Archive for July, 2008

The Countdown

July 28, 2008

As my 18th birthday nears I have inevitably started to compile a mental list of all the things I will soon be “allowed” to do, with the help of friends and family. I had actually forgotten that some of these things, like drinking and smoking, were legally restricted, which just goes to show how futile said restrictions are in real society. Anyway, this is what I’ve got so far:

1. Getting my driver’s license

2. Drinking alcohol, pub crawling and other related booze-fuelled activities

3. Going to overage clubs and concerts

4. Smoking

5. Getting a tattoo (or five)

6. Voting in federal elections

7. Joining the army

8. Administering my own finances

9. Signing my own excursion forms and other legal documents

10. Generally countering all overprotective advice with “As a legal adult I can make my own decisions now, and if I were living in Ancient Rome I would’ve already been that for two whole years, so [insert arrogant parting comment here]“.

Now, those are the possibilities, but what will be the actualities? Well, as horrified as my parents would be if I turned up to my November exams sloshed (therefore making it an appealing prospect) and at the danger of sounding wowserish, I don’t plan to drink any alcohol at my birthday, or before my exams, or, like, ever. Don’t like the stuff. It smells bad, it wrecks your insides, and from experience I get high enough off orange juice without having to consume stronger poison. Case closed.

As for driving: with a tram, bus and train stop all within easy waking distance of my front door, I really don’t see the need to learn to drive or get a car. This may change in future, but I hope not. Nothing against being chauffeured around to interesting places, though ;)

Smoking is also a no-go. I’m already addicted to cheese, so let’s take one self-destructive habit at a time, shall we? The same goes for tattoos at the moment. Why use ink when there’s henna? (something to do with permanency, I know). 

And then there’s the thoroughly unlikely prospect of me enlisting myself for the armed forces. The truth is I can’t even walk up Westbourne Grove without keeling over and gasping for breath, so marching around and learning a lot of shouty, repetitive phrases and getting deployed in the middle of artillery fire is a not a high priority on my to do list. 

As for numbers 3, 6, 8, 9 and 10 — I’m looking forward to it. And as half of the US isn’t going to bother voting in their Presidential election this year, we US citizenship-holding Australians might as well pick up some of the slack. I’ve already downloaded my election ballot, and on November 4 this year, I will finally have an excuse to wear those US flag earrings I bought in Taiwan. Go figure.

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Posted in IMO, Life in General, School/Uni | 9 Comments »

Secrets of the Inner Sanctum

July 18, 2008

Having attended a whopping total of two school in my life, I’m probably not best placed to discuss the varying nature of staff rooms in different schools. All I remember is that at my primary school the teachers’ communal area was practically sacred ground, where on the rare occasion students were allowed within the room, they would remain tremblingly silent and walk on tiptoe for fear of being rounded on by a teacher and exiled to the cold, yellow corridor outside.

It’s a completely different story at my high school, where there are close to a dozen different staff rooms, and (except perhaps for the Principal’s office), students generally have no hang ups about knocking (or not) and entering to generally pester or be pestered by teachers. As my mother, the human ATM and Excursion Note Signing Automaton, is a new resident in one of said staff rooms, I have had frequent occasion to go and visit her, and in the process have had all my prior beliefs in the existence of her scholarly and mature behaviour, and that of her colleagues, dashed upon the staff room’s table — for it was on that surface that I first laid eyes upon their hideous creation, their mascot: The Anthropomorphic Lemon.

Although I have yet to identify any rituals the teachers perform in honour of their deity, I live in fear of what will happen when its inevitable rotting begins, and in what manner they will vent their report-writing angst next. Caveat Citrum.

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The Glass and Tubing Between Us

July 12, 2008

One of the upsides of TV-watching from the safe confines of your couch is that you can abuse people to your heart’s content and emerge outside no less kind and compassionate in the eyes of others, despite that comment you made about that celebrity’s nose and the likelihood of it being able to open an oyster. My mother, for example, is a devotee of quality current affairs and international relations programs, and for a long time I was convinced that deep set concentration in her eyes stemmed from a real interest in and thirst for knowledge — that was until she made one too many “doesn’t that newsreader realise that tie is two seasons old? I haven’t seen a tie that skinny since the 70s!” comments, and I began to suspect otherwise. 

Objects of her TV ire extend past unfashionable newsreaders, however, and into the domain of the incomprehensible: anyone who knows anything about radio and Spicks & Specks star Myf Warhurst would say she is clearly one of the loveliest and most good natured women in the Australian entertainment industry, or indeed, Australia itself.

