Last post for Assessment 1!

Well this is my final post for my MPA104 Assessment 1 and I was trying to think of what to write and to make one final attempt and writing an interesting post and suddenly thought “hey, maybe I could write a blog post on what interestingness (which by the way is not a word) really is". Easier said then done.

My first stop was at Wikipedia. Wiki is a really good online encyclopedia type of website and is often a really good place to start assignments from (though not to cite for an essay as it is not up to University standard of being a reliable source) or at least be pointed in the right direction.
The first thing Wiki gave me for the search “interesting” was the Flickr site, which I found slightly amusing but didn’t feel this was what I wanted to write my blog on.

Next I tried searching for “interestingness” and Wiki brought up related pages which were mainly about interest rates and some on human interest and public interest topics, these may be interesting but it would depend on the content of what the issue they were discussing and again were not really what I was searching for to create this final post about.

Thus I gave up and decided I could not find anything worth while to write my final post on interesting about, but didn’t want to leave this post at that. So I have decided to write a little bit about what I’ve been doing in the hope it will be of some interest (Oh my God, can I write interesting any more times!).

Well to begin with I have now moved back into Stewards B Block! And it is still really great and it has been fantastic to see all my friends again, I can’t believe how much I have missed them and it was only a 3 week break!

Last term everyone brought with them belongings from their rooms at home to make their Stewards room feel more homely and I guess to make them less homesick as well as helping them settle in easier. Me being the type to not think about stuff like went “Pfft! As if I need those things, I’ll be right, there’s no need!” and I was alright, it’s not like I died or anything but I did miss being around some of my belongings I was used to seeing every day. This time around I have brought back with me so much stuff it’s ridiculous. I have successfully unpack (minus connecting my printer yet) and have decorated my room with posters and photos, as well as memento’s from my trip abroad to Europe last year, so I have all my shot glasses on my shelves that I collected from every country I visited while I was away! Other than moving back I’ve also been taking a new path in the styles of music I listen too.

During the holidays I went through a massive Beatles stage, I’ve always enjoyed listening to the Beatles but really only knew off their number 1 hits. I like most styles of music, usually I listen to punk, rock, indie, alternative so this was a little of the normal track for me. My favourite song by the Beatles is “I am the walrus” which just before the holidays Elise and I constantly played/ sang while we studied/ did folio work for Crazy Lady class and I think this is what lead me to have to keep listening to them, I also found my friend had put quite a few of the Beatles albums on to my Ipod which was handy!

They are my mum’s favourite band and anytime we were on long car journey they were our compromise as I couldn’t handle her listening to talk back radio and she couldn’t stand listening to my normal music. I also wanted to learn more about the “Fab Four” so Googled them and got the official site which gave a quite good though brief overview look at the biography of the Beatles, I really enjoyed reading this style of writing as it was brief yet informative and well written! I did want to see if I could find something else on them and found this good Fan Site which gave a longer biography of them as well as lots of little snippets of information and trivia facts.

As well as going back in time and listening to the Beatles, I also started getting into dance/ house music which I think may be due to the fact living here in Wagga and going out so much there are so many Sydney/ Canberra folk who listen to this genre and it has rubbed off on me. During the holidays I really got in The Presets which I think are a Melbourne band and are fantastic to dance too I’m particularly fond of their tracks “Are you the one?” and “I go hard, I go home”.
Another good Aussie dance band I was listening to quite frequently is Sneaky Sound System who are from Sydney and they are brilliant I absolutely love their songs “Pictures”, “UFO” and “I love it” they are great tracks to have played whilst out dancing the night away!

I am really enjoying listening to these different styles of music that generally I would have just brushed to one side and never given a chance! I’m loving learning about new things, it’s great!
This is Viv signing off for MPA104 Assessment 1 (even though I have to write another post for Johannes to actually pass!)

something a little more interesting maybe?!

Hello fellow bloggers/readers! How are we all? I'm not too bad, am still stressing a little that I haven't done my work thoroughly enough and that my things aren't interesting. So in another attempt to create interestingness I've decided to put a small bit of my art work I did at the end of Year12 but not for my VCE.

