The Uni and the Dale

The morning of the 16^th of January – I give mum her birthday card and presents, have breakfast, shower, and then turn on the computer. I go to the VTAC website, enter in my application and PIN numbers. I tap my fingers impatiently on the desk as I wait for the page to load. After a minute it’s done. I skim-read through to the important part and find what I was looking for; I’d got in. I lean back in my chair and breathe a sigh of relief. I’d been accepted into the Bachelor of Arts (Professional & Creative Writing) course to which I’d applied. The change of direction in my life was now confirmed. I was happy, but felt that I should be happier. My mind often doesn’t realise how good it has things. (I would insult my mind but for the fear of pissing it off and it seeking revenge by making me stupid).

The morning of the 19^th of January – I get out of the car, wave good bye to mum, and walk in what I hope is the direction of the building where I’m supposed to enrol. After consulting a few information boards and disagreeing with where they said I was standing, I find a sign that says “Building X is that-a-way”. (Well it didn’t say “that-a-way”, but had an arrow pointing in the direction… You get this gist.) The sign turned out to be trustworthy, and I located the ominously named structure. To my disappointment, the building was not in the shape of a giant X, but of a regularly shaped lecture theatre. I walk in, sit down, and listen to a lady explain what a lecture is, what a tutorial is, and point out the differences between high school and uni life for the second, and hopefully final, time. Eventually she begins to talk about the actual course, so I stop subtly checking out the other people in the room and actually listen. I discover that I’ll have to study “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” – a text that I studied in Year 12 – once again. I did contemplate burning my English notes at one stage, but thankfully laziness won out and I didn’t succumb to the temptation, so they will be of use once more. I get my ID card complete with baaaaaad photo of me on it, and then go home to do the rest of my enrolment online (choosing units, filling out government forms, etc).

The morning of the 23^rd of January – I decided to blog about this.

Dale. :)

Survival of the Dale S.

Boobies!

Okay, now that I have your attention I can start talking about serious stuff. :)

I’ve been thinking lately about self-sufficiency. I don’t know what has brought this on because I have no desire to leave home in the immediate future. Or the not so immediate future. Or the... Not for a while I guess is what I’m trying to say! Although the cause may have been the alarmingly fast pace at which the countdown on my MySpace is approaching “zero months until I’m not a teenager anymore...”

Anyway, I guess it’s made me take stock of my life and examine how fit I would be to survive on my own. Financially it’s implausible, but that’s no surprise. It’s the other aspects of living by myself that I’ve been thinking about.

Cooking: Everyone needs food (well almost everyone, Adam!), and I couldn’t and wouldn’t buy dinner every night, so how are my culinary skills? Up to scratch? Not really! I’m not totally hopeless in the kitchen, but then again I’m by no means an Iron Chef. I can make spaghetti and other pretty basic pasta based meals, I can now barbeque (Dad taught me on the weekend) although my expertise at this stage only covers sausages and chicken, and I can handle all the relatively simple oven meals, including – importantly – chips! Chopping and cooking vegies couldn’t really be that hard, and neither is a toasted sandwich/pie/roll for lunch or something. I’m okay with cakes and muffins, so my sweet tooth would be satisfied. So basically looking at that, I think I can cook, but I don’t think I could cook anything that would able to really impress someone. Then again, who is there to impress but myself? I’ll be on my own after all!

Cleaning/Washing: I’m a neat person. I find myself subconsciously neatening stuff – even when I’m at someone else’s place! – but having said that, I’ve led a pretty spoilt life so far in terms of housework. I told someone the other day that I’d never done laundry before, and they just laughed at me, thinking that I was joking. Sure I’ve hung up and brought down the clothes from the clothesline before, but I’ve never used the washing machine. Will probably get mum to show me how this weekend. All I know is there’s something you’re not supposed to do with colours or all your clothes will go pink… :) Nah I’m not that naïve – I’m pretty sure mixing lights and darks is the main no-no. I’ve vacuumed about 10 times in my life, but I know how. I’ve ironed about 5 times in my life but I’m pretty sure I’ve got that down pat too. I make my bed, wash and dry the dishes on occasion, have mastered the ability to wheel a wheelie bin, and yeah, I think that’s about it as far as the essentials go.

Social Interaction: This would be an issue for me. Living without the guidance/restrictions of my parents would be completely weird and it would take me a while to adjust. Living without the company of my brother Mark would also be strange. I think I’d miss his constant companionship the most. If I was living with people, adapting might take a while. If I was by myself then I think I’d definitely seek out my friends’ company a lot more actively. I’d practically live on msn I reckon! Although I think it would be good for me (seeking company, not living on msn). It would force me to get out into the world a bit more. Give the world some exposure to Dale. NOT that kind of exposure all you people with dirty minds…:P I probably wouldn’t lose my mind, so I guess I’d be okay in that department too. But not having someone to turn to to seek advice, or to tell a random thought, or ask a simple question would be hard.

So the verdict is if I could afford to move out, I would most likely not die. I would be inviolable* for a while. Go me!

Dale.

* As shocking as it may be to some, the word “inviolable” was not in Dale’s vocabulary. I know not all of you will believe it, and it does seem unfathomable, but it is true. Props to my homeboy Na for the sweet-ass word. Worrrrrd. (Sorry for that, it will never happen again! :))

"Welcome to Wantirna McDonalds..."

I’m a drive thru dude! Yep, that’s right - I’ve been elevated to the level of kings in the go-go world of fast-food service jobs. Well, at least I was yesterday anyway. I’m not sure if it’ll be a permanent thing, but who cares!

It came as somewhat of a surprise. I had an hour left of my 12.00-3.30 shift when the store manager came up to me and asked if I had any plans for the night. I said no (which was a little depressing in itself; not having plans for a Saturday night) and then he asked if I’d be willing to work until - get this - 9:00! Thereby changing my meagre three and half hour shift into a whopping great big nine hour monster of a shift! This seemed like an eternity to me, especially considering that my job at that stage consisted solely of making fries and cleaning stuff, and previously my longest shift had been approximately one third of that length...

I accepted the extended hours with a forced smile, knowing that the store manager of all people was someone I should be trying to impress, and he said “excellent, we’ll get you trained on order-take”. I blinked, and almost asked him to repeat himself, but he was already walking off towards the first drive thru window. I followed along behind him like a good little sheep, and fast-forwarding a little, Tamara gave me the basic training, then after half an hour I started taking orders by myself. I needed to call upon Luke and Jess for help at times, like for when I couldn’t find an item (on the cool touch screen orderer/register thing) or change food so that it was customised the way the customer specified, but besides that I think I did a pretty damn good job for my first time.

It did get tricky with people being rude pricks or prickettes, and some people had very thick accents, but overall there weren’t too many dramas. And it got busy! But I eventually figured out how to multi-task taking orders and payments so that people didn’t have to wait too long. The whole cash-handling thing came surprisingly easily to me, like I’d done it before. Although I guess there’s not that much to it really. :)

One of the best parts about it though was that I didn’t have to go fetch the food; I had Luke or Jess the next window up to do that for me. They had a headset on too, and talking to Luke over the headset was really fun. At my lame suggestion we gave each other codenames – he was Bad Boy because he’d just got his eyebrow pierced, and I was Bambi because that’s what Dr Cox calls the intern JD on the tv show ‘Scrubs’. When it was quiet a lot of pointless chatter ensued. It was good. SO much better than fries.

But as with all good things, there are downsides to the job. My legs got so sore! I was standing for most of the 9 hours that I was working, and when I got home I practically collapsed straight onto my bed, unable to move. Well, that might be a tad dramatic, but my legs really did kill! Another annoying thing was that as I tried to get to sleep I kept hearing the beeping of the fries machine, and the beeping of the sensor telling me that a car was waiting for me to take their order, which made me picture myself saying “Welcome to Wantirna McDonalds. How can I help you today?” I reckon I said that over 100 times easily. Oh and one time I said “Welcome to McTirna Wandonalds” and laughed the rest of the way through my spiel. :)

So maybe the next time you’ll hear my voice it’ll be greeting you in a friendly manner through a speaker thingo, and maybe the next time you’ll see me I’ll be taking money from you and giving you the appropriate change… Who knows? :)

Dale.

The Unexplainable

To set the scene, it’s Thursday night and I’m at Knox City AMF with three friends; Daniel, Simon and Matt. Not long beforehand I’d miraculously eaten a whole Meatosaurus pizza from Dominos by myself, and consumed an incredibly unhealthy amount of Coca Cola. My bowling shoes are on, my bowling ball is at the ready, and I’m staring down the lane thinking about how miserably I’m going to do (the other guys take part in competition for bowling during the week). I look up at the screen and see the name they’d assigned me, “Macca” - because I work at McDonalds – staring back at me.

I trundle down the lane and bowl the ball. To my astonishment I get a strike, and think “Woah… that was pretty cool.” My second turn comes around, I trundle down the lane again, get a second strike and think “Holy cow I did it again.” I look back at the others and like them assume that it was purely a fluke. Third bowl, still not thinking too much about my last two bowls, I get a third strike and think “Okay, this is just plain freaky”. My friends were slightly gobsmacked too, as I was clearly in the lead, and that was not supposed to happen!

I sit down and wait for my next turn. I look up at the screen as LJ, Hero and Pyro have their bowls and aren’t all that successful, and stare in amazement at my three strikes in a row. I rubbed my eyes and looked again to make sure I wasn’t seeing things wrong, but no, “Macca” still showed three strikes in a row, which I later learned is called a ‘Turkey’. :)

I felt that surely I would completely suck for the rest of the game, because that’s just how things generally turn out for me, but no, my success did not end there. I got a spare, then my fourth strike, then my fifth strike, then two more spares, and an 8 and a 7. (Five strikes and three spares in one game!!) It gave me a total of 185. If my last two bowls had been a bit better I would have made 200. Now THAT would have been something.

Dan, Simon and Matt were tempted to abandon the next two games of bowling and take me to the casino. :) But that didn’t happen, and it was probably for the best too, because in the next two games I didn’t do anywhere near as well (105 and 126).

So one is forced to ponder: How did Dale get 185?

Did all that practice at Wii Sports Bowling really pay off? Is a whole pizza and a small bucketful of coke some sort of bowling wondermeal? Were the planets and stars aligned in such a way that I bizarrely obtained some kind of bowling superpowers?

I guess it’s just one of those things that you can’t explain, and that if you did find a reason for, it would probably cause your head to explode to know such a thing. :)

Dale.

Reconnecting

Not long ago I received an unexpected Myspace message. It was from someone called Nathan. I’d only ever really known one Nathan in my life, and he’d been my best friend from Prep to Grade 2 or 3 in primary school, before he moved to Queensland. He came to mind when I read the name but I ruled out the possibility that it could actually be him – I mean, what are the chances? So when I discovered that it truly was him (and not some random who’d just become another number in my Myspace friend total) I got a bit excited. How had he been? What is he doing now? What kind of person would he be? Would we still get along after more than ten years apart? So I replied, and just like that we started corresponding again.

We began talking on msn not long after the first Myspace message. Finding out about him has been very interesting, and it turns out that he’s someone who I can definitely see myself being friends with. We seem to get along pretty well. If only we weren’t separated by about 2,000 kilometres! I know talking on msn is one thing, and talking in real life is another, but I think I’ve gotten a good feel for what he’s like during our conversations of late.

It’s fascinating to me that friends from so long ago, from when we were both so young, can still be compatible after spending so many years apart, and after growing up in somewhat different worlds. I don’t know if it’s just coincidence, if like-minded people naturally group together, or if the core aspects of a person don’t really change that much over time, but whatever it is I’m glad we’ve reconnected. It was quite a pleasant and unexpected twist of fate, and I’m looking forward to getting to know Nathan even better. Ten plus years of stuff to catch up on will keep me occupied for quite some time I imagine. :)

Dale.

Don't give up on Me...

I’m me. I will make mistakes. I will act strangely and uncharacteristically at times. I will inevitably attract drama. But I will always be me. The me who I like, and the me who I am most of the time, is still here. And it wants to say sorry, but also wants to ask that you remember it, rather than the other me who more often than not screws things up. But that part of me will always be there too. It tends to steal the spotlight and bring the focus upon itself, while the other, better part of me is slowly forgotten.

This is addressed at me as much as to anyone else.

I know I won't ever give up on Me.

I just hope you don't either.

Dale.

(I realise that this is a perfect example of the drama I create, too. *sigh* When will I learn?)