Five minutes ago I was starting my first year of University and then WHAM, nope. I’m almost 25.

Where does the time go? College was over in an instant and whoops, it’s actually been two and a half years since I graduated. I’ve lived out of home for 7 years and our 10 year High School reunion is in 3….What is this madness?

Sometimes I wake up and feel like I’ve been in a coma. I look around and I’m surprised by where I am in my life and how old I actually am versus how old I actually feel.

But aren’t I a fully functioning member of society?

I do my taxes (late) and manage to dress myself daily (sometimes) and supposedly I’ve mastered enough cooking techniques to keep myself alive up until this point.

So why do I still want to play on the swings every time I walk past the park? Why am I still sniggering at the same old dumb jokes. Why don’t I care about Politics or Savings accounts or depreciating housing loanes?

Today I went to the supermarket for the first time since I got back to Canada about 5 days ago. I’ve been battling Jet-Lag and the desire to only eat pizza every single day at weird times like 1am.

I wrote a list (which I didn’t stick to) and headed into the first aisle where I was confronted by yet another challenge of Adulthood.

Shredded Wheat & Bran vs Krave Double Chocolate (with extra chocolate inside)

The great cereal dilemma.

Now. What is girl to do?

On the one hand, Shredded Wheat & Bran is probably totally BLAND and totally healthy (I don’t know if that is a fact… it’s not like I actually checked the box) but then look at Krave! It’s got curved font and the milk is sparkling in between the delicious bites of chocolatey goodness! And it’s DOUBLE the chocolate.

Decisions, decisions. A or B?

Well… I had to go with…

Option C

The compromise

This cereal could literally be worse for me than KRAVE. But I don’t care. It has both wheat coloured and chocolate coloured/flavoured things.

So it must be good.

For more insight into how I feel: Check out Jenna Marbles Video ‘I hate being a grownup’.

Everything about this is hilarious to me

Being back in Hong Kong is sometimes so weird.

In this fast paced city, so much can change. Leave for a year and BOOM they’ve just built all these new buildings and your favourite cheap outlet is gone and French Restaurants have moved in everywhere (this is no joke…where the hell did all the frogs come from?!)

BUT *screechbangwaitasecond* so much can stay the same. I went to an ANZAC memorial service on Thursday with my parents and the Australian International School (where I went for the last four years of High School) was well represented by kids in hideous Green and Gold blazers. And Lo, who should I spy, but my old Headmaster who is still kicking it (with more grey hair) here in Hongkers in the same job. I bumped into so many people who are still here doing their thing – same old same old, you know?

The great thing about Hong Kong people is, no matter how long you have been gone and no matter how much has changed, friendships and conversations pick up right where they left off. Having a happy hour cocktail with a girlfriend after 2 years, it’s like I saw her yesterday. Meet my friend after the gym for some fatty fat fat Starbucks time, didn’t we do this yesterday? Oh no wait that was 18 months ago.

But being back in this city also reminds me of the High School times I had and all the stupid High School stuff we did. Like…remember in High School when someone could do one thing, and they were out of your life forever?

It’s sad that I’ve realized over the past few years I’ve become much more judgemental and quick to get angry at people or cut them out of my life. I wasn’t always like this. Even my dad has picked up on it, and to him, I can do no wrong, right Papa?

In High School and at University I was the easy going friends-with-everyone type. Maybe i’m getting older and more jaded? Dunno. Whatever it is, over the last few years I’ve noticed a change in myself that I’m trying to rewind. I don’t try to have enemies…

But there was ONE time in High School where I did cut someone out of my life with the words “Have a Nice Life” and remained until the last few years, extremely angry, and considered this girl my enemy.

It’s not a particularly interesting story and it’s definitely High School, but basically, a rumour got started while we went away on our grad trip that next to all the drinking we were doing (our parents knew about this…they knew we sneaked out to bars with our fake ID’s) we were also smoking *SHOCK* pot. Now, the reason this rumour got started was because of me. I had always had a VERY open relationship with my parents about what was going on, and they’d seen it all before, and I made some flippant comment about stoners on a phone call to my Mother, which she then mentioned to a friend (a teacher at our High School) in an anecdote which then BLEW UP into a huge escalando! (Goodness me Beatrice, the children have begun smoking Marijuana!)

