Life and Other Monumental Moments

A self interview covering first kisses, fights, the good times, the bad times and all those crazy feelings that live somewhere between the memories.

The first time I watched my favourite movie:

After much consideration, it’s actually pretty recent. Monday, May 18, 2009 in fact. The first time I saw “I Love You, Man” with Sarah at Hoyts at Victoria Gardens. Sarah and I are big Paul Rudd fans and we were always going to see the movie as soon as it came out. She ended up getting free media preview tickets through her work and we were very excited. I remember I had to leave work quickly to make the trip up to Melbourne and get to the 6:30pm screening on time – and it was totally worth it! It lived up to expectations and when leaving the cinema I could be quoted as saying “I can’t believe there is a movie that has Lou Ferrigno AND RUSH in it!”

The first kiss:

It was with a girl called Rebecca at a blue light disco in my first year of high school (when I was 13 years old). The place where it was held was a combination of a large indoor playground and big dance floor area with DJ, so when you were done with dancing you could check your shoes in and go crazy on the playground! When you entered the place, it always smelled of that “light grape” fog machine fog smell. For reasons I cannot explain, we chose to make out in the most central of locations: atop the largest tunnel slide in the whole place. Most people talk awkwardly of their first kiss or how bad it was, but if I am to talk honestly, it was actually quite great. She was about a foot shorter than me, very cool and completely adept. Given our location, we were of course busted by staff member and given a stern talking to in a side room by the boss/organiser, but we felt so cool that it didn’t matter and nothing really sank in. All I remember is them asking our ages. I think they were concerned about a disparity in our ages because our differing heights perhaps made it look so. After all that business, I remember feeling on a high and feeling like there were waves coming over the back of my head, pushing me happily into the ground. Time also really seemed to speed up. It was 9pm before I knew it and the lights came on. I collected my shoes and headed home. My aunty and uncle were over visiting my parents and I had a hard time playing it off to the eager crowd when attempting to pass though the family room to my bedroom. I had a drink of Fanta and went to bed. Because we had exchanged numbers at the end of the night, I consequently spent the rest of the week shitting myself every time the home phone rang (yes, pre-mobile problems!) for fear of discovery/teen embarrassment. It was unnecessary, as I found out the next week that she lost my number anyway, or at least claimed to have.

The person I’ve had the most intense romantic feelings for:

Sarah. It’s always been Sarah. When I first met her she was calm, confident, carefree and for a respective teenager had an enviable vibe of ‘had it togetherness’. I am innately fascinated with discovering unknowns and anything which is not me, and she was some unknown magical force that came out of nowhere and intrigued me to no end. When we were in school we wrote letters to each other and I sent numerous emails to her from IT class – writing in white text, so no one could see what I was typing. We have just passed the 12 year mark of being together (inc. 1 year of marriage) and it is still literally like the first year we met. We still laugh a lot. The hugs are still amazing. Her smile still reels me in like the very first time I saw her. The magical nature of these kinds things you would assume might diminish over time, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. I conclude that that means true love (despite having no other point of reference). She has made my life infinitely richer and I will always have the most intense romantic feelings for her.

The thing I regret most so far:

Since moving out of home I have come to realise how much effort it takes to run a household. So, my biggest regret would be not helping Mum out much around the house while I was living at home. I probably did more than your average teenager and was of course preoccupied with numerous social engagements at that age. With that said, I certainly didn’t waste the time that I could have been using to do housework. All the time with Sarah was the beginning of a lifetime of love. All the bass playing and practice ended in great bands with friends and unforgettable playing memories. All the time on the computer ended in me getting the best job I have ever had in my life. So, if not housework, I wish I just sat and talked with her more. I think she felt trapped in our home and an increasingly loveless marriage. She was likely subject to a lot of under-appreciation in the household (with 4 males, you try and keep that kind of shit in order!). They were certainly the main factors that sent her off the rails for a bit. She’s good now and going all around Australia with her new partner, being happy, free and travelling – just like every gypsy, fortune teller and tarot card reader told her she would. We talk more often now and I love hearing about all her crazy road adventures after a day of working inside in an office. I tell her that she’s got it pretty good.

The best birthday I’ve had:

I would have to say my 6th birthday. I had all my friends from down the street, school friends from Prep and my cousins at my house. It was a loud mayhem. We were all entertained by Bimbo the Clown; he was from Corio, drove a VK Commodore and was intensely brilliant. Being the earliest notable birthday I can remember, it’s always going to have nostalgia on its side and that makes it hard to beat.

Other notable entries, which I’d put right up there with the best of them, include:

• My day of birth when I was born in an apocalyptic storm
• My 10th birthday when the storms struck again. I got an awesome Sony boombox and had a birthday at Ayces (All You Can Eat, now known as Gateway) with school friends. It was a sunny day then it turned bad. Really bad. It rained and hailed so hard that the restaurant started to flood with water coming through the down lights in the ceiling. I still continued to peruse the desserts. The indoor playground area was then off limits, which sucked because we wanted to play the “controller mounted to the cabinet so kids can’t wreck them” SNES consoles. We had snowball fights out the front upon leaving and the streets were flooded with water a foot high.
• My 21st birthday at The Seaview Club. It was ‘D’ themed, as I believe also was my Dad’s 21st. There were a myriad of crazy people and costumes. Everything from Darth Vader and Daft Punk right through to a dishwashing machine. The Seaview Club was about a 400m walk from my house and everyone walked backed there for camping and campfire after. As a consequence, there were no designated drivers and that party is often famously talked about as the one party where every single person was really inebriated. The camp fire turned into a massive bonfire when my brother and some of my mates decided the reserve wood pile would make a good flame. It was memorable at least, I’ll give them that.
• My 26th birthday in San Francisco. Drinks are cheaper in America than Australia so much relishing was done. Partied hard and crashed hard. Luckily I had leftover burrito from Misson to pick me up the next morning.

