A Week In My Life

Hello friends! So, I’ve done one of these before, and you all loved it. Or you at least claimed to love it. Either way, I got great feedback and reviews.

Because I like being affirmed that I’m capable of doing something right, I’m gonna do another one. This week isn’t ridiculously musical in terms of what I’m doing or where I’m going, but it’s a fun week so I thought I’d have another go!

I actually started this post two separate times, once because I wasn’t happy with the visuals and the photos I had taken, and another time because I forgot to take photos for one whole day and had nothing to show for it.

But yeah, here’s another week in my life.

This time, let’s see if I decide to go to my lectures … (hint: probably not).

MONDAY
Monday was a struggle, but I managed to drag myself out of bed and get into the city for university. I did feel slightly cheated, considering I got dressed and got on the bus, but by the time I was getting on the train the sun had started to beat down and it had reached close to 25 degrees. Cheated. It was exceptionally warm for Spring, and I was not prepared. Thankfully I spent quite some time inside, first at my tutorial.

It was an interesting enough tutorial. I couldn’t completely validate coming into the city for a one hour class, but I made the most of it, welcomed the extra work and practice for our upcoming final quiz, and thanked my tutor for her help this semester. I loved having her, she was a legend.

After finishing up my class, I headed back into Melbourne Central to meet up with a friend for lunch. We walked around the shops for half an hour or so, before getting back on the train and heading home.

TUESDAY
Tuesday was a good day. One of the things that has changed since my last A Week In My Life post, is that I’ve started working a bit more regularly. Tuesday was a 9-5:30 shift, and it was pretty quiet, considering how shitty the weather was. It was a drastic change to the warm, sunny weather on Monday, and the rain and humidity probably kept some people at home, meaning it was pretty quiet, enough to get some work done. I ended up working on a blog post for my work’s website, collating catalogs, tuning guitars, answering the phones and online inquiries, posting on the store FaceBook page, and assisting any brave customer that came in from the rain.

On Tuesday I also got a message from one of my best friend’s (my pal Nishika, who coincidentally appeared in my first Week In My Life) boyfriend, who’s the music director at a new cocktail bar, offering me another set time for Friday. A few weeks ago my guitarist and I performed a short 45 minute gig at the bar, and it was heaps of fun, so I was over the moon to get a message asking if I wanted to perform again on Friday. After frantically messaging my guitarist again to check his availability, I confirmed the gig and spent a little bit of time typing up a set list.

In the evening I spent some time editing some of my own blog posts, checking in on two of my last assignments for this week and listening to some music before driving to the gym. If you haven’t checked out my playlists for the gym, I have two, which you can check out HERE and HERE. After an amazingly sweaty and brutal leg session, I headed home to do some more work on my group assignments, and called it a day.

WEDNESDAY
As I mentioned above, I’ve started working more often, especially in the front end of the store with all the musical instruments rather than with sheet music and books, and Wednesday was another 9-5:30 shift. It was also another day of doing some pretty fun secretarial work, which I secretly really love. I’ve been taking on more responsibility in terms of back-end work and giving my opinion and input on bigger decisions that are made in regards to the running of the store and our online presence especially, which I love, and Wednesday gave me a decent dose of that. It was a pretty quiet day in terms of customers, though I did manage to help out a woman very early in the morning, meaning I got a sale in, which I didn’t do at all on Tuesday.

I got to fill in in the Print Department again, which is always nice. Because it tends to get really quiet back there throughout the middle of the day, I was able to do some of my own work, adding notes to a Slide presentation for Thursday and editing some blog posts.

After work I got a bit of driving done, which I absolutely love now that I have my license, and did a pick up and drop off between my Mum at a night class and my sister from her dance class. In between going back and forth to pick them up, I finished up the last final touches for my university presentations.

THURSDAY
My Thursday got off to a shaky start. I slept in a little bit late, but still managed to catch my bus to the train station. Then while on the train, I swear to God, I got so invested in looking at memes on FaceBook, I completely missed the stop at Richmond to get off and change to my City Loop train, meaning I had to go to Flinders Street and wait 15 minutes for the next train back to Melbourne Central. Which in turn, resulted in me walking into my 10:30 class at 10:40 and rushing to get sorted with my group for our presentation.

The presentation went alright. I’m just making a Credit in that class, which isn’t bad at all. But probably could have bumped my score up to a Distinction if we put a bit more effort but I finish uni this week and care factor is: 0.

The next two hours after that class were spent walking around Melbourne Central. I spent a bit of money, not too much, and afterwards headed to Nando’s for lunch, where I was joined by Kate, who has been mentioned on the blog quite a few times by now. After our Nando’s we walked over to Boost to get our Thursday Mango Tango which has been a tradition of ours this semester, and then headed to our Television Cultures class.

I had another presentation in this class, this time with Kate, and it was on the TV show The 100. Comparatively to the first presentation of the day, this one went really well and our class was fantastic. After university, we hopped on the train and headed back to my house, before getting changed and getting in the car to head to our netball game with all our friends.

It was a pretty close game, we lost by four, but it was a really fun match, though an indicator that my fitness levels are drastically worst than I initially thought. After dropping Kate, my other friend and my cousin back to their house, my little sister and I headed home.

What was left of the evening was spent preparing for an assignment that was due on Friday night which I had yet to start, as well as finalising all the details of my set for the next day.

FRIDAY
Friday was a slow, yet hectic day for me, if that makes any sense at all. In true Priya fashion I left one of my biggest assignments, until the last day it was due. My studio class this semester was about cover songs, recording covers, performing tributes, anything and everything to do with performing pre-existing songs.

Our final assessment was to be developed over the semester, and that was a recorded version of a cover of any song of our choice. Throughout the entire semester, I had no idea of what song I was doing. And up until Friday morning I was still down to a list of four songs. Eventually I landed on iRobot by my man, Jon Bellion (new album out next month, get keen, get prepared).

That resulted in the next six hours of the day, stuck at my desk, practising, recording and mixing my cover, trying to not deviate too much from the original, but following the assignment criteria enough to ‘make it my own’. I don’t know, we’ll see what my mark is, but I feel like I did a decent job.

