Enough about me, let’s talk about YOU for a minute: Luscious Llama

Carly as most of you readers know is a wonderfully interesting and exuberant person. She found me through my now defunct University Literacy course blog, on our mutual devotion on antiquities such as May Gibb’s Gumnut babies. Henceforth I recently reignited my interest in blogging – something I’ve done on and off since my high school years.

My name is Lanelle. I am fairly young, have nearly finished a double degree at University and I plan to become an art teacher. Currently I freelance as a fine art photojournalist. I’ve exhibited work in numerous regional and city galleries in NSW. Other than that I live a pretty standard life somewhere between Newcastle and Sydney.

Blogging, alongside the internet has been the growth chart against which I’ve lived my life. I’m twenty-two now and my family first obtained a computer in 1990. I suppose I never really considered diary making and so forth because I never had anything to write home about till I started commuting into Newcastle for high school everyday. For that I started with the Livejournal platform, which allowed me a glimpse into the lives of other persons in my year cohort at school which I would not normally get to know. I enjoyed reading about their thoughts and kept mine and I think this is how I became interested in writing, moreso than posting pictures and what not. Livejournal for me was the centre of my life from late 2003 onwards and I kept it till I was entered into a HSC blogging competition in 2006, my final year of school. It wasn’t an official competition by departmental standards or anything of the sort but a competition that sort of ran on an unofficial HSC advice forum website – kind of like vogueforums for high school kids who are more interested in pop culture and insulting one another’s intelligence, than style notes or the latest designer for Target collaboration.

To get selected, I had to compose a short piece on why I would be a suitable candidate. I don’t remember the particulars but I did include that I was Asian, a band photographer and lived in a very ‘white’ regional part of NSW, had a ridiculous amount of interests that I loved the arts, wasn’t bothered with mathematics and wasn’t in it for prizes or anything. I simply wanted to meet new people that were interesting an around about age from other places.

There were 9 of us to start off with, 4 schoolgirls and 5 schoolboys from the eastern seaboard areas. I was lucky enough to make the first culling round, where the 3 other girls were voted out. This I thought was unfortunate because I was basically the only girl amongst 5 boys. So I got a lot of the female votes I believe simply because I was the only school girl left. Some other bloggers made their entire Year 12 cohorts vote for them but I only told a few friends because I didn’t want to make a scene within my already bizarre high school (I attended a performing arts school).

I would write about things that happened in my day, subject content I found pointless, silly things my pet cat would do, my anxieties, my joys, mindless trivial things like what to put on your Year 12 jersey, food I liked to gorge myself on, troubles in my life, my less-than traditional Asian family, pictures of my HSC art project, and just life basically. For some reason my blogging style seem to appeal to a wide variety of people which have gained me some of the loveliest of friends post-HSC. Best of all it also gained me my current boyfriend, Mr Maus who’s good mate had entered in the competition and gotten his entire year to vote for him and write awful comments (of the trolling variety) on people’s blogs. Nevertheless Mr Maus could never find it in his heart to write something nasty about me and we ended up keeping in touch, meeting up and falling in love once the competition was all over. So that is my nice little story about why blogging has been a very important part of my young life so far.

I think my manner of writing is fairly predicable – I don’t have an original writing style, given that my creative abilities lie within photography but I do enjoy expressing myself. I also love reflection and in writing this particular post I can remember the kind of person I was back then – and how all these experiences have shaped the person I am now. I think that blogging, particularly as it is a typed form, offers a very interesting introspective methodology on which we can see ourselves live to this modern age. It seems to me, a new kind of historical footprint. It’s one that requires us to carefully choose our words and opinions but one that finds us open to the possibilities of a global community.

And that folks, is the end, and here I leave you with some pictures from my life 09-10.

Me and Mr Maus on Skype

My Sydney loves at some fancy place.

An Andy Warhol 21st.

Morpeth Times with Newcastle Loves

Cats are excellent. My favourite domestic creature.

This is me on Bastille Day in Bordeaux.

St Emilion, the loveliest vineyard in Gironde

I had two 21sts, this is one of them.

Our first picture together after 6 months of being in different countries

Bastille Day with Excellent Europeans.

My Newcastle lovelies.

Me in my teacher mode – photography is fun with Year 12 kids.

I went to Japan with these people, we have reunions biannually.

I’m a photographer to The People, particularly young and not very wealthy people. But I love it!

My high school friends. We graduated nearly 5 years ago.