The continued funkifying of Adam

The world is built on and run by human emotion. Emotion governs the interaction between people and those people who are attractive to others are also seen as more trustworthy and just overall better people.

So, in order to take a couple of steps closer I've decided to go to the gym. I haven't told anyone. I read a book called Body for Life which seemed to have some really good plans and ideas in it and I was excited to give it a go. I went along on Monday night and started doing my thing. The really freakin' old owner came over and taught me the proper way to do one of the exercises. He started talking and during the course of the conversation said that I have alright arms but my chest needs immediate attention. What the hell? Immediate attention?!? Is he worried that I'll die in an elevator because I won't be able to open stuck door with my pecs? I can't imagine any reason why it's all so drastic. Anyway, last night he took me through a program and a plan and the way to do all the exercises and said he'd be checking on the progress of my chart and blah blah blah. The dude was nuts, he told me he was 72 years old about 40 times in the hour. Anyway, my plan is to follow his plan until Christmas and then I should be working overseas and I can get back on to my original plan. I did the program in Body of Life on monday and was wreaked, that good kind of muscle soreness. I don't feel any effects from last night. I'll work harder and give it a go, but I kind of feel weird about this gym now.

Oh, I asked Cara about the concerns with money vs all the plans she was making. At first she didn't understand, so I asked her slower and louder and she basically said that she knew she was getting paid soon and could support her immediate plans and then didn't know what she would do for the rest of the fortnight, probably ask me. So, guess this makes me a sugar daddy. I kind of always assumed she knew what she was doing but she admitted otherwise and said that she always assumed I would rein her in if need be. Cool, a whole new skill for me to learn.

Cashin' around

I'm a little stressed at the moment. I've never had to worry about money, I'm not rich, I'm just not disciplined and I've always made enough to have fun but not enough to save anything, really. So, due to mounting pressures from everyone to not live a frivilous lifestyle I've tied up some of my money in basic investments and stuff. Due to a fairly expensive month, we don't have much to live on. Enough, but only just. Cara's organised us to go to the races, and to hold Cup Day festivities and to see a stack of bands and a whole lot of fun stuff - which is totally fun and rockin' but also requires some cashup'dness. Since she's always always stressed about money, I don't understand where she is coming from. I reckon this is one of those things that you have to ask girls very gently. I'll let you know how I go.

Spring Carnival

I love this city! We have a spring carnival which is like a week of special events at the horse racing. The entire city gets into it and the highlight is the Melbourne Cup which is a public holiday.

I'm going on Saturday to Derby Day and need a new shirt and tie. I haven't worn a suit since my grandfathers funeral early this year. Melbourne is a very multicultral place and the actual city seems to have a taste of everything. Walking through the city in search for clothes stores I even noticed that different areas also seem to have more attractive people and less attractive people - never noticed that before. We've fully got a Chinese bit, a Paris bit, a bohemian bit, a businessy bit, a druggy bit, a run down bit and a whole lot of new expensive bits. Love it. I've lived here all my life and I never get bored with it. I didn't find a shirt by the way, I just couldn't be bothered. I'm a terrible shopper - it's just not fun enough.

Dinner

The whole world is craziness. I can't remember we've been hit by a storm this bad, trees are falling over and everything. I was completely soaked through after riding my bike to work. Every time I'd stop at the lights I was nearly pushed over by the wind - very cool. I parked my bike overnight near the beach because I borrowed someone's car and this morning the waves were crashing right up and spraying my bike - it sounds stupid but who knew we'd be hit by the blowiest storm for ages.
So, the reason I had borrowed a car was for the anniversary thing. I wanted to get a big huge retro whale of a car to pick Cara up in and it was proving a bit tricky to organise, especially with work being a bit frantic. I couldn't find anything good, a lot of cars that weren't the usual were wedding cars, chevys and stuff which is not really what I was after. I gave up but yesterday afternoon when I was telling Kanella about the dinner she told me to take her convertible. I hadn't said anything about any cars, it was just a bit co-incidental. <...Kanella Description...> Kanella is totally cool and is a bit older than me and I've worked on and off with her for the last year or so. We've been 4WDriving a couple of times and had some very fun adventures. When we moved, we moved really close to Kanella and she has been helpful and fun and in the summer will let us use the pool at her place. Every year she goes to the Greek islands for a few weeks and seems to have life completely under control. She's been helping me look for work overseas because she has so much experience and totally awesome contacts...>
Cara thought the car was totally cool and a bit exciting and we felt a bit crazy driving around with the top down to this resturant. The resturant I picked was the place we went to for our first date. Last night was as awkward as that first night. The place was completely empty and somewhat devoid of personality and atmosphere. It's the week before the horse racing and renovations had closed the resturant part - we were moved to the cafe part. I was a little bit disappointed with young Cara. I never said anything but I've watched her glam up for so many things for so many other people a million kabillion times recently. She looks awesome for like, rehearsals, BBQs as well as parties and gigs and stuff. Sometimes I've been a bit jealous about the amount of effort she's put in just to hang out with her band or her mates or whatever. So, last night when she was looking like a dowdy libarian, I was disappointed and a bit embarrased that I had put so much effort in. I guess all those times watching her make herself amazing for other people, I was kind of hoping for the same thing. It doesn't actually seem important enough to mention, but it did throw me into a slight weird mood for dinner. Didn't help that I was exhausted either. We seem to have been rocking along to bed like 2am every morning and waking up at 6.30am. I don't think it's having a huge effect but I'm probably not as chirpy as I have been.
We ended the night with some candlelit massaging and so it will go down in the ancient tomes as a nice romantic evening.

