Australia: So who the bloody hell are you?

It always makes me cringe with second hand embarrassment when people compare Melbourne to Europe without irony; that people think Australian cities are even comparable to some of the major European ones makes me snort. Apparently the differences between Sydney and Melbourne — in culture, fashion, music, lifestyle – are vast and many.

I’m no snob, I love Australia, I love Sydney, and Melbourne charmed me when I visited, but to be quite honest they’re both much of the same, really. (I.e. There are wankers in both cities.) The only difference is Sydney has the ‘big city’ feel that I crave in a city, which gives it more of a dynamism; but it also comes with many of the big city problems.

Regardless, this rivalry does reveal something about the Australian consciousness which I think is a shame: this desire to be something else, to be comparable to something else. Sydney is apparently a global city — so much so it’s been dubbed the ‘Harbour City’. Melbourne would rather die than be compared similarly to its popular, older sister and has decided she’ll forge its own identity as the younger, ‘precocious’ sibling with a chip on her shoulder and something to prove.

You know it's true. And Tasmania is Alice.

Video killed the radio star

Long before the days when The Devil Wears Prada entered the everyday lexicon and before Lauren pretended to intern at Teen Vogue, I dreamed of finally growing up and joining the shimmering mirage of media and magazines.  In one of my many media internships, I chanced upon a high up staff member who had worked everywhere from The London Review of Books to the Economist and was one of the editorial directors of an incredibly prestigious, “wow” brand type of magazine.  In the most diplomatic way she could, she basically advised me, the young, eager and willing upstart, to look for a career elsewhere.  Obviously it wasn’t because of my less than burgeoning talent in picking up coffees or running errands – necessary jobs of an intern, and something you cannot stuff up.  Instead, it was more along the lines of her likening the magazine industry to dinosaurs.

Now the whole “oh, old media is dying, new media is taking over the world” kind of gist isn’t new of course.  What is frustrating however is that the traditional media seems more or less unwilling to change, instead they seem to be taking the passive angst route, where they sit silently, and bite their fingernails while waiting for their imminent death.

The way she wore

I like the Obamas as much as the next (non-extremist-right-wing) person.  Barack seems like a decent guy on an amazing run on his own, without any underhanded jokes concerning his performance in comparison to Bush.  Michelle I like too.  She’s statuesque, Amazonian, incredibly photogenic and is just as accomplished as her husband. Now I realise that it’s Barack who’s the president, but I would have hoped that our definition and understanding of a First Lady would have evolved with the times.  

Now, I love clothes and fashion and I’m of the ilk that understands that clothing is a means of expression.  I wouldn’t go so high-falutin’ saying it’s art (hasn’t Any Warhol taught us anything?) but the constant obsession on Michella Obama’s clothing is odd. Disturbing.  Frustrating.  I’m not saying it’s completely wrong and unfounded.  The way costume is utilised in art is truly riveting (says the Art History major…).  Art works depict members of court as literally being moulded into their status and rank – the fact that the French liked a bit more cleavage in their dress than the more prudish Spanish with their massive stiff hooped skirts belies more than just colour and fabric preferences. The role of art history and theory in analysing dress is that they also consider the context and background.  With Michelle Obama, it seems like there’s such an intense focus on what she’s wearing that all her other accomplishes are disregarded.

It is fascinating to an extent to see that she’ll pull out that Junya Watanabe on her European tour, but sticks to Michael Kors stateside, just as how Jackie Kennedy diligently wore American clothes in favour of her beloved Parisian designers, all in the name of patriotism (and good press).

Complacency is the Anathema to Progress: An Open Letter to My Homeland

It is easy for me, as a second generation Filipino-Australian, to sit atop my high horse and dispense commentary on the political, social, and economic conditions of a country that I have little first hand experience with. And, it is easy for me to tell my kababayans to resist their first impulse to become nurses, which would make them eligible for skilled workers visas. Yet such is the situation in my homeland. However, I am self-aware enough to understand that whatever I may say is insulting to the people who are currently there, and work tirelessly to “fix” the current state of affairs. After all, this is merely the simplistic observation of an outsider.

