there really are entirely too many people on television that look like barbie dolls. or stepford wives. my gosh. all these tv channels to chose from and i end up watching bbc world news cause most of it is an insult to my intelligence. one thing that contemporary television makes clear: life is a competition.

its been a busy weekend. so busy i had to take a nap this arvo after eating sushi buffet for lunch. it was a sushi buffet that was brought to your table almost a la cart. this place is on the oakville border was found via a friends of a friends birthday party. there was a take away looking menu on the table that you wrote numbers beside how many of each dish you wanted to order. when the food started to come out i think some of us who are not me were a little shocked at how much food was there prompting the comment "thats what happens when you write down the big numbers." i dont know most of what we ordered beyond bbq chicken and california rolls. something called red dragon had a bunch of stuff inside including tempora shrimp and salmon on the outside and that good. the random fish stuff i did not try. not my thing. we had green tea ice cream for dessert that really made me want a green tea latte.

oh and we found a drive thru starbucks. ive never seen one of those before and it seemed to be a novelty.

yesterday was the first of st patrick's day celebrations for some and my only alcoholic acknowledgement to the occasion. rex found there was a party/ celebration going on at the steamwhistle brewery downtown that started in the afternoon. we headed down to that via mississauga transit and the go bus.. and hour later plus walking time we got there. im not a fan of transit, i like walking, but it seems as though that is the way to go when planning to get very very crunk on the weekend. we got to steamwhistle around 2:30 but the event didnt start until 3. that meant we had to have free samples of beer while we waiting. that didnt suck. the place wasnt packed out at 3 but very full. we had some more beers and waiting for another friend to show up. apparently green on st patricks day does not require than one wear irish green. there were people who can cute capes in the shape of clovers and others were doing the funny hat, glasses, antenna thing. but also lots of tops from mainstream mall stores that just happened to be green and a few sports jerseys for countries like mexico and brasil. the most festive i got was a green hairband and barring the one green tshirt i have that says 'australia' across the front, i do not own anything green. we left at 6 and i went home while the others went to madison. i was close to falling alseep on the way home, clearly id had enough. the stories they told me today about being off their faces made me not regret my decision. my parent had friends over for dinner so i got good food cooked for me there.

friday night was the gutter twins (mark lanegan + greg dulli) show at he mod club and it was my first show back in canada. it was really great. saturnalia sounds better live than recorded. considering who is in the band, i would have been disappointed if they had not delivered something awesome, but yah, it was awesome. to my knowledge the mark lanegan band/ mark solo has never played in canada and the last time i heard him sing was qotsa in montreal (oddly i just found the mini disc of that show the other day). meth blues was on the setlist and some of the european shows from this year's tour. towards the end of the set they went into hit the city, fucking rock, but i was so sure that it was going to be the only lanegan that was played. nope. four songs later we got meth blues. even more rock. yah, it was pretty great, even if it was an early show. a friend was trying to get me to go to montreal for the show on saturday but he couldnt convince me. a $30 ticket plus $300 in travel only happens for certain artists, as much as i liked the show im not spending that kinda cash.

i found good underground parking on college street too. in the past whenever ive gone there or when someone else is driving we laywas go for street parking on ossington or college. the snow banks were covering a lot of that, and seeing as my parallel parking skills are a little rusty i was hopeing for paking lot. i found a green p parking that was only a few mins walking away. it was all good.

the gym i joined closes at eight on the weekend. i thought it would be at least 9pm.. not cool.

the internet is being so retarded right now. i feel like im still in australia and i just hit my download cap and was reduced to dial up speed.

i looked at the date earlier and thought feb 23rd, where the fuck did the year go already? life has always been flying by at a rate too fast to comprehend, but at the moment its going at hyperspeed.

i had a great week involving seeing some friends again, its been awhile, and having saturday in the middle of the week. the work week needs to consist of every wednesday off and it be made mandatory to hang out with friends.

excellent i can still get into pubmed. it would be nice if my access isnt cut off before the end of the weekend.. cause im no longer a fee paying student, thus i dont exist!

back to this week. tuesday night involved shenanigans at the wonderful woywoy building that will soon be sold and tenants fucked over (dontcha loved landlords?!) many beverages were consumed and pizza and snacks were eaten and we talked over the top of many videos. nadeen had to leave and by that time i was sufficiently mood altered that i ran outside to give fabien a hug. in another example of time flying, somehow it became 3am and sonia thought it would be an excellent idea to go for a swim. and swim we did. port philip bay, middle of the night, no one else on the entire beach. and no sunburns. it was the first and probably only time that i have been swimming in the bay beach. any other time ive been to the beach but not swimming. sonia forgot the key to the outside door so she had to buzz lara to come and let us in. oops. the next morning was not so good. i had quite the headache and dawn had realtors coming through her apartment (hate to landlords for inconvenience). outside it rained a little bit and i got a little went coming back into the city. i had to miss the shopping fun since i had a lab meeting to go to that arvo and yah, i had to go.

