Letter From United

Dear MissE:

I would like to offer my personal apologies for the extended delay you experienced on your recent United flight. As promised, please accept the enclosed certificate for your understanding and co-operation in this matter, as well as a token of appreciation for your business.

Please be assured that having the safest and most reliable aircraft is one of United's top priorities. Our on-time performance has been industry-leading, and we know how important this is in your choice of carriers. We realize we fell short on this trip and look forward to building your confidence in United.

Thank you again for choosing United Airlines. We look forward to having the opportunity to serve you again at the level of performance you expect and deserve from us.

Sincerely,
Elisa Bhatia
Customer Relations.

Let's recap, shall we? I went to America in June of 2005. I returned home in September from London via JFK and LA. In LA, we were informed that a door was broken, and we would be put up in hotels for the night, the better to catch the early-morning flight they were transferring us to. I assume this is the "recent" extended delay to which this letter refers.

I am now the proud owner of a hundred-dollar United voucher. It's pretty, but as I don't plan to use it as a wall decoration, it's kinda useless to me. If anyone wants it, let me know. Just be aware that you may experience some very extended delays in any of your correspondence with them.

Here and There

Hey everyone! I'm back!

The trip was really cold and really fun. Photos and details will come. Probably. When I get around to it.

Things to do Friday and Saturday:
- early breakfast (done. and eri, the original early riser, slept in).
- lunch with DVD Guy (done. and he didn't bring me dvds. what's the go. seriously).
- stop saying seriously (not done. obviously).
- call work to make sure they have a job for me on Monday (done: "oh monday, yes we may need you... oh yes I'm sure we can um yes that will be fine." jeez).
- maybe the beach (it's sunny today. yay!) or maybe marion or maybe a movie.
- early tea.
- bus to the city.
- Pancake House for dessert.
- party at the Fad Bar wherever the hell that is, then kicking on in the city
- home and sleeeeep. and say goodbye to Bea, who I won't see again, and Shelle, who I will.
- pack.
- city for lunch and some awesome chocolate cafe thing and shopping (not that any of us have any money left or space in our suitcases).
- airport with Gma and ALyn, and Eri and Anais.
- cry.
- go.
- be hot.

Road Trip!

We're off on our Great Ocean Road/Melbourne road trip tomorrow morning.

The car is booked and we just have to pick it up in the morning. Jollan is going to drive me there to get it cos I'm letting her have the Scarlet Lady while I'm away (in Melbourne and when I go back home).

Because yes, I am going back home. Winter is cold, as it turns out, and the money does not magically appear on my credit card. (Which makes you wonder I'm going to Melbourne. But anyhow.)

We've booked accomodation along the way, and in Melbourne, and we've bought supplies for the trip: nutella, kool fruits, tuna. All the essentials.

We spent heaps of time with Ryan today who knows the area really well. He was awesome and helped us out so much. We no longer have a vague idea of kinda heading east. He's Bee's neighbour but I haven't talked to him much but he put so much effort in I was really amazed. There are some very decent people in the world.

And it was so exciting. It actually got real once we started talking and planning and buying and packing. Right now I'm typing this while my Road Trip CDs are burning... I have no idea if a Swedish and a Japanese girl will at all understand or like these songs, but I added some ABBA for Bee, and some of the pub songs they hear every time we go to Shags or the Tav, so I think we'll be ok.

The last CD is still burning so what would you like to talk about?

Ooh, I finished my essays. Did you know that? Well, I did. And I got my history one back with all my participation, oral, and essay marks as well, so I know that I passed that subject. One down, three still to find out.

What else can we talk about?

Everyone's leaving me. Eri and Bee and Anais and Renate and Twiggy and I'm forgetting someone, but they're all leaving me. Well actually, I'm leaving them which is kind of awesome. And then no-one will be here when I get back. Which won't be so awesome. Especially since we just had gotten this nice little group going with me and Eri and Bee and Anais. Luckily it was also Jollan and Rashelle so I may still have one or two friends left.

Still burning!

How was your day? Do anything exciting? What do you have planned for this week?

No seriously, cos I'm going to be away from my computer til Friday and I'm going to be hella busy between then and Saturday night when I leave so I could conceivably not write anything again til, like, Sunday. More than a week away.

So go ahead. You have to post for me. Any topic you like.

And I'm heading off to bed now (then Melbourne. Then Darwin). So have a good week. Tell me all about it.

YEAH BABY!

Oh yeah! Go me! It's your birthday!

Actually it's Renate's birthday sometime but we're going out to celebrate it tonight cos she won't be here when it actually happens which is awesome cos

WE'RE GONNA PARTY LIKE I FINISHED ALL MY ESSAYS!!!

Woohoo! And the holidays officially start ... NOW! Go party!

How am I supposed to know what day it is?

No House last night.

Stupid boys with their stupid footy.

Wizards On A Plane

Apparently, there is some big cosmic connection between me, aeroplanes, and Harry Potter books.

When the last one was released (the last one that was released, not the Last One), I was at summer camp in New York. For some reason it was too far from civilisation for me to get a copy. Actually, the nearest Walmart was like ten minutes down the road, so it can't have been that. I think I wanted it to be all summer-campish, not all scholasticalish.

And then I went to England and bought it from some English shop. A real Harry Potter book from England! And then I read it twenty-six million times between Heathrow and Sydney (including way too many times in my long long stay at JFK).

And now, it turns out, I'll be reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Plane Flight or whatever it's called, on a plane. Spooky hey. We're going to be on a tight schedule - the book will be released at midnight, so we'll have to get there heaps earlier so I don't have to line up, buy it, go home and get my suitcase (or maybe it'll come with me to buy the book) then make it to the airport by 3am, which, incidentally, is a heinous time for a flight. (It'll be fine as long as I'm not half asleep when reading it so I read the same paragraph ten times, then realise when I get here I have no idea what happened in the first five hundred pages, but I will remember some crucial plot point that ruins the rest of it for me when I do go back and read it.)

That last part came out sounding a bit negative, but really, I am very excited about this. I think I am creating a grand Harry Potter-plane tradition for myself here, plus it's the last book EVER (at least it better be) so everything will be explained and tidied up (right JKR???), PLUS it will be hilarious to see how many other people have their reading lights on for the whole flight as well.



Ok, ignore all of that. I realised that the release time is not midnight, or even 12:01, cos we're not in England (unfortunately. how cool would that be). It's 8:31am which means I will arrive here at 6:30, have plenty of time for a shower and change, then a quick ride down to Marion to line up for HP7. This also means I HAVE NOTHING TO READ ON THE PLANE.

Thanks, JKR. Well-planned. NOT.

I've now added a Polls section to the sidebar. The first one is about HP7. You can click on things! It's all very exciting. Go now!

Template Changes

As you may have noticed (and if you didn't, I'm a little worried), there is now a header image. Cool hey. And I changed some of the colours around again.

Hey, do you think I could hand the ranch in instead of an essay on Australian publishing? It's publishing, it's Australian, it'll be great! Right?

Okay, okay, I'm going. Jeez.

IGNORE THE TEMPLATE ISSUES

Sorry, my bad.

Ignore the template and colours.

It'll be fixed tomorrow, promise.

Singing, Shags, Sleepover, Shh!

The last event of the semester was held on Friday: Hall Idol.

We hadn't planned to, but Eri and I sang Time of Your Life. (Even though obviously I have no business singing in public, ever, and Eri didn't know the words!) And then we cried. Which was very embarrassing.



And then we decided to go to Shags, even though it was a Friday. When we got there it was dead, of course, and the music was shit, but we (ok, I) decided to get a round of cowboys there before heading to New Yorks.



We were about to head off, when some guy called out to Rashelle. He was in the band about to come on and if we stayed, we'd get a bottle of champagne.



We ended up with free champagne for the entire night plus free Hungry Jacks from the bouncer on our way out.



The only catch was that we had to sneak in quietly when we got back: Swotvac has officially started. Y'all need to shush. This is when the all the bossy rules of the Hall really get to me. That and the freaky-ass silence.

