Can't touch me!

I'm sad to say that Orientation 2007 has come to an end. Never before in my life, I think, have I been so challenged/entertained/excited/afraid. My initial apprehensions about not being able to make friends, or facing the sharp edge of an imposed high school type pecking order have thankfully fizzled out.

Uni is awesome.

Tuesday
My most nervewrecking day. Sitting on the tram listening to Placebo to calm my nerves down (doesn't make sense, really) I expected the worst - and got it. I could only click with some people in my host group, I was edgy with fears about my problematic subject combination and problems with my diploma, and the place seemed so huge and I kept getting lost. To make things worse, there was a girl in my group who had a) partied with celebrities like Kylie Minogue in London and had danced and been kissed on the hand by Tyrone; b) gone to a German boarding school with royalty, and c) danced onstage with the bodybeaters or some rock band or whatever. Perhaps you could extrapolate some really heady stuff about my insecurities here, but I got a major "Privilege!" vibe off her. And my feelings about privileged people with an astonishing sense of self-entitlement has been made pretty clear. Of course, I do acknowledge that it is a biasness that is not always fair or justified.

Our host group leader, tiny A----, was very, very enthusiastic. Case in point. While we were touring the Sydney Myer Asia Centre building, she suggested we all pile into the very awesome glass and steel lifts and take a ride down every floor.

I'll let that speak for itself.

Wednesday
Academic orientation day, chock full of boring lectures and academic talks. It was so entirely uninteresting that I can barely remember much of it (perhaps more an indictment of my poor memory than the actual eventfulness of the day) I do remember the media com lunch though, where I met more people from my high school. I am now convinced that there exists a little Gen in our university, and melb uni is hardly the egalitarian place one hopes and dreams of. It was really nice, though, to see lots of people I hadn't seen for nearly four months. And this would be the preening-privilege-parrot in me talking, but... yes, that would be one of the benefits to attending a private school - ready made friends. And yes, I have used (abused) such benefits. But I can't change the fact that there is where I'm from, so now all effort must be made to recognise any little privileges I have and do all in my power to make sure I don't wield them over someone else. And make sure I go all out to befriend people of different backgrounds. Not possible to do the cock-of-the-walk thing in a place filled with 46 000 staff and students. Thank goodness!

Thursday
Clubs and Societies day 1. It was quite fun, met loads of new people, signed up for quite a few clubs (of which I'm sure I will evantually just drop out of): such as the Singapore Students Society (I like Singaporeans, so sue me), the chocolate lover's society, Amnesty International, the film society (where we watch less well-known films and then go out for coffee later to discuss them). I've been shopping around the socialist clubs now, to be my main club.

I also actually went to talk to the fucking Liberal Club, and I have to say that is one of the absolute worst experiences of O-week. If you're not a rich white guy, or a vapid hot white girl... just don't bother with the Liberals. Just. Don't. Signed up to be a writer for the student paper and had a very unsatisfying talk with the womyn's officers, but perhaps if I involve myself a bit more I'll be able to get more fruitful discussions with them.

The rest of Thursday night was devoted to attending Soc Alt meetings, having more dinner and discussions with them. I applaud them for the work they're doing, and the strong stance they take against all forms of oppression, and I have never been able to win an argument against them... but somehow my gut feeling tells me I need to get out of this. I can't explain this right now.

Friday
Clubs and Societies day 2. More of walking around with two of my new-found friends trying to score freebies. Another encounter with Soc Alt, a most terrifying one with one of their founding members, S----- B---------, who is truly a formidable woman who sees no need for a feminist movement, because she believes it undermines the position of women by making them seem weak and in need of a separate agenda of their own away from the men's. I can't agree with her, and yet I can't win an argument against her, given her much stronger-formed political beliefs, experience and superior knowledge and logic. I think this, if anything else, convinced me I cannot join them. Capitalism and oppression won't be the only ones given a beating, it would be my ideas and beliefs that will be thumbed down into one coherent with their thought.

On a much lighter note, I'm back to Friday night tutoring, something I really enjoy. I saw my old student again, and I'll be tutoring him week after next in Chemistry. Next week I'll be teaching this really sweet girl, Cindy, in Physics. But wait - I'm doing an arts degree, aren't I? What am I doing touching the hard sciences? Isn't it then, that I'm no longer qualified?? Plus I've thrown out all my old notes and sold off my old textbooks.

