I used to be really excited about it, I’ll be honest, but as time goes by, I don’t think that it’ll be as princessy and amazing as I imagine it will be. I do want to get married and celebrate with a wedding, but over the past few months I’ve thought about what a ridiculous idea that is. I see quite a few couples who are happy not being married, or happy being engaged for years, or just have some other kind of commitment to each other that isn’t exactly legal marriage. Many people say marriage is overrated, and I suppose it is, in a way, but I can’t help but think that this lovely dream of getting married is a dream that should come true.

With a few exceptions.

I’m a girl, and by tradition, I should have a bunch of girls with whom I should have a wonderful hen night with, on the night before my wedding. Well, newsflash honey – I have one real, true girlfriend, Lilian, and she means the world to me – and the way I see it, she’ll be my maid of honour. Which leaves me with no bridesmaids. Already this imagined wedding taking place in my head is not going to turn out right.

I do have friends, but the rest of them are guys. I’ve brought it up before, and I wouldn’t be totally against the idea of having male bridesmaids. So I’ll really be the centre of attention. I am often used to being the only girl in a group. Not surprising. On that note, I start thinking about the reception and the speeches my friends will make about me. I don’t think many of them will want to speak. I went to my cousin’s wedding last year, and all her girlfriends gave a speech. Well, Lilian’s definitely giving a speech, but there isn’t anyone else. James and I also have a lot of mutual friends. They’d probably end up speaking for both of us.

Oh, I jumped a bit ahead there didn’t I? I was imagining of course my future husband, who is none other than James. Sorry, forgot to mention that.

You may now kiss the bride!

Oh no, wait. Pause. Rewind. Play.

I don’t want a diamond wedding ring or a silver band. I want an onyx ring for my wedding ring. No, I’m not having a red dress, even if red is my favourite colour. I think I’ll stick with the white.

At the reception, I’m just going to be a bitch and make everything Japanese, and not care if people like sushi or not. Wait – no… James is a terrific cook; how about we just cook our own food for the wedding instead of doing some catering whizzwooz? Maybe because it’d eat up a lot of our time, I guess. At this rate, my mum might invite soooo many people to the wedding, also keeping in mind how big our family is.

So when I throw the bouquet, who’s going to be there? I’m thinking of all my relatives right now (even the distant ones), and I can’t think of many female cousins who aren’t already married. I have a lot of young female relatives who are about… ten years old? Hmm, maybe I’m thinking too far into this. When I’m older they’ll be in their twenties or so. I guess it won’t be so bad then.

Alright, forgive me if I sound a fool, but I never really favoured the idea of the bride’s garter being thrown towards the bachelors. It seems strange and a little disturbing.

Another problem; I’m Catholic, really, but there’s no way I want to get married in a church. For me it’s too… too traditional? I feel like it doesn’t suit me, getting married in a church. I’d rather a garden wedding, or one in a large hall. I don’t mind the setting of a church, but I don’t really want my wedding to have any religious aspect. Anyone can disagree with me. But there’s a chance that not all guests will be too keen on praying…

Now I begin to think that tradition is ridiculous. Years ago, Lilian told me that she was going to get married in ripped jeans. I used to think that was a silly idea. Now I don’t so much anymore. Well, I’m nowhere near getting married, so I think I should just let my mind wander however it wants for now.

Many people have wanted to dabble in HTML5 and after learning about it, it’s not that hard to grasp. Then again, I can’t really do anything fancy, but I thought I’d take the step up.

One of my previous designs, Coffee and TV, was responsive enough that it looked the same in most resolutions, and the free WordPress themes I created are responsive as well. However, with this new theme I decided to take it one step further and not just make a responsive width. If you resize the window you’ll find that the sidebar content shrinks and eventually disappears. I still need to debug the mobile version because it has some kinks, but if you fish out your iPhone or Android you won’t get a sidebar at all and you can just read the blog.

With that said though, I think I’ve optimised the site for iPads so you should see it beautifully. Landscape version gives you the full layout; portrait will give you just the blog. I don’t have an iPad so I can’t test it.

