Introducing an old friend: Hello Kitty

My love of Hello Kitty began in around 1993, when I was four years old. It was a red Hello Kitty lunchbox, its accompanying drink bottle long gone. On the side were pictures of Miss Kitty gardening, coaxing tulips out of the earth as sweet birds flew overhead. The lunchbox became the perfect place to store my growing crayon collection. It was portable enough to take from project to project- scribbling on butchers paper on the floor, or practising colouring within the lines in books on the kitchen table.

The love affair lay dormant - surprisingly - during my teenage years. Towards the end of high school, when day trips to the big city became a possibility, my friends and I discovered a little gem of a shop just off Bourke St. It was called Artbox, and it was a haven of all things cute. I made some new friends:

Super Panda

Blue Bear

And of course charming, inexplicable examples of Engrish, which like this one are often sweetly poetic:

So Artbox (sadly no longer open in Melbourne's CBD!) became my go-to place for cutesy stationery- notebooks, erasers and diaries. I was happy with my new friends for a while, but in 2007, my soon-to-be boyfriend Al gave me a Hello Kitty alarm clock as a gift. It was an old-style analog clock with a bell on the top that set off like a fire alarm every day. I soon learned to not use the alarm function, because I was sleeping with it under my pillow to muffle the BRRRRRRR every morning at 6.50am.

For my 18th birthday, one of my best friends Hayley gave me a Hello Kitty toaster, still in use to this day as you can see by the state it's in. I'll call it well loved...

This ingenious appliance etches Hello Kitty's face into each piece of toast. Al doesn't love my toaster, because it does happen to leave some portions of the bread largely uncooked so we have to flip the bread over halfway through the cycle. To get a good clear face in your toast, you need to cook the bejesus out of it.

What the toaster claims to do.

What it really does.

When I moved into my tiny college apartment the following year, Al gave me a Hello Kitty DVD player. It was hot pink, with decals of Hello Kitty and her friends and family wearing 3D glasses on it, and came with a super cute matching remote control.

After this, my Hello Kitty collection began to grow. And only today have I realised that I haven't bought a single item. And no, I am not a shoplifter (my criminal career ended at age three when my attempted theft of an Easter egg was intercepted by the scariest of all law-enforcers... my mum. All of my Hello Kitty goodies have been gifts, which makes them extra special! Here are some of my things:

Hello Kitty playhouse. I may be a little too old for this, but I really, really love it!

Hello Kitty figures can be purchased separately, like this birthday Hello Kitty (pictured with sister Mimmy)

Just hanging out with a snack!

Sailor Hello Kitty!

Strawberry Hello Kitty plush toy. She sits at my dressing table and keeps me company while I do my make up!

I have a few Hello Kitty cups. When my favourite one broke, I was too sad to throw it away, so it now has a second life as a pen and pencil holder!

Hello Kitty Monopoly is the newest addition to my collection. It doesn't make Monopoly gameplay any less brutal, but the properties are named things like 'Playground' and 'Flower Shop', while the train stations have been replaced by 'bicycle' and 'boat'. Darling!

This book is pretty much the guidebook to all things Hello Kitty! Did you know that she is the height of five apples, and the weight of three? Didn't think so, you'd better study up!

Hello Kitty lolly dispensers. Note the lack of lollies. Yum!

And lastly, this is our household phone. My best friend Ericah bought me this for my 22nd birthday last year. My boyfriend is very patient with me, isn't he? These are my favourite items from my collection. I won't bore you with photos of my many other Hello Kitty products: notebooks, diaries, rules, pens, erasers...

Hello Kitty is an anti-consumerist's nightmare. There was no original TV show or comic book. Her entire point of existence is to be plastered all over every kind of product there is, from clothing to USB flash drives, from cotton ball containers to hairbrushes. And while it's healthy to keep consumption at a moderate level (unlike this fan over over here), Hello Kitty does bring a little sunshine into my life! And there's nothing wrong with that.

Han x

Some nostalgia

I was getting a little nostalgic as I went through some old things a few weeks ago, especially when I found this old letter. I sent these handwritten letters (loveheart-dotted 'i's and all) to all my high school girlfriends as school was finishing for the last time. I had always planned to defer from my university place the year after high school, but life had other plans for me. Very suddenly I had to move out of home, leave Central Victoria and my family, and find my feet in the city. This all happened within about four weeks, and I was only seventeen. I wasn't ready to go.

* * *

I suppose that I finally have to admit that The Group's self decided high school reign of superiority has finished. Our era as we know it is coming to a close, and although our best intention is to hold off and avoid our inevitable fate, our futures are pulling us away from what we always wanted. Plans make in our last year of togetherness over out hand-painted watercolour table at school are becoming harder and harder to maintain. Our dreams of eternal years of schoolies-like parties are being replaced by personal ideals of the perfect job, university places, lectures, finding new accommodation, meeting new friends, and finding new love. Some of our ideals are being realised, while some of our original plans are being thrown out of order by new opportunities that were never intended to occur.

Change for some of us puts smiles on our faces, as this was the plan all along, to change. But this word has another meaning for others. Changing is forcing us from our ordered, safe, comforting little worlds where ideally, everything will continue to be. At least until we say that it is alright to adapt.

As much as those of us want to hide in this place, life makes other plans for us and I've begun to understand that no matter how happy we are to live here in our organised, sheltered lives, we can't prolong our stay here any longer than our fate intends.

We've hear one thousand times over that "things change", but from now on, I want to swallow my fear of it and make things change for the better. I'm scared of something that will be a whole new world for me, a whole year too early. I'm scared of losing you and leaving you and I'm scared that my future will be too far from yours.

But I will call you. I will email you. I will visit you. We will always be together, just in a different setting. Things will be different, but we don't have to let The Group go. We have had our years of wonderful experiences.

We'll go to the beach in the summer and make pyramids and take photos. In autumn we'll walk together and laugh about Slush Puppy and Muscular Whore. In winter we'll stay together in an apartment in the city, after our annual Saints vs. Bombers game, and be grateful for our doonas and hot chocolate. In spring we'll come back home and lay in the grass in the Castlemaine Botanic Gardens and be thankful that despite our different and diverse paths, we didn't let our friendship slip away from us. We'll make new friends, but we'll never replace the old ones. We have too much to let go of.