Ayshe's Journal

I called a short term place yesterday and got a woman with a really posh accent, darling. Her descriptions of the wonderful apartments filled me with a sense of joy not dissimilar to being slowly stuffed with champagne-scented cotton wool. My spirits were elevated at least a full two points above my station.

She then asked what my range was, and I dutifully replied 300 pcm.

"Three hundred..... Pee see em?!!!!" She remarked, incredulously, in a manner that made me feel very stupid. Her words were laced with the utmost distaste. I could sense her revulsion at the receiver in her hands being connected, intimately, with mine. I could literally sense her mental imagery of my unwashed hands upon her palm, my halitosis in her ear. I swear I heard her eyeballs furtitively dart towards the handset, as her mind resigned to the neccesity of a thorough disinfecting after the conversation.

"Oh, lord no. No, no, I cater for fully serviced apartments" she said, lengthening the vowels for the word "serviced" in a manner which made it perfectly lucid that my education cost less than some items of clothing in her immense, antique wardrobe. "No" she repeated, demonstrating an innate keeness for the word. "No, my apartments would cost more than that a week". Despite her obvious discomfort at the lower classes' habit of calling up ladies of stature and enquiring of the use of her palaces for, presumably, some kind of slumhouse, I could not help but admire her technical precision in pronouncing words in italics.

"I shall check with my partner and see what she thinks" I lied smoothly, having already felt guilty enough for sullying her day with this rather base conversation. "OK" she said, reverting momentarily into the lower class dialectical habit of colloquialisms. The sheer mental effort of communicating in so few syllables made her break out into a cold sweat, and my heart wavered for a moment as I realised what senseless damage I had so carelessly wrought.

The conversation ended, and I imagine she went for a bit of a lie down. I straightened my grubby collar, popped my doffer cap on my head and got back to the real business, of shovelling mud for a living.

I shall never aspire beyond my station again!

Dear sirs,

I would like to take this opportunity to make you aware that the shoe-sized and somewhat terrifying device that is emitting shrill bell-like noises upon your desk is called a telephone. This marvel of modern technology has the capacity to allow two persons, (such as customer and storeowner, were we to pick an example from a hat) to communicate almost instantaneously from almost anywhere on the globe.

Whilst I applaud your decision to install an automated answering device, replete with computer generated voice, I must puzzle over the complete lack of a voice message system attached to that unit should the store owners or other call-answering staff be in a state of paralysed terror under their desks from the cacophony of unanswered calls.

One could easily imagine a scenario where a dashingly handsome young chap making a simple enquiry about lenses could, over the course of a morning, listen to the delightful yet impersonal computerised voice up to twenty times in successive unanswered calls, whilst enjoying the gentle soothing melody offered by the miraculous telecommunications network.

I award you no points for your customer service, and may God have mercy on your souls.

Good DAY sirs.

Gareth Fox
Potential customer

Yesterday was a fairly exciting day in general comparison to life here in Shepherd's bush, London. We have been happily bunkered down in this multicultural melting house for a couple of weeks now, carefully planning and sending out applications for rejection letters. So far the net haul has been distressingly efficient!

The British National Party managed to get two seats in the recent European elections, and as such had been given a chance to go on the political show Question Time, which is pretty normal in the grand scheme of things. What is unusual about this is that the party involved is essentially a neo-Nazi organisation, with frighteningly xenophobic aims and goals. The political leanings of the BNP are well documented, and I'd certainly advocate looking it up if you wanted to know more, but I won't go in to it here. The party leader is a man by the name of Nick Griffith, and this wonderful chappie has aims of retaking the UK for the indiginous peoples that were left here after the last Ice age. I ponder how he is going to remove the Normans, Saxons etc, but if he wants a nation of celts... well, good luck with that. Personally, I think the man is a tool. Idealogically, the man is on record denying the Holocaust, and he's said he thought Hitler went "a bit too far". Suffice to say, it's abject socialism and racism in a suit and tie.

