Publicity Revisited - Love - Thoughts on the Seoul - The Gambler

I just want to briefly mention that I finally managed to score some pics from my trip to Publicity. Heres one anyways. Its of myself and my housemates; Cody and Dan. Also pictured are Jynx and Matt.


Publicity Crew 


I sent flowers to Lia for her birthday. They will arrive tomorrow. I'm almost regretting having done so now. I'm wondering if it was a bad idea. I suppose I'll find out soon enough.

After I did my hour with Yun (new student) we went to the casino. She lives just across the street from the casino and we often talk about how dangerous that is. She lost $20 and I won $75 in about an hour. Good stuff. Today I think we will go to see a movie and then discuss it for my lesson. I also must try to get a haircut today. I am becoming a shaggy beast!

Kumiko returned to Japan today. I'll see her again in September as she will arrive shortly before our shared birthday (18/9).

I've befriended a few new Korean girls lately and some Thai guys. I gotta start rocking those language exchanges. But then again, I pick up quite a bit of language skills just going out to eat and/or drink with these people. Fun stuff.

Thai Party

Kumiko has introduced me to a handful of Thais that live in Melbourne. Yesterday I went to their place for a party. I got a bit too drunk, but it was fun. It has been kind of nice to be able to speak Thai lately. I'm finding that Melbourne is a great place to learn languages after all. Its a pity it took so long for me to start liking this place.

Crazy Ole Tim

I have been terribly busy. I haven't even had the time to put up half of the things that have been going on before I've forgotten all the important details!

Anyways, I just wanted to say that I'm alive, busy and happy. I'm certainly still in love, but I realized that it might as well be impossible. I'm getting good at that I suppose. I need to go back to Thailand for a while, no matter how much this place is growing on me. I just needed a couple months to get comfortable I suppose. Ahh well. Next year I will try to goto Japan again. Of course, I wouldn't be adverse to going to Korea or any other new country for that matter. Coming here has reminded me of something I discovered about three years ago. If I wasn't so tired, I might even go into that!

A few quick notes might be worthy of mention. I went to St. Kilda beach today with Kumiko. We ate at this badass vegetarian place called Soul Mama. Right on the beach and the food was mighty good. Not as good as my shop in Chiang Mai, but on the right track! Tonight I went out with Will, Tomoe, Ashin, Lang-ee, Kumiko and two new Burmese friends (Sanda and Bon). We had a good time and I informed Will and Tomoe of my feelings for Lia. On the tram home with Tomo, an odd Australian guy talked to us the entire hour back. Tim, who had just come from his fourth viewing of the musical Mama Mia!, was wearing a shirt of the same name as well as an ABBA button (Abba music is the soundtrack to the play I think?). He told us how he is 46, lives with his parents, and has never found someone he cared enough about to make love to. It goes on much longer than this, but I fear I must retire. Faithful readers, do try and be patient and I will attempt to complete this story another time. Perhaps I shall wow you with stories of how Tim just didn't feel good about the size of his belly or how he never seemed to have any luck with the ladies. Or maybe, I'll recite tales of his thoughts on homosexuality and how as a Christian he wasn't against it per se, but he still thought it was wrong. Well, you get the idea. Only in Australia.

Blackjack - Boxed Wine - Music Theory

I think I had an amazing weekend. I did end up going out to dinner with some of the IH'ers for Stephanie's birthday on Saturday. Afterwards I did some studying and I got the Pimsleur Korean lessons.

Alright, not so amazing. On Sunday, Will invited me to go to this barbeque in a place called Newport. Its about 25 minutes by train outside the city. At the jam were my Korean crew of late (Will, Lia, and Lana), as well as Will's housemate and 3 friends of theirs from one of their English classes. Anshin (Burmese), Yutaka and Hiromi (Japanese). We went through an entire box of red wine (4 Litres) and a fair amount of a box of white as well as half a bottle of Soju (Korean rice wine). We ate and drank in a park by the crevice in the Southern middle part of Australia. It was a really amazing place. The view was great and the weather was mild. Afterwards, completely inebriated as I was, I went to the casino with Lia and Lana. The lost a bit of cash on baccharat whereas I played a rather impressive streak of blackjack and took home $100 more than I started with. Following this, we went to my favorite Chinese-owned Italian restuarant where lots of hot Asian girls work. Oh, some point during the night I confessed to the girls that I am kind of in love with Lia. Not exactly sure how that turned out but I think it ended fairly well considering. Our waitress was Thai to my surprise and I kept trying to talk to her. Her name is Faa. Good stuff. Tomorrow after English conversation club, the bbq group and I are going out for a bit. Hiromi is going back to Japan on Wed. And Kumiko is coming on Tuesday.

Tonight I did language exchange with Lee. I learned quite a lot of Korean today. I am pleased.

Tomorrow I have a music theory test. I am not feeling too confident about it. I don't really know what to expect. I do know that I am pretty bad at rythmic dictation.

Publicity - More Work - Women

I scored a new student. I start with her on Tuesday. 3 hours/week. She bartered me down to $50 for 3 hours/week. What the hell was I thinking? This city is too expensive for that crap. Oh well.

Last night I went and got trashed at the opening of some club called Publicity. You could play rock-paper-scissors to get drink deals. If you win its free, a draw is half price and a loss is full. Not a bad idea. It was a lot of fun. We took a few pictures and I'll try to get them in the near future.