Just prior to this grad trip, I’d been having a HELL of a year. My parents were splitting, it was my final year of High School, my brothers and father had moved to the other side of the world, my mother was battling an addiction and depression. Not a fun cocktail. And this girl who I had been close with for four years, suddenly turned around and accused me of being a snitch and a this that and the other and told me I had to call her parents and tell them I had been lying to get attention.

Well.

Nope.

At 18, despite being a very emotional and extreme person (which I still am to some degree) I decided, heart racing, that because she and I were moving to different parts of Australia to pursue our University degrees, to not engage in this drama. And I simply told her to have a nice life, and actually, haven’t really spoken to her in 6.5 years since we graduated. I bumped into her a few times over this period, and after the first time when she tried to talk to me, and I (extremely drunk) turned my back on her and faced a wall, have had (obviously) thoughts about why I acted the way I did.

In what mind-frame do you just decide someone is out of your life forevermore in a moment? Life is long and relationships are hard and tricky and messy and interesting.

I’d like to think that each year I get older, I also get a little wiser (pfffffft) and so, this year, being back in this great city for two months, with the opportunity to reconnect again with my friends and family, I’d like to work on being a little more normal when it comes to people and relationships.

Ultimately as humans (like bee’s…i think) our society and our self is built on relationships and interactions (unless you’re that Hermit guy in Wales…but even he has to buy his milk from somewhere).

So I will strive to approach people with more tolerance, and remember that at the end of the day we’re all human and we all make mistakes.

Family is probably one of the most important elements of our lives.

Our family is our support network when all the rest of it turns to shit. They’re the people we turn to for support, and the occasional organ donation.

I would argue that a family is not defined specifically by blood. Sure I have those crazy cats in my immediate family (Mum, Dad, two Brothers) and the extended family like cousins, Grandmother, Aunts and Uncles, but then I have people in my life that are so close to me, they ARE family, even if we don’t have the same awesome last name (mine, not theirs).

I used to be jealous of people who had spent their whole lives in the same city as their big families, having get-togethers and dinners, celebrating birthdays and special events. Childhood friends and their parents who were like relatives they were so close.

But the last 5 or so weeks has really taught me something. It has been an incredible time of reflection as my life merges from one opportunity to another. June 12th will mark two years for me in Canada, and we just passed my half birthday (holy shit I’ll be 25 in 6 months!?) and I have had time away from my new home city and back in my old home city.

I have families sequestered (like a squirrel) all over the world. I have friends all over the world who love me and only want the best for me. Some of them I have known for a long time, some for a short period of time, but in each city, there are those who are like brothers and sisters to me. That is how deep our friendship runs.

I always thought I was different somehow because my family is scattered far and wide over the planet.

I have spent some incredible time with my Mum over the last few weeks, an Awesome inspiring woman who I haven’t seen a whole lot of over the last 2 years, and my Dad, a steadfast, loyal, clear-headed guy who I haven’t seen a whole lot over the last 3 years.

My Dad and I have always had a special relationship, but truthfully over the last ten years it has been difficult. When we moved back to Hong Kong when I was in High School, my Dad started working in China 5 days a week, and we didn’t get to see too much of him.

When my parents split, my brothers went to live with him, while I, in my last year of High School, stayed in Hong Kong to complete my exams, and then fucked off to Sydney for four years of education in destroying my liver, (ah…memories).

So it has been wonderful to be back in Hong Kong with both my parents for the first time in 7 years. This city is so unique for me because of the time of my life we lived here. I look around at all the familiar places (the park bench where I had my first kiss, the bar my underage girlfriends and I snuck into, the restaurant my newly graduated friends and I drew out our life plans on the paper table cloth..)

Being back here has given me the wonderful opportunity of asking myself: Well…What next?

It’s so comforting to know that there are unlimited options and groups of people all over the world waiting to accept me with open arms for the next bit of my journey and adventure.

I’m excited to see what happens.

A Star Nosed Mole one of the stranger creatures on our beautiful planet

January 2013 marked 11 years since my family moved to Hong Kong for the second time. And although it’s just my mum who lives here now, and I’ve lived in Sydney, Australia for four of those years and Toronto, Canada for two, Hong Kong feels the most like home. Perhaps that is why, I always feel like I’m re-finding myself when I am here. This is the city of my first true love, my first night out, some of my oldest and closest friends. I can be away for a year and a half, and still navigate myself around like I never left. I think I walk these streets in my dreams, and years melt away when I see those familiar faces. Expat brats are one of a kind people.

