Category Archives: The University of Sydney makes rush hour traffic seem fun

Darn that essay – and the book you should read if you’re a dude

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Darn my essay!  I’ve been drawing a complete mental blank the entire day.  And except for this morning’s catch-up with BFA, I attempted to focus only on my essay all day. So I should be done with it right?  Right.  Am I done with it?  No.

What is the essay about?  My assignment is:  “Discuss the idea that adaptations are never as good as the original by demonstrating research of relevant references, situating arguments clearly within contemporary literature on remix culture and intertextuality.” Anyone else ever tried to do research on remixable culture or intertextuality?? (which btw those aren’t even real words.)   These are RECENT ideas.  There isn’t a whole lot of research out there.  I told my teacher I was struggling and you know what she said? “I have a hard time buying that.”  [insert look of death directed at HER.]

Want to know what I have a hard time buying? That she can’t afford to buy a razor.  And this is when I bit my tongue. My opinions on the fact that she wears shorts to class and doesn’t shave her legs aren’t helpful – though they are arguably constructive because it IS very distracting during the lectures when she plops a leg up on the table for us all to see.

Ah well … I have until tomorrow at 5:00 to turn the essay in.  I’m being docked 4% for it being late but I can’t be fussed by it.  This is the first time I’ve done this and hopefully the last.  Bonnie Lass warned me that the first late essay puts you on a dangerously slippery slope to being a poor student.  He’s probably right.  Which is why I will be EXTRA careful with the other assignments.  :)

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See what I missed today while I was studying?  At least I got to walk down the promenade before hitting the books.

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Ooh!  This picture reminds me!!  Are you a dude? (lol – I can’t believe I just wrote that question.)  ANYWAY …

If you’re a dude you should read that book. :) :) haha!  No seriously though – BFA had me look through it – it’s a great book.  It explains why women are crazy and how men can cope with it. lol. That should put this book on my Lame List but honestly I found myself agreeing with it!  haha!  BFA says the book has changed his life and I would venture to guess that it has helped countless of other men as well.  So yeah – A must read for boys of all ages.  “The Way of the Superior Man.”  I’m going to read it too even though I’m NOT a dude (thank goodness!!!)  :D

a013“Things are always different than what they might be… If you wait for them to change you’ll never do anything.”

~The Portrait of a Lady ~Henry James

Have a great day!!!

Goals vs. Direction & SYTYCD Slideshow – YAY!!!

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Having goals and having direction in life are not one-in-the-same.  I am GREAT at making, working toward, and achieving goals.  But direction?  Well THAT my friends is an entirely different matter.  In THAT particular realm of existence, I have none.

I could recite some scholarly psychological reasons for my lack of direction, I could offer some heart-wrenching excuses – but the fact of the matter is – doing such will not get me any closer to finding my life’s compass than I was before.  And this is a very big problem.

I began my Australian journey long before I had ever considered Sydney as a place to live.  It began with a sense of unrest.  An unspoken yet annoyingly nagging feeling that I needed to be somewhere else, doing something else.  I didn’t know where, I didn’t know what, I didn’t know why or how.  I only knew that 1. change was necessary, 2. it needed to be big, and 3. it needed to be international.

Other than this my only main life goals were a post-graduate education and hopefully a job doing something I enjoy.  So that was it.  I tried to envision a more concrete “5 year plan” like WHAT I should major in or WHAT I would like to do as a career but I didn’t even know if I liked sushi, or what was my favorite flavor of gelato!  Not that this mattered – the point was I had no idea what I wanted.  It seems a funny thing happens when the unexpected becomes the goal – suddenly it becomes very difficult to want or plan anything – those wants or plans can’t be “unexpected” if they’re planned can they?

So I strolled along the avenues of my life, searching for open doors to take me from my street into a world unknown.  I figured eventually I’d discover a path and it would just “work out.”  When I found the door to Australia open, I ran inside and locked the door behind me.  No turning back.

INTERMISSION:  I’ve decided to fulfill my promise and post pics from SYTYCD!!!  Be warned – they’re pretty flippin amazing ;) – though the end of the slideshow got a little messed up – but hey – c’est la vie.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xer812o26tk]

Ok – back to it.  There was just one little problem – I still had no idea what I was going to do.  I only knew WHERE I was going to do “it.”  I had reached my “goal” – big, international change with a bonus helping of post-graduate education – but I had no direction.  Peace and Conflict seemed a noble and worthwhile goal – until I discovered that the walls of that hallway were painted with hypocrisy, agendas, and lack of structure.

I backed out of that one and thought “Hmm – Digital Communication sounds nice.  Digital IS the way of the future and communication is my thing.”  But today as I was doing my research I was told DO NOT MAJOR IN ANYTHING COMMUNICATION- or at least not if you have to pay for it.  My source was quite reputable, he recently retired from being the President of a broadcasting company.  His opinion is that my degree would be the worst investment and biggest waste of money ever.  How’s that for reassuring?

MINI BREAK :) Here is a clip from the show … watch for us on the lefthand balcony of the stage.  :) This was my fave performance and you can totally see us!!!  Here is Gianne and BJ.  (skip to like 1 minute in to avoid the boring talking part.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI78q-9YY4U]

And now I’m left wondering what the use of goals are if you have no direction.  And though of course, indirectly, the whole purpose of this “unexpected” thing was to discover my unexpected but entirely desirable “direction in life” – but I fear I’m as far away from that goal as I ever have been.

I guess the good news is that along the way I’ve learned some pretty amazing things and revived a few old goals – like the whole R word which leads to the L word which leads to the M word (shudder) I didn’t have that in the 5, 10 OR 20 year plan – NOW – well … I am still not planning on it – but I definitely wouldn’t mind considering it.

