My Watch is Slow

Slow, not fast, mind you. My guitar is also pretty perfect in terms of being tuned. But this is not the point of the story.

2011. I forgot to do a beautiful, reminscing post about 2011. Sorry.

It was, without a doubt, the best year of my life. Yeah, it involved a lot of long hours in the study or the library that I certainly complained about, and a lot of awkward moments during which I wanted to sprint as fast as possible in the opposite direction, find a particularly hard surface and bash my head against it repeatedly. But I (cliche cliche cliche cliche) wouldn't change any of my experiences for a million dollars and a glass of lemon juice. Except maybe to get a few more marks in my external French paper.

2011 meant for me:

- Long hours in the common room discussing everything from Schoolies plans that never eventuated to Francisco I-Can't-Spell-His-Surname the beautiful effeminate model to politics and history and philosophy. Plus removing the stuffing from a giant soft-toy style dummy from the drama storeroom and refilling it with Latian, and throwing the naked baby doll Johnny at juniors in the corridor.

- Becoming super close to my High girls, who I love more than Tasmanian Double Brie and wish every happiness on each and every one of their beautiful, intelligent and stupendously attractive selves.

- Making many new and equally wonderful friends, a few of whom I feel as though I've known a lot longer than a few months.

- Success in my final year of high school academically, as in, achieving the goal I set for myself by quite a large margin.

- Being able to use my not-very-extensive life experience to help others.

- Forgiving someone after six years of having a sort of consuming hatred; it is such a liberating feeling, if you're holding a grudge against someone as of this moment I strongly recommend you forgive them. Do itttt. :)

- Blogging, time capsule and diary writing, generally making sure my last hoorah at secondary education was well-documented.

- A large amount of incredible contentment due to spending hours procrastinating or having spontaneous adventures with the people I truly truly love, even if sometimes we just can't figure out what to do with ourselves.

Oh, I have to say it just one more time. I am the luckiest person alive to have the people I have around me. You're all quite wonderful people.

So 2012? It's going to be scary, I know that. This is because I'm not doing what everyone else is doing and going straight to uni. I'm jumping into thin air, managing my whole life, becoming independent and travelling. I hope to work hard, keep in touch with all my lovely friends doing spontaneous things still (which I will never tire of), learn a lot, teach a lot and get to this point next year proud of myself and ready to start university.

Perhaps maybe also know what I want to do with my life.

I also hope the world doesn't end before then. I have big plans, world. I hope you do too.

Love you, and I mean it, like hope in general. Urgh how sentimental :P

A Sparkly Bathtub

So bros, sup?

Well, I'm in Vietnam, terribly sorry for lack of recent activity, but au meme-temps frustrated due to the difficulty of typing coherently on an iPad (I blame this for that iffy introduction) and ridiculously content due to recent adventures/book-reading. I shall be quick cause sleep must be had to fully enjoy the Hanoi Experience, but I'll start with the book bit.

To be honest, I've found it incredibly difficult to finish any type of book since the HSC (to be extra honest, I found it incredibly difficult during the HSC too). This might be because I keep setting my sights on intriguing works such as Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, which incidentally my Extension Two teacher recommended for a spot of light background reading for my major work without mentioning that it came in several volumes, each several hundreds of pages long. But this afternoon I finished (and started) perhaps the greatest book ever, Starter for Ten by David Nicholls. Feel free to read it now. Go on. Much better than this load of relative crap.

So the book is devastatingly hilarious, I think I have developed a bruise on my arm due to the amount of times Bruv punched me for laughing aloud as I was reading it. Then the characters are very relatable as per the protagonist reminding me of my good friend Superman (not the real version, but nicknamed as such due to his slightly worrying and constant delusional remarks about his superpowers), as well as the situation, which is all about starting off at university (ultra relevant for those not taking a gap year). Finally, the amount of literary references and general knowledge packed into it really makes you feel good about yourself, that is, if you get them. At the start of each chapter there's a trivia question with an answer relating to the goings-on that follow, which is quite amusing although admittedly I only knew slightly more than half the answers, and throughout I found myself thinking things like, "LOL, I know who Brecht and Stanislavski are, let me write that essay for you dear Alice."

Anyway. Read it.

I promised (perhaps) to keep you up to date with my various Vietnam adventures and have failed miserably; granted, I only started writing my travel diary today, two weeks into our three-week trip, and in it I wrote, "In our hotel room we have a sparkly bathtub. It's like fairy dust. Maybe if I think happy thoughts I'll start flying? ... Oh gosh, how do I get down?" Witty, right? Thought someone else should appreciate it.

