So High School

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

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.

The Next Five Years

“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.

The Fourth day of the New Year

I for one buy into all the New Year resolutions brew-ha-ha. I’m no fool. I know that realistically this time last week I was no hugely different person (although I was in Hong Kong having a pretty sweet-as time with my family), but there is something about the “New Year” that really does it for me. The idea that things are new and shiny and that the slates are wiped clean. That appeals to me.

I’d like to think that one has the ability to change their destiny, and when you feel like you are stuck in a funk, then something as simple as a change from 2012 to 2013 and taking the time to re-evaluate your priorities is extremely important.

I was also told years ago that the way you spend your New Years Eve is the way you will spend your year. It is one of those stupid things that I heard in childhood and has stuck with me like gospel. I spent New Years Eve working an event with my family (dressing up as crazy Medieval characters), and the following day I was travelling. So following that logic, my 2013 should be filled with a) lots of work, b) lots of family c) Creativity and d) Travel.

I hope so. Family is so incredibly important to me, which may strike you as odd considering I live a comfortable 15 hour flight away from my closest family member. But that is the life of the expatriate that I have to embrace. I am an expat brat through and through, and I’ll never be happy unless I’m moving around sampling the world around me.

Yes, it gets exhausting and I get tired. Last night I cracked the shits (which is an Australian expression meaning to lose it, or to get angry and hysterical…not any other fun thing you can think of) and said that I wanted to go home (which home you ask…ahh?).

But at the end of the day I do love being an Austraalien in Canada. It isn’t easy, and it especially is frustrating when you are job seeking like I have been and feel like you are getting nowhere. But i’m not ready to move back to Australia or Hong Kong at this stage. And although I am secretly desperate to move to the UK, or NYC, I think it would be a foolish move at this point.

So for now I must content myself with the piles of snow and the polite Canadians.

But it certainly was interesting to be back in Hong Kong for the christmas break. It is amazing how some things can change so dramatically in 18 months and some things can stay so the same. Walking around, navigating the streets, bumping into people, it was like I had never left. But then a couple of my favourite shops had disappeared and there were new trendy shops in my area (Sheung Wan in Hong Kong used to be the antiques district, and when my Mum moved there 6 years ago, there were carpenters in the street and a couple of vegetable vendors, all of which have been muscled out for trendy new “concept stores.”)

It was weird to go to Hong Kong and then to come back to Toronto. It really solidified Toronto as “home” for the moment. All my stuff is here, my boyfriend, my phone bill…all the commitment things, ya’know?

But I was glad to be coming back. Too many of my Expat Brat friends moved back to Australia and are stuck there a bit now. They have better jobs than me, but they don’t necessarily plan on living the Expat lifestyle anymore. And I do. I love Australia and I miss my friends, but I’m not ready to end up there yet.

I suppose it doesn’t matter where you are so long as you are happy.

Well…here’s to being happy in 2013.

End of First rant of the year… for now

You don’t get it…I’m an ArTIsTe

Pursuing any kind of career is hard (unless you’re Bruce Wayne). Because of my interesting life, I know many interesting people (yay ME) from all industries scattered across the globe. Some of my best friends are medical-types, educators, health-related people, business savvy wizards, nine to fivers and of course creative types.

Each industry has its ladder to climb and no ladder is less challenging than any other.

But sometimes I wonder, if the Arts industry actually has a ladder? Maybe its more of greased up lightning rod you’re trying to climb? Or maybe where the ladder is supposed to be, there’s actually just an empty space with an artwork tag that says “Ladder” and four creative types (one in tattered jeans and some kind of slouchy headwear) are standing around describing how “post modern” and “eclectic” the ladder is. And just like in the Emperors new clothes you nod and agree and leap in the space it theoretically should be, only to fall flat on your face.

Are we still following?

Good. Lets move on.

I’ve had some experience trying to get a foothold on that elusive ladder…probably I’ve had more experience discussing how I should probably try and look for that ladder. Bitching about not being an academy award winning screenplay writer when I haven’t written a screenplay since 2010, and wondering why there are people younger than me who are more famous.

It’s a tough industry. I know a lot of talented creative people who gave up on their dreams to try for different careers. I know many creative people struggling to make what they love a priority and a full time gig, while busting their arses doing something else to pay the bills.

My Mother is a perfect example of someone in the latter category. Two nights ago she opened her new Directorial offering “My Big Gay Italian Wedding” which is completely sold out and pretty much was when the tickets first went on sale. She has had rave reviews and write ups. She is a Theatre DAHHLING in Hong Kong, and yet she, and her extremely talented cast and crew, are doing the play more for love than any other reason. There just isn’t money in it.

