Football World Cup
The Football World Cup starts tomorrow in South Korea and Japan, although I haven't really followed soccer this year as much as I have previously, it will be interesting as soccer is one of the few sports where there are a lot of countries that are very good at it. Unlike the rugby world cup - where realistically only about 4 or 5 countries are ever going to win it or the cricket world cup which is fairly similar, in soccer you never really know who's going to win. I mean when you have a team that made the semi-finals last time around (ie. Holland) and aren't even there this time, you know that you have a pretty competitive competition. I guess that I'll find a good website somewhere so that I can keep up to date with everything - I remember in 98 Soccernet was about the best site around on the world cup, but that's been taken over by EPSN so it'll be interesting what pops up.

Caught the bus to town in the middle of the rush hour today for the first time in ages, as Nats started work at 8 o'clock. Traffic wasn't too bad, as per usual, once you're actually on the motorway to get on the harbour bridge - it's just a slow ride along Onewa Road in order to get there. Luckily we live close to the last bus stop before you get on the harbour bridge so it's never too long.

I have to write an essay by the end of today on something to do with Southeast Asian nationalism. Hopefully it won't take me too long, as I have work tomorrow and really don't want to have to be finishing it off in a mad rush before my deadline of starting work at midday.

Auckland's Weather
Damn Auckland weather, one second it's absolutely pouring down with rain and the next minute it's nice and sunny so you think that it's a good time to go out. And then as soon as you do go out it decides to pour down again. It was interesting yesterday though, because we had a thunder storm for the first time in ages.... lightning and all which was kinda exciting. I always remember being at primary school and watching the thunder storms during lunch time as we played some really really old game on the crappy computers we had back then. The other thing I always think about during a thunder storm is the really really scary one that happened when I was on school camp in about standard three I think, well it had been raining pretty much steadily throughout the week, so this must have been about the Tuesday or Wednesday night I think. Anyway, the thunder started and it just kept on going, getting louder and louder and louder. Well my best friend Nicholas needed to go outside, and just as he opened the door there was a massive flash of lightning which hit the middle of the field just outside the dormitories we were sleeping in. I don't know who got the bigger fright, him from seeing the lightning or me from seeing his reaction. But anyway, it must have been a pretty big thing for me if I can still remember it over 10 years later. (Damn I feel old saying that!)

Seven essays down and only the one to go now. As well as a little geography lab exercise which shouldn't take me too long at all, I'll be finished the internal assessment part of my course, which will include one paper entirely, 60% of my philosophy paper and 40% of my two geography papers. It's been one hell of a semester, but I think that I'm through the worst of it, next semester seems like it will be a bit easier as I am doing three papers and not four - so everything should be slightly less stressful. Then at the end of that I'm going to have a degree..... scary!

I watched Third Watch with Nats last night, about September 11th - I thought that it was pretty well done, everyone knew what they were talking about although no shots of the planes or anything else like that were ever shown. I guess since it has been about eight months since September 11th, it's interesting to see how it has really 'changed' the world. I know that people said at the time things would never be the same again, but has that really happened? Maybe in the states is has for sure, and even in countries like Australia who have put aside a greater amount of money than ever before, for defence, it has made a big difference. The 'war' against the Taleban seemed to be about as one-sided as tanks vs. spears, and was over pretty quickly. I guess one way of thinking about it is, that maybe everything hasn't changed but it's still not the same as it was - maybe it never will be.

Essays
I've been 20 for a month as of today, kinda weird thinking about it that way as it does seem like a while in some ways but not that long in others. I guess time flies at the moment, although with exams looming not too far away I'm not really sure whether I'm that pleased about it doing so!

Had to wake up really early this morning, although it's not such a bad thing because (hurray!) I'm not working tonight. Nats started work at 6:30am so I got a lift with her into town which was good as my bus card has run out for last week, and it meant that I could have a pretty relaxing start to the day lounging about on the Starbucks couch reading a bit of the newspaper, and then doing stuff on my essay..... now talking about that essay...