But, I’m getting one soon. I actually bid on a number of iPads on eBay the other day, and since I’m 1) impatient and 2) a cheapskate, I bid on an iPad that did not only have a low starting bid, but had just over 24 hours to go. I was close to winning more than one but I’m glad that I won one of the items I bid on. It’s only the first generation iPad, but it’s just what I need. I can read on it, listen to music, watch some videos – making my daily commute a bit more enjoyable and less of a waste of time.

I don’t really care for weight or size (as long as the thing weighs less than my laptop, which it does), and I don’t need a camera on my iPad nor do I need to Skype or Facetime with people. I’m also not bothered getting the newest technology, so what gives.

The iPad should be arriving at my work office within two weeks… well, hopefully. I also got a red case for it (I mean come on; what other colour). I’m guessing the case will come first because it’s being shipped from somewhere closer. On Friday I went to Typo and even though there were soooooo many notebooks I wanted, I just gave up. My mum phoned me while I was browsing the shop and I figured it was time to walk back to work anyway, so I did. After all, I just blasted a few hundred bucks on an iPad.

I pulled this layout together really quickly, and there are probably many bugs in it, but I really was sick of the grey and wanted something similar to my portfolio layout. I also still need to get around to writing a full list of everything I’ve cleaned from my websites so I can see everything at a glance.

It’s been a busy week and an equally busy weekend. I had to wash my bedsheets and currently my bed is unmade. I have work tomorrow so I have to wake up early, but that doesn’t bother me. I’m thinking of taking my Vegemite to work and putting it in the fridge. LOL.

I probably shouldn’t make silly excuses since I had enough time to fork up this layout, but I haven’t responded to most of the comments I’ve received on previous posts. Thank you so much for dropping by though, I love you all.

PS. This layout is called Strawberry Custard, was originally Coral and Mustard – but take your pick.

Because I didn’t use notebooks as much for my diaries, a lot of them ended up being unused. During high school we were given a school diary and I opted to use it to keep me organised, and also because it had important dates printed. I have, however, long hated diaries with dates printed.

Many times I’ve received dated diaries as gifts, but to be honest I have not really liked them very much. I find them to be very restricting; you can only use it for one particular year because the dates will be wrong, or you don’t have a lot of space to write… This happened when I still kept a diary but I used it anyway, just for the lines and the writing space. I completely ignored the dates and print. It was still very annoying.

I have many notebooks lying around now but because I have so many, it’s going to take me some time to get through them. I bought three new notebooks late last year and started using one. I use it for everything – writing poems, making to-do lists, doodling, reminders – and no doubt I’ll start using it by the time university starts again. In early university I started using exercise books, just blank ones you buy from the stationery store, but I found them dull. Later on I wanted to use all my pretty notebooks to take notes.

My problem is that some of these notebooks are just too cute to use. I have this problem all the time with cute stationery. Be it pens, pencils, paperclips, post-it notes – I can’t bring myself to use them because of the impeccable cuteness. When I bought these three new notebooks last year I promised I would use them. I had to use them. I now have to use them and I’m using one. And I’m going to keep at it, too. This time I hope to use a different notebook for each subject when I go to university so I don’t get confused. It’ll hopefully keep me organised and let me use up my notebooks.

Of course, I have to have a handy dandy notebook at hand. Wait, does anyone remember that show? Blues Clues! It’s been a while. I loved that show to pieces, even though people made up some weird stuff about the Steve guy on there. Actually, speaking of Blues Clues and Handy Dandy Notebooks, I loved that show so much that I went out and bought a notebook just like the one on the show. Anyway, what I meant by a handy notebook is one that I’ll have for bits and bobs and other notes that don’t really go anywhere else – and one that I carry around daily so I can write down anything if I need to. The one I’m using now is a spiral notebook with a red cover and unlined pages.

It was obviously no surprise that I was drawn to the sale at Typo yesterday. I was browsing the shops with James and I thought maybe it would be worth a look since I’ve never actually looked in a Typo store before.

