Where I get excited about dress-ups

I had my uni enrolment day yesterday.

...

It is by the beach. It is pretty purdy. The course still sounds fabulous.

And I get a JUMPSUIT.

ZOMG.

I'm doing Nursing and Emergency Health, the latter of which is related to being a paramedic/reliefpersionwhogoesoverseastohelpoutinwartorncountriesandthoseaffectedbynaturaldisasters. Throughout my four years of study, apparently I gotta do a lot of placements - right in the thick of the action - and therefore I get a snazzy uniform. Part of which is a JUMPSUIT.

(Okay, I can't find a picture, but when I do get it, I'll show you guys.)

I'm super excited. You don't understand. It's the jumpsuit that really gets me, but there's so much I have to prepare. Here, lemme list everything I have to do:

1. Have a uniform fitting appointment
2. Immunisations
3. Fitness test
4. Get a Police Check + Working with Children Check
5. Start timetabling my lectures and blah blah
6. Buy my books

... okay, it doesn't look like a lot, but it is. It's a bit overwhelming. I donno. The thing that freaks me out is how independant I have to be. No cute little forms for me to take home to mummy and have signed. I have to do everything By Myself. It's everything I was afraid of. 

I'm good at following instructions. I'm very happy to be lead. At most, I can be a second-in-command, or someone who gets the ideas but offloads them onto someone else to carry through. And now it's all like "You have to do this this this this and that and then this and this and that", so on, so forth, but there's nothing specific. It's all officially 'in your own time'. It's... scary.

Oh, I should probably talk about people. The suburb where my uni is located is known to be a White People Hotspot, so maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by how many white people there were. But I was. I mean, I expected a lot more ethnics to be in the uni, because it's based on course, not race. I literally saw one brown person and two Asians in my course, and everyone was white. I don't mean like white white in terms of skin - I mean like Aussie. Not even any recognisable Europeans, and no Middle Easterners either...

This might sound a bit weird, right? Having been born and raised in Australia and suddenly being overwhelmed by Aussies? The thing is, I grew up in an Ethnic Central, and yes, I meet Aussies and all that jazz, but they all tended to blend into this brilliant spectrum of People from All Over the World. So I donno, I find it... disconcerting... to be in this place where there are only Aussies. Only Aussies. And they all dress similarly, and I'm a bit worried, because I don't know how I'm going to find someone to bond with on equal footing.

But whatever.

I get a JUMPSUIT. AND A STETHOSCOPE. And this snazzy fluoro jacket and a t-shirt and.... !!!

Okay, that's it for now about that. There's still a Long Way to go for uni to actually start, plus I'm really worried about all the costs and stuff the my scholarship doesn't cover (i.e. the uniform package is over $200, which I need by Tuesday :/ ), so I'll just leave you a little show of patriotism. The 26th was Australia Day, and so here's a little video of what I think about it. Please, do take a look.

 
If he was single, and not that old, and marriage didn't have to be consensual, I'd marry him. Unfortunately, he isn't single, he is (kinda) that old, and marriage does have to be consensual. Sigh.

Peace in,
Laila

My Top Ten Under-Appreciated Books

HOLA PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET!

It has sort of been a while, hasn't it? Firstly it was because there was always Something to Do.

By this I mean, what with two cousins plus my sister back, the weather quite fine, we just kept going out, out, out. Nothing particularly grand - I did A Thousand Steps for the first time, we went to the city to eat, we went on many walks, we played badminton, we just... do stuff.

But the last few days have seen me stuck in a lackadaisical limbo. Not even - more like a lethargic limbo. It has been HAWT. The week has averaged 40 degrees celsius so far. Although we all get together and have awesome conversations, I try to stay clear of the good ol' computer, because the aircon happens to not reach it. 

Today though, the uni offers came out, so I was forced to come on, and I thought I'd do a pit stop and write something. Here it is.

At some point during last year, my friend at The Loony Teen Writer wrote this blog listing a number of her 'under appreciated' books, which I thought was a brilliant idea and I said that I would do the same at some point. I figured this is as good a point as any.

