*grin from ear to ear - I wish you could see it*
hahahaha, I bet you see an email from me now and you think 'noooooooooooo, not another epic tale of woe!'
*phft* this is a BRILLIANT email! :) I was just looking back over these emails and while you might be a little puzzled over the other side of the world, I am so glad you inspire me to write them because they are a BRILLIANT record of something that is usually such a hard thing to record - falling in love again after four years.
Why am I in such a good mood? I just got a GIGANTIC email from him, written at 1.15am this morning, from his private email account to my private email account. It was colloquial and chatty and I am really, really relaxed now because I don't have to worry about what he wants and if we will see each other after uni, because we will now.
The thing about him is that we have SO much to talk about it is like it explodes out of us whenever we are around each other. And although I reign myself in in my emails, he has just let himself off the leash. He and I will be so fine.
Yesterday, challenging as the situation seemed before I saw him, turned out in the most amazingly good way possible. It still freaks me out that in the last two weeks everyone does exactly as I expect, and says exactly what I want.
All I wanted to have happen yesterday was to hear him say 'I hope this does not make you think less of me.'
And he did. Those exact words. In front of three of my workmates and one of his classmates - the largest audience we have ever had for one of our very personal conversations.
As soon as he said it my heart was still - his immediate thought was not to defend himself or make excuses, it was what I thought of him. And that is all I wanted.
It occurred to me as I walked to work yesterday, in a zombie-like daze of disappointment in his behaviour and dread at finding out he really was an asshole, that I was living my own very special Pride and Prejudice.
THIS was when Lizzie and Darcy met at Lady De Burgh's the first time, stories coming to a head, families meet, things clarified. And it has turned out as well as that episode did, he has written me a letter to apologise (third apology to date) and has mentioned in each paragraph how well the two of us get along and how much we have to talk about. He talked about how much he liked Romeo, how he is embarrassed that his debut at the Bell table was not a good one, how much I would like the conversation around his family dinner table.
Oh yes, we will be so fine. I will be so fine. We will be so fine, even if his attraction to me is not enough to ask me out, his mind is, in the end, what I really require. I have done the unrequited lust thing, I can handle it. It is losing such a complementary mind that would kill me. And I don't think I will.
It is a stunning morning at the moment, made all the better because something that has obsessed me for too long has been resolved for me and I can concentrate now on doing my essay and being productive at work.
Ah, and there is another important factor as to why I am feeling so calm.
The political situation at work is being mediated by the Faculty, and I was asked to be the first person the mediator talked to, nominated by the Head of School because I was 'fresh eyes'. The mediator was very, very complimentary of my framing of the problems, my suggestions for solving the problems, my assessment of the situation. She told me I would make a good lawyer, a good diplomat, that I would make an exceptional historian.
But it was at the end, as we parted that she told me 'you are ethical and intrinsically fair in the workplace, and that is too rare.' No matter what kind of mess I make in my personal life, and we both know that I make a right mess sometimes, I am so goddamn GLAD that I make the grade in the 'adult' world. I am so glad I stuck to my ethical guns, especially with the way I have handled this new job and the situation with him. I am glad I can control my indulgent and selfish feelings in some part of my life, I hope now I can bring this over to my personal life. I feel much better, I can tell you.
Joey, I hope you are still having an amazing time, that the sights and sounds are giving you pleasure beyond measure, that your stomach is fine and that you will be happy to come home. How much we shall have to talk about! How much we do not have to conceal *grin*
Thursday, October 31, 2019
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
30 October 2008
Thank you.
And you just made a connection for me, a very important connection. I
am sorting out all my writing, collating it, and finding that even my
very old writing from primary school and my university essays have
parallels in my life of the last few years. Since last year I have not
written anything new, but rescued old drafts and retold them in
reference to the present. And I have finally started populating my new
website, and as I start reformatting and uploading all my previous
work, it is becoming obvious that everything from the last ten years
fits, locks right in together through the development of my thinking.
So you may be more correct than I know, there is something I CAN do
with these scribblings - after a LOT of work :)
And you just made a connection for me, a very important connection. I
am sorting out all my writing, collating it, and finding that even my
very old writing from primary school and my university essays have
parallels in my life of the last few years. Since last year I have not
written anything new, but rescued old drafts and retold them in
reference to the present. And I have finally started populating my new
website, and as I start reformatting and uploading all my previous
work, it is becoming obvious that everything from the last ten years
fits, locks right in together through the development of my thinking.
So you may be more correct than I know, there is something I CAN do
with these scribblings - after a LOT of work :)
30 October 2009
Robbie: Thanks anyway for all the emails - will let Marlene know her only other option from my end is a goth dj
Yes bell a goth dj
sigh
Friend: I didn't know Goths had djs
Robbie: Yar - like at Sin ...
Max: but he is just a dj that dresses as a goth isn't he, he actually PLAYS bubblegum pop doesn't he Daph?
Robbie: Ahahaah. No- he plays industrial music, melodic goth and hardcore stuff. But he doesn't dress like a goth
Max: damnit - wrong non-stereotypicl dj …
Friend: U get out a bit eh rob
Robbie: 'Eh?' Who's this random asking if I get out a bit, and saying 'eh' and calling me 'rob?"!
Hahahah
No- ask Max- I stay and home and scowl a lot. Then I go out a lot and scowl some more
Max: Young Santa Maria! You appear to have forgotten many of the consonants and vowels needed to construct words! How your teachers would turn over in their graves …
Friend: It's the price u pay when u cc strangers on to emails!
U would definitely fit in at sin with all your scowling
Robbie: Ahahaha. No, I don't scowl. I smile a lot. Like Bell. We're the two weird ppl beaming at ppl … then they come over and talk to us, and then I scowl
Max: don't listen to her Friend, she is make of sugar and spice and everything nice and if she is approached in a nightspot she is universally charming :)
Robbie: Oh- I saw this reaaally cute Vince Noir looking dj once, but proper electro goth...playing really electro-goth (the metallic stuff) ....was soo dreamy I wanted to puke!
U coming for drinks after work today? MyPlace (on Pier St near wellington st)- 5.30 onwards.......
MAX
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - dunno, maybe not this Friday - I have to go to the THEATRE again (surprise surprise).
Check out my week next week ...
Monday - Equity Awards Ball (drinking, schmoozing, pretending to like people)
Wednesday - Script Reading which always ends up with Karaoke in the Pub with me Dancing with Actors at 12 pm
Thursday - WAAPA showcase (drinking, schmoozing, trying not to drool too much over hot young boys, fending off stupid, older agents to get to the hot ones first, that is what sharpened elbows and a dangerous smile are for)
Friday - Eat my Monologues at BamBOO (drinking, schmoozing, more drinking, standing in VERY high heels and trying to fend off ugly boys)
hehehehe - and that is all WORK. I hate my job.
HOW YOU DOIN'? How is the watering can going?
ROBBIE
Oh my....sucks to be u.
Ahahaah- sounds good, if not very very busy!
Have to say I find actors very boring, as more often than not I think they are very B-grade...and the good ones are smart enough to disappear early and not stay for the shameless smoozing...heh
My weekdays are far far more sedate, which is why I like my weekends a lil more packed!
Wouldn't turn my nose up at looking sideways at cybs, or cute young boys.....
MAX
It sucks, but someone HAS to do it *dramatic hand to forehead*
Actors are not the worst or the best bit of the job - they are, in the end, entirely incidental. It is the producers and agents and managers and crew and stage mothers that need to be dodged. The actors stand there, look less pretty than on film, talk boring talk and their brain cells die alone ...
The Cybs however - oh my, who cares if they are pretty and vacant, I am just looking, juuuuuuuuuuuuust looking ...
ROBBIE
Meh- gone are the days of just looking I think. If the Cybs thinks ur a Cyg ... no worries ... heh
Yuk- stage mothers? If they are anything like those ridiculous hens who run around trying to enter their babies in the cutest kid competitions, I hope u are VERY successful in dodging them!
Yes bell a goth dj
sigh
Friend: I didn't know Goths had djs
Robbie: Yar - like at Sin ...
Max: but he is just a dj that dresses as a goth isn't he, he actually PLAYS bubblegum pop doesn't he Daph?
Robbie: Ahahaah. No- he plays industrial music, melodic goth and hardcore stuff. But he doesn't dress like a goth
Max: damnit - wrong non-stereotypicl dj …
Friend: U get out a bit eh rob
Robbie: 'Eh?' Who's this random asking if I get out a bit, and saying 'eh' and calling me 'rob?"!
Hahahah
No- ask Max- I stay and home and scowl a lot. Then I go out a lot and scowl some more
Max: Young Santa Maria! You appear to have forgotten many of the consonants and vowels needed to construct words! How your teachers would turn over in their graves …
Friend: It's the price u pay when u cc strangers on to emails!
U would definitely fit in at sin with all your scowling
Robbie: Ahahaha. No, I don't scowl. I smile a lot. Like Bell. We're the two weird ppl beaming at ppl … then they come over and talk to us, and then I scowl
Max: don't listen to her Friend, she is make of sugar and spice and everything nice and if she is approached in a nightspot she is universally charming :)
Robbie: Oh- I saw this reaaally cute Vince Noir looking dj once, but proper electro goth...playing really electro-goth (the metallic stuff) ....was soo dreamy I wanted to puke!
U coming for drinks after work today? MyPlace (on Pier St near wellington st)- 5.30 onwards.......
MAX
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm - dunno, maybe not this Friday - I have to go to the THEATRE again (surprise surprise).
Check out my week next week ...
Monday - Equity Awards Ball (drinking, schmoozing, pretending to like people)
Wednesday - Script Reading which always ends up with Karaoke in the Pub with me Dancing with Actors at 12 pm
Thursday - WAAPA showcase (drinking, schmoozing, trying not to drool too much over hot young boys, fending off stupid, older agents to get to the hot ones first, that is what sharpened elbows and a dangerous smile are for)
Friday - Eat my Monologues at BamBOO (drinking, schmoozing, more drinking, standing in VERY high heels and trying to fend off ugly boys)
hehehehe - and that is all WORK. I hate my job.
HOW YOU DOIN'? How is the watering can going?
ROBBIE
Oh my....sucks to be u.
Ahahaah- sounds good, if not very very busy!
Have to say I find actors very boring, as more often than not I think they are very B-grade...and the good ones are smart enough to disappear early and not stay for the shameless smoozing...heh
My weekdays are far far more sedate, which is why I like my weekends a lil more packed!
Wouldn't turn my nose up at looking sideways at cybs, or cute young boys.....
MAX
It sucks, but someone HAS to do it *dramatic hand to forehead*
Actors are not the worst or the best bit of the job - they are, in the end, entirely incidental. It is the producers and agents and managers and crew and stage mothers that need to be dodged. The actors stand there, look less pretty than on film, talk boring talk and their brain cells die alone ...
The Cybs however - oh my, who cares if they are pretty and vacant, I am just looking, juuuuuuuuuuuuust looking ...
ROBBIE
Meh- gone are the days of just looking I think. If the Cybs thinks ur a Cyg ... no worries ... heh
Yuk- stage mothers? If they are anything like those ridiculous hens who run around trying to enter their babies in the cutest kid competitions, I hope u are VERY successful in dodging them!
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
26 October 2006
Before we get to the man, a little on what I have been up to ...
#1 The ex-boyfriend and I parted ways due to him uttering a racist comment in my house that made me feel a little sick that I had been sleeping with him. Intolerance is not an attractive feature in a man!
#2 I have seen the making of movies from behind the camera now - one of my friends is in the film industry and I was her assistant on set for a weekend, it was fascinating.
#3 Started my study and realised that I wouldn't have a life for the next two years and that I didn't want a life apart from travel and study, nothing else interests me at all!
#4 Tom and I have turned into Nannas, staying home on the weekend more than we go out. However that is not so bad now that she is going out with a *cough* young man who keeps her occupied and while I had Nathan to play with infrequently too, I am anticipating a more constant entertainment unit for my bed soonish (once he graduates!)
#5 Summer is here and it is going to be a HUGE summer with lots of friends coming back home and my brothers, sister and I having a lot of partying to do!
And now a quick rundown on why he is the perfect man:
#1 Good Irish Catholic stock, my parents will love him,
#2 Can do a pitch-perfect Irish accent, it makes me want to jump him right there,
#3 Loves English History as much as I do, if not more,
#4 I suspect he is actually better than me at it - he is actually completing an Engineering degree in two weeks, but he does History Units as his electives (almost unheard of in the Engineering Faculty, Engineers hate Arts) and his marks are better than mine *phooey*,
#5 He is SO jealous of me doing my Honours in History that he literally gets green with jealousy when I talk about it,
#6 He reads Hemmingway, Sun Tze and Machiavelli,
#7 He bought me chocolates for no reason other than I was always smiling when he came to talk to me in the office,
#8 He gets red stripes on his cheekbones when he sees me, it is adorable,
#9 He can't control his breathing, his speech, his eyes or his body when I am around, it is PERFECTLY obvious how I affect him *smirk*
#10 We finish each other's jokes and make the most obscure history jokes possible and sometimes we can't stand for laughing at each other.
HIS ANCESTRY VISA TO THE UK! Four years is SO worth a wedding :)
His entire class and my boss have known for FOUR months that he has a crush on me and have watched in amazement as I only started having the same feelings a month ago - Treehouse Friend assures me his feelings for me are the worst kept secret in the world. It is so sweet.
More news from the frontline ...
Well, I tell you what, this is going to give you a laugh!
At the moment I am the sanest I have been since the day after my graduation when this entire affair really started. I am sane because I have to be - it appears that the moment of reckoning for the two of us is going to be next Wednesday night, which I had hoped would not be the case, but I cannot ignore the impetus that this affair is lent by the people watching.
You see, there are 58 very tired, stressed and emotionally shattered students who are gearing up to hand in their thesis' on Tuesday and party on Wednesday night. And to my mounting despair, it appears that too many of them, most with whom I have barely shared three words, are watching and discussing me with unsettling fascination. Today I got three different comments about MY honours from students who had not even BEEN at the event at which I discussed my studies with only four students. The fact that the details of my life are so well known confirm Treehouse Friend's assertion that while I am in the eye of the storm caused by the year's worst kept secret, I have to be very, very careful.
They are so young, they are so raw from stress and excitement that I can read them like a book. I am becoming a focus for them because I am so close to them in age and experience, I am so empathetic because I am the one emailing them to remind them of deadlines and I am the face they see when they have problems. I am good at making people like me anyway, but in their state, I am becoming something too important. Add to that the fact that it now appears that they (and Treehouse Friend) have known for FOUR months that He has had his eye on me, and there is a drama starring a reluctant Max shaping up for the Final Year Dinner next Wednesday.
Tuesday was SO embarrassing I kept getting aftershocks of whole body embarrassment *gloom*
Let's recap: from the first time I met him and for the three months subsequent it took me about three hours to be able to think after I had seen him, but I was in control all other times. Then a month ago he started stepping up the contact and my recovery time after seeing him escalated from a day to days, to weeks now.
THEN I started getting hot knees when he wasn't around, then I started forgetting the rest of the world when he was around, then I actively ignored the rest of the world when he was around.
Today I actually reached the worst level yet in this saga - when he arrived in the office my knees actually wobbled, I stammered, I was so nervous I just ended up not saying anything and then, well, for the first time when he was actually there, I flushed to my hair for no other reason than he was teasing me. It was like I was fifteen and in love with the Trinity Head Boy. I was in NO WAY a 25-year-old woman, I was a lovesick teenager.
My only consolation is that while I may have been all too aware that my face was singing the paper on my desk, I was not talking (from terror that I would mess up a five-word sentence for the fourth time) and so was able to watch his entire face heat up as red as his cheeks always are, he actually went redder than me and looked like he was sunburnt. I have NEVER seen such a pathetic pair as the two of us.
That night and Wednesday morning we were emailing a little. Then I took the bull by the horns and I emailed him and asked him to come in and see me. He left home before he got the email, so when I ran into him on the stairs 50 minutes later we were both at a distinct disadvantage - I thought he was ignoring me, he did not know that I was determined to tell him AGAIN to pull his head in.
We rounded a corner and literally ran into each other, brown eyes meeting brown eyes with unmistakable pleasure and pain at the unexpected meeting. I had my thoughts in better order than him, at one point he uttered a sentence that was gobble-de-gook from start to finish - the words entirely jumbled up. Terribly endearing until the flush of his embarrassment creeps up his cheeks and I just wanted to tell him that it will all be over sooner than we can imagine.
I knew which class he was going to, so I commanded him to come and see when it finished and he was very good and turned up on the dot of 3. He and I took a stroll down to James Oval, him dragging his feet and warning me that he was not in the best headspace to hear what he thought I was going to say. I was uncaring. In the middle of James Oval, I told him that he was distracting me, that he could not expect me to continue to be as outgoing as usual with him under the gaze of others and I asked him if he had not noticed that he made me flush when he was around.
Despite these comments - as forward comments as a woman could ever give a man - he gave me nothing in return and I was getting nervous that we had ALL misread the signs. We parted well and as I went back to work I realised that despite his silence, I was finally feeling better. And indeed I felt so much better, especially when Treehouse Friend sat me down to hear the story, and when she heard that I was happy with the outcome, told me that he had been exactly the same with me from the very first meeting - it's just that after four months I had finally come to see his reactions with more and more clarity. She assured me that it was not imagination.
Late that afternoon, as Treehouse Friend and I were debriefing, he arrived in the office again and I do not know which part of 'leave me alone' he has a problem with, but it seemed to have only incited him. I was ruthless in enforcing my request from earlier that afternoon and he only escalated his familiarity each time. In the end, I cut him off and walked away, finally convinced that he was not in control of his reactions. It is overwhelming for me when he is around, I am so frantic for any contact that I can barely keep a skerrick of air between us without concentrating stupendously hard on not plastering myself against him.
