21 Going on 60

Boss: So what are you going to do today?

Me: Study. Oh, and Target are having a sale. On cardigans.

Silence.

I didn't mention, "And I need to buy toothpaste," because that would have just been WAY too much excitement for one afternoon. Although considering the way my social life is going (thank you, stupid workload that is threatening to break my fragile spirit) I might as well have said I was going to get soaking solution for my dentures before going off to play bingo, thank you very much.

Then I stood in front of the toothpaste aisle for 15 minutes (I was texting, in my defence) weighing up the advantages of Cool Mint with Mini Breath Strips versus the 12 Hour Antibacterial Protection offered by Colgate Total, just because handing over the $3.99 at the checkout meant that I had no more excuse to linger in the shopping centre- and that meant I had to go home and open my books and study, and hey, that didn't work either because I am now procrastinating by blogging.

Sigh.

Mush

After the rather tumultuous events of last week, my brain has decided to counter all that over-stimulation by only absorbing happy squishy stuff that doesn't require hard thinking. Or any type of concentration.

Don't get me wrong, I had a most excellent week- I got to achieve my dream of eating a grilled rump steak for breakfast, was almost suffocated on a dancefloor with shirtless guys slicked in foam, played with a heck of a lot of glowbands, failed an extremely important pre-requisite subject, drank an espresso martini on fake grass, had a lovely Devonshire tea at a friend's place, was woken up by a mighty rendition of My Humps (AGAIN), woke up almost screaming from a nightmare in which I was pregnant with Kevin Federline's third child (I CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW HORRENDOUS THIS WAS), watched Mulan at a video night and heard this young lady shriek with uncontrolled excitement when a two dimensional cartoon cartoon character took his shirt off, and I worked four shifts and was forcibly reminded of why I HATE SELLING IPODS.

Oh, and the morning after the foam party I was woken up by the sound of a chainsaw next door.

Anyway, my brain has decided that over-stimulation and little sleep makes Daph a very very crazy girl. So you know what I've been doing to recover?

I've been reading teenage romance novels and listening to The Love Album by Westlife.

Oh, Daphne, how low you have sunk.

It's Kris' fault, really. She recommended Twilight. You know that series which teenage girls (and as one journalist wrote, "women who should know better") are all obsessed with? It's about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. It's about as badly written as you might expect and full of bizarre subliminal messages about the virtues of abstinence...but it's also very very easy to read and requires very little thinking. Furthermore, the guy the protagonist falls in love with is like the vampiric equivalent of Mr Darcy...all moody and broody yet female readers cannot help but swoon over him.

If it lessens the disgust you must be feeling, I really am only listening to the one track on the Westlife album (All Out Of Love) because their rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart made me want to scream and smash the disc into tiny pieces. And it's the property of my local library so I can't.

In an effort to dispel this mushy, swoony why can't I find unconditional love without the vampirism crap, I went and borrowed the DVD for the ULTIMATE ANTIDOTE to the lovey teenagey-ness of Twilight.

I borrowed Blade II.

I'll be back after I've watched Wesley Snipes decimate a whole lotta shit.

Are You Still Having Fun?

I just failed Property Law.

I think I'm still in shock. That's another $1200 I need to raise to pay for it, it's another semester tacked on to an already lengthy degree, it means I can't qualify for two of my chosen electives next year and most of all, I was pretty sure I'd done okay. I wasn't expecting a particularly good mark but I thought that I had at least passed.

I'm still in a kind of shock. I've just been too tired to be bothered crying over it, and my self-esteem was already at quite a low so I don't think anything can really drag it down further. Luckily, I was out with friends last night when results came through and I refused to look at my SMS results until I'd had at least three standard drinks. So when I actually did look at my phone I spent the rest of the night downing even more alcohol in an attempt to cope with it.

And hey, it helped...in a head-pounding kind of way.

See, I deserved to fail Torts. I did nothing for that subject, I skipped almost all my classes. Conversely, I went to almost every single one of Property, did all my readings, took copious notes. Yet I passed Torts and failed Property. Not sure how that works, but there you go. Life is cruel. Crueeeeel.

