I’m on holidays and it is such a pleasure! As of 4pm Monday just gone, I have a whole month off Uni, a whole month of unstructured time that i cant wait to start playing with!

The last few months have been kind of interesting - people usually divide a week up into work week followed by weekend. I’ve been having 3 day work weeks followed by 4 day study weeks, and not really thinking about weekends too much. It helps that Sean doesn’t really have a normal work week either, and that for both of us working for part or all of a Saturday or Sunday has become standard without the sort of resentment you get from thinking “this is supposed to be my weekend!”. My work week has been a pleasant holiday from having to think about study, and the study week is an immersion in subjects I’m really interested in interspersed with housework that just cant wait any longer (there is only so much room on the benchtop near the sink, only so many pairs of socks and jeans available). So I’m really in the habit now of thinking in terms of work-week and study-week, and that feels good.

Work continues to be good, the admin stuff I’m doing is varied, fast-paced and interesting. And the office environment is really good, I’m working with a great bunch of people. But the economic recession is starting to bite - we lost a bit of funding and so some programs are not being refunded or are being cut back. And as an admin person there is no funding for my job, the money comes from the program funding. It only makes sense that if a number of program staff are losing their jobs (in a couple of cases) or losing a day here or there (in the majority of cases), then I should lose a day too. So as of last week, the work week is now 2 days and the study week is 5 days.

So next semester looks a lot less hectic than the last one - 5 days to study, two to work and only three subjects as opposed to the 4 I had last semester. Who knows, I might even pick up a day a week helping out a very busy archaeologist friend whose admin needs a bit of straightening out and end up back where i started… we will see.

I have very little planned for the holidays - I haven’t had time to think about them! The plumber is already here fixing the numerous plumbing issues, and later this afternoon Sean and I may head off to Bunnings hardware store to buy some some irrigation tubing which I will turn into hoops. Tomorrow I’m going to Gawler to hang out with the grandparents for the day - I have hardly spent any time with them this year! I will go garage sailing with Dad and Naomi on Saturday for the first time in AGES and try hard not to buy anything! I may take the camera tho. I intend to take the overlocker home with me when I leave their house and buy some t-shirt jersey stretch and fleece fabrics to experiment with. And its tax time, so I guess I could do that too…

Ah unstructured time! What a luxury!

Earth shadow

Taken as we were leaving Tokyo. Either Mum or Sandy leant over the next passenger to snap this pic for me. I didn’t realise what it was at the time, all I knew was that it was pretty, and a bit unusual. Ive known about halos for a while, but i recently got a bit more interested in atmospheric optics after spotting this on the way back from Western Australia:

Glory

Since then I have discovered a group on Flickr, and a very beautiful, detailed and interesting page, all on atmospheric optics.

But I’m supposed to be studying. Actually, right now, I’m supposed to be working on an A1-sized poster promoting a piece of heritage. I have chosen to present a piece of artwork, a mural on the wall of the boardroom at work. The building previously belonged to a metalwork trade union group, and in the late 80’s they commissioned a piece to represent them. It is quite beautiful, and the artistic and political context of it is interesting. It was commissioned as part of the art and working life movement, through which the unions sought to encourage art - whether that be through craftsmanship, introducing people to new art forms, the production of art focused on workers’ lives, or simply enough time off for workers to pursue it as a producer or consumer - and investment in art, by Government and industry, via unions. The literature is heavily influenced by socialism, and the unions seem to spend quite a bit of time justifying their existence, but the stories/histories are very interesting.

I need to do a bit more reading, but much of the rest of the work this arvo will be in photoshop and powerpoint. Im supposed to submit it today. I have tried to get in contact with the artist to ask him a few questions about it and I’m hoping he will get back to me via Facebook at some stage today. If I dont hear from him until later, I will ask him my questions anyway. I’m planning to give the finished poster to my workplace, and the info I get from him can be added even after I have handed it up for marking.

I hope to get it done by 5pm, cos Sean is stranded up in Woomera at the moment and there is the possibility of going for a drive tonight to pick him up. A friend of his has offered to go up there with a trailer and tow him back - but I don’t know if I want to tag along for a 10hr return trip. I kinda do and I kinda don’t - 10hrs on the road ..... still thinking about that one. Well, better get on with it!

Hooping in Hibiya Park during the trip back for Ash and Tracey’s wedding in May.

Feedback is always a good thing. I’ve been told I’m too cryptic, and I know I’m too sporadic, and generally I would like things to be different around here, content-wise in particular. And additionally, I would like to be writing again, practicing writing regularly; why not here?

