Mission One Report

Did you know that people here on 'assignment' for donor agencies refer to their trips, with no apparent irony, as 'missions'? I find that really wierd and always want to snort with supressed contempt, but generally remember not to. And at the end of said missions, people write mission reports. I want to snort in contempt becuase while it is appparent that most peopled come as evangelical representatives of the religion of Industrialist Capitalism, I figure they could at least pretend to have less missionary zeal. Plus it somehow always makes me think of missionary position sex (yes, I realise this is probably a damning indictment of my state of mind rather than a logical progression, but whatev...).

In any case. Here is my the start of my Mission Report presented in absurdist random prose that befits the kind of week I've had. Make a cup of tea, take a deep breath, it's one of those posts.

1. Food & nutrition
1.1 Pho for breakfast the other day! met a colleague at 8 in the morning to have traditional Vietnamese soup for breakfast. imagine a hole in beth wall style shop, with low tables and even lower little plastic chairs or benhches. Imagine soup and only soup on offer. Watch me throw values to the wind as I order chicken soup and all notions of vegetarianism vaguely wander off. imagine the subtle taste of clear broth with star anise and corrinader echoes, well cooked noodle, shallots, thin slices of white flesh. imagine the slurping, us being the only foreigners, my knees almost at chin height. Imagine how the second woman came up and barked our order at us because she didn't beleive that the first woman had got it right. Imagine me feeling happy and brave.
1.2 Snacks consumed at the worst Australian pub on the 4th floor of a very swanky hotel. imagine suited Aussie expats watching large screen sport tv. Imagine eyes tracking me because I am one of only 2 women in the bar and am wearing brazen red. Imagine being curt to the first person who I've ever met from the (insert name of big bad donor agency - hint, calls itself a bank, but is a fund, sits next to an organisation that calls itself a fund but in essence operates as a Bank). Snacks were bruschetta, quite tasty, if somewhat oily. Cost the same as 2 curries at the thai place down the road from my hotel.
1.3 Room service pasta. Mmmmm the goodness of no company whatsoever, the oily garlicky goodness of it all, the sheer delighted decadence at the white linen table cloth and strange pale carnation in a bud vase - also with no apparent sense of irony.

2. Technology
2.1 Fucking internet. Yes that refers to the very ridiculously overpriced wifi cards I have to buty from this otherwise supposedly high tech hotel we're staying at. Seriously, you'd think for a gadzillion US dollars a night they could throw in internet access. I know this sounds quite spoilt-bratty, but I buy these cards and type like crazy to get my one hours worth (can't log on and off). Or.. I go to a cafe with laptop in tow and suffer very slow and erratic access and then run late and have to rush back to hotel for some engagement or other.
2.2 The powerpoint arrangement in my room means I can either have the kettle / tv / fridge plugged in OR have the laptop plugged in. I am getting quick at the deft plug converter transfer hand motion as I stick my head elegantly under the desk, and my bum out into space behind me.

3. Clothes & shelter
3.1 A friend helped me sew buttons onto my suit jacket the night before I flew out. She also gave me the kind of 'tough love' fashion feedback that Trinny and Suzanna try for, but without sharing their unnatural love of the bootleg and 3/4 pant. Thanks to her advice and the miraculous 'roll everything and then pack them into 'cells' in your suitcase' technique, I somehow seem to have enough to wear, even though i only took a tiny case.
3.2 Am actually for the very first time doing that shit you read about in those crappy magazines: 'transform your outfit from office whiteboard lovein to dancing on tables at cocktail party to camping trip to outer mongolia!'. Yes with a casual Chanel suit jacket, a pair of retro eighties earrings and a scuba mask you can too! Well. Not quite. But I have found myself dashing upstairs to my room to change accessories between day time and evening meetings, or to 'take me from day to night'. Too lazy for complete outfit change you see.
3.3 I would really like to go buy colourful silk scarves, but I am so far both resisting the consumption urge and trying for the right moment to sneak away from my sensible male colleagues to do so.

4. Health and wellbeing
4.1 Went to the gym in the hotel and rode a fake bike for half an hour. Had wrestling on the tv right in my face and very short and stumpy Gym staff member man doing odd excersises which looked like solo land-based synchronised swimming on a mat behind me. Very distracting. Then remarkably buff American (looking) man hoppped on machine directly next to me and went for a fake run. Imagine very shapely muscular thighs thumping in some kind of rythmic motion.
4.2 Rediscovering the joy of loungeroom dancing reconfigured as hotel dancing. I little boogie to Leftfield or Gorillaz seems just the thing to perk me up when all seems a bit washed out and fake in hotel land.

