The Balancing Act

So it’s been a while since my last post. Have I been busy? no, not really. I think what has stopped me from blogging or whatnot has been the balancing act of life. Yeah, it takes a bit of effort to coerce myself to write about stuff. Well I suppose that a few things have happened to talk about but generally I’ve been severely unmotivated to do this. But as of late I’ve been jumping back into it all, hence I am here now, writing this piece. So I title this entry as the Balancing Act because more times than I can count, I find myself choosing between what I want to do and what I deem necessary for me to do. There’s a difference because obviously the former is something of choice and the latter is something that I begrudgingly need to get done. Even now it takes a little pressure to coaxes myself into writing line after line, with the only motivating factor not being the concept of a blog more specifically my blog but the acceptance of the fact that after I do this entry, I’m free of guilt and responsibility until at least uni returns. And I think that is what this is all about, me not being able to go to uni and do my thing; I miss my friends, I miss the workload and I miss the lifestyle and to be honest, I think the 3 month or so ‘respite’ is too excessive.

But, what have I done to date? since my last entry? well as you can imagine, my last entry was a distraction merely to keep myself comfortable with not touching this blog for a while, but again, as you can imagine such a small inane post can’t do alot in that respect. So, again, what have I done with myself to date? Ahh well.. for starters I started and finished a temporary job, it was pretty boring which I think just added to my unmotivatedness but the money was decent and it kept me doing something for which I am grateful. That in it’s entirety neared two months but still left me short from the commencement of the semester.

With regards to social life, I haven’t went out too much, it’s actually been so long since I blogged that I don’t know if I’ve documented recent such events or not. But again, as the start of uni is nearing I find myself trying to squeeze in some fun. Last weekend I went into the city with Jace and Tim and some of Jace’s peeps and we went to some snazzy out of the way bar / club-like place near the Gabba called the Chalk hotel or something.. I’ve gotta admit that it was a pretty sweet place and I will definitely be going back there some time, it had the best setup imaginable.
I’m hoping to go ice skating with Tim and hopefully reunite the entire gang before we go back to uni, which providing it happens, will be completely awesome. We have unfinished slapbets that need to be fixed up and Anthony owes us all a ton of drinks.. furthermore he will be the duty manager at Fitzy’s near the Hyperdome meaning I’ll be immune to getting kicked out of there when he’s there, which again, fanastic.. even if I hardly ever go to Fitzy’s anyhow.

Life is a balancing act.

University and Exchange -

Well with uni drawing near I’ve been checking out my units and what it will all entail and I’ve gotta be quite clear and honest and say that I’m not looking forward to one unit in particular, Data Structures and Algorithms.. or was it Algorithms and Data Structures? regardless I’ve done a bit of research and I’ve found that it involves some of the stuff that I, and surely many others despise. Math. Yeah, in a nutshell, to my understanding.. this unit will encompass a bunch of random stuff that allows us to code better. Everyone knows there are alot of possible ways to code a program, by the end of this, we will know the best possible way to code a program — that is to say, one that runs fastest and uses up less resources which in turn when applied to mass amounts of data being processed is a valuable skill.
Despite being a nice something something to add to the skillset that’s not exactly what I need, or rather what I think I need. You see, over the holidays I did a bit of research into what exactly I wanted to do when I decided to pursue my professional career. You may think this is silly, I’ve been at uni for 3 years now and I don’t know what I want to be? well you’ve got to realize with IT there are so many complex specializations that one can choose and it takes an understanding of these roles that need to be furfilled within the IT sector that can only be gained by working through your degree and fishing out what you like to do and what you don’t.

I’ve decided upon a VoIP Cisco Network Engineer. Why? simply because I believe there is and will continue to be a great need for the service and it’s right up that little lane that has all the things I’d like to do and that I am interested in. Plus it’s one of the highest paying IT jobs out there.. muaha $120k is a very long way off from being a fantasy. So with that in mind, I’m able to plan the rest of my degree accordingly, pick up valuable skills and whatnot.. so I’m happy in regards with the entire IT career department thingo.

Moving on, tonight I received an email saying officially, even though I had unofficially known for a while now, that I would be nominated to go to Japan to my selected university. This is great news for me as in this email I received a bunch of helpful links which gave me an abundance of info regarding the complexities of what I’m to undertake and the challenges I’ll meet. This is nice as I’m one to plan, always have been, always will be. Basically, I’m the guy you want in one of those zombie doomsday scenarios because I’ve already meticulously planned that out.

Oh, so I’m also officially an adult in Japan now, turning 20 on Monday, which in Japan is the age of ‘manhood’ / legal age to drink alcomahols.. which is nice. Lucky me, I now have the entire collection of Scrubs on DVD to date, seasons 1 to 7 and I’ve been watching them daily. I was going to have a Scrubs-a-thon but I’ve decided to hold off and actually have a mass Scrubs-a-thon with alcohol involved (on the first night at least).. I’ve also found a renewed vigor to get my website up and running with the formal acknowledgment from the university and 3 week countdown back to uni.

Ohh and a bit on the bad side of my update is me announcing (I’ve made a habit of that as of late) that I won’t be able to formally study Japanese at university anymore. In what I suspect is a bid to reduce expenditure, three universities — QUT, Griffith and UQ have banded together and formed a language ‘alliance’ of sorts and are now only offering higher level language units at the UQ St Lucia campus and consquently their time tables now clash with my IT units and I wouldn’t be arsed to travel to St Lucia anyway soo it looks like I’m going to do self study. It shouldn’t be so bad as I’m going in for an appointment with the Japanese Head Coordinator to just have a chat about some stuff and I’m going to see if I can mooch some powerpoint slides from previous years to help me with my studies. Shouldn’t be a big ask as I’ve spoken with her before about my exchange to Japan. Fingers crossed though.

I think that’s all I need to report, sure I’ve left a few things out like the fact that I’m moving to nowhere but I might remember to talk about those random facets of life another time.

Sayonara. Til next time.