It’s probably unsurprising then, that I value the advice I get when I’m here. There are a lot of older and wiser people than me, who’ve led very interesting lives that live here. And I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by love and by people who want to see me succeed, and only want the best for me.

This evening I went for a few cheap cocktails with Miss J. I met Miss J exactly ten years ago when we were both in High School and when we both signed up to do the Hong Kong Youth Arts Festival production of ‘Footloose’. What an experience. Forty five of the most frustrated Drama/Musical Theatre geeks from all the different High Schools in Hong Kong, thrown together into one huge all singing all dancing production.

We spent hours together at rehearsal, and hours hiding in the bowels of the Shouson Theatre in Wan Chai. We were just kids, chasing our passion and singing our hearts out. Bonds were formed that have continued to this day.

So back to the cocktails. Miss J has her head screwed on pretty straight and to me, it seems like not much fazes her. I could say “J, i’ve decided to sign up for the Mars cruiser expedition. I’m leaving in 8 years and I’m not coming back” and this girl would take a breath, think about it and then say “Ok. great.”

She rocks.

So tonight when we went for a few drinks and I was telling her (for the 100th time) that I don’t-know-what-I’m-doing-with-my-life, and-I’m-24-and-OMG-who-am-I?-And-I-Like-Toronto-But-what-about-London?-Or-New-York?-Or…

And after listening to me rant for a little bit, sipping on her Lychee Bellini, she put her hand on my arm and said “Paris…do what you always do…just Improvise.”

…..

I felt like this girl had just transfigured into Buddha at the Bar and an ethereal light was beaming out of the top of her head and bouncing around the room.

Improvise.

Right.

Life is a series of Improvisations. Things happen, you go with them, you make decisions and you get on with your life.

I never realized that was what I was doing. I kind of thought things were just happening in my life that were a random series of events. Which is kind of what happens in Improvisation, an offer is made and then you run with it. There is no saying no in Improv, you can take what is offered and transform it into something else, but you never just stop.

That isn’t how life works.

Okay maybe it was the three (very strong) cocktails, but something suddenly clicked in my brain.

I’ve decided to go with the flow and continue to accept the offers that open to me and not put too much pressure on the way the story pans out.

After all it’s all just a bit of fun.

Sydney:

Walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sydney has one of the most amazing harbours in the world (in my humble opinion) and walking across the bridge (i’m talking about at road level, not even climbing over it as you can do) at any time of the year is amazing and makes you realize how beautiful the world really is. I once walked over it with my brother in the spring, and the whole North Shore side was purple with blooming Jacaranda flowers. I’ve walked across it when the weather was foul and rainy (I felt like I was in a music video the whole time) and I’ve walked across it at sunrise and sunset. If you’re in Sydney, do yourself a favour this week and do this.

Paddington Markets

I miss the Paddington Area with it’s cute cafes and funky restaurants, sun-dappled side streets and big glorious townhouses. But what I miss the most is Paddington Markets with their blend of laid-back boho style clothing, intermingled with weird art and cool foods. I would spend many a luxurious day wandering around this market, sipping hot chocolate, enjoying the sunshine.

Bondi Beach

Since moving to Canada, the one thing I can TRULY say that I miss (aside from friends and family of course) is the Ocean and the beach. There is something so cleansing and cathartic about walking along a strip of sand, staring out into the vastness of sky beyond the curve of the coast. Bondi beach is supposed to be all touristy now, and there are pictures of the sand covered end to end in white pasty bodies, but regardless, Bondi is the beach I love. It is close to the city and the suburb of Bondi has a great feel.

Toronto

Queen Street West

Whenever I’m feeling down, I like to walk through Trinity Bellwoods park and along Queen Street West. This happening hood has treats and gorgeous stores galore. Simply getting out amongst these trendy stores makes you feel like your life is cooler than it is. Grab yourself a Macaroon, pick a table at one of the many adorable cafes and take the time to watch the world go by. I’m never disappointed by the plethora of interesting characters strolling by, ripe fodder for creative stimulation.

Toronto Island

Toronto Island is possibly one of the most luscious gorgeous places I have ever been to. It is located in the lake Toronto borders and is a short ferry ride away. I’ll never forget jetting over there for the first time with my two friends both named Alex. It was a hot, fresh Toronto summer day and as we pulled away from the city we got a wonderful view of the whole Toronto skyline (a visually interesting city). When we got to the island we biked, we paddled our feet in the water and ate ice cream on the long cool grass. Definitely a must-do for picnics in Toronto.

