I've got all my marks back, finally, and they're wonderfully supririsingly excellent - with an A for my research geography paper and an A+ for my other geography paper. That all makes this semester the best ever for me, when it comes to my marks, and the first time that I haven't got an A- in a semester. So I'm feeling pretty good about things, and quite proud of myself that I was able to rise to the challenge of my advanced papers and do really well in them, all I need to do now is do a really good and interesting piece of research over the holidays and get it published in a geography journal.

No money though, and I must say that I'm starting to worry whether the letter I posted back with my acceptance of the scholarship got lost in the mail, was missing something, or I wrote the wrong bank account number (can't have though, because the bank printed out the number as verification). OK, so maybe I'm just being impatient and it'll come sometime next week. It's just that having a laptop would be really useful for the research that I've started, and I can't even really think about buying a laptop until the money comes through.

There were two power surges this morning in the city, which knocked out all the vats at McDonald's. Luckily I wasn't working, as it would have been rather stressful, but it did mean that they had no Hash Browns when I went up to buy breakfast for Nats and a couple of other people from her work. Hopefully by the time I start work at 10:30 it will all be fixed.

No more marks today, and also no money from the science faculty as the scholarship seems to still be finding its way into my bank account. This is slightly frustrating, as to really get stuck into my research I would like to have my laptop so that I can keep all the information together. But at the moment I'm just starting out, trying to find useful information from the Statistics New Zealand website which is proving more difficult than anticipated, as they aren't breaking the information down into small enough areas of New Zealand. I know that I'll eventually figure it out, it's just the frustration of downloading masses of excel tables only to find that they aren't really what you're looking for, but I guess that's just the nature of research.

I'll be going to the gym with Nats this afternoon, for the first time since Sunday ,as I thankfully have a day off work today. Next week things should settle into a better pattern, as I have Monday, Tuesday and Thursday off, which will give me more opportunities to go to the gym and actually make a difference. The whole 'gym thing' seems to be depressing Nats which isn't a good thing as we're both spending lots of money on it, but hopefully that's going to change once we get our proper programmes going and when there's hopefully signs of progress.

I have managed to find the information I was looking for, although now I have absolutely huge amounts of stuff that I need to trawl through in order to make any sense of it. This is only for the 2001 census information, and I'm going right back to 1981 in order to make dencent comparisions and understand how things have changed over time.

I'm making a start on my summer scholarship project, which should hopefully lead to me developing a really interesting piece of research that might even be included in a journal. My focus is on ethnic change on the North Shore of Auckland over the past 20 year, a subject which is seemingly always in the headlines at the moment - not only in New Zealand but overseas as well. I'll have the 2001 census to give me up-to-date information about what has been going on, and maybe I'll be able to come up with some really interesting conclusions that can shed light on a really important matter, it makes me feel all important all of a sudden!

Yesterday I felt better, and I wasn't so absolutely wasted, which was a relief. However, by the end of the day I was beginning to have to think twice about things that are normally subconscious, as well as not hearing things at all or hearing something completely different to what was said. It's still a little bit worrying, but Nats agrees with me that all it might be is just my not sleeping properly (who knows what's causing that...) causing me to be less alert than usual, and maybe I'm taking it all out of proportion and thinking that a few coincidences is more than it actually is. I'm not worried about anything in particular - so maybe all I really need is a few good night's sleep, and anyway things seem OK today so I could be on the path back to being me a bit more.

I got the first of my marks back, an A for history which was exactly what I predicted and is a really good result for a paper that I really enjoyed. With my geography marks to come, maybe I'll have another A and an A- or two A-'s or something like that. Either way, it's been a really good semester marks-wise, and a great way to finish off my degree.

I seem so tired all the time, which definately isn't good, and probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not sleeping very well at all. I think that last night was a bit better, I know that I had a very well developed dream (although your guess is as good as mine as to what it was about), and maybe I also managed some non REM sleep. Over the past few days it seems as though I've either been really tired, or that my brain has decided to go on holiday. I'm forgetting things that I wouldn't normally forget, and I'm just switching off completely at times when I don't really want to. Nats thinks that my brain is just having a well-deserved holiday, and I hope like hell that she's right and something more serious isn't going on - it's slightly worrying although hopefully a few decent sleeps (which have been rather rare lately) will put things right, and maybe I just need to concentrate a little bit more.

