What was I doing and who was I in 1998?
I was 14 years old. Wow. I’m young, aren’t I? ) Stingo was 22 in 1998. And Monsoux was graduating in 1997.

I was in secondary school. I joined the PAL-TIN project in May 1997 and that has greatly influenced me. I started focusing my immense energy on something useful and interesting. (I really wanted to do something special with my time, but didn’t know what. Piano lessons and other such things were not an option.)

At 13 years old I learned how to write projects and budgets. On November the 30th the first project I coordinated took place. It was a success – I was so proud!

And because I was so enthusiastic and passionate about writing projects and spending my free time convincing people to sponsor them, because I could speak English and had a passport, in the autumn of 1997 I represented my colleagues at an International conference in Bulgaria. That was the first time I was leaving the country. Wow. It was an amazing experience for a 13 year old. Here’s a picture of me from that Conference: (had long legs back then as well…)

In 1998 I went to the second edition of that Conference. On our way back to Romania we stopped in Varna, Sozopol, Balcik… I’ve already shown you a picture from that time, in a different post. This is me in Balcik:

For ten years I continued to volunteer in NGO’s and that has had the biggest influence on my life, not taking into consideration my mother, of course. I traveled, I got to meet people from all over the world with the same interests, I spoke foreign languages and worked on International projects. I am still very good friends with people I met in that period.

In 1998 I was doing these things: going to school (being extremely bad at drawing!) and volunteering. At school I was doing pretty well and I was already determined to become a journalist. I was writing a lot. I kept a diary for 12 years (started in the 4th grade).

In 1998 I went for the first time in Western countries. It was a Jeka trip – a few weeks in a bus – going through Hungary, Germany and Austria. It was fabulous. I visited Schonbrunn, the Mozart museum (his home in Salzburg), I went shopping in Budapest, I cooked in Tirol! ) A guy talked to me about “goa” and Moby and my taste in music changed.

This is me in Salzburg, climbing on Mozart’s bust. I was a vandal.

I had a huge crush for a guy who was 3 years older than me and looked at me as “a nice kid”. I was hurting so much! ) He never kissed me although I wanted that so badly. Haven’t seen him for years. I think he became a pilot or something, I remember he cared a lot for planes and studied some kind of engineering. Anyway, he was cute, that’s the important part.

My best friend was Ioana. A girl who I lost contact with although she lives a couple of buildings away. We had a fight about something (when we where in high school) and I refused to talk to her for a couple of years. After that, it was impossible to go back to our friendship. We went separate ways, I guess, we are very different now.

We used to laugh a lot. All the time. For silly reasons. For example, when the first Romanian Music Television started to air, they had promos with different artists saying the name of that television: (Hello. I am X… and I am Y.. and together we are W band. You are watching Atomic TV”) Salut. Sunt X… eu sunt Y … si impreuna suntem trupa cutare. Urmariti Atomic TV. And we would say “Salut. Eu sunt Gaz.. iar eu sunt pe foc… iar impreuna suntem Gaz pe foc” or “Eu sunt Negura… si eu sunt Bunget… iar impreuna suntem Negura Bunget” and that made us laugh for hours!!! ” )) Damn, I still think it’s funny!

In 1998 I listened to rock music. Mostly because my friends were big fans of Metallica or Sepultura or Marilyn Manson. I liked them to, but wasn’t that much into that. I went to wild parties where I was usually the youngest guest and one of the few girls invited and I loved that.

I had very bad taste in clothes. I was either wearing a lot of black (the rock music, you know…) or colorful outfits bought from the street market by my mother. That’s the only thing that makes me frown when I see old pictures: the clothes.

In 1998 I liked Romanian novelists. It was the age, I guess, and the school. I liked Marin Preda very much. And Sadoveanu.

I had a computer: 486. A typing machine, really. I used Norton Commander! )

Also, about then was the time I started surfing the Internet (Alta Vista ftw!) and using mIRC – for that I went to my mother’s office.

