friendship cameos in my undergraduate degree

1. Country kids who lived in the student apartment block I lived in
When I didn't get into the Melbourne uni college I wanted, things seemed dire as heck. Scrounging around for alternatives, me and my sister ended up living a few streets apart in 'Student Housing Australia'. It was horrible. I lived in a shoebox room and most of the other tenants were quiet asian types. (Sometimes I would be woken up at 6am by the sound of pots and pans being thrown and very loud screaming..!) Though this was a good exercise in living alone, I was overjoyed when I ran into a girl called Laura from Benalla in the lift one day. She had made other friends, Alice and Tim. They all went to RMIT as well, though Alice never went to class and seemed scatty as all hell. One night we decided to go on an RMIT pub crawl as a building. I went along and learnt about those games where if someone puts a coin in your beer you have to scull it. The next day Alice woke up and she had a sore throat. She said when she swallowed it felt like there was something in there. Laura drove us to the hospital and we were in emergency trying to convince the doctors that a possible coin in the throat was worth skipping through all the people with gaping wounds or broken limbs. Alice had to go home to her parents and she didn't come back for semester two. I used to get group texts from Laura saying things like 'happy easter' or 'merry christmas' but I think she has probably deleted me from her phone by now. I think Tim ended up getting into a college.

2. Lindy
I don't really remember how we fell into the same crowd, because we never had any classes together, but for my second semester my 'bestie' at uni was a French Canadian girl called Lindy. She'd done a year of exchange in Geelong and ended up in Melbourne. She lived in an apartment about a twenty minute tram ride away from me and was experiencing similar accommodation loneliness. The difference between her student housing and mine was that hers had a largely unused entertainment room with a big ass tv. We took this as our opportunity to become wanky media students and watched things like Mulholland Drive and Slaughterhouse 5. Lindy was a loud person with lots of enthusiasm. She was also still in love with her high school boyfriend Aiden. One day we went to Geelong to hang out with some of her old friends and see Aiden. It was weird seeing Aiden. Lindy liked the song 'Shake it' by Metro Station and also the band Escape the Fate. She got a job bartending at a strip club and would insist that I went to visit her when she finished work. I managed to do this only one time and it was as weird as I thought it would be, even though I didn't see any boobies. The bar is across from the MCG and apparently football players would always go there after games. Sometimes she seemed a bit like a sociopath and I couldn't tell when she was lying. There was one particular incident on a night when we went out for somebody's birthday and she scratched my arm because I accidentally touched her dermal anchor while hugging her and she tripped another friend of ours, then went home with the birthday person out of spite (but I am not sure if this actually happened). Lindy and I were going to live together in our second year but a lot of my misgivings about became overwhelming and I had to tell her I didn't think it would be a good idea and after that our friendship fell apart. I have seen her on the street probably once since then and made false promises to hang out but I am okay with not hanging out.

3. My media and meaning tutor
For some reason me and my friend were obsessed with the idea of our media and meaning tutor. I was in one of those classes were nobody would speak (a pattern to be repeated for the remaining two years of my degree) and there was overwhelming pressure on those sitting closest to the tutor to say something. For whatever reason, I usually found myself in that position. I found his arrogance attractive for some reason. And because it was first year and we had a bunch of young tutors taking us we would end up going for end of semester drinks. And you know. I ended up being one of those breathy girls, twirling her hair staying around until the end trying to 'get to know' my tutor. Uh now I see him sometimes when I'm studying at uni and every time I think 'jesus, how embarrassing'. Then, 'maybe I can write about this'.

4. The indies
Country girl that I was (also highly influenced by myspace), I spent the first couple of weeks introducing myself to people at uni, then asking what music they were into. Everyone in my course seemed to be really hip, well dressed, into awesome things, confident etc etc. I felt shy and wanted this awesomeness to rub off on me. One night after drinks with a bunch of kids from uni, somebody mentioned wanting some weed. At this time I still had hometown connections and had a stash in my crappy flat. We had a session on the deck at my place. I think another time some people stayed over. I felt a bit jaded that these two instances didn't equate to instant friendship but to be fair the lengths I went to after that basically boiled down to 'facebooking' them and then proceeding to get blog-jealous of one in particular! My first year friendship efforts were fairly rubbish, also I was a passive aggressive bitch. In third year I ended up in groups with all these people who I had revered in first year and found them to be normal/funny human beings.. and I think by that time I'd turned into one of those too.

5. Boy from band who I emailed for a number of months
Somehow I 'got into' a really cute band and via myspace or this blog probably. I began emailing the singer somehow. We had this nice insightful email correspondence for a couple of months and then they played a residency at the Birmy in May and I went with a couple of friends.

We stopped emailing after this. I never really knew what happened, but I can only assume that it had something to do with the fact that I started 'seeing' email boy's friend (who I referred to for some time as 'blog boy' but now is just my regular friend - also cannot write about him here because his friendship isn't a cameo) but maybe it doesn't matter and I just don't understand him at all. We did sort of chat at Campus a Low Hum earlier this year when Toro y Moi was playing and he was having some sort of 'musical epiphany' or that is how it seemed to me kinda. Anyway I feel like their band is still really amazing to see live and I don't really mind but I like emails so people should email me long things of niceness maybe.

6. People from my philosophy class
I have written about these people before, one in my four crushes zine. The person who I mentioned in my zine wasn't really that attractive to me I think but was more a memorable figure for a few months. My philosophy class was handily timed from 4.30-6.30 Wednesdays, so we would, more often than not, head to either the Oxford Scholar (rancid pub across from RMIT) or Workshop (decent, not overly trendy bar in close proximity to RMIT) and debrief about the annoying people in class, like the one girl from my course who would come along every four weeks and be the most verbal person in the class just to compensate for her terrible attendance. So there was the guy from my zine known only by his last name 'Collins', Felix, the German exchange student, Carolyn, the sweet printmaking student who had similar music taste to me and I run into her occasionally and she's as sweet as ever and Madeline, the American exchange student who was as cool as shit, just a real friendly group. We would hang around in the smoking area at workshop and smoke cigarettes and sometimes Felix had weed, talking until 9 or so. Often we would speculate about our philosophy teacher's life and make amusing banter about his silk attire. I was in a dire philosophical/personal ontological state at that point in my life, and I found these gatherings to be a useful extension of the therapy that philosophy class offered.