Maybe the reason that I've been writing "this, this and then this happened" kind of entries lately is because a lot has been going on. Now, at least for a little while, things seem to be dying down and possibly even settling into a pattern of some sorts (although I'd rather not be doing 10:30-5 shifts as they eat up the whole day but don't even provide eight hours of work). Maybe this means that I can write a little bit more about how I'm feeling and things that I notice, like how the weater during the week lately has been really, really nice but when you wait for the weekend it all packs in and the one chance you have of actually making use of the nice weather is blown.

I can't believe that it's less than a month to Christmas, does it really seem that long since Christmas last year? Going to Nats' mother's place and trying my hand at being a cameraman for the home-video, it really seems like only a few months ago in some ways, while in others that time seems almost a lifetime ago. Lots of things have changed since then, and in some ways I feel like a really different person to who I was this time last year. I've grown up a lot this year, things have not been easy the whole time but that's what generally happens when you take a major step in your life such as moving out of home.

When I look to the future, especially next year, I don't really know what's going to happen. Working at McDonald's is beginning to bore me a little bit more than it used to - which is not a good thing as I've only been back working fulltime for about three weeks. Maybe it is time for a change, as I've been working at Maccas for almost three years - but I'm keen to become a manager at least for a little while before I leave, so that my future job prospects (at least until I use my qualifications to gain a career job) are improved. At least by taking next year off I'm going to ensure that I don't burn out halfway through my masters degree, and it's going to mean that for the first time ever I might actually have some money next year... damn that's a different concept to the last year and a half!

Work yesterday was rather busy, as the Santa Parade meant that just about everyone in Auckland wanted McDonald's for lunch or afternoon tea. We did pretty well I thought, thankfully having about 40 people working which made things possible as the crowds of people almost streched back to the door at one stage, I was pretty tired last night after it all though and my feet hurt like anything - which is actually pretty normal come to think of it.

My life is incredibly unstructured at the moment, as work is giving me annoying hours which are actually outside my availability (they didn't notice that I had changed it), which has meant that I haven't really been able to make a start on my summer research yet. The scholarship money hasn't come through yet which means that although I'm still looking around for a laptop I can't really get into shopping for it seriously quite yet. Also, my marks haven't come through yet either, which is slightly frustrating as university marks generally come through a little bit quicker than has been the case this time. So at the moment there's a lot of wait and see, and hopefully next week I will be able to settle into a bit of a pattern and get stuck into this research I need to do.

I've thought about adding a new page to my site, one which archives the top 20 New Zealand singles every week. I keep a pretty decent archive myself, from collecting Top 50 charts each week from music stores, and as you might realise the website referred to above only shows you this week and last week's charts. So I think it would be a pretty cool and useful thing to add to my site - I might not be able to backdate it beyond September this year, but in the future hopefully I'll be able to keep it up-to-date and provide a useful resource for people.

We went shopping today, although because I hardly have any money at the moment (due to lots of overdue bills I had to put off during exams) I only bought the one DVD: E.T. the special edition. I guess that's a pretty good film to get as it was the first movie I can ever remember seeing, when I was about four years old. It freaked the hell out of me then, maybe having a role to play in my general distate for scary movies - although now everyone says that E.T. isn't really a scary movie at all. But anyway, I haven't actually seen it since, although a few years ago we taped it off T.V. and I watched the first while before someone taped over it.... grrr....

Nats bought two U2 CDs today, the best of 1980-1990 and the best of 1990-2000. On the first CD was a song called "I still haven't found what I'm looking for", which is one of those songs I've had in my mind over the years and never actually known what it was, or who it was by. I have the feeling that it was in one of my favourite movies when I was younger, possibly Crocodile Dundee although maybe not - but anyway it was awesome to hear this song again, and to know what it was and also know that in the future I will be able to listen to it as often as I like.

