Catch-up yo!
Before I do or say anything, a big Chuck Norris-esque roundhouse kick in the face to bekindi, for having the sheer nerve to turn twenty on us. Damn you sly, younger-than-me strumpet you xD
Happy Birthday!!!
----------------------
Now....
I wasn't surprised that it took me a full day (I'm speaking 24hrs wise here) to fully read journals and revisit the communities that I belong to as I soon found myself resuming my 'surfing' stance at the computer and somehow (like I always manage to do) get utterly lost within tangents in and out of fandoms and other various forms of 'important' internet miscellany.
A pair of tired eyes, sore stomach from late laughter (yes ‘Hard Gay’ and capstara I’m looking at j00 xD) and a flood of spammy lj emails in various inboxes across the globe later and I’ve pretty much caught up with everyone and their dog more or less. I still need to track back on my precious Avatar and KHR! fandoms, but for the most part nothing major has happened with ‘my boys’, and I still have what, 14 days until the finale chapters air for Avatar (so friggin’ excited!!) and I know what’s happening with KHR! so it’s ok folks! We’ve got that covered…
As for the real life things that caused my break, college ended with yet another bang(s) as well as many sleepless nights of me abusing poor, poor Ashley (my computer at college) to the ends of the Earth trying to finish everything that needed to be finished. It was quite awful really, as my last night/day there consisted of me finishing at 5am, sleeping in my car for the most extreme nanna nap in the world, waking up two hours later from the most extreme nanna nap in the world before any students/teachers/wild animals could see me sleep in such a bizarre position in my car (poor Eric xD), having a shower behind the college’s theatres and finishing in a flourish of having breakfast of who-knows-what before Khim showed up to mark our websites x_X
For those playing at home, my website wasn’t really any different from a pdf slideshow really. Dreamweaver and its partner in crime, Fireworks decided to be just plain difficult, leaving me with a semi-nice looking but not quite working website D8 The only page that I did get, and was sort of proud of was the one that Trev didn’t like anyway… I saw where he was coming from, but I was just so happy with it. I mean it was one of only two working pages within my whole site xD Not to worry.
After that, we handed in our logo style guides (I NEVER want to do that again. EVER. +ten billion infinities. Just thought you’d all like to know) and that was that. Everything was done and once again, the day was ours! So in usual graphic designer style, we struggled for another 2 hours to come up with a definite thing to do afterwards and ended up going to a nearby pub for food, deer hunting and pool. I still maintain my complete losership over the game of pool, and that particular Thursday afternoon was no different xD
I was going to go to drawing that night, but once I got home I pretty much went to sleep and did the whole ‘wake up at 7pm and think it’s the next day thing…’ for a little. Typical -__-
I ventured back to college the next day and finished off my semi-portfolio for the folks at Cowan Design to present the following week.
Hooley bloody dooley, was that something.
In hindsight, the whole experience of me working there was just fantastic, if not exhausting x_X Mind you I walked into the place (this being the first time I had ever stepped into a *real life* design studio) absolutely terrified and completely in awe of how cool the place looked. It was on a single floor with a loft upstairs for the accounting team (Their upstairs was just one big fat bucket of awesome, they even had a really cool spiral staircase to boot!). All the computers were G5 macs drools and all of them had Aeron-like chairs (my bad, I thought they were Aeron but they were slightly different… Phooey).
I had a chat with the art director and was really freaking out because I got the impression that he wasn’t really impressed at all with me. But I calmed down a little when he reiterated that he has never done work placement with a student before and that he wouldn’t have taken me on if I didn’t meet their company’s standard. Phew I thought. Anyways, they immediately got me to work on *real life stuff* and I was briefed like the rest of the designers and got to work on redesigning various ‘flashes’ (think of those information ‘bubbles’ - like “made with wholegrains” etc you find on packaging) for Uncle Toby’s Oats.
I realised that at this stage, I had unconsciously catapulted myself into a very, very deep sea and that I didn’t know exactly how to swim as the programme I had to use was none other than my arch nemesis adobe ILLUSTRATOR!!1!!!1!):!!!
I hate that programme, just for those of you who couldn’t pick that up xD
So here I am, not entirely sure of what I am meant to be doing, how I am meant to be doing it and using a programme that revels on the mutual hate that we both feed each other. I got through it, but still, this was all initially scarring.
The random IT guy from Melbourne (yes he could magically access my computer from another STATE?!) made it hilarious though. I was trying to do XYZ on my comp and all of a sudden, a chat screen appears and it seemed like the computer was talking to me. I talked back and it turned out that I was somehow logged onto the mac admin account, which is not a good thing xD Greg, the imp in my computer IT guy from Melbourne fixed it all up blah blah etc… Bottom line, it was funny.
