*dances* Things are starting to look up a little! I'm auditioning for Anything Goes for the Geelong Lyric Theatre Society. It will be brilliant - I'm auditioning for Hope Harcourt, the debutante ingenue (she sings It's Delovely with her love interest, Billy Crocker). So, if I do get in, I'll also have to travel to Geelong three times a week.. which will be slightly annoying, but I'd do it for my chance at a lead role. So, wish me luck!
As certain people would know, I have been practically incommunicado for the last half of semester. Feelings of isolation and despair, along with the whole gamut of negative emotions, have been swamping me. Life has been extremely hard, and there have been many day when I simply could not get out of bed, let alone go to class or attempt to have a social life. Luckily, it's subsiding - I got a new job, I'm auditioning for a show, it's almost holidays and I've been doing lots of exercise... it's easier to feel positive when your life if full of bright, promising things.
I feel dreadful for how many classes I have missed though. I'm still doing my exams, except for the Archaeology subject I wthdrew from. It's just been a bad semester.. so much to get used to, and I'm away from my family and everybody who loves me and cares about me. It's just about the loneliest place to be.
Anyway - on to happy things! Or at least things I can be spirited about ... my Dad is getting married. I suppose it's a happy thing for him, but I have been angry. Now I just feel almost apathetic towards it.... sure, he's marrying the woman who he had an affair with leading to the end of my parents marriage, but will be happy in the end? He asked my sister to play cello and me to sing at his wedding.. wedding? The word sounds strange. Like it's for young people, women in white dresses being walked down the aisle by their fathers, nervous men lined up at the altar whispering to each other. Not my 50 year old father and his .. well, Taiwanese fiancee who is well into her 40s. Hmmmmrmrmrm
In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now God knows, anything goes! I'm so excited about the show...
OK - I am sure that those of you who have actually read my blog, if there are any of you, have been wondering whether or not my last entry actually indicated my death. However, let me assure you, I am not dead (although a recent article in Farrago may have also suggested otherwise). I've been catching up with all my Uni work while trying to pay rent and all that jazz, and it really became all too much to try and blog amidst that. The good news now, though, is that I don't actually HAVE any exams, and all my assessments have been handed in, so now I can blog freely! Be this an important lesson to all prospective UniMelb kiddies: take a course which does not require exams, because even though it leads to a lot of stress towards the end of semester, it gives you four extra weeks of holidays when you'd otherwise be studying. Muahahaha. Not to rub it in or anything. I mean, surely at least one of my fellow bloggers doesn't have exams either? What's that? You've all got exams? Deepest sympathies guys. I'm sure that all your long hours of studying pages upon pages of text by the cold light of your desk lamps are going great! In your honour, I've decided to compose this acrostic poem.
F irst year I am in, and
R elaxing is what I do whilst not studying for any exams.
E nergy is what I possess much of because my
E ffortless, casual attitude allows me to appreciate life as the
D ays drift slowly by. How lucky I am that
O nly assignments comprise
M y assessment critera; and thus I have no exams.
Hahaha. I know, I'm being really slack rubbing it in, but hey! It's been one hell of a semester and it's good to vent a little when it's all over. Aside from Uni stuff, things have been pretty OK. Work is still long hours and quite tiring, but I'm also finding more time to go out (have been enjoying Smith St. in Collingwood recently - awesome place) and... responsibly... consume alcohol. Been writing a fair bit too, both for Farrago and myself, and I'm looking forward to trying to get some stuff up and running for next year's fringe festival. So much is going on and that always seems to be the case with University life, even when semester's over. But I can't really say that I'm unhappy about that. It's pretty much what I wanted from Uni. Anyway, if this site still exists in a couple of weeks, I'll keep you posted on what's happening. Until then - GOOD LUCK WITH EXAMS (e-x-a-m-s?) EVERYONE!
EDIT: Well, I've just been catching up on everyone else's entries, and I gathered a few things. Firstly, my repeated hammering home of the exam joke mightn't be funny to poor Lara, who I hope is doing OK back in Sydney. Secondly, this whole blog seems to have turned into Big Brother 06 (not that I watch it or anything, I mean, I'm far too busy wearing black leather gloves and smoking whilst reading Sartre and dissecting Focault's historical discourses to bother with popular culture), what with a new intruder (G'day Jez) and some exciting drama heating up. I look forward to reading how everyone's going through the exam period. Lastly - you all write bloody long entries! So much for my makeup extravaganza. Well, I think this extra edit addition surely makes up for any deficiency in substance, quality or charisma that my entry (self?) may have. Oh, and one more thing. I've been working closely with the Media Society and am one of the Arts producers of our very own SYN FM radio show! So tune in tomorrow and have a listen, to ease all of your exam worries!
SYN FM 90.7 - 2PM TIL 4PM - TUESDAYS ALL THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS
Cheers all!
Chris
I can almost picture it. Over one hundred years ago, a group of men sat around a table, preferably each sporting a decent amount of facial hair (as was the fashion at the time) and perhaps a monocle just to complete the picture. They were setting up what eventually became the Australian Football League, and were designing the uniform. One of them, the guy in the corner with a sense of humour (presumably Warwick Capper's grandfather), sniggers and points to the knee-length knickerbockers proposed by the rest of the group. "I've got a much better idea than that," he says, with a slightly cruel, maniacal glint in the very pupil of his eye as he grabbed the eraser and replaced the knickerbockers with a pair of shorts that looked as though they were painted on. "It's a winter game! This'll make men of them!"
