Randomness

Firstly, let me just say this. Never trust a web-browser to remain open while you have unsaved work.

These blog updates are keeping me up late at night, which is one of the reasons why i’m experiencing sleep-deprivation lately. The other reason is the freezing cold temperatures that wake me up in the middle of the night. I’ve just turned the heating off so i have around 20 minutes or so to write, edit, review and publish this update before the temperature in this room returns to finger-numbing levels again.

So lately, or more precisely in the last 2 weeks, i’ve been hunting on the intarweb for this anime i used to watch as a kid back in the 80’s. Yes, you know the 80’s right? Does anyone out there still remember the 80’s? Probably not. It wasn’t that long ago, was it? So the anime i’m searching for is about this little blue ninja boy who leaps around on rooftops and has this side kick who dresses up in a similar green ninja suit. Together, they go through adventures around town and..well, that’s all i seem to remember. If anyone out there knows what i’m talking about, tell me that i wasn’t imagining my childhood and such an anime really did exist, cos i can’t seem find it anywhere on the net!

And while i’m on the topic of colours, why is it that the colours pink and blue are used exclusively for females and males respectively? I mean, who was it that assigned genders to these colours anyway? And why do the rest of us conform to these rules which we never agreed to in the first place? Seems a bit silly to me. I will continue to wear my pink socks with pride. Not that i want to, but only because i don’t have any other pair of clean and comfortable socks to wear right now.

Well things have improved a little and I feel better right now than I felt yesterday. I’m not as stressed as I was for one thing, and I’ve also managed to set up a few appointments with some real estate agents for tommorow, which coincidentally is my rostered day off. Funny how these things seem to fall in place, I guess if you are in the right state of mind you can see the good coming out of the bad. Yesterday’s events were a bit like a kick in the butt really, as I was stalling on when I should start hunting for a home for myself instead of continuing to let all this rent money go down the drain. So here’s to me in sucessfully finding a nice home for myself, in a reasonably short amount of time and, most importantly, within budget.

My buller club membership arrived in the mail today along with my mid-week lift pass voucher which I shall very happily redeem with great pleasure. Yay! The snow trip is only 2 weeks away now, how fast time seems to fly. I’m gonna have to start doing some serious training very soon to get myself fit again, and I was thinking of doing some jogging around the neighbourhood, but then I realised that I don’t have a decent pair of running shoes. What a cop-out! So I’m just gonna have to resort to some stretching exercises for the time being until I figure something out, footwear-wise. And if the weather permits I might even go for a bike ride up and down a few hills nearby.

I wrote myself a wishlist today during an idle moment at work. Yes, I was slightly bored, slightly unmotivated, and slightly sleep-deprieved if that’s what you were thinking. Furthermore, it was late in the afternoon which seem to be the slower hours for me at work. Why am I explaining myself to myself? So anyway, I won’t reveal what the wishlist is just yet, but i will say that it contains items of the following categories: musical instruments, sporting equipment and tech toys. I can see more categories being added to said wishlist very soon and so I will keep dreaming away. Do not wake me up! ZZZzzzz..

Yikes! I tried to keep my voice in a calm and unsurprised tone but it was straining over the phone. My Landlord called me up this afternoon and i knew by her hesitant stutter that there was something up. It turns out that they will be listing the place, which i have very comfortably lived in for almost 2 years now, on the market for sell in a few weeks time. I will need to go through the whole process of looking for a new place and moving all my stuff before settling in a totally foreign apartment again. Argh, how could this be, all my plans have gone straight down the drain. Glurg, Glurg, Glurg. Is that the sound of water going down the drain?

In other bad news, the management at Mount Buller have decided not to award me the 2 points which i am rightly entitled to for my Buller Club Membership. For those of you who don’t know, the buller club works on a points scheme for frequent skiiers/boarders which awards 1 point for each day you have a valid lift pass and 2 points if you sign up another member (the new member also gets 2 points). What are all these points for you ask? Well after accumulating 5 points you are given a free daily lift pass to use at your leisure. So anyway, the guy who signed me up was operating out of ebay and the buller management were not too impressed with what he was doing. So there is a dispute between him and the management at the moment and i’m hopeful that things are sorted out quickly whatever the outcome may be.

And finally, to top it all off, i just found out today that Tomoko has just switched jobs and so will not be able to take any leave for the the planned September trip to the snow. Boo-hoo-hoo.

I keep telling myself that it’s all alright, somehow it will all be okay.

I came across this music website earlier this year from my colleague who is into the "heavier" stuff. You can download free mp3’s on the site by relatively unknown bands, so there’s some good stuff in there waiting to be discovered. Anyway, i found this song called Ohio Is For Lovers by a band called Hawthorne Heights.

I don’t really know much about the band except that they were formed back in 2001 in Dayton, Ohio and style themselves as post-hardcore/screamo rock. Personally, i’m not really into the whole scream-your-throats-out kinda thing, but i thought the other parts that make up this song transcends its genre.

It’s not the kinda music i normally listen to and i’m way past my teen-angst years but, i think it’s worth mentioning anyway since it’s free to download and listen to. The link may not work in the future, but i know the song is freely available in many other websites right now if you know where to look. Here’s another download link if you don’t feel like registering at stereokiller.com.

Doing the laundry is not something i look forward to doing, especially when the outcome is something unexpected. I think in some places in the world, people need to take their dirty clothes to the nearest river, soak them in the water, lather with soap, and slap them against some rocks or a soap board before wringing them out and carrying their load back home.

Sounds like a lot of hard work just for some clean clothes hey? How convenient it must then be for the most of us to have our very own washing machine at home. The washing process couldn’t be made any easier in comparison. You put your clothes in, pour in the detergent, press a couple buttons and let the machine do its thing.

And so, even with all the hard work taken out of something which is rather time consuming and laborious, i can still manage to screw things up. My lovely pair of newish white socks now has a slight pink hue to them. No i do not like wearing pink socks, they just seem to come out of the washing that way, when i mix them with my red Manly beach t-shirt. Damn that red t-shirt! It always seems to be able to slip through my careful clothes sorting, as this is not the only pair of pink socks i have in my basket.

Eversince the easter break and up until recently, I’ve been playing quite alot of ps2 when I’m not doing much else. In fact, I’ve probably been playing too much of it and spending way too much time infront of the idiot box when i should be doing other things.

It all began with GTA: San Andreas, this game takes considerably longer to finish when compared to the other ps2 games I normally play. Then there was Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, but this wasn’t so bad as it took only under 20 hours to complete. And I didn’t mind playing it as much, cos fans of the MGS series would be familiar with the excellent storylines that go behind them, kinda like watching a 20 hour movie. And finally, there is The Sims: Bustin’ Out. I started playing this last year, and I’m still only 2/3rds the way through completing all the missions, need I say anymore?

So anyway, whilst I was occupying my time with stealing fast cars, taking out baddies, and making new friends (all in ps2 land, of course), I was neglecting some other activities, namely playing my guitar. It’s just been sitting there in the corner and in it’s bag, with the strings slowly going out of tune.

Now that I think of it, I haven’t as much as plucked a single one of its strings since Alex left his Maton acoustic guitar with me over the summer break. I’ve just been playing his maton instead, cos it’s so much easier to play with the low action bridge and the steel string sound is brilliant. And so, since Alex got his maton back a few weeks ago, I’ve been left with my old classical nylon string guitar once more (which was sitting in the corner and slowly going out of tune remember). Oh and just going off the topic for a moment, thank you Alex for letting me mind and play your precious "baby" while you were away. So yeah, I guess I should get back into it and build up those fingertip calluses once more, as soon as I finish The Sims of course!

Hands up those of you who have eaten left over pasta or pizza from the night before? Left over hamburgers, anybody? I’m sure more than one of you have done this at least once in the past. Then can someone please tell me why it seems to taste so much better the next day? It’s a mystery to me. I’ve pondered over this puzzle for many years now, whilst munching on some overnight tasties. And i’ve arrived to only one conclusion. Foods containing cheese and/or tomato taste better the next day. Leave them in the fridge for a day then zap them, and your food tasting experience will be enhanced by at least 15%, give or take (varies from foods to foods). This is not always true though, but i do wonder what other foods this rule does applies to, and whether or not they are related in any way.

Man, i need to learn to relax, sometimes. I just can’t seem to relax unless everything around me is neat and tidy. I’m a freak for neatness, and it’s challenging when you don’t live on your own. My self-diagnosis tells me that I’m bordering obsessive-compulsive, and this applies to many other facets in my life. I need things to be organised and planned in advance, and then i start to worry. I’m a worrier. I check, and double-check, then triple-check that doors are locked, appliances are switched off, the gas stove is off, things are in place, you get the drift. How and when did I develop this habit? Is it fixable? Can I unprogram myself out of it?

Poke Her! Who? Poker! Ohhhh poker, gotcha! Man, i totally suck at texas hold ‘em poker, or maybe i’m just very unlucky. Either way, it’s not such a bad thing to lose at gambling. That way, you do not reinforce behaviour that could potentially be problematic. But it was exciting, even if i didn’t win a single hand all night. Who would have thought losing money could be so much fun. Yeah right.

So i found out a couple days ago in a forum that Buller reports its snowbase quite conservatively compared with the other resorts. So, even if the snow levels reported at Buller are lower then Hotham or Falls, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there was less snowfall there. That explains the reported 18cm of snowbase at Buller at the moment, when in actual fact much more snow has fallen there over the last couple days.

Hooray for me! I won my first ebay auction last night, very exciting stuff bidding is. Nothing special, just a snowboard bag to keep all my gear in. The very cool thing with this bag is that it has 2 external straps which can be used to carry the board as a backpack. Hopefully it all goes smooth with the pickup tommorow. I don’t want a repeat of what happened last time, which i shall try to forget as much as possible.

Right, i feel abosolute buggered now, all that standing around and staring at roulette wheels has put a toll on my feet. I suspect that there will be more standing around at Samsons party tommorow night. Nite.

People you may feel nervous about reading your blog:
1) Your Housemate
2) Your family Members
3) Your distant Friends
4) Your secret Admiree
5) Your potential Employers
6) Your former Girlfriend
7) Your former Colleagues Your current Colleagues
9) Your current Girlfriend
10) Your Therapist

People you may feel totally comfortable with reading your blog:
1) Strangers

The point being made here is that you should feel totally at ease with the messages which you convey to the world. This is especially true when you use the blogging method to express yourself. Much like the body language which you give out when you communicate with people, your blog is just another medium for the transfer of information of yourself on to others.

The only problem here is that the non-verbal ques that you naturally give out during social interactions is not easily available through the intarweb, as yet. What i’m talking about here are things like the tone of your voice, the expression of your face, or the subliminal posture of your body. But for many people, this is an advantage and is what draws people to blogging. It is exactly for those reasons that people choose to type things down, read it, review it, think over it and edit it, before letting it be known to the outside world. Can you imagine how fantastic it would be if you could do this in your every day real life situations. Just think for a moment, if you could go back in time and undo those stupid comments you made to people or those awkward moments that you wish you never lived through.

I was supposed to post this up last night, but i was busy watching the delayed broadcast of State of Origin. I’ve got good news, my older brother is now a new Father! My little niece was born yesterday morning, welcome to the world Isabelle!

What a strange feeling this is, my brother being a Father and all, and me being a new Uncle to a Niece. The amazing thing is my Sisters younger Son had his 1st birthday yesterday. Which means that my Niece and my Nephew share the same birthday and are exactly 1 year apart! How cool is that!

In other good news, the Alps received a good dumping of snow overnight. Buller got 7cm, and Hotham and Falls each got a massive 24cm and 27cm each! White, fluffy, heavenly goodness. Aaahhhhhh.