The inactivity here has been spectacular. Seeing as I've missed a lot of fine details over the preceding few months I reckon I'll just cut to a pertinent issue I found plagued me throughout the last couple of months. Currently I feel as comfortable as lichen on a rock, going nowhere fast, comfy in the security of a house with good housemates and a great city. Anyone who's ever been to Brisbane probably thinks I speak with the sanity of a man who's just poured vinegar down both his ears when I say it's a great city to live in, but for me living life in different places is all about jiving to different grooves, and I am personally glad I can dance to the samba of KL and waltz to the swoon of Brisbane with equal adeptness.

It may come as a surprise to many a reader but I personally had found friends hard to come by in uni. Granted I maintain quite an exclusivist policy when it comes to points of conversational interest, which I reckon does subconciously affect my ability to socialise, but one would have thought that in a relatively enclosed society of 40,000 people I would at least have found a clique of people to know on a hi/bye basis. I had earlier lamented this paradox, but having entered second year it seems company is finally availing itself to me, and I now have a few faces I can grit my misshapen teeth at in the corridors.

I cannot however, help but greet this refreshing avenue of potential company with the big foam hand marked 'CYNICISM'. The reality hit home last month with an end-of-sem lecture regarding the deepsea expeditions which UQ will undertake in a year's time. For those who aren't in the know, a good man with more money than you or me [and possibly the both of us combined] bought a ship, outfitted them with two research submersibles [also his], did such boyish things as dive to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean and plant a flag on the North Pole to become the first man to truly do so, because Man likes planting flags into random 'significant' patches of ground to signify his ownership of said terrain, got bored, as men often do, and flogged his Extreme Battleboat set off to this prestigious institution at a cut-price rate, in a sale which I presume did not involve scantily-clad models perched on various promontories of the ship's outrigging seductively directing 'come-hither' glances at the uni's directors. Anyway this wonderful set of toys is now ours to play with, tinker, knock about, stuff intothe sweaty crotch between our legs and genitals until our groins itch, and set fire to in true Aussie bogan style, and should arrive, newly renovated, by the end of next year, after which this Intrepid Institution of Theologians and Thespians shall undertake a series of Intrepid Expeditions to hitherto-unexplored locations wild and pure [okay, the East Australian Seaboard] in order to fathom their biodiversity and with much faux-professorial rubbing of chins and stroking of brows attempt to explain why there is no Cthulhu, and all that marine jazz.

[Hill-billy annotated version of above paragraph for most readers and all Americans: We got us a boomin' big boat and we're gonna catch us stuff n look at 'em reeeal close through our peeposcopes.]

In all seriousness however, it was announced that quite possibly, some highly limited space [and we're talking realty of the Bill Gates' suit cabinet variety- a big thing, but really not very much at all] would be allocated for Honours projects involving this expedition series. Now as stoked as I was upon hearing the good news I looked around the rest of the classroom held in an awe so dumbstruck it'd put shame upon a nun's 25-year vow of silence, by images of anglerfish and bioluminescent critters flashing across the presentation screen, and two things occurred to me: first, there were 112 other people watching this presentation, and second, I was now in direct competition with all of them. These were the faces whom I ambivalently smile at every day, the people I found no shame in fraternising with; I couldn't look at anyone else in the eye for the rest of the day.

I had found the true cruelty of the workplace, that from this point on, there really were no friends, only competitors, people who know each other on a seemingly amicable basis but behind each other's backs are cutting at each other's throats with blades, boxcutters and those cheap Japanese-made single-sheet plastic files everyone in second year seems to keep their documents in, anything sharp they can get their hands on, pitted against each other in a war a la Battle Royale in which only the really adept and jaded will eventually crawl from, exhausted from their endeavours in which they had to downtread and supercede friends, relationships and potted plants, to achieve their own ultimately selfish ends, and I am one of these people. Whether I am one of the victors or one of the fallen remains to be seen. I do firmly believe I write my own destiny, albeit influenced by the outside actions of others, but it seems now I can achieve no end without ending up hurting someone, and almost inevitably the people whom I have grown platonically accustomed to.

Perhaps I am over-complicating matters. Maybe, after all, we could all just get along, despite the distinct competition. People after all have morals, and surely we couldn't all be so devoured by our materialism and the rat race to the top that we'd end up compromising the friendships we built. When I think about it however, I realise that certainly I am not the only person to have had this epiphany. People at my age group and education level would do well to look around at the number of friends who have already shown the signs of promise, the ones who've taken up research and advanced study programmes and in that manner have already been earmarked for greatness, yet still find time to work three jobs in a week and possibly fund their own education. Then you realise that the logic, like a dandelion seed in a tsunami, just won't stand. You realise it's happening already, and as Nick Hornby wrote in his excellent book Fever Pitch, with relevance to Gus Caesar, that maligned Arsenal player of the 80s, that you may be great, you may be awesome, but sometimes in life, even your best is not good enough, and all you can do for the rest of your life is to continue combating, fighting against the crowd which collectively seems to already have an opinion against your success, and finally at the end, jaded and weary, with half your life gone and your sperm count down to near-zero, you realise that you have no real friends, you never did, and you never are going to, that all the smiles you made at that hot blonde in class came to nought, that all the contacts you exchanged in the hope of 'widening your network' never helped, and you retire, cold, and alone, with the cold snow of your life's achievements fluttering to dust around your head, as you realise death is nigh in the cold zephyrs, and you finally muster the strength to question, 'For what was all this for?'...