Earlier today I changed my timetable for this semester (starting next week, until the end of June). I had classes that were from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, but because I’ll have trouble getting home that late, and because I’m not sure I can tolerate working nine hours a day and having class right afterwards. I was only able to change two of my classes, but that means I’ll be home about two hours earlier on a couple of days – which is still more relieving than coming home late at night only to go right to bed and drag myself up to go back to work and university in the morning.
Right now I’m yawning like a nutter, and I’m honestly at the point where I can barely keep my eyes open. I think it’s rather ironic that I’m listening to Open Your Eyes by Snow Patrol.
I need to sleep earlier. I’m actually looking forward to the weekend, getting all my books and things ready for university and organising myself for the last time. I’ve cleaned my room every week because over the course of the week, I just end up making a mess somewhere new in my room. I really ought to clean my desk. It could be worse, and I don’t think the mess really gets in the way, but I need a good atmosphere.
Yesterday it was O-day at my university. It’s usually a day where all the clubs set up stalls and try to get new students to join all the clubs and get social. I remember thinking it was rather cool when I was in first year [university] and ended up joining all these clubs. But over time I didn’t really like the way things were set out with most of the clubs – you had to work it with your timetable, and most of the time I really couldn’t be bothered commuting all the way to the city just for a meeting. I guess there wasn’t anything I was completely passionate about either. I wanted to join the music club, and I remember sitting in that room feeling rather left out because everyone else already knew each other and had been there for several years already.
Let’s just say I’m not really a social person. Ugh.
James told me that some guy at work was inviting everyone to play a game of soccer. A few months ago when I worked in a group for a project, our leader invited us all for a drink at the bar at university. I refused because I don’t drink. Sometimes the way people hang out and get together just isn’t my idea of catching up.
“Let’s see a movie!” – I hate watching movies. Have a coffee – no, that’s not really my kind of thing either. Neither is having a drink. My kind of crap is having a barbecue or a picnic or something really traditional. Or just sitting and chatting. Years ago, when I caught up with some friends, Dylan said, “Let’s not watch a movie. Come on, we haven’t seen each other in what – six months? Let’s have a chat.”
For other people, O-day is just a chance to grab all the showbags and freebies that you can. Of course, that’s usually why I go there now. All the stalls are set up, and people sit at them and hand out stickers, candy, chocolate, and encourage you to sign up. They hand out flyers, and sometimes they have free promotional pens too. That’s kind of the only reason I went. I just wanted some freebies.
I got a lot of chips and candy which I shared with the guys back at the workplace, and a ridiculous amount of this Uncle Ben’s Rice crap which my boss thought would be half poisonous. I might try it… if I forget my lunch or something. I left them in the shelf in the office.
Yes, new theme. I already said I was absolutely sick of the old one so I coded this HTML5 baby completely from scratch. I have learned so many new things at work with HTML5 and CSS3 – again, I felt like I had to “get with the times, man”. It reminds me of the time I was still using iframes in 2007 because it was so much easier to change layouts. Well, I was naive and young.
Many people have wanted to dabble in HTML5 and after learning about it, it’s not that hard to grasp. Then again, I can’t really do anything fancy, but I thought I’d take the step up.
One of my previous designs, Coffee and TV, was responsive enough that it looked the same in most resolutions, and the free WordPress themes I created are responsive as well. However, with this new theme I decided to take it one step further and not just make a responsive width. If you resize the window you’ll find that the sidebar content shrinks and eventually disappears. I still need to debug the mobile version because it has some kinks, but if you fish out your iPhone or Android you won’t get a sidebar at all and you can just read the blog.
With that said though, I think I’ve optimised the site for iPads so you should see it beautifully. Landscape version gives you the full layout; portrait will give you just the blog. I don’t have an iPad so I can’t test it.
But, I’m getting one soon. I actually bid on a number of iPads on eBay the other day, and since I’m 1) impatient and 2) a cheapskate, I bid on an iPad that did not only have a low starting bid, but had just over 24 hours to go. I was close to winning more than one but I’m glad that I won one of the items I bid on. It’s only the first generation iPad, but it’s just what I need. I can read on it, listen to music, watch some videos – making my daily commute a bit more enjoyable and less of a waste of time.
I don’t really care for weight or size (as long as the thing weighs less than my laptop, which it does), and I don’t need a camera on my iPad nor do I need to Skype or Facetime with people. I’m also not bothered getting the newest technology, so what gives.