But anyway since we last talked I have:

1. Cycled 70kms along the Mekong River, which was amazing. My only regret was not having ridden a bike for ten years, except for sport around Centennial Park when Lox and Tersa and I used to do one lap, then sit around in the bathrooms talking about the mansion we were going to co-own in Provincial France when I was a famous actor, Lox a Disney star and Tersa a vet. This is what I reflected upon whilst trying not to fall off 50-centimetre wide bridges two metres in the air over the river, crowded with motorcycles, roosters, dogs and little Viet kids cooing "hello" in distinctly Aussie accents to us as we cycled past.

2. Ridden a Vespa around the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and lived to tell the tale.

3. Crawled along 100m of the Cu Chi tunnels in pitch darkness. Escaped with very dirty knees.

4. Told half a million people Chuc Mung Nam Moi! (Happy New Year, and the only phrase I feel comfortable saying with my despicable accent. Very useful on NYE of course. Now, not so much.)

5. Been hugged farewell by the receptionists at our hotel in Hoi An, the sweetest ladies ever I swear, who also told me to come back soon, with my boyfriend. I said, "Deal." If you ever go to Hoi An, which you should, stay in the Hai Au hotel and say hello to Sally and Tammy for me.

Urgh and there's so much more but I really must sleep and I think you've probably had enough of my rambling and incredible wit. I'll talk to you later, and tell you more things, including useful literary techniques such as description and the not-so-secret challenges I have been rather bad at completing.

Love you like lemon juice. It's seriously the most delicious thing I have ever had the pleasure of consuming. Which reminds me of the time I sat a PD exam and couldn't think of the word so wrote "consumpting alcohol" instead.

x

An Unexpected Epiphany

The other day I was on the train on the way to Bicentennial Park, having recently done something I both regret and know was necessary to do and hence was feeling a little conflicted. So I was sitting there, hyperventilating slightly because of my irrational fear of catching trains, and generally minding my own business, when a group of lads walked into my carriage.

If you don’t know what lads are, they can sort of be described as generally quite stupid, rude teenage boys (it’s creepy when they’re adults) who hang out in big groups in parks or on trains doing silly/dangerous/illegal things for entertainment. Just to generalise.

At the time I was thinking about how sick I was of being the “nice girl” who people took for granted because I always end up being the one who apologises for fights and stuff (I hate conflict and am super terrible in confrontational situations) when one of the lads said,

“Oi! Shut up,” (this is heavily censored by the way,) “Look what I found ... ‘I never thought being too nice would be my greatest weakness and my greatest attribute at the same time.’”

At first I didn’t get it because the kid couldn’t read the note he had found properly and was struggling with the word ‘attribute’, but once his friend helped him out I couldn’t help thinking ... yeah! The lads are right! And suddenly it made a lot more sense and I felt better about everything and knew what to do.

I guess the moral of this amusing anecdote is, you never know when your problems are going to be answered and by who. So keep your mind and your ears open (eavesdropping is always beneficial) because even the stupid-sounding and stupidly dressed lads on your train have interesting things to say. Or read. J

Love you like pleasant coincidences.

An apology of sorts.

... Oops?

Sorry that I haven’t written since forever. Things happen; freedom, the composing of romantic sonnets with proper Shakespearean structure and everything, HSC results coming back (I GOT FULL MARKS FOR MY EXTENSION TWO MAJOR WORK GUYS EEE) and acceptance into a volunteer group travelling to South America next year. That’s just to mention a few of the brilliant things I’ve been up to recently that have prevented me from talking to you, or finishing my theories of life.

I promise that I’ll write more soon. Also, this’ll be a great way of keeping you up to date with my amazing adventures in Vietnam in a couple of weeks (if there’s much internet about) and then when I go to Ecuador ... it’ll probably be Ecuador ... next September.

So stay tuned, don’t hate me too much for not talking for ages, and enjoy the chronicles of my life as a proper adult who will never ever go to school ever again. J

Unless I become a teacher.

Love you like 50/50.

Insomnia

I can’t sleep, as per title. I am too happy. Super dooper content with life in general. Couldn’t sleep much last night either, or the night before that. Everything is just a brilliant haze of blissfulness.

I won’t tell you why because I don’t like to jinx these things. Also, because I don’t want to be too happy because there is a particularly large chance that said happiness is unjustified. Oh but my goodness, there are blisters on my toes from wearing stupid high heels to formal and I have a bit of a cold from walking around the city with holey shoes last night, but I super love life right now. J EEEEE.