As for the girl. I saw her briefly yesterday. And she messaged me today. I won't really know how I'm doing with that until early next week. We shall see. Either way, I'm not stressed about it anymore. Emotional levels are stable. Feeling good.

I have a music theory test on Monday. I'm not too excited about that. While I have an ear for melodic dictation, I have a lot of trouble with rythmic dictation. 20% of my grade. Argh.

I was invited to go out for this girls b-day tonight, but I think they may have left already. I'm not really sure how to get to the place and I don't have any of their phone #'s, so I may need to come up with a backup plan for the evening.

New Stuff

Kumiko is coming to Melbourne on the 19th. It seems Tokyo is too cold! Perhaps while she is here, I will travel or something? No promises, but I imagine I can score a picture or two.

I have been going into the city nearly everyday and haven't been able to update much lately. I am meeting with another possible student tomorrow. Hopefully, I can scrape up a few more dollars this way.

On another note, I think I slipped and fell in love not so long ago. I guess it didn't last long. Or if its still there, I'm not really sure. But either way, it had me pretty messed up for a while and this part of the reason I haven't written. I thought it best if I didn't complain too much. Nice 'eh? Whatever hole I sank into, I think I'm out. Then again, I haven't seen the girl, so I won't know for sure until I see her again. Sometimes its rough being crazy! Ah, how much better I do when I

My sleeping schedule has been screwed for the most part. I overslept and missed two classes today. I did make it to Chinese class, however and it was suprisingly decent. Perhaps I'll start attending both tutorials?

I've made a few friends. One of which I hung out with for a while tonight. A Korean guy who majored in Japanese. We played some snooker and drank a bit. Nothing too exciting.

I've also met a bunch of Japanese recently. I went to a JACE (Jap/Aus Cultural Exchange) bbq. It started pouring about 20 minutes after I got there. We stood under a footbridge for about an hour. It was fun, albeit very wet. Not sure if any of those will end up as people I hang out with, but we'll see what happens.

There is a Uni in the city which has some supposedly reasonably priced language courses. I'm gonna go check it out soon.

Partially Employed

Yes, its true. I am now employed for 2 hours of each and every week. $20/hour to tutor English. I did the first lesson yesterday. It went quite well I thought. Hopefully, I can find some more students in the near future.

I've been hanging out in the city with my Korean friends quite a bit and I suppose you won't be surprised to learn that they have been spending a lot of time teaching me Korean this week. As with Arabic, not being able to type at a reasonable pace is a huge obstacle in progressing with vocab absorbtion. I'll figure something out eventually.

I went to another Japanese conversation club on Wed as well as tonight. It was at a bar, so I actually got to use my Japanese a bit. I don't think I got any in tonight however.

Not much else of interest going on. Classes are ok. Grades are good. Weather sucks. Pretty mundane.

Thai Festival - Party

Ah, the last few hours of my vacation. I enjoyed it. I spent the day at the Thai festival in the city. It wasn't anything special as far as festivals go, but it was a decent taste of home. The weather was Melbourne at its best: hot, rainy and really cold. I spent most of the day with Lia, one of the Korean girls I've recently befriended. She has given me a decent base of Korean. I can read most of the alphabet after one lesson, though there are a few characters with which I'm still a bit slow or rusty. Learning can be easy if you don't overload your brain with any one particular thing. By jumping around, you can absorb so much!

I picked up my Zoloft prescription today. It was $40 for 30 100mg pills. That should hold me off for a bit.

As for my party on Friday, I made an Indian-style curry/soup, a few rolls of vegan sushi as appetizers, fried mixed vegetables with tofu, and Thai spicy vermicelli salad with fake squid. Anthony made sweet and spicy Thai-style pasta and Will brought some kim chee. I think everything turned out well. Here is a shot of a few of us. We all got sickeningly full. Food is surely evil!

From L to R - Lia, Me, Anthony, Will, Lana.

IM Etiquette - Traina Unveiled

I finished cooking up a storm for today. I'll give you a menu later. In the meantime, I have a message for Mr. Traina. Please wait more than 30 seconds for a reply. As I have a kitchen now, I am often online, but in the other room cooking lots of good vegan stuff. "Doing it with some hot chick" is also possible.


Mr. Traina! 

Zoloft - Gainful Employment? - Gambling

I went to the doctor yesterday and got a 5-time 30/100g dosage prescription. This should cover me well after I leave Australia. This pleases me!

A Korean friend of mine named Will put an ad up for me in the hopes I could find some students to teach English to. I got a call the same day and I met with her yesterday. I'm not certain whether she wants me or not, but I will find out on Monday. It wouldn't be much, but it would help.

While I was on the tram into the city a busload of mostly Asian girls hopped aboard on what appeared some sort of tour. I slid over to increase the chances that some of them would sit with me. It worked of course. One Thai girl, two Japanese and one Turkish. It was nice to speak some Thai here for once (phone calls aside). When I asked them where they were from I was pretty surprised. But I was amused by their reaction to my response that I speak Japanese, Thai and am studying Arabic. Good stuff.

I went to the casino last night after meeting with my student. Nothing big. I won 10 bucks or so. I now have over $50 in $1-coins stacked neatly on my desk. I should have left with a higher profit margin, but I got a little out of control.

I'm having a small party today. I ordered lots of food and I need to go pick up more soon. I'm gonna cook up a bunch of stuff.