Law and black humour (… because it’s the only kind available)

Doug to Lecturer: “So, I’ve been thinking about genocide –”

Lecturer: “As you do of a morning.”

Doug: “Well, it is my favourite international crime.”

Lecturer: “It’s the king of crimes.”

Doug: “If you’re going to start somewhere as an international criminal, it might as well be the top.

“But seriously, isn’t there a problem with the ICC Elements of Crimes on Genocide, in that the Elements require the acts be committed as part of widespread and systematic pattern, while under the Genocide Convention a single murder would be enough if the offender’s intent was to kill the racial group in whole or in part.

“I mean you could have a situation where the guy confess to someone down the pub later that that had been his intent.

“So isn’t a widespread or systematic pattern better seen as constituting evidence making it easier to infer the accused’s state of mind in the absence of a confession, rather than a formal element of the crime?”

Lecturer: “Yeah, I’d say that’s right. The pub confession point is right on the mark. The problem is that the Elements of Crimes reflect the judgements in the Yugoslav Tribunal, which frankly, weren’t always that good on this stuff in the early days.”

If you thought whether a single act of murder could constitute genocide was a purely academic issue, I’d have to say, “Yup, you’re right.” But this is the stuff I spend my days worrying about. Speculating about the legal possibility of a lone genocidal maniac. Proof, yet again, of the parallel moral universe lawyers inhabit …

I have fed you, you are my tribe

Cooking for others was a bit of theme of last week. Tuesday I was a one-man factory at a college Day of the Dead/Shrove Tuesday pancake festival (oh … okay, there was some other talented help in the end) and Thursday I cooked for half the flatmates and a couple of college friends I’d not seen for a while.

Rather bizzarely, I heard the words “Doug, you’re a saint” quite often on Tuesday. I mean, sure I was slaving over a hot stove, but others pitched in to help – once I learned to relinquish the spatula.

Still, it left me with this image of myself in stained glass: a thin man in a brown-hooded robe, brandishing a frying pan benignly at his acolytes. (Rather less certain about the life of poverty and chastity, but I suppose saints still get to drink, right? Although, come to that, a simple, single life of quiet contemplation and study, having renounced the ways of the world (excepting wine and ale), sounds a spookily apt summation of graduate study.)

Thursday night I made my creamy chicken pasta in a tomato sauce with onion and capsicum, than all former flatmates will know and hopefully recall fondly. It seemed as popular as pancakes.

Other people brought cheese and salad, and one person prepared a truly awesome little fruit plate for dessert. (What were those bright yellow things the size of cherry tomatoes called? They were yummy. Especially with crème fraiche and honey.)

I am finding, or rediscovering, how much I like cooking for people. We are terribly lucky to have such a homey kitchen in student accommodation. There is something that fosters a real sense of community about sitting down to a meal around a kitchen table.

Nearly as much a sense of community as staggering in at the end of a long Friday night at the same time as a flatmate and deciding that a late night full English breakfast and gossip-swap over peppermint tea is in order.

Anyway, my culinary endeavours have not gone unnoticed. Thursday someone wrote a plea on the kitchen whiteboard for those staying in the house during the day to remove their washing at the end of the spin cycle and put it in the drier – even pledging to buy the good Samaritan a drink. I made the same request Friday, underneath someone scrawled:

“But what about the free drink?”

To which I wrote in reply: “Isn’t it enough I feed you?”

A third hand added: “And how!”

A fourth: “How? I’m curious?”

While a fifth concluded: “Wonderfully and fulsomely!”

So, there we have it. The first review of my cooking in print.

Who says constitutional drafting need be humourless?

I only wish I had had a hand in drafting this gem for our new Middle Combination Room (college graduate society) constitution and electoral procedures:

“10. 21 In the case of a tied result for a position, the tied candidates should meet to discuss the result and see if they can come to a mutually satisfactory agreement. If the candidates cannot reach an agreement, the candidates have the option of breaking the tie by a coin toss or by asking to rerun the elections for that position. If a coin toss is held, it will occur on the South East lawn of the Front Court of Trinity Hall as soon as reasonably possible. All candidates in the coin toss will be attired in formal clothes and academic dress.”

Ah Cambridge, when no tradition exists, just invent it.

“If this is your first time at Fight Club …”

It seems at a range of 10 metres I have about 80% accuracy in hitting a 10 cm square target and can get about one in five shots within the black centre of the target. I even managed three nine- or ten-point bull’s-eyes.

Mostly I had a quiet weekend, but Sunday I managed to something I’d never done before.

I went air-pistol target shooting.

Yup, boys and guns.

Not that I’m the kind of person who wakes up of a winter’s morning saying: “You know, I want to learn how to shoot stuff.” However, it seems I am the type who – when a flatmate (and president-elect of the student pistol and rifle club) asks of a Sunday evening “Hey do you guys want to come target shooting?” – will reply, “Why not?”

Frankly, the weirdest bit of the experience was finding the range. We drove out past the Grafton centre towards the Ring Road and the light-industrial strip of panel-beaters, tyre salesmen and mechanics’ workshops towards the Cam, aptly clustering around the looming plinth of the technology museum smokestack.

We parked in a tiny set of parking bays next to the Elizabeth Road overpass bridge and walked down, in the dark, to the tunnel leading under the bridge. It was one of those graffitied abandoned spaces with jaundiced low-watt electric lights a succession of sturdy doors set into the concrete. The one we stopped at had a piece of yellow card pinned to the lintel with a name and mobile phone number on it.

My flatmate unlocked the door and fumbled inside for a light-switch. I followed him into a fluorescently lit corridor of cinderblock walls and wooden partitions, a crude ramp leading to a rough concrete floor.

“Welcome to Fight Club,” I muttered.

The empty clubroom (pool table, chairs, kitchenette, green carpet squares) concealed beyond another door was functional but looked surprisingly little like a cavern beneath a bridge. After signing in as guests, a brief tour collapsed when, at the end of several further corridors (cold, flickering lights, randomly placed lockers and lockable cabinets) no-one could find the light-switch for the final passage to the twenty-yard range. I suggested we turn back before I convinced myself we were on the set of a horror movie. (Thety were totally that sort of darkened passages full of steel-cabinet clutter.)

We went back to the ten-metre range visible through a long window in the club room.

It was terribly, terribly cold. Bar heaters did not make much of an impact on the big bare concrete space.

It was interesting. The small crack of the compressed-air pistols, the ping when a shot went too high and caught the metal frame above the targets. The whir of the little electric pulleys that take the small card-targets out and back. Learning the discipline of it: feet at 45 degree, close one eye move shoulders to 90 degrees with wall, sight along shoulder, bring arm up, try and get the wavering halves of the sights to meet up in one neat rectangle against the blurred image of the target, squeeze with light pressure.

The flatmate told me I did fairly well for a fist time.

Not saying I’m a convert mind you, but I enjoyed it more than I’d expect, and the air pistols – while expensive – are a long way short of deadly weapons (though we were solemnly instructed on safety measures and the fact that if our weapons could kill a rat, they could certain hurt us).

I think I may put my pocked target-cards up on the back of my door.

Still, someone was talking about joining the fencing club next term. That might be more my scene.

(Cloisters, St John’s college)

“Play” (an entry for )

Being in a play. At heart, I think I may be a performer. Probably a revelation to no-one but me (“So, you debate, act, blog and want to teach? A performer? Never!”)

But I really didn’t expect to wind up doing a second play this year. I thought my return to uni had to feature at least one play, but that was going to be it: the end of my board-treading. Who was I kidding?

I didn’t think I’d have time for it – but I am enjoying it immensely (despite the perils of morning rehearsals every Saturday). It’s a wonderful part of being a full time student again, having the chance to get in touch with half-neglected parts of yourself, like the 10-year dormant high-school student who was so terribly into drama.

Also doubling several roles in a farce is just marvellous, “The Golden Ass” is a really clever script – textually very clever, but just so entirely mad, especially by the time you reach the stories within stories within stories.

Having time to play. I like the fact that I feel, well, alive at the moment. I feel break-neck busy - which I suppose is the nature of short, intense, eight-week terms – but the work/lifestyle balance does not get much better than being a student again. Especially when, as a foreigner in Cambridge, you have so many excuses to play the tourist.

It’s great to have play-mates you like as well. My household just gets better and better: I like the dynamic we have, the conversations, the discussions. It’s really stimulating to be cooking dinner for friends while an Italian Sociologist and Irish International Relations student argue social and media theory with the odd interjection from a Canadian English literature PhD.

Geeky? Undoubtedly. But quite intoxicating.

Playing with ideas. It’s easily the best thing about being studying again is just being excited by ideas. At the end of the day, I’d study international law just because it interests me, but it doesn’t hurt that it’s so topical. Especially for conversations down the pub.

I had a gratifying moment with a pro-Iraq War medicine student on Friday. To strip our conversation right back, it boiled down to:

“But look,” he said, “the world’s better off without Hussein. So surely it was the right thing to do.”