5. Livelihood
5.1 Yesterday was a slight breakthrough for me and my perception of my own usefulness here on this project. Today even more so. Sure it was also an incredible test of perserverence as I worked all day with the 'griller' mentioned earlier, but I think we made good headway, and somehow the relationship has grown into something more collaborative and less hostile. My colleague seemed very grateful and impressed at how far I got, so that helped make me feel more useful.
5.2 Had odd moment of walking through the offices of (one of the more PC European Country's Development Agency) offering to make coffee for other folk from around the world feeling a little like I'd fallen into some Barbie life that doesn't quite belong to me. I mean I didn't even have buttons on my suit jacket, and I don't blow dry - so how am I here?

6. Potential future husbands
6.1 I suppose it's tacky to just hang out in front of the UNDP offices across the road and hope for the best?
6.2 Staying in random soulless hotels and having work experiences which are a little like 'walking through treacle' in terms of negotiation style and progress with project partners makes any kind of heart beating excitement, including the idea of random meaningless sex with strangers, appeal a lot more than normal. I am appraising people in lifts far more than I normally would. Just FYI. Instead... tomorrow I will be going to see the water puppets and maybe the temple of literature. In fact forget I said the other.

[to be continued - see email point above]

We're not in kanzas anymore Toto

Head spins from the flash and relentless bustle as we taxi through oncoming traffic with nominal notion of lanes. Post-meeting I feel nauseous from too much input and crave just silence and time away from all this discussion, these nuanced, multitoned, round and round discussions. These personalities, multiple levels of meaning and intention. Miscommunication. Repetition.
After getting out of a taxi from the meeting I worry that I will literally throw up, it's certainly some kind of motion sickness, but maybe more to do with the movement in multiple directions of my thinking than my stomach. That I will never remember all these acronyms that slide off me. That I will be mute and awkward, without the styled fit-in-edness of the local women. That I will not hold up under the stare and interrogation of the Swiss German with the sensible overbite. I worry that I have nothing to offer and at the same time too much to offer – that by the time I come up with some insight of use to the project, something elegant and arced and finely crafted, that the trip will be over, and I will make my announcement to an empty room. That the conversation will be over and I will be standing saying ‘oh’.

Those are the bad moments.

The good bits are open windows and happy bustle at arms lenth, or just some kind of cheerful connection with colleagues. Getting from A to B without falling down a drain was my biggest accomplishment for the first week I was in KL; here I think the equivilent is being able to cross the road. Confidently. Without darting. Meaningful connections with local people? Funnily enough not a lot of that is forthcoming in between my dashes from breakfast to lobby to room to laptop to meeting to bed to lobby. Especially with my nonexistent Vietnamese (though I think I now have 'thankyou' downpat, a good start!). Luckily I am just an interloper, this project draws on the partnerships already established, committed local consultants and NGO's, good local projects, other foreigners based here. What we care doing seems reasonable, so at least I don't have major dissonance about that.

Random hotel moment #732

I come back from my brief visit to the ‘Business centre’ for an internet connection code and open my room finding…something different… what’s different? Where’s those perky little cushions on the bed? Those orange ones?? Has someone been in my room? OMG there’s a creepy orchid on my pillow! Like some kind of scary serial killing orchid leaver has crept into my room!! Fuck! And plumped my pillows..? Oooooooh. Oh. That would be the turning down of the bed. So that’s what that means. I kept turning the evening visiting maids away – thinking, girlfriend, you only tidied the room this morning, save yourself a second go. Now I get it. To think I’ve been doing myself out of fresh flowers.

Forget I spoke. No really - please.

"Me? I have a Masters in Inane Conversation. Yes, did my undergraduate in the Social Sciences majoring in cross cultural small talk. Oh no, I didn’t study embarrassing myself professionally, I just learnt that on the job. But I have had several years experience."

Fortunately I can be relentlessly chipper. Fortunately for me that is. After what I could quite comfortably label the most challenging – nay hostile – meeting I have been in within living memory, I not only survived but somehow also managed to join and then steer a group of people through cheery dinner time conversation which was both safe and inclusive. Possibly I looked like I was on crack, or at least on some kind of Pollyanna Pill, but you know, it sure beat crying after the meeting and going back to my room to hide. And anyway, in the meeting the ‘griller’ became far more pleasant with time, as if it was somehow an endurance test, and the longer I stayed in the conversation, the more we had established that I had neither qualifications nor experience nor original thought nor the drive to seriously push my principles in the projects I’m involved with, the more friendly the conversation became. If I’d known I would have begun the conversation with a confession ‘look I really know bugger all about this, and you’re one hell of an expert, so let’s skip the bit where you ask me about particular text books and whether I’m familiar with them and then act mortified, let’s just skip that bit and get to the bit where you think I’m a knob’ and we could have saved a lot of time and got to dinner earlier. Hence dispelling any notions you might have that this particular work trip was a junket. Note to self: grow thicker skin. Note to self: avoid special one on one meetings with people you don’t know, about things you don’t know much about. Note to self: read people’s books before you speak to them.

