Lease’s ChangeLog

Do you ever want to kick someone so hard in the nuts that it might possibly knock loose the mysterious brain blockages that seem to be preventing this person from rational thought? A type of kick-start for the brain I suppose.
Dear Lord.
Must. Control. Temper.

The events that initially invoked my range were at least a week ago. But the sight of a bowl that has been occupying our sink - still unwashed - has brought the feelings of fury flooding back.

I ask you. What is SO hard about washing a dish when you are done with it? Are there some mysterical forces I don’t know about that somehow make dish washing much more fun if you leave them to fester for a few days or so?

Perhaps some background is necessary. The only problem here isn’t just dishes. I could maybe handle that. It is the inability of another individual to clean any part of the kitchen. Or the bathroom. Or the living room. It is the ability to borrow lots of money from me and somehow remember paying me back when in fact this event has never taken place. And I’m beginning to think probably never will. It is the ability to lie. Poorly. And repeatedly. Get caught in lies, and just turn and leave the room instead of addressing the issue. It is the ability to spray roaches - sometimes in the vicinity of my food - yet the inability to dispose of roaches, leaving a trail of dead bugs for others to pick up. It is the inability to buy toilet paper, papertowels, soap, or any common consumable, expecting that the purchase of these items will magically always be taken care of by someone else. It is the ability to literally climb over or even sit on piles of one’s belongings which have been strewn all over the common areas without noticing they are still there. When asked repeatedly to remove such items, the response automatically generated is "yeah, i was JUST ABOUT to do that." yet the items remain weeks later. It is watching loud movies on one’s computer for some reason directly outside of my room (this is slightly bothersome since I do not have a real room or real walls)instead of in one’s room. Every night. Until 5am. When asked EVERY night, at several points during EVERY night to turn it down so that I can sleep. Automatic response generator spits out "yeah, i was JUST ABOUT to turn it off." Several hours later, now at the point of tears, asking once again to fucking go into one’s own room so I can at least get two hours of sleep before a very long day, new response is miraculously generated. "yeah, i was JUST about to turn it off… i didn’t know it was such a big deal." didn’t know. DIDN’T KNOW? That is very interesting since we have had this exact same exchange the previous night. And the night before that. And pretty much every night previous since we moved into this place. This is why, after waking up the next morning on very little sleep, coming across pots and plates in my sink encrusted in what my mom would refer to as "dead food" made me want to aim my foot for a good kick square in this individual’s nuts.

At this particular time, I was running late for a group meeting on a research project, but I paused briefly to write the following note which I left next to the sink.

"There seems to be some kind of problem here, but I will have to assume that it is because one of us never got the answer to that all-important question… "Mommy, where do baby roaches come from?" Well, you see little tyke, baby roaches come from bigger roaches who roam around this kitchen looking for food, usually find it very easily thanks to dishes and other random garbage left out, they fall in love, and reproduce. Maybe this newfound knowledge will help this situation.
But probably not.
So to further this educational experience…
An occasional dish left here or there when one is very busy is totaly understandable. But this is starting to become a regular occurrance. And I see no reason for it. I KNOW you were not too busy to do dishes last night… although SO many movies and friends episodes to watch - so little time. Maybe that counts as "busy".
And, washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen is an activity you can participate in for FREE! So it couldn’t be the money thing. I am just at a loss.
In the future please just clean up after yourself when you are finished. it only takes a few minutes, it costs nothing, and maybe it will break the roach procreation cycle. Thank you."

Although there was never any mention of the note, the sink did remain dirty dish free for at least 3 days. But unfortunately all the progress I thought we made seems to have been reset, and dirty dishes abound once again.

wtf.

I am just in a pissy mood, possibly thanks to the fiftygagillion assignments I need to be working on, and I don’t want to deal with this idiot, and I just want to whine at somebody. So thank you for letting me whine. Or if you already stopped reading when you realized how lame a post this is, you suck. Not that you will ever know that.

How to go from happy to crappy in about 6.5 seconds…
billie ann: "How did you go with your studying?"
me: "ha, that’s funny. wait. study? for what?"
billie ann: "For the test… the one we have tonight…"
me: "ha, that’s funny. wait. you are serious"
billie ann: looks at me and blinks.
me: fuck.

so somehow i survived that little mishap. but for now, let’s focus on happy.

