I bet she doesn't know my name. Hypocrite.

The irony is, of course, squillions of people know her name. And know it very well. Due in no little part to this song.

One of the greatest songs of all time. Or something like that. And of course, Kanye West production.

I like the video as well. It's very dreamy and sweet, I think. And a little bit old school, which always gets me.

I was going to scrawl a bit about the weekend and all that, but I'm not going to do it now, because it's still officially the weekend, and I'm feeling a tad sleepy and not on the ball. The second reason's probably more applicable. I do like to be on the ball when I'm writing.

Have a good one.

Word of the Day: Scrawl

Midsem brake

At long last, we're here. Midsem break. A chance to take it slightly slower for a day or two.

And listen to good music!

Watching Nirvana at the cinemas tonight. Still don't know what time it is, but I'm sure we'll get there.

Word of the Day: Brake

I wonder if lemons conduct electricity

When life gives me lemons...I play semi-nonsensical Oasis songs.

Today wasn't actually all that bad. Actually, it would've been positively good but for a few things that kind of tainted its goodness. That's the nature of things I guess. Only takes a little bit of badness to do a lot of damage to the goodness. 

Lots of people today just seemed to be in Annoy Andrew mode. Some people couldn't help it, I guess. You could say it's their default setting. In chronological order:

1. The student group politics/propaganda/whatever they are. Technically not just today, but whatever. They are absolutely the worst. Everywhere I go, I just get mobbed. Finally voted for them today. Irene had a genuinely brilliant idea to go vote and get 'I voted' stickers. It gave me an unprecedented amount of immunity. Some idiots still pestered me, but I showed them a thing or two. These guys are intrinsically annoying as anything.
2. The guys in my International Studies tute that kept saying nukular. As in nuclear. It was so bad, it even sort of infected my tutor. For these people, default setting. 
3. I think that's about it really.

And I realise how complainy my posts have been lately, so just to show you I'm not such a complainy person, good things did happen today. 

1. Irene bought me a mocha for about the 535083920th time. Made me unreasonably happy. I gotta get her a coffee or something one of these days. 
2. Got ambushed by James Cheng. Was pretty funny. Mainly because it was the worst ambush ever.
3. Sort-of-accidentally ran into Banh at the Campus Centre flogging tickets and got free Skittles. Most of the joy was from accidentally-sort-of running into him, but Skittles are good too. 

That's about it really. So most of the badness was really all in one of the annoying events. The other two were quite trivial, and one of them was actually semi-amusing. I'll let you sort out which. Until next time, go find your very own electric girlfriend. 

Word of the Day: Badness 

Masterdream

I had the strangest dream just then. Let's go through it.

So I was in Metung. For some reason, Banh turned up. He was waiting for his family to turn up. I was with my family. We were talking about fish or something. I think he was there to give me something, or something like that. He was going to leave, being all like "I can wait by myself if you want, I'll leave you guys along," being all mopey and suchlike.

So my dad, being the nice guy he is, says, "Nah, you can stay with us for a couple of hours." Naturally, Banh is delighted at this.

Fast forward a couple of hours.

We're on Masterchef. I don't know how that happened. Somehow, we got transported to Masterchef Metung.

I was stuck on a team with an Asian girl and some other dude that I can't remember now. I don't think I ever knew who they were. My other friends were there competing against me. James Cheng and Banh were definitely there.

So anyway, we kept losing, but none of the people there actually cooked anything at all. I just know that after every round (each round involved us sitting there for 10 seconds), the judges would give us ridiculously low scores. Like, 52% for me, and a few 40s for me other team mates. I knew that they were biased and out to get me. I mean, how is it even possible to get that low in cooking-but-not-actually? In the end, my whole team got put up for elimination. Then the girl in our team was punished with watching me and the other guy having to have a cook-off.

I was incensed. I had outscored both of them, but the girl got immunity (somehow I knew that that was immunity).

We went outside, and shook hands to say bye to everybody. Meng had suddenly appeared as a contestant, so I was shaking hands with him. Zara had just turned up as well, so we chatted for a bit. I think she wished me luck as well. I think she was the only one that knew I was up for the elimination challenge, such that it was. None of my friends who were actually there knew, but Zara did. Typical. I knew they didn't know, because they were all surprised when I told them, or my mystery friend behind me told them the reason for why I kept telling people I was nervous. "He's in the elimination challenge!!!" So, well done Zara.

I can't remember whether I kept saying I was nervous to just one person, or everyone. Whatever. Point is, I was nervous. "I don't know how to cook anything," I kept saying. Which, now that I think about it, is not true. But since when have dreams made sense? I just know that I kept thinking of what I was going to make for entree, and thinking that all I knew how to cook was tofu. Nice tofu, but tofu will only get you so far in Masterchef Metung.

It was at this point I woke up. I think it's because it just became way too unrealistic. I mean, me, not being able to cook? That probably created a hole in the space-time continuum of the dream. The other parts were zany, but that last part was just the proverbial straw the broke the proverbial camel's back.

Actually, it might just've been the alarm waking me up. I hate it when it does that. I was looking forward to the cook-off too, pitting my skills against an unknown foe, and ultimately overcoming biased judges. Maybe next time I'm in Metung.

Word of the Day: Continuum

But it's provocative!

Been playing this with alarming frequency in my car for the past two weeks or so. Very catchy beat and pseudo-hookline. Oh, and Jay-Z and Kanye. On the same track. And random guy in the middle of the song.

