Post-Flight Blogging!

I'm baaaaaaaaack!

Sorry for the lack of updating- I didn't get much chance to use the internet while I was overseas, and when I got back I had to complete a take-home exam for consumer law...and that sort of involved actually learning the about the examinable topic while I was completing the exam. Multitasking for the win!

I was actually extremely fortunate to get the chance to hand in the exam at all, because the Iceland volcano (it's ICEland...where does it get off having gigantic heat explosions?) shut down operations at Heathrow Airport the day I flew out from London to Singapore. However, our pilot made the decision to take off an hour early, meaning that we literally got out of Heathrow forty minutes before they shut down. Ironically, when we got to Singapore I flicked through the cable channels and 'Dante's Peak' was playing on the cinema station :D

It feels weird to be back in Melbourne, tugging on gloves in the cold when only a few weeks ago, I was wandering around Spain in the Andalusian sunshine. It also feels weird to be facing a giant pile of law readings when a few weeks ago, my only concern was whether eating a Magnum for lunch would elicit a sense of loss for not getting the limited edition Cornetto sitting next to it in the ice-cream freezer. Such dilemmas were easily solved (the Magnum was purchased for lunch; the Cornetto for an afternoon snack) but alas, the giant pile of law readings currently sitting on the table downstairs cannot be vanquished merely by the provision of three euros.

The trip was amazing. It was my first trip to Europe, and I was stunned by the amount of history behind everything. Earlier this year, I was reading a collection of 19th century Australian essays and stories- and one of them noted that although Australia lacks the history of European buildings, our beauty and value lie in the natural wonders of our landscape. And that's true. Australia is lovely. Australia has much natural beauty to offer to the marvelling eye.

BUT EUROPEAN HISTORY KICKS ASS.

I walked along 2000 year old walls in York, built by Willliam the Conqueror. I wandered through old Moorish palaces and centuries-old Cathedrals. I saw the tombs of English monarchs in Westminster Abbey, and saw busts from Ancient Greece and paintings from the Renaissance in the Prado.

And it was freaking awesome.

I'm just going to post a photo or two up for fellow blogger (and now fellow Aries 22 year old!) miku, as she was recently in Barcelona and it was ridiculously exciting to look at her photos and squeal, "Ooh I've been there!!!" The salamander says happy birthday- and I hope the salamander of your dreams comes along and picks you up and takes you over his salamander shoulder! :D (Photos are smallest size as takes me a while to upload!)





(The photos above were taken in Park Guell, one of Gaudi's architectural creations. I love the gingerbread house on the left side- it even has little button candies along the windowpanes.)

Before I pop back downstairs to resume my readings, a few tips I've picked up:

Daph's Travel Tips for Spain and England

• in Spain, when people say 'I only speak a little English', don't believe them. After saying this, they will then wax lyrical in fluent English to the point where they could probably write a 2,000 word essay for English Literature and surpass most high school students in Britain, America and Australia.
• in Spain, when people say "Muy poquito" when you ask them if they speak English, they actually do mean that they don't speak much English.
• Spanish coffee is amazing. In Spain, ask for a 'cafe con leche' (there are accents there but admittedly I'm too lazy to format the plain text, sorry!) and you'll get a lovely strong latte. Ask for a 'cafe solo' and you'll probably get knocked out by the intensity. In England, coffee mostly needs a bit of improvement before it can be classified as coffee. Ask for a double shot, or a strong latte, or you'll just get very nicely foamed milk.
• take a travel pillow on long flights. Otherwise you'll wake up with the Neck Crick to End All Neck Cricks.
• 'American Psycho' is not a relaxing book to read on a flight. However, it will keep you awake, and horrified, if you need to stay up to switch time zones.
• They have one pence coins in England. Run away before the service assistant can give you a wallet-clogging bronze coin after buying your 99p Ribena.
• If you are regret not buying something from Zara or Mango in Spain, don't sweat it. One will magically appear every 20 metres down the street across the entire country.
• If you're around Andalusia at Easter and you see people in white cloaks and white pointy hats with eye-holes marching past, they're being pious Catholics and not racist redneck Americans.
• If your hotel offers a laundry service, be aware that they will charge about three euro PER PAIR of underwear. It is much more fun to construct a shameful makeshift washing line in the bathroom- even though the maid will think you're a cheap bastard, it's awfully fun to get a calculator and add up just how many euros you've saved...my calculations for one load came to at least 150 euros.
• Hotel tea in England is frightening and makes strange dymorphic forms that creep up the teacup when you add hot water. Be wary of new British tea-based lifeforms brewing in your cup. High tea, on the other hand, is most excellent and quite free of strange liquids trying to grope their way up the side of your cup.

Hope you've all had a good past month or so- will hopefully update a bit quicker this time! :)

Pre-Flight Blogging!

I'm flying to Barcelona tomorrow.

Well, today really, since it's 12:17 a.m on what is technically Friday morning...but in approximately twelve hours I'll be grabbing my backpack and heading off to the airport.

It still hasn't sunk in yet that I'll actually be heading overseas for the first time since 2004- I did go to New Zealand in 2007 but I don't count New Zealand as exactly 'overseas'...it's more like popping across the Tasman to visit Australia's weird dorky cousin :D On that trip, I embarrassed my family by collapsing into a hysterical fit of laughter in the airport queue because the New Zealander who checked our passports said quite seriously to my American aunt, "Oh, you've come from the Oo-Iss?" and I ended up having to leave the queue because tears were leaking from my eyes and every second breath was being inhaled as a strangled, "Hee! Hee! Waaaaah hah hah hah....New Zealanders...funny....talk....funny....HEEEEEE!"

Don't even ask what happened at the supermarket when the attendant asked my Dad to confirm that he wanted 'six' slices of ham.

Anyway, I think that there's much more scope for potential humiliation in Spain, as my Spanish is nothing short of horrendous (as evidenced by what was possibly the most pathetic attempt at conversation I had the other day when I phoned our accomodation in Spain- I think I coughed out a 'Como estas?' in reply to a torrent of indecipherable Spanish before I blurted out the inevitable, "Usted hable Ingles?!")