I’m suddenly too tired to generate new sentences though so i’ll just copy directly from my journal. the real kind, with real paper. eh, i may skip a few details mostly to not bore you to death. we’ll just aim to bore you to tears for now. i guess that’s the royal we, because there is no one else here. ok, here you go, enjoy.

"
Last Saturday was our harbour cruse. for joe, simon, britta’s birthdays we chartered a boat and cruised around sydney harbour for several hours and got trashed and danced around on this dodgy boat. it was one of the best nights ever. EVER. (except for the scarf incident.) there were over 50 of us on that boat. so it wasn’t too crowded but enough people to have a decent party. and it was a clear night so the views were just beautiful. ah. i love sydney. after the booze cruise we went to some bar somewhere downtown. i have no idea where we went. i just follow. moo. i somehow managed to lose everything that wasn’t attached to my body at least twice. my leather jacket, my purse and camera, and christina’s scarf. somehow all the items kept getting brought back to me - except for the scarf. i still feel awful about that. anyway i don’t know what the hell i was doing with all my stuff. what an idiot. but had fun dancing with some norwegian boy named lars and kevin. played soccer with a mackers (mcdonalds) bag on the way to the bus stop. Against all advice i’ve received since kindergarten, started talking to strangers on the bus ride home. met this guy named dave who had hurt his ankle. i told him about my scarf drama. we shared each other’s pain. the next day i met random bus boy dave at coogee beach and we had chocolate muffins and watched the waves. very nice sunday. and dave is very nice too. bonus. wouldn’t mind seeing this bloke again.
This Saturday was super fantastic girl day (which we have also named ‘the day of fried bread’)Me, Cindy, and Laura went to the Glebe Market to check out the hippies. the weather was beautiful. kind of cold sometimes but sunny and blue skies. and plenty of tie dye and incense and pretty shiny dangly things to look at. we got some kind of turkish fried bread thing with spinach and feta and beef. perfect outdoor market sitting on the steps in the sun on a pretty day type of food. after that we headed to paddy’s market for some decent boba and then i introduced them to my favorite place in sydney. that bakery in chinatown. that place is so freakin stressful but just so worth it. and they were very impressed with my knowledge of this place. 50 points to amy for showing me in the first place. so after we fought our way through the crowd, dodging hot trays of more yummy goodness, we sat on a bench eating our buns (still warm. red bean paste. custard. mmm. drool.), drinking our boba, and listening to the worst karaoke probably ever to happen on this planet. happy. oh, then got some kind of custard filled ball thing that tasted like a waffle because it was 30 cents. I felt sick. but man it was a good day.
oh no. my tummy is starting to hang out over my jeans. probably shouldn’t have another day dedicated to fried bread for a long time."

as an update, i have not had another fried bread day since then. but laura, cindy, and i declared today to be "bacon sandwiches day" and that lunch, my friends, will go down in history. i’m not exactly sure what it will go down in history as, but it is just a day that should live in infamy or at least some kind of famy.

a brief word on crappy… So tonight there was that test. yeah, that kind of sucked. tomorrow is another test. then next week i have my major project (research paper) due. on the same day as my final exam for that same class. on the same day that our lab reports are due - for that same class. on the same day that a homework assignment is due - yes, for the same fucking class. bruce (we are on a first name basis with the profs now) bruce, you are the devil.
it is going to take more than a crunchie bar to get me through this week. if you have any good ideas please let me know. i’m off to bed now.

doh. somehow i submitted the same log twice. so instead of just having a blank space here, i’ll write something about, um, something.

