Sore eyes are pain

My eyes are in greatly pain so much so that ice mask are needed. It is the side effect of sitting in front of the computer for hours. I had such kind of suffering last year as I had to write a presentation for a product pitch. Not so much fun in the advertising/marketing field absolutely different from most people think it was. I still will get my hands dirty in the field, but might considered a career change after my mind-20s.

For the first time, I watched a Singaporean movie –“Chicken Rice War”- with my ex-neighbour Hann. The DVD was taken from my office desk; it was supposed to be an Asian culture studied material for Year 11 kids. The storyline is not that fascinating and it has employed some Hong Kong cinema narrative tactics, which I don’t really like. Actually, there are not many films can pass my favourite judging hurdle. With cute Singlish, the two main actors fell in love in a sudden. I don’t know if that is a true Singapore youth reflection, whereas it seems too fake to me and I give it an emotional rejection. One interested thing I found was the Honker centre. This place has attracted me a lot yet in the film it was totally different to my imagination. In the film it is like Hong Kong 大排档, filthy and cheap. Hmm…Singapore will be a fascinating place to me.

Melbourne city is boiling up day by day. Heat wave chokes me consistently and also causes allergy spot on me every night. I start taking those anti-virus pills although I know they are no good.

Never say a female is fat, no matter how close you are and you are just telling the truth. Monday night I told my manager she was a bit fat. In the subsequent night she kept calling me “skeleton”. Swear not to tell such a sensitive truth to a female. NEVER!!

Ready to go

Everything has settled down in Melbourne. I am just waiting for Friday to fly away. The restaurant people farewelled me by saying that: “Don’t get sunburn”, “Don’t get too drunk”, “Come back safely…and work for us.” The first two tips may have larger chance to happen. Late November is always the time for VCE young kids to celebrate schoolies in Gold Coast. I am too old to be part of them; yet we are all young and wild young ladies that love clubbing and dancing that not to enjoy “days of being wild” is impossible. I, in particular, who has been trapped in Melbourne and behaved as a good girl for a year, will have a brand new self-image in the sunshine city.

Working

Internship

Life has not yet slowed down because of school holiday. I was scolded by big C in her email as: “Are you crazy woman?”, for I told her that I worked for Uni from 10am to 5pm in the day time, then worked from 6pm to 12 midnight for money soon after I settle down everything. My holiday of the year is merely being away for sunshine for a week’s time. Have been tracked by assorted things throughout the year, I stayed in Melbourne for 10 months already. It is time to get away from it and enjoy the sunshine in Australia’s sunshine state.

Not long before my exam period, I was contacted by Sydney Myer Asian Centre for offering me an internship in the summer break. It is definitely a surprise to me, for I was ignored since my initial contact with them in the mid-year. It is just a junior position of a marketing campaign. The best of all is I have the absolute control over the whole flow of the campaign under a nice supervisor with enough finical back up. On top of that, from my working desk I could obtain a nice view over my Uni campus. I am not going to work for that non-for profit organization as the lady in charge has been very rude to me. After receiving several times of no reply to my emails and invitations, I was worrying about how I could work with such a @#*. Fortunately enough, Asialink offers me the place.

Allergy

Some allergy problems happen to me since I move in the new place. I don’t know if the carpet is my cause to be blamed, red itchy red spots appear all over my skin every night. On top of that, I have freakish thirsty at night. The symptom is similar to having MSG added food. To make matter worse, my underlip is canker for no reasons.

The 2nd Australian was announced tonight. It is a 17-year-old Sydney girl called Casey (not Casey Chambers, my favourite western single singer who was introduced to me by my first bf). I am not an Idol fan at all. Because of my course, I have to know every big things that is happening in the screen. What can attract audience? How they like it? Besides all these media effects, the ads segment showed in the show break must be very creative and bit companies that could afford to buy the time slot.

For various personal reasons, I don’t think I will continue for Master after I graduate next year no matter how much I wish I could. If no trauma happens to me next year, I think I will move to Sydney and get a junior position. Then what will happen … depends on my faith.