Hopefully I'll get the chance to blog while I'm over there- tomorrow I've got the epic 22-hour flight extravaganza which will be alternately spent eating, sleeping, exhausting my inflight entertainment and fighting over what constitutes a legitimate word in travel Scrabble with my sister. (The Official Scrabble Dictionary would be too heavy to drag along in our backpacks :P) My long-suffering sister gets to put up with me in a confined space for 22 hours, and I'm pretty sure that at some point during those 22 hours the two of us will end up like this:

Catch y'all in Europe!

xox

Dresses and (Achilles) Heels

I'm meant to be doing adminstrative law right now- in fact, I have four subjects to catch up on and about 20 job applications to write- but unfortunately that all had to take a backseat this evening.

You see, the Oscars were held earlier today. And whilst I actually care very little for the Oscars (I'm probably part of the 1% of the population who thought Avatar was completely overrated) I do have a weakness for the red carpet fashions- and so it's damn near impossible to resist when presented with a link to an Oscars frock photo gallery.

Dresses are my Achilles heel. Well, one of my many Achilles heels- I suppose you should really only have two Achilles heels (one for each foot) so I suppose if I had to pick two, one of them would be food and the other would be dresses. I suppose if I had a superfluous third leg (and therefore an extra heel to be bestowed with Achilles-like properties) the other one would be lip glosses. I'm not exactly sure why I'm drawn to lip glosses as I don't really wear them all that often, but they're just so slim and pretty and well, glossy...and they're the first thing my hand snakes towards in the cosmetics aisle.

But with regards to dresses...I have about 20 formal dresses in my closet, which in my opinion isn't that many considering roughly 95% were purchased for $20-$50, with the median price probably hovering around $30. I have a strange ability to ferret out discounted clothes (I think it's encoded into my DNA at an Asian genetic level), so almost all of them went through a 70% markdown at some stage. My sister once suggested I sell a couple, but I felt a sudden rush of horror at the very thought. I have a connection to every item of clothing in my closet. If you point at any item, I can tell you where I bought it, how much I paid for it, and the shopping companion I was with at the time.

I liken it to the scene in Pocahontas where she's running around singing about colours of the wind and trying to explain the concept to John Smith (substitute my sister for John Smith, or any hapless male really). Or since this post is Oscars-related, probably also the bit where Zoe Saldana's Na'vi character in Avatar is showing Jake Sully how their world is interconnected with nature. (In fact, Pocahontas and Avatar are practically the same movie, so either analogy would be appropriate.) Because to an outsider, the connection that I have with my wardrobe is completely unfathomable. But I know every skirt and dress and T-shirt...has a life, has a spirit has a naaaaaame...

Of course, this connection means that I hardly ever throw anything out- I always feel a sudden twang of remorse that makes me clutch at that item of clothing (imbued with memories and probably several dust-mites) and place it back in the closet. I am planning a spring-clean eventually...but in spring. And since I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, I'm safe for a couple more months :P

But I had a look at this Oscars slideshow, and was struck again by how awesome Mariska Hargitay looks on the red carpet. All the time. I still remember the dress she wore to the 2008 Emmy Awards (again, I was procrastinating at the time) and she managed to pull off this amazing bright yellow dress which inspired me to go on the hunt for a yellow dress this summer (I didn't find one though.) Even if you Google Image her on the red carpet, she looks constantly impeccable- bright fuchsia, aquamarine, cream, pale pink- the woman just pulls it off with such elegance every single time.

And now that I've indulged in my celebrity gossip/procrastination/girly moment for the day, I feel that I can now go back down to the plain text drudgery of administrative law :D

B**tch, Run That

Job-hunting is driving me crazy.

Granted, quite a few things drive me crazy. Like double negatives, or triple negatives in the one sentence. Or how every Rob Thomas song that comes out sounds exactly like his entire back catalogue but with random concepts like mockingbirds and diamonds thrown in. Or the fact that some bitch today almost ran me over in the university carpark because she decided that because she was in a 4WD this somehow gave her the right to DRIVE OVER A NATURE STRIP PARKING DIVIDER, WITHOUT LOOKING (I feel the need to capitalise every single one of her driving transgressions) WHILE HOLDING UP A MOBILE PHONE TO HER EAR AND CHATTING AWAY, LIKE PLAYING CRAZY TAXI IN THE GROUNDS OF A TERTIARY INSTITUTION WAS A NORMAL EVERYDAY THING BECAUSE HEY, HEAVEN FORBID THAT YOU PAUSE YOUR ENGINE IN AN EMPTY CARPARK TO TAKE YOUR STUPID CALL.

And then the bitch smiles at me as she's bouncing down from the curb and I've stopped in my tracks with my mouth agape at her stupidity.

This is actually the second time I 've almost been run over at university- the first was a bus driver who didn't stop at a pedestrian crossing- and he had plenty of time to see me crossing with a few other students. Fortunately I saw he wasn't stopping in time, but one of the other students screamed out, "You could've killed her, you fucking idiot!" after it roared past.

Oh, and there was also the time where some creepy git hid under my friend's car- most likely waiting to assault her but there were two of us so he didn't emerge- so we almost killed him when we reversed over him. I saw his legs flailing under the car out of the passenger's side window and I thought we'd killed somebody- and that is an image that will unfortunately always stay with me. (He ran away though while we were completely freaking out, and I don't think they ever caught him, although I'm not sure whether the police would even bother to tell us anyway if he had been nabbed.)

Yes, my university is a lovely, safe place to be.

Anyway, I've wandered off topic...scrolling up, I believe I originally started off talking about job hunting.

Ah, yes.

I'm pretty keen to get out of university- not just because bad traffic-related things seem to occur in threes on campus, but because I've just started my fifth year and really, I'm sort of over the whole study thing. I've been trying to apply for graduate positions recently, but it's just form after form after form of questions asking me about times I've demonstrated leadership/teamwork/problem-solving/initiative...and then I have to figure out ways to tweak my CV to demonstrate these key skills without sounding like a tool.

Sigh.

I went to an information session today for a certain organisation that was recruiting graduates- and although the actual presentation was fine, everyone was schmoozing in the foyer afterwards with glasses of OJ and champagne and these weird little things that looked like retarded vol-au-vents, and I just felt distinctly uncomfortable.