It's strange how essays develop throughout my time at university. I remember last year having to write a 2,000 word essay for human geography, which was at that point the longest ever essay I had had to write for university. Well, I was rather used to writing little 1,500 word things so when I got to about 1,500 words I kinda ran out of things to say. I had sub-consciously angled my essay so that I could say what I wanted in about the same number of words to what I was used to. Now jumping foward to this year, and I have to write a 1,500 word Philosophy essay (really need it done in the next hour and a half, but I'm nearly there), and I can't seem to keep myself to anywhere close to 1,500 words. In about two hours I have managed to write nearly 1300 words, and I still think that I'm only really getting started and that there's quite a lot more to my argument that needs to be said. I guess it's just the way that you write things.

On a more interesting note, Nats' aunty is due to have a baby pretty soon, so there will be another addition to the extended family. Here's hoping that everything goes well, and it'll be pretty cool having a little baby around the place - the last one I really remember was my sister Ella, and she was born when I was three and a half!

Power Cut
We had a power cut today, for the first time that I can really remember for years. Bloody sucked actually since we were in the middle of watching a DVD (Cats and Dogs - very funny).

It's been so fucking cold lately, my hands and feet feel kind of numb and like they're going to fall off. I now realise why I really hate winter, cos I'm a skinny little thing I always feel the cold pretty badly and end up freezing my ass off - bring back summer!

It sucks how places where you work can go from being your best friend to dumping you and not giving a damn. At the moment, it seems like Starbucks' sales are down as it's winter, so nobody's getting the hours that they need. This sucks for Nats, as she was employed on the basis that she would be a fulltime worker, and now she's getting barely 20 hours a week.

The Knowledge Argument
Well I managed to finish my reaserch project, with a huge 20 minutes to spare. I know that I really shouldn't leave things so close next time, but oh well. It was like 15 pages long including all the references and a couple of pages of diagrams. But I think that it was a pretty good essay thing, not the best ever but probably not too bad considering I did end up writing it under quite a bit of pressure.

Now I've got to write a Philosophy essay by Monday about The Knowledge Argument. It seems as though The Knowledge Argument, which is an argument against Functionalism and Physicalism, interestingly enough as that's basically what we've got to in terms of the one 'right' theory by elimination of all the other theories. Well, basically physicalism says that everything is physical, so that if you know everything physical then you know everything there is to know. Functionalism says that the mental states we have, are what is known as "functional states", and that they are a combination of inputs, outputs and internal processes that cannot function by themselves, but only as a whole system.

But anyway, The Knowledge Argument supposes that there's this chick called Mary (I wonder why they chose a chick called Mary, bloody Philosophers don't get out enough probably) who knows all there is to know about physical stuff. She knows all the maths that we could possibly ever know, she knows all about the human brain and the neurophysiological bullshit that goes on inside our heads. BUT, she has lived her entire life inside a room which is completely black and white, all the books she has read to acquire her immense knowledge have been solely black and white, and similarly the TV that she watches is black and white. Now suppose we let her out of this room (aren't we nice.....) and she sees red for the first time, now does this experience of red for the first time mean that she's learnt something? Has she learned what it is like to experience red? And is this a realistic learning process? Common sense says that she has learnt something, and that if she has then she mustn't have known everything before she got out of the room, but since she knew everything physical before she got let out of the room there must be other non-physical stuff that she didn't know about. Here's when we all say "holy shit! Physicalism is wrong... wooooohooooo!!!"

There are heaps of replies to this situation, although as yet I haven't found one that's really any good - although possibly the best way for a physicalist to reply to the situation is by attacking the actual situation. I think that it might be impossible for Mary to know everything physical in the world without knowing what red looks like, so therefore the whole situation is wrong because she doesn't know everything physical so she can therefore learn something new physical which means that the experience was physical so physicalism isn't dead. (I think I wrote physical WAY too many times in that sentence.) It'll hopefully be quite an interesting essay to write, as maybe I'll finally understand this insane philosophy paper and hopefully be able to drag my marks back up.

