I've become suddenly a lot more busy this week, and I've no idea why. I've spent a lot of time running between appointments, I suppose. The doctor, Centrelink, the recruitment agency(s), shopping for essentials, band practice, tutoring - and more are coming up next week. I've already nearly forgotten things several times, so here's the list to myself so I don't forget:

SAT: B'day party.
SUN: Band practice.
MON: (argh, mental blank - I know I have something important to do then, but can't remember what! Uh oh.)
TUE: Il Lido lunch.
WED: Uni enrolment & orientation tour.
THU: Tutoring (changed from Wed)
FRI: HP6, appt with foot surgeon.

Oops. Whenever I think I've forgotten something, I always have. Unfortunately, I have a strong feeling it was something very important, too. Not job related, I'm sure, but still important. Perhaps it will come back to me later. I hope.

I'm supposed to be recording a song by Sunday, too. Will have to do that tomorrow if I have time.

As for tonight, Dad took me to see the Glory play Wolverhamptom, over here from England. The Wolves won, of course, but the Glory played fairly well against them even so. Afterwards, we went to Dad's friends' house, drank mulled wine, ate mushroom pizza (my favourite topping!), and played a game called "Liar Dice", which Dad lost badly, to my amusement (as he's prone to claiming he's always right). I already knew a very similar game from Japan that was played by counting fingers rather than dice. It has very little to do with lying, despite the name, and more to do with making educated guesses based on probabilities. I didn't play, because it was too reliant on chance for my taste. Dad thought the same. What's the point in playing a game if you know that everyone has equal odds of winning? There's no fun in that. Games of skill are much more interesting. Nevertheless, I had great fun watching everyone else play, with some great conversation about the symbolism of colours and probability theory (without the hardcore maths). Best night I've had in ages!
 
The insides of my headphone ear covers smell really nice, I've noticed. Some of my shampoo must have rubbed off on them.

Very few part-time casual job advertisements are around at the moment. I found just one today on seek.com (which admittedly isn't the best source for part time work). It wasn't ideal, I thought, but it was simple and I could do it with my hands tied behind my back. Then I saw that they specified two years minimum experience. Argh!

Why do people want even casual admin assistants to have two years experience? A braindead person could do that kind of work!

The really annoying thing is that I even have experience working in admin - but not two years, so I'm still not qualified.

I need to find three more jobs to apply to by tomorrow, but the advertisements simply aren't there. According to the news, job advertisements have gone down by 51% since the financial crash, which doesn't help. I'll just have to send out more resumes and hope for a reply, as nobody is advertising for part time workers right now.

Several months ago I recall mentioning that a growth/protrusion/lump/bone on my foot that had been annoying me suddenly disappeared. Well, it has slowly grown back and is now annoying me again. I went to see the doctor about it yesterday, and I'm told that yes, it's a ganglion cyst. He said that it would keep coming back unless I had it surgically removed, so that's what I'm going to do as soon as possible.

#95 - 65/365
"The Family Tree", by Sheri S. Tepper.

I was impressed by the other book of Tepper's I read a few days ago, so I went on to another, and I'm pleased to say that it's just as good - in fact, maybe even better. In "The Family Tree", the environmental theme is still present, but handled very differently. This is really more of a fantasy novel than science fiction, alternating between the modern world we live in and a distant time in the future. It begins in modern America, where trees suddenly begin to grow at an unnatural, magical rate, reclaiming cities and turning on people who threaten to cut them down. (It sounds like a horror movie the way I've just explained it, but it definitely isn't anything of the sort.) I thought it was a unique idea.

The characters are also likeable. Dora, the main character, is a policewoman, but it's handled largely as an aside - this isn't a murder mystery. Yet, the way she's described, her job fits seamlessly into the rest of her life, as she deals with an obsessive-compulsive husband, a new case, and, of course, the trees. She had a fascinating backstory, and I found it easy to relate to her even though her character is much older than I. Unfortunately many of the other characters aren't explored with such depth, but none of them irritated me, even the villains. I found all of them believable.

