The case of the missing laundry basket
Things have been quite hectic lately, however I certainly don’t seem to be alone in this respect; everyone I have spoken to lately seems rushed off their feet. Quite a lot has been happening generally, and mostly everything was turning out wrong until one momentous day in the laundry room. You see, at college we are given a laundry basket that has our room number on it, but in the chaos and confusion that occurs in the laundry rooms, the baskets (which all look the same) get mixed up, and this is what happened to mine a while back. Some how I ended up with room 3075’s basket and had no idea what had happened to mine. Recently though, I saw my original basket perched on a shelf in the laundry room and I immediately claimed it back. It was quite amazing, once I had it back, my fortunes seemed to turn around; I got a second interview with AXA, my Microsoft Word started working again and I began to reconcile an important friendship.

Of course that is not to say that I have an emotional attachment to my laundry basket, it was just an interesting coincidence I observed. Some people at college do however seem to have a particular emotional attachment to their laundry baskets. I have seen signs around my floor notifying others that their laundry basket has been ‘stolen’ and ‘legal action’ will be taken unless it is returned. I found this quite hilarious really; I honestly think we are turning into America. We are part of the British Commonwealth damn it, if we are going to copy anyone it should be the British, not the boisterous and tasteless Americans. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with America of course, I guess I’m just a bit of an Anglo-phile. I can just imagine ‘The case of the missing laundry basket’ going before the courts, please grow up people! And another thing, why are there some escalators that go up on the right side instead of the left these days? Even our escalators are being Americanised, AHHH.

I realise I haven’t spoken about some of the interesting characters at college for quite some time, and feel that I should. Firstly, I must write again about my neighbour. If you recall he was the Italian guy who called me ‘Tee-Rav’. Well he has changed slightly, now he likes to call me ‘Travesty’ Hmmm… He and several others in my corridor, derive endless amusement at yelling out to the college across from John’s. “Hey Burgman,” he will yell at random times, “Hey Burgman,” he’ll yell again, and then once more. One weekend he invited his mates over and there must have been at least seven of them who packed into his tiny college room. For fun, they ran over to Burgman College and ran around yelling out “Hey Burgmanm,” which caused a chain reaction of yelling “Hey Burgman,” throughout my corridor. I guess you just have to laugh.

Oh there are so many characters, but I’ll only mention one more this time. One guy is obsessed with German culture, in particular, Hitler. When I’m studying, I sometimes hear him wandering the corridors drunk, yelling German phrases at the top of his voice. He seems to think any German phrase sounds unbelievably cool, so he is probably walking around screaming something like “I would like to know how to get to the flower shop please.” He listens and sings along to a German heavy metal singer, called Ramstein, at ungodly hours. The funny thing is though, he was actually born in England. Oh dear.

I left off last time on the somewhat negative note of being rejected for a graduate work position. That weekend, I decided I wanted to get away from things and fortunately a PhD student named Magnus, invited me to go bushwalking. So he, Ludovic and I set off to climb a mountain. As I was driving there, specs of rain fell on the windscreen, which caused all three of us to look nervously at the sky before staring straight ahead. After a lengthy silence, we almost all simultaneously said, “It’ll clear up.”

The road turned from highway to a deserted winding country road with a high speed limit, which I absolutely adored. I perhaps went a little bit faster than I normally would have (or should have) with other people in the car, but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity of enjoying such a lovely stretch of road. To me it was highly therapeutic, even more so than the walk.

Eventually we got to the mountain and started walking to a place called square rock. It was a jagged limestone rock formation atop the summit, which offered mesmerising views of the lush valley below. We stared out to the horizon and basked in the utter silence. The only sound that could be heard was the occasional crunching of the seaweed rice crackers that Magnus had brought along, which were very tasty incidentally.

The college ball was fast approaching and I was quite looking forward to it. At that stage, only one of my good friends was planning to go and the rest were uncertain if they would. I remember last year I had quite an exciting time at the ball. The band, I remembered, was superb and played jazz and pop covers with funky looking electronic instruments. Everyone was dressed in their finest and all danced along joyously to the upbeat tunes. I think formal wear is the pinnacle of fashion; a woman never looks better than when she is dressed in a slender elegant evening gown (umm... actually I can think of another ‘outfit’ when women look even better than that).

I got a call one evening from Harry, who passed the phone over to Irwin, who was down in Melbourne for the week. It was the first time I had heard his voice since that bitterly cold morning in Yokaichiba, Japan, when we had said our goodbyes. He answered in true Japanese style, “Mushi Mushi.” Anyway after that 10 minute conversation, somehow I was convinced to ditch the ball and fly down to Melbourne for the weekend instead.

Honestly the whole thing came at a bad time. Now everyone, it seemed, was going to the ball and it was shaping up to be a fantastic night. And the last thing I wanted to do was more travelling around, but mates are mates and it is part of the code that you would do anything for them. So I found myself on a jet again flying to Melbourne.

When I had left Melbourne after the break, I had set myself goals of what I wanted to achieve by the time I stepped back into my room. I remembered this and felt quite guilty and disappointed that I had achieved none of them. But how was I to know how everything was to turn out? It felt a little strange being back, almost as though I didn’t deserve to be there. See for me, Melbourne represents the reward after enduring a strenuous semester of uni, a kind of sanctuary if you will. I guess the experience and the general feeling seemed a little surreal, as though I was still in Canberra and I was just seeing my family and friends through some virtual image that we were all somehow able to share.