I finished Year 12 in 2005, and as I was applying for uni courses that were all in the area of the arts I, like I'm sure most of you had to do, had to have interviews and show my folio at the different universities I was appyling for.

Now one uni/course, aside from wanting an interview and a look at my folio also set us the task of creating a story board to send in before our interviews. Now we were given four; for lack of a better word "topics" which were:
- Don't look down
- End of the line
- The fan
- and there was a fourth but I have forgotten it.

There were some guidelines to this story board it had to be told in 10 frames, using drawing, collage or photography as the medium. The last two frames needed to tell a moral to the story or be a twist or something along those lines.

I decided to choose the "topic" The Fan, and most things that come to mind when you hear those words are like a football fan or a fan of a band or something like that. I started thinking along a different line of like ceiling fans or air cons and then it came to me, pedestal fans! From there I created the story of my friend Mulla falling in love with this Pedestal Fan and dating it on a date.

So I have created a slide show with the photographs I took for this task and put them in this blog for you to view. As it's on a bit of a loop the first image to view from is that of my friend offering flowers to the Pedestal Fan at the front door.

Let me know what you think etc.

Enjoy!

Splendour in the Grass

Well guys and girls it has been like 5 days since I wrote my last post *shock horror* and for some reason decided to re-read Johannes' Blog post from back in the last week of school, and am now starting to freak out, that although I've completed quite a lot of that checklist there is still a lot that I feel I haven't covered thoroughly enough; especially for what we are ment to link in our final blog before emailing it to Johannes! I was told by Matt the other week that I ramble too much and that my stuff isn't interesting and now I am doubley freaking that I will fail from lack of interestingess!!! ARGH! Anywho, so for this post I decided to write about the festival Splendour in the Grass.

Last week a friend's sister asked me if I had seen the line up for Splendour in the Grass cos Triple J had annouced it and she said it was quite impressive, telling me that they had announced Bloc Party were playing. So off I toddled to Splendour In The Grass.com and pretty much had a heart attack by the shock of how great the line up was! So many of my favourite bands are going to be playing there!

Splendour in the Grass is a music festival being held at the start of August (6th-8th I think) for a weekend up in Byron Bay, so basically great music along with camping for a whole weekend!


As I said before Bloc Party was announced last week to be one of the main acts, they will be playing on the Sunday. For Bloc Party who reign all the way from Britain this will be their second appearence at Splendour, with the release of their new album A weekend in the city. I haven't yet listened to this, but if it is anything like their first album Silent Alarm then I have lots to look forward too!


Also playing at the festival and hailing from Britain is another one of my favourite bands, the Arctic Monkeys they too have just released a new album (came out today) Favourite worst nightmare with the first single being Brainstorm - it's similar to older stuff by the Arctic Monkeys but a little more edgier and a lot faster, I'm not sure whether I like the song or if my doubt comes from the crappy download I got. The Arctic Monkeys will also be playing on the Sunday.


Yet another band coming over from the UK to play (there are lots of them!) at Splendour and the one I am most excited about, the Kaiser Chiefs! They are also another band to release a new album Your's Truly, Angry Mob with the first single being Ruby. This album I feel is not as good as their first album Employment, but it would be very hard to make another album to this standard and Your's Truly is still a great effort and still worth a listen! I am so excited for them to be playing, I saw them live at a festival in England last year and it was an amazing performance, so hopefully this one will be as well!

There are quite a few other British artists playing (Lily Allen) as well as lots of local produce including Powderfinger (as they are bringing out a new album), Hilltop Hoods, Grinspoon and Josh Pyke.

I have decided I desperately want to go to Splendour in the Grass, even if it will take us like 2 days to get there, and Matt and I have talked about organising a group and driving up there! So anyone interested in going should so totally come, it will be well worth it. Tickets go on sale on the 12th of May I think and are $185, then in addition to this ticket you need another ticket to camp (these sell out very, very quickly) which is a further $115, I know it's expensive but for a great weekend who cares. To buy the tickets you also need to have access to a credit card as ringing in to buy is the only form of purchase as they print your name and birthday on the ticket to stop scalping.

