A Fun Game

Last year and intermittently since I was practicing a process called mehta bhavana. A form of meditation that cultivates loving kindness. Unfortunately when I was doing this most wholesome exercise I was also going ‘on heat ‘ as my sexual frustration was coming into its own. And thus it became…something else.
For about a week I attempted to sexually fantasize about EVERYONE except of course close friends and associates as I didn’t want it to get awkward or anything. But the times I had, it was very empowering I highly recommend it to anyone sexually frustrated or just worried that you may be superficial. It sure got me to accentuate the positives in people.
Seriously sensuously shaving the head of the guy who sells tickets in the nova box office is a kind of intimacy you don’t normally experience in life.
I felt loved. Try it before you die.

Attitude IS Everything

I really should write about the man who broke my conditioning and changed my life completely for the better. That man is Paul Rubens, I always thought I could articulate things well. I had been told it was so, but Paul in 20 minutes managed to beautifully sum up everything I had suspected about life but had never managed to piece together.
That Attitude is everything, it really is, it is because you choose your attitude. It's a choice, you can make it consciously or unconsciously. I met Paul by being lazy. I had failed two subjects which put me off kilter with the rest of my RMIT year level by a semester. (I had been taught that if you score any higher than 51 on a subject your trying too hard. I had also vowed I would never work as hard as I had in VCE [which wasn't very hard relatively speaking] ever again for the rest of my life) so here I was paying for it by having to find a years full-time placement with a company in the marketing profession without my qualification as yet. RMIT's Catch-22 marketing illusion: Graduates from RMIT are more employable because they have a years experience in the industry tucked under their belts HOWEVER it is much harder to line up a job for that year of experience as you have no experience and furthermore are unqualified, so it pretty much balances out.
At any rate I didn't even try as I only had RMITs economical two week mid semester break to contemplate getting a job, I had two fails on my academic record and naturally didn't bother applying for any jobs, to my credit I did feel anxious the entire time I played computer games that break.
But I got shuffled into PSP which was the best single program I have ever done, the best reward for innaction ever, the biggest boost to my self esteem and confidence and gave me a whole new approach to life.
Paul gave all 50 students the Attitude speech pointing out we could choose to think our workplace didn't offer as much as other placements, that the Business Policy Game was a pointless waste of time etc OR you could choose to try and learn as much as possible, turn up to every class and make the best impression possible when you go to your workplacement.
Which I did and it worked well for me. But more on Paul he is the interesting one.
Paul skipped university to work for his parents business, importers of dutch goods for the dutch community that had been bringing in european goods that solicited complaints such as 'this cheese I bought of you has mould all over it, a white coating all around the edges.' and shit like that. Simple ideas and hard work Paul and his wife paid for an overseas trip to Europe by buying a shipping container of licorice at Auction that had been left in the sun and the liquorice had all fused together. So they cut it up and packaged it and sold it and went to Europe. In Europe Paul went to supermarkets and picked up products he thought were 'great' and called the number on the back and asked the manufacturers if he could sell their products in Australia. So he bought in Guylian chocolates and other such European marvels. He took over the business (with his brother I think) and encouraged money/time saving ideas, looked after customers and suppliers and then he eventually sold his stake in the business and had three goals 1. He'd never employ anyone again. 2. he wanted to do something in America. 3. He wanted to be fit and healthy.
SO he retired age 30 and eventually met a guy through a friend who had these inspirational books that coupled pictures with inspirational phrases. Paul dropped a comment that he should get them printed in Hong Kong and save costs. The guy said he didn't know anything about Hong Kong so Paul said buy me a ticket and I'll meet you there. And they did and Paul became the companies Asian correspondent. Without trying he tripled his net worth as those posters are everywhere now. The other guy had cashflow troubles so he started paying Paul in Stock.
The best story the one I love and broke my brain in a good way was the story of how he was in America and talking to this guy who (again) had cash flow problems for his franchise and offered Paul the operating rights to his franchise in Australia for $10 grand and Paul using his best logic determined their wasn't a market for it in Australia because people could buy hamburgers with the lot for $1.80 at their corner fish & chip shop that were better quality. Paul was wrong about that because the store was McDonalds. Paul is literally unphased by missing the opportunity to be a billionaire, because his attitude is so good. What he is passionate about is start ups, he has enough money to fulfill all his goals he doesn't need anymore that he has. Precisely the attitude that would make capatalism tenable and efficient.
Maybe I don't give my mother enough credit but I'm sure she would let the missed opportunity haunt her to the end of her days, as I would have. As such I was risk averse before meeting Paul. I now where a thumb ring engraved 'fors jurat andenes' I may have done a beckham and spelt it wrong because I just googled it but it means 'fortune favors the brave' [things seem so much more official when written in latin] as one of them affirmation things that purifies water crystals. [I wanna look good if I'm ever frozen to death] but mainly as a reminder that risk is a measure of both positive and negative deviation from the expected result: meaning if you don't stand to lose you actually lose the opportunity to gain anything.
If you are worried about losing something you are ensuring you will also never gain anything. Which is all well and good and says Paul should have taken a risk on the McDonalds venture in Australia. But there's a difference you are given an intelligent brain so appreciate that there are better risks than others. For example gambling is a probability rigged exercise so you can gamble and try and 'win big' however you are more or less guarunteed to lose the longer you engage in it which is the same as if you blindly throw money into the stock market, but in the stock market you can bet on a horse like Coca Cola who you know has no traditional product lifecycle and the market is probably going to grow in the next 20 years so you would make better returns by placing a 20 year bet on that one company (this is not financial advice okay, don't do it because I said it here. I don't guaruntee you'll make money) And relationships don't read this and say 'If I'm not single how am I going to marry someone better than what I got?' there probably is someone better out there you know [there's me of course] but risk is both positive and negative variation there could be a lot of people worse you gotta evaluate what is 'good enough' for you or or possibly 'low maintainance' enough for you. The fucken point is you can reason and judge for yourself (this isn't relationship advice okay just don't do anything because I said, fuck.)
Fucking fact is the best thing is to identify your goals and take the risks that stand a chance of moving you closer to fulfilling those goals. And get full value out of everything. I'm just starting to read about all these causes I'd dismissed as lost and uninteresting to me because they didn't involve ninjas but there's a world outside ninjas tom. A bright world, with cheese in it.
But seriously I went to this RYLA camp and stood around the first half day thinking 'who are these freaks? I don't belong here' but I had my goals such as disclosure and shit and was trying to force my cynacism down and try and actually be supportive, all that shit. I got so much more out of the experience by sitting and listening and trying to participate in everything that was on offer. I even had milk with my cereal.
On friday I had to print out a bunch of fancy rebates that was going to tie up a printer for 15 whole minutes and the courtesy thing is to send a boring email out to say 'Printer 14 will be in use...blah blah...sorry for the inconveniance.' for the 200 hundred people that don't use the printer anyway the greatest inconvenience is the email so I tacked on '...and I just want everyone to know how much I appreciate you all and you make $%#d& a great place to work.' which I got responses to like 'thanks so much.' and one guy sent me a recording of him making a sucking noise into his microphone. I did it to be a smartarse but also because I genuinly believe those positive vibes can make a significant difference in someones day.
Another example of choosing an attitude was from J/the doctor on triple j breakfast radio who was alking about getting called by telemarketers from an indian call centre. 'Most people get annoyed and tell them to fuck off, learn english or something like that but I thought "I don't know anyone in India and they are paying for this call" and he asked the guy all about india.' just such a fucking great attitude it would have made two peoples day.
September 11 and the Bush reaction is probably another stark example of choosing attitude. Hmmm... poignant tom poignant.
You know life is great. Paul and me and some other guys were standing outside a food truck at an Autowreckers and everyone was buying pies and Paul said 'I hardly ever eat pies anymore but when I do I think "gee there great"' it's so Paul. Life just gets sweeter and sweeter when you have the right attitude and I just wanted to take Paul and put him in my yard.