After tutoring, I had a pho dinner at Richmond with Leanne and Jane. I'm so glad to have friends like them around, and I really do hope we continue to keep in contact, especially in the very volatile period of the beginning of school, where you never know if the next person you meet is going to be a mere hi-bye-acquaintance or a friend for life.

Saturday
There was an Amazing Race event organised by the overseas student society held at 1.30pm. Basically, we were supposed to run around the CBD looking for checkpoints and doing stupid stunts one associates with first year undergrad students in their orientation week. I had vegemite forced onto my face, and my group ran around the city with the stinky yeast extract caked onto our faces, giving out the most ghastly stench that made several concerned passers-by stare and ask if we were ok. The less sympathetic ones gave us looks of disgust and cried out "What. The. FUCK?!" at us.

In addition we had to do the most humiliating things, like smooshing our face in flour and begging for money from strangers. But it was an incredibly good bonding experience, and it was also, in retrospect, heaps of fun. You only get to do these sorts of things when you're young, so by all means, just go for it. No time for regrets.

And it was great, because I've made so many new friends, among first years and older students, and have even found a new movie buddy to head to Cinema Nova with to watch weird, artsy indie films. Not art for art's sake, mind you, because we both have standards. We both loved The Chumscrubber, The Thumbsucker and Adaptation. Need any more be said?

The Amazing Race after-party at The Workshop was also fun. I was quite broke and so had to settle for some cheap, not very nice-tasting mixers. (a tequila sunrise and a vodka sprite) It was a good crowd, mostly 3rd and 4th year internationals from Singapore and Malaysia, a sprinkling of local Australians and a post-grad IT person from the middle-east. I had a hilarious time with Trev, a local Australian guy who had taken a gap year in China, trying to maintain conversation with him in mandarin. It's pretty hard to say who mangled the language more... him with his one year of learning the language, or me with my entire pre-primary+primary+secondary+one year of post secondary years of learning to write and speak the language. I can assure you that he kicked my ass many, many times. My standard of Chinese hovers near that of a Primary 2 kid's. Hell no, even primary 2 kids would kick my ass.

My only complaint of the night was a smarmy guy from Indonesia who had apparently taken a liking to me. He said I could pass off as a final year student, thinking it would flatter me (and maybe it does, a bit, but still: I don't want to look that old) tried to get me to down a flaming shot (to... get me drunk??) kept leaning over and pressing himself closer to me and kept staring at me the rest of the night. The absolute clincher was when we had retired to someone's apartment for card games and where he full-on leaned against my entire leg (I was sitting on the couch, he was sitting on the floor in front of me. By then I was completely freaking out and called my mum to come pick me up. Seriously, this guy is doing his post-grad. He's got to be at least 24 or 25. Talk about disturbing.

The other guys were thankfully not at all smarmy. I met a couple of first year Singapore guys who are all going to be 23 this year. When I asked if NS was an almighty waste of time, they all concurred.

Labels: University

Now it's time to bid farewell to my hedonistic lifestyle. Ever since my return to Melbourne, countless days/nights have been spent doing the most unproductive, time-wasting activities.

WEll, it ends tonight.

School unofficially begins tomorrow with a week of orientation activities.

I've got my outfit picked (blue; stripey; non-stomach-fat-revealing), my bag packed with an assortment of pencils, pens and highlighters (just like in primary one - SQUEE!!), my orientation week planned (at least for the next two days), and my subject timetable in complete disarray.

Tomorrow I'll be meeting my host group (and hopefully, new friends!) and a whole balancing act of popping in and out of buildings and transversing vast lawns for faculty information sessions, campus and facility tours, student services carnival stalls and the like.

Ah, wish me luck!!

Labels: University

Good lord, I hope I'm not falling for L___.

With his lanky frame, generally quiet demeanour, and his penchant for shouting whenever he's agitated/ passionate about his politics, he is strangely attractive. Not to mention he has these ratty old jeans and big shoes, all the better for stomping his feet with.

P.S: Eve and I had a disussion about this, and we both agree not to get my hopes up, 'cause we all know what happened the last time. And anyway, this entry is more in the spirit of mocking my 'one guy down, next please!" attitude, more than anything else. I mean, it has to be said, right?

Labels: Boys

And now to my nit-pick of the day. I think years of CIP and hao gong ming have only reinforced a terribly condescending attitude to people who are less well-off than I am.

"We should help the less fortunate."

