Hot weather policy

Well I just ate way too much over the last few days! Yesterday I stopped by the markets on the way home and stocked up on fresh fruit to detox my system with. It feels so lovely to eat fresh food after so much junk. Although there has been a bit of chocolate sneaking into the mix today... The weather is just wonderful, it seems like we are going to have a nice hot NYE which will make a change from the snow I had last year. My plan for the evening is not coming along very well, so far no really inspiring offers, but I guess anything that's not sleeping on an overnight bus is an improvement on last year anyway.

Tonight BVR comes over to get set for the Moonlight Cinema. I'm glad it's hot because sitting out on the grass at night is pretty chilly business - at least it is for those who seem to be cold-blooded like me. The film is Life of Brian, which we have both seen a thousand times, but it's a guaranteed laugh. My body clock seems to have been stuffed up somehow and I am unable to sleep before midnight. I'm not sure how to fix it except to get up really early to tire myself out - but the days are already so long and boring... Kinda wish I had a car at the moment so I could drive down the coast and get some good beach action going - Glenelg just doesn't cut it on these super hot days. And at least the drive would kill more time! Speaking of which, I am now about to kill some by walking up and down Rundle Mall and watching all the freaks at the sales. Ordinarily I'd be concerned about getting sucked in and buying something, but one look at my bank account today has cured that...

Annual illness

Merk, ate too much, tummy hurts.. but just can't.... stop.... eating.

Merry Christmas everyone!

A Party House

Saturday night I had the most fun I have had in a long long time. Two of my mates from interstate were back, we had the local Thai restaurant booked for a party of 10 and were all apparently in the mood to party. We all ended up back at mine afterwards since the option of heading into town in the cold weather didn't appeal to anyone, and neither did paying for a taxi. Between 10pm and 5am the next morning we managed to discuss at least a small section of any subject you can possibly think of and solve at least 53% of the world's problems. Trouble is, we were so drunk we can't remember what those solutions were... Some fool brought along his spirits collection and there were some rather dodgy lip-sip-sucks going on involving lemon juice from a bottle (my housemate may want that replaced) and rather more salt than is generally recommended. The next day I kept finding Jaffas all over the floor, evidently there was a food fight too. Oh, and a broken wine glass - not mine. It seems I will be buying my housemate a gift for Christmas after all... Great thing is that she's in NZ currently so I can take advantage of the post-Christmas sales to replace all the things of hers I have used/broken. More than enough evidence around the house to suggest that it was a cracking good time! New Years has a lot to live up to now...

It's RAINING! Not just a little bit, but heaps of it. That's crazy talk in this dust bowl town of ours. I spent all morning holed up at home being bored out of my mind. I can't even remember what I was doing really. Not a good sign. Well, this time yesterday I was lazing by the pool reading a terrible book I borrowed from the local library. It was a truly awful read. But once you're stuck poolside with such a book you just have to keep reading. At least I had a bit of a sleep in this morning after a late one with a bottle of white, didn't get up til 8:30am...



I watched SuperNanny, the highlight of daytime TV at the moment (which just goes to show how low things have crept since ratings season is over) and amused myself by tut tutting at ludicrous parents. I can't remember who said this recently, but I wholeheartedly agree, there should be a parenting license issued before couples are allowed to conceive. If so many people need someone who has a limited grasp of English grammar to come into their house and explain to them what I thought was simple common sense then perhaps things really are as bad as I fear. I'm sure it is very difficult to watch your child have a tantrum about something and work themselves up, but the alternative is letting them treat you like an errand boy for the rest of their life. I know which I'd prefer. But obviously SuperNanny's on a good wicket, she's figured out before anyone else that there are heaps of these dysfunctional families around who are willing to embarrass themselves on TV out of a peculiar mix of desperation and vanity. I guess it would produce excellent footage for 21st birthdays too...



After SuperNanny left, kids tamed, parents back to a simmer, The Ellen Degeneres Show came on. She's made like Oprah and given all her audience Xmas gifts like crazy. I've never seen so much screaming and crying and jumping up and down since parliament closed for the hols. Why do the audiences in America scream so much? I don't think I have ever had cause to scream in a live audience, or in private that much either come to think of it. Am I particularly sedate and self-controlled, or are these women all on drugs? Why so excited? It's more than a little freaky to watch.

Where to go?

As my commenter pointed out, the last paragraph of my last post was a bit mental. Somehow it had been cut and pasted after I posted it so that the sentences were all in the wrong order, but I have reverted it to its formal glory now. Not entirely sure what caused that. Someone hacking into my blog? They have clearly mistaken me for someone who matters then.

Anyway, as I said yesterday, there was quiche action in my kitchen. Turned out pretty well if you ask me and the guest who partook of it (who has thus far escaped gastro and other food poisoning related illnesses). Plenty of red to wash it down, a fair chunk of Haigh's and about half a year's worth of gossip to catch up on makes for a good evening. My friend is making her way across the Americas next year before ending up in the UK to look for work. Hmm, that just added about five more options to my own trip planning... Just have to wait and see what my budget will allow at the end of the day.

Drip drip

It sure is hot today. I don't mind the usual Adelaide heat, where you can usually escape it simply by standing under a tree, but this humidity sucks. It reminds me of being in Japan where the heat is so sticky you can't escape it except by having a really great air con. It reminds me of falling asleep at work on the long summer afternoons. I think those days were as close as I will ever be to living life as a cat. Even though you have slept all night the lethargy creeps up on you and there's nothing to do but submit to it. Sure made it difficult to keep awake when the holidays were over and kids came back though!

Did you know that not only too little sleep, but also too much sleep gives me dark circles under my eyes? I'm doing nothing all day, I'm getting my normal amount of sleep and I look awful. I guess the only answer is all night drinking binges to lose some sleep, but I can't be bothered. There is some cause for excitement though; two of my friends are coming back to Adelaide for Christmas. Hurrah! People to play with :) I am going to play with someone tonight too - I am making Rocket and Leek Quiche for the occasion. Might as well make something time consuming since I have a lot of it to consume. I should start making bread. Except then I'd have to eat it I guess.

At the moment I am reading three books. I like to mix them up; it makes for interesting dreams. I love how in dreams the craziest situations just seem normal, we should be more like that in real life. And I also love how everyone wants to share their dreams, tell you every detail, even though they know that when they are subjected to such descriptions themselves they are bored to tears. I dream often. My dreams are clear, like the new plasma wide screen TVs, all the colours are brilliant. People will tell you that your dreams mean something, like that's a piece of trivia or something. Of course they mean something, it is your subconscious at play! This morning I had a dream I would like to not have awoken from.

Holiday malaise

My plan today was to go to the flicks, but there's nothing on that really inspires me. Instead I might try and get my UK passport application happening again because that was so fun the first time. Apparently if your parents marry subsequent to your birth it can only mean that you are trying to rort the British Government. Suppose I should be glad they married at all though since bastards aren't given any consideration at all.

Today is my last day of work for the year. I am a little bit happy about this, and also a little bit wary. I always look forward to the conecpt of having nothing to do and nowhere to be, but in reality I don't enjoy it that much. I do enjoy wasting a day just reading a couple of books, but I can't do that for 4 weeks straight without going mental. Not sure what the plans are for the break yet - it's all unpaid leave so there won't be too much going on I would say. I WAS going to Cambodia but plans for that kind of fell through and instead I have tickets for Vietnam in June, but that's so far away!

Tonight is my work Xmas dinner and I am looking forward to it, if only for the chance to frock it up a little bit. Haven't been doing that much lately. And of course Saturday morning the dreaded Xmas shopping. I still have about half to go - totally uninspired still. Christmas Schmistmas.

I ate a tomato I grew today. It was yummy.

Berries galire

This weekend I spent a lot of time out and about. Saturday morning I braved the croweds for some Christmas shopping in the city. It wasn't too bad in the end, I just couldn't think of what to get people so ended up wandering around a lot. Still need to finish that off this weekend coming. In the arvo I jumped on my bike for a ride down to the beach. Headed down Anzac Highway and onto the sand at Glenelg. It's not the best beach around, but it is the closest to my house so I ignored the slightly murky water. It wasn't really hot so I didn't jump in the water for too long but spent most of my time on the towel reading and eavesdropping on conversations around me.

I love how out on the sand everyone seems to feel as though no one can see or hear what they are up to. Some girls on my right were unfortunately gossiping in German so I couldn't understand them, but on my left there were another couple of girls who were approached by a rather white and rotund man who tried the worlds worst pick up line on them. It was definitely a home-grown one, as evidenced by it's awkward delivery and general failure. He asked one of the girls if she had a lighter, she held it out for him, he asked several times if it was really OK for him to use it. She kept nodding impatiently and he finally took it and lit his cigarette. Upon handing back the lighter he asked "Would it be alright if I moved my towel a bit closer so next time I won't have to come across?" She hesitated for a moment, no doubt weighing the awkwardness of refusing him against the discomfort of encouraging him to pursue in his obvious and futile attempt to pick up. Then she just shook her head and he went back to his towel for about five minutes before picking it up and moving on. I wonder if he'll try that one again?