By the time I finished the song, finished the spoken reflection, uploaded it all and submitted it, I had another two hours to spare before I needed to start getting ready for the evening, so naturally I watched a movie, XOXO, which was decent enough to pass some time and have on while I did some general cleaning around my room.

Around 7:00 I began getting ready for my gig that evening, and after I was all dressed up I quickly jumped to upload the cover to SoundCloud, and just as it finished uploading I got the text that my guitarist was in front of my house to pick me up.

We made it to the gig with a couple minutes to spare, and while it was a really quiet gig, I enjoyed it. There weren’t many people at all, but it made it a little less stressful, we mucked around a bit and chatted while we were up, and the vibe was generally really good. Getting paid to play music and muck around? Yes please.

Due to how quiet it was, we decided to kick off after our set, staying for a couple more minutes before getting into the car with another friend , and our other friend who plays drums with us, and head to McDonald’s for some food.

It was a good end to a decent day.

SATURDAY
Saturday went much like the last few weeks. I started work at 9:00 in the morning until 5:00. It was a pretty quiet day in the Print Department which is where I was for majority of the day, save for a couple of times when I was needed at the front register.

The evening, after work, is when it well and truly kicked off.

For the last fifteen years my immediate and extended family have held a huge fundraiser for some charities back in India where my family is from. It’s a huge event, we sell tickets to roughly 300 people each year, there’s a band, a DJ, incredible food and heaps of drinking and dancing. It’s one of the highlights of the year and it takes a huge amount of work to put on.

Since I was at my gig on Friday night and work all of Saturday, I missed the huge load of work that’s needed to be done in order to set up the hall for the fundraiser, but ended up going at 6:30 to do last minute stuff before people came at 7:00.

The night was incredible. The music was good, the food was amazing, Dan and James, my two friends who play guitar and drums for me came, along with Kate and another friend Yazmine, and the boys and I even got up and played a few songs for everyone.

It was also a late as heck night. By the time we turned off the music and everyone left it was close to 1:00am, but by the time we packed up what we needed to and left the hall it was closer to 3:30am.

A pretty good day to say the least.

SUNDAY
Sunday was a slow one. Understandably, considering we all only really got to sleep at 4:00. My little sister and I only woke up around 1:30, to the sweet smell of bacon may I add, and majority of the day was spent lazing around, going through photos from the night before, counting money for accounts and sorting out bags that had been dumped in the corridor the night before.

I did some photo editing and post editing for You Should Hear, scheduling a couple more posts and making some small moodboards for said Week In My Life post, before getting ready to see my family again, at one of my cousin’s 23rd birthday dinner.

 

It was a pretty quiet, chilled out dinner in terms of my family’s usual level of rowdiness. The night before was still pretty heavy on everyone and we were all still a little bit drained from the lack of sleep, but managed to have a really good time with great food again.

It was a good, relaxing way to end the week.

I really enjoyed making and writing this post. I hope it wasn’t boring to read, if you stuck around to read it all. Let me know what you thought, I’d love your feedback on these type of posts!

x

Priya

PS:
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A Slightly More Musical Than Usual, Week In My Life

Hello hello!

Thanks for choosing to give me some of your time, I can’t guarantee it’ll be worth it, but we can sure as heck try.

This week I thought I’d let you guys in on a week in my life, more specifically, my first week back at university, and an exceptionally busy week in general. I’ve done one of these before, my I Blogged My Day post, where I gave you updates as I went about my regular day at university, but I thought I’d extend on it a bit, considering I have a busy week ahead.

Let’s get into it!
(I hope you all notice and appreciate the date stamps on the photos throughout this post, I wasn’t playing any games this week).

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SATURDAY
I worked today. I struggled considerably to get up at 9:00 this morning due to the Melbourne public transport system screwing us over last night on our way back from the footy, turning what should have been a forty minute trip home into a two and a half hour nightmare.

It’s been pretty slow at work for the last few weeks, I guess because it’s school holidays and quite a few people are away and schools aren’t buying anything for the term yet, but there’s never a boring day at the music shop. Since I finished smashing boxes considerably fast (amazing stress relief would highly recommend) I was sent over to the MI section to help out at the counter.

I count myself incredibly lucky that for a solid hour and a half I got to sit in the guitar room and tune all the electric guitars and basses with one of my coworkers, with whom the banter is top quality. It was a great way to start the day.

yes ppl I work here, I’m jealous of me too :)))

But then it decided to start picking up, meaning we had some customers coming through the door, and ya girl ended up selling a ukulele and a kids guitar within a forty minute time frame. I was slightly buzzed off the adrenaline but it was a good kick start.

One of the best things about working a Saturday shift is that the company buys us lunch, meaning we got to scoff down pizza during our break before we got straight back into it. I followed the guitar and ukulele sales with the biggest fluke, by selling a bass guitar.

Towards the end of the day I helped in setting up an electric drum kit, and spent the last hour just messing around with the kit and some bass guitars with the other guys working in the MI section with me. It was a good way to end a good day.

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SUNDAY
Today was a really productive day.

Today meant rehearsal.

‘For what?’ I hear you say. For a performance. I finally have another gig coming up next month, and this time I’m playing not only with a friend (colleague too as he works with me at the music shop) accompanying me on the guitar, but with a drummer as well. Which obviously means, we need some decent practice time.

This was the second practice we had, and we managed to get a lot of stuff done, despite the vibes and our energy levels being a lil bit low during the first half of the day, however from 11-4 we plowed through, managing to perfect a few of the songs. PLUS, the boys even helped me finish up a new song, which I had finished the lyrics for earlier in the day while they were setting up the drum kit.

We managed to sort out majority of the setlist, but there’s still one song, an original of mine that we aren’t entirely sold on yet, so depending on how next week goes, we’ll probably try to rework it a little bit more, or choose a different one. We shall see.

not a fan of the chamomile tea, don’t come for me

Unfortunately I was also coming off a cough and cold that’s been floating around, so I wasn’t able to sing as well as I could or really go for any of the high notes in my set, of which there are a couple, though…the dudes forced me to chug two huge mugs of chamomile tea and honey, disregarding me whenever I mentioned that I actually liked neither of those things.

