In the days preceding the start of the Melbourne University semester, my sedulous to-do list has grown in length at a rate much faster than that at which I could check off completed items with a perfunctory grin of satisfaction. Indeed, as unfinished summer projects and crates of anti-static storage boxes (don't ask) lie strewn around my room, the semester looms with all the certainty of the gargantuan queue for student diaries come lunch time during orientation week.

Despite tasks unfinished and queues impending, I am looking forward once more to the hustle and bustle that is an inevitable consequence of spending a large portion of one's at an inner-city academic metropolis. It now appears that I have several more tasks to add to my ever-growing list: 22) devise witty excuse for declining religious/political/bureaucratic propaganda from their respective zealots (who stand, coveting bundles of pamphlets, yelling slogans and profanities from the side of the pavement while attempting to thrust another unwanted petition/survey/membership form at one's personage); and 23) invent foolpoof scheme to overcome exhorbitant pricing of public transport concession cards. Oh, the travesty!