Unilife in Aussie

One of the first impressive experiences I had in Australia was seeing the university life.

In Estonia universities are spread around the city – so different faculties are in different parts of the city. Which means there is no centralised place for the students to meat and mostly there is no unity between different faculties. So mainly you have close relationships within your faculty, but that’s about it.

In Australia universities have different campuses. One university campus is like a small city. If you are fulltime student then you sometimes don’t even leave the campus because everything is there.

Campus normally has all the faculties next to each other, big library, lot of pubs and clubs, shops, restaurants, parks, sports clubs etc. And all of that just 10 minutes walk from the CBD of Sydney City.

Which means that there is a place for university students to network and get to know people from all over the university.

I feel always so good when I am on my LC visits and between the meetings I just walk around in the campus and try to feel my self as student again. These moments always get me really empowered of going back to university to do my masters. I don’t know what it is but university just breaths of wisdom. But you need to be out of uni to evaluate and appreciate that.

So the university life shown in the US movies actually exists. This is also the reason why I enjoy walking around there – I just feel so cool as in American movies.

And as I mentioned the fully packed market and how marketing gets harder and harder here - Even the marketing and recruitment in the universities is getting harder for the LCs every year. For example in the University of Sydney there are 200+ student organizations and AIESEC is just one of them. So to make our messages to stand out and reach the right people is harder than it has ever been. It is definitely a totally new reality compared to the university life in Estonia.

Sky Marketing?

A new area that I have discovered in Sydney is marketing in the sky.

So you have either the planes writing in the sky or some weir looking balloons flying around or just the adds behind planes.

Since Sydney is a big city and companies have to put a lot of creativity to their marketing messages and ways to address the right audiences. Probably this is why, very often you see things written in the sky. For the first time I was really impressed and took multiple pictures of it ….wow so cool. Now it is just part of everyday marketing and sometimes I don't even notice it anymore.

I wonder how far will the marketing go?

What is the next out of space marketing?

Reflecting brands from the moon?

Movember – The month of Moustache

This is one of the coolest things I have seen in world :P. So November is the month of Moustache, called Movember. Each guy who wants to participate in Movember has to grow is moustache.

The Movember participants known as Mo Bros then have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their moustache and along the way raise as much money and awareness about male health issues, in particular prostate cancer as possible. So all the people around the man who grow moustache can donate money. I think it is such a cool way to earn money for charity.

Isnt this cool?

I am actually starting to like men with moustache :P. You just get use to it when everyone is wearing it. It seriously a lot of people do that – u see them in TV, on the streets, in the shops etc.

Read more:

http://www.movember.com/

AIESEC in Australia

AIESEC life is wired, it keeps you constantly thinking about your future. Every year you have to re look your goals and values to choose the right opportunity from the thousands that AIESEC offers.

It is not even half of my time in Australia, but the applications for the MC team 08/09 are opened now! Soon we will have babys J.

Being the only international in my team I sort of feel obligated to promote this opportunity to all the international people out there. Actually obligated is not a right word, I just really want to show the world how cool is AIESEC in Australia and how much you will be missing out if you don’t consider this as one of your opportunities. So I am going to write now some of my thought, why being part of AIESEC in Australia next year would be awesome opportunity

GROWTH! – We have just conducted updated version of our Long-Term plan, because we had already hit the 2010 goals set. According to our new plan, if we achieve the goals set for this year (170 exchanges) and we will keep growing by just 16% every year, then by 2010 we will be the TOP 10 Exchange country in AIESEC. How awesome would it be to be part of Australia exactly at the moment when it breaks all the barriers and mindsets – Australia being a low performing country? How awesome would it be to be part of the team who brings AIESEC Australia back to the AIESEC map?

Membership – The membership base has grown enormously over 2 year. We have already hit far away from the membership goal set for 2010 couple of years ago. But the growth is not only in numbers but also in quality. The members in Australia hardly ever get to go to international conference, but still they are able to get equal amount of passion and AIESEC knowledge. The members of Australia are extremely smart , which makes it easy to drive the success and growth and work with the members. AIESEC Australia is really well Internationally aligned country.

Potential Coming from the 2 first factors, the potential of Australia is huge! All the relevant factors for AIESEC have a lot of potential to development in Australia. For example, Australia has about 40 universities – AIESEC is only in 16 of them – You can calculate yourself how much more growth potential is there.

So yes, being part of AIESEC Australia this year has been excellent, exciting and challenging. This year has been focusing on setting up the ground for the shooting star, approving that we can grow, changing the mindset that 2 exchange per LC is good and 20 is impossible. All of that is what makes next year really exciting and I cant wait to see the talented, smart and passionate people of next MC team that are going to achieve great things!

Take a look ate the MC video and see how cool is our MC life – we have a cool office as well :P:

You know you have been too long in AIESEC, If...

