This morning I had breakfast with Nic at Brew Cafe down on Poath Road. It was good to catch up with an old friend with a variety of topics being discussed ranging from school to apartments. I then went up to Chadstone to buy my brother his birthday present (unfortunately I can’t tell you what it is because he has stumbled across this blog before). The most exciting part of my day however was when I walked into Kmart and saw giant Clarabel’s on sale. I immediately told Luke who seemed very keen to know which Kmart store and how big. They had a variety of sizes including the small Clarabel so if anyone wants one then Kmart is the place to be.

It has been a busy week hence the lack of posts since I returned from Sydney. I can’t be bothered recapping my whole week but it involved drinking, dancing and countless dinners and lunches. Yesterday I went down to Sandringham to visit my auntie, we went out for breakfast and then lunch as well and if my auntie had of had it her way we would have gone out for dinner as well all in all it wasn’t really that exciting. Tomorrow I will be having breakfast with Nic who has flown down from Singapore for a few weeks. Anyway I hope everyone is enjoying there well earned break and its only a week until everything starts again (yay!).

That’s it for the long weekend, and we wont be getting any until November which is a bit of a shame but hey, we get school holidays. I have been one of those fortunate people that don’t have mid-year exams this week so its a relatively cruisy week for me. One thing I do have this week is my english oral which I’m doing on the Iraq War so I’m sitting here having a beer (Stella Artois) and adding the finishing touches to the Power Point presentation. However I seem to have been sidetracked an am now talking to Derrick Ha on MSN, but hell it’s only VCE.

Tonight we headed to a very nice Indian restaurant with family friends. We don’t see them a whole lot because they live in Nar Nar Goon so it was very nice to catch up with them. Anyway Indian cuisine is a personal favourite of mine and I recommend those of you who have never tried it to go out an try it. I also got the HDMI cable for my DVD player so I can now watch DVD’s in HD, because Samsung had forgotten to put one with my DVD player so I had to go back to the store and they ordered it in. That’s all for now, I’m about to sit down and watch Blood Diamond which I was meant to see at the movies but other things came up and now am going to watch it at home on DVD.

Well my big news is I will be 18 in a couple of days. It’s one of those things that sounds exciting but really isn’t when you think about it. Anyway I will on Thursday be able to;

-legally able to buy and drink alcohol (I already drink so its not really a big thing).

-Buy tobacco related products (don’t smoke so again pointless)

-Vote in state and federal elections (probably the only thing that I can’t do now)

-Gamble (again something I already do now, however the one thing I will be able to do is go to Crown, which I’m doing in two weeks time)

I will also be able to go for my license, however due to me being lazy and VicRoads being stupidly far behind my test isn’t till late July. My other news is that it looks like my iRiver is about to die so I’m in the market for a new music player. I have been looking around at some but I’ve found that there seems to be all these 1 or 2gb devices around and not many +40gb. So it looks like I might end up having to go for an iPod or one of Creative’s hard disk players. Any suggestions would be welcome.

In other news, today I was dragged along to my brothers football game to watch him play his 50th match, it wasn’t all that exciting and they lost by 1 point which was pretty disappointing. But I did get to see the assistant coach from the other team hit a kid in the throat, anyway he got reported and will most likely get banned which kinda reminds me of a certain hockey coach at a certain private school in Melbourne. Well tomorrow I have a Sociology SAC, and another Sociology SAC on Thursday, however there’s no school on Friday which is good, and of course no school the following Monday due to the Queens Birthday (the sole reason I believe we should not become a republic, we would lose a public holiday). Well that’s it for now, at least that’s all I can remember, I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and will no doubt see most of my readers during the week (except the guy from Spain).

Well after Luke’s wonderful dramatic display that almost saw the ‘group’ split. I am here to concede that Luke’s lighting and sound is indeed a hobby and that the work that he does for the school during school hours is not part of his standard school service commitments. I also accept that it is certainly possible for a person to receive a monetary compensation for their hobby and for the activity to still remain a hobby. It is with great disappointment and shame that I admit that I was wrong and I let my arrogance get in the way of facts.

Today was one of those very interesting days that ensured I didn’t have a moment of free time (except for the time I spent at the cafe). After the usual mundane double math, I headed over to the office to ask scotty to pay for something. In the end he did which was good as I wasn’t expecting him to go for it.

I then headed to the hall only to discover that certain staff had decided that the only “usable” computer in the school was now to be only used by those ” that need to be using it”. So I went and hassled some other staff to convince them to provide an Editorial computer where we can actually sort through the photos without students constantly coming up to us and asking for a copy (the answer to that question is absolutely no), anyway in short lawso said that if I can find a spot and the money then yeah not a problem but until then I will have to resort to using his computer or another private computer.

