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Year View| Summary| Highlights| September 2005 (Month View)

May ‘05 | Jun ‘05 | Jul ‘05 | Aug ‘05 | Sep ‘05 Oct ‘05 | Nov ‘05 | Dec ‘05 | Jan ‘06 |

01.09.2005 – Thursday 1 September – Amanda’s

• Tutoring, work, and so on. Can’t really remember so can’t have been too important – or is repressed, perhaps. I do remember the evening, though – I drove out to Amanda’s after work, to learn how to feed her dogs, one of which has arthritis, and the other epilepsy. Sadly, none of them have milkshakes.

02.09.2005 – Friday 2 September – Amanda’s

• Drove into uni, via Amanda’s work, borrowing her car. Did things at uni, then work, etcetera, etcetera, driving out to Amanda’s to feed the dogs and spend the night.

03.09.2005 – Saturday 3 September – Amanda’s & Riverfire

• Waking out here in the sticks looking after Amanda’s while she’s away, where it’s quite peaceful and the horses roam, sort of free-ish. In the evening Bronwen and I drove into the city, parking at her place, and heading down to Riverfire which we saw with Raymond and his brother. After this, we walked back to Bronwen’s place to get the car and drove to a friend of hers for a housewarming. We weren’t able to stay long as we had to get back to Amanda’s to feed her dogs, and thus ended Saturday.

04.09.2005 – Sunday 4 September – Charlie & the Chocolate Factory

• Still looking after Amanda’s. Drove to Bronwen’s and then Southbank, where we saw “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, before rushing, late, to the airport to pick up Amanda. She dropped us back at Bronwen’s place.

05.09.2005 – Monday 5 September – Murderball

• This story begins at uni, where I completed my PHIL1020 assignment with Maz, before heading to Indooroopilly for lunch. It then follows me as we go to Kieran’s, after which I headed into the valley.

06.09.2005 – Tuesday 6 September – Insanity

• “LA Ice”, the Cola of the poor, induced my insanity, following an already bad morning at Bronwen’s where I had to leave horribly early, arriving at uni where there wasn’t anything and it was cold, and from there to Griffith Nathan Campus for a change, lunch, and to read my philosophy readings (of which none make sense, let it be known and posted far and wide). Following this, tutoring, then a CSSE3004 meeting (which I forgot and was late for), then the Ville with Maz for food, where I bought my “LA Ice”, the Cola of the poor, and where I began what was a long night working on my PHIL1000 essay, broken by a run to the other side of campus to submit my PHIL1020 assignment, during which the Rembo of doom shut down all our machines. Several hours later, I got a lift to Clint’s with Maz, spending the night there. We went to Dave’s Ampol for ice cream, and I got to sleep not long before four o’clock.

07.09.2005 – Wednesday 7 September – Sleepy & Busy

• I had a busy day at uni, tutoring and attending my tutorials and lectures, followed by work. This resulted in me feeling a little tired, perhaps because I didn’t get to bed until half past three last night, and then had to get up at nine o’clock this morning, or perhaps because I hadn’t eaten anything better than a bucket of chips, or perhaps because lectures are mind numbing.

Night

• I now have no table. I knew I’d have no table, but arriving home just before midnight, already feeling rather tired, and knowing I had to get up at half past six tomorrow, as well as do my washing so that I’d have something to wear to uni, and then finding all my stuff (which, I admit, should have been sorted away somehow ages ago) all over the floor and having to put my computer back together, also on the floor, so I could find out what time the train left in the morning – it isn’t conducive to a state of happiness and wellbeing.

08.09.2005 – Thursday 8 September – Sleepier

6:30am

• This is a very bad time to get up after very few hours sleep after a busy day, which was itself preceded by very few hours sleep, ad infinitum. It is a good time for Latin.

Day

• I tutored. I did stuff for my CSSE3004 project. I stared blankly at walls, screens, PocketPCs, people... and made many ridiculous jokes with Johnson.

Night

• I headed to Bronwen’s after doing almost no work at work, because Hans talked about cars, electric energy, public transport...

09.09.2005 – Friday 9 September – Tra-la-la

• I went to uni and did very little (also known as “PocketPC development for CSSE3004 lar”, followed by work, after which Hans dropped me off at Bronwen’s.