Geez I hate that man.
Might I explain. It's winter, of course, and the weather's suddenly hit a cold snap at night because the clouds have suddenly left Melbourne for the last few days. Footy training starts at 6.15 every Tuesday and Thursday evening, and by then it is well and truly dark, and well and truly freezing. To compound that, I seem to have inherited a frustratingly annoying trait from the paternal side of the family; that would be the Hodges trademark Barely-There Butt. My barely-there butt makes clothes shopping difficult at the best of times (YOU try buying jeans that fit your hips but come about three inches past your knees) but it makes footy shorts nigh-on embarassing. I pull them out of my bag with a resigned sigh. They look as though they were made out of two facewashers stitched together (with material left over for the ties at the side). In short, they're not much longer than my own handspan. As I jog down the race, you can hear me yelling out something that sounds like "BRASS MONKEYS!!!", except of course that it starts with the letter 'F'. As soon as I get home, covered in mud and filth from head to toe, the first thing I feel like doing is jumping into the microwave and doing about thirty seconds on defrost cycle. And I would, excepting of course the fact that a) I don't fit in the microwave and b) I would cop so much radiation that I would probably grow at extra arm out of my big toe. I'm trying to work out if that would be beneficial for footy.
Of course, when the mercury does plummet and all good boys and girls decide to stay indoors, I have discovered a new best friend; my fingerless gloves. Oh, I love thee, fingerless gloves. I love you more than words could ever say, even if you do make me look like a wandering hobo. (When wearing my fingerless gloves in conjunction with my trenchcoat, I can make mothers with young children cross the street from thirty paces, preferably with Little Jimmy tugging on his mother's arm, asking "Who is that strange dirty man, Mummy?"). I don't care. I need functioning fingers, although I do appreciate that there are another nine where that first one came from.
So imagine my panic when I lost them (the gloves, not the fingers, idiot) in my room, on the floor, somewhere. I searched using my usual technique; they're not bundled up in my coat, they're not immediately visible under the bed, they're not snuggled down in between the bedside table and the bed, and they're not even busy acquainting themselves with whatever detritus has cultivated itself at the bottom of my bag. (Don't ask.) I began to panic. It was obviously Time To Clean My Room.
I took a step back, and looked at the whole setup from the doorway. Simply put, it looked a bit like the sort of thing that really should have been cordoned off by the CSIRO. Bits of newspaper were almost walking across the room of their own accord. Various Year 12 notes - hauled out for some referencing - were scattered exactly where I left them about a month ago. This was going to be a job and a half. Welcome to the Monkey House (and apologies to the Dandy Warhols).
I went downstairs and came back armed with some new weaponry; not just one garbage bag but a whole roll of the damn things, a vacuum cleaner, a washing basket (and kero and a couple of matches in case things got really bad). First port of call was the massive pile of dirty washing in the far corner. I call it the "half-a-day pile"; but the cat-shaped imprint (complete with molted ginger fur) in the coat lying on the top of it told me that it was probably ready for a wash. One by one I stuck the items into the washing basket, pausing at times to say, "THAT'S where that went!" (for a necklace), or just "Eww" (for anything found in my pockets). Eventually the pile began to shrink and then disappear. "So THAT'S what colour my floor is!", I exclaimed in surprise, as though making reacquaintance with a long-lost friend, before completely disappearing behind a clothesbasket full of dirty washing. I staggered, unbalanced and completely blinded by the wonderful viewpoint of last week's jeans and dirty socks, down the steps to the laundry and dumped the whole lot in our large basket beside the washing machine. Task one complete.
Once I'd picked up all my notes from off the floor, I considered one by one the best place to put them in a neat and ordered fashion before completely disregarding all those places and throwing the notes into the top of my wardrobe. Keeping one hand on the copious (and heavy) pile of foolscap A4 which contained pretty much every single thing I had ever written in the year 2003 (my graduation year), I reached across to the other side of the cupboard and somehow managed to haul the door shut, all the meanwhile making a mental note to myself to never, ever open that door again.
Finally, it was time for the activity which I had been putting off for the entire morning; underneath the bed. Under The Bed in my room is the sort of place that the University Of Melbourne Biology Research Department would pay very good money to see. The items that are found under my bed can be classified into three different categories; things that were once alive, things that are alive, and things that will soon take life. I daren't look as I plunge an innocent, unsuspecting hand Underneath The Bed. (Did I really hear that "meow", or was I simply just imagining it?). "Now", I say to myself as I see the sock that I somehow managed to pluck from the quagmire that lies beneath the mattress, "what WAS the original colour of that thing again?". Straight into the garbage bag it goes. In fact, better make it two.
The good news is, that after a long, thorough session of room-cleaning, I finally have to myself a space that would be considered fit for human habitation without bribing the authorities in question. Now, to just work out how to study for the next six months without either using my desk or opening the wardrobe is the next question. I'll get back to you on that one.
