So today I'm riding the elevator up to the seventh floor of the Menzies Building on Monash University's Clayton Campus, and I'm watching the other people - students, teachers, post-grads who're a little of both - getting on and off on different floors. I wonder, nearly absently, whether any of them have been to the seventh floor, or, if like me, they've only been to their one floor. If they are like me, then the majority of their classes on this campus will only have ever been on that one floor, so they've never had a reason to get off at a different floor. I wonder what those other floors are like - are they laid out exactly like mine? do they have the same pokey corridors, bits of construction, new bathrooms? - and whether or not I can ever be bothered to find out. After all, why would it benefit me if I drifted onto a different floor every now and then just to see what it's like when I've no actual business there. Maybe I'd just look silly. Are we caring about that?
The next thing I wonder, which makes me smile, is that I refer to the seventh floor as 'my' floor, as though it having contained all my classes on this campus gives me some sort of proprietary right to it; of course, when I get on the elevator and ride it up I get off at 'my' floor, just like everyone else gets off of theirs. I hear them say it when they're parting ways with friends or colleagues - or both: 'This is my floor. See you at lunch.', or 'This is me.' It's odd that particular places inspire that kind of level of comfort, public places in particular; if you go their regularly then you feel like you belong to that place and that place belongs to you in some shape or form, simply because you have certain experience with the place in question.
Just food for thought really...
ClearSkies~V
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Monday, August 29, 2011
Monday, August 15, 2011
Ah, Student Politics
Part of my Monday routine involves wasting the hours between arriving on campus and my Exotic Erotic Other class at 2pm. X usually drops me off at the station on his way to work which means I'm usually on campus by around 10am, depending on what time we're out the door. This means I generally have enough time to have a real sort of breakfast on campus - Monash's Clayton Campus is pretty awesome for food availability and variety - wander around the bookshop to see if there's anything I want to add to my collection - Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters, Gaiman's Anansi Boys - and run any other errands I can do on campus - any banking, doctor appointments, optometrists. Most of the time I end up sitting at a table with a fruit smoothie doing my readings or, ever since I got my hands on one of these little netbooks, typing things, doing research, etc etc etc. Lately of course, I've been looking at dress designs - but I'll discuss that more at a later date.
Today's time wasting took place primary in the English School Library, during which I was looking at pretty things before getting kicked out at 12:45pm by some of the members of the faculty who needed the room for a meeting, fair enough really. So I had some lunch and a ginger ale and then, out of sheer boredom and need to fill another hour with a useless activity that - preferably - didn't cost me any money, I wandered up to one of the several tables that were doing their student politic-y things. This one was trying to get as many signatures for a petition to the Australian Government to halt the 'Refugee Malaysia Solution' - for those of you not in the know, the Malaysia Solution, as it's being called apparently, involves, more or less, the government relieving the pressure of overpopulation in their refugee detention centres by sending refugees to a centre in Malaysia; the problem that has been raised with this is that Malaysia is not a signatory of the UNHCR Refugee Convention which deals with issues such as fair treatment and human rights. There's more to it of course, but that's it in a nutshell.
So anyways, I step up to said table, thinking 'eh, what the hell', and of course I ended up at the Socialist Alternative table...the group I'd spent so many years at the ANU avoiding....
Dredging up ever last thing I remembered about what not to say I ended up having a fairly basic conversation with the young woman, who in the process pawned off several bits and pieces of reading material off on me - I might even read some of them before I throw them out; can you tell I'm less than completely politically motivated?
And so, I ended up back outside class, waiting for the meeting to end and class to start, and typing this up...because I can.
ClearSkies~V
Friday, August 12, 2011
Random Pretty
This is me...on my 2nd(?) birthday!
My Mom (who is holding my pressie) found it a little while ago.
Isn't I cute?
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Materialism, Epiphanies, Moving, Growin' the hell up!
There's a certain bittersweet taste to packing up one's belongings into a series of boxes (always too many) and saying goodbye to a place you've spent enough time to have unpacked them in the first place. You'd think you'd get used to it after having lived an entire life based on the uprooting of a family unit every four years; maybe some people do get used to it, I'll admit there's a certain appeal to allowing yourself to acclimatise to it, but I can say with surety, if I ever felt good about it, that part is long gone. I don't hate many things, but I do hate moving.
I don't actually dislike the packing, or the unpacking, that's doable, and often even entertaining - and a really god time to go through belongings and say 'that's really got to go'. I figure I've done my part for charity this year, to say the least.