My last comment to Treehouse Friend was that I knew exactly what was going to happen next - Gidget was going to be in before the end of the week and she was going to ask me if I had a boyfriend. And in the manner that is now characterising this affair, I was right on the money - today Gidget was in and her entire conversation was crafted to ask me about my status.
Now, Gidget - I have only mentioned her in passing, but she is the wild card in this game. She is half Japanese and what must be Malaysian, an extraordinary looking girl, she is short and slender and is very distinctive and cool.
In my five months here I had only met her one week before the symposium, but that first time she was with him and I immediately realised that she was a very close friend and he was reluctant to talk to me too much in front of her. The second time I met her, it was after the first day of the symposium and she came up to him and me in the middle of our first really flirtatious conversation. She stood, she listened for about ten seconds and very bluntly asked us 'what the hell are the two of you talking about?' She then dismissed me completely and told him she was ready to go - they live down the road from each other and he drives her to Uni and back.
From that moment I knew that I was now dealing with two people, and sure enough the next day, at the symposium lunch, Gidget had been told what was expected of her and she fell in line with the rest of the boys and was utterly friendly and went out of her way to talk to me. And goodness me wasn't *I* on my best behaviour with her too - I knew I had to keep her onside.
From then on we have had this strange relationship in which we talk on the surface as if we are getting on like a house on fire (I genuinely like her), but we both know why we are talking. When he does not visit, Gidget is in to talk to me. Lately, she has not even bothered to use the flimsy excuses that she used to use, she just comes in to talk to me. And all our conversations end in her fishing for my boyfriend status, what I like in men, etc. I have been dodging the questions, but she lost her patience today and asked me straight out.
The problem with her is that I am also fishing for answers to the same questions she asks me - I want to know if I am being screened, or if I am being sized up by the opposition. My first instinct was that she was the opposition, and if she is I am not scared! My subsequent thoughts have been that she is screening and that they are just friends - she has been too clearly making friends with me and her questions and mentions of him are too closely correlated to my conversations with him that I cannot conclude anything but that he is telling her everything.
*sigh* There are two main opinions on Gidget, from Treehouse Friend and Elbow. With plenty of experience in the male/female friend thing, Elbow says she is ensuring that I like her, so she will see enough of him if he does go out with me. Elbow's wry comment was that female friends waited on the girlfriend's pleasure in such matters. Treehouse Friend, with her greater life experiences, just warns me that some women will use anything to get their man, and I should not trust her at all. I am utterly divided myself, I cannot read her at all.
So today she was in to talk to me and from our conversation, I can conclude that he wanted a clear answer on my status and that she is of the opinion that he would be making a move on Wednesday.
This I cannot allow because the 24th of November is the very earliest I can entertain anything at all, ethically. So I have come up with a cunning, cunning plan. On Wednesday when we are mingling he can monopolise me as much as he wants. When it comes to sitting down to dinner, I am sitting with my other good mate Tad. Tad is the only student that he is in awe of (he is actually a little terrified of Tad!), because Tad is the clear intellectual giant of the group.
From all the interactions I have witnessed, I currently get along famously with the respective leaders of the packs. Tad is the intellectual alpha male (he is 23, two years older than the rest of the class), and his group consists of the very cleverest students and the international students, all of whom I made friends with when I first arrived and are my very favourites. He is the social alpha male (he is 24, as is Gidget) and his group are the beautiful people (my GOD you should see his two best mates, I get all silent around Filip he is so hot, and Daniel is utterly gorgeous).
Neither talk much to each other, but three times now I have been standing between the two of them as they watch each other closely while competing for my conversation, and it has been a very strange experience indeed.
Tad has an utterly gorgeous and charming girlfriend, a 2nd-year med student, whose name is Claire and bears a striking resemblance to me in both looks and personality - although I would effortlessly say she is light years ahead of me in charm, poise and looks. Treehouse Friend met her the night I did, and since then she has been very blunt with me about our resemblance and how well Tad and I get on. Each time she sees me with Tad she tells me off afterwards for doing something that would make his girlfriend worry.
I tell you what, I hope she is misreading Tad as well, but Treehouse Friend hasn't been wrong yet.
As these days start speeding up, as the tension builds, as the people involved get closer to a letting off of steam I am getting tenser and tenser - this is the very last situation I thought I would end up in, but it is getting to an unbearable and frankly dangerous pitch.
And now I am here to say that each time I think that things couldn't get worse in this affair, it totally gets worse.
The new pinnacle of discomfort? Tonight he was an anecdote around the table at the Bell Sunday dinner ... and the anecdote was told by Romeo and it was not a good one. How could this be I hear you ask?
Let me explain ...
Romeo was one of the six finalists for the WA Rhodes Scholarship on Friday. He lost to a lawyer and since he came second he is going to Canberra in a month to compete for one of the three National Scholarships. I talked to him on Friday afternoon after the announcement and we discussed quickly the guy who won it, Travers, and Romeo quite liked him.
Saturday he emails me to admit that his thesis was getting done slowly because he had been drinking all night - WITH HIS BEST MATE TRAVERS WHO HAD WON THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.
I felt like I had been kicked in the guts - this was TOO FUCKING close to home now. I sent him a reply answering his other questions and dropping in that his mate had beaten my brother. That was all cool, it could have just been something else to talk about.
But then this evening as Romeo and Elbow came to pick me up to take me to the parents, Romeo mentioned that he had gatecrashed the UWA Law Final Show on Friday - with Travers and his mates. You can imagine how nonchalant my voice when I asked him if he had met a friend of his.
*sigh*
Romeo: Him? Yeah, actually, tall footballer with big shoulders?
Max: (melting) Yup, that's him.
Romeo: He was a bit of an arrogant fuck actually. He couldn't believe that I wasn't upset about losing to his mate. He wouldn't let it go, I got a bit pissed off.
Max stares out the window thinking 'fuck fuck fuckity fuuuuuuck, this is not good.'
The dinner was spent dissecting the Friday announcement and Romeo told the parents about how Travers had treated him afterwards - apparently he actually ruffled Romeo's hair later at the Law Show in front of people - you can imagine how that went down with the Bells around the table! And then Romeo told the story about him and I just, well, I just felt sick. What a fucking mess. Sometimes I really hate Perth and how small and arrogant everyone is.
So I make another prediction - he will see my email after a bender of a weekend and he will suddenly remember his conversation with Romeo. I have a feeling that there will be a very interesting conversation when he comes in to hand me his thesis.
As for me, well, I feel sick because I am not interested in having to toe the line with a bunch of arrogant lawyers and footballers. I was so tired of the constant Australian arrogance of first boyfriend and his football mates, and his friends are older, more successful and, judging from his Uni friends, pretty much the beautiful people. And to be perfectly frank, those kinds of people bore me to tears.
I know he is arrogant, but I don't mind arrogance when it is disabled in my presence because he is so smitten. But I do not want to have to swallow my pride and start being nice to arrogant Australian pretty boys *shudder*
And let's not forget that I am not a skinny blonde, which caused enough trouble with first boyfriend to keep me sorted for the rest of my life, thanks.
I am pretty much permanently nauseous these days with anticipation and dread. I am not sure how much worse this can get.
And now that I have said it, it's going to get worse, guaranteed.
*in a very special Perth hell*
#1 The ex-boyfriend and I parted ways due to him uttering a racist comment in my house that made me feel a little sick that I had been sleeping with him. Intolerance is not an attractive feature in a man!
#2 I have seen the making of movies from behind the camera now - one of my friends is in the film industry and I was her assistant on set for a weekend, it was fascinating.
#3 Started my study and realised that I wouldn't have a life for the next two years and that I didn't want a life apart from travel and study, nothing else interests me at all!
#4 Tom and I have turned into Nannas, staying home on the weekend more than we go out. However that is not so bad now that she is going out with a *cough* young man who keeps her occupied and while I had Nathan to play with infrequently too, I am anticipating a more constant entertainment unit for my bed soonish (once he graduates!)
#5 Summer is here and it is going to be a HUGE summer with lots of friends coming back home and my brothers, sister and I having a lot of partying to do!
And now a quick rundown on why he is the perfect man:
#1 Good Irish Catholic stock, my parents will love him,
#2 Can do a pitch-perfect Irish accent, it makes me want to jump him right there,
#3 Loves English History as much as I do, if not more,
#4 I suspect he is actually better than me at it - he is actually completing an Engineering degree in two weeks, but he does History Units as his electives (almost unheard of in the Engineering Faculty, Engineers hate Arts) and his marks are better than mine *phooey*,
#5 He is SO jealous of me doing my Honours in History that he literally gets green with jealousy when I talk about it,
#6 He reads Hemmingway, Sun Tze and Machiavelli,
#7 He bought me chocolates for no reason other than I was always smiling when he came to talk to me in the office,
#8 He gets red stripes on his cheekbones when he sees me, it is adorable,
#9 He can't control his breathing, his speech, his eyes or his body when I am around, it is PERFECTLY obvious how I affect him *smirk*
#10 We finish each other's jokes and make the most obscure history jokes possible and sometimes we can't stand for laughing at each other.
HIS ANCESTRY VISA TO THE UK! Four years is SO worth a wedding :)
His entire class and my boss have known for FOUR months that he has a crush on me and have watched in amazement as I only started having the same feelings a month ago - Treehouse Friend assures me his feelings for me are the worst kept secret in the world. It is so sweet.
More news from the frontline ...
Well, I tell you what, this is going to give you a laugh!
At the moment I am the sanest I have been since the day after my graduation when this entire affair really started. I am sane because I have to be - it appears that the moment of reckoning for the two of us is going to be next Wednesday night, which I had hoped would not be the case, but I cannot ignore the impetus that this affair is lent by the people watching.
You see, there are 58 very tired, stressed and emotionally shattered students who are gearing up to hand in their thesis' on Tuesday and party on Wednesday night. And to my mounting despair, it appears that too many of them, most with whom I have barely shared three words, are watching and discussing me with unsettling fascination. Today I got three different comments about MY honours from students who had not even BEEN at the event at which I discussed my studies with only four students. The fact that the details of my life are so well known confirm Treehouse Friend's assertion that while I am in the eye of the storm caused by the year's worst kept secret, I have to be very, very careful.
They are so young, they are so raw from stress and excitement that I can read them like a book. I am becoming a focus for them because I am so close to them in age and experience, I am so empathetic because I am the one emailing them to remind them of deadlines and I am the face they see when they have problems. I am good at making people like me anyway, but in their state, I am becoming something too important. Add to that the fact that it now appears that they (and Treehouse Friend) have known for FOUR months that He has had his eye on me, and there is a drama starring a reluctant Max shaping up for the Final Year Dinner next Wednesday.
Tuesday was SO embarrassing I kept getting aftershocks of whole body embarrassment *gloom*
Let's recap: from the first time I met him and for the three months subsequent it took me about three hours to be able to think after I had seen him, but I was in control all other times. Then a month ago he started stepping up the contact and my recovery time after seeing him escalated from a day to days, to weeks now.
THEN I started getting hot knees when he wasn't around, then I started forgetting the rest of the world when he was around, then I actively ignored the rest of the world when he was around.
Today I actually reached the worst level yet in this saga - when he arrived in the office my knees actually wobbled, I stammered, I was so nervous I just ended up not saying anything and then, well, for the first time when he was actually there, I flushed to my hair for no other reason than he was teasing me. It was like I was fifteen and in love with the Trinity Head Boy. I was in NO WAY a 25-year-old woman, I was a lovesick teenager.
My only consolation is that while I may have been all too aware that my face was singing the paper on my desk, I was not talking (from terror that I would mess up a five-word sentence for the fourth time) and so was able to watch his entire face heat up as red as his cheeks always are, he actually went redder than me and looked like he was sunburnt. I have NEVER seen such a pathetic pair as the two of us.
That night and Wednesday morning we were emailing a little. Then I took the bull by the horns and I emailed him and asked him to come in and see me. He left home before he got the email, so when I ran into him on the stairs 50 minutes later we were both at a distinct disadvantage - I thought he was ignoring me, he did not know that I was determined to tell him AGAIN to pull his head in.
We rounded a corner and literally ran into each other, brown eyes meeting brown eyes with unmistakable pleasure and pain at the unexpected meeting. I had my thoughts in better order than him, at one point he uttered a sentence that was gobble-de-gook from start to finish - the words entirely jumbled up. Terribly endearing until the flush of his embarrassment creeps up his cheeks and I just wanted to tell him that it will all be over sooner than we can imagine.
I knew which class he was going to, so I commanded him to come and see when it finished and he was very good and turned up on the dot of 3. He and I took a stroll down to James Oval, him dragging his feet and warning me that he was not in the best headspace to hear what he thought I was going to say. I was uncaring. In the middle of James Oval, I told him that he was distracting me, that he could not expect me to continue to be as outgoing as usual with him under the gaze of others and I asked him if he had not noticed that he made me flush when he was around.
Despite these comments - as forward comments as a woman could ever give a man - he gave me nothing in return and I was getting nervous that we had ALL misread the signs. We parted well and as I went back to work I realised that despite his silence, I was finally feeling better. And indeed I felt so much better, especially when Treehouse Friend sat me down to hear the story, and when she heard that I was happy with the outcome, told me that he had been exactly the same with me from the very first meeting - it's just that after four months I had finally come to see his reactions with more and more clarity. She assured me that it was not imagination.
Late that afternoon, as Treehouse Friend and I were debriefing, he arrived in the office again and I do not know which part of 'leave me alone' he has a problem with, but it seemed to have only incited him. I was ruthless in enforcing my request from earlier that afternoon and he only escalated his familiarity each time. In the end, I cut him off and walked away, finally convinced that he was not in control of his reactions. It is overwhelming for me when he is around, I am so frantic for any contact that I can barely keep a skerrick of air between us without concentrating stupendously hard on not plastering myself against him.
My last comment to Treehouse Friend was that I knew exactly what was going to happen next - Gidget was going to be in before the end of the week and she was going to ask me if I had a boyfriend. And in the manner that is now characterising this affair, I was right on the money - today Gidget was in and her entire conversation was crafted to ask me about my status.
Now, Gidget - I have only mentioned her in passing, but she is the wild card in this game. She is half Japanese and what must be Malaysian, an extraordinary looking girl, she is short and slender and is very distinctive and cool.
In my five months here I had only met her one week before the symposium, but that first time she was with him and I immediately realised that she was a very close friend and he was reluctant to talk to me too much in front of her. The second time I met her, it was after the first day of the symposium and she came up to him and me in the middle of our first really flirtatious conversation. She stood, she listened for about ten seconds and very bluntly asked us 'what the hell are the two of you talking about?' She then dismissed me completely and told him she was ready to go - they live down the road from each other and he drives her to Uni and back.
From that moment I knew that I was now dealing with two people, and sure enough the next day, at the symposium lunch, Gidget had been told what was expected of her and she fell in line with the rest of the boys and was utterly friendly and went out of her way to talk to me. And goodness me wasn't *I* on my best behaviour with her too - I knew I had to keep her onside.
From then on we have had this strange relationship in which we talk on the surface as if we are getting on like a house on fire (I genuinely like her), but we both know why we are talking. When he does not visit, Gidget is in to talk to me. Lately, she has not even bothered to use the flimsy excuses that she used to use, she just comes in to talk to me. And all our conversations end in her fishing for my boyfriend status, what I like in men, etc. I have been dodging the questions, but she lost her patience today and asked me straight out.
The problem with her is that I am also fishing for answers to the same questions she asks me - I want to know if I am being screened, or if I am being sized up by the opposition. My first instinct was that she was the opposition, and if she is I am not scared! My subsequent thoughts have been that she is screening and that they are just friends - she has been too clearly making friends with me and her questions and mentions of him are too closely correlated to my conversations with him that I cannot conclude anything but that he is telling her everything.
*sigh* There are two main opinions on Gidget, from Treehouse Friend and Elbow. With plenty of experience in the male/female friend thing, Elbow says she is ensuring that I like her, so she will see enough of him if he does go out with me. Elbow's wry comment was that female friends waited on the girlfriend's pleasure in such matters. Treehouse Friend, with her greater life experiences, just warns me that some women will use anything to get their man, and I should not trust her at all. I am utterly divided myself, I cannot read her at all.
So today she was in to talk to me and from our conversation, I can conclude that he wanted a clear answer on my status and that she is of the opinion that he would be making a move on Wednesday.
This I cannot allow because the 24th of November is the very earliest I can entertain anything at all, ethically. So I have come up with a cunning, cunning plan. On Wednesday when we are mingling he can monopolise me as much as he wants. When it comes to sitting down to dinner, I am sitting with my other good mate Tad. Tad is the only student that he is in awe of (he is actually a little terrified of Tad!), because Tad is the clear intellectual giant of the group.
From all the interactions I have witnessed, I currently get along famously with the respective leaders of the packs. Tad is the intellectual alpha male (he is 23, two years older than the rest of the class), and his group consists of the very cleverest students and the international students, all of whom I made friends with when I first arrived and are my very favourites. He is the social alpha male (he is 24, as is Gidget) and his group are the beautiful people (my GOD you should see his two best mates, I get all silent around Filip he is so hot, and Daniel is utterly gorgeous).
Neither talk much to each other, but three times now I have been standing between the two of them as they watch each other closely while competing for my conversation, and it has been a very strange experience indeed.
Tad has an utterly gorgeous and charming girlfriend, a 2nd-year med student, whose name is Claire and bears a striking resemblance to me in both looks and personality - although I would effortlessly say she is light years ahead of me in charm, poise and looks. Treehouse Friend met her the night I did, and since then she has been very blunt with me about our resemblance and how well Tad and I get on. Each time she sees me with Tad she tells me off afterwards for doing something that would make his girlfriend worry.
