Boredom again.

So, here I am. After a month of neglect, I'm back at this blogging business. By which I mean I finally ran out of things to do for long enough that I had to resort to posting random thoughts on the internet. And guess what? It's not even midnight yet! Something must be terribly terribly wrong with the world for this to happen.

Normally if I run out of things to do, I'd be going to sleep. And considering I've got an algebra test tomorrow, that's probably what I should do. But considering I'm being paid $70 to sit and look after the UNSW Sunsprint track from 3am-7am, that's not likely to happen. So instead here I am, trying to waste the time between now and then (some four hours, which could probably be spent productively somehow). So, yeah. No sleep for me tonight!

I really don't have much else to say. I guess the election is on on Saturday. So there's that. I heard a couple of friends were going to play an election drinking game - for every five seats that Labor loses, they take a shot. Meaning that if the ALP wins, then that's a minimum of 15 shots. I think they figure that if Tony Abbott wins, then the world isn't worth living in anyway. I tend to agree with them on that, since Tony Abbott is an idiot.

Okay, I'm really out of things to say now. I'mma just go make myself a cup of tea and find some other way to distract myself from the relentless march of time.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 13: When in Rome...

Well, it's official. The Contiki Chronicles are now officially more than a year out of date.

Also, I'm totally out of Rome-related names for posts, so tomorrow might be a bit unimaginative.

So, first thing: The Vatican City.

Well, I didn't actually go into the Vatican. I'd already been before so I figured I'd save myself the thirty euro and get myself some lunch instead. I wandered down some random street near the Vatican, looked at about six or seven different restaurant/cafe places, and finally settled on the second or third place I found, because they did lasagne and lasagne is God's gift to humanity. So I went in, seated myself, ordered the lasagne, and was served with a lump of almost pure carbs. It was glorious. There wasn't any meat however, since the lasagne I ordered was not alla bolognaise, meaning it was more or less just pasta sheets and cheese layered on top of each other so densely I was convinced it had its own gravity. Like I said, glorious.

After that incredibly satisfying meal, I wandered back up to the Vatican to wait for the rest of the tour. Just across the road from St. Peter's Square, I spied this sign outside a souvenir shop:

Apparently Papal Blessings are for sale. Who knew.

Anyway, I bought a shot glass of some description, and then promptly needed to go to the toilet. After about fifteen minutes of searching for a map, I found one, which then told me the toilets were on the complete other side of the square. And did I mention that it was incredibly hot and sunny? And that there is almost NO shade in the entirety of the square (which is more of an ellipse, to be honest)? Well, there's that. 

That's the view of the square from where the only map was. Yeah, it's pretty fucking big.

So I went to the toilet, and when that was over and done with, I figured I'd take a look at the square itself. Or, more accurately, the only thing of interest in the entire square. Which is the big ass obelisk in the centre of it.

Yup, that's the one. That thing is over four thousand years old, and was taken from Egypt by the Ancient Romans who just chucked it up in a bunch of places at different times until it was finally moved to this Square. It's been there ever since, and I think the Vatican likes it because the Catholic Church seems to have some kind of addiction to obelisks. Seriously, those things are fucking everywhere. 

Anyway, have some facts about the Vatican which I couldn't throw smoothly in anywhere else in this post:

The Vatican city itself is a separate country located entirely within the city of Rome. At 0.44 square kilometres, it's the smallest country in the world, although it somehow manages to narrowly miss out on being the least populated with around 800 residents. It's just beat out by the Keeling Islands, and the Pitcairn Islands, with populations of 550 and 66, respectively.

More importantly though, the Vatican City is the world centre of Catholicism. It's where the Pope lives, and where a number of other high ranking clergymen reside. It also happens to be protected by a very famous mercenary force: The Swiss Guard. The Pontifical Swiss Guard, as the ones who serve the Vatican are officially called, are directly responsible for the safety of the Pope, and serve as the Vatican's de facto military force.

And that's enough facts since I honestly can't remember anything else that's useful, and I'm getting bored of trudging through Wikipedia articles on this.

After catching up with the rest of the tour, we all hopped back on the bus and were taken on a short driving tour of the city. Here are some photos, if you want some descriptions then you'll probably have to wait because they'll be coming at some unspecified later point.

And then we got off the bus. Like I said, it was a fairly short tour, and to be fair, a lot of the things in Rome are pretty close together. Also, that was when we started our walking tour, which was a bit longer.

So there we were, just outside the Coliseum, where the Ancient Romans would make gladiators and other things fight each other for their own amusement. We headed off down the street, past the old Roman forum, and a bunch of other ruins which I can't really remember what they were, and down that long street/boulevard/avenue/thoroughfare that led to the Coliseum, we arrived at Il Vittoriano, which is a big ass fucking huge monument to the guy who united Italy.

We walked past the big white monument building, down some street, down some other street, and possibly down three or four more streets until we arrived at the Trevi Fountain, which is really famous for some reason:

Apparently the water of this fountain is enchanted or some shit, and according to some legends, drinking it allows you to regrow your virginity or something. I'm not prepared to testify to the truth of that claim, but I know that the water is, in fact, drinkable. All of the public fountains and taps in Rome are, which is pretty cool. Also, apparently the pizza from the shops around the fountain are meant to be really good or something. I didn't try any so I don't really know.

After some more walking, there was this:

I honestly can't remember what this was, and I don't actually care all that much either.

Then there were these:

It's just a bunch of stairs, but the Spanish Steps are really famous, again, for reasons I can't quite explain. However, they're meant to be romantic for some reason and as such are a really popular destination for couples, and hawkers looking to sell stuff to couples.

Finally, we reached out penultimate destination on the walking tour, and also one of the few places which is actually pretty cool: The Pantheon.

This photo gets to be in large because that's how cool this place is.

The Pantheon is a temple. Except this temple isn't dedicated to any one God, instead it is consecrated to every God. Or at least every God of Ancient Rome. Inside is a bunch of murals dedicated to the various Gods, and also a bunch of tombs of some really cool people. Furthermore, there's no electric lighting in the entire building (or at least the public areas). Instead, all the light is provided by this:

What's that, you ask? Why, it's a hole in the roof. It's surprisingly effective at keeping the entire inside of the building well lit for admittedly brief periods of time. And I imagine it must be kind of annoying when it rains, but I still think it's pretty cool.

A block or two past the Pantheon, there's another square, which contains a fountain. A fountain which I only have a somewhat unsatisfying picture of, but a fountain nonetheless.

Of you're a fan of the works of Dan Brown, then you might recognise this fountain when I tell you its name: The Fountain of the Four Rivers. This is the fountain in which Robert Langdon engages in an epic underwater struggle against the bad guy whose name I can't remember. As awesome as that is, I can tell you now that such a battle would have looked kind of ridiculous in real life, since the water is barely waist deep.

It was in that square that we had dinner and then boarded the bus back to the campsite. It was a long day with a lot of walking, although tomorrow was actually even longer. And I think I also figured out what I'm going to call the next chapter, so there's that.

Contiki Chronicles, Day 12: On the road again...

Two things:

1. It's now been so long since this trip happened that I'm relying rather heavily on my stock of photos to remind me what exactly happened.

2. After looking over said photos, I realise day 12 was not a particularly interesting day. I think. It was a travel day, but I don't think Florence and Rome are too far apart, so this might have also been the day we went to the Vatican. Well, the day that everybody else went to the Vatican. I had lasagne instead.


Either way, I'm going to use this opportunity to just get a couple of things straight.

This was Day 12. We started on Day 1, July 10th. The day in which we travelled from Florence to Rome was July 21st.

Here are the Day sheets from Florence and Rome, just in case there was any confusion at all.

Florence:

Rome:

Rome was kind of a blur anyway, so I'm probably just gonna fit all the stuff that happened in those three days into the next two posts anyway.

Insomnia

It turns out I haven't named any of my posts "Insomnia" yet. Which is weird, considering it seems to be the motivating factor for about 70% of all my posts. Kind of like this one.

So here I am, at 3am, having just failed to get to sleep for the last two hours, writing a blog post. I'm honestly struggling to come up with things to talk about past "what I've been doing for the last <insert time since last blog post>". I'm not really sure many people appreciate getting nothing more than brief snapshots into the train wreck that is my life. Especially since I can't really say much had changed. Exams are almost over, I guess. My last one - for Comp - is on Wednesday, and I'm feeling pretty good about it, which is more than I could have said for Physics and Maths. After that, well, I'll be off trying to find stuff to do for almost four weeks again. It will probably involve copious amounts of drinking.

But enough of that. My life really isn't that interesting. Makes me wonder why I have a blog in the first place, to be honest. The answer is because I was convinced my brain held hidden gems that were just waiting to be thrust out onto the interwebs for the viewing pleasure of at least like, a dozen people. Maybe a dozen and a half. The reality is that if those gems do exist, my brain filtering system decides to keep me from thinking about those instead of the flood of crap that it's actually meant to keep out. And so I end up with all sorts of useless junk going through my mind at 3am in the morning, thus resulting in this blog post.

Hmm... Two paragraphs so far, I must be on a roll today. Maybe I can keep it going if I just keep typing and not think about the fact that nobody in their right mind would want to read the garbage that spews forth from my brain like some kind of limitless trash fountain into the small confined area that is my blog. But meh, screw those people. I never enjoyed talking to right-minded people anyway. I only like crazy people. They're much more entertaining, so long as you can keep them from delivering severe bodily harm to people. People who aren't you, that is. Or people who you care about. Or anybody who isn't a person you have a severe hatred for. But in every other case, that shit is hilarious.

