A Letter From Natalie

This evening I received the most wonderful thing in the mail. It was not a pay check, or a big parcel containing the contents of yet another needless online shopping spree. It was a hand written letter from Natalie.

It's been a tough couple of weeks, at uni, at work, and at home. I was starting to feel trapped in my own routine, treading water, running in circles and not going anywhere. But there's something so beautiful about the letter, whether it be her handwriting or the scribbled out words, or the slanting lines. It's just so real. As I read it, it reinforced in me what I promised I would never let go of, but I fear I was starting to; that the world is a big place, bigger than I can possibly imagine, and it certainly doesn't revolve around me. And there are others out there, who are just as real.

Reading what I just wrote, it sounds a bit silly. But it's the truth. It was something we promised to do after she moved down to Bunbury, write each other. I thought it would be a nice thing to do; I never knew how important it would turn out to be. It's hope incarnate.

And none will hear the postman's knock,
Without a quickening of the heart.
For who can bear himself to be forgotten?
- W.H. Auden

Jump Into the Fog

Where am I? What am I doing here? Is this really where I want to be? I just don't know any more.

Milo's Experts

The expression "Monday's Experts" refers to those people at your workplace or uni, or down at your local pub, who think they know how to run things better than everyone else. For example, they will come up and tell you exactly how and why their football team lost the game on the weekend, and then they will go into incessant detail about how the game should've been won; running you through key moments where players and coaches and umpires should've done this, and should've done that. Most of the time it's all in good fun, but sometimes it can be plain annoying.

Anyway, recently I have noticed that at the place where I work, I seem to get all these Monday's Experts commenting about the way I make my lunchtime cup of Milo. I shrug off the the usual "Chris you're not a kid anymore, make yourself a coffee like a real man". But then there are those who want to get technical...

"Chris, geez that's a shitload of Milo you've got in there" one of my colleagues told me as he peered over my shoulder into the mug, in which I was heaping multiple teaspoons of chocolatey goodness.
"Well it's better than it tasting like plain milk" I said. He swept off, tsking me.

On another occassion, as I was standing at the kitchen bench, stirring my Milo and minding my own business, another one of my workmates prowls around the corner, and poking his face into my mug, with a half-sympathetic, half-amused look on his face, goes: "Maaaate! What you do is you boil the kettle, and use a little hot water to disolve the Milo at the bottom, then you add the milk! That way you don't have to stir it".
I said: "But I like the stuff that floats to the top after I stir it"
And he replied: "That's why you spoon a bit of Milo on top at the end". And he made a funny "duuuuh" noise like some kind of camel, and snickered off.

"Geez" I thought. "Can't a guy make a Milo these days, without someone poking their sticky beak into my mug and handing out smartarse advice?"

What's wrong with stirring, anyway? I find it therapeutic.