Grammar

Bad grammar pisses me the fuck off.

Just saying.

And bad spelling, but to a lesser degree.

Je T'aime, Ma Cherie

So, I'd say we're officially "back together" even though this boy issue came at the worst possible time ever, but as you said, pretty much the story of our life, we have alarmingly similar taste and it took us all too long to realise it.

But, silver lining, if we've gotten past this, all the while trying to navigate what's left of our "rough patch" I'm pretty sure we'll be able to deal with anything, come hell or high water.

I often swing between the "we've been through so much together this is nothing" side of the spectrum over to the "for the love of God, how were we ever friends at all?" side. For now I'm at the former. I'm not freaking giving up now, what a waste of time and effort that would be. Besides, you don't get to have long lasting friendships without struggling through some stuff.

Our friendship doesn’t have to be the "speak everyday, see each other all the time, tell each other all our secrets" one that it sort of used to be…we've been through that. We grew up together. That's important to me. We went through all those big, life changing things together, that's worth fighting for. You can't recreate those memories with new people. They're once in a life time and I shared them with you.

We've had our "space" and "had our time apart", then we "got to know each other again" though not all that much has changed really. We started spending time together again and now we're good as new. Only now I have to contend with another in your affections but it's about time anyway.

You've got to be some form of ridiculously important to me, you're pretty much the story of my blog.

You have a toothbrush that lives in my bathroom, if that's not the sign of a lasting relationship then I don't know what is.

Also, we have a sometimes hilarious, sometimes annoying drunk dialling relationship and there's no way I'm gonna give that up. 

We're gonna be tri-lingual soon babe, here's a taste.

I love you.

Je t'aime.

Ti amo.

Life Experience - No Regrets

So, at the start of this month I officially had my first (and hopefully last, though I'm not making any promises) "I drank so much, I threw up" experience.
I'm slightly mortified because A) I made a fool of myself, B) I threw up at my friend's house who I haven't seen in ages (the only saving grace being that his parents weren't home), C) I'm pretty sure I said (and most probably did) some things I really shouldn't have…

However, I strongly believe, and always have, that it is one of the Rights of Passage of growing up; a drunk and/or random hook up, throwing up from drinking too much, having a bitchin' hangover, going to work hung-over, playing a drinking game, drunk dialling and/or drunk texting, etc etc.
I did a fair few of those things a few weeks back and topped the whole experience off with a detour via Maccas on the way home.

Despite the fact that my memory (and my best friend) keeps reminding me of a seemingly endless list of the cringe worthy things I did and/or said I'm glad that night happened with all its events exactly as they were. It was a learning experience that I am glad I had. I don't feel like I'm being left behind by my friends anymore as they enjoy their Uni/18 year old life styles. That's not to say I did this to "fit in" with them or anything because I didn’t, not at all. I did it because I wanted to, and because I did want to I can't bring myself to regret it one bit. 

I had fun, I enjoyed myself with my friends and that's all that matters. 

Harry Potter, C'est La Vie♥

Harry Potter is my life. 

The above statement was most definitely true back in primary school and the first few years of highschool and it still is true to a certain degree. 

I am an avid Harry Pottet fan, of the books anyway. While I am unbelievably in love with the world J.K. created with her words, the movies just don't do it for me. However, they are without a doubt a prime example of theatrical wonder at it's best. 

Despite my less than fond feelings for the Harry Potter movies, the Deathly Hallows Part 2 release last week nonetheless marks the end of an era. What is there to look forward to in life if not Harry Potter? 

Possibly a small exaggeration there, but the point is valid. Harry Potter was an integral part of our childhoods whether it be in book or movie form (though I think you are undoubtedly missing out if you haven't read those books because they're amazing).

I remember, on the day of the Deathly Hallows release I went to the shops with my best friend and we bought the books and sat down to read them wherever possible while mum continued to do her shopping until we could get home where we both sat down on my bed and read. That was the day that proved the strength of that particular friendship. 

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The sheer volume of people lined up at the register with just the Harry Potter book in their hands made me smile. J.K. Rowling managed to touch an amazing amount of people with her words, something an aspiring author can only be in awe of. More than the amount of people purchasing the seventh and final Harry Potter book was the varying demographic. 25 year old men standing in line at the registers with Harry Potter (which is advertised as a children's book) tucked under their arms, ready to spend the next few weeks (or days) finishing off the series that they started in their teens. Yet in line behind them, 10 year olds with their parents, nose in the book while they waited to pay. And behind them, mature aged women, my own mother included, with the book popped into their baskets along with their other items. 

