29 Dec 2003

Aaaargh. Screw that. My nose is peeling.

27 Dec 2003

Aaaargh. Barely a day after Christmas and it is hello, sunburnt country! In more ways than one. I'm on a little holiday of sorts and it so does not help when you've forgotten the sunscreen and the thought of going and buying some more has failed to cross your mind ... So my face looks like I scrubbed it with a Body Shop exfoliator glove and then stood in a scalding shower for half an hour. With a sunglass tan. I hate getting a sunglass tan! It makes me feel unsociable and very very stupid. Oh well, at least I'm not peeling. Though I'm sure there's still time for THAT.

It's been pretty relaxing so far, sitting on the beach, out in the sun doing nothing for hours on end gathering dust and cobwebs and sand. Guiltily getting a tan despite all the talk of skin cancer and premature aging. I promise I'll eventually stop frying myself in the hole in the ozone layer before it's too late. Next year. Meanwhile, get a load of the sexy bronzed gods playing frisbee near my patch of the sand! Miles of lean golden skin, six-pack stomaches and solid biceps abound. Stop me before I start to drool. Sure won't mind getting myself a piece of that... And I swear the blonde one was checking me out. No, really! Ah well, another day on the sand and sea beckons, so I must leave you with this.

26 Dec 2003

Merry Christmas Everyone! 

I think the title says it all. Have a great one.

21 Dec 2003

Yes!!! Christmas holidays, finally. Got a lip gloss gift pack for my class Kris Kringle. I genuinely LOVE lip gloss! A girl can never have too much lip gloss! And one of my best friends got me the Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘Greatest Hits’ album so that was pretty good. Skipped speech night rehearsal due to an unplanned stomach bug that got me feeling like shit all day. Speech night itself was dead boring, as always, and did not help with my recent lapse in health. A synthetic school shirt, overdone air-conditioning coupled with balmy humidity outside, running around sweating – you do the math. Then because I wasn’t at the day rehearsal, I missed my cue when we were done singing in choir and ended up leaving with the orchestra people. Duh! How stupid was that? Then I had to sneak back in while the strings section got set up, and the choir had already got into their formation and I’m like hi there, and everyone’s like, what the hell are you doing here? Now that was a reeeally awkward situation …

During the ‘grand finale’, which was so stuffed up that you could barely hear the harmonies above the din of the orchestra, there was this cheerleading segment. Now I need not mention that Ditz was part of the show. Even though I just did. Okay, anyway … due to the time lapse from the balcony to the stage, our control freak dance teacher was in charge of clapping the beat for the girls to move to. The other cheerleading groups were right in time, doing their thing (“Rah rah rah … don’t mess with dynamite!” etc.) until Ditz and her gang come in. She with the highly nasal voice and no sense of rhythm launched straight into the routine at about one and a half times faster. Dance teacher full-on gave up, threw her hands in the air and stopped clapping. You’ve got to be there to find it as hilarious as I did, but come on! The one thing you would expect someone like her to be good at she can’t do! It took all of my discipline and self control to detain from totally cracking up on stage.

Overall, I guess it's been a pretty calm year, not too many ups and downs (however if you're enquiring into silent bitch fights we DO have a lot of those on hand; whatever happened to the good ol' days where bitch fightin' was straight-up and right out in the open?), delirious euphoria or heartbreaking tears. I'm still at that age where Christmas is not yet just another way for those damn greedy capitalists to make us all festively broke, so I'm looking forward to the holiday.

