What year is it again? This is so fucking stupid. Great to be living in a corporate monopoly.

"An important message about your Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Service
Our records show your household has reached 75% of the 95 GB monthly usage allowance provided with your Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Extreme service.

You will receive another notification when you reach 100% of your monthly usage allowance. To track your usage and learn more, visit rogers.com/keepingpace.
I acknowledge that I have received this message.
You will continue to receive notifications if you reach 75% of your monthly usage allowance in the future."

The end of the month better be the end of the calendar month and not some random day on the billing cycle of their choosing.
F.U. Rogers.

this week sucked! yah. it got worse than the last previous (locked) post makes it seem. i dunno why some people like to go on major power trips because they can. really, what is the point of making other people's lives as difficult as you can just because you can.

i phoned C today to touch base before sunday when i get to NYC. one of the things we ended up chatting about was jobs that re boring vs jobs that make you want to pull our hair out. i had the latter. im on the other side of the world and still losing sleep over it. im practically on melbourne time anyways, which means i can see feedback via email fairly quickly. reading emails at 4:30am when all they do is make me furious is a really bad idea. usually i have to wait 24 hours to response or i will write something inappropriate. the whole experience is just a massive WTF?

to everyone that has listened to me complain in the last month, in person or online.. thank you.

this morning 10am became 2pm way to fast. i dont like it when time does that to me.

in more positiive news,. sunday, new york, being a tourist, and going to pearl jam. fuck yeah. havent seen a show on the atlantic side of the world for a while.. ;-) im now basically counting on hearing all night at one of the shows, which should be good. and stone needs to sing. yah, stonebot warm up those vocals and give us some mankind.

edit: randomly looking at online crap and i see the ad "non stop flights from los angeles to auckland." umm,. where the fuck would the plane stop between those two cities? is that aimed at people with no geography skills?

my phone bill from april/ may is retarded. rogers is perhaps the worst service who charges for every fucking thing possible. eh, i take that back im sure bell is exactly the fucking same. corporate whore. when i was in seattle i was charged $0.60 per text message sent. um, what? i thought the point of texting is that its cheap! and i guess im used to the non-existence of 'roaming' and all incoming calls being free with my plan in AU, cause i didnt realize i was getting charges $0.30/ minute to receive calls. thats just stupid. i just went on the rogers website and found that text send to the USA will be going to to $0.25 per message as of july 15, which is the price for overseas txt. gay gay gay. i can call most civilized countries from the land line for less than $0.10/ minute of speaking time.

got a pleasant surprise of an email tonight from someone who ive been meaning to email for a couple of months. yah, im a little slow on that. i have two drafts sitting in my mail box of stuff to write to friends. i just never got around to finishing the garbage i wanted to say.

ive seen commercials for the hulk movie about a 1000 times tonight. i love the fact that production companies dont try to hide the fact that movies are filmed in canada. hollywood north is where its at. one scene in the commerical the hulk runs past zanibar and same the record man. zanibar is a strip club on yonge street just south of bloor. sam's flagship store and one of the few left of this canadian landmark chain is on the north side of dundas sqaure. thank you for not hiding our awesomeness. and yes, ours is longer.. (yonge street is the longest street in the world).

i thought about writing an update oh, last week but i decided to continue doing whatever it was i was doing instead.

so a random itemized-ish list of things i have been doing recently.

the majority of my time is dedicated to writing me thesis. no i am not done yet, thank you for asking. in doing this i have become mostly nocturnal. its a really hard pattern to break out of. basically im on melbourne time if i chose to get up at 5am each morning. i sort of did this for about 3 days last year right after i went back but the whole idea of being a morning person didnt last all that long. the communication break down still exists so i dont have nearly as much feedback as id like, but that happened when i was physically in melbourne anyways.

a few mondays ago i went to a baseball game. D got free ticket from work and his boss gave him the afternoon off, which was great for him but he had 3 tickets an d whole bunch of friend who have jobs. enter me, the unemployed student. bang on. we sat in the club level in the seats where a smiley waitress brings you your $8 hot dog and $6 soda. yep, it was a fun day. jays won too. since it was an afternoon game there were a lot of school groups there, and possibly because of all the kids they had an invite to run the bases after the game. no, we didnt go, but i wanted to.