On Sunday I was on a bike heading up the freeway with thousands of other motorcyclists. I was wearing puppets on my hands to wave at all the kids with and I must say they were a huge success. Only problem was that I was getting carried away with puppeteering and when the bike took off a bit fast I almost came off the back! It was beautiful weather for it, not too hot and it didn't rain in the end either. The oval was packed with people up at Hahndorf, it would have been nice to have had lunch up there and hang around a bit but we had to head back into Adelaide for my grandma's 70th birthday party. So the day was a bit crazy in the end, headed straight from the party back to mine for some quick food and then off to touch footy! Crazy busy. We did win touch footy though, hurray!!

This week I have a lot of cooking to do. Pie for someone's birthday and a dish to share on Saturday evening. And Friday is the work Xmas function :) Nice to be at a workplace that has such things going on. Today there was even a break up party for the international students and I stuffed myself full of cherries and other fruit and am now feeling slightly worse for wear... Too many berries; not good news.

Flat Friday

This morning on the way to work I got a flat tyre! Oh no. It went down really quickly so I had to walk the rest of the way, luckily I was already in the CBD anyway. At least it didn't happen yesterday when I was riding all over Adelaide. I finished up teaching touch at the school out in whoop whoop. How relieved was I about that! Every week it was different, all different kids and so on. Yesterday it was majority girls and they were so mean to each other all the time. Everytime a little kid dropped the ball they'd just get yelled at by all the others, it was really awful so I started awarding 'nice' points as well as scoring points - made it easy to make everything a draw too! Yes, kids aren't supposed to play competitive games apparently. Funny how the only games they really love are the ones that are competitive!

The dreaded shop

No post in a while because I have been lost for what to say. So many things happen everyday that I could easily write a few words about, but somehow they all disappear when I sit down to do exactly that. Today I ordered a Xmas present for someone on the internet and they sent me an email back an hour later saying my package was on its way already! Nice one. It's rather an exciting package too. You know when you really get inspired about a gift for someone? I hate it when you just have no idea what to get someone, the day gets closer and closer and in the end you have to cop out with a gift voucher. There's a lot of that going on this year. When your mates move away it's hard to know what to get them since their taste may have changed, they might even have what you are getting them already! But presents have to be a surprise so you can't ask them. Tricky.

Oh well, one present sorted - bloody heaps to go.

Haigh's dark peppermint pastilles; Mmmmmmm.



Had a bit of a good weekend. Dinner party on Saturday night. Only a couple of mates round and some fantastic pasta recipe. Spinach and ricotta tortellini with creamy mushroom sauce. It was tops, except I couldn't roll the pasta out thin enough with the empty vodka bottle I was using as a rolling pin so the tortellini were fat as. I think we each ate about 4 or 5 of them and were stuffed. Good value then! A few bottles of wine later and it was a very merry occasion. Sunday evening was my first state league game of touch. It was all very serious, we had THREE refs. Crazy talk. But I think we played really well and there's heaps of potential for improvement there.

Democracy

My workmate was telling me about voting process in her homeland, Russia. It's a tad different from over here where you can wander into a polling station wherever you like in your electorate, announce your name without providing proof of identity, fill in your flimsy piece of recycled paper with a pencil and drop it into a cardboard box guarded by a pensioner with a poking stick. Over there you need to show up to a particular polling station with your passport and registration number for that area. The ballot papers are full of anti-counterfeiting measures like we find in our currency, and you have to sign for them. Vote counters have a representative from each political party peering over their shoulders as they tally it all up and because of all the extra security results aren't usually known until the next day. It all sounds like they take the democratic process very seriously!
But then on the ABC I was watching a doco about the Russian oligarchs and how they were basically running the country for a few years there and it suddenly doesn't seem quite so democratic... But according to my workmate most Russians don't even know what was going on in that time and it made me realise how comfortable and trusting we Aussies are with our pollies and those in charge. We THINK we have this democratic process going, where even if we don't like what we get, at least a majority wanted it, but we could all be being duped so easily. All we'd need is a rubber or a match and poof! there goes a whole electorate's votes!

I may pop

I'm at work and just need to have a vent. Sometimes you get a new comer to comuters who just drives you nuts. You ask them to just click with the left button once on My Computer for example, and it takes them a whole 30 seconds just to get the cursor in the right place cos they go aRound and aRound the screen with big big circles, the mouse is falling off the table and then they try and 'hover' the mouse back not realising that the mouse doesn't actually work unless it is touching the desk surface. ARGH!! It's SO frustrating. But you just have to smile and keep going, pretending that everyone struggles so much with the mouse issue...

A holiday

I'm heading to Vietnam again!! Heheeee. Yesterday arvo MM comes over all a brim with excitement; Jetstar have cheap as tickets to Ho Chi Minh, wanna go? Well, it'll be the last week of uni... why not! So now I have tickets to Vietnam happening in the first week of June next year. A long way off yet, but I guess it has to be to be so cheap! We're going diving, and we're going T-shirt hunting and it's gonna be SO MUCH FUN :) Yipeeeeee.

Now we just have to decide where we are going in January...

BDO 07

It's warm again. Ah. And we are back with a Labor government again too. Ah. Well, these days it's pretty much the same thing, Liberal/Labor, whatever. But perhaps there'll at least be some slight changes in areas where it counts. Worth it just to see Costello spit the dummy and storm out in disgust too, especially after Howard gave him so much support in his loser speech. That's what they call it; The Loser Speech. I didn't set out to watch election coverage, I was actually quite happy to watch Channel 10 for a change because they were the ONLY network not screening full coverage of the vote counting crap. I did flick over and have a peek during the ads for Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Harrison Ford- yes please) and from what I could tell there was a whole bunch of people who thought they were pretty damned important gassing on about nothing on Channel nine, the ABC and SBS, while channel 7 went with the 'farce' option and had some useless gits who usually host a morning chat show (badly) gassing on. I don't know what's worse to watch; idiots who know nothing about politics or people who know quite a bit about politics but are still idiots.

I snoozed off straight after Star Wars and slept in until 11am this morning! That's crazy, I haven't slept that long for ages. Must have needed my rest. I rode up to mum's yesterday and did the voting thing. Visited my grandparents, ate some cake, and rode home again. It was a good day for a ride, not too hot and only a slight breeze. This afternoon MM and I are going for another ride, but this time down to the beach, hopefully it'll still be warm enough to swim by the time we get there. I haven't been to the beach yet this year so should be great! If only for the ice cream eating potential. Friday night i got extremely drunk at a 21st in North Adelaide and ended up calling BVR for a friendly chat. I can't exactly remember how pleased she was to hear from me, but all I have to say in my defence is that it wasn't really so late because I caught a lift home with people who weren't staying out late. Will stay away from champagne for a while I think... But the slight hangover did make me think of my bro who is at schoolies in Victor this weekend and if he's hungover too...

In other news, most exciting; I HAVE BIG DAY OUT TICKETS!!! Yar!! Yippeeeee. I thought they were sold out in Adelaide, as did most people I think. But Triple J gave a little hint one morning last week and on my lunch break I headed down to Big Star Records and there they were! Oh, there's gonna be some serious dancing happening that day!

Another lost thing

Yesterday went really well! Only about 8 kids came out, but that turned out to be a good thing since it made everything run more smoothly and they could all participate a lot (and I learnt all their names really quickly which makes controlling them a lot easier too). I asked them if they had fun at the end and they all shouted YES at the top of their lungs so I guess I did alright! Hopefully that might tempt more kids out next week as well, but a group of 8 is a good number I think.

The vego touchers repeated requests for vego sausages on the BBQ at the fields finally paid off last night. Yum. They knew how to cook them too which is great - most meaters just throw them on the hot plate for ages like they do with real sausages thinking that they need to cook em, but they only need heating through cos they're not raw meat! Bit of sauce, bit of bread, bit of a pale ale - nice was to end an evening. Except I left my bike helmet behind! I caught a lift home because it was quite cold and late by the time we left and in all the packing the bike into the car excitement I completely forgot about my hat! So I had to bus it in this morning :( And now I can't even ride my bike up to have a look and see if it's still there. Boo me.

More stuff, less think

I'm going back to the horror school in the northern suburbs to do my coaching stuff today. For some reason I am hopeful that things will be different today. I did that course on Sunday and I now have heaps of cool game ideas and reckon they'll enjoy it more this week. Turns out if they can't play touch at the end of the four weeks it's not a disaster, they just have to have fun! I can do that.

Then I'm off to play touch in the evening. It's nice being so busy, less time to think about things.

Nice begging

I have to say, I'm more than a little bored at work today. I only have 2 students in my room and they are getting along just fine without any help. Luckily the internet is back up again so I can cruise around gathering info about various things. I have to start deciding when I want to head off on my big trip next year but I still can't even decide where to go! There are worse problems in the world though. Yesterday a vagrant seeming person came up to me and congratulated me for riding my bike and not "polluting the atmosphere and fucking everything up" and then asked me for $2 for the bus. I gave it to her, not because I think I should have, but just in admiration of her begging style. Step 1: compliment, Step 2: ask politely for cash.

