So, a lot of my diary entry titles are in caps. GOOD. i like caps. They express EXTREMENESS. Anyway, I thought I'd witter on a bit more about y'know, the whole Australia deal. because it's pretty fucking mint out here. Minty fresh. Fruity. Tasty. Awesome. Any word you use to describe good fun stuff, that's what it's like out here.
Maybe aside from the smoking. Cigs are WAY more expensive out here. A pack of cigs is like, £10. You can't smoke in LOADS of places. Even in beer gardens if the place serves food. Which is LAME. Seriously man, what's the point in a beer garden if you can't smoke? Also, apparently they're bringing in new legislation so that cig packet's can't have any branding on them. That just seems utterly pointless. Obviously it won't stop the current smokers, but their aim is to avoid new smokers, and honestly, i never started smoking because i thought "ooh look at the shiny packet!" I started smoking because i thought "Hmm, i wonder what the big deal is... oh riiiight".
That aside, I'm having a great time out here. I'm still loving the lab work as well. We've been close to a BEC for like, the last month, but we're STILL NOT THERE. It's frustrating, but I'm still really enjoying the lab work. I find a massive satisfaction in experimental physics. I love thinking up an idea and what i expect will happen, implementing that idea and then seeing exactly what i expect unfold. i love when you come up against a problem and you spend some time researching how others solved the problem and then solving it yourself. I enjoy trying to find problems in the set up and solving them, it's all incredibly fun.
Don't get me wrong, it's still frustrating ass hell, 95% of the stuff I've done out here is just fucking around whilst confused and frustrated as to why the experiment isn't working and pissed off and bored and angry etcetc, but seriously man, when you get it right, it's just minty fresh, It's great going into the lab every day not quite knowing what I'm doing and then learning new stuff every day. it's incredibly fun.
But, eGAD we are so close to this bose einstein condensate that it's incredibly frustrating. Seriously man, I've only one more week in the lab and i reeeaalllyyy want to make a BEC before i go!!!
Anyway, so far I've basically just been jizzing over how much i love experimental physics, but fuck you, it's my diary and I'll do what ah want, I know it might be boring for you.
Another thing I've found interesting over here is how I;ve been dealing with being so far away from everyone I know and anything familiar. It's been a bit difficult, I've been thinking about the whole "I'm secretly being filmed in my own Truman show" deal, but my CBT techniques have been a massive help in dealing with that and other various woes that have threatened to upset me horribly. It's great that finally after 3 years of counseling that I'm pretty comfortable in my own head again. Don't get me wrong, I still have all the usual worries anyone does about "oh no, am I being a douche?" and "does that person secretly hate me for what I'm doing" and of course "oh god I look HORRIBLE, I'm super fat blahblahblah". But just remembering the stuff i learned in CBT and especially the stuff Rose sent to me in her letters are so great for dispelling those worries pretty sharpish.
I know it might be boring for you guys to read about, but honestly, I'm just so happy that I'm finally feeling loads better mentally. I still get down, but not into the spiraling pit of woe i used to that just end up with me lying in bed for a few days staring at the wall and just eating about 4 crackers a day. Now when i get down i can just remind myself that if i didn't feel sad, I'd never know when I w as happy and that eventually I'll stop being sad and blah blah blah blah hippie bullshit sounding stuff. Still, it's nice.
Back to Australia stuff anyways. 'm off to the rainforest tomorrow, which I am SO excited tomorrow. Well, sub tropical rainforest. on a volcano. With eucalyptus trees. Any maybe koalas and kangaroos! I'm going with my Israeli drinking buddy Gal. We thought that since we pretty much NEVER see each other sober ('cause usually we just meet up on a weekend evening to go out to the gay club), so it'll be nice to see Gal whilst we're both sane and sober.
Pretty much everyone I meet out here is great. I've met a couple weirdos (mainly my housemates- Pervy kev and they guys that never shuts up. EVER) but mainly, everyone's really awesome. People over here are just perfectly happy to lend out things all the time and to help you out, it's great! like recently, leif's bike got stolen. he mentioned it to someone at uni today and he was like "oh there's a spare bike lying around my office, you can borrow it until you get your new one!" Although technically, leif could have just nabbed the bike he lent me back, but i mentioned that to him and he was like "Ahhhh just keep hold of it until you go". People over here are well nice and friendly. Aside from the bike thief, obvi, But what else would you expect from a nation descended from convicts? you gotta have a FEW bad eggs, fo' shizzle.
Another thing I like about people over here is how relaxed they are about using the word cunt. They say it loads. It's still pretty much one of the worst things you can call someone, but people say it so much more casually over here. I really like that, mainly because I've got a bit of a thing about the word cunt. I hate that a word that simply means "vagina" is one of the worst things you can ever call someone. Everyone casually calls their friends a dick or a cock or a bell end, but call someone a cunt, and it's worse than saying you fucked their mum! That'd's not right, man. If you think about it, vaginas make SO many people VERY happy, so why would you want such a great thing to be one of the horriblest things you can call someone? it just doesn't make sense. And that's why i like to use it as often as possible to try and desensitize everyone to the word (I advise you do too!). And that's why I like how much people use the word cunt over here.
