In These Past Few Weeks ...

I have:

1.       Dressed up in my junior uniform and revisited my childhood by playing Foil Ball on the Lowers.

That's a foil ball -- basically a ball made of the foil from our lunches because we're not organised enough to bring a real ball. :) (Photo courtesy of Carol)

2.       Danced like an idiot in the dark in the boys’ hall and lost trivia pathetically.

3.      Gone to our champagne breakfast in Moore Park West along with the police and our deputies (both decided it was too tame to bother with and left pretty much straight away).

4.      Walked into our assembly with Rebecca Black playing, before dancing like an idiot to a dubstep version of our school song, singing an abridged version of “Under the Sea”, laughing at our skit called “Finding Mimmo”, watching Anne Dao take over school captaincy and telling everyone who has skipped classes that, “If you don’t come to school to study, come for your friends!” and crying pathetically whilst attempting to sing our medley of farewell songs.

5.      Danced like an idiot on Bronte Beach with my beautiful friends as the sun went down and smashed Lox and Tersa at beach volleyball. Latian and I, we are actually amazing at beach volleyball.

6.      Spent hours and hours making our graduation video with Alex and my fair Adie.

7.      Had a bajillion class parties ... except in our last double period of advanced where we actually were lectured at for an hour and twenty minutes.

8.      Cried pathetically in modern when we talked about what we would miss at school.

9.      Sprinted through unknown Eastern suburbs streets to make sure Laurin’s door was locked and felt like a superhero.

10.   Shared the most delicious desserts with my brilliant Superprefects on Crown Street.

11.    Got to school at 7am in my pyjamas to eat croissants, receive our gorgeous yearbooks, open the letters we wrote to ourselves in year seven (I teased myself for having the HSC, which backfired splendidly, thanks 12-year-old Clare) and finally show the graduation video TWICE to many tears (NOT MINE!! I didn’t cry at all on Wednesday!) And then quickly got changed into our muck-up costumes.

Lox is the Grinch, Tara is the Reindog, Carol is the Christmas Tree and I am Cindy Lou Who from the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Lox did the hair, it has a styrofoam cup underneath. Isn't it COOOOOOOL? (photo courtesy of Tara)

12.    Swum in JUB’s infinity pool in rainbow long-johns and pyjama top, before drip-drying in her apartment over-looking the Opera House.

13.   Been evacuated from JUB’s apartment due to an electrical fire, then walked around the Opera House for fifteen minutes at sunset while we waited to be let back inside, then rescued the stir-fry we had been in the middle of cooking and realised the udon was perfectly cooked. J

14.   Found Macheath from Threepenny Opera attractive with my beautiful drama class ... ability to sing and tap-dance really does excuse all criminal behaviour.

15.   Cried pathetically at Chakkers’ and Laurin’s beautiful graduation speech, felt incredibly embarrassed that our principal mentioned my year ten music performance in her speech, laughed at how cute the year seven and year eleven farewell speeches were.

16.   Graduated from school.

17.   Made a huge circle on the Lowers holding hands with the entire grade, sung the school song and sprinted into the centre of the circle for a ginormous and slightly painful 169-person group hug.

18.   Dressed up in a pretty dress, proposed a toast to our teachers that no one heard, took a million photos, signed a million yearbooks.

The beautiful Tazmunia (photo courtesy of Tara)

19.   Had D&Ms on the bus.

20.  Revisited the chocolate shop (which represents our brilliant junior years) and giggled ridiculously from sugar-shots and a chocolate overload.

21.    Made a Chocolate and Raspberry Guts Delight Cake and shivered over it at Maroubra Beach for Tararara’s 18^th party.

22.   Had it confirmed that my no-alcohol-(AT LEAST)-until-21 policy is a good idea J

So as you may be able to see, it is a bit of an anticlimax that I have found myself at home after all that with barely anything to do but study. On Friday night I even had a dream that I was at the Advanced Paper One exam and had not studied for it at all, and was trying to think up a good concept for a belonging story before I went in ... my idea was to tell the story of a conchie during WWI. I think I might try writing that, after all, it is what my subconscious has told me.

However, if there is one thing I know for sure it’s that my last weeks of school were simply AMAZING. Here is a whole lot of love and thanks to all the people that I spent them with.

Love you like brilliant times with lovely people.

x

My Favourite Girls

It seems impossible. It’s ridiculously surreal. But here it is, happening right in front of me, and I can’t do anything but go along for the ride.

