I started writing the previous post quite a while ago, and so it's all over the place. It starts telling story about me, which is unrelated to the original point, and then stops after I realized I was talking about something completely different.

Basically, I'm not our partying, not because I am an "academic" stuck-up private school snob who studies continuously and who's closest friend is a computer, I don't think anyone can be all of those at once (I am though, in the many ways different people see me), but because I both choose to learn about stuff all the time (knowledge addict [but not a statistics freak]), and am too much of a control freak to get off my face.

I'm the only person, perhaps besides Benita, and some people who may not "know" me well who actually know me, with the last two probably having the best picture.

its a friday night y arnt u out partying?

said Benita's sister when she saw I was logged onto MSN Messenger tonight. Or maybe it's Benji's sister, I'm not sure anymore.

I'd just finished reading her (Ben ji/ita 's) comment on Noushi, and so ... well it kind of reinforced the doubts I've had over the last few years about just what I'm doing with my life.

My first memories are of the time I spent as a little kid, playing with my next-door neighbour, Alison. We used to play in her cubby house, which was built across a bridge spanning a 3 metre drop from a retaining wall behind their house, dress-ups inside, "Mums and Dads", board games, and with dolls. Yep I had a doll, His (it was definitely male) name was Jack, I think. We had baths together, my hair had girly things put it in it, and I was always over at their house. We moved two suburbs away when I started school, and the friendship, whilst still there becomes more remote each year.

My Brother arrived when I was two, and from what my parents have told me, I was pretty tolerant of him, just ignoring him (and others in general) when they took my toys, and the like. We started going to playgroup when I was a bit older and for the first time I met people other than relatives or neighbours.

When Ali went to pre-school, I had a lot more time by myself, and my parents thought it might be time to send me to pre-school, to be around children my own age (Ali is 5 months older than me, and was therefore a year above me in the school system). I hated it. For the first week I cried every morning when my parents dropped me off, and I hid under the building in a sand-pit area with toy blocks, alone. My parents decided I wasn't ready and I spent the rest of the year at home with mum. The following year it was back off to pre-school, this year time with much more success. I was a quiet kid, and still am relatively quite now.

Throughout my early years of school, I didn't have a specific group of friends, I'm not sure anyone does, but rather, everyone gets along with everyone else. As the years progressed I continued to stay friends with everyone, and my time was spent with large groups of people. In year 5, with the introduction of 3 multi-age year 5 / year 6 classes, I was seperated from most of the people I had chosen to stay with (I was later to find out I had been moved to allow for a teacher to have a class with only one "trouble maker" whilst my original class had none), and my considered friends slowly focused in to a smaller number of people.

The people I had settled in with however, had not as much in common with me as they did with each other.

The following year, the boundaries set by our class allocations were gone, but I found myself, staying with some of the people I had been around the year before. Whilst being clumped up into groups of friends, I continued to mingle with the rest of the year. Year 6 was strange in that it seemed that the group as a whole became closer as our time at primary school drew to an end, with everyone being more accepting and open to each other throughout that year, with year wide soccer games, or games of tip not uncommon.

I was unique in that in the midst of the chaos which occurs on a primary school playground I once found the time to calculate the energy used for some activity using Einsteins E = mc ^2 written in the dirt near the cricket nets. I was a library monitor but played soccer at lunch with the others, was only in trouble twice my entire school life, and never had a detention.

I've always been a person who asks "Why?", not so much out loud, but in my mind, which resulted in me continuously thinking about the reasons behind peoples actions, and words, and about everything in general. This probably magnified in year 5 where I talked less than others in many conversations.

Over the holidays between Primary school and High School I began to listen to the BBC World Service late at night, after stumbling across it being rebroadcast on the radio (ABC NewsRadio - 630 AM). This led to my mind opening up to a much wider world, and I took a much greater interest in what was happening in the world . I picked up on High School quickly, despite not having any older siblings, and took to the 6 period day well, with results being maintained at a high level throughout 7 - 10. My english was pretty average in years 7 & 8 but a good teacher in the later helped me to improve to the stage where I was able to do Advanced English in the school certificate.

blah blah blah

None of this really says anything about me though. I think what I'm trying to say is that despite thinking and working and being nice to everyone, I have no real direction.

Warning - Random Thoughts Follow.

What am I doing and What is it that I want to achieve by doing so?

Why did I write this blog?

I don't go out on friday nights, but I'm not a slave to school or a workaholic and I haven't studied in a shamefully long time.

I know a bit about computers - so am I a "geek"
I get good marks (or used to) - so am I a "spock" / "nerd" / "stuck-up prick"
etc. etc. etc.

I don't know who or what I am or want.

edited 1:40 AM 29.05.2004

The smell of popcorn from the local cinema's drifted over the road as I walked to the old station masters cottage where the drinks are stored at work. I was reminded of childhood trips, though there weren't many, and of more recent visits to the movies, with family and friends. A warm nostalgic feeling swept over me, and I opened the bolted door with a smile on my face.

Walking into the darkened storeroom, smelling the petrol from the gardening equipment kept on a shelf near the door, my smile faded, and I was reminded of the events which were occuring at that very moment, at different places around the world.

I felt sick and depressed.

Children starving while their mother makes your next pair of Nike$, rhetoric rhetoric rhetoric.

It's true, and It get's to me.