... and have a nervous breakdown instead!


  ¶ 19:11 0 Comments

  I met with my language exchange partner Rong Rong today. I've kind of forgotten about who's speaking what language and for how long, which makes it much more enjoyable as you can just have a normal conversation. Yes, it ended up being all English. ;-) But I didn't care. I grilled her about China today. Later I messaged her saying I hope it wasn't rude of me to ask all those pointing questions like "So, do you consider yourself a communist?" etc. And "have you read 1984?" I just find it fascinating. Anyway we went to the MCA which was kind of boring. The usual pointless videos of people sitting in a boat or a woman under water followed by crashing waves. Profound. No wonder it's free. She hasn't been on a ferry yet, so next time I'll take her on a ferry trip somewhere. Actually there was a good one. There was an old lady reading out a sermon and talking about praying and they had four screens showing people listening looking bored and unimpressed. I liked it.

One point Rong Rong made about democracy was that even though China's government doesn't have an opposition party to keep them in check, they are in fact scrutinised by the West and that's what makes them behave. But I think as long as they have all that cheap labour for sale do they really have to try to please anyone?  ¶ 16:53 0 Comments

  It's Friday night and I've dedicated tonight to writing an awesome response to the selection criteria for this job that I'm going to go for. News just in - you can use dot points in your answers. I like it. I like it alot.

Today I printed out the application form for a UK passport. I shuddered at the $300 price tag, but delighted in the list of countries that are part of the EU. Shani and Ian gave me a healthy reality check about London - most people who go there for working holidays never end up saving much to travel anyway, and rent is ridiculous, and the best bet would be to share a room with someone in an appartment with ten people living in it. I like that idea, though!!!

Today on smh in a forum about whether Sydneysiders are selfish, someone quoted some song lyrics that went "If you can't make it in Melbourne, you'll never make it in Sydney". Well, if I can't make it in Sydney... I guess I'll never make it in London! Shani said it was even more cut-throat than Sydney. Maybe I was destined not to have a good career. My new life plan is to sail through life without writing a single cover letter. I wonder how long that will last until I give in. Or when I'm 25 and still have no experience in anything. Alarm bells. Lai bu ji le. But who cares, even if I end up a bitter old phone-aswering underpaid masters-holding 40 year old at least I can say I did what I wanted to do, which is travel.

Vanja reckons temping is dead-end, but on the contrary, it can lead to opportunities. At the restaurant and catering association they said they'd be happy for me to apply for the events coordinator job that was coming up (I changed my mind after the title was changed to 'events administrative assistant', what a snob I am) so yeah that could have been half a footstep out of the Admin Circle of Doom. Funny that - the new title described the position very accurately, and I knew exactly what the job involved, but for me, it was obviously the title that mattered only. From a business perspective, the salary was something like 35 grand, so by emphasising the admin aspect of the job, then can get away with paying as little as possible.

Maybe I should have taken it. In fact, it would probably have been able to help me for the job I'm going to apply for which is an 'events and programs officer' position.

I'm totally procrastinating from writing this job app. It's like having a nasty assignment to write for uni.

I got another letter from the uni housing officer today, telling me that if I didn't contact them by Tuesday, they would be forced to terminate my tenancy. So I wrote an email just being honest with them saying it was all the AFP's fault (which it is) and that my circumstances warrant special consideration.

Now that I've got a computer, I can sit in my room and write to my heart's content. What I always dreamed of. OK inspiration. Maybe I should go buy a can of Redbull. The thing is, I want to write about experiences, and put it on the net, but not this blog, coz people I know read it. It's time for a new anonymous blog.

I cracked a funny the other day. Now I'm really procrastinating. I would tell the joke I made but it would reveal a personal secret I wish not to reveal.