6 Dec 2003

Arrrgh. I don’t want to sing another note, ever again. And don’t even TALK to me about musicals! I have just been singing my little heart out, non-stop, for the last week or so. If it hadn’t been choir rehearsal for Carols Night, then it’s been end-of-year speech night songs. And to top it all off, they’ve started auditioning for the school musical from Wednesday! I like singing all very well, and I’d love to get into Les Miserables for next year, but how much more singing can I bear? Granted I did relatively well in my Les Mis audition (I got a call back!) and they didn’t even stop me halfway through the reading like they did with some people (but maybe that’s because I was one of the first to go in and they hadn’t gotten fully sick of the excerpt yet – god, maybe that means I’m in with a chance!). Five days flat of singing dodgy songs does not a happy girl make. The ones we have to sing for speech night (written by a few of the music teachers and senior students with a lot of time on their hands) are so massively terrible that I can’t go into details. Oh well, at least the harmonies are easy.

Had an extremely boring day at school. I woke up and decided to go hippy for the day. I went home in the afternoon and this loser checks me out and goes, “why helloooo.” Definitely eye-roll worthy but nevertheless, it makes a girl feel good about herself, you know?

4 Dec 2003

A few years ago I changed schools, removing myself from an already familiar environment. Within the summer, I lost contact with all but one of my old friends (maybe that was partly due to the fact that I lived for the whole time like an antisocial hermit, six hours on the computer every day – but we won’t go into that) and the rest had moved on. Perhaps because everyone else used to live within half a mile of each other and it took me most of an hours’ worth of walking to get to one of their houses, I saw my old classmates very rarely, and only on the way to school and on public transport at that. There was this one boy I wanted to ask out, but he was in love with a bitchy girl from my old school (ain’t it always like that?) so I never ended up gathering the courage to do so. All the gossip and rumours of who was going out with who I got from my remaining friend by email, but by the end of the next school year our emails became sparse and few in between. She’d changed too, and ended up doing perverse sexual acts with the nerdy fat guy – I’m telling you, no one saw THAT one coming!

Then a bit of time passed, and one day I’m heading to the bus stop when I see this really hot guy ambling towards me. Hello … I look up slightly to check him out and suddenly his face seems awfully familiar. Oh my god, I do a double take, it’s Jack from my old school! Last time I saw him he was a weedy little thing, stick thin awkwardness and gangly limbs. Somehow that memory had mutated into the confident, broad shouldered hottie heading in my direction. Jack, I call out, long time no see. He studies me for a moment from behind these ridiculously long lashes (I am so jealous!) and there is a flicker of recognition in his dark blue eyes. He breaks into that wide smile that, funnily enough, I had never thought was so gorgeous before, and says my name. Ah, that’s who I am, the weirdly intelligent new girl. Well, I’ve changed too, hopefully for the better, and out of the restrictive familiarities of school we have a civil, look-how-you’ve-changed kind of conversation. Be still, my beating heart. He seems nicer too, like with a newfound sense of maturity. It is then that I start to miss all my old friends and our close-knit community.

We go our separate ways, but occasionally I see him around the shops, sometimes working at the local chemist, sometimes perusing the aisles of the supermarket. I don’t deliberately strike up a conversation with him every time (he’s cute but not that cute) but every time I marvel at how much someone can change so much in such a short time. I wonder how much I’ve changed?

3 Dec 2003

I love the presence of peak hour summer rain. When you’re in the thick of the city, buskers’ colourful ukeles and mournful violins mingling with the rush of passing traffic. Pigeons bobbing their short little necks at scraps underfoot, and the darkening day just warm enough for the cafes not to light their beacons. Commuters are gathering at streetlights crossing as one to get to the train station, preoccupied with their own little worlds, waiting to get home from a day at the office. A suited-up bottle blonde here, a punk in full chains and piercings sitting on a bench – I always wonder how they manage to get their hair to stand so high and straight? – a stressed businessman conversing into his mobile phone. McDonalds’ is bustling, as always, and neon lights of the little pizza shops start to glow their fluorescent oranges and blues. A rhythmic ka-thunk, ka-thunk of trams rolling past, working overtime as they take another load of weary workers home. The ambience of released citizens in the humid air, freed once again from their monotonous nine to fives. Bright lights from the juice bar, clusters of happy people at street side tables, their happy chatter overshadowing the hugeness of the towering monoliths above. The gentle summer breeze, heralded by the subtle swaying of old oaks. A silver BMW speeds around the corner, sending an elongated honk of annoyance to the overtaking Ford. Ah, the city.

