So register I did, and I am now $410 poorer.  I guess I won’t be buying an iPad this fortnight But wait, the story is not finished there.  After I registered this afternoon, I decided I should open the mail that had collected on my desk over the last week.  Ah, fabulous I thought to myself as i got to the letter from my local member of parliament.  More per-election paraphernalia.  For the election that is to be held on the same day as the GAMSAT.  Low and behold, it was not the “vote for me, I’m awesome” material I was expecting.  Instead, it was a letter from my MP with an application for a postal vote and reply paid envelope.

Which actually, for a moment freaked me out.  Is my local MP stalking me? How do they know I’m sitting the GAMSAT on the same day as the election and will need to apply for a postal vote? I looked out my window, half expecting to find the MP grinning cheesily at me, with thumbs up, from my garden bed.  Luckily, no one was there.  I don’t know exactly what I would have done if there had been.  Finding no one in my yard, common sense prevailed and I realised it must be a mail out to everyone in my electoral area. A rather convenient mail out which I will take full advantage of.

And so, the rest of the afternoon and evening have been whiled away, at my desk.  With my books.  Welcome to the jungle.  The jungle that is my life for the next two months. Wish me luck!

]]> http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/week-2-dear-16-year-old-me/feed/ 1 selenocentric http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/week-1-hello-2012/ http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/week-1-hello-2012/#comments Sun, 01 Jan 2012 10:50:16 +0000 selenocentric http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/?p=618 ]]>

Hello 2012! You’ve arrived a bit unexpectedly, I wasn’t quite ready to meet you yet.  However, you are now here, and deal with you I must. 2011 I think, was a year of growth and conversely, inaction. In a lot of ways, it feels like I spent a good portion of the year in hibernation mode. And survival mode.  At the start of the year, I took on too much.  Consequently, I paid the price.  What I forgot at that time though, was that it wasn’t just me paying the price, a few of my relationships suffered as well.  Of course, my friends understood, but they also saw what was happening to me and there may have been an intervention staged at some point during the year.

A rather confronting, painful intervention. Which is hardly surprising really. When is it ever easy to hear the truth and face up to it? Now I can be thankful, although I certainly wasn’t at the time.  Clearly, I have people who care enough to bother and that is something I cherish.  It acted as a cataclysm, I think. A turning point that resulted in my withdrawal from the world, for a good portion of the year.  Actually, thinking back I was pretty “unavailable” for most of the year. First, from over commitment, and then from my self enforced exile.  The bonus is, I’ve emerged from my shell, with new knowledge and new purpose.  I’ve grown a lot in the last year, through experience and reflection.   So I’m chalking 2011 up as a year of personal growth.

I successfully navigated the year and am entering 2012 ready to take on the world and follow through on some of the hard thought decisions I’ve made.  Starting with the GAMSAT which is only two and a half months away (hopefully saying it that way will scare me enough to work my butt off studying) and then finding another job. I’ve had enough of my current employer. I think I’ve grown beyond what they can offer me more than anything else, and it is well past time for a change. The problem of course is, that I am due for long service leave as of April, and to leave now would be rather foolish.  So my goals for the next six months are to ace the GAMSAT,  find a new job, and rather ambiguously, embrace life and the opportunities I’m given more freely.  And now that I’ve rambled a bit, I’ll finish by saying I am also trying out this whole post a week thing again, and hoping it’ll be a bit more successful this time around!  Wish me luck!

]]> http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/week-1-hello-2012/feed/ 0 New Year 2012 Images and Wallpapers-05 selenocentric New Year 2012 Images and Wallpapers-05 http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/week-x-1-soap-opera-moment/ http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/week-x-1-soap-opera-moment/#comments Sun, 04 Dec 2011 10:05:08 +0000 selenocentric http://selenocentric.wordpress.com/?p=612 ]]>

Recently I had an experience that made me feel like I’d stepped out of my life and into a soap opera.  I meant to right about it at the time, however got caught up and completely forgot.  Tonight I remembered said moment when reminiscing  with the sister, and thought I should share it here for you to marvel at the strange twist of events I found myself in.