wednesday night was the miss polly jean harvey show. omg, awesome. if you didnt happen to read it somewhere else i posted it, here it is again: whatever boys can do, girls can do better. she played a lot from white chalk and older stuff too. songs on the piano, songs on the electric guitar and songs on the acoustic guitar. mick harvey was the opener and he came out and played a few songs with her too. and oddly in his set he played some non album pj stuff. polly said that she watched the crowd coming into the venue and we all looked very nice. this was after someone shouted at her your the prettiest lady or something alone those lines. and after her comment it initiated the we are much better than sydney response.

the venue was one of the reasons a good show was made even better. the acoustics were excellent. the only time ive seen an artist play at a similar venue was the 1999 cornell solo tour of symphony halls etc. or it was in toronto at the time. every note she sang and played was crystal clear, even the vocals when she backed away from the mic were picked up well.

after the show we hung around for a bit and then decided food was needed. walking the 500m into the city one of us commented about how the moon looked really eerie. the sky was misty and cloudy and it was (almost?) full. this was 15 hours before the eclipse that was viewable in the northern hemisphere.. although at the time i had no idea there was an eclipse. when food was in sight mcdonalds got veto'ed so it was hungry jacks. the only time i eat shit food is after shows. i had a strawberry milkshake that was pretty good for $2, but not great for a milkshake. everyone in the place stared at us. weirdos.

thursday i packed all day and this morning i tried to get some work done then i packed some more. i got pretty much everything in boxes to ship out tomorrow. the amount of stuff i have left to go into suitcases is still quite a lot. most of it is things i will need in the next 10 days or in the month after returning home. its hard to figure out 'what will i need until the end of march'. im throwing out a lot of stuff too. that is hard to part with since i keep everything. tonight i took down the posters off my wall with the intention that i would keep the frames and ship them home. as careful as i was the glass cracked on one of the frames. while it was leaning against my bed of all things. if it cant survive sitting on the floor then it would definitely break in transit. that prompted me to repack all the photo frames that are going home. im going to have major issues on where to put everything since i dont have my own house.

i had to go to lab drinks today since it was half planned with me in mind. someone else is leaving the lab too so this was our shared goodbye thing. total gyp having to share. not really complaining though since its usually awkward enough. got the usual questions in the round table that certain people dont care enough about to ask in personal situations. i routinely find it funny that random people ask more questions and seem more interested in general life things than my supervisor. since there was a lot of people time went by fast enough and i didnt end up leaving until 7:30.

i ran down to bourke street to pick up stuff at supre that i want to take home. i went to ask an employee standing near me a question and she turned around and asked me "are you asal's friend?" im looked at her for a second and details came flashing back but not a name. it was mo, someone i havent seen it about a year and a half and only knew through asal and her brothers. totally weird to see someone like that randomly. i guess you know the city well enough when that happens.

i just got a little less excited about the anticipation to go home when 1. i received an email from my mom telling me there has been 67 cm of snow so far in february. apparently this breaks all previously records of snowfall, or something along those line. 2. while wasting my time on facebook just now, i saw a photo of a friend plus others standing outside wearing their mega parkas with snow flakes as big as your head falling in the background. it looked cold.

it was 20C in melbourne today and i loved it. not to hot, not too cold. its was just right. and i finally went to lulu to pick up the pants i bought on boxing day that were getting altered. since they were on sale i had to pay for the alterations and ended up only saving $15. at this point i dont know why i bought them in the first place.

as of two nights ago i started losing sleep over how the fuck i am going to pack and then ship everything back to toronto. fricken fuck. what a stress attack. i am either going to become very organized over this next weekend, or have a complete melt down. if i could figure out this whole am i going to be coming back thing that would also help. but i cant, at least not yet. thus, awake in the middle of the night i remain. drinking massive amounts of tea after midnight does not help me fall asleep either, but i like to enjoy a cuppa, all of the time.

and, i will now issue and open invitation to cocktail hour, at my house, everyday, to be held constantly whenever im home. please ring before dropping by. if you see me and im in a really good mood, this is why. i dont know why i have so much alcohol in my possession at this time, but i do. bring your own mixers.

the shawshank redemption was on tv tonight which meant i needed to watch it. around halfway through M and i were sitting there with work in front of us, supposedly being productive. she got much more done than i did, because i like to work through the process of osmosis. after the movie was finished letterman came on. we're only a day behind north america at the moment, evangeline lily was the guest.. i didnt know she was canadian. after watching that interview i dont dislike her anymore. the media played her out to be such an haute couture whore, maybe she is, but i now like her off screen.

