one place did they notice my shoes just after letting me in, so the security guys stopped me and to my surprise in a hard tone he just said “Hey, turn your shoes around properly, man!”.

22^nd: Lauren joined the four of us and took us to Shark Bay and Milk Beach in the north-eastern part of Sydney. Here we could do some cliff jumping from a 5-6 meter cliff into the water. It was super fun, and we had an amazing view of the whole city and landscape surrounding it. In the evening we went to a running Sushi restaurant before continuing to Coogee beach where we had some beers and later we went to Pavilion.

23^rd: I spent 5-6 hours planning my travels after the semester before going to Erik and Peter’s house. It was Erik, Peter, Laurens, and Stine’s last day in Sydney, so we said goodbye and see you in Denmark.

24^th: Picnic at Coogee Beach with a mixture of people from everywhere.

25-27^th: Practical things to take care of and getting ready to leave Sydney on the 2^nd of December.

28^th: Meeting with the official Anthony Robbins group with Dave and Katrina Elliott from UPW crew in Sydney on business mastery.

1^st of December: My final day in Sydney. I wanted to leave Sydney earlier, but because Empowernet were hosting an event ‘Masters of Wealth’ featuring Robert Kiyosaki live in Sydney I postponed my travels so I could get a chance to see Robert live. The event had 6 speakers in total including Scott Harris, who is the facilitator on Wealth Mastery, so the audience was in very great hands this day. There was a bit of selling with so many different speakers promoting their individual products to take advantage of the changing future and economy. Finally Robert Kiyosaki appeared as the final speaker and he received a standing applause even before he started speaking since he had touched almost everyone’s lives in the room. Robert Kiyosaki is the author of the book ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ and he is the leading authority on personal finance. His teachings are mostly very controversial to common sense and traditional advice. He was awesome to see and experience live after having read several of his books and bought my trading courses from his company.

Exchange Semester in Sydney 2014 Pt. 6

The 30^th of November 2014 at 14:20 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

(Reading time: 10-15 minutes)

Visit from Denmark

After returning from my spring break on Monday the 6^th of October it was soon my turn to be the guide as my parents were arriving that same week on the 9^th. On that day I had signed up for a full-day real estate investing seminar with Mark Rolton talking about specific strategies on how to invest through his company or using real estate options and using those strategies create a very specific retirement plan. It was profound knowledge, as Mark called it. An amazing system.

In the evening I met my parents in front of the apartment they had booked through Airbnb. It was great seeing them again on this distant side of the world. They had been traveling for close to 30 hours so they were rather tired, so we went to bed early. The following day we planned out what to do and see here in Sydney during the first 1½ weeks they were spending here before we would rent a car and drive north to Brisbane during the last week. We took a walking tour around Sydney and had some lunch. In the evening we went out for dinner at the yearly Night Noodle Market in Hyde Park where a lot of food stall were set up selling mostly Asian food combined with music and a few activities.

On the 11^th I had signed up for yet another full-day seminar – this time on NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) with Sebastien Leblond, founder of NLP Top Coach in Bangkok. He was amazingly good at NLP and provided us with specific and valuable strategies and tools. For those of you, who don’t know about NLP, check it out. It can save you many years, and it teaches you how the brain works and how to use it advantageously. After the seminar I met my parents again and we went to Darling Harbour for dinner. We found a big restaurant located on a boat from which they would make a big firework show at 8 PM. Just as we finished our dinner the show started and we were probably located in one of the best locations for the fireworks.

Obviously my parents wanted to see and experience Sydney, so I got to do a lot of the thing and activities again. This also included the Bondi-Coogee-costal-walk, which we did on the morning on the 12^th. It is an amazingly beautiful walk where you can walk right next to the water on cliffs with great viewpoints along the way.

The following day we went to the Sealife Aquarium at Darling Harbour. It was a huge place with many different exotic animals none of us had seen before anywhere else. They also had an enormous pool with several different species of sharks, fish, dugongs, and other animals. And since the aquarium is located in Australia, obviously they also had lots of beautiful corals.

No trip to Sydney is complete without a show at the Sydney Opera House. So on the 14^th we went to see Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The King and I. The tickets turned out to be quite a bit more expensive than expected as the low ‘from-price’ apparently was standing tickets with no view of the stage. But anyway, we went for the 3-hour-musical. It was very beautiful and we got to see the Opera House from the inside. The musical had some very nice effects and some funny moments although we definitely didn’t get all of them in the midst of all the singing and Asian-English languages. After the musical we talked about it, and honestly I didn’t really understand what it was about, but neither did my parents. Haha, it was a comical situation, but we did enjoy it!

As we were leaving the opera it had started to rain heavily. And heavy rain in Sydney is quite unlike what it is back in Denmark. I think just 5 minutes of heavy rain is similar to the amount of water falling down within an hour on a normal rainy day in Denmark – it’s powerful. Fortunately we could walk under a roof all the way to the bus stop. But even standing under the roof at the bus stop we still got wet from the rain and wind. During the bus ride the rain started to get heavier and heavier. And from the place we got off the bus close to the apartment was only 200 meters. So as soon as we got off we started to run as fast as we could towards the apartment, but it was rather useless. I found the whole experience to be quite funny, so I was laughing during the whole run. Even though it might only have taken 60 seconds we were all three soaking wet as we entered the apartment.

The next day the weather was complete fine again and we boarded a boat from Circular Quay towards Manly which is located a bit north of Sydney. A funny thing was that I met Frederik Ha from Germany who I had previously visited Manly with back in August. He was also going to Manly with his parents. We arrived in Manly and began our long walk around Manly and the beautiful scenic nature surroundings.

We spent most of the day here and upon returning to Sydney in the early evening we went to the Sydney Tower Eye which is a 309 meters tall building with an observation deck. When entering they first showed us a 4D short movie about Sydney, and then we could enter the observation deck and take some nice pictures and enjoy the 360 degree view over Sydney. On our way back home from the Tower we walked past the Night Noodle Market again where we got some dinner. We sat down at a table behind a small Mercedes Benz dome where they apparently served free food and drinks, so we got to try a bit of different cuisines. In the park the Australian news station 7News were present. We walked closer to where they were located, and then they asked me whether I wanted to try and be part of the news, which I of course wanted to. So they were filming me while I was reading the text that appeared on the screen in front of me. It was very fun, and the result speaks for itself, haha.

https://7live-sydney.click2share.com.au/ac0c0edf824f7332c778f65d8bb49634#189693

The last few days in Sydney we spent on some of the last must do’s in Sydney. So we took a trip to the Sydney Royal Botanics Garden and had lunch around Wollomollo, one of the most expensive areas around Sydney where there were no parking spaces but instead people had their own private spot for their boats and yachts in front of their apartments.

On the 18^th we had booked a full day trip to Blue Mountains from Sydney. The trip started early in the morning with a stop at Featherdale Wildlife Park which is a small zoo where you can pet and feed many of the animals. Especially the kangaroos were hungry that morning and they kept eating not only the food but also the ice cream cone containing the food.

From here we headed on to the Blue Mountains where we had several stops at different viewpoints such as The Three sisters and we walked around and could see the seemingly never-ending beautiful nature far away in the horizon.

Included in the trip was also an aboriginal show, where 4 aboriginals were teaching us about their culture and performing different dances and songs. I couldn’t help thinking that the dances look like something they just came up with right before they went on stage. Or perhaps even improvising on stage! Hehe, but anyway, it was fun to see.

After the show we continued to the 4 scenic world attractions which involved 2 huge cable cars, the world’s steepest train ride, and a scenic walk in the rainforest on the side of one of the mountains. It was very beautiful and a fantastic location for a day trip with a great combination of mountains, viewpoints, and rainforest.

Shortly after departing Blue Mountains we got dropped off at Sydney Olympic from where we took a 45-minute-cruise back to Sydney on the river. As we approached Sydney we could see the whole city from the water, and after shortly stopping at Darling Harbour we sailed under the Sydney Harbor Bridge and got off at Circular Quay right next to the Opera House.

From here I wanted to take my parents to a special restaurant in Newtown someone had recommended. It was called ‘Lentils as Anything’, and it had a rather unique concept. It is an organic vegetarian restaurant, and they only have 3-4 different things you can order. There are no prices for the food, but instead you donate what you want to or what you believe the food is worth. Furthermore, the waiters are not employees, but instead they are volunteers. We arrived at the restaurant and apparently all the tables were shared, but they only had room for three people at a small table in the corner. We ordered 3 different dishes and decided to switch and try all of them. Shortly after the band started playing and we enjoyed our meal with music playing right behind us.

Our last day in Sydney we spent at the Rocks looking at a small market as well as walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge from where we could take some amazing pictures of the city and Opera House.

Road Trip from Sydney to Brisbane

On the 20^th of October we left Sydney in the morning for our trip to Brisbane and headed to our first stop which was the Jenolan Cave, which were located almost 200 km west of Sydney. The cave network is around 40 km long with more than 300 entrances and it is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The caves are estimated to be around 340 million years old. We got a tour in the Diamond Cave with a guide and around 20 other visitors. This was one of the so-called ‘show-caves’ meaning that they had made it easy for people to walk inside by building stairs and installing lights. After entering the cave our guide gave a brief introduction after which she turned off the lights and we were then standing in utter darkness. It is a rare experience to be standing in complete darkness not being able to see anything at all during these times when we have lights illuminating almost everything everywhere. Whether your eyes were are open or closed made no difference! We continued deeper inside the cave at narrow small paths up and down stairs seeing natural diamonds, crystal, live stone, drip stones, and much more. It was fantastic; however the pictures aren’t even close to reflecting the beauty of the caves. After our tour we drove to a very local place where we had booked accommodation for the night.

