Happily ever after

Fairy tales are overrated. Perhaps I'm just hard to please, but the standard gorgeous prince saves helpless docile princess and makes her blissfully happy for ever more is just mind numbingly dull. The brothers Grimm ones were quite funky, but a little too dark for my taste, perhaps I was too young cos they fired my hyperactive imagination and caused some crazy nightmares. So I gave up and switched to proper books, until Princess Florizel came my way.

Its a pretty obscure book, haven't found anyone else who has read it, but its the perfect fairytale and should, I firmly believe, be read repeatedly to all little girls during their impressionable years. Florizel is all a real princess should be: fun, easygoing, full of energy, down to earth and game for anything. Too busy riding her horse and being upto all varieties of pranks to waste time on dresses and gilded mirrors. Freckles, boy short curly hair.

Theres a prince of course - handsome and only heir to the large neighbouring kingdom, nice enough guy, immensely relieved to meet Florizel who compares well to all the stick thin, self obsessed princesses that shudder at the idea of having anything other than dry toast and water for breakfast and turn pale at the thought of being in the sun.

At The Ball [the one where the prince chooses his princess, for any lacking fairytale education] Florizel tells him in her usual firm friendly way that he's quite nice but she has no interest in getting married thank you very much and would he like to do something interesting such as go on a hunt instead.

Her parents are horrified, being of the follow the fairytale template generation and lock her up in her room [with food, they have quite a good relationship going]. Her mother waits eagerly for the prince to climb the vine that she planted when her daughter was born.

Then comes my favourite part: the prince climbs into the tower and proclaims [quite chuffed] that he has come to rescue her. Florizel asks him how he got up there, and he replies that he used the vine. She then points out [in a 'speaking to idiot male' tone] that if he used it to come up, she can obviously use it to go down can she not, and she doesn't need rescuing, thanks. HAH!!! Awesomeness. He climbs down the vine alone, quite deflated, presumably feeling his little fantasy world is rather topsy turvy.

There is of course a scene with a dragon, where the prince gets trapped and Florizel out on a ride finds and rescues him, tearful scene with the parents who cant understand where their daughter is coming from and a couple more humorous twists that I cant remember anymore. The conclusion however was that Florizel and the prince decided to be firm friends and got on very well, I don't think there was anything about a Forever.

And no, she's not a lesbian :P Maybe they got together later on, if her hormones kicked in and she decided she wants to settle down, its all open ended and realistic. There is no creation of impossible expectations for a handsome knight on a white horse to make a breathtaking entrance, swish his sword a few times and solve all the princess' problems. No magical kiss which, being from the 'one true love' overrides all evil.

This is the root of the high divorce rate. Little girls and boys are encouraged to think even subconsciously that perfection exists. That there is the happily ever after where all food tastes divine, there is no stress and the weather is miraculously perfect. The scary thing is that once you've gotten to them before about 5 years of age, its ingrained in their consciousness, and they can only rationalise it to a certain extent! ARGGHH. Plus the whole extravagant wedding stuff is just an adult continuation of a children's story. Think about the adjectives that are used to describe weddings - magical, fairytale etc etc. Watched 27 dresses yesterday and everything looked so pretty, I actually contemplated thinking about wanting one for a whole tenth of a millisecond. YIKES. Of course BirdBoy got all happy taking it as a sign that I might be less of a commitment phobic someday, but I don't think so!!

I love intelligent romantic comedies with happy endings as much as the next girl, but most of the stories out there are so darn unbelievable. Wheres the fun in having an entirely peaceful life? A few fights now and again are healthy and keep things spicy - after all makeup sex is apparently the best kind and all that. I'm not a cynic, I believe in love and a boy to be happy with and laugh a lot with. But I do have an innate suspicion of this love stuff, it is so often just heavily perfumed rubbish.

Gripes

Its so irritating when couples come for a dinner and spend the evening cooing at each other. Not necessarily to the extent where they need a room, but even just creating dead air in terms of conversation and interaction.

Went for a Curry party got stuck at the couples end of a table for a while, which was quite a painful experience. Is it that difficult to retain your individuality and ability to keep up a conversation with someone outside the cacoon? Pathetic.

Met several interesting people after making my escape, including a Sri Lankan who has been in Aussie all her life, visited once, but is more 'Curri-fied' than most of my friends back home! Twas hilarious, she's lovely as in warm, generous and caring but the whole grapevine/setting people up thing is scary. I was randomly chatting to this guy and suddenly he comes out with 'oh yea, K told me about you and said we should be friends cos we're both from SL'. AAARRGGHHH. 911. A terrifying majority of her friends are from SL, and looking at the slideshow of pictures from over the years, any Aussie influence is minimal. Of course the accent is there, and she does have 'white' friends but still, unsettling. I don't like the thought of being accepted so easily just because I come from a certain country/sub continent.