Essays Coming Out Of My Ears
I'm making fairly good progress on my geography research assignment, so I thought that I would take a bit of time out to write in my news page for the day. It's my Dad's birthday today, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I've got essays coming out of my ears at the moment, in fact the assignment I'm doing at the moment has come down to the number of hours left before it's due. Well at the moment I have three hours left to go, and I have about another thousand words to write so I don't think that I'm too stuffed. It's nice when you get going on something and the words just start to flow, the problem is that I'm so used to writing essays, that I'm probably going to write this assignment like it was an essay - and apparentely it's not. Hmmmmm.......

Yay, no more working at nights for me until at least the holidays after my last exam, which is on June 26th. Sometimes it's just a bit too much, having a full day's university and then coming into work and doing a 7 hour shift which finishes at 11pm, then finally going home. I also always seem to wake Nats up which sucks, especially when she starts work at 6:30am the next morning. Well now hopefully I'll be working afternoons on Wednesdays and then Mornings on Fridays, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Rain
It's pissing down with rain at the moment, of course that just had to happen the day I didn't bring an umbrella or my jacket. So I'm here stuck in the library (which is probably a good thing, as I have a massive essay due tomorrow) until it stops raining - or I'm going to get fucking wet. Well, wetter than I am so far which is pretty soaked as I made my dash from the Engineering School over to the library. Grrrrrr.....

I can't believe they've made a Scooby Doo movie. I used to watch that cartoon when I was really little, and MAN did it freak the hell out of me! All those ghosts, vampires etc. etc. were probably a little bit too much for me, but for some reason I liked the show. I wonder how they would make it into a movie though.....

I had work last night for the first time in over a week, it was pretty normal I suppose - although the shift manager at the moment is utterly hopeless. I basically ran the kitchen the whole night: gave out all the breaks, organised the wash, as well as looking after the production bin the whole time and closing the grill. Time seemed to go really really slowly for some reason, and although it was probably my shortest ever shift at Queen St., only 5 hours long, it seemed to be even longer than my normal 7 hour shifts. Probably because I only had the one break.

My poor Nats ended up working 13 hours yesterday, after getting shit all sleep the night before. Oh well, the good thing is that she's got the day off today. Hope that you're sleeping!!

Had a strange Philosophy lecture today, it sort of made sense I guess. But as Philosophy has been like this whole semester, I kinda felt that I missed the bit of the lecture that made the whole thing relevant. Maybe on the last day of studying before my exam I'm finally going to actually 'get' the whole paper and it'll just all make sense (it has happened in the past you know!), or maybe I'll be destined to have kinda got what's been going on, but never really understood it fully. It was interesting to figure out that a person's life does have a finite amount of possibilities, as our perception means that we cannot tell the smallest differences of inputs and we can't tell the smallest differences in time. So theoretically you could make a huge book about all the possible inputs in a person's life, and therefore all the possible outputs. I think that's kind of what functionalism is all about, but don't quote me on it!

Party
Went to Nats' work party with her last night at the Dispensary Bar. It wasn't too bad, the drinks were rather expensive but what do you really expect at a bar - plus we did get vouchers for 3 free drinks. Also, Nats won a $30 music voucher for selling lots of Frappucinos. So it was pretty cool. I managed to get myself rather tipsy on 4 bottle of KGB lemonade, which probably just shows how little alcohol I've drunk lately. But it was good, because I didn't get to the "feeling sick" part of drunk, and I was still sort of in control of myself. As I said to Nats, I'm at the stage where I can still be serious, it's just much easier than usual not to be serious. Which is a nice feeling.

Back to earth today however, as Nats started work bloody early in the morning (poor thing), and I have had another pretty typical day of lectures. Interestingly, I'm not starting work until 5pm, instead of my usual 4pm - which means that I'll get one less break than usual but I will get paid for my whole shift as I don't get an unpaid half hour break.

