Andy's Amnesty Adventure OCT-2011 [Part 2]

I'm writing this on Thursday the 13th in the evening but I don't think I'll have it uploaded today. I spent the better part of today upstairs with Mum losing my sanity over the MYOB assignment. But it's done! Even though we both wanted to chuck it in the shredder...we endeavored and eventually kicked its arse. :D May that be the last time I have to use that piece of crap. At least I feel more confident now, it wasn't that I'm a dumbass, it was just that the assignment was worded ridiculously difficultly. Like I said before Mum has been using MYOB for nearly two decades and even she didn't understand most of it. I raced over to Yeerongpilly, handed it in and that was that. I should hear back soon from them if it's all done and I can have my certificate. I've definitely passed all of the other units, they would have notified me if I hadn't.

Now it's Monday the 17th...okay, I know I'm getting used to being busy again and there are days when I really don't have any time to do any writing...but I really need to make the time. I'll have a think on how best to do that. In the meantime, back to the conferences!

I'm going to drastically summarize it so that I can get back to more current events. The Amnesty International 'Change the World' conference was held on the 6th, 7th and 8th of October. I'd volunteered for all three days as I had originally wanted to attend via buying a ticket, but it was a little out of my price range. This way I would still get to see most of the main presentations, panels and workshops and get some work experience at the same time. Amnesty was on top of its game in regard to all the speakers it was able to get to attend this event. We heard from activists, academics, the media, lawyers, peoples currently suffering from human rights abuses and more. I've got a much clearer idea of what it means to be an activist and ways I can go about achieving that goal.

One of the best outcomes from the conference though came from an email that Carmen and I received from Artillery headquarters informing us that the coordinator for Brisbane Artillery had pulled out for some reason. That wasn't good news of course as we had been looking forward to working on her ideas, but we were offered the position of coordinator in her place. We both freaked out a little at first and met that evening to have a discussion, but as I was on the bus to her house I quickly realized how great an opportunity this would be! It's huge.

So we talked about it for a bit and decided to go ahead with it. That was close to two weeks ago now and we are now firmly on top of things. We will be holding a three day exhibition at Jugglers Art Space in the Valley called MasterPEACE and inviting artists to create works of mixed media. Stuff like paintings, sculptures, films and photos. The message will be individuals at risk, which is an Amnesty campaign that tries to raise awareness about particular groups and peoples that are in danger. I'm not going to write everything here because I want it to be a surprise. But I think it's going to be truly amazing. I'm also being sent to Perth this Friday to attend a summit with the coordinators of each other city that is holding Artillery in Australia. Together we will get training on how to run the festival. First time for me to travel to that side of the country, but more importantly I've only been at Amnesty around two and a half months and have this sort of work to do. I'm still shocked.

My tafe course is done, well as far as I know. I haven't received any calls from the school saying my MYOB was bad, so I'm going to assume its done. Went into the job agency today to discuss where to go next and he said he'd be talking to someone on Thursday that specializes in getting people government jobs. I'm so close to having all of this years goals met. A part-time job, volunteering at Amnesty, a great social life and no more depression. There's not much else I can ask for, but hey that's the best part of achieving a goal, thinking about "what's next?" I'll leave that for next year methinks. But an internship here at Amnesty is certainly not out of the question. Well my reception shift is about to begin so I'd better go and relieve my colleague. I will try and book a time to do writing at least three days a week and stick with it. This month was like a 100x increase of work though, so it's a little understandable. All right then, that's all from me.

Andy Scott