I have a problem

I teach two hiphop classes on Monday. One is meant to be an intermediate class and the other is for beginners. The intermediate class was to be made up of the beginners from last year, who were getting to be quite good. Only about five of them came back though, and now my intermediate class is flooded with people slightly better than beginners but not as good as they should be to join the class.

If I was stern enough, I'd have immediately told the newcomers to change to the beginners class an hour later. But I'm a softie :-( I didn't put my foot down.

I thought I might push the beginner-type people really hard to get them up to the level needed to be. I think I can do it but I'll need at least another two months.

But now I have a problem. The advanced dancers have come up to me and said that they are bored with the class and feel it's unfair that all these newcomers are holding them back. They really want to stay in my class (they like me) but it is frustrating to go over the same material each week.

My options seem to be:

1. Rearrange the classes to form a beginner/beginner plus class and an advanced class.
   
2. Start an advanced class.
   
3. Come in half an hour early each week to work with the advanced people before class.
   
4. Suggest my advanced people go to another teacher's class.

The best option is number 2. That way I don't have the trouble of a huge beginners class and teaching everyone new dance routines. But I am extremely loathe to teach three hours a week. Having three classes increases the amount of choreography, preparation, organising, costume-buying and paperwork I have to do.

I really don't know what to do :-(

Glass pain

On Thursday, there was a fire drill at work. Fifteen floors of workers had to evacuate down to Swanston Street in the middle of the city. As we milled around in the 35°C heat, I decided to take an early lunch. I slipped out of the crowd and took a tram to check out the Orientation Week festivities at university.

I was very happy to see my friends there. Being a working adult, I now feel a bit isolated from the social action so I was very pleased to catch up with everyone. But all good things must come to an end and after half an hour, Damjan walked me back to the office.

"Bye Joan!" he said. "See you tomorrow."
"See you, Damjan! Thank you for walking with me." I waved happily and entered the glass revolving doors.

As I kept pace with the revolving doors, I was still absorbed in the pleasantness of my lunch break. I stepped out of the turnstile and immediately smacked my head against the glass -- I had stepped out one pane too early!

The people behind me gasped. "Are you okay?"

I laughed feebly and waved off the helping hands. How embarrassing...

That's what I get for procrastinating

My tutoring student cancelled at the last minute so tonight was the first completely agenda-less night I've had in some weeks.

I had no idea what to do.

I began tidying my room and got to the piles of paper left over from my Tasmania trip. I started flicking papers into different piles: Keep, Reuse, Recycle, Bin.

Suddenly, I found in my hands a photography magazine that I had borrowed from the library more than a month ago to take to Tasmania.

Uh oh.

I haven't had an overdue library book since high school. I wonder how big the fine will be?

It serves me right for not tying up loose ends immediately.

The Two Bag Phenomenon

Every morning, as I travel into the office, I notice that most women carry two bags: One handbag and the other is almost invariably one of those cardboard bags from places such as Harrods or Kookai.

"Well, that's just stupid," I thought. "Why don't they just get one bigger bag and that will leave one of their hands free? What's the point of having two little bags when one bag will do the job?" (I realise that having one large backpack will leave both hands free but it will also crinkle my shirt.)

And so, I have always scorned the victims of the "Two Bag Phenomenon".

This morning, I was trying to organise myself to carry an extra pair of shoes to work. You see, I have a lovely new pair of heels, which go nicely with my black skirt but I can't walk very quickly in the silly things. The plan was to wear comfortable shoes to and from the office and change into the heels when I got there. However, just by looking at it, I knew that the shoes would not fit into my satchel.

Luckily, I had won a L'Oréal giftpack a week ago and it came in a handy dandy flat-bottomed cardboard bag with "L'Oréal Paris" emblazoned on it. I poured out the make-up, hair and skincare products and dumped my heeled shoes into it.

"Don't worry," I reasoned to myself, "I'm not really carrying two bags. I'll get rid of my shoe bag as soon as I get to work. It's like carrying a gym bag to school when you have Phys Ed. I'm really carrying only one and a half bags."

My mum handed me my lunch. It was noodles. It had sauce in it. Instead of putting it in my satchel, it only made sense to make use of the flat bottom of my non-bag. (Remember the incident with the water bottle?) But I hesitated. Oh no. Putting my lunch into the non-bag would make it too useful, too functional, too necessary. My shoe non-bag would be verging on second bag status.

Closing my eyes, I quickly placed the lunch container in and rearranged my shoes on top. And then -- "To hell with it, I've gone this far, I might as well put my jacket in there too." Now there was no denying it -- the bag was completely integrated into my work uniform.

And that is how I fell (fashion) victim to the Two Bag Phenomenon. We're all doomed.

Stranger advice

I was waiting for my train to go home when a man sidled up to me and said, "Nihao." Nihao is "Hello" in Mandarin Chinese. I was quite surprised. I had never seen him before. He was a portly, balding Australian man in his fifties.

He smiled in an intensely friendly way. "Is that how you say it? Nihao?"

"Erm. Yes. Nihao," I said cautiously. Should I be worried here? He seemed to be keeping a polite distance.

"So how long have you been in Australia?" he asked.

"Oh, a long time now."

He looked a bit disappointed as I added, "19 years, in fact."

"You must have come over when you were a baby."

"Yes."

"My name is John. I worked in China for a while."

"Hello John."

He handed me a pamphlet. "I'd like to invite you to join our church at Melbourne University."

Then he talked about the wonderful people I could meet and activities I could do at this church. He talked for about two minutes and I kept nodding. I didn't really mind being evangalised to. It would have been a boring 10 minute wait for my train, otherwise.

"So please do come," he concluded earnestly. "Is that your train? No? Okay, let me give you my phone number." He scribbled it almost illegibly on the back of my phamplet.

I thought, "Hey, this isn't bad. He's nice enough, only a little bit pushy. I suppose you have to be, when you're recruiting for your church."

But then things got a bit weird. "Let me give you some advice just because I know," he inserted, just as I thought he was going to leave me alone. "Even if he's a millionaire, don't marry an Australian man. Marry your own, a Chinese man. It will save you a lot of trouble. You'll have the same food, the same culture..."

I gaped at him.

"Zaijian!" he nodded, waved and wandered off to look for his next victim.

Money, money, money

I sold my car today! It's a very nice car, quite new, runs perfectly. It's driven me to uni, parties, holidays and jobs for three years.

Why did I sell it then? For the past two weeks, I've been walking to the station and catching the train to work. I did the same coming home. I only used my car in the evening and on the weekend. It seemed pointless paying $1000 a year for car insurance and registration when I could borrow my mum's car out of business hours.

Now I get to make some pretense of being environmentally friendly by getting rid of my car and spending $1500 on public transport (ouch!).

I've come out of my stint of car ownership at break even. That is, I've sold the car for more than I've been paying mum and dad for it, if we ignore complications like running costs, interest and inflation. Now I've got all this money! Yay! More shares for me! It feels like an enforced savings plan has suddenly matured.

I am reminded of the debate on house ownership versus shares. A good proportion of financial planners say that instead of spending $400,000 or whatever on buying a house, you'll be much better off if you rented and invested the extra money in the sharemarket. It's far less risky to spread your money amongst equities. Just think -- would you buy $400,000 of shares in the one company? That's crazy! (Pretend you're not a millionaire.)

Still, financial planners encourage people to invest in houses. The simple reason is this: Very, very few people would have the discipline to put aside the money they would have paid to their mortgage. Let's face it, if you're renting, then the temptation to spend the extra money on having fun and buying new gadgets would be overwhelming. Buying a house and paying a mortgage is like having an enforced saving plan. People are forced to put money into an asset and in a few decades, they own something worth a few hundred thousand dollars.

So. Humans are weak. Buy a house.

Bullying at the library

I'm in a funny mood, not my usual cheerful self.

I was with my parents at our local library. There was a little boy, maybe three years old. He was quite cute, very inquistive, running around to investigate the behaviour of the automatic doors. I watched him for a bit and suddenly, I imagined pushing him really, really hard so that he would fall over and bounce on his head.

I know that's really cruel. Don't worry, I would never actually do it. It was just a bit of a thought experiment. Still, I think it would have been funny. If I could forget that he was a live, thinking, feeling creature, the simple physical response of a small unstable figure to being shoved by a bigger one would be visually amusing. Especially the bouncing part.

I did a silly thing

I was sitting at the train station, waiting for my 7:30 AM train to take me to work. I was thirsty, so I took a swig of my water bottle and plonked it back into my bag. After a minute, I felt a coldness in my lap. I lifted my bag and saw dark blue patches of wetness on jeans. How strange!

Furrowing my eyebrows, I looked at the bottom of my bag -- it was all wet! I yanked the flap open and pulled out the water bottle. Sure enough, the previously full bottle was empty and the bright yellow cap lounged rakishly on the lip. I reached into the bag and grimaced as I felt the wetness.

At that moment, the train arrived.

I'm quite proud of what I did next. Normally, after doing something extremely silly, I flail about uselessly, berating myself. However, this time I calmly began pulling everything out of the bag. I flipped the empty bag inside-out and shook out a drink bottle's worth of water. I wiped the bag down with my tissues and quickly began replacing its contents. Then I hopped onto the train.

I discovered an interesting thing that day. Nearly everything in my bag is waterproof. Isn't that wonderful?

Joan the high flyer

1. Since Monday, I've been at a training seminar. I've had fun learning, taking tests, eating catered food and hanging out with young environmental professionals from other companies. My company has paid the equivalent of half a semester's university fees for me to attend the three day course. I hope I'm worth it!
   
   
2. My university called me today to invite me to a breakfast function at the Hotel Sofitel. I get to hear a guest speaker and network with other university alumni.
   
   
3. Motorola called me to tell me that I had won second prize for a random competition I entered last year.

   Joan,
   Congratulations!
   You are a winner of the GIRL CRAZY Competition.
   Your answer to, "What is the best thing about being a girl?", was brilliant and has won you second prize which is a bag of L'Oreal products. The prize pack includes makeup, hair colour and skin care, to keep you looking your girly best."

   I think I wrote something about beating the boys at their own games (engineering, skating etc.) while looking gorgeous, goregeous, I tells ya. Mmm, very silly and very marketable...

Hello young lovers, wherever you are...

I was wandering around the center of my neighbourhood at 10 PM tonight. I had to return my library books.

It was a hot, balmy night. As I neared the gelati store, the world was suddenly populated by lovers. Under the warm pools of yellow lamplight, couples gazed at each other and shared gelati. The dark nooks of buildings were filled with low murmurings of sweet talk, committment and the slurping of gelati. Other partnerships leaned in together under the protection of trees. They held onto each other -- and their gelati cones. Another pairing walked towards me, their arms hooked together. Obviously, they were heading towards the gelati store.

I was a library-bag-carrying intruder in the field of love.

Tip for my beloved commenters

If you want to leave your name on a comment, click 'Other' as the option for signing off in the comments pop-up. A textbox will show up for you to fill in your name.

Only use the 'Anonymous' if you don't want to leave your name. Thankeroo!

I'm not a kid anymore, mum!

I decided to celebrate my entry into the world of Regular Income by applying for a new credit card. My old one, with its dinky $500 limit, felt more and more like a baby wading pool. I was ready to upgrade to the big person's pool now.

So I filled in the online application for a Virgin credit card. Yesterday, the magical envelope arrived. I eagerly tore it open and there it was, my new sexy red MasterCard. Hurrah! I flipped the card over and scrawled my signature on it. Now, I wonder what my credit limit was?

Carefully, I read through the accompanying letter. "Here's your shiny new Virgin Credit Card... blah blah... Remember you receive 4.9% p.a. for... blah blah... Your Credit Limit is $10,800..."

WHOA!

Alarm bells began ringing. $10,800? Gee, that seemed like an awful lot. I could pay my car registration, insurance, HECS fees all in one month -- and have enough left over to buy that scooter I've always wanted. Was this normal?

I wandered into my parents' bedroom. "Mum, what's the limit on your gold credit card?" She told me.

"Wow." I managed to say. "The limit on my new card is higher than that!"
"What is it?" she asked.
"$10,800."
"What?! That's ridiculous!" Mum looked shocked and offended. "What are they thinking? How can they give that much to a kid!"
I blinked. "Mum, I'm not a kid anymore. I have a job, a car, a share portfolio, a..."
"Don't be silly," she said dismissively. "You're still a kid."

She's right, of course. Until I do all my own laundry, I'm still a kid.

I rang the friendly Virgin Money team and got a friendly human response straight away. That's pretty impressive before 9 AM on a Saturday. I informed the customer service representative that my credit limit was Virgin on the ridiculous (haha) and that I wanted a decrease immediately.

"A decrease? That's easy!" she said cheerfully.

So now I have a limit less than one-fifth of the original assignment. I'm flattered that the good folks at Virgin Money thought I was ready for the deep end, but if you don't mind, I think I'll paddle around the kids pool for a bit longer.

This blog is temporarily out of order

Blogger has decided to change stuff so all my code needs to be changed. Bother. None of the comments are showing up. Hopefully, this will be fixed soon.

Edited 10:49 AM
Actually, the Blogger native commenting system is much better than before, now that I've tweaked my preferences. But the 'recent comments' hack doesn't work anymore :(

Post-It and Eat-It

Sometimes, my mum is too cute. I got home today and every container in our fridge had a little yellow Post-It note stuck on it. The labels say: Fried Noodle, Wings, Water Melon, Egg Plant, Fish Soup and Rice.

How did I show my appreciation? By snacking on watermelon and chicken wings, of course!

Creative consulting

It was my second day on the job and I am still yet to do any chargeable work. What does this mean? I'm working in an engineering consultancy, where every 15 minutes of our day must be accounted for. At the end of each week, we submit timesheets, which detail how many hours we worked on each job. The client is billed for the time we spend doing their work. So if I stop for a fifteen minute chat or spend time organising my desk, it's costing someone out there!

I admit that when this was first explained to me, it felt weird. But I've gotten used to the idea. This is how it was explained to the graduates:

"We are a consultancy. Our product is your labour, your skills, your time. That's all we have. So to stay in business, we must maximise the amount of time we spend on work for which we can charge clients."

I don't have much room to stuff around. As a junior professional, my target chargeability is 95%. So in a 37.5 hour week, I have less than two hours to play with. This target should be achievable because I don't have any administrative or marketing responsibilities.

I've already spent two days (15 hours) in unchargeable induction mode, which would normally mean I need 300 hours of straight work to meet my target. But the people around me aren't that unreasonable. My boss has cheerfully admitted that this week is a write-off for all of us new graduates.

In many ways, it's nice being in an environment where everyone is committed to working hard and pulling their weight. I couldn't in good conscience work inefficiently, knowing that someone is paying $90+ an hour for my junior engineering.

Don't worry. I expect that as I settle in, I will sneak in some fun time. Timesheets will just have to become, how shall we say it, a bit creative :)

Nice bunch of person

I had the best first day any graduate employee could ask for. My company is really looking after its 23 new graduates. Today was strictly an induction day -- no work. They handed us three folders of information about computer use, timesheets, floorplans, organisational charts, social club and so on. We have all been assigned buddies and will begin attending training sessions soon.

More importantly, they gave us cake and fruit for morning and afternoon tea and those little triangle sandwiches for lunch. I got a Freddo Frog and we played teamwork and communication games. Then they let us go home 90 minutes early!

Everyone was friendly, talkative and active, a very nice bunch of people. They hired me so the implication is I'm a nice bunch of person too. Hooray!

Cooking up a milestone

While in Tasmania, I made some decisions. I decided to make noodle soup. I bumbled around the supermarket and made my friends pay for carrot, mushroom, lettuce, pork mince, eggs and chilli. Back at the hostel, I directed my kitchen hands, "Cut the carrots to yea big." I chose a pot. I guessed the order the ingredients went into the boiling water.

And all this while, I was marvelling at my decision-making. I have never guessed my way through a meal before, let alone had kitchen hands who behaved as if I had some sort of authority. It was... quite thrilling. I was mimicking what I saw my mum do in the kitchen every day. Cooking this meal made me feel more like an adult than organising the administrative details of this holiday. Strange, eh?

