I finally finished the essay. Celebration! Whoo! No more essays ever! There might be one for History of ID but that'll be easy peasy. Posting it off tomorrow. I read heaps of Don Quixote as well. And drank lots of coffee, and that's it. Speaking of ID, I looked on the 'Emplyment in ID' forum on Core 77 and it was really helpful, that is, helpful in letting me doubt whether I should study it or not. You need to be able to draw, and it's really competitive etc. Hmm. Am I doing the right thing? Of course I am! I've wanted to do it since I was in Taiwan! Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. I've got the course, I've got the joint, I've got it all. OK. Yes. I might specialise in something like POS (point of sale) or something. Did you know that all the chocolate bars in a service station are arranged strategically to maximise sales? That's the kind of shit I dig. Anyway will try to get work experience. I arranged my timetable so that I have Tuesdays off. OK bye!  ¶ 17:33 0 Comments

  Today I had lunch with Luke, read a chapter of Don Quixote, and prepared a sumptuous anti-pasto platter with baby octopus, marinated mussels, sundried tomatoes, olives, salami and artichoke hearts followed by a tropical fruit platter. Mmmm baby it was good. The lady who lived in Beijing gave me a call and she said most of the girls she spoke to have funny timetables too so it will be more of a time-share situation. Anyway I'm ringing her when I go back next time. I told her about my major in Chinese studies and she said 'tai hao le!'. Man I wish I had lived in China for eight years I'd be a god. Hunter starts school tomorrow and today Kate enrolled in Visual Arts at TAFE which starts next week. I'm still excited and relieved that I got a room in the uni appartments and can't wait to go and start my new exciting life although I'll be sad to leave Tumut which has become my home so quickly. Ah life. OK it's bloody hot. I finally bought some new pyjamas for summer today they were only thirteen bucks from Target Country! Bargain!

This morning I woke up after dreaming of John laughing in the good old days when we were 16 and gloriously happy. Just him laughing the way he used to - then I woke up. I fell asleep again and dreamt that he had turned straight again, and there was this girl in his life and I was trying to win him back, saying I was better for him, that I was his first love etc. Then I woke up again and thought of all the ways of explaining what happened to a psychiatrist. 'And then um.. he said.. and I said... and it was a nightmare!'

OK good night, tonight I'll pray that I'll fall in love again one day soon. Sooner rather than later! If ever...

LOve LIzwa  ¶ 21:53 0 Comments

  Great News! By way of email and fax I have found somewhere to live. UNSW student appartments a kilometre from the campus in Randwick. It's a room in a five-bedroom appartment and it's not cheap but the buildings are only 12 years old. Yay! Don't have to worry anymore. I'm moving in on the 18th ready for OWeek on the 20th.  ¶ 14:59 0 Comments

  She sits alone at an outside lunch table with a folder of notes open in front of her. She looks up, puzzled, as two men in suits approach the table, with backs to the camera. This is the first episode of Alias, an episode that may have fed the imaginations of hundreds more delusional teenagers when they sat down to watch the new show about a female spy. A student of Chinese herself, Sam wished the same thing would happen to her and she would be whisked into another, secret world. Would it? Could it? It should have, for oh how she yearned to be put out of her misery. Finally her day arrived when Anthony revealed his identity to her through a series of unmistakable hints. It would never be, he assured her, provable by fact. If she opened her mouth, nobody, including him, would know what she was talking about. He found her in Beijing, to take her on a training mission across China. Bloody dangerous place for people like us, he said, and his nervousness was obvious. The mission was aborted in Golmud when some Public Security officers brought them into their office to ask them where they were going. He freaked out and left her in the boring town which was a pit-stop to Tibet to fend for herself. That was it, she was to go on to Chengdu and meet a another agent there to direct her where to go. "This is madness" she thought, but how very exciting it was!  ¶ 13:50 0 Comments

  Blogging out of sheer dedication and dedication only, I fear my blog has turned into something like this. I don't think I want to blog at all after reading THIS!!!!  ¶ 22:12 0 Comments

  We went swimming today at Little River. We had a splash fight and everyone (four boys and Kate) ganged up on me and I was splashed from five different directions for about three minutes non-stop. Was a little worried about breathing and how I needed to but survived nonetheless. Today was the third time this week that we went to the river. We have our own little section where the water is just deep enough to sit down in and it goes up to your shoulders.

