Broken Hill - The Argument

Me vs The Establishment

Broken Hill - The Odyssey - Part Three.

Losing the flattened 20 cent coin to outback Australia is a kick in the pants administered by the establishment. *Shakes fist* Damn you establishment! I wont give up that easily! I wont!

Night one I had eaten a hearty steak - scotch fillet, what else? - and for lunch was just a sandwich. The guys I was rooming with had began part two of their Wang Quest. It was really just a sausage feast every night for those guys. If I were an outside observer of any kind, I'd have surmised from their love meat, tubular in shape, in or around their mouths, three times a day, for five days, that they love cock.

I don't have anything to add to this.

In serious news however, I dreaded what my lecturer would say to me. I wasn't sure how deep in the shit I was. I've been in heaps of trouble a few times in my life, and this was the first in a long time. Maybe even the last time I felt like this was when the boss from the golf club called me into his office and said I had to leave, which was in 08, I think.

So I was standing in the door way to my room picking my nose because of all the dust out there, we were constantly getting massive, diamond like boogers - don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. I was just trying to alleviate my lungs from having to suck harder due to the restricted intake, when he pops his head in the door and says "Righto, let's go outside" (he's British - while playing cricket a few days later, he said: shitey bullocks - I have now included it into my rotation of words, so if you hear me us it, you know where I got it from. Trying, to, resist, comma orientated, joke).

Meanwhile, in England

My first thought was, I hope he wasn't standing there long. He begins to tell me how disappointed he is - and I hope it's not because I was digging for gold - and that he feels the only course of action to take is to send me home. He had spoken to the head of the Science Department at Macquarie and they had said to send me home also. It would cost X amount to change my ticket, and here is the phone number to get it done. I'll drive you to the train station myself. What do you think?

Well, I have done some pretty stupid things in my life, and I haven't had to suffer any consequences for most of them, so perhaps this one time, I'm going to have to do what I'm told and accept my punishment.

I'm not even kidding that's what I said.

Lord Monkton, what a fuck wit.

He then told me I should come up with an argument to try to persuade him otherwise. I said I was happy to take the punishment, but being the ex-Commissioner he is, I guess he likes to hear arguments.

If there was one lesson I've learned in all my 27 years, it's that there are many. And the point is that if you need to select one, do it. But if not, then don't. So when this happens, you know how to respond. Understand?

I asked if not completing the field trip would compromise my ability to complete the class. He wasn't sure and would have to get back to me. If it was going to however, I told him I would come to him with an argument.

I went and spoke to a bunch of people and they gave me advice on what arguments I should use. I got a few good ones, but decided to go with my own. I'm not even sure why I didn't use all of them, in hind sight, I guess it doesn't matter.

I put it to him that because earlier in the day, me and another person had crossed the tracks (at a different site) in front of an instructor and himself, to no repercussion, it had set a precedent. There was a culture among the student body that there were no rules - the only rules we had were out of respect and not any higher purpose - and the tracks weren't an out of bounds entity.

This was the basis for my argument.

He allowed it as it was a fact, and it had indeed set the bar for later in the day. He went on the tell me that he had spoken to another academic on the phone and they told him to fill out an incident form as if the train had derailed. It would have cost the lives of a couple of people and a shit tonne of money. He tried to make a point of that but I didn't really give a shit. I said, now off the record, you had told us you put a coin under a TGV train in France!

Dunno what happened, we was just trainspotting, innit...

He laughed and said I could stay. If I had gone home, it wouldn't be able to affect the outcome of the class, which posed a bigger problem for him.

Regardless, he needed to punish me. And short of not knowing how to, he gave me a 24 hour No Participation Suspension - probably the first time a uni student has ever had a detention. My head exploded with how awesome that was going to be. I thanked him and he thanked me, for some reason, and we went our separate ways.

A day of doing nothing? FUCK YEAH!

Fuck yeah!

Earlier we had gone to Woolies and Big W to get supplies. The number one best buy was the cricket set as it supplied us with hours of entertainment. We loaded a good length with a pile of rocks to make it more interesting. But it didn't really, finding rocks to put on the pitch was more fun then what the rocks produced when the ball landed on them. I donated the set to the lodge.

The umbrella field was a must

The number two best buy was my hat. Don't even remember how much it was, but it was worth twice as much.

That picture is pretty cool, it could very well end up in the blog banner.