And, yet, this — being an outsider — is something I feel I have always been.

I was — am — restless. When I was younger, I straddled two cultures that were often in conflict with one another; ever burdened by being a double-barrelled Australian: a ‘Fil-Oz’. This identity crisis manifested itself into my burgeoning wanderlust — as an Antipodean, so isolated from the world, it was inevitable. So, with Kerouacian aplomb, I attempted to find myself. It was a journey that took me to interesting locales in Europe, the beaches of Hawaii, the bustling streets of Shanghai, and (twice!) to the Philippines.

But it was not just fellow Australians I came across overseas. It’s self-explanatory as to who else I met when I say: It’s surreal to eat dinuguan in Barcelona, and to know that somewhere, out there in the world, at any one time, Wowowee is being watched by an overseas worker or migrant, reminding them of home. There is something quite fantastic about that, and yet so implicitly disheartening, too.

The Whores of War

Rape. It’s a great, feel-good topic of discussion, isn’t it? Sexual assault isn’t really considered dinner table conversation. While ‘Sex’ is everywhere, and talked about quite openly, sexual assault is that retarded cousin you go to school with but don’t acknowledge in the hallways. It’s embarrassing, a source of shame, and with it comes equal parts sympathy and revulsion. So much so that even victims of sexual assault don’t talk about it; and, sadly, in many cases, don’t report it either.

But how about incidents of sexual assault that everyone knows about but ignores? How about sexual assault as a policy of government? How about sexual assault used as a weapon of war?

Amnesty International report that rape is being used as a military strategy; and it was in Rwanda that acts of sexual violence against Tutsi women were legitimised by government backed, Hutu military leaders through organised propaganda. As a means in which to break the morale of their enemy and increase their own, loot their enemy’s prized possessions, taint the women’s standing in their villages and tribes thereby interrupting their social structures, and to spread AIDS and other STIs. These women were raped, in the most disgusting ways imaginable, solely because of their gender and ethnicity.

When these facts came to light, the world made like Helen Lovejoy and collectively gasped, flabbergasted by the indecency and the inhumanity of it all.  But this wasn’t the first instance of rape used in war. Rape and war have been linked since antiquity. Like most — if not all — cases of sexual assault, rape was used to exert dominance and power. This war is a silent one.

How to be photographed by the Sartorialist.

Personally, I’m more of a Garance Dore girl myself.

Minor internet celebrity, Style.com favourite, top of the Street Style hierarchy and every socialite

 

Here’s a quick how to:

1. Don’t wear black.

2. Following from 1. Don’t be tempted to pull out that little Seduce dress that you bought for your year 12 formal after party, no matter how like, omg so totally hot you think it is, even though that sleazy doorman at Dragonfly hit on you in it in like, 2003.  Not cool.

Uni — ooh! ah! — what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Well, actually…

The other day in my tutorial we were discussing the “culture” of the current university I’m completing my Masters in. After much discussion and comparisons with our undergrad experiences at other universities, a few themes revealed themselves. Apart from the Fail Boat that University Administration seemed to find themselves sailing in, the most common observation about the culture of the university was that it was focused on churning out “well-rounded professionals”, as opposed to liberal Arts wankers who could wax poetically about Baudrillard and simulacra, but couldn’t lodge a tax return to save their life.

 

Arts Degrees: Please take one.

Law School: You Got Served

 So tomorrow is a big day for me.  After a year’s respite in the Arts department, I return to Law School.  This morning I wandered into the kitchen clutching a 1000 page textbook called Land Law by someone called Butt (which incidentally is where I’d rather shove this book than read it).  My mother smiled and tried to reassure me.

  ”Look at it this way – you only have two years to go!”

  The cyanide tooth option is looking pretty good right now.  But, I am nothing if not an optimist.  So in the hope of inspiring myself, I called a lifeline – one of my favorite law friends, who is almost completely not-crazy (although her eye does occasionally twitch when she’s studying for exams).

