Brak pliku jeszcze ras

Jeszcze ras mój komputer jest popsute. Nie ma plika, jak ostatni ras. Mogę naprawiać komputer teraz.

Melbourneland

I'm going to Melbourneland. I've booked my flights already, and I plan to spend about 4 days in the southern. I shall visit Nat, Mark and Mel while down there, as well as see some of the city. The last time that I was there, which was also the only time that I've been there, I was about 12 years old and managed to offend an elderly Greek woman. I hope to avoid doing this again.
I will be there from late Friday evening, the 23rd of February, to the evening of Tuesday the 27th of February.
I must remember to inform work of my impending absence.

Il y a beaucoup de temps

Je vais ameliorer mon francais. Kat et moi avons trouve un prof de francais qui va nous aider. Nous l'avons envoye un courriel hier soir et elle nous a repondu aujourd'hui. Je veux aller en France cette annee et je crois qu'il faut ameliorer avant que j'y arriverai. Je voulais suivre des cours a l'alliance francaise, mais je ne peux pas parce que maitenant j'ai des repetitions d'orchestre aux soirs de jeudi et les cours d'alliance pour mon niveau sont aux jeudis. Quel dommage.

J'espere que notre nouvelle prof est tres sympa.

I want to buy a house

I've been watching the property market for a while, mostly watching friends buy things, but I've just seen the perfect property. I want to buy this. It may be slightly out of my price range at the moment, but sometimes you have to pay a bit extra to buy something that you really like, and I'd really like to own Dracula's Castle. Of course, we could then refer to it as Drakeula's Castle.

Forgetful Fred

My sunglasses are missing. They may have gone the way of my bookmark, which still hasn't turned up ('turn up' is a phrasal verb).

I also left my keys at home today, again.

Another Book Review

I finished reading Armisted Maupin's Tales of the City last night. It is a fantastic read, and makes me want to live in 70's San Francisco, specifically as one of the residents of Barbary Lane. I'm recommeding this to anyone who'd appreciate an interesting light read with great plot and fun characters. I always have a dilemma with great books: I want to read them, and find out what's going to happen next, and to see where the characters end up, but on the other hand, I never want to finish them as I find I'm then left with a void in my reading. So, should I read quickly or slowly? Tales is definitely one of the books that fit into this category.
I borrowed Tales of the City from the Brisbane Central Library (the new brightly coloured library in front of the casino) before I found out that Kat owns the whole series and borrowing from her would have been easier than the library (there were a few issues with getting this book from the library, but I won't go into them here).
The book is followed by two more in the series, namely More Tales of the City and Further Tales of the City. I plan to read both of these books as soon as possible and I think I may well want to add this series to my library. After all, one can never own too many books.

Też, skonczyłem czytać książki francuski. Jeszcze nie go lubię, ale on jest lepiej (lepszy?) blisko do koncu.

Pointless Update

My bookmark is still missing.

Pretentious? Me?

I have read on the bus, on the way home, twice this week. Today being the second time. After alighting from the bus, I thought about this fact, combined with the book that I was reading, and decided that there's a chance that I had been engaged in an act of sheer pretentiousness, and therefore hypocrisy. Pretentiousness because the book is a piece of literary wankery, L'Etranger d'Albert Camus, in French, and hypocrisy because I mentioned, on this very blog, my opinion of those who read The Da Vinci Code on public transport.

My bookmark a disparu

I was recently reading a book, as I am literate. Before I started my day's reading, I placed my bookmark somewhere, but now that I have taken a break from the activity, I am unable to find said bookmark. I am aware that it has to be somewhere, because of various laws of physics regarding the fact that matter can neither be created nor destroyed.

I will let you know if my bookmark turns up.

200!

The previous post was my 199th post on this blog, which makes this one my 200th! Yay! It looks like I've reached a milestone because of the round appearance of the number, thanks to our base 10 counting system.

Plans for this year

I have decided that I want to go to England or Ireland this year for a summer job at a school over there, probably in late June, July or August. My preference would be in England, at the school that Kat's going to be working at in July. It would also be a good chance to visit Edinburgh while I'm in England, and perhaps hop over the Irish Sea to Ireland.

The job that I'd prefer in England would pay enough to cover at least most of a return airfare to Europe, as well as provide accommodation and meals. This, I feel, would be a great opportunity to realise my plan of living in France, as I'd be able to cross La Manche without too much difficulty and then hunt for a job there. Most of the ESL industry in France hasn't heard of the idea of using the internet to advertise jobs, and those that have usually stipulate that the applicant must be available in France for a face-to-face interview and/or an immediate start, which is difficult for one applying from Australia, and as I feel the biggest, or most wasted, expense in getting to France is the cost of the airfare, and as this would be covered by my earnings from the English job, I think it's a great chance for me. So, if all goes according to plan, I will be in England in July, travelling around England (inc Scotland) and Ireland (maybe) in August, and then in France from August or September through to whenever I leave.

