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.

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.

this week

I haven't posted much later, which probably doesn't matter because I don't think anyone reads this, but anyway...

It has been a sad week for Victoria. Even though I have not been directly affected by the recent bush fires, I have found that the tragedy has really gotten to me. Every night since last Sunday I have had nightmares about fire, mainly ones where I have to flee my home. I've been paranoid about knowing exactly where all my most important possessions are just in case something happens. In reality, the affected areas are nowhere near where I live, but I've found myself worrying that the Dandenongs might go up, and although even in that case there would still be little threat to me, I think I would want to feel prepared and ready to go. On Friday morning and last night there were fires up there but they were put out quickly, it did force a lot of smoke into our area though. I don't know, I just can't stop thinking about it all.

On the upside, on Friday all the Coles stores in Australia pledged to donate all of their profits to the Bush Fire Appeal, and our sales for the day were about $326,000 (to give some perspective, on a normal Friday we would usually do around $150,000). I don't know what percentage of that is profit (my dad thinks approximately 5%), but even so it was really good thing of them to do. It was good, as a staff member, to see the public make the effort to change their plans to ensure their money went to a good cause. Even though it was insanely busy, I didn't feel bitter towards all the customers like I often do on days like that (i.e. Christmas Eve). For the record, I usually feel bitter because mainly when that happens it's right before a significant day or, God forbid, a day we are closed, and I feel like people could just be better organised and less annoying in general.

I don't really feel like writing today.

p.s.

Oh and I forgot to add, it was totally uncool that none of the customers laughed at my hilarious nuclear holocaust jokes today. I had three trolleys completely full of gourmet cheese and they were all "what's going on?" and I was sick of explaining that the fridges were off so I said "I'm just preparing for a nuclear holocaust, I really like cheese" (in an entirely joking tone) and they didn't really seem to find it funny at all. Losers, I am hilarious.