best laid plans of mice and men

when i woke up i knew the weather was not going to be great today. but i decided i would try and ride to uni anyway. it hadnt rained in the hour after i woke up so i thought i could be in luck for teh next hour that it would take me to get to hawthorn....

5km later and it was pelting down. i had only gotten as far as ringwood east! 1 station from my house!

but by this point is was too late to go back and it was also too wet so i had to take the train with my bike into uni.

so i have my fingers crossed that it wont be raining at 8pm when i am coming home again......
i have realised that my rain jacket is really not that waterproof

Trivia night return

"I like Jacks" will be coming back for a chance to live up to our glory 2 weeks ago at the Trivia night at Father Flanagans in Collingwood. Come along and give us a hand, but then we might have to change our team name to fit you in! Tuesday at 8pm.

But if Collingwood is not your scene, you can find all the trvia night locations all over Australia at this site

My Sunday morn.

Kate was discussing on her blog about her experiences at the Swinburne Open Day today.
i was there too.

well it took me a bit of effort to get there. i was still in bed at 8am and realising that i had to catch a 8.40am train to get there by 10am i finally pulled myself up and got showered and dressed.

only to get to the station on time to find out that the trains have been replaced by busses between ringwod and croydon. Oh joy.
so stuck on a bus with another 50 or so unhappy souls and having to listen to these two ladies in front of me discuss irritable bowl syndrome.....

anyway i finally got to the Exhibition Buildings in Carlton at 10.10am. isnt Swinburne in Hawthorn you ask? well i thought so too, but seeing there are way too many campuses of this lovely uni they decided to put everything in one place. and seeing they got rid of Swinburne's only hall (Ethel Hall) last year sometime to replace it with an "information deli" there were not too many options.

but it was actually a really good location for it. I had never been inside the exhibition buildings before and it is pretty cool. and huge. i was surprised they filled the place. but there was no more space for another booth i would say.

the japanese booth was hidden in a corner but surprisingly we had a lot if visitors. it could have been our groovy happi coats, but i doubt it... a strange number of geeky anime fans though did show up to watch the anime on continuous loop on the tv set up beside us.

lots of people seemed interested in the course and i was pretty busy explaining the whole structure of it. the lecturers have no idea at all about how it all works, just what they have to teach.

and aparently i am famous. at the info session i was named as the person to talk to about being succesful in japanese and i had a few too bubbly kids come and talk to me especially.

and aparently i am also a legend! well according to Jenni Baldwin, the IBL coordinator. this is all because i set up the job in Siemens VDO Tokyo and they have been able to send another 2 people there because of me! Go me!

We got free lunch for our efforts but it was not really worth it. i was still hungry. but kate and i had a lovely chat to a teacher called Jit, who apparently teaches "everything" and whose classes are "very fun" and if you wnat to learn anything you shouldnt go to his classes :)

i had to get over to eltham to see my grandpa in the arvo so i was able to nab a ride with kate seeing it is almost next door to her house. my grandma died yesterday so we were giving him a bit of moral support. she had been in a nursing home for the last 10 years and had alzimers disease so it wasnt really that sudden. but sad all the same. the funeral is on wednesday

but now i am home and should be studying seeing i have done a limited amount of that over the last week. it cant be helped though. olympics, and riding, and snowboarding just keep getting in the way!

google me

have you ever tried to google yourself to see what kind of trail you leave on the net?

well, dont we all love the google ads. this one came up when i googled "carly"

Carly
Great deals on new and used items.
Search for carly now!
www.eBay.com

i wonder how much a "carly" sells for on ebay these days?

ballroom

wouldnt it be cool to have a ball at the flinders street station ballroom


http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/28/1072546412056.html

i remember seeing this picture in the age back in december and for some reason was thinking about it right now so i looked it up.

but apparently it is in disrepair so i guess no-one will be having a ball there for a long time seeing connex is not being the most useful train operator.

