Hunter Valley

Did you know that there is a word in German for the specific type of pain you get when your left earlobe hurts? Why don't we have a word like that in English? We should have a word which describes that pain! After living with international students for a while now I've started to learn how dreadfully inefficient English is. 1) Some words sound the same but are spelled differently (like "no" and "know") 2) We have silent letters jammed into other words (like "know") 3) sentences whilst clear and easy to understand can still technically be grammatically incorrect (like "You know I no like chocolate"). Now I know I definitely haven't mastered the English language, but from what I do know, I can tell ya it's pretty limited. In my personal opinion, I think we should all abandon English and switch to sign language and grunting. Or if society won't allow me to do that, then fuck it, I'm learning French.

I just came back from the hunter valley today. It was awesome sauce. The food was awesome. The company was good and the bike riding was adventurous. About a week ago, I didn't think "Adventurous" would be the word I thought I'd use to describe what I thought would be a relaxing day of cycling between wineyards and trying different wines. But when you see the News title "Rain-magedon" the same day you drive up to the Hunter you start to change your expectations a lil' bit. It did rain quite a lot on Saturday, but not enough to close any wineries or roads. The plan was to ride a full loop around a bike trail, but one member of our group (let's call him "Tom Mayfield"), despite having weeks of warning, decided that now was the time to tell us that he couldn't ride a bike. God complimented Tom's timing by unzipping his pants and pissing down water at the exact same time. Fortunately, things did get better. Over time the rain got less severe and Toms bike riding got better with more wine. Even though we only made 1/4 of the route we were planning to ride around we still managed to enjoy a shit tonne of wine. Mission complete! In the morning the weather was much better so Jonas, Alberto and I rode the entire bike trail including a good lookout just to make the most of our bikes before we had to return them by 12. Then, after we checked out we visited a few more distilleries and wineries. Yep so it looks like everything worked out after all. Oh, except for the part where I rode my bike into a wall of barbed wire and got slashes up and down my right and left arms. EXTREME!

Oh yeah, a little bit of tension has been building up in the house recently over the mess that has slowly been piling up in the sink. I've suggested public whipping to the person that doesn't clean his/her plate. My idea was down-voted 0 - 6 (even I down-voted it). But now that I've put more thought into it, I've realized that public whipping could be a great way to bond 5/6ths of the house together and make the house cleaner. Bring back the whip!

City2Surf

I ran the City2Surf race yesterday. I'm still out of breath. I woke up at 7:10am for a 7:55 start in the red group. It may have been optimistic of me to think I'd be able to get there on time, but it was definitely stupid of me to press the snooze button when I heard my phone alarm go off. I had sprinted down to the bus stop and was waiting impatiently for the bus to get to its destination (Hyde Park) when I heard the gun go off. By the way, Red group is at the front of the 70,000 people, and it's usually filled with mostly super fit athletes and a small mix of unfit and unprepared idiots like me. I got off the bus early and sprinted down oxford st to join the Red group before it was too late. I approached a side entrance where a crowed control officer was filtering out runners from watchers. I was already so tired from sprinting from Oxford st that I could only manage to wheeze out the words "I'm.. in.. red.. group.. can I get through.. (deep breath) please..?". After sharing a glimpse of disgust and sympathy, the guy pulled the gate open and let me through. Almost all the runners had already crossed the start line at this point, so I was the last guy to cross the start line while panting furiously with the camera pointing at my face. The race itself was good though. I somehow managed to run the whole thing and got a final time of 1 hour and 15 minutes. I think this is my worst time yet, but I'm not too surprised. After all, your dignity isn't the only thing you lose when you sit down 7 hours a day in an office.

Life is a video game

Day 234234

Reinforcements have arrived. Today we got our dishwasher fixed. Finally the cutting boards, bowls and cutlery that served as the breeding grounds for the cockroaches will be swept clean. We can finally take back what was once ours - a kitchen free of infestation. Our first assault will be at 0900. My roommates are resting for the day ahead, God knows they'll need it...

In other news my hunter valley trip is getting nearer and nearer. I'm very excited. This weekend off will be the closest thing to a holiday that I've had since the start of the year. It's just my roommates and a friend of mine from Pymble driving up there for a few days of good ol wine drinking and site seeing. We're actually bringing up German food as preventative hangover cure. Most of it I'm guessing will be German sausage so I guess the weekend trip will be a sausage fest in more than one way.

Hanging out with only my roommates and a few select friends from up north all the time really gets me thinking about my deteriorating social life. I'm seriously one boring Saturday night away from Googling how to make friends. But my track record for doing research through Google for school / uni projects makes me think I'll inevitably end up watching YouTube videos of Pokemon or reading an mildly interesting Wikipedia article about Vegemite.

