That nagging pain at the Back of your Head

i'm so tired right now it's not funny. work has been... busy lately. three of our presenters are sick or away on leave and its left to the rest of us to fill in the blank spaces on the roster. i was talking to noodle last night, and i told her about work and the current situation (or sitch as we call it in the bizz, by bizz i mean business) and she asked me why i'm always the one to rush in and volunteer when stuff like this happens. i think i made a silly joke or something after that, but it got me to thinking.

why do i help out so much?

i like to think that people appreciate it, the little extras that you put in, taking the time out of your life, what little you have of it, to help out in a time of need. but the truth is, that rarely happens. i mean sure, people are greatful, but i don't know, eventually they just take it for granted that you're always going to be there to do things.

i love my job, it's what i wake up in the morning to do, but i know the limitations that come from it, and the danger it carries. the truth is, when i comes to presenting, burning yourself out is a big risk, and lately i've been wondering if i've burnt out. i just feel so tired lately...it could be the three hours of sleep i got last night, in between shifts, but i could really use some z's at the moment.

this post is really more of a rant than an attempt to make some kind of sense or coherance. please bear this in mind.

On the subject of the olden days

so for some strange reason today i was tripping on Dragonlance and Little Nemo in Slumberland. for a while there was nothing i would read except Dragonlance novels. the adventures of a band of heroes on a magical planet named Krynn. my stepmum first bought me my first one when i was in class eight, she picked one up from Value City or something, an old second hand bookshop, and i was hooked. my favorite character, i still remember, was Raistlin, he was a mage, first of the order of the red robes and then the order of the black robes, and was a very tragic character. he was weak for one thing, without his magic his body was frail and cursed. he made up for it by his enormous store of will though, yes, Raist was a fun character.
i'd go searching for each and every Dragonlance book i could find, which eventually led me to the Deathwing Cycle by the same authors, which i also read meticulously. it's sad to think about it, but my favorite novels are based on dungeons and dragons modules.
and then i saw this on Deviantart this morning, and a part of me just smiled. i loved Little Nemo in Slumberland as a kid. i'd watch it over and over again (as well as Fern Gully, which made that piece of art even more sweet), even though i got scared in the bits when the bed grew legs and walked. i used to have nightmares about falling off of that bed. i also used to have dreams about that princess...although at the time i was slightly confused as to some of my feelings towards said princess.
i miss being that young sometimes, and i'm only eighteen. i think today i'm going to go and see if i can find the dvd at comsol.

Old Friends and Reminisces

so today i got a buzz from an old friend of mine from high school. i called her up and asked her, what was up. mainly because a friend of mine in china has been bugging me to catch up with my old crew from school.

we didn't call it a crew back then, but if i could go back i would.
anyway, so the gang just so happened to be meeting up at USP that morning to hang out and stuff. so i went to catch up. it was good fun, reminded me a lot of the good old days of sitting in the back of the classroom and yarning away about nothing in particular.

also, apparently Gulong ng Palad is a good watch. i don't know what my friends are doing watching Filipino soaps, but it's the latest thing since Shortland Street apparently.

so it was day of reminisces and nostalgia. i enjoyed myself immensely.

Noobs

everyone was a noob once. it's true. even if you're the most uber-l337 son's of mothers that are playing at the moment, at one time you didn't know what the spacebar did. or that you could eat and drink at the same time.
yesterday i introduced a friend of mine to world of warcraft. he had heard of this before...this world of warcraft, but he had not played it, merely listened as the rest of us rattled on about mobs and aggro and pallies bubbling like bitches.
so i sat him down at the computer and told what does what, and walked him through the first three levels or so.
now, it's important to keep in mind that when you're teaching someone, the best thing to do is to let them try things out on their own, and make their own mistakes, which is what i did. eventually he started to get the hang of things, finishing quests, putting on better gear ( well, more gear, since you don't start with much) and such.
and he was a noob.
it was beautiful, everything was new and different to him, and i look forward to that feeling somewhere down the line where i can be a noob again at some other game.
so when you meet a real noob, someone like a warlock with plus attack power gear, or a strictly melee hunter, do not scorn them. we were all noobs once.

also, this post has a lot to do with world of warcraft.

