My best thoughts of the week, collected and presented to you for your Sunday reading. This week: physical touch as a love language, my new cyclist persona, and how I got scammed by a group of teenagers.
Touchy-feely friends
I love being touched. Let me clarify. I love being touched by the people I love, specifically when it occurs and evolves in friendships. It’s the small physical gestures that translate to: Hey, I like you, and I feel comfortable with you. Friendly flirting but purely platonic, there is something incredibly endearing about reaching out (figuratively and literally) to your friends. A learnt behaviour that we inherit from our childhood, I’m part of a family that never shies away from showing affection. I link arms with my mum when we walk down the street; my brother constantly slings his arm over my shoulders like its my third limb, and my dad only just last week had an argument with my mum about who would be the first parent to hug me at the airport. But I get it, not everyone’s overly keen on physical touch as their love language. The way we communicate and interact with each other naturally differs from relationship to relationship, meaning it’s important that we respect personal boundaries, understand their dispositions, and READ THE ROOM. No one wants to be that god-awful person who counteracts a handshake with the response, “Sorry, I’m a hugger!’ whilst forcing their victim into an awkward embrace.
I have one friend that is so uncomfortable with hugging that she gives me affectionate pokes instead. We’ve been best friends for thirteen years – long enough to know what our love languages are and how to not cross them. On the other end of the spectrum, I have another best friend that will put her head in my lap, forcing a temple massage, as we chat on the sofa. There’s one who will pick a hair or a piece of fluff off my jacket mid-conversation without asking. One that will casually rest their hand on my knee at meal times as they narrate a story to the rest of the table. One that clutches my hands and bounces side to side when they are excited. One that squeezes my face when we reunite after months apart. One that always wraps their hands around my waist and cuddles me when we take group pictures. All these minute, somewhat mindless touches of affection are so innocently endearing. Somewhere in that hand gesture, that poke, that kiss on the cheek, is an unspoken exchange of comfort, friendship, love.
Life in the fast (cyclist) lane
I recently bought a bike. She is a smokin’ red, hot cherry bomb. Her name is Vanessa – Nessie for short. We are in love. She was absolutely an impulsive purchase, but just like all great love stories, the right one will find you when you least expect it. It all started when David saw a recycled bike event on Facebook that was selling second-hand bikes at a heavily discounted price. He tried to sell the notion to me of how pragmatic buying a bike could be for the both of us. “Imagine cycling to the shops, to the lake, to work!”. I was dubious and unbothered. That was until he came cycling home with his new ride, quite literally transported into a euphoric state of glee. I watched with envy as he began ordering new fanciful and functional accessories on Amazon for him and his new lover. “No fair, I want one!” I whined.
It’s not that I didn’t know how to cycle, I just wasn’t very good at it. My first experience of cycling on public city roads was a few years ago when my friend Amy took me on an ambitious route around Hyde Park in London. I unlocked my Santander bike, wobbly pedalled for two minutes, and crashed into a pole. When I moved back to Australia I made it a mission to take my child bike out and practice in the park under the gumption that one day I might live in Amsterdam. I didn’t end up living in Amsterdam, but I do live in a comparatively pro-cycling city. So, when I saw my upcycled goddess shining bright with her handy-dandy basket on the streets of Södermalm, I just KNEW I had to have her. It has been liberating. It’s the al fresco pedalling, the wind in my hair, the convenience and the freedom. Don’t be mistaken: I’m no seasoned professional. I still struggle to indicate with one hand and I occasionally surrender to the steep incline and have to tragically push my bike uphill instead. What I do excel at though is the sweet, simple, storybook stuff. I have a new wholesome routine of cycling to the lake to sweat and swim, rinse and read. I meet other Swede’s on my journey and together we congregate like wild animals at a watering hole before going our separate ways. Do I have a certain unentitled superiority now? Yes, but I am in no way commandeering the roads. I recently read an article that spoke about a study in Australia where more than 50 per cent of drivers don’t view cyclists as fully human, instead labelling them as mosquitoes or cockroaches. You can’t not laugh at that. I was definitely part of that percentage at one point, and I still am to those slow burners who travel in their lycra-crad pack. But I do have to say, you can’t knock it until you try it. Don’t beep ’em, join ’em. Mount that saddle and feel the rush. Play that track “Bicycle Race” by Queen. And next time you see a wanker cyclist taking up too much space, wobbling about, or not indicating properly. Ease up – it could be me.