sadly my big week out is over. quite sadly actually. now that it is february it feels like it is the beginning of the end of my time in melbourne. this past week its been fantastic meeting up with quite a few people i havent seen for months, those in town for a short time and those who are just busy. the people, the shows, the sunny days in beer gardens and the relaxed atmosphere.. thats summer.

a few friends from sydney flew in and trained in on saturday/ sunday last weekend. i met up with steph and ryan for coffee in the morning, it was probably their 20th coffee that morning and we hung out until emma and stu came and met us. with all the rearranging or where we were all going to go that afternoon steph left ryan in our care for a few hours so she could do get her stuff done. we dropped off emma and stu's stuff at my house sat for a bit then started to walking the direction of fed square to pick up gaby. on the way downstairs i get a message from jason asking what time we are heading to the show. my reply was something like: beer garden, right now, pick you up on the way. by pick you up im sure i insinuated involvement of a car and not walking but oh well. we got jason on the way to fed square and then found gaby.. group growing every stop.. got on a tram after decided that the 16 definitely went that far down st kilda road so it was a safe route to take. arriving at the belgian bier cafe we were about 45 minutes later than the intended meet up time, so megan had been waiting for a little while. steph arrived a while later and so did aaron, who hadnt been sure if he would make it or not. i didnt realize that only steph and i had met him before, so he was putting faces to crazy. then the drinking shenanigans began. megan has a good pic of ryan reaching for beer among about 20 empties sitting there, captioned: MOAR. that was the afternoon. at one point gaby and i went to get chips. seeing that there was three sauces we decided on one tomato, one mayonaise, and one hot sauce. we are smart cause it was a good choice and we devoured the chips. gaby's other half dropped by for a while before they headed off to their evening activity. aaron had to go too and watch fireworks in the g-rat on sunday night. melbourne had their fireworks on saturday night.

i was starting to feel not so good with the amount of beer consumed and wanted a break for a while. i decided to go home because i needed to change my shoes anyways, and met everyone else at that prince. it was going to be emma, stu, steph, jason and i that went to the show. megan waited with ryan in the bar downstairs playing pool or something for 3 hours. i cant imagine the patience she has with tired ryan who hadnt slept the night before. anyhow, i get into the prince and there are 50 or 60 people in the room, the people i know at front and center. apparently when they got there jason gravitated towards cam and tish who had been waiting for a while. that ended up being a waste of time on their part since some bogan asshole pushed them out the way when UNKLE came on. the new drink of choice began: vodka and red bull. im so loving red bull even though i know how bad it is to drink and mixing it with alcohol is even worse.. damn knowledge of the adrenergic system. funny thing is i never drank a single red bull until a couple of months ago.. when i bought a round i was shocked they were $13 each. hello, rip off.

i already posted about this show and it was fantastic. i didnt mention how the people who obviously got in free (read: photographers) were fucking annoying as, some stupid girl decides she is going to push me out the way then stick her camera in front of my face. until she moved i made it next to impossible for her to take a clear shot. asshole. perhaps when one doesnt have to pay $65 to get in the door they can show more respect for the people that do. all you need if one good photo to get paid from whoever you are taking pics for.

after the show we waited way too long to get a cab home. we split up and finding two taxis proved to be a challenge. fitzroy street was swarmed at that time of night and more people were leaving bars than i would have expected at 12:30. we finally did get a taxi and got dropped off at the mcdonalds at swanson and lonsdale. realizing that none of us had eaten dinne, we very much in need for food at that time, mcdonalds was going to have to do. the UNKLE show day shall now forever be known as the day i went to mcdonalds in australia.

big day out was monday. we left much later than anticiapted to get there. i forgot to eat dinner that day too. i guess i was too concerned about seeing bands. tuesday was the nightwatchmen, i posted about this already too. i was less than impressed when my friends basically walked outside saw a cab and jumped in. they didnt even ask how i was getting home. thanks! wednesday was going to be arcade fire, then it was going to be rage, then it was nothing because i sold my ticket to arcade fire then decided that rage were way too boring at BDO and i wasnt wasting another $110 to see them play something i can hear on a cd.

thursday i did get to LCD soundsystem. gaby decided not to go so i got her ticket. that worked out well since i couldnt find anything online. not a single ticket was even on ebay. steph came over after work and we had drinks at my place. i managed to be a complete minimalist that night and not take a purse. i used to be able to go out all the time with i.d., keys, money and my phone. and that is what i did on thursday, yay me. id drunk enough that i had to use the toilets three times before LCD came on. that worked out ok too, on the route back to the floor after the last trip i followed some other girl who was going back to her spot and we were only 4-5 people back from the stage. that show was really good too. good crowd, lots of dancing and happy people not pushing each other out of raging anger. it would have been good for the set to be longer, i always feel like that when it is an enjoyable show.