Its one of those days

I have 100 pages of a marketing textbook to go over.
I have a 3000 word Japanese essay to finish.
I have lots to read for foundations of international business.

but the Olympics are on TV......
synchronized swimming! yeh!
and there is days of our lives to catch up on.....

its one of those days :)

quote of the day

in relation to getting rid of an unwanted boyfriend

"you have get rid of them quickly like ripping off a bandaid"

120km in a day

Well this is the furthest I have riding in one day so far so I was pretty happy with myself, but it is only half of the way around the bay. So I have a lot of work to do

I left croydon at 10am, taking my new found route into the city via maroondah hwy and then mont Albert road. First stop was at uni in glenferrie to talk to the people at swinergy. (25km)

next I rode along bridge road to the city and then St kilda road. Got stopped at the big round-about cause I had to answer my phone. Dad calling me to tell me that they have a new girl at work who knows me (35km)

then it was all the way down beach road to mordialloc. It was soo windy I thought I was going to be knocked over on my side by the cross winds. It nearly happened a couple of times but I got my feet out of my clips fast enough to get my balance. (60km)

had lunch at the cafe I went to last time and then set out again. When I started out in the morning I had been planning to do a roundtrip via carrum but it was too difficult to get across the nepean hwy so I decided on the spare of the moment to go back along beach road again cause it would be a similar distance. Silly me. The winds had picked up even more and it had turned into a full blown head wind!

so it was a hard slog back to the city. I had a bit of a rest at sandingham (75km) where I was overtaken by a big group of riders. I hate being overtaken but I really don't ride that fast...

my average speed were way way down cause of the wind but I made it in the end.
a boost juice passionfruit smoothie gave me back my energy. (90km)

I have ridden down to mordialloc a couple of times but every time I have taken the train home from the city. Today I decided that I was going to make it the whole way. I took bridge road again and then mont Albert road. mont Albert road is great on the way into the city but uphill all the way home!

finally I got to ringwood (114km). And I needed a good excuse to take a break even though I only had 5km till home. So I pulled into Bicycle Workshop to have a chat to Hans about the new bike I want to buy. The Giant Road Flat bar CRX2 is the one he recommends to me. They didn't have it in stock yet, but it should be coming in over the next few days . I tried out another one in the same price range but I cant remember what model it was. I had never really ridden a road bike before and the ones with the curly handlebars take a little to get used to. That is why he recommends the flat bar one.

So finally at 5.30pm, 7.5hrs after I set out, I arrived back at home (121km) and man was I stuffed. But I am glad to say that I made it all the way. Next step is 150km and then 210km for the round the bay in a day. But i dont think i will get a chance to practice the whole 210km at any point.

what greek god are you?

thanks to kate for pointing this one out

does this sound like me?

Nemesis

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

market

imagine waking up at 4.30am to go outside into the freezing cold morning

that was me this morning. kate, megu and i had decided to have a stall at the camberwell market.

well at least megu and i maed it there by 6am. the same cant be said for kate, from whom i got an sms at 6am telling me that she couldnt get out of bed. and it was her who suggested to have a stall in the first place!

so as soon as we pulled into stall #112 there were already people trying to see in out boxes what we had for sale. the stock quetsion was, "do you have cds?" or "do you have designer?" and sadly the answer was no both times for me.

even though kate didnt turn up, another friend of mine from work brought some stuff along and a friend of megu's came to sell hand made jewellery. so it was pretty cramped in our 5.5m X 2.5m stall.

but over the course of the day i was able to sell nearly $100 of stuff. well and truely makes back the $11 i spent on the stall hire. and it didnt rain until just as we were packing up. so i would call it a success.

a kath and kim moment

i am baby sitting my cousin today out in narre warren and have gotten onto the computer to escape the disney chanel on tv for just a few minutes. there is only so much cartoon crao you can stand....

now we are trying to sort out how we will pass the time until his parents come home, and all he wants to do is go to fountain gate! his mum gave him $1 and he wants to go spend it on video games. i have a feeling that $1 is not going to go far

i have never been to fountain gate before, only ever seen it on kath and kim. i wonder if it is really that bogan?

blog bar

what do you think of the new blog bar? just another piece of junk to add to the page?
i havent actually got the search box to work yet.....

name change

seeing i am not in japan anymore, it doesnt really make sence for my blog to be called "koko ga hen" now. so in keeping with my present location i have changed the name to "melbourne tales" permenantly.

that doesnt mean that i wont continue to bore my loyal readers with info about japan etc.
its in my nature

somebody told me

i have had this song stuck in my head all day. i think i was annoying brooke during jap class this morning humming the tune.

