Forward, by Travvy

Blogging seems to have taken the world by storm and is a medium by which the every day lives of ordinary people, good people, are made public allowing the writer to feel somewhat a sense of stardom. Most blogs sit idly by in a tiny portion of the hard disk of a mighty server somewhere, viewed only by the writer and perhaps a few close friends. However a small percentage are extremely well written and entertain a large audience of curious readers. I must say that I believe my friend Irwin’s blog, http://hoju72.blogspot.com/, fits into the latter category. So it was he who inspired me to start a blog and rediscover my creative side that for years has been crushed with the weight of studying complicated mathematics and investment theorems and other soul destroying work. By the way I am expecting my blog to fall into the first category and hence obscurity.

Back to reality

No matter how long or how pleasurable holidays are, I feel that they are always marred by the fact that they are too short. That is the only criticism of my summer holiday. I know that I have no right to complain, as my holiday was in fact extremely lengthy. I was on holidays for almost three months, a whole season almost, and I got to spend one of those months in Japan with my best mates. Even though I had spent some of the best days of my life and enjoyed most every day, time waits for no one and inevitably it came time to pack up my things and go back to Canberra, back to reality.

I rose early that morning and frantically stuffed last minute items into my car as I tried to beat my self set deadline of leaving by 8 am. I was aiming to get to Canberra around 4pm, so that reception would still be open and I would be able to check into my new room without any drama. So conservatively I estimated that I would need to leave a bit before 8am, allowing for traffic getting through Melbourne.

By about 7:30am my car was looking somewhat amusing. The boot was fully loaded, my bike was nestled in the back passenger bay ensconced with bags and bags of mainly useless items that I felt compelled to take up. The front seat contained a hefty passenger strapped into it; a large heavy old TV. Soon came the time to wave goodbye and pull out of the driveway.

The drive was uninteresting as always. The radio cut out, as it always does, about 50 minutes out of Melbourne and so I was forced, as I always am, to delve into my cassette tape collection. My tape collection is far from impressive by the way. I, like many others, live my life in a world with a vast library of free music in mp3 format that remains on my computer. So, my collection consisted of one or two tapes I had dubbed from one of my CD’s, the Aladdin soundtrack and Queen’s greatest hits.

So there I was buzzing along the hume highway at a conservative 120km/h belting out “Prince Ali” and “We are the champions” in my amusingly well laden car. When I was bored of that I started observing funny town names such as “Beveridge” and rock formations such as “Eric’s crack”. One town, named Holbrook, prides itself on being a submarine town and even sports a large retired submarine in the centre of the town. The problem is though, Holbrook is about 400km away from the ocean, so why they call themselves the submarine town I’ll never know.

Sure enough though, town by town I started getting closer to Canberra. I turned off down the Barton highway and could recall every hill that I had to ride up when I was on a charity bike ride last year. Memories started flooding in and when I saw “Black Mountain Tower”, which is one of the most distinctive landmarks of Canberra I felt a mixture of nervousness of the year that lay ahead and nostalgia of the previous year I had spent. Soon enough I pulled up in the “John’s” carpark and walked through the same halls that I must have walked hundreds of times last year. I was home. Well sort of.

I found my new room, and started transferring my vast mass of junk from my car to my room. Although I was happy to be on the third floor in a nice location, I wasn’t thrilled about walking up and down the stairs carrying my TV and other heavy items. Eventually though I had transferred everything and started assigning all my stuff a place in my room. I was exhausted by the end, but got everything set up except for decorations, which I could do another day. I remember it was hot. Very hot. Uncomfortably so. Perspiration was beading from almost every pore. I must have showered and washed my face a ridiculous number of times.

Soon old friends started arriving at my door. Caz showed up and all the crazy and fun times that we had spent last year gushed through my head causing me to smirk almost the entire length of our conversation. It was really great seeing her again. Later I met up with several other old friends, all who looked different and yet the same. All who were bubbling with the excitement of seeing everyone again and with enthusiasm told the tales of their summers. Yet there were hundreds of new and unfamiliar faces as well. Everything was so similar and familiar, yet so much had seemed to change as well.

O-week kicked off for returning residents that night. The event that night was a “Toga night”, where all the college residents dress up in togas or bed sheets and drink and drink until they get blotto. I decided to opt out of this, partly because I was exhausted from the drive, but mainly because I had an interview the next day. So I drifted into a deep sleep with the loud beat of popular dance songs and the laughter of drunken college students infiltrating and engulfing my hot room.

I donned a suit for the interview the next day. I walked from college over to the “academic skills and learning centre” during the hottest part of the day. The sun beat down on me and my black suit absorbed every colour in the visible spectrum and trapped it inside, but I tried to keep my cool, as I was sure turning up red and sweaty would not leave a good impression. Canberra, unlike Melbourne is based in basically in the middle of nowhere, with no desirable natural features. When Melbourne gets hot, there is always a nice cool breeze that blows off the bay soothing weary souls in its path. When Canberra gets hot, the air seems to stagnate and becomes thick while the heat increases in force as the day goes on. So anyway I turned up, had a brief interview, was completely overdressed it seemed, but nonetheless I was offered the casual maths/stats tutor job and left, thinking “Huh?”

Instead of being excited, which would probably be normal, I spent the whole afternoon in angst about whether I would do well, what it would be like and whether students would ask questions I didn’t know.