For the amount of time (and talent) that these men and women poor into a project, it would be nice to think that they could make the leap from teachers and bankers and general managers (who act and sing and direct on the side) to full-blown Artists or Creatives or whatever you want to call yourself.

But the truth is, that funding in the arts and for creative enterprises is limited no matter where you go. Part of the reason I didn’t go back to Australia, and have decided to stay in North America, is the possibility and opportunities here. I was fortunate enough to work on a TV show when I was finishing my masters in Sydney, however the opportunity of a second season for that show dried up because of the way the Television industry operates down there. It is simply too expensive to make home-grown products. Most episodes and series are imported from the states as it is cheaper.

Lots of my young, energetic creative friends have moved to LA or New York to try and break into industries there where the market is bigger. And what a shame that they do. The UK, Australia, Hong Kong…these countries are losing some great talent to places that seem like Creative Mecca’s.

That’s not to say that there aren’t people battling it out on home ground, doing what they love, trying to see what happens. Some guys I worked with on the previously mentioned TV show, used crowd-funding to get some cash together to make a reality of a creative project of theirs “The Weatherman”  which is going ahead in the next few months. But I know that for them it has been an uphill battle. I read some of their scripts while we would wait around like goons, and it is really funny, great stuff. Why shouldn’t it be made? And why shouldn’t they reap the benefits?

The Arts and Entertainment industry is often hard because it’s so competitive. It seems as though people are sometimes reluctant to help one another get that crucial foot in the door. It seems like once you’re in, you’re in, but that door is like the room of requirement at Hogwarts. You have to chant and chant what you want and hope that it materializes.

There is an element of being in the right place at the right time, of knowing the right people, of working hard, but for some it isn’t that easy. It is a difficult struggle to keep going, keep interning, keep writing, keep putting on shows, trekking to auditions practising, learning, all while trying to live everyday.

SO what am I getting at?

I guess I’m saying we all need to support the arts more. Go to plays, see up-and-coming bands, read each others work and give encouragement and feedback. And I guess I’m trying to say, keep going. If you are a creative person and thats what you want to do with your life, then go for it. Maybe things won’t turn out exactly as planned…Hey! That’s life and its a part of the journey, but Mama says:

If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.

So stick that up your ladder and deal with it!

Paris

The Help…er

In the last fortnight I have read ‘The Help’ by Katherine Stockett and viewed the movie adaptation that has an amazing cast including Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis. Both were excellent.

I haven’t been able to put either out of my mind, and I couldn’t help but draw similarities between the African-American maids of 1964 Alabama, with the Filipino maids of Hong Kong in the early 2000′s that I grew up with.

My the time we moved back to Hong Kong when I was 14, the term “Maid” wasn’t very widely used, and instead the more “Politically Correct” term for these women, was “Helper” (are you starting to see the similarities? No? Ok, just go along with it.)

Hong Kong, and other major expatriate cities like Kuala Lumper, Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai and Bang Kok are teeming not only with Foreign expatriates working the high-powered corporate gigs, but also a plethora of people (mainly women) from Sri Lanka and the Philippines. It seems to be a cultural expectation of women, particularly from the Philippines, that they will go to these far away cities, often with no job lined up, to find a family, to work for them, and send pretty much all of the money home.

Filipino maids get paid very little per month. I think that in 2002 when we moved back to Hong Kong, the minimum wage for a full-time, live in “Helper” was somewhere around $3200HKD per month. I’m going to assume that it was 5 to 1 in those days and that the Australian dollar and Canadian dollar were fairly evenly matched (probably all wrong information, don’t listen to me, I’m an English and Film major) and that works out to be roughly a salary of $640AUD a month.

Keep in mind if you will, that these helpers work 6 days a week, cook every meal, clean the house, do the laundry, walk the dogs, pick up the children, entertain the children and basically follow out every instruction given to them. It is not a 9-5 day. It is a day with no real set hours. And in the tiny apartment (of massive mansion depending on your Corporate peg on the ladder) they have a tiny room to themselves with a bed, usually a tv, and not much else. Or sometimes if that is not possible, the “Helper” would live in a room with a child or infant. I have heard horror stories of Maid’s sleeping in the kitchen. Some will have their own Bathroom (is this starting to sound like the Bathroom initiative in ‘The Help’?)

When we moved back to Hong Kong (after being maid-less for a number of years in Australia) we hired a lady called Lolita to be our Helper. Lolita was literraly 4″zilch and the shortest person I had ever seen outside of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. Not a dwarf, just, a tiny person…which worked out well considering the room we had in our first ground floor apartment was the size of a broom closet and she could have a custom made childs bed.

