I probably should have brought a jacket. Two years to the day since I moved to Melbourne and I'm still making inappropriate clothing choices.

Inappropriate choices have certainly gone a long way in shaping the swirls and fragments of my life. To be honest, my life at 29 is nothing like I thought it would be. As a willful, stubborn, and probably a little self righteous teenager I wrote myself a letter to open on my 29th birthday. Funny, at 15 I must have thought that I had a better idea of the world than my future self would.* Perhaps "a little self-righteous" isn't quite the right turn of phrase. When I opened the letter earlier this year, I realised that 15 year old me really wasn't particularly strong on predicting the future. Life in my 30th year is nothing like I thought it would be. The other night on Survivor, the contestants were cable gliding over the top of the Nicaraguan jungle. Cut away to contestant description of how exciting everything is, and I could hear one of them say "I just never thought I'd be doing anything like this in my life, this is incredible". My own reaction wouldn't have been the same. Nicaraguan jungles feature somewhere on my bucket list, and I don't think I'd be too surprised to find myself in one. The things that end up surprising me are the small differences.

I knew that I would move to Melbourne from the very first time I visited here 10 years ago, so that's not really a surprise to me. My lifestyle surprises me. My career constantly surprises me. For the girl who told her high school maths teacher that she wouldn't have to remember any of the work after the exam, since there was no way she was going to be an engineer, to not only become an engineer, but also be considered and expert in her field, and be flown around the country to talk to people about her (mathematically based) research is quite a different direction to have taken. I zoomed past the age that I thought I would probably have kids at with nothing more than a slight whooshing sound, which really wasn't noticeable over the trance music, and I'm still not any closer to owning a house than I was at 15. I'm not married, I live in a share house, I own a full set of camping gear, and I swim in rivers more often than the ocean. I'm about to drive a very cheap car from Brisbane to Darwin to raise money for cancer research. I drink and smoke more than I ever thought I would, I party harder than I even knew was possible at 15.

I started this blog post on Novemeber 18, 2011, and a week later I voted as a Victorian for the first time. I had planned to make Melbourne a launch pad for my journeys to the rest of the world, but to be honest, I think I might actually stay here a while.

everyone loves a good dress-up

A week ago I managed to clean my room for the first time since I broke my wrist. Unfortunately having trouble lifting and folding things (due to a loss of functionality in one limb) makes it very difficult to keep things in order. Also unfortunately, the advent of Halloween and Eastment St Derby and the consequent costume creation, dress-up and drinking, means that my room is back in pretty much the same state as it was after not putting anything away for 4 weeks. Except this time some of the clothes on the floor are covered in fake blood as well.

It's almost 5 weeks now since the tram tracks on Swanston Street gripped the front tyre of my bike, flinging me helplessly onto the road, landing with my skirt over my head, a few more injuries than I had started the day with and holes in my brand new pair of tights. Not one to be put off by something as minor as a broken wrist and a knee the size of a rockmelon when there was music to dance to, I got Zoe to tie up my bike, and we walked the rest of the way to Parklife. To be honest actually breaking my wrist wasn't really the bad part, neither were the next 5 hours spent in the emergency room. A reasonable prescription of morphine and two amazing friends to keep me company definitely ensured hilarity. The surgery was less fun. And the two weeks of having a supersized and useless arm were even less fun. Things that are particularly difficult to do with only one arm include: Opening bottles (or jars, or anything that you have to unscrew), using a pepper grinder, typing, carrying anything, driving a car, washing your hair, washing the arm that you can actually still use and putting on socks. The cast wasn't even one of those ones that you could write on.

Luckily, the extra pain I went through earlier when they turned me cyborg by screwing bits and pieces of metal into my bones, meant that the cast came off after only 2 weeks, instead of the usual 6. It also means I have an awesome scar. One that looks a lot like I've tried to slit my wrists. Not great for giving out the impression that you're 100% mentally stable, but SUPER AWESOME for a halloween costume...

... especially when you have amazing friends who can make a copy of the real scar, and put it on your other arm, AND lend you corpse-like make-up.

