fear of mathematics

my new job is challenging. i get in early and i leave late. my hand is all cramped up tonight after over working the mouse. but i learn lots of things each day. the people who call us are friendly and my coworkers look out for me.

last friday matty and i were at the pub next door to iinet, eating dinner and having a few quiet ones before going to see something for kate. one of the guys who started in may or so, who i didn't know too well at all, stopped to have a drink with us. we chatted for a while, he even flirted with matt a little bit before he went on his way home.

on monday morning matt emailed to tell me that he had died on saturday. apparently it was a problem with his cardiovascular system. i don't know how i feel about it really. i didn't know him well enough to feel sad. i'm just shaken up that one day he was there having a beer with us and the next day he was gone.

i need to pack over the weekend. i'm leaving the field for the peninsula for four months. as much as i am looking forward to being able to see the ocean from every room in my house, i'm not looking forward to leaving my room and my mum.

i need go to bed now so i can get enough sleep to be able to stay out drinking all night tomorrow. one of my favourite iineters is leaving, and the pissup is sure to be killer.

oh man

hungover on a tuesday.

noodle box

i have finally, finally mastered the art of eating with chopsticks.

today is trying to kick my ass

on the way to work this morning, i was changing trains at central. as i do pretty much every day. and every day the trains are packed because people are only going one stop and stand right in the door way so they can make a hasty exit at town all. i was standing at the door, checking if there was enough room for me to get on, when the guard's whistle blew signaling that the train was about to depart.

all of a sudden this guy came up from behind me and pushed me in the back. this action caused me to stumble onto the train and cause a cascade effect of falling people. but it also meant that it created room for him on the train.

i was too busy regaining my footing to turn around and abuse him. but as i took my earphone out of my ear to say something to him, i heard a guy say "what kind of low life scum are you to push a woman?" the creep had no response. instead he turned with his back to us and didn't look at a single person for the rest of the trip to town hall. some people are like that.

then at work, because i'm the new kid people are trying to take advantage of me. of our customer base, there's about 20 people who call regularly, like multiple times a day. some of them are trying to see if they can slide things past me that the other guys would knock back. i'm starting to learn to watch out for those ones. but even worse, a few are blaming me when the others tell them they've done something wrong saying "but mel said i could do it like that." even though i've never spoken to them.

also, we take calls for another department because apparently they are too lazy to answer the phone themselves. they are also apparently really crap at their jobs, because we get several people a day yelling at us because we can't answer their questions just offer a call back that never happens.

and there is a ladder in my stockings. and the same thing happened yesterday.

however, apart from the things mentioned above, i am enjoying newjob.

i keep having dreams where i am yelling at people. people who piss me off in real life, like my grandmother or my evil neighbour, or one of my friends who is just the narcissistic person i have ever met. i frequently have dreams where i'm screaming "not everything is about you" at him. it's surprisingly cathartic.

but that was on the outside

this is what i want for christmas. fuck yeah.

The sidewinder sleeps tonight

Am i the only living boy round here who buckles to the kind of fear that somethings just don't feel right? From a paper cup i drink coffee. It's sugar sweet to make me mean. And some things just don't feel right

little fat kid

i feel like buying some make up today. i think i will, even though it's like 2 days til payday. and even though i can never be fucked putting the stuff on.

after three weeks without anything in it, my lip peircing had started to close up. so in mad diy stylz, i popped it back open with a pin last night. hardly bled at all. but then the new ring i had bought was too big and was feeling uncomfortable, so i took it back out.

i feel like i could sleep from now until monday.

the people in the department that sit behind us listen to the WORST music ever. it's like 2dayfm from 1998 all over again.

someone wrote to mx yesterday and said "bring back hey dad - martin, chatswood" AHAHAHAHAHA i almost died laughing. then i felt really lame for even finding that funny in the first place

view askew

i went to the optometrist to get my eyes checked last night. since about october last year i've been getting headaches in the afternoon, that go away within an hour of finishing work. i kinda thought it was just that i hated tech support, but i've been getting them since i started newjob too.
i'd been putting off getting my eyes checked out for ages, mainly because i hate eye drops. i hate putting eye drops in almost as much as i hate going to the dentist. what can i say, i have weird face issues. but yesterday at lunch time i was struggling to focus on things. in fact trying to do so was making me feel dizzy. so i bit the bullet and made an appointment.
then i started stressing because i hadn't plucked my eyebrows and i was all "what if he's really hot and all that's standing in the way of me marrying a doctor is my feral eyebrows?" but as it turned out i had nothing to worry about because her eyebrows were worse than mine.
so anyway, all the normal read the letters on the board tests were good. but then she made me do this test i've never seen before. she covered one eye [with a patch. i said "do people normally make pirate jokes right about now?" and she was like "umm. no"] and with the other i had to look at this white circle of light with a black spot in the centre. then every few seconds it would flash a bit, and when it did i had to click the buzzer.
apparently i sucked at that shit, and didn't click when i should've, because i failed for both eyes. i have to go back and do it again next week to see if i get the same results. i have no idea what happens if i fail again. i don't even know what the test is, or what it measures. any ideas?
she said she thinks my headaches are coming from having my screen too high, so today i put it down so it sits on my desk and i have to look down on it. it feels so much more comfortable on my neck to be able look up at the screen, but i guess that makes my eyes do too much work. we'll see how it all goes.
in other news:
-i miss being able to look at facebook during the day.  i'll die if they block livejournal
-i left my headphones at work yesterday, and therefore had to endure two hours of the publics on my way home yesterday, and in today. fuck people are annoying. like the guy who had his music on his mobile playing on speaker, so it was all loud and tinny and shit. or the girl who snored from kingsgrove to green square. or the other girl who had a fight while calling her mum about who would have to back the car out of the driveway at home.
-don't forget to watch summer heights high tonight on the abc. "but sir. he's a ranga!" has already become an office catch phrase around these parts.

oh god

my nan made me hook her up to dial up

and then show her how to use the interwebs.

it's going to kill me i swear.

nothing i did in the 9 months i spent doing tech support has prepared me for the stupid i have faced today.

i am, you are, we are australian

i feel like i've spent all day listening to telstra's on hold music

oh wait, that's cause i have

point form

-new job is keeping me very busy, and on my toes. three people from our starting group of seven have already been fired.

-the main thing i have learnt from apec is: i would like to be a jet skiing-terrorist catching-police officer.

-on the apec theme, there's more cops than tourists in darling harbour at the moment. kinda scary.

-i don't know what to think about this whole andrew johns drug/depression thing. he's been a figure in my life for 12 years, which is indeed half my life. as such it's hard to think of him as having problems just like you and i do. and i think that's what most people are struggling with.

-3 minutes til home time.

-i'm really looking forward to seeing something for kate at the metro with matt in two weeks.

- i'm currently in the middle of watching 3 dvd's: bargearse/olden days, season two of thank god you're here and season two part one of the chaser's war on everything. and i've got season 2 of oz to start. jb hifi got 140 of my hard earned dollars last week.

-i'm also on a real non-fiction kick lately. specifically australian crime. people look at you funny on the train when you are reading books about serial killers

don't go now

sometimes during the middle of my chaotic city, i get moments of absolute clarity and inspiration.

i'm going to write a book. a history of waterfront.

then i'm going to open a record store and call it making noise. i'm gonna paint the walls light blue and frame posters displaying lyrics that have shaped my generation.