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?

here a few reasons why flying australia domestic, across the tasman, and new zealand domestic are infinitely better than flying in north america.

1. food/ drinks are free
2. the flights leave on time
3. despite a pending mechanics strike on qantas, there are no interruptions to the scheduled flights
4. the beverage cart on air new zealand is referred to as "the bar"

im in queenstown at the moment, adrenaline capital of the world. the south island is awesome, very picturesque. queenstown is where people go for "the snow" and i imagine in the winter it would be pretty nice to relax and ski and do winter sports. seeing as it is currently summer, there is no snow on the tops of the mountains.. the remarkables are out my hotel room window. we are so far south that the sun sets at 10pm. crazy. even more so because i am not in this time zone properly yet.

some of yesterday and today was spent trying to figure out what time it is at home. auckland is two hours ahead of melbourne. that means its 18 hours ahead of toronto and 21 hours ahead of vancouver. or 6 and 3 when one works the other way and subtracts a day. or take the short cut and add a clock application to firefox like i did. i know what time it is in 8 different cities. just for fun.

today/ tonight we took a gondola ride up a mountain and had a nice view down to the city and water below. there is a bungy jump tower at the top of the mountain. its set so that when someone jumps off the platform they free fall down the mountain. no bridges with water below like in all the movies. jumping off the side of a mountain seems slightly more intense than jumping off a bridge over water. i had just eaten a feast of a dinner at the restaurant at the top of the mountain, so i had an excuse not to try it.

for the second time in a week i am sunburned. woo awesome, i am red. it was a bit much of me to think that new zealand actually has an ozone layer and i would be okay on a somewhat cloudy day. no. wrong. i have a farmer's tan line too, how horrible. at least it will now even out all the (dis)colour from last week.


the remarkables


queenstown from above

warning: 41 degrees celcius + al fresco dining + bottle of red wine = bad idea. add in some gelato makes it even worse while walking home with full belly of delicious food, wine and dessert.

it is so fricken hot.

QLD was hot. not as hot as here and not as dry as here. the joke when we got up there was we needed to get away from the heat in melbourne. we stayed in surfer's paradise for 4 nights. the idea of going up there was to get some relaxing time, which did and didnt happen. i thought it would be fun to stay at the beach and do beach stuff. we did, on day number 2 when the rain decided to stop and the skies became blue and sunny. after half a bottle of sunscreen and 2 hours on the beach i had a nice blotchy sunburn. no ozone layer is great fun. from that point on the going to beach to relax became much less of a fun time than it originally seemed in my head.

in a quick run down of some of stuff i did- surfer's, byron bay, green mountains, australia zoo, brisbane city, botanical gardens. the day trip out to the green mountains was fun. as with all coach trips it included a stop off for morning tea (at one's own expense) this was the best morning tea ive had in ages. pot of tea + scones + cream + jam. oh yeah. the green mountains were good too. kangaroos at the side of the road and all. we visited a rainforest, and like the two other rain forests ive been too, it fucking poured rain. how authenic. i got sort of wet because i had a sort of rain coat to cover up with. it wasnt cold so that was good, just wet.

and all that rain.. well yah, all of australia needs rain, its aridly dry. thanks to cyclone helen who went through the north, now there are massive floors in NSW and QLD. when the rain stopped the beach in surfer's wasnt as nice and clean as all the aerial photos seen the world over make it appear. debris and everything, including a deceased cow washed up on the shores the days after the worst of the rains.. the eroded shores. everything in the valleys in the hinterland was flooded. massive destruction. byron was much nicer since its more sheltered. getting to byron on flooded out roads was interesting. ive never seen flooding that bad.