I also did another 400 words on my essay. I'm now up to 2200 - I've written more than I need to and yes it's still getting progressively vague and unfactual yet it's still a serious attempt and I will probably get a credit for it. Yay!

Last night Kate took up a guitar missing all its strings but for three and in the tradition of 'smelly cat' by Pheobe off Friends we sang nonsensical postmodern hippy shit like "I saw a butterfly on the road and ran it over it went SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT" and also a song called "Chain-smoking Aunty". No need to guess who that was about. Nelson thought it was "Chain-smoking Undies" which was quite humurous I do say.

Lately I've been getting down on my hands and knees (over the phone) begging Rose to let me move into the room which will be becoming available soon in her house. Yes I do say I will stick it out even if the Prime Minister shipped over the Taj Mahal from India and put it next door to the Faculty of the Built Environment at UNSW and offered it to me for four years. Must ring Rosie now and beg some more.

Love,
Lizwa  ¶ 18:05 0 Comments

  Got an old phone from Luke, went here to unlock it for free. It worked! Saved myself fifty bucks.  ¶ 20:37 0 Comments

  Ching-chong Ni hao ma ah-so xie-xie. That's a new song by acclaimed song-writers Kate and Liz.

I enrolled in my classes yesterday. 7 hours on Monday, Tuesday off, and four-hour-long classes for I.D. on Thursdays and Fridays. 6 hours of maths per week. Oh that reminds me, I've scored some 2unit maths textbooks to use to catch up for it. Dude!

Ella's in a photo in the Telegraph today. The article's about mini melons and they took a photo at Ella's work with Ella about to let go of a bowling ball with a really corny look on her face :-)

Nothing else to report except that my f-ing phone is not working anymore and I can't check my messages which sucks. Also i might be going camping at Blue Water Holes just past Talbingo on the weekend. Also a lady wrote back about a job keeping her 13 year old daughter company after school Monday to Friday. They have just come back from China where they lived for 8 years and said the job would suit a student of Chinese. And finally, that post-grad guy sent me an email so I didn't have to send him one. Over and out.  ¶ 10:52 0 Comments

  I got a 'kiss' from an attractive guy with a post-grad degree and I sent him a kiss, then he sent me a kiss, asking me to send HIM an email. Dude, it's like fifty bucks for four emails. I'm not sure whether I'm going to cross that line although obviously it's the only way it works but the traditionalist in me says that the guy should foot the bill! Might do it when I get back to Sido-nee.

Today I made three great achievements! After I looked on the internet for jobs in industrial design, I 1. went to the post office to post my cross-stitch of a baby cockatoo to Jessie 2. Forgot oh that's right, Kate waxed my underarms. I was previously an underarm waxing virgin because at the tender age of 16 I was forewarned by a friend that it f---ing kills and bleeds and is sore and tender afterwards but anyway I did it and survived 2. Did another four-hundred words on my stupid essay.

I applied for a room in the unsw student appartments but it might be too late because it starts in February. O week starts on the 20th of next month and first day of classes is on the 27th. So soon! Must - find - place to live - - - - - - - - - -  ¶ 20:18 0 Comments

