Peachy

Turns out I couldn't go to work yesterday.

I knew something was wrong when I woke up from a weird, fever-induced sleep in which I dreamt I was posing as a renegade anti-establishment guerilla spy in Indonesia. For one moment when I woke up, I was utterly convinced that I couldn't go to Indonesia in 2009 because they would try to kill me on political grounds if I ever set foot there.

Then I cracked an eyelid open, thought about it for a good two minutes, and thought, "Hmm...no one's shooting at me."

(This is generally a good thought to have.)

I then realised that:

(a) I was still sick

(b) I really needed to get out more if I was starting to have dreams relating to my Arts electives

Although I spent yesterday glowering darkly at anything that came within three feet, I was much more perky today.

I even got a slightly sweet moment of revenge:

A customer came in who needed a particular kind of connector for two hard drives. We only had the SATA connectors. That should really have been the end of the story. Except that he demanded someone who "knows more about it than you do." Well, tough- nobody else did. When I passed him again he just shoved his phone into my hands and told me to talk to his friend on the line who knew what kind of connector he needed.

I talked to the guy on the line, and established that no, we didn't have it. Then I passed the (rather expensive) phone back and thought privately to myself, "HAH HAH HAH YOU JUST GOT MY BRONCHITIS GERMS!!!"

I never said I wasn't immature.

A note for Congealed Blob: Selamat datang ke blog saya! Terima kasih untuk pesan. Pertama-tama, apa kamu mengerti film yang dilihat hari ini? (Meskipun kamu mungkin tertidur)...dan kalau kamu pergi ke Indonesia (dan/atau Malaysia) pada akhir tahun 2009 saya mungkin mengunjungi kamu!

In Sickness and In Health

I firmly believe that every blog should at least have one obligatory "I-Am-Sick, Therefore-I-Hate-The-World" blog post.

Thus, this is it.

*twiddles thumbs*

...

Apparently, I have some sort of viral infection/flu/bronchitis (the latter is written on my medical certificate- my doctor figured that if he described it as bronchitis, "your workplace isn't going to want you in anyway."). The last week has been...painful. My misery was further compounded by the fact that the most wonderfully warm, sunshiny weather has emerged, and instead of going outside to enjoy the warmth, I've been stuck in my very own germ-ridden cocoon of blankets, shivering one minute then overheating the next.

I spent all of yesterday in bed with a fever, until I dragged myself out of bed to see the doctor. I figured that seven hours of daytime sleep might get rid of what I've now come to call my 'zombie eyes' but I look even worse than before. Now, I look like an extra on "Dawn of the Dead", or better yet, a character template on "Dead Rising".

I thought that maybe I'd get over it by today, but it seems to have bitten back with a vengeance. Swallowing still hurts, I still have this strange pain in my ears, and pain sensitivity has been cranked up to 11 on a scale of 1-10.

However, I have drugs. Drugs are good. Drugs are my friend. Happy drugs that come in two tones of yellow in a cool little capsule. And with the help of my good friends Amoxycillin and Panadol, I SHALL BE UNSTOPPABLE.

In the meantime, I shall crawl back into my little hole with my ugg boots.

I have work at 9 a.m tomorrow, in which I plan to steel myself with a bucket of strong coffee the size of my head. For the past three morning shifts, all I've done is slowly stir four sachets of sugar into my cappuccino, checking periodically for anyone who requires assistance. No one really does at 9 a.m (why would you wake up before 11 a.m if you didn't have to- and furthermore, why would you decide to go shop for electronics at that hour?)

I have also missed seven hours of uni this week (well, nine if you count the lecture on Critical Legal Studies, but I voluntarily walked out of that one) so that's not good. Maybe my body is awarding itself its own mid-semester break, although I could have told my immune system that there are better ways to do it.

Our mid-semester break is in Week 10. There are 13 weeks in a semester. Considering we are meant to house some of the greatest mathematical minds in this country, it does get you a bit worried.

Anyhow, the moral of this post is: stay away from me, I may yet still be contagious.

Hip-Hop Is Not Dead

It is my dream to be cool and black, with a big deep voice like Kingsley Shacklebolt.

On the path to pursuing this dream, I struck the first snag almost immediately when I looked in the mirror and realised:

I'm not black.

Genetics are cruel.

Genetics means that I have horrendous eyesight. It means that I cannot park straight in an empty bay full of empty angled parking slots in an empty carpark outside an empty shopping centre. It means that I cannot run continously for a minute without collapsing on the ground and wheezing like Darth Vader.

On the upside, genetics also means that I have relatively little arm hair.

Woot!

Anyway, back to what I was going to say...ah, yes, coolness and blackness. They go hand-in-hand, like peas and carrots.

