Day 10 - Thou shalt dunk thy tongue in thy brain before thou speakest

OK, I don't often talk about politics. I hate it. I hate listening to politicians speak, I hate the way they lie, the way they sneer, the way they smirk, the way they use disguises of humanity and sincerity to peddle any old crap that will get them the largest number of votes when the time comes. I hate them.

I turn off the news when the current Leader of the Opposition is interviewed, I hit the "mute" button when the Prime Minister is speaking. We appear to have no Australian political leaders in whom we can have any faith at all. So, as a general rule, I figure there are better ways to spend my time than listening to creepy people who don't represent my interests, and who just piss and whinge at (and about) each other.

Our previous PM was an articulate intellectual who worked people to hard and made enemies by appearing smug and overly aware of his own intelligence. However, I never actually felt that he would ever put the welfare of his people in jeopardy to serve his own political needs. As the daughter of an academic, and as a graduate and long-time employee of a tertiary institution, Rudd and so much about Rudd was familiar to me. But, you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

Today, despite my desolate feelings about our current Prime Ministerial options, I found myself quite moved by footage of yesterday's Question Time in parliament, which has today gone viral.

For the first time in a very long time, I saw humanity and genuine raw emotion in a woman who has been looking hard and cold - and more than a little bit lost - of late.

The video is here (it's long, but worth sticking out to the end for her closing line): Julia Gillard Destroying the Joint

(For anyone who is not in Australia, or who may have avoided all news over the last few weeks, our PM's father died recently, and one very charming radio "personality" decided it might be appropriate to state that the Prime Minister's father had actually "died of shame" as a result of his daughter's political performance... and he said this in a speech to a dining-room full of young Opposition supporters and media representatives)

Anyway, not wanting to get preachy and political-like, but I really just wanted to record here and now how this video made me feel.

Take care and be proud, my lovely Bloggamigos.

xxx

Day 9 - Thou shalt not fret about things over which thou hast not control

No news on the job yet, so I'm thinking that it's going to be a "thanks but no thanks". Whenever I start feeling a bit miz about likely rejection, I remind myself about the list I made - for exactly this purpose - when working on my application.

The list had 2 columns: If I Get the Job and If I Don't Get the Job.
Under each, I wrote down all the good things that will come of each outcome.

The first list item under If I Get the Job was "It's ok to be sad". Basically because I really do enjoy what I'm doing now, I get a lot of satisfaction from this job, and I love the people I work with. I've never ever left a job that I didn't WANT to leave before!

The first list item under If I Don't Get the Job was "It's ok to be disappointed". Even though, ultimately, it will be nice to be able to stay where I am, it's always a bit poo to feel rejected.

Ultimately, I've done all I can do, and it's in the hands of others now. If I'm not what they're looking for, that's ok. Might turn out they want a doormat, or a bully, or a hard-arse, or even possibly just a BLOKE. And, frankly, I wouldn't want to work in a place where I'm not going to fit into the position or the environment.

So either way, it'll work out for the best!

Happy thoughts, fellow Bloggeramas. And when all else fails, go for the cookies!

Louki xx

Day 8 - Thou shalt not be a dick on public transport

OK. It's time for a Public Transport rant.

And, just for something different, it's NOT about stupid Metro Trains and their ridiculously bad service, and the fact that they run nowhere near enough trains to get home between 5 and 7 pm, and you can't even get on the damn things let alone sit down and then they go ahead and bluddy cancel the fugging things at 5:30 right when everyone wants to get home so you just stand there on a platform for an hour wanting to cry because you feel like you may never get home again and why oh why is it so difficult to just get home at the end of a horrible day and you end up getting home after 7pm when you just work a stupid 9-to-5 job and that just SUCKS and then you send them complaints and get some indifferent revolting mail-merged standard letter telling you basically to get stuffed because they don't care that you pay over one hundred bucks a month NOT to be able to get home.

No, for once, it's not about that at all.

This time, it's about PEOPLE on Public Transport.

Quite often, I listen to my iPod on the train. As a considerate human being - with, y'know, EMPATHY - I always check that my music isn't turned up so loud that other people can hear it leaking out the side of my earphones. You know, just being human and not really wanting to piss other people off when I can avoid it.

