Antarctica, I miss you.

Tonight, I was going to write something along the lines of how I've booked my ticket for Melbourne (arrival 3.40pm, 20 April), how I'm suddenly feeling nervous/scared/apprehensive/all of the above, and how i have to figure out a way of cutting apart all these imaginary strings running out of me and attaching themselves to various things that is Sydney.

However, I made the mistake of going through This-Week-At-Davis, and then I went through This-Week-At-Casey, and then This-Week-At-Mawson, and then I browsed the website for the Elysium Exhibition on Antarctica, and then I browsed through my own photos taken in Antarctica, and now...I'm here.

I desperately miss the 'Tarc. I miss the coldness (I know, don't ask). I miss the white glariness of the ice and snow. I miss looking up into the night and staring into a sea of stars that go on forever and ever. I miss the quietness and solitude. I miss the amazing displays of oh-so-rare Auroras. I miss the smelly penguins, fuck I even miss the smelly farting burping seals. I miss the people and the camaraderie. I miss the sense of adventure. I miss the times when it starts to snow ever so softly and gently and everything gets covered in a soft, white and fluffy blanket. I miss having the cinema and its thousands of cinematic choices. I miss the solemn and majestic icebergs. I miss the Sorsdal. (The only thing I don't miss is the wind).

I miss my old life there.

I truly understand now, what they mean when they talk about getting ice in your veins. I wish teleport machines have been invented. I'm not exactly desperate and dying to spend another 14 months on the ice...I'd just like to be able to visit for a week or so, get my fill of the place again and then say Adios. I guess I'll just have to dream myself back into that old familiar and comfortable life. A life free from worries and petty day-to-day bothers; free from mobile phones and telemarketers; free from rent, grocery shopping and cooking (apart from the occasional slushy day); free from bills and financial obligations.

A life free from reality.

A letdown.

There is not much compassion to be found in big cities. And I'm ashamed to say that i belong with this compassion-less society. Homeless people begging on the streets of Sydney are a common sight. I see them so often that, sometimes, i don't see them at all, and it is not until I'm nearly stumbling on top of them at busy intersections that i remember they are there.

Every time they enter my consciousness, i am hit with pangs of guilt. I am always on the verge of giving, but my legs and my haste pull me away. Every time I'm in this big city, i am hasty, and i am rushed, and i am flustered, always dodging people, dodging traffic, dodging sidewalk fundraisers who want to sign you up for one charity or the other (love to but i can't, really). In the midst of all this dodging and hastening and rushing, i seem to have dodged all my own compassion too.

Today, while walking up George Street to catch my bus back to Cherrybrook, Ken, 67, homeless and hunched in a corner writing in an A4 notebook (which i can only presume is his diary of sorts) caught my eye. There was a cardboard sign in front of him with the words 'please help' and 'lost pension' advertising his situation. I wanted to stop, i really did. I was about to pull out my plastic bag of plums i bought from Leura markets yesterday, and tell him, here, take this, you need it more than i do. But my legs kept walking and in 5 seconds i was carried away. I'm writing this on the bus now and i feel guilty as fuck.

What is it about humans that make us shun charity? Ten thousand people will walk past Ken on George Street today, and even if 1 out of 100 people gave him a dollar, he would be able to afford a place to sleep for the night and a full stomach. I mean, what is one dollar? But no one does, and i didn't too.

I guess I'll just have to keep reminding myself about how lucky i am, that i am not on the street and if i think I'm having a shitty day, well, there's always someone out there worse off than me.

There is a subset of Australians who are young, male, commonly found wearing a singlet with a generic baseball cap, and commonly referred to as bogans. These men often exhibit the following in public: excessive bravado, excessive high-fiving, excessive testosterone, hooting, shouting, shoving, fighting and braying laughter.

Tonight, i had the misfortune of crossing paths with a whole pack of them (5), stuffed inside a white Holden station wagon (how i wish I'd gotten a hold of their number plate now). Things seemed pretty innocent at first; i was waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green, they were being rowdy inside their car, the car turns left and hello, i find myself ice-cream bombed (it was thrown out of the backseat window, hit my thigh and splat on the ground) by a half-eaten softserve vanilla cone most likely purchased from Maccas.

The bogans are laughing like hyenas congratulating themselves on a job well done while driving away in their getaway car and staring at me for a reaction. I look at them, flipped both fingers and called them cunts (HELLO). They drive off into the distance.