Even though I realised that this weedy little yellow caterpillar would never transform into a big, cool, homey black butterfly, I decided that in lieu of wearing bling, smokin' crack and driving around in a pimped-up ride, I would take up hip-hop classes.

(I am acutely aware that not all black males do these things. Unfortunately the only black person I know is my nasal law lecturer and he's actually from Africa and doesn't rap. Therefore, I must draw inferences from cool black people like 50 Cent and Jay-Z.)

So..today was a not-very-good day, as my mother had forgotten to leave me her car keys, and I didn't realise this until before I was about to leave for my English class. Cue massive panic- there was no point trying to get there by public transport because the lesson was only 1.5 hours anyway...so I decided I'd just take the bus later to go to the gym for the hip-hop class. (Now I'll never know the difference between finite and infinite verbs...'tis a cruel world.)

So at 4:30, dressed in my ultra-hip 3/4 length Target pants, my equally ultra-hip Volleys (also from Target) and a Converse sport vest, I toddled over to the Aerobics Gym.

And discovered that 75% of my class was also Asian.

Thus, I have concluded that it is an inherent and deeply-hidden secret wish of all Asian girls to be cool and black. (Right, Kris? Mmm?)

My dance instructor was not, unfortunately, cool and black. She was skinny, ultra-fit and practically bounced up on the podium with the kind of energy I normally associate with two years olds and Red Bull. Everything was "you've got it, yeah?" or "we'll do it in slow-mo, yeah?" with an upbeat attitude rivalling the good boys and girls of Hi-5.

So we got started on some warm-ups which involved stretching (and I have seen enough of tight-Lycra-clad backside to last me a lifetime) then we practiced some dance moves.

It was actually really fun, although the step-and-spin stuff was beyond most of us on a carpeted floor with runners, and there was an awful lot of wobbling and frantic grabbing of air when we had to stand on one foot. There was also a giant mirror at the front, which only reinforced my decision to never buy 3/4 length sports pants from Target again.

Even though I would never actually use those moves anywhere but in the safety of the sports hall, it was the most amusing workout I've had in a long time. Not that dying over the treadmill isn't fun *snort*

Now for the best part of working out- undoing absolutely everything with a large bowl of Milo ice-cream.

Peace out, y'all!

P.S- Thanks to Rosy, Kris, Loui and Claire for the comments on the last post- really made my day :) And Rosy dearest, I counted you and Kris as number one and two, so technically it's still four :D

X, Y and Z

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore...

To one thing constant never...



...the fraud of men was ever so,

Since summer first was leavy.



Damn right.


Kris and Rosy have posted recently on the contentious subject that is the human male. (Excellent posts which I encourage you to read!) Now, you get my vitriolic tirade...

So I have this friend. Let us call him...X.

X and I met in the first few weeks of uni and struck up a friendship over the course of the semester. X and I don't actually have much in common but that's OK- we had a fairly good, and may I stress, platonic friendship. (X, thankfully, will never read this in a million years but I am covering my ass here by using initials just in case).

Everything was fine. Until a couple of weeks into Semester Two. Suddenly, we stopped talking to each other in classes- either he stopped talking to me, or I stopped talking to him, but something just changed. And now, he pretty much will not even look at me or say hello. Bastard.

I was wondering vaguely if it was something I had done (I'm not the brightest spark on campus, I tend to fall asleep and generally look like a grumpy, drugged-up zombie) or maybe something he had done (could not think of anything). Then I noticed that he was completely and utterly ignoring me, yet taking up with the blonder, more gorgeous girls in my class.

As my Contracts lecturer would say, "Hmmmm."

Then, "Mmmm."

(Then "Mmmmm...." again for good measure, just in case we hadn't figured out that "mmmm" was his 'I-am-thinking-very-deeply noise).

So.

Suddenly he's turned into Mr Charming (around other people at least) and now our friendship, which I thought was relatively solid, does not exist. The twig snapped today when I noticed that he didn't even acknowledge my existence. Fine.

Go chase your little girlfriends...you....little girlfriend chaser.

Moral of the story: Men are fickle and cannot be trusted. Bastard.

Onto the second event of my day which forced me into blogging this:

I sat next to the most incredibly hot specimen of human male today (in my humble opinion).

This was BAD.

Very, very bad.

I cannot quite express just how hot aforementioned human male is. It kind of doesn't help that I've been perving on him with somewhat objective detachment all year (DAMN YOU LAW FACULTY!!!) and you know what? It's ten times worse when said hotness is sitting next to you.

For a damn hour.

Mr Cuteness-Personified was so damn gorgeous that I thought my heart would crawl up my throat, push past my mouth, and flop dramatically onto the carpet in front of him. (Then grow little legs and with a big puppy dog eye in each ventricle and go, "I wuv you.")

AAAARGH.