And guess what? Just earlier this morning I was walking out the door to meet up with Kim and Dylan from my Maths lecture - bless their little cotton socks. Turning the key in the lock, I spied two little spots of black out the corner of my eye, sitting on the desk we have beside the back door. I couldn't believe it. Oh my fingerless gloves, how I love thee so.
w. love to all, even those who are not my fingerless gloves,
jez
I just taught myself a Semester's worth of Accounting in 3 days.
Yes...during SWOTVAC you start to have regrets - i.e I THOUGHT I had Accounting under control...only to realise that in reality I had no idea how to even do a basic ledger account, let alone what the difference was between a Statement of Financial Performance and Statement of Financial Position!
Everything else is going well though -i.e QM1, Management and Intro Micro.
I'm still really nervous about exams despite that my current level of effort (study) = high. This time it matters...a hell of a lot more than Year 12. I have so much that's hanging in the balance over these exams (internships next year at IBs, future jobs ect ect)...I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling the pressure. Actually - I've been feeling the pressue all year.
I try to keep a sensible view about it all though. I mean...the main thing is that I simply pass. No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes in first year, and that's what uni is about - it's a massive learning curve. If I don't get top marks this semester, there is always next. And above all, marks are not everything. If you want to be successful in life, you will be. Marks do not determine your own person worth or value (though they can help with getting a job!).
Anyways...
"I'm going back to studying."
-I hate the way that sounds! lol.
On a side note, looking from an outsider's persective, I am deeply amused at my current state. I have never studied this hard in my life; it got to the point the other night where my own mother was fearing I was having a MENTAL breakdown! I had to re-assure her that I was simply putting in 100% so I couldn't have any thoughts of "If only" -i.e when I receive my results I will accept it and....party on!
As for partying...
There is already so much in my coming vacation to look forward to. Just thinking about it overwhelms me with excitement!!! I can't wait!
I’m not sure how my other fellow bloggers write their entries, but I never do it all in one go. I’m fortunate enough to be able to write this post in my room, after my brother has been not doing his homework at home, so now I’ve got this computer for a while. It’s also good because it’s giving me access to Macromedia Dreamweaver as the Medley Hall computers do not have it. Unfortunately my brother forgot to bring the adapter so I can use the sound card, meaning I can’t listen to the music and also forgot the power cord for the wireless mouse recharging dock, so I estimate I’ve got about 30 hours of use in it, which should be ok at this time of year, as I will be doing lots of study, and I can use the computer reasonably efficiently just using keyboard shortcuts.
The last week brought a few small things apart from all the study I was doing for exams. I created a comic strip called ‘Angry Man’ and have since uploaded to my website.
This was published in our college newsletter ‘The Medley Mail’, and was enjoyed by many. I’ve had many references to it by people including when they’ve been angry about something and talked about biting it.
On Tuesday I had my Physics extended abstract writing, of which I don’t really enjoy, once again because there is no consistency in what is expected by us according to the lab manuals and web resources to what our lab tutors seem to want. I do feel though my current tutor is more consistent with the manual than my first.
I was fortunate to finish that early and went with someone else in my lab class to the U-Bar, along with some other people. I was able to meet some other people studying science, but were doing different subjects. (I’m one of the very few not doing biology or chemistry in my degree. (Most likely will not take them up.)) I played doubles in pool with these people and after quite an adventuress game, including an army of four of our balls blocking their ball, we lost.
Also this day there were people giving out free promotional Berocca tablets, a multi-vitamin supplement. Appealing to the fact that we want to do well in exams for less effort is why they were obviously around for. It’s worked for me and I got a pack of thirty tablets. I figure I’ll just try to ensure that everything’s all well and good in my health department, even if maybe I am getting all the vitamins I need.
Wednesday brought a debate between Socialist Alternative and the ALP club. Although the ALP club asked for this debate, they felt less organised in their preparation than we did. Although I do know that many of our members are used to speaking and debating due to the nature of the clubs meetings, and that a smaller organisation needs to make sure it has well developed politics. (Also so we couldn’t get sold out.)
