Big Day Out!! selling my body + plans

Things continue much as usual - work, formatting, getting frustrated with Word, retreating to the office kitchen with the free food.

However, the immensely good news is that I scored a ticket to the Big Day Out music festival tomorrow!!! (see www.bigdayout.com for details). It's Australia day, the celebration of the day Australia was discovered by white people - hmm, dubious cause for a holiday, surely - which is a bank holiday. I wasn't planning on going to Big Day Out, but then I realised on monday that I really did want to go and my ticket is a testimony to my Ebay-ing skills.

So that's tomorrow. Work on friday is going to be...painful.

I'm earning some extra money by participating in a medical trial. Basically...this involves me getting a trial vaccine for Japanese Encephalitis and then keeping a diary for 30 days to see I drop down dead/experience side effects. For this I get paid $250. My friends over here have mostly been very concerned about my doing this: "What, are you crazy?!" being the usual reaction. For those of you out there who are screaming "No! Mary, don't do it, your health is not something to gamble with and there are other ways to earn money!" - too late: I got vaccinated yesterday. So far...I feel fine. Touch wood, fingers crossed, etc.


So given that I'm earning money in this somewhat dubious fashion, I've been planning constructive and positive ways to spend it. This job finishes in just over 3 weeks, and the trial at the end of february, so after that I'll be free to leave Sydney and do some more travelling. I'm thinking of going down to Melbourne from where I could fly to Tasmania and volunteer in an environment conservation project for a week or so(good CV building for when I try to get a place in a Greenpeace anti-whaling boat or whatever). Then back to Melbourne, on to Adelaide via the Great Coast Road, and by then my money will probably have run out again and I'll need to find some kind of work (fruit picking is still on the cards).