Djobi Djoba

End semester exams are two weeks off, so serious (*cough*) study mode. That said I do have a little this and that to do.

Found a possible job just a few days ago. It's in a warehouse, decorating Christmas trees and then shipping it off to the customers. Sent my CV in and dude emailed back wondering if I could work today and the weekend before the official interviews. Couldn't work today, but told him I could on the weekends. He probably wants to assess me and see how I go. I do hope to get this job. Christmas is coming around the corner and it's mighty hard to buy stuff if you're broke.

Almost a week ago, I remember have a little discussion with my friend about razors and shaving. Yes, guys can talk about shaving. He was extolling the virtues of the Gillette Fusion, the one with five blades and saying how good it was. I was a bit skeptical but interested. I use a standard three-bladed one and its cuts alright. I might pop into the shops and buy one to test out. Everytime I shave it starts to grow right back out after a day.

Also watched Friday Night Download. It's not that bad. I remember Channel 9 or 7 had something similar but I think it's off the air. The videos they choose are quite good. Like there was one of those Japanese educational ones that encourages little kids to use the toilet. It's a good mix of the weird and wonderful.

Funny little email also popped into my inbox. From an old primary school friend called Noah. It's been ages since I've last seen him, 2005 was our last reunion if I remember. Apparently he goes to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. All thanks to Facebook. It's turning out to be quite a useful social application, despite the massive amounts of vampire and werewolf invites, but at least that's dying down now. To be honest, without Facebook I doubt I would ever have any contact with him again. Despite that, it does have it's drawbacks. There's no delete function, so you can't delete your profile and I think it's too easy to steal someone's identity and create a Facebook profile of them. Still, so far the benefits seem to outweight the risks.

And listen to some Gipsy Kings. Awesome guitar stuff. I wish I could play a guitar that well. I never seem to have the discipline in the first place.

Sorry, please try again

With my brother having much more free time due to holidays and HSC, he has been hitting up the net a little harder than usual, so right now I'm capped and it is ten long painful days before I'm uncapped again.

To alleviate the pain, I tried to strike a deal with my dad. Upgrade to the next level of the plan (20gigs) for the remainder of the month and then downgrade back to the old plan next month. As a sweetener I even offered to pay the extra $30 on the bill. Didn't work. My dad was skeptical that they would allow such wanton changing to plans and observed that even with the extra gigs (8 or so) I (meaning me and my brother) would use them up anyway. He felt that the 12 gigs is enough and we should tough it out. So plan failed. The offer to help pay the extra cash to make up the difference failed. Well, shit happens and you have to deal with it.

That said, this incident brings out a few wise words out from the depths of my memory. The first thought was from a manga called Eyeshield 21. It's about a Japanese high school American Football team trying to make it to the finals. One of the characters notes that your chance of succeeding at something will be 0% only if you don't attempt it. As long as you try and have a go, your chances won't be 0%. It might not be that much higher, but you will have some chance at succeeding. That's how I consoled myself. As long as I talked to my dad and brought it up, the chance of failure was high but not guaranteed. It might have worked. The second thought that came to me after that was it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Maybe I should have just upgraded the plan, profit, humbly apologise when the bill came along and then offered to pay the difference. Well, since he was rather hostile to the idea, might as well tough it out.

You know how sometimes you have these very weird yet so realistic dreams. I just had one of those. It started off with me running and gunning these bad guys ala CounterStrike, with a dash of John Woo's Hardboiled gunplay. So I'm shooting these guys down with dual pistols, doing flips and spins until I get to the last guy. He's pointing a gun at my face, which I managed to deflect yet inexplicably I fall down. The scene changes to a rooftop on a dark, rainy night. I'm lying on my back and the guy is pushing down on me trying to choke me. I'm trying to strangle him. I can't make out his face clearly, but he's grinning ferally. Rain falls onto my face. Eventually I take a deep breath and push at his chest with both my hands only to wake up with my arms outstretched and panting hard.

It was so damn real. I could feel the drops of rain splash against my face. I could feel my hands clasp and jab ineffectively at his meaty throat. And the finish push I felt my hands slam against his chest, only for me to wake up at that point. As I got back to sleep, I felt uneasy. It was a dream, right? Did I actually dream it? Dreams can disappear so quickly from your memory that you start to wonder whether you actually had that dream at all.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Sorry, were you in the middle of something?

Awesome. My David Attenborough DVD The Private Life of Plants just arrived moments ago. Can't wait to pop that into the DVD player and finally watch it.

That was my first docu that I ever watched. My aunt had a VHS copy of it, and I was so fascinated, not only by the info but with the video techniques and presenter who gave off this radiant aura of knowledge, that I watched it whenever I could and even borrowed it for a while. I distinctly remember this, because I was also doing public speaking in primary and I was trying to emulate the way David Attenborough spoke and his mannerisms. Now I pretty much have his whole set of documentaries. He's making his last series at the moment. On my buy list already.

