My kingdom for methyl m-nitrobenzoate.

Five out of my eight hours at uni today was spent in chemistry. Fun times. Erm, yeah...

While I was synthesising m-nitrobenzoic acid from methyl benzoate in the second-year organic lab, Aaron was downstairs in the first-year labs breaking things. I used to think I was king of breaking lab equipment but evidently I've had the crown taken from me. Four burettes, a pipette, two pipette pumps and a conical flask, all written off at the hands of Aaron. And that was just from today's first-year titration assessment task. All I broke in that assessment last year was a volumetric flask.

I've noticed that a woman comes out of the prep room to clean the blackboards after lectures in the chemistry theatres. She uses an Enjo glove. I find that amusing. Sadly, that's as exciting as my day got.


Listening to:
Title: State of Graceful Mourning
Artist: Died Pretty
Album/station: Blackrock OST (1997)
Length: 5.50

It's all in the suburbs.

Why is it that all the city surf stores have such crap stock? Even the brand outlets like Billabong and Quiksilver on George Street are shyte for choice.

My shameful consumerist shopping wants were satisfied this weekend. At last. Citybeach, Westfield Parramatta and Geffro's, Macquarie Centre provided the goods. Finally, some stuff in my size.


Listening to:
Title: Baby's Got Me Up
Artist: Zed
Album/station: This Little Empire (2003)
Length: 3.10

Tsunami victims vs. Schapelle Corby.

I wasn't going to comment on the Schapelle Corby case because I realise that (a) I'm not a lawyer; (b) I'm not a lawyer familiar with the Indonesian judicature; and (c) I'm not an experienced judge with all the evidence before me.

However, what really disgusts me are reports that some people throughout Terra Australis want their money back - money that was donated to Indonesian tsunami victims in the wake of the Boxing Day Tsunami last year. And what's more, they're unwilling to donate to the Salvation Army's Red Shield Appeal unless they can be guaranteed that their donations won't be going to Indonesia. [Edit: link - Australians dig deep for Salvos appeal & Red Shield appeal on target for $6m, Sydney Morning Herald/AAP, May 29, 2005]

For one thing, thousands of wave-struck people in Banda Aceh have no bearing upon the judicial proceedings in Bali. So why hurt them for a verdict that was handed down by three judges halfway across the country? And another thing, who are we to think we can interfere with a sovereign nation's judicial system? We are not superior to Indonesia. The only thing we can do is to go through the due process as prescribed by the Indonesian Judicature.

But the main thing that shits me is this attitude that aspirational and middle class Australia has towards charitable aid. People who've had to rebuild their lives from scratch have graciously accepted the help that your donations have provided. But it's not something that one can use as a bargaining tool. It does not buy you leverage and you can't hold it over them as if they owe you something. One gives so that another may be helped out of dire circumstances, not so that one's own ends can be accomplished. And to ask for that money back is just disgusting.


Listening to:
Title: Feel Good Inc.
Artist: Gorillaz
Album/station: Channel [v]
Length: -.--

Bah! I suck.

...can we please get our heads out of the gutter? Yes? Thank you.

So I gave a presentation for a photoelectric experiment in physics lab today. I'm so disappointed with myself. It was a half-arsed effort and I know it. I was prepared, but evidently not as prepared as I should've been. Exposed for the incompetent fool that I am.

I can't think on my feet very well either, especially in front of a bunch of people, unless I really know what I'm talking about. So to make things worse, I got thrown a few curly questions from the rest of the group. One was from this cocky smartarse, Ollie I think his name was. He looked so pleased with himself. Bah! I've got to hand it to him though, he's cute in a perpetually-gym-clothed kind of way. But he's got the stereotypical gay voice, soft and with silibant Ss. And I'd heard him talking about penises once, in a jokey way that boys tend to do but in not the same kind of way that straight boys do. Maybe, I don't know. I could just be reading into it a little much.

Anyway, all this presentation business worries me. How am I meant to be school physics teacher if I can't do a simple talk on a some theory and an experiment? Some one said to me on Monday before my ed psych presentation: you've got to get used the sound of your own voice. I think I'm going to have to.


Listening to:
Title: Hate Crime
Artist: Bagster
Album/station: Onwards And Upwards (2004)
Length: 5.10

Addendum: some extra whinge.