So the upside to having broken a third bone this year is that I got a pretty cool Halloween costume out of it. The downside is that after being knocked over onto my wrist by crazy drunk dancing women at Eastment Street, it still hurts to type.

Thanks to Mr. Murphy and Underground Cinema for the photo. You can see the rest of the photos from the evening here

Accident prone?

*warning there may be minor whinging present in this blog post*

"And she's ready to go in for the tackle, eyes eagerly on the opponents feet. He's got his head down. Wait - he's just run straight into her. She's actually rebounded backwards off of his head! It looks like he's headbutted her right in the boob. Well, now, that's something you don't usually see in a game of soccer"

That's what a fraction of the commentary would have sounded like from our Sunday afternoon mixed league indoor soccer game, if it was the kind of game that generated an audience. I was the she. I'm not entirely sure what my opponent was thinking at the time, perhaps in identifying me as a member of the fairer sex he thought I might stand aside, and let him pass. My thought was definitely that he'd try to go around, rather than through me.

So it's now Wednesday, and I'm propped up on a bean-bag diagnosed with a fractured rib. I'm tired and grumpy because I wake up every time I move in my sleep, but most of all it just hurts. Anyway, it got me to thinking. After surviving 28 and a half years without any broken bones, I've now broken 2 in the last 6 months. I'm beginning to believe that my personal trainer was right when she said I was the most accident prone person she knew. In the last year I have sprained my foot, broken my big toe, had a recurring shoulder injury, received numerous bruises, and now fractured a rib. What on earth is going on? Is this a sign that I've suddenly gotten old?

So after spending the first couple of months of the year explaining that I broke my toe in an awkward trapeze dismount, I'm now going to have to go about explaining that someone headbutted my boob and broke my ribs during an indoor soccer match. I hope the mileage I get from that story is worth the pain.

expose of a date (it was going to be an expose of "dating", but I didn't really get that far before I got sick of it)

Recently I came to the conclusion that there was no one I know that I would actually like to be in a relationship with. And since I've been thinking that I might like to be in a relationship, the logical conclusion was that I would have to meet new people. Any avid reader of this blog would realise that the circles I move in are already intertwined enough without me complicating things further by dating friends of friends, which left me with two potential options. 1. Attempt to meet random strangers out and about; and 2. Internet dating.

I've had some minor success with option 1 in the past, although recently, despite the most random of meetings (I mean, who meets someone while hungover in a camping store?), there seems to have been a little too much overlap with the current social Venn diagram. So having gone with option 1 for the last 10 years or so, I thought maybe it would be best to give option 2 a try.

Every woman I spoke to about the proposal was enthused. Some had considered trying it themselves and were eager for my feedback, some had tried it already, the already coupled-up said they thought it sounded like fun, and the general response was along the lines of "go girl!". The men I told reacted slightly differently. Some were amused, some had tried it already and my housemate downright laughed at me (although he did add the very flattering comment that he thought I already got more than my fair share of attention from the opposite sex and perhaps I didn't need any more).

The profile creation was not to be undertaken lightly. Trying to distill the essence of why you are awesome into a by-line, a photo and a slightly more detailed description is no mean feat. It took me hours just to come up with the by-line.

The first week or so was fun, a bit like playing some kind of computer game. People send you "kisses", the real world equivalent of making eyes at you across the dance floor. You then have the choice of sending a kiss back (flirting back a little), or not (turning away abruptly). If you return the kiss, then they can send you an email, which would be the equivalent of asking to buy you a drink in the hope of starting up a conversation.

I set up one hard and fast rule for myself - anyone who in any way referred to finding "that someone special" was immediately ruled out. No room for cliches in my dating circle. Unsurprisingly that narrowed the pool remarkably. To be honest, after all the stories I'd heard about people finding love (or at least some kind of pleasant interaction) over the internet, I was surprised at what a bunch of duds were showing up on my computer screen. Perhaps I was being too harsh, but in 2 weeks of searching I found only 5 that attracted my interest.

