I don't know what was going on in town today, but work was incredibly busy right throughout my shift. We did more sales than we often do during the week, and Saturday's meant to be one of the quieter days of the week!

The first half of my last semester at university has finished, I wrote a pretty good essay yesterday (I think) although it was a bit too long.... but the history department generally doesn't worry if you go a little bit over the word limit - so hopefully that essay's going to be a good start to this history paper, I should hopefully get an A something for it.

Off to Hastings tomorrow morning, hopefully the lecturer will remember to pick me up in the morning so that I won't be stranded in Auckland while everyone else goes on a field-trip. Six days of geography, I don't know how I'm going to handle it! Should be rather useful and fun, although for my actual project (which focuses on the type of people who migrate to and from the Hawke's Bay and why they make this choice) I'm not really sure how useful a trip to the area will be - as the people I really want to talk to are those who have left the region.

I'm 2000 words away from being on holiday, and I've got roughly 9 hours to write those words... hmmm... I think that I can manage just over 120 words per hour! Hopefully I can get it all done by midday or sometimes around then as I need to sort things out for my fieldtrip which is now only two days away!

Yesterday sucked! I managed to lose my EFTPOS card which completely fucks me up, because the National Bank takes 5 days to send you out a new one, because it has your name and your customer number on it. I also needed to change my address, and I still need to fix my internet banking which also screwed up! It's like everything to do with the bank just decided to stuff up at the same time, a pretty bad time at that, as I'm not even going to be in Auckland in 5 days time.

It had better not be too cold in Hastings.......

After about two and a half years of this site being in existence, I've broken 3000 hits. As I've said before, I really don't actually know when I created this website, I just worked out that it must have been about May 2000, although possibly a bit earlier than that.

It's another lovely day in Auckland, pretty cold but not a cloud in the sky. It was pretty cool on the bus to university, driving across the harbour bridge with the sun sparkling on the harbour while I was listening to my new Coldplay CD. Shame I had to rush off to a 9am tutorial about the impact and influence of the 1885 elections on Irish political history..... sounds thrilling.

I've only got one more lecture left before my holidays, although I still have to finish off my research for - and write, my essay for history. Why do they always have things due the last day before the holidays??? At least I should have a pretty relaxing holidays as there's nothing that's due directly when I get back (apart from an annoying research essay proposal for my Human Geography paper). So I'm going to have fun!

Apparentely this page is a 'blog' because it's updated so frequently, and that's all you really have to do in order to call something a 'blog'. So.... welcome to my blog! Anyway, on a serious side, I actually started this page a long time before I had ever heard of blogs (even though they go back a long time before I started this page), and I only did so because one of my chat friends had a pretty cool news page on their site and I thought it would be something interesting to add to my rather static and boring webpage. Over the last year and a half I've written about 300k of text, which is a CRAP LOAD about all sorts of things to do with my life, and probably bored stiff a lot of people!

I think that I'm addicted to "Warning Sign" by Coldplay.... I just like the piano chords and the way the guy's voice goes "and the truth iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis..... that I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiss youuuuuuuuuu"... it's a good song, I'm not insane! But maybe it says something about me that the last two albums that I've bought have been by Coldplay and Moby - have I gone all introspective? A few months ago I was enjoying more 'heavy' stuff by Puddle of Mudd, Sugar Ray and even Linkin Park, and now it seems that I have gone back to my emotional, introspective, thought-provoking stuff. Is this just a coincidence, or maybe I'm heading towards a stage where I'm not quite sure who I am and I'm looking for the kind of music that can help me, rather than just something that's fun to listen to and beat your head up and down.

