Category: the daily column

Things are totally settled now, I’ve run down my list of obligated-to-visit people, I don’t have any pressing items that need to be bought and there’s not a whole lot going down to distract me.

Right.

Looking around the house, I realise that perhaps I’ve been neglecting something. Namely neatness. There’s a pile of dishes in the sink, the laundry basket is kind of full – but more tellingly there’s shirts scattered all over my room and they don’t look like they were artfully placed there. There’s dust bunnies accumulated in the empty rooms. Shoes really need a polish. The single plant I have, a shoot of bamboo, is sitting in mostly green water. The grass outside needs cutting before it starts to gets rampant. There’s leaf-litter everywhere from the big stupid gumnut tree right out front. The study room looks like a literary bomb hit it, with books and magazines strewn about the place. Things generally need to be straightened out.

While nothing has gotten truly unhygenic, it’s the kind of mess that’s easily sustainable without any particular effort what so ever, and it’s not conducive to day to day living. So today is cleaning day designate. I’d call it spring cleaning, except it’s not spring, it’s Autumn. It’s more get-your-act-together cleaning. Time to roll up them sleeves and get to it.

6:45 – Alarm goes off. I reach out and switch it to the radio.

7:04 – Swear, get out of bed. Do the whole morning thing.

7:59 – Start breakfast while watching Sunrise for weather & news. Out the door by 8:09.

8:16 – At station waiting for 8:24 express to city.

9:15 – Log in to computers, read overnight email from London & NY. Catch up on bloglines.

9:45 – Start looking at work. Synchronise with overnight work from others, move into “work” mode

10:40ish – Get up, stretch, fill waterbottle, have small snack (still very much in the ‘Recess’ mindset).

12:23 – Update blog

12:56 – Leave desk for lunch

1:05 – Pay exorbitant price for sushi box, thinking “Hey, I haven’t sushi in a while…”

1:21 – Try to remember why it was so long between ordering sushi box for lunch. Ah, that’s right, because it doesn’t half fill me up.

1:24 – Order garlic bread/toast type thing. Walk away satisfied with salty, garlicy, buttery goodness.

1:34 – decide not much interested in sitting by the harbour with seagulls swooping all around me and return to work.

1:39 – Update blog.

3:15 – “Happy Hour” coffee, $1, not brilliant but does the job.

4:35 – crack Stupid Bug which has been occupying my time for the last day or so. Celebrate.

5:30 – Weekly update meeting thing. Realise there’s a lot of stuff to do yet.

6:10 – Update blog. Leave for home.

7:17 – Arrive home, consider what to cook.

7:25 – Reheat leftovers from the weekend. Suppress stomach growls while waiting for microwave with orange juice.

7:34 – Switch on Channel 10 for new show “Thank God you’re here”. I think it’s pretty funny actually, despite some slow moments. Improv is always funny for the fact that it’s so random.

8:36 – Switch between Spicks and Specks, House and The Movie Show (SBS). I eventually settle on Spicks and Specks because I feel like a laugh tonight.

9:04 – bored with house, I go sit on the net for a bit, catching up on forums and downloads.

9:31 – Go back to the TV to watch The Glass House.

9:37 – Remember I have to iron a shirt for tomorrow.

10:07 – pull out sofabed to have a lie down while watching At The Movies, since I didn’t end up watching The Movie Show. Always liked David & Margret better anyway.

1:22 (am) – wake up on the sofa bed, the sounds of the TV having intruded into my dreams. Groggily turn off TV, computer, lights, hit the bed.

End of Day.

So I figure I can’t be stuffed waiting a week because no research questions have been asked and it’s practically only two questions on the list anyway.

Answering in order of ease, we have:

