Starstruck! The Royal Couple

I shook hands with the Royal Couple today! I have to say, they seem so tender with each other, it made a brief handshake really worth a cold, cramped wait worth it!

Look how close I got! He was really sweet with the
2 yr old girl next to me who was super excited
to see a "real-life Princess" Adorable!!

I have yet to see her in an outfit I didn't like-
I'm guessing one of the perks of royal living is an outstanding wardrobe

The butterfly, the ostrich, the monkey and the snob.

Odd title for a post right? But it DID catch your attention. Today, I'm looking at the animal farm (literary reference!) of people you probably don't want to know.  I start complaining, get a little ranty, but to redeem myself, pretty pictures and smiley faces for the awesome weekend I had :D

By human nature, we are always quick to forgive, or more readily, forget "the bad"- be it bad memories, bad feelings or the bad in people. But then why do some people so readily lump the bad and the good, and cast aside entire entities? You break-up with a boyfriend, and all the "I love you"'s instantly transform to "I hate you"'s or "don't-give-a-damn"s and all the good memories you made are tarnished by this thick and heavy haze, and you find yourself cringing at ever feeling the warm-fuzzies at that time. Even speaking non-romantically, when you fall out with a friend you tend to get hung-up on all the terrible, awful things they did that caused the fall-out and all the lunch-break gossip sessions, laughter-induced belly aches and storm weathering become a distant memory. And even then we don't need a huge conflict like that to bring about a shift of your perspective, sometimes people evolve and progressively become more disagreeable- monkey to man/ man to monkey, whichever you think is worst (the latter for me, I frickin' hate monkeys, chimps and apes). I stumbled upon this this week, and it got me thinking...

...once we find ourselves in a good place, it's just too easy to forget the tough little road we had to get through to get there. I had a really shitty couple of weeks a little while ago (hadn't you noticed?), I felt like I was under a barrage of misfortune and fuck-ups, and it really felt never ending; every day I was pleading for a little respite, for one GOOD day, or even a day in which absolutely nothing happened, good or bad. At the time it felt like I was far from any kind of "break", but when things did eventually calm down and I got a chance to get away from it a bit, I find that partly out of relief, and out of a desire to push away from any and all sources of fuck-uppery I was falling out of touch with someone I really should've kept close to. I'm paying penance now though, bridges are being rebuilt and hopefully things will return to normality and a hunkydory state soon. I digress.

The proverb actually had me thinking about those who deliberately deny any kind of struggle to get to where they were. Those who when graced with a hand of good fortune, adopt a "holier than thou" attitude towards the pitiful underlings they may have passed by at some point, or hide their head in the sand when something ugly involves them. If I could host a dinner party right now, I would bake the largest Humble Pie the world has ever seen, and cut some very larges slices to serve to these certain people. Even if they had to be force-fed. I even took the time to draw out some etiquette guidelines for said dinner party, which I'd have to insist that guests were well-versed in before attending.

I don't want you to look down on me from your pedestal and feel sorry for me because I am "less fortunate". I do not envy your position whatsoever, and hand-on-heart promise that my side of the grass is plenty green for me. Do I look unhappy? No. Really, no.

I don't want you to waltz around and try to give me any little pearls of wisdom you have recently acquired since you revelation. I personally think you are working with a horrendously faulty logic, and as far as I can see, the way I'm doing things is working out very nicely for me.

I don't want you pulling a look of disgust if you disagree with something about me/about what I'm doing. Once upon a time, you were very happily in the same boat as I, and I'm not too convinced you've changed so profoundly that you wouldn't secretly enjoy cavorting with us plebs once again.

I do ask that you don't try to force on me any of the goods you are trying to peddle. If I were looking for a new idealogy, I'd go find it for myself, or if I wanted a new and conflicting opinion on X/Y/Z I'd do my own research. Don't "do me a favour" and tell me what I'll end up thinking is what you're already thinking. Shortcuts are for cheats. Or for achieving optimum efficiency when navigating through your current OS on PC or Mac.

I do ask that you realise that when you did go through hardships, you didn't go through them alone. But you did then leave others to weather hardships on their own. Or when others kept silent about your faults and flaws, you never paid the same courtesy. They say don't bite the hand that feeds, but maybe these hands won't feed the mouth that bites anymore.

To cut a looong rant short, I think there's a lot of importance in the idea of not forgetting nor forsaking your humble roots, which my parents bellowed when I turned my nose up at the idea of visiting slums in Vietnam on a family holiday. But with a little bad-ass story telling from mum, not only did I learn that she is IN FACT made of tougher stuff than your average (actual war stories here), but my mixed heritage is something to boast about (half of it kicked American butt at some point, right?).

-Moral story telling over-

I had an aaah-mazing weekend this weekend past, with out-of-bubble visitors coming in for a birthday weekend, which lead to ultimate milkshakes, brownies, beach walks and belly-aching humour. During a grey saturday afternoon we attempted to venture out for a sunny beach walk- thoroughly thwarted by persistant clouds, but eventually we had a window of 30minute sunshine, yielding these glorious snaps:

Loverly. 