However, I didn’t mention it while I was there to save their heads from exploding, but it definitely did the trick, and we were able to give the last couple of songs a bit more energy.

The rest of the day following rehearsal was spent lounging around at home, only slightly panicking over the impending beginning of university and binge watching Queer Eye on Netflix.

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MONDAY
Ah, Monday. The first day of the week, and the first day of semester two at university. It was definitely a very chill day for me, despite the 7:30 wakeup that was a severe shock to the system after nearly a month and a half of getting up between 9:00 and 10:00. That said, the day did not exactly go off without a hitch, as I came to realise that I’d misread my timetable, and my tutorial only started at 11:30 rather than 10:30.

So what did ya girl do? Literally nothing. I walked back to Melbourne Central to get me some bubble tea cos I live off that stuff, and browsed through some of the shops, all the while checking the time until I could finally head to class.

The class was good, at least. Sure we had to do an ice breaker that I recall doing in Year 7, but it was fun. I have a pretty decent class, and even though none of my close friends are in my tutorial, I have a good group.

During the tutorial however, I managed to take a quick glance at the schedule for the lecture that I had next.

Some of you will judge me for this.

I am not a huge fan of introduction lectures. If whatever is being said can be said on the PowerPoint presentation that’s uploaded online or compiled into a succinct, quick email, then I am all for that option. Which is why when I saw that my lecture would be precisely that, I decided to head to JD and grab a bargain.

These, my friends, are the newest members of the family.

I’ve had my eye on the Reebok Classic Club C’s for ages, they’re one of the top shoes on my ‘Sneakers To Snag’ list on my phone Notes, so when I saw this pair, originally $150, down to $120, and then dropped to a ‘final-pair’ absolute steal of a deal of $60, I knew they were mine. Now we just wait for the 85’s to get on sale too and I can rest.

Does anyone else share an absolute obsession with sneakers that are stupidly out of your budget, save for sales like the one I was blessed with??

Anyway, after I picked up my shoes, I jumped back on the train and headed home. Like I said, a self-inflicted ‘chill’ kinda day. Also it was 13 degrees outside, so chill to that extent as well.

To make up for the cash I dropped earlier in the day, I managed to hold off on buying any lunch on my way home, and made use of the stocked pantry at home. It was a good day and a relaxing evening.

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TUESDAY
Tuesday marked the first day of my newly appointed Tuesday afternoon, 12:00-5:30PM shift at the music shop. Thanks to a much more forgiving university timetable this semester, I was able to jump on the MI roster, meaning I get to work a couple more shifts in the musical instrument department, as well as my regular Saturday shift in the print music department.

Which is exciting.

I spent the first half of my shift doing the usual low rank jobs, none of which I had a huge problem with. The first was flattening cardboard.

Working in a music shop means we are constantly getting instruments and equipment delivered, meaning we are usually left with a large assortment of cardboard boxes in varying sizes, that end up being tossed in the back room for the poor soul left to deal with them at the start of every week.

This week, being me.

However, I can’t say I cared all too much. Our work is pretty lenient. If I’m stuck in a back room, sorting through boxes or doing any odd jobs out of sight of customers, I’m all good to pull out my phone, throw on some tunes and get the job done. Flattening cardboard means I get to go out the back of the store near the carpark with a Stanley knife, blast some tunes from my Spotify, and flatten cardboard at my leisure.

It was a chill start to the day. Again, it was bit windier and colder than I would have liked, so chill in all senses of the word.

Once I finished that, my next job was one of my favourites, one which I jump at the chance to do every day; tuning guitars.

Um … sitting in a room of beautiful guitars, tuning them all up and having a strum when I’m finished each one?

Yes please.

That took up quite some time too, meaning that by the time I was finished, my manager left to go on his break, leaving my other colleague and I to hang out at the front counter, banter over proper conductor hand movements and assist any customers that happened to come in.

Ya girl got another customer lead for a guitar and amp pack meaning commission, but we shall see.

Considering I’m going to be on this shift until the semester finishes and my timetable switches up again, I was also shown how to lock up that end of the store, finally attempting to wrap my head around the twelve key keychain.

We’re very blessed at the music shop, to be within walking distance of heaps of yum food, which is where I headed straight after I finished work at 5:30, right next door the the Chinese restaurant, where I was planning on meeting one of my closest friends Nishika, who’s recently returned from a trip to Asia.

I see her often enough when she’s here and we go out with friends, but it was really, really nice to catch up with her one on one, considering we’ve been close friends for the past six or seven years and I’ve considered her a sister to me for the longest time. There was heaps of talking, catching up, lil bit of crying, and a whole heap of eating and shovelling food into our mouths, resulting in us being the last ones left in the restaurant until my mum picked us up.

Tuesday was a good day.

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WEDNESDAY
Welcome to the off-day. Thanks to picking up that Tuesday shift, Wednesday became my completely free day. However, it also meant I had one day to do most of the things I had to do during the week, and it was a pretty easy feat considering the university semester has just started and there isn’t a whole lot to catch up on. I did, however manage to watch a required movie, The Social Network, for my Screening Politics and Economies class, and it was a pretty good film. I enjoyed it and laughed quite a lot more than I anticipated, definitely recommend if you haven’t already watched it by now.

I made the effort to start looking for some hooks around my house. My dad has a slight hatred towards anything that needs to be banged into the wall, so majority of the things that are hanging around my house are stuck on with the sticky hooks, and so far they’ve worked well enough, it’s just hard to get them perfectly in place on the first go.

I have some digital drawings that I did on my phone that I actually liked enough to print out and frame, and I plan on hanging them up in my room above my bed, the only issue is all the sticky hooks around my house have disappeared, so the project is currently on hold.

kehlani, donald, lauryn, michael and billie

My next activity for the day, is what I like to call ‘independent learning’, a relatively new endeavour I’ve undertaken, where for an hour a day I try and learn about something new. Whether it’s through a TedEd talk, a podcast or whatever, just learning something, taking some notes and all. Today I learnt about altruism, contagious yawning and the science behind memes. It was enlightening.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out with my dog (it counts as an activity, fight me), watching Queer Eye, and finally getting around to watching End of The F***ing World (Chloe, you’re welcome), which made me pee my pants with laughter, but also creeped me out because they’re both complete psychopaths.