But first, allow me to define what I mean by 'under-appreciated'. Basically, these are the books that you think (or I think) do not get the credit they deserve. Maybe the kind of books that you mention amongst a group of readers and you get the 'say whaaa?' reaction, because no one ever seems to have heard of it. Maybe something you think is amazing and you just cannotbelievethatTwilightbecamethathugeandthisdidn't (sorry Twilight). Maybe it's just something that has the potential to be huge, but for some inexplicable reason, is not getting the attention it deserves yet. Maybe its something that has less than 1000 reviews on Goodreads, when you think it deserves like 63,745 more.

So really, it's not a restricted thing. Just the books you think deserve a little more love than they get. So here goes, and they're not in a particular order or anything:

#1: First, I'm going to refer you back to my first ever 'These Are My Favourite Things', where I named a book called Dirty Magic, by Carol Hughes.  I luhhhhhh-v this book. Okay, that was stupid, clearly this is about books I love. Huh, whatever. All I can say is that it has nothing to do with witches and wizards and that kind of hocus pocus (the title still baffles me), but it's really innocent but powerful...

#2: The Clockwork Forest, by Doug MacLeod - or anything by him, really. The guy is funny, hilarious, in a really simple kind of way.  This one I'm referring to is just weird with a fantastical edge to it, but not something completely outrageous. Okay, in general, his books are a little bit very-young-adult, but I think you can appreciate it if you're older too - they're just fun and lighthearted. Two more I recommend are The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher and Siggy and Amber.



#3: The Year the Gypsies Came , by Linzi Glass. I guess this is a pretty dark kind of story, and pretty darn tragic. I got teary - well, as teary as I get when it comes to fiction. That's one reason I'm recommending it, that it ripped out my heart and broke it for a while, and the other reason is because it's set in South Africa. And it's also a bit close to home for me, but I'll keep that out of this.







 
#4: Siege, by Sarah Mussi. Oh. My. God. This book is scary good. Scary and good. What really intrigued me was how the issues loaded into it are so relevant to what happens in the world today. Poverty, lack of education, government conspiracy stuff... what freaked me out were those shootings that happened this year, in Kenya I think? At the mall? I felt like in a way, it panned out like this story. In a way, because the perspective of this novel is from the inside. It's fast-paced, intense, emotionally draining stuff, but it's also very quick, and leaves you with a lot of questions about today. A lot of the Goodreads reviews said it was really violent, which it is... but not dramatically so, in the sense that I don't think it's any more than plenty of other novels. Plus, most of them seem to come from concerned mothers. So don't worry - just read it already o_o

#5: Alif the Unseen, by G.W. Wilson. Okay, it's got quite a few reviews on Goodreads, I think... I donno what makes a book famous on Goodreads, actually, but 5000+ seems pretty good. But I don't think that's good ENOUGH, OKAY? This book is by a Muslim author, it is freaking epicus. Like nothing I've read from Muslim authors. It's adventurous and exciting and fantasical and amazing, and of course, there's that teeny element of truth to it all. It doesn't feel preachy, it's not about Muslim teenagers with their angsty identity crises - okay, I guess that's unfair, maybe a lot of Muslim youth need that stuff. But I've always wished for something where one's religious identity is not the foundation of the problem in the plot. It's one of my favourite books everrrr.

#6: Act of Faith, by Kelly Gardiner. It's historical fiction, set in the 1600s, where the Spanish Inquisition rules and censoring rife. It's just about books, really, and words, and how powerful they are no matter how you try to burn them. I don't know why, but the book is really resonant and intriguing, and I do have a thing for historical fiction, and this is a setting I haven't encountered before... there's just something about it. It's part of a series/trilogy, but honestly, you can just read it standalone and it's great :)




#7: Friday Brown, by Vikki Wakefield. Side note: I met her, I conversed with her like a Normal Person, and I love her. That is all. This book, it's Australian contemporary, it's dark, it is heart rending, it has these absolutely beautiful descriptions - almost poetry, really. It's about a kind of underbelly, it's adventurous, it gets downright ugly. It's a heart breaker. It's something that you might find difficult to love at first - in fact, you may be annoyed or disgusted - but once you finish it's unforgettable.




