Welcome Back
Hello everybody and welcome back like Oliver Twist for some good ol’fashioned sloppy seconds. The call has come up on the first-year page for New Bloggers and so the sun has set on an era, one mostly characterised by rude jokes and porr speling. We will no doubt be replaced by a set of clean, presentable bloggers who were born sometime in 1989 (and doesn’t that make me feel ridiculously old, I remember my fourth birthday from that year) and are far too old to have any concept of the things that matter; Alanis Morissette albums, yoyos that do tricks, seeing The Lion King when it was first released and, naturally, remembering exactly what packet of chips Tazos came in. (It was Thins’). How on earth you could ever hold a conversation with people who don’t remember Tram Conducters and who go blank when you mention the wonders of Hey Hey It’s Saturday is really beyond me.
If knowledge was class and sex appeal then I would be Paris Hilton (without the midnight videos). Unfortunately my coffee skills aren’t much use in Engineering, Chinese or French and the ability to call a customer – this is not a lie – a “complete arsehole after my own heart” doesn’t really seem to cut mustard with the lecturers for some reason (the customer in question, however, left a very large tip). The real issue is now going to be balancing University with work and what a thorny issue that is going to prove to be. It currently looks as though I’ll be doing five days a week at uni and two days a week at work. Unless my maths is wrong, that adds up to seven days, as far as I’m concerned, and at last count that added up to an entire week. Read between the lines; spare time will be at a premium. Just ask my secretary, Kimberly.
It’s nice to be back with my good ole mates the Engies and within the first thirty seconds there were more jokes about Boy Love than you’d find at a Mardi Gras. Not much has changed over summer, mostly because people can’t afford to actually do much. Harto’s still got dreads that could hide dead rats in them, Yari’s got the mother of all hangovers after doing more raves than an LA celebrity, Timbag is still Timbag, and all of Kim’s friends are still lovely little don’t-say-boo-to-that-goose sort of people. (Try and pick which one of us has the more responsible friendship group). You chat to each other to compare social lives and then find out that each one of us either couldn’t go out because we didn’t have the money to because we didn’t work, or we did work so we didn’t have the time to go out. The one exception to this rule would be my good mate Dave from French, who travelled over to Thailand over the break; any story beginning with, “I went out drinking with my newfound Norweigian travelling buddy and his Thai lady-friend” has got to be one worth listening to.
The other thing you notice about coming back after the summer break is what I refer to as the “toaster effect” – everyone is either white, brown, or burnt. Quite laughable in particular is the notion of a few white friends who thought that they could actually tan and wound up looking like an enormous peeling frankfurt in a shirt. It’s the sort of look that screams, “I come from Tasmania and I holidayed in Queensland”. It’s one of my favourite little sadistic pleasures. It’s right up there with orange year eleven girls just before the school formal.
I am doing one first-year subject this year due to my crowded course schedule, and walking into the lecture theatre for Engineering Communication (apparently only slightly less boring than death, according to people who’d probably know) and I was instantly transported back twelve months. The lecture hall was full of tentative young first years with half-beards grown over the summer (that’s the men, not the women) who sat one seat apart from each other as though it was public transport and filtered in nervously one by one. I remembered my very own number one rule of first year – never, ever let anybody sit by themselves – and quickly enough assembled a group around me in the middle of the theatre. Wouldn’t that be right; it’s a lecture about career paths and second year options for Mechanical Engineering. “Sorry”, “sorry”, “oops, sorry ’bout that”… I mumbled as I made my way out of the theatre five minutes into the lecture.
Cheers guys and WAKE UP YOU OVERSLEEPING PEOPLE!
jez
Yes, don’t sleep.
People seem to be wanting to sit apart in History and Philosophy of Mathematics. Not only that, but they like to sit on the edges. So by the time I get there from the last lecture I have to either sit up the back or the person with me must sit in different places. On Wednesday I sat up the back with a sensible person (I didn’t know them at this time) who actually was sitting near the center. So I got the best of both worlds – met someone new and was still sitting with my friend! : D
It is definitely fun to talk with people you’ve either never seen or just never spoken to.
We will no doubt be replaced by a set of clean, presentable bloggers who were born sometime in 1989 (and doesn’t that make me feel ridiculously old, I remember my fourth birthday from that year) and are far too old to have any concept of the things that matter; Alanis Morissette albums, yoyos that do tricks, seeing The Lion King when it was first released and, naturally, remembering exactly what packet of chips Tazos came in. (It was Thins’). How on earth you could ever hold a conversation with people who don’t remember Tram Conducters and who go blank when you mention the wonders of Hey Hey It’s Saturday is really beyond me.
*coughs* Hey, not all of us 1989-born are clean and presentable! Uh, I mean… we can swear just like the rest of you! 🙂 And I remember some yo-yo craze and tram conductors. >O Generalisations phail.