The last drop

Is hanging on the branches outside my black windows

Sparkles a last time

Before it leaves all my laughter

And departs to my lost lovers

I am tired of all the clouds

whispering sweet secrets to us sleeping children

I am tired of the shuffle of spring’s quivering leaves

The soft words between lovers

Bores me

A mother’s tenderness to her lovechild

Makes me turn away in disgust

I will only walk into the woods

Deep in where I have never been before

Between the sparkling faces of the city

Do I sleep my Cinderella sleep

In the dreams of my dreams

Am I a prisoner of my own reality…

I look at the single drop

And wish it could take me along

May 1996

my eyes feel like someone poured a bucketfull of sand into them. I am tired, and there are still an hour untill my bus will take me home. Home to my telly and nachos and caramel pudding .

and yes, i still wear my stilettos.

time to close the shop and go home...

So, I dress up prettily. Put on my 3-inch stilettos (which costed me 300 baht in Thailand, but looks like they would have costed me $300), and meet my friends in trendy (but mostly in not-so-trendy) bars. And I laugh a lot. And smile a lot. And generally being a pretty, slightly drunk (mostly the charming sort, sometimes the just drunken sort, and sometimes the horrible Woman from Hell sort), fun girl out. And I will dance, sometimes. If I feel really daring, I will even do the dirty-strip-joint routine on the dance floor, which is, although highly popular among my male friends, maybe not the cleverest thing to do, so I am trying to restrain myself. I am getting better. And I will take cab back home alone (mostly, not always, but mostly). But sometimes, I will take my friends cab back home (his home that would be).

I have known him for three years now and he is perfect boyfriend material. Sadly, even though my brain is optimistically informing me again and again that he is, the rest of my body does not seem to respond to the pep-talk. He is a couple of years younger than me. But what the hell I ask. Young boys try harder. Or something like that. We are studying the same things. We like each other. And not only do we like each other, we also do have fun together. He is tall and blond and handsome in the Scandinavian sort of way. And he is a great dresser. It’s true, he has a great fashion sense. I know what you are thinking, that maybe he is gay. And no, he isn’t. Really. And I do find him attractive, but in a friendish sort of way, and not in a wanting-to-bonk-the-living-daylight-out-of-him sort of way. So why won’t the body cooperate with what the brain have figured out is the match made in Heaven? I know I might have set the list I bit high with expecting both love and lust. Oh what the hell, I would have settled for just lust. But no, there is no such thing going on at the lower departments. Nothing, nada, ikkeno…

We have talked about it, mostly when drinks have been involved, but still talked about it. We even tried out a rather awkward and sheepishly drunken pash when lots of drinks had been taken. It didn’t turn out brilliantly. There was no sudden realisation that this very-good-friend was The One. That the man in my life had been in front of my very eyes all along. Instead it was only a rather pathetic feeling of nothingness. It was nice, but if I had to choose between another drink and another kiss, I would definitely go for the drink. So we did. Luckily he felt the same way.

But sometime we spend the night together. And we cuddle (which is nice), and swear at the totally lack of lust (which would have been nicer). And I will bother his flatmate, and raid his fridge. And the next day we will watch bad day-time-telly, and grunting to each other. And later, he will drive me home, and we will wonder why nothing ever happens between us…

on my way to the city, the days i take the bus, i drive past this house. I have been meaning to tell u about it for a long time, but somehow i never seem to remember the important (or not so important) things when i am in front of my conputer, reducing this blog to a mere diary. anyway, in the window of this house there is a nun standing. the first time i drove past it, i jumped. but by the next time i had realised that it was a human sized doll dressed up as a nun.

this nun seems to alway being appropriate dressed. when the heatwave was here, and everyone was lying in front of the air-con at different malls, she was attired with a trendy cap and sunnies. then the autumn came along, and she shanged into a light headscarf and different sunnies. when winter came, she was dressed in a knittet beanie, woollen scarf, and muttons. a couple of weeks ago i realised that she was getting married, as she was standing there, waving with weddinggear on, complete with a wedding boquet. and today, obviously in honour of State of Origin, she was dressed smartly in her favourite teams colours.

she is positioned such as you can only see her going to city, and not from city. Which makes her a little bit of a morning news. i can judge the weather from her, and as for today, she reminded me that State of Origin was today.

I wonder what people live in that house...

I have to go home and clean my kitchen, since M is coming home tomorrow. I have already packed my bag with 15 articles about corporate identity which i will read tonight. it's interesting, but tonight my thoughts are occupied with diving...

i read this article in a dive magasine about dive sited in the phillipines. the article claimed that there is a place in the phillipines where there are lots of whalesharks, and the author wrote that in one day he personally had 38 sightings of whalesharks. another article mentioned the mantarays in the phillipines, and featured lots of beautiful pictures of flying mantarays in the water. i can't remember where these places were supposed to be, but the phillipines are now definitively on my itenary. then i talked to some of my phillipino friends here. and i told them that i was going to the phillipines to dive with mantarays. they just laughed of me...

but even if they tell me that there are no mantarays in the phillipines i will still go. i know they are there.