Laugh with me :P
Long story short, I got better and more comfortable within the environment and almost enjoyed working with Illustrator (shocking, I know.). I spoke to the designers about the industry; the accountants and what they do and even had the creative director look at my work and telling me something along the lines for “for someone who hasn’t finished this course yet and this is your quality of work so far, I’m certain you’ll do very well” which made me feel a twinge of accomplishment ^_^ Good for me.
One of the things I really enjoyed being a part of was all the brainstorming/naming/briefing sessions. It was really cool to see all these people, passionate about what they’re doing and all thinking on how to make the best for their client. Sure designing real life things being sent off to real life clients was awesome, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘fly on the wall’ aspect of the whole experience too. This particular branch of graphic design is definitely not for me. I didn’t like it much to be honest, but I’ve taken a lot from it and I’m so glad to have that over and done with so I can finally start my measly holiday :D.
This more or less, brings me to now.
I have issues with work at the moment. For some reason Woolies just isn’t making as much as it did (for reasons I could care less about) which has caused all the casuals (that’s me) to have their shifts cut back most dramatically. I’m talking having 5 hours a week x_X
Now since I can’t live off 5 hours a week and I don’t particularly want to get another job as I, hopefully, won’t have it for very long as my course finishes this year, I went to Laura (my boss). I told her that I understood that they have to cut back casual hours but I seriously can’t live off 5 hours a week and asked if it was possible to switch to permanent part time. I don’t care if I get paid less; I just want hours and monies!!! D:
It was weird. She lit up like a Christmas tree and told me that she had wanted me to permanent part-time for simply aaaagesss and that she didn’t want to cramp my uni schedule by asking me etc. She told me that she was so sorry, and that I could go PPT next week with contracted shifts that Woolies just have to let me have yadda yadda [work talk goes here]. But in the meantime, she’s called me almost everytime they’ve had a shift to fill and given me a hunk of hours, which makes me super happy that after almost 6 years of slaving away, I am worth something at that place xD
Today was my first day off in 16 straight days actually, counting all my 90hours of work placement and weekend stuff too x_X It’s a shame I couldn’t get paid for all those work placement days… Which reminds me, is it just me, or are all creatives bi-polar or something? Gary (the art director) one day seemed as happy as a really cute puppy and wanted to know whether or not I wanted to ‘stay back’ at Cowan after my time there and that I was a great help etc... He had to go before I chance to talk more about it but then the next day, it was like he was a different person and forgot that he had mentioned the whole thing. Before I left however, he went back into puppy mode and told me I was great, he’ll keep in touch and so on and so forth (I don’t believe him xD) and that was that. Mind you, if they did offer me a job, I still would have said yes. I think I would’ve been a total idiot if I did decline, even if I didn’t like it that much.
Other things that happened?
I went along and saw last years third years graduate. That went really well. Trev signed me up (mostly without my knowledge) to help out prepare for the whole shindig and I found myself giving out graduation bags, cutting up a crap load of cake (and proceeded to be rather terrible at it in the process) and in charge of the power point presentation for the whole ceremony. Oh joy :P
However, it was really lovely seeing all the third years again and we all went out for lunch at an awesome sauce pub and played a couple rounds of pool (of which cemented my flawless skill in being quite awful at the bloody game) as well as laughing along with all the things we miss at college now like the heavily accented German cries of “GET OOUUUTT” and the old classic, “Vhat are you sinking about?”
It was really odd to have seen them all ‘grown up’ too, all settled into their new roles and out of their student shell. But it was nice to see them still retain the things that made them ‘them’, for example, Paul still wears his lovely beanies and wonderful threadless t-shirts to work. Good on you buddy *thumbs up*
That being said, it gave me a lot to think about regarding my own graduation, the work I have to do to get there and my eventual departure from college itself. But I’ll talk more about that later, I’ve talked long enough as it is :D
In other, most wonderful news, I succumbed to the weight of all the games I want and the ‘limited edition’ label and broke my savings to buy the beautiful crimson red and black Nintendo DS I had been waiting for. I had been waiting patiently for this one for simply aaaaagggees and figured it was about bloody time. All I have is Pokemon Diamond though. I wanted “The World Ends With You first, but the guy said it was an “obscure” game and that I may have to order it in etc… As if it’s “obscure”?! Screw you Australia and your relentless hatred of gamers *shakes fist*. Oh well, I still have a plethora of games around here that I can easily sink my teeth into once I become very rich and buy all of these games first xD
Wrraghbblarrgh, this has taken 2 hours to write x___X
Hurray for pretentious exhibitionism!! just when you thought it disappeared with me foreverxP
Talk later ^_^
Happy Birthday!!!