friday was more meet, part 2. the idea was pizza and beer, or beer and pizza. steph found out that marrakech has $0.99 coronas from 5-7 and the aim was to get there. jason and i got there at 6:30 and there was massive line outside to get in. we texted some more and further rearranged what to do. in the mean time megan and chris showed with one of their friends. chris and friend would prove to be entertainment for the rest of the night. steph left the bar because it was ridiculously packed inside and cheap beer was almost over. the decision was made to go to st jerome's. score. it was not packed at all and we walked right in. coopers long necks were in order. gaby met us there, which was good since the plan to meet for pizza at 7:30 was not going to happen until much later. during beer drinking we had some good reminising about shows and tour moments. fun and silly.

pizza eating was to be at pizza-a-metro, my pick, and i was surprised no one else had been there. the seven of us had 1.7 meters of pizza, none left over. so good. the varieties we ordered were salvatore, vego, special and aussie. (this was written for the purpose of the former regulars ;-) ) and house red wine and beer. i think everyone agreed that it was pretty excellent food.

megan, chris and friend headed off to a show in chapel street after pizza and the rest of us took a walk down lygon street. end point: il dolce freddo. gelato goodness. i told the server to give jason a sample of durian since he had never had it before, 3 hours later he was telling me he could still taste it after eating chocolate ice cream. i had some pandan and coconut gelato, highly recommended.

we hung out for a bit eating on the street, then hung out for a bit at my place before gaby and steph headed home. jason stayed at mine and left this morning at 5am to catch his flight to perth. i went back to sleep after he left and have been having the laziest day yet this year. sadly the excitment is over and i have to concentrate more of work without the benefit of having good nights to look forward to. not sure if i will be around next australia day holiday week to hang out in melbourne some more.. time will tell.

oh and for tomorrow, happy yield day! 10 years, wow.

its way past my bedtime, yet im still up and i didnt even watch LOTR that is sitting here beside me. christmas and boxing day have come to an end. it didnt feel like christmas at all. this whole summer = holidays it just weird. today was a madhouse in the city. people are crazy when it comes to sales.

on christmas day i ended up buying a train ticket for nothing, because apparently public transport was all free. i found that out coming home when C went to purchase a ticket in cranbourne and he was told he didnt need one. basically, the trains ran when they wanted to, as opposed to on schedule, more than usual. because of that randomness, i "ran" across flinders station in my strappy sandals on tuesday morning only to find that the train i needed to catch was not the one that was there. wrong fricken line. like any good melbourne snob, i went to get coffee while i waited 19 minutes for my train. i hate waiting. train came, i got on, it wasnt that busy, but there were enough people around. one more thing i hate about public transport; parents that let their children run wild instead of instructing them to sit down and behave. maybe it worked in whatever country you came from, welcome to the civilized world, get up to speed on something called manners.

the whole deal about public transportation would be brought up again later in the day. i was picked up at the train station by C's relative. dinner was at C's aunt's sister's house, and there were a hole heap of people. from the moment i was in the down until almost the moment i left i had a glass of sparkling in my hand. the daughter of the host of the dinner had come back from london for christmas. i had some really good conversation with her and about overseas and traveling and life in general and this is where the public transport topic came back up. living in the london the transit system is awesome. it needs to be. so when one has to wait 6 minutes from a tube train one becomes very impatient. and when one line becomes backed up for whatever reasons one become even more impatient. people bitch about the trains in melbourne. i dont think they are that bad but i cannot, at all, stand the fucking trams. public transport that has to abide by traffic lights is no good. no buses, no streetcars, no trams. no way. trains yes, subways yes.

anyways, lunch was great. two turkeys, ham, roast beef, loads of veggies, stuffing, umm.. other stuff too perhaps. mud cake and fruits for after and bottomless glasses of sparkling. a surprise of the day was the presents they gave me. i was not expecting anything from them at all, considering they had been generous enough to invite to for dinner. M. C and i had taken bottles of wine and chocolates for the house. there were four families there and i got a gift from all of them. soaps, a calendar, chocolates, body shop stuff, schwarzkopf shampoo. it was really nice of them.

on the way home the flatmates wanted to stop by pj obriens at southgate because there was supposedly some big irish thing happening for the people who were way from home. i think there was a dinner (lunch) earlier in the day, and by the time we got there no sign of food was around. it wasnt very busy, i thought. we had some drinks, had a chat, listened to the christmas music, listened to the girls at the table beside us drunkenly singing. then we decided to go. at that time M went to say something to the drunk girls beside us who then invited us all to have a drink. and we did, or three. i was then ready to leave, but they were having a good time, which i totally understood because if it was a canadian bar somewhere and i had convinced them to go hang out there it would have been the same thing. fyi, its shit being by yourself on the other side of the world at christmas. the girls were really nice, all of them were backpacking and had been in the country for various lengths of time. i was getting tired and it was getting harder to leave because both M & C's phones started ringing continually. we are 11 hours ahead of ireland so by that time it was late morning and everyone had just got up and opened their presents.