GNP to be royally screwed?

So Mahinda darling is at it again. Its amazing that his ego hasn't caused his head to explode. Yet. We live in hope. The village thug continues to casually flick away any who don't recognise that the red scarf means Royalty. A passport to an ongoing party for all obliging relations and bum sucking followers.

Looks like Peter Hill ignored the memo, good on him. So he's getting thrown out of his hut. All in all a rather good story to chuckle over since no one got hurt except of course for fair play, democracy, the reputation of SL in the eyes of the rest of the world etc etc and those things are on its way to extinction anyway right?

And then my mother pointed out a worrying connection. Makes me realise I should take her seriously once in a while. Peter Hill works for Emirates. Emirates is wholly owned by the government of Dubai.There is a scary math coming up here. According to the CIA World fact book:

"About 800,000 Sri Lankans work abroad, 90% in the Middle East. They send home more than $1 billion a year"

GOSL just gave the government of Dubai a back handed slap in the face. Whats to stop them from cancelling/ refusing to issue any work visas? Leaving aside the lack of any proper labour laws protecting all the migrant workers in the UAE and surrounding countries which is a serious but completely different issue, the fact is that we rely on them to an extent that does not seem to be recognised. I've got this image in my head of the GNP deflating with a thin whine, a sad little balloon with a rather large hole. If only that buffoon's ego would go the same way.

The only thing there seems to be to fall back on is that there WILL be a specially horrible place reserved for him in hell. Or all his afterlives will be absolute misery. Its difficult to understand how someone can live so entirely without regard for the future. Surely, at some point every thinking human being would stop and reflect? As much as its tempting to call him names and go on long tirades, he does have a brain in there somewhere [altho one does wonder sometimes].

In politics especially as with pretty much everything else, theres a give and take. Actions have reactions. You can't always get what you want. How can he be behaving like such a child? Leave aside the rest of the country, because thats perhaps easy enough to forget when on such a power trip but what about his individual future? Every religion, belief system has a balancing of the scales. If you do good, you get rewarded whether its in this life, the next life or the afterlife. There is punishment for causing suffering. What goes around comes around. Some level of his subconscious is not in denial and knows that he's plundering and exploiting things that do not belong to him. Surely he has nightmares. Even if its mainly from eating too much rich food.

All you need is love?

If I went all out hippie/bohemic crazy, would he still love me? He finds the hippie streak attractive, of course.. its different, its interesting, adds a small unpredictable element, but if I stopped squashing it, if I suddenly decided that today Im going to live in a cliche' brightly painted VW, spreading the love denying tedious reality, could he accept that? Loving someone 'just as they are' is flung around so much its just a blur. Thats the problem with finding a potential Person [with a capital] too early - quietly, oh so gently you start to pick and choose. The bits they dont like gets hidden, rubbed off. The bits they like are painted over, darkened, highlighted. And then suddenly you look back and realise you're still the same person, all the essential components are ticking along as always, just... shaded.

What is it about 3am?!

I don't know if Matchbox Twenty chose 3 am as opposed to 2 or 4 for a reason, but whenever unwanted thoughts kill my sleep, and i finally give up and switch on the light in exasperation, it is that particular wretched hour give or take about twenty minutes. I love my sleep. Crankiness invades if at least 8 solid hours have not been had. But tonight it is not to be, and rather than tear the sheets with too much kicking and twisting, Im up drifting through random google searches. "Orange clocks" brings up some kinda funky images! Also, I couldn't get a half line of the Simon and Garfunkel song "Flowers never bend with the rainfall" out of my head, which turned out to rather eerily sum up exactly how I feel right now. I haven't heard it or thought about it in at least 2 years. Thumbs up for the sub conscious.

Through the corridors of sleep
Past the shadows dark and deep
My mind dances and leaps in confusion.
I don't know what is real,
I can't touch what i feel
And i hide behind the shield of my illusion.

So i'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And flowers never bend
With the rainfall.

It's no matter if you're born
To play the king or pawn
For the line is thinly drawn 'tween joy and sorrow,
So my fantasy
Becomes reality,
And i must be what i must be and face tomorrow.

There is something comforting about finding how I feel put into words far more cleverly than I could hope to, with a lilting, almost happy tune to go along with it :) Its so much more of an effective tonic than the wailing and wallowing that most modern songs seem to do. Although I might be generalizing unfairly, as the brain with no sleep is having vague painful flashbacks of songs that whined for 4 minutes straight. If you're complaining, you could at least refrain from overdosing the listener with it.