I need inspiration. A male muse. Kuba is not a muse. Maybe George is, from half way around the world.  ¶ 19:51 0 Comments

  Announcement.
I realised that doing 4 subjects next semester is not going to make the finish date any earlier than the end of next year - I can still do 3 per semester plus one in the summer and finish at the same time, all while working full-time, and saving, which I am doing pretty well at right now. Thank god for the tin. St George can go get rich off someone else's measely two-digit balances for all I care, after charging me at least $20 a month for the past few months for ATM withdrawals. These days I withdraw my entire pay on pay day, pay my rent, add some to the money box, and keep the rest for spending. No ATM fees, no eftpos, nothing. Sucked in.
I went to bed at one last night. I saw Paris Je T'aime with Ian then we got a couple of bottles of red wine and hung out getting drunk and watching The Chasers War on Everything, which had me convulsing on the couch. Dude I had no idea Alan Jones really said things like that. Anyway Vanja came home and told us how she got elected president of the Australian Serbian Students Association, but declined. I'm like Dude, she should do it for all the women out there. ANYWAY after Ian went home, I helped Vanja write her Facebook profile. On Facebook, you can pay a dollar to send one of your friends a 'gift' which is basically just a small picture of something with a message. Anyway I got an anonymous gift from someone but you wouldn't blame me for suspecting German George... the picture was a picture of some handcuffs, and the message was "no message necessary". Dude this guy is on fire.
Oh so back to the job situation... I had to summon the courage to call the manager at the media place and apologise as profusely as humanely possible. But no one can deny it was still very bad form to say yes then change my mind. Damn. But obviously I wasn't going to start the job just because I had said yes.
Money money money in a rich man's world uh huh uh uh uh all the things I could do If I had a little George  ¶ 16:37 0 Comments

  The Legend Weekly
Announcements:
New computer. Yay.
The media place offered me a part-time position with better hours and the possibility of taking extra shifts. This is good - I will be able to study full-time next semester. Can't wait! It still only means I'll finish my degree at the end of next year, but live and learn, I guess.
I'm on Facebook. I'm not really seeing the point, but am eager to recruit many people to add themselves to my 'friends' list so that I look more popular :-) hehehe
I posted my monitor on ebay. Someone is coming to pick it up in an hour. I'm putting the dosh straight into the GSMF. Fuck maybe I didn't ask enough for it.
And what else. Um my boss is an angel, we really gossiped today. We got a letter asking for info regarding someone's estate, because lo and behold, someone is contesting his father's will, in which everything was left to the evil stepmother. Family law must be a tedious though lucrative business.
Oh and I declared that we are having Indian tonight, so yay.  ¶ 17:30 0 Comments

  I am starting a 'Ridiculous Shit in the Media' section on my blog. Here is the first edition.
Click here

In 1984, when Benedict headed the Vatican's doctrinal enforcement body as
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he said he was "personally" in favour of
scrapping the 13th-century notion, which he termed a mere "hypothesis."

OK that's cool. So limbo is just a notion. Next they'll be scrapping heaven too. But wait hang on, heaven doesn't count.

Could someone please 'hypothesise' why they publish this shit at all?

  ¶ 16:25 0 Comments

  My next big weekend will be the weekend Kate comes up for the Pink concert. We are going to stay in a hotel in the city and do fun stuff like on the Saturday a one-day art class etc. YAY FACTOR 10.

We are really democratic in this household. It was a funny morning. Marissa sent us a set of five key ring things with a Beijing Olympics theme. They are different colours. And Shani, Vanja and I all wanted the red one. So instead of fighting about it, we all gave an oration of sorts on why each of us should have the red one. I think Vanja won, because she argued that she always wears red, and she is a communist, so it just works. My argument was that in my family it is a tradition to pick the red playing token when playing board games etc. Anyway sad, but true.

I watched the Departed the other night. Fucking excellent. Got depressed - I would have started training on Monday. Today I got the same email I got three weeks ago telling me that I didn't pass the medical. So I cracked and sent them an email back. Here it is.