On Education

I have hated the education system for approximately 10 years now. I don’t know when or why I started hating it. I don’t hate it enough to ruin my life over it of course so probably hate is too strong a word. I dislike it. A couple of months ago I was super inspired by someone who possessed the exact attitude all employers seek and yet demonstrated clearly that VCE and its counterparts fail to identify the best possible people to enter the work force.
The person in particular was blessed by having identified what they were passionate about in life and what they really wanted to do which was nursing, and because of a learning disability was having a hard time (one that I can’t even conceive of resitting VCE) getting into a nursing course. She told a large group of people she got an enter of 39 (I think I can’t recall exactly) and how proud she was of that result because she was proud of all the work that went into achieving it. I would much rather have an attitude like that than get a shitty Academic Achievement award in front of students that have never heard of me as a marketing exercise for prospective parents.
On the other end of the spectrum sits me. I’m ashamed of my attitude to some extent. I got 95.5 and I think more than anything else its just a big fucking joke. VCE was a joke to me. I don’t profess to be a genius either that ala Good Will Hunting sneaks into mathematics classrooms and completes Harvard Standard equations with my eyes closed. In 2001 I set myself 3 guidelines. I wasn’t going to get an Enter in the 90’s. I wouldn’t study more than 5 hours a week. I would always be in bed by 9.30 on a weeknight. I was a serial procrastinator, I had no respect for the education system and believed that SACS worked to my advantage as under the CATS system I actually would have been competing against people willing to put in the hours outside of class time.
And I was set. Going to a private school the one competitive advantage that outweighs all the others is the photo copy budget. That and being pressured into doing the classes that received the most generous scaling I was rigged to sit on the sunny side of the bell-curve. I had a phone book full of past exams. It wasn’t about knowledge it was about criteria. The exams were all designed to measure certain things and all you had to do was demonstrate you could do them. There were only a few ways to ask if you knew how to calculate the acceleration of a body falling towards the earth. My maths teacher said if you do a million questions chances are your not going to see a question you haven’t been asked before. In reality you really only needed to do 5 questions or so for something as not brilliant as the VCE system. I don’t want to sound condescending, its why my lack of appreciation for my enter shames me. If I could sell the surplus 10 points that I didn’t need to get into my course on e-bay I would have because I know how devastating and restricting and difficult VCE can be for a lot of decent people.
So really I don’t hate Education itself as a concept. The education system parades itself as this fantasy that its function is to pass on knowledge. It isn’t it’s a supply demand market function. A profession that is in high demand (doctors, lawyers) doesn’t have sufficient resources to actually supply that demand and so you put in place a system who’s function isn’t to educate but in fact to discriminate adequately between the student population so that Universities can form a basis to accept some students into their courses and reject others. That is the primary reason VCE exists. Which I have two problems with: 1. It claims to be something it isn’t which has damaging ramifications on peoples self esteem and sense of self worth. 2. It isn’t done very well.
If you check a VTAC guide you’ll find very few courses that have more prerequisites than a study score of 25 in English. This means the same scale (Enter) to determine if you are a good Economist is the same as the scale used to determine if you will be a good Chiropractor. I applaud introductions like the UMAT test for the medical profession which at least acknowledges that there is more to being good doctor/dentist/nurse material than your ability to sit exams and takes into account people skills etc. But most courses don’t do this. I don’t need my 95.5 whatever the fuck its meant to tell people about me to do my course, I can’t really imagine you’d need more than a 20 to do my course I can’t see why everyone from my highschool wouldn’t be able to do marketing except for the fact that they wouldn’t fit in the lecture theatre and scheduling tutorials would be a nightmare.
As such I know in my course (and don’t know about others) that a lot of people can pass subjects and have no idea what they are doing to embarrassing levels. (ie. People can’t define some of the most central concepts such as brand equity, the value of a brand in the consumers mind as owned by the company) by their senior year.
As for self esteem I always found submitting essays, assignments and sitting tests undignified and insulting that fucking teachers would presume to tell me how good or bad I was. I had a very close relationship with my Studio Art teacher and never is the fallacy of criteria more exposed in art where 12 artists had to have their ‘art’ an undefinable concept in itself discriminated out and ranked. I tried to get out of school and books and classes what I could and considered that the learning function of attending school. Completeing assessment pieces was a humiliation a had to suffer because the school asked it of me and I wasn’t dumb enough to not see the advantages of getting myself a decent enter score. As such though because I availed no respect to the system I never felt like I was 68% intelligent because I got 68 out of 100 on a test. But some people do. For the record my best friend got 99.95 I don’t think he’s smarter than me. He certainly had a particular genius that was well suited to VCE as he picked up languages easily and was very good at maths. He became a med student which has very little use for specialist maths and slightly more for languages depending on which suburb you end up practicing in. I think I could chew up and spit out a lot of people who got higher scores than me and a high enter certainly doesn’t prevent you from being cleaned up in a car accident or making a dumb decision like trying out heroin. My other best friend got an enter I never found out but it wasn’t enough to get him into the course he was aiming for. He had to take the long way round. I know for a fact he can chew up and spit out just about everyone I know and is now heading up a rapidly growing radio station and is a n all around star, I don’t know a single person who has achieved more off his own bat at our age.
My Ex came round before Christmas last year because she was upset over her thesis results (79%) and her esteem had taken a blow because someone she knew had just got an amazing enter that was higher than the one she got 5 years previously. To her credit rationally she knew not to worry but her feelings were under attack. I tried to hold in my disgust. We dated for three years and I never knew she would pander so to someone else’s criteria. She is a smart girl with a lot to offer and I had assumed she was above the primitive obey the authority figure disposition. She had a higher enter score than mine that she was intensely proud of where I treated mine as a bit of currency that could buy my way into a course, a direct market transaction. I hope she isn’t reading this but I never thought my Ex was smarter than me. I believe she will do great things but in a leadership seminar I sat through I believe the guy who was doing it hit the nail on the head and my applling attitude to something as sacred as VCE came clear.
He asked ‘What do leaders all have in common?’ I think I said ‘moustaches’ or something like that but the answer was ‘They never fail.’ Which you immediately want to contradict but he is ultimately right leaders only have setbacks, they are persistent. They don’t give up. Failure is something imposed on an individual by the rest of society. It is the desire to accept a common criteria which is as false as a universal truth.
I learnt for me and thought the marks put on my essays was the opinion of a group of pencil dick fuck-heads sitting on a committee somewhere, and I got very good marks (again what is very good?) A getting 79% on a thesis (in particularly bad circumstances too) you should be proud of anyway otherwise your greed for recognition needs addressing B if your not happy with your work just identify whats wrong with it because isn’t learning about knowledge even if you cant get it marked again C if you submit to someone elses criteria you can fail, but if you are truly passionate about something you can never be told who is right or wrong.
So if you want good grades send me stuff now I’ll grade it for you I’ll try my best to tell you how dumb or smart you are. I could probably wrangle my way onto the VCE governing board you know, me who likes Dolly Parton and is sexually aroused by anything associated with ducks.
The girl with the low enter who IS becoming a nurse I have no doubt is and always will be a true leader because she persists, respects herself and takes pride in every mark she gets. The girl who got 79% on her thesis could go either way in my opinion, she has so much potential to change the world but feels shame for every mark she doesn’t get and possibly puts too much stock in institutionalised criteria which is a big fucking joke because she does development and would have been writing essays for 3 years about how inadequate the HDI, GNP and GPI are as criteria to measure a nations development and progress yet didn’t stand back and look at the archaic academic criteria as having the same problem when books like Emotional Intelligence and the complex plethora of new Education theories are being taken up by passionate, inspiring dedicated teachers in the face of the market function that is VCE, HSC and whatever they use in primitive Queensland.
If I had got a 39 enter my mother would have cried and wailed in grief and been inconsolable due to her pathalogical fear of us being poor like she was. For that I think my mother is a failure in that particular part of her life and she is a teacher and a damn good one too (she certainly doesn’t put the same criteria on her students) I forgot to change my preferences because I was too busy drinking and partying and too lazy to log onto a computer. It worked out very well for me, but it was a pretty stupid thing to do.
My dad said to me ‘Once again the McC’s have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory’ which I still think is a great saying and reminds me to be responsible.
I will tell my kids every day ‘Don’t let anyone ever tell you what you are worth.’