...so I would like to open a blog posting about this issue :). Being in MC you constantly find yourself living and breathing AIESEC, which sometimes can have quite funny outcomes. So Here are my top things:

1. You don’t go on dates anymore, but you have scheduled meetings with your boyfriend
2. Your personal weekly priority is follow up with friends and parents
3. You have been caught almost naked by uni security guard, from changing close in the middle of classroom, because you couldn’t leave the room, due to a global chat.

Some updates

I am starting to enjoy more and more living in a big city. So many good artists, so many music festivals - if I would only have enough money to go to all of them! So my next target is festival in Sydney, January - Big Day Out (www.bigdayout.com). The lineup start with Range against the Machine and Björk. Jei cant wait for it!

So what else have I been up to so far:
Last week I was at a conference (and the weeks before that I have been living in the office - so nothing interesting). The conference took place at a suburb in Sydney. Very nice place in the nature that actually reminded Estonian summer camps places (pioneeri laagreid). 35 people in on room, nice nature around and you can make as much noise as you want. The conference was meant for all the LC president in Australia - incoming and outgoing. Yes, the LCP term in Australia is from December to November. It was nice and short conference - 4 pre conference days and 4 days of conference. As one of the really exciting thing - Long Term Plan for AIESEC Australia was created during the conference and it is very exciting, but I have to make another posting someday about it :). Shortly - AIESEC Australia is raising star and I am extremely happy that I am here at the moment and I can contribute to the development of country that will be in top 10 performing countries sooner than anyone is expecting ;).
Some more interesting things that are happening soon:
next week I will choose my own National Task Force - Expansion Task force that is going to develop Expansion Long Term plan. As part of my responsibilities is also expansion strategy.
week after that I will go for my 2nd LC visits - full week out of office and full of meetings - hard but exciting experience.

I have also received 2 hand written letters from Estonia - from my granny and my drunken friends :). It is so exciting no I know that love is a balloon and I should never drink for love with empty glass - thanks guys for educating me! But all the pictures and letters sent are on my wall and I am looking at them everyday. It is so inspiring and nice to receive real letter. Please write me more!

ok, enough of the random posting. Next one is going to be more structured and have more content.

PS somehow my photos web page has constant problems, so I have been uploading my pics to facebook - so everyone join facebook to see pics :P.

TORI AMOS, OPERA HOUSE

… Probably one of the best things that has ever happened to me!

About a week ago I was watching TV at home and suddenly they announced that Tori Amos is going to perform in Sydney in one weeks time. Off course I though it was some kind of joke – it is not possible that some one who I have desired to see for 5 years is suddenly coming to the town were I live! But I guess I just have to get use to the fact that I leave in the big city now and I don’t have to see the second hand artist lives anymore.

So on Monday morning, I looked it up from the internet and there it was: Saturday 15th of September, Tori Amos, Sydney Opera House, ticket $120. …hmm that’s about the same as my weekly salary, but suddenly I realised that I don’t even care how much it costs – I had the money and I bought the ticket. I have been waiting this moment so so long. The moment were I can actually go to listen an artist who I truly love and enjoy. So far I have just seen the artists that I can see – because every year we get about 1-2 international starts to Estonia.

While walking to the concert I was a bit scared – maybe my expectations are do high, maybe I will walk out with disappointment. Luckily, the experience that I got was far from that.

Saturday at 8 o’ clock I walked into Sydney Opera House. I got a seat at the box which was just above the stage –the view was good. While walking in to the room, I realised why the Opera house is so famous – the acoustics were just amazing. So good that even a crappy Ozzy-rock warm-up band sounded quite good.

At 9 pm – the concert hall is filled with people who don’t fit to the place quite well –hippie people, lot of gey guys and girls who want to look like Tori.
9.05, room goes dark, band starts playing – Tori walks in. She is wearing Blond wing, smoking – she does here interesting looking poses on the piano. There is a piano and a electric piano on the stage and she sits in the middle of them. The concert is amazing, audients is almost in heaven – going crazy from the pleasure that Tori is giving us. If feel like going through journey of my life – feeling 10 different strong feeling in 2 hours. She is just amazing – at one stage she was standing in the middle of the pianos playing one with one hand, the other with other hand and singing at the same time. So who ever thinks that she is just a piano player who doesn’t do any shows, your perception is way wrong. Somewhere in the middle I started thinking what is so special about here. I started focusing on her piano notes – soon I realised, that her voice and the piano just go so well together that sometimes it is hard to tell them a difference. All of her songs are like small little stories that have begging, end and the culmination point. And off course not to mention the echo of the concert hall – I have never heard so good quality live!

So seriously – this was one of the best moments of my life so far! If I‘d had a change I would do it again – even if it costs way more than I can afford.
I praise the person who introduced me to Tori Amos music! Thank you!