As you might expect, a lot of people had issues with the BBC inviting him on to Question time. They have accused the BBC of giving the BNP a platform to further their agendas, and they think the BBC should have excluded the party from TV. Personally, I think that the sad fact is that the party was democratically elected, and the BBC has no right to censor politics on it's own authority.

I will also point out that the Nazi party was also democratically elected, and the problem is not democracy in general, but the fact that such a party can exist in our current times. I think it is a sign of problems and unhappiness, and the current government has failed to properly manage a lot of the issues that the BNP has managed to hijack. My impressions are that most people who voted for the BNP did not realise what they were actually voting for, and they voted their anger and frustration at issues that had been neglected. Dangerous reasons to give an entity power, I think. I like the idea of voting on hope and aspirations... but again, that's not something I am going in to here.

Our personal interactions for the day started with a wander down to the BBC offices to see the gathering protesters, who were fairly peaceful albeit angry at this point. I agreed wholeheartedly with the root cause of the protestors unhappiness - the rise of fascism and racism in British politics. I could not really agree on the picketing of BBC though, who in my eyes have a duty of impartiality. It made me feel oddly like a traitor... what's the term? an enabler? I am not sure. We watched for a bit with that horrid morbid curiosity that gawkers posess - almost expecting a mecha-hitler to start doing battle with the mob. It was interesting and refreshing in a way to see people getting passionate about politics, doing something about it. Somewhere in the last year I have somehow begun to nurture a solid pride in my British ancestry and citizenship that I never knew existed. Regardless of the mistakes the governent makes - and there have been numerous! - Britain is on the good guys side. Always has been.

We watched the live coverage on the BBC website for a bit, which was fairly interesting. Nick Griffith made it into the studio by being driven down our street, which was the closest to fame I am sure we will ever get. Hooray, our claim is that a neo-Nazi drove past our house. I think we can do better...

Fast forward to a few hours later, and I noticed some photographers outside our house. Dee and I went outside to see five or so police officers in a cordon blocking the street. Cool! Then suddenly the protest mob appeared, as if from nowhere. We looked behind us as a battalion of riot police ran down the road in full gear, right past us to block the protestors. Then it got really cool, with the chanting, police blockages and us ignorant gawkers on street level, as if the whole spectacle was for our own private amusement.

About fifteen minutes later, the police chief for our area walked over to us and asked us if we were OK. He'd written letters to every house to make sure they knew about the protest, and he was literally checking on the residents, making sure they knew the police were there to protect them. I felt very warm and fuzzy at this point, up until the part where he said three officers had been injured outside the BBC earlier on.

Nick Griffith used a diifferent road to escape from the studio, and the mob and riot police dissapated about half an hour later. It left me with a whole buch of very odd thoughts. I was on the police side of the cordon, but fundamentally I agreed with the mob. I am absolutely convinced that the officers who were there last night to protect us, the BBC staff and even Nick Griffith himself also agree fundamentally with their protest. But it was the boys in blue who got hurt, keeping law and order, keeping society civil.

It made me wonder if there is ever going to be such a thing as a perfect system. I don't think there is... and democracy is pretty much the least evil we are capable of. People will always be made minorities by the greater will of the people, and even racists deserve a vote and a voice. What you are left with, in the end, is the will of the people, a thin imaginary line that we don't cross and beyond that is anarchy.

Frankly, I am amazed it works at all!

With regards to the actual show, I watched it live on the BBC. Nick Griffith came across as a complete tool and racist, but there was so much BNP bashing on so many angles that it came to be an overload. I thought the other panelists had great moments but in general were not terribly strong, and in the end for me it became about watching the brawling and question dodging. Jack Straw, for instance, should have just admitted that the BNP's rise in popularity is because of gaps in policy.

All in all, quite an atypical day, I should think!

What a week. First, the degree, my daily exasperation for the last god-knows how many weeks, is finally over. It felt so surreal to finally stand up and present. Naturally, I choked and forgot all my cues. Smooth. I had some drinks with Zac and Baines, was a little dissappointing no one else was in posession of the alcoholic gene. The big hand was on the four, the little on drink o clock. No matter. After that I went to have more drinks with Mum and Dad. After that? I walked home to promptly fall asleep on the couch. I blame my 8am-2am work schedule for the last few weeks.

