As part of Drug Action Week here in Australia, Boroondara City Council teamed up with other local councils and the Victorian Education Department to develop a series of fora on Young People, Alcohol and Parents.

The focus for tonights forum was on youth action; the session was facilitated by the Boroondara Youth Reference Group as a series of workshop style activites that aimed to engage to parents on issues of awareness, communication and harm minimisation.

It was a fantastic demonstration that young people can be involved in such events not as token participants, but as active leaders.

And gee, what a poorly written update. I must be tired.

Fantastic. Exams are over.

The essays on Global Inequalities and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy I didn't mind, they were quite interesting in fact. The 3 hour statistics exam where I forgot my calculator, hadn't been to half the lectures and didn't have the textbooks ... let's just say I'm glad it's over and I'm condfident of a pass. And the two hour exam for Behavioural Neuroscience that capped it all off yesterday, what a buzz! 120 multiple choice questions, all of them hard.

So now it's all over for another semester, what's left? What to do for the next seven weeks?

Catching up I think. Doing all the things I meant to do in April, but never quite got around to. And, of course, committing. Seven weeks should give me plenty of time to find yet more people doing yet more amazing stuff to get interested in; I'm pumped already.

In fact, it's started.

- Meeting on monday with the founder of VCEnet, Daniel Dobos. VCEnet is an amazing FREE service for disadvantaged senior secondary students in Victoria to get advice and tutoring on matters year 12. He's got some heavyweight local backers (the Age newspaper, Monash and RMIT universities), and in two years has actively serviced over 8000 students.

- Part of a team running an Expo/Fourm on Drug & Alcohol issues on Thursday. It's a young-person driven event, run by the Boroondara Youth Reference Group for the parents in the local area, giving some first hand perspectives on drug and alcohol issues and harm minimisation.

- Went to an interesting forum run by YACvic on Wednesday (when I should have been studying). Called 'Bringing in the Bacon' it was a chacne for young people and the youth sector to hear frist hand from some of the main funding bodies for youth initiatives in the state. Representatives from the Reichstein Foundation, Telstra Foundation, Foundation for Young Australians and the Myer Foundation addressed a packed out room of over 200 at the Melbourne Town Hall. (type any of their names into google to get the addresses)

- GASS has a new logo ... or at least it will once we've sorted out the paperwork. It's likely to look like the image shown above. And, if I get everything done as I'm supposed to, we'll have a 2 x 0.8 m banner made up with the new logo in time for the arrival of this year's batch of exchange students on June 30.

- The trials and tribulations of the OTG soccer club continue. Partly, I reckon, because I got dropped to the seconds after having a bad game and takign a week off to head down to Anglesea to go on a leadership camp. Oh well. The seniors continue their up-and-down form, performing well against the top team last week, but still losing 4-0, and playing only relatively well against the bottom team the week before and caning them 18-0. The big win was helpful though, it distracted everyone from the mistakes I made in catering for the post-game function.

At this point, I realise I've probably written a lot, (not as much as Jedimike though), so it's best to come to a close with the words of NSW Premier Bob Carr on the international linkup between 11 countries on "What the World Thinks of America", regarding his hypothetical 15 seconds with George W Bush

"Slash America's use of fossil fuels and sign the Kyoto. Go down in history as the world's greatest conservationist"

Peace, Mossy

Hehe ... in the latest atttempt to avoid studying the hippocampal system or writing an essay on temporal lobe epilepsy, I've done a bit of interior redecoration on the page.

I was looking to juxtapose the environmental theme for June with the harsh realities of my biting (what, I'll leave up to you) commentary and updates, leaving the reader relaxed yet at the same time intruiged by the innocent words in white.

Or maybe I just like the colour Oxfam have on their walls at their offices in Fitzroy.

And, in yet another round of self-glorifcation I changed my header picture, so I can now feature four of my fave photos snapped in the past months; although this does mean that the mysterious sunglasses image has vanished, leaving the TIG community, bar Scott and a few others, no idea what I look like!

Well, that's been a productive hour or so, must be time for bed ... plenty of time to study tomorrow

Mossy