I really should be asleep by now...

but instead I am up at 4am updating my blog for some reason.

Just shuffling a few things around...

and letting everyone who knows us that my sister has enrolled in the Visual Arts course at TAFE! Along with one of my friends from the mural project! Yay for both of them!

And yet, for some reason I feel a bit sad about that.
Partly because they are both younger than me and still have some leverage with their lives, which makes me wish I still had the same freedom...
okay, I'm only THIRTY for crying out loud, but still, it feels like I forgot to do something along the way

but also because of something that came up while my sister was talking with one of the Art Department faculty (who instructed me while I was doing the graphic-arty Diploma thing about ten years ago).
Basically, he spent a good portion of the induction telling the new students about the amazing career opportunities that would come up upon completion of their course, and how most of the graduates went on to get jobs in the industry almost immediately.
What he didn't realise at the time was that he already knew my sister - in fact, she and I had both attended the Photography courses he conducted a few years back, and she knew him quite well! Of course, this was about six years ago, and she looked rather different then. People who have known my younger sister for anything longer than six months will understand how he could have missed her. She's a frickin chameleon.

When he worked out who she was, he immediately remembered her, and who she was related to, and asked about what I was doing with myself (probably expecting me to be involved with something remotely arty).
My sister politely refrained from telling him that I'm currently a casual worker in a service station... but I think he got the point anyway. sigh
Then again, I never did manage to complete all of my subjects, thus falling a little short of getting the Diploma. So therefore the Art Dept's track record remains... relatively untarnished.

Boy, this post has depressed me all of a sudden. I really should have gone to bed straight away.

Oh, never mind.
Krissy, Andrew, I hope you both have an excellent couple of years getting your Diplomas of Art. I look forward to seeing your finished works at the end-of-year exhibition, and if I have cash at the time I'll be sure to buy some of your stuff! Promise!

PS. I just thought I'd let all the ex-residents of the Yallourn TAFE Art Department know that Peter Biram has shaved off his moustache. :P

Old School (plays)

Earlier this week, my nephew featured in his primary school's play, called "Showtime At Sea".
It was everything you'd expect from a bunch of junior school age children, and more! The funniest part was a little number with a classroom dressed up as fairy penguins, complete with little tuxes and top hats (meanwhile I hope the wardrobe department managed to fix it so that their hats actually stayed on for the whole act)!

It made me think back to some of the beautifully tragic plays that I featured in back when I was around his age.
I remember one year that was particularly awful. All of the kids in Grades 5 and 6 were allowed to put on little plays in honour of Nutrition Week. We were given "carte blanche" to perform whatever we wanted, so long as it had to do with nutrition. The two classes each broke up into groups of six and set to work. It took us about two or three weeks to set it all up (scripts, costumes, props, etc.) and at the end, we performed them in front of the rest of the school.

Well.
Instead of about a dozen different plays, we made the school sit through the SAME two plays, over and over again. Why? Because everyone copied what the rest of the classroom was doing. We saw what they had, and thought, "Hey, why bother with original ideas when what they are doing sounds much better?"
I can only imagine how disappointed our teachers must have been (especially the person who came up with the whole idea in the first place). Needless to say, we didn't have to do anything like that the next year!