escaping reality

Oh, so this is a club. I seemed to have a much more elaborate image in my mind but it turns out to be a densely-packed loungey area with excessively loud music coming from behind an even more densely-packed standing area. The pulsating coloured patterns projected upon the ceiling were nice though.
It would certainly be interesting to run experiments on groups of people with loud sounds that affect balance and fake drinks that have no alcoholic content.
I also found that the environment is not conducive in the slightest manner for conversation. It is difficult to convey ideas to new people in such an environment.
It was also an opportunity to observe the inebriated. Here I see a very different facet of a colleague and it's not one that exemplifies his best qualities as a person. It seems as though people want to spend as little time in this 'real-world' as possible. They recreate their dreams or unawareness by excessively loud music, alcohol, lighting effects and possibly other elements.
Another matter - how can foot traffic be so heavy in such a small area. Where is everyone going? There aren't all that many destinations within such a confined space.
One colleague certainly demonstrated his 'can-do' attitude.  Although he had no fewer than three 'attempts', he declared the session a failure.  It begs the question of how to measure success. Perhaps it is impressing sufficiently with a dance in order to exchange contact details (sounds like a David Attenborough narration). Otherwise it could be related to that strange conversation emanating from a male toilet cubicle. hrm
Nevertheless, I'll try to keep an open mind on what others enjoy. It might even help on a developing professional relationships interview question. Having said that, Government House was a lot nicer.

polling assistant-ing

Last weekend I had the pleasure of working at a polling place for the federal election. It was not without issues in gaining employment in the first place. The AEC seem to ignore their web applications. It was only after some eavesdropping, round-about thinking aloud from co-workers and other weird human interaction that I was verbally prodded into following up my application by telephone. To my delight the AEC was both eager and desperate sounding on the phone and promised me a call back later that evening. This was on a Thursday.
On Friday I received an email telling me to do the online course. It goes through all you need to know but won't remember. There's a 1% pass rate required on the quizzes.
Saturday was when it all happened. The officer in charge, OIC, gave me the role of ballot box guard. It sounds quite alright but in reality it's not that interesting. It mainly involved making suggestions to people about which box to put their ballot papers in. One fellow didn't take kindly to my suggested, retorting that he'd been doing it for 70 years already. It was reasonably straightforward except that some people decided to fold the House of Representatives paper into the Senate paper.
It took until around 1PM for the queues to die out. After lunch I had a stint as ordinary issuing officer - just the regular name marker person. It does require marginally more knowledge and more brain-sapping interaction. Although it was quiet when I got into it and so I went to sharpen some pencils and clean out the booths. I really wouldn't mind the job of 2IC - it seems like a position where you can jump in to relieve people while holding experience and knowledge but not so much that you're flooded with paperwork like the OIC.

Days like this also provide an opportunity to see the whole spectrum of the community. But firstly, I did happen to make myself known to my granduncle and his mob. The generation+1 members didn’t recognise me at first but ran back in five minutes after putting in their ballot papers to confirm my identity. This is one of those days where people who ordinarily wouldn’t be seen in public with their parents are caught doing exactly that. It was notable that white male Asian female couples tended to be older and not always arriving together and almost certainly without the children being present. Asian male white female couples tended to be younger and with kids in tow, or rather man happily pushing stroller. The kids from a darker man with curly hair (possibly West Indies) and Asian female were absolutely adorable. “I voted” stickers turned out to be an absolute winner with the kids, but not so much with the adults. That is, except for a group of mid-twenties dark-dressing group of four (Goth or something?) who were thrilled to be offered a whole roll of stickers.

By the close of polling I had managed to stuff down two meals in a space of four hours. A class of 2006 MHS dude joined the crew and we developed an effective way of sorting Senate papers. Well, at least much more effective than the others. I think the 2IC was impressed, especially with the gravity-assisted compact temporary storage. There’s still a place for time and management studies and it would be rather cool to implement it in the next election.

Party-appointed scruntineers turned out to be much more well-mannered than the OIC and my work manager made them out to be. In fact, everyone was really nice! An old lady said that to me in the morning after I bode her a good day as she walked past the ballot box. I thought the OIC didn’t have to be that nice – there were plenty of things that would have ticked me off. Mainly ignorant questions.

All up it was quite a worthwhile experience. Recommended. 10/10

I googled...

Control Lecturer:

What is the correct definition?
If you don't believe this - what I'm telling you - you just google
you just google 'damping ratio'
right?
natural frequency pop up
I tried last night
I was wondering, I tried last night
I googled very late alright - 1 AM
I googled last night
you just go to website

This funny man also revised a lab sheet and in the process removed the credit to another dude. But it wasn't something worth taking credit for - 1 hour of copy-paste.

He also sent out an email to the class at 00:40.