Only three days to go now, or something like that. It seems a little more real every day as we start to plan where we are going to stay and organise car rentals etc. I get that little tingle of excitement, although for some reason it just doesn't quite seem real. Off to Australia again, and luckily it doesn't really seem that long since i was last there - this should mean that things flow on from where they were which would just be fantastic. It will also be great to completely relax for three weeks since I haven't had a decent break since February.

Life can be very confusing at times, wondering why things turn out the way that they do - and why they don't turn out differently. I am a great believer in our ability to make our own luck and to realise that it's up to us to decide how we want to live our lives. In the end we decide who we are, and we are the only ones who can really change ourselves although it's incredibly useful to have guiding hands from a few friends along the way. Never under-estimate the influence of a great friend.

I think that it's important to be true to yourself in real life, to take responsibility for your actions and to not hide behind the front of a certain social/cultural group saying that you have no choice in the matter and that you are how you are just because of the culture that you have grown up in. I mean sure if you do grow up in a Christian household then you are more likely to have Christian beliefs that you would if you grew up in an Atheist/Agnostic household. However you still have the ultimate personal choice to decide whether or not you are going to agree with this situation, therefore you must be responsible for your actions. There's no point hiding behind a created image, in a sense you are just handing over responsibility of your actions to the image that you have created, Jean-Paul Sartre terms this as 'bad faith', the rejection of your ability to think for yourself.

Well that's my philosophical spiel for tonight, hope that you all can understand my position now :). I guess that at a time in my life such as the moment when I am constantly re-assessing who I am and what my boundaries are it's important that I can find a philosophy to stick to in order to make sure that I can improve myself and remain true to what I believe in.

Maybe it's just something that happens around this time of year, but for some reason all the chat regulars seem to be on far less frequently than they used to be. I mean sure, they do still come online once in a while but maybe less than they used to for some reason. Maybe it's just the natural progression of chat, and how people will always move on in life and new people will take their place - maybe I should be more interested in these new chatter or eventually most of my chat friends will disappear. I guess that emphasizes how great it can be to extent friendships beyond chat, as it provides a much more personal relationship and ensures that this person won't just disappear out of your life some day and never return without you knowing what's happened.

The web-page has just undergone one of the largest updates in months, a second photo page of me has been created and all the photos have been reduced to manageable sizes of around 20K each which is good because it guarantees fast loading times. If you're lucky enough to wait the 30 seconds when the page loads up to download the wav file then you get to listen to my new introduction sound. I wonder if you can guess which song it's from.

Less than a week until I am off to Australia!!! It doesn't quite seem real for me somehow, which is strange but rather similar to last time I went to Australia. You don't really believe that you are going there basically until you're on the plane, but deep down I know that I am incredibly excited about it although I will miss people back here in New Zealand.

Luckily the weather in the last week has been noticably warmer than it was previous week. I think that I would have frozen if there had been another week like that - just my luck that it had to coincide with my exams - great, numb fingers while I write essays. 24 degrees looks very attractive to me right now.

Next for an update are probably my Cheetachat Page and my Chat Friends page, I really want to be able to have a complete Cheetachat Pro zip file that can be downloaded from my site, I just can't remember exactly where I got it from :(. Also I should make an effort to find out the links of my friend's sites which I never really got around to replacing when Angelfire decided to delete my entire chat friends page quite some months ago. Anyway it's all very exciting, but I don't know how much I will be able to get done before I head off to Australia next Sunday. Although maybe I will be able to get into chat a few times while I am there, especially while I am in Sydney like I have done so in the past.

The future of news pages is in doubt, my inspiration for a news page (that of x_chicky_x) has disappeared leaving me rather disillusioned. Where will I come up with the amazing little insights that I manage to get down here almost every day - where will all my creative genius manage to get its inspiration from??? Well for one I don't have creative genius (I'm too sensible) and secondly the death of Chicky's news page, while sad, really doesn't influence me that much because my news page has always been different.

Don't boy/girlracers just make you laugh? I mean surely you have better things to do with your time than to just drive up and down Queen St. occasionally burning your tyres so that everyone has a look at you, and basically just wasting the non-renewable resource of crude oil (ie. petrol). Oh well at least you provide some entertainment for those of us who actually walk around on a Saturday night and spend our time at the movie theatre or doing some rather more environmentally friendly activity, such as playing pool. Maybe a stereo from which you can hear more than just "boom boom ..." would be a good idea. Isn't there more to music than the bass?

I think that I have a personal philosophy that mirrors that of Jean-Paul Sartre, in that everything you do you have the choice to have done something differently. Therefore no matter what choice you make you must be held responsible for that decision because you could have chosen otherwise. It's an interesting point, and seems to fit in well with how I live my life. For more information Click here

First day back working today, it seemed to take so long, maybe because I was out the back cooking for the first part of my shift and when you are out the back cooking time seems to pass so much slower than when you are serving on front counter. Strange how time distorts isn't it?

It's just over a week until I go back to Australia... ohhhh... I am getting very excited. I get to go to the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Sydney; get to see Jannatun again, and have a really nice holiday for three weeks (which I have earned I think!) For some reason Australia seems to click with me, possibly because of the busyness of Sydney and the fact that I am a big city person. OH well it will be nice to get out of the country for a while. :)

It's strange when people leave chat and don't seem to come back for ages - these people you have talked to for many many days and then they suddenly disappear on you. It's quite scary. But possibly the scariest thing is that sometimes you don't even know that they have gone until they come back - the good old "oh wow long time no see" normally means that the person hasn't really noticed that you have been gone, however this is not always the case. Sometimes a chatter who you have been close to disappears and it's a very strange time if you didn't know them in any other way than just a chat room. It's as if they have just disappeared from your life for good.