oh ok, maybe someone would like to help me out with this…
fries here are called chips. unless they are thin cut. in which case they are now called fries again. but if they are really thick they are just called wedges. or chips in some cases. but chips as we know them are called crisps. in most cases. sometimes on a whim i guess they decide to just go ahead and call them chips like normal people. ok, fair enough. but they have funky flavours like chicken. who wants to eat chicken flavoured chip/crisps? they also have chicken flavoured cheeto type things. interesting. but i’ll stick to doritos, thank you.
if you as for jelly with your toast, you will get a bowl of jell-o. in order to make it more confusing, pudding is not pudding as we know it - it is usually a type of dense cake thing sometimes served warm with sauce. and custard - custard is apparently some kind of creamy sauce they pour on all desserts and it comes in a milk carton. wtf.
but at least these things are somewhat easy to figure out. the next two aren’t quite so "intuitive". raisins are called sultanas. a bell pepper - be it green, red, yellow, orange - is called capsicum. i think they are just making up words now.
heh, and to diverge from food for a moment, i must mention the one that just makes me giggle every time i hear it. aluminium. "al-yoo-min-ee-um". hahaha. i try to use that word in a sentence every day. ‘excuse me, where is the aluminium can recycling? tee heheee.’

eh, this is probably not very interesting to anyone else, but i am continually amazed how two countries speaking the same language can have so many little quirky differences.

oh! it’s time for my milo. excuse me.

http://community.webshots.com/user/lisainoz

I still have a lot more photos to upload, but at least there is something there so you can see what I’ve been up to.

I can handle them on the wall. I can handle them on the counter. I can almost even handle them in the silverware drawer.
But Dear God. There was a roach in my FRIDGE.

I want to die.

Yes Klayson, he was probably just chillin’.

Goodness I guess it’s been a while, and my public (hi mom!) is requesting more updates, so here you go. Sorry I’m not going to talk about kangaroos or the crocodile hunter or other wonderful australia things like heath ledger.

while i still get weak in the knees every time i see the beautiful view of the opera house and harbour bridge or view the sydney skyline at night, I am beginning to settle into the not-so-glamourous-this-city-is-actually-full-of-flying-roaches-and-freakin-huge-bats world of reality.

i have found a place to live. hooray! i have two american flatmates (way to branch out there, i know. but the international housing office wasn’t exactly teeming with australian kids) and we share a 2.5 bedroom apartment. thanks to my way awesome good luck and mad skillz at drawing little slips of paper out of a hat, i have the .5 of a bedroom. it’s actually a closet-sized sunroom that heats up to a cool 50 bazillion degrees (that’s celcius by the way) every morning when the sun shines in. but i love it.

so getting all set up in this new country was a bit hectic and at times very trying, but i am just continually impressed with myself and my ability to take care of simple tasks. the other day i woke up late, which actually was quite an accomplishment in itself considering we turned the clocks back and actually gained an hour of sleep. i got ready for church anyway, walked all the way down there, grasped the handle and prepared to enter and then decided -eh, screw it. did an about-face and headed back up the hill towards home. but i felt that my first big accomplishment of actually getting out of bed should not be wasted, so i walked to coles(1) to get some much desperately needed toilet paper. by ‘desperate’ i mean that there was approximately 1/3 of a square clinging to the last tp tube. Since I had bought the last month’s supply, i didn’t really want to be in charge of this junk again. but if i didn’t do anything, the boys might end up using the curtains or something. and that would be bad. wait, i don’t think we even have curtains in there which means they would have to go use someone else’s curtains. and that would be seriously bad. but what the heck was i even talking about before this mess. oh yes. me and how wonderful i am.

so, after braving the sunday morning crowd at the coles (this place has the worst setup i have ever seen in any store. ever. trying to checkout of there is a nightmare. luckily the supersize pack of tp i had only counted as one item so i could stand in the line of 20 people in the "express" lane.) i decided that i deserved a reward for all of my efforts. so i stopped by brumby’s(2) on the walk back to our flat. after carefully surveying the selection in the case, thoughtfully tasting each sample they had available, and then just staring blankly at the case while drooling for another 10 minutes (believe it or not, i have somehow earned the nickname "decision master" here. i think they are somehow picking on me. hmmm.) i ended up choosing the hazelnut chocolate chip butterfly roll. i must say this is probably one of the better decisions i have made in the past few weeks. it was heavenly.

that night andrew was replacing a light ‘globe’. since nothing can be quite simple here and also due to the fact that our flat is booby trapped, this simple operation managed to blow a fuse. so we spent an evening in the dark. joon came over to join us for a movie. he ended up staying on our ghetto couch again. i really think he would be happy to just live in our living room. oh heck, it’s already called a living room he might as well. he even has a toothbrush here. so i guess we’re really living in a 2.75 bedroom flat. sweet.