Arrival - Part 4 (venturing out)

I went out by myself after various cups of tea, naps and a brief look at some incomprehensible guide material with maps it took me forever to figure out. I shower, I dress. Take the scarf, for modesty and as a gesture of dressiness. I go downstairs and ask about the nearest supermarket (I have this vision of salty snacks like cashews or rice crackers, and maybe some milk for tea – the ‘creamer’ that comes with the tea stuff in the room is that powder, which if you read the packet – I have – is full of strange aluminium compounds, no doubt to give it a strong opaque while colour. I find this disturbing. It also doesn’t help cool the tea, or really change the flavour.) I get instructions to markets – fresh fruit and veg markets. I accept them graciously. I leave and start walking along a footpath crowded with motorbikes - scooters. Looks like a showroom spilling out on to the footpath. It looks like the footpath is for parking not walking. I navigate gutters and wetness, random poles and muddy run off from building sites. The water pooling in the small recesses is white and clear, marbled, has an occasional sheen. People are out, sitting on very small baby size stools, eating soup at a outdoor shop which is maybe 5 bowls of ingredients resting on a low table, and the shopkeeper sitting there on her stool ready to cook. There is something very intimate about bowls of raw meat sitting open on a street. There are open fronted clothes shops: ladies professional wear, long cotton pinafores that might be maternity wear, Chinese style tops, hanging one above each other making a display wall of colour perpendicular to the street. A few glass shop fronts. People look blankly at me. I try to walk as if I belong, walk slowly and carefully but with ease. I try to look at everything, but without staring gape jawed. No one likes to be stared at. I do catch an eye full of some amazing power lines above – there are maybe 30 wires black and slack, a gentle arc downwards as they travel from one node to another. They meet at a pole which is somehow sporting a mass of wires as they have been scribbled there in the air by a small child drawing. I stop and stare at those before walking on. Hassling – very little hassling. No one tries to sell me soup or clothes. Maybe on the whole walk a total of 4 men leaning or sitting on their stationary bikes say ‘can I help you? Where you going?’ and I shake my head and smile and say ‘walking’. One follows for a bit and says ‘can I help you?’. I’m not sure whether this is standard practice when tourists pass on foot, or whether I look lost and particularly in need of help. I opt for the former. I’m not lost, I couldn’t really be, I’ve been so cautious with my venturing – straight line right out of hotel, go straight, go straight some more. Follow the curves to the right. Turn left at the Samsung building, turn left again at the end of the row of suit shop. Straight straight straight. Hit a crooked intersection with a few too many angles to be able to calculate confidently – turn around, head back, follow my tracks, like an ant sniffing out the trail. Get back to the hotel and keep walking, left this time. I feel a surge of satisfaction at having been this far, resilience for going further. I know that this first exposure to somewhere new, especially on my own, is like an act of determination rather than a curiosity inspired fun wander. That will come later, when the familiarity has taken the edge off the noise, the wet burning smell of the air, the shock of old women sitting in dark, furniture-less narrow shop fronts waiting to sell things, the feeling of being so different, the self doubt about intruding on other people’s familiar space, the lack of words to even order food, the unfamiliarity with currency that makes you peer at the numbers that mean nothing as you try to remember which order of magnitude is appropriate for which type of purchase. It is like walking as a baby – deliberate, unfamiliar, prone to falling. It will get more coordinated as I do it more.

The mythical expat friendly supermarket does not appear, I go into a bakery and find it sells other things, I stand and look at sachets of milk until a young woman comes up and kindly touches one each of the two identical – but different coloured – sachets I’m holding. ‘That one has sugar – that one no sugar’ and smiles. I thank her and take the sugarless one. Take two. I browse at the rolls and danishes, each wraped in a printed bag, I pick one that looks like it is filled with custard or maybe bean paste. I am shown the calculator for the price. I pay. I leave.

Straight straight straight, then right. Straight straight, until the prospect of more whizzing flocks of bikes beeping and another length of sidewalk to navigate becomes overwhelming and I am ready to face my final task – of getting a coffee, of sitting somewhere and being, even temporarility, part of the landscape.

Arrival - Part 3 (jetlag)

My first day feels never ending. Like I imagine Iceland feels when the days are 20 hours long. I sleep late, go back to sleep a few times – wake up, it is still only early. I get up and do things, I eat a leisurely breakfast, I spin it out, I read the paper, I drink more coffee. It is still only 10.30. I go back to my room, read, write. Only now lunchtime. I am so tired, I sleep for a few hours, wake up thinking it must be almost evening. It’s 2pm.