It is better to look good than feel good

Last weekend I was at my weekly cycling club, were I take RMIT international students around the city. We leave from Fed Square but last weekend I couldn’t park my bike anywhere so I can sensuously rub sunscreen into my face and arms as I normally do. Briefly I entertained the notion that I had had my best turnout ever. Then I realised if 60 people did turn up my best option would be to ride away as quickly as possible, not wanting to answer questions for the police as to why I had 60 inexperienced riders trying to fit in a bike lane when some driver takes them out. But after the allotted time nobody had shown up. So I headed out to Brighton Yacht Club from the city. Which was a dumb idea anyway to compound my dumb idea of not eating breakfast. I like riding along the beach. The actually have bike paths and runner/walker paths. Some smartarse has painted Mammoth stencils under the bike and rollerblade silhouettes too which cracks me up.
I turned around at the yacht club and headed back into town. I had ridden so much I was dizzy. I then proceeded to eat so much I felt sick. I had to sit and digest a while so I headed into Fed square to see what was on.
What was on was the sustainable living festival. My first impression was ‘What’s wrong with these people’ as I dropped my rubbish from lunch on the ground to be safely washed into the Yarra with the next heavy fall. People wearing all kinds of stuff that looks like its been crocheted from Camel pubes and sandpaper. But on closer inspection there where a lot of ‘normal’ people like me.
My lasting impression was that it was a tradeshow, which I have attended more than my fair share of. But this was a tradeshow that is promoting products that actually need promoting. There was something for everyone. I went to Engineers without Borders for Dad, ethical investments for me, environmentally sustainable estate planning for mum and grandma who need to be shipped off soon. No Sweat non sweatshop sneakers for my sister.
The only thing missing was plastic showbags to be handed out by every stall so I can put my brochures into and then chuck into the river at the end of the day. The lack of showbags was a real hassle. I had to come back the next day with a backpack to get all the info I needed.
And of course earthsharing which is causing me a headache because I can’t refute it. They were represented too. I’m in the running for a scholarship. I’m going to buy an Australian Fur Seal Fur coat environmentalists have no sense of style.