A final turn out

I thought I could hold back my grumpy temper after so years of living alone. Yet in the last three days, I was fidgety with the internet network setting in my new home. Running around Melbourne city to buy a cable card under the capricious weather had already made me weary, the worse was I still could not fix the problem while I opened the computer case! On top of that, I had heaps of things to follow up after moving in. The broken window blind on top of my room had to be fixed; the messy downstairs living room needed to be tidied up; a rid up for my old place; plus a lot of other clean ups. Too bad to be a fussy immaculate lover, I would like everything be done as the way I want, if that is possible. Eventually, everything has been done perfectly well: the window is covered with a “curtain” I designed and sewed myself; the internet was kicked start for the fear of being cursed thousands time while I was asking my friend’s friend for help; after mine dragging and shaking the ground floor, the living room looks more pleased to eyes; paying a fortune to a cleaner, my old place got cleaner than we move in (~not fair~). Everything will have a final turn out, while I should start to control my irritated temper every time things do not come up as expected.

Loads of thanks to my forever-best friend Lina for listening and consoling to my unreasonable distress yelling. I nearly cried again while I was hanging up cloris-made curtain. Hands were sore and no hope for others to help me. Living faraway from home and family, the only reliable person is only myself. No one I can turn for infinity help.

Melbourne weather is getting hotter and hotter everyday. I had a nice afternoon tea in the most famous café on Lygon street with my ex-neighbour Hann, a Norwegian girl. Having coffee and enjoying sunshine on the city street will definitely be a Melbournian’s favour.

Hann was kind enough to lend me a bike to ride to our real estate agent for final inspection. Nevertheless, I have never ride a bike in Melbourne although I used to do it everyday when I was back in China. On top of that, Hann is so tall that I could not reach the fall while I was on her bike. The return was I fell on down in the middle of the road while I braked the bike unprepared. So embarrassed!

New home

Legs are sore, hands are red, bones are cracking; I finally settle down in my new place. Fitting two rooms stuff into one room is a challenge. I have got tones of stuff. I will never know I have stuffed up so many futilities in the past one and a half year until yesterday. On top of that, various cooking ingredients my ex-flatmates left me could chock up half of the kitchen space. Hopefully it would be my last move in Melbourne.

Running up and down several time under 35 degree yesterday, I am still in the recovered mood. My great expectance of this place is its broadband connection. Cheerfully plug the cable line into the iron machine…damn… it is not fit at all. I lagged along Elizabeth St. trying to find an adaptor. No hope. ~sigh~ I think I would not use MSN up until next week.

Horrified awake

I woke up with a shocked start. For no reasons, my heart was beating irregularly and fears rushing into my mind. Screening in my lifeless flat, I was trying to grab whatever I could. Many years passed by, the only thing I could always hold firmly was my rag bunny. Please, please don’t laugh at me. I am just a simple girl with no companions when I was young. My parents were ignorant of my feelings; no true friends were around; the only one would listen my crap was my beloved bunny.

My best colleague, Polly, is going to marry on this Saturday. Both of her husband and her quitted their job to prepare for their once a life time romantic “Pirate Wedding”. It is a pity that I can not make it her bridemate as I promised to at the beginning of this year. What I can do is to send in my love and blessing to them.

End of Macro exam

Dragging myself out of the economic exam, my brain was drained. I did not perform well in the exam as usual. It was not a hard paper, but I only did half of the short answer questions – the definition of “half” is different from the others as I only answered the question half! I understood what the question was asking me about, yet I could not clarify the point half way through my answers. Economic is all about logic, I have the will but I don’t have the talent to do well. No matter what, I still have about four economic subjects before I finish my degree.

The essence of Christmas can be smelt everywhere in Melbourne. The Christmas tree in the city centre is going to be light on Friday night; street light bunting stands along side city main street; Christmas decorations start selling in retail shops. It is going to be my seconde Christmas in the South atmosphere.

The weather is becoming better and better. I would like to take a walk down the whole Drummond St. one day to taste the rare warmth touch from Melbourne. Only at this time of the year, Melbourne is deserved to the title as “the most liveable city in the world”.

The end of semester

After the two-week swot-vac, my psychology state is still tightened. Three 3000-word essays which I have put a lot of hard-work on them, plus a mess macro exam, my 2nd year of university education ends. Year-by-year, new knowledge, new friends, new life and new expectations are flowing in and washing out.

