Driving.

I just went to Canberra and back (4:30am to 2:30pm) to submit my working holiday visa application. It went through alright but I won’t get my passport back until either Friday or Monday. Too bad my flight is booked for Friday. The nice man from STA travel said he can get me a flight next Wednesday on Korean Air instead for only a few hundred bucks more (Tahiti Air is all booked out now). I’ll do that when I visit him in a minute and make it a return ticket. Then I’ll have the pleasure of trying to find more accommodation for the new dates from the 8th to the 13th, probably. It may even work out cheaper in the long run, I’ll see.

There was a strange burnt smell in the car on the way back. I hope my little red mumcar™ isn’t going to die on me…

Tick.

It’s almost time.

Almost.

Fucking Visas. Fucking UK faggot fucks. Bah.

I have a strong coffee here. Mmm.

I finished working at SDS! How dramatic. On my Wednesday night shift we had some cake and I got a card along with a Lonely Planet city guide to London and a travel journal about some guy’s journey from Bombay to Beijing by bicycle. An odd choice considering my destination but an interesting read nonetheless, I’m sure.

On the Friday I got another little card from the people that I didn’t see on Wednesday and a packet of Big Red chewing gum. I’ve got a hankering for some right now, in fact.

Em and I went to see X-Men 3 last Thursday. The critic’s consensus on Rotten Tomatoes is 53%. That’s probably a little lower than I’d give it. It’s certainly more shallow in regards to plot and character development than the previous two films. It seems like they’ve used the last film as an excuse to slap in as many characters as they can without making them interesting at all. Anyway, read the site if you give more than 3 sentences worth of a shit.

My folks had a going away party for me on the weekend, too. How nice. I ate a lot of food and enjoyed a tasty banana cake. I also took a lot of photos with my new camera.

My new phone has also arrived, I’m going to transfer the data across from the one I’m using now. They’re the same model but the one palmy gave me drains the battery in under 24 hours from virtually no usage. Oh well.

I’ve bought an exercise book to write in while I’m away. I’ll publish the good bits online along with the other crap I get up to. Whee.

Coughing.

TOFU GOT DRUNK LAST NIGHT.

I just had to make that official. Boy is he a cutie. The little darling just wanted to hug and squeeze us all evening. He’s still curled up on the couch feeling sorry for himself. I’m playing music to be a prick.

He actually slammed through quite a lot of vodka shots. Probably 9 or 10 along with a little KB, butterscotch schnapps and goon. No vomit. Hurrah!

palmy’s going to give me some videos and photos he took, so you can all spread the news over the intarweb.

I’m planning on going off to get my backpack today. Hopefully I’ll be able to find the MLC centre and pick up a sexy travel adapter because I want it.

Strangely enough, I’ve started to use the to-do list on my mobile phone as a reminder of the other odds and ends I want to get through before I leave in … 15 days! :O Fuck.

This phone burns through fucking batteries. I bought a new one off eBay and it still dies after about 15 hours of moderate use. What the hell’s with that? Maybe I’ll be able to nab another one O/S or just before I leave. Lucky I have a spare battery, but Jesus.

I found out that palmy was planning a surprise going away party for me. Unfortunately I fucked it up by accident as he didn’t realise I had other plans for that day. That’s the risk of surprise parties, I guess. I probably won’t have a chance to see as many people now, but meh.

I have fuzzy hair growing from my head hair down the sides of my neck and it’s quite long and it shits me. I need to tidy up the back of my hair a bit. Fascinating, I know.

Last night we saw an X-box with a controller in a pawn shop for $150. If I gave a shit/wasn’t leaving I’d be tempted to buy it for that kind of price. Tempted.

My hair’s long. I look like a wild man. Maybe it’s the beard assisting. Bushy. Brr. I’m impersonating Ryan Reynolds in Blade 3 but without the vampire slaying. I still have the weapons.

I really should use a dictionary. God damn it.

Crap.

The hot water tap in my shower broke so that it won’t turn off. I’ve decided that’s a good enough reason to not go to work. I managed to turn off the water main which is conveniently located inside the wall beside the front door, behind a panel held on by four screws that take approximately 2 minutes each to remove. I’m not built to be a handyman.

Heli and Krista have returned to Sydney in preparation for their departure back home next week. Ross wove a web of deceit around all of us so that we all bumped into each other “accidentally” at Subway last night without telling anyone what was actually happening. I was meant to meet up with them again tonight on my break at work with palmy but I’ve graciously decided to let him fly this one solo so that I can stay home.

Staying home is actually going to be more work than if I really did go to work. This place is really quite a disgusting mess. It’s messy enough that it’s just depressing trying to comprehend cleaning the place, if you know what I mean. I suppose I’ll have to make some effort very shortly if I’m to evade the painful whine of my father when he arrives.

I’ve been procrastinating well enough that I have a big fat list of things I’m meant to (and can completely) do tomorrow. They’re all relatively boring tasks, mostly related to tying up loose ends. Things not really worth mentioning except for future reference so that when I whinge about not having done them you’ll understand when I was planning to do it. I hope that made sense.

Today I went on a little splurge on eBay and ordered some accessories for my new (inherited) phone from palmy. Just a spare battery, USB charger, headset, red cover and a car charger for my iPod. AUD$25.28 + $11.90 express postage (including $2 insurance). Cheap. On Monday I bought a data cable for the phone from Hong Kong, too. Now I just have to work out an efficient way to cram it all this shit into my bag. My survival kits rock. I bought a acrylic “unbreakable” mirror that slots in beautifully. Vanity, here I come!

Speaking of bags, I believe I’ll be getting one of these from somewhere. I played with one in Paddy Pallin’s on Kent Street on Sunday. They’re pretty hunky. Oh, the fun I’ll have living out of a bag!

I still need to book accommodation in Paris. Technically that’s on my list of things to do tomorrow, but I figured it’s something interesting to share. I figured I’d spoil myself and avoid hostels for the first couple of nights, just to get familiar with everything and recover from the 29 hour trip. It’d also be nice to have my own room to sink into and cry inside of when I realise I’m all alone and can’t speak French.

palmy’s moving out soon. I don’t know when. Neither does he. Probably the week I depart. I wonder how he’ll cope back at home? I’m sure he’ll complain about it to me. At least when he’s gone I won’t find tools that he hasn’t put back in the toolbox lying around all over the place, or every glass in the flat left somewhere, or empty drink bottles rinsed out and dumped in the sink, or containers of Thai takeaway sitting on the kitchen counter, or breakfast bowls left on the coffee table, or boxes and his uni shit left all over the computer room floor, or other crap I haven’t thought of. I feel better now. I won’t when I still have to take out the garbage on my own again while he’s playing Counter-Strike or World of Warcraft. Don’t worry if you’re reading this palmy, you know I’ll be over it in no time.

Things with Emily are going well. Too well, in fact. It’s really going to suck when I leave. One of her co-workers keeps hitting on her and it’s pissing her off. I got to meet him the other day. He’s a deadshit. I keep thinking his name is Gil. How appropriate.

While I’m on the topic of deadshits, apparently I am. It seems I made (what my hazy memory tells me) a good-natured drunken comment somewhere on the Internet that caused a lot more grief than I expected a standard passing comment to make. Oh well, shit happens.

Yo.

Hi.

Miss me?

Didn’t think so.

I swapped the fucking Atom with dad’s old Nokia 7250i. I’m much happier. I may end up getting a Nokia N80 when they become available instead of the 6280. Woo.

I may also need to actually buy a digital camera. It depends whether or not I get the N80, methinks.

In other news, I’ve wisely decided to start going out with someone two months before I leave the country. Dumb idea, really, I know. Still, a little drama always keeps things interesting. Her name’s Emily.

In a budget-rescuing exercise, palmy and I have started buying goon en masse for our “drinking habit”. On Sunday night we had 136 standard drinks worth of cask wine lined up in our fridge for the low-low price of $56 between us. They’re a great resource for drinking games.

My manorexia is being ruined by all the food I’ve been eating lately. I’m going to have to resist. I don’t feel bad for eating food, I feel bad for eating too much because I know I don’t do enough exercise. After having put as much weight on as I did a few years ago then managing to lose it all and more I simply refuse to let it happen again. It’s hard when you have no self control when it comes to flavour. Meh.

We lost netball on the weekend, even though we won 3 of the 4 quarters (so we get bonus points). Typically, the quarter that I didn’t play in resulted in a score of 20-4 to the opposition. The advantage was too great for us to recover. I certainly enjoyed beating up the female goalkeeper from the other team who seemed to think it was my fault that I kept running into her whenever she deliberated stepped in front of my path to block me. She didn’t look too happy when I pushed her off me simply by raising my arm up and shifting all her body weight downwards so that she staggered and nearly fell to the floor. The other highlight was when she kept pushing into me while I just stood there and held her off until the umpire called her for contact and I got to shoot a goal. Apparently after the game she ran straight off the field and complained to the management that the umpire wasn’t picking up any of my “dirty” play.

I wasn’t dirty, I’m just good. ;) Silly bitch.

Time’s running out and I need to get myself a UK visa. Thursday. Always Thursday. The weeks are going so quickly now, it’s freaking me out.

I went to my cousin’s 21st at the Harbord Diggers Club on Saturday. Even my mum said it was boring. I had more fun driving there and back. I also blew $40 on the poker machines in there out of sheer boredom. Think about that for a second.

palmy rolled his ankle after netball a week ago, then completely stuffed it last Friday when he went out dancing after breaking up with his girlfriend. He didn’t get it looked at until Sunday and by then it had swollen up to about three times the size of his opposite foot, with brusing all around the toes and heel. The ligaments are swollen and sticking up, too. Fortunately he got a massage from a physio student at work to clear it up a bit but he’s going to need to do some more work to it.

