Yesterday was indeed a long day, I woke up at about 7am, which was a bit earlier than I needed to but my body didn't really feel like sleeping in which was a bit of a pain. But anyway I didn't finish work until about 11pm and then had to walk up to the bus stop, and then home from the bus stop. Oh well, I guess it wasn't too bad of a day, work was really busy but that's OK because you can have a bit of fun seeing how many burgers you can make as fast as you can - and not having to worry about the waste because it's so busy that they're always going to be sold within 10 minutes. Especially McChickens on Wednesdays when about 60 children on some massive class trip all decide to have dinner at McDonald's!.

Today's my short(ish) day of university, which really gives me a chance to get stuck into my essay which is due on the 4th of April (I think that's next Thursday), so hopefully I will be finished the research and into the writing by this afternoon. If I was a really good boy I would be doing it now, but I try to keep this page updated every day of the week (and if possible on the weekend) so I have an reasonable excuse.

And anyway, my essay is coming along quite nicely - well at least I have started writing it! It's all about the automobile industry, and how things have changed in the past 25 years from being an industry full of huge factories producing zillions of the same type of car to one where a large number of different cars are produced by factories employing far less people than before. I have to analyse the impact on the workers and how they have responded... well they got the sack! Maybe they were a bit pissed off in response but you can't really write that in an essay, I'll probably have to write something about them upskilling (although MS Word had never heard of the work "upskilling") so that they were eligible for the jobs which were increasingly demanded by the industry - notably electronic specialists to come and fix the robotics when it breaks down, and highly skilled labour to see when the robitics are playing up so that they can either fix it themselves, or turn off the machines and wait until the people I was just talking about come and fix them. When the essay's finished I'll probably upload it to my site like the rest of my essays, although I kinda doubt whether it'll be the most interesting thing ever to read. It's kind of interesting to write, but it's a rather specialised topic as opposed to some history or philosophy essay which many people can relate to.

Another long day looms ahead - I have too many essays at the moment and not enough time to do them in. I said to myself that I would try to get them done early this semester so that I didn't have the stress of having only the one week to do an entire essay. Unfortunately (although I did try!) I still seem to have hardly any time left to do far too many essays, and the stress of it all is coming back!

On the good side of things I have been keeping this page up-to-date just about every day. It's good to see the response as well, with far more people visiting my page this month than any months since about October last year. Now I just have to somehow get the levels back to June last year - when 360 people visited my site in a month! After that I suppose that my next target is to have 3000 hits on this site - I'm up to about 2160 at the moment.

I had a bit of a strange day of lectures today, they varied from the boring and horrible to the really interesting and informative. Even my Philosophy lecture could be pretty much divided in half, between the incredibly boring first half which was dominated by the same fucking annoying guy who always butts in during class. Fortunately he shut up in the second half of the lecture, prompting me to comment to the person next to me that someone must have tranquilised him - sure enough about a minute later he started his ranting and raving yet again.

Luckily the second half of the lecture was rather more interesting, we managed to move away from comparing super-spartans with super-super-spartans in order to disprove a theory which we had already rubbished and instead concentrated on describing the Identity Theory - which turned out to be reasonably interesting.

Monday morning, don't you just hate them? After the respite of the weekend it's back to good old bloody university, and the best thing is that all my essays are getting closer and closer - and every time I look at the questions they seem to have changed, which makes any studying I have done so far fairly obsolete. Which is rather frustrating.

It's Easter this weekend - which means lots of easter eggs and hopefully double pay for me on Easter Monday (and possibly Good Friday), another public holiday which has been completely commercialised - although not quite to the extent of Christmas yet.

Anyway, I'd better go and do some studying, get my essay going so that I don't have quite so much stress about university.

I've had a fairly interesting weekend, I suppose that I should start off with my 'minor surgery' on Thursday night as that's about where everything started. Well I guess that it went OK, the doctor gave me about a million injections in my toe which bloody hurt I may say! And then, once my toe was rather numb, he cut off the side of my toenail that was growing into my toe, isn't that all very pleasant? So I've had my ingrown toenail removed, he gives me some painkillers and says take them sometime tonight when the anaesthetic works off and it starts to hurt.

About an hour later it starts to hurt like hell, I'm sure that he said it probably wouldn't start hurting until about 9 o'clock and it's only 6 o'clock - but oh well I take a couple of painkillers and they don't do jack! About half an hour later my foot's still hurting like hell, I'm upstairs in Starbucks lying on one of the couches trying to ignore the pain my reading the newspaper. Anyway, eventually the painkillers begin to kick in, and my foot's not hurting quite so much. I'm feeling a little bit light-headed, but it may have been the anaesthetic which has done that. So I go home, go to sleep and have a reasonable night's sleep, although rather broken.