we got home and made some food. by eleven at night we hadnt eaten in a good 6 hours or more. on the way home C and i were all "lets watch LOTR!" which didnt exactly happen cause their phones kept going off. my family called me at 20 after midnight (the 26th).. 8:20am christmas morning in toronto, using voip as the phone lines into australian were jammed. theres a surprise. they are shit at the best of times. another fyi, if you are intending to call australia use skype or another voip service. land line connections have constant delays or poor reception.

surprising even myself, i got up at 8am at went to prahran on boxing day. spent a lot of money at lulu lemon and came home. i manged to not even go to the store with the pretty sandals that may have been on further sale than saturday. i have stuff to return to lulu now since the sale items were cheaper than the other items i purchased last week. i expected this to happen so i didnt wear any of them. i came home and slept for 3 hours in the middle of the day then went out to some shops in the city. city was an absolute zoo. the sales at myer were pretty crap. i got some new bathers at rip curl and jetty surf, now i am more ready for QLD holidays. i bought something else too but i dont remember what it was and i cant see it in my bedroom. hmm.

we had a quite night. there were a whole bunch of movie released on boxing say that have been out in canada for something like 3 months. i couldnt convince a flatmate to come with, so that took a pass. maybe this weekend.

it would be nice to say its beginning to feel a lot like christmas. but that would be a big lie. and i dont lie. very often. i did change my phone ring tone to jingle bells about 3 days ago. it makes me want to listen to the song rather than answer the phone. i should change it to my alarm clock ring tone so i can let it play out, but id probly just get confused at this point.

i made a whole bunch of phone calls yesterday to people back home. it put me in a better mood to talk to people that i havent seen for many months or 2 years. i got most of them but some of them i didnt. surprisingly i got three people for the price of one by phoning a party that i didnt know was going on. the first thing i got in that conversation was "are you coming to the wedding? you have to come". he was drunk which made it funnier. the question that everyone asked was "when are you coming home?" i have answer for that one. next question "are you going to stay here?" i dont have an answer for that one yet. i know everyone means well when they ask but its tiring to hear the same thing over again when i dont know. its like finishing undergrad when all parental types expect you to now have this magical life plan mapped out exactly how the restof your life will go. um, no. it was the same a month ago when i had to get addresses. "are you coming home for christmas?" no, not unless you gift me an airfare. and that was a real sore spot at the time.

right, so it doesnt feel like christmas. its rained and rained the last four days and dropped the temperature i dont know how many degrees. the last two days it was 20ish. i went out with jeans and a hoodie on. i think people at home were wearing the same thing since toronto is having a warm spell. going from house to car to heated mall back to car doesnt require too many layers. i did some shopping and browsing in prahan yesterday. lulu is having a sale starting wednesday. there were actually nice people in the store yesterday. one of the last times i was there i asked some girl about the hoodies and got a bitchy response. walking back to the train station i accidentially went into sole devotion. wickedly cute shoes. i almost bought i pair of sandals that i am trying to convince myself i need. i am going on a summer vacation after all.. i passed them up cause one of the girls working their said there is a chance they will go cheaper on boxing day. the exchange rate better not go haywire before then.

i wasnt sure if my house was going to do the who gift exchange thing this year. we are all poor. while browsing sole devotion yesterday, i had a conversation with the very chatty employee about crappy gifts and how its much better to give money in a card than something no one wants. there was other options too like gift certificates. anyways, i decided i was going to fill up the alcohol part of the fridge. i went down to the bottle shop and bought all bunch of stuff that we all drink and wines that we have been taking out to dinners etc. i had the intention that we would drink this in the house and not give it away. anyhow, one of the bottles i bought is on the left, the label is quite nice, and im super lame for posting this. the winery is called innocent bystander, from the yarra valley. i read about the winery when i was browsing for what is out in that area. hadnt seen it in the stores cause i hadnt looked. anyways.
my flatmate gifted the gift of alcohol right back to me. we've been drinking heaps of chandon in the house lately, and now there is another bottle into the stores for us. M gave me chocolates too, which i think came from here.. her mom sent over similar chocolates for her, which we all ate. nothing worse than little individually wrapped chocolates sitting on the table. that could be why we eat them 4 at a time.


its the morning of christmas eve in canada now.. and almost the 25th here. merry christmas to everyone. have a lovely day full of food and drink and merriment and whatever else it may entail. i hope santa is good to everyone! shit, i dont have a chimney..