Holding the hand of a Moslem

Last night I went to an interfaith meeting. It was many things, inspiring and frustrating. Entertaining and boring. All the negative aspects can be attributed to one significant factor it was only the third meeting so presumably they will alleviate and only the inspirational aspects remain. Or a harsh beauracracy with cliques and uniforms and social fau pars, I hope I can join the Muslim clique.
I took my good friend Omar who always gets swamped by Islam adorers. I always get questioned about atheism but it’s generally all a little confrontational ‘So why don’t you?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Why?’ sort of questions which is my question exactly.
Omar hit the nail on the head though. What tends to happen in interfaith activities, is everyone seeks a common ground and that is humanity. It almost becomes a collective in spite of our various belief systems. It’s not a punch on session arguing the merits it’s finding the flexibility between all beliefs at which you can relate.
I’m one of those people that draws the lines till they intercept and it boiled down to humanity. As in not the devine. As in God’s certainly aren’t omnipresent because theres many areas of life that are distinct from religion or the spiritual world.
Which is a profound message of peace. Except humanity definitely has its downside. Like the f#$king peace nick Buddhists wanting us to all go out and meditate. While those shifty Bhai’s parading their tolerance around as some kind of everything to everyone policy like Virgin Enterprises is talking about Pakistan and the earthquake, Which makes someone bring up Africa, until the Moslem starts talking about keeping it local and trying to help out the indigenous communities, then those cynical fucking atheists (me) says just start a website with info and stuff as a small manageable first project where its easy for everyone to contribute. Then with all these great informative humanitarian ideas, the posturing Jewish girl starts pushing the Sub-committee catch cry.
Then this other dude who’s religion I can’t remember but it had a lot to do with Doubting Thomas the apostle, he was cool said ‘I’m not interested in going to churches let’s work together and hold an event that uses something that does bring people together, I love food, I love music, I love art these are good things.’
While I was thinking we could have a ‘Muslims and Jews eating ham for peace’ day which I’d get a kick out of, because I’m sick in the head, someone reiterated the exact same point the other guy had just raised. For forty minutes.
So after 20 ideas I thought were interesting had come and gone from my mind the incorporation issue got raised. And then that had to be brought back to philosophical debates, debates that should have been addressed at the start.
But can I say that unlike the usual occasions where I’ve had to put the ‘open minded’ money where my mouth is and gone to a Christian Evangelist information session were I walk out because the proposed belief system is so horrible and judgemental and the music is really crappy and I’m either wrong and going to hell , or write and have just spent 3 hours of my finite sentient existence being shouted at about hell and brimstone.
Which I know is bullshit. That’s not what Jesus was about, or mohammed, or buddha, or gary coleman. This meeting was frustrating but I left it energised and inspired. And not genocide inspired either. No it was great except when the inevitable questions of why I’m an atheist, how I can consider myself spiritual. But the different faiths were united, against me, but in a non-threatening way.
What a fucking world.

And Now the Aristocrats...

Saw just about the best documentary I’ve ever seen in my life last Friday. After the short lived joy of setting up a wireless network in my house being replaced with the longterm frustration of it deciding not to work, I’ve finally got back to writing my blog on the sly at work.
Aristocrats I highly recommend if you enjoy pure filth. It brings together comedians the best thing about democracy all telling the same joke over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It goes on for about 2 hours like this. The punchline is shitty. The premis is funny. You tell the same joke about an act that’s called the aristocrats and you just try and push it into the darkest realm of tasteless, perverted, incestuous, racist,, paedophilic, masochistic and vile as is humanly possible. The worst renditions of which is told by Women and Bob Sagat of Full House fame, the lamest family oriented comedian in the world.
I loved it. I was surprised at how many of the filthy concepts were completely unnew to me (the priveledges of a private education) and furthermore highlighted that nothing on earth is not worth laughing at.
If the worst state of being, the worst level of existence is fear (which I personally believe it is) a state of existence where nothing is so sacred it cannot be laughed at openly is really the change I would like to see in the world.
Maybe I’m completely insane but I was saying to my main man Omar as we walked along the shore of Albert Park Lake on Saturday night that, if he were to push me into the water in my two tone shoes and cocktail wear I’d be wet, I’d be pissed off, it would ruin my evening but I would still laugh, because I can see the funny side of it all.
You know there is a lot of negativity in the world and a lot of tragedy and you know what they all make great material. My idea of what is funny, as in the very funniest something can be is to say ‘the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time’ like on orientation at International House where students from all over the world unite under the brotherly philosophy of fraternitas and during the first briefing some guy made aperfectly intelligent and relevant comment that also happened to be from Malaysia and I lent over to the guy next to me and whispered ‘fucking asians’ SNAP! It set him off. Infact racial comedy later became a hallmark tactic of the international house debating teams.
If you can stand outside of yourself and not take yourself so seriously then you’ll notice a lot of shit is actually really funny. Being white, middle class and born in Australia and male I am one of the least persecuted and most advantaged people alive on earth. The best day of my life was when I was in Japan and went to my sister Madoka’s volunteer work with her. Madoka is awesome and deserves a blog entry of her own but every weekend she hung out and helped cook and spend time in what can only be called a day care centre for WW2 veterans.
I sat there watching these old people who could only really drool and sit upright (if assisted) try and sing old school songs that were long and droning. But because they were from a generation that believed that Japan was the devine people destined to rule all the world they would quite happily refer to me in the Japanese equivalent terms for ‘white-nigger’ because I was meant ot be working in the rice fields for their grandchildren not sitting in western clothing eating their food. Hilarious.
SO I can see someone objecting that if I was a slave of Japanese overlords working in the rice fields I probably wouldn’t find being called Japanese derogatory slave names funny. Maybe, but I should. Because that is funny, because slavery is wrong. What a world. What a fucking joke.

I'm well behind on shit I meant to disclose will keep them coming over the next couple of days.

Am I Evil?

On recommendation a while back I read Aldous Huxley's 'A Brave New World' the opposite of Marxist socialism it was capatalism pushed to its extreme where the concepts of Henry Ford prevailed. People were produced en masse and conditioned to perform specific duties in society. World controllers maintained the social order by censoring new ideas and exiling malcontents and divergent thinkers. The population avoids antisocial behaviour like the plague. Monogomous relationships have been abandoned and pnuematic girls go out with handsome men and are subdued by soma the literal opiate of the masses.
There's some guy who comes from a spiritual and trying native american reserve and he creates upset in the mechanical society etc.
At the end I put the book down and said 'so?' to me it doesn't seem that bad. Conditioning everyone to find meaning in there lives. I mean so long as I could be a world controller you know and explore new ideas. But if I'd been conditioned in my upbringing to enjoy cleaning phone booths hey I could dig that too.
Does that make me evil? I dunno. I'm pretty happy now but I wasn't particularly shaken or even frustrated by the ideas in Brave New World. We bread livestock for eating what makes us so special? I wouldn't eat a human being but surely we could bread singaporeans to be accountants or something. I mean accountants are always in demand.