The iPad should be arriving at my work office within two weeks… well, hopefully. I also got a red case for it (I mean come on; what other colour). I’m guessing the case will come first because it’s being shipped from somewhere closer. On Friday I went to Typo and even though there were soooooo many notebooks I wanted, I just gave up. My mum phoned me while I was browsing the shop and I figured it was time to walk back to work anyway, so I did. After all, I just blasted a few hundred bucks on an iPad.
I pulled this layout together really quickly, and there are probably many bugs in it, but I really was sick of the grey and wanted something similar to my portfolio layout. I also still need to get around to writing a full list of everything I’ve cleaned from my websites so I can see everything at a glance.
It’s been a busy week and an equally busy weekend. I had to wash my bedsheets and currently my bed is unmade. I have work tomorrow so I have to wake up early, but that doesn’t bother me. I’m thinking of taking my Vegemite to work and putting it in the fridge. LOL.
I probably shouldn’t make silly excuses since I had enough time to fork up this layout, but I haven’t responded to most of the comments I’ve received on previous posts. Thank you so much for dropping by though, I love you all.
PS. This layout is called Strawberry Custard, was originally Coral and Mustard – but take your pick.
I have this thing for paper notebooks. I just can’t get enough of them. I used to collect all kinds of notebooks, but I really liked collecting ones with cute designs. Over the course of many years I’d use these notebooks for various purposes – mostly for keeping a daily diary. I stopped keeping a diary in around 2007. That year I blogged a lot more often and going digital was the course my writing took. I know that typing is never going to be the same as putting pen to paper, but I still like keeping a log of events and happenings in my blog.
Because I didn’t use notebooks as much for my diaries, a lot of them ended up being unused. During high school we were given a school diary and I opted to use it to keep me organised, and also because it had important dates printed. I have, however, long hated diaries with dates printed.
Many times I’ve received dated diaries as gifts, but to be honest I have not really liked them very much. I find them to be very restricting; you can only use it for one particular year because the dates will be wrong, or you don’t have a lot of space to write… This happened when I still kept a diary but I used it anyway, just for the lines and the writing space. I completely ignored the dates and print. It was still very annoying.
I have many notebooks lying around now but because I have so many, it’s going to take me some time to get through them. I bought three new notebooks late last year and started using one. I use it for everything – writing poems, making to-do lists, doodling, reminders – and no doubt I’ll start using it by the time university starts again. In early university I started using exercise books, just blank ones you buy from the stationery store, but I found them dull. Later on I wanted to use all my pretty notebooks to take notes.
My problem is that some of these notebooks are just too cute to use. I have this problem all the time with cute stationery. Be it pens, pencils, paperclips, post-it notes – I can’t bring myself to use them because of the impeccable cuteness. When I bought these three new notebooks last year I promised I would use them. I had to use them. I now have to use them and I’m using one. And I’m going to keep at it, too. This time I hope to use a different notebook for each subject when I go to university so I don’t get confused. It’ll hopefully keep me organised and let me use up my notebooks.
Of course, I have to have a handy dandy notebook at hand. Wait, does anyone remember that show? Blues Clues! It’s been a while. I loved that show to pieces, even though people made up some weird stuff about the Steve guy on there. Actually, speaking of Blues Clues and Handy Dandy Notebooks, I loved that show so much that I went out and bought a notebook just like the one on the show. Anyway, what I meant by a handy notebook is one that I’ll have for bits and bobs and other notes that don’t really go anywhere else – and one that I carry around daily so I can write down anything if I need to. The one I’m using now is a spiral notebook with a red cover and unlined pages.
It was obviously no surprise that I was drawn to the sale at Typo yesterday. I was browsing the shops with James and I thought maybe it would be worth a look since I’ve never actually looked in a Typo store before.
Why did no one tell me about this earlier? This shop is like my heaven. It’s full of stationery, typography-inspired room decorations, and, of course, fitting under the stationery category – notebooks. They had a sale, three for ten dollars. I know there are other stores with cute notebooks that sell three for five dollars or three for eight dollars, but something just completely drew me to these amazing notebooks. Typo has notebooks with humourous covers, as well as gorgeous styles and sizes big and small, thick and thin. I was surprised I managed to walk out of there without my wallet losing weight, but I think I’m going to be going there tomorrow…
I got outbid on a lot of iPads on eBay, but not before they hit $500 or more. I’m not really keen on buying any second-hand iPad for much more than $300, and even then, I am a bit of a cheapskate. there are many auctions I am watching, but two of them finish tomorrow morning. I hope that I can win one of them, and of course still be willing to pay whatever price the auction hits.
It’s funny how you say you win an auction but you’re not really winning anything when you’re paying for it.