J.K. Rowling did an amazing thing when it came to creating the world of Harry Potter, I am in her debt for sharing her ingenuity with us mere "muggles". 

We Are Family

I have no real concept of whether it's just me, just my family but every single cousin's birthday constitutes of a big family get together with everyone and a ridiculous amount of food.

add that to the fact that my Auntie has spent the last 10 or so years popping out babies like they're going out of fashion, with my cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents as well as Easter, Christmas, New Years, Melbourne Cup, ANZAC day, etc I pretty much have a family gathering every month.

But now I'm 18.

I don't have to go anymore. I have my Ps, I have my car, I have my life, I don’t have to go to my cousin's 9th birthday if I have other plans. I actually did have other plans but I went anyway.

It's been more than 2 months since I've seen any of my extended family and I was starting to notice. 2 months isnt a long time in the grand scheme of things but when you have an 18 month old cousin, 2 months is a long time to miss out on. She's almost talking now.

I missed my family. I missed my cousins, my auntie, my grandparents and the most amazing food in the world.

I wrote this next bit a while ago when I had the first of my "My Family Is An Integral Part of My Life" moments but the point still stands, I love my family and I couldn't imagine my life any differently and I can't fathom that other people don’t have this same relationship with their families.

It’s A Family Affair

Family events consist of a multitude of noise. Kids yelling and shouting, arguments - half in Italian, constant chatter (also half in Italian), laughter and the football (whether it be AFL or EPL), ever present in the background, no matter what time of year (with the exception of the first Tuesday in November when the Melbourne Cup reigns across widescreens). They're loud and they're long but it's family. Quality time. It's warmth and it's love and it's belonging. It's my life, my family and I wouldn't change it for the world.

I pick up a bread stick, my baby cousin in my arms (she's really starting to get heavy now). "You can't be a wog without breadsticks," I tell her, remembering my own childhood.

Babies, who want to have what the adults have, get handed bread sticks to chew on, but you can't do much without teeth. It all ends up in a soggy mess, below a toothless smile.

Want to save money?

Don't go shopping when you are hungry.

Villers-Brettonneux♥

One day I'm going to go there, and I'm going to see this plaque, and I'm going to cry.
(For those of you that can't read French, it basically says: "To the Australian heroes who died in defence of Villers-Brettonneux 24-25th of April 1918, the residents are thankful.")

Lest We Forget.

Making History

You think about (or are forced to think about) all the stuff our parents and grandparents have witnessed in their life times; cars, planes, radio, phones, penicillin, T.V., computers, Internet, first man on the moon.

Technological advancements, medical innovations, the kind of stuff dreams were made of (albeit, no flying cars as of yet) and people we know, knew a time when these things didn't exist.

We've seen some pretty cool stuff too though, iPods, Facebook, Harry Potter. The advances are smaller, in our life time, I think, but they affect the world in more powerful ways because while the world is a large place, it really is a small world after all.

I'm sure we'll be seeing more leaps forward soon (flying cars have got to be in the works somewhere) and i'll be looking forward to adding to the "In My Lifetime I Witnessed..." list.

"Vapoury Goodness"

I don’t know how much I like this because it's an awesome phrase and just makes me laugh or because you said it.

Knowing me, it's probably the latter.

But maybe it's both.

Whichever is cool, I like you, there has to be some reasons why and I guess making up words/phrases is one of them.

You. Interest. Me.

I don't understand most of the stuff that comes out of your mouth but it intrigues me that you know this stuff whereas I have no concept of it whatsoever. It's fascinating. I suppose it highlights how different we are but I still find it intriguing.

You were slightly intoxicated, I should also add, when we had this Dandenong to Berwick station conversation, or at least that's what "and then I went to the pub" imparted to me and the fact you had issues zipping up your jacket. But I won't judge you.

I know I shouldn’t compromise my morals or make exceptions but I can't help it. Chances are it won't amount to anything anyway so no one will ever know. Except for my avid blog readers…but that's cool, as long as I don't have to discuss it and actually face up to the fact that I'm doing what I promised myself I'd never do.