Nats and I are working tomorrow, because it's the Santa Parade in Auckland. This means that it's going to be the busiest day of the year at McDonald's and we're going to have just about every crew person available working. I'm looking forward to it, as I have been ever since a guy at Pt. Chev Maccas last year told me about the 2001 Santa Parade. It's probably going to be a really hard day's work, but at least it will be something different and an interesting experience. The time should probably go pretty quickly too.

I look at the posts I have made over the past few weeks and they really don't seem to indicate what's really been going on in my life. While they have said "I did this, this and then this", that has been about it. While I feel pretty good about how my life is going at the moment, Nats seems really depressed at the moment and I don't seem to be able to do anything about it all which is really depressing. I'm not sure that I am helping things at times, so while things seem to be getting better, I can't really feel happy since Nats is so upset and sad all the time.

Nats is deciding whether she should do a foundation course for university next year, it sounds really full-on and she isn't that confident because she has been out of education for quite a while. Ideally it seems a little bit soon to start at the beginning of next year, but as things work out it's either starting in March next year or wait until 2005 to start her Bachelors which is way too far away, and seems far too late to do something like university. We looked through the courses available, and they seem to be based around what was taught during the last couple of years in high school so hopefully it's not going to be too difficult for Nats, and I should be able to help her out with the Geography and the Maths.

I think that she'll be OK, and the main thing that's holding her back is the lack of self-confidence in herself. I guess that I am in a very different position to her and it is scary to embark on something that's so... big... I suppose is the best way of descibing it. All I can really say is that I'm going to help her through it, and to support her where I can but in the end she's going to have to do it so it's up to her to decide if it's what she wants to do and if she believes that she can do it.

For my scholarship I need to help the geography department for at least 8 weeks over the holidays, conducting research which is similar to anything they are doing at the moment. Although I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do yet, it will be something based around Auckland's changing demographics over the past 20 years. I'd like to focus on ethnic change, which is a particularly interesting as it has become an intense political debate in New Zealand recently. Who knows, my research might be of some importance - it's all quite exciting!

I haven't yet quite decided which laptop I'm going to buy, although there is a Compaq Evo which looks like a pretty good computer at a reasonably cheap price. I don't want to spend all $4000 on just a laptop, as I have debts to Nats and James which I would like to try and pay off, as well as having some money left over so I'm not living on the edge as I've been doing since about March this year. There are a few other options too, and although I'm really looking forward to getting a laptop, I don't want to hurry into it and find out a couple of weeks after I've bought it that I could have got something even better for a cheaper price.

I've got this annoying error on my page, which seems to be something from angelfire stuffing up. It might actually be their pop-up not working, as I have noticed that it hasn't shown up recently. So don't panic about it, everything else seems to be working fine, and maybe it's a good thing if a pop-up doesn't work.

It's been a while since I updated, but things have been in overdrive as my post-university life starts to kick in. I worked Wendesday, Thursday and Friday last week, very necessary since at the moment I'm incredibly poor and having to rely upon poor Nats, who's been really supportive throughout my exams, for money. But that's all going to change...

...As I found out that I won the scholarship on Friday! When I finished work I had a message on my cellphone that Grace (ex girlfriend, still friends) had got a scholarship and that it had come in the mail today. As I was rather interested to find out whether I had also got one (the science faculty gave out 100 of them), I messaged Nats to see if we had got any mail. Apparentely there hadn't been any, as Nats had checked where it normally is, but she decided to check with her Grandma to see whether she had got the mail in, and YES there was a little letter from the university saying that they were pleased to announce that I am $4000 richer! Finally, I have the chance to sort out what's going to happen over the holidays and also buy myself a laptop. I'll need to cut back my hours at McDonald's a bit, but hopefully things will still work out pretty well so that I'll be able to pay back my debts and save for Australia sometime next year (although me and Nats seem to be changing our minds about the trip every day or two).

Yesterday we went to Big Boys Toys, which was OK as there were lots of cool electronics and I got to play on lots of Macintosh Computers from little laptops up to 24" widescreen monitors. Lots of cars as well, which I'm not really into. I don't really get the whole 'car' thing, which so many guys seem to go nuts over - am I weird or are they just all strange?

