Ch-ch-changes

I still associate you two together even though you're not even friends anymore. Even though you're pretty much one of my best friends and he's...very much not. 

I met you as a pair, you came together, like me and my best friend, and you've stayed that way in my head long after the both of you have moved on. I don't even know if you ever had a genuine friendship or one born from the mutual necessity of new friends that is the first year of high school.

Now, you're not interested and I get that, and he's...lonely I think. And feeling nostalgic and I get that too because I feel that way about one of my friends sometimes. We had amazing times together growing up and we were best friends for a long time but we've grown apart now and while we're still friends, we've accepted that we're not as close as we were and we probably never will be again. I don't know how to push him towards acceptance that things are different now because I think he needs to realise that your friendship is over. 

It's a foreign concept to me not to still see school friends. The friendships have grown and changed since school finished of course but I'm still friends with most of the people I was friends with when I was at school. 

It's probably not a good thing (certainly not for my love life) that my friendship group has barely changed in 5 years but it's nice to have old friends. 

He doesn't seem to have many of those friendships. Not that he doesn't have friends because he does. Maybe you guys will be friends again but it'll never be like it was and that's just life, c'est la vie. 

Drunk Facebooking

I feel like it should be a rule that you're not allowed to post on Facebook while inebriated. 

I say as I post this almost 3 cocktails to the wind. 

Post-School Friending

So, I have this friend (seriously, I have got to stop starting blog posts like that).

He's...we've been friends for quite a long time really, considering we've known each other since circa year 7, and while we don't have heaps of stuff in common we have perhaps one of the most important things to either of us in common, especially when we were in high school: French.

He went away to France after school (like literally straight after, the weekend after our last exam he was on a plane, destination Charles de Gaulle) and I think he lost touch with a lot of people while he was away because that's a crucial period.
The first 6-12 months after school finishes is vital, especially once people start at uni/TAFE/work/etc. You realise who you miss, who you like, who you want to spend time with, and, more importantly perhaps, who you don't.

When he came back, he struggled. He'd missed 8 months of his friends' lives here when we'd been stressed about results, acceptances, the scary world of uni, losing touch with our old friends as well as the fact he came back from an amazing and terrifying stay abroad (I really want to use the word voyage because moving to foreign country at age 18 while undeniably beneficial would've been scary as fuck).

We weren't exceptionally close in high school, nor are we now. We've spoken on and off since he got back, over text and Facebook. I'm...cautious about really taking this friendship seriously because we've had some crazy ups and downs since school finished, not to mention our unstable friendship during school. He's the kind of guy who wanted so desperately to be a "cool kid" he'd ditch you the second one of them paid him any attention. I'd like to think he's matured from his time in France and his return but sometimes he seems more talk than walk. He's not a bad guy, he's intelligent and blunt in a way that makes me believe we're better friends than I think (though it has lead to disagreements) and he's ambitious. None of these are bad qualities in either a friend or a person in general. I like that we can talk about relationships in the same thread as talking about nuclear weaponry or the beauty of bilingualism. I like talking to him because we don't always talk about people. Most of the time we do but sometimes we talk about languages or international politics or history and it's really nice to have intelligent conversations and share knowledge that's more than who slept with who. Not that he's the only person I can have intelligent conversations with but I feel like a higher proportion of our conversations are intelligent than those I have with other people. I love to talk about books, movies, tv shows, whatever but learning things by talking to someone else is fascinating.

Word of the Day

'Cause some words are just damn fine. 

Intransigent 

- unwillingness to change one's views or to agree about something. 

*Definition courtesy of Apple's built in dictionary. 

Polyglot Wins!

Using a foreign word instead of an English word in your note taking short hand because it's so much shorter!

Also makes your notes quasi indecipherable to monolingual English speakers. 

The Weird Me

So what inspired me to write this little post is my boyfriend asking me why not many of my friends would go see certain movies with me.

I've known for a long time that my friends think I am weird. Why? Because they tell me all the time. They think I like weird music and weird movies, and to generalise, weird things. Not many of them actually like the weird things I do like, which is ok because they have their own interest. But what saddens me is that they just assume when I suggest to do/listen/see something they haven't heard of before that it would be weird and they say no. 

I think my closest friends are the ones who give it a go. The ones who say why not? The ones who would see quirky movies like ruby sparks and Grand Budapest Hotel, and listen to a mixed cd of songs they may have never heard of, spend ages learning complicated board games, or cook weird things with weird ingredients for the hell of it, without pre judging. Maybe its because no matter what the activity is, it is the company you are in that determines the fun you are really having.

In the last year I have really found who my best friends are. Some have been around for a while, some are new, some are yet to come.

Mistakes Have Been Made

On my quest to watch the entire IMDB listing of a particular actor I'm currently in love with I have, on occasion, come across some gems I probably would not have seen otherwise.

I've also watched some absolutely atrocious movies.

Immortals (2011) for example, don't. Just don't. Don't watch it. Not even the abundance of ridiculously over the top 300-esque ab shots can make that movie bearable. It takes a special kind of director/producer/writer/SFX team to do movies that involve Gods (especially Greek Gods) well. Immortals was not one of them. I had to watch Disney's Hercules to flush the awfulness out of my brain.

The Internship (2013) not bad. However, that may be because Dylan O'Brien is dude-of-the-moment and he was in it for like 2.3 seconds (okay like half the movie thankfully).

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009) when the opening scene is crazy sex...nope.

Zerophilia (2005) bizarre as fuck. Just...it was weird, okay?

Kingdom of Heaven (2005) could've been worse - Orlando Bloom + Crusades is enough for me.

Troy (2004) there was really no way I could've gone wrong with this one. Troy, historically inaccurate as it may be, is pretty ace.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) this movie is amazing. Johnny Depp's in it too, but it's 19 year old Leonardo DiCaprio that steals the stage. He's 19 and he's...amazing. This is before Titanic, before Romeo & Juliet and Inception and The Departed and The Great Gatsby and all the other amazing movies Leonardo DiCaprio went on to make (still no Oscar though, poor baby Leo). This was the start. Watch this movie. Seriously, just do it.

Despite the absolutely appalling movies I've subjected to myself to, I'm not stopping now. I have Dylan O'Brien's IMDB page to work through. Come at me!

Polyglot Problems #3

Writing an Italian culture essay on an Italian text, in English, using quotes in Italian and researching in both Italian and English. 

BECAUSE ONE LANGUAGE JUST ISNT ENOUGH! 

Classic Italian

To be honest, when I go to Italy I wouldn't be surprised if I'm better versed in classic Italian literature than the native Italians are. 

I've studied, Dante, Machiaveli, Boccaccio, Foscolo, Leopardi, Verdi.

It should not come as a surprise (as it did to my Italian teacher 3 weeks ago) that we know more about Italian history than we do Australian. They force it onto us when all we want is to learn the language. 

I appreciate this cultural education but if I could spend more of that culture time focusing on modern Italian I'd feel much better about my language proficiency. 

You Know You're a Grown Up When...

When you tell your little cousins off for sucking the helium out of balloons. 

C'mon Zo, you're not so old you don't remember how much fun it is to breathe in helium and talk in a funny voice for 10 seconds! Let 'em have their fun!