Kensington Market

Kensington Market

Kensington Market is smack bang beside Chinatown (so I obviously found it pretty quickly). It is a hodgepodge of cheese stores, cafes, vintage clothing sellers, art stores, random ethnic spice stores and little tiny tucked away bars. At night the scene can be a little bit dodgy, but during the day and on the weekends, this place is hopping with music and creativity. Plenty of places to chill out and enjoy so more people watching.

Hong Kong

The Peak

Hong Kong is a highly populated city that certainly knows how to cram a lot of people into a small space. Despite this fact, there are places you can go to get some peace and quiet and Victoria Peak is one of them. Sure, there are often plenty of tourists stuffed into the mall that the Peak Tram drops you off at, but when you walk around the top of the Peak, you are treated to spectacular views of this island metropolis. Like the photo I have chosen, I like to go at night to see all the buildings light up. Truly a stunning sight to see.

The Markets

The Markets

Hong Kong is synonymous with shopping and by-god there is shopping to be had. Whether you head to the Mong Kok Markets, Temple Street Markets at Yau Ma Tai, Bird Market at Prince Edward, Sneaker street, The Lanes in Central, Wanchai markets… I could go on. Pretty much in every district is a side street where wheeling and dealing is taking place. Food, electronics, clothing, jewellery, you name it, it is there and it is overwhelming. Hold onto your wallet!

Dim Sum/Yum Cha

For those that know me at all, the knowledge that I LOVE Dim Sum is something so totally obvious as to be startlingly stupid. I could eat Dim Sum evert weekend (and pretty much have since moving to Toronto I think!) If you ask me if I want to do brunch on Sunday, this is probably where I want to go. And Dim Sum in Hong Kong is obviously the best in the world. Fresh, delicious and totally cheap, I’m probably going to turn INTO a dim sum dish because of how much I eat it. My Dim Sum recommendations for Hong Kong are pretty general because I will eat it anywhere and everywhere. Sorry I can’t be more specific!

And there you have it, my Top 3 things to do in my top 3 cities (so far!)

Sydney, Toronto and Hong Kong. Three pretty diverse places to live, but all offering awesome ways to spend this precious time we have called life.

ENJOY!

Oh yeaaaah, I’m from Australia. Right.

People is People, as they say (in the muppets 1984) and to be honest, I forget you are all Canadian.

Buuuuut…eesh…awkward…I’m not really from Australia, because I’ve now lived more years overseas than I ever did in the land of my Parents and Grandparents (cheers for the sweet passport). There are days when I miss Sydney like crazy, but I realize it’s the people and the time that it represented that I miss the most (Uni days with the best girlfriends and guyfriends in the world). Okay I miss the Harbour Bridge and King street Newtown, the Beaches and Paddington, but the great thing about my little Navy Passport with the Kangaroo and Emu on it, is that I can go back any time.

And I honestly feel like I COULD just slot back in there. Familiar streets, familiar faces.

Anyone that knows me well knows that I secretly FREAK out when it comes to change, but they also know that I am constantly making myself do weird things and change-it-up because I am like two people sharing the same personality. One, a quiet homebody type who doesn’t really want to rock the boat and wants to live a quiet, friendly, calm, stable life, and the other a crazy, Adventurous, eccentric type who says “f^%$ you, I do what WANT!” And moves to the otherside of the world with no warning.

Like on April 3rd 2013.

On April 3rd 2013 I’m going home to Hong Kong for 7 weeks to work as an Assistant Stage Manager on a rather huge production, home to the land of my High School friends, my mother, and our Irritating but adorable Cat Guinness.

Guinness the Cat

The homebody me at first dismissed the idea of going:

Homebody Me: What about the opportunities here you may miss out on? What about your room, you’ll have to find a sublet, what about…what about…what about…

But luckily for me, my eccentric side listened to the many naggings on my mother, and simply decided, “screw this, I’m going”…and booked a ticket, confident that the rest would just fall into place. (Which it always does)

And with each day that passes since I simply made up my mind to go, I’m getting more and more excited. Because the Adventurous me gets nervous when things are a bit too quiet, and what seems more fun? Temping and doing Volunteer TV stuff, or going to Asia and working on a West End like production? If the universe unfolds as it should, and with the Job market such a dogs breakfast over here…maybe I was meant to take this opportunity all along?