Despite that, we had sleepover/girls night in the Basement last night. We watched Bring It On and ate lots of junk food and played Truth or Dare (cos apparently we are 13 years old). Most of all, we forgot that we had essays/pracs/exams looming which was absolutely fan-fucking-tastic. (Turns out blogging works much the same way.) It will be very very sad soon cos half the girls there are leaving which totally sucks. They suck. I hate you all!

Um, anyway, point was: Hall Idol - fun. Girls night out - awesome. Girls night in - like, so much fun!

The end.

Oh ok, fine.

Essay update: one more down, one to go. Happy?

It's an awesome feeling, to realise you're about to change someone's life forever*

These girls have never heard of Bring It On.

Seriously.

*From Tomorrow When The War Began which is a seriously awesome book, almost as awesome a book as BIO is a film. Go read it. And watch it.

Pirates

I saw Pirates 3 on Tuesday (cos we're cheap students!). I don't think I liked it. I didn't think I liked the second one but it got better after I watched it again, hence my confusion over whether I did actually not like this one.

Far be it for me to complain about too much Johnny Depp (you could never have too much Johnny Depp) but I don't think I liked the multiple Jacks thing. I don't think they got too many funny lines out of it, I don't think it helped the plot along, and it was better when Captain Jack was all crazy on his own.

You could totally tell who the smart people were in the cinema. Seriously, how many Pirates movies have there been? How many of them have not had something after the credits? WHERE ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING?

Something I did like (and I totally stole this off the IMDb message board, thanks whoever wrote it) was that they all ended up where they started, and I quote: "COTBP: At the start, Barbossa is captain of Black Pearl; Gibbs is on Tortuga; Jack is on the dinghy; Will and Elizabeth are living seperate but intertwined lives---AWE: At the end, Gibbs is on Tortuga; Barbossa is captain; Jack is on the dinghy; Will and Elizabeth are the same."

I wanted there to be something more significant about the nine pieces of eight. And that line about the junk they had in their pockets at the time I thought was funny, but like most of the other funny lines, it should have been hilarious and for some reason it wasn't.

At the end of the second one I had heaps of questions - it was totally a second in the trilogy, but I didn't get a sense of discovery in the third one as if they had been clever and were tying up all the loose ends they'd left. I suppose they did tie them up, but there should have been these great reveals.

Calypso. Man, Calypso. First of all it was obvious that it was going to be Tia Dalma since they brought her along. But why bring her along? I could've done with leaving her in her swamp.* Her accent annoyed me. I wanted her to suddenly be drop-dead gorgeous when they released her(and I was even planning out how they would do it), instead she just got really big. And...turned into lots of crabs. Ok so she created the maelstrom, but then she didn't do anything. Was that the best an all-poewrful sea goddess could come up with?

*Which brings me to my next point. If you wanted another female character, how about Ana Maria, from the first one. She was pretty awesome. She could have been a sea goddess.

I was a bit dubious about them getting married of a battle but that kiss - oh my god! The hottest kiss EVER.

Keira Knightley can't act.
(Altho I did enjoy her little speech to the pirates, suprisingly.)

What was the point in having Chow Yun-Fat in the movie at all? So he could be on the poster. So he could die. Oh yeah, and so he could make Elizabeth captain (which was actually ok by me, even though it was the most obvious move ever). They should have made us care about him so that we'd care when he died, instead of being all, 'just die already and make her the pirate lord so we can move on.' Which is mean.

It was funny when they were all, 'we don't care if you kill him, he's not our guy,' and I loved how it pained Jack to say 'Captain Swann,' but they both could have been so much better moments. I don't know what you guys are doing wrong, but something wasn't quite right.

I was expecting some more significance to come from the song at the start. Apparently it signifed the gathering of the pirates or what have you. This I learned from the intrawebs.

Also. The reason Davy Jones was all tentacly was because Tia Dalma/Calypso betrayed him during his first ten years at sea. At the end, when Kiera was watching the sunset, apparently signified the end of the ten years, during which she'd been faithful, and therefore Will could come home to her. FILMMAKERS: YOU CAN'T RELY ON THE INTERNET OR EXTRAS ON THE DVD TO TELL YOUR STORY FOR YOU.