Last week I was drying my hair with the hairdryer our family has owned for many years. Supposedly due to the heat, the unit decided to explode. It only exploded on the inside, so there was a bit of fire, a lot of sparks, and some remnants of the unit made their way down the sink. I wasn’t injured but my mum decided to look for a new hairdryer. Since it’s been a decade or so since we got this hairdryer, it was surprising to find that these days we’re apparently going to have to fork out some $100 for a good hairdryer. I don’t dry my hair a lot – most of the time I let it dry naturally, but because I hated the poofiness that resulted from this old hairdryer, I sometimes used the hair curler instead. Now I like killing two birds with one stone. Curly hair and dry hair… fantastic.
My mum isn’t a fan of buying online, even though it’s cheap, shipping is free, and it’s generally quite safe. I keep telling her that the shock stories she hears about using credit cards online and getting money stolen is often reported on television as a result of people’s lack of common sense, or just the media trying to make you crap your pants. The media is ridiculous in the way it tantalises minor issues in society in order to gain more viewers and hence higher ratings. What’s this I hear about sashimi making people lose their legs? … come on. I got salmonella in a country where hygiene is terrible and health conditions are below average (not joking – and it was horrible). That’s not hard to believe, but in a relatively rich country where raw fish is stored at very cold temperatures giving them a certain appearance and flavour – I highly doubt that you would get some life-threatening disease like gangrene from eating sushi that isn’t cold enough. Ugh, moving on.
After contacting the eBay seller to retract my bids, I received no reply until two days later, upon which the seller threatened to open a case against me. After that they said that they had already sold the item to someone else… but still demanded payment. Now I got myself into this mess and I used James’s account and felt like a complete fool, but he was nonetheless willing to help. He contacted eBay and they dealt with the situation, though we were not given any information about what they did to the seller. The seller still opened a case saying I was a non paying bidder. It’s funny that the warning is that I “may not receive the item” if I don’t pay… yeah well, even if I do, I won’t get it because the idiot seller sold it to someone else. Ooooh, that hurts so bad.
The reply James received from eBay was promising though, and assured us that appropriate action would be taken and the issue would be resolved. The representative reassured us that it would be okay and even apologised for the late reply. Meanwhile, since I was outbid on a number of iPads, I chose one (just one, hahaha) and went for it. This time I made sure I read through the listing and was okay with it. Right, so I’m not desperate for an iPad but one would be useful for my eBooks, more of my music, and for web testing.
I’m getting bored of this layout; I feel like the colours and fonts are dull and it’s time for something new. Working on a number of websites at work has made me keener to dabble in HTML5 and CSS3. I should be thinking simpler; that’s just what I had in mind when I designed my free themes and they turned out wonderful. I feel like I put too much effort into things sometimes, that if I stop poking around and look at the bigger picture, it would make things a lot easier.
Today James took me to a Japanese restaurant for lunch to celebrate Valentine’s day. There were some heart-shaped decorations hanging from the ceiling but I was most amazed by the avocado, tuna and roe sushi that were shaped like flowers. I’ll be posting some photos to my photoblog. Valentine’s Day is a special day for some, and a day of whining about being single for others. Please, stop. It’s a holiday that was originally meant to celebrate romantic love but for crying out loud, it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have a partner you have to feel like you’re drowning in rose petals. It’s rather pathetic; I think that people should be able to treat it like just another day if they’re in that predicament. Some people don’t celebrate Christmas but they don’t complain about not being Christian. I don’t complain that I get nothing on Mother’s Day… because I’m not a mother, duh.
I’ve got to be up early tomorrow to go to work again, so it’s time to sleep as early as possible. Catch you in Dreamland! I’ll be playing my guitar under the tree with pink leaves.
The other day, Thursday… was my last day at the education centre. I gave my boss one of those mugs I got for my mum. She was pretty touched, haha. I know she doesn’t really like chocolate because she’s always trying to lose weight. She thanked me for all my work and told me to keep in touch and email her and tell her all the gossip. She said, “tell me when you get married and have children and everything”. Haha, I will… but that isn’t happening for a while, I can say.
I miss it. Just a little. It was my first ever job, and it was hard to let go of… but towards the end of it, I guess I knew it was time to move on and focus on my job in the city, and I knew that this didn’t fit with my schedule so well.
I told some of the children it was my last day. I guess I’ll never know if they’ll miss me, though others have been saying that they will. Sometimes they don’t know what to say. It’s not like I hope to be remembered or anything. I just sort of wonder how they’ll do. I think I was pretty approachable to them over the four years I was there, and the newer students got used to me being the only one there for English. Now that I’ve been replaced by Andy, I hope he does a good job. Of course, he’s hell new, but he’s been doing really well. The kids might take a while getting used to someone new, but then again they’re kids… kids tend to love anyone, really. I will remember a lot of the kids there especially watching them grow up and seeing them progress. Some have done so, so well. Others not so well. But some I will remember for their politeness and smiles. Others I’d rather forget because they annoyed me. It wasn’t a job entirely for me, but I didn’t mind it that much.