BUT, without fail, there's always some complete knob-jockey who has their music on SO loud that I can hear it OVER THE TOP of my own music (which, let's face it, is about as close to my ear-drums as it can possibly get without having the speakers surgically implanted inside my head).

Sometimes I even just end up taking my earphones out and turning off my iPod, because it's just not worth trying to enjoy my own music with someone else's second-hand shit playing through it.

But, despite this massive unforgivable assault on the senses of everyone around them, nobody asks them to turn it down, probably because they don't really feel they can, just like me.

Only a couple of times, when the culprit actually looks NICE and seems unaware of the noise, have I tapped my ears and then pointed at theirs as if to say "oh golly gee, you know what? silly me, but i'd quite like to be able to hear my OWN music and enjoy it, just like you are listening to and clearly enjoying YOUR cacophonous shit, ta."

My question is: Why is it so hard for us to ask people to stop being dicks on public transport?

Is it because we don't believe it can actually be so necessarily to point out to grown adults that they're being so repulsively obnoxious?

Is it because we think that they MUST be aware of the impact of their behaviour, but they must be doing it on purpose, in which case...

Is it because we're scared they'll get shitty and knife us?

Whatever it is, I'm goddamn sick of it.

And that's my profound rant for today. Thanks for listening, fellow blogga-liciouses!

L x

Day 7 - Thou shalt not fall behind on your blogging

OOPS.

Day 6 - Thou shalt pay attention

So.... I'm sitting in Dorkestra rehearsal, not paying attention to the boring committee announcements and blogging instead. Is that bad? Blah blah blah, something about concert ticket sales being down, yep yep blah de blah de blah.

If anyone's interested, our next concert is on 27 October!

Day 5 - Thou shalt not blabber like an idiot

Today was job interview day! So scary. Interviews in the afternoon are the PITS - you have to spend the first half of the day trying to (pretend to) concentrate on stuff and not run to the loo every 5 minutes.

I think it went ok, insofar as I'm not rethinking it and kicking myself for saying dumb things (yet). It's so hard to know how you come across in these things. Hopefully I didn't seem like too much of a jabbering idiot or arrogant turd, and hopefully I didn't have snot on my forehead or anything like that.

And luckily I read the newspaper article about Jill Meagher's funeral AFTER the interview, otherwise I would've turned up with mascara smeared down my cheeks.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, please, dear fellow Blogsters! :-)

(Apologies that this is going up a day late - I fell asleep on the couch past night, woops!)

Day 4 - Thou shalt not be a lazy sod

Happy October 4th, Fellow Bloggerinos!

Do you ever have those days where you look at your list of Fun Times Ahead, and suddenly you can't be bothered and just want to cancel everything?

Maybe it's just because it got to over 30 degrees (celsius) today and all I wanted to do all day was stretch out on a sandy beach with a magazine and a cocktail, instead of staring at a computer in noisy air-conditioning under fluorescent lights all day.

Maybe it's because I've got a job interview tomorrow and I'm feeling a bit like I'd quite prefer to hide my head under a nice cozy blankie somewhere and come out when it's all over.

Maybe it's just because I'm lazy.

Whatever the reason, I'm starting to feel rather BLAH about all the fun things I was so looking forward to up until now.

I expect (and hope) things will start looking up once tomorrow's interview is done, and I can start looking ahead a bit further. Hooray!

In the meantime, Blossoms, I'm going to get an early night with my new book (pictured below) which arrived in the mail today (yay)! Not sure what to expect, am only about 15 pages in so far.

I'm not much of a prude, but I must admit it was a bitofa shock reading the C-word for the first time in a J.K. Rowling book... We're not in Hogwarts any more, Hedwig!

Which reminds me of something funny I saw today: a woman reading Fifty Shades of Porn on the train this morning. She was clutching her handbag unusually tightly and was chewing her gum in a frenzy! Everyone else looked thoroughly embarrassed on her behalf. Funnily enough, the seat next to her was the last one to be taken...

Sending lotsa love out into the Blogosphere,
Louki xx