i saw the presets a week ago saturday at lee's palace. it was excellent. the last and only other time i have seen them was at the myer music bowl opening for daft punk.. outside in the middle of the day. change the setting to a small club in the dark.. well it was hotter here but anyways a different atmosphere. lee's was ridiculously hot that night, i walked and started to get sweaty. it was a fun show, the crowd was really into it, everyone dancing around. no pushing and shoving and i was up at the front for about the second half of it.
after the show we went up to the dance cave for like 10 minutes were about to buy drinks until we found out T didnt get in cause he was too drunk. he wasnt really that drunk but apparently walking to a wall in front of the bouncer was not a good move. so we 'had' to leave and ended up at the bruny. that was ok, but had crap music and was filled with frat boys. seriously it was all guys and no pretty ones that i wanted to look at. we didnt stay there that long cause it was 2 or 3 by that point. this was the awesome night that the gardiner was closed. seriously, closing the highway at midnight on a saturday cause there is some charity even the next day? stupid. sat in traffic for a while in the city and then took queensway home. other that the sitting in traffic part it wasnt that much longer, but annoying none the less.

i saw sex and the city the movie with michelle the day it came out. since neither of us had work obligation we went to a late afternoon showing. there was maybe 30 people in the theater. at the end of the show, we exited at 6:30 and the next show began at 7:15 in that theater and there was at least 300 excited women in line for that show, even more for the 6:45 in another theater. i liked the movie, and was surprised they could make it as good as they did. i love that series and was skeptical how it would transfer to the silver screen, but for what it was and what it became it was good. the people who think it should have been done by the time they went on carrie's honeymoon, well you can fuck off cause i could have sat there and hour longer. the whole carrie having an assistant things was stupid, she didnt need another accessory character. they could have give more screen time to the women that did matter. jason lewis and david eigenberg have aged the least gracefully of the men, or rather they look older than season 6 of the show. chris noth.. has still got it ;-)

over the long weekend i was at a bridal shower and dinner party. at first it was nice to catch up with some people but by the end of things the attitudes and tenseness was too much and id dint need to deal with that. when i got home from the shower my mom asked me what the gifts were, i didnt know cause she didnt open them. my brother's girlfriend is a bridesmaid in two different weddings and on of the girls is being a total bitch about everything. my brother hates this girl but basically has to go to the wedding (lulz, poor kid). through my own experiences, the stories some of my close male friends have told me, and my brother's gf, i am in no rush to attend any more of these events because they bring undue stress and attitudes.

this weekend i caught up with my friend nick from sydney who is doing another round the world business/ pleasure trip. the travel budget he has in his PhD is something i am jealous of and also of the freedom he gets from his supervisors. if i ever do more research in academia i am much more aware of things i need to know so i do no get walked all over again. anyhow, nick was staying with a friend, and 3 others went out to dinner. i spend most of the dinner talking to nick and not purposely ignoring the other but it sort of happened. something that was reinforced that night was expensive wine does not always taste better to the palate. and some boys have no idea how you are supposed to tip. tipping is the most annoying thing about being back in canada, not that i even go out that much but i got used to it the other way.

after humming and hawing over travel plans for NYC i have decided to take the train. i was going to fly and use my air miles, but cause air canada is shithouse i was going to have to pay as much in tax as what the train is going to cost and hand over the points. whatever. it annoys me that they are the main choice for flying in canada, but some of the star alliance airlines are okay. airlines can stick their taxes and fuel charges where the sun dont shine cause its bullshit. we all have to pay more gas. ive sat on a plane for 12 hours before to go to one show, so on a train to get to two isnt much. people coming from europe have to do it, so no big deal.

my mom is going to hong kong at the end of the month and i am a lil jealous. she is going to bejing too, which i think would be better to wait until after the olympics, but my opinion doesnt count. i have to make a list of fun stuff to see and cool electronics and shoes to buy me places of interest in the next little while.

im so sick of this heat we are having. i really hate summer. yah its cold in the winter but at least you can put on a sweater and turn on the heat. i cant take off layers of skin. physiologically not possible. if i get to go back to australia any time soon it will be awesome since its winter there!

today was fun. oh wait, scratch that. today was a big fucking headache that never should have happened because some asshole at the electricity company fucking lied to me.

last thursday i called the electricity company and as usual waited on hold for 20 minutes to talk to someone, was transfered around multiple times and after explaining my situation multiple times to multiple people was told that i had been told the wrong thing in october when my account was set up. 4 months ago i made a huge fuss about how when i took my name off as primary account holder the new name was not to be charged a reconnection fee. in october it was all, oh yeah, no worries, we can do that. last thursday it was all, nope that cant happen accounts dont work that way. if you are persistent and dont mind 45 minutes conversations and wanting to jump out of your window, they do. fucking hell. of course one has to call any customer oriented 'service' during business hours. i was calling mid afternoon and i was the only one home since my flatmates were at work. it would be too easy for me to change the account into M's name and get on with it. the rep i was talking to, joe, all of a sudden starts on about how he is going to have to talk to M and arrange with her. but doing me a huge favour, he can phone her. i tell him she is at work, just like everyone else in the fucking city. its between the hours of 9 and 5 where are you? he gives me his extension number so we can reach him again and fix the whole changing the name of the account ordeal.