I've re-made an astounding discovery: I have a lot of things. What can I say? I'm a material girl, and I like it that way.
Sometimes 'materialism' develops a bad connotation, certainly the drift in my nuclear family. Sure, you could want it, but why would you need it? That seemed to have been the general feeling of my growing up. Don't get me wrong, I think it's saved me from growing up into a spoiled rich brat, but I've also realised that I like shiny things, I like gadgets and technology, I like fancy cars and expensive jewelry, I like Diesel jumpers and shirts and jeans, I like my shiny new boots that I didn't really need but I really wanted. I've also come to the late-life discovery that it's okay to like these things, even if I can't get them all at once, it's alright to aspire to own that shiny plasma TV or that blu-ray player, or want to drive an expensive car after I've got a liscence.
It's weird, having these epiphanies all at once. It's probably because I'm doing this 'on my own' for the first time, with a little help from friends, but not with my parents - bar the financial aspect of course. I guess I've realised that I'm really allowed to be my own person, with my own opinions, grown up in my own right. I don't have to hold to the person people expect me to be.
Huh. It's weird, and probably a long time in the coming, but you know what? I feel damn good about it.
Little scared about the move, little intimidated by other circumstances, but excited too, really excited to be doing this and to be moving forward. I've picked what I wanted, I can work out how to get there, and then...the world is my oyster.
=^.^=
Clear Skies~V
I don't actually dislike the packing, or the unpacking, that's doable, and often even entertaining - and a really god time to go through belongings and say 'that's really got to go'. I figure I've done my part for charity this year, to say the least.
I've re-made an astounding discovery: I have a lot of things. What can I say? I'm a material girl, and I like it that way.
Sometimes 'materialism' develops a bad connotation, certainly the drift in my nuclear family. Sure, you could want it, but why would you need it? That seemed to have been the general feeling of my growing up. Don't get me wrong, I think it's saved me from growing up into a spoiled rich brat, but I've also realised that I like shiny things, I like gadgets and technology, I like fancy cars and expensive jewelry, I like Diesel jumpers and shirts and jeans, I like my shiny new boots that I didn't really need but I really wanted. I've also come to the late-life discovery that it's okay to like these things, even if I can't get them all at once, it's alright to aspire to own that shiny plasma TV or that blu-ray player, or want to drive an expensive car after I've got a liscence.
It's weird, having these epiphanies all at once. It's probably because I'm doing this 'on my own' for the first time, with a little help from friends, but not with my parents - bar the financial aspect of course. I guess I've realised that I'm really allowed to be my own person, with my own opinions, grown up in my own right. I don't have to hold to the person people expect me to be.
Huh. It's weird, and probably a long time in the coming, but you know what? I feel damn good about it.
Little scared about the move, little intimidated by other circumstances, but excited too, really excited to be doing this and to be moving forward. I've picked what I wanted, I can work out how to get there, and then...the world is my oyster.
=^.^=
Clear Skies~V
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Silver Linings
You ever get that feeling? You know, the one that makes you think you've hit the biggest obstacle in your life and you've got no inkling on how to tackle it? It's a lot like despair, if you had to give it a name. The deep, cold, dark despair that sucker punches you in the stomach with just thatuch extra oomph right after the silent numbness of shock has vacated your nervous system. All you can think is "Let it be before, take back this knowledge, this experience; let it be when everything was right".
We've all faced this, in some form or another, let's be honest, and if you haven't, you're either living lucky, not doing something right, or you've got it coming at you with extra extra oomph. It's the heartbreak of a breakup, the diagnosis of a incurable illness, the F you got on your math test, or the car accident you shouldn't have had. It's the decisions you've made, the path you've ended up on, by whatever means, fair or foul: if you're human, probably a bit of both. Whether it's a small thing or something that literally hold lives in the balance, the emotion is still there and one thing is universally true, irregardless of faith, ideology, class, or race: IT F***ING SUCKS. I totally dare anyone to disagree with me.
The question that really makes the difference though, is what you're going to do next. Sure, your gut's wrenched, eyes cried out of your skull, you've eaten a tub full of ice cream, ranted at someone, possibly written a really long letter (or hell, a blog entry maybe), set fire to photos, had a few too many drinks, etc. so forth and so on... That's great. Now what? In case you hadn't noticed, that feeling is still there, and it's not going to go away on a hurry. You can't fix it by staying in the moment, can you? Or looking back longingly at yesterday thinking "Damn, they was an awesome day, I cans has plez?". It just won't fix that way. So what can you do? Look forward, when you can bare it, look ahead; think things through. Even the most horrid things give way somewhere; always a silver lining, if you choose to search for the right angle.
