My Long Weekend

Mood: inspired
Listening to: 'Teardrops On My Guitar' by Taylor Swift
Hungry for: dinner?

I am in the middle of a long weekend here. God knows why we have Monday off - and for goodness sake I don't care. Well, I'd prefer it if the day off was a Friday instead of a Monday, because Monday I have English and therefore is actually a worthwhile day of school wherelse Friday does not include English and therefore is not, but any day off of school is good, especially in the mind of a stressed schoolgirl.

I am not spending this long weekend like I normally do - eating junk food and watching movies, ignoring 'that sinking feeling' which is a side effect of overdue homework - instead, I took advantage of Perth's very limited festivity and went to the Perth Writer's Festival, which is part of the Perth International Arts Festival. I spent an hour there yesterday, a very long day there today and I'll be back again, tomorrow, for an even longer day.

This is a bit different to the average way an average fourteen year old spends an average summer long weekend - but I'm not a big fan of average, anyway. Some girls I know are going to a theme park tomorrow - and you may think it ridiculous that I'm going to some festival whilst I could go to a theme park. Well, firstly, I wasn't invited - I'm not normally invited to these kind of things, I'm considered too weird and most people are under the (mostly false) impression that I can't swim - and secondly, there is only one theme park here in Perth, and I've just been there a few weeks ago. The theme park here, which is imaginatively called 'Adventure World', is quite fun by Perth standards, but seeing as we only have the one park we have to be careful not to go there more than a couple of times a year or you risk boring yourself silly on one of our only entertainment sources.

Let me tell you about the festival. It's held at the University of Western Australia, which is WA's top university, and there are two major types of events - adults and kids.

I hate festivals that have adults and kids events. Do teenagers not matter anymore?

So I went to the adults sessions, and copped a lot of strange looks for being the youngest person in the room by about three decades. The audience was mainly old people, and when I mean old people I mean old to the point that they don't care that socks and sandals look stupid, and don't know that no matter how much purple eyeshadow and fuschia lipstick you have on you won't look twenty years younger. Yeah, that old.

I cannot adequately describe the feeling of being the youngest in pretty much everything in your life. I'm the youngest in my family, I take classes with kids in the year above me, and I do a lot of things considered "old" - which is not really intentional, I just don't like most things that entertain people of my age. In some ways, it's kinda fun - people tend to associate words like 'wise' and 'mature' with you (not entirely sure whether that's a good idea), and you get a bit of leeway for not having a clue what's going on, because you're young (which is not a valid excuse for playing SingStar, unfortunately). But in some ways it can be incredibly annoying - getting strange looks from old farts and grumpy grannies, getting your opinions dismissed because of your age, and of course, the teasing and dirty looks from people my age, who are, all in all, quite xenophobic.

Some sessions were very good - as in so fun and inspiring that you the crowds were erupting into applause every twenty seconds and you were rolling in the aisles in fits of laughter - and others had guest speakers with the public speaking ability of a toddler. So yeah, lots of variety.

Why do I go to these things? Partly because I'm a wannabe writer trying to get something published, and partly because I love the atmosphere of these kind of events. It's different to school because everyone is kind of forced to be there, and not everyone actually wants to be there. This event is voluntary, so people are willingly passionate. I love passionate people. There's not enough passion in the world.

So here are a couple of questions for you to ponder (and hopefully answer, in the comments). Do you think you are a passionate person? Do you have the strength to go against the flow? Have you ever been the youngest in a family, a class, or an organization? Do you get the same discrimination and reluctant awe from others like I do?