the next morning i was unstoppable. it must be my new "100% TASTY" Sanitarium(tm) cereal. doctor, pharmacist, medibank, and i even picked up my mail. since i was on such a roll, i did a few other errands and then went to the electronic store for a new fuse. the nice man in the shop (who later i wish i had kicked in the jaw) told me that while they do have fuse wire (oh yeah, these are no normal fuses. these are huge plug things probably crafted in the early 1200s with some wire you thread through and clamp down.) he said that my fuse was probably shot to hell and i would need a new one. which they don’t have. and the nearest hardware store is a 20 min walk away. suck. i came back home to regroup and look at a map. oh apparently i am sparing no detail in this long boring part of the story. so the map is kept in my closet. bottom shelf. on the left. i sipped a tall cool glass of o.j. while planning my route.
ok.
so it was really at least a half hour walk. jerkface. and when the man there looked at my archaic fuse plug thing i presented to him, he informed me in a very condescending manner that all i really need is some new fuse wire. besides, they don’t even make fuses like that any more. sonofabitch. so i got the wire and started the long journey back home. of course it was uphill both ways and i had to walk it barefoot in the snow. actually, it was a pretty nice day out and i could probably use the exercise. plus, i got to see a new part of town. and not wanting this trek into the heart of bfe randwick to go to waste, i stopped into a little secondhand store and then checked into some salsa dancing lessons on alison.

once again feeling quite proud of myself for completing the quest at hand, i decided to treat myself to a nice lunch. toast with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and dill. deeelicious. i should open up a cafe. of course i was eating all this in the dark since the fuse replacing fairy had not yet appeared. but, strengthened by my salmon, i replaced the fuse wire using a cheeseknife. (did i mention that besides being clever and wonderful and humble i am also resourceful?) i plugged that bad boy in and clk-clk-clk-click! we had light. the happy dance followed.

hmm. maybe it’s about time i should start accomplishing some studying or something.

Footnotes

1. coles = grocery store. basically, for your food shopping needs your choices are coles, coles, coles, or coles express. or all the little random shops along the streets which are a lot more interesting but i haven’t figured out which shops are good for what things yet.
2. brumby’s is like a panera only without the sandwiches. or soup. or coffee. okay, so it’s just a bakery. but it smells awesome as you walk past, and if you’re lucky they have samples of their chocolate cross buns sometimes so you can grab a bite on your way down the street

hey. oh my god. so one day i’m sitting in a cubicle, writing code and cursing at the code for doing exactly what i told it to, and not what i wanted it to. a week later, i am taking a shower in a waterfall in the fiji islands. several days after that, i am sitting at an internet cafe in sydney thinking this just cannot be my life. so far this has been the scariest, most exciting, most interesting, and at times most boring week of my life. to get everyone up to speed here, after 2 years of the real world, i decided i’d had enough and it was time to do something different. so i’m going back to grad school for a masters in biomedical engineering, and i thought if i had to spend a couple years studying and all that junk again, it might as well be somewhere cool. and i’d never been to australia. so it seemed like a great idea. besides the fact that i STILL don’t know how i’m going to pay for it, and the fact that i am having problems actually getting to the little money i do have since i am in the wrong hemisphere. and i still don’t know where i’m going to live, and i am having problems registering for my classes due to the crappy ass system the school has elected to use for it’s enrolment (yes, there is only one l in enrolment here. apparently the other l costs extra, just like everything else here in sydney. like a take-away box in a restaurant. who saw that one coming. not me. good thing i had another 40 cents.), and i don’t know anybody here. but i’m sure at one time it was a great idea. i’m sure of it. yes.

in any case, it has certainly been a great experience so far, and i’m only about one week into this whole little adventure.