Getting stuck into my history essay today, as it's due on Friday and I've only done about half the research that I'm going to need to complete in order for it not to be crap. I was trying to remember the last time that I wrote a history essay that I was happy with, and it goes all the way back to stage one I think, even though I got an A for an essay I wrote last year about Nazi Germany. That was a weird essay, I never really understood the question until quite a long way into my research, which meant that I wrote a hell of a lot of completely irrelevant notes; I also wrote it at a time when I was working about 25 hours a week and had another three essays due in the same week. Luckily that's the only time I've been up until 2 in the morning writing essays, and although I thought it was pretty crap I actually ended up with a good mark.

It'll be nice to get a break from university over the holidays, and even get an entire week off work for my field-trip. So I guess it's going to be one week off uni (the week that I work), and one week off work (the week that I'll be doing uni stuff).... so do I really end up with a holiday at all?? Last time I had a real holiday was July last year so it has been a while, I think that I had three days off at the end of my exams last year, and it's been either work or uni ever since!

Man it's freezing this morning! It's like winter's nearly over so everyone's looking forward to spring, and that bastard winter just says "fuck you... I'm gonna freeze you one last time!" Actually I shouldn't be too harsh, as it's been a pretty mild winter I think. It seemed to be really cold early on (maybe that's just because I was used to warmer weather), but has got a little bit warmer as time has gone on. I wonder if that means we have a hot summer in store?

I especially don't like the idea of a cold snap when I'm about to head down to the Hawke's Bay for my field trip as it's bound to be a bit colder down there than it is in Auckland (OK.... so I'm a wuss), apparentely there was even snow of the Taupo-Napier highway last week, which could be exciting if a little dangerous. I have to remember to buy myself some more batteries (for Discman), and some Audio Tapes as well as getting my sleeping bag from my parents place and seeing whether the handheld tape recorder still works. It's like going on school camp all over again......

I bought the new Coldplay album yesterday, on its first day of release in New Zealand. It's rather unlike me to make such an unplanned decision as I really didn't think that I would be buying the album. But yesterday, when I woke up I think that Yellow, off Coldplay's previous album was playing on the computer so perhaps it was just a Coldplay day? And then, after university I walked into Sounds on Queen St. to get a couple of top 50 charts (I collect them), and this incredibly beautiful song was playing in the store. I instantly knew that it was Coldplay (they are fairly distinctive). So I figured that I'd try to listen to a bit more of the album and consider buying it. But, as I am smart and realise that planetjack.com sell their CDs cheaper I walked down there and got it. Somehow I think that I was meant to buy that album, as it was playing when I woke up, then when I was walking into Sounds. The rest of the album's pretty cool too!

What is it with geography and 'research projects'? Just when I think that one is enough, my other paper decides to haul out a 3000 word research essay which has many parts rather similar to my main research project paper. Fortunately, I don't think that it's worth nearly as much, so if I screw it up it's not going to be the end of the world. I think, after almost three years of geography, I'm finally 'getting it'. I still think that human geography really doesn't know what it wants to be - so it's a little bit of economics, environmental science, health studies, sociology, psychology, history and just about anything else that you can think of. According to our lecturer, "it's the movement of people through time and space... because as people go through their lives they move spatially, as time never stops so they move through time as well". OK, I'm sure that I knew that when I was about 4.

The best song on the Coldplay CD is "Warning Sign" - I think that it's about the eighth track. I hope they make it a single, it would be such a huge hit.

It's the last week of the first half of semester, and it all seems to have gone by so very quickly. At least at the end of this week I get a break, head out of Auckland for a week on my geography fieldtrip and then probably come back to Auckland to work a 45 hour week after that. I have to say that I'm quite proud of myself, and the way that I've managed my finances over the past 6 weeks. In the first semester it was a bit of a disaster (I don't think buying about 8 DVDs helped.... but hey), as by the day before I got paid I'd never have anything left in the bank. But it seems that I've managed not to spend too much money on unnecessary things (like DVDs), and I haven't screwed up (yet).