10.09.2005 – Saturday 10 September – From Russia with Love

• I had a pleasantly quiet and lazy morning, and went looking for a “Brisbane Settee” in the afternoon. I had planned to see a movie, but that didn’t work out – fortunately, as it turns out, because I had a lovely night with a lovely woman, lovely nachos, and watched James Bond “From Russia with Love” instead.

Comment by Mum – Wednesday 14 September 2005, 9:08 PM

  Was my favourite James Bond movie (with Sean Connery, who is not as predictably snide at Pierce Brohaha.)

11.09.2005 – Sunday 11 September – Wherein I have a milkshake

4:17pm

• Here I am at uni, having just booked myself a flight up north – although it’s not yet confirmed. Annoyingly, I have to miss the first part of the mid-semester break, due to CSSE3004 having compulsory assessment on the Friday. It’s only worth a measly three percent or so, and is a ten-minute presentation amongst seven people, but failing to attend is, apparently, a failure to pass the course. It’s rather annoying missing the Wallaby Creek Festival and half of my mid-semester break due to a two minute, three percent presentation.

4:45pm

• Maz has arrived, for great justice.

5:44pm

• I have a lollipop – may the infidels shake in their infidel equivalent of boots.

5:49pm

• My tongue and mouth hurt. Lollipops suck.

7:45pm

• Nothing has really happened. I wish I had a milkshake.

8:09pm

• My wish has come true. We are going to Cold Rock, internal combustion permitting.

Later

• Maz, Clint, Lisa and her flatmate drove to Cold Rock, ate Cold Rock, and dropped Clint and I back at his place.

5am

• I was shocked to find that it was somewhat early in the morning, and rushed to bed.

Comment by Mum – Wednesday 14 September 2005, 9:03 PM

  Beware the Cold Rocky my son, the lollypops that bite and and the slithey tomes.

Comment by Who knows – Monday 26 September 2005, 10:44 AM

  I can't believe that you would rather go to Wallaby Ck Festival than stay down here! I don't think anyone could even pay me to go there, coz it's as boring as bat shit. I wouldn't want to miss out on the hippies plaiting each other's pubic hairs. I guess different strokes for different folks.

12.09.2005 – Monday 12 September – Sleepy & Confused

Morning

• Around five o’clock this morning I noticed that it was five o’clock, and rushed to bed. Around seven o’clock this morning, before my brain had awoken, I noticed that it was nine o’clock, so I jumped up and started to get ready for uni. Two hours later, when it actually was nine o’clock, I again got up, having not got back to sleep, and headed into uni. Around ten o’clock I finished my iced coffee and tutored. Now I’m sleepy for some reason.

Noon

• I am having an unproductive day, joking with Johnson while he should be studying for his COMP3502 exam. BITS had a BBQ, which fed me my lunch, and Kieran turned up looking for Clint, who apparently hasn’t turned up for his exam.

Afternoon

• Kieran and I rushed off to Clint’s – who had slept in and missed his exam – and brought him back into uni under “exam conditions”

Night

• Clint and I went around to Kieran’s place, where I ended up spending the night, and had dinner there.

13.09.2005 – Tuesday 13 September – Carpeted

Morning

• I trained back to Joe’s, where I cleaned up some hard drive space so I could copy off data from my spare hard drive onto my other hard drives, and take the drive into Maz.

2pm

• I tutored, having met Maz and given him my hard drive. I then read through my CSSE3004 group’s project plan, attended the group’s group meeting, booked an airfare from Cairns back to Brisbane, and headed back to Joe’s, via Indooroopilly, Woolworth’s and Cold Rock.

1:10am

• While the bohemian freedom one achieves from living without tables is thrilling, the dead arms and difficulty typing one experiences while lying on the carpet in front of one’s computer fixing up one’s journal comment system so it doesn’t cache post data or allow people to enter comments longer than they should, is less so.

14.09.2005 – Wednesday 14 September – Uni

9am

• Sleeping in would have been lovely this morning, and was something I had counted on. Unfortunately, though, I had to be in town to look at some possible rental properties, neither of which met with my approval.

11am

• I tutored, which is rather easy at the moment, as practicals have finished and the technical things I am supposed to be tutoring haven’t actually been released yet.