----------------------
Now....
I wasn't surprised that it took me a full day (I'm speaking 24hrs wise here) to fully read journals and revisit the communities that I belong to as I soon found myself resuming my 'surfing' stance at the computer and somehow (like I always manage to do) get utterly lost within tangents in and out of fandoms and other various forms of 'important' internet miscellany.
A pair of tired eyes, sore stomach from late laughter (yes ‘Hard Gay’ and capstara I’m looking at j00 xD) and a flood of spammy lj emails in various inboxes across the globe later and I’ve pretty much caught up with everyone and their dog more or less. I still need to track back on my precious Avatar and KHR! fandoms, but for the most part nothing major has happened with ‘my boys’, and I still have what, 14 days until the finale chapters air for Avatar (so friggin’ excited!!) and I know what’s happening with KHR! so it’s ok folks! We’ve got that covered…
As for the real life things that caused my break, college ended with yet another bang(s) as well as many sleepless nights of me abusing poor, poor Ashley (my computer at college) to the ends of the Earth trying to finish everything that needed to be finished. It was quite awful really, as my last night/day there consisted of me finishing at 5am, sleeping in my car for the most extreme nanna nap in the world, waking up two hours later from the most extreme nanna nap in the world before any students/teachers/wild animals could see me sleep in such a bizarre position in my car (poor Eric xD), having a shower behind the college’s theatres and finishing in a flourish of having breakfast of who-knows-what before Khim showed up to mark our websites x_X
For those playing at home, my website wasn’t really any different from a pdf slideshow really. Dreamweaver and its partner in crime, Fireworks decided to be just plain difficult, leaving me with a semi-nice looking but not quite working website D8 The only page that I did get, and was sort of proud of was the one that Trev didn’t like anyway… I saw where he was coming from, but I was just so happy with it. I mean it was one of only two working pages within my whole site xD Not to worry.
After that, we handed in our logo style guides (I NEVER want to do that again. EVER. +ten billion infinities. Just thought you’d all like to know) and that was that. Everything was done and once again, the day was ours! So in usual graphic designer style, we struggled for another 2 hours to come up with a definite thing to do afterwards and ended up going to a nearby pub for food, deer hunting and pool. I still maintain my complete losership over the game of pool, and that particular Thursday afternoon was no different xD
I was going to go to drawing that night, but once I got home I pretty much went to sleep and did the whole ‘wake up at 7pm and think it’s the next day thing…’ for a little. Typical -__-
I ventured back to college the next day and finished off my semi-portfolio for the folks at Cowan Design to present the following week.
Hooley bloody dooley, was that something.
In hindsight, the whole experience of me working there was just fantastic, if not exhausting x_X Mind you I walked into the place (this being the first time I had ever stepped into a *real life* design studio) absolutely terrified and completely in awe of how cool the place looked. It was on a single floor with a loft upstairs for the accounting team (Their upstairs was just one big fat bucket of awesome, they even had a really cool spiral staircase to boot!). All the computers were G5 macs drools and all of them had Aeron-like chairs (my bad, I thought they were Aeron but they were slightly different… Phooey).
I had a chat with the art director and was really freaking out because I got the impression that he wasn’t really impressed at all with me. But I calmed down a little when he reiterated that he has never done work placement with a student before and that he wouldn’t have taken me on if I didn’t meet their company’s standard. Phew I thought. Anyways, they immediately got me to work on *real life stuff* and I was briefed like the rest of the designers and got to work on redesigning various ‘flashes’ (think of those information ‘bubbles’ - like “made with wholegrains” etc you find on packaging) for Uncle Toby’s Oats.
I realised that at this stage, I had unconsciously catapulted myself into a very, very deep sea and that I didn’t know exactly how to swim as the programme I had to use was none other than my arch nemesis adobe ILLUSTRATOR!!1!!!1!):!!!
I hate that programme, just for those of you who couldn’t pick that up xD
So here I am, not entirely sure of what I am meant to be doing, how I am meant to be doing it and using a programme that revels on the mutual hate that we both feed each other. I got through it, but still, this was all initially scarring.
The random IT guy from Melbourne (yes he could magically access my computer from another STATE?!) made it hilarious though. I was trying to do XYZ on my comp and all of a sudden, a chat screen appears and it seemed like the computer was talking to me. I talked back and it turned out that I was somehow logged onto the mac admin account, which is not a good thing xD Greg, the imp in my computer IT guy from Melbourne fixed it all up blah blah etc… Bottom line, it was funny.
