chidade.net

Over the last couple of months, I’ve lived on a diet of stress and caffeine. Hair has fallen out. There were tears - TEARS - about school work! I was convinced that this semester’s results weren’t going to be as great as last semester’s results.

Last semester, it was 4 high distinctions and a distinction. I thought that this semester, it would be 1 HD and, if I was bloody lucky, 4 distinctions. Low distinctions, at that. Credits, more likely.

I didn’t think I was going to fail but I was not happy at the prospect of credits. This is my second IT degree. I came back to uni so that this time I could do it right. Four distinctions and a HD would have been a relief, given how hard the semester was, but not grades I’d be ecstatic with. Still, a distinction average would be acceptable.

Exams ended. I had one lousy week of holiday before summer school started again. Most of the time was spent catatonic. Sat on my bed and stared out the window. Slept. Lots of sleeping! Occassionally played video games but not as much as I thought I would. Cleaned the house. Was fairly zombie-like, overall.

The morning of results came and I slept in. That’s how brain dead I was. I didn’t even remember, after all the stress I went through, that the results would be out that morning. Eventually was woken up by a message from a friend asking me if I was happy or if it was time to take Accounting.

I stared at that message for about three minutes wondering what the hell he was going on about before I realised “Oh!! Results are out!!” and he wanted to know if I was happy with mine.

Turn on laptop. Takes an eternity to load. Log into my uni account.

One of the nice things Swinburne does with their online portal is - on results day - redirect you to your results page as soon as you log in.

Page loads. My eyes are still half-glued together after 9 hours snoozing. But I can still make out the straight line of HDs down the page.

Hehhhh….*dies*

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In the spirit of xkcd, I have constructed a graph:

I’m supposed to be studying today. But I couldn’t get into it. My brain kept pulling cruel tricks on me. So in the end I started doing procrastination cleaning. And to accompany my cleaning? Some music! I should turn on my stereo every so often, after all. Ooh! And look! I have shelves full of CDs! Why don’t I put one on?

Hmm, the pillows! Bloody hell, when was the last time I listened to them?

I’ve been living on a musical diet of Triple J and whatever I can hear from my housemate’s bedroom lately. I haven’t had iTunes on in a while and even then I’ve kept it to the whole playlist, rather than the Japanese or pillows-specific playlists. Kyo-kun hasn’t even been charged in the last ….three months, maybe?

As soon as the CD started playing though, I instantly felt happier. Cleaning and sorting the laundry was fun, I had something nice to eat and I could settle down at my laptop to do a bit of study.

I probably haven’t been the easiest person to be around recently. If I’m not bitchy and hermit-y then I’m stressed and slightly hysterical. Apologies to my friends and family who have had to put up with me this semester. It hasn’t been an easy one. Nearly over though.

And now I know the real cause behind my bad moods! It all became so clear this afternoon, listening to My Foot…I haven’t been listening to enough pillows!

Hahaaahaaahahaha!! That must be it!!! All better now!!!

Probably will be better still when my exams are over and I get a decent grade for them, but for now the pillows is the panacea.

Meanwhile, the procrastination cleaning, then drawing up this graph and blogging about it means I’ve wasted three hours that I could’ve used studying.

But at least I feel better about it!

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• Have to get up at 6am…downer
• Cat cuddles up to me…upper
• Find Eilix and Bato playing Hexic against each other at 7am….wtf
• See ducks sitting on neighbour’s roof as I pull out of the driveway…upper
• McDonalds breakfast…upper for the tastebuds, downer for my arteries
• Find out that my train is an express…upper
• Train is five minutes late and chock-full so I can’t play my DS…mild downer
• Realised that I just wasted money buying a ticket because I already had one…downer
• Arrive at uni, greeted by friends, do well on the newspaper quiz…mild upper
• Sit through the intelligence-insulting lecture that forces me to be on campus at 8.30 in the freaking morning…downer
• Get worked accomplished in intelligence-insulting tute so I can leave early…mild upper
• Don’t have a break and need to get to the next class…downer
• Realise I don’t have my tablet pen to take notes with…downer
• Lecturer makes me want to fall asleep…downer
• Sleepiness accentuated by lack of sleep last night…downer
• Stomach is dissolving in it’s own acids but don’t have a break until 3.30pm…major downer
• Consider skipping classes and going home to catch up on meals and sleep…upper, although it shouldn’t be
• Realise that I can’t go home even if I want to because I’m having dinner in the city with an old school friend…downer, although it shouldn’t be
• Skip second half of the lecture in disgust so I can at least eat something…downer
• Subway lunch with extra cookies…upper
• Need to take a cash advance off my credit card to pay for lunch and tonight’s dinner…downer
• No money left now until next week’s pay day…downer
• Feel very unhealthy walking up the stairs to class…downer
• Late for class…downer
• Get to class only to find that I have no bloody clues about this subject…major downer
• At least I don’t get pestered my the tutor about my lack of work…mild upper
• Get to next class and can actually make valid contributions…upper
• Battery on laptop went flat…downer
• Suddenly saw a puffer fish on the window…upper
• Have to consider fare evasion because I don’t want to waste the ticket I already had on a five minute journey…downer
• Organise my club membership and get excited about getting seriously involved soon…upper
• Elevator in the Union Building makes itself my mortal enemy…downer

Uppers: 12
Downers: 20

next…class which is looking promising, dinner which should be good but exhaustion will probably stop me from enjoying it properly, commute home which will only be frustrating and finally an evening in bed dead, exhausted and depressed because there were more downers than uppers today. And all this to the background of family trouble, boy trouble and education disorganisation.

It’s crazy how such…essentially unimportant things can change my mood so drastically.

