Tuesday 2 October 2012

Canguru, diz-me tu.


So again, snapshots of life from the past few months, in bullet-points:

-       What a summer! I’ve literally been all over the place, to Malaysia, the States, and Portugal… I’ve enjoyed the travelling, as tiring as it was, but I’m also happy to be back in Cambridge.
-       I have a flat! And it is in the process of becoming a home. It’s the first time since leaving home that I’m not sharing my kitchen and living room with a bunch of other people. I can leave my toiletries in the bathroom! I don’t have to worry about dirty dishes piling up because other people aren’t responsible enough to do them! I have space. And I can decorate! I never bothered very much with personalising my previous rooms in Oregon and here in Cambridge (other than by leaving lots of my stuff lying around, very neatly of course), because they always felt very temporary. This flat could be temporary too, really – I’m not sure I can keep it next year. But still! Like I said, it feels more like a home, probably because it’s more private.
-       Wedding planning is a lot of work. Especially when you have to plan a couple of different events in a couple of different countries… from neither of those countries! There are so many things to think about! It hasn’t been too overwhelming though, and I think we’re on top of things (so far!). We’ve also had lots of support from our families, for which we’re very grateful. We have dates and venues pretty much set, which was our aim for the summer, so yay! Now for guest lists, invitations, dresses, flowers, rings, music, flights…
-       Putting on a veil with a wedding dress makes a wedding DRESS aWEDDING dress.
-       Planning a wedding is a lot of work, planning a couple of weddings is even more work, and planning a couple of weddings while writing up a PhD is just plain intimidating! But also exciting. It’s nice to see my work come into fruition (at least, I hope it will), and to have things fall into place. After two years of running around trying to get lots of fieldwork done, it’s nice to be a bit more settled and to be able to focus on results. Just don’t ask me what my plans are for the following year yet.
-       As this is the final year of my PhD, I’m going through a bit of… separation anxiety? with regards to my status as a student. After my PhD I won’t be a student anymore! There’s no other degree that is a natural progression from this one, just… a career (which sounds too adult-y, ugh). Some people argue a PhD is pretty much a job, and is really the start of a career, but still, while doing a PhD I am a student. I get student discounts. I have a flexible schedule. I don’t have a restrictive amount of leave. I don’t have to pay council tax. So I’m going through a bit of a ‘carpe diem’ phase now, where I want to do EVERYTHING! I want to go for lots of random lectures, I want to learn a language (or brush up on the ones I know), I want to dance, I want to play badminton, I want to travel… andplanmanyweddingsandcompleteaPhD. I’ll ride my wave of gung-ho while I can.
-       I’ve also been going through a stage of nostalgia lately. I think it’s mainly due to the fact that my flat is currently internet-less, which has meant I’ve had to find alternative ways of entertaining myself rather than surfing the net mindlessly. One of the things I’ve been doing is working my way through the movies I had on my external hard drive, which I never got around to watching previously. And since I’ve had to access my external hard drive, I’ve also stumbled across many documents and pictures that I have stored in there, many of them pre-Cambridge, and some of them even going into my early teens! I don’t know if nostalgia is the right word for it, really, because I don’t have the same longing for the times past as I would have had I gone through these things two or three years ago. But it’s been a feeling of fondness. Seeing all the people that were a part of my life, and people that were a part of my life and still are… and looking at myself at 14, 17, just before going to the States, in the States… it gets me trying to remember what was going through my mind then, to remember what my life was like, to remember what the relationships I had were like and to ponder on what they have become.
-       And finally, I will end on a bit of a cryptic note – because there are some things that I want to remember in the future, which are a bit too personal for such a public place. I want to remember the conversation we had by the river, the three of us. I want to remember scales and arpeggios. I want to remember your patience, your indulgence, and your generosity. And I want to remember this part of the journey with Him.


PS. The title means ‘Tell me, kangaroo’, from a Portuguese song. The full line goes ‘Tell me, kangaroo, how many hairs have you… in your nose?’

PPS: I have recently learned that ‘Hungarian’ (as in, a person from Hungary) is ‘HĂșngaro’, which to me sounds a lot like kangaroo in Portuguese. And that tickles me.