On Tuesday 3rd October 2000 I moved to Fenner Hall,one of the halls of residence of the Australian National University.
This is not that story. (I may repost _that_ story some day...) This is in fact the story of 2002, and a New Year's Resolution.
The New Year's Resolution (the relevant one, at least) is to keep a diary. It's called "How To Study Japanese' since I'm studying Japanese this year, and I needed a good name for my diary.
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Yes, I realise that Monday, 31st December isn't the start of 2002. But my 2002 diary starts then. :-)
| Wake: | 10:30am | Ate/Drank: | Pizza, Mango Icecream, lots of Vodka |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep: | 2:00am | Studied: | Nope. |
Woke up 10:30am in the passenger seat of Trystan's car, an hour out of Sydney. We'd been travelling since 8:30am, and by travelling I mean he drove while I slept in the passenger seat. On our way to Julia's place, since we were going to have New Year's Eve with Julia and Phil.
The plan had been to go to some park on the bay and watch the fireworks, but by the time we go to Julia's place, that plan became 'Going to Grace's place, and watch fireworks on TV'. I called the mechanic and told him to go ahead on fixing my car, then Phil made me and Trystan sit down and watch Pi (as in the mathematical symbol...) which he thought was great but I wasn't overly impressed. Trystan nodded off right at the end.
Anyway, on to Grace's. We got there, watched Shrek on DVD (excellent!), then everyone but me (That's Grace, Nancy, Phil, Julia and Trystan) went to the DVD store to hire DVDs, and brought back 'Bring It On' (which I watched the day before anyway....) and 'Swordfish' (which I'd seen and failed to be overwhelmed by) and pizza. That's the food, not the TV series.... We watched Bring It On, then stopped to watch the 9pm fireworks, which were not spectacular. Then we found that Toy Story 2 was on one of the cable TV channels, so we watched that. (Jealous of Cable TV...) Also, some other friends of Grace's and Nancy's came along later... Jon Max, his gf (Lai??), her younger sister (Liu???), and another couple who's names have slipped my completely.
Anyway, alcohol wise, we took a bottle of Vodka, some lemonade and some grapefruit juice. 1/5th-1/10th Vodka, lemonade and then a spalsh of grapefruit juice does a good imitation Baltik. (Fizzier lemondae is better, such as Sprite. Avoid Homebrand, it's almost flat. And use Smirnof Vodka. A couple of ice cubes is a good idea when it's 30 degrees in the shade... Grr Sydney) Also had a Blueberry Vodka Cruiser, and finsihed the bottle of Vodka with Cranberry Juice. (Nice!)
Somewhere along the line, I got a bit of a headache. Which is weird, since hangovers are supposed to come _after_ you sleep... Anyway, Phil put Swordfish on at this point, everyone else had crashed, but there wasn't a mattress or anything for me, and one of the lights had to be left on for religious purposes so I went outside and slept in Trystan's car about 2am or so.
| Wake: | 7:10am, 8:40pm | Ate/Drank: | Strawberrys, peach, plate of wedges, lots of buns from the Chinese Bakery, and a Chicken Fillet Bruger. Two bottles of Diet waterfords, a 600ml Diet Coke, a 300ml Lemonade and about 2l of water. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep: | 6:40pm, 2:00am | Studied: | MCSE 70-219 for Dummies. |
Woke up at 7:10am, since the car was in the sun and heating up quickly. But there was noone awake in Grace's house to let me in, so I say around playing SiChuan on my Jornada until 8:10am, when I wandered around again and Grace and her brother Gary were up and about. So I went inside and sat facing the fan for a while, until other people stirred and Nancy brought out a big bowl of fruit salad for breakfast. Mind you, it was strawberrys, a peach or two sliced up, and a whole lot of melon chunks. I don't like Melon, so I mainly ate strawberries. Happily, I didn't seem to be hungover, but I was tired.
Eventually, we went to Julia's place, intending to meet Grace and Nancy at the beach later. (We is me, Phil, Trystan and Julia. Trystan has a car. So do I, but mine broke down. I'll explain that below. It's complicated. :-) Anyway, we went to Julia's, sat around for a bit, and then piled into Trystan's car to go to Coogee Beach. Just before we left, Trystan got an SMS, and he didn't come to the beach, he dropped us off and went to the Hospital. Dunno why exactly. Sadly, I was denied the opportunity to see Nancy, Grace and Julia in bikinis because Phil wanted to have coffee instead. I certainly preferred to do that too, but I would have at least enjoyed the chance to gawk. ;-) Anyway, over coffee (and I had wedges w/chilli sauce and sour cream, and lemonade instead of coffee...) Phil told me he'd broken up with Julia last night. "Aaah" says I, in an as unsurprised tone as I could muster. I then suggested he should take the bus back with me tonight instead of staying at Julia's tonight and catching the 9am bus back tomorrow. This was arranged.