Mattymoo wants to get into extra curricular activities all of a sudden. Sure, good on him and all that, but he says he wants to get into it because it'd look good on his CV. I suppose the community could do with any help, regardless of the motivation for providing it. But it bothers me a little, don't ask me why. One could say that there's no such thing as real altruism anyway but they way he's been talking about it, well it's the antithesis of altruism.

This all stems from him suddenly becoming so career focused. Everything he's done in his life now somehow relates to why he should get a high paying job. He's even started using aspects of high powered corporate speak already. And I get the feeling that he's well on his way to joining Howard's rising aspirational class - everything I loathe and despise.

It bothers me about as much as him and his informal voting.


Listening to:
Title: Wonderwall
Artist: Paul Anka
Album/station: Rock Swings (2005)
Length: 4.01

It wasn't fine and it wasn't twenty-three degrees.


You know, not that I'm saying I could do a better job at predicting the weather than the Bureau of Meteorology or anything. But it was freezing! And it didn't help that I didn't get a break for lunch today, either. In Chopper Read's immortal words: "whinge, fucken whinge".

I had chem lab today. It's one of those things that you should either do a lot of, or none at all. I reckon that my lab incompetency could be cured by lots and lots of lab work. As they say, practice makes perfect. But I'm limited to four hours, one day a week. I've got to say, the whole chemistry lab environment intimidates me. So much care and precision is needed, and a small mistake could undo hours of work or worse still, endanger health and life.

I feel a little silly in the lab too. I feel small. Usually in any other environment I'd be what they call an independent learner, and stubbornly so - even if I don't understand something, I wouldn't ask for help. But in chemistry, I have some odd need for a lab demonstrator to be around a lot of the time, making sure that I'm not doing anything wrong.


Tomorrow, I have to give a second presentation this week. Presentations are another thing that I reckon one should do a lot of or none at all, for some of the same reasons. Yesterday, I presented my tutorial group with Social Purposes of Assessment. I tried to break away from reading off notes and speak off the cuff with some dot points for reference... and it wasn't a total failure. Nor was it a total success.

Now I have to give a talk on a photoelectric experiment in physics tomorrow. It shouldn't be that bad, at least this time I actually know a little about what I'm talking about.

Both presentations were/are a part of a group thing and in both I reckon that I've had a bit of an uneven share of the load foisted upon me. But the thing is, I don't really mind. I think I'm a doormat.


Listening to:
Title: Suicide Is Painless
Artist: Manic Street Preachers
Album/station: Forever Delayed (2002)
Length: 3.29

Arrivals, part deux.

Nikki had a girl!!! Five pounds, nine ounces, goes by the name of Isabella. Aww!


Listening to:
Title: Creep
Artist: Radiohead
Album/station: Pablo Honey (1992)
Length: 3.58

Arrivals.

My mate Nikki up on the Central Coast went into labour this morning. I haven't heard any news other than that yet but I hope her and the baby are alright.

Her best mate and one of my closest, Lauren, had been on standby all week, ready to shoot up there when the first contractions happened. And sure enough, she got the call this morning. I've tried calling but I guess you're not supposed to have a mobile switched on in a hospital.

In other news, Mum came home from Auckland, New Zealand this afternoon. I spent a third of my weekly travel budget on the train ticket to the airport but it's all good.


Listening to:
Title: Mint Car
Artist: The Cure
Album/station: Greatest Hits (2003)
Length: 3.29

My poor Woodies!

Sydney University 32,
Eastwood 25.
University Oval.

So I saw the rugby with Edward yesterday at the place that we were constantly reminded was the birthplace of Australian Rugby, University Oval No.1. It's the only game I make an effort to go and see as opposed to watching it on the ABC. You'd think it'd be some kind of conflict of emotions. Do I demonstrate my loyalty to my university or to my local team? Ha, fuck that. Eastwood all the way.

So the game started well. The Woodies were in the lead at the end of the first half and through the opening minutes of the second, but only by one point. A couple of penalties and tries later, USyd jumped ahead and took the game. Damn. In the saddening parts, like when USyd were gunning for tries or conversions, Edward and I discussed politics, Eurovision and ed psych. It took my mind off things.

Anyway, we'll trounce USyd at the Toohey's New Cup game in July.