Death of the Flower Child

 

Fight your impulse to make out with the man

So I have a confession to make: I hang out with a lot of squares.  Perhaps it’s because of my first day back at work after a blissful six week break, but I suddenly feel the urge to comment on the strange trend I find in my day-to-day friends and acquaintances.  As the specter of unemployment haunts our city streets, it seems that the young twenty-something year old is suddenly convinced that at any moment they could be exiled from their computer console in their corporate jobs and thrust into the no-man’s-land of…well…retail, I suppose.  

  Not only does it seem like every young part-time corporate hack is living in constant fear that the dagger over their heads will drop, but they seem to be thanking their lucky stars for their status as Office Bitch.  Perhaps it is the now very real prospect of unemployment at the tail end of a five or six year university slog, but it just seems that the days of picking up your backpack and taking to the road seems less and less likely.

Courting ‘Joe Sixpack’

This was a feature written for one of my classes, on the importance of segmenting your audience in political strategy.

 

When presidential hopeful, John McCain, chose a little known Alaskan Governor to run for Office with him, no one expected the appeal that a “hockey mum” would have on the fickle voting public. Whilst Sarah Palin has drawn the ire of Democrats and supporters alike – being a transparent manoeuvre by the McCain camp that reeks of tokenism – the appointment has, nonetheless, boosted the momentum of McCain’s campaign. So, the question remains, why? Make no mistake that Palin is being used to compete for the voting bloc that Hillary Clinton’s failed bid has left in its wake.

 

It has long been held that political strategy focuses not only on public perception but also appealing to the ‘safe’ constituents – the voters who fall in to the same patterns of voting – and consolidating these likely voters. The task would remain, then, to source voters outside of these established voting groups. Barack Obama’s campaign focused on non-voters, with an aggressive initiative encouraging voter registration, managing to tap in to the youth market. In doing so he mobilised a completely new constituent of voters beyond regular voters, which would push him to victory in the primaries.

 

Historically, this is not the first time that a Democrat has done this to get to the White House. John F. Kennedy’s

Post Secret…(or how I learned to stop worrying and start sharing my most intimate secrets with complete strangers)

Every Sunday I have a mid-afternoon ritual.  No, it’s not spending time in prayer, cleaning my room, or even cutting up that hose that my neighbour always sprays on my window when she thinks the music is too loud.  Instead, I log onto Post Secret to read this week’s round of anonymous over-shares.

The idea is fairly simple; people send in their secrets on the back of a postcard, designed in any way they want – with absolutely no identification – and the supreme lord of the site will post it on the web.  The secrets people choose to share range from ridiculous to heart breaking (with a few stops at psychotic along the way), and each week I find myself with a small keyhole view into complete strangers’ lives.

It makes me wonder about the desire to transmit our secrets over the web.  I suppose that might sound strange from someone who writes on a blog using a fake name – but in my case, the idea is to practice writing (and give my friends and family a break from my whining).  The whole idea of casting a secret into the abyss strikes a chord with me.

There seems to be something primal and necessary about the confessional.

D-Phat

I recently found out that my step-sister is coming to the end of her one-year maternity leave. Yes, you heard right. One year. Now, before you all quit your jobs to sign up to whatever it is my step-sister does, I should warn you. It’s not as easy as all that. In order to get this job, she had to do a law degree, a Master’s Degree at Cambridge (yes – the one in England, not the one that sells free degrees from their grimy window in Surry Hills), an internship at the United Nations, and who knows how many sexual favors. And even then, there was the background check, the psychometric test, the written test, and then the interviews. All this, to get into the trainee program at the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

D-Phat

And yes – to answer your question: my step-sister is annoyingly perfect.

I can think of at least 20 people – off the top of my head – who would lie, cheat, kill or steal (or a heady combination of all four) to get one of these coveted Grad jobs. I can think of another 30 who would quite like one, but who’d have to stop and think for a second before shooting their best friend in order to qualify. I suppose that it’s fair enough; one you get in, you relocate to Canberra (gross), apply for international placements, learn a new language full time, then have all your accommodation and travel paid for while you get sent on three-year postings all over the world.

And it is hideously, painfully, and notoriously, difficult to get a place as a Grad.

