It's taken a while to get organised, but I had my first day back at Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB) yesterday. Anh, who used to run the EWB Challenge, has moved to Adelaide, so the project isn't dealt with in the Brisbane office anymore. Instead of working on the Challenge like I did last year, I spent the morning starting to put together a list of other organisations who do research into appropriate technology and their details. Hopefully we can learn from some of their methods and ideas, maybe even form some useful partnerships. I spent the afternoon making phone calls to donors and thanking them for their support, but it was very unsuccessful. Not a single person was available to talk. So I guess I'll be back at it next week.

Holiday time!!! Exams were full on this semester, 3 out of 4 were worth 65% or more. My first exam was maths on the first Saturday of exam block. I thought it was a lot more difficult than some of the past exams, but it went ok. The next Monday we had a process engineering exam, then a week later, catchment hydrology. My last exam was soil mechanics on Wednesday. A piece of advice for anyone who studies soil mechanics with David Williams at any point, get hold of as many practise/past exams as you can! They recycle questions so much and it's multiple choice, so seeing the questions beforehand can give you a big head start. Now it's time to start some serious planning for my exchange to Berlin next year (hopefully). So much paperwork... And the website for the uni is in German, which doesn't help. I'm really excited though, it'll be totally worth it if it all works out. At this stage, I'm planning to leave in February. Until then, I have some more part-time vac work lined up with EWB Australia. The Brisbane office doesn't handle the EWB Challenge anymore, so it'll be interesting to see what sort of work I end up doing.

Hey, just spent a crazy week down at the GC for uni games. I played hockey for UQ & we won a silver medal :-). For anyone thinking about heading to the games at some point, I would definitely recommend it, it's a great week to relax, have fun & meet new people.

Uni starts again tomorrow & we have an exam on ASPEN (a computer program for modelling process plants) on Tuesday. I'm a bit nervous because I've struggled a bit with the program, but it should be ok. The scary part is that if you fail, you re-sit & if you fail that, you automatically fail the whole course :-(.

We're well into the semester now and I'm enjoying uni heaps. We handed the methane to methanol project in yesterday, it ended up being a huge project so it's good to have it out of the way. We had to write all about different methods of making syngas from natural gas, then converting it to methanol. Once we worked out the best process, we had to design and model a methanol plant. We used a program called ASPEN that does all your mass & energy balances for you, but it's pretty complex to work. It was a real photo finish for my group, we only just got it done in time :P.

We've just finished week 3 of uni now and I'm back in the swing of regular life in Australia. The subjects for Environmental Engineering students in 2nd semester, 3rd year are catchment hydrology, maths, soil mechanics and process principles 2. They're all good courses and it's really starting to feel like I'm learning things I'll use in my career. So far, catchment hydrology is all about analysing weather patterns and topography of landscapes to predict how water will behave in an area. Soil mechanics is mostly about analysing different soil types and their properties to determine the suitability of certain soils for a project. Process principles 2 follows on from a course I did last semester. We're learning to use a computer program to model process plants and calculate different flow rates. We've also started a project on converting methane to methanol. So yeah, it's been an interesting semester so far. The workload is huge already, so we're all getting a bit stressed, but it's great to be learning things that are directly relevant to engineering design, rather than just pure maths and science.

Hey, back at uni now & glad to be home. I didn't have much access to computers over the last few weeks in Italy, so I thought I'd put some stuff up now. Since my last post I've travelled to Munich (Southern Germany), Venice, Florence, Cinque Terre, Rome and Milan. Munich is buzzing with construction at the moment, there's a section of road that's meant to be the busiest in Europe and is currently being worked on. They're putting in a massive tunnel, which is a really huge project considering the size of the road. I also got to visit an older piece of innovative German engineering. The olympic stadium in Munich is the most massive, complex structure I saw on the whole trip. At the time it was built, it was really controversial. A lot of people thought it wouldn't work or that it was too expensive, but now it's one of the city's biggest assets. Here's a picture:














Pretty impressive, hey?

