DarkSlinky

Archive for the ‘Blogs’ Category

Shame on me. I have been entirely neglecting my blog lately, but for a perfectly acceptable reason (not an excuse, I swear).

I quit my job because I got into university. Yay!

I am now a poor, unemployed university student studying a Bachelor of Applied Science/Bachelor of Secondary Education.

My degree eats all of my time. The time it takes for me to travel to and from university, attend classes and study is more than a full time job; somewhere between 50 and 60 hours a week, maybe even more.. This is the first night in a long time that I’ve actually stopped studying before 7pm!

You may wonder where so many hours are going – well, let me tell you! 80% of my time is invested in one particular subject, ‘Cellular Basis of Life,’ in which we were studying biochemistry in the first week. It is extremely overwhelming and stressful, but I’m managing. I was worried that I would struggle with chemistry but every biochemistry lecture is effectively just words plowing into the brick wall that is my brain. Chemistry is difficult, but biochemistry is off the difficulty scale entirely.

Actually, it’s kind of funny, because my chemistry lecturer will mention something, for example, a hydrogen bond, then will explain that we don’t need to understand it early on as it’s quite complicated. Meanwhile, in my biochemistry lecture in the hour before, we were told we are expected to know all about every kind of bond on a chemical level. I always laugh a little inside, in a sad and bitter way.

The other 18% of my time goes into chemistry, philosophical science and mathematics. That leaves 2% of my time for eating, sleeping and ‘me’ time (usually spent zoning out under a steaming hot shower).

I am completely exhausted, I come home every day with a headache, but I’m so glad that my life is actually going somewhere. I never believed I was good enough for science, yet here I am, understanding horrible words like oligosaccharide, polypeptide, hemiacetal…

In other news, a photo of mine was picked to be in a gallery for Youth Week. I am very happy, can’t wait to see it hanging up for people to see!

These are the 5 photos I sent in and they ended up picking the 4th one (first on the second row):

Hopefully I will be able to update more in the future but I have assessments due and mid-semester exams looming, so I will probably update in another… year….

<3 DarkSlinky.

I’ve had a few days in my life where everything simply played out perfectly and yesterday was one of them.
“Racing partner and Ford Cobra GT write off” is another example of one of these amazing days.

What did I do, you ask?

I won the first cosplay competition I’ve ever entered, that’s what, dressed as the Scout from Team Fortress 2.

A few months ago at a housewarming party a friend of a friend of mine suggested we all get a group of people together and go to Brisbane’s 2011 Supanova as the Red Team from Team Fortress 2.  We joked around about it, discussed who could potentially play what character and decided to go for it.  It was decided I would be the Scout.

As the weeks went by we planned and collaborated via e-mail, everyone working on their own clothes and weapons and gradually we began to resemble the red team – everything minus the spy and the pyro unfortunately.

When the day finally came we all got up early so we could arrive at Supanova with plenty of time to spare.  We queued for over an hour to get in, and then queued to sign up for the cosplay competition, some of us reluctantly, thinking it was too much effort and we couldn’t possibly win despite how happy we were with our costumes.

After two or more hours waiting to go on stage, our opportunity to present our costumes finally arrived.  I didn’t realise it was going to be in front of such a big crowd, but the cheer was enormous.  We all ran out on stage, the soldier first as he yelled “GO, GO, GO!”

Above our heads they had a screen with “They’re all spies!” as we stood there posing, waiting, watching the host stare at us in awe, as the heavy spun his mini-gun barrel.  This caught the hosts’ attention and he immediately moved down the line to talk to him first.

Host (to heavy):  “How did you make this gun?”
Heavy (in Russian accent):  “Engie is credit to team.”
Host (to engie):  “So, you tell me, how was the gun made?”
Engie (in American accent):  “I took a gun, and I added more gun.”

The crowd loved it.

The host then proceeded down the line, asking my team questions and all of them remaining in character.  I was ready with an answer, but he unfortunately skipped the last couple of us and went back to addressing the crowd.  The soldier then waved his arm, yelled, “ROLL OUT!” and we marched off stage, the crowd cheering behind us.

My boyfriend, who was dressed as the sniper, wanted to go and buy more stuff from the stalls but I told him I wanted to stay for the results, even though I doubted we would win.   I told him he could go by himself, which he did, but the venue with the stalls was closed and he came straight back which was kind of lucky.

When the results were finally announced, at first they said we had come second, which we were stoked with.  Then they said there had been a mistake and we hadn’t come second, which was disappointing, until they announced we had actually come first for the group cosplay.

It was a long, hot day with a lot of queuing, waiting and literally thousands of photos taken by hundreds of both strangers and friends, but it was so worth it.

Thanks to my amazing team.  I love you guys.

Now to plan for next year’s competition…

<3 DarkSlinky.

Team Fortress 2 Red Team

On the stage, from left to right: Engie, heavy, medic, demoman, sniper, scout, heavy, host.

Soldier, heavy, scout, sniper. Taken by Kohanna Photography.

I never planned to get Pokémon Black or Pokémon White, neither did I didn’t get particularly hyped up about it.  I was vaguely excited but I think I knew deep down it’d be overpriced and I’d just be heartbroken when it came out and I couldn’t afford it.

Well, I bought it last week, which is my reason for not going outside much.

It is fantastic.

The best part of it is I got it cheaper purely because I’m a girl.  Let me explain:

My boyfriend and I went shopping one night and saw it somewhere for $59.  He said he’d buy it for both of us at that price and we decided to shop around to see if we could find it cheaper.  We came across it in another shop with a sign for $49 above it; however the games themselves had $59 on them.   He said he’d go ask someone, I said I’d look at laptops while I waited.

After a while of waiting around, I decided to go look for him to see what was going on.  I came across an employee hanging around the games section and decided to ask him about it myself.  I said the game was marked at $49 and asked him if he would give it to me for that price.  He looked me up and down and asked me to show him the sign with $49 on it.

I showed him the sign and he said it should have been $59, but he’d give it to me to $49 anyway.  At this point, Snags had found me and was standing behind the guy out of his view.  I saw Snags standing there and explained to him that this guy would give us the game for $49.  The salesman turned around, looked at Snags and told us what to tell the cashier before scurrying off in a hurry.

I asked Snags what that was all about, and he explained he had already asked the same guy if he would give him the game for $49 and he had said no.  He asked me how I got it for that price off the same guy; I replied that I’m cuter than he is.

Now, I’m all for equality, woman power and moderate feminism, but if a silly boy is going to go all gaga because I’m a girl gamer then that’s his problem and I’m not going to complain if I benefit from it.  The whole incident made my day.

<3 DarkSlinky.