One great weekend, hopefully a good group of friends, brilliant bands, camping, lots of fun and a mad road trip! Come on guys lets go to Splendour in the Grass 2007!

Until next time when hopefully everyone wants to go to Splendour, Peace Out!

P.S. For any of you interested, in a post I wrote last week on the Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala wanting to know who two comdeians were I finally found out who the Welsh guy is, he was on Spicks and Specks as well as on Rove last night; his name is Mark Watson and he is HI-LAR-IOUS!

Nuh uh Not cool!

Shark!
Originally uploaded by Vivalin.

So I've been updating my Flickr account adding in some funny images a mate found on th netz... anywho long story short went to put them into a set and it wouldn't let me!

Apparently free account holders are limited to only 3 sets which I already have. I really like sets they make my photos feel organised, they make me feel organised...and clean (yeah I'm not OCD! lol!).

Anywho this is a rant at Flickr I think thats a really uncool thing to do, how does letting me have unlimited Sets affect them in any way, its just makes things neater and organised! If you go on to Flickr Pro you can have more/unlimited (not sure on this still reading up) but I can't afford to upgrade my account I'm a student for Christ's sake! ARGH! Not happy Jan!

That is all

The rubbish on television these days!

So as most people in our course know...especially those that live on campus, in all common rooms we get Austar YAY! this is a great privilege to me as mum would always say "you watch too much TV as it is, if we got Austar you'd never leave the house" which at the time is fair to say accurate.

Though I've noticed at uni we mainly only have Channel [V] and MTV going and watch a lot of the music channels and basically never switch over to ordinary TV, not that we actually watch that much only if no one is around to talk rubbish with.

Now being back at home I am forced to watch ordinary TV, and as I haven't been watching ordinary TV I have gotten very far behind in my soaps (Neighbours and Home & Away) though I was already 3 months behind after coming back from overseas. Any who trying to catch up with them these holidays has been extremely hard, all these new people and story lines and I've decided they really are a waste of my time! But too move on to some worse rubbish...



Today while eating my lunch I decided to pop the tele on and on Prime was this competition show from America called Master of Champions and what I was watching was Interpretive Pizza Throwing - two teams who each did a different "dance of interpretation" whilst throwing pizza dough bases in the air, I don't know about the rest of you, but this seems the lamest competition ever! I couldn't believe there even was a challenge out there like this and that people were wanting to enter it. How do you interpret pizza dough tossing?



The next guy to come on was a little better he wanted to beat his own personal record of juggling fire whilst dancing on one of those arcade dance machines with the arrows and to complete 250 combinations on the dance machine in 2 minutes. The poor guy missed out by 1 combination, I felt sorry for him. It was very impressive, just to be able to juggle fire is impressive, or to dance on one of those machines but to do both was impressive!

If you would like to watch this show it seems to be on most days at 2pm on Prime for those in the country, but not sure about those with Channel 7.

Even if I felt that second guy who danced and fire twirled was impressive, the interpretive pizza tossing put that show into the LAME box! and after those two acts I had to switch over I couldn't handle it any more!

Whilst trying to find some images to put with this post as well as a link to some more information for those interested in the show, I stumbled upon another website which is for the US Official Dough Throwers team, it has video tutorials to learn off as well as dates of upcoming events, including a demo in Sydney in September!

Any who that's my little random rant about rubbish television. Maybe I will make another post later...we will see!

Peace Out!

...and another thing

Last night my friends and I also watched the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala which was absolutely hilarious, and I've been trying to find some kind of website or at least a review of the show but can't find anything. What I'm looking for is to find out the names of two comedians, one was Welsh and wore a yellow shirt and spoke very fast and sounded like he was on crack but boy was he funny!

The other is an Aussie bloke I think or maybe British he had a red top on and one gag was about his mum embarrassing him in a spa bath that himself, his mum, dad, and dogs were all swimming in and his mum made a joke about everyone in the Spa having sucked on her nipples! The way he said it was side splitting!

