A cold southerly chill straight from the antarctic - and maybe even the cold vacuum of space - is currently blasting my poor little country into submission. As an avid fan of cold days, I've prepared myself to handle the temperatures. Right now I'm wearing with my usual attire, socks, another long-sleeved tops, fingerless gloves and a just-purchased-today beanie, with my legs resting on my 9-fin oil heater while I chow-down on chips and chocolate biscuits. On any other day, this moment would exist in some permutation of my own personal heaven, but there's one more details which puts a big fat dampener on whole situation: I'm sick.

It is approaching winter, it is getting cold, and it just happens to be the month when my sick leave gets reset, so of course I would get sick. This particular sickness has been lingering at the back of my throat for several days now, waiting for the perfect opportunity to rear its ugly head. It started-off as a pretty weak thing, but I think it's been fueled into the major annoyance it is now because of my state of mind this past week.

"It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black."

You see, on Wednesday morning as I was reading the paper while eating breakfast, I came across an article which said the Dymocks on Lambton Quay is closing down (for those who don't know, Dymocks is a chain of bookstores throughout New Zealand, and Lambton Quay is a street name). There have been a lot of retail closures throughout the country because of the recession, but Dymocks, "The booklovers bookstore" (as their motto goes), came as a major surprise to me. Dymocks has been as much a part of Lambton Quay as blue is to the sky and as far as I'm concerned has existed in that spot since the English settled this country.

Not only is it a landmark, but it's also a bookstore. While I'm no bibliophile, my love of writing is fueled by my enjoyment of reading and the feeling a good book gives me that is the urge to go out and start telling my own stories. I don't even buy books that often (I'm more of a library slut, and my last book purchase was from a competitor), yet to hear that this particular bookstore was closing down was like a stab to the book-loving part of my heart, and so without the kindle for my writing fire, I began to despair.

So there I am at mid-week, both sick and sad, one possibly the cause of the other, but I have no idea which one it could be. On the one hand, I become more susceptible to illness when my mood is particularly negative; it's like being emo allows my immune system to become more porous and thus permeable to bad bacteria and viruses. On the other, being sick causes me to feel worse and tints my entire world and outlook with a drab palette; unejoyable days at work feel longer, every wind chills to the bone, and even my favourite foods can lose their taste. One paves the way for the other and vice versa, creating some sort of feedback loop that decided mid-day Friday to explode.

Friday night had a dinner with friends to use-up 2-for-1 dinner vouchers we had accumulated before they expire, and a sort of well-wishing for one of us who is headed-off overseas to represent New Zealand in some sport I still don't completely understand. I was looking forward to it the whole week, but around lunchtime on Friday everything started to go downhill from there.

Lunch didn't feel all that great because my throat started to feel like it was swallowing sandpaper, and the shopping afterwards for a new beanie, gloves, and jacket for an upcoming ski trip left me noticing how cold it was getting outside and how useless my jacket was to protect me from the elements.

Back at work, the new project I'm currently assigned to just didn't hold the same excitement as it usually does, and so the afternoon dragged. When work ended and it was time for dinner, I didn't head straight to the restaurant. Instead, I took a bit of a wander in an attempt to lift my mood before I had to face everybody. It wasn't a complete success.

Long story short: I managed to muster enough energy, sarcasm, wit and one-liners to last dinner without looking too ill, but after that I had to take a back seat to proceedings lest I collapse or something.

Spent

That, and told myself I had to get home and let whatever sickness I had run its course. I've already been nicknamed 'ebola monkey' at work for my ability to be the most cold/flu-stricken person and the most likely vector for infecting others with said cold/flu. I didn't want to give this group a reason to continue the nickname here.

So I'm looking for a scapegoat, but it's like asking about the chicken and egg situation. Now I've just been told that I should get some more sleep because I look like a zombie. That compliment just made me notice my throat flare-up again.

It's a vicious cycle...

"Before you sue me for defamation, in my defence, teasing or joking is one of the ways I show my affection. It's only with my friends that I joke about their mothers, so the fact that I just joked about yours, and written about you twice in the past 2 weeks, goes to show how much I like you."

And those were my last words before dial-up girl - tired of being misrepresented in my blog - killed me with her cold hard stare. Yup, I'm blogging from the afterlife which, oddly enough, looks a lot like work, so I must be in hell.

SPARTAAAAAA!

So what do you do when you're in a temporarily ethereal state? I dunno about you, but I start thinking about the hard questions: Why are we here? If you were given the opportunity to travel back in time and talk to yourself when you were much younger, could you go through with it? What would you say? OK, so I never really thought about that stuff, but instead I thought about how I've slipped under the radar.

All this reflecting was started by a dream I had a few nights ago about my dance classes.

