Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Our Dead

A short poem I wrote for one of my gaming things. o/ Pacifica

Our dead lie where they cannot be seen,
As if the steps they took had never been.
The mark they made is viewed not by eyes,
The mark they made is where our heart lies.
The bravest of the brave, the truest of the true,
They gave their lives for me and you.
And as they fell, memories past they did relive,
But still uttered, "if I had one more life to give".
Face down they fell, and they fell head first,
Still in death, at the enemy they cursed.
We who still live, we all do know,
That though they're lost like summer snow,
Our comrades of those battles past,
Will be with us when we breathe our last.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Post 1/13

Well, I haven't updated this blog in...something like three or four months. But hey, I still get the email notifications of spammers posting comments on posts, so it's not like I've forgotten about it. What's new? Hmm. Well, it's 2013. Hopefully, my final year of university (assuming I don't fail anything). Let's take a look back at the past few months.

I couldn't think of anything worth writing about, so I'm just going to talk about Christmas. Went with family and a few other families out to Lakes Entrance for four days. Crabfishing, fishing, played some beach cricket. It was fun, haven't done anything like that in a while.

Oh, also, I got my P's. Green ones, since I turned 21 before I got them. Dad bought a car and since he isn't here for most of the year, I get to drive it. It's a Volkswagen Tiguan Pacific, pretty sweet, but I can't drive the damn thing yet because it's turbo so I need to apply for an exemption from VicRoads. Sent it in already but it'll take three weeks to get a response.

And in three week's time (or, well, two weeks now, since I sent it last Friday), I'll be somewhere in Vietnam. Flying up on the 14th with mum and sis for two weeks, first time heading over there so it should be an experience. Tossing up whether I should take my camera or not, apparently petty thievery is a common occurance, especially targeted against tourists, but I'd probably regret not taking it once I get over there.

Oh, my harddrive died a while ago, and along with it was two and a half years worth of photos. Something like 20,000 photos from various events and countries. Would have cost over two thousand dollars to retrieve the data though, and that's simply money I don't have. Most of the decent photos are uploaded to Facebook anyway, so it's not like I'm missing anything especially. All my music and all my past classwork/homework/assignments/projects crap from three years of uni is on there too, which is actually more of a loss than the  photos. Also movies and games, but those are pretty expendable.

Steam sales, probably spent like $60-70 in about a two week period, picking up some pretty good deals. AOE3 complete, Dawn of War pack courtesy of Hungy, got the THQ Humble Bundle, picked up Red Orchestra 2, and Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai. All in all, I've probably spent well over $200 on my entire Steam collection, which...isn't that much, considering I've spent about 1400 hours on various Steam games. That's literally a solid two months straight of gaming over the past three years. Holy crap, that means I've spent like 6% of the past three years gaming. Minimum, considering the games I play which aren't on Steam. Probably more like 10%. That's pretty damn impressive. And sad, very sad.

So what's the plan for this year? Study hard, get decent marks, graduate. Need to start looking for graduate programs and internships and jobs. Got a few sites bookmarked but they don't open till February/March, so I've got a little bit of time yet. If I'm allowed by the university to take a lower sequence of Chinese (long story), I'll be doing a Diploma of Languages on top of my Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science, which means five units a semester instead of the usual four. That being said, I've got a second-year Genetics unit first semester and a first-year Biology unit second semester, and a lower level sequence of Chinese would be fairly straightforward, so the year wouldn't be that bad despite the fact that I would be overloading. On the other hand, if I can't take the lower level sequence then I won't do the Diploma, which means three units a semester. On top of the one first-year and one second-year sequence, and that would be an incredibly breezy year.

I need to start looking for jobs. Preferably retail, preferably flexible hours. Looking at EB Games, Coles, Safeway, Big W, that kind of stuff. I'm terrible at customer interaction though so I'd prefer something like those guys that work after the store is closed to get the shelves all ready. EB would be easy though, since I'd know what I'm selling pretty damn well. Actually, I'm not too bad at telling people where stuff is, I might be able to do alright. Coles never has any openings though (took two years for Box Hill to have anything), and Safeway/Big W I've never recieved anything after signing up at their website. Eh.

I'm pretty healthy, I guess. Somewhat. Maybe. Not really. I need to do more start exercising.

My laptop is an absolute piece of shit. On a hot day, it'll overheat if I'm just running Firefox and Skype. Need a new laptop/computer. Probably a computer, it'll handle the punishment mistreatment strain better.

Went clubbing for the first time in Melbourne. Shanghai was better. And Hungy lost my sunglasses :(

My sleeping pattern is all screwed up.

Welcome to 2013, y'all.

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