Coincident with the end of my school year is the end of my tenant-stay on the peaceful Drummond St. On Wednesday, I will be living in the city and have to bear the noise from the human civilization. And now, I have to drag out those card-boxes underneath my bed and start packing. My three-week bachelorette life left my two-bedroom flat as mess as it can be. Living alone is not a bad experience, except it would only make me lazier.

I wish I am a simple-minded girl; I wish have no big ambitious; I wish family does not take up most weight in my life perspective; I wish I am not that sensible; then life will be easier and simpler for me.

Days of being housegirl

I have been busy the whole morning arranging the moving out matters. Three telephone companies, two energy supply companies, two banks, several school departments, one cleaning services were harassed by me early in the morning. That is not all, I still have the real estate agent and other relevant group of people to call.

There are also tones of house works to do. I feel like being a housewife in the last two days. Now I understand how come housewives, especially those have kids, are always busy. It takes the whole morning to do laundry, then cook lunch. In the afternoon is doing the washing and clean up the house. Followed by an hour or so afternoon tea with a bit of relaxed mood of reading. About 4ish, kids are back home, the poor women have to settle them down and cook dinner for the whole family. The dark soon comes; another day again.

Melbourne weather is mysterious. Yesterday everywhere could smell the summer essence, while today hail drops heavily like hell. Where is the sunshine? Where is the smell from the grass root? Ai…Melbourne………

The local communities make me Irritated for getting rid of my “big” fridge. I want to donate it to Salvation Army or some community organizations. None of these organizations would offer free moving for my still-in-working fridge. Run out of choices, I would only chuck it on the roadside. Hopefully one day, the local council find this metal waste and remove it to those organizations.

I have big plans once my exam finish on Monday. The first thing I would do is to go to Nova cinema every week to watch those profound art house films. Anyway, at the moment, I have to sit back and do my Macro practice exams.

my writings

Assignment time

I could not wait to put my Asia-Pacific final assignment into the English department pigeonhole. With my head spinning, I went straight back home to sleep. This quantitative research assignment was finished for quite some time, but small changes of grammar, editing, appendices stuff were left to the last minute, which nearly killed me. After all, it was done and I would never think about it anymore.

I am a sucker for affection and always hurt for faked human interactions. In uni, I always bump into people I “meet”. These are people for communicating information purpose only. What-so-ever promises you say to keep in touch are all bullshit. If I want to step into media dirt water, these sorts of things are what I have to bear with. My personality could not stand injustice without voicing out, whereas most of the time I am unable to stop bad things happen. What can I do? I choose avoidance.

Melbourne weather is damn shit since cup day. Spring is supposed to arrive; yet chilling wind interwoven with drizzle is persistent for days. To survive, I has been telling myself: “I should precious this weather coz I will not be here next year this time.”

Last night I was talking to my aunt and uncle about my cousins education. I was shocked to know that my sweetie Jennifer was about to secondary school next year! And me…was about to work next year!

Another wet day with a lifetime memory

I have done another crazy thing tonight to add onto my legendary life pages – walking under the rain outside cemetery at 11:00pm. The story started like this: lucky enough no need to work at night, so I intended to spend my one-in-a-thousand free Saturday night studying at uni. Soon after I “kicked” a girl out of Baillieu’s scarce computer machine, I received a call from Rod. Nothing else than pub and alcohol from him. I could not refuse his sweet temptation but went to meet with him in Brunswick, near where the gangsters’ gunshot happened. I headed home not long after having a couple of drinks with these lovely old buddies. Ant wanted to dub(?) me at the back of his pushy. I asked him: “Are you sure you can do that?” he went: “Nut! But I will try.” Then we nearly fell down. I chose to ran away from him and went for a safer transport – tram. I got off at the cemetery road. The God was not apathy for this simple girl and started to pour rain drops on her. Worse still, the bloody tram driver on Lygon drove away, ignoring my wave just couple of meters away. The end of the story was, I was all wet in-side-out by the time I reached my OWN flat.