and i had no idea who sang it until now
i should be able to sleep tonight now i know the truth
all it ever takes is a little google-ing

Artist : The Killers

Title : Somebody Told Me

Album : Hot Fuss

Lyrics:

Breaking my back just to know your name
Seventeen tracks and I've had it with this game
I'm breaking my back just to know your name
But heaven ain't close in a place like this
Anything goes but don't blink you might miss
Cause heaven ain't close in a place like this
I said heaven ain't close in a place like this
Bring it back down, bring it back down tonight
Never thought I'd let a rumour ruin my moonlight

Well somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looks like a girlfriend
That I had in February of last year
It's not confidential
I've got potential

Ready? Let's roll onto something new
Taking its toll and I'm leaving without you
Ready? Let's roll onto something new
But heaven ain't close in a place like this
Anything goes but don't blink you might miss

Cause heaven ain't close in a place like this
I said heaven ain't close in a place like this
Bring it back down, bring it back down tonight
Never thought I'd let a rumour ruin my moonlight

Well somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looks like a girlfriend
That I had in February of last year
It's not confidential
I've got potential
A rushin', a rushin' around

Pace yourself from me
I said maybe baby please
But I just don't know now

Somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looks like a girlfriend
That I had in February of last year
It's not confidential
I've got potential
A rushin', a rushin' around

Another Steven Bradbury moment

How much is Sarah carrigan's win in the women's road race the other day like Steven Bradbury in his ice skating race. But good for her.

the world champion and the 2nd best rider were knocked out earlier in the race by a fall, leaving the lead open to our aussie girl to take and win.

and now a norwegian rider is insinuating that Sarah is a drug cheat because she came from nowhere. what a case of sour grapes. The Australian Olympic committee made the Norwegian make a formal apology. She was really scary looking too, weird eye shadow.

all this success in the cycling is inspiring me to ride more. Today I took my bike into uni, braved the morning commuters evil stares on the train, and then rode back to home after class. Then I had lunch and set out again in the arvo for another 20km.

I have no idea how I am going to be ready for the round the bay in a day though. Its a similar distance to what the mens road race was the other day at the Olympics, around 210km. They took 6 hours to finish it but I forsee 12 hours of grueling riding ahead of me. the women only rode half of that.

Champions!

Last night while Australia was battling away for gold at the Olympics, another challenge was underway in suburban collingwood.

the team named "i like jacks", the 1st time rookies, beat all the veteran other teams against the odds.

we are talking about trivia here. The ultimate challenge. Each week, father Flanagan pub on smith street offers free trivia night to those who want to take up the challenge.

at 8pm the teams lined up and the battle began. Questions from music, geography, maths, to politics were rained down on the competitors. The team "i like jacks", made up of John, Adam, Carly, Kate and Scott (initials from everyone's names) was joined by a few late starters, atish, ricky, john and his gf.

at the halfway point we were up by 1 point. And at the end we beat the other 5 teams by 2 points!

for our efforts, a $50 drink voucher to be used next time when we defend our title

SWY

i had decided i wasnt going to try and apply for SWY again this year because i thought that it was being run from November, but it turns out that it leaves in January.

So i downloaded the application form and i was fronted with some horrible questions. I have to send this application in on Wednesday at the latest.

Check this out. Especially Question 1, what a doozy!

1. Outline how you have:
a) Encouraged development of community capacity for self help;
b) Enhanced life prospects for young people by encouraging their active participation in academic, business and/or community life; supporting young people to work to their capacity; and/or developing young people's capabilities.

2. Please tell us about your extra-curricular activity, for example, your involvement as an active member of youth organisation(s), private organizations and/or voluntary involvement in your community, and/or discuss your relevant interests. Please give a working example of your experience(s).

3. How will your interests and experience help to contribute to the SWY program?

4. What do you hope to gain from participating in the SWY Program? How will you use the experiences gained from participating in the program on your return to Australia?

5. In 100 words or less what does being Australian mean to you?

6. Briefly describe a situation where you have been required to work as part of a team, and outline your key strengths as a team member?

japanese job opportunities

three japanese speaking jobs have been brought to my attention recently.