Me: “That’s not my problem. My problem is that it’s not only a violation of the rule of law, it’s not even in America’s long-term interests. American supremacy has, what, fifty to seventy five years before China is the world super-power, right? So the question is what do you do in that time: do you play for short-term self-interest, or do you try and strengthen - and get everyone else to buy into - a stable rules-based system because it’s the only protection you’ll have when someone else is the sole global hegemon?”

“China? Yeah, of course. Why hasn’t anyone said that to me before? Damn,” waving his pint at other people at the table, “these international lawyers have it going on!”

Nice to feel appreciated.

(Autumn punts, not winter rowers, on the river. Note to self: carry camera everywhere dammit.)


B is for “Bumps”

After rehearsal Saturday I wound up at the bumps.

While it sounds like a party where the entertainment is those sumo-suits, it’s another Cambridge tradition, marking the height of the rowing season.

Basically, the Cam’s a narrow strip of water, not wide enough for a couple of dozen college boats to line up at the one starting line. So there’s a staggered start, based on your ranking in the rowing competition to date (I think). To remove someone from the race you basically ram their boat from behind, and they have to pull over and sit it out.

Hence the term “bumps” (as opposed to “vicious battering”).

Despite the combative name, I think it’s far more common just to try and overtake than to bump.

Some qualifying Trinity Hall men’s and women’s crews were in late races at 4.00 and 4.30 so when I got out of rehearsal early I headed on out to the river. I had no idea where I had to go, just that it was up-river a long way, so glancing at a map, I took a (metaphorical) punt and cycled out along the Cam figuring it would be easy to tell when I was in the right place.

It was. I saw supporters in boat club jackets long before I saw anything else.

The whole thing made a strangely feudal impression on me.

The sound of oars being drawn up in rowlocks with a distinctly martial clack. The heraldic colours of the crew uniforms, that matched the painted undersides of the oar-blades as the sculls scud by. The boom of distant starting guns, somewhere beyond the river bend and flayed winter trees and hedgerows and bramble, the approaching racket and roar of supporters and coaches riding (sometimes slipping) through the riverside bike-track riven quagmire.

The unperturbed swans, ponderously wallowing in the shallows.

Standing a little back from the quick-moving riot, then pacing it with bike – I reflected that wars in the middle ages must have been a bit like this. All human flurry and colour: a packed, moiling movement that could be heard a little way off – but not very far off – and that could probably be safely observed from that same modest distance.

And then at the finish line by the Pike & Eel it would all be over: a dozen odd drifting sculls full of steam-panting ruddied rowers – the culmination of months of pre-dawn mornings braving the freezing waters of the Cam.

I was briefly stirred by the spectacle, but not enough to face that kind of training schedule. (At 10.15 am Saturday morning, I was running late for rehearsal and couldn’t even find where I had to be. The rehearsal was being held in my own college, in a room where I’ve served drinks ...)

The spectators were less practically attired than the rowers. Where the towpath ran out into fields, as mentioned, bikes had churned up a sort of battle of the Somme environment (cow paddock fences added the barbed wire). A lot of people, women especially, were in white fashion sneakers with jeans that hung down to level with the soles of their shoes.

It was an interesting demonstration of capillary action in cotton, the height to which mud had scaled people’s calves.

Not that I can talk. Taking a lady’s racing bike cross-country over mud-churned cow paddocks is probably not in the manufacturer’s recommendations. Cycling a field’s also not necessarily a whole heap better for your jeans and shoes than walking either …

In another interesting display of tradition, the winners in the women’s race got to do a victory lap with laurel in their hair.

(Or what I hope was laurel.)

They drubbed the side of their boat in encouragement to their men’s team as it cruised by to position.

(Gonville and Caius, S Staircase)

S is for schoolmates and snow at St Mary's

“Is everyone from your high school in Cambridge?”

I’ve had the question more than once of late. Last Friday night I was definitely the under-achiever. I went for drinks at the Eagle with four other guys from my little Canberra high school. Two post docs (physics and IT) and a PhD candidate (early modern English Lit with something of a focus on Milton) and me (a mere Masters student) are Friday night regulars.

We were joined by someone who was in Cambridge for an interview for a tenure track lectureship position.

Having just finished his economics doctorate at Harvard.

As you do.

Monday I had a visitor, another high school friend (and second cousin, once removed, as near as we can work out). It was cool showing someone else Cambridge: though the pretty bits can be covered in well under four hours walking. It was good to have an excuse to wander up to the top of St Mary’s tower and take some aerial shots though (see “a new set” over at the photo album).

It was a mildly “The Crow” moment, being at the top of a church tower, accompanied by a thin man in a long leather overcoat and a lot of black (including knee-high, lace-up Docs), being mildly snowed upon.

Yes, it’s snowing again of an evening. Not enough to take photos of yet, though, dammit.

Naylor Day

The new instalment of Naylor is up for the week.

Bruised and shaken, Elliot heads home for some clean clothes, and discovers his situation is worse than he had realised ...

PS I've had a lot of old school friends in town recently, so expect a blast-from-the-past post later in the week (and more photos, of course).

(Me, talking law stuff)

Ar har me hearties!

How many lawyers does it take to get a laptop to speak to a projector? Well, I still don’t know because after more than 30 minutes of struggle me and my seminar-presentation minder gave up (after helpful advice from the Manciple and another guy from the Butler’s office) and called in the guys from the college IT office.

It took them around 30 seconds to drag my laptop under a light and tell me to press Fn + F8.

“Oh,” said I. “You mean that ‘LCD’ key has something to do with the picture display?”

Thankfully, my minder had suggested we start getting ready at 5 for at talk at 6.15. Factoring in a generous margin to cover one’s own ineptitude seldom goes astray.

So anyway, that’s me giving my seminar (“Containing Weapons of Mass Destruction: the US, North Korea and International Law”) on Wednesday in the Master’s lodge. My talk was basically about when you can stop a ship in international waters and confiscate its cargo, if that cargo contains WMD.

(The very short answer, in my opinion, is only when you are engaged in an armed conflict and the weapons are destined for your adversary - thus WMD bound for al Qaeda could be intercepted if the “war on terror” is actually a war not a metaphor, but there is no general right to seize WMD regardless of who they are being shipped to as an act of “pre-emptive” self-defence.)

I think I was successful in pitching it at a mixed audience of lawyers and non-lawyers, and I left the pirate joke in. It seemed to go rather well and drew a number of people from outside the college, including a few South Koreans and international relations students. Around 30 people in total, which was great.

A number of non-lawyers said they thought I was laid out a clear argument and spoke confidently and engagingly. A couple of law-types present said if I wanted to be a teaching academic I was clearly up to it – all of which was great to hear. I certainly had fun, and was happy that the Q&A session was pretty lively and people came up with some interesting legal and common-sense questions.

(My favorite: “If what your saying is right, and international law gives those involved in armed conflicts the power to seize contraband weapons destined for the enemy – does your argument mean, hypothetically, that an al Qaeda navy could legally intercept weapons being shipped to the United States?”)

I got to take a guest to the grad hall dinner afterwards and also got a nice bottle of wine for my troubles - a 1992 Bordeaux from the college cellars, certainly better than anything I could afford. It was also a good night to take a guest: pumpkin, prawn and coconut cream soup to start, quail for main, lychee ice for dessert.

A number of the Aussie LLMs said they would have liked to have come, but I was competing with the Paul Kelly concert in London. Unsurprisingly, international law didn’t quite have the same pulling power.

Still, I get to give the talk again on Monday to the Gates Scholars as a ring-in speaker for an international law colloquium. Should be fun.

Things yoga teachers say …

I think I am still feeling really lethargic after the amazingly taxing yoga session Tuesday. Sort of a 24 hour delayed reaction thing.

Anyway, while we’re straining away in downward dog, waiting for the endorphins to kick in, our instructor is a real talker. Great guy, but a big talker.

“Get your weight back over your hips, fall forward like a waterfall.”

Me: Yeah, waterfall, right.

“Gravity is your friend.”

Me: Uh huh, the rush of blood to my head is going to really help block out the pain any moment now.

“You can’t do yoga without gravity. It’s utterly essential. There could not be yoga in outer space.”

Me: Um, what?

“You need gravity most of all.”

Me: What I need is steel-reinforced sockets for my goddamn arms.

“Well, you also need a mind obviously. And a body.”

Me: No, I really don’t need my body right about now, not with this blistering pain arching through my wrists and arms and shoulders and … and … ooh, endorphins, now my spine feels all stretchy and spready.

“And trousers. You need trousers.”

…

However, the best single line delivered in my hearing recently was a reason for not going into a loud party in a college bar late on Wednesday.

“It smells like undergraduates.”

This, mind you, from ten metres outside its closed doors.

(Mill Road cemetary)

Grad Halls and Seminars

So, last Wednesday was grad hall as usual. I went to the seminar beforehand, being given by a friend on the interaction between human rights and international trade law – particularly looking at the implications for access to water in developing countries. Pretty thought-provoking and even inspiring stuff.

