Hellooooooo…yes I have been slack again but I have a good excuse…I’ve actually had an active social life the past couple of days! Yay! But in lieu of one massive entry, I will write separate entries for each of the significant events of the past few days.

But first things first, Lulu has tagged me to do a meme which I must complete!

Here are the rules:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story.

So here it goes….

1. I used to really hate staying away from home when I was kid – like REALLY hate it. If my parents had to go to a dinner party or away for a weekend, I would dread it for weeks. I’m not really sure why this was the case – I think because I was such a meek child in many ways, I didn’t like to be out of my comfort zone and hated the thought of upsetting people in their house. Now here I am living across the world and have travelled solo through quite exotic places – very different from back then!

2. I’m not a big animal lover, but I adore cats and dislike people who hate cats. In fact, you can tell a lot about someone if they hate cats. And I don’t mean a passing dislike of cats because they might be allergic. But people who have stickers on their cars that say “I love cats, they taste like chicken” may just prompt me to ram my car against their fender. Also, I may have a slight fear of dogs.

3. I’ve never been much of a relationship girl. After a completely disasterous one at 17 (which was a really bad experience and left me a bit scarred), I generally shyed away from men. But that all changed when I met Tom. Now I don’t want to be one of THOSE gushy people and I never really believed in love at first sight or anything like that, but in some ways I now do. Let me tell you the story. I met Tom about 5 weeks before I left for London. It was in the most seediest of all Brisbane bars (the Down Under Bar) where loads of travellers go and party each week. I saw him across the bar and thought he had such a lovely face and smile. We caught each other’s eye. About 10 minutes later I walked past him and asked if he was from Finland as he was wearing a Suomi jacket (since I was going to Finland in the next month, i thought it would be a good idea to meet a local!). But nee, he was a Dutchie! Anyways, we got chatting and I was constantly apologising to him saying “Oh look, I must be holding you up from somewhere important” but we ended up talking for hours. We exchanged numbers and met up again the next night. And then again on the Sunday night to see Ocean’s Eleven at Southbank. We walked along the river, went for coffee and chatted again until 2am in the morning. Tom was due to leave Brisbane the next day. As we were saying Goodbye, he asked me: “Do you think if we lived in the same town, you would want to see me again – that this might work?” and I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like lightening struck or something and I said yes, yes, yes.

Anyways, I am bezzling on a bit, but Tom did leave the next day to travel further up the coast and I continued studying for my exams. He emailed on the Tuesday and said how he was going and whether it might be a good idea for him to come back to Bris for a bit, even though I had exams. Again I said yes, yes, yes and the next week he arrived back in Bris on the Tues. As a Brisbane cliche, I met him out the front of the Hungry Jack’s in Queen Street. There was rain, he was wearing THAT jacket and when I hugged him then, I knew it was it! We spent the afternoon together having coffee, chatting, then we went for Thai food that evening and to a cool bar. Tom stayed at our place and what was going to be a couple of nights turned into a week, then two and then it was the last days in Brisbane before I left.

The night before Tom left was so upsetting – I cried so much. Here I had been blindsided by something so unreal and then I was leaving everything I had ever known for the unknown of Europe and London by myself. I hadn’t had time to prepare for that with the excitement of meeting Tom. So it was one of the most emotional nights of my life. Tom drove off the next morning in his beaten up Corolla that took him around Oz from Sydney to Perth. I could barely see his grey car disappear over the hill cos I had so many tears in my eyes and I ran inside and shook for the next hour with great massive sobs. Mum tried to calm me down. I had the world on my doorstep, a backpack to pack and all I could l think about was the Dutchie in the grey car leaving MY world – for who knew how long. We knew we would meet again, but not how or when.

Halfway through my backpacking trip, and Tom’s trip around Australia, we decided that it would be so great if Tom could come to London. I can’t really remember the day it got set in stone, but it happened. When Tom arrived here on October 12, I waited for him at Stanstead Airport. When I saw him with his backpack and Suomi jacket, it was like he had never left. And there were only tears of joy when we hugged again like no time had passed and it had always been.

How’s that for a soppy third point in a meme??? How lengthy.

4. My favourite flowers are lillies and tulips. We buy fresh flowers for our house every week and it’s one extravagance I think is truly worth it – even if my brother doesn’t!

5. I have always been a bit of a geek. I’ve read since I can remember. History fascinates me, I get joy from mastering a maths equation, I loved to soak up all manner of useless facts. If there is one thing I am passionate about, it is learning. To me, the one greatest gift you can give to another person is the opportunity to learn and be educated in a conducive environment. I lament that our education system seems to be outcomes based and based on churn and burn, rather than creating an environment when people can get a universal education in every sense of the word.

6. My favourite actor when I was a child was Harrison Ford. I read a 500page biography on him when I was 7 and watched Star Wars, Witness, Indiana Jones, Mosquito Coast, Flight 10 of the Navarone and any other obscure Harrison Ford title I could get my hands on. I thought he was so handsome and masculine! He still isn’t too bad for an old geezer!

7. I’ve dyed my hair since I was 12. My first colouring experience was at 12 when I got about five blonde foils through my naturally brown hair for Year Seven graduation. It just went from there…half head of foils, full head, streaking cap, tint – the whole way! I went back to brunette for a brief period in 2005/6 I think and it just didn’t feel like me AT ALL. Maybe one day I will go back to brunette but I love being a blonde. I do wonder about stereotypes sometimes – brunettes are generally taken more seriously but to me, you can only be the best individual you can and not give a sod about what other people think.

8. Is it frightening that I love being really domestic? I get such joy from cooking, food shopping, cleaning, ironing, arranging the house, make it really nice and clean with a lovely smell and great visual look. I absolutely cannot wait to hold a housewarming dinner party in our new place. I will shop at Borough Market beforehand and get vegetables, meats, cheeses, wine and bread. Do you think this is anti-feminist – to revel in the domestic domain or is simply a choice that a feminist can make in a world of open options? Not sayng I don’t want a career per se. To me I’m driven to ‘make my mark” because I know I can, but does enjoying domestic simplicities mark me as simple?

 

Okay, I’m afraid I don’t have eight people to tag yet as a lot of the blogs I read have already been tagged! But hoepfully this longwinded reply is OK.

I have entries to follow on:

• Monopoly Pub Crawl and Tom’s friends’ stay
• Interior Design Course
• 101 List Update
• Life aspirations and plans (for Paul)

Adios for now! xxx