I know I keep hammering on about this every blog, but I really wish there were more post uni activities for people fresh out in the real world. Perhaps something simple like 'international onesie week' would be a refreshing way to meet people. I think it'll be really cool to have a African American friend who's not actually American (just black). I think I'd get so much street cred without even trying - it's like the cheat code to popularity.

So I'm sure I must have mentioned at some point in a previous post that I view life kinda like a high graphics video game that's more boring than GTA but more interesting than Tetris. I still cling to this world view by the way. It keeps me super vigilant about the possibility of a zombie breakout.  Which reminds me, why do people in Zombie films write fancy dramatic sayings like "The End Is Nigh" or "Muuuurrrdeeerrrr" across the wall in blood? Why wouldn't you communicate something more meaningful like "Food this way ---->" or something. Also, why do they write in blood? This is a zombie Apocalypse we're talking about, not some world wide shortage of pens. And if they're so rushed to write a message that they're forced to write in blood, why don't they just run? I dunno, these questions and more I think will never be solved :(

But alas this is not the only time I've been confused by the actions of a computer. I found myself typing on Microsoft word yesterday and a word I had typed up had been underlined in that squiggly red line we're all familiar too with. I was sure the word was spelled correctly so I right clicked to see if I could get rid of that red underline. Instead Microsoft word insisted I "ignore once". WTF Microsoft? What's with the ambiguous threat? What if I want to ignore it twice? Bring it on computer, game on.

WWII

Day 9394

I've been poisoned. I'm unsure if it's the cockroaches, mosquitoes, bed bugs or maggots but either way they found a way to hit me where it hurts; my body. I got food poisoning last Wednesday from a restaurant in the city. Whatever I ate took 4 hours to settle in my stomach before it evolved into the gut punching ninja it is now. There's been an eerie silence on the Western front for weeks and I know now that it's because the insects have been communicating with international forces. It won't be long until the house is infested with insects. May God have mercy on us all.

Seriously though, I did actually get food poisoning. It wasn't cool. Imagine pinching your ear lobe as hard as you can, that's what it felt like - except replace the ear with your stomach and replace the pinching with searing pain!

In other news I managed to find two people to move into Jasper and lachies room. One of them is an Italian named Alberto and the other is a German called Jonas. I guess now our house has become symbolic of WW2 because Hibbert is English, Susan is American, Tom is Austrlian, and I'm 1/3 French, 1/3 Polish and 1/3 Russian.

I'm really disappointed that my Italian roommate doesn't know how to cook. I asked him to teach me to make a special type of pasta, but he said he didn't know and recommended I just look online :(. On the upside, the Nazi German taught me to make Pork Schnitzle and Spaetzle with a white wine sauce. It was amazing! It was like having 20 boxes of cereal in one bowl. I managed to teach him a few Australian meals in return - Vegemite on toast, Domino's Pizza, Chicken Schnitzel and Sushi.

Still in Australia :D

I recently faced the hard cold fact that my blog isn’t really about expressing myself, entertaining others, or exaggerating my drinking tolerance. The main reason I write here is so that future matt can relive young Matt’s experiences. It’s because of this that I’ve decide to dedicate this post to communicate where I am in my life, where I think I’m going, and what I think is influencing me. Now I know you must be thinking “Gee, Matt. If you really care about future Matt that much, why don’t you contribute more to your superannuation, or take out a loan and by property, or just eat at least one healthy meal a week”? And to that I say; “umm, uhh… maybe next week?”

Let’s start with some context.

1)      Russia has found Stalin’s Dairy and mindlessly obeyed a direct order to invade part of Ukraine. The take-over was non-violent and completely successful (note, this is all I know after seeing simplified cartoons of this situation on the internet). I’m not really concerned though because my childhood experiences of playing ‘Risk’ has convinced me that no one can hold Ukraine – there’s just too many entrance points from Asia and Europe!

2)      The world cup is being played in Brazil and my roommates are currently watching most games live. Even though they were passionately optimistic of Australia’s chances, I knew there was a 99 out of 99 chance they’d lose.

3)      I’m currently lying on Coogee Beach (which is mostly deserted because it’s winter) watching the waves gently roll up to my fingertips and then disappear into the sand below as I write this blog on a notepad. I guess if you randomly find 3 sentences missing or crudely written, then that’s because I got water on that section of the paper.

