Archive for the 'Friends' Category
September 4 2008: Retail Therapy Is Not An Incorrect Term
Thank you for your comments yesterday. Honestly, thank you. It means a lot to me - while I know that everything that’s happening now is just a temporary bleakness in my life, that knowledge doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to handle so your encouragement is much appreciated.
On a brighter note, I did get the chance to spend much of today with Alex. Sure, I made an ironing run early in the morning beforehand, and just came back from another ironing run at 10pm at night, but! A good eight/nine hours of girliness with Alex! Nothing takes my mind off things more than shopping!
Our local shopping mall is having a month of freebies to celebrate spring. We took advantage of the free Toblerones (mmm…), of a free manicure each, and of course, of some shopping. But, as shopping at the biggest mall in Melbourne apparently wasn’t enough, we decided to hightail to Ikea on the other side of town and browse through mass-produced homewares (I bought microwavable food containers!), and then hit up a couple of warehouse clothing sales.
All in all, we went from 10am in the morning to 6.30pm in the evening, and by my calculations, gave around $400AUD to the retail industry between us. Thankfully, we got goods in return for the dosh…goods that shall be described in further detail, with photos, in tomorrow’s entry. LOTS OF GOODS, LOTS OF CLOTHES! Mmm, clothes.
Filed under Friends & Life & Money with 10 Comments
September 3 2008: General Veil Of Darkness
I realise that I’ve been rather circumspect when blogging in the past month or so. Personal entries have been few and far between - rather, I’ve been writing lengthy entries on broader issues, “how to” guides to everything from saving money to eBaying, and basically anything that avoids speaking too much about me and my life has been fair game.
There are two main reasons for this reticence. The first, my current lack of writing at length in English (my university classes this semester are primarily all in the Chinese language, so no essays in English) has meant that I need to get my rambling-at-length fix from somewhere. The second, I’ve not been particularly happy the past couple of weeks. For a while earlier this year, everything was peachy, but recently, things are dark, and I don’t do dark blogging. I find it hard to post rants about how bad everything is going, and how I hate the world, and general misery. That would be expressing feelings that I’m not comfortable sharing. Escaping the realities of unhappiness with impersonal entries about broader issues is a better option.
With this said, I do realise that I need to face and address the situation I’m in, for my own mental wellbeing if nothing else. So here I go, setting it all down in print.
Filed under Family & Friends & Life & Men & Uni/Work with 20 Comments
August 17 2008: I’m A Man’s Woman
I went out with some girl friends on Friday night for dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Kum Den (oh the possible wordplay). We’d all met fairly recently, over the Australian summer of 2006/2007, when we were all in China for the same language study program. We’d stayed in touch as well, which is surprisingly hard because for a lot of people, their holiday selves are quite different from their regular selves. It’s the whole “I don’t have to think about work or school” unstressful lifestyle, where you can party until dawn without consequences. When you return home, you quite often find that you simply have nothing in common with those that you got on well with when away.
In any case, the dinner was notable perhaps because they are pretty much my only girl friends, and vice versa as well. Not one of the four of us present at the get-together have more than a handful of close female friends, yet we all have a whole phonebook’s worth of close male friends. We recognise in each other a kindred spirit - someone down-to-earth, practical and without emotional complications, someone more at ease with men than women.
I’ve always had a problem - women hate me, men love me. I’m a girly girl in the way I dress myself, but I’m a man’s woman in the way I act.I drink beer, I fart, I burp, I swear all the fucking time, I make crude jokes, I love watching football, I scratch my crotch (exaggeration!) and I ogle hot women walking past. Apparently the large majority of my fellow sex don’t like to be friends with women like this, though they’re generally happy to indulge this behaviour in their men. Who would’ve guessed?
My fellow dinner partners have similar problems: one is so down-to-earth and practical that she can’t help but be scathing of the high school dramas and cliques that seem to come packaged with the large majority of women of our age group; another is so incredibly beautiful, talented, and intelligent that’s she’s often viewed as a threat; another is so earthy and sensual (even more so than myself I’d say) that she’s automatically stereotyped as a dangerous maneater to avoid.
When we get together, we’re grown ups. It’s hard to find another group of females in their early twenties here in Melbourne, who when they get together, don’t get together for the express purpose of getting pissed and dancing till dawn. Rather, when we get together we make it a point to try new restaurants every time (hidden restaurants especially, down Melbourne’s myriad network of alleyways), sitting at the table for hours with beers, just laughing and talking.
Getting together for the purpose of making conversation and eating good food, rather than for the purpose of dancing to music that ensures you don’t talk to the people you’re with, is a lost art in the Melbourne twenty-something scene. Sad really.
Filed under Friends with 16 Comments