Dear Recruitment Team,
Thanks for the email. I actually received the same one from A-- --- over 3 weeks ago. It is also odd timing, as after my interview, I was booked in over the phone to start a course on April 16th - 3 days ago. The timing of the whole process has been very odd, and dare I say it, seems a little disorganised. After my interview, I was called by one of you, and told to fill out my security clearance and send it to Canberra. I was rung twice by them, by two different people, on two occasions 3 weeks apart, asking why I had sent it in. The first caller said she would sort it out, then three weeks later, after I imagine the form had been sitting in a pile somewhere (?) another person called to ask the same thing. It was then that I called recruitment, only to find out that there was a problem with my medical clearance. This was roughly two weeks after I attended the medical appointment, and I don't know how long it would have been left to actually tell me I had not passed, if I had not made those enquiries, remembering that the whole time I was preparing to start on the date given to me over the phone. Also, I am still waiting for my reply from the medical officer to find out why I didn't pass. I sent a letter three weeks ago.
I am probably also speaking for the possibly many others who put their lives on hold for this, only to encounter inefficiency and poor communication from recruitment. I think there's room for improvement. I deferred uni in aniticipation - if I had been informed just one week earlier that I could not proceed with my application, I could have re-enrolled. This has just added another semester to my degree.
Yours sincerely,

I wanted to really go wild, but this represents maximum restraint.

My savings for my ticket to London a.k.a. the George-Shagging Monetary Fund are under way. Small steps, small steps. Yeah. Only worked three days last week so this week I'm brokedy broke broke as usual, but I STILL put some cash into the GSMF. Today I only had a cheeseburger and small fries for lunch - $3.50! Good old maccas. But then I had a sushi roll for afternoon tea. I really should stick to buying the raw tuna ones in the morning. In the afternoon the slices have dried edges which you don't really want to stick in your mouth, unless you're hungry because you only had a cheeseburger and small fries for lunch, of course.

Kuba and I had so much fun last night. He fucking cracked me up big time. Sigh.

My laptop is arriving on Monday. I promise to:
1.Blog, blog, blog, every day.
2.Apply for jobs, and actually put some effort in. After all, I'll have the time and the... RESOURCES AHEM.

I started a spreadsheet of my expenditures, but I couldn't be bothered today, so now it's over. It doesn't really help much, it just hits home how much money you waste everyday on the little things (and the bigger things like alcohol) and you go OH MY GOD I'M SO BAD and then you go to the convenience store and buy a packet of chips and a snake for the bus ride home and forget about it. I've been a compulsive spender and smoker ever since I got home from Taiwan. I'm hypothesising the possible reasons behind this. As long as I stay away from can openers, I will never spend the sacred GSMF.

  ¶ 17:44 0 Comments

  1. Getting computer, finally, of the laptop variety. Statistics show that one out of three parents are unwilling to provide humanitarian aid for such causes, because, at age 67, they are unlikely to understand that you can't go to uni without a computer these days, and it is in fact a major part of educational expenses, which these days, parents usually provide with no questions asked. Times have changed. Dad is still at that stage where he thinks internet bank transfers mean giving your bank details to crooks and having your bank account emptied by a Nigerian conman operating from Rangoon.

2. The frequency of George's emails has increased, and I have started to hang out for the next one, which is a bad sign, because instead of enjoying it, I am addicted to it.

3. On Thursday night I saw 300 with Arnab. I crashed out not long after the Queen submits to the bad guy's manly and coercive domination, and woke up when Arnab started shaking the seat with his leg.
Kuba rang me this morning - he is in need of a companion to go see 300 tonight. As I agreed to see it with Kuba first, I am obliged to go see it again... at the IMAX. Wow. I surely won't be sleeping through this one.


5. This morning, I woke up in my own bed on a Saturday morning for the first time in ages. (Usually I wake up to the sound of Kuba's alarm at 6am every Saturday). I was therefore free to have morning dreams. Bizarre as usual, I had a dream that I became friends with the anti-social anti-Christ who lived in appartment 31, and we reminisced how I always thought he was a snob, but that now I knew better.

