Last night after work, I ventured up to Melbourne for what I have been calling my “First Day at School”. I headed to one of RMIT’s many lecture theatres (Capitol Theatre) on Swanston Street for what was to be my first ever lecture.
Accounting was the first subject in my IT/Business Degree. What do I know about accounting? Very Little. What do I know about accounting after the lecture? Still very little, but I now know just how much I don’t know.
After that I had to head to the Bourke St Building for my tutorial class. It was similar stuff but I have since changed classes due to my not being able to understand my tutor. Nice guy, but very thick Indian accent.
I haven’t studied anything in a while (excusing short courses and Foxtels Lifestyle channel). I wondered if my brain would implode with all the new information – luckily for me it was all OK.
Saturdays heat played havoc with my guitar strings. I had a gig that night with “Rocket Girl” and needed to change them over since I hadn’t done so in a while. Due to the heat I snapped two of the high “E” strings, the third luckily stayed on and tuned successfully but left me with no spares in case it happened again that night.
My usual store “Guitars and Things” was closed at this time so I quickly ran around the corner to their competitors and picked up another couple of sets. On heading back to my car I noticed someone walking around it suspiciously. Once I knew it was my car they were eyeing off, I headed towards them.
It was a parking inspector leaving some paper under my wiper. This was the wrong time to do that to me, being stressed out about the gig and suffering form the heat. In an action which can only be described as unlike me, I yelled out “Hey, excuse me mate!“.
He replied with what seemed like a well rehearsed and often spoken answer “Just Hang on, hear me out!“.
I had no intention of hearing him out because the gig I was heading to was turning out to be more expensive than what I would make; with the purchase of new strings (and if you threw a parking ticket into the mix). I explained to him in a firm manner “I’ve been here less than a minute, am I expected to buy a ticket when I’m just going in and out of somewhere?” – I was careful not to swear.
He responded with a very condescending “Just read what it says“. I did and luckily (for him) it was just a courtesy notice. He then said in that same tone “Just say thankyou“.
I responded: “Are you kidding me?“.
His reply: “Hey! We’ve got feelings too!” (It took me a couple of seconds to get over that completely out-of-the-blue and pointless remark).
At this point I ended it by throwing the ticket in my (now open) car door and saying “I understand that, but we pay a fortune for parking in this town as it is!” and promptly drove away.
That felt good to say as the current minimum rate for parking is 70c for 1 hour in Frankston, and rising.
For the past few days I would get up, get organised, get ready for work and head out – only to get entangled in a horrible spider web when walking down our front steps to the car. One morning I actually had the web still in its original shape attached to the side of my briefcase.
Well this morning the little web designer revealed himself. I nearly walked right into him (had I done so it would have ended up on my stomach, with its web wrapped around me). I went for the camera and Mel went for the Heavy Duty insecticide. I shot first then Mel followed, bringing the poor bugger to its knees.
It was almost as big as this one we found a couple of years ago. Now we just have to deal with the 20,000 or so more spiders wandering around our house.
Yesterday I helped out in the studio where I’ve been recording my original CD. The owner had doubled booked himself and asked me to to run a recording session. I have done a course and have plenty of audio engineering experience, but it had been a while since I had been a solo engineer for a band of strangers. Even so, I volunteered anyway.
All the mics were set up early and everything was ready to go by the time the band arrived. I am extremely familiar with the PC software used, from my own music projects. The plan was to record one song, so I helped the young band produce it as professionally as I could. After a full day of recording drums, bass, acoustic/electric guitars, keyboards and vocals, the result was a complete success. The band were extremely happy with their product and the studio owner was able to be at his other engagement.
I’m glad to see I still have the knack, let’s hope I get more work there!
Yesterday I finally convinced Mel it would be great to go to the Zoo. I’ve been wanting to go since I got my new camera so I can further practice my photography. The day was hot but the cool breeze made it enjoyable – and (unlike Australia Day) I slipped slopped and slapped!
We left home at about 12:30 and got there just over 1 hour later (thanks TomTom!). It was pretty crowded as we expected, so we ended up coming in through the rail gate end.
I ended up taking around 300 shots again. I am still learning the basics so my main goal for the day was “focus”. I need to learn everything there is to know about taking shots but I figure it’s all worthless if I can’t get my subjects in focus correctly. As a result some shots were perfect where I was aiming and others were white blobs. Oh well, the best part is it’s fun to practice.
You can see my photos in my Gallery and some on Flickr.
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