My beloved No. 18.

I refer to the one with "Made in France" on the back, not that crazy shimmery No. 18 that's has "Made in USA" and is called "Vamp". Shimmery and a less classy name = a double dose of nastiness.

Rouge Noir is my favourite nail polish colour. It's the one I resort to when I can't decide what colour I feel like wearing for the next few days.

Unfortunately for me, my current bottle has been around for a while now; it's becoming more viscous each time I use it and more difficult to apply. I should just go in and buy a new bottle, perhaps from the new Chanel boutique in Chadstone. It would give me an excuse to sample the fragrances that aren't kept at David Jones, Myer and other Chanel stockists.

However, it is Christmas - and there's no way I'm stepping into a major shopping centre now.

Adding to the annoyance is that I have a particular order that I paint my nails in, so my right thumbnail always looks quite atrocious with this colour. All my other nails are nice and smooth (and shiny!), this one's not. I refuse to fix it as there's always the risk that soaking some cotton wool with nail polish remover could cause a minor spill onto nails of the fingers holding the cotton wool. It would be a catastrophe.

Perhaps I need to work on my coordination.

Grow our ... business to include strong modelling capabilities from inland to coastal environs.

That came through in an internal email yesterday afternoon at work as one of the global growth areas for the company I'm at. It's semi-amusing as it would be something that I could do at the completion of the PhD.

While I don't want to get ahead of myself, nor do I want to continue in consulting (at this stage), it does provide some substance to a couple of offers and questions asked of me yesterday.

I told my two day-to-day managers what my intentions were for the future but that I wouldn't be handing in my resignation until the New Year. I'm currently working on a project that is best described as an unstable work environment, so letting them what was going on with me gives them time over the Christmas/New Year office closure period to manage my departure and gives me a clear conscience.

One manager asked if I wanted to work part-time in the Sydney office. I didn't anticipate this, but at the same time wouldn't do it as I wanted to focus on the PhD. So I declined and provided that reason.

The other manager asked if I wanted to defer my employment. Another option that I did not anticipate. I didn't answer directly, telling him that I should have applied for working at the environmental sister company rather than the infrastructure one that I was ultimately employed by. We are all one company now, so I could move to what is now another team.

But I think a clean break is best for me. I'll just keep in touch with the necessary people.

Internal injuries?

I continue to wonder if Glen Moss not playing was due to friction between himself and Kevin Muscat. Muscat, as captain and assistant coach, appears to have enormous influence on the team - the Victory defence sometimes gets into serious problems because it seems like they MUST pass the ball to him!

Not being able to communicate well with your defence, means that they can't work for you and you can't work for them. So I can't say that Moss is solely responsible for that 4-0 loss to Central Coast, but I don't think he should be made the scapegoat either.

And I'm outta here!

The long wait is over - I now have my PhD place and scholarship confirmed for next year! :)

Of course, things had to change a little at work so that my resignation is no longer as straight forward...

Timeline of this week:

1. Wed - receive an SMS telling me about the PhD scholarship.
2. Thu - work approves a conference I had planned to go to in March (I have a paper to present).
3. Fri lunch - receive written notification of a pay-rise from work.
4. Fri arvo - receive the email with the formal offer of the PhD scholarship. Confirmed that I need to start by mid-Feb.

While I still have a week or so of work until the office closes for Christmas and New Year, I don't want to give them more than the four weeks of notice defined in my contract. But I need to book the conference this year. Messy. LOL.

On the other side of things, I don't want to hand in the resignation on the first day back at the office. So according to my timelines, I'll finish work on a Friday and have to move up to Sydney and begin the PhD by the following Friday.

I'm looking forward to the weekend immediately after... zzz...

And as for the pay rise? It seems that work like me, they really like me*. ;)



*If I used the correct words I think it would have had a different, un-Cecilia tone. :)

Archie Thomspon

Enough said.

So who still hates Archie Thompson?

This was shouted out by a man who sits one row behind me on my left after Thompson had scored his second goal.

He's quite aware of the group I sit amongst that is unhappy with Thompson as a player and as the marquee - someone will semi-regularly yell out, "Archie! You're shit!"

Reading the paper and watching highlights of yesterday's match, it's somewhat (ok, very) frustrating that Thompson is portrayed as a player who is deserving of being considered for the Socceroos squad. The Australian public seem to think that a player who scores a couple of goals in a match is a good player. They fail to realise that Thompson is lazy and needs the whole team to play for him in order for him to be effective.

Gone is Danny Allsopp who worked all over the field – patching up the gaps that occurred in the midfield in defence, gaps which have become more apparent this season. Without Allsopp there is no longer a hard-working, self-sacrificing player in the Victory attack who was the perfect alternative to the generally idle and selfish player that Thompson is.

The number of times that Thompson has been offside this year has been ridiculous. I suspect that if there was a statistic that totalled the distance that each player was offside, Thompson would have it in the bag with the most metres. That he’s rarely slightly offside is an indication him not working for the team – he’s out of play and he’s of no use to the team. Sometimes the ball will head out in his off-side direction. Instead of letting the ball go for a throw-in deeep in the opposition defence, Thompson chooses to become involved in the play – giving the opposition a free-kick further up the field than if he had chosen to let it go.

Do you really want such a “player” in your national team?

So he scored a couple of goals last night. Whoop-de-doo. Those goals were a credit to Ward and Kruse – the quality of those passes to Thompson was outstanding. As Fox Sports news were only replaying Thompson’s goals I had a chance to appreciate those passes. They were perfect.

But the media doesn’t seem to recognise the quality of the pass. It happens often that the goal-scorer is the celebrated one. Unfortunately in this case, Thompson is the one being celebrated – a player who does not deserve to be in the national team, but with the media coverage causes the public to believe that he belongs in the national team! A preposterous idea!

The worst thing is that football is still a misunderstood sport here in Australia. So much of the focus is on scoring goals. It's a mindset that will take a long time to change, having had so many decades of AFL as the primary sport - a sport that is high scoring and where 'booting' the ball up the field is OK. Football is a different kind of sport. The Australian public will need to recognise that it's not AFL on a square pitch, and that there is much more to being a footballer than scoring goals that are served up on a silver plate.

Women's stuff

No, not a post about menstruation. Though I did want to type that word just for the sake of being slightly cheeky. :) This post is just a random musing of sorts.

I recently obtained my Learner's permit for riding a motorbike! It's all quite exciting, though Melbourne has turned on its rainmaker so I haven't been test-riding bikes. But I have been accumulating gear.

Have you any idea how difficult it is to get a ladies' summer jacket with a waterproof removable liner in a colour that is NOT black? There were only two jackets that met my needs. Add my long arms, and I am left with one jacket.

Really - I'm sure there are a number of female motorcyclists out there. Surely, there's a lot more options than what I've found so far?

And yes, it had to be a ladies cut - it's the only way that all the padding and armour would sit in the right places.

Reminds me of my (men's) goalkeeping pants. I suppose most of the padding is in the right place - a lot of it bunches up around my waist - not a surprise given I have hips and men do not. Well, they do, but they're not wider than the rest of them!

P.S. I had a bio electrical impedance analysis today. My calculated age was only 2 months older than I actually am. For someone who is generally sedentary, albeit a once a week/fortnight cycle, and doesn't follow any particular diet - I'm pretty happy. Especially since the exercise and diet conscious girl who sits on my left at work had a calculated age 3 years older than her actual age. :) Ooooh, am I evil or what?

I've been thinking about my juicer lately, and today's BIA got me thinking about recipes, so I may start that again. Sad, isn't it? ;)