Arrival - Part 2

I used to think that on arriving, there were certain things that one must do to adjust, to settle into the new space – acclimatize – like a goldfish in a plastic bag inside the new tank, staring through it’s plastic protective layer and immersed in familiar water until that moment of opening, where tentative and then in a flurry of flicking wet fish swim, it launches into the wider space, and it’s familiar surrounds bleeds out and mixes with the new space, creating something new, the new subtly altered by the old. For me, those things are fairly obvious ones – eat, shit, unpack, be naked, bathe, sleep, walk through the streets unaccompanied. Once I’ve done those things I feel much more part of a place, more settled. Mess up the hotel bedroom. Put stuff on that spotless sink. Maybe send a postcard or two (dog pissing on pole, transcontinentally). Now I add ‘write about it’ to the list.

Arrival - Part 1

Hotels like this are slippery. They have been designed to keep the world at bay, to keep out anything textured and dirty. The rooms are clean, the people’s smiles slicked back, the colours mute, the windows have a thin layer of gauze curtain between you and the view, designed to make everything faded and gentle, a photographers misty interpretation of reality. Softer, more nostalgic.

On the box tonight on SBS

For those Aussie blogreaders, this might be of interest:

DATELINE - WEDNESDAY 21st March 8.30pm, SBS

'This week we have a special environmental edition of the show – coinciding
with World Water Day tomorrow. First up David O'Shea checks out Singapore's
bold iniatives to solve its water shortage - including desalination and
using water recycled from sewage. Even the mention of these two options
stirs heated debate in this drought stricken country. And if you've ever
wanted to find out what the stuff tastes like – both recycled and
desalinated that is - don't miss George's taste test at the end of the
story.

You'll also hear from two world authorities on climate change about new
iniatives underway in Britain and Europe which promise to bring about a
dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Our climate gurus also
discuss developments in the United States and have a few words of wisdom on
what Australia should or should not be doing.

Our last story profiles Chinese Australian Dr Zhenrong Shi, an
environmentalist and billionaire entrepreneur. Dr Shi spent over fourteen
years studying, researching and developing solar panel technology in
Australia and then built a multi-million dollar company based in China. So
why did he leave Australia to set up shop in China? And why does he really
think he can save the planet?'

http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/

Is it hot in here?

Climate action road show down east coast of Australia - one in the mountains and a few in Sydneytown for those who are interested.

http://www.climate.net.au/schedule.htm

Blunt and narrow instrument

...is what we referred to some regulations as recently in a document for work. I think it sounds great. Sounds like the name of an industrial German goth electronica band. Ooooh instrument. Blunt and narrow. Sorry - do I sound delirious? I am very tired. Am suffering from a mild bout of 'trying to do everything at the expense of getting enough sleep'itis. Had a weekend away with late nights of intense lovely catching up chats and red wine drinking with old friends and went straight from there to work Monday morning, with overnight bag and giant zucchini from friends' garden in tow, did work, then off to after work volunteer commitment, to home for late evening complaining cat cat feeding and housemate catch up chats to stencil making and printing tshirts into the wee hours for our work soccer team, to an early start to prep for a meeting, to soccer at lunch and then trying to power through a ragggedy to do list in the afternoon, especially in that last hour where time goes funny and somehow all the hours have drained away and all the things have slid down into a moody little damp pile, waiting to be attended to.

Random highlights and lowlights and random in between lights of my week so far, in no particular order include:
- Monday am: the work experience student says 'oh you guys are so cynical' and hearing myself say in a serious and explainy voice 'we are like ambulance officers - you know how they do really good work saving people but have a black sense of humour to keep them sane?' and as I spoke wondering if that was at all a relevant analogy, whether I wasn't overstating both the nature of our work and the extremity of our (collective, in that meeting) SOH. Thinking 'wow, we've just disillusioned someone, and it's not even lunch time'.
- Monday am: being presented with my passport, now with new visa, and some relevant currency, ready for trip on Friday
- Monday lunchtime: discovering that 'teriyake marinade with garlic' makes for a passable salad dressing on green salad if used sparingly and faced with no other zinginess in lunchy shelf at work
- Monday pm: being called bella by an earnest seeming Italian man with sparkly eyes at said volunteer committment. As in 'Where do you live bella?' which made me stare for just half a beat before I answered. Heavy lilting accent made it all sound lovely and not sleazy, truly.
- Tuesday very am: tshirts worked!
- Tuesday am: housemate vomiting in toilet with strange unidentified tummy bug.
- Tuesday am: reading new book about 'expressive therapies' over breakfast, more than just art and music therapy, a whole world of fascinating stuff (although I can't help think of cat shit when I read 'sandbox therapy', which is a little offputting) which I am keen to learn more about in case I choose to blow off my Masters (erherm, more than I already have that is) and do an art therapy course instead. Or not. Or something.
- Tuesday pm: the cute friendly words of encouragement that people say to each other in our soccer team from the sidelines. The clap for a good try.
- Tuesday pm: the random bump-in to friends newly relocated to the area. The street chat on a rainy light with yellow lights flashing over wet road. The making of breakfast dates.
- Tuesday pm: being offered baked vegies for dinner
- Tuesday very pm: cat flaked on lap

[Funny isn't it - the importance of intervals and focus in story telling? Imagine how our days would sound if people reported back whatever they were doing only at random and externally dictated times ('errr, today? cleaning my ears, staring into space, trying to remember the words to that Rolling Stones song which I never reallly liked, and right now? Trying to balance this bowl on the sink)? And what if our stories were uniformally about what we gave the most time to? The 5 thoughts that got most air time on loop that day? Everything we did, in alphabetical order? Just the things we did which someone famous did in a film made sometime in the last 30 years? Everything we did that day so other people would like us more / because we were scared / because we were too tired to do something different? Everything that made someone else smile?