Almost had a record number of hits on my site last week, of 81. I think that the record was 140 something back in June last year when I went on a mad spree of advertising my webpage in chat - but I'm pretty proud of how things have gone in the last week and hopefully the new people who have visited my site will come back again and again.

I have to write 2 essays in the next week, one of which is about 3,000 words long and is due in two days time. Aaarrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!! Oh well, I've done most of the research, just need to do a little bit more theoretical stuff. It's on the Breakfast Ceral Industry - not the most riveting of things to write a research report about, but I guess that it's something that shouldn't be too difficult. Then I have to write a Philosophy essay about something to do with Functionalism I think, Philosophy has been rather disappointing this semester considering last year it was probably one of the best papers I've ever done at university, I guess it's been a combination of factors such as the very nature of the paper, the fact that all the tutorial times clashed, the stupid idiot in the lecture who always comes up with the most inane things to say (such as "well.... I'd just like to complicate the situation - what if mathematics is not species-independent....") and so on.... Oh well, it's something that I should be able to pass OK, and by the end of this semester I'll be pretty close to finished my degree. I can just look forward to the last word of the last exam I write next semester - strangely enough it'll be like the last word of my degree. Kinda like when I finished my bursary physics exam - it was like "this is the last thing I'm ever going to write at school!" I guess it's not quite that big as I'll be back at uni the year after next to do my Masters in Geography - but you know what I mean!

Essay after essay after essay
Yay! I've finally finished my essay! It took a shit load longer than it should have, and now I'm left with between now and Wednesday to do a 3,000 word research assignment on the breakfast cereal industry. Luckily I've managed to do most of the research for that. Then I have a Philosophy essay due in the Monday after that, then a history essay the Friday after that. And then I'm free..... no wait, then I've got exams! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Well the good thing is that my exams shouldn't be too bad. For Geography I always seem to do pretty well in exams, while for Philosophy it's only worth 40%, so my mark really depends on how well (or otherwise) I do in the two essays. Hmmmm.....

I wonder if you have noticed some writing on my entrance page - yes I must admit that when I first designed that page I vowed not to have any text whatsoever, but you know I think that sometimes people need a little bit of direction when they visit my webpage, so hopefully I'll direct them all here to the news page where people can read about my wonderful liddle life and keep coming back every day so that eventually I can get 3000 hits on my page. I might even be able to break last month's 110 hits as the record for 2002!

Man I'm tired, had to wake up early this morning again, as I had this stupid essay to do and Nats was workin on the other side of the city (ie. New Lynn), so I'm kinda sleepy and it's only 1:30pm. Oh well, early night tonight - no going out and drinking myself into a drunker stupor (when did I ever do that..... don't ask!.. And no jokes about raspberry Mirinda!) Yay it's the weekend tomorrow, although it's going to suck as I know I really should get some research done for my big assignment, I mean it's the weekend though! It's just criminal to do university work on the weekend!

More essays
Grrrr..... I've given my presentation about the Vietnam War, now I just have to write the bloody essay and I really don't know where to start. The books aren't really that great.... OK, calm down, stop panicking. Count to ten slowly........ there we go. I have done the research, I know where to start, I've written essays about the Vietnam War before. Why am I panicking?..... Coz I'm me.

Didn't have any lectures today, well I kinda should have. But since I've already missed about 2 lectures on the topic we're doing at the moment in Environmental Geography I really didn't see any point in going to the lecture today. Hopefully we didn't move on to a new topic or I have also stuffed that one up - but I don't think so. I'll just make sure that I avoid the environmental impacts of tourism throughout the exam and I should be pretty sweet. The essay I have written for this paper was pretty good, so hopefully I'm going to do pretty well in this paper, I guess that I should do OK since it is very much similar to what I'm interested in.

