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.