Backpacking on Bali & Gili Trawangan

Not a bad way to end the exchange! I spent eight days on Bali and Gili islands - Bali is nice, full of good scents, beautiful sceneries, cozy restaurants and traditional temples, and even with the crazy, busy traffic it's easy enough to move around on the island thanks to cheap taxis, scooter rent and personal drivers (best for day trips).

Gili Trawangan is super chilled out with small tropical island-like "city center" and beautiful beaches. Spending few days on the tiny island was like living the good beach life surrounded by cheerful locals, good coffee, surf shack bars, diving centers, bikes and horse carriages.

Part of the trip I spent with friends from UWA, and part of it I was travelling on my own, but I met people in the hostels and through activities anyway so it didn't really feel like travelling "alone". Especially on Gili T the atmosphere was extremely welcoming and relaxed with backpackers coming from all around the world. For example, just during the very first day I happened to meet three Finns (more than during my exchange in Perth). The atmosphere in the hostel was the best as well, big common areas with fatboys, free banana pancakes with watermelon and balinese coffee (the best taste and I don't even like black coffee), outdoorsy tropic-like setting, good music and great staff (super funny and friendly local boys who apparently lived in the hostel themselves sleeping on the fatboys wherever).

In Seminyak I stayed in M Boutique hostel, that was outgoing as well, yet stylish, neat and surprisingly modern with private "capsules" to sleep in etc. Nice pool, located in the "quieter" part of Seminyak near Potato Head Beach Club and good cafeterias! Way better than any of the hostels I stayed in on the East Coast in Australia and half the price.

All together I spent five nights in Seminyak, Bali, and three nights on Gili T, during which we made few day tours with friends around Bali, walked around temples, ate good food, chilled out at the beach and by the pool, and I took an adventure level course in diving - 30m depth, check! Good time and hot days, and I got several to do -ideas from other backpackers. Even if the street view wasn't the tidiest possible, both islands actually exceeded my expectations and I definitely could consider going there again :)

Good brekkie at Café Organic, Seminyak

Uluwatu temples and cliffs

Coffee and tea tasting

Tegenungan falls in Ubud

Monkey Forest temples

Rock Bar in Uluwatu

Gili Trawangan

Gili T harbour

Nitrox + Photography Dive whippee!

Happy certified adventure level diver

 Next stop: Singapore!

Unit review

I'M DONE! All my exams are behind now, it has been quite a long period with everyone just studying and trying to prepare for the exams (one-week study break and two-week examination period). But now I'm all done with my studies and exchange as well. Wierd feeling. I have two days left in Australia now, after which I'm gonna spend few weeks in South East Asia (whippee!) before returning to Finland to the real life. Exciting, a bit wierd and bittersweet.

For the incoming future exchangers and Aalto-BIZ here's a review of the courses ("units") that I took this semester.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR, MKTG1204

         2h lecture, 1h tute

·       Text book

·       Weekly assignments to submit online and go through during tute (analysis based on text book and/or operative observing tasks out in the “real world”) 35%

·       Tutorial participation (separated from the assignments) 15%

·       Mid-sem exam (MCQ) 20%

·       Final exam (MCQ) 30% 

Handles theories of psychology, real cases and examples and advertising effects. A quite interesting, easy-going and more creative unit. Nothing too hard except for memorizing some definitions and theories in order to excel in the multiple choices exam. Otherwise lectures and assignments were chilled out analyzing, mainly discussing ads, brands and trends with no right answers really, and argumentation based on theories. Level 1 unit.

ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS, MGMT3335

·       2h lecture, 1h tutorial/lab per week

·       Text book

·       Weekly assignments to go through during the tutes (Short answers, definitions or lab exercises) 10%

·       Every other week recorded lectures online, otherwise face-to-face lectures

·       Group assignment (Proposal and a 20-page report for a real organization) 30%

·       Mid-term exam (MCQ online) 10%

·       Final exam (paper) 50%

      Handles information systems and their (implementation) management. Way too much work and readingsfor something that could be very practical. Not my favorite unit. Part of the course was very practical actually using the SAP and Signavio during labs, but half of it was like some ERP philosophy, and during the other half I felt like the whole unit was there just to advertise SAP program. However, I chose the unit for the new skillset. I liked the online lectures, lots of compact, shorter, straight forward online recordings instead of actual f2f lectures, but unfortunately most of the content, studying and memorizing the ERP philosophy or never-ending implementation management "guidance" from a book (three hundred pages about ERP implementation management, mainly reminding you how hard it is without giving much advice how to actually do it), really wasn’t my thing. Level 3 unit.

INTERNATIONAL FINANCE, ECON3236

·       2h lecture, 1h tute

·       Text book, no lecture slides

·       Weekly assignments to go through during tute (calculations from the text book usually) 10%

·       Mid-semester test 25%

·       Final exam 65%

·     Handles tools related to exchange rates mainly. I liked the clearness of the unit, very informative, straight forward, compact and clear package.  Strongly relying on formulas and derivation though, and lots of facts and definitions, you can make it far simply by reading the book. Not exactly the most inspiring unit, but I believe this unit can be useful to understand for example banking better. However there’s lot of memorizing in order to get accurate definitions and so on, no applied real life cases. Despite the name, the unit is under economics, not finance. Level 3 unit.

RISE OF GLOBAL ECONOMY, ECON2105

·       2h lecture, 1h tute

·       Articles (contemporary issues etc) and short online recordings (in addition to face-to-face lectures), no text book

·       Weekly assignments to go through during tutes (short essays) 10%

·       Mid-semester test 20%

·       Final exam 70%

·     Our tutor told us this unit to be like the movie “The Big Short”. Very interesting course, mainly contemporary issues and economic happenings discussed, some theory to reason and justify these happenings, actually liked the content a lot! Most of the theory was something I had already studied earlier but still interesting because the unit included happenings that are not paid attention in Finland and more or less different kind of points of views in general. Shortly, the unit was like reading newspaper’s economics section and analyzing the news carefully. The structure and the content was pretty much the opposite to clear and theory-based International Finance’s.

One downside was the workload. There were so many channels, different online recordings, assignments, articles all over the place behind different links on LMS and so on. HUGE amount of work if you really are planning to listen, read and do all that is required. I think the unit had high expectations regarding details and cases of the 100-page-articles that you should know and learn. But excuse me, the mid-term exam had three 2-page essay questions and we were given one hour of time to answer them ALL. (In final exam we were expected to write minimum 12 pages for example about the GFC in two hours.) At least I didn’t have time to give many examples, draw several illustrations or add any other details so when it comes to exams you might as well forget the articles worth of 100 pages and stick with the main points and principles that you actually are able to write down into a 20-minute-2-page-essay. Level 2 unit.

Thank you for reading. At least one more fun post coming later on, from Asia! :)

Cheers, Anni