Anti-War rallies, parties, extra classes, and rapping. (Rick)

A few weeks ago I went to an anti-war rally at the State Library. I thought I was going to go alone but I found one person who was also planning to go from my college. It was quite a big rally with about one thousand people. We marched down Swanston St. to Federation Square. I was yelling “No war on Iraq” and enjoyed the atmosphere. (I get a thrill from these things.) I got talking to some more of the people from ‘Socialist Alternative’ and decided to go to their meeting the next day.

That Saturday I went to their meeting, and after agreeing with their politics, joined ‘Socialist Alternative’. We basically see society split into two classes, an upper, ruling class and a lower, working class. The working class generates the wealth in society, as in ‘they do the work’. The ruling class (such as those in high positions of big business) is forced to be only concerned about maximising profits, and to do this they must make their workers have longer hours, and less pay. The ruling class has control over what our governments often do as they can threaten to leave their businesses from the country, affecting our economy. We look to the working class to make change, because when the working class threatens to and doesn’t work, businesses can lose millions of dollars in profit. So now every Saturday I’m going to a meeting and helping out with their stall in the city.

That Saturday night I went to a friends house warming party in Brunswick. It was the first time I’d seen their house and also the first time in a while I’d seen quite a few people from around my hometown. I’d organised to stay at another friends place. Three of the four people that were at that house for the night wanted to go home earlier, so I took them home and then went to the party again. By this time things were starting to get quieter, although there had been some bottle smashing out the back. When one of the people living in the house realised this was happening he told the people smashing to quit it and clean it up. One person was fairly happy to while another just acted smart. He was asked to leave and there was a small fight. (Really just a bit of shoving and yelling). I also got the chance to see the work sone so far for a ‘What’s Going On?’ video clip that we did the filming for last year. (It’s still being edited). I later went to my friends place again, also taking someone else to their place and also another friend also staying where I was for the night.

The next night was the day before Canberra day. Apparently this is a holiday they have in Canberra so someone in our college had a few friends come up from Canberra. Unfortunately they were partying well into the night, and I could hear them for quite a while since I live so close to our games room. I’m not really sure if they did really bother anyone else though – they might have not been close enough.

On the next Tuesday Ash Grunwald was playing on our main stage. And what an act it was! His music is lively and easy to listen to. During the performance my mum was sending some text messages to my phone asking if I was seeing Ash Grunwald playing, and then sent another text message stating the name of the song he was playing at that time. I then realised that they were giving a live broadcast of the show on PBS radio which I know is the main radio station she listens to. About half way during the performance there was once again lots of dancing, just this time there was a very, very big crowd.

That night there was a college night at a club in Melbourne. There were about a dozen people from Medley and proved to be not a great deal from other colleges probably about eighty people in total, apart from Janet Clarke Hall, which had almost twenty people. (And they are the second smallest college.) I stayed until very late for a Tuesday (1:15am) and felt very tired the next day.

This Wednesday night I got to sit on the high table at Medley Hall. As I was still tired from the last night I was less engaged in conversation than usual and found it harder to take things in.

On Thursday I had to go to a college tute at Newman College. I arrived at 8:31 at the room I was supposed to be in, and found that there was just a person playing a piano in that room and I let them know they’d have to leave. No-one else was coming, but I knew I was in the correct room because it was clearly posted on the door. I eventually decided to leave but found that it was a devil of a place to get out of if you don’t have keys. I even managed to get myself into deeper trouble when I locked myself outside where the car park is, and not being able to get back. Eventually I found someone wandering around (when I was also thinking that I didn’t know how to get out) and got out after fifteen minutes.

Recently I enrolled in some one off classes on the software Dreamweaver for website design and Flash for animation and interactive experiences. As I’d already had some experience with Dreamweaver the first class didn’t have much I didn’t know, but fortunately (and as I expected) the second class helped me to find out about some of it’s features which I did not know about or had used. I only went to the second flash class but unfortunately I didn’t find out anything I didn’t already know. (I was hoping to find out about some things that I might have missed.) At least I didn’t have to pay anything for them. 😀

The weekend a week ago I had my brother and Mum around. We were wanting to see some reggae music but unfortunately my brother was not old enough to be able to get into the place, so we went to Lygon Street in Carlton instead. We had ice – cream and found a Latin-American place to have breakfast the next morning. The breakfast we had there was fantastic. I had a rice porridge with vanilla and lemon, while we also shared a plate of a variety of food and very different cereal like dish that I wasn’t such a big fan of.

That Sunday night the leader of our choir took those in the choir out for dinner on Lygon Street. I was the only person who had pasta, while some others had some fish and chip like dishes, and quite a number had pasta. That night I had signed myself up for playing pool against the other colleges. I unfortunately did not get back to the college in time and missed the group that went, and even when they did go they were heading off late.

Wednesday of the week just gone brought a ‘Bad Taste Party’. We had to come dressed up in some bad-taste clothes and were encouraged to do some bad dancing. (although not many people tried) I got told that I wasn’t capable of dancing badly, but they didn’t comment after my efforts. During the night I decided to show off my two songs ‘In a Cage’ and ‘What’s Going On?’, and was enjoyed greatly by all. As usual I used all the space I could and tried to act out my pain in ‘What’s Going On? (The pain of not knowing what in the world is going on!) Annoyingly there wasn’t enough people willing so that the pie eating and bad-taste dancing competitions could go ahead.