I suppose the shock of it will hit me later, and I suppose the inevitable bout of tears will hit me at some point...probably when I've been given the 50th conciliatory sympathy speech, because I actually feel strangely calm.

But a big part of this goes to my friend Kris, who was just so wonderful about the whole thing and knew exactly what to do to make me feel better. Besides making me down a few buckets of water to balance out the alcohol, she went out in the morning and got me a Sausage and Egg McMuffin, a hash brown, and what has to be one of the best coffees I've had in ages.

(Dude, you're the bestest.)

So...time to get on with it. I think I might actually do that Honours year in English now, if just to take a break from the horror that is law school.

And if I guess I had to repeat a subject, I'd rather it be Property Law because I did actually quite enjoy it, failure or no failure.

But if anything ever mentions the word 'caveat' within my earshot they will get brutally stabbed with a pen.

Let's Go Stalking, Stalking, Stalking...

If you've ever Facebook-stalked somebody just because you met them once and you thought they were kinda cute, say 'aye'.

Aye.

*tumbleweed rolls past*

Right. Now I feel like a total absolute stalker.

And he wasn't even all that cute. In fact, his Facebook profile is really not very encouraging. So now I am wondering what my own Facebook profile says about me.

Probably nothing very flattering.

In fact, judging by my applications and info you'd think I was some kind of Jensen-Ackles-crazed anarchist nut.

Oh wait...

Damn you Facebook.

The Magic Pudding

My dad just exploded a pudding in our kitchen.

Literally, it looks like a pudding bomb has gone off in spectacular fashion- our entire stove is coated in brown debris and the roof is charred black above the stove where the pudding blew up.

(This, incidentally, is what happens when you leave a tinned pudding boiling in hot water on a stove at high heat, and you forget all about it and leave it there for two and a half hours.)

Unfortunately or fortunately, I was in the shower at the time of the explosion...in hindsight, maybe this was a good thing, as I didn't really fancy having to explain pudding-related burn lesions on my face at work tomorrow...

At any rate, downstairs now smells entirely like fragrant, albeit charred, brandy pudding. I just stood there and laughed, then finally offered to clean the walls .

(I also took some pictures of this momentous occasion...it's not every day you get an edible re-enactment of Pompeii in your humble household.)

I couldn't get a very good view unfortunately- I had to lean over the bench to snap some shots because the floor was covered in three millimetres of pudding crumbs...

It's all Spanish to me...

I slept in until 1 p.m this afternoon.

Most of this can be attributed to the fact that I've been sleeping at 3 a.m for the past few nights, thanks to that stupid essay. I finished writing it and realised that I'd just written a 1, 500 word babbling exegesis that made absolutely no sense and was completely non-cohesive, and furthermore, I'd just written 1, 500 on a fiction piece about a romance between a gay Russian and a gay Englishman that also MADE NO SENSE.

See what stress does to my brain?

Anyway...my studying habits are shocking. So far, in my second day off, it has been:

Sit at laptop. Type. Wander off for a snack. Sit back down. Stare at screen. Wander off to make instant coffee. Sit down. Type. Get up to check e-mail. Go on Facebook. Check other people's blogs. Get on Facebook chat. Get distracted. Get another snack. Look at the paper...ooh, it's already afternoon. Get back and type. Get on Blogger. Get another snack.

And the vicious cycle continues.

I was wandering through the house at 11:30 p.m the other night, wondering at how little television I watch these days. Which is actually a very good thing. I couldn't remember the last time I had sat down to watch something stupid and mindless without feeling guilt, so I flicked open the Green Guide to see if anything was on at 11:30 p.m besides Lateline.

And lo and behold, there was a random Spanish film called Buena Vida Delivery on SBS.

I figured that I might as well grab a beanbag and watch it, since my voluntary exposure to foreign language films has thus far consisted of Godzilla and Gamera marathons on SBS as a kid, and you really don't pick up much of the language at all when all you hear are terrified Japanese people screaming "GOD-ZILLA!" and "GA-ME-RA!" while running for their lives from a giant radioactive fire-breathing turtle.

So I sat down to watch this Spanish 'comedy', hoping that this would broaden my horizons.