The following morning we headed for Port Stephens and more specifically Nelson Bay. It was a rather long drive, so we arrived in the afternoon. We then went to Mt Tomaree at Shoal Bay where we followed a small nature trail to the top of a big hill with an amazing view over Nelson Bay.

Before departing Port Stephens the following day we wanted to see the renowned sand dunes, so we booked a quad bike tour where we drove around and up and down the sand dunes located right next to the water. It was great fun and a good combination of adventure and sightseeing.

After the sand dunes we drove further north to Ellenborough Falls, which at 200 meters is one of the longest single drop waterfalls in the Southern Hemisphere. We parked the car and walked the 641 steps down to the bottom where we took some pictures. After climbing the 641 steps on the way up again we continued our trip to Port Macquire.

At Port Macquire we started our day on the 23rd with a trip to a light house on the beach. We walked along the beach and climbed some rocks before continuing to a local koala hospital located close to the beach. Koalas from around Australia were transported to the hospital where volunteers and koala doctors made sure the koalas recovered again before they could be released back to their origin again. I think we saw 15-20 koalas – most of them sleeping in the tall eucalyptus trees. Before leaving we donated some money to keep the hospital running. We then headed to Ricardoes Tomatoes & Strawberries – a big local farm selling home made fresh strawberries and tomatoes and every possible type of derivative from these two ingredients. Next stop was Yamba.

From Yamba we started our trip at the blue lagoon close to where we stayed. There were some big rocks in the water and when the big waves hit the rocks there were huge splashes.

From here we continued to the notorious Byron Bay known as a beach paradise with beautiful surroundings. We only had 2-3 hours here, so we had a quick lunch and walked to the top of a big hill where a lighthouse was located. From here we literally had a 270 degree panorama view over the mile-long white beaches and the ocean.

Next up was Gold Coast – located 80 km north of Byron Bay. In Gold Coast we stopped at Surfer’s Paradise, which is the touristy part of Gold Coast. Again we only had 2-3 hours here, so we walked along the esplanade next to the beach and walked around the centre of Surfer’s Paradise. During this weekend there was a race going on, so a big part of the city was blocked and from almost everywhere you could hear the sounds from the race cars as they were racing. After Gold Coast we drive to our last destination, Brisbane, from where I began my spring break adventures. So now I had covered the whole Australian east coast from Sydney almost 3000 km north to Cairns.

Brisbane

The following day on the 25^th we started our day with a 1-hour-drive to Australia Zoo north of Brisbane. This zoo was founded by Steve Irwin and it is still privately owned by the family. As we arrived in the zoo there was a show starting shortly after in the famous Crocoseum. It was an amazing show that involved birds, dingos, crocodiles, and humans! Amazingly they let the birds fly around in the open space flying right next to other wild birds, but they all returned again (or so we think, haha). It was no doubt the best zoo I have ever seen or visited before. All the animals had great space and there were several hundred zookeepers to take care of the animals. At one point as we were walking we encountered a zookeeper who was walking one of the wombats with a leash as if she was walking a dog. She said it is something they do every day with the wombats individually to ensure they are thriving and get some new sense impressions. It was an amazing zoo, and like Featherdale you could also feed the kangaroos here.

After the zoo we headed back to Brisbane and drove to Mount Coot-tha, which was a lookout point a few kilometers from the City where we had an amazing panorama view over the city. As it was fairly late when we made it to Mount Coot-cha we returned the following morning on the 26^th to experience the view in daylight as well.

This was our last day together in Australia as we would be flying on the 27^th in the morning – my parents to Copenhagen and I to Sydney. After the lookout we drove to Southbank which is a cultural area in the middle of Brisbane with different activities and attractions such as a lagoon built so it looks like a beach. It was a really cool place to walk around.

After Southbank we drove to Newtown to meet up with Phoebe whom I had gotten to know from my apartment tower at UNSW. We met her and her parents and talked for around half an hour before we continued to Kangaroo Point, which was an area next to the river where you could do different activities such as rock climbing, segway, or other water sports. In the evening we took a walk around the center of the city. Because the G20 meeting was coming up in 3 weeks from this time, there were a lot of different cultural performances and activities going on around the city. As we were walking around we came across the Old State Library which was illuminated with beautiful changing lights making the building completely different every 30 seconds.

As we were standing in front of the library suddenly music started playing from the building to our left and 30-40 people dressed in white walked out the doors on the first and second floor. Then they started singing opera while a fantastic light show illuminated the building. It was amazing to see. The video can be seen below:

After the opera concert ended we continued a bit through the city where a dance off was going on. Numerous dancers with different styles were performing in front of a crowd of more than 500 people. We returned home late in the evening and started packing our things for the flight the following day. The following morning on the 27^th of October we headed for the domestic terminal where we parked the car and entered the airport. After checking in we went upstairs to the security check and had our big goodbye time before my parents had to return the car and check in themselves at the international terminal.

There was extremely much turbulence on the plane from Brisbane to Sydney, but the worst part was over Sydney before landing. Honestly I have never experienced such a bumpy flight before. And it didn’t make it better that we had to cruise around Sydney for another 15 minutes before landing. At one point the girl next to me looked at me and said ‘Oh my god, I’m panicking’. I wanted to help by saying something, but I didn’t know what, so instead I said ‘Yea, it’s crazy’, which quite didn’t make the situation better for her, haha. But well, the intention was good. As we finally landed people started clapping as everyone could feel it was a rather difficult landing.

Exchange semester in Sydney 2014 pt. 5

The 13^th of November 2014 at 10:10 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

(Reading time: 10 minutes)

This blog is a continuation of the previous one and describes my adventures from my spring break.

Skydive at Mission Beach

On the 2^nd of October we left Magnetic Island and set course towards Mission Beach, where we were going to do our long awaited skydive. We were 10 people in total who had signed up for skydiving, so while we would be skydiving the others spent time on the beach relaxing. While on the bus from Magnetic Island most people were sleeping, but I spent 1½-2 hours preparing for my upcoming skydive. I tried to mentally prepare myself the best possible way by implementing and applying some of the strategies I had learned from Tony Robbins before doing the firewalk as well as other strategies I had read about. Whether it worked or not is hard to say, but I didn’t feel bad or overwhelmed in any way when preparing for the skydive or taking off the ground in the plane. I’m sure it did have a great effect that I had mentally prepared.

After arriving at the skydiving place, we all signed the required waivers that we would not sue them if the parachute didn’t open etc. We then watched a safety video, but just like the safety video in airplanes I doubt that you actually can remember what to do when the times comes and the emotions are running high. After the safety briefing it was time to put on the skydive gear and belt and a bus transported us 20 minutes to the local airport where a plane was awaiting us.

My instructor and I were the first ones to board the plane so we got to sit right next to the pilot. The plane was very small and I was surprised it could fit all 15 of us.  The plane was very narrow with 2 parallel benches along the plane. When you haven’t tried skydiving before you have an instructor attached to your back to ensure the skydive will be a great experience and everything will go as planned. So everyone sat back to back in the plane, so the instructors could make sure we were properly attached to them.

We then took off and rose up and up in the plane. It was a 14.000 feet skydive (4,25 km) with a 60-second-free-fall over the great barrier reef with a guaranteed landing on the beach. It was extreme settings, and the view was astonishing from the plane. We could see small islands below us and in the horizon, and the sun was shining making the Great Barrier Reef looking crystal clear. At one point I felt we had kept going up and up for a very long period of time, and that we probably soon would be at around 14.000 feet. I asked my instructor, who had done more than 10.000 jumps, and he informed me that we were only at 6.000 feet altitude. Not even half the way! Wow! It is hard to estimate distances when you aren’t used to it this way. Usually airplanes are flying at around 30.000 feet (or around 9 km), so this was just around half the altitude and we were about to jump out of the plane from here.

Finally, we reached 14.000 feet, and they opened the door. It was hard to tell what people were feeling or thinking since I was sitting at the back not able to see their faces. But I’m sure some of them felt some very weird and special feelings. Honestly I didn’t really fear the jump or feel bad about what was about to happen. Maybe 20 seconds after they opened the door, the first pair sat down on the edge of the plane with their feet and legs hanging out in 14.000 feet above ground. And all of a sudden they were gone. It looked just like something from a movie. It went so fast that it seemed as if it was the powerful wind had taken them and pulled them out of the plane. As soon as the first pair was gone, the next pair was already in position, and so it continued.

I had assumed we all jumped with maybe a minute or two in between and great distance, but I think from the time they opened the door to it was my turn to sit down on the edge of the plane only took 1-1½ minutes. It went extremely fast. I think they purposely did it this fast, so people wouldn’t have time for doubts and second thoughts. I think everyone was quite occupied with just getting into position, which wasn’t all that easy with another person attached to your back. Finally it was my turn to sit down on the edge. But with another person attached to your back, you don’t really sit on the edge of the plane. The instructor does that, and you are more or less just hanging and dangling in the air only thanks to the safety gear and belts you are wearing. Hanging in this rather unique life-affirming position the instructor told me to take the position he had told me in the plane. So I put my head back and looked right up in the sky and grabbed the front of the safety belt. It was a weird feeling knowing what was about to happen, but still I didn’t have the thoughts about ‘WTF am I doing here?’. And then all of sudden the instructor pushed us off the plane into our 60 seconds free fall. Just as we jumped off the plane we were spinning around doing a flip or 2 in the air and I remember seeing the earth, the ocean, the plane, followed by the water and plane again, and now I was overwhelmed with the strangest feelings and thoughts such as ‘Holy shit, what am I doing? What’s going on?’. But as sudden as those thoughts came to me, they were gone again. The instructor balanced us out in the air so that we were dropping straight down face first looking at the ground and my previous thoughts and feelings were replaced by feelings of ecstasy and adrenalin. It was intense, amazing, and revitalizing dropping with 220 km/h for 60 seconds through several layers of air and skies screaming on the top my lungs.