Do not be fooled, though. This newfound decision-making-prowess has done nothing to change my "Kitchen Klutz" status. On that night, I exploded dried noodles onto the stove and cracked a raw egg all over the bench. My kitchen hands swooped to clean the mess without batting an eyelid.

The meal was a success, although there wasn't enough salt.

Today, we made home-made pesto pasta. Even though I was the one who chopped the basil, crushed the pinenuts, added the cheese, sprinkled the salt and pounded it all together, Damjan was clearly the chef. "That looks right now, Joan. Now we'll pour in the olive oil." He made all the decisions -- I was provided little more than mechanical power.

So, I have concluded that nearly all the "work" in cooking is in the decision-making.

I achieve another lifetime milestone tomorrow. It will be my first day in my post-uni related-to-my-degree full-time job. I am ascending the ranks of adulthood!

...What am I going to wear?

Joel and Damjan get dumped

One of the holiday highlights was sea kayaking in the twilight at Freycinet National Park.

Kayaking, well. I suck. Damjan and I were always the last people to catch up to the group, trailing by a long way. I was incredibly frustrated, almost in tears. I don't like slowing people down. Damjan tried to calm me down. He'd put down his paddle and try to persuade me just to enjoy the sea and scenery.

And then it started raining with thunder and lighting and the waves got big and my eyes stung with saltwater and I couldn't see and we were further behind and I was wet.

At last, we pulled into a small bay. Damjan helped me pull my wet outer-clothes off. I was too upset to be much help.

I was somewhat cheered up when the kayaking guides greeted us with hot chocolate, tea and coffee, as well as chocolate brownies. There's nothing like chocolate brownies to calm a girl down.

This time when we got back into the kayaks, I sat in front and Damjan got to steer. This was a big relief because I could barely figure out the paddling bit, let alone control the boat at the same time.

I immediately felt better. The waves seemed calmer. There was no salt in my eyes. The water was warm. The rain fell vertically, pattering onto ocean surface, instead of horizontally into my eyes. I began to sing sea songs -- "Beyond the Sea", "Under the Sea" and "Drunken Sailor". I really don't know that many sea shanties.

We saw dozens of little silver fish suddenly break out of the sea and leap over the surface again and again and again.

Damjan, you're right, the scenery really is lovely.

We were all soaking and cold when we reached the shore. Ah! What we wouldn't give for a hot shower and clean clothes! But it was not to be for Damo and Joel.

Joel was splashing in the ocean. One of the guides saw him and said, "What's happening there? Is someone going to get dumped in?" Joel's ears perked up when he heard this. He leapt onto the shore and bore down towards Damjan. Vera, James and I barely had time to register them as they sped past and wrestled each other into the sea.

"What are you doing?! [sputter] [sputter]"
"Get off me Damo! Damnit, you're heavy!"

Hahahaha!

They came out of the sea, saturated and grinning. What a sight we all were, standing behind the car, shivering. The people in the pub in front were probably laughing. Except for me, everyone had towels wrapped around their waists. Joel didn't care. He wanted beer! So he wandered into the pub, wearing his towel-skirt and not much else. Apparently, he got slapped on his behind :)


Joan versus Freycinet National Park.


Joel rewards himself with a post-dumping beer.


A beautiful sunset to end our kayaking adventure.

Busting the boomgate

I'm not going to blog my whole Tasmania holiday, which is a mercy to my holiday "workload" -- and also to my friends, who probably don't want me exposing our silliness to the entire world! :)

But I'd like to tell you about our Australia Day (26 January) in Hobart.

We had arrived in Hobart two days before and checked into a backpackers hostel. We've been trying to save money by living in hostels but silly me forgot to factor in the cost of three days of city parking.

We had two cars. James parked on the street, which meant that ever few hours, he would dash outside and put 90 cents into the meter. Vera's car found its way into a paid carpark, which was convenient, secure and expensive at $12 a day. We hadn't budgeted for that!

The ever-resourceful, ever-cunning Joel devised a grand plan to scam the carpark. We would leave the car untouched in there and use James's car to get around Hobart. On the third day, we would show up and pretend we had lost our parking ticket. Then we'd pay the maximum daily charge of $12, instead of $36 for three days. Brilliant!