Listening to:
Title: The Coast Is Always Changing
Artist: Maximo Park
Album/station: A Certain Trigger (2005)
Length: 3.19

Words of wisdom.

It's getting increasingly harder to get my closest mates together all at once. Which is a shame. These are people I care deeply about and I don't get to see them very often together. A few of us managed to get together at the local tonight for a couple of drinks, so that was good.

My best mate Adam reckons that girls should have lights on their foreheads that glow whenever they're aroused. He thinks it's unfair that, due certain physiological reactions, the generic male's state of arousal is so easy to read. No one said he wasn't an ideas man!

Also, Lauren, a straight chick mate of mine, says to me out of nowhere: "You're a crap friend. You won't go to a gay bar with me so I can get drunk and dance".

Love 'em all.


Listening to:
Title: She's A Mystery
Artist: Roy Orbison
Album/station: Mystery Girl (1989)
Length: 4.17

Phallic chalkings.

Is it just me or have chalk scrawlings in the shape of dick-and-balls been popping up all around USyd's Camperdown and Darlington Campuses?


Listening to:
Title: Feel Good Inc.
Artist: Gorillaz
Album/station: Today Today - Triple J 105.7FM
Length: -.--

More uni mentionables.

I found myself getting very frustrated with the other members in my presentation group for ed psych today. They kept misinterpreting some major parts of the readings and they just wouldn't hear me out. A standardised test is different to a standard and has nothing to do with norm-referenced evaluation! For some reason, the girl has the impression that the normal "bell" curve is what is referred to in the text as a standard (in the 'benchmark' sense). Gah! I hate group work.

All through maths, between discussing the gay Simpsons episode from last night and Rove's What The...?s, Pat kept cracking π/pie jokes. And for some reason, he was too lazy to turn the pages in his book with his hands so he tried to do it with his mouth and lips. The whole exercise was futile but it was cute seing him try. Yeah, he's one of those straight boys. Whatever he seems to do is cute. Puppy-dog cute, that is. He thinks himself to be a bit of a ladies man. I mean, yeah he's a smooth operator but I'm not sure if he actually gets the chance to follow things through to-- erm-- completion.

Physics lab wasn't so bad today. We caught up on all the experiments we'd lagged behind on and finished the set. Something's changed, though. Even though it's tough and I frequently get the wrong answers, I'm starting to like experimental physics lab sessions. Now that's some pretty fucked up shit.


Listening to:
Title: Go to Sleep. (Little Man Being Erased.)
Artist: Radiohead
Album/station: Hail to the Thief (2003)
Length: 3.21

Mattymoo is lazy.

I just thought I'd mention this: Mattymoo is too lazy to play with himself. Or so he tells me.

He still likes girls at this stage. Le sigh.


Listening to:
Title: Sophie
Artist: Goodshirt
Album/station: Good (2002)
Length: 3.42

Ask me tomorrow about what I thought of yesterday.

I take issue with chemicals. Firstly, pool chlorine. I absolutely hate the stuff. I gag when I smell it. So I'm sitting in a Carslaw lecture theatre this morning, copying something down about surface integrals when this guy sits in right front of me. Normally, I avoid sitting near him but he came in late and just had to choose that seat. And like always, he STANK of chlorine. At least have a shower after you get out of the pool. For fuck's sake.

Secondly, I hate every single chemical I've had to handle in chemistry lab. Chem lab started up again this week and I can't wait until it's all over. Today we had to extract eugenol, otherwise known as clove oil, from cloves. Apparently it's an easy procedure but they're forgetting that in the laboratory, I'm an incompetent dope. I tend to add the wrong compound into the wrong flask at the wrong time. Like today, instead of adding hexane, I added a dash of some sodium hydroxide. And it was really early on in the process, so it fucked me over. And despite exposing my incompetence, the lab demonstrators bore with me and performed a totally different experiment to get the eugenol out.

Anyway, now I smell like incense.

Another thing I take issue with is road traffic. Normally on the bus, I don't mind traffic. I tend to just sit there and chill out. But I actually had somewhere to be today. It took forty minutes to get up George Street and I got to Circular Quay five minutes after the ferry left. Hrmph.


Listening to:
Title: Forget Her (Bonus Track)
Artist: Jeff Buckley
Album/station: Grace (1994)
Length: 5.13

Indiana Mikey and the Woolworths of Doom.

