Chewy

"Chewy": Australian slang for a chewed up piece of gum.

Stathi: "Once I found a chewy in my fried chicken breast. That's why I never went back to KFC."

Woo hoo, happy 22nd birthday to me. Even though there's really not much for me to say, I felt compelled to make a post just to commemorate today. First birthday spent in a foreign country, yay! Anyway, Christine has been hanging out with me for the past few days. I must say, having a friend from home to explore a foreign country is much more fun. ^^ We'll be going to Stathi's farewell party/dinner tonight, and then flying off for a week in Perth tomorrow. I'm a bit sad that the Perth weather won't be as warm as I envisioned it to be though (according to Rob). Oh well, at least it'll be warmer than Melbourne. The weather only has three phases here: windy, cloudy or rainy. Yeah, definitely feeling like I could head home for sunny So Cal weather now. I guess it's a good idea that I timed it so I was leaving Australia just as the weather is getting crappy. Well, until next time kiddies!

Heaps

"Heaps": what Aussies say instead of the word, "loads," "tons," or "a lot."

Ex: "Yeah, there's always heaps of drunks on Swanston St. on a Friday night."

Highlights of the week:
Nancy arriving at Melbourne and staying with me for a couple of nights. I love her cooking and she made me enough food to last me for several nights. My Canadian roommate, Bobby, came back from his travels across Aussie and will be staying in the house for another few months. I'm glad to have his company because his extroverted, comedic humor always brightens my day. Visited some cool Melbourne landmarks, which I will definitely show Xtine once she gets here. Also finally got ahold of the boss and he paid me what he owed me in full, plus $100. That was because he failed to remember that he had paid me already for one of the days. Since he was such a bastard to me, I didn't feel compelled to correct his mistake. Yay for rent money!

Downers:
Nancy left for Tazzy today, which makes me sad because I really enjoyed her company. That lucky girl is going to be studying in Brissy for another 6 months, so I have no idea when I'll see her next. Thank God that she lives in Cerritos, which is relatively close to L.A. My friend Christine also left for the States this morning, which makes it worse because she's one of my really good friends in Melbourne. =( Luckily, she also lives relatively close by (maybe a 30 min drive on the freeway?).

Speaking of roommates, Bob and Zoe cleaned up the house today. I really appreciated their hard work, especially since the kitchen was filled with dirty dishes and the bathroom was just plain gross. It's really nice to finally have clean dishes and a clean bathroom. Now I don't want to appear ungrateful, but in a way I kind of felt that Zoe was obligated to clean up the mess. I mean, the reason why the kitchen and the bathroom was so gross was because her friends were always over, cooking/eating/spending the night at our house. This one girl, Amy, lived on our couch for at least a month. Therefore, I felt slightly miffed when I came home and Zoe went up to me and said, "Bob and I just cleaned the house. It looks nice, doesn't it? Let's keep it that way." I felt like saying, "I HAVE been trying to keep the house clean, tell that to your friends!" but of course, I just smiled, nodded and said, "Sure!" It didn't help when I went to the fridge to look for my leftover fried rice and Nancy's delicious soup and was confronted with empty shelves. Yes, that's right, the same soup I was ranting about in my Highlights section had completely disappeared from the fridge, pot and all. Zoe saw my alarmed expression and said, "Oh, I also cleaned the fridge and threw out a lot of food. I'm sorry if I threw out any of your stuff, but all the trashed things either smelled bad or was pretty old." Now that pissed me off, because Nancy made that soup only two days ago (it was a full pot!!) and my fried rice was brought home last night. What was this girl's definition of "smelling bad"?! Geez! I wanted to yell at her for throwing away the food that I had so carefully rationed to last, but couldn't really figure out what to say. "Um Zoe, that 'bad-smelling' food you threw out was actually fresh, and you just cost me a whole week's worth of meals"? All she could have responded with was "Oh, sorry," but the food will still be in the trash. Damnit, I just want Nancy's pot of veggie stew back. What a complete and utter waste. =(

Sorry you guys, I'm really trying hard not to complain in here because no one likes to read boo-hoo-life-sucks entries. It's just that a bunch of stuff has been stressing me out and I guess it's finally getting to me. I guess the biggest problem is just money. There's just so little of it right now and so much is needed. That's why whenever I plan out money-saving strategies and someone comes along and messes it up, it's really frustrating and infuriating. Whoever said money doesn't buy happiness has obviously never been poor. Anyway, I'll end this entry now before I get too bitter and angry. Hopefully, a good night's rest will clear my head. I may have to head to the market tomorrow and see if I can recreate Nancy's soup.

Whinging

"Whinging": slang for "whining."

Ex: "Stop your whinging!"

So I was quite surprised to see that I haven't updated since June 11th, which is quite bad since it's been almost a week. I actually have written two posts since that time, but had so much to write about that I didn't finish it and ended up saving them in Word documents. I'll finish those posts later and put them on Blog when I have a little more time.

I've realized that I've come across many more Epic Failures than I let on in my posts. Sad thing is, they're all mostly my fault.

I finally got ahold of my boss yesterday. I guess my coworkers got tired of telling me "oh, he's not in today, you want to leave a message?" because I pretty much leave a message every other day. Anyway, I'm supposed to meet up with him tomorrow at 6 p.m. to work out payment. Damn right I'm getting paid, you can't escape me!