Amazingly the orthodontist didn't say that I needed to get a new plate, or that I even need to wear the one that I have at the moment (and that I probably should have been wearing more often). So in a way, after about six and a half years of treatment for my crooked teeth I'm finished! I still have this annoying metal bar on the inside of my bottom teeth which has to stay there at least until I turn 30 (did you know that your jaw can keep growing until your 30s???) The only problem about my teeth is that one of my wisdom teeth is rather ingrown and will probably need to be removed. That is definately something NOT to look forward to, as I've had far too many teeth forcibly removed in my lifetime (no.... not another needle!)

I try to refrain from too much comment on sport and current affairs - but what happened to the Warriors??? One week they beat the championship leaders who were getting paid twice as much as anyone else, and the next week they lose 44-0 to a team they haven't lost to in ages.. Has the world gone mad???? There, that's my spiel on that, hopefully life will return to normal next week and the Warriors will win comfortably.

Can life just suddenly turn around so that you're no longer depressed, instead all happy and joyous? I wish. I think that when life has become so strange, and rather unpleasant as mine has been lately, the path to turning it around is a long one, and a very difficult one. On the bright side of things, something tells me that I may have turned a corner in the past couple of weeks (bottomed out, as they say), and things may be on the improve. However, maybe I'm just fooling myself and things aren't actually getting better, only I'm just further shying away from everything and retreating into my metaphoric shell. Nothing really seems to have changed, although there is hope that the future will bring happier times for me, and yet the fact that I feel a bit better is making me think that I'm just concentrating on details rather than the big picture in an effort to block out my horrible feelings that things are not really that great.

Don't you just sometimes wish you could just ask someone what you should do, how you should deal with a particular situation, and they'd always have the right answer. Why does it have to be me making all the decisions? Does this attitude mean that I shy away from responsibility, surely if I am afraid of taking responsibility over my own actions then I'm a bit screwed. On the other hand, if I fuck up when making my decisions then I have to deal with it in the most personal way. If I screw up at work, a customer waits 2 minutes longer for their burger - BIG SHIT!

University is a strange society, for days you walk past thousands and thousands of strangers and recognise nobody, on other days you just bump into person after person that you know. The number of times I have told people "I'm doing a BA in Geography, nearly finished... woohoo!" must be reaching the hundreds, although it's good to catch up with people that you haven't seen for ages.

I have to say that I'm pretty happy with my news entries for this month, some days I come here and just don't have a clue what to say, but lately things seem to have been flowing along a bit easier. My life does seem to be getting a little bit better (I'm still probably a little bit depressed), although that may be the result of me actually dealing with things how they are rather than making any vast improvements.

I don't really know whether this page is really a 'blog' or not. From what I've been reading of other 'true' blogs, they seem to be more focused on what's happening in the real world as a whole - while this page is basically about me and my thoughts. I actually think this is a good thing, hopefully people find what I write interesting and it's a good reference point to me, a good diary of my life over the past two years.

I'm not sure if I have come to a final decision about what I'm going to do next year, or maybe I did actually come to this decision a long time ago and have only really been flirting with alternatives - but it seems as though I will be taking next year off to work and hopefully go on a bit of an overseas adventure. I need the extra money, as I plan to buy a laptop, I kinda want to get out of New Zealand for a bit - but the main reason that I want to take next year off is that I don't want to fuck up my masters. I've been lucky this year so far, too many essays handed in 30 minutes before they're due without the time to really proof-read them or do justice to myself really isn't the way that I should be approaching post-graduate study. So I think that giving myself the break should hopefully rekindle my excitement for study once I come back the next year and I will be able to give it all 100%. I just have to hope that I don't find a job that's too good...... there's always working fulltime at McDonald's if I want to give myself the incentive to return to university!

I'm off to the orthodontist's tomorrow, for the first time in about a year and a half. Those nasty people that put nasty braces on your teeth (that hurt like hell) and then charge you $4000 for the experience of it. Oh yes, and I've probably been a naughty boy and haven't been wearing my plate (removable pink thing.... kinda gross), although I have good reason because my wisdom teeth have grown through and I can't fit it over my teeth anymore. Chances are, the orthodontist is going to go "mutter mutter.... must get another plate" and I'll be stuck with another painful and annoying plate. At least I'll end up with straight teeth some day, I shouldn't really be complaining should I?