I tell you what, I hope she is misreading Tad as well, but Treehouse Friend hasn't been wrong yet.
As these days start speeding up, as the tension builds, as the people involved get closer to a letting off of steam I am getting tenser and tenser - this is the very last situation I thought I would end up in, but it is getting to an unbearable and frankly dangerous pitch.
And now I am here to say that each time I think that things couldn't get worse in this affair, it totally gets worse.
The new pinnacle of discomfort? Tonight he was an anecdote around the table at the Bell Sunday dinner ... and the anecdote was told by Romeo and it was not a good one. How could this be I hear you ask?
Let me explain ...
Romeo was one of the six finalists for the WA Rhodes Scholarship on Friday. He lost to a lawyer and since he came second he is going to Canberra in a month to compete for one of the three National Scholarships. I talked to him on Friday afternoon after the announcement and we discussed quickly the guy who won it, Travers, and Romeo quite liked him.
Saturday he emails me to admit that his thesis was getting done slowly because he had been drinking all night - WITH HIS BEST MATE TRAVERS WHO HAD WON THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIP.
I felt like I had been kicked in the guts - this was TOO FUCKING close to home now. I sent him a reply answering his other questions and dropping in that his mate had beaten my brother. That was all cool, it could have just been something else to talk about.
But then this evening as Romeo and Elbow came to pick me up to take me to the parents, Romeo mentioned that he had gatecrashed the UWA Law Final Show on Friday - with Travers and his mates. You can imagine how nonchalant my voice when I asked him if he had met a friend of his.
*sigh*
Romeo: Him? Yeah, actually, tall footballer with big shoulders?
Max: (melting) Yup, that's him.
Romeo: He was a bit of an arrogant fuck actually. He couldn't believe that I wasn't upset about losing to his mate. He wouldn't let it go, I got a bit pissed off.
Max stares out the window thinking 'fuck fuck fuckity fuuuuuuck, this is not good.'
The dinner was spent dissecting the Friday announcement and Romeo told the parents about how Travers had treated him afterwards - apparently he actually ruffled Romeo's hair later at the Law Show in front of people - you can imagine how that went down with the Bells around the table! And then Romeo told the story about him and I just, well, I just felt sick. What a fucking mess. Sometimes I really hate Perth and how small and arrogant everyone is.
So I make another prediction - he will see my email after a bender of a weekend and he will suddenly remember his conversation with Romeo. I have a feeling that there will be a very interesting conversation when he comes in to hand me his thesis.
As for me, well, I feel sick because I am not interested in having to toe the line with a bunch of arrogant lawyers and footballers. I was so tired of the constant Australian arrogance of first boyfriend and his football mates, and his friends are older, more successful and, judging from his Uni friends, pretty much the beautiful people. And to be perfectly frank, those kinds of people bore me to tears.
I know he is arrogant, but I don't mind arrogance when it is disabled in my presence because he is so smitten. But I do not want to have to swallow my pride and start being nice to arrogant Australian pretty boys *shudder*
And let's not forget that I am not a skinny blonde, which caused enough trouble with first boyfriend to keep me sorted for the rest of my life, thanks.
I am pretty much permanently nauseous these days with anticipation and dread. I am not sure how much worse this can get.
And now that I have said it, it's going to get worse, guaranteed.
*in a very special Perth hell*
29 October 2004
TO CHE
Right, so I have a goddamn love affair totally not happening and so I am going to keep you up to date ...
After declaring in my morning email to Sister that, and I quote,
“You should see what I do to Teddy’s that displease me ...
*riiiiiiiiip* (actually, probably won't happen because I possibly don't care enough)”
I decided that his rudeness would not go unnoticed. So I sent this ...
Just because I hate not knowing what is going on with outstanding invitations …
Please just select an answer for your reply!
1.
Thanks for the invite, I would like further invites when applicable and I will let you know if I am coming.
2.
Thanks for the invite, how about I let you know if I want to come on a Tuesday in the future.
3.
Thanks for the invite but it is not really my cuppa.
4.
Please stop emailing me!
5.
Who are you again?
6
Did you know that 42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything and the amount of time it would take for an object to travel from one side of the earth to the other via a theoretical hole through the centre?
7.
The world is made up of five basic building blocks known as up, down, sideways, sex appeal and peppermint.
Cheers mate
Claire
And my sad-arse reaction to his reply (for prosperity his answer was to chose 2, 6 and 7) to this self-same email?
TO A SISTER
As a Freudian, I feel impelled to inform you that dreams are the conscious manifestation of subconscious desires! Embrace those desires girl! Did I not, this very afternoon, bare witness to the harnessing and directing of desires to get what I wanted? Though I bet most of his haste to email me was because you were there - we are a great team!
Oh, and the funniest thing about me protesting that I loved him not was my reaction to the email from him! As soon as I got it I started humming and I hummed, sung and danced all afternoon. Then I went boot shopping, I got a makeup pampering at Benefit AND Elizabeth Arden and then tried on cute pink jumpers at Laura Ashley.
I wear light powder, eyeliner, mascara and lip balm on any normal day. Today I had two eyeshadows, three moisturisers, two blushes and all kinds of muck on and I felt so GIRLIE! :)
I have never even WANTED to go into Laura Ashley in my life, let alone contemplated buying two tops from there!
I try not to sing and dance in front of workmates but I did both.
M told me that I should not stick that coathanger up my nose again or else the self-administered lobotomy may take out something important!
I don't know what is wrong with me. Oh, and the new Yves St Laurent perfume, Cinema, is fabulous darhlink ... raaaahhhh!
A toast to men and their ability to make us lose our cool.
Right, so I have a goddamn love affair totally not happening and so I am going to keep you up to date ...
After declaring in my morning email to Sister that, and I quote,
“You should see what I do to Teddy’s that displease me ...
*riiiiiiiiip* (actually, probably won't happen because I possibly don't care enough)”
I decided that his rudeness would not go unnoticed. So I sent this ...
Just because I hate not knowing what is going on with outstanding invitations …
Please just select an answer for your reply!
1.
Thanks for the invite, I would like further invites when applicable and I will let you know if I am coming.
2.
Thanks for the invite, how about I let you know if I want to come on a Tuesday in the future.
3.
Thanks for the invite but it is not really my cuppa.
4.
Please stop emailing me!
5.
Who are you again?
6
Did you know that 42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything and the amount of time it would take for an object to travel from one side of the earth to the other via a theoretical hole through the centre?
7.
The world is made up of five basic building blocks known as up, down, sideways, sex appeal and peppermint.
Cheers mate
Claire
And my sad-arse reaction to his reply (for prosperity his answer was to chose 2, 6 and 7) to this self-same email?
TO A SISTER
As a Freudian, I feel impelled to inform you that dreams are the conscious manifestation of subconscious desires! Embrace those desires girl! Did I not, this very afternoon, bare witness to the harnessing and directing of desires to get what I wanted? Though I bet most of his haste to email me was because you were there - we are a great team!
Oh, and the funniest thing about me protesting that I loved him not was my reaction to the email from him! As soon as I got it I started humming and I hummed, sung and danced all afternoon. Then I went boot shopping, I got a makeup pampering at Benefit AND Elizabeth Arden and then tried on cute pink jumpers at Laura Ashley.
I wear light powder, eyeliner, mascara and lip balm on any normal day. Today I had two eyeshadows, three moisturisers, two blushes and all kinds of muck on and I felt so GIRLIE! :)
I have never even WANTED to go into Laura Ashley in my life, let alone contemplated buying two tops from there!
I try not to sing and dance in front of workmates but I did both.
M told me that I should not stick that coathanger up my nose again or else the self-administered lobotomy may take out something important!
I don't know what is wrong with me. Oh, and the new Yves St Laurent perfume, Cinema, is fabulous darhlink ... raaaahhhh!
A toast to men and their ability to make us lose our cool.
Monday, October 28, 2019
28 October 2013
EMAIL
From: Aunt
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 7:53 AM
Subject: Re: The Button Box
That is beautiful Godmother … thank you for sending it. AND that little 2year old is you again.
I well remember Mum's button box and loved looking through it. I even remember some of those buttons she describes, particularly the pearly ones on my blue corduroy coat that melted in front of the heater.
I still have that coat and daughter wore it when she was little. I will get it out when I get home and it may fit granddaughter now. I will take a photo for Mum.
Love
Aunt
From: FUtE Bowen
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 10:48 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Godmother I am starting to get jealous … you seem to feature in most of these stories … or are you just typing out the ones with you in them? We know Morgan had the famous baby book to himself, Uncle Priest, Uncle Farm, FUtE and Aunt seem to enjoy a certain anonymity and, of course, Uncle Youngest … well nit picking around Uncle Youngest’s adulated childhood would seem petty, unless of course one discounts the velvet suits, the alter of adoration in the corner and, of course, the praise singing in the background! So what’s the deal huh?
Love
FUtE
From: Morgan
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:05 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
I think the little girl in the story is Aunt, isn’t it?
From: Godmother
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:33 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Actually FUtE, you notice that my name is never mentioned, nor those of any of our other siblings – HOWEVER – YOUR name IS mentioned and it’s the ONLY name in any of the stories … and that’s in RAJAH. Apparently you said “So you are awake little Swan? I hope you are well now, because you are going to be my very own Swan. Daddy said so, and you are going to live with us here at National Park. My name is FUtE and I am going to call you Rajah. Would you like that?”
Seriously though – I guess that the reason could be that Mum and Dad might have found the time to take a breather when I was preschool age. There was 5 years remember before Uncle Younger came along which was the longest break they’d had between babies. So maybe there was less time taken up with washing nappies and a little relaxation time. I know that at the time I was due there were severe financial troubles which were not helped by the fact that I was late arriving and Mum and Dad had hired Mrs Cutts to help with the housekeeping. She ended up being present for longer than anticipated and would, no doubt, have cost a bit. If I remember correctly, Dad was working at Ag Parts at the time. Perhaps they were back on track a few years later and got around to putting their feet up, reflecting and writing stories.
FUtE I am positive that the deprived, neglected childhood that we “middle children” experienced has been instrumental in making us the amazing people that we are today. so don’t waste time being jealous.
BTW … as far as I know that’s all the stories now … apart from a reflection written by Uncle Younger ... about his first visit to Ireland.
From: Morgan
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:40 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Give me a break!
You middle children got it easy.
Try being the eldest…you have to “break in” the parents, live up to unrealistic expectations and assume unreasonable responsibility for the supervision of feckless younger siblings.
It was hell.
From: FUtE
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:53 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
I am assuming Morgan that trying to shoehorn Aunt into the picture, whilst madly protecting one of your more valuable employees from accusations of nepotism (can you do that to yourself as opposed to others?) is actually a backhanded way of getting your own privileged babyhood out of the limelight!
At this moment … As I write this … an new email from you has just flashed in screaming “Give me a break … I had to break in the parents etc” Whatever, all I remember is the astounding and uncritical support we gave to your machinations. Do you remember making Uncle Farm and I sit next to you on the train so that when the girls from PC got on we would stand and offer our seat to the chosen one?? Not only did we fail to see the injustice of this, we thought you were damned cool. For my part I am sure I only did it to enjoy the moment when Trish Anderson actually looked at me (as opposed to you) and said “Thanks”. So don’t give me hardship Boy … it was straight out exploitation! “Give me a break indeed”!
From: FUtE
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:55 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Dammit Godmother … I didn’t realise I was mentioned and now I have just excoriated Morgan! When you two gang up on me make sure your emails arrive in the right order so my paranoia has time to work itself through!
From: FUtE
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 12:16 PM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Ok Godmother … mea culpa. I had actually not read Rajah because I was away at the time. Needless to say I think that is easily the best of the stories and the protagonists are those we most easily identify with … nay possibly simply admire. Such compassion, faultless diction and, even, the warm manly chest … in one so young? MMMmm None of these things add up Godmother, my diction was not advanced at that point, I suspect I would have been unable to hear the swan (cygnet?) thrashing around in the scrub and, well the manly warm chest doesn’t sound like me eithee … in fact these virtues were far more likely to be associated with Uncle Priest … so did you change the name or what?
FACEBOOK
Hey Cousins (Godmother), how hilarious is 'The Bell Bunch' email trail at the moment? Other cousins (all other siblings) ... ask your rentals for the emails ...
Cousin-in-law (Godmother): I know!!
Cousin (FUtE): Literally have no idea what you are talking about. Just asked dad and he doesn't know either
Cousin (Uncle Farm): What is email?
Max: Hehehe ... The Button Box ...
Cousin (Godmother): Hahaha I just read it. Cousin (FUtE), your dad is heavily involved, he's playing dumb because he doesn't want you to see my mum out-arguing him
Max: I love that FUtE is disavowing knowledge ... I am enjoying the read immensely. Especially my favorite uncle stirring, stirring ...
FUtE: That last endorsement is clearly made by someone with scintillating intelligence
Cousin (FUtE): ahh sibling rivalry at its finest
FUtE: The previous post was clearly the work of a nephew of limited ability.
A wonderful surveyor though
Cousin-in-law (Godmother): *updates email* oh god its a Howe fest!
Cousin-in-law (Godmother): Well...Bell
FUtE: What is a howe fest...or do you mean a "howling"?
Max: Not on my status FUtE! This is for the kiddies to delight in ...
FUtE: Waddever sweedart....we own the bloody assets you can't get rid of us that easily
Cousin (Godmother): "heeeeere fishy fishy fishy..."
Max: Not on my status Cuz! Just exclamations of supportive delight for all aunts, uncles and rentals please ... we look on with indulgent smiles and give them oranges at half time ...
Cousin (Godmother) Ok. Go FUtE!
Max: :)
FUtE: When have you ever given me an orange at half time clever niece? Any time in fact....not to be picky about it of course!
Max: Metaphorical Orange Uncle Mine! :)
FUtE: … and metaphorical half time?
Max: We rhyme!
FUtE: … it's time
Max: I pine for the time when to rhyme was divine
FUtE: … and fb is in terminal decline
Max: Time for wine/whine ...
FUtE: That is fine
but we will not whine
The kids opine
That "fb is mine!"
They would decline
My right to post
To them I say
Max knows the most
'...cause she sure can post
To all the host
Cousin (FUtE) ^eminem
Max: Shakespeare :)
FUtE: Farewell ye all
I take a bow
Tis humbling thus
To show you how
Fb is media
For all of us
Be gone...away
I cannot stay
With work to do
It's time I flew
Max: Yup, favorite uncle
From: Aunt
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 7:53 AM
Subject: Re: The Button Box
That is beautiful Godmother … thank you for sending it. AND that little 2year old is you again.
I well remember Mum's button box and loved looking through it. I even remember some of those buttons she describes, particularly the pearly ones on my blue corduroy coat that melted in front of the heater.
I still have that coat and daughter wore it when she was little. I will get it out when I get home and it may fit granddaughter now. I will take a photo for Mum.
Love
Aunt
From: FUtE Bowen
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 10:48 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Godmother I am starting to get jealous … you seem to feature in most of these stories … or are you just typing out the ones with you in them? We know Morgan had the famous baby book to himself, Uncle Priest, Uncle Farm, FUtE and Aunt seem to enjoy a certain anonymity and, of course, Uncle Youngest … well nit picking around Uncle Youngest’s adulated childhood would seem petty, unless of course one discounts the velvet suits, the alter of adoration in the corner and, of course, the praise singing in the background! So what’s the deal huh?
Love
FUtE
From: Morgan
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:05 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
I think the little girl in the story is Aunt, isn’t it?
From: Godmother
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:33 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Actually FUtE, you notice that my name is never mentioned, nor those of any of our other siblings – HOWEVER – YOUR name IS mentioned and it’s the ONLY name in any of the stories … and that’s in RAJAH. Apparently you said “So you are awake little Swan? I hope you are well now, because you are going to be my very own Swan. Daddy said so, and you are going to live with us here at National Park. My name is FUtE and I am going to call you Rajah. Would you like that?”
Seriously though – I guess that the reason could be that Mum and Dad might have found the time to take a breather when I was preschool age. There was 5 years remember before Uncle Younger came along which was the longest break they’d had between babies. So maybe there was less time taken up with washing nappies and a little relaxation time. I know that at the time I was due there were severe financial troubles which were not helped by the fact that I was late arriving and Mum and Dad had hired Mrs Cutts to help with the housekeeping. She ended up being present for longer than anticipated and would, no doubt, have cost a bit. If I remember correctly, Dad was working at Ag Parts at the time. Perhaps they were back on track a few years later and got around to putting their feet up, reflecting and writing stories.
FUtE I am positive that the deprived, neglected childhood that we “middle children” experienced has been instrumental in making us the amazing people that we are today. so don’t waste time being jealous.
BTW … as far as I know that’s all the stories now … apart from a reflection written by Uncle Younger ... about his first visit to Ireland.
From: Morgan
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:40 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Give me a break!
You middle children got it easy.
Try being the eldest…you have to “break in” the parents, live up to unrealistic expectations and assume unreasonable responsibility for the supervision of feckless younger siblings.
It was hell.
From: FUtE
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:53 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
I am assuming Morgan that trying to shoehorn Aunt into the picture, whilst madly protecting one of your more valuable employees from accusations of nepotism (can you do that to yourself as opposed to others?) is actually a backhanded way of getting your own privileged babyhood out of the limelight!
At this moment … As I write this … an new email from you has just flashed in screaming “Give me a break … I had to break in the parents etc” Whatever, all I remember is the astounding and uncritical support we gave to your machinations. Do you remember making Uncle Farm and I sit next to you on the train so that when the girls from PC got on we would stand and offer our seat to the chosen one?? Not only did we fail to see the injustice of this, we thought you were damned cool. For my part I am sure I only did it to enjoy the moment when Trish Anderson actually looked at me (as opposed to you) and said “Thanks”. So don’t give me hardship Boy … it was straight out exploitation! “Give me a break indeed”!