Again, for anonymity's sake I will call him...Y.

Anyhow, I vaguely know Y enough to speak politely, except the conversation pretty much died after four lines, possibly when my heart did try to crawl up my throat and I submitted to merely a polite gargle.

Ask me how my weekend was sometime. I'm sure it'll be more than "GAAAAAAH?"

Sigh.

And worst of all, sitting with a particularly hot person within a one metre radius is terribly disarming for your learning. I can't remember anything important from that lesson, except that Y dresses really well. It was pretty bad- I wanted to either stand up and shake him for being so "impossibly, ridiculously good-looking" or jump him.

Neither of which would have been very subtle.

And of course, he is also a bit of a ladies' man and so not my type it is not funny. Plus, I've found that repeating the mantra He has a girlfriend, he has a girlfriend, he has a girlfriend does not work. Leaving the tute and banging your head repeatedly against a wall in the hope that you wil bang some common sense into yourself does.

So there you have it.

I had a friend called X.

I will probably have to wear a blindfold around Y.

And I still have to find a way to kindly explain to...eh, let's call him Z...that being friends is all I want to be.

Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more,
May be you blithe, and bonny,
And turn your tales of woe,
Into hey, nonny nonny.

Yes. Let's do that.

(N.B- considering I only have two female readers, this is probably unwarranted- but if you are a male, please note that for the most part, I think y'all are 'just swell'*.)

*(Nice to see that Year 12 English still hasn't left me)

Political Gallivanting of the Semi-Naked Kind

Kevin Rudd, Mr 'Kevin07' himself, has just admitted to getting absolutely trashed and visiting a strip club whilst in the U.S.

Wait a minute, you say.

Kevin Rudd? In a strip club?

Imagine, for a moment, Kevin Rudd in a strip club. The bespectacled, square-faced, mild-mannered, mousy Opposition Leader swaying drunkenly in a seedy dive groping, at half-naked girls.

HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH.

Now imagine, for a moment, little Johnny Howard tucking a little green note into a dancer's G-string.

Who else feels like vomiting?

Things You Wish You Hadn't Seen #1

Passing by one of the aisles today at work, I noticed a kid standing next to the massagers.

To be precise, one of the new Quad Massagers with four heads that lights up when you push the button.

Which would have been perfectly fine and innocent...

...had he not been putting it over his groin.


The kid looked about seven years old, so it wasn't like he knew what he was doing. I didn't believe what I was seeing at first, so I subtly doubled back- and yups, he was still standing there with that thing over his crotch. I didn't do anything- what could I possibly say? "Hey, sweetie, you can't just jerk off in the middle of the store..."

The lesson here is...don't touch anything that vibrates. You never know where it's been.

Sigh

Ever heard something that chilled your blood?

Said by my mother as I was preparing to go out to the Writers' Soiree:

"Oh, you look so pretty in that dress! When you go out all the boys will fall in love with you and one of them will marry you and I will finally have grandchildren!"

*Pause*

At times like these, I'm all-too-happy to be single.

Round the World in 80? 30? 60? Days

I had an epiphany today.

I was sitting in my Law lecture today, eyes glazing over at the joyous amount of legal theory presented for our viewing pleasure on the overhead projectors, and I realised something.

I was bored.

It wasn't just boredom that had been brought about by a prolonged discussion of natural law- (although that will do it every time)- it was the sort of boredom that simmers, quietly, under the surface, patiently nettling you at intervals until you finally acknowledge the fact that it's there, and that it's kind of beginning to piss you off.

My life seems to be on constant repeat each week.

Work. Uni. Work. Uni.

I tried cutting down on work shifts. That didn't work.

I finished Eighth Grade Piano. That didn't free up much time because I didn't practise much anyway.

I bought a car. That made me happy. But all I do is drive it to work. Uni. Work. Uni. (Or on the odd occasion, for one and half hours around the city because I am a doofus)

So today, smack bang, in the middle of my lecture, I decided to take 2009 off.

And travel.

I'm a little foggy on the details, but all I know is that after I finish the Arts component of my degree (and hopefully sit my A.Mus A in Piano) I want to defer. Take the entire year off. Work to raise some travel money, then jet off around the world on a student ticket.

Learn another instrument. Learn another language. Volunteer again. Teach music. Read. Go out with friends, without having to plan two weeks in advance. Do something. Anything.

I got on STA Travel's website and started clicking random points on the Round the World Planner. One itinerary ran:

Melbourne- Denpasar (via KL)- Male (also via KL)- Nairobi- Dakar- Addis Ababa- Rome- Beirut- Athens- Melbourne.