Anywho if anyone finds a review or article or anything or know who either of these two comedians are I would very much appreciate knowing!

One other thing to ask the help of everyone is...I have a display picture up, but I put it up by going through Customize and adding picture that way, but this doesn't count as a profile image does it? How do I host an image in my profile, I clicked on the link beside the box thingy and downloaded those Hello and Picasa programs but cant seem to work out from there how to host an image! Again help much appreciated!

If you didn't see the Gala and some kind person taped it and lets you borrow it, DO IT! It's rate funny!

Peace Out

Melbourne Adventures...if you could call them that

Hello guys and girls or anyone who reads this (which probably isn't anyone except Matt, Erin and Hannah!). I have just returned today from 4 nights in Victoria's capital to wonderful ye ol' Shepparton...

Last Thursday night I was hanging out with Katie, Ikkin, Duston and Ricky Hoare (lol his name still cracks me up after knowing him for like 10 years!), and Katie told me she was heading back to Melbourne on the Friday to go back to Deakin Uni (sucks to be a Vic uni student! go CSU!) and to go see Dave Hugh's (sucks to be a poor uni student =( ) in the Melbourne comedy festival with her brother. So on the spot decided I still needed to catch up with mates living down there so asked if I could hitch a ride and thats what I did. After a bit of bother with Centrelink and going to pick up my car, we eventually left Shepp at like half 2.

I got dropped of in the suburb Moonee Ponds which for those of you playing at home is next suburb over from Essedon, where 4 of my very best mates (Hanora, Lucas, Undies and Justin) all live together.

In between me getting back from abroad and Uni starting which was only like 5 weeks, I spent most of that time down in Moonee Ponds just hanging with this lot, couple of parties, many adventures, lots random shinanigans and a lot of WII and Guitar Hero and net nerding! So I always have fun whenever I go there as anything could happen. This time however wasn't as eventful as everyone was working or going to TAFE and Undies had her mum and sister down to stay and Justin was being a prick and some new girl moved in who I didn't know and that left me feeling weirded out.

But anywho we spent the weekend bumming around, on Saturday I got my sushi finally! (Wagga sucks for sushi not being readily available) and we went out to a Japanese resturant that night as well, which the food wasn't as enjoyable as I had hope =( that day Lucas and I had also gone and hung with Baz over in Kennsington as he is getting evicted and they were having a open house and we were supposed to go a keep Baz company but got a little lost on the way...plus we stopped for sushi!


That night (Saturday) we had all planned on going out clubbing in the city, but everyone is silly and wouldn't come with me and Hanora so we went on our own. We were heading for this club called Bang! which Hanora often goes to and said would be fun, and the new girl in the house (Bridget) goes there so often she has a list at the door which gets her friends in cheaper and she arranged for us to be on a list that night which was cool!


Anywho this club Bang! is an alternative club with an area for Punk/Emo stuff, then a room for retro and dancier type stuff and upstairs is the metal room. At first it was lame, but a few red bulls later and actually running into people I knew it was great fun, me and Hanora danced for a solid 4 hours straight! It was intense! We only went to the one club as everywhere has cover charges and we are poor! But we left Bang! sometime after 4 which I feel is a good effort!

Sunday brought about some tiredness and very sore legs and feet from all the dancing (poor Hanora had to work) and my sudden guilt that it had been like 2 days without homework! YIKES! Though on Saturday i rose early and took a roll of film to make sure I was using the camera correctly. So decided Sunday was the day to take some more photos for our Photography Assignment. I don't know how well these photos will turn out, I kind of have the ideas behind them but keep thinking negative thoughts about them. Anywho everyone was again working, being with family, or being a prick, so Lucas and I headed off on the adventure of Maccas first followed by photo taking.