all good things come in threes, yah? last night was supposed to be a relatively alcohol free night. after spending thursday at daft punk and the christmas party and cocktial night caps on friday i thought my liver would like a break. i was home fairly early and C and M were waiting for C's aunt and uncle to let them know where to meet up for a drink. i was invited, but i didnt think i was going to go. that all changed when they came to our place instead of meeting them. surprisingly it was not just the two of them, they arrived with two other aunts and one of their husbands, and bringing bottles of white and sparkling wine. there went sober saturday. i swear they poured the wine down my throat and made me drink it.
when they left we had a full bottle of champagne, half another, and half a bottle of white. M and drank the rest of the open bottles then wanted to start on the other champagne. we only wanted one more glass each. i said no we should save it, unless we could find my bottle stopper thingo and we'd put the rest in the fridge for today. that didnt happen at all. i found the bottle stopper in another bottle in the fridge that i forgot about, whoops, but it solved the problem of whether or not to open the remaining bottle. the hesitance quickly became a okay, sure why not, it was a gift therefore we should enjoy it. i cut up strawberries to put in the flutes and we would have our one drink and be satisfied. nope. bottle gone within the hour. the countertop looked like that --> this morning, 3 people and their quiet night in. i cleaned up all the glasses, or rather put them in the dishwasher, before i went to bed. i hate waking up and glassware and serving plates being everywhere.

after the visitors left we watched a bunch of crappy tv then found that rage was on. its been months and months since ive seen rage and i sort of forgot about it. they were doing some sort of 20 years of rage episode and the first feature year was 1997. good year. there was s bunch of good videos, paranoid android, smack my bitch up, around the world, bittersweet symphony and um thats all i can remember. people actually tried 10 years ago making videos. then the program switched to 1998, must have been the second hour. not as memorable videos but lots of "omg, i was in year 11 when this came out" or "omg they played this are my prom" (<--pretty fly for a white guy) second hour also included do the evolution as programmed by some american rock band i did not at all recognize. yah thats right, best video ever, picked by some random dudes. 1999 was crap. we got bored pretty fast and C had already turned in. he was 8 drinks ahead of us when the visitors came over. i drank about 3 litres of water before i went to bed. or rather to go and watch tv from bed.

i have now finished watching the first 10 episodes of gossipgirl. what a load of totally addictive trash. another mindless show of 20 something actors playing spoiled rich kids in private schools, who never actually go to school. awesome. yes, i did watch beverly hills 90210 religiously when i was 12 (and i have season 3 of that show on my computer).

this morning i woke up a really negative mood. im blaming the alcohol and lack of food. because it couldnt be at all work related, could it? i went out for a walk and ended up inviting myself over to claire's house. i brought brunetti's so it was fair, they got cake as a trade for putting up with my crashing. i hadnt seen claire in a while so i filled her and dan in on newcastle and various other dealings. we talked all over dan's cricket match, which prob wasnt too much appreciated by him but he didnt say anything. i tired ginger beer cordial too, which was nice. i havent strayed too much from my lemon crush and raspberry/ apple flavours cordial in a while.

my new optical cordless mini mouse died about 20 minutes ago. i think the batteries are dead, which is stupid considering how new it is. i think i have to unplug it when i leave it on stand by or the batteries will continue to be used up. thats stupid, because if the computer goes to sleep the mouse should too.

at the moment i have this huge inclination to start watching lord of the rings. i could get through one disc before i fall asleep, ive got not other tv to watch at this time either. hmm.

my not so good week got better over the last few days. i had things to take my mind off the negative aspects of everything that is getting me down at the moment. all things considered i managed to have a semi productive saturday, seeing as i only woke up at 11am.

thursday was daft punk day. wooo! to funness. steph came over after work and we had some drinks and ate some dips that she so lovingly purchased on the way over. from my house we went towards the venue to meet up with aaron who was waiting at a pub. the last time i was at the meyer music bowl was for tool earlier this year and i explained to steph that i am not a patient person in line. in janurary we totally cut in line around the back of the venue because people are retarded and dont know how to line up correctly. anyways, we got there and there was a very little queue to get in. strangely i got inside first through the people with bags part of the line. pulling out my ID i was asked "wheres that?" to my drivers license. always.

the first thing we we was go to the bar tent. the lines were still pretty short. two alcoholic drinks per transaction limit. never seen that described in those terms before. two drinks it was (the rest of this post is going to be about alcohol). the event seemingly was sponsored by red bull and jager. everything goes with jager, apparently. i did not have any. i went with sparkling, then first few times, then switched over to the chambulls which i have never heard of before. in general i am not a consumer of large amounts of red bull but if you want to drink pure fizz sparkling and red bull is the way to go. my housemate asked me today what that was so i will explain here too. 3/4 of the lovely plastic flute was filled with champagne, then then remaining part was filled with red bull, then i got the rest of the can of red bull too. in that transaction, 3 drinks and only 2 hands.. a bit of a problem. one must learn to hold 2 drinks in one hand in order to drink the other. this night was all about pure class.