The weekend was nice and relaxed, I packed, I did goodbyes, I took mental snapshots of everything. I'll be back. I know I was supposed to feel sad, but the excitement was mounting. After all, it would be the first real test of my 'spensive noise cancelling headphones. Oh, and I was going to finally fly to Europe to meet up with Dee!! When I got to Tuesday morning, I took pancakes around to Dave's for a pretty difficult goodbye. I really don't know what I will do with myself without my siblings.

The drive up was interesting. Very interesting. While I really enjoyed the company, a couple of incidents left me scratching my head wondering if I was adopted. At the airport, saying goodbye was made relatively easy by Mum cutting off the emotional farewells to make a quick getaway and thusly it was a relaxed and chirpy me sitting at the airport bar instead of a melancholy one. Boarding was exciting, and the first part of the flight was quite comfortable, considering. A mere 13 hours in the seat, sleeping where I could, watching movies and listening to my iPod. Not a bad way to spend your time, provided you don't mind bad quality sleep, constant noise and uninspiring views out into blackness.

Landing in LA was pretty cool. I actually saw the Hollywood sign on the hills. I found that to be quite exciting in of itself. And that was pretty much it. Shepherded into a waiting room by efficient but not unpleasant staff, and a quiet relaxing moment to change into my spare underclothes and help myself to free snacks and drinks.

It was much harder to sleep on the second leg, because of the mounting excitement. I slept when I could, but ended up watching movies from about 4am through to landing. Incidentally, Heath Ledger's Joker is actually pretty good. Landing was an hour early because of good tail winds. The aircraft got up to about 1200 kph. That's quick! Once landed, I got myself a TalkMobile SIM card (4p a minute to call home!) and made my way to the Dot2Dot airport shuttle. London was much as I left it last April, but clearly I have changed a little. I scored internal points for recognizing the BT tower, the back of Paddington, various sights along the path and such. Unfortunately, the early landing meant a long wait to get in to the apartments I'd booked. I fluffed around for three hours, desperately wanting to sit somewhere comfortable and relax. Carrying several thousand dollars in foreign currency upon your person in a strange place so does make you edgy.

Once at the apartment, I decided to catch a couple of hours nap. I was out in seconds and woke bleary and disorientated to my alarm what seemed like seconds later. Ugh. I caught the underground to Liverpool Street station where I met up with Danushka (finally!!). We had dinner, made it back to the apartment and then I think I was pretty much snoring till the next morning. Loudly, I presume.

I thank my crap student sleeping schedule for the fact that I woke feeling full of beans. In fact, I was not really affected by jetlag at all for this trip, I just seem to wake a little earlier than normal. Being a student rocks!

In the next blog I'll talk more about London itself, with pictures! Ciao

I found this to be a pretty powerful monologue.

YouTube - Keith Olbermann Prop 8

Have you ever gone to print an assessment the night before it is due and discovered that your younger brother has emptied the paper tray on your printer?

I am struck with disbelief.