Noon

• Today’s PSYC1020 tutorial was a chance to discuss our fast approaching essay, and submit an essay plan for review by the tutor. Maz and I had to improvise, having not yet thought about the essay, or even chosen a topic, let alone written an essay plan. Scribbling “Essay Plan: I plan to write an essay” for Maz and “I plan to buy an essay” for myself, while perhaps not the most productive use of time, seemed to do the trick. The class was then split into two groups – those planning to discuss the accuracy of flashbulb memories, and those planning to discuss sleep deprivation with respect to alcohol consumption and driving. Maz and I, having not yet chosen a subject, sat in on the flashbulb memory discussion simply because it happened first. I had then planned to sit in on the second topic discussion, but decided I would rather go and buy something to eat, and as this seemed to be a good way to choose which topic to write my essay on, I headed to POD to print out the required reading. POD didn’t have the flashbulb topic’s readings printed, but had two copies of the sleep topic printed. This seemed like an even better reason to choose a topic, so Maz and I are now planning to write an essay on sleep deprivation.

1pm

• My PHIL1000 tutorial started with the tutor walking into the darkened tutorial room and frightening himself to find that I was already there. He then made witty comments about the Greek on the whiteboard being “all Greek” to him, before “translating” it into a risqué and slightly anti-American limerick (but not before the three American exchange students had arrived). We then discussed the relative worthlessness of the week’s reading, and began to fall asleep, at which point the tutor explained that he was actually sleepier than any of us, as he had last night written eight thousand words less than the thirty thousand he was supposed to have written before yesterday. He went on to explain that he was planning to write the remaining eight thousand directly after the tutorial, so we should all feel sorry for him, at which point Maz (who had submitted his essay late last week, after being told every tutorial prior to that not to leave things to the last minute) suggested that the tutor should not leave things to the last minute. The tutor explained that, as unlike Maz and I, he did not do IT, he could submit his incomplete work and by the time his supervisor had read to the bottom, he would have finished the remainder and could claim that the submission was actually complete but had been cut off due to some inexplicable technological wonder totally out of his grasp. The tutor then requested that we all come up with an analogy for life and the individual, which none of us did, because we are all “the worst class I have ever had”, to quote our illustrious tutor, at which point he put on his stern tutor face and demanded we have the best analogies ever by next week, and we all left.

2pm

• The first hour of PSYC1020 was not thrilling enough to keep me awake, so I don’t actually remember what it was about. The second hour, however, was taken by our humorous lecturer, and was interesting enough that I actually remember it. We were told the current theories on why people eat; apparently, it’s not because they’re hungry. The lecturer explained that the act of eating itself satiates a person, and that bottle-fed babies, when their teat becomes worn, require more milk to satiate them, as they’re no being forced to suck as hard to get their milk. This, according to our lecturer, results in the “little swine” screaming and screaming, which in turn results in their distraught mother feeding them another bottle and in some cases a third. At this point, the “little swine” is overfull and vomits up the milk; but not because he is full, we were told, it is because he is a “little devil and hates his parents”. This was coming from his personal experience, I believe.

4pm

• I’m not working tonight, and I’m also skipping tonight’s PHIL1000 lecture; instead, I am heading into town, where I will dine at a nice Indian place in West End.

Comment by Mum – Friday 16 September 2005, 9:14 PM

  Yes, nice Indian place at West End, but.....are you REALLY HUNGRY? It might be that you are a little devil and hate your parents. Yeah, okay, all that broccoli as a child. Sorry. Dont hate me. Broccoli is good for, um, good for, er, good for...something. Sulphur I think. Dont devils like sulphur?

15.09.2005 – Thursday 15 September – Sex & Biological Waste

9am

• I tutor. I go to the labs and do CSSE3004 crud. I see Ken to complain about marking criteria for said crud, due tomorrow. I go to the Ville for lunch cum dinner, having only eaten a vanilla slice from Grinder’s for lunch, and then to work. I saw a bloke kitted out in protective gear and mask removing biological waste. I saw lovers loving in an abandoned lecture theatre. They got a shock.

1am

• I’ve been playing around with “Authentic” view in XMLSpy, to make creation of XML journals easier. I’m considering developing XSLT to convert Word document to journal XML, but am not sure how much effort I can be bothered expending.

16.09.2005 – Friday 16 September – Unproductive & Sleepy

6:30am

• I woke up, very sleepy, having had four hours sleep.

