I probably should have brought a jacket. Two years to the day since I moved to Melbourne and I'm still making inappropriate clothing choices.

Inappropriate choices have certainly gone a long way in shaping the swirls and fragments of my life. To be honest, my life at 29 is nothing like I thought it would be. As a willful, stubborn, and probably a little self righteous teenager I wrote myself a letter to open on my 29th birthday. Funny, at 15 I must have thought that I had a better idea of the world than my future self would.* Perhaps "a little self-righteous" isn't quite the right turn of phrase. When I opened the letter earlier this year, I realised that 15 year old me really wasn't particularly strong on predicting the future. Life in my 30th year is nothing like I thought it would be. The other night on Survivor, the contestants were cable gliding over the top of the Nicaraguan jungle. Cut away to contestant description of how exciting everything is, and I could hear one of them say "I just never thought I'd be doing anything like this in my life, this is incredible". My own reaction wouldn't have been the same. Nicaraguan jungles feature somewhere on my bucket list, and I don't think I'd be too surprised to find myself in one. The things that end up surprising me are the small differences.

I knew that I would move to Melbourne from the very first time I visited here 10 years ago, so that's not really a surprise to me. My lifestyle surprises me. My career constantly surprises me. For the girl who told her high school maths teacher that she wouldn't have to remember any of the work after the exam, since there was no way she was going to be an engineer, to not only become an engineer, but also be considered and expert in her field, and be flown around the country to talk to people about her (mathematically based) research is quite a different direction to have taken. I zoomed past the age that I thought I would probably have kids at with nothing more than a slight whooshing sound, which really wasn't noticeable over the trance music, and I'm still not any closer to owning a house than I was at 15. I'm not married, I live in a share house, I own a full set of camping gear, and I swim in rivers more often than the ocean. I'm about to drive a very cheap car from Brisbane to Darwin to raise money for cancer research. I drink and smoke more than I ever thought I would, I party harder than I even knew was possible at 15.

I started this blog post on Novemeber 18, 2011, and a week later I voted as a Victorian for the first time. I had planned to make Melbourne a launch pad for my journeys to the rest of the world, but to be honest, I think I might actually stay here a while.

everyone loves a good dress-up

A week ago I managed to clean my room for the first time since I broke my wrist. Unfortunately having trouble lifting and folding things (due to a loss of functionality in one limb) makes it very difficult to keep things in order. Also unfortunately, the advent of Halloween and Eastment St Derby and the consequent costume creation, dress-up and drinking, means that my room is back in pretty much the same state as it was after not putting anything away for 4 weeks. Except this time some of the clothes on the floor are covered in fake blood as well.

It's almost 5 weeks now since the tram tracks on Swanston Street gripped the front tyre of my bike, flinging me helplessly onto the road, landing with my skirt over my head, a few more injuries than I had started the day with and holes in my brand new pair of tights. Not one to be put off by something as minor as a broken wrist and a knee the size of a rockmelon when there was music to dance to, I got Zoe to tie up my bike, and we walked the rest of the way to Parklife. To be honest actually breaking my wrist wasn't really the bad part, neither were the next 5 hours spent in the emergency room. A reasonable prescription of morphine and two amazing friends to keep me company definitely ensured hilarity. The surgery was less fun. And the two weeks of having a supersized and useless arm were even less fun. Things that are particularly difficult to do with only one arm include: Opening bottles (or jars, or anything that you have to unscrew), using a pepper grinder, typing, carrying anything, driving a car, washing your hair, washing the arm that you can actually still use and putting on socks. The cast wasn't even one of those ones that you could write on.

Luckily, the extra pain I went through earlier when they turned me cyborg by screwing bits and pieces of metal into my bones, meant that the cast came off after only 2 weeks, instead of the usual 6. It also means I have an awesome scar. One that looks a lot like I've tried to slit my wrists. Not great for giving out the impression that you're 100% mentally stable, but SUPER AWESOME for a halloween costume...

... especially when you have amazing friends who can make a copy of the real scar, and put it on your other arm, AND lend you corpse-like make-up.

So the upside to having broken a third bone this year is that I got a pretty cool Halloween costume out of it. The downside is that after being knocked over onto my wrist by crazy drunk dancing women at Eastment Street, it still hurts to type.

Thanks to Mr. Murphy and Underground Cinema for the photo. You can see the rest of the photos from the evening here