WHICH BTW – The FM gave me a spreadsheet-ish breakdown of the differences between a DB (like Captain Charisma or U.D.B.) and a nice guy (like the dude from the party on Sunday or potentially CC+4 or Ben but since FM hasn’t met those boys he isn’t willing to call them nice yet.)  SO I will post the differences tomorrow.  :)

As well as my view of boys who use emoticons.

AND TO MAKE THIS THE LONGEST POST IN THE WORLD (not so large exaggeration) here’s a sucky one in which we are in MOST of …  Talia and Emmanuel (skip like before …)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Jn4qDt9wY]

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Nerdy, Social Butterfly Pioneer Discovers Top 30 Novels in History

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First and foremost, thank you to everyone who left comments on my last post and for the emails and IMs!!! Everything said was soooo helpful!!  This is a BIG decision and I only have 6 days to decide so it was nice to get input.  THANK YOU!!!  :) One particular thing said by Emily really touched home with me, “Crying doesn’t make you weak; it makes you human.”  That’s something I need to remember.

Today, in an attempt to figure things out, I met with the Director of the Dig. Comm Dept.  It was encouraging AND discouraging all rolled up into one!  Oh boy – what a trip.  Ok so the bad news is apparently this is a brand new program and as such they have no support staff, no internships, and no clue. :) The good news is that BECAUSE this is a brand new program I can turn it into whatever I would like.  CC+4′s encouraging words were, “Sounds like you’re going to have to be your own Pioneer.  All the great ones are.  No worries.  You are the one who is going to make your career not the classes at school.” He’s right.  And I guess great minds think alike because I had already discussed with the Director which classes outside of the department I would like to take AND the possibility of my heading up a committee or club for the department.  lol.  A nerdy, social butterfly pioneer. Hmm … I guess it could be worse.

In social butterfly news – Captain Charisma wants to catch-up tomorrow.  And then I’m supposed to catch-up with the Ultimate D.B. on Friday (though FM says it doesn’t matter how much UDB tries – he shouldn’t get another chance – we’ll see…)  Sunday I’ve been invited to a couple parties.  Oh and today, besides playing Dr. Phil to some girl he had a crush on during a short cruise over a month ago, (poor CC+4 – he can’t seem to get rid of me)  CC+4 put me on to the song “Hot Thing” by Talib Kweli – it’s hot.

In nerdy news - tonight – instead of watching TV like normal people do – I took Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels in History and cross referenced it with Radcliffe’s Top 100 Novels in History.  By assigning numerical values to each list I discovered the Top 30 Great Novels in History (the lists only had 44 in common and the last 14 weren’t ranked particularly high.) SO – yeah – fascinating isn’t it?  Oh wait …

FYI – I plan on reading all 30 – or re-reading as the case will be with a few of them.  :) Here’s the list for my fellow readers – ordered  according to ranking:

  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. Ulysses by James Joyce
  3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  4. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
  5. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  6. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  7. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  8. 1984 by George Orwell
  9. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  10. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  11. Native Son by Richard Wright
  12. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  13. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  14. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  15. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  16. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  17. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  18. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
  19. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  20. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  21. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  22. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  24. Howards End by E.M. Forster
  25. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  26. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  27. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
  28. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  29. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
  30. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Have a happy day!  I haven’t forgotten about pics for SYTYCD – I’ll try and get to that tomorrow.  :)

Fine! I’ll admit it. I like popcorn – are you happy now?

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This morning as I was eating NOT yummy gluten-free pancakes from a mix (note to self – stop being so lazy and make your OWN pancakes which ARE yummy) I was serenaded by some screaming crazies not too far away. “I HATE YOU!” blah blah blah “I WANT YOU OUT OF MY LIFE” blah blah blah. I think maybe someone hasn’t been watching enough “The Farmer Wants A Wife” because if they HAD been watching it they’d know all of their problems would be solved if they’d only move to the middle of nowhere and be farmers!  And even if it didn’t solve all of their problems at least no one else would have to hear about it.  YAY!

I have good news and bad news today.  GOOD NEWS:  The members of my group at school have stepped it up and are now officially pulling their weight.  YAY!   BAD NEWS:  The Uni of Syd did NOT get back to me about my application as promised.  BOO!

And in OTHER NEWS: I learned today that a “Sausage Sizzle” is the not-too-distant cousin of “The Barbie.”  The difference being that “The Barbie” is for steak – not sausages.  Oh and my FM’s GF informed me that kebabs are also not for “The Barbie” unless you are trying to lose masculinity points – in which case – chicken kebabs are the way to go.  Thank goodness I am clear about that now!  hmm …

Oh and I just remembered I have a confession to make.  Yep.  That’s right.  I am craving [dun dun dun] movie theater popcorn.  Say what?  Oh yes.  It’s true!  GROSS!!!  And tonight my FM, his GF and I are going to see a movie and the motivating factor for our decision wasn’t really the movie.  It is the artery clogging goodness of movie theater popcorn.  GROSS!  And this is where if I were having a conversation I would be like, “But dude – for real – it’s not that bad.  Like seriously, popcorn is like my only vice.  I don’t even eat potato chips or candy bars.  That stuff is gross.  But popcorn?  Mmmmm mmmm.”

OOH!!!   Australian trivia for you!!  AUS doesn’t do microwave popcorn.  And if you go to the popcorn section in the grocery store – wait popcorn section?  haha!  I tricked you!  There ISN’T a popcorn section.  No lie.  There’s just a little shelf, usually hidden somewhere in the middle of the chicken flavored potato chips (which is practically their only flavor) and it houses the two flavors of popcorn made in Australia.  Bland and Bland Lite.  You can forget about that yummy gourmet chocolate popcorn stuff.  Or the gourmet caramel stuff.  No no – not here.  [tear]