It has been an interesting week. It started off on a bad note with my getting up with a horrible pain in my mouth and my head on Sunday. My upper-right wisdom tooth was on the way out and making a big fuss about it, until it even chewed open an ulcer on my cheek. It was a dull but constant pain from my jaw up the entire right side of the face. If you put your face against the wall and start pushing yourself sideways, that's what it felt like.The next few days the pain didn't ease off, and I was getting grumpy and short-tempered. One of the reasons was that I had a lot of things planned for the week, including attending 2 networking events and attending a friend's birthday party. I was upset that I would have to cancel attendance to all of them if I decided to get the tooth extracted. In the end the pain was unbearable and I just made an appointment with the cheapest dentist I could find, because dental is not covered by Medicare and I don't have private medical insurance yet. The appointment was at 9:30am on Thursday, and the clinic was in Richmond and the Chinese dentist (he's from Hong Kong) determined it needed to come out and I agreed wholeheartedly. 30 mins later and $88 poorer, I left with my wisdom tooth in my bag instead of my mouth (which was full of blood instead). The pain of the extraction set in after the anesthetic wore off and I was on Panadols for the next couple of days. Despite having just taken the tooth out in the morning, I decided to go for the RMIT Alumni Talk on "How to Profit from Design" that same night, having already paid for it anyway. I just made sure I took my painkillers before I left, and ate some light food beforehand cos I wasn't sure what type of cocktail finger-food they'd be serving. Dentist also gave instructions to avoid alcohol until the wound heals. The very first person I spoke to while mingling before the talk was Antony from quicksmartweb.com. I had actually applied for work at his company a few weeks back and he recognized my name. We had a chat about the work I've done and the design industry in Australia in general. Hopefully this is a start of something good. The talk given by two renowned Australian architects gave opposing views on the subject matter, but it was all good. They gave pointers on how small, upcoming studios are run, most importantly managing their finances to break even initially. To actually be profitable it would take a matter of years once it has established itself. I did a bit more networking after the talk ended and distributed a few more of my name cards before calling it a night. Friday I went to the city for a bit to check out what's going on with the Christmas sales on now. That evening I met up with Moira, my former lecturer at RMIT, to discuss an art installation project she's doing and needs some help with. It's the Director Lingo part of it that will run on a computer which will be triggered by viewers interacting with the artwork outside of the computer (not a usual input device like a mouse or a touch screen). Laura's birthday party was a Scu Bar on Satruday night and it was good catching up with her and Jodee. Both of them being my classmates in my final Degree year in RMIT 3 years ago. James, Jodee's husband, mentioned there might be work at his company for someone to reorganize their Intranet system. I'll be keeping in touch and see where this goes. Last week I sold my Palm Tungsten T2 on eBay and I've actually received payment and sent it out on Friday by Express Post, but Max, the buyer in Brisbane, still hasn't received it after a _week_! I've been in constant contact with him and Australia Post who are now investigating the lost parcel. The thing is Post says the barcode of the package wasn't scanned, and when I checked with them early in the week they said that unscanned packages might still be delivered on time. Well, it hasn't, and nobody from Post can tell us where it is either. So much for "Guaranteed Next Day Delivery". This is the first time I've had a bad experience with Australian Post. I'll be calling them up on Monday and they had better have a good explanation then, or be prepared to compensate us for the contents of the lost package. The weather's been warm the past few days, hovering around the mid-30 degrees in the day, but it just started raining (with the sun shining brightly). Weather forecast says thunderstorms this evening and maybe tomorrow too. I purposely bought today's Sunday Age to get a free 2004 Leunig calendar.