I've been living in my new place for a little less than two months, now, and I'm enjoying it very much. The location is handy to get back home and see my family on a fairly regular basis, while still being within range of uni.

My one problem, if you could even call it that, is that people here are not very friendly at all. I live in a small apartment block, with around fourteen other people. So far, in two months of random hallway meetings, I have had two people respond to a hello. One of them was a deliveryman. I'm not asking for soul deep connections here; the second anyone suggests a quilting bee or a community sing song it's going to be a split-second decision between fleeing and smothering them with a pillow and hiding the body in the garden somewhere. No. All I'm after is a meaningless social gesture with little or no community value.

So far, I have had people stare blankly at me ("What is this 'evening' he is speaking of? Perhaps if I freeze in place and do not break eye contact, this apish freak will pass me by. Why is he carrying a pillow, anyway?"), ignore me altogether despite me actually standing in my way at the door and, my personal favourite, drop their head into the sprinter's position and run like hell.

Last night I had five people blank me, a new record. I also nearly got into a fight with a homeless man and stumbled upon a pair of old people standing completely motionless in a park, in the dark, fifty metres across from each other and having what appeared to be a staring contest.

My point: you don't have to go to Japan to meet freaks.

As for law school, things are just ticking along nicely. Marks are solid, consistently winning in competitions (albeit with scores too low to make it to the inter-varsity events and then, someday, Paris. Sigh) and am procrastinating so hard and so often that my apartment has been cleaned and buffed to the point where it's too shiny to see and I can only navigate by the essential oils I have used to polish the timber: "Smells like an old woman's lace doily. Must be in the living room". Who knew I would end up like this, huh?

I mean, really. Who knew? I'll be twenty nine in a week. And somehow, I've ended up living in Sydney (past prediction: "I hate Sydney. I'll live in Melbourne or overseas and just hope Sydney burns to the ground one fine evening"), back at uni studying law (past prediction: "This linguistics PhD is definitely the way forward, and will totally make it possible to go back to Japan, settle down and have some kids who will have to deal with casual racism every second of their lives and will learn to hate me for it. Also, lawyers are mercenary, venal arseholes"), dressing and sexually identifying as a woman (past prediction: "This is only for the pageant, guys, I can't stand this frilly, lacy, sensual underwear that I'm wearing") and cleaning so often it's a fair bet I am going to die like this guy. It's just barely possible I'm lying about one of those.

In short, nothing has gone as I planned it, and this tells me that planning stuff is stupid and I should stick to my snap decisions and random tangents on major life decisions.

If you're wondering why I'm writing so much (or just wondering why there are so many things in brackets, possibly; the answer to that one is that I just like brackets. Also semi-colons and imaginary quotes. Sue me, I dare you.) it's that I should really be reading about Federal Constitutional law and preparing my resume and doing my Japanese homework. Now, for some cleaning.