Hubris.co.nz

Sunday the 3rd of January, 1999

So it’s a new year, so we get a new colour scheme. Possibly this purple is a little too bright for your tender eyes – do let me know. Okay. Onward ho. Do make sure you’ve downloaded my font too, okay?

I woke up around 10.30am when Karen came into the lounge (I was in the moonlight lounge remember?) and said Good Morning to her. She was fully suprised and was like “what are you doing here?” I replied “sleeping” and turned over and went back to sleep. Such a shocker of a McLeod answer huh?

Anyways, I got up properly at the far more dignified hour of 1pm, and explained to her that I’d been out with Anji. We went to have breakfast at the Krazy Lounge, which was nice, only I’m not a big fan of breakfast menus. Eggs and I are not on speaking terms, basically. But yeah, anyways. Mum and Neil came to collect me, and I went home.

Did I ever explain why I call my father ‘Neil’ ? Like, everyone always asks me, so maybe I’ll write it down here for you.

Once upon a time, way back in the early seventies, a man called Neil and a woman called Aimee had so much love for each other that the love formed a whole seperate baby that they called Angeline – or Angie (Anji now) for short. Angie watched her mother and father refer to themselves as “Neil” and “Aimee” so when she started to talk, she called them that too. Aimee and Neil made another baby out of their love, called Karen, who was basically just an Angie wannabe and called her parents the same names too. One day Angie started Preschool, and saw all her peers call their mothers “Mum”. Aimee helped out at the preschool, and all the children there called her “Angie’s Mum”. A lightbulb went on in Angie’s head, and she started to call Aimee “Mum”. Karen instantly copied her. Neil however, was not as involved in his children’s lives, so he didn’t have his name changed to fit in with their peers’ expectations. A few years later, Joanna came along, and mimicked her sisters. She got really tired of telling the story, and since she resented being moved to Japan and loathed her father for it, she claimed that was the reason he didn’t get called Dad. But it wasn’t really.

Gosh, that was a fun digression, wasn’t it? Anyways, where were we? Oh yeah.

The rest of the day was pretty boring. In the evening I totally hid out in my room because my aunt and uncle came over and they’re excrutiatingly boring. I was just sitting on IRC and stuff when Kate came online, and she was like “can I come over?” Of course I would have said yes, only up pops Simon with “come and visit me!!!!!”. So yeah, on the spur of the moment, we decided to make the hour long drive up to Waikanae. She told me that she’d be at my house in fifteen minutes, so I went to wait for her at my letterbox, foolishly not realising that she meant half an hour. Ah well. Eventually, we were on our way. In Johnsonville, she decided that we needed to get KFC, so we got burgers that were actually really yucky. The roundabout had its sprinklers going, so we drove around it like four times, shrieking when the water came in the open window. Ahhhh you crazy kids!

The drive out to Waikanae took a long time, and Kate’s driving is slightly scary, but that’s okay. It was amusing ‘cos she made me smoke a cigarette, and I realised that they taste like shit, even more so because I wasn’t drunk. So yeah, I don’t know what the moral of that story is. Smoking IS sexy though, even though it probably shouldn’t be. Most of the people I know smoke; it’s kind of suprising that I don’t. In fact, neither me or Anji or Karen smoke. I guess in Karen’s case, that’s not suprising, but both me and Anji dwell in what are extremely smokey societies. How Brady are we then?

Anyways. Kate and I decided as we drove along that we’d take Simon to the beach, so after sitting around for a while watching him play with his linux, and after making more arrangments with his momma for our exodus up north (she’s coming next week to help us flat hunt) we did just that. It was so dark walking through the trees barefoot, and then we had to scramble down sand dunes, but it was completly worth it. There was a full moon, and it glinted off the water something gorgeous. Further along the beach was a bonfire, but as it was midnight, it was completly deserted otherwise.

I rushed into the water, although Simon calling out a warning about blue bottles was a little spooky, as was the thought of Katipos. Kate rolled her pants up (I was holding up my long skirt) and came wading in too. It was so lovely and warm. It could have been so romantic if I’d been there with a guy, instead of two of my best friends. We splashed around a bit, after finally convincing Simon to come in – he’s such a big girl’s blouse sometimes. Kate gave me the fright of my life, sneaking up while my back was turned. I screamed so loud, it was crazy. I ended up totally soaked, which sucked a bit, plus I got sand in my open blisters, which wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it was soooooooo much fun!

We dropped Simon off back at his house then, and went to harrass the macdonalds staff at Mana. When we found out the drive through was shut, we drove through it like three times, sharks circling their prey. Meanies. Shit, that’s like three times Kate and I have played games with Maccers staff that they didn’t get. You’re terrible, Muriel. I swear to god, she’s just a bad influence!

Friday 4th December

Can I just state now for the record that I love Jo Eaton? I’m sure I can. Yay, it’s so good to have that off my chest. She’s started a journal too, so I can live voyeristically through that. I’m not going to give you the direct link, but her homepage is here. Now that I have that off my chest, I can tell you about my day.

