Things I like

Things I like:



Hearing people speak in their own language and add little bits of English in. *chinese chinese chinese Global Gossip System chinese chinese*



A grey sky before it starts raining, where the world looks all snuggly.

Tasting the sauce in the free cheeseburger thrown into 4 am drive through order, when I wasn't going to buy it myself.

Comparisons between training your body to run and your mind to think.

Message boards with stringent rules who put people on probation a lot.

Hearing my boyfriend detail what he'd do to Lily Allen and Tina Fey in bed.

Meeting the guy who my friend is starting to see and thinking, you know, I really like you. You could really fit into our picture.

The downy, plasticy smell of a sleeping bag.

Buying a new variety of loose leaf tea and suddenly realising it was what I drank in Germany.

Reading the last page of an article or textbook chapter and feeling accomplished.

Wine with dinner, all tipsy before the food comes.

Mornings where the sunlight is pale and misty.

Dancing at the Elephant.

Sharing gossip with a friend who you're growing closer to.

Being on the hostel balcony to socialise rather than work.

Tickle fights where all the limbs are utilised.

An arm draped over me in bed upon waking up.

Organising trips away.

Breakfast.

What I talk about when I talk about Stuff

Since getting my new ipod, my itunes had refused to upload all songs to it because it couldn't find the source, or whatever. I could have done some stuff to get the lost songs on there, but basically I was lazy and didn't worry about it. But suddenly, itunes did something weird and added nearly all the 'lost' songs, including things I didn't even have anyore on my old ipod, plus doubles of already-added songs, so now I am bursting with new/old music. Hey, Bloc Party are pretty good. Why did I ever dismiss them? Damn old 2GB Ipod, making me forget Bloc Party!

The issue of adjusting to plans/ideas interests me. I saw some lateline thing with two academic females battling it out on issues of marital rape and sexual dynamics. One of them (I think she'd done some sort of research study) suggested that many women tended to claim 'not in the mood' and then stick by their decision, suppressing mood changes that may have otherwise taken place. Heh. Of course there's a very fine line between implying that women should have sex even when they claim they don't want to, and being lenient on marital rape. These ladies were parading down that line. I wouldn't mind reading her book actually; I should try to find who it was. *pinging new ideas radar*

Then there's the similarity between that and the mental flip flop that occurs when 1. you have Sunday off and plan to have a quiet day studying 2. your co-worker messages you asking to cover her shift, because she's sick 3. you agree, first reluctantly but then become happy with your new mental plan for the day 4. you proceed to walk to bus stop 5. you have another message informing you that a different co-worker, who is currently at the hostel anyway, wants the shift to cash up 6. you liase with said co-worker and agree that he can work 7. you walk back home, kinda bummed 8. you figure its actually a good thing, because you didn't want to work anyway, remember? 9. you now don't feel guilty for wasting great chunks of time on facebook and 'blogger' even though you had designated this as study time, because hey, you had already come to the mental conclusion that it was ok to work a 6 hour shift anyway

From sex to work rosters! I win the Most Boring Segue competition!

Other Stuff:

My friend who was kicked out of the hostel (I'm too lazy to figure out how to link to past posts) is apparently running a competition for people to nominate designs for him to tattoo on his knob.

I appear to be quite in favour with all the guests at the moment - last shift Victor (old, cranky, OCD man) was what can only be described as cheerful towards me, expressing gladness that I was on shift. The annoying kiwi architect somehow has the impression that I am the force pulling all the strings around the place (when clearly it's Brian, gosh) and always jokes about how the place is now in 'good hands' whenever he sees me. Chris, a big bouncy-faced English chap who visits sometimes, complimented me on my figure, suggesting I had put on half a kilo in all the right places (um? whatever, I'll take it) and the group of Aussies down in the state for Clipsal were relieved to vent to me about the issues they had with the boss, the airconditioner, the rudeness of another staff member, etc. On request, I got one of them a bucket of water to soak her feet (apparently swollen from the heat of a poorly-functioning air conditioner?) and murmured with shock and disapproval at all the right places in their stories, managing to avoid either dismissing their complaints or badmouthing the hostel and staff with phrases like 'oh I completely understand' 'thanks for letting us know'. And I'm fixing other people's stuff-ups on the reservation system instead of making them. So it's all good there at the moment.

I went to the 21st of a family friend on Friday and got quite drunk, which is kind of embarrassing considering the relatives there and the fact that we left before 11 pm. Maybe it was the concentrated period of drinking over just a few hours, the availability of very drinkable wine on tap, but I ended up throwing up at home for the first time ever for alcohol-induced reasons. Shh. I think the rest of my family was asleep, so my dignity remains intact.

I now own a bunch of free crap that was given to me at the legal careers fair, including a coffee flask, a bottle opener, many pens and note pads, and even a little folded cardboard box full of fantales (left in my locker at uni for chocolate emergencies). My brain kind of went into overdrive reading all the firms' brochures and the legal careers guide publication and whatnot, envisaging myself in all these various positions, for good or bad. I could be a judge's associate! An expert in commercial litigation! A drafter of legislation! A solver of civil disputes! Firms with flexible hours and massages once a month - good, right? Or are all firms evil and bad? What's better: Big or small? Adelaide or interstate? Government or private? What about money? Hours? Future family? *hyperventilates*

Ok, kidding on the hyperventilation. On Tuesday my friend and I are trying our first ever round of a client interviewing competition, with very little idea of what to expect. A step in the right direction anyway, whatever that direction will be.

And for anyone who was wondering, the lentil burgers turned out very good, better than even I expected.

Is it weird/pretentious to refer to myself as Khere, as if that's my, uh, name? persona? I don't think you can be a persona if nobody knows about it. If a tree falls...?

khere is a falling tree in an empty forest.

Man on the Moon

Last Saturday my last shift at the nutshop. Well, the previous Saturday had been my 'official' last shift, and my co-worker was all lovely and we had a nice shift and chatted a lot and hugged goobye and whatnot. She is, as DW put it, the kind of girl who has butterflies and rainbows surrounding her. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. She's also the kind of girl who studies a lot and makes sure she doesn't work over the limit that will reduce her youth allowance money. So, when she saw that she was on the roster for the next week as well, she was a little peeved. Hence I covered her half-day shift last week and had a real last day.

I have to say, its probably a good thing I did, because otherwise I would have left with a far too optimistic view of nutland. Saturday coworker #2 is a girl who I also like, but have a more rocky relationship with. About her, DW would say, 'she has good knockers'. She's fun to be around when she's in a good mood, but when she's not she can be quite painful. Insert political family-business-bitchiness about how some people can afford to sulk around and still have a job, while others had to earn it, blah blah blah. She's the daughter of the manager. With that though, some people can perhaps afford to quit with less personal ramifications. Anyway. She was in a shit from the very start when she came in half an hour earlier than she was supposed to, at her mum's mistake, and all I had the whole morning was bitching about how the shop was left crappy last week, how the new girls were crap, how she's going to have to work both days of the weekend now, grah grah grumble snoot. I sympathise, sure, but it was a nice thing to leave. Guess who gives a shit how much you had to cook on a day where you were nearing $30 an hour? Guess who cares whether some barely-sold product has a full display? Well golly gee, keep guessing, because its not me.

Tomorrow I'm going to enjoy my free morning in true commo-lezzo-poofo style and make lentil burgers.

That is all.

Pickles

THE GOOD:

My comfy wumfy pants. OMGZ SO comfies!

Getting my groove back in the first German tutorial. This may have something to do with the abscene of the girls who are all OMG WE'VE ENTERED THE ROOM EVERYONE talky talky laugh-loudly-at-the-tutor's-jokes, oh-we-so-get-it-even-though-its-in-german, now lets whisper loudly to each other in german! (Hm. I need to work on my concise adjectives.) Anyway, one half of the said pair is actually lovely, and the other is not entirely awful, but it is nice to not hear the same cutesy voices every two seconds. Our tutorial is at 5 pm so the uni is nice and emptied and there are like six people in the class, plus we've got the sweet East-german tutor that I liked from last year. But to be honest, I enjoy feeling competent and loquacious again.

(But did I go too far in my excitement to share my associations with the word 'integration'? First, I offered something dramatic about how it used to be a positive, but now was seen as a negative, because people lost their own culture! Then, after a few simple entries by the others like 'language' and 'living together', in an attempt to not to seem too radical, I mentioned that if people of different cultures lived 'close' together without integrating, there could be 'violence'! The tutor murmured something about that being an extreme example.)

A break with unigirlfriend, signing up for a legal comp and talking about social stuff.

Brian offering his apologies for putting me on a back to back shift and offering to take over earlier on Wednesday evenings should I ever want him to.