Optimism is rare enough to find in this world, but it's there alright, tucked away between cynicism and self-preservation. Sure, that thought killing pain won't go away, not right away, but it does help to remember that while time may not heal all wounds, if you'll let it, it will give you respite in form of a lighter perspective.
Just some thoughts from your friendly (sleepless) optimist.
ClearSkies~V
We've all faced this, in some form or another, let's be honest, and if you haven't, you're either living lucky, not doing something right, or you've got it coming at you with extra extra oomph. It's the heartbreak of a breakup, the diagnosis of a incurable illness, the F you got on your math test, or the car accident you shouldn't have had. It's the decisions you've made, the path you've ended up on, by whatever means, fair or foul: if you're human, probably a bit of both. Whether it's a small thing or something that literally hold lives in the balance, the emotion is still there and one thing is universally true, irregardless of faith, ideology, class, or race: IT F***ING SUCKS. I totally dare anyone to disagree with me.
The question that really makes the difference though, is what you're going to do next. Sure, your gut's wrenched, eyes cried out of your skull, you've eaten a tub full of ice cream, ranted at someone, possibly written a really long letter (or hell, a blog entry maybe), set fire to photos, had a few too many drinks, etc. so forth and so on... That's great. Now what? In case you hadn't noticed, that feeling is still there, and it's not going to go away on a hurry. You can't fix it by staying in the moment, can you? Or looking back longingly at yesterday thinking "Damn, they was an awesome day, I cans has plez?". It just won't fix that way. So what can you do? Look forward, when you can bare it, look ahead; think things through. Even the most horrid things give way somewhere; always a silver lining, if you choose to search for the right angle.
Optimism is rare enough to find in this world, but it's there alright, tucked away between cynicism and self-preservation. Sure, that thought killing pain won't go away, not right away, but it does help to remember that while time may not heal all wounds, if you'll let it, it will give you respite in form of a lighter perspective.
Just some thoughts from your friendly (sleepless) optimist.
ClearSkies~V
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Ah...Valentine's Day.
So. Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I hope you're all snug 'n things with your partner of choice, be they male, female, virtual, furry, fluffy, blown up, near or far, a book, a cat, a dog, or a box of tissues and chocolates (or as it is in my case, a large bottle of vodka, a bottle of cranberry juice, and my computer).
I've been meaning to talk about this for a long time, but for some reason it just seemed silly and somewhat stupid to talk about that crazy lil thing called 'love' when, firstly, I don't claim to know a thing about it other than what goes on in my brain, and secondly, I figure it's different in all books. And then, hey, check out the date! Perfect excuse right? But before we begin, let me set the rules: I will not cry, I will not rant (much), I will attempt to be objective and general, and I will attempt to use as little profanity as I can. Provided you lot don't laugh or roll your eyes or cry, rant, rave, or judge. Also: I'm not the expert! I'm just being opinionated 'n stuff 'n things, so no one kill me. All happy? Awesome, let's rock...
I keep seeing people stuck in relationships they shouldn't be in, either at all or anymore, take your pick. I know people who shouldn't still be together, except somewhere down the line in the turns and twists of their relationship they forgot that they were allowed to choose their own way, and now they're stuck together for the rest of their lives (granted, at 70, I suppose you really have to want to get out). Humans are creatures of habits, we like things we know, we're scared of things we don't. So few of us take risks anymore, and those of us who do tend to be looked upon as 'crazy idiots who really should settle down'. The thing is, habits and patterns are all well and good, if they're good patterns and habits. If you're in a relationship right now where you respect and love your partner and get that respect and love back, where you're communication is brilliant and everything is shiny 'n happy etc etc etc, then by all means, stay in that pattern and that habit. People who end up sticking it out in relationships where the spark has flown, either need to rekindle (and no I don't know how, I'm just half ranting thoughts here) or need to break the cycle and move on. The trouble is, they don't, because they're in a pattern where they know the ins and outs, where they know the rules and they know how the game is played - even if they don't like that game.
Of course, it's easy for me to say all of that. They're only words for me, for people in the situation, they have to be actions and that's always harder than words.
