So u know i am a study "freak", but i also have a great social life at uni. I want to introduce everyone to the wonderful societies, which i joined up and activities which i participate.
THe snow skiing club. Muski.
Great People running the club. They are so friendly to people. I just recently joined up the club, without knowning me, they lent me skiing equipment for the club skiing trip. The committe, Stephanie helped me a lot. Matt insisted to let me borrow his new skiing pant!!! (how kind is him?) not to forget Courney, paddy and the many new friends i met on the trip.
Beginner trip: must go event (for uni students)m, ski hard during day time and party hard at night. Great life.
Sports club. Play soccer on the hockey field at lunch. Play table tenis on monday and wed at 3:30.
Participate law school activities, eg competitions such as mooting (pretend to be a lawyer arguing a case in court) etc and go to a lunch time seminar once a week to learn about aspects of law, inc some greate lawyer's experience, org, charity work, etc.
I am losing the interest in writing the blog due to the difficulty of summarizing the epical length of my past 5 or 6weeks. Or maybe more accurately, I become lazy or school results did not go well or I was feeling depressed because I don’t like a quite holiday and I am affected by it. Lastly maybe I just become selfish, too occupied to do my own things and cbb writing the blog. L
(Hey, I just realize I feel more free by admitting my own weakness)
Look I am going to fire up and learn from these exps. Firstly about my progress, I got a pass for my law subjects, which refers to the essay and the exam assessments. I wasn’t happy initially because I put in so much and the result lowered my self confidence. However I realize I enjoy learning about law in the whole semester, which is the most important thing. I felt happy.Also I realized my English and other skills such as reading and writing are still not great yet, so I should not feel I am stupid. we all have strengths and weakness.
I have put in place to improve my skills. Reflect on what I have done (going over essays, tips), ask coordinator for help. Law teachers are really fantastic.(Ian Malkin, & the PPl coordinators,). Their offer of help gave me the hope that I have the opp. To improve.
(N.B for first yr law students)
I will summarise the gist of law exam now.
Since it is All about giving advice to a hyperthetical problem, ur summary (notes) should be focus on the issues of the case. (For more tip, make sure u listen to ur teacher’s advice, THINK AND DIGEST and FOLLOW THEM)
The facts of the problem can be expanded. (imagine and think about what they can be extended to, what if….. Do it in a practical sense though)
Sounds easy, but then why I did not do so well? This is all about the critical thinking of the issues. Your summary of the course should focus on the issues.
Ok, I am not here to teach. Teachers are the experts. Let me talk about my holiday now. The main thing which bothers me was the feeling of depression. I was at home for 3 of the 4 weeks. Since I have so much free time, I became bore doing the basic things in life. (think
NOw thinking back, i should have used the time to prestudy the subjects in this semester. The reading load is heavy.
Also it was up to me to spice my life, i can exercise, talk to friends on the phone....., just need to initiate the motivation to do positive things. then i will be able to enjoy the fun.
Most of all i should not complaint about my life. My family is wonderful. All i need to do is to study and hf in life. :)
The weekend back to Melbourne was extremely busy. First I picked up a friend from her sister's and stayed over at her place, watching Kill Bill. It was part funny, but with great shots and the sheer quantity of fighters at the end just bizarre. As usual me and my friend watched Rage on ABC TV for a little while, having a laugh at the bizarre video clips then went to bed.
The next day I got up and rushed over to Medley Hall to unpack. Most of the bags stayed on the floor for most of the week until I finally got a chance to put things away. I had lunch and then went to footy training for a game of Medley and JCH vs Trinity seconds. (Our colleges are that small we have to combine and go into the second division.) Saturday night I went to a 19th birthday party in Brunswick for a distant friend from high-school.
Sunday we played footy and won by about 8 goals to just a few behinds. I didn't exactly do too much to help us win. It started raining but it was all in fun, but made being tackled into the mud kind of fun.
This semester I again get a 9 O'clock start everyday but this time on three days I finish at 5:15pm and another 4:15pm, even though I've got only 20 hours compared to 24 last semester. I was dissapointed not to get Marty Ross, who was on Catalyst (ABC TV) the Thursday just before uni started, for Applied Mathematics Advanced, as I had to take the 9 O'clock stream. I remember him from a MUMS seminar from earlier this year, and was great. Maybe for a subject in the future?
