Two weeks of university have come and gone. I don’t quite know what to think. At this rate, I’ll be alright. Heck, I’ll always be alright, who am I kidding. I’m not behind yet; I’m going to spend the next few days working on my proposal and working ahead. I already took a peek at next week’s stuff for one of my subjects. It’s looking good so far.
And work? Work is fantastic. I get irritated every now and then when I’m working on something that does my head in – which isn’t all the time. And I still haven’t finished my jigsaw puzzle, which is sitting in the kitchen at work. Work is like my second home now. In the mornings, I find that sometimes I skip breakfast because I’m in a rush. The other day I drank soup at my desk. Luckily, it was beautifully raining, so it was very fitting. Beautifully raining and I chose to wear a different, real leather pair of boots too. Because of that, the rain didn’t soak all the way through my boots and to my socks. I was a happy girl that day.
It’s not often I wear jeans and ankle-high heeled boots. Okay, so I hate jeans, but it was a very cold and rainy day, and somehow I think it is better to deal with rain in jeans or pants than in a skirt/dress and pantyhose/stockings.
Thursdays are getting dull for me now. Class from 6:00 until 9:00 in the evenings. I finish early sometimes, but still around 8:30. I get home around 10:00. My dad has to pick me up from the train station because it’s late and there aren’t any buses that can take me home from there. He ends up being late for work. (He works night shift.) I think that maybe I could finish up class earlier, it’s no big deal, but after July, I can’t do that anymore because pretty much all my classes finish very late.
I thought of this crazy idea to go back to work and sleep in the office because there’s a sofa and a kitchen and enough for me to just sleep on and then get up in the morning. It’s a crazy idea. I just don’t like the idea of arriving back home at 10:00 only to shower and sleep, and wake up at 6:00 just to eat, brush my teeth, and go back to where I came home from. It’s like I’m just going home to sleep, plus the ridiculous total of three hours of travelling. Yuck.
I sure like my mornings, and I don’t mind my commutes, but I don’t like my commutes. I’ve gotten addicted to Jewels Maze on my phone again. I’m trying to get three stars on every level I’ve unlocked. Just trying to do the best I can, of course.
Every Friday James and I just have this thing – we play Friday Come Five by Bob Evans in the car while he drives me home. The lyrics are fitting.
On Friday come five, it is the weekend
Well, for me it’s really six o’clock and not five o’clock, and James finishes up maybe around 5:30, but it’s still a great song to welcome in the weekend. Better than Rebecca Black’s song, too.
I’m rather tired now, I think I ought to go to sleep. I slept early quite a few nights in the week, but towards the end of the week I started sleeping later again. I’m getting very tired. I just watched a video lecture for class and I want to watch another one but I’m yawning madly. Am I turning into a workaholic? I spent most of today cleaning my room and throwing out a lot of stuff just to clear up space on my desk and in my shelves. I think I did a pretty good job. I found a lot of old notes and things that I know I won’t look at again, so they went in the trash.
Pressed by my friend Sashin, I watched KONY 2012, a short film and campaign to get Joseph Kony arrested before the end of 2012. By virally spreading information about his crimes of humanity, hopefully there will be enough support from the American Government for ambassadors to visit Uganda to assist the Ugandan military in the capture and arrest of Kony. As leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Kony and his army have abducted and forced thousands of children to fight for them. Kony must simply be stopped. Spreading the word about this is the least you can do, but it’s something small as well. Educate yourself on the situation. No one should have to experience what Kony has done to others. Watch the video, pass on the message.
I’ve got bruises on my left arm from the Grates’ concert last Friday. I also have a strange bruise on my right hand – I think I might have accidentally banged the door or something, but it’s an uncomfortable spot to have a bruise. I’m pretty pale skinned so it looks odd.
The jigsaw puzzle has been driving me insane. I kept getting distracted by it at work. I don’t think it was the best idea to have it at work, but I don’t have much space at home, and when I opened the box at work, it was like the be-all-end-all… that was where the damn thing was staying. The thing is, with me being distracted by it at work, there was no way it was going to stay on my desk forever. It was already taking up half my desk. Even though I had enough space to put my bag, and the keyboard still had enough room, the fact that a half-finished jigsaw puzzle and its pieces and box were right next to me were just excruciatingly painful for my ticking brain. I would constantly look out of the corner of my eye while typing code on the computer, and then spot a loose piece and the place it was supposed to go.
It was very distracting.
