Random

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore: tomato sauce, sweet and sour, bbq, CURRY, what do you mean you don't have honey???

Yes, it's true, I've been to McDonald's. Vikki's marketing class has been doing a lot of research on their new ads and products and stuff so she insisted that we stop at one on the way home from Phillip Island. They really have improved things in the health department, like using canola oil and putting real white meat in their mcnuggets. Makes you wonder what the heck was in them before doesn't it? Anyways, I didn't know what to order, and comprehending the whole new healthy menu was simply beyond me at that hour of the night (I needed all reserves to drive us home), so I ended up with a mega craving for mcnuggets and honey. Guess I wanted to feel like a kid again or something. The girl asked me what kind of sauce I wanted and I swear, she looked at me like I was from Mars or something when I said "honey". Apparently there is no honey to be found anywhere in an Australian McDonald's. And yet they have CURRY sauce for dipping.

I was taking the laundry off the line yesterday and I started to pull down my OV shirt when suddenly some sort of creepy crawly came falling towards my face. Now, in Australia, when an unidentified creepy crawly is coming at you, you get the heck out of the way because it may actually kill you. Or be a cockroach. Add this to the normal startled reaction and I'm just glad nobody was around to see me. What a sight I must have been, with my OV shirt half stuck to the line and half tangled over my head and arms, and me jumping up and down flailing my arms trying to free myself. I succeeded, only to find that I had freaked out over a moth. A small moth. A much larger one was still nestled in the folds of the shirt and I shook it out. I think this is a very good argument for getting driers in Sydney. True, with the weather like it is, clothing dries very quickly on a line outside. But it's outside. A redback could make a web in your jeans. Or a couple of moths could scare the living daylights outta you.

Well Ching has already spilled the beans about this to enough people that I may as well tell everyone. It was our first night in Melbourne. We were walking along the sidewalk in the dark. DARK, let's remember. My zipper hoodie was tied around my waist and I was getting chilly, so I untied it and then had to untangle it and get the zipper undone. I was quite focussed on this task, trusting that Ching and Vikki would steer me in the right direction. Ching noticed a dark pole. Ching noticed that I was heading straight for it. I jerked at my hoodie and swerved a little to the left. Ching thought I was dodging the pole. I wasn't. I veered back onto my original course, still concentrating on the hoodie. I walked directly into the pole. Fortunately, it was a flexible pole or I might have spent my holiday with a broken nose. Vikki hadn't seen it either, so I didn't feel so bad, especially since I hadn't been looking up. I mean, who puts a pole in the middle of a sidewalk? We couldn't stop laughing for several blocks after that.

My mom sent me my new driver's licence by registered mail and I went to pick it up today. It arrived at my house in Mississauga only a few days after I'd left the continent. But my old licence expires in November and that would leave me without any official ID other than my passport, and no licence if I want to rent a car while we're travelling. So it was rather important. The package contained not only a licence with a photo I'm actually not ashamed to show, but photos and a letter. I stood at the bus stop to get back to campus, reading the letter and flipping through the photos with the biggest grin on my face. Just seeing my mom's printing on the envelope - something I could hold in my hands, not just read on a screen. It made me feel so good. She sent me a photo of her and my dad because I got here and realised that I the only photos I had of them were on my computer and therefore not stuck to my wall where I can see them whenever. And a bunch of my sister's new haircut. Well not so new by now, but new to me. She cut it off right after I left and never managed to send me pics. It wasn't a homesick feeling looking through the package, just a really happy, warm fuzzy reminder of the people who love me most.