I can’t remember what I have mentioned about my work, but essentially at present I am a workplace trainer. I look after the training requirements for 200+ people in my workplace, chronicle their histories, determine what they need to do, organise and facilitate the training as required. It is a rather large job, that takes a lot of time and energy and made life as a law student more difficult then it needed to be. But anyway I digress.

Recently, while at work going about my business I received a phone call from a lady in head office who asked for me specifically. I was intrigued when I heard who was calling, someone from head office for little old me? Surprised when said lady told me she’d got my name and details off the State’s head guy for Learning & Development. I have never met said head guy and was not even aware he knew of my existence. Apparently not only did he know of my existence, he also had recommended me to said lady for my skills and expertise.

She requested I go to an offsite location, to provide them with training they desperately needed.  Hmm, I thought to myself. Sounds a little challenging, will be good for the resume, and OMG the head guy from L&D knows who I am? Should I be worried? Flattered? Flabbergasted?  Sure I’ll do it. I have nothing better to do on that Friday (which was actually a bit of a lie, because my workload just seems to keep on piling up).  So I prepared myself, which was challenging enough amongst ladies and slithery friends and what not. Gathered my materials and headed out bright and early on Friday morning, plugging the address into my GPS.

Driving along the street, I am looking for the number. Nope, nope, nope… WAIT! The street just jumped up 100 numbers! And the place I’m supposed to be is somewhere in the middle! WTF? Where am I supposed to be going? Ok, I know. I’ll call “home” and find out if anyone knows where this place is. So that I did.  The response I got at “home”? Oh didn’t that place close down a little while ago? Wait, what? No freaking way. It couldn’t have closed down! So I track down the number for the off site and give them a call. Luckily they have not shut, and are indeed expecting me. They provide directions to the most obscure location, but off I trek in search of this place I agreed to go. Stupidly agreed is how I’m feeling right about now.

So I head off back the way I came, to find this mysterious location I have only heard rumors about.  Finally I find it! Hallelujah! It does exist, and I’m only half an hour late. Not too bad really. So I head inside to introduce myself and get things started. Uh oh, IT haven’t set up the programs correctly. Fabulous. Things that desperately need to be printed are not printing. I spend half of my training time on the phone to IT trying to get the issues sorted.  Logged my dramas and got on with the training. In walks my next pupil.

My first thought was oh f#@k! What the hell am I going to do? Shit, shit, shit shit. Perhaps another shit or two. I plastered a polite smile on my face, introduced myself and pretended that I had never met my pupil before. My pupil who happens to be the woman who almost tore my “family” apart. The woman who had befriended us all, especially my mother. The woman who then proceeded to have an affair with my step father. A rather long affair. That my mother found out about and pretty much destroyed her. She has stayed with my step father through multiple affairs but that is a whole other story. This was the first.   And the most devastating. My mother left him for a while, but eventually went back but she hasn’t been the same since.

What was I thinking? I was trying not to actually. I gave myself a stern talking to, that I was at work and must be professional. I have come to do a job, and do it I must. So I continued with the charade that I had no idea who she was. In turn, she played her part.  Although it was a number of years ago now, I know that she must have remembered.  Physically I haven’t changed that much, and neither had she. Plus I have a slightly unusual name.  Although with the hell she put my family through, I damn well hope she remembered. And suffered as much through that training session as I did.  I made sure to cover all the relevant material, and that she understood before I moved on to my next pupil, the last for the day.

Unfortunately I think that last pupil suffered a bit, as my mind wasn’t completely on the job, and I think I omitted a few things, but by that stage all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there and back to my own place of employment. I left their unfixed IT issues with them, promised a cheat sheet and high tailed it back to work as fast as I could. I may have stopped to inhale some comfort junk food on the way though. And that dear readers, was the start of my week from hell (which I may tell you about at another date) and very own soap opera moment.

Looking through my year 9 diary, I remember how a couple of the boys got cranky at my leaving them off the personal directory. As a result, they decided to deface large chunks of my diary scrawling such information across the pages. There are comments from people I don’t remember, whose faces I can vaguely make out.  So much talk about boys, finding the guy of my dreams and so much advice on the practice of safe sex. While I’m sure ground breaking at the time, now merely elicits a smile for fond memories. Or a giggle in the case of Stan’s declaration that he’d never forgive me for not voting for Lion King II – Simba’s pride.