Why did no one tell me about this earlier? This shop is like my heaven. It’s full of stationery, typography-inspired room decorations, and, of course, fitting under the stationery category – notebooks. They had a sale, three for ten dollars. I know there are other stores with cute notebooks that sell three for five dollars or three for eight dollars, but something just completely drew me to these amazing notebooks. Typo has notebooks with humourous covers, as well as gorgeous styles and sizes big and small, thick and thin. I was surprised I managed to walk out of there without my wallet losing weight, but I think I’m going to be going there tomorrow…

I got outbid on a lot of iPads on eBay, but not before they hit $500 or more. I’m not really keen on buying any second-hand iPad for much more than $300, and even then, I am a bit of a cheapskate. there are many auctions I am watching, but two of them finish tomorrow morning. I hope that I can win one of them, and of course still be willing to pay whatever price the auction hits.

It’s funny how you say you win an auction but you’re not really winning anything when you’re paying for it.

My mum isn’t a fan of buying online, even though it’s cheap, shipping is free, and it’s generally quite safe. I keep telling her that the shock stories she hears about using credit cards online and getting money stolen is often reported on television as a result of people’s lack of common sense, or just the media trying to make you crap your pants. The media is ridiculous in the way it tantalises minor issues in society in order to gain more viewers and hence higher ratings. What’s this I hear about sashimi making people lose their legs? … come on. I got salmonella in a country where hygiene is terrible and health conditions are below average (not joking – and it was horrible). That’s not hard to believe, but in a relatively rich country where raw fish is stored at very cold temperatures giving them a certain appearance and flavour – I highly doubt that you would get some life-threatening disease like gangrene from eating sushi that isn’t cold enough. Ugh, moving on.

After contacting the eBay seller to retract my bids, I received no reply until two days later, upon which the seller threatened to open a case against me. After that they said that they had already sold the item to someone else… but still demanded payment. Now I got myself into this mess and I used James’s account and felt like a complete fool, but he was nonetheless willing to help. He contacted eBay and they dealt with the situation, though we were not given any information about what they did to the seller. The seller still opened a case saying I was a non paying bidder. It’s funny that the warning is that I “may not receive the item” if I don’t pay… yeah well, even if I do, I won’t get it because the idiot seller sold it to someone else. Ooooh, that hurts so bad.

The reply James received from eBay was promising though, and assured us that appropriate action would be taken and the issue would be resolved. The representative reassured us that it would be okay and even apologised for the late reply. Meanwhile, since I was outbid on a number of iPads, I chose one (just one, hahaha) and went for it. This time I made sure I read through the listing and was okay with it. Right, so I’m not desperate for an iPad but one would be useful for my eBooks, more of my music, and for web testing.

I’m getting bored of this layout; I feel like the colours and fonts are dull and it’s time for something new. Working on a number of websites at work has made me keener to dabble in HTML5 and CSS3. I should be thinking simpler; that’s just what I had in mind when I designed my free themes and they turned out wonderful. I feel like I put too much effort into things sometimes, that if I stop poking around and look at the bigger picture, it would make things a lot easier.

Today James took me to a Japanese restaurant for lunch to celebrate Valentine’s day. There were some heart-shaped decorations hanging from the ceiling but I was most amazed by the avocado, tuna and roe sushi that were shaped like flowers. I’ll be posting some photos to my photoblog. Valentine’s Day is a special day for some, and a day of whining about being single for others. Please, stop. It’s a holiday that was originally meant to celebrate romantic love but for crying out loud, it doesn’t mean that if you don’t have a partner you have to feel like you’re drowning in rose petals. It’s rather pathetic; I think that people should be able to treat it like just another day if they’re in that predicament. Some people don’t celebrate Christmas but they don’t complain about not being Christian. I don’t complain that I get nothing on Mother’s Day… because I’m not a mother, duh.

I’ve got to be up early tomorrow to go to work again, so it’s time to sleep as early as possible. Catch you in Dreamland! I’ll be playing my guitar under the tree with pink leaves.

I miss it. Just a little. It was my first ever job, and it was hard to let go of… but towards the end of it, I guess I knew it was time to move on and focus on my job in the city, and I knew that this didn’t fit with my schedule so well.