Anyway fast forward past the "kisses", past the emailing back and forth, and finally to phone call proceeding the date. The boy had been surprisingly sweet via text communication, perhaps the kind of sweet that suggested he wasn't entirely relaxed with the situation. I've never been offered the phrase "have a lovely day" so much outside of the USA retail sector. As soon as the phone call got going though, I found the first flaw. He was a slow-talker. This was a bad sign.

There's something to be said here for the additional depth of human perception when it comes to the standard human communication methods. Online this guy seemed fairly intelligent, interesting and not too bad at conversation, but as soon as I heard him talking there was an immediate feeling that something wasn't the way I wanted it.

Anyway, attempting not to judge a book by its audio tape, I went along with the date as planned. In essence, it was horrible. When someone repeats more than once that as a child they used to spend most of their time having horse-poo and rotten egg fights, you do start to question their priorities in life. So after 10 minutes I found myself thinking up excuses to leave. I figured I would give it an hour, it could possibly get better, but in reality I was already wishing I was across the road playing lawn bowls with my mates. Concerning when you take into account my lack of enthusiasm for lawn bowls.

So that was the end of internet dating for yours truly. I did however learn an interesting lesson, there are some things conveyed when you actually meet a person that are very well hidden in internet communication. Perhaps we shouldn't be so hasty to discount actual interaction from our lives.

It's all about the journey

'Everyone's on a journey these days' writes John Elder in the Sunday Age this week, as he discusses the prevalence of the term in modern lingo. Several well known thinkers weigh into the discussion with their own perceptions of the use of the word - from a comparison with "aspirational voters and their ambitions", to a way to make sense of enduring hardship.

I often think of my life and discoveries as a journey, and the whole article got me to wondering why. Going through the many levels of education that I've encountered, I had a general sense of waiting for the world to start, for my life to start. Things always seemed to be happening while I was waiting for something else to really kick in. Some time in my mid-20s (and still enrolled as a full time student), I realised that there wasn't going to be any grand starting moment, where someone handed me a key and I opened the door to the rest of my life. Life was now, and I had better start actually paying attention to it. That life that I'd been thinking of as being fixed in a place in the future had actually been going on all around me, while I was patiently waiting to grow up. There was no actual destination, life was unfolding around me as I thought about it.

To me, the key features of a journey are the things that happen along the way. A journey in my mind has no need of a final end point, it continues on for as long as you let it. It's not a trip, or a visit or an outing - it's a journey, alluding that the path is greater than the destination. When we journey through the first three dimensions, it is easy to stand still in one place and assume a destination has been reached, but it would be sad to think that nothing had happened along the way. So now, as we all journey through the fourth dimension, do we ever reach a place where we might stand still in time? This constant movement is for me the essence of life. My greatest fear is standing still while the current washes around me, and watching the world go past. The journey is in fact all there is. It's no wonder that we're suddenly so pre-occupied with the word. Travel, movement, change, new thoughts, new ideas, new activities, they're all a part of the journey.

If we're constantly traveling, how can we ignore the journey? One of life's great lessons is to stop and smell the roses, to appreciate the moments as you find them, rather than dismissing them in favour of the next - living in the moment. Perhaps that is the key to it after all, if we think about the journey, where we have come from, to where we are, and pay attention to all of its parts we allow ourselves to appreciate the importance and beauty of each moment.

So despite journey being the new word of the decade, I'm sticking with it. I'm along for the ride and I'm not getting off - this journey has no destination, and I think that's what makes it the most exciting.

Deadlines seem to you to be of relative, rather than absolute, importance

The title of this post was one of many questions in myers briggs type personality test I saw recently. Ironically, without hesitation I answered yes. To the frustration of many people in my life, I'm not exactly what you'd call punctual. That would be one of the many reasons that I'm writing a "wrap-up of 2009, start again 2010" type blog post 2 weeks into the new year.

For three years in a row I made the same New Years resolutions without managing to ever keep one of them. The first was to lose 5kg (actually I think that had been a standing resolution since I was about 15, when I didn't actually need to lose 5kg). The second was to learn to speak Italian (which I did attempt one of the years). The third was to finish my PhD. So after 3 years of consistently failing, in 2009 I thought it was time to mix things up again. I abandoned all other resolutions, and summed it all up with one statement. "to not to do anything that I don't want someone* to find out about". As it went, there were only 2 incidents where I slipped up, and since they're things I don't want someone to find out about, I won't mention what they were here. Overall, I think 2 slip-ups in 365 days, counts as a success.