Went to the airport today, to see off my mother and sister who are now somewhere between Sydney and Bangkok. They are spending the next four weeks travelling around Europe (France, Italy and Switzerland), before my mum comes home while Ella stays for another 6 weeks at a kind of exchange student thing. They were all excited, which is nice - although I must say I did have a slight tinge of jealousy as I really wouldn't mind travelling to all the great European cities and checking out their wonderful buildings. But I guess that my time will come, and I will eventually get to Europe so I shouldn't be too jealous - but it'll be soooo cool! Just send me lots of e-mails and postcards!!

No work again today, I was going to do a couple of graveyard shifts this week but Nats and I decided (probably quite smartly) that it would screw things up too much and I would be a bloody wreck by the end of the week. So it's going to be a pretty quiet week for me. Which is a good thing as it gives me a chance to actually have a holiday of sorts for the first time in a long time, so I found Sim City 3000 and spent the whole morning creating a city. Ahhh.... love them holidays.

There's still no word on my scholarship, which may or may not be a good thing. The science faculty might not actually accounce it until the start of next week - because that's when exams finish. So hopefully I still have a good shot at it.

Armistice Day, which I only just realised when writing the date of today's post. Finally, on this day back in 1918 Europe finally realised that World War One was completely, utterly and totally a pointless exercise and the major powers changed their minds about thinking that it was a good idea to cull the entire male population between the ages of 17 and 40. Why New Zealand ever got involved...... don't ask me...

I've moved into my post-university stage - which will last for the next year and a half (roughly), although I'm still very indecisive about what I'm going to do. As I wrote in my last post, the idea of working fulltime at McDonald's for a year freaks me out - and this has become even more the case in the last couple of days when I found out that I've only been given one shift this week. Maybe it was miscommunication that led to this happening, but I can't really survive on 5 hours a week, and unless I get lots more hours I might need to go looking for another job.

Nats and I had a good weekend away, it was really nice to get out of the city and see my family for a while. There's something about Mangawhai Heads which is deeply relaxing, probably the fact that you end up so tired there (the fresh air seems to have that effect) that you sleep for about 12 hours every night. But back to the city last night, and back to the routines today - although it's nice to get away it's also not that bad to get back to civilisation and to find those same old routines.

Sadly the Republicans won the mid-term U.S. elections. In the past I haven't given a rat's arse about these elections, but it seems as though this result gives Bush the ability to do whatever the hell he likes, which is rather scary. On a better note (possibly), the U.N. and the U.S. have finally agreed upon what to do about Iraq, and I guess that the result of it all isn't too unreasonable, and it does mean that the U.S. had to compromise a lot of their war-mongering ideals. I think we all want Saddam Hussein to go, but in a way that helps the Iraqi people and in a way that follows the conventions that the international community has set up. In other words, I'm sick to death with the U.S. doing whatever the hell it wants!

It's been nice today, not having to worry about my exams anymore and just relaxing and enjoying a real day off for the first time in ages. We're off to Mangawhai Heads this afternoon, for what is hopefully going to be a really good weekend - a chance to get away from the city. I had a good talk with Nats about what's going to happen over the next couple of years although there's still quite a lot of things up in the air.

I'm taking next year off, although the thought of working fulltime at McDonald's for all that time does freak me out a little bit. I know that it means I'll become a shift manager and I will have a more interesting, if stressful, job than I have at the moment but I guess I'm a little worried that I'll end up incredibly bored of it all. What are the alternatives? I don't want to do my Masters next year because I think that I'm a little bit jaded and sick of university, and I would be able to give it a better shot after a bit of time off. I suppose that I could apply for a different job, maybe something a little more related to geography, but I don't really think I have much of a chance landing a job that I would only be able to do for a year.

