I wrote a 500 word story for this contest that's happening with the British Council. I'm planning to write a couple more so I can pick the best one. I put it on my website.

NEVAR!

A lot of ANU people go on to Oxbridge to do masters because ANU is one of the few universities in the world that has a student exchange programme with Oxbridge. I don't know why that is, but there you go!

Meeks give me an email or post your email with a spam tag in it. You still using the intellicide address?

Generalisations work sometimes and I like rap so I'm not trying to bash rap, its the complete opposite: it's one of the things that makes underground rap so fucking good. So if your experience with the genre tells you otherwise, let's hear it.

I hated 28 days later, the opening shots of London were beautiful. Also in the action scenes you can see the manga style violence, but the ending was shit. the girl can beat up flesh-eating zombies but she can't beat up post-adolescent soldiers? it turns into an adventure film at the end. Completely shit-out

Greetings, amigoes. Thankyou so much for all the kind words.

I got accepted into my first choice law school at australian national university, in the nation's capital. I am tempted to defer the year, continue working at the bank, until my mother's health is 100%. As far as I'm concerned, she is my number one priority. Though the bank is crushing my will to live, the pay and experience is satisfactory until she's all better. On top of my BA from Melbourne, that's only another 2 years until yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum (ie. the completion of the degree). My mother insists I go, as all good mothers would, but I worry so much about her.

Saturday, I had to man the spotlight for a performance called Cultural Kaleidoscope, part of the celebration for International Week. At one point my boss put me down in his trademark tongue-in-cheek fashion and I just snapped. I didn't say anything, I just wanted to walk out to the basketball courts and think up ways of killing him. Afterwards, I felt miserable and I'm still not sure why because I have had more stressful performances, and my boss has riled on me more severely; I'm still trying to get to the bottom of it.

I took a walk with my mom down to Centrepoint Damansara Utama last night where I raided the discount comic bin of The Mind Shop. I picked up a couple of issues of X-Force. Comics are very shit. You have got a picture of a statuesque girl sitting on top of a building contemplating how miserable her life is. By the way, she's wearing an improbable constume that draws attention to herself. How do superheros stay live when they wear such bright costumes? Why is violence ok as a form of vengeance or when it is visited upon large monsters or government-issued killing machines?

I think I need to get out of this city. I need to get out of myself. But I'm not running myself ragged. I'm not stressed or suffering from burnout. Vinny, being in ISKL is reminding me how much I was glad to leave. I had to wrestle with my self-image and I can see kids going through the exact same thing, the self-hating, the cynicism towards everything. I never knew Generation X was characterised by "irony = cool" but it makes perfect sense.

I'm pretty sure I've grown out of hating myself for the pleasure of it. I'm pretty sure what I consider smart people don't understand.

Passionate teaching is what you make of it. The problem was I had to get a degree to realise the system's shortcomings. Which, as you point out, may not even be shortcomings when you consider the alternatives. What needs to happen is teachers and administrators need to incorporate what teenagers really think about learning, they need to address the stigma. It is like trying to engage the source material without personally responding to it. Or creating a personal relationship with a teacher without a breach of professional distance. I think personal interest works against professional interest. This is obvious. Neither instance is impossible, from my experience, good students retain and critique the information they are given and that is the basic requirement in a teacher-student relationship.

Maybe it creates a mockery out of a place of learning when you distinctly eschew discipline. But discipline benefits from intimidation, that means students are terrified into making the acceptable choices.

Vinny, your assumption is when you are left to your own devices you will never finish a piece of work. I agree with you. Because I am chronically late in submitting anything for assessment if the deadline had been extended by a year, I often feel I still would have started the assignment a week before the due date. I tell myself it is good form to throw together an assignment at the last minute and I scour newspapers and blogs and comic books for information I can use in an essay. But I don't qualify the information deeply enough, I don't leave a clear paper trail. There: I've just identified why my system doesn't work. Does that preclude that people make their living as a freelance writing, designer or performer on the basis they are disciplined enough to realise When They Are Done?

Or course not. Why? Because if they don't get with the program they aren't going to be paid. They need to incorporate discipline into their work habits. A hip hop artists rises to prominence on the basis he tells himself he won't be dealing drugs all his life and end up face-down in the street at 22. He is good at rapping and makes money because he has learnt the music game because he needs to, or else, well there isn't anything else.

My life experience is nowhere close to a ghetto. I work in an International School whose students are the children of the cream of the crop of Malaysia. I sleep a consistent 8 hours or more a night. I get into work around midday. These are not things conducive of discipline.

So we'll see how this year shapes up. If I wrote on this blog every day you would all be alot more sick hearing me rant about the same shit for the nth time.

Thanks so much for the well wishes, by the way.

I hope 2004 is a glorious year for all!

Sorry it has been so long since I posted. Here is a catch up, of sorts.

On the 30th of November mum came home from work early, looking and feeling very ill. She had suffered some pain, and went straight to bed. She said the pain had gotten so bad she had vomitted. A few hours later she woke up, very cold and slightly incoherent. We took her to our local GP, who then recommended we take her straight to the emergency room. They began tests on her, but ultimately sent her home, saying she had an infection they could not locate. At about 4am on the 1st of December I was woken by the sound of my mother screaming. My sister and I snapped awake and we drove mum to the emergency room. She was delirious and had no idea where she was or who we were. She couldn't breathe. I stayed with her in the emergency unit while she was pumped full of various liquids and they did more tests on her. The doctor, who was completely incompetent, kept pumping her full of fluids, as he said this is how to get blood pressure up, and her blood pressure was dangerously low. Several near fatal mistakes later, he located the infection at her kidney, and she was sent to a private hospital for emergency surgery. She could not breathe, and she had become delirious, because she was filled so full of liquids that she was essentially drowning from the inside out. I took the week off work and kept near mum as much as possible.

Hello, can we say malpractise? I think we can. My mother is a very highly trained and experienced nurse, having worked through many departments and with certifications coming out her arse. She was half out of her mind and completely septic, and she knew this doctor had no idea what he was doing.

What had happened was that my mother had a kidney stone. Due to the medication she takes for her arthritis, she had no idea that anything was wrong with her kidney. Eventually, the kidney stone calcified further until it eventually blocked one of the major passages to her kidney, causing it to fail. The doctors said had it been left a few hours longer she would have died. Luckily my mother is a strong old bird, and she wasn't having any of that. Interestingly enough, my mother's arthritis has been 99% alleviated, and is only left with a bit of a click in her knee (which she is having surgery to repair in the coming weeks).

Without a doubt, the worst week of my life. Not many people know how close I am to my mother. Just seeing her come out of surgery made me cry like I haven't since I was a child. I knew in the pit of my stomach she would be well again, but seeing your mother unable to recognise you or walk, and vomiting on herself telling you she is going to die, is a very frightening thing.

With all that has happened - my mother's illness, Christmas, finishing uni and starting ajob, I have completely run myself into the ground. I'm staying home at the moment with a nasty case of bronchitis, tonsilitis and sinusitis. YES, I am a walking infection. The doctor told me today that I am just completely exhausted - both mentally and physically - and I need to rest more than anything. I didn't need a doctor to tell me that I just need a holiday: I haven't had one in a year, and with my second degree to begin in March, I don't know if I should just let the job go and relax. It's not worth all this. And money bores me to tears.