Upon hindsight, i guess i shouldn't have called them cunts. It could've been dangerous. Maybe assholes would've been a better choice. Because assholes are all around us, especially if they are young male bogans. I'm pretty sure me being a female Asian made me a prime target for them. But you know what? Fuck it. One day I'll be earning AUD 100 000 per annum and they will still be driving around 5-to-a-car in their fucking singlets and caps, eating softserve ice-cream and generally being white trailer trash (yup, they were white).

What's a little ice-cream?

And anyway, I've already prayed to God that they'll get into an accident tonight which will hopefully leave them all crippled and impotent. God listens to prayers so I'm all good.

The banalities of key selection criterion.

So...I've just completed another round of answering the above-mentioned. Is it normal for these questions to be so mind-numbing and soul-sapping? Do they ever get better? Will there be a light at the end of my tunnel? Should i just stop being a whinging whiny bitch and suck it up?

To demonstrate the level of wtfness i felt while writing the newest application...one question asked me to demonstrate a 'neat and professional personal appearance'. Corporate World, am i missing something? I was quite prepared to take a photo of myself with my hair tied back and wearing a black suit jacket, and then attaching it to the document...but then i decided maybe that wasn't professional enough. Good thing Google saved the day.

Did you know there are websites out there that provide you with power statements (yup that's what they called it) to answer any and every selection criteria question under the sun? At least now i have a semi-valid and respectable answer. So i may have cheated, but i think it was a valid cheat. Like, a white lie kinda thing. But if the questions continue down a similar vein, i may just decide to say Fuck It, I'm Going Back To Academia. At least i don't have to worry about personal appearances.

so i'm no longer in malaysia. and in a little less than 2 weeks, i will no longer be in sydney either. in the end, my holiday in malaysia felt nothing more than an incredible whirlwind of taste, scenes, sounds and smells, all at once so comforting and familiar yet so alien and exciting and new. i had a lot of fun catching up with my old friends, and my old haunts, and my old life. and i had a lot of fun gathering new experiences too. visiting laos turned out to be a blast and i feel all the better for it. it will definitely be a destination on my radar for a long long time, and i just hope that it won't be too long before i step foot on luang prabang soil again.

so anyway, after all my umm-ing and aah-ing, i have finally decided to take the leap and move to melbourne. yup, towards the very end, i was still a little apprehensive and would've probably backed out if i were given a strong and concrete-enough reason not to do so, but now i am 100% sure.

of course, with any big decisions like this, there's bound to be some cold-feet feelings involved. sometimes i worry that i am making the wrong decision. i am sure a lot of people can't understand why i would want to do what i'm doing now. sometimes, even i myself don't understand why i'm doing this. why would i want to uproot myself from my comfort zone, from a comfortable job in the university whose halls i have stalked for a long time, from my family and friends, and from the familiarity of the city i have spent nearly a decade in?

i don't have answers for any of those questions, and to be honest, i don't really care. all i know is that i am turning 27 soon and i haven't been properly challenged or put out of my comfort zone before, and neither have i ever held down a 'proper' job with 'proper' 9-to-5 working hours, receiving a 'proper' pay. at times i suppose that moving to melbourne is my version of trying to tell myself to grow up, but who am i kidding? it probably isn't something as noble as that; most likely than not, it is because of my love for the city and the need to finally scrap the 'long-distance' part out of my relationship. i would say that, at this point in time, i don't really have much of a direction in my life except going South, towards melbourne.

am i going to regret this decision? maybe...but then again, maybe not. i've never had to apply for jobs; i've always had jobs handed to me. so this whole experience of writing cover letters and answering key selection criterias, and talking myself up so that potential employers will think that i am hire-able, and then having to deal with that deflating sense of being rejected and told that i didn't make the final selection - all that is very new to me. sometimes i hate it, but then again, i don't mind it. i feel like i'm finally going through what all my peers have been doing. i'm trying very hard to change my nomadic lifestyle, and after spending the majority of my last 3 years in Antarctica, i feel like i need this. some sort of stability, any sort of stability. i don't want change anymore, even though, ironically, i'll have to go through yet another big change in my life.

all this should be a good thing, right? me, trying to be more responsible and to be a useful contributor to society. i hope someone hires me soon!