Touch football, VAC WORK, careers in engineering night and CESA updates

Uni has been keeping me pretty busy recently with assignments and mid semester exams. I'm really enjoying the mine ventilation course I'm taking at the moment - I have a prac at the UQ mine on Wednesday which should be interesting.

The touch season is off to a good start with our division E (yes, that is the lowest division) team recording a 10-1 loss tonight. However this is an improvement on last week's score of 10-0. The team I play in on Wednesday nights is performing a bit better with a 9-4 win last week.

In more exciting news (I know what you're thinking - how can anything be more exciting than my touch team's epic losses), I'll be doing vac work with Golder Associates during the summer holidays!!! They are an employee-owned company with international expertise in ground engineering, earth and environmental services. I'm going to be working in the civil design department which means that half the work I do will be mining related and the other half will be civil related. I'll be based at their Brisbane office for most of the time with a trip or two out to the Queensland Gas Company (one of their clients) gas fields which are south-south-east of Chinchilla. I can't wait to start - it's sure to be a fantastic experience!

On Thursday night of last week I helped out at the UQ Careers in Engineering night (along with most of the other QRC scholarship students). It was a great chance for high school aged students to find out more about what engineering offers and what it's really like. If you couldn't make it this year, either leave a message on one of our blogs, join the facebook group or come along next year if you're not in grade 12.

Also last week was the Baulderstone and Nutrient Water sponsored CESA BBQ which was a great success. Thankfully for everyone there I wasn't cooking the sausages, but if I do say so myself, I think I did a pretty awesome job stacking the piles of bread and serviettes. CESA is currently planning a first year BBQ for Wednesday 2 September (next week) sponsored by UQ, so any first years, you'll be finding out about it soon enough.

Ok, better go now!

Science and Engineering Challenge State Finals

On Wednesday I volunteered at the Science and Engineering Challenge State Finals. I was supervising the "who gets the water?" challenge where the task was to design a system to pipe water around Australia.
This involved student teams setting up various paths of calibrated containers, hoses, valves and T joiners to transfer water from upper reservoirs to the lower target containers in as little time as possible. I volunteered for the initial rounds of competition earlier in the year so it was great to see some of the schools back for the finals. The grand final is being held in Bendigo in October - good luck to all the teams involved!

Europe and UQ Open Day

Over the holidays I went to Europe which was AWESOME to say the least. I started in Rome and ended up in London after visiting Florence, Venice, Salzburg, Munich, Heidelberg and Paris. In Salzburg I went to the 450 year old salt mines which was very cool - they have long wooden slides that you go on to get into the mine. Also, in Munich there was a fantastic museum on engineering with everything from tunnel building to bridges to model trains. I'd highly recommend it to anyone visiting Munich. I've put a few photos from the trip below.

In other news, the UQ open day was on Sunday. I helped out on the Civil Engineering BBQ which was good fun (except that I smelled of sausages afterwards). It was great to see so many people interested in the engineering displays.



Grand Canal in Venice

This is a photo of the walls inside the old university jail in Heidelberg. Yes, they used to jail uni students who misbehaved. Apparently common offences were swimming in the city fountains after having too much to drink and chasing farmers' pigs through the streets

The view from the top of the hill in Salzburg...right before it stormed