Friday night the ladies and I headed out to thai dinner before seeing Ding Dong Downe, Bob Downe touring with Ding Dong Drysdale. It was hard enough working out where we were going to go, because everyone has right of veto. We waited for ages for our meals to arrive, and eventually we had to abandon ship if we were to make it to the show. I went up to the counter and the apologetic woman said immediately “It’s coming now!” I told her the game was up and she had to wrap them in a container. It had already been about an hour at this point, and it actually took another 10 minutes for them to get the meals ready for us to take leaving us with only a matter of minutes to jog to the theatre.

When the curtain went up I was pleasantly surprised to see Jelly’s brother on drums because Jelly hadn’t mentioned anything to me at all. The show was great, typical Bob and Ding Dong ran herself to the floor (literally) to entertain. She even copped a grope from some creep in the third row whilst doing her triple summersaults. Once again our home town showed we are a bunch of dumb neaderthals and have serious rhythm impediments when it comes to clapping.

I had to get up early Saturday to work overtime, but it was good money (though I’m not sure exactly how much yet) to sit there for five hours and listen to my iPod. Oh, and the work too, but I was completely undisturbed for the whole five hours. I think I was located in the area I’m to be moved to at the end of this week. A real desk and a real phone and real drawers! I can’t wait!

I got the new Mac OSX (nicknamed Leopard) on Friday and had a play around over the weekend. The new synthesized voice is pretty impressive. As I fiddled I made it read out the time on the hour. I accidently left it on, and it has been scaring the crap out of me ever since. Overall, the huge changes to the OS pale next to the small but perfect modifications with things such as QuickLook. I also upgraded my hacked iPhone to the newest firmware, just because I can.

The rest of the weekend has been fairly lazy as I adjust to the daylight savings (at one point I was two hours ahead by mistake) and readying my DipEd application. Though it must be told that someone desperately does not want me to become a teacher. I’ve had so many obstacles. The latest is the Department of Education being completely unhelpful with regards to my inaccurate academic requirements assessment. Apparently a degree in music isn’t enough to teach it, though I know my degree has been fine for previous applicants. It’s now with a ’senior’, though no amount of emails or phone calls can persuade them to action is a little more quickly, considering my DipEd application is due on Wednesday and I need this letter. Well, it took them 3 months to send out the first letter, who’s going to rush them?

I have a family member in the Army reserves. If you think Scouts are mentally unstable (and you should), they are nothing next to the freaking lunatics that run our defence force.

Today I received a rather stern phone call during which the caller identified himself as Sergeant Donner. Except he spelt it out. Spelling ’sergeant’ as “S. G. T.” Rather than asking if I had to time to answer his ridiculous series of questions asked in a faux-official manner (put-on deep voice and always calling me ‘Sir’), he simply barraged on to the point of absurdity. He was asking about the make and model of our cars and often said things like “Thank you sir, I’m making a note of that for future reference.”

He asked what my army relative looked like as he wasn’t sure he could place the face. As a joke I replied, “he has cropped hair.” This went well and truly over this guy’s head. He then asked if he had ever been to and I said “Perhaps.” To which he responded with the perfect punchline “Oh yes, I think I know him now”, except he really meant it.

That said, at least Army guys don’t wear toggles or woggles or whatever the hell those sweat-shop made knobs of crap are.

I’m home from a weekend of children’s theatre. This is my ninth year with the group and it made me think of all the people who have been involved at one time or another. Oddly enough there are still some kids in the group who were in it when I was performing on stage at the age of fourteen. Others have long moved on, but you usually see them coming back to watch the latest show. It’s also great to see some of the young ones in the orchestra pit, because doing that was my start into the music side of things. The two young girls, Leah and Meg even bought us some Cold Rock gift vouchers. Can’t argue with that!

I’ve barely been home all weekend so things are a shambles here. Clothes and used bowls of food were everywhere this morning, very much unlike me. I did fix up the bad stuff this morning, but my floor is still a little messy. As so perfectly put in Seinfeld, I need that downtime on a Sunday night to get my things organised for the week. A bit of calm before the storm again.

As the school certificate nears, the three boys I tutor in maths are having lessons every week and I’m quickly running out of time. At work I’m supposed to be starting on helping out with the insurance processing team tomorrow after “showing an interest”. I don’t know how long I’ll be doing that for and when if I’ll be back with the usual maintenance group, but I know that I am still not getting a real desk with a phone and a bin and a set of drawers. Because they are out of room, they’ve put us new people in “the sweatshop” (so called because the air conditioning doesn’t work).

One concern is that I’ll be sitting next to the loud talker. You know the type. While everyone else is pretty quiet, this woman tries to maintain a conversation all day, usually about her daughter or one of her sisters, or one of her many holidays or jobs in the past. Already in the 7 working days we’re beginning to hear stories for the second time. I’m quite the opposite, I’d prefer to sit in piece and quiet so I can think about my own things and focus on getting the work right.

I started to think about a strategy I might take if she tries to maintain a conversation with me. I’m thinking I’ll stick to one word answers and avoid eye contact. I have nothing against the woman at all, but there’s a time for conversation and there’s a time to enjoy silence.

It’s surprisingly hard work to sit at a computer and type all day.

Actually, I take that back. Not only is it easy, but I had a lot of practice at it at home. Actually, my pre-work life was more strenuous as I used to walk down the shops and back to get some lunch. Now I just walk down one flight of stairs. The most exciting thing I do is drink lots of water and see how long I can torment my bladder.

What is a little annoying is that they expect so many hours of your day. The good ones, too. I start at around 8am and finish at 3.30 so I still have time to do some tutoring after school. When I do a full day, plus some tutoring, plus rehearsal at night it tends to get a bit time consuming. I barely have time to Jazzercise and shave my legs before the day is out and it’s time to slip between the silky sheets one again.

Oh to spend another day with semi-lobotomised temps who constantly surprise themselves with cries like “Whoops! I just locked myself out of my whole computer!”

Late last week my mum found out there was a need for data entry clerks at her work place for a little while. With me sitting at home and not doing a whole lot (particularly as it’s school holidays and all tutoring/teaching work drops off), I decided to put my resume in hoping for a few weeks work.Apparently the plan was originally to get a bunch of uni students introduced on monday of this week, and have them start on tuesday (today) so they could get rid of the backlog as quickly as possible. I was asked to come in on monday and contrary to what I was told on the phone, I was given a full half hour interview with all the usual questions… “Give us an example of a time when you …”, “What characteristics have you displayed in your previous work that will apply to this job”…. Umm, let’s see, I can type and read, and my brain wasn’t cut in half during epilepsy surgery, so I’m good to go?I have absolutely zilch tolerance for corporate bullshit. I wanted to laugh out loud several times during the interview. They were wasting my time and their own with the same pointless questions they ask of paper shufflers to senior management. To make matters even more absurd, they then called my reference Adam and interrogated him about my “areas of improvement”. I won’t even find out till the end of the week if they want me.I’m starting to become less interested as they mentioned fixed-term contracts as an option. I’d rather be casual so I can do a runner when I need to if something else comes up.On top of this I’ve been working on sorting out my uni studies. I’ve now applied to graduate at the end of the year with a Creative Arts degree, and have someone in the Education department working on a screw-up with my DipEd application.UPDATE: I was offered the job. Good money and on a casual arrangement, so I start thursday.