the important bit of the conversation went something like this:

joe: M has to call to give me her details
me: she can call tomorrow or monday
joe: YES.

friday: M is on hold for 40 minutes from 4:15 to 4:55pm. this joe character leaves at 5 and clearly M has better things to do than wait on hold when no one is picking up.

today: C and i are in the living room he is watching tv and im sitting working at the dining table. at 1:14pm the power goes off. i didnt even notice because i was reading a harcopy of a paper. C goes out into the hallway and realizes it is only our apartment. hmm. i call the electricty company. speak with clueless woman who finally transfers me to 'movers' when she realizes she cannot help. i ask to be transferred to this joe guy. he is busy. fucking retard rep then has me tell him the same thing 4 times and says the that my account was listed to be disconnect on feb 25th. well, to my knowledge a final reading was to be taken today for a final bill under my name and then switched into another name. from everything that i tell him 4 times, the bit he picks out is 'so only one of you tried calling one times since thursday'. yes asshole, and was on hold for 40 minutes. lets count the business days since thursday. 1. friday 2. oh thats today and its not even 2pm yet, making it over 3 hours left before the close of business. fucking retard then says i can talk to his supervisor, what he meant i say was i am going to put you on hold for 10 minutes and i will talk to my supervisor. i finally get through to the supervisor who is nice enough and retell her my issue because the fucking retard i know didnt do it. she gives me her direct line and says she will work on fixing it. this phone call was 1h12m on C's credit since conveniently my phone battery was less than one bar.

50 mins later i call her back and get voicemail. 8 mins later she calls me back and says she did find a voice recording on my call from last thursday and i was told the electricity would be disconnected if we didnt call and provide details. i prompted stated that i was not told it would be disconnected on monday and that i was told i could call ON MONDAY and make the necessary arrangements. she did agree with me there because it was on the recording. i was then told that the earliest the power could go back on was tuesday morning and that it could be anytime between 7am and 9pm. no fucking good. what am i supposed to do tonight i repeated. the 3rd party responsible couldnt come out a flick a switch tonight before 9pm. again persistence and blatantly stating that we are all foreigners and its not like we can go to mum and dads for the night. on hold again while supervisor called 3rd party flick switchers. oh now, they could come tonight but we would have to jump through hoops to let them in the building because they needed access to some room on the 27th floor. (how did they manage to turn OFF the electricity without our help?) such a joke. they came we never saw them, at all, they somehow had access to wherever they needed to be and only randomly by M turning the main power switch did we know it was back on. when C went to talk to building management earlier he was told this happens 'all the time.' all the time. what is wrong with this situation?

my conversation on thursday should have been something like this:

joe: M has to call to give me her details
me: she can call tomorrow or monday
joe: ABSOLUTELY NOT. she must call by close of business on friday or we will arbitrarily turn off your electricity on monday and laugh at you because we can.

not impressed at all with customer service in this country.



on a nicer note, i got two birthday cards today from my aunties. after the 2 month transit period of one of their christmas cards (from the uk). these cards took 5 and 7 days respectively to arrive. thanks for that!

please, no festivals. no festivals. shows with fan club tickets, yes, please. no festivals. little mockingbirds twitters, whatever.

i joined the gym in the building complexe today. i was sick of the air conditioning in the apartment gym being broken and the gym being ridiculously hot all the time. and the fact that stupid girl who i cant stand seems to always go to the gym when i do. even in the middle of the afternoon or in the evening or the last thing at night when the cleaner is there! i sort of have to change my schedule now since fitness first closes at 9pm.

ive been trying to get a lot of writing done in the mornings, taking a break because my attention span is fully zero and then write more in the evenings. tonight this is going superb (sarcasm).

i just had a real live phone conversation with someone i havent seen in a year. oddly ive been text'ed a lot over the past week. first conversation was a: "hey where are you?" me: "big day out" a: "what are you doing after" me: "taking a shower" a: "okay well you should come for drinks then" second conversation was more of the same: a: "hey what are you doing" me: "im at LCD soundsystem" a: "im at transport, you should come for drinks". no drinks were had together.

i have 30 days until i leave. i have so much stuff to get rid of. some days i walk by oxfam on the way to school. i was thinking that i should check and see if its only an office or if they accept donations to and i can give them all my unwanted things. realistically if i started now and everyday when i walk to school took a little bag i could empty out my bedroom in a decent amount of time. this will never happen and i will end up like most other people i know when they left with bags of stuff to want to give away but not the time or the effort to do it.

oh, and those sideshows for v-fest that i cant go to: queens are going to get an hour max, whatever. total jealously regardless. adelaide is only $60 away. i want to go too.

so much for getting to see my mom on NYE, her flight out of SFO was just canceled and now she will be here a day later than planned. shes getting a full day in san francisco now, and the day that does not exist crossing the international dateline will be december 31st! no ringing in the new year at all.

