I’ve decided…

I need to take a trip to Australia.

It’s not just ‘want’. It’s I need to.
Because my best friend lives in Sydney, and we haven’t seen each other for like ten years. And we’ve been developing this interesting sort of relationship. Honestly, it’s quite funny when I think about it.

We hit it off as eleven year olds, same school, that sort of thing. She was slightly older, more girly, and took me on my first ‘girly’ retail therapy session, and bought me my first proper makeup kit. (As ‘proper’ as they get for tweens). And we just had lots of nerdy fun times as kids. I remember back then, I laughed a lot more than I do now. Sort of hyperactive silent, uncontrollable laughter. Like, the kind of laugh that once you start you can’t stop, and it hurts your stomach like hell, and you go all red in the face, and you start losing your voice? Yeah well those were the days…And she used to do funny things with her face and make funny inside jokes that would just crack me up into laughter. It’s a wonderful connection to be able to make each other laugh you know?

Then her family moved, and we made sure to keep in touch. We’d send each other Christmas cards, every year, and updated each other on the coolest things that happened, then we wrote more to each other (Go snail mail!)), and then finally in the last few years we decided snail mail was too slow, and even though we loved being old-fashioned and were SO much better than electronic communication, we had to admit it made talking about the more ‘serious’ issues easier without the time lag, and we could support each other in ‘real time’.

And if you wondered why we didn’t just pick up the phone and called each other? Hm. I don’t actually know…It’s always just been our thing to write instead.

Ok. So anyway, obviously, haven’t seen said bestie in eons, and she’s been nagging for a meet-up for ages – all the people she wants to introduce me to, all the places, food etc. – and we have a mutual friend, also in Sydney who’s having her 21st birthday party in a few months, and of course, we’re both invited, and I really want to go, because I’m close to her as well, and she wants us to sit down for tea and meet her German boyfriend who’s coming over. She met him on her university exchange in Germany – surreal huh? It’s sort of the stuff we joked about before she went away.

So this trip is much, much overdue, and there’s going to be loads to do!

Considering that I live in New Zealand, Australia’s like the closest and cheapest country to visit. But…

I’m a very bad saver.

I like to spend.

On food.

Like, I’ve become quite price INsensitive in the last few years. I don’t really care about the number, or the notes, or whatever. I’ve started seeing ‘price’ as just, something I have to give to get what I want.

- And I don’t see a point in restraining myself? It’s like, if you want a nice gourmet burger then pay the damn price, and you’ll get your real burger with side salad and lightly seasoned chips with garlic. – It’s actually a wonder that I’m not a balloon yet – seriously do eat like a fat man. – Not even a man – but a Fat one.

I’ve cut it down a lot recently. More because I have to save up for this trip, than because I’ve decided to get healthy, but you know, I should really take better care of my body. – And I totally have phases…

See, I’ll tell you where the love for gourmet burger meals came from:

In an effort to eat more healthily (sometime last year), I decided to have salads and sandwiches more often for lunch instead of like, cakes and pies, you know. Then after about two weeks those sandwiches upgraded to gourmet burgers – I can say, triple the calories, and triple the price too. Yeah…I have some sort of two week healthy, two week unhealthy phases.

This is totally old news though, so don’t worry, my eating habits are much more in moderation now. I’ve actually started eating bananas – you know, fruit. I mean, I love fruit, i do – but I usually only like the ones you can scoop with a spoon. I know, I’m a bit weird I guess. So like, I like melons and papayas and avocados etc. scoop-able stuff.

I think it’s time the food rant is over.

So anyway, this trip – is quite the challenge to save for. But I think, it’s something I need to do, and it’s a good time to do it – develop some saving and self-control habits you know? This should be good for me – and as much as I’m not looking forward to restricting my spending, I’m looking forward to a nice mini vacation away. It’ll probably be my first solo vacation as well, (non-family related), and I really owe it to myself to at least go on one vacation in 2012. I mean, since I’ve decided I don’t want to jump straight into the whole ‘career’ thing – because if I do, I know I won’t want to pause if I do – like, this is the only time I feel that I can allow myself to ‘bum’ or to explore, or to just breathe for a bit and focus on my hobbies and things because I don’t have many serious commitments going on right now. I really need to take advantage of this ‘solo’ time that I have right now to do a few things and enjoy being relatively ‘free’ before I decide on something to commit to you know – still working on that ‘finding my passion’ thing. That’s all for now. – You know, I wasn’t even going to write about this, I was totally going to write about work – Well, next time.

Oh, side note: Puss in Boots was such a cool movie!