I can’t wait to fall in love with you

[Summer Love – Justin Timberlake]

So I am aware that I haven’t written much for a while. Mostly, life has been pretty routine – I meet up with Mela, I go to work, I have some shifts that are terrible, some that are fun. Mela and I have had a few small arguments but nothing close to a fight. I’ve gotten her Christmas presents and she’s gotten me some as well.

As you can imagine, last night was NYE 2011. Putting aside the “oh my God it was only, like, yesterday that I went to the city for NYE 2010”, I was pretty excited because we’d gotten a hotel room together in the city. Awkwardly, the room was right next to my work, the very place where I can’t be seen because I was “home sick”, so I spent a lot of time cowering behind Mela when we passed my work in case the managers were about.

We met up at Glen, as usual, and took the train up. There was still time before check-in, so we had lunch at this Vietnamese place, except I felt like fried rice, so of course I ordered a Pad Thai Fried Rice at a Vietnamese Pho restaurant. After eating our fill, we took the tram down to our hotel room, checked in, got all excited at the prospect of a night together in a decent for how much we paid hotel room. But not 10 minutes into our honeymoon beyond the threshold mania did Brendan call for me to pick him up from downstairs. There was a bit of a whinge on Mela’s behalf who, understandably, seeing as we hadn’t seen each other properly in a few days, wanted some time alone first. But I got Brendan, and we hung out in the hotel room for a bit watching TV until we went to Coles at Melb Central to get some snacks because I remembered being hungry the year prior. Took almost an hour to decide what alcohol to buy and ending up buying a tiny bottle of butterscotch schnapps which I will say now, sucked. We passed by Dani and Ben eating crepes outside of Harajuku crepes, thus seeing a 2nd year of accidentally coming across Dani in the city on NYE. We went back to the room and watched Man Vs Wild until Brendan had to go see his friends. So then Mela finally had her time alone with me.

At around 7:50, 8, we headed off to go have dinner with Jen in Richmond, seeing as it was also her birthday that we were counting down to. We went to Pacific House on Victoria Street, and since we arrived late, they ordered already. It was fine, because the food was amazing. Once again, we ate our fill and with bulging stomachs hugged Jen goodbye to catch up with my uni group in the city.

Caught up with Jacky who was standing waving his arms in the middle of Swanston Street looking for us, and we went to Gin Palace (a small bar just off Lt Collins) for a bit. Jacky brought along an entourage of our lunch group, including Clare whom I haven’t seen in what felt like forever. We didn’t stay in the bar for long, seeing as it was already 30 minutes to midnight. We went back to Fed Square, and on the way, Mela, Little Sam and I lost the rest of the group. After a good quarter of an hour desperately pushing through crowds and trying to get calls to go through, I finally got through to Clare, who told us where they were. Running like mad people and hurting, I am sure, numerous merry-makers, we managed to run from Fed Square, through the crowd and down to Southbank opposite the Langham in around 5 minutes, arriving to where the group was a mere 2 minutes before midnight.

Missed the countdown, as we always do on Southbank because we don’t have speakers there, but we knew that we’d ushered in the new (and final?) year when the fireworks flew into the night sky. We watched in awe as this year’s (which was much better than last year’s) fireworks lit up the Melbourne skyline, and then we watched in amusement and some degree of horror as the top of the Art Building spire caught on fire, sending massive flaming debris down.

Mela and I trudged back to our hotel room, somehow managing to get there before 1am. We had our showers, then snuggled up in bed with the schnapps which were quickly abandoned. We ate some bread and ham that we bought, even though she was still full. We hugged a lot and told each other many sweet things before feeling fatigue pull its veil over our eyes by 2, and going to sleep.

Sleep was a bit difficult, for me at least, because it was quite warm, but it was nice to be able to cuddle the one you love at any given time during the night. We woke up and had some more cuddles and sleepy talking before her phone went off to let us know that we had to get ready for check-out. Quick packing up, a few moments of Ben 10 on TV, and we said goodbye to our first hotel room together.

The day was already heating up monstrously, and we ate congee at the same restaurant as I had last year with Annie, Anna, Josh and Julia. Then we took the Cranbourne back to Oakleigh, and said a long and sad goodbye as we took our respective buses. But the goodbye wasn’t for long, because I can feel that 2012 is going to be the year where I don’t (and really shouldn’t) feel like I am alone at any time.

Alex.

