People have told me, set a task for yourself each weekend. Something you should do. Something to look forward to. It's only recently that I've really been able to grasp this concept. Attempting to take advantage of 48 hour periods is hard work, when you're trying to use it to recover from the week. The problem is, if you do nothing but sit down on a weekend, it doesn't actually give you a sense of being "rested" on Monday, more a sense of regret. As a result, I'm endeavouring to get out of my box and do things, not only to have human contact, with the social situations and pathogens that entails, but also mainly to stretch my spontaneity.
In case you haven't picked it up already, I cherish the art to something without thinking it through. Well, okay, thinking it through but extremely quickly. I believe I've got the "Make a quick action" down pat. Changing lanes, going to catch something, breaking out the wallet. That's all good. The thinking bit just needs some tuning now. Generally it's about 3 seconds after I've made the action when I realise if I've just made a mistake. Approximately enough time for an EFTPoS transaction to go through.
But this regret is good. It means I've done something, or something interesting is about to happen. This Cracked article pretty much sums up what I was talking about a few weeks ago about fear of growing up. Number 3 and number 2 have really hit me hard. So I've been wasting Saturday and Sunday doing tourist things. And wishing like hell that when I call someone up to talk about it, I can use the phrase "But my night, was only just beginning." But seeing the only night, which could of possibly got to that point was a weeknight, and I didn't really want to call some leave getting over it. Speaking of work, I may have intentionally given out my blog addresses after bringing up my blog in a newsletter talking about me as a new graduate. As due to editting out something inappropriate, the line came out as "In my spare time I work on a blog." Like that's the only thing I do. I update my Facebook status as well, excuse me. I also realise my only other mention of work was that people at work totally ignored me after my birthday. I want to HUGELY take that back. Since then, I have been talked to daily about random stuff at even feel like part of the team at meetings. Okay, still feeling a bit out of my depth, but part of team enough so that I can pretend that I can act like I know what I'm doing.
(I will take this chance to say that this comment cannot be legally used in my performance review.)
Enough about work. It's kind of odd, cause I know I shouldn't talk about it at all, but, you know it takes up a substantial part of my life, so I cannot guarantee that it will not crop up in future, however, all names will of course be omitted and nothing directly will be said. Well, unless it's out of the ordinary and slightly interesting
Cause that's the thing. I was only grasping slightly mid last year that from June to August will be my last break that long, possibly ever until retirement. Which might NEVER HAPPEN. Or is going to be about 2 of my LIFETIME'S away. That's not a great feeling. Sure there will be breaks, and holidays, but probably nothing too big.
So from every Friday at around 5 I have just over 48 hours to pretend Monday doesn't exist. Pretty much every blog from now until the foreseeable future is look like it's going to be bitching about that, so that's slightly unfortunate for you. To attempt to change that, I have been getting in the car on a Saturday morning completing a selection of random tasks (Which have ranged from "Find a way to get the smell out of the sink." to "Post birthday present for sister" to "testing the load baring on my balcony railing for appropriate zombie apocalypse weapon." Oh and washing up any left over dishes, do some minor cleaning, rearranging bookcase,doing some laundry. As much as I don't think those jobs need doing yet, some visitors in a few weeks might think otherwise.) at about lunch time, it's jump in the car, and flick through "Tourist Attraction POI's click one that sounds good. And hope the tank is still where it was when you were last in the car several days ago. Get the music pumping and out onto the open road! (Filled with other cars trucks and buses.) I'm twenty metres away from a road that goes to the sunshine coast in one direction and to the gold coast in another. Initially, my first couple of trips were just to city things, South Bank, museums, art galleries. But my last two trips have been going each way on that road.
I decided when I went to the gold coast, not to do the theme parks as I would be when one of my sisters come later next month. So I did the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, knowing full well that the people I have coming to stay throughout this year would show little interest in this, but would be of great interest to me. And indeed it was. I've heard people compare Ripley's type facts to Guinness World Records, but it isn't, it really just shows how weird nature, but more importantly, how weird humans are. As Ripley said in his first book "I have seen many strange things, but the strangest I've seen is man." Indeed, so many of his objects are weird things humans have done, or weird things human cultures have done, and that's interesting. My one thing I have a problem with, is there's a room you can walk through which has two laser projectors each end, splitting a single beam. The problem is, you can see the source, which is REALLY harmful for your retinas. But anyway, and then I was just walking around, (Surfer's has TERRIBLE parking. There are two places to park, on the street or at the shopping centre. All are ticketed and expensive. It's almost cheaper to hire a hotel for the day so you can use the valet. ) looked a few different free tourist places, tracked down a hotel I stayed at when I was 10 (The name has always stuck with me. And the fact that when we first went into the room we stayed in they hadn't cleaned out the fridge. And then I was a bit bored, and I realised the back of my ticket to the museum ($22.50 entry. WHAT. THE. HELL. Worth it though, although a lot of it is family friendly (And that's how they pitch it in their late night TV ads.) They don't mention that 2 adults and 2 children would be racking up higher than $50. But I guess that's to be expected. Tourism and what-not.) Was a cheap ticket to the skydeck, a room on the 77th floor of an apartment building (Able to be booked as a function room, if you're interested.), the current tallest building at the Gold Coast. Just sort of thought, that's how I need to finnish this day So went up there, had a drink at the bar, took some nice photos of the beach, the hotel roofs and the sunbathers that happened to be on them at the time. And the nice sunset. Realising then I now needed to make an hours drive in the dark. But you get that.