My Valentines

Romantic love? is there any better kind of love? love of life probably. The jury's still out on Valentines. If your in a relationship why should you need one day of the year to celebrate the fact? If your single why do you need the fact rubbed in your face? You may be really insecure about it.
I had the pleasure yesterday of riding home with my bike on the train in the disabled and special needs area. My special need is the new spacious train seating arrangements leave no room for bikes, the addition of which makes commuting feasable for me and many others. So I was sitting there and unfortunately my company in the area was not disabled, just two teenage girls talking about getting bashed, abused and harassed like it was teenage gossip. I thought 'that's terrible' but tried to avoid eye contact. One of them had almost had their head kicked in for excepting a lift off a male friend. Romance is alive and well in wherever it is they come from. One of them had her tracksuit pant leg rolled up to reveal a pink lipstick message 'I [love] rooting' just when I was feeling sympathy for them they got up and and left the train leaving a pile of garbage that had been chicken chips and gravy on the floor in an unneat pile. What a fucking spiralling success story these extreme teen gossips were riding. I almost chucked the garbage at their backs but I wasn't sure I could take them if things turned ugly. For a pussy I have a lot of random violent thoughts.
Someone else I lost sympathy for was on another blog, a girl was whining about how they were all alone on Valentine's but they'd bought a sexy dress. Then began soliciting presents and flowers from the presumably desperate guys that read her blog.
So what did I do? I frocked up with my housemate gang members [the handsome gentlemen] one of the least intimidating gangs in all of melbourne. We went and met up with all our single friends in front of the reject shop. We walked up to RMIT to make use of the free bbq's passing a hot potatoes were out of the generosity of my heart we bought everyone $2 'roses' bearing the mysterious caption 'is it a rose? is it a perfume' in truth I'm not sure they where either.
At the bbq we spent the next hour waiting for the meat to cook (presumably by the power of the sun) then the next hour eating various 'food' out of bread, hands and paper towell. The juices from the sausages ruining many a good shirt.
We headed to trampoline for possibly the most romantic gesture of the night in buying icecreams. There were too many people in line so we went to Nam Loong for some Egg Custard Bao.
That was more or less the night. What better way to celebrate romantic love when you don't have it than partaking in a performance art event such as this? Everyone can celebrate Valentines. I don't know I like it I guess, I can see how some people hate it or think it's a massive wank. Point is empower yourself.

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Dragon pants

I want Jimmy Page's pants. Nothing sexual. I just want black flared pants with flaming red chinese dragons embroidered down the legs. If anyone knows where I can get a decent imitation I'd like to know. email me ohminous_t@hotmail.com

Swingamajig

I love Melbourne I really do. I love old people actually enjoying themselves too. Nothing better to see. Work in a call centre you learn to hate old people. You get the overwhelming impression that old people have nothing better to do than bitch and complain. They must secretly love cold callers for reinforcing their misery. Why I became so hardened against old people I don’t think I’d shed a tear if a heat wave wiped them out.
But the Melbourne swing festival is something else. Old dudes jumping, and twirling around in shined up two-tone shoes. Having a good time. I can Charleston pretty good now too. People just don’t choreograph dancing enough. I’ve started eating a porcupine now. I no longer feel comfortable just hitting a dance floor blind. Sure I can try shimmying or I can shake my hands and step back and forth like a lazy version of the hockey pokey. But not now, now I can swing dance. But I only have 40 seconds worth of routine. The pressure is on.
For every kid in the park there are at least 20 more sitting at home on there arses watching the biggest loser while eating pizza. For every old person there dancing it up with a grey haired honey there’s 20 more calling their daughter and moaning about the price of margarine. There’s so much on in Melbourne. There’s festivals and performances going on just about every day. How do you get more losers to utilise it? I don’t know, all I know is that when I turn 80 I’ll be pasting on the Vaseline hair tonic, shining my two tone shoes. Strapping on suspenders and hitting the park looking for hot widows.
An amusing anecdote, my brother works in my old call centre currently and he had some old guy who thought he was funny put him on hold for ten minutes then ask ‘Do you have a lead bar or a long weight?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you sure you didn’t just have one?’ I don’t really get it myself but the guy next to my brother said that for a while there was an epidemic of old people blowing whistles down the phone as call centre headphones had no noise inhibitors, which is a bastardly thing to do, hurt someone’s ears just because they are trying to earn $16 an hour so they qualify for youth allowance. Anyway this guy took down the old bastards number and started calling him at 3 am in the morning and threatening to kill him. Apparantly the old guy was terrified and couldn’t put two and two together. Yet another incentive to not adopt the victim mentality, you’ll end up being a victim by some bastard who’s much more of a smart arse than you are. And handle annoying people politely or they tend to become more so.

Chroming

Chroming is pretty confronting I have to admit. What could possibly have happened to you poor, poor children to hurt yourselves this way? To take to your pain with such a noxious sledgehammer. I all too often see people who chrome slump into a seat on a train and sniff the paint fumes out of a plastic bag. Still hiding despite the overpowering smell that fills the carriage and the paint all over their face. One of the cheapest ways to get high I think a can of spray paint can cost as little as $2 but it seems so potent a mind killer I can’t see how you could chrome and hold down any kind of income, even filling in paperwork for welfare.
It upsets me that anything could be so fearful to warrant this form of escapism. I’m not really in any position to judge, having no experience of any sort of unnatural high apart from drunkenness. Still I wonder.

