I’m having trouble with my broadband connection. I can connect but the connection drops out every five or fifteen minutes, then it’d work again. It sounds like a fault with the cable or the server to me.

I called my ISPs IT support. The lady was silly. She couldn’t help me. She told me to turn off my firewall, delete my cookies, check my IP address, check the settings on my browser. You silly lady. It’s not just internet browsing that I’m having issues with — I can’t get to my email or use my FTP client.

When she started taking me through the settings on Internet Explorer, I said that I’m using Mozilla. She said, “Oh, I can only help you with Internet Explorer. If you’re using Mozilla, maybe you should contact them.”

Stupid woman.

Wow, look at this bit of digital art — the ZOOMQUILT.

I like thinking about new houses. I like the idea of moving into a new place where all the surfaces are clear and clean. I can very deliberately position furniture here, belongings there. Everything would have its place. It’d be easy to keep tidy because I’d have systems.

Yesterday, as I was picking through the mess that is my bedroom, I had an epiphany. I can’t even keep my little bedroom tidy — how on earth could I expect to look after an entire house?!

This is what I’ve decided. It will be time to move out of my familial home, not when I get save enough for a house deposit, not when I begin to crave independence, not even when I get married. My readiness to move out will be signalled only by when my bedroom experiences three months of continual neatness.

Late last night, Damjan and I drove into some serious roadworks. There were detour signs (“No left turn. Follow me! Right. Left. Left. Hurrah!”), flashing arrows, backhoes and really tall traffic cones.

As we approached a red light, we (and the cars around us) had to pull up at an unconventional angle to avoid running over a toppled traffic cone.

“Hmm. I wonder if we should pick that up?” Damo mused. The traffic light turned green and I accelerated into the intersection.

“Too late,” he said.

“No way! ” I yanked the steering wheel left. “I’ll stop at the curb.”

“What?!” Damjan sputtered.

I grinned. “Out you go, Damo.”

“Oh, very well!” *grumble grumble*.

I watched him push the car door open and start jogging back towards the intersection. Hee hee. I like civic conscious people.

Work has been stressful these past two weeks. We’re auditing an oil refinery at the request of the EPA. On the first day, I showed up at the refinery, expecting that like always, someone would tell me what to do. The other members of the audit team arrived with handwritten notes, highlighted and annotated licences and policies, and the ISO 14001 standard. Slowly, a lightbulb brightened over my head. Oh dear. Maybe I should have done some preparation.

Three weeks into my first full time job, I had found myself in the deep end. Some crazy people had entrusted me with responsibility.

“Joan,” they said, “You have to audit licence conditions 2.2f and 2.2d.”

I thought, “By myself? Won’t you tell me what to do? Micromanage me, please! I’m not ready!”

Two days later, the job manager, Miriam (little older than me), found me sitting amongst a pile of procedures and reports, with 17 documents open on the PC. She looked at my bewildered expression.

“Joan, do you know what you have to do?”

“No,” I said in a small voice. “I… I need a criteria sheet. I need someone to tell me how many pages I can write and if I should use tables and dot points or paragraphs…”

“Oh!” She was surprised. “I’m sorry. You’re smart, I keep thinking of you as my equal. Don’t worry, I’ll explain it to you.”

I ended up writing this thing, which I thought was too long, too random, too oblique. The day it was due, I found out that it was also probably too positive. That’s my problem — I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. “Oh, operating a refinery is really complicated and I would never be able to understand the things you have to deal with. Those environmental management systems seem like a good effort. Big tick to you.” The oil company people were really nice to me and I believed (believe) them.

Then we spoke to the EPA and they told us all about the stupid, frustrating, environmentally detrimental actions of the oil company. “Oh dear,” I thought. “I’m a sucker. Back to the drawing board.”

I trawled through my report and deleted three of my nice unsubstantiated sentences. Suddenly, the tone of the whole report had changed. Hiding behind my benefits of the doubt was doubt. I had identified a whole bunch of gaps and problems already.

I had a great day today. The two lead auditors told me that they were impressed by my work. I’m happy, very happy that I haven’t let the team down.

Tonight, we had dinner at a Nepalese restaurant. Nepalese food appears to be a combination of Indian and Chinese, which makes sense if I think about Nepal’s geographical location.

We ordered three mains between four of us. At the end, there was still space in our tummies.

“Perfect! We have enough space to enjoy dessert!” Damjan and Vera exclaimed. “Rice pudding, here we come!”

Megan and I looked at each other. “I don’t really feel like having dessert,” Megan commented.

“Why don’t you have an entree?” I suggested. “I’d go for something savoury as well.”

“Good idea,” she agreed.

We called the waiter over.

“Excuse me, Damjan and Vera here would like some dessert. And if you don’t mind, the two of us will have entree.”

The waiter looked doubtful but accommodated us eccentric people.

I’ve had regressive dinners, where the meal goes backwards (dessert first) but this is the first time for a divergent dinner!

I’ve been a little down lately but I’ve had so much support from my good friends. On Friday, I got a card in the mail. There was a close-up photo of a grinning zebra. “Cheer up Joan! We love you!” I was delighted.

Last night, I wrote down the things that made me happy this week.

1. Track 2 on the second CD of the Narada Jazz album
2. Choreographing a cool intro to our competition dance for troupe
3. Finding my work security pass in the back of mum’s car
4. Dad fixing my printer
5. Seeing Kate and Gurpreet on the weekend for the first time in many weeks
6. Eating Shanghai dumplings with Damjan and Vera
7. Swing dancing on Friday night
8. The Toastmasters meeting at work on Tuesday
9. Damjan calling me the day he came back from Sydney

Sorry. I’ve just realised that the tone of my blog has been quite negative this week.

Um.

I actually can’t think of anything positive to say right now. How strange. I’m usually a glass is half full person.

My dad fixed my printer? I was happy about that.

23:47 — Oooh! Rohan has paid me a really nice compliment. The happiness is on the up!

I feel good. I’ve just finished translating a short article in Chinese about this year’s predicted Consumer Price Index. I did it all by myself, admittedly with extensive help from Google’s wonderful Language tools.

This is the first time in a long while that I’ve enjoyed studying Chinese. Mandarin was my first language but I’m very rapidly losing my speaking and writing ability. I came to Australia from Taiwan when I was three years old and have worked hard since then, trying to keep my language. The problem is that I hate studying Chinese. It’s so painful. I get most things wrong. I speak wonkily. I struggle even with children’s books, never mind newspapers and literature. I need my parents to hold my hand through every text I read. When I write essays, they correct my drafts at least three times. I’ve driven my mum up the wall so often. I feel bad when this happens, she feels bad… It’s really frustrating.

I do wish I enjoyed learning Chinese. It would make it much easier. I know people who, like me, came over when they were young. These people love reading Chinese novels, watching Chinese films and TV serials. They want to (and do) travel back to Taiwan and China. Me, I don’t care enough. There’s not much there that interests me (except the food). And when I watch Chinese shows, the pain of processing the language eliminates whatever enjoyment I have of the content.

I often think, “What’s the point? What’s the point of studying when I don’t enjoy it and I’ll forget most of it after I stop?” The alternative, though, is to give up and let it go. I don’t want to lose my heritage like that.