Ok so after about 1.35 Bajillion procrastinatings, I’ve finally started knuckling down and making this website worth looking at. This post is basically to kick things off, and to allow me to test out the inner-workings of this site, while I try to get it looking right.
But to make this post worth reading, I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been up to for the past six moons. Bear with me, as this will probably be a long post – 6 months is a lot to cover…
Ok, so after first semester 2008 finished, I made the regular, (roughly) quarterly journey back to the mother-town of Canberry – 2 years ago I would have called it a city, but 20 months of living in Melbourne has given a new meaning to the word – anyways, while in Canberra I was technically homeless, as I had ended my lease on a room in a house in Glen Iris, Victoria. This meant that for the last week that I was in Canberra, I spent many an hour on the internet, looking for accomodation, stressing out, praying and worrying that I was going to be living in squalor in a cubic metre of cardboard somewhere in Footscray.
Luckily I have a great little (though taller than me) friend called L-to-the-ANI! While she was globe-trotting – or more specifically, USA-trotting – she kindly allowed me to inhabit her bedroom, so though I was still homeless when I touched down in Melbourne, I still had somewhere to crash for two weeks.
Just to clear something up, I did NOT – I repeat, NOT! – puncture your inflatable mattress, Lani! When I arrived at the lovely cottage by the train station in Hawksburn, I entered the bedroom only to have to reinflate the mattress which for some reason (unbeknownst to me, though I suspect mice) had deflated to a pitiful 50% air capacity. But alas, I digress…
After two weeks of hard prayer, stress and frumious accomodation-searching in places such as Domain, realestate.com.au, Gumtree, and various other locations, I was finally blessed with a room in a sharehouse 3 MINUTES’ WALK FROM UNI! And the housemates are pretty good, to boot! Now how’s that for the power of prayer.. Or incredibly convenient luck, if you prefer.
Perhaps less of a boon, however, was the fact that I was already 2 weeks into the university semester, which gave me a large disadvantage in the race for educational glory. I’d also missed all of the first week’s classes and most of weeks two and three, so that didn’t help. It also didn’t help that, unknown to me, I was enrolled in two 3rd-year, capstone (the hard ones) marketing subjects – and I’m only in second year. Had they been capstone multimedia subjects, I would have been fine. And just to top off this craptastic icecream sundae of misfortune, my hardest class saw me grouped with the other two latecomers (one of which dropped out in the third week of semester), on an assignment which was designed to be completed by no-less-than-four people. This assignment was worth about, oh… 70% of the subject’s total grade. Yes, this was a fun semester. This class was the cause of many a sleepless night in the last few weeks of uni. Literally, I spent almost all of the past 3 weeks going to bed at no-earlier-than 4.30 am, if at all. A routine which I still haven’t managed to break.
Apart from that horrible class which I’m sure I couldn’t have gotten more than a Pass in (but let’s face it – P’s get degrees…), I’d say I’ve had a pretty good year. If you’ve been keeping up with my facebook (or with regular forms of conversation with me), you’d know that my housemates and I threw a housewarming/houseleaving party for me and Jase, the guy whose room I took over. For those of you that didn’t know, the party was a Fiesta-Española-themed party with many a bottle of tequila and cerveza to be consumed. I think that some people went through like 3 bottles of tequila in about an hour… greedy Mexicans! Those photos can be found here if you haven’t seen them yet. Also check out these photos of my midsemester visit to Canberra, and the AFL Grand Final, and these photos of my ever-evolving bedroom – not unlike this website, my bedroom (and this album) are works in progress.
Now that I’ve finished this semester of Uni, I’m in the process of job-searching for an Industry-Based Learning (IBL) position for next year. So far I’ve only applied for one position, which as it turns out, has been postponed until at least mid-February next year – courtesy of the credit-crisis.
I think that pretty much sums up my semester… Please keep checking back frequently, as one day I will be finished with the design-side of things, and when that happens… well let’s just say that this post is a small snowball rolling down a large, snowy slope.
- Juancho
3 Comments
Why would you puncture Lani’s mattress after she graciously let you stay at her place for two weeks?? What kind of person does that?? I mean really…?
Damn right we’re pretty good housemates… The best, in fact…. Ribs!
I am sorry Juan for blaming you if you in fact did not do it. But you must look at it from my perspective – i sleep on my comfy, non-flat mattress one night, and then get on a plane (while the mattress is still fully inflated). I return home to a FLAT mattress. I repeat. FLAT. The only person (i hope) to have entered my room in my absence was in fact, you. So it was kind of inevitable that you got the blame for it. But now i know the kind of people my housemates were i would not be surprised if you had nothing to do with the scenario altogether. And for that i apologize. By the way i got you a cool christmas present and i think it is funny too. Therefore so will you and no-one else in the universe coz you are the only one who gets my humour. That is all.