We'd Make Great Pets

Please allow me to expose myself for the hypocrite I am. I have a weakness (not hypocrisy) for subservience. Often in life I’ve felt a temptation to subscribe to some doctrine or another, to disciple myself to some impressive person. I have gone seeking information to actively seek out some theory or person I can use to alleviate all responsibility for my own actions. You don’t get into warrior code and loyalty as values unless there’s a very small person inside of you that wants to be a lapdog. The only thing that’s stopped me is the fact that I just don’t often get impressed. Many have hit me with the good old ‘my standards are too high’ I don’t really think they are. Mostly just too different.
If everyone was asked what they would do to fix the world given supreme powers you’d probably get many and varied results. I for one would try and create a stress free and fun living environment for everyone. I guess that’s why self determination is so important to most people.
There’s a Porno for Pyro’s song that goes: ‘Will there be another race to, come along and takeover for us, maybe Martians can do, better than we’ve done! We’ll make great pets, we will make great pets, we’ll make great pets…’ I love the sentiment. Its fatalistic yes throwing in the towel on humans managing their own affairs but what if? What if someone could do a better job?
So often ambition is encouraged, driven is such an admirable quality but there’s no inherent recognition of the greater good. I’m not talking about speculating ‘what if there’s someone better out there’ I’m saying if there is someone better out there.
How trusting dogs are! We answer the difficult economic questions, work individually unrewarding hours, accumulate debts and feel guilty for the third world. They sit in a yard chewing on pine cones, eating, sleeping and playing all day. It’s a dogs life for sure but its fine provided you don’t want empowerment and intellectual challenge. I am often ‘off with the fairies’ (I used this phrase at my new school in year 8 in a PE class, beatings ensued) so I’m hard pressed to get truly bored or unstimulated.
I’d make a great pet, I’m loveable and shaggy. I enjoy being scratched and patted. I like running around in parks. Eating with my bare hands. If faced with some good competition what would we do? I for one would lie down and have my belly tickled.
It as always is a question of benevolence for those questioning why I’d lay down for a martian but not an omnipresent divine being. If you don’t treat me right girls I’d bight the hand that feeds me gladly. I just think I’d make a great pet, like a Labrador or something.
Blind ambition on the other hand needs to be looked at. There are times in life when its more constructive to sit back and not strive for personal glory. I was having a laugh with a friend over the phenomena of when a large group with no hierarchy has to solve a problem often people will reiterate the exact same point the last person made just to make sure everyone knows they were thinking it as well. I should laugh at myself for a do the same thing. Its amazing though how often the need is felt by more than one person and the same solution can be arrived at by two different minds.
I’ll never get to be a pet to a kind master (I dream of Genie style, marrying your magical slave you dirty NASA bastard) just because what I ultimately want is different to the next person, my interpretation of a ‘kind master’ would be different from everyone elses. Like the ridiculous pursuit of a soul mate or a universal truth. At the end of the day it ‘s a weak disposition to want to be a pet. People are imperfect and are going to make mistakes but its endearing not damning. We’ve also come further than all other lifeforms known in terms of manipulating the natural world around us. Whether this is an achievement or not can be disputed but you never see wild animals feeling sorry for themselves, just hungry.
I’m trying to be a good labradorian but 21 years of being a cynical contrarian in every social interaction have put bad habits into me, active committed support seems almost out of my grasp. I personally could probably benefit from living as a happy tail wagging Labrador for a while and wouldn’t mind having that lifestyle enabled. I don’t think I’m a hypocrite. Every time I’m in a relationship my friends all say I’m whipped. I disagree.

A Month of Sundays

For the first time in a long time I did nothing on a Sunday. Buckets of nothing. I didn’t even speak to anyone all day. I had the apartment to myself. I watched the Led Zeppelin DVD and decided that I have to buy a drum kit. So I rocked out in my underwear but couldn’t really let loose because I forget other people don’t get up by 7am on a Sunday. I won’t play music in my room but I forget that playing music on the TV is the same thing.
Decided to spoil myself with McDonalds for breakfast, it’s about a ten minute walk. Did so was disappointed I think my McMuffins had been sitting in the thing for the longest time. I meandered back home and crashed on the couch. I’m reading Absurdistan at the moment by Eric Campbell an ABC foreign correspondent, very good narrative. Privatising from a ratshit centrally planned economy just doesn’t work, and as for the Taliban the whole Afghanistan war (although generally a war consists of two sides fighting, carpet bombing should have it’s own name) was sketchy at best but the Taliban was into some ridiculous and fanatical rules there and probably everyone’s better off having them gone.
But the book cant keep me entertained that long.
I was meant to go to the Quakers meeting and I wish I had to learn something new. I like the sound of the Quakers they seem to respect the individuals personal spirituality which most organised religions I find tend to overlook. But I didn’t because I fell asleep again. Then I dithered around for about 20 minutes looking for a suitable container to put all my 5c pieces in. I wandered down to Barkly Square to get some lunch and realised it was way too early for lunch.
So I walked round Princes Park. The duckling wasn’t into my spinach and fetta damper roll and to be honest I wouldn’t buy one again. I walked past people practicing kung fu in the park and wondered how close I’d let them get to me before running. On closer inspection I determined that skill in kung fu also cannot make you cool.
I walked past ‘Optus Oval’ my Mecca that’s nice I wonder if Carlton will play respectable football this year I haven’t even checked up on the draft picks we got. I bought a bowtie and some lunch. Offloaded all my coins. Went home was still too full from breakfast so I just forced the food down my throat as I didn’t have anything to do. I tried playing a computer game my brother recommended that is turning out to be the most thoroughly tedious and boring game in the universe, one of those dialogue games.
So I ping ponged it between the game and the book, lying around in my underwear. Not even exciting underwear. If my whole life were Sundays like this one I’d last two days. I had more showers than could possibly be justified. Picked out my monobrow. Where to from there? My life felt so empty and stagnant even though I enjoy my own company normally.
As an introverted person I find social interaction exhausting, but I didn’t recharge at all on Sunday. In fact I didn’t get any relief from my impending ennui until Smallville came on (which I shouldn’t be admitting to as it combines the embarrassment of teen drama with the nerdiness of being a comic book fan making me doubly uncool) but I saw the most awesome thing. Superman started dating this girl who was hot and could teleport. It was the most exciting application of teleportation ever. Forget interstellar travel this girl was feeling randy and teleported into his room for some action. Words can not describe how excited I was by this practical application of teleportation technology.
I was so excited that life felt good again. I mean it would mean more pregnant teenagers out there but that’s cool I can did that. If I could teleport I’d just work as the worlds best paid courier in the world.
I suspect this posting has been as boring as my Sunday was. I should have gone and done something like roller disco I don’t know. Why cant I meet a teleporting chick in an elevator disaster?