#8: Where the Streets had a Name, by Randa Abdel-Fattah. Remember I mentioned those books about angsty Muslims with identity crises? Yeah, Randa Abdel-Fattah does a lot of that, but I still love her for it. We need that every now and again, right? But this story isn't about that. It's set between Palestine and Israel, but it's not really political... it just has this innocent perspective that I like, I guess.



 #9: My Life As An Alphabet, by Barry Jonsberg. Another incredibly funny story, and sweet, and innocent, and unique, and quick, and cute, and I can't believe it only has 95 reviews. What is that?! 







#10: .... I can't find 10. My bad.

But the point of this is to get you to try read stuff that I don't think is read enough, and if I overwhelm you (if you're anything like me), you may not end up trying to read any of it. So yeah. This is me spreading the love. Do you guys have any under-appreciated books you want me to show a little love to?

Peace in,
Laila

A Walk on the Wild Side

Nooooooooooooooooo. 
Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
Nawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease. 
Pretty pretty pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? 
PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE?

 

This is how I got myself to the city on New Years Eve. An annoying combination of agonised cries for my mother's refusals and incessant pleas with puppy-eyes at every other moment; those elongated vowels, the constant badgering so infuriatingly annoying that one just has to say yes so you can just SHUT UP ALREADY. 

It works well.

I mean, they were right to be concerned. New Years Eve is when the stupidity of YOLO is showcased in all its glory. Public transport is free, so obviously every cheapskate wants to take advantage of it, and all the trains are so packed it's a wonder there's room for oxygen. And, you know, everyone gets drunk, and it being Australia, it is rather common for white people here to welcome the new year by putting on raucous displays of their hatred for... not white people. (You see what I did there? How ironical x] ) 

So why would I want to go? Because I'm bored. I mean, school's over, I'm on holiday for about three months. I've yet to get a job (I'm trying, okay?), and not having money can really impede your outdoorsy fun options. Not just that, but me being me... I just ... crave adventure, I guess, but not just any adventure... danger. I crave danger. Thrills. Adrenaline rushes. As well as a certain ache, you know, the really good feeling you get after a long run? That. And walking about the city at night, with no parents, on New Years Eve... well, it seemed fitting.

And also, there's a kind of romance attached to it. Come on, the city at night? All lit up? It seems like a dream, doesn't it? It was.

The train ride there was as expected. It was crowded when we got on, and at each stop on the way, it just got more packed. At first I was standing - I kind of prefer standing, because you know how you should give up your seat to the elderly/pregnant/etc? I have this paranoia that one day I'll be sitting down for a good long ride and I won't notice some old person who needs my seat and hence I won't give it up for them until I get off and then I'll see them and I'll feel really terrible for not noticing them and I will forever be plagued by this guilt for putting them through such an uncomfortable ride... it's sort of irrational, but it's what I do. Stand so I don't have to be on my guard.

But this time, as it was packed, where I was standing was getting uncomfortably thronged by guys. Young guys. They were quite boisterous. My cousin -

[Side note: I should, at this point, mention that right now I have two guy cousins in my house. It's kind of sad, right, the first time a cousin came over, I was so ecstatic on this blog, and this time, I haven't done anything? Well, whatever, c'est la vie, now you know. You also know now why my mother wasn't too strict on me not going - two guy cousins to play bodyguards.]

 - had been standing in front of a seat, not taking it I think for similar reasons to moi. Noticing that it was getting crowded, he offered me the seat (again, actually, because up til then I was showing some bravado about not needing it) , and I took it. It was a tiny cramped singular one, tucked away. My cousin stood in front, to block me off from any other creepers. I spent the ride trying to figure out where to put my eyes. Have you ever been in this situation, where you're in a crowded space, and everywhere you look, there's a face, and you don't know these people, so you don't want to be caught in that awkward moment like you were staring at them, when you weren't really staring at them? So you sort of look up, but if you're shortish like me, that takes effort, so you look down, but you don't want to look depressed, so you're not looking all the way down, and then, after some time, you realise you're actually staring at... people's derrieres, or their legs, or something like that, and you feel mortified because you think that maybe other people think that you're a creeper, so you find yourself hurriedly shifting your eyes again, looking around to see if anyone saw you...