In the meantime, a second plotline is woven into the novel set in the far future. At first I thought this was sigificantly more boring, as it mainly seemed to be based around politics. It looked as though this section might degenerate into old stereotypes, such as the bloodthirsty, arrogant prince out to take over the kingdom, the noblewoman forging alliances, or the young slave girl realising she has a secret. I was delighted to find out that what I hoped wouldn't happen, didn't.

This brings me to my next point, and that is that "The Family Tree" had quite a few twists in it. They were a mixed bunch - some of them I could see coming a mile off. But others were fantastic. There was one particular twist just over halfway through the book so unexpected that I had to re-read the page a couple of times to make sure I had read it correctly! It was fantastic! Not many books can genuinely surprise me to this extent. Up until that point, I had been wondering about a few things, thinking that perhaps I'd accidentally missed something, or whether the author had not been doing a good job in some areas, but it all made sense after the twist. I want to go back and read that "boring" part again, to see if I can pick up and more clues this time. It seems much less dull now!

Well, I finally managed to speak to someone at DFAT. They don't allow work experience as a rule, it seems. The woman I spoke to recommended that I try and apply to specialist positions... but I can't see that my chances would be any good for that, seeing as they'd almost certainly want experienced people. Still, it's worth a look to see what the criteria for position is.

As it turned out, 2500 people applied for DFAT's graduate program. I thought the Dept of Immigration was bad, and that was 1000 people less! So it seems I did fairly well to get into the top 350 for the written test, at least. It's just that I really needed to get into the top 100, and then top 50... *sigh*

Well, at least I have university to go to!

If there is such a thing as a god, I swear it's laughing at me. My luck was already bad; now it's even worse!

Last night, I finally received an approval of my enrolment application in the mail from Curtin (five weeks overdue). So now at least I can notify Centrelink that I won't be looking for work anymore.

And guess what? Five minutes ago, I received a call from the recruitment agency who found me a little bit of work in January. The Department of Education needed someone to stand in at reception again, and they were so happy with me that they wanted me back! The only trouble is... it's right when university starts.

That's right, six months with no work, while I became more and more depressed - and the moment I know for sure I'm going back to uni - WHAM, I have a job offer. Only for a couple of weeks, but it's still something.

Of course, I can't give up a whole degree just for a couple of weeks of work, no matter how badly I need it - I'd just go straight back to unemployment once it's over, and waste another six months doing nothing. Likewise, I can't skip the first two weeks just to work, because they'll me crucial for me to catch up on last semester's content. (Not to mention that I don't believe in skipping classes.)

This is certainly one very unlucky coincidence, but after everything that's happened this year (or not happened, rather), I shouldn't be at all surprised. Nothing has gone right for me this year.

#95 - 63/365
"City of Ashes", by Cassandra Clare.

There were so many issues with this book that I think the best way to cover them would be to list them in order from most to least serious. Here we go:

A.) Lack of originality. I know, I know, I complain about lack of originality in a lot of books. But there are generally two types of unoriginality, one worse than the other. The forgiveable type is where the author has been heavily inspired by other works - such as Tolkien's LOTR-style high fantasy - but puts their own spin on it or introduces a new way of looking at things. The last book I reviewed, "Soulless", was one such example. It had all the trappings of a generic disaster/zombie movie, but threw the stereotype of zombies being slow and brainless out the window, and came up with an interesting idea to explain the walking undead by linking them with spirits and psychics. Another great example of unoriginality done right is The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie.

"City of Ashes" is of the other type, however. This is the type of unoriginality that takes a well-known concept and doesn't change it at all (or, for this book, ten or so unchanged concepts). If there were zombies in this book, you can absolutely bet on it that they'd be slow, brainless, eat brains, hang around graveyards, and turn other people into zombies via flesh wounds. There aren't zombies here, but there are werewolves, vampires, faeries and demons, and they're exactly the way pop culture portrays them. For instance, faeries are beautiful but sinister tricksters who can't lie, call themselves the Seelie Court, have a queen, use illusion, spend all their time dancing, and always try to enchant people with their food. I've seen it a hundred times before. Surely it couldn't have been so hard to think of just one little detail to change?