After Munich I headed down to Venice. I'm not sure how many people already heard about this, but Venice is pretty much sinking into the water. A lot of the buildings are starting to tilt or crack and some of their quick-fix repairs looked very different to the high-tech construction work we saw in Munich... This is a Venetian patch-up job on a wall that was falling down:














Here's a picture that follows on from the environmental stuff I was talking about a few posts back. These bins in Cinque Terre are made from recycled plastic bags and there are lots of sections for different types of rubbish:

Just thought I'd put in a picture I took in Cinque Terre.

Today is our last day in Cinque Terre, it's been a really amazing few days. One major difference I've noticed is that people are expected to take care of their own safety here - we walked along narrow, rocky paths on steep cliffs, often with no hand rail. They're very heavily used, these walks are one of the major tourist attractions of the area. I don't think you'd find that in Australia, liability must be much less of an issue over here. Although, they seem to have all the same regulations when it comes to actual construction sites.

People over here are also very environmentally conscious. Recycling is a huge thing, they have so many different bins rather than just recycling and waste. Public transport is also widely used and very reliable.

Tonight we're heading back to Milan by train, then up to Munich in southern Germany. Bis bald, Clare

Holidays are finally here and I'm touring around Italy. We're in Cinque Terre on the coast at the moment. The little towns are built into the cliffs along the shore and it's all very picturesque. The buildings are all painted in bright colours, it's so different to anything I've seen before. Anyway, I'm off to walk to the beach at another little village :)

This week is the second week of exams for UQ. I've got three this week (chemistry, environmental issues and microbiology) and had two last week (process engineering, statistics). So yeah, should probably get back to studying...

Last week of uni!!! Spent 9.5 hours at uni today, 1.5 hrs were classes. That leaves 8 hrs of solid work on the boiler project :-(. Should have got it out of the way earlier...

Hey, has anyone else been watching Dirt Games? It's looking pretty dramatic tonight, jobs lost, trying to finance the new mine, etc. I've really been enjoying it, it's an interesting show. So yeah, check it out if you haven't already.

I can't believe how fast this semester's going! I have an exam tomorrow that's only worth 5%, but you need 70% to pass. The worst thing is, if you don't pass, you have to re-sit and if you don't pass that, you fail the entire course automatically :-(. So we've all been working hard to make sure we get through it. The last one wasn't too hard, so hopefully it will be fine. Still working on the bioremediation report too, as well as the VISY boiler project. Hope everyone else is having a fun week...

Hey, it's been a while since I posted anything so I thought I should, but I'm really not sure what there is to write about... Have been crazy busy at uni and am getting pretty stressed. I'm doing one especially interesting assignment about bioremediation of arsenic in groundwater. Arsenic occurs naturally in a lot of groundwater. It's an area of interest for me because it's a major problem in Cambodia, where the EWB Challenge I worked on over summer was set. People who drink the contaminated water suffer from skin disorders, heart problems, decreased IQ and increased risk of cancer, so it's a pretty big deal. I'm writing about a method of removing arsenic from water using sulphate-reducing bacteria. It's a pretty new idea, but looks like it could have a lot of potential. So yeah, that's been really interesting to look into. I'm also doing an assignment on the boiler at VISY Paper Recycling Mill, which I suppose is interesting too in its own way...

I went on a field trip to the XXXX brewery for my microbiology course yesterday. It was really interesting to see where all the different processes take place in the factory. Tours are open to the public, it's a worthwhile trip. Because we were a group of engineering students, they took us to a few places where most people don't get to go, like the boiler room. So yeah, it was a really good experience, but I'm not sure I'd ever want to work there - the smell was pretty awful in some parts :P

Hey, it's so good to have finished wk 7! I had 7 pieces of assessment this week and it was so stressful. Tonight I'm going to the German Film Festival, which should be a good recovery activity :).

Hey, so it's getting towards the end of the holidays now and I'm still studying like crazy, but I did take the evening off on Tuesday to go to the Jason Mraz concert. It was so awesome, I still get excited when I think about it! Check out this youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1d5r_LYDZo

So yeah, if you see someone walking around with a big smile on their face and a Jason Mraz t-shirt, that'll be me :P

Happy Easter!!!!! Gotta love holidays, shame about the 7 assessment items first week back though... Apparently Aussies have bought a record amount of Easter chocolate this year, which seems odd considering the current financial situation. Maybe people are trying to drown their sorrows in chocolate. Works for me :P! That's what I'll be doing while I pour over textbooks for the next week.