Busy busy weekend. But a great one. Went to a farewell party on Saturday night. Had a great time, had a few beers and went to bed very very late which was regretted the next morning when I had to be up and on my bike heading to Kidman Park for a coaching course. It was actually quite useful though so I am glad I went. Even though the coaching I'm doing totals 4 hours and the course was 7! But I might be able to get another gig at a school closer to home in Term 1 next year. So I have some ideas for making the whole thing run smoother this week. The kids have already stolen the valve caps off my bike, so what will they steal this week I wonder? I'll come back and it'll just be up on blocks. Hmm. Another reason to get a school closer to home next year.

Saturday morning I spent my time doing the online component of this coaching course. The said it takes 6 hours to complete but I did it in 1 hour and 42 minutes because I skipped all the readings and just did the assessment :) It's all just common sense stuff anyway - the tricky bit is creating fun sessions which is all just activity ideas. In that respect Sunday was actually useful. I had a little snooze on the couch on Saturday arvo while reading and waiting for MM (gonna have to start using the pseudonyms cos it's too hard to avoid sometimes) to rock up. He woke me up after laughing at me through the loungeroom window for a while. Nice. We hired a couple DVDs which we didn't really watch very attentively, too many things to talk about.

Off to Henley for dinner and sunset watching in the wind. Also observed a variety of idiots trying to navigate their way through the carpark below. Lots of unnecessary horn tooting going on which was very pleasant over dinner. Pity it was so windy or we could have done the beach walk, but it was just a bit too nippy and we headed off to our party instead after chowing through some banana caramel pie. Yummmmm.

Sunday arvo training session and I was sleepy as. I intended to get to bed early, but ended up going round to visit a mate who is moving up to BrisVegas. I was pretty jealous I realised, looking at the half empty flat and boxes - moving is fun! He has a cat that he's gonna put in a cattery to be looked after while he settles up there and finds a place. How much does that cat know something's about to happen then! So I ended up getting tobed quite late after all and as a result I'm pretty sleepy today. Got book club at my house tonight though so better perk it up.

The other day I found a spider in my house for the first time. I squashed him with the spatula. (Don't tell my housemate, she'll never make eggs again). Bit sad to squash things, but the spiders know the rules - stay out of my house and I'll leave you alone. If they're gonna break the rules and push the boundaries they're gonna get messed up. Spiders are perfectly happy outside in the elements so there's no need for them to be coming into my territory.

Escape

I had a crazy busy weekend which I will tell you all about as soon as I get a chance. I'm starting work full-time this week so less antics and more sitting in an air conditioned room - but it means more money which we all need coming up to Xmas. All the rooms at my work have large maps of the world painted on the walls so I spend a lot of time checking out all the locations I would like to visit. Right now Fiji is looking pretty attractive...

Coolness awaits

I'm off to the pool. O-h yeah. What's good about the pool is that it is only 1 minute walk from my place. When it's too hot to get as far as the beach I can still swim!

Yay!

I am finally finished!! Last essay handed up, presentation happening in a few minutes, heheee. Now I've gotta find something else to fill up my evenings...

So sick of computers

Meeeh, my final essay is coming along so slooooowly. It is now at the requisite number of words, but it is still lacking depth, clarity and purpose. All important things in an essay usually. It's like some kind of gremlin comes along and steals my ability to sit straight and regulate my body temperature as soon as I sit in front of a computer. I could just fall asleep right now despite the fact that I have done bugger all today except sit in front of a screen.

Hmmm, an iceblock would go down a treat right now...

Might stop at Woolies on the way home. Last week my other course had a break up dinner at a cafe on Rundle. It was quite a lovely time, we had some white wine and I brought a chocolate cake I whipped up teh night before when I wasn't working on this essay, or my presentation... Procrastination produces cake: let that be a lesson to you all. It also apparently produces a rambling blog entry that lack as much depth, clarity and purpose as my essay does.

Canberra continued...

So we pick up the Canberra story on the Sunday morning. No touch watching this time, just sightseeing. Kicked the day off with a trip to the National Museum. It was pretty quiet there, very dark inside and made us VERY sleepy indeed. We spent a good hour and a half wandering around, lost each other and spent 10 minutes sitting around the corner from each other in the sports section waiting for the other to walk past... silly. Headed into Civic for some lunch and found ourselves a nice little cafe and an omlette. Tried once more to have coffee at this chocolate shop but it was full so just wandered about down town. Had a look in a record shop that had these great racks of dresses up the back. There were a few nice ones, but nothing in my size, there were for minatures I think! Probablyjust as well since funds were already running pretty low. A phone call from our touch representative who wanted to hit the National Gallery with me and we headed out to the fields to pick him up toting coffee, which attracted a circle of fans quite quickly! We only had 45 minutes or so in the Gallery since they were closing at 5, but we did see Sid's Ned Kelly collection I was interested in so that was all good.

A leisurely walk back to the touch quarters and everyone was winding down and getting ready for the night out on the town. We hit the only pub we knew in town; back to King O'Malley's. The teams were getting a bit serious on some points so my mates and I just found ourselves a table way from all the pedantry and had a few drinks. Frangelico, lime and soda: YES! We were a little surprised by all the note taking and meeting bizzo going on with the teams to be honest. I mean, they had just been comprehensibly beaten by all and sundry, what could there be to talk about? Just have a drink and go home! One team was in the corner for ages looking really serious doing god knows what. And the teams had some kind of fine system going, fines for quoting Shrek, fines for not, fines for saying stupid things, fines for not doing team stuff and they all got WRITTEN DOWN, like it was a really serious issue or something. Personally I think when something has become so organised and systemised all the fun is just taken right out of it because it's just a chore. Hopefully people have chilled out a bit by the time I'm in a team!

Anyway, as you can see from the photos in the last post; Shrek did make an appearance. Shrek got very drunk indeed and provided plenty of entertainment. I got quite drunk and managed to stay up until about 4am! Luckily I, unlike most of the touch team, including the bloke I kept up talking all night, did not have to get on a 6:30am flight back to Adelaide! I'm told there were some very untidy people on that flight. Wiffy. I, however, slept in until 10 ish, had a late brekkie and headed back to the gallery to look around, have lunch and chill out quietly before picking up my host and heading out for lunch. It was a bit of a novelty driving around since I don't do that very often anymore! A bit of pasta and gelato and we were feeling pretty sleepy indeed. But we couldn't have me leave Canberra without a visit to the Southern Hemisphere's largest sex shop. So off we went. Yeah, it's pretty large and well stocked! Managed to restrain from making any purchases despite the very tempting 35% off sale. Basically I ended the weekend with $6.85 in my purse. Usually an indication of either a great time or a particularly bad time - and in this case a Great Time! yar.

So here I am, back in Adelaide, now able to say I have visited the capital of Australia. And what do i think of the wee town? Hmm, let's just say the reason I had a good time was more because of the company than the location... But it just goes to show how important the people you surround yourself with are - they can turn boring into exciting just like that!

Shrek IV and others...

Did you know that Shrek could fly? Neither did we!

Attempting to be sexy was a theme for the evening...

Clearly attempting to be sexy means just staring really hard at the camera. 10 points for intensity!

How damned white are we then! Bring on summer I say :)

Canberra - Capital of odd bus shelters

This weekend I went to Canberra and had a fabulous time. Not because of the destination, just because of the company. First just let me say that our nation's capital is a very odd place indeed. One minute you are driving around Parliament House, the next you are driving up what seems like a freeway with nought but fields and trees on either side. It's truly bizarre. And a really strange vibe too. A little bit country town, but just a bit too fancy in some ways... I guess because most country towns don't house a population of rather wealthy public servants so they don't have much demand for fancy shops or restaurants. The roads are just vast and never straight and there's never any traffic! Driving in from the airport it felt like we were miles from anything with not a single other car in sight and yet it was 7pm on a Friday. First thing of course was to find a bar to drink in. We achieved that straight out of the airport :) Headed to Old Parliament House for a glass of red where we were served by a very young man who asked us "is that a red or a white?" when we ordered a Shiraz! Then we copped a bit of agro from a bloke when we took one of the dozen or so empty chairs surrounding him - apparently his mate was sitting in that exact chair and none other would do. Lovely. The wine was crap and it was freezing outside so we headed off for Civic (Canberra can't call city centre "the city" like everyone else, they have to call it 'Civic') and some Thai food. Met up with my bloke and he kindly chipped in with a bottle of white, so already the drinks mixing had begun...



After-dinner drinks at Hippo where entry was refused out male companion due to his shorts (no problem with the rubber thongs though apparently!). "It's a cocktail bar" we were told. And boy was it ever! I ordered something or other and it took a fair amount of bottle throwing and glass twirling to arrive. I say bung it in a glass and get it to me, but the man behind the bar had other ideas. So, one cocktail and then a beer later and it was home time.