i had a one and a half day layover in LA. four of the people i had lived with during my "summer of service" in st. louis now live in california all within about a 1 hour radius of LA, so we had a bit of a reunion. that was pretty cool. i have to admit that there were a few awkward moments where none of us really knew what to say to each other and we would just stand in a circle staring at one another taking turns saying "sooo…" which seemed so strange because 3 years ago we would all stay up all night hanging out in the community kitchen just talking so easily. it kind of sucks that you can’t just jump back into that. but anyhow, once we got over that bit of awkwardness, we had a really good time. we went to dinner at a neat little outdoor restaurant and went back to ashley’s apartment and ate cheesecake and talked about how much our lives have changed over the past 3, oh wait, FOUR! years. geez i am getting old. anyhow, we are all still the same people, but still so different. it’s just kind of crazy. anhow, the next day ashley got off work and took me for a whirlwind tour of the city. that was awesome. we saw the tar pits thanks to dave’s suggestion. yup, it was a pit of tar. and these poor poor prehistoric fiberglass animals are sadly stuck there for eternity. that was pretty cool. and the weather was so beautiful that day, it was nice to walk around the little park there. then we went to the chinese theater on hollywood and i of course had to get that cheesy ‘tourist trying to fit hand into famous person’s handprint’ picture. my hand happens to be just about the size of judy garland’s. although my feet are about 30 times the size of hers. what did they do, bind the feet of actresses back in the day? they all had such dainty feet prints. it made me feel like a saskwatch or something. oh, and of course the picture of the hollywood sign. oh! to get that picture we asked a kind looking fellow walking by to snap our photo. when taking it, he said "well, it’s gonna be bloody small in the back, but what the hell" and then when we thanked him, he said "no worries". ha. so i chased him down and asked if he was australian. yup. and he’s from sydney. and the guy with him is going to the same school (UNSW) i’m going to here. how bizarre is that. so they gave me their number and they’ll supposedly help me find my way around here if i give them a call. i just need a phone. but how crazy is that. holy moses. oh yeah, back to my trip. then we went to in-n-out which was some of the best and greasiest food i’ve ever had. we went to a mexican market and then a few blocks over to chinatown. and i saw snow white’s house. it was a great day and it was nice to spend time with ashley and really catch up and then just be normal around each other. that was cool. so then that night i left.

i had a 3 day layover in fiji. i just stayed on the main island and didn’t venture out too far, just 2 hours out of the main city in a backpacker hostel on the beach. that was kind of roughing it, kind of like camping with walls and kind of a bed and water that they get from rain runoff that smells kind of funny but i drank it and i am still alive. unfortunately, it rained for the entire 3 days i was there. i had visions of lurning to surf, kayaking, swimming, laying on the beach, travelling around the island. but instead i spent the three days mostly in the cafe/bar at the hostel playing cards or other games with the other hostel residents bitching about the weather. which was also fun. this way i got to avoid skin cancer for 3 more days, and i got to meet a lot of people i probably wouldn’t have had the chance to meet otherwise swinging in my own private hammock on the beach. There weren’t a lot of other people travelling on their own, though so it was kind of hard at first to meet people, and i was waaay out of my comfort zone and i have never felt so shy in my life. but i forced myself to just like sit down in the middle of groups and make them talk to me. most of the people there were from england and travelling around the world for about a year. that is so wonderful. why don’t americans do that so much? i met 2 girls from sweden, and they were really nice. there were two guys from switzerland who i would talk to and i don’t think they would understand 1/3 of what i was saying but they would just smile and nod. it was like a fun game. and then i met 2 guys from florida. one of them just graduated from UF. what the hell! we were both saying how we travelled to the other side of the world to meet new people from different cultures and not someone from the same freakin college. but that’s okay. the english people had me try marmite. it’s like a slightly milder form of vegemite, but still with that same great rat turd flavour. the second day, even though it was of course raining, i went on a jungle trek with this somewhat crazy guy from a nearby village as our guide. i think he was one taco short of a full order or something, but it was certainly interesting. it was a 4 hour hike through the jungle. that was incredible, but 2 years of cubicle sitting had certainly not prepared me for the somewhat mountainous journey. some parts were very green and lush, other parts were very dark even in the middle of the day because of the canopy of plants, other parts were very rocky and slippery. and we had to wade through a few rivers so we were slipping and falling all over the place. i had a few (very graceful of course) wipeouts. the journey ended at the afore mentioned waterfall which was just beautiful. when he told us we were going up it to take a shower i thought he was kidding. crazy little man. then he basically started shoving us all up there. i was so scared my knees were shaking. which by the way is not ideal for climbing up a slippery rock face. but as you can probably conclude due to the fact that you are reading this, i survived. and it was just incredible. have i used that word enough yet? incredible. that evening, the guide invited us to a kava ceremony. kava is this stuff that people in fiji drink because it tastes wonderful. okay, no, it tastes like muddy water and looks even less inviting. but there is a big ceremony involved with it’s consumption involving sitting around this special bowl in a circle, ceremonial words spoken that i don’t understand, and a lot of clapping. you clap before they hand you the bowl, and everyone in the circle claps 3 times as you drink it out of a coconut shell, then everyone claps 3 times when you finish. then your lips go numb and your tongue is all tingly and you feel goooood. later that night i somehow got involved in another kava ceremony involving some of the villagers. there were some guys playing traditional fiji music, and one of the villagers (kimmee) tought me how to dance to it. that was great. i also met a guy named kavi who was really nice and apparently likes country music. so i made him a copy of some tim mcgraw and now he is like my fiji boyfriend. it was very scandalous - we shook hands. so he wants to come visit me in sydney. that would be interesting. i ended up using all of my writable cd’s and all of my laptop battery juice making copies of cd’s for the village people (ha. village people) they were so thrilled it was worth it. one of them went back to his village and a couple hours later showed up with a raggae cd to give me in return. that was pretty cool. man, this is getting really long. sorry you probably don’t even want to read all this. but oh well. i’ll try to sum up the rest of fiji without all the boring details. once i was the only person on the bus, the busdriver decided i needed to try a coconut, so he threw the bus in reverse and we drove backwards on the windy road to a coconut stand. he showed me how to drink the juice and then cut it up and eat it and i basically just ended up pouring coconut stuff all over myself and this little girl was laughing at me. oh well. it was good stuff. it didn’t taste anything like the coconut i know and love since it was still green and soft. it wasn’t even sweet, but it still kind of tasted like coconut. oh, and another little adventure was i somehow ended up in a van with the hostel staff driving into town because i needed change. i had just gotten back from the trek so i was still soaking wet and covered in mud. at first none of them would talk to me, but eventually they decided to be nice or something, and the rest of the trip was pretty fun. i bought a cd at the fueling station of the #1 fiji band DokiDoki. they highly recommended it. we were listening to it in the van and they were kinda dancing and singing along. it was cool.