... and it repeats. That was my ride to the city.

We got there at 7ish, if I remember correctly. It was lovely. So many people, but so few vehicles, because most of the roads were blocked. But people still felt inclined to stick to the footpaths and stuff, and so you just had these empty roads that were so clean, and we just wandered through them.

That's the only thing about us going out. My cousins and I, we go places, but we lack purpose. Everyone's in groups, walking HERE or THERE, you know, SOMEWHERE, and we sort of just drift. But it's a nice sort of drifting, that lose yourself in the crowd, in the city. It was twilight, the sky was a dark blue, still tinted with gold from the sun, and the city was lighting up. It also - despite the crowds - in my head, it felt kind of quiet.

So we walked without purpose, going this way and that, trying to figure out what to do. My parents would probably never let us do this again, so we wanted to make the best of it, but how?

In the end, it was just walking, talking, admiring the buskers, the views, bemoaning our lack of a good camera, just killing time slowly. We looked for the perfect place to view the fireworks, but then got hungry so we left it to find food. We tried to get back to the place, but we were swept up by the crowds, and somehow time escaped us. So we hurriedly found another place, and soon it was those final moments, everyone looking to the sky, just waiting.

I was a little sad because we didn't get to do my favourite bit - the countdown. The few times I've been before, in the final seconds, everyone starts counting down, and its like the voice of the city itself, it's that unified, that loud. But that night, we waited, and the fireworks just exploded out of everywhere.

My cousin, a few seconds before, he said: "Just watch, everyone's going to take out their phones and cameras and start filming."

He was stating the obvious, but I wish he wasn't right. I mean, it's right there guys, right in front of you. That's the beauty of the moment. If you wanted to see it through a screen, you may as well have stayed home and recorded it off your TV. I could do a whole other rant on how meaningless photos are becoming these days, how we're not really preserving memories, because there's really not much to preserve anymore, how the moments that are worth remembering are the ones that stay in your head, and yes, they may get distorted over time, but that's what makes them so worth it - because it's a reflection of how you felt at the moment, not really what happened. But I won't go on about that now.

So we stood there in this crowd, we watched the fireworks, we lost ourselves in the ooohs and aaahs. We bemoaned our lack of a good camera again. It was nice.

Then it was over. People hugged. They loitered. They started to disperse. The paths were clogged, the bridge was blocked, so we could only imagine what the trains would be like. So hung around, leaning against the bridge. This apparently drunk (I couldn't tell) walked by, offering free high-fives, and my cousin leaped forward - literally - and seized the moment. The drunk guy grinned broadly, saying, 'You are a good man. You know what? You get a bonus. You get a discount. You can have a hug.' He then embraced my cousin somewhat passionately.

We found our way to the water again, and just sat there. There's something about that, you know, just sitting there by the water, in the city, at night, and you know, the reflection of the light just glitters on the surface. I don't really consider myself the meditative type, but I could just lose myself in it.

Eventually, at about 2pm, the bridge started to clear, and we walked back to the station, which was still filled up. We couldn't take the first train, and me and one of my cousins were just happy to hang around for a few hours until the whole place cleared up, but the other one (I really ought to give them names, huh?) insisted we get on the second one. We had to wait, of course, and oh, in that time, there was an almost fight - two guys getting all buff and shouting and then their girlfriends interfered.

Then we squashed onto a train, with a whole bunch of others - it really did feel like a kind of wrestling match. I wasn't fussed about a seat - I guess I was in a zombie-state, so I just couldn't care - but my cousin had once again saved me one, and I couldn't care to argue either.

