theducks | And now it's been 10 years, I'm still wondering who to be

Alex leaving Perth, 1998
Originally uploaded by theducks

(with apologies to Ben Fold Five)

On this day, 10 years ago, I left Perth on Cathay Pacific to begin my semester of student exchange in Canada. Pictured is an 18 year old Alex, ready to leave the country for the first time, and on his own. I'm not sure I knew what I was getting myself into (or, admittedly any fashion sense.. I ditched the plaid in late 1999 ok? :P). Talk about jumping in at the deep end, but swum I did.

It was so much fun that despite it being the dead of winter, I extended my stay for an additional semester. I don't think I can ever repay the kindness of so many people who helped keep me sane and grow as a person while I was over there. I remember sometimes walking down UC Hill to my residence and just pausing to ponder the enormity of how far my parents were away from me, and how I wasn't in Australia any more.

For many other people I met at UWO, it was their first year of university (it was my second), and most of them, like me, their first time living away from home. I remember being slightly envious of them being able to go home to visit on weekends, but you know, I never got very homesick, aside from around christmas time seeing how much it would cost to fly to Sydney and back and knowing it wasn't going to happen. My parents would email me, and I'd call them every few months. It was really breaking free of home. Also, I stopped biting my nails. I suspect these two may not have been unrelated, but moving on. It was still nice to see my mum walk out of immigration at Pearson Airport in May 1999, having not seen her since this photo was taken in August 1998.

Since finishing there in April 1999, I've been back 4 times (2002, 2003, 2006, 2007) to visit friends from my time there, and oh my god how I love Facebook. It's so amazing to see what my friends have made of their lives. Three of them married Australians, for example. I went back to my old dorm in 2003, during summer, so it was empty. As they say, a house is just four walls and a roof, a home is the people in it. It was an interesting experience, like walking through a deserted land I used to know well.

I remember sitting at my desk on one of my last nights in T302 at Sydenham Hall, listening to a few MP3s on MacAmp on my Powerbook 1400CS/166 and having it hit me. "It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right, I hope you had the time of your life", "but don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got till its gone"

Youth is wasted on the young. Mistakes are wasted on the stupid.