We've got plans to go to Wellington again! At the end of last year, we did have plans to go down to Wellington for a holiday although we kinda ran out of money because Nats bought her computer and I didn't work for about a month due to exams. Well hopefully this year things will work out a bit better as Nats is now working fulltime and I should have some money saved up by working at Maccas for a while - or somewhere else if I manage to get a decent job by the end of the year. I haven't been out of Auckland since about November last year I think, and it's been even longer for Nats, so it'll be a nice break. I haven't actually been to Wellington since 1995, and even then it was only for a couple of days while we went to the South Island and back, therefore it's basically back to 1993 since I actually spent a decent length of time in Wellington, and things have changed quite a lot there with the building of Te Papa etc. etc. , so it's going to be fun, and after about a year in Auckland I'm pretty sure that we'll both be dying to get out of the city for a while.

Train
I just gave my presentation about the Vietnam War, I think that it went pretty well although I might have missed out on quite a bit as the books I have read so far aren't actually that great. I need to do some more research this afternoon, and then hopefully write it later on tonight or tomorrow so that it's out of the way and I can concentrate on my geography assignment about the breakfast cereals industry.

I caught a train in Auckland yesterday! Yes, to all you people reading this page outside Auckland (if there are any) it is quite an amazing feat to actually catch a train in Auckland. They're rather infrequent and the stations are pretty crap, although because it was a train and not a bus, the trip was a bit cheaper, much more comfortable and quite a bit faster during the rush hour. Nats was working in New Lynn last night so instead of catching a bus from the city to New Lynn in the middle of the rush hour (which would have taken me HOURS), I decided to catch the train. I'm going to do the same again today, as Nats is working there again tonight.

I did accidently delete the main photo, and I'm just about to find a short term replacement until I can either find that photo again or create some sort of a Photoshoped baby photo consisting of me and Nats.

Little Red Cross
I think that I accidently deleted the main photo on my webpage, so that instead of seeing a beautiful little picture of me when you log in, all there happens to be there now is a crappy little red cross. I think that happened because I was cleaning out some old folders in my directory and I didn't realise that I had bundled that picture in with my old white page design folder. Oops! Oh well I'm pretty sure that we have that photo stored somewhere on the computer at home, I'll just have to upload it again which is a bit of a pain in the arse. But oh well....

Grrr.... I'm writing a pretty annoying essay at the moment (well in the process of researching so that I can write it), all the books seem to have the kind of angle that just misses fully explaning my question of "who won the Vietnam War?" I mean it seems pretty clear cut and simple to say that the North Vietnamese must have since they captured Saigon and unified Vietnam under Communism - but this is an essay so I have to find some sort of controversial aspect of it so that I have something to argue about.

Early start this morning, with Nats starting work at 6:30am, and me really also having to come in so darn early because I have this silly essay to do. It's interesting to see how the city slowly comes alive in the morning, the trip in was a cruise, I guess if I had to drive into work every day I'd probably get up early to avoid the rush hour traffic. The only thing was that I was pretty tired when I woke up this morning, probably because my eyes have been playing up a bit lately - things are slightly out of focus and it's very tiring having to refocus all the time. I should go to the Optometrist sometime soon, but they're so expensive and I hardly have the time..... hmmmmm....

DVDs
Officially my web-page is two years old today, although I have to admit that I'm really not quite sure how correct that is - because when I tried to remember the particular day that I created my site, well it wasn't really that clear. However, I managed to figure out when abouts it probably was, because I'm pretty sure that I was at university and I'm pretty sure it was about the same time as I wrote my history essay about Napoleon. So that would have been roughly about two years ago, it replaced a really shit page that I had built earlier (you can still find it on the net if you look closely enough!), and funnily enough this web-site has managed to develop into something pretty cool (I would like to think). Some day I'll have the time to really learn about a few of the webpage design programs out there like Dreamweaver and Frontpage so that I can really create something special, and many pages within my website probably need a good update. Luckily though, I still update my news page pretty regularly, and I have created pages such as my wallpapers page and my avatars page in the last 6 months adding something a little bit different to my page.

