for years afflicted; symptoms worsening

my birthday is in less than a week. then i will officially be too old to get a working holiday visa for ireland, france, and a bunch of other places. not that i was planning on uprooting and living abroad for any extended period of time. but now that i realize that option is forever being taken away, it makes me want it! blah blah, the whole wanting what we can't have thing. i'm sure if i could go at any time in my life, i wouldn't be one bit fussed about it. but now my mind if racing - i've only got a few days to apply for that visa or i'll never get to live in france! ARGH!

i'm never going to live in france. accept it, it'll be fine.

i know why they call it the "travel bug". it really is like a disease. so i don't know why people refer to it all cutesy like. "oh, she's got the travel bug, time for a little va-cay!" Ok, thankfully no one has used the annoying and in no way cutesy term va-cay to me. but the travel bug should not be taken lightly! once you've been bitten, you have it for life. and as far as i'm aware, there is no known cure. i contracted it early on, as a young teenager. it's highly addictive, so my condition only worsens over time. i mollify the bug with holidays whenever i can, hoping that a long weekend in vegas will placate it and allow for some restfulness and contentment at home. but the periods of respite grow shorter before withdrawal symptoms set in and i'm in need of a travel fix. i look back at last year - a couple of visits to vancouver, toronto, vegas, 2 weeks in costa rica, not to mention over 3 weeks in thailand - and i'm still jonesing for more!

withdrawal is difficult. i can't focus on anything else except where i'm gonna score my next hit. i hoard money for my next escape. i look at the lonely planet books on my shelf and get lost in flashbacks. i relentlessly explore google earth, zooming in to ogle the details of victoria falls or sigh at the beauty of a remote pacific atoll.

 

 

and like any addiction, i keep pushing for a greater high: something to top the last. come on, i need a fix. whatcha got, whatcha got? you know a little week in mexico ain't gonna do it for me, man! europe? that's for noobs! nah man, nah, i need something with a little more oomph, a little more wow-you're-going-where-awesome, ya know? africa is still my holy grail - anywhere from kenya, tanzania, zambia, botswana, nimibia.... or all of the above! but i'm open to other suggestions.

i'll take what i can get and keep chasing for more. after all, i'm a travel junkie.

Some success! but mostly failure

A while ago i wrote about my superdeeduper sleuthing abilities and how i tracked down a couple of friends from about 15 years ago. I was very excited about the possibility of hearing from them after all this time. i sent out some e-messages, and waited, hoping they wouldn't just hang around in cyberspace, unread.

in my searching, i also came across Leonie, another girl i knew from back in the day. i sent her a message too. i didn't know her nearly as well; she was my friend Cathrine's new flatmate and during a 3 week visit i stayed with them. well she wrote back! she said that i had become a "legend of the flat", and my heart swelled with a twisted sense of pride. sure, i was a legend just because of the non-stop partying that we did, but a legend nonetheless! Cath and I would stay out all night, sometimes stumbling in at 8am, napping briefly, then swigging back a red bull and starting dance parties in the living room. i was 20! i didn't get hangovers, i had energy to burn, i was invincible! oh the stories i could tell... but won't. nope, i'm a (semi-)respectable grown up now, those secrets are what give me the mischevious twinkle in my eye ;)

it was fantastic to catch up with one old pal, but sadly, it seems that Cath no longer uses facebook, as i suspected and Leonie confirmed. sigh.... one friend found, one still lost. I had also sent out a message to my friend Mike's girlfriend, as she was the nearest contact i could find. I never got a response but know she got my message because her facebook profile photo has been changed. BAH! That annoys me. clearly she has logged into facebook since i messaged her. clearly she would have seen my message. why wouldn't she have the courtesy to respond?? is it so hard to say "i'll pass on the message"? or "we broke up and i don't talk to him anymore"? or if i made a mistake and she's not who i thought a simple "sorry, you have the wrong person" would be nice. YEESH! i hate being ignored. even if you're a crazy psycho bi#ch i would be happier to get a "stay away from my boyfriend" themed hate mail rather than nothing. acknowledge my message damnit!!!

ok, calm down. who needs her anyway. stupid jerkball.

so that's that. i'm not giving up forever though. maybe one day Oprah (or whoever the new Oprah is) will have us on a long-lost-friends-surprise-reunion show. yay. :)

in the land of make believe, amanda reigns

maybe it just goes with the territory of being the eldest child, but when it came to playing games with my siblings, i was always queen. when my sister and i played with my little ponies, i had Majesty, queen of all the ponies. all other ponies (ie: my sister's ponies) had to obey her laws and commands. Majesty ruled all ponies! Amanda ruled all ponies! oh, and majesty was usually an evil queen who kidnapped all the baby ponies and locked them in a cave. much more interesting that way. pony games get pretty boring if all they do is frolic happily.

another great game playing opportunity was in the furniture section at the Bay. with all the faux room set ups, the 6th floor became my palace. i was queen once again, proudly surveying all that was mine. my sister was the poor little orphan girl who was hoping i would adopt her. basically the game consisted of meandering through the labyrinth of rooms, amazing little orphan jennie with the grandeur of my estate (a mansion so huge it had over a dozen living rooms and dining rooms), dangling this life of wealth and luxury in front of her... and then not adopting her. needless to say, this wasn't jennie's favourite game. she thought she would get a reprieve when i brought our little brother into the game. surely with a newer player, her status would improve. sadly, no. i was still queen, she was still the orphan girl, but now i had a little prince who also got to break the bad news that she wasn't getting adopted.

always being the evil pony queen or the heartless queen of the Bay eventually took its toll, and made it difficult to lure in my players. no one jumped at the chance to "play pretend" with me anymore. so i learned to compromise. no more royalty and orphans. we became spies instead. we went on missions, we planned adventures, we had code names and secret hiding places for secret documents. we were a single unit,  a team of spies, cooperating and working together!

of course i was still the leader. i am the oldest, after all.