Catch up

It is amazing how quickly the last two weeks have gone since my last post... I honestly do not know where it has gone! C'est la vie.

I have begun a (slightly less than) part time job on Monday mornings. I am doing some voluntary work for Case for refugees - a local charity aiding refugess in their visa applications and guiding them through the process of settling in Australia. It is good to help out, & also get a little legal experience on the side. I have also read a veritable plethora of journals and legal texts in research for several essays that are due in a few weeks - this is the staple diet of a law undergraduate degree in Australia. With slightly more forward looking vision, I have also completed a few more applications for summer vacation schemes with law firms, and thus may yet try my hand at the 'big city business' bag for a few weeks this summer.

One question I found particularly difficult to answer on one of the aforementioned applications was:

Creativity - Describe a new way you were able to apply existing knowledge to solve a problem.

It sounds simple, but you try answering it. In fact, I would appreciate it if anyone has any ideas of what material I could use (from my life!) in answer to such a question. I'm dry on this one. Keep it clean please, boys. The whole process is a little demeaning as it can be difficult to impress the recruiters in answering such questions without churning out the usual 'trite CV lines.' The joys of law.

JoeyRadford visited for half a week, so it was fairly cool to hang with him a little. He was around last Saturday, when it was the annual college car rally, which involved car loads of people dressed up in a fancy dress theme terrorising locals in Perth for various photos, bits of information, prices, autographs and the such like. Being one of the last groups, my tactful and subtle request in the gay bar for a photo of Joey with 'anyone available' was quickly unmasked as specifically requiring a lesbian... very embarrassing, but alas we got the photo & continued! The rally ended with a party on someones farm out in the country, inlcuding a bush band with Aussie county dancing - a distant cousin of the barn dance, celiedh and other such folk type dances. It was a good night. The photo below is of my car - dressed in the theme of Scooby Doo after securing a brown van as our mode of transportation... I am 'Fred'. (nb: we were one of the less adventurously dressed cars... everyone else went to far more effort: spartans, ninja turtles, flower pot men et al!)

Wednesday 25 was ANZAC day - a remembremance type day commemorating Aus & NZ soliers in WWII. I went to a service in the chapel, which was moving. My tutor group from college then had a social in the afo: ice blocking, which is essentially sledging on blocks of ice down a hill. It was quite cool, but is clearly an inferior Ozzie version of one of my fav child-hood outings. Its got nothing on Happy Valley! We then went out for an all-you-can-eat Chinese, which was edible... so that was good!

I've just got back from a unichurch weekend away. It was cool fun. We heard some talks from the book of Daniel in the Bible which were helpful... about living a Christian lifestyle in a world that is not Christian. Lots of challenges there. However, there was also lots of time off for chilling out over the weekend, which was good. Yesterday afo, 6 of us guys hired some canoes & went up the river: sinking each other, sabotaging other groups, & generally being 'laddish' & causing trouble. We also found some v.high sand dunes that ran right down into the water. We each ran the gauntlet down the dunes trying to get to the safety of the water whilst getting nailed by all the other guys - good to practice rugby tackles. Later we also dragged one of the hire canoes 50m up to the top of a sand dune & had a go at some bob-sledding Jamaican style down the sand into the water. That was one very cool hour.

Tonight, I played football for my college in a couple of games against the other residential colleges from UWA. It was a windy & blustery night, so it felt a little more like playing back home (apart from the considerably warmer climate!) which was nice. We played 2 games, & won them both - I managed to steel a goal & set one up, so not a bad night in all. I hope you are all well & enjoying the early summer vibes in England. Go hard in the exams friends, a long summer is just around the corner!