It’s been a pretty normal week, getting used being a manager at Maccas hasn’t really been that hard because it seems as though a lot of the people there already have some respect for me so it doesn’t come as a huge shock now that I’m there boss (of sorts). This shift has also meant one really good thing: I’m guaranteed 40 hours of work a week. No more wondering whether I’d have enough hours to cover all my bills etc., now I’ll be able to figure what I’m going to get paid each week so that I’ll know what I can afford to spend and what needs to go towards my bills. It’s like growing up you know, once you have bills to pay every week and the need to earn enough money to pay them all you realise that you have grown up – kinda sucks in some ways.

I am missing university a little this year, being away from the education system for the first time in forever. But it’s a healthy ‘missing’, one which says that I don’t mind working fulltime this year because it’s something different and is giving me a break, but at the same time is making me look forward to next year and doing my masters degree as I know that I don’t want to be in the McDonald’s business forever. Hopefully I’m also learning stuff this year, about managing people and other things that may indeed prove to be useful in the future.

I guess the positive side of working fulltime this year so far has been the people I’ve met and worked with, and the whole different side to life that working fulltime brings. As I’m probably going to spend most of the next 40 years of my life working fulltime I sure as hell better get used to it, and I think that this year is going to help me lots in the long-run. I’m also quite a lot happier than last year, although I don’t think this fact has anything to do with the fact that I’m working rather than at university maybe by me not being as stressed out as I was for much of last year I’ve become a bit more laid back about things and I’m not as easily bothered as I used to be. Maybe that’s also part of growing up, learning to say “oh well, shit happens, better luck next time” and to not get all stressed about everything.

Angelfire seems to have been playing up quite a lot lately, when I go to the page which I update from nothing appears except for a blue screen, sure it's quite a nice blank blue screen, but no matter how long I wait for it just never loads. So if there are gaps between my entries it's not always my fault. Although what I should probably be doing is writing my updates in Microsoft Word and then copying and pasting them into my webpage editor if something like that happens. But I just can never be bothered.

My life is revolving around work way too much at the moment. It's even getting to my dreams more than usual. I've always dreamed about work, whether it was me being shifted to a completely different store for a day, going back to one of my old stores, panicking because I can see that we're about to have the biggest lunch rush and there's nobody in the kitchen but me etc. etc. But recently it seems as though barely a night goes past without my dreams floating towards work in some way or another. About a week ago I had a really odd dream that my parents' house also doubled as a really small McDonald's restaurant, and I was worried that we would hardly ever get any customers because there weren't any signs telling people that this was the case. A couple of weeks ago I had a dream that seemed to go on forever, where I was working a shift that started sometime on a Thursday morning but didn't finish until Saturday. My dreams are always screwed up creatures, which don't seem to stick around in my memory as much more than a few snapshots - although I'm fairly sure that when I'm in the middle of them it's like real life just mixed and jumbled together in a completely incoherent manner.

Funnily enough the earliest dream I ever remember was from when I was either 3 or 4, and I was dreaming about jumping around in the playground of (you guessed it) a McDonald's, maybe I was destined for this job. Over the years my sleep time has played upon my fears and anxieties, from being sucked down the plug-hole of our bath (had continuous nightmares about that for a couple of years) to being late for school because I kept on forgetting things and had to go back (such as forgetting my bike when I used to ride it to school). I've been late for many exams, sat my school bursary exams about 10 times, got lost on the way to school and much much more. I guess the saddest thing about dreams is that you don't remember more, at least not until you are asleep yet again and your memories of past dreams seem to come flooding back only for you to forget it all yet again once you wake up. Maybe I need to be hypnotised to a point where my subconscious, which holds all my memories of dreams, can be unlocked. It annoys me that so much of what I've experienced and thought about whilst asleep just disappears...

In real-life matters I finally had a day off work today, after working from Monday to Saturday. We had a pretty quiet day, going over to Nats' mothers to drop off a misbehaving comptuer (not mine), before doing a little bit of shopping. But it's back to work tomorrow, for anotehr pretty long week which shouldn't be too bad as it will be my first full week as a manager and might prove to be a little bit different to how things have been in the past. When you've worked for McD's as long as I have anything new can make your day. It's a bit sad when you think about it.

Finally, finally, finally I got my managers uniform yesterday, which kind of officially means that I've joined the ranks of a shift manager at McDonald's. I remember on my second ever day at McDonald's (now this was a bloody long time ago back in January 2000) one of the managers said that he was really impressed with how I was picking up things and that he thought I had good potential to become a manager within the next few months. Now, about three and a half years later this finally comes true - an excellent example of how the McDonald's system works.

Life is being rather dominated by work at the moment, which is actually not too bad because work isn't annoying the hell out of me for once. The past couple of days have actually been surprisingly busy - but we've managed to cope pretty well. I'm working tomorrow for the first time on a Saturday for ages, mainly because Nats is working and it gives me a chance to earn a few extra dollars for this week. My money situation is becoming potentially quite stressful, as I realised this morning that when I add together the money I pay for board, my gym membership, the repayments for the car, and other stuff like car insurance etc. it all adds up to about $200 a week, while normally I'm only getting paid around $300 a week. Good thing that I can now get free food as a manager, although this will probably mean that my diet will consist of a fair amount of McDonald's which cannot be healthy for me. Well, I seem to have managed my finances quite well so far this year, so hopefully with the lower food costs and the pay rise once I finish my management course, things won't become critical like they were for the whole of last year, and I'll still be able to have a bit of a buffer and maybe even eat into the $2000 I need to save for next year's university fees.

I feel really wiped out tonight, which is rather odd since I didn't work a particularly long shift today and I had a pretty good sleep last night. Maybe it's everything just compounding upon itself and eventually it's all going to hit me and I'll be totally wasted. But that hasn't really happened in the past which makes me wonder why the hell I felt so tired today?

My writing has kind of trailed off in the past few weeks, although again I can't really explain it. For some reason it just doesn't seem to cool to keep my webpage up to date anymore, it's become almost a hassle rather than something I look forward to writing in. This is definitely not a good thing, and I presume that I'll get over it. Life just seems... uneventful... at the moment, the kind of time which will probably completely slip my mind a few months from now. Well, except for the ways that having a car is making things so much easier, that's something which seems to stand out among the haze of the rest of my life at the moment. My days at work at become rather repetitive, and are blending into one really long day of increasing disorganisation. I'm supposed to be moving into the management team, but it seems like everyone has just forgot about it, and nothing's happening at all. I'm sure that things will improve in the long run, but I'm glad that this is only a one year journey of full-time work at Maccas as I don't think I could handle it for much longer.

Having a car is really beginning to reveal its usefulness, in giving us much more freedom than before. Not having to rely upon buses, and making sure that all our journeys aren't too far from bus routes. I think that having a car is going to become one of those "how the hell did we live without one" things. Like a cellphone and my laptop. I guess that before we did survive, but things are just so much easier now. Nats should be ready to take her driving test pretty soon, although I'm a little bit further behind these days as I haven't had the chance for much practice. Once Nats gets her proprt restricted license things should be even better as we'll be properly able to drive around wherever we like.

My parents have gone away for the weekend, so me and Nats decided to crash here for a couple of nights and take advantage of the fast(er) internet speeds, furthermore when you're the only people in the house you don't have to worry about keeping the stereo down or hogging the phone lines. So I spent about 18 hours on the net continuously (that did include a sleep you know!) and managed to download about 300 mb of music and viedeos which would have taken me weeks at home.

Work was quite busy last week, I think that things are really just starting to pick up at that store for some reason. Probably because we're finally sorting all the shit out which has been going on for months. For once it seems as though we're concentrating on customer satisfaction and not just making a profit - which means that ironically the sales will increase as people want to come back, meaning that profit levels incrase. Moreover, from Tuesday next week I should officially be a manager, as I get my uniform and hopefully progress a bit further in my management training.

I had one of those 'completely and utterly normal' days at work today. In some ways that's slightly sad, as I know that today will be one of those just which just disappears from my memory bank within a week or two. One of those days which just quickly disappeared, as the days seem to have done over the past couple of months. Full-time work is rather repititious, and although having a bank balance which isn't critical all the time does feel nice I do sometimes miss the intellectual stimulation of university. I suppose that's a good thing, as I wouldn't want to have the feeling that I really don't want to go back next year, as it would have meant that giving myself a break this year would have been a bad idea. But at the moment I am still enjoying not having too many stresses in my life - although instead of worrying about my essays and when they're due I start worrying about Nats' essays and when they're due. Yet at the same time I'm not enjoying things too much so that I get to the point of not wanting to go back. The univesity has opened a whole new huge student commmons building which is really cool and will be very very useful for me next year.

No chance for me to drive today, as I had a rather long day at work. But hopefully I'll be able to have a little drive around before the end of the week, and then have a driving lesson with my parents some time on the weekend. I probably just need lots more practice, getting used to doing heaps of things at once and making sure that I keep my eyes on the road and not on the gear stick when changing gears!

According to previous entries, this page has been going for three years as of today. Now that figure is most probably wrong, as I was never actually sure when I started this website. I know that it was up and running in time to put some of my first university essays up on my Essays Page, but something tells me that I may have actually created it back in 1999, although I can't remember for sure. But anyway, keeping a website up and running for at least three years is pretty cool, and I'm pretty happy with myself at being able to do that. Hopefully it's got better and better as time has gone on, and is a great improvement upon my original website.

I went driving with Nats today, and we're making improvements which is really great. It's still difficult in some patches, like not freaking out when you start rolling backwards on a hill-start. But hopefully we're going to get to the point where we can really drive ourselves around in the next few weeks, so that we won't have to rely upon buses all the time. I'm feeling much more confident with steering and getting the car going, although changing gears is still a bit of a pain. Nats is quite a bit ahead of me at the moment as she's had quite a lot more practice, and she'll probably get her license before me which is OK as it means she'll have to drive me around. Ha Ha!