So I’ve passed on the torch.
I think it was rather idiotic of me to bid on so many iPods on eBay. I changed my mind and decided I didn’t really want or need one at the moment, but I had bid on about 20 iPods. I ended up winning one of them shortly after I realised it was actually faulty. The status was set as “Used”, which didn’t bother me too much, and I was sucked in by numerous “GREAT DEAL”s and “GOOD CONDITION!” Except, unknowingly, this damn “good” condition was the physical state of the iPod, whereas the touch screen functionality did not actually work. I’m probably going to be criticised, and I totally agree that it was my fault. Soon after I realised my fault, I realised there were at least ten hours left until the auction ended so I immediately contacted the seller saying I had changed my mind.
Worst case scenario: I get ignored, I don’t pay, I lose a couple of points for bad rep. It’s just eBay. I’m cool with that, and if someone can’t accept that I am simply human and changed my mind, then that’s just one less person to really care about. I guess it goes to show I’m still a bit indecisive and impulsive. I thought it had changed, but I guess not. Looks like old habits creep back up on me. I’ve started sleeping late again, which is really nasty considering I have to get up early to go to work. This leaves me a bit drained on the weekend. I’ve become lazy again and I just arrive home and surf the internet. It’s relaxing, sure, but there are some things that need to be taken care of. I need to clean my room; my desk is a mess again. I cleaned it up for my new computer but now it needs a clean again.
I’m getting annoyed at the cluttered arrangement of my photos on my wall (photos of me and my friends) and I want to reduce the number or arrange them nicely. I need to throw more stuff out from my bookshelves. There are some things I want to get caught up on before university starts, like watching Futurama and Sherlock and just… other things. I haven’t watched any of my YouTube subscriptions in three or four months and I’m missing my weekly dose of comedy. I’m also behind on reading my favourite blogs and seeing how my blog buddies are going.
Again I’m trying to make my train rides more useful with books or planning or listening to new music. Travel time is the absolute best time to listen to new albums you just bought. I have been listening to Foster The People and Ball Park Music lately, and I guess I would describe their music as very alternative and unique. I’m seeing Ball Park Music at the end of March; yesterday I just had to buy tickets to their show. I think I’ll love their music live.
Things are going great, though. I often can’t wait until the weekend for pick-me-ups. I get a bit disorganised every now and then, but I always look forward to when I can unwind and pick things up where I left off. So it’s 12:14am… and I’m going to brush my teeth and head off to bed.
I just wanted some freebies. 
I might try it… if I forget my lunch or something. I left them in the shelf in the office.
I have work tomorrow so I have to wake up early, but that doesn’t bother me. I’m thinking of taking my Vegemite to work and putting it in the fridge. LOL. 
Anyway, what I meant by a handy notebook is one that I’ll have for bits and bobs and other notes that don’t really go anywhere else – and one that I carry around daily so I can write down anything if I need to. The one I’m using now is a spiral notebook with a red cover and unlined pages. 
This shop is like my heaven. It’s full of stationery, typography-inspired room decorations, and, of course, fitting under the stationery category – notebooks. They had a sale, three for ten dollars. I know there are other stores with cute notebooks that sell three for five dollars or three for eight dollars, but something just completely drew me to these amazing notebooks. Typo has notebooks with humourous covers, as well as gorgeous styles and sizes big and small, thick and thin. I was surprised I managed to walk out of there without my wallet losing weight, but I think I’m going to be going there tomorrow… 
I’ll be posting some photos to my 
Sometimes they don’t know what to say. It’s not like I hope to be remembered or anything. I just sort of wonder how they’ll do. I think I was pretty approachable to them over the four years I was there, and the newer students got used to me being the only one there for English. Now that I’ve been replaced by Andy, I hope he does a good job. Of course, he’s hell new, but he’s been doing really well. The kids might take a while getting used to someone new, but then again they’re kids… kids tend to love anyone, really. I will remember a lot of the kids there especially watching them grow up and seeing them progress. Some have done so, so well. Others not so well. But some I will remember for their politeness and smiles. Others I’d rather forget because they annoyed me. It wasn’t a job entirely for me, but I didn’t mind it that much. 
So it’s 12:14am… and I’m going to brush my teeth and head off to bed.