Scarily enough, my fieldtrip is only just over a week away, it's kinda gone from the "wooohoo.... it's going to be fun, but a long time away" to the "damn... it's getting close, what am I going to take? How am I going to keep in touch?" I guess Hastings is backwards, but it shouldn't be that bad, well at least I should have the chance to use an internet cafe to keep in touch with people via e-mail - and to hopefully maintain my news page (I just couldn't leave it for a week.... I might actually have something interesting to write about!)

Still feeling like crap, got a frog in my throat and someone shoving a hose up my nose (at least that's how it feels!) I couldn't get to sleep last night for ages, which kinda sucked as it meant I had far less than an adequate amount of sleep - especially as I'm not in the best of conditions at the moment.

My dreams are strange things, sometimes I remember them and sometimes I wouldn't know what happened during the night from a bar of soap. The weirdest thing is, that while I am asleep I have a really good knowledge of my past dreams - it's like I'm in this second world of mine and I know my way around it from the years and years of previous dreams I have had. And yet, 5 seconds after I wake up, it all seems to disappear. Here I am, knowing that only seconds before I had such a wealth of knowledge about my dreamworld, that I could remember the whole night's dreams pretty darn well - and it's just gone. I feel robbed, like someone has pointed a memory eraser (like those ones in Men In Black) at me, and just wiped it all away. Some day I think that I should organise myself a little bit more so that I have a pen and paper by my bed and I can write about my dreams from the night before - however sometimes they are so hard to write about, writing can't seem to do them justice as a dream is not only what was going on in your mind, what you can see or hear. But also how it affected you, whether you felt comfortable in this dream, and how things reacted with you. I wonder if other people have a similar world, which they return to at night.....

I know I keep on saying this, but it still seems to amaze me how quickly the past year and a half has gone, it's like a lot changed in the middle of last year - and since then my life has readjusted itself to incorporate those changes. Some memories, such as getting up for my geography lectures last year don't seem that long ago, but when I think about those actual lectures they seem to be distant memories. Similar when I think about working at St. Lukes it doesn't feel like that long ago, and yet Pt. Chev or even my first days working at Queen St. feel like ages ago. I guess it comes back to my feeling that time really isn't a constant, just as space in reality isn't uniformly constant - it's all about how you have perceieved the time that's gone just as how you perceieve space.

I have found another big fan of Daniel Vettori (Click Here). As people say I look like Daniel Vettori, bowl like him (just not quite so well), and hope to field like him (I bat right-handed for some strange reason) - he's become my favourite cricketer. Just good to know that I'm not the only one out there, check out the site.

I've been wondering about the future of my web-page, and whether I should make the news page the main page as it seems to be the only worthwhile thing on my website. I know that the page would load a lot faster than my current mainpage which would be a good thing. But then again, I reckon that it would be sacrificing the fact that this is more than just a blog - this webpage of mine has lots of other bits to it (even though they are rather neglected) and it would be sad to see them thrust into the background (even more than they are now). I still think that I need to do something different though, maybe I'll wait until I have a computer of my own so that I have the chance to really play around with things, I may even get around to buying a proper domain name.

I still feel kind of lost, wondering where things are going in my life - and getting frustrated by the repetition of things. This whole semester (I'm in week 5!!!!!!) seems to have just condensed itself into one day after another that all seem to be the same - it's like this big cloud is hanging over everything and it just won't got away, maybe it's up to me to make it go away but I really don't know if I have the strength for something so momentous.