It was a relaxing day. I definitely feel I managed to get as much done because I woke up a bit earlier than I usually would, which I’m aiming to start doing from now on. Not only do I have more time to get things done, but I also feel a bit better.

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THURSDAY
Thursday marked my second day back at university.

By all means, as has been the running theme throughout this week, it was a pretty decent day and I wasn’t hating life at all. It was pretty windy in the morning, so the walk to the bus stop was not entirely pleasant, but it was a smooth train ride into the city for my first class.

I had a two hour tutorial for my Screening Politics and Economies course, and I was lucky enough to know at least one other person in the class, considering a lot of the students taking the subject were Cinema Studies students. The other boy at our table with us was nice as well, so we got on well as a group as we discussed The Social Network. Once the class was over, I exited the building, only to realise that the huge clubs day and sign-up was happening in the main courtyard that I had to walk through, meaning it took slightly longer than usual to get back to Melbourne Central for lunch.

After a quick cheeky Nando’s for lunch, and watching an intense dance battle going on courtesy of the marching band and the dance club, I made a quick stop at Glassons (rip my wallet) and Pandora to pick up two gifts for my sister’s 14th birthday the day after.

After walking back to the right building I was joined by Kate, my best friend who has been mentioned on the blog before, and we made our way to the one class we were lucky enough to have together, despite doing different courses and forgetting to consult each other when putting in our timetable preferences, TV Cultures. Fair to say it was a very enjoyable class that consisted of everyone sharing and conversing about their favourite TV show, getting to know our tutor who is one of the most laid-back, chill teachers I’ve ever had and then talking some more about TV and shows she needed to watch, as well as people life hacking Netflix with their own VPN. It was a great tutorial, really fun, and after the two hours were up, Kate and I caught the train back home.

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FRIDAY
Friday was a fantastic day. A bit busier than the rest of the week, but it was really fun.

I woke up earlier than usual, to make sure I could give my younger sister her 14th birthday gift before she left for school. I got her the July birthstone ring from Pandora considering me and two of my other cousins all have ours, as well as a cute burnt orange top from Glassons, just to slightly poke fun at the fact that she finally had her own clothes from my favourite store, so now she didn’t have to steal mine.

I had a tutorial in the morning, this time a 10:30 class, meaning I was on the bus around 9:30, and catching the train into the city, listening to my Spotify playlist to get me through.

My first class was actually my practical for my main course, Global Perspectives, and I had chosen a really fun studio, all about covers and cover songs. Our first class was the usual introductory class, and we all shared our musical backgrounds so our teacher could really tailor the semester for our capabilities and styles, and then we spoke for a little while about some of our favourite covers. You know I had to learn everyone a thing or two about my favourite cover, Moon River by Frank Ocean, as well as a heap of the Triple J ‘Like A Version’ covers.

It was a very relaxed studio, mainly filled with talking and listening to a ton of different covers, and I learnt a bit more about our assignments and practices which are all basically going to be recording our own covers, sampling pre-existing music to use in our own music, creating remixes and understanding mash-ups, all of which I’m super keen to get into.

Choosing again to skip my next introductory lecture, I picked up a call from my cousin who I was seeing later in the evening, to find that she was in the city as well, so we decided to meet up at Melbourne Central to grab lunch.

After a short Gong Cha break while I waited for her, we decided that $4 pizzas from the Asian Beer Cafe (ABC) was the move.

Two pizzas, a bowl of chips and two very satisfied gals later, and we decided to head on back to my house.

Once we got home, we only had to wait a little while until my other cousin arrived at my house, as the sisters, as well as my sister and I were planning on going and watching Richmond play against St Kilda at the football at Etihad Stadium.

We left my house around quarter to 7, and made our way to the station and onto the train. We had a slight mishap one station in when we tried to change carriages to find a place for all four of us to sit, only to have our group split up, leaving me with my younger cousin on the train, and my older cousin with my little sister on the platform, watching us as the doors closed between us before they could get on.

We only had to wait at the next station for ten minutes to meet them on the next train and from then on it was smooth sailing, and a good laugh.

We made it to Etihad Stadium, where I had seen Ed Sheeran a couple months ago, and after buying some food to eat, we walked around the stadium to try and find some seats.

We managed to get some decent seats with a pretty good view, and settled in for what we knew would be, not a very eventful game, considering that unfortunately for me, St Kilda are 15th on the ladder of 18 teams, while Richmond is currently 1st, much to my sisters delight.

While it was an easy win, there were a few moments when my younger cousin and I thought the Saints could pull up even a little to make the loss slightly less embarrassing, but I’m glad we left at the start of the fourth quarter, just in time to miss the huge crowds on the train, as well as the 54 point loss.

After a quick stop at Hungry Jacks for hot brownies, we were back on the train on the way home, with my younger cousin reading inspirational cringe-y quotes from Pinterest that had us all giggling like idiots until we got off the train.

It was a good way to end the week.

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So there you have it friends. It was actually a pretty fun week, and I really enjoyed myself with all the people I spent it with. Work was fun, rehearsals were great, I’ll probably have to try a bit harder with lectures next week but I’ll let you know how that ends up going.

If you read everything, congratulations and thank you, let me know if you enjoyed this type of post, I know it was long, but it was great fun to sit down at the end of every day and run through how it went. I had heaps of fun taking and editing the photos too, date stamps are my new lil obsession.

x

Priya

PS:
Feel free to follow me on my social media!
Instagram: YouShouldHear
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Instagram: priya_francis (personal)
Spotify: priyafrancis

I Have An Excuse

Hello my friends!

It may not seem like it to some of you, but I’ve been a bit off on here, haven’t been as active as I definitely could have, but to be quite frank, I’m not sorry. Why?

Here’s my reasoning and subtle attempt at begging for forgiveness while simultaneously plugging my own shit.