Come the end of May I'll have attended ceroc lessons for a year. In the dream, everybody whose name I know and is still attending classes (which isn't a lot) is going to some private dance party that I didn't know about. When I went to ceroc last night, several things hinted that my dream might actually be true; a couple of people asked me if I was going to some dance party that I had never heard of. I intended to ask my ceroc friends about it, but just forgot. So when I got home I did a bit of Facebook stalking and it turned-out that yes, my ceroc friends were going to this previously-unheard-of dance party.

I didn't really feel surprised - not getting blindsided by surprises is a skill that comes with age - but I did kinda feel left out. It also reinforced a slight 'on the outside looking in' feeling I've had when I see some of the groups at ceroc.

My 2 ceroc friends have managed to make a big impression with many of the others there and so are very much a part of those groups. I guess it helps when you have some redeeming or memorable traits: one of those 2 is the ever cheerful hug nazi, the other looks like the spitting image of Edward Cullen from Twilight. As for me, I don't exactly do anything to draw attention to myself: I dance well enough, I don't look like any actors, and I don't grope my dance partners or stare at their chest all day (I've been told of some creepy guys who do).

That's not to say I haven't been a total social failure: I've made another 2 solid friends through dancing (one of whom is amazing baking girl), and maybe twice that number in acquaintances who'd I'd stop to talk to if we ran into each other on the street. But the rest of the time, I'm just another familiar face.

I'm not really complaining here - just stating facts - as I do bring this upon myself: I don't go to every event on my calendar, I tend to stick with the people I know, and I do enjoy a quiet night at home. I'm more of a 'go where I'm needed' type.

I think I do this because I focus so much on the few friends that I do have. It's this core bunch that I will travel long distances for, re-organize my schedule to meet with, or go to a movie or exhibit again despite having seen it myself so that they have company when they go. Sometimes it requires a lot of effort, which is probably why I keep the number of friends I do have to a low number lest I get gray hairs or other sign of aging from trying to make too many people feel like they're worth their weight in gold.

So yeah, I think about them a lot. I try not to give them too much to worry about when they think of me, but I can't really stop that when it comes to it. The last time I ever think I worried them was several years ago when I had a seizure. My friends were organizing some get-together, and when they were unable to reach me, one of them tried ringing my house:

*phone rings*
My dad: Hello?
Friend: Hi. Is Em there?
Dad: Uh, no. He's in the hospital.
Friend: Oh...

The thing was, my dad never elaborated on why I was in the hospital, letting my friends' imaginations come up with all sorts of possibilities. The truth of it was that in my flu-induced state, my temperature reached an almighty high (40C / 104F) to which my body responded by shutting-down and resetting itself, a by-product of which was the seizure.

I tended to downplay the seizure because, well, it wasn't that bad. Before the seizure: my head hurt, I felt warm, colours and lights were swirling in my vision, and I couldn't even guide a spoonful of food into my mouth properly (the seizure occured over breakfast). Afterwards: my head was clear, my body felt cool, my vision was restored, and I could tie my shoes - the seizure was the best thing that happened to me during my flu!

I'm not suggesting everybody who's sick go out and have a seizure. A few years after that incident, I witnessed what a seizure looked like from the outside when a lady at my favourite bakery (which I have dubbed 'The Pie Shop' for having won a Best Pie In NZ award) collapsed and seized-up while making an order. It didn't look pretty - it was actually quite frightening - so it's not the sort of thing I'd be encouraging people to go out and experience.

I like to show I care by making jokes and sharing a laugh - I basically live by the motto "the day your friends stop making fun of you, is the day they stop caring about you." But to prevent myself from imploding, I only extend this philosophy to a close-knit bunch of people.

So I'm one of those quality over quantity freaks; sue me.

In a previous post I talked a bit about the concept of Three Thirtyitis. After that, you should understand what I then mean when I'm suffering from 10am-itis.

My Twitter update sums it up rather well:

Woke-up early to meet friends for breakfast, is now fighting sleep by blasting American Idol tunes through headphones d(O_O)b

So this morning I woke-up a lot earlier than usual (1 whole hour! *gasp*) so I could meet-up with friends for breakfast before work, and on a Monday morning too! The attraction of such an early-week early-morning get-together was to see people we don't often see. Well, that was the premise from the point-of-view of the organizer. For me, I'd been lucky enough to actually see the others rather recently.

Despite that, I made it through the cold, the rain, and the soul-crushing darkness that is the overcast cloud cover which has blocked sunlight from the city for several days now. I and one of the other train-riding guys caught the same train and made it in early. The next to come along lives a couple of suburbs away. The last person was actually the one who lives in the city and is the closest to the breakfast venue... typical. It was good though: breakfast was alright, company as always was great, lots of lols were had.