Then all of a sudden the instructor released the parachute and the speed slowed down immediately and the noise from the air stopped. We were now slowly dropping and could enjoy the fantastic view. Because we had dropped so fast in such a short period of time my ears were blobbing just like when you fly in an airplane, but this was more intense due to big drop. Fortunately it disappeared shortly after. After a minute or so dropping, I got to steer the parachute and we were spinning 5 times around ourselves.

The instructor took over once again as we about to land on the beach. We got closer and closer, and I pulled up my legs, so he could make sure we had a great landing. And we did. Back again on solid ground it was unbelievable to think that just 5-6 minutes ago I was sitting in a plane 14.000 feet above me. What an amazing experience! Although it can seem a bit scary, it is highly recommendable, and I’m sure an experience like this can provide us with the emotional strength we sometimes need in life.

If you haven’t seen it already, my 5-minute skydive video can be seen here:

Tully River White Water Rafting

After an experience like a skydive I doubted that the rest of the trip could ever compete with it, but fortunately I was wrong. The following day we were going to White Water River Rafting on the Tully River just south of Cairns. We arrived and were split up in teams of 6 people plus a rafting guide in each boat before cruising down the 14 km long rafting journey on the Tully River. It was a very different experience from skydiving, which was an intense burst of adrenalin and energy. This was an 8 hour long day and a combination of action and relaxation, of big water drops and beautiful nature. We had an extraordinary time attacking the challenges the river threw at us while our guide shouted different commands at us in order to best get through the mazes of stones, water drops, and other obstacles. We didn’t tip over the raft, but we very close at one point. This place required all of us to move all the way to the right side of the raft in order to move forward and get through a narrow spot between some stones while at the same time being aware of the water drop right after the stones. We all moved to the right, and after a while the raft got through and we gained speed. But before we had even returned to our original positions, we were floating on top of a new big rock on the left side of the raft, which caused it to turn 45 degrees to the right while it was almost vertical. As we were all 6 sitting in the right side of the raft, our weight was about to cause the raft to flip upside down, so the instructor was screaming ‘OVERLEFT! OVERLEFT!’, and we all threw ourselves to the left just in time to prevent the raft from flipping. Puh! We made it, and we were safe again. Rafting is fun and definitely worth doing in the future again.

Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns

The following morning waking up in Cairns I once again thought to myself that now it couldn’t possibly get any better. But wrong I was again. This morning we boarded a huge catamaran with maybe 150 people in total which took us out on the Great Barrier Reef to snorkel at 2 different spot, and you had the option to purchase a 30-minute dive as well. The first place was in the middle of the ocean and no land in sight anywhere. There was a big area with beautiful corals surrounded by a 10-12 meter deep ocean. I saw some exotic fish I had never seen before, some of which were huge – perhaps almost a meter long. After getting back on the catamaran again, some of the people who had dived reported that they had seen ‘Wally’, a huge fat fish maybe 2 meters long. Some of them had also seen a smaller shark of around the same size as Wally. Yikes! I’m glad I didn’t see the shark although it is supposedly a very rare sight to see a wild shark. The other snorkeling spot was next to a small island known as a bird sanctuary. The island was packed with birds all over – it was amazing. We all snorkeled a bit and walked on the beach. On my way back to the catamaran I encountered two sea turtles, which I followed around in the water. They must have been a meter long and wide, so they were fairly big.

Enjoying Cairns

Returning to Cairns again we picked up our wristbands for tonight’s ‘Ultimate Party’ as they call it. It involved dinner, pubcrawl, activities, entrance to bars, as well as transportation in a party bus between bars. It was heaps of fun with a lot of hilarious activities.

The 5th of October we had to ourselves until the last group activity and farewell dinner at 5 pm. Most of us spent the day at the lagoon in Cairns and by the pool at the hostel. Then at 5 pm we all met up at Cairns ZOOm and Wildlife Dome. It was an indoor zoo on top of a casino. And in the zoo were a big zipline course, and 2 obstacle courses anywhere between 3-12 meter above ground, as well as other activities you could perform while the animals were walking or flying right next to you. It was absolutely unique to experience. I did 3 of the activities, both the medium and high obstacle courses and the Power Jump, which was a 30 meter drop where you landed on a trampoline. The drop itself wasn’t as exciting as I had imagined, but still it was fun.

After the activities we went for our farewell dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the building. Some people said a few words, and Angie thanked us all. Upon returning to our hostel we all sat outside and had some beers and the group gave Angie a present to thank her for her time and an amazing trip we would all remember in the future. I think most of us agreed that the past 10 days were perhaps some of the best 10 days we had ever had.

Exchange semester in Sydney 2014 pt. 4

The 12^th of November 2014 at 20:15 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

(Reading time: 10 minutes)

It has been quite a while since last time I published a blog on my experiences and life here in Australia. The reason is that I almost was traveling all of October, and because I also had to follow school, I didn’t take the time to focus on the blog. But that is about to change again! Because it has been such a long time and there are so many new experiences this blog will partly be structured with bullet points.

The Weeks Leading Up to Spring Break

The two weeks leading up to spring break, which began on the 26^th of September, there was quite a bit of school work. Some of the highlights from the 2 weeks are the following:

12^th: Live rugby match at the Allianz Stadium here in Sydney. Frederik, Tobias, Peter, Nicholas, and I went to see a match between Manly Sea Eagles and South Sydney Rabbitohs. I had no idea of the rules, and neither had the others. Nevertheless, it was exciting to experience. I think Manly got crushed in the first half with something like 42-0, but the game ended a bit more even.

13^th: With some of the people from Tony Robbins UPW-crew I went to FX Zone – a big indoor trampoline park similar to Sky Zone. It was great fun, and good to see the crew again.

18^th: Dave Elliott, one of the senior leaders for Tony Robbins, had offered a free coaching session to everyone from the UPW crew. He is a great coach himself, so I figured why not get a professional outside view and perspective on my own life? So we spend around an hour over Skype talking about different topics I wanted to discuss. When you really sit down with a professional coach it is amazing to experience how much value they can actually bring to you in such a short period of time – and Dave was exception. He added great value, and in fact I learned some things about myself and life. His specialty is relationships, but he is open for other topics as well. If you want to check out his website, go to http://legendaryloveforlife.com/.

19^th: Alibaba, the Chinese company, had its Initial Public Offering on the New York Stock Exchange. I wanted to follow it when the US market opened and possibly place an order. Because of the time difference, the market opened at 00:30, but it wasn’t trading. The demand was so great that they had to postpone trading. And after the clock hit maybe 02:00 and it still hadn’t traded, I decided to go to bed.

22nd: This was the day of my parkour injury, which is described in my previous blog called ‘From Geek to Freak – Part 1.

Spring Break – Aussie East Coast from Brisbane to Cairns – 26^th – 6^th of October

Finally it was time for my very first spring break trip. I had signed up for a trip starting in Brisbane around 1000 km north of Sydney and ending in Cairns around 1700 km north of Brisbane. We had a lot of stops along the way so we probably drove closer to 2000 km.

Arriving in Brisbane and Meeting the Group and Guide

On the 26^th I flew to Brisbane from Sydney together with the 5 others I had signed up for the trip with. After arriving as we were walking to the meeting place to meet our guide on the trip, Jesper said ‘I don’t hope we get a 40-50-year-old-guide’. When we arrived we were greeted by an almost 50-year-old woman. We laughed a bit at his recent comment that came true. But after talking to Angie for just a minute, she had already crushed our prejudices, and it was clear that it was not going to be her that would slow down the group the next 10 days, no it would be us. She was the most playful and energetic person I think I have ever met, and despite of her age she blended in with all 30 of us as if she was yet another person joining the trip. This turned out to be the case during the whole trip.

Fraser Island

The trip commenced in morning on the 27^th. Before we checked out of the hostel in the morning, I took off the bed sheets and right there on my bed was a fairly fat cockroach climbing around. Yikes! I’m glad I didn’t see any before I went to bed (as stupid as that sounds), even though I did have my suspicions about it. Anyway, our first stop on the trip was to Hervey Bay from where we sailed to the famous Fraser Island. It is the world’s biggest sand island, and it is really a small paradise. Surround by white sand beaches and rainforests in the middle, it is a place for relaxation and beautiful nature. We checked in at our accommodation and enjoyed a day on the beach and by the pool with beach volley and other activities.

The following day we did one of the infamous 4WD Jeep tours around a part the island where you drive on the beach right next to the water, and sometimes in the water as well as through rain forests. You are allowed to drive up to 80 km/h on the beach, and that is really fast considering how bumpy it is driving on the beach. As we drove through the rain forest and on the beach the driver told us stories about the island and from the jeep we were able to see whales and dolphins far out in the horizon.

After a couple of hours of driving around, we got off the bus in the middle of a rainforest and had to walk on a rainforest walking track through some beautiful nature. The driver called all of us together to give us the mandatory snake safety briefing. Apparently the rainforest was home to 6 of the world’s deadliest snakes, so everyone was very attentive of the surroundings on our trip. Along the walking track there was a small water stream, which contained some of the world’s cleanest water according to the driver. It was an amazing walk with beautiful nature and strange trees.