6. Speaking of Bangladesh, I went to a Burmese restaurant in Strathfield last night. Noone else wanted to order the deep-friend pigs intestines, so I resigned myself to stir-fried chicken, something new and revolutionary that I had never encountered before in my life. I was blown away by the depth of the cultural experience.  ¶ 10:57 0 Comments

  My phone woke me up this morning. I grabbed it from my desk. It took me .75 seconds to register the time on my clock radio (9:10) and then register who was calling (private number - the agency). I was so panicked, I then proceeded to do two things simultaneously: answer the call, and shout "SHIT!" There's little way I'll ever know whether Kate from Select heard this cry.
The call ended with her asking "Did you sleep in?", and there, sitting in my bed, I explained that I was "having trouble with the buses." Before my shower, I shouted an extra loud "SHIT!" just for good measure. Running to the bus stop, I sweated in my DJs shirt. Damn.  ¶ 17:29 0 Comments

  The lowdown on Byron Bay
To avoid the traffic, we took the long route, along Putty Rd to Singleton then past Tamworth and then further north. Total driving time: 17 hours!! 5 hours to the first campsite on Putty Rd, then 12 hours the next day from there to Byron Bay. Anyway it was fun. We stopped a million times for toilet, cigarrettes, reading the newspaper, buying prawns... there was never a reason not to stop.
We arrived with no prearranged accommodation so I was absolutely devastated when I realised I would be spending over half my budget to camp. $30 per person per night, minimum 4 night stay. SHIT!!! So after declaring bankruptcy I was nostalgic to the old days when you're a kid and your mum only gives you $2 to spend on the excursion to Taronga Zoo and you have to search the gift shop high and low for something under $2 while everyone else buys whatever they want. Ah, the good old days. [Sob sob]
The music was mostly funky. This performance by Xavier Rudd was mesmerising mainly due to the reaction from the crowd, which was one of hysteria especially as it became apparent he was beginning a reggae song that everyone seemed to know (except us). It was entertaining though - he sat on stage with 3 didgeridoos in front of him, some drums and a guitar, often playing all three at once. The audience screamed louder as the drum beat and the guitar strumming intensified and if only all the acts were as popular as this guy, the festival would have gone off.
Wandering into a performance by a band called Jackson Jackson I was immediately entertained and later spent the rest of my A-list budget on their CD. Which turned out to be alot of rap, which signals alarm bells for me, but it ain't too bad.
The first night we spent about 9 hours straight at the festival watching peformances and after a while I needed to get some space after it became more crowded and I became tired of the aroma of musty wet grass floating up from down below, not to mention the aroma of burning grass weaving in and out of the sea of heads, finding it's way to our noses every 3-4 minutes. We speculated as to whether we would become stoned by osmosis; luckily, I felt nothing.
The second night we had a bbq with Rose's friends Regina and Billy. That gave us a chance to drink for less than $5 per beer (did they even sell alcohol at Woodstock?), get drunk, and then drink-cycle back to the festival. I managed to stack it only once on the way. Speaking of Woodstock, I forgot to shave my underarms or take a razor, and this hairyness became known as 'going Woodstock'.
As for the weather, everyone commented on the rain, but noone seemed to note that it wasn't just bad luck - it is supposed to rain at this time of the year in Byron. Our tents didn't leak, and I found it fun cycling through the rain, so all was good.
On the way back we took the short route which took about 11 hours. Conversation included arguments over who farted, and whether I wanted any more pizza. And there you have the trip to Byron. Yay! Mission completed. So soon!  ¶ 11:12 0 Comments

  Mushroom picking is awesome fun, I highly recommend it. I had a bit of a hangover but managed to stay semi composed throughout the day. When I finally found my first mushroom I shouted "I found one! Can we go home now?!" as a joke, but it may not have been understood, because a couple people were politely telling me we were still going to lunch afterwards. Oops. Must - stop - being - sarcastic - - -
Tomorrow we are going to Byron Bay!!!!!!
Can't wait can't wait can't wait. Will be fun. Yay.
Dinner last Saturday was good, it was followed by drinks, and then later going off at Kuba for not answering his phone when I needed to get in. What a bastard!!! But he's my special man. Ah well.
Love
Lizwa  ¶ 17:46 0 Comments