With my new 2 year Canadian work visa up for renewal, and the idea that I will continue to live in Toronto for the next two years, the homebody part of me is somewhat satisfied that there is stability on the horizon.

And the adventurous part of me is PSYCHED to learn some new things, meet some new people, reconnect with old friends, and generally spend some time deviating from the norm some more.

I am an Australian born, Asia Bred girl of 24 who lives in Canada.

Got all that? Good.

This week has been tumultuous. I’ve been all up and down like a birthday clown coming off meth, and GEE WHIZ has it been fun for the people around me. Props to my boyfriend for not breaking up with me (thanks guy, you’re great), and props to my family for not changing their last names and going into hiding to get the F away from me.
The reason for the moody mood-ring emotional rollercoaster? Why, dreams of course. Splendid Rose-glasses-tinted dreams. The kind that mean you are like a bloodhound on a scent when it comes to jobs and opportunities and real life. The kind of dreams that wait impatiently in the back of your mind whispering:

“why haven’t I been realized yet? What are you doing? Every day you don’t do something valuable is another day closer to death.”

I like to imagine the voice whispering in the voice of Darth Vader, “psssh Paris, caaaaaw, what are you doing pssssh, cawwww with your fucking life pssssh.”
I digress.

So I’ve been temping here and there…whatever it’s boring… I mean it’s not that boring, I’ve worked in some cool companies, made some new contacts, you know the usual…and this week the Temp Agency (which has been excellent and kept me busy) contacted me and asked me if I’d be interested in being put forward for a job outside of the Creative Field. The role sounded like boring admin, but here’s the kicker… the money was excellent.

I had to have a good grapple with myself. I gave up a cushy admin position back in August to pursue my dreams of Film and Television. I’m young, I don’t really have any commitments, but HELLO it’s been exhausting scraping by each month. A part of me was really really REALLy attracted to the offer.

And then Darth Vader exploded in my head.

Literally, the Dark Side was calling me, but in this case the Dark side was the corporate world, the world of 9-5 and boring KILLMYSELF office politics. Stability. Health care. Benefits. All those words which must mean a lot at some point.
But not today, and possibly not tomorrow, and possibly not for the next few years.
It is stressful trying to keep a positive attitude about going after what you love (especially when a lot of other people seem to want it too), but there is also knowing in your gut when something is the right or wrong path to take. Do I want to wake up in ten years and realize that I’m unhappy? NO.

Would I rather keep slogging it out, working for free, getting involved with lots of projects and running myself ragged in the hope that I will get to where I want to be?
I think so.

But it is a tough balance, and on the days where I have to pay my rent, and phone bill, and internet and buy my Transport for the month and still try to budget for food and entertainment… well on those days I think about just taking a day job.
And then I remember that this my life and I only get one shot at it, so I better make the most of it…yada yada cliché, read them in Morgan Freemans voice. So I hoick up my falling down ratty old jeans, eat my stir fry for the fourth day in a row and keep going.

Because one day Money and Dreams might just go hand in hand.

I wouldn’t usually use the word “Whore’ to describe myself, (let alone anyone else unless I was EXCEPTIONALLY pissed off), but there is no denying that for the last 3 days I am been whoring myself on all forms of social media for one reason only.

*Gasp* I have entered a reality tv show type competition.

AND oh MAN do I want it.

Twitter (which I haven’t ever fully appreciated and use mostly for posting stuff about the volunteer TV interviews I do)

Facebook (which I over-use for sharing photos and funny stuff with friends and family overseas)

and Instagram (which is mainly just pictures of snow, cut off “artsy” pictures of my face and the Canuck boyfriends dogs)

I am HATING myself all over Facebook and twitter because I am being so annoying and inundating friends and family with ME ME ME-ness.

VOTE FOR ME! I tell them, and I start thinking it is totally normal to start harassing people I haven’t spoken to in a year (umm…hi….i know we haven’t spoken in a while… and we probably don’t have anything in common any more… but would you be a dear and click this link and rate me even though this is a thing you don’t even care about….)

I have turned into one of those spamming douches that people right-click, hide, on their news feeds.

What have I become?