I need to do more work for my university essays - I'm being complacent because they're not all due at once in the next week. But my history essay is lurking up on me and I don't know what I'm so afraid of in getting into it, it's probably going to be one of the more interesting questions that I've answered (how did the great famine change the course of Irish history?), but I kinda don't know where to start and where to get into it.

Dunkin Donuts has opened 2 stores down from McDonald's on Queen St. I think it's a pretty cool thing, as they make nice donuts and it will give me a chance to get some healthy food on the way to university and on the way home (I am joking...) But anyway, even if donuts aren't the healthiest things to eat on the planet, they're yummy and I only eat them in moderation - honest!

I voted in the AUSA elections, like... BIG SHIT! I am sure that the AVP, EVP, IAO and the rest of them have important jobs and the university would collapse without them (really?), but I'm sure that there would be little difference if a goat was holding those positions. On the other hand, Craccum editor is a fairly important job and I have to redeem myself from last year when I voted for the very people who have managed to produce an utterly crap Craccum this year. Oh well, I went for a guy who can really make the shit hit the fan - not that it's probably going to matter for me as in all likeliness I'm not going to be at University next year.

It's Monday, and welcome back to university for me! This week I have to write the majority of my first history essay - which looks like it's going to be pretty interesting - as well as do a stupid geography assignment using SPSS, which I guess nobody has heard of (lucky people), but is a statistical analysis piece of software that is rather complex. Oh well, it's going to be a fun week - added to all that I have about 22 hours of work and an orthodontist appointment!

Still feeling sick, all blocked up like someone's taken all the air passages in my body and slowly filled them up with liquid. This means that as I breathe I probably sound like a steam train, and I'm frequently coughing up phlegm left, right and centre. Oh yeah..... just thrilling.

This is my second to last week of university before the holidays, which is pretty scary since it doesn't really seem that long ago that it was the holidays and I was working 50 hours a week - I'm not sure if it's a good thing that they are coming along quite so quickly, sure enough I'm going on a field trip for the first week of the holidays - but whenever time goes by quickly I think that "damn..... one less week to do my research assignment or one less week before exams!" I probably have an anxiety complex....

I've managed to kick my addiction to Skittles (I think), as I haven't had any for quite a few weeks now. This is better than my average of consuming about a packet of them per day a few months ago, although I'm sure that they're not that bad for my health, it's a good thing.

Had work tonight, on a Saturday night which is pretty sad. I mean I really should be out having fun, and here I am working - making burgers and so on.... interestingly enough it was actually really quiet tonight for a Saturday night. This meant that work was pretty cruisy.

I've been kinda sick in the last few days, blocked nose and just feelings tired all the time. The fact that I'm working 25 hours a week and studying is probably not helping things that much, but hopefully I'm going to get better pretty soon. In time for my field trip to Hastings which is only a couple of weeks away now!

After three days off work, it's back to Maccas tonight. I don't know if it was a good thing or not to miss Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - which always seem to be the busiest days of the week. Problem is now that I have 4 days of work in a row which is going to be almighty amounts of fun!

This semester has been pretty cruisy so far, I know that it's all eventually going to catch up on me like it always has, but at least things aren't going to be incredibly busy (no 4 essays due in a week), although my research project is probably going to take up a hell of a lot of time. Talking about that, my field trip isn't actually that far away now (1st September we head off!) so I'm looking forward to getting out of Auckland and going to..... Hastings.... but at least it will be interesting, and a bit better than a fulltime week of work at McDonald's (which would have happened if I had stayed in Auckland during the holidays.)

Started work on my history essay, which is going to be about the Irish Famine - should be interesting enough although I was hoping for a question on Daniel O'Connell, who we had a lecture on last Thursday which was really interesting. But no essay question relating to him, so back to the famine which is probably not the most happy things to write about. But interestingly enough, it's got such a lasting impact on Irish society (namely, through the population loss either through death or mainly emigration), it's an incredibly important event to study.