It's not uncommon to automatically lump the term 'foreign language film' with 'arthouse'. They're not synonymous at all, but in this case, I had the same reaction to the end of the film as I would to an arthouse one:

"What the f**k was that?"

I just sat there as the credits rolled at 1 a.m in my little bunny pyjamas feeling rather un-cultured and wondering whether or not I had gotten the point of that film.

Most people would have viewed it as a black comedy cleverly satirising the state of the Argentinian economy in that particular period of history, but I saw it as a depressing exploitation of other people with not one blackly humourous moment in it.

I understood, on a purely objective level, what they were trying to say. I appreciated the cinematography, the cleverness of the repeated dialogue...but I just didn't connect with it. It was like when I read Chekhov for the first time, and I just sat there blankly wondering why it was left open and struggling with the lack of a finite conclusion.

(But then again, maybe some things are better left open-ended...like that awful epilogue from the seventh Harry Potter book which read like a snippet from a 15-year old girl's fanfiction.)

I got to read Chekhov again this year. In fact, I cannot actually escape him- I always end up studying The Lady With the Dog in some form. This was the third time I'd done it, and admittedly, it has grown on me the more I've read it. True to life, there are no definitive conclusions (except, as the old saying goes, death and taxes) and having grown up watching happy Disney films where everyone lived happily ever after, it was a bit of wake-up call.

(At this point, I must cite Pocahontas as breaking the trend. They had a slew of Disney movies on TV earlier this year, and I disconcerted my entire family by singing along somewhat loudly to Aladdin, so much so that when I left the room to do some work, my Dad called me on the intercom to tell me that they'd reached the flying carpet Whole New World part so I could flounce around the room doing my best Lea Salonga impression...anyway, the fact that Pocahontas gave up John Smith almost made me weep with frustration. Hot blonde English chappy who can sing like Mel Gibson? What is wrong with you, woman?!)

Back to whatever original point I was waffling on about...

Realism, and surrealism, are basically reflections of reality, although surrealism likes to pick out the more grotesque aspects or twist them in some way. Surrealism unsettles me, but it makes me think. Realist material is difficult, it's slow-going, but at the end it always reveals something to you...like chewing very slowly on a hard caramel.

(I felt this way while reading Love in the Time of Cholera and 100 Years of Solitude...but in the end, seeing the entire book as a whole, you realise what a beautiful, albeit pathetic, love story it is.)

As you can see from this fractured post, my brain is somewhat muddled at the moment. Expect a more cohesive post in the not-too-distant future, and stay away from foreign movies....

Worst. Morning. Ever. (A Comedy of Errors)

Today was a truly bad morning.

One might even call it a truly shit morning.

In fact, one might go as far as to say that this morning sucked balls.

I woke up late this morning. Again. This in itself was not breaking news, as I'm pretty much late to every single class five days a week, but this was especially bad because out of 18 lectures for Tort Law, I've only ever been to three this semester. I really shouldn't have picked the 8:30 a.m time, it's pretty much all my stupid fault for having too much faith in my own moral and physical stamina.

Anyway...I figured I'd still have time to get to my all-important English tutorial, as this week the entire class was dissecting my crappy little short story and humilating as it was, I was required to be there to receive feedback and be assessed (and probably humiliated). So off I trotted to open the garage door.

I pressed the big green button.

Silence.

Pressed it again.

Nothing.

Tried the other remote.

Nothing.

There was this little blinking red light on the so-called 'automatic' door system, a little blinking light saying, "Hah! You're trapped! I've got you my pretty, and your little Yaris too!"

(insert cinematic cackling)

I was already running late. But as I kept poking desperately at the door control, I tried to keep my panic under control. Never mind that my car was effectively trapped.

Okay, Daphne...don't panic. You're a thinking woman. Not one of those helpless little damsels in distress...c'mon, you work with electronics, what's the first thing you should do?

Aha! The manual override!

Manual override was duly executed, but during this whole ordeal, I still hadn't put on my little black boots, and I'd just scuttled around in a festy old pair of blue garden scuffs. I ran to put the alarm on, totally forgetting that I didn't have shoes, and then I locked the door.

It was then that I looked down and noticed that I was still wearing the festy pair of blue garden scuffs. And these slippers, aside from being totally old and dirty and hideous, were also five sizes too big as they belonged to my dad.