When I wake up on Friday morning I still feel a little bit light-headed. I have an appointment back at the doctors at 11am before work from midday till 9pm. I'm feeling rather sweaty, and very itchy for some reason (no, it's not normal for me). I also feel as though I could go back to sleep and just sleep away the rest of the day quite easily. As I go to have a shave (bloody Maccas!) I feel rather faint, and also slightly sick so I call McDonald's and tell them I may not be able to work today, but I'll either call in and see them or I'll ring back shortly after 2pm. Once I get to the doctors at the university I'm feeling a little bit better, although still rather weak and dizzy. They redress my toe (the original dressing had come off about halfway down Victoria St.), and then take my blood pressure because of my complaints about feeling really dizzy. Turns out that I have a blood pressure of about 75/48 which is apparently really really low (although I wouldn't have a clue what the numbers mean myself!) A combination of overly strong painkillers (they were trying some new ones out), and me not eating that morning had meant that my head was basically getting shit-all oxygen and I probably almost passed out a couple of times.

So I don't go to work, which is a bit bad because it means that I'm not eligible for my double pay next Friday which is Good Friday, but at least I didn't collapse into a vat which is probably what would have happened if I had gone to work on Friday. Yesterday was rather uneventful by comparison!

I just had the most insane lecture ever, my Sociology tutor from last year was invited to be a guest lecturer for my environmental geography paper - so that he could discuss the Actor-Network Theory. Something which is supposedly reasonably important for us to learn, so he comes in and gives us a lecture about how Sociologists try to ignore nature, about Scallops and how they dislike scientists and then on how to modify the weather. Meanwhile all somehow relating this to the Actor-Network Theory. Well I dunno if it was just me who missed it, but for some reason the connection didn't stick and if you asked me what the Actor-Network Theory is I wouldn't have a god damned clue, hopefully it's something that I cvan easily avoid during exams. I think the most relevant thing in the lecture was when he explained the reasons why some people don't like the theory - according to some academic there are 4 things wrong with the Actor-Network Theory: 1)Actor, 2)Network, 3)Theory and 4) the hyphen between actor and network. At least that made sense!

It's my lucky day today, in roughly 2 hours I get to go to the university doctor and get my toe chopped open so that my ingrown toenail can stop infecting my toe and hurting like hell whenever I accidently kick something with my right foot. This is the second time I've had to go to the doctors, anti-biotics helped for a little while, but once they finished their course the infection just came back again. It's not that bad anymore, I think that my toe has just got sick of the pain and has permanently gone numb, which is a good thing. Hopefully I'll be able to walk around OK, because I have work tomorrow and I REALLY need the money!

What is also strange (following on from my news entry just below), is when you begin to feel much better about things and you're still not quite sure what's caused the turnaround. Yesterday was a pretty long day for me, I ended up having six hours of lectures in a row becuase my history lecture turned out to be some sort of big-shot conference attended by Indonesian MPs and the like, and that dragged on for about 2 1/2 hours which was slightly annoying as there went my one hour break which I usually enjoy on a Tuesday from 3-4. But the good thing was that Philosophy was actually really interesting for once, I actually understood what was going on and actually saw a purpose to what the lecturer was talking about. Maybe that's what turned my day around yesterday, I know that I had been looking forward to Philosophy quite a lot because of how much I enjoyed it last year, and the fact that the first two lectures weren't that great had been quite a disappointment. Who knows with me, I'm just weird.

In Philosophy we were talking about different kinds of Physicalism - now basically the Philosophy of the Mind is divided into Dualists and Physicalists, Dualists think that there are two kinds of 'stuff': mental 'stuff' and physical 'stuff', and that no matter how advanced science gets it will never be able to explain the mental 'stuff'. Meanwhile Physicalists believe that there is only physical 'stuff', and therefore some day it will be possible to explain everything through science. Basically a Dualist will say that if you are having a thought, enjoying a belief or experiencing pain then they are mental processes that cannot be explained by even the most advanced science. While the Dualist will say that a particular mental process is the result of particular brain activity, and that there is little to distinguish between brain processes and mental processes - because brain processes ARE mental processes, and vice-versa. Now being Philosophy there are arguments against and arguments for each of these theories, and then arguments against those arguments, arguments against those counter-arguments and even more arguments that counter the countering counter arguments. Confused? Yeah me too.... but it's interesting I tell you!