Lilian reckons I can code in my sleep, but I think I can only go so far as to do it with my eyes shut.
I had this conversation yesterday with my boss…
“Georgina…”
“Yes…”
“Have you finished?”
“No.”
“Are you stuck?”
“No…”
“…”
“I’m sorry, I’m just so distracted by this puzzle!”
Yesterday in class I was on the 27th floor again, with beautiful sunset views. The weather was lovely that day. Most of the class was the tutor going through HTML, text editors and the like. All stuff I was very familiar with. I really wanted to turn around and face my computer but I didn’t want to be rude. I joined in the discussion anyway, and chipped in a bit when it came to webhost suggestions and text editor suggestions. I apparently came up with the best suggestion in the class, that is, Surpass Hosting.
I finished the tutorial exercises in five, ten minutes… too easy for me. Really too easy. I aim to give myself a challenge with the proposal we have to submit. That’s what I like about subjects like these – you learn, but you have the opportunity to push yourself as well. It’s really for your own benefit though. I know some people suggested to me “make a website” as a proposal, and James even suggested I propose something I already created, and just not tell anyone until later. That would be a splendid idea, but as flexible as this subject is, I really do want to try and learn something new while teaching staff are around to help me and while I’m paying for this education, haha.
After class a boy named Yu came up to me and asked if I was Georgina; he said that he really liked my blog and its layout and found my tutorials useful. I was so thrilled. I didn’t quite know what to say but thanks; not many people have ever said that to me in person.
This morning I came to work about an hour early just so I could work on the puzzle before my shift started. My boss helped me move the puzzle to the kitchen… dun dun dun… and Georgie was no longer distracted. Dylan, who works in the office too, joked, “How much are you paying her to do this per hour?”
I am probably about a quarter of the way through.
I slept at 10:00pm last night. I’m going to sleep at around that time every day now, or where possible. I find myself tired when I get home late these days, but I guess that’s the nature of full time work and full time study.
Last Friday I passed Basement Books, which is a bookstore that is partially underground. You pass it on the way to the train station, so it’s in a rather busy place. It’s a busy place itself though – people like to go there and see what books are on sale (everything!) as well as the stationery and other things.
I was a bit early to class that Friday morning so I took some time to browse the store. I saw a sign that read, “When was the last time you did it?”
In small print underneath, it said, “A jigsaw puzzle, that is.”
This caught my eye, particularly because finishing a jigsaw puzzle is one of the things on my 101 in 1001 list. I wasn’t that specific in my goal, but I usually do try to give myself a challenge. I noticed that these puzzles all had a thousand pieces and there were many different pictures. I couldn’t decide, and I realised I would be late for class if I didn’t hurry up. I wasn’t all that sure if I wanted a puzzle either, but the $4.95 price tag was tempting. I thought about it as I walked up the escalator.
I messaged James later and asked him to please get me a box. I’m glad I asked him, because I knew he’d make a good choice. I would have stood around trying to pick the prettiest picture. James chose one that was not only pretty (a garden with lots of colourful flowers) but also difficult. Because of all the greens in the garden, it would make it a difficult puzzle. James told me that the girl at the checkout said, “The greens will make your head spin.”
Funnily enough, when I lugged it to work after class later that morning, my boss said, “Hmm. This is going to be hard because of all the green.” I already spent time during my break at work to do some of the puzzle, and I got a whole pink blob of flowers put together in the puzzle.
I didn’t take the puzzle home since I was going to the Grates’ show that evening, and I thought that since I already started the puzzle I should finish it at work. Today I worked on it some more, but it was so hard to stop myself and draw myself away from it. I must have spent an hour picking through the pieces and putting it together. I can’t stop thinking about it. I have a large corner done, and nearly the whole bottom edge. My boss said I was going to run out of room soon.
I’ll have to move some of my stuff off my desk. I’ve never been so attached to a jigsaw puzzle. Come to think of it, I wasn’t really a fan of jigsaw puzzles when I was younger. I don’t think I’ve done one for at least ten years. Every time I saw a jigsaw puzzle at a yard/garage sale or at the discount store, I cringed. They were almost like my worst nightmare – something time consuming, uninteresting, and plain horrifying. Now I’m enjoying this one puzzle I have.
I’ve never done a puzzle that big. A thousand pieces seemed insane to me when I was in high school. I never imagined I’d ever be interested in jigsaw puzzles. I’m aiming to finish the puzzle by the end of next week, working on it only when I’m at work.