Lolita was there for the good times and the bad. With my mum suffering from depression, and my dad working in China 5/7 days, Lolita was really the one keeping us alive and not looking grubby. She packed our lunches, cleaned our uniforms, made sure we had money to get to and from school, took my youngest brother to school, and saw myself and Kip, my middle brother off on the ferry or bus. She took us to play at the members only pool (of course she didn’t swim – but hung out with the other maids in a kind of segregation… sound familiar?)

She also celebrated with us when we had triumphs, awards, achievements, birthdays. She was a seen, and yet unseen part of our family unit. She could NOT say the letter P, so when she called me, it would be “Faris” and she was forever cleaning up our golden cocker spaniels “Foo Foo’s” and she called the Philippines the “Pil-ipines” which made no sense to me because it was already a word with the “Fff” sound. She had been an accountant in the “Pil-ipines” and she used to help me with my Maths (because I was awful at it). She made more money being our maid, than she did as an accountant in the Philippines. True story. I also knew that she was married, and that she had been a world vision sponsor kid, that that is how she had been able to go through University. Somebody sponsored her all the way through. I think Lolita said she was an older British lady.

And that is really all I know about Lolita. My last year of high school was kind of blur because of all the traumatic shit that went down. I can’t remember if Lolita left before I did for University or before. I’m sure my mum will be able to shed some light on the subject (sadly it is 12 hours ahead in Hong Kong, and therefore she is in bed). I never sought to keep in touch with her, and I don’t really know what happened to her. I didn’t really know that much about her to begin with… so…

I asked my brothers what they remember about Lolita (we had plenty of maids before that when we were little, but she is the one we all most remember. She was also our most recent one).

This is what my brothers had to say:

R: (Who was pretty much raised by her between the ages of 9-11) I don’t really remember much about her.

K: All I remember is helping her set up her computer so she could use Skype, and that she had a husband and house in the Philipines.

Me: (In response to Kip) Doesn’t it strike you as kinda weird that we didn’t really know that much about her… and yet she knew very intimate details about us?

K: I guess, at the time I never really thought about it.

And there you have it in a nutshell. We didn’t really think about it. Lolita was literally our helper in every way. She helped us with our homework, helped us when we were sad or sick or angry, she cleaned up after us, fed us, she did everything a parent does, but she was not a parent. We didn’t love her… we didn’t know her.

Paris

 

 

Fly the Rainbow

I have a wonderful, insane, loud, colourful, supportive family. Mum, Dad, two younger brothers and one HUGELY OBESE black and white cat called Guinness.

Currently we are flung far and wide.

Sydney - The littlest One

Perth - Papa and the Middle Child

Hong Kong - Mama + Guinness

Toronto - Yours Truly

I love them, and respect them so much, even though they are so far away. I would adore it if we could all live in the same place, but knowing us as I do, I think that is probably unlikely… maybe one day in the future when we’ve tamed the itch in our wandering feet. We are all adventurers, and we all struggle to stay still for long periods of time. Sometimes it is hard, and I have written about that before. It is confusing to live in my own timezone, but also two others (luckily Perth and Hong Kong are on the same lateral) and weird that when I speak to my parents in the morning, they have already had their day, and my brothers are waking up for work and Uni when I am out having dinner.

It has made for some pretty funny drink-dialling incidents.

So what flag do we fly under, this far-flung family of mine? Four of us have Australian passports, Mum being a New Zealander. The littlest one was born in Malaysia, and the Middle one was born in Hong Kong. The  Rainbow flag?

Five years ago, my youngest brother came out, and two years later, my Middle Brother came out.

I have always considered myself to be a liberal-minded person, but I struggled at first with the fact that my baby brothers were gay. With the littlest one, it was less of a shock, he has always proudly worn his heart on his sleeve, but when my middle brother came out, I suddenly felt very left out. Is that weird? Growing up, it had always been the boys VS the girls. They shared a room, I got my own. I was older (and moodier), they were gross boys in torn, muddy shirts. I had socks with frills.

Even though I always considered myself unflappable, level-headed, accepting of one and all, I cried when I realized that my brothers had had these secrets. I felt that I had been a bad big sister for not knowing. In hindsight, I should have rejoiced that we live in a time and are citizens of a country where being Gay is not a crime, and people are (more) accepting. Instead, I beat myself up for all the gay jokes I had ever made in their presence, or the use of the word “gay” as a derogatory term throughout High School. I’m still not perfect, I have indulged people who have laughed when they have learned about my family, and those who have exclaimed,

“WOW! That’s pretty unusual! Does that make you a lesbian?! HAHA derp HA”

I am so happy that my brothers are who they are, strong, outspoken, proud members of the LGBT community. I look to them to better myself in area’s of tolerance and understanding. They have faced inner struggles and hardships that I have not. I have never had to justify my heterosexuality, or who I love and why. I have never felt uncomfortably stared at for kissing my significant other in public, nor walking hand in hand with him down the street. I am proud of them for all that they have achieved at their young ages, raising awareness, and just being who they with courage and integrity.