The ride back was that sleepy kind of blur. You know, you can hear the noise, but it feels far away. I remember a group of guys singing that song, 'Rude', and it just kept going around in my head the whole way back... why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know we human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Someone else kept yelling 'HAPPY NEW YEAR!' everytime the train stopped. People were sleeping. A few times, I closed my eyes, slept about five minutes - could it be longer - and then I'd be wide awake again. An old man in front of me spoke to someone loudly on the phone, and people were laughing, but in a kind of endearing way.

And then we got off, at our station. The body heat made it hard to feel the cold. It was, I think, maybe 3am? The plan was to catch a bus - we assumed there was one, that's what my dad said. Turns out there wasn't. We had the option of calling my parents, my mother did say to, but then... but then I got the YOLO vibe. My cousin got it too. The other one not so much, but you know, majority rules.

We decided to walk.

It's just over 6km. Which is... about 4miles. I don't know if you consider that long or not, but the real importance of what we were about to do lies in this one little fact: we live in Dandenong.

Okay, I can't believe I gave that bit information out. I guess I'm becoming less paranoid? Okay, whatever.

The point is, where I live has a lot of notoriety about it. It's infamous for being thug central. It's a bit of a ghetto. Star's brother, who has done this before, apparently put up an FB status after saying 'just walked home from Dandy station and didn't get shot'. Heck, our whole walk home, we were cracking jokes about drive by shootings.  Do you get what I'm saying?

Guys, it was the best way to start the year. I feel like I deserve a badge for Stupidity/Bravery. I guess you know the end of the story - we got home alive. But gosh, it was thrilling. Walking across all these empty roads, past empty houses. Not even the trees shivering, it was that much of a ghost town. Something freaky about all the traffic lights, but no cars. Oh, the occasional car was there, and yeah, that's when the jokes about drive by shootings came up. Long stretches without streetlights, commenting on the possibilities of creepers jumping out of trees. How eerie it was that you couldn't even hear, say, a dog bark.

We got to an intersection where we had the option of going along a more lit up main road, or into a darker avenue. There was a park we'd pass, one that I was told, growing up, was a hotspot for druggies. I made us go that way just for kicks (now I'm wondering why they even listened to me - I mean, I'm the youngest, so they didn't have to... huh, boys). My cousin suggested we take a nap at that park, and I reminded him of the druggies though the park was clearly empty, and we discussed the cunning and cleverness of drug-addicts these days, lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce. We made it to the next main road alive, and then it was just this long stretch home. 

Then we saw the thugs.

Okay, initially, I was sure my cousin was just jumping to the stereotype - a group of black guys, jeans hanging low and all that jazz, swaggering down the street. But then - they were ahead of us - they just seemed to be putting on this shifty show, you know, stopping randomly, crossing the road back and forth when certain cars passed, and I too got the shivers. We had to laugh though - somewhat masochistically - because we were all so broke, if they tried to rob us, they'd probably end up giving us our wallets back after putting money in it. The longer we walked down that road, the closer we got to them, and I have a habit of commentating in a really... how do you say it? Darkly humourous way? Morbid. I'm pretty morbid about a lot of things.

[Fun fact: sometimes at night, when I'm under my quilt, I like to imagine someone standing over my bed holding up a knife, poised, ready to plunge it right into my neck. I don't know why.]

But again, you know the end of the story. We got home in one piece, and none of my unhelpful suggestions about how to get out of being shot were put to use. 

I know this is the time for reflections, but looking back, it was one of those years that feel short, but in fact, are really long and it's just too difficult to pick out the most significant moments. Right now, I can only remember being at the park a few days ago, and I met this kid. He introduced himself as Yaqub. I asked him where he came from. He said something like 'Gherkos'. I was like, 'is that a country?'

And he replied, 'No, it's a swimming pool.'

He's five. I'll probably never see him again, but he was one great kid.

But it's been a momentous year, I'm glad I came out alive, and really, I don't even know what to expect from the year to come - university, battling marriage proposals, brainwashing tutoring, learning to drive.... it's almost beyond comprehension.

I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST. HAPPY NEW YEAR

Peace in,
Laila