There are, of course, Reasons why I haven’t been around much. Study is one of them, but not a good one. Working on this will only improve my writing skills and my marks. Sean is another, and I’m gonna have to do a bit of work on the balance there. One reason you didn’t really know about was the fact that when I started working after finishing Uni last time around, I told my bosses about this site and that became hugely inhibiting. I actually stopped wanting to write, and it didn’t quite feel safe in here anymore. But that feeling has passed, and I am no longer subject to one of those bosses, nor writing about things that will concern the other boss, and neither had the time to read it in any case.

As for being cryptic, well, I stopped keeping a diary once I got this blog, so the tradition of writing for the audience of one continued. I kinda ventured out into writing for an audience now and then, but as I was (and am still) rather self-conscious about the fact that the audience exists, I didn’t really try very hard to connect. I wanted to maintain the old style. And now, I feel like I want to try something new.

So, enough for today. I don’t think I’m going to be here everyday, and I certainly dont want this to be an extension of a facebook page, I’m going to think a bit more about how this will work.

I would love to write in here a bit more about what i have been up to study-wise, what I’ve been thinking and learning, but there isn’t any time! Im spending all my time lurching from assignment to assignment, without being able to do anything more than the bare minimum of reading required to churn out the words i need to hand up to pass. Im a bit disappointed actually. I’ve been thinking quite seriously about dropping a topic, and I’ve asked a few people what they think about that, and their responses have been interesting in that all the men say “Suck it up and get on with it - no-one expects you to be a prize-winning student when you are working at the same time, don’t worry about it!” and the women all say “Don’t let it affect your health, if you feel like its too much then let one go and then you can turn out the quality of work that you want to.” Interesting divide there. In any case, the possibility has passed, its too late to withdraw, so I guess I’m just gonna suck it and see. But I’m pretty frazzled. And it feels pretty bad handing in low quality work.

I have photos from Womad I’d love to show you, stories from the last few months I’d love to tell, but there is just no time. Even work has gotten so busy lately that it took me 3.5 hrs to write a tiny blurb on a friend’s Facebook wall today, in between interruptions and phone calls…. You would think i would be able to finish a sentence, but no, more difficult than it seems. And it’s weeks between peeks at my friends’ blogs or flickr pages….

So i guess, the short story is that all is going well. Study, work, life, love; its all ticking along, some bits faster than others. The VNM is away at the moment, out in the field and not returning until the day after I go out in the field (woooo, field trip to Esperance, 2 weeks of excavations and surveys in the day and report writing at night, actually cant wait!), so we miss each other there, but will catch up again in the couple of weeks before I head to Tokyo for the Wedding. Five weeks apart… oh well. You get that.

And now, its time to go write a tender submission. woo.

Its back on Wednesday nights!

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I did something not so long ago that wasn’t good. And I knew it wasn’t good. I was blind, but at the same time, I knew I was in trouble. I thought about keeping it all to myself, but I knew that if I did that, I would not be able to get out of it. I would lie to myself and twist the truth around to suit the reality.

So I talked my friends about it. They told me I was doing the wrong thing and I defended myself because there is not much else you can do at the time. But I heard what they said, and over time their words sank in. And eventually I stopped doing the wrong thing, because in the end it was their big kicks in the pants shook the blindness out of me and got me to take action. I love my friends for their honesty, I know that what they said was coming from a good place, and I’m glad I trusted my instincts and told them about it. They may have lost respect for me, but I gained a new appreciation of them. Thanks gals.

Conversation with Mum re heading to Tokyo for the wedding just recently - we had just been talking about places we wanted to go, and how much they might cost…

Mum: Oh, and your stimulus payment should come through in April! Working people are getting it April and families get it in March.
Me: Well, thats good timing, but I think we were supposed to spend that here in Australia, on local stuff….
Mum: It doesn’t matter what we spend it on, and Japan’s economy needs help too!

Here, Japan; accept this small offering of financial aid from the Australian Government.

I really like the idea of receiving nearly $1000 for nothing, but bigger picture looks bad to me. In my mind, we are just shovelling money down the throat of a very large tapeworm somewhere in the bowels of the economy; a worm that is much, much larger than it actually needs to be at this point in time, and at a rate which we cannot sustain.

These days we have a much better understanding of the wider repercussions of our culture of consumption, and what all this production and dumping is doing to the planet, and yet we are still so unwilling to deal with any of the changes required to adapt to it, particularly at a governmental/policy level. As Public Opinion points out, the governmental stance is to downplay the crisis as much as possible, and dither and make concessions on emissions trading schemes and other such environmental platforms as soon as the spectre of job losses is raised.

