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 ;)