I may even venture out of these books tomorrow to go and snap a few shots of the Royal Couple tomorrow, they're conveniently in town for the University's 600 birthday. But only if the weather's fine, I don't fancy being trampled and rained on for a sneak peak of anybody.

"I'm late! I'm late!" said the white rabbit..

And I am so sorry, but I genuinely had no idea or inspiration as to what to write about this week. I guess I've used up all my words on intern applications that I didn't have any left for me!

As I write this, I'm watching "The Notebook" (only 8mins in and I'm crying already, what a baby)- and something has occurred to me: you really can't guess what's about to come your way. Key things I've been musing on this week:
1. A year ago, if I'd been sitting on a chair and trying to look into the future, I never would have seen myself doing the things I'm doing now, or all the turns my friendships and settings would take. And I don't think that with this realisation that I could sit in a chair now and fathom what's going to hit me in the next year.
I mean, I could maybe guess the general direction of things: I'll be heading towards graduating, I'll be looking for graduate jobs in some stir-mad frenzy, my hair might be a little longer... but what if I'm not friends with the friends I have now? Could I be in love with someone else? What will my family look like? Thinking about this, I realised how heavily chance can change things, not to sound too defeatist or dreamy- but I felt like a tiny pebble at the bottom of the sea, pushed along by a huge wave and then resting in my spot until something else sweeps me up. 

2. Chance is such an infuriating thing, you think you have everything figured out  until something happens that completely changes the rules of the game. Like when you're a kid, you have your first love/crush and as you sit there sharing your raisins and swapping lunchboxes, you're sure they are the most perfect thing in the world and that's the one you're going to marry and spend the rest of your life with. Then you break up and wonder how stark-raving mad you were to think like that. The next love comes along, and ever wiser you are sure that this time you've gotten it right, and there's no way in heck you could not this person. That relationship goes to pot, but you have no time to mourn a loss cos you've just been to dinner with the One. Even though in technicality it's more like the Latest. You can look back and be sure of all the ways you were wrong, but it's so much harder to look forward and be sure you're right. 

When Noah meets Allie, she's really really itching to get away from him, and swoons over a guy with a seriously dodgy 'tasche (facial hair beyond a fetching designer stubble=huge risk. Not that I'm hinting or anything...) and here I am, sitting on my couch sniggering "haha, you're gonna fall in love with hiiiim!". She doesn't know that. What I would give for a chat with my future-self right now. I'm dying to know where I'm living, how I'm looking, who stood opposite me at the alter, or whether I've gone all rebellious and ditched the idea of marriage. And I'd also probably ask her where I put my mother's handbag that she wants back...nobody tell mother...

All those people you walk past on the street, the cancelled holiday plans, the cinema showings you ditch in favour of Orange Wednesdays and early-bird savers- what if you just slip past someone, not necessarily the destined "One", who could've swept your life in another direction?

...Parallel dimensions HAVE to exist...

At long last, I've managed to squeeze some photographic competency out of these hands, enjoy some shots from my very cosy Falentine's day (no, that's not a typo, its my way of marking fake-Valentine's).

Le Petit Prince

Currently listening to: Song to the Siren (Paula Arundell)

Currently pondering: Please, please, please, let me get what I want this time

It is something past 1a.m. and I have been watching very short clips of a video I haven't seen since I was...well, I dunno, "knee high to a grass hopper": The Adventures of the Little Prince. Urrbody throw your hands up if you know what I'm talking about (sorry...I've been listening to a lot of Usher and Ludacris today, but please note the heavy irony).

Ta-daaaa! Anyone? No?

I was a fairly fickle child, and whilst I enjoyed the adventures he had (finding out what made Mitzi mean, bringing the flowers back to the valley, asking Sean to play it again etc) I would always rewind and watch the first few minutes over and over again before going onto the rest of it because 1. He flew wild geese and captured comets to travel around space and 2. Because you'd catch a brief glimpse of his Rose Girl.

So preetty..I loved how her hair looked like petals. Couldn't get over it. Astounding. For aaages I wanted to be the rose girl, but err, she was the only regular female character and until I made it into my "Tomboy" phase, I rejected all male roles.

I then decided tonight to do a little study on the Little Prince, and apparently- it's a lot deeper than childish whimsy I'll have you know! So different is the concept of the book from the re-telling of the video, I'm now hell bent on reading the thing to see for myself at the risk of shattering my childhood illusions. Well, too late for that really, I just found out the Rose Girl is a complete and utter cow.

 Admittedly, I didn't own the full video set, just a few episodes from the later series (yeah this thing had a series timeline- who knew?!) and unless you see the first few episodes apparently you miss out on the majority of the Rose's horridness. 

