modishdebutante’s Neighborhood

My, my, my....it has been ages since I last posted an entry. Let see, am still working at the same place... currently it's just launched a new system headed by my associate director; who's a former primary school music teacher who knows f***-all about the admissions process by international students...I'm still amazed the system hasn't blown up in her face... yet. Maybe it will some day. Seriously though, it sucks having to work under someone you have zero respect for. Oh well, it's not like I'll be there forever.

But speaking of work... ahhh, the one thing I do enjoy is dressing up for work. Crisp shirts, pencil skirts and heels. Mmmm...I love work shirts, especially stripey ones. I blame the boy for it; who has a shitload of them. I'm really beginning to think that I should be buying more work-appropriate shirts since I pretty much live in them. And pretty blouses that go oh so well with pencil skirts. Speaking of which, I really need to invest more in them and stop buying them from chain stores. Sure, they're cheap-as but they really don't survive long, do they? Ah, lesson learnt.

Training for the new system ended relatively early, so I had about 30mins to kill before the boy finishes work.

Whats a girl to do in rainy melbourne? Duck into a shopping mall and windowshop, of course! Headed into valleygirl and tried on 2 pairs of jeans- one skinny fit, the other a bootcut. Both were a size 6. The skinny jeans fit me perfectly (black skinnies of course!), but my thigh could barely fit into the bootcut pair! Wth? U'd think I'd have more problems with the skinnies!

Grrrr. Why do they do this?! No wonder shopping can be frustrating for some people. I'll stick to getting el cheapo jeans at jayjays and sportsgirl then.

This job can be such a bitch sometimes. We are expected to be doormats, acquisciant (if there is such a word) to all demands, no matter how busy we are and those fucking ingrates (the ones called students) continue to treat us like absolute shite. Especially those ingrates from a particular middle eastern country (cough cough KS.A cough cough) where the government pays for them to study here in Australia.
Hey motherfucking ingrate, I dont know why it takes overnight for the system to recognize you as a fully- fledged student. It just works that way. Don't come to me twisting my (and my colleagues') words saying we didn't tell you that would happen. We fucking told you five fucking times and you fucking didn't bother to listen. Don't fucking tell us you had never been treated with so much disrespect when YOU were the one twisting words and literally pointing fingers. Just because in that country of yours women are not allowed to call men out when there are clearly lying scumbags, you expect every woman to be the same. If you fucking twist my words, you are fucking with the wrong person. YOU'RE AN OUTRIGHT LIAR and customer service be damned to hell if you even try to insinuate that I, or my colleagues, are liars.
I hope you fail your fucking course and just go back to that woman-hating shithole u actually call a country.

So I've finally decided to get off my arse (although maybe I'm doing this as a means of procrastination from more pressing concerns: the completion of my research work) and do some wardrobe purging. Maybe not purging per se, but finally getting rid of stuff that's just been sitting around in boxes for erm, years. Yeap, I do still have a box of unwanted clothes that's just been sitting around since I moved into Moonee Ponds. Isn't that just plain laziness?!
So anyway, as I was packing them into bags for the charity bin, I'm appalled at how small I was back in the days. Like some of my tops looked like they belonged to a ten year old girl and I was wearing them only 2-3 years ago! Shock, horror. That isn't very good, is it?
Of course I constantly moan about my curves, I think I may have found a new appreciation for my more womanly figure.

Do people shop in phases? Over the last few weeks, I have been completely obsessed with Supre oversized tees; they uber comfortable and at AUD16 a pop, whats not to like? I think I may have bought 1 in the colours I'm normally seen in: black, purple, blue, white.
This obsession has got to stop. Like, how many oversized tees can one wear, right? But they're just sooooo versatile- especially with pencil skirts, skinnies and leggings! Hell, you can even wear them as a minidress if you go up a couple of sizes!
Plus i'm also obsessed with "dominatrix" shoes; you know the kind littering the runways and shodding the feet of celebs like the olsen twins. I was planning to buy a pair today and realised I already have similar styles! Plus the one that I had my eyes on- they're near impossible to walk in; with their curved 15cm heels. I admitted defeat and returned them to the lovely sales assistant. So pretty yet so impossible. Sigh.

Do people shop in phases? Over the last few weeks, I have been completely obsessed with Supre oversized tees; they uber comfortable and at AUD16 a pop, whats not to like? I think I may have bought 1 in the colours I'm normally seen in: black, purple, blue, white.
This obsession has got to stop. Like, how many oversized tees can one wear, right? But they're just sooooo versatile- especially with pencil skirts, skinnies and leggings! Hell, you can even wear them as a minidress if you go up a couple of sizes!
Plus i'm also obsessed with "dominatrix" shoes; you know the kind littering the runways and shodding the feet of celebs like the olsen twins. I was planning to buy a pair today and realised I already have similar styles! Plus the one that I had my eyes on- they're near impossible to walk in; with their curved 15cm heels. I admitted defeat and returned them to the lovely sales assistant. So pretty yet so impossible. Sigh.