  I'm back from my journey around NSW. I saw three movies in three days in three different cities: The Producers, Nanny McPhee, and Memoirs of a Geisha. Memoirs of a Geisha was the one I was most excited about and although it wasn't bad the story was rushed and there was no time to go into much detail. Nanny McPhee was entertaining and so was The Producers.
Yesterday I went to the beach with Ella and chilled out and had multiple coffees. I was going to stay and watch some acting videos with her but I had to leave for my long trip home. We discussed starting a writing group and she's got a video camera and we might make a short film about my adventures in China and Hong Kong.
Kate and Shane and the boys are back from Tasmania and Jenny and Rod are arriving here soon.
We talked about me deciding to go back to Sydney. I got accepted into Industrial Design (no big deal) and enrolled online today. Wow! Going back to Sydney. New life, new home, new degree, it'll all be great. And there's a camp at the beginning of the year which should be thoroughly exciting and a good way to get to know everyone.
A bit scared about going "General Mathematics 1B". You HAVE to have done 2-unit maths in highschool to be able to do it. It's too late to do a bridging course so I'm going to have to do some private catching up which is going to suck coz I'll be doing this extra maths work just for one subject which may or may not be completely useful when designing stuff. But AAAAH THIS IS IT!! I'M REALLY DOING IT!!! ROCK ON. See, I have something to thank Taiwan for. Qili's friend Hans and his girlfriend were studying it and I'd also like to thank Chengpin Books for having a really good industrial design selection! HOW F-ING COOL!

So I had the coffee date. Not my type. I made up my mind in the first five minutes and it struck me why people do 'speed-dating'. But we chatted for an hour and a half anyway. I've got a few "kisses" from rsvp. Kisses are what you send to someone when you want them to check out your profile. I replied to one of them. My sister Karina is going back on apparently and Ella's mum goes on it! But what do I need a boyfriend for anyway? One problem with the coffee date guy was that I told him I was just doing it for fun but he was serious about finding a girlfriend. Anyway that's enough for today! Love Lizwa.  ¶ 13:42 0 Comments

  I have a coffee date on Thursday with a guy who lives in Newtown. He hasn't seen my photo yet and my father said he must be desperate if he's meeting me without seeing my photo first. Well if he's expecting someone who is hideously ugly he's going to be pleasantly surprised, that's all I can say! So this RSVP thing is moving along quite fast. Meeting duds will force me to abort the mission but I'm sticking my feelers out for the time being. Oh my god. Again. In my profile I said I enjoy devising plots for future best-sellers and he's keen to hear all about it. I've only got one - the supernatural spy thriller I devised while I was in the Observation Unit!

Done 1284 words for my essay. It's not that bad really. It's a bit brief with few references but as long as it shows an understanding then I'll survive. It won't be a Distinction though. I always get Credits. A credit will be fine, as long as I get it over with. Yeah baby. And that's Lizwa, signing out of Sydney University, not that I was there for more than two years. I feel like I used to the degree as an excuse to travel and live overseas. It's like I tried to learn Chinese for four years and now I'm getting a degree for it.

****************************************

Here's the first half of my stupid essay:

The Chinese Communist Party has assessed the late leader of China from 1947 to 1976 Mao Zedong as 70% good, 30% bad. This assessment could mean many things and many interpretations may be made as to how these proportions were decided. A greater weight has been given to his achievements and general contribution to China while the large mistakes and failures such as the Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution have not gone unacknowledged. In this essay I would like to argue that due to the seriousness of the mistakes that were made and to the human suffering to which Mao is to be held responsible, this assessment is rather generous. My own assessment would be a reversal of this ratio. Maurice Meisner argues that despite these ���blots on the Maoist record��� the Maoist era was one of the great modernising epochs of world history.��� I would argue that despite the Maoist era being such an epoch, these events had a massive human toll that is too significant to assign a mere 30%. So, Mao Zedong was 30% good and 70% bad.

