Am I a Writer?

Time will tell. Note: Quite often, I write about people I know. If any of you object to anything I have written, let me know and I will remove it.

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Wannabe. Living in Vientiane, Laos. Has blog to avoid sending lengthy emails.

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

What am I leaving behind?

Ok, I am going to Laos for 12 months as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development. It's a brilliant opportunity, something I probably would never have seriously considered had Pristy not planted the seeds of adventure in my gradually disillusioned mind. But there it is.
I'm rapt. Since moving to Melbourne and doing volunteer work at the Fitzroy Legal Service, I've been wanting to become involved in some sort of aid work. Mainly because my life is so easy. I've also been itching to go overseas, but can never manage to save up enough money. But now I'm going, to a part of the world I've never seen, to do something completely different. Here are the details.
[And, just as an aside, that is pretty much exactly how I look every day- a v-neck sweater, that onyx neckalce that my parents have me as a gift 2 birthdays ago which goes with everything I own, and my hair a total fucking disaster. I mean, will you look at that hair??
It looks a bit better now, I must say. People often comment on my hair. This is because, despite being cursed with particularly thin, fine, whispy, ungrowable, unlustrous locks (are they even locks?), I make a point of finding a decent hairdresser wherever I am living who can make the best of a bad situation, hopefully without arguing or making me feel bad (and no, I'm NOT referring to that bitch who "did" my hair on Cristy's wedding day. That was a debacle. She kind of poked at my head, sighed, and said "Okay. One word. Hairspray." And then proceeded to give me a helmet. Moving on.)
Anyway, and until about June of this year, all that credit went to one particular person. Check it.
Oliver used to cut all our hair regularly, usually in the back garden, but sometimes in the kitchen. I gave him free reign, and he would always do something unexpected, like leave one side longer than the other, which I kinda liked. The last time he cut my hair, as you can see from the photo, he was wearing a blindfold, although I didn't know it at the time. (Can you see I look slightly annoyed? I was wondering why the hell Schram was snickering and taking photos of me.)
But damn if it wasn't the best haircut I've ever had.
Anyway, that Ausaid photo was taken about six months later. I had refused to go and pay for a haircut, on the off chance that Ollie might walk through the door one day brandishing his scissors. But then, not long after, I came across a weatherbeaten ball of hair just outside the back door. It wasn't just my hair: there were tufts of my dirty blond, strands of Acko's tough black Asian hair, Alice's dyed red waves, Helen's dark curls. All drifting around sadly like tumbleweed. I knew Ollie wasn't coming back from Brisbane.
I booked in for a haircut at Chainsaw Massacre on Elgin St the next day. It wasn't the same. The girl said my hair was "mousey".]
Anyway, that was a long aside, wasn't it?
I wanted to write about Laos, and what I'm going to be doing, and how I feel about going. But maybe that's not the thing to do right now. Maybe it's best if I think about something else for a while.
In fact, I've been pretty down over the last week or so, for whatever reason. I think it's because I have absolutely nothing keeping me in Melbourne, which should be a good thing, but it makes me feel absolutely desolate instead.
I've always been prone to sadness. It's not actual depression- it's far too cliched, and manifests itself far too obviously to be anything that serious. But it's there, it comes and goes with alarming regularity, and its something I am still learning to deal with. I mean, it's not teenage angst anymore, is it? I'm 26 for fuck's sake!
But this bout had better go away in the next few days- I have no intention of whining my way through my final weeks of Melbourne in a foul mood.
Anwyay, I said I had nothing keeping me in Melbourne, which is a lie, because I have lots of particularly ace friends. One of them is Jess, who, upon hearing I was blue, left a couple of books and some lollies at my house on Monday night while I was at the FLS.
One of the books was Prep, by Curtis Sittenfield, which I've been dying to read. I started it last night- so far so good, although I was alarmed to read on the inside cover that Ms Sittenfield is only 3 years older than me.
Who knows if I don't have a book in me too?
Next post: Ramadan, the Nail Technician's Professional Code of Conduct, why Brooke is so fucking delirious with happiness, why indie music nerds (aka me and my friend Patrick) are funny, and more, maybe.
Oh, and one more thing: yesterday I went and saw former PM Malcolm Fraser speak about Human Rights. It was very rousing. He made the fundamental point that ten or fifteen years ago the idea that people would even be debating such things as human rights, a free press and the rule of law daily in the press would have been crazy.
So true, Malcolm, so true.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Preaching to the converted

