Hello, sorry I haven’t blogged, et cetera, et cetera. But I’m here now.

This is the second last week of second semester. So basically, I complete my first year of university next Friday. Wow, it’s gone so fast I feel like I’m in The Sims 2 University. The academic year goes fast there too.

The books that I ordered from Angus and Robertson [an Australian bookseller] came yesterday, which was a pleasant surprise. Now that I’ve completed my last really huge assignment for the year (I do have a Psychology essay and HRM newspaper article diary to submit next week, but they’re small potatoes compared to this group assignment), I can read the last four books in the Gossip Girl series! (They stopped stocking them in the bookshop for some unknown reason. Probably ’cause they’re trashy).

I get to relax for a few days now, which will be good for my health. (more…)

Yeah, I know I haven’t blogged in ages, blah blah blah. Nobody reads this anyway. But. Here’s a paragraph-style list of the things that have happened over the past few weeks since I last blogged.

I got halfway towards getting my P-plates. I passed my computerised Hazard Perception Test (as addressed in my previous entry).

I’m getting much more comfortable driving my gorgeous little vrrrooomthing.

I got the most gorgeous, perfect pair of boots in Chapel Street a few weeks ago. They were apparently $300 originally, but I got them for FIFTY BUCKS. How good is that? They’re suede, round-toe (I can’t stand leather or pointy) with decent heels (I don’t generally go for spikes).

My friend and I sorted out our issues, and he will be going to the Justin Timberlake concert with me! I’m so excited for it…

… But, speaking of Justin’s concert - horror of horrors, the Exam Timetable Gods have cursed me with an exam at NINE-THIRTY IN THE GODFORSAKEN MORNING the day after it. But I do finish my exams in less than two weeks to make up for it, so earlier holidays for meeeee!

My favourite singer in the whole wide world (that would be Delta Goodrem) is releasing her new album in less than two weeks. I’m all the more excited for it because I’ve actually already won a copy. There’s two editions of it, a limited edition digipak and your standard jewel-case edition. So now I can have both without looking like I’m a few scones short of a high tea.

• The competition was one of those “in 50 words or less, please explain why you want this” jobs. So, not only can I talk for Australia, I can write a pretty good treatise on why I want something (just ask my long-suffering parents).
• ‘Course, I would’ve liked the tickets to her album launch (which is tonight, in Sydney - imagine, I could’ve been blogging from Sydney) or a Sony Ericsson mobilio-phone, but the CD’ll do. I won something, and that’s pretty cool, no?

Below this cut are some words about the movies I’ve seen (Stardust, Superbad and Hairspray), which are spoiler-free but snarky. There’s always room for snark.

(more…)

I do. Because then, when I have it, and when I’m driving Silver Belle to uni each day, if something like what happened this morning happens again, I can drive home.

I am stuck here until 5:00 PM. I arrived at 9:30 this morning for a tutorial which is supposed to start at 10:00 AM. “Supposed to” are the operative terms, my friends. My tutor decided not to show up. Therefore, I am stuck here until 5:00 PM. Without a car, without a lift, without any conceivable, safe way of getting home.

My dad is right. I need my licence, stat.

So you’ll be glad to know I’m taking steps towards achieving this goal.

I passed my computerised Hazard Perception Test a few weeks ago now - which, if you want my opinion, is a pretty silly way of seeing how safe we are, given the pass mark is a measly 54 per cent (but it’s hard).

For instance, how am I supposed to tell the computer when I would slow down on a road? There are so many things to consider. For example, how fast is the rest of the traffic going? Is there anyone behind me who, if I “slow down”, might plough into the back of my sweet little vrrrooomthing? What exactly do you mean by “slow down”? Do you mean start slowing down? Or, perhaps you mean coming to a near-complete stop?

What the hell does “click when you would slow down” essentially mean?

I was so prepared to stay home from uni today. I was. I fought tooth and nail to stay home, even though my mum fought tooth and nail back to get me to go.

So I went.  Only my going had no purpose after all.

Mondays are only an hour’s worth. Now, some of you might question why the hell I go to uni on Mondays this semester at all, but I figure it’s X-amount of weeks, it could be worse, et cetera, et cetera.

My lecturer didn’t show up.

So all in all, attending uni today was an exercise in complete pointlessness.

