THESES!

I somehow managed to hand in my thesis on time, and not be a loser. That is to say, I handed it in on Monday.

What a relief, more than anything. I'm just glad I'm done with it, and I somehow managed to get it down to a respectable word count of 19, 032.

So, a question that I naturally get asked by people is: what are you doing now that you have so much free time.

Well, on the night after handing the aforementioned document in, I went drinking with white people, being my Honours friends. It's not something I do very often, but it's fun in small doses. The funnest part is watching how people behave when they've had a bit to drink.

The not so fun part is having to contend with creepers that are out at 2 a.m. on a Monday night.

Next morning, after having slept about 3 and a half hours, we watched Cool Runnings at my friend Nonie's house (as you do). We then left for Brighton Beach, which was conveniently located a stone's throw away from Nonie's house.

Once there, we tanned, and Anna and I started ruminating about the future, life, the Holocaust, and humanity. (Yeah, Arts kids fo real, man.)

A good night, and an excellent morning. I've grown quite fond of a few of these Honours types, and I hope I keep in touch with them.

Afterwards, on the way home, I rear-ended a car. He ended up with a few scratches, while I was left with a towbar-shaped hole in my front.

I have no idea how it happened. I must've taken my eyes off the road at the vital moment, and he braked suddenly or something. It was pretty much at snail's pace.

Amazingly, he decided he didn't want to claim insurance for it, despite his initial rage. So I guess I'll just live with the towbar-shaped hole in the front of my car.

Oh, during all this time, my mum got sick, and the neighbour managed to run their car through our fence because they forgot to put the handbrake on.

Yesterday, my grandmother got hospitalised, so I've been in and out at couple of times visiting her, and picking up a little bit of the slack that mum leaves when she visits her.

And next week, it's my turn. My knee is undergoing surgery, which puts me out of action for the Coldplay gig and the annual roadtrip with my mates. Both frustrating. Extremely so, in the case of Coldplay. I hope I get a couple of visitors when I'm maimed. 9th of November. Mark it in your diaries, start visiting me from that date onwards. Please.

Today, I got a haircut, went to uni, ran into Meng, and gave my supervisor a bottle of the red wine in gratitude. Not a bad bottle either. For some reason, we always get into this philosophical discussions when we sit down together. Top supervisor, that Natalie Doyle.

So yeah. Despite being all done with uni, I've been fairly flat out doing this and that. Some of it good, some not so much.

Tomorrow, I'm off to buy stuff. Wish me luck.

Word of the Day: Theses

 

Work and stuff

So yeah, work.

It's been pretty fun, actually. My team's really fun to work with, and the other vaccies are pretty cool as well. I've been working at the Hyatt for the last week, which has been pretty awesome. My buddy Daniel's been spotting tennis stars all over the joint, but none for me so far.

The only thing that's stressing me out a bit is the study that I have to do up until Friday, but other than that, it's all cool.

Something exciting happened! The rear end of my car got swiped off by an 87-year-old driver while my mum was driving it. First weekend I've had free for a bazillion weeks, and my car is out of action.

Typical.

Thankfully, nobody was hurt, including Michelle, who was in the car at the time.

It also made me marvel at the genius of Toyota engineering. The back of the car just came off at the joints, resulting in less damage to the car body as a whole, and less impact to the driver. It's also pretty easy to repair. Essentially, you just pop the rear back on, and away you go.

But yeah, kind of sucks.

Two more nights of study to go!

Word of the Day: Engineering

Le Horse

Apologies for last night. Andrew was in quite a bad mood. Bad mood real life Andrew = bad mood blogging Andrew. Yes, I do occasionally feel emotion. There's your revelation for the day.

Today, my mother won 500-odd dollars on the Cup. She boxed three correct horses and put 10 buck on them. For those of you that don't understand horsing parlance (don't worry, I only re-learned it today), it's like a trifecta, but the horsies can come in any order. If that's still confusing, you should probably stick with your chosen profession, and not take up horse-race-betting as a career any time soon, and just be happy in the knowledge that my mother won bucketloads (relatively).

She's quite lucky on Cup Day. She never gambles apart from then. She won 90 bucks at the slot machines last Cup Day, and she only put in about 10 bucks as well.

As for me, I won approximately 10 bucks or something. As in, I put in 45, and got back about 10 dollars. And that was already well done by me. Stupid So You Think decided to be a dud, so I only won minimal amounts. My mother couldn't even be bothered counting. She just threw me fifty. Cheers.

I knew I should've put money on the French horse.

I'll leave you with the song that I'm currently listening to. A Hawaiian masterpiece.

Oh, and this one. Sort of French-ish, which kind of relates to the horse. His name is Americain, by the way.