Nats is in a fairly similar situation, she has made her mind up that she wants to study Psychology but it's going to be a mission to get there because she doesn't have university entrance, which means that she needs to do a bridging course and they have restriction and many other loops you have to jump through. We did plan to go to Australia next year but now it seems that it's just going to cost too much, with future university fees to pay for the both of us it seems that maybe the smart option is to save the money now so that we can benefit later. Nats obviously doesn't want to end up with a massive student loan, so maybe the best idea is to spend next year saving as much as we can so that eventually I can buy a car or something like that (and maybe even get my license so I can drive it!), and Nats can save for her fees. But on the other hand I feel that we're young and we should have fun in our lives, and that there's so much time in the future to act responsibly. Shouldn't 20 and 18 year olds be doing that? Are we being smart, or just dull? I'd probably have to say smart... and there will be times in the future when I'm getting paid more than $9.64 an hour, and it will be easier to go on holiday and have lots of fun!

Wow..... I've finished my degree. It really hasn't sunk in yet, but the fact of the matter is (sounding like a pathetic politician here) that it's completely done and I don't have to write another essay, sit another exam or go to another lecture for my Bachelors Degree. It's kinda scary actually, another stage of my life going by, soon I'll be a graduate and before I know it I'll probably have to get a decent job. Well, at least for the next three years I have a reasonable idea of what I'm doing - after that your guess is as good as mine.

I find out whether I won the Geography Science scholarship thingee pretty soon. I have been reasonably confident about it, although it seems that whenever I talk to somebody they've also applied for it and I have more competition than I thought I had. But here's hoping that it comes through.

My exam did go OK, geography always has the tendency of surprising you with questions that are a little bit out of left field and require you to disregard everything that you've studied and try to turn a little bit of a lecture you had way back at the start of semester into an essay. Basically you always seem to end up using your common knowledge more than the nitty gritty of the course. But I answered the questions, so they can't be too annoyed at me - and when I think that I haven't done that well I always end up getting better marks than if I think that I did really well.

I went to the hospital with Nats today, for her tonsil checkup. Now, if you have been reading this page for a while you'll realise that back in June Nats had her tonsils removed, and something went a little bit wrong leaving her in horrible pain for about three weeks. Since then she's been back to the hospital for about three different checkups, and it seems every time they've given her a different reason why she reacted so badly to the operation. Hopefully things will eventually come right, but it really seems that all we've had since the operation is a whole heap of problems and it really makes you wonder whether it was worth it.

Went to the gym again yesterday, and I'm beginning to get used to it. My legs don't hurt today, which is probably a good thing and it the result of much better stretching at the end of our workout yesterday, but my arms are still pretty sore. It's probably because I'm using muscles that I hardly ever use, and they've gone "hey.... what the hell???" It should get better, so long as I keep going to the gym as often as possible.

My last university exam tomorrow, and I think that I've just about got it sussed. Geography have a tendency to screw you over by giving you exactly the questions you don't want, but I've been smart this time around and studied my topics reasonably widely so that even if I don't get the exact questions I want, I should still be OK. Fortunately, the geography department also has the habit of marking the exam essays fairly easily - although when you think you've done really well you're probably going to get a worse mark than if you think you screwed the exam up. At least that's my experience.

Everyone seems to be shifting into 'summer mode', obviously it's been getting warmer throughout the past three months but now you sit around the computer labs at university and people are talking about what they'll be up to over the holidays, about going to the beach and stuff like that. It looks as though me and Nats will also be heading away for the weekend, up to Mangawhai with my family which will be pretty cool as I haven't actually been up there for a year (almost exactly a year actually). It's always good to get away from the city, and especially when you go to the beach as I've always been a beach person. I just hope the water's warm enough to go swimming... as I am a skinny little thing and only ever go swimming when the water's really warm.

I went to the gym for the first time yesterday with Nats, and it was pretty cool although my legs still hurt like hell! I'm going to make sure that I get my money's worth, although I still haven't really decided upon what my aim should be. They have a good mixture of running, cycling, rowing and stepping machines, as well as every single weights machine you could ever imagine. It's slightly intimidating at first being around all these incredibly fit people, but I guess it's motivation to say that "hey.... in a couple of months I should be able to cycle continuously for an hour". At the moment 10 minutes on a pretty hard resistance level is enough to make my legs hurt like anything, and to make me sweat rather lots.