$9.95 for an hour of internet at a hotel is a rip off. $24.95 for 24 hours isnt much better either.

i went to see an advance screening of into the wild yesterday afternoon. wow. i think i posted before how i hadnt read the book, but i should. everyone i saw it with (minus the manfriend) had read it, so that was a point of comparison when the movie was over. i like it. i really did, but there was something missing that none of us could quite figure out. possibly the way it flowed overall. and some of the relationships with the people he met on the way to alaska seemed really forced, especially the old guy in the desert. i to ask if the book was written in chronological order or if it jumped around like the movie did. i dont think the movie would have worked if it was told without the flashbacks. and it was so long..

the ending was very moving. i liked that part. not the very end, but when he starts writing in his journal that he is lonely and scared. very relatable. the sense of adventure and discovery throughout the entire film was good. i think 90% of the people i know would be willing do to the same thing. just fuck off from whatever boring thing they do every day and set off with no goal to just live life.

oh and the music. that was an exciting thing, to see where the songs were going to fit into the movie. hard sun is a driving song!!! :P some of the clips were a definite, yah that makes sense now that i see the visual. others not so obvious but the clarity was effective.

we hung around for a while after the movie. trying to find where alan's taxi was going to pick him up. the girls had been doing activities in carlton for most of the day. a few of us had election parties to attend. sonia and manfriend excused themselves to dinner and the rest of us did what we had to do.

my election party last night was at claires house. i think it was officially hosted by dan though.. anyhow, i headed over there from nova which was only a 10 minute walk. with all the things i had been hearing from various sources during the day it seemed as though the masses were voting liberal. everyone i know that was open about their support was going for labor.

general comments about the coverage i saw on tv: no one dressed up. 98% of the candidate i sw interview from their electorates head quarters were not wearing ties, or even suits. that would not fly at home. i cant remember her name but this cute lady from adelaide-ish had a low cut top and an "N" necklace. this prompted comments of "omg, she has a carrie necklace". again, youd never see that at home. the party leaders were dressed at a level i thought was more becoming of a politician. johnny's goodbye speech from the sofitel was very black tie, as one would expect. rudd's speech from brisvegas was to a room full of kids in "kevin '07" t-shirts and wristbands that allowed them access in. looked a bit low key for the next prime minister.

dan explained to me how the electoral process worked.. you vote by ranking the candidates in your riding. interesting. so the lowest score wins, i was told. this was weird to say the least, and i was not the only one who thought so. apparently alaina got in a fight with one of her friend about how the voting process worked. "no, it cant be."

catching up with all the americans yesterday i became so insanely jealous that they are all going home for christmas. i was trying not to think about at all this year. but when your family is a 24 hour plane ride away the holidays become really shit. i miss the cold. sort of. its so far to go home for a week, but makes all the difference in the world. hmm.

its feels like summer. the clocks go forward tonight. damn, losing sleep. it now means that it wont be getting light before 6am, and i wont wake up way too early with sunlight coming in my window. good? i did go outside today and plan to head down to the yarra for an hour or so and do nothing, outside, in the sun. its almost 30 degrees today,

the CBD and southbank
i post this view too much, i know. its days like today where looking out at port philip bay and the nice clear sky makes me happy. and that i should go outside.

melbourne central. cnr swanson & latrobe streets, with a bit of the roof of the state library

happy birthday to claire!

To all those who love reading me rant, youll love this one.. What a day it started out as.

I must pre-empt the rant by explaining a few things. I hate the post office at Melbourne Uni. Everyone that works there is a total moron. Either they dont speak English well, and dont seem to want to try, or they are old and bitter that they work in a PO, or just plain stupid. When at all possible I avoid going there, instead going to the PO at the RMH or the one on Lygon street that is on my way to Uni. The RMH location has older yet not bitter employees and they are helpful when you ask them a question. I have even turned Kate to going to the this location, its probably closer to our lab even though its not technically on campus. Whenever we have to overnight stuff to Perth on ice packs they never ask stupid questions and they do it, correctly.

(a lot of this was copied from an email, hence me using capital letters)

Last Wednesday I received a pick up notice from the PO at Melbourne Uni. I was not expecting anything so didnt really know what it was. My stuff from Amazon should have been left at reception no problem so I immediately assumed it was that and was extremely pissed because the PO closes at 4:30 and I could not go pick it up that day.

As mentioned, the people that work at that location are rude and all morons. I went to pick up the package on Thursday at lunch time expecting it to be the dvd. It wasnt. The package I was handed wasnt even addressed to me. But, I didnt realize this until I left the PO. Someone with the same last name and same first initial as me, who works at the HFI, the building next door to mine, was sent an envelope with a Toronto return address. I saw the return to location, read my last name in big letters on the envelope, and assumed it was someone from home sending me stuff so I signed for it. The moron that worked there gave me the wrong package.