I feel glad in some ways that my time table is more spread as it will give me more of a chance to talk to other students and study together rather than just going back to college. There's been a few Applied maths stuff I've been stuck on and would be great to have some people to help me (and me help them).
My subjects for this semester are:
| 136105 |
Science, Philosophy and History |
| 620122 |
Mathematics B (Advanced) |
| 620123 |
Applied Mathematics (Advanced) |
| 640122 |
Physics B (Adv) |
Science, Philosophy and history has proved to be extremely interesting and a great contrast from the other subjects in my course. And writing this entry is detracting from my editing of my mini-paper due tommorow. The first Monday I also felt very over stimulated with all the new faces!
On Thursday night we started to play a game called spoons at our college where we are given these (cheap) woodern spoons. We have to hold them in our hands and if someone else from our college taps us on the shoulder while they are not being held in the hands, and says our first and last names you loose your spoon. The aim to be the last holding their spoon. I managed to get SW's spoon after about 10 minutes when he was on the Medley Hall computers and had the spoon on his lap. He was reluctant to give it to me. About an hour later, I stupidly took SW's spoon with me instead of my own, someone noticed and I was thus out of the game. (I would've but then I would've dropped a bowl that was balanced on top of a plate I was going to wash.)
On Friday I took my double bass to the university and into my Maths B Advanced lecture. And did I sweat! I later took it to Newman College for the Intercollegiate Melbourne University Symphony Orchester. (ICMUSO). We practiced some of The Carnivals of the Animals and Carmen. (and something else...) Just so everybody knows we want more string players, and they don't nessersarily need to be in college. (Just given preference, but shouldn't matter for string people.) Also it isn't like we're playing super hard music either.
On Saturday I went out with my grandmother and her partner to a restaurant in Lygon street and had gnocci with a vegetarian sauce. It was definitely one of the best meals I'd had in ages, but I can't think of that places name right now.
Later that night I had some high school friends over for dinner and showed them around Medley Hall for those that hadn't seen the place yet. We later went to 'The Night Cat' in Fitzroy which was very busy and smokey. I had a few Hightail Mountain Goat's which I found out was a very tasty beer. I saw one guy from the intercollegiate orchestra who I'd invited and a few people from college came down later. It was a fun night with lots of fun dancing.
Here's a page with something to amuse yourself with regarding our good old Prime Minister that I did during the holidays.
Before I go, I'm just real happy to know that soon bananas will be affordable!
Rick
I have managed to be nicely sick over the last couple of weeks with a variety of bugs. Cold, flu, that whole sore-dizzy thing that Melbourne seems to have had over the last month, and the latest illness is something which, believe me, on a want-to-know basis, you most definetely do not want to know. (Let's just say that it evoked memories of my travels in China, where we got food poisoning so often that we kept a "scoreboard"). Best of all, this gastric bug just won't seem to go away and has managed to rear its ugly head at the most inconvenient of times.
Last Sunday I invited Dear Kim to come over with me to my grandparent's place for lunch over in the west of the city (the day after doing the 3am shuffle between bedroom and bathroom, then back to bedroom, back to bathroom... you get the drift). It all went without a hitch; Nan made sure not to ask (on threat of death, naturally) "WHAT are your intentions with my Grandson?", and we made sure that in order to gain any sort of acceptance into our family Kim understood that she had to support Geelong within the month. The train ride home rates a mention too, if only for the very funny Melbourne-supporting footy bogans (and isn't that a contradiction in terms?) who decided to entertain us all by teasing the single Bulldog supporter on the train. We left the train contented, with "It's a Grand Old Flag" ringing in our ears and the wind whistling through our clothes. That wasn't an issue; it had been a great day.
The problems came later.
Kim's family - wonderfully generous people that they are - had asked me if I was going to stay at their place for dinner? and of course there was no way that I was ever going to be able to turn down such an offer as that. On the menu was steak (slightly bloody, as I like it), followed up by potatoes and of course a little healthy salad. It wasn't quite until I'd finished my second steak that my gut began to wire little messages to my brain that it wasn't happy and had begun to sulk a little, and within the shorter side of five minutes that light sulking had suddenly turned into a fully-blown temper tantrum. "Please excuse my rudeness", I said, as I stood up, forced-smile hitched on my pasty, pale face, before running off to the bathroom as fast as politeness could possibly allow me.