Snorkeling Trip on Board the Derwent Hunter

Later that day we left Fraser Island and we had our longest and only drive at night to Airlie Beach where we arrived in the morning of the 29^th. We were dropped off right at the harbor where we had to board the Derwent Hunter – also referred to as the sexiest ship in the port according to the crew. It was a full day snorkeling tour, so we departed Airlie Beach and set sails for our first destination or more precisely our first snorkeling spot. And yes of course, you cannot put me on a ship for a full day without me gaining the wisdom of another toilet-story, and this time was no different. So here it goes: Just as we departed, the crew spent some time talking about safety, the trip, and also the features of the ship which included the toilets. Because it is a ship they work differently from regular ones. I heard their words, but I wasn’t listening. I thought it couldn’t be that difficult, and I believed that I would be able to figure it out myself. Sure enough, an hour later I went down to use the toilet. As it is very small I have to sit down, which was also a good idea as the ship was rocking form side to side. All of a sudden I think we encountered a bigger wave which caused everything on the ship including me to shift to the left. Apparently as I quickly discovered the toilet seat was loose and with my weight on top of it, somehow it completely fell out and rolled across the floor until it hit the wall. ‘WTF just happened?’ I remember thinking. It was such a comically and unique situation that I had to laugh of it myself. But it was only the beginning. Now it was time to test whether I could remember what the crew said about flushing the toilets – all I remembered was that it was extremely important to turn a lever or handle back into the right position. But before I had even finished that thought a paper on the wall had caught the attention of my eyes. It was an A4 page paper with big letter describing how the toilets worked in 3 bullet points. I started reading it just to make sure I was about to do everything correct. I read point number 1 and 2 and everything just seemed straight forward and logical so I decided not to read point number 3 – bad idea! As it later turned out this was the small detail I needed that would have made all the difference. I turned the lever, which filled the toilet tank with water, and I flushed. It flushed as expected and everything seemed completely fine until the toilet stopped flushing, but the water still kept pouring out from the tank. After the water level hit a critical point I had to do something, so I grabbed the toilet brush although I had no idea what to do. I’ll spare you for the details, but I’m sure you have guessed it. Then all of a sudden as lighting from a blue sky it struck me. I quickly closed the lever I had opened, which cut off the water supply. I flushed again, and everything went back to normal. Puh! I was glad it hadn’t been worse, which it easily could have been. As I am washing hands, I read the paper on how to operate the toilets again. And sure enough, under point number 3 which I had skipped before, was all the information I had needed to prevent the above. Lesson learned. When people emphasize seemingly simple things, it is probably important. Sorry for the long anecdote, but my blog is M-rated 🙂

After having sailed for maybe 2 hours we arrived at our first destination in the middle of the ocean surrounded by a few smaller islands. It looks amazingly beautiful with the blue sky, crystal clear water, and green islands. One of the surrounding islands is Hayman Island, which supposedly is where the rich and famous people go. It can could as much as $8.000 a night and up. So unfortunately we didn’t get to go here, but we snorkeled at a smaller island close to it. It was fantastic to snorkel between all the corals and exotic fish observing life in the water. The area was known to be home for sea turtles and after a bit of snorkeling we encountered one. We were able to swim next to, under, and over it. It was absolutely amazing to swim side by side with one of these marvelous creatures.

After our second snorkel I walked along the beach at one of the small islands, and as I crossed some trees and branches on the ground I saw something move right in front of me. I had a shock as I realized it was a snake. Right there in front of me – maybe just 2 meter in front, and it was probably around 1½ meters long.

After returning to Airlie Beach again we all went out for dinner and some of us went out to party.

Magnetic Island

The following morning on the 30^th we had to meet at 7 am sharp as we had to catch a ferry later that morning a few 100 km from Airlie Beach. I have a bad tendency to often be late, and this morning was no exception. So Andy, an American guy, and I were 10-15 minutes late. Angie, our guide, had threatened anyone who would be late with a spoon of vegemite. I didn’t think she was serious, but oh yes, she sure was. So upon entering the bus Andy and I were given a fork with vegemite on that we had to eat in front of everyone as a punishment for being late. I think it is impossible to describe the taste of this unbelievably horribly tasting thick brown Australian product. On a picture it could look similar to Nutella, but it is nothing like it. Its smell is disgusting and its taste is even worse. I have no idea how Australian can eat it – I think you have to grow up with it in order to eat it. Needless to say, Andy and I suffered for almost 30 minutes after having eaten it.

On our way we stopped at a thrift shop to buy some clothes for tonight’s theme party ‘ladies night’. So everyone secretly had to buy woman’s clothes for the person whose name appeared on the piece of paper that we drew from a hat. Everyone had to dress up as women, and you had to wear the clothes you were given. In the bus we all showed each other what we bought and told who it was for. There were some outfits that were really crazy and maybe across the line – the outfit I bought was probably one of them. After our shopping we continued to Townsville and boarded a boat which took us to a small island called Magnetic Island. It was only around 15×12 km, but it too was a small paradise with amazing nature. Before dinner we all changed to our newly acquired female clothes. Then we went for dinner, joined in on a special drinking bingo game, and later partied at the hostel with an amazing view over the water the rest of the night.

The following day we could spend as we wanted to on Magnetic Island. I think around half of the group wanted to rent scooters and take a tour around the island. So the 15 of us all went together to the scooter rental place and signed the paper work etc. Some people had never driven a scooter before and had a bit of trouble operating them, and you could tell they were a bit uncomfortable riding them. While this was going on I talked to one of the other guys from the group and said ‘that the worst place to fall off the scooter must be right here in front of the rental place and the employees’. As I’m sure we all have experiences and examples of – karma is a bitch. So sure enough after 7 hours of driving around the island with no problems I return to deliver my scooter. And just as I am about the take the very last turn from the street to the rental place I have a bit too much speed and I cross some gravel while turning which resulted in the scooter sliding and me falling off. Just like I said 7 hours previously this must be the worst place to fall off. And it wasn’t just in front of the employees at the rental place; no everyone from our group was there as well. So I think I must have had a good crowd of around 20-25 people. As soon as the scooter slid and I realized I didn’t hurt myself badly, internally I had to laugh of the situation and the fact that I spoke those words a couple of hours previously. Fortunately the damage wasn’t too great, so it ended up costing me only $40 in damages. I think Andy and I had a special bond together on the trip. Not only were we both late in the morning, but it turned out that he too had fallen off his scooter.

Despite my fall, it was a great trip around the island. We stopped at several of the beaches on the way, and we saw a wild koala sitting in a tree – a very rare sight – and we also got to feed wild wallabies.

EXCHANGE SEMESTER IN SYDNEY 2014 PT. 3

The 11^st of September 2014 at 14:20 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

(Reading time: 15  minutes)

Uni and Everyday Life

The following few weeks in Sydney from the 18^th of August (the end of my last blog) I spent quite some time on home work and assignments as I knew I was going to Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within seminar in the beginning of September for 5 full days, so I had to prepare in advance. The uni work isn’t that exciting to write about, so I’ll spare you for the details.

In the evening on the 19^th I went to a free 1-day-event called ‘financial freedom through FX’ with one of the world’s leading forex traders, Greg Secker. I knew in advance this was an event where he would promote his forex trading product and coaching, but I enjoy going to events like these as you always take home something – even though it might just be a small phrase or idea. I went primarily because I myself have an interest in trading (although not forex), and therefore I wanted to get to know his beliefs about trading and copy and adopt them as my own. One of the keys to duplicating another person’s success is to copy their core beliefs. Through my almost 5 years of business schooling I have been taught that it is not possible to beat the market return, however every day there are people around the world who do it. So who do you listen to? I would rather listen to the ones that are actually doing it than those who claim it cannot be done, which is the reason I went to this small event. It was actually really good, and he was also a very great speaker. Now, it is only a maybe 2-hour event, so of course he cannot go into details about what to do, but he sure opened everyone’s mind when he showed how he had made £19.000 in just 4 minutes! Sure he is a sales-person; however his credibility and results speak for themselves. I didn’t sign up for the program, however I did receive some valuable information about his beliefs such as: “To achieve and believe we must spend time in the company of those who are already doing it” and “Anticipation is the mother of all skills in serious money-making” and much more.

On the 21^st I visited another Toastmasters club close to UNSW, and to my surprise I found that Alex from my accounting class was actually a member of this one. The format was very similar to the first club I visited.

I signed up for a parkour class during the semester and the first class was on the 22^nd. It was really fun. We were a group of maybe 10 students and one instructor in his late 20’s. It is a very psychological sport, so whenever he shows you what to do you think ‘that doesn’t look too difficult’ but when it’s your turn your mind goes ‘oh fuck’. The same pattern continued the next couple of weeks in my parkour classes. Even though my 10 years of trampoline training definitely helps, the ironic thing is that I have no problem doing full front and back flips, but a ‘simple’ thing such as jumping over a wall with your hands first cause me quite some trouble. Anyway, I keep practicing. I have 2 parkour classes a week – on Mondays and Fridays.

On the same day I had the experience of being denied access to a bar together with Erik and Emil because we were too drunk according to the security guy at the door. Now I can’t remember if I have ever been denied access after having had less than 6 beers on the excuse of being too drunk. The funny thing was that one of the other security people came over to us just 2 minutes after and told us to go inside or further away as people were sleeping in their hotel rooms just above the bar. Apparently, he could tell we were too drunk, so I doubt this excuse was even valid. Anyway, to be sure to get in you need to bring girls or go in alone. Åsmund, who had definitely been drinking the most, had arrived just a few minutes before us. He had a plastic bag with some clothes in it, and when he had arrived one of the security people asked if he was working in the bar. Åsmund had said yes, and the security person had let him in the employee entrance. When he told the story the next next day, it just confirmed my suspicion that the security people had no idea what they were doing, haha.

The following day I went for dinner with Peter, Åsmund, Erik, and one of Eriks’s friends, Mandy, and her friend, Grace before going to some bars in Newtown.

On the 24^th it was time for the 5 km Sydney Color Run. Fortunately it was located just north of campus, so when I woke up during the morning I decided to run to the starting area. It turned out to be a bit further than expected, so my warm up for the 5 km race was a 4 km run. I met up with Erik, Peter, and Åsmund and we got in line waiting for our turn to start.

There were 20.000 participants all dressed in the same white T-shirt and accessories. Every 3 minutes of so, 1000 new runners started the race. But after the first 30 minutes when it was finally our time to go there were so many people on the track that the 5 km turned into something like 1½ km of running and 3,5 km of walking. There were no time taking or anything like that, so you could just complete the race as you liked. We decided to take a picture after each of the 5 color stations to see the progress, which can be seen below.

 After pink

 After orange

 After blue

 Afterr purple

 After green

When we finished the race the time was only 10:30 AM, so we joined the party in front of the stage where they played music and every now and then made the whole audience do a color throw. A color throw is when everyone in the audience had a pack of color powder and throws it in the air at the same time. It looks amazing, but shortly after you can barely breathe if you are in the middle of it. But it was fun!

In the beginning of the semester I became aware of a student society called university network of trading and investing. And just recently I saw they announced a trading competition in collaboration with Saxo Bank Australia, and I decided to check out their information session and perhaps meet some of the Aussies I had previously sent emails to from my time in Saxo Bank in Copenhagen. The event itself was pretty basic, but I did get to meet 4-5 of the people from the Australian office, however I did not know any of them. But they knew my team back in Copenhagen, so we talked a bit about that and the 2-week-trading-competition.

I have almost finished repairing my bike, and it has taken way more time than originally expected. But the next time I went to the bike club to finish up the rest, the wheel was turned 90 degrees, and I’m thinking ‘WTF?!’. Fortunately, I could easily just turn it back again.

Continuing my experiment to see how much I can batch my life, I wanted to try and experiment with delivery of groceries. So I went online and started shopping on coles.com.au and stated my preferred delivery time. First time shoppers got free delivery and since I didn’t have to carry the stuff myself I put in a huge order of almost $200. Just 2 days later in the morning it was delivered right to my door – so easy and convenient! Definitely something I can recommend, and it also forces you to think in advance what to cook for the week so you don’t have to go shopping several times a week. The only problem with my huge order was that I vastly underestimated the capacity of our freezer. But fortunately one of my flat mates had an extra freezer in which I barely could fit the remainder of my items – so perhaps I should place smaller orders in the future. But a large part of this order was also due to Occam’s Protocol, the 28-experiment I am currently doing, which required some changes in my diet.

On the 2^nd of Sept I visited yet another Toastmasters club called Professional speakers. This day they had a joint meeting with another club so there must have been 30 people or more. This club also started out with 1-minute impromptu speeches. The person leading this part of the evening was not aware that I was a guest so she asked me to join the stage as there were not many volunteers for this speech. I did not expect this at all, since it was my first visit to this club, but I went. She had given me a picture of a tree with some birds on it, and I had to talk about, but I had no idea what to say so I just came up with a fantasy story that I told for maybe 30 seconds before returning to my seat. It wasn’t the best performance but definitely fun and insightful to try.

Crewing Tony Robbins’ Unleash the Power Within

Finally came the days I had been looking forward to for several months: Tony Robbins was coming to Sydney to host his powerful event ‘Unleash the Power Within’. I had attended the same event in London back in March, and because of this I was now eligible to crew the event in the future, so I had applied 3-4 months in advance and had been accepted on the crew team. For those of you who are not familiar with Tony, he is the world’s leading success and peak performance coach, and he has worked together with people from every walk of life from Nelson Mandela, Princess Diana, André Agassi, and US presidents to some of the most challenged people on earth.

The event itself runs for around 50 hours over the course of 4 days, but the crew also met for an information session on the 4^th of Sept. one day before the event. I think we must have been more than 100 people crewing the event aged between 20 to 75. The first day was pretty much just some basic information about what we were going to do during the event, but meeting all these people who had previously attended Tony’s UPW event was a gift in itself. Everyone on the crew team had given up their time and pushed past obstacles in order to serve and contribute to the more than 3000 participants and help them create changes and transform their lives over the course of the weekend. Just being in this kind of environment surrounded by these kinds and types of people was very unique and rewarding. In this group there were no limitations in life and people supported each other in a way I have never seen or felt anywhere before. To give you a metaphor, they were probably some of the spiritually youngest people in life, who saw the whole donut and not just the hole in the middle as most other people do. When we finished Thursday and I went to bed, my alarm said just 4½ hours since we were meeting again Friday morning at 7 AM.

Friday was the first official day of seminar, and after having done all the preparations in the morning, the 3000 participants started arriving at 9AM. It was quite early as the event didn’t start until 1 PM, but Tony attracts a lot of people and most everyone wants the best possible seats so they stand in line for several hours. It was interesting to see the participants and feel the energy in the room when they arrived. A lot of them were a bit uncertain why they were here, what they could expect, and most of them only talked to the people they arrived together with. But this surely changed already after the first day.

Finally the music started and the dancers went on stage and got the whole audience engaged by having them do the same moves as the dancers. After a short 10-minutes-dance Tony himself made his impressive entrance on stage. He is amazing to watch on stage and even form a far distance you can easily tell he is a very very tall and big man. I wish I could report everything he shared during the event but that would be too long a blog. I will however share this important piece of information form Tony: ‘The quality of your life is determined by the emotions you experience on a regular basis”. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, how successful you are etc. If you keep living with feelings of depression, frustration, stress, and anger, then that is how you will be living and experiencing your life.

Day 1 – The Fire Walk

Friday night is particularly known for the famous fire walk that Tony has all the participants do. The crew team was split in 2 on this day – one group called the fire crew and the other the event crew. The fire crew spent almost the entire day preparing for the fire walk until around 10 or 11 PM when Tony had prepared the participants for the walk.

On stage Tony prepares the audience for the fire walk mentally, physically, and spiritually for several hours, while the crew practices their individual roles during the fire walk. Around 20 minutes before the audience is ready everyone from the crew is in their position and ready to begin the fire walk. Almost 150 people including coaches, trainers, and security were waiting in their positions at the 16 lanes that were set up before the doors opened and 3000 participants all came rushing out ready for their fire walk. The fire walk is a much more a mental game than a physical one, and one must use specific strategies and tools to keep the mind focused on the task and not let the inner voice and self doubt take over your state. Therefore Tony teaches the audience to clap and say yes while waiting in line, so all 3000 people were just clapping and screaming ‘yes!’ – it was beautiful! Then Tony joined from one of the back doors and got in position at one of the lanes and said ‘Let the games begin’. This was the clue for the trainers and himself to test the fire walk by first walking it themselves. After this the game was on and the 3000 participants stormed across the fire one by one. When you have 16 lanes, that means almost 200 people are crossing your lane and I got to see how everyone of them dealt with the fire walk – something most people considered impossible before coming to the event. I saw children aged 5 and adults ages 80 walk the fire walk. It was amazing to see the transformation that happened in those people’s lives right there, and also see how well people dealt with the inner voice inside their head while still conditioning their body to perform ‘the impossible’. After all the participant had had their turn, everyone from the crew had an opportunity to try it. Obviously we didn’t have Tony to prepare us for the event, but since all the crew members had previously attended his seminar and done the fire walk it was assumed that we didn’t need any coaching. I had done it before and I knew also that I could do it again, but still the voice inside my head went ‘Are you sure?’. I waited in line and when it was my turn I made my power move, screamed yes, and blasted to the other side of the fire before celebrating my victory! Wow, it’s amazing, fun, and incredibly addictive. It was such an addictive energy boost that I had to do it again – partly to experience the feeling again but more importantly to see how fast I could condition myself for another fire walk. I ended up walking 3 times in total feeling more alive and energized than almost ever before.

Day 2-4

The rest of the seminar was just as amazing as the first day and consisted of quite a lot of crew things to do but also participating in the seminar. Saturday was the day where Tony’s head speaker, Joseph, among other things taught the participants the ultimate success formula which is:

1. Know your outcome
2. Know your reasons why
3. Take massive action
4. Notice your results
5. Change your approach

A more detailed description can be found here: http://training.tonyrobbins.com/the-ultimate-success-formula/

Sunday Tony was back again for ‘Transformation Day’. This is probably the most powerful day of the whole event – and for most people it far surpasses the fire walk. This is the day where Tony smashes the participants limiting beliefs and shows them what is possible in this world – which is anything. He does so through a powerful 4-hour-long emotional process he calls ‘Dickens’. I won’t go into details and rob you of this amazing experience should you choose to attend one of his UPW events. During this day Tony also shares lessons and stories from his own life to show the participants what is possible and open their minds to another world of endless possibilities. E.g. he tells his story how he came from nothing and now is privileged enough to charge more than $1.000.000 for 12 hours of his own coaching time – and there is an 18-months-waiting list. The reason he can do this is because he produces immediate results.

Towards the end of Saturday Tony asks all crew members to join him on stage to receive recognition for our contribution and he shakes everyone’s hands.

This is the closest I have ever been and he is even bigger than I expected. He must be 210 cm tall, size 50 in shoes, and well over 100 kg. After the event we all went to the crew room where Tony showed up shortly after and we got a group photo with him (unfortunately I haven’t received this photo yet).

On my way home this night I decided to cross along the curb (kantsten) on my bike instead of across which resulted in my getting thrown off the bike and landing on the sidewalk on my left hips and hands. Fortunately nothing bad happened and I was able to continue my way home, however the next morning it did hurt a bit more, but I could still function properly.