Me and Phil sat around near the beach for a while, under a tree, reading. He's reading 'Atlas Shrugged' and I read my MCSE for Dummies book. Although I also sat and wool-gathered for a while. I also went for a walk along the promenade and back. This left me a bit sore, so I was looking forward to sitting in the shade again when Phil pointed out that we'd better get going if we wanted to catch the bus. So we phoned Trystan, but his car was with him at the friend's place he's staying at in Sydney so walked to Julia's place (about 20 mins) to get Phil's bag. Then we talked to Randwich (about 15 mins) to return Pi before we caught the bus to Central.
We went to a Chinese bakery in Chinatown, bought buns, and lots of 'em... I had a Sausage bun, a Chicken and Mushroom bun, a Pork bun, three dumplings, and two freshly steamed Pork Buns. I bought 6 Pork buns for the trip home. Phil went to the toilet, and we went to catch our bus.
Got a call from Matt Firth, looking for a SMTP prefilter (for want of a better description) for Novell Groupwise. I suggested Postfix might be able to do it, and that I'd look when I got home. Then I bought some Diet Waterford's and boarded the bus.
On the bus, I talked to Phil for about 40 minutes, then we both pretty much fell asleep for 2 hours. Actually, he slept longer. But I woke up about 20 minutes from Canberra, and he woke up about 5 minutes later. I drank my Waterfords, but didn't eat the Pork Buns.
Anyway, when we got off the bus, Terry was there to meet us, since he was supposed to be meeting Salu at 9:20pm anyway. So we went and picked Salu up, and went into Civic for Coffee, but the only place open was Chicken Gourmet. So I had a chicken burger (which I regretted immediately) and we talked for a bit before driving back to Fenner Hall. We (me, Phil, Salu and Terry) sat around Phil's room and talked for a bit, then they went home after we decided to see Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring tomorrow night, and I went upstairs to my room.
While I was typing this up from my notes, Phil phoned and said Naoko was on ICQ, and did I wanna come down and chat to her on his computer, since I'm out of Internet Quota. I said I would, and did. She seems to be really enjoying herself back home in Japan. Which I'm glad to see, since she was nearly in tears when she left us a week earlier. She couldn't talk for long because her sister wanted the phone line. Then I came back up here, finished typing this and went to bed about 2:00.
Oh yeah, my car. :-) Basically, I and Trystan drove down on Christmas Eve to see Naoko off at the airport since she was going home to Japan. But my clutch burnt out in Central Sydney, so I got towed to Botany Bay, where the mechanic said he'd quote me on it. Then Naoko's friend Jon drove us all (Me, Tez, Naoko, Trystan and Jon) around Sydney for a bit. We saw the place me and Tez think was the fortress from near the end of Mission Impossible II. Then Naoko saw me and Trystan off at the Coach bay.... That's the story of my car. :-)
| Wake: | 12:00pm | Ate/Drank: | Pork buns, Tempura Udon and a Chicken Burger. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep: | 4:30am | Studied: | MCSE For Dummies |
I was woken by Salu calling to say her bf wants to see LOTR and insists she see it with him. So we're not... Oh well. I ate the pork buns as a consolation prize.
I went downstairs to talk to Ian about the acceptance fee, he was happy to put the rental component back to the direct debit before the fortnight the rent would actually apply to. (February 7th. Don't forget!) I also put some money on my Internet account
Back on ICQ!!!
On ICQ, I talked to Rabekah, Dewi and Phil. Rabekah mentioned there was some vague plan on to go to see Monsters, Inc. that night at Hoyts, but they'd SMS me with the details.
I caught up on Webcomics. I'm down from my previous massive list to: Megatokyo, Exploitation Now!, Acid Reflux and Polymer City Chronicles.
Anyway, Phil's lost his mobile charger so he brought his phone up to charge on mine.
I also updated the diary, and filled in lots of links for the first few days.
Then Salu called, she wants to see Shallow Hal, American Pie 2 or Vanilla Sky later this week. Thursday's Kendo, so it's Friday or the weekend....
I went downstairs again to get Ian to sign my Centrelink form which says that my rent changed... As I walked out of the office, I saw Terry, Rabekah and Sean waiting outside the doors. I let them in, and they were here to return Way's phone, which Naoko borrowed for the last part of her time in Australia. Rabekah said the movie was at 8:40pm, and they dropped me off at Centrelink.
At Centrelink, I put in the forms and got my payment date moved to co-incide with the new Fenner direct debit day. Apparently they're asking for ID now. I think the guy just felt bad that he'd asked for my health care card (which I don't have) and then ask for ID instead of asking for my CRN or my name or something. He looked new.