But wow, I feel so drowsy right now: my eyelids are being drawn to the ground by more than just gravity and my concentration is so far detached from my mind that it's almost like having an out-of-body-experience. I would normally eat something sugary to keep my consciousness afloat, but this doesn't feel like a blood-sugar thing. If this were after lunch, maybe I'd try sneak-in a power nap, but that's not gonna look so good having just gotten into work. So instead I've settled for playing tracks from this seasons American Idol contestants a bit louder than usual through my headphones.

How non-coffee drinkers wake up

Surprisingly the volume therapy is working wonders. The only downside was when a phone call came through and I picked up and put the receiver to my ear while my headphones were still on.

Unfortunately for me, I'm one of those people that needs about 8 hours of sleep a night to function at 100%. I'm not somebody who can either operate on less sleep or supplement rest with coffee or a wide variety of energy drinks. I came across several of the latter kind at university, or at least discovered that a lot of my friends could also fit into that category. One of the guys always kept a 6-pack of V energy drink at their workstation and ended-up collecting them to create a massive tower. Wandering around my floor at work, I see one of the older guys doing the same thing with his takeaway cofee cups.

Achievement unlocked

All that's left for me is to catch up on lost sleep tonight. I only fear that I'll fall asleep on the train home - gently rocked by the moving carriage, lulled by the sound of the electric engine - and miss my stop. I've done that before...

m(_ _)m ZZZ

First of all, I have a Miley Cyrus song stuck in my head because after watching this parody, I went and watched the original, before watching the parody again. So technically I have a parody of a Miley Cyrus song stuck in my head. Hmm, still doesn't help my case.

Secondly, I was walking to work yesterday morning with a friend - the same friend who has dial-up and mocked me for writing about My Feelings on this blog - who found even more reasons to divorce herself of my friendship. Last week she said my life wasn't scandalous enough to warrant us hanging out. This week, as a consequence of my non-scandalous life, she complained that our walks together are so draining that she needs to grab another coffee afterwards to wake her up for the second time for the day (she feeds on scandal like a plant feeds on sunlight. My presence obviously starves her). "What, is there not enough caffeine in my breath to keep you awake?" I joked.

So along the way, whenever a coffee shop passed us by I offered to buy her a coffee. She refused of course, knowing that I was only doing this to annoy her, but after maybe the 3rd coffee joint she came up with an excuse for her refusals: "I can't! Because if you spend money on me, and I haven't got any money to spend on you, then it creates an imbalance in the bank of friendship." (OK so that's not the exact quote, but it went something like that).

In response I asked if she wanted to apply for an overdraft, or hear of various loan repayment schemes (I would have taken payments from her mum, but I kept that line to myself), but it got me thinking about whether or not there was something more to her choice of metaphor; whether there is some sort of economic model I could apply to this situation.

Where my friendship could be headed

I looked to the internet to see if somebody else has tried to do a similar thing, and several people had. Some were more philosophical than others, some were very technical and I even came across a few scientific papers on the subject. One page seemed to sum it up best with our good friend, the law of supply and demand:

One of the first things they teach you in introductory economics is the law of supply and demand. A price equilibrium is reached at the point where supply and demand intersect. All that means is that both parties are getting what they want for what they think is a fair price.

I guess you could say friendship is established at that equilibrium point where both parties are happy with whatever they're getting from the other person.

The kind of relationship between dial-up girl and I is simple, but there is a mutual equality to it. We don't really organize to see one another but talk when we do, usually at friends' parties or when our paths happen to cross. Dial-up girl however has a tendency to feel a tremendous amount of guilt at the smallest infractions, and so my joke of buying her a coffee to make-up for the boring-ness that is my life was perceived as throwing a little - but just enough by her standards - imbalance into the equation.

[L]ooking at friendship as an economic transaction might seem a little cold and callous, but really, it's what we were all taught when we were younger. Life is about give and take. You can't just give give give or else you'll burn out. It's also the trademark of a sucker. And if you take take take, eventually people are going to realize that they're not getting anything out of your friendship. We should always be aware of what we're offering to other people. If we look at it like that, it'd be easier to understand why people interact with us in a certain way.

http://qnzalvin.xanga.com/624082638/economics-of-friendship/

I can think of a few people who could learn a little from watching what they offer. Hug nazi in particular used to give too much, and then started feeling bad when people stopped accepting her generosity, thinking that people didn't want her help anymore - she failed to understand that those on the receiving end started to accumulate some guilt at having taken so much. Several younger siblings of families I know often take too much, and then become ungrateful when the charity comes into question or stops - they fail to realize the effort being made by the gift-giver.

So what did I learn? 1) I shouldn't have joked so much about the coffee. 2) I totally should've said I'd take repayments from her mum. 3) No more coffee for dial-up girl :P