Shit. One hour until I leave the house for the airport. I have never been more scared or unprepared for something so major in my life.

No turning back now I guess.

Deja vu much?

Looks like it's all going to happen again. I originally started this way back when to document my exchange to Australia. Now, it's time for something bigger (and hopefully better).

Before I make it all official to everyone, I need a bucket list for the next two months. This is more for my own personal purposes and no one else's. In no real particular order...

• Jethro's
• Phnom Penh
• Fried chicken
• SUSHI TILL I PUKE
• The Cobalt
• Blackout
• Bake something again
• Memphis Blues
• Electric Owl
• Grouse Grind - 50 minute goal
• Tan in preparation for two years of dismal weather.
• Bike the Sea Wall
• Drunken McDonalds
• AYCE Indian
• The Cambie
• ...more to come.

Take me back..

Motivation

Motivation comes in many ways. Recently I have been dedicating my days to studying the MCAT. Scratch that, I've hardly been dedicated. Going out during the playoffs basically meant little to no studying. Any studying done probably got erased by the excitement and events associated with playoff hockey. I realised I was not taking the MCAT as seriously as I should have been. Students, on average, spend about 3 good months studying for this test, I am attempting to do it in about 1.5. I know I am not the smartest academically which means I am at an even greater disadvantage.

In light of recent events at home, I have found a new source of motivation: my family. This is too public of a place to write about everything but going out is now going to take a backseat to everything. I am comfortable knowing while everyone is out partying Friday and Saturday, I will be at home with coffee partying with Organic Chemistry and Physics. My future doesn't necessarily depend on this test, but I am not going to half-ass this exam. For the next 5 weeks I don't see myself going out to the extent I have been in the past year. It's time to smarten up and know my priorities. Family is always going to come first and this is the first time in a long time I have actually accepted this with open arms.

There's no place for me to screw around anymore. It's time to get serious Nelson. I may be the youngest in the family but with the backbone of the household breaking down, someone's gotta make up for it.

I can only hope things will return back to some normalcy by summer's end.

...

You know it's finals when you gain weight.

My mother called me fat today.

Excellent.

The Red Centre

I KNOW. 5 months later and I'm FINALLY writing about Uluru. I debated long and hard whether or not to even do it, but instead of 'blogging' about it I've decided to treat this as more of a reflection/journal of my travels in Australia. There hasn't been a day where I didn't think about Australia. It sucks, but it's life.

----------------------------------------------

Wow, to go back all those months it's sort of hard actually.. So ever since I was in grade 4 my teacher had taught me about Uluru (Ayer's Rock is the 'white man' name for it, something I never bothered to adopt since it feels disrespectful) and its iconic symbolism to Australia. For those who don't know what exactly Uluru is it's that big red rock you see in Australia books/postcards/brochures. Money was no longer that big of an issue to me at this point, I was determined to see as much as I could as my time in Australia was drawing to a close.

So I booked a flight with Jess, Xander and Hilary (bro and sis from FL, also living at the Unilodge) for the end of June, right after final exams [funny: it's the end of UBC exams right now..]. It was going to be cold for sure as nighttime temps hovered around freezing. I was just getting used to the low teens that Melbourne was going through too..

We would be there for 5 days. There are only two flights that go in/out of Alice Springs each day. One from Tiger, the other from Qantas. We arrived in the evening and it was pitch black..and chilly. We caught the shuttle bus our hostel provided us with and already, I could feel I was in an entirely different world. Strange, yet exciting. As we got settled in..we decided to see what was going on in the restaurant/pub downstairs. Since it was night, and we were warned to NOT wander the streets then, we planned for a calm night.

Next think you know, jugs were on the table, bottles of wine appeared, and I'll leave it at that.

Next day, we caught up with one of the girls I met on the plane ride over, Steph, as we went into town to explore. It was sort of chilly in the morning but by noon, it got up to about 20ish degrees. Such a nice welcome.. weather in the desert is too weird.

Sightseeing, shopping, and other touristy related activities were completed. We even found a place that sold $6 steak, chips, and a beer to go with it. Can NOT beat that anywhere. Benefits of a small town I suppose. We took a quick pit stop at the bottle shop to pick up some expensive as goon. Classy goon. $15, 2L. Oh boy, Stanley. This is where my eyes truly opened to the very visible disparity that exist in the town.

Many aboriginals of Australia have had a rough past. Similar to Canada and many other countries, when it was first colonized the settlers decided to 'ethnically cleanse the country of any natives for whatever reason they saw fit. The after effects are still seen today as the Aboriginals of Australia are now only in select concentrated areas, Alice Springs (and the Northern Territory) being one of them. Through government handouts, the natives still receive little to no assistance in forms of education or support through their lives. Thus, many fall into the alcoholic world that is so often stereotyped with this group of people. Although not all Aboriginals are like this, the ones we saw around town were just alarming in appearance. They'd sit around the street with a box of wine to themselves and drink themselves till they pass out. The bottle shop even has signs limiting sales of goon to one box/car or group of them in an attempt to control the alcoholism. Sadly, it doesn't really work. Fetal alcohol syndrome is almost a given with many of the kids, some of which I saw first hand. Heart breaking, but also a dark side to Australia. It's not perfect and I can see how it needs to address these serious issues but I digress.. back to the trip.

We went back to our hostel to cook up dinner again, ha. My appetite when travelling more than doubles, it's weird. Pesto pasta with chicken was the meal of choice. Standard backpacker's meal I suppose. I learned from this trip there are meals many backpackers will eat. Pasta, of course, rice, butter chicken (of all things), potatoes, and $10 roast chicken from Woolies..

Anyways. I believe we had a relatively easy night because we had to be up at 6am the next day to start our tour.

So I won't go into too much detail as I feel the pictures alone have enough substance to them. I'll just jot down notes here and there of any significant or interesting events to note.

....okay I'll do that soon. Back to studying.

Still holding on..

I still can't believe it was just two months ago that I was in Australia. Now, I'm dealing with graduation, courses not working out, stresses at home and ..school..

Okay I'll stop bitching.

I still need to complete my final thoughts and reflections from my Alice Springs and East Coast trips.

I'll get on that soon.