Screw it.

I've always had this paranoia that if I post something on Monkey Socks -- or anywhere online, for that matter -- it'll come back and haunt me in my future. I used to have an LJ account which was found by a random blogger and she added me as a friend -- and it turns out she used to do psychology at my university and still lived in the suburb. I've never met her but thing is, considering how big the whole wide world is, the fact that she added me randomly and turned out to be a fellow Brisbaner was almost freaky. Even if the city's huge, and that there are about a million of us on the internet with our billions of accounts.

Today I decided, screw it. I am going to tell a story, and if my cousin reads it, then so be it. I hope she laughs. Worst comes to worst, she lives in a totally different country to me and has never left it. So, for now, I am safe.

As you might know, I went overseas for the Christmas holidays and met up with a million cousins I'd either never met before because they were born after I last visited, or ones I couldn't remember. Trying to catch up on seven years can be a fair bit of work. My cousins in particular have the strangest way of 'getting to know you'. On one occasion, friends of my cousins conducted an interview, asking me what my name was, how old I was, what my hobbies were, what Australia was like ('are there any Aboriginals? What about kangaroos?') and, stranger still, whether I had any talents.

Maree's right when she says it sounds like I was in a beauty pageant.

Anyway, I now have some of those cousins on MSN, and we talk sometimes. They like to ask me the same questions, like what my life here is like.

Just yesterday my cousin asked me how I was, and to describe Australia.

'What is it like? I want to go there one day. And see Hillsong.' (did I tell you that Filipinos are religious fanatics?)

I told her about my little church and how I wasn't really all that religious and how I loved living here. I told her about my university and directed her to my university's web page and basically gave her a virtual tour.

She didn't say much, and when I finished she said to me,

'ok, cool. So, how much do you know about God?'



It was then that I realised that, perhaps, just maybe, my conversational skills were amiss.