Little kids

I forgot to mention on the weekend I actually went to a BBQ that was organised by some photographers on the internet. This is part of my efforts to eventually not work full time in IT. Anyway, it was really quite weird. No one really knew each other particularly well and most were very quiet and not talkative. I was quite happy to talk up a storm but people weren't even responsive - I didn't have much to work with. There were a couple of good ones though which was awesome. I had invited a workmates brother who would like to dabble in modelling himself. Thank god he and his sister Anna came, they were so much more entertaining and fun and I had some an awesome time with them. I spread myself around a bit to meet everyone, but they stuck with one or two of the photographers and got to know them fairly well. Anna was totally cool and people warm up to her so much. Anyway the point of this story is that someone brought her little daughter along who was about 3 or something. She was very cute and easily made friends with everyone. She made me jump up and down wanting to go higher and higher and at one point I picked her up and spun and spun and spun her around. Someone was saying goodbye so as I put her down and her eyes rolled to the back of her head and all her limp and she sunk down. I tried to get her to move or react and there was nothing. Freaked me right out. I called her mum over and the little girl kind of woke up when her mum asked her what was wrong. I went to say goodbye to the person waiting and then checked everything was cool with the mum. She said everything was totally fine and the little girl does that all the time and was just mucking around. I though the little girl was very convincing. Later I was jumping up and down with her again and it happened again. I didn't call anyone and just let her flop down. After a while she slowly got back up and went off dancing to herself. Way weird. I don't have much contact with little kids, can you tell?
Speaking of kids, my dad came over to my place to have some good photos done for a work thing and he brought his partner and their 2 month old baby, Dominic Michael. The baby and Chester got along very well, it was weird and a little bit cute to see two tiny little things playing with each other.

Monday morning anniversary

I am so totally lathergic today, not sleepy, just kind of lolling around the place aimlessly. I'm at work so I'm really only tackling the easy things today. Last week was totally hectic and I had far too much going on - I had an important deadline on Friday afternoon and everything was focused towards that. Once I over that hurdle I just crashed and did nothing for the weekend. Cara was recording and mastering and other fun music stuff so she wasn't around for the entire weekend. I spent a quite a bit of time being a hermit and was really happy with that - it just means that I'm lacking energy now. It's always the way.
Today is the 2 year anniversary of the pashing and getting together of young Cara and myself. Cara said some time ago that I didn't need to get her anything and that she wanted to get us a present. I was really happy with that because I get over the whole contrived present occasion thing. I'm over birthdays and christmas and everything else. I used to be totally into them and very, very generous and I think I burnt myself out. I remember years and years of getting awesome presents for my family and them giving me and each other cheap, thoughtless, nothing special gifts. I don't want to sound mean but I think I do think because of the massive energy I've put into stuff for other people - I get over it all. Anyway, I was excited that Cara had it under control. I booked a resturant and was thinking about getting a massive retro huge car to drive to it - Cara seems to love big whale-sized cars. The cars have turned out to really be only suited to weddings, I couldn't find anything funky enough. It turns out Cara is rehersing tonight, I was a little bit miffed because I kind of like to think that I would come before anything else but I think I've known for a while that that isn't really true. So, re-booked all good. This morning Cara gave me the present, she couldn't get the thing she was intending for the both of us so she just got something for me. A whole set of paints and canvases and sketch books and stuff. I've been thinking about doing some painting for a while because I've been inspired by a couple of things - but I have no skills at all. At first I was a little intimidated by it but now I'm all excited and keen. I'm going to be very dodge to start off with but I'm sure I can keep it together long enough to produce something good before I get distracted by something else in life. I do love it - I'm excited.
I felt a bit dodge though, because I hadn't put any effort into getting her a present, or a card or anything. When I seemed a bit concerned she told me not to get her anything because I'm always looking after her and stuff. I decided to completely ignore her and got her a card and tickets to the PJ Harvey concert. Bailed her up at lunchtime and she was way touched and excited. Phew! Too close.