It still boggles my mind that people could have so much hate inside them directed towards guys as cool as my Brothers simply because they love people with the same junk in their underpants as them. We’re all young now, 18-23, but it stops me short to think that if my brothers wanted to marry their partners, they wouldn’t be allowed to. That adopting kids would be insanely hard for them. My middle brother loves kids and is going to be the nicest uncle of all time (if I can hog tie a guy long enough to walk him down the aisle and then convince him to reproduce with me) and my youngest brother is so tattooed and pierced and generally awesome, that my kids will never want to listen to me and will only want to hang out with him (nah who am I kidding… I’m going to be the coolest mum on the block.)

I look to actress Anne Hathaway for inspiration. Okay yes, she played a wannabe Genovian princess in the Princess Diaries and sure, her boyfriend of three years is in prison for fraud now, but she is extremely vocal about rights for the LGBT community – her brother is gay and she has always spoken publicly about her support of him.

I hope that the world can grow more tolerant. It starts with the individual and the dissipation of ignorance. I hope that Australia throws out it’s backward policies and legalizes Gay marriage in my life time.

Until then, I know people will keep writing about their experiences, lending their voices to the cause of equal rights. Mine is just a small voice, but it is one that will be raised in support of my brothers and their rights to have the same things that I do. We are blood, they share my DNA. They have been raised with equality in every other way, why should they not share the same rights that I have?

Maybe they’ll both just have to move to Canada with me where it is legal.
Maybe we’ll all live in the same place sooner than I think.

University words of Wisdom

My littlest brother is flying out of our home town of Hong Kong in a few short hours, to start his University journey.

I know my Mum is sad, and proud, at the same time. What an achievement, three kids through high school all by the tender age of 42.

Littlest brother is excited, and nervous, as we all were when we packed up our rooms to head to our new lives. Like I did when I hit 18, LB (Littlest Brother) is flying 9 hours and half way across the world by himself to start his higher education. Luckily we have a network in Sydney which will scoop him up and hopefully set him in the right direction.

I wish I could be there to help you in this exciting time, but sadly I am on the opposite side of the globe.

But what I can give him are some words of Wisdom from my own experience, and Canadian boyfriend is here too, and he wears glasses so he must be smart.

Eat the meals provided at College, but make sure you work out.
‘Fresher Spread’ ‘Fresher Fifteen’ ‘Freshman Fifteen’, these are universal. First year Uni students living away from home get fat, they eat crap and they drink loads of booze. Eat the free food, because you’ll be broke, but just make sure you exercise/eat a salad occasionally, because those Kilo’s are hard to shift. Trust me. You can eat cheap Thai near the Uni and get cheap deals on campus.

(Canuk Boyfs advice): Wear Condoms.
Self explanatory. As the only gay in the village, you won’t have to worry about getting girls knocked up (yay for you), but STD’s are for life man.

Have as much fun as you possibly can.
Say yes before you say no (not to drugs obviously), embrace every challenge and new opportunity. The University years are short and fleeting, but they are fun and amazing. You are not only there to learn things from books, but also to learn things about yourself and others, to learn discipline and independence. Make sure you have a good time.

(Canuk Boyfs advice): Time Manage.
Personally, I started my assignments the day they were due (I used to run to the drop box at 4.55pm because I knew they closed at 5pm and start them at 6am). But CB’s advice is work hard play hard. Get shit done and get shit faced. Or if you do it last-minute like me, then make it look good by throwing in loads of citations and fancy schmancy words.

Don’t get involved with someone you live with unless you’re prepared for the drama when/if it all gets fucked.
Loosely summarized by our mother as “Don’t shit where you eat.” At college you live with 250+ people. You see them every day, at every meal (unless you become a troll hiding in your room), so be careful. It can get nasty.

(CB advice): Talk to your parents often
Let them know how you’re doing, they are the reason you are there and they care about you. (awww! isn’t that sweet)

Get a part-time job – you’ll have the time.
Seriously, you’ll need the money for extra booze when there aren’t organized parties and to go to the local bars. Never underestimate the $5 goon sack. Also, as great as a degree is, having work experience on the resume is awesome too.

 

And that’s it from me, older sister done with Uni, as you start your journey. Remember all the good things – like be true to yourself and to study and shower occasionally, etc etc.

Love you lots little pants

 

P