As one should not be judged by their intentions but rather the results of their leadership I hesitantly choose to allow 10% of the 30% assigned to Mao���s utopian intentions which I believe deserve attention despite the disastrous effects his policies had on China. Mao was determined to bring about economic success hand in hand with an ideal socialist state. He was similarly driven to minimise bureaucracy and put into force his concept of the Mass Line which would merge the state and the masses together as one so that the masses were to rule themselves. Another 10% is for his success in leading the Communist Party to victory in 1949; the final 10% for the improvements made to Chinese society and the setting up of the foundations of China today whose economy is now booming. The degree to which movements such as The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution affected people���s lives was quite severe. The failure of the Great Leap Forward led to mass food shortages and skepticism among the population. The Cultural Revolution as a period in history unparalleled by any other event saw the persecution, humiliation, torture, and sometimes death of many Chinese aswell as the general state of instability, fear, and chaos endured by all. To compound the severe nature of these events, the reasons behind them were related to Mao���s personal career. From the mid 1950���s, Mao wanted to split with the Soviet Union in ideology and as he progressively did so, formed himself and his follwers into a minority, becoming more and more separated from the Party majority. Gasping for air in the early 60���s he allowed a personality cult to grow around him based on the prestige he gained through leading China to liberation in 1949 and the loyalty of the army. When it came to the Cultural Revolution, he was still concerned with the way the Party operated, in Soviet style, and his attempts to ���reform��� the party are what led to the abovementioned chaos and destruction.

Firstly, one must look at the featured ideas of Maoist ideology to appreciate Mao Zedong���s intentions for China. Known as Mao Zedong Thought, his philosophy involved a deviation from orthodox Marxist-Leninism, which was the path followed by the Soviet Russia. According to this idea, industrialisation was a prerequisite to communism. In pre-industrial countries such as Russia and China at the time of revolution, industrialisation being incomplete had to be a task undertaken by the state. Only after this stage in development could communism be brought about. The First Five Year plan had proved unsatisfactory to Mao. He thought that communism and industrial development could happen simultaneously. This was the intention behind the Great Leap Forward: to create communist socioeconomic structures while pushing industrial development forward as fast as possible. One of the main goals of the Great Leap Forward policies was to catch up to and overtake Great Britain economically in 15 years . The similarly utopian means to such an end was the theory that human consciousness and morale could overpower material obstacles in development and that by human will Chinese society could essentially be moulded whatever it wanted to be, namely that which Mao wanted it to be like. It shows great faith in the ability to consciously create a new society while dismissing material factors as secondary to human ones. Mao���s daring to experiment in this way to bring about what he thought was best for China deserves some acknowledgement and is therefore assessed as ���good���.

His ongoing problems with the growth of the bureaucracy and the Soviet-modelled structure of the Party apparatus in China led him to begin a ���reform��� movement of the Party which among other aims manifested itself as the Cultural Revolution. Mao was vexed at what he saw as a growing gulf between the Party and the people and this went against the grass roots ideals of the Mass Line concept. To Mao, the original revolutionary aims of the Party were being neglected somewhat as the Party became more concerned with maintaining it���s position of power in China. His intention was to cleanse the party of it���s increasingly conservative morale and reinvigorate it spiritually rather than let it stagnate and become a new ruling class when it���s own reason for existence was to introduce China to an egalitarian society. In fact it has been argued that Mao succeeded in achieving some of his aims especially where the size of the bureaucracy is concerned: he reduced it to one-sixth its former size, causing better growth of industry and making it impossible to reestablish a Soviet-style economy after his death. Mao���s intentions were honourable in the context of the progression of socialism in China and although the results of his intentions were bad, they still deserve 10% of the 30% allocated to what was ���good��� about the leader.

The next 10% goes to Mao���s leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to victory against the Guomindang in 1949, soon after bringing in policies to cleanse the country of its more ���impure��� occurrences such as family clan organisations, prostitution and foot-binding, and redistributing land (although many times in violent ways) to the peasants. The Communist Party was founded in 1921. Mao was Chairman from 1945 and during the time they were based in Yenan played a dominant role in creating their basic principles of ascetics and frugality which later became known and remembered as the Yenan spirit as its influence became more apparent. Mao and his military right-hand man Zhu De employed radical guerilla tactics to fight both the Guomindang and the Japanese during World War II and made policies that gained mass support of China���s peasant population where the Guomindang failed to do so. As a better alternative to the GMD and its allegedly rampant corruption and inflation problems, Mao���s soliders treated the peasants with respect and made promises of a better life. One of the major features of Mao���s leadership of the party was his deviation from conventional Marxist ideology: the peasants, rather than the urban proletariat, were to be the basis of the revolution. Mao stuck by his own ideas despite early criticism from the Russians and it was his philosphies exactly which brought power to the Party. It was Mao who was responsible for doing so and has been accordingly referred to as the ���Great Helmsan���. We are able to question whether similar successes could have been achieved if the Party had led a different path under a different leader.