I'm not a born schmoozer. I hate schmoozing. I'm one of those unrealistic, naive people who likes to have a conversation without a self-serving agenda. Which means, really, that I would be squished like a bug in the corporate world. I just happen to hate trite conversations that aren't genuine. So I chatted to a random Engineering student who was standing next to me like an extremely awkward statue, had a spring roll and an OJ, and wandered off to have dinner with my family.

So out of interest- any born schmoozers out there? Any anti-schmoozers? Or any tips on how to surreptiously stand in front of the good canapes tray without looking like you're monopolising it?

N.B- Blog post title is from M.O.P's 'Ante Up'...but I'm not normally that mean unless you try and run me over :P

Also, a shout-out to the lovely 'Anonymous' commenter who is reading through my old posts and leaving me feedback- thank you- your comments really make my day :)

Tooth. And nothing but the tooth.

Hello! Sorry for the lack of updates recently- I had my wisdom teeth removed last week, and despite my sister cheerfully suggesting that I blog "while the pain is still fresh!" I wasn't really keen on writing a post detailing the blood spitting and the mouth-numbing and the tooth-doucheing.

And no, that's not a typo- on my review two days ago, my surgeon stuck an irrigation syringe down the gum cavity where my wisdom tooth (or teeth, rather) had been, and flushed the cavity. It was so disgusting. And painful. And then he popped the syringe in a bag and told me to do exactly the same thing, six times a day.

I call it the tooth douche. It's my new friend in the pursuit of dental hygiene:



Anyway, despite the pain from the intubation (they stuck a tube down my throat for the general anaesthetic and it created an ulcer) everything is peachy. Except for the six-times-a-day tooth douche.

And despite my best efforts, I just spent a goodly paragraph detailing the tooth douche after all. Oh well.

In other non-tooth-douche-related news, Happy Chinese New Year, and a happy belated Valentines'...Chinese New Year actually started on Valentines' Day this year, so I actually got money for being single. It was brilliant!

And judging by the fact that I've just written an entire post about tooth-doucheing, I expect that my 'single' status really isn't likely to change any time soon, unless I find some handsome young maxillofacial surgeon who finds that kind of thing absolutely fascinating :P But that's fine by me, cos all I need in this life of sin, is me and my tooth douche.

Gong Xi Fai Cai, bloggers! :D

'Ow' Is Our Not-So-Secret Word of the Day

I would like to personally bitch-slap the person who invented squats.

In fact, I would also like to personally bitch-slap the person who invented 'burpees' (see a delightful animation here of what this entails) although I strongly suspect that the person who invented that particular brand of physical torture would be able to slam me through a wall with one flick of his well-defined beefcake finger.

I suppose it's not really their fault for making up the individual exercise...the fault lies with the sadistic bastards who string them all into one big hellish routine and make you do them for 1.5 continuous hours with only three 45-second breaks.

You can probably guess what I did yesterday in my boxing class. And you can probably guess why I was staggering around Melbourne today, unable to use the full function of my legs because the muscles in my thighs kept screaming, "You did this, bitch!" over and over again with each painful step. I looked like an extra who'd escaped from the set of Dawn of the Dead- each jolting, staggered step was taken with my legs straight out, and I probably had a constipated-looking, gaping-mouthed expression of pain on my face to match even the finest zombie acting.

It was only my second boxing class- I went last week with my friend, K, and that was at her university. This time, I suggested we try my university's gym.

Oh God.

Y'see, last time we went we were actually recruited by a boxing instructor at K's uni who was really short on participants. There were six people in the class, of which K and I made up 1/3. Furthermore, there was also an overweight Asian guy so there was at least someone who was lower than our current level of fitness (yeah, schadenfreude, I know...but admit it, you feel a bit better when you're not the most unfit person in the room...)

This time...the class was full. Full of regulars, and each one of those regulars had a ripped six-pack. Even the girls had bulging deltoids in their arms the size of rolled-up socks. There was an Asian guy next to me, and when his singlet rode up all I saw was rock-hard, rippled abs that made him look like Liu Kang from Mortal Kombat come to life. It was terrifying.

It's hard to describe exactly what they did in that class. First off, there was a bit of boxing. After that, Person A had to do 10 punches (caught by Person B), run to the other side of the room, do 5 squats, run back, run back again and drop the ground, run back, and then swap with Person B (who all this time had to jog on the spot.) After this, we had to do the whole thing again but with 20 punches, then 30, 40, 50 all the way up to 100...and then count down again to 90, 80, 70 all the way back down to ten.

Our sadistic instructor was also adamant that we all do this continuously and without a break- although he said that if we were first-timers we could take a drink. K and I grabbed a drink at the 100 mark- and the instructor actually came over and suggested that we start the count back down at 60 instead of 100. Even with this pity discount, we still finished at the same time as everyone else. Oh, and you know what? Always wear a sports bra when boxing...because as I discovered, you can't actually pull a wayward strap back up WHEN YOUR ENTIRE HAND IS ENCASED IN A GIANT PADDED GLOVE.

Anyway...

After that, we had three rounds of what could only be described as pure torture. I'm not exactly the fittest person in the world, but K at least is pretty good, and we were both driven the point of near-collapse. I wasn't sure if I could properly describe this in words, so I took the liberty of drawing a highly detailed, beautifully crafted diagram:

And yes, that was my exact expression the entire time. I don't think I've hissed 'son of a bitch!' that many times under my breath- I achieved a new personal best.

Anyway, the diagram above shows what the instructor could call out- we were at opposite sides of the room, and we'd be doing simulataneous but different exercises from that group in the middle. Again, continuously. And timed. With no breaks, except 45 seconds between rounds. And it wasn't a matter of just going through the list- he could pick anything from that list, as many times as he wanted. It was hideous. The pathetic thing was the 'crawling'...I dropped, exhausted, to my hands and knees and started to drag myself along the ground using my fingernails as claws. I looked like a demented overgrown toddler. Then I realised that everyone else had their butts in the air and their knees off the ground (cue another "SON OF A BITCH!") so I had to follow suit. There was more than one point where I considered just smacking my face into the ground and breathing in the smell of sweet, sweet carpet rather than get up and go on.

