Aussie Expats Update – Driving Reprimands, Manuscript Typing and Travel Planning

It’s Friday yet again (thank goodness!), and I’m worried that no tale will ever again live up to that of the free-spirited armadillo I introduced you all to last week. [We need to name it, I think, then freely and ignorantly apply this name to every and all armadillos seen in the future, dead (‘sleeping’) or alive.]

However, I did get pulled over by an on-base cop yesterday! There you go, more drama and intrigue in the life of the Aussie expats. Having picked James up to take him to a promotion ceremony that was happening elsewhere on base (and on a tight schedule, I’d like to add), I turned right at a T-junction at the bottom of the road and next thing I knew, was getting wee-ooo-wee-ooo’ed. We looked at one another, exchanged the customary “Is that for us?” and pulled over to the side; despite James’ impatience, we managed to sit tight while the policeman took a million years to get out of the car and come over to us.

Turns out, in his opinion, I kind of cut off the guy behind me when I turned… Sorry, what? He told me he wasn’t going to give me a ticket, but to be more careful in future: not sure whether that’s thanks to the Australian driver’s licence, our accents or the terse, impatient Army officer sitting in the front seat but let me ask you this.

If I didn’t break the law… Why the hell am I being pulled over?  

Last time I checked, police officers weren’t there to rate people’s driving skills: and if they were, there are undoubtedly a myriad of people more in need than I am (though I guess all bad drivers consider themselves good drivers, so who knows). Never mind the fact that this guy was driving towards me, so his perception was already skewed by the angle at which he was observing the incident. My dad told me I should be thankful that it went smoothly, considering Australian cops don’t often make the news for shooting people; however, I will confess to being completely flabbergasted and not a little bit pissed off that simply because someone didn’t like the way I took a corner, I had to waste my time and energy getting told off. So, there you go.

I am officially a fearless, crazed woman behind the wheel and I have been told off by an American police officer for my driving skills (or lack thereof).

On another note, it’s the end of the first week of a fortnight Uni break and considering a number of upcoming assessments – and yes, for those of you dying of curiosity about my political ideologies essay, I completed it and submitted it with James’ all-knowing blessing – it’s pretty timely. I’ve made myself a list of things to accomplish, including: psychology research report, first draft of my 2000 word travel writing story, first draft of my publishing and editing essay and transcribing some of my handwritten manuscript to computer. Despite the fact that I had to catch up on course work for a lot of this week after putting it off last week to work on my fascism essay, I’m feeling pretty good about achieving the vast majority of them. We’re planning on going camping in Arkansas for the long weekend at the start of September, which is incredibly exciting for us! We’re looking at heading out to the hot springs in the national park with some yet-to-be-purchased camping equipment (we’re doing no spend August and then will launch ourselves into Spendtember with our camping gear). Then we’ve planned on going to Dallas the following weekend, then the next round of the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge is the weekend after that: so it’s going to be tight tight tight for assessments due on the 23rd of September. I figure if I get something cracked out now, I should hopefully make my life a bit easier!

Working on transcribing a handwritten manuscript to your laptop is no easy task. After what seems like hours of work, peering alternately at the book and at the screen, fingers flying (and making a lot of errors on the way) with sore shoulders and a deep-seated desire for gummy bears, I have invariably only typed one or two handwritten pages. For context, that’s less than 1000 words. Considering that my manuscript is sitting somewhere around the 70 pages, 65 000 words (roughly) mark, and I’ve only typed up 13 pages, I can see this being a long slog… Like maybe a year or something crazy like that .

Can you pay someone to type your manuscript for you? If you can, who are they, how much do I need to pay them and how long will it take?

I hope everyone has a great weekend: I’m anticipating some training, some study, an epic beef stew that I cannot wait to eat and hopefully a mammoth storm to photograph and watch with wide eyes.

— Ana.