Moving onto the year 10 dairy, the artwork seriously improved, taking up pages with poetry and randomness. Declarations of friends forever made in those young school days. Notes of kindness and and character traits I’d long since forgotten. Cheerful? Me? Are you sure you’ve got the right person? The half a page scrawls that say nothing at all.   Although it seems my mother hen traits were prevalent even then, with talk of providing comfort, help and food as needed. Again, most of Stan’s entry makes me laugh. I think he must have finally forgiven me for vetoing Simba’s pride.  Then there are the people you just wonder what happened to? Gabriel was such a sweetheart, one of the loveliest guys I’ve ever met. He encouraged me to be better and do more, something I really needed at the time.

I seemed to actually use my diary for it’s intended use in senior, but of course that didn’t stop me from gathering memories. I came across in the box a special book, just for friends.  Reading through the entries I feel mixed emotions, for the girl I once was, and the life I led. All of that comes crumbling down when I get to the page by David. My senior crush, the guy I spent so much of my time thinking about / obsessing over. The guy who died 2 years ago in a motorcycle crash.  I can’t help feeling sad for a life lost in tragedy.  He was way to young to die.

Then I wonder what happened to me? What happened to the girl with the positive attitude, determination, endless optimism and charisma? The one who was kind, helpful and supportive.  The girl with the bright future. The girl waiting for the guy that “totally bedazzles her and leaves her speechless… because she talks to much as it is”.  Where did she go? Occasionally I see glimpses of her. This year those glimpses have been few and far between. I feel like somewhere along the way I’ve lost her and, in turn a large part of myself.  I wonder if it’s even possible to find that girl? Is she still there?

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know very much about what happened during WWI and WWII.  It has never struck me as of particular interest, and a lot of the stories I’ve heard from world war II and the persecution of the Jews make me sad.  Consequently, I tend to avoid any literature on the subject.  I admit, it’s not the best attitude to have, and perhaps I should have forced myself to pay more attention. Recently, I read such a book, Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay on the recommendation of a friend.

It is a beautifully tragic piece of fiction, and one that will stay with me for a long time I think.  While a piece of fiction, a lot of the main events in the book are based on events that happened in Nazi occupied France in 1942.  The most horrific I think was the round up of thousands of Jews over the course of 16th and 17th of July 1942.  These round ups were not conducted by the Nazis, but rather by the French police by order of the Vichy government.  Of those arrested, the majority were women and children, who were not only Jews, but also French citizens.

Approximately 7, 500 thousand (for those GAMSAT buffs out there, think everyone that sat the GAMSAT last year) people were held in hot, squalid conditions for 5 days during the middle of summer in the Vélodrome d’Hiver.  Others were taking to the Darcy camp. The roof of the Vel’ d’Hiv was darkly painted glass, the windows and doors were bolted shut for “security” reasons, sealing the heat in. Of the 10 toilets, 5 were sealed off due to security risks. The other 5 were blocked within hours. There was one water tap. The only food available was those brought by quakers and the few doctors and nursers that were allowed inside.  Those that tried to escape were shot.  Some committed suicide.

These are of course the facts. I cannot fathom being locked in a room with thousands of others, in the middle of summer, with no toilets, no water, no food. Being scared for my life. Witnessing others taking their lives or having their life taken from them. This deprivation of basic human rights horrifies me.  So too, the thought that this raid accounted for about a quarter of all Jews (~ 42 000) sent from France to Auschwitz in 1942.  Only 811 made it back to France after the war.  I find it so hard to get my head around these numbers. They are staggering.  The unnecessary loss of so many lives saddens me greatly.  I can only hope humanity has learned from it’s mistakes.

I used the random quote generator over at ellipsoid to come up with the following set of quotes on travel:

1: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

— Robert Frost (1874 – 1963) , The Road Not Taken

2: A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

— George Moore

3: Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

— Paul Theroux (1941 – ) , The Washington Post

4: Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel.

