je-t_paris2004.jpgI am a sucker when it comes to French film. If you can choose to ignore their often slightly lewd slant (or at least moments) their utter absurdity throws you into this trance of… wow.

I love it.

They are creative, they are quirky, they are clever, they are beautiful, they are more real – despite being so weird. Much more real than Hollywood much less annoying than Bollywood. That is not meant to rhyme to sound catchy or tacky – why the ‘wood’ suffix anyway…?

I had the immense pleasure of seeing Paris, je t’aime (Paris, I love you) tonight. Jess, my movie obsessed friend again struck with her taste of brilliance and coerced us into making the trek into Camberwell to the Rivoli. It didn’t take much persuasion. Fortunately my taste of foreign film is shared and appreciated by my fiance (Yes, I was just looking for an excuse to use that). He of course can speak much better French than I can… although he is more fluent in German. I know perhaps one word in French – maybe two. I can say something about the woman and the little girl and I can count but I’m never quite sure if I’m mixing it up with Italian. Neither of us really know French very well. Both of us would like to learn. There’s something you might not know.

Regardless of whether we learn, he will always have the better accent.

As said this evening, whatever you say in French sounds beautiful – even if you swear. Whatever you say in German sounds like swearing – even if it is beautiful.

My severe anti-aural learning abilities haven’t ever been all that assistive (Let’s make up words) in learning languages. I can speak Solomon Islands Pijin – which is more than most could boast but it is obscure and not very helpful. Besides, I’m still not very good.

This movie however – like our German-French comparison, was utterly stunning.

The movie is an anthology – multiple directors. You walk away feeling like you’ve been at a short film festival. I’ve never actually been to one. I steal more lines than you might realise.

It’s not about a set plot with beginning, middle, end. It’s beginning, middle and end the whole way through, although sometimes you’re not sure at quite where you’re at. I like that. It says as much about life as the few engagement-rings of wisdom on love throughout do.

Movies

Here’s to sore throats, excessive homework and the car that nearly skidded into the back of mine.

Life

I am finally around to posting! Feels a bit odd, the longish break. Three or so days… hohum.

Geoff’s writing has put a halt to mine! Perhaps not.

I have been rather busy, between uni (Hardly any compared to what I should be doing), early wedding stuff (Too much as to what I should be doing), young adults and general headspace which has been practically non-existant.

Some moments.

Young adults last night was flipped on end as we made fat headway into some ongoing issues, a bit of reconciliation time and God doing some really good stuff.

The BIG Wedding talk with the parents – getting initial ideas and budget out on the table. Fairly exhausting stuff. It makes me a little sick as to how much everything costs. It’s a bit ridiculous. I don’t know where my head is in justifying the money and wanting something really nice and me. Sure it’s a celebration but… Regardless, the afternoon/day was very productive, we tried to cover way too much but hey, I’m glad it’s out there.

Food poisoning, of a very low level. Geoff and I wound up at some half classy, half really not place and the next morning we were on the train together and I mentioned that I suddenly felt rather sick. He said he’d been that way all morning and due to my ‘almost puking’ status I got off the train early and went right back home and ignored uni for the day.

A LOT of emails and text messages. Also some really nice people (some whom I don’t even know in person) have put links up, it’s quite amusing and quite nice:

Ish
Rodney Olsen

So… the wedding ideas continue. I suspect it’ll be a mad rush early on, the eye of the storm in the middle, and the horror at the end… (pessimistic perspective) – really I intend to keep things as low stress as I possibly can. It is after all one day. I intend to have fun getting there. Besides the wedding isn’t the point. The marriage is.

Church Life On The Train Wedding

Yes - this is the real deal! As seen on Bec’s finger

“Kat and I got talking about blogging, she said a certain other person (present) blogs and asked for mine, which I was perfectly happy to give her. Anyway, we drifted up the road to Macca’s after and I was talking to him about it (blogging) note: I did not ask for his blog-address.Tonight when I got home I did something extremely stupid. “Google is your friend” All the time I was telling myself, “Don’t you dare Rebecca! You wouldn’t like it, don’t do it!” and I went and found it. Now I feel traitorous and rather bad and so will have to get to him asap to apologise. I am quite embarassed actually. I shall not read it until I get permission and I certainly don’t deserve it. It was very stupid and I rather regret it, because despite not really knowing him all that well I have a lot of respect for him. Stupid, stupid”

– Taken from “Departing markedly from the usual or customary; extreme

The above excerpt comes from Rebecca’s post on the 26th of April 2006, notable not only for being just barely less than a year ago, but also for what it represents. A beginning. A brief flirtation. Just a very little thing. Not much at all really. The sort of little thing that could easily just get dismissed and forgotten. But it wasn’t.

Yesterday, Sunday the 22nd of April, I started the day with the express purpose of proposing to my dearest Rebecca. I, in this case and unlike any other post currently found on this blog, refers to me Geoff. Given that Bec’s allowing me to write this as a guest poster, (and given the picture in the top left handside) you probably already can guess what the ending looks like in this story. But allow me a little indulgence as I relate to you my best attempt at retelling the story. After all – I did just get engaged: it’s the least you can do.

The day began with a building a little anticipation (albeit a little unintentionally) with a quick phone call to (the very beautiful) Rebecca before she headed off to church: requiring that she bring with her a warm jumper, the camera and comfortable walking shoes on her feet. Suffice to say this may have aroused some suspicion.

Having held on through a ripper sermon from visiting preacher (and Tabor classmate) Gordon Lingard: ironically on “What do we do in the meantime?”, we headed off for lunch. I drove Rebecca to “The Stonehouse”, the place where we shared our first date many moons ago. It’s fair to say that any doubts Bec might have had regarding my purpose for the remainder of the day were well and truly put to rest when she found out we were having lunch there. So we shared a wonderful time of chatting and laughing and nervousness (although ironically less nervousness than the first time we were there).

Once we had eaten, it was time for us to head off for the afternoon’s main outing. After taking a detour through some Lilydale-ian side-streets, we made our way to Steavenson’s Falls, where we had spent a day previously. As we parked the car I had very sneakily placed my car key behind the front wheel, but once we realised that we’d left the camera in the car, my sneakiness quickly became sheepishness.

After a cursory glance or fifty at the waterfall (which for anyone thinking about heading up there, is no longer being lit of an evening due to low water levels), we headed off on the 4km walk to Keppels Lookout. The walk is remarkably steep for the first kilometre, but once you reach “De La Rue Lookout” the hard work is done. So after a joke or two about making her work for it; it was a lovely time of just really enjoying each other’s company and the beautiful views.

Once we eventually arrived at Keppels, we ended up needing to wait about 20 minutes for Anita, Mark, Stu and Robyn (my brother and sister and their respective partners) to arrive. It’s probably worth mentioning that this was entirely due to a piece of poor direction-writing by myself (don’t trust Google Maps). Once the two cars arrived (you might have guessed, as Bec did, that we weren’t going to be doing the walk back, thus the car key thing), we were quickly and sensitively hugged then shunted into the car to wait while they set up. Unfortunately our intrepid helpers had to carefully shoo away a lovely tourist couple.

So we sat in the car and the realisation came that this was all about to happen. Suffice to say that after I was asked to choose a song for Bec (“Green Eyes” by Coldplay – can’t go wrong), we both shed a few tears and had a bit of a pray. It was a very beautiful moment, both being keenly aware of what was about to happen. About 10 minutes later, we were ready to get the show on the road.

Mark, Anita, Stu and Robyn had brought the stew (yes, that stew) which I’d made the day before and Stuart had intelligently thought to bring a camping stove so that our stew could be beautiful and warm. They’d set out a rug for us to sit on, candles, champagne (from Ringwood Jewellers – the best engagement ring sellers I’ve ever bought from!) and very selflessly left me to do the rest.

There was a brief moment of excitement as I half opened the champagne bottle, only to get distracted by the stew on the stove and then suddenly heard a “BOOM” as the cork left it’s pressurised confines and made its way skyward. That broke a little of the tension and lost us a little of the champagne, but once that was dealt with and the stew served, we sat down to eat and enjoyed a lovely stew (even if the dumplings were a little dense).

Once the main course had finished, I snuck the ring box out of the plastic mug it was sitting in, and asked Bec to sit up on the bench. She – looking inexplicably oblivious – obliged. I got down on one knee, gave my spiel (again with a couple of tears) and asked Rebecca to marry me. She said “yes”! We hugged for quite a while, both a little bit giggly, and then I slid the engagement ring on her finger (after panicking internally because I momentarily couldn’t work out which was her left hand).

We had our dessert (Creme Caramel that was just a little more runny than I might have liked), and packed up our things. We were engaged! We still are!!

After the most excitable car trip I can ever remember, we arrived back to my house and both of the families together shared some more champagne, and told the whole story from start to finish (much like you have just read). If you’ve managed to make it this far, congratulations. If you feel like reading what actually happened, you’ll have to read the post being published simultaneously by Rebecca over at TheGeoffRe(y)port.

Life Relationships

party.jpg

Here’s what my 21st speech sounded like,

“Mumble, well Laura (my twin), you always forget everyone elses birthday so here’s something for you *hands across giant I O U poster* , I don’t have your present yet, mumble mumble, mumble, Thanks all for coming and everyone who helped, you did a good job *looks at parents* mumble, mumble, okay, that’s enough I’m going to finish now”

Utterly thrilling. Perhaps I should’ve planned something…

I am however very impressed with the creativity of the majority of my guests.

By way of context, I did have my 21st party last night and it went exceptionally well, aside from working out that I’d forgotten to invite someone whom I’d meant to and it got back to her and I had to call her up to apologise.

The creativity of my guests was beautiful. I think they’ve finally worked out what appeases the finicky nature of one slightly untypical girl… it’s taken 21 odd years.

There were those who gave me art magazines instead of candles, Copic markers, a Kathmandu jacket (I was pretty desperate for a new jumper of some kind and didn’t think I’d mentioned it to anyone), books, many more fun things and a group present of a voucher for an Ipod instead of an actual Ipod! On that, let me talk about gift vouchers.

People really do underestimate the power of the gift voucher. I don’t get the whole, ‘It’s nicer to have something on hand’. Sure whatever, but only if it guarantees a positive response. Gift vouchers not only provide the present, but give the option of choice to the recipient and of complete satisfaction. It’s just smart!

That saying, I still think those who thought outside the box and gave me something that was very ‘me’ did best.

To stop sounding like a selfish, consumeristic moron, I’ll just say that I had a very nice time even if my introversion was pushed to confusion in trying to get around to talk to everyone. We had about 60 or so people show. Dad embarrassed us with a video/photo thing. Our veranda was covered in fairy lights and candles. There was a fire pit out the back, endless desserts and lots of laughing and other such ‘happy’ chatter (I nearly said ‘noises’ but that sounds a bit wrong).

At one stage during the evening someone told me to really stop and take it in. I didn’t. I should have.

Due to not having helped set up (work), I spent this morning cleaning up and this afternoon doing homework. Tonight I shall return to eat leftovers.

Now I can breathe and life can return to normal. At least for a little bit.

Life