(I did say it was random)

Then I looked at the travel warnings for Africa, which consisted of: "DO NOT DRINK THE WATER. DO NOT STRAY OFF THE PATHS AS THERE ARE LANDMINES. TOURISTS HAVE BEEN THE SUBJECTS OF KNIFE ATTACKS IN THE REGION. PICKPOCKETING AND MUGGING IS RIFE. VISITORS ARE ADVISED NOT TO TAKE PHOTOS OF NATIONAL BUILDINGS- THIS COULD RESULT IN DETENTION."

I was planning to take my year off after graduation, but I don't think I can do five years of law without a break.

Suffice to say, I retained absolutely nothing about Theories of Law today.

Drive slow, homey

I drove to Xia's house on Saturday night.

It took me one and half hours.

This can attributed to several factors:

1. I am Asian.
2. I am female.
3. I cannot read a map without pulling over, switching on a light, and rotating the entire Melway in 90 degree turns to figure out how to get somewhere.
4. I have no sense of direction.
5. I have driven in the city a grand total of once, and that was with Katherine giving me directions.
6. On this night, Katherine was not with me.
7. It was dark.
8. It was raining.
9. There were wolves after me. (Well, not really...unless they were metaphorical wolves of my own creation, rising unbidden from my suppressed inner psyche)
10. My glasses have a weak prescription so I couldn't read the street names.
11. I am not a rational, calm sort of person.

All this meant that I was driving around...and around....and around. At one point, I ended up (somehow) at the entrance to the Westgate Bridge and the freeway- and obviously, I panicked. I cut across six lanes of traffic and hightailed outta there, cursing all the way.

In the city, there are only two lanes. If you're in the left lane, you must turn left. In the right lane, you must turn right (unless there is a stupid sign forbidding this...there are many of those). Which begs the question- how do you go straight?

YOU CAN'T.

Which is why I ended up doing weird turns into streets that I didn't want to go into.

When I finally made it onto Flemington Rd, I missed the house and ended up trawling through the backstreets in the dark with no idea how to make it back onto the main road.

Eventually, I got there, albeit a little hysterically. And the next morning, I managed to make it back by only getting lost twice :D

However, I did find that there is nothing that a cocktail glass full of pure cream, chocolate and Bundaberg rum cannot fix.

Free Intergalactic (and interspecies) love

I've been watching Torchwood recently.

Torchwood, for those who aren't quite as tragic/geeky as I am, is a spin-off of Doctor Who (and a witty anagram to boot). Russell T. Davies, who wrote most of the new Doctor Who series, is also the driving force behind Torchwood.

Let me just point out now that Russell T. Davies was also a writer for Queer as Folk, which is one of those television series that you shouldn't, under any circumstances, switch on when your parents are in the room.

Unlike Doctor Who, "Torchwood" is not family-friendly viewing. The one episode which my father watched with me unfortunately happened to involve an alien lifeform that lived on sexual orgasmic energy (three guesses as to how she absorbed this energy.) There was an uncomfortable moment of silence in the living room whilst the alien (in human form) was graphically demonstrating this process with a willing male in a public bathroom.

The leader of the Torchwood team is the extremely hot and extremely bisexual Captain Jack Harkness. Then there's your Token Asian Technical Specialist, the weedy skinny science person and the Welsh former policewoman...who's just funny because she's Welsh- "Jack, doon't doooo it, nooohhhh..."

However, it takes a very special person to become part of the Torchwood team. From what I've observed, you must qualify for the following:

1. You must be bisexual. Or if not, be willing to change.
2. You must have had physical relations with an alien lifeform. Or if not, be willing to.
3. You must be willing to encourage an incestuous workplace environment by sleeping with as many of your colleagues as possible.
4. You must spout as much technicable gibberish as possible, preferably five syllables or more.
5. You must always uphold Torchwood's reputation as a DARK, SEXY NEW CRIME SERIES.

Despite all these obvious flaws, it makes for fun, brainless viewing.

Watch it.

But don't say I didn't warn you.

Out, vile jellies!

Anthony Mundine isn't exactly the brightest spark around.

Given that his career consists of bashing other men repeatedly in the skull, it shouldn't be surprising. But now The Man's sporting future has been jeopardised by an infection in his left eye- because he took out a contact lens and cleaned it with his mouth.

When I got my contact lenses, I was told NEVER to rinse them with tap water. It was implied that since relatively neutral tap water was forbidden, other liquids were also a no-no. Like chocolate milk. Or hydrochloric acid. The optometrist didn't mention anything about saliva- because she assumed that no normal person would ever lick their contact lens to clean it, or swirl it around their bacteria-laden mouth like a good Merlot...and then put it back onto their eyeball.

Apparently, boxers have carved out their own sub-level of intelligence.

First Contact

Welcome!

I've escaped the self-loving clutches of MySpace and MSN to gouge out my own niche in the wide world of blogging.

So this is how my new blog begins- not with a bang, but with a whimper.