Cough, cough, SPLUTTER

Hehe, yes, I took a day off today. Not because I'm very ill, just because I have too much to do and too much sleep to be had!! Hayds and Sheree's wedding is coming up on Saturday, I can't wait. I'm road tripping it down to Warrnie with Ilks, so that should be a blast, it's been a while since we had some time to actually talk 1:1. Clinic is almost over. 5 more days of being grilled by grumpy supervisors and being made to do too much work! Enough complaining, can't wait for musc (I hope there is some sort of improvement at the Western, contrary to popular belief!)

The speech

Hi everyone!
I’m Jacqui and this is Terence, and we’re Stefan‘s uni friends. Terence and I first met Stefan at Physio Orientation Camp in the Summer of 2003, where we were all innocent and naïve teenagers, fresh out of school. This brown haired, blue eyed, pale skinned stud made such an impression on me that, despite exchanging daily conversation with him for a month, I still had absolutely no clue what his name was. Since then, we’ve both had the pleasure of getting to know him and have grown to love his quirks and wacky ways, even if it's meant listening to Jessica Simpson all day every day for a week, or playing internet minesweeper every 3 minutes over MSN during swot vac! Even though it’s been only 3 years, we’ve seen enough of him in this short time to realize that you could become a successful stand-up comedian using material based solely on the shenanigans that this guy gets up to. But tonight we’ll give just a few examples.

Stefan would have to be one of the luckiest students to ever grace the overrated name of Melbourne university. Somehow he has managed to scrape through every semester so far by the skin of his teeth. He has scored more 50s at uni than the Australian Cricket Team playing Bangladesh. In fact, if bets were being taken for who would win the award of ‘the luckiest person to graduate’, I would sell my clothes, my car, my organs and the rights to any future kids of mine and put all the resulting money on Stefan. Not that he isn’t smart. Oh trust me he’s smart! Who else would figure out that the best way to evade a fine for not buying a tram ticket would be to “accidentally” give the inspector the wrong number to his address. It’s just that, if he were any lazier, he would shift his tv, toilet and kitchen into his bedroom to avoid getting out of it. In fact, I’m actually starting to believe that the only reason why he’s managing to pass his exams is because he watches enough episodes of House and Grey’s Anatomy to give decent legitimate answers. If he were to stop going to the tennis with me rather than take a sickie from his extra clinic rotation that determines whether or not he would have to repeat the year, he would be a physio guru, and heavens above would definitely not be going around claiming he wants to have ‘Gill Webb’s babies’…

Not only is Stefan lazy, but he has a finely tuned memory for unimportant information. While he struggles to remember day-to-day get togethers and due dates, his memory tends to make a miraculous recovery when it comes to the TV guide. Stefan has no trouble remembering the exact days and times of his favourite programs. In fact, I think Stefan is the only male on the planet who actually enjoys the judging segment from Dancing with the Stars more than the actual dances!

Yes, Stefan has a passion for planting himself in front of the couch on any given day with a bowlful of chicken cheezels and 10L of coke. But this doesn’t mean that Stefan doesn’t enjoy exercise… oh no! On rare occasions he feels guilty about his prolonged inactivity and vows to start a health-kick, where he becomes extremely ambitious. A series of 100m sprints and a 2km run have been well in his repertoire, involving a scenic cruise around the local Brunswick neighbourhood. This is all well and good, except that afterwards, Stefan entertains us all with hourly complaints of back, neck and shoulder pain and vows never to get off his couch again. Who needs exercise when you have a mountain-high pile of junk food and a good 12 hours of recorded TV to watch?

Stefan has always been a ladies’ man... No, it’s not that he’s a player or a pimp. In fact, the girl who ends up with Stefan may just be the luckiest girl alive. It’s just that Stefan has had his moments. Yes, many of his male brethren have stood back and watched on, wondering just how in the world he does it. It seems that many a girl cannot resist the sheer attractiveness, the sheer manliness of the appallingly slouched back and the hair that just never seems to change which this man is so blessed by. Example number 1. It was two years ago on the Yarra River. Without going into TOO much detail, let’s just say that the night involved a boat so crammed the RSPCA would go nuts, roudy physio students dressed up to dance the night away, a little bit of FREE alcohol – the best kind of alcohol in Stefan’s books, and a dentistry girl of whom Stefan got to know well…really well….no I mean, really really well. SO well that it was surprising that he never even got her name. Not that he was really talking to her much. Oh no, getting names and phone numbers weren’t the objective of the night. Drunken public displays of affection, at the back of the boat outside an overflowing toilet in full view of all to see the two of them in each other’s arms in what can only be described as “violent cuddles” were more his thing for the night.

