A day in the life of

Yesterday was my first day of uni for the second semester. And what a day it was! It was, as my days tend to be, an epic.

I guess now would be an appropriate time to explain what I'm doing at uni. I'm doing what's called a "University Preparation Course." Technically I'm a "non-award" student, because my studies this year won't directly contribute to a degree program. The story is that since I developed my illness at 15, on the eve of my School Certificate (year 10) exams, I had a pretty hellish time of high school. I was very very sick, and as a consequence, didn't learn a lot. I did make it though, taking one year longer than my friends, and getting an ok mark, but not one good enough to do much at uni. So here I am, completing the University Prep Course, which coupled with my high school mark, will (hopefully) allow me to enter as a mature age student. I think the term "mature age student" has such a dignified ring to it.

So this year I go to uni one day a week, for two hours. And although it isn't much time at all, it knocks the shit out of me physically after years of being sick. But I'm getting better, slowly.

So at 10,45 my alarm goes off and I am snapped into consciousness by the sounds of some fairly un-musical "music" and after a few minutes the doorbell rings. I leap out of bed, careful to avoid the debris on my bedroom floor and argue with my trackpants for a good 30 seconds, trying to convince them to let my right leg pass through freely, all the while hopping on the left one. Once dressed I then hobbled to the front door (for the record, I am not really able to move faster than a stroll before midday) and caught the man as he was leaving. He had my new phone! I have to think of a name. I have a theory about naming electrical items, particularly computer paraphernalia and communications devices, which is probably best left for another day.

The train trip was fairly uneventful. I spent the hour-and-a-half trek to the city entering phone numbers into the new phone after spending a good five minutes trying to figure out how to turn of the keypad tones.

I got to uni at about 2,15 and headed up to the Queerspace to hang out for a while with the other local queers at uni (and yes, it is an affectionate term). It was there that I met the gayest boy I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. He made Emmett from Queer as Folk look subdued. He was like Super Emmett. Now don't get me wrong, I love gay boys, really I do. But to be honest, for a shy guy like me (who at 22 is starting to do the whole coming out thing and starting to figure out the whole gay thing) it was a little scary. He was American, loud, bottle-blonde, moderately good-looking, clad in tight jeans and a small red shirt that showed off his tanned midriff. He kept saying things like "Honey you are such a fucking bitch, I love you!" when someone said something funny. He was really a funny guy, although I suspect the Australian sarcastic humour was very new for him. We were trying to teach him some dos and donts of Australian life, prompted in part by him asking "Where are all the black people?" after someone suggested that the room contained all the major gay stereotypes. I'm curious to know exactly which stereotype I represented. I have to say the funniest event of the afternoon was when a guy showed him where the toilets are and he walked into the ladies room. The guy said "ummm, that's the ladies." SuperEmmett replied "Honey I am a lady."

The rest of the day was fairly mundane after that fabulous hour with SuperEmmett. At about 3,45 I felt wretched. I had a killer headache, I could barely walk, I felt sick to the stomach. I sat down and gradually recovered my composure, just in time for my first class at 4,00. After class I headed off to Central station to catch a bus to my Pop's place where I stay on Monday nights. I ducked into the newsagent to see if they had a new DNA Magazine, but alas it the new one isn't available yet. Who'd have thought I would have been disappointed to see that guy's body on a magazine cover??

Well that' about it. I got home to my Pop's place at 7,00, watched Desperate Housewives and went to bed soon after.