The final 10% of ���good��� goes to improvements in health care and education, and economic successes. TO BE CONTI... FINISHED EVENTUALLY  ¶ 17:16 0 Comments

  Emergency
Emergency
Emergency

Somebody call an ambulance. Somebody help me. I'm sick.

I just registered on RSVP.com.au

Doomsday. The end. There's no turning back. It's done.

BLogging AND internet dating. There's got to be a word for this.

Goodbye dignity, you were there by my side for a long, long 21 years.



It's so much fun though. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun. Well I can, but fun on the internet. Oh my god.

Bye.  ¶ 21:59 0 Comments

  Read George Orwell to learn how to write.  ¶ 14:29 0 Comments

  Mr Piper leaned back in his chair, and said "God, there's chocolate icecream pouring out of this cone." (nice one Mum have a good time in Egypt). Later they returned to Betty's house in the country for coffee. They chatted outside under the twin plum trees while they smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. Wiping the dead leaves, squashed plums, and firm balls of sheep shit off the soles of their feet as they went in, Peter Piper asked Betty if she minded whether he sit down at her computer and add the third 400 words to his essay on Mao Zedong. "Sure, and it's late, why don't you stay the night? We can go to the Big Golden Guitar (Tamworth is where the country music festival is held annually) in the morning."

"Sounds like a great idea."

Later---

Peter Piper's essay was getting progressively worse. He kept repeating 'big words' to sound like he had a good vocabulary, words such as 'socioeconomic', 'progressively' and 'military right-hand man Zhu De'.

In the morning they indeed drove to the Big Golden Guitar after taking a dip in the pool. "Betty, you're like a jar of caviar, everyone wants to eat you, but noone wants to fork the bill."

"I know, Mr Piper, but I'm nevertheless pleased to be a jar of caviar. Smoked salmon and anchovies are OK but roe is the shit."

The End  ¶ 12:00 0 Comments

  Well I did my best during the bridge lesson but all I wanted to do was throw in the towel, and have a cup of tea and smoke. We played two games where you 'bid'. Arthur says that you won't be bothered playing any other game once you can play bridge. So I'm like 'yeah man, show me the money!' but it's one of those complicated games where you have to add stuff up and do weird things in general.

Gushi Shijian

Betty looked to her right and saw a million and three photos of herself growing up pinned to the notice board. It's time to lose weight and do it properly, she thought to herself. Not wanting to be a loony, she would have to do it gradually over time so noone thought she was anorexic just because she'd prefer to be a size 10. She would have to sacrifice her baby boobs but she'd rather be hot like in the olden days. Excersise was for the time being out of the question.

There were sheep in the front yard. Baaaa. She wondered if sheep could be mentally ill. Maybe they got left behind or perished according to the laws of survival of the woolliest.

Bob still hadn't enquired about her time in hospital and probably wouldn't. Seeing as though he had instructed her to 'pull herself out of it' she realised the true meaning of the generation gap. One parent thought it was a 'neurosis', the other thought she had been feeling a little 'blue'. Try being fucking insane! What do you think the Observation Unit is FOR? She thought to herself. The registrar had asked how it felt and she had replied that it was just a tragedy that she could not rely on the people that were there to be relied upon.

Peter Piper called and asked her out on a hot date. They had sashimi and miso soup. Mr Piper leaned back in his chair, smoked a cone, and said....

