GenesisDreams

One sleep to go!

Friends - Travel - University I had to get up before sunrise yesterday in order to get into Uni on time for my last exam. It was cold and it was wet and I was miserable. The test was easy though and it brought to a close my seventh University semester, so I'm happy. I spent the rest of the day walking around the city buying Australian "stuff", mostly for our friend Sugoi, so he can give it all away as presents. Today I started packing. I was going to start earlier, but well it didn't happen. Thankfully I am not missing anything too important. The flights confirmed, Sugoi rang us last night, everything is taken care off. Just a few last minute things to worry about now. I was going to write a whole lot more here, but my list of last few things to do today is actually quite long. Next time I write I'll probably be in Japan!

Wasted Day

Personal I accomplished nothing today. Capping off an extremely busy week was a totally unproductive Saturday. I was planning on doing some study for my test next week, but that never eventuated. "There are still too many days to go." I keep telling myself, and thus keep putting it off. I was also planning on working on some stuff for the trip, considering that this time next week I'll be in Japan. There is still a lot to be worked out, and I'm quickly running out of time to organise things (or at least go and buy them when I realise I will probably need them). No I didn't do anything except lie in bed for most of the day and read a book I've already read twice before. A relaxing way to spend a day I guess, but can't afford to relax at the moment. At least I've finished the book, so I can't waste all of tomorrow reading as well.

Lantastic

Friends - Travel - University - Work I contemplated blogging from work today. I had come up from the rec room after being soundly beaten at pool (boo) and I didn't really feel like getting stuck right back into documentation, so I pondered whether the IT guys would consider blogging as "work related internet usage". For some reason I doubted it. I just surfed pages on backpacking instead. I've got to work again tomorrow, and the next day and the day after that, but if it means I can eat tasty things in Japan then I'll gladly put up with it! My test went well yesterday. No surprise questions, nothing I absolutely couldn't answer, all is good in the world of relational database systems. Only one more really small (30%) exam left (for Business Research Methods) and I'll be free! Free for this semester at least, free to forget about my thesis for a while and go party in Japan. I haven't been to any of the lectures for this test since week 3 (it is a business subject after all) but if I do some study on the weekend I should be right. My 40% assignment mark should have been released today, but it's not up on the website yet. Not that I really expected anything better from the Uni. Meanwhile half my friends are at a LAN, and have been for the past three days. It's so very annoying becuase they are sitting on IRC and I'm sitting on IRC, and I'm trying to study, and they are playing games, or doing other "fun" things as the case may be. As I type it seems that Bull is about to head over to the LAN as well. Oh and Chris ate a yogo in 30 seconds, I think Wulfen's comment "the fatty" sums it up best. I probably shouldn't blog and read IRC at the same time, everything gets crossed over. We still haven't got anyplace booked to stay in Japan (other than Obama, where we are all staying with our friend Sugoi, and paying by means of walking the landlady's dog). Hopefully we get that all worked out soon, otherwise it's a capsule hotel for us! The closer we get, the more disorganised we seem.

Art of Noise

Music The Seduction of Claude Debussy. It's an album I've been listening to it for the entire afternoon, trying to block out thoughts that don't revolve around extendible hashing and query optimisation. I've been addicted to Debussy for about a year now, ever since I saw 'All About Lily Chou-Chou" at the Brisbane International Film Festival, and I have yet to grow tired of his work. Much of the music in Lily is inspired by Debussy pieces, with several being used directly. I probably got my first taste of "furniture music" with the Endorphin track "Satie 3" which is directly inspired by Erik Satie's 'Trois Gymnopédies'. It was that track that really got me into Endorphin, and I was lucky enough to see him live for the second time at the beginning of the year. His live shows are fantastic, extremely visual, which adds to the whole experience. Ok so I got a little off track there. My mind tends to wander easily when I'm avoiding study. Debussy's piano pieces my favourites and are also the best to study to, in particular I like 'Claire De Lune', 'Arabesque' and 'The Girl with the Flaxen Hair' (which all happened to feature in Lily, coincidence?). They all give me something, which I can't quite explain, but that never fails to move me (and strangely help me concentrate). I don't know what it is about turn of the century French composers, but as far as study music goes, they are the best. The Art of Noise album is interesting, it's got some great ideas, some great tracks, and of course it is influenced by Debussy's work, so the underlying musical themes are close to perfection. Some of the tracks jar a little (they are very eclectic) and so it's probably not the best album to study to, but hey I've just written this entry, so all I'm doing is procrastinating anyway. It's probably time to get back to work now though. I can't wait till tomorrow afternoon; one test down, one more to go.

Toot! Toot!

Travel In about two hours, two weeks from now, we will be stepping off the airplane at Kansai airport Osaka. The anticipation is steadily building, I really wish I didn't have Uni tests over the next two weeks; it would make the wait so much more pleasant. We went and organised our Japan Rail passes today. Twenty-one days of unlimited travel on any JR train, including the Shinkansen (bullet trains). I'm getting progressively closer to poverty and I haven't even left yet! But that's cool, I'm sure it will be worth it. Plus after my test on Monday I'm going to try and fit in seven days of work before we leave. I've missed a lot of work over the past couple of weeks, and I've still got all this documentation I need to do on the project I'm working on. Thankfully my supervisor said it's cool to work extra days even though my contract states that I'm only supposed to do two days a week. Documentation's boring, but the money is great, so I'm not complaining. Anyway we now have a rough plan sketched out for the trip, and over the next couple of days we should hopefully get some more details down. Hopefully the others can take care of most of that, because there is still so much study I need to do for Monday's test. Benkyo! Benkyo! Benkyo!

And then there were five.

Friends - Travel Well Wulfen is now officially coming to Japan! The travel agent thought he was a terrorist, and wouldn't give him the details of our trip, but after a couple of quick phone calls all the privacy issues were cleared and he managed to get on the same flights as us. He even managed to get his package for $130 less than we did! Ah well I'm just glad he is coming. We are going to all get together tomorrow to actually organise some things for the trip because at the moment we haven't got much planned besides "Arrive in Japan" .... "Leave Japan". In the meantime though I need to get some serious study done. Benkyo! Benkyo! Benkyo!

Tech stuff

Metaposts - Music I'm procrastinating becuase I don't want to study, so instead I'm messing around with the blog some more. I've added comment functions now using BackBlog, so you can all give me feedback on what I write. I've also fixed up a few formatting things and played around with the "look" of the blog. It's very simplistic, partly becuase I'm not a visually creative person, but mostly becuase I believe this is a place for me to write, and for others to read my writing. It doesn't need to be flashy or have lots of bells and whistles. Meanwhile I'm listening to Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief", which I am really enjoying.

Tomorrow's just an excuse away...

Metaposts This blog itself is probably temporary, I've only spent a little time getting it up and running. Hopefully in the months to come I'll be running the beta of of system my friend nash is writing, which will give me a lot more features to play with. In the meantime, sleep calls.

Motivations

General - Metaposts - Travel In 15 days I leave for Japan to spend four weeks backpacking around with my friends, squandering all my money on sake, and generally trying to forget that I am half way through writing an engineering honours thesis that I don't know will ever be finished. In six months I am heading to England, to the University of Nottingham, to finish my fifth and final year of tertiary study as an exchange student. Eventually this blog will become one of the most important links I will have to all the family and friends I will leave over here. At the moment though I'm simply aiming on getting used to posting entries often, I've never kept a journal before, so my first few posts will likely be quite erratic. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it, so when I do go away you guys can keep up to date with what's going on, any maybe not miss me quite so much (that's you especially mum).