Beautiful Life

If you're reading this, we've survived the rapture.

Yay! :)

OK, so I'm making plans for a trip to Canada in July this year. The main reason for the trip is a wedding, but I'm heading over early to explore Vancouver (and hopefully Montreal) before I meet up with friends (and the beautiful bride) in Toronto.

I'd really appreciate the advice of anyone who lives in Canada, or who has travelled there, especially in regards to "best things to do," recommended accomodation and in-country flights.

Comments are screened, or you can PM or email me - any and all comments will be appreciated!!

Why has no one written a Lie to Me/Mentalist Crossover fic, and posted it to ff.net?

Inquiring minds need to know :)

I put my expression of interest/'application' form into the film school about a week ago, and a few days ago I recieved the email that contained the creative tasks I have to do. They're due in about three weeks - one prose piece, and a narrative series of photos. For each task I can choose one of two available topics. The frustrating thing is that I think the writing topics suit the photo task and the photo topics suit the writing task better!

I've had the tasks a few days and I'm trying to think about what I can do for them. The prose task is challenging because you have to tell a narrative story (in only 800 words!) as you would see it in a film - it doesn't seem to be a typical prose piece, and it's definitely not a script (thank bob). The photo task is challenging for me because, although I think I've taken photos that tell a story, I haven't set out to tell a narrative story in a very short series of photos (I only have 9 for the assessment!) since I made a very simple one in grade 9 or 10.

I have a lot of thinking ahead of me! And doing - can't forget the actual doing.

It might sound presumptuous, but as soon as I get the tasks finished I want to try to start making a few short films, so I have something already made if I do, in fact, get asked in for an interview (so I don't panic if I get the phone call, and have to run out as straight away and make something).

It's been very exciting to be back here in Australia - of the time I've been spending in Melbourne, a lot has been given over to seeing a lot of theatre. I mentioned this in my last entry, and have since I've seen a production of Macbeth (congrats to geldfuss on a fine performance) and tonight (Sat) pedropablo suggested I go to see "Scenes from the Ecstatic Bible" at Northcote Town Hall. All I can say is - it finishes tomorrow: go and see it. I was blown away by the variety of characters some performers played, and the awesomeness of some of the performers fullstop. I saw the director afterward, said hello - I met him last year when I worked on "Blithe Spirit" at LaTrobe Uni before I went to Japan last year, was happy to find that he remembered me - and congratulated him on the show.

Want. To make. Movies.

Just need to come up with bloody scenarios first!!!

Did I mention that I'm home in Australia?

:)

It's great, but weird. For the first few days I had a very heavy sense of dislocation, of being out of time somehow -- even though nothing had changed. My family met me off the plane, and they all look the same. I look the same (although my hair's grown a little bit!). For the most part, the City of Melbourne (and my hometown, which I went home to almost immediately for nearly a week) is the same as I left it.

One cool part was coming home and getting back in my car. It's been sitting idle for nearly a year, but it's as quick and punchy as I remembered it. (Needless to say, next time I go overseas I'm taking an International Driver's License with me, cause I missed driving like crazy.)

Things I've done since I've come back to Aus:
* Seen two theatre productions by friends, and going to at least one more next week
* Been to one impro show, and one impro class
* Driven to my hometown and back
* Caught up with several friends, and made plans with others
* Gone to see the location of my sister's forthcoming wedding
* Attended the Open Day of the university I'd like to attend next year
* Secured my first tech job since I've come back - working Sound for a UoM alumni's theatre company at the start of September.

Unfortunately, the last two items mean that my plans to visit Sydney will probably be delayed until the end of September; so I can work in the theatre, complete the tasks I need to do to complete my Postgrad Application, and find an actual, "omg-they'll-pay-me-money?!" kind of job. Tossing up between cafes and schools at the moment, though I know I really should be applying for both.

I was here in the apaato cleaning and packing today and got a phone call from my Mum at 1pm. We had a good chat (Mum also told me that (yay!) I have a place to stay in Melbourne when I get home), but there was a weird moment when we realised that almost a week to the hour, I'll be home. Not bad weird, just one of those moments when you pause and have a split-second of clarity and awareness, of where you are and what you're doing.

