I paid off my student loan today.

How can you go to a climate protest one day and then instagram a photo of your single-use coffee cup the next?

Yesterday I went to the Royal Melbourne Show. It was great! I went for work and escorted a group of students around the show. First we went for free food samples, and then we went to the dog show. They had Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers, pugs, bull terriers, German Shepherds, and Gordon Setters, among others that I can't remember right now. We also saw chickens, sheep, cows, horses, lizards, donkeys, alpacas, deer, ducks, a cockatiel, and a cockatoo. We watched some woodchop, saw handicrafts, saw showbags, and saw rides (which were very expensive). The chickens were the best because when all put together, they sounded like that toy. I was walking around the chicken area with a French guy. He said, "the rooster is the symbol of France." When I asked him why, he said, "Because it can stand in shit and still sing." He said it with a straight face so I'm not sure if he was joking or if that is the actual answer.

Next week, I'll be going to the Grampians!

I'm thankful for public libraries. A moment ago, I found another book by an author I just finished reading and I reserved it with no hesitation. If I had to buy every book I read, I think I would reread a lot of books, and I don't think either book would ever have found its way into my life.

The book I have just finished reading was by Chloe Hooper and the book was titled The Arsonist. The other book of hers that I found is titled The Tall Man.

선배님의 새로운 시리즈인 "다크 라이즈"가 2021년 가을에 (호주에서 봄인가?) 출시될 거라는 공고를 올리셨다. 새로운 책을 축하드립니다, 선배님! 저는 무척 신나고 기대가 됩니다.




Ever since that weird sickness I had two weekends ago where all my muscles and joints hurt and nausea took over my head, I've gone off tea and coffee. While sick, I drank only hot water (which may have contributed caffeine withdrawal to the sickness), and that has continued although I am fully recovered. Almost every food that has made me sick, I have stopped eating (oysters, avocado, meat in general). You would think, rather than just not eating it, I should be more vigilant about food safety (especially since I have been trained in this area). ALAS.

I'm also thankful to live in a place that is warm in winter and cool in summer. I'm thankful that I have this time to write. I'm thankful that I walk by beautiful trees on my way to work. I'm thankful that my flatmates are not noisy in the morning. I'm thankful that I do a job that makes me happy more often than not. I'm thankful that I get to meet so many interesting and inspiring people through my work. I'm thankful to live in a city with clean skies, new clouds daily, and frequent rainbows.

I'm listening to an audiobook called Solitude by Michael Harris. In it, he talks about how it took him months to get used to being alone while writing, how he would feel the pull to email or message someone just to have contact. Typing that made me realise my phone has somehow migrated right next to me on the desk.

In it, he also says something like 80% of young people check their phone immediately upon waking and I felt like he had turned the scope right on me.

I have paused right before the payment option on a website where I have been inspecting flip phones. I am on the cusp, as I have been a few times in the past, but I just can't bring myself to make the switch. I need a smart phone, I say to myself. I need google maps to tell me how to get around this foreign town with its convoluted four-lane, four-exit roundabouts. I need it so I can look up French conjugations easily. I need it for the club I created on Duolingo. I need it for Line so that I can call people overseas using data. I need it for Whatsapp so I can interact with the permanent and higher ranking staff at work. It is handy for AusPost and BorrowBox, and, to a lesser extent, online banking and Goodreads (though I could certainly live with just the desktop versions of the latter two).

How do you reckon clouds maintain their shape when they're moving that fast?

I went to a flower and garden show with a friend yesterday. My friend who I went with had originally meant to go with her husband, but something came up and he couldn't go, so in the course of one of our conversations, she offered me his ticket, which included entry and high tea. At the time, I didn't know how much high tea costs. Do you know how much high tea costs? Perhaps look it up before accepting a ticket from a friend who refuses to be paid back.

One important thing I have not recorded is this: when the leaves start turning yellow for autumn, there will be a couple of days of final summer heat, and on one of those days the wind will turn and blow cold. If you have the chance, get yourself to a park with a lot of trees. The wind will blow the weak leaves from the trees all in a gust, and the resulting shower will look like thousands of yellow fluttering butterflies.

Us students in French class keep lapsing back into English phonetics whenever we encounter anything with -tion, even though we have been told to say /sjɔ̃/, not /ʃn/. It's fascinating how much inertia compels us to pronounce these words wrong again and again.