I can't spend it either

For as long as I can remember I’ve had a pathalogical hatred for five cent pieces. I used to have a theory that if you made the 5c coin into a note people would hang onto it like it was valuable. Not only would this have become a health hazard as people slipped on discarded 5c notes traipsing down stairs but it would have probably consumed so much plastic as to send petrol prices skyrocketing. Even if the fuckers were heavy you’d feel like there was something to them like they weren’t the absolute detritus that they are (I’m writing like Helen Raiser today) but again anything sufficiently heavy is probably worth more than 5c. I’d be happy, in fact fucking over the moon if those Allens frogs just became legal tender worth 5c. How sweet it would be to Hand over a 20 for something that cost you $19.95 and get handed a red frog to jam in your craw.
So anyway me and a friend were cruising down Southbank to get some chilli-choc chip ice-cream when we were fooling around and I was wearing like a Hawaiian shirt and one of my dad’s old blazers complete with conference nametag still attached and my Summer of Love Shorts* so not only should I not judge the odd looking kids that hang around Flinders St these days (and even odder jocular looking kids that have decided to look odd intentionally) but I should be thankful I was getting any action at all.
Anyway by far my favourite street performer of all time was performing, the Amazing Mr Fish and his 10ft suicycle. He was fucking great if anyone could have replaced Dylan Lewis when they butchered Recovery and sent Dylan sailing out on the 10.30 slot it was the Amazing Mr. Fish. Not only was the stunt of dressing up in a straight Jacket and climbing onto a ten foot unicycle before attempting to escape actually an impressive busking act he cracked unPC jokes at all the foreign tourists watching his show. A kid walked through his act once chucking a tantrum and he said ‘I love kids…couldn’t eat a whole one though. I have one in my freezer, those bastards are too hard to peel.’ And such calibre comments delivered with sincerity and condescension.
Anyway at the end of the show he’d say ‘Folks if you enjoyed the show please step up and put a twenty in my hat, if you don’t have a twenty that’s okay a ten or a five will do. If you don’t have that I’ll also accept gold coins. If all you have is silver keep it. I can’t spend it either. This show is my gift to you.’
So anyway I’m on the train to work listening to Steve my good mate who has sworn to protect me and I take that very seriously, telling me lewd jokes and asking me if I’ve got any change. I don’t hesitate I dig into my pockets trying to separate coins from my key ring because I love Steve and all but you don’t want to hand someone the keys to your apartment and inadvertently ruin the friendship. All I’ve got is 40c. Steve laughs at me but takes it anyway and counts up his clams to see if he’s made the holy $3 mark that I think buys a Kebab. Then he hands me 2 x 5c pieces as change. I sit them on my desk and stare at them all day in the same way I stare at my kinetic art Christmas gift wondering how I can destroy it. At least a 1¥ piece (1¥ = AU0.73c) were made out of plastic and you could chew them up if you had too many like they were sunflower seeds (remarkably close to the Allen’s dream really you just had to hope some Japanese Hentai Sarariman hadn’t shoved it up his rectum at some point).
So anyway at KFC** and Red Rooster*** they have my favourite charity boxes there for Muscular Dystrophy a charity I feel strongly for for again entirely irrational reasons (they have posters of a kid dressed up as Batman and the caption ‘His enemy is his own body’ and there’s a kid on the other platforms in the morning that gets to wear a batman costume to school and I wish I could do the same for work so all my change goes to this charity, I’ve never met someone directly or indirectly affected by muscular dystrophy that I know of) and it’s sweet. I no longer accumulate 5c and it’s odious older brother the 10c piece towards this charity that I imagine can do what I have never done and collect them all together and walk into a bank (the thought baffles me) and exchange them for something you can actually spend.
SO how do I get all the 5c pieces sitting in a bowl at home into that box? How do I do it. I wasn’t thinking about it when Steve handed me two more of the fuckers (do the 7-Eleven guys feel infuriated when someone says ‘forget about the change’ is getting rid of those things why stores mark things so you either have 19 x 5c pieces or your getting fucking change prices) because I was trying to think of a joke that Steve would find funny eventually settling on ‘What’s brown and sticky?... a stick’ which he didn’t find funny after guessing the much funnier ‘piece of shit’ two of which I had in my hands.
My dearest friend in the whole world or at least most consistent Bryce got me a Sporran to go with my kilt when I was in Ballarat. So one day I put some coins in it and endeavoured to go to the shops. The stereotypes about the Scots are true I discovered because when I opened up my sporran to pay for the ice-cream at the supermarket I discovered it had just swallowed my coins I had to bash it with my fist upside down to get a coin out of it. Now there is a one way purse you tight Scottish bastards. Anyway this was less embarrassing a retail experience for me as I felt today in Red Rooster pulling out a toiletries bag (it took me half an hour to come up with this idea for a container) and painstakingly feeding 5 and 10c pieces through the inadequate slot and having the shift manager watch me do it. I probably put $20 towards the cause right then and there (2kg worth at least probably = 75c) it was my most generous donation. Yet I was embarrassed doing it, at least some Safeway employee could go home from their mind numbing job and tell their family about the kid in the kilt and sporran who was bashing his coin purse and swearing at those miserly Scottish bastards while his ice-cream melted and give him the momentary delusion that his job exposes him to interesting people. This was just being gawked at and I felt completely fucking conspicuous which should feel good when your being charitable, and I was it was the best possible way I could dispose of that crap.
So anyway I got rid of the fuckers and felt an enormous weight off my back, what a great insight into Tom’s Id.

*Another one of my obstinate policies I had a pair of black shorts that where exactly knee length and I’d decided were perfect, furthermore because of the starch factor had decided you didn’t wash shorts either. This was combined with my Summer of Love diet of Salsa and cheese melted in a roll that dripped onto my shorts every time I ate them. I was a fucking genius though I colored in the food stains with a black texta for 2 solid months.

**I love KFC, they have lousy service, unhealthy foods, constantly understaffed, unclean facilities, a Klansman as a mascot and use plastic packaging for everything making it a completely shithouse experience to eat there. One I ironically appreciate to the extreme, although their Extreme burger Combo should bare the disclaimer ‘Not to be consumed by one person’ or else legislate that they call it ‘the fat bastard’ combo)
***I remember when red rooster came to Ballarat and I went into this shitty new fast food store to see what it was like and had to take a number like the Safeway Deli and I thought ‘Well this IS different’