The sole original idea in the series (this is Book Two) is the idea of the demon-slayer race, who use runes to ward off evil. Yet Clare never takes the opportunity to develop the idea into an enriching culture. Instead, she states all the basic facts straight away in exposition and leaves it like that. This is so disappointing. Being the only original part of the book, I really wanted to be exposed to more about demon-hunter culture and the supernatural areas they frequented. It never happened, though.

I was so dumbfounded by the sheer extent of the unoriginality in this particular book that I went and looked up some reviews on the author, thinking that surely I couldn't be the only person to notice it. And I wasn't. As it so happened, it appears that Clare has been at the centre of a plagiarism debate - and not just the odd stolen paragraph, either. On websites quoting her previous work, it's clear (there's very obvious proof to be found online) that she has plagiarised entire chapters of published books - and television shows. You can clearly see where she copied huge portions of text and went through to change names, synonyms and other details, in effect recreating someone else's entire scene down to every sentence, only to then pass it off as her own story. This is an appalling practice, and I can't believe she's been published since. I can't respect a writer who is so unimaginative that they can't even come up with their own idea for a scene - but to go ahead and steal from other artists who put in the real hard work is simply disgusting. I understand that thinking of a truly original idea is very difficult, but I have never before come across an author who wouldn't even try. It's pathetic.

B. Obnoxious Character of the Year Award. I'm referring to the protagonist's love interest. He was awful in Book One as well, but he someone became even worse in this volume. I'd say there's been zero character growth on his part, but I'm more inclined to think it's actually in the negative range. To give you an idea of his personality, he's a gorgeous pretty boy who treats everyone like dirt, thinks that he's God's gift to the world, and makes it quite clear (very loudly) that he doesn't give a stuff about anyone except Mary Sue (who he'd die for, despite not having known her very long). Worse still, the author goes on and on and on about how intelligent, graceful, handsome and charming (uh, hello? NO) he's supposed to be. Oh, and he also has one-of-a-kind superpowers, of course. One of the first scenes in the story reads like an "Ode to Love Interest", and I don't think it's too much of an exaggeration to call the series "A Shrine to Love Interest".

If anyone reading this review has ever read Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, you'll know how annoying that book's love interest (Edward Cullen) is. Perfect in every way, with constant references to things like: 'the golden pools of his eyes sent an electrifying shock through her that made her want to drown in them longingly forever'. This is almost exactly the same, except for one thing. Edward Cullen was nice. Creepy and stalker-like, but nice and ultimately well-intentioned. Jace, on the other hand, has the personality of a cross between Adolf Hitler and your average primary school bully who thinks it's funny to pick on people weaker than him.

Now, you might be thinking that every book needs a villain, right? Could Love Interest really be that bad? Well, if he was simply a bad character, I could get over it. But he isn't portrayed as bad by the author. No, we're supposed to love Jace, believe he's the coolest and sexiest thing since sliced bread. He appears in just about every single scene in the whole book, and it drove me nuts. He does everything from lying, putting people down, picking fights and breaking the law, and gets away with it every single time. On more than one occasion, he directly causes a lot of problems for everybody else, but at the first word out of his mouth - far from punishing him - the other character immediately feel sorry for him and start complaining about how he was wronged. This astounded me. In the real world, if somebody acted half as badly as Love Interest, they'd face the consequences to at least some extent. Nobody would forgive him that easily unless they were a complete moron (to be fair, this Mary Sue isn't exactly what I would call bright, but it isn't just her - it's the whole book). There is only one character who seems willing to deal out to him what he deserves - but they're summarily dismissed as being a raving lunatic (another very, very bad characterisation by the author, I might add) and so their opinion is given no weight.

Every character in the book is always talking or thinking about him, as he apparently occupies the center of their thoughts constantly. In one horrible scene, he walks into a pub, and the entire pub stops to look at him and murmur in amazement at how beautiful he is. Ah, which brings me to point C.

C.) Poor-quality writing overall. This should already be evident from the Twilight comparisons, but to push the point further, I'm giving it its own paragraph. There's nothing technically wrong with the grammar. I know other book reviewers often have a problem with things like adverb usage, but I never notice that kind of thing. What does bother me is the endless repetition. Since the book is mostly written from Mary Sue's point of view, this is usually about Love Interest. However, there is a third character - whom we shall call Token Nerd (again, major lack of imagination there) - who is madly in love with Mary Sue. He was actually a decent character in Book One, but by the time Book Two came out, he'd turned into a wet doormat of a character whose entire life revolved around Mary Sue. Every time he appeared in a scene - which was often - I'd be treated to paragraphs upon paragraphs of him angsting about MS. And MS angsting about Love Interest. And Love Interest and Token Nerd hating each other, because their love for MS naturally means they have to dislike each other. Gah!