Very soothing music all around.

Word of the Day: Boxed

Seven times three times a million

Hmm. That downing (it's like a combination between turning and down) point seems to be creeping up on me again. All the good stuff that's happened at the start of this week seems to be slowly evaporating. Like the last of the winter snow disappearing on the first day of spring sunshine. Except not in that kind of positive way. How apt that winter is ending soon.

Anyhow. My expected two interviews has now turned into a definite one. Which is a bit of a downer, as I thought that my 82% on the aptitude test was pretty good. Meng got 88, and he got a call, but I didn't. 82%. That means that, statistically, I am better than 82% of the people working in accounting and finance at analysing stuff and whatnot. And it still does not seem to be good enough. Still, I'm holding out hope that they'll give me a call on Monday.

Also, I have a lot of work due, I want to buy stuff but I've been forbidden from spending too much money, and I have a lot of twenty-firsts that I want to go to, but I can't because I'm a failure, so I'm going to have to pick a few. So here's the list:

1. James. Fo sho. It's been on my radar for a while, and he's in my top five friends. And I'm making a speech. Look out for it. (Also, the dinner should be really nice. Not that that influences my decision or anything).

2. Eugene's. Probably just going to go for an hour or so, due to my massive workload.

3. Rui's. This one, I actually want to go to (not that I don't want to go to the others), but it's quite a bit of money, and I have a vendetta against China Bar. But it's not so much those two reasons as me having a mountain of work to do.

4. Timothy's. Probably not. I don't really know him that well, and yeah. Work.

5. Ben Niles. Most likely, but still in the process of working out the logistics.

6. Linda's. Probably not. I'm fairly sure she doesn't want to talk to me anymore, and she's inviting me just to humour me. We haven't talked for about...I don't even know how long now. It's kind of sad. You know, you're getting along with someone, and, for some reason or another, it just dies.

And I think that's just about all of the one's on my list right now. I'm expecting at least about five more in the near future. I love how August/September/October always try and bankrupt me. Well, it won't work this time. I'm making money from different revenue streams. Except I still have to get a Father's Day present. And birthday presents for my parents. And presents for my imaginary girlfriend.

I seriously don't know how people with more friends than me (and I think that's just about everybody, especially with respect to Facebook friends) would cope in my situation. Probably just not go to any.

My birthday's awesome. It's during the holidays. See, that's how good a friend I am.

Word of the Day: Twenty-firsts

I found a pro

What an action-packed weekend this has been. Best one I've had in a while too.

Friday
It all started with the purchase of an iMac on Friday night. Why an iMac, you may ask. Well, my parents decided that my littlest sister, Michelle, needed a computer, and asked me for my professional opinion. I came to the conclusion that, since PCs for the same amount of money pretty much give you the same amount of go, we should get an iMac, just to have something different and more useful for graphic-y stuff. So we moseyed on down to the Apple Store in Shoppo (insert obligatory 'bro' here).

On the way, I almost got into a fight with an Asian in a BMW. He was in the next lane, I cut him off a bit. He had ample time to stop, but he decided to incessantly honk me anyway. My father honked him back, and he swerved at me. After he found out that I would not, unfortunately, be scared of him, he angrily drove off. Jerk. By this time, the rain was getting ridiculously hard. Hard, like Financial Accounting hard.

Anyway, we got there, and scored a bargain. We asked for a change of keyboard, and they decided to just shout us the extra keyboard. The assistant then accidentally took the price of the keyboard off, on top of the student discount. She realised in the end, and we were willing to pay up, but the manager just let it go.

All capped off with coffee from Laurent.

Never going there again, by the way. Parking is just ridiculous. All aspects of it. Every single one. I have not been to a shopping centre with a more ludicrous carpark.

Driving back was an absolute nightmare. Could not see more than two metres ahead of me. Bit like walking around without my glasses.

Saturday
On Saturday morning, the friend who I said was having relationship problems in the last post told me that she had sorted them out. Good-o. I would've liked to point out that what she did was essentially follow my advice, and, fortunately for her, everything worked out fine. Good-o. Glad that it all worked out for her. I also just noticed that I used good-o twice in the same paragraph. What kind of loser says good-o?

Saturday night was Josh's 21st birthday partay. I went for an hour and a bit, completely overdressed, and was planning to go home at around 9:30. I did leave at 9:30, but mainly because Linda had told me she was also leaving a party then, and also sort of maybe needed to go Mother's Day shopping. Longish story short, we went to Burwood K-Mart and she helped me pick out a maddogz cooking book set. Women are good at that sort of thing. We then raided Coles (women are also good at that sort of thing), and went on a run to Maccas.