The Dyson Airwrap from hell
I am a victim of a crime. Last month I was scammed out of $360 (AUD) via a dodgy Facebook Marketplace ad. I wish I could say it was at the hands of an organised crime group; a real Tinder-Swindler operation or a mega Mafia scam. But it was at the mercy and tiny brain cells of three 16-year-olds. It’s laughable now, but I can tell you at the time, I was not laughing. For months I had been contemplating buying the holy grail of all hair appliances – the Dyson Airwrap Multi-Styler. Retailing for a whopping $900, I had been testing and toying with my own sensibility on whether making rent was really as important as having heatless, wavy hair. My Instagram feed became a dedicated fan page for the Airwrap, where I would spend mindless minutes, if not hours, watching influencers swish around their luscious locks with this viral vortex wand. Could I have just gone into a store and bought the product in a very legitimate albeit expensive way? Yes. But I am also Sri Lankan-Indian and was raised to hunt for a good bargain.
I began messaging with this Swedish girl on Facebook who had a listing in Märsta, a suburb in Sweden just 30-minutes north from the city centre. I asked her if we could communicate in English and yet she continually chose to respond back in Swedish leaving me to Google Translate every message. First red flag. I asked for more photos and she sent a bunch through willingly. I requested a video of her turning the device on and off and she delivered it within seconds. She followed this by taking a photograph of it packaged up in a box with receipts for a one-year warranty. She then went ‘for a short walk’ to her local postal office and sent me a final photo of the parcel sitting on the postal counter. In my brain, things checked out. The deal was that I would receive the postal tracking number upon transferring her the full amount via an instant payment service called Swish. I did ask if I could send a part of the payment beforehand and the rest after I received the shipment number registered in my name, however, she refused this. Second red flag. I received the text, “I’m here at the post office and have just sent it off, please send me the money now :)”. I was at the office when this was all happening so I looked around at my colleagues for their advice, but truthfully, for their encouragement. We all seemed to be on board, so, I sent the money. Together we all watched as the little typing bubbles faded, the responses ceased and the account went offline. Nobody wanted to say it but I knew straight away…I had been conned.
There are a lot of details to this story which would just simply take too long to explain. Within hours, I knew the real person behind the fake account as her name came up on the bank transfer. Idiot. From there, we had her mother’s name, her workplace, their home address and all of their mobile numbers. I say ‘we’ because this soon became a group investigation as my friends and I sat in a meeting room searching their names, visiting their social profiles, and essentially, doing hardcore detective work. We had all watched enough Netflix scam shows to know how deep these things could go and how invested you could become. My friend Viv did come up with a creative series title called “Stylish Crimes” which was the only thing that made me laugh that whole day. That night when I went home I received a surge of calls and texts from this girl and her friends begging me to hear them out after I had threatened to go to the police. They spun a pathetic, non-sensical story of how this was all just a big misunderstanding and yet they couldn’t return back my money because so-and-so had it. In the end, I blocked their numbers and reported each of their names and contact details to the police. In hindsight, the Facebook profile was dubiously blank and scarce with information or pictures, but other than that, I genuinely thought this was a bona fide ad. People always say to trust your intuition, yet in that moment, I had none. My gut up and left me, leaving me with nothing but poor judgment. This stressful scam has now become a great party tale that has ensued some wonderful puns and inside jokes. “Did I style my hair today with my Airwrap?” HAHA, very funny. “Where did you buy that? I hope it wasn’t Facebook Marketplace!” 10/10 material. I have accepted the fact that I will never see that money again unless the police miraculously get it back. I truly hope the few hundred dollars was worth it for them. And if not, have fun in juvy you little rats.
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