Unfortunately the title is as dramatic as this little adventure got. I didn't get to do the groceries yesterday because I had no money and really, I was too buggered to do it. So I got Dad to drive me to Top Ryde Shops. I mean after all, this is his food too.

I don't usually like going to Woolies with my dad. Let's face it, he's getting on a bit. And it shows when he's shopping. He pays attention to every bit of detail on the label and isn't satisfied until he knows the minutiae of every brand of a certain product. I'd left him looking at lip balm and went about gathering food and I came back with a full trolley. He was still in the same aisle, looking at the same couple of lip balms. Deary me.

The fun started with the fruits and the vegetables (Ho! Puns a-plenty!). The Woolworths piped music happened to be Pseudo Echo's Funky Town. I'm sorry, but if that doesn't get you moving, I don't know what will. Cue the shopping trolley ballet. Need some oranges? Sure! Shuffle, hip shake, shuffle, three-sixty. Maybe some apples, too? Why not! Zigzagged up the aisle, spun the trolley around, pushed it backwards with my bum. I looked like a dick, but no one's ever around on a Monday night and I didn't really care.

Anyway, I eventually pulled up to the checkouts and the barcode babe was a guy who went to my school. I didn't realise at first but it dawned on me eventually. He was a few years below me but in the last year, fuck he grew! How depressing. He's taller than me now, but I suppose I should be used to that sort of thing.

On a slightly related matter, is it just me or is the stereotypical image of a person coming home with the shopping always have leafy stalks of celery sticking out the top of a shopping bag? I never really noticed that until tonight. I don't think I've ever bought celery in my entire life until now. Gosh, what have I been missing out on? Fun celeric times, evidently.


Listening to:
Title: I'm Not In Love
Artist: 11cc
Album/station: Ministry of Sound: Chillout Sessions Vol. 5 (2004)
Length: 5.16

Unfortunate finds.

There wasn't much to do today except to do my washing. Jeb wrote about Buffy DVDs so I thought that I'd go through a few while the washing machine was doing its thing. I searched through the box sets, looking for any episode where Buffy doesn't stake a vampire (ha!) when I came across these two mother-owned specimens:

See, my mum's recently gotten into the whole fitness video thing. One of her recent acquisitions evidently is Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease. I'll admit that I didn't get around to watching any of this, which is just as well. I don't want to imagine my mother performing any of the moves that Ms Booby Electra might be performing on this excuse for a fitness video. Softcore porn, that's what it is!

I did however watch a bit of this. The presence of male dancers, albeit a bit on the fresh meat side (a little too fresh), persuaded me to stick this in the player. Says the blurb:

Learn how to dance like your favourite pop stars! Top choreographer Paulette Minott, who works with top groups Blue, Mis-Teeq and Sugababes, together with her dancers introduces the coolest dance video of the year! This DVD contains 7 routines – each track comprises 2 minutes’ instruction to the chorus, moves then follow the dancers as they perform the whole routine on stage!

Too many exclamation marks, methinks! The playlist includes such pop 'greats' as Justin Timberwho's Rock Your Body, Blue's You Make Me Wanna (spew? Sorry, cheap predictable shot), S Club 7's Don't Stop Movin', Liberty X's Just a Little, Girls Aloud's Sound of the Underground, Atomic Kitten's horrendous cover of Blondie's Tide is High and Britney's Oops I Did It Again - but they obviously didn't get the rights to play the originals. How tragic.

Firstly, I can't imagine my mum even attempting this. So there goes that mental image. Phew.

Secondly, the visored one looks like he's just come out of the Big Book of British Smiles. But to his credit, he can dance. And the rest of him is pretty alright. The other one rates higher, of course. And the girls? Well they didn't register on the radar, for obvious reasons. When I did notice them though, I found them a little irritating anyway. They kinda do look like certain pop idols but they're not them. That's got to feel shitty.

The narrating voice really starts to grate after a while. And the 'tutorial' stage before each 'performance' is really quite silly. All of the dancers are on stage but only one of them is demonstrating the slick moves. So in the back ground, the surplus meat are in strange pseudo-cool poses, standing/lying/crouching still for two minutes while the show pony does his or her thing out front. And it feels as if they give you a lot of time, maybe too much time to try out a move after they demonstrate it. Catering to the uncoordinated in the marketplace? I don't know, maybe jumping to the left and jumping back to the right might need some practice to get down pat.