Then there are the poor descriptions. I'll admit that Twilight still beats City of Ashes in the bad descriptions stakes, but the latter isn't that far behind. While I was thankfully spared from watching the main character drown in Edward's golden pools, there was still an awful lot of needy eye-contact and furtive glances going on, not to mention the angst. I think this is now the right time to talk about...

D.) Far too heavy on melodramatic romance. Well, the plot of the series deals with an evil villain out to mass murder a lot of people and take over the reigns of power from the current leaders of the supernatural world. I'll give Clare some credit here - she doesn't do too badly with this part of the plot. I've read a lot worse. However, one could be easily mistaken for thinking that this story wasn't really about the attempt to stop the villain's evil plans and that it was actually a teen Mills & Boon/Harlequin romance in disguise (for those who don't know what these are, be very grateful). If one was to pick a scene at random, chances are it would be about 50% plot and 50% romance, although it depends on the scene. Some scenes are almost 100% romance. I don't mind romance if it's done well, but the non-stop whining and pining for their one true loves really got on my nerves after just the first couple of chapters. And the way the characters would prioritise their crushes over everything else (like family, stopping the evil villain, and near-death experiences, for example) was nauseating. Token Nerd had hobbies in Book One. Now, he only has Mary Sue. Mary Sue, and nothing but Mary Sue. 

To give one example, there was a scene in this book where the characters went to see the Faerie Queen of the Seelie Court. The reasons for going were ambigious and flimsy at best, and when they got there, it was shortly discovered that they didn't really need to be there. What was the point of Clare leaving this scene in the book at all? Because it gave Mary Sue and Love Interest a chance to kiss. That's right, the entire scene had been written in for that sole purpose. The concept was unconvincing, and it was unconvincing. The Queen, by her own admission, didn't care about the characters two hoots except to see them kiss. The whole thing reminded me very strongly of the similar kissing scene in The Matrix Reloaded, which the scriptwriters undoubtedly only put in for the excuse for the kiss. Why? It was just so pointless!

E.) Incredibly stupid characters. I could not believe how dense the characters in this book were. Every time a problem presented itself and a clear, logical solution was found, the characters all ignored it and often did the direct opposite of what they should have been doing. Miss Mary Sue was one of the worst offenders. Surprisingly, Love Interest wasn't as bad, but this was probably because he was too obnoxious to care about trying to think of a solution at all. My previous entry details a couple of the instances where people were demonstrating their lack of brainpower, but those were only the tip of the iceberg.

One more significant example occurred when Mary Sue discovered she had an amazing, unique power. She tested it once to see if it worked, and then promptly forgot about it. So did everyone else, acting as if it was normal (although she was suppose to be the only person ever to have had this power). The trouble was, this power of hers was incredibly useful. I don't want to spoil it here, but it was just about the most useful power that anyone could have had to help with the fight against the villain. But did anyone think to use it against the villain? No! (Or not until much, much later, at any rate.) Did anyone think to even get Mary Sue to practice using her new power? No! So she developed this new, impressive power simply for the sake of having a new, impressive power - and never thought to use it in any of the fifty billion ways she could have. I guess this comes back as a testament of the author's lack of creative ability. I simply couldn't believe that such an obvious solution was sitting there staring her in the face, and she made no use of it whatsoever. I also couldn't believe that MS didn't care about her new power, either - but she was too busy making googly eyes at Love Interest to think of anything helpful.