Cuntoriffic rant over. now I'm going to tell you about the people I *don't" like over here. namely my landlord and pervy kev. MY landlord is basically the obese Canadian guy who doesn't know when the hell to shut up. Now, i don't dislike someone because they're fat, but when i dislike someone AND They're properly morbidly obese to the point they have a waddle, i ALWAYS use it against them. It's like an extra free insult "Eugh they suck.... AND they're fat" i know it's a dick move, but I just can't help myself. Anyway, my landlord is this fuckin' annoying guy. You ask him how his day went and half an hour later, he's still telling you about his stupid fuckin' day. he's doing some chem engineering phd, and he tells you EVERYTHING about what he's doing. He gives you specific details about all the stupid measurements he's making, even though if you don't work in his lab, ou wouldn't understand what the fuck he's talking about. So you just stand there and you're like "Yup... uhhuh... yeah.... right.. mmm....hmm...hm..m..... ..... *nodnod*...... ... .....*nod* .... ... .........." you stand there SILENTLY, and try to walk away, and he just doesn't shut the fuck up about the most inane shit you can imagine.
It's not just the inane chem engineering experiment shit though, all of his conversations come with a free boring history lesson as well. he'll somehow find a way to link to conversation to the boer war or something, Even if you demonstrate in depth knowledge of whatever the fuck he's talking about "say, that battle of Britain that they made us learn to death in school" He'll s till plow the fuck on and tell you a REALLY boring version of what happened. Eugh. He's also pretty self centered. You talk about something that's not to do with him, and he get's bored and redirects the conversation back to HIS views and blah blah blah. For example, I crashed my bike a few weeks ago (I was riding a bike I borrowed off him). When i mentioned it to people, the first thing EVERYONE asked is "Oh dear, are you ok?" The first thing he asked (rather angrily) is "IS MY BIKE OK????". i mean, I know it might be a bit self centred of *me* to expect people to immediately enquire as to how i am, but still, c'mon. I wasn't the only one to think this though, because after I said that, pervy kev then very pointedly asked "but are YOU alright, Kate?" so y'know,a t least i wasn't the only one to think it was weird.
So then there's pervy kev. Not much to complain about him aside from the fact that when he talks to you, he doesn't make eye contact. he's far too busy looking at your legs or your chest. unless you're wearing a burqua or something, he won't be looking at your eyes. He was telling me the other day all about his perving techniques on the beach, boasting about some camera he has that has SUPER ZOOM so he can even perv on women from REALLY FAR AWAY. All whilst not making eye contact. Great.
Ha, I think my paragraphs bitching about my housemates i dislike is longer than the rest of this (preeetttyyy long) entry. but damnit, i LOVE bitching about people, it's so fun! I love sitting in a club with my sister and bitching about other people's clothes and dancing, it's so fun!
Umm... Also I've been pretty far away from my boyfriend out here. It's been a bit weird, but I think I've managed to make it work. We had this weird deal where i could run off with girls if i wanted to, but that got a bit blurry in my head (no, not THAT kind of blurry, ROSE) and i accidentally ended up hitting on some men (although not doing anything, i don't think they even realised i was hitting on them). So i decided not to do anything with them. Another valuable thing i ended up doing is taking my space from chazzy. like, a LOT of space. And i really appreciate how much space Chaz gives me, We don't really talk for like, 10 days at a time, and i know that sounds like a long time, but for me, I just get really annoyed if my boyfriend is trying to talk to me all the time when we're not in the same palace. When you're living in the same city, you knew the same people, you do the same things, blahblahblah, you can talk about nothing easily. When you're far away from each other and you're calling regularly, you can't really report much. They don't know the people you know, so that funny anecdote about what Mark did isn't funny to them at all. They don't know the same places so they don't get that the lemmy is s stupid nothingy rubbish place to go out. You can tell them all this stuff, but they're still kinda out of the loop, and anything you tell each other still feels kinda empty and boring. It's like "oh how was your day" "oh i went to uni and we found jack shit in our results, how about you" "oh i sat on the sofa all day". If you did either of those things together, you'd have LOADS to talk about, somehow, but if you didn't, then that's all you can say and you just part ways for the day, knowing you're doomed to similar conversations every day for the next month or so or until something of mutual interest happens.
I don't know if that made much sense, I'm pretty drunk right now and kind of rambling (which is why I may make more typos than normal... although I'll probably run this through word to do a spellcheck since this is a pretty long entry and all. But yeah. What I was trying to say, is it's nice not to talk to my boyfriend regularly, because personally, I end up feeling like it's some obligation to talk to them, and I end up resenting the obligation to find something vaguely conversational to say. Another thing I've found out I need long distance relationship wise is to feel like I miss my partner. I don't feel that if I talk to them all the time. At all. So I don't feel like I miss them so I'm all like "oh maybe they don't mean that much to me". So yeah, I've been taking my space from chaz, and chaz has let me have it, which i really appreciate from him, especially since I'm such an awesome person, and it must suck not to be able to talk to me all the fucking time.
Anyway, I think it's working pretty well, because now it's getting close to me going home, and I'm really starting to look forward to being back with chazzy in Exeter and sitting around with him being stupid and having a cuddle on the sofa watching shit on TV and stuff like that. It's nice. I think I've' finally managed to find some weird way of dealing with this stupid long distance shit. in the short term, anyway.
Umm... anyway, I think I've run out of crap to say now, but I've managed to ramble along on a pretty long-ass entry. I hope you enjoyed my musings on my current life and don't think I'm too much of a dick! Also, you can see how my train of thought evolves as i get steadily more drunk as you read thing entry (since it took me about 2 hours to write and I've been drinking reasonably heavily throughout). Anyway, I'm off to the rainforest tomorrow, so check my facebook on Sunday if you wanna see some cool pics!!!!
catch y'all on the flipside!
p.s. totally spellchecked the shit out of this and I've probably still left some mistakes in or somethin, but AH WELL, it's probably better than most of my typing!
