Confidence, take 2

A few months back (last post) I posted a positive sounding post about confidence. Funny how in a breeze, confidence can be lost. Now it might be because i have 3/4 of a bottle of red wine in me that I don't feel too sobby, but I can't help but being a hypocrite. During my entire stay in Australia, I've been saying: "Take like as it goes" or "Things happen for a reason" or other stupid cliche idioms like that. Guess what, when things happen for a reason, well "shit fucking happens" is my other idiom that I should add. I know it's not my fault that things are happening, that "a greater force is in control", but does it just suck when you feel that you can't do anything but hope for the best? Hopefully after the storm comes the rainbow.

I'm all sort of idioms tonight. Maybe I should drink more wine... in vino es vertitas.

Confidence

Funny how it takes years to build it, but it only takes one moment to lose it, and then it takes twice the amount of time to rebuild it. Three years ago, I lose my confidence. A verbally and mentally abusive boss made me forget the meaning of confidence. But somehow while working in a painfully routine and unchallenging workplace, it slowly came back to me. Cheering, supporting and believing in myself brought it up to its normal level.

Sometimes, all you need is a leap of faith to test out your confidence level. I'm glad I did mine.

Vive le quebec ostie...

I never realized how quebecois I was until recently. A few weeks back, I finally met another Quebecois person (i was here for 4 months, i haven't met one until then, just bloody frenchies from France!) and I was ecstatic! It felt good to speak in "bon quebecois". Speaking in French (with frenchies made me replace words from Quebecois to French.. hollible like the French say), talk about how awesome Montreal was with the food, festivals, summer and all. Over the weekend, I met yet ANOTHER quebecois girl, and I was even more excited because of the rarity! Then the full fledge quebecois came back, franglais, poutine, maudite marde, ostie de tabarnak viarge, saying how Laval is a black hole for direction you name it. It felt so, natural. We were such a great duo at promoting Montreal that they were wondering if we were working for Tourisme Quebec!

Maybe I'm starting to get a bit home sick and speaking to other people helps me remind me that I'm not too far from home.

Studying..

I forgot the meaning of that word. It's been over 5 years since I have graduated and I haven't done that since. I just finished a 3 day training/certification program for a product called Sitecore, an enterprise level CMS used through out the industry. I came into the training and exam with basic .NET experience (the entire platform is built on .NET). I am no where close to be a junior programmer with school experience, but I still felt incredibly overwhelmed. I forgot (perhaps it's a good thing since I have also forgotten my bad studying habits) how to study efficiently and mostly how to effectively answer multiple choice exams. Thankfully (well thank you useless knowledge compartment in my brain) I remember a useful tip that my high school teach taught me. "On multiple choice questions, the first answer is always the right one". Meaning, if you are unsure if your answer is right and the other answers gives you the same amount of question marks, chances are, it's the right question. Obviously, it is not a foul proof rule, but rule of thumb, it usually works.

The exam itself was intense, not because it was hard per se, but there is A LOT of material to cover in 3 days. If I could have a penny for everytime i said "what the HELL is this", I would probably be able to pay for the certification myself. The exam was as stressful as dentist appointment, and I don't remember feeling my heart beat that fast because of an exam.

Did I think that I passed? It felt like I managed to answer most of the question, following my rule of thumb, but I don't want to think about it. This also reminded me why I hated exams and school so badly.

[update]

Turns out I passed the exam. I guess using my gut feeling paid off. yay me

Lost in translation

Being in an English speaking (well officially anyways) country, one shouldn't have a problem understanding the locals, unless the local uses more slang than English in their sentences! Australians love to shorten their words (probably because they are constantly drunk) and end the contraction with "ie". Here is a list (short) of the expressions I heard so far:

Breakky -> Breakfast

Sunnies -> Sunglasses

Pokies -> Slot machines

Wetty -> Wet Suit

Barbie -> BBQ
[updates]
Brissie -> Brisbane (the city)
Pommie -> People who come from the UK (i have a feeling this is more derogatory than anything else)
Footie -> Australian Football (not soccer, not american football, some weird mix between rugby, soccer, volleyball, basketball)

They also have their variations of other expressions too

Arvo -> Afternoon

Mackers -> Mc Donalds

Minced Meat -> Ground beef

Capsicum -> Peppers (green/red/orange/yellow)

Sultanas -> Dried raisins

help?

Meeting new people

When living in a new country or new city, one of the hardest challenge is to meet new people and friends. Leaving your friends behind, you only have yourself to rely on. Although I'm a very sociable person and not afraid to meet new people, my biggest hurdle was to find WHERE to meet new people. I never liked the idea (nor have I had much luck) meeting people in a club, it's usually quite pretentious and there might be fake people.

Fortunately for me, my coworker is a really awesome dude and I get along very well with him. He introduced to me to this community called couchsurfing.org, which is a community built over couch surfers. A couch surfer is literally a person who travels and sleeps on couches of other people. At first I found the concept quite dodgy (I mean, I wouldn't want to sleep in a stranger's house that I've met online! Or host a complete stranger) but once I got to know the community and the website, it's quite safe. Working on referrals and testimonials throughout the community, you can easily tell who are the trustworthy people and who you should avoid.

For the past month or so, I've been regularly attending meet ups where heaps of couch surfers meet over a beer, sharing stories and travel experiences. Hopefully when I get back home, I can host a few couch surfers and hear their stories.

Living on my own..

It's about almost two months since I left the nest and venture in the great and scary unknown. Equipped with my tiny laptop, a massive backpack and suitcase and virtually no plan, I went to tempt lady luck and moved to Australia. A few weeks down the line, I'm blogging (could have been doing it on my work macbook) in a huge house, with amazing flat mates, working with great people. It all sounds nice and dandy, but this is the first time in my life that I have lived on my own, and it's been a big eye opener on how spoiled I was back home.

The first biggest hurdle was food. I love food, and I hate eating frozen/instant/microwavable food (I do have my weakness for microwavable burritos and frozen pizza though!). However, there are days that after a long day of work, all I feel like doing is sit on the couch (or this great beanie bag we have in our flat) and drink a nice glass of wine (or beer). Before I would come home, and dinner would be served on the table, all I had to do is sit down, open my mouth and chew. I also have a lack of inspiration in terms of variety. I have so much to learn (my mom is a great cook who knows how to cook virtually anything).

Grocery shopping is another challenge I'm trying to master. The fact that I don't have a car makes things harder since I have to carry everything, but I realized how expensive (and difficult) it is to buy food for just ONE person. I can't buy too many because food has an annoying ability to go bad. I can't buy premium ingredients because it's expensive (so far, generic brand taste not too bad).

But the biggest and hardest hurdle that I have yet to overcome is technology, mostly the WORLD WIDE WEB. I used to go home, and download my tv shows (heaps and heaps of it) and watch them after dinner, not having to worry about how long it will take (20 minutes tops for a 45 minutes show) or how many I can download. I can just click, wait and watch. As simple as that. Over here, I don't have a broadband connection. I'm surviving on a prepaid (and incredibly slow) internet, with a limit. No TV shows, limited youtube streaming (and not to mention an attrociously slow speed). I admit that I'm addicted to the Internet, I'm still trying to find a way to get over this one.

Who said moving out is a fun and amazing experience, then again, if it was easy, I wouldn't be enjoying it ;)