Example number 2 would be at Melissa’s 21st. The rest of us guys stood back and watched on as slowly and precisely like poetry written with a gold felt pen on silk cloth, Stefan weaved his magic on this particular girl on the dancefloor. It was like drinking vanilla coke – intriguingly smooth. To his credit, Stefan actually knows the name of this particular girl. In fact, he actually took the time to talk to her a little bit first. But surely enough, the two would be in each other’s arms on the dancefloor. Now as the rest of us watched we began to place bets. Just how long would he be kissing this girl? 10 minutes passes by…then 20 minutes…30 minutes….1 hour….an hour and a half…2 hours. In fact, just a little over two hours had passed by before he finally breathed unrecycled air. And when I finally went over to him I asked, “do you have ANY idea how long it’s been?” in which he replied “oh, I don’t know…30 minutes or so?” To this day he still thinks I’m a lying son of a bitch. But oh well, time flies by when you’re having fun huh?

Yes, it’s true, Stefan has definitely had his fair share with the ladies, and the truth is, they all love him. Not because he’s 6 foot 2 with an amazing tan and ripped abs, but because he somewhat resembles Forrest Gump. On many occasions, Stefan would merrily ride past us on his bicycle on the way to uni, shamelessly yelling a greeting to us at the top of his lungs across 5 lanes of traffic and a dinging tram, waving frantically. On the rare occasion that he didn’t ride his bike to uni in 2nd year, he could be seen daftly kicking rocks and sticks or tripping on the side of the footpath clumsily, but merrily, on his way back to International House.

Stefan is also great story teller, and is far from shy when it comes to telling people stories at his own expense, as long has he gets a laugh out of it. Like the time he was asleep and it was 2 or 3am. He was awoken by sounds coming down from his garage. Fearing that it was a band of Brunswick thugs, most probably from the gangland underworld as Brunswick is so famous for, he decided to go check it out. Now any sane sensible person would’ve grabbed a weapon for self-defense like a baseball bat, perhaps a fork or at the very least, his Tina Arena DVD which would’ve surely scared the thugs away. But no, whether it be his unrivaled stupidity or his way out of control macho-ness, he decided to go down without any weapon at all, seemingly believing that the sheer, brute natural power of his biceps will be all that’s needed. Thankfully for him the thugs ran away at the first sight of this tall monster, because if any fight did happen, Stefan would be six feet under or, at best, drinking out of a straw for the rest of his life.

But jokes aside, Stefan is most certainly one of the greatest blokes you could ever have as a friend. Behind the Tina Arena DVDs, the 10 packets of Tim Tams sitting in his old college room, the incessant “are we there yet?”s when driving him around, the constant stream of complaints following a hard core 5 minutes of exercise, the drunken escapades where every 3rd word coming out of his mouth is either the F or the C word or some combination of the two, the $15 Kmart jeans, and his incredibly annoying knack of rocking up to things wearing the same clothes as me, is a man who can make you smile when you feel like crap. A friend who is actually as mature as a wise old man when it comes to deep and meaningful issues. A pal who would let you crash at his place a hundred times in as many days. The go-to guy when it’s 3 seconds left before the buzzer and you need a person who just wouldn’t let you down. For the two of us, and I’m sure we speak for many if not all the uni people who’ve been lucky to know him, when we think back on our uni years, Stefan will be one of the first people to pop up in our minds. Put simply, life since uni started just wouldn’t have been as great without him around. Stefan, Happy 21st champ. Have a great night. And keep rockin like only Tina Arena can!

Last night

Stefan's 21st...

What a night to remember!!!

Love y'all