1. the job i mentioned in the previous post. they are still looking for japanese speakers. they need about 20 of them for the call centre.
http://www.gapbuster.com/en-us/index.htm

2. 2005 World Expo Nagoya, Aichi, Japan
http://www.expo2005.com.au/recruitment.asp
This one sounds cool. You get to work at the Australian booth at the expo.
main drawback is that you have to be available from march to september for teh whole 6 months.....
applications close August 25th

3. The JET program
http://www.japan.org.au/Jet.htm
I thought the JET program only was for ALTs or "english teachers" but there is a second part to the progran called CIR.

CIRs (Coordinator for International Relations) are engaged in international activities. These participants are placed in offices of local governments or related organisations such as international associations, universities, convention bureaus and so on.

The duties of the CIR are carried out under the guidance of the division management in local government offices in prefectures, cities, towns and villages.
a) Assistance with projects related to international activities carried out by local governments. Such activities may include: translating, editing and proof-reading pamphlets in a foreign language; assisting with planning, designing and implementing international exchange programmes; assisting with official guests from abroad and interpreting at events for overseas visitors or for local foreign community residents.
b) Assistance with language instruction of government employees and local residents.
c) Assistance with planning and participation in activities of local private groups or organisations engaging in international exchange.
d) Assistance with or creation of exchange activities related to local residents' cross-cultural awareness and understanding.
e) Other duties as specified by the Contracting Organisation.

secret shopper

did you ever want to make a bit of extra cash while you were shopping?
isnt that every woman's dream?

well when i was looking in seek.com.au for interesting jobs, i found a company which offers just this. become a mystery shopper!

The company is called GapBusters and you can apply online here.

I was actually looking at this company because they had advertised a japanese job on seek.
It seemed to be a call centre job, but i was still interested in finding out more

When i first looked at the site, i had problems trying to figure out what the company actually did. all that marketing gobldy gook, and i am supposed to be a marketing student! but deep in the site the truth came out, they supply mystery shoppers! my mum signed up straight away!

if i get the job, it would be my job to help recruit mystery shoppers in japan and give them their "assignments". sounds kind of fun. i had the interview this morning. $17 / hour.
it was a strange interview. i had to do this spelling, grammar and maths test, and then write a passage in japanese. and then talk to the HR guy in english and then a japanese guy for a little while. i think i have the job if i want it. they were like, "when can you come in for training? tonight?" and i was like, "i have classes till 8pm tonigt so no."

but i am still deciding. dont know how it would all work with my other job.....

but become a mystery shopper. i dont know how much they get paid, but it has to be all worth it if you can shop at the same time. sometimes you even get to buy stuff to keep and they pay you back for it

how to drink absinth

According to http://www.eabsinthe.com/hills/serving.htm and tried and tested by carly.

ONE Pour a shot of Absinth into a glass. Dip a teaspoon of sugar in so that it absorbs the absinthe.

TWO Light the sugar and let it burn so that it bubles and caramelises.

THREE Pour the melted sugar into the Absinth and stir (if the glass catches alight, quickly smother the flames).

FOUR Add an equal part of water to the absinthe.

rappadoh

the other day when the girls came over to my house for drink (because the parents were away), we played a game called rappadoh that katie brought along. its kind of like pictionary but you use playdoh to make the word instead. this was one of our creations

snow pictures

this is the only snow photo i took when i went to buller on wednesday this week. it was so cold and wet i couldnt actually get my camera out of my bag when i was anywhere near the snow, so this one was taken in the car park

i went to the snow

waking up at 5.30am is only worth it for one reason. SNOW!

i was surprised how quickly we actually go to buller. i think it was like 6.45 by the time we left scott's house and we were out of teh car buying tickets for the lift by 9.15!

the only problem was that it was raining. and it was cold. and it was cloudy.
but that wasnt going to stop me.

my gloves were saturated within the first 5 minutes of being out there. that could have been the rain, but more likely the fact that i fell over just a few too many times.

but it wasnt my fault. really!

i was borrowing scott's board and boots. he hadnt used it for a while and in the mean time had lent it to a friend. it turns out this friend had adjusted the indings to fit another set of boots and that was why i couldnt get them tight enough. and not tight bindings mean carly falls over a lot.