So 2010, and the semi-pointless task of thinking up new resolutions is back. Given my penchant for repeating resolutions it's not surprising that I've decided to maintain the same resolution this year. I think once I manage to keep it for 3 years in a row, I might just call it my life motto, although that being the case, it's going to need to be phrased a little better.

*excluding speed cameras and law enforcement officers

hands up if you have not had sex with someone sitting at this table...

Some years ago I was privileged enough to find myself hosting a radio show on Radio Adelaide under the guise of uncovering interesting things about Adelaide that not many people knew. Our first show was devoted to something that everyone already knows, and at the time seemed to be reverberating through our existence - the two and half degrees of separation between everyone living in Adelaide. We didn't research particularly well - there was no facebook back then to easily get statistics on who knew who - we figured on it being a fairly well established fact and discussed what it meant to us and our lives.

Six or seven years on, Adelaide being highly interconnected had stopped being a revelation and had become the status quo. It wasn't exactly surprising to find people who knew people who knew you, it was more expected than not. Feeling somewhat claustrophobic within the tangle of interconnections, and finding the start of an exciting new world just 8 hours drive away, I realised it was time to move on. Time to break free of the circles I'd grown up in and move to the bigger playground, where hopefully the swings would be more exciting, the monkey bars high enough that my feet didn't scrape the ground and where there'd be a whole bunch of new kids who didn't all know each other already.

The prospect was exciting and a little frightening - I knew a bunch of people , in a whole lot of different circles, but nothing as intertwined as the Venn Diagram I was leaving behind me. The thought of being able to go out and know no one at the party was invigorating. So I came and I met people, I socialised, I had a whole lot of fun. I met people through different avenues, at different parties, under different circumstances.

Slowly though, the circles started to tighten. People I thought were in entirely different circles were suddenly old friends, people who didn't know each other before I arrived became the best of friends, and I found myself struggling to describe who these new people were to the old circles back home. It's not a bad thing at all, just an interesting realisation, the world is a small place, you create your own circles, like attracts like, and you're drawn to the same people who are drawn to each other.

So here I am a year later, and I think I might have been spending too much time on the one piece of play equipment. Sitting around outside with a big group of people at the Black Cat on Brunswick St a friend of mine looked around and said "Hands up if you haven't had sex with someone sitting at this table". One person put their hand up. Welcome back to Adelaide circa 1999.

A little late, a little memory

I don’t want to ever forget this afternoon. I sat on the porch couch in the sun, drinking cider, smoking, reading Kerouac and listening to Bowie. As if that wasn’t fulfilling enough, as I sat out there a beautiful young girl walked past and handed me the most amazing looking pink blossoms. That completely random act made me feel so special, so pleased. I felt rewarded for taking time out to myself, to sit and engross myself in sweetness, all on my own. I know those moments are rare, the rare combination of sunshine and time out, and the will to sit and be peaceful doesn’t come as often as it should. I know that this period of my life is special; there will be times when my life is full of beautiful action, busy and hectic, yet still wonderful I’m sure. For now, I can appreciate the stillness, the languid afternoon, with the sun slowly melting through the trees, time to contemplate and reflect. The simple joy of reading words so beautifully put, images conjured and tales told as if they were playing out before me, in the same delicate slowness that they were witnessed. Oh, the joy of reading, tripping over the words as they saunter past, listening softly to the heartbeats, the moments of the characters, told, not to drive towards some suspenseful ending, but just to be told, and to be relished. Conjuring the memories of childhood and adolescence, feeling their emotions, and remembering my own stories like these. Stories that are by far more important to the participant than the observer, but throwing the reader into the participant’s pulsating memory, allows them re-witness the beauty of life over and over. Life is beautiful, its moments pass by so quickly, it is important to stop and notice them. Hold them briefly and preserve their memories. Please always let me remember the beauty of the sun shining through the plane trees on Rathdowne Street, framing the illuminated clouds in the azure sky, the moments of peace and stillness and the freedom of having time to read in my own company warmed by the sun, with the taste of cider on my lips. I could quite possibly be the luckiest girl in the world. At moments like these I wonder whether I could ask for anything more.