Google has done its monthly 'shake up', which unfortunately means that I've disappeared back into oblivion on a few search lists, although my essays still seem to be doing pretty well in attracting people. I guess the positive side of the change is that my backgrounds page won't be quite so inundated with users that my bandwidth won't skyrocket. So, as a result my backgrounds page is back working, I just hope that people don't download too many of the wallpapers because then angelfire will throw another spazz and I'll need to move it once again.

Only two more days of studying, and then my last and final exam! I should be finding out whether I got the scholarship by the end of this week, and all going well (assuming I get it), I should be.... back at university next week (oh the thrill of it), and $4000 richer (YES!). I'm pretty sure that I'm going to go with the Dell computer ahead of the other one basically because Dell has a better reputation and offers more support. Since I'm spending so much money I want to make sure that I get a good computer that's not going to die on me. Also, there isn't really that much difference between a P4 2.0GHz and a P4 1.7GHz is there?

Back to university, and this will be the last week of my degree as I have my final exam on Thursday which will be the last of the 21 courses I have to do in order to get my degree. It's been a pretty good semester marks-wise, I've finally managed to 'achieve my potential' in some ways, as I've had enough time to really throw myself into the essays that I've had to do, and probably for the first time ever I haven't left them all to the last minute.

I went out on Saturday night, for the first time in ages, as we went to see Red Dragon, the first of the Hannibal Lector series. Although I'm not really a 'thriller' type movie fan, I've always admired the acting talent of Anthony Hopkins - as he's terrifying even when he isn't doing anything. I actually thought the film was surprisingly good, although potentially rather predictable. Even though it hasn't done as well at the box office as either Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal, I thought it was a better film than Hannibal. We went out for a little bit after that, but couldn't really think of what to do, as 'going out' just doesn't seem to have such an alluring appeal anymore. Am I growing up too fast?

Yesterday seemed like an incredibly long day, as we changed the bedroom around. Now for most people this would probably be a pretty simple job that would only take a couple of hours, but you would be mistaken when thinking that about Nats and my bedroom, which probably has enough 'stuff' in it to fill most houses. About six hours later we were done, nothing fit where we wanted it to fit so eventually we came up with something completely different to what we set out to do. But it's new and the room hasn't been like that, at least for as long as I've known Nats so it's nice to have a change.

You always get some strange people in the library when you're studying. There's always the person who's there before you get there, and still there after you've left - probably the same person who gets A+'s all the time; then there's that annoying person whose cell-phone keeps on ringing, or even better the person who doesn't care about anyone else and talks loudly on their phone until someone taps them on the shoulder and reminds them what an inconsiderate prick they're being. Or there's the classic discman listener, who doesn't realise that I can probably hear what they're listening to just as well as they can; or the chatter - who thinks that just because they're talking in a different language it won't distract me whatsoever. But when I think about it, maybe I'm not that great in some ways - although I do make sure that my cellphone is on silent whenever I'm in the library or in a lecture, there have been too many snide remarks made by lecturers regarding cellphones for me to ever want to be caught in such a situation.

Did you know that during the 1960s New Zealand had the highest fertility rate among the developed world? Well.... now you do, and it's amazing all the interesting things you can learn by doing geography, maybe it was something in the water back then?

I had my first exam today, and things went pretty well as I don't think that I could have asked for better questions. Two hours for two essays means that you have to develop a pretty good essay and I think that I was able to do that. So one down and one to go, although my history exam (the one I had today) is probably quite a lot easier than the Geography exam I have next Thursday. Once that exam is finished with, my entire degree is complete which is pretty exciting.

There's a huge thunderstorm going on in Auckland tonight, and although it's kinda scary to think that if one of the flashes decides to hit your house rather than out in the middle of the harbour then there's going to be trouble, just as I wrote that there was a lightning flash that seemed a little bit close for comfort... kinda scary too. Lightning is so awe-inspiring and yet scary you don't know whether to watch it and admire or freak out about it. Nats is a little scared of it, and I guess I am too as I have childhood memories of waking up in the middle of the night listening to really scary thunderstorms. I guess we'll just have to snuggle up tonight and comfort each other throughout the storm, one of the nicest things about having someone there sleeping in your bed with you...