From: FUtE
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 11:55 AM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Dammit Godmother … I didn’t realise I was mentioned and now I have just excoriated Morgan! When you two gang up on me make sure your emails arrive in the right order so my paranoia has time to work itself through!
From: FUtE
Sent: Monday, 28 October 2013 12:16 PM
Subject: RE: The Button Box
Ok Godmother … mea culpa. I had actually not read Rajah because I was away at the time. Needless to say I think that is easily the best of the stories and the protagonists are those we most easily identify with … nay possibly simply admire. Such compassion, faultless diction and, even, the warm manly chest … in one so young? MMMmm None of these things add up Godmother, my diction was not advanced at that point, I suspect I would have been unable to hear the swan (cygnet?) thrashing around in the scrub and, well the manly warm chest doesn’t sound like me eithee … in fact these virtues were far more likely to be associated with Uncle Priest … so did you change the name or what?
Hey Cousins (Godmother), how hilarious is 'The Bell Bunch' email trail at the moment? Other cousins (all other siblings) ... ask your rentals for the emails ...
Cousin-in-law (Godmother): I know!!
Cousin (FUtE): Literally have no idea what you are talking about. Just asked dad and he doesn't know either
Cousin (Uncle Farm): What is email?
Max: Hehehe ... The Button Box ...
Cousin (Godmother): Hahaha I just read it. Cousin (FUtE), your dad is heavily involved, he's playing dumb because he doesn't want you to see my mum out-arguing him
Max: I love that FUtE is disavowing knowledge ... I am enjoying the read immensely. Especially my favorite uncle stirring, stirring ...
FUtE: That last endorsement is clearly made by someone with scintillating intelligence
Cousin (FUtE): ahh sibling rivalry at its finest
FUtE: The previous post was clearly the work of a nephew of limited ability.
A wonderful surveyor though
Cousin-in-law (Godmother): *updates email* oh god its a Howe fest!
Cousin-in-law (Godmother): Well...Bell
FUtE: What is a howe fest...or do you mean a "howling"?
Max: Not on my status FUtE! This is for the kiddies to delight in ...
FUtE: Waddever sweedart....we own the bloody assets you can't get rid of us that easily
Cousin (Godmother): "heeeeere fishy fishy fishy..."
Max: Not on my status Cuz! Just exclamations of supportive delight for all aunts, uncles and rentals please ... we look on with indulgent smiles and give them oranges at half time ...
Cousin (Godmother) Ok. Go FUtE!
Max: :)
FUtE: When have you ever given me an orange at half time clever niece? Any time in fact....not to be picky about it of course!
Max: Metaphorical Orange Uncle Mine! :)
FUtE: … and metaphorical half time?
Max: We rhyme!
FUtE: … it's time
Max: I pine for the time when to rhyme was divine
FUtE: … and fb is in terminal decline
Max: Time for wine/whine ...
FUtE: That is fine
but we will not whine
The kids opine
That "fb is mine!"
They would decline
My right to post
To them I say
Max knows the most
'...cause she sure can post
To all the host
Cousin (FUtE) ^eminem
Max: Shakespeare :)
FUtE: Farewell ye all
I take a bow
Tis humbling thus
To show you how
Fb is media
For all of us
Be gone...away
I cannot stay
With work to do
It's time I flew
Max: Yup, favorite uncle
Saturday, October 26, 2019
26 October 2010
Hello, hello from your lovely, lovely house.
You know, I am turning into you - I kid you not. I think your house is like a magic gateway or something - a gateway into a realm of perpetual water!
I have joined Lords and I swim every morning because it takes me EIGHT minutes from door to door to get to their adorable indoor and usually utterly empty pool. There is nothing that makes me happier than having my own lane. And their changerooms are always spotless and I just really love having a swimming pool within walking distance. BLISS.
So, I did three weeks of swimming in an indoor pool before I realised that I needed to swim outside at some time to get the tan up for summer, so, well, as my boss would say, I went Mad, Dorrie! I went to Challenge Stadium and signed up.
The best thing was that they found my photo from, like, 2002 or something. I seriously don't remember ever signing up, but they had the photo and from the top I am wearing, it can only be 2002 …
Now on the weekend I swim in the outside pool and I am establishing a fine tan - although lurking in the change rooms until there is a sweet elderly lady in there who will put suncream on my back is making me wish for a boyfriend slash swimming partner like crazy. A sunburnt back is no laughing matter, and I need to really tan up before swimming 3km is not going to get me a burnt back, y'know?
Anyway, the lifestyle associated with your house is unreal - I pop down to the beach, to the pool, to your AWESOME parks and I just can't imagine how I could live in any other area. It is the most perfect place in Perth to live - and this is coming from someone I thought was a dyed-in-the-wool Mt Lawley girl :)
And I have to say, Celina leaving way too early in our friendship has given me a sharp kick up the backside - I need to have a plan that is not reliant on other people - and all this swimming is part of that plan. Heheheh, it is an awesome plan actually, so I will tell you about it sometime. I miss having you around to float crazy ideas with!
I love that the hair grows to get away from too many thoughts!? (is that right, or does the active side of the brain suck the hair in?) I wonder how uneven my hair is ..?
So much has happened for me since you left, and much more will happen before you get home. Almost every week something happens and I think 'damnit Dean should be here to hear this ...' Look after yourself!
I am looking forward to donuts in the sea for my birthday if the plan comes together (who knows if I get the leave!)
I miss Fieke so much it is a little bit ridiculous - she is such a perfect presence in the house! My girlfriends come from London on 22 November and stay for three weeks so I start looking for a housemate in December. *siiiigh*
Love your work, give yourself a hug for me, and thanks for the heads up on the chocolate military, especially the NAME! It is so appropriate I just can't stop applying it to cute boys with ethnic heritage that I spot. So good.
Hahaha, more stories coming on the back of postcards - wanna do some cooking?
You know, I am turning into you - I kid you not. I think your house is like a magic gateway or something - a gateway into a realm of perpetual water!
I have joined Lords and I swim every morning because it takes me EIGHT minutes from door to door to get to their adorable indoor and usually utterly empty pool. There is nothing that makes me happier than having my own lane. And their changerooms are always spotless and I just really love having a swimming pool within walking distance. BLISS.
So, I did three weeks of swimming in an indoor pool before I realised that I needed to swim outside at some time to get the tan up for summer, so, well, as my boss would say, I went Mad, Dorrie! I went to Challenge Stadium and signed up.
The best thing was that they found my photo from, like, 2002 or something. I seriously don't remember ever signing up, but they had the photo and from the top I am wearing, it can only be 2002 …
Now on the weekend I swim in the outside pool and I am establishing a fine tan - although lurking in the change rooms until there is a sweet elderly lady in there who will put suncream on my back is making me wish for a boyfriend slash swimming partner like crazy. A sunburnt back is no laughing matter, and I need to really tan up before swimming 3km is not going to get me a burnt back, y'know?
Anyway, the lifestyle associated with your house is unreal - I pop down to the beach, to the pool, to your AWESOME parks and I just can't imagine how I could live in any other area. It is the most perfect place in Perth to live - and this is coming from someone I thought was a dyed-in-the-wool Mt Lawley girl :)
And I have to say, Celina leaving way too early in our friendship has given me a sharp kick up the backside - I need to have a plan that is not reliant on other people - and all this swimming is part of that plan. Heheheh, it is an awesome plan actually, so I will tell you about it sometime. I miss having you around to float crazy ideas with!
I love that the hair grows to get away from too many thoughts!? (is that right, or does the active side of the brain suck the hair in?) I wonder how uneven my hair is ..?
So much has happened for me since you left, and much more will happen before you get home. Almost every week something happens and I think 'damnit Dean should be here to hear this ...' Look after yourself!
I am looking forward to donuts in the sea for my birthday if the plan comes together (who knows if I get the leave!)
I miss Fieke so much it is a little bit ridiculous - she is such a perfect presence in the house! My girlfriends come from London on 22 November and stay for three weeks so I start looking for a housemate in December. *siiiigh*
Love your work, give yourself a hug for me, and thanks for the heads up on the chocolate military, especially the NAME! It is so appropriate I just can't stop applying it to cute boys with ethnic heritage that I spot. So good.
Hahaha, more stories coming on the back of postcards - wanna do some cooking?
26 October 2006
FW: Join me on the map!
Romeo (WorleyParsons)
Wed, Oct 25, 2006, 5:11 PM
Hopefully, all this action will have some effect:
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
Also, if you want to make your car carbon neutral, check out the website linked below. It costs me about $70 per year to lock away the carbon my car produces:
http://www.carbonneutral.com.au/
From: Nicol (SKM)
Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2006 4:40 PM
Pretty nifty way to show something important. A bit of a greenie rant below the map, but hopefully it gets the point across ...
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
From: Nicol (Conservation WA)
Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2006 4:29 PM
This came through an engineering friend - looks like climate change is finally a mainstream concern!
From: Hinds (Clough)
Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2006 4:14 PM
Subject: FW: Join me on the map!
Why not, it doesn’t ask for your address, only name and e-mail
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
From: Chaffer (MLC)
Something I feel strongly about – we need to do this for our future
Please sign the petition for action on global warming. -- Everyone's talking about global warming and the climate crisis - and now there's a new way to show our elected representatives we're serious.
I'm part of a national campaign that's redrawing the map of Australia so that every person concerned about climate change can stand up and be counted, wherever you live. Together, we're starting a new movement to drive the message home to politicians at all levels of government that we expect responsible leadership and bold action to solve this crisis.
This issue is bigger than party politics, bigger than special interests, more important than short-term economic gain - and each of us can play a part in the solution by taking a stand for our future.
Now we're aiming for a record-breaking target of 250,000 people to help create a groundswell for change in every electorate across the country.
I'll hope you'll join me - just click on the link below to add your name to the Climate Action Map now.
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
Prohasky (EWB)
Thu, Oct 26, 2006, 7:32 AM
Hi everyone,
While I think planting trees is a great idea and something worth supporting you should consider some of the drawbacks of carbon offsetting before you run out and neutralise your life:
1. Carbon emission trading does not actually address the cause of global warming and climate change but only offers a temporary solution that is based on in inexact science. If there is no change to the status quo then at some point in the future there is going to be no space left on the planet to plant enough trees to absorb all our carbon emissions.
2. By offering people an option (not a compulsory tax) of trading for their carbon emissions you might, in fact, be sending a message that their current behaviour patterns, in regards to carbon emissions, are actually acceptable and that no change is required to the way we live our lives.
3. A carbon emission system implies that accounting for a carbon emission now is addressed by the planting of trees today. The reality is that a carbon emission today is not absorbed until some point in the future as you wait for the tree to grow. There have been numerous studies that point to a date that a forest becomes a net reducer of carbon emissions. The generally accepted time is 10 years. So if today everyone on the planet were to plant enough trees every year to negate their yearly carbon emissions there would still be at least 10 years of carbon emissions that you can never absorb.
4. The economic axiom that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow is not applied in the same way for emissions. A trading system that promises to nullify your carbon emission today by an equal amount at some undetermined point in the future is flawed as it implies that your carbon emission is worth the same amount to humanity today as it is tomorrow.
5. Some of the certified carbon plantations available for use in Australia are softwood plantations that are on previously cleared land, predominately monoculture and are destined to be used for timber production.
6. There is a concern that current living forests will be used as part of a carbon credit trading scheme by companies looking to profit from this fast-growing industry. Some primary producers have in the past been known to clear native vegetation to gain tax credits by setting up timber plantations.
7. There is a certain amount of hypocrisy in trading carbon credits now to plant trees but not supporting the complete abolition of land clearing. According to the Wilderness Society Australia is clearing land at a rate of half a million hectares a year which is faster than any other developed nation. Cutting down a seventy-year-old tree returns over 3 tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere.
I am happy to discuss any of these points in further detail and can be contacted on any of the numbers below.
Regards,
Executive Director
Engineers Without Borders Australia
ENGINEERING A BETTER WORLD
MAX
Thu, Oct 26, 2006, 11:51 PM
To: Romeo, Prohasky
Hi
While I have always regarded a 'reply all' email to an emailing list that is largely unknown to the sender to be rather rude, I am glad that I took the time to read the email you sent because it was addressing some important questions about the gap between popular science and applied science.
The impression I got from your email was that it was better to carry out actions with scientific exactitude that may be more difficult for the unscientific public to participate in than to carry out actions with fluffy scientific results that are more in keeping, excuse the colloquialism, with 'the vibe' of increased awareness of environmental problems.
I would propose that activists should not utilise the gap in first principle understanding between trained scientists and the public to question programs that could become a basis for increased awareness in the general public that science can solve the problems progress has created.
As an untrained reader I can only assume your points are valid, but couching them as a reason *not* to do something is not a positive use of such important arguments. When I made the effort not to be a little disconcerted by your points, I had to assume that if I supported such a program the problems would be sorted out as the push for environmental policies became stronger and it became viable for agencies promoting programs to become more exact as they obtained more support and legitimacy.
Using your arguments in a positive light, to argue, for example, for more education and funding for research, would mean that people would be galvanised by a goal to achieve, not paralysed by a feeling of a problem too big for them to impact on.
When it comes to galvanising the public, it is YOUR job to do the groundbreaking and scientifically sound research and lobbying, it is OUR job to start supporting programs, however small and scientifically short of the desired mark.
I am, however, very glad you took the time to send that email!
Max
(Romeo's sister)
Romeo
Fri, Oct 27, 2006, 8:16 AM
to Max Prohasky
Peace guys! Good discussion by the way. Some solid points from both of youse. :)
Prohasky (EWB)
Fri, Oct 27, 2006, 9:53 AM
to Romeo, Max
Hi Romeo and Max
Thanks for your email Max. I think you raised so valid points and I will be sure to include some simple and positive ways individuals can help reduce their personal carbon emissions in future emails.
I normally bcc everyone in a group email context but forgot to this time.
By giving people an alternative view (clearly representing the negative side) of carbon trading I had hoped that people would be able to make up their own minds about the relative benefits and disadvantages of off-setting their personal carbon emissions. I did not advocate *not* off-setting your personal emissions I just requested people consider my points as carbon off-setting is not the panacea it is made out to be.
The idea was to make people think differently about the problem and the solution.
You argue that it is not the role of an activist to point out the drawbacks of a particular system. Then what is their role?
You also state that 'OUR job to start supporting programs, however small and scientifically short of the desired mark'. By doing this you are actually advocating that it is ok to do something that is just less bad instead of good. Why would anybody want to do that? Surely people who are thinking of off-setting their carbon emissions are already believers in climate change and therefore should be as well informed as possible about what is the best way to reduce their emissions?
I disagree with your last point that it is the general public's role to support programs that may not even be effective and our role (I assume you are referring to the NGO sector here) is to do the research and the lobbying. Even an untrained reader would surely know that the NGO sector has been lobbying, both the Government and the general public, for over 20 years on climate change with little or no impact. I remember first hearing about the greenhouse effect when I was in primary school! So to say that it is the public's role to just support what the NGO sector has been advocating is, in fact, condoning doing nothing.
By engaging people in critical thought (my form of lobbying) you make them more aware of the bigger picture and hopefully inspire them to act.
If I can change one person by sending a group email then I might have been able to create a better world for the children of this planet.
I hope this email inspires you to make a difference in whatever way you can.
Romeo (WorleyParsons)
Wed, Oct 25, 2006, 5:11 PM
Hopefully, all this action will have some effect:
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
Also, if you want to make your car carbon neutral, check out the website linked below. It costs me about $70 per year to lock away the carbon my car produces:
http://www.carbonneutral.com.au/
From: Nicol (SKM)
Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2006 4:40 PM
Pretty nifty way to show something important. A bit of a greenie rant below the map, but hopefully it gets the point across ...
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
From: Nicol (Conservation WA)
Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2006 4:29 PM
This came through an engineering friend - looks like climate change is finally a mainstream concern!
From: Hinds (Clough)
Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2006 4:14 PM
Subject: FW: Join me on the map!
Why not, it doesn’t ask for your address, only name and e-mail
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
From: Chaffer (MLC)
Something I feel strongly about – we need to do this for our future
Please sign the petition for action on global warming. -- Everyone's talking about global warming and the climate crisis - and now there's a new way to show our elected representatives we're serious.
I'm part of a national campaign that's redrawing the map of Australia so that every person concerned about climate change can stand up and be counted, wherever you live. Together, we're starting a new movement to drive the message home to politicians at all levels of government that we expect responsible leadership and bold action to solve this crisis.
This issue is bigger than party politics, bigger than special interests, more important than short-term economic gain - and each of us can play a part in the solution by taking a stand for our future.
Now we're aiming for a record-breaking target of 250,000 people to help create a groundswell for change in every electorate across the country.
I'll hope you'll join me - just click on the link below to add your name to the Climate Action Map now.
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/ClimateActionNow
Prohasky (EWB)
Thu, Oct 26, 2006, 7:32 AM
Hi everyone,
While I think planting trees is a great idea and something worth supporting you should consider some of the drawbacks of carbon offsetting before you run out and neutralise your life:
1. Carbon emission trading does not actually address the cause of global warming and climate change but only offers a temporary solution that is based on in inexact science. If there is no change to the status quo then at some point in the future there is going to be no space left on the planet to plant enough trees to absorb all our carbon emissions.
2. By offering people an option (not a compulsory tax) of trading for their carbon emissions you might, in fact, be sending a message that their current behaviour patterns, in regards to carbon emissions, are actually acceptable and that no change is required to the way we live our lives.