This blog was supposed to be about life...

...but this is too good to leave out.

Found this comic on xkcd.com today, then continued on to find this article.

Hover your mouse over the comic for the full effect.

Did I mention I love the internet?

Woe is Tuesday (aka Pimp my Monday)

My relationship with Tuesday has had its ups and downs. In fact it's possible to say that Tuesday and I have never really seen eye to eye, until just recently that is. In the past Tuesday has been tough, really tough. The excitement of Monday and a new week beginning is over, you've already discussed the follies of the weekend with co-workers, and most weeks, nothing thrilling has happened since yesterday afternoon.* The tedium of the week has set in. Unfortunately, on Tuesday morning, you still have another 4 days of it to go. A whole 4 days - that's practically forever. 4 more days of getting up early, 4 more days of work before the weekend, 4 more days of being sensible. Four. More. Days. Not to mention that sneaky little problem of the fun from the weekend really catching up with you - you can ride into Monday with a little bit of sparkle still left in your step, but it's Tuesday when you really start to suffer.

Recently however, Tuesday and I seem to have sorted out our differences, she has become somewhat the teacher's pet of weekdays. It might partly be because I've shifted my working hours slightly and no longer rise at 6am (I really hate early mornings), but I think our current rapport has grown from new Tuesday night activities, the anticipation of which manages to get me through the tedium of the working day. In fact the anticipation of my weekly rendezvous with Tuesday, boosts me through Monday, leaving me feeling as joyous as if I were coming up to Friday, a long time favourite.

So it got me to thinking - maybe all our troubled weekday relationships can be repaired. While Monday and I have enjoyed a cordial interaction thus far, I'm aware of many who don't feel the same way about her. So in their honour (and having fixed my one broken weekday relationship) I've been trying to come up with other ways to avoid wanting to break-up with Monday every time she comes around. So far I've thought of:** Cheap Monday dinner at the pub; some kind of exciting new activity like rock-climbing, jewelery making, painting, or dancing classes; cheap Monday movies; Monday spa time or even Monday massage. Leave your suggestions in the comments section, perhaps we'll find a way to kick Mondayitis to the curb once and for all.

Oh, and I know I may have picked unfairly on poor old Monday, she does get a rough ride. If your least favourite day of the week is another, feel free to substitute.

* Television does not count as something to talk about. Especially if it was last night's episode of Big Brother/Australian Idol/whatever mindless crap reality program is spewing forth this month. Exceptions might include a really fascinating documentary on string theory, anthropology or the meaning of life.

**Tried really hard to not make this sound like a list that you might find in Cosmo or FHM. Not sure that I've been successful. Actually, I probably didn't try that hard, but I did try at least a little bit.

How old am I really?

Read an article in today's Age by someone claiming to have lived their entire life with the internet. I still remember life without the internet. A lot of it. I even remember life before mobile phones. By my recollection the internet wasn't particularly widespread in Australia before 1995, I even remember the weird squelchy noises of dial-up, internet chat before facebook or msn, and the day that someone told me there was this crazy new search engine called google that was way better than anything else, and I thought "gee that's cool, they've named it the same as the number 10^100". I wonder if anyone still knows what a googol is? I'm still waiting for the new Google product called Googleplex. Even if it would be impossible to ever write the number down.

Anyway I digress. My main point was:

Do they let 14 year olds write in the paper these days?

Caller Blocked

I just got asked on a date by someone calling from a blocked number. Have I become one of those people that you have to trap into answering the phone? Maybe it was an accident, but it got me to thinking about the whole concept.

It's a thoroughly weird situation really. I'm sure I've done it in the past, although not for a while. You know, when you think someone might be avoiding you, so you switch of the number sending on your phone and call them to trick them into answering. The key thing here is - surely their lack of answer is enough of an indication that they might not actually want to talk to you. Do you need a bigger signal? And is someone who needs to be tricked into answering the phone really going to be keen to go out with you?