The catch up of these guys:
-Rod and Ant neurotically wanted to become a photographer. Both of them buy an AU$1000+ digital camera and taking it with them wherever they go. Crazy man!
-Ant is leaving to Germany in two weeks. He quits smoking and alcoholic indulgence to save up for this trip.
-Rod … is still the same. Happily doing nothing in his life, with sex and nicotine topics all the time. (Hey big C, this time is about chain/cuff sex in bed).
-Kath is going back to Perth. She decides to quit her kindergarten job and take doll next year. She told me she wanted to drift around aimless for a year and see how it goes.

Another wet day. I will never forget the warmth from the sunshine, the smell from the lawn, the touch from the grass today last year. It is the best memory I have ever had. Love the weather, love the feeling, love that moment – this year last time.

I have never regretted any big decisions in my life so far. I consider myself lucky in this way.

A strange feeling

Today I feel like burning for something that I could not calm down my mental state. My heart was jumping splash-dash for no reasons. After taking in two cups of triple Bailey, I left home to Uni as I want to stay in somewhere with people around. I have a very strange feeling, or maybe I just paranoia.

It is Saturday night, Melbourne Uni library are full of students! Studying in this world-class uni, everyone is smart and hard working. (~sigh~) my self-confident was defeated again.

Melbourne Cup

The Cup day yesterday ended up with muddy spotting over the ladies’ glamorous dress. The winning horse came with no surprise, while the weather surprised all Melbourne horse fans. Elusively Melbourne weather, it can change from glitter blue sky to grey cloudy cover within a moment. Poor horses! Poor Jockeys! They wiped track mud on the face and running in the rain. And those crazy well-dressers were yelling with hands preying for the betting wins. This is 2004 spring racing carnival – the race that stop the nation… but not the rain!

A ? mind?

I discover one thing very disgusting today. While I was bored with my economic revision, I took my time off to visit “A beautiful mind” official website. Gee, the paranoia guy with mental disturbance in the movie is the one who developed the concept of cooperate “Nash Equilibrium” game theory! This is the concept I have been studying for a quarter of semester! Isn’t it awful?

Severely sick

I slept in last night. I collapsed by the time I reached home. Without knowing how I crawled to my bed, I lost my conscious from 7pm to 8am today. It can not help me to feel better, only makes my head spin less. Gee, still need to get back to uni to finish my long assignment. Every year this time is the worse moment. I had the worse cold while I was preparing for VCE; being sick for a week last year; and this year … No matter what, I will not lose my ambitious and do the best out of my studies.

By the time I woke up this morning, I found myself living alone. Sorry ah, I don’t have time to say “goodbye” to Junie. But I will see her soon, as the plan of moving to Sydney has already been “projected”. I have even planned the way I moved my stuff.

There are tones of food and source from my ex-flatmates! Some of them I would hardly eat – cheese, butter, bags of garlic, tomato source, plus much much more. I don’t think I need to spend any money on food in the next two-week of living alone.

I could not continue to read after the first two emails. I should have deleted them a long time ago. How come human can have such a dramatic change within one day? How come a sincere attitude can be thrown away just in a moment? In this messy money dominated society, surge of self-desire could turn everything upside down.

Feeling tired

I am extremely tired, both physically and mentally. No matter how hard I try to keep myself healthy in this semester, I know I am weak and stress for some reasons. Yesterday I worked six hours among a sea of people in Flemington racing course. It was not a hard job, but … I am very weak, even the supervisor empathy me. By the time I got home, I felt hot from my inside organ and drank two glasses of champagne offered by my flatmate. Then, either the alcohol or my tiredness got me sleep in the couch. Today I am still very bad. I could even see stars around me serval times. It was the same as last year, that I could not open my eyes for sometime. Better still, I know how to take on unexpected incidence. Not as distress as last year, I hope I will be healthy soon after I move to my new home.

Although now is not the end of the year yet, I feel like everything is over as no more school next week. At the beginning of this year, I said that it would not be a good year for me. Coming to conclusions at this time, I can say it is not precise. Indeed, I have been through a lot more than last year. Some fancy imaginations are destroyed, the ideology has completely changed, I have achieved what I promised myself at the yearly planning. Looking for a better year, or at least, a happier year in Melbourne.