I've been

So, friends ask, "How've you been?" and I never know what one-line response to give. If I had more than one line, this might be my answer.

Apart from fighting my university in a battle that mostly didn't need to happen, and meeting the living embodiment of passive aggression, and reminding myself that throwing a defective almost-new mobile phone on the ground and stomping it to pieces is not productive, I mean, other than all these things, this is what I've been up to. And more, but these are the photo highlights.

I've been making almost weekly trips to Paddy's, usually for my fresh fruit and veg run. Admittedly, sometimes it's also to browse the non-produce side to see the best of suspicious DVDs, tacky lingerie, sweatshop apparel, decidedly un-Australian souvenirs, and cute wooden toys it has to offer. If you know me well enough, you should know which of the above is the only category of merchandise I find worth photographing.

Then there's all this sitting/standing around that I've been doing, waiting for buses and trains.

And, before Semester 2 ended, there were those crazy Thursdays with nine hours of class held over a 12-hour period. So, I've been spending some quiet time during the 2-hour afternoon breaks. It helped keep me sane. The rainbows helped, too.

And because this is Ren, and Ren tries never to miss an opportunity to capture beauty, I've been snapping away. I actually walked out of class to snap this early-Spring sunset. Allrighty, it was also extremely stuffy in that mobile classroom. Wasn't too much of a chore to bring the camera with me when I skipped out to get some air into my lungs.

I've been having thoughtful dinner chats with friends. While uni was in session, evenings were sometimes spent in conversation at the grassy knoll, and this one time, nobody else seemed to notice that there was an extra guest at the table. (Shall I state the obvious and ask you to spot the ladybug?)

And now, as of three weeks ago, I've been working. After 10 months of searching and more job applications than I can count, I was and am so thankful to have got a job, and one that I even like. So what if, at the end of the first day, I ended up waiting an hour in the cold for a supposedly quarter-hourly bus? It eventually got me to let go of the idea of catching a bus on an empty stomach, and led me here:

To Not Bread Alone, celebrating the job, good weather, literacy and writing ability, and the invention of salt-&-pepper squid with lemon aioli. My unbiased, paying-customer opinion: it was really very tasty, and served not more than 5 minutes after my order. I'm not in the mood for long and laborious food reviews so I'll leave it there.

And these days, when the working and commuting and talking with friends and visiting 16-year-olds from Singapore all becomes so tiring that I can't fall asleep at night, I've been listening to this album a lot. Contrary to what the cover might imply, it isn't baby music played on, like, tinkly chimes and synth strings. It's grown-up and pretty and peaceful, and I wake up happy. I don't seem to fit into the producers' target demographic, but we all know that's nothing new.