I emerged twenty minutes later, having turned a delicate shade of vanilla, with slightly shaking legs and quivering knees. "You right, Jez?" asked Dearest Kim, at a time when sympathy was exactly what I needed. "Do you need to go home?". The thought of car travel was not exactly enthralling at the time but the thought of having my own bed and my own bathroom at my disposal instead of constantly abusing hers was too good to resist. I felt incredibly rude leaving, and this is akin to a nigh-on public apology to her family for leaving so abruptly, but I had no choice. I jumped in the car and they bade us farewell. "Now", said Kim, "if you need to pull over, just say so, believe me."
I grabbed her by the hand. "I, the undersigned, do hereby promise that I will not throw in your car - Jez." I meant it, too.
Well, it was certainly an interesting trip, to say the least. What should have been a twenty-minute hop, skip and a jump turned into a thirty-five minute sweat-faced extravaganza as we pulled over twice to let me try and recollect some sense of balance and settle my angry stomach, which had since progressed from temper tantrums to all-out guerilla war. Eventually we got home, and fifteen minutes later, the sick feeling disappeared (not completely), as fast as it had come. It's strange like that.
It didn't return (with the exception of another quick bout on Monday morning mid-lecture) until lunchtime today, when I was about to settle down to lunch with Kim. (The fact that I was with her both times when I was sick says a lot more about the amount of time we're spending together rather than any tenuous link between her company and me being sick). That makes eight days running of this bug, and I'm sick of not being able to eat properly. I want to be able to enjoy meals out and time with people I care about without needing to duck off to the loo once every ten minutes whenever fate decrees, and so I think I'm going to see someone about this tomorrow. The nausea sucks, but the frustration's worse. And yes, I am washing my hands with hot water and soap. No-one else in my family has caught it yet, and I think that's a credit on my part, thanks.
Anyway, I'm off to powder my nose... hope you're all settling nicely back into the world of academia;
w.love to all
a nicely sick jez
Dear Student IT abuse,
I would like to contest the temporary suspension of my account for 2 weeks from August 14th to August 28th 2006 due to reason suggested in your email to me of "one complaint about misuse of your email account. The complaint is that you have been attempting to sell (or buy) text books (or other goods or services) on the student email lists."
Firstly, I would like to request details of the specific complainant as I have reason to believe that a certain individual may have been involved in the initiation of this complaint. If Student IT is enforcing a punishment on account of this individual, they therefore may be liable to Section 4.1 of the University of Melbourne's Student Grievances Policy.
Secondly I would like Student IT to consider how strongly they adhere to their ‘Email Abuse Policy’?”
Last semester I contacted Student IT-abuse to complain about the large number of textbooks being advertised via the University email accounts. My complaint was brushed off through the reply that only "specific" complaints could be dealt with. This required the copying and forwarding to IT-abuse of all individual emails sent regarding textbooks.
Most students cannot be bothered to go through this time-consuming process and hence, decide not to complain. This in essence allows students to continue advertising text books with no punishment, hence indicating Student IT's conflicting 'Encourage Then Punish' Policy. After seeing continual emails sent out this semester regarding the advertising of textbooks and no end to the constant tirade, after much conscious moral debate, I decided “If you can’t beat them, then join them.” I do not consider myself at fault however after my conscious efforts in the past to follow “Policy” were later dismantled by poor management at Student IT.
It must also be mentioned that in addition, many students have no clear understanding of the actual Student IT policy regarding email accounts – possibly because the regulation document regarding Student IT is a tiresome eleven pages in length.
Above all however, it must be clear by now that in actual fact, Student IT could conserve resources and increase overall efficiency by CREATING a Student IT specific service which allows Melbourne University Students to list personal textbooks for sale, and for email users to sign up to alerts for textbooks that they may be interested in. A decrease in administration because of ‘email misuse’ in regards to advertising textbooks would conserve staff resources, while both textbook advertisers and email users would be happy (and love and cherish Student IT) because of the new, improved email system for dealing with the selling of textbooks (an issue many Melbourne University Students feel is bothersome and stressful at the beginning of a new semester). Overall, the IT-abuse reporting system itself would not be targeted by individuals willing to smear the reputation of fellow students such as myself.
