Adelaide is not god's waiting room
Well okay, maybe it is to some but that means that lots of other places are too. No, Adelaide is the perfect place to live. You can do as little or as much as you like, but it will rarely force you to do something. As a friend pointed out recently, perhaps thats the problem, it lets you be slack and get away with things you probably couldn't in a more competive city. Still its a shame. I like the life I've built here.
I arrived in 1996 from a medium-large town in NSW called Nowra. The differences are too many to begin to describe. In a strange quirk, I had to leave high school and go back to primary school because of the different education systems (did you know that what they call prep in Victoria, is kindergarden in NSW and reception in SA?). High School wasn't going exactly to plan for me. I'd had heaps of friends at the end of primary school but it didn't translate. Things were so much more hardcore and i was just a nice half asian boy.
Back in primary school, things didn't get much better. Holden Hill North is now closed and i think i can safely say good ridence. It was so small, i was in a composite class of thirteen year 7s and about eighteen year 6s. There wasn't much chance to make real friends halfway through the year except with the social death kids, as Jonathen Franzen might put it. I'm ashamed to say that it bothered me so much that i tried to act like the cool kids (who I realise now were utter imbeciles). I remember getting poeple to sign a book and write few words. I found it while packing a few days ago and had read it (all 20 small pages of it). I'd forgotten what a rotten time i'd had, it almost made me cry. The comments were a mixture cruel and indifferent mostly, appart from a small few from the social death kids. I threw it away.
After that i spent a term at Banksia Park High School where i was equally misfitted until we moved yet again and I started at Norwood Morialta which was much better for me. Here i learnt about drama and started a cult called The Mulligraters with my best mate Leslie. Every recess we would have to walk to the gym and back to the courtyard before doing aything else. Normally it was scabbing money for zooper doopers. My favourite colour was pink, fairy floss flavour. On a good day we may have scored 5 between recess and lunch. It was years later that I learnt what a mulligrater was, when i saw it hanging in Leslie's mum's Kitchen.
Wow, I could go on for ever. Nowadays The Mulligraters are all but powerless and forgotten. Leslie's in Sydney being successful and I'm about to go and study sound at RMIT. Its a bit like a full circle for me because my mum's family is from Footscray in west Melbourne. I lived there for a bit when i was very young after we got back from New Zealand. The circle, briefly, goes like this - Auckalnd (Grey Lin), Melbourne (Footscray, Yarraville, Port Melbourne), Hastings (mornington peninsula), Nowra (NSW), Adelaide and now Coburg.
After the intial hiccup, Adelaide has been great for me. Just recently it has really began to make an imprint on me. Its certainly the closest thing that I've had to a home town. I used to think i had no home town, that i was a citizen of the world and that I'd just be moving on and on, but now the anticipation of leaving is beginning to nibble and pull at me. I'm going to miss it.
I arrived in 1996 from a medium-large town in NSW called Nowra. The differences are too many to begin to describe. In a strange quirk, I had to leave high school and go back to primary school because of the different education systems (did you know that what they call prep in Victoria, is kindergarden in NSW and reception in SA?). High School wasn't going exactly to plan for me. I'd had heaps of friends at the end of primary school but it didn't translate. Things were so much more hardcore and i was just a nice half asian boy.
Back in primary school, things didn't get much better. Holden Hill North is now closed and i think i can safely say good ridence. It was so small, i was in a composite class of thirteen year 7s and about eighteen year 6s. There wasn't much chance to make real friends halfway through the year except with the social death kids, as Jonathen Franzen might put it. I'm ashamed to say that it bothered me so much that i tried to act like the cool kids (who I realise now were utter imbeciles). I remember getting poeple to sign a book and write few words. I found it while packing a few days ago and had read it (all 20 small pages of it). I'd forgotten what a rotten time i'd had, it almost made me cry. The comments were a mixture cruel and indifferent mostly, appart from a small few from the social death kids. I threw it away.
After that i spent a term at Banksia Park High School where i was equally misfitted until we moved yet again and I started at Norwood Morialta which was much better for me. Here i learnt about drama and started a cult called The Mulligraters with my best mate Leslie. Every recess we would have to walk to the gym and back to the courtyard before doing aything else. Normally it was scabbing money for zooper doopers. My favourite colour was pink, fairy floss flavour. On a good day we may have scored 5 between recess and lunch. It was years later that I learnt what a mulligrater was, when i saw it hanging in Leslie's mum's Kitchen.
Wow, I could go on for ever. Nowadays The Mulligraters are all but powerless and forgotten. Leslie's in Sydney being successful and I'm about to go and study sound at RMIT. Its a bit like a full circle for me because my mum's family is from Footscray in west Melbourne. I lived there for a bit when i was very young after we got back from New Zealand. The circle, briefly, goes like this - Auckalnd (Grey Lin), Melbourne (Footscray, Yarraville, Port Melbourne), Hastings (mornington peninsula), Nowra (NSW), Adelaide and now Coburg.
After the intial hiccup, Adelaide has been great for me. Just recently it has really began to make an imprint on me. Its certainly the closest thing that I've had to a home town. I used to think i had no home town, that i was a citizen of the world and that I'd just be moving on and on, but now the anticipation of leaving is beginning to nibble and pull at me. I'm going to miss it.
posted by Pocket at 1:15 AM
2 Comments:
You when to holden hill north primary hey haha me too crappy place that was.
went woops
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