No problemo. I'll just get my house key and open the...

...oh.

Bugger.

I had left my key in the house, and LOCKED MY SHOES INSIDE.

Idiocy could go no further.

In my defense, I've been sick for the past few days (like pretty much everyone else, really) and was extremely tired and stressed and wasn't thinking straight at all. However, I do concede that there was a fair amount of sheer stupidity inherent in the act that wasn't sickness-related at all.

I stared down at the horrible pair of garden slippers, which clashed hideously with my hipsters and jacket, and decided that life was indeed, terribly cruel. I couldn't DRIVE with them because they were too big (I ended up having to press the pedals in my besocked state) and I certainly would not be caught dead at uni with them, and I couldn't also go up seven flights of stairs without tripping over my own feet.

And because I like to keep up my own running internal commentary to stop myself from panicking (I also talk out loud to reassure myself while driving), the inner monologue continued...

Okay, Daphne. Calm. You have a mobile phone.

So I rang my mother.

Unfortunately, my mother does not have a mobile phone. (This is all going to change tomorrow night, when I will forcibly drag her down to my workplace and I will personally buy her a cheap prepaid phone so that this does not happen again.)

Anyway, I figured that if I rang her I might be able to stop into her office and pick up her housekey. And then drive back and rescue my shoes. Unfortunately, she has the most useless receptionists ever.

The first one said she'd put me through.

Then she hung up on me.

The second one said dismissively, "Oh, I'll send her an e-mail and tell her."

"But it's URGENT-"

"I said I'll send her an e-mail."

Funny, last time I checked, my Mum's office WAS THREE BLOODY DOORS DOWN FROM RECEPTION. SURELY IT WOULDN'T KILL YOU TO GET UP AND PASS ON A FREAKING NOTE?!

So I sat there for fifteen minutes in the driveway. In my car. Alone. (It would have been nice if there'd been pouring rain and some atmospheric symphonic music, resplendent with doleful violins, but y'know, you can't have everything.)

And then the cat got her revenge for me neglecting to feed her that morning, and so jumped up on my car bonnet and stared at me through the glass.

I was meant to go shopping with a friend at 11 a.m, but obviously plans had changed- so I rang her and offered to pick her up from the station, as I was sick of just sitting there in the driveway watching my cat groom herself on my pristine metallic paintwork.

I told her what had happened. She said, "Wow, I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who's done that."
"Really?" said I. (I felt a sense of camaderie at the thought that at least someone else had locked themselves out shoeless at some point). "Oh, I don't feel quite so loser-ish then."
"Well, granted, I was quite drunk at the time..."
"Well, I'm plain cold SOBER and I still managed to do something this dumb."

I picked her up and decided that we'd go shopping- well, that I would shuffle into Chadstone as quickly as possible in my ugly hideous never-meant-to-see-the-light-of-day 'shoes' and buy new ones. So we ran into K-Mart and she kindly started seeking out Size 8s for me to try on.

You know how they say 'beggars can't be choosers'?

Well, they can.

I COULD have purchased $8 ballet flats in a hideous shade of plastic royal blue with BOWS, but I figured that if I was going to spend $40 on emergency shoes they might as well be decent ones...so we scampered upstairs to Target and I grabbed a pair of brown boots and bought them on the spot. Then I tottered out and we got a coffee.

And then to cut a long story short, we both shared a plate of dumplings from the food court and got food poisoning.

So after we met up with some friends at Camberwell, I had to scurry her back because she was literally about to throw up in my car.

I offered her the bag with my stupid garden shoes in it if she needed to hurl, because frankly, I couldn't have cared less if they'd been coated in vomit. Stupid shoes.

And that was my day.

On the upside, when my sister came home at night after a long day at the hospital, she had stopped in at Safeway to buy me a 'cheer-up pie' as she had gathered from my hysterical SMS that morning that I was having a shit day. So at least there was the comfort of apple berry crumble. I love having siblings.

I thought the trauma of the day was over, until I realised that I had lost the sore throat from last night and developed a cold instead. So now I have no sense of taste and I sound like a human foghorn.

On the upside, I just realised that in my congested state, I can do a really bitchin' Tracy Chapman impression.