After the three rounds, an hour had passed and we thought that we were finished. But oh no...there was something else called the 'Circle of Pain'...but since we were first-timers we didn't have to do it with weights. I can safely say that the Circle of Pain was NOT a misnomer.

After the Circle of Pain, where my arms had gone numb, we had to do 50 sit-ups, followed by 20 splices. On the 29th sit-up, I looked over at K, where we had both flopped back on the mat trying to muster up the strength to keep going, and we started giggling hysterically from exhaustion. Fortunately, after the splices the sadistic instructor called time, and we picked ourselves off the mat and staggered out (after I had finally unleashed another torrent of "SON OF A BITCH! SON OF A BITCH!")

And that is why I am in a lot of pain right now.

But I came to a sad realisation after boxing. Although I may possibly go back to that particular class when I get a bit fitter (i.e a year at least from now) I may have to give up on my dream of being Kitana. Probably not achievable if I have to urge to flop down on the floor after only one round...

Changes

I must admit the title of this post is quite deceptive- 'changes' is such a dramatic word, full of anticipation, trepidation, promises, or even dread preceding some major announcement...but in this case, I'm merely referring to the fact that I've been attempting to change the look of my blog on this lovely Wednesday afternoon, and it's driving me freaking crazy.

Despite being fairly computer-literate, my knowledge of programming, HTML and general blog stuff is about on par with my algebraic skills. That is, if I manage to somehow fluke my way into getting a solution, it's by sheer dumb luck and I can't actually backtrack and tell you how I did it. Plus, both programming and algebra elicit the same reaction from me- frustration and the desire to smash something. So far, I've changed the layout three or four times, trying to find something that fits, and trying to figure out how to edit the fonts in HTML. Just to warn y'all in advance, I'll probably be playing around with formats for a bit in the new few weeks- you'll probably be able to get a new template every time you press F5 on your browser :D

I quite liked the simple layout of my old design, but it was a stock-standard sensible Blogger template that I had for about three years. Figured I might as well get a new one, considering it's a new decade and all.

Hope you all had a great start to 2010!

New Year!

Greetings!

From everyone here at TEotA (and by 'everyone' I really mean just me, and by TEotA I just realised that I've coined a really weird acronym for my blog that sounds like an alien name from Avatar) we wish you a very Happy New Year and a fantastic 2010.

(And I'm dropping the royal 'we' now as this is just getting too confusing.)

Anyway- thank you to anyone who's perused, browsed, followed or stumbled across this blog, to anyone who's ever left a comment or even just browsed anonymously, and to those whose own blogs have given me inspiration in the past year. Your support means a lot :)

Have a safe NYE, and I'll see y'all in 2010!!!

xox

Daph

Why My Family Is Awesome

Came home from work the other day and found that my family were celebrating my exam results :D

(For any international readers- my mother absolutely loves puns, and those little round candies around the edge are called 'Smarties'. The rest of the joke is pretty much self-explanatory :P)

Kickstart

I'm kickstarting my blog back into action, because I tend to have a bad habit of neglecting my blog for a month or two on end- and my poor little corner of cyberspace is left to sit fallow for a bit, until a spell of I need to blog sorta moseys on over and whacks me with a little prodding stick, and my fingers hit the keys.

Oddly enough, in this case it was John Mayer who inspired this update.

Yes. John Mayer.

Okay, okay, I know he's mostly in the tabloids for his reputation as a ladies' man, and I confess that I had not purchased a single one of his albums up until last week- but I heard Who Says a few weeks ago, and something in that prompted me to buy his new album, Battle Studies. And so I did. And I have to say that it's a beautiful album- simple, yet somewhat exquisite in its crafting.

I buy albums for different reasons. I have a strange fondness for commerically crafted pop- I love the familiar four-chord progression of a predictable ballad. For me, it's like having the aural equivalent of a nice warm comfort blanket. This is why you'll find that quite a few of the CDs on my shelf are of ex-Idols (Kelly Clarkson, Jessica Mauboy, Jordin Sparks). The cornier the ballad, the better. I also love hip hop/rap. Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 was one of my favourite albums this year.

Sometimes, however, you find albums that speak to you, the ones where you connect on some strange level. I think Battle Studies has fallen into this category, along with Anna Nalick's Wreck of the Day.

Anyway, my long and rambling point was that I got onto John Mayer's website and onto his blog (and say what you want about the guy, but he has a wicked sense of humour- there's a video of him attempting to mix some hip hop where his lyrics consist solely of "I like sex, and I'm good at it...I like sex, and I'm good at it...") and he had this post here.

In case you don't read it (and in case you're bored of what seems so far to be a John Mayer plug), he was talking about conscious composition, and the importance of it in keeping him focussed and able to keep writing. That got me thinking about how much of what can be loosely deemed as the 'creative process' is a product of conscious, focussed thought. Most people would agree that overthinking a situation can have detrimental consequences, and perhaps too much of this self-awareness can have a negative effect on creativity as well. There's no doubt that most of my planned, considered essays have failed where my last-minute, hysterically-written essays have succeeded beyond even my most optimistic expectations.

One of my university tutors, a poet, once described the creative writing process as almost being in a different state of consciousness, where you let go of all your preconceptions and inhibitions (or words to that effect). This always reminds me of Samuel Coleridge- as the story goes, Coleridge saw the course of an epic poem in a dream, and as soon as he woke up, he started to write the entire thing down before he forgot it. Unfortunately for him, a person on business from Porlock came and interrupted him, so he never got to finish it. The poem was called Kubla Khan, and if you ever hear the expression, "person from Porlock", that's where it originated from. (Hopefully you're not being described as one, as I don't think the expression is meant to be terribly flattering in its present form.)

There is also a theory that this 'dream' of Coleridge's was actually an opium-induced haze, but regardless of what it was, it was still an altered state of consciousness which seemed to spark this sudden burst of creative brilliance. And quite a few writers were high as a kite when they wrote their own works of literary genius.