Most of you know that I’m a Music Industry student here in Melbourne. The first semester has just wrapped up, meaning a bunch of my friends are drowning themselves in coffee in order to utilise any spare moment to study for upcoming exams, and I’ve been locking myself in my room in order to avoid any people whatsoever, in an attempt to finish all my assignments. I say ‘all’ like I’m drowning in a sea of assessment tasks, but realistically, I’ve had a couple of essays to write and one major music assignment.

Thankfully, yesterday night, I handed the last of the lot in, and I’m now free until mid-July.

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However, my procrastination game this semester, was on fire. I thought I had that shit sorted out last semester, but due to the overwhelming ‘meh’ feeling I’ve had this entire semester, I was incredibly great at putting things off until the last minute. As in, beginning the two 2000 word essays I had to write a mere five hours before they were due, and scaring the majority of my family who found me hunched over my computer furiously switching between bashing at the keyboard, double, triple checking how to reference using the bloody Harvard standard style and getting my hands on any form of caffeine I could, all while wasting more time Snapchat-ing all my friends about the self-inflicted absolute misery I was in.

I had one essay that I had absolutely zero idea about, considering I only watched about four of the movies throughout the 12 week semester, and only went for six of the tutorials, but somehow I managed to scrape through and submit the 1800-2000 word essay ten minutes before it was due, much to my parents enjoyment, as they got to watch me scram and panic for a solid hour beforehand. Then last night I happily agreed to take a very much undeserved break and go to church followed by a cheeky Nando’s that only chewed further into the short time I had left. Passing on the opportunity to go to the gym and waste yet another hour or so, I managed to compared the musical genres in Bruno Mars first album and his most recent album, to a decent length, even going the 10% over the word limit.

However, on Friday, I submitted the assessment that’s been taking up all my spare time, and that was my studio recording. If you take anything away from this blog post, make sure is this. Ya girl hates Ableton. With a passion. A loathing, fiery passion. I hate it so much. I had to create a 3 minute minimum song, using sounds in Ableton, thankfully with the added aid of lyrics and vocals on top, write a reflection on why I chose to use the sounds and mix them the way I did (answer: I don’t know) and submit it on SoundCloud for my tutor to listen to and judge. Easy.

Anyone who’s read a couple of my insightful rants about some of my music subjects may remember me mentioning that I’m a singer and a songwriter. In no way am I a producer. Which in my opinion, is the demographic that Ableton happily caters towards. Not only is it a bloody ugly audio work space to use, but it’s just finicky and difficult to manoeuvre around, especially if you have no idea how to use it. Which is the boat that myself, and two of my other friends found ourselves in.

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Being three of the four only girls in the entire class, the ‘boys club’ kind of mentality irked us just a lil bit. I hate making myself out to be the victim, but there were just many instances when our calls (emails) for help went unanswered and we were finding ourselves with no clue on how to approach the assignment several times. Enter ya girl, with a fantastic idea.

Having known both these girls for a good year and a half now, we knew each other and our styles well enough that we could confidently work together. I’d spent the last year and a half working with one of them, who is also my best friend at university. So I proposed that we all just book out the studios, work together to make three individual songs, each one taking control of one particular song in regards to how it sounded, and then write the reports ourselves.

Honestly, the two days we locked ourselves in the studio from 11-5 were the best days of the entire month of May. We left only to pee and grab $9 pizzas from the best Italian cafe in the university, but other than that we were underground in the studios, totally removed from everything, only slightly shocked when we’d emerge and it was already getting dark.

I have to say, for a couple of chicks who had no prior idea of what the hell they were doing, we did pretty well. There was a moment the second day when we all listened to the song that was meant to be mine and decided that the day before was a temporary lapse of judgement that resulted in the shit-show that the song was, meaning I started all over again, but it went really well overall. We all genuinely enjoyed working the way we did, at times we’d split up several times during the sessions to move into separate corners of the studio to work on lyrics, then other times we’d descend into tribal insanity and blast catholic all-girl school bops that all of our schools used to play at mass (hit me up if you’re about Shine Jesus Shine or Shout To The Lord).

The point of this entire blog, is not only to try and explain any absence that may or may not (probably not) have been noticed, but to give yet another insight into my personal life, or more so, my life as a music student.

Not only was I down in that dungeon of a music studio (I promise, I love it, I live for it) for two days with the girls, but after submitting the song, I booked out the studio again the day after for another six hours, and went in by myself to fix up my song even more. Why? Because I was proud as heck of it. Considering I made all the sounds that I used, in Ableton, and then mixed majority of and then wrote the lyrics and did all the singing on it, it’s the most I’ve done in a hot minute, and I loved it.

To the point where I decided “You know what, I’m not keeping this song on a private SoundCloud link, only for my teacher to hear, I’m actually gonna put it up and share it cos I LIKE IT.” So I did. And this is it.

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I really only shared it on my SnapChat and Instagram. Haven’t bothered sharing it on Facebook yet, but my friends have been really supportive of it so far (looking at you too, Mia). I’m proud as heck of it. Not only is it a song I actually enjoy listening to that encompasses my whole personality as a petty human being, but I’m proud of how much more involved and directly responsible I am of it. It’s all mine.

I’d love to hear your opinions on the song, or even anything I’ve mentioned in this post. Let me know in the comments below.

x

Priya

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Very Specific Pt. 6

Hello friends, and welcome to yet another instalment of what’s quickly becoming a regular post, my Very Specific series.

This blog post, I’m going to be sharing some songs that fit into a specific context, quite close to my heart.

If you’ve been here for more than a couple of months, you’ll know how passionate I am about aggressively speed walking within the city, to and from my university classes. What makes this activity ten times better? My playlist. So without further ado, here are some songs specifically for speed walking through a busy city.

