Hello my pretties.
Today’s exactly four months since I first arrived in Sydney. Sometimes I feel like I've been here forever and sometimes I feel like I've just landed. But it’s been a great 4 months. I never knew you could fall in love with a city, but I sure did. We have two weeks to go before the semester officially ends and our finals begin. Assignments, deadlines, and a general lack of income aside, college life is just grand. Much has happened in the past months but it is 1:45 in the morning and I'm lazy. So here are some stray observations:
- The weather in Sydney is crazy. It supposed to be spring now but I'm not really sure. It was 34 degrees on Sunday and then 9 degrees on Monday. It’s fun to see people be so stubborn about the weather though. Two months ago, in peak winter, 9 degree weather meant thick coats, stoles, boots, and cap. But this week, all we wore was a light jacket. (Coz its spring foo!)
- The women here are GORGEOUS. Tall and slim with beautiful Blake Lively hair. It was first quite disconcerting to me especially since the best thing you can say about my looks is that I have a nice personality. Then I chopped of my hair so now I look like crap on purpose. Wee.
- The entrance to the Central Station tunnel smells like manure. Not pee. Not poo. Manure. I don’t understand. Are they trying to grow vegetables in there?
- I've started saying ‘Jeez’ a lot. I really should stop. It’s not pleasant when I suddenly blurt it out when I'm talking to people at church. These guys are really “on fire for the Lord”. I'm there for the free soup.
- Darling Harbour is quite literally my most favourite place on Earth. It’s barely a 1.5 Km walk from my place. My perfect evening involves walking to the Harbour and watching the sun set. I'm usually accompanied by a Starbucks Caramel Hot Chocolate (it tastes like liquid Quality Street chocolates!) and an awesome playlist. (In other news, I have not lost a single kilo.)
- I have accidently ingested octopus. Note to readers: When asked about what’s in Takoyaki, do remember that people are more interested in the octopus part than the tofu part. I'm not the biggest fan of either. But I do like sushi. And of course, by sushi, I mean cooked tuna and avocado rolls.
- In August, we had this Clubs Day, where different university clubs put up stalls and you could sign up for whatever you liked. I joined the Chocolate Society and Amnesty International. Mainly because they had a chocolate fountain and a goodie bag. I also joined the choir and the book club. Then I quit the choir. For now at least.
- Postgrad studies is not a joke. We have 3 hour lectures for each subject once a week. So with only 4 subjects a semester, you’d think this would be a breeze. But nooo. We have 16-30 page papers to read before each class and then we have 15-page essays to write for each subject. When we whined about our essay topics in class, our professor just said, “Welcome to post-graduate education”. It’s rough, but I love it. My favourite professor looks like Santa and swears like a sailor. On the plus side, I can now appreciate proper literature. On the other hand, I rarely have time to read anything.
Of course, then there’s the guilt. That I am here because Rajeev never will. That part sucks. I miss him. I miss home. But if these past few months have been anything, it’s therapeutic. Here, where no one (or very few) knows what happened, I can be anyone. I can cry when I want to (and I have) and laugh when I want to (done that too) without having to think about how it would affect anyone else. This freedom is both exhilarating and terrifying. But I can’t explain how grateful I am for it. I can treat anniversaries of events as regular days instead of scary milestones. It doesn't always work though, I’ll admit. But as a friend told me recently- Every minute you dwell on the negative is 60 seconds of your life you’re never getting back. And that’s true. I do not want to repress any emotions. Not any more at least. But I've also begun to understand the need to strike that balance between suppressing your emotions and wallowing in them. Like all extremes, both are easy but neither is very helpful. I need to remember that what happened in July 2011 was lousy but it was not the only thing that ever happened to me. Good things happened too. Like June 2010. Like the 365 days that followed. Like so many, many other days. I can’t let one event define who I am, even if it was the single worst thing I could have ever imagined, even if it is so darn easy to let it take over my life. I'm more than one event.
There’s this one quote that my favourite professor often mentions. It’s by T.E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, and I absolutely love it. Here goes:
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
P.S. Thanks to some wonderful suggestions from some wonderful people, I’m considering making a new blog about my “shenanigans” here in Sydney. With pictures and everything. Stay tuned!