I told some of the children it was my last day. I guess I’ll never know if they’ll miss me, though others have been saying that they will. Sometimes they don’t know what to say. It’s not like I hope to be remembered or anything. I just sort of wonder how they’ll do. I think I was pretty approachable to them over the four years I was there, and the newer students got used to me being the only one there for English. Now that I’ve been replaced by Andy, I hope he does a good job. Of course, he’s hell new, but he’s been doing really well. The kids might take a while getting used to someone new, but then again they’re kids… kids tend to love anyone, really. I will remember a lot of the kids there especially watching them grow up and seeing them progress. Some have done so, so well. Others not so well. But some I will remember for their politeness and smiles. Others I’d rather forget because they annoyed me. It wasn’t a job entirely for me, but I didn’t mind it that much.

So I’ve passed on the torch.

I think it was rather idiotic of me to bid on so many iPods on eBay. I changed my mind and decided I didn’t really want or need one at the moment, but I had bid on about 20 iPods. I ended up winning one of them shortly after I realised it was actually faulty. The status was set as “Used”, which didn’t bother me too much, and I was sucked in by numerous “GREAT DEAL”s and “GOOD CONDITION!” Except, unknowingly, this damn “good” condition was the physical state of the iPod, whereas the touch screen functionality did not actually work. I’m probably going to be criticised, and I totally agree that it was my fault. Soon after I realised my fault, I realised there were at least ten hours left until the auction ended so I immediately contacted the seller saying I had changed my mind.

Worst case scenario: I get ignored, I don’t pay, I lose a couple of points for bad rep. It’s just eBay. I’m cool with that, and if someone can’t accept that I am simply human and changed my mind, then that’s just one less person to really care about. I guess it goes to show I’m still a bit indecisive and impulsive. I thought it had changed, but I guess not. Looks like old habits creep back up on me. I’ve started sleeping late again, which is really nasty considering I have to get up early to go to work. This leaves me a bit drained on the weekend. I’ve become lazy again and I just arrive home and surf the internet. It’s relaxing, sure, but there are some things that need to be taken care of. I need to clean my room; my desk is a mess again. I cleaned it up for my new computer but now it needs a clean again.

I’m getting annoyed at the cluttered arrangement of my photos on my wall (photos of me and my friends) and I want to reduce the number or arrange them nicely. I need to throw more stuff out from my bookshelves. There are some things I want to get caught up on before university starts, like watching Futurama and Sherlock and just… other things. I haven’t watched any of my YouTube subscriptions in three or four months and I’m missing my weekly dose of comedy. I’m also behind on reading my favourite blogs and seeing how my blog buddies are going.

Again I’m trying to make my train rides more useful with books or planning or listening to new music. Travel time is the absolute best time to listen to new albums you just bought. I have been listening to Foster The People and Ball Park Music lately, and I guess I would describe their music as very alternative and unique. I’m seeing Ball Park Music at the end of March; yesterday I just had to buy tickets to their show. I think I’ll love their music live.

Things are going great, though. I often can’t wait until the weekend for pick-me-ups. I get a bit disorganised every now and then, but I always look forward to when I can unwind and pick things up where I left off. So it’s 12:14am… and I’m going to brush my teeth and head off to bed.

The other day I took a mug to work. My mum has a little collection of mugs, which all have different designs of sea creatures on them, including starfish, fish, whales, turtles, and so on. I wanted to choose one of these to take to work and keep on my desk. The other day, after I had already taken the mug to work and left it on my desk, I said to my mum, “By the way, I took one of the mugs so I could keep it at work.”

“What? You took one of the mugs and you didn’t ask!”

“I’m sorry, I was in a rush and I really just wanted to take a nice mug, not a crap one.”

“But I counted those. There were an even number of each pattern and design… you could have asked me first.”

My mum was just joking but I thought that for fun, she should try and guess which one I took. After doing a bit of counting she couldn’t remember exactly how many we had of each. She counted three with a blue handle and three with a yellow handle and concluded that I must have taken one of those.

“Come on,” I laughed. “What’s my favourite colour?”

“Purple?”

Of course, that was the case many years ago. I know people’s favourite colours are inclined to change, but I’ve only had about three different favourite colours. For the longest time my favourite colour was blue, blue, blue. I always told everyone when I was younger that my favourite colour was blue. One of my friends got me a blue shirt for my birthday. It was unusual that at the age of nine someone would give you a shirt for your birthday, especially since this friend was a male friend. I did like the shirt though, and I don’t know if he just happened to remember my favourite colour was blue, or if it was just a coincidence.