School is completely over. Over forever (and ever and ever and ever ...) and it feels really, really weird. We graduated on Thursday after possibly the most tiring week of my life, and this morning I was sitting in the kitchen gargling Betadine to rid myself of a gross lingering cold and I realised that I didn’t really feel anything – not sad that school was over, nor happy that school was over, nor stressed about the HSC in three weeks. Just numb. It’s so different from when I left primary school, because then I was just paralysed with the fear of the unknown. It’s a bit of an anticlimax really, the fact that we’ve been celebrating since trials and now I just have to buckle down and study again (I’ve done four hours today J). Maybe I’ll be scared again once the HSC is over and there’s nothing between me and the big wide world.

But what is really strange is not getting to see my favourite people in the entire world together ever again (except for the advanced exam). The girls who I have spent the last six years with have actually changed me so incredibly it is difficult to imagine. When I started in year seven I was this incredibly tiny, quiet girl who spent most of her time writing stories in the library. I am now a completely different person who has had so many amazing and terrible experiences and I like who I am now. Sometimes the things I do disgust me, but even the knowledge that I am able to reflect on my own state of being makes me pretty proud of myself.

After we graduated we went out for dinner, and a friend of mine asked me whether I was happy with whom I had become. I did have to think about it for a while because I think it’s a very difficult question to answer. But I am happy with me. At the end of the day, I am a good person with beautiful friends and a very lucky life. What is even better is that I have the self-reflexivity to see what I do that is bad and, rather than despair about it, look objectively at myself and work out how to improve or deal with it.

I don’t know what I would have been like had I not gone to my school, obviously. I do know, however, that the person I am now has been shaped by my relationships with the most amazing, intelligent, hilarious, generous, creative and beautiful girls in the entire world. I love you guys to the moon and back 169 times over. With you I have laughed a million times and for you (especially in this last week) I have cried a million tears. You make me an emotional wreck, but I will always remember the times we have spent together. BUT THIS IS NOT GOOD BYE AND WILL NEVER BE. We will be friends until the day we die. Possibly afterwards too.

I’m sorry I haven’t written for a while, things have been so ridiculously busy. Soon I’ll tell you of all my adventures since we last spoke; I’ve had some that have been pretty lovely. This was just a little emotional ioaoghsaskjnbjiaut to sum up just how much I will miss my brilliant school and the brilliant people inside of it.

P.S. Here is the video that I made with my fair Adie and Alex. I spent approximately 50 hours on it, so I think you should watch it, don’t you think hyperlink? And I totally got Lox on camera confessing her love for Kelvin.

There is no way that I could love you as much as the past six years, I am sorry.

x

It's Time: Plottier

I think it’s time that I shared with you a very interesting time of Lox and my high school careers, seeing as said career will be finished shortly and I won’t have much of an excuse to revisit it.

In year eight and nine (before I tired of it) I did debating after school and in year nine our tutor was this guy called Kelvin. It seems weird now but apparently he was 18 when he taught us. He seemed to be constantly uncomfortable in our lessons (perhaps not used to teaching a large number of squeaky 14-year-old girls?) and I liked to make fun of him. So did Lox. She loved to come up with pranks to pull on him and she called them plots. So one day I wrote this little short story for her and called it Plottier for said reason. (I feel as if I am giving away all of our in-jokes, Lox. I’m sorry. This is all for you <3)

*

Plottier

For Loxie

Kelvin Yu was not, perhaps, the most physically gifted male in his year group, to say the least. He was quite short and scrawny with a comically high voice, which amused itself by saying the word ‘like’ almost as often as the stereotypical brat often portrayed in American teen angst movies. His hair stuck up at all angles in a fashion that J.K Rowling would be proud of, and if he was to be reincarnated everyone believed that he was to be a mouse. The baby of his group, his skin was conceivably pale from the many hours of studying he had partaken in during his senior years of high school in order to achieve his UAI of 99.65. As it was, this was an astonishing fact, his tagline that he pulled out quite often to, really, any girl that he met. He seemed to cry out at any possible opportunity, “I may be scrawny, small and own an awfully girly voice, but at least I have the means of securing a high income!” And it was true. He was rather clever, and everyone knew. He was a debating tutor, after all, and had an incomprehensible knowledge of anything to do with anything happening around the world at any given period.

Kelvin taught at his old school. Sydney Boys’ was practically the only school in all of the Sydney state that he could feel comfortable teaching at. That’s just how it was. A given. A set fact that could not be altered in any way, shape or form. It was known, agreed, specified, prearranged, certain. Whatever word his thesaurus brain could arrive at, his job was it. Until, of course, a distress cry came via the form of a curiously misspelt text message from a friend of a friend; a debating coach from Sydney Girls’ High.

