Been thinking bout the nature of friendship just now, about the ebbs and swells of people around me over the years. Although friends are the new family, according to trendwatchers (family? didn't that implode back in the sixties), I don't buy it. I find it easy to get along with most people, enough so to generate familiarity, in-jokes, conversation on demand if I want to but at the same time, I wonder how much these things mean. Earlier this year, after a previously blogged unfortunate incident involving a Thai drink, salmonella and stomach eruptions, I was groaning in my bed while bad, bad things were shifting in my belly, plotting a sudden rush to my gullet and my friends-and-housemates were of minimal use or comfort; some help, but not much. I had to return to the family home to get a proper fuss made of me. While I'm glad to be living free and central, the ties of friendship just don't have the same kinds of obligations as blood. Sadly. A little off track there... oh. And as for my two weeks of depression prior to job application going in - interest minimal from non-related parties. It shits me when this happens, because I've generally been the counselor-type for my friends; I take an interest, try to work the serotonin receptors, console, pat, hug, blah-de-blah. OK, so I choose to do this, because I like it and I like the insides of people (it feels more real) but at the same time, reciprosity is lacking. Perhaps it's because I'm mostly sunny and smily even when not. Ah, who knows.

--------------

Small excitement: Snuck into a uni ball on Wednesday night for the second year running (seriously, who pays $75 to get drunk and dance to the Nutbush?) only to realise that I am now in my fourth or fifth year of uni (it blurs the further in you get) and that there is a distinct, clear and definite divide between me and the first/second/perhaps third years who filled the room. So, the ball itself was mediocre; fully subsidised drinking, bad dancing, painful music. We were herded from the ballroom by a security man genetically engineered for stupidity and aggression (small, piggish eyes/fat face/reveling in the authority he really, really doesn't deserve) and gingerly stepped over vomit to escape.

But then, in the line for the afterparty at Cherry, a wondrous occurence: a pretty girl made eyes at me, and I not only Did Not Freak but made conversation, found she was English, interesting, rather beautiful, and here for four weeks only (in that order). I immediately promoted myself to holiday fling and spent the rest of the night talking, dancing and (yay) kissing sweetly while dancing on the slightly raised bit on the Cherry dancefloor (before realising that the cloud of gyrating bodies had moved on and we were the main attraction). We fled to Stalactitites for four am coffee and talk and wonder. Oh, joy. Not only this, but I got to see her again on Friday and bounced off walls and ceilings on Saturday and Sunday on the strength of this meeting and boasted wildly and liberally and freely. And thanked my lucky stars for this: it is Quite Rare that I am pursued in any form, even rarer that I manage to get past the wall of um and what-do-you-do's, rarer still that I meet a girl prepared to forgive my paranoia - she gives me number; drunk, terrified of not seeing her again, I ring it immediately, to check if it is - it rings in her hand and I am suddenly hugely embarassed. I have no class, whatsoever. Presumably, I've transmuted that into charm (can't think of another plausible explanation). So, life is good. I didn't see it coming, which makes it wonderfuller still.