There are only two things I find it hard to fully comprehend in this organisation: The use of the word ‘girl’ is somehow sexist when referring to anyone of a mature age, about 13 up, and should use ‘woman’ instead. I can kind of see their point but isn’t the word ‘boy’ used just as often? Ok, maybe quite not as often, but the word ‘guys’ might also be used. (Although sometimes also used to refer to both sexes.) We sometimes use ‘gals’ but damn doesn’t that sound like ‘girls’? When people say ‘man’, I even find it hard to feel comfortable being put in that category, and, maybe it’s just me, the words ‘man’ and ‘woman’ when used I think of someone over the age of thirty. The other is that our police really shouldn’t be in society are not the solution. It is true that our police really don’t always do the right thing by people, including incidents (one’s I’ve known about before this year) where the police have charged peaceful protesters, thus causing fights. Naturally the media were filming, and edited it so what was covered was a violent protest, that people just don’t relate to. Emphasising the violence of any protest discourages future protesters, and since we live in a corporate world where our media are so closely tied to big business, it is in there interest to make as many demonstrations as possible violent. But on the flip-side we couldn’t do without them. There are many who just simply do what they want and chaos would break loose. Our police ensure that we don’t live in a society where everyone is fighting and murders are rampant. Police won’t solve the current gang fights in aboriginal communities, but the current situation will require them to contain it. This will not be enough, but will require some real planning, real funding, and a sincere effort to make peaceful communities. We must also not forget one of the many reasons why their society has descended to this! (The Stolen Generation)
Now for something more entertaining. On Thursday at lunch time I went to the back entrance of the J. H. Michell theatre of the Richard Berry Building. There was an Introduction to Programming lecture with Alistair Moffat. I knew one person from my college in there and also knew Alistair from enrolment day. He’s quite a character. Anyway, when I was out the back I put a scream mask on, and waited until I could heard that they’d finished the student surveys that students fill out about the lecturer. One person, who happened to be late (not many after lunch), saw me, and was staring at me for a while as they walked up the stairs into the lecture theatre. Eventually I decided to walk in and sat up the back of the lecture theatre, listening to the lecture. A few more late people came and quietly laughed as they saw me. Eventually, after about four minutes Alistair saw me and said something like “Hello, we have a visitor! Do you have something to tell us?” in a curious and slightly bemused voice. Everyone in the lecture theatre turned around and looked in my direction. I then asked if we could use ‘goto’, but he couldn’t hear me under the mask. (‘goto’ is a function in C that allows you to move to another part of a program instantly, but is unused by computer scientist’s due to the fact it can make computer code very hard to read. His book says to be ‘deeply suspicious’ of any program that uses this function.) I ran down to the front and asked him closer, and was answered “Absolutely not!” I then walked out waving my arms in the air in disbelief, and then tried to push the wrong side of the door (unintentional), and then moving to the other side to exit. (That last part got quite a laugh.) I then proceeded to the other door with a window to have a quick peep in, just for a few people’s entertainment purposes, (a few did look), and went back to the rear entrance to collect my bag that I had left there. (And also my chance to de-mask)
On Friday night I had my first ever proper game of that one where you’ve got two cards and you try to get certain combinations of up to five cards and hopefully have better combinations than others. I lost. I then played again Saturday night, I came 5th out of eight, and burnt out two other apparently good players. I’ve also had some success lately with pool at my college. By success, I mean of the two games I played I won.
A few nights ago I had a weird dream about being stuck in a small patch of cactuses. I had to push my way through them with the spikes poking into me, and many getting stuck in my skin. When I woke up I had to check I still didn’t have spikes poking into my forehead.
Exams are obviously soon, as Jeremy pointed out. I feel I’m going well and will be studying for my two hardest subjects this week, Physics A (Adv) and Maths A (Adv), with exams on the 6th and 7th of June respectively. I’d like to at least get a H3 in Physics while going for a H1 in Maths, as to leave me more options later. Unlike many other courses, I’ve seen that higher second and third year maths subjects require good marks from previous subjects, and would be of great advantage to be studying for a pure or statistics maths major. I’d also like to get into the Applied Mathematics Advanced Plus next semester. I feel that it is in my grasp.
As for Introduction to Programming (Adv) and Scientific Programming and Simulation, they won’t get any time until after my first two, being on the 16th and 20th respectively. Even still they have more time to study for them then the exams coming just next week.
Naturally I need more food at this time, more than my college can offer. I’ve also had to get some things like soap (had a few soap-less showers), toothpaste, some bowls, and some pens. (All the blue and black ones I have are either turning dodgy or running out – not good for exams.)
I feel lucky that I’ve tried to keep on top of things during semester – going to make the following week so much easier.
WELL, folks, it's that time of year. Time for the lecturers to actually breathe, sleep and eat and possibly even see other people (though I personally don't like the idea of them ever having a social life) before exam week. Time for our relatives to all put up with having unwashed, smelly first-year students at home across the real week. Above all, it's Time To Panic! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's SWOT (which of course stands for, "Sh*t, We're Outta Time!") Vac. And that, of course, means planning ahead.
To help all you little JAFFY mites out there, we've produced the Jez Plan To SWOTvac Success*** (suggested slogan: "For when 50% plus one will do"). This plan has been road-tested by many a student. Whether they planned for it or not.
MONDAY
Wake up with throbbing hangover at ten. Unsure whether to visit toilet or go to the sink for a glass of water first so spend fifteen minutes in bed deciding which one to go to. Eventually you decide the loo is the more pressing concern. (This quite possibly qualifies as your entire study load for the subject of "Fluid Mechanics"). Stagger downstairs in your pyjama pants at ten-thirty. Feed the cat.
After checking your email, chatting on MSN, and seven rounds of Solitaire, it's probably time for some study, which is lucky, as it's already roughly 1.30. Go upstairs, open a textbook, and stare at it for ten minutes. This is known as intra-cerebral-intuitive-transitive learning, wherein the knowledge is all contained within the head of the textbook and it will magically flow into your head simply by you being within roughly a metre of it, without any conscious effort on your own behalf. This technique has been practiced by many a mathematics student all over the world.