3. A carbon emission system implies that accounting for a carbon emission now is addressed by the planting of trees today. The reality is that a carbon emission today is not absorbed until some point in the future as you wait for the tree to grow. There have been numerous studies that point to a date that a forest becomes a net reducer of carbon emissions. The generally accepted time is 10 years. So if today everyone on the planet were to plant enough trees every year to negate their yearly carbon emissions there would still be at least 10 years of carbon emissions that you can never absorb.
4. The economic axiom that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow is not applied in the same way for emissions. A trading system that promises to nullify your carbon emission today by an equal amount at some undetermined point in the future is flawed as it implies that your carbon emission is worth the same amount to humanity today as it is tomorrow.
5. Some of the certified carbon plantations available for use in Australia are softwood plantations that are on previously cleared land, predominately monoculture and are destined to be used for timber production.
6. There is a concern that current living forests will be used as part of a carbon credit trading scheme by companies looking to profit from this fast-growing industry. Some primary producers have in the past been known to clear native vegetation to gain tax credits by setting up timber plantations.
7. There is a certain amount of hypocrisy in trading carbon credits now to plant trees but not supporting the complete abolition of land clearing. According to the Wilderness Society Australia is clearing land at a rate of half a million hectares a year which is faster than any other developed nation. Cutting down a seventy-year-old tree returns over 3 tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere.
I am happy to discuss any of these points in further detail and can be contacted on any of the numbers below.
Regards,
Executive Director
Engineers Without Borders Australia
ENGINEERING A BETTER WORLD
MAX
Thu, Oct 26, 2006, 11:51 PM
To: Romeo, Prohasky
Hi
While I have always regarded a 'reply all' email to an emailing list that is largely unknown to the sender to be rather rude, I am glad that I took the time to read the email you sent because it was addressing some important questions about the gap between popular science and applied science.
The impression I got from your email was that it was better to carry out actions with scientific exactitude that may be more difficult for the unscientific public to participate in than to carry out actions with fluffy scientific results that are more in keeping, excuse the colloquialism, with 'the vibe' of increased awareness of environmental problems.
I would propose that activists should not utilise the gap in first principle understanding between trained scientists and the public to question programs that could become a basis for increased awareness in the general public that science can solve the problems progress has created.
As an untrained reader I can only assume your points are valid, but couching them as a reason *not* to do something is not a positive use of such important arguments. When I made the effort not to be a little disconcerted by your points, I had to assume that if I supported such a program the problems would be sorted out as the push for environmental policies became stronger and it became viable for agencies promoting programs to become more exact as they obtained more support and legitimacy.
Using your arguments in a positive light, to argue, for example, for more education and funding for research, would mean that people would be galvanised by a goal to achieve, not paralysed by a feeling of a problem too big for them to impact on.
When it comes to galvanising the public, it is YOUR job to do the groundbreaking and scientifically sound research and lobbying, it is OUR job to start supporting programs, however small and scientifically short of the desired mark.
I am, however, very glad you took the time to send that email!
Max
(Romeo's sister)
Romeo
Fri, Oct 27, 2006, 8:16 AM
to Max Prohasky
Peace guys! Good discussion by the way. Some solid points from both of youse. :)
Prohasky (EWB)
Fri, Oct 27, 2006, 9:53 AM
to Romeo, Max
Hi Romeo and Max
Thanks for your email Max. I think you raised so valid points and I will be sure to include some simple and positive ways individuals can help reduce their personal carbon emissions in future emails.
I normally bcc everyone in a group email context but forgot to this time.
By giving people an alternative view (clearly representing the negative side) of carbon trading I had hoped that people would be able to make up their own minds about the relative benefits and disadvantages of off-setting their personal carbon emissions. I did not advocate *not* off-setting your personal emissions I just requested people consider my points as carbon off-setting is not the panacea it is made out to be.
The idea was to make people think differently about the problem and the solution.
You argue that it is not the role of an activist to point out the drawbacks of a particular system. Then what is their role?
You also state that 'OUR job to start supporting programs, however small and scientifically short of the desired mark'. By doing this you are actually advocating that it is ok to do something that is just less bad instead of good. Why would anybody want to do that? Surely people who are thinking of off-setting their carbon emissions are already believers in climate change and therefore should be as well informed as possible about what is the best way to reduce their emissions?
I disagree with your last point that it is the general public's role to support programs that may not even be effective and our role (I assume you are referring to the NGO sector here) is to do the research and the lobbying. Even an untrained reader would surely know that the NGO sector has been lobbying, both the Government and the general public, for over 20 years on climate change with little or no impact. I remember first hearing about the greenhouse effect when I was in primary school! So to say that it is the public's role to just support what the NGO sector has been advocating is, in fact, condoning doing nothing.
By engaging people in critical thought (my form of lobbying) you make them more aware of the bigger picture and hopefully inspire them to act.
If I can change one person by sending a group email then I might have been able to create a better world for the children of this planet.
I hope this email inspires you to make a difference in whatever way you can.
26 October 2007
Max needs to get a grip, three bunches of bok choy and a goldfish
Arthur: i don't quite know what it is … but i like it
Max: It was actually completely true ...
Arthur: but what did you need the goldfish for???
Max: I have decided to enter into a meaningful relationship again with a Siamese Fighting Fish ... just for love and companionship. Also, kisses
Arthur: I hear that can result in a nasty rash Also.. when you say again.. how long did the previous one last?
Max: Approximately nine months. Steerpike of Gormenghast II (Gormy for short) lasted until I got cross of him swimming in the same direction around the bowl. He was bent in half as a result and so I put him in the outside fishpond and he disappeared
Arthur: so
A square bowl this time than?
Max: A tall bowl actually, a tall one like a thermometer because in the wild they have vertical territories apparently …
Arthur: i don't quite know what it is … but i like it
Max: It was actually completely true ...
Arthur: but what did you need the goldfish for???
Max: I have decided to enter into a meaningful relationship again with a Siamese Fighting Fish ... just for love and companionship. Also, kisses
Arthur: I hear that can result in a nasty rash Also.. when you say again.. how long did the previous one last?
Max: Approximately nine months. Steerpike of Gormenghast II (Gormy for short) lasted until I got cross of him swimming in the same direction around the bowl. He was bent in half as a result and so I put him in the outside fishpond and he disappeared
Arthur: so
A square bowl this time than?
Max: A tall bowl actually, a tall one like a thermometer because in the wild they have vertical territories apparently …
Friday, October 25, 2019
25 October 2012
Max could totally do with a minion or two right now
Moses: from chasers?
Max: YES. As long as they come with BACON and MAPLE SYRUP!
Moses: after your status last night on them i take the above comment 2 different ways
Max: Isn't it magic what people will read into words? :)
Archie: I'll remember to send my rejects your way then
Max: Rejected words or rejected minions?
Friend: Isn't it wonderful what words will write into people
Max: The will writes wonderful things for people
Friend: If only someone would write me into their will
Max: the win is yours!
Friend: Anyway minions have to high a mortality rate in reel 2. What you need maybe is a sidekick
Archie: evil accomplice? or a protege?
Max: True that! But a sidekick needs emotional and often monetary investment from me. Minions you don't really need to feed
Friend: Sorry just got into the mood then
Max: Evil accomplices always have their eye on your position for themselves. Proteges EXPECT to supplant you at some point
Max is wondering if you can use bacon and maple syrup for cleaning?
Friend: That would just be a waste of bacon and maple syrup!
Max: Maybe I could use them to bribe someone to do my cleaning for me? Would that work with you? You'd have to do it without a shirt on of course ...
Friend: Haha well I can eat the bacon and the maple syrup can be used for something else! Haha
Archie: Arthur says 'it was really good for the bathroom but really hard to get out of the cat'
Moses: from chasers?
Max: YES. As long as they come with BACON and MAPLE SYRUP!
Moses: after your status last night on them i take the above comment 2 different ways
Max: Isn't it magic what people will read into words? :)
Archie: I'll remember to send my rejects your way then
Max: Rejected words or rejected minions?
Friend: Isn't it wonderful what words will write into people
Max: The will writes wonderful things for people
Friend: If only someone would write me into their will
Max: the win is yours!
Friend: Anyway minions have to high a mortality rate in reel 2. What you need maybe is a sidekick
Archie: evil accomplice? or a protege?
Max: True that! But a sidekick needs emotional and often monetary investment from me. Minions you don't really need to feed
Friend: Sorry just got into the mood then
Max: Evil accomplices always have their eye on your position for themselves. Proteges EXPECT to supplant you at some point
Max is wondering if you can use bacon and maple syrup for cleaning?
Friend: That would just be a waste of bacon and maple syrup!
Max: Maybe I could use them to bribe someone to do my cleaning for me? Would that work with you? You'd have to do it without a shirt on of course ...
Friend: Haha well I can eat the bacon and the maple syrup can be used for something else! Haha
Archie: Arthur says 'it was really good for the bathroom but really hard to get out of the cat'
Thursday, October 24, 2019
24 October 2006
What a great collection of emails we have here! :) You on a cultural journey through a country of myth and misery, me in the middle of an excruciating love affair!
Udaipur sounds incredible, especially all those real palaces. What extraordinary sights they must be. I also like the google ads that pop up when I open your emails - I can buy a trip to Udaipur right now!
As per usual, my only news is that he and I are getting worse, today was SO embarrassing I keep getting aftershocks of whole-body embarrassment *gloom*
Let's recap: from the first time I met him and for the three months subsequent it took me about three hours to be able to think after I had seen him, but I was in control all other times. Then a month ago he started stepping up the contact and my recovery time after seeing him escalated from a day, to days, to weeks now.
THEN I started getting hot knees when he wasn't around, then I started forgetting the rest of the world when he was around, then I actively ignored the rest of the world when he was around.
Today I actually reached the worst level yet in this saga - when he arrived in the office my knees actually wobbled, I stammered, I was so nervous I just ended up not saying anything and then, well, for the first time when he was actually there, I flushed to my hair for no other reason than he was teasing me. It was like I was fifteen and in love with the Trinity Head Boy. I was in NO WAY a 25-year-old woman, I was a lovesick teenager.
My only consolation is that while I may have been all too aware that my face was singing the paper on my desk, I was not talking (from terror that I would mess up a five-word sentence for the fourth time) and so was able to watch his entire face heat up as red as his cheeks always are, he actually went redder than me and looked like he was sunburnt. I have NEVER seen such a pathetic pair as the two of us.
It is entirely unfair, I have important essays to write, and stopping obsessing over him enough to do them justice is going to become as likely as me dying my hair blonde again.
I am so, so, SO screwed it is not funny :(
But, to my credit, and to the terror of my whole body, I am actually going to say something. I tried to get him alone this afternoon but was thwarted by rude workmates who insisted on wanting me to work (stupid people). I know he has to be in tomorrow or Thursday so I am going to be prepared to ask him to take a walk with me and I will simply lay my cards on the table.
I cannot operate like this for another two months or he will end up thinking I am a permanently pink, stuttering idiot whose knees fold the other way.
*crazed laughter* oh god I am getting nervous just thinking about it, I need to go have a lie-down.
Enjoy your night in the palace my sweet, also the cooking and the tattoo
Udaipur sounds incredible, especially all those real palaces. What extraordinary sights they must be. I also like the google ads that pop up when I open your emails - I can buy a trip to Udaipur right now!
As per usual, my only news is that he and I are getting worse, today was SO embarrassing I keep getting aftershocks of whole-body embarrassment *gloom*
Let's recap: from the first time I met him and for the three months subsequent it took me about three hours to be able to think after I had seen him, but I was in control all other times. Then a month ago he started stepping up the contact and my recovery time after seeing him escalated from a day, to days, to weeks now.
THEN I started getting hot knees when he wasn't around, then I started forgetting the rest of the world when he was around, then I actively ignored the rest of the world when he was around.
Today I actually reached the worst level yet in this saga - when he arrived in the office my knees actually wobbled, I stammered, I was so nervous I just ended up not saying anything and then, well, for the first time when he was actually there, I flushed to my hair for no other reason than he was teasing me. It was like I was fifteen and in love with the Trinity Head Boy. I was in NO WAY a 25-year-old woman, I was a lovesick teenager.
My only consolation is that while I may have been all too aware that my face was singing the paper on my desk, I was not talking (from terror that I would mess up a five-word sentence for the fourth time) and so was able to watch his entire face heat up as red as his cheeks always are, he actually went redder than me and looked like he was sunburnt. I have NEVER seen such a pathetic pair as the two of us.
It is entirely unfair, I have important essays to write, and stopping obsessing over him enough to do them justice is going to become as likely as me dying my hair blonde again.
I am so, so, SO screwed it is not funny :(
But, to my credit, and to the terror of my whole body, I am actually going to say something. I tried to get him alone this afternoon but was thwarted by rude workmates who insisted on wanting me to work (stupid people). I know he has to be in tomorrow or Thursday so I am going to be prepared to ask him to take a walk with me and I will simply lay my cards on the table.
I cannot operate like this for another two months or he will end up thinking I am a permanently pink, stuttering idiot whose knees fold the other way.
*crazed laughter* oh god I am getting nervous just thinking about it, I need to go have a lie-down.
Enjoy your night in the palace my sweet, also the cooking and the tattoo
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
23 October 2006
Here are the highlights since the thunderstorm on Friday:
#1 Ever since my three weeks of sickness my sleeping patterns have been getting weirder and weirder. I have progressively had to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier. Until last week I couldn't stay up past 11 and couldn't sleep in past 8 or 9 am. As of last week, I am up bouncing out of bed, at ... 4.30am! This weekend, despite some serious late nights of 1am, I was up bouncing out of bed, at ... 5.30am! On a weekend! I tell you what, it makes you feel like you have had a 4 day weekend though! :( From 5.30am to 12pm feels like one day, then you have lunch and start the rest of your second day. It's amazing.
#2 I got to work dreading a week of not seeing nor hearing from him again since he is finishing all that hard work of a thesis. Then he emailed me around lunchtime and I could feel my body light up from the inside. I was *REALLY* good though and didn't reply for three hours - thus keeping my knees from spontaneously combusting as they are fond of doing when I think of him. So I sent him a reply finally and HIS reply came back in 15 minutes. My knees got a bit luke-warm then, he is so cute *scuffs the ground*
#3 I got an invitation from Ishan (the Muslim boy that I have an intellectual crush on) to join the UWA Muslim Student's Association for the feast to celebrate the end of Ramadan. I was SO pleased I was walking on air for the rest of the afternoon. It was amazing - Ishan invited me but he was in the male section of the prayer room and I was behind the screen in the women's section with all these amazing Muslim women from all over the world and they ate and laughed and prayed and made me feel so welcome two hours went like two minutes.
I was the only non-Muslim guest amongst the women and I was a bit of novelty. ESPECIALLY as I gather Ishan is quite the best man in the group and the girls cannot talk to him as much as I can. Each time I head over to him and start talking you can see all of the girls crane over and each time I head back to them they quiz me on what we talked about. I have such unthinking freedom interacting with other people it blows me away sometimes the rules that I break without knowing they are there.
The food was amazing, and I got a rather cool henna tattoo on my hand and I got to play tictactoe with a lively six-year-old while the adults were praying and I had so much fun. The funniest bit was as I was leaving one of the young boys was sent into the women's section with a message from Ishan to me. The little boy was so funny, he came charging in and demanded to talk to me, and his message was 'Ishan says that he has to go and he says goodbye and that you have to become a Muslim' (!!) Funny as it is, it is an incredible feeling to know that this young man trusts me enough to bring me into his faith group and is so desirous of my presence in his faith.
And now I am home, staying up late in defiance of my drooping eyelids to wonder in my own time at how a day can start out so conventionally and end so wonderfully in a place so totally unexpected as a Muslim feast.
May your travels bring you cool lakes and romantic scenery
#1 Ever since my three weeks of sickness my sleeping patterns have been getting weirder and weirder. I have progressively had to go to sleep earlier and get up earlier. Until last week I couldn't stay up past 11 and couldn't sleep in past 8 or 9 am. As of last week, I am up bouncing out of bed, at ... 4.30am! This weekend, despite some serious late nights of 1am, I was up bouncing out of bed, at ... 5.30am! On a weekend! I tell you what, it makes you feel like you have had a 4 day weekend though! :( From 5.30am to 12pm feels like one day, then you have lunch and start the rest of your second day. It's amazing.
#2 I got to work dreading a week of not seeing nor hearing from him again since he is finishing all that hard work of a thesis. Then he emailed me around lunchtime and I could feel my body light up from the inside. I was *REALLY* good though and didn't reply for three hours - thus keeping my knees from spontaneously combusting as they are fond of doing when I think of him. So I sent him a reply finally and HIS reply came back in 15 minutes. My knees got a bit luke-warm then, he is so cute *scuffs the ground*
#3 I got an invitation from Ishan (the Muslim boy that I have an intellectual crush on) to join the UWA Muslim Student's Association for the feast to celebrate the end of Ramadan. I was SO pleased I was walking on air for the rest of the afternoon. It was amazing - Ishan invited me but he was in the male section of the prayer room and I was behind the screen in the women's section with all these amazing Muslim women from all over the world and they ate and laughed and prayed and made me feel so welcome two hours went like two minutes.
I was the only non-Muslim guest amongst the women and I was a bit of novelty. ESPECIALLY as I gather Ishan is quite the best man in the group and the girls cannot talk to him as much as I can. Each time I head over to him and start talking you can see all of the girls crane over and each time I head back to them they quiz me on what we talked about. I have such unthinking freedom interacting with other people it blows me away sometimes the rules that I break without knowing they are there.
The food was amazing, and I got a rather cool henna tattoo on my hand and I got to play tictactoe with a lively six-year-old while the adults were praying and I had so much fun. The funniest bit was as I was leaving one of the young boys was sent into the women's section with a message from Ishan to me. The little boy was so funny, he came charging in and demanded to talk to me, and his message was 'Ishan says that he has to go and he says goodbye and that you have to become a Muslim' (!!) Funny as it is, it is an incredible feeling to know that this young man trusts me enough to bring me into his faith group and is so desirous of my presence in his faith.