9am

• Here I am at uni preparing to prove my use of our project plan with Ken for CSSE3004. This goes well, I am not asked any questions and do not need to say anything. Overall, our group is treated far better and more leniently than the other groups that I’ve questioned.

12:50pm

• I’m just starting to read my psychology stuff again.

4:17pm

• I’m going to the Ville for food before work. I have just spent hours playing around with PHP and XML parsing my journal via PHP, instead of doing my assignments which are due horribly soon.

17.09.2005 – Saturday 17 September – City

Morning

• I slept in, not getting up until after midday – something I really needed after my recent sleep-lacking week.

18.09.2005 – Sunday 18 September – Wallace & Gromit

• I had a relaxing morning and saw “Wallace and Gromit” in the evening. It’s quite a fun movie.

19.09.2005 – Monday 19 September – Aching

• I got up earlier than I wanted to, and blew my nose. This, as it turns out, was a bad mistake. Blowing my nose did all sorts of internal damage, and all day it has been hurting, and every time I chew. I managed to tutor without any problems, or many students for that matter, but writing my PSYC1020 essay just wasn’t going to happen. I did eventually manage to get eighty words down, but coherent thinking wasn’t an option; concentration requires a clear head, and a clear head requires unclogged internal canals that don’t constantly ache. Looking on the bright side, I managed to finish off my journal’s online editing and updating functionality, and it all seems to be working nicely as far as I can tell.

Night

• Several people on the train home were very sick, with running eyes, sneezing mouths, and generally unhappy all over. It must be that time of year again – cold and flu season. I hope I get better in the morning, because I’m now down to absolute critical period, where there’s just enough time to finish my assignment before it’s due, but only if all goes well.

20.09.2005 – Tuesday 20 September – Essaying

10am

• I arrived at uni, having got nearly a full seven hours sleep and being freshly invigorated and eager to write, at least in theory. I then met Clint and Maz, walked to the Ville where I wasted highly limited time, and bought yoghurt. Then, an hour after I arrived a uni, I opened my PSYC1020 reading and began summarising it. A few hours later, I was finished. I turned my summaries into English, wrote a conclusion, and wished I’d had time to write some critical analysis.

3pm

• I’ve just handed in my PSYC1020 essay, which I’ve just written in the past few hours, rather too hurriedly – even having to skip tutoring. Still, the stress of an impending deadline was the only way I was going to develop the motivation to read and write about studies into the effects of sleep deprivation on driving ability, and its comparableness to alcohol induced driving impairment.

7:56pm

• After a CSSE3004 group meeting and some more procrastination on my journal updating system, I think I’m ready to go home and pretend I don’t have an assignment due tomorrow. The scary people who run ITEE have installed a monitor in the foyer which shows statistics such as UQ being the fifth best university in Australia, how full each computer lab is, and even the foyercam.

1:50am

• Staying up late was a bad idea, although all the cool things I implemented on my journal updating form were good ideas. As much as I dislike JavaScript, some of its dynamic capabilities are rather cool. I need to limit myself so that I am not too carried away, or I’ll end up spending all my time making this entirely, and somewhat pointlessly, dynamic. I have to get to uni tomorrow as early as possible so I can do my assignment, due tomorrow, and also attend at least some of my uni classes, my whole week of which are also tomorrow. Washing is now finished, only showering and packing my bag to go, so I can get up and leave without actually waking up.

Comment by DM – Wednesday 21 September 2005, 8:12 AM

  I didn't notice that foyer monitor yesterday. I'll have to check it out today.

21.09.2005 – Wednesday 21 September – Busy

10am

• I arrived a whole hour before my tutorial, having read on the train all about “Standard Form” presentation of logical arguments and how to break these down into trees – all of which I understood quite clearly right up until I printed out my PHIL1020 assignment and tried to do the first tree question. I managed to do all the other questions without too many problems, but it would seem I haven’t quite grasped the concept of the trees yet, something of a problem given that this is due by five o’clock today.

11am

• Tutoring, during which Julie wasn’t able to help me with my logic trees either.

Noon

• Maz and I attended our PSYC1020 tutorial, in which we performed a paper-stabbing exercise. We had to alternately tap two dots drawn on paper as many times as we could in five seconds, once with our right hands while silent, then again with our right hands while saying out loud “She sells sea shells by the seashore”, and then the same again with our left hands. This will form the basis of our written report, no doubt due nastily soon. I don’t seem to be statistically useful, gaining roughly the same amount of dots for all the experiments, and Maz was still writing his PSYC1020 essay, due yesterday.

