Friends are fun

Call me the "friend collector" 

I like to collect friends from everywhere I stop by in life;

For example work friends. Every job I have had (with one kinda exception - I have fb friends from Ozmosis but none of us catch up. All were great people though :)) I have found good friends and kept them. And by friend I mean that I still have their numbers and could call them up right now and have a relevant and enjoyable convocation without awkward pauses. And honestly, fb has reinforced some of these friendships. But I have already talked about my love of fb so I don't need to rehash it just yet.

I also still have friends from primary school. One in particular is Bec, who I love to death. Friends all through primary school, then high school, and into today, we will be friends forever!

My high school friends are some of my closest friends, we catch up regularly for a coffee, or a snack, or whatever! We just like to catch up. 

My more recent work friends have also turned into my close friends. The best friends I have are either from Bevilles or Jeanswest, both recent workplaces. 

And I also have my friends from uni, who I don't see nearly enough of, but when we do catch up in turns into 5 hours long sessions at the Pancake Parlour or an equally delicious place. 

Tonight I caught up with some recent friends, who I met while doing the TESOL course. We organised the dinner over fb, and caught up at the Good Luck Teahouse in Prahran. 

NB 

I'm gonna have to go slightly off topic here for a moment and talk about how delicious my meal was at the Good Luck Teahouse.
There was 4 of us eating, and we started with some dumplings - vegetable, pork, and prawn and duck. The veggie one and the duck ones were steamed, the pork was fried but they were so so tasty. I tend not to eat any meat when I go out, I have a hard time trusting any person other than my mum and Kirsty to cook meat. I always worry about how its prepared and cooked... But tonight I are some of the pork dumpling and it was so good! I preferred the veggie one but still it was a big deal.
We also ordered main serves of sweet and sour chicken, fried spice chicken ribs and some noodle dish with meat and prawns. I ate the sweet and sour chicken and the weird noodle dish and they were both great. I am trying to ease into spicy foods, and the noodles were a good level of beginner spice. Hot, but mild. Anyway there was a heap of food (we all got a serve of rice too) and pretty much ate all of it. The whole thing ended up costing just under $100 which I think was pretty good for 4 people eating a shit load of food.
Amanda knew the owners so thats why we chose that particular place but I would totally eat there again. The only downside was that the dumplings took ages to come out. They were made fresh so I suppose thats why, but we were all starving by the time they arrived.
I didn't take any pics because my phone went dead, but please go eat there. It was great.

http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/71/1509157/restaurant/Melbourne/Good-Luck-Tea-House-Prahran#
http://www.goodluckteahouse.com.au/

ANYWAY BACK TO WHAT I WAS SAYING...

So yeah. Basically, I am a friendly chic who has a lot of friends. I also have friends through the horses, but I could easily write an essay about these girls, specifically the club CINC of which I have been a member since the early 2000's. Its kinda like Fight Club, so I can't really talk about it...

The trouble comes when you try to blend groups. I am an avid blender. Networker if you will. I love it when all my friends get along and we can all play nicely together... I guess this isn't always possible when you have such a random mix of people coming from so many different backgrounds. I love that some of my friends all get along together though, it makes hanging out a whole lot easier - one night, triple the friends :D

I am pretty close to my family, but my friends are different. Family you are stuck with - they can't get away from you either. Friends, on the other hand, can potentially ditch you whenever they want. No one forces them to hang out with you, and as such they require a bit more work than the relationships you have with family. Or so I feel (keep in mind everything I write is my opinion, and your own relationships with family members and friends might be totally different... Maybe you pay your friends. Whatever.).

It would be lying if I said I was not concerned about my friends replacing me while I am away. I know I will make new friends, and hopefully add to my eclectic friend collection, but I like where I am in my friend web. I am concerned my place will be shifted, or filled, or removed all together. I put a lot of time onto my friends, and I worry that the bonds we have aren't as strong as I think they are. I'm sure I am worrying over nothing, but its something that I am feeling. Only time will tell how it will all play out, but I am planning on still being an annoying part of their lives. I will still be on my beloved fb, and I will ensure everyone has Skype so we can chat practically face to face.
And I hope they will still message me with what is going on with their lives, and post funny things on my wall, and fill me in on all the goss.

Korea update

The documents have left! The guy from FedEx picked them up from my place today and they are currently en route to Korea. Apparently the little ol' parcel will arrive by 6pm tomorrow night, which I thought was pretty impressive. 

What I was not impressed about was the price - $121.70 to send a small stack of A4 pages to a country that is in the same time zone. And I have on good authority that the same paperwork sent from America only costs $35. I plan on calling them up again on Thursday or something and having a massive whinge. Its stupid that Australian's have to pay so much... Next blog I will do another tally of how much this saga has cost me. Its gotta be creeping up pretty high now, last week I forked out a crap load of money for the Notary and the Apostille's. I would guesstimate around the $400 mark but I will check it out properly. 

Makes me really mad.

And I did my tax wrong. So I am not waiting on the edge of my seat to find out how much I get back. If its less than $1000 I will really flip my lid, because I am sure I should get a fair bit back seeing as I haven't really worked this finical year. And I need the cash to pay for my flight to Korea. GEPIK will reimburse me, but not until the first pay or something so I need to have some money handy to cover the cost and I would prefer not to dig into the last of my savings :s

No other news for now, so reader get away with a reasonably short read tonight! Usually the posts are more like essays (or so i've been told), but at least I am trying to vary the content. 

I will prob do another post at some point about how friends are fun. Cos, well, friends are fun, and I love to write about my friends. They are awesome, and you should be so lucky to have friends like mine.

xox