Ahhh, the Soph.

Whoa! I'm only just getting over my weekend, it's Tuesday morning now. We had a bit of a send off for Sophie which was a pub crawl on Saturday night. It was massive and Sunday was a complete and utter right-off.
<....Sophie Description....> Sophie is an English chicky that met Cara when they both did a semester at a Canadian university years ago. Sophie came to Australia in December last year to stay for 9 months and only just left on Sunday morning, early Sunday morning. She lived with us for a couple of months and then moved to Port Melbourne, we obviously got bored without her and moved to the next suburb along. She aspires to be a writer and does some good little work, but it is a little bit directionless in life (much like myself) - we get along really really well - amazing well and I loved having her around. It was good for Cara and me too because we were having problems before she rocked up and it gave us something else to focus on. Sophie laughs at everything which is hilarious in itself. Being from England on a working holiday visa she had to find a new job every 3 months which meant that sometimes she was doing some very boring stuff but she met a lot of people and her farewell was huge.>
The pub crawl was a bit of fun, there was scoring and there were points for drinking and bonus points for all sorts of stupidity. I got a huge lead in the first pub and managed to win the night on that lead. Sophie came second and we both received appallingly crap trophies. We had to put a bet on the greyhounds and I won like 50 bucks and one of the chicks won like 60 bucks, then we got the hell out of there because it was dodge. We also went through a couple of really upperclass bars where we stuck out like nothing else in our tartan golf gear.
What else? I got through my first acrobatics class without injury. Somehow, everyone on the project knows about it so there are weekly meetings where my progress is now discussed. I'm sure they'll get bored of it soon enough. The acrobatics thing was pretty cool but I was so fricken bad at it. There were 15 people doing it and every single one had done the same course before or gymnastics when they were 8 or something. It sounds weird but it's been a long time since I've so terribly crap at something. Seems like a whole lot of fun though and I'm hanging for the next one.

Damn.

3:19 PM 13/10/2004Dagnammm I'm frustrated!! I had to motorbike it home to let Chester out because we had the lawnmower man coming over early this morning and I didn't want him running around the backyard while the dude is swingin' the whippersnipper. I get home and the dude hasn't been over yet so I let Chester run around outside and then coax him back in to sit out the remainder of his day. Chester is an outside dog so I'm not expecting him to cope real well. On the way back to work I manage to drop my bike. It wasn't damaged on the way down but I busted a panel when I had to kick it off my foot. I think I've done a couple of hundred dollars worth of damage. I managed to hurt my wrist in the process which I now don't want to tell anyone at work about. I really don't have the time or the spare brain spare to deal with these little things. I'm still going to the acrobatics course tonight and I think I'll leave my bike how it is until I want to sell it, I'd hate to have it all fixed up nice and then have a shopping trolley or something scratch the heck out of it. Duh!!

People

8:51 AM 13/10/2004So, part of my goal to funk myself up a bit is to get my personal interactions under control a bit. There is nothing wrong with the way I interact with people, but everyone is different and I'm noticing that some people make a far bigger impact on others. I'm interested in how and why and I personally would like to make a bigger impact than I have done. I'm sure I come across as very nice and slightly humourous, so I don't want to disrupt that, but I do want to improve things a bit - with my friends, my work collegues, my girlfriend and with strangers. I think a lot of people who come across as nice make a positive impression but never get the attention that they want. I want to be in more control of that situation.
Yesterday morning, I was still in bed and just before Cara left she leapt onto the bed and gave me a huge cuddle and a kiss goodbye. This morning, she waved goodbye as she closed the bedroom door. The cause of this difference? Yesterday Cara needed to ask for money for the tram. Now, this is not something that I care about, it's trivial and unimportant but I'm wondering if it is something that I should pull her up on. Do girls (or adults even) need to be told if they don't act cool or do people have things under control and do they only need to be pulled up on the very big things?!? If I were to do something about it, should I tell her off, should I tease her? Should I mention it in passing? Should I just let it go?
Enough of that, on with life. As part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival there was a public interaction thingy in Federation Square....they have them every day over the 3 weeks or so that the festival is on. So Cara and I went to their thing last night. They started it off with a laughing class - it was bizarre and strange and wierd and a bit fun. They took us through various laughing exercises that you had to do with strangers and it was hilarious. They say that you fake laughing until it makes you laugh because the body doesn't know the difference - the premise is that laughing does have some healing effects. The whole thing was a little contrived - they were trying a little bit too hard to make us laugh but for what it was worth it was good fun. It was one of those things that only works if everyone gets into it, and everyone did. Whooooo!
Tonight I've actually got my first acrobatics and tumbling class. I have no idea what to expect and I've never done anything like it. It's for adults and I'm hoping everyone else is as unco as me. I wanted to try something different, learn a new skill, get some new stories. It's a six week short course (2 hours per week) and the boys and girls at work don't believe I'll get through the entire course without injuring myself. I keep telling them that I am totally invincible but they don't believe me. So, we've got a bet going.
If I come to work with any sprains, broken bones and cuts over the next six weeks then I have to: a) Drink a cup of coffee (which I've never done and am already too hyper) b) swear loudly in the office (no one here has ever heard me swear) and stand in the middle of the office and allow myself to be tickled (I'm very ticklish and even though I am quite manly, have a habit of squealing like a girl if ever tickled). It all sounds very gay, I know, but it was a gay man that came up with the bet so I should have expected it. If I get through the six weeks then they are going to buy me breakfast every day for a week. I really don't want to lose this bet - it's too stupid.