I had my nineteenth birthday last Monday. To soften the blow of entering my final year of teenagerhood, my parents bought me the thing I’ve been wanting since my other one (nearly, almost) died: a white 80 GB Apple iPod. They (well, actually, I) ordered it from Apple online, so we had it laser engraved (for free!) with the inscription To Sonya, love from Mum and Dad. I got a pink Belkin brushed-metal case to protect it as well.

Aah, I love the thing so much. I’ve waited a while for it (by my standards, since I pretty much get what I want, when I want - which, yes, I am grateful for), but since the iPod was so expensive, I was happy to wait.

I got a few other presents from my parents too, including a 25th Anniversary Care Bear, which has genuine Swarovski crystals set into its eyes and sterling silver accents. I’m not allowed to take it out of its box. and that’s fine with me, since the bear’s fur is purest white! Yeah, I’m just a kid at heart.

I also got a 100 mL bottle of Calvin Klein Euphoria perfume, which is my ’signature scent’ and the most divine perfume since… since Mum bought her La Prairie Silver Rain perfume (as a side note, Silver Rain smells wonderful on my mum and not so wonderful on me, which leads me to conclude that it smells best on middle-aged, pack-a-day smokers. Oh, the injustice of it all).

I received a bit of money from my godmother, who lives on the other side of the city. I’m hoping that she’ll visit sometime soon - I’d really like to catch up with her.

I’d better finish off my Business Law homework soon. There’s not much of it to go, and contracts are pretty interesting, at least for the moment.

Oh! I also bought myself SingStar 90s. That game is incredibly embarrassing. I knocked through most of the songs on there in a night.

And it was so humiliating. Why, you ask? I KNOW THOSE SONGS. I LOVED THOSE SONGS.

Reasons Why SingStar 90s Embarrasses the Hell Out of Sonya:

• All Saints, ‘Never Ever’;
• Billy Ray Cyrus, ‘Achy Breaky Heart’;
• Aqua, ‘Barbie Girl’;
• Spice Girls, ‘Wannabe’;
• The Cardigans, ‘Lovefool’;
• Natalie Imbruglia, ‘Torn’… oh, just read the list.
• Go on, observe my humiliation: SingStar 90s track list (thanks Wikipedia).

Today is so not my day.

Okay, so it was kind of good, with only one hour-long lecture, and in most weeks my dad’ll be able to pick me up soon afterwards. And my lecturer for the next month in Psych 1B is practically a comedian, so at least the excruciating 9 AM-10 AM Timeslot of Death and Sonya Not Being Totally, Completely Awake Yet will be an entertaining prospect.

But the big problem is with the Faculty of Business and Law’s online education system, WebCT. I dropped a subject (Accounting for Decision Making) that I enrolled into at the start of the year because I realised it wouldn’t fit in to this semester’s schedule.

However, I kept the other business subject I enrolled into (Human Resource Management). I can’t access either subject’s home page on the system because it alleges (and IT, useless as they are) presume I am not enrolled correctly. Rule one of the blackboard jungle of academia: it is your fault, even when it is decidedly not your fault. So, I have to deal with this pronto. There’s online assessment I have to do for Business Law which, ironically enough, is accessible only through WebCT! And I can’t access it!

EDIT: I can access it now. How amazement.

To top it off, I can’t access the home page for the University altogether. Oh wait, now I can.

And according to TNT Logistics’ package tracking service, they tried to deliver my iPod, but we aren’t home, home, home. A free cookie for anyone who can guess what song that sentence could be sung to the tune of. You all know when my birthday is. If not, it’s on that sidebar o’yonder. *points pointedly*

I treated myself to a fantastic box set of ten Doctor Who novels featuring the Ninth and Tenth Doctors. They’ll keep me going for a while. It was only $54.95, can’t say fairer than that. I estimate that that’s about $5 AUD a book, but my maths is rubbish, so don’t quote me.

Oh yes. I was going to post about the seventh and final Harry Potter book. But do you know what? I don’t think I will. I have so much to say about it that I’m just going to cop out and say nothing. Much.

It was one of the best books I’ve ever read, I couldn’t read it fast enough, and I read it in four hours without a break to eat, drink or go to the loo, so that should tell you something of how enthralled I was by the spell of “Deathly Hallows”.

… And by that, I mean ‘Tomorrow’. You know, the one that goes, “Toooooo-morrow, tooooooo-morrow, I love ya, to-morrow, you’re only a day a-way!”?

You may have gleaned that I am a massive Harry Potter fan (make that a complete fanatic), and from seven o’clock tonight (which is an hour and ten minutes from now), my computer is going to be turned off.