Then again, writing cannot be easily read without structure, and a melody line can't just run without some semblance of rhythm, so an element of technicality and conscious thought is required. I'm just curious as to whether the creative process depends on being able to suspend reality, or alter our perception of our current reality, in order to really work.

And perhaps that is why so many artists are crazy.

And that's my random thought of the evening :)

The Waiting Game Sucks

Earlier this evening, my Arts tutor sent out a group e-mail explaining that by midnight tonight, we would all get an e-mail with our marks and feedback for the subject.

It is now 11:51 p.m, and if you think that I'm sad enough to sit by the computer hitting F5 on my browser for 20 minutes while blogging about the whole sorry experience...

...then you're right.

*twiddles thumbs*

The Devil's Marsupial

I hate possums.

Most people look at their tiny little faces, their cute furry noses, and think aww.

I look at them, and think THIS:



Look at his demonic eyes. The pink, twitchy nose. The cold, calculating expression of a KILLER. (Feel free to click on that picture and view it in its full horror.)



Look at that butt. Look at that massive possum ass. Look at Mr and Mrs Psycho Killer, lurking behind the door. You want to know why I hate possums?

Look at the picture. Those are my boots. Those are my black MG boots right before their retirement, and those are my friend's runners being held hostage by the little blighters. And those were the two huge monostrosities, the devil's marsupials, who were holding us under siege in our teepee in Tasmania when all I wanted to do was BRUSH MY TEETH.

IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK, YOU ACCURSED ANIMAL? CAN I NOT PRACTISE NORMAL DENTAL HYGIENE IN THE MIDDLE OF A BUSH RETREAT WITHOUT YOU STALKING AT MY HEELS?!

Do you remember me, demon possum spawn? My (braver) friend Kris tried clapping her runners at you. She almost threw a shoe at you. She hollered. And yelled. And you stood your ground, anchored by some kind of evil spirit force.

And I was so traumatised that I was forced to revert to one of my most basic and favoured coping mechanisms.


(Photography Credit: my friend Kris. I still cop flak from her every time the 'P' word is mentioned.)

(And yes, that is actually me. Behold the brave and valiant author of this noble blog.)

More proof of demonic possession, again FROM THE SAME TRIP. ON THE SAME NIGHT.



ALL YOUR PANS ARE BELONG TO US.

So as you can see, friends, I am not exactly a fan of trichosurus vulpecula. Or as I prefer, demonicus furrecula.

Possums just enjoy making my life miserable. Because why else would they start MATING IN THE CEILING OF MY HOUSE DURING EXAM TIME?

Exam time is stressful. Law school is stressful. All of this is stressful enough without having THUMP THUMP THUMP HISS SQUAWK THUMP THUMP *RABID POSSUM NOISE* THUMP THUMP SNARL HISS HISS HISS THUMP THWACK echoing in the roof.

Earlier today, my father conceded that perhaps it was time he called in someone to get rid of the possums before they caused any structural damage to the house, or caused insomnia.

Unfortunately, in the temporal space between 2 p.m and 7 p.m, he got on Google and discovered that there are entire forum threads devoted to the best methods of flushing out possums. My father enjoys a challenge. Possibly even more than that, he also enjoys saving money. The very concept of DIY Possum Extraction proved to be almost irresistible in combining two of his favourite things. This is why he was quite happy to spend half the afternoon bashing at the walls, climbing up on the roof, checking for possum holes and trawling the 'net for tips. Apparently one such tip on flushing possums out involves using moth balls, or any kinds of incense.

And this is why the downstairs guest bathroom now has a saucer of burning incense perched atop the shower, with the the ceiling fan plate removed and the exhaust turned on, with incense wafting up into the roof cavity.

And this is why the downstairs guest bathroom currently smells like a Chinese temple.

My father thinks he has won this battle. But we shall not underestimate our enemy.

The war has only just begun.

Culinary Disasters #1

Twenty minutes ago, I thought I detected a rather unpleasant burning smell.

It took a few seconds of bemused deliberation until the colloquial penny dropped...and I bolted downstairs to find out exactly what happens when you leave a pot of homebrand pasta boiling for forty-five minutes in a small pot.

The answer = half a centimetre of charcoal.

So I'm timing myself as I write this post, because it's already 1 a.m and that pasta was actually meant to be for my lunch tomorrow- well, today I suppose- so it's going to be an even later night than per usual, and now I can't make fun of my Dad's Great Pudding Explosion so much anymore.

Cooking FAIL.

I partially blame my sister. She initiated a spontaneous game of charades at midnight and so whilst I was earnestly pretending to be a house, then pretending to be an arsonist burning down the house (it was 'song names') my own flame-related disaster was merrily boiling away downstairs.

Irony FOR THE WIN.

And this is why being a crazy cat lady will be so much easier when I'm older. All you need to do is get a spoon and scoop out some jellied fish into a bowl (or one large feeding platter for my one hundred and twenty-six feline friends) and that's it. No preparation required.

Although knowing me, I'll probably end up snapping the pull ring off or something and then the cats will all turn on me and it'll be me fighting against a swarm of 126 cats and I'll run out screaming into the street clutching a can of Snappy Tom with cats clinging to my cardigan as I scream incoherently with several sets of claws in my face.

*coughs*

Righto, down to check on Pasta V2.0...

Don't Phunk With My Heart

Yesterday I went to see my GP over a few minor concerns with what Captain Jack Sparrow would fondly refer to as his "thump thump."

My thump-thump has been...well, thumping rather erratically recently so I figured it was better to veer on the side of caution and see a doctor. However, I couldn't help but feel like a bit of hypochondriac when I was sitting in the office trying to explain exactly what was freaking me out.

In layman's terms, I believe I garbled out, "It sometimes it goes thump...thump...thump...paaaause...gurgle.....thump thump...."

And all credit to my doctor, I think he managed to decipher this (including my lame tapping demonstration on his desk). He said it could be a combination of factors, including lack of sleep, caffeine, stress, thyroid problems, or heart defects (tick tick tick for the first three) and then followed it up with the cheerful question, "Has anyone in your family ever dropped dead for no apparent reason?"

