/karen/

Trivialities

Friday, 09 April, 2004

• The real estate agent says that the leak in our roof has to be fixed by strata management. Given that strata management are also supposed to fix our fence and our aerial, and they're also responsible for cleaning the gutters (which they have never done in the 15 months we've been living here), I feel quite pessimistic about our chances of getting a speedy repair done. Please pray that it won't rain like it did last weekend; it doesn't seem to leak unless there's heavy rain.

• All the married people on staff are expecting babies except for Richard and Bronwyn. Ben and I are starting to feel out.
• Next Thursday we are going to Moore College to pick up the application form for next year. Tim and Liz lent me their handbook so I have started reading it. I feel slightly nerdy but then I also having a good grasp of such things, having worked in student administration for two years, and, anyway, it's about time I found out more about the place, given that we want to go there. Moore College has a lot of interesting rules and regulations (interesting in that they are probably things that everyone should do but may not necessarily be mindful of), eg. “Students are advised in the event of the announcement of their engagement, that it is an act of courtesy to inform the Principal ...” or “Students are encouraged in the matter of dress to show consideration for others in the College community. Students should dress appropriately in each situation. This includes a requirement to wear footwear, other than thongs, in the Kitchen and Dining Room”. They have their own style guide for writing essays (that section takes up 8 pages of the handbook). The library has a borrowing limit of 10 items and normal undergrads can only take stuff out for one week. There is also summer “homework” that must be done—eg. reading boks of Calvin's Institutes (you must sign a statement when you return from break saying that you have read them carefully). On the one hand, thinking about doing all that stuff for the degree sounds rather painful, juggling study (exams, assignments, reading) and ups and downs of life. But on the other hand, it is also really exciting because the subjects look so interesting. I have to remember my passion for learning and rekindle my dedication to hard work; maybe it just sounds exhausting now because I'm feeling so snowed under with MTS. If we don't get into college, Ben was thinking of doing MTS for another year—maybe somewhere else. I'd probably go to work full-time. And then we'll probably try again.
• Yesterday I was walking in to Uni and met a girl who asked to walk with me because she was afraid of swooping magpies. We didn't get swooped and we had a good conversation all the way from the Siberia parking lot down to McKinnon. Turns out she became a Christian a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the walk wasn't long enough to ask her how it happened but it was encouraging to have met her and I hope I run into her again.
• I was watching bits of The Animatrix on Tuesday night (when I should have been designing a slideshow for the Thursday University Easter service). My favourite is probably Program which you can download for free if you have the bandwidth. I also like Final Flight of the Osiris which is the prologue to The Matrix Reloaded and Detective Story. I didn't realise until I watched the extra features that Kid's Story and Detective Story were done by the guy who did Cowboy Bebop and that the guy who did Matriculated did Rugrats. The DVD includes a fascinating documentary called “Scrolls to Screen: The History and Culture of Anime” and it highlights the influence that anime has had over the Matrix films.
• I'm thinking of going to anime club tomorrow since it's their AGM and every other time I have been meaning to go, I haven't. I've never been before and I don't know anyone who is going so I'm just going to rock up by myself with a bucket of popcorn.
• Singing in choirs is cool and, if I had more time, I'd join one. I realised how much I missed it when some people at my church got together to rehearse a hymn in four-part harmony for today's Good Friday service. When I was in Year 10, my friend Ynping dragged me along to this Opera House celebration concert which was made up of volunteers—mostly recruited through music camps. We had an 800-voice choir and the largest orchestra ever to fit on the concert hall stage, and we sang selections from Carmina Burana, Mahler Symphony No. 2 and Zadok the Priest. In the latter years of high school and the early years of Uni, I kept participating in these combined choral concerts because they were so much fun and you got to sing really challenging stuff like Belshazzar's Feast, Mozart's Requiem, Haydn's The Creation plus a lot of contemporary Australian music that I'd never heard of before. It really stretched the vocal chords and gave them a good work out; I'm sure that a lot of notes I could hit then, I cannot hit now (notes around the upper end of the scale—high C, etc.)
• Watching Mona Lisa Smile reminded me of high school. Ben didn't like it (maybe because it features a mostly-female cast and it's about female things). I enjoyed it because it dealt, in part, with what it's like to be a girl in a world where being a girl meant specific rules and roles. It is also gorgeous to look at, highlighting all the beauty and sophistication of 1953 (against a score by Rachel Portman who won an Academy Award for Emma and whose music, personally, I find rather boring). I also found it interesting that one of the girls in the movie says to the teacher (played by Julia Roberts), “You taught us to look beyond the image but you never saw beyond the image yourself.” She chooses marriage and housewifedom over law school and I liked that; even though the film seemed to be promoting feminism and the “You can have both a career and a family” mentality, this character made her choice simply because that's what she knew she wanted.

Twitter

Blinks:

Feeds

• Full posts
• Full posts and del.icio.us feed
• Excerpts only
• del.icio.us feed only
• All comments

Social media

• Flickr
• Goodreads
• Last FM
• LibraryThing
• Listal
• Pinterest
• Ravelry
• This Is My Jam
• Twitter