There's no place like home, there's no place like home...

Meh, it was bound to happen at some time, and this was the most likely I guess. I'm missing home =( So sad really. I guess I still wasn't prepared to actually do work out here, and all the fun I've been having so far hasn't really helped that.

It's not really home that I'm missing, it's the people. I miss so many people. I just feel alone here, even though there's people all around.

I know that I'm tremendously lucky to be able to do this, to be able to meet so many new people, to experience new things, new places, and I know that work has to be involved, but I just miss the people, being able to give someone a hug.

But yeah, I'll get through it soon.

So, what's been happening. Well, the football was ok. Got there after it started, and left after the end of the third quarter, because, to be frank, it got boring. The score was 12-11 to the Thunderbirds, which was the score at half time. There were a fair few people there, and I asked enough questions to work out how the game worked. But it was really slow. So much stopping and starting, trainers were out on the field every second play because someone was down injured.

Apparently the correct term for someone being down is "Shaken up on the play," which is what the commentator/announcer said every single time. Also, the cheerleaders are exactly like you see in the movies - the whole bouncing around and waving their arms in the air to get the crowd into it actually happens.

A couple of stupid things about the game:

1) When the ball goes out of bounds. I thought it was stupid the way AFL does it, with the ball being thrown in and therefore it's 'neutral.' In American Football, the ball goes out of bounds and, most of the time, the team in possession gets possession again.

2) The referees (there are about 7 of them, one of whom has the sole job of ensuring there's the right number of people on the field), throw a red/orange handkerchief up in the air every time they call a penalty. You'd think whistling would be enough.

3) The teams are stupidly large. Like, there are close to 40 (I think) players on each team, with only 12 on the field at any one time.

4) This is more of a personal thing (yes, they're all personal, but whatever), but the idea that you have players, whose sole purpose is to use their bodies to stop other players from going anywhere seems a little stupid to me. It's like wrestling within a team sports game.

That said, it was enjoyable enough, if rather dull towards the end. I think we won, but I'm not sure... I should find that out.

There was also a little kid's game at halftime (ages 9-12 I think). This game was also really intense. The teams lined up in a grid to warm up, and did the whole 'leader-at-the-front-shouting' thing. Unfortunately the little kids can't throw, catch or kick, so that made the game even harder to deal with. Not surprisingly, no touchdowns were scored in the kid's game.


Yesterday I guess was the start of my emotional decline. The problem is that I'm doing too many classes at the moment, and need to drop one of them. The two candidates are Machine Learning and Data Mining, and Introduction to Theory of Computation.

ML & DM seems to be fairly interesting, but it does involve a lot of stats. I hate stats. It also involves a lot of work. Weekly assignments that apparently take 5-10 hours per week. It will also cost me $170 to get Matlab (or I can try to acquire it... whatever)

ToC is probably slightly interesting (to me), more mathematical based, but it seems like less work. Unfortunately the classes are all 8 am classes, three times a week.

I'm really not sure what I should go for. I've changed my mind two or three times in the last 24 hours, so any advice would be awesome.

Anyhow, I don't know what else to talk about now. I guess I should start an assignment or two before dinner, followed by some 'capture the president' game. Should be interesting.

Anyways, here's a picture of a competition which you can enter by signing up for a credit card or something:
I wanna win

And here's the other picture of that bee that I promised: