Tag Archives: community

lazy sunday

Today I woke up to the snores of an Irishman. From across the room in the hostel, but still. Very loud. The Americans who woke up to the noise were vocal about their displeasure. I merely lay there waiting and figuring out how to spend my day.

See this is the thing about being in a country that isn’t cheap when you have no real money, you can’t just head off into the void and do whatever, confident in your ability to make it out financially unscathed. Relatively I mean. If you go ahead and crash a scooter even in a country where they’re as cheap as Armenians well yes you do have to pay a bit even then. You need to plan out your day so it’ll work.

Having not a tonne of money in Sydney means I’m spending a lot of time in parks and libraries. It seems a waste to just hang out here at the hostel reading, but too expensive to justify going to have afternoon beers by myself. It’s nice out, 20 degrees during the day, so it’s no great hardship to go sit in the sun. Today I found the local branch of the city public library (as opposed to the state library I was in yesterday) and read some comics.

Also, I got a SIM card and now have a phone number. Not that I use the phone part of my phone very often, especially when I don’t know anyone in this city, but it’s probably good for my future employer (assuming the visa comes through eventually) to have some way of contacting me.

Yesterday I found a really swank comic shop and a decent game store. I’m going to wait until I have an apartment before I start buying books/comics/games, but gamers are the only community I feel any confidence in dropping into. My first forays in Vancouver were to game stores too.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I’m really looking forward to when Holly arrives in a couple of months.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

little skinny dynamo

The new term has begun for real and I finished two assignments this weekend. One’s a little cataloguing thing that was actually pretty fun and useful, and the other is for my Community-Led Libraries class, which is only due in February. I discovered last term when I was prepping for my China trip that I like getting on top of things early and getting shit out of the way. This term I’m trying to organize things so that when Holly comes in February I have to do as little homework as possible while she’s here. At this point if all goes to schedule I think I’ll just have stuff to do for my online Info Policy class.

But on Friday I went to see the Oh Wells at the Biltmore. I really liked them when I saw them compete in Shindig back in November or whenever it was. I think they ended up winning it. And they were good on Friday. The other bands were okay, but the kinds of music I’d need to listen to the CDs a bunch of times before I’d like it. I usually need to parse the words in songs before I can really like something. Except if I accept beforehand that it’s in another language (see Sigur Ros) or practically nonsense (see Deerhoof).

On Saturday Kerry and Alex had a casino party which was fun. I lost all my fake money and didn’t win the prize, but I had an epically creepy run at Small Stakes Go Fish (every time you have to Go Fish you put $10 in the kitty, which was won by the person with the most pairs at the end). There were eight people playing and I asked the right people for the right cards at least seven times in a row before having to fish. And it was early in the round too, so it’s not like I was remembering what people had.

Yesterday I read and relaxed. Today I’ve been prepping for my job interview on Thursday and doing some research for a cool Co-Op opportunity in Australia. SQL queries are easier than I’d expected. I’m also working on a volunteer project that used to have a terrible name, but is now known as NetworkEd UBC, so that’s kind of fun. I’m trying to embrace my identity as a blogging-type library person, but I think this job I’m interviewing for is less about the actual blogging, and more coordinating, which would probably be good for me. We’ll see.

I’m also hoping to find some time in the next couple of weeks to paint up my Blood Bowl team because there’s a tournament at a local game store in a couple of weeks. It’s been too long since I’ve painted.

I’m also spending a lot of time on Skype, hanging out with Holly. I love that we can just turn on our computers and both go about our business (she has more business to go about since she can only get online at the bakery, where there are often customers demanding her attention) and chat when there’re spare moments. It’s not like it’s some big special thing, just life and a bit of connection. Long-distance sucks for relationships, but this is a pretty decent time in history to be doing it, all things considered.

So yes, that’s my recent activity log. A bit more than one thing a day.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 309 other followers