Anyway despite this, I headed into the city to meet up with my friends. We eventually all met up in a bar called Spleen. For some reason that I have no idea why, a visit to this bar has always tended to coincide with a defining point in my life. A few years ago, I met up with Chris and Irz in that very bar and came to realise something very important. And this time I was also working through a lot of issues. It is quite a nice bar actually; the upstairs area has low lighting, relaxing tones and comfy kitsch furniture. Derek, Chris and I waited with beers in hand for Irz to arrive.

Soon enough, a familiar figure bumbled up the stairs and approached us with knowing grin. I was quite surprised; a completely different looking Irwin shook my hand. He had hair in the style of a trendy Japanese pop star and wore the clothes to match. I couldn’t recall him ever being that fashionable, but after talking to him for a while, I realised it was the same old Irwin. It certainly felt good being reunited as a group again and we reminisced, laughed and caught up over beers, Stella naturally. Once again in that bar, after drifting into a deep thought whilst the conversation went on, I came to another important realisation. I’m certain there is something special about that bar.

Soon though, it was time to move on, and we went on a bar crawl (of sorts) around the city. Of course I’m not going to divulge many of the details of the night, for that would breach both the mates’ code and the gentlemen’s code. One highlight for me though, was (after we had had quite a few drinks) singing ‘living on a prayer’ as a tribute to the good times we’d shared on our holiday in Japan. We all sung with passion, vivaciousness and volume, which received several strange looks and laughs, but gee it felt good. Besides, Irwin and I didn’t care what people thought of our singing; we were from out of town. It was a different story for Chris and Derek though.

Curiously later on in the night, we bumped into a bunch of old guys in suits, who were also singing together. I remember wondering at the time if that would be us in 60 years. Chris and I joined in their song, Derek asked one of them who the president of the UN was and Irwin was otherwise, umm occupied.

I really needed a night like that and arrived back in Canberra with greatly improved clarity. Who knows when the four of us will get a chance to all meet up again. I just hope it isn’t too far away. Although I feel I missed out on a fun night at the ball with my friends in Canberra, I don’t regret my decision to fly down to Melbourne.

On Wednesday, it was time to fly down to Melbourne again, this time for a job interview with AXA. After the interview I had the chance to catch up with Sherly. I was waiting for her and when she arrived, she had come straight from the computer labs, and was wearing casual clothes and glasses (which I’ve never seen her wear before). I was quite amused and charmed by a side of Sherly that I’d never really seen before. She was a cute little nerd and I found it to be quite cool. We said our hellos and then ‘nerdy Sherly’ disappeared in to her room and then magically ten minutes later, ‘supermodel Sherly’ came out, sunglasses and all. It was kind of like ‘Superman’, except she didn’t get changed in a phone booth, she took a lot longer to change than Clark Kent and I thought she looked a lot better than superman.

We had a rushed dinner, but it was still really nice to catch up. I felt quite bad, as I hadn’t realised that Sherly had a major project due the next day and couldn’t really afford to take time off. Still, I am very thankful that she did.

Uni started to get really busy and I reverted to my hermit like state, only leaving my room for meals and classes. After some time of intense study, I felt as though I was going a little loopy and decided to take a night off, so I went to a karaoke night that was organised at college. A ‘singstar’ game was set up on a big screen and singers could select their preferred song from any one of the versions of the game. The room was packed with college residents, who were all singing along. I mustered the courage to get up and sing ‘eye of the tiger’ – an eighties classic. As I was about to perform, I heard some smart sarcastic comments such as, “This should be interesting,” but I feel that I shut those people up quite sufficiently after doing a performance that earned me a third place for the night. The night went on and only the most hardcore karaoke fans remained.

I’m sure some keen observers may have realised that Caz (who featured quite regularly in my early entries) hasn’t been mentioned at all in any of my recent entries, and there is a good reason, which I’m not going to share. Anyway, let’s just say our friendship hasn’t been in the best shape of late. As the karaoke night wore on though, at one point we ended up sitting next to each other and so naturally started a conversation, given that we are both civil adults. After a bit of talking we ended up agreeing to perform a duet together, which was followed by several more duets. Caz incidentally is a superb singer and on the night came second only to Robin, who is a singing sensation. Soon, we began to talk and joke like old times and I began to realise how much I missed the close friendship we used to share. I think we made some progress that night and I hope we can restore our previously strong friendship, but I guess only time will tell.

Well now I am in Melbourne once again. I flew down this morning for a second interview with AXA. I was running so late in the morning I almost missed my flight, and then fog in Melbourne delayed the plane from taking off, which resulted in me touching down in Melbourne only 15 minutes before I had to be in the city.

As I was rushing out of the exit, a tall man approached me and asked if I needed a car to take me to the city, which was quite fortunate as it meant that I avoided having to wait for a taxi. The car was a luxurious limousine and the driver spoke in a strong commanding voice, which was very similar to that of the driver in ‘Transporter 2’. He got me to the AXA building, in fairly good time, so that I was only 10 minutes late for the interview.

I really hope I get the job, but again I guess only time will tell.

Until next time,

Take care.