I don’t usually do memes, and I wasn’t going to do this one that it seems every single person in the world is doing right now (mostly because I have grown to despise my generation’s gross overuse and misuse of the word ‘random’), but frankly I’ve read just about all the ones I’ve come across that were written by peeps on Facebook or bloggers I admire, and have totally dug every single one, so I thought I might as well. Plus, everyone knows I love talking about myself.
1. I wish it was socially acceptable (and possible) to eat all food with chopsticks.
2. Every day on my way home I change from the northbound Bakerloo Line to the northbound Jubilee line. When you cross the platform through the little walkway just by the back end of the train, there’s this strange, unidentifiable but not unpleasant smell that comes through the vents from the platform below. The only other place I’ve ever smelled it is at Clapham Junction station. It makes me weirdly happy every day, because it reminds me of the first six months I lived in London, when I was working as a copywriter for a travel company in Crawley, and commuted via Clapham Junction. It always makes me think of how everything was new and sort of alien back then, but by the end of that contract I was a total Londoner, and had become friends with some of the most fabulous, funny people I’ve known here. It makes me smile every single day without fail, and I’m quietly confident the people walking past me at the time think I’m a bit differently-abled. Gosh, that was a long story and probably quite boring for anyone who’s not me.
3. I had a crush on the same boy consistently from age 11, when I started at a new primary school, to age 17 when I graduated from high school. Like all the boys I have ever had a crush on, he was the only one I thought was as clever and funny as me. (Why yes, I do have quite a high opinion of myself, thanks for noticing.) We finally got together about a year after we graduated, and then nine months later broke up due to random fact #4. He is still a seriously awesome, clever, funny, talented dude.
4. I have a crippling aversion to commitment. It infects every corner of my life, from relationships to the tasks on my daily to-do list.
5. When I was seven years old, whenever anyone asked me what I was going to be when I grew up I would say, “A singer, a violinist, an author, a dancer, an actor and a polo player.” I didn’t really know what polo was, just that it involved horses.
6. I worked at Australia Zoo (‘Home of The Crocodile Hunter, on Glasshouse Mountains Road, Beerwah… where Crocs Rule!’ <— imagine that in an American accent) for almost five years. I started straight out of high school folding t-shirts in a souvenir store and ended up editing their stable of websites and a magazine. Left in May 2007 to move to London. Probably the world’s funnest and most bizarre workplace.
7. I don’t believe in anything even resembling the supernatural or spiritual anymore. Sometimes that makes me sad, but mostly it’s just a big steaming bowl of sweet relief soup. Ahhhhhh… oh yeah that’s the stuff.
8. Return to Oz is still the scariest movie in the world to me, and the irrational thought of the Wheelers being real and coming to get me sometimes strikes me when I’m walking down a quiet residential London street at night.
9. I’m the youngest of five. I have two brothers and two sisters. The eldest is 15 years older than me.
10. My newest obsession is this whackjob.
11. I’ve read Little Women approximately once a year since I was nine. I cry every single time Beth dies.
12. I have a cat at home in Australia called Hunter. He’s nine years old. He was a Christmas gift when I was 14.
13. I’m mildly fixated on Rwanda and the genocide and how they’ve rebuilt the country since 1994. I’m desperate to go there.
14. I suspect, but cannot confirm, that I made myself learn how to drink black, sugarless coffee because I thought it made me seem cool and sophisticated… two things that, if you spend approximately five minutes with me, you will realise I am most certainly not.
15. London frequently takes my breath away. I think this city is the most exciting, beautiful, quirky and surprising place in the world.
16. I still haven’t used the video camera that I bought two years ago.
17. Sometimes I worry that when I move back to Australia, it’ll be like that final scene in The Wizard of Oz, when everything’s gone back to sepia and nobody believes that Dorothy has seen all the amazing things she describes, until finally she begins to wonder if any of it actually happened or if she really did just dream it all.
18. I am secretly, politically-incorrectly concerned that because the United States now has an awesome president, we will all soon have no reason to bitch about America and its inhabitants. I know I’m awful, you don’t have to say it.
19. When I was about six I apparently ran home crying from the neighbour’s house, where my sister and I had been playing with a bunch of kids. We had been having a singing competition and all the other kids were singing things like Mary Had a Little Lamb, Three Blind Mice, etc, and I got disqualified for singing (and headbanging to) Under The Bridge by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Fucking fascists.
20. One of the things I miss most about home is proper thunderstorms, with actual thunder and lightning. I used to love the rain in Australia, because it was proper, hardcore rain that drenched you in five seconds but made everything seem clean and fresh half an hour later. Here it’s just this endless, miserable drizzle that eats away at you for three days and then slips politely out the back door, trying to pretend it was never really there to begin with. However…
21. …summer in London is my absolute favourite time/place combination.
22. I desperately want a pet rabbit.
23. My favourite song to sing when drunk in a pub is Holy Grail by Hunters and Collectors. This is a phenomenon that only ever occurs in Australia.
24. My top three all-time favourite bands are as follows: 1) Crowded House, 2) Indigo Girls and 3) Ben Folds Five.
25. I get really angry when people eat wildlife (e.g. shark fin soup, crocodile kebabs, kangaroo meat etc). If you have an opinion on this, by all means let me know. I will fight you. I will meet you in the carpark after school and Kick. Your. Ass.
