24th March, 2009

Today was a loooong but generally good day.

The morning was pretty stressful, I had to be in the city by nine am for the forum, so I had to get an 8 o'clock train. But when I got to the station at 7:45, there were no car parks! Nor were there any car parks at the next two stations! As I was running out of time to get the train, I decided to drive to uni and park there to get the train from Caulfield. I was going to drive into the city but I hate driving in the CBD and also parking is really really expensive. So I got to Caulfield (by this time it was about 8:40, massive amounts of traffic) and went to buy a parking ticket thing, put my $4.50 in change in the machine, but no ticket printed out! I was in such a rush and I got so mad, plus I didn't have another $4.50 in coins to buy another ticket with (who carries around $9 in change? not me). So I called the council on the phone number that is written on the ticket machine and explained the situation, not wanting to get a parking fine. They were surprisingly helpful and cool about it, got my details etc and told me to leave a note with the transaction number of the call on it for the parking inspectors. So I quickly left a note and ran to the station. I am never usually late for anything so when I am, it is very stressful for me.

Of course I JUST missed a train, but I got on one soon enough, that luckily was an express train that got me to Flagstaff at about 9:05. Since registration was at 9 o'clock, I ran to the building and ran to make a lift trip up to the fifth floor. When I got there finally, there was hardly anyone there! Turns out registration STARTED at 9 and the actual forum started at 9:20. Oh well, I guess at least I got some exercise? The forum was okay, the first speaker was really dull but the others were quite good, and I understood 99% of what they were talking about, so that felt pretty good. 

After the seminar I met up with le boy for a long walk (I am quite the active one today, I probably spent at least 2 hours of today either walking or running) and some lunch in the park. There were 4 army helicopters that kept flying over us (Dad says they're training or something) that made it feel a bit like downtown Baghdad, but apart from that it was a nice afternoon.

At 4:30 I went to Melbourne University to meet up with one of my best friends who I haven't seen for ages, Stacey. Actually, she is probably my best friend tied with Casey. Anyway, we walked (see?) down to Brunswick street and had a cup of tea in a Russian-ish cafe, then jumped on the tram to go to a Moroccan soup kitchen for dinner. It looked sooo good and smelt amazing, but there were no tables and they estimated a wait of an hour! I don't think so. So we got straight back on a tram going in the opposite direction and went back to Brunswick street. We headed to the ever trusty Vegie Bar for some food. Vegie Bar has the most AMAZING mushroom risotto ever, I have never tasted better anywhere in the world. They also have some damn fine berry cheesecake. Stace and I shared both, for we are ladies and not eating machines. I had planned to head back to Caulfield by around 8 o'clock but that didn't happen, I walked Stacey home via a friends house to deliver a message, then she put some new music on a cd for me, showed me her amazing new boots, and then SHE walked ME to the train station. She lives in this amazing apartment that is so close to everything, you can walk anywhere from her place. Yet again, I missed a train by about 30 seconds, and I was slightly concerned because the train line in question (Frankston) is slightly suss and I've never been on it at night before, certainly not by myself....I told you I am a wuss.

Anyway, I eventually got back to Caulfield (in one piece, the Frankston line is fine) and thank goodness, no parking ticket. I drove home and my mother had put all the crap that was on my bedroom floor on my bed so I couldn't go to sleep without cleaning it up, how very thoughtful of her. Now I am in bed, and I am going to go to sleep.

A good Sunday.

Today I had a really really excellent day. I woke up at my lovely boyfriend's house, he slightly hung over, me not at all. We slept in and hung out for a bit, discussed some pretty exciting things that may be happening to us in the not-so-distant future, and of course, what we should do with our Sunday off. I got to choose because I just did. And this is how our day went.

We strolled casually to the train station because we had plenty of time. I enjoyed this because the weather was nice and I don't really like running. We caught the train in to Melbourne Central, where we each got a hideously unhealthy brunch/pre-lunch, then we made our way to David Jones on Burke Street. See, there is this handbag that I have wanted for about a year now, and they are currently having a sale on 'selected' handbags by this brand, and I wanted to go and see if 'my' bag was on sale. The regular RRP is $499 and I was willing to pay about $300 at the most. Of course it wasn't on sale, so I was a bit disappointed. We continued on to Genki because Casey was interested in buying a teeshirt, but we soon discovered that they don't make them for boys.