I loved the colour black throughout high school, and still do – but I don’t really like to think of black as a colour – rather, the absence of colour. So taking black out of the story, there was purple. Since 2005, that was certainly my favourite. I got dresses in purple and jewellery in purple. The guitar pick necklace I’ve worn all the time since 2006 (and still do) is purple. But I guess, at some point, purple and red became one… and red, ever so majestic, became my favourite colour.

I guess it’s something that’ll stay. I feel like it’s been a part of me someplace, that red was meant to be my favourite colour. I guess I don’t see myself getting over it any time soon.

I spent the last few hours on eBay bidding on items. I have an 8GB iPod nano (the third generation, the fat square kind of ones), which is a hand-me-down from my brother. That’s cool. I did give him my iPod touch before he lost it. Anyway, I would like a new iPod. I could listen to music on my phone, but I guess I’m too lazy to get around to buying a new memory card.

I wanted at least 16GB, so that’s what I looked for online. It then occurred to me that I really, really wanted a red iPod. Red is just special edition so they’re really rare now. But I can’t seem to find many on eBay for an affordable price (or maybe I’m just a cheapskate), and some of them don’t even ship to Australia either.

It also occurred to me that I could just get a small iPod, with just 8GB of space… and then I could lug two iPods around (that doesn’t bother me at all, promise!). It certainly sucks having some 40GB of music.

Today I bought these armwarmers for only $2! Well, James paid for me, but yeah.

Yesterday James and I celebrated our four-year anniversary with dinner at a lovely restaurant called 168 degrees. It was a mix of Asian and European, or “Asian Fusion”. James found the Eatability.com.au entry and suggested we try it. I had looked endlessly for nice Japanese restaurants and ridiculously fancy places to eat out, but you know what they say about looking too far into something, so much so that you completely miss what’s staring you in the face. I suppose that happened with me on a seemingly endless search for a good place to eat.

James made a perfect choice. He made a booking on the website even though he was in a bit of doubt about whether it was really a booking service. He got a confirmation email and after looking at it I thought it was pretty legitimate. He picked me up at 5:00 yesterday evening just as my dad came back from picking my mum up from work.

I was pretty confident with directions so I practically insisted James turn off the GPS. I had been around the area as I have family friends who live in the suburbs surrounding the restaurant. We got stuck at a little detour because the road had changed since I’d last been there. Oops. We managed to get out alright, though.

We had a table reserved for us at the restaurant and James was pretty surprised that the booking worked. I wasn’t that surprised! The staff were very friendly and welcoming and they made us feel at home. They weren’t snobby or overly formal, which I really liked. (One of the staff reminded me of James’s mum, but I haven’t told him that. Hahahaha.)

We decided to order an entree and a main meal each. We got these spring roll/crepe hybrids (as James called them on his blog with Angus beef. It was delicious. James got a slightly different one which I think had zucchini and more vegetables. It wasn’t as tasty as mine but it was good.

James was again a bit skeptical about the “whole crispy chicken” he ordered. He doubted it was whole, but when it arrived, it was indeed a whole chicken. It was enormous. I chose grilled salmon. Usually when I have a choice, I go for the salmon. It’s just so hard to resist. I am so used to eating raw salmon in sushi, so when the waitress asked how I wanted my salmon I just said “well done”. I know, I should have been a man and grunted, “medium rare”, but I guess I need a change from the raw fish.

After filling ourselves up with our delicious mains, we shared green tea ice cream. It was a really lovely date. Since that was also a new restaurant I went to, I successfully crossed something off my 101 in 1001 list, that being to go to ten new restaurants.

We picked up my brother from taekwondo later on. While we were waiting for him, we walked around the nearly-empty shopping centre feeling rather full and content. Since I’ve only ever done it once in my life before, we held hands and walked up the wrong escalator together. It was kind of fun just walking step by step up even though we were slowed down by the escalator moving back down. Hahaha. I heard someone applaud us but after we turned around, confused, there was a man from a distance (possibly a security guard) gesturing at us to stop. He must have felt like a god or something… I don’t know what he got out of telling off a boy and a girl walking up the wrong escalator in the middle of the night when there was practically no one else around. Loser.