He also had much more professional looking power-point slides than mine dammit.

Not sure how interdicting North Korean weapons of mass destruction on the high seas is going to cut it against that competition.

Dammit. I’m just going to have to put back in the sub-heading: “The law of piracy: AR HAR ME HEARTIES!”

I took a guest to the dinner for the first time last Wednesday: a PhD student friend from one of the newer (i.e. twentieth century) colleges, he really liked our narrow, portrait-hung dining hall. He caught a good meal too: melon starter, fish, apple strudel. Hard to go wrong or get terribly creative with that menu.

Where I went wrong was the discount Hungarian cab sav I picked up during the week. It was astonishing: it had no flavor at all, just a faint metallic aftertaste. I think I’m going to have to double what I spend on a bottle of wine, but just buy it half as often.

Thursday I should really have knocked over revising my own seminar notes, but got too little work done (when at four o’clock you decide to go take photos in the local cemetery and rifle through a second-hand book store, you have problems) and went to see “Out of Order” at the ADC, catching the little-known sport of Irish bicycle tossing on the way back.

So now I now I need to finish my seminar presentation for tomorrow. I did re-work it extensively today and practice the intro a few times. I’m hoping it should run fairly smoothly.

It’s a useful exercise to take your thesis idea, strip it down and try and make a comprehensible and (hopefully) interesting presentation for non-lawyers.

Feeling a bit blessed out to get much more done tonight though: yoga this evening was amazing. I’ve finally found a class that really works for me in Cambridge. It’s twenty minutes each way from home, but pretty close to the law school. As I was working from home today, though I got an extra forty minutes exercise into the bargain.

I’m really warming to our instructor’s eccentricities, but more about that tomorrow.

Time to go tidy up slides about pirates and weapons of mass destruction before I pop down to “The Lawyer” for an end-of-evening pint.

Naylor Day

The new instalment of crime fiction is up for the week. It’s longer than usual to compensate for my recent erratic output. It’s safe to say Elliot’s day takes a significant turn for the worse …

New Naylor also went up last week (just in case you read Naylor and missed it).

For those curious about the idea of someone writing a serial novel in a parallel blog, the first instalment is over here.

(An office in the Botanic Garden greenhouses)

Picture this ... (an entry for )

For Blogger idol visitors, welcome.

I didn’t set out to put up a photoblog or become an on-line diarist, but this little law and witticism site has rapidly become the written and visual record of my year in Cambridge.

I've moved from borrowing the photos of others, to having friends host my photos, to finally having the technical nouse to decorate entries with them more or less at will.

I now waste far too much time editing photos for later use on the site, there should be a few new ones each week.

So picture any of these, if you will:

Gonville and Caius College;

Lisa's photo of Trinity Chapel and St John’s College gate;

The courtyard outside my college library;

My favourite photo from my time in Singapore; and, of course -

If you scroll down the page, some of my favourite photos from the recent three days of snow in Cambridge.

More of my photos live over here.

In wordy matters, well, just picture me: clasping a towel and chicken sandwich, locked out of my house on my first night in town; intimidated out of my wits at a "casual" function in a set of rooms with a history; or dealing with the Hogwarts-esque bureacracy of getting ready to leave and come here.

I'm having a ball, am grateful to be here, and hope the site proves entertaining to others.

Now, if only my friends would stop leaving scandalous comments. My sponsor organisation and a few former employers read this dang thing, too ...

(The Bun Shop, Cambridge: in case of emergency, detach bike.)

Friday the 13th and Valentine’s Day: a low key combination

Saturday morning rehearsals are not getting any easier. Send me your halt, your lame, your under-slept night-owls, your hungover, your chronically tardy.

That’s pretty much the state of most of us come “Golden Ass” rehearsals at 10 am Saturday. On the upside play rehearsals are now being held in a regular venue at my college, so it’s easy to duck across the graduate common room and make coffee. I made one for the director this week, which was probably sucking-up, but I may have lost the brownie points coming back late from lunch.

(The downside is it’s the lecture hall where Junior Common Room Friday bops are held. The floor was disgustingly sticky with spilt beer and god-knows-what this week. Walking across the “stage” was accompanied by suction cup noises at every step. The chalkboard also bore the ledgend: “The Asolutely Bad Taste Party”, but the top line seemed to read “Absolut Ely” – vodka straight from an old cathedral town, perhaps? There was also some disturbing ... blood splatter ... in the gent's toilet. So the reason I don't go to JCR parties.)

By lunchtime we’re usually all in pretty good form: the buzz of rehearsals, the ravenous stabbing pangs of hunger. I’ve become obsessed with the full English breakfast at the Bun Shop pub on King’s Street behind Christ’s College. Five pounds for a huge plate of back, eggs, beans, sausage, mushroom and chips or hash browns. Mmmm … cholesterol.

Friday I had also been at the Bun Shop, drinking with the Friday pub alliance – which was a bit like returning to the scene of the crime I suppose. I wandered through Friday oblivious to it being the 13th and had a singularly pleasant day. Nothing untoward at all.

Okay, the May Ball I wanted to go to sold out - but hell, there are others. Other than that, little of note. Attended class, went to a talk, had a coffee, completed a scholarship application. Drank three pints, smoked cigar, went to party.
Typical day really. Other than the cigar. Don’t know how that happened at all.

Oh yes, last night I also went to see a friend from the Albert’s Bridge cast’s first stab at directing. It was a college production of Alan Ayckbourn’s “Comic Potential”, a terribly funny, clever script that was pulled off really well by the cast and in a small venue. The play itself features a “near-future” in which TV actors have been replaced by emotionless “actoid” androids – except one begins to develop an independent sense of humor, and becomes involved with a comedy script writer. Like most good science fiction, it was basically an allegory about human nature. None of which makes it sound as funny as it was.

Of course, some would say we don’t have to wait for the near future for the comic-misadventures of synthetic actors and their love-lives to become national entertainment …

(The Age: Esplenade hotel, Melbourne.)

Melbourne nostalgia

It’s funny, the place I get most nostalgic for in Australia is Melbourne, a town where I lived for only 10 months.

The Age’s “My Melbourne” photos aren’t helping, but it was delightful to receive a postcard view of Flinder’s Street Station from Daniel. (Anyone else wanting to send me postcards from home is welcome - e-mail me if you don't have my address.)

I guess I miss my Melbourne hang-outs as much as anything.

The casual grunge-chic of pubs, the seventies lounge-room retro-flair of the Comfortable Chair on upper Lygon Street, the Toblerone cocktails at Kelvin in Northcote. I miss the wine bars. Pubs are fun, but generally it seems like that's all there is over here – with the honourable exception of La Razza, which with entry by a narrow stairway, low couches, and live jazz on a Wednesday is everything I like in a bar.

Even the sticky humidity of heat-wave summer and the long, lazy horizontal sunlight of the late afternoon holds a certain charm at this distance. That said, there’s less difference in the winter weather than one might expect. OK, the snow was very exciting, but largely the winter has been much less cold than I was expecting, really.

And perhaps not such a contrast to Melbourne, when you think about it. Also, I was never this warm or comfortable indoors in Melbourne. The Brits have discovered central heating and taken to it with a mighty vengeance of which I whole heartedly approve. (Other than the fact I like sleeping under a doonah – duvet for the English – but get horribly dehydrated if I do so here, even with the heating in my room ostensibly switched to zero.)

Obviously, there are some similarities. Umm ... let's see, both have a sluggish river and people wearing striped team-colour (OK, college-colour) scarves here.

Rather shamefully for a Bulldogs supporter, my college scarf is Collingwood white and black.

Will I dare wear it in public back home?

PS: just when you think you've seen everything

Cycling home from my first encounter with undergraduate on-stage nudity (not sure I'd be prepared to drop my towel while leaving the stage in the name of art at the Amatuer Dramatic Club theatre, but that's just me) I cycled past Sidney Sussex college and encountered a couple of Irish guys engaged in bicycle tossing.

Seriously, they were throwing it into the air (repeated) to see if they could make it come down facing the other side up.

Note to self: always chain your bike to a railing.

(Parker’s piece on a snowy morning.)

Ooops … I really have to start writing this before 1 am

A number of people have written on the obvious theme of embarrassment for Blogger Idol.

Most people, I suppose, fear embarrassment of the kind that makes one’s life one hideous montage of shame and humiliation. For my part, I mostly seem to fear administrative inefficiency, or those moments when things just don’t work. The sense that someone might be watching me struggle to do something any chimp should be able to handle.

You know, like being caught pulling like mad on a push door.

Like setting off metal detectors. Or Tuesdays in an office job when nothing works quite right. Begging and whimpering to college porters for a key that will actually let you back into your house. Not reading your supervisor’s book before turning in a chunk of draft dissertation on the exact same topic.

That sort of stuff.

The moment in my day I feel most vulnerable is getting ready to cycle to law school, or organising myself at the other end. It’s a complex ritual containing many little battles to be fought with the tyranny of the inanimate. Before leaving the house I don helmet, cycling clips, gloves jacket and scarf. Simple.

I then remove my jacket and sling my scarf over my shoulder again, and replace my jacket, thus trapping half said scarf under my outer layer of clothes so it doesn’t unwind on the 15 minute trip to the faculty. I go outside to my bike, and wind up removing my gloves - again, so I can actually find my keys and unlock the bike.

I then usually realise I’ve forgotten something and go back indoors.

If I’m wearing too many layers, I’ll get to law school hot and bothered and will remove several while I chain my bike up so I can cool down.

Chain bike up.

Unlock bike again, finally remember to remove helmet, pass bike lock through helmet straps, chain bike and helmet in place.

Put back on jumper and jacket removed while cooling down.

At night, adding or subtracting lights from my bike adds another level of complexity – the number of times I get moving only to emergency brake and turn my rear light on, or move it where it can be seen is staggering. (I’ve a basket in back which, when full, means it can’t be seen at all.)

Also, my clips seem to slip off cord trousers, leaving my cuffs to flap merrily in the breeze and play with the bike chain.

Nice cuffs, you have fun down there, doing your thing.

This is so why I now only wear black pants while cycling.

All up, it probably takes me as long to stop or start moving as the trip itself.

I also need to get my blogging back on track. Unfortunately, my social life at present seems to be curving up in direct proportion to the amount of work to be done – the give in the equation coming out of sleeping hours. Damn.

Oh well, at least Naylor is up for the week. (Yes, the crime novel hasn't stalled completely yet ...)

Sunday morning comes early
(or, a lad’s pad no longer)

The curse is lifted, the sun shines once more on our happy vale.

OK, I exaggerate – but we’ve finally replaced the top-room flatmate (the odd mathematician who departed rather spectacularly at the end of last term) and my favourite Italian, the good sociologist, returned from a week in Milan yesterday as well.

Now, while we have never been a larger-can and dirty-socks-on-the-floor kind of house, we have been a house of five or six men for some time. I think we’ve made an effort not to let standards slip for this very reason. We also have, most useful of things, a kitchen cleanliness freak and of course, five visits a week from a bedder, dubbed by my Greek and Italian flatmates “Santa Martha”. She’s fabulously sweet to us, and thinks we’re very tidy and considerate.

(I still cannot believe how rapidly my egalitarian embarrassment at have a cleaner come in so often has evaporated in the face of sheer convenience.)

Anyway, with the latest addition to our “garret” room (standing upright in some corners of it is rather tricky), we finally have a full-time female resident. (A fellow committee member and a South African, just to add to our household’s UN flavour.) We also have a flatmate’s girlfriend visiting from Greece. The change in atmosphere is subtle, but evident. Between a visitor and a new flatmate, and the sudden presence of two women, everyone is making a real effort to be polite and welcoming.

(The amiable trading of insults in three languages will break out again soon, though, I’m sure.)

And most delightful of all, everyone woke up between ten and eleven this morning and wandered down to the kitchen and lounge room. With everyone milling around in track suits and PJs, making cereal and coffee and swapping stories and jokes it really felt like – well – family, or a relaxed Sunday morning.

Even the elusive downstairs lawyer popped his head in (he’s friendly, but he’s normally only at home to sleep, shower and change clothes).

Fabulous way to start the morning.

If only I weren’t now psychologically convinced it’s Sunday. How can I work under these conditions?

Slightly alarming

Yes, I know I’ve been a bit quiet.

Things keep creeping up on me. (And I’ve had a bit of a cold.)

Most notable thing to creep up on me today? The realisation that a seminar in college I’d volunteered to present at date that seemed comfortably removed from the here and now has suddenly become rather closer.

I am giving a 20 to 30 minute dry-run presentation, as it were, of my dissertation before next week’s Wednesday formal hall. Shame I'd not done any specific preparation before today - other than a title.

“Containing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: North Korea, the US and international law”.

Catchy, non? Not at all a sweeping terrain to cover for a mixed audience of lawyers and non-lawyers.

Fortunately my ideas are fairly clear in my head, and I’ve just sat up and put together a 16 slide power-point presentation. (No more than four bullets to a slide, no bullet more than three lines long, and all white text on a blue background – which I thought rather nice for UN law.)

The animation is done, the spelling checked. I could probably give the speech now if I had to.

Me, obsessive? Never.

Thank god I have no fear of public speaking. And I do get a decent bottle of wine and I and a guest diner free for my pains.

Time for sleep now, methinks.

(The snowman is also not feeling at his best. Click him for more pictures.)


Tips for the novice writer of a master’s thesis (no. 2)

It is not that I am unused to wine.

I cannot plead that as an excuse.

Note to self: when going to a grad hall and having no particular plans to sit with anyone, taking wine may be sociable, but may lead to finishing the bottle almost unaided if on one side you have people already well-stocked with vino and on the other, people who aren’t drinking.

Do not consider it your patriotic duty to finish it off simply because it is South Australian (Banrock Station wines having been available for 3 for 10 pounds at the local supermarket).

This could lead to distinct feelings of ... lethargy ... the next morning. Being, of course, the Thursday morning you have to go and see your supervisor about that draft.

There are seven delightful words a supervisor can utter to someone in this state, pushing your draft (complete with tatty brown envelope) back across the desk:

“Well, I think this is going well.”

Ah, one thinks, brain, you can now turn off for the day.

Until I went and made a rash promise to have a good draft and final reading list within three weeks. Oh, well, apparently I'm ahead of the game.

Last Wednesday's blizzard at college, as captured by my friend Kaila (click image for more), my photos are over here.

Recent viewing

Going to films is a good way of visiting other colleges.

One of my new year’s resolutions was to make more use of the college film groups. They’re a nice example of the Cambridge philosophy of competitive individualism. While the ANU had one, huge film group, Cambridge has a proliferation of them on a college-by-college basis and market forces seem to have set a flat price of two pounds a screening.

Other than a cheap night at the movies, it’s a good excuse for wandering around other (often bigger, richer) colleges at night. My favourite “other” college so far is St John’s, possibly the archetypal Cambridge college. It has a procession of three courts (imaginatively titled first, second, and third) leading to the knock-off Bridge of Sighs that crosses the Cam into some Gothic cloisters, which lead up towards the new buildings closer to Castle Hill. The size and age of the place seems perfect: big enough to cross the river, but with no individual courtyard as big as the windswept, dwarfing, institutional expanse of Trinity’s Great Court.

The view from the Bridge of Sighs at night is dazzling, but would photograph rather poorly.

Films, then:

Thursday two weeks ago was “Confidence”. I love a crime flick, and they can be great vehicles for one-role big-name actors (I first warmed to George Clooney in “Ocean’s Eleven”). The cardboard cut-out, chisel-chinne Ben Affleck works well in a confidence scam film. A good film noir anti-hero is not meant to display emotion. The fact that Affleck is incapable of it made for inspired casting. Dustin Hoffman as an ADHD suffering gangland boss (“it’s the H that’s important – attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder”) was fabulous. The keep-you-guessing plot wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but it was slick enough.

Thursday last week was my first time seeing “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”: Hepburn is, of course, luminescent. I hadn’t realised it was directed by Blake Edwards of “Pink Panther” fame and the matter-of-fact morality of the kept-man male lead and rich-husband-hunting Holly Golightly leant it a tough worldliness that was somehow – charming. Wonderfully scripted.

Sunday was “Intolerable Cruelty”: one of the most enjoyable lawyer-joke films in a while. The decrepit senior partner, living in a darkened Dickensian office, without intestines, on life support; the utterly strategic lawyers (“She’s financially exposed, there’s no need to kill her! And I love her, that’s two reasons not to!”); the concept of a signed pre-nuptial agreement as the ultimate expression of trust; and a wedding in Vegas where I find myself muttering, “There has to be a jurisdictional issue here …” – all recognisable law stereotypes, if obviously not intended as realistic. There were some bitter lawyers who leant a hand to this script, I tell ye. Despite the participation of Clooney and That Awful Woman, a thoroughly enjoyable romp.

Okay, I did grimace once. Anyone who that clearly lost the plot at a professional conference and denounced law in favour of love, in my limited experience, would probably be politely ignored until they had the good grace to slink away and never be spoken of again.

They would not get a standing ovation.

Ever.

Even if they were the ineffably smug George Clooney.

A cold day in Cambridge

Right, the snow. It began Tuesday night, big fluffy, surprisingly un-wet flakes.

Cycling back from the theatre, it completely filled the "windward" side air vents of my helmet (see below).

It was quite amazing – snowfalls over two nights, and a third day before everything thawed. (Some fairly nasty wind during the period as well.)

The first morning was the most eye-popping. I was late to class because I just kept stopping to take photos. “Hello snowman with carrot nose!”

“Hello Parker’s Piece covered in snow!”

That sort of thing. I quickly learned that cycling worked best on snow that was still powdery and soft – anything already compacted by passing vehicles had the traction of wet glass. That said, the gritting of the main roads was pretty effective – I could still cycle most places, it just took longer.

Traffic, however, at peak hour ground to a total halt, the only way to get anywhere was on a bike. I would have tried out my new leather-soled shoes for the Burn’s night formal dinner – but it seemed rather too slippery in the un-gritted cobbled lanes around college. (One guy who usually wears leather soles slipped over seven times, until he swapped to his football boots and trod everywhere on studs.)

The worst day was the second – all compacted snow and thawed water re-frozen into treacherous black ice. I still managed three days of cycling most places without any accidents – sticking to the gritted roads helped, but some of the cobbled paths and ungritted bridges were a bit scary.

Still, number of us crazy foreigners kept cycling. As a German friend said: "Oh yes, I cycled - no, let me say - I glided home." No sudden breaking and it's all fine.

Have some more photos up over here, under "Winter".

(Cambridge snow photo courtesy of Lisa.)

Tips for the novice writer of a master’s thesis

(1) Strongly consider reading your supervisor’s book, which is directly relevant a chunk of your topic, before drafting that part of your paper;

(2) when quoting a large, convoluted chunk of argument and re-typing it into your document, think about scanning the passage in at the library – this will stop double-negatives becoming single negatives, thus totally inverting the quote’s meaning;

(3) do not read the quote-with-inverted-meaning, think “that’s a bit funny, it reads like saying white is black” and instead of checking the quote, conclude “oh well, they are the International Court of Justice, they probably know that white really is black” and proceed to merrily write an extended analysis of the passage;

(4) if foolish enough to complete step (3), do not compose an e-mail to your supervisor, attach the draft and hit “send” before checking all the quotes;

(5) if attempting to avoid hyperventilation, do not chose this moment to read your supervisor’s book on the law of the use of force under the UN Charter, and do not then attempt to reassure your (misguided) self by checking her book against the textbooks written by the Old Gods of international law – discovering they all footnote to her book will only create a heightened sensation of tension, if not panic;

(6) complete hyperventilation – check e-mail, and discover she will not be able to read the white-is-black draft before the weekend;

(7) do at this point e-mail and ask if you can get a new draft with some corrections to her Friday morning – but do try and stifle your bleats of joy when you get an affirmative answer, conditional on delivering a hard copy before Friday lunch to the porter’s lodge at her college;

(8) do not, rather cryptically, when you accidentally bump into her in the law library mid-re-drafting-frenzy, confess that you wanted a chance to re-write it to “correct an overly creative interpretation of the Nicaragua Case and avoid looking like a complete lemming”;

(9) do spend a moment wondering why you thought “lemming” sounded like amusing British slang, and resolve to live a life less influenced by Richard Curtis films; and

(10) finally, do risk life and limb to cycle across snow and black ice, skid across a college forecourt and jam a draft (packaged in a crumpled, pre-loved brown paper envelope) into said supervisor’s pigeonhole, before allowing a porter to point out that the names on the pidgeon holes are positioned over, and not under, the relevant slot (allow friendly porter to reposition tatty envelope accordingly).

(Some accuracy may have been sacrificed for comic potential. Tomorrow – snow tales!)

A day in the life … (Blogger Idol, week 3)

… of my lunchbox

The one missing habit on that list of the seven allegedly possessed by highly effective people is remembering to take a packed lunch. It’s without doubt the only genuinely effective life habit I have ever formed and underpins many of my modest successes.

I ALWAYS have a lunch box.

It almost always begins the day holding: one ham or turkey sandwich (lettuce, cheese), two muesli bars, one Mars bar, one apple, one banana. A full water bottle is also a must.

Partially, I’m a cheapskate. Do the maths, $5 (or pounds) per lunch and drink time 5 lunches a week: that's $25 a week or $1,250 a year.

I also have a hummingbird metabolism and tend to fall over twitching if I don’t snack every hour, on the hour. (This explains the relationship of my lunchbox to my achievements. Occupying ground, twitching, is a poor fulfilment of most job descriptions - other than being a cricket pitch tarpaulin in a moderate breeze.)

But mostly, it’s the cheapskate thing. Which as a person recently returned to relative student poverty from relative wage-slave affluence, is not at all bad.

Especially when one has significant new expenses. Such as beer by the pint and textbooks (though perhaps mostly the beer thing).

At law school, several people referred to mine as a “magic lunchbox”, which I found a trifle demeaning - really. It’s quite a logistical effort to keep a fridge stocked with both bread and sandwich fillings. Let alone a cupboard of fruit and snacks. It just doesn’t happen on it’s own.

While my present tupperware container does the job just fine (ie it keeps crumbs in and notebooks out, and sometimes it even keeps crumbs out of the notebook computer), I was sorry to leave behind in Australia my large tin Batman lunchbox. It was nine-tenths of my cred as a commercial solicitor. It got me known as "eccentric" and "quirky".

(It was a law firm. It doesn't take much.)

PS For regular readers, yes, the thesis-draft thing went (eventually) fine. The snow was fun. Uni film groups (a New Year’s resolution) are great. Play rehearsals proceed. Each of these is an adventure unto itself I (and lunchbox) hope to unfold over the week.

I take it all back … (so exciting, I had to blog it now)

I had a couple of firsts tonight. The second was more exciting, but first firsts first – so to speak.

I went to see my first Footlights’ Smoker at the ADC theatre – the proving ground of sketch and stand-up comedy here. The show starts at 11, tickets go on sale at 10.30. I joined the queue outside the theatre around 10.15 and felt chuffed for skipping half its length by diving in where I saw the people I was meeting.

About 10.30 someone came out to say the show had basically sold out on pre-purchase tickets. The could take the first 20. As Mr Fifty-Seven, I no longer felt so clever.

What do you do in these situations? You go to the theatre’s bar, latest opening in town. The stairs between us and beer were crushed with ticket holders, so we slinked up the wrought-iron spiral-staircase and rapped on the glass until someone let us in the fire door.

I was with some of the “Albert’s Bridge” cast again, and we were in the theatre where we’d done the play. So someone suggested we watch it on the little black and white TV in the club-room and listen to the sketches over the loudspeakers.

A frustrating (if free) way to see a show. There was some really good stuff, but it was quite the mixed bag ranging from the incomprehensible, to the guffaw worthy, to borderline comic genius. I’ll be doing it again.

Then, I stepped outside and there was my second first for the evening. I’d heard the warnings. I’d cast apprehensive glances at the grit and salt strewn on Mill Road and outside the University Library. I’d refused to believe. Thought if it happened, it would just be an inconvenience.

But it was snowing.

A soft haze of thick flakes, sluicing through the streetlights, settling on gutters, bicycles and pedestrians.

I was laughing as I cycled home through midnight streets, snow slowly forming a crispy white exo-skeleton on my goose-down jacket, accumulating in drifts on my cord trousers, caking my bike light to the point where I had to dust it off.

The gritted main road was fine, slick, black easy cycling just with cake-frosted pavements and shop fronts. My own street was, well, a fairly land. There were six friends with their after-pub hot chips staggering down the middle of the road, scraping snow of bonnets for the first snowballs of the season. They apologised for blocking the road and let me pass, slowly crunching snow under my tyres.

I take it back, Richard Curtis, England can be as pretty as Christmas Eve in your postcard-perfect films.

I had to brush myself down and stomp my feet on the doormat (drifts of snow on my shoes). The airvents of my bike helmet were clogged with it.

If it keeps up overnight, there will be photos, on so many photos.

Right, morning class, I should sleep.

(Photo of Trinity Hall Jerwood Library, copyright A. Miller)

Freedom, student life and choices (Blogger Idol week 2)

Why are villains always more fun?

I mean, I like Richard in Richard III and Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost (and come to that Jamie Delano or Neil Gaiman’s take on Lucifer), and I suspect most people do. (Alright, one murdered half his relatives and the other destroyed earthly Paradise, but they did it with panache, didn't they?)

Villains in fiction act without constraint - as if ties of family, society, duty and, well, other people in general just don’t matter. They speak their mind. They are the perfect rationally self-calculating individual of economic theory. They make the choices we don’t dare to.

And that’s the rub of it.

Freedom implies free will and freedom of choice. The paradox being that the majority of us will never exercise most of the choices we have available. (Despite teeth-grating irritation, for example, few people ever murder that one really insufferable flatmate.)

One thing I noticed on my Singapore trip was that while most locals supported Singapore’s gradual political liberalisation quite a few told me they thought now was not the time to push too far too fast. Political and social cohesion were strongly associated with past economic success, and in a weak global economy most didn’t want to rock the boat. Regardless of what I might think of the argument that civil liberties run counter to economic development, it illustrates a basic truth: most people would willingly trade a certain amount of “surplus freedom” for material security.

But the opposite is true as well. Greater wealth and possessions can make you less free.

Being free of material possessions and societal commitments is a fairly tricky business, but has it's own rewards, as Kundera kinda sorta said. Having under 80 kilograms of possessions and no job or firm plans come June is a really different experience for me: the man who doesn’t pack light and always knows what’s round the corner. The freedom to float and think is wonderfully liberating, but rather stressful at times.

Still, in a professional life that’s mostly been about slowly moving away from corporate to public law it’s been nice to remember how comfortable life can be on a student income. The majority of the world survives on considerably less than this, and many are happy. But I'm lucky I was offered the choice of a more materially lucrative career than the public-law career path I'm now (hopefully) on.

I guess that’s the other appealing thing about villains, right? They spurn the safe options. I mean, fictional heroes sometimes do that too, but there’s always so much hand-wringing.

And their dialogue is never as crisp.

“Puttin’ a study group together? You want in?”

Damon waits in a common-room. He’s slightly nervous.

Enter Clooney, looking ineffably smug.

Clooney: “Hey. Hear you did your time at UQ. Did you know Jimmy ‘The Constitution’ up there?”

Damon: “We knocked over a couple of subjects. Came away with a coupla firsts.”

Clooney: “Not bad work.”

Damon: “He calls me ‘trade and commerce’ these days.”

Clooney: “Huh. Well, I’ve got something on in Cambridge. We could use a good statutory and constitutional interpretation man.

Smirks.

“You know, in case things get messy.”

Damon: “Cambridge, huh? Nice town. I hear double-medal Andy’s running something up there these days.”

Clooney: “Yeah, he went native. Got his own turf. Piece of the local action. We don’t want any of that. Ours is a strictly in-out Masters job.”

Damon: “A Masters play? Always wanted to try one of those. What’s the score?”

Clooney: “Strictly October to the first weeks of June. Bit under nine months. Low contact hours, four three-hour papers, then we walk.”

Damon: “Eight months and four papers? In Cambridge?”

Clooney: “Eight and a half. We spend some time getting the lay of the place, go over the past exams, take in a few lectures. We just need to be well-planned, well-researched, very precise.”

Damon: “You need to be nuts, too. And you’d need a crew as nuts as you are!

Pauses.

“Who d’ya got in mind?”

Clooney: “You on interpretation. Me on comparative approaches and state practice. Old “Sanctions” Mack on the UN system. All we need is a history and theory guy. I hear Red-Head Lila can handle that. It’s a four-man play. Think about it. You’ll walk away with at least a middle second. Maybe more. We can swing this.”

Damon: “Cambridge, huh?”

Clooney: “The academic’s playground.”

Cue Elvis Presley track.

The way we work: “no flexibility thanks, we’re client focussed.”

An interesting piece from home in The Age about the battle for flexible working conditions:

[A] survey found that workers are trapped in "long hours" cultures trying to demonstrate company commitment to the detriment of their personal lives. Companies have created isolating, hostile and unsupportive environments for employees who have commitments outside the organisation, and poor attitudes and resistance from middle management and supervisors are quashing progress.

Unsurprisingly, corporate law firms come out of surveys looking fairly monolithic and unsupportive, with anyone (especially women) wanting to work part-time needing to check their career ambitions at the door.

(When an accounting firm can say 15% of people now have flexible options because “there are a lot of women choosing to have children”, the implicit family/career dichotomy speaks volumes.)

I think the common law firm experience is that those who go part-time wind up being paid less (obviously), but find themselves still doing very nearly the same amount of work in fewer working days. In fairness, being a client-driven industry makes it harder for the big firms to offer flexibility, but when that very lack of flexibility fuels a high turnover rate – well, that’s a business cost as well and you’d have to think some sensible balance could be struck.

A key issue appears to remain the widely-held idea that working from home is a “soft” option that inherently means less commitment and productivity. On the flipside, the first company to come up with a genuinely “flexible” employment model that can fairly measure and manage home-working employee productivity will have a big recruitment advantage, as employees value the flexibility often over higher pay.

Not sure I see it working in the legal industry though. My theory has always been there are enough driven high-fliers to fill the ranks of most large firms, negating the incentive to offer genuine work-life balance. (Remember this blog on the lawyer-life?)

If you find fulfilment in your work alone though, they’re certainly great places to be.

Me? Maybe I could work those hours if I felt I was having a genuine impact on public policy. Otherwise, I’d rather earn less and enjoy what I do more. Sounds like academia or government advisory work, really, doesn’t it?

Naylor day

This week's instalment of the crime novel is over here. (Some literary metaphors and similies may incurr a parental advisory rating, but y'know, it is a crime novel after all.)

I've also been nominated in the category of "best overseas Australian blog" over here at the Australian Blog Awards thingee - which is a bit of a surprise. I guess it only takes one delusional friend to get you nominated. Mostly you should just take the time to surf a heap of other cool blogs, but if you find stuff you like, take the time to grab an e-mail ballot before Australia day why don't you?

Hats off to Vlado at Keks for running the awards, and my best (if belated) wishes for the new addition to his family.

Weather, weather all around

If this is January, I can understand why England is a “green and pleasant land”. Well, at least the green bit.

In this kind of light, continuous drizzle if I stood in one place long enough I doubt I’d actually get wet through to my skin, but I would almost certainly begin to grow moss.

Today’s weather is a big contrast to arriving at the end of the summer drought, when I really didn’t get the “green and pleasant” concept – flying immediately out of Heathrow to Rome for my en route holiday I was struck by how brown all the fields looked. It was pretty much like rural New South Wales, well, most of the time actually.

Today’s rain is mild and misty. Last Wednesday, it was snowing big wet gooey flakes that did not settle into anything on the ground. The correct term is probably sleet.

I know someone who was out rowing in that. Apparently, when the Cam floods, they have to wade out to a safe depth to launch the boats – and then row for an hour in wet shoes, socks and track-suit pants. It’s those rowing stories that make me glad to be doing another play.

Anyway, the near-permanent grey-filter sky does have some bonuses. One is the terrible paroxysm of gratitude that seizes everyone at the merest hint of blue sky; the other is that colours look different. I have clothes that in the harsh, vivid light of Sydney or Singapore look black, but which in the mellow greyish light of England look more, well, blue.

At least when it rains, it is usually much warmer. Indeed, the nights seldom seem that cold anymore.

Oh, yes, the “Singapore and Cambridge” photos include some shots from New Year’s Eve when (during the day) I went with two people from college to see the Carols at Kings. We assumed places in the line around 7 am (ie, before dawn) and got into the Chapel around 1.30 pm for a service beginning after 3 pm. We were on the good side of the organ screen (a wooden partition which means half the enormity of the chapel has no view of the choir).

It was mind-boggling: the ethereal voices of the boys choir, the sun slowly setting outside (changing the illumination behind the medieval painted glass), the fact that this was going out live to the world via BBC radio and being taped for later (possible) use on TV.

I had no hypothermia-induced epiphanies unfortunately, as there was an etiquette of queuing that allows people to rotate out to get coffee or pick up some sandwiches, but it got pretty windy at points, and was very damp underfoot.

The Chapel was still full, but apparently it was a slower-building queue than usual, some dettered by a perceived risk of terrorist attack. It hadn’t occurred to me, but given the arrest of 12 odd terror suspects in Cambridge since my arrival, it should have. Bomb-sniffer dogs apparently went through the Chapel before they let us in.

Anyway, it was certainly worth doing once, despite the wind, cold and light drizzle.

Roll on summer - and exams, dammit.

The Glory of the 80s (part of Blogger Idol)

For me the 80s was the decade of primary school and early high school. A perilous decade straddling the time from when girls were grudging school-yard rivals, whose close proximity should be avoided for fear of “girl germs” to when they became … well, possibly not so bad after all (if vaguely terrifying).

I was a bookish kid, largely because of coordination problems that didn’t really get sorted out until 1987-8. If a ball was kicked in the air, I always knew whose head it was going to come down on. The library seemed the safer option. Not that I wasn’t social – any game requiring imagination, I was certainly there.

Although, my biggest failure of imagination in the school-yard was undoubtedly on insisting when we played “G-Force” to be allowed to be the robot back at base. Despite the warnings that he did nothing, I was mad about robots and would not be gainsaid. I soon learnt why the damn robot spent so much time griping about being left at home to man the phones while G-Force were out having exciting adventures.

“Part of the team”, yeah, my right oil filter I was “part of the team”.

Of course, Transformers were much better – then you got to play an entire bunch of robots with your friends. Though playing with the toys was generally better than pretending to be the cartoon characters. Transformers were nearly as good as Lego (the two genres often blurring: more than once Cybertron, additional Autobots or the odd doomsday device was built from Lego).

I gave up transformers before entering high school, they seemed little kid stuff. Of course, as my glories of the 80s, they’re still in a crate in the attic. Along with the Lego.

