WOo HOoo

Hey I'm in work! Just finished an interview, got a lovely cushy casual design job two minutes down the road with what seems to be really nice people. Perfect for my scattered and lazy lifestyle. Now I have to pump up my super-fast design muscles...

Okay...still sore

Hey, so yeah, we moved yesterday. Am still in pain. Not really from moving, more from deciding to have a lengthy tea towel fight that night after bible study. Have welts all down my legs.

Introducing...Elyse!

I am gaining a new flatmate to my 'little house on the prarie' this Weds. Expect a moving update soon. Elyse will be living somewhere between the music room and Crit's bedroom for the next month or so until it all settles down. But first she had to undergo a our traditional rigourous interview process. Here's what it goes like:

(Normally, we greet the future flatmate with biscuits on granny plates and attempt to look as cultic as possibly by all wearing the same T-shirt, but we didn't get our act together in time for this one)

Question 1: What is your bra size? This question is asked by Bron, who works at Bond's anyway so if the interviewee does not know, Bron will then squint at her chest and tell her what size she is. So far no males have applied, but I suspect she would still do the same to them.

Elyse's Answer: Don't know. It changes. In the interest of privacy I won't say what Bron said next.

Question 2: Do you fart a lot? This is asked by Crit, who has been traumatised by excessive farting on her in the past.

Elyse's Answer: Quite loudly and frequently, but it's hardly ever smelly. Quite a good answer I thought.

Question 3: Do you play a musical instrument? I don't know how we let Gabby through this one.

Elyse's Answer: Bass and Drums, but my hearts with the drums. Oh yeah another drummer!

Question 4: Can we borrow your clothes? The need for this question is determined as soon as the interviewee enters the room. The question is not 'can we' but rather 'will you mind when we do' since it's an unavoidable fate in this household.

Elyse's Answer: Haha Jaz already said "Hey when you move in I can borrow your clothing!"

Question 5: Can you cook? Don't know why we care, no one else can either.

Elyse's answer: Brad can.

Good answers to all. Elyse is in!

ouch...long night

Well, my little sister is now 18. Saying that really makes me feel my age. As does realising that now some of my male friends will find her hit-on-able. It's extremely worrying.

Our night out went like this:
8:30, Excessively late because we are girls, we arrived at David's place to go into the city with him. No one is home. It is windy and very dark. I turn to Anna and say to her "What time did you tell him we were coming?" She says "What do you mean? I thought you told him we were coming!" We proceed to kill each other.

9pm picked up david who jumped off his bus and parked in a carpark opp. the lowenbrau (german beer restaurant). Order my little sister's first drink - 300 ml of mango wheat beer. She doesn't really like it. Hung around in the upstairs uber-bar being extremely squashed.

10pm Hunting for the Harbourside on a dodgy tip-off Bron had that there was a jazz club there, we end up with cocktails at the Harbour Bar. The concierge is made to look up jazz clubs for us while all the little girls (and Patchy) have cocktails that were actually not meant to be on the menu till the morrow. My little sister is very pink by now.

11:30 turns out Dave and Andrew had been trying to find us at the Harbourside Brassierie and caught up with us finally at Starbucks at Circular Quay. All head on down, where we were going to see the Ministry of Sound at the Arthouse, but with the massive line and $30 cover charge, we went on to the 3 wise monkeys instead. In the line outside, the excessively drunk english boy named Patrick shows me why he's been kicked out of 4 pubs (keeps pulling faces at the bouncers) and also that he is wearing women's underwear - a G-string with sequins. Actually his friend showed me that, by pulling on it, and giving Pat the biggest wedgie. Had a flashback to Shrek 2 - the dungeon break-out part.

Walk into the 3 monkeys, and the band on the top floor is playing Pearl Jam's even flow. Definitely a good sign. Had a 'little dance' as Dave would say, which included very friendly indians in turnbans jumping in to the middle of our circle and shaking their tushies in out faces for a very long time. I thought they were trying for the girls, but since I heard they came back to dance after all the girls left, I think Dave and Andrew should watch out!

Well...I'm still recovering. and oh - there's more

2am: We went back to the car. The carpark had closed at 1am (mentioned in ridiculously small print available only after you parked). $100 call out fee. I consider jumping the gates and trying to break out my car. I am excessive cranky. We split the fee with the other two cars that also got locked in.

Got back to the house in time to see Thorpe win the 400m at the Olympics. Hard to tell with the pool water, but it looked like he cried. Also looked a bit jarred when the reporter mentioned that he should thank Craig Stevens for his win!

getting round to it...

Ok, that's it. I'm going to get motivated. Soon. Really.
I've decided I need to actually try to work hard and as a first step, I'm finally making my own website. Oh the shame of a graphic designer without a web site. Now no more!
Does anyone realise how hard it is to write about yourself? Well, not like this posting, but so that you sound like a rational professional who still has a sense of fun. It's almost an oxymoron.
Well, I spent all today riding the wave of my new dedication to motivation and it carried me through 4 hours of trying to make an animated menu. I don't think I will ever forget how again.
Also, it is my mum's and sister's birthday. On one hand, it makes this a very expensive time of the year, on the other, at least I have much less chance of forgetting a birthday, especially not with my dad smsing from China to remind me in the weeks leading up to it.

In training...

ooh I have a cold *sniffle sniffle*.

This is what happens when you push yourself to the point of silliness and beyond. But since I prefer to whine to you all in person, I'll skip that and write about my MAYT training weekend. Firstly, MAYT is the mission team that I'm going with to China. We'll be teaching english for a week or so as well as visiting other missions. I was in charge of organising this weekend, so here's some snapshots of what the weekend was like.

Sat 9am: smoke fills building as boys try to cook pancakes

Sat 10am: Language teacher Vera has all 10 of us saying 'Ni hao!'

Sat 10:15am: Steve is in the depths of despair.

Sat 10:30am Steve is mangling the sentence 'I speak only a little Chinese'. I reassure him it gives it authenticity anyway.

Sat 12 noon: Steve is singing all the words we learnt in one long sentence to some tuneless melody, while strumming 3 chords on the guitar.

Sat 2pm: Everyone's eyes are now glazed over. Language Teacher Vera decided that for a bit of wrap up, we should talk about the toilet hygiene in China (none - BYO paper).

Sat Dinner: Chinese Banquet - an awful lot of 'what is this?' and 'you eat it first!'.

Sat night movie: To get culturally ready, we watched crouching tiger, hidden dragon. In a long tender moment where Chow Yun Fat has just declared the peace his love brings to his soul against a backdrop of bamboo and stone, I hear a 'Yeah, peace - and boredom!'. Girls vote that 'Dark Cloud' the Mongolian warrior is a spunk.

All in all, I think we've adequately prepared, don't you?