What I Did On The Holidays
What I Did On The Holidays
Well, this week I went back to Uni after a three month break. So it seems appropriate to crap on a bit about what happened on the holidays.
I should probably explain some background first. In my first two years out of school (2000 & 2001) I didn't go to Uni but went and worked crap jobs so that I could qualify for the "Youth Allowance." This Centrelink payment puts about $160 a week in my pocket whilst I'm studying. However it comes with a few conditions, one of which is that I am not allowed to earn much money from paid work whilst receiving the allowance. By "not much" I mean no more than $236 a fortnight, otherwise for every buck I earn at work, I lose 70 cents from my youth allowance. This is a bit fucked if I want to earn extra cash, because it means that once I work over about 7 hours a week I am only able to clear $4.50 an hour! I am not going to work lots of hours for $4.50 an hour! So what I generally do is work about 10 hours a week, which gives me enough cash to get by, and works nicely time-wise when I am at Uni. However, it means that come December, January and February I spend 10 hours a week working, and have the rest of the week to do whatever the hell I want. Hence why I've had time to make DVDs and websites and stuff the past few years!
December was rad. I was Mr Sociable and went to lots of gatherings/getogethers/gigs and stuff. I developed a new appreciation for beer. Music wise my highlight was seeing The Meanies. I also started playing cricket again (I hadn't been playing whilst I was at uni because I was too busy). I was fucking rusty because I'd done pretty much no fitness work or skills training and got shoved straight back into second grade (which in the WACA comp is quite a high standard). Also my brother and I had a new person move into our house. She was the first non family member or girlfriend that I'd ever lived with. Living with her was good and bad... she could be a bit strange... for example:
Me: "How was your day?"
Her: "What are you asking me about my day for, what do you want to know about my day for, no body asks me about my day, I'm not used to being asked about my day, do you want me to write you a report?"
Oh I also edited up lots of old videos in December for use on new website I'd been compiling on and off for about 12 months.
For XMAS i went down to Bunbury to see my folks (who moved there from Esperance a few years ago). I found a couple of boxes full of my old stuff from Esperance. Old trophies and school work and love letters and stuff. It was weird looking at it all.
January was mostly the opposite of December. It sucked. Our rental lease was due to expire and we wanted to move to a cheaper place, so we spent a lot of time looking for a new house. Actually, "we" mostly meant "me" because I had the most time/motivation out of the three of us. The rental market at the moment SUCKS. We found lots of places we liked but they got snapped up by other people before we had a crack at them. In the end it took us about five weeks to find a place and get our application approved. Over these five weeks I personally drove past and looked around about sixty houses (this is not an exaggeration, I had printouts of them all and counted them). It was fucked. In the end Matt and I went back to living by ourselves. My January weekends were also a bit shit because usually I'd be fucking tired from playing Cricket and often in pain/cramping etc and not able to get out. Also lots of things sold out on me. The mark of cain, dave callan, Australia vs Sri Lanka, etc. Then I got a ticket for the Rosemount Rumble but ended up being too physically fucked up from cricket to attend. Not good. Furthermore my long time best friend Liam got a job in kalgoorlie, so he packed up and left. This is not the first time he'd disappeared - in 2003 he packed up and went to America for six months. However I was heavily distracted by courting my future girlfriend at the time so i didn't notice too much. This time around his departure has impacted on me a lot more, for lots of reasons... in part because he's such a scenester and often I feel like people only know/talk to me because he's there! Anyhow, el Douche's departure combined with another of my closest friends being stuck out in the country for at least six months, another one planning on going overseas, and a relatively recent split from my long time girlfriend, and I was left feeling rather lonely, depressed and sorry for myself.
One good thing happened in January though! I finished off a new website and whacked it online towards the end of the month. I was very surprised at the response it got. I was showered in praise from musical artists I respect highly, through to people that post on the Heartbreak High forums (remember the TV show... Alex Dimitreaties or whatever his name is was in it)! For the first couple of weeks after the site went up I was spending two to three hours a day replying to emails I'd been sent by people. It was nuts. I've gotten lots of cool free stuff out of making the site too... rare seven inches, tshirts, videos, long out of print cds, zines... it's been great!
February was ok. It started out a bit shit but ended pretty well. The Big Day Out was ok. The Stooges, Beasts of Bourbon and Henry Rollins were my highlights. Matt and I had to move house. In the past we've always had help from family/removalists etc. This time we did everything ourselves using one small trailer. So we did about a million trips. We have a lot of stuff. It took us 8 days to pack up our old house, clean it, move our stuff to our new house, and set up the new house. By the end I was going crazzzzzzy. It's all good now though, and our new house is good value for its price. My cricketing performances picked up nicely in Feb as my fitness had improved... I took 6 wickets in an innings in once match! I also compiled two DVDs for myself... one featuring footage of the Local Pricks / Sin City, and the other a three-discer featuring a heap of my old home/uni videos from 2001-2004. I also got my ass into gear and got organised to go back to Uni... and started doing some proper Psychological work experience... and more stuff but that i can't be bothered writing about.
Anyhow, now my three months of holidays are over, and I am back in ultra-busy Uni mode. I have a 15,000 word dissertation to write this year. I think I'm going to do something related to those new graphic cigarette packets, and a concept called psychological reactance. I have to do another project on a community group/issue... i am going to swindle this one so that i can do something about wam and noise restrictions.
This summer marks the last time I will have a lovely three month holiday, as come the end of the year I will have finished my uni course, my youth allowance will cut out and my uni scholarship will cut out. I'm actually going to have to get a real job and work real hours. No longer will I stumble upon people describing me like this:
"Hola Cass
Dig this Melniks-and-related-bands website some dude with a lot of time on his hands did- mongoloiddave.com/themelniks.html.