And now I am home, staying up late in defiance of my drooping eyelids to wonder in my own time at how a day can start out so conventionally and end so wonderfully in a place so totally unexpected as a Muslim feast.
May your travels bring you cool lakes and romantic scenery
Monday, October 21, 2019
21 October 2006
Our Own Correspondent - how extraordinary, all I can do is read about Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and you are closer to him than most of the reporters telling me what to think. Stroppy, yoga-starved show pony companions aside, you are there, right in the middle of the world where things happen - I hope you are enjoying it in all its splendour.
I am in the middle of splendour at the moment. Today was 30 degrees and it was such a beautiful day. After work, I lay on James Oval from 5 to 6 just relaxing into the grass and watching the sunset behind Reid Library. The air sat on my skin like a hug, and I felt the working week seep out of my muscles through the soles of my green sandals.
It's half past midnight now and I am standing on my balcony watching the sky behind the city. There is a storm coming in from the coast and the lightning is golden and frequent and it looks like there is a war happening in Fremantle, the bombing yet to reach up the river. The wind is warm and holds the smell of the mango I had for dessert and the vanilla candles in my house on its stillness. On the verandah, I can smell the cool of the rain heading up towards me.
Apart from the weather, life is hurtling along at a frantic pace, it is the business end of my semester both at work and in my study - I am writing essays while organising thesis marking and postgraduate administration and trying to keep my thoughts in order about the boy.
I have not seen him this week, although his two best friends have been keeping an eye on me - both Kelly and Dean have been in each day instead of the usual once a month. They talk for ages with me, as opposed to not at all. And each time they chat away to me, Painful Love Affair comes into the conversation. Today as the day ended and I realised that he really wasn't coming in to see me, I thought I was going to cry for missing him.
I am much better now - I have essays to concentrate on during the weekend and I have not thought about him with the accompanying abject physical and mental pain for at least four hours, which is pretty good going at this stage of my predicament. Hopefully, I will get under more control soon.
Forward, always forward!
I am in the middle of splendour at the moment. Today was 30 degrees and it was such a beautiful day. After work, I lay on James Oval from 5 to 6 just relaxing into the grass and watching the sunset behind Reid Library. The air sat on my skin like a hug, and I felt the working week seep out of my muscles through the soles of my green sandals.
It's half past midnight now and I am standing on my balcony watching the sky behind the city. There is a storm coming in from the coast and the lightning is golden and frequent and it looks like there is a war happening in Fremantle, the bombing yet to reach up the river. The wind is warm and holds the smell of the mango I had for dessert and the vanilla candles in my house on its stillness. On the verandah, I can smell the cool of the rain heading up towards me.
Apart from the weather, life is hurtling along at a frantic pace, it is the business end of my semester both at work and in my study - I am writing essays while organising thesis marking and postgraduate administration and trying to keep my thoughts in order about the boy.
I have not seen him this week, although his two best friends have been keeping an eye on me - both Kelly and Dean have been in each day instead of the usual once a month. They talk for ages with me, as opposed to not at all. And each time they chat away to me, Painful Love Affair comes into the conversation. Today as the day ended and I realised that he really wasn't coming in to see me, I thought I was going to cry for missing him.
I am much better now - I have essays to concentrate on during the weekend and I have not thought about him with the accompanying abject physical and mental pain for at least four hours, which is pretty good going at this stage of my predicament. Hopefully, I will get under more control soon.
Forward, always forward!
21 October 2006
In the months of me leaving London, Joey and I were thinking about the expectations of our parents, we started swapping scenarios of our future, mainly painfully probable Perth-reality and fantasies glorious in their promise …
THESE WERE MY SCENARIOS:
Reality #1
I can see us at 40 as our mothers would have us now. Me with my grease-stained hands, shorts and lumberjack shirt, crocodile skin and rough ways smoking my rollies at the table in a café in Fremantle with you. You will be in a home-sewn vaguely turn-of-the-century Spanish inspired skirt and blouse ensemble, covered in cat fur and with your hair long and dyed black. We are both seeing divorced father-of-three's, mine a mine supervisor, yours a local government supremo, possibly Greek mafia.
Fantasy #1
I would like to be still unmarried, but preferably in a relationship of convenience with a wildlife documentary maker. We are together when we are on the same continent! I will be one of those crazy aunts who whisks her nephews and nieces off on adventures when she is home, and is always somewhere doing something and sending home weird postcards and artefacts for Louise and her husband to store in 'Aunt Claire's Trousseau' which will be huge fireproof chests in the shed at the farm. I am not sure what I am doing for money but hopefully, it will be writing and teaching, but there will not be a lot of it. Once I hit 45 and want to settle down I will come home, start another degree and live in a little donga on Louise's farm and drive a beat-up Volvo around Perth being eccentric and colourful. The documentary filmmaker will finally propose and we will settle in a 'renovator's delight' style apartment in Buenos Aires where we will teach English and dance until we die, hosting all manner of relatives in the meantime.
Reality #2
I will be home in August and meet some slightly deserving guy (engineer) and be living with him by my birthday next year. I will do a Dip Ed and be teaching Social Studies and English Literature at Mercedes by 2008. I will have my first child in 2011. I think it will be probably only two kids, possibly around two years apart and both little boys. I will take about 7 years off and once the littlest is at school (St Paul's and then Trinity) I will go back to teaching. Once they have left school and home I will be Head of Department and trying to extricate myself so I can go back to UWA to study the classics. I will be driving a Volvo and the hubby and I will only get to Europe about once every ten years and he will want to go to Greece each time. I will try to have salons and dinner parties etc but will become so tired of running teenaged boys around to sport that the salon plan will fall through in about three years. Melbourne will be my holiday destination each year as Louise will have a farm there raising horses.
I think I just have to go and have a stiff drink now.
Fantasy #2 (sad because I almost got there)
P&O will keep me on for another two years because I am so adaptable around the office. I will immediately enrol in a part-time course in curatorial studies and volunteer for the Friends of the National Portrait Gallery committee.
Over the next two years, I will network shamelessly, both through P&O's social diary and by becoming at home in the Gallery. At one point during those two years, I will make such an impression on someone in a position of power that I will be sponsored to complete an internship for the last year of my course and be able to walk straight into a job after I have finished.
This brings me up to age 27, still here and on a wage that would make the last two years look wealthy. But I will be blissfully happy working in the only area I care for, history.
By this stage, however, I have become so engaged by my own intelligence and wonderfulness that I am giving Nik a run for her money in the ice queen stakes. FSO, still being referred to as my ex after six years and quite possibly married himself, will still be held up as the perfect man and no-one will be able to compete with him. I am not sure I will even be inclined to attempt a relationship and I will certainly not be sleeping around so I will simply be complaining and getting on with enjoying myself.
By 34 my parents would have finally given up hope of grandkids from me and I will be taking out a loan in Australia to buy them out of the house in Mt Lawley as they will want to be retiring to the farm by then. Hopefully, by then I will have a reasonable wage and will be suitably experienced enough to have at least one publishable manuscript ready to be given to an agent.
At 38 my first novel will have made it to number 24 on the bestsellers list and I will be able to pay off the mortgage on Joel Terrace and return to Perth to pursue the research for my second novel.
At my 40th birthday, I will meet my first toy boy ...
*ahem*
Reality / Fantasy #1
I go home and decide to take a walk on the wild side. I go out to Kalgoorlie and set myself up with some hideously well-paying mining job with which I will stick for three years. I will buy a house AND each year spend at least two months in Europe to tide me over in the culture stakes. The rest of the time will be spent reading history books and highbrow magazines, writing, long-distance study and searing my skin.
Once I have paid off the house and run a lusty miner out of my house unsatisfied every week for three years, I will start travelling again, but this time with something to keep me supplied with moolah while I teach English in South America for two years, work the ski slopes of Whistler, spend two years in Africa helping to build villages for refugees with that lovely Scotsman I met in Skeggie and helping the counselling of children in the West Bank.
END OF MY SCENARIOS
More Flights Of Fancy - Life in Ireland
THESE WERE MY SCENARIOS:
Reality #1
I can see us at 40 as our mothers would have us now. Me with my grease-stained hands, shorts and lumberjack shirt, crocodile skin and rough ways smoking my rollies at the table in a café in Fremantle with you. You will be in a home-sewn vaguely turn-of-the-century Spanish inspired skirt and blouse ensemble, covered in cat fur and with your hair long and dyed black. We are both seeing divorced father-of-three's, mine a mine supervisor, yours a local government supremo, possibly Greek mafia.
Fantasy #1
I would like to be still unmarried, but preferably in a relationship of convenience with a wildlife documentary maker. We are together when we are on the same continent! I will be one of those crazy aunts who whisks her nephews and nieces off on adventures when she is home, and is always somewhere doing something and sending home weird postcards and artefacts for Louise and her husband to store in 'Aunt Claire's Trousseau' which will be huge fireproof chests in the shed at the farm. I am not sure what I am doing for money but hopefully, it will be writing and teaching, but there will not be a lot of it. Once I hit 45 and want to settle down I will come home, start another degree and live in a little donga on Louise's farm and drive a beat-up Volvo around Perth being eccentric and colourful. The documentary filmmaker will finally propose and we will settle in a 'renovator's delight' style apartment in Buenos Aires where we will teach English and dance until we die, hosting all manner of relatives in the meantime.
Reality #2
I will be home in August and meet some slightly deserving guy (engineer) and be living with him by my birthday next year. I will do a Dip Ed and be teaching Social Studies and English Literature at Mercedes by 2008. I will have my first child in 2011. I think it will be probably only two kids, possibly around two years apart and both little boys. I will take about 7 years off and once the littlest is at school (St Paul's and then Trinity) I will go back to teaching. Once they have left school and home I will be Head of Department and trying to extricate myself so I can go back to UWA to study the classics. I will be driving a Volvo and the hubby and I will only get to Europe about once every ten years and he will want to go to Greece each time. I will try to have salons and dinner parties etc but will become so tired of running teenaged boys around to sport that the salon plan will fall through in about three years. Melbourne will be my holiday destination each year as Louise will have a farm there raising horses.
I think I just have to go and have a stiff drink now.
Fantasy #2 (sad because I almost got there)
P&O will keep me on for another two years because I am so adaptable around the office. I will immediately enrol in a part-time course in curatorial studies and volunteer for the Friends of the National Portrait Gallery committee.
Over the next two years, I will network shamelessly, both through P&O's social diary and by becoming at home in the Gallery. At one point during those two years, I will make such an impression on someone in a position of power that I will be sponsored to complete an internship for the last year of my course and be able to walk straight into a job after I have finished.
This brings me up to age 27, still here and on a wage that would make the last two years look wealthy. But I will be blissfully happy working in the only area I care for, history.
By this stage, however, I have become so engaged by my own intelligence and wonderfulness that I am giving Nik a run for her money in the ice queen stakes. FSO, still being referred to as my ex after six years and quite possibly married himself, will still be held up as the perfect man and no-one will be able to compete with him. I am not sure I will even be inclined to attempt a relationship and I will certainly not be sleeping around so I will simply be complaining and getting on with enjoying myself.
By 34 my parents would have finally given up hope of grandkids from me and I will be taking out a loan in Australia to buy them out of the house in Mt Lawley as they will want to be retiring to the farm by then. Hopefully, by then I will have a reasonable wage and will be suitably experienced enough to have at least one publishable manuscript ready to be given to an agent.
At 38 my first novel will have made it to number 24 on the bestsellers list and I will be able to pay off the mortgage on Joel Terrace and return to Perth to pursue the research for my second novel.
At my 40th birthday, I will meet my first toy boy ...
*ahem*
Reality / Fantasy #1
I go home and decide to take a walk on the wild side. I go out to Kalgoorlie and set myself up with some hideously well-paying mining job with which I will stick for three years. I will buy a house AND each year spend at least two months in Europe to tide me over in the culture stakes. The rest of the time will be spent reading history books and highbrow magazines, writing, long-distance study and searing my skin.
Once I have paid off the house and run a lusty miner out of my house unsatisfied every week for three years, I will start travelling again, but this time with something to keep me supplied with moolah while I teach English in South America for two years, work the ski slopes of Whistler, spend two years in Africa helping to build villages for refugees with that lovely Scotsman I met in Skeggie and helping the counselling of children in the West Bank.
END OF MY SCENARIOS
More Flights Of Fancy - Life in Ireland
Sunday, October 20, 2019
20 October 2015
I must say after the fifth hottie I was a bit dazzled and lost the plot. They are ALL geologists too ...
Jed: Sexy geologists? Is that a thing?
Max: Sexy geologists are very much a thing
Tina: Geologists, eh? Getting rocks off and all that ...
Max: *max establishes meaningful eye contact with tina*
Tina: *gleefully ignoring Max's pointed stares*
GEOLOGISTS ROCK!
X-D
Max: *max starts to sway, slowly*
Do it Tina, go on a pun run ...
Tina: Pun waddle. I don't run. Ever ;)
Shag a geologist today; get between a rock and a hard place ;)
Max: you're only getting started Tina, you can do it ...
Jed: Sexy geologists? Is that a thing?
Max: Sexy geologists are very much a thing
Tina: Geologists, eh? Getting rocks off and all that ...
Max: *max establishes meaningful eye contact with tina*
Tina: *gleefully ignoring Max's pointed stares*
GEOLOGISTS ROCK!
X-D
Max: *max starts to sway, slowly*
Do it Tina, go on a pun run ...
Tina: Pun waddle. I don't run. Ever ;)
Shag a geologist today; get between a rock and a hard place ;)
Max: you're only getting started Tina, you can do it ...
20 October 2009
4711 was totally my first perfume too! Syd's youngest brother got it for me when he turned oh, about 25 maybe and decided to start buying his nieces and nephews presents. I still love him dearly for that first year of presents because he bought so well for us and I realise now how hard that would have been to do. It is funny how your youth takes on entirely different complexions once you reach the age of those you interacted with.
Isn't it illuminating when you take a complete stranger to a celebration that is familiar to you and unfamiliar to them and they think it is exotic - it really brings everything that is done into stark relief. Wifey's wedding was in a Catholic church (she is one of the 2% of Greek Catholics) and it was one of the most elegant and short ceremonies I have yet attended. I am tempted to ask for the running sheet just in case I ever have to do it myself - it only just pipped Jim and H's wedding because theirs was Protestant and we know Mother would not stand for that!
I think the most wonderful thing about the whole trip for me was the people. Without a doubt being able to chat to Jim and H, G, J, E, my Sisters and Wifey again without missing a beat, realising how much they have changed alongside my own change, and seeing just how good friends we still are was soothing and went a long way to making me happy to come home. I just assumed I would love or hate London on my return, not feel as if I never left! But now that I know I am still very much a Londoner I am not so afraid of being away from my town - after all, it is my friends that make me a Londoner :) I think the nicest thing was walking with Jim or my Sister and having them tell me that I had opened their eyes with my enthusiasm for the town last time I was there. Jim reminded me that I had urged him to look up all the time, my Sister still remembers old jokes of mine. THAT is London, what I did there, and no time spent away from there can negate those memories. And this time around everyone was sure to take me to places I had not been the last time - they all remembered my interests and what I loved and found me amazing places to see. It was just wonderful.
It was SO hot on Saturday, 39, and the Bell's went to Cott. It was heaving, you could barely see the sand for the flesh (too many winter tans though) and I was as happy as I was with my Sisters and Wifey dancing at 6am in the morning at the reception - which is a good place to be I feel, happy in two places in the world, not sad in both ...
See you in November ...
Isn't it illuminating when you take a complete stranger to a celebration that is familiar to you and unfamiliar to them and they think it is exotic - it really brings everything that is done into stark relief. Wifey's wedding was in a Catholic church (she is one of the 2% of Greek Catholics) and it was one of the most elegant and short ceremonies I have yet attended. I am tempted to ask for the running sheet just in case I ever have to do it myself - it only just pipped Jim and H's wedding because theirs was Protestant and we know Mother would not stand for that!
I think the most wonderful thing about the whole trip for me was the people. Without a doubt being able to chat to Jim and H, G, J, E, my Sisters and Wifey again without missing a beat, realising how much they have changed alongside my own change, and seeing just how good friends we still are was soothing and went a long way to making me happy to come home. I just assumed I would love or hate London on my return, not feel as if I never left! But now that I know I am still very much a Londoner I am not so afraid of being away from my town - after all, it is my friends that make me a Londoner :) I think the nicest thing was walking with Jim or my Sister and having them tell me that I had opened their eyes with my enthusiasm for the town last time I was there. Jim reminded me that I had urged him to look up all the time, my Sister still remembers old jokes of mine. THAT is London, what I did there, and no time spent away from there can negate those memories. And this time around everyone was sure to take me to places I had not been the last time - they all remembered my interests and what I loved and found me amazing places to see. It was just wonderful.
It was SO hot on Saturday, 39, and the Bell's went to Cott. It was heaving, you could barely see the sand for the flesh (too many winter tans though) and I was as happy as I was with my Sisters and Wifey dancing at 6am in the morning at the reception - which is a good place to be I feel, happy in two places in the world, not sad in both ...
See you in November ...
20 October 2005
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Holding out for a Hero
by Frou Frou
I am slightly obsessed with this song at the moment. My iTunes tells me I have played it 15 times in the last five days, I whistle it when I am walking and it scrolls through my mind each time I have nothing else to think about. And at the moment it is also inextricably linked to a person.