we hung near the back of the lawn while some of the opening acts were on. at some point i found a mickey of whiskey (i dont know what the australian equivalent of this is, 40oz) on the ground which i picked up and gave to steph. i dont drink random alcohol but my friends sure can.

it was a relaxed atmosphere most of the night. everyone sitting around the lawn at the sides of the main view area in front of the stage. it was light until almost 9, so everyone had their sunnies on. turning around and seeing the city and southbank as the view was awesome. even better when it got dark and the light came on. daft punk started just after 9. they were earlier than their posted set time of 9:15. the crowd was really responsive and there was an awesome light show. the best of my memory the set was the 'alive' record from start to finish. maybe live there were some longer mixes, but my memory was not the best by the end of the night.

dancing on a hill left some to be desired. lost my balance more than once. hah. ive only seen regular concerts at the music bowl, so i had wondered how the dance festivals worked. just like a concert but everyone is on GA lawns and you jump around on the lawn. but unlike the freakshows that go there to mosh and start fights, people were more towards the euphoric side of the spectrum and well behaved.

i was told by someone today that over the 2 shows there were 30 some odd people comatosed/ passed out on whatever their chemicals of choice were. the story made the news from the perspective of how the police were not happy about all the "trouble" and footage of kids lying in stretchers and on the ground. i saw one girls being carried away in a sitting up roller stretcher followed by 2 of her friends none of them looked very happy, they were probably getting kicked out.



NEVER EVER LAND

drinks and more drinks

lights

what wold the night be without someone sticking their tongue out in a photo? aaron had a red flashing tongue ring that helped him make new friends to talk to once he disapeared off to the toilets and steph and i lost him until the end of the show. it was pretty cool and made his whole mouth go red.

DA FUNK

the next day was department christmas party, so i slept in accordingly. i went to school around 11 to print out some stuff and find people to walk over to the party with. it was a lunch time event. i had planned to get there eat lunch drink my drinks and go home early. nope. four of us left the lab at 12:15ish, and got to the leveston around 20 to one. id been there before for a couple people's birthday dinners/ drinks nights and thought it was a nice place. the department had the whole back half of the restaurant with the outdoor patio and a bar. i went through my three drink tickets before lunch was served. and i was starving so it wasnt the best combination. finger foods were coming around while we all mingled and hung out before the meal.
one of the guys i was talking to used to be in my lab but left lest year and went to another one. he said he had to leave the party early because he was going to daft punk. i told him i had gone the night before and he asked me how it was. i told him it was really good and to get there early because the opening djs were worth seeing. he said hearing from me that it was really good actually gave it meaning and he believed it. i laughed.

lunch took forever to get served. there were two dishes, chick or beef. they were put down in alternating patterns and you didnt get to pick what you go. it thought this was stupid when they did it last year too. i got chicken i was okay with that. i would have been fine with either but a few of the guys needed to have the steak. kate had the vego meal which was lasagne and looked really nice too. we had wine put on the table for the meal. since i was sitting with mostly guys there were all getting jugs of beer and didnt want the wine. then we got told that there was a tab on the bar. thank you taxpayers. more champagne for me.

i had some good conversation with kate and jim about life and the lab and more life and how shit happens to good people and you move on. it was funny seeing some of the academics a bit tipsy. we left at 4:45 to go to another bar. so much for going home early. a bunch of us moved to the redback on flemington road. i drank only water as i was started to feel very very tired and i had to walk home.

i went home a fell asleep at 6:30. slept for 2 hours woke up made a cheese and tomato toastie and was only 3 hours for dinner at nadeens house. i didnt eat just ate all of the salt and vinegar chips. seeing as i never chips then were damn good. none of them seemed that drunk, compared to past cocktail nights, and we watching sex and the city. season 4 episode 5.. you know youve seen a lot of a good thing when. oh right, then sonia took the piss outta me for going to daft punk. dawn's sister is going to the show in perth. at least someone else can appreciate a varitey of music :P

while going through the city on the way home there was more people than ive ever seen carrying their shoes. even more than race days. every other person seemed to be shoeless and had a pair of strappy sandals in their hand paired with a party dress. i supposed when at a christmas party, drinking on someone elses dime, it is important to full enjoy oneself. i did.