Sunrise – The Kooks

Nice For What – Drake

KOD – J. Cole

Campfire – Amine 

South of The River – Tom Misch

Home – Johnnyswim

Miracles – Coldplay, Big Sean

Dedication To My Ex – Lloyd, Andre 3000, Lil Wayne

I Wish – Stevie Wonder

Bonkers – Dizzee Rascal, Armand Van Helden

Heads Will Roll – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

You Don’t Know Me – Jax Jones, RAYE

Let’s Dance – David Bowie

That Girl’s A Genius – Jet

Down With The Trumpets – Rizzle Kicks

Thumbs – Sabrina Carpenter

Overcome – Laura Mvula, Nile Rodgers

Teenagers – My Chemical Romance

That’s Not My Name – The Ting Tings

Shake It – Metro Station

Intoxicated – The Cab

My Way – Calvin Harris

Little Black Dress – One Direction

Blame It On Me – George Ezra

Raise Hell – Sir The Baptist, ChuchPeople

Bad Liar – Selena Gomez

 

That’s it! Have fun stomping around your city, think of me while you do!

 

x

Priya

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A Week In

Hello lovely people. Due to the following week being insanely busy for me, I thought I’d take this bloody four hour gap in-between my classes on this cold Monday to schedule some posts. As great of an idea as that is, I’ve struggled to come up with post ideas, (all though I do have a review and music video to share that I’ve been putting off for God knows how long).

As I was recently hanging out with my best friends, Kate and Jess, I thought back to a conversation we were having on the train, regarding university and how we were finding it. So I thought I’d continue that ramble here, and kind of unpack my first week back at university, now in my second year, fitting considering I only recently let you guys in to how I found my first year.

One thing to get out of the way. I love my university. It’s literally in the heart of the city, a five minute walk outside Melbourne Central and it’s a massive campus with something happening at every minute of every day. That said, I have to return to a point I brought up in my last post about university. It’s very easy to get caught up in how big the city is, how much is happening on campus, the hundreds of people that are constantly surrounding you, and how small you are. That was definitely a feeling I had to get used to and learn to confront all over again, especially after four months of really not doing a lot outside of my own personal sphere.

Monday, exactly a week ago, was interesting. I had a movie screening at 9:00AM, meaning I was up at 6:30AM to ensure I was on the bus on the way to the train station by 8:00. The screening was interesting, just due to how obscure the films we’re watching are. Well, obscure to me. Apparently some people love the film list and know all the films, but I’m just gonna go along with it. And then came the first four hour break of the semester.

I hate it. A huge downsize of being right in the heart of Melbourne and a five minute walk from Melbourne Central is that I am surrounded by shops, some of my favourites, and I have zero will power, so of course, I walked into my recording studio session four hours later, $40 poorer. I don’t regret that however, because I got some good shit. My studio class is by far my favourite, purely because I’m in the recording studio, I love the people in my class and it’s quite an independent class structure. Aside from one hour of being taught in’s and out’s of the studios, most of which we generally have a grasp of, the whole focus is about making music, churning out tunes, collaborating with each other and producing stuff, which I am all about. My closest friend at university is in that class with me as well, we worked together quite closely on group projects and songs last year, and that’s what we’ve planned to do this year as well. I’m really looking forward to finally making some more music, hopefully posting some on SoundCloud, maybe releasing some more on Spotify if I really love anything.

Monday is one of my longest days, purely because of my early start, but finishing at 4:30 is not too bad at all.

Tuesday was decent. I guess. I have one class the whole day, which means I’m traveling for two hours all up into the city and back out, for one tutorial, which I wasn’t ecstatic about when I got my timetable. It’s not even a lecture so it’s not like I could skip it and watch it online at home. So I made my way into the city for my 9:30 tutorial, and I swear to God I had to stop myself from falling asleep at least three times. It was a painful experience, but one I have resign myself to. The tutorial itself wasn’t horrible, but they’re all going to be about the movies we watch during the screening I mentioned on the Monday, and considering I know none of them, it’ll be an effort through. Oh well, only one semester.

Wednesday is a pretty cruise-y class. However, there is one downfall, that I’m sure my family and friends are incredibly tired of hearing about, and that’s the lecture hall. Remember when I mentioned how huge my campus is? Well the lecture hall I have my main class lecture in, is in the last possible building on the city campus map. The furthest possible building from the train station and a hell of a hike to get to. Might have to start wearing gym clothes on a Wednesday. I was incredibly glad that all my friends were equally as pissed off about the huge walk, but once we got into the lecture it was fine. I love my main lectures for Music Industry. There’s always something interesting to talk about and topics and subjects are never boring. Even the introduction lecture was fun. After the lecture my friend I mentioned before and I walked back down into the main courtyard of our area of the university, and in our search for somewhere to eat, stumbled upon the row of cafes and restaurants that had been in the works over last year and throughout the holidays. Coffees, sushi, burgers, pizza, lasagna, it was kind of perfect, and we both enjoyed a pizza for lunch, before heading to our tutorial. Again, it was just an introduction but it was still interesting. We planned our first group assignment, in pairs thank god, and chose our genre topics (you know we had to pick RnB).

Timing wise, Thursday are probably the hardest. I have my first lecture at 8:30, meaning I’m up at quarter to 6, to catch a bus at 6:45, and I’m on the train by 7:15. The lecture was daunting to say the least. The hall was massive, at least three hundred people and just when I thought the class was done, more and more people kept pouring in. The size of the course made me feel so overwhelmed, but a quick review assured me that all the people who were with me from Music Industry felt the exact same way, considering we were the smallest group of people in the elective. The class was Music In Popular Culture, so despite the size of the elective, the content was really interesting and I enjoyed the lecture.

I had the tutorial for the class an hour later, so got a drink and made my way to the class, expecting to be in the same class as my friend, only for us to realise that due to the size of the elective, several tutorials were running at once and we were in different classes. Mood plummeted drastically, but as I mentioned the content was pretty interesting and I got through. Just.

I feel like if the last week was a reflection of the rest of the semester I should be fine. Hopefully I can pull through with some new music and songs to share with everyone. Hope you enjoyed this post, sorry if it’s a little different again than what I usually do!

x

Priya

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I Blogged My Day

Hello friends. So I’ve recently made a couple more posts that let you into my world a bit more as a student, a music student specifically. I really enjoyed reading some of your comments on those posts and have found that the topic of college and university is one I find myself reading about a lot on here. So I thought, I’d pick a day, which happened to be Thursday March the 1st, the last day of my first week back at university and record parts of my day, thoughts I have, shit that goes through my head and the general overview of my day at university. Let me know if you enjoyed this, I only ever really have two classes any day of the week, so sometimes my days are bit dry. If you like getting inside my head a bit more, we could do it again???