They'll be so sorry for making this when they get older.


Listening to:
Title: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
Artist: The Smiths
Album/station: The Very Best of the Smiths (2001)
Length: 4.05

Quaker's Hill, 2763.

So Mum left for Auckland, New Zealand this morning. I wish I could've tagged along. Like Melbourne, Auckland is one of my favourite holiday destinations. It's much like Sydney, only a little different so it's well within my comfort zone, which is probably why I like it.

Anyway, I woke up too late to tag along to the airport and have the traditional seeing-rellies-off McDonald's breakfast while watching the planes landing, taking off and taxiing. Meh. Suffice to say, today has been quite uneventful so far.

So this weekend, like most others, I'm staying at Mum's house in Sydney's north-west. Despite it's distance from the City and the westies (a.k.a. bogans, who appear to be a dying breed in Quakers Hill), I like it. It's suburban and a little rural too, but what sets Quakers Hill from the generic urban fringe suburb is that it's not depressing or lifeless. It's not dusty and it's not touched by urban decay. Well, not yet anyway.

Earlier, I went in to what I still call the town (the section of road near the railway station with the shops on it) to buy my lunch and the Saturday Herald. I crossed the railway tracks at the pedestrian level crossing, stopped by the newsagent/post office and Chicken Run before coming back home. I like crossing the tracks, I'm not really sure why. But there's talk of building a new railway station three hundred metres down the line and when that comes in, no more level crossing.

Times, they are a-changing. When Mum bought the house back in 1991, it was pretty much just our street that had houses on it. Now it's been cloned and all over 'Quakers' there are replicas of Zammit Avenue, except that the houses are boxier, the land lots are smaller and the properties cost much much more. And no one knows who their neighbours are. One thing we've noticed is the high owner turnover in most of the other streets. Apparently most of the people who buy in are either in it for a quick buck or those who quickly realise that they can't handle the mortgage.

Quaker's Hill has been swallowed up by the aspirational middle class. The federal electorate of Greenway is now in conservative Liberal Party/Hillsong hands. While property prices increase, the character of this place feels like it's been cheapened. Houses aren't homes anymore - they've just become brick sheds to keep plasma TVs, dishwashers and leather sofas out of the weather and a place to park four-wheel drives at night. People care less about the community and more about their material wealth. And it's sad.


Listening to:
Title: Pressed In A Book
Artist: The Shins
Album/station: Oh, Inverted World (2001)
Length: 2.55

Weather will kill you.

I heard Ben Lee reading/singing the weather forecast on Triple J's Breakfast with Jay and the Doctor to the tune of Cigarettes Will Kill You. Absolute gold. Where can I buy the CD?

In other things that'll kill you, the website I built for EDSE4001 wouldn't open on EdFac's iMacs. Stupid interplatform incompatibility. Stupid WinXP burning in a native format or something or another.


Listening to:
Title: ---
Artist: ---
Album/station: --- (0000)
Length: -.--

ABC hotties.

Bah! I missed the first episode of the ABC's new children's drama, Blue Water High. I come home from uni way too late on Wednesdays to catch it on the telly. And really, I should've known better and taped it or something.

And yes, I am aware that it's a children's drama. And no, I don't have any sort of mental retardation which prevents me from enjoying a more adult, complex narrative. But see this:

What exactly is the ABC trying to push here? Is THIS what innocent school boys and girls are seeing at 5.25pm on an afternoon after school these days? Terrible! Where the fuck was this when I was a kid?


Listening to:
Title: Daniel
Artist: Lior
Album/station: Autumn Flow (2004)
Length: 3.50

Homeward-bound observations.

On the ferry I saw a kid, probably not even in year 4 yet, doing his homework - copying the answers out of the back of the book. They start young, don't they?

So, some photos? Yes? Right.

Listening to:
Title: Comin' Back
Artist: Bent
Album/station: Ministry of Sound: Chillout Sessions 7 (2005)
Length: 4.14

Such is life.

Simon came to uni today. Though apparently one of his mates commited suicide on Friday night. I can't imagine how tough that must be. We spoke about it during our vector calculus tute and I felt tears being held back. He's usually a cheery kind of bloke, an absolute clown. But today it was different. God, I felt terrible. I didn't know what to say.

