Of course Australia – and Victoria in particular – is no stranger to the flames. Every summer we hear news reports of small country towns licked by smaller bushfires around the nation, however none with such dire consequences as the recent catastrophe. Even those fires that up until last week were considered our worst fires in history are dwarfed by the fires of February 2009. The ‘Black Friday’ bushfires of 1939 tore through 20,000km of land, leaving 71 dead. ‘Ash Wednesday’ was worse, claiming the lives of 75 Australians across Victoria and South Australia, and leaving many others homeless. The deathtoll from the bushfires of February 7 have already almost doubled these historic disasters, at more than 130 confirmed deaths and approximately 100 more missing and expected dead.

In light of such a terrible catastrophe, it’s awesome to see my country rally together to support the victims of the affected areas. Already, over $45m worth of support has been raised and donated, whether in the form of cash, goods or services. The government is also bending over backwards to assist through sending support teams, providing instant cash relief, and setting up relief funds for a more long-term support solution. Rebuilding the destroyed communities and recovering after such heartwrenching loss is not going to be easy, and it makes me proud to be part of a country so eager to help.

But while we’re on the note of monetary support for the bushfire victims, I’d just like to share my worries about the way that some businesses respond to these disasters. Certainly it’s great to see some of the bigger corporations (Coles, FFA, Hoyts, etc.) pledge support to those in need, but as a Business student, I can’t help but wonder how much is true, benevolant philanthropy and how much is simply using ‘corporate philanthropy’ as a means to boost sales. Take for instance Hoyts’ pledge of $2 from every ticket sold this Sunday (15 Feb). Now, $2 doesn’t seem like much when FFA and Coles are donating all their profits to the cause, and when you consider that a child’s ticket costs $12, there’s still more than 80% of the ticket price to go to expenses and – of course – profit. I know that the cinema industry doesn’t make all that much from tickets, but if this is the case, shouldn’t they be donating from their profits (including concessions) rather than a measly $2 from one day’s ticket sales? It seems like they’d be profiting more from this gesture than they are giving.

Another no-good, self-centered type of miscreant who appear in this type of situation are people like this. People who pose as charity collectors, fuelling their schemes with the misfortune of others, only to line their pockets with the dollars of their more trusting and charitable peers. If this isn’t a characteristic of the most base and degenerate citizens our country has to offer, I shudder to think what is. Most people would agree that this tactic is despicable, it’s not far from the pricing strategies employed by the Canberra building firms after the 2003 bushfires, in which many houses were destroyed. Feeding off the terrible destruction that sparked a vast necessity to rebuild, these firms raised their prices drastically, knowing that the fire-affected would be receiving grants from the government and payouts from their insurers to help subsidise the inflated costs. Of course, this left many families (those with reluctant insurers, those not affected enough to be eligible for grants, and those who were simply building within the next few years) spending much more than they should have been.

What really confounds me is how we, a society willing and eager to help those in need in any way we can, are capable of producing these fiends at the opposite end of the spectrum. Is it just as much a part of our nature to take advantage of a terrible situation as it is to help those affected by it? In any case, I’m sure that the generous and charitable members of society greatly outweigh the more morally devoid characters. I just hope that there are measures in place to prevent any unnecessary cost to those affected, and that those taking advantage of these tragedies for personal gain receive their just desserts.

A belated New Years’ salutation (though who is to say that the earth actually completed and started its solar rotation on the 31st of December/1st of January is beyond me, but the arbitrariness of this holiday is a discussion for a different day…), and welcome to the year 2009.

I hope you all enjoyed your celebrations with great enthusiasm, wrecklessly ignoring the following morning’s consequences and digestive repercussions. I, on the other hand, can safely – and somewhat-regrettably – say that there were no excesses to be enjoyed on my part. This can be blamed partly on my failure to work the previous week, and partly on my failure to change out of shorts before I left home for the night. A lesson has been learned from this experience, however.

Actually, I’ve realised that each new year, or more pertinently, each New Year’s celebration, brings a lesson. Last year’s lesson will not soon be forgotten – get to the party on time so you don’t have to catch up. And if you do have to catch up, don’t try to close that six-drink gap in one, or even two, hits. This year I learned that, on any festive occasion, you should think and plan ahead before you leave home. Never assume that what you are wearing during the casual part of the day will suffice for the rest of the day and into the night. Another lesson – which I have only just realised – is that at all times (and especially on festive occasions,) when you leave the house, you should have a camera with you. I failed this time, and accordingly, I don’t have any photos of my celebrations to share. Fail.

Despite the few downsides however, I did enjoy my segway between 2008 and 2009, and it wasn’t a complete loss. I got to see the Canberra fireworks (though I missed what was supposedly Sydney’s best display ever), I got to spend time with my awesome family, I hung out with some of my closest friends, and best of all, I remember all of it. I guess that’s what these occasions are all about – Fireworks, Family, Friends, and Memories.

- Juanito Jua-Jua

Feliz Navidad!

Juanta Claus.

Go forth, drink, and be Mexi.. I mean, Merry.

- Juanazo

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