I promised to tell you about my long misplaced friend Caroline didn't I? It's been a week of reconnections which began with a quick look at schoolfriends.com.au, a website dedicated to reuniting old school friends (or put you back in touch with the miserable cretins who made your school life hell forever ensuring that being within a five kilometre radius of your old high school made your eyes bleed). Take your pick.
I digress.
Caroline and I met when we both enrolled in the Tertiary Orientation Program at Swinburne TAFE in Melbourne. The idea of the course was, if you passed with the marks required, you were guaranteed a place in a Degree course at Swinburne University. I enrolled because I wanted to figure out what to do with my life and I thought it would give me direction. Caroline enrolled because she wanted to eventually become a Solicitor so she could represent the underdogs in our world. I'm proud to say five and a half years after we met, Caroline is about to begin her articles with a large law firm in Melbourne. Me? I finished the course, got a place then realised I had no idea what I wanted to spend five years studying to be so I went back to work.
I still don't know why Caroline and I made a beeline for each other that first day at Swinburne. We talked about it later and decided that the rest of the class were complete nutters and we were not. How incredibly modest of us huh? Anyway, gravitate we did and along the way we collected Gary and between the three of us we managed to cause a string of little uprisings when, surprise, surprise, we refused to follow the party line. What this meant was when we were asked what we thought about anything in particular, and we did not respond 'parrot fashion' we were asked the question again and again and gently prodded towards the accepted mindset. Needless to say that effort failed miserably and we continued to answer as we saw it gathering members as we went along much to the annoyance of our lecturerers. It has to be said that most of them had taught the course subject matter for thirteen odd years so a little bucking of the system was well overdue!
I suppose the other thing that drew us together was our faith. At that stage mine was a little more pronounced and Caroline's somewhat latent but it was the substance to our relationship which feeds it to this day.
We lost touch in the intervening years but I found her just before our wedding in January last year. It was so great she was there after all that time and even though we hardly got a chance to catch up it was lovely to see her. But again we dropped the ball and lost touch. I put her home number into my mobile here in the UK and she lost my email address. However one morning last week in a fit of nostalgia [and an ever pervading feeling that I was floating around this life with no anchors] I called her and once again reconnected. She has email now and whatever your thoughts are on that particular method of communication, it has helped me keep in touch with many friends back in Oz.
Funnily enough those I am closest too hardly ever email me nor I them. I can see Caroline and I going to same way. And I think that is a good thing.
When all is said and done however, I am glad to have found her again...
C x
Listening to: 'Daybreaker', Beth Orton.
Reading: 'The Night Listener', Amistead Maupin
I digress.
Caroline and I met when we both enrolled in the Tertiary Orientation Program at Swinburne TAFE in Melbourne. The idea of the course was, if you passed with the marks required, you were guaranteed a place in a Degree course at Swinburne University. I enrolled because I wanted to figure out what to do with my life and I thought it would give me direction. Caroline enrolled because she wanted to eventually become a Solicitor so she could represent the underdogs in our world. I'm proud to say five and a half years after we met, Caroline is about to begin her articles with a large law firm in Melbourne. Me? I finished the course, got a place then realised I had no idea what I wanted to spend five years studying to be so I went back to work.
I still don't know why Caroline and I made a beeline for each other that first day at Swinburne. We talked about it later and decided that the rest of the class were complete nutters and we were not. How incredibly modest of us huh? Anyway, gravitate we did and along the way we collected Gary and between the three of us we managed to cause a string of little uprisings when, surprise, surprise, we refused to follow the party line. What this meant was when we were asked what we thought about anything in particular, and we did not respond 'parrot fashion' we were asked the question again and again and gently prodded towards the accepted mindset. Needless to say that effort failed miserably and we continued to answer as we saw it gathering members as we went along much to the annoyance of our lecturerers. It has to be said that most of them had taught the course subject matter for thirteen odd years so a little bucking of the system was well overdue!
I suppose the other thing that drew us together was our faith. At that stage mine was a little more pronounced and Caroline's somewhat latent but it was the substance to our relationship which feeds it to this day.
We lost touch in the intervening years but I found her just before our wedding in January last year. It was so great she was there after all that time and even though we hardly got a chance to catch up it was lovely to see her. But again we dropped the ball and lost touch. I put her home number into my mobile here in the UK and she lost my email address. However one morning last week in a fit of nostalgia [and an ever pervading feeling that I was floating around this life with no anchors] I called her and once again reconnected. She has email now and whatever your thoughts are on that particular method of communication, it has helped me keep in touch with many friends back in Oz.
Funnily enough those I am closest too hardly ever email me nor I them. I can see Caroline and I going to same way. And I think that is a good thing.
When all is said and done however, I am glad to have found her again...
C x
Listening to: 'Daybreaker', Beth Orton.
Reading: 'The Night Listener', Amistead Maupin
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