We just had some of Q&A on. In it, over 100 18 to 25-year-olds were in a room, able to address questions to our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

Frankly, neither Dad nor I enjoyed this show. Kevin is good at platitudes and political rhetoric, but, frankly, tends to have a somewhat soporific effect on his viewers. He also tends to say the word 'frankly' over-frequently Mind you, I have a few such verbal tics myself, namely 'mind you' and 'to be honest'.

Anyway, I found myself supporting Kevin far more than the young people supposedly representing 'young Australia'. I found myself writhing inwardly at their questions - they just sounded so naive. People asking things like 'if I finish uni, how can you guarantee I'll be able to get a job?' and 'given the failure of your election promises, how can you expect anyone to trust you?'

Rudd made the point that Labor had made over 600 promises going into the election, and they had enacted or made significant progress on a majority of them - not to mention dealing with the economic crisis in the middle of it - though it was true they hadn't completely fulfilled all 600 by this point, and a few of them had been delayed or re-considered.

Anyway, although I tend to default to a kind of low-level cynicism regarding politicians, and it's likely there have been lies and botched jobs and underperformance, I also think that politicians are also human, and feel a good bit of respect for the way they have to live their lives being constantly reviled and criticised. I can't imagine many worse jobs.

I wonder if part of the young people's reactions and 'what have you done for us, why hasn't this happened' attitude, were because they have never worked in a proper office job before. I think any job where you deal with bureaucracy, with sliding deadlines, with overworked staff, with unforeseen circumstances cropping up to delay projects, etc - it gives you more understanding of how all plans are ultimately implemented by ordinary people in ordinary offices doing a lot of hard work - they do not magically come into being just by throwing some money at it. And that sometimes issues are more complicated, and require much consideration and long-term planning than a simple 'okay, let's fix the health system, boom, done'.

I was glad when Dad switched over to Dr Who, even though it's one of the most inexplicable and irritating episodes (or ten minutes of an episode) I've ever seen.

We brainstormed some vocabulary related to furniture. Then I got students to describe their houses to each other and talk about the furniture. I went around monitoring.

'So what's in your house?' I asked one pair of boys.

'He has gondam... gandom...' sputtered one of them, pointing at his friend. His friend scowled and hit him.

'Sorry, what?' I said.

He could not make himself understood. I had a suspicion but I had no intention of asking. I moved on.

Later they called me back and pointed to the screen of their dictionary: 'rubber condom'. They waited expectantly for my reaction.

'Oh, I see,' I said, 'that's not actually furniture, is it. And your pronunciation is terrible.'

They all cracked up.

I love some of the funny names of Facebook groups. Here are some I've seen recently:

I wouldn't celebrate if my friends burst into Sprite.

Thank you phone, for letting me look at you in awkward situations.

The Mini Spaz Attack When You're In Bed, Half Asleep And Imagine You're Falling

Procrastination - because it's not due right this second

I hate it when someone else takes the piece of food I have mentally claimed

You're not drunk, you've had one drink, so stop pretending.

I Hate Getting Texts That Only Say "k"

Going to McDonalds for a salad roll is like going to a brothel for a hug.

I KNOW YOU ARE MY BEST FRIEND BUT IF YOU FALL I WILL LAUGH

You're weird. I like you.

Trying To Fix Things By Hitting Them

Realizing you borrowed the pen you're sticking in your mouth

I'm paranoid because the spider I saw five seconds ago isn't there anymore.

Why learn algebra? Finding X is only useful if you're a pirate!

I love it when someone's laugh is funnier than the joke

I AM ALWAYS TIRED BECAUSE I BECOME A SUPERHERO AT NIGHT

We Will Not Pay to Use Facebook, Because Absolutely Nobody is Asking Us To

No, I thought I'd balance my goods on my head, yes i'd like a fucking bag.

No Matter How Hot It Is, I Cant Sleep Unless A Lil Bit Of Blanket Is On Me

Don't Worry Pluto, I'm Not A Planet Either.

I hate it when you're with MC Hammer and he doesn't let you touch anything.

Incidentally, a scary number of Facebook group names misspell 'you're' as 'your' - I duly corrected them in this post. I should join this group:

Your annoying me with you're ignorance of grammar.

Or one of the thirty-seven (and I'm not even exaggerating) other groups dedicated to this very specific and special topic.

I'm cleaning out the handbag I carry around every day. I can never understand how some women can carry such small bags with them (or how some men don't carry anything at all).

In my handbag were the following items:

three books (I'd been to the library, usually I carry only one or two)

a water bottle

keys

phone

wallet

comb

brush

lip gloss, chapstick and concealer

iPod

notebook

pens and pencils

light cardigan

glasses

an apple

receipts etc

miscellaneous small bits and pieces (hair ties, tissues, safety pins, pills, etc)

Now, as far as I'm concerned, most of those things are necessity items, so how to reduce the mass? -_-

I went to Sydney for a week's holiday; came back about three days ago. I went with my sister.

Two things strike me about Sydney: the sun is brutal and it's slightly humid, which makes it feel really hot. And there are lots of people from different countries. In some parts of the city, there were far more Asians and Europeans (as in, people born in Europe, speaking languages other than English) than 'Australians'.