More than one keen as mustard International Relations major has been left disappointed, finding themselves rejected by the one place that wouldn’t think their papers on MI-5 links in the Uzbek Symphony Orchestra anything other than a conspiracy theorist wank written by a Dan Brown wannabe.

Clothes maketh the (wo)man

So is it just me or can women just not win on the campaign trail? I mean. Seriously. On the one hand we have the Clinton-Is-Dowdy Club, who revel in eyebrow-raising comments on the former First Lady’s tentative steps towards the plunging neckline (I think she’s a chick after all). Then we have the latest furore over the $150,000 that the Republican Party shelled out on Palin’s wardrobe (She’s a very freaky girl).

Let me preface the impending rant by conceding that anyone spending that amount of money on clothes over such a short period of time is a bit crazy. Factor in the (almost satisfying) pictures of investment bankers considering hanging themselves with their neckties and (absolutely horrible) photos of Main Street-ers losing their houses in the face of the sup-prime crisis, and we have a particularly disturbing illustration of political hypocrisy.

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

The UC Octet: making me want to have a eight-way sex marathon since 2008

Once a year, during my High School days, I would be overcome by the most soul-destroying jealousy.  I thought that as the years passed, the intensity of my nasty feeling would decrease.  And yet, each year, the green monster reared it’s ugly, neighbor’s-wife-coveting head from the cesspool of my most unappealing emotions.

And the reason was this: each year one of my school friends would play host to the Harvard Krokadiloes.

To the uninitiated, the Krokadiloes are but one (albeit among the most Ivy League, elite examples) of the many gimpy singing groups that confound and delight Universities and lucky outsiders around the world.  And it is within this particular context that any standard-bearing feminist drops her ideological problem with anything exclusively male, and just embraces the vision of a group of men dressed in tuxedoes or baggy beige pants – walking Tommy Hilfiger ads, all of them – while hearing the most delightful a cappella singing that the ear can stand. Whatever variation we’re talking about, whether we’re in the spires of Oxford, or the halls of Harvard, or the quadrangles of Yale – or even in light-hearted and sunny California – let’s be honest: a cappella performances are aural sex.

But it’s not canon!

I have a confession to make. I read fanfiction, and, occassionally, I write it too. This isn’t something I’m particularly proud of, and I like to tell myself it’s because I like to broaden my writing horizons, practice it, and also read some good yarns. (Which is complete bollocks because I can categorically say that 99.999999% of fanfiction is rubbish.) But, really, it’s to indulge my romantic-sensibilities as a TV fanatic. And, by that, I mean that I heavily invest in TV romances. We all do it, and TV will usually anoint a ‘Chosen Couple’ in order to exploit our unhealthy fixation on these characters and their relationship, in order to get us to keep watching, by building up sexual tension, getting them together, breaking them up, getting them together, and breaking them up again like the emotional tug-o-war it is for a viewer who’s a closet romantic, because TV is a sick, sick, sadistic bastard.

So, in the absence of closure, or in an attempt to fill in the gaps and ‘fix’ anything we may find wrong with the current state of the relationship of the Chosen Couple, we turn to fanfiction to create our own – and we’d like to think, a better – revisioning of the saga between these characters [1]. Unfortunately, a lot of 13-year-old girls with access to the Internet think the same thing, and you’re left to find the proverbial diamond in the rough as you attempt to dig through bad grammar, unrealistic plots, and poorly written sex scenes, those of which are written by people who’ve probably never actually touched a member of the opposite sex [2].

Unfortunately, Weasley fans did not get the memo.

There is a reason why the word fan takes its roots from the word ‘fanatics.’ And when you delve in to the scary world of the Harry Potter fandom, it becomes apparent that there are some seriously fucked up kids out there. Most of it is harmless, others are just. Wrong. *cough*Snape/Harry slash*cough*. It goes without saying that in this particular fandom there is a blatant disregard for canon, the beacon of guidance for aspiring writers. Usually, all fiction must operate within the parameters of the canon. Those who attempt to deviate from it may suffer the backlash of readers and fans alike. One such example being Smallville fans, who want everything in the series to follow the canon of the original Superman mythos, and don’t take in to consideration that Erica Durance and Tom Welling have the chemistry of a plank of wood. Truth is, some of the most interesting relationships aren’t canon at all.

Emma Thompson Please Date Me!

Emma Thompson is a goddess. And if I ever saw her in person I would probably do a half-bow, realize that I couldn’t be more uncool if I tried, trip over one of my feet, realize that somehow I’ve fumbled my meeting with Emma Thompson even more, throw caution to the winds and just make out with her. Probably.

As if my embarrassing girl crush hadn’t already reached a fevered pitch, in today’s Australian there was an interview with the woman herself – obviously a puff piece spruiking the impending release of Brideshead Revisited (23 October, I believe… not that I have a giant calendar in the corner of my room marking each hour that passes before the release). The article glossed over her authorial ambitions, the discovery of her acting talents during her sojourn with the Footlights theatrical club at Cambridge.

Nonetheless, there was still a lot of juicy info for a swooning fan-girl such as myself. Apparently, when Thompson found out that the actress playing Julia in the film was asked to lose weight before filming, she through a hissy-fit tantrum and threatened to walk away from the entire film unless they revoked their request.

Swoon.

The road we don’t think about travelling.

R.I.P. Britt Lapthorne

Obtuse (and lame) Robert Frost reference aside, the news coverage of Melbourne student, and backpacker, Britt Lapthorne’s disappearance in Dubrovnik, Croatia (and, recently, her death,) has driven home to many young travelers a chilling reality: it could have been me. It’s like a punch in the gut for those of us who can think of one moment (or several) overseas when the night could have gone one of two ways; the way that it did or the way that Britt’s did. My insides twist painfully when I recall one particular night in Italy where I could have dropped off the face of the earth and no one would have been the wiser.

Why am I here when I could be over there?

Tired. May embellish thought process later.

New York, I love you and miss you. And yes, I still dream of you.

You know you’ve finished your thesis, when…(or I’d root the shit out of Chewy)

International Sign For Geek

There is a small cross-section of society who can sit at a table in a bar, roll their own cigarettes, surrounded by William Burroughs’ letters to Allen Ginsberg, playing root/shoot/marry using only fictional characters, before exchanging Vulcan High-5s. 

And yet, last night I did just that with the band of English geeks I adore: my English Honours cohort. 

People come to Honours for different reasons.  For some, the lure of the life of an academic – the dashing, globe-trotting Trotskyite – is too much to resist.  For others, the Honours year is just one step in what has been a 10-year plan of getting a a Rhodes Scholarship, a job in the Public Defender’s office, then the Whitehouse, then piles of money to swim in with nubile youths who never would have acknowledged you in the halls at high school. 

Why College Boys Suck

As someone who used to go to a univeristy with a thriving college system, I have come to the conclusion that college boys suck. Not college. Not college girls. Just college boys. I’m sure those living in residential colleges, right now, whilst they complete their studies, who are reading this will say “Ur jst jellus!!1!” But to them I reply: whatevs. My blog. My content. Without further ado, these are the reasons why I think college boys suck.

• They don’t wear shoes.

I never really understood this practice of not wearing shoes around campus. They probably graduated from a miscelleaneous GPS school (probably not High), so I’m sure they can afford some half decent footwear. Since when did simple hygiene become uncool? Now, I don’t know about you guys but I wear shoes for the same reason I never used to play in the sandbox when I was a kid: kids pissing in the sand.

Do the words global economic crisis not mean anything to you?

Australia has one of the world’s largest credit debts. And just working this weekend at my casual sales assistant job (I’m a uni student, there are worse jobs out there) I was slightly bemused that pretty much 90%+ of customers blithely used their credit cards without batting an eyelid.

Credit crunch - not actually a breakfast cereal.

 

Fair enough – while the world’s economy seems to be crumbling around us, here in Australia we seem to be gliding by in this sense of isolation. It’s something to note that where I work at least, our sales are not significantly down during the sale period. The words ‘Great Depression’ have been bandied about, but that’s probably a bit of a stretch. There is a lack of understanding about what’s happening, understandably. Being a senior undergraduate Commerce student has left me scratching my head and checking up the terminology, and current news articles have made it a bit of a fad to try to explain what’s been happening to the ordinary reader. I’ve been asked by friends and work colleagues (being the token finance student) to explain what interest rates are, I kid you not. Seriously, I really wish I was joking.