Last week at work there was a server error, and later we discovered that the backups had failed, and not only that, but the server had its problems and everything was lost. The last backup was from September, meaning that pretty much everything I had been familiar with since I started this job was gone. We didn’t really have to start from scratch to restore everything though, since we had stylesheets and a lot of images – but the databases and most of the content was gone. My boss has thankfully come up with backup plans for backing up! I learned my own lesson many years ago when my freeserver deleted everyone without notice… backups are so important.

I have one more day of my education centre job, as I decided to end this week instead of next week – I kind of wonder if the kids are gonna miss me, but hey.

I’m pretty guilty of the latter. I’m not a goody-two shoes, but I’m not very rebellious either. Like typical rebellious daughters, I don’t do drugs or drink until I get trashed, I don’t drive a car when I don’t even have a licence, I don’t go out late and ignore my parents’ phone calls. Like most daughters, when I’m in a bad mood I yell at my parents, I also hate doing housework sometimes, and my room is a mess.

I began web design about ten years ago but didn’t have a personal website until 2003. I had just been learning to work my head around HTML and CSS. When I decided to make a personal website and include a detailed profile of myself, the only digital photograph I had of myself was a photo of me in a ballet costume performing the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker Suite. Back then, digital cameras were expensive and I had obtained a digital copy of this photograph thanks to my ballet teacher. I didn’t think twice and I put it straight on my website, along with a substantial amount of information about myself.

I was level-headed, I was well-informed, I was careful, but I was also naive, and perhaps gave out too much information. The internet is full of predators, though over the past few years – dare I say – it has become a more interactive platform and people are interacting via Twitter and even advertising themselves to employers via websites like LinkedIn. I wouldn’t go as far to say that it’s safer, but it’s become more of an outlet for people to connect than it was before.

In 2003, I was 12. Ooh, come on. No parent likes their twelve-year-old chatting to other people online. Though I was regularly chatting with Rhiannon (whom some of you might remember from PetShopGirlsReviews.com before she disappeared, or if you remember her before then, she owned petshopgirl.tk) and other people who owned blogs and websites, my mum wasn’t pleased when I told her I was chatting to some random chick on Messenger from Perth, and she doozed up and ranted about how this girl could be some freaky old man who lived just around the corner. I was just thinking, come on, fat chance.

Ages ago, my uncle used to send a crapload of chain mail to my mum. My mum used to refer to this particular one, in which there was some ridiculous story about this girl who started talking to a boy online. One day there was a man following her as she walked home from basketball practice, and as soon as she reached home, she rushed inside and shut the door. Her parents obviously asked her what was wrong, and it turns out the man following her was a douchebag hired by her parents to teach her a lesson about chatting to people online. I hate that story, FTR.

Anyway, my mum found my website. She told me to remove the information about myself. She was not very pleased. Much later, I put my information back up there (oo, rebel). My mum never asked about my websites again. Over the years, I can say I’ve revealed much about myself through my blog and have interacted with many other bloggers, and I know when something could pose a risk or not. However, over time I have come to learn that the blogging community is also a lovely one, and anyone I interact with is most likely another blogger with the same mindset as me.

Given that, I was still always cautious about what I wrote on my blog in case anyone from my family came across it. I still am – and there are some things I don’t mention at all on my blog. No one in my family is really aware of my blog address or really visits it. Recently, I also changed my name on some websites so I would be a little less discoverable – it has been quite some time that Googling my full name gives a vast array of results. (This actually doesn’t bother me all that much.)

My mum recently got a smartphone and likes that it gives her the ability to check her email. She can also save time while she is sitting on the couch, not quite in the mood to use the computer, but she can research the internet. Unfortunately that leaves her resorting to her phone as a cure for boredom, and one day as I was brushing my teeth, I heard her saying loudly:

“Hello, I’m Georgina. My favourite colour is red.
In case you hadn’t guessed that already.”

I stopped mid-brush, nearly swallowing some toothpaste.