FOAD Finally

I have composed this post in my head many many times and yet all this time I've refrained from actually posting it. It's always stated that I'm not the type of person to offer up FOADs and then I don't end up posting it, probably because, well, I'm not the type of person to offer up FOADs. It seems a bit excessive.*

The time has come, however.

Much like the internet RANDOMLY NOT WORKING IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS OF UNI COULD YOU PICK A WORSE TIME OH MY LORD there is a time and a place when things could be overlooked and a time and a place when they just can't.

If I could hear anyone else's conversation/music/radio ads word-for-word while in my own room, and not be able to hear my own music (at a considerately low volume) then they sure as hell would have recieved a noise complaint long before I even yelled at them to FO(BPDD).

BUT NO.

It's ok for certain (cleaning type) people to blast their music so loud the (really really) thin walls are shaking.

*It may also be that this time I was studying for my history test (but let's not go there) and the other hundred or so times I was being WOKEN! at the crack of oh, let's say, 11:30, 12ish.

Dude get an ipod like everyone else.

The Hall Shark Special Report

Formal Dinner 2: Good vs Evil Shags Edition

I had a lovely chat last night with a fake security guard who spent the day in court because he's a drug dealer, but lost because he had a public defender, or possibly Eugene McGee, then came to Marion to drown his sorrows. He let his 'missus' drink drive, even though he himself is a really good drink driver, and she's good to his two sons, aged five and nine, the elder of which sounds like a real little psycho, who knows four-letter words starting with f that rhyme with truck, and who'd like to do things to people, with axes, but luckily, his dad took him to a different street than the one where the people had been. And he gave me a rose.

Formal Dinner 2: Good vs Evil St Marks Edition

On Thursday at tea, there were letters from the Helen (dean?) on the tables in the Dining Hall. One side was to Uni Hall, one side was to St Marks. (Obviously, both colleges got both letters.)

On the night of the "boys basketball finals" (also the night of the girls finals, but no-one cares about that), our boys lost up at main campus after being ahead with just a few minutes to go, then Flinders and Marks supporters trooped down to Sturt campus to watch the girls game, which we also lost. Stupid Marks.

Anyway, when they went to drive off, they had a bit of trouble, as someone had mysteriously let down two of their tyres. Which doesn't seem so bad but apparently a valve got broken or whatever, causing trillions of dollars of damage, which Uni Hall will be paying for.

Being an honourary member of House Committee yesterday, we had a long and oh-so-serious discussion of this over lunch. HC are all depressed, as they think that we think they're failing. Whatever!

Basically, I think it was stupid of Helen to write the letter.

She apparently didn't consult HC on this, and if she'd read their minutes, would have known they had discussed this and were planning to do ... something. Talk about it at length would be my guess.

They haven't determined who did it, even though there's a list of obvious suspects that any Hallie could give you. Without proof or a confession though, I'm not sure why we're admitting anything to Marks.

The letter to Marks also said something about retaliation, in the form of 'please don't, we can dish it out and now we're terrified you might attempt something back.'

And most of all, it seems a huuge percentage of Hallies had no idea this had even happened. I'm not sure it would have been the same at Marks, but that doesn't really matter. The point is, this has got everyone all stirred up about it, not least of all Marks, who had it pointed out to them that that we'd got them twice and they'd done jack-all, and all Hallies, not just ones who would have done something like this before we confessed without proof and handed over our money without proof and begged not to be attacked like little babies.

Anyway, how stupid are they, trying to drive on two flat tyres?


Oh, and then Bec and Helen go and dress up in Marks colours for Good vs EVIL. Way to dispell the situation there guys.

Formal Dinner 2: Good vs Evil Photo Edition

Yesterday I fulfilled my community service (for leaving my scooter at the back gate while the carpack gate was BROKEN) by helping to set up for Formal Dinner.




Pretty, hey?

Speaking of pretty: