A few nice days

First Episode of the Exciting Times of Chris Judd and Rebecca Twigley

(Partial credit to Mr Glen Trevaskis)

Setting: The Jugley Residence. A pristine Melbourne apartment. Nothing too flashy. Everything is meticulously ordered.

Scene begins: The door opens, Chris walks in. He's wearing football clothes. Rebecca is sitting on the couch. She looks up as he walks in.

Chris: Hi (pause)

Rebecca: Hello (pause)

Chris: I've just been at football practice (pause)

Rebecca: Oh yes? (pause)

Chris: Yep (pause)

Rebecca: How was that? (pause)

Chris: Good (pause)

Long Pause

Chris: Everyone was happy I won the Brownlow. (pause)

Rebecca: That's nice (pause)

Chris: What did you do today? (pause)

Rebecca: Just some more modelling (pause)

Chris: Oh good (pause)

Rebecca: Yeah (pause)

Chris: What's for dinner? (pause)

Rebecca: Pasta (pause)

Long Pause

Chris: Oh yum (pause)

Long Pause

Rebecca: Shall we watch Packed to the Rafters tonight? (pause)

Chris: Yeah (pause)

Rebecca: Got much on tomorrow?(pause)

Chris: Just football. (pause)

Rebecca: Good (pause)

Chris: You?(pause)

Rebecca: Just modelling (pause)

Chris: Good (pause)

Rebecca: I'll get dinner on (pause)

Chris: Thanks (pause)

Rebecca exits to the kitchen. Chris sits down. Turns TV on.

End scene.

The "Great" Storm

University Wars

To begin with- I attend Edith Cowan University and I am immensely proud of doing so. I enjoy my degree on a day-to-day basis and I find my classes stimulating and relevant. I have no problem with getting myself out the door each morning and attending the classes I am supposed to attend. Similarly I have no problem with the work outside of the classroom that is asked of me because it is always interesting and most of the time fairly challenging. This was not always the case.

I am one of the "transients" who have undertaken the much feared or revered "Mid-degree Uni Swap". And I am a great believer in it.

Once upon a time I attended a different University. The University I attended had a much higher entrance level than the one I attend now and when I was accepted to this university after Year 12 I was very happy and looked forward to beginning my Arts/Communications Degree after a gap year (a year seemingly miss-spent getting very drunk on the Gold Coast for 5 months, and then getting very drunk at home for the rest of the year). I began the degree finally and for the first 6 months things were fantastic. I met wonderful people, I learnt new things about English and History and Anthropology and I somehow managed to pass my German language unit. I spent almost all of my time either at Uni or out somewhere socialising with my new-found friends I had met at Uni. Life was brilliant. The next 6 months were somewhat similar although the time I spent in class at Uni was waning. I spent a lot of time AT uni, but most of it spent either in a dank room with fellow Arts Students (oh the hours spent listening to cool music, engaging in friendly banter with like-minded individuals and waiting for a particular boy to come in or walk past) or on one of the many grassy patches at Uni, in the sun, talking or just generally ignoring the work I should have been doing. The summer break rolled around and I was able to forget that I was starting to hate my classes. But sure enough, the next March when I trudged back into those classrooms I had suppressed all memory of over Summer, my heart began to sink. Slowly, week by week, my attendance, which I had promised myself at the start of semester to maintain, began to diminish. So significantly that by about week 7 I would say I was going to no lectures at all and getting away with the bare minimum of tutes. This is not how I had envisaged my University life to end up. I still loved GOING to Uni, but that was just to see the people I liked. Classes were a by-product of the situation I had created for myself. And finally, after weeks of neglecting them because of a broken heart, I gave up on assessments altogether.

Woe. Despair. What to do now? I loved the people at Uni and the life my University offered me, but surely actually learning was the point of the whole exercise?

Eventually I knew something had to give. And finally it did. I can't remember the precise moment but for some reason I picked Edith Cowan as my new place. Something about it seemed modern and fun and up-to-the-minute. I looked into their journalism courses (the career I had always imagined myself following in High School until every single person I came across who wasn't doing commerce or science at Uni next year said "Oh yeah I'm going to be a journo when I grow up") and made my mind up. It was time to evacuate the rut I had created for myself at The University of Western Australia. And I am happy to report that I don't regret my decision for a second. I was genuinely happy with my friends at UWA and to some extent if I had been more considered about my unit choices I may have been able to make more out of my tertiary experience there, but, as is often the case retrospect is a beautiful thing.

My point in all of this is my general sense of infuriating rage when I feel the need to defend the University I attend now. I am not an unintelligent person, nor do I go to Uni with unintelligent people. I am constantly stimulated by the work I do at ECU and whilst, yes, I miss the social life at UWA I do not miss the general feeling of "we're better than you" that I am frequently faced with when dealing with UWA alumni. This is an unfair generalisation because I have maintained a close relationship with plenty of my UWA friends who are not snobby about going to UWA and they have politely always made sure never to rubbish my decision to switch. And I am grateful for this. My parents also both attended UWA and I feel very confident that they are more proud of me now for having made a decision to up-root myself from a situation I wasn't happy with to a the situation I now find myself where I genuinely love going to Uni each day and I am fantastically proud of the work I am doing now.

So with this in mind I find it outrageous that anyone who has only attended one tertiary institution in their life can have the audacity to make a judgement about another. I don't want to be one of those ECU students who feel the need to justify themselves to an audience who, by the mere fact they do not attend ECU, will never understand that it does not matter which University you attend, so long as you are enjoying and doing well in your degree. But circumstance and exasperation has lead me to be one of these ECU students.

If you are unhappy with what you are studying, do research about other degrees or universities and make a change. If you hate your degree you can be damn sure you're going to hate the career that goes along with the degree. Don't feel obliged to stay where you are because reputation tells you to. The worst thing that can happen is you waste a few more years getting boozy at a new Tav and a few more HECS dollars, but hey, you tried right? The best thing that can happen? You land exactly where you're supposed to be.

Football Evening.

I look forward to nights like this for weeks.

It's 10.00pm on Saturday the 11th of September. I have been sitting in the lounge room with my dad for a few hours now. We had dinner together before (chicken stir fry) and we both half-heartedly watched the Everton-Manchester United game. (3-3 in case you were wondering). But now, finally, the culmination of our hours spent together thus far this evening. Chelsea, live, at West Ham.

I can't quite explain to anyone who doesn't love football, or their parents, how much these nights mean to me. Both because I love Chelsea more than I love some people that I know and because I happen to be friends with my dad. (2 minutes in and Chelsea have just scored with a header by Michael Essien!).

Dad comes alive when Chelsea play. He's loud, passionate, aggressive, but most of all, he's incredibly funny. We started off the broadcast with an aggrieved cry from Dad because Florent Malouda has been left on the bench (replaced by Kalou...surely not Carlo, what are you thinking?) and Malouda is in Dad's Fantasy Football team. I personally have no interest in Fantasy Football, but Dad likes it, so I care. Well maybe not care, but I can appreciate Dad's pain. He loves his boys. And I love them a bit more because he loves them. We share it together. Sometimes people come and watch the football with us, but it's always the best when it's just us. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the many jokes that have grown out of Saturday and Sunday nights in front of the TV with the boys. "Paul Scholes" (Chris and Sophie rhyming slang for goals), "Get out of the way Ref" (a familiar cry with Joshua Nissen now), "Better late than Neville" (I can't remember the birth of this, but the boys liked it). These moments will never leave me and I rarely enjoy life as much as when I'm watching The Chelsea Boys. Again, I can't explain this to anyone who doesn't love football, but if you do you will understand.

I get in trouble when I talk too much during the football so I can't imagine the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard is appreciated much by Dad so this is it.

HELLO, HELLO, WE ARE THE CHELSEA BOYS.

Inspiration

I have a class at university. It is a digital video class and I frequently look forward to this class because although I find the content overwhelming, the tutor is a dynamo.

He is a director and I have never met anyone, ever, who is so passionate about anything. His 'thing' is cinema....not film...cinema. I get to class with a smile on my face everywhere in apprehension of the inspiration he's going to install in me in regards to my 'future' in producing film. I haven't the heart to tell him that I'm not like all the other people in my class who are all first year film students, I'm the dreaded journo student among the ranks so I can't share in his excitement for our collective cinematic futures. But I can share in his excitement for cinema in general. And for creativity. I started something today that I have been meaning to do for ages because of him. And he'll probably never know that it was basically down to him and I'll forever be slightly indebted to him for it. Even if nothing ends up coming of my endeavour I still have him to thank for making me get off my fat ass and starting it. I might tell him one day. Probably not though.

He always asks us at the start of class what movies we've seen lately and for the first few weeks I had been crazy slack in movie watching so I had nothing. All the other film-buffs in the class had cool movies to boast about and I sat quietly cursing that I hadn't watched anything cool enough to mention. Finally one week I sucked it up and told him I'd watched Contact (for a science class but also because it reminds me of being a little girl) and he didn't let me down. He liked Contact as much as I did. I told him another one today. He liked it too. He's a good man.

Although this little writ is very dull, I wanted to make a note to myself that inspiration doesn't always have to be monumental. It can be as much as watching someone else get super pumped about something and just wanting to be that super pumped about something as well.

I'm exhausted. Standing in a room full of white people bopping to hip hop (most of whom are fairly boozed) is full on. Good though. When you've got a highlight to look forward too though.

I now have less than 6 hours to sleep and not much else to say. A weekend of science journalism awaits. Fuck yes.

Picture note: I'm going to Brooklyn in just under 4 months. Jay-Z you better not hide cos I'm coming to find you.

New Loves.

Wow three years in between blogs is OK right?

Yeah you know it.

I still haven't finished that Nazi book. It's sitting on my bookshelf smirking. "Oh Yeah I'll

read it while I'm on the train", um no.

There are far too many books on my shelf that haven't been read yet. All purchased with fantastic intentions. But all left sitting without any purpose. I won't keep making empty promises because to be honest, choosing between the particularly easy to read "Jeremy Clarkson on..." and "Nabokov, Details of a Sunset and other short stories" I'm going to go with Jezza. Not only is he already sitting on the bedside table so he wins by default, but he's got a few more laughs up his sleeve than old mate "I like writing books about sexy 11 year olds" Nabokov. Nabokov was a gift however. So I can't really blame myself for not reading it. Well I can, but it doesn't count. Where is this going? I don't know.

What I wanted to look at this evening was Hip Hop and my burgeoning relationship with it.

For the moment I feel the relationship is moving forward nicely at a pace that I am enjoying but the ever-present sad reality will not for

much longer keep itself politely hidden. The ever-present sad reality of which I refer to is the fact that I, a young, small, very white girl from Australia will probably never be "down" with hip hop. Now I know I sound like your year 10 science teacher who says he's "down" with what kids are into, but it's true. I love the beats, I love the rhymes, I love the swagger and I love the stories, but as much as I can appreciate hip hop in my own way I'll never be able to present this outwardly. For most people this is fine because music appreciation is simply that- appreciation and nothing else. But I want the life that hip hop is offering me. It's more that music at the moment. I'm learning about a whole way of life that will never exist for me. What pains me the most is how much the stories I'm hearing are beginning to mean to me and how I will never be able to impress this upon anyone. Imagine a little white girl telling the RZA or Doom or Q-Tip that they know what they were saying when they wrote "X". I don't even pretend for a second that I do know what they were saying- but I want to be able to explain the impact hip hop is having on me. But for the moment I'm stumped. So I'll present the visuals.reality of which I refer to is the fact that I, a young, small, very white girl from Australia will probably never be "down" with hip hop. Now I know I sound like your year 10 science teacher who says he's "down" with what kids are into, but it's true. I love the beats, I love the rhymes, I love the swagger and I love the stories, but as much as I can appreciate hip hop in my own way I'll never be able to present this outwardly. For most people this is fine because music appreciation is simply that- appreciation and nothing else. But I want the life that hip hop is offering me. It's more that music at the moment. I'm learning about a whole way of life that will never exist for me. What pains me the most is how much the stories I'm hearing are beginning to mean to me and how I will never be able to impress this upon anyone. Imagine a little white girl telling the RZA or Doom or Q-Tip that they know what they were saying when they wrote "X". I don't even pretend for a second that I do know what they were saying- but I want to be able to explain the impact hip hop is having on me. But for the moment I'm stumped. So I'll present the visuals.

Don't use "I"

It already seems like months ago. A quick trip out of town thanks to some inspiration from a newly discovered ally and things seem to have shifted monumentally. Everything is simple. Well perhaps not everything, but generally grievances are lessening. Outwardly so anyway. The warmth and immediate comfort was something that has not happened for quiet some time and it's already fading but knowing that it happened and knowing how good it felt is enough to hold onto for the time being.

The small bay behind the giant rocks was magic. The calm, contented person sitting on the sand with a gorgeous Serbian goddess was a shock to the system. But a pleasant surprise none-the-less. Everything about the time away was refreshing. New company, new stories, new music.

The smell of Down South is what makes it so removed from what we wake up to here. The trees and the air and the water and the rain and the fire places. I (damn it) don't think there's anywhere in Australia I'd rather travel too now. This place is too perfect. I can't quite express how at home and freeing it is, but I haven't had a better time in a long while.