F.) Lack of descriptive details. I went into this very briefly in one of the other paragraphs earlier, but it needs restating that this book lacked details. There were many things about the supernatural world I wanted to learn more about - the demon-hunters, for instance, their tools, their glass city. I wanted to know more about vampires, about werewolves. I wanted the characters to visit new places and interact with them. I wanted to know more about the daily life of this world. But there was none of this - the author only focused on very broad concepts in exposition, and then didn't really ever go into their application in everyday situations. When the scene changed, the only things in the room that were often mentioned were the people. That meant I had no sense of where they were. Even the Faerie kingdom (one of the better settings) was only briefly described as an earthy tunnel, a large cavern lit by artificial daylight with dancers in it, and a room full of bright cushions. There was nothing memorable about any of it, so after I while I got used to picturing them all standing around in dimly-lit warehouses, no matter the scene.

Ironically, Clare is supposed to be a well-known author of Harry Potter fanfiction. Yet her writing style is so different to Harry Potter. The latter contains a world full of rich detail, down to the things like types of goods available at the shops. It's the small details that make it, like wizard chess, quidditch, every-flavour beans and Potions recipes, and is filled with fascinating little things to discover. It's a world that is so well thought out, it could easily be real if magic actually existed. Clare's book, in constrast, slams you in the face with the big stereotypes: "Demons. Werewolves. Vampires. Faeries. Villain." ... and doesn't bother to go into any more depth. To be fair, she probably couldn't be expected to, because she's made it so unoriginal that the readers are just going to fill in all the blanks with the preconceived pop culture version of each concept. It pains me to read it, though. If Clare took out the parasitic angsty romance, she would have a hundred pages suddenly freed up to fill up with details. Honestly, she should just stick to writing fanfiction, because fanfiction doesn't require much originality or imagination - which are obviously her greatest weaknesses.


Well, I actually had more negative things to say about this story, but I've spent two hours just typing this much and need to sleep, so I'll leave it here. To conclude, I'll just say that this is a great example of how not to write a book. 1/5.

Okay, this book is very, very bad so far.

In bad quality writing, the phrase "almost as if" inevitably means "it definitely is". This is one phrase that I believe many authors should stay well away from. And not only it, but its variations. For instance, I just came across this sentence:

To her surprise, the demon skittered back, almost as if - but this wasn't possible - it was afraid of her.

A.) Considering that you are trying to kill it, have already lopped off a few tentacles, and are waving a magic dagger in its face, I'd just like to point out that yes, it IS possible it's afraid of you, Miss Mary Sue. Just a hunch.
B.) Well, if it's acting as if it's afraid, then you know what? I'd say it's afraid. The demons in this series aren't exactly known for their skill at concealing their reactions to things or pretending they're scared when they're really forming some clever attack tactics on the side - on the contrary, they're big, stupid monsters. If you can't figure that out, Mary Sue, you're an idiot (but the worst Mary Sues usually are, of course).
C.) This sentence is a very, very thinly veiled hint at the fact that Miss Mary Sue has some hidden power she isn't aware of (though she should be aware of it, because other characters have already told her about it).

Another example...

"Oh," she murmured. "Could it be they don't know?"

A.) If it looks like they don't know and sounds like they don't know, then they probably don't know! You have to be amazed at how long it takes these characters to figure out the obvious conclusion.
B.) Why would you say this aloud in front of the people you're talking about? They are going to notice you talking to yourself.
C.) For that matter, why say it aloud at all? And if aloud, why the 'murmuring' - why not just say it in a normal voice? (Who murmurs in real life, besides?) Why not just think it quietly to yourself?
D.) If you do realise they don't know, why not just bloody tell them what you know about it, instead of acting all mysterious. You basically messed up the mysterious angle when you said your little line of dialogue in their hearing, anyway.


And those are just two of the poor-quality sentences from this book - believe me, there are plenty more where these came from. These are very petty gripes, of course, but I'm going to have so many major gripes about this book to fill up the actual review, that I need to put these down in another entry!

I'm reading the sequel to a book I read long enough ago that I need a memory boost, so I've been reading Amazon.com reviews for the one I've read. The greatest criticism seemed to be the plot twist at the end - but I didn't remember it being that bad. But after reading a few more reviews, I remembered a little bit more about it, and have to agree. The trouble was, it could have been a brilliant plot twist. I got quite excited about it, actually. If it went the way I hoped, it would be an almost revolutionary idea (I wish I could explain it here, but it's full of spoilers). Unfortunately, though, the author disappointed, and swung the story back onto the route of generic stereotypes again. It had so much potential. What a waste!