Then to Sizzle Bento (Page broken??) for Tempura Udon, and a Raspberry Iced Tea Frappuchino from Starbucks. (I'm trying to work myself down from having a Large Combo Bento every day, to something less fried.) I also went to Impact Records to pick up the latest Ultimate X-men comic, and an Oh My Goddess! trade paperback.
I stopped at the arcade on the way home, and played Silent Scope II (which I wasn't very good at), Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix (I'm terrible at this one), American Pro Trucking (Pretty bad at this too), Capcom VS SNK (I was doing alright, but the screen crapped out on me) and Crazy Taxi (Which I was pretty bad at too.) So I went home and played with MAME roms. There was a new MAME release while I was in Sydney, so I had lots of stuff to start downloading. Figures, I'd only finished completing my set on Sunday.
Anyway, at about 7:40pm I left to go to Tuggeranong. I ran into Paul Purcell, last year's Fenner Hall Computer Consultant, who said he wasn't interested in the job this year. This's good news for me, 'cause I want that job.
Read my new comics on the bus, and got to Tuggeranong about 8:20pm. I played $2 on the Harley Davidson pinball machine, and that lasted until about 8:40pm. However, Terry and co. hadn't arrived at the cinema by then, so I was a little worried. I SMS'd Terry, and he said they were at Woden. (Between Fenner and Tuggeranong!) This is annoying because it means _all_ my friends have now seen either LOTR or Monsters, Inc. or both.
I caught the bus home. Of course, it was windy and rainy at the bus stop, which made me more mad because I hadn't brought a jumper, expecting to be in a warm movie theatre, not out in the cold. I caught the bus home, stopping briefly in Civic to buy another chicken burger from Chicken Gourmet.
I was in a bad mood when I got home, so I read Linux Kernel stuff for a while. I also fixed the share permissions between Keitarou and Mutsumi at last, and downloaded a few MAME roms.
I talked to Dewi and Phil on ICQ for a bit, then I decided I'd go watch Blues Brothers 2000 on DVD downstairs, but I'd drop in on Phil first. Instead we watched the second half of some french movie on SBS ("A SELF-MADE HERO (UN HÉROS TRÈS DISCRET)" it turns out...), then an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 - Page down?.
Phil got his Visual Studio CD back off me, so he could get back into C++ in 21 days. But he's also grabbing Civilisation III off Keitorou's uploads directory, so we'll see how he goes...
And that's today's diary update.... Took about an hour. Anyway, bed time is 4:30am.
| Wake: | 3:45pm | Ate/Drank: | Pizza Shapes, 2 subway subs, a Ruski and a Orange Juice Bicardi Breezer. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep: | 5:40am | Studied: | MCSE book |
Was woken by Nick calling to say my car's ready! Yay! Phil then told me over ICQ that the Jo staffs would be in at Planet Max next Wednesday for $40.
Good news. Then I checked my email, and Naoko's grandfather died yesterday. He was 96.... Must be something about this diary.... My grandmother died during my previous online diary....
Anyway, surfed the web for a bit (TheRegisteri, Retrogamesi) and Phil came round to return my Microsoft Office 2000 CD.
I downloaded bits and pieces of the software for my Jornada, and I'm now just waiting to find my Microsoft Outlook 2000 CD....
Kendo was good. An hour's keigo, and an hour's kata. We did the first and second katas tonight.
It's Marianne's birthday today, so we went to All Bar Nun for drinks. (We here is Me, Joe, Marianne, Martino, David Cunningham and the Japanese guy who's name has slipped my mind. Phil went home instead.) We were gonna go to Civic Pub, but Summernats is on so the street was incredibly crowded.
After that, I phoned Salu to see if she wanted to come out with me and get something to eat but she was in bed and her car's not back from the repair place yet. Someone smashed her window, but they didn't steal anything... Martino dropped me in Civic, and I got 2 subs and 6 cookies from Subway and walked home.
At home, I watched my Blues Brothers 2000 DVD, although I had to much with the DVD player first. Somene had switched it to YUV output, and so I was only getting black and white on screen, until I found the appropriate switch. (By feel... You can't see the back of our DVD player properly. It's bolted to the wall)
Phil dropped in right at the end, so we talked for a while about encryption and stuff, then I went back up to his room, and we got talking about Windows Help files, so I pulled up the one I wrote for PetVet back at Erindale College. This then led to an exploration of my PLP1, PLP2 and then Progs directories, which was somewhat embarresing for me. I hadn't seen that stuff in a while, and for good reason.
Surfed the 'net a bit, then updated the diary.
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