I had messaged dad the night before and asked him where abouts in Melbz were these specific things I wanted to take photos off and he had said Hoddle street near kew and Johnston street near Collingwood. Undies mum had also said there were some right by Highpoint shopping centre in Moonee Ponds. So rather then drive all the way across the city we thought we would go to Highpoint then for some bizarre reason Lucas asked me if the streets dad gave me were near the suburb Fitzroy and I said yes Johnston street runs through it. He then had a mad spaz attack and was like "last year when I lived in the city I found this mad arse house that i want to live in, we'll go to these streets and I'll show you the house!".

A little while later we were in Fitzroy and I remembered my dads cousin lived here and that their last name was Mohr and Lucas was telling me the street the house was on was Moor street and I was like that sounds familiar but might just be becuase of there last name. Turned into the street and I was like "this looks familiar, my cousins own that building there on the corner, and thats there house next door" Lucas was gobsmacked and was like (you're bullshitting me, that's the house I wanted to show you". Lol so it turned out Lucas had stumbled onto my cousins house last year and fallen in love with it...how freaky is that!

So we went on to take my photo's which was cool, cos we kept taking random streets around Hoddle, Johnston and Brunswick and finding cool things to photograph because of all the culture around that area. Hopefully these images will work and it wasn't too dark for them!

Monday we slept and bummed some more, Lucas and I hung out again cos everyone was again doing stuff. We went down Puckle street and got more sushi, then went back to the house and became net nerds. People around them are rich and stupid and before uni started we worked out we could use their neighbours wireless internet. So I hooked my laptop up for that to happen. Does this count as stealing? We are still in our house using our computers and they have not set an area limit on their wireless...is this illegal or just morally wrong? Your comments on this would be appreciated.

Monday nigth everyone pitched in some money and we went to the supermarket and bought food too cook up a storm...which I did! YAY me! I made stirfry with noodles for 8 people, I'm pretty darn proud of that effort!

So Tuesday brought about an early rise to shower/ pack/ play guitar hero all before heading off for the station to catch my train home!

Until my next blog, Peace out!
*hearts*
Viv

P.S. has anyone else finished their photography assignment or know exactly what they are doing for it? I feel lost!

Some stuff about me...

Hey Guys, I said I would try and blog as often as possible so here we go for the second day in a row! I have been on the net for like 4 hours doing all the stuff Joh wants us to do, though this is prolly longer then is should take as I am using crappy dial but thank God am in the process for getting broadband YAY! So lets continue...

So I finished year 12 in 2005 and decided rather then go straight to uni I would take a Gap year (had planned on doing this since forever!). Beginning of April 2006 off I went flying straight into Glasgow Airport on the west coast of Scotland, I flew with my grandma who had been out staying with us for about 4 months and we were met by my aunty. We then drove over to the other side of the country (it's not really that big of a country!) to the capital city Edinburgh, which would be my home for the next 10 months.

The plan was to have fun and travel, but also to work so I could get that independant living allowance thing from Centrelink. Did take some time to get a job with me beginning to stress about running out of money and being quite home sick but after about a month I evetually found a job through the website Gumtree.com I highly recommend this site for all you budding travellers out there, has sections for most major cities and is aimed at Aussies, Kiwi's and Safa's; and under these sections you can look for jobs or put your CV up so potential employers can find it, you can find places to live through buying/letting or renting, you can buy and sell belongings and there are also groups on there so you can make friends with similar interests if you don't know anyone where you are! Brilliant site.

Anywho the job I applied for was a hotel maid (not the most stylish job, but I needed money) so after emailing through my CV my future boss replied asking me if I would consider taking up there office job as there receptionist was heading off very shortly. Now do you really think I would turn down that offer...clean toilets or answer phones! The next week I went off for an interview and they met me at the station as the place is about half an hour out of Edinburgh. It was a little daunting the interview but I just tried to be bubbly and happy and it worked lol! They asked me if I would like to have a trial two days later when they had a conference, which I ended up waiting at the dinner for the Famous Grouse conference (Famous Grouse is like the biggest whiskey producers in Scotland!).

