Dear family and friends,
I’ve decided to give up on regular social media platforms – so for future updates on my goings-on, I suggest signing up for this blog or checking it sparingly. I’ve found Instagram particularly frustrating this past month. 1 in 20 of the posts on the feed are people I have chosen to follow, the rest are TikTok videos and ads for hair removal. I’m still contactable by messenger in case you are in Sydney and wanna say hi!
Many wonderful things happened over the past month. The biggest was that my best friend from Canada, Chase, flew over to Perth and we spent two days walking around Perth beaches. I don’t miss much about Canada, but some people made it very special like Chase. I also rode a bike around Rottnest Island for four hours on one weekend and finally met quokkas (although I couldn’t get the happy snap everyone manages to coax out of the giant rats). To be honest, I didn’t find Perth anything special. I didn’t have a car, so that was a big downer as nothing is all that accessible. When I arrived, they had just opened an airport train (in 2022)! While in Perth city, I felt quite unsafe, the city centre had quite a lot of homeless people and dark streets with no lighting. But the sights were beautiful, housesitting was fun, and my friend made the week-long trip worth it!
The second biggest change is that I am staying in Sydney for a little while longer. I had been evicted from the place I was living in and had to make alternate plans quick smart. Originally that meant I was going to drive back to Queensland during the last few weeks of the university semester but my plans changed yet again when my best friend Merryn needed a housemate and a new place to stay. Miraculously we got a place the weekend that I needed to move out of my place and we have been slowly furnishing the place. We share the two-bedroom unit with a beautiful feline too, named Hershey. Because we live on a street with Parade in the title, we have concluded that for this portion of our thirties we are “princesses on parade” (that’s a Swan Princess tune in case it didn’t ring a bell).
Semester two is over and all my tedious study days get to stop for a while. Because I’m staying in Sydney for a few extra months, I am deferring my course a little as I’ve got no units that can be completed online now. In its place, I’ll be working full-time as a diploma-qualified childcare educator. I’m kind of nervous about getting back into full-time work. I miss studying already. Other highlights in October were going to an Indiana Jones-themed bar with my ex-housemate, attending two “Halloween parties” where I was the only one dressed up, and buying a candle every time I studied at Ikea.
The movies I watched this month were Hocus Pocus 2 (pretty damn good), Senior Year (meh), Black Adam (not my favourite Rock movie – he’s so serious), and Practical Magic (everyone is so pretty in this movie). Books I read this month were ‘Waleed Aly: On sincerity, compassion & integrity' and ‘They can’t kill us all: The story of Black Lives Matter’. Lastly, my go-to series at the moment is Modern Family. I could imagine myself on a show like that #goals.
That’s it for now folks. Thanks for reading and I’ll catch up with you in December.
Xx May