After all that we walked to the AQUARIUM, which is what I had chosen to do on this fine Sunday afternoon. I felt a bit guilty at first for dragging Casey there because I don't think he was that keen on it and entry was really expensive! But oh well, we went anyway, and it was the best. The first exhibit you see is the new penguin antarctica thing. There were four Emperor penguins who were clearly the leaders of the pack, and probably about 15 regular penguins, and they were so amazing. Watching them swim around was so cool, they are so graceful and beautiful in the water which I really didn't expect....they kind of just cruise around. I could have watched them all day. After the penguins we saw all kinds of different sea creatures. Like a million different kinds of fish, some scary giant crab/lobster things, frogs, spiders, star fish, eels, everything. My favourites were the jellyfish because they are so beautiful, and the fish that kind of look like unicorns. 

We timed the trip somehow to coincide with seeing some scuba divers feeding the fish in the main tank thing, which has SHARKS and GIANT RAYS and TURTLES in it. One of the turtles was being annoying and trying to eat all the food from the divers' bucket so he just grabbed it and carried it around under his arm like it were a newspaper or something, and went on feeding the others. The giant rays (seriously they were so huge, like the size of a large floor rug at least) looked like they were hugging him trying to get him to feed him, and at that point I was a bit scared. When we were in Port Douglas about five years ago my uncle stepped on a sting ray and it shot its' barb right into his foot and it was pretty bloody and painful for him, so they scare me a bit. I'm just a total wuss though, I'm scared of most creatures (except penguins). 

Once we had finished with the aquarium, we headed back to the CBD to get some lunch, and again lucky timing, there was a Thai food + culture festival on in Federation Square. I LOVE Thai food!! There were about a billion people around but eventually I got my hands on some green curry and roti bread, Casey got some basil chicken with rice, and we sat on the grass and ate it and were very happy. Then I saw someone with pofertjes (am I spelling it right? those little dutch pancakes?) so of course I had to have some too because I love them. I lined up for ages to get them but they were so worth it, they were delicious. Once I had finished those we headed back to Burke St to go to Myer because I wanted a penguin figurine as a souvenir. I didn't really like any of the ones they had at the aquarium. They didn't have any but we strolled around for a bit, looked at some stuff, but I didn't buy anything because I am trying to save up some money.

On the way home I fell asleep with my head on Casey's shoulder and I woke up with a very sore neck. We strolled back to his house from the station and then I drove back to my house. We had a very Sunday-night-ish dinner that was excellent, as well as leftover pear-upside-down cake from last night (it was my cousins birthday, I don't know how we ended up with the leftover cake, but score, anyhow). My sister hurt her shoulder pretty badly on Saturday so we all sat around feeling sorry for her for a bit, then I went off to do some homework. Of course I didn't do any, now I'm too tired to start it, I think I will go to bed and get a good nights sleep.

Today was one of those days when I just feel like everything is so good. I'm so lucky, and so happy right now.

p.s. right now the possum outside my window sounds like he/she is being tortured, seriously it is making the most awful sounds

this week.

Well another week has gone by, and I have posted nothing again. It was a very quiet week.

I'm starting to get very nervous about uni, starting all over again (...again), and I have a feeling this new course is going to be a lot harder than the one I did last year. I'm going to have to put in a lot of work. I'm willing to do it though, it's not like I really have a social life to sacrifice anyway. 

I've had a good time with the boy this week. We went into the city together on Tuesday (I hardly ever go into the city, it's far away and I'm very lazy) to go shopping and have a nice lunch, then when we got home we went for a walk because the weather was so great. Then on Thursday after dinner I went to his house for a sleep over and we ended up taking his cousin from Tasmania out for a cocktail (passionfruit vodka martinis, my favourite) at Cookie. It was nice to lie in bed together with nothing to do this morning, before I had to make a mad dash to my orthodontist because the wire behind my teeth broke last night while I was eating a taco.

Been working a bit more this week, I've never been so grateful to work at Coles after last week. On Sunday I worked at the Good Vibrations festival at the bar, and it was one of the worst days of my entire life. I accepted the shift thinking it might be fun, the atmosphere would be good and I might get to see Fatboy Slim, right? WRONG. It was AWFUL! I didn't get to see any of the artists I wanted to see, my bar was situated next to some stage that had just clubbing-type music, and the thud of the repetitive base line all day really caused significant headaches all around. In the 10 hours that the festival went for, there were probably 8-10 DJ sets there and they all pretty much mixed exactly the same songs. Boring. Also I did an 11 hour shift and I was only given one half hour break! They are SLAVE DRIVERS, I tell you. The senior staff there are also quite racist, I might add, I really felt like I was treated a lot better than the rest of the staff by them, and I'm fairly sure it's because I was the only white person working at the bar. Most people that work for the company in question are international students from India and that general area. Anyway the way the supervisors treated everyone made me very uncomfortable and I will not be working there again.