The Saturday just gone I turned my attention Northward. This time however, looking through tourist destinations I had a bit harder time. I picked one at random that sounded okay and went for it, about 30 minutes into the drive however, I saw "Tourist Drive, exit 1Km" Being not exactly inspired by my destination , I though "What the hay?" and made a very quick turn off.
You see, I am constantly in the right place at the wrong time. What I mean is, I go to places where interesting things might happen they never do. I mean, even with now getting the attention, making my way to grad events, and catching up with them during lunch, I still haven't found a group of, dare I say it, my type of people. As an old Perth friend tells me "Breaking into pre-formed social groups is hard," which it is, but I thought if I get out of the house, who knows who I'll find. I keep ignoring my own advice to head to a LAN cafe, and I think that's where my problem is.
Or, if I don't even meet people, I might have an interesting experience. Sure, I could tell people about my little day trips, but I wanted something interesting, it's one thing to share stories about tourist spots, but, you know, lots of people have them, lots of people have taken the same photo, of the same interesting landmark. It's like quite a few people in my family have been to New Zealand, some of the financial assistance I received for my birthday was for a trip, the suggestion I got was New Zealand. Although some of the places does sound really nice to look at, the latest people to go there came back to lots of responses like "Oh yeah, it was bad day when I went there too" "I really liked Milford sound as well." and "Oh yes, I remember being there/doing that." Sure, a trip is special for you because your the one experiencing it, But when I can look at photo albums from 4 different people and see the exact same photos crop up occasionally, it just turned me off the idea. I can watch 400 hours of people's videos and complain about the cold and have a similar experience. The experience those people did have was the fact that they experienced one of the after shocks of the Christchurch earthquakes. and even though the only descriptions I've got were "Everything shook. It was really scary" I consider that almost the highlight of their trip. Something they didn't plan for, something out of the ordinary. Which is why I am VERY serious about spending my 25th birthday in Antarctica, Sure any of my photos the white balance will be way off, but I might be able to say "You see that penguin, guess what? It's not behind glass!" And sure people can say to me "Can't you just look at pictures on the internet, rather than have the threat of frostbite or hypthothermia?" to which I say "And miss out on a birthday where it's daytime for 24 hours? Hell no." "But, why can't you go somewhere safe? Somewhere there will be people your own age, who will speak English and you can associate with. OH And are you going to care about calling your family? Are you going to care about anyone who at that point care about you? Or are you only going to think about yourself YOU INCONSIDERATE ASSHOLE."
"I can go anywhere if I want. I... Can go anywhere.."
So I took the turn off. Something I didn't plan for, something to make it seem like less of a drive to a destination and back. And I really enjoyed that drive. It's the glass house mountains scenic route. A lot of it is 100 km/h road, doing blind turns up and down hills with lush vegetation either side, and on that particular day, I saw one other car the entire trip, and I stared out the window and saw awesome, foliage covered mountains.
I've always respected the way my dad drove, it seems he could drive for hours on really boring roads, somehow keep himself awake and never do anything silly. Just sit in the perfect distance from the edge and the white line, and if anything crazy happened, he could handle it, break well, swerve if needed, always completely in control. I did not really inherit this trait. Especially on drives with scenery, I gotta glance out the window occasionally. Now, I am pretty good, and on this particular road, after the first panorama-with-a-blind-corner got me on the other side of the road, I decided to concentrate a lot harder, and hence, got through okay, but seriously, scenic drives need some sort of warning "Drivers are suggested to be people who find green valleys and tropical foliage really boring." That road should not have as high speed limit as it does either, but it's SOOOOO much fun, you get the techno pumping, the sun peeping through the clouds into the trees. Oh, it's incredible. And once you get to the top, you get this 360 degree view of these different mountains (a few more tourists by this point, but still not too many, and none were on the walking track, so that was great.) Although this place must pick up at some point. It had TWO toilet blocks. Within 20 metres of each other. WTF.
So I was here quite a while actually, enjoying the breeze and the view. Now the glasshouse mountains were named by Mr Cook who did some pretty famous sailing around Botany Bay. Now, I hear "Glass House Moutains" and I think, that must have a really cool story behind them. Turns out he looked at them and they reminded him of the roofs of glass factories back home in England. Weird the stuff you think of when you're homesick. Luckily they were not called the "Kinda remind me of the industrialisation of England and the really drab grey everywhere and toxic air of London in the late 1800's and the fact that we don't know what a beach is" mountains. Now, the range are the ruminants of volcanoes (Hence, the beautiful foliage.) In fact, they are not the volcano, but the remains of the magma inside the volcano, as it cooled, this hardened. The volcano laid dormant and erosion removed the volcano itself leaving just this 'frozen' core. Kinda like if you had a blocked nose then your face melted off. Okay, nothing like that. More like if you froze a bottle of wine then dropped it, shattering the wine glass but leaving the wine-block in tact. Much more pleasant image (Nice of you wasting your good wine like that to help me form an analogy, much appreciated.).