Stingo said I should post pictures from that time. It was fun looking through the pictures from that time, to select a few. Really. I was very happy back then. I still am.

© 2010 Andressa. Toate drepturile rezervate.

I hadn’t taken my cap off. It’s easier to spy on people with a cap almost covering my eyes. And then: beep-beep-beep! My cute-guy-alarm went nuts. He was tall and slim, just the way I like’em , brown haired and smartly dressed. He was sitting, I was standing. I checked him out carefully, as if he had been auditioning for a part in a movie and I was the picky director.

Our eyes met. I felt safe and sexy behind the peak of my cap. We stared at each other for a few seconds, a little longer than the social rules would allow for two strangers like us.

Soon I had to get off the train. The station was very crowded. I tip toed to the escalators. As I was going up, I felt someone leaning on me. “It is crowded indeed”, I said to myself. But then I looked around me and realized that the escalator was not that full.

I turned my head a little to the right. The cute guy was standing behind me. He was hugging me. He put his head on my shoulder and smelled my perfume. And, as fucked up as that was (he could have stolen my wallet!), for those few seconds in his arms I felt loved like I hadn’t for a long time.

I got off the escalators and walked straight ahead. Didn’t look back.

© 2010 Andressa. Toate drepturile rezervate.

© 2010 Andressa. Toate drepturile rezervate.

First of all, I must say that I admire your sense of humour and that I am a big fan of Bridget, the character, just as any other insecure, single, lunatic girl.

Bridget is everything us, goofy women, hate about ourselves. She says everything that crosses her mind, creating awkward moments, she has no ambition to lose weight, give up smoking or drinking, has no self esteem, she is far from being a genius or a model and she can’t cook. She is… inappropriate for this world!

That is why, Daniel Cleaver is a realistic, appropriate character. He’s exactly the kind of guy us, bridgets, fall for. He’s the “bad guy” we know we’ll never have (and we’re not losing much, really, when we’re lucid – rarely I mean – we know he’s an ass!). And he knows that too: that we want him and that we’d never be enough for him. So, in order to feel like a Casanova, Daniel doesn’t aim very high and charms Bridget. With his looks and her low self esteem, the match is perfect: she’d forgive him anything and never leave him; he’d never love her for who she is, but appreciate her devotion. And Mr. Too Good To Be True turns out to be Mr. Too Bad To Be True because a person who doesn’t care enough makes you feel even more insignificant that you felt in the first place, when you first met him.

Which brings me to my point: Mark Darcy is unrealistic. I mean that good-looking, funny, smart, warm, but disciplined guys like him really exist. Only they would never love a bridget. They might fall for one and might find her goofy behavior fascinating for a while, but a real Mark Darcy would get exhausted… And I don’t mean exhausted in a sweet way, but in a bad, “i’m-sick-of-this” way.

Marks are attracted to bridgets because they’re funny, sweet and silly, but on the long run, they’re too much of a handful for them. Realistically, marks have happy ends with natashas. Those girls have more self control, are prettier and smarter and, most of all, they like themselves better which makes everyone else around them more indulgent.

In the real world, Bridget would get dumped by Mark after he realized she has one too many issues, or would dump him for an arsehole like Daniel not seeing the potential in Mark. Good things don’t happen to us, bridgets.

In conclusion, I would like to kindly ask you to give Bridget Jones and all the bridgets out there a sad ending. We need that in order to stop hoping for marks to show up when we least expect it (but in fact waiting for that to happen) and save us from our self destructing, lazy and depressed selves. I beg you to make Bridget Jones suffer so that we can make peace with ourselves and move the hell on with our sad lonely lives. Thank you for reading this letter.

Yours truly,

andressa

ps: Loved “Bridget Jones’s Guide to Life”, I found it funny and (sadly) very useful!

© 2010 Andressa. Toate drepturile rezervate.

© 2010 Andressa. Toate drepturile rezervate.