back from study camp
Am feeling very rejeuvenated and with better perspective since study week at UNSW. Daily walks from Coogee to Randwick, multiple places to get coffee, good views of the beach, sunny weather and there was the best bookshop in the world!
It's like a ladder of good bookshops, and each surpasses the former. This is better than Gleebooks, Berkelow, the bookshops in Potts Point and the one in Melbourne near Pelligrinis. What was charming about the bookshop was the staff. There was a guy with a long hockey playing girls ponytail halfway down his back, tattooes and Metallica like tshirts. He looked like a 40 something mechanic or guitar teacher. There was the guy with the hard arse nose ring who was quite meek and mild and probably the most apologetic about not being helpful. Then there was the young blonde guy playing with premature ageing by having a beard and wearing vneck grandad jumpers. The book shop faces one of the many grassy quadrangles and mid century cloister style buildings.
Wednesday lunch time was the halfway point of the day as we transitted from short course work to retreat. Several of us lay out in the half dappled sunshine of the quadrangle as I read aloud amusing bits from Submarine by Joe Dunthorne, my new favourite find. Our assistant strolled past. May I say that this is the first time I have ever had acccess to an assistant. He welcomed us every morning to class, arranged the morning and afternoon tea, gave out lunch vouchers (whilst you were sitting at your desk) and even walked me the long way to the doctors clinic when I wasn't well and gave me his mobile number to call if I needed him for anything at all. He was always so polite and serious (he came up to me later and apologised for taking me the long way to the clinic, having reviewed the campus map ) and I couldn't tell if it was an impersonation of being helpful or if he was just very good. He explained that he was temping, that he was meant to be writing his "college" assignment, that he'd last studied/or was from Birmingham.
As we lazed around, he walked past three of us on the lawns, with his satchel over his shoulder sideways and nodded and smiled at us, and as soon as he was almost out of earshot, R said "Oh, I so want to set him up with my friend!" I responded "Wow, does she also love cool nerds who wear glasses that make them look like they're from Thunderbirds?!" When he finished up with us Thursday evening and came to say goodbye to the group, he got a standing ovation. I did suggest to R that perhaps she loved him because of the contrast between wading our brains through statistics and needing to creatively float (one of our mentors was seriously into cartooning, a nerd father of five and was the rock star of the retreat).
It's like a ladder of good bookshops, and each surpasses the former. This is better than Gleebooks, Berkelow, the bookshops in Potts Point and the one in Melbourne near Pelligrinis. What was charming about the bookshop was the staff. There was a guy with a long hockey playing girls ponytail halfway down his back, tattooes and Metallica like tshirts. He looked like a 40 something mechanic or guitar teacher. There was the guy with the hard arse nose ring who was quite meek and mild and probably the most apologetic about not being helpful. Then there was the young blonde guy playing with premature ageing by having a beard and wearing vneck grandad jumpers. The book shop faces one of the many grassy quadrangles and mid century cloister style buildings.
Wednesday lunch time was the halfway point of the day as we transitted from short course work to retreat. Several of us lay out in the half dappled sunshine of the quadrangle as I read aloud amusing bits from Submarine by Joe Dunthorne, my new favourite find. Our assistant strolled past. May I say that this is the first time I have ever had acccess to an assistant. He welcomed us every morning to class, arranged the morning and afternoon tea, gave out lunch vouchers (whilst you were sitting at your desk) and even walked me the long way to the doctors clinic when I wasn't well and gave me his mobile number to call if I needed him for anything at all. He was always so polite and serious (he came up to me later and apologised for taking me the long way to the clinic, having reviewed the campus map ) and I couldn't tell if it was an impersonation of being helpful or if he was just very good. He explained that he was temping, that he was meant to be writing his "college" assignment, that he'd last studied/or was from Birmingham.
As we lazed around, he walked past three of us on the lawns, with his satchel over his shoulder sideways and nodded and smiled at us, and as soon as he was almost out of earshot, R said "Oh, I so want to set him up with my friend!" I responded "Wow, does she also love cool nerds who wear glasses that make them look like they're from Thunderbirds?!" When he finished up with us Thursday evening and came to say goodbye to the group, he got a standing ovation. I did suggest to R that perhaps she loved him because of the contrast between wading our brains through statistics and needing to creatively float (one of our mentors was seriously into cartooning, a nerd father of five and was the rock star of the retreat).
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