The Future...?

I am about to finish the first semester of my final year at the University of Melbourne. I'm feeling incredibly excited, but also shitting myself a little bit. I need to go out and be a real person! Scary thought. 

Most people in my course are beginning to put together teaching portfolios, resumes, and so on, getting ready to dive headfirst into the world of Primary School teaching. Lecturers are kind of taking it for granted that we will be Primary Teachers, or at least Kindergarten Teachers. 

To tell you the truth though, I don't really think I want to be a Primary School Teacher. Not yet, anyway. I've been in the school system in one form or another for the last sixteen and a half year. At the end of this year, it will be seventeen years in total. Thats a fucking long time. 

So really, I need a break. I need at least a gap year, maybe longer. I also need to leave Australia. I've lived here almost my whole life, with the exception being the time I lived in the Netherlands as a child. Living abroad has always been the dream, and if I don't do it now, I am so scared that I will fall into a career, and then be thinking 'what if I had moved' for the rest of my life. Teaching also seems to be very easy to fall into, you get into a school, save up some money, buy a car for convenience, figure "one more year to save some money", meet someone, think of buying a house, starting a family, and before you know it you are 50 years old and thinking back to the time when you were still young enough to move countries just for the sake of moving. 

Well fuck that.

One way or another, I am leaving this country, preferably to head back to the Netherlands. I think the best option at the moment would be becoming an au pair. I have a mate who did that first year out of high school, in Germany. He sent me this link: http://www.facebook.com/l/738fc;www.aupairworld.net

So far it seems pretty damn good! Plenty of options, they are not all asking for females (as so many ads do) and it looks like being able to speak fluent English and Dutch is a helpful skill to have. Having a Bachelor in Early Childhood Education probably makes me a little overqualified, but it can't hurt, right?

Lots of them seem to be 'live in' positions as well, which I think would be best. I am already a morning person, so getting up early, getting breakfast ready, getting kids off to school or nursery or wherever they will be going sounds pretty great. It seems like most leave a reasonable amount of time for small trips, so it would be easy to visit friends and family I haven't seen in years. 

I must admit, looking through the website was getting me pretty excited. My little brother has worked at Aldi for the last year or so. He has finished high school, so that and playing with his band is pretty much his life. I'm pretty jealous! No assignments, no studying, no job to take home. His free time is his, and is not spent constructing lesson plans, or cutting out fucking complex art activities for the children to work on the next day. One day I might be ready for that, but not yet. I want to be free, to have a job that is one-on-one with some kids, and that I don't have to constantly think about in my downtime. Nannying seems like it could be that job!

It felt great last year, when I got round to renewing my Dutch Passport. Just seeing that little box "Nationaliteit: Nederlandse" (Nationality: Dutch) felt amazing. It made finishing up and leaving seem so much more real than just an idea. Last week I voted for the first time in the Dutch elections (for the VVD, hopefully they do a good job for the economy) and that made me feel active, part of the Netherlands again. Looking through these job listings, seeing the end of the year coming up, planning to begin saving, it's all making it feel real again. 

There is light at the end of the tunnel, and I am truly looking forward to reaching it.

Atheist Convention

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend the Atheist Convention, held in Melbourne. It was a lot of fun! The people there were really nice, lots of conversations were had while waiting for talks to start.

I always like going to things like these, because it instantly gives people something to talk about. "What did you think of .....'s talk"? "Would you consider yourself an Atheist"? "Are you from around here"? 

I got full weekend tickets as a Christmas present (a little ironic I suppose), so got to see all speakers Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday night was fun, the talkers were more of a comedy style, not too much heavy thinking. They were also serving beer, champagne and some cool food. The beer was actually good, Red Angus! Not the normal stuff given away as 'complimentary'. Speaking of beer, there was one dude sitting behind me who was SMASHED. He kept yelling stupid things, and pissing everyone around him off. Catherine Deveny tore into him, "does the term 'shut the fuck up mean anything to you"?

The first speakers were at about 8:30 Saturday morning, bright an early! Phillip Adams was the first one up, I liked his talk. (I'm not going to go into too much detail, for that go to http://tiny.cc/tb0me)

The best speakers on Saturday were A.C Grayling, Taslima Nasrin, and of course P.Z Myers (who I got to say hello to, very cool!). A.C Grayling gave an awesome talk, but what made it great was that it just flowed, he didn't seem like he was reading from notes at all. 

Taslima Nasrin gave an amazing talk about her experiences writing about religion, and it was amazing to hear how much her life was at risk, just from writing! Scary stuff. She received a very well deserved standing ovation, the only other person who got one was Richard Dawkins (obviously). 

PZ Myers was incredibly funny, exactly as you would expect if you are a regular reader of his blog Pharyngula. I liked the way he talked about scientists who are religious. Religion compromises them, because they have to set apart a section of their brain to non-scientific thinking, and have to create these complicated scenarios in order to justify their beliefs. PZ of course explained it much better than I ever could. 