"Chat turnover" is probably a good example of why the distinction between chat and reality should be kept quite clear. A chat friend is only a chat friend, you don't know them personally (no matter what you think) until you have met them in person. You don't remember when you met them, you don't really notice when the leave chat until it hits you "hey ****** hasn't been on for ages, or even worse when they finally make a re-appearance in chat.

It has nearly been a year since I got my computer, and I suppose you could argue that it has changed my life fairly considerably. Hopefully not all in bad ways! In fact, I have met many interesting people in chat rooms, and have even continued that friendship into real life on the odd occassion. It's sometimes strange to think what fate made you meet a person, and I suppose in chat it's all the same: why did you decide to come into THAT particular room? Why did you start talking to THAT particular person? Why were you online at all when you should have been studying? (No more study for meeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!) I guess these questions can never be answered because there isn't an answer to them (unless you believe in determinism) apart from luck. Or the view that I take which is that we would have met anyway, at a different time, maybe a different place... but still have met. Such is life....

For the chatters who haven't re-appeared:
auntymojo
bizkit_babe_nz
lilmissgemini07
cullens_gal_2000_nz
Unfortunately this list is bound to increase in the future, I suppose that for friends that I know only through chat and will sometime in the future disappear from my life - "the life of a chat-room depends on the chatter, the life of the chatter shouldn't depend on the chat-room"

Phhhhhhhhhhhewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.... exams are finished and I can finally live. It's like someone has taken such a huge burden off my shoulders, I don't have to worry about the fact that I should be studying because I don't have any study to do for like the first time since February.

I plan to really enjoy these holidays, with my trip to Australia it means that I will have a great time for three weeks and I know that, but while I am still in New Zealand for the next 10 days I should make the most of my exam-free self even though I will be working full-time and have a really good time.

Getting my eyes checked tomorrow for like the first time in over three years, which is very naughty since you should get them checked every year and a half and my glasses are probably making my eyes even worse as they strain all the time. Oh well shit happens, I could get myself contact lenses and have them some awesome bright blue colour.... but that would freak a lot of people out since basically nobody except my family remembers me without my glasses. Oh well it's a possibility although I am far too squeemish to stick things onto my eyeballs every day and take them off my eyeballs... I mean ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww...... (wimp)

Has anyone else noticed that it's been FUCKING COLD in the last few days? I mean surely it wasn't this cold last winter. The morning have been just horrible for the last week I think. Especially last Tuesday, brrrrrrrrrrrr..... a high of 12 for Auckland? That's unheard of! Good thing that it's 24 in Brisbane and I'm heading there in about 10 days :). Sorry jealous people, you can come next time.

Don't panic.... the rest of the news page has moved onto the "older news" page because this one was getting far too long, since it's the end of semester for me I thought this was a good time to start fresh... enjoy quicker loading times :)

More than halfway through my exams, I have done 2 and I only have 1 left. That's the good news, the bad news is that my hard exam is the one that I have left - it's the one that I need to do really well in if I want to get an A and it's the one which I haven't completely studied for. Oh well... shit happens... PANIC!!!!!

I'll be back after tomorrow with hopefully a wrap-up of my semester since my exams will finally be finished (thank god).

Man I am just soooooo.... sick of studying for my silly exams. Maybe I'm not the kind of person who can put in hours and hours of study - I always seem to have an attention span of about 30 minutes and then I need to go and do something else with my time. Scary huh? Oh well in another week they'll all be out of the way just about - just another week of hell before I get a nice well deserved break (how does working full-time at McDonalds sound like as a break?) But then of course it's off to Australia.

I was thinking the other day about the differences between internet chat and real life - I mean obviously there are differences that are pretty clear, but one thing that I found interesting is that when I am in chat it seems like I am chatting with people who I know, yet I don't remember meeting them. One could ask "why do I chat with so-and-so?" and I guess that I would possibly answer "because I have chatted with them before, got to know them and enjoy chatting with them" but I rarely remember chatting with someone for the first time. It's like they just appear in my life from nowhere and stay there. A rather interesting observation I must say :).

Oh well, time waits for no-one and no-one waits for me, especially the examination so I had better get back to my studies.... Au Revoir people :)!

EXAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK so that's a pretty boring entry but I suppose that it's the main thing which is running through my mind at the moment, learning all about Human Geography, Philosophy and Sociology in the past few days, and similarly in the next few days leading up to my exams on the 11th, 12th and 13th the whole 'exams' thing is taking over my life. Scary.

Obviously the good news is that I am off to Australia after my exams, which will be a nice break from my usual typical life in New Zealand. And I get to see Jannatun again which is a pretty cool bonus :). Well rather more than a bonus :P.

From the 15th of July all of this writing here will be shifted to a secondary news page so that the page won't take too long to load for people trying to access it, I have though about how I was going to approach this problem and I think that it's the best idea because it means that the old news will still be available through some kind of link while the more recent news will not take such a long time to load up and will be the page that loads when you click on the link from my site.