Harbourfront, Halloween and Hiking

It has come to the end of the semester. Everyone has finished lectures, and there is a sense of relief in the atmosphere as people get their last assignments handed in. To celebrate, a posh three course meal was organised for the residents of Kooloobong at the harbourfront restaurant last Friday. It was a great chance for everyone to get dressed up and look nice for a change! There was no choice in what meal you had, it was kind of "pot luck"  because the waitresses just put random dishes in front of random people, and if you didn't like it you just had to find someone willing to swap with you. I feel I was lucky with my meals, and had calamari to start, chicken, ham, cheese, mashed potato for my main, and cheesecake for dessert (and also Tora's profiteroles because she wasn't hungry anymore - result!). After the meal, we took the party back to Kooloobong, and partied on until the early hours of Saturday morning.

So... It's that time of year again, where everyone paints their faces and looks like an idiot, but no one minds. There were birds, pumpkins, clowns, catholic school girls and Miss Norway. Halloween is barely ever celebrated in Australia, so we decided to show them how its done (even though it is my least favourite holiday of the year - mainly because I hate wearing face paint)

The boys hosted the party in their new house, and fun was had by all. The night started early (about 3pm for me) and everyone was sat outside to avoid overheating as there was a nice breeze, but this was soon ruined by a downpour of torrential rain and a quick lightning show. The party migrated inside, but we did let it ruin our spirits (or the goon punch). The table was used for beer pong, and in the lounge room, drinking games were being played - there were some decent games for the one of the first times since I got here! It's nice to not play ring of fire for once!

After a quick trip home to Skype my two favourite Stephs, I went back to rejoin the party, but I was so tired from a week of assignments and from the night before that it wasn't long until I passed out on the sofa! I decided it was probably a good idea for me to go home, so I did, but was apparently found a few hours later asleep on Noor's couch - no idea why, and no recollection of this haha

The next night, Halloween was celebrated with some of my course mates at the Outback Steakhouse. It was expensive, but bloody good. I donned my pumpkin outfit again (no face paint this time) and had a great meal with a nice, cold lager. After the meal, we went back to Thom's place (who has a sward, a bow and arrow, a library, and many many more cool things) and played card games into the night, and it was great to not be drunk (for once)!

The next day I made an effort to get up early and actually managed to make it to the top of Mt Keira! It was the first time I'd managed to get up there and the view was amazing. It just seemed magical as blue butterflies danced around my head. On the railings there were padlocks, where people had engraved their names and the names of their loved one. This must be something that happens all over the world, because I saw it in Ljubljana when I went, and there are definitely other places in Europe where this is done. I suppose it represents the never ending love that the two people have for each other, and its all very sweet.

Anyway, once I'd had enough of taking in the view, I was tempted to try and hitch a lift down with someone who'd driven up, but decided that I should just walk. It's a lot harder on the way down than it is on the way up - mainly because I can see how far I'm going to fall if I slip, and I'm not great with heights! I made it down in half the time it took for me to get up, with only a few minor scrapes.

That's all for now! Don't expect too many posts in the next few weeks... Exams will soon be upon us so all my time will be taken up with revision, but I'll try and blog before NZ since I don't think I'll be able to do one over there! x

A little blue pill and a mini mountain adventure

So most of this week, for me, has revolved around a little known treatment for male impotence called Viagra. Don't worry, I haven't had to take it, I've just had to write about it. I've not blogged a lot this week because I've spent all my time trying to find information about Viagra and haven't been able to do anything else! I'm not doing this for fun, in case you were wondering... I had to write my first literature review on any one of a list of given drugs for my medicinal chemistry module, and since it was the only one I'd heard of, I chose Viagra!

It wasn't all doom and gloom though this week, in fact I quite enjoyed writing it at times, so I'll share some facts about it with you...

-It was originally developed as a vasodilator to cure hypertension and angina, but during clinical trials, the research team noticed that many of the men who took the pill got erections
-This was due to the fact that it inhibited an enzyme in the smooth muscle of the penis, instead of the smooth muscle in arterial walls that it was supposed to act on
-The drug was developed by Pfizer, and was first prescribed in 1998
-It was initially prescribed at a rate of 10,000 pills per day in the USA
-Annual sales of the drug peaked in 2008 when worldwide sales gave a profit of about £1,100 million, which is pretty good, when Pfizer is a company that spends billions on advertising every year

And now you know a little bit about Viagra. Apart from looking at online journals, I went out a couple of times, saw a turtle/tortoise in the middle of Kooloobong, discovered the eels in the ponds on campus, went to the gym a few times, and played tennis with Charlie. Nothing interesting at all - so today I decided to climb a mountain.

Mount Keira, which is just behind Kooloobong, stands at about 460m above sea level (according to Wikipedia), and the route to the top is meant to be fairly logical and simple, but of course, because it's me, I got lost!

While I was climbing, the path I was on suddenly stopped and I was presented with a steep, rocky hill. I knew I'd gone the wrong way, but decided to climb up it anyway. It properly tired me out, so I sat down when I got to the top, but then I realised that I couldn't have gone any further if I wanted to because of the massive (and I'm talking huge) rocks that were now in my way! So after about half an hour of trying to see if there was a way to get around these rocks I decided that I should probably go back and try to find the path I was supposed to be on, but getting down was a lot harder than getting up, and I was genuinely terrified that I would slip and break my ankle or something. After slipping, scrambling and sliding my way down the hill I found a path, it wasn't the one I came up on, but it was better than nothing! I followed it for a while until I came to a road, and decided to try again another day and managed to find my way back.

Even if I was scared for my life (or at least me ankle) at some points and it was a massive fail (something that is starting to happen more and more!), I still had a crackin' time and probably made it to about 400m so didn't do too badly! It was just nice to be able to be on the mountain by myself surrounded by nature! I was hoping to bump into one of the lyrebirds or wallabies that apparently live up there, but I think the closest I came to either of them was seeing a large pile of animal poo on the path. I did think I could hear a lyrebird at one point, but it was probably something else that just made a cool noise...

Next time I try to climb it, I'll get to the top, the view is meant to be amazing, but since I didn't quite get there today, here are a few snaps of what I did manage to see :)

The steep, rocky hill I was on about