I guess you could say that one of my worst nightmares was having my parents find me on Google. I imagined I’d have bricks falling out of my backside.

I said, “That’s my portfolio. How did you find it?”

As soon as I said that, I regretted asking her. She calmly told me that she had been looking for the origin of some foreign names and looking at foreign names in general when the idea occurred to her to Google my name. Me! Of all people. She said this, briefly pausing at times, and said she thought I had written beautifully on my portfolio and that it was really quite impressive.

The bricks stopped threatening to fall out of my backside. I stood there just nodding slowly as my mum surfed my portfolio (which contains quite a substantial amount of information about myself) on her phone. She asked me how employers reacted when I had interviews and how I used my portfolio to show them my work. I mean, come on, you still gotta explain this kind of thing to parents.

“I Googled your brother and I couldn’t find everything… you have so much. Look! Twitter, LinkedIn… what is LinkedIn, by the way? And a blog, owned by you…”
“I know, I’ve Googled myself before…”

I guess my mum finding me on Google wasn’t so bad.

I guess my cold is just stuffing things up but I hope to be better soon. Smelling some Vaporub seems to do the trick, too. I think the wind also gets to me easily. Yesterday I let myself into work (I have my own keys now) and I opened the windows because I was rather out of breath from walking from the station and up the flights of stairs, but soon enough the wind was making me feel cold so I shut them. The good thing about working in a converted loft is that it rarely gets muggy in there.

I caught up with Johnny and Fern the other day – I hadn’t seen them in months! I didn’t have a jacket with me and as I was waiting for them outside our meeting place, I was hoping it wasn’t going to make my cold worse.

I was wearing my shirt that said, “The art of conversation is, like, kinda dead and stuff”. A boy about my age was nearby with another two girls, and he asked, “Hey, excuse me, what does your shirt say?”

I walked towards them and let them read it out aloud. “Hey, that’s cool! Thanks,” he nodded.

Thankfully, that’s probably the only geeky shirt I own that has words on it; the others have prints of LEGO, rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock or a TARDIS, which doesn’t really encourage people to ask what my shirt reads, or say. A popular online store from which I bought some of these shirts is ThinkGeek.com. I used to shop there quite often before I found their shipping costs to Australia were too high for my taste, not to mention they seemed to be out of any good merchandise.

More often than not, I find geeky shirts that quote certain memes or have Pedobear on them, or Double Rainbow, or reference some game like Skyrim or Minecraft or Pacman, or have some programming or HTML or blogger joke on it. I find the majority of these shirts, particularly the ones with jokes on them, to be very unfunny and very lame. Yes, I think a shirt with <body> on it is a pretty cool shirt, but I wouldn’t buy one and wear it.

It’s not hip and it’s not funny or cool or totally rad or fully sick [bro]. Let’s just say, if I saw an English teacher wearing a shirt like the one I mentioned earlier, I’d think he was being rather pretentious or trying to be cool. It makes sense for me to wear it because I’m part of the younger generation and even though I prefer writing formally and with verbose words at times, I do kinda, like, talk like that.

There’s a shirt that reads “Just shut up and reboot already”. If I saw an IT support guy, or just someone working in a computer shop or anyone interested in computers wearing that, I’d honestly think he was a snob.

It’s as if whoever chooses to wear these shirts will think that whoever is interested in the same thing as them or has the same kind of knowledge as them will understand their shirt and likewise, think it’s cool. Perhaps it does seem cool to that person, but you’re just showing off, really. I don’t see my boss wearing a shirt with <body> on it. I would understand it, but if someone else sees someone with a shirt like that and has no idea what HTML is or is unfamiliar with the internet, they wouldn’t think twice about it.

James agreed with me and stated that it was the reason why he wouldn’t buy something like a ROS shirt. (I’m sure that 98% of you would have no clue what that means.)

“It’s sad. It’s like you’re saying ‘I want you to ask me what my shirt is about so I can boast of my knowledge. NOT to converse, but for me to tell you about my specialised expertise on a topic. FOR I WAS HEAVILY NEGLECTED AS AN EARLY TEENAGER’.” And after a pause – he laughed.

