Listening pleasure 

Conversations with God

Yesterday should have been an unparalled triumph. For a start, my bank finally gave me my missing PIN number (only fifteen days rather than the promised five, but who's counting); my glorious new iPod inMotion speakers arrived at the porters lodge (an ebay assisted import from the US at 2/3rds the Australian cost); and I had grad hall to look forward to.

Instead, I felt sort of tense, crotchety and out of control most of the day. My mood was probably not helped by a morning of fine rain, more like a nursery spray mist, not so much falling as hanging in the air and infiltrating every opening and settling in gentle, cumulative slicks over cobblestones and trouser-legs alike.

Bascially, my problem is getting ready for the next conversation with god. My supervisor is - well - if not the guy, one of the five guys, but more likely one of the two. Put it this way, a very good proportion of the ICJ cases I will need to look at over the next three years he appeared in. This is a practicing international lawyer whose clients are nation states.

Faintly intimidated? Me?

Anyway, despite being internationally mobile, frighteningly intelligent and insanely busy, he seems (after one meeting) extremely approachable, genuinely nice and very active in his supervision of PhD students. Once again, I've been incredibly lucky.

But ... it looks like I'll be producing writing for him on a fortnightly basis. External deadlines are great, but convincing yourself that something doesn't have to be perfect before presenting it to one of the planet's more senior and experienced people in your field is another challenge altogether.

However, today, despite it being the morning after a particularly rigorous grad hall that somehow finished in the bar of a neighbouring college, I put in a good day at the office (as pictured above) and just got the hell on with it.

I'll have something for him by tomorrow, though he's pushed our next meeting back from 4 pm Friday to 11 am ... Saturday.

I mentioned he was busy, right?