If you are reading this, leave a comment to say what he said. Coz I can't be bothered!!!

Love Lizwa

PS Don't make me have to leave a comment myself pretending to be someone else.  ¶ 12:51 0 Comments

  I hope you're sitting down, because guess what, I started my essay yesterday. I wrote 470 words. That's nearly 500, which means only 2500 to go! It was just the intro. It wasn't superb but it was passable.

I'm in Tamworth at the moment. My smoking is OK I just don't make it obvious. He lives on a property out on this country road about 15km outside of the city. There's a pool and sheep and a plum tree with a nest full of eggs just a shoulder height and whenever I'm under the tree sucking on a fag the bird comes and guards the nest by chirping at making various noises and flying past me really fast. Yesterday we went food shopping and went to look at jewellery and had lunch at a cafe called Gorgeous Grub where I had a cranberry frappe and smoked trout pate.

I'm reading a book called Tell Me I'm Here by Anne Deveson. It's about her son who had serious the s-word and didn't respond to medication. He rarely had insight into his illness unfortunately and ended up dying of an overdose. Yes, it's not like breaking your leg when you can look at your leg and say 'it's broken'.

This morning Margaret is going to teach me how to play bridge. Must have a shower.

Bye for now!  ¶ 09:25 0 Comments

  Just added 'daily cartoons' to my blog. Now it will be triply rewarding to visit.

Yesterday Jenny, Rod, her baby twins and two stepdaughters stayed the night before going on to Albury today. It's a spinout all three of us hanging out together. I wonder what I've missed out on. Being a nurse, she gave me my next injection today so I don't have to go to the surgery tomorrow. Which means I can leave earlier for Sydney. So far, a different person has given it each time. Last time it was the local ambo driver Paulos* and before that it was a nurse at a surgery in Kariong who had no idea what she was supposed to do, and couldn't even pretend she did.

We are having sausages and salad for dinner today.

I won the sauage eating competition. I beat Hunter and Nelson.
"No! No! No!" he cried. "Eat your other sausages," the father said.

OK bye.

LoVe LiZwA the one and only!  ¶ 18:50 0 Comments

  Home Economics

-Lizwa, my dear sister from another mother, please clean the mushy peas stuck to the walls of the microwave.
-Lucy Petal, my dear sister from another mother, let's sit down again and have another coffee.
-That's a splendid idea, Lizwa.

-So Lizwa, slurping her plungerfied coffee, did you or did you not use glad wrap on December 16th, 2005?
-I, I, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm innocent! Actually no, I didn't use glad wrap.

Next witness called: the bowl

-Yes, I was the bowl that embowled the mushy peas in the microwave. I saw everything. I was there.
-What exactly did you see on the night of the 16th, at around dinner time?
-Mushy peas splat everywhere. We were in there for three minutes. After one minute, it started splatting. Splatting, I tell you! Splatting!
-And who put you and the peas into the microwave?
-It was her! Lizwa! She did it!

-Lizwa, how do you plead?
-I plead guilty, for trying to feed the boys mushy peas! What a disaster!

Sentence:
-Lizwa is hereby sentenced to 20 minutes of cleaning at the Boyd correctional facility a.k.a. the kitchen.

-Hooray!
-Hooray!
-Hooray!  ¶ 13:27 0 Comments

  Summer Repeats: Tuesday, March 09, 2004


Draft for the Eulogy of my Metabolism

We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Gretel's metabolism and mourn its passing.
For twenty long years it kept the chub off Gretel's waist. Through its hard and dedicated work, there was no chocolate bar too fatty, no fast-food marathon weekend too disgusting, no bag of Skittles too big, to make Gretel put on extra weight. From the days at Monti's when Gretel saw her first dimple of cellulite to the semester of starvation and walking up and down Glebe Point Road all day, Gretel's metabolism worked tirelessly to let her enjoy the finer things in life without having to consider going to a gym.