1pm

• Maz and I attended our PHIL1000 tutorial and got our essays back. I am very unhappy with my fourteen out of twenty; although I’ve no one to really compare with I felt that I deserved better for the effort I put in, and the huge amount of semi-colons that I used. I felt a little less gloomy when the tutor pointed out that he has an hour-long presentation directly following our tutorial, on a paper he only wrote last night. I also popped next door to our PHIL1020 tutorial and clarified a few things about our logic assignments.

2pm

• Maz and I attended our PSYC1020 lecture, during which I worked furiously on my PHIL1020 assignment and Maz on his PSYC1020 assignment, leaving half an hour into the lecture so he could print and submit his.

3pm

• Maz and I met Kieran near the lolly shop and we all went and submitted our PHIL1020 assignments.

4pm

• I caught a bus to the Ville and bought Maz and myself dinner, dropping his back to his lecture, and then heading off to work.

9pm

• I made my way to Bronwen’s after work, spending the night there.

22.09.2005 – Thursday 22 September – Uni & Not Much Else

9am

• I tutored, and then borrowed out a PocketPC and spent far too long working developing help menus and things, broken by Nachos at Grinders.

5pm

• Work.

9pm

• Hans dropped me off at Bronwen’s after work, where I spent the night.

23.09.2005 – Friday 23 September – Early & Nasty

6:30am

• To be at uni by eight o’clock for my exhilarating CSSE3004 group problem presentation involved getting up now. This is not a good thing.

8am

• Robert, who is presenting our whinge, worried us a little by not turning up until one minute past the hour. We presented our two problems (this being perhaps the only course where we get marks from having problems) as the second group, then sat through another few presentations, before heading back to GPS and the labs, where I (and most of my group) now code.

Noon

• In theory, BITS had a barbecue at noon, free for all, sponsored by the centre for complex systems or some similar academic money mover. In reality, Lachlan had all the food in his car, and his car wasn’t there. Fortunately for starving lab-people like me, he arrived shortly after and burgers flew free.

5:32pm

• While I was sitting in the labs feeling like I’d somehow forgotten something, it all of a sudden occurred to me – work; work starts at five o’clock, it was half past, I wasn’t at work, I hadn’t got anything to eat, I hadn’t finished what I was doing... I rushed off to work, grabbing dinner from the Ville a little later.

7:40pm

• An interesting display I hadn’t noticed before – a piece of aluminium from a Land Rover door with a large inch hole burnt through it by a two second pule from a 50,000 watt CO2 laser.

Night

• I rushed down to the labs after work and updated the pricing for Georgie’s prints, before catching the bus to Bronwen’s and spending the night there.

Comment by io – Friday 23 September 2005, 11:00 PM

  Where was this display?

Comment by Ned – Friday 23 September 2005, 11:07 PM

  Parnell, along the wall facing Steele.

24.09.2005 – Saturday 24 September – Howl’s Moving Castle

Day

• I spent a pleasant day doing nothing whatsoever – which is exactly what one is supposed to do during the mid-semester break, of which today is the first day.

Night

• I went and saw “Howl’s Moving Castle” at South Bank. It made an interesting change from my traditional movie fare, but I can’t say I was overly impressed by its confusing lack of coherent plot, contrasting strangely with its childish simplicity – still, it was an enjoyable, and different, film. I spent the rest of the night playing around with the code that generates my online journal and wishing there wasn’t something painfully stuck in my eye.

25.09.2005 – Sunday 25 September – Relaxing

Afternoon

• Joe held a BBQ. I held a sleep-in.

Evening

• I trained into the city, getting my combined breakfast and lunch at South Bank, walking around the cliffs at Kangaroo Point, and finishing up by dining at “Tastes of India” on the Boardwalk.

Night

• I spent the night at Bronwen’s, both of us being bloated from our dinner.

26.09.2005 – Monday 26 September – Uni & Centrelink

10:53am

• The bus to uni was full of sports students from various universities around Australia attending the University Games. It also contained an advert for the UQ Business School, containing the embarrassing misuse of English, “its not to late to apply”. Even ignoring the lack of apostrophe, a university that uses “to” instead of “too” in its advertising doesn’t really inspire much confidence in the quality of education they’d provide.