I was working in the Bakehouse Gallery all day. I sold one mug. Ooooh it’s a hive of activity that place. Actually, it sorta is, cos I must have answered at least twenty phone calls. It’s a shame that so few people come in – it really is a cool shop. But actually, I didn’t care, cos Jo came in and that’s all that matters. We were sitting yacking for aaaages (she said she likes to listen to my stories – someone must be paying her) and I was telling her all about the party that’s tommorrow night, High Jinks in Hamilton… otherwise refered to as the Rumble. She was like “I wish I could witness it” so, like on the spur of the moment, I invited her to come along. God knows why she’d want to meet my ‘friends’ other than she’s heard too much about them, but she said yes. She’s a braver lass than me, that’s for sure. Her mother was only going to let her go if Jo retrieved her precious stainless steel teaspoon from the Treehouse Cafe – luckily Jo did this, and escaped the Title Ultimatum. Does that make sense? To clarify, the title of this entry is the quote Jo’s mother gave her. But Jo got the teaspoon, so it’s sweetassbro.

So yeaaaaah, that’s going to be so cool. We’re going to Paeroa and stuff on the way, and we’re going to take billions of touristy photos – triffic! I so love being a tourist. Posing in front of the giant L&P bottle, and also possibly taking photos for my new web page, which is going to be hosted on Vision. Did I mention that? No, I don’t think I did. They like me, they really like me – or my writing anyways, so my application was successful. Wahooo. And people actually get rejected from it too. Warm fuzzy glows all round.

In the evening Karen came over for dinner – well, fish and chips anyways, and to watch Xena. I so love that show. Such class! To think I nearly got thrown out of a Film&TV tutorial for saying it was serious New Zealand drama. I know someone who’s going to be on it (you know who you are) – I’m so proud! Karen had the audacity to say on the way home that I had an overinflated ego AND a lack of self esteem – then she topped that up with “you just don’t want to hear the truth”. Bitch! That’s the last time I bake HER brownies. It’s okay, I know she was just doing honest teasing, like I always tease her.

Okay, and Memory for the day…… Jo goes to me today all worried like when I was talking about ASIJ “What did they do to you there?”. Ummmmm good question. I guess nothing’s good when you’re 10-14 anyways, and you live in a foreign country without your sisters, and you have no friends and you can’t fit back into the culture you came from. There was an actual psychiatrical term for me back then “third culture kid”. Rock on. I wanna be labeled with that tape stuff you can type onto. You’ve gotta know what I mean, cos I can’t think of the word.

One GOOD thing about childhood though, but this was pre-Japan, was “Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter” by Astrid Lindgren. She was the chick that wrote the Pippi Longstocking books, but this is a thousand times cooler. It’s about a girl who lives in woods inhabited with all sorts of gobliny things like Harpies and Grey dwarves, with a Romeo + Juliet esque plot, because her best friend Birk is the son of the sworn enemey of Ronia’s dad. Of course, they’re only eleven, so it’s really innocent, and it’s just beautiful. I found it on the bookshelf, and re-devoured it. It was always one of my favourite books, and rereading it was like discovering it all over. There was a really good film of it made in Swedish too. It makes me almost want to have kids so that I can share the book with them. So many of the games I used to play as a kid, and the stories I wrote were based on it. I used to be such the little tom boy, climbing every tree, having forts in lots of my neighbours gardens and stuff like that. I’m really lucky ‘cos our section backs onto lots and lots of square kilometres of Native Forest – there’s a jungle in my garden. I wish I was young again – I had so many adventures.

Ah well, tommorrow’s another adventure. Watch this space to find out how Hammy went!

xoxoxox

Saturday the 21st of November

The loss of my homepage is devastating. I put so much work into it, having destroyed is like being amputated or something. I can cope with loosing most of it – I was going to do a complete revamp anyways, and this is a good excuse to get my ass into gear. The thing I hate though is that my Journals were lost. I didn’t have backups. I don’t keep a paper journal anymore (past three weeks excluded). So basically, I’ve lost my emotional records of the past three months.

Actually, maybe that’s a good thing. I know I’m getting increasingly introspective and open in my journals – I guess having too much time to think without IRC will do that to a girl. Now I’ll keep hard copy records. And load to my geocities page as well. Call it Life Insurance if you like.

In the Bakehouse this afternoon, the cafe next doo was playing Madonna’s ‘Oh Father’. That song smacks of when I was eleven, and had first moved to Japan. Bitterly unhappy, I wrote my own version of the lyrics:

“Oh Father, if you never wanted to hurt me,

if you never wanted to end my life

why are you making me stay?”

And then, to the tune of Rod Steward’s ‘Sailing’;

I am crying

I am crying

or is it dying

because I’m here

I am trying

to get back home

so I can live

so I can breathe

I wonder if I can sue the the govt for abuse. Despite how privleged diplomat brats get to be, they also have their lives right royally fucked up.

It’s so nice to be home after such a tremendous year. It’s nice to have my Tori Tapes back, to immerse myself in.