But all good things must come to an end and it was Gretel's metabolism's time. We first noticed something was wrong when the last button popped off Gretel's last pair of pants and she realised she would have to fork out for a new pair. Her metabolism always seemed so vibrant and flexible and it was a shock to all of us, especially Gretel, when it came to light that Gretel would eventually have to stop stuffing her face everytime she walked past a 7-11.

Thankyou for twenty long years of service to Gretel. We have also received several messages of condolence from Cadbury, KFC and McDonalds.

***********************

Sydney Afternoon Herald, 9/3/04
"GHOST OF GRETEL'S METABOLSIM ROCKS GRETEL'S WALLET"
Local Taichung resident Gretel Bobskins was admitted involuntarily to the Insititute of Stop Buying Junk Food after insane claims that her metabolism is haunting her from the afterlife.
"I swear its taken control of me! Everytime I walk past a convenience store, I feel something grab me by the shoulders and drag me kicking and screaming into to the store. I can't escape it, it could only be an unearthly force that compels me to go in! You've got to believe me!"
Gretel went on to disclose that not only does she get dragged to the door, it takes her all the way to the chocolate section where it forces her to linger in front of a selection of six different Dove bars, Twixes, and some cheap Taiwanese chocolate bars and she must quickly choose, only after doing so can she then be allowed to feel human again.
"Gretel suffers from what we in the weight loss industry call 'I love Chocolate' Syndrome. It affects many women aged between 9 and 99 and if it goes untreated for too long, patients begin to put on weight," Says Dr. Lipo.  ¶ 18:42 0 Comments

  Still haven't started the essay. More excellent excuses. Rose and the utterly hilarious Marcin fresh out from Poland arrived yesterday and spent the night here at Kate's. Marcin is an avid fan of vodka and is just overflowing with surprises. Who would have thought pretending to stuff a turkey could be so obscene. Hyena-like laughs all around. Actually, just me. Rose has stopped drinking for undisclosed reasons. Will have to get her drunk to get it out of her. They left this arvo after cooking a wicked pasta bake. Am crashing in Newtown on Tuesday, will arrive fully stocked with the remnants of the vodka plus copious amounts of wine. John used to love using the word 'copious'. It was so funny. Sigh.

Then we went to Pioneer Park and had a couple of drinks for Ruth's farewell.

I added 'quote of the day' to my blog. See, visiting my blog is now a more rewarding experience than it ever was. Might add some more funky links and shit and jazz it up a bit.  ¶ 20:48 0 Comments

  Tonight we are having green salad, potato salad, some tzatziki and some 'fragrant meat.' No we're having steaks of ham cooked on the barbeque. The reason I keep talking about food is because the computer is in the kitchen.

TOday I got up at eleven, got dressed and went to Vinnie's with Kate to get clothes for the sports-themed party on Saturday. Then we went grocery shopping with the kids. She found a white tennis skirt which is absolutely tiny and I found a black viser to go with my black netball skirt that Nicole gave me in the hospital.

I hooked up my computer so that I could write the essay blaste and the monitor isn't turning on. Excellent excuse for not starting it. I'm going to allocate two hours a day towards sitting in front of the computer with a confusion of photocopies as if it was work and not some passionate piece of writing that I must get done all in one day because that would be the only way to do it. So I'm turning it into work. I'll take it to Tamworth anyway and do it there. Yeah right. I told my teacher he'd have it by mid-Feb so as you can foresee I won't be blogging on the fifteenth because I'll be too busy committing myself into the local mental hospital. I wonder if my lecturers have gone back to work yet because I sent in those two envelopes with my exams in them and I want to find out my new terrible marks.

Yesterday I received a package from Jessie my language exchange partner in Taiwan. She sent me the viking bear that I had totally forgotten about. Ingunn had given it to me when she arrived back from Iceland and I left it with Jessie when I left Taiwan. No idea why she sent it to me but it was nice to get. Shane suggested I take a photo of myself with it with the mountains in the background, put the photo in the package, and start sending 'Erik' all over the world so people can do the same in different locations and Erik can say he's been all over the world. At least someone will be able to! Just like a real viking. Kinda.