Like, a really good one.

I think I'll just spend tomorrow doing Cher impersonations.

The Facebook Debate

Facebook.

That's a fun word. It provokes different and stimulating reactions. Much like 'Iraq'. And 'Bush'. And any other word that smacks of world politics. You get the rabid devotees, you get the 'no-way-in-hell' crowd, and you get the neutral little fence-sitters (like me.)

But ah, Facebook...

...tis something of a blessing, yet the bane of my existence.

After mostly neglecting Facebook for months, except to use that nifty photo sharing feature, I dove back into the tangled web of online networking earlier tonight. And then I remembered exactly why I spent so much time on it last year during exam time.

Torts...versus...Facebook.

Property law....versus Facebook.

No contest. It's a time sapper and the ultimate procrastination tool. I wandered around the site posting random crap on people's walls instead of working on my tutorial problems.

And the thing about Facebook is that everyone is literally at your fingertips. The RSS feed in particular is pretty much the ultimate stalking tool and a voluntary offer to relinquish your privacy. I'm trying very hard not to shout out to my beloved s21A of the Crimes Act, but there, I did it...21A 21A 21A....

Facebook is sort of useful, in that I've caught up with old friends from high school and primary school, and it's handy if people are overseas.

On the other hand, it is, once again, a poor substitute for face-to-face contact. I keep hearing about the whole '90% of communication is in your body language'- now and then, that little factoid tends to pop up in weekend magazines and the ever trusty adhesive backs on Libra pads. But people nowadays, including myself, are so time-poor that it quickly becomes a cheap substitute for human interaction. Kind of like missing breakfast and drinking an Up-And-Go instead. Cheap nutrition that won't last.

I strongly believe that the anathema to Facebook is...

...coffee.

I love coffee. I love the aroma, I love the fact that a grande size latte can lift my mood right up, I like doodling on the little paper cup in lectures while Kristine gives me odd looks, I like cradling the steaming cup to my lips and breathing in the steam, I like clutching the mug on morning shifts at work (assistant manager: "Quick! Scull it before a customer interrupts you!") and the other day, I skipped my lecture and just sat in the little garden behind the law building with a little plastic cup having a little moment of Daphne-introspection.

But most of all, I like sitting down for a couple of hours with a mug at a cafe with some good company. Most often it's just one person, sometimes two, but I strongly believe that sustaining an easy conversation over three hours with one mug is the best way to get to know someone.

If I had an ideal date*, it would probably have to involve coffee. Because if there's going to be any awkwardness, it'll be ironed out straight away once the cup is drained.

And sometimes companionable silence is a good thing.

I will give two examples here from personal experience- one, where I caught up with a friend in the city (and the coffee was absolutely terrible) and after four hours over one cup, we realised it had gotten dark and we hadn't even noticed, we were so caught up in the conversation. The other example was when I rather unwillingly accepted an offer for coffee (but I was being polite and couldn't say no) and I personally felt so uncomfortable that I wanted to run away screaming.

But that was a one in a million occurrence.

So you know what? Go through your Facebook contacts. Weed out the random ones, look at the ones that you love, the ones whom you're close to, the ones that you've lost contact with but still care for...and go get a coffee.

It beats a Wall Post any time.

Or a freaking Super Fun Wall Post.

Or whatever the fuck they're called.

And if it's a total disaster, I give you permission to spam my wall.

Just no Viagra offers, please.

*And by this, I mean any ideal date that DID NOT involve Jensen Ackles, Tom Welling or John Barrowman. Or all three at once...

Update!

After several threats from Kristine (both physical and electronic, which could very well amount to a course of conduct in stalking under s21A of the Crimes Act) I am finally updating my blog.

Sorry.

However, the lack of blogging means that Kris hasn't been able to use it as an excuse to procrastinate, so really, SHE SHOULD BE THANKING ME when she gets her high distinction in Property Law at the end of the semester.

Unfortunately, I just haven't had time in the past few weeks- or to put it another way, saya tidak punya cukup waktu. (I've been trying to keep up what little language skills I have by chatting in Malay with my mother, but all we've been doing is insulting each other, then giggling hysterically.)