Speaking of my apartment... it's come a long way in the last few days! I still have a lot of the fine cleaning to do, and I have a heap of rubbish to get rid of (but I have to wait for Thursday and Friday, my burnable and plastics days respectively - made even more difficult by the fact that I have my apartment check on Thursday afternoon and am staying with my neighbour Ez on Thursday and Friday nights before we head to Tokyo for the weekend. I bit the bullet and signed up for a stand-up workshop at Temple University in Tokyo on Saturday, but after that we're planning to check out a museum or two and visit the Israeli restaurant I took mcalex22 to when she visited. It should be a great way to cap off the year - and quite the bookend, considering that my first few days in Japan last year were spent in Tokyo as well.

I'll be home next Tuesday. Somehow, I know it's going to seem unreal right up until the moment I meet my parents at the airport... and then Japan will start to feel like the dream.

Re-watching Watchman tonight... I'd forgotten how gory it was, especially in Rorschack's jail scenes.

http://www.apple.com/iphone

... man, I'm such an Apple geek girl.

One of my friends here is having a lot of trouble with her laptop (a Dell) and is on the verge of packing it up and sending it home to be fixed/replaced.

She has mentioned that, need she get a new computer, she'd think about a Mac (even though they scare her). Cue excitement. =D

After an incredibly epic sleep-in last week (well, epic for standards over here - I was supposed to meet my ride at 7.45 and I was woken by a phone call (one of many, I later realised) by my supervisor at 8.10) I've been a bit more wary about how I'm sleeping. Which is to say, not much.

Ever since a guy I talked to at a wrap party told me that sleep tends toward four-hour cycles, I've tried it out a few times and found that he's more or less right. If I wake after six hours, it's much harder to get out of bed than it is if I've had either four or eight hours.

So last night, after still not being able to get to sleep by about 1am, resigned myself to the fact that I should try the four-hour thing again. So I kept myself awake on purpose until about 2.30, by which time I actually was quite tired and feel asleep quite quickly, only to wake up to my mobile phone alarm on cue at 6.45 (My friends here in town gave me two joint presents over the weekend for my b'day, the most hilarious of them being a huge kinda old-fashioned alarm clock (the type with the huge bells on top)).

I had hoped that getting so little sleep would make me go to bed earlier tonight, but that hasn't quite worked as planned. :( Oh well - fingers crossed and all that.

I had my fifth Eikaiwa English Conversation class tonight. Class was tiny tonight, only seven people turned up (out of the original sixteen or so!), but it went well and I felt quite relaxed with everyone. I did a fair bit of prep today that I didn't end up using, so I already have most of next week's new stuff made, and I'll just do a giant round-up of everything we've covered over the course. Next week is the last week, and I'm relieved; but I am really glad I had this experience. In a lot of ways it has pushed me harder than most of the day-to-day teaching I do, and then best thing has been the coordinator at the International Centre, who has given me great feedback every week on my lessons, which helped me improve upon them. Next week is the last class, but I'm going to go out for dinner with the two women from the IC who have coordinated the course on that end - they're both very sweet, so hopefully we'll have a good time out in a fortnight's time.

Now: to bed! =D

A Little Bird, A Bell and Me
Misuzu Kaneko

Even if I stretch my arms wide open,
I won't be able to fly freely as a little bird.
Though a little bird can fly,
It can't run as fast as me on the ground.
Even if I shake my body,
I won't be able to make beautiful sound like a bell.
A bell can make beautiful sound but,
it doesn't know as many songs as I do.
A bell, a little bird, and I,
We are all different but it's good to be different.

-- This was on the cover of a booklet we were given when we went to a local primary school to observe three different English classes. It struck me, because I wouldn't say it is especially descriptive of the school system here. It also reminded me so much of being back at uni doing my Dip.Ed. and being in classes that encouraged us to work with every child individually; and being so frazzled and depressed at the time... mostly because while I agree with the concept completely in theory, I think it is incredibly difficult to undertake in a mass education system.