On Sunday our sister Jenny and her family are arriving from Brisbane. On Tuesday I'm going up to Tamworth for ten or so days and probably stopping at Sydney overnight. Then we have to start thinking about applying to TAFE for fine arts.

OK I hope that was boring enough for you all. I was reading over my first ever posts and remembered how inspired I was in Taiwan to write shit about various things such as taking piano lessons with a cutie that thought I was nuts for charging him the equivalent of eight bucks and hour. I look back and think I should have paid him four hundred kuai, just to knock his socks off.

Nelson has a nose bleed and Shane has just squished up a little plug to stick in his nose.

Oh by the way in my Year in Review I forgot to mention my 21st birthday. That was alright. Oh what was I talking about before that's right my first posts. Rose's favourite was the one in which I talk about the guy in the internet cafe who farted. I don't know man maybe when I travel again I'll have shitloads to bag out and joke about.

OK I'm just abusing my poor blog now, will call the department of community services and report it.

Bye,
Love Lizwa
The One and Only!  ¶ 19:37 0 Comments

  What's Your Title? Do You like Mushroom sauce, I'll put an anchovy in it, mushroom and cream?

Hello I just got back from Canberra. I photocopied lots of stuff at the library, hopefully I'll actually use it. Then I drove down the road to the national gallery and sussed out some of the paintings there. Some I didn't like, some I would have liked to have done myself, and some were just amazing. There was a craft exhibition there aswell where this man had gotten a huge piece of black fabric and used a sewing machine to 'draw' what from a distance looked like a painting, using long white lines of buttonhole stitches. Then I went to the shopping centre and had Macca's for lunch then drove home.

I feel awful about not going to the christmas party I was invited to, they were expecting me I just found out. Scheisse!

Kate so lovingly put my pink parka in a gentle wash on it's own but the cheap thing fell apart at the seams, several of them. So we're going to sew it up with pink ribbon or something. I wore it nearly every cold day last year though. Man it needed a wash, i took it camping and oil pastel got all over the sleeves.

I didn't have a cigarette all day today. Good on me.

Mark left today to go and see his mate in Shepparton. He's actually going to house-sit here from the tenth while Kate's in Tassie and I'm in Tamworth. The country music festival will be on and it may be worth checking out just for atmosphere etc.


I wore jeans today man what a day fifteen bucks on photocopying drinking like a fish eating MacDonald's for both breakfast and lunch plus all the soft drink I've been drinking for the past two weeks better watch my gut must start toning up and that;s the end of my long sentence. BYE EVERYBODY!

BYE DOCTOR NICK!

Better stop before mum thinks I've already developed full-blown The S-Word.

Ciao darlings, love youse all, find me a bloke, I want a husband and children aswell as a jetsetting lifestyle, give me a degree in design, buy me a book on fluidity, look at the clock, feel a bit tired,

still writing nonsense,
glad I went to the art gallery, might go do a painting!  ¶ 18:31 0 Comments

  2005: Year in Review
for posterity

Jan 14 Leave Taiwan*
Feb 23 Arrive home from Taiwan
Easter Recover from craziness
June/July Move to Newtown
August Start Uni again
September First car
November 3 Go crazy
December 14 Arrive in Tumut

So much to talk about!

I might go to Taiwan for a trip!
Camping: I tried wakeboarding, tried four times to get up, couldn't do it, not strong enough. Oh well. Camping was excellent, was well-known for sitting around and relaxing. Swam everyday in the beautiful clean water. Drew pictures. Last night was merry for new years. Kate's friends are all really nice. Had a great time.

Saw the doctor, handed me a leaflet on 'the S-word' as Edele put it. WTF, mate. As Deltra Goodrem put it, 'not I, not me,' etc.

Will write more tomorrow!
Love,
Lizwa  ¶ 20:26 0 Comments