Vacant Mind

Train stories #2 June 21st, 2009

It’s been a long day at work and I’m at Richmond station about to board the train home, looking forward to reading my book ‘Dreams of my father’ which I had almost finished, it’s a good book so far, many insights and new thoughts, but there is a lady sitting a couple of rows ahead of me with a radiant smile something that I haven’t seen on someone in a while. A smile that seems to have been on her for a little while, she wasn’t looking at anything just staring out the window and smiling slowly and carefully thumbing a mobile phone looking like she was itching to make a phone call.

Soon enough a phone call is made and a conversation beings with a very excited voice, going over the details of the night before. It was a date, a first date with a guy that she had met through a friend of a friend. She was good looking, not a model but certainly someone that wouldn’t have trouble getting drinks at a bar or club, it certainly sounded like she had difficulty finding the right type of guy before, if not someone interesting it was someone that would treat her the way she wanted.

From the sounds of it, this guy was an interesting fellow himself, “he was so full of life, such a zest of light I have never seen before” and not a bad looker himself  “he wasn’t stunning but he was good looking, like he had got around bit, he likes spending time outdoors and can’t find anyone to spend that time with” and they had run into each other before “we went to the same uni and did the same courses, I knew his brother but not him, we talked about our favorite lectures, subjects and places around the uni”

It was interesting conversation the whole time with her face set in a constant state of happiness such that I couldn’t concentrate on my book, after a little while I put the book down and pulled out the notes on World War II that I had been slowing going through, this required less concentration and could be easily skimmed.

“we are looking forward to seeing each other again, he was so nice, it was nice to finally meet someone that I can get along with so easily”

She hung up the phone and begun twirling the mobile phone again in her hands, almost waiting to make another phone call and tell someone else the story again.

Tags: melbourne, Train Stories, transport
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School packed train June 9th, 2009

It’s raining I’m at the station waiting for a train which has just been cancelled. It’s cold, bitterly cold, coldest day so far for the year. I look up and down the platform and see a thinly spread group of people I think to myself ‘this doesn’t seem to bad, there aren’t that many people, I should be OK for a seat’. Time slips by and more and more potential passengers arrive and platfrom begins to fill and my previous thoughts of a seat or even a spacious ride begin to look doubtful.

I keep forgetting that this is the about the time that seemily millions of school children also board the train. The train arrives, the rain is coming down and the wind is blowing.

We board the train, I find a spot where I can stand, get my book out and begin to read, as we pass station after station it becomes apparent that the previously cancelled train has begun to take it’s tool

A women turns a head, another gets a faceful of hair, a man tries to read with another persons’ hand in front of their face holding onto the bar, eveyone contends with school kids and their backpacks being thrown around as theyswish around like water as the train makes it’s journey.

The train is full again and we are all uncomfortable.

Tags: Train Stories
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The trouble with good neighbours April 27th, 2009

So it was a big night, an unexpected big night.

I got home late, when I wasn’t supposed to, I had told the fiance with every good intention that I would be home earlier than the 5 hours that I actually got home by taxi. I had driven the car to the station that night because I to believe that I would be home by 9pm.

So when I got up the next morning, obviously nervous about the telling off that I would get, which I got I realised that I also had to go and get my car, what was also lucky was that my fiance hadn’t noticed that my car was missing. So off I went, by bus, under the guise that I was dropping off some dry cleaning. Everything worked perfectly, I returned in my car and no one was the wiser.

That was until the next day or so when one of our neighbours came by, a family friend of the fiance. When it was mentioned that I was seen walking to the bus stop carrying clothes and why I was doing such a thing. My story had to come undone.

That’s the trouble with good neighbors.

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Busy Trains March 3rd, 2009

I know that people harp on about the crowded, late and generally rubbish service of Melbourne’s train network, but I’ve got another complaint that is more close to my heart, and like the normal problems I’ve had to compensate to work my way around it.

School children…hundreds of them, unavoidable, loud, obnoxis, intrusive, space hogs. They are everywhere and they take up so much space, funnily enough the girls tend to be fine, nothing wrong with them as they fit in like any other normal passenger (besides being numerous amounts of them) It’s the boys that are the uncomfortable part, they push, get in the way, are rude, and when you have just woken up and all you want to do is try to relax before a busy day at work is need a buch of boys screaming about something or other. But they all take up copious amounts of room which cout towards trains being late due to numours people but also school bags blocking doors.

I just realised how old that last paragraph made me sound, I shall say no more to what I’ve already stated.

So how do I get around the problem, I catch a earlier train, like most things there is always a solution.

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New Year Resolutions January 2nd, 2009

I’m sure that everyone is doing them, so why not me:

• Sell a print or digital of one of my photographs
• Do more photography, I enjoy it and find it relaxing, so why not
• Loose 10kg, get to size 34 pants, 15% body fat
• Start a small home business (photography or computer fix/repair)
• Get a job that I want
• Find and buy into a managed fun that has regular savings
• Find and buy shares into company
• Build the network that I’ve been thinking about
• Read 2 books per month
• Write more (journal and blog)
• Practice meditation
• See my friends more regularly
• Join the 365 project – take a photo per day
• Take a photo of myself everyday
• Build a stronger relationship with my fiance
• Continue to understand and believe in myself more
• Dig into my family history and record it – family tree with stories
• Learn a second language or two
• Ride to work or at least half way or to the station
• Learn to cook…better
• Develop a ‘early riser’ routine

I don’t know if I will get to them all or any of them. I’ve got it out there at least, out of my mind.

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Job Swapping November 11th, 2008

The fiance (former g/f) is a teacher, but a teacher for autistic kids. It’s one of those things that you fall into, I don’t think that she chose it per say but she seems to like it…I think.

While my job may not be a teachers job in the way that I look after or teach people things, I like to think that I face my own stress as well. When seriously compared (or she is a better story teller) my things don’t matter. It’s amazing how your problems can seem the worst in the world and then when someone else puts them in perspective with their story. Stories of kids going crazy in the classroom, parents dealing with the mentally disabled children and the general teacher gossip that goes around.

I wondering what it would be like teaching children, everyone things that they would be good, I’m sure that I would be alright but who knows. Not me, I’m actually quite scared of children…well teaching them…parenting them. I like the bit where you can take them have fun with them and give them back. There is none of that with teaching, you have to be tough and kind as well.

I wonder what she would be like in my job, the daily stress of last minute requests, the strategy meetings, the juggling multiple projects, the pressure of the projects the constant meetings.

It’s amzing the amount of misgiving that people from different professions have about each other is amazing, I admit that I was one of those that would tease teachers from afar, but now having the experice of living with one makes me realise how much they actually go though. To be fair listening the primary/junior secondary school kids on the train maked me want to tape their mouths shut and staple their bags to them. I couldn’t possibly deal with because of a profession – I have a hard enough time dealing with the animals that I work with.

It’s with this same perspective that I look at all other people with a jobs – waiters, cooks, lawyers, train drivers, police, trades people – they all deal with the stress of their own type.

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60 hour week October 30th, 2008

Wow, now that was tough. I actual week were I didn’t get home till after 11pm, I had dinner at work, I didn’t see my fiance for 3 whole days. I actually felt like that I had made it to the corporate life, the life that I had always seen and heard about. The one where people give up almost everything for work.

It’s amazing how dedicated some people can be and it became evident that I can be that dedicated, the couple of weeks that I have been doing this I realised the amount that people are prepared to give up for little gain.

I had been convinced to do this due the the great exposure and experience that I would get, I hated it at first. The mundane work, long hours and the exposure and experience that I wasn’t getting.

I stuck with it, the dinner at work, 15 hour days, 60 hour weeks. I don’t know if  made an impression or not but I”m leaving now because I couldn’t handle the work and I wanted to go back where it was easy.

Go back where it was easy, that part I don’t like, the part where I might have given up because it all got too hard. I don’t know how this will effect me in the future but I hope that I made the right decision.

Tags: Life, Work
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What can I do in 3 hours? October 15th, 2008

Nothing. Well to be honest almost nothing. Let’s get a little more detailed shall we.

I get home about at 6.30 pm (on average), anytime between now and 7.45 pm is dinner (cooking and eating). I clean up after dinner which will normally take me to about 8.00 pm, and then I’ll clean up and get ready for the next day (shower/shave/clothes). It’s now 8.30 pm, here is where the problem starts, I have to be in bed at 9.30, I don’t think that I’ll make it to bed by 9.30 because I’ve got things that I like to do at night.

• See friends
• General surfing the Internet
• Say out after work

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Living together October 8th, 2008

Who would have thought that living together would have been so hard, well most people I guess I just didn’t think about it. I probably should have I don’t know why I thought that it would have been easy, living out of each other pockets was never going to be easy, I realised this at the point when we started commenting on each others toilet habits, that’s about when it got a bit much.

I’m not used to the routine either that she has, so regimented so routine. It leaves little to be flexible with the little time that I do have to do what I want. There are many things that I have found out that I would like to share with you now.

• I didn’t know that pillows also existed for decoration. I thought that beds served a practical purpose and since no one has seen it yet decoration seems useless.

• Beds need to be tucked in a military fashion otherwise it is not made

• House cleaning must be done at 7am on a Saturday morning.

• Gardening is meant to be fun

• ‘You’re the man’ is meant to he a sufficient reason for almost everything

It’s not that I’m complaining, it is that I’ve never segmented duties to gender classification, but it seems the I’m relegated to the garden work and she to the house work.
I don’t know if it has been the years of nagging and negative comments, but I’m just very cynical of her now. Or am I too emotional that I take comments that she said too personal. Who knows.

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Anxiety Attacks September 17th, 2008

I’ve never had one before, I’m a pretty relaxed guy. I don’t let too much phase me nor to I take many things to heart. Altough recent problems with the new fiance has meant that I’ve begun to stress a lot more than I used to. 

I’ve started to have a very uneasy stomach, with it causing lots of discomfort, I’ve also had a lot of chest pain on the left side. I’m not certain if this is because I’m also unfit.

There are days that I don’t even want to come home because I don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable conversations that I know I have to have. 

I guess this is one those grown up things that I have to learn how to do.

Tags: Health, Life, Partner, Relationships
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