The book I'm talking about is "City of Bones" by Cassandra Clare. It isn't that good, but it's passable, and I imagine it would strongly appeal to Buffy fans, or people who like the young adult supernatural genre (aka vampires and werewolves, etc).

This review doesn't count as part of my list, but I'm writing about it anyway. :P

#95 - 62/365.
"Soulless", by Christopher Golden.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting when I picked this up. The title sounded like a typical vampire novel, but the blurb said zombies. Funnily enough despite being done to death in horror movies, I haven't actually read too many books with zombies in them, so I decided to give it a chance. Sure enough, the plot turned out to read very much like a horror film, right down to the young adult cast, hordes of undead roaming the streets, and the desperate fight for the survival of the human race. That's basically as deep as it got plot-wise.

Fortunately, there were enough new ideas to keep it interesting. Rather than slow, idiot zombies, this book gives us fast, smart zombies capable of setting traps to lure out their victims. This is balanced by the fact that the human victims aren't turned into zombies by minor bite or scratch wounds, either. But the main idea behind it is that a psychic seance was responsible for the walking dead. It's a good idea, especially in the specifics (which I won't spoil here), but again, it was never really explored properly. While we see the psychics from the eyes of the other characters, we never really find out much about them, why they caused the zombie uprising, or what was going on. Instead, we're treated to a typical teen survivor story.

I found some events just a little too convenient. The older adults all got conveniently killed off early on, leaving the teenagers as the sole main characters (after about the third time this happened, I was starting to think the author didn't like people older than thirty or something). Another thing which seemed odd to me was that nobody was worried about food supplies (they didn't even rate a mention) despite bolting themselves up in buildings for a potentially long period of time. If I'd been in the characters' places, this would have been my top concern, second only to barricading the entrances. The ease with which some of the zombies picked off their victims was also a little too convenient. Many victims seemed to go down without a fight at all - it was often a case of something like this:

Main Character: No, watch out! Behind you!
Man: *is paralysed with fear* Arrrrgh! No! You must run and leave me! It's too late!
Zombie: *chomp chomp* Yummy.

Where was the valiant (or not so valiant) fight to the end? Why didn't he at least try and escape? And why didn't the main character jump to his aid? In a couple of instances there was only one zombie around, and without fear of zombification from being scratched, two people should have been able to overpower a single zombie, surely.

Mind you, I found it an entertaining read. It wasn't such a bad story, and I was visualising the 'movie version' the whole way throughout. It's so very horror film-like that I even found myself being surprised that I was reading written text at various points, and not watching it on a screen. Well, I suppose it was more like a disaster movie than a horror movie in this case, but I'm sure you catch my drift. I'll give this 3/5 stars. Not food for thought by any means, but an exciting story with plenty of action, adventure, and, of course, zombies.

I just came across this article by one of my favourite blog writers, who happens to be both a great journalist and a vocal feminist. Yet he's a man. It makes me happy whenever I see men speaking out about feminism, because not enough do.

But then, as this article agrees, not nearly enough women do, either. It always surprises me when I talk about feminism with another woman, only to find that they dissociate themselves from the whole idea. Why? Don't they want women to be socially accepted as equals? As this article says, many people see feminists as being man-haters, bra-burners and radicalists who want all the power to be in women's hands - but that couldn't be farther from the truth!

Here it is, and it's worth reading:
http://blogs.theage.com.au/executive-style/allmenareliars/2009/04/28/chooseyourbat.html
 

Well, thanks to yesterday's debacle, I tried to sort out my voicemail again, this time armed with my old passport number from when I was 15. It still took three calls, though. The first two went like this:

CALL ONE
Telstra: Hello, how can I help you?
Me: I can't access MessageBank on my phone. Can you fix it for me?
Telstra: Can I have your phone number?
Me: Yes, here you go.
Telstra: Oh, you have a prepaid phone. We can't access prepaid accounts here at the billing department. Try this number instead.
Me: Yours was the number Telstra's website listed for prepaid phone repairs, though...