May I also add, there's something freaky going on when I just happen to get onto the same carriage as you and the same train twice. I mean come on, what are the chances? But you've done it once and I've done it once and I'm starting to think one of us has got to be stalking the other and I swear (for once) it isn't me.

日本

It is strange the way we can adapt to different cultures. Never once would i have thought that after eating dinner, while sitting on the floor, i would fall asleep under the dinner table, that still had remnants of our meal and that had an inbuilt heater and warm blankets, while watching a japanese movie without subtitles. And before i went to Japan i would have laughed, but looking back at my photo that my host mother took it seemed like the most natural thing at the time. I keep that photo in my diary to remind me of how much i can change over just two weeks abroad. I want to be able to remember every single moment of that trip, no matter how novel they are. All i want to do is go back and do it all again. All you know and presume about the culture is forgotten once your there. It has inspired me to just want to travel the world. And not just in the holiday sense, but to actually spend time living within the culture. I don't want to just go to the tourist gift shop, i want to live as others do, see the world as they do. I think that if everyone did that, we would all be less prejudiced, and there would be more peace in the world. We don't need a treaty, or a genie to grant the wish of world peace. I really don't know how i got onto world peace, i think my mind is just full of a web of connections. All i did was open my diary.

Hello again, friend of a friend i knew you when....

There is a few things i want to talk about today. I think it's mostly likely because i spend so much time on and waiting for public transport that i have a lot of time to think.
The inspiration of this story itself comes from just sitting on the bus today. I saw this guy on the bus who i recognised, but i couldn't remember where i knew him from. Its one of those things where you end up just staring at them like some stalker and then awkwardly look away when they catch you staring. Its even worse though when you can't see their face and you only get a quick glimpse at them and your trying not to make it obvious that you are trying get a look at them, but you are really itching to have a peak and figure out the puzzle. I ended up figuring out who this guy was (well who i thought he was anyway). And it was the guy from beauty and the geek who wore those Hawaiian shirts all the time. This guy wasn't wearing a hawaiian shirt or anything so i'm not sure if i was correct. But thats not where i was headed with this post. After a lot of time spend pondering about this sort of thing i ended up thinking about those awkward moments when you see someone on the train that you used to know but never really liked, or those friends of friends that you are unsure if they could remember you or not. And you don't know if you should say hello or not. And then if you do, you find yourself thinking ''umm... so what uni are you at'' while meanwhile trying to think of an excuse to depart without being rude, because all you really want to do is go sit by yourself and listen to that song on your i pod. And then it gets even more uncomfortable when their friend turns up and you're stuck trying to excuse yourself without it seeming like you're being shy or whatever. ....
And another observation today on the train was when the train stopped at a station and i looked down at a little boy, who must have been in prep, and who was crouch on the footpath and using a rock like it was chalk to draw all over the pavement. and you could look at it in two ways. One, this kid could be the next Picasso (highly unlikely looking at the skill he displayed). Or two, first chalk drawing, next he will be drawing all over school desks and carving his initials into it, and before you know it he will be graffitiing the very train i'm on now. I think the outcome of my pondering here was that we are so full of certainties of who and what we want to be, or at least we are all preoccupied in trying to figure it out, and so we see children as innocent because they have no clue, and they don't care about who they will be someday. They just absorb themselves in their curiosities. In a way i wish i was like that again. No one expects anything of you. You don't feel obliged to talk to anyone on the train that you don't want to, and you don't feel guilty for staring at people on the train. Its a freedom that i think we loose as we age and we can never regain. Oh such is life...

Sharing is Caring

So I've decided to just get over my apprehension of following the amazing thing Han wrote and jump on the band wagon to blog about a blog.

http://blankcanvasmind.blogspot.com/

The above link is my friend's blog.
He is awesome (just don't tell him I actually said that, 'cause i'll never hear the end of it).

I havent seen him or spoken to him as much as I would have liked since school finished but I came across his blog 15 minutes ago (I always knew he had one I just never knew the URL/couldn't be bothered looking).

At first glance it's kinda dank and depressing and verging on emo...I mean it's black like ALL black and don't get me wrong i LOVE black but it is admittedly a dark, scary and relatively depressing colour. But, don't judge a book by it's cover, or a blog by it's theme.