To which I said that there was no history of Long QT or anything like that, which made him ask me if I'd been Googling. To this, I indignantly replied that no, I was not one of those people who print out a whole list of their symptoms off Ask Jeeves and take them into their doctor....but I sort of left off the fact that I learnt about Long QT Syndrome from a storyline on Neighbours.

Anyway, he then ordered a blood test and an electrocardiogram (ECG) and I toddled off next door to get all the Pathology stuff done.

And then as I was sitting there holding my waiting line number, I realised that this was my first ever blood test.

Eep.

I'm not good with blood. I don't dissolve into hysterics, I don't scream, and I don't faint, but I dislike needles immensely. I can normally sit there quite calmly but there is generally a lot of panicking beforehand. Fortunately, I only had seven minutes of panicking before the nurse was passing me vials.

Vials.

Vials in which to hold my blood.

Oh, God.

See, there's just something about the thought of blood being drawn from my body which makes me very very uneasy. When the nurse actually stuck the needle into my skin I was fine, but then I heard this gurgling as my blood was being drawn up the syringe and all I could think of was AAARRRRGGH! AAARGGGGGH! AAARGGGGGHH! AARGGGGH! AAARGGGGGH! AARRGGGGH!!!!!

I tried to toughen myself up my doing Work Experience seven years ago at a veterinary clinic. And I found out that I'm okay with operations, and blood, and seeing a dog's innards on the operating table, and having the vet chat happily about his new Lord of the Rings DVD with collectible Gollum figure while his scalpel was poking at an infected doggy spleen in front of him...but when it comes to things like papercuts or needles on humans it's something different altogether.

What I did do was concentrate very very hard on the radio that was playing some kind of obnoxious ad for Harvey Norman. So I sat there and focussed on the fact that Harvey Norman were having some kind of sale, and this sale was offering 24 months interest-free....that's right, 24 months interest-free and that this had nothing to do with the gurgling...OMG PLEASE STOP THE GURGLING...of my blood being drawn up into a needle.

It was over quicker than I expected, so then I had to lie down while the nurse ran SANDPAPER over my skin and stuck electrodes to it. Then she began clipping leads to all these electrodes, so I felt like one big human component switch as she plugged me into the ECG machine thingy.

So now I'm waiting on the test results. On the upside, my doctor didn't tell me to lay off caffeine or anything like that, which was quite a relief, so I had two very large cups of coffee in the afternoon. The nurse sternly told me that I wasn't allowed to lift anything heavy with my left arm for the rest of the day (where the blood had been drawn) and as I rose to shove my tote bag over my left shoulder she squawked at me "I hope you're not going to put that on that arm! Put it on the other one!"

This made things quite irritating when I had to go to work in the afternoon...I ended up dragging out a 700VA uninterruptible power supply out using only my right arm, and that was all kinds of not-fun. And because I am physically uncoordinated and have issues wearing things over my right arm, I accidentally smashed into the toy keyboard stand at work on my way out and knocked the entire thing over with my handbag.

Obviously I'm not an ambi-wearer.

But since I have no restrictions on my caffeine intake as yet, I'm going to go and have a nice afternoon coffee :)

Mmmm. Coffee. How I thump thump thee.

Why I Should Be Cast as Kitana...(are you listening, McG?)

I pulled my pyjama top over my face earlier this evening- I don't know why, I just felt like annoying my sister while she was using the bathroom mirror, and pretending to be a masked bandit in bright pink Chupa Chup PJs and waving my hands in the air behind her head just seemed the best way to go about it- when I realised something.

I could totally be Kitana if they ever made another horrible Mortal Kombat movie.



(Kitana always wears a mask that hides everything but her eyes. Thus, it hit me like a lightning bolt when I was mucking around in the mirror.)

I have given this considered, educated thought (mostly because the alternative to this train of thought was going back to a large pile of legislation and national employment standards) and have come up with the following reasons why I could totally be cast as Kitana:

1) I'm Asian. She's Asian. In fact, Kristin Kreuk got cast as Chun-Li for Street Fighter and she's only half-Asian. Therefore, am TWICE AS QUALIFIED as Kristin Kreuk for this role. (Am still irritated at Kristin Kreuk and the fact that she got to star as the love interest of Tom Welling AND Jensen Ackles in Smallville. That's just plain greedy.)

2. Drop-dead gorgeousness is not a deciding factor. She wears a mask over most of her face.

3. Even acting is not an issue. Of course, I do have the unrivalled experience of having a minor speaking part in my Year Six school play, but at any rate, Kitana's voice comes out muffled in MK v DC...quite possibly due to having an entire scrap of blue fabric plastered to her jaw. So I could botch my lines and no one would notice!

4. I really like the colour blue. It's meant to be.

5. KISS OF DEATH! KISS OF DEATH!

And as you can see, my study for the next exam is not going so well....:P

It's What I Go To Work For

GFC.

It always takes me a little mental minute to process acronyms. Whenever someone mentions the GFC my brain kicks into overdrive. Does it stand for Games For Consoles? Gluten Free Cooking? Grease Fried Chips?

Alas, the rather prosaic answer is the Global Financial Crisis. Nothing quite so fun as the other food-related alternatives my mind tossed up.

Anyway, the 'GFC' has meant that consumer spending has dropped, which means that retail stores are laying off staff, cutting hours and slashing wage budgets. Which means that when I walked into work today for my first shift in two weeks, I was apologetically informed that I wouldn't get another shift until the 10th of July. And this shift would be a grand total of three hours. Huzzah.

However, given the lack of consumer enthusiasm, it meant that my Thursday night shift was very very quiet. This was basically my night:

(M is my Manager, AM the Assistant Manager, 3IC the third-in-charge).

5:45 p.m- Arrive early for shift. AM has downloaded two episodes of Season Four of Supernatural on his iPhone for my viewing pleasure, so I stand in the backroom annoying M, making little squeaky noises when the little Jensen Ackles on screen lifts up his shirt. I get an inordinate amount of pleasure turning the iPhone upside-down so the image rotates too. Why doesn't everything come with built-in accelerators?!

5:55 p.m- M and AM start humming. They enjoy stringing my name along to the Spiderman theme, probably because my full name has three syllables and the tune is as catchy as anything.