Problem:
Brother's PC is slow

Solution
1) Run spyware scan on PC
2) Spyware is running too slow. Abort spyware check
3) Remove HDD, insert into my main PC
4) Run defrag and virus scan to clean HDD
5) Reinsert clean HDD into brother's PC
6) Observe random reboots with rising caution
7) Attempt to diagnose system with chkdsk
8) Chkdsk reports irrecoverable errors
9) Realise that the HDD was already very damaged and has now crashed
10) Obligatory panic moment
11) Regain composure. Download SpinRite by Steve Gibson
12) Observe as SpinRite finds over six million errors. Six million errors
13) Did I mention? Six million errors.
14) Re-run SpinRite
15) Conclude that disk is irreparable.
16) Imaginary arbitrary invisible counter appears over HDD. Every subsequent reboot decrements counter
17) When counter reaches zero, data is irrecoverably lost. Data recovery is now critical
18) Start playing Recovery Roulette. Spin a "attempt to clone HDD"
19) Clone fails due to irreparable errors
20) Cannibalize other PC for identical size drive
21) Start download of XP home ISO to load OS on to drive using existing key
22) Main PC video card inexplicably fails
23) Replace video card in main PC with spare
24) Reboot main PC to find no POST, card is faulty
25) Play motherboard roulette, wiggle card until it works
26) Drivers on main PC fail. Reinstall drivers
27) Reboot and regain control of video card
28) ADSL modem fails, taking down LAN and server with spammed packets
29) Reset ADSL modem
30) Reconfigure LAN
31) Bring back main PC, network and LAN by using laptop which has 10 min battery
32) LAN and main PC repaired. Obtain ISO from server
33) Burn ISO and begin installation process
34) ISO works right up until the BSOD stop message
35) Blog at 2am


The above sequence of events is totally genuine. I was intending to go to bed at step 19, when suddenly I realised just how bad the situation was. At each step I thought "just one more, this will fix it!"

36) Sleep, safe in the knowledge that there is a God, and I am largely disfavoured.

Dee has read everything in bold
I've read the strikeouts

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Oh man, it's really happening. I've booked my ticket!

I'm going to Europe, kids! I am so excited. Looks like Nov 20, I am invading London. I am going to miss my family like crazy, but right now I am too excited to feel blue about that. Of course there are some rather minor details to sort out still, such as a bank account, a job, where we're actually moving to... you know, minor stuff. I am sure we can sort that at the last minute.

I am full of bubbly effervescent joy!

So on the weekend just gone, when I was in Auckland, I was struck down with the deadly man-flu. On Sunday evening when I left, Danushka reported similar symptoms. Oh dear.

She's home sick today while I am working on assessments. To while the time, our conversation has been somewhat inspired. I shall paraphrase:

Dee: I feel eel.
Gaf: Roe dear. That's not good
Dee: I have a sore trout and clogged herring
Gaf: So the net effect from having the flu is you want to pike out and sleep?
Dee: It's not the flu, honey, it's just a cod
Gaf: I think you need to hook yourself a lemon drink, line in bed and sinker down some paracetamol.
Dee: I warehou about you sometimes


I am sure in some countries a conversation like this can get one arrested, or at least severely beaten. Hope you feel better soon, Dee!

Well, I am still up because I am feeling unwell and can't sleep.

A YouTube random search turned this old gem out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQQeg3jYgOA

Potentially NSFW, it's a really weird video, wrong but so funny

What an amazing weekend!

So Dee and I got the nutty idea to go camping mid autumnish. The weather is highly variable, and rainy and windy but also interspersed with sunniness. Perfect tent weather!

The plan this time was to actually plan. Last time we sort of did things ad hoc, and although it worked out well, we were both hoping for a less rushed-about trip. We headed first out to the far north west coast for the Kauri forests. I have to tell you about Tane Mahouta, the tree we went to see.

On the first night (where we camped next to a babbling river) we went out for a night-time bush walk. It was about two hours of easygoing walk in the forest. Every now and then we doused the lights and stood in silence, in near pitch black to listen for the Kiwi in the forest. We never saw any but we saw massive Kauri trees, weta, freshwater crayfish, giant eels and snails and all sorts of wonderful flora. It was pretty damned cool, and we learned a lot about the forest and Kiwi and all the other forest denizens.

The next day we went on a self guided tour of the forests. First stop was to see the seventh largest Kauri tree, called Yakas. These trees are so immense they are named and revered and people come from all over the world to see them. I am not even kidding. We took pictures but you just can't get the scale. You are talking about a tree with a thirteen metre girth that is over 1200 years old. A sapling of a year old could be less than six inches high. The walk was not easy and reminded me just how unfit I am... but that's not really anything to do with anything. Next we went to see the second biggest Kauri, Te Matua Ngahere, Father of the Forest. Once again, there is no scale that can convey how impressive this tree is. This tree was 16 metres in girth. There are over two hundred cubic metres of wood in the trunk, and the canopy is roughly thirty metres across. Lastly we went to see Tane Mahouta. It may sound odd calling a tree by a name, but in Maori, he (the tree is male) is called "Lord of the Forest". The name is apt... you simply cannot fathom the size of this ancient tree. It is estimated that the tree was a sapling at the time of Jesus. It is over two thousand years old, and has been standing on that spot for the whole time. Unbelievable.