This morning I checked on an eBay order I have been waiting for since the end of September. An order than was supposed to be shipped to Canada. When I bought the item the seller said bluntly this cannot be shipped to an address that is not your PayPal billing address. So, I gave him my parents address, and put them on alert to expect this item. I find the tracking number and check on the order. From past experience USPS is just as crap as every other postal service in a civilized country at updating their websites on where you stuff is. Needless to say I have not checked on this order in three weeks because the last time I did there wasnt any info in the system yet. Today there was. The last 3 entries read "attempted delivery Oct 10, 2007" at hours between 6am and 7am and listed AUSTRALIA as the location.

I read that and went what the fuck. This idiot tells me it cant be sent to Australia, then were does it get sent. Recalling back, Oct 10 was last Wednesday when I got that pick up notice from the PO. They could have given me my package but clearly decided not to. I got someone else's stuff and that guy got nothing when he went to try and get his envelope. Before I left the house today I pieced together that I either had a package sitting at the PO or this other guy had mine.

I get to the PO and its the same moron from last week who gave the wrong thing that is serving at the counter. He looks like he is about 22, is Australian, and speaks English. Apparently he is just dumb. I told him I needed to pick something up but didnt have the notification card. I gave him my ID and he immediately recognized the name. Then he tells me that he tried to give my package to someone else. Yah, nice. This is what they get paid the big bucks for.

Seriously, it seems to be this location. In general I have not had THAT many bad experiences with the PO. Of course this does not apply to their hours, as they are open even less than the banks!
Last year all through tour I was overnighting poster tubes back to myself at work from all over the country. They got there. I expected something to get lost or missing or whatever and mentally planned for this. Should they not have smart people working at a University location? Clearly the majority of the people going into the location are students, with ridiculously high entrances scores to get their foot in the door, or academics!!

The package was my new/ replacement phone. A phone I could have been using for the last 9 days. $225 USD on eBay after shipping versus $380 CAD at an online retailer after shipping. Whats the better deal!?!?! Even if I did have to go through undue stress to get the damn thing.

okay, this is lame. its $6/ hr for broadband internet at the qantas domestic terminal in sydney. like im going to pay. shit house and cheap ass. im writing this waiting for my flight back to melbourne and will post from home, assuming my dependent internet is working there. my flight is fucking 45 minutes late.

i am so depressed. i want to go home. to canada.

asia was awesome.

the quick wrap up of it.. i had a great time in hong kong for the first 5 or so days of my trip. i did everything. literally everything i could, except go to disneyland because, well, ive done that in america and even the locals say thats its not that big of a park. causeway bay, wan chai, kowloon, new territories, lantau, aberdeen. i even made a wish on the wishing tree that locals go to when they need to wish for something. it only costs $10 HKD per sheet of wishing paper.

korea was fun. i dont know what i was expecting from going there but i dont think i was expecting was i got. its hard to explain how i viewed the country in a few sentences so i went try to do that yet. overall seoul was very american with a language barrier. mcdonals, burger king, pizza hut, starbucks.. the works of chain fast food places. but, there were also street meat vendors that sell very korea local things. the items that i bought one day for lunch were some sort of rice cake total stoge thing. i found thing out after trying to describe in detail to a tour guide what i had bought. the pancake and egg guy i was so impressed by on my first day there only had one more visit from me. it was so good, but i craved real food at some point.

because i had done so much in hong knog i was really tired by the time i got to korea. i took it a lot easier and only did a few morning/ afternoon tours and stayed in the vincinity of the hotel the rest of the time. my first hotel was awesome and had a gym and provided gym clothes and everything to guests. i used that a couple of nights. after 3 days in seoul i was sick of being a tourist. i really just wanted to go to the shows.

the day of the seoul show gaby flew in in the afternoon and we met up at the hotel we stayed at that night. the hotel was a let down. i picked it because it was close to the venue and in the olympic park zone. it seemed like it was a short distance to the venue, which turned out ot be a 15 minute walk through a nice greenery area. the hotel was stuck in the 1970s. lol. funny, because it was built for the 1988 olympic games. it was fine since we were only there for one night and only needed to sleep and shower etc.