But yes...time management. Not going well.

If I'm not at uni, then I'm at work. If I'm not at work, then I'm banging my head on the large dining table with my laptop attempting to study. If I'm not banging my head on the large dining table with my laptop attempting to study, I'm standing in the kitchen with my head stuck in the pantry scavenging for food.

And the vicious cycle goes on.

And so, that leaves me here at 12:47 a.m still with my unfinished homework to print off and a little bundle of anxiety that likes to build up in my chest until I end up trying to get rid of it by panicking or hopping on one foot and sticking my head in the pantry again and wailing.

Because I am a mature young woman and I like to resolve my various personal crises in grown-up, mature ways.

Like wailing.

But yes...tomorrow I am screwed for my law tutorials. Oh, so screwed. How I wish the week were over...

A proper update will be forthcoming...

Days of Ugliness

I had an Ugly Day today.

I consider this profoundly unfair, as I already suffered through an Ugly Day yesterday, but it looks like that maybe Ugly Days, like many things, come in threes.

For the perpetually beautiful (and thus ignorant) people who have never had one, an Ugly Day is when you get up and look in the mirror and something akin to the monosyllable, "BLEEEAAARGH!!!" bursts forth upon seeing your hideous visage.

Then you close your eyes for two seconds.

Then you crack one eye open, just to make sure that what you saw wasn't a sleep-deprivation-induced hallucination.

If you still look horrible, then yep, it's an Ugly Day.

It's a combination of factors- bad skin, bad hair, bad make-up, painful application of corrective lenses, your favourite top is in the wash...and all you want to do is hide under the covers and shout a muffled defiance at the world.

So I had one yesterday, but luckily all I had was Torts (where I sat right up the back by myself in a little huddle where no one could look upon me and be turned to stone, Medusa-like) and my Spanish cultural class, which is generally in a darkened theatre.

I then went home, where Dad was setting up digital set-top box #2.

Except he didn't have any spare RF cables. I found that a bit hard to believe, considering the jungle of cables he keeps around. And Dad being Dad, just said: "Why don't you go and get me one now?"

Two main things wrong with that:

1. I was having an Ugly Day
2. There's nothing more loser-ish than going into work WHEN YOU HAVE A DAY OFF

Except I didn't really want to explain to Dad that I was having an Ugly Day, because in my opinion, Ugly Days are a purely feminine concept, and men just don't get why you're hiding in the house with your trackies and ugg boots all day and hissing at the prospect of human contact. Plus, men just go out and get things done regardless of whether they look shit or not.

But after 40 minutes of discussion, we finally settled upon getting a 2.5m cable and some spare TV coax solder heads, just as backup. Plus, Dad agreed to teach me to strip and solder coaxial cable, and we still haven't tried out his newest toy, a temperature-controlled soldering station.

After a really nasty bout of Daphne v Foundation, in which the defendant, Revlon Flex, would not apply properly to the plaintiff's face without drying it out, I slunk off to work. Looking like someone had rubbed sand on my cheeks. If I'd been able to sue a semi-liquid inanimate object, I would have cited emotional trauma.

After the initial "What are you doing at work on YOUR DAY OFF?" from the girls, and after "giving shit" to my boss, as he likes to call it, I got the RF plugs and cable and went home. But not before browsing for some new glasses frames, which was even more humiliating, as 99% of the frames looked like they were attacking my face instead of helping my little eyeballs see clearly.

Oh, the horrors.

Not to worry, I thought. Because tomorrow is a new and exciting day!!!

To quote Borat...

...NOT.

I woke up this morning- actually, strike that, it was sometime in the afternoon- padded to the mirror, and internally, I screamed.

That stupid healing purple spot on my forehead had decided to reverse the healing process so it looked like someone had squashed a munted blueberry on my face and stuck it there for all posterity. To add insult to injury, it had somehow procreated overnight and so I had two matching companions for the damn thing on my left cheek, and oh, what I would've given to have Photoshopped my face right then at that moment.

OK, Daphne.

We are not going out today.

Luckily, it was 'Reading Week' for English at uni. Which is pretty stupid, because I only have TWO CONTACT HOURS a week for that subject, so I just don't understand why a Reading Week (read: Bludge Week) is required. Not that I'm complaining, because I got to stay home and bemoan Ugly Day #2.