We'd both been to Sydney together at the start of 2007, and neither of us are crazy about big sightseeing outings, so it was a week of sitting around, reading, eating, and so on. I finished 5 1/2 books. We probably spent half the week in the David Jones food hall, ha ha ha. I think we went there five times in total. I ate a lot of crap, including going to Max Brenner's (a chocolate cafe) four times. It's embarrassing, but...

I did do a few new things. I went to the Basement (jazz club) to see The Idea of North, a really terrific a capella group. I did the Bronte to Bondi walk. Lots of drinking wine while sitting at Darling Harbour. Went to Manly beach and I had the song 'Reckless' in my head - 'as the Manly ferry cuts its way to Circular Quay...' I found a great secondhand bookstore/cafe on Oxford Street, where I browsed for over an hour.

We also caught the first night of the Sydney festival, which was a huge open-air party with many, many thousands of people, food stalls, laser shows, different singers and bands, light displays on buildings. I got a free condom and a free electric fan from ANZ.

It was quite funny, really. The actual festival is a couple of weeks of various arts events - none of which seemed at all interesting to me, especially in a city like Sydney, which has quite a lot of events and gigs and shows on at any given time anyway. Probably 95% of people at the festival opening night would not attend a single festival event, but that festival opening was, like, one of the biggest nights of the year.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Went snowboarding, did post-graduate study, went to Korea.

2. Did you keep your New Years' resolutions and will you make more for next year?
I don't usually make them.

5. What countries did you visit?
Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia.

( More meme )

I was starting to feel all excited about the idea of having something I really wanted to do (ie, teaching ESL).

Now I'm up late preparing lessons and experiencing the difference between ESL teaching in the abstract and in the concrete, hahaha.

I think, when you're starting out, it can be extremely time-consuming and a tough job. In Japan I didn't have to prepare lessons from scratch, and in the CELTA course I usually had two days (or more) to plan a 40-minute lesson. Now it's half a day, to plan a 5-hour lesson. It's a different kettle of fish.

Just a matter of getting used to it - and over time, developing a set of materials you can use in your school - but for the new teacher it's quite demanding.

Tomorrow will be my first day teaching ESL in Australia. ^_^

This year for Christmas, all I asked for was money. (I'm still not working.) I decided to spend a portion of it on Christmas presents for myself at the post Boxing Day sales.

Naturally, the local shopping centre (biggest in the southern hemisphere*) was packed to the point of being ridiculous. I didn't care though, since I wasn't there to try on clothes.

*(In Australia, we like this expression 'most ___ in the southern hemisphere'. Basically, it sounds more impressive than saying 'most ___ in Australia'. Because anything that is the biggest in Australia is likely to beat the African, Pacific Island and South American nations against whom we are apparently 'competing'.)

So my little Christmas haul consists of:
-a bottle of red wine and some vodka cruisers
-a block of Crunchie chocolate
-the new Nick Hornby book, 'Juliet Naked'
-the new Robbie Williams CD, 'Reality killed the radio star'
-a DS game, 'Professor Layton and the Curious Village'

I look forward to getting into them. ^_^

Life is going well, and I've almost finished my course.

Since I've been busy, I haven't been brooding or feeling like a misery guts the way I did before. I have had the odd pang of Japan-homesickness though. In a way, I think one of the things I most dislike is the thought that things are going on there without me there seeing them.

Like, when I went to Japan, of course, it took quite a bit of time to become familiar with things, know where things were, how they worked; to meet people and get to know them. Now, new, funny Kit Kats are coming out and I don't know about them; stores I walked past every day are being renovated and re-built and I don't know about them, new celeb gossip is coming up and I'm not hearing people talking about it. And of course, people are hanging out, dating, leaving their jobs, changing classes, getting transferred - and I don't know about it.

It's funny that I never felt like that when I was out of Adelaide for two years. I suppose because Adelaide changes so little, and I knew it so well from before; I knew it wouldn't be hard to get re-acquainted with everything. With Japan, all my knowledge was slowly hard-won from scratch, and now it's out-of-date.

Anyway, I don't care; I just thought it was an interesting thought. I'm going back for a visit in April, after all, and I'm feeling very positive at the moment because I like teaching so much and I like my students so much. I'm glad about that, too - see, I loved my Japanese students and actually wondered if I'd like teaching an 'international' group as much - maybe people would be too blunt or not very polite, or too forward asking me difficult grammar questions I couldn't answer, or whatever. But I love them too.

And I feel so happy that, for now, I've found a job I love. Is it what they call a 'vocation'? I guess it's too early to tell - I'm still in a bit of a honeymoon period. But to still be honeymooning after two years ain't a bad beginning. And if I do eventually weary of it, well, perhaps I'll find the perfect job to suit my temperament at that time in the future. Here's to it!

I'm feeling rather weary. -_- Been doing study all week, been doing homework for much of the weekend. I think I've done about 10 hours' worth this weekend, anyway. The fact that I'm not 100% healthy doesn't help, nor does the fact that I'm working on 3-4 tasks at the same time. Getting a bit braindead. Must just do one final go-over of tomorrow's assignment, then call it a night, I think...