6:30AM
Okay. Making good time since I was getting out of bed 45 minutes ago. . . though my bus is in ten minutes meaning I have to scoff this bread roll and chug my orange juice.

6:36AM
Screw. This. It’s cold, slightly drizzling and the last day of summer yesterday apparently means the sun is a now show at the moment. Omg, there’s an old lady at the bus stop, could be cute, could be creepy, will confirm.

6:38AM
She cute.

8:02AM
I dislike trains and need to get my license ASAP, but thank God I’m finally at university. As per usual I’m the first one outside the lecture hall thanks to my early as heck bus and train timings. I have high hopes for this course, Music In Popular Culture.

9:28AM
Okay, this lecturer is talking about HIGH/LOW ART and the problems with viewing pop music and popular culture as inferior and I am LIVING for this, did she read my blog post?

10:17AM
We finished a bit early since it was the first lecture, but it was really interesting. I mean, my lecturer just recently finished submitting her PhD studying stardom using Lady Gaga as her case. The class is huge because it’s students from all over Media and Communications, so our lecture hall is four times the size of my course lecture hall. It seems like it’ll be a great course – does it make up for waking at the ass crack of dawn? To be confirmed. But I have an hour break now which is obviously being filled with bubble tea.

12:30PM
Okay. That tutorial was a little dry, but I’m gonna be optimistic and put it down to it being the first class. We had introductions which made me cry inside while I told the whole class about myself. Someone cheered when my answer to ‘what’s the last gig you went to’ was Billie Eilish and I felt my soul leave my body in relief. Acceptance is much appreciated. But now I’m currently stuck in a throng of students who are packed into this courtyard for club signups of which I have no interest. No thank you, I don’t want to join the Dragon Boat club. Thank God, I’m on my way to have some sushi with my best friend, order is about to be restored.

12:53PM
What Makes You Beautiful is playing in this sushi train style restaurant. Kate and I have whiplash from how quickly we turned to each other. Getting war flashbacks.

12:58PM
Neither of us have any experience with a sushi train, do you just . . . grab it off the train? Are we committing theft? Why do we have an iPad? What’s the protocol? Omg spring rolls.

1:04PM
Nah, the girl next to me has a plate of whole shrimp heads and all I can think of is Mr Bean in Mr Bean’s Holiday in the fancy restaurant, Kate’s body is shaking while she laughs and I’m choking on my gyoza.

1:47
My day is done. Finally waiting for my train home so I can relax and get some shit done. Maybe. I’ll try.

4:42PM
As anticipated, not much as been done. Answered emails, watched some YouTube videos, listened to some Justice Der and scrolled endlessly though social media. We still have 7 hours of the day left.

6:34PM
I’ve had this guitar in my hands for a solid hour and nothing is happening. Nothing is coming to me and I’m frustrated to say the least, so I’m gonna stop before I smash it over my own head.

7:08PM
So decided to check on my uni noticeboard, and have discovered I have 17 pages of a readings and note taking to do. I love it. So pleased. Cannot wait to get stuck into it. Yay.

9:00PM
Married At First Sight on catch-up marathon with my dad is currently underway and I’ve yelled at the TV a total of 8 times, but it’s fine. Goggle Box is after this, and I’d really like to stick around for Blue Bloods but I can feel my body slowly shutting down each and every time Nasser grabs his bloody man bag and rides off on his scooter after leaving Gabby in her apartment, at her home stay, so I may have to call it quits.

So that was my day for Thursday the 1st of March guys. Hopefully you enjoyed it. That’s kind of the general flow of the week for me, sometimes timings are a bit different and I have entire mornings free or I’m only in for one class and I’m done by 11:30, but this was a good day, just the usual. Hopefully you had fun reading, let me know what you thought!

 

x

Priya

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First Year . . . Done & Dusted

 Hello everyone!

So today’s post will be a little different, and possibly a little longer than my usual posts. Some of you may know that I’m currently in university, and in 2017 I finished my first year, so before I move into my second year next week, I thought I would share my experience with you all. Hopefully you don’t mind me taking a tiny break from my usual posts to give you all this insight into my life.

I’m currently studying a Bachelor of Arts, in Music Industry. It was my first preference, and the course I set out to do a whole two years before I even finished high school. I am beyond grateful to be in the course, I love every part of it, the good and the bad, and I’m excited as heck to move into second year. But as expected, like a lot of people in their first year of university or college or even full time work, I had a couple of set backs and personal issues I definitely had to overcome.

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I’m positive it’s slightly different wherever you’re from, but here in Australian, and more specifically my state Victoria, all Year 12 students sit VCE exams, which, combined with assessment and coursework scores from throughout the year, give you a final result out of 50 for each subject. These scores then average out or some maths equations take place, and you’re left with a decimal mark out of 100. This is your final ATAR score, and usually decides what you can immediately do after high school. This by no means at all defines what you can and can’t do, I for one loathe the whole situation and despise being pitted against every other 17/18 year old in my state. I know a lot of people who decided to do Year 12 un-scored and are completely happy with what they’re are doing. There are also people who may not have gotten the score they wanted, but have found alternatives that they can do, which can lead them to eventually securing a spot in the course of their choice.

However, ATAR was never a problem for me. This sounds conceited as heck, but I promise I don’t mean it like that. For my course in particular, the ATAR was in the range that I saw I could make if I worked hard enough, but also, there was a lot of reliance on my personal statement and any prior musical experience and work that I had under my belt already. With that in mind, I was a whole point off the entry ATAR for my course, so I can definitely assume that  my personal statement and prior musical history and experience secured that final point for me.

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Now onto the actual course. I was scared as shit. Prior to starting uni I was always a very social person. I still am. I can be very confident, loud and extroverted, at times quite obnoxious. But going to uni was a big shock for me. The first drawback for me, was that in my course, I knew absolutely no-one. While some of my other friends had a whole group of girls from my school doing their course, sharing subjects with them, I had not a single person that I knew, going into the class. It was so daunting for me, coming from a high school where no joke, half the year level went to primary school with me too. It brought out this super introverted, shy, anxiety-riddled side of me that was very much suppressed throughout all of high school. Not even during exams did I feel stressed or over-worked or nervous, yet I remember exactly a year ago, really, really panicking.

To add on to this, and emphasise this loneliness even further, my university is literally the city. The campus is spread all over the CBD and surrounding inner suburbs, and while two of my best friends were going to the same uni and I, the chances of us catching up or bumping into each other regularly were slim. It was daunting going into the city every day, by myself, to be in a room full of strangers.

Then the classes. I do remember, I took a literature subject in my first semester, and that literally knocked the wind out of me. While I did literature in Year 11, and it was one of my VCE subjects, it was basic literature. This was Literary Realism to Post Modernism, and having had one semester of Philosophy and zero background in History other than the compulsory one semester in Year 11, I had a major meltdown after the first week. I was assigned a book a week, and as much as I love reading, they were hard, hefty books to read and I was mentally drained after reading them. That was an elective so thank the lords that I only endured it for a semester.

However, my anxiety definitely kicked up within my main course. A blessing and a curse really, as only last year was I finally able to confront myself about it completely honestly, and then in turn be open about it to my mum who was a huge help. However, it was brought on by the main course I’m doing, Music Industry, and this overwhelming sense of being really small and irrelevant and not nearly half as good as the people I was around. I was being surrounded by people who were gigging every week, who knew their way around a mixing desk like the back of their hand or were just incredibly, super talented in whatever aspect of the music industry they wanted to pursue, and I had no idea how me and my little songs really fit into it, as stupid as that sounds now. Like I’m not cutting myself down, because I definitely have faith in myself, but sitting in a lecture hall next to 60 other people who were already getting on with it, and getting on with it slightly better than I was, was hard. So much so to the point where I was getting panic attacks on the train into uni, or while sitting in the middle of a lecture next to my friends, because I had made friends, yet I was still so anxious about being there in general. I had to start bringing an inhaler with me everywhere and tracking when and where I was whenever an attack came on. I was waking up with the worst chest pain I’ve every experienced. I’ve always used the saying ‘weight on my shoulders’ metaphorically, but it became very literal for me, as if someone had locked me in to this iron clasp that strapped from my left side near my ribs, across my chest and over my right shoulder. When the doctor finally told me what it was, it began clicking, every time it happened, that I was really panicking and stressing myself out about uni, the people around me, my worth and my future.

However, throughout it all, I was ridiculously in love with what I was doing. The course itself was incredible. I learnt how to schedule a music tour, how to finally use synths and record myself properly, I got 24 hour access to state of the art recording studios and I was literally writing about Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna and give group presentations about super heroes for popular culture classes. It didn’t seem like work most of the time, and this brings us to my next point.

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While I was going through these panic attacks and feeling so tiny and lonely in the huge city that Melbourne is, I spent most of last year, so grateful to be where I was, doing what I was doing. After going through most of high school doing subjects and learning things that had little relevance to my life or what I planned for my future, it was a breathe of fresh air to finally being learning things that I could really truly use, around people who were just as invested in the music industry as I was. Majority of the subjects I did in high school, I did because there were no other options. If there were options for me then I definitely would not have being doing Health and Human Development and Business Management. The one certificate course I did do, involved me leaving my high school three hours early every Wednesday to travel to another high school, where the subject was offered and credited.

Finally being in a course where I’m doing what I’m passionate about and what I love has been a huge game changer and eye opener for me, and has definitely made me appreciate the opportunity to learn 100 times more than I ever thought I would.

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Second semester was ultimately a lot better for me. My little trio of friends had solidified itself, and I was doing another set of interesting subjects; my main subject for Music Industry, a cinema subject and another class focused around MTV and music videos. The projects were all fun, the assignments interesting and it was a lot easier on me mentally than the first semester. What had previously freaked me out about the whole ordeal, now seemed to come so naturally to me. While before I had felt so small and irrelevant in the city, I now have this sense of freedom while wondering to and from classes, or taking breaks in the huge library that’s literally a tourist attraction across the road from my class. Walking around the city by myself has become one of my favourite things to do during my long breaks between classes, and where beforehand I was intimidated and scared to be around a bunch of strangers, it’s now slightly comforting. Coming from a smaller all-girls school, there was not a lot of your business that stayed your business, however at university, everyone has their own life outside of it, that only they know. It’s a fresh start and it was only when I came to this realisation that I could really finally be a bit more relaxed, a bit more chilled out and myself for the three or four days that I was at uni, that I started to enjoy it more and get a lot more out of it.

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I did have some stressful moments. We all do. Towards the end of the year when I had my second semester assignments due, my stress levels started to rise again, however I managed to find a groove and a pattern that really worked well for me. Being the night owl that I am, I thrived while staying up late and smashing out several assignments in one go, then taking time the next day to fix them up. I managed to hand in majority of my final assignments a couple of days early, which increased my holidays by a week or so and I managed to keep myself accountable and on top of things, which is where I fell short in first semester.

I know it’s pretty late for a 2017 reflection but I’m gonna do it anyway. I definitely did not plan to write as much as I did, or what I did, but I’m glad that it happened. 2017 was a huge year of growth for me, possibly down to really being on my own, being my own person and taking charge of what I wanted out of my year. It definitely helped me focus a lot on what I want to achieve and what I’ll define as success, if it comes to me. Whenever someone asks me about university and my course, I never hesitate to tell them that I love it. I definitely had really shitty moments, but we all do, so I know I’m not the only one in that particular boat, and I genuinely had an amazing first year. I know several people who really didn’t find what they were looking for in 2017 course-wise and I count myself lucky that I knew what I wanted to do, and that I had the perfect opportunity and course that fit me. Hopefully 2018 only gets better.

 

So yeah, hopefully that wasn’t too full on and was a nice change from what I usually bring you. I’d love to hear your opinions about the whole ‘college/university’ thing and how you’re going if you’re in the same boat as me! Hope you enjoyed reading!

x

Priya

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