The truth of the matter is that I cringe to ask people to do this. Not because I am afraid of failure (oh no, I’ve taken quite a few knock-backs in my life and I am FINALLY FINALLY learning to dust myself off and pick myself back up) but because social media has etiquette, and begging for votes or views goes against that etiquette. I am like the prim old lady of Social Media.

But it’s not just me and my well-to-do online profile. There are many articles and sources to look for the way one minds their online manners, and you better not fuck too hard with them because a rain of hate will fall down on you. Delete, dust hands of person. Perhaps in real life you will begin to think less of them.

There have been people who I have been close to deleting because of their online spamming. And now I have morphed into one of those people!

BUT whats a girl to do?

I have been fighting for my bit of the TV/FILM pie for a while now and the one thing I do know is that you have to be in it to win it. You have to say “Hi, I’m here and I’m keen”.

There is a high likelihood that I will not make it into the top forty of this comepetition (No! What am I saying – positive thinking/vibes/ooooooohhhhhmmmmmmm – (thats me meditating to the spirit world of reality tv competitions)) but the fact that I made a video, put myself out there and went for it…well who knows who will see it and think, “that girl is cool.”

There is a saying I heard here in Canada which I love and I think about it all the time.

the saying goes:

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

So here it is, my first shot at goal for Much Music…. but who knows?!! At least I’m up for the game.

“Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans” is something my father has been known to say on occasion, but which google reveals to be a John Lennon quote/song lyric. Never is that saying truer than it is for the month of February, which at 28 days most years, goes by in a flash. Here we are March 1st and I’m thinking, we should probably take down the Christmas tree.

My Mum wrote a very funny blog earlier this week, about how she feels she is just hanging around in the waiting room of life. She’s 43 years old and all her children have fled the nest, and she’s not sure what the next twenty years will look like. Well funny that, none of us do.

A day after reading her blog, a package I sent myself six weeks ago arrived. During the Christmas break back in Hong Kong, I spent some time going through some of my old stuff that has accumulated in my mothers tiny apartment. I found my old school blazer (which was gigantic on me in year 12 and now sits the way my work blazers sit…ever an indication of aging and thickening) old programs from Musicals I was in, and I found precious newspaper pages on which I featured.

When I was 15 and living in Hong Kong there was a section of the South China Morning post called “The Young Post” and for a period of time they had different groups of kids (I think they started with 9) come in, photograph them in a couple of different poses, and then send then get them to respond to certain questions. The idea was that you would vote one kid out of the young post every week.

I only lasted 3 weeks or so. My downfall week, the question was “tell us a joke”. My parents had a thick book of politically incorrect jokes that used to sit in our bathroom (wildly inappropriate for children, but hey, I learned a lot about sex and sexual interaction from that novel!) Now, I know what you are thinking, I went ahead and did the one about the Nun and the Irishman. WRONG. Because somewhere in the back of my rude-joke-packed-mind I realized that these jokes were hilarious but also WILDLY inappropriate for the young post, I looked up online, “politically correct, lame jokes,” and came up with the following, which I used as my answer:
“What’s brown and sticky? A Stick!”

I was eliminated. Well Fuck.

But that isn’t where our story ends today. The question before the one that ended my career as Supreme Young Person of Hong Kong 2004, was “Where do you see yourself in 15 years?” And I answered the following:

“Wow! I’ll be 30! Well I hope to be working in a creative Job, maybe Acting because that is something I have always loved, living in some far away exotic place, with some really hot guy.”

Well.

This year I will be 25 and that means it has been ten years since I wrote that.

Let’s check in.

I am certainly living in some faraway place; Toronto is NOT exactly close to Hong Kong, and I’m not sure what I would have defined as exotic back then, having lived the majority of my life in Asia at that point. Compared to the busy, loud, crazy city that I consider my home…snow covered everything is pretty exotic. Eh?

As for the job…at this point I’d take any job as the endless weeks of Temping blur into one another and my sent inbox fills with more and more desperate and unanswered emails, (I’m totally kidding, I’m still working towards the creative thing and have actually had a couple of non-creative job offers suggested to me, which I have politely turned down. I didn’t bust my ass being poor and interning for the last 6 months to give up and take yet another Admin job which pays the bills, but kills my soul.)

And as for the really hot guy thing, let’s not even go there. You don’t want to hear me gush about Canuck boyfriend and he’d probably de-friend me if I did. But I think I’m on-track with that one.