The worst Christmas I’ve had:

2001. I got a Walkman box with no Walkman in it. To get over the disappointment of the Walkman, I went outside and flew the Star Wars box kite that I also got. Winds were always on the heavy side up on the hill where we lived and I later found out that box kites are designed for light winds. It took a fierce and direct path into the ground and snapped in a couple of places. By the time I got to the family Christmas dinner I knew the day was a complete write off. In the KK I received a pair of shorts that were much too small. It was comical just how too small they were. I shared a look with my parents (them looking back a bit disappointed knowing the day I had had) and commented with disdain “Well, this will make a good chamois!!”. They laughed, and in that moment we all shared an unspoken understanding that the universe was never going to turn the fortunes in my favour on that day.

The biggest fear:

I don’t know if it just comes with age, but lately I have thought about legacy and the fact that I want to leave behind something more than dirt. I’m only 27, but I’ve been feeling like I want to pack as much into life as possible. My biggest fear is that I’m not doing enough; not soaking in enough life. The thought of leaving chapters of life unwritten upon my death bed terrifies me. Maybe I had a quarter-life crisis or something? I’ve become very goal oriented in the last few years and now feel like I have to use my time more wisely to achieve things. I quantify and qualify those things all the time. In years gone by I wasn’t too worried about letting a year slip past, but for some reason my mind shifted. Having children and investing in them is one thing I feel will certainly fill my sense of legacy. I’m also hoping leave behind something big and great for mankind, if not, then at the very least, a detailed log of an ordinary yet magical life.

The guilty pleasures:

I am a programmer by trade and have no qualms with switching off my brain once in a while to enjoy the simpler things in life; it’s very liberating. Everything doesn’t have to be intellectually challenging all the time – that’s just too exhausting. So, I suppose things that would fall into the ‘guilty pleasures’ category are perceived as a ‘bit trashy’ or non-intellectual and yet still give me utter joy. So here they are:

• “If You Are The One” – a Chinese dating show that can be quite cheesy and is totally off-the-wall unpredictable. The host, Meng Fei, is so dry, blunt and witty that he balances out the cheese factor of the show/format. The format can be harsh and a lot of the time contestants leave without a date – making the wins all the more exciting and valuable. It’s unpredictability is it’s best attribute though. Sarah, overhearing me watching an episode on TV, commented “I didn’t know it was a singing dating show?” to which I replied “It isn’t, but the last two guys have come out singing to win over the girls! God, I love this show!”. On that same episode, one contestant even came in and professed his love for the shows stage manager ..and they went on a date!
• “Beauty and The Geek” – an Australian reality show about nerds and beauties living together and doing challenges. It’s episode after episode of “the beauties are dumb and the nerds are socially retarded” finger pointing and largely demoralising challenges, yet it is somehow completely tolerable. Perhaps even enjoyable. I think the pearlers from the beauties are what keep the show chugging along. In one episode, the beauties had to do a bug eating challenge and in a cut-away one excalimed: “I’ve never even killed a bug, let alone eaten one! I mean, I lived with a moth in my room for six months. His name was Gary.”
• “Paramore” – I feel like they are a band who’s demographic should be angsty teenage girls. I personally can’t deny the tasty riffs and soaring vocals on “RIOT” and it gets fair rotation on my work playlist.

As usual though, Dave Grohl’s philosophy is key:

The biggest fight I’ve ever had:

It was in primary school with another kid called Reece. We seemingly had no reason to fight, but he talked to me like he wanted to start one, perhaps just for the hell of it. So it came to be one lunchtime and many punches went both ways. It was broken up shortly after by a teacher and I was the only one crying like a bitch, not because of the fight, but because of the trouble we were now in. I hated being in trouble.
Thinking back now, I do remember that I did accidentally save a new game over his Pokemon save game when he let me play his Gameboy one time. In his save, he was at least in the 140’s for Pokemon catches. He cried a lot that day when I did that – maybe that is why he wanted to sock me.

The most pride in:

My job and how I got here by sticking to my guns. I knew from the start I was playing against the odds to try an get a fulfilling IT job in Geelong. It became starkly apparent upon completing my VCE, when I visited a local employment agency and expressed my interests in IT. A staff member claimed that there was little work in the field and suggested I try boiler-making instead. Geelong wasn’t exactly the place for cutting edge Web Development companies! Regardless, I went on to study Information Technology (Website Development) at the Gordon Institute of TAFE (East Geelong Campus). It was there that I had my first experiences with Linux systems and the Java programming language. Towards the end of the Diploma, a teacher mentioned that a new web development company ‘Gieman IT Solutions’ was opening up in Geelong and encouraged students to apply. I initially applied for one of the web design jobs, but Gerald saw that my study of the sciences in VCE, the Java language at TAFE and my scientific brain would be better suited to programming and web development. It took me a little while to realise it, but he was completely right. And so it was. Reece Donovan – Web Developer.