Today saw your intrepid QAHC Brisbane Metro team load our tiny red hatchback full to the point of suffocation with condoms and sexual health resources; and trudge our way to a designated stall at UQ’s Orientation Week Market Day (UQOWMD), possibly the most noisy, claustrophobic and ramshackle…
Week 1: Half Marathon Training
So I’ve *nearly* completed the schedule for the first week of half marathon training. Tonight I’m hoping to do the final 40 minute run - but heat as well as feeling quite ill may keep me from achieving this goal.
Still I’m proud of having done two 40 minute runs. My pace was terrible, but I ran for time, not speed. My route includes running through Dutton Park, across the Green Bridge at St. Lucia, and back. It’s about 5 to 6 kilometres and I manage to do that in 40 minutes. This is well off the pace that I used to do similar distances. I ran the 6km Santa Run in London back in 2008 in 25 minutes. However, this was on a flat track and the route I currently take is full of hills which inevitably drain the stamina.
The next week sees three more runs plus a game of netball on Tuesday night as well as a football match on Thursday. Fitness, here I come!
The King of Limbs, the eighth studio album by Oxford titans Radiohead, will be “the world’s first newspaper album” according to the group’s website. After a frenzied day following the early digital release of the record, this now seems riddled with an irony I suspect Thom Yorke and friends…
Dislikes: Argh, the mX!
The bane of my trip home everyday - the mX. Modelled around similar newspapers that grace tube stations in London, the mX purports to “cover the issues that matter most in a concise, upbeat, funky, intelligent and sexy way.” [sic].
Using a common definition of the word ‘sexy’ (marked by a tendency to cause sexual arousal), clearly the intent of the mX is to get us so worked up about the most important issues of the day so that we can all travel home with egorged sex organs. Perhaps this explains the man in the trench coat I saw making love to the mX in the main entrance hall of Central Station.
On the subject of important issues, a cursory glance of the mX reveals that the issues the editors consider most important revolve around:
A) People using the paper’s column to stalk fellow commuters.
To the young blonde I who was standing next to me on the crowded Caboolture line train. What is your favourite colour? I NEED TO KNOW.
N.B On the odd occasion that I read the mX, I did submit the following to this particular column
Hey there to the pockmarked scantily-clad lady standing outside the New Farm laundromat at 11:10 pm last Friday night. I love you, call me.
It wasn’t printed.
B) Insight into what Lady Gaga is currently doing / saying / excreting.
C) What some random celebrity ate for lunch sourced from their twitter feed.
One wonders about how many trees have to be executed to enable the publishing of this puerile stuff.Where do all the mX’s go? I presume they gather at the terminus of the train lines. People in Ipswich and Caboolture must love the busy young and affluent city workers that peruse the pages of mX and leave their garbage strewn across train carriages.
Serenity now. Knowing my luck, I’ll get beaten to death by hoodlums armed with mXs as I walk to the train station this evening.
Dislikes: Idle Lift Talk
Working in a inner-city office tower has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it’s fairly easy to get to work, good coffee is readily available and if you want to go shopping, it’s fairly easy to walk into the central shopping precinct.
However, one thing that drives me absolutely mental is the idle work chatter between office workers that I’m forced to eavesdrop on while taking the lift up nineteen floors to my office.
Comes off as neurotic, but hear me out.
For instance, today I heard this:
Person 1: “Oh, I just got back from holidays. Work was quiet the first week, but now its picking up again.”
Person 2: “Well, you do want that to happen around this time of year”
Cue: Laughter.
Cue: My brain imploding in silent rage.
Conversation always seems to revolve around excessively boring topics. Work, weekends, golf, the latest episode of Top Gear. Just once I’d love to overhear a conversation like this.
Person 1: “Oh so what do you have planned for the weekend?”
Person 2: “I’m putting the finishing touches on the giant trebuchet I’m constructing, which I’m going to use to launch my body into the atmosphere after I die.”
Person 1: “Wow, that’s some way to go out.”
Tell me I’m not the only one.
Working for free is an unavoidable part of starting out in any career. Whether you want to be a writer or a surgeon, you have to pay your dues and work hard to make your name before you start getting financially rewarded.
I was nineteen years old when I started my journalism degree. I…
Great post on the pain of FasterLouder. Lucky I’ve never worked here….
Half Marathon
I’m doing my first half-marathon in July. Partly because I’ve never done one before and partly because I need to get my weight down to a more healthy level. While I don’t think I’m the most unfit person around, a year of study and partying along with an extended absence from football and social netball has left me a wee bit slower than usual.
Tomorrow is my first run. A 40 minute ‘comfortable’ session. I have done forty minutes countless times before but this time is a first time in a long time. I basically have to train three times per week with cross-training during the off days. I’ve been attempting to get a bit fitter just by regulating my diet since New Years. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since then and I’ve cut back the junk in my diet in the hope that I’m in better shape physically to do this. I’ve also rejoined the gym to get some muscle tone back and am about to start netball again. I’ve been playing football the last two weeks as well (and being killed by the pace!!).
Anyway, wish me luck. Perhaps I’ll use this tumblr for more interesting things than just the odd random image every two or three months.
