Chapter 30 - The Words of The Doctor Are Written on the Bathroom Walls ....

In which our hero operates her phone in a public toilet for the first time ever ... that she can remember ...

OK, friends.  Now I'm not normally the type of person who would even consider using their phone until all bathroom related things have been completed and the hands have been washed.  That's as it should be.  But this was a very special circumstance, and I hadn't yet touched anything like the door handles or anything.  Please don't feel all awkward because I'm talking about bathrooms.  You'll see why it was important in just a minute.

So basically it was a break during a two hour lecture, so I went to the bathroom.  As one does occasionally.  This is the first thing I saw when I entered the stall.  I swear I did not write it myself.  I've never written on a public wall in my life.

If you don't get it, it's probably because it's Doctor Who related, and you don't watch Doctor Who.

Now in other news I finished my assignment that's been plaguing me for so long.  I just buckled down and did it, and it wasn't so bad.  I guess it was good that I'd been thinking about it for like 4 weeks.  I was up till 3 a.m. on Saturday, then to school by 12:30/1 p.m. on Sunday to complete the drawings/designs, and then submit it before the library staff left at 5.  I am fairly satisfied with it.  It could have been better, but it could also have been a lot worse. 

On Monday I'd made a plan in my head to go to see the new Die Hard movie after my lecture, which ended at 12.  But on the bus in the morning I ran into one of my new Australian friends and she told me that another friend, Skye, had organized the screening of a documentary called 'Bag It', about how plastic is everywhere and in everything and there's nothing we can do about it but reduce our usage so less of it ends up in the environment.  It was scheduled for 11-2, so I figured I could go after my lecture and catch the end of whatever discussion was going on.  As I was making my way there I noticed a line-up with a sausage sizzle at the end of it, so I joined in.  I love a good free lunch, me.  By the time I got to the movie screening thing it was like 12:30, and Skye said I'd missed it, but she could easily re-screen it, as it was just a DVD on a laptop hooked up to a projector.  So she did, and it was very interesting, and also disturbing.  It's seriously so easy to just chuck things in the bin and think they're dealt with, but what really happens?  Do bread bags I so carelessly throw out get dislodged from the landfill, and blow out into the ocean, and get mistaken for a jellyfish by a sea turtle, who subsequently chokes to death?  Will bits of the pens I use and throw out find their way into the stomach of an albatross, where they don't digest, but simply take up space that cannot be used by real food?  Like seriously, people.  Think about it.  Everything is made of plastic.  If someone said to us that we had to stop using plastic tomorrow, how seriously hard would that be?  Your phone is made of plastic.  Your computer.  Your TV.  The container your yoghurt comes in.  The bag your bread comes in.  The over packaging that toys and things come in.  The toys themselves.  Hand lotion and shampoo, clothing, granola bar wrappers.  It's everywhere. 

Another thing I learned too was that that "great big island of floating plastic" in the north-ish Pacific is for one thing only one of six 'gyres', as they're called, and for another not exactly what I thought.  I though it was whole items, like bags and barrels and coke bottles, just floating around, all together, like a big plastic island.  But it's not.  It's little bits of plastic floating beneath the surface.  Because plastic photo degrades, the sun's light makes it break up into smaller and smaller bits.  Like that toy dump truck that's been left outside for three years solid, and now is too brittle to play with.  So these smaller and smaller bits just float there, and sea creatures scoop them up inadvertently either thinking they're plankton, or perhaps in an attempt to grab something bigger.  So it ends up in their stomachs, and they take it home and feed it to their babies.  This whole area is really quite large, and it's not at all very feasible to clean it up.  Apparently it would be like trying to vacuum the entire United States three times over.  That would be mad.  So what can we do but reduce?

I should also move on to happier news.  After the second screening of the film Skye and I decided to just hang out for a bit, because we had nothing else going on.  We wandered for a while, and got some stamps at the post office, and some free art postcards from the caf., and had a hot beverage at one of the many coffee shops.  (I had hot chocolate, which was great.)  The hot beverages made me think of the latte printer, where someone modified an ink jet printer to print images on lattes with caramel colour food colouring, so I told Skye about that, and we discussed other interesting things, like the immortal jellyfish that grows old, and then young again, and then old again, until it gets eaten.  She asked if I did a blog, and I said that yes, I did, in order to keep the folks at home up to date with my adventures.  She said "Dibs on starring in it!".  So here she is, starring in it. 

We ended up in the Unibar, where if you bought a Budweiser you got a little ticket thing, and you could peel back the little panel and possibly win.  She decided she'd buy one for me and one for her.  Her ticket won a cap, so she gave it to me.  Now I have a Budweiser cap.  Then later, as we were sitting with some people, someone else at the table got one too, and their ticket won a 'T-Shirt Buddy', so they gave that to me as well.  Turns out it's a tee-shirt with a little pocket on the bottom left seam for your MP3 player, and a little tube of fabric sewn to the inside to run your earphones through so they don't go all over the place and tangled.

On Tuesday afternoon it rained rather heavily.  Here's a few images.

Torrential downpour off the roof of G07 (Link Building).  Rather like standing behind a waterfall, I would imagine.

The sun came out briefly as I was walking to the bus stop, but the rain was still falling.

A faint rainbow against some looming dark clouds.  (If you were to draw an arc between the hypotenuse of the lamp and about the middle of the roof, you'd see it.)

Some clearing in the evening sky by the time I got back to Helensvale Station.

On Wednesday I finally finally made it to see 'A Good Day To Die Hard' at Harbour Town, which is on the way home.  I had another one-hour day that day, because it's an odd week and I don't have a lab.  After the movie I went to Maccas to get a 30 cent ice cream cone.  They've currently got this "Tastes of America" promotion on, with like the Texas Roadhouse Burger, or the Philly Cheesesteak Burger, or whatever.  Also American Waffle Cones - $1.95.  So this is what greeted me as I turned to leave, having successfully acquired my ice cream

Who needs the real South Dakota when it's hot and randomly rainy and there's a cardboard Mt. Rushmore?  Hmm?  Well, I do, for one.  The air here doesn't smell like sweetgrass.