I'm also toying with the idea of purchasing a one-way ticket, for two main reasons. The first is that, at the moment, return tickets don't appear to be significantly cheaper than two one-way tickets, and this would mean I wouldn't have to specify my departure airline and airport in advance. The second reason is that I would be able to keep my options open as far as staying longer in Europe, or going somewhere else, ie Japan, for a short-term job on the "way home".

Am I suitable to work with children?

Well, we'll soon find out as I have recently applied for a Blue Card, otherwise known as an "I'm-not-a-pedophile Card".
I'll actually be working with minors for two weeks from Monday, but apparently it's enough to have submitted the application in order to work with the youngsters.

Should I thank microsoft?

If it weren't for microsoft window xp's inherent bugs, I'd never have learnt how to fix a certain error relating to a corrupt or missing config file using a system restore point.

Polylingual media library

I have decided, due to a slight case of boredom, to post a list of the languages that can be found in my media library. I have songs in the following languages:
English (English)
French (Français)
German (Deutsch)
Polish (Język Polski)
Spanish (Español)
Russian (Pусский Язык)
Romanian (Română)
Welsh (Cymraeg)
Arabic (العربية)
Hindi ( हिन्दी)
Punjabi (ਪੰਜਾਬੀ)
Japanese (日本語)

That's twelve languages, thirteen if you count Swedish Chef as a language.

Happy New Year and the year in review

Due to our society's completely arbitrary decision to nominate the 1st of January as being the first day of a new year, we are now in 2007 (another arbitrary number). In light of this, Happy New Year to all those who can be bothered reading my blog.

Well, now for the second part of this entry, which could be quite long and wordy, depending on how I feel as I type.

The year in review:
I was in Gliwice, Poland for New Year's Day last year, with a lot of snow and it was very cold. The snow fell in huge amounts for a couple of days either side of the 1st of January, which was a complete change from the New Years that I'd had previously. I'm not normally a fan of fireworks, believing that, for the most part, if you've seen one, you've seen them all, but they were quite pretty in Poland because of the contrast between the bright fireworks and the drab gray of the buildings and sky at that time of year. I didn't travel much in the early part of the year in Poland, as I was saving money and also working long hours in split shifts, which are a real pain in the arse. My only foray into other places was to a town called Bielsko-Biała, where I visited Nicola for a few days.

In March, I left Poland and flew to France where I went to Paris, Lyon, Grenoble and Marseilles. While there, I visited Julien, Amelie and Thomas, three former exchange students. I thoroughly enjoyed my stay in France to the point of vowing to return one day for a longer term stay.

I returned to Australia at the end of March (actually on my mother's birthday) and I've been here since then. I haven't travelled much since my return, with Noosa and Banora Point being the furthest towns north and south of Brisbane to be graced by my presence. This lack of travel is something that I plan to remedy in 2007.

In April, Angie and Michael got married (to each other) but haven't yet produced any spawn. They have purchased a house, which means they have a mortgage. The first four letters of that word, mort, mean dead in French. This is appropriate because, with current property prices and interest rates, most people will be "mort" before their mortgage. With any luck, and some sensible budgetting, this fate might not befall the couple who, until they read those last two sentences, were probably quite happy.

Pepsi had a birthday in June, which is an annual event for her.

In late July, or perhaps early August, I started work at Global Village Brisbane, an English language school for foreign students. I enjoy the work, I like most of the students (there will always be a handful at any school who are little shits), and the rate of pay is good. The only downside is that the number of hours isn't particularly high, which means that I don't get that nice pay rate for the number of hours that I'd like. I am actually working as much as I can at the school, in light of its hours of operation, so it's not possible to obtain more hours there.

In December, like many other people around the world, I celebrated the feast day of St. Santa. Some people would call this 'Christmas' but the festival on the 25th of December has about as much relevance to Christianity as Easter. I celebrated in the usual way by worshipping pagan idols (the tree, Santa, etc) and eating yummy food.

The last day of 2006 saw me at a party at Ben's house. It was originally planned for Rowan's house but was moved. It was a good party, and a worth way to welcome the, as mentioned above, completely arbitrary start to 2007.

Now, have any of you bothered to read this far?