• Jack asks: Do you ever worry that your friends will realise your sister is much cooler than you and one day hang out with her instead?
  Well jack, the answer to your question is simple – I don’t worry about it. I already know it. But I don’t fear it – I’d be perfectly happy for that to happen. I hang out with her friends often enough, and while occasionally it feels like big-older-brother-pushing-in-because-he’s-bored-elsewhere, it’s usually cool. If anything, it’d be even cooler to have a good mix & cross-section of people hanging out together, which I don’t think happens enough. Stop cliquing about, y’all.
• Kahiti asks: what would you say is the worst fashion fad ever?
  Well Kahiti, I’m not sure if you remember, but in the late 80s and early 90s there was a fashion for what’s commonly called “Day-glo”. It was terrible on a scale that you can’t imagine. With the hangover of the 80s Dallas-esque clothes at one end of the scale and day-glo at the other, everywhere you looked there wasn’t a single stylish and understated option. In fact, practically all fashion between 1976 through to 1996 is enitirely forgettable.
• Kahiti more relevantly asks, and I’ll answer this second question because it is a deep-thinking one: What is the best thing about true disappointment/”failure”, if there is one, in your opinion? Personally and for humanity as a whole?
  There’s no better way to put this than “good question”. The best thing about disappointment and failure, in my mind, is the chance to pick things up and start over. It’s a chance to wipe the slate clean and move on. However, a lesson must be learnt, or otherwise you’ll be staring down the same barrel again – be it in 6 months, a year, or indeed a decade later – if the lesson isn’t learnt, it will come back. Essentially, the best thing about failing is getting back up afterwards.
  On the level of society, however, opinion generally differs. Society’s failures take a long time to correct, and in the meantime people get hurt, and generations can suffer for mistakes made by a foolish few. One example of society’s failures would be slavery – it took years for that to be effectively removed and its after effects cleaned up. Society through slavery failed to deliever positives for all its members – and that’s what a successful society does.
• And that’s it.
  Should you think this was positive, feel free to drop a question in the comments or email me (karanj at gmail).

And that’s a wrap. Hope that was informative, peeps.

So in the vain hope of trying to put something regular into this blog, I’m going to send out a call for questions. Ask me a question, any question, one question per commenter, and I’ll do my best to answer it.

I’ll return with the answers in a week’s time; this gives me time to research if someone asks me an oddball question like “How many fins on a Stegosaurus?” or something (please don’t).

Personal questions will be answered as honestly as possible, but some may be turned down. The boudaries are pretty wide here though, because otherwise it wouldn’t work.

Um yeah don’t mind the ramble below.

One part of the Kinokuniya story I didn’t mention was buying the first volume of MegaTokyo, a web-comic that’s broken out into paper. There’s always an element of satisfaction to be had by reading in hand as opposed to on the screen, and I suppose that’s why I preferred to pick up the paper form, as opposed to reading online – I knew it’d make me like it more. It’s totally backwards from an economic perspective, since I was putting down cash for something untested, but some days you just feel like jumping.

Now a week later I’ve finished reading through all eight hundred and thirty something comics… oh dear.

It’s a manga, basically, and I’ve read it at exactly the same pace I did some of my favourite manga (Bleach, Love Hina, Kare Kano… list goes on -_-). It’s Love Hina with gamers & l33tsp34k. It’s almost devillishly designed to hit exactly that spot with the nerds and otaku of society that makes you go all gooey inside. I suppose it’s a good thing I’m up to the latest, in a way, since I won’t spend my brain-fade moments at work reading it (as opposed to reading tech-like sites which look less time-wasting). It’s a bad thing in that now I don’t have any buffer and the pace will now be throttled back to what everyone else is reading at.

It’s a good thing in that I’ve found some renewal of faith in good writing. The drawing is good – not brilliant, some odd moments – but the writing is excellent. Or rather it is getting better as it goes – the plot is starting to get more complex, the characters are beginning to get more depth, and things are getting far closer to what you might call sanity, or perhaps consistency. It’s still a nuts-to-reality story, but it’s consistent. It’s slow like hell, but consistent.

It’s also reminded me that I need to go back and edit my NaNoWriMo effort, and perhaps actually get to some more story writing. I’ve only had 2 fiction peices since Pushing the Sky started, and while I can blame that to some extent on work, it’s really lacking by my personal measures. So hopefully I’ll make the effort and ramp up to writing one story a week. There’s no better way to work on something than pushing a schedule. Keep an eye out =)

A few things I thought of over the weekend:

– There are 793 billionaires in the world. So if we take into account the mafioso and the drug barons who wouldn’t be on that list, let’s say there was a round figure of roughly a 1000. That’s… 0.0000166..7% of the world’s population. One billionaire per 6 million people, give or take. I want to be in that “club”. Seriously. That’s a bloody exclusive club. Millionaire doesn’t mean anything any more, dammit.

– I guess I’m a fairly regular airplane traveller now. Security check etc are practically automatic, as is checking in and everything. I remember the days when I’d go in with a nervous grin, but now it’s far more standard – I’m almost frustrated now at the people who don’t fly regularly and take their damn sweet time getting on and everything. I’m still astounded every time they get all those tonnes off the ground, though – I’m just waiting for them one day to charge down the runway, slow down half way and go “No, sorry people, we were just kidding. You didn’t seriously believe we’d get this monstrosity in the air did you?”