Phil just came over and offered me a 'very nice chocolate'. And so it was. I am normally not a really big chocolate fan. And don't get me wrong, if someone offers I will take it, and i will like it. And i DO like it. But I can go for months without and NOT get the huge cravings for it. I even have a huge chocolate bar i my fridge from Norway, which I haven't even touched, and had since february. Of course, that may not be a good examples anyway, as chocolate from Norway is worth its weight in gold down here (among Norwegians that is), and is way too precious to be merely eaten... Anyway, Phil's chocolate was really good, and that was my only point.

I do now realise that this post seem slightly suggestive, and of course somewhat unremarkable...

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

- Dorothy Parker

How can it be so hard to give away free stuff??? We held this event where we had a raffle, and when we were drawing the prizes, four of the winner weren’t present. Which was fine, or so we thought. For the past week I have spent an inappropriate time on the phone, trying to track these winners down. Well, the hardest part wasn’t actually tracking them down, but to get them to come and get their free stuff they won/ and no, we are not talking lame t-shirts or caps, we are talking decent prizes like A$100 tickets to a ball, trips for two to Frasier Island, bartabs worth A$200 altogether. And not only were there prizes to be delivered, but also to repay debt from the event to students. I have been on the phone to lots of people, again, and again, and again. Oh, they can come over and pick it up later today. Surprise, surprise, no one turns up. So, I call them again, and again, and text them. And oops, they forgot, but they can come by tomorrow. And whadaya reckon, no one turns up then either. No, there are no catch by picking up the prizes, no, you don’t have to go steady with me, no, I will not try to sell you into slavery, no, we will not make you sign anything that will cause you to loose all your future earnings… I just want to get rid of these prizes. Even not-concealed threats that if they don’t come and pick them up will cause them to lose the prizes don’t seem to make any difference. I feel rather pushy calling people again and again, and texting them again and again. Why don’t they pick up, or call me back?? No, I am not ugly, I am popular too… ehr… hang on…

remembering walking in the rainforest

the padded silence of all the animals quietened by my presence embracing me

the sun filtering thick green leaves, creating interesting shadows on the ground

I could read my life story in those shadows

mesmerising

tantalising

hypnotising…

am sitting here, listening to two other people in the office, discussing some indian philosopher. or at least i think they talk about an indian guy, coz they are talking in that heavily, and quite fun, indian accent. there are a lot of them here. whenever they talk to me they slow down, and talk more 'normal', but when they are not addressing me their speech speeds up, and the accent emerge. i don't pretend to understand them when they do, becoz i don't. i can comprehend a word here and there, just enough to understand what they are talking about, but the finer details evade me. i wonder, is it a name for that accented speech a lot of indian talk? it's english, but somehow the words are pronounced different. there are pronounciations i would never even try to do, or understand. but it's nice, it's a nice brackground noise. i wish i could talk like that...

We dream such big dreams, but we are still left with the smallness of our reality.

I ran into a friend of mine the other day in the lift. And he asked me if I had heard anything from B, which is a mutual friend who left for Norway last year. I told him that I hadn’t heard from her for about a month or so, and then added that B wasn’t very good with e-mails. To which he replied that neither was he, and then he giggled. What struck me was that he didn’t seem very apologetic about it either, but rather proud. And that got me thinking.

So, this thought isn’t new, but it never came across so clear. There seem to be more and more ppl which takes pride in their inaccessibility. When internet first started out, everyone wanted to get connected, and everyone who was anyone did have e-mails. And so communication changed, or so we thought. And also, when mobiles became common, everyone had one, and we took pride in our accessibility. We lived in a world where you could get contacted everywhere at anytime. We wanted people to reach us, and we needed it. To be honest, I still do, when my mobile became sick, and it had to go to mobile hospital, I felt amputated, friendless, alone… I couldn’t reach anyone, as all my phone numbers were on my mobile, and gone were the days when I knew my friends phone numbers by heart, and no one could contact me. But, I still had my e-mail though.

But, more and more lately, I have discovered the trend that in a world where everyone is accessible all the time, wherever they are, it’s status to not be accessible anymore. As my friend, and B… to not have the time to answer e-mails, or write them in the first place, seem to be a sign to the world that one do have a life, and a such exiting life that one do not have the time for so mundane tasks as to write e-mails.

Another friend of mine told me rather proudly how little he used his mobile anymore. If people wanted to reach him, he said, they could call him at home and leave a message. So, is this the new answering machine screening strategy? Not even text messages did he reply to, even when he saw them in time. Of course, most of the text messages he got was seen way too late anyway. You can only ask J he told me, and J will tell you how little I use my mobile. And again was I struck by the pride in what he said.

When mobiles first came out, the phone trend changed from calling to someone’s home, to calling that someone directly. We didn’t want to leave messages, and we didn’t want to talk to someone else than the person we wanted to reach. And so we couldn’t understand how we somehow had managed to exist without all these new communication tools. But, have we now moved on the being too accessible? Is not being reachable 24/7 the new status sign. Instead of being on everyone else’s fingertips at whatever time, do we now require that people do make an effort to reach us, to find us?