AUSTRALIA - a retrospective

It is the end of an era and as far as eras go this one has not only been extremely easy to define in terms of beginning and end, but also extremely easy to define as the best era of my life so far. But as it is with all things it comes to a close in a few months and I feel (after 5 glasses of wine) that a look back is worthy of a blog post. So sit back, pop some corn and relax for I am about to take you through the last two years of my life and try and figure out what I have learned and how it has effected me. If you wish to stop reading now I understand (hehe).

I can remember the day I left home to the great unknown as if it was yesterday. The excitement of going to school in a big city I had never ever been before. Sure I had been to both Sydney and Byron Bay before on holiday, but that would not prepare enough for my time in Melbourne. With my first room-mate and very good friend by my side (Linn Therese) I was ready to tackle anything. I never did tell her how much she helped me in those early days and how easy she made it for me to establish a foothold down here once we landed. She was a familiar anker in a new world.

Once the apartment was secures, in the same building in which I reside today, things started to become more and more relaxed. I had a place to call home (something you don't really get from a hostel) things got allot easier to manage. Allocated halfway between my school (Deakin university) and Melbourne city it was easy to make one self familiar with the new city which just so happened to have the same amount of people as my entire home country.

Deakin University was pretty much as I expected, if not a tad smaller then I imagined. Not that I was complaining. it made it all the more easy to get familiarized with the surroundings that would be there for the reminder of my time here. It was exciting to attend a university in another country and I met some people I will never forget, some whom I still call my friends today be they from Germany, Turkey or otherwise. I never did try and get in contact with other Norwegians as that seemed a tad out of point in staying in a foreign country.

As I got to know people in my apartment building love reared its ugly head in the form of Charlotte. As me and my other friends tried to get to know other people in the same building I met her. Beautiful, quirky and artistic she was, at the time, everything I could imagine ever seeing in a girl. I don't really know how it happened, but somewhere along the line she and I became somewhat of an item and I thought I had found true happiness for the first time in....a long good while. Looking back at it and how it ended, which I will not get into here, I see that phase of my time here as a life experience that has made me a richer person and would make me wiser in some ways. For all the pain it might have caused, I am truly grateful for her influence on who I am today.

Being in Australia for two years now I see my self as a richer person and a person that has grown immensely since the time I left. There have been fun times and there have been times where everything seemed hopeless. I guess the most important aspect of my change in the last two years is in truly figuring out not only who I am, but also what I wish to do with my life from here on end. I always said I wanted to be a director, but in my time here I have discovered that writing is my passion and is pretty much the only thing I can ever see my self do for a living. For that alone I value my time here in Australia (that and my new found appreciation for red wine).

I truly know now who I am and what my place is in this world. The only thing that remains now is trying to make a living out of it, but I have faith.

Leaving Australia will probably be one of the most difficult things I've had to do so far in my life as I have totally fallen in love with not only Melbourne city, but the country as a whole. But as much as I love it here I have also discovered that if i ever want to make it as a screen writer then I have to move on and New York is too good of an opportunity to pass up.

There are of course people...one person especially...that I'll miss, but I am confident I'll meet the people I have met down here again. I might be gone for a while, but I can feel it deep inside...I will be in Melbourne again.