hello. end of quarantine period so i can use the internet now ( via 3 pedal-powered computers in the main building, which we've not been allowed in to on account of our potentially-sars-laced-breath the past 10 days )

yeah. life is pretty good here. no actually life is beautiful here. only roberto benigni isn't in this one.

ok perhaps that was lame. indulge me. oh before i forget, i got your smses, yan, but i can't reply. didn't sign up for autoroam. haha. sorry.

so i was just lying in bed the other day and reflecting that life here is well good, especially when you remember that you're actually serving your ns liability ( you can forget that, almost ). mmm.

we're in the british aerospace ( BAe) flight training college in tamworth, which is in the tamworth city airport compound. so its a civilian place, albeit crawling with australian defence force ( adf ) types. no babes around though. maybe in town. hehehehe. mmph. the first ten days life was pretty much free-n-easy. a few hours of mass briefs in the morning, then you're free for the rest of the day. almost totally own time own target. there's tennis, basketball, gym and even a swimming pool for anyone foolish to try swimming in winter.

accomodation is exactly like a hotel room, only minus tv and phone. there's a tv in our lounge though. aussie tv....well....its ok. there's stuff like south park ( excellent! ), jerry springer ( trashy! ), friends etc. the aussie version of big brother is popular. they show an hour or two of live footage every bloody evening on channel10. there's an uncensored version, "big brother uncut" on wednesday nights, but last week's episode was crap, centering as it did on saxon agonising over whether to shave his pubes. he did, if you're interested. there's the odd bit of trashy porn on some late nights. oh yes. porn. hahaha. every course keeps the communal prOn mags hidden in the lounge's false ceiling. its an open secret though.

food is pretty good. like a buffet style, every meal. fairly good although breakfast is the same everyday. barely worth getting up for on weekdays and not worth it at all on weekends. then there're 3 pizza joints here for delivery. cheap - $8 or so for a large pizza. standard about the same as pizza hut or canadian 2for1 - nothing fantastic.

met my instructor today. he's a beng! imagine that. i'm honestly worried i won't be able to understand him up there. bad england, man. like today he was saying "...the dirt track south from the curlewis", where curlewis is a town. and, "you must pwevent yaw!". mmph. quite.

i probably won't be flying till next week though; there're too many of us. so the programme from today onwards is like this

you wake up any time you want, as long as you get to the rsaf classroom around 7.20. breakfast optional.
sit in the room and rot, unless you're flying that day. in which case you rot, fly, then go back to rotting. nothing to do in the room. there's a computer yuou can play solitaire on. there's a radio for listening in on the ATIS ( sth like weather info ) or tower ops. alas, you can't transmit on it.
(i.e. you: tamworth tower, harrier eight-niner, 2 POB, received ATIS alpha, ready for gate west.
tower: what? where are you, harrier eight-niner?
you: right there! on the runway! there man, right there!)

pity.

well there are lots of people waiting to use the comp. first time in 10 days, after all. maybe more some other day.