im going to complain about something other than my thesis for a change.

last friday i get a call on my cell phone from the wireless provider asking to speak to my Dad. we have the family plan thing, so the account isnt in my name. im not sure why but i said he wasnt there, i certainly didnt want to talk to the person, and they asked when they could call back to speak to him. i gave them a time. firstly, i was annoyed because i hate getting telemarketers on my cell phone. this is what land lines are for: so you can ignore them.
i got calls everyday since friday, including at 9:10 yesterday morning when the fucking phone woke me up. since the caller id shows an 1-866 number i ignored all the calls. until this afternoon, i picked up because i dont want them fucking calling me again and again. the girl asks to speak to my Dad again, this time i flat out say its not his phone number. is my name on the account?.. yes. oh goody, that was the answer they wanted so she could pester me with questions. first question is are you happy with your Rogers services? i ask is she means all services because the answer to that is fuck no, or just wireless, where the answer is still no. just wireless. yah i am unhappy with the text charges for overseas and the text price to send to the US went up by $0.10 per text in july and that i charged an obscene amount to send text from the US while im roaming there. oh well would i like to put an international text plan on my account. no i wouldnt. i continue to voice my displeasure of how i think its a bit much to be charged for incoming calls when i am outside of my local area code. i am under the impression that in the US most providers have basically all long distance outgoing and incoming is priced as local calls. thats how it was in AUS too. when i am in burlington i am on incoming call roaming charges. its a 30 minute drive away and the same area code. i tell the caller this, politely, and her response is that all services are like that. i give her my examples of in other countries it is not this way and i dont remember what her response was but something along the lines of all service providers will charge you when you leave your local area. i politely say that you asked me my opinion and this is my opinion of your service, i am charged too much and you dont offer what i, the paying customer, wants.

at least now they wont have to fucking call me everyday.

i was watching something on the bbc recently about how in europe there is some sort of legislation going to come into play forcing all airlines to include all mandatory fees in the advertised price of their fares. it wont include everything because you dont have to bring a carry on or checked piece of luggage with you, but all the airport taxes and other bullshit they hide after the advertised fares must be in there. according to the news story, all the big name airlines were backing this.. that doesnt come as a surprise because if everyone is under the same rules the advertising wars are going to be exaclty the same, only the price you see will be higher than it was before.
randomly i was looking up flights to the UK the other day.. its $1500 to fly to London. yah.. holy crap. cheap(er) fares to Madchester but still well over $1K. as recently as a few months ago when i was still thinking of flying to NYC when i went, it was $790 CAD to LHR. okay, i know its peak season to go to Europe but still its retarded since i can get to the South Pacific for $2K which is a lot further.

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!

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.

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.

i really thought that i could be done data collection by now. apparently it is not to be. some of my analysis is done by M in wollongong. while analyzing the the last bunch of sample she had equipment issues and about a third of the samples for one tissue section were completely lost. the data i do have is good enough to write a thesis with, but not so good for using in publication. now publication is on the table. the menu hasnt been discussed but its on the table. i dont know what that means. my supervisor not so out of the blue decided two wednesdays ago that i should send up more samples. we dont sand anything on thursdays in case the couriers fuck up, and the next week (last week) i was in newcastle monday to wednesday, the okay days to overnight stuff.
on thursday i emailed M to see what the go was with the equipment. she wrote me back the next day saying that all was well. she cc'ed her supervisor and mine, and my email came back as an attachment. i had expected to see M at the conference in newcastle, but she wasnt there. i had written her something conversational about how it was too bad i missed her and i enjoyed my time as a valuable learning experience blah blah. in that email i almost went off about the lack of instruction by my supervisor before and after the conference. i thought better of it since emailing your thoughts is a great way to shoot yourself in the foot when it gets forwarded to someone else. it was a good idea to shut the fuck up because it would have been really really bad when it came back at me. instead, it was really good. when M wrote back on friday arvo i went to ask my supervisor if there was anything additional that i should be sending up to M for analysis. she told me she had just read my email as it was returned to her as an attachment from M. the first thing i thought of was what did i write knowing that i had to stop myself for being negative. turns out she was impressed with my tact and prompting in my message and was happy or surprised or i dont know what that i had a good time at the conference. i wanted to roll my eyes that one. i saw my supervisor for about 20 minutes total during the entire 4-day conference. maybe if she had at all asked me how i liked the experience she would have known. to me it didnt seem like she wanted to know and didnt care if i liked it or not.

anyways, now i have to send more samples out tomorrow which is such a pain. the damn things need to be individually wrapped in foil and packed in dry ice. then the couriers have their little hissy fits about dry ice since it is in class 9 dangerous goods. more paperwork. i need to get this all done as early as possible so i can then call the courier for pick up. last time i called first, they listed me and i requested as pick up as late in the day as possible. yah yah, no problem, itll be round 4. they came at 11:30am.

the 80s are back. back again. seriously why must we repeat every horrid style from two decades ago. the legging thing, yeah absolutely horrible. now that its summer the leggings are shorter and come in white and pale yellow and other light colours. please, please burn out my eyes. i was shopping today and aside from all the ridiculous neon everything in the stores i saw something that made me just roll my eyes. jelly shoes. seriously? i had jelly shoes in, i dunno, lets say 1986, probably 1987 too. twenty years ago. the ones i had back them were so much nicer than the shit i saw today. plastic neon yellow shoes, yeah, i got three pairs cause i know im going to wear them out so fast.

i was in supre for a few minutes; i do shop there because their stuff is cheap and it can survive the washing machine much better than other equally priced clothing stores. out of the many things that are wrong with supre the big one is that they are trying to emulate a night club. dark lighting and music that is too loud. looking at clothing in the dark is nothing like looking at clothing in day light. quite ridiculous. but perhaps it is to highlite the neon everyhing imaginable in the store. terry cloth shorts are back too. i dont remember owning these as a kid, so maybe they were the 70s. i do plan on buying a pair for when i go to QLD in january. when in rome wear neon terry cloth clothing.

i went to supre cause i need to get a singlet top to wear under another top. i got told yesterday not to wear pink at the conference. i thought fuck you, im now going out of my way to purposely wear pink. another lab colleague then stated the obvious that our supervisor could do with some help from the fashion police herself and is in no position to dole out what not to wear advice. above comment about leggings.. guilty as charged there.

the other thing i thought i needed to buy was shoes. that was until i decided that they were too ugly and i would rather wear shoes that were slightly scuffed than hideous trendy ballet slippers. so fucking ugly. then while being swarmed with chinese school girls in their uniforms (um, its saturday?) i recalled that i own shoes similar to what they were wearing. i came home and found three pairs of shoes that i forgot i had. oops. one pair has pink stitching on them, theyre coming for sure..

im not allowed to take a taxi to the airport if i want to be reimbursed for my expenses. this is where there is a definitely hierarchy in the lab. someone who is arriving in newcastle today told me outright he will be taking a taxi ($60) into the city. my house to the airport is $45. but since i live downtown i can get the sky bus, while carrying bags.. seriously?(?) taxi taking colleague told me months ago that i should not have to pay for anything while going to a conference, i am representing the lab and the university, they should pay for it. such is the case when you are willing to have your supervisor walk all over you.

i hope newcastle isnt as boring as everyone says it is.