I'm liable to go Michael, take your pick, Jackson, Tyson, Jordan

Awesome line.

In other news, my Week from Hell is going pretty badly. Stuff is turning out to be harder than I anticipated. The midsem test for Corp Fi was ok. Pretty sure I screwed up the last question hard, but did alright overall hopefully.

Time to soldier on. Or perhaps sleep. Sleep seems quite appealing right about now.

Word of the Day: Pseudo

It's been a while

A little bit less than 10 years ago, I stood in my backyard, with a newspaper in my hands. I stared at the front page for probably a full three minutes before taking inside and showing my parents.

Looking back, I'm actually quite astounded at how I knew, or at least felt, that the bombing of the World Trade Centre, what was to become known as the September 11 attacks, was going to have a massive effect.

It has. In so many ways. Economically. Culturally. Politically. Spiritually, even.

I can't say I felt sad right then. That would be a lie. Probably because I'm not American, and those weren't my people. I do feel really sorry for those that died, as well as their families. Having said that, I also feel sorry for people that die in war, and their families.

I can only imagine what I would be like if something like that happened in Melbourne (touchwood that it never does). I would be angry. Even if nobody I knew was affected, I'd still be angry beyond belief.

That's what sucks about terrorist attacks. And, I guess, any kind of attack. I'd be angry because I, and 99.99% of the people in Australia, have no beef with any country, or any race. We're just trying to mind our own business, and do things. The same goes for the guys living in Iraq, or in Afghanistan. Most of them are just trying to take care of their families.

They want enough rice. They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want. 

- Graham Greene, The Quiet American

While the novel is about the American invasion of Vietnam, I find it interesting, and poignant, that the same could be said for the people on the other side of the proverbial fence. Except maybe substitute 'rice' with just 'food'.  

So, in summary, I think war just sucks. In so many ways. No matter which side you're on.

On a slight tangent, this also made me realise how much times have changed. I would've been in about Year 7 then, and I don't think I'd even contemplated the existence of online news. Probably not disimilar to most of the citizens of the world at the time. Now that's my primary source of news. Truly amazing, when you think about it. The leaps and bounds that we can make in 10 years. 

Rest in peace, victims of war. 

Word of the Day: September

Adam Le Awesome

Ah, the sweet strains of Adam Levine's voice. Makes any song good.

I should really not be on here. I just found out that my week from hell is a lot worse than I first thought it was.

Why do things almost always work out that way? I'd like for something, just once in a while, to be easier than I originally thought it would be.

Word of the Day: Strains

Freaky coincidence again?

Ok, I swear I had no idea it was Freddie Mercury's birthday today until I Youtubed 'Don't Stop Me Now' last night, and then only after I looked at it again after chucking it on my blog. Weird thing is, it wasn't even a random compulsion that drove me to Youtube the song. On my laptop, my screensaver pops up with all the album covers of the music that I have in iTunes.

Really cool.

Anyway, they made it stupid with the new operating system, so that when you move your mouse, the screensaver doesn't go away. No. It does much more than that.

It lets you click the album, and it plays!

Pretty cool, except for the fact that you can't get rid of the screensaver by moving your mouse.

But I digress. What happened was that I accidentally clicked on the album, 'Jazz', by Queen. And the only song I have from that album is, of course, 'Don't Stop Me Now'. And at the time, I thought, huh, crazy coincidence, good motivating song for the upcoming week from hell.

But this, this is some next-level crazy coincidence. Lots of weird coincidences happened back in my high school days - we'd talk about something random and obscure in class, and the next day it'd be in the mX - but this just takes the cake.

Anyway, I guess all that's left is to wish Freddie Mercury happy birthday. Happy birthday, Freddie Mercury.

Word of the Day: Mercury

PS: Check out the Google banner. It's fantastic.

I'm having a ball

Another week from hell coming right up. Bring it on, I say. Bring it!



Word of the Day: Queen

Feel like Chris Browning someone right about now

So I had a semi-bad day that doesn't have much prospect of getting better.

I was going to take it out of Chris Brown, he of the gold-Rolex-throwing fame, but decided against it, because that's already been done and dusted. The fact that he attempted to throw a Rolex that costs as much as my car 'to safety' because it was starting to come loose speaks volumes about him anyway.

Isn't he just the coolest guy evarrrr?!

Back to the topic at hand.

Today was semi-bad mostly because the seminar that I, and, to a certain extent, Danny, had been planning for the better part of the last three months ended up with three people attending. Three. Out of 21 people that had said they were attending on Facebook.

Yeah, I know it's Facebook. I understand that you should probably expect half the people listed as 'Attending' to actually attend. I just don't understand the people that had class, and said they were attending. I mean, clearly they had no intention to do so. Why they felt compelled to put themselves down as attending I'll never know. Many lessons learnt, and all that.

What sucked the most was that it was actually quite a good gig. Like, I was actually interested. It was a lot better than I originally expected it to be.

Oh well. It matters little now. I just would've liked for something that I put a bit of effort to come off.

On a (very) bright note, Arsenal signed a bazillion people last night! Almost literally. Probably most excited about Arteta, and most satisfied with Mertesacker. Hasn't quite sunk in yet. Not that I'm THAT happy about it, it's just hard to envision them in the jersey. Something to look forward to I guess.

Also, I finally got my copy of the deluxe edition of Watch the Throne. Incidentally, the first CD I've bought in almost a decade. Amazing record, just for the fact that Jay-Z and Kanye are up on it. More on that later.

Word of the Day: Rolex