Always Travelling

• It's a study break week so I've naturally been doing anything but study. I will be ahead in my readings and all the other associated uni work before next Monday.
• Working 30 hours this week at Zipform. Mail room work. Been through it all on this blog before. Enough said on that.
  
• Listened to The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells (audiobook via iPod) whilst hand inserting Bunnings annual reports into envelopes (didn't I just say enough said?)
• Minus the expense on the skydive, I'm about half way to the amount needed for the CELTA course in Nov-Dec. I can do it!!
  

posted by Nic  # 2:53 AM 0 Comments

• Working casual in the mail room at Zipform. My goal is to be able to afford the CELTA course in late November, which costs close to $3000.
• Skydiving on Wednesday morning!!! God this will be something to remember.
• Scan and upload my photo collection - this'll be a 4 or 5 hour job at least I think, but it'll be great to get it done.
  
• Organise something for my Birthday - it's not too far away now at all!

posted by Nic  # 1:55 PM 0 Comments

Look at that hair! WOAH!

posted by Nic  # 12:50 PM 3 Comments

I hardly watch TV these days, and whenever I do I feel like I'm wasting my time. However there are at least a couple of things on the telly that I'll jump on the couch for. I think I've said it before that my favourite TV channels are World Movies and Movie Extra, both foxtel and both showing a great selection of movies. World Movies is where I get all the important foreign language films, and Movie Extra's slogan is 'movies that matter', based on societal impact (including but not limited to popularity) and content. And I also like to watch the odd stupid movie from Showtime, for instance yesterday I watched "Soul Plane".

"Ae Fond Kiss" is a movie that really touched me. I'm giving it a big positive recommendation. Here's a synopsis:

Casim Khan (Yaqub) is a Glaswegian DJ of Pakistani origin. His devout Muslim parents, Tariq and Sadia, have arranged for him to marry his first cousin, Jasmine, and Casim is happy with the arrangement. Casim then meets and falls in love with Roisin (Birthistle), an Irish teacher working in a Catholic school. They then have to decide whether their love is strong enough to endure the reprecussions of their actions and without the support of their respective communities.

It's a film by Ken Loach, who won this year's Palm d'Or (for The Wind That Shakes the Barley). I want to highlight something about his film making style:

Loach's film work is characterized by a particular view of realism; he strives in every area of filmmaking to emphasize genuine interplay between actors, to the point where some scenes in his films appear unscripted. Rather than employing method actors, he prefers unknown talent who have had some of the actual life experience of the characters they portray - so much so that many professional actors aspiring to work with Loach will often pretend to be actual construction labourers or other working class types called for in his script. For Bread and Roses, he chose two leading actors who had experience of union organizing and life as an immigrant. The lead actress in the film, Pilar Padilla, actually had to learn English in order to play the part.

He tries to make sure that actors express as genuinely as possible the feelings of their characters by filming the story in order, and crucially, not giving the actors the script until a few minutes before the filming. Frequently in a scene, only some of the actors will know what is going to happen - the others will often be able to express genuine surprise shock or sadness because they really are hit with the events of the scene.

Personal reflection: Perhaps it's because because most of my relationships have been cross-cultural added to the fact that I'm really just a big softy, but cross-cultural romance portrayed realistically really draws me in. I got emotionally involved watching this film. Go watch it. I'm not going to say anymore about the film, apart from that you might not want to watch it with your parents - it has a few sex scenes that you might feel a little uncomfortable viewing in their presence.

Differences in upbringing, culture, accent, skin colour and religion make relationships so much more interesting. I don't see them as a negative, I see them as a positive. Differences are to be valued. I cherish Pascaline's accent, her brown skin, the way she places so much value on friends and family, and so much more. I'm not niaive, I've experienced problems when expectations are different, and miscommunication does happen. But these are solved through patience, trust and communication, and it's a fallacy to blame your problems on background differences and say nothing of the delight those differences bring to your life. Anyway. My rant for the day is done.

posted by Nic  # 10:57 PM 0 Comments

Nomadlife Around The World

Being as how we're literally scattered about the globe, I thought it would be a fun idea if people would take a picture(s) with the word "Nomadlife" somewhere in it and post it to this site. It can be on your t-shirt at a nice beach, scribbled on the forehead of a friend who had too much to drink at the local pub, on top of a mountain you just scaled, next to that cute air hostess in Sofia, or on the perfunctory streets of the city where you live. I think it would make for an interesting collage and pay homage to the living diversity represented by your posts each and everyday, even if that diversity includes the likes of Devrim Leonard. Drop a comment somewhere on this blog if you have a picture to contribute, and we'll either grant you user access or post it for ya.