Imagine saying 'what things would you like me to tell you?' before answering 'how was your day?' and people being able to say honestly what they wanted to hear...'just the impressive stuff that makes me feel like you make my life more cool' 'whatever I can retell as good stories to my friends later', 'just something quick, I have to pee and I'm just being polite'.. etc]

(not a song title at all)

Oceans of angels, oceans of stars

Was going down the hill from the mountains on the train on Monday and a friend got on and sat next to me. It was very misty outside and I said 'look! A full moon!' and she looked at me strangely and said 'it's the sun.' She was right - that muted silver ball was in fact the sun.

(Title care of Hole)

Tell me why I don’t like Mondays*

The thing is I think that it should be socially acceptable to have blogging breaks, like tea breaks at work. To clear your head, to process, to chat in appropriate forum. To quote quotable quotes, to share websites, to reconnect with your online posse. To procrastinate, sure, but to do so in a creative and literary way. To prove this point I am now indulging in one.

Snap, Aunty B! Snap Mermaidgrrl! I was also doing my share of leafing through bad magazines in a waiting room today. I had injections today for my trip – youch sore arm now. I take the ‘c'mon, tell me straight, what do I absolutely have to take and what is really just for people trekking through the jungle in short shorts and patting stray dogs?’ approach to travel medicine. And I mostly do it just so that people can’t say ‘what?? You have typhoid?? Didn’t you get vaccinated??’. Is that bad? I do it not for my health, but just to avoid ‘I told you so’ should I actually get sick. I’m possibly overly optimistic about my body’s natural ability to fight infections. Maybe if I worked in malaria treatment wards of African hospitals I’d take it all more seriously. Possibly just delusional about my own mortality, but hey, aren’t we all mostly?

I always feel a little nervous going to medical centres, hospitals or doctors. I talk to much, making cheery conversation. The smells are strange, the lighting is far too bright, the colours are jarring. the people that work there exude efficiency, they wear pale blue and have neat bobs or slicked back with side parts. I read all their notices from the state health department on their walls – partly because I’m a quick reader and partly because I am insatiably nosy. I always half suspect that I will glean some useful information related to my visit (‘Medical Circular 1057 relating to work trips to SE Asia and vaccination for lazy girls who leave it to the last minute’ ahhuh! That’s me!). The mismatched drift of old educational posters about random topics freak me out – like some loud cacophony of fonts and messages and eras and attitudes to medical priorities. Medical centres are very loud and busy (I imagine that you also wouldn’t approve Betty Sue? They are after all loud with lots of flashing things).

You’ll also be pleased to know that I did my washing today (no mean feat when juggling Sydney’s spontaneously rainy weather which likes to keep us on our toes, fierce competition for line space in share house post weekend, and a whole weekend of no clothes line due to party rearrangements of the back yard). I may not have a visa or flights yet, but I have clean knickers! Yah!

(*Yes it’s Wednesday, but that was the song I was listening to on my little music thingie as I started writing. The Tori Amos cover of all things. Wacky.)

Ms Saigon

I'm going to Vietnam. For work. Hey hey. In less than 2 weeks. Eek. Was that loud enough? Let me try again - EEEK!! I'm in denial (yes the Nile is in Egypt), because... it's been a couple of years since I've been OS, this was decided only very recently and it feels like I haven't really had time to get my head around it. I suppose now is a bad time to confess that I couldn't even point out Ho Chi Minh City on a map (um, unless it was labelled, in which case I could). Today I had to get passport photos taken so I could get my Visa sorted. The photos were crap (oh, now there's an exciting and unusual observation - passport photos that are unnatractive, ho ho, write that down for posterity); I look mega nerdy, and kind of tentative like a meek myopic pale bunny with wispy hair sneaking out of its pony tail. But at least I got it done, so here I am, on the way to having the Visa sorted. My flights are kind of half organised, there is travel insurance still to do for my personal chunk of travel after the work stuff (thinking around 5 days at this stage), ditto some kind of accomodation for after the work leg.