Extensive!
Party on "
Well, this week I went back to Uni after a three month break. So it seems appropriate to crap on a bit about what happened on the holidays.
I should probably explain some background first. In my first two years out of school (2000 & 2001) I didn't go to Uni but went and worked crap jobs so that I could qualify for the "Youth Allowance." This Centrelink payment puts about $160 a week in my pocket whilst I'm studying. However it comes with a few conditions, one of which is that I am not allowed to earn much money from paid work whilst receiving the allowance. By "not much" I mean no more than $236 a fortnight, otherwise for every buck I earn at work, I lose 70 cents from my youth allowance. This is a bit fucked if I want to earn extra cash, because it means that once I work over about 7 hours a week I am only able to clear $4.50 an hour! I am not going to work lots of hours for $4.50 an hour! So what I generally do is work about 10 hours a week, which gives me enough cash to get by, and works nicely time-wise when I am at Uni. However, it means that come December, January and February I spend 10 hours a week working, and have the rest of the week to do whatever the hell I want. Hence why I've had time to make DVDs and websites and stuff the past few years!
December was rad. I was Mr Sociable and went to lots of gatherings/getogethers/gigs and stuff. I developed a new appreciation for beer. Music wise my highlight was seeing The Meanies. I also started playing cricket again (I hadn't been playing whilst I was at uni because I was too busy). I was fucking rusty because I'd done pretty much no fitness work or skills training and got shoved straight back into second grade (which in the WACA comp is quite a high standard). Also my brother and I had a new person move into our house. She was the first non family member or girlfriend that I'd ever lived with. Living with her was good and bad... she could be a bit strange... for example:
Me: "How was your day?"
Her: "What are you asking me about my day for, what do you want to know about my day for, no body asks me about my day, I'm not used to being asked about my day, do you want me to write you a report?"
Oh I also edited up lots of old videos in December for use on new website I'd been compiling on and off for about 12 months.
For XMAS i went down to Bunbury to see my folks (who moved there from Esperance a few years ago). I found a couple of boxes full of my old stuff from Esperance. Old trophies and school work and love letters and stuff. It was weird looking at it all.
January was mostly the opposite of December. It sucked. Our rental lease was due to expire and we wanted to move to a cheaper place, so we spent a lot of time looking for a new house. Actually, "we" mostly meant "me" because I had the most time/motivation out of the three of us. The rental market at the moment SUCKS. We found lots of places we liked but they got snapped up by other people before we had a crack at them. In the end it took us about five weeks to find a place and get our application approved. Over these five weeks I personally drove past and looked around about sixty houses (this is not an exaggeration, I had printouts of them all and counted them). It was fucked. In the end Matt and I went back to living by ourselves. My January weekends were also a bit shit because usually I'd be fucking tired from playing Cricket and often in pain/cramping etc and not able to get out. Also lots of things sold out on me. The mark of cain, dave callan, Australia vs Sri Lanka, etc. Then I got a ticket for the Rosemount Rumble but ended up being too physically fucked up from cricket to attend. Not good. Furthermore my long time best friend Liam got a job in kalgoorlie, so he packed up and left. This is not the first time he'd disappeared - in 2003 he packed up and went to America for six months. However I was heavily distracted by courting my future girlfriend at the time so i didn't notice too much. This time around his departure has impacted on me a lot more, for lots of reasons... in part because he's such a scenester and often I feel like people only know/talk to me because he's there! Anyhow, el Douche's departure combined with another of my closest friends being stuck out in the country for at least six months, another one planning on going overseas, and a relatively recent split from my long time girlfriend, and I was left feeling rather lonely, depressed and sorry for myself.
One good thing happened in January though! I finished off a new website and whacked it online towards the end of the month. I was very surprised at the response it got. I was showered in praise from musical artists I respect highly, through to people that post on the Heartbreak High forums (remember the TV show... Alex Dimitreaties or whatever his name is was in it)! For the first couple of weeks after the site went up I was spending two to three hours a day replying to emails I'd been sent by people. It was nuts. I've gotten lots of cool free stuff out of making the site too... rare seven inches, tshirts, videos, long out of print cds, zines... it's been great!
February was ok. It started out a bit shit but ended pretty well. The Big Day Out was ok. The Stooges, Beasts of Bourbon and Henry Rollins were my highlights. Matt and I had to move house. In the past we've always had help from family/removalists etc. This time we did everything ourselves using one small trailer. So we did about a million trips. We have a lot of stuff. It took us 8 days to pack up our old house, clean it, move our stuff to our new house, and set up the new house. By the end I was going crazzzzzzy. It's all good now though, and our new house is good value for its price. My cricketing performances picked up nicely in Feb as my fitness had improved... I took 6 wickets in an innings in once match! I also compiled two DVDs for myself... one featuring footage of the Local Pricks / Sin City, and the other a three-discer featuring a heap of my old home/uni videos from 2001-2004. I also got my ass into gear and got organised to go back to Uni... and started doing some proper Psychological work experience... and more stuff but that i can't be bothered writing about.
Anyhow, now my three months of holidays are over, and I am back in ultra-busy Uni mode. I have a 15,000 word dissertation to write this year. I think I'm going to do something related to those new graphic cigarette packets, and a concept called psychological reactance. I have to do another project on a community group/issue... i am going to swindle this one so that i can do something about wam and noise restrictions.
This summer marks the last time I will have a lovely three month holiday, as come the end of the year I will have finished my uni course, my youth allowance will cut out and my uni scholarship will cut out. I'm actually going to have to get a real job and work real hours. No longer will I stumble upon people describing me like this:
"Hola Cass
Dig this Melniks-and-related-bands website some dude with a lot of time on his hands did- mongoloiddave.com/themelniks.html.
Extensive!
Party on "