But not Mum. Mum has decided that Myf is egregiously bubbly and god-knows-what-else, freezing at the very sight of her and muttering things that don’t bare repeating on such a tame blog. Lately though, she has made an admirable attempt to “reform” her Myf-bashing ways, and now when seeing music’s golden girl on the idiot box she says nothing, just tenses up and sets her jaw. Now I won’t pretend that I’m scot free of my own irrepressible disdain for certain TV mainstays (such as Peter Cundall and Phil Harding, which makes me look like I have something against old guys with funny accents and a passion for horticulture and archaeology, respectively), but this post isn’t about my foibles, is it?

For you see, Mum’s deviance of judgement does not end there — it works the other way too. Although she has also apparently “reformed” on this particular character, she once had a short-lived but no less disturbing obsession with Argentine tennis play David Nalbandian.

I mean, look at him! He has zombie eyes! And he totally contradicts all her previous nose insults! Maybe if he had a lovely on-court nature, the same kind of gentlemanliness as Roger Federer, or the strangely hot demons that make Marat Safin pound his hapless tennis racquets into the grass/clay/plexicushion, but no. Nalbandian is a good player, but that makes him no more remarkable than any other pro player, and certainly no less creepy.

A person on whom Mum has yet to reform so far is Lehrer NewsHour anchor Jeffrey Brown.

 

From what I have been able to make out from her somewhat unfathomable rationale for this attraction, it is that he reminds her of the New English Boston-Symphony Orchestra-attending Toryness of her lost youth(?) I’m not really sure. All I know is he isn’t as bad as David Nalbandian, though I wouldn’t exactly run out to put Jeffrey in a sweatband and short shorts either. Oh well. Maybe it’s his fish eyes. Maybe it’s because he has more than half a brain cell, and often reports for the artsy poet segments of the NewsHour. Maybe it’s his groovy, In Fashion ties. Maybe we will never know.

I’m just glad there’s a whole lot of glass, tubing and sometimes continents between Mum and the people who appear on our TV.

N.B. [None of these images are mine --open them in a new window to find their original source]

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The Miraculous Sleep In

July 10, 2008

There are few things in the world, as far as I’m concerned, that equal the bliss attained from automatically waking up at a certain time, only to find you’re on holiday and obliged to immediately fall back asleep again (that and going overseas — not for the tourist attractions, climate, people, culture or food, but for the incredibly long showers you can have without worrying about Water Restrictions Level 3a and drought-stricken farmers and their drought-stricken cows and goats who are required for lots of superlative cheeses to magically appear on my dinner plate).

That being said, this set of school holidays I have tried to keep my sleeping pattern relatively even and have so far resisted the urge to stay up to 4am watching incomprehensible late night TV, reading (laughing at) 1990s Mills & Boon romances, and generally filling my brain with useless information about Taiwanese celebrities that will no doubt evict all the painstaking National Politics memorisation I have done since February. I can see my November Final Year Exam now:

Q: Discuss two factors that can limit the federal government’s power to make domestic policy.

A: I was actually in Taipei when Barbie Hsu and Zaizai broke up; I remember seeing it on the LCD screens at this weird little foodcourt called New York New York, eating bad chips with some kind of sauce on them. But yeah,  was really upset because I though Barbie and Zaizai were a really cute couple, and I loved their acting in ‘Mars’, especially when Zaizai had his shirt off, though all the psychotic episodes his character kept having were kind of creepy. And that stalker guy, I mean, they would SO not have just let him out of that mental institution just because he said he was sorry for trying to kill all those people. How dumb can you be!?

Marks awarded: 0

So yes, not good. Instead, to maintain my admirable bed time of 10.30 and fall asleep within the next half hour, I shall:

1. Go for long walks into the city which may or may not end up in shopping sprees

2. Take a valerian tablet

3. Read a chapter of Sense & Sensibility

Works every time.

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Posted in Food, IMO, Life in General, School/Uni | 1 Comment »

Operation Sesame Ball

July 1, 2008

Progress Log:

06:34, Location: Opsomania HQ (house)

Alarm failed to got off, must mark for repair or battery change. Not sure which. But I am now precisely 34 minutes behind time and therefore must make certain sacrifices, i.e. not brushing teeth, not eating breakfast. 

06:45, Location: Opsomania HQ Control Room (bathroom)

Damnit, cannot not brush teeth, as non-minty breath shall severely compromise my tactical abilities. Thankfully I prepared my disguise yesterday in a blaze of foresight. I believe it embodies the seriousness of the mission at hand, while also taking into consideration the weather. I have observed lately that sunglasses add an extra dimension of inconspicuousness, and thusly have donned a pair unearthed from a sunglasses case deep within HQ’s Storage.

 

07:41, In Transit

A grevious miscalculation on my part was forgetting that I am unlicensed to drive motorised vehicles. Plan B consisted of taking a bicycle from HQ’s docking bay, but the poor state of its tyres made another mode of transportation more practicable, perhaps necessary. Thus I find myself aboard the 112 Tram bound for St Kilda, though little do any of these zombie commuters realise this is not my true destination. Sometimes my craftiness astonishes even me.

(more…)

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