Arrggghh.... why am I still so confused about life in general? Is it just me, or is it something about this stage in everyone's life where you really just don't know where to go next. Things change, but they seem to stay the same - or they don't change, but you find that everything ends up different. I don't know where to go next, everywhere I turn seems to be a dead-end road and all the decisions I seem to make, I then unmake them or remake them into something completely different, and then doubt myself so go back to where I started or to some place completely different. Maybe that's it, I don't trust my judgement anymore? Who knows.....

I've added my site to a few New Zealand search directories and some webrings, so hopefully it'll become a little more popular and a little more regularly accessed. A few people manage to find my site through the more specialised meta tags on other pages, or just seem to appear out of nowhere. But it would be nice to have a steady flow of 15-20 hits a day - that weren't just me!

Well I've made a dent in my workload for this semester, finishing my research proposal which is 20% of my final mark for my geography research paper. Now I have the chance to get stuck into my history essay, which isn't due for another two weeks. It's a nice feeling not having a millions essays all due at once (that will hit me in the second half of semester!)

Funnily enough the semester is passing by pretty quickly, much the way the whole year has seemed to just slip by without me noticing. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, sometimes when I think about it I get this stab in my heart like it's something that I'm really really afraid of, that life is just passing me by far too quickly and I'm not really doing anything about it. But maybe it's a good thing, the quicker the end of the year comes the quicker I'll have my degree, and have a few more choices available to me. But, as I've already mentioned in past news page entries, all the end of the year really holds for me is some really big decisions which could be the make or break of my future. It's a scary stage in my life - maybe I am having a quarter-life crisis? (Don't laugh... there is such a thing!)

I suppose the good thing is that at least I've got something interesting to write about in my news page. For far too long it's been.... 'get to computer, must write someting, don't know what to write... write some crap that comes to mind'. At least in the last couple of weeks I've actually used this page for the reason it was really designed for: some place to put my thoughts into writing so hopefully it makes a little bit more sense to me as well as entertaining everyone (anyone?) that decides to visit this page. Hopefully I'll begin to have some answers to all my questions in the next couple of weeks, but any progress seems to be incredibly slow at the moment.

On the bright side of things, in about three weeks I'm actually getting out of Auckland for the first time since November last year (yeah I know that's kinda scary), as our Geography paper has a field-trip to the Hawke's Bay. I haven't actually been there since I was 8 so it'll be interesting, I also have to do some research on migration patterns in the region - although I don't know if it's much use actually going there since the people I really want to talk to are those who have left the region! But it will give me a chance to get out of the city, to stretch my legs (as they say) and hopefully have a good time.

Some people say that life is all but about 10 big decisions. I know that I have made a few of those big decisions in the last couple of years, and my life has changed enormously as a result of this. Maybe what scares me is that I know I have at least 2 big decisions I'll have to make before the end of the year... the kind the affect the rest of your life whether you like it or not.

I had work yesterday, and it wasn't actually too bad (for a Sunday), even though I was on front counter and not in the kitchen where I generally feel more comfortable. Sundays are funny at Queen St. Maccas, I mean compared to other stores that I have worked at it's hardly quiet - consistently enough customers to warrant about 4 registers going all the time. But it doesn't really get BUSY like it does during the week, and it all seems so unlike how the store should be. I guess that's because I have spent most of my time working at Queen St. during the week, only recently I've started working on the weekend to give myself more time during the week for my university studies. Yesterday was good though, as I was learning how to run the shift, and hopefully in the not so distant future I may become a shift manager - which means that I'll be getting more money (which is GOOD), and I'll have a more interesting job (although probably more stressful!)