Have you ever wondered why, when you get on a bus which is about half full, and everyone are strangers (ie. no friends), that everyone will sit on a separate seat, even if it means that you will walk all the way to the back seat, seemingly to avoid sitting next to someone. Maybe this is because we don't want to be seen as 'hitting' on this person by sitting next to them? Or is it something else? My best guess is that we all would prefer to have the seats to ourselves and that we give the person as much 'space' as possible. Maybe next time you should sit next to someone, even when there are only a few people on the bus, just to see what happens. How about actually talking to a complete stranger while taking a ride? Now that would be revolutionary wouldn't it?

It's strange when you know that something's not quite right - or that for some reason you're not quite acting like yourself lately and you just can't figure out why. I mean I know that there are a few stresses in my life at the moment, such as university and money etc., but on the other hand it doesn't seem like they are what's causing this. I'm just not sure. Maybe I'm just overworking myself and having a few too many long days which is really tiring me out. Who knows.....

I'm beginning to get into the swing of things at university, for the rest of this week I'm going to concentrate on my first essay - which is for economic geography, something about the automotive industry which should be fairly interesting. The questions are a bit hard to make sense out of though, so I'm not sure exactly what question I'm going to answer. I think that the most important thing is that I get stuck in, get one of my essays out of the way because come April and May I have millions of them to do, and i don't want to get into the same old situation that I always do when I have about 4 essays due in the one week.

Don't you just hate Auckland's crappy bus system? I waited nearly an hour this morning for a bus that never came. Sure Sylvan Ave. isn't the best place in the world to get out of, so the busses try to avoid the area during rush hour, but the bus timetable said that there was a bus due to arrive at Northcote shops at both 6:40am and 7:00am. And neither of those busses arrived - in the end we had to catch a Birkenhead bus which cost about $5.00 all up. I guess it's not just the busses to blame, the whole Onewa Rd. area is a mess, anyone who lives on the North Shore will know exactly what I am talking about.

I went to see Black Hawk Down on Saturday night, a pretty good movie I must say because it wasn't too American and not too "war is good" as some other movies have a tendency to fall towards because it's "good for business". In the end it showed how easily something can go wrong, and how fucked up war is. Worth watching I reckon.

Through two weeks of university now, although strangely enough it hardly seems as though I've really been back. Probably now because I have a life out of university it's not my be-all and end-all. Also since I haven't really got into any assignments it seems as though I'm hardly there. That will change, which I guess is a good thing as it's slightly worrying how little university work I have done in the past two weeks. I always worry about not doing enough work, and I still seem to get good marks so I guess that I'm just a worry wart.

I have finally figured out that even if nobody reads this news page apart from me and Nats it still has a point - for me when reading past entries it gives a really good account of my life. Not just what I have been doing, but my feelings, my worries and so on.

Work isn't bad, the good thing about Queen St. is that you say to them "it would be really cool to work then, then and then.... and they actually give you the very shifts that you ask for. Never mind the fact that I'm having minor surgery on my toe next Thursday, which means that I might not be able to work on the Friday.

It's strange when I think about where my news page will be in a couple of years time. Will it still be going? Would I still have the same e-mail address in 10 years time? I don't see any reason for me to change it - but I never thought that I would change my mobile number, when in reality I'm probably going to downgrade to a prepay mobile phone because now that Nats works in the city I don't need to send millions of messages to her in order to catch up. I can do that in person. :D

The start of semesters are always a bit strange - you don't have much that's due like RIGHT NOW, but lingering away in the back of your mind is the fact that in just over a month you have about three essays due in a week, and that if you leave them all to do in that particular week you're going to be absolutely fucked. So you think about them, do some reading but have a horrible feeling that you're not getting anywhere, nor that you can really get anywhere because the lecturer hasn't covered your topic yet. Never mind the fact that the essay you wouldn't mind doing first isn't due until a month after the other ones - which makes it totally pointless doing that essay first.

My papers are pretty interesting this semester, one on Environmental Geography, one on Economic Geography, a History paper about South East Asia as well as the Philosophy of Mind. I will hopefully get into things a little bit more in the next couple of weeks so that I can talk about some of the interesting issues that I am encountering during my studies - but at the moment introductory and background lectures (read B-O-R-I-N-G) are the main things I am having.