It's so him, his blog. Maybe it's just me, but I can almost hear him talking in my head, reading his stream of consciousness blog-blurts out loud to me as if I was sitting beside him.
It may be kind of weird or creepy (two things I'm more than well acquainted with at this point in my life) but I felt closer to him reading it.

I have now passed the flame in this little circle of promoting another's blog and I managed to blog about it too.  Yay me.

Bounderies

I look at a white wall and see a plain canvas

I hold a pen or pencil and feel the urge to draw on the thing next to me

I see the places the lines would go, the darks and the lights, the texture

In my minds eye colour spreads across the walls around me

And then I blink and it vanishes and I am left staring at a blank wall that is not mine to taint

Why do we like painting our walls one colour and then hang art on top of them, confining it to a square frame?

Everywhere we look we see boundaries. A human invention, created from greed and the need to find order in chaos.

In my minds eye i see a world where lines of creativity run in every direction.

And then i blink, and it vanishes.

Practice

You don't realise it in high school, but all those years of classes and lunchtimes are just practicing for the real world. And I'm not only talking about assignments and managing your time around a million things, but I'm talking about relationships. At school, if you have an argument with a friend you will most likely resolve it within a couple of weeks. Why? because you're stuck with them. You see them everyday at school. But the scary thing is, when you leave that tight knit community you don't have to see them anymore. You don't have to make up, you just move on. And hell, you even find yourself drifting away from even your closest school friends. I'm scared of that day when i will realise that i have lost a friend, because in my mind, even though i haven't seen some friends in over a month, i still consider them close friends.
And why don't we see them anymore? We're always busy, free at different times, have exams, working that day. It is exhausting to organise events, and when you do its hard to get one on one time with that one person your itching to talk to.
I'm kind of sad, because even through the last few years of high school i've felt myself drifting away from my best friend since year seven. I started to find that other people knew mare about her and her love life etc more than me, and i felt even more distanced as we started taking different classes. I don't want to be the jealous type, even though at times i have felt the green little monster inside me wanting to get out. But the further away i get from people, the harder it is to get back. I think you get to the point where you are a part of so many communities that as much as you want to, you can't keep in touch with everyone, and you cant keep all your relationships as strong as you want. You just need to take those skills you have been practicing since day one or prep in the playground days of sharing the slide and not taking those acorn fights so seriously, and organise to catch up with everyone once a month, and organise regular brunch or coffee mornings with those few who you want to keep for life. It is something that has occurred to me in the part few days. You can't just expect things to happen. You need to make them happen. So when i have a few free minutes after this post, i'm going to contact my best friend since year 7 and organise to catch up this week.
I think you get so caught up with everything that there are few who really see who you are. As said in an earlier post, only few are lucky to see the real you below all the different layers. Maybe thats your mum, or your boyfriend, or you best friend. And sometimes no one can understand someone completely. We all know the same people in different ways because each person brings out a different quality in others. I am a different person at home than at uni, and my life in music is a different world entirely. It's not like you are trying to be someone your are not, but it is more that different characteristics are brought out in different situations. We get caught up in so many groups of friends that we find it difficult to keep in touch with everyone. And thats all i miss from high school, having everyone on one convenient location, kind of like K Mart or Big W. I think now it just comes down to making an effort to keep in touch with all the different people we love, and this is where true friendship is tested.

Speed

No, not the drug. 

As in "speed, a need for."

Velocity, movement, that kind of speed. 

The kind of speed where 40km an hour can be relatively fast speeding up a dirt road but 40km through a school zone is unbelievably slow and has your speedometer creeping towards 50. 

100km on the freeway, no sweat, don't even feel it, 100km along a foreign back road in the dark and you're shitting yourself. 

Princess highway at 70km and you wish you could go faster to overtake the wanker in front of you but 70km down and around a sharp corner and you're slamming on the brakes to 40 before you go careening off the edge and into a sheep or something.

10km trawling through a parking lot looking for a parking space and it's fine but 10km almost anywhere else and you're convinced your Gran could walk faster than this with her walking frame. 

The first time you get into a car and it's terrifying, you're going so fast and you have to concentrate on so many things at once and you look down at the speedo and you're barely pushing 30. Now, on your Ps 30km is a waste of time, or only necessary for very sharp corners, in the dark, when it's raining. 

Speed.
It all depends on perspective, context, conditions, experience. 

Wipe off 5 guys, or wipe out lives.