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!