Week 20 - Up-skilling & Sunburning

Thursday #21 – This Thursday’s early wakeup call was a bit of a shock to the system.  Having moved house to be closer to uni; I found myself back at my old digs after Wednesday night’s futsal and once again waking up ridiculously early to spend 90 minutes on a bus rather than 10.  When I got to uni it was time to learn some new and exciting techniques and then practise them on The Italian.  Together we mastered (or at least got a signature to say we fluked it once) the following techniques: removing a foreign body from the eye (though admittedly that was done on a bull’s eye with a contact lens and cling wrap over the top, not on each other), pressure patching, measuring how much our eyes bulge out, sphygmomanometry (at which point The Not Much Older Than Me Supervisor suggested we were perhaps forgetting to breathe as our resting heart rates were ridiculously high), testing for colour blindness and taking photos of the back of the eye.  The Oh So Cool Salesman had M-Dizzle cracking up when he suggested that the camera flash would need to be turned down to take photos of my eye, in his words “now as soon as you see red hair, turn the flash right down”.

The Italian, M-Dizzle, The Greek Jesus and I headed down to Coogee beach in our lunch break to grab some food (all of us), have a swim (The Greek Jesus), get a tan (The Italian) and get stupidly sunburnt (me and M-Dizzle).  There was some disappointment as M-Dizzle gee’d herself up for a McOz and then accidentally ordered a Big Mac but all was well when The Italian offered up the pickle from her cheeseburger.  There were laughs all round when we realised The Greek Jesus and I had dressed in matching clothes and we gave each other props for the other's stylish white top and blue and white striped shorts/skirt combo.  With classes done and bright red backs heating up, it was time for the O-week optometry barbecue.  The Oh So Cool Salesman was funding the event and while not his biggest fan, I am yet to do my grocery shopping so was more than happy to indulge in some free beer and snags.

The BBQ provided a great opportunity for M-Dizzle to make jokes at my expense and in the process make other students who we’ve never met before, feel rather awkward and embarrassed.  As a guy wandered up to introduce himself and offer some assistance, The 4^th Year clarified that we were not in fact lost 1^st years but were instead in our 5^th and final year of uni.  He tried to make up for this with a “yeah I thought you looked older and more experienced”, at which point M-Dizzle turned to me to announce “did you hear that – he just called you a slut”.  We laughed it up and the poor kid went bright red as M-Dizzle’s interpretation was obviously not what he had intended.

A couple of sausage sandwiches and some strange beer later we headed home.  Not an overly exciting Thursday but as far as a uni day goes it wasn’t too bad.  There were no free movies but there was free food so I can’t complain too much.