the works, rambles, and life of an aspiring graphic designer

Dont you hate it when you start reading this truly awesome blog, and it builds up a story about moving to a new and exciting country, and even tells you about how the owner of the blog has JUST moved in to this completely AWESOME house, only to see that the last update was around 8 months ago?

I bet that happens to you a lot. So here I am again, writing another post to summarize the past 8 months of my life for those of you who are too lazy to scroll that far back on facebook. Can’t blame you really, thats a lot of scrolling. Just to go completely against everything that I’ve done before, I’m even going to try to make this somewhat organised. Waaaait for it… aaaand…

poof!

September->November:
I eventually got round to doing the homework that I had to do, the fact that it was the week before hand in… well, that shouldn’t really come as a surprise for most of you. My logo for Palomino Valley (the wine place I wrote in the post below that I was doing branding for) was awesome, the rest of it was rushed. But hey, it was pretty nice at the end of the day. Adding a little bit more finish to it, and it might even be portfolio-worthy. We’ll see.
For photography, I spent aaages in the studio getting some pictures right, and completing others quite literally just before class. By chance. I know, not the best way to go around things, but I did have a rationale to explain it all, so the teacher was fine with it. In my defense, I’ve improved in terms of last minute work. This semester, its more like last hour work. Or day, depending on the subject.
My personal branding project came together quite nicely, thanks to some help from an ever-patient Irene, who showed me what moose should look like if they had wings, so that I could work with that in photoshop, and as for my logo. Well, I bragged about the concept enough last time. Eventually, I got everything I wanted out of it. Awesomeness, pegamoose and flying ninja squirrels.

I like to think that I’m keeping up the general idea that Norwegians are a bunch of crazy bastards. In case you didn’t know already – we are.

After a fair amount of stress, I got through that first semester here, surprisingly making all deadlines (first shocker for this whole post so far, eh!?) and prepared for my first Christmas away from home.

December->January
Having stocked up on noodles and TV series to get me through the holidays, I started to plan a trip with Irene, Simon and a friend of Irene’s – Kristin – to go to New Zealand sometime throughout the summer holiday.

Wait. Let me explain. Australia is one of those weird places where they haven’t quite understood the concept of Christmas meaning “white, cold, snowy and skis”. Instead they figured it was something that could translate to “OMG BBQ AT THE BEACH, MATE!”. Ok, so I added the “mate” bit. Sue me. Anyway, its actually summer here when its winter back at home. And vice versa.

Right. Back on track. I was sat up one evening being a geek and playing world of warcraft till 5 am when mom and Erling called. Erling said that he’d pick up my plane ticket if I could make it home within 5 days. Normally the combination of gratuitous amounts of energy drink with news like this would lead to a heart attack – but hey. I’m a resilient little nerd. Which means that I only had a minor heart attack.

Of course I took him up on the offer, went straight to booking tickets (this happened at 7 am) and proceeded to sit there wide awake wondering if I’d wake up in a pool of slobber on my keyboard (mmm, sexy) or if this was actually happening. It was. My first solo plane trip was to be a 27 hour trip to Ålesund, and was actually fairly comfortable. How is that possible, you ask? KLM has awesome plane food AND you dont have to pay extra for the beers. Yeaaah, thats how.

Being at home for a month might sound like a lot, but really, its all more of a blur. The first couple of days I was at the cabin in Krabbestien, and then I took off to Trondheim to pick up some winter clothes. Because Norway in midwinter isnt really the place to run around in a t-shirt and shorts.

…Made you think I was wearing shorts. HAHA, like that would happen. Anywhere.

For the first bit, I kept it a secret that I was at home, and went around to test everyone’s ticker instead. Calling them first, saying australia was good and all, even if it was a bit hot, but it would be nice we could catch up over a cup of coffee. And then telling them to put on a pot of coffee, and open up, cause I was freezing my ass off. Good times.

The second bit, when everyone knew I was at home, involved a fair amount of alcohol, and bagels with fårepølse <–you'll never know what that is if you don't already. Bwahaha. Oh, and socialising of course.

Eventually though, I had to get back to Australia so that I could do some last minute planning and then take off for New Zealand – which honestly is one of the most awesome places in the world.

Now, I know you think you know where this is going. Getting to one of the most exciting parts here (I know you guys want an in-depth story of the crazy things that went down in new zealand), the title is called cliffhangers, and so forth. You're probably expecting me to just drop off mid-sentence now, and leave you in suspense.

But I don't think that would be

Whee, another two weeks have passed, and I haven’t gotten round to an update. Damn, I can be slow some times. Or good at procrastinating. But, I finally decided to procrastinate later instead of now. Moving on to the update, though!

The week following my last post was quite uneventful – it was basically the same thing as international start up week with a little bit less confusion regarding how to get places. The same crowd, same pretty much everything until friday of that week. When Veronica got back. She’d felt the need to flee the country just as I was arriving for a short vacation in Thailand to get away from the “cold” of the Australian winter. “Cold”. *cough*. Well, anyway, this meant going out to the Tav (which is my school’s tavern) to celebrate, and meet a lot of norwegians. Gosh, school is FULL of norwegians. At the Tav on said friday, I’m fairly certain that 70% of the crowd was from Norway. But that might be more due to norwegians being attracted to places where they sell drinks for cheap… ah well

On to this week – ACTUAL university. No more introduction classes, but on to real work! And getting stuff for my different classes. One thing I can say for certain, is that uni here works way differently than NKF back at home. And by that, I’m talking about the workload. After this one weekwe have been told we’re to design a logo, business card, letterhead and a magazine. The last one could be swapped out for an annual report, but we’ll see. Oh, thats just two of my classes. Why only projects from two classes, you ask?

One of the main events of this week has been timetable swapping. Changing units, and sorting timetables to (hopefully) get a couple days off. I swapped advanced photography for an introduction course, seeing as I haven’t used studio lights before, or thought about using them at all. And I now have design reflective practice instead of design methods because… well, I think I might be allergic to essay writing. This means I now have wednesdays and thursdays off. Yay for weekend midweek (or, not really… more like designated homework time. but at least its interesting homework!)

I’ve also started to appreciate not only the size of campus, and the aesthetics of it all, but the actual goodness of it all. Like sitting under a tree on campus grounds in the sun while waiting for your next class. Or how convenient it is to have a discounted hairdresser on campus. And computer supplies shop. I’m even able to navigate the place now! yay!

Right, enough about school. For now. Besides school, this week has been exploring the train system around here, checking out what the city looks like when everything is closed, checking out what Fremantle looks like when everything is closed, drinking as an excuse to be social (more startup parties, yay!), and today I even went for a hike. I’ve now started the Bibbulmun Track! Go read about it – its very interesting and you’ll hear me talking about it in the future.. my goal is to do most of it, if not all of it. Not in one go, but as day/weekend hikes. As a final note, Veronica said I could borrow her camera while I wait for my 7D to arrive, so next post might include pictures.

The short version; still in Australia, still maintaining the crazyass viking image, enjoying school immensely and trying to be fit to a certain degree. Oh, and still not eaten by sharks, crocs or anything. Yet, anyway

…from ålesund this time. Wow, time really has flown by. Two weeks in ålesund have already passed, and tomorrow morning, I start my journey to aussieland. My travelroute, you ask? Ålesund-Oslo-London-Singapore-Perth. Holy shit, thats a lot of travelling, you say? Correct. Between all the stress at airports, sitting in a metal tube with barely enough room for your legs, the total time for this trip will be two days. Good times! But hopefully, it’ll all pay off. Eventually.

For now, everything is all about sorting the usual last minute stuff. Playing computer techy. Eating awesome food (thanks mom). And friends coming over for a last minute goodbye.

As much as I could write about all of this, and the “moving blues” that have been in the air for the past couple of days… I still have yet to pack. So I’ll get back to this later.