There was a cocktail party that evening and I decided to keep going afterwards and head out. So it was off to Mooseheads. Now, Canberra has the reputation of being a sleepy city and possibly one of the lamest cities in Australia, maybe not as bad as Hobart, but definitely a contender for Adelaide. Despite this, with a large student population, the city manages to sustain somewhat of a nightlife. While it is true that this nightlife is compacted into a littering of a few bars, it is still possible to have a fun night unless you are one who loves pub crawls. Mooseheads is the perennial favourite of my fellow college residents. It is a bar that has a downstairs area that has a definite country pub ambiance, which is created by the music that they play and the décor. The middle level is just boring, I’m not even sure what it is for. Upstairs is a dance club, where a DJ mixes the latest dance beats and several funky lights and lasers create a decent club atmosphere.

I decided to head downstairs, which tends to be the favourite area for the John’s kids. The cheap liquor flowed freely and the people on the crowded, sticky dance floor swayed and shook to the country songs. The first years could easily be spotted by the bibs with their names on them that the residents association of the college forced them to wear. It was certainly fun to meet the multitude of bright eyed new people and catch up with the old ones, but most of my good friends weren’t out and I got a bit bored, so I left and ran all the way home. I figured I could use the exercise, plus it got me home quicker.

The party just kept going at college. I woke to hear people rising to get ready for “Fantasy Island”, another big day of drinking. They dressed in curious costumes, started drinking (at about 9am) and boarded the bus that would take them off to a secluded peninsula where they would drink all day. Call me old if you will, but I didn’t feel up to it, it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. They got back some time in the afternoon, sunburnt and hammered, yet still drinking.

I spent the days mainly in my room, organising, decorating and preparing. By Saturday night though I felt like going out again and so I planned to head out with one of my good friends Vijey, a charismatic international student from India. I waited patiently in the foyer but he or no one else showed up. After a while though, another group began to form in the foyer, so I decided to head out with them. I knew the entire group from first year with the exception of a girl called Mi’er whom I met for the first time. We all headed to Mooseheads downstairs, got a few drinks and started dancing. We took over a large portion of the dance floor by forming a circle with linked arms in which we danced and jumped around and occasionally pushed unsuspecting people in the middle. For all its rawness and perhaps primitiveness, the atmosphere of Mooseheads downstairs does allow one to feel a connection with your fellow man and the warmth of good friendships.

After we’d had quite enough, we moved on to an African (or maybe Samoan) themed pub. The dance floor here was far more spacious and comfortable and the less mainstream tunes allowed us to have more variety in our dancing. We spent many hours there, while every now and then one or two in the group would drop out and rest on the seats and then rejoin. We left a bit after 3am and most of the group got kebabs at a 24 hour Ali Baaba store. The night had been really fun and although I had accidentally spilt beer on Mi’er at one stage and bumped her on the head during a poorly executed spin move, it had been really nice meeting her. She is an interesting girl with a unique and refreshing perspective on most things and I hoped that the fun night we had spent would be the beginning of a strong friendship.

Sunday was the college’s official day of rest, yet many still continued to drink throughout the day. I was awoken by a phone call from Caz suggesting that we avoid Sunday brunch and go out to get our own food. It was a great idea; Sunday brunch is notoriously one of the worst meals at college. The idea is people can sleep in and still have a hot greasy breakfast until 1pm, but the problem is the scrambled eggs and bacon fester in their respective metal trays until they become quite revolting to eat. Last year, several of us found hairs in our scrambled eggs and not the regular hairs that one may find, these hairs were short black and curly. Enough said. Avoid John’s brunch.

Anyway we got some lunch and some lovely dessert and decided to go for a walk somewhere. We ended up heading to the lake where we spotted some pedal boats going around. “Ooh lets go on one,” Caz suggested, “we can go under the big water jet.” “Sure, why not” I replied enthusiastically. So we walked around the lake, found the hire place and hopped in our little plastic boat. We only had half an hour, so we pedalled frantically to get to the water jet.

Now for those who don’t know Canberra, the city is next to quite a large lake, which features a large fountain which thrusts a jet of water perhaps 50 meters high and the wind and gravity carry this water and cause it to land reasonably close to the fountain.

We reached the fountain and sure enough I steered us right under it and we got a few drops on us in the process.
“Whoo that was fun hey Caz?” I asked.
“Yeah. Hey lets go under where the water is landing!” She suggested excitedly.
“Umm sure…” I replied.
So I turned the boat around and we headed for where the water was landing. The bulk was cascading in about a 10m by 5m strip, so we thought we’d pedal along the length of that strip. When we entered the “landing zone” the sky turned dark; I couldn’t even see the sun. Water bucketed down on us with immense force, stronger than some of the most vicious rainstorms I have been in and the drops were big and soaking. My instinct was to steer out straight away, but Caz had a maniacal grin on her face and was gripping the steering rod with extreme determination piloting us into the water. All I could do was scream until I wrenched control of the steering rod and pedalled like crazy to get us out of there.
“Whoooo yeah,” Caz exclaimed while laughing heavily at how soaking wet we were.
I’m sure we would have stayed drier if we had actually fallen into the lake and swum back to shore. Although I thought she was a maniac at the time, it is things like this that makes her one of my best friends. We get up to so many silly crazy things and I love her for it. Her friendship really does make living in Canberra so much easier.

We gently pedalled back to the boat hire place and stepped onto the pier dripping with water and with huge smirks on our faces. We made our way back to college and soon enough the last day of holidays was over. It was time to get back to reality.