The next day came a visit to Waitangi, the birthplace of our nation. I was left more introspective than awed, as I tend to overthink things. I'm not happy at how the country is so divided against itself, despite the fact that on a global scale, New Zealand is a utopia. I can't help the thinking spirals and it's really stupid. Less said the better.

The final full day we had in Paihia was devoted to a full day bay cruise in search of dolphins, deserted islands, penguins, sea birds and beautiful cobalt blue ocean. I saw a sad, lonely dolphin in December, in Napier aquarium. Apparently the lifespan of a dolphin in the wild is 50 years, in captivity it is about eight. I can see why, these creatures belong in the wide open sea. The pictures are awesome but I still can't describe how it was to be on the boat seeing dolphins playing under the bow, jumping and calling to each other. I heard them whistle and chirp, and they were so showing off for us!

Monday also marked one year since Danushka and I made our relationship official. I was so excited by the dolphin cruise I forgot completely! What a terrible boyfriend. We had dinner at a great Italian restaurant and had a fantastic evening.

All in all this trip was amazing. It is kind of sad that it is the last I will do in New Zealand for some time, since I am going overseas in November. More memories for the locker :)

It's been a bust couple of months. For some unfathomable reason, I have been neglecting pretty much everything except the bare minimum of schoolwork.

I''ve been to-ing and fro-ingfrom Auckland a lot (and Wellington last weekend), and today I am going again, for two weeks this time. Dee's friend Peter has offered me a spare room at his house, a generosity which makes me feel squidgy inside. Yay! I will be setting up an office at Dee's parents place and working from there. Basically a lot of people are doing me favours, and the result is I get to spend two weeks in Auckland on "holiday", hanging out with Dee. Yay!

Life in general is pretty good lately. I really can't complain, although I am kind of worried about a lot of things. School, work, travel, money. The usual. A new one to worry about is my mother, who may have a tumour in her head. She's being so practical about it, the whole no-sense-in-worrying-until-CT-scan attitude that is nice for now but I am just so terrified that it's going to be bad.

I gained a niece and nephew since December, and Dave got himself a new, better job. There's a sense of everyone just getting on with their lives, and some days I feel stalled - but that's the study messing with my head.

I plan to backdate a lot of entries because there really is a lot I have to talk about, but for now I have to pack this PC up and load it into the van.

Ciao!

Or rather, lack of it.

I am wide awake, but I went to bed two and a half hours ago. Grrr. And I will (if uninterrupted) sleep until 11am.

It's bloody annoying. It's like my brain thinks sleepytime is four hours out of sync. I just want to be normal!!

Part 1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KeZB2EsPqGE
Part 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=XmzailhVl-U
Part 3: http://youtube.com/watch?v=m6UdQxt7b24

Food for thought...

First day of class was yesterday. It feels good to be back in study, and working towards that wonderful goal of being a professional nerd!

The last month has been amazing. I've spent it working at a 3D animation studio, doing network administration on a campus of students, animators, offices and all sorts of joy. I was kind of the Linux expert, and some of the troubleshooting I ended up doing left me feeling quite confident about my abilities.

In class yesterday the tutor went over the subjects. Most of it I had received a crash course in and had been playing with for that month. I'm excited!

In the relationship front, things are pretty good. Just last night we etched out a fairly tentative Plan for travel. It involves not returning for graduation next year - it's six thousand dollars for some photos. I can deal :)

Things are moving forward. I really have to stop with these uber brief posts but I just don't have the inspiration to write anything profound right now...