I will not be getting online until approximately quarter past eight tomorrow night, just after Doctor Who, and when I do, I may blog or I may not. But whatever I write, it will be password-protected. I don’t mind if people don’t read it - I honestly will probably just want to get all my thoughts down, for me, you know.

I am rather amazed at how I have successfully evaded any manner of spoiler. I don’t want to know anything. I’m so militant that here’s what I plan to do between seven o’clock and nine o’clock tomorrow morning:

• Totally avoid watching television in case there is news.
• Re-read Half-Blood Prince to ‘catch up’ … for about the thirtieth time.
• Play a lot of Zelda: Twilight Princess and finish City in the Sky (the third last dungeon).
• Go to bed.
• My alarm on my mobile phone is set for 7:30 AM, and my dad has kindly offered to take me to Dymocks, where my pre-ordered children’s edition of Deathly Hallows shall be waiting for me.
• We shall go to Dymocks.
• Dad shall laugh at the measures I will take to avoid spoilers.
• I shall wear earplugs, or else my iPod mini in my ears.
• I shall punch any stupid person who might dare to breathe a word of the plot while I wait in the queue.
• And then I shall punch them again.
• Go home, lie on bed, open book.
• Read.
• Finish book in three hours or less.
• Read it again.
• It’s over.
• Watch Doctor Who.

It’s going to be over.

Less than twenty-four hours from now, it’s going to be over.

I feel quite conflicted emotionally, actually.

You might say it’s just a book, but I grew up with Harry and his friends. I say that because I was quite young (about 12) when I started reading the books. Actually, I hated them at first. I threw Philosopher’s Stone at the wall! So as Harry was walking his life’s path through his years at Hogwarts and experiencing growing up and adolescence, I was going through the same sort of things. I think that’s why I love these books so much.

Well, see you all on the flip side - bet you I can finish it first!

I can access my university results for this semester from twelve midnight tonight (or should that be tomorrow morning?). I’m kind of really nervous, and kind of really calm, both at the same time. I guess I realise that there’s not much I can do now - they’ve been calculated, and all that’s left is for me to discover what they are.

I’m going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix tomorrow night with my friends. I hope there aren’t many (read: any) little children (who, in my opinion, should not be reading the latter Harry Potter novels until they are older) there to spoil the experience for me. There shouldn’t really be any there, though, considering that school starts back tomorrow.

All the same, though, I wish we were going later than six-thirty in the evening. But at least this way I won’t miss Torchwood.

I really want to go to Federation Square in the city on Saturday morning for the official Deathly Hallows book launch. I wouldn’t ordinarily go to one of these things, but because it’s the seventh and final book, I just - I want to be a part of that.

I stayed up till 4 AM on Wednesday morning to catch the live web-cast of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix premiere in the UK.

This began at 2 AM AEST and the highlight, of course, was David “Tenth Doctor” Tennant arriving with that bird on his arm, what’s her name, Sophia Myles. You might remember her turns in the sheets with James Franco in Tristan + Isolde, a love story about a star-cross’d Irish princess and a dashing knight, and quite possibly another story Shakespeare plagiarised from.

It is rather good that she’s moved on from banging aging leading men of yesteryear like Charles Dance (apparently true, and frightening to boot) to the dishy Doctor. If you have to ask “Doctor Who?” I’ll flick you on the ear.

Also, I’m stealing the shoes Emma Watson wore, and if she won’t give them up quietly I’ll have to snatch Katie Leung’s.

… Wait a second, they were the same!

(more…)

1. Doctor Who returned to Australian television with the episodes ‘The Runaway Bride’ and ‘Smith and Jones’. Both were absolutely fantastic episodes. But I already knew that, given I *cough* have seen the episodes.
2. Doctor Who finished in the UK. I have seen the last episode, and will post my thoughts later on. Maybe.
3. I am exceptionally proud that I resisted the temptation to look on Wikipedia for what happened in the finale.
4. And that concludes all Doctor Who-related announcements for this post.
5. I returned the Wii game I bought (’SSX Blur’) and didn’t buy anything else.
6. But yesterday, I bought a Nintendo DS game, Kirby Squeak Squad.
7. It’s going back on Thursday.
8. I think I should just buy the Doctor Who season one box set and have done with it.
9. Okay, I lied that there weren’t going to be any more Who-related announcements.

I am currently working on another project to do with this Web site and will post about it in a later entry. That’s a definite, because I’m rather excited about it!