I know this is dorky, proper slick professionals who travel for work don't get all excited about it and write about it on their blogs. They don't have blogs. They're probably busy pressing their suits, finishing their reports and reading the fin review. But that aside. I am a bit excited, and seriously need to very quickly get my shit together work wise and washing-wise and maybe even map wise so that come next week I can shove that suit in the bag, pop the report on the stick and use the fin review to line the kitty litter tray. I love interstate travel just for that little window of resting, the opportunity for reading and daydreaming, the excuse to write postcards. So longer flights are even better. Having never been to Vietnam, my vision is all very 'Scent of the Green Papaya' - I see crumbling colonial buildings, elegant women in long flowy white pant suits, streetside snacks. I love the idea of havinng a few days by myself as well, time to explore and muse in a new place.

Party Hardy

Well my housemate had his 30th on the weekend, and the house was all decked out - beautiful flowers, tea lights at dusk, chinese lanterns strung across the courtyard. We had the extended family of my other housemate here, pitching in to help cook and prep, like some big extended family getting ready for a huge fiesta. It was family ahoy, none of them mine, and quite lovely to see someone have a significant milestone shared with people they care about. I drank a little too much later in the night after having been a model of gracious hostieness complete with carrying dips plates through clusters of other people's work mates and nannas before that. Mostly. Didn't help that we discovered a few bottles of moet in the esky at the end of the night. Knew I was tipsy when I held up a bromeliad and emphatically explained to friends who have recently moved to the area just how wonderfully they grow, just how little water you need to give them, how versatile they are in low light areas. I insisted they stick their finger into the nub of the leaves and stroke the damp softness of new buds clustered furrily together. Which they did. Uh huh. As you do. (Horticultural advice is emerging as one of my favourite drunken topics, a month ago I went out on a Friday night and ended up walking arm in arm with a nice young gay man, waxing lyrical about the joys of perennial Greek basil compared with the big leaf annual kind. Want to know more? Just ply me with alcohol and I will reveal all sorts of plant secrets). Also went out Friday night and stayed out till dawn, mingleicious, loungeroom-dancing-licious. Met some nice folk from a certain environmental activist organisation, including some people off an anti-whaling boat that had swung into our lovely harbour that day. Watched cute little yearnings and couplings, heard about people's life epiphanies, discussed hair cuts. Was a little surprised to have an activist type comment on my hairy armpits (you work for a climate campaign for a big greenie organisation for goodness sake - are you tellling me you've never seen a hairy armpitted woman before?? Really.).

And for bonus points...

It is a beautiful hot Sydney summer day. You have a hangover and dim memories of drunken ramblings into the wee hours, in your candlelit courtyard backyard. You are running late with work stuff but it's been a day or two since you were last in the office and don't care quite as much as you did.

Do you:
a) stay home and nap with your cat on the freshly made bed, having shafts of sun dance over your sleeping form, only to emerge late afternoon, to make tea and toast and channel surf for BBC crime dramas?
b) funk it it up - heading into an inner city art shop to get that new paint you need for next wednesday's art class, stopping along the way for random coffees and bookshop browsing?
c) get up at 7 and find yourself in the office at 9, after having jogged, saluted the sun, done some personal admin and pumiced your feet, and procede to blitz the week's to do list?
d) think wistfully of a) and b) and guiltily about the lost possibility of c), half-arsedly help with collecting the empties for the recycling bin, lay on your bedroom floor listening to Leonard Cohen for a song or two enjoying the solid cosy warmth of sizal carpet and your cats pur and the hungover state of non-think, drink bad coffee you made yourself, go out and eat spicy thai food for lunch to help wake up your cells, buy zingy citrus fruit to do the same, meander slowly towards the office and find yourself there mid afternoon wondering if you can really be bothered to write those few pages, or whether an early movie might not be such a bad idea (and hey, might even catch that art shop...) ?

Oh alright, hang the expense! Monsters all round!

Further to post below, if I get my act together to do some scanning, I might share some monster pics with you later this week. Will see how tonight goes. Did plan to keep changing the picture in the header of the blog, actually - you know, provide some nice weekly treat of a new pic - but really thus far have just been too lazy. Had hoped that some techie whizz such as el Bizarrro might write me some lovely code to do the swapping of pictures for me on some kind of time sequence, but the night we had planned to do this I just spruced my sidebar with Aunty B's help and then we all drank beer and watched zany Spanish spoof cop drama movie instead.

Monsters, cute cute little monsters

I spent large chunks of time on the weekend drawing little monsters for my stencil art class this week. We were meant to come with 3 images and I think I now have 15-20, and many many more ideas for projects which I haven't done the images for (but a quick trip to the library tonight might avail). Last week was the first class and I left feeling very excited. I like any kind of art class as a focus, as dedicated time for thinking about images and possibilities. I love it but its a guilty kind of pleasure.