On Monday Joseph covered the keys to a vital life and how to operate on an unlimited amount of energy in your life. This included everything from exercise, food, breathing, and much more. This day is likely to be the day where most people’s beliefs and assumptions are questioned the most regarding their own health and well being. They teach you what actually breaks down the body and causes it to age faster, and how you instead can keep the body in balance and enjoy seemingly limitless energy. Obviously I cannot report all the lessons they shared this day since there are way too many. However, as they teach, you should consider your own health the most important subject of your life, because without the energy to perform and do what you want, what else have we got? Tony for instance is 54 years old, but says he has more energy and feels more vibrant and alive than when he was 20. One important distinction they make is whether your body burns sugar or fat. Most people burn sugar, which is similar to a short burst in energy, whereas burning fat is like burning coals – it keeps going and going. After my 28-day Occam’s Protocol experiment I will train my body to burn fat and feel and experience the results.

After the event most of us went to the Novotel bar afterwards to say goodbye to each other. Here I had the opportunity to talk to some of the trainers and senior leaders and ask them about their lives and the impact Tony has had on them. I spoke to one of the trainers, Kym, and she told me that see could see me become one of the senior leaders one day. Honestly, I barely had had a chance to talk to her during the event but her words encouraged me almost more than anything else during the weekend. So thank you, Kym!

All in all it was an amazing event and definitely worth crewing. Tony will be returning to London in March where I will be applying for crew once again.

First Mid-term Exam

I made it back to the Village late Monday night and had a mid-term exam Tuesday the 10^th. During the last 5-6 nights I had slept an average of just 5 hours, but because I had to get up and study for my exam I couldn’t even sleep much more this night. So I woke up and started studying. I only had 1½ to study and learn everything by heart from the first 6 weeks of school. It seemed like way too little time but I just looked through the lecturer’s slides and a little in my notes before I had to go. I was a bit late and when I found the room I thought was the right one I wondered why I was the only one there. Apparently it turned out that I was 1 hour ahead of time, so that just gave me another 40 minutes to study, which was good. It was a multiple choice exam and it wasn’t too bad at all. Interestingly, the difficulty of exams at CBS seems much greater than here at UNSW (and also University of Texas) even though the UNSW business school is supposedly one of the best in Australia. It went quite well based on the amount of time I had put in, but let’s wait and see if the result says the same.

Exchange semester in Sydney 2014 pt. 2

The 15^th of August at 17:50 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

The semester begins

Monday the 28^th of July was the first official day of the semester. At this point in time I had already been at the exchange advisors office numerous times – I almost believe I must have been the most difficult student. The reason for my many visits was due to the fact that students at UNSW have to enroll in their desired classes as opposed to the Danish school system where almost all classes are set from the beginning of the degree. Enrolling in classes means you can sign up for whatever class you desire (if it is preapproved for your degree) as long as that particular class has enough capacity to accommodate it. There is nothing wrong with that way of doing it as long as you are proactive and know what kind of classes you want before they become full. However, UNSW does not allow exchange students to add or drop classes online themselves, so we had to go down to the office every time there were just a small change – and I had many changes to request. Several of the classes I originally had indicated I would like to enroll in was not offered because of too little demand. That included ‘Real Estate Finance and Investment’ as well as ‘Behavioral Finance’, which were 2 of the 3 classes I wanted the most. Having to find substitutes for these 2 classes and enroll in another took me quite some time since I wasn’t too satisfied with the supply of classes within business this semester. Firstly, I didn’t want yet another theoretical class with virtually no practical relevance and secondly, some of the classes that might have been okay were either introductory classes for people with limited business background or classes with almost the exact same course description and reading materials as some of my previous classes on CBS. When I realized this and had boiled the potential list of classes down to just a few, my top ones were almost all full and the ones that weren’t full offered several different time slots with the available ones from 6-9 PM. Not quite what I was hoping for. In my mind it would be a very bad schedule having classes from 6-9 PM 3 times a week. It would be in the middle of dinner and cut me out for many potential social activities during the semester, so I was committed to finding another way. To put it briefly: Getting from the schedule I had this day to the one I am currently enrolled in required a lot of steps and visits to the office as well as more advanced methods. These included things such as contacting the faculties or professors personally and have them approve my enrolment despite a class being full. It all worked out perfectly, and full or not, I got enrolled in my classes. Before I figured this out, there was one time when I was sitting up around midnight continuously refreshing the enrolment-website and suddenly..! One of my desired classes was open. The only problem was that I couldn’t contact anyone who could enroll me in the middle of the night. So the only thing I could do was to send an email, and before they replied back to me the next morning it was too late. In the end everything turned out fine and I am now enrolled in my 4 classes leaving me with both Thursday and Friday off every week. My current schedule looks like this:

• Monday
  • 6-9 PM: E-business: Strategy and Processes (I really wanted this class, and it was the only time slot available. But a late class on Monday seemed okay to me)
• Tuesday
  • 1-4 PM: Financial Institution Management
• Wednesday
  • 12-3 PM: Real Estate Economics and Public Policy
  • 3:30-5 PM + 6-7:30 PM: Managing and Leading People

 

Since the semester had just begun there were a lot of events going on. The Village provided a free dinner and had arranged a party at one of the local clubs at King’s Cross called Barcode where they on big signs were adverting with shots called ‘wet pussy’. And of course we had to try the wet pussy, haha. The student bar called Roundhouse also hosted their first party of the year on the 31^st of July. Since July is the middle of winter in Australia the theme of course was SNOW. It’s ironic that their snow party takes place in around 15-20 degrees C.

One of the student organizations had previously given me a flyer and urged me to sign up for their email list (they also provided awesome food which only helped the process). On the 1^st of August Mantra Meditation Club were having their first meditation session including free dinner. I decided to try it out and join them for their meditation – partly because I wanted to check out what it was and also because their food was so delicious. I arrived at the location on campus and was greeted by a young monk in a salmon colored piece of cloth. We talked a bit and apparently he had graduated as an engineer a few years back from UNSW but had chosen to become a monk. The session started with a discussion about what ‘spirituality’ is followed by a meditation session with music and singing. He and two other were playing on some simple instruments, while one of the girls was singing and the rest of us repeating what she sang. We continued this way for a long time repeating the same 4 lines over and over again and again at least 50-60 times. They didn’t give any directions on what to do, how to sit, or what to focus on, so I just sat with my eyes open looking at the words on the board and the people playing the instruments. Needless to say, the effect on me was limited. But the food afterwards was excellent though.

 

(Continued on the 18^th of August at 21:35 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney)

By: Christian Ljungbeck

 

On Saturday the 2^nd of August I made a trip to Manly Beach with Frederik and Nicolas from Germany. Frederik heard this beach should be very beautiful, so we took the ferry from the southern shore where we passed Sydney Opera House and had an amazing view over Sydney and the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

We arrived in Manly and took a walk on the beach as head south along a walk track looking at the beautiful nature and beaches.

During the next couple of days I went to the cinema with Peter, Erik, and Åsmund (All from CBS) to watch Planet of the Apes 2, did some homework, as well as some practical stuff. Inspired by Timothy Ferriss’ book ‘The 4-hour work week’ I wanted to try and see how efficient I could design my week by batching activities together. Batching means to group together activities at a specific time in order to save time by not having to do the same activities multiple times over a longer time period. Some examples of batching that I have outlined in my weekly schedule include:

• Spend 30 minutes on Sundays to look in cooking books and plan the meals for the coming week plus write a detailed grocery shopping list.
• Spend 60 minutes on grocery shopping on Monday morning buying all the food I need during the week for all my meals.
• Only cook food 4 times a week by cooking large amounts of food that lasts several meals (e.g. on Mondays I cook food to consume for lunch, afternoon, evening, and Tuesday lunch and afternoon.)
• Doing laundry on Sundays every other (maybe third) week

A full outline can be seen below. It is still in the development process, but I enjoy seeing how much time I can free up this way to other activities. (A lot of it is abbreviated such as H.W. = Home work, but you get the idea)

 

On Tuesday the 5^th I had my first class in ‘Financial Institution Management’. I was a bit late for this class so when I walked in the lecturer had already begun. I slowly walk to an empty seat and sat down. There must have been 80-90 students in the room. After having been in the class for around 5 minutes I looked around on my fellow classmates. Starting from the left side of the room I turned my head to the right observing everyone in the room. To my great surprise I was the only person with blond hair, everyone else was Asian and had black hair. There are a lot of Asian students at UNSW and especially in the business school, but me being the only one out of almost 100 students was quite surprising. During the break a guy behind me asked me if I already had a group for the team assignment coming up later in the course. I didn’t, so he tells me I can join his group, but he just wants to confirm with the 3 other girls in the group. We walk over to them and he speaks to them in Chinese for about 20 seconds and returns to me saying ‘Oh, I’m sorry but she wanted another Chinese person’. Usually I would probably take it more personally but this was just so ridiculous to me that I had to smile. So much for being the blond minority!

 

Foundation Day

During week 2 UNSW turned 65 years old and everyone celebrated what was called ’Foundation Day’. This involved a lot of different events during Thursday the 7^th such as jumping castles, mechanical bulls, music, a lot of stalls and stands etc. Coincidentally I meet Christian Langkjær (another student from CBS) who is about to look at a bike with a guy from UNSW bike club. Apparently they have a lot of bikes that have been unused for several months and therefore they have collected them before they either sell them or fix them up. I too have been looking for a bike, so I join them and both Christian and I find a bike we like. None of them are ready to ride so they need some fixing. The rear brakes on one I have chosen is so tight against the rear wheel that it cannot run around at all. Already at this point I am seriously considering if this is something I will be able to fix or whether I should just buy something that already works. By all means I prefer the latter, but nevertheless I continue with this bike on the assumption that the time I will spend fixing it will require less time than searching for bikes online and go try them before buying one (and it will be more expensive too as this one costs only $40-50). Every Tuesdays and Thursday from 12-14 the bike club has free bike repair lessons where some volunteers come and help out with fixing people’s bikes, so I agree to join them on Tuesday and start fixing up my bike with their help.