Yes, I agree.
But perhaps I am being cynical. Are there any other places in the world where community service is made mandatory for students? Perhaps it is a lot more common than I think. But are there any other places in the world where a set number of community service hours is required in order to gain a pass for one's cca grade? I think it reinforces a disturbing mindset among our students: "I should only help someone else when there's something in it for me. In this case, a nice little reference on my testimonial. Or the difference betwen a B3 and an A2 for my PE grade." Maybe ol' PAP(a) is hammering the message that we should help our fellow men, via such practices as charity and philanthropy, so the government doesn't have to spend a cent on welfare. Because, yeah, if we have a welfare state, the whole country will fall into a productivity glug, with people lining up at their welfare offices to collect their checks for a week of insane boozing. [/sarcasm]

Then there are those who volunteer or contribute to charity because it makes them feel good about themselves, makes them feel fortunate in comparison, or just boosts their credentials.

Schmucks.

Look, if you feel good about yourself by helping other people, well and good. That's not a bad thing. If you feel a oneness with your fellow man by reaching out to them, excellent. If you can recognise your own comparative privilege, that's good too. Nothing worse than a prvileged schmuck than a privileged schmuck who doesn't recognise how much things are skewed in his favour, and how much he takes that for granted.

But poor/disabled/unfortunate people don't exist just to teach you a lesson on not taking things for granted. They aren't a series of lectures to make ourselves feel better in comparison. I especially get this vibe off people who work with disabled people and who go, "actually, they're a lot smarter than you think.../ actually, they're quite capable you know... if we give them a chance" Yeah, because their survival so much depends on our magnimity... if only we give them a chance. No, they're not objects to massage your ego, they are actualy living, breathing entities. Some of them just don't happen to have as much money as you and I. Some of them don't have the resources to get a good education. Some of them are disadvantaged because of the way they are born. Whatever it is, it is our responsibility to correct these injustices, not because hao gong ming tells us to, or because we want an A1 for our PE grade, or because we want to be presented with a philanthropy trophy at some fancy cocktail party, or because we want to feel a little less guilty about the new Lexus we just bought when millions of people all over the world are struggling just to get something to eat. Basic human rights - the right to food, clean water, shelter, an education, a decent living - all these trump all the silly, frivolous reasons.

Labels: Society

Raine Maida:

"So there's a song that we, that we recorded when we were, recording all the songs for Clumsy. A song about the Russian circus, a song about the two main trapeze artists. Song about a man who has to make a choice.

"The choice that he has to make is one where every night, he finds himself and his wife, the other main trapeze artist, in an arena like this, staring at each other on opposite ends, way up top on their perch like before they're about to perform. And every night the man, the husband, looks over to his wife and gives her a very sexy kind of 'hello' look.

"And every night, all around the world, she reciprocates this look, says it back in her eyes - except for this one night; this one night where the husband again, seconds about, when they're just about to perform, gives that look - only she's not looking at him, she's got her eyes focused way down in the corner of the... in that corner, sits what's called the 'Human Cannonball'.

"And the husband sees that she's looking at the human cannonball and the human cannonball is looking back up at her. The anxiety starts to build in his head and he starts thinking about the last two minutes, the last two hours, the last two days, the last two weeks, the last two months - and so finally, finally tonight he suffers from what - what you would call enlightenment. And his enlightenment is that he realises his wife's been fucking the human cannonball.

"Well this song Trapeze that I've been telling about is a song based purely on those four seconds the husband now has to decide about whether or not he actually wants to catch his wife tonight."
----------------
We must all have felt that way sometimes. When, you've recently discovered your betrayal, this incredible pressure builds up in your head. If you're the sort, like I am, who feels a sort of clarity - not the logical kind, not mental clarity, mind you; but a sort of short-term emotional clarity that goes like this - oh, I am going to hurt you so bad, I am going to make you pay for doing this to me; then you'll understand what this song is talking about. And if you decide to use those four seconds to make the person pay, well - revenge is amazingly carthatic, the euphoria that you feel when you're soaring through the sky, only to look down and realise you're falling and you think oh fuck I'm going to die.

(No Evelyn, this isn't what you think I'm talking about. My life does not revolve around that one comment.)

Well, what did the trapeze artist husband do? Let's find out from the first stanzaa of the song:

can't believe she fell
the silence was unnerving
the crowd began to yell
was the thought of her returning
so you never knew him well
but you know what you've been seeing
these images of guilt
and the concrete in her hair
so far these lions still need taming
its very sad very sad
no no
she fell very far very far
no no

Can't say I blame him.