So I then went and bitched to IT, which later led to me having to apologise to IT. After that I cracked the shits with a certain junior precinct and then went to PD, of which I spent the entire time sitting there bored. During lunch I had a high powered leadership meeting which was were I was told to apologise to IT and then spent the rest of the time sitting at the cafe contemplating how in the world I could get a copy of a completed maths assignment to cheat off (Luke initially promised one but then disappeared for the rest of the day).

I was talking to Luke Hawley on the phone just before about visitors to my blog. It has always intrigued me to know whether I know the people that come to my blog, either personally or through association. After looking through my reference sources, search terms and repeat visitor numbers I can conclude that most of the visitors that come to my blog either know me, or at least have some association with my school, friends or family. So I thought that I would post most top ten search terms that I receive visitors from;

1. Matthew Kennedy (including variations such as Matthew Kennedy Haileybury etc.)

2. James Panther (including variations, thanks Pant!!)

3. Haileybury (and variations)

4. Year 12 formal (have had a huge number of searches since the formal)

5. Luke Hawley (including variations, Luke admitted that many of these may be him googling his own name)

6. Cardinia Reservoir (one family trip has led to hundreds of extra visitors to my blog)

7. Connex (finally they are giving me something back)

8. Quotes (including searches for individual quotes)

9. Three (including variations such as “it’s good to be 3″, and Three Hutchinson)

10. Sahil Shekhar (and variations)

So there you have it, if you type in the above words in Google or any other search engine of your choice you will eventually come across this blog. I also receive a number of visitors from other blogs such as Luke’s, Stephen’s and even Pant’s (visitors from Pants blog have died down recently though). I also get a lot of visitors through my MySpace page and Facebook profile.

There are also many people that use Feed readers to view my blog, with the most popular being Google Reader and BlogPulse, although these two readers make up less than 50% of my feed readership with the rest coming from ‘Other’ readers.

I have been stupidly busy the last week, without even a moment to myself and unfortunately this won’t change for the next couple of weeks. I did however manage to dig up a photo of the Kindergarten class of 1994, which in case you didn’t know is the year the current year 12’s were in kindergarten. Anyway I now have a photo of Luke when he was like 4, as well as some other year 12’s which is pretty funny. I would post it however I would get in a lot of trouble from the school for doing so, so if you want a copy and go to Haileybury I can send it to you via school email. If you don’t go to (or work at) Haileybury then I can’t help you.

The Year 12 magazine has been coming along nicely, and we should actually start putting the content on pages soon. Also in between all this I managed to get a SAC done, and have multiple coming up fast, as well as speeches at each precinct, and literally hundreds of meetings and countless luncheons. Also apparently the play went well last night, and is coming along well tonight (I was just talking to a crew member on MSN). So well done to you guys. And finally I’m beginning to become cynical of Connex like Pant, you see this morning I was stuck at Hughesdale station for 90 minutes while a train was derailed on one of  four tracks at Oakleigh. During this time no alternative arrangements were made in regards to buses, no announcements, no nothing, just an increasingly full platform.

I was on the train this morning when Pat abruptely told me that this would most likely be his last week on the train. I obviously asked why and he informed me that he would be moving to Blairgowrie. I then spent a large portion of my day to point out Blairgowrie’s distance from… well everything!! Here are some quick facts about it’s distance from some places, they are all “as the crow flies” (and measured using Google Earth).

• 62Km from Melbourne
• 52 Km from Haileybury
• 58 Km from Murrumbeena

So in order to make Pat feel just a little better I have decided to quote some distance figures from my house to some places.

• 13 Km from Melbourne
• 12 Km from Haileybury
• 58 Km from Blairgowrie
• 40 Km from Gembrook

And to make Pat feel that little bit worse, here are some figures from our “country” property out in Gembrook

• 51 Km from Melbourne
• 34 Km from Haileybury
• 81 Km from Blairgowrie
• 40 Km from Murrumbeena

So pretty much I have concluded that he will be living extremely far away. We were working out exactly how he will get to school and he will get a lift to Cranbourne with his mum who works there (travel time* approx : 50 min), he will then catch a train to Springvale (approx: 20 min), bus to Haileybury (approx: 15 min). So all in all he will spend 1 hour and 25 minutes travelling, this doesn’t count the approx 5-10 minute wait for the train, and the 20 minute wait for the bus (which brings it close to 2 hours).

*Travel time taken from Whereis.com