Anywho I started out just working on the estate to see how this side of the business ran, then two weeks later started in the office, the job was only ment to be until the end of July maybe a bit into August. I answered phones, and emailed people and sent out lots of wedding brochures and did some other strange tasks, one day I had to collect a wedding cake from Edinburgh and bring it out with me on the train...that was scary!

I should probably explain what the company was cos it is very confusing as it isn't actually a hotel its a private house. Basically the Spurways who were my bosses had 4 companies run from this sporting estate. The estate had a Georgian Masion on it and 3 lodges and these were all let out for weddings and conferences and things like that, this side of the business was just known as Harburn House as that was the name of the masion/estate ( images on the side are of the House and the drive up to the House cos I think they are pretty!). Then there were two shotting companies which is how we were a sporting estate these were Harburn Shooting and Dykefoot Shooting.
Then the fourth company was actually more Mr Spurways side which was a Christmas Tree Farm, infact the largest in Britain. and I worked in the office which was like the hub for all of these companies as they all at peak season of the year. I ended up making the job last til Christmas lol considering it was only meant to be 2 months!


I worked with some really great people there and I had an awesome time, my bosses were brilliant and knew that I was on my gap year and if I wanted time off to go travelling they were fine with it.

During the year I went to Scotland (obviously), Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Germany, Brussels, Monaco and Sweden. Most of the countries I visited when I did a month long tour with Topdeck Tours which are exactly the same as Contiki, but better! I did the Grand European Tour was brilliant! If you go to my Flickr account and go to the set Europe 2006 you can see my photos from this tour, though I still have lots to put up, I'm just running out of my allowance for the month!

Soo...that was a little bit more info about me and what I got up to last year and what my job was about, maybe I will go more in depth on some of the other places I went to in another post!

Until next time, stay safe and have fun!

Many random things to talk about

So this is my first post since the "non-contact" period started, AKA Holidays! As my title suggests I have many things on my mind at the minute and could make them all into seperate blogs but they could be quite brief and un-interesting, which is not what we are after considering we want to pass! Then again I do have that ability to ramble, so we will see how we go!

I do very much want to pass this subject so have set myself the task of not only getting everything on that checklist that Jo posted but to also blog as often as I used to last year! So...

Lets begin with the fact it is now Wednesday believe it or not, and I got back from Sydney last night after spending a wonderful Easter weekend there visiting family and some friends from uni which was really cool!

I stayed on campus Thursday night, even though the majority of people left that day, so it was a little eerie with no one being around, it was like a ghost town! But I had a few friends still there and Austar and my mum stayed with me that night as we were both going up to Sydney together on Friday.

Spent Friday night with Erin (she is in one of the other MPI104 classes!) and she lives in a massive house and it is very impressive! We went to a girl she went to school with party, they had a list and everything you needed to be on to get in which I found realy strange, but anywho my name was on it which was cool, but the party was lame and it was an 18th so I felt bad for the girl. We left the party early and went and hung in the car park at some local park with some of Erins friends, this made me feel underage all over again, but it was still interesting to see how city kids/Erin live and how different it is from the country.

Saturday we bummed and jus did normal lazy Easter Weekend things. Sunday was pretty much the same, everyone went to church except me cos I am a REBEL! and sleep is so much better then church! Easter eggs were good, though I felt sick by that night, and it was jus a very relaxing day as lame as that sounds.


On Monday I went over to Elise's (another friend from uni) house in the Northern Beaches, when she said she lived ages away from the city I didn't think it was that far but it was! She's another person with a massively impressive house where you can see the sea, I'm so jealous of these Sydney folk! So Monday was another bumming day, we watched her favourite movie, Frequency (this link takes you to a bit of a review on the movie) which I really enjoyed and would recommend others to watch.

So that was my Easter weekend, doesn't sound like much but if I went on and on you would stop reading so there was no point!

I'm now not sure whether to keep going with all the random thoughts running through my head because this is already pretty long and I don't know how much people will bother with reading it, so maybe it would be wise of me to break all these thoughts up into seperate blogs. At least I will be able to achieve my goal of constant blogging!

Until next time... be good!