I am a man of faith

From my experience atheists are categorized as empty embittered vessals of cold unfeeling reason by most spiritual people who tend to throw phrases like ‘your not looking with your heart’ and ‘I pray for your soul’ which I find more upsetting than they could possibly find me having no ‘faith.’ But I am a man of faith, I have complete faith in humanity rather than divinity, that’s all. I don’t believe human behaviour is random, people behave the way they do and I believe they do so with very little devine intervention. Nietzsche decribed atheism as an evolution of Christianity moving from the will to power to the will to truth (as an extension of the will to power). Comments like ‘The Devil was at work in Hitler’s heart ‘are dangerous by virtue of the fact that theres a lot of precedent that a lot of rulers both godly and not have commited genocide and invaded etc.
Furthermore I have faith that peoples brains tick away trying to make sense of their surroundings, natural selection means loser strategies tend to get abandoned or the natural consequences mean people learn behaviours. I have faith because I can’t learn lessons for other people. I was at an industry show talking to a guy at the stall I worked at who was telling me how he almost lost the use of his legs when he came off a motorcycle at 120km/h and said ‘Nobody could have told me’ and I remarked that he’d probably been told several times and he remarked ‘oh well live and learn’ and its hard you know to not make the same mistakes that have been made before because you feel so in control.
But I have faith that some people are just going to luck out and others learn from their mistakes. A conscious mind can do anything. What happens in 1000 years time when technological advances mean that creating a universe just isn’t that impressive. I mean it already isn’t a singularity exploding and then energy condensing into various configurations of mass. Atheism doesn’t have any answers even though it represents as major motivation a will to truth. What makes it hard and a matter of faith is that all those big unknowns the ‘why are we here?’ and ‘what happens next?’ don’t have any answers that you don’t have to define for yourself. It’s comforting to put in a divine system of any kind to fill those blanks, one that can never be refuted through reason as it pins everything on some omnipotent entity understanding why everything is the way it is and having faith that it’s all for the best. In that sense I totally agree if it means that the Universe is in the control of an omnipresent entity and there’s nothing you can do about it, therefore not worth worrying about it, that’s fine by me. I mean if a god of any kind dropped out of the sky tomorrow and said ‘Tom I’m your god’ I’d have the same reaction as if my father did that ‘Where the f$%k have you been all my life?’ I’ve learnt to be independent I don’t need god or faith and furthermore my spirituality is such a personal thing I’d never cede authority to someone who I’ve been told is better at interpreting the religion than I am (or you for that matter).
So that’s what I believe in the mundane world that I can detect with my four senses, its difficult and complex and spiritually rewarding. It compels me to get the most out of every day when your life is a brief respite between two infinite voids. I believe that an ordinary human being possesses infinite potential , that we are capable of anything. JFK hit the nail on the head really when he said (something that was probably written by someone else) ‘Everything that man has ever achieved was at one point in time thought impossible’ which equates to ‘if you can dream it you can do it’
I have nothing against religion, I’m personally just not motivated by promises of the divine, getting up and sitting through sermons, engaging in routine ritual. More to the point I probably couldn’t even be sold a religion.
I’ve met people of various different faiths in my time, I’ve met Catholics that are cool and have their shit together and I’ve met Catholics that are nutcases who lead miserable lives. I’ve met muslims who are cool and keep their shit together and I’ve met muslims who freak me out and are depressing. I’ve met buddhusts that are cool calm and collected and I’ve met Buddhists that are insane and dogmatic. Hindus generally seem to be nice. The universal truths though don’t seem to be so universal and I’ve concluded that whatever it is that works it’s probably not the religion but the attitude of the practitioner that makes the difference. This is no reason to discard religion on a whole it just says to me that there’s no correlation between any one religion and quality of peoples lives. I get just as much inspiration watching the Transformers Movie as I have out of Chapel services. Have a set of values stick to them and get out of anything what you can (especially money just for the fun of it).

People who eat wales

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If you could tell as many people as you can about our website, that would be a great help.
Thanks for your support and remember to sign the petition.

Make a friend, make them cry

Something I care deeply about. RMIT spends millions of dollars in marketing to attract international students to come and study in Australia. The incentive is obvious: They pay up front, at higher prices and most importantly they fail and fail often. I never realised this, I always thought those nerdy Asian kids were the ones who became dux, the ones pressured by their parents to be brighter than bright and whiter than white (piano, violin, tennis you know shit my parents didn’t even bother with in my expensive education) my assumption was far wrong.
In second year I treated uni with almost as much contempt as I had VCE. First year had been a holiday I hadn’t even touched my textbooks and seemed to be a key contributor in my course. I had recently been dumped so I fled to Japan with my tail between my legs desperately seeking someplace where I was free from reminders of the decline even though I’d met a great girl in the interim. Life was in fact on the up and up. I was an o-weeker for my college which was affiliated to Melbourne Uni which being more prestigious means you have to spend less time attending it than RMIT so my first week of second year classes was a writeoff because I was to spend it drunk leading around a pack of impressionable freshers trying to convince them I was cooler than they were.
I also didn’t bother enrolling in any classes. So when I slept through the following Monday and Tuesday and finally got up on the Wednesday to schedule all my classes for the last two days of the week I was shocked to discover I couldn’t. So I missed my second week. My third week was spent turning up to classes that had been filled by disregarding the online booking. So in week four I was put into a class with the other students who were too disorganised to form a group. They were fucking insane.
Nevertheless as marketing is pretty much all group assignments I failed two subjects and lost a lot of sleep.
I vowed that from now on I would A) attend all classes (or at the very least the first and last ones) B) Accept late comers into my group to spare them from eachother 3) Never trust anyone to compile the final assignment again.
The plan worked brilliantly. I ended up in a group with 5 mainland chinese students who could barely speak English, had no grasp of basic marketing concepts, didn’t have the confidence to do a class presentation and scared off the only other local student in my group. For the first time ever we got a HD for a group assignment. I barely lifted a finger too. It was time consuming but these guys were reliable, we had synergy and the shoddiness of my group appealed to my ‘I’ll fucking show them’ response which is my greatest motivator.
Local students are excitable, arrogant and have a distorted perspective of their own ability in marketing. Too many cooks. They are also disorganised procrastinators or worse sycophants with bleached teeth. As such group assignments translates into one person doing 5-6 assignments while the others ride free.
I’ve worked with my Chinese group ever since. The amount Andy, Jerry and Xi developed as people and professionals was remarkable. Easily the most rewarding thing I’ve done at Uni and we remain friends even now that they’ve graduated. Jerry and I have plans to tap into the lucrative BEM that is China, as a hobby. Andy and Jerry have cooked for me when I’ve felt down and says classic stuff like ‘Australian pork stinks because you are too kind to your animals. Need to cut throat and bleed, all the blood goes no more stink’ and ‘look after your penis’ just classic stuff. Through the relationship they’ve learned that China had a Tianamin square massacre they never knew about and that Tibet is considered an occupied country rather than a part of China.
I was so heartbroken when they graduated I decided I needed to do something about it and eventually got in touch with Marc Barry (an amazing man in his own right) who runs activities for RMIT English Worldwide or REW through which I now run a cycling club for international students on weekends and have met some interesting people. I’m also looking at starting up a basketball club since the guy running it could no longer spare the time and its much easier and more accessable than the cycling club.
Anyone who wants to broaden themselves and really make a world of difference to an international student or two and at the same time get fit, make friends and broaden your understanding of the world I strongly urge you to get in touch with Marc at REW marc.barry@rmit.edu.au all you need is an interest and to include an international student in it. Marc introduces me to everyone and 1 or 10 people don’t really matter. Melbourne CBD can be an alienating place if your whole life is shopping at QV, living at QV and sitting through lectures of gobbledegook. It’s something I’m pretty involved in and it’s easy, its like hugging myself.