Experimenting with going to bed with wet hair and a little product = waking up with nice nice curls.

THE BAD

Keep a non-paying former guest's passport as security, or give it to them because they need it to get paid? Would you pay back money owed for nights you slept somewhere for free, if you were just getting back on your feet and finally had nothing tying you there? What's to stop you taking the passport and walking away? What if you were annoyed about how you'd been treated there? I've got to say, if I was in that situation I'd put pretty high regard on looking after number one. Perhaps I'd mail the hostel a cheque for what I thought was fair, then never show my face around there again. Perhaps honour would win out and I would return the passport and promise the money soon. Perhaps the free breakfast given by the receptionist girls would keep me on their good side. Here's hoping, for my sake!

And then there's the woman who wants to go to Kangaroo Island, who finally gets the last place on the second-best tour and is waiting promptly for her tour bus in the morning, who waits forty minutes before coming back to the hostel. The bus driver who misses her on the list but comes back just as she's gone and calls (leaving no number, so I have to wait til the office is open twenty minutes later to contact anyone) to say he can't wait any longer and has to go. Too late to catch a taxi, no chance to book another tour. I actually felt sorry for him too, after giving him an earful of my (rightful) disapproval, because he obviously took his boo boo to heart. And then I had: "Sticky situation! I'll give you a sticky situation!" in an American Parent-Trap accent continuously refraining in my head.

THE UGLY

Call it office politics, suspected theft, a testosterone war, 'no trust', the IT boy claiming too much authority, a tendency to 'annoy' staff behind the front desk, a tendency to 'help' staff behind the front desk, stepping out of the view of cameras, too much 'social acumen', a dirty set up. Morgan's been kicked out of the hostel and it sucks. For him, I would imagine, even more than for us, since we're talking about his home and family. Damn it.

Bobbling head

A mix of social obligations on the horizon. Dinner in town with a mixed group of old school buddies tonight, the 21st birthday DW's friend tomorrow night, and a housewarming party on Sunday for some uni girls who have just moved down to the 'big smoke' from the country. In the still-further future there is a night of house-sitting which DW has gone so far as to roster off work, heh. And plenty of relatives' birthdays. Does town feature into any of my social plans? Perhaps not, although I am half-inclined to convince DW to come to see a magician/mentalist show with me while the Fringe is on, a guy who apparently stayed at the hostel before I worked there and was quite... awe-inspiring. DW is not normally my choice of companion for those sorts of outings (rather, by his own choice he's a closer-to-home type) but... who else will get geeked out with me over a magician? Anyway, yeah, I feel kind of over the whole drinky drinky town scene at the moment, but isn't it lucky that at present there are many things to do in Adelaide city apart from that. Mad March!



Recent realisations:



I eat meat almost every day. I don't really *need* to eat that much meat. I have no desire to be vegetarian, exactly, but from an environmental/economic standpoint I don't really feel like I should chow down on the animal flesh as much as I do. Plus, I just grossed myself out typing that last sentence. Maybe it'll be the vegie platter for me tonight.

When my car has a funny smell, I should alert the authorities (by which I mean: my dad) ASAP because it means that water is leaking from something and is a precursor to an overheated car and a wet carpet and a new radiator and a bill.

I have almost the least amount of responsibility and authority at work, which actually suits me fine. There is this new kinda chain of authority where people who are in other senses 'equal' now have to sign off each other's books and all that jazz, and I am basically out of it because I don't do anything extra apart from run reception. On one hand, there's my boss saying to me that he would have loved me to be the one to start organising procedure manuals and stuff, but that he knows with uni and whatever I'm too busy to commit myself to that. Which is true. However, I seem to be screwing up a lot lately anyway with basic things like guest's money and forgetting to extend them on the computer, so on the other hand I'm thinking that it may be for the best anyway. Speaking of work, I stayed over on Thursday when I worked a back-to-back night and morning shift, and wasn't that a laugh and a half. I was giddy and happy drinking a cruiser with some friends on the balcony after I finished, then subjected myself to the cold shower of the northern toilet block, then... then when sleeping time began, there was massive noise from the TV, despite my room being upstairs, and city traffic and germans arguing in the next room and somebody rhythmically pounding on the door to their room when they forgot their key in the middle of the night (I let him in with my magical key). So, it wasn't the most restful night. I'm yet to decide whether or not its preferable to catching a bus home and getting up half an hour earlier.

Tata for now.