Urgh-ishness

i have been sick for the past few days. it hasn't been fun. in fact, it could be said that being sick is the opposite of fun. a fun black hole, if you will. so yeah, not a lotta fun.

however, today i did feel good enough to draw some pictures. my first foray into getting back into the art groove was this :


its very sketchy...and not very well done, but it least it's getting on the right track right? right!?

so because i had a lotta spare time on my hands i started going through my old sketchbooks, and found a little sketch i did of my mage when he got his hawkstrider at level 40, (big thanks to wilson for lending me the gold to buy boco ^_^ )


yeah, then i mucked around for a bit, did some computer stuff's, because that's always fun, listened to some music, and then decided to do one more picture...
which ended up being this:
i like drawing the hellbat :)

yeah... so i still feel like crap, and am planning to go to work tommorrow. mainly because i can't afford to miss too many days of work. so we'll see how that goes.

M.A.G.E. also known as Lol, mage

hehe, mages.

i play a mage in world of warcraft.

this clip made me nod in sad agreement.

we are the vending machines of WoW :)

Full Metal Friday

i think i just had what must have been the longest friday of my life ever. it was alright, i must say, a lot of things happened. some of which i'll share with you, because i am inebriated at the moment.

like most days, my day started at 3AM. i work as a presenter for a breakfast show, so i have to be up extra early to catch the van that takes me to work. so i was up at 3, ready by half past and in the van by quarter to four. and then off to work i went. nothing to much to report about that. except that i had to pull an extra shift, so i was in that little box of a studio for about nine hours.

blinking at the light of the early afternoon, i stepped out of the building at two, and got lunch with Lawrence. lunch time conversation involved erections and teacher/student fantasies. if further information is needed, feel free to send me an email.

after lunch, i decided to go home and get ready for the planned evening of fun and frolicking. which meant getting emails and stuff out of the way at home ( i received a nice one from my monkey ninja lady, which put a smile on my face for the rest of the day).

while i was in the bathroom, i was faced with a conundrum.

to shave or not to shave, truly that is the question.

now, when we go out to the clubs, i like to think that the way you carry yourself is everything, and if you're lucky, they won't ask you for ID. my friend wilson on the other hand, is older than i am, and gets stopped a lot for his ID, and he's much older than i am. whereas i can pretty much count the number of times i've been stopped by bouncers. twice.

at the moment though, i'm trying to increase the volume of facial hair that i possess. don't ask me, why, so i shaved. because my good friend told me that is the way to increase you facial hair potential quotient ( or the FHPQ as it's known in some circles).

the old crew got together, and we were set for our night of planned debauchery.

first up was drinks at bad dog, which was fun. i like bad dog, its kinda like the closest thing we have to a proper pub in Suva, except that the food is bloody expensive.

after that, we went and had dinner. mistake number one of the evening, as this sobered up our little drinking crew. so much so that we decided to go and watch Resident Evil : Apocalypse.

the movie was, meh, i guess. it was alright, Milla Jovovich is very hot, but her character Alice, is very overpowered. they need to nerf her. really, in one scene she takes out most of a container full of zombies. with Gurkha knives.

after the movie, we lost one of our crew, not to zombies, but to tiredness. he had had a long day, and decided to bow out early for the evening. leaving just four brave men to venture out into the rainy suva night.

karaoke was the name of the game now, and many songs we did sing. i would elaborate further, but i won't. karaoke is like fight club. the first rule of karaoke, is that you don't talk about karaoke.

then we decided to go to O'Reillys. where the bouncer stopped me and asked for my ID. see, what i did earlier in the post was foreshadow this event with the whole shaving question thing. that's some professional writing right there.

i could tell though that my mates really wanted to check out O'Reillys, and even though i got into Traps i decided that i'd take my leave and head on home. i mean, it was turning midnight and i'd been up since three. i badly needed some Z's.

and yeah, that was my day, long and hard. just like...a marathon.

