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

One Little Number

At 11:52pm, my mother was braiding my hair.

"Are you going to check?" she asked.

"No," I replied flatly.

"But there's only 8 minutes," she said.

"But you're here," I countered. "I need you to be out of the house. I'll check when you go to work tomorrow."

She honestly doesn't get it, and it sort of amuses me, that she can't seem to comprehend the pressure she puts on me, explicitly and implicitly. But then I can feel her smile evilly, really, just the vibes shifting.

"Well, I don't think I'm going to work tomorrow," she says nonchalantly. "You know... I think I'll do some cleaning, and I have some shopping to do."

And I can't help but think how eeeevil she is, my mother. I sleep after midnight, but I absolutely cannot make myself check. Although I'm not usually a dream/nightmare person, I have vague recollections of a kind of dream or nightmare, numbers of a possibly ATAR or study score spinning around, not making any sense.

In the morning, my mother's in my room.

"Are you going to check?" she asks, her voice sing-songy.

I pretend I'm still asleep, moaning and pulling my sheet over my head. When she's gone, I take my phone off my charger, turn on the WiFi and hide under my quilt. My friends' group on Viber, AWESOME, is alive and kicking. Hundreds of messages pile up and keep going, and I try to go back, get updated, but it's impossible. The only thing I get is that everyone seems to be alive.

Of course they note that I'm online, and then they're asking me. Are you alive?

I can't check. Up until now, the waiting period was torture, like being on death row, waiting for the execution date. But right now, the waiting is a mild comfort, because as long as I don't know, there's this possibility that I may still do well. Whatever happens after, of course, cannot be changed, and that's even scarier than not knowing.

When they realise I can't contribute to the group, Star messages me personally. Pep talks me into it, mingling motivational and demanding. It's weird - I have never been this nervous in my life. My eyes literally tear up, my stomach feels like it's holding stones, my throat hurts, and my hands are sweaty. It's gross, but as my fingers tap against the screen of my phone, they leave little pixelated rainbows.

But she tells me that she's alive and kicking, which is what she said last year when we got our Literature/Methods results, and it's enough. I log in. I check. I die.

98.70

It's jizbillions more than I expected. Okay, not jizbillions. I was arrogant enough to think I'd do better than my sister, though not by much. But this is a lot. This is huge. I can't even speak.

I crawl out of bed and traipse to the kitchen and show my mother. Her eyes scan the screen, they widen, light up, and she screams a little. Envelopes me in a huge hug.

And it's too much for me, so I go back to bed and crawl under the sheets. Inform the rest of my friends that I'm alive. Start checking up on my comrades. Outside my room, the house is abuzz. My cousins shouting their congratulations, then hushing 'cause they think I'm asleep. My dad coming in to see my room. The calls start coming in, because that's what it's like, being a part of the Curry community. They start going out too - we have a whole family to inform. It's insane.

The best part is that 90% of my friends so far are alive. And well. And happy. And I'm so proud of us, I really am. My school in particular - we're usually considered a part of the ghetto, you know, with the leftovers, the rejects, the thugs. And I know 7 of us so far have 90+ results. Star got 99.35. We killed it.

An annoying side note: the Herald Sun newspaper published an article on the high achievers. They mention a whole bunch of schools, taking the time to mention Dandy High's highest result was 96.1. They did not mention our school, when, excuse me, we did a lot better. Let me repeat: STAR GOT 99.35.

The same day, Monash uni calls up and informs me that I've won a scholarship. That very day, they're having a ceremony for high achievers. That very day. I don't even know what to do anymore. It's all above me.

So there you have it. I'msohappylikeyouwouldn'tbelieve. I could cry. I could cry because my peers killed it, because we put in the effort and we got the rewards and no one can say that our school is crap. I could cry because I showed my mother that I don't need to go to a posh private or select entry school to get a good result, nor do I need to have a million tuitions, or do all the sciency mathsy subjects. I could cry because I haven't let anyone down - not my parents, not my teachers, not my friends, not me. I could cry because everyone's so happy. I could cry out of gratitude, thank God, literally. I could cry just out of relief.

The funny thing is how little all this will mean in a couple of months. We'll all start university, and we'll realise how insignificant the ATAR - this number - is. We may even forget what we got, like my sister did. I used to think it was unfathomable. Now I'm not so sure.

But until then I'm going to enjoy it :)

Peace in,
Laila