Maccas was good stuff. Stayed there for an hour and a bit. Seemed a lot shorter than it actually was. With BYO yogurt too. And the final event of the night was this guy I sort of knew, because he looks like his other six siblings, two of which I used to know, asking me for two dollars, which I told him I didn't have. I'd much rather donate it to the Ronald McDonald Charity House then give money to idiot teenagers hanging around McDonald's at 12 at night. I did actually donate money to the Ronald McDonald thing, but that's another story for another time.

And yes, I have no idea why I'm always in a suit either. I think out of the three times we've gone somewhere together, two of those have featured me in a suit. She probably thinks that's what I where casually.

A classic case of the afterparty being better than the party. Not that the actual party wasn't good. Catching up with old friends and all that. But yeah. I'm sure you understand. Happy birthday Josh.

Sunday
Finally set up the iMac after reconfiguring the computer room. Oh, and I also gave mother the gift, on top of the maddogz mug that we bought from T2. She completely overvalued the books. Her rough estimate was 60 bucks. I lol'd. Her price guessing is usually a bit better than that. Better, like how I'm better at seeing with my glasses on than without them on. I think that's about it for Sunday.

I also managed to get a bit of work done this weekend too. Amazing.



I've also been quite profound this week. I think I've almost exhausted my stock of profoundness. But I've had this little nugget stored away for a while, so it doesn't really count. I've just decided that now is an appropriate time to unleash it.

I've just realised that I don't have that much in common with most of my friends. At least, not on a superficial level. Sure, we share some of the same interests, and we do a few things in common. But quite apart from that, there are a few things that make these people my friends:
1. They're there for me. They back me up, and are always willing to lend me a hand, if it's in their power to do so.
2. They make me laugh.
3. I can talk to them, and they can talk to me.
4. They have integrity, and are people with morals and principles which I also share.

I believe that the above four characteristics are the foundations for forming relationships, and that superficial things, such as common interests and tastes, just act as a good starting point. Kind of like a conversation starter, if you will. Even if the person in question listens to the music that I do, follows the same football team that I do, eats the same food I do, and laughs at the same things that I laugh at, it doesn't mean anything if they don't care about you, and aren't there for you when you need them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that having shared interests is kind of like a bonus, and the most important thing is that your principles and moral compass are compatible, and that you care about each other.

I've come to this conclusion through my own bitter experience with a person who seemed made for me, based on commonality, blah, blah, blah. And what ultimately screwed me over was the fact that she didn't care about me one jot. I guess I'd known that from the start, but hey, I do a lot of stupid things, and will likely do many more in the not-too-distant future.

I've also known for a long, long time that I don't have many friends that fit the above four points. And I guess that's what makes them so valuable, rare, and special.

Anyway, if you've made it to this point, I commend you. I really do. I can't even be bothered reading that again. Not that I normally do. But yeah. It's a bit big, isn't it? Kind of like Empire State Building big. Ok, that's enough metaphors for tonight.

Word of the Day: Profound

I'm so fly, I get jetlag

A lyric from a forthcoming Usher song. Apparently it means "I'm really cool." But "I'm so fly" is so much more eloquent and beautiful in it's pristine awesomeness.

So yeah, I haven't been disowned by my mother over my results. She took it quite well actually. She was like, well, you didn't fail, so it's not all bad. But you probably should work out a way to do better next sem, because, you know, accounting is kind of important.

I think I've found a method. The method, passed down the generations, father-to-son and all that jazz, is called prioritising i.e. not pouring my soul into International Studies and French, and actually putting some time into my Commerce subjects.

I would like to know the fail rate though. It would help me put things in perspective.

Went to Mount Dandenong for dinner just then. It's so nice up there. The waitresses, the food, the view, the service, the frigid mountain air. It's cool. Might take someone special up there, when I get a car.

Which brings me nicely to my next point. It appears that I may be getting a car sooner than expected. And sadly, not through any endeavour of my own. Apparently, my dad's thinking about getting a car now. But yeah. That might change in the next week. You can never tell. One week he's all like "No. Final." Then the next week he'll be like "Let's get a second-hand car." Then it'll be back to "No." This week, he was like "Let's get a new car." In summary, I'm not getting my hopes up too much.

Today also marks the beginning of an annual period of stupidity, which I shall now call "Andrew's Awkwardness", because it's alliterative, and...yeah. That's about it.

See, it's around this time in the year, where I realise that I've misplaced the mental Christmas wishlist that I've had stored up in my brain. I'm dead serious, next year, I will write down what I want. Right now, All I can think of is a bag. And like, I'm fairly sure that wasn't on the list until yesterday. Probably because I don't need one all that much. I would ask my parents to get me true love, but the last time I looked, there wasn't much of that on the shelves at Myer.

Word of the Day: Fly