It was playing in Ash's car on Saturday as we shot through the white glare of midday towards her birthday party and I made her play it again, and then got it burnt to CD so I could hold it close to me always. It was the first two lines that really grabbed me, because at the moment all I find myself asking (let's face it, we all ask this ALL the time) is the same thing – where have all the good men gone? Where are all the gods?
I was so determined not to have man troubles when I returned to Perth, and I was so sure I knew what kind of man troubles I would have, that the man troubles I do have are not what I expected. I am not in the least surprised though, because that is how life is.
Basically I thought that I would get home, the men would be so tanned and good looking and straight forward that I would spend 18 months trying not to pine my life away sighing after men with long term girlfriends, Perth being couple central and at our age we are fast approaching the Bermuda triangle of single Perth men.
So, once in Perth I called up the old friends, arranged to meet and catch up and when I met my admittedly small amount of male friends, I was shocked at how boring they were. They don't do anything beyond make clever remarks about unimportant TV shows, they don't think, they don't care, they are rude and they are arrogant with no grounds. This is particularly annoying as I very seriously miss conversations with men. I miss hearing the non-girlie opinion. I also miss being able to mix two genders at a meeting, instead of reverting back to my all-girl group of Perth friends.
After a few meetings it was with dismay that I concluded that they must never have been the epitome of male sophistication, just that I had so few male friends that I assumed they were the best I had to work with. Since I left Perth I have met men of all ages, inclinations, careers, interests and level of friendship and it has left me infinitely richer for the experience. Richer certainly, but it has meant the bar has been raised to a height that my old friends cannot reach, let alone leap.
Goddamnit. They are good friends, funny guys, nice boys that have done their best with their education and what Perth has to offer. They simply haven't moved out of their comfort zone and so have no driving goals like the ones that hound me. In a frank assessment of my list of people to maintain contact with, only one man has made the cut. There are another two on the list, but they are new friends.
So I have another aim for the next eighteen months, to find those good men, preferably with girlfriends that I get along with, so I can have an intelligent conversation with a young man again. Of all the things I miss, eh?
So that settles the good man question, but it is the plaintive cry for a god that has suddenly taken more significance for me. Saturday lunchtime, when I first heard the song, the quest for a god was not important to me, it was a nice line that related more to a long-term wish to meet a god, but it was not an immediate concern. Then I ran into a god and he is now nestled in my brain right, cosying up with my sanity thoughts of new visas.
So, in the course of my rants you have been introduced to the Charming Italian and his mother, who is a bit of a Max fan.
Bella Pelt Wanted For Marital Bed - the Wedding Weekend and the Charming Italian
Although I have admittedly been a little dismissive about that weekend, it was more for anger at the situation than the players involved. Suffice to say that I need to apologise to the Charming Italian for what happened that weekend and subsequently other comments that I made and I took the initiative, got in touch with him and we were to go for coffee in a month, after his exams. The Charming Italian, with his intelligence, his good manners, his travel and his goals was one of my top three men to cultivate for good conversation, and I was looking forward to our meeting so I could see if we would get along.
Then, Saturday night at 12.30 I ran into him in Northbridge and a few things happened. He spotted me and leapt across to say hello, introduced me to his friend and was altogether UTTERLY CHARMING! I was there with Ash's party and we were heading to Bar Open, which impressed him mightily as he is evidently one of the few who has heard of it. So he walked with me, we chatted easily, and then I mentioned my official reason for wanting to talk to him, information on the Italian visa and his reply ensured he went from mere mortal to god in one quick sentence.
On the subject of travel he told me that as soon as he finishes his med degree, he flies to Ecuador for six weeks to work in a mobile operating theatre that is travelling the poor villages giving free medical treatment, all paid for with his own money. Now, as you can imagine, having a god reveal himself in Northbridge early on a Sunday morning is as an unlucky event as a fashion revolution starting in Basildon! (oh, hang on …)
He mentioned this selfless adventure and I just remember thinking that I owed his mother more than I could repay her for ensuring that we met and talked. A man with manners, intelligence, convictions and a purpose in life standing right in front of me, inviting me to his grandmother's place to learn to cook real Italian food and confirming a date for coffee in the future. This one is only going to be prised from my cold, dead fingers, I swear it now.
We parted, and I spent the rest of the night with my gaze turned inwards, trying not to get too possessive of him, yet turning over and over the idea of him travelling for the good of others, while contrasting it with my hedonistic travelling. For the first time in a very long time I respected a man for his performance in the area of life I most treasured, life experience. I have even started trying to work out what projects I would be anywhere near useful on so I can do the same. Competitive charity travel – there are worse ways to select goals!
It was only two days later that another thought occurred to me regarding that meeting, and it is a rather more amusing realisation. It has to do with the hugging that is now the default way I greet someone I care about. My sisters and Wifey really trained me to hug, but spending two months hugging people goodbye and hello have meant that sometimes I hug inappropriately over here. That night I was with Robbie, Ash, V and my Cousin and we hug as a matter of habit and we had spent the whole night in comfortable contact.
Basically, I actually cannot remember how it happened and I cannot remember even noticing it, but the Charming Italian and I did the whole Mediterranean hug at our greeting and our farewell. This is something that amuses me, while it worries me, because in Perth terms we are almost months away from hugs, and considering our ages and his status as Romeo's friend, it was nowhere near appropriate. But he didn't bat an eyelid, I never even noticed I had done it and I think it would mean one of two things. One, he would think I have the hots for him (this may be the truth, I am not sure yet). Two, he realises that I am comfortable with the Italian way (this is a good thing, he is a big family man). I just think it is funny that I didn't even realise I had done it on that occasion, whereas every other inappropriate hug has been an embarrassing moment!
So, I sit and wait and try not to become obsessed (you know how we are once we meet a good man) and see how this goes. In the meantime, I try to distract myself with other brand new friends and my new house. Living alone gives you lots of time to think though …
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Holding out for a Hero
by Frou Frou
I am slightly obsessed with this song at the moment. My iTunes tells me I have played it 15 times in the last five days, I whistle it when I am walking and it scrolls through my mind each time I have nothing else to think about. And at the moment it is also inextricably linked to a person.
It was playing in Ash's car on Saturday as we shot through the white glare of midday towards her birthday party and I made her play it again, and then got it burnt to CD so I could hold it close to me always. It was the first two lines that really grabbed me, because at the moment all I find myself asking (let's face it, we all ask this ALL the time) is the same thing – where have all the good men gone? Where are all the gods?
I was so determined not to have man troubles when I returned to Perth, and I was so sure I knew what kind of man troubles I would have, that the man troubles I do have are not what I expected. I am not in the least surprised though, because that is how life is.
Basically I thought that I would get home, the men would be so tanned and good looking and straight forward that I would spend 18 months trying not to pine my life away sighing after men with long term girlfriends, Perth being couple central and at our age we are fast approaching the Bermuda triangle of single Perth men.
So, once in Perth I called up the old friends, arranged to meet and catch up and when I met my admittedly small amount of male friends, I was shocked at how boring they were. They don't do anything beyond make clever remarks about unimportant TV shows, they don't think, they don't care, they are rude and they are arrogant with no grounds. This is particularly annoying as I very seriously miss conversations with men. I miss hearing the non-girlie opinion. I also miss being able to mix two genders at a meeting, instead of reverting back to my all-girl group of Perth friends.
After a few meetings it was with dismay that I concluded that they must never have been the epitome of male sophistication, just that I had so few male friends that I assumed they were the best I had to work with. Since I left Perth I have met men of all ages, inclinations, careers, interests and level of friendship and it has left me infinitely richer for the experience. Richer certainly, but it has meant the bar has been raised to a height that my old friends cannot reach, let alone leap.
Goddamnit. They are good friends, funny guys, nice boys that have done their best with their education and what Perth has to offer. They simply haven't moved out of their comfort zone and so have no driving goals like the ones that hound me. In a frank assessment of my list of people to maintain contact with, only one man has made the cut. There are another two on the list, but they are new friends.
So I have another aim for the next eighteen months, to find those good men, preferably with girlfriends that I get along with, so I can have an intelligent conversation with a young man again. Of all the things I miss, eh?
So that settles the good man question, but it is the plaintive cry for a god that has suddenly taken more significance for me. Saturday lunchtime, when I first heard the song, the quest for a god was not important to me, it was a nice line that related more to a long-term wish to meet a god, but it was not an immediate concern. Then I ran into a god and he is now nestled in my brain right, cosying up with my sanity thoughts of new visas.
So, in the course of my rants you have been introduced to the Charming Italian and his mother, who is a bit of a Max fan.
Bella Pelt Wanted For Marital Bed - the Wedding Weekend and the Charming Italian
Although I have admittedly been a little dismissive about that weekend, it was more for anger at the situation than the players involved. Suffice to say that I need to apologise to the Charming Italian for what happened that weekend and subsequently other comments that I made and I took the initiative, got in touch with him and we were to go for coffee in a month, after his exams. The Charming Italian, with his intelligence, his good manners, his travel and his goals was one of my top three men to cultivate for good conversation, and I was looking forward to our meeting so I could see if we would get along.
Then, Saturday night at 12.30 I ran into him in Northbridge and a few things happened. He spotted me and leapt across to say hello, introduced me to his friend and was altogether UTTERLY CHARMING! I was there with Ash's party and we were heading to Bar Open, which impressed him mightily as he is evidently one of the few who has heard of it. So he walked with me, we chatted easily, and then I mentioned my official reason for wanting to talk to him, information on the Italian visa and his reply ensured he went from mere mortal to god in one quick sentence.
On the subject of travel he told me that as soon as he finishes his med degree, he flies to Ecuador for six weeks to work in a mobile operating theatre that is travelling the poor villages giving free medical treatment, all paid for with his own money. Now, as you can imagine, having a god reveal himself in Northbridge early on a Sunday morning is as an unlucky event as a fashion revolution starting in Basildon! (oh, hang on …)
He mentioned this selfless adventure and I just remember thinking that I owed his mother more than I could repay her for ensuring that we met and talked. A man with manners, intelligence, convictions and a purpose in life standing right in front of me, inviting me to his grandmother's place to learn to cook real Italian food and confirming a date for coffee in the future. This one is only going to be prised from my cold, dead fingers, I swear it now.
We parted, and I spent the rest of the night with my gaze turned inwards, trying not to get too possessive of him, yet turning over and over the idea of him travelling for the good of others, while contrasting it with my hedonistic travelling. For the first time in a very long time I respected a man for his performance in the area of life I most treasured, life experience. I have even started trying to work out what projects I would be anywhere near useful on so I can do the same. Competitive charity travel – there are worse ways to select goals!
It was only two days later that another thought occurred to me regarding that meeting, and it is a rather more amusing realisation. It has to do with the hugging that is now the default way I greet someone I care about. My sisters and Wifey really trained me to hug, but spending two months hugging people goodbye and hello have meant that sometimes I hug inappropriately over here. That night I was with Robbie, Ash, V and my Cousin and we hug as a matter of habit and we had spent the whole night in comfortable contact.
Basically, I actually cannot remember how it happened and I cannot remember even noticing it, but the Charming Italian and I did the whole Mediterranean hug at our greeting and our farewell. This is something that amuses me, while it worries me, because in Perth terms we are almost months away from hugs, and considering our ages and his status as Romeo's friend, it was nowhere near appropriate. But he didn't bat an eyelid, I never even noticed I had done it and I think it would mean one of two things. One, he would think I have the hots for him (this may be the truth, I am not sure yet). Two, he realises that I am comfortable with the Italian way (this is a good thing, he is a big family man). I just think it is funny that I didn't even realise I had done it on that occasion, whereas every other inappropriate hug has been an embarrassing moment!
So, I sit and wait and try not to become obsessed (you know how we are once we meet a good man) and see how this goes. In the meantime, I try to distract myself with other brand new friends and my new house. Living alone gives you lots of time to think though …
20 October 2004
MAX
Artfully straight forward when those around her are too subtle
Our girl keeps the boys in line whether they have glasses or dark stubble
Her twin gets to see my Sister's other life
Dozy workmates mistaking them causes them both to laugh and laugh
Oh ozzy wozza yousa legend doncha change that brilliant self!
I will email him - I am a big girl :) Anyway, it could lead to a more speedy meeting ...
SISTER
OH! u make me want to cry ... that was so sooo nice ... a true poem for me! so spot on, but it made a huge lump in my throat and a big smile of course. i have to look happy, otherwise everyone will keep on asking me if i'm ok ...
i'm gonna b a big girl ... i've had tougher than this
MAX
That is it, dude, you would not be there if you were not tough enough
We will be big girls together
SISTER
U R GREAT ... REALLY REALLY GREAT. i think i would have been in tears by now, if i wasn't talking to you!!!
sister's shining now ... guess who's back, my matt is back ... oooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! i love working with him. u should come back and work with your teddy.
MAX
*max bows gives her Sister a hug and turns her face to the horizon*
And my job here is done for another day! :)
I am glad the be-stubbled-one is being a solace. Well done him. And I take it Matt is being cute as ever.
And so we approach the end of the day in equilibrium :)
I am going to get off the email now, have been naughty today.
Cya tomorrow, same bat time, same bat station
superMax
*cough*
here is superMax just nipping back for a quick question - what IS teddy's email address? his surname escapes me for the moment ...
*sheepish grin*
then I will stride off into the sunset with my swinging fur coat ...
SISTER
he said that men like bums and that he looks for bums first ... then he was talking about how he bites his nails and i was so surprised ... he said he didn't like his hands and i said well actually max really likes them ... then i was such a chicken to say about his thumb .... bbbbbbboooooooooo ... leticia was there and she would have screamed i know it ...
MAX
Dear Matt
I hear that my Sister has been a big scaredy-cat and tried to claim that *I* think your hands are gorgeous. I did actually make such a statement, but mine is a much more disinterested admiration than my Sister's all-encompassing worshipping of the sexiness of your thumbs.
You should try stroking her mouth with them sometime ...
SISTER
u send e-moo to ur teddy, that u'll be holding at nights ... and this teddy actually hugs back and shares body heat ... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm --- an advanced teddy this one!!! but i'm sure he'll have to do the keeping up and not u!!!
MAX
Ah, and now you have repaid the poem - I have the HUGEST grin on my face :) An advanced and interactive teddy eh? I like that ALOT! :)
Artfully straight forward when those around her are too subtle
Our girl keeps the boys in line whether they have glasses or dark stubble
Her twin gets to see my Sister's other life
Dozy workmates mistaking them causes them both to laugh and laugh
Oh ozzy wozza yousa legend doncha change that brilliant self!
I will email him - I am a big girl :) Anyway, it could lead to a more speedy meeting ...
SISTER
OH! u make me want to cry ... that was so sooo nice ... a true poem for me! so spot on, but it made a huge lump in my throat and a big smile of course. i have to look happy, otherwise everyone will keep on asking me if i'm ok ...
i'm gonna b a big girl ... i've had tougher than this
MAX
That is it, dude, you would not be there if you were not tough enough
We will be big girls together
SISTER
U R GREAT ... REALLY REALLY GREAT. i think i would have been in tears by now, if i wasn't talking to you!!!
sister's shining now ... guess who's back, my matt is back ... oooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! i love working with him. u should come back and work with your teddy.
MAX
*max bows gives her Sister a hug and turns her face to the horizon*
And my job here is done for another day! :)
I am glad the be-stubbled-one is being a solace. Well done him. And I take it Matt is being cute as ever.
And so we approach the end of the day in equilibrium :)
I am going to get off the email now, have been naughty today.
Cya tomorrow, same bat time, same bat station
superMax
*cough*
here is superMax just nipping back for a quick question - what IS teddy's email address? his surname escapes me for the moment ...
*sheepish grin*
then I will stride off into the sunset with my swinging fur coat ...
SISTER
he said that men like bums and that he looks for bums first ... then he was talking about how he bites his nails and i was so surprised ... he said he didn't like his hands and i said well actually max really likes them ... then i was such a chicken to say about his thumb .... bbbbbbboooooooooo ... leticia was there and she would have screamed i know it ...
MAX
Dear Matt
I hear that my Sister has been a big scaredy-cat and tried to claim that *I* think your hands are gorgeous. I did actually make such a statement, but mine is a much more disinterested admiration than my Sister's all-encompassing worshipping of the sexiness of your thumbs.
You should try stroking her mouth with them sometime ...
SISTER
u send e-moo to ur teddy, that u'll be holding at nights ... and this teddy actually hugs back and shares body heat ... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm --- an advanced teddy this one!!! but i'm sure he'll have to do the keeping up and not u!!!
MAX
Ah, and now you have repaid the poem - I have the HUGEST grin on my face :) An advanced and interactive teddy eh? I like that ALOT! :)
Saturday, October 19, 2019
19 October 2011
HOST TO ALL
Having entered the realm of themed food with the tapas edition, it seems only natural that the poker edition demands suitably themed victuals.
Now we can’t really live on the iconic poker night items - cigars, beer, whiskey and peanuts in shells…
So, in honour of the tradition of poker nights, we will be eating Man Food!
Rhys has vowed to create amazing mini man burgers (made from 100% man).
MAX TO ALL
I will bring along Russian Chicken Drumsticks - a fabulously sticky curry-style chicken drumstick recipe (it is really Russian, from my Mongolian Aunt, naturally) which means we can gnaw on a drumstick in one hand and hold cards/cigar/scantily-clad-young-person-who-is-only-with-us-while-we-are-winning in the other. MANLY!
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
I'll bring some manly chilli chicken wings ;)
MAX TO ALL
I am re-calibrating my suggestion:
I want to do scotch eggs now ...
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
Awesomeness – I’ll attempt some manly slow cooked ribs … remember that is ‘attempt’.
Now the question is do we play for REAL money – Host and I were thinking that we could maybe do a novel $10 or $5
Thoughts????
HOST TO MAX (AND RHYS)
Oh my god I love you!!!
