On the Shoulders of Midgets

Day 184 - Post Melbourne Edition

David Guetta vs. The Egg - Love Don't Let Me Go (Walking Away) (Joachim Garraoud & David Guetta's Fuck Me I'm Famous Mix)

I dare you to find a longer song title.

With a song title like that, you're expecting some epic, ghetto blasting, stuff so good that not even Chuck Norris can stand it.
Alas, it's some mediocre commercial house track that is just as crappy as the others. Bring me back to the old school trance anthems thank you very much.

Anyway, this is the Post-Melbourne edition, though there aren't many editions to speak of so why does this post have to be so special? No particular reason. It's just that, now, I've somehow found the time to write up a blog post.

In fact, as I look back to my previous posts, my last post was 141 days ago (nearly 5 months), and I hadn't seen Phantom of the Opera yet.

All you Melbournites have actually seen snippets of my life since then. After all, I have been back. And I miss the place muchly.

So, a rundown since my last post:

- I have been back to Melbourne twice now, once in March for 10 days, more recently in the mid year for 17 days. I'll talk about that in more detail later.

On the Phantom
I did go see Phantom of the Opera - quite a good experience. I love the music, and couldn't stop singing afterwards (probably to the annoyance of housemate Sheryll and her collegue Vashti, poor dears). I now have a yearning to go see this on Broadway (where I believe it is a permanent fixture?), perhaps in time.

On Work
Work is still treating me pretty well - it is relaxing at times, challenging at others, and each day is never the same. Pretty soon it will be the midyear review, so it'll be good to gather my thoughts soon to describe my expierences and achievements over the past 6 months.

On Magic: The Gathering
The Alara Reborn prerelease for Magic: The Gathering (weekend of April 25th-26th?) was the last time I ever played a game of Magic. Yes, I have stopped playing Magic. This will be a cause for celebration for many of you who know me, a cause for concern for a few others, undoubtedly a minority.
The factors that lead to my stopping really come down to an unfortunate set of circumstances. The weekly Magic events that are run in Perth are a Tuesday night draft, and a Friday night draft.
Thanks to my work hours, I can only make it to every second Friday night draft, and the late night Tuesday drafts. However, whenever I go to the Tuesday night draft, I find that I cannot sleep, and am buggered for the next day. So, I simply stopped going - I value my sleep too much.
Then, for some reason, I found myself not going to the Friday night drafts either. This I don't know why - it may be because I simply couldn't be bothered heading into the city, even though I just spent the entire day at home.
Hence, I stopped playing.

I don't think I had as much of an incentive to play here in Perth as opposed to in Melbourne. I think that I had many good friends that played Magic back in Melbourne, so it was harder for me to let it go. Of course, this was not the case in Perth - and I didn't really make any friends in the Perth Magic playing community either. So it was easier for me to stop.

It's proven to be quite liberating.

On Daily Routines
By now, I suspect that I would have settled into some sort of routine. For a while, it consisted of waking up, going to work, coming back, eat something crap, spend the rest of the night watching anime (and hence not blog posting), stalk some people on Facebook and blogs, then go to sleep.
Since coming back from Melbourne recently, however, that seems to have changed:

I make sure I cook on the weekend. I will cook to great excess, so that I will have enough to eat for the remainder of the week, and not have to spend time cooking when I come home at night. This allows me to do other things throughout the week.
Nearly every day after work I head to the gym, except for on Wednesdays, where I head to the gym after playing soccer at work. Also on Wednesdays, I go to a bible study group that Deborah Lin (friend who I met last year at vacation work!) introduced me to. I quite enjoy their company - the meetings are nothing like what I'm used to, but I am learning a lot more about the Bible.
Every other day at night, I do other things, which I will go into later.

I think this routine, especially going to the gym every night, is a lot better for me, and my outlook on life as well. Actually, it's just been really positive in recent weeks....

On Anime
For a while, I really got into watching a bunch of anime that I got off my cousin Jason on one of my house visits. In the period of about two weeks, I finished:
Nodame Cantible
Romeo x Juliet (which, after a wiki search, I found that it was the only ever adaptation of Romeo & Juliet for a television series!)
Clannad: After Story (which, being about a guy raising his daughter after his wife had died, really made me cry - for some reason, I felt like I could relate to that, even though I've never had a wife who died, or kids....creepy)
Spice and Wolf (which is simply awesome - any anime that talks about fractional reserve banking, margin lending, asymmetrical information and game theory, all with a really really really really cute wolf girl, has got to be awesome)

On Melbourne
I said it once, I'll say it again. I really miss Melbourne. It was great seeing everyone again, and even after two weeks, I wasn't able to meet everyone!
Yes, that's pretty much what I did in Melbourne for two weeks - meet up with people. It ain't a bad thing.
A few notes I should say to people, that I can say publicly:

To all the DoTA players - Andrew, thanks for organising the LAN, and it's great that we've all been able to play over the wonders of the internet.
I put forth an invitation to all else who play - please PM me for the name of a Hamachi server where we can gather and DoTA.
Eventually, I'm going to see if I can organise a time where a whole bunch of ppl can be online at the same time - both Perth and Melbourne people. It will be a massive LANfest

To Sylvia and Ewan - once again, I apologise for not being able to come to the wedding, but from all reports and pictures, it seems like you had a fantastic day. No, no amount of Settlers can ever compare to the awesomeness of that day. Congratulations, and all the best now into the future.

Steph - I still haven't gotten around to getting 774 streaming over the internet, but even if I did, I wouldn't able to hear you on air because you've probably gone home by the time I get to listen. And I don't really get to listen at work :(. Also, dreadfully sorry that I didn't ring, and didn't reply to your message regarding Stern Hu - I was quite busy, I think you'll understand why ;).

2nd Floorers - Apologies! I didn't get to meet up with you guys at all except for the brief random run-ins around the city and whatnot. Next time, I will try to make dumplings happen.

Old Scotch - same goes! Next time, I shall be more diligent. Or maybe I just need more time.

And, that's about it.

On Love
Last, but not least, I have found love. Or more like, love unexpectedly found me some time back in March.
But that's a story best left for another post. Right now, I want to call her. If she's still awake.

posted by Celestial Vision @ 9:45 pm