It's time for lunch, which is two-minutes noodles, chicken flavour. Eat three-quarters of the two-minute noodles, spill one-eighth on the floor, and the other eighth all over your Chinese notebook. Yell loud swear word, and embark upon a book-preservation process with involves wiping your book with a facewasher and re-inking over the characters that have become mere smudges with some inventive guesswork. Stick the book on top of the sunny window ledge in the laundry near the cat's food bowl and pray for the best. Reheat some lasagne for dinner.
TUESDAY
Stagger downstairs at eleven to find the note that was yesterday taped to the fridge, telling you not to eat the lasagne. Feed the cat. Wipe the cat vomit OFF the book, preferably using the actual cat itself. You're not sure, but you think that's your Lesson Six vocab list underneath a mixture of half-chewed Whiskettes and ginger fur. Breakfast is, naturally, two-minute noodles.
You decide not to go on the computer so as to get to study straightaway. After a forty-five minute shower which involves three different Mohican hairstyles with the shampoo, two belting shower-cubicle renditions of Khe Sahn, and an extra fifteen minutes after that of sucking in your gut and admiring your two-pack (which looks more like lumpy pizza dough than a set of tennis balls), plus a half-hour telephone conversation with your mate, you're ready to study.
Open your book to the one topic in the subject that you are actually comfortable with. Hey, you've got to start somewhere, right? Complete exercises 1(a), (b) and (c). Don't bother about exercises 1(d) through to 7(u). You've got the general idea, right?
You remember your Programming lecturer telling you to enjoy your SWOT vac, and you decide that the best way to do this is to not study at all. You decide that your study load for this evening will be thinking about your French exam on the bus over to your mates' party. You think and think about it, and eventually come to one conclusion. You think you'll fail.
WEDNESDAY
Wake up at 11.00am in a spinning-room stupor. Try to retrieve some sort of semblance of last night's events in your head until you realise that you spent most of last night studying Newton's Fourth Law (what goes down must come back up) and Good Mate Dave's Third Law (Straight Man Cannot Dance, but he can make a dickhead of himself). Feed the cat and grab yourself some two minute noodles. It's only when you think your breakfast tastes a little salty that you realise that you yourself have a bowl full of Whiskettes and your cat is busy slurping up two-minute noodles. Whoops.
Sit down at your desk. Stare out the window for twenty minutes (thus preparing you well for a career in the transition department at Melbourne University) (Editor's note: when we're not reading the blog, of course!). Don't forget to turn once every ten minutes to avoid pins and needles. Eventually you get out the Chinese dictionary and Cat V-spattered notebook and write a short speech about Shopping In China. Wouldn't that be right; the central vocab that you need lies right underneath the inked-over cat spew. There you go; that's your preparation done for the Chinese exam!
In the evening you decide that your diet has been somewhat lacking in nutritional value. You try to remember all five food groups; from memory, it's carbohydrates, greens, animals, fat and chemicals. Thus it only makes sense to look after yourself properly at mealtimes and your inspired choice of combining the beef AND the stir-fry vegetable two minute noodles manages to accomodate all five. Congratulations!
THURSDAY
Amble downstairs, admiring your pale white physique in the mirror on the way down (a consequence of having avoided ALL direct contact with sunlight over the last four days). Notice a slightly lumpy green and brown mass in the bottom of your fridge. You think they're fruit and vegetables, but you're not quite sure.
Back upstairs for work and it's time for some maths. Open your notebook to the first page. You're trying to work out the ratio; you think it's roughly a 20/30/50 split between things you understand, things you don't and scrawled comments like "Hot Chick @ 3 o'clock" courtesy of your mate Johnno. Flick the page to discover a large biro picture of a takeaway cup of coffee and a set of phone numbers without owners. This is perhaps not an ideal exhibition of note-taking in Maths.
You get to the page that covers the material that you Just Don't Understand, and discover that you didn't really understand it at the time either. The proof of this is that this particular page is covered in various forms of the phrase "F*** f*** f***" interspersed with a few weird Greek symbols. You begin a panic a little. You open your previously-unthumbed copy of the textbook and start reading furiously at the first page. The textbook is of course written by someone with lots of letters after their name who could make addition sound like a complex and convoluted process. Bit by bit, you inch foward at snail's pace through it.
It's time for dinner and you decide to resort to last-ditch measures for timesaving. This time you don't even bother trying to cook the two-minute noodles; instead you just open the dry packet into a plastic bowl, empty the flavour sachet over it and get munching. You've heard that rehydration is naturally important for the studying student, so you make yourself a triple-strength instant coffee and slam it down in one hit. With a slightly maniacal glint in your eye, you return back to your work, and then to bed at midnight.
FRIDAY
Wake up at eleven o'clock. Try to remember what happened last night and why you couldn't actually get to sleep until four; perhaps it was too much coffee.
Amble into the bathroom to go to the loo. That's when, on your way back out, you notice the cat flat on it's back in a pool of water in the shower, foaming slightly at the mouth. Panicking a little, you grab a cardboard box, line it with newspaper and stuff the plaintively-mewing cat into it. Tucking the box under one arm, you sprint down to the vet's.
After a sweating two hours spent worrying over Leo the Cat in the reception at the Vet's, you are eventually handed back the cat, a large bottle of pills and an even larger bill. Food poisoning, apparently, says the vet. A nigh-on lethal cocktail of chemicals in that cat's stomach. Only God knows what you've been feeding him.
Back home to read over your oral about clothes-shopping in China. You look once; twice at some of the characters in it; they're the ones that were indecipherable under the cat vomit, and they just don't look 100% right. You check them up in your dictionary, and sure enough, instead of saying that young people like to buy jeans you've ended up saying that polite people like to buy g-strings. Damn that cat.
After finding that monumental stuff-up, you really begin to sweat. Dinner is another two-minute noodle biscuit, this time sprinkled with raw instant coffee granules. After force-feeding the cat its pills with an extraordinarily long name (casualty count: two tooth marks on your finger requring a bandaid, scratches on the curtains and a torn sleeve) you get back to work. And when people ask you why you look like such a zombie when you turn up for work on Saturday, they risk life and limb for it. Ah well. Such is the life of a uni student.
Happy Cramming! I know I will be;
jez
*** not actually guaranteed to produce a pass mark
I'm only going to briefly touch on this, as it's not worth wasting too much time on.
But just incase some/a certain...fan(s)... of this site didn't know, I did not pull out of my examinations simply because what was described as "some boy i liked" blocked me on an instant messenger program. That idea is a joke in itself.
I had to withdraw from those exams because of NUMEROUS difficulties I was/am/will be facing.
In fact, the first day of many that I wasn't able to attend university, was because my friend of 12 years was killed in a car crash which saw his body impaled on a fence, then it all went downhill from there as several events followed.
So, to be honest and straight to the point, and sorry to everyone else not involved, but, please my friend, get your facts straight before you flame somebody. The events posted on this site by all six of us could merely be regarded as the SHELL of our lives, for all you know. I will speak for myself, and say that what I'm going through is much deeper than what I reveal on here, because, simply, I'm not the sort of person who will open up to just anyone, especially when there are certain people out there such as yourself who are willing to pick at someone before even knowing what they are messing with, and some of us, myself included, do not need that.
Also, to say that the organisers of this website only want to promote all of the fun stuff that comes about with uni, yes, sure it's everywhere! But don't forget that all 40,000 of us are humans, too, and there are going to be some really crappy times too. SO in my personal opinion I feel it is better to be honest, rather than show potential future first years a biased and edited story of what to expect. And I bet that's what the people who created this had in mind too!
Anyway, enough of this, and sorry again to those not involved, but I felt that had to be said.
Ciao, and good luck to those of you who are lucky enough to have made it to exams. I'll be thinking of you.
*** note to readers: from now on in the character in the blog formerly known as "C" will now be known by the pseudonym "Ophelia"... well, it beats using initials, at any rate!***
It happened again a few nights ago.
I knew it would. Lying down, lights out, newspaper casually strewn across the floor on the left hand side of the bed. Head on the pillow, dead-tired, trying to empty my head of everything that happened across the weekend (see post "Dear God;"), when suddenly, cutting through the darkness, it happened.
LEFT BRAIN: Hey, you there mate?
RIGHT BRAIN: Sure thing. How ya been?
LEFT BRAIN: Bloody tired. More languages than I can handle. If I ever hear the words "composite verbs" again, I think I'll have an aneurism.
RIGHT BRAIN: Really? You should try thinking of twenty different filthy jokes and one-liners a day.
ME: Oh shut up. I'm trying to get some sleep here.
LB: Oh really? Best of luck, buddy.
(silence)
LB: ... Ophelia....
RB: (sniggering) Oh, Lefty, that's really not nice.
LB: .... Ophelia.... Ophelia....
(pause)
LB: OPHELIA!!!
RB: Don't listen to him, Jez. You're shot of her. Well clear.
LB: Really? Then why can't you stop thinking about her? Why does she keep drifting through your head like a ship passing in the night? If she's worth nothing to you, then why can't you just shut her out of your head?
RB: Don't listen! Save your emotions for something worthwhile, Jez... remember what Sophie said? That the only girl worth your tears is the one who doesn't make you cry at all? Yeh, sure, she had something special but think of how she made you squirm... like, say, when she stood you up on Friday...
LB: That was once!
RB: And then she didn't call you... but blamed you for rocking up "without confirmation"...
LB: Ahh, look, water under the bridge. Here you go Jez, I'll turn your hormone levels up. This might help you see things a bit more clearly. Remember the way you found her fun? How you felt you could connect with her, how you found her funny and engaging to be around?
RB: You say that again and I'll put your sweat glands on overdrive for a week so much so that people think you've been on the Pure Chocolate Diet.
LB: She seemed like such a nice girl... she just loses sight of the big picture sometimes.
RB: Oh yeh. For someone who couldn't give a flying f*&^ about the way you felt when she sent that email to you on Monday morning, she's very nice and considerate. So nice and considerate, in fact, that she didn't even bother giving you so much as a phone call.
LB: Hey, she's not the sort of person who has the courage to face these sorts of things head-on. She's not a bad human being, it's just that... she doesn't have the empathy to realise what the effects are of what she says and does.
RB: Or the compassion, or the humanity, or the sympathy, or even really the maturity or the sense of responsibility.
LB: (mutters) That'd be right. Trust the Powers That Be to put the power of vocabulary in the Right Brain.
RB: Something better will come along. You go to a University with forty thousand people, for God's sakes. Twenty thousand of them are women. And, let's face it, you know one of the best places for good-looking women in the city... Monday afternoon's French Lecture.
Me: Mmmm... Monday afternoon French Lecture...
LB: Stop being a sleaze! Remember the good times you had with Ophelia, laughing together over truly obscure jokes, racking up phone bills large enough to keep Telstra in business on your own... remember that? A person can't just change overnight.
RB: And what was one of the last things that she said to you?
Me: Would that be the comment about going and finding yourself "a nice Melbourne-Uni girl-next-door type"?
RB: And how that made you feel like...
Me: ... blowing up her tertiary institution with a rocket launcher?
LB: Hey, Earth To Jez, everyone has their own personal faults, you included, buddy. You can't just isolate people for not being perfect. That's ridiculously hypocritical. Sometimes people fall and trip and bruise their knee; and what do they do? They swear, and loudly. That doesn't make it the right thing to do, but it's only a human reaction. It's the same with emotion; you fall over, it hurts, you do something rash and ill-considered that you shouldn't. That's no capital offence.
RB: But you can isolate people for being nasty and heartless. There's a difference between saying that you're wrong, and laying on the sarcasm thick and strong. There's a difference between being detatched and being inconsiderate. Above all, there's a difference between being upset and being hurtful and she crossed that line.
(Silence)
LB: ... but you still like her, don't you? Eh? Eh?
Me: Oh shut up.
RB: Not in the same way that you used to. And not even a quarter as much. And, above all, not for who she is, but who she used to be. Who you thought she was. What you thought she represented.
Me: I guess.
LB: Hey, Jez, you know the good news? You're now a very, very available man.
RB: Ahh, the possibilities.
LB: There's a whole world of women out there for you...
RB: ... and quite a few desperate men, if you're ever open to possiblities...
LB: Time to start dreaming. I think it's back to the good-old single-man standby....
RB: ... are you thinking what I'm thinking, Left Brain?
LB: I think I am, Right Brain...
(Together) : ... Uma Thurman.
END
'Night all. I'm off to watch Pulp Fiction... mmm... Mrs Wallace...
xo
jez
So the other night I dreamed of eating Krispy Kreme...
I craved the taste of such rich, sickly sweet donuts...
I wanted to devour the fluffy textured cakes, iced in a tempting white frosting.
And yesterday my dream came true.
Presented to me at approximately 6:30pm was a box of one dozen, straight from Sydney, Krispy Kreme donuts.
A variety so delectable, so pretty; each screaming "EAT ME, EAT ME" ...it was like being at the Mad Hatter's teaparty and there I was as Alice....
So my dinner last night was four gorgeous KK donuts....each a tribute to itself in individuality and sensuous taste.
There is nothing like KK for tea.
Dear God;
I know I haven't really been that great a citizen lately. I'm certainly no Mother Theresa; I don't help the poor, or the orphaned, or anybody in great need really to any great extent. I know that I haven't been buying The Big Issue all that much lately; it's a question of finances, y'see, but I suppose that you already know that, being God and all. And I know that I have been thinking highly inappropriate and vulgar thoughts, but I guess that really doesn't make me any different from most of the world's population (let's face it, even Bill Clinton did that, and he turned out alright). But, underneath it all, I think that I'm not really all that bad a person. I stopped a bag from cannoning into an old lady on the bus last Thursday, does that count? I tell my Mum and Dad that I love them every day. I wash the dishes when I'm asked. I try to study hard and be nice to people. Overall, I'm not really all that bad.
Which leads me to this one question; why, why on Earth, did you just give me the Weekend From Hell? Yes, I know that may well be overstating it somewhat; nobody died, and the world for most people kept on turning all the same regardless of whatever happened to me, but there's no doubting that the weekend you just gave me was a bit of a shocker. Really, if you're going to give me that bad a seventy-two hour stretch from Friday morning through to Monday inclusive, I'd like a bit of a forewarning about it, please. Perhaps a burning bush at the bus stop, or something. I understand you have experience in these matters. Whatever the case may well be, I thought it was a bit rude of you to drop a bomb of a weekend like that on me without even so much as a couple of half-decent thunderclaps from the sky.
They say that the best stories have a good introduction, in which case this was most certainly one of your finest. Admittedly you seem to be quite strong as far as introductions are concerned; I thought the simplicity of flooding the planet with water before letting us all down by saying that after that there was forty days and forty nights of nothing bar seasickness (and presumably a couple of health issues) was a brilliant introduction. Admittedly I thought that the introduction to the New Testament could have been handled with a little more excitement and derring-do - the whole manger idea was cute and succint but perhaps paled a little in comparison to your earlier story about a man being eaten by a whale - but as far as my weekend was concerned, Friday was certainly a return to form. I gave myself a "self-rostered day off University" to ride over to the place of the girl I like, as we had prearranged to catch up, which was fantastic, except for the fact that she wasn't there. I sat outside her place for hours feeling like a total dickhead and wondering just what it was about me which was so unappealing that she didn't even want to catch up with me. I was also highly impressed by your attention to detail; you'd even remembered to turn her phone off, and even managed to time her mother leaving the house as I rode down her street so as to put me within about thirty seconds of saving myself a lot of waiting and heartbreak. It was a pretty horrible couple of hours. Eventually I wrote her a letter, stuck it through the door, and rode off home. I was pretty distraught, to say the least.