In general I have mixed feelings about visual arts - about doing it, spending time on it. There is some dastedly inground protestant work ethic or devoutly utilitarian internal dictator that raises its serge clad form and contributes to my internal dialogue on this topic to suggest that it is a self-indulgant waste of time and that if I had a stronger service mentality I would be spending that creative time doing something useful for us all. Like writing articles, or letters, leafletting out the front of public events, doing more volunteer work, excersising my democratic voice and taking a stand on the many things I care about. And not that I would just do those things, but that more importantly I would be the kind of person who would *want* to spend my spare time doing that rather than drawing spotty monsters with gnashing fangs and getting excited about making t-shirts. Because let's remember that these are not even high-brow, culturally significant technically savvy oils the size of walls but infantile, self-amusing, simple and 'pointless' images.

I wonder whether drawing is some kind of attention seeking ploy, I worry that it contributes to just more 'things' in the world when there are already so many objects and such overconsumption, I hate the idea of an art scene - of any description other than practicioners coming together for the joy of sharing the process, and loathe the ridiculous 5-minuteism of fashion and a profit driven market.

But I like drawing little monsters that actually make me laugh and my notebook is full of sketches of other bigger, more time-consuming projects waiting to be given wings. I have a rusty metal collection, for fucks sake, because I have plans for sculptures which involve beautiful rusty washers and bits of cars found weathered on the road side. I have two giant plastic tubs of art gear stacked in my room. I love hand made things that are made with heart, and love the different voices that come through different people's work. When I took my current full-time desk job, at the start of last year (after working part time and weaving in more art and writing into my days in the year before) I made a deal with myself that I would at least use my increased pay to buy more art books so that I have something I care about to show for the time of working full time (no not a house, no not a car, no not nice clothes, no not homewares or furniture, just art books - and music). I found a way to run a felt-making workshop with most of the office last year, and the first social outing I organised (we take it in turns, meant to do one a month) was an evening visit to the self-portraiture exhibition at the art gallery. I have even been musing on ways I can write more about sustainability and how it intersects with creativity - from maybe a positive psychology or evolutionary biology perspective. I draw in my notebook at work in boring meetings. I'm halfway through a masters in international urban and environmental management but don't really care about it anymore and fantacise about doing an accelerated art therapy course instead. I try to get other people to play with me, so it doesn't feel like such a solo interest - kicked off an 'urban candour' artbook project with 3 friends around last year as a way to make space for a shared visual dialogue. etc. You get the point.

So. Am I just embodying the art-science / left-right hemisphere / organic-inorganic / subconsious-conscious / male-female schism which our culture is so strongly shaped by? (This is partly a philosophical divide but also a practical one - there are after all only so many hours, we work on the Ford factory line model of 'life's work', you are meant to pick just one pursuit, right?). etc. Is my 'sensible & useful' day job just a ruse to cover for the fact that almost all of my interests are juvenile, ephemeral, playful things which I do just for fun?

Am I Ricky Wong????*





* From 'We Can be Heroes' - and Australian mockumentary. This character is a physicist working on solar cell research who decides he wants to act. He is a crap actor. Presumably he was a good researcher.

Picture's worth a

So went off to very yummy vegan yum cha followed by a trip to the art gallery on the weekend with some buddies, as a belated birthday kind of get together and also just to enjoy the warm weather and do some things I like doing. The exhibition was interesting - Osamu Tezuka, maybe best known in the west for inventing Astro Boy, and also Kimba the White Lion, but what was really amazing about him I learnt as I trailed around in the semi dark with friends' small children struggling to see the images far above theri heads, was the sheer variety and volume of comics he produced, as well as the quality.

"Foreign visitors to Japan often find it difficult to understand why Japanese people like comics so much. For example, they often reportedly find it odd to see grown men and women engrossed in weekly comic magazines on the trains during commute hours. One explanation for the popularity of comics in Japan, however, is that Japan had Osamu Tezuka, whereas other nations did not. Without Dr. Tezuka, the post war explosion in comics in Japan would have been inconceivable." (Asahi newspaper, 10 February 1989, See the Art Gallery of NSW's website at left, for more info).

Apparently he produced some 700 titles of comic in his lifetime. 700!! That is just incredible. And lots of interesting themes and subjects tackled, redoing things like Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in graphic novel format, the life of Beethoven, the life of the Buddha, and exploring all the very human stuff like power, bitterness, hope, sex, gender and identity, redemption and transformation. I loved seeing the actual cells he worked on, with their smooth and clean freehand lines and the remnants of a prephotoshop era where the stippled shading to fill large areas in a uniform coloured grey was created using a decal which he carefully cut out to fit the required shape and then pasted on to the image. Wow - so low fi, I just love that kind of manual, tactile, process driven art work.