Work's pretty boring at the moment, my management course seems to have stalled for the time being, as everyone just seems a little bit too busy to spend time training up the new managers. But as I was told a couple of the current managers are going to be shifting to other stores in the not-so-distant future which means that the store is going to need more managers. That's hopefully where I fit in.

It’s been four days since I last updated, and I suppose that’s pretty bad considering quite a lot has happened since then. Friday was a pretty cool day, being my graduation and all. Then yesterday I had a crew outing with my fellow McDonald’s workers, which was pretty cool although took a bit longer than I thought it would which has meant that now on Sunday night I feel totally wiped out when I should be all refreshed and ready to go for the upcoming week.

But back to the important stuff: my graduation day on Friday. I got to wear the silly academic regalia which you would normally not want to be seen dead in, but makes you feel special as people congratulate you out of the blue. We started off by having a breakfast in a huge marquee along with about 10 million other people, before assembling all 400 graduands in alphabetical order – which proved to be a bit of a mission. Then we made our way out of the marquee and slowly down to the Auckland Town Hall. I thought that it was really cool that they stopped all the traffic so that we could all walk down the middle of some of the roads in central Auckland. There were people lined up on the sides of the road and it almost felt that I was in some kind of parade (which I suppose that I was), something that I am used to watching rather than be part of. Once we reached the Town Hall we all assembled again in one of the rooms there, perfecting our order which had been totally lost while walking down the hill from the university – then we walked into the Town Hall which was pretty much packed with people graduating, and their friends and family. I looked around for a bit to check if I could see Nats, Ella and my Mum and I eventually spotted them right at the back of the place on the top area of seating. The actual ceremony was pretty long and boring, with lots and lots of names being read out - although of course I had my moment of glory going up on stage to get capped and receive my degree. We got some cool photos, and all round it was a pretty cool day.

Then that night we went out which was pretty cool. I got rather drunk for a while, although it wore off quite quickly after I had something to eat. We got home at about 4am, which meant hardly any sleep at all for me because I had a McDonald's work outing yesterday. That basically turned into a giant piss-up, with about $800 of Maccas money being spent on alcohol, and everyone ending up on the bus that we hired driving all around the North Shore. I didn't have much to drink, as getting drunk twice on the same weekend is probably not the greatest idea ever - but some of the other people...

I haven't really felt like writing that much lately, for some reason the idea of having to update a page seems a little bit of a drag. Maybe it's because I feel a bit 'bleh' at the moment and can't really be bothered with anything or maybe it's something else altogether. My life is fairly monotonous at the moment, which doesn't make for particularly interesting reading, but it doesn't seem to really concern me too much. Maybe having some pattern and predictability is a good thing for me at the moment, or maybe I just don't know what I want.

Something in my life for the past few weeks just hasn't seemed right. Things seem to be stagnating and not really going anywhere, although there isn't a reason why this should be the case. Everything should be pretty great at the moment: we just bought a car, my graduation is coming up and I just turned 21. But for some reason something isn't right and I just don't know what it is. Ugh, annoying.

I had a couple of driving lessons today, and in my opinion I made pretty good progress. In the past I've been shit scared of hitting anything which has made me panic, and that's hardly helped things at all. But today I felt pretty calm and I made good progress, I'm fairly confident with my steering now, as well as changing gears (our new car's a manual) so hopefully I'll be driving well before too long. It's a little bit scary realising how much power you've got at the touch of a pedal, especially once you've got it into second gear and it jumps when you step on the accelerator.

My latest craze on the net seems to be downloading music videos for songs. Now it's all really nice, being able to watch the music video for a song that you really like - adds more than just listening to the song. Only problem is the size of the bloody things, at an average of about 50mb. So on our crappy internet connection it takes about 4 hours to download each and every video - so I'm going to be selective and I'll definitely not end up with over 2000 videos!

It's been a pretty long week so far for me, with work being the rather dominant feature in my life at the moment. It's been "get up at 7am, go to work, come home at about 6, eat, sleep then do it again" which has become slightly depressing, but at least tomorrow I have a later start so I'll have a chance to have at least a small sleep-in. Work has also been more interesting than usual, with my management training as well as the Crew Training development programme which I'm doing.

The other main thing that's happened this week is us buying our car, which is now nicely parked in the carport. We even got an alarm installed which is pretty cool - although it turns itself on after 30 seconds which can be slightly disconcerting at first. But at least it's finally sinking in that we actually have a car, although it probably won't really seem like much of a great thing until I've learned how to drive the darn thing!

My graduation is just over a week away, which is kind of exciting as I'm finally going to be one of those people dressed up funny who I have seen every year that I've been at university. All those "one day I'll be doing that" thoughts are about to become a reality, and although it's a pretty weird tradition with all the clothes etc. it's the kind of thing that you're not exactly going to do too many times in your life so you may as well savour the moment. It also means that I finally get the degree that I've worked so hard for in paper, now we just need to figure out a place to put it...