But the next five years is going to be pretty huge I’m guessing. There is obviously no way of knowing (because 2 years ago I would have never thought I’d be where I am today), but the one thing I do know is that life is an ever changing thing. You can never get too comfortable with the way things are, for better or worse, and it’s always for the better in my opinion.
I find it interesting that my Mother feels rutted in her life when she is still in the prime of it. I get it that the hands on child-rearing faze of her life has fizzled, but she never gets to stop being our mother (sucks to be you) and she never gets to stop being a part of her already fairly eccentric family. Maybe that’s her problem (and I suffer from it to) there are days when things just seem too calm and normal.

And that is freaky.
The good news is that she has the next generation to look forward to. Maybe not in the next five years, but, thanks to stupid biology, certainly in the next 15. And she’s already threatened to be the grandmother that feeds the grandkids sugar and lets them stay up late and gives them money to sneak out to concerts and will generally be considered “cool” and therefore loved more than me. Stupid ungrateful unborn, un-conceived children.

I guess we’ll just have to see where we’re at, twenty years from now.

Celery

Celery is one of those ingredients that is in everything. Oh you wanted to make a stock? Celery. Oh you’re making a delicious soup? Celery. Cooking something that doesn’t seem like it would contain Celery? Celery. When it’s hidden in things like soups and stock, fine, but don’t go putting Celery in my Chicken Cashew nut. I can see it! It’s sitting right there! And I am not a fan. My dad used to cut up celery and put peanut butter on it. I feel like he called them Peanut butter floats or something like that. And even with a cute nickname I still wasn’t buying it (but then, I’m pretty sure my favourite word was just NO as a child, straight off the bat.) It’s a shame I haven’t made friends with this vegetable that tastes and feels like eating crunchy green snails because Celery is rich in Vitamin C and contains Potassium and Folic acid. It’s also rumoured to burn more calories eating celery than the beast vegetable actually contains itself.

Chamomile Tea

I associate the taste of Chamomile Tea with throwing up, thanks to a nasty experience in High School when I had a 24 hour puking virus and I slept at my friend Annies place and her mum offered me Chamomile tea in the morning to settle my stomach and I threw it up five minutes after I ingested it. It is a shame that I hate this because Chamomile tea seems to have antibacterial properties (probably why people think to drink it when they are sick) and also seems to help with menstrual cramps. One study found that drinking chamomile tea raised urine levels of glycine, a compound that calms muscle spasms. Researchers believe this is why chamomile tea helps menstrual cramps.

Milk

I’ll drink Chocolate milk by the gallon but I am SO not drinking plain milk. Plain milk on some kind of sugary cereal, fine. Milk in Earl Gray Tea, duh, what am I? A barbarian? Milk in recipes, yes yes of course. But not by itself. Yuck yuck yuckity yick. NOthankyouverymuch. Saying Milk is good for you is a bit like saying that cigarettes are bad for you. Everybody knows that Milk and dairy products are providers of calcium, phosphorous, magnesium and protein which are all essential for healthy bone growth and development. But what you maybe didn’t know is that studies have linked milk and dairy consumption with a reduced risk for cardiovascular disease, and other studies (who are these people studying Milk, don’t they have lives to get on with? Perfect Milk free lives?!?) suggest that regular consumption of low fat dairy products can help to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Onion

I hate this vegetable. When I was in year 12 and it was the night before my first HSC exam, my Mum took me to a steak restaurant and I ordered a steak which sounded delicious. It came topped with a huge pile of onions. I merely put my head down on the table and started to sob. I thought it was a sign my life was over and I would fail my exams. Thats how much I hate these. Which is a shame because Onions have many healthy properties. Raw onion encourages the production of good cholestoral which helps your heart and A powerful compound called quercetin in onions is known to play a significant role in preventing cancer.

Lamb

This is pretty blasphemous to admit as an Australian, but I don’t like lamb (to be fair, growing up in Asia, I didn’t have so much access to this meat, we mostly had pork and chicken). Some people slobber over the idea of Lamb Shank or cutlets, but I’d rather not. I wouldn’t order it for myself and it’s very rare that I eat it now in my grown up life. That is not to say that I’ve had all bad experiences, but for the most part Meh. Apparently Lamb is good for health conscious people, as it is a source of ‘good fat’ in the body and has less saturated fat than other meat products. Nah. I’ll just take my fatty fat thanks.