— George Santayana (1863 – 1952)

5: Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.

— Miriam Beard

My essay:

If we choose it to be so life is a never ending journey.  We travel down many paths – some well trodden, some not – always searching, always nearing the inevitable end.  The choices we make along the way defining our path, whether by divergence or convergence until we reach a pitstop, a place for the weary to rest a while before continuing on.

I am currently at a pit stop, and am carefully choosing my next move.  I stand at a crossroads of sorts, about to make a decision which will change the course of my life. For many years I have trod along the path towards a career in medicine.  I have done all the right things, choose all the right options and yet it hasn’t been enough.

I’ve always fallen just short of the goal.  Have never quite made it onto the correct path.  Fear has led me down the well lit, familiar path when I should have chosen the darker, stranger route.  Yet I always seem to find myself back there, deciding which road to take.  I stand here again.  At the crossroads I’ve faced many times before.

The decision of which path to take faces me once more.  My natural inclination, is of course, to go down that brightly lit way I’ve chosen so many times before.  Yet something, some spark at the back of my mind is urging me to be brave, to follow that path not taken and see where it leads.  The road will be hard and rock, this I know.  But the little voice in my head tells me the challenge of this way will be worth it.  It will not be glamorous, or particularly fun, but I will grow.

Taking the unknown path will lead me away from this never ending loop I seem to currently keep choosing.  I am tired.  So tired of the sameness of my travel.  It is time for something new.  Perhaps the darker path will converge with that bright road, perhaps not.  But I will never know if I don’t find the courage.  And so, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and take a step forward.  A small step, but a step none-the-less, onto that dark path whose ending I’m yet to know.

What I have realised, with the help of my father, is that medicine is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and the dream hasn’t quite died.   I’ve been feeling a bit “old” to be starting medicine lately, which is part of why I think I tried to talk myself out of it. I’ve come to realise this isn’t the case. I have no real commitments, so why shouldn’t I try again? The support of my dad has been instrumental in my decision to try again.  So I’ve dusted off the books, stocked up on new stationery (who doesn’t love gorgeous new pens and paper?), watched a few youtube motivational videos and am now preparing to sit the GAMSAT again.

In order to stay true, and maintain my motivation, my blog will be littered with GAMSAT stories over the next few months as part of the way of keeping up my motivation.  I will post up some of my practice essays, share science stories and whatever else happens in an attempt to keep myself on track.  I know many of you have offered so much support and help, and in the past I’ve been reluctant to accept (awesome at giving help to others, not so crash hot on accepting it myself), however I’m making a change and will try to graciously accept all and any help and support offered.   So stay tuned for the confessions of a terrible studier.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning. The sun was shining, the birds singing, the scent of jasmine floating on the breeze.  I slept in,  luxuriating in fresh linen on a beautiful morning. When I finally roused from my slumber, I lazed about before getting up to potter around the house.  Gradually getting ready for a big day of fathers day shopping.  Finally I was ready, and decided to set out on my mission.  I grabbed my favorite mimco handbag, found my car keys and headed for the door.  Once I reached the door, I of course exited, locking said door behind me.  I turned, preparing to leave on my mission.

And came to a complete stand still. What the HELL is that? I thought to myself, as I looked confusedly forward. Did I exit from the right house? Best check. So I turned and checked the door. Yes, definitely my house. Have I stepped into an alternate dimension? Doubtful I decided upon looking to the street. Yes, it was my house. No it wasn’t an alternative dimension. Hmm, perhaps I was on candid camera? Was there a cameraman hiding in the bushes waiting to ambush me and yell surprise? Alas, this was not the case. So the only conclusion I could draw, was yes, that umbrella that does not belong to this household is really sitting between the pillars at the front of my house. Behind the screen of rather large trees that screen the front of my house.

But where did it come from? And how did it manage to find its way to sitting exactly between the two pillars? After surveying some friends, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that Mary Poppins was under pursuit from a number of ninjas.  Sadly, she was unable to evade them, subsequently surrendering to their capture.  Leaving behind her trusty umbrella. Abandoned, lonely on my front porch.

In proof of this story, I offer the following photo: