Countdown to Cambridge: C minus 28 days
(My last four days in excruciating detail)

Today: Visa day!

Canberra is a little surreal after Melbourne. The sky is so big, everything else looks, well, flat – or in bizarrely compressed perspective, like a Jeffrey Smart painting.

Indeed, whoever designed the Brindabella Business Park at the Canberra airport had clearly recently OD’d on some Smart paintings: solid blocks of industrial colour rising out of no discernable foreground and standing stark against the sky. The buildings all had that assembled-from-simple-shapes-on-a-fuzzy-felt-board look to them. One of these oddities was the quaintly titled Piccadilly House, which accommodates the British High Commission Consular Section.

I felt nervous that my paperwork would be found wanting. (“What do you mean you don’t have birth certificates for at least five grandparents?”) However, the only hassle was waiting. A cheery consular officials sat behind a bank teller’s glass screen and informed me, tinnily, through a Bose speaker that my four-year ancestry-based entry permit will be ready to collect lunchtime tomorrow.

To step back in time:

Friday night: I did, in the end, get a bit emotional, saying goodbye to my colleagues. The boss and his PA (hereafter, “Moneypenny”) had some lovely words to say, and I went for a pre-drinks drink with Moneypenny where we managed to get sincerely sentimental about the quality of our working relationship.

It has been an excellent year working closely with the two of them, and I’ve learned a good deal from both.

My second farewell function was aimed at outside-work friends, although Mr Z and another recent-leaver from my organisation were kind enough to come along. Drinks were low-key and at the Lounge, on the upstairs balcony. I was delighted by the turnout. There was a good cross-section of lawyer-type, blogging, book clubbing, old Canberra and new Melbourne friends – as well as it being the first occasion when my new, temporary set of housemates were all out on the town together.

The most amusing part of the night was my effort at table reservation. I arrived first (a mere 20 minutes late) to find the far corner of *my* table already colonised by a group of Brunswick Street types whom I randomly decided to be cinema studies students planning a short film. I sat as far as possible from them, and allowed friends to infill around me, creeping along the table.

“Yup,” I said, “it starts with population pressures, ripens into border disputes – and then it’s all just a question of what the German economy is doing.”

The situation resolved itself according to some unsuspected law of moral balance: as soon as we (the late arriving types who’d booked) filled exactly half the table and were elbow-to-elbow with the interlopers, they spontaneously rose, apologised and retreated to an island colony of two nearby tables which they pushed together.

The second most amusing part of the evening was finishing up my final night in Melbourne dancing at the self-consciously daggy 80s/90s disco at the Builders Arms Hotel on Getrude Street. Nicole, Miriam, Martin, Fiona and I were the posse for that event. Some of the others present didn’t look as though they’d changed their hair styles since the music was first played.

Saturday: I awoke at 9 am, refreshingly un-hungover and began madly stuffing my remaining possessions into two bags. I’d got it down to three coats, a pillow, a fedora (ie Humphrey Bogart) hat, two large green suitcases (only one with wheels), two suit-packs and several stray handfuls of bits and pieces by the time the brunching hour rolled about.

My final meal in Melbourne was a lovely brunch at the Comfortable Chair on Lygon Street. My god they do a huge plateful of food for $10. The company was my exceedingly excellent flatmates and round-the-corner Miriam. And there were bad puns and good coffee.

Such good coffee, and such bad puns. Many of them mine …

The trip to the airport was punctuated by a terribly sweet goodbye phone call from a dear Melbourne friend. Arriving at the airport, however, proved what a hideous encumbrance three coats, a pillow, a fedora, two large green suitcases, two suit-packs and several stray handfuls of bits and pieces shoved into a shoulder bag can be.

Especially when you forget to put your old boy-scout’s pocket knife in your checked luggage.

(It’s following me by mail.)

On the plane to Canberra, I saw one of my scholarship referees, but was unable to catch her for a chat on disembarking. (Must’ve been frightened by my unshaven appearance.

Or the hat.)

Mum and my sister collected me at the airport. It was good to see them. Although my mother’s vest and slacks, eerily, were the same green as my luggage.

Canberra welcomed me with rain and horizontal wind, which was not a great change from recent Melbourne weather, all told.

Sunday: Brunch with the Ruminator! And an absolute stack of dear, ole Canberra friends it was delight to see. We talked, we ate, we watched chunks of “The Animatrix”. (I liked the noir-ish detective story – for reasons that had nothing to do with the guy’s excellent hat.) Beer at the Wig & Pen ensued, followed by dinner with the family, then staying up half the night reading Ben’s “Promethea” collection in a single sitting.

Damn quality Allan Moore writing.

Blogging today will be delayed ...

I'm off to do noble battle with surly visa beasts.

Actually, I've heard the British High Commission in Canberra is really friendly and quick.

However, I've decided it might also be prudent to get visas for a number of other places I'd like to visit before leaving the country. People warn me that most of Eastern Europe still has a decidely communist-era approach to the issue of visas and their inspection at borders ...

Anyway, just trying to finish off my paperwork for a 4 year entry permit to the UK based on my mother's father being a UK citizen. Had it been my father's father I could get a UK passport.

Why did my parents not have the sense to get me born in the UK and save all this mucking about?

Much to report about the end of my time in Melbourne/the return to Canberra, but later.

Not sad, not yet

Heavy-lidded and feeling a touch displaced I stumble through my last day at work.

Had a fabulous farewell function last night, for me and two others who leave next week. There were nearly 30 of us: the guys presently working at my level in the different teams, and some who’d recently left us.

I hadn’t realised there were going to be speeches, and got a little apprehensive about who might have been tapped on the shoulder to make mine.

It suddenly struck me that most of those co-workers I got to feel close to when I first moved to Melbourne and was in hard-core friend-making mode, moved on from the office some time ago. (Most people only do this job a year or 18 months because there’s really no career path, so there’s constant turnover – but less angsty than at a firm because you know going in it’s a one-year gig.)

Anyway, I realised that at work I have, on the whole, probably been friendly – but maybe a little aloof. My Melbourne has been one of a broad range of acquaintances and a few good friends. This suits me, but left no one at work who really knew me. I wondered who on earth would be asked to speak about me.

So, when Mr Z rose to his feet, I was quite relieved. He used to work at the Adelaide office and we got to know each other first through some weeknight drinking. He was also present when I, metaphorically, “hit the wall” rather suddenly at a party some months ago. I was burbling along fine for ages, then kinda got rather flat and sick-feeling around 2.30am, and went to sit, unspeaking and pretty non compos mentis for some time in the garden.

I blamed this mostly on drinking a series of tequila shots with a man possibly twice my weight (I’m a slender guy, if tall-ish, weighing in at a mere 55 kilos immediately after eating).

Mr Z lead with the words: “Doug is a man who punches above his weight …”

The speech was hysterical, short and very kind.

Eventually they kicked us out of the restaurant and a hard core went on to finish a bottle of red at Soft Belly before getting our trams home.

So, this is my final day in the office. There is literally nothing left for me to do here, except fill out the “leaver’s clearance” document that will trigger my final pay and pay-out my accumulated leave, and delete about 2,000 personal e-mails that have accumulated over several months. I no longer even have a desk, my replacement is now well settled in and I’m using spare computers where I find them.

Sad? Not yet. I think I will be soon though.

Meantime I just have to work out what “returned all attractive items?” on my clearance form means …

I know, I know

Naylor Day has been delayed. Forgot to bring in the edits I have been making on paper and transfer them to screen. So tomorrow. Or Saturday at the latest. No threatening e-mails before the weekend please. (Jason - this means you.)

You think this is bad, wait 'till I'm trotting round Europe. (I will maintain Courting Disaster as my travel and Cambridge diary, as well as the usual posts, but until I settle down to study again, Naylor may be tricky for a fortnight in late September.)

Anyway, read on and berate my politics instead.

“I can’t believe it’s not a bollicking”

At the risk of permanently losing my latte-sipping leftist credentials, I find myself about to come out in limited, half-hearted support of a staunch right-wing death beast: Tony Abbott, federal minister for workplace relations.

And not just because he has an eerie resemblance to my former landlord, the gentleman academic.

I watched the 7.30 Report interview last night about whether he had lied about setting up a “slush fund” to attack Pauline Hanson’s One Nation “party”. (I say “party” because “Pauline Hanson’s One Nation” was always a corporation controlled by three voting members, unwilling to open itself to democratic governance by its members (who were in fact mere financial supporters). It’s registration as a party was a fraud on the Electoral Act and Hanson received some $500,000 of public funds for campaign expenses as a result.)

I started off jeering at Abbott, and thinking he was being evasive and obfuscatory. Which he was. But eventually, I got rather sick of Kerry O’Brien’s interview – pleasant as it is to see a bully being bullied.

As Deborah Snow pointed out, there are two separate issues:

“The first is a pledge he made to a disillusioned former One Nation candidate, Terry Sharples, in July 1998 to defray legal costs in a case Sharples was bringing against One Nation.

The second is a trust that Abbott set up the next month to pursue One Nation through other legal channels.”

It has been said that Abbott lied to an ABC interviewer in 1998 when he answered “absolutely not” to the question “So there was never any question of any party funds or other funds from any other source being offered to Terry Sharples?”

Let’s unpack this. In all fairness, the point Abbott tried to get across last night was Sharples was never going to be paid to take on Hanson in the Courts. Abbott organised free legal counsel and said he would make sure – if Sharples lost – that any costs order made against him by a Court and payable to One Nation would not come out of Sharples’ own pocket.

Now whether giving someone a financial guarantee that there will be no cost to them, is at the end of the day, different from “offering” money is an open question. It is certainly not “paying” someone to launch a court case, but that was not the question he was asked to answer.

However, Sharples’ case was never brought. The fund in question (to quote The Age):

“was used to challenge the registration of One Nation in Queensland by preparing a proposed case to be brought by Pauline Hanson's former assistant, Barbara Hazelton. The case did not go ahead and Mr Abbott said the money remaining was returned to the donors.”

So, what we have is (a) a guy guaranteed that if he lost and had costs orders made against him that order would be paid; and (b) funds spent preparing a case that never proceeded. “Slush fund” for a witch-hunt? Hmmm.

Much as I say this through gritted teeth, and with a vein bulging so prominently upon my brow it threatens to burst the skin and inflict whiplash injuries on nearby innocents, Abbott deserves praise.

He backed people to do the right thing and expose a corrupt organisation that was perpetrating a fraud on the public purse and the public’s trust. He may have done it by shady means and for dubious motives, but he did not attempt to use public or party funds to do it. He also did it at a time when his Prime Minister refused to come out in the open and call a spade a dirty great mud-dripping shovel.

It’s a dubious, lop-sided kind of integrity at best – but at least this bullying blusterer of a politician was prepared to take action and not wring his hands in the face of a rising tide of simplistic, fear-driven politics.

As I have said in comments on others’ posts on this issue: (a) Hanson never wanted members with rights in the context of a properly run political party under electoral law - her "party" was a corporation run by three people that did not tolerate internal dissent; and (b) this false structure allowed her to misappropriate (ie steal) $500,000 of public money.

If this was a tax rort committed by a barrister, no-one would be crying over a jail sentence of say, 6 – 12 months. Stealing what the average worker earns in 10 years *is* a big deal. Nor would anyone say ignorance was an excuse.

3 years without parole? Harsh, certainly.

Abbott, using political power and influence to hound a new party out of existence, or showing more determination than most in his party to stand up to a truly outrageous fraud? Much as I may dislike the man, I think the latter.

Final days and counting

Ah, a quiet farewell lunch. Given that much of the organisation is off at conferences this week I am spared speech-making at a farewell afternoon tea. Normally, I quite like making speeches – unlike many I try and keep them pithy and sit down before people start drooling from boredom or in their sleep – but the last guy to leave presented his humorous farewell speech in surprisingly good rhyming couplets.

I hate following a tough act.

Anyway, after a terribly pleasant lunch of fish, white wine and an Italian waiter whose recitation of the specials would have done a town crier proud, I am full of love towards humanity in general – as well as being full of fish and white wine.

The removalists did indeed show up yesterday, and conforming to stereotype, consisted of the older more experienced mover (who did more of the papers and talking and less of the lifting) and the younger mover (who seemed less attached to the job and more figuring out what comes next).

I was, however, sufficiently stressed that I woke up early and by 6.30am was dismantling my bed and trying to wrap my mattress in plastic. My boss then kindly gave me the whole afternoon off so I’d have plenty of time to get everything done before the removalists were expected. I was still sufficiently uptight and sleep deprived that I managed to get on the wrong train home and had to get off in Footscray and find a taxi.

Ooops.

Still, every box I packed is inventoried, numbered and has my father’s contact details and a map of how to get to the appropriate rural property outside Canberra taped to its lid.

Yes, I am a control freak.

Anyway, I am now feeling more relaxed. The rest of the week though is a social blitz: farewell lunch today, farewell dinner with the other young lawyers at my level on Thursday and then the obligatory farewell drinks on Friday. I may or may not scrape myself out for brunch on Saturday before flying out in the afternoon.

Sometime last week I gave up on eating at home, too much chance of the groceries just going to waste. It’s a tough job, eating out all the time in Melbourne, but dammit, when I live virtually on Lygon street, I’m willing to give it a go.

Let the madness begin

My last week at work and my last week in Melbourne. Between farewell events and nerves, this is going to be one weirded-out, sleep deprived kind of week. (Especially once my bed leaves tomorrow.)

Also, my replacement starts today, so training him up – and having someone at my elbow all week – could seriously cramp my blogging.

Mental notes:

(1) when a mite stressed and sleep deprived, do not drink to excess at farewell functions – this may end badly;

(2) remember to gift wrap presents for the boss and the PA early this week, you forgot them both at Christmas, they at least deserve a thank-you now;

(3) if anything will ever allow me to achieve Zen-like contempt for material possessions, it’s moving: packing all my crap again and compiling an inventory for when my parents take possession from the removalists is leading my to see said crap as – well – crap;

(4) though I did an excellent thing returning almost all my library books to the Northcote branch on Sunday, I still have “To the Lighthouse”; now that I am without a car I will need to post it back;

(5) remind Canberra friends I am back as of this weekend for two weeks;

(6) make the big Gautex vs goose-down jacket decision before the Katmandu sale starts on Friday (I think Gautex will win, despite my mother’s lobbying for down – maybe the answer is a triple layer Gautex jacket and a down vest … );

(7) call removalists – why have they not faxed through a job confirmation? They’re due tomorrow, dammit; and

(8) despite (1), gin may well be my friend this week …

What are your tips for things to do in a last week at work?

Blowing them away at the polls

The Californian recall debacle just gets weirder. For those not across the basics, California has a generous system of that old sawhorse of Australian politics, citizen-initiated-referenda. This apparently extends to “recalling” a Governor and forcing a special election. It’ll be a two stage ballot requiring a majority to oust the Governor and, if that succeeds, votes can be counted as cast in a special election.

The media coverage has not really been about Governor Gray Davis’ budgetary and energy policy woes, of course, but about the farcical number of candidates, and the candidature of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who can’t pronounce “forgeddabowdit” as three separate words.

Schwarzenegger faces two serious opponents, the Democrats lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante, who is set to capitalise on the important Hispanic vote and his antagonistic relationship with Gov. Davis. Indeed, Bustamante is ahead of the actor in present polling.

Schwarzenegger’s other opponent is the right wing of the Republican party which is aghast at the Terminator’s tolerant views on abortion and homosexuality (though he is against illegal immigrant workers).

At least Schwarzenegger is following the time honoured Republican tradition of being a candidate who, while being about as sharp as box of hammers, is happy to welcome aboard the full steak-knife set of smart advisers *and* also pay for some of his own advertising.

What is it about Republicans wanting morally (and intellectually) simple people at the helm? (I guess Nixon did give brains a bad name.)

Anyway, the new weirdness is that now Jesse Ventura, former pro wrestler and governor of Minessota has advice for Gubernatorial contender Arnie:

Mr. Ventura [said] that if Californians "are stupid enough to vote for this recall," then people cannot blame his friend and former co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger for capitalizing on it.
…
"First of all, I'd tell Arnold, be yourself," said Mr. Ventura, a man who made his name and fortune dressing in leotards and boas and playing the heavyweight foil to Hulk Hogan. "Don't be spun doctored and stay away from the Republican Party, who will try to make you something you're not."

At least, even if he makes Governor, as someone not born in the US, Schwarzenegger is constitutionally barred from following Reagan’s lead and running for President. Although, on social policy he’d be an advance on Bush and no more incoherent a speech-maker.

But following Beth’s post about minor-celebrity weapons-inspector Richard Butler becoming Governor of Tasmania, which Australian celebrities would you push for state governor? I kinda like the idea of David Wenham as State Governor: I can see him rocking up to the opening of new government building in denim jacket and burnt-copper three-day growth saying “Yeah, it’s largely a ceremonial gig, but the pay isn't too bad.”

That old-time drive-in experience
(Car sale part I, reviews of “American Pie 3”, “Charlies Angels 2” and “Feardotcom”)

So Saturday I sold my car and went to a drive-in double-bill.

I know that sounds odd, but (a) dream-buyer Steve didn’t take possession until Monday, and (b) I went in someone else’s vehicle.

I mean, if you went to the drive in and everyone took their own car it’d just be silly.

My phone had not run hot following my three-day ad in The Age. Dream-buyer Steve was actually my only caller on the Thursday. Over the weekend I had a few other private inquiries – but most were from dealers or auction-houses. I listened politely, took their numbers and asked what they could offer (no more than $8,500).

I also phoned a dealership’s second-hand buyer who was genuinely helpful about who I should be speaking to and what price I should expect.

Saturday did not run to plan. The only car-detailers I could get on short notice arrived late and didn’t finish with the car until after 2 pm. Steve cancelled his morning inspection. My sale was floundering.

I did the only sane thing. I went to brunch with a friend I’d not seen since the penguin escapade.

The detailers did a spanky job though, the car looked dewy-fresh and was heady with that dry-cleaner fresh smell.

Steve showed up in the afternoon; he was friendly, clearly knew a bit about cars and didn’t muck me about. He offered $9,600 and settlement on Monday. It was a good price and a quick sale – so we shook hands and he left a cash deposit.

Celebration was a drive-in all-sequel double-bill of American Pie 3 (“American Wedding”) and Charlie’s Angels 2. Sometimes, cinema is so bad, you can’t help but enjoy it.

Pie 3 is dominated by Sean William Scott. It could be titled: “Stiffler screws up, grosses out, then saves the day.” It was amusing, but I needed to be much drunker.

Stiffler’s half-assed “rehabilitation” turns on him realising that “really gay” does mean “stylish and sophisticated”, and that you could do things both for your friends and to have sex with a bridesmaid.

The earlier films were only redeemed by Eugene Levy as the Dad. Taking your son to emergency when he’s super-glued his hand to his genitals in a masturbatory accident is pretty much the kind of practical, non-judgemental assistance fatherly love is about. His role, along with Alyson Hannigan’s, was diminished for Stiffler’s sake and the slender merits of the series suffered accordingly.

What disturbed me was the hordes of 8 year olds people had brought to the Coburg drive-in. Hello? Sex references? Nudity? The film features strippers, clearly present for the male age demographic of 12 to dead, who were at least they were kind of funny. But appropriate for 8 year olds?

I’ve watched “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” before. See it drunk and it’s forgivable. Sober, it’s tolerable – except the final fifteen minutes.

That ending is even worse a second time round: long, ludicrous, painful. It’s like the writing team, confronted with the sheer existential horror of their wasted lives, gave up and the mail-boy had to complete the script by stapling on ten discarded pages from “Spider Man”. Seriously, people start shooting webs, flying, and swinging between buildings on cables.

The opening sequence is priceless, though, and the fight against the “O’Grady clan” isn’t too bad. The car wash scene in the closing credits is simply gratuitous.

I spent a lot of time glancing over to the ridiculously stylised “Feardotcom” on another screen. I think I got most of the plot: women are kidnapped and tortured on demand for a sicko webcam site.

It also features poltergeist weirdness involving a little girl with white hair, in a white dress, playing with a white ball. Spooky.

Everything is shot on an angle, through a blue filter. Most of the cyber-cops die. I presumed good triumphed over evil - despite rooms that seeped blood, cockroaches or “eerie” video montage.

Conclusion: scary films aren’t very scary without sound.

Overall, I had a fantastically tacky night. Only an extra six-pack could have improved it.

Hardbitten, hardboiled, but certainly not hung-over

One does not use the h-word on a weekday morning (“hung-over”), not even in combination with an adjective such as “mildly”.

One speaks of “feeling a trifle dehydrated”, “a drink too many”, “soup for lunch”, and perhaps “sleeping under a heavy quilt was a mistake”.

Nothing aspirin and black coffee for breakfast can’t fix.

So yes, having stopped at Young & Jackson’s Chloe’s bar for dinner again (fantastic food actually, but very rich), I was rather late to my final blogger Melbourne meetup, and perhaps a little loud and boisterous on arrival.

I may have dominated conversation to the exclusion of others in my Bob-Hope-entertaining-the-troops mode. Ooops.

Anyway, this week’s Naylor is up:

“ … it didn’t look good – grown men don’t just deliberately walk out in front of cars. Hard thing to explain to a jury.”

My thoughts flickered back to the night, headlights slewing across the dark tarmac, the body sprawled like a broken bird. Me, walking over in desperate misplaced hope, to ask if he was all right. Running back to scrabble under the car seats to find where my mobile had ricocheted to rest. Then beginning the first stretch of waiting until the blue and red lights and white cars arrived.

I’m off in search of more coffee.

Long and bitter, the path to reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan

The bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq overnight was, without doubt, a tragic, senseless and brutal act. It is all the more awful given that the people of Iraq should have no real or perceived grievance with the UN, playing as it is a limited relief and advisory role, other than perhaps its having “recognised” US forces as the occupying authority of Iraq and having welcomed the interim and US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.* The UN force in Iraq, though, had called for a speedy transition to Iraqi self-government and had been involved in relief efforts including UNICEF. The death of UN workers in Iraq is, as Kofi Annan put it, a blow to the Iraqi people themselves.

Indeed, the very vulnerability of the UN facility may have resulted from its desire to distance itself from US troops or a heavy security presence.

We can only hope that this development does not undermine the international will to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq and that the good of the majority of its citizens is not jeopardised as a result of this criminal act.

However bad the situation in Iraq, though, it seems terribly regrettable that the news cycle appears to have forgotten Afghanistan. NATO is now to provide a continuing and stable command structure for the security operation in Kabul, but is unlikely to expand the military presence beyond the capital before the June elections. Quite apart from NATO capacity, expanding the operations of UN forces beyond Kabul will require a new Security Council resolution.

The consequence of this seems relatively clear: the warlords who still rule much of the country stand to gain a share of the country’s governance and the odds of free and fair elections do not seem especially promising.

Aid agencies report a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Popular discontent, ethnic tensions and rivalry between warlords combined risk:

creating conditions "dangerously close" to those prevailing at the time of the Taleban's emergence.

The Red Cross still seems upbeat about its efforts to restore essential water and sanitation services, but it is hard to escape the vision of a situation slowly collapsing while the world looks elsewhere.

If this the model for reconstruction following military occupation as part of the War on Terror, it is hardly inspiring. There is already a clear sense that Iraq is sliding from US control, and a radical re-think of strategy is now needed. A new multilateral approach may be the onlything stopping Iraq becoming the new Vietnam, if UN will has not already been dealt a critcal blow. (The fact that most UN, if not World Bank or IMF, workers have elected to remain in place is simply inspiring.) The path ahead is clearly going to be long and difficult and will require a great deal of political and economic will from the international community.

(*Okay, when I wrote this yesterday I should also have thought about the crippling UN sanctions regime as a potential source of local tension and grievances also.)

Losing one by one my keys, and other people’s voices

A weird thought struck me yesterday, as nice-guy and dream-buyer Steve handed over a bank cheque for my car, and that is that – as I wind down my life in Melbourne – my key ring is getting smaller.

(Well, it has fewer keys.)

True, I took the spare keys to my parents’ place in Canberra off it months ago and set them aside, trying to trim it down from something that looked like a shuriken or mace down to a practical implement. So on Sunday, I still had four keys: house, car, office door, luggage. Now I’ve three. By the time I leave Melbourne I will no longer need any of those, provided I get around to replacing my flimsy luggage padlocks.

In some cultures, apparently, keys are a symbol of status as they represent property. Maybe I am finally succeeding in divesting myself of possessions. It certainly feels as if I am relinquishing this city by degrees.

A different loss-phenomenon is, I reflected yesterday, meeting a fellow-blogger for the first time, especially after reading their blog for an extended period.

What I lose on such a meeting (or, in one case, a phone call) is the way I imagined the blogger’s voice sounding. Reading a blog is not just about content. As a very personal, conversational medium, it is an exercise in imagining the author – one gleans things, snippets about a person, assembles them in a certain way and assigns a blog a tone, a voice. Naturally, the person one meets is different.

Sometimes conversation flows readily, sometimes it takes a little more work, but for me there is often the sense of losing the imagined person, the imagined voice.

This is not a saddening loss, like the loss of my keys it is in some ways more of an unburdening – real people are inevitably more interesting. Besides, re-assimilating the gleaned pieces of a writer-as-character in the light of meeting them as writer-in-person also an imaginative exercise. (And probably as creatively flawed as the first imagining.)

Just once or twice, though, there’s been a period when I can still here both voices, the one I assigned someone’s blog, and the “physical” voice I heard on meeting them. Intriguing.

Woo hoo!

Okay, the car is sold. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to blog about it at present. Hmmm … reminder list of topics to blog about:

(1) selling the car

(2) seeing a drive-in all-sequel double-bill of American Pie 3 and Charlie’s Angels 2

(3) watching “Better than Chocolate”

(4) getting used to brunch at Comfortable Chair, Brunswick

(5) reading: “To the Lighthouse” and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”

(6) attempting to work with no remaining brain-power or emotional focus

(7) my new life as a pedestrian

(8) attending a great international law forum on Thrusday and reflecting on the big questions: is it “law” if it can't be enforced? (And issues of direct vs municipal enforcement.)

Less than two weeks in Melbourne to go, and I still need to book a removalist and re-pack all my packing boxes …

(Exeunt pursued by bear)

"Identity" and Naylor Day

Urgh, a bit insomniac at the moment, and engaged in a great e-mail discussion about "Identity" which I saw last night. (Short summary: cool, intriguing, not just a horror/slasher flick - give it a burl.) I would give more detail about the film and the present discussion, but everything that's cool to discuss about it would be a spoiler.

Intriguing, this spate of films with a "who are you, anyway?" theme in them somewhere, first "the Matrix", now "Identity" and soon "Cypher".

So anyway, this week's Naylor is up:

Last year. The story of why I wasn’t a solicitor. How I came to be stamped: “refused admission to practice.” There was a lot to cover, and some of it I knew I would have to skip that first time with Danielle, but at least with her finding a beginning was easy.

If you're new to the site, this is my side-project: publishing a 1000 words a week of a crime-novel-in-progress set in Canberra. It begins over here.

In Sydney: take a moment to reflect
(and other sappy calendar slogans)

Every time I’m back in Sydney for work (and this trip makes three), seems to be a moment to consider what I left behind exiting stage left from the life of a corporate lawyer and moving to Melbourne, and how happy I was to do it.

Many, many, of my Canberra friends live here now and it’s a shame more of them weren’t about while I was still in Sydney.

Still, looking back over “Sydney trip/Sydney sucks” entries numbers one, two, three and four – I have become progressively less bitter about my time here. Though the thought of returning to a firm still fills me with visceral horror.

Walking down to the legal precinct this morning the full two-block length of Hyde Park was beautiful. It was drizzling a little, and terribly humid (when is Sydney not?), but the central axis of the park with its canopy of trees is delightful.

The Hyde Park war memorial is about level with the apartment I’m splitting for the week here with two colleagues, and it’s art-deco era plinth-like outline is quite dramatic lit up at night. All the good buildings here are native sandstone, unfortunately most have been pulled down by successive waves of development, leaving the town with much less architectural history (for my taste) than Melbourne.

I also had a little nostalgia attack, smelling the leaf-mould in the park this morning, its scent fusing with the salty, heavy, humid air off the harbour. I'm growing very fond of the Archibald fountain in Hyde park, too. (Donated by the founder of the Archibald Prize for National Portraiture at the NSW Art Gallery?)

The best thing about this trip, so far though, has been the people – easily. It has been great seeing everyone again, there’s been a real celebratory air to it, in fact.

Monday I saw some of the old Balmain gang, all lawyers – and had a fabulous night of drinking a little too much, joking, reminiscing, gossiping, talking a little too loudly about law-type social issues, and having dinner at the Angus restaurant at the Sheraton on the Park. It’s lovely to catch up with people who you only met on moving to a city, who are genuinely happy to see you again, and genuinely excited for you about what’s going on in your life.

Tuesday I had dinner with Rob, Lyn, Davo and Lara (all of whom have commented on these pages from time to time), Patrick and Petra. Those of us who could get away early went to two for one cocktails at Martin Place Bar (so often my downfall) and we then had dinner at Chinta Ria Temple of Love, which looks something like a Malaysian temple and perches atop the Cockle Bay complex of restaurants. We had great seats outdoors until it started raining, but they scooted us inside pretty quick.

Old Canberra and Coogee friends, some of whom I’ve not seen in months, it was a great night. Hlaf of them had been in Canberra on the weekend – maybe I shouldn’t have just hidden out at the folks’ place.

Also, hanging out with and speaking with my lawyer friends up here has confirmed one thing: I know very few twenty-somethings who are still with a big law firm and genuinely enjoying their job. Those who've gone in-house, on secondment, to smaller firms, or switched career-path look happier and healthier than I've ever seen them. Tends to confirm my own choices, really.

Still, all this drinking and socialising ain’t helping my persistent cold.

PS Went to “Shaolin Soccer” at the Film Festival on Friday and it was spectacular: a really brilliantly funny martial-arts comedy sports romp.

Pushed, kicking and screaming, into the free market

I did it. Even after moaning and griping, and saying it would be too much hassle.

It’s amazing the eminently practical decisions it takes a conversation with your mother to push you into.

So, on Saturday, I bit the bullet. I placed an ad for this weekend’s paper to sell my car.

I finally woke up to the fact that:

(a) driving it round to two or three second-hand dealers was going to take as long as spending a day at home waiting for people to come look at it; and

(b) selling it to a dealer would lose me at least $1,000 – not just a few hundred.

However, as a salesman, I am a born failure. I hate selling things. It embarrasses me. I’m not even a very good Red Cross doorknocker. Sell an idea? Certainly. Speak in public? Not a problem. Push myself as the successor to sliced bread in an interview? Nothing easier.

Sell chocolate door to door? Not in a million years.

I have a pathological dislike of situations that involve any kind of hard-nosed bargaining over money. So I find the idea of a private sale pretty stressful. I’m really an incredibly uncommercial person, which probably explains my aversion to resuming the practice of corporate law.

Anyway, if you’re contemplating this horror yourself, I recommend the red book and drive to help you work out what a fair market price for your car is. (Red book for a small fee will give a very specific estimate and is meant to be the industry price guide.)

Calling a few used-car dealerships is probably still not a bad idea – it will take some of the pressure off the sale if I know I have a viable plan B for selling it. (The “what is your best independent alternative outside this deal?” question in negotiation theory.)

Remaining issues:

(1) managing to get it cleaned and detailed in the little slice of time between returning to town Friday (I’m in Sydney this week) and commencing inspections on Saturday;

(2) if you let people take it for a test drive, what security do you ask for – their car keys? How do you know they have a car? Get them to park it out front first?;

(3) if I get a decent offer – clearly I’ll want a bank cheque, but what’s a reasonable cash deposit? Is $500 on a car for which I’m asking $9,900 reasonable?

Meantime, if you want to look at a good-condition late ‘99 Toyota Echo sedan with 110,000 kms on the clock (that’s why I’m only asking $9,900), e-mail me.

The perils of RSS feeds

I have been picked up, temporarily at least, by the Fidel Castro watch page at Havana Journal.

The reference that their search has picked up is here.

I for one find this all somewhat amusing.

The Toblerone cocktail recipe, by demand

I rave about these all the time, and I get enough Google hits for the topic, so I thought I should post the recipe.

30 ml Frangelico

30 ml Kahlua

30 ml Bailey's Irish cream

60 ml Cream, fresh

1 tblsp Honey

Place the ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker, shake, and strain into glasses, preferably those flat ‘20s-style champagne glasses or martini glasses.

The Frangelico, Baliey’s and Kahlua should only set you back about $100 Australian, at which price I am happy to keep drinking these in bars.

Do not serve with stupid little umbrellas.

For this and other recipes see: the webtender.

(The martini poster is available at All Posters.)

Penguins!

Your life has become, perhaps, objectively sad when you can sit chuckling in the freezing dark on concrete steps at a beach going – “man, this is so bloggable”.

Nonetheless, that’s what I did Sunday night with some of the Melbourne-based Canberra diaspora. We’d gone penguin watching at Phillip Island. (We’d also had a wine tasting and “refreshment platters” pit stop along the way.) Phillip Island has a colony of “little penguins”, the world’s smallest penguins – most no bigger than my shoe, or a little bigger than my hands.

Can I just say, you have not seen funny until you’ve seen a rumble in the penguin colony. A penguin-on-penguin mugging three feet from your face. There’s no solidarity under those little tuxedos, just the ruthless drive to be alpha-penguin by next breeding season. I’ll come back to that, though.

There’s a big visitors’ centre at the “penguin parade”, and then some rather lovely boardwalks carrying you above the nesting grounds out to the beachside concrete steps. You watch the penguins arrive from the sea for an hour, then wander back over the boardwalk through the colony.

I say “steps”, but it’s more like amphitheatre seating, except facing the dark sea. The penguins arrive at sunset to a beach full of tourists and blazing lights.

“If they only come in at sunset,” I said, “don’t the lights confuse them?”

“People have been penguin watching here for years,” said Beth, “they’ve had time to get used to it.”

Someone assumed a penguin voice:

“Man, I’ve been floating out here for days, I don’t care about the lights – I’m going in!”

They’re nervous getting out of the water, as on the beach they’re vulnerable to sea eagle attacks. We speculated at to whether the writhing, wailing mass of child-dom assembled on steps would be scarred for life if a sea eagle descend on the penguins.

The penguins come ashore in “rafts”, very seldom alone. At the high water mark, they seem easily bowled off their little feet by the waves. Also, like the RSPCA wombat, they never cross the beach in one go. There’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, with little forays back into the ocean.

Penguin voices: “Sod this, it was warmer in the water!”

or

“Wait a minute … where’s Beryl?”

They seem to hop more than waddle on their little, little legs, bobbing over the little rocks in their path. Off the beach they split up to follow penguin tracks back to their burrows – or in one case, the tracks of a 4-wheel motorbike back to the fence-line at visitors’ centre.

If not for their white bellies, they would have been quite hard to see once scattered into the undergrowth.

We saw one standing in a little penguin-sized clearing, then another hurdling tiny bushes towards him. A third came out from behind him, waddling along the penguin-track. Suddenly they were hooting and chest-butting and flipper-slapping: penguin fight!

Our night was then complete, though not without its sinister moments. On the way out I noticed penguins gathered by the visitors’ centre fence, undeterred by humans, watching, motionless.

“It’s like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds … but with teeny things in formal wear.”

In the car park a sign read:

LOOK UNDER YOUR CAR.

“… Oh, for penguins!” said one friend. “You can tell I’m from Northern Ireland.”

I decided not to share my vision of bomb-sniffing penguins.

The 90-minute drive home proved that I can indeed assemble the ultimate road-trip cassette.

Naylor day

Today's Naylor is up, and it's an eventful instalment.

More later. Maybe even about penguins.

Yesterday: a day with a hard-boiled master

I got up sluggishly from my bed, let a cough rattle in my throat, and went into the bathroom.

The complexion in the bathroom mirror was grey, brown eyes misty and dull.

Men have been worse, I thought, but better men have called in sick.

I made the call, said I would not be coming in and was told that was sensible. I was alone in the house, except for the two cats.

Felines, not jazz musicians.

I don’t always get on with cats.

I went back to my bed, picked up a novel with a grey and red dust jacket: Dashiell Hammet, “The Glass Key”.

I shrugged without curiosity, rolled on my back and stared at the ceiling, remembered Cate Blanchett’s kid is named after this Dashiell guy. Built a big name in the ‘30s.

I cracked the novel open.

“Huh,” I said an hour later, “I’d heard this guy could put words on a page.”

I turned pages, ignored the cats, my eyes regaining something of their keen glitter.

Outside, clouds spread from the east like an ink stain on a blotter. I couldn’t tell you if I noticed when the rain first started smearing the dusty windows.

Later, I closed the book and put it down.

I looked at the cats without enmity.

“Not a bad way to spend a day,” I said.


(Picture: Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake in "The Glass Key")

"Once upon a time in the midlands"

I've had better ideas than going out after drinks, on an empty stomach, when feeling a mite peaky to see a free film. Still, free film-festival action is free film-festival action, and the ticket to the Victorian premiere came with my British Council pre-departure briefing. I only hope that "Shaolin Soccer" on Friday, for which I have paid, is a trifle more rewarding.

"The Midlands" is an eminently predictable film. Amusing and charming, perhaps, but in a straight to small screen way.

Men, it seems, come in two types:

(1) simmering, broody Scottish criminal sex-pots (ie Robert Carlyle), who walk out on you and their new daughter ten years earlier, and are basically losers; and

(2) gormless, tall, Welsh, well-intentioned providers who make a mockery of themselves proposing to you on television, and who are, basically, losers with good hearts.

The woman in question gets to vacillate between the type (1) from her past, and the type (2) in her present, causing needless suffering all round.

No character has any emotional depth except the 12 year old daughter, though the only thing approaching character development occurs with bloke (2) learning to stand up for himself a bit.

Yes, there's some touching stuff about what it means to be a real father, but it was better explored in "After the Deluge" which did not resort to those limp, tired stereotypes.

The scholarship breifing itself was good. The Kitten Club was a decent venue. Nice to meet lots of other people on various British programs (all clutching their newly issued briefing kits like little transparent briefcases). Good to know the others have all had the same (or much worse) encounters with university bureaucracies and feel they have endless pre-departure to do lists. One had only just heard back from Cambridge as her file had - literally - got lost down the back of an armchair for some weeks. One who was off to Oxford was rejected by four colleges before getting one in the final round lottery.

Still, what I am doing among them bemuses me: not having worked overseas, for a UN agency, for a community legal centre, not writing my first textbook and not wanting to study anything really useful like environmental science and land management. There were definite moments when neither my CV nor aspirations really seemed to stack up.

I kick myself more, though, for missing the chance to meet David Wenham at the UK Alumni meeting before the film and to ask him about his rumoured starring role in the production of a Murray Whelan TV series ...

PS today's entry is late and brief as I seem to have come down with a sore throat following sitting on a cold beach to watch penguins on the weekend. More of that adventure later.

Gay marriage

The Vatican has declared:

"No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman who . . . co-operate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives"

and called on Catholic politicians everywhere to block or wind back recognition of same-sex unions. The document issued by the Inquisition contains a slightly limp-wristed recognition that Christians should not condone "unjust discrimination against homosexual persons".

Meantime, President Bush has said America should be “welcoming” to gays, but marriage should be legally codified as something only between a man and a woman. This has puzzled some lawyers as:

“… there already is a law, known as the Defense of Marriage Act, that appears to address the two principal concerns of gay marriage opponents. The law, signed by President Clinton in 1996, prohibits any federal recognition of gay marriage, meaning that benefits like those given under Social Security or to veterans may be claimed only by a surviving spouse of the opposite sex. In addition, the law relieves states of any obligation to recognize gay marriages performed in other states where they might be legal.”

It seems that pesky philanderer Clinton has already beaten him to a gay-marriage crackdown. Maybe someone should tell the president?

But none of this goes far enough, especially not this “we won’t actively persecute gay people and that’s pretty damn friendly” spineless pusillanimity. Clearly, the function of marriage is the raising of children in relationships where private sexual acts may lead to reproduction. All heterosexual couples who fail to reproduce within, say, three years of marriage, should have their marriage licenses and legal recognition of their relationship cancelled too.

No baby made between the two of you the old-fashioned way that God or Darwin intended, then no property rights in common, no inheritance benefits, no social security payouts, no access to divorce courts if you split up. This would create a consistent, simple law of marriage and we’d all know where we stood.

Gays, family planners, and willfully non-reproducing couples (as well as those disfavoured by the Almighty or their DNA with infertility) all threaten the family unit. We need to take a firm stand against these people to save our social institutions, and we need to take it now before there’s some outbreak of compassion, tolerance or equality.

Other coverage from puling lefties: Beth, Gianna.

Law: it’s bad for you
(a long polemic rant, approach with irony)

Want to risk depression, mental illness and alcoholism? Want to enter a profession where the highest-paid say, if they had their time over, they’d pick a different career? Want to make money but have not time to spend it? Patrick Schultz, an academic at Notre Dame Law School, has the answer: become a lawyer in a big firm.

It’s always nice to have an academic article backing your prejudices. Schultz’s “On Being a Happy, Healthy and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession” (1999) 52 Vanderbilt Law Review 871 neatly summarizes my reasons for leaving life (or un-death) at a commercial firm, even one with nice views of Sydney harbor.

Admittedly, the American situation Schultz studies is more extreme, and he’s a jaded ex-law-firm-partner, but broadly his ideas are sound. So, let me state my bitter, vitriol-filled position: big law firms are wrong and they warp you.

The major issue is time: lawyers sell their lives in 6-minute slices, putting their working day under enormous time-pressure. It’s a reactive profession: court and client deadlines are seldom realistic when working on several cases at once. Promotion is about how much you billed clients last year. Hours, unsurprisingly, are long. Thus, lawyers complain about (at 888-9):

" … pressure to attract and retain clients in a ferociously competitive marketplace. They complain about having to work in an adversarial environment "in which aggression, selfishness, hostility, suspiciousness, and cynicism are widespread." They complain about not having control over their lives and about being at the mercy of judges and clients. … Mostly, though, they complain about the hours."

The results? First off, lawyers are unusually depressed:

"In 1990 … only three occupations were discovered to have statistically significant elevations of MDD [major depressive disorder]: lawyers, pre-kindergarten … teachers, and secretaries. Lawyers topped the list, suffering from MDD at a rate 3.6 times higher than non-lawyers ... The researchers did not know whether lawyers were depressed because "persons at high risk for major depressive disorder" are attracted to the legal profession or because practicing law "causes or precipitates depression." "

Let me take a blind stab at answering that … but it’s not just practitioners:

"A study of law students … discovered that when students enter law school, they suffer from depression at approximately the same rate as the general population. However, by the spring of the first year of law school, 32% of law students suffer from depression, and by … third year … the figure escalates to an astonishing 40%. Two years after graduation, the rate of depression falls, but only to 17%, or roughly double the level of the general population."

Lawyers also suffer “elevated rates” of emotional problems such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, clinical anxiety, “social alienation and isolation … paranoid ideation, interpersonal sensitivity, phobic anxiety, and hostility”.

Firms seldom weed out problem personalities; indeed, they are sometimes promoted to partner.

The article then goes on to state the obvious:

"Lawyers appear to be prodigious drinkers. The North Carolina study reported that almost 17% of lawyers admitted to drinking three to five alcoholic beverages every day. One researcher conservatively estimated that 15% of lawyers are alcoholics."

Now, all this depicts people unhappy with, and because of, their job. Why don’t they leave? Are the addicted to the money, despite the fact that – really – you could work fewer hours, earn less but still be very comfortable, and regain quality of life?

" … lawyers don't think in these terms. They don't see their lives as crazy. … [indeed] very few lawyers are working extraordinarily long hours because they need the money. …

"Big firm lawyers are, on the whole, a remarkably insecure and competitive group of people. Many of them have spent almost their entire lives competing to win games that other people have set up for them. First they competed to get into a prestigious college. Then they competed for college grades. Then they competed for LSAT scores. Then they competed to get into a prestigious law school. Then they competed for law school grades. ... Then they competed for clerkships. Then they competed to get hired by a big law firm.

"Now that they're in a big law firm, what's going to happen? … [They're] competing to bill more hours, to attract more clients, to win more cases, to do more deals. They're playing a game. And money is how the score is kept in that game … These lawyers have spent their entire lives … measuring their worth by how well they do in the[se] competitions. ... Money is [now] what tells them if they're more successful than the [next] lawyer ... If a lawyer's life is dominated by the game - and if his success in the game is measured by money - then his life is dominated by money. For many, many lawyers, it's that simple."

I have to say, this rings frighteningly true. Lawyers are very position-conscious creatures, and can be quite intimidated by those of higher status. I’ve been asked at a drinks function (by someone who found out I worked for a more prestigious organization), “Oh, so are you still going to talk to me?”

But have I really escaped the game now? True, I’ve dropped out of the “money” game, but I wonder if I’ve now chosen to enter the “further degrees and published articles” game.

Schultz also poses a troubling question: if you have no life outside work, how can you possibly live an ethical life, being so out of touch with social institutions? Law is a closed shop, and following the letter of professional disciplinary codes is not enough: I’ve heard it said jokingly “you only get struck off for stealing the client’s money”. While every aspect of the profession continues to be driven by a culture of time-scarce competition over money, there is little chance of its image, let alone the lives of its practitioners, improving.

Other rants on this theme: God no, they mustn't breed!

Naylor day

This week's Naylor is up.

I may blog more later in the day, otherwise there's always yesterday's collection of links.

(Jonas, working on your question, not sure the article I link to adresses it.)

Intriguing intrigue*: stuff that caught my eye this week

1. Depression = genes + environment?

Why does adversity depress some people, while others soldier on cheerfully? We all have two 5-HTT genes: if both are "long" genes, you're likely to be emotionally resilient; if both are "short" you are more likely to be depressed by age 26.

Now, if only I knew why this English study used a sample population of 847 New Zealanders ...


2. Rebuilding Iraq's courts

How do you re-establish a court system with popular support in a country accustomed to law as a rubber-stamp for coerced confessions and torture? With some inspiring work by local lawyers and law students, and the assistance of US imported experts, it seems. Step one? Reinstating the relatively liberal pre-Saddam criminal law; however, there was a fair bit of heel-dragging over this reform:

"[There was a] long delay in replacing Saddam Hussein's laws with the comparatively progressive Iraqi Penal Code of 1969. Despite agreement among the coalition members in April that this was the best option, the change did not occur until last month. The delay, we were told, came because America's coalition allies wanted the death penalty provisions in the code suspended, while Washington was steadfast in its insistence, apparently, that what's good for Texas must be good for Iraq."

3. Manly manliness, the pulps of the 50s

It's no secret that the cover-art for this male medium was weirdly Freudian and often hyper-politicised (is that Fidel Castro with a rubber hose?):

"The moment most often captured on these magazine covers is one in which the menaced [male] subject has already slogged through a snake-infested swamp, been tortured in a Nazi prison camp, washed up on the shores of a cannibal island and now, in torn or shredded clothing, sopping wet or desiccated after crawling through a desert, faces decapitation, consumption by vicious marine life, amputation by hacksaw, attack by alligators, weasels, ferrets, Indian arrows or samurai cutlasses, sexual exhaustion by Nazi libertines, cigar torture at the hands of Fidel Castro and sometimes - not often - incineration by H-bomb."

In all seriousness, though, what does the lurid pulp fiction of the 50s suggest about male repression and anxiety in stiflingly conformist 50s America?


4. Michael Moore ... also a cheating, millionaire fat-cat?

He deconstructs other people's lies and fictions, so it's inevitable someone would look for omissions and misrepresentations in his work, however bad or slanted their prose:

"And there are the lies of exaggeration - details that after marinating in Moore's brain swell into squishy conspiracy tales, like one of those dried sponges that swell prodigiously in water."

"So how has an embittered, cynical man with a paranoid streak as wide as Montana and a dysfunctional relationship to the truth been able to present himself so successfully as a compassionate, salt-of-the-earth, truth-seeking hero?"

I have trouble taking seriously an article that's racked up 2000 words of invective before offering substantiating examples - though the claim the "free gun today with your new bank account" sequence in "Bowling for Columbine" was staged is disturbing (I've not checked this, but apparently there was a 6 week wait and character check on the issue of that gun).

Still, there's a genuine admiration her for Moore's sheer, improbable charisma - and vitriol is always fun.

Can Moore be criticised for being as simplistic as the monolithic Right he takes on? Of course he can. Polemicists aren't obliged to be even-handed. If they were, they'd be too dull to listen to.


5. No-email please, we're French.

Speaks for itself, really.


*With apologies to the "Mysterious Mysteries" of Invader Zim.

A diary entry

As every good office slave and student knows, nothing makes time fly like a deadline. I leave Melbourne on 30 August (and the country on 16 September) and I have the unaccustomed sensation that my sedate little life has strapped itself in and dropped a heavy right foot to the floor.

So, before I forget everything that’s happened recently, I’m going to step back in time and cover ten eventful days in twenty sentences.

Sunday 27 July. The ineffably camp Shaana warned us yoga would be strenuous, and man did he deliver; the combined sense of tranquil relaxation and rampantly surging endorphins at the end, though, was divine. Also bought THE backpack at the Mountain Design factory outlet on Smith Street for my upcoming adventures.

Saturday 26 July. Kicked off having brunch at the Vegetarian Café, 273 Smith Street with Canberra mate Faye: not only was the food excellent, but it’s great speaking to someone going through much the same stuff – we now do the same type of work for different organisations, both escaped corporate jobs in Sydney, and are both doing a Masters overseas next year (she’s going to Columbia - the University, not the country).

After that came, loosely: Smith Street window shopping where I saw THE backpack, collecting MIFF tickets for “Shaolin Soccer”, lunch/a snack at the gorgeous patisserie Laurent (“to the white place!” we cried) with Beth and Nichole, picking up comics and buying “Promethea” vol 1, dinner at Beth’s and reading “Promethea” (sound effects: jaw hits floor, laughter, wailing that I’ll never write like Alan Moore), and seeing “Bad Eggs”.

Friday 25 July. After work with a dozen colleagues and their spouses I enjoyed drinks at Scubar (where the floorplan and décor have morphed from post-disco to ‘Nam movie brothel), dinner at Nudel Bar (never wear a favourite shirt and order laksa), and ten-pin bowling/cocktails at Crown Casino. My lesson for the night, do not run up and bowl just coz everyone else does it that way; relax, breathe: step calmly to the head of the lane and release the ball firmly and directly – this way you will hit something.

Thursday 24 July. A night of beer with “the boys” (broadly defined) in front of the famous/infamous portrait of “Chloe” at Young and Jacksons.

Wednesday 23 July. A light yoga class, where we were warned what Sunday would be like.

Tuesday 22 July. Dinner at home with a flatmate: stupid jokes told to way past bedtime.

Monday 21 July. Nothing of note.

Sunday 20 July. The end of the Ruminator’s visit: dominated by Yum Cha at Shark Finn Inn City where I disgraced myself by refusing to try the chicken feet on the grounds they looked like Fraggle limbs.

Saturday 19 July. Brunch and morning papers with the Ruminator at the Comfortable Chair, Lygon Street; checked out a seconded friend’s pad behind the Casino; discovered the perils of Kahlua hot chocolate after a long day’s walking; had dinner at the Vege Bar, Brunswick Street; and then went to check out some jazz at Dizzy’s that was fine, but too sleepy for our sedate and sleepy mood (we should have gone to see Cat Empire, dammit).

Friday 18 July. A dinner at Ondine, mentioned over here.

I also appear to have been doing my job adequately, getting on with preparations for the overseas move and reading “To the Lighthouse” for the Book Club of Intestinal Fortitude.

“Bad Eggs”: Australian crime comedy, a tad underdone

Sometimes, the script comes out of the oven before it’s quite ready, before all the ingredients have settled into the right proportion. It can still taste good, everything you need is in it, but there’s a lingering sense of something missing.

Crime comedy can be tricky: just do the set-piece gags and visual mayhem (“Charlie’s Angels”); or go for a convoluted plot too? Well, if you are going to have a plot, best to have all the action in the foreground, seen by the audience (“Dirty Deeds”).

“Bad Eggs” is funny, but inconsistently paced. The opening sequence borders on magic realism in its surreal progression from the plausible, to the credibility-straining, to over-the-top mayhem. (Anytime you want to bolster a sense of suburban normality before undercutting it, throw in a few golden retrievers and a tai chi class.) The rest of the film just doesn’t quite live up to this opening, and the first handful of newspaper gags.

Where “Bad Eggs” gets most bogged down is that everything to do with back-plot, motivation or character histories is written in through unfunny heavy-handed, talking head sequences. “Ooops, better do some explaining now, let’s get dull and slow”. The jokes deliver, but are usually telegraphed well in advance.

That said, there are some good performances and some terribly well delivered one-liners (shame 30% of them were used in the trailer). Mick Molloy and Bob Franklin, as the partnered bumbling cops in a crooked taskforce, play off against each other nicely; Franklin routinely outshining Molloy by putting some character into his performance, not just deadpan delivery.

Judith Lucy has a fair bit to carry as almost the only female presence in the film and turns in a predictably solid performance. Her romantic antagonism with Molloy really doesn’t spark, though, until the final sequence (which I found hil-ar-ious).

Shaun Micallef has a lovely turn as an oily State Premier, and Bill Hunter’s old-time cop is as accomplished as you’d expect. Alan Brough’s computer nerd was a surprisingly funny character whose appeal, as the SMH put it, is that he just moves through the film at his own pace, disjointed from the action about him.

Sometimes, though, you can’t help but hear the limit of the budget creaking, especially when the boom mike drops into shot.

Watchable, genuinely funny, but decidedly uneven.

Alrighty, then

Yesterday’s Naylor is now up (I just plain forgot) and hopefully it represent a return to form.

Anyone who wants to take a geek and tell me why some entries, such as this and this, have started publishing in a different font to the one in the template (see this entry) please do!

Much to blog (including a debate among friends as to the correct use of “thankyou” and “thank you” or “alright” and “all right”, not to mention my initiation into the views of “purists” as to the merits of non-table formatting), but little time as I overslept.

Question of the day: should I get an iPod and use it to take my CD collection overseas with me for a year? (Slightly-lower-than-CD-quality sound is less an issue with my jazz collection - as much of it has already been digitally remastered from vinyl or tape and is not likely to be a full CD-quality anyway.) Seems like it could be a big saving on space and having to whittle down a choice of albums, but is it a good item to take travelling? Can I get it duty free? Hmm …

Crimes that shock the conscience of all mankind

It’s no secret that many in the US are International Criminal Court sceptics. An Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by former Reagan/Bush Snr administration lawyers, takes up the refrain in realtion to international criminal law in general. They begin by discussing the Pinochet case and the Spanish judge who attempted to extradite him from Britain to stand trial in Spain for his human rights abuses in Chile. They comment:

“The problem is that [such prosecutions] … are based
on a legal doctrine that has worrisome implications.
That doctrine is "universal jurisdiction," under which every state
is entitled to prosecute and punish the officials of every other
state for "international" offenses. It is a principle that even its
most active international practitioner, Belgium, is wisely
starting to reject: the governing party plans to amend a
law under which activists tried to prosecute George H. W.
Bush, Gen. Tommy Franks and Prime Minister Tony Blair for
human rights offenses (sic) in connection with the wars against
Iraq, even though nobody involved is Belgian …

Universal jurisdiction does have a proper place in
international law. It began as a device to fight piracy and
slave trading, offenses that took place on the high seas,
beyond the boundaries of any individual state. In more
recent years, however, universality has been asserted for
an increasing number of human rights offenses, even though
there is little practice (in the form of actual
prosecutions … accepted as legal by the defendant's
own country) to support these claims. …”

They are starting from the premise that the only actors in the international community are states, that law is the servant of foreign policy and individuals do not exist as legal subjects on the international plane.

Their examples of slavery and piracy ignore the crime of genocide: intrinsically only capable of being committed within a state, and – at international law – punishable by any legal system anywhere in the world.

The point of universal jurisdiction is not to provide law where state boundaries end (the middle of the ocean), but to punish crimes that shock the conscience of all mankind. That is the principle on which slavers and pirates were tried by courts other than in their home countries: their crimes made them “hostis humanis generis” – enemies of all mankind. The crime of genocide, and the laws of war, recognise that individual people are both protected (and punishable) by international law. The piece continues:

“If international law really did permit each state to
prosecute the leaders of all others … this would prompt a
new kind of war, one fought in courtrooms around the globe.
Courts, however, are poor instruments of international
policy, and such a result would make normal international
relations impossible. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
recently said, for instance … that if United States officials
cannot travel to Brussels without the fear of politically
motivated prosecution, then the United States would take
its business (i.e., NATO headquarters) elsewhere.”

This is a dangerous world view. The Realpolitik view that heads of state should never be accountable for their actions, and should be able to be pardoned for the most outrageous of crimes by themselves, or the cronies who succeed them is self-evidently morally wrong.

The idea that the enforcement of criminal law is an aspect of foreign policy is odious, and in any country with an independent judicial system, is a furphy. The stark American fear of “politically motivated prosecutions” is only of any validity in states where cronyism rules the courts – in a country with a functioning court system if charges are brought as a baseless political stunt, they will be thrown out where there is no evidence to support a conviction.

If in a domestic legal system criminals could go unpunished because local politicians thought it expedient in terms of the smooth running of the country, we would denounce this as corruption. The fact that intelligent people can argue a lesser standard should apply on the international plane should, frankly, revolt us.

(PS if anyone can help me get indented quotes working in this template, I'd be most appreciative.)

(PPS thanks for the tips fellas, I am most appreciative!)

“The Scar”, China Miéville

So, a while ago I reviewed “Perdido Street Station”. “The Scar” is the follow-up and has a tangential connection to the events of the earlier novel. If “Perdido Street” was a steam-punk take on the Victorian vampire novel set in London, “The Scar” starts off looking like a colonial novel – Bellis Coldwine, linguist, flees New Crobuzon for its new colony, on a ship with a cargo full of convicts who are to serve as labour to the free settlers. The convicts are transferred to the ship at night from rotting prison-hulks moored in the great city’s river.

Familiar, anyone?

However, the action soon takes a different turn when the ship is captured by pirates. (No, honestly, they are scary, nasty and violent.) What follows is a unique and compelling idea: the pirates come from their own state, Armada, a floating city of vessels chained and roped together over an area nearly a mile square. Nor is there a simple “pirate king”, it is divided into ridings, each with its own rulers and systems of law.

Once again, Miéville invents a city from scratch and peoples it with exotic concepts. His particular gift, I think, is for conveying a sense of the alien – unlike a good deal of science fiction, his non-human races are often genuinely weird with motivations that are at first, quite hard to fathom. Sometimes they manage to be quite horrifically alien in the Lovecraft manner, yet no less sentient, rational beings as opposed to just being man-eating nasties.

The plot has some lovely switchbacks, and the author’s talent for action scenes is well-used. The concept of scars (as wounds, as signs of healing, from fights, from surgery, self inflicted, and as a form of personal map or history) as an organising theme is well-used. His remains a fairly brutal, loveless world, and some of the characters may seem a little thin – or at least unknowable. One can feel a little for Coldwine’s plight, but she remains such a stern emotional self-disciplinarian it’s often difficult to empathise with her. The key spy-figure is revealed as nothing but a “skin full of schemes”, without real personality of his own; and the mercenary general/bodyguard Uther Doul is deliberately cast as a figure who keeps his own counsel so closely, it is impossible to know him.

Does “high concept” plot-driven science fiction always have to be at the expense of characterisation? Nonetheless, a rollicking read, fabulously imaginative and memorable, and full of Miéville’s fondness for obscure vocabulary.

My mate Elliot

And a shout out to the people keeping me on my toes over at Naylor’s Canberra. My “no-prize” this week goes to Dan at quantum meruit (chuckle if you’re a lawyer) for pointing out I had spontaneously re-named Libby Morris as Libby Hughes. I have a nasty habit of changing the names of "off stage" characters inconsistently. My writers’ group in Balmain pulled me up several times in the early chapters for changing the Carmichael family surname, and having Marina’s brother’s name shift to and fro between Stephen and Daniel. Until a character actually scores some dialogue, I often have trouble keeping a name in line.

I also agree recent instalments may feel rushed-to-the-page. Happy to receive any substantive comments people have on fixing that.

However, the reward for the faithful is coming, the next three weeks will be the conclusion of Chapter 6 – hopefully much more polished material, and the beginning of a markedly different phase of the novel.

And there may well be sex. (Now if that isn’t a teaser … )

Spoilt for choice

Hum, time to pick subjects, at least tentatively, for my Masters. Some sort of pre-registration to indicate what I intend to enrol in. Nice to know university bureaucracy is as just Byzantine, no matter where you land.

I need to sit four papers (three hour exams) to graduate with the Masters, one paper per subject. Some subjects offer as an alternative to a three hour exam either: a two hour exam and a 7000 word paper; or no exam and an 18000 word dissertation. Challenging.

To graduate with international law specialisation, three of my papers must come from the following list:

Law of Armed Conflict, Use of Force and Peacekeeping - which would obviously be intensely topical. Despite this blog though, there’s more to international law than war and invading other countries. Not sure how keen I am.

Settlement of International Disputes - a course with a very wide scope: would include topics as diverse as the use of force, the international court and private international commercial arbitration.

History and Theory of International Law - this is lectured by Phillip Allott. I’m reading his “Eunomia: New Order for a New World” for kicks at present – a dense and sweepingly scholarly book. I’m normally suspicious of “high theory” courses, but Allott argues with convincing fervour that the current system of international relations is morally wrong and that only the development of a radically new doctrine of international law is likely to improve the practice of the international community – provided, of course, you can convince people of your theory.

The WTO and International Economic Law - the WTO strikes me as far too important at the moment to ignore. Like it or loathe it, it’s the only international body capable of enforcing its decisions and, as it has the potential to set internationally binding labour standards, could be the most effectual forum for practical human rights implementation. That said, the course coordinators don’t have a syllabus outline up yet, which is not terribly confidence-boosting.

International Criminal Law - International Disputes and Criminal Law are both taught by James Crawford, who’s a major guru, and he judged me in a moot (mock court) once. War crimes law has been a hobby interest for some time, odd as that sounds to say out loud.

So, anyway, if I don’t do Law of Armed Conflict –figuring I’ll cover the same material between the international disputes and criminal law courses, that would be my four, right? No! I want to do these subjects too:

Comparative Public Law – contrasting approaches to federal constitutional arrangements in the US, the UK and Europe.

Law and Practice of Civil Liberties.

The European Union as a New Legal Order.

One thing’s clear – no commercial firm would ever dare hire me again after doing any combination from this set of subjects. (Yes, I could equally as easily specialise in tax or commercial law. Care factor zero, sadly for my future bank balance.)

PS Last week's Naylor is now up. More Thursday.

On your marks, get set – EAT!

Two words you really want to hear from a friend who has told you that they will be paying for dinner when you crack open the menus at a fancy restaurant: “Go crazy.”

So, the Ruminator was down for the weekend and we indulged.

Oh, how we ate.

My going-away present was Friday-night dinner at Ondine, downstairs at the corner of LaTrobe and Queen Streets, a stone’s throw from work. Thank you for the recommendations people, it was simply astonishing.

We had the three tastes of salmon and mosaic of duck and fois gras (sp?) for entrées, the ocean trout and saddle of rabbit for mains, and the truffle-centred soufflé with peppermint scented caramel ice cream and the “chocolate and coffee” (another three-tastes dish) for dessert. I’m not sure how food can be both rich and delicate at the same time, but it was. By the end of the entrées, the Ruminator wanted to have Donovan’s (the chef’s) baby, and by the end of the mains I was prepared to have a go at it myself.

Any lingering doubts about my limited sense of smell making my tastebuds defective have been abolished. The Riesling by the glass was also wonderfully fragrant. (A bit of a theme of the weekend was how little we wound up drinking – just too full of food, I guess.)

The service was discreet but unpretentious, the lighting subtle – but still enough to see by, and the music was all Ella and Louis tunes from my collection. The post-communist kinky-sex themed canvas hanging in the landing/foyer near the toilets was an odd touch, but the use of space in the restaurant was interesting. (We also saw someone who might have been Geoffrey Rush, but probably wasn’t.)

The rest of the weekend was pretty nifty too – but had a lot to live up to from that as a starting point. However, as I was late to the office this morning, the rest of the weekend roundup will have to wait for tomorrow.

Writing exercise: An overdose of insomulin

And so, his imagination soaked with it, each night he dreamed a world of his own. A world the size of that we know, but circling a giant planet as a moon; following its orbit but unrotating on its own axis, so that each night and each day lasted one half a month. Each night would have a coldest part, when the moon passed through its parent’s shadow, both hemispheres out of the light of the sun.

He dreamed of its inhabitants, of pallid Candlemen, their heads crowned with anemone tendrils that gleamed with latern-fish light and gathered smaller creatures of the night into a concealed mouth. Such people might look human in part, but would need no lips or mouth upon their face.

Somnambulists, too, might live in such a world – beings with two nervous and organic systems within the one body, so that half of them might sleep while the other half woke and took control. Two intelligences could thus share one person, each moving between waking sleep and sleeping wide-awake. Somnambulists would be large, but not strong, and have two sets of eyes that never opened together. What social order would serve a race like this? How do four people with two bodies chose to breed or marry?

In all of this strangeness, he dreamt a human colony, founded on a shipwreck, abandoned. A city built about the petrified remains of two giants, and the creature they died fighting: a fist, a face, a talon extruding as vast obsidian slabs from the soil. A city that mixed law and lawlessness, five wards with courts where a judgement is as it was in Irish myth – a doom that alters one’s fate. The wards draw their strength from the giant’s relics. Beyond are the lawless grounds, where all is free but fierce. Among the men and women move people built of perpetual clockwork, able to act out a precisely ordained fate, changing only if by some accident they should ever need re-winding – their memories lasting only as long as their gears turn.

He saw a strange, precise society, turning on its old grooves, run more by judges than its governor and wondered what might come to pass if the colony should even meet its founders once again.

Sometimes the memory of it kept him from sleeping, and sometimes the dreaming of it made him slow to wake.

If this is as bad as it gets …

Despite yesterday’s piece of self-indulgence, I have nothing to complain about.

The Ruminator visits this weekend, and with great generosity has volunteered to take me somewhere nice for dinner as a going away present. (She has a new job to celebrate too, come to that.) Of course, it’s up to me to pick and book the restaurant – any ideas, anyone? I’m still thinking.

I think our plan is just to drink and eat our way around a few discreet bits of Melbourne, maybe do some shopping. Still, if anyone knows of some good live music Friday or Saturday, drop me a line or leave a comment.

My new, temporary flatmates are great. (I keep staying up past my bed-time with the night-owl of the two, talking and laughing.)

On a completely separate note, one of the joys of being a morning person is about once a fortnight, I just have an unaccountable sense of wonder at the city in the morning – simple things like morning light on the state library, and the pallet of colours under the red-awning of a brightly lit fruit stand can be just breathtaking. Little moments when everyone on the tram seems really uniquely cool in some way, from the girl with a hugely round baby face but a sharp, sharp chin (and funky red shoes and matching skirt) to the guy with hands so big that change looked like play money as he fed it into the machine.

The peril of being a morning person is that no one else is awake enough to share this with, and if you pointed it out to anyone, they’d slap you.

Wild mood swings, strong coffee and wardrobes

I had to take two hours off work this morning to supervise the removalists collecting my gorgeous tawny, century-old wardrobe for the auctioneer’s. Past removalists (cowboys) have chipped it, put nicks in the door, and mysteriously warped one handle out of shape.

At least these guys seemed competent, careful and cheerful. Still, I consigned it to their care without even a signed docket. I accepted my boss’ opinion as to a couple of auction places, phoned around, was referred over the phone by an auction house to a removalist, who then delegated the job to another guy. I am trusting to reputation and could just as easily have handed it over to furniture thieves.

But frankly, even if it were stolen, I’d feel relieved. I’d invested that intractably heavy, awkward, beautiful object (and what to do with it) with so much of my angst over moving house, relocating overseas, studying again and the inevitable administrative to and fro between Cambridge and my scholarship organisation.

Much as I loved it, much as its solid presence made everywhere I’ve landed home, I’d really started to see caring for the wardrobe as a liability and was getting guilty about the damage my serial moves were doing to it.

So yesterday, I was almost crippled by paranoia that the removalists would never confirm a pick-up time and I’d have to start over, that I’d not get funding confirmation from the scholarship in time to make Cambridge’s deadline, that I’d lost a library book, that I’d never get my new room in order in time for a guest this weekend, that I need to look at selling my car and booking the next removal of my stuff to my parents’ in Canberra, that the cat I accidentally let out last night would never come back, etc, etc, etc.

This morning, with the wardrobe gone and a triple black coffee at the morning tea, though, I’m now feeling on top of the world – I have the sense of having done my best to find a neglected pet a good home.

Now, if I could just stop jittering enough to do my work.