In finale, perhaps a reversal in attitude by IT-abuse staff towards my case would help with the overall Growing Esteem program that the University is trying to implement?
I am available for further discussion on my case at any time during the working week. Otherwise with fondest respects, I look forward to your online response.
With best regards,
Sophie
After what was a pretty awesome rocking weekend at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay (the secret band being The Vines, of which Craig Nicholls did enough damage after the set to produce a novel-sized repair/replacement bill!), which was meant to be my final fling before hopping on a plane to venture back into the mysterious depths of Victoria, I arrived back in Sydney airport after catching a plane from the Gold Coast feeling rather tired and lethargic.
After being greeted by my parents we drove back home but by the time i was walking in the front door i was strangely REALLY tired and hot so i decided to lay down. Give it half an hour and, yep..you guessed it....
Half an hour later i'm walking out of the medical centre in tears of disbelief at how one can have such ongoing bad luck.
"Chicken Pox," says the doctor. "It can be much worse when you get it older, come back if you get really bad. Otherwise don't leave home for at least a week..or more depending how bad you get!"
So here i am, lying in bed unable to eat/move/swallow liquids/talk without being in immense pain. So much for my fresh return to Melbourne, hey!
*Sigh* I hope everyone else has had a great return to uni...Hopefully mine will come sooner rather than too much later. I'll attach some photos from Splendour anyways cause that was pretty fantastic.
Tomorrow will be spent reading what has been posted up on webraft in the way of lecture notes, prac information etc. i think. If i actually wake up from all that Nurofen! So upset that my return to uni has to be sabotaged by something as well!
Lara x
paul mac
me on the left and my friend kristy on the right at a place called cheeky monkeys the night before splendour started
The Zutons!
Wolfmother
The Vines!
Snow Patrol
evil wild bush turkey (aka- dinner) which we caught eating my friend's noodles while we were at the beach!
i took over 200 and something photos..ahhh good times
Just recently, I attended a best mate's 21st and was of course (rather dangerously, if you ask me), asked to provide a speech. Instead of going on and on about the party I think it's probably best to reprint the speech I gave.
I first met Brok in '95, when we were only in Year Three
A small boy who was adept at drawing aeroplanes and twisters
Doing flips on trampolines, attired in our dungarees
We stopped and propped in time for lunch, and then we bitched about our sisters
We were together in 5R, the naughtiest class since creation
They'd run amok and yell and shout and all without repercussion
Nothing could hold our attention, till of course Sex Education
We all sat down in a circle, and attempted "Class Discussion"
One small boy piped up and asked, "Why do condoms glow in the dark?"
A question that would've surely vexed us to this very day,
Had not of course, young Master Brok, been blessed with a mind so sharp
He stuck his hand up and announced, "It's so the sperm can see their way!".
I left the College in Year Seven, moving on to greener places,
And I found it hard to see the little friend I'd left behind,
There was a new world to explore, and those new exciting faces!
Twas then a sudden realisation briefly flitted 'cross my mind;
The best friendships are never those maintained by convenience,
Without suffering tribulations, obstacles both wide and tall,
Instead I find that they are those weathered by experience,
So when asked whose side you're on, you'll know exactly where to fall.
So when all is said and done, and time has washed the words away,
Should he have nowhere left to run, or no pennies left to spend,
I'll be there to break his fall, as he'd break mine in his own way,
And that's what I think you'd call, the definition of life-long friend.
In terms of adapting back into Uni life... eugh! On Friday I had the 21st, and I stuck around the next day to cleanup... the net result was not enough sleep (I had to grab forty-five minutes just before work to stay sane) before evening work as an Aquatic Engineer (well, ok, dishpick). Then, on Saturday and Sunday nights, I had a shocking temperature which resulted in me lying awake sweating for a good four hours a night when I really should have been asleep. Earlier today (Monday), this all finally caught up with me after the first 9.00 lecture (6.30am wakeup!) when I was exhausted to the point of faintness and nausea. As I slumped against my locker at 10.05 with my eyes closed Dear Kim (who is normally the studious one!) suggested that Chinese class was an optional extra for today and I could not agree more... before running off to the bathroom! (I managed to retain breakfast, for those of you interested in my health and wellbeing, but it was a close-run thing). Two hours later, I was immersed in a hot bath with a good book and a little bit of Gastrolyte in me and memories of good ol' food poisoning in China (without the bath of course) had begun to resurface. I'm feeling better now in the evening - though I think a sleep-in is in order!
Best of luck for the first week back,
jez
The adventure began at Oakleigh train station where I was met by my dear friend PXW in his own private form of transport (car) - something I'm not quite used to considering I am a proud MetCard holder. After a quick consultation of the Melways, off we went on our roadtrip to what seemed to be the edge of the earth...or the edge of Metropolitan Melbourne as we know it. Destination? Krispy Kreme.
With the inevitable roadtrip style "missed exit"....we finally arrived at Kath n' Kim territory - "Fown-tan Gate". Staring up into the hills, the new development covering every square inch was amazing. This really was the meaning of "Suburbian Expansion".
The queue was incredible. Going out the door, and snaking round the outside of the building. I could not believe how great the demand for Krispy Kreme was.
Finally once inside...it was fascinating to stare through the glass windows as the donuts were produced on the conveyor belt system.
The white shaped donuts are the raw mixture...notice the "Reject" which is not quite in its correct place.
The donuts after they have been sent through the oven.
The reject donut which has only been cooked on one side!!
A group of girls behind us were QUITE concerned that the reject may end up in someone's order!
Going through the icing machine....our friend the reject is still there.
Now how unhealthy does this look?!?! But oh....they taste SO DAMN GOOD!
FINALLY....the chance to choose what donuts we take home with us! We were extra lucky to be given a free HOT original glazed donut while waiting in line...it made waiting so much more fun!
THE DONUTS. MINE. MINE. MINE!!!!!!!!!!
Outside Krispy Kreme...the Drive-Thru line. About 10 or 15 cars long!
It was definitely an experience. Staff morale at the store was high...they were friendly but efficient. Krispy Kreme is supposedly known for its happy staff (always something I'm interested in after working for a company with particularly low staff morale).
They did try to short-change PXW when he passed over a $50 note...they thought it was a $20...so be on the ball - watch your money carefully! I'm sure everyone does that by habit though...I know I count my change down to the last cent no matter where I am...though perhaps that is just a weird commerce student thing?
Silly me did forget to take photos of THE ACTUAL DONUTS IN THE BOX.
The dozen I bought lasted approximately 35.9 minutes in my household of 6!
For those interested however,
I got 6 original glazed,
2 sour cream glazed,
1 devil's foodcake glazed,
3 chocolate covered, glazed with sprinkles.
= HEAVEN.
Ok, the holidays are almost over. Heading back to Melbourne tommorow, still have to pack but many of my bags were never emptied here since I never needed to properly empty them. Not looking forward to unpacking at Medley Hall again! (The doors make it take so long!)
On Wednesday I was at the University helping out with Orientation Week for semester two. (For new students this semester.) We were discussing ways to solve issues that uni students face around the topics of food, money, and relationships. On our table we had three facilitators including myself and Jeremy. Naturally Jeremey was the big talker and a little loose while I couldn't help being a little more serious and tried to stay on topic, but it actually made for quite a good mix.
The last bit of my holidays was spent making my Angry Man cartoon into an animation for the U-Film Fest coming in September. (The entries close mid-late August.)
Meant to be playing football for Medley Hall on Sunday, and I expect to be the worst kicker on the field!
I thought Melbourne's normal winter weather was pretty ordinary. There are a few consistent elements to Melbourne's winter weather. Number one is absolute, constant cloud cover punctured by little three-minutes patches of bright sunlight (and it's in this three-minute patch that you naturally choose what to wear for the day, and that how one ends up wearing clothing so cold that one wears one's nether regions as earrings). Number two is a chilly breeze that is always a headwind. I don't care what direction you are heading, the wind will turn and blow straight in your face even if does mean that it's blowing seven different directions all at once. Number three is that everyone wears black, number four is that it doesn't start raining until you get out of the car, and number five is that there will always be stupid women in miniskirts in subzero temperatures. That was, of course, all true up until this week. This week, someone turned the thermostat down. I don't care who it was. I just wish the little b****ds would turn the damn thing back up again!
Y'see, the last few days have been the sort of weather to make your body forget that it actually has extremeties. (Seriously. It's the sort of weather that makes you look, count, and say, "I'm sure I used to have ten of those!"). The thermometer has plummeted, the days seem to be even shorter than the solstice, and above all we have finally had rain. I know that its Good For The Farmers and Good For The Country but quite frankly I wish it was warm rain. Still, rain is becoming such a scarce commodity that I cannot complain about it too much. The validity of the seven-year-cycle argument of El Nino has well outworn its own welcome and the truth is that it just doesn't rain as much as it used to. Year after year, the creek at my Grandmother's property used to flood. We have photos of a submerged train line that runs a good seventy-five metres away. It has now only flooded once in the last seven to eight years and the lower paddocks never flood like they used to. Unlike our football ground.
I rocked up at quarter to eleven to footy on Saturday to find the eighteens having first use of the ground which looked more in tune to hosting an exfoliating mud bath rather than a game of footy. Players turned like dodgem cars and were coated from head to toe in mud. Our normally white jumpers looked as though we had come off second-best in a chocolate cake fight and the ball was so heavy it looked as though it wouldn't look out of place stuffed down a cannon. A small wave of mud sprayed out from under our feet every time a player turned. In short, it was a great day for footy. And this was only the U18's. Before the weekend was out, we would have the U18s, the reserves, the senior side, plus the colts and two or three sets of juniors playing on the ground. I feared that the last we would see of any under-nines player who went near the foward pocket on the far side would be a small, soft white hand frantically waving above the mud from some small child drowning cutely in a particularly muddy tract.
By the time we were halfway through our game (and I had to squint just to see through the rain) the rain was still bucketing down and the ground now looked as though someone had melted a giant ice rink and stirred some mud through it for good effect. Club Stalwart 'Prangers' did not slide through the water as he dived for the high footy; he aquaplaned, sending great sheets of water either side of him as he dived, like the bow wave from a ship. Our runner was told to slow down five metres away from the coach's box so as to not splatter him with mud. At the end of the game, the sheds consisted of three or four either polite or underendowed young souls clustered in the room and the other eighteen of us lining up, waiting for the showers. Even after a good shower-hogging three minutes, I still couldn't get all the dirt off. It was straight home and into another shower, where I finally managed to peel off the thick sports tape across my left shoulder. Naturally it felt as though I was peeling off half my skin and left three angry bright-red welts across my back where the tape was. Not for the first time in my life (!!), I made a mental note to NEVER get my legs waxed. (And every time I shave my face in the morning, I give thanks for the invention of razors).
After Sunday - a day miraculously spent under roofs and ceilings - came Monday and that brought with it a visit out to Knox to a local school to promote the Wonderful Wide World of GAP (the organisation who sent me overseas to China to teach English). I knew it was going to be a fantastic day on three counts; one, the parcel containing all the promotional material such as brochures et al didn't show up, two, GAP had promised to cover all my transport costs which was great excepting of course for the fact that the quickest way there was by bicycle, and of course the third factor was incessant rain all morning. Ah well - a little rain never hurt anybody. Trying hard not to think of hot chocolate and chicken soup, I stuffed some warm clothes in a bag, pushed off into the rain and started to pedal.
Even in the rain, once I got used to the cold, I began to enjoy the riding; I always have and always will. I even began to enjoy the cold air that lapped my frozen fingers as I began to make the long climb out of Warrandyte. I rode into Ringwood in not unreasonable time in the wet, and then the rain's intensity doubled. Down I rolled towards Wantirna - where the hell was this turnoff onto Mountain Highway? - and suddenly the magic of the ride was lost as I was almost swiped by a truck who decided that twenty centimetres was certainly an adequate distance to differentiate cyclists from pancakes. My heart leaped into my mouth as I pulled off the road and onto the gravel to recollect myself. Suddenly the Cycling Magic Trick started to come into play - jump in the saddle and watch your Melways grow! - and I became aware of just how freezing and soaked I was. Water was kicking up off both the front and back wheels, creating wet trails down both my back, and front, and the rain was making visibility tough. After paying homage to the Law Of Threes by missing the turnoff to the school, I looked a pretty, pretty picture as I trudged into reception, with no brochures, no car and a sopping wet bike top. After defrosting me from the inside out with some coffee, the friendly counsellor (if the Counsellor of the Knox School is reading this, a big thankyou is in order) showed me through to the spacious disabled loo, complete with heater and hot shower (which I would have used but for want of a towel). Whatever they pay those people, it isn't enough.
In the finish I managed to use my considerable resourcefulness to pull off some sort of display at our GAP table (what this really means is that I pilfered the three display brochures from the school's Career's office and looked wistfully at RMIT's exquisite setup with flags, brochures, posters, themed plastic bags and giveaway Fantails whilst reading through my pitiful three brochures in turn). The Careers person, who initially looked at me as though I smelt quite bad (and to be honest she had very good reason for it), turned out to be quite friendly and accomodating (after a change of clothes from yours truly) and seemed quite unfussed about our somewhat spartan demonstration. "Less is more!", I said with a hopeful smile, and I feel that all five students who visited our stall in the three hours I was there validated my attitude.
I won't mention what it was like changing back into that sopping, cold, thin set of bike-riding clothes but I think I could summarise it by saying that my voice was substantially higher after I put them on than before I was changed.
I flew home like the wind (there is a nice cause-and-effect to having done all that climbing in the morning) and rode up beside the house. You wouldn't believe it - there was the courier-sent parcel full of GAP-advertising paraphernalia, three hours late and containing enough brochures and material to convince a used car salesman. Smiling wryly to myself, I walked through to the laundry and took off my riding gear. There are two tests that men apply to dirty garments to determine if it needs a wash or not (and these can be relaxed on school camps if needs be). Unfortunately my bike top probably failed the visual test and most definetely failed the sniff test and so in it went. Utilising this form of jurisdiction, some men have been known to wear the same black t-shirt for months on end. Lucky for poor Kim who we were inviting over for dinner that night I did decide to throw the bike top in the wash, and shut the laundry door to cover the slight pong. Actually, in all honesty, I did the same with my bedroom too for exactly the same reason.
The next day (and I'm trying not to make this post too long) I had a slightly better selling experience. I ambled into Uni for the mid-year recruitment Clubs and Societies day with the aim of giving away not too much chocolate and selling plenty of memberships. Unfortunately our poor Vice-President had managed to not only contract appendicitis but also an infected wound after surgery (he could have just told me he didn't want to do it in the first place instead and saved himself the trouble) and so I am still ever-grateful for the prescence of Darling Kim who decided to help out of nothing more than a sense of charity and perhaps a little bit of chocolate. I knew we were in for a good day when I set up table next to a long-lost school buddy (think: 1996) from the Political Interest Society and we had managed to rake in ten members to their every one within the first hour. Within an hour and a half I had made a reconnaisance trip for more pens, emergency chocolate blocks (as we were running low) and our Chocaholics polo-shirt stuffed deep within the bowels of the CLS locker, and within two and a half hours Sophie had turned up for the PIS table (though there's something about that acronym that bothers me) and had finally managed to meet Kim for the first time, having heard about nothing but her for the past month. Speaking of Kim, she was fantastic as a chocolate jockey and I honestly would have been completely snowed in without her. Apart from Krispy Kremes, arty movies, chocolate, and, most importantly of all, each other, we don't share a whole lot of common interests and to me that's the most special part to our relationship. To me, it means that there is more than mere superficiality in my relationship to this wonderful woman, and she is now probably quite red and embarassed after reading this so I'll stop that now! (Suffice to say that I also met Sophie's 'J' for the first time - a really nice guy and a living incarnation of every word Soph said about him - and I would like to start a nationwide campaign to get him on board with our idea of a double-date to 'Ten Canoes'. He's still standing firm, despite the attempts of us three to coerce him).
Best of luck with Alloc8 (and don't I just wish that system had manual override with timetable clashes);
jez
ps - Anyone who has read and enjoyed the following - Wild Swans, Mao's Last Dancer, The Russian Gulag, Long Walk to Freedom - go and read 'Life and Death in Shanghai' (Nien Cheng). In fact, just go and read it anyway. It is the most powerful book I have read - and it has serious competition on that front.
pps - I had my first blogging fan come up to me today and tell me how much she enjoyed reading this! I didn't know anyone did, so thanks. Hope you enjoy your transition back to Uni and stay in touch!
Number of posts found:
1327