I am slack

I can't believe I've waited so long between posts. And so much has happened! I am writing this post not from my PC, but from my shiny gorgeous new toy - a laptop! A very pretty, ultra-cool laptop, to be exact. I've had it for a week now, and the novelty isn't wearing off yet. It's fabulous. Not only that, but when I actually manage to get a good backpack to carry it in, I will undergo another whole wave of novelty, being able to carry my computer around with me. Oh, the joy!

In other news, it is now STUVAC, which essentially means that I should be studying but amn't really. Have no fear, though, it's my way. I'm sure my brain knows what it's doing. A week and a bit until your first exam, brain!

I saw some of question time during lunch today. I tell you, it's no wonder the country is such a mess. Instead of taking the opportunity to actually lay out policy and clear up misunderstandings, the senators use their reply time to insult their questioner, and avoid the issue completely. It's a shambles. Of course, going from my experience of Yes Minister, all this capering about in the Senate, and the similar antics in the Lower House, are really just a way of giving the pollies something to do while the public servants get on with running the country. Makes them feel important, you know.

Assessments galore

It's that time of the semester when it feels like all your assessments come at once. Exams, quizzes, assignments, all rolled together into a huge slavering beast which buries you under a hail of marking schemes and percentage markings. Professors from all faculties join forces and plot, cackling with glee, to make sure that you have to do everything all at once. All over campus, students can discuss nothing else but what a long essay they have to write, or how many exams they must sit. The library staff suddenly have three times as much work, as the entire Arts Faculty descends upon them in a last minute rush for research material, students progressing to more and more obscure books in the desperate hope that something in them may prove the key to boosting their mark to a Distinction.

I, on the other hand, have a different tactic. Sensing an exam or a due date rapidly approaching, my brain does a curious thing. It does not like stress, you see, so when it recognizes the approaching deadline as the source of its discomfort it panics and tries to purge the offending thought. That is to say it thinks about anything but the exam, preferring to focus instead on some other form of distraction, such as writing blogs, and thus put off thinking about anything nasty until it can do so for the least possible amount of time. That is to say, immediately beforehand.

However, whatever your tactic for dealing with the horrible time that is the end of semester we are all in it together, so let us join in feeling stressed and panicked and celebrate the end of a wonderful half-year. Remember, in a few weeks we can put it all behind us and totally forget all about it until the same time next semester when it will all come flooding horribly back.

NB - I have it on fairly good authority that my mother peruses this blog once in a while (indeed she is probably the only one, everyone else preferring to do something more interesting like, say, look at their toes, or make friends with a small piece of lint). If so, I would ask her kindly to not read the second paragraph of this post. Thankyou.

I'm hungry

It seems that the vending machines have been removed from city train stations this week. Vanished into fat air, they did. Now I learn that the reason is just as stupid as I feared; the powers that be are convinced that there is a group of terrorists lined up replace twisties and coke cans with grenades and pipe bombs. Of course, silly me. It's obvious, really. Not paranoid or ridiculous at all. 'The terrorists' are going around putting bombs in vending machines, then collapsing with laughter when some poor innocent commuter pays $2.10 and receives, instead of the delicious snack he's expecting, a rather violent explosion.

Really, people, when we start getting this paranoid haven't the terrorists already won (to coin a phrase)? Although I suppose, since the bins have been removed from the stations already for the same reason, the lack of vending machines will cut down on litter.