Rather excited

Wooh-hooh!

Today I completed my University of Technology of Sydney offer acceptance form and in exactly the time it takes the combined Turkish and Australian postal systems to safely navigate my envelope's contents into the hands of a friendly but probably slightly bored paper shuffler, I'll be officially enrolled once again as another pointless member of society who skims off the taxes of hard-working everyday Australians by becoming a student. I'm very excited. Both at the opportunity to study again, at my long opening sentence to this blog entry, and at the chance to stop shaving and arise from bed after others have long scampered from the house with their briefcase.

It's so long to Starbucks and crying into my caffe latte at 8am and buongiorno 'maybe I'll get up now before the sun goes down'. Exhilarating.

There is much to do. Stationary shops, inexplicably along with hardware stores and the Turkish bakkal, hold more than a passing attraction for me. I've forever been mezmerised by locales with floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with a multitude of products in numerous shapes and sizes and ordered in a way that makes me feel safe. Stationary store offer me a sense of security that a roof over my head cannot. I love the the lines of neatly arranged lead pencils, in descending order hardness, from 4B to 2HH. Paper organised by texture, paints by hues, sketch books by size and notebooks by binding. Stationary stores bring order, an oasis in an world of cluttered desks and office disorder. It's easy to draw the same analogy with hardware stores and the infinite possibilities of fixing, fasting, joining and adhering that can be had.

The Turkish bakkal, or deli, corner store or tuck shop a la turquoise provides the same sensory fulfillment. I always return from the local shop with more than the requisite repulsive and ubiquitous un-gratifying long-life milk that remains de rigueur in Istanbul. There is something very attractive about kuruyemiş, the unending variety of fried fruit and nuts that can be had within 500 metres of where you might be positioned in Istanbul. I like regularity and Turkish dried fruit keeps me very regular indeed.

Anyway, I'm off to the closest stationary shop to buy everything that cannot be purloined from work over the next eight days. I have also purchased a new digital voice recorder but it's such an exciting acquisition that it deserves its own blog entry. So more about that later.

I'm off to talk gsm, foolscap and spiral binder.