6:00 p.m- Shift starts. 3IC is having a teary argument because apparently the Area Manager noticed her very frayed pants hems and told M that 3IC must buy new ones. M informs 3IC that if she doesn't get new pants and comply with uniform standards he can send her home for her next shift. 3IC threatens to call the Union, because obviously the Union does not have better things to do with its time than look at people's trousers.

6:25 p.m- M gives 3IC way too much leeway. I make a mental note that tears will get you out of anything. M and 3IC leave.

6:45 p.m- Colleague is stuck with an Asian woman and her two kids trying to haggle down the price of some kind of robot kit with Bluetooth capabilities. In three years, I have never seen a customer successfully put that thing together. The control box always karks it or something.

7:00 p.m- Am stuck with someone looking for Components. Crap it.

7:05 p.m- Have located a crystal earpiece, but am now combing the Components area for bloody ferrite rods.

7:10 p.m- I emerge triumpantly from the midst of fuses and resistors with three ferrite rods, only to be told that they're not suitable because they lack coils. Why do ferrite rods have coils?! It's a rod! It's ferrite! Why add coils to it's rodly goodness? AARGH.

7:15 p.m- Am now stuck looking in the diodes section for some kind of obscure diode. I hate diodes.

7:18 p.m- Asian woman still haggling.

7:20 p.m- Find a dude roaming the tools section looking for an AV switch. Dump him in front of the right section while discreetly checking him out. Final verdict: nah.

7:25 p.m- Asian woman still haggling.

7:30 p.m- Another customer wants to know if he can ask a tricky question. I say sure- he's holding a SCART-3RGB adaptor, it's not like there's anything else he needs to know about. Except:

"Is it bi-directional?"

EH?!

7:32 p.m- Apparently bi-directional is just a fancy name for input/output. Point-of-Sale database, how I love thee.

7:45 p.m- Boss brings me giant coffee, latte with two sugars. Wish my favourite barista was working so we could bitch about the trials of law school during the coffee-making process. Ooh, it's a large coffee. Daphne the Caffeine Squirrel ain't gettin' any sleep tonight.

7:50 p.m- AM hooks up his iPhone to a 22" Samsung in the back room and Jensen's glorious visage fills the screen. Were my life a Stephenie Meyer novel, I would be gasping at his smouldering dark eyes and chiselled chest, thinking how sweet and intoxicating his breath would be and bemoaning my own feeble insignificance next to his heartbreaking beauty.

AM tells me to stop drooling.

7:53 p.m- Jensen is sharpening a knife. How manly he looks in his singlet and his gun arsenal.

7:54 p.m- AM asks me if I can blow up some more balloons for the sale display.

7:56 p.m- Have filled the last two minutes with blow-related jokes.

7:59 p.m- I attempt to earnestly give a brief etymology lesson to AM by arguing that the word 'erect' cannot be used in relation to a balloon, as 'erect' implies something being built from foundations or rising up, and really, the word 'inflate' is more appropriate. What can't you do with a B.A in English?

8:00 p.m- AM decides to test out iPhone and component cable on a larger LCD screen. Am impressed that such a compressed file can be shown in clear 576p. Have reevaluated my scorn of the iPhone, but I still wouldn't get one.

8:30 p.m- Remember that my coffee is still sitting out the back. Coffee is duly sculled, luke-warm and all, but still coffee.

8:45 p.m- Almost home time!

9:00 p.m- End of shift.

And they pay me $21/hr for this* :D

*Well, in the good old days when I had weekly shifts

Attention Span FAIL...

My attention span has actually decreased from when I was a kid.

I used to be able to sit through long, painful school assemblies. Chapel, every week (although I once copped detention for sliding with my friends on the pews.) Speech Nights. Double periods, sometimes triple- of the same class. Hours of let's-go-through-every-line-of-Romeo-and-Juliet in English. Yet now, I am unable to sustain my concentration for more than 20 minutes at a time.

And just to prove a point, I am writing this in the middle of my Equity lecture.

It's only one and a half hours and I am so painfully bored that I have actually exhausted the distractions of all other websites, including Facebook.

Currently, the lecturer is talking about 'equitable monetary remedies' and I am blogging about not paying attention.

Sigh.

Beast

I am currently hibernating in my Study Cave.

My Study Cave generally looks like the kind of underground lair that you see in horror films- where the creature drags the remains of their meal and lets it rot in the corner while it goes out to kill more innocents. Currently, my Study Cave looks like I've gone out, killed something, dragged it back and fed it to my young because there are piles of clothes forming a strange kind of nest around my bed and coffee cups strewn all over the desk.

(Rule Number One of my studying habits: if it requires more work than adding boiling water, don't drink it.)

Anyway, one of the main rules that outsiders must understand is that when the Beast is studying, the Beast does not enjoy having unannounced visits by stray humans such as the "Have you ever considered switching from Tru Energy to AGL?" man, the "Have you ever considered switching from AGL to Tru Energy?" man, and the Avon Representative (the latter of which has been taken care of. Permanently.)

This is mainly because on Study Days, the Beast finds getting out of her pyjamas is a pointless exercise and that makeup is not necessary if her waking hours are spent in the Study Cave. Therefore, the Beast looks like...a beast. Especially when she wakes up.

In my Beast form, I have already managed to permanently frighten off the Avon cosmetics representative- all it took was a 9 a.m visit with unbrushed hair with no makeup and my bunny pyjamas squinting at the hideous sun behind the Avon lady's head...(plus I generally can only splutter out monosyllables before 10 a.m) and from now on, she just leaves the catalogue at the doorstep before presumably running for her life. I think she now understands that sometimes, there are faces that cosmetics just can't fix.

So this morning I heard the doorbell ring. My sister had just left two minutes before, so I assumed she'd forgotten something and come back for it.

So I stumbled downstairs to the door in my little Soho cotton stripey PJs and my V-neck pullover and made my way to the door. When I opened it, I realised that:

(a) if I'd had put my glasses on I probably would have seen that this was NOT my sister; and that
(b) I was about to encounter another species of stray human that would have to be taught a lesson.

"Hello," the human said. He was medium height, skinny, male, probably would have been quite attractive looking if I'd had corrective lenses of some sort over my eyes, except all I saw was a tall blur in a suit.