 

The last week or so I have also been trying to plan out my spring break. During spring break (from the 27^th of Sept. to the 6. of Oct.) UNSW is closed and many people travel somewhere – especially the exchange students. At the orientation STA Travel handed out a tiny booklet presenting the 5 spring break trips they have put together for UNSW students. The destinations were Thailand, Fiji, Bali, New Zealand, and a trip up the Australian east coast. Much as I want to go to New Zealand, I felt like going on the Aussie East Coast trip starting in Brisbane (10 hour drive north of Sydney) and ending north in Cairns. This trip includes sailing around Fraser Island as well as Whitsunday Island (Whitehaven Beach, one of the best beaches in the world is located here), jeep tour, rain forest, Mission Beach (where you can skydive and land on the beach), White River Rafting, Great Barrier Reef, and much more. So I met some other people who also were keen on this trip and we signed up together and got a small group discount of 5%.(Check out the tour details here: http://ww3.statravel.com.au/unsw/)

 

Since it is Foundation Day there is of course also a party. Again, Roundhouse was hosting the Foundation Day Party where the theme was masquerade. I invited Peter, Erik, Åsmund, and Frederik home to my place before the party to play some games and drink some beers. I wasn’t planning on buying any masks as there were so few people last week that had actually dressed up for the ‘snow’ theme. But Peter apparently had had a great idea for the masks. He had bought some foil trays, rubber bands, and tape which we could use to make our own masks. I have no idea how he came up with that idea, but it was fun. So we all took a foil tray and smashed it against our face. When the foil tray had taken the shape of our faces we cut holes for the eyes, put some tape on the masks, and made a string around our heads of the rubber bands. And voila, we all had our masks. Even though they were basic, the result, I believe, was quite stunning as you can see below.

 

 

Week 2 and 3 of uni

The following day UNSWOC (UNSW Outdoor Club) is hosting a free BBQ – it’s amazing so many free food events they have. At night I go out with Craig and Bruce from my ‘E-business’-class at a local bar ‘Regent’. Bruce keeps buying a new jug of beer as soon as the previous one has been poured up in our glasses. It continues this way for several jugs until we have had quite a few of them. We are sitting outside and suddenly one of the security guards comes over to our table where we have been sitting for maybe 2 hours and tells me to get inside because I am not smoking. I don’t understand what that has to do with anything, so I don’t really react as I am confused. Then he gets mad and tells me to go inside or he will throw me out of the bar. Still confused, we all 3 walk inside. Apparently it turns out that they are only allowed to have 20 people sitting outside at the same time. Had the guard given me that small piece of information I would have understood it, but he didn’t say anything about it – very weird.

 

The following day we are a bunch of guys from Denmark (and Frederik from Germany) who go to Side Bar at the Wake Up Hostel for their beer pong tournament. We all end up getting knocked out by the 2^nd round, so we go to another place where they also have a beer pong tournament. But it turned out it didn’t start until around 23 o’clock so most of us went home before that.

 

Finally Tuesday came and it was time for me to fix my bike. I go to the bike club and take a look at the bike. I almost have no idea where to start or what to do, so I ask one of the volunteers. He comes over and looks at the rear brake and wheel which is completely stuck. ‘Wow’, he says, ‘that looks like fun’. That wasn’t quite what I wanted to hear, but well, I made it this far, so I might as well continue. He tells me to get the WD-40 spray so we can try and fix the problem. I pick up the WD-40 and he tells me to spray it on. ‘No problem’, I think, ‘I know how to do this’ so I take the bottle and start spraying right on the wheel where the brake is stuck. ‘Oh, no, spray it in here’ he says and points at the nut (møtrik) holding the rear brake together. I smile, try to act like I know what I am doing, and say ‘Oh, yeah that’s right’, but on the inside I am laughing big time. He hits the brake and it releases its grib – it worked! Now we can take the wheel off which he helped out with a lot in order to align the brakes and wheel itself. We place the wheel in a special holder and he looks at it. It turns out some of the spokes (eger) on the rear wheel are very loose and 2 of them are broken. I had not seen that before as I still hadn’t really done a full condition check on the bike. They had some special tool for removing the broken stokes. He did the first one while explaining which way I should turn to loosen and tighten them, respectively. ‘Ye, ye, I can tell by looking at it and whether it comes out or goes further in’, I thought to myself. When he was done with the first one he left to get some equipment while I did the next spoke. I turned it one way, but it didn’t look like anything was happening. It seemed as if I was just turning it, so after 30 seconds I started turning it the other way. After a while with no visible changes the tire suddenly lost all its air. It went from completely full to completely flat. The volunteer returned to me and asked how I was doing. ‘I’m okay’, I replied, ‘but the tire suddenly lost all its air’. He looked at it and I could tell that he was thinking that I had probably punctured the tire, but he was very reluctant saying so, but finally he said that I might have done so. I knew that I most definitely had punctured the tire since I must have turned the spoke the wrong way and caused it to go right through the tire. Again, I was laughed inside. The clock was approaching 13, and I had a class starting soon, so I had to pack everything up again. The volunteer told me to just put the wheel back on the bike and only softly tighten the nuts so I could easily get them off the next time. I also had to put the support foot back on but for some reason this felt completely stuck to me, which was weird as it had worked just 1 hour ago. I asked him about it, and he said that it was because there was a small lock on it, so I had to press on its top before it would work (probably similar to a child lock function, haha). I assemble the bike again thinking that it was the least productive hour of fixing anything I had experienced in a long time. Not only was it very unproductive, but the bike was in an even worse condition now than when I had arrived! I left the bike club with a big grin on my face thinking if I will ever be able to ride that bike or whether I should just buy a used bike online.

 

In my class ‘Managing and Leading People’ the lecturer asked last week if anyone was a member of ‘Toastmasters’. No one was and she explained that it was a non-profit organization consisting of several thousand clubs around the world where people meet in small groups of 10-20 people to practice their public speaking and leadership skills. This sounded just like something I have been looking for for a long time. Therefore I did some research and found out that there were actually quite many clubs located in Sydney. I called on of the clubs and they invited me as a visitor to their next meeting. So on the evening on the 12^th of August I went to Sydney CBD to attend their meeting not really knowing what was going to happen. It turned out to be an awesome experience. I visited the club called ‘National Toastmasters’ which consisted of around 20 people including 6 visitors. All the members had been assigned different roles during the 2½-hour-meeting such as ah-counter, grammarian, timer, chairman, evaluator, etc. Some of them had also prepared a short speech which they would be presenting for the club. It was a lot of fun even though I as a visitor didn’t really get to participate that much other than a short introduction. But after the meeting I knew I had to sign up for one of the clubs. The questions then becomes: ‘Which one?’. Since there are many clubs I want a club where people are really focused on improving their skills and where the ambitions are great. This club was great; however, I could sense that a lot of the members were a little too comfortable with the plateau where they were currently at. So before signing up for the club I want to check out other clubs to see if I can find another where the demands are greater. When signing up you receive a monthly newsletter and a manual. Inside the manual you will find papers on the different speeches you will have to perform in order to advance to the next level. When you reach a new level you receive a new manual etc.

 

After returning home from National Toastmasters I do some research on other clubs in Sydney that I want to check out the next couple of weeks. During my research I somehow end up on Facebook looking at a post saying something along the lines of ‘If this doesn’t get you up in the morning, I don’t know what else will’. As I the last 2-3 weeks have tried to condition myself to immediately get out of bed as soon as I hear my alarm clock, I eagerly follow the link and end up on Youtube watching a short 3½ minute motivational video. Wow, it’s powerful! I even got goose bumps while watching it. I figure that this might just be the kind of leverage I need in order to get out of bed immediately in the mornings, so I download the audio file and set it as my alarm clock on my phone. I’m already excited waking up the flowing day even though I haven’t even gone to bed yet, haha. You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzm6TEManmQ. (In order to download the audio file go to www.vidtomp3.com and paste the URL from youtube).

 

During one of the tutorials in my class ‘Managing and Leading People’ the teacher divides the class into 3 groups and points out a leader in each team. She then gives the leader a pack of straws and secretly assigns each leader a leadership style which they have to play while the group collectively has to build a monument or building out of straws. It was a fun exercise but looking at it from the outside there is no way you would guess that this would be a postgraduate class. I remember thinking to myself ‘After 4 years of business studies – do things get easier or is it just me? Or perhaps this is the law of diminishing returns I have encountered?’, Haha.

 

 

On the 14^th I go to the bank to withdraw money for the spring break trip I have signed up for. The bank teller asks for the amount and my credit card. I then have to sign on the receipt before she can give me the money. I just make a quick signature and hand the receipt back to her. She looks at it and says that it doesn’t look like the one I did when I opened my bank account. She asks me to sign it again on the back. I do so, but still she says it doesn’t look like the original one they have in their system. I get a little nervous because rarely am I able to write 2 signatures that look like each other. In fact the first time I had to ‘sign’ anything was in 4^th grade. I didn’t have a signature at that time, so Elizabeth from my class actually designed one for me, and embarrassing as it sounds, it has stuck with me ever since. It is basically just ‘ChrLj’ written fast in cursive. The problem is just that they almost never look like each other. I try to sign the receipt a third time, but still no luck. She then asks me if I have used my card today and asks me some security questions. Fortunately I score 100% in this test and she gives me my money. I leave the bank knowing that I probably have to design a new signature.

 

Surf Camp

On the weekend from the 16^th to the 17^th of August we are 9 Danes who have arranged a surf camp. We got picked up at 7 AM in the morning and we drive about 1½ hours south to Wollongong, where they have an awesome beach for surfing.

