sticks

So that weekend we were up in Macedon (ref. our adventure at Hanging Rock), I took some photos of the Coopers' up-and-coming new house next door to their current house. Had a tinker with some photo apps on my tablet and came up with this..

So I don't quite know where I stand on these photo collages. It looks like an ad for a very poor wood construction company. The idea of these collages seemed pretty cool at the start, but now I don't really know...

Anyway, a few weekends ago the vet kids went up to Mt. Martha, about an hour southeast of Melbourne along the coast. Driving along the Nepean highway to avoid the tolls on the Eastern was a pain but we got to see some really slick looking beachfront houses with cool looking cars. Every year since 2010, Hill's has been sponsoring our alcoholic weekend, with our only obligation, subjecting ourselves to personality pigeon-holing- I mean -typing. 2 nights of drinking, beautiful weather, nature and friends. And not to forget the beach close by. So here are some badly taken photos.

Our binge drinking party was 80s themed. Also, a classmate brought a handy torchlight and I used it to take some... spotlight photos. I quite liked the idea of it but I have to admit the execution is rather poor... I blame alcohol and the shitty quality of my phone camera.

I love my skates. They are awesome, I bought them on eBay for $45 brand new. I don't skate as much as i'd like to but hey the weather's warming up, and it's more fun than running. Have I mentioned how much I love them? I LOOOOOVE THEM.

Absolutely SKATING

spring is here!

The number of days between each beautiful spring day is shortening, the days are getting longer, and I'm starting to feel better. After feeling quite shitty the last 2-3 months, $920 at the neurologist later, found nothing. I don't really know why I've been feeling rather 50% lately. But today is the first day in a long time that I feel pretty good. I'd say about 70%.

I wonder if this has anything to do with our dwindling holidays. I really need some sort of relaxing beach holiday, soon.

(why yes, that is my car, and it is a sexy Holden Commodore)

crazy things

So I've been working my new job for about a week now, and it's been great. The animals so far have been absolutely adorable and the work is relatively easy going save for the driving.

Basically I pet sit. When people go on holidays, they call up the agency I work for, and I may get assigned to it if it's west-side. I get their details, get to know them (so far they've all been lovely) and off I go. I've been ridden with I think the worst flu bug possible (it's lasted all weekend and it makes my entire face hurt :( ) which has made the driving a bit of a task but hopefully i'll get better soon. Next week i'll be faced with 9am-5pm days with morning and evening jobs which will absolutely swamp me. I thought I'd catch up on study this weekend but this flu has had me doing the absolute bare minimum. Of life. It's upsetting because I was really getting into the swing of studying but what to do.

What do you do when the Sudafed no longer works? I hate taking any sort of medication but this bug has really been something else.

Back to my job. I usually look up addresses prior to leaving and remember the route there as I don't have a sat nav and I think it's much quicker this way and I just like to look at maps and navigate old school. So this one particular job I got was about a 15 minute drive from mine and I looked it up on Google maps, to find this while looking for a shortcut;

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

But really, how long did he (or she) have to wait for that to show up on on satellite view? Madness. 

I really enjoy reading about Singapore politics nowadays, ever since the exciting 2011 General Election. We're living in exciting times, things perhaps may change now as people are actually standing up to voice their dissatisfaction. Despite being of voting age I have never voted, and probably had my name struck off the registry which doesn't bother me and yet it does, I feel like a bit of an outsider and now all I can do is merely observe.

The Singapore government has warmly embraced hundreds of thousands of foreigners, some highly skilled and some working basic hospitality jobs, allowing them to lead cushy lives and providing them with nearly on-par benefits with us, the native Singapore citizens. I have not worked a tax-paying, CPF-contributing job (had to love being a tutor back in the day) but as long as my dad is a tax-paying Singapore citizen surely I am not a complete outsider. I've only been in Australia nearly 4 years and I love Singapore as the place I grew up in, but all this civil tension is going to boil over sometime and get messy. The government has cited various reasons for herding in foreigners by the masses, and when it backfires they provide weak excuses, insult and threaten Singaporeans and yet keep hammering away at their terrible policies, haha perhaps in an attempt not to lose face? To avoid an I-told-you-so?

So here I am, just over a year from graduation and having to make a pretty big life changing decision soon as to where I am going to be for the next few years. Maybe this is just my opinion, but the veterinary profession is rather politically and economically isolated. Maybe I could go back home and save myself the trouble of moving elsewhere, but I wonder if that is the right decision. Educated Singaporeans are packing up shop to start anew elsewhere, seeking a better life and I have yet to hear anyone who's made the move complain about anything really apart from getting used to paying larger taxes. Surely this is sending some sort of message to the ruling party? How will you one day afford to import highly-skilled labour once the population has been saturated with foreign blue-collar workers? How far will you underpay them? How will you afford to keep the rich Singaporeans rich when there is no local middle class to exploit after you've run your cheaply paid foreigners into the ground?

Ahh... So I wonder what the future of Singapore will be like. Will the government heed and finally listen to the people as a democratically appointed government should? Or will they press on with stupid policies only to buffer them with exponentially stupider, stifling and less accountable policies?

STOP IT WITH THE QUESTIONS ARUNA. Okay. I'm just mind-mapping outcomes. Interestingly enough, I googled 'working in singapore' to find this;


Contact Singapore is an 'alliance' of the Ministry of Manpower.

Next, I googled;



I am probably taking it out of context. But it's just funny how they are on both ends of the spectrum. Amazing.

Haha, I wonder when the kiss-assery will stop and when Singapore will emerge as the badass nation that it truly is.