My latest craze seems to be buying DVDs to watch on Nats' computer. Together we have bought 22 in the last month (I think), and we're amassing a pretty good collection. Tombraider, Dude Where's My Car, Roadtrip, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Forsaken, Tomcats, The Fast and the Furious, Where the Heart is, Empire Records, Artificial Intelligence, Pearl Harbour, The Sixth Sense, Coyote Ugly, Cruel Intentions, Pretty Woman, Notting Hill, Pleasantville, Planet of the Apes, American Beauty and a few more which I can't remember. Altogether we've got a pretty good collection going - I mean we haven't even had the time to watch them all. The next few I plan to get are The Truman Show, Can't Hardly Wait, Forrest Gump and maybe The Shawshank Redemption.

My geography essay turned out really well, I think that it's one of the best essays that I've ever written - it all seemed to flow pretty well and I had a pretty good idea about what I was writing which is always a good thing. I used something like 11 different references, which is a hell of a lot, and always a good thing. Hopefully I should be able to get a pretty good mark for it, as geography is probably the only thing I am studying which I really need to do well in, because that's what I plan to do for my post-graduate studies - and who knows, if I do really well I might even get some kind of scholarship.

Panic
Panic time is here, although I have to admit that I've done pretty well on my assignments so far as the one due yesterday is gone, and the one due tomorrow is just about up to writing stage (the writing always seems to be the easiest part!) I've got next week off work which is a really good thing as it will give me the extra time that I desperately need to finish the essays that I have due. One has to be done by Wednesday next week, another by the Monday after that and then another that Wednesday. Then, shock horror, I have a nine day break until my final history essay is due. By then my history paper will be completetly finished and I'll only (ONLY!) have to worry about my three exams, the end of semester is looming close. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or not, at least it will give me the chance to work fulltime and hopefully save up some money so that I can pay off my debts.

It must be the time of year for big bosses to come to New Zealand and check on their stores. Yesterday Starbucks had some big people come in to 'check out' the store, and Nats was cleaning the place all day so that they got a good impression - and I heard today that the McDonald's big boss for Asia-Pacific is headed our way. He's been here before, this year in fact as I remember he came to Pt. Chev McDonald's which led to all the managers getting incredibly stressed out and scheduling millions of people to work for the day. I liked that, as we actually ran the store how is should be run for at least one day of the year - all the food was kept for the correct time and the service was outstanding (at least that's what I remember.) Interestingly enough he was actually a pretty cool guy, wearing a T shirt and shorts while all the other 'big people' had their suits and jackets on - and he actually talked to the staff which is always a good sign, normally people from head office think that they're way too good to talk to a lowly McDonald's crew person.

Snowed Under
All my assignments are about to converge on me at once, I can just feel the tension building although for some reason I don't seem to be able to get that much done because it's not quite panic time just yet. The problem is that next week really will be panic time, and to make next week easier I should be trying to get as much done this week as possible. Ugh! Well hopefully things will come along a bit better in the next couple of days, Monday is always a long day in which I have very little time to get anything done at all.

Hmmmm..... seems like the National Bank website is down at the moment, kind of crappy as I wanted to check if I had been paid or not, and now I'll have to go to a cash machine - how archaic... LOL! Today is going to be another pretty long day, although I must say that it's nothing compared to what Nats has lined up for the day, working from 6:30 am till about 10pm with only a couple of breaks to go from the city to New Lynn and back again - ouch!

Shakira paid Auckland a visit yesterday afternoon, I was working at the time so I couldn't go and meet her, but apparentely there were a lot of people there, luckily they all didn't want to come up to McDonald's and get dinner, although at one stage we were freaking out because there were about 400 people walking up Queen St. When you're already struggling because there are so many new people working at the moment, the last thing that you really want is to have a killer rush hit you at an unusual time. I guess the good side about there being a whole heap of new people working, is that at least we have those people rather than nothing at all before. I think that finally McDonald's realised that a person who has worked in the store for a couple of weeks is not the same as someone who has been around for a couple of years, and you need extra people to cover that shortage.

Essay Progress
I'm at university on a Sunday - again! I know it's becoming rather normal so I shouldn't be making much of a big deal about it, but it is still kind of frustrating as I don't really have a day off to just lie around and do nothing. Yesterday was a pretty long and tiring day as we had Kieran and Sarah, who were really good but are always a bit of a handfull, add into that about 4 hours of bus rides and I was pretty zonked out by last night. I watched Get Over It, and Crazy/Beautiful with Nats once we got home, of which I thought Get Over It was pretty crap but Crazy/Beautiful a really cool movie which has a really interesting story - I recommend it!

It's interesting looking at my favourite songs at the moment, as they are completely different to what I always thought my music taste was. Heavy rock songs like "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd, "Too Bad" by Nickleback and "I Wish You Were Here" by Incubus are hardly what I thought was my music taste - but somehow it's evolved with me over the past few months so they're actually pretty cool songs.

I've actually managed to make reasonably good progress with one of my essays, probably because it's about as close as I've ever got to doing an essay about what I really am interested in - namely city planning. It's an interesting idea, that some city forms can contribute greatly towards susatinability versus other city forms. Researchers agree this much, however when it gets down to deciding whether the "compact city" model achieves sustainability better than any other model, academics are typically divided. As per usual, it's a bit too complicated as it helps in some ways, but makes things worse in other ways so we're not quite sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Bloody typical human geographers, can never agree on anything.... LOL!

Busiest Month Ever Coming Up
A new month, and one that looks as though it's going to be about my busiest ever - with 5 essays due in the next month plus a lab assignment, things don't look like they're going to be that easy. But hopefully I'll be able to get through it all, and the bonus is that once I've done that, things should start to get a little bit easier although I do have exams coming up in the not-so-distant future.

I went to Newmarket this morning, because Nats is working at the Newmarket Starbucks today. It was really weird because I walked into the 277 foodcourt, because I was hungry and thought that there might be something good to eat there - anyway as I walk past the McDonald's there I see not one, not two, but three of my old managers working at the McDonald's there. As I said to one of them "I thought I might see someone I knew, and I just about know everyone working here!" Man I've worked at McDonald's far too long for my own good now, I seem to know just about everyone in the 'system'.

It's graduation week this week at the university, and it's kind of funny seeing all these people walking around in their robes and gowns - thinking 'hey - this time next year it'll be me doing this'. As I should pass all my courses (I've never really been that close to failing), this time next year I'll be presented with my degree and I'll be able to take the walk down Queen St. wearing a funny long black gown holding my degree.

A Time of Change
Back at university, I was here yesterday for a short amount of time because I had work so this is really my first chance to write in my news page, which was slightly ignored over the holidays. University seems as busy as ever, I have either two or three things due in the next week and a bit, I'm hoping that it's only two otherwise I am going to be royally screwed! Fortunately the geography essay is going to one of the more interesting things that I write about, because I am interested in finding out the answer to my question - "can cities be designed in a sustainable way?" True, it's not going to be that easy because we haven't studied it in class yet, but that's happened in the past and I've managed to get over it.

It seems as though a lot has changed in the last couple of weeks, you know how sometimes you go through a stage in your life that you know you're going to look back upon and say "wow.... that was a really important point in my life", but you can't really comprehend it at the time because you're living that moment. I guess that's some way of thinking about my life at the moment. I also think I have had these moments quite a few times in the last six months - November last year and the start of March this year also seemed to be important moments in my life. I guess this way of looking at things comes from my history education, where you are always searching for "key moments" that led to change, or whatever you happen to be studying.

20
I'm 20!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep it was my birthday yesterday so now I am no longer a teenager and, scarily enough, I'm into my 20s. Sheesh, that means that in 10 years time I am going to be 30 and seriously over the hill! LOL! But anyway, I'm now 20 and officially old - although funnily enough it doesn't really make much of a difference, although in the past year, since my 19th birthday, things have changed a great deal so it would be fair to say that my life is quite different to how it was a year ago, so things do change.