And then there are the raindrops, the big slow raindrops falling intermittently onto the asphalt pavement, until light grey becomes a darker, glistening black. The delicious feeling of warmth sliding down your bare arms, of lazy water stroking your sweaty face. Summer rain, when the fug-filled sky is hazy with lurid pink sunset and residue of noontime light, cool relief from an air thick and creamy as intangible cheesecake. Then I stand still on the sidewalk, while another horde of people pass me by, unaware of the magic moment I’ve struck upon, as precious and rare as gold. I stand in the open air, relishing a raindrop’s tender touch, knowing how lucky I am to be able to stand on a busy street catching God’s tears on my tongue. Feeling glad to be alive on this summer’s day, glad for the presence of peak hour summer rain.

1 Dec 2003

Drum roll please: congratulations girlfriend, you’ve just won ‘Bimbo of the Year’!

Let me enlighten you on what I’m talking about. There is a certain girl I know at a certain school who, for the moment, we’ll just call Ditz. Well, that’s the name she is most frequently known as behind her back. She is a total bitch and is synonymous with the phrases “what a bimbo” and “she is so dumb” coupled with the exasperated eye roll. She has her school skirt hiked halfway up her thigh and a really whiny voice that you can recognise from a mile away. Sort of like Fran Drescher’s from ‘The Nanny’, remember that show?, but less nasal and without the charm. To add insult to injury, this girl also shares my name. (No, my name is NOT ditz!) Think I’m exaggerating? This is a person who thinks stealing bases in softball is stupid because “who would want to steal a base? They’re so dirty”.

Now normally I wouldn’t have anything against desperate slutty bimbos who happen to have no brain (no, I’ll just laugh at their obvious stupidity – they say the funniest things though, anyone who is slightly not as dumb cannot come up with the things they do) but Ditz has decided that, because I am intelligent and do well at school, I am therefore classified a nerd. You know, I HATE labels. They’re so… stereotypical American high school that it makes me sick! Just because you’re a cheerleader doesn’t mean you are brainless (though I beg to differ in Ditz’s case). Just because you happen to be more quiet and withdrawn than everyone else doesn’t mean you’re a freak. Just because you are good at sport doesn’t mean you’re a ‘jock’. And just because you’ve rather spend your ten and a half thousand dollar a year education actually learning instead of bitching about other girls and gossiping about guys you met on the weekend DOESN’T MAKE YOU A NERD!

Okay, now that I’ve got my daily rant out of the way, let’s get on with the story. Ditz tried out for the school drama purely to get a boyfriend (all girls’ school … you know how it is). I got in, and when she sees the noticeboard, she goes, “Omigod, I got in, I got in!” Well whaddaya know, she can’t read either. Then someone tells her, no she didn’t get in, I’m the one who actually got in, and she is so pissed. So she goes around bitching about me all day about how I’m such a nerd and why the hell I got into the drama in the first place. Hello? Like, I can act and she can’t? Another time, she wore a miniskirt on a school excursion to the zoo. I ask you, who wears a miniskirt to a zoo excursion? When we were there we went into the butterfly house and she kept trying to get butterflies to land on her and freaked out when they actually did because she thought they were trying to eat her.

That sounds really bitchy, doesn’t it? Anyway, I’m not the only one who feels this way. Almost all of my friends, and everyone else who has been in a prolonged situation with her have been driven to the point of insanity where they don’t know whether to laugh or cry at her brainlessness. Come to think of it, I don’t think she actually has many real friends. Sometimes, I wonder whether she’s really actually an evil genius behind a mask of shallowness, and inside she’s laughing at us because we all think she’s so stupid. Because I find it hard to believe someone can actually be that dumb.


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