Mandy's First Post, The Blog's Second Post, and Kudos to Samme

First things first: Big Kudos to Samme! Yay and rainbows and happy things for all! Thank you for setting this up (I had no clue it existed until 3 minutes ago, so it was a nice surprise).

Alright, from what I’ve surmised, we’re supposed to be chronicling our uni days. Here I feel I must point out that the majority of our little group will graduate after three years (if they don’t fail anything, which they won’t), leaving the rest of us cold and alone and bitter for another two whole years of hard labour. But hey, I’ll be a young beautiful student for two more years than you guys, while you will actually have to go out and work and get lives.

Not that I don’t love our uni. I’m very loyal to it. I was arguing its merits to a friend of mine earlier this year.

FRIEND: It’s depressing.
ME: It’s really nice on the inside! Don’t be so superficial.
FRIEND: There’s no grass.
ME: We have grass! And we’re getting more!
FRIEND: It’s a concentration camp.
ME: A concentration camp of fun!

I think won. Anyway, I’m grateful to this blog (and by extension Samme), because not everyone has a LiveJournal, where I usually post little stories comprising of my life. Though recently I’ve only been using it to keep up with Code Geass and for the occasional crack posting. Now that I have law classes I only see Sayrawr, Samme and Kat during the lecture on Mondays and everyone else on the Wednesday lecture. (By the way, when I’m old, senile and drooling twenty-four seven, I’m going to look back at this and think ‘When did I know someone called “Say-Rawr”? Say rawr. Rawr. Rawr. I am a tiger! RAWR!’) So the only time we actually interact is for those brief minutes before and after a lecture, through e-mail, and now this blog.

Speaking of names, I actually get rather confused when people talk about Manda, 'cause I automatically assume they mean me. See, this is why I was all ready to introduce myself as Gawanda or something first day of uni. I actually went through a list of names before I started uni to decide what my new name was going to be. It was not Gawanda, by the way. But of course I couldn’t bring myself to introduce myself as anything other than ‘Mandy’, because otherwise it felt like lying.

I was actually thinking of doing something like this blog only in book form, inspired by John Birmingham’s ‘He Died with a Felafel in His Hand’ and ‘The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco’ but of course I think of a lot of things that I don’t actually do. Plus, his weird and wonderful recounts of his uni days trump anything I’ve experienced so far. Which kinda puts a damper on the whole ‘write what you know’ philosophy, but hey. I’ve got a great imagination. Case in point:

FRIEND: (brandishing a large bag) I can fit your bag in here.
SISTER: You could fit a baby in there.
ME: You could fit two... no, maybe three babies in there.
SISTER: I think three.
ME: Depending on how old they are.
SISTER: Does it really matter?
ME: Yeah – babies grow like crazy.
SISTER: Let’s say about a week old. Still small, but they’ve plumped up a little.
ME: Alright, I could see three babies in there. More, if we crush them. Like, stick them in a blender, grind up the bones, make them malleable.
SISTER: There’s not that much air in babies. The real problem is the water.
ME: Yeah, you’ve got to dehydrate them too.
SISTER: Yeah, dry them out.
ME: Then vacuum-pack them and stuff them in the bag.
SISTER: Four could fit in there easy.
ME: I say we go for five.
FRIEND: You two need to stop.

That was on our way to RICErally, a gathering of 4000 Christian youth (99.9% of which are Asian) for a talk and singing and games and stuff. It was fun – my friend’s not Asian, and she was so lost. I put a ribbon in my hair so that she could recognise me from behind, otherwise she’d just get swept away in the sea of black and yellow. Like bees. I also came across a really creepy pervert on the way back to the train station, so now I know why hanging out in the city late at night is a no-no. But let us not dwell on such things.

You know that scrolling ABC news headlines bar in the city, behind the ABC building? Whenever I walk that way, I always end up walking while looking backwards to read it. It’s a good think there aren’t any poles around that area. The other day it occurred to me ‘Hey, I must look like some curious, gullible Asian tourist, staring my eyes out at the moving lights’. So I quickly looked around to see if anyone was staring at my peculiar behaviour. Everyone in that courtyard was Asian, and about half were reading the headlines. Me: ‘Wow, I can see what Pauline Hanson was talking about!’ But then, who doesn’t want to live in Australia? Australia’s packed with awesome. In fact, Australia has so much awesome, it’s had to use Uluru as a giant paperweight to keep Australia’s awesome down under and in control. Otherwise, the awesomeness would cause it to float off and become an entire planet of awesome unto itself.