It was also a greast introduction to manga for me, because my love affair with comics has been periodic through my life (over the last 5 years shyly started to reacquaint myself with this childhood sweetheart), but very anglo-centric. It's funny because as a kid I loved, loved loved my 'comic collection'. I always called it that although I suspect it was someone else's words that I was using, because I never had that collector's fervour - back catalogues, matching series, all the numbers in order. No, mine was a motley crew of disney characters, heckle and jeckle the crows, little lotta, even ritchie the ritch that strange kid with wide ankles and too high pulled up socks. I read them again and again and again. Packed them carefully up into my little carry case, and unpacked them again. I can still see images from the comics when I think about them - the strange bunch of fruit that Little Lotta had on her head and the yellow background on that cover; the strange button up clothes and shoes that Donald Duck's Uncle wore; the very plump plum looking noses on the Goofy-like characters, tales of kidnapping and empty swimming pools and swapping things with other things and general high jinx. I thought they were very funny at the time. I read them along side a vast array of 'serious books' and did not suffer from self doubt about these different interests being incompatible, or about these interests speaking of - or creating - a self which was inconsistent or unpalatable to the world.

Then I went through a comic drought, stopped being interested. Discovered the idea of zines in Uni but never really read or made any. Later, after I'd moved to Sydney I knew I hadn't quite kicked the habit but felt intimidated by my image of what a proper comic fan was like. You know, someone who can reel off all the authors side projects; someone who picks one or two things and knows them inside out; someone who doesn't get nervous or overwhelmed going into one of thoser cramped little comic shops; someone who skateboards. I wasn't one of those people. And where to start? And how to browse with all those lank haired young men staking out territory near the racks?

Well, somehow I got over that, one tentative little visit to random music and comic shop / visit to a zine fair / exploration of the artier book shop at a time, and have slowly and tenatively rebuilt my relationship with books that are mostly pictures. Given outlet to those feelings of fondness and curiosity that never really went away. Found again that delight in skipping through knowing that it will end too soon and you will need to go back and reread. Discovering the web comic was a revelation for me - handy, wry, accessible, and such variety. Of course, I do worry that it is juvenille, that any properly developed 31 year old should have more sophisticated tastes (like collecting antique china??? bonsai?? investing??), and in all seriousness do think that maybe this is some symptom of arrested development, maybe an acting out of a teenage phase of self-indulgence and self determination which didn't quite complete then. Or as Freud would probably say, an infantile regression of some kind related to sexual repression? Either way I think maybe I'm just an incurable pleasure seeker who is easily amused by pretty pictures and delighted by tight dialogue.

insert nerf herder lyrics here

Thanks to El Bizarro for this one, I had to smile, but in a 'what do you mean?? it never gets boring watching Buffy!!' kind of stoic way. Sorrry about the lack of schmick linkage, you'll have to copy and paste. Some techie issue this end:

http://www.chaser.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3357&Itemid=72

By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but I think the lyrics as blog post title is now getting tired. I am officially stopping now.

But loving the cosy constricted feeling that a nicely carved theme can give, I was pondering other possible themes for headers. How about all titles as things parents say to kids? ('You're just over tired', 'Stop showing off', 'Uhuh, do they? Wow.'). Or bad pick up lines? ('So do you have a boyfriend? I could be your boyfriend..'). Or conversation starters with taxi drivers ('cold today isn't it?', 'busy tonight?'); or random snippets overheard as you walk down the street; or random words that sound good.

Hot hot hot, yes I like it a lot

So played soccer (football) today at lunch. The second time. It was only ‘training’ if that’s what you call a lunchtime kick-around in preparation for the actual competition we have entered a work team in and that I somewhat foolhardily joined. I think the last time I played a team sport was a whole decade ago and then some. I don’t think I really even did it then except for when we had to at school. Sure I ran and jumped over things for a few years and even won events at sports days, went to the state athletics comp, but did averagely. Never ran quite fast enough to start training or have a strategy or care much. Never was s sporty spice, more bookish spice. Maybe just lazy. Definitely cerebral over physical, especially after puberty hit and bodies became all awkward and embarrassing for those few years. But. This year is my ‘less thinking, more doing’ year – right?? So I joined. And was prepared to be completely inept, frustrated and even upset when faced with a complete inability to make contact with the ball or remember the rules or kick a goal. So 2 weeks in and maybe it’s not as bad as all that. There’s lots of laughing and lunging and tripping over. People are kind and say ‘oh nice shot’ or ‘so close!’ when people get close to the goals, or ‘nice save’ if you get the ball from someone (even if it then ends up going out because you’ve kicked it randomly into the other side of the park). I do go very red in the face though – like some 3rd degree sunburn victim. So spot the unfit girl. But also I think it’s the standing in the sun at lunchtime for an hour. Who does anything in the summer sun for as whole hour?? It’s not even shady! Luckily the actual competition is indoor. I think would have preferred the rooftop games at night rather than lunchtime in some venue which is likely cramped and probably badly decorated, and likely smelly. Oh but other than those climatic, temperature regulation and décor related concerns, it’s been fun. So if anyone wants to sit pubside soon and watch strategic games over a beer and point out good moves, or just generally tell about winning strategies (because I don’t have any) I’m in.