"Hello." That's it. Be the sparkling conversationalist that you are before luring him into a false sense of security...then we rip out his innards. Bwah hah hah.

"How are you this morning?"

"Good." Very good, in fact, human. How would you like to be strung upside down by your ankles while I GO BACK TO BED?

"I'm from...*insert agency here* and we just sold a house in your area for a very good price, and I was wondering whether you were interested at all in putting up your house for..."

He trailed off as I squinted at him.

Boy am I good at that. I really think that being Asian lends my eye-squints an extra squinty charm.

I continued my Death-By-Squint technique. This probably would have worked had I been a ninja. Or an assassin in black latex. Or Julia Gillard. But in my morning state, I just looked like I was half-stoned and trying to blink out some kind of flash code with my eyelids. I think that just confused him because he said, "Um...are your parents home?"

ARE MY PARENTS HOME?!

Excuse me, but I just turned 21! I'm a big girl! I'm an ADULT. A MATURE ADULT WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE WEARING PASTEL STRIPEY PYJAMAS BECAUSE YOU THINK THAT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD ENJOYS WAKING UP BEFORE 10 A.M?!

Little girl? I'll show him little girl! So I called for backup, like the mature 21 year old I am.

"Daaaaddy!"

And I stomped off to let my father deal with him.

If he comes back, there will be a price to pay. And if he comes back during SWOTVAC, he will never cross our driveway again once the Harpy in Pink Flannelettes has seen to his trespassing.

If You Seek Huxley

I smell like wet dog.

Possibly because for the last forty-five minutes, I have been chasing after one.

My sister had just shut the door to go to her night shift at 11 p.m when she opened the door again and shoved in a lost dog that she'd found roaming on the street- because not only is it cold, our area is prone to people hooning around the streets and it is not safe for a little pup to go trotting around at Hoon Happy Hour in suburbia.

Off she went to night shift, and I was left staring at this random, damp dog in the hallway.

And then I heard an outraged "Meow!" coming from the other side of the door where the cat was now demanding entrance.

Great.

Just great.

I had to let her in, and I quickly grabbed her before she could pad into the hallway, but halfway to the laundry and her basket, Huxley trotted into view. I had to leap away to separate them, because Anna stiffened in my grip and let loose the most venomous, furious hissy snarl that I've ever heard from her, and I hastily stuffed her in the study before a full-blown animal war took place.

The dog was obviously well-cared for, since he had a nice little collar and a registration tag and even a little bone-shaped engraved tag with a phone number and the name, "Huxley". (Most excellent name, by the way. A most excellent author who wrote a most excellent book. Classic.)

Rang the owner four times. No response.

Looked like Huxley was staying for the night.

This is Huxley, by the way, looking somewhat demonic:



(Don't you just love the digital era? One hour of lost-dog guardianship and I'm already uploading his image onto Blogger.)
Anyway, he LOOKS scary but he's actually a real sweetie. He also looks like a Maltese x Bichon Frise from this angle but he looks to me more like a Poodle x Bichon Frise because in reality, he's about twice the size as Maltese and the shape of his underbelly is oddly whippet-like. But you be the judge:



It soon became apparent that Huxley was hungry. Not having any dog food in the house, my mother cooked up a bit of chicken and rice, as I was slightly worried that the dog might be allergic to something, and then we'd have some kind of hideous anaphylatic fit on our hands without the canine version of an EpiPen. (Paranoid? Yes. But you never know...)

We lured Huxley into the spare bathroom with the food, left him an old bedsheet with a nice patch of old carpet, and some water before shutting the light off to let him sleep. Then I yanked the cat out from the study, dumped her in the laundry, and went upstairs.

Then I heard whining.

Then scratching.

Then meowing.

Then whining again.

Followed by more anxious scratching.

With more outraged meowing.

In the end, I finally had to move Huxley outside, because property damage to our door was not something I had factored in when sheltering the dog for the night. Huxley quite enjoyed taking a turn about the lawn- he attempted to pee in our vegetable patch, then in our rose bushes, and had a merry trot around the grounds.

Looking at his happy little doggy face, I really wanted to have a dog again. They're just so adorable and cute and happy.

Thanks to Huxley though, my studious efforts at doing my workplace law essay have been thwarted. I shall endeavour to change out of my now-smelling-like-wet-dog-pyjamas and attempt to locate Huxley's owners on the morrow.

The Miracle Cure-All

Today, I had a headache. I blamed it on the early morning start at the legal centre and the fact that we had NO clients, so I was doing filework all morning, staring at the computer screen while trying to figure out how superannuation works in matters of divorce.

In the afternoon, I tried:

1. Drinking more water
2. Drinking green tea with lemon
3. Eating
4. Eating something with sugar
5. Eating something high in sodium
6. Eating something else just because I wanted to
7. Taking paracetamol
8. Playing Rainbox Six Vegas 2 and getting myself repeatedly killed
9. Eating (again)
10. Sprawling on my sister's bed interrupting her study session and thumping my head repeatedly on her mattress to the sound of my own wailing

Then I had to go to work.

Now that I'm doing an average of 3-5 hours a week, instead of 30, I'm finding work much more relaxing- a sort of antidote to law school. Of course, working full-time in the holidays really did suck, so I suppose absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that jazz. I don't know how my managers put up with the weekly tirade that follows their innocent question of, "How's uni?"and I sure as hell don't know why they bother to listen, but it's nice to get an outside perspective on things.

Anyway, headache persisted until I was about to get another paracetamol from my bag- it's a giant tote that I discovered is actually giving me back pain in my left side, that's how much crap I stuff into it on a daily basis- when my assistant manager (bless him) shoved a $20 note and a loyalty card at me and told me to get coffee.

Coffee.

COFFEE.

So we got coffee.

And headache DISAPPEARED.

Gone. Dissipated. Goooooone.

Which just goes to show that coffee is a miracle panacea and the most amazing thing ever.

(And also why I'm awake and blogging at 12:48 a.m in the morning.)

And yes, this is yet another of my 'Coffee is the Best Thing Ever' posts...prepare to see quite a few of them in the lead-up to exams...