Finding the words

I had something very weird happen to me the other day, it even frightened me a little.  I have spent rather a large amount of time since returning from the United States reading and writing about culture, business and expanding knowledge base so these subjects have been looming pretty large in my mind.

Also, because business studies is something I have previously worked on for all of never, I have been stressing about it - to the extent that it has been popping up in my dreams.  Trust me, marketing managers preventing your superhero alterego from catching the villain with their dancing spreadsheets isn't something you want to happen, even in your sleep.

Dreams are dreams, though, and that wasn't the weird thing that happened to me.  No, the weird thing was when I realised I had forgotten how to talk to people. Weird right?

I was out with friends, doing everything I could to relax and put the whole assignments issue out of my mind for a few hours - which, of course, meant that I was thinking about it most of the night.  This in turn meant that I was only following the conversations in the absolute broadest sense of the term and not participating much.  For anyone out there who knows me, they will probably realise that this is fairly unusual behaviour for me and a couple of people decided to check if I was alright.

I'd like to stop for a moment to say good on them, they are awesome friends and I wish more people in the world could be awesome friends.

Anyways, they asked if things were ok and I sat there for about five seconds doing that disturbing fish thing of opening and closing my mouth while I tried to remember how to form a coherent sentence that didn't involve supply chains or market trends.  I eventually came up with "Yeah, just thinking about my assignments." and then managed to actually get into the swing of things.

This was the first time in my life that I have found myself completely unable to say anything, just forming the words was a gargantuan task for some reason.  And this freaked me out because words are so very important to me.

"Sigh"

I have a friend who always insists on writing omgosh in online chat to show that she isn't blaspheming.  This got me thinking about the number of people who say this but are atheists, shouldn't they say omct rather than omg as they believe in the chaos theory rather than any sort of god.  As an agnostic I feel I should probably write omubogapdpttsiitfohawmomnae (oh my unspecified being of great and possibly divine power that takes some interest in the fate of humanity and who may or may not actually exist) although possibly worded differently for the sake of not taking up almost an entire twitter post just to write the acronym.

I mention this first because it amuses me a little.  There is a particular language usage doesn't amuse me in the slightest, though, and that is people who say sigh.

Now I'm not talking about the word in general, it is a great word that is useful to describe a forceful outlet of breath.  No, I'm talking about people who say sigh instead of actually sighing, or worse those who sigh and then feel the need to emphasise it by saying sigh afterwards.

My issue with this is that a sigh is supposed to signify that whatever is being sighed at is not great, but it isn't terrible either, it's just meh.  Spending additional energy forming the word rather than just breathing out heavily is far too much work for something that wasn't worth the effort in the first place.  And yes I realise that I am doing the same thing by writing an entire post about it...

Well at least she didn't say sigh at me.  Source

My theory is that ranting about it here will make it easier for me to put up with it when my friends say it, which is far too often.  Then again, I have been informed that it annoys others when I use weird worth order such as "my liking is of the not so much variety" or try and enlarge the English language with things like "nonsensicality" so I probably shouldn't complain about it.

Maybe I'll turn into Spiderman!

Well today I woke up covered in spider bites and discovered that sometime while I'd been in America and my mattress wasn't getting disturbed every night, some spiders had decided to take up residence therein.  So that was a fun start to the day.

And, of course, it just got better from there because then I had to deal with the issues related to this such as cleaning all my bedclothes and pesticiding my mattress (and yes, pesticiding is a real word... now!).

This has resulted in another day of procrastination from all the get-back-into-a-normal-routine-after-the-international-trip work I've been meaning to do since Monday.  Instead of doing anything useful like actually get started on the uni stuff I should be focusing on, I've been lying on the couch whining and generally wallowing in self-pity which my family has graciously put up with as they clearly weren't doing enough to stop spiders from setting up home in my mattress in the first place.

The only problem with this turn of events is that I feel guilty to myself.  Well, when I say the only problem, I mean apart from the itching across maybe 80% of my body, the fact that I currently look like some sort of retarded dalmatian with all the calamine lotion dabbed liberally on the various bite marks, and the fear that the same thing will happen again tonight.

The guilt to myself is because I know I should be starting all the get back into the swing of things stuff but three days later I still haven't done anything about it.  I feel like I've let myself down by taking the time to a) relax and b) get over the more pressing issues which have cropped up.  I am well aware that this is not sensible because I need the time to sort everything out, but that doesn't stop me from giving myself a hard time about it.

Home Sweet Home

So I'm home again, and it feels good to be back.  Not that I didn't enjoy myself in America but as Twoflower said in The Light Fantastic, "You haven't really been anywhere until you've got back home."

Well I'm back home now and will be sharing my first experience of international travel with you all soon, but I have to recover first and focus on getting back into gear for uni this semester.  I swear I will get stuff posted soon though.

For now, I shall provide you all with a set of reasons why I'm happy to be home:

My family, as much as I get annoyed with them occasionally they're still my family and I haven't been away from all of them for over a month before.  Whenever I was in a museum or gallery I kept wanting to turn to one of them to say something about the exhibit in front of me and they weren't there, but mostly I didn't realise how much I'd missed them until I got back.