Now, I read on some forum somewhere, some when, that the poster absolutely hated mobile phones going off during uni lectures. Not my biggest peeve, since at uni I perma-silence my phone and it's relatively rare that ring tones go off. They are usually silenced quite quickly. What annoys me more is the chatting you get during lectures. Don't get me wrong. A few whispered words or sentences don't piss me off. Doesn't even register on my radar. But the lecturer stops talking for a moment. A little fumble in the slides, or maybe some delay as they mentally rearranged themselves for the next topic, and all this chatter starts. It's constant and always seems to be a buzz in your ear. You're trying to listen to the lecturer make this important point, and all you can hear are snatches and ends of conversations. My pysch lecturer told us to be quiet and asked 'why are you so noisy?' and some student replied '...boring...'. Boring? So leave. No one is forcing you to stay. If you find the lecture boring then leave and go do something exciting. Don't keep talking and disturbing everyone else. Eventually, at the break, half the class left and you could actually hear the lecturer speak and not worry about the voices you hear echoing in your head.

Private Life of Plants now. Then maybe some Halo 2, a sprinkling of Neverwinter Nights, garnished with a touch of Phoenix Wright Trials and Tribulations.

The Right Stuff

I have a little rant coming up, but let's get the little stuff out of the way first, yes?

House season 4 has started. I've seen the first two episodes direct from the US and it's proving to be exciting watching. House used to be about the strange and weird medical cases that no one could solve, but it later became more about the interaction between House and his three assistants, Chase, Foreman and Cameron. That became the whole point of the show, it was what made the show good. So when all three left at the end of season three, I was a bit worried that the fourth season would turn out to be a dud. Instead he has to hire three new assistants and the interaction between him and med people is so damn funny. Two thumbs up so far.

Rant time. This happened today during our neurophysiology lecture. There was supposed to be a 9-10am lecture, but the dude never showed up, something kept him away. So we had a 2 hour lecture instead starting at 2pm. So he starts his lecture and people realise that his lecture is nothing like our notes. Turns out the notes are for revision, and his lecture notes won't be on WebCT. People grumble and start taking notes. Every slide there are murmurs of complaint, yells to go back to the last slide and afterwards grumblings of discontent. The general consensus seemed to be "why doesn't he put up the slides on WebCT, the bastard...".

Okay, so the lecture slides will never go up online (copyright issues due to using pictures from a textbook) and we have to resort to pen and paper. So can you actually shut up and take notes? Why all the complaining? It's amazing the amount bitching people can make just because you have to take notes by hand. And it is taking notes! Not writing down the entire fucking slide. Come on, you know the drill. You read the slide, then jot down the essential information. Then maybe transfer to a Word document for easier revision. A load of time was spent doing nothing because people kept yelling out for the lecturer to go back, because they hadn't finished copying all the details on the action potential and the five main stages in neural activity. I think that having the lecture notes on the Web has soften most uni students. It seems that we can't survive without having notes on the net.

Yes, I'll admit that I was a little peeved off at the fact we had to do some manual note taking, but what did I and most of the understanding students do? Suck it up, break out the pen and paper and do some note taking the old-fashioned way. Not hiss and moan at every single slide. Really, this comes down to the fact that shit happens and you just have to adapt to the situation. Or don't take notes.

Hmmm...I do feel a little better now. Now maybe instead of procrastinating, I'll dig my teeth into some work.

There Was A Hole Here

Long time no post. I spent the dying days of September being capped, and there was a bunch of uni work I had to plough through. So updates.

I've managed to locate Bokbunjajoo, the Korean raspberry wine. My friend Sheung discovered a liquor store that sold it in Stratfield and bought three bottles of the stuff. Very nice. I still have 1.5 bottles left, and I'm saving one for...well...that Vietnamese thing where you honour the dead. I don't know who to accurately translate that into English. Death memorial? That's the closest I can get to.

Finally finished Ace Attorney Justice For All. I started it ages ago, but never got around to finishing it. But I've finally finished it and am now starting on the third game Trials and Tribulations. The American version is not officially released, but the Jap version does have the translated English game there as well, so no big deal. Playing through Trials and Tribulations just reaffirms who much I love Ace Attorney. The plot, quirky characters and awesome music just suck me in. Games is more than just great graphics, you've got to have substance to back it up.

New book addition. Neal Asher's Polity Agent. It's a hard sci-fi novel, that focuses on more on the science of future. Still, it's got some great characters, but the ending leaves something to be desired. It still leaves a lot of loose threads. Probably setting up for a sequel. I hate it when that happens.

Damn. I have a exam tomorrow. And an assignment due at the end of the week. Might as well get it over with rather than procrastinate. Trying not to procrastinate so much. I finished some of the uni work on the Monday of the mid-semester break, and now I feel good about it, because I've already finished it and I don't have to speed through it NOW. Hmmm...there is really something to be said about getting your work done in advance of the deadline. I might...try it some more.

Here's a little something that I found amusing.