Rick’s Cheer Squad (Rick)

On Monday I started my lunchtime off by following a friend to the basement of Union House. This is the place where all the ‘geeks’ hang out and this particular lunchtime they were moving to the second floor for the ‘Fantasy appreciation society’. They were doing a writing exercise in completing short stories from short paragraphs. After seeing what the thing was about, and having a go, I found it just wasn’t my thing and left. I bumped into an American exchange student from college and spoke for a while, then later found one of my best friends from high school, who was speaking to someone they had become friends with in their course. We spoke for a while and planned to have coffee on Lygon Street next week. I feel that I’m not trying to catch up with old friends as often as I should, but then again there are a lot of things that I’d like to be able to do more of.

I had planned this Wednesday to go to the comedy show ‘The Mathematical Revolution’, but unfortunately the person I had going with me was overwhelmed with an assignment which was due in the next day and they had not completed it. They were free on Thursday but as I’m enrolled at a college tute at Newman for Physics A (Adv) I couldn’t go. If I had it would’ve made a $15 show into a $40 show, and it wouldn’t be the same going by myself on Wednesday, so I said ‘no’.

After having that Thursday night tute I started to talking to someone from Newman who was in my physics tute this time as they’d missed theirs earlier. They were only doing the standard stream of physics and felt a little bit that some of the stuff we covered was beyond their course, and therefore I hadn’t seen them earlier. We spoke for a while, just about how we were finding things, and also where we were wanting to go, and then suddenly someone walked past that I knew there face but couldn’t put a name to it. He was like “Rick”, and I’m getting all confused trying to remember where in the world I’ve seen this bloke! I found out it was from the International Science School at the University of Sydney last year. He’d come from Brisbane to study medicine, but I know he is also quite the maths fan, so I felt a little annoyed that I didn’t know that he was here sooner, then maybe I would’ve had someone to go to ‘The Mathematical Revolution’.

Friday was the day of the annual general meeting of the Melbourne University Mathematics and Statistics Society (MUMS). I attended, and ran for a few positions, and got none. {:-( There was one person who was ridiculously running for almost every position even though he was in first year, and really just wasn’t serious about getting most of them. In the end though, he somehow managed to get first year rep, of which there were six candidates, and some others probably would’ve appreciated it more than him. Maybe that’s the strategy I should use next time? Run for all positions until people feel I should just have a position because I’ve run for so many, even those I’d clearly not be able to get. (Such as vice president, secretary, or treasurer, as did this guy, and make the meeting go longer.)

That night was the intercollegiate swimming sports carnival. I participated in the 100m freestyle and in the 4 times 50m medley relay, doing backstroke. In the 100m I did shockingly. Just after I was heading back to where I’d started (now at half way) most of the other competitors had finished, and I was left struggling. I don’t often swim, and am no fantastic one either. I managed to get a cheer squad from other colleges, with them yelling ‘Ricky! Ricky! Ricky!’ (Obviously caught on from Medley people.) I was quite amused, and managed to finish the race in 1:52 compared to the winning time of 1:03. I’ll do better in the 1500m in the athletics. I went searching out for Lara hoping she’d be there, (to say hi) but I wasn’t able to find and recognise her, (Photos can be hard), too bad I didn’t think about saying I’d be there or anything. But I did manage to see and talk with some other people that I did know, including someone in Trinity from my old school.

On Saturday morning I went mask shopping (for the Medley Hall Masquerade Ball) with some other people from my college. I wasn’t planning on buying a mask, just more having a look at some so I could make one myself, and fetch some elastic and a Stanley knife to make it.

Later that day I had my grandmother, her partner, my mum and brother come over and went to see Spymonkey’s show ‘Cooped’. It was a very random show with birds running into windows, horses with no bodies, and surprising us with having something hidden on just about every part of the stage. Later we had a good dinner at Federation Square, and saw my grandmother and her partner off.

My mum and brother hung around the city, just looking in some shops. We found a shop that sold things from and about Greece. My mum got a bracelet, which I was looking at earlier thinking that they would make very good presents for friends, as they were quite unusual and different. The beads looked like rocks with eyes and swirly pattens on them.

We then saw the spaceman that I was talking about a few weeks ago, and watched him for about ten minutes. Just before we left there was a woman who approached him and yelled “How dare you!?!” Was she offended that someone was trying to mimic a Martian? She walked away cursing, and just happened to be the direction we were going. She walked into a Seven Eleven and just when we walked past we saw her slip a Mentos (or similar) into her pocket. After walking on we saw she’d left too soon to pay for it, and saw her take it out of her pocket to eat. Not the first stealing I’ve seen in Melbourne before, although last time it was more serious. This was back in 2003 where I was at a café with some people from school and saw a man have his bag snatched (when sitting down) and getting up to chase the thief. Another time when I was about 12, in the country, I had someone smash the window of my bedroom and attempt to get in while I was there. I had been woken up and thought that there was a possum outside my window. I went to shoo it off and instead was face to face with this man who was just about to get in, and we gave each other a huge fright. It was just after a few nights of being away, and probably assumed that where he was breaking in was the back of the post office as we were living in it’s residence at the time.

At 9:30 we saw Sammy-J’s 55 Minute National Tour. He plays a keyboard and comes up with some very clever words. This show was about a series of performances over a few days, at the capitals of the states of Australia, and having a total performance time of 55 minutes. We started out in Brisbane, and introduced as if we were in Brisbane. In between each ‘set’ of about three songs there was a short clip showing him missing his flight to the next city everyday and having to resort to riding lawnmowers, hi-jacking planes and travelling by boat. (who cares about being realistic). At the start of the show Sammy-J asked me my name and I was wearing the Medley Hall rugby jumper. He complemented on it and got me to show everyone. He then asked a woman in the crowd her name, and spoke a bit, and then once being in that city was over, spoke into a microphone back stage into a ‘diary’, and said how he saw her after the show, etc. Later he then was getting freaked out at several of his ‘gigs’ at the different cities that she kept being in the crowd. Quite funny. We then saw him after the show, got him to sign some posters and I learnt that he is a student at The University of Melbourne, but is finishing this semester. I’m hoping to bump into him again and be able to say ‘Hey, it’s Sammy-G.’ (As he was called on the radio every morning on the clips and sometimes introduced at the shows.)

It should also be known that Sammy-J’s show got the Melbourne Airport Best Newcomer award. Yey! I saw an award-winning show! 😀