Also, tonight I babysat these kids and we had a Dr Seuss Fox in Socks rapping competition. That story is the hardest thing to read out loud, I had to practice. You should try, it is another thing that aids contentment. That and being really knowledgeable about year eight maths/french/geo homework and making paper planes and watching youtube videos. I love kids :) This time, not in the strange trying to work out the logistics of getting pregnant/giving birth/raising a child enough to put them in childcare by the time I get to university in sixteen months fashion ... just that I love them a normal amount.

Okay sorry I’ll stop this iffy happiness rant thing. Super self-absorbed today or something? Probably. Always. It’s just ... everything (almost everything) is perfect.

Love you like LIFEEEEEEEE.

x

Life Philosophies #1: Empathy

It is impossible to hate anyone that you understand, because the second that you understand someone you are making links with them, connections between the way they act and the way you’ve acted. Connections between their internal motivations, their hopes and dreams, their relationships, and yours. It is this concept that gives me this incredibly idealistic and probably naïve belief in people and their ability to just ... be humans: empathy.

We all have the ability to understand each other because of our common humanity. Some people you have to try incredibly hard to understand; others you just naturally connect with so deeply that you know how they are going to react to any given circumstance. Then there are people who won’t try to understand others because it offers justification for the way someone interacts with you; if it’s not a positive interaction, then it can be daunting to understand why it was that way. Then there are people who are just so optimistic and idealistic that they can’t help but spend hours in other people’s heads, trying to work out the mechanics of human beings until they come to the conclusion that everybody is inherently good.

I’m one of that last kind of people. I’ve resolved that it’s not necessarily a good thing.

When I was about six, I remember having the biggest breakdown psychologically. I was in my bedroom one night, I don’t know what I was thinking about, but I somehow decided that everyone in the entire world could be a robot and I would never know, because I could never see what was really going on in their head. Everything I saw was a façade, every action a performance of the ideal person. It’s all very Hamlet. But as a little kid the thought isolated me and I became very locked up in my own head, until I decided the best way of being a human was to trust the fact that there was some spirituality (not necessarily religious) that linked us all and that was when I promised myself that I would always remember that all people are people are people are people.

Not robots.

The thing is, it makes it very difficult to hate others. This is a good thing in a way, hate is soul-destroying and just generally disgusting. But it’s easy. And if you don’t naturally like someone, the thing about being incredibly empathetic is that you just keep working away to find something beautiful and good about them. Sounds like a good thing, right? I suppose it is but just ... once you understand them, you connect with them, you know how they’d feel if you did something that might hurt them, and you just generally end up hating yourself that little bit more.

Hence why not being empathetic is easy – you then have justification for not being good to people all the time.

I think you have to be a very, VERY good person to be able to empathise with others and not end up feeling kind of shit, just generally.

Alright that’s my philosophising for the night, Lox just got back from the Gold Coast and I’m super pumped to talk to her for a bajillion years. So I’m going to leave you now. Look forward to more philosophising in the future.

Love you like being human or something.

x

Ah the Brilliance of ME!

Some things you ought to know:

1.       This is my 100^th post. THERE ARE ONE HUNDRED OF THESE THINGS! You may now proceed to read them all. J

2.       I have finished my HSC. As in, finished my secondary education. As in, I will never sit in a classroom (as I know it) ever again. Unless I become a teacher that is.

3.      I have acquired what I believe is legitimately the most beautiful dress for formal. Whilst I won’t show you a picture of it (just yet anyway), here is an example of what it resembles:

 (I mean, what Belle's wearing, not the Beast. Does he have a name, other than "the Beast"? What is with that?)

4.      Hence I may be the most content human being alive on earth.

So what have I been doing recently that has prevented me writing to you DESPITE having absolutely NO WORK to do? Well, let me tell you I have spent a lot of time in a tunnel in a playground having my spine slowly warped whilst singing many songs of varying degrees of brilliance. I have also spent a good deal of lovely time with Bruv including going to the park this afternoon and playing Frisbee/soccer in the middle of a glorious summer storm. We got soaked, but a combination of playing on the swings and a warm breeze dried us off really fast. It was lovely.

Also I just have had no idea what I wanted to write for the 100^th post. I still don’t. So here’s the most amazing short film I found on Youtube:

I’m going to go to sleep now because I’m tired. However, in the next few weeks I may be recording some music! :O And if it all turns out spiffily, I will show it to you. I also have just some generally exciting rants regarding feminism/alcohol/my life philosophies to type up and share with you. Okay? Placated now?

Love you like having actually nothing in the world to do ... except tidy my room :S

x