Back to Cambridge, back to the books

Ah, January in a grey and rainy country. The passage of Christmas, the end of the quiet, gently reflective under-graduate free interregnum that is Cambridge during holidays - the arrival of bustling sales shopping, the new term’s whirlwind social calendar, and the onset of those first stirring sensations of Masters-study DOOM.

I’ve not done yet done the new term’s “back to study blog” and there’s a reason. I have been pretty good with my New Year’s studying resolutions thus far, focussing on making headway with my 15,000 word dissertation on armed conflict at sea and intercepting weapons of mass destruction – the paper in lieu of my four exams. (Still awake? It gets better.)

But – I didn’t want to draw the universes attention to my study life. I was trying to study, as it were, below the radar of Murphy’s law. The pact I was making with the universe was: “I’ll go at it steadily, not brag about book-side hours, not jinx myself; just don’t pile on too much pressure yet, huh?”

So, there comes a point where the universe is either on board or decides to give you a nice constructive kick in the pants. (Dammit, I mean “trousers”. Over here “pants” means “undies”.)

I can’t fault the universe for its unexpected use, like Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, of fear and surprise. Friday had been a good, quiet evening: a couple of pints at the Pickerel with two other guys from my mid-sized Canberra high school, a small and pleasant school reunion. I arrived home relaxed. Which is when, of course, I found the e-mail from my dissertation supervisor:

“Dear Douglas, hope you had a good break. What are the chances you have most of a draft to show me?”

Urm.

Figuring “Nil” was not a good answer, and “isn’t this due in April?” would be little better - and that she’d probably cotton on if I resubmitted the 6,000 words I churned out before Christmas in a different font – I settled for: “Thanks for chasing me on this. December was not as productive as I had hoped, but things are gaining speed. I’d hope to have a substantial piece of new work to show you by Monday week at the latest.”

A week, ladies and gents, in which to produce another 6,000 words. Which will leave me (if I am still alive) in excellent shape for submitting in April and having plenty of study-time for my other exams.

So, of course, having brokered that deal – I spent none of the weekend studying. I went and did a legal negotiation competition Saturday and on Sunday auditioned for a play some college friends are directing – the “Golden Ass”, a farcical romp first written for the Globe (yes, that Globe) with many, many doubled parts.

We didn’t go through to the regionals in legal negotiation. The judges weren’t entirely impressed with our “creative” and “win/win” solutions in the more contentious round. Apparently we strayed beyond our instructions. (I tended to think the written instructions “renegotiate the contract amicably or come to a financial settlement” put everything up for grabs, but whatever.)

I do, however, have four or five smallish parts in a play rehearsing every Saturday from now until May week.

May week being, of course, in June.

So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and get quietly panicky about the Cuban missile crisis and treatment of neutral shipping in the Iran-Iraq war.

Exit stage left, pursued by thesis.

Vile and villainous villainy
(or, "Where is my army of evil winged monkeys, dammit?")

I've thought long and hard about the career merits of being a Bond villain, or at least a consultant to Bond villains (all the perks, much lower chance of being killed by some pesky Brit in a dinner suit) - so where was this book at my high-school careers fair?

How to be a villain is full of practical advice for the cut-price, time-poor villain: "No time to awaken an army of the undead? ... Paint a large curtain with a tromp l'oeil scene depicting hundred of thousands of undead eager to do your bidding. Hang it behind you whenever you confront the townsfolk." (Or you can buy your own undead-army making "Zombification System" over here from the nice ... sorry, EVIL ... people at VillainSupply.com.)

Dammit, I want this book. Not only is it cool, New Line Cinema has apparently optioned the film rights.

My top-five wishlist in a world where I am an evil overlord?

(1) A secret underground lair. These never go out of style and are oh-so-cool. There would have to be some sort of mountain-top villa attached though, because lack of natural daylight makes me grumpy. Not that in a villain that would be such a problem.

(2) A transforming car. I was obsessed with these as a kid, to wit: the Danger Mouse car and Dr Claw's Clawmobile. I would then have to learn how to fly it, of course, but roof-top parking would be much easier. I could at least skip obtaining a pilot's license. (I'd be being evil, remember?)

(3) A chair with buttons. They needn't do anything, and I don't care how anti the point-and-click/touch-sensitive-surfaces age they may be, a villain ain't a villain without an arm-rest full of buttons. In fact, having them mostly non-functional would probably be a real asset. Give you somewhere to rest your arm for a start and - if one chose to own a villainous cat - would prevent it inadvertently unleashing Armageddon, or mutant cross-bred piranha-penguins.

(4) Teleportation equipment. I actually find commuting kind of fun, but business travel and jet-lag really suck. It would also vastly expand one's range of options in terms of popping out for a quick lunch and some duty-free shopping.

(5) A legion of winged monkeys. I mean, where's the fun without the monkeys? I'd even give 'em all type writers and they could do my blog content as well as enforcing my evil will.

Anyway, time for a quiz. Which Batman villain are you?

You are: R'AS AL GHUL!


Which Batman Villain Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I love obscure references, and the quiz questions aren't too bad either.

Shuffle and deal

I firmly believe in geek-pride, since it’s the only kind of cool I’ll ever muster. Still geeky-cool will get you by in graduate study, indeed, you’ll find a greater depth of geeky per square metre in a graduate community than almost anywhere else on the planet.

That said, once you’ve found all the closet bloggers, thesps, graphic novel readers, yoga-freaks and literary obsessive it’s still nice to have an aspect of your personality that weirds people out.

“You read Tarot cards?”

It’s a hobby some find hard to reconcile with the image of a calm, rational lawyer. I’ve yet to meet anyone who equates it with devil-worship, but there’s still a predictable barrage of responses (do you believe in that stuff? does it work? do you let it run your life?), all of which miss the point from my perspective.

I’ve been interested in Tarot as long as I can remember. When we lived in Broken Hill (I must have been seven) I borrowed a big, illustrated book on Tarot from one of the school cleaners. (Mum was the school principal and all the staff knew me pretty well.) Later, for a primary-school fete, I made up my own deck of imaginary cards and ran a gypsy fortune-telling stall.

The interest then slept for a long time, until a slightly new-age uni girlfriend encouraged me to explore it again. I bought a modern deck at a sale and began reading up on it. She and I broke up over the summer I was clerking for the Sydney firm and during that period I bought my Rider-Waite deck and began making a more earnest effort to learn the symbolism, running through the cards in my head while waiting all sweat-tickled in my impractical winter-weight wool suits on the sunny Newtown city-bound train platform.

Anyway, the cards for me are not predictive, they are a diagnostic tool. That is, they don’t tell the future, they provide a perspective on the present. The cards are a set of open-textured symbols: you bring your own meaning to them - you have to be intuitive, creative, irrational. They’re a break from the left-brain (rational, logical) world of law.

The cards have no more power to predict the future than a Rorschach blot. They present a problem: how do I resolve these randomly chosen symbols into a story? If that story conflicts with your present view of your life, that’s valuable: there may be an insight, an unconsidered possibility, a fresh perspective.

Do I believe in them? They’re about story-telling. Do I “believe” in the films I see, the novels I read, the plays I go to? No, but I do suspend disbelief and agree to approach the medium on its own terms.

Have they ever been weirdly accurate? Maybe. I once read for a friend of a friend in a Canberra pub - a total stranger. Several cards strongly indicated travel, especially by air and over water (eight of wands, page of swords) and in the position of her immediate future she turned up, rather dramatically, the blank card (something that one is not meant to know now). I explained this to her a little apologetically (people usually expect more concrete answers).

“Right,” she said, “Interesting. The thing is, I get on a plane to London tomorrow and I have nothing at all lined up at the other end.”

Accurate or not, they’ve sometimes made a great party trick, or conversation-starter. And if the law thing doesn’t work out, at least I have one other marketable skill.

Naylor day returns

Yes, it's well overdue - but in the spirit of my new year's resolutions, the next installment of Naylor is finally up after a too-long hiatus. And it's safe to say the Elliot's life is just getting weirder.

For those who don't remember (it has been a while), or who are new to these parts "Naylor's Canberra"; is the tentative title of a crime-novel-in-progress. My objective is to publish 1,000 words a week until I have a finished draft. Some bits were worked over with the help of a writer's group last year and so are more polished than others.

The story so far? Elliot Naylor, a law graduate who has been refused admission to practice for reasons to do with a fatal car accident, is an under-employed part-time law librarian. A former girlfriend of his is missing, Marina - a highflying political staffer to Milton Dawes, Minister for Justice and Customs. Her father, David Carmichael, a prominent local barrister, hires Elliot to find her before he has to report it to the police: an attempt to keep it quiet and close to the family and avoid scandal.

It seems easy enough, until Elliot begins to dig into David's shady business dealings and close ties to the Minister. Further, Elliot is the first to discover that one of Marina's co-workers, Jenny, has been murdered and is (so far) the only person questioned by the police.

Understandably, he's nervous. Worse, he's no closer to finding Marina.