(Saturday, January 29, 2005)

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I think it's a cool idea and want in. My first lame attempt is this; nomadlife hastily written on scrap paper with a blue pen so faint you can hardly even read it:



Here's the link to the post.

posted by Nic  # 7:46 PM 4 Comments

IE 6.0:

You probably don't know what a "browser" is and you think Internet is IE. You have no clue about technology, and you are generally afraid of computers. You also use your machine only for IM, chat, email and myspace. Your friends keep telling you about that "Fried Fox" thingy but you don't really understand this stuff and never really had time to look into it.

posted by Nic  # 2:15 PM 0 Comments

I've always been a bit unsure about how long a résumé or CV should be. One page? Two pages max? As long as is needed? The general idea I had was that 2 pages was a good length, the reasoning being that the employer doesn't want a whole lot of waffle, only the really key points. But the whole thing was all a bit unsatisfactory and I was never comfortable with it given that I could be doing quite a bit of screening and selection in my career. It was one of those nagging questions floating around in the back of my head for the past ... perhaps 8 years. Nagging because it is so basic yet I never got a good answer, not even in my HR textbooks. You'd think it would be important for an aspiring HR expert to know wouldn't you! Thank you wikipedia! See the whole entry here.

The word résumé is used especially in the United States and in English Canada; the Latin term curriculum vitae (often abbreviated CV) is instead used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand and some Commonwealth countries, as well as in the academic fields in North America, and in many languages other than English. In some regions (such as Australia and India) CV and résumé are used interchangeably.

In American English usage, a CV is a longer document than a résumé, and will include a comprehensive listing of professional history including every term of employment, academic credential, publication, contribution or significant achievement. In certain professions, it may even include samples of the person's work and may run to many pages. In contrast, a résumé is a summary typically limited to one or two pages highlighting only those experiences and credentials which the author considers most relevant to the desired position. CVs are the preferred recruiting tool for academic and medical professions while résumés are generally preferred for business employment.

In many contexts, a résumé is short (usually one or two pages), and therefore contains only experience directly relevant to a particular position. Many résumés use precise keywords that the potential new employers are looking for, are self-aggrandizing, and contain many action words.

posted by Nic  # 8:32 PM 0 Comments

• Friday morning saw another shift at Zipform. Dead boring work, my task with another guy named Ash (Murdoch multimedia undergrad) was to open envelopes and remove the completed surveys. The envelopes were to big for the machine so they had to call us in to do it manually. I'm enjoying the hours of listening time I get with this job, and I have utilised those hours so far by listening to lectures from various disciplines. This time I almost completed a whole unit on International Economics within the one shift. The next shift I've lined up a unit called The History of Public Health. Should be interesting. The money I'm earning is coming in handy for....
• Skydiving!!! Yes, I'm all booked in for a tandem jump from 12,000ft over Perth city on Wednesday 30th August. Megan and I have been talking about it for a few weeks and I finally got my butt into gear and booked us in. We're both having a DVD made for us to relive the experience again and again. I'm definitely going to post more on this soon.
  
• Next Saturday the 26th August and the following Saturday the 2nd September I'm doing a senior first aid certificate course at the St John Ambulance centre in my suburb. This is something I've been intending on doing for quite a while.
  
• I'll be leading a group to Laverton from the 8th - 11th September.
• It's my birthday on the 5th September. Turning 22 - geeezzz I'm getting old!
• And tomorrow I'm going to post up about this time to say that I've completed all my catch-up study and am right and ready for the coming week. Having completed all the readings for the coming week will be even better! Let's be realistic though - I don't have uni on Mondays so I'll probably leave this week's readings to then.

posted by Nic  # 12:17 AM 3 Comments

How do I listen to my Google Talk voicemail messages in Gmail?

Voicemails come into your account with the subject Voicemail from contact (x seconds) and are tagged with a telephone icon in the attachments column.

You can also search for voicemails in your Gmail account using is:voicemail.

posted by Nic  # 11:54 PM 0 Comments

And spotted this! Every student at Curtin (and there are 30,000+) who logs in will also see this. Good work guys, it's great to see the committee going places.

posted by Nic  # 11:20 AM 0 Comments

Departing Friday noon and arriving back in Perth this morning, my weekend was spent volunteering in Laverton. Summation: Another great experience, spent with a good/strong group of fellow students who I'm looking forward to getting to know better as time progresses. The trip was to prepare us for future weekends when we'll each lead different groups to Laverton. I'll expand more in a separate post once I get some of the pics off the girls.

In other news:

• I signed up for Perth Glory season tickets! "Glory Glory Perth Glory! Glory Glory Perth Glory!" $90 for 10 games is quite reasonable. I went silver level with concession.
• I'm working another shift at Zipform on Wednesday morning, 6:45am to 3:00pm. I'm quite looking forward to more Chomsky and another array of audio lectures.
• Liverpool beat Chelsea! Watched the replay tonight.

posted by Nic  # 9:56 PM 0 Comments