Thursday, March 24, 2005

Starstruck: aka my action packed life 

I feel an urge to be all journal-y. You're warned.

So, I touched an original copy of Diderot's Encylopedia today. And a handwritten Cyrano de Bergerac book. Now, how nerdy is it to get excited in the presence of a book? Well. Nerdissimo am I. My profane hands touched the very same documents that have probably passed through the hands of, like, Rousseau or something. Tell me that's not cool.

Another celebrity encounter, though hardly of the same calibre: while buying my lunch today at Ralph's cafe, I saw His Eponymousness himself. Ralph.

In other news, I went to see Look at me (Comme une image) last night with Maria, Bec and her friend Lucinda. It's basically a fat-teenager self-esteem movie, the type that would be accompanied by angry-chick-music and end with a miracle makeover in Hollywood. There's the uncomfortable clothes-shop scenes, the too-good-for-me cute suitor, the gorgeous stepmother, the sobbing. Being a French movie though, there's biting dialogue and actual character development and very well-written awkward moments. Surprisingly little Hot European Sex and long silences with people sitting at metro stations. Verdict: moving, occasionally hilarious though nothing ground-breaking. Or maybe it is revolutionary to have fat actors in France, I don't know.

It was a crazy day actually. It started off well. I woke up late, didn't have time for breakfast, got on the wrong train, forgot my umbrella, and was late for Ethics. Halfway through, I had to run through the crazy Sydney rain to OTC to hand in my contracts assignment which I'd stayed up til 2am finishing (it's complete arse). French was an odd mix of gloating at correcting French nemesis* (know-it-all drawling pretentious sideburned Liberal dick, but more on him later) at grammar and squinting at a picture of Nestle Noir chocolate and a picture of a boat, to make us think how you could create an ad with them. I have a sneaking suspicion that this tutor is using us as some kind of weird psychological case study, last week she made us write poetry and read it out loud (I did my best Invisible impression ie. no eye contact, look engrossed in something else - and it worked, too). She's sweet, this tutor, but with a hidden streak of oddball. After French, I lunched with Bec and her friend who's going to Baxter Detention Centre this Easter to protest. Admirable and ever so slightly guilt-inducing. There was also a girl whose name I couldn't remember even though she sat behind me for a whole semester. Nicole, I now recall. We made small talk for an excruciatingly long time. Mostly about the rain. Thank god for rain; it saves many a conversational lull.

Post-lunch, Bec and I went to the language centre to order our movie tickets. There we met this probably-gay French nerd guy with a cute lisp and snaggle-tooth. By Spanish time, I was rather spaced out and crazy which translated to "perdon? repita per favor" (check out the chops, not bad eh) every time the teacher asked me something. Now this teacher, she's kind of hard to pin down. Bec calls her Eurotrash, and it's true that she wears all-white linen which equals very very VPL, but she's alright, can be funny. Patronising at times, though. Yes, so, after Spanish, rush rush rush to Oxford Street. We, being moi, Bec and Maria, arrived just in time. Luckily our seats were saved by B&M's friend Lucinda.

I should pause to introduce the characters at this point, I think. Bec is an Anglo chick (see how I define people by race? niiice) from my French class. Very nice but with sufficient deadpan wit to be interesting. She's from North Sydney Girl's and knows lots of people and is actually cool and normal. Like well-adjusted but also not too intimidatingly rebelly and earnest. Maria, Chinese, went to the same school and is even repressed-er than me. Amusingly neurotic, though, and angularly smart. Very into French, the way I was when I actually cared. It's reassuring that other people also obsessively taped SBS movies and downloaded weird French music. In short, a sort of odd kindred spirit. Lucinda, finally, was a total stranger up til yesterday.

By the time the movie finished it was already like past nine. Being a group of girls, it took us another half an hour to decide where to eat. We crossed the road about five times before we finally chose a Thai restaurant with an entrance that looked like a porno shop. The decor was tacky, but it had sweet dimmed lights and good food and gay guys holding hands across the table. Cosy. A pad thai and penang (padang? I'm a Thai virgin) later, it was 10-ish. On the way back to Town Hall I was mocked by a crazy drunk man, in true Sydney style. The day ended the way it began- I overshot my station and had to wait at the next deserted stop for twenty minutes for the next train. I blame the pad thai.

This morning I slept on the car to Marrickville, on the bus to uni, and in the library, before going to Enlightenment where I met Mr Diderot's masterpiece, among others, and faked concentration through someone's exposé. Then Ralph's, a bit of law reading in Badham next to a guy studying "Advanced Pest Management" according to his textbooks, then Contracts. In the second hour, we went outside and pretended to do questions on the lawn. Mostly we mocked the stupidity of the consideration doctrine. More and more, I'm realising that the law is just a whole bunch of made-up-along-the-way rubbish. Suits.

At 6pm I headed off to the AGM of the United Nations Society where we were lecture to by the Sydney office liaison chick. When asked about what our campus group could do to help the UN fulfill the Millenium Development Goals, she replied that we should Talk to People, Write Letters, and Lobby Our Politicians. So basically I expect that this society will be doing....shit all. Again, suits me fine. There was free pizza afterwards, at least. I forgot to mention, Sideburns was there. See, this guy wears CCCP t-shirts and campaigned for Malcolm Turnbull. He did practically all the same subjects as me last year and thinks he's top shit in French (ha-ha), or rather, in everything. His ambition is shameless- he's in all these student groups to make his resume look good, even though he couldn't give a flying about refugees or whatever. Anyway, I overheard him telling someone he wanted to go into DFAT since he read "The Prince" in Year 10. Don't even ask what my internal monologue was muttering at that point. On the other hand I was annoyingly flattered that he knew my name, and grudgingly admitted to internal-Tina that he could be a normal, even charming conversationalist. Am not getting sucked in, though. I can imagine him in twenty years as a power-broking ball-breaker for the Libs (while I'm moulding in some lowly temp job, thinking "hah, well I beat him in a grammar test once! take that!").

After UN-Soc the parental unit picked me up. A couple of her friends from Melbourne are up here and staying with us, so we took them to Our Japanese Restaurant, then went home. They took over my room, though it was gratifying to hear they appreciate my taste in posters. Heh. I was proud, but now that I think of it, these people are like, my parents' age. Definitely hipper than my folks though. They know who Missy Higgins and the White Stripes are...I actually suspect that they're more with it than me.

Ok, my logorrhea is finished now. Bedtime.

# posted at 11:57 pm

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