Letting people know where you Stand

i was twelve. at least, i think i was twelve. the thing was, i was in class eight right, and everyone else was around thirteen, so i would have been twelve because i skipped class two. anyway, i was twelve years old and i was in love. how do i know? well, i had sweaty palms whenever i talked to her, and even though i wasn't certain of the specifics of how it would happen, i could picture our kids.

so what was i to do?

i made friends with her first, of course, because i am a very friendly person, except towards Nazis. we started hanging out, first at school, and then we'd spend the afternoon in town, sometimes with our other friends, and sometimes just the two of us. i was happy. unfortunately, what i didn't do was tell her that i fancied her.

even now i can remember why i liked her, she had all the things about her that i like in a girl. she was smart, could carry a conversation about anything, and had a great smile. she also had breasts. but that wasn't the only reason why i liked her! i swear! it's just...she also happened to have a nice rack.

and then the sucky thing happened. i refer to it as the sucky thing, because it was a major event in my life that sucked.

it was a July afternoon, and we were walking to the canteen to buy something to drink. i remember it was the two of us walking across the court, oblivious to the other kids playing around us and just talking about things. then she looks at me and asks me,

"Albie, what do you think of Brett?"

okay, his name wasn't really Brett, I'm just using this name as an alias, because well, i don't feel like going out of my way to ask him if he'd mind me using his name in my blog on the intar-webz.

"um," i replied, "i think he's alright, he's good at basketball."

i said, plumbing the depths of my knowledge of this person who had previously been a background character in the stage show that is my life.

"well, yesterday he asked me if i wanted to go steady with him, and i said yes, isn't that great?"

it was a while before i replied, and honestly, to this day i can't remember what i said after that. i know that before that moment, i was happy, and after that, i was extremely depressed.

i learned some valuable lessons that day, you have to let people know where you stand. unless you know someone who is psychic, they'll never know how you feel unless you tell them. or make it reeeeally obvious.

Counting Chickens

so you remember how i was worried and junk about thursday? well, it turns out i needn't (a real word!) have bothered, as ms. Betty (is anyone else reminded of kung pow?) has decided to go to pacific harbor. and i wouldn't have found out if i hadn't have called her to re-confirm.

a lesson we can all learn from this innocent (yet ruggedly handsome) blogger, is one that many have often been forced to learn. don't count your chickens before they hatch into dinosaurs. (also, i love brackets)

Thinkin' about Thursday

so i was walking to the shop this morning, to get my fix of ebola cola and peanut ruffs (just like peanut butter only crunchy! wait...peanut butter can be crunchy...never mind) when i got to thinking about thursday.
on thursday i have plans to go and get coffee with...let's call her Betty. now, i've had coffee with Betty before, several times in fact. i have learnt from past experience that she cancels often and is bad at returning phone calls. this thursday is different though, because she asked me if i wanted to get coffee. switching gender roles ftw!
i enjoy Betty's company, she's smart, funny, is interested in stuff like anime and art, and is an awesome artist to boot. she also has a cute nose.
so why am i not that excited about this thing on thursday? there was a time when i would've have been all worried and junk about it.

i think part of it might be because i kinda called her because Lawrence was bugging me to. well, in his roundabout way he was bugging me to. what he was actually doing was making lewd suggestions and facial expressions like he usually does. maybe i'm feeling obligated to go through with this thing now?

anyway, that's enough introspection for now, i have work to do.

Why doesn't anyone tell me where to go to pay these goddamn Bills?

today i had to pay the bills for the house. my mum handed me the cheques, and said,

"albert, go and pay the bills."

so during the show, in between announcer breaks i carefully plotted the most time efficient way to pay said bills, without cutting into valuable comic drawing time, because i was late one comic for the fiji times, and didn't want to miss out on the awesome money which they pay me.

i decided that i would take care of the bills that i could pay in town first, then skip over to the computer hardware shop to get me a new flashdrive, after that i'd travel out to raiwaqa and pay the internet bill. now raiwaqa isn't that far out of the way, but it is kinda a hassle to catch a cab all the way out there and take another back to town.

so i did all that, i payed the bills like a good man of the house should, and then i went home to draw my comic. which of course turned out to be the worst gosh darn comic i ever drew, thanks to my lack of time on it. no time of course though, i had to rush it over to the papers, and hand it in. the graphic designer who i work with there, then informs me that the accounts lady is looking for me, so i take off around the building to see the accounts lady this is the actual conversation i have with her, i swear to the appropriate deity:

"are you albert ?"

"yes, yes i am."

"you're not albert !"

"dammit woman, I'm albert, now give me the cheque for my literary contributions to your publication!"

well, i might've been slightly less eloquent than that, but it was pretty accurate.

so yeah, after the whole long day is gone and done, i go home, and tell my mum that i went all over the city to pay the bills.

and then she says,

"you know that you could have just paid the bills at the post office right."

luckily i cut my hair recently, otherwise i woulda torn it out.

also, albert is getting coffee with a girl on thursday. more information on this as it comes to light.