Lots of things have been happening in the last fortnight, and I won’t even try to put this into chronological order!

On Tuesday last week I got a phone call from ETSA Utilities, who rang to ask for my postal address so they can send my employment contract to me. This I guess means that I have the job with ETSA, which I haven’t mentioned in my blog yet since I didn’t want to be too preemptive about it. I nearly started working for ETSA in early 2005 although opted to try postgrad research instead, so I’m really looking forward to starting work with ETSA. Hopefully it comes in the post early this week, otherwise I’d best find out what happened to it.

On Thursday last week I started volunteer work via Greening Australia, with the Youth Conservation Corps. It was all good and interesting, and I enjoyed working with people I hadn’t met before. I even learnt a few things. However, I only lasted one day before I decided to quit, because of the setup of the program they were running. Because the program is sponsored by the Government for the purposes of giving young people skills to make them suitable for entering the work-force, most of the other volunteers were people that didn’t neccessarily care too much about the work they were doing. The program works such that the team I was assigned to is rostered certain tasks for the week. Since I was an added bonus to the team, all I did for them was to make their job less work, which reduced their individual workload from about 2 hours a day to about 1.5 hours a day, despite them actually “working” for 8 hours a day. I found it hard to believe that people could be doing volunteer work “for the environment” whilst dropping cigarette butts all over the place. In my opinion, the majority of the people that require volunteer work as a means of building up their CV are more likely to benefit from it if the Government pays these “volunteers” a small amount of money such that they can be disciplined for lack of team attitude and work ethics.

I did an extremely hilly 20.3km run on the way home from the job-site of this day of work I did with these people, and at the average pace I did it in after nailing such steeply ascending hills, I think I can say I’m fit to do the Adelaide August marathon this year in at least the 3:15 mark. (Previously I have been hoping to do it in sub 3 hours, but I have been sick on and off for about 6 weeks this year with a virusy type thing).

Sometime last week I cleaned and detailed my motorbike the best I ever have, and took heaps of photos of it. Click on the image below to see all of them.

A lot of my time in the last fortnight has been spent with the lovely Morv. She’s been on holidays which has been really fun but is back at work tomorrow We’ve been for a couple good hikes in Cleland, a DNB event with Technical Itch at the Colonel Light that Eddie organised, together with Darius & Sari, played a game called “pooker” which we’ve devised as a fair way of playing eight-ball together (not quite snooker, and not quite pool, rather more like eight-ball except I have to hit all the balls in in order and she doesn’t, since I’ve played about 1,000 times more pool than she has in her time it puts the game on a level playing-field) and just hung out together in general. The Technical Itch was awesome – I was expecting Tech. Itch to be heavy industrial type DNB but it wasn’t too bad, slightly progressive. We all had an awesome time, but all left by 2am as I think we’re getting old or something. Definitely have to go to some more DNB events in the near future. Morv took me to one of her friend of friends band that played at the Ales and Sails hotel (not somewhere I’d normally go!). The band was called the Lady Beatles – they were a group of chicks (quite young) that play Beatles songs, and their logo is of course a lady beatle! They were very impressive and very talented, it was just unfortunate that there were a few drunks in the pub that felt the need to dance in front of where we were sitting to watch the band. This would be fine if one of the 40 or so year old ladies had not decided to flash her tits, and shortly thereafter moon us. Thankfully I was able to use mind over matter combined with telekinesis to deflect the photons of light beaming from the said “moonie” such that I did not completely burn my retinas, and nor my sanity. I have not been having hallucenagenic nightmares since being mooned at point blank range by this drunk lady due to the quick action I took with the situation, and am trying to move on with my life. I haven’t even required professional counselling…yet.

I also still need to decide on a replacement light-fitting for my bedroom and would like to get some feedback of what you few readers there think of this one. Nai took me shopping for light-fittings and we found this one, which I’m intending on putting in alignment with my desk. So, what do you think? Please, leave a comment!

On another random note, one of my blog entries made it into the South Australian Rogaine Association June Newsletter!

What else have I been up to lately.. well the marking of assignments and stuff for uni is nearing complete. I finished all the “assignments” and just have to finish this marking 44 reports that are maximum of 2,000 words each, and then I’m done for good – can’t wait!! Speaking of which, I best get this done ASAP. It is so hard to motivate myself to mark assignments though. As my colleague Laura once said, it is “soul-destroying”.