Last night was the first night in about a week that I’ve gotten a proper sleep. I crashed at 12:30am and didn’t bother getting up til about 1pm. I’ve picked up a sore throat and cold in the meantime, so I’m working on getting rid of it through lethargy.

Damn, I have to catch up on my Naruto and Bleach episodes. Berserk, too. Good times ahead.

Poorer.

Paid for my ticket. Just in time.

I bought a bottle of Jim Beam and four litres of Coca-Cola to celebrate.

Alright, not to celebrate. To feed my alcohol addiction.

I’m going to get a new phone soon. I’m not sure whether to get the O2 Atom PDA/phone or the new Nokia 6280. It might boil down to SMS functionality. How sad.

I’ve got this sinking feeling that everyone that would ever bother to SMS me thinks i’m ignoring them these days (not that I’m particularly popular, but you never know what people have been trying to send in the last week and a bit). The other hard part is that I don’t have anyone’s numbers stored anywhere except for on my phone bills.

We played 2 games of netball last night, one for our team and the other was because one team needed 2 extra male players, so palmy and I stepped up. I lost about 4 kilos over the weekend, mainly fluid and mainly because of the exercise, I think. Groovy.

Speaking of fluid, time to drink more, since the drought’s been broken, and all.

Airborne.

Not quite.

I did it! I turned up in a travel agent! All by myself!

I slapped down a $150 deposit on my flight with Air Tahiti (I promise they’re decent) to Paris, departing on the 2nd of June. It goes via the USA but I only have 2 hour waits on transfers, so I won’t be getting outside the terminal. Now I just have to pay the rest off in the next week or so and organise travel insurance, an international youth card and perhaps somewhere to stay for a few days when I get over to Frog land.

The plan is to spend some time recovering from jet lag and checking out Paris for a few days then trekking down south to Bordeaux to touch Benecke, then I guess we’ll just play it by ear from there. Hopefully. I might have to get an ongoing ticket or something so that they let me into the country to begin with. I’ll see what happens.

Not sure whether to bother applying for a UK working visa yet or not. I’ll see how I feel.

I need to look up some backpacks for research. Good old backpacks.

ARGH.

Happy Mardi Gras. I smell like cask wine (since it was poured all over me about 7 times).

I lost my fucking phone tonight. Somehow. I wasn’t even that gone when it happened, I just didn’t notice. Yeah, sorry if anyone tried to SMS me, I think it’s still on the grass of Hyde Park since no one has fucking answered it whenever I ring it. Sounds like Optus is getting a phone call tomorrow.

Joel’s dad tried to kill Ross and I last week with glass. This week he’s been packing up to move out. FUCK WIN.

All the jobs I’ve applied for/had phone calls about haven’t gotten back to me at all.

I’m booking my flight to France to meet up with Benecke on Monday.

I’m getting a 2 year working holiday visa for the UK which only allows 12 months of actual work for ~$200.

I bought a 60 gig iPod and conformed along with headphones worth $300 (but cheaper – thanks eBay [what’s with the second letter capitals?]).

I’ve been eating a wee bit of garlic lately. Makes my breath stink but it makes my soul happy.

I’ve also picked up a nasty habit of being a near-chain smoker when I’m drinking. I know it’s bad for me but I enjoy it, so bring on the downfall.

The other bad habit that’s come to play is that I’m eating again when I’m drunk. I blame Andrew for not having any self control. I can do it solo but not when someone else wants food. Bah.

At least I’m occasionally brushing my teeth at night again these days. How exciting.

That’s all, folks.

P.S. sorry that I only seem to update in the early morning when I’m drunk. At least it makes me more honest. I’m proud I still come across as (reasonably) coherent and with (seemingly) accurate spelling and punctuation. Good times.

P.P.S. go nuts.

Ding.

[13:36:44] <@dot|redknob> man
[13:37:01] <@dot|redknob> my life is going to be as frustrating as a fucking rpg now
[13:37:09] <@dot|redknob> an open ended rpg
[13:37:23] <@dot|loknlowd> emo
[13:37:25] <@dot|loknlowd> ;o
[13:37:26] <@dot|redknob> nah
[13:37:29] <@dot|redknob> scared :o
[13:37:36] <@dot|loknlowd> !!
[13:37:37] <@dot|redknob> we all know how i never get through open rpgs
[13:37:41] <%bubs> ./install u7
[13:37:44] <@dot|loknlowd> lol
[13:37:52] <@dot|redknob> and in the next few weeks i’m going to have total freedom to do what i want
[13:37:58] <@dot|redknob> no ties at all
[13:38:01] <@dot|redknob> no uni
[13:38:02] <@dot|redknob> no gf
[13:38:09] <@dot|redknob> free to leave the country
[13:38:12] <@dot|redknob> money to spend
[13:38:35] <@dot|redknob> i guess i’ll just go wandering
[13:38:40] <@dot|redknob> see where i end up
[13:38:49] <@dot|redknob> fortunately i don’t know how to pick locks
[13:38:52] <@dot|redknob> or i’d never get anywhere