Well, hello there.

Well, hello there. Glad you've found the very start. My name is Adam.
A stack of my friends are traveling at the moment and one of them is using this website to record his travels. All my other friends are sending group e-mails about their adventures. I thought it was about time that someone started a travel diary without actually going anywhere. My friends write really well and entirely too entertainingly and I was getting a bit jeolous so it's all happening now.
I am going through a bit of a transitionary phase of my life. Job/Friends/Myself are a'changing! My job finishes just before Christmas, everyone on my project has to find a new job. Most of my day to day hanging out with friends are now traveling various places around the world. Within one month 7 of my close friends left/will leave the country. So, I need a new crew to hang out with. I also want to funk myself up. I like myself, but I want to really, really like myself. I want to look cooler, have a cooler headspace and have much funner stories. So, who am I?
<...Adam description.. I work in IT looking after the security of a massive database called SAP. It is so big and expensive that only large companies can consider installing it. It takes million dollar projects to install this thing and I work on those projects. I contract out to them so I don't become an employee of each company per se. My current project finishes at Christmas time and I would like to take up another contract interstate or overseas for a couple of months then find something longer-term in Melbourne (Australia) where I live. I live with Cara and Chester in a nice little house. I am 26 years old and also teach dance classes on the side. I taught my second class all year last night, I'm sort of not as interested as I used to be. It's a latin/modern jive type of dancing and it is how I know a big chuck of my friends. I'm taking up photography and would love to be in a position where I could work a couple of days a week doing computer stuff and the rest of the week taking photos. I'm finding that photography is really freakin' hard to do well and there are many many photographers out there and very very few ways to make any money from it. I'm hoping to catch a niche market somehow - I just have to invent it first. I am lovely, I have funny moments and I'm not hugely unattractive. My mode of transportation is a red Honda VFR 750 (I remember watching one of those pre-liminary big brother shows and they said like 80% of all the video entrants put in their car - guess people find their car/bike defines them somewhat). I have totally awesome friends but I am really very ready to meet some new way groovy people, new people to get excited about>
<....Cara Description... Cara is a quite attractive young lady that has huge aspirations about being a rock chick. She plays the keyboards and does backing vocals for her band. They really are very good and are impatiently paving the way to take over the world. She also works in a camera store full time to pay the bills. She is an intelligent little chicky and can be very funny and very very focused. She can be focused to the point of being a bit selfish and self-centred, but mostly she's good. Today she's taken up riding to the tramstop from our house via the beach - with our recent excellent sunshine this makes her very happy. Soon her band will need to tour up the east coast of Australia and so while she is doing this I would like to be working in another state or country having my own adventures.>
<.....Chester description....> Chester was actually called Jonesy until we renamed him. We renamed him ages ago but he only came to live with us on Tuesday after Amber left to travel the world. Chester is a tiny little boggle eyed dog - a chiuawa thing - and lives to be patted. He was a bit sad the first day after Amber left but he seems very chirpy now. I have to get the lawnmower man to cut the grass tomorrow morning because it's been too long for him and he hasn't really left his little dog house since he got here. His favourite thing is coming inside the house and getting our attention>
I'm on a mission to make myself a little more funky, to set myself up with some groovy new friends and find myself an exciting fun job and I'm hoping this blogger thing can track that.
So, who am I writing to? I think I expect at some point my friends will read this but I think mostly I'm writing this for myself (because I seem to forget all my good stories and I want to write down my adventures as entertainingly as all my travelling friends) and for just people who randomly stumble across this - there is a lot of junk on the internet and I'd like to add to it. Whoooo!