Sunday was great, I got there a bit late so missed half the first talk. I couldn't really concentrate for the bit that I did turn up to, because I was pretty sure I had locked my keys in my car, and didn't want to create a massive disturbance by searching through my entire backpack. Luckily I found them in the interval, they had fallen to the bottom of my bag.

Richard Dawkins was clearly the highlight of the conference, I would be curious to find out what the attendance would have been had he not been speaking. He gave a really great talk, but I must admit it didn't flow as nicely as other talks. The best part was during the Question and Answer section, when he was just going off the top of his head. 

One woman asked what she clearly thought was a killer question to destroy his atheism "what is DNA"? People started booing, but quickly quietened down, and Richard gave a really good answer. But it was annoying that time was wasted on a question that 99% of the audience understood, and could have been answered by reading a year 7 science textbook. It was unfair that a significant amount of time was given to a clearly religious person, when SO many other more interesting questions could have been asked and answered. I understood why people booed, and I get why they were quickly shooshed. If Richard hadn't answered, the religious would have won, "Richard Dawkins can't answer a simple fact, therefore Christianity is right". He handled the situation very well, in the best possible way. 

People did tend to abuse the question time, talking for aaaaages, loving their time in the spotlight. There must be a better way to do question time, maybe the same way the tv show Q&A (on ABC) do it? That way we could avoid idiots talking about how 'psychology is pseudoscience'. (Seriously, what a dickhead).

At the end of his talk Richard got a very well deserved standing ovation, then everyone rushed out to get their books signed. Man, the queue was loooooooooooooooooooooooooong. Like, really long. I was about in the middle, but the queue even seemed long when I joined it. But everyone was friendly no jostling or fighting. I had a good chat with the dude in front of me, about life the universe and everything. We also talked about how awesome the food had been! Seriously, I've been to conventions before, but the food here was the best I have come across. There was plenty for everyone, and it was varied and interesting and Tasty! Very cool.

The only downside was that nothing was really said that challenged any of my beliefs, or that I disagreed with. It's nice to be challenged, and have to change or defend an opinion. Also, the panel of women really should have been four separate talks, they should have had more time. Then the panel could have been more of a question and answer type thing, more of a conversation (like a panel is supposed to be). 

Oh my god the new Joanna Newsom album is good.

So, so good.

So university has started up again, it's weird being a fourth year! 

Exciting to think that this is my last year, but also a bit scary. I'm going to miss being a student. I guess I can always continue my studies if I miss it too much...

I got a great timetable this year, two days off! However, this means that I have lots of class crammed into Tuesdays. I don't finish until 6, which means I don't get back to Sunbury until around 7-7:30. But hey, two days off. I'm not complaining.

This year we also do a biiig research project, in an area we are interested in. I am really fascinated by attachment theory , so I'm trying to figure out something to research in that area. I also managed to get my top choice of supervisor, so thats also very exciting! I'm looking forward to it, it's a good chance to really try and work out where I want to go with my degree; straight into the classroom, or into further academic study. I guess we'll see!

Sanitorium Lake

Good day today. We have had some friends from Holland staying with us, so we headed down to Sanitorium lake, up in Macedon. Nice weather, a little cold but no need for a jumper. We had bought a really nice frisbee (apparently the one that holds the world record for distance) so we were tossing that around, very good fun. Stuck up a tree more than a few times, but it was all good. 

We also made these very nice hamburgers, really spicy with sambal and tabasco and lots of other spices. We walked around for a bit, then headed up to the Macedon Reservoir to do a bit of fishing. No luck though, unfortunately. There were loads of blackberries around though, it was fantastic! I stuffed myself full. Nothing quite like fresh blackberries, straight off the bush. mmmm.....

All in all, a very nice Sunday! This was also the final day before I head back for another year of uni, so I've been getting all my stuff together. I'm looking forward to heading back, even though I know I will wish it was holidays again after the first week of work... Although this year I have two full days off, Thursday and Friday. So long weekend! 

Right, this laptop is almost out of power.

I am feeling incredibly satisfied. 

For ages I have been meaning to get a new wardrobe, as my old one was falling apart. After putting it off for weeks and weeks, I drove down to Bunnings and picked a nice (cheap) one out. However, I had to put it together myself. 

My Grandad was a carpenter, and my other ancestors built ships in Holland, so it should be in my blood, but I am really not very good at putting things together. But this was going to work, and work it did!

Finally, my clothes are no longer living on my floor, but are organized into nice, individual compartments. Satisfaction. I only hope they stay as organized, I've never been able to keep my stuff neat and ordered.

While I was there, I also grabbed two new plants, a bonsai Banyan Fig (pictured), and some bamboo, which I swear have grown since I bought them. 

Saturday

Cool! First post of my new blog! I guess I might be a little late to this whole 'internet' thing, but hey... 

I suppose I should outline what I hope this blog will be. I'm planning to write about food and drink, something that I really enjoy. Life as a fourth year BECE student, living it up in Melbourne. And I really hope this eventually turn into a travel blog. 

I've long enjoyed reading other people's writing, so I suppose now it's time to start some writing of my own.