Eucalypts, everything in the USA smelt slightly wrong and it took me a while to realise that it was lack of eucalyptus scent in the air.  Walking near my house yesterday everything just smelt like home.

Internet, as much as I did have internet access after my computer was fixed, the access could best be described as intermittent, unreliable and frustratingly slow.  I had so much trouble with it that I was barely checking my emails and communication from back home.  This may seem odd, but I was informed that in New Orleans all internet connections were stuffed up because of all the work to set up for the Superbowl and in LA several of the internet providers, including the one for my hotel were having fairly major issues with connection.

The internet thing has been kind of good too, though, because I've been able to relax for a couple of days just catching up on everything in my reader.  This has been a great way to avoid doing things like unpack or actually start my assignments while I recover from the jetlag I've had - which mainly consists of waking up at 3am and not being able to get back to sleep, no matter how tired I still am.

Anyway that's why I'm happy to be home, and posts about the trip are coming at some point but for now I'm eating vegemite and reading blogs and generally enjoying being home again.

I'll be back soon

So its been almost 20 days since I last posted, sorry about that.

I really want to blame the computer having issues but as I've had it back for over a week and it has taken me until now to actually post anything, instead I'm going to blame it on being in another country for the first time ever and packing my schedule so full that I haven't had time to put a post together until now.

I have decided too, that rather than try to post all my activities for the trip before I get home, or try and start now and catch up later, I will hold off blogging about my trip until I get home and can get them to a standard which I am happy with while still keeping them in the right order.  The only problem this leaves me with is what to write about now.

This problem is compounded by the very fact that I haven't blogged in almost 20 days which has put me out of the swing of blogging again, so soon after starting.  I never realised until I started blogging that it is more than simply sitting down at the computer and writing stream of consciousness until you've had enough.  At least it isn't for me.

Although I do write most of these posts in a stream of consciousness way, because I decided that was how I wanted to handle this early on, I go back and make sure that I feel everything makes sense before I post it. This is because it is a public medium and I would really rather have at least semi-polished work on here to be read, although I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm not doing terrifically well with that.

Well this post has gone in rather a different direction to where I thought it was headed when I started typing.  I was originally intending to post a little about the places I've been, without giving too much away for the more detailed posts later, but I guess that's what happens when you write in a stream of consciousness style.

I might post again before I get back to Australia, but I wouldn't really count on it.  Thanks for sticking with me despite this.

I'm not dead, but my laptop is.

Sorry I haven't posted, and sorry in advance for the limited, possibly lack of, posting that will occur during my trip in the USA, I took a computer so I could let you all know how I'm doing but it does not want to pick up wifi anywhere in either Hawaii or Washington and when I got it looked at it stopped booting up at all.

I am currently on the terrible computer in the lobby of the hotel I am staying at and it is terrible so don't expect me to use it much.  I also don't know if any of the other hotels even have a desktop in their lobbies so chances are I won't be getting any information about this trip up here until I get home.

Anyway, I have now blogged from the other side of the planet, so that's done.  I promise to try and post again from here, but we'll have to see if I have time, the schedule is pretty busy.  Suffice to say for now that I'm having a ball and am loving the States.

Have fun and stay tuned because normal broadcasts will resume in February, if not before.

Welcome 2013

Well, my New Year's celebrations were remarkably tame this year (last year?), they consisted of packing and then playing Cluedo for the FIRST TIME EVER!  And some considerable alcohol consumption, of course.

Turns out I'm pretty good at Cluedo as I would have won if I hadn't initially been told that I could make an investigation and accusation in the same turn, something that I was told I couldn't do after all when I announced who dunnit.

It was Miss Scarlett in the Library with the Rope.  Source

Fun as the game was, one of the best parts of this New Year's Eve was how quiet it was.  I don't think I've had a New Year's Eve celebration with so few people since I was in high school, only five people were there and two dogs.  So relaxing, which was just what I needed as a contrast to the hectic December I have had with university work as well as organising and packing for America.

I think the most energetic the night got was during a discussion about how close the ties are between atheistic existentialism and nihilism.  That and the epic celebration of how the two noobs did like a millionty times better at Cluedo than the veterans.  Mostly, though, a time for reflection was truly enjoyed by all present and the conversations got deep and meaningful.

No conversation was had of New Year's Resolutions, though, which I'm thankful for because I don't know what my resolution would be - I gave up smoking last year so that fallback is gone and I have less idea than usual what the future holds for me because I am about to undertake what I can only imagine will be one of the most life changing experiences of my days.

Given that, I only have one resolution to make for this year, to make the absolute most out of my month in the US.  Beyond that everything is up in the air.  Except of course needing to finish my course, find a job, get fit and all the other standards of new years resolutions that should probably be taken as read at this point.

Anyway, this will be my last post from Australia until sometime in February so prepare for lots of OMG HOW DO I DEAL WITH THE CULTURE SHOCK as I experience the wonders of America.