To do list for summer 2007

• Learn to surf
• Get drivers licence
• Recover crazy wild self. Rather miss that self
  
• Read books already bought before buying more
  
• Focus!! Be a nerd. Well, during the semester that is.
• Find an interesting volunteer job.
  
• Kick the addiction to airports.
• Write
• Say yes
  
• Start the photography thing again

i.e - get a life.

*Gulp*

A week and 3 days to go before the end of exams, the semester and my first year of university. Not going so well. Especially the second semester, where a vague sense of panic sort of hovered over everything, not demanding any attention, just...existing. All the time. I tried sleeping it away. Disaster. After a few weeks, hazily wondering which month it was, I started to fret in earnest. The problem is that generally I have my emotions well trained. Most of them can be talked into being reasonable, and the ones which cant wear themselves out soon enough so that normalcy can bounce back. So this time around, faced with an unsettling shadowy presence that lounges around, none of the old battle plans worked. Avoiding was out of the question so I tried ignoring - it laughed!

And descended.

With a week and 3 days to go... I'm in so much trouble.

Another ditch in the road, we keep moving...

I really need life to stop. Is that so much to ask? A little pause. A few days. Which is really a miniscule drop in the ocean if you look at the bigger scheme of things. I will frantically gulp down lungfuls of oxygen. My head will stop spinning. I can stop running. Im taking rests when there arent supposed to be any and falling even further behind in The Race. Im so far behind, but not yet out, the fat lady hasnt sung yet!! And she jolly well had better not for a long time to come :)

On a different note, omg, Im a Labour voter! Never ever thought I would say this, but there you go. And Im hoping that they win this election, because the Libs are going overboard. The Liberal govt is too cocky, they've forgotten that what makes Australia such a easy, lovely place to live [besides the beaches and sun] is that the lower income wage rates are ridiculously good. They've forgotten that Aussies pride themselves on being more than mere money grubbers. The workplace agreements are going to make this country richer, indisputable, but at the same time its going screw over a LOT of the little people. The gap between the rich and the poor will become larger, people will be working their asses off for less. Does this sound familiar to anyone? A certain arrogant nation has a shocking split between the rich and the poor? Yea, its disturbing to see America in an Aussie future.

I dont think anyone has thought about it from quite this angle, but its going to heavily affect university and tafe students because they make up a massive part of the retail and hospitality sector. These part time jobs get them through the 4 or 5 years of uni until they get 'real' jobs. It would be so sad if we become like the American students I know, constantly stressed out because their casual jobs are too casual to survive on. Aussies dont just live from paycheck to paycheck, all of the sensible ones I know go on all kinds of funky holidays and generally enjoy themselves while going to uni and working. And this in turn I think makes them so much more interesting as people, having thoroughly enjoyed life by the time they have to settle down and do a 9-5 or 9-midnight. Its reflected in what companies look for in their graduates, again, I dont really know countrywide, but from what I've experienced in Aussie so far is that the big finance firms - KPMG, PWC etc etc all want ppl with a range of experiences. Leadership. Interesting interests i.e. a personality! Correct me if Im wrong, but if you're supporting yourself, doesnt it make sense that being able to have a life outside of university does depend on being able to support yourself without stressing out too much?

Or am I just being a lazyass Sri Lankan? :D

Or chicken.

The wherefores.

So, this being a couple of weeks before exams it is, of course, the most rational time to start a blog. I've never been this screwed for exams. Ever. Even with A levels, even though I did no work on my own, I had some vague idea as to what is going on, and lets face it, London ALs especially with the modules, is not too bad. This time around, having made into uni through some glitch in the universe, and even more strangely managed to survive a semester, Im dead meat. And decomposing fast. Ok Im now going to stop contemplating my prettily decorated study plan and try to catch up on the 2 months of chatting/partying/I dont even know what.

http://www.savagechickens.com/blog/2005/03/irrational-fear-3.html - awesome chicken cartoons. Good for daily laughs and things to ponder :)

The whys

Im terrible at the whole perseverance thing. The last time I tried a blog, it lasted a grand total of about 3 months, starting off of course with enthusiastic posts every few days dwindling down to the inevitable zero posts every month. Flatlined. This time around however, Im hoping I'd have developed enough of a personality to keep it going. For the past 10 months my life has been really quite dull, but I feel in my bones a change in the air. This summer is going to rock :) And it all started on a certain dark and rainy night... more on that in the days to come ;)