A week of intense work and university has passed. Four evenings and nights of classes, and work from the morning until the afternoon. It has left me very busy, but I’m not stressed out. I just have less time for hobbies, and I spent nearly the whole weekend studying and doing homework. Thirteen weeks to go, then first semester ends. It can’t be too bad. I can totally do this. Two of my subjects are pretty similar and some topics sort of overlap, so that’s a good thing.
My third subject is Enterprise Computing, which sounds dull and technical as hell, but I hope I can get my head around it all and memorise everything. My fourth subject this semester is Interactive Arts, which is project-based, so it won’t be too bad. I guess I have a good weighting of all my subjects. I am a bit worried about next semester because I think the subjects I’m taking have a greater workload, but that’s all to worry about then.
Fun fact of the day: This morning I found that the opening chord of the song Down by Anberlin is uncannily similar to (if not the same as) the one in Disarm by The Smashing Pumpkins. They’re two amazing songs, by two amazing bands. Two completely different songs, and I guarantee you’ll like at least one of them.
Yesterday James and I celebrated our four-year anniversary with dinner at a lovely restaurant called 168 degrees. It was a mix of Asian and European, or “Asian Fusion”. James found the Eatability.com.au entry and suggested we try it. I had looked endlessly for nice Japanese restaurants and ridiculously fancy places to eat out, but you know what they say about looking too far into something, so much so that you completely miss what’s staring you in the face. I suppose that happened with me on a seemingly endless search for a good place to eat.
James made a perfect choice. He made a booking on the website even though he was in a bit of doubt about whether it was really a booking service. He got a confirmation email and after looking at it I thought it was pretty legitimate. He picked me up at 5:00 yesterday evening just as my dad came back from picking my mum up from work.
I was pretty confident with directions so I practically insisted James turn off the GPS. I had been around the area as I have family friends who live in the suburbs surrounding the restaurant. We got stuck at a little detour because the road had changed since I’d last been there. Oops. We managed to get out alright, though.
We had a table reserved for us at the restaurant and James was pretty surprised that the booking worked. I wasn’t that surprised! The staff were very friendly and welcoming and they made us feel at home. They weren’t snobby or overly formal, which I really liked. (One of the staff reminded me of James’s mum, but I haven’t told him that. Hahahaha.)
We decided to order an entree and a main meal each. We got these spring roll/crepe hybrids (as James called them on his blog with Angus beef. It was delicious. James got a slightly different one which I think had zucchini and more vegetables. It wasn’t as tasty as mine but it was good.
James was again a bit skeptical about the “whole crispy chicken” he ordered. He doubted it was whole, but when it arrived, it was indeed a whole chicken. It was enormous. I chose grilled salmon. Usually when I have a choice, I go for the salmon. It’s just so hard to resist. I am so used to eating raw salmon in sushi, so when the waitress asked how I wanted my salmon I just said “well done”. I know, I should have been a man and grunted, “medium rare”, but I guess I need a change from the raw fish.
After filling ourselves up with our delicious mains, we shared green tea ice cream. It was a really lovely date. Since that was also a new restaurant I went to, I successfully crossed something off my 101 in 1001 list, that being to go to ten new restaurants.
We picked up my brother from taekwondo later on. While we were waiting for him, we walked around the nearly-empty shopping centre feeling rather full and content. Since I’ve only ever done it once in my life before, we held hands and walked up the wrong escalator together. It was kind of fun just walking step by step up even though we were slowed down by the escalator moving back down. Hahaha. I heard someone applaud us but after we turned around, confused, there was a man from a distance (possibly a security guard) gesturing at us to stop. He must have felt like a god or something… I don’t know what he got out of telling off a boy and a girl walking up the wrong escalator in the middle of the night when there was practically no one else around. Loser.
Last week at work there was a server error, and later we discovered that the backups had failed, and not only that, but the server had its problems and everything was lost. The last backup was from September, meaning that pretty much everything I had been familiar with since I started this job was gone. We didn’t really have to start from scratch to restore everything though, since we had stylesheets and a lot of images – but the databases and most of the content was gone. My boss has thankfully come up with backup plans for backing up! I learned my own lesson many years ago when my freeserver deleted everyone without notice… backups are so important.
I have one more day of my education centre job, as I decided to end this week instead of next week – I kind of wonder if the kids are gonna miss me, but hey.