TGIFriday. my friday has been very productive. or least what i am including as "friday" from waking up on friday morning. my thursday night was very productive.

there are a few people that i wish i could just get out of my life and pretend i never knew them, but thats not about to happen. then there is another person who i need the help of more than ever at the moment and she is being more obliging that in previous times. im just over people.

yesterday i had another mini meltdown. i woke up feeling that everything was wrong and it wasnt about to get any better. the whole work situation isnt going as swimmingly as i would have liked. but, and its a big BUT, since i now have data that isnt coinciding with everything in the literature guess who has taken an interest in me? LOL. it only took 20 fucking months. the fact that the interest is there is great, but too little too late from the queen of mixed messages. in my humble opinion, i was hung out to dry a long time ago.

we had a massive lab meeting on wednesday and her enthusiasm for what may be emerging from my experiments came up. but so did the whole lack of what was supposed to happen with my intended project, the one i never got any help with from my supervisor who supposedly has done the technique for years, after waving the SOS flag. instead of writing a big FAIL on the agenda it was all this is what we need to accomplish next year to fill in the gaps. thanks. i needed to know indirectly how much i didnt do. oh and i found out the hypocrit is leaving to go to teachers college. thats funny. and of course that needed a rude comment about students living in impoverished states. thanks! some of us pay assloads of money to be here. the woman has no tack, email, voice, whatever. you wanna be walked all over join our lab.

all the little things that people say to annoying or make me feel inadequate i remember. then when more are added to the list i get really upset about all of them because the floodgates open. i think i probably slept on all my negative thoughts on wednesday night so by thursday morning i was ready to burst. and i did. by the afternoon i had massive chest pains. i have now decided that they are entirely stress related and psychological factors cause them more than physical factors. i havent felt that bad since the weekend of melbourne cup. the weird thing was my heart didnt start to hurt until i had calmed down and was starting to feel "better" about the situation.

is it february yet?

last weekend was good. met up with a bunch of people i hadnt seen in a while. beer at the corner hotel garden patio until sunset then back into the city for chinese. id been into the shanghai dumpling house to meet up with one of the friends that was there, but had never eaten there previously. in a non intoxicated stated im not sure if i would have enjoyed it that much. but full of liquor it was alright. drinking an entire bottle of wine with dinner was a really bad idea. at the time it seemed like a good idea, or i just didnt notice what i was doing. i dont even like white wine that much. and ive only gotten sick from wine when it was white. note to self: bad idea. remember this next time, bad idea, start doing jaeger bombs instead.

after food we took a stroll down russell street to cherry bar. for some reason i felt the need to blabber the entire way. i have an image of myself talking to the door people before we got in. there was no line and i was probably just doing it to hear the sound of my own voice. we got in, and got drinks, and sat down in the small room, and i dont know what went on after that. yup it was that good.

the next day was awesome. i slept all day and started (finally) watching californication. im now done the season and i really enjoyed it. i have never seen an entire episode of the x-files and i have no interest in david duchovny as an actor. but this was a good show. smartly written, and funny. the characters have good lines, except the children, who dont act like regular people would. that pisses me off when tv kids speak like they are reciting shakepeare or have the intelligence of a university professor. nobody is that smart.

yesterday i finally did some searching around my computer and got my webcam working. duh. yah i made it all the way to grad school and cant work my computer accessories. since ive been working from home as much as possible i took the opportunity to video chat this morning. time zones are fun. i could probably find someone online right now, but i general i have to do things in the morning or the middle of the night to get people at regular times for them.

i finally remembered to go to next byte today and ask them where the hell my head phones are. three and a half weeks ago i took my iphones in because the left ear bud didnt work. after the hummed and hawed over it they agreed to send them out for service and it would take one of two days. i called the service place at least a week ago i dont even remember when it was, then i kept forgetting to go to next byte at uni. i went today and they replaced the non working headphones strait up. why they couldnt do this on the spot i dont know. then i asked the guy why i hadnt received a call to tell me to come and get them. he looks at the work sheet ready to tell me that theyve only just been done and says on well they only been ready since the 16th.. yeah that was week ago.

Happy Brithday Dawn. you got caps. too tired to make colours, atm.

another friday night spend dancing around a friends' house.. pearl jam , led zepplin, i dunno what else. good times.

how awesome is this cake?



yah, you wish you had a friend that was a pastry chef too. doncha?

oh wow, thats a big pic. i cant be assed to fix it, ill make it smaller tomorrow.

more
edit: we were watching IIC (again). for the life of me i couldnt remember the name of donato's dance when i was trying to tell whoever that it is still one of my favourite parts of the dvd. when we got that far, i was told that the two girls that have 30 seconds of screen time are twins. i totally had not noticed this previously, clearly not interested in people that i dont know.

and we decided that manpris are now going to be referred to as "shants", or maybe "shantz". some comedian/ politician/ well known australian used to call the manly 3/4 length pants "spants" since they are a shorts + pants combo. (sonia brought this info to the table) she suggested that we call them spants, and i was all no, no, they should be "shants", then you get the "h" from "shorts" into the name too. you heard it here first.


dawn, i think, took this awesome photo of me post immigrant song.