I went to a housewarming yesterday.
You might ask, then, why the hell didn't I take a gift?
Well, the owners of the house, dear friends Jess and Ben, recently got married, and my wedding gift to them was quite possibly the most awesom gift ever: a subscription to Crikey.
Ain't that enough? Must we constantly give gifts above and beyond our mere presence at a party? Is my sparkling wit not enough? What would I have got them anyway? What more do they need when they have each other? These are the justifications that were running through my panicked mind as more and more people arrived with plants and flowers and elaborately wrapped gifts. I got over it after a few glasses of champagne.
Anyway, it was a lunchtime barbie on the patio of their swell new Fitzroy pad. Attendees were a suitably chic combination of Ben's law firm colleagues and Jess' media-type buddies, including me. A couple of hours in and I found myself on the patio engaged in a group discussion about, among other things, the impending execution of Nguyen Tuong Van, and the elaborate high jinks of model Michelle Leslie who recently got herself into a bit of a scrape.
These are highly charged issues that have "gripped the nation" over the past month or so, the subject of many an editorial and vox pop, online poll and petition. And yet, for all that, the discussion at a Sunday barbeque in Fitzroy was predictably tame, tempered by agreement, coloured pastel by an all-round feeling of goodwill at being amongst like-minded people. No one thinks Van Nguyen deserves to die. Everyone agrees that had they been busted like Michelle Leslie, they would have been perfectly willing to bribe and lie their way out of it to avoid a prolonged stint in an Indonesian prison. And who the hell would be stoopid enough to buy, sell, ingest or traffic drugs in South-East Asia anyway? Not us, no way.
This was no bad thing, mind you. I would hate to have to spend the afternoon arguing myself blue in the face to defend what I see as being basic human principles. I'm not very good at it, for one.
But it got me thinking about one of the first things they told us in J-school. Namely, how important it is to get on with all kinds of people. Not that any of us needed to be told something so obvious, but it needed to be hammered home, I think.
I've been in situations so far removed from the comfortable clean air of Jess and Ben's patio that it could be a different universe. Usually I manage to get on.
Humour helps. I met someone recently who barely cracked a smile the whole time I was in her presence. Didn't laugh once. What kind of person IS this?
Would this girl, who shall remain nameless, have enjoyed another equally fascinating conversation that went on yesterday, involving the very dirtiest words for "vagina" ever conceived of?
Geez I laughed.
But then, my sense of humour has always been fairly primitive, you know? All those who've seen me practically burst a blood vessel when watching Jackass: The Movie, can attest to that.
But it's not all about smut, I swear. For instance, I think this is one of the funniest things I've seen in days. Well, maybe not the funniest, but it did make me laugh a lot.
So, in the end, it was a very pleasant, politically stimulating, smut-filled sojourn into the good life for an afternoon. I was sorry to leave.
I will be sorry to leave Melbourne all round, I think, but I'm starting to feel, more and more, like the elements are pushing me out and it's time to go.
But that's a subject for another post, I think.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Outed

I had a call on Tuesday night, from Ireland. It was my best of all besties, Brooke, who is over there at the moment, taking Dublin by storm, no doubt. Gosh I do miss her, but we've been living in different cities for at least the last three years now. She, being a beach bum, headed up to honey-skinned, bleachy-blond Sydney, while I languished in Canberra for a while longer before fleeing to Melbourne, bastion of all that is "edgy", where I have been able to wear black and brood to my heart's content.
She finally decided to update her blog- only, as she points out, to spite me. In her post, she alluded to that fact that I am going to Laos. "Allude"- what am I saying? She outed me! I wanted to keep that one in the bag until, like, the day before I left, so that I could just sort of swan off, thus increasing my enigma.
Too late. Enigma never worked for me, really. My "friends" make sure of that.
My other bestie, Cristy Clark, who has been bossing me around since we were both five, married Paul, her old highschool boyfriend earlier this year, and my wasn't it something? They (the "Pristy/Craul" entity), are currently in Vientiane, Laos, soon to head back to Our Nation's Capital. Together, they conspired to have me go over there and take over their job, house, life, their very identity, so that they can come back to the 'Berra and start a pretty family. Or something.
So that's what the next year holds for me. Against all odds, previous plans and expectations, I am taking up a twelve-month Youth Ambassodorship with Ausaid, starting January. Look out- will Vientiane ever be the same again??
But I'm not going to talk about that just now.
Instead, I'll tell you about my friend SC.
SC and I have been friends since 1996. I have long accepted that, were he not a permanent passenger on the Manly Ferry (heh), we would have settled down, oh, years ago.
But, as it is, I am the square straight one who stayed behind and did a couple of degrees, while he flitted around the world, or Asia, anyway, for years and years and years.
But we have stayed friends the whole time, a fact that continues to amaze me, given how irritable and prickly and fickle I can be, particularly towards him. He seems to have accepted it as his "lot" in life. It's because he's Catholic, I suspect: I am the cross he has to bear, but he doesn't seem to mind.
Anyway, our paths intersect but never quite seem to meet. All those years, he has been urging me to go somewhere in Asia. "You'd love Thailand, Sally," he always used to say when I whinged about being stuck in Canberra. Meanwhile, I used to bag him for never having finished the degree he started in 1997.
Long story short: I'm heading off for my first big Asian adventure, probably for quite some time, while he, degree finished, piece of paper in hand, has accepted a job with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade-DFAT, for love of god, in Canberra!
Oh, the hilarity.

Monday, November 21, 2005

But what's with the name, Sarrie??

Sarrie: a happy, happy medium between Sally and Sarah, both of which are my name. It's the same name, everyone, just accept it.

Like JFK, who was always called Jack. Like Prince Harry, who I think is really a Henry.

What's that you say? Same number of syllables? How can Sally be short for Sarah? Because, what, I've never realised that before? Thanks for the tip.

Anyway, there are other reasons. For those of you who've known me since the late 90s, you might remember an old boyfriend who went to Japan. Sarrie was my special jokey Japanese name then. Japan swallowed him whole, but my name stuck. It was even my Hotmail address for a while, hence the "Sarrie24" moniker. Strange to think there were already 23 other "Sarries" in existance by the time I signed up to Hotmail in 2000.

For those who've known me since about this time last year, Sarrie is what my Japanese housemate actually calls me- because she can't help it! Other people who have lived in that house sometimes call me that too.

So there you go. Sarrie. Maybe I'll change my name by deed poll one day.

I'm mysterious...no really!



Great photo, huh? I look all intense and mysterious and cool. Thing is, I had just got my new phone that day, and found a button on the side and was wondering what it did, and damn if the damn thing didn't snap a photo of me right there.

So, stupid, really.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

First post

Everyone's doing it. And I'm "hip", right?
Also, I'm going away for a while, and it would nice to have this blog, rather than sending mass emails.
So how does it look?
I'll be back...