I was making a pumpkin soup in the afternoon, and I'd got it all nice and blended and smooth when I realised that I was missing cream.

"Dad, I need cream. And we're out of milk."

"Why don't you go get some?"

"Because it's an Ugly Day."

"It's a beautiful day outside."

"No, I know the weather's nice. But I am having an ugly day. I refuse to go out."

(Dad didn't really have a response for that. Probably too befuddled as to the illogical workings of the teenage female mind. Plus he'd already commented on the hideousness of The Spot earlier in the afternoon, so he probably did understand.)

"Awwww come on Dad. I went and got your RF cable for you yesterday didn't I? Your turn."

So Dad went and fetched my cream and my milk, and that was that. I am currently holed up at home until soccer tonight, but all of my friends there have seen me at some stage in my little pink and blue bunny pyjamas and if that isn't a trial of friendship I don't know what is, so I never really feel self-conscious around them at all. It's quite liberating.

I even think that I radiate some kind of negative electromagnetic energy on Ugly Days, like Jack Black in Be Kind Rewind- my phone froze when I tried to answer a call and I had to hold down the off button until it blinked off, and the home PC froze up completely last night as well and had to be manually shut down.

Even technology doesn't like reflecting my face in its LCD screens.

Oh, and you know what was playing as I got into my car yesterday?

"Unpretty" by TLC.

And that, Ms Morissette, is irony.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!!

I figured I'd blog now, because:

(a) it's way too hot to sleep...(today was meant to be 42 degrees!!!)
(b) I also figured that I might as well sort of my New Year's Resolutions right now

For New Year's Eve, I went out for dinner with my family (which included two uncles, my aunt and my younger cousin) to this restaurant in Fitzroy famous for its Peking Duck. It was good duck, even though the waiter who carved it at the table seemed to be extremely hyper or extremely high- "Anyone here a Peking Duck virgin? No one? Who wants a leg? Who wants the bottom? If you want another just ask, we've got plenty of arse to go round...NO YOU CAN'T PUT TWO SPRING ONIONS ON ONE PANCAKE, IT IS STRICTLY ONE CUCUMBER AND ONE SPRING ONION IN A 3:15 POSITION!!!"

I am NOT kidding.

He actually threw a rather melodramatic fit upon seeing my cousin's sprig of spring onion matching the cucumber angle in a 12:00 position instead of 3:15.

Of course, it was all an act, and it amused me somewhat, but I didn't quite feel comfortable in reaching for the mandarin pancakes whilst he was waving the giant chopper around, slicing and dicing with a lot of gusto.

After the duck (in which we had Peking Duck, then the leftovers were stir-fried with bean sprouts, then the bones were made into soup) we tramped back to our place for the countdown.

Earlier in the day, I worked from 11 a.m to 6 p.m, although I was officially the acting manager between 3:30 and 6:00 p.m, which I personally found hilarious because as a youngest child, I'm extremely bad at giving orders or taking any kind of responsibility. It didn't go too badly either, although I'm sure my boss will arrive on Wednesday morning and find out that I've done something really stupid.

Anyhow, I'm going to post up my New Year's Resolutions here, and watch with a kind of detached amusement at how long it takes me to break them:

Daphne's New Year's Resolutions for 2008

1. I will make an effort to actually catch up with people

See, I suck at this. I really really suck. I'm sick of exchanging 'we have to catch up' - it should be we WILL catch up, and I haven't seen some of my La Trobe friends for...well, a year. Since I left. Anyhow, I will also be a better texter...I issue an apology for anyone who has received one of my '24-hours-after-you-sent-your-message' texts...my phone memory caps at 150 messages and I have to delete them all one by one manually.

GAAAAAARGH

I need a new phone.

2. I will actually do the readings for uni

Hah.

HAH.

Let's see how long THAT one lasts...

3. I will exercise

This, friends, is partly why I spent $100 on getting Dance Dance Revolution for the XBox 360. It has a Workout mode and a Calorie counter, so I can dance dance without the pain pain.

Supposedly.