My mind isn’t very healthy right now. I think I’m struggling. It must be the backwash of adrenalin and happiness from seven weeks in Japan. Been home for just over two weeks and haven’t been particularly happy any day. I’m not doing so well right now.

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Note to self:

Paying attention in lectures is extremely difficult with wireless internet access and a guy in front of you watching Naruto on YouTube.

Sigh.

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Wanna see something utterly terrifying? Have a look at this:

That, dear readers, is my timetable *cries*

I’m expected to study 12.5 hours per subject, per week this semester, including the actual class time.

Five subjects, each of them have been assigned a colour, which you can see when I have an actual class or lecture for the subject. The empty blocks that are a lighter version of the subject colour are the times where I sit and study it, either at home or at uni.

The empty blocks with darker versions of the subject colours are also study times, but while I’m commuting to uni. Those hours will probably be complete write-offs, because I tend to get distracted by the street art along the train tracks, or I can’t find a seat so I can’t pull out my huge textbooks. I’m hoping that the podcasts of lectures that the university records will be useful during the commute though, because if I can’t study while I’m on the train then I’ll have to use up the little free time I have left.

Red boxes are ongoing social/extra curricular engaements. The coloured bars at the top and bottom just represent things like sleeping, getting up and ready, etc.

The white boxes dotted throughout are meal times and extra commuting where I can’t study, eg: bike or car.

The two chunks of white space on Fridays and Saturdays are all the free time I have. Which would probably disappear if there’s an assignment due or exams coming up. Even in quiet times, it’ll probably be spent doing things like laundry and cleaning and catching up on sleep >.<

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of my social life, blogging time and Ragnarok levelling ability grinding to a halt.

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I’ve been accepted into university. I’ll be attending Swinburne University of Technology’s Hawthorn campus for another three years of I.T. training. I’m relieved in a way, because I’ve technically been on holiday for the last two years now and my brain has been dribbling out my ears. I need to have a regular schedule again. 4 hours of evening classes 5 days a week in an eikaiwa didn’t count. They were complete no-brainers.

So, I have two weeks left before orientation. Surrounded by 17 and 18 year olds who are going to go batshit insane over the free alcohol. Vodka lost it’s novelty for me a while ago. I wonder how I’ll cope surrounded by kids?

Anyway, I digress. What I was going to say is that I have 2 weeks left to get myself organised for school and my tight budget that begins February 19th. So, while this list is probably quite boring for you, dear readers, deal with it. What follows are the system requirements to be able to install the upgrade to Chidade: version 3.1.

• Purchase replacement Razr V3x and mod it so that it has all necessary ringtones, images and the Final Fantasy victory fanfare as the SMS alert.
• Install the calendar syncronisation program that’ll keep my Google Calendar and keitai in sync, via Outlook.
  Note: this will require installing Office 2003 at last.
• Deauthorise the iTunes on Akiba and convert AAC files to MP3 then backup on PC.
• Backup Akiba and reformat, see if you can get an English OS instead. Learn how to actually operate the tablet features since that’s why you bought the bloody thing.
• Try and get Joomla installed and running for the Aug. website eventually so they don’t hassle you for free web design work during the semester, the tightwads.
• See if you can get a good chunk of the planning done and some psuedo-coding for the fundraising website.
• See if any of the textbooks you spent thousands of dollars on during the first degree can be recycled for this second one.
• Upgrade the blog to Wordpress 2.1 Ella, which looks very spiffy.
• Get Chidade to job level 50 and bloody job change into a Blacksmith already!

Two weeks should be enough to get all of the above done, except for the fact that this weekends seems to want to rip me apart with social engagements. Good grief. I don’t think I’ve ever been so over-booked.

• St. Kilda Festival
• The inaugural Discworld convention and gala dinner Nullus Anxietas - the first outside the UK. Yay! I finally get to do what everyone else already seems to have done - meet Terry Pratchett!
• Snark’s 25th birthday and party
• Madman’s free open-air cinema again on Saturday night. This time, it’s the awesome Read or Die
• R’s Shindig and catching up with Mi
• An old high school friend’s birthday party
• K’s Singstar party

The Gala Dinner, K’s party and the school friend’s birthday party have already become victims. Most of this weekend is going to be taken up by Nullus Anxietas, I guess. Hopefully St. Kilda Fest and Madman get a look in. Ross Irwin and the Soul Special are playing at the festival.

Gah! Busy!

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Today was the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, or JLPT, which is held around the world every year on the first Sunday in December. It was my first ever go at this exam, after studying Japanese in Year 6, a semester in my final year of university and after spending 10 months in Japan itself. Needless to say, I attempted the lowest level. Needless to say, I’ll fail miserably.

I didn’t study as much as I’d have liked since my adopted onee-san is currently in Australia and living with me until she gets her own digs. This means I’ve been spending a lot of time with her and travelling a bit. She’s helped me study a bit but memorising kanji is something that’d I’d have to do myself.

Ah well, I’m not too fussed. I didn’t need to pass this exam. I won’t be working in Japan anytime soon. I basically just did it for myself, because I’d like to watch, read and play Japanese media without the aid of subtitles one day. At any rate, I used today to get the jist of how the exam works so I can try for Level 3 next time.

I learnt one thing though - even if I had studied everything that I had planned to study, then I still would’ve had trouble today. It’s very fast paced - 40 questions in 25 minutes - and of course everything is written in Japanese. The main thing I’ll need to practice is reading hiragana and katakana quickly.

Anyway, now that my so-called studies of Japanese can be relaxed a bit, my next goal is finally clocking Final Fantasy VII. I can’t see the obsession with Sephiroth, personally. Vincent is clearly the better bishie. In human form, anyway.

One last thing tonight: Thoughts go out to Duane’s family. Duane was a former Rover who died tragically today. He’ll be missed in Scouting circles. Rest in peace.

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