Basically, the Rose Girl lands on asteroid B-612 as a seed carried by a really strong wind, and the Prince plants her, nurtures her and builds a little rock garden around her to keep away mischievous caterpillars and butterflies. When she blooms though, Rose is really stuck-up, scornful, mocking and vain- really vain- demanding that the Prince dotes on her all the time. When he decides he wants to go travelling for a while though, she gets even more annoying and whiney, guilt-tripping him into staying, and then threatens to rips herself out of the ground if he leaves but spikes him with a thorn when he tries to calm her down. (Told you she's a cow). Having had enough of her guff, the Prince leaves anyway, and as he hooks himself onto a passing-by shooting star, then she's sorry, and really worries that she's put him off ever coming home again. Then some episodes happen in-between, but from then on, the Rose Girl is a lot nicer to him when he is around and is a general delight to have living with you on a tiny asteroid.

The Prince loves the Rose Girl to bits, in the episodes I remember, towards the end of his trips he's always anxious to get back to her to take care of her and tell her his stories, because he knows she hates being alone for too long. I just did a little sparknoting on the characters of the book, and came across this:

 "Although the rose is, for the most part, vain and naïve, the prince still loves her deeply because of the time he has spent watering and caring for her."

...Am I the only one who finds that really sad? That it seems like he's only with her just because he's spent that much effort on her, it'd be a waste to let it all go? I preferred to think that he came to love her because he could see her softer side and loved her in spite of her flaws- aha! and he even says it himself!

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;what is essential is invisible to the eye"

Men who are willing to be patient with a girl throwing a supreme strop and take care of her when she really needs to be taken to the glue factory are worth their weight in gold.

 
There. Take that spark notes. Oh wait, I think I've just obliged myself to give the Rose Girl a second chance...

But I certainly don't want to be her anymore, nobody wears "high-maintenance" well.

Back-off universe, I'm already pissed off.

Currently Listening To: the bass line rippling through Alex's floor from two levels down.
Pondering: Need coffee, and a walk. Feel like a spaniel.

This week:
1. Witnessed a mid-life crisis.
2. Found out the mid-life crisis "doesn't really like you anymore since you yelled at him".
3. Witnessed the dissolution of my parent's marriage part II.
4. Worry that with no models of a fully-functioning marriage at hand, my own will surely fail.
5. Took the brunt of an unnecessary police call-out I didn't even make.
6. Took on more shit other people were off-loading on me
7. Decided there were too many people in my life.
8. Walls went up.
9. Watched "Black Swan".
10. Had a really beautiful dream about being 8 again. Woke up. Found my boyfriend had brought me peanut-butter toast and was singing the Beach Boys "Wouldn't It Be Nice", found myself in bliss. Minus chronic back-pain.

-And we're about to create number 11 if Mister ever gets out of the shower: Go for a sunny, feel-good walk and a coffee. Then go to the pharmacy for codeine and antiseptic because I've been scratching myself during the night and am covered in angry bloody patches. Yummy.

SO! It's been a hectic week! Most of it spent cleaning up the mess other people leave behind and then just standing by in disbelief while other people then come in and make more of a mess for me to deal with. These people have officially been deemed "knobs" and will be making a significantly reduced appearance in my life from now on. It's the curtain call for you chappies.

And in my usual style, we breeze over that, move on, and find something nicer to talk about: My new blog and "Black Swan".

-New Blog! It's not a huge thing, nor a replacement for this one, but now that I've joined Tumblr (find me here) I have somewhere to post trinkets and doo-dahs that I stumble upon on a somewhat daily basis. I'll be aiming to keep on with the huge weekly blogs on here still (ambitious? I know, but let's see how things pan out). Expect pretty pictures, brief sentences and the like.

-Black Swan.
Drop whatever you are doing right this minute and get yourself to the nearest cineplex and see it. Even if you go on your own (you might want to abandon any pre-existing fears about going out/dining on your own first though. C'mon, they're unfounded and irrational). 

I wish I could give you a definite "this is what it's about" thing, but when I saw it with the Beau and his friend, we all came out with completely different interpretations of what had happened- but we all agreed that it was beyond awesome and definitely warrants a second viewing (Orange Wednesdays anyone?). I picked out lots of tones of perfectionism taken to extreme self-sabotage, and the boys saw a family history of inherited neuroticism (doesn't this sound like a light-hearted flm?) But no, really, it's visually outstanding; two stunningly beautiful female leads, gorgeous wardrobe and set design, and the choreography is just such a flirt! <insert camp hand gesture here>
Regardez-vous the beauty:

Unfortunately couldn't find any stills of Mila Kunis :( but she might have been my favourite. She had a little sass about her, and I like girls with sass. I've said it before, but if my life were made into a film, I'd cast her as me. Hell, I want to be her.

Lily "Wait, did you have some sort of lezzie wet dream about me?"
Nina: [whispers] "Stop it."

Lily: "Oh my God? Oh my God! You did! You fantasized about me!"

Nina: "Shut up!"

Lily: [gasps] "Was I good?"

And with that comic relief, I am out to buy caffeine and non-prescription goods.

It's not like my usual photography can compete with those glorious movie stills right?