Where does it all begin?

To be honest with all of you who are about to read this blog, I always thought you were sad. You might be put off by this and be about to shut down my page in disgust, wrinkling your nose or narrowing your eyes at my rudeness, but let me apologise. I am not afraid to hold my hands up and say I was wrong. Though I doubt I will ever meet any of you in person, if one day we do accidentally bump into each other on the tube or on a sofa in Starbucks as we clutch our blissfully warm (if exploitative) hot chocolates or our chests, I want to say sorry now for my prejudice.

And so on with my blog.

I was not sure what to write about. Though I have always been fond of writing I never considered doing something like this. I hate it when people rant on about their problems as though they are the only one is the world who has them but still expects everybody to feel sympathetic. So I am going to tell you a story in installments. If you like you could perhaps leave a few comments adding your own ideas. I could read them, disregard the crap ones and then carry on with the tale adding in the descent (or even half-descent) suggestions :)

I never believed that I would become a tragic slave to my own passions. I am just not that 'kinda gal' as they say in all those American 1940 films. I was in the International sixth form in a college just outside Cambridge. Its sounds a bit swishy doesn't it. Well just to rub it in I'm going to tell you that it was. It was the most swishy place in the world (in my opinion, a country bumpkin from a rural community where cows often escaped into the school playground). For the first time in my life I was mixing with foreigners from every Continent, not just french people from Calais but real foreigners, Chinese, Pakistani, Chileans, Italians, Poles (north and south hehehe love crappy jokes), Estonians, Nigerians, Brazilians, Non-tourist Americans, Germans, Koreans and even a Northerner from darkest depths of Middlesbrough. I socialised with people from all walks of life from Persian princes parading the latest techno-gadgets to loo-scrubbers who worked in John Lewis. It was enthralling hears 30 different languages swirl around me as I sat in the common room, but there was one face that stood out for me from the first day in the common room. With his computer bag thrown over his shoulder, glasses framing slanted eyes, he walked towards me and I was smitten. Its sad isn't it, but I knew from that moment that I was too much of a coward to ever say anything to him.

I have always been shy. It comes from being very unattractive, you instinctively shrink away from any intimacy with anybody you could ever fancy. Quiet, unprepossessing and geeky was how most people saw him, me too for that matter, but that suited me down to the ground.
"Well? Come on people think" the rather bossy yet well meaning voice broke though my contemplation of his spiky black hair.
"Capital of Korean guy it can't be that hard"
We were doing this crappy international quiz that our uber-politically correct teacher had set us.
"I have some Korean movies" I ventured, blushing deeply as he paused listening to our conversation. I was sure I knew the answer, I had read about it in Artemis Fowl.
"Ho Chi Min city!" I cried out triumphantly, inwardly praising my own genius.
A snort or derision and silence.
"I think you'll find its Seoul" he said