on the birthday of Bronwyn

we-e-eeell. this started out as a wall post on Facebook and then it morphed into something so gastronomically long that even i didn't want to read through the whole thing. so you know what i do when that happens? i turn the wall post into a blog post. VÓILA! maaaagic, i tell you.

as the title of this blog post suggests, today is the birthday of the glorious Bronwyn (or, erm, "Brownwyn", if you are our old Design 3 lecturer... derp).

if you have not had the privilege of meeting and/or getting to know Bron, i have two things to say to you:

1. ag shem for you;
2. you can sort of make up for the clear lack in your life by heading over to her blog and giving it a read.

i've known Bron for a good 4.5 years, and she's my straight-up homie. we first encountered one another at some point during O-Week, because we were ickle firsties in the same res - at that point bearing the glorious moniker "New Residence 2" (i kid you not) - and so we learnt our first year serenade together with the other, like, 60-odd girls who were newbies to the res and the university, too; we danced and sang, likely alongside one another at some point, in the cold street outside res in front of half-asleep first-year boys and on stage in the Great Hall for RU Jamming; we sat through all the obligatory introductory lectures and house meetings together. 

now, psychologists and clever brain-people talk about first impressions of people being important, which i am going to poo-poo thoroughly (sorry, clever people) because i can't distinctly remember my first impression of Bronwyn. to be fair, i met her when just about everyone in the University World was new to me so it's probably there muddled up with my first impressions of the other 500+ people i had the duty of meeting in my first couple weeks at Rhodes. but, like, first impressions are dumb, guys. (i say this probably mainly because i get the sense that i make a profoundly unimpactful first impression... ha!) what matters way more is who you find when you actually get to know a person, and over many years of Journ- and English-bonding as well as in the fiery furnaces of Design 3 and 4, i found a gem in Bron.

i will, at this point, compare my dear, beloved friend to a gateway drug. stay with me here, folks. the more time you spend with her, the more time you want to spend with her; it's very difficult (read: impossible) to get sick of her. i have also noticed that she has an uncanny knack for getting me hooked on other things, too (hence the gateway comparison). only good things though - things like coffee, and Bebas Neue (which is a typeface, if you are uneducated), and the song "BO$$" by Fifth Harmony. (Bron, this song came on while i was sitting in Twing Wok with my sister earlier this week and i was on the edge of getting up and dancing while shouting the lyrics very confidently when they skipped to the next track. i feel like the waitress had some sort of premonition about my course of action had the song continued...). now let us all partake in the glory.

"BO$$" is the epitome of Bronwyn. she is confident, independent, strong, smart, focused and hopefully making ALL the Oprah-dollars because she is intensely talented and hard-working. mostly, she is unapologetically herself,  and that's more than pretty miraculous in my books. 

i love her because (unlike a gateway drug) she has only ever had a positive influence on me. isn't it amazing when you find a person about whom you can say that? lucky lucky me. 

i love her because she inspires me to work my very hardest at what i do. 

i love her because she lets me cry when i need to, and she is able to tell me i'm being a fool in the nicest way possible. 

i love her because she understands the true necessity of Dylan Moran in one's daily life. 

i love her because she believes that sometimes you can have copious amounts of coffee for lunch. (we did this together the other week. supreme dining, let me tell you.) 

i love her because she is #kakpleasant. 

i love her because beauty - she has much of it. 

i love her for creating the best fictional teen girl magazine with me, that one day i have growing confidence will be a reality. 

i love her because she gives more than a damn; she gives many damns. 

i love her because she doesn't hold the truly painful blind drawing i did of her faaaace in art class that one time against me (true friendship, yo!). 

i love her because even though she now lives some distance from me (very much boo), she will send me random whatsapp messages that turn my day around. 

i love her for being a fellow typeface nerd (see: that one time when we had a whole freakout session about how glorious FontFabric was and your mom was just laughing at us). 

i love her for her wicked sense of humour (see what i did there, Bron!). 

i love her for being one of the two girls (you too, my Lucy-Lu) who remained the longest with me the night/morning before our final portfolios were due last November, when i was a wreck and we were all vulnerable as vaaaark and we were each other's emotional lifelines. (yoh that got very deep very suddenly.) 

mostly, i love her because it is the only sensible thing to do when faced with someone as glorious as she is.

so hi, Bron, i hand-lettered you a thing today (in memory of my incredibly terrible self-defined project, haha!)...

...and yes, that is Oswald and Bebas Neue, and yes, i think you are, in fact, the original BO$$. i love you more than all the horrogs in the world and i hope you have had only the most incredible day of your life today (or at least a really flipping awesome day; there was no Han so i dunno if it could've been the BEST day ever ;) ). i can't waaaait to see you so soon and drink some Homeground goodness with you and freak out over Dylan Moran with you and find cute onesies at the Village Green and coerce you up to the Cue lair with jub-jubs (i had to work the jub-jubs in somewhere)! you are a special kind and a true friend, and i hope you know just how treasured you are. now look at these photos of us and tell me why i am always on the left and you are always on the right... it's like we just KNOW.

ok, das all... Han eeeout. *air-kiss*