4. I will stop eating crap. Or at least, spending ridiculous amounts of money on food.

This is a pretty important one. Stoopid attractive food court at work! Oh, and that coffee addiction!!!

5. I will not dress like a tramp

I will make an active effort to dress nicely.

Gaah.

This will probably involve sorting out my wardrobe and spending ridiculous amounts of money on clothes. Sigh.

6. I will keep track of my spending

Take note, Point 5.

7. I will be grateful for what I have

I think a lot of useless energy is spent comparing one's self to the status quo, which just breeds discontent. I'm living a life of privilege while others in the world are suffering. I have nothing to whine about.

8. I will keep my room clean

My mum recommended this one, not me.

9. I will be more pro-active.

I'm not quite sure what I meant by this, but I suppose it could be taken to mean that I need to muster more enthusiasm for whatever it is that I'm doing. Like studying. Or work. Or cleaning the house.

10. I will be more culturally-minded.

Xia, if you're reading this, I look forward to more mad dashes to the MSO. My Llama-like fishbowlin friend, I think it's time I set foot in a proper arthouse theatre with a proper arthouse movie that no one but the director can decipher. I'm also going to read all those books I've always wanted to read. (Loui, I shall make that one of my next posts.)

So yes...let's see how those all pan out.

I hope you all have a fantastic start to 2008, and best wishes for the New Year!!!

Thanks muchly for reading, btw :D

Thinking...

My parents do not think very highly of my intelligence.

Admittedly, I haven't given them much reason to disprove this opinion, but that's not the point...surely the 'I-Trust-My-Child-To-Be-Sensible instinct outweights the I-Am-The-Parent-And-Thus-Am-Always-Right mentality?

Or...not.

Today I had a job interview. Again. For a music teaching position. (Again). Only this time, they pretty much offered me a twelve-month contract after fifteen minutes of chatting.

Which was kind of strange, considering the other music school made me jump through several hoops to even get to the bloody audition part...but this seems okay, it's teaching children in primary schools. The only problem is getting around my university timetable...which is going to be interesting. Very interesting.

Anyhow, I rang Dad before going to work to tell him the good news.

He said, "You didn't sign the contract did you? Did you even read it?" etc, acting like I was nine instead of nineteen...before I cracked it and finally pointed out, "YOU KNOW I DIDN'T SUFFER THROUGH ONE YEAR OF CONTRACT LAW TO BE TOLD THAT I NEED TO READ A BLOODY CONTRACT."

I even remember the bloody precedent- L'Estrange v Graucob, although this knowledge is about as useful as the little random facts that come printed on the back of Libra sanitary pads.

Secondly...my grand plan, as I explained to my interviewer, is to take a year off in 2009, and do music. Just music. Ideally, I'd like to teach for a year, complete my A.Mus.A, learn voice and violin, and travel to Greece. And possibly South America. And possibly Alaska.

My mother does not like this idea. In fact, she violently disapproves. She thinks I am being insensible, and she pointed out that time is money, and I could be earning money in that one year blah blah blah...she tried to use the opinion of one of my siblings as back-up for her argument, except I'm perfectly aware that that particular sibling thinks of the world in seven-minute billings...so that really had no weight.

Oddly enough, my father gave me some spiel about superannuation when I first floated this plan, but then shrugged it off, saying, "It's your life..." which would have been quite nice of him if he hadn't added, "...you can muck it up if you want."

Without sounding like a petulant five-year old, I wish I were financially independent...because then no one could tell me what to do. But since I can't afford to move out, no matter how much I wish I had my own space, I am somewhat restricted by certain limitations.

But never mind.

All I want for Christmas is one week off. I have a 9 a.m- 7 p.m shift tomorrow and I think I am just going to retire to the back room with the biggest vat of coffee I can find, and drown my misery in sweet-smelling caffeine.

Mmm.

Coffee...

Edit, post-evil-shift: I bought one extremely large cappuccino during my lunch break but it didn't make me even a smidgen more alert...when I woefully pointed this out to my colleague, he went and bought me an additional cup in order to wake me up. This didn't work either. Which makes me wonder...AM I BECOMING DESENSITISED TO THE MIRACULOUS RESTORATIVE POWERS OF COFFEE?!!!