Someone accused me of performing this trickery last year sometime when I had the number sending turned off for some other reason (think needing to call someone who you don't want to have your number). My first thought was how entirely counter productive it was - I mean unless you had something really really important to tell them, why would you bother? Who wants to talk to someone that doesn't want to talk to them anyway?

The human mind really does work in mysterious ways.

Time is a construct

Small ironies of life:

Being asked out on a date and realising that you only have one night free in the next two weeks. It's suddenly apparent that an extra person will not fit into my life*. A friend once told me that whenever you decide to start something new, you have to think of something else that you're going to give up - after all, technically your day is already full of activities, even if the activity is just sitting on your arse doing nothing. So, right now, nothing to give up, apparently no space for new activities.

Lucky I'm single.

*That is of course, unless they're an heir who might allow me to spend less time on the more tedious parts of life.

housing crisis

Realised today that the amount of money I'm spending repaying debt is the rough equivalent of a mortgage repayment. Only difference being I don't have a house, or any assets.

All I have is the memories. There are some pretty good memories though.

In search of an heir

A downside of enjoying traveling and the finer (read more expensive) things in life is the cost. Since I opened my very first bank account, not counting the dollarmites account that I put $2 per week in, but had no access to, I've been big on spending. You know it's bad when at your 21st instead of starting with stories of stupid drunken antics, or the obligatory "I've known Miss Pomegranate since..." your friends start their speech to the brassy sounds of "Hey Big Spender".

Oscar Wilde once said that anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. From that rationale, anyone could tell from my credit card statement that I'm clearly gifted in the imagination department. Unfortunately all of this living beyond one's means can only end in one of three ways: death, bankruptcy, or living frugally until the debt is repayed and someone is stupid enough to allow you to clock up a new one. With the options of death and bankruptcy not being particularly appealing, I've opted for debt repayment and am now desperately flinging money into the black hole of debt that I've been very steadily digging since the day I got that very first credit card (to pay for accommodation that I conveniently forgot I would have to pay for when I booked the $1 virgin flights to get me there and back). I'm hoping that if I throw it fervourently enough I might actually plug the hole at the bottom, much like the drains in my house when you turn the tap on fast enough and the sink fills up with water.*

In the meantime, I've come up with another potential out. All I need to do is marry an heir and become an heiress. So if anyone knows of an heir looking for his heiress, please pass on my contacts. I'd do a much better job than Paris, I'm far classier, and I have a whole lot more imagination.

*fast enough being slightly faster than a trickle.

On the subject of wank

One of the things I really don't like is wank, and there seems to be a lot of it going around. It's always very thinly disguised as some kind of lifestyle choice, and often espoused by those who think that they are living an Alternative Lifestyle*.

The one that seems to be thrown around by so many of my peers is that of going to another country to Find Yourself. Young wankers, the country over seem to think that through some miraculous transformation, jetting off to the other side of the world is going to help them in their quest towards meaning in their otherwise consumer driven lives. The part of themselves that makes them Unique is out there just waiting to be stumbled over, but not locally, no, it's so Unique that they have to go to another country** to find it. Now I've been to other countries, and one thing I've noticed it that being thrown into an unfamiliar situation often makes it difficult just to find the local supermarket, let alone that very special piece of yourself that makes you Unique. Seriously, if you can't find yourself in a city you know, how on earth are you going to manage in one where you can't speak the language and need a map to navigate?!

The other wank I hate is this whole idea of Who You Are being an excuse for completely crappy behaviour and character flaws. "I'm a Taurus, so I'm supposed to be stubborn", or "I'm an Aires, so I'm selfish" are not excuses for being a dickhead. After all, while you may have been born into a particular star sign, you've had since birth to work on these things. By all means, if you enjoy your character flaws then continue to promote them, but at least take responsibility. Rephrase: "I only think about myself, and I don't really want to think about other people, so that makes me selfish" or "I don't want to think about things from another perspective, and I enjoy ignorantly sticking to my original thought or idea no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented, which is why I'm stubborn".