And now a little bit about me currently

1)      I’ve found YouTube videos consume 90% of my time. And because I know I’ll never be able to stop the addiction I’ve decided to make the most of the situation by changing the types of YouTube videos I watch. Recently I’ve been watching inspiring clips which are from successful people/ movies giving advice. One of them said “The sum of all your previous experiences, all your conscious choices and all your efforts combine to make you the person you are today and have put you in the place you are right now”. Whilst I could tell that this was meant to be an inspiring statement, I couldn’t help but feel demotivated listening to it from my phone in my right hand while searching unsuccessfully for a full roll of toilet paper in the public bathroom with my left hand.

2)      The other 10% of my time is spent working, chilling with my roommates or playing computer games locked up in my room. The work I do at the moment is quite uninspiring and the house has become very quiet since Jasper and Lachie have left. Overall I feel like I’m in a very stagnate period of my life – I’m not challenging myself academically, not meeting different people, not involving myself in sport, nothing. My parents don’t understand why I don’t just get more involved in the community and I don’t understand either – my best guess is a mix of 2 things: a massive change in culture bought upon by the internet and also crippling laziness. That being said, I have been working on my own company recently. I’ve been making content (albeit slowly) which I plan to upload to my site. I’m paying a computer scientist $450 to make the site. Hopefully this will give me the challenge I need to pull myself out of this slump.

3)      I met a woman the other day who said she liked Shakespeare because of how he communicates human emotion so beautifully. She went on to say that HSC English prepared her with useful skills which she will continue to use in the future. This really made me reflect on how my high school English classes had left me completely unprepared all the English literary technique analysis that I come across in my daily life. Pfffttt, no! Please! I think Shakespeare is an overanalysed con artist who made up a few words and got way to much credit for it.
Consider this sentence:

“I woke up at 9:00 and took the biggest dump ever! About 40 minutes later I started drinking with my friend Timmy. We made a few fart jokes that were super clever”

This is how a mathematician would read that passage:
9:00 he took a poo
9:40 he started drinking with Timmy

This is how an English teacher would read that passage:
The passage is a metaphor for the eternal human struggle. The story of Christianity is told through the use of powerful symbolism. 9:00 denotes genesis where Adam commits the original sin. Once leaving the house (symbolic for heaven), he meets Timmy who consoles him about his mortal suffering. Clearly Timmy is a metaphor for Jesus. The final rhyme between the words “ever” and “clever” binds the story together and reinforces the idea that humanity can find eternal wisdom through the use of Jesus Christ.

4)      Anywho, I’m pretty tired now so I’m going to end this blog early and just mention that Google Glass looks really cool! Even though I’d never find any real practical benefit of using them, I want them anyway. I can’t wait till Apple comes up with their own knockoff idea – the iEye (or I’mshit) 

Graduation

I have my graduation ceremony on the 12th. After 5 long years of study I’ve accumulated all the skills I need to get a job in an Engineering company. I can use these skills to meet interesting people, go interesting places, and slowly begin my ascent up the corporate mountain. Along my journey I’ll get married, start a family and get a dog named ‘Sniffles’. Once my bank account is inflated enough to comfortably support myself and my family I’ll invest more of my time playing golf, drinking fine wine and making small of the cuff remarks to colleagues about the intellectual inefficiencies of the lower class. By the time I’ve reached retirement, technology would have reached such a level that my brain can be preserved in a vat of green bubbling liquid while my body lives on through the mechanical movements of a gold plated robot.

I can go on, but I think the sarcasm is transparent enough. Whoever ends up reading this crappy blog must really have a lot of patience with me. I mean, I hardly say anything worth any value. Let me test that patience with this post. Watch this YouTube video all the way through:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxihhBzCjk

Did you watch it? I know you didn't… here let me write it again. Watch it this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSxihhBzCjk

That's better. Now write an essay about how the swimming pool in the background is a metaphor for the destructive effects of capitalism. Did you do it? No? That’s OK. I wasn’t going to read it anyway. I hate essays.

Now I know what you’re thinking. “Oh here we go again. Matt’s going to rage against the machine and be all pessimistic and shit.” Yeah, Ok, I am going to do that. But I’ll do that towards the end. That way I’ll give you guys a bit of a break.

Ok ok ok ok. I need to think of something non related to my future. Something non… related… to… my… GOT IT! OK OK! So Africa and Pablo (two Spanish peeps that studied in Australia a while back) invited me to go to London in 3 weeks. How awesome would that be! I would really love to go! I feel like a kid again asking my mum if I can play xbox with my neighbours. Except, you know, in this case my neighbours live like 17 million meters away. It would be so awesome to just throw my desk papers up in the air on a Monday morning and shout out “fuck it, I’m going to England!” But sadly reality is a harsh mistress. I’ll have to inform Pablo and Africa about my new found sanity and let them know I won’t make it. Besides, the next place I want to travel to is not England, it’s Kentucky. I simply have to know what they call “KFC” over there. Do they just call it “FC”? And how do they pronounce it? It seems a little inappropriate to me.