I read a great story today, one that fits the situation very well:

On the journey to finding “success” a man comes to a fork in the road. At the fork he meets a Guru. The man asks, “Which way to success?” The Guru doesn’t speak, but points to one of the roads. The man goes up the road and hits a big bump and splat…he falls down. He decides he is going in the wrong direction and goes back down the road to find the Guru. He asks the Guru, “Is this the way to success because I hit a big bump?” The Guru doesn’t speak and just points again to the same road again. The man goes up the road again, gets a little further this time only to get hit by a car and SPLAT, he falls down. He’s injured and bleeding and decides he must be on the wrong road, so he goes back down the road to find the Guru again. This time he asks the Guru, “Is this the right road to success, becuase I am injured and bleeding!” He says to the Guru, “Please speak, don’t just point.” Finally, the guru speaks…the guru says, “That is in fact the right road you are on, success is just past SPLAT!”

For me, the SPLAT part looks pretty inevitable, and the earlier we do it, the less toxins and environmental damage we have to deal with afterwards.

So I’m coming home, and I walk into the park at the centre of my place, and I see blue police tape around a few trees, cordoning off an area. Hmmm, i think to myself. I walk further in, and there are a bunch of police, some in what looks to be helmetless spacesuits, others in uniform, and they are sitting around, taking it kinda slow. They certainly arent interested in me.

Discreet inquiries amongst a couple of the saner neighbours reveal that a meth lab was discovered in an upstairs apartment a few doors down from my place, and that the police were there most of the day dealing with it and cleaning it up. And what’s more, this isnt the first meth lab to be discovered in this block of apartments!

Damn, and I though I was reasonably safe at home in bed at night!

This week has been a busy one!

On Monday night I went to water polo training as usual, and then home for a lightening shower and change before heading out to see the Waifs at the Governor Hindmarsh! It was sooo goooood to see them live, but i think I waited too long. I have listened to a brief history of… so many times, i think they did those songs in a way that cant be improved upon for me, and I was kinda disappointed with the classics. But the new jazzy stuff off their new album was fantastic, and the cover of Kylie’s “I should be so lucky” was just too cheeky!!!

The gig finished soon after 11pm, but instead of going home, the VNM suggested going to the Grace Emily afterwards, and he must have had some kind of psyclic premonition (but wait - i thought i was the psyclist in this relationship!), because soon after most of the band turned up. Monday night is Billy Bob’s BBQ Jam, and it turned into quite a jam indeed. We got home at 3am…

On Tuesday morning at 8am, the funky young wasp destroyer from the City Council came over, stood next to me (in less than best condition) in my front yard and agreed that there were wasps hanging out in my garden. He went off in search of the nest. I went back to bed for a while. A long while.

On Tuesday night, we won our first game of water polo! Two new players who didn’t quite make the state under 19 team have joined just joined us, so THIS time when we played the Women’s Masters team (who are very experienced players and not afraid of the whole grab/kick/push/dunk/strangle/elbow-to-jaw routine), we won 9:5. Quite a turnaround from our last encounter, where we lost 1:14. I’m sure the fact that I’ve figured out a) how to swim again and b) how to catch and throw a wet ball in my wet hands while treading water made a bit of a difference (i actually got my hands on the ball twice in the last game), but I think most of the credit goes to the new girls!

On Wednesday morning, I found the wasp’s nest in one of the neighboring buildings. And I enroled. Easily the most interesting subject I enroled in was a two week dig in Esperance in WA in April! This study year is gonna be fun!

This morning at 8am, the funky young wasp destroyer came over again and i took him to the nest. Wasp problem solved! No more being harassed while sitting outdoors eating!

Power supply has long been an issue in South Australia, and this Summer seems to be testing the situation quite severely. It has been cool for quite a while through December and early January, but the last week has been up in the 40’s quite consistently. On Wed last week, we lost power at work at 4pm, then again on Thurs. I heard it was all ok on Friday, but the VNM lost power late on Thurs night for an hour or two. I didnt notice any power outages on the weekend, but now at work we lost power for an hour this morning, and then again just now for 30 mins.

What a shambles! And temperatures this week will continue in the high 30/low 40’s… I think I can probably expect a power shortage each day.

So I bought an airconditioner. Because I didnt think I was doing enough to contribute to the problem. Nah, actually its because (like many men) the VNM is severely exothermic, so its much like sleeping with a large, cuddly heater in the bed. Not cool, er, happy. And also, it just somehow seems to be hotter than usual. I dunno, I guess these kind of hot spells usually come later in the Summer when we have all had a bit of time to adjust already, but this one came right at the start. So when it got to the point that even with the whole house shut down and blinds shut and everything, it was only a degree or two cooler inside than out, well it suddenly seemed like a good idea to sink $500 into a window-type aircon. I went out with Dad on Saturday, and, well, that was a bit of an ordeal and very hot and sweaty but we got it installed the same day.

If only the cool air would reach the bedroom…. Time to move into the lounge I think.

I really like extremes of weather, but Tokyo’s extremes are much more interesting than Adelaide’s extremes.