One small step for man… (Benjamin)

Salutations and felicitations,

My name is Benjamin, but you can call me Ben/Benny/Ben 10/His Royal Highness (circle one) for short.  This year I’m studying first year Science at Melbourne, and am very much enjoying the course already (even though it’s only the first day).  I’m very much looking forward to blogging and meeting the other kind (and hopefully extremely attractive) bloggers whenever that may be.

To quickly introduce myself, I’m a Taurus, enjoy long walks on the beach and can slam dunk… Wait, this isn’t my E harmony profile is it?  Eh, same thing really.

I’m a Kwong Lee Dow Scholar and used to read this blog all the time (shout out to all past bloggers, especially Jeremy and jinghan), to learn more about uni and to help push myself through Year 12.  In VCE I did English, Biology, Chemistry, Maths Methods, Latin and French; the Latin particularly coming in useful for reading the occasional school motto and the French for becoming a more culturally aware person/appearing to be somewhat exotic.  To all the school kids out there, keep working, but remember to balance work and play.  Isn’t there a quote something like: ‘All work and no play makes Jack an unhappy boy.  But all play and no work results in an exponential increase to your friend count on Facebook.’  Or something like that, anyway… But seriously, everything in moderation, try strike that balance, enjoy yourself and you’re set for a good year. 🙂

I have a tendency of getting myself into rather awkward situtations, embarrassing not only myself, but those within a two metre vicinity (friends).  My claim to fame would have to be the good old ‘Try-overly-hard-to-be-cool-at-Year-Eight-mixed-paty-when-you-go-to-single-sex-school’ trick, where I went up to a group of girls and attempted the one liner ‘Hi there, I’m Ben.  I used to play netball and I’ve got a six pack.  How youse all doing?’  Oh, and fyi, both of those fun facts are true (oi, we did netball as a joke at primary school, alright?  Just chillax.  And know, it’s not the type of six pack that is drunk at parties.  Apologies.) Needless to say, that sentence resulted in a fair bit of giggling and what I like to call ‘apt descriptive words’ including “Stupid idiot” and “Brain-dead moron”.  The word ‘dignity’ is somewhat foreign to me.  Whenever those people see me now, I know that that line is still at the back of their head.  Don’t judge!  What I have is a skill.  We call it social ineptitude.

O week was lots of fun, especially the speed greeting activity, where my friend was so appalled by the fact that he was not on a table with this girl he had eyed that he asked me to give him a pretend name.  Being that he’s Sri Lankan, I thought I’d choose one that would suit his heritage; Vladmir (a Russian name which coincidentally is about as un Sri Lankan as it gets).  In his boredom, he decided to spell it ‘Vladamere’.  As soon as the conversation started, we all gave the impression to the other people that we’d never met before.  So of course, I quizzed him on his knowledge of the Russian language (of which I know a handful of words), which city he was born in and other easy to answer questions (note the sarcasm dripping off the screen and onto your keyboard).  He weaved a thoroughly unlikely tale with a straight face.  Someone asked him “Is your name really Vladamere?” to which he responded, “Obviously, is your name really Sarah?” resulting in me bursting out  laughing.  This was hastily covered by ducking under the table and breaking out into an extended ten second coughing fit.  Oh, and he couldn’t give/get the person’s details when he was on her table due to his pretend name.  Oh what a fun time that was.  Good old Vlad 😀

Oh, and just to stay somewhat on track, the other thing we did during O week apart from joining lots of clubs was go to some information lectures about how to adjust to uni life and stuff.  They were very good and helped me get organised.  The most informative thing I learnt though was how to write with your hand after not having done so for such a long time.  That was good too.  My old maths teacher once wrote ‘Reading Ben’s writing is akin to deciphering Egyptian Hieroglyphics; it is an art.’  Talk about a confidence boost!

Well that’s about it!  Thanks for reading this narcissistic rant. 🙂 I’m happy to answer any questions/queries/concerns that you may have, so feel free to comment. 😀

Peace and love,

Ben xx