I've always viewed Valentine's Day as a little bit of a 'silly' holiday, carrying the same weight like 'Teacher's Day' - that came out a little bitter, but the metaphor stands: Teacher's Day is great for people involved in it, bringing apples to the teacher or whatever the traditions are these days (did that make me sound old?). The same goes for good ole V-day: if you're in love, and you're with someone, YAYY!!! If you're not in love and (I suppose therefore) not with someone, then YAYY!! Just another day!! If you're in love but not with someone, then you're just f***ed, cept not literally, which would be part of the problem maybe. (Okay that was bad. Sorry, couldn't help it. BAD V! *finds L and gets a slap on the wrist*).
I've been meaning to talk about this for a long time, but for some reason it just seemed silly and somewhat stupid to talk about that crazy lil thing called 'love' when, firstly, I don't claim to know a thing about it other than what goes on in my brain, and secondly, I figure it's different in all books. And then, hey, check out the date! Perfect excuse right? But before we begin, let me set the rules: I will not cry, I will not rant (much), I will attempt to be objective and general, and I will attempt to use as little profanity as I can. Provided you lot don't laugh or roll your eyes or cry, rant, rave, or judge. Also: I'm not the expert! I'm just being opinionated 'n stuff 'n things, so no one kill me. All happy? Awesome, let's rock...
I keep seeing people stuck in relationships they shouldn't be in, either at all or anymore, take your pick. I know people who shouldn't still be together, except somewhere down the line in the turns and twists of their relationship they forgot that they were allowed to choose their own way, and now they're stuck together for the rest of their lives (granted, at 70, I suppose you really have to want to get out). Humans are creatures of habits, we like things we know, we're scared of things we don't. So few of us take risks anymore, and those of us who do tend to be looked upon as 'crazy idiots who really should settle down'. The thing is, habits and patterns are all well and good, if they're good patterns and habits. If you're in a relationship right now where you respect and love your partner and get that respect and love back, where you're communication is brilliant and everything is shiny 'n happy etc etc etc, then by all means, stay in that pattern and that habit. People who end up sticking it out in relationships where the spark has flown, either need to rekindle (and no I don't know how, I'm just half ranting thoughts here) or need to break the cycle and move on. The trouble is, they don't, because they're in a pattern where they know the ins and outs, where they know the rules and they know how the game is played - even if they don't like that game.
Of course, it's easy for me to say all of that. They're only words for me, for people in the situation, they have to be actions and that's always harder than words.
I've always viewed Valentine's Day as a little bit of a 'silly' holiday, carrying the same weight like 'Teacher's Day' - that came out a little bitter, but the metaphor stands: Teacher's Day is great for people involved in it, bringing apples to the teacher or whatever the traditions are these days (did that make me sound old?). The same goes for good ole V-day: if you're in love, and you're with someone, YAYY!!! If you're not in love and (I suppose therefore) not with someone, then YAYY!! Just another day!! If you're in love but not with someone, then you're just f***ed, cept not literally, which would be part of the problem maybe. (Okay that was bad. Sorry, couldn't help it. BAD V! *finds L and gets a slap on the wrist*).
(Side question...is quarter to 4 in the afternoon too early to start drinking?)
Of course, you could argue that Valentine's Day is primarily driven by the deliciously capitalist chocolate fabrication businesses, I mean this is their jackpot day right? Forget Halloween, forget Easter (though I would really like another chocolate orange, kthnxbai), and forget Christmas, Valentine's Day is where they really hit the spot. Why? Because people forget about it if they're not 'in the loop', and so they look at the calander and go 'Oh shit, Valentine's Day...should do something in case s/he thinks I forgot and don't love her/him! Where's the nearest chocolate store?'. Okay, so maybe that's a little cynical (*cough*unhealthycynicism*cough*)...and maybe I'm spending too much time thinking about it, but it is V-day...that kind of gives me perogative to think about it right?
Anyways, I hope I didn't spoil anyone's chocolate kisses, and those of you celebrating, celebrate away (safely, please, the world is already overpopulated, we'd like to avoid more accidents in the back of the car, kthnx). And those of you who can't wait to move onto the next chocolate season where you don't have to think about not being someone, it's okay, Easter's just around the corner and we can all celebrate Zombie-Jesus Day with extra chocolatey oranges 'n bunnies, if that's your thing.
Clear Skies~V
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