Irini

 Irini worked in the system support team with me at Monash. She was in charge of training faculty staff on how to use the student database. She was very extrovert, had a very loud laugh that used to travel the entire sea of cubefarm (partitioned offices) that we worked in and was absolutely stunning to look at: like a leggy Madonna (the singer just to clarify). She had a great rapport with Chris because of his grecophilia. 

Her parents were born in Greece, migrated to Australia, had worked their entire life in a factory and had saved a small fortune. They tried really hard to instil a sense of discipline and commitment in Irini but she rebelled. During the course of the time that we worked together she ditched the ideal My Big Fat Greek Wedding boyfriend, an excellent soccer player to boot and traded him for a long haired blonde surfer called Anthony. She eventually rebelled against her nice, secure job at Monash too. I remember her crying out from her desk, "I am SO bored! I am sick of this job". Haha, funny girl.

She helped organise my kitchen tea with my best friend Genevieve and they had organised some really naughty games like me having to eat a dessert blindfolded and it was a rum banana with two perfectly suggestive scoops of vanilla ice-cream either side. Everyone laughed because they knew what I eating. Instead of pin the tail on the donkey, we also played pin the penis on my husband (well a poster of him anyway) which she had organised at work.

She and I did aqua aerobics together for a while with the funniest, gay instructor imaginable. I lost so much weight thanks to him pushing us in the pool, just in time to be married to Mark. Irini and Anthony came to our wedding.

When Mark and I moved to Eildon, she moved to Fremantle and worked for Cockburn council in WA. God did we laugh, "No, Anna, the 'ck' is silent!". Over there she met an American guy called Sacha and she eventually moved to the US with him and they had two boys together. Their relationship eroded. She told Chris and I, "I see him more like a brother now than a lover". She worked for the Hispanic Institute and then studied Psychology and ended up becoming a counsellor.

She was on Facebook for a while but it eventually drove her mad because she had such an infectious personality that everyone wanted to stay in touch with her. I emailed her a few times and then again when I deleted my own Facebook and she lamented that no-one e-mails her any more because she is not on Facebook.

I bought her a copy of The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas because I had watched the TV series and thought it might remind her of Grecian culture in Melbourne.