Saw my doctor again today and he said that my eye lab test results came back negative for Herpes Simplex virus. Hooray! Of course, there's always the chance that the virus was dormant and so the test wasn't able to pick up the virus, but it's unlikely. Bad news is, I still don't know what's causing this infection. -_-

Nancy, my friend from Queensland Uni, just arrived from Brisbane. She'll be staying with me for a couple of days until Saturday, so I'll be playing tourguide and hostess for her. It's good practice for when Christine comes to visit me XD. Today was rainy and cold though, so I couldn't really show her around. She wandered around Queen Victoria Market for a couple of hours while I was at my doctor's appointment, and then we went to tour the Melbourne City museum. The museum is really quite amazing actually, and even though I've been there two times, I still haven't seen it in its entirety. Anyway, the museum closed at 5 pm, so Nancy, her Tazzy friend Tam and I went back to my place to cook some dinner. Nancy made this amazing vegetable stew (which I have learned and will take that knowledge with me back home) which was absolutely deeelicious! It definitely made my throat feel better and warmed up my tummy. Oh yeah, did I mention I'm terribly sick with a sore throat, runny nose and coughing fits? I feel bad for Nancy, who has to share my bed and listen to me gagging and snorting in my sleep. =( Alright, better get ready for bed.

EPIC FAIL 3

So this is my second Epic Fail entry in a week, which is pretty bad but expected (unfortunately) since my last two assessments are tomorrow. Procrastination has been something I've been working to change ever since elementary school. I remember that I stayed up until 4 a.m. to write a stupid paper on a Mission (hey for a fourth grader, that's pretty damn late!) More than a decade later, things haven't changed one bit. I think I just hate anything that I HAVE to do. I have a sort of resentfulness towards things that you have to accomplish within a given time period. Though it's highly unrealistic to do everything at your own pace, it's what I like best. Give me a slow work day over a busy, jam-packed-with-customers shift any day.

This reminds me - originally, I couldn't wait to be done with school and start working. I thought that one of the biggest lures to career work is that I wouldn't have to worry about working at home. At the end of the day, once I leave the office, I'm done - all that work will be left behind and I'll be able to watch t.v. or do whatever I pleased. No more worrying about completing math problem sets, cramming for exams, completing papers... I'll be free! Of course, now I know better. Nurses have to take exams to renew their licenses. Doctors have to complete extensive research on a patient's medical problem in order to treat them. I-bankers and businessmen have to compile countless presentations, projects, reports, etc. Every professional job has homework, whether I like it or not. I don't know why I didn't realize it before.

Sometimes I flirt with the idea of running away to an island near Australia and just never coming back home. I'll make a living doing menial labor and live in a little hut on the beach without a care in the world. Man, that would be the life.

EDIT: may I also add that I managed to lose part of my References list for my philosophy paper? I thought I saved it, but when I opened the document, it was my old file. Thank God that it's only the references. What is up with me losing pieces of my work?? Talk about killing incentive to be productive, YOU TOOK MY WORK YOU STUPID COMPUTER! AGAIN!

While I'm on this procrastinating tangent, I've been watching Wong Fu Production's blog videos (yes, I'm a closet fan). Watching them stress, joke around and hang out with each other made me realize how wonderful life would be if you could live with your best friends. I think that would be amazing. Whenever I want someone to eat dinner with me or hang out, all I'll have to do is open the door and shout down the hall. Of course, I'm well aware that there would be short-comings as well, but I'm sure if we all communicated and set down some ground rules, everything will be A-okay (optimistic and idealist side coming out). I will end the post on this happy note. Hopefully the next time I see you guys, I'll be done with my finals and be in a much happier state. Wish me luck! :)

EPIC FAIL 2

Once more studying rant before my final on Friday. I've been working on this philosophy paper for the past week, and I just realized I've completely neglected my zoology final, which from 2 pm - 4:30 pm on Friday. My philosophy paper is due 5 pm on Friday. I should have studied for my zoology final first, and now I have a whole semester's worth of work to catch up in 1.5 days. I took shit notes. I should have taken better notes. Why is Australia's assessment system so lame? They shouldn't have everything based on one test or paper. I would feel much better if I knew that my zoology exam was worth less than 70% of my grade, but unfortunately it isn't. I better damn well get a H1 on my philosophy paper. Fuck.

I hate how when I'm not paying attention to a phone call, I go "Uh huh... yes... uh huh." That kind of absent-minded agreeableness bit me in the ass today. This guy called me (I usually screen his calls, but since he hadn't called for awhile, I failed to check the caller ID first and just automatically picked up) and started rambling about how finals was going. Let me first say that this guy is some bank official who helped me open up my account and then shamelessly flirted with me. Anyway, I was tricked into giving him my number (long story, message me if you want to know) and the next thing I know, I've been getting random calls/emails from him. Anyway, so he's talking about how we should meet up and I'm not really listening at all, so I go into auto-pilot mode: "Uh huh... uh huh.... yeah... uh huh," while I'm chatting with a friend online. The next thing I know, I hear him say, "Great, so I'll see you this Saturday then!"
What?
It turns out I had just uh-huhed my way into a date this weekend, which is..... incredibly bad. I stammered and tried to think up some last minute excuse, but he hung up before I could utter the words, "Wait a minute." Shit.