If it makes someone feel good wearing a shirt that shows off some of your knowledge, well, fine, be my guest, I’d say to them. Hats off to you, mate. But don’t expect me to ask you what it means if I haven’t a clue, then mope and have a booboo at home because no one asked. Finally, if you do see someone with a shirt with something you like on them, are you seriously going to approach them and say it’s zarking awesome? I still think that giving strangers compliments makes my shoulder feel like spiders have crawled over it. I also think that receiving compliments from strangers gives me the same feeling (but on my other shoulder).

Maybe it brings this sense of community or something. “O HEY YOU LIKE VLOGBROTHERS TOO WELL SO DO I OMG…”
“Then why the fuck don’t you have a DFTBA shirt?”

“I would also take an arrow to the knee omg you play Skyrim? Man I love your boobs.”
“Ugh, go away.”

So even if girls do play Skyrim, or any other game for that matter, it doesn’t mean you get to make out with them. I know couples end up together because they have the same geeky obsession with something – they might have met online through playing a game, or found out in school that they had common interests, but I bet you my left foot that it wasn’t from wearing some godforsaken t-shirt with some geek joke on it.

(If you’re still wondering, ROS = Robot Operating System.)

You can see how cute they are! I have to say they are my favourite shoes in terms of versatility. I find versatility in clothing and accessories to be pretty important. I don’t like changing things every day to suit my mood, so it’s nice to have some staple pieces that aren’t just staple pieces, but ones that you can wear comfortably almost any time.

I was disappointed when it rained last week and my shoes got soaked all the way through. I wasn’t wearing tights or stockings because it had been very hot, so I was bare-legged. Despite having an umbrella (which was lent to me by my boss because I didn’t bring one as I didn’t see the rain coming at all – it only started raining around 5:00pm), the rain hit my knees and my legs and just aimed for my shoes.

I got The Squelch. It’s just about the worst feeling you can get when you walk in the rain. You can feel the water wetting your toes or your socks, slowly, as you’re walking through the rain. Be it slow or fast… that feeling is just terrible.

Anyway, I was walking, with this Squelch, and I saw all these other people wearing high heels and other people wearing boots with their shoelaces just dragging behind on the wet pavement. It was raining so heavily that you could hardly see in front of you and there were puddles everywhere. You were probably pretty lucky if a car didn’t half-drench you by driving in a puddle. I saw some people with umbrellas who still looked relatively dry, and I was guessing they either got lucky or only just stepped outside. Hmm.

Yesterday I’m not sure what the weather was thinking but it was so hot. It is supposed to be summer where I live, but lately we’ve just been receiving a lot of rain, so I guess you could say that it was what we had been expecting since December. Today, it seemed to cool down as it was exceptionally windy in the morning, but as soon as I stepped outside after noon, to go to work, it was so hot I perspired straight away.

At work I had to train a new guy working there. He’s in the same grade as my brother, used to do the education program when he was younger so was pretty familiar with how things worked. He made a few mistakes which I had to point out. He was also a bit slow. However, being slow is usually experienced with most new workers, as it does take some time to get used to the marking system. That said though, he did a great job for his first day, and he picked up the workings of the centre pretty quickly and didn’t hesitate or get distracted. I have to say I’m actually pretty proud of him! I remember training a girl before who kept chatting to me and kept asking questions, and she also kept watching around her and not really paying attention.

The boy is coming on Thursday as well where I hope he continues to work at a steady pace. He was a very fast learner, I must say. I will be stopping work there soon… so I really hope he is a good replacement. Fingers crossed.

I bought some ball stud earrings on eBay a couple of weeks ago and I was excited to get them but when I received them in the mail today, I was less than pleased. They were just wrapped once in paper and put in a standard envelope; no padding or box or anything. I noticed that while the seller had 98% positive feedback, they did have at least 20 different buyers give negative feedback. My earrings were a bit bent at the posts, which I could fix by bending them back… but the balls were meant to be a shade of silver and they were already rather discoloured. Giving them a rub sort of helped even out the colour. I still sent a message asking for a refund.

The weather forecast says it’ll rain tomorrow. Surprise, surprise. I might bring a change of shoes. Just in case.

Edit: I’m still sick. -___- I have a terrible cold now.