However, great in terms of names is the name for two particular mountains in the range.got the name simply of "The Pair"
Two dome shaped mountains, very close together, very similar height. I can only imagine the conversation that lead to the name.
James Cook: "Ah look at these wondrous formations. So large, so green. Amazing! Two of them look to be the same in height! And so close together! It looks as if God himself drew them perfectly together, they are so iconic! They look like.. Erm. Well, you know they kinda remind me of... Something I once saw in a book. I mean, I don't want to sound unprofessional, but we really need to call them something to remind us.. well, oh come on, I mean they look like.."
First Mate: "Like a beautiful pair, my captain?"
James Cook: "Yes, that's what they look like a perfect duplicate of each other. That's what we'll call them 'The Pair'"
(The group look at the beautiful canyon, and reflect silently for a few moments.)
Immature person (who was probably living in the gully.): "Heh, boobies."
James Cook: "What did you just say in my presence, young squire?!"
Immature person: "Er.. Erm, 'Boobies' sir, in that tree over there, I saw them nesting in that tree but they just flew off."
James Cook: "Ah, most interesting sir. First mate, write that down. 'Wandered up mountains seeking enlightenment, found boobies.'"
The only flaw in this logic of course being that the Sulidae Sula is not native to the Queensland coastal area.
Interesting also is the attempt to find a nice photo of the glasshouse mountains without people standing in front of it ruining the shot. "We are more than aware you went on a trip to the glasshouse mountains, you do not need to be in shot, or pretending you are having a good time, regardless of whether you are, or had just had an epic hour long fight in the car."
By the time I had found my own enlightenment, it had gotten quite late, so drove promptly onto the sunshine coast to my destination. 30 minutes further down a much more boring road, only broken by finding another memory from my trip to Brisbane, two rest stops, one on each side of the road, each with a large service station picnic tables and a McDonalds either side. Seriously, within 6 car lanes of each other, two Macca's. AND IN THE LAST TEN YEARS, now TWO KFC's. Sigh. Not wanting to push it any later, I ignored this and pushed on. To my grand destination for this trip: A pub. It turned out, that this was quite a famous pub for some reason or another. I was expecting a museum or something but no, just a pub. Not really wanting to stop for a drink, I drove aimlessly, finding the big pineapple (Closed for renovations.) Nostalgia Town (Closing within 30 minutes.) and a river front jetty. (Closed due to inclement weather.) Dejected, and maybe considering researching a better place for next weekend, I decided to find a beach. After all this was the sunshine coast, and although the cloud had really come in, and it was drizzling a bit, I wanted to see a beach.
But all I could find were retirement villages. SO MANY RETIREMENT VILLAGES. All very nicely gated to keep out any unruly folks, all near the beach (according to maps I was working off, but access only for the inmates. I mean, condemned. I... mean. No I don't think I can make up for that agest remark. It was quite late. I decided to just be glad I saw some hills, and start the long trek home. Although, I could revel in the fact, that with the roads and my car being like it was, I was doing what used to be a multiday hike in just over an hour, and leave it at that. The fact is, I would be turning off the road onto another road and staying on that single road. The next road I would run at, has my house on it. And that's something to be very pleased about it. Then I slammed the brakes (After, of course, checking there was no one behind me, because I am a safe, alert driver.) Because hidden by a tree, and at some point, drastically bent by something. Was a sign pointing to a very thin, poorly sealed road to "BEACH ACCESS." A couple of kilometres at some resemblance of a car park appeared (A few cars parked next to each other at the end of the road before it became sand.) Along a path enclosed by overhanging trees was sand. Golden sand. Reaching beautiful, slightly choppy, bright blue water, the sun peaked through a cloud, resting beams upon the scene. I sat on top a dune next to the path, satisfied. This weekend too, had just been worth it.
I can't believe how long I sat there, by my calculations, just under 45 minutes. Just sitting, looking and hearing the waves. My view only interrupted by the occasional dog, dog-walker, or young woman showing off just how tight a swimsuit can be. So that wasn't really that bad of an interruption. Strangely when I got home, the sun was only just halfway under the horizon. Giving me time to get to that cleaning up I had been thinking I knew would have to done.
But then I thought "Why ruin the moment?"
Positions unavailable
Box Fort Engineer.
Our office wars have just entered their 7th week. We are looking for civil engineers to rapidly increase our defences. There will be blood by elevenses.
Places where she isn't
- Gold Coast Ripley's Believe It or Not museum
- Front of Aristocrat apartments
- Timezone Surfer's Paradise
- Perth Convention Centre (17th March.)
- Timezone Fremantle
- Pot Black Cannington
- Glass House Mountains Lookout
- Random Beach, somewhere along the sunshine coast
And here's the moment where 4 females message me saying "What did I tell you about LOOKING for a girlfriend?"
Well, it's now late enough that I have to be up for work in 6 hours, so i should get some rest. I look forward to having something to post to you again soon, goodnight.
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