First of all, a massive thank you to everyone for their birthday wishes and presents! And thank heaps to my mum for not stopping presents even though I'm officially earning! : )

And to the bestie, the faux leather leggings are a huge hit! I wore them to work on Casual Friday for the first time with an oversized white tee and purple cardi, and the girls on my team loved it! And then I wore them again on Saturday night out with a sequinned dress, and they apparently were "hot"! Lol, those things are growing on me. Maybe I should stop protesting so much about stuff. Case in point 1: faux leather leggings, which turned up on my doorstep as a birthday present. Case in point 2: Hello Kitty. My coordinator made a comment about how all Asian girls love Hello Kitty to which I vehemently protested to. Lo and behold, the team gave me a mini Hello Kitty money box as part of my birthday present! Kitty, as it is now called (yea, tres original) is now sitting atop my computer desk at work. With 15cents in her. Ok granted, that thing is quite cute.

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Now on to my 2 rants: Indian students being bashed in Melbourne (so-called dubbed "curry bashings) and the wine flu "pandemic" in Melbourne

It seems there's nothing else to talk about in the world, with the abovementioned topics (for lack of a better word) dominating world headlines. *rolls eyes*

Really ironic, isn't it, when a country with an official caste system with an "untouchables" category part of that archaic system plays the racism card immediately when their students are apparently being "targeted" by thugs. It's like why can't they get it in their heads that international students are soft targets anywhere in the world? I mean, most international students carry around valuables such as laptops and other electronic gadgets and they often come back late at night, so how are these attacks racist? What, when attackers call them racist names? Sure a small percentage of these attacks might have been racist in nature, but seriously, get over it.

Tell me why an Indian student deserves more sympathy than someone who gets stabbed to death when trying to stop a fight in a nightspot?

Funny how other international students don't run crying off to the nearest diplomatic office when they get heckled, spat at, etc. And funny how foreigners don't call for a "stop travelling to India" or bun effigies of Indian politicians when they get heckled, mugged, etc in India. Racism goes both ways.

Next: swine flu in Melbourne. Gee, people are really getting hysterical over this, aren't they? So there are more than 1000 confirmed swine flu cases in Melbourne and suddenly we are the "swine flu capital of the world"?? I am soooo sick of fielding texts from Singapore about it. Don't ask me about swine flu, H1N1 virus, whatever you want to call it until someone in Melboune actually dies from it. I think when it first hit Mexico and the US, it was much worse than in Melbourne. *rolls eyes*

I have enough updates from the news here, no need from people from other countries to tell me the same. This is news fatigue at its worst.

Shouldn't people be talking about other stuff that's going on in the world? I dont know... global warming, sexual abuse in churches, global financial crisis, the un-covered refugee case in Pakistan, people in Somalia are still caught in civil war, etc etc. Heck, I's be pleased if some random D-list celebrity hits the front pages for some silly shit or other; at least it's something different than swine flu or curry-bashing.

***

There you go. Happy 25th to me, one week late.

In an attempt to feel like I'm back at uni (I know, it's really sad that I am missing my uni days, especially those days where I isolated myself from the outside world in the name of "research"), I agreed to do research for a lecturer about a subject I know nothing about. And since he's on deadlines, I am frantically trying to vaguely eke out something that might resemble lecture notes which he can use to deliver lectures with. I have about 10 of them to do, and I'm only about 20% done on the first one. This afternoon I have been frantically wiki-ing. I know, one shouldn't rely on Wikipedia for academic matters, but I am in desperate need of background information. On tomorrow's agenda: an emergency trip to the holy temple of academia: the library.

An advantage of being a university staff member is that I get inter-library borrowing privileges... wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I am such a dork, but I love my libraries. My first membership card was a library card, and I would max it out each time we trooped to the library. And no offense to RMIT, but their libraries pale in comparison to Baillieu. 1.5 years on, my love affair with that library is still going strong. By now my colleagues would probably kill me if I mention how awesome that library is one more time.

Anyway, back to work. Fun times ahead!

A very late (and even later birthday present) birthday shoutout to my bestie:

HAPPY 25th DOLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope you're having an awesome birthday weekend with the girls, the family and the boy!

And all the best in your new job at your old workplace! : )

***
ps: I finally bought a 1940s style cloche hat!

Today marks the end of my annual leave/ Easter break...and boy, what an awesome week it has been! ALthough using terms like "annual leave" is still slightly disconcerting for me, it's a constant reminder of how I am no longer a carefee student, but a working adult. Gah.

The boy and I went to V Festival where we got crushed on the way out from Temper Trap by Vanilla Ice enthusiasts... *rolls eyes* Seriously people, Vanilla Ice?! (One could almost hear the contempt in that statement!). Well, other than the silly Vanilla Ice fiasco, I had an awesome time...only because I saw Snow Patrol..............!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 Yeap, I am a huge fan. Oh, and the Kaiser Chiefs as well. Razorlight was a bit of a letdown, and so were The Killers. Anyhoo...it was fun!

The bestie and her bf planned a week-long holiday in Melbourne and we had the greatest time being tourists! Well, they were legit, but I haven't done anything tourist-y (save for Great Ocean Road and Puffing Billy) since I moved here 5 years ago. So we did Sovereign Hill (a town based on 1850s goldrush Victoria), Eureka Skydeck (a lovely viewing platform of 1 side of Melbourne from 88 storeys) and of course, riding on Puffing Billy the steam train. I made them get the tram one night on the way home, and we all trooped down to Williamstown on Good Friday for some good ol' pub meals. And gelato whenever we could! How trippy was the shop in Williamstown?! The flavours were all in Italian, and we couldn't make out what each flavour was so it was mainly a stab in the dark. Oh, and we bought heaps of lollies... who knew Melbourne was so full of vintage lolly stores?!

For those who really want to know, we shopped our way through Melbourne. : )