Noon

• I went and saw Soon to get my tutor timesheet signed and to let her know I’d not be tutoring for a few days next week, and continued figuring out a more efficient method of replacing acronyms for my online journal.

Afternoon

• I met Kieran and Maz at Wordsmith’s where I had a caramel milkshake before Maz drove me to Centrelink where I dropped in my greatly overdue rent assistance form. I then trained into the city for lunch at Govinda’s, before heading back out to uni through what appeared to be a gathering storm but only resulted in a few isolated ominous, large and cold raindrops.

7:21pm

• I’m about to go home, having just written up an instruction guide on creating an installer for Apache, PHP and MySQL, should COMP1800 require one again. Hopefully the large raindrops are no longer.

3:21am

• I’ve now rewritten my journal so that it uses DOM-based XML functions instead of XSL, making it more flexible. XSL worked well for simple transformations, but was starting to get overly complicated whenever I tried using it for string parsing or various other complex manipulations. Now the journal can be viewed as years, months, days, or in theory, any arbitrary period. I’ve become too sleepy to iron out the remaining logic bugs – perhaps it’ll give me something to do over the mid-semester break.

Comment by Mum – Tuesday 27 September 2005, 8:24 PM

  "Something to do over the mid semester break"?? Far out. Might be better to make the break a real break and plunge into the Wallaby Creek, sit outside under the Far North Queensland stars in a non polluted sky and stir the embers of a good old fashioned fire out the back, and forget parsing and thising and thating. Watch the orbs spin etc. Cant wait to see you and be with you again.

27.09.2005 – Tuesday 27 September – House Hunting

11am

• I had a very late night last night, and don’t feel at all good now. Sitting in the labs at my CSSE3004 group meeting along with five of my group members, each in their usual jovial moods – Robert with donuts because he broke code, Johnson telling everyone his jokes, Jervina modifying her remarkably long and confusing code, Mark working on the PocketPC code, Matthew suffering Johnson’s wit, and myself drinking my milkshake and trying to feel alive – perhaps isn’t the ideal way to spend the morning.

2:36pm

• I’ve fixed up most of the bugs in my journal code that I couldn’t be bothered fixing last night, and am now beginning to feel rather like a bite to eat, and hopefully get over my “stayed up far too late last night” feeling.

Evening

• I bought some rice and limp green Chinese vegetables swimming in greasy fried onion from the noodle bar, as nothing else was open. I then caught a City Cat (which was very full of the La Trobe University soccer team) to West End, sat on a hill and ate half my rice mess, and inspected a house. The house was, like many of the others that I’ve seen, not quite what I’m after. I guess I’m being too stingy, too strict, and too fussy.

Night

• I bought a veggie burger from Hungry Jack’s to recover from my mistake at the noodle bar, some bananas, custard and cream to eat for dinner, and trained out to Joe’s. Once there, I phoned Mandi to arrange my lift in Cairns, and re-added a few features I’d removed from my online journal during its upgrade.

12:07am

• I need to be up horribly early tomorrow, so I’m going to pack as fast as I can, and get to bed.

28.09.2005 – Wednesday 28 September – Cairns, Sun, Cars & Bikinis

4am

• What a day. I’m nearly delirious and have half lost my voice. It all began at four o’clock, which is a horrible time to have to get up, particularly after only a few hours sleep. I woke up, finished a little bit of packing, and walked through the dark to the train station. I was surprised to find that there are actually quite a few people on such an early train. I drank half a litre of milk on the way to the city (which kept me awake nicely) and changed to the airport train with only a few minutes spare, but arrived with plenty of time – even getting a blue early arrival ticket. The flight itself was non-eventful, and partially empty. The middle few rows of seats were closed off to keep the plane balanced, and I got a whole row to myself so could lie (or at least slouch) down and get a bit of sleep.

9:10am

• Cairns is hot. I began my return by getting ripped off by a taxi driver. I shared a cab with another girl from the plane, assuming we’d split the fare down the middle, as per usual; however, the cab driver asked the girl sitting in front if she’d be happy paying $10 each, which she was, and then didn’t turn the trip meter on – it was still cheaper than a single fare, but more expensive than it should have been. Once in Cairns, I found the only shady spot at the Esplanade and read my philosophy text for PHIL1000. It was incredibly busy – hundreds of nearly-nude women, several topless, were occupying every available piece of grass, doing their best to permanently ruin their complexion. I got sunburnt legs because, for an hour or so until the sun moved over, they didn’t quite fit under the shade I had found – I hate to think what lying in the sun all day does to people.