– Oh My God the Cricket – Australia score 434, sit back and wait for the inevitable win. South Africa, however, are reading their own script… and score 438 with a ball and a wicket to spare. Cue disbelief. Want replay, highlights.

Lunchtime today, I found Kinokuniya. The little story goes a little something like this.

So it’s 1:05, and I’ve finished the lunch I brought from home. Good food, but eating at the desk is just one of those things that keeps you thinking about work, not relaxing. I ate at the desk because there’s a microwave in the kitchen, but it’s one of those tiny bar-kitchens and you pretty much only have the option of sitting back at your desk. So anyway, I try to think of a way to spend the next 40 minutes without going straight back to work, because that’s what I’d done the last two days and it wasn’t what you’d call fun. I remember that I’d said to myself I’d find Kinokuniya in Sydney, so I idly google and find that it is at 500 George St, “The Galleries Victoria”. That’s right opposite the Queen Victoria Building, a designer-filled “mall”, but to say mall is to insult it. It’s classy.

Quick calculation. That’s at least 15 minutes of walk, before allowing for traffic lights. I’d be cutting it fine, and most likely just sighting and turning around. Hell with it, last couple of days I haven’t taken the full hour, why not today.

1:15. I walk out of my building, I imagine something like a small arcade or something. It’s got to be something in the vein of Japan Book Plaza in Melbourne, a small bookstore (closing, from last reports). There’s more Japanese here, sure, but nothing too much bigger can be supported by the Japanese alone, and how many non-Japanese are interested in a Japanese bookshop? Can’t be a big number.

It’s a decent hike. I’m at the north end of the city, about as far as the business part of it extends – further north is well touristed. QVB and Town Hall station, near my destination, is the southern end, with Chinatown beyond. The day is warm and pleasant, and there’s a fair amount of foot traffic to dodge between, but I’m making good time. Encounter a few walking walls, but overall I’m ahead. I get to QVB in about 12 minutes, and I stand consulting a map before thinking “No, wait, QVB isn’t quite 500 George…” I glance at the road signs, but they point only to further walking.

Then I realise I’m standing on the odd-numbered side.

Continue reading “Kinokuniya”

I suppose I’ve been talking a bit much about work recently. It’s now been a month, believe it or not, and work’s no longer “new”, really. Routine is vaguely settled. All good and all that. So the botched segway is into the next most important thing: a social life.

Yeaaaaaaaah. Um.

I guess I have a social life in the same sense that I suppose spiders have thoughts – basic and instinctive. (wow, terrible analogy). In terms of going out and just enjoying, I’m averaging at least once a week, usually Fridays, and the occasional (i.e. every second) Saturday. I’ve got family friends I’m pretty much obligated to visit, but that does make it sound somewhat like a chore, and usually it’s not, because most of our social circle up here is around my age. This is distinctly in contrast to Melbourne where I was the eldest “child” – a very rare and unusual position for me – and the only guy between the ages of 9 and 40. Suffice to say I got bored shitless more than once visiting family friends in Melbourne.

From my limited explorations, it’s clear that I haven’t explored nearly enough. The Rocks seems to be a good area, although a little over touristed. There’s an abundance of restaurants in the city, but very rarely is the set up like Melbourne, where there will be a good bit of street seating filled with people and thus giving a damn good indicator as to where to grab a bite – it’s all a little hidden away. This is in stark contrast with the clubs, pubs & bars, which are pretty well signposted. Completely the opposite of Melbourne, really.

I’m starting to build a circle of friends, but it’s hard within the company as a lot of the grads are investment bankers and so have hours which would make the average man falter far sooner than they do. Other than that, people meeting opportunities have been… limited, to say the least. Need to get out more.

I’ve just seen this pile of book-type things dumped on my desk because the intern who had them has finished up, and I’m the next person in line that these things are relevant to. It’s the “training materials” for our course.

And I swear to you, it is the size of at least 3 A-K Yellow Pages. And it’s not complete – I can tell there are things that are missing because there’s stuff like “vol 2” and no corresponding volume 1.

It looks very much to me like it’s practically a whole year of uni compressed into 8 weeks. Which, given working 8hr/day, 5days/week for 8 weeks, is probably the same amount of time a full year course has; that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is freaking insaaaaane. I’m gonna get started on it now.

A pigeon just brained itself by flying into my kitchen window, where I was cooking lunch, scaring the shit out of me. Its death spasm certainly didn’t help.

The dead bird is in my rubbish bin now. I could think of no other way.

Geh, I feel horrible.