I also collected most of my stuff last night (all that we could carry!), so in some ways I've officially moved out of home, even though it has been a pretty gradual process over the past 6 months (much to my girlfriend's disgust).

I got the coolest discman for my birthday (thanks Nats, love you soooo much!) It's a really really thin black aluminium Sony one, and has a cool LCD remote so that you can change songs, and the volume while the discman is in your bag. It's also got cool rechargable batteries, unlike my old discman which tended to run out of battery power after about an hour. I also got a couple of CDs (Goodshirt and Chemical Brothers), a bathrobe, a cricket book and $260.

I've kind of ignored describing my favourite 20 songs this month, I started off with such enthusiasm, but oh well, let's jump straight to number one - I guess this song is in my mind at the moment because we watched City of Angels last night. As you all (hopefully) realise, I am talking about Iris, by the Goo Goo Dolls. I think that I first heard this song in Fahad's car sometime during 7th form as he had the soundtrack for City of Angels, I must admit at the time I thought it was the same song as Name, another really cool song by them which finds itself at number 4 on my alltime favourite songs. Anyway, the lyrics seemed to click with me, and my struggle to find out who I am really am (which continues..... maybe forever... I'm doomed!), as well as the music being really cool. I bought the CD once I realised that Name was a different song, and that the album had some other really cool songs, such as Slide and Black Balloon. I put the CD on program play (as I only liked about 5 songs) and listened to it continuously for a couple of days (I think I was studying for a geography test at the time). So it's a song that has kind of become part of me, and one that I just about know all the words to.

It's the last day of my holidays today, all one week of them! And horribly enough I havne't done any university study througout them, the one day that I really had a good chance to was Anzac Day and the bloody library was shut. Oh well, it's going to be pretty tough over the next six weeks with millions of essays due in, but once I get through that things should get better. I only have three papers next semester, for the first time since my first ever semester at university, plus one of those papers is a giant research project which should be quite interesting - even though research projects aren't usually my thing, it's the kind of assignment that I should get used to if I'm going to do a Masters.

Holidays
Well I've finished my essay - at last - and it's now holiday which is an awfully good feeling in some ways, although I know that I should be doing a lot more work than I've actually done in the past couple of days (anything is more than nothing!). But the good news is that I managed to finish my essay (on Monday morning!) and I don't think it was too bad, although I know that I could have done better if I had been able to give it a bit more time. But then again, I reckon I could always do better, but you just kind of have to live with the fact that there is just a limited amount of time in which to do things. It's not too bad I suppose!

I've been doing a bit more work at Maccas in the past couple of days (well I worked yesterday which I don't normally do), because it's the holidays. Once again I've found out why I really had issues with McDonald's last year, and it's risen again. They just seem to always have to understaff you, in attempts to maximise profit (oh an extra $9 an hour is going to make the world of difference!), McDonald's continuously fucks us over by not having enough people on the floor. If I ever had any plans about becoming a manager, the last week is really going to change my mind as it is the shift manager who is most stuffed when it comes to not having enough people. Strange that they never think about the number of customers that they might lose because the restaurant is dirty, because we have no-one to spare to do lobby, or because they all have to wait 4 minutes for every burger, or get burgers that are really old because the one way we can cook enough is to cook far too much, and then use the spare time we create to cook on another station. No matter how McDonald's management sees it, understaffing will always decrease the customer's experience and will probably prove to be the downfall of McDonald's eventually as people look elsewhere.

I've taken my tongue stud out, maybe permanently although I'm not sure (how quickly does it close up?) This is because it was irritating me quite a lot, as I had a really bad habit of playing with it sub-consciously. I wouldn't actually realise that I was playing with it, but the fact that I was annoyed me, as did the whole idea of having something in your mouth 24/7. And no matter what people tell you about getting used to it, you still always notice it in some way or another. My tongue just seems so tiny now!