On Friday night, I went to a Christmas dance social. One of the boys I danced with was a good lead but his rumba basics were circular. I like to think of rumba as a dance of right angles so the roundness of it all began to unnerve me.

I should learn how to foxtrot. I suppose I have learned it before but my teacher taught it as a series of steps to memorise. It never felt like a dance. As a result, I haven’t been able to retain it.

I had a dance competition on Saturday. I usually compete in the troupe events, where you dance in a group. This Saturday, at the last minute, we decided to enter a trio in the duos/trios hip hop section. That’s when all the competitors are on the dancefloor dancing to the same music at the same time. The judges then pick their favourite combinations. I don’t like these sorts of events (which are much like dancesport competitions). The reason is that the combination that wins is the one with the most energy and biggest moves. There is no opportunity to do anything subtle, creative, or technically correct. We did get into the finals, though.

As usual, I didn’t stay for the results. That’s mostly because I never go to competitions with the aim to win. I go to competitions to support my team mates.

On Saturday night, I helped run a 1920s murder mystery party. I had fun dressing up to the theme. I felt terribly daring, defying the Prohibition by drinking a glass of wine.

	Ms Suzie Pantsoffyou at the Tracy Speakeasy.
Ms Vera Totheleft was accompanied by Mr Dee Pinthort.
	Ms Jess Kidding is a Chinese triad member on gangster exchange with the Tracy Gang in Chicago.

In my final year of uni, knowing that I would stop being a student soon, I made a pre-emptive strike against the Commonwealth Bank and switched to ANZ, where I don’t have to pay an account keeping fee. Finally! Escaped from the clutches of the Dollarmites!

Maybe you too have been backed into a corner by the Dollarmites or are now battling the legacy of doing well in the Westpac Maths Competition. Be strong! Break free! I know you can do it.

P.S. Back in my more vulnerable days, the Dollarmites were aliens with lots of tentacles. The Dollarmites seem to have had an image overhaul; they now have more street cred and look like humans. They must have changed their publicist. Just like Tom Cruise did.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on how the Commonwealth Bank is luring little savers with cartoons.

In the January after the end of Year 12, I got a phone call from Herald Sun. The university offers were to be published in an early edition of the paper and for some reason, a journalist thought I would make a nice photo. I still don’t know how they got my number. Perhaps someone from my high school thought I was particularly photogenic.

The idea, the journalist explained, was to get a shot of me looking up at the Herald Sun printing presses, as those make-or-break editions of the paper were being churned out.

Mum and I were very excited. Together, we put together the perfect outfit — casual, young, unfussy but flattering. I wore my new pink Winnie-the-Pooh t-shirt and grey 3/4 length pants.

On the evening the university offers came out, mum and dad rushed to the newsagent and brought home the paper. We weren’t keen to see my offer, oh no, we were looking for my photo.

We flipped through the paper (cursory glance at my offer code, yeah, whatever, ho, engineering, what a surprise) then flipped through it again. Lots of photos of other earnest, smiling, casual-yet-elegant teenagers, but no Joan-amongst-the-printing-presses.

Disbelief! Betrayal! Disappointment.

From that moment onwards, I lost all respect for the Herald Sun. Not only do they publish populist, trivial, sensationalist, blatantly manipulative “news”, not only do they shelter Andrew Bolt, but they also hurt my feelings. Die, Herald Scum, die.

This week has been the first of what I think will be about seven busy weeks. If I’m not careful, then they will be seven stressful, worrying weeks.

I may have committed to too many projects. It could be the kind of overcommitment that cannot be eliminated by a few hours of overtime. I think I will have to figure out a way to withdraw from some projects. I hate letting people down.

Oh well, it’s the weekend. I’ll think about it later.

I went to the public library tonight. I had forgotten how exciting libraries are. Somehow, I had stumbled into the ‘relationship help’ aisle of the non-fiction section. I really liked this title: “I used to miss him… my aim is getting better”. It was a “break up recovery” manual.

Libraries sure have evolved. I found a stack of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘ DVDs. I thought I might like to borrow them one day, then realised that any time I need any DVD, I could just ask Jon.

I’m trying to create a joke. I’ve never done it before. What do you think?

Joe saw Mike hunching miserably over his desk.

“Oh no!” Joe said. “You did it, didn’t you? You went back to your old girlfriend.” Mike nodded, ashamed. “Why do you do it, Mike? She’s cheated on you, taken your money and has 30% hearing in her left ear. What keeps you crawling back?”

“I don’t know!” Mike said. “It’s just… I guess she has the Ex Factor.”

Hmm. I don’t know if I’ve quite gotten the hang of it yet. Maybe someone could make a maths joke using ‘X Factor’.