sydney. not too much to report from here yet. i’ve been here about 2 days. i’m staying in another hostel looking for a real place to stay. everything is so expensive here. but it is such a pretty place. i’ve spent most of my time on campus trying to take care of all that student garbage and orientation that has to be done, or walking around looking at flats and meeting landlords. several times we couldn’t find landlords so we just knocked on random doors. we did that 3 times. each time the person was so friendly. one guy even gave us this grandious tour and offered to give us dinner. i had heard that the aussies are friendly but it is just out of hand. i love it. oh, you may have noticed i’ve been using the term ‘we’. this is not the royal ‘we’ as you were probably thinking. we are not amused. no, i met someone i am probably going to live with. i know my parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles/brother are going to freak because it is a boy. <gasp!> but i really think it’s going to work. we were both in the housing office at the same time, found out we’re both from florida which was kind of strange. but most important, we’re both grad students in engineering. everyone else i’ve met so far is an exchange student here for a semester or two in undergrad and not really even planning on going to classes. they’re basically here to hook up and learn how to surf and get a tan. while none of these things are really bad, i would like to live with someone who is planning to study at least once in a while. and we talk the same boring engineering language so we can hold conversations about boring things no one else wants to talk about. and most importantly, he just happened to be standing there as i was about to have a nervous breakdown over finding a place to live. we we’ll see, hopefully this will work out alright. if we get a 3 bedroom flat, we met a swiss guy who needs a place so we might get him to live with us too. that would be fun. i don’t know many swiss people. except for those 2 from fiji. they liked to roll dice. i wonder if this guy likes dice. hmmm. i haven’t seen much of the city yet, but tomorrow the international office has an outing to watson bay and the gap. (hopefully the gap is some kind of interesting area in sydney and not a store that sells khakis) and it seems that this little internet cafe is fixing to close, so i’d better sign off. i’m not exactly sure who’s even reading this, but i hope you are doing well. take care of yourself, be good, have fun. i’ll plan on doing the same.