Laugh with me :P
Long story short, I got better and more comfortable within the environment and almost enjoyed working with Illustrator (shocking, I know.). I spoke to the designers about the industry; the accountants and what they do and even had the creative director look at my work and telling me something along the lines for “for someone who hasn’t finished this course yet and this is your quality of work so far, I’m certain you’ll do very well” which made me feel a twinge of accomplishment ^_^ Good for me.
One of the things I really enjoyed being a part of was all the brainstorming/naming/briefing sessions. It was really cool to see all these people, passionate about what they’re doing and all thinking on how to make the best for their client. Sure designing real life things being sent off to real life clients was awesome, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ‘fly on the wall’ aspect of the whole experience too. This particular branch of graphic design is definitely not for me. I didn’t like it much to be honest, but I’ve taken a lot from it and I’m so glad to have that over and done with so I can finally start my measly holiday :D.
This more or less, brings me to now.
I have issues with work at the moment. For some reason Woolies just isn’t making as much as it did (for reasons I could care less about) which has caused all the casuals (that’s me) to have their shifts cut back most dramatically. I’m talking having 5 hours a week x_X
Now since I can’t live off 5 hours a week and I don’t particularly want to get another job as I, hopefully, won’t have it for very long as my course finishes this year, I went to Laura (my boss). I told her that I understood that they have to cut back casual hours but I seriously can’t live off 5 hours a week and asked if it was possible to switch to permanent part time. I don’t care if I get paid less; I just want hours and monies!!! D:
It was weird. She lit up like a Christmas tree and told me that she had wanted me to permanent part-time for simply aaaagesss and that she didn’t want to cramp my uni schedule by asking me etc. She told me that she was so sorry, and that I could go PPT next week with contracted shifts that Woolies just have to let me have yadda yadda [work talk goes here]. But in the meantime, she’s called me almost everytime they’ve had a shift to fill and given me a hunk of hours, which makes me super happy that after almost 6 years of slaving away, I am worth something at that place xD
Today was my first day off in 16 straight days actually, counting all my 90hours of work placement and weekend stuff too x_X It’s a shame I couldn’t get paid for all those work placement days… Which reminds me, is it just me, or are all creatives bi-polar or something? Gary (the art director) one day seemed as happy as a really cute puppy and wanted to know whether or not I wanted to ‘stay back’ at Cowan after my time there and that I was a great help etc... He had to go before I chance to talk more about it but then the next day, it was like he was a different person and forgot that he had mentioned the whole thing. Before I left however, he went back into puppy mode and told me I was great, he’ll keep in touch and so on and so forth (I don’t believe him xD) and that was that. Mind you, if they did offer me a job, I still would have said yes. I think I would’ve been a total idiot if I did decline, even if I didn’t like it that much.
Other things that happened?
I went along and saw last years third years graduate. That went really well. Trev signed me up (mostly without my knowledge) to help out prepare for the whole shindig and I found myself giving out graduation bags, cutting up a crap load of cake (and proceeded to be rather terrible at it in the process) and in charge of the power point presentation for the whole ceremony. Oh joy :P
However, it was really lovely seeing all the third years again and we all went out for lunch at an awesome sauce pub and played a couple rounds of pool (of which cemented my flawless skill in being quite awful at the bloody game) as well as laughing along with all the things we miss at college now like the heavily accented German cries of “GET OOUUUTT” and the old classic, “Vhat are you sinking about?”
It was really odd to have seen them all ‘grown up’ too, all settled into their new roles and out of their student shell. But it was nice to see them still retain the things that made them ‘them’, for example, Paul still wears his lovely beanies and wonderful threadless t-shirts to work. Good on you buddy *thumbs up*
That being said, it gave me a lot to think about regarding my own graduation, the work I have to do to get there and my eventual departure from college itself. But I’ll talk more about that later, I’ve talked long enough as it is :D
In other, most wonderful news, I succumbed to the weight of all the games I want and the ‘limited edition’ label and broke my savings to buy the beautiful crimson red and black Nintendo DS I had been waiting for. I had been waiting patiently for this one for simply aaaaagggees and figured it was about bloody time. All I have is Pokemon Diamond though. I wanted “The World Ends With You first, but the guy said it was an “obscure” game and that I may have to order it in etc… As if it’s “obscure”?! Screw you Australia and your relentless hatred of gamers *shakes fist*. Oh well, I still have a plethora of games around here that I can easily sink my teeth into once I become very rich and buy all of these games first xD
Wrraghbblarrgh, this has taken 2 hours to write x___X
Hurray for pretentious exhibitionism!! just when you thought it disappeared with me foreverxP
Talk later ^_^