In other news I’m contemplating moving out a whole lot more. A pretty strange thing to do considering I just signed a year lease about a week ago. Jasper and Lachie are behaving themselves a lot more, but I still feel quite disconnected from the rest of the house and I guess I just want an abrupt change. I’m honestly entertaining the idea even though the distance I’d have to travel to work would be significantly more. I can imagine myself stepping outside of the house; encumbered by carrying all my clothes under my arms. The weight of the baggage and our beer bottle polluted front yard would make me look like an astronaut taking his first steps on the surface of the moon. “One Small step for Matt. Three thousand steps for Matt to walk to work”. I don’t know, maybe this is just a phase I’m going through. Who am I kidding, I’ve get a priceless Pac-man bottle cap artwork in my room which I can’t abandon.

I worked till 9:00pm last night trying to fix up a particular bug in my coding. I couldn't find out what the problem was so I just gave up and trotted home. In cases like that it’s nice to have a house so close. To my surprise work is actually getting much easier. I'm finding that time kinda balloons itself into one giant bubble and then bursts by the time 5:00pm pops up on the bottom right of my computer monitor. I'm unsure if I'm gaining productivity this way or losing the sporadic bursts of inspiration that I used to get. Either way, I can't help but be reminded of this scene from the music video 'Do the evolution' by Pearl Jam.

Ok so I've absent mindedly gone back to pessimistic Matt. I guess it was inevitable. Time to rage.

I guess the first thing I want to confess is that the holy book I've been reading ever since early high school has shown me the way to truth. I'm talking ofcourse about the Dilbert Comics. The great book of Dilbert was right. The prophesy has come true! Working in an office in a square cubical is dehumanizing and boring. Superiors aren't always capable of making good decisions. And most importantly, Engineers are furious at the vacuous crap that oozes out of the mouths of art students.

I'm also hating Facebook more and more too. Don't worry I'm not hopping on the bandwagon here (I'm still a hipster, guys). I don't hate Facebook because of it's surveillance on the public - I actually support that - I hate Facebook because of how everyone is turning their wall into a plaque filled with awards. That's for Linked-In guys! Not for Facebook.

Also, I'm genuinely frustrated at how society has a tendency to group people by age bracket like sheep and assort them into different pens. It seems like if your under 20 you must get a good grade in high school and either learn a skill or go to Uni. If you're between 25 and 30 you must have started on a career and be looking upward. But if you're 30 or higher you need to have a family or be working on one. I kinda wish people learned for the sake of learning. There's so much delicious information out there and it's belittled by simply learning it for the sake of practical application.

Lastly, I found out recently that a French exchange student reads every one of my blogs. I'm impressed you can put yourself through this much torture just to see whats going on in my life. I feel like I need to reward you somehow with some advice. Ok, how about this? Go to the nearest French Google office and tell them that they should start spelling 'Google' as 'Googel'. It'll sound extra French and the rest of the world will love you for it. You're welcome :)

Bieber

The last few weeks have been a bizarre mesh of events for me. I have to deal with mind numbing boredom for the most part of my day while simultaneously having quick and rapid bursts of creative thought. Almost every day after work I find myself scribbling away in a corner of my room hatching a new idea that could be part of a company I hope to create in the future. I guess the proper term to diagnose me would be 'business bi polar'.

During my lunch break I met up with Ed (a brother of a friend of mine from way back). I heard he did graphic design and had some website creation skills. The meet up was short and sweet - he told me what he could do, what he couldn't and what pay he would like. Something non related to business stuck with me after we had split ways though. He mentioned casually that I looked "weathered". I'd usually shrug something like that off without a second thought and put it down to having one too few cappuccinos in the morning. But strangely I've been having a lot of people tell me that recently. It's also strange how everyone manages to find a new synonym to keep me on my toes. I guess eventually they'll run out of words and the problem will solve itself.

I wonder if it's a result of my new haircut. I've decided not to cut my hair as of February for a few reasons. 1) To save money in preparation for Tony Abbott’s budget cuts and 2) To try something new - I figure this will be the only time in my life where I can get away with long filthy hair. The only downside is, I've gone through the itchy faze, the greasy faze and the semi mullet faze, but now I'm going through the awkward moment where my hair is long enough to just wrap around and scratch my eyes faze. I feel like a teenage pop star due to the amount of times I have to swipe my hair left or right.