so after being told i was a crappy boarder for 1 hour i decided to try and get it fixed. i used to work at grimmus so i called in there, mentioned pretty early in the piece that i used to work there and then they fixed it for free for me.

not before a few hiccups. i think the repair guy was having such a nice conversation with us that he accidently adjusted the bindings to make them even looser first. but then he fixed it again pretty soon.

so after that i was doing a lot better. but that didnt stop me falling over. just not as often.

the clouds didnt help at all. it was so foggy that i couldnt see what was uphill and what was down.

by the end i was only falling over about 2 times per run. we had moved on to "standard" which was on the side of the mountain that wasnt so cloudy. lots of fun!

we left around 4pm and got back to melbourne around 6.30. a bit more traffic on the way home.

but even though my legs and arms and back and bottom are still killing today (2 days later) it wa definately worth it. and next time i go up in 2 weeks i will be much better. i promise

i'm going to the snow!

i'm going to the snow! i'm going to the snow! i'm going to the snow! i'm going to the snow! i'm going to the snow!

that might be a bit overboard, but i am truely excited! i have been trying to convince people to go snow boarding with me for so long, and finally it has worked.

so on wednesday morning when you are all getting ready for work/uni, i will be on the slopes, enjoying the fresh powder snow at Mt. Buller. ha ha

cd ripper

I have been trying to find a good program to get my cds into mp3 format so i can listen to them on the way to work each day.

i think i have downloaded like 10 different programs and finally i have found one that you
a. dont have to register to use past 10 days
b. lets you rip more than the first 5 tracks of the cd
c. actually makes mp3s and not other weird formats

its called FreeRIP and you can get it at http://www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml

the cool thing is that it connects to the music database and finds all the track names and album names for you

i would recommend it

The power of women

In our Japanese class this year, there is only 1 guy. And he isn't there a lot of the time

anyway, the other day, all us girls ganged up on our teacher (a guy) and used our powers to convince him to revise the evaluation criteria in the subject.

the main problem we had with it was with the amount of work we were required to do
in other years, we have had 2 Japanese classes per semester, but this year they have decided to squish it all into one subject. All of the assessment we would normally get over 2 subjects. So this means that we are basically doing 5 subjects this semester instead of 4

so, we were unable to get the 4 hours of class cut down to the standard 3, but we were able to get rid of the kanji tests (who writes their own kanji these days anyway, that's what computers are for) and get rid of one of the essays.

saying this though, i have signed up for the honours subject which doubles the length of the essay, but at least we got rid of the kanji and we don't have to hand in the essay till the 12 week of classes.

long live the power of women.

left in the dark

its a strange feeling to be there at the station at the exact time in the morning everyday when the street lights get turned off.

connex - doing a great job

i got 5 sms's from connex today telling me about cancelled trains. lucky today i had no work or classes so i didnt have to go into the city

but the frustrating thing would be for those unlucky enough to have to take the train everyday is that 4 of these train were in a row. meaning that these poor people would have had to wait almost 1 hour for the train to finally come!

now thats great service. nice to see how a monopoly in action.

Great bikes rides

Does anyone really ever get anything for free??

I have signed up for this years "Great Victorian Bike Ride" and because i am (now) a bicycle Victoria member, i get a free bike to go with my 10 day, 570km bike ride. I am a bit curious as to the quality of this bike though. If they can afford to give one away to hundreds of people who signed up for the ride, i think i will ride my own instead.

I get the bike some time in October at a special day where you learn how to put it all together, so i can tell you more about it then.

The bike ride is along the Great Ocean Road, so i am sure it is going to be really cool. The cooler thing is that i don't have to do it by myself because i discovered that one of my really good friends from high school is also going to do it

The ride starts the day after exams finish, Nov 27. At least it will be nice and warm by then. I went riding on Sunday to carrum and then the city (90km) via the bike tracks from croydon and i was soooo cold. i really need to get myself some long bike knicks. i did have my new fancy fluro pink bike jersey that i bought in Germany on, but being short sleeve it didn't help much, just made me look cool!

church mosaics

berlin parliament building domed roof

berlin synagouge

jewish museum

checkpoint charlie

a street named "Bode"

berlin wall