Duck Over, Down Under

My friend said, "So, you know this Sai Baba right."
"Yeah?"
"They say he can fly."
"You mean, levitate."
"Yeah, like itik."

Itik in Malay meaning: duck.

So, the Australian education exhibition was quite the something. Unlike a few years ago, they've come to realize the value of the post-grad education market segment. And the cool part is that applying during this IDP education fair more often than not means a complete waiver of application fees, plus they courier the whole thing - application and in my case, audition DVD - FOC to Australia. So I'm sending the stuff all over the place, and I'll save almost a thousand ringgit... though I admit I wouldn't send quite as many applications if it were a question of spending a thousand ringgit. The one place particularly interests me is the University of Sydney, though their castle architecture for a conservatory is... strange.

The not-as-cool part is that scholarships are hard to come by for international students going to Australia, so it comes down to whether the fees and living costs in Australian dollars is more or less than just living costs in the US. That's where it stands now - though I haven't finished working things out with Indiana University. That's on Tuesday - at the American exhibition.

It's quite interesting watching how these university representatives work. Some of them have used the cultural edge, you know, sending in a rep that's completely Australian but of Chinese ethnicity to make the Malaysians feel more comfortable. But then the guy opens his mouth and pronounces all the "day"s as "die" and then you just get this weird feeling. Like, you smell your food, this looks like cow but it tastes like fish and you can't decide whether you should get mustard or tartar. Ya know?

Some of the bigger institutions don't really bother to hook you in, though they gain some points for being upfront with not knowing certain details and here could you email the university at this email address. But it doesn't really work when I already emailed your institution three months ago and you haven't stopped spamming me since. Then you get somewhat smaller institutions like the University of Tasmania - just one rep, who's smart enough to get my email and promise to get info to me by a certain date. That's the way to do it.

And then finally, I'm wondering whether some universities just sent in cool babes... for that reason alone. Coz they didn't seem to have much else.

All in all, an interesting experience. Lots of running around to send off the applications to IDP tomorrow, and then it's the American thing on Tuesday. Busy, busy, busy. Like a duck, baby, yeah.