Sometimes your stories have sagged a little bit in the middle - having a parting of the Red Sea followed by forty years wandering in the Desert comes to mind, although it's not a patch on James Cameron's Titanic - but you managed to keep the pace right up on this one. I'm quite sure that, being God, you have no problem seeing that the bank balance in account 250-3342-1159*** is roughly three dollars and twenty cents, and that my monthly Metcard expired the next day. So I have no doubt that the decision of work to call me, with about forty-five minutes to go before I was due there, was a premeditated one, and so I spent a nice lonely night by myself at home, with extra time to contemplate just what had gone on earlier that day. Even better, you managed to make sure that C (the girl) wasn't home, and that her phone STILL wasn't on, so I couldn't even get close to sorting out the mess from that afternoon. That was certainly a neat touch that ensured that my mind kept spinning in circles for hours that night, and so it's fair to say that I didn't really sleep so well.
Come Saturday day and it was time for football down at Sunny Kilsyth. I didn't get selected, so it was certainly a character-building experience to watch our team get flogged in the afternoon sun by ten goals. It certainly made me a tougher person but I couldn't say that I really appreciated the experience. Nor did I really appreciate the flat tyre that I got on my bike just as I rode into the ground. After a good afternoon contemplating not only my own fate but also that of Warrandyte Football Club, I managed to get a lift back home to do some study before it was time for work.
Well, I suppose that it would've been time for work, had, of course, not work called, this time with half-an-hour's warning, to tell me that I wasn't required. There went both my shifts for the week; thank you very much. Is this your way of trying to tell me that money and me just don't go together? After trying to ring C yet again (guess what, she still wasn't home and her phone was turned off) I tried to console myself with the thought that I could at least watch Geelong on TV. The game was being broadcast on only half-an-hour's delay. We were playing against Collingwood, and going in as favourites.
After Geelong had been flogged by 102 points, their worst loss for roughly ten years, I began to reconsider my position in life. Stuck at home with nowhere to go, I consoled myself with the thought that tomorrow I would be meeting up with Soph and our friend M, then going to dinner with Dad, who was down in Melbourne for the weekend. I went to sleep, hoping that Sunday would bring some better luck with it.
Meeting Soph and M was fantastic. It was great to catch up with them and get some Womanly Advice on my predicament with C. After going up with Soph to her tennis at the University, and hitting the gym, I then caught the tram back to Jolimont. Guess what happens? The first Met Nazis I have seen for roughly six months get on. I'm so used to having a monthly ticket, I've forgotten to buy a Sunday Saver. I thought it was particularly sadistic of you to make the Met Nazi in question tell me that he was sorry for my predicament. Yeh right, buddy. Sure you are. It didn't stop him from issueing me with a ticket, though. My bank balance rocketed from positive three down to negative one-hundred and forty-seven.
In short, I didn't think that I'd had such a bad weekend for ages. I said to the friend whose house I stayed at on Sunday night, that I had just had the sort of weekend to make me yearn for Monday Morning. Boy, was I wrong.
Monday morning, Union House Computing Centre. First email recieved; hey it's from C! I opened it up in anticipation:
"Jez
please stop ringing my house every five seconds cuz ur freaking my parents out. As for friday, thanks for confiming you coming over- You cant just rock up to my place like that- you should have rung and let me know you were still coming- thats why i wasnt home
two. we are not going out- so stop acting like we are
three- you are too possessive for my liking and ur starting to freak me out too.
So please just leave me alone
C"
I thought that was particularly cruel. It's nice to know, that so many years after making the Egyptians squirm like Rabbis in the Vatican, you've still got that magic touch, the ability to make people utterly miserable. I love the way that you completely trapped me into that situation; you knew that I kept on trying to call her from Sunday through to Thursday inclusive, except of course for the fact that her phone was off or engaged. She ended up believing that I didn't try to confirm the day with her; so she went off and did something else! I must take my hat off to you. That was probably the most devious thing you've done since you put apple trees in the Garden of Eden.
But - and this is the most complex part of the script - I still believe that she's a good person, underneath it all. She's just not someone who can empathise with other people all that well; she can't see, straightaway, what her actions make other people feel. I know it sounds like I am trying to convince myself, but really, I'm not. In the finish, I guess that it wasn't meant to be, and so on I move. That won't be easy but it's got to be done.
So, God, in the finish, thankyou for that bomb of a weekend. All I can ask is that I have used up all my bad karma for roughly five years so hopefully I can have a better one next weekend. And after that, who knows? Overall, I think this story that you've put together really has potential in the finish. We could do with releasing it in book form. After all, your last publication seems to have sold quite well. It would certainly be a welcome return to form after those pale imitations written in your name, "The Crusades", bombed most spectacularly. Above all, we have GOT to keep Mel Gibson from stealing the limelight in YOUR title roles.
Anyway, I'm off to ring a few friends; Brok, Caitlin, Krista, Soph... it's tim-tam and hankie time. Best of luck up there in Heaven, and don't forget to tell Elvis to wash behind his ears,
jez.
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