Of course, if you're a real Wanker, then you can top it off with a combo. The Who You Are wank can also very closely follow the Finding Yourself in another country wank, because of course once you've found what makes you Unique (by working in a bar in London for a year before you go back home to university), then you know very well Who You Are, and of course all of the associated character flaws that go along with it.

* The irony here is that it's not really very alternative when so many people are doing it now is it?

**remarkably this is most likely the same other country that everyone else who is Unique goes to, usually it's in Europe with a high probability of being somewhere in the UK

Did I mention I like to travel?

Walking along Lake Street I thought to myself "I should have worn shoes", then quickly dismissed the thought as frivilous. Thongs (or flip flops) were perfectly acceptable attire, despite it being the middle of winter.

One more thing that I like starting with C; Cairns.

I had my first corndog (and most likely my last) in San Francisco. It was a very perplexing experience, my mouth didn't quite know whether it was supposed to be sweet or savoury. It left me feeling, well, confused.

I find Queensland much the same. The weather is amazing, the environment is stunning, but the people, oh the people. It always feels like I'm stepping into a giant theme park when I go there. Everything man made seems to be tackily oversized, over coloured and generally a bit off.

I think in the end, the weather in Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef on the doorstep won out over the people and it ended up on the positive side of the scale. After all there aren't really that many people living there.

And I thought Melbourne was cold

First thought as I step out of Canberra airport today - "I should have brought gloves". It was a balmy -1 degrees outside. -1?!

On return to Melbourne, with the angst cloud that is Canberra still hanging over my head, I've come to the sad conclusion that I'll probably die of some kind of lifestyle illness. I participate in far too many of the things that are bad for you to actually be able to get away with it. It's either that or I'll die in jail after going on a mad rampage, hunting down and killing people who misuse "your" and "you're", or use apostrophes pluratively, rather than in the contractive or possessive forms.

Actually that's probably not true, I'm not really the violent type, bad grammar just irritates me on a level with those last few grains of sand that seem to find their way in your bed after a day at the beach. You know the ones, the ones that no matter how hard you try to brush them out they always gravitate right back towards the spot you're lying in.*

Oh and I discovered one thing starting with C that I don't like - Canberra.

*that said, I'm fairly certain there will be at least one, if not many, instances of bad grammar in this blog. Feel free to point them out.

Brought to you by the letter 'C'

As I walked across the road in the general direction of Brunswick St the first thought I had was that I should have worn tights. It's Melbourne. It's cold. Fuck, that conclusion shouldn't have been too hard to draw, even with the heater on in my room. Thankfully since I moved here my sensitivity to temperature has reduced remarkably.

First post should be an introduction, right?

Here's some interesting or not interesting things about me:

I like science. I like art. I don't think the two are that different. I appreciate politcs. I have a love-hate relationship with computer code. I work from home a lot because I can't be bothered going to the office. Also they don't let me smoke and drink at my desk. My desk at home currently houses these things:

computer, nail scissors, half a bottle of shiraz, half a glass of shiraz, half a packet of cigarettes, an ash tray, a coffee mug, empty bowl and plate, printer, hand cream, lighter, earrings, rings, tweezers, camera, tin mug from alcatraz, half a glass of water, papers, dvd, lamp, unpaid parking fines, frequent flyer card, credit card, hard drive, bepanthen, blank cds, spray bottle, phone, sunglasses and a lamp. Hell, I could survive for a week with this stuff.

Until a week ago I didn't own a pair of jeans that fit. I wear skirts a lot. I enjoy starting things, I'm not very good at finishing them. 140 characters isn't enough space for me to voice my opinion.

I was once told by an old Jewish fashionista come petroleum broker who I met in an airport that I looked like the kind of girl who wears exactly what she likes all the time. I tend to agree.

I like the rollercoaster, and would always chose it over the ferris wheel, even if it makes you sick sometimes. I belive sleep is for the weak, and sometimes for the week, but never for the weekend. I'm very good at procrastinating.

I like most things starting with the letter 'C', and some things that don't

Oh, and now I have a blog. It's called "I should have worn tights". If it could have a by-line it would be "growing up in Melbourne at 28".