Labels: Music, OLP

Lots of good stuff on TV lately.

The parliamentary debates were a hoot. Politics. Really. A bunch of monkeys jumping around making loud noises.

The 7.30 report with Kerry O' Brien was really interesting, and had Liberal Joe Hockey debating with Labour minister Julia Gillard over industrial workplace relations.

In light of very recent pressures (read: Socialist-type pressures) which would presumably fling me over to the Labour side, I still have to declare, pressure-free, that Julia Gillard makes a lot more sense. Plus she's poised and articulate and charismatic. Joe Hockey is a lumbering baboon.

Labels: Politics

Had to rush my diploma application on Thursday and Friday. Now that it's done, phew. But then, of course, in the process I get to feel all mopey and sad just because I had to go there again.

So yesterday, someone from Socialist Alternative called me and we got into a pretty interesting discussion about the Iraq war, evil-bad-greedy-fat-cat-capitalism, John Howard and racism, environmental issues, religion and sexism.

Now they're asking me to come down for their public meetings and to help stick posters around campus.

Naturally, I am apprehensive. The reason I gave the representative - "I hope you understand, I'm at a point in time of my life where I feel my political views are not fully devloped and I'm not sure if I want to align myself to any one side when I don't have a full understanding of many of today's current issues." sounded good to me, but also carries with it a not-so-subtle current of laziness, don't you think? I don't know, so don't ask me, is what I'm basically saying. The onus is on me to educate myself on issues, and I can honestly say I'm trying, but I need to try a lot harder.

I decide I'll give it a shot. I'm much less hostile to the ideas of Socialism and Communism than a lot of people I know (and a lot of people I don't) and I wouldn't go as far as to say no harm trying, but I would have to at least concede - lots of harm sitting on my ass complaining and not doing anything about any of the social injustices that plague our world. After all, talk is cheap. I can sit here and argue about how much I hate the war and how much I hate sexism and racism and imperialism and classism, and yet continue to contribute to the structure upholding these injustices through my passitivity.
-----------------
Last night I decided to hit the gym. I had to use the toilet halfway and then realised -oh shit- that I couldn't get the door open and had basically locked myself in. To make things worse, it was nearing 10pm, when the gym closes, so basically there wouldn't be anyone around, meaning I had better find some way to make a pillow out of the toilet cistern and blankets out of toilet paper.

"HELLO?!?!?!" I screamed as I hammered the door with my fists. Desperate, I clicked the lock back and forth a few more times, until lo and behold, the door swung open. I must have looked like a complete idiot with my left fist still half-raised to pummel the crap out of the door and my mouth still half open to scream bloody incarceration. Luckily (or unluckily, if I was really stuck) the toilet is seperated from the main gym area by what appears to be a sound-proof door. As nonchalently as possible, I went back into the gym and hit the stationary bikes.

There were two other people there, an Indian man and a rather cute German tourist (from his "Deutschland" jersey and, as I later found out, a very funny accent) We worked out in silence for about 15 minutes before the Indian guy informed the German tourist and I that we had better leave soon because the concierges don't come in to lock the gym anymore, it's on autolock. He had been locked in the previous night and only managed to leave because he had the concierge's number stored on his phone. Phew, thank goodness he warned us then, since I don't even carry my phone with me to the gym, yet alone store the concierge's number in my phonebook!

What a good samaritan, huh? But in retrospect, if he hadn't been there, or hadn't warned us, I would have been locked in alone with a young, sweaty, funnily-accented cutie. On a particularly cold night. Damn, we might have had to remove our clothes! You know, to burn for warmth and all.

Labels: Gym, Politics

I spent 45 minutes at this very addictive site. You can upload your pictures and be transformed into a baby, child, adult, Afro-Carribbean, Caucasian, West Asian, Boticelli painting, half-ape, a drunkard, and more! (WARNING: addictive. Soon you'll find yourself uploading Edison Chen and Raine Maida pictures just for kicks! And yes, Asian Raine Maida is very hot.)

This is me as a manga character (unbelievably cute! Sigh... now, if only God painted everyone with a manga brush...)
...And this is how I look after a long night of o2Jamming.

Labels: Miscellanous

Life isn't a zero-sum game, is it?

The universe is zero-sum. All the mountains and valleys, when added together, form a perfectly straight plateau. No new atoms created or destroyed, just converted and combined and split apart and put back together endlessly (I'll have to check again, since I've not been a Physics students for nearly 3 months.)

Nuclear reactions are zero-sum. All that stuff about the strong forces and e=mc² basically means that things don't come out of nowhere; they were something else before and will become something else soon enough.

What about life? Does my happiness = someone else's misery, and vice versa? Is life a slice of bread and happiness a mound of peanut butter? Spread it thinly and every square centimetre can have a fair and equal, though rather miserly, amount of peanut butter happiness. Or Spread it unevenly and let the centre have the most and the areas near the crusts have nothing? I mean, after all, nearly everyone hates the crusts. Might as well cut them off.

Or maybe I've been going about this all wrong. Humans are greater than the sum of our parts. I'm more than my limbs and torso put together in a geometrically acceptable way; you're more than your 10 toes and 11 fingers and 3 hairs. Shouldn't life be like that? After all, happiness spreads around, increasing as it goes (peanut butter analogy not withstanding), while misery compounds itself like a cancerous tumour.

Ah well, even if life is a zero-sum game, I really do hope that my slightly depressed mood and my slight hangover means a little added iota of happiness for all of you.

To my mother, I have now become a slut.
Returning home at 9.15pm after a nice dinner with Jane and Leanne, my mum eyed the top I was wearing and launched into a lecture on "modesty, chastity and purity of heart, mind and spirit."

And I thought those were internal values you embody, not something you can discern just from looking at someone's dressing.

Anyway what, was wrong with what I was wearing? It's your standard, run-of-the-mill streetwear. Put me in a large group of people and you could even single me out for dressing conservatively. Geez. It wasn't a bikini top, it wasn't a teensy-weensy tube, it wasn't two small postage stamps strategically stuck to my chest. It was a spaghetti top and jeans. Plus I wore a jacket over it towards evening. What makes it even worse is that I had recently overcome a mental obstacle with regards to dressing and was feeling quite celebratory (Eve, I think you're the only one who will quite understand what I mean - what I told you while we were O2Jamming the other night).

Me: What's wrong with it?
Mum: PULL it up.
Me (tugs at neckline)
Mum: HIGHER
Me (tugs again)
Mum: Hmmph. Tsk, this is Australian dressing already, you know.

Yeah, and pray do tell me: where am I currently residing in, huh, the North Pole??

Then she made me read out the definition of "modesty" from the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary.

modest /mod-uhst/ adj. 1 having or expressing a humble or moderate estimate of one's own merits. 2 diffident, bashful.

She grunted with great displeasure at the first two definitions I read out. "No, no, what's the other meaning?"

So I read on:

3 decorous in manner and conduct.

Which seemed to satisfy her. I won't continue with the other two meanings of 'modest', but you get the idea.

And I think we got into some debate about rape and molestation, with me taking the (feminist) stance that a woman, even one revealing dressed, never, never, ever deserves to take even the weeniest ounce of responsibility should she be raped; while mum, still clings on to the antiquated notion that rape is a dark alley, creepy man and sexily-dressed woman. (Hello, it's not - majority of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim; even old women and conservatively dressed women are raped, because rape is about establishing power and control over someone weaker, not necessarily about sex and perceived attractiveness) She took what I thought was a decidedly anti-feminist stance by declaring that women have a responsibility to be always dressed modestly in order not to tempt our good brothers in Christ. Or whatever.

Ironically, when we get right down to it, I don't think I'm unreasonable when I say I fit the dictionary definition of modesty. I have humble expectations of myself, I don't expect myself to be some rich, famous career high-flier with three Porsches and a Lambourghini. Hell, I don't even want a merse or a BMW or a Toyota or a Honda. I'll be happy with a beat-up second-hand car. With a manual roll-down windows. I don't expect to live in a mansion, not even a semi-detached. I'll be happy with a small flat or apartment.

I don't show-boat. I don't scream to be centre-of-attention. I don't need to be surronded by fawning admirers. I really am quite a shy, introverted person. I don't really talk about my academic or other achievements, not because I'm not proud of them, but because... why, because there really isn't any need to, at least among the people I hang out with. And I like it that way.

But no, my mum picks and choose the definitions she thinks should apply to me in order to portray me as 'immodest'. Because I'm not dressed in a tent that makes a pleateau out of my chest and hides my dirty pillows, because I'm wearing something that makes her ultra-conservative, nearly-fundamentalist-christian radar go off, I am now officially TEH SLUT.