The five of us viewed this scheme with varying degrees of comfort but in the end, as long as it was Joel doing the fast talking, we didn't mind too much.

So we had a carefree few days in Hobart wandering the docks, caving and eating steak. Then the Australia Day holiday came and it was time to leave.

When I woke up on Australia Day, James greeted us with the welcome news that we probably wouldn't have to worry about street carparking, it being a holiday and all. Hurrah. Then I wondered whether or not the paid carpark would be open. My gut feeling was that it wouldn't be -- who would pay for parking when there was free street parking all around?

This turned out to be a crucial question because Vera's car ended up being trapped in the carpark! What to do? We had accommodation waiting for us in Bicheno that night. We had to leave.

Our options were:

• Drive to Bicheno and waste the next day (and two lots of petrol) to come back and pick up the car.
  
• Leave Joel and Vera behind in Hobart, while Damjan, James and I went on to Bicheno. They would catch up the next day.
  
• Pay the call-out fee so that our car could be released out of hours.

In the end, we resigned ourselves to forking out the $33 call-out fee.

We called up at 9:40 AM and began waiting for the 24-hour security guard to arrive. We sat patiently in the alleyway outside. An hour passed. We had morning tea. Soon, an extended round of hackey sack began. (As the morning wore on, we all got better, so according to the Law of Global Conservation of Hacky Sack Ability, someone out there was getting much worse.)

We called the security guard for the third time. The guard informed us that he had no idea what time he could come out because he was chasing alarms across the city.

We decided to forget our frustration for a while and settle down for lunch in the nearby Franklin Square. An otherwise quiet (despondent) picnic was perked up when Damjan treated us all to ice-cream.

Finally, Joel's call to the guard triggered good news. Hooray! The guard had arrived. Our troubles were over. We could finally get on with our holidays!

Joel and Vera skipped into the carpark. The three of us waited outside. And waited. What was happening? How long did it take to drive a car out?

Suddenly, Joel ducked out and asked if anyone had tools on them. Amazingly, James pulled out a complete toolkit from his car. What was going on?

It turned out that although the garage door was open, the boomgate was stopping Vera from driving out. We watched as Joel and the guard tried to dismantle the boomgate. Vera hovered about anxiously. To be so close, yet so far!

Finally, after half an hour, the guard was ready to leave. "Sorry, kids. Looks like the car's going to stay here." AAAAAARGH! We were all frustrated. There was no way we were going to pay the call-out fee after this fiasco.

"I kept waiting for the security guard to say something about the fee," the normally easy-going Joel told me. "I was primed, primed for a confrontation. I've never been so mad before." We were so going to rip into the carpark attendants the next day for wasting our holiday with their incompetence.

And so it went like this. I used my mobile to call Bicheno and cancel two of the accommodation places. Joel and Vera checked back into our Hobart hostel. After transferring maps and food to Vera and Joel, we waved goodbye and drove up to Bicheno.

Well, we reasoned to ourselves, at least we saved ourselves $33.

Joel and Vera arrived at lunch time the next day. "Well? Well? Did you tell them off, didja?" we asked.

"Erm, not exactly." Joel looked sheepish. "It ended up costing us $60. They made us pay for parking on Australia Day too."

"What?" we gasped. "Didn't you yell at them for keeping our car trapped all day?"

"It was hard to. They had records of the day we came in. It was hard to act indignant and self-righteous just after they had caught us out lying about our lost ticket. So we just paid it."

Hahaha! Oh, the irony of it!


Damjan looking despondent in front of a locked carpark.


The alleyway where we waited all morning.


Vera tries to beat the boomgate into submission.

Suicide cells

I'm back from Tassie. I had a wonderful time cooking with friends, kayaking, caving, hiking and sitting in the car as others chauffered me around the state. I'll blog properly soon but right now, I really need to get to bed.

I will say, though, that I'm sunburned. It's the first time. Joel tells me that we should all be thankful for our sunburn. Skin cells mutate under excessive exposure to UV light. To prevent themselves from replicating and spreading the damaged DNA (forming a cancer), the skin cells commit suicide. They sacrifice themselves for us! Now that I know this, I feel bad for neglecting my skin. There, there. I'll look after you from now on...