Life is strange at the moment, although that's not really any change from how things have been for a couple of months now. I don't know whether things are getting better or worse, whenever I think they are going one way or the other something seems to change my mind. I'm afraid of losing who I am, the last year and a half has been such a huge time of change for me that I wonder if I really am the same person that I used to be. Sure, there are parts of me that I'm glad to be rid of, but there are bits of me that I miss - I don't know exactly what they are but I feel as though I am missing some part of me and I don't know where it has gone or if I will ever be able to get it back. It's a really strange feeling, like I've forgotten how to do all these things that used to be sub-conscious, or I've just lost massive numbers of memories. Maybe they'll all come back some day, or maybe they haven't actually gone anywhere - I can't say for sure. Things just seem strange, and I don't feel like me anymore.

I'm at university on a Saturday for the first time this semester - possibly (but hopefully not I suppose), the first of many as the workload for this semester actually looks like it's going to be quite a bit more than I thought at first. Doesn't help that I'm probably working a little bit too much - but c'est la vie.

Have got my research proposal to do today, which is going to be loads and loads of fun (not!), hopefully it shouldn't take too long - although 2000 words generally takes a while to write no matter what it's about. However, as a lot of the proposal is in my head rather than the idea of someone else from a book that I need to work with, it should hopefully flow rather easily once I get going.

I'm finally discovering that the internet is useful for more than just e-mail, chat, funny web-pages and.... entertainment. In fact, for my research project so far I've managed not to look at a book (quite yet, going to very soon), but get heaps of information about the 2001 census from the Statistics New Zealand website which has proved to be incredibly useful, as well as picking my way through e-journals and Social Science databases. It's all enough to give you a bit of a headache, this whole paper is INCREDIBLY full-on, and I'm very glad that I'm only doing two other papers this semester otherwise I would be totally stuffed!

Yay I have the day off work, I think working in the morning and then going to university is probably not the smartest idea I've ever had, as I nearly fell asleep in my lecture yesterday - well I got to the point where my head was dropping down subconsciously. I think I'll try to avoid working on Wednesday mornings in the future.

Finally, oh finally, we may have confirmation today about the make-up of the next government in New Zealand. Apparentely Helen Clark has made good progress with United Future, and there may be a coalition there which could be a little bit scary as there are a few "crazy christians" in United Future. But I have to say that the Greens have sort of shot themselves in the foot over the GM moratorium stance, and are possibly excluding themselves from any major role in government for the next three years - and no control over whether the moratorium gets extended or not!

Finally I'm being punished for doing absolutely crap all during the past two weeks at university. I've got a research proposal which looks dauntingly huge due in on Monday, as well as a few other essays lurking in the background not too far away. At least I'm probably not scheduled to work that much next week, so there should be some more time for me to do things.

I worked this morning, which was a bit of a mistake as I wouldn't have actually had to get up early as Nats had the day off work, and once again found out that Wednesdays are not exactly the easiest days of the week to work - as people find McChickens rather popular. Over the lunch rush, it gets rather chaotic with people running this way and that, fighting over burgers and drinks, as well as the general mess which is caused by the registers being far too close together. And to think that when the Santa Parade is on, we do at least double the hourly sales that we do on a busy Wednesday lunch. Goodness knows how we cope - there must be bodies flying everywhere!

The America's Cup challenger series starts reasonably soon, well on October the 1st I think. That should be pretty interesting, as a boost for the city, and to see how strong the opponents are going to be this time around. I can assure you of one thing though, it's not going to be 5-0 this time around in the America's Cup final because the challengers look to be incredibly strong - not to mention that about half of Team New Zealand from 2000 are now sailing for another syndicate.

Maybe things are sorting themselves out, when they seem better but you know that nothing major has actually changed you begin to wonder whether you have actually sorted anything out. Maybe all that was needed was to refocus things, to put some energy back into everything, and to believe that it can work. But can that actually make things work? I guess only time can tell.....

It's interesting to see how 'blogging' has become a really popular activity on the net - and I'd like to say that my news page is some sort of a 'blog' that came along well before the trend. However, because of the fact that this is not anonymous, and that I'm probably not the most imaginative person in the world - this news page probably is incredibly boring to most people who read it. However, I'm glad to say that I don't give a crap! I realised a few months back that even if nobody else ever reads this page, it's still important and useful for me because it gives me a good idea of what's been going on in my life over the past year and a half. If I want to know what I was doing this time last year, I have the chance to look it up. I do recommend keeping some sort of diary of your life, I know that in the past I have thought about it - but never really had the inspiration or the commitment to keep it going. Perhaps the fact that it is public, and that it isn't anonymous gives me a reason to keep my news page going - and maybe going well into the future as well.

University seems strange this semester, and I guess it did last semester as well. The things that made it seem so good, now just annoy me, and I don't really have any motivation to get involved in the upcoming AUSA elections. I can barely be bothered reading the advertising plastered all over university - my general apathy has me wondering about what I want to do next year. I guess when I first started university I always planned to do a Masters degree, and I still do - at first I figured that I would probably go 'straight through' and do my masters as soon as I finished my BA. Then last year, at the beginning of the year I think, I began to get a little bit sick of university and thought that taking a year off would be a good idea. It would give me a chance to travel, maybe spending about 6 months overseas (probably in Australia) working to pay my way. This would give me the chance to get a new experience, and to give me a bit of a break from university. At the start of this year, things had changed and I was looking to probably try and find a reasonable job in New Zealand for next year - until it became rather obvious that it was silly to look for a good job when I would only be able to do it fulltime for the one year. This means that it's possibly better for me to go back to university next year and to do my masters so by the time I'm finished I will have the ability to get a much better job (hopefully) than I would with just a Bachelors - which kinda puts me back in the position I was early last year as I still reckon I'd want a break.

So, as far as I can see, there are two options for me: I can either bite the bullet and do my masters next year, which by the end of the year after would mean that I had spent about 18 years in a row doing some sort of schooling, or I could take a holiday in Australia (probably for the second half of next year), work there (probably at a McDonald's) - and get my break. The problem with the second option is that I might decide that I don't want to go back to university (or indeed to New Zealand, although I think that's incredibly unlikely), and that working at McDonald's or some place similar could be seen as a bit of a waste of time. However, it would probably mean that I could come back the next year, refreshed from a break and really give my masters the attention and focus that it would need, as well as giving me the experience of living in another country for a bit longer than three weeks. I guess it's a choice that I'll have to make in the upcoming months, but I think that I have until about the end of October - so we shall see.....

Had work today, was rather busy and we just about got completely stuffed because people from Head Office came in to do some product testing and took over half the kitchen - they also meant that we had to do absolutely everything by the books, which is just about impossible so we lost the production bin, the holding cabinet and were only saved because it happened to be really quiet and because there were heaps of people cooking.

I feel as though I am at a crossroads in my life, wondering whether the direction that I am taking is the best one - thinking that in some ways I used to be happier more often but not quite sure whether going back to the past is a good idea. Should I press on, and hope that things improve, or say that enough's enough and take a big step backwards. I'm really not sure, but I know that the decision I make will have a big impact on the rest of my life, and that I need to make it reasonably soon.

It's welcome to a new month, once again it all seems to catch up on you. Luckily, August is the last month of winter so hopefully the weather might just warm up a little bit. However, I shouldn't really complain as we've had perfectly clear skies for the past three days - and although that means cold mornings, it's much better than persistent rain.

I'm finally getting into my research assignment, realising how huge it's probably going to be, but also hopefully how interesting it might end up being. I've decided to do something about migration patterns in the Hawke's Bay, and how they vary according to age, and what the impacts of these patterns are on the region. I guess that most of my research will be into Census Data, as well as theoretical stuff about what 'should' happen when certain age-groups have a particular migration pattern. But maybe the Hawke's Bay doesn't follow the pattern, maybe there is no pattern in the region (although I think that's rather doubtful), and maybe the theory will be proved wrong (or right?). It all seems like it will be rather interesting, although at the moment it's incredibly daunting embarking on such a large project.