Chapter 33 - The Cardboard Gallery

In which our hero goes to the art show without deviating from her normal routine in the slightest ....

OK.  First of all, I'm not going to make any apologies for having been absent for like three weeks.  I told you ages ago not to get too attached, because when school started I'd be focusing on important school things.  Now things are winding down and wrapping up and so forth.  Last week I had like five things due and a maths test.  Due on Thursday was my maths assignment, Friday was the MATLAB assignment, the power electronics lab report, the power electronics tutorial questions, and I had a math test.  Then on Sunday my electromagnetics lab report and assignment were both due.  The lab report went in on Monday.  The tutorial questions went in on Tuesday morning.  I really hate handing things in late, but I figured I'd suffer the late marks for the sake of my sanity and sleep.

So yes.  I've been a bit busy.  I'm also out of the habit, so when I have a minute I don't think of this as a thing to do.

I've learned something recently that's an interesting language thing.  Apparently it's weird here to refer to uni as 'school'.  If a person says they're going to school, it means elementary or high school.  And so it's extra confusing for youngish looking people such as myself because we might possibly pass for high school.  Meaning it's extra confusing to an Aussie that doesn't know me if I say that I have to go to school the next day or something.  I don't even know what the term is they use for like mature students who are "going back to school", as we'd say, meaning they're taking up post secondary education, usually, after having already had ten or fifteen years of a career of some sort.  When I find out I'll let you know.

So anyway.  Back to the point.  No, wait! First, my Kamoala has been disappeared! Maybe it was just a limited time installation or something.  I though it was going to be up forever.  It's quite disappointing.  If mine's gone, too, then that means probably they're all gone, and I only got to see like three of them.  I know there was more because I picked up a flyer thingy about them, and it had all the locations.  Or maybe they've just moved the one at uni because of nearby construction.  Who knows.

OK. So now actually the point.  I think the exact day after the last thing I wrote about, being the beach and the blues show, I was walking to a class, along my usual route from the bus stop, when I was greeted by this:

Random little cardboard cube people.  What's going on?  Then it developed into this ....

Naturally I was drawn to it because it was a great big box with gears all over it.  There's a little explanation by it, and it says what class it's from, but I can't remember.  It's someone's final project, no doubt.  It has something to do with having a collection of unique people, then putting them through 'the system', I guess, and they come out as bored and all the same.  Here's the cast of characters before the contraption ...

Lying down this guy looks like a hobo.

I think this is a gangsta with bling.  (Spell check just underlined 'bling', but not 'gangsta'.)

A little bird on the window sill.

An angry punk fellow.

Monopoly Man.

Lovely pyramid girl.

Hart shaped girl in the machine.

Sad cube halfway through the machine ...

Standing up he just looks like a NED.  (That's non-educated delinquent.)

And then here's the poor chaps after the 'system' ...

Then on my way out to the bus stop that afternoon I discovered this one:

The rope is made of masking tape, as are the bits of waves around the crates.  The crates say things on them like 'environment' and 'research'.

In the next days and weeks I discovered more.  Sometimes they'd disappear and be replaced by something else.  Observe....

This one has various logos of educational institutions being chopped by a guillotine.

 

The chopped things in the basket.

I have no idea what this one is about.  There's a giant snake going in and out of buildings.

Another view of the snake one.

This one is at the entrance to G09, where some of the engineering labs and offices are.  It says "Save Surfer's - Preserve our Paradise".  I guess it has something to do with something happening to Surfer's Paradise?

A shovel associated with the Surfer's one.

This one replaced the box of gears.  It says "The Worries of Aus", and it's got puppets that resemble Wizard of Oz characters.

This one replaced the guillotine.  The arm of the digging machine says Coles, which is a major supermarket chain, and in the scoop are little things like 'Sally's Fish Market' and other small retailers that are getting destroyed by the big chains.  I think.

This one has to do with Schrodinger's Cat (that's it coming out of the box in the centre) and quantum computing, and how it can be explained that things can be in two states at once.  (The cat experiment is supposed to explain, sort of.)  (In theory).

I believe that is all, my friends.  I need to go to bed.  Tomorrow is the last day of my first semester at uni.  Then there's a study week, then it's exams.  Don't expect too much excitement during that time.  I'll see what I can do over the next  couple days though, re. blog writing.  On Saturday we're planning to go to the Outback Spectacular, which is like, I imagine, Medieval Times, except with an outback horse show instead of knights and things.  It'll surely be something to report, I shouldn't wonder.