I suppose I've been lucky enough not to know anybody who has taken their own life and I hope that that doesn't change.


Listening to:
Title: If She Wants Me
Artist: Belle & Sebastian
Album/station: Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003)
Length: 5.05

Grogblogging II.

All up it was a great night at the Sydney RSL. I saw and spoke with Darp and Jess Ausculture again, the respective patri- and matriarchs of the Sydney Blogosphere. In my slightly drunken stupor, I may have confessed to Jess about fantasies involving me being an Ausculture groupie - it's an unsubstantiated allegation at the moment. But at least this time around I didn't embarass myself by not repeating my ohmygodyou'resocutewhyaren'tyougay effort with Melbourne's Agent Fare Evader.

At one point, I was trying to explain a few Australian idiosyncrasies such as Medicare to the American, airblue's Rob, who came with inhibitory link's Scott. Those two are the coolest guys one could ever meet. Rob was up to a fair bit of mischief, trying to pick up random guys for and then egging me on to score a pash with Spunky Edward (I was unfortunately unsuccessful). Ahh Edward. Ed. Eddy. We chose a few songs on the video juke box together. From memory, they were the Divinyls' I Touch Myself, Steps' Tragedy and umm, I can't remember the other one but we had to sit through someone else's sick requests for Peter Andre before they came on. Shudders.

Amongst the disappointments was not getting to meet Melbourne's Dreadnought, although I did catch a glance of him sprinting for the elevator. But fuck me dead, he's gorgeous.

Fun times.


Listening to:
Title: No Goodbye
Artist: Water
Album/station: Ministry of Sound: Chillout Sessions, Vol. 5 (2004)
Length: 3.30

Unidaze.

Whoops, forgot to plug the new Mikey Mixtape.

Listening to:
Title: One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
Artist: Ben Folds Five
Album/station: Whatever & Ever Amen (1997)
Length: 3.54

Unboyfriendable, part deux.

So I'm trying to collect my thoughts here. I'm not doing too well, though. You know, it could be that the modern lifestyle has left me without effective critical thinking skills, so the process of thought collection could just be futile. Bah! Excuses, excuses.

I could just rattle off some clichéd relationship babble. I could say that he wasn't right for me. I could say that we wanted different things. I could say there were irreconcilable differences. I could also say that my heart just wasn't in it and it'd all be true to varying degrees. Of course, to preserve both my dignity and his, I won't go into too much detail and leave it unsatisfyingly vague.

When faced with a pseudo-ultimatum of stepping down to a casual, open relationship or up to an intense serious one, I chose neither. Don't ask my why, I just didn't like either option. Honestly, I didn't see the harm in continuing as we were. Ah well.


Listening to:
Title: Days Go By [bonus acoustic]
Artist: Dirty Vegas
Album/station: Dirty Vegas (2002)
Length: 2.43

Packed train.

I never thought the train could get as crowded as it was this morning. Apparently something effed up at Epping so the commuters at the next station, Eastwood, got onto my all stops train instead of their normal express city service. By the time we pulled into Burwood, people actually fell out when the doors opened. But Burwoodians nonetheless still tried to get on! There's another fucking train in five minutes, can't you wait? It boggles the mind.

Unfortunately, the private school boy from a couple of mornings ago wasn't on board. See, the other morning, my carriage was pretty packed; at the time, I didn't think you could possibly fit any more people in but this morning proved me wrong. An influx of people at a busy junction station pushed me up against this tall, blonde senior private school boy that I was standing near. And he smelled good. He looked down at me and smiled. I apologised. He was so cute that I wanted to cry.


Listening to:
Title: Leaving Home
Artist: Jebediah
Album/station: Slightly Odway (1997)
Length: 3.03

Unboyfriendable.

I think I'll hijack Gayety's boy advisory warning system and adopt this term to describe my current state. I said I would after Darren and well-- lets see if I can stick to it this time.

So yes, I'm not seeing the boyf N!xau in that capacity anymore. Believe me, it's not a crock when I say it's because it wasn't working, because it really wasn't. Ahh well, such is dating.

Possibly an in-depth blog entry later.


Listening to:
Title: Nuclear
Artist: Ryan Adams
Album/station: Smallville OST (2003)
Length: 3.24

I broke something... again.