Unfortunately the weather isn’t too good, but when we arrive the sun shows itself but quickly returns behind the grey skies again. The surroundings and the beach look beautiful, but in my opinion the waves are quite big. Some of them must be around 1½ meters. Fortunately I have been snowboarding for many years, so I have enough references to not let the waves intimidate me. We put on our wetsuits and grab a surfboard. The instructors explain the basic stuff about when to paddle and stand up as well as how to surf. After the short introduction we all jump in the water and start paddling out into the big waves. Even paddling out was difficult and exhausting. Once a rather big wave came your way it pushed you further in or maybe even knocked you over and before you got up on your feet again another wave was approaching pushing you even further back. After a few attempts I finally made it to the point where all the waves started breaking. I waited for the right wave, started paddling, and once I could feel the momentum and push from the wave I stood up and turned sideways. Success! My very first attempt at surfing and I even stood up and rode a wave until it died. We surfed for about 1½-2 hours before everyone until everyone was freezing and it was time for lunch. Then we headed 1½ hours further south to where we would spend the night. We unpacked and went for the afternoon surfing session. This location had even bigger waves and several of them were 2 meters tall. It wasn’t quite the conditions you would expose beginner surfers to. But again, we couldn’t change the conditions so we all jumped in the water. This time everyone seemed to face quite a challenge. With waves this big and powerful we continually got thrown around as if we were small bricks. Both on the way out as well as during our surfing attempts the waves just played around with us. Every now and then when I got off to a good start and began paddling at the right time, the waves were so fast and powerful that I suddenly found myself on top of a 2 meter wave before I gained enough momentum only to find myself nose dip almost 90 degrees straight down toward the bottom of the ocean. Wow, you could really tell the power of the ocean. We continued for around 1½ hours before going back to our small wooden houses where we prepared dinner, had a lot of beers, and partied. Late in the evening it started raining and it continued the next day with heavy rain. We were going surfing again this day, so after having driven to a new location we went for yet another 1½-2 hours surf session before going to a bar to officially end our surf camp.

Exchange semester in Sydney 2014 pt. 1

The 28^th of July at 22:50 at the Village, University of New South Wales, Sydney

By: Christian Ljungbeck

Arrival in Sydney

After what must have been the longest flight I have ever had I arrive in Sydney on the 15^th of July in the morning. I was so lucky to sit right behind a mom and dad who had brought their less than six-month-old baby and their three-year-old son. At first it was okay, but then when it got late and people were getting tired, the baby and the son saw their chance to keep everyone awake. Their beautiful master plan involved screaming and/or crying alternately during the whole night keeping everyone from sleeping more than ten minutes. Very tired and exhausted, yet with great energy for the coming adventures, I arrive in Sydney. The airport was packed with people and there must have been at least 200 meters of queue for the passport control. Finally it’s my turn and they allow me to enter Australia – such a risky move! Haha. I get picked up by one of the so-called  ‘Aussie Mates’ from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and he takes me to Wake Up, which is the hostel I had booked in advance. Originally I had booked a six-person-room in order to meet more people and hopefully have more fun. But when I get my key and enter the room there are only four beds and none of them are occupied – and that’s what they give you when you try to socialize! Well, I am quite tired so right now I am happy I have the room for myself, so I sleep a few hours. Waking up again I text Amalie Meldgaard on Facebook (old friend from Nærum Gymnasium, who also is spending a semester abroad in Sydney and currently staying at Wake Up) and we meet in the reception. We talk a bit and decide to go to a travel information session in the bar in the basement, and we stay for the ‘trivia night’ as well. Later that day Peter and Erik from CBS arrive and we say hey. All of us are quite tired so we call it a night and go to bed early.

Lunch at Darling Harbour and party at Side Bar

The next day Amalie is moving in to her permanent apartment, so I meet Peter and Erik and we want to explore Sydney and take care of some of the more practical thing. So we all order an Australian sim card and take a walk to Darling Harbour, which is located 1½ km from our hostel.

The sun is shining even though it is quite cold. We have lunch at one of the restaurants along the harbor. There are a lot of birds on the ground close to our table and it Is obvious that they are used to finding food here because they are so aggressive. After our food has been served I stand up to go get a knife and fork, and at the same time as I leave the table a bird flies over and lands right on our table so Erik has to grab my plate and stop the bird from going bananas in my delicious caeser salad. We end up having to go inside and eat our food because the birds are so close. Later we get home to the hostel again and talk to some of the other exchange students.

Wake Up is hosting a wine and cheese pre-party before they turn on the music in the bar in the basement where they will be giving away a free keg of beer. At the pre-party they serve goon, which is the famous Australian wine among students because it is by far the cheapest to drink. I am excited to try goon – mostly because I don’t like wine and I have heard so much about it. Fortunately, the wine must have been so cheap that it barely can be classified as wine, and I can actually drink it. Today is Wednesday which means it is time for the weekly bikini contest at around midnight in the bar at Wake Up. As you can imagine the bar is completely full with more than 300 people since they have been giving away free beer AND will be hosting a bikini contest. It turns out they don’t have a stage, so only the first five rows of people could actually see what was going on. Nevertheless, we had a great night and got to meet a lot of people from around the world.

The housing hunt begins

Neither Peter, Erik, or myself have arranged anything from Denmark in regards to housing in Sydney. We have only booked one week at the hostel, which we can extend if needed. The following day on the 17^th we start looking at www.gumtree.com.au for different housing options. The first thing to figure out is where to stay in Sydney, which can be quite hard when you haven’t yet been around Sydney or know what anything is called. After having decided on the location it is time to determine the price range and type of accommodation. I knew I wanted a single room within a shared apartment or house with other students or people around my age, so I look mainly in the suburbs called Randwick, Coogee, and Kingsford – all three located very close to campus as well as the beach in Coogee. The next couple of days go by without many exciting things happening. We call on people who post available housing online and go for house inspections. None of us really see anything that we would like to move in to, and by day three we are all tired and fed up with house inspections. But of course we need a place to stay, so we continue our search. We search and go for inspections during the day while at night we go to Side Bar or do other activities with other people from our hostel or CBS. On the 19^th I decided to apply for on-campus housing at The Village even though they had previously told me they were full, but they always have cancellations in the beginning of the semester, so I hoped I would be able to get one of these rooms. On Monday just two days later I receive an offer for accommodation from The Village and I can move in Thursday already. Perfect and just what I needed! In my opinion this was probably the best thing that could have happened since The Village is an apartment complex with several hundred student staying there so there would be many opportunities to meet both locals as well as other exchange students. They also have different events going on during the semester which I would be able to participate in, and last but not least it is located only a one-minute-walk from the Australian School of Business, where all my classes will take place.

Orientation at UNSW

The 23^rd to the 25^th of July were orientation days at the uni. On the first day all the major student organizations were present and informing new and old students of their presence and their work. It included everything from sports organizations and meditation clubs to academic skill development, vegetarian food, and much more. During these days we also received more information about the exchange office, the uni, and all the different events they have put together for us during the semester. Among other thing the events include trips to Blue Mountains, Toronga Zoo, Canberra, and ski/surf trips as well as events such as Sydney Harbour bridge climb, Lion King at the theatre, Opera house tour, and not to mention a spring break trip to one of the following places: Thailand, Bali, Fiji, New Zealand, or the Australian east coast. Everything sounds amazing and I could easily spend $4.000+ on the various events.

(Aboriginees dancing at UNSW on the orientation day)

On the 23^rd we go out again to check out Sydney by night and we end up on The Soda Factory, which is a nice small bar. After having been there for an hour they announce that the final is beginning momentarily. Apparently it is ‘The First Annual National Hotdog Day’. Four guys have made it through the knockout rounds, which consisted on eat-as-many-hotdogs-as-possible-in-two-minutes, and they were now In the final where they had five minutes to compete against each other. It was awesome to watch and the winner ate seven quite large hotdogs after having finished five hotdogs in the knockout round previously. I suppose that was well done even though I believe I could have given him a run for the money, hah!

Moving in at The Village

Thursday finally came and I could now move In to my new room in a four-bedroom-apartment where I would be staying with three Australian guys around my age who all studied at UNSW. The room is nice and big, and I already like it. The only thing that was not included in the room was a quilt, pillows, bed sheets etc. So I go shopping and end up in Kmart (similar to Walmart I guess). Since I am only here for one semester (four months) I don’t want to spend a lot of money on a quilt. Even though it is winter now In Sydney I know it will get very hot during the summer, so I find a great offer and end up paying $30 for a quilt, two pillows, bed sheet, and quilt+pillow cases. I thought this was a good price to pay, but after the first night in The Village I knew I had to buy yet another quilt, so I had to return to Kmart the next day.

Coogee-Bondi Beach Walk

Someone from the exchange group on Facebook asked if anyone would be willing to join a walk from Coogee beach to Bondi beach which is around three-four km north of Coogee. A lot of people showed up, so we walk a group of around 15-20 people. The trip took us more than three hours and we got to see some beautiful viewpoints along the way before stopping for late-lunch/early-dinner at Bondi Beach.

Fun day at The Village

On Sunday the 28^th of July The Village has arranged a fun day which started out with a trip to the famous Toronga Zoo in Sydney followed by a trip to Sky Zone, which is a big indoor trampoline park. In the evening there was compulsory orientation for the new residents followed by free Indian food.

We started the day early in the morning by taking the bus to Circular Quay from where we sailed to Toronga Zoo. As we departed Circular Quay we passed the Opera House on our right side and everyone was taking pictures of the amazing view we had of the Opera House and Sydney from the water. Arriving at the Zoo we split up in smaller groups and walked around and saw all the different animals. It is always fun to see new animals and we did get to see kangaroos, koalas, wombats, huge snakes, and many other animals I haven’t seen before.