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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Friday 15 August 2003 (Day View)

Mon 11 Aug | Tue 12 Aug | Wed 13 Aug | Thu 14 Aug |   Fri 15 Aug   Sat 16 Aug | Sun 17 Aug | Mon 18 Aug | Tue 19 Aug |

15.08.2003 – Friday 15 August

• Here I am, sitting with my left hand in a tub of warm, salty water, trying to type with only my right hand – not something that is easy to do on a split ergonomic keyboard. The abscess has spread around the front of the nail somewhat, but at the same time, where there was an abscess yesterday is now just red and sore looking, so I think it’s getting better – either that or it is spreading.

Morning

• I actually woke up before the alarm went off, and was ready with plenty of time to spare and able to walk to the train, rather than run. As the saying goes, “early to bed and early to rise makes a [gender-unspecific person type] healthy, wealthy, and wise”. I had to edit it a little as I realised they’d used the taboo word, “man”, presumably back before people became enlightened enough to realise that using gender-specific words is only permissible if used to refer to a repressed minority, such as non-men.

Tutorial

• I had a group tutorial today. We form groups, each of which is assigned a question to answer, one member of which then presents the group’s answer on an overhead projector. Every group gets a different question, so in the best psychological sense – we are all right, which kills any group competitiveness. There’s not enough scope for academic competition here at uni, which is a shame as that’s been the only thing that’s ever motivated me in any previous studies – the desire to be seen as better than someone else, the desire to show off. Somehow, “do well in your studies so you can work hard for the rest of your life” has never quite appealed to me in the way it obviously does to some people. “Do well in your studies so you can earn more money per amount of work that you do while working hard for the rest of your life”, or even “do well in your studies so you can work hard for only most of the rest of your life” both make sense, but aren’t what I’d call highly motivational. They’re not what spring to mind when I think of a sports coach giving a pre-match pep talk.

Toowong

• After uni, I caught a bus to Toowong, and went to Centrelink, after walking around the car park working out how to get there. I stood in line for half an hour too long, spoke briefly to a Centrelink employee, walked back to a table, filled out many little boxes on many pieces of paper – almost none of which made any sense in the context that I had to take them, and stood in line for another half hour too long, only to see another Centrelink employee, go back to the table again, fill in more slightly more relevant but equally ambiguous boxes, and hand them all back to another Centrelink employee – after pushing ahead of the queue. On my holiday, did I use either public transport, and if I did, can I provide receipts, or did I not use public transport, and if so, why couldn’t I use public transport? Well, yes, I flew back, so I did use public transport, however, I drove up, and so I didn’t use public transport. In the end, I answered “no” to every question on one form, and “yes” to every question on another, and wrote a statement, which might, hopefully and highly doubtfully, clarify things a little. The annoying part is that it essentially takes me two hours to fill in and lodge a form for what should be quite normal and simple – a holiday using two modes of transport. At least it’s done – now I just have to wait for the letters asking for additional forms, proof and trouble.

2:55am

• I drove Joe down to his club, and then came home and laid down for the rest of the evening. I didn’t get up until after eight, at which time I went online. Joe and Liz came home a bit later and I went downstairs and we had pizza, and then I came back up here and went online again, and I’ve been here ever since. I think, because I’ve already slept, I’m not so tired now, but even so, if I don’t go to bed now I know I’ll sleep in for some ridiculous amount of time tomorrow and end up wasting away my day. I need to go to bed now, but I’m not tired. The Milo I just drank probably won’t make me sleepy either.