So in physics lab today, I blew up an operational amplifier. The lab manual said to switch the leads around, and I so did. Unfortunately they were the wrong leads. I turned the function generator on without realising what I'd done and I heard something snap and smelled smoke and burning plastic. I looked at my partner and asked if he heard and smelled it too. Then I notice what I've done. I switched everything off and noticed this chunk missing from this little black intergrated circuit.

I tend to break things in labs. Today was the first physics incident but it follows on from a few in chemistry. Earlier this year, a flame photometer decided to catch fire after I'd used it. Last year I broke a pipette and a pipette filler and knocked a volumetric flask off a bench.

I've noticed that after I break something, no one is ever angry. Mostly, they pat me on the back and tell me what a good effort I must've put in to destroy a piece of lab equipment - with no hint of sarcasm. I love uni people.


Listening to:
Title: Black Cherry
Artist: Groove Armada
Album/station: Ministry of Sound: Chillout Session, Vol. 2 (2002)
Length: 4.34

Pictureless.

While Modblog is having another bout of chronic downtime, there won't be any images on In Another Life et cetera. So sorry kids, no pics of hot Chris Hemsworth or sexy Sam Crosby.

Don't worry, it's only temporary... apparently.


Listening to:
Title: When You Come [live]
Artist: Crowded House
Album/station: Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House (1996)
Length: 7.26

The cripple.

The cripple came back to uni today. Simon hobbled into our vector calculus lecture-- okay, well he didn't exactly hobble - it's just his right hand that's stuffed and has the screws in it. He's left handed anyway (we've dubbed him the Loveable Lord Lefty III). So despite being able to do normal things like write and eat, he still seemed to me as helpless as a kitten. Aww.


Listening to:
Title: There There. (The Boney King of Nowhere.)
Artist: Radiohead
Album/station: Hail to the Thief (2003)
Length: 5.23

The Logies.

Terrible. In my household tonight, we're watching the Logies Awards and all my dad is doing is comment on tits. The worst remark was about Nikki Webster. Shudders. Dirty, dirty old man.

And the gorgeous Chris Hemsworth of Home and Away won the Logie for best new actor. Mmm. Can I bear his children? Please?

Listening to:
Title: Tonight, Tonight
Artist: The Smashing Pumkins
Album/station: Rotten Apples (2001)
Length: 4.15

Small world.

So I was sitting on the platform at Quaker's Hill railway station, waiting for the train - as one does on a station platform. It being Sunday, I was on my way back to Dad's place from Mum's where I'd stayed for the weekend. And as I do when I'm waiting for the train, I'm staring up at the sky when some tall familiar looking boy, who ends up being the ex-boyff Darren, comes and stands by me saying hi - and he scares the shit out of me in the process.

Of all people, he was the person I was least expecting to see. But apparently he used to live out there (right nearby to my Mum's house, actually - it's a wonder that I hadn't met him before) and he was visiting some mates from school.

So we sat on the train together and had a good ol' chat while observing the mulleted ones and a group of unkempt elderly folk toting and drinking cask wine. While the trip was a little awkward, it was great to see him again. I'm still not sure where I sit with regards to how I feel about him though. I mean, I don't hate him and I have no reason to dislike him. Obviously we're not together anymore but feelings linger nonetheless.


Listening to:
Title: Lonely Day
Artist: Phantom Planet
Album/station: Smallville OST (2003)
Length: 3.44

One hundred and sixty-nine centimetres.

I hate my size - all five feet and seven inches of me. Not because I have self-image problems or anything, but because well fitting clothes are impossible to find.

Yesterday, like most other Saturdays in this increasingly consumerist world, I went clothes shopping. Yesterday, however, I came home empty handed. Not one thing in my size anywhere. Extra smalls are a rare find and a lot of the time, smalls just seem to hang off me. It could be that the Howardesque 'aspirational' urges within me weren't satisfied - heaven forbid, I came home without spending a single cent - but nonetheless I'm feeling quite dejected by the whole experience.

And the shitty thing is that I can't do anything about it. I mean, it's not like I can go on a diet to get taller. I suppose I could work out to fill those shirts out better. But I don't have the time nor the money and it all seems awfully vain of me anyway.


Listening to:
Title: Wish You Were Here
Artist: Wyclef Jean
Album/station: The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book (2000)
Length: 4.06