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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Wednesday 16 May 2007 (Day View)

Sat 12 May | Sun 13 May | Mon 14 May | Tue 15 May |   Wed 16 May   Thu 17 May | Fri 18 May | Sat 19 May | Sun 20 May |

16.05.2007 – Wednesday 16 May – Feelings, Thoughts, & Water Fountains

• The problem with my journal is that it’s boring. The idea was to keep an accurate record of my life, and in that respect, I think I’ve done a fairly good job. Unfortunately, day-to-day life—at least mine—is not actually very interesting, and when it is, I’m often not at liberty to publish publicly the juicy titbits, making it even more boring than it otherwise would be. I actually enjoy writing, and enjoy playing with the English language for some unknown reason, but no longer get the free time needed to build up the motivation needed to feel like sitting down and writing. It’s not really that I don’t get free time—in a purely mathematical sense, I probably get more than the average full-time worker—it’s more that the free time I do have isn’t mentally free. Even if I don’t have something I’m busy doing, there’s something I should be doing, and if I’m not doing that, it’s because there’s some reason I can’t, and for that same reason, I don’t feel that I can sit and relax, building up the required laxness needed to enjoy writing. For example, when I get home from work at the moment, I should be designing a website that I’ve put off for far too long, but I’ve been working all day in front of a computer, so don’t feel like it, but because I can’t do the site design, I’d feel guilty doing something else, so I don’t. Instead, I sit in front of a computer, and design my own site. It’s not very logical. Probably, I’m just tired.
  Anyway, the point I was meaning to get to before I went off-track, was that my journal, as a day-to-day factual record of the physical events that occurred in my proximity, is rather boring, and I’m wondering if I should branch out into recording more than mere physical actualities. After all, our physical state is meaningless without the associated mental state—perhaps what I thought today is just as relevant as what happened—not that either are actually relevant to anything other than, perhaps, me. So, before I ramble off-track again, let’s try this for a few days and see how it goes. And, in the silly way I find playing with English interesting—I’ve already begun.

Morning

• Yesterday morning I slept in. This morning I intentionally got up later than I usually would, and should have been just able to get to work on time—perhaps five to ten minutes late—had the bus not failed to stop at work. In what’s becoming frequently more common now that I’ve decided to buy a car, I’m finding myself frustrated at the seeming ineptitude of the public transport system here—buses anyway. I think they should advertise some method of complaining, so if nothing else, they can gauge public opinion, or hopefully identify and attempt to correct the problems plaguing buses, and the reasons why people don’t like them. They just fail to turn up, or they’re late, or they go somewhere they shouldn’t, or fail to stop—to put it simply, they’re unreliable and annoying. I ended up half an hour late at work, though five minutes of that was picking up my morning milkshake.

Night

• Maz walked here, and we caught a bus into the city. He had KFC; I had a veggie baguette from Hungry Jack’s. I currently fail to see any reason to cook. I can quite easily afford to eat out, all the time, and despite what Mum would no doubt think, it’s not necessarily any less healthy than home-cooked food. A curry meal from the local Indian restaurant sets me back about sixteen dollars, and provides enough leftovers for another meal. That’s eight dollars for a chef-cooked dinner. There’s no point in me competing with that.
  After dinner, we walked to South Bank, to take photos of the new water feature they’ve placed there. It’s pretty crazy, and I’m actually quite impressed now I’ve spent some time examining it. There’s these water-jets with lights set under them. It’s a bit hard to explain. They shoot a perfectly formed arched jet of water, and the light shines through them, bending with them, as it would in an optic fibre. The jets pulsate, seemingly randomly, the light tracing through them. Standing close, you can see small, perfectly formed detached “chunks” of the arc flying through the air, as it turns on and off, and the light bending through the water turns them into something akin to a light sabre. Placing a hand into the arc causes the light to break out. Really quite impressive.
  Then, fifteen minutes or so into photographing things, it suddenly, and without warning, began to rain—and thunder, and lightning. Then it announced that we should stand clear, as the doors were closing. We began to run to shelter, fearing we’d been caught in some apocalyptic flash-storm, when we realised this is a feature of the water feature—apparently it’s artistic. It randomly begins to rain, while speakers play thunder and lights fake lightning, then random sounds—I think picked from around Brisbane—play, the lights dim, mist effuses from unusual places, the fountains stop, and the strange arts-grant noises stop, and everything starts up again. It’s realistic enough to fool anyone into thinking it’s beginning to storm. Having it suddenly start raining on what must be around five grand worth of camera equipment isn’t particularly great though.
  Funnily enough, what made me think of trying to write a little more than my usual boring “had a milkshake”, was telling a story to Maz on the way back, and having him tell me I should write it in my journal, rather than what I’d done. It was the fake rain—it made me think of a post apocalyptic science fiction scenario—one that’s becoming scarily feasible—where it simply doesn’t rain, and people have set up places where they can go and show their children what it used to be like in their day. “Back when I was a youngster, water used to fall from the sky just like this, and it would thunder, just like that”, and they’d all stand in the rain, in awe, and then they’d go home and drink their recycled, chemically enhanced, government approved water.
  To contrast with my bus experience this morning, there was a bus just about to depart as soon as we got to the Cultural centre bus stop, getting us home in good time. I walked to Maz’s with him, buying the obligatory Cold Rock (vanilla, banana and coconut, seeing as you asked), feeling suitably sick after, and am now back here, in theory going to bed, so I can get up at the proper time tomorrow, and get to work without being late. In reality, however, I’ve just read Clint’s latest journal entry, which was quite interesting without mentioning anything at all that he’s done or doing, and that’s enthused me to write. So, if I’m late tomorrow, I’ll blame Maz and Clint.

12:30am

• Turns out I’ll have to blame Loki if I’m late tomorrow. I’ve just finished knocking up a quick website layout template for him, and it’s somehow become half past midnight.

Comment by Mum – Friday 18 May 2007, 5:06 PM

  Anyone ever seen an old movie called "Soylen Green" or perhaps "Soylent Green"? With Charleton Heston?? Was a futuristic movie, wherein everything was kaput and when older folks or anyone at all, wanted to "out" they would be taken to this place and as they were dying or being deaded, they would get a glimpse of this lovely planet earth with waterfalls, green grass, birds, etc. which did not exist (in the movie) and then they were "out". This movie scared me half to death. But I did not know about God then.

Comment by Ned – Friday 18 May 2007, 5:17 PM

  I have seen that.

Comment by anon – Tuesday 26 June 2007, 7:01 PM

  I hope it wasn't kfc from the myer centre, because the chicken there contains ghb!