On top of that, he's decided to investigate the background of one Jeremy Ryder, who has business ties to David Carmichael as well as Canberra's legalised prostitution and pornography industries. Marina and Jenny were both involved in a Ministerial task force investigating sexual slavery - is Ryder somehow connectedisappearanceapearence of one and the murder of the other?

Elliot does not yet consider Ryder dangerous - which may be a mistake ...

Apologies if the new instalment is a bit rough round the edges. Suggestions and proof-reading are, as always, welcome.

On the topic of spelling mistakes

… especially those not to make when writing a paper the law of naval warfare, in particular when writing on the use of a “blockade” to prevent the shipment by sea of potential war-supplies to an enemy state.

So, with this in mind, have you ever noticed how close “d” and “g” are on a qwerty keyboard?

It makes it really easy for “naval blockade” to become “naval blockage” – which certainly sounds uncomfortable for any naval officers involved, but is probably much less effective as a tool of economic warfare.

Spell check won’t catch it either, of course. Just another way Microsoft can wage a war of attrition on my sanity.

That’s right, a poor typist should always blame his tools.

By the way, on matters military, if you're looking for weapons grade plutonium for your plans for world domination (bwah hah hah!) go no further than ... VillainSupply.com. (Thanks for the link Dan.)

PS Singapore: forgot to mention that I added Jolene's version n to my links last week - a native Singaporean and fellow Cambridge debater; coupled with a l's wuyuetian I seem to have a burgeoning affinity for Singapore blogs.

A dedicated follower of fashion (Impressions of Singapore 2)
(Trip photos are still over here … )

Despite normally having the fiscal discipline of a first-term Tory Chancellor, I have poor-impulse control in high-bargain-density environments.

It’s like an inverse law. My iron-clad budgetary self-control (or my basically tight-wad nature) dissipates in a sales season. Add a sales season in Singapore and I get nearly as vicious as the grandmother you only let out for the Christmas shopping so as to hone her killer instinct.

Yup, that bad. And with my sister riding shot-gun to encourage me, well, things get messy.

Still, I went to Singapore with objectives. As a student whose cuffs and hands are now constantly smeared in bicycle grease (Singapore was the first time in ages my nails were grease-free) my top priorities were clear: another pair of jeans, and another pair of black cord trousers. Some new good black shoes, preferably boots (the kind you can wear to interviews or a black tie function) and a blue shirt would also be handy.

So, the attempted to go to the sales at Robinsons. On New Year’s Day.

In retrospect, going to Singapore’s oldest local department store on day one of the sales was not necessarily a good idea. It’s up there with inspecting ground zero at a nuclear test facility immediately after a detonation, and just in time for Godzilla. If the radiation doesn’t get you, the giant lizard will.

Anyway, the sales. Don’t get me wrong, no-one was pushy or baying for blood or fighting over the deals. It was Singapore - everyone was far too polite. But man, it was a tight squeeze around the sales tables. I might as well have worn a “clueless, clumsy westerner, please keep a safe distance” sign - I couldn’t seem to turn round without elbowing someone or swatting them with my bag.

Somehow I emerged unbloodied and unbowed with the blue shirt and black cords (English winter weight no less, in Singapore‘s climate). Tick, tick - items off the list. On track, on budget.

Somehow, somewhere between Orchard Road, Raffles City and Chinatown markets my sense of financial responsibility lost its oxygen supply, shrivelled up and died discreetly. I left Singapore with new jeans, funky blue shoes, a big green satchel bag, a heap of new t-shirts (including some cool Bathing Ape cartoon types), and some terribly comfy tan trousers from British India. In some weird colonial legacy the trousers have a button-in detachable lining, which can be taken out and washed separately to save wear and tear.

But sweetest gift of all - I miscalculated the exchange rate, and so got a 25% discount on currency value, rather than the 12.5% I was expecting. Yay. Now, as for the sales in Cambridge where I was spending pounds … well, I found the shoes I needed in M&S and a Gap jumper, both for under half price.

But I resisted the wonderful 20% off last sales-price brown boots I just don’t need. (But want, want so bad! Ahem.)

So, fiscal order has been restored to the financial force Chez Doug.

How was your sales season looting and pillaging?

New year’s blogging (or “happy birthday, blog!”)

Hum, a season of resolutions and stock taking. Quite apart from “Courting Disaster” being one year old today. (Hurrah!)

So, indulge me.

New Year’s Eve 2002 I was drinking sparkling wine by, well, the bucket really, with my sister, Beth and Beth’s sister in the Purple Emerald on Flinder’s Lane in Melbourne. I’d been living in the World’s Most Liveable City™ for about three months. I was flirting with the idea of starting a blog.

New Year’s Eve 2003 I was entirely too sober in Singapore, standing with a Cambridge debating contingent as we realised most of us were, lamentably, not in the finals series. Fortunately, I’d smuggled my sister into the party, who provided sympathy, a little “it’s only a game” perspective, and beer - as well as the obvious thematic continuity.

Between those two events, well, it’s been a roller coaster. Melbourne was magnificent to me. I’ve never enjoyed a city so much, I’ve never enjoyed a job (working for a judge) so much. I made some great friends - especially through blogging. I applied for, and somehow succeeded in getting, a funded place in a graduate international law program in a major UK university, which (although occasionally stressing me out), I am loving.

On the other hand, I had some friendships I thought were firm go belly-up unexpectedly, both in Australia and England. In May, my plans to leave Melbourne for Cambridge also lead to some painful personal decisions. December, too, had some pretty drab moments on the self-confidence/“am I out of my depth?” front.

Other blessings, though, have been legion. Realising that I can move city, set myself up and make new friends (and have done so three times now) has given me much more self-confidence and I’ve learned to be much more outgoing, much more myself.

I’ve established a blog with a modest, but consistent readership. I’ve travelled. I’ve realised that I have very seldom failed at anything I’ve really wanted to achieve, which makes me amazingly lucky.

So, my resolutions, such as they are:

(1) I will trust that I am an effective budgeter and worry about money less.

(2) I will make more use of college film groups.

(3) I will go away somewhere at least one weekend in the coming term, and will take a proper five-day or week-long holiday somewhere (hopefully Barcelona, maybe Morrocco) in the term break. I will not worry that I should be writing-up my research paper around then.

(4) I will treat my course as a 9-5 office job. Okay, a 10-6 office job with a little work on Saturday. Starting today, dammit.

(5) I will finish Naylor if it kills me, or a few innocent bystanders.

(Chinatown markets, Singapore)

Impressions of Singapore (Part 1)
(Photos are over here, towards the bottom of the page ... )

High humidity, warm balmy nights, cicadas singing - to an Australian who’d spent December in England, it finally felt like Christmas. Colonial architecture among commercial high-rises, the knotted arthritic limbs of tropical trees, frangipanni in bloom, a city turned towards the water all deepened the sense of familiarity. Some moments I could have been back in Sydney - well, Sydney minus the pollution, litter, grime and car-choked narrow streets.

Even the fact that walking fifteen un-airconditioned metres would leave me glistening with a Mr Sheen-level sheen of perspiration felt not unlike Sydney.

So, I was in Singapore for the World’s Debating competition. Despite our successes at the Oxford Intervarsity, my team didn’t reach the octo-finals, which was a bit disappointing. In some ways rather more disappointing was the virtual absence of alcohol from the tournament. While my drinking to get drunk undergrad days are behind me, alcohol is perhaps the only genuinely expensive thing in Singapore: S$7 or $8 beers, S$12 gin and tonics or S$60 for a bottle of fairly ordinary Australian wine.

Even for those who did want a punishing drinking schedule, Singaporean bar staff seemed utterly bewildered by Irish/Australian/debater levels of demand. One suspects those native and to the manor born seek to refill their glasses much less often.

The competition itself was run terribly well: I don’t envy convenors the logistical nightmare of coordinating 900 people over 9 rounds of 75 individual debates per round, a finals series and a social circuit.

Otherwise, I met some nice people, bumped into some ANU debating friends (which was scary, I seriously expected to be too old to be recognised at all) and hung out with the Oxbridge gang. Jet-lag at times dulled my enjoyment of the tournament, and my enthusiasm for sight-seeing, but catching up with the family (who I saw after the tournament) was fantastic.

Overall, though, the most intriguing part of the experience was gaining some awareness of the facets of Singapore as a country/city-state: the ethnic mix, the economic miracle, the consumer paradise, the incrementally liberalising democracy, the visibility of guest workers, the endemic civility and community-spiritedness. There was both much to admire, and a direct awareness of the pervasiveness of the nanny-state.

I also bought a lot of new clothes and collected my new laptop from my Dad (ordered and paid for in Australia by me and smuggled into Singapore by him. Yes, I know no-one bothers buying new electronic goods if they’re visiting Singapore … but anyway …), so I came back bout 15 kgs overweight.

(Luggage, not me. If I could gain 15 kilos I might actually hit standard weight-for-height ratios.)