Hey, check out this link:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/comingsoon.htm#?vid=video1

It's a trailer for a new show on the ABC called "Dirt Games". It looks like it could be pretty good, although I suppose it might overdramatise everything rather than showing what working on a mine is really like (probably makes for more interesting TV). Will hopefully catch a few episodes and see how they are.

Hey again, I've just got back from Rockhampton and am taking a break from trying to catch up on everything I've missed. Uni's starting to get crazy busy with mid-semesters looming (I have 4). A while ago we went to visit the VISY recycled paper factory, which was really interesting. It was my first uni field trip (if you don't include last semester's 15 minute trip to the distillation column in the chemical engineering building, which I don't). We saw the paper being sorted from other recycled material, pulped with water, then sent through a number of cleaning and drying processes before being flattened out into new paper. Of course, guide's explanation of the process was a bit more complicated than that...
So now I'm working in a group to do a mass balance on the entire plant and work out how they can reduce their water use. A mass balance is when you work out how much water and paper is going in and out of each part of the plant. It's so much more complicated than I thought it would be, but we're all really glad to be doing something practical rather than pure maths and science.

Today was the careers expo at UQ and (besides getting a bunch of freebies including a pen with a compass, a usb, 3 waterbottles, a pedometer and, oddly enough, a live plant) I met heaps of people from construction, consulting and environmental management companies. The expo was for everyone, but at least a quarter of the companies were engineering ones. Funny story (kind of), I had to fight the lady with the plants to get one because she said "They're only for environmental students" and then when I said I was an environmental engineering student, she didn't believe me. Eventually, after I'd shown enough interest in her company to convince her that I really was an environmental student, I got the plant :). Apparently lots of randoms had been pretending they studied environmental science/engineering to get one. It's one of those cool fleshy-leaved ones, it's called an Echeveria Golden Glow. Anyways, signing off...

Back already for week 3 of uni. On Saturday a few friends and I went to the MESS (Mechanical Engineering Student Society) lake party. Turns out you don't actually have to do mechanical engineering to go. I actually went to a party last Thursday for the Latin American student society :P (my background is English, Scottish & Danish, nothing exotic). Anyway, the MESS thing was really cool, we sat & chatted down at the lakes for a while, then went to the Regatta on the city cat. Great night.

Back at uni again & one week in. So far it hasn't been too different to first year except that I'm 18 & can go to all the engineering society events. The last few weeks at EWB were great, we made a promotional film for this year's EWB challenge and all the first years watched it last week. I'll only be able to work once every two weeks now though because I have such a hectic schedule (27 contact hours). I shouldn't complain though because my friend at QUT has 28 already & his pracs haven't even started!

I've just arrived home from a holiday up at the Keppel Islands. Really good fun. This morning I found a letter from the QRC with a brochure called "Leading Practice Principles for the Attraction and Retention of Women in the Minerals and Energy Sector". The info in it got me pretty excited. I mean, I knew mining and engineering companies were keen to employ more women, but check this out:

• Rio Tinto's Coal Australia's Clermont Mine holds focus groups with women onsite for them to gain an understanding of the support mechanisms that can make their work life easier
• BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance has a Gender Diversity Strategy which includes a BMA women's network, development day for women, research into best practice in gender diversity arena, the appointment of a senior advisor women's employment and more.
• Cement Australia analyses total employment cost statistics by gender. The stats on disparities are presented to the executive team annually and movements to ensure there is no systematic inequality are discussed.
• Macmahon Holdings transfers couples to the same locations to ensure a good work/life balance.
• Rio Tinto Alcan's Weipa Operation provides a childcare facility.

These are just a few examples of how companies are encouraging women to get involved in the resource sector. The brochure has hundreds of similar pieces. I think that's pretty encouraging for any girls looking at studying engineering.

I've enrolled in my courses for next semester: Principles of Biological Engineering; Process Principles; Chemical Structure and Reactions; Environmental Issues, Monitoring and Assessment; Analysis of Engineering and Scientific Data.

Looks like it's going to be pretty full on...