Anyway, I used the term ‘X Factor’ for the first time in my life on Sunday while helping with the Dance School Idol judging.

When British convicts came to Australia, they brought with them an enthusiasm for rhyming slang. The slang can be relatively straightforward (and lame) or convoluted and obscure (often lame but sometimes clever).

For example, “I’m wearing a bag of fruit (’suit’) to the dinner dance on Friday.” And, “As soon as she’s finished up here, I’ll bet you she’ll Harold Holt.” (‘bolt’, as in depart quickly. Derived from an Australian Prime Minister, who disappeared while swimming in the sea, in 1967)

Terry Pratchett writes,

Various rhyming slangs are known, and have given the universe such terms as ‘apples and pears’ (stairs), ‘rubbity-dub’ (pub) and ‘busy bee’ (General Theory of Relativity).

– Going Postal

On Sunday morning from 9:30 AM, the hopefuls began filtering into the dance studio. For some people, years of training had led to this day — the hip hop troupe auditions.

The existing ‘A’ troupe members (including me) had re-auditioned earlier in the morning and all had been invited back. Now we were here to help run the show.

About thirty students registered. Most were new auditionees who had spent the year watching the competition troupes train and compete. Something they saw made them want to put themselves through the tests this year. Other auditionees were current members of the ‘B’ troupe, who felt they were ready to move into ‘A’, and ‘Junior’ troupe members who wanted to move up to the adult troupes.

The morning started with lectures. What does it mean to be a troupe member? What level of commitment is required? What competitions, what opportunities, are open to competitive dancers? There is no point trying out for the team you aren’t willing to meet these expectations.

Diego, the Japanese South-American dancer who taught all the troupes, began the lesson. Everyone learned the same 4 counts of 8 in less than half an hour. The 32 beats weren’t difficult for the more advanced dancers. Some of the beginners and intermediate dancers were clearly struggling. And everyone was losing balance after the high jump over counts 3 and 4 in the third set of 8.

During the lesson, Suzy watched the individuals and made a list of two groups. During a break, she called out the names. Everyone was doing the same audition routine but half them would dance it to a much faster piece of music. I shook my head as I heard the piece. Wow. It was fast.

It was a 30°C day. People who asked for the air-conditioning to be turned on were told that it was already on. The room became stifling, yet the auditionees kept pushing themselves, and pushing and pushing.

“If only they worked this hard during class!” Suzy exclaimed.

When Diego was satisfied that people had learned the routine, he announced an extra test. Before the main part of the music track began, students would be required to freestyle dance — show us what you’ve got! The slow group had one count of eight, and the faster group had two counts of eight.

Finally, the learning was over and in pairs or groups of three, students were called into the audition room. The others waited nervously outside, every now and then, bursting into a flurry of practice.

After all the preparation, the actual auditions ran for only forty minutes. People came out grinning and relieved or mortified at their mistakes after having practiced it perfectly ten times before.

By 1 PM, everyone was turned out of the studio and the ‘A’ troupe and Diego remained to make the decisions.

I’ve been listening to music on my computer at work. My old headphones started doing this really annoying loud-soft-loud left-right-left thing so I decided it was time to get new ones.

I’m not an audiophile. Expensive Bang & Olufsen or Sennheiser would be wasted on me (give them to Daniel or his mum instead). So I wandered into JB Hi-fi one lunch time and bought myself a pair of earphones that cost less than lunch. No point buying anything decent just for listening to compressed music on a computer, eh.

They were completely dissatisfactory. As soon as I plugged them into the computer, my brain was assaulted by loud buzzing. I hadn’t even turned up the volume.

A friend listened to my tale of woe and convinced me to take the earphones back to the store. I was reluctant; it seemed unfair to expect the store to accept the earphones once I had ripped them out of their packaging and put them in my ears. But, as they say, I had nothing to lose.

So I went back yesterday. I was very clever. I timed my visit to be the day following the Melbourne Cup holiday and arrived when the store opened at 10 AM. I figured the shop assistants would be well rested and in good moods.

They were very amiable. They gave me credit for the failed earphones and I used it to upgrade to something that is just expensive enough for me to know that they’ll work. They’ve got to be all right; they come with a one year warranty (which isn’t valid in Australia).

I like these earphones. They’re comfortable. Interestingly, there are three sizes of earpieces. I’m using the small ones. The packaging warns, “Ensure that earpieces are firmly attached to earphones otherwise they may be left in ears.”

I now have only two problems.

Firstly, the earphones are white. Someone once told me that there are people out there who buy white earphones just to pretend they have iPods.

Finally, although lessened, there is still buzzing in my ears when I listen to music on the computer. It has become apparent that computers are not audio devices. I am starting to think I’ll have to buy an iPod or similar before long.