Talking about my generation: overachievers and etc

According to Wikipedia, I’m a Millenial. Or a Generation Y (which makes me think, so after Generations X, Y, then Z, what comes next?) I thought I could put a lot of effort into this and source proper journals and texts then I thought, alright, seriously, that’s just way too much work. Wikipedia tells me also that putting so much effort is out of character being a Generation Y-er. That I’m attention deficit, true, perhaps, because I have over five internet browser windows open and whilst listening to music, chatting on MSN instant messenger, Facestalking and browsing eBay. eBay: the bastion of consumerism and modern capitalism.  Wikipedia assures me that being Generation Y, I like technology and stuff in general so why not really run with it?  

She's the pretty one, the smart one, the nice one, the Chanel-Teen Vogue intern, the one wearing Marni...

Then you’ve got those kids who ruin all this self-absorbed fun for us.  Emily Weiss and some girl called  Winter Raymond (seriously, is that even a real name?)

Emily Weiss (bless her) will probably be only known to Teen Vogue addicts and The Hills watchers (they can be considered one and the same). Ignoring the fact that I’m just bamboozled by the way reality shows propel nobodies to stardom, she did utter the best line of the season “I’m taking 18 credits, two days a week… then I work two days a week at Teen Vogue… and I also intern at Chanel!” leaving pretty much any self-respecting university student feeling pretty depleted as well as in awe of her multi-tasking abilities. (I would like to note that I proudly no longer watch the Hills, and have replaced it with Gossip Girl. hiushoe watches West Wing for the politics and like, serious stuff, I watch Gossip Girl for 3.1 Phillip Lim dresses).

Post-Europe-itis

There’s a sickness I have, and it’s difficult to overcome. There’s no cure and it’s hard to manage. I get bouts of withdrawals, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, shivering, and sweating. Then I realise I’m in bed, in Sydney, and I curl up in to foetal position rocking, as I attempt to cry myself to sleep. No one really talks about it much – this sickness. Trying to tell people stories to allay anxieties and withdrawals only garners the rolling of their eyes as they mutter that they don’t really care that this time last month I was caught skinny-dipping in Cinqueterre. It’s called Post-Europe-itis. And each day that rolls in to the next I am slowly recovering.

Gets you through those 4 hour train waits.

It’s funny, really, that my last trip affected me so much. I’ve been on trips overseas before, but I had never hit the withdrawals as hard as after my last one. I’m not quite sure why, but I think a large part of it I can put down to the knowledge that people are still over there. You know, that magical land of 3 Euro cigarette packs and 9 o’clock sunsets. It’s bad enough that I can’t tell a story to people without ending with, “I guess you had to be there,” but that every time I log-in to Facebook the whole flippin’ Newsfeed is an up-to-date bulletin of everyone’s movements, on their wall-to-walls, their photos, their status updates; of those still on the road, those on their way there, those studying abroad, or those you’ve met. All a painful reminder of where you were just a few months ago. What really hits me is that I’m here drowning in all the work I have to do for uni. And in between reading about communications theory I’m clicking on the My Pictures filmstrip of my photos trying to imagine myself back at Roma Centrale, lying on my pack, reading my Kafka, and smoking my fags in front of the Departures board as I await my train to wherever it was that I found myself heading. And a lot of the time I wasn’t really that sure.

The Genius of Gossip Girl

Blast from the past.

In my early high school years I wanted to be Joey Potter, who’s now known as Mrs Tom Cruise, a.k.a. mother of the cutest celebrity baby ever, other than that, you know, Scientology problem. Anyway.

Dawson’s Creek paved the way for mid-20 year old actors and actresses passing themselves off as ten years younger, who seduced teachers with no legal repercussions and did things like climb into their best friend’s bedroom window at night. Then came The O.C. and Marissa Cooper, with all her Californian tan bottle goodness in a cute Marc Jacobs dress and monotonous voice. She probably single-handedly revived Chanel bag sales in the under 25 demographic and made every girl want a geek Jewish boyfriend (Seth) to deck out in Lacoste polos, or at least a cute-but-not-as-cute sidekick (Summer) who will look like, you know, super-cute with her Valley Girl accent and all.

And now we have Gossip Girl.

Queer Pairing

Girl germs

I’m sure you’ve all been there.  The long-awaited, I’ve-heard-so-much-about-you…possibly-more-than-I-really-wanted-to-lots of-guys-have-the-same-problem meeting of the boyfriend.  This particular meeting wasn’t that uncomfortable; I had very little invested in it, and am not so close to the girl that I’ve heard every gory detail about the guy’s performance in the bedroom.  All I knew was that he was a real-life 40 year old virgin (ok, not quite 40, but if a blog can’t be the home of hyperbole, what can be?), with very little in the way of professional prospects.  Already a winning combination.  On meeting him, however, he seemed personable, cute (if you’re into that lanky faux-emo kind of thing), and sweet.  Sighs of relief all round.

There were sure as hell more uncomfortable meetings at this particularly party.  The evil spawn little sister of the hostess for example.  In between spewing vitriol, slamming back vodka with the zest that only a 16 year old can muster, and swearing for absolutely no reason, she slurred at me that she thought there was something odd going on with the new boy on the block.

WWAD?

What Would Amy Do?

I have wit, I have charm, I have brains, I have legs that go all the way down to the floor.

So. Ok. I am a massive, unapologetic West Wing fan. To the extent that the end of the series made me curl up in foetal position and twitch for about four days. But this post isn’t about the time I stuck my own face on a picture of President Bartlet or my encyclopedic knowledge of the fabricated careers of the characters on the show. This is about my motto: WWAD?

Amy Gardner isn’t my favorite character on the show. I’m more of a C.J. woman myself. Plus, I was an avid Donna/Josh shipper (yeah. I said shipper. So what?). Her character sometimes seemed a bit too polished – a bit too unnatural. But for some reason, when I reach for a woman role-model, I keep coming back to Amy. Sort of like admiring that pimped up blue ride with wheels the size of a small elephant, while driving a volvo.

Why ProGrad = full of FAIL.

The advertisements are innocuous enough.

Looking for:

• Fresh graduate. Hey, that’s me!
• No experience necessary. I’m listening…
• Funky CBD location. Keep talking.
• Starting salary from $45,000, with the possibility of earning more. What’s the catch?
• No catch! Holy shit, I can’t not apply. Where do I send my resume?

I hope to God that's the key to my future and not the janitor's closet.

I received a callback from ProGrad after applying for a communications job on Seek that was too good to be true. They invited me to an Assessment Day that Thursday. I obliged. I like to believe that I have a healthy cynicism when it comes to, well, everything, especially recruitment companies that promise you the world and use fake advertisements to lure possible placements. So, I did what any tech-savvy individual would do with a prospective employer: I Googled them to do some ‘research.’ I undertake my employer research two ways; first I visit their website to understand their company culture; and, second, I look for experiences of previous employees and recruits. With the Internet as your oyster, you’re bound to find at least one person who was either happily-satisfied or irate enough to share to the world wide web their experience. I was lucky enough to find this thread in an IT forum, through this website, which outline what the ProGrad Assessment Day is like.

The comments in both the thread and the website piqued my curiosity, but I took every criticism with a grain of salt. After all, ProGrad have been in business for quite a while and so they must be doing something right. Right? Besides, I thought, it would make for an interesting blog entry. I kept in mind what I had read, anyhow, until Thursday’s Assessment Day. I was soon to find out, however, that there may have been more merit to the experiences of the participants from the thread than I thought.

The Fortress of Solitude

Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spiderman.

Whenever I hear those solemn and prophetic words, the same thought comes upon me: Fire out Peter Parker was a tight-ass wanker.  Sure, receiving your destiny and learning that it is your fate to wander alone across the cold face of the earth is a bit heavy, but come on.  Last time I checked, getting bitten by a spider usually came with dettol and a band-aid, rather than a bunch of super-powers designed to be a shot of heroin to your flaccid social life.  Also, most people whose cells are altered by an aggressive outside force usually call themselves cancer patients, rather than Spiderman.  So all in all, Peter Parker should stop bitching and start saving my train from plummeting off the side of a cliff.

That spider altered the fuck out of my DNA

There’s a party in my fortress…

In case it isn’t obvious from the preceding rant, I count myself as one of those part-geek, part-human creatures who enjoy the under-appreciated subset of the canon known as the sci-fi, comic-book, super-hero genre. And yet I have several things going for me that your average acne-scarred trekkie-cum-hacker does not: my literary and cinematic tastes are more varied then re-runs of Kyle XY, I have occasionally been known to talk to members of the opposite sex, and (this is the real kicker) I am a woman. So I’d really appreciate it if you kept these things in mind while reading what I have to say.

What the Korean romantic-drama-dy has taught me about love. (Or, why crunchyroll ate up all my bandwidth.)

In 'My Sassy Girl' the doormats get the girls.

For some odd reason there was a time last year when I was addicted to Korean romantic comedies slash dramas (because their films can’t belong to just the one genre), I don’t even know why or how I got hooked on to them. And, no, it wasn’t because of the re-make of ‘The Lake House’ which had just been released, nor was it because of the buzz surrounding ‘My Sassy Girl’, which I picked up from reading blogs about J-Pop (don’t ask). Actually, I think I stumbled upon a link on YouTube of a trailer in English for ‘Ditto.’ You know how it is, you just keep clicking links on the Internet and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and you find yourself watching reaction videos to 2 Girls 1 Cup, and then curiosity gets the best of you and so you actually watch 2 Girls 1 Cup, and it’s from that moment on that you realise you have a stomach of steel because you managed to sit through the whole thing without being affected.

Trove: dedicated to my one, true, trove Joel.

I left my heart in Robert Downey Jr's pants.

In a small hotel room in Pisa, after missing our train to La Spezia, and after haggling for a better price for said room, Joel and I were lying in bed talking about stuff. More specifically, falling in love whilst overseas, and whether it was actual attraction or love, or whether the conditions of the situation heightened everything, and put it all on fast forward. It was different to all those random hook-ups you had on your trip. What is this feeling called, we asked ourselves. After a few seconds of silence in the dark, I finally said: Trove. (Three guesses how I came up with that.) Joel replied by laughing hysterically.

A break-up letter to Agyness Deyn: Style Maven or Style Satan?

Dear Laura Holl she who dresses like a spinster catwo Agyness De Agy,

I don’t know how to say this. I like you, I really do. Seriously, you’re a really cool and happening kind of chick. I like the way you embrace retro and modernise the 80s. No, really, I do. I see what you’re doing there. White dress, denim jacket and purple tights, fabulous – really, it’s great. You’re having fun, I understand that. Designers probably throw clothes at you because you’re pretty ‘right now’. You’re the model of the moment. (Your Young London Burberry advertisements with Lily Donaldson – you made my heart melt. And your runway work, totally fierce.) I get that, really, I do. I know it can be difficult, sometimes, trying to appease all those designers by wearing the clothes they give you. It’s a tough job, I can imagine, posing during the day and vacantly staring at a camera, being waited on hand and foot, then coming home to boxes full of free clothes that plebs, such as myself, wouldn’t know what to do with. But you, you really make it work. I don’t know how.

All my friends are getting married. I’m just getting drunk.

Financial Liabilities

There’s a group on Facebook I’ve joined titled, ‘All my friends are getting married. I’m just getting drunk.’ It’s crazy, really, that this should be relevant to me. I’m only 21. In my high school graduating class of 2004, Facebook tells me a size-able percentage of these girls are in long term relationships, are married (or will be soon), and have kids (or will be having them). For someone who considers kids as dream-killing, money-suckers, it truly boggles the mind that my peers could be so, well, ‘adult.’ I question whether this is a matter of their being grown-up, or whether I’m complacent in just being a perpetual kid and being selfish.