Making friends. Again.

When you move around as often as we have, you get used to meeting new people and making new friends. Since we have lived in each place for a limited time, the process of making friends needs to be very efficient – like platonic speed-dating. Often we turn to our countrymen in the search of potential friends. My closest friends today are friends I’ve made since we moved out of Sweden. It’s a challenge to make new friends; finding interesting people, getting to know them, building up a mutual trust that will lead to friendship. So far, it’s been really hard to make friends here in Melbourne. If you come from Europe, Australia’s not that different. Well, what am I saying? Of course Australia’s different. It’s an entire continent just bursting with amazing and beautiful places, interesting and unusual animals and nice weather all year around – except Melbourne, where we happen to live. Melbourne is fairly close to the South Pole, hence the cold winds and the sudden changes of weather. What I was referring to was that the Australian community and society is working in a similar way as the northern European dittos. You can get around by speaking English as the official languages here is English, Australian English that is. They have a tendency to shorten most words; pressies are presents, brekkie is breakfast, mozzies are mosquitoes. Since it’s a modern, Western society, most women work at least part time. Only senior citizens, mothers on maternity leave and a handful of ladies of leisure are populating the streets and beaches of Melbourne on a regular weekday.

Just as I have met some wonderful people – who have become close friends – thanks to our nomadic lifestyle, I have also met the absolute opposite. I sometimes wonder if these unpleasant people are better persons when they are in their own environment and not in the somewhat artificial world that the expatriate life can be? Perhaps this topic deserves a blog entry of its own as I have so many thoughts on this.

We haven’t been here for long and our circle of friends is currently very small but I must say I’m quite happy with taking my time in making new friends. We are not in Melbourne for a limited time only, there’s no rush. I don’t need to socialize with people just for the sake of socializing. With most things and matters in my life; I much more prefer quality over quantity. Also when it comes to friends. 

"Friendship is not about whom you have know the longest, it's about who came and never left your side"

Daddy can too!

I went grocery shopping on Friday morning. Well, it was late morning and the supermarket was full with Friday shoppers, mainly women and quite many small children. A father was pushing a shopping trolley with his baby son sitting in the baby chair and a small boy around three years old was walking next to him. Suddenly the three year old says loud and clear: ”Daddy, I need to wee-wee”. No immediate reaction from the dad. ”DADDY, I NEED TO WEE-WEE” shouted the boy. ”Do you really need to wee-wee right now?” asked the dad. ”YEEEESSSS, RIGHT NOW DAD! I WILL WEE-WEE IN MY PANTS SOON!” Shopping women around him started to give good advice to the the father who looked stressed and as if he were searching for a toilet to magically appear next to the meat deli. I kept on walking so I don’t know if the little boy did wet his pant or not. 

I wonder how come a father get so much sympathy when he’s on his own with two children? How often don’t we see mothers with two, three children? Children who are crying and screaming? Do we rush to their aid with advice or help them out? Probably not. I might give the struggling mother a faint smile while in my head I’m thinking ”just get your ill-mannered kids to put a sock in it”. Why are we mothers expected by other women to manage the children by ourselves while we take pity in the men and offer them help as if the men are not capable of taking care of their children? Taking a kid to the bathroom for a wee-wee is a piece of cake. It’s a whole other deal when you need to go to the restroom and you have small children. I’ve been to public toilets many times with my youngest in a Baby Björn, the oldest being only two years old and too little to wait outside for mommy. Half standing over the porcelain chair, lifting the youngest daughter in the Baby Björn a little with the left hand, holding the oldest daughter with the right hand so she doesn’t touch anything in the toilet or tries to open the door. Sure, a little help with the children would have been nice but I managed. 

When our youngest was about ten months and our oldest was two and a half years old, I decided to take a couple of hours off to go shopping by myself downtown Bangkok and leave the girls with my husband. It was Saturday and the maid wasn’t working so he was really on his own.  At 13.30 he calls me, sounding desperate. ”The girls have been crying for one and a half hour now. Something’s wrong. You have to come home right now.” ”Have you tried giving them lunch? They eat at 12 every day.” I asked. ”Eeehhh, no. I didn’t think of that” replied my husband. He fed the girls, they stopped crying and everything was fine. See, a father can take of his children too! I never went shopping without the girls ever again though, but that’s another story... 

                                            Family lunch some 10 years ago....

Dealing with illness: Mommy style

I’m feeling a bit under the weather today. If I were a man, I would most likely be in bed for a couple of days, resting and getting well. But I’m not, I’m a woman. And more importantly, I’m a mother. This means that I can only be indisposed between 21.00 and 07.00. My subconscious somehow always manages to gather energy and pull me together so I can be a somewhat functional mother around my daughters; picking them up i school, serving them snack, sitting with them as they do their homework, cook dinner and make sure they go to bed on time. When I go to bed, I take paracetamol, I spray my nose, rub my feet and chest with Vaporub. Feet you may wonder? Yes, an old trick I learned from a doctor i Mexico. I cannot say for sure that it works, but my feet feel soft and smooth in the morning so at least something good comes out of it. 

I have to admit that I kind of like when my daughters are sick and have to stay home with me. I get to pamper them and fuss over them, watch a tweenie-movie or even an old Disney movie we haven’t watched since they were in kindergarten and loved princesses. 

My husband is not a typical man, he is always well enough to go to work and when he comes home he’s exhaused and collapses in bed only to get up again in the morning and go to work. The man was even considering a business trip when he had chicken pox but then he got so sick he had to go the hospital. Two weeks he had to stay home and I don’t know who was happier when he finally could return to his office, him or me? 

This time it’s not any of my darlings who is sick. It’s me. I realize of course that complaining about my failing health in this blog entry is not the proper way to deal with a sickness. What I should do instead is what many people do as their first action during illness: namely to post a Facebook status informing all my friends of my condition followed by a sad face and dot dot dot in order to get some sympathy and empathy from my Facebook friends. Or I shall go back to bed for a couple of hours. Yup, I’ll go for the latter. 

A wombat and its keeper! It has nothing to do with today's text but I wanted some Australian flair and the wombat is an Australian animal. Voilà! 

Happiness is a new painting

About ten days ago, a handsome man came by our house selling oil paintings. The fact that he was handsome is irrelevant to the event, I’m just stressing it as I haven’t seen many handsome men around. I’ve come to the conclusion that all handsome Australian men are instantly picked up and shipped to the USA as actors and musicians/judges on American Idol. It turned out that the handsome artist was not Australian. Anyway, he was selling his and his fellow-artists paintings and he had some wonderful pieces in the portfolio. We bought paintings from a similar group of painters some  years ago when we were in Sweden for the summer. The prices are always reasonable and the paintings are always unique. We already have many paintings, too many if you look at how many we keep in our storage. But I don’t want to sell or give away any, they are all unique pieces. The most treasured paintings we have were framed in a framing shop and made by very young artists, namely our daughters when they were in kindergarten. I love art. I love handbags too but I realize that handbags are generally not considered as a minor investment although it should with regards to the prices for designer handbags. We bought three paintings from him, bargained of course and got a good price. 

As the paintings are just canvases, we had to have them mounted. The price for mounting at a framing shop was double what we paid for the paintings so we decided to go with the ”do-it-yourself” spirit that is prevailing in Australia as well as in many other countries. I went to a craft shop and got white canvases mounted on a wooden frame. On the way to the car, a young man ran into my left arm where I was carrying the frames and I managed to twist my arm. The young man kept running, followed by a three security guards and a woman screaming ”he stole something, stop him!”. Next stop was Bunnings, the Australian version of Bauhaus and Home Depot to get a stapler gun. As we went in, we met the police who was escorting a man in handcuffs. That Sunday must have been the Festival of Thieves as we saw two delinquents within five minutes. We got the stapler gun and have now managed to mount the canvases all by ourselves. 

Guess what? It feels really good being able to do things by myself and not always hiring people to do it for me. My appetite is whetted! I bought a sewing machine with the intention to mend, alter and perhaps even sew some garments. Wish me luck! Based on my previous encounters with sewing machines, I sure need plenty of it. 

Is there a life after 40?

After dropping my girls off at their schools, I went to the supermarket to do this week’s grocery shopping. The pantry is quite well stocked and I mainly needed to fill up on fruits, vegetables, dairy products and proteins. The menu I’m planning for this week features the French classic Steak Haché, Indian Butter Chicken with saffron rice, spagetti Bolognese and white fish fillets with green pea purée – all dishes are family favorites, even the fish. When I went to pay, the ladies working in the cashiers were talking to each other and kept talking even as one of them were scanning my items. They were talking about how difficult it is to get older and compared their ages. One was turning 45 this year, the other 44. Both looked at least 10 years older. They involved me in their conversation and I had to confess that I’m turning 40 this year. ”Life is over after 40, you know” said the 44 year old-to-be with a sigh of sadness. ”I heard that 40 is the new 30, so I’m keeping my hopes up” I replied cheerfully. ”Yeah, so they say” she retorted and added ”but you actually look good”. ”Ehhh.... thank you”, I said. Luckily the ladies dropped the subject, stopped chatting both with me and each other and just finished my check-out. 

In Europe and USA, turning 40 is a kind of mile stone. All the gorgeous, desirable women like Heidi Klum, Jennifer Lopez, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie just to mention a few, they are all in their 40’s. Here in Australia, the women seem to think that it’s the end of the road when they turn 40. The radio and tv-personalities Chrissie & Jane often make fun of their ages in the morning show on the radio. They talk about their bodily pains and aches, how their teeth are chipping off, hair is falling off and growing where it’s not supposed to grow and so on. Judging from they way they carry on, I would have guessed that they are in their mid-50’s but apparently they are both my age. I don’t recognize any of their symptoms of turning 40 – on the contrary. I think this is the perfect age: I’m old enough to have experience from life and be taken seriously and young enough to do all sorts of stuff and enjoy life. I’m happy with where I am right now, married to a wonderful man and proud mother of two lovely girls. But if I do get a divorce within these couple of years, I’m getting myself a 25-year old boyfriend. I’m just saying.

The power of the Social Networks

I was browsing through the Swedish news and I read that a Swedish singer and his boyfriend had split up yet again, after having reconciled following their ”break up on Facebook when the singer had changed his status to single”.  I also read about a Swedish politician who had embezzled millions of Swedish crowns, she held a high status within her political party and ”is still Facebook friends with several of the Swedish ministers”. Very often the newspapers refer to Twitter, where the White House has tweeted different statements about ongoing matters. I don’t even know if that is the correct verb? Do you say To tweet or is it To Twitter? I’m baffled by the power these social networks have; how the statuses and statements you put on Facebook and Twitter become legitimate information, how accepted it has become to announce family matters – or any other matter - this way. Anyone can open an account under any name and proclaim anything and it’s considered as a Reliable Source of Information. 

My brother and his wife got married about a year ago in Sweden, when they baptized their third child. I was in Kuwait and I got the information at the same time as their other 500 friends when they updated their relationship statuses on Facebook. I was furious to say the least and gave my brother a piece of my mind. My mother tried to smooth things over when I complained about not being informed properly and she said that ”they did update their statuses on Facebook so you did indeed get the information”. Her comment took me from ”furious” to ”boiling mad” and I needed several weeks before I cooled off and could let go of the anger. I’d probably better deny any friction between my brother and me since I’m writing this blog entry and blogs are also considered as Acceptable Sources of Information; we are very good friends and I care deeply about his entire family. 

Personally I’m not on Twitter and I don’t have very many Facebook friends. Facebook is an easy way for me to stay in touch with family and friends all over the world; people I know I would loose contact with if it weren’t for Facebook. I delete people every now and then, people like old classmates from 2nd grade that I haven’t seen since then and wouldn’t recognize if I passed them on the street, people who have just as little interest in me as I have in them, people who want me as a contact because we live in Melbourne – they will eventually be deleted. That is today’s method of ending an unwanted friendship – to unfriend them on Facebook. As I use it as a social tool and put photos of my family, I only want people who care, people with good intentions in my list. That’s why I unfriend every now and then. "It’s nothing personal, it’s just Facebook.... "