A year ago I was settling into bed in a motel in Auckland.

It was the first time I had ever gone on a business trip and I was pretty excited. Not because I had the entirety of the next day to work on HACCP procedures, enthralling as they were, but because I had a date!

I was going to be in the Auckland area, so I texted an old friend named Dee. She and I had always been inexplicably at ease with eachother over the years since we first officially met, and she had sounded so enthused, in a textual kind of way, to be meeting for dinner on the 20th of February.

I'd always held a soft, squishy spot for Dee, and I never really knew why. About six months prior, I had seen her last, with one of her friends. Actually, we'd never spent more than 15 minutes alone in eachothers company before. Surely it was a landmark date!

I also held no romantic notions whatsoever, by the word date I mean we were meeting for dinner. Regardless, with the strange natural affinity that was just so effortlessly manifesting itself, I ended up kissing her on top of one tree hill that night. I had never in my life, ever needed to kiss someone so badly. Nor had I ever stolen one.

I received a solid telling off for this. Then another kiss.

Typical womanly behaviour or not, something wonderful started that night. Thousands of text messages, hundreds of hours on the phone, dozens of weekends visiting eachother, time away together in Australia and camping all over the North Island. While I was in the UK she called all the time. She supported me going back to study. She supports me in everything, with that patience and insight I've come to rely on.

Last April we started dating; it was really the only option. I'm crazy about her.

Tomorrow marks one year since that first Tuesday, where we went to an Italian restaurant, walked along a beach eating ice creams and visited no tree hill. It's been one hell of a year, and I don't think I will ever be able to express just how happy I am to be with you, Dee.

Some other stuff happened today, dramas with the network falling over, problems with the internet and all sorts of joy and potatoes. I had intended to post about that here but it's kind of irrelevant.

Hopefully my interwebs stays up long enough to catch up on my emails!

Unfortunately, this will have to be a blog of extreme brevity.

It's 2am and I've just put in an hour of work. See, tonight I drove down to Auckland (thanks to Dee!) and went on a date. We saw Juno, which was actually a really good, funny movie about serious stuff. Wow, a date!

Anyway I got back at 1am after the drive (the sole downside) and I wasn't particularly sleepy so I did some contract work. Tomorrow I'll head into Huhu studio and carry on with the jobs there, maybe switching to contracts in the afternoon. Basically I work when I want on what I want, however. I am being careful to maintain a decent amount of hours at Huhus to cover the room and such, but apart from that I am working at my own pace. And I am really finding Huhu's to be a great place to be with good people and interesting, challenging work. Who knew?!

Basically the way I am living right now that means that when I want to go and see Danushka, I can go and see Danushka. It's like a working holiday but I'm really enjoying it. It feels like a real relationship, and despite the fact that I have entered into a symbiotic relationship with the studio here, I feel fairly independent.

I'm trying to concentrate on all the important things in my life right now, and for once it all feels pretty much balanced. I'm really going to miss being here when school starts up again.

I wish I could type more and go into better detail but I really aught to get some sleep.

I'm pretty happy these days :)

It's been a wee while since I updated. Things are going really well up here in Snell's Beach!

I met with Rob of Paua to discuss taking on some extra roles temporarily. Contract work is going well, more or less. A lot of the critical work at the moment is asp.net based, and I'm a novice at it. I'm working with an asp developer, so there is some support there, but we're missing important deadlines and it's not good.

In other contract news, I managed to grab one to design some forum software. Should be pretty fun!

In Lifeway news, things are a bit of a mix. I am really enjoying working at the studio, and I am learning plenty about their systems and general Microsoft network skills that are applicable anywhere. However, back in the dorms the internet is shaky and often is down. On average there's about a 15% packet loss... which means working on contracts is taking far longer than it should, and I'm having to spend more time in my dorm than in the studio.

Being close to Dee is great! I can just pop down the road and see her any time I like... although I am sure her parents will start charging me rent soon for the couch :p

Basically, things and stuff are good. This still feels like a holiday, albeit a working one. w00t!