Possibly out of all my papers the Southeast Asian history one seems to have been the most interesting so far, probably as it's the one which I know least about and therefore have most to learn from. I pride myself on having a pretty good general knowledge of world history, and having a reasonably impartial worldview. But, as I have learned, I actually know incredibly little about Southeast Asian history, and it's incredibly complicated to the extent that "Southeast Asia" as a generic term for the region didn't exist until World War 2. It's also interesting to learn about how influences from the major civilisations of India and China shaped the culture of the region; it makes me want to learn more about the history of both those regions. Maybe some day I'll read a book about it so I have some idea about it. My lecturer is also an environmental geographer which is really useful, as he brings in the importance of geography and the environment and how that has shaped the history of the region - an influence often ignored by other lecturers.

Don't you just love not having university on Fridays? It's a really nice thought on a Thursday knowing that this is the last day of the week - especially as it's a pretty easy day because I only have the one 2 hour lecture. 3 day weekends are all good, even more so because for the first time in about three months at least I don't have work on a Saturday! So I actually have a weekend for once!

I just wanted to somehow send a message out to Peter from Pt. Chev Maccas, when I tried to e-mail you the other day it said that your account was deactivated. Now hopefully you're going to activate it sometime soon so that I cna sned you e-mails or some other way I can contact you. Anyway, hope work's good and that you aren't working too much (say a maximum of 45 hours a week?), don't let the managers treat you like shit!. OK?

My news page entries are coming thick and fast at the moment, which I suppose is a good thing since everyone would have got completely bored throughout the holidays with my entire three entries! Hopefully I can entice a few more people to actually read my news page - I think that everyone gave up on me which is kind of sad. If you accessed this page through Dust Bunnie's page then you will probably be new to me. Please if you like this page then link to it from your site or tell a couple of people about it, but most importantly come back here once in a while because my page is ever-changing. Nats and myself have some pretty grand ideas about how we are going to revolutionise this page into something rather more artistic and interesting. First step is to get my roll-overs going again on the main page.

My third day back at university, and it already seems as though holidays are a distant memory and that they've just thrown me straight into the deep end of a lot of essays, millions of assignments etc. etc. Pretty typical I suppose, the good thing (or maybe bad thing) is that one of my papers this semester is completely internally assessed, which means that although I'll therefore have millions of assignments during the semester at least I will only have three and not four exams at the end of it. My first essay is due on the 4th of April I think, and then they are pretty constant after that. But anyway, it's pretty good to be back here - doesn't really seem that long since last year in some ways although if I really think about it then I did have a bloody long 'holiday' (not that working fulltime really constitutes as a holiday, but anywayyyyyy....)

Before I go any further I need to congratulate my girlfriend Nats - as of today she is a Starbucks employee on a higher rate than I get at McDonald's (oh the shame of it!.... lol), but anyway good on her for getting a good job and I hope that things go well. Don't stress!!!!!

I've started work at Queen St. McDonalds - and yeah it's much much busier than the store was at Pt. Chev. Hopefully all my shifts won't be like my first one on Monday night where about 2 people didn't turn up and I was left as the only cook. It's rather daunting when you look out on front counter and see about 50 people waiting to order! All the equipment is old and crappy which is a change from Pt. Chev where everything was obviously brand new (as the store was new), which is slightly crappy but I'm sure that I'll get used to it eventually.

As you would have noticed, my main page has been updated recently - with new buttons and a new background being implemented (big words!), I suppose that this will continue throughout the rest of my site at some stage in the future although at the moment it seems as though the only pages people ever go to are my main page and my news page - and I have recently changed the format of both pages so my webpage is getting a bit more attention than I gave it during the holidays.

Almost back at university now, and it seems as though things are the same as ever - AUSA is free this year which is supposed to make heaps of people join so that they can claim to be representative of the whole university. Just a pity that the one person who could have made a difference as AUSA president managed to narrowly lose in the elections last year. Anyway, student politics is rather boring and is guaranteed to make anyone go to sleep rather quickly. The orientation magazine looks rather thick - although I haven't started reading it yet as I had a lot of things planned to do. Unfortuantely nobody was at the AUSA stall for me to join, and the people who were giving out room allocation details basically told me that the best idea would be to go on the internet and find out which rooms have my papers that way. Problem is that I go on the net and half of my papers have a wonderful TBA (to be announced I suspect) next to them. Grrrrrrr......

Apart from that I have little news to communicate - I am trying to fix up my news pages so that every month has a page for itself, the only problem there is that I made very few entries during December, January and February so they are going to be rather empty pages. Oh well I'm sure everyone will get over it.