Update

Can this be so? Just an update about recent events without a flaming arrow being shot at some section of the community and their beliefs? Well, maybe - I'll see where this takes me.

So I am now a full-time student once more - after four years in (and out of) the workforce I have put the foot on the brake of my ongoing lack of postgraduate education and thrown myself back into Uni land.

The emotions have been mixed to say the very least. From the top of the world in every sense to its polar opposite in the space of 24 hours was a common feature of the past couple of months - but now that I have a routine (yes a ROUTINE!) time is flying by and am feeling like I am making progress towards something. Not exactly sure what it is, but something that is slowly gaining clarity in the swampy depths of my mind with every lecture I attend, every article I read and every other mind I engage.

I am working nearly a full-time job at the UQ Union Bookshop on top of my study - and the all important gymnasium routine has not been forgotten either - so after the contact and non-contact hours of study that I have committed myself to, I have not nearly as much time as I would like to spend with my equally hard working little nurse (who has had the worst tempered bugger of a patient recently with a sore back and stiff neck.....me).

I think that if there is only one thing in my entire life at the moment that I would change, it would be to have more hours in the day - there just isn't enough time to do all that I want to do and so I feel like there is a portion of life that I am missing out on. Current affairs and cultural activities have dissipated to a trickle of Simpsons, the occasional quiz show and The Biggest Loser (yes, I watch - it's health and fitness, albeit dramatised excessively). Being aware of time passing can be both a useful tool and mental torture at the same time. It makes you endeavour to do all you can before all the grains of sands have fallen, but results in an element of desperation in the mind to achieve all that needs to be achieved before it's too late.

The other thing I have discovered (you'll like this one Lucas) is that 'the customer is always wrong, and an idiot'. My customer service work in the bookshop has made me a cynical customer hater - but I also love them when they do everything perfectly. It is great to be able to compare the behaviour of a massive cross section of the University community through the multitude of tiny interactive differences.

Some empirical data thus far collected goes as follows:

- International students always want plastic bags
- Females almost always want plastic bags - unless they are trying to be enviro friendly
- Males almost never ever want a bag
- Females are more picky about their products
- Females are more impatient
- Middle ages females are the most impatient and demanding
- Old women are the most patient
- Japanese/Korean students always give you that extra 5 or 10 cents so that they get a note or gold coin back in change (good on them I say)
- Nobody ever reads signs in the shop - no matter how big or how often they are in front of their face.
- Boys these days must spend as much time as girls in the hairdresser - the variety of specially coloured/spiked/twisted/blow waved hair do's these guys get around in would make a rock star embarrassed for them.

And that is all I have to say about that for now.