CALL TWO
Telstra: Hello, how can I help you?
Me: I can't access MessageBank on my phone. It used to work, but not anymore. Can you fix it for me?
Telstra: Well, to start it up again, all you need to do is call this number. *gives number*
Me: You're joking - it's that easy?! Why on earth don't you just put that number on your website FAQ, then, to save people the trouble of calling for assistance?
Telstra: Next time, you should call the billing department instead of this number.
Me: But they actually told me to call you on this number.
Telstra: Have a nice day. *click*
Me: *dials number*
Telstra: This call can not be connected.
Me: I knew that sounded way too easy! What incompetent advice!

Fortunately, the third time around I was assisted by a very nice person who actually knew what they were talking about - and didn't even ask me for my outdated passport number! If only all Telstra's staff were like that. So now I have a working voicemail again - yay!
 

Nooooooo!

I finally heard back from DFAT, and I didn't make it into the next round. Blast! If I had some money, you can bet I'd be booking plane tickets right now to Canberra to go and see them in person to try and convince them otherwise. This is the one job I really, really, really wanted! But I'm broke, so I can't.

This is definitely the worst year I've had in my life since I was ten years old. It seems that nothing at all can go right for me! Not only have I been rejected over 100 times, I'm also completely dependent on my parents, can't go out to anything but the cheapest events, have everybody yelling at me, and feel utterly and absolutely worthless. I hate not being able to do anything about it. Believe me, I've tried everything I can think of! And I hate even more the fact that I've wasted five (six, including this year) years of my life on a worthless uni degree. Degrees. Do Commerce, they said. It will get you a job, they said. Do Honours, they said. It will get you a better job, they said. Yeah, right. I did all that while overloading, didn't fail any units, came top of my classes in numerous instances, and it means nothing. I'm glad I said no to a Masters degree, or I'd be wasting more of everyone's time.

The only mitigating factor is that I will have university to go to soon with a degree I'm significantly more interested in. I still have a few weeks to wait, though - I mixed the dates up and disappointed myself because I thought it was sooner. That's if the university gets its act together - I was supposed to have my enrolment confirmed two weeks ago at least, but they still haven't processed my application. Which is crazy, because I've been ringing them every couple of days to find out how it's going.

I hereby resolve to do my utmost to come top of every single class I enroll in, and I shall defy employers to not hire me then! (Of course, this is going to be a real challenge, seeing as I'm already a semester behind everybody else and missed all the introductory units.) This is going on the List (replacing one of the now-impossible things I can't afford at #42), so I can't back out of it and change my mind later.

And I haven't even been able to write any good songs recently, because of the lack of inspiration in my life, which is in turn due to sitting in the house all day with nothing to do but read and browse the internet. Argh, the boredom drives me nuts!

I hate my life so much. I really hate it.

Do you hear this? This is the sound of my dreams crashing down around me. I mean, I think I'm quite an adaptable person. I'm willing to shift my life into a new permanent direction. After all, if everything was predestined and set, life would be much too dull! If one dream crashes, I'll come up with another one. But this year I've had about ten different dreams fall down around me. Nobody will hire me in any industry! Not one! Diplomat? No. Creative arts? No. Public service? No. Advertising? No. Legal secretarial work? No. Administration? No. Technician? No. Police force? No! All the others? Not them either! 

What's left? Fast food? But I couldn't work there, unless they are prepared to give me concessions like a chair for my back. (And that's where I draw the line, honestly. I'd rather be unemployed than undergo the humiliation of working in fast food. If I'm ever homeless, I'd rather busk for my food than suffer that indignity, thankyou very much.)

Please hurry up, uni. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry!

They say time seems to go faster when you get older, but I think 'they' were seriously mistaken.

AND SOMEONE, FOR GOD'S SAKE, GIVE ME A JOB!! Who cares if I have experience or not - I know I can learn whatever it is quickly! (Except maths, probably.)

Edit: Well, actually, there is one positive - I'll be able to commit to the band properly now that I know I won't be leaving Perth for a few years. The downside to that is, of course, that I won't be leaving Perth for a few years.

Edit2: And it does mean I can start my small business, I suppose. I'll need my parents to provide the startup costs, of course, but the actual operation should be easy-peasy. But still, it won't be nearly enough to make a living out of. And I can't start it until spring, which is so far away!