Woke up the next day feeling not too flash at all. Ick. But, a bit of fruit for brekky while watching the SA Mixed touch team's first game of the day against my friend's Canberra team. Her team wiped SA all over the field and skipped off to their next game and things didn't get much perkier for SA all day. But we hung in and watched em all the same. Went home between games and brought ourselves out a picnic for the next match. It was raining on and off for a while there, but just drizzle and it wasn't day destroying. Canberra certainly turned on the charm for us though - that evening there was a thunder storm and the rain was so heavy that once we'd made it to the pub we refused to move anywhere for the rest of the night! Well, I refused anyway ;)

Movember

Yes, the dreaded day approaches. Soon men all over town will be sporting the beginnings of unsightly mos all over the upper lip and there's bugger all we can do to stop it. In fact, it seems that the sillier the better... And it's only a matter of time before the girls get involved too.

Procrastination blog

Today I am feeling very lazy. But I have heaps of work to do. I kind of took a break after working so hard on my last few essays and now I am struggling to get back in the habit of thinking about writing again. But next weekend I am off to Canberra to hang out with my best buddy who I haven't seen for MONTHS. Good times await. So I have to clear up everything so I can relax and enjoy myself. But I am feeling lazy so still nothing much is getting done.

Oh, and now it is raining. Bugger.

Last night I saw a film called Eastern Promises (I think), about the Russian mafia in London. It was a good story - although the ending was a bit fairyland. It was nice to watch a well-made something that is just a story without an agenda. Or, if there was one I missed it enough that it doesn't bother me! Another thing I did last night was attend a gallery opening for some painter or other - Darryl someone... That was a first for me, and I enjoyed it heaps. Not because I'm suddenly interested in art, or want to pretend I am, but because of the free stuff! Red, white, sparkling wine, a HUGE cheese. Seriously, it was a piece of Brie about as big as... I'm trying to think of something that size... basically it was a family sized pizza - but it was cheese. !! Vegies with dips and a bowl of strawberries. There was this one guy, an elderly Asian man, who ruined the strawberries for everyone else by digging right down to the bottom with his possibly (and seemingly) unwashed hands to find the one particular strawberry that was worthy of him. Nice one matey! So I basically stocked up on cheese, ate my quota of animal protein for the week and laughed at artsy types with their peculiar clothing and manic glasses. I spotted a man in a black skivvy and I was done - a complete art event experience.

After stuffing me with cheese and wine and laughing at me for being so excited about free food my companion decided to delve further into the complexities of being me by asking me to explain exactly and precisely why watching a movie is about 17th on my list of Stuff I Like To Do. Needless to say he was left not a little dissatisfied with my meandering reply but with the distinct impression that the evening he had planned out for us was now going to be marred somewhat by its inclusion of Film Watching which I had just proclaimed to be "lonely and dull". But it was all good in the end. I'm not ANTI film, I'm just having a period of being less than enthused about it all. And I did, as I said above, enjoy the movie we saw anyway. But the whole situation was somewhat typical of those I find myself in constantly. Like when I was 13 and went overseas with my grandparents and my great-aunt was kind enough to buy me some books to read on the plane. Although instead of saying "Here, bought you some books." She first asked me "Do you like Goosebumps?" (kiddie thriller series by RL Stine which was all the rage for a while in the 90s among primary school students). I said "No, they're crap". Well, possibly I didn't use those words, but the gist was that I thought they were for kids at a reading level much below mine and didn't get much out of them. "Oh dear" she says, and pulls out from a bag three Goosebumps books which she had just bought for me! Uncomfortable much?

Well, it wasn't quite as uncomfortable last night because by now we're well used to dealing with my foot in mouth, it's not the first time and won't be the last. Actually the first time was quite hilarious; Bloke asks, "What's been your biggest fashion faux pas?", I ponder for a while and then decide then say, "possibly the double denim look I had for a while" - then look at my interlocutor - he's wearing double denim. Brilliant! So we continued on for a Greek meal with dips and some yummy eggplant number. Hmmmm. And wine, of course ;) It was a lovely evening.

Ah, the weekend arriveth.

And another week goes by... They just slip past so quickly now. Last night I had a dinner party! Well, it wasn't anywhere near as fancy as it sounds, but people came to my house and we ate and drank (some more than others) and were merry. I am left with vast amounts of food in my house which is one of the great things about hosting an event.

Home stuff

The flowers I received which brightened up my room for a week and then not so much for another week when I was too lazy (and sentimental) to throw them away.

Here are my tomato plants - can't remember if I posted a photo of them like I said I would. Actually now they are huge compared to this shot, and the one in front has since died. Well, perhaps died is too strong a word; it has ceased to grow. The leaves at the bottom have all turned yellow and curled up and it looks pretty sick alright! But the other three have continued upwards and outwards and now have little green balls on them that look like baby tomatoes!! heheee.

Here is a picture of the chest of drawers that I procured from the side of the road a month ago or so. How fabulous!

JJJ

This morning I got up extra early to go in to town and see Ben Kweller play for breakfast radio. Kind of sucks to have to get up early for that, but it was free! Well, he is playing again tonight for free, but you need to have your hands on tickets to get in. It's funny when you listen to people's voices on the radio every morning and you get this idea in your head of what they look like and then you see them in real life and it's so not right! This really familiar voice is coming out of a completely foreign body. There was a free brekky on too, but it was sausages of course, just as well I ate my Weetbix before I left the house aye! I guess I could have stayed in bed and listened since it was all broadcast on national radio after all, but then I wouldn't have been able to SEE the pyjama parade, only hear it. I would advocate a National PJs Day except that I don't really have PJs per se and people would definitely thank me not to get involved.

That stupid little four letter word

'You sighed and I was lost in you, weeks could've past for all I knew.
You were the blanket of the over-world and so I couldn't say,
I wouldn't say "no". But they all said, "you're too young to even know,
just don't let it grow and you'll be stronger without him"
but oh, now, my world is at your feet. I was lost and I was found,
but I was alive and now I've drowned.
So now I will be waiting for the world to hear my song
so they can tell me I was wrong...

'But they weren't there beneath your stare,
and they weren't stripped 'till they were bare
of any bindings from the world outside that room.
And they weren't taken by the hand and led through fields
of naked land where any pre-conceived ideas were blown away...
So I couldn't say "no"'

- Missy Higgins

There comes a time in all of our lives when we have to fight popular sentiment. At least I sure hope there is, or it may just be me! Frankly the idea of facing a shower of disapproval and judgements about what I have chosen to do with my life has never been particularly appealing to me and I'm sure many of you are in the same boat. It is, after all, such fear that keeps us behaving in such a predictable fashion for the most part. Never mind that it's obvious that what anyone else thinks can have no real bearing on you, and that no one really has the right to assess your life - nevertheless people can made a real shit time of it for you if they don't agree with your actions. I suppose that's how we cluster ourselves to an extent. We make friends with those of similar ideals and expectations so that we only need ever be marginally morally tolerant. Because it's hard to be tolerant. It is truly difficult to face a person who has chosen to do something that you find reprehensible and just say "Well, that's their right and as long as it doesn't impose on my rights, I have to let it be." Keeping in mind how difficult it is for people to do this it's obvious why people choose to conceal, or are ashamed of actions that diverge from the mainstream. But I guess I discovered something that makes it worth while going off-track and risking public opinion. And it's kind of liberating, to find something that is so powerful that it will give you the courage to go somewhere you never thought you would.

I try to keep my blog to a recount of happenings only rather than a discussion of feelings. This is a public space after all. But there's some really amazing stuff going on in my life at the moment and I wanted to share a little of it. I have been lucky enough to find the kind of love that is life changing, not because I am now tied to another, but because that other has opened up a whole world of possibilities for me that I never knew existed. Nothing lasts forever and who knows where this is going, but this experience will always mean more to me than I could hope to explain here.

A Party

Styling it up in MY shoes. When did I lend my shoes out anyway??

You gotta have looong arms like mine to be a photographer otherwise you never get any photos of yourself!

My women's team - those of us who were there anyway! A few of us got awards too!

I have no idea who this guy is but he looks pretty happy!

Yeah, so the evening was a bit of a success I would say. I had plenty to drink and I think there may have been a little bit of uncoordinated dancing towards the end of the evening. Woke up on Saturday morning with no recollection of how I got home except vague memories of a car ride. I must be getting old, I've never lost time before! So I spent yesterday very quietly getting over it all and having a ponder of a few happenings. And today I must write yet another essay! Hurrah!

Wow this has been a crazy week. I finally submitted one of my essays today and have another one to work on over the weekend again. I wish that if they were intending to extend the due date they would do it BEFORE the due date. Of course I could submit the essay I wrote for the first due date, but then he wouldn't have extended it if he didn't want to tell us all exactly what he wants us to cover which is coincidentally everything tht I haven't covered! OK, that's my whinge over.



Tonight is the Touch club end of season function and I am ready to go! Got my frock, got my jewels (well, pretend jewels) and I am pretty ready for a beer or three after today.