Last week, it rained to the point where I had water fill up my favourite shoes. I suppose they’re not my favourite shoes – I’m not a hundred percent sure they are my favourite. But these shoes are flat (not completely flat, but with a small, tolerable heel), a bit glossy, with a ribbed pattern, and they’re black, and are cute, fashionable, and formal. You can dress them up or down and they’re just so comfortable. In the photo below, from Easy Steps, my pair of shoes is the third pair from the front.
You can see how cute they are! I have to say they are my favourite shoes in terms of versatility. I find versatility in clothing and accessories to be pretty important. I don’t like changing things every day to suit my mood, so it’s nice to have some staple pieces that aren’t just staple pieces, but ones that you can wear comfortably almost any time.
I was disappointed when it rained last week and my shoes got soaked all the way through. I wasn’t wearing tights or stockings because it had been very hot, so I was bare-legged. Despite having an umbrella (which was lent to me by my boss because I didn’t bring one as I didn’t see the rain coming at all – it only started raining around 5:00pm), the rain hit my knees and my legs and just aimed for my shoes.
I got The Squelch. It’s just about the worst feeling you can get when you walk in the rain. You can feel the water wetting your toes or your socks, slowly, as you’re walking through the rain. Be it slow or fast… that feeling is just terrible.
Anyway, I was walking, with this Squelch, and I saw all these other people wearing high heels and other people wearing boots with their shoelaces just dragging behind on the wet pavement. It was raining so heavily that you could hardly see in front of you and there were puddles everywhere. You were probably pretty lucky if a car didn’t half-drench you by driving in a puddle. I saw some people with umbrellas who still looked relatively dry, and I was guessing they either got lucky or only just stepped outside. Hmm.
Yesterday I’m not sure what the weather was thinking but it was so hot. It is supposed to be summer where I live, but lately we’ve just been receiving a lot of rain, so I guess you could say that it was what we had been expecting since December. Today, it seemed to cool down as it was exceptionally windy in the morning, but as soon as I stepped outside after noon, to go to work, it was so hot I perspired straight away.
At work I had to train a new guy working there. He’s in the same grade as my brother, used to do the education program when he was younger so was pretty familiar with how things worked. He made a few mistakes which I had to point out. He was also a bit slow. However, being slow is usually experienced with most new workers, as it does take some time to get used to the marking system. That said though, he did a great job for his first day, and he picked up the workings of the centre pretty quickly and didn’t hesitate or get distracted. I have to say I’m actually pretty proud of him! I remember training a girl before who kept chatting to me and kept asking questions, and she also kept watching around her and not really paying attention.
The boy is coming on Thursday as well where I hope he continues to work at a steady pace. He was a very fast learner, I must say. I will be stopping work there soon… so I really hope he is a good replacement. Fingers crossed.
I bought some ball stud earrings on eBay a couple of weeks ago and I was excited to get them but when I received them in the mail today, I was less than pleased. They were just wrapped once in paper and put in a standard envelope; no padding or box or anything. I noticed that while the seller had 98% positive feedback, they did have at least 20 different buyers give negative feedback. My earrings were a bit bent at the posts, which I could fix by bending them back… but the balls were meant to be a shade of silver and they were already rather discoloured. Giving them a rub sort of helped even out the colour. I still sent a message asking for a refund.
The weather forecast says it’ll rain tomorrow. Surprise, surprise. I might bring a change of shoes. Just in case.
Edit: I’m still sick. -___- I have a terrible cold now.
I spent most of today cleaning my room and throwing out a lot of stuff just to clear up space on my desk and in my shelves. I think I did a pretty good job. I found a lot of old notes and things that I know I won’t look at again, so they went in the trash. 
I apparently came up with the best suggestion in the class, that is, 
Dylan, who works in the office too, joked, “How much are you paying her to do this per hour?” 
I noticed that these puzzles all had a thousand pieces and there were many different pictures. I couldn’t decide, and I realised I would be late for class if I didn’t hurry up. I wasn’t all that sure if I wanted a puzzle either, but the $4.95 price tag was tempting. I thought about it as I walked up the escalator. 
Hahahaha.) 
I am so used to eating raw salmon in sushi, so when the waitress asked how I wanted my salmon I just said “well done”. I know, I should have been a man and grunted, “medium rare”, but I guess I need a change from the raw fish. 
Since that was also a new restaurant I went to, I successfully crossed something off my 
My boss has thankfully come up with backup plans for backing up! I learned my own lesson many years ago when my freeserver deleted everyone without notice… backups are so important.