Midday

• Silas called, and I headed slowly to Cairns Central, where I had an Indian curry lunch and a chat with him.

Afternoon

• Kylie called, and I met her and Mandi at Cairns Central. They were panicking, trying to get a lot of shopping done in time for an optometrist’s appointment at five. They ended up having to leave their half-filled trolley at the service desk, and rush off to the optometrist. Mandi and I sat and chatted for over an hour, waiting for the optometrist who was apparently also gasbagging. We then rushed back to the supermarket to finish shopping, and then out to the airport to pick up Jade, arriving just in time. Jade hadn’t eaten all day, so we went and bought pizza.

9pm

• I used a paring knife to strip back the insulation from a piece of wire, which I then taped with electrical tape, bush mechanic style, directly to the battery terminal, so that we’d have spotlights and be able to see cows and kangaroos before hitting them on the way home. I noticed another wire hanging loosely near the battery terminal, already bared back and looking as though it shouldn’t be hanging loosely. As I soon found out, the switch controlling the electric radiator fan had broken some time ago, and instead of being replaced or fixed, one simply connected this wire to the battery before driving anywhere that one expected would overheat the engine, and removed it when finished. This task was made a little more difficult by the bonnet – it took two people to open it, as someone had to press down on it while someone else activated the opening lever inside the cabin. Suitably enlightened, we left Cairns and began the windy drive up the Kuranda range, the car getting hotter and hotter on the way up. We kept planning to stop, but Mandi kept saying that the top of the range was just around the bend. We reached the top of the range just as the temperature gauge reached the red, and pulled over anyway – but it was too late. The car boiled over spectacularly, steam hissing from everywhere. Needless to say, we didn’t have any spare water, or even containers. Fortunately for us, a gentleman kindly stopped on his way home from work and, gloomily predicting the permanent demise of the engine should we attempt to drive it anywhere, gave me a lift to the nearest service station. Being closed, and having only managed to find a litre or two of small drink bottles, forced me to resort to emergency measures – I eventually managed to find a large twenty litre bottle of water, which I stole from amongst the oils and other scary chemicals behind the service station. Water in hand, or boot actually, we drove back to the girls, who were hiding in the car with all the lights off – not a good idea when stuck right on the edge of a cliff, with traffic flying past. It had looked a little grim for a while; water that had collected in ridges on the engine kept boiling off in such a way that it looked like the head had cracked, but after refilling the radiator everything seemed to work fine and we headed merrily on our way, keeping a close eye on the temperature gauge and remembering to connect the fan before heading up the next range.

2am

• I arrived home after a semi-delirious drive, which felt, as Jade put it, like being in a movie. For some reason nothing quite seemed real; it seemed that, after I was sick of it, I’d just walk out and catch a train back to Joe’s – rather like, and probably for the same reasons as, the insanity caused by an all-nighter before assignments are due at uni. For some reason there were heaps of wallabies too, although we managed not to hit any. Unsurprisingly, once home I went straight to bed.

29.09.2005 – Thursday 29 September – Cooktown & Kickboxing

Afternoon

• I woke up, having had a pleasantly relaxing, and very much overdue, sleep-in. My throat is still not working properly; while it doesn’t really hurt, it is quite an effort to speak and requires me to drink copious amounts of water.

Night

• Shan, Damian, Kylie and I drove into Cooktown and went kickboxing. I watched for a little while, went to the supermarket (which is newly enlarged) and had a wander around town, coming across an extremely large, very expensive, privately owned catamaran at the wharf – amusingly named “My Way”.

12:23am

• I’m surprisingly tired, so might head to bed.

30.09.2005 – Friday 30 September – Hot & Busy

• I spent the morning playing around online, fiddling with bits of my journal generation code. I spent the afternoon out at Home Rule moving piles of lumber and assorted junk around in the hot sun, preparing for Shan’s party tomorrow. I spent the evening up at Dad’s, discussing life, cooking shows, and various other important topics.

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