HOST TO MAX (AND RHYS)
Teehee
But I want Russian drum sticks and a scantily clad young man....
HOST TO ALL
Ribs … mmmmmm
Ok, $10 each into the pot and winner takes all?
Be prepared for some serious sulking from me – I am not a good loser
MAX TO HOST (AND RHYS)
hehehehehehehehe, I know, right?
How are we going to advertise for suitably quiet and minion-ful young men to attend to our gambling and refreshment needs?
The Miner has such a forum, surely ...
Scotch Eggs are shaped like balls and can be eaten suggestively ..?
MAX TO HOST
Well, I'd like to be original, but right back at ya - Mutual Admiration Club - as long as the Club admits pretty and pliable men also ...
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
Sounds good to me! I have no idea how to play so someone is going to make some easy money! bahaha
RHYS TO MAX AND HOST
Stop making me laugh - I am trying to work!
And $10 sounds good for the poker.
MAX TO RHYS AND HOST
This is all just training for getting your Poker Face on Rhys ...
Man Up etc etc
$10 is an affirmative, guys.
MAX TO ALL
Clearly we are going to have to refer to each other by our surnames ONLY all night too ... :)
RHYS TO MAX AND HOST
Can't read my, can't read my, no you can't read my poker face ...
*insert Gaga-esk movements*
HOST TO ALL
Ok you are doing the dance for us on the night
HOST TO ALL
Bahaha nice work ladies, we're on a roll
Those who haven't accepted yet, get onto it
RHYS TO ALL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvkCEEj4I2s&feature=related
I feel this youtube clip is appropriate for our foody games night :)
MAX TO RHYS
SO
MUCH
FABULOUSNESS!
ARGH!
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
Hey guys!!! that's with a very manly tone.
Deal me in on the night at this stage too, have only checked this mountain of emails this arvo.
Will whip up something appropriate can't think what at this moment, but a few ideas will occur no doubt.
Having entered the realm of themed food with the tapas edition, it seems only natural that the poker edition demands suitably themed victuals.
Now we can’t really live on the iconic poker night items - cigars, beer, whiskey and peanuts in shells…
So, in honour of the tradition of poker nights, we will be eating Man Food!
Rhys has vowed to create amazing mini man burgers (made from 100% man).
MAX TO ALL
I will bring along Russian Chicken Drumsticks - a fabulously sticky curry-style chicken drumstick recipe (it is really Russian, from my Mongolian Aunt, naturally) which means we can gnaw on a drumstick in one hand and hold cards/cigar/scantily-clad-young-person-who-is-only-with-us-while-we-are-winning in the other. MANLY!
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
I'll bring some manly chilli chicken wings ;)
MAX TO ALL
I am re-calibrating my suggestion:
I want to do scotch eggs now ...
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
Awesomeness – I’ll attempt some manly slow cooked ribs … remember that is ‘attempt’.
Now the question is do we play for REAL money – Host and I were thinking that we could maybe do a novel $10 or $5
Thoughts????
HOST TO MAX (AND RHYS)
Oh my god I love you!!!
HOST TO MAX (AND RHYS)
Teehee
But I want Russian drum sticks and a scantily clad young man....
HOST TO ALL
Ribs … mmmmmm
Ok, $10 each into the pot and winner takes all?
Be prepared for some serious sulking from me – I am not a good loser
MAX TO HOST (AND RHYS)
hehehehehehehehe, I know, right?
How are we going to advertise for suitably quiet and minion-ful young men to attend to our gambling and refreshment needs?
The Miner has such a forum, surely ...
Scotch Eggs are shaped like balls and can be eaten suggestively ..?
MAX TO HOST
Well, I'd like to be original, but right back at ya - Mutual Admiration Club - as long as the Club admits pretty and pliable men also ...
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
Sounds good to me! I have no idea how to play so someone is going to make some easy money! bahaha
RHYS TO MAX AND HOST
Stop making me laugh - I am trying to work!
And $10 sounds good for the poker.
MAX TO RHYS AND HOST
This is all just training for getting your Poker Face on Rhys ...
Man Up etc etc
$10 is an affirmative, guys.
MAX TO ALL
Clearly we are going to have to refer to each other by our surnames ONLY all night too ... :)
RHYS TO MAX AND HOST
Can't read my, can't read my, no you can't read my poker face ...
*insert Gaga-esk movements*
HOST TO ALL
Ok you are doing the dance for us on the night
HOST TO ALL
Bahaha nice work ladies, we're on a roll
Those who haven't accepted yet, get onto it
RHYS TO ALL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvkCEEj4I2s&feature=related
I feel this youtube clip is appropriate for our foody games night :)
MAX TO RHYS
SO
MUCH
FABULOUSNESS!
ARGH!
OTHER PLAYER TO ALL
Hey guys!!! that's with a very manly tone.
Deal me in on the night at this stage too, have only checked this mountain of emails this arvo.
Will whip up something appropriate can't think what at this moment, but a few ideas will occur no doubt.
Friday, October 18, 2019
18 October 2009
Archie
Dear Researcher
Max
I think the strangest thing about the machine that you describe is what happens when she is allowed out of the office on a Friday and surrounded by her attackers as they progressively consume more and more beer. Her burnished metal skin appears to change to silk, her soft, acquiescent replies appear coy and encouraging and her existence as your helper appears naturally to extend beyond the workplace and into your private life. For alcohol reduces her even further, from a machine to a willing slave to your desires, for after all, she doesn't know anything else.
Archie
Are you encouraging flirtations with researchers? *tut* *tut* not you too? :)
Max
No. I just had some pretty funny run-ins with charming visiting lecturers who thought I was just too pretty not to be stroked on the cheek and told I was adorable. So pretty, just an admin assistant, just look at me, don't talk to me ...
We must also mention the chance that a malfunction in the machine will momentarily lower the firewall between external conditions and cognitive function, allowing the machine the freedom to show what appears to be both facial expressions similar to human emotions of disgust and disbelief, and sometimes noises that seem to make exceptional sense. Research shows that these malfunctions simply take on the appearance of human-like behaviour to the sympathetic observer, it is merely the observer finding meaning in otherwise illogical events, anthropomorphism if you will, of the machine in her weakness.
Dear Researcher
Max
I think the strangest thing about the machine that you describe is what happens when she is allowed out of the office on a Friday and surrounded by her attackers as they progressively consume more and more beer. Her burnished metal skin appears to change to silk, her soft, acquiescent replies appear coy and encouraging and her existence as your helper appears naturally to extend beyond the workplace and into your private life. For alcohol reduces her even further, from a machine to a willing slave to your desires, for after all, she doesn't know anything else.
Archie
Are you encouraging flirtations with researchers? *tut* *tut* not you too? :)
Max
No. I just had some pretty funny run-ins with charming visiting lecturers who thought I was just too pretty not to be stroked on the cheek and told I was adorable. So pretty, just an admin assistant, just look at me, don't talk to me ...
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
16 October 2006
I had the strangest thought last night. As of that first day when he looked me up and down and appropriated my body, mind and soul, I have been giving my freedom up to him in frightening amounts. And then last night it hit me – I was getting more and more subservient to the idea of achieving him, I was mentally changing my life to fit in with him, I was giving up my mental and physical autonomy. And while I am very conscious of it and I am getting quite nervous about it, I yearn for it so completely it is like a fever. Extraordinary times indeed.
As I said to Gerry on Sunday – even though I have not officially gotten to the other side, and I may be a little overconfident, I am so anticipating being there that I am there anyway and it is so strange to look back on the last three years and see the freedom and self-containment that was my life. It is like looking back from a wilderness slope, back towards rolling plains of manicured gardens and control. I feel like I have given up thinking, questioning,
MY PARENTS CONSTRUCTED AN ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL WORLD OF ABSOLUTE CONTROL.
BUGGER.
So, what to do about this controlling tendency? I need to talk to M. Sweet jebus what is going to break me? London broke me just a little bit, then I came back here and got it all back under my thumb. This must be why it hurts so much, it is the same as all the others, but I have so little actual control over the situation, although I still try so hard to exert some.
And just then I tried to justify just giving in to my urges as pandering to my controlling urges, but what am I trying to justify here? Goddamnit this is not easy. Just thinking about giving in is making me nervous, this must be why I am such cactus – the urge to be subser … alright, see, look at the words I use, such negative connotations.
Okay, so let’s look at it this way – I am very controlling. In fact it is not very controlling, I have serious control issues. How am I going to break them? Do I have to break them? Mum and Dad are convinced that I have to change, although they are the ones who bred it into me (getting cross at the moment). I cannot control my feelings, my hopes, my desires, what he will actually do, that is making me anxious and distrustful.
Let’s look at this some more – let’s be controlling and structuralist and break it down to it’s moving parts and let’s be rational and take all the imagination out of it. Funny thing is, I break out in my writing, I dream of it being influential, but in the end I am trying not to be so controlled by trying to write in a confronting manner.
I don’t know, I just need to get the real revelation.
As I said to Gerry on Sunday – even though I have not officially gotten to the other side, and I may be a little overconfident, I am so anticipating being there that I am there anyway and it is so strange to look back on the last three years and see the freedom and self-containment that was my life. It is like looking back from a wilderness slope, back towards rolling plains of manicured gardens and control. I feel like I have given up thinking, questioning,
MY PARENTS CONSTRUCTED AN ENTIRELY ARTIFICIAL WORLD OF ABSOLUTE CONTROL.
BUGGER.
So, what to do about this controlling tendency? I need to talk to M. Sweet jebus what is going to break me? London broke me just a little bit, then I came back here and got it all back under my thumb. This must be why it hurts so much, it is the same as all the others, but I have so little actual control over the situation, although I still try so hard to exert some.
And just then I tried to justify just giving in to my urges as pandering to my controlling urges, but what am I trying to justify here? Goddamnit this is not easy. Just thinking about giving in is making me nervous, this must be why I am such cactus – the urge to be subser … alright, see, look at the words I use, such negative connotations.
Okay, so let’s look at it this way – I am very controlling. In fact it is not very controlling, I have serious control issues. How am I going to break them? Do I have to break them? Mum and Dad are convinced that I have to change, although they are the ones who bred it into me (getting cross at the moment). I cannot control my feelings, my hopes, my desires, what he will actually do, that is making me anxious and distrustful.
Let’s look at this some more – let’s be controlling and structuralist and break it down to it’s moving parts and let’s be rational and take all the imagination out of it. Funny thing is, I break out in my writing, I dream of it being influential, but in the end I am trying not to be so controlled by trying to write in a confronting manner.
I don’t know, I just need to get the real revelation.
16 October 2017
Me too.*
If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too" as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
Please copy/paste.
*at 50% of my workplaces since I was 18 - in two workplaces it was institutionalised sexual harassment that had nothing to do with who the victim was, it happened to every woman. I had one workplace fully documented, and they asked for the documentation before I left ... I kept it.
*at the University I attended, and with such severity that when I discussed it with other alumni and staff, they cried in public from relief that someone believed them.
*in the industry I work in now, condoned and perpetrated by peers in the positions that I have held before, and hold now.
ALSO, I WAS COMPLICIT THE FIRST TIME I WORKED IN THIS INDUSTRY, AS I CONTINUED TO WORK WITH THE PERPETRATORS.
*I can contact almost all the perpetrators (who harmed me or people I know) through Facebook, LinkedIn or email. I could find their mobile number with only one text to a friend. One of the most multi-faceted perpetrators I experienced is still a Facebook Friend (this is incomprehensible to me even as I write this, and yes, they can see this post, but they will not know it's about them, because they think they get away with it).
*I could commission a movie script, and create an entire cast and crew with the perpetrators I know that have Australia-wide whisper networks about them.
If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too" as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
Please copy/paste.
*at 50% of my workplaces since I was 18 - in two workplaces it was institutionalised sexual harassment that had nothing to do with who the victim was, it happened to every woman. I had one workplace fully documented, and they asked for the documentation before I left ... I kept it.
*at the University I attended, and with such severity that when I discussed it with other alumni and staff, they cried in public from relief that someone believed them.
*in the industry I work in now, condoned and perpetrated by peers in the positions that I have held before, and hold now.
ALSO, I WAS COMPLICIT THE FIRST TIME I WORKED IN THIS INDUSTRY, AS I CONTINUED TO WORK WITH THE PERPETRATORS.
*I can contact almost all the perpetrators (who harmed me or people I know) through Facebook, LinkedIn or email. I could find their mobile number with only one text to a friend. One of the most multi-faceted perpetrators I experienced is still a Facebook Friend (this is incomprehensible to me even as I write this, and yes, they can see this post, but they will not know it's about them, because they think they get away with it).
*I could commission a movie script, and create an entire cast and crew with the perpetrators I know that have Australia-wide whisper networks about them.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
12 October 2012
Once upon a time, there were two princesses with VERY POINTY HATS (WITH VEILS). They were VERY NORMAL, got around on a special bandwagon that they liked to use to drag chariots in the forest, and they never did what the King, their Father, wanted.
Most importantly, these two princesses had forgotten to find their princes.
Princes had fallen down the back of the couch when the princess with the short attention span jumped up to change the channel, spotted something in the other room, went to have a look and never returned. Sometimes the Princes in the Couch survived, banded together and escaped. Sometimes the Princes in the Couch died; alone, thirsty, keeping the remote close to their chest, hoping for rescue. Surely someone will come looking for the remote, they reasoned, everyone comes looking for the remote.
Most importantly, these two princesses had forgotten to find their princes.
Princes had fallen down the back of the couch when the princess with the short attention span jumped up to change the channel, spotted something in the other room, went to have a look and never returned. Sometimes the Princes in the Couch survived, banded together and escaped. Sometimes the Princes in the Couch died; alone, thirsty, keeping the remote close to their chest, hoping for rescue. Surely someone will come looking for the remote, they reasoned, everyone comes looking for the remote.
12 October 2011
I got taken out to dinner at Balthazar by a man with romantic intents, who gave me a bunch of red roses and bought me half the menu (and we shared three desserts between us).
My first real expensive restaurant dinner date at 30. I feel as if there must be some mistake and he was supposed to take me to a Mexican restaurant, like the only other dinner date I have been taken on.
The place was full of men dining with each other, which I found quite hilarious - very Boys Club.
I am still single in my head and I may have slipped and checked out some seriously hot and young Engineering-Types (set of four) getting up from a table.
But, even now, knowing he took me there, I still feel like I must have dreamt the whole 'real date' thing.
I am trying to work out how to remain the Grown Up Lady that gets taken on real dates by real men. It just has to be done.
***
It feels WEIRD to be a grown-up lady who has been on a grown-up date. I am trying to get over the huge feeling of obligation I feel towards him for spending so much money on me. I have this overwhelming urge to cook him about a million cakes.
I am keeping the feeling under control though. I have to learn to let men do what they do best ... make the moves.
He is so clever, and so funny, it was an excellent night all around.
Although I was TERRIFIED beforehand because I have never been on a real date and I was hoping I wouldn't be abrasive or over-the-top enthusiastic or uncool. I was super charming all evening because it is the social contract after all if he is taking me out, I should be on my best behaviour. And I jumped right out of the car at the end of the evening and waved goodbye with gusto ... gotta be a lady on the first date.
I do feel like a bit of a fraud though, I am actually quite uncomfortable with the thought of men spending money on feeding me because while I am happy to be a good guest, social contract wise, I
do not want to provide any other services that may conceivably ALSO be included in the modern social contract.
I have only ever required my partners to earn their own money, pay their own way, be cool to hang out with and be of sound sexual health in a committed relationship. I do not expect expensive dinners (that we don't share the cost for) and I get really overwhelmed when receiving flowers, which I am finding quite amusing to experience.
What am I? 19?
Anyway, so, that is the strange little thoughts going through my head. But I am not sharing them with the man of course. I am staying aloof and charming, as a grown-up lady who gets taken to restaurants should be, and trying to remind myself that I have had plenty of these egalitarian relationships to date, time to try different styles ...
My first real expensive restaurant dinner date at 30. I feel as if there must be some mistake and he was supposed to take me to a Mexican restaurant, like the only other dinner date I have been taken on.
The place was full of men dining with each other, which I found quite hilarious - very Boys Club.
I am still single in my head and I may have slipped and checked out some seriously hot and young Engineering-Types (set of four) getting up from a table.
I am trying to work out how to remain the Grown Up Lady that gets taken on real dates by real men. It just has to be done.
It feels WEIRD to be a grown-up lady who has been on a grown-up date. I am trying to get over the huge feeling of obligation I feel towards him for spending so much money on me. I have this overwhelming urge to cook him about a million cakes.
I am keeping the feeling under control though. I have to learn to let men do what they do best ... make the moves.
He is so clever, and so funny, it was an excellent night all around.
Although I was TERRIFIED beforehand because I have never been on a real date and I was hoping I wouldn't be abrasive or over-the-top enthusiastic or uncool. I was super charming all evening because it is the social contract after all if he is taking me out, I should be on my best behaviour. And I jumped right out of the car at the end of the evening and waved goodbye with gusto ... gotta be a lady on the first date.
I do feel like a bit of a fraud though, I am actually quite uncomfortable with the thought of men spending money on feeding me because while I am happy to be a good guest, social contract wise, I
do not want to provide any other services that may conceivably ALSO be included in the modern social contract.
I have only ever required my partners to earn their own money, pay their own way, be cool to hang out with and be of sound sexual health in a committed relationship. I do not expect expensive dinners (that we don't share the cost for) and I get really overwhelmed when receiving flowers, which I am finding quite amusing to experience.
What am I? 19?
Anyway, so, that is the strange little thoughts going through my head. But I am not sharing them with the man of course. I am staying aloof and charming, as a grown-up lady who gets taken to restaurants should be, and trying to remind myself that I have had plenty of these egalitarian relationships to date, time to try different styles ...
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