Update…

Thursday, 18^th

Up early, lift to the city from parents who were driving to the fish markets, walk from Pyrmont to Town Hall…overly nice Red Cross money collector complimented my hair (and noticed it was dreadlocked…most people just think it’s a manic growth on top of my head) and my fork bracelet…met up with Kylar, coffee and cigarettes all over the place, Hyde Park and Bill & Toni’s and Hyde Park again….home, Slavica and Jasmina helping my mum cook for Sveti Nikola, but had to leave soon after I arrived…all day running around helping with whatever needed to be done around the house…late night Oz watching. Consumed five coffees and was still dead tired.

 

Friday, 19^th

Sveti Nikola, my family’s Slava. I am horrible at getting into the spirit of things so I mostly hid in the living room and avoided all the guests who were in the sun room. I get really awkward every year because I rarely see a lot of those people, and there’s the confusion of whether I should just shake their hand or do I need to kiss them as well, and do I kiss them once or three times, and what the hell should I talk to them about, etc. Plus, every year someone makes a comment about me losing weight, which makes me wonder if I was obese as a child or something… Towards the end of the night I managed to get away with sitting on the couch and reading as most of the guests had left, my parents were with the older ones and my sister with her friends, and Jasmina had left – these days I have only a few Serbian friends, and those that I do have go to Nikola’s house because his Slava is also Sveti Nikola, and as they’ve been going to Nikola’s well before they met me, they of course still go there. Plus, everyone gets drunk there so it makes more sense anyway. Our house tends to be a bit quieter. Sveti Nikola reminds me every year, very blatantly, just how hard it is for my family to spend a day together and get along. The upside is waiting for midnight so I can eat chocolate.

 

Saturday, 20^th

       

 

Kalaediscope fun; Emma; Kylie; Seeta & T-Nev; Katie & moi; Arex

 

During the day, Annie and I went to a small zine fair that was happening at the first Voiceworks launch to happen outside Victoria. It was nice. Small and kind of quiet, and the people that came along didn’t really seem to know what zines were, but it was chilled out; I mostly sat around reading and occasionally talking to the kids from Just Like Candy & the Black Rose Anarchist Bookshop (on Enmore Rd, Newtown). Afterwards we wandered around a bit, bought a present for Emma which was directly responsible for us speaking Engrish all day – part of the present was a Guns n Roses cigarette case. On the side it had a warning label against smoking but it said something like “cigarette smoke the harmful health”…what the fuck? So all day we were speaking Engrish – replacing every L with an R. “hero, may I have a rarge vanirra mirkshake?” Then I went home, frantically rushed around for an hour getting ready to leave again, then off to Scary Canary…which is a terrible venue but Up the Bracket happens there and it featured good people + vodka and therefore wasn’t horrible like the venue is. Good company featured: Emma (we were celebrating her birthday), Alex (Arex), Katie (ok just quietly, I’m sort of in love with Katie), Kylie, Seeta, T-Nev, etc. Seabas played a bit of November Rain – hell yeah! After a while we went to Emma’s (new) place which I really like. Stairs everywhere! Emma put on The Doors and packed a cone as soon as we walked in which made me very happy.  Katie asked me why I love The Doors and I really couldn’t put an answer into words – they are just so special to me. Bit of hanging around, being lazy, that sort of high when sitting on a couch with a blanket is just like the most perfect thing, then we wanted to watch That 70s Show but the speakers connected to the fancy-computer-TV weren’t working so instead we watched so-bad-it’s-good Stripperella on SBS, then something else I don’t remember, before we went to sleep.

 

Sunday, 21^st

  

 

I woke up around 9.30 and Annie was already awake. We sat on the little balcony smoking – I really wanted to have a cigarette first thing in the morning because I can never do that whilst living at home! Then we wrote a note for Emma and left before her housemates, who we don’t know, got up to find two weird kids hanging out in their living room. Wandered the city in search of a pretzel (nowhere to be found!), then went home. I napped on the couch, watched Oz, and otherwise generally lazed around.

  

Monday, 22^nd

Spent the day in a really unexpected unbelievably happy mood. I don’t even know why! I just feel good all over. Have lazed around in the sun, reading, listening to silverchair’s Live From Faraway Stables, Love, Alice Coltrane (the last two thanks to Kylar), dancing around the backyard like a character from Hair, discovering Gogol Bordello and reconnecting with my Eastern European roots with mad gypsy music. Good times.

 

(Photos by ANNIE LY.)

Gonna live on science alone

    

 

I’ve been feeling down but I have ways of dealing.

 

Yesterday I met up with Kylar in the city and we went to American Apparel where he spent forever trying on clothes as I wished I’d been born a boy because their clothing is much better. Except for the heel-wearing girls get to do, but I’d wear heels even if I was a boy, and I don’t actually get to wear heels much now because I am a giant and also don’t really know how to walk in them. Anyway, the customers at AA bugged me a little but the employees are lovely, and Kylar bought green jeans. Then we had coffee at Bill and Toni’s, wandered around…I guess we wandered around a lot because I sort of lose track here and we end up at Jet…oh yeah, we went to get Kylar’s novelty lighter fixed but that didn’t really work out. We saw Albert so he joined us for a while at Jet. He was waiting for a friend who was an hour and a half late and we left a little after she arrived. Kylar went home to feed the cat and I went home to watch too much TV, then talk to Nenad until 3^rd Rock From the Sun was on at 1.30 in the morning, doing lots of sit-ups in between because I have lost my mind and think that sit-ups are the cure for everything. (Since 10^th November, I have done 1120 sit-ups and 450 crunches altogether. Go me!)

 

 

Today looked good to start with, then absolutely everything turned to shit rapidly, I did some crying, etc and then decided I had to make myself feel better or else, so I left the house in a hurry, went to the city with about $5 to my name & walked up Broadway giving my resume out (I am so desperate for a job I even gave my resume to that horrible Goth-by-numbers store near Easy Way). Then I walked further down to the University of Sydney where I met up with my sister and we walked to Newtown where she bought us Thai food for lunch and we wandered King St for a bit. By this stage I’d basically completely forgotten how miserable I’d been earlier. I just need to keep myself distracted. Then we went back to her uni, to her interesting but sort of depressing lab (it’s fascinating but spending long hours there would be horrible) where she finished an experiment. To my disappointment there was no fire, smoke, bubbling liquids…nothing. Science isn’t as fun as they make it seem on TV! Then we headed homewards, and she continued towards Liverpool to meet up with friends.

 

My Canadian cousin Vlado was at my house; he’d had lunch with my parents and so we hung out, talking, watching TV, etc. I found out he’s got a job at the same place Kylar works, so I warned him about it. Oh and then I got my grades and that sort of brought the good mood to new levels.

 

So the downside now remains that I am broke as a fucking joke, have no idea how to get any money, am on constant bad terms with my mother and my sister is going away for the weekend! But I’m ok and am seeing Die! Die! Die! & Ohana tomorrow regardless of the money situation…I’ll figure something out (dentist money, anyone?).