I was just chatting to Matilda online, and my mood has plummeted. (No don't worry, it was not a direct causal relationship :D - chatting to you is always a pleasure, old friend.)

I suppose reading her blog and talking to her has got me thinking about this past week, and how I have been dealing with 5 days of continuous isolation.

From Matilda's blog:

"I thought loneliness was easy to handle. But weeks of lunching by myself,
talking to myself, pretending to read books to seem like I don't need
company
for lunch redefine loneliness for me. With the circumstances
surrounding me,
plain loneliness will slowly turn into 'unspeakable
loneliness'. "

Such a great difference in the way we deal with our emotions - she confronts her loneliness, and she reflects on it. What do I do? I squash it into a tiny ball and bury it under megabytes of online youtube videos, megapixels of SBS cartoons and documentaries and strange foreign language films about cannabilistic butchers. So much so that I didn't even realise it.

I wonder how many other people deal with their feelings the way I do, and unfortunately in our very (slavishly) technology-dependent society, it's not going to be an insignificant number.

Today, for the first time, I stepped out of my apartment. It was an odd feeling - the lift landing is always slightly cooler than the interior of my apartment; not an enticing first step. I was horribly self-conscious, knowing that my illness had simultaneously taken the colour out of my skin, pimplified my face, and added a few pounds on me (Jia Wei sums it up best: "sick=depressed=eat").

It was quite a relief, though, to finally see the sun. The first human I saw (besides mummy dearest who I see everyday, even when sick) was the janitor guy who glowered at me while leaning on his mop.

And the people in Southbank! Oh the humanity! So strange and fascinating to see people milling around, going about their everyday business - and so amusingly dressed in such contrasting gear. It's the end of the second month of summer, so techincally it should still be warm. And the sun is hot and beats down hard. Just that... there's this cool breeze that comes along as and when it wants to maim you and make you regret the very minute you stepped out of home without bringing along a jacket. Then it stops, and you bake. Then it comes, and you freeze. Repeat.

So I saw people walking along the Yarra in spaghetti tops and shorts, people in long pants and jackets, ladies in coats and boots striding out of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. We are a confused bunch, weather-wise, here in Melbourne.

My main intention in even leaving my comfortable, junk food littered apartment was to go to a chemist to get anti-perspirant. And of course, I've just given away a big embarassing secret. I sweat (I'm not even going to dignify that with the word 'perspire') like a hog. For a long time I've used Nivea's deodorant/anti-perspirant which I thought worked fine. But the last time I took a non-exerting walk and made the silly mistake of wearing a dark top, I came home to find myself with two big wet (but nice-smelling, thanks to Nivea) moons under my arms. Immediate, affirmative action required. Could have gone to any ol' chemist in South Melbourne or Southbank or in the CBD for some super heavy duty mega aluminum chloride anti-perspirant, but no; somehow I found myself on the train to Richmond.

Why did I go to Richmond? I think it's because the ratio of asian to non-asian people is roughly that of Orchard Road's - probably the closest experience I can get to home.

And therein lies the crux of the whole issue, doesn't it? No Guardian pharmacy or Watsons drugstore or Kovan Beauty Language shops to turn to; strange names like "Lu Pharmacy" or "Thian Thian Pharmacy" (if you're in Richmond) or names like Collin's Pharmacy (if you're in the CBD). No bus 73 or 136 or 22 or 24 or 315 or NEL Serangoon or TP or AMK or Bishan or Novena; there's tram 55, 109, there's the Epping or Blackburn or Alamein or Hurstbridge or Sandringham or Pakenham or Frankston line, said in a stilted automated mechanical voice.
I think I didn't deal with my homesickness properly this time, just dismissed it in one entry as being "much easier than the very first time and even the second time" [Friday, Jan 19]

Ah well. Suck it up and get moving, girl. Immerse yourself in wonderful new experiences. The Arts Student Society is organising a camp and an o-week party, where they're giving away free pot. Yes. POT. Unless I'm very much mistaken and everyone gets a shiny new Tefal, I think that means everyone is going to, in the words of Towelie, "get hiiiiiiiggggghhhh?!?!"

EDIT: Yes, I am very much mistaken. The term 'pot' used in a Melbourne context refers to a beer glass. Whoops. I think somewhere in this post is a lesson on checking facts thoroughly. But hey, boys and girls, alcohol is a drug too. So we can still "get hiiiiiiiigggggghhhhh"!!