Let's see... what else has been going on? I may have mentioned this already, but I've been playing some crazy amount of Borderlands 2 recently. I've kind of already finished the game though. Twice. I'm planning on getting the DLC for it as soon as the bank gets its shit together and sends me my debit card. Which might not be for a while, since they apparently managed to send it to a totally different branch to the one that they were supposed to. Hopefully I can get it by Friday though, since dropping by the bank on campus might be a bit of a hassle once I'm back home in Orange. Not that I'm opposed to a three and a half hour drive, mind you. It just doesn't seem practical from my viewpoint is all.

Also, I've now watched all of both existing seasons of Sherlock, and I can now see what all the fuss is about. It's a good show. I'm currently two episodes into Breaking Bad, but I seem to be taking my time with this show, not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the awkwardly-lengthed episodes or the fact that despite my outward appearance, I'm just not that into crystal meth. Or more likely, it's the fact that I only watch it when it's past midnight and then I need to go to sleep shortly after. Probably that last one.

I should probably stop typing now. I get the impression the quality of my writing has dropped somewhat dramatically over the last three paragraphs. Although I'm still not tired enough to sleep, which is kind of bullshit. And I still have almost nothing to write about. Maybe if I just completely abstained from computers for three weeks I'd have more interesting tales to tell. As it is, most of my time which could otherwise be spent experiencing adventures and other tales of derring-do is instead consumed by my apparently voracious appetite for banality. Whoo.

And with that charming end note, I'm off to try my luck at being tired elsewhere on the Internet. Farewell, all ye who venture here!

I don't know what this post is supposed to be.

But I've already committed to writing it, so I might as well keep going.





...Or not. I've been here for about fifteen minutes and I still haven't written anything.

Oh well.

The Kind of Okay Gatsby

I just got back from watching The Great Gatsby. Y'know, the story is really profound in a number of ways. Essentially, it's the story of a man who refuses to let go of the future which he's constructed for himself, and how his staunch refusal to allow anything to deviate from his own preconceived destiny eventually tears his life apart. The story actually resonates with me a little bit, and watching the film, it made me think that perhaps I should be taking some kind of lesson from Gatsby, whose relentless pursuit of a perfect love blinds him to the world around him. Gatsby creates a fantasy for himself which  includes only himself and the object of his desire, and when that starts to drift away, so too does his entire life.

...But, on the other hand, I don't really care that much.



Oh, and the movie was pretty good, too.

Life Update

So it suddenly occurred to me how long it's been since I made a blog post. Not that that's ever really been much of a reason to make one in the past, but I'm kind of bored and in a procrastinating mood, so why not update my one or two regular readers as two what the hell has been going on in my life since the last blog post.... Wait.

It's only been three weeks? WHAT MADNESS IS THIS. Hrm. I don't know if it's a good thing or not that three weeks is starting to look like a long time from where I'm standing. Either way, I've already started this post, so I might as well finish it.

So a lot has happened, I guess. I think I've finally managed to get my Uni work under control (and it's now the end of week 8. Eek!), and it seems to be going well so far. I still don't like Maths and Physics, but I'm pretty sure that's more because of when the lectures are than anything else. Comp and Engineering are going pretty well - we just got our project for Computing, which is to represent a game (similar to Settlers of Catan) in code as a tutorial group, and then in pairs to create an AI to play that game (and hopefully win).  It looks like a lot of fun.

Exams are on next month, and I'm kind of quietly freaking out about them, but I figure I can get most of my work up to date well before then and in time to cram furiously for the harder ones. After that is the end of semester, yay!

Let's see... what else is going on? I've recently been playing Injustice for iOS, because Superheroes beating each other up - who wouldn't like that? I'm not playing the much more advanced console version because I a) have no console on which to play and b) have no TV to connect the console up to. So I'm stuck on my iPad. Which I guess isn't too bad, really. I started reading the Dark Tower series by Stephen King back in O-Week and I still haven't touched the first book since then, but I'll get around to it. Eventually. I've also been sucked in to League of Legends and re-sucked in to Minecraft, which is slightly worrying, but I kind of don't really care for the moment.

I still don't have a girlfriend, although I can't exactly say that I've been trying very hard (or at all). It also occurred to me just the other day in the club, exactly how socially broken I am. Which is kind of depressing and something I really don't actually have any idea what to do about. Did I ever mention I was made a Social Assistant for College? Well then... that happened. And I've also, for various reasons had to cut out a large part of my personal life, but that's something I plan to eventually return to.

And so there you have it. My social life is a mess, my private life is also a mess, but at least my academic life isn't completely a mess. I still pretend like my conscious mind has control over my actions when in reality I continually knowingly make stupid decisions because I apparently have no impulse control, and I think I may also have a slight alcohol problem. Namely that I have none except for cheap boxed wine.