Scooooooooooooooting around

I went for a ride on a scooter! It was heaps of fun. Owing to the ridiculous law that you don't need a bike license for anything under 50cc in SA I am able to jump straight on a scooter and zip around. This partiular scooter was heaps funny because with your helmet on you can't see the handbars or anything in front of you except the road so it feels a bit like you're flying.

Also, my mum came back from Greece and Dubai. It seems they had a fabulous time which is great. I scored a very white Tshirt out of it! Sounds like Dubai is just like another planet though. So I won;t need to wait for space travel to advance after all...

Small whinge

According to the rules of the world I live in I need a little piece of paper that says I know that probably the best way to create a comfortable and encouraging learning environment is NOT to pick out students at random with as little notice as possible to answer taxing and pointless questions to which they have no answer before laughing at their answers and inviting their classmates to join me. Unfortunately said little piece of paper costs $2,400 and will consume four weeks of my life during which I will be unable to work to start earning back the ridiculous amount I just shelled out for the privlege of being let in on the prized teaching methods that characterise popular (even if slightly misguided) theories on second langauge learning in 2007. God forbid I should go out there and just start teaching people with my own methodology created from the broad reading and research I have done covering a whole range of theories and methodologies. I must be five kinds of naive to have thought that a teacher would have a say in what, and how, they teach in their own classroom. But even though it's ridiculous and even though it makes my entire (increasingly expensive) education redundant I'll probably do that stupid course and spend the $2400 because when the person who is in charge of deciding who works as an ESL teacher in their college tells you that your university education is "useless" because it teaches you to teach drawing on myriad of methodologies when she just wants someone to teach "the way we do here", what else can you do? Perhaps it is just the narrow-mindedness and exam focused tuition of private English colleges but it would appear that there is a dichotomy between what it is possible to do in the ESL teaching world and what the Applied Linguistics faculty seem to think is happening out there. Which begs the question - what am I wasting my money on?

Punnet of strawberries. $1.

$1.

It's a good day.

Plug

For some reason - probably wishful thinking - I thought it was going to be warm today. So here I am at work in my skirt and short sleeved top shivering in the air conditioning and knowing that it's only going to be colder outside. So to warm myself up I've been doing research on Cambodia. Seems like I can do my dive license over there for way cheap, the only problem being that it's quite time consuming and I'm not sure I want to spend 2 of the few days I will have there waterlogged - what if I hate it! Yeh, this post is turning into a bit of a journal entry so I'm changing the subject.

Last night I finally got around to visiting the little Thai restaurant on Goodwood Rd that my housemate recommended to me yonks ago. It was really fabulous! Small and tucked away and just comfy inside - it has a nice 'ammmmbi-ance' as my friend and I were fond of saying afterwards with ridiculously posh English accents. And it was yum. And it was cheap. $28 for two people including starters. Of course we were vego so the meals were cheaper, but even the meat dishes were cheap as. After the meal, and this was the clincher for me, they served complimentary after dinner mints! Never in my life have I seen such a thing. I have heard of after-dinner mints of course, seen them in the chocolate shelves at the supermarket, but I have never had one given to me at a restaurant and I assumed it was one of those services of the past, like pulling your chair out for you, bringing water to the table without being asked, taking your order at the table rather than making you line up like you're in a school cafeteria... Yeah, that's such bullshit, all those cafes on Rundle St where you pay through the nose and don't get any service, you have to do everything yourself, even carry your own drinks to the table!

Anyway, a big 5 star rating for the Manee Siem Thai Restaurant on Goodwood Rd. (they do takeaway!)

Hump Day

Never mind that the opposition only had four players - we won our grand final on Monday night too! Yes, I am now in possession of two inordinately green ribboned 'gold' medals. Yay. Had a couple of beers afterwards to celebrate and then headed home to catch up on some uni readings. And how lovely was the weather yesterday! Too bad I was stuck inside all day :( I did go for a walk in the evening and it was still quite lovely. Overnight there must have been quite a gale blowing though because this morning one of my tomato plants was keeled right over trying to touch the ground. Maybe he was just stretching? I'm afraid that one of the plants has carked it. For some reason he refuses to grow like the others and has a whole bunch of yellow crunchy leaves. But I guess when it's your first time growing something you gotta expect a high mortality rate - I should be glad they aren't all dead!

This morning I skipped out of my stint at the English college and did some errands instead. I found out that I can't really afford to go to Goa over Xmas. BOO. But I can afford to go to Cambodia! So that's where I'm going. I think. Nothing's final until the plane ticket's paid for. For some reason I thought that Cambodia was land-locked - it isn't and apparently has gorgeous beaches. I really enjoyed Vietnam and I think this'll be similar. Better practice my Lara Croft impersonations before I go. Actually if I can get my dive license before I go it will be heaps cheap to do some of that action over there...

These things just snowball don't they!

Solid gold

Last night on my way home from uni I spotted a chest of drawers out on the street with "give away" written on them. Yes please. I raced home and enlisted my houstemate to help me drag it back and up the stairs into my bedroom. So now I am finally no longer living out of my suitcase! It's in pretty good nick - not smelly or anything! See, that's why I didn't buy anything - because sooner or later someone on my street would have had to do a spring clean and dispose of exactly what I needed. As we were picking it up some bloke across the street called out "Hey, I wanted that!". Too slow matey. Haha!

Cue Victory Dance Music

AUTC Hot Chocolates beat Henry's Drivers 6-3 in a fast-paced high intensity grand final last night. Hehee, got a little medal on a green ribbon and everything. How cute is that! We played really well and despite letting a few through on the line we managed to keep them in check with the assistance of a ball juggling Zippy McZipster who got 4 of our 6 tries. Nice work. Considering how it felt at the start of the season when we all hated the team (well, I have't surveyed all the team members on that one, but there was definitely a lack of team enthusiasm), we did bloody well. Anyway, that's the end of the winter season and summer season starts in 4 weeks or so. Now what will I do with my evenings??

Octo-freak

It is not uncommon for the Chinese students who come to Australia to assign themselves a Western name in the interest of making it easier for all us ignorant monolingual Aussies to remember and pronounce their names. Usually they will pick something that's quite nice, and I guess it's a bit of fun for them to be able to pick a name they feel suits them as adults rather than having one arbitrarily assigned to them by their parents at birth. So in a few of my classes I have Henry, Veronica, Lucy, Gary, Jack - all Chinese. I also have an Octopus. No, I don't mean that sea creatures are now undertaking English classes in the hopes of succeeding in the capitalist Western rat race, but that some bloke from Hong Kong has decided that he wants to be known as Octopus. I could hardly control my mirth at the idea and my supervising teacher said several times, "Now, you're SURE you want me to call you Octopus?". Oh yes, quite sure. What a lunactic!

Touch update

Touch semi-final last night. We actually won. The last few weeks the women's team hasn't exactly been playing well. But this week we were on fire and won 9-0. I even scored a few times, although once I put the ball in the dead ball zone. BOO. What an idiot, but at least it was in a game where it didn't make the difference between winning and losing! Finished the game with about 3 more bruises, someone's finger marks on my leg and mud stripes up the side. We didn't have any subs and somehow I think that works out better because people work harder in some strange way. Well, the two boys who play for us (boys under 14 count as women in this comp) subbed with each other the entire game because the other team said they didn't want more than one boy on the field at a time, which is fair enough because they are pretty zippy! Too bad for them though cos they only played half as much as the rest of us. So next week is the GF for the bottom half of the ladder (that's definitely us), go Fruitcakes! Yeah, I LOVE our team name - every week the ref says to someone on our team captain, "You're a Fruitcake?" And we have to say "Yep!".

Meanwhile Thursday night mixed is going well, although it doesn't feel like it. We are in the GF too after beating the other uni team last week in an abysmal game. Games like that are just awful, where you feel like you haven't done anything and that everything is going wrong - the only reason we won was because the other team was playing just as badly. Hopefully we can step it up and knock off Henry's Drivers this week...

Drama Queens

On Friday afternoon I had a big chat with my lecturer and you know it actually helped. I've been re-writing this assignment and it's hardly making me cry with frustration at all this time! Actually, it really is a lot better going this time around so I'm feeling totally relieved. My lecturer is really helpful, clearly an incredibly busy man with fifteen things on the boil at once, but always has time for a chat but I find him a little too... effusive. On Friday I walked into his office and he's all "OH, there she is! A ray of sunshine on a long dreary afternoon, look at that!" all with his arms waving and gushing and I have to say I felt pretty uncomfortable about it all. It's not that he's creepy, or I feel 'harassed' but just that that kind of effusive, unexpected display of emotion makes me feel uncomfortable in general. You know those people for whom normal, everday expressions of surprise upon meeting randomly, or shock upon learning something unexpected are not enough, but arms and body and the whole vocal range must be employed? Too much, put it away, it makes me feel awkward. I guess because if you don't match their enthusiasm you feel like you are being a grump, or deliberately non-reactive, but if you do match their enthusiasm you are just acting a part. Anyway, in this case I chose to just nod and smile and pull up a chair and start bemoaning my lack of understanding of the topic. It's hard for anyone to be effusive about the Zone of Proximal Development. Haha!

Gee, is it really the weekend already?

As you may have guessed from the title of this blog entry, I am feeling a bit like time is just whirling by this week. On Wednesday I attended my first ever funeral. It was for my great-grandmother who died on Sunday night. She was pretty old, as you may imagine, so it wasn't sad so much as a relief I think. She was in a nursing home and in the dementia ward for the last few years. When we went to her 90th a few months ago she didn't really seem to recognise anyone, particularly not the grandkids and great-grandkids. Personally I would hate to live like that and I can't imagine she was enjoying it very much either. Sometimes I think it would be nice to just be able to forget everything, but in reality it would just mean constant confusion about everything around you. Anyway, the funeral meant that I missed work on Wednesday arvo, I had already skipped it on Monday in order to write The Dreaded Assignment, which has since been handed back and the deadline extended until this Tuesday so it can ruin yet another weekend. Thursday, yesterday, I taught an entire class at my practical placement. It was not a fabulous class. I ended up with a list about a page long of things I could have done better after the supervising teacher filled me in on how I went. My usual supervisor was away soI had a different bloke with me, and although he is lovely, he didn't have many positive things to say. Or indeed any, and I would like to believe that's not because there were none, but rather because he just didn't feel like sharing. It would have been nice to have some positive feedback too since it was my very first time taking that class and teaching adults. Hopefully when my real supervisor gets back next week she'll have some more helpful suggestions.

On Tuesday night I went to the show and did all kinds of exciting stuff. It was raining when we first got there but soon cleared up and stayed clear for the duration. Rode the Mad Mouse of course. It was CRAZY. No wonder they're shutting that thing down! I had a scream or two and left with two matching bruises just below my knees where I was slammed repeatedly at the bottom of the drops. What are they going to have at the Show next year instead of the Mad Mouse? Hopefully something with padding. Got my Freddo Frog bag which this year came with a choice of a Freddo keychain or Freddo Puzzle Mug. Go the Puzzle Mug. And get this; there were also TWO giant pencils in there with their own giant sharpener! How fantastic is that? I was pretty excited I must say and have been using the pencils to take notes at uni ever since. Might take one of them to work too. I'm nothing if not professional.

Speaking of work; I have offically reached the end of my 6 week trial. Since they are happy chappies with me and I am happy chappies with them there is only one thing to do - give me more money. OHHH yeah. I'm a bit of a fan of the amount of buckeroos rolling in at the moment because they're all going straight to the Goa Account and I am so Going to Goa at the end of the year. Just keep thinking about that and I might just make it...

Out in the cold.

Never fear! Photos of tomatoes and hairs will follow in a few days... Tonight I am going to The Show and I am Excited. Yeah. I'm going on the Ferris Wheel, I'm going on the Mad Mouse for the first and last time, I'm going to eat heaps of doughnuts, I'm going to look at fireworks (rather than be annoyed by them), I'm going to hold my nose near the animals and buy a few showbags with chocolate in them. Yeah.

Last night I had a bit of an episode. I was out the front in the road talking to a friend who was just passing by for about 10 minutes (we were distracted by the fireworks). During that time my housemate came home and left again, locking the front door behind her leaving me homeless! I had nothing on me at all and was wearing my PJs (which are luckily just trackie daks and a woolly cardie rather than anything slinky. I tried breaking into my house, and you might be pleased to hear that it's no easy feat! I gave up on that and decided to just walk to a mate's house in Unley and get some help. After ringing about 3 people to get my housemate's number I finally got on to her and she went back to ours and opened the door for me. There a few lessons to be learnt from this I think; 1. take your keys with you when you walk someone to their car, 2. leave a spare key with someone close by, and probably most importantly, 3. Commit to memory important phone numbers. The only phone number I could recall without the help of my own phone was my parents'. Not useful for this stuff. My best friend, whose number I use constantly, I had no idea what it was. Not even a faint recollection. Hmm, should probably work on that one!

But it did mean that I had a lovely 20 minute walk through the backstreets of Unley in my pjs, you don't get to do that everyday! And it also meant i got to sit in a heated room and chat about random stuff for a while when I should have been doing my assignment at home. See, procrastination is good, circumstances have conspired to allow it yet again.

Jo cuts her hair

Well how wonderful is all this weather at the moment!! Usually the start of the Show means miserable wet stuff, but it's been fantastic. My little tomato plants are flourishing so much, this weekend I had to go out and buy them some new homes. They were getting abit crowded with the four of them in one pot so I got three more pots and a bunch of soil and now they each have their own home. Apparently I am supposed to "stake" them too, so I wandered across to the parklands and found some "stakes" (aka fallen gumtree twigs) and now the tomato plants are going great guns. Probably I have committed some major gardening faux pas by using gumtree bits as stakes, probably it's going to kill my plants, but frankly I couldn't see the point of spending money on some bits of wood when I could just grab some off the ground for free. Plus, I already had to buy potting mix - which is essentially dirt, exactly what I should able able to find anywhere in even my tiny back garden - but it seems that there are plenty of different kinds of dirt and the kind that is found beneath my weed patch is not the right one. Anyway, according to the little tag that came with my toms, they will take 12 weeks to mature so now I just wait...

Friday arvo was quite pleasantly warm too and it inspired me to walk into the nearest hairdresser and spend way too much money on having someone I don't know from a bar of soap cut my hair off. It's always a gamble going to a new hairdresser, or as in my case, going to a hairdresser at all since I don't have one that is 'mine'. But I think I was lucky because she seems to have done a good job. The best part was that she didn't want to talk to me! The whole cut was done in complete silence except for when she needed to ask me something haircut related. How fantastic! I will definitely go back there. Having just decided that I was NOT going to Syders for APEC (BOOOO), I was feeling quite reckless with my pennies since anything I bought would be a saving on what I would have spent had I gone to Sydney. And just as well too - $78 later I have short hair. SEVENTY EIGHT DOLLARS. I reckon that's about twenty cents a hair because my hair is so thin. At first I was quite a fan of the new 'do, but now... I washed it and what do you know! I can't get it back the way they did it over there. And I was watching him SO carefully too - all he did was dry it a little, and rub some cream into it - why can't I do that?? Grr. Maybe I just need practice.

Meanwhile in the real world - I have assignments that need doing. This week I design a unit of work for a class. Yeah, it is as dull as it sounds. If anyone knows any good activities for teaching the present perfect continuous tense just let me know, it'd be greatly appreciated! It's seriously concerning how little I know about English grammar. To me it just seems irrelevant to language learning. I mean, we can all speak English and probably use the present perfect continuous everyday without knowing the rules of its construction - why do we suddenly need to know the names and rules for everything when we learn a second language? I guess I learnt a few grammatical rules and so on when I did Jap, but I didn't remember "OK, now this is how you make the present perfect, this is how you make the past participle", but just recognised patterns and used them myself in contexts that felt appropriate. Seemed to work. In fact, that is exactly the idea the folks who designed the English curriculum I was taught under in primary school had since that is why I grew up not knowing any grammatical rules to begin with. But whether I think I need to know this stuff or not, the fact is that the students at my prac placement, the Asian students in particular, are obsessed with knowing why??. You can't just say to them, "That's just a set phrase, there's no rule, you just have to memorise it". You can sure try though - and that's what I have to do!

Anyway - English is a stupid langauge, we all know that. Better get back to pretending to explain it to some internationals...

Friday fun in the office

Tonight I'm off to the footy! Very random I know - but a friend has organised a group of us to go and I figure it can't be too bad in a large group. Plus, what else am I going to do? Study? Haha.

Today I learnt that the photocopier can scan stuff and send it to my computer! How fun is that!

Got my placard...

Oooo, I really want to go to Sydney this weekend for the APEC-a-rama. Might get a chance to throw a rotten tomato at some world leader... Haha, or to get arrested - which could be fun? Be a shame to go my whole life without being arrested. Clearly I need to take some red paint. That's how the protesting gets done these days it seems. Of course I should just stay here and get some uni work done, but that's DULL! I just can't wait to see what goober outfit the PM dresses everyone in. Honestly, who organises this stuff?!

All cooped up

Today I spent all morning sitting in classes at the English school and all afternoon sitting in front of the computer at my real job. It sucks. How do people sit in stuffy offices all day anyway? I need a bit more fresh air than an enclosed room can provide I think. All that recycled air... I guess if I eventually end up teaching English it won't be so bad because I can (hopefully) find work someplace where I won't have to be inside all day. At least find a place with windows!

Small world

On Thursday one of my classmates told me the most amazing story. This woman is an international student from Norway and she's living in the city, Sturt St I believe. The previous Friday she had been sitting at home alone, bored, so at 10:30ish decided to go out for a walk. She walked past a pub, heard live music and went inside for a look. She had been watching the band for not 2 minutes when a bloke she didn't know approached her and started up a conversation. Hearing her accent, it wasn't long before he asked where she was from. He said, "Oh, I had a sweetheart from Norway - she was from a little town on the west coast but she went home years ago". My friend asks, "Really, what's the town called?". It's her town. It's the same tiny little village she gre up in and she KNOWS the sweetheart! How crazy! She even gave him a phone number he could catch up with her.

It doesn't end there.... they keep talking and eventually the band finishes and the singer came down to join them and the conversation turns to why my friend decided to come to Adelaide. Her dad lies in Pt Lincoln. Oh yeah, there's a few Norweigans in Pt Lincoln, what's his name then? The singer's dad has worked with her dad for years! How creepy - I know Adelaide is good at that and everyone knows everyone - but it's totally amazing that these 3 people from all over the world are connected in this tiny pub!

2 sides to everyone...

I've been photoshopping. I took a photo of myself, cut one side of my face off, flipped it to make a symmetrical Jo. The first one is the Right Jo, the second the Left Jo. It's pretty creepy I think!

The sweet smell of the weekend

Hahaa, the weekend is upon us. Only 50 more minutes at work and off I go. Tonight I have a bit of a cookup going on with my special friend. Last week I purchase my first cook book and have since been inspired to actually cook most of the recipes in it. I have never really enjoyed cooking very much, but I have discovered that cooking with or for someone can be good fun! It's my bro's birthday on the weekend; Happy Birthday!!

Who is 'lentheric' anyway? I give up!

Royal Adelaide Show Countdown is on

It's nearly Showtime. Someone just told me that you can get into the show for free after 9pm. What a bonanza! I'll be able to wander out my front door and into cake decorating and tree stump lopping for FREE. And of course, access to the Bertie Beetle showbag. Although, just quietly, I have always preferred the Freddo Frog showbag. And just think of all the fireworks I'm going to be blessed with from the comfort of my bedroom what with the window facing that exact direction! Yeah, bring it on.

Today I started my teaching placement. It's at a place that teaches adults. Most students come for about 6 weeks, although some only for 2 weeks, a few for longer periods. It's basically an intensive English program for tourists. Like, if I wanted to go to Spain to learn Spanish I could go on the internet and book myself in a school - it's kinda the same thing. Expensive. I just madly wrote notes for ages, got a sore arse from sitting on the horrible plastic chairs and wondered how in hell I was ever going to sort out a lesson plan for my classes in a few weeks. Well, only 2 weeks really. Eek. Bit different to kids classes, that's for sure.

Face this

Facebook is going completely off its nut! If Facebook were a furniture shop there would be a massive sale on at the moment what with all the crazy. Everywhere I turn there are people talking about it and I'm just not sure what the big deal is. I joined up, I admit. Someone sent me a request, a person in a far and distant land and I thought "OK, I'd like to see what this bloke is up to", so I joined and now I have an ever-increasing number of people in my friendlies box. But I'm just not sure what I am supposed ot DO with them. What is the point in sending them a "poke" when I could poke them in real time if I can just have the patience to wait a few hours? I do have mates who are overseas so in that respect it could be useful I suppose - but we already had e-mail going. Besides which, they aren't doing anything so interesting that I need to hear from them everyday! According to The 'Tiser (source of all breaking news and hardhitting headlines) hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars are being pissed down the drain by mindless employees who sit and Facebook each other all day at work. Well, if that isn't front page news, I don't know what is! But why?? What exactly is so good about it? Aren't we sick of computers yet? I have to sit in front of one from 9-1pm everyday and frankly - that's about enough for me. By the time I get around to typing up my uni assignments too I have practically developed an allergy caused by over exposition. Aha, and how amusing, one may think, to choose to rant about wasting time spreading personal information via the internet and computers through such a medium. OH yes, my sides are aching with laughter.

Choclofied

The Cook Off was a mega success. At least I think it was. The two desserts were a moussey number and a flan. In the end the mousse took the cake since it wasn't quite so rich as the flan. The flan was FULLON chocolate and so rich one bite was more than enough! Both girls put in a huge effort though and there really was no loser at the end of dinner when we were all stuffed to the gills! We had a bit of karaoke action - a bit of a drinking game for about 2 seconds until I knocked over a glass of red in my enthusiasm and it sprayed just about everyone around the table. Nice one. Then we discovered a selection of ink stamps and of course ended the night with "received" and "paid" in blue and red covering our skin. They should make that ink not quite so permanent on skin, there was a lot of scrubbing to be done in the shower this morning. There was a bit of guitar action and we decided that next time we should bring some music that everyone knows and have a sing along because when everyone only knows every second word it's a bit shit. I had way too much red but enjoyed myself tremendously and what more can you ask of a Friday evening? Can't wait for the next Cook Off (so long as I'm not cooking that is...).

CopyCat

The photocopier fixer is here and he's just given me a big long spiel about how bad our paper is for the printer and I spent the whole time imagining him back at Copier Fixer Headquarters bitching to his workmates about people who use "dusty" paper and try and get half-used sheets of labels through the thing... God, people just have NO idea do they! A photocopier is a fine piece of machinery that should be treated with the respect it deserves - you wouldn't try and run your car on coke would you??

My plans for friday? A Cook-off. I have been invited to judge in a dessert competition. The theme; chocolate. And who indeed would be more qualified to decide such matters? I'm heaps looking forward to it, there's been sledging flying around between the competitors all week and it sounds like they are both going for gold. There really can be no losers in a situation where there are TWO fantastic chocolate desserts on the horizon can there? I have to bring the vego dish since with the proposed menu comprising of oysters and steak it didn't seem likely that any non-meat dishes would be very inspired. My planned contribution?.. A carrot and pesto bake. And a fair amount of wine...

Beepbeepbeep

Argh, Sunday. I'm at uni attempting to write another assignment. I got my first one back on Friday and it had some scribbles all over it - who knows what they said! The only part I could discern with any degree of confidence was "good". Right-o. I'll take that on board then. I'm supposed to start my teaching prac this week but I still don't know where I am going! I'm trying to just not worry about it but that's hard on the weekends when there is nothing to do but think about such things. Well, that's not completely true. Yesterday I did go on a wine tour of the McClaren Vale for my friend's 30th. It was a good day, we didn't get too messy, had a lovely lunch and tried plenty of wines. I had a pretty good cocktail of whites and red and ports going on in my tummy I tell you what! The bus took us back to the birthday/housewarming party lined up for the evening, on the way stopping at mine to pick up a few bottles of wine leftover from my housewarming. On to the party and suddenly all the drinking throughout the day caught up with me and I recall having some very odd conversations with various people, toasting marshmallows, and dropping a full bottle of red on my foot resulting in some pretty serious bruising today. Don't think I'll be running off to touch this arvo... Actually I have several mysterious injuries, I somehow managed to cut my fingers as well - I think it may have been while trying to open a bottle. Oops. Several people spent a good while rubbing the tuna mornay (sp?) in my face. Not literally, just going on about how fantastic it was because I couldn't eat it. I do miss tuna because it is so easy. Tuna goes in salads, in pasta, it's cheap and it's yummy and quick - how can you go wrong? But I did eat teh pasta bake instead and it was yummo - although I probably could have done without it since I'd been eating finger foods non-stop since arriving. There was a brilliant guacamole which the host made - there was a massive bowl full of it and it was practically licked clean. Will try and recreate it myself... Oh yeah, vegie spring rolls went into the guacomole too - that was a good combo!

I was very lucky to get a lift home with a non-drinker who stayed very late like me. Bent his ear with endless chatter about what's going on in Jo's head at the moment, although without any context it must have made for extremely confusing ramblings so perhaps it was if nothing else, amusing. Fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and woke up at 7:30 when my alarm went off, grrr, and then snoozed until 11. Feel a little seedy, but not too bad.

I've just had a massive conversation with a girl from my course who is equally confused about what we are supposed to be doing over the next few weeks. It feels so nice to know that everyone else is just as much in the dark about what we are actually doing here as I am. Not that it bodes well that so many of us are confused, but it does mean that perhaps I'm not as slow as I was beginning to think.

What a wonderful day! Clear blue skies and all that sun, spring is definitely on the way... I've been doing some research on the internet about how to keep the tomato plants I received as a housewarming gift alive. Apprently I will have to work pretty hard to kill them, but if I want nice juicy red fruit I gotta actually pay attention to what I am doing. We'll see what happens. I wonder if I'm allowed to dig up some lawn and put them in the ground?? Probably not aye! Well, more uni readings to do so here I go...

Happy Birthday mum...

She seems pretty pleased with everything!

It's a golden pig!!!

jfdlakr

Yipee! Finished my assignment! Hurrah :)

This morning my shoe fell off while I was trying to cross Goodwood Rd. It was highly embarassing because everyone was just sitting intheir carwatching me. Oh well, good to give someone some mirth I guess... At least I didn't fall off!

This morning I woke up with a fat lip. The whole right side of my bottom lip is swollen. I look like a real treat I do.

Well, I haven't done the reading for this week yet cos I spent all my time writing this assignment and being too poor to pay for it. Oh yeah, and I gotta ring Centrelink so off I go...

BOO to strange words

It's been a long long weekend and I'm kind of glad to start the week. Although I am having major difficulties with my assignment for Language Teaching in Specific Settings and beginning to wonder what I'm doing here at uni again... Saturday night I cooked up a storm for my mate's birthday. Made Pumpkin and Sage Risotto - the recipe for which I found on the internet. It turned out fabulously (if I do say so myself), the only problem being the part where I sliced open my thumb opening a dip and had to cut all the vegies one-handed owing to a lack of Band-aids. Put them on the shopping list then I guess. Unfortunately risotto takes forever to cook so everyone filled up on starters before it was ready, not that it stopped them eating a fair portion each - just made them pretty full! Especially after they tucked into the birthday cake which was pretty much a chocorama. Had a trifle on the go too which was received with groans (that particular "I'm SO full but it looks SO good I might risk explosion..." groan). After dinner I quickly jumped into some fancy clothes (luckily I had slipped into my jeans before I ate or they never would have done up!) and off to the Botanic where there are some pretty damn cosy couches and a lot of girls wearing strange puffy dresses. The drinks weren't cheap and taking into account the taxi ride I could afford exactly 0 of them but somehow ended up having two cocktails. Odd. Trouble with fancy cocktail places is that it takes a good deal of time to make fancy drinks so you end up spending most of your time at the bar or lining up to get to the bar. After we had gathered a good group together we proceeded to the Universal Wine Bar where mate's boyf kept us in supply of wine through his connections... Several rather disturbing conversations later I was ready for bed and, aware that I had another function the next day, bundled myself into a taxi with instructions for the cabbie to only go as far as $11.60 would take me. I ended up around the showgrounds and driver ended up dropping me all the way home for free! Lovely man.

Sunday morning brought some study after a little sleep in. That's about the point I realised that this assignment was going to be the death of me since I had no idea how to even start answering the question... My ride to the party never turned up so I had to taxi again. $48.08 for a trip to St Agnes from Goodwood - in case anyone's interested. Mum's 50th. It was a great arvo, way too much food which she cooked herself over the past 2 weeeks. I ended up leaving with more than enough food to see me through the week. Yummo. I stayed until 5:30ish - the guests all did the dishes which was lovely. It's not her actual birthday until Wednesday so there was no present to hand over or anything. My friend kindly came and picked me up and dropped me home and collected the car left in front of mine the night before. Sunday night I did some more reading for uni, watched an hour of TV and headed for bed at a reasonable hour in an attempt to remove the seemingly permanent dark shadows from under my eyes.

Ah, yes I am procrastinating since I should be trying to figure out this assignment right now...

Loving it

The new job rocks. By the time I start getting fidgety and want to leave it IS time to leave! 9-1 has to be the best shift ever. I might just work part time for the rest of my life...

The postgraduate study room for Linguistics is on the 9th floor of the Napier building overlooking the Torrens and all sorts of lovely things. How is one supposed to study when all one can see before them is other people chilling out on green green grass? Look away, avert your eyes!

Life goes on

Long time no post, I know. I no longer have regular internet access so it's going to be well patchy from now on. What have I been doing then? I started uni for one thing. Became a little overwhelmed by just how much reading I was going to have to do to come up to speed with everything. Spent a lot of money on textbooks and reading bricks, spend a lot of time reading and re-reading rather dense text packed full of seemingly incoherent nonsense. Obviously I'm not quite up with the Applied Linguistics lexicon yet, but hopefully that will change!

Last week on Saturday I did my last shift at the horrendous cafe and felt awfully glad about it. Took my pay and a few biscuits with me... I borrowed my brother's car in order to shift a box on Saturday night and when I came out in the morning to take it back to him caused a street-long traffic deadlock by not hurrying up when someone decided to put their blinker on and wait for me to leave. I did have a load of stuff to get in the car and they could see that, but they were obviously very desperate for the park! Did anyone know that there is a Farmer's Market on Sundays at the showground? There is. Every Sunday 9-1 there are cars fighting for parks all up and down my street. I haven't actually gone and checked out the markets yet becauseI always seems to be busy doing something else, but maybe next week... Actually, no, definitely not next week because I have a huge weekend lined up. Friday night Quiz Night, Saturday night hosting Dinner Party and celebrating a certain lovely lady's Birthday, Sunday arvo Mum's 50th. My God, it's like I have a life or something! And the weekend after that? Housewarming matey!! Gonna make some punch and crank up the stereo and see if we can't get the cops over...

Random pub crawl photo...

One Broken Door

So today I started moving my things to my new place and had a minor incident. I propped the screen door open on it's little dooflicka up the top and this prompted the top hinge to snap off resulting in the Leaning Door of Goodwood. So already I have caused trouble at my new address and I'm not sure people will pay to see this Leaning Monument To Dodgy Workmanship so I will have to fund the repairs myself. BOO.

Last night after touch training I headed to the showgrounds to play basketball with my friend. She has a team with school mates and some weeks they are struggling for players so I thought I'd go along for a run around even though I have no basketball skills whatsoever. Lucky I did go this week since only three of them turned up! It was looking to be quite a dismal game since they usually get thrashed anyway, when we realised that the other team also only had 4 players. Yar. In the end we WON! It was quite exciting. At first our opponent was all friendly and so on, but after they realised we actually wanted to (and could) win the game the game descended into a Bitch-a-rama. As usual it was the peole of smaller stature who started it all - what IS it with short people? Why do they always feel they need to make up for their height by being aggressive? The thing about basketball is that it is a contact sport which means that you expect to get a bit of hip and shoulder during the course of chasing the ball around. It means that if you don't enjoy being run into, pushed or leaned against you should probably take up another sport. Instead of taking my advice a couple of girls on the other team decided to just start slapping us whenever they could. At one point I was holding the ball up high just looking for someone to pass to and this little girl was jumping up and down in front of me, got pissed that she couldn't reach me, so just slapped me a few times. Nice. This is supposedly "social basketball" mind you. What the hell? It wasn't fun, it wasn't enjoyable, it was like a visit back to my primary school days. I think I'll stick to touch footy in the future - at least there most people have a sense of sportsmanship and fair play and can handle the incidental collisions that are unavoidable in sport without having a sook.

Let's go to the Excitement Factory

I have a new job! I am very excited about this one, as the bloke who rang to tell me would tell you were he available for comment right now. So now I don't have to remember sandwich prices anymore, only how to use MYOB - much more my style. I start Monday week so I have plenty of time to work out some office attire. YIPEE!! The bloke said it came down to 2 of us and they decided to go with me cos my personality came out more in the interview. Haha, it appears it helps to have a personality, whatever it may be. All useful tips kiddies, write it down. Take Personality To Interviews. Well, I was stoked, he was stoked, there was a lot of jumping around and general excitement. To celebrate I have made some chocolate biscuits that each contain a square of caramel chocolate. Yummo. Found the recipe in the cupboard here and figured there isn't a better way to celebrate really. Except maybe champagne? yeah, gonna get some of that tonight too then :)

Forward motion

Sooooooooooo, the interview on Friday was a bit of a disaster, but perhaps I will get the job if every other applicant turns out to be a complete idiot. There's always hope. Never mind because there is other excitement to distract me; I have a place to live! My friend put me in contact with an old work mate who is looking for a flatmate and we met up on Saturday after work, I had a look at the place, we agreed on a price and a day to move in and I'm set! It was all too easy really. The place is in Goodwood, really close to everything, trains, trams and more importantly, The Showground! Come September while all those other suckers are searching or paying through the nose for parking I'll be able to stroll out my front door and onto the ferris wheel. Nice. Only problem now is figuring out how to get my bed from it's location at dad's place to my new place without a car... Could strap it to the back of my bike I guess? And most importantly, uni starts next week so I can start worrying about that stuff rather than all the other boring stuff I usually worry about.

Little smiggler

I have a new friend in my bed. Unfortunately it's not as exciting as it first sounds... Alpha, the cat I am feeding while his owner is away, has decided that we are mates now. One the mornings when I am not getting up for work he jumps off his sleeping basket quite early and bounds up on the bed, sticks his face in my face and wakes me up, then, when I reach out from under the doona to pat him he jumps into the little cave created under the doona by doing so, snuggles up next to me and falls back to sleep. It's very cute. On the mornings when I DO get up early he wakes up with the alarm and does the same thing, only I can't snuggle up with him for long cos obviously the alarm means it's get up time. He likes to push against me with his feet when I change position - presumably so I don't roll on top of him! I have to say that I am a bit of a fan of cat ownership. But I can't have one of my own until i decide to stop travelling - so I hope it'll be a while before I move the kitty litter in!

In other news... due to the wet weather and the abysmal state of the fields touch training has been cancelled AGAIN! It's SO annoying, was looking forward to a run around all day. Instead we are all set for a video session at the British apparently. Great, so instead of running around now I am going ot be drinking beer! Gah!