the show in seoul was great. i think this was my favourite show of the 4 that i just saw. i have the wrost bruises from this show too. maybe they just got worse with subsequent shoving. there were a lot fo japanese girls that i met there. most of them spoke english really well. they managed to get the fan club people in early by talking to someone.. who looks like henry rollins.. on the nin crew. he was funny because he wanted someone to translate his english into korean for the locals. except no one there was korean. just two white girls and a slew of japanese people.

the next day we left to go to the airport, and sat on the bus for over two and half hours. the first hour was spent in traffic in seoul doing the bus route lap around the city then finally going to the airport which is quite far from the city center. it was good that we left with a lot of time since it took a lot longer than we thought to get there. we had planned to go online at the airport and hang around before the flight but time was cut short. we bumped into a few other girls from the show flying out around when we were. we also saw them again that night in hong kong at victoria peak. we had lunch as the "western" food court because all the other food was so unappealing. netiher of us was impressed by the selection here either and just had fries from the very popular burger king. (edit: i has cheezeburger? lulz.)

uneventful flight. we got to sit right new to the toilets. awesome. i think we had just had a conversation about how we hated sitting at certain spots on the plane. aisle seats when people grab your chair back as they walk by was one of them and the prime spot of this is the damn line for the toilets.

hong kong the first night was slow. we didnt get into the hotel until 7 or so. we went into the city and to victoria peak. sitting on a bus and a plane all day was tiring. i left gaby and took the ferry back to kowloon to sit and look across the harbour. best city sky line view in the world. i could have sat there all night if i didnt need to get the mtr back to the hotel. i knew i would really miss hong kong.

in the morning we went shopping since the hotel was basically attached to a shopping mall. emma joined us that morning and we met up with another one of her friends before the two of them went into the city.

the show that night was good. i didnt like it as much as seoul and that was because i hated the crowd. i am completely of the opinion that places that dont get shows often do not know how to act. this goes for the fans and the venue. the people behind me were just stupid, then theyd get pushed out and some worst person would be there. the venue has a lot to learn too. from where the line up was they took tickets then let people run down escalators to the entrance on the other level where the doors to the hall were. really, really safe. they didnt seem to care that people were running either. i guess thats china for you, people are a dime a dozen.

venues outside of big cities, generally in north america, dont have a clue of people lining up for half a day before shows. even though i dislike arena shows, its so much nicer to go to a venue where they know whats going on and the staff are there 5 times a week for events and hockey games and whatever else. everything in my head is compared to st john's in 2005 where i got in an argument with venue staff. just no idea.

i got up ridiculously early the next day to get to the airport and use the free wifi. it was not as good as it had been the week before, slow. i had issues connecting, then so did emma. i got bored of sitting there. partly because i was so tired so we went for a walk around the terminal and ran into a few people we knew. very fangirl of us since they were on the flight right after ours.

my ipod battery lasted as much as i needed it to flying to australia. the flight was boring, i watched oceans thirteen two and half times and part of some dumb lindsay lohan movie. i was glad to just get there by the end of it. i basically ran off the plane because i didnt want to have to wait in a line a customs. turned out there wasnt one. but, i was lucky since within 20 minutes, while we were waiting for our bags 2 more large flights arrived. the security check point where you get your bags x-rays had a huge line when we joined it but neither emma of i was in a big rush to go anywhere. i finally got into my hotel around 10pm. so tired.

this is pretty much a copy and paste of my post elsewhere.. i really like these photos so everyone must see them. i had to resize them all and put my name on them which took more time than i like to spend on things.

the 3rd night, krystie said to me after the show "whos the guitarist? he's awesome."

scroll through them fast to get the full spastic effect of his movements/ stomping/ twirling of guitar ;-)

Brisbane Night 1
still the best show played down under this tour..

the sydney opera house, the harbour bridge, north sydney
my flight to brisbane took off and flew over the city!

.. an excellent night

wash was on the melbourne 2 setlist and it was changed to leash! i think that i had a blackout of some sort tonight because i do not remember them playing go or last exit. the first two freakin songs. my memory of the show begins with brain of j.. go figure. i know i was jumping around to something but i dont know what to.

*shakes head*