edit:
the official reason for the delay on the UA website is: "Schedule change due to Aircraft Servicing". i heard through my dad that the plane got out to the end of the runway, then turned back because something mechanical was wrong. what a tease to be about to take off and go back to the terminal. the air conditioning was not working when the plane left the gate, and still wasnt working when the engines revved. ive been on planes like that and its hot as. but it always works when the plane is pushed back.

the flight across the pacific wasnt even close to full. i doubt one that bypasses decemeber 31st will be either. i learned a whole bunch of things about UA in the last hour, including not to fly them. the JFK flight goes through LAX to SYD and the ORD flight goes through SFO to SYD. then the plane from the JFK route continues to MEL.

i know of someone else who had this cancellation happen to him transiting in SFO. funny how the two airlines that bypass america completely are both star alliance but its united that fucks up leaving their own country. on the way home my mom has the AKL to YVR direct flight. fun times. i would fly that route with confidence too.. air new zealand are one of the few airlines that at this point do not service any of their aircraft in asia. hope it stays that way.

ive been having a really hard time getting work done this week. all the fake "you did well" at the conference just doesnt cut it for longer than 10 seconds because, i dont believe it. the best thing about the conference was finding out that its not all in my head. its not me saying canada was different maybe that how they do it here. no, its my lab. a complete 180 from the last lab i was in. at this time the supervisor is gone for the rest of the year which is great in some sense, but she is worse to contact over email when 1. she doesnt respond to you and 2. writes completely tactless messages demanding things be done yesterday.

when i had to beg to be reimbursed for my expenses on this "business trip". clearly it was my fault i had spent any money at all right? she made a comment about how she was disapointed i took taxis to get around. i took four. 1. the conference venue was a 20 minutes walk from where the students were holed up 2. it rained on two occasions. 3. i dont walk around strange cities at night by myself 4. i dont walk 20 minutes in heels. 5. i split cabs with other lab members and i paid for it and kept the receipt. i stated the above to which she response "oh well thats a good reason" to each fucking thing. please make everything as hard as possible.

i used to like reading the literature. i used to get exciting to learn things and understand a concept more clearly. i used to actually enjoy writing "essays" and getting ideas to make sense on paper. but now.. nothing. no motivation. and its christmas. and people are taking holidays. and asking me when i will be done uni. i wont. im not fucking allowed to be.

although it cant be worse than last year, when after working all through christmas i was asked on janurary 4th if i had thought about withdrawing from my program. hmm.. no. i hadnt. lets thing of reasons why i did not have the most super fantastic holidays season ever last year and was not in the best spirits. 1. i was alone. 2. my family was on the other side of the world. 3. many friends left the country for good. 4. i was alone. 5. i worked all my "vacation" time. 6. work was going shitty and i got no "help" 7. it was summer and thats just weird. that enough reasons..

i am in such a bad space right now.

im back from newcastle. guess who once again was randomly searched at the airport while going through security? every fucking time i go anywhere. serously, what the fuck?. this time took me to new heights. i went through with two other people from the lab. i was last. i was slow picking up my lap top and getting a book inside my laptop bag and struggling to zip the thing closed. yep, by that time no one else in line for go through.

they swiped my clothes and my bag and it comes up that i have traces of explosives on me. *rolls eyes* fucking perfect. no worries it could just be washing powder. cue comments and conversation i dont want to have with security man. they swipe again. negative. but, they have to it one more time for procedure sake. positive. have i been on a farm? where was a staying? how did i get to the airport? was i on a bus? blah blah blah.

i had to sign a whole bunch of stuff saying that i was happy to have them go through all my stuff, because otherwise i would not be able to board my flight. oh, then they pulled my bag off the plane, and i had to go into the little room. they were fast and getting my bag off the plane, funny how when it might have explosives in it airport staff can hustle. this lady went through all my stuff and pulled everything out my purse and laptop bag. thankfully she didnt empty my checked luggage because it would have been a bitch to get it all back in. i travel with everything in compartments. she had to open every one of those small bags to see what was inside.. travel adapters, toiletries. real harmful stuff. oddly she didnt do the body pat down like i signed away my rights i was willing to get.

what happened wasnt that different from every time i have flown into or out of the united states. except there, they do it to everyone. at least on international flights, they go through everyones bag and everyone gets that pat down getting on the plane. hence why one as to be at the gate fucking hours before the flight.

i hate small town airports. world wide. they suck. we had this issue crossing canada in 2005. yah, i really want to be harassed in winnepeg at 6am because you have nothing better to do that go through my stuff. i think that adelaide is the only airport in australia where i have not been randomly searched. it could have happened and i just dont remember. i was in a good mood getting on that flight, so either i forgot or it didnt happen.

fucking airports.

anyways, pics from newy:

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.