tammaiya | (no subject)

I'm on a mini-secondment out at Woden right now - I will be back in my own office next week, but for the past week and a half I have been out here as an onsite probity adviser. A number of the people I am currently working with are from northern Australia - Northern Territory, northern Queensland, Torres Strait - and they are suffering from Canberra's oppressive fog. It hasn't lifted at all today. Kind of cold and depressing, but it's been worse... -1 to 11 isn't fun but I personally rate that as cold rather than freezing. Sucks for those who literally didn't own any long-sleeved tops before coming here, though.

The major benefit to being out in Woden is that the building I'm in is right next door to the shopping centre. The Canberra Centre in Civic theoretically has more to offer, but it is also on the other side of the city from my office. That may not mean as much as it does in Sydney - it is still walking distance - but it does make it inconvenient. By the time you walk there you've used up half your lunch break and don't have time for shopping. Consequently being in Woden has been rather expensive, despite being a dollar cheaper per day for parking (so long as you don't overstay the early bird parking hours. I made that mistake last Friday to take advantage of late night shopping and got whacked with $30 parking. Ouch). In particular I am drawn to the EB sales like a moth to a flame. I repeatedly find myself back there... and as a result am now in possession of a whole lot of Assassins Creed games, plus LEGO Lord of the Rings and the Star Trek game, all for PS3. (But they were on sale!)

In slight counter to my consumer whore excesses, I am now donating $25 to Oxfam a month because that makes me an ever so slightly better person, probably.

It will be a rude shock when I get a mortgage, really. On the other hand, if I don't move out soon I will run out of space to keep all the crap I keep buying. It is a catch 22. Like the truth that until you work full-time, you have plenty of time for your hobbies but nothing to spend them on, and then once you enter the workforce, you have plenty of money but no time to spend it (okay let's be honest, no time to use the stuff you spend it on).

... still foggy, and I am pretty sure the sun has set, in that purely theoretical way where I haven't seen the sun all day. Huh.