Cucumbers And Tomatoes

Or tomatoes, however you say it.

Thanks to April, last night I went out for the first time in weeks. I went to the city in my nice blazer, with my hoodie in my bag in case it gets cold. My blazer has many buttons because of a certain feature, and so when I got on the train, a lady going to the footy smiled and said to me, “if I ever need buttons, I’ll come to you.”

On the tram from Flinders Station to QV, I had many many people stare at me. I later said to April, “either I’m ri-DI-kulusly good-looking (said in the same way as Zoolander), or each and every one of them was trying to figure out if I am a girl or a guy.” April agreed it was probably the latter. I mentioned that it happens every morning on the tram, too, to the point where I get paranoid and start sneakily wiping my face to check if there’s anything on it.

We sat on the fake grass area of QV, April, Si, Simon’s 2nd April (i.e. his newly bought PS3) and I. It got very very windy and cold, so I went for that cool hipster look where you wear a hoodie inside a blazer, and passersby think “woah, bro, that’s a sharp shoulder line because of the blazer, but a nice and cushy neck-line because of the hoodie. Righteous!”

A small girl began running circles around us, airplane style, so I screamed “WHEEEEEEEEE” which scared her off.

Soph, April’s little sister, showed up and we went to meet April’s childhood friend Tom on Swanston St. Tom is in the army, and has finally started having weekends off. He is training to drive tanks – the ones with 8-wheels and they’re fast so they’re not very good under fire but they’re FAST – and to handle weaponry, obviously. He has many stories of rough training sessions and wilderness camps.

Tom hasn’t been in the city very often, and if he was honest, he’d never had Chinese food at a Chinese restaurant before. So April decided Chinatown would be a good idea, until I reminded her that there is a chance Tom a) might not like the food and b) can’t use chopsticks (when I mentioned this, Tom sort of said, “chopsticks?”).

In the end we decided to hell with that, and went to Lygon St for Italian. Ironically, we met up with one of Soph’s friends called Pasta (nickname, obviously). We were waiting for Pasta next to an Asian busker playing Guang Liang songs on his keyboard.

Walked to Lygon St via Russel St, and it took a lot less time than I thought it would. We ended up going to/being pulled into this small restaurant near Grattan St. The manager who pulled us in was very friendly and incredibly heavily-accented. Fresh home-made pasta, she boasted. Better than the restaurant next door. Simon found an online review of the place, and the review mentioned that the manager would persuade and repeat about the freshness of their pasta. We supposed that we’ve just been had by a nightly routine.

Tom was served Coronas with a wedge of lemon inside the neck of the bottle. He says it tastes interesting, so I think I will try that next time.

After a while, Soph’s boyfriend Erh- arrived (now, I am more than certain I mentioned Erh-. In the post about Hamwu’s birthday last April, when I talked about a guy who walked around in a Scream mask scaring and shadowing everyone, that guy was Erh-) with his friend Anvo. I can’t remember Anvo’s name properly so I will say Anvo but it probably isn’t Anvo. Anvo and Erh- are Turkish and Pasta is Iranian. I have not really hung out with non-Asian guys much so yesterday was an eye-opener, in a good way.

Anvo was a fun character, he would be talking to me one moment, and a girl would walk past and I would just have to wait a few minutes for him to turn back around to me. The dinner table conversation got a bit MA rated when they started evaluating April’s true vegetarianism, seeing as she’s dating Si and everything. (Go on, draw the dirtiest conclusions from that.)

Erh- asked April if there is a vegetarian way of eating meat. April replied, “lick it.”

Laughter.

Soph said, “well, what about cucumbers and tomatoes?”

Laughter.

Erh-: “Cucumbers never go soft though.”

Soph: “What about when they get old?”

Laughter. A passing waiter gave us the eye.

Then, the conversation moved onto whether there is a Halal way of eating meat (still thinking dirty here, folks). Then ensued a demonstration of praying before “killing”, and at that point Tom was looking horrified, I was looking confused (being at the far end of the table, I get parts of the jokes only) and Si was just laughing.

After the meal, we said bye to Erh- and Anvo, and then bye to Soph, Pasta and Tom at Melb Central. Took the train home without too much problem, despite there being a slightly strange girl trying to play some sort of hand game with herself loudly.

I apologize if any readers were offended by what I wrote. I don’t think it’s excuse enough to say “but the jokes were made by people of the religion” but there it is…

Alex.