come on, we're not 12 anymore!

as you get older, you learn to behave as an adult. well, in principle, anyway. for some, this seems to be difficult. you would think that fully grown adults - and not the new ones, those with about 2 decades' worth of experience at it - would behave as such. it seems, however, that this is not necessarily the case. 

one of my friends is actively asking me what she should do about the guy whom she indirectly contacted through FB - as in, she wrote a random comment on his wall and apparently expects the guy to understand she wants to date him. why not just call him? or, if that's too direct, send him an email about meeting up? at worst, he'll say no but at least there won't be a need to spend days wondering if a) he saw the post, b) understood the underlying message and c) whether he's just pretending not to have seen it and what that could mean. and here i'm thinking: we're not 12 anymore!

another friend, male this time, also seems intent on doing things indirectly. rather than just emailing his friend and asking her how she's doing, he's asking his best friend to reach out and find out. ok, so he's not in the same country but why exactly does this have to go through a third party? i don't get why he can't just send her a message. and poor best friend, who for some crazy reason agrees to be part of this...

and then there's my best friend. he always says we should meet up more often but then never does anything about it. at some point i decided that if he wanted to meet up, he could call/text/email and set up a time & place. this obviously resulted in us not seeing each other that much, which he seems pained about but clearly not enough to actually do anything about it. and to him i'd like to say that it goes both ways. i'd love to hang out more but i am going to prioritise people who make an effort to see me. so walk the talk or stop complaining.

make-up

i don't really wear make-up. this may be because my mother didn't really wear it either, so it was never really something i aspired to myself. i played around with it at the age of 12, wearing bright green or blue eye-shadow on a daily basis for the best part of a year. i was neither encouraged nor discouraged from doing so. after a while, i stopped. then in high-school, i started using eyeliner and mascara but again, that didn't really last long. maybe it was because i felt make-up was expensive and, in the end, not really worth it - i liked my looks just fine without it - that i stopped.

i know i look rather spectacular with make-up - some would say unrecognisable - but it's just not me. yes, i actually have basic make-up products but only because i feel it's sometimes important to wear for, e.g. client meetings. there are also special occasions, like a party or a date, where i will probably wear stuff. if i'm on stage, there is obviously no choice as the lights reduce facial features to one big blur. but most of the time, i'm happier without the hassle and i often feel that wearing make-up is like lying about who i really am.

post-modernist moment?

i was at a friend's birthday do the other night, where a guy that i used to date showed up. i hadn't seen him in 3-4 years and in the end, we didn't really know what to say to each other. it wasn't awkward per se, we'd seen each other a few times after it hadn't actually become anything. i guess it was what it was. but as i was leaving i spotted my ex. him i hadn't seen in, what, 7 years? more? considering how small this town is, pretty unbelievable (at least the guy i dated used to both live and work elsewhere). i felt lucky i was leaving because i wouldn't really have known what to say. 

but that wasn't the end of it. as i was stepping away, i heard my name being called. a guy whom i nearly dated. of the 3, the only one i could have had a conversation with, and he seemed to be a bit anxious about knowing no one there (he was there with a girl whom i presumed to be his girlfriend) so clearly wanted me to stay a bit but i had another commitment so off i went. still, meeting those 3 guys at the same event was a bit weird.

weird menu

on our last evening in Australia, we ate in a restaurant where the menu, rather than showing us food items, showed only the ingredients in them. for example, you might have a line saying "beef, potatoes, parsley, legumes". 

whilst i understand they were trying to be different, this elicited a number of questions that the waiters had to waste their time answering. what kind of beef cut or how was it cooked - was it a steak, a roast, a stew, a stir fry? were the potatoes mashed, fried, boiled, ...? 

the desserts were even more confusing: "chocolate, lemon, nougat, raspberry" - was that cake, ice-cream, mousse, raw ingredients? were they all in one, all separate or a mixture? 

sometimes, the waiters couldn't actually remember what the end product was, meaning they had to go to the kitchen and find out!

income problem solution: get a job

one of my friends is an actor. he's been acting for more than a decade and, when he had to stop his 'real' job for health reasons, he decided to concentrate on acting, which is very brave considering how insecure this field is in terms of income. 

over a year later, it turns out he's not getting enough money to survive and so he turned to friends to elicit ways in which he could make enough money to enable him to stay put in an expensive city. to me, the logical answer is to get a day job. seriously. i don't understand how this hasn't come up yet. you can't live on thin air and yes, it would be lovely to only do what you love but the reality is that few people get to do that. how this hasn't come up in the last year is beyond me. ok, maybe i'm missing a vital piece of information, but still.

the post office

i applied to a job that required the application to be sent by regular snail mail, so once i was done on Saturday afternoon, i drove into town to do just that. however, i was nearly there when i realised that i'd forgotten the all important line that you need in French applications. for a minute, i was torn between sending it anyway or going home to fix it and the practical side won. i would send it on the next day. on a Sunday? well, yes. we are lucky that one of the post offices here is actually open on Sundays. i checked the times online first - you never know - and drove back in the next day. i had timed it so that i could go straight from there to my nearby rehearsal, so it wasn't a big deal, but it was still infuriating to find the doors closed when i arrived. turned out that as of the 1st of February, the office was no longer open on Sundays! 

i was determined that this envelope be sent as soon as possible so i took the bus in early Monday morning to go to the closest office. it was 5 minutes' walk from the bus stop but after 10 minutes, i had to come to the conclusion that it had closed and the building had been torn down because it just WASN'T THERE. i took another bus and went to the next post office i knew of - this one was open, as it should have been so three days and three post offices later my application was finally sent. 

quote of the day

today is Mardi Gras and as such, lots of school kids are wearing costumes. explanation from a kid dressed up as a medieval knight - "this thing is used to call people and such thing ; and this thingy here is for putting stuff in it." there are many words for 'thing' in French, so it sounded reasonably verbose if very vague.

changing decade

for most people, changing decade is a momentous occasion, and i most definitely remember turning 30 being one of those - i couldn't wait to leave the 20s behind. but for some reason, turning 40 wasn't a game-changer. it was a great opportunity to celebrate with friends but other than that, i didn't feel anything in particular, whether negative or positive. at this stage, it feels like just another year. which is good, i think - i remember how many people around me freaked out when they turned 30 and i was wondering whether this would be it for me, but it seems not. or at least, not yet.

daily advice

one of the presents i got for my birthday was a daily positive message thing and i just thought i should share today's: "buy yourself a present and request that it be wrapped; explain that it's for a really very important person."