“Kev,” it said, confirming Kelvin’s initial impression that the text was from someone he didn’t truly know, “we @ SGHS hav 1 coach <. Need nu 1. Plz come or else will all hav 2 teach more kids. Repli ASAP. Luv, Gina.”

At first, Kelvin had blinked. Twice. Then he had put down the phone. Sydney Boys’ was his home. He couldn’t teach at more than one school anyway. Right? But then he looked for the third time, and thought of the pay. He replied quickly to this Gina in affirmative. He was going to teach at Sydney Girls’ High.

And now the day had arrived. He scanned the sheet he had been emailed, sight-reading hastily in order to find his name. Finally he saw the bold-lettered “Yu”, and quickly ran his finger across the muddled table to see which year he was to teach. The number seemed to explode out of the page. He felt his body going weak. His class was year nine.           

The group of students that Kelvin taught at Sydney Boys’ was a year nine group, too. It was merciful bliss if ever he could get them to listen for a moment, let alone use the correct structure for first aff. He couldn’t imagine the terror of a gossipy, loud and squeaky class of hormone-driven fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls. What if their voices were squeakier than his?

In the car park of the girls’ school, Kelvin sat in his tiny blue car with the dent in the boot door. His class began in less than five minutes. Kelvin began to get terrifyingly nervous. He ran his hands through his hair until it stood perpendicular to the roof of his car. He bit his nails until they had all been ripped off. He must have checked his fly now for the hundredth time, and of course he had practiced using a low voice. Nothing was to go wrong.

Confidently he swung the door of his car open and leapt out. He could hear shrieking laughter coming from the classroom above. A girl with dark hair looked out, and screamed in such a high voice that it rivalled his.

“OH, MY GOD!” She screamed. “He’s a guy!”

Kelvin coughed a couple of times and flashed the girl a bracing smile. Quickly, not wanting to be seen near the shrieking girl, he slammed the door of his car shut and walked away. Or at least, he attempted to walk away; his shirt had gotten stuck in the door and he was wrenched back against his car almost indecently. The girl in the window laughed loudly before clapping her hand over her mouth and ducking down. She had seen him seeing her.

Kelvin cursed his chances and proceeded to remove himself from the car roughly, thus ripping the back of his shirt. His jacket covered the rip mostly but Kelvin truly wasn’t having a great day. And he hadn’t even properly met Louise yet. His life was about to get much Plottier.

*

P.S. This isn’t entirely a true story.

P.P.S. I did write this when I was 14. Please don’t blame (current) me for its oddness.

Bruv just came into my room and proudly spurted a brilliant pun. “I went camping the other day ... it was intense!” (In tents? No?) How I do love him.

Love you like fridges in suits (I won’t give away all our in-jokes just yet).

x



Almost Winners?

Today the Annual Sydney High Prefects Binball Match of Death occurred at lunchtime at the boys’ school. My being incredibly coordinated resulted in falling over twice (once with spectacular windmill arms right onto my bum, the other was a scramble that left me having fallen on my face with a strained wrist.)

Then I shook hands with Amebrain and that was when the pain shot through my wrist (right hand, of course), and I ended up sort of on the floor, but I didn’t cry! Proud? You ought to be.

Anyway, so we lost – two games to one when it was girls vs. boys (although Lish had to steal the bin and bring it into our half of the court for us to win) and two games to nothing when it was Whites vs. Asians.

Now this may make us sound like horrible people. Racial segregation is really not something I personally advocate. But it’s okay at Sydney High because everyone is so not racist that it doesn’t matter. It’s racist to be embarrassed by race, you know? Don’t hate me.

I’m on the bus now heading home and there’s this sweet old Chinese woman with her friend, I’m pretty sure they’re tourists because the one next to the window (I’ll call her Leopard Print Hair Clip) has her digital camera out and is taking pictures of my bus route. Isn’t that supremely gorgeous? To think that this route, which is to me the same old Parramatta Road, boring and ugly and uninspiring, is to someone else worthy of photo taking, is beautiful and new and exciting, just makes me incredibly happy. I sometimes try to think that way, as though everything I see is new, like I’m a tourist in my own city, just like Leopard Print Hair Clip. Then, every day is an adventure.

I sound like Peter Pan.

MAN ON MY BUS THAT LOOKS LIKE RORY (Doctor Who Rory, that is).

He just got off. L

Alright well I’m going now, I’m not almost home really but I’m tired, and napping on buses is a thing I do all the time.

Love you like almost being triumphant at binball today.

x