oh this

is all jet lag. slept through but despite that lurking, waiting. just waiting to jump out at you, It is all 'hey, yeah, whatever, let's go to the party' even though everyone is tired, is wondering whether it's the right thing to do. it's all 'well, now that we're here let's mingle huh?'. It's all 'yuck is that what I look like in the random photos - really that bad? shit, oh well.'

It's all 'hey look at that bristled concave boy fire twirling, mmm.' It's all waiting, being the last to jump in, it's all slick women in blonde and red lipstick, it's all duty free perfume plooming up like a big bomb blast of violets, phwah, hitting you in the face. It's surreral, being home, having a sense of home even though you don't rationally know where home is (where the heart is? Sydney? Where the head is? Where I live? My home town? My childhood? My youth? Where i curl up to sleep now?)

And parties - as? As mingling locales, as 'quick, make the most of, talk to, sell yourself, tell your stories' or is it 'slow now, listen, listen to all the people's stories'? Or is it 'quick, smile, glisten - you might find a husband'?

Fucked if I know.

I glistened a bit, I smiled for the camera a bit, I wiggled a bit, I talked a bit, I drank punch a bitg. A bit, a bit, a bit.

Such a stickler, I sometimes wish I could say 'wait, wait, wait, could we just clarify the rules here? What are we doing? Aah that. good, ok then, let's get into it'

But that's just me. Presumably everyone else there somehow magically knows the rules, and is devoid of this existential gap, this space through which the wind whistles when there should be no wind, there should be only anectdote and story and smiles and flirt and vodka. Presumably.

And single-ness? Raises itself again as I come back into the country. It raises itself as something tangible - the absence of someone waiting at the airport to greet me, again, quite sick of this unheralded arrival. It is the absence of fresh flowers there to greet me at home. It is the absence of someone to share physicality with, the absence of someone to talk to in detail of what I've just read, that I miss. Plans. The absence of shared plans, or someone to bounce life plans off. It is a singular, unsupported aloneness in plan making. And yet presumably I've chosen this, on some level I choose to be alone. And all the warm bed moments, and the indulgent smiles of shared secrets, the warmth, the injokes, the solidarity.. I don't have. This somehow becomes more clear as I stand in the courtyard of someone's house, as people in coats tell 'us' stories and couple up and smile into each other's shoulders.

Life in the fast lane

(surely make you lose your mind)

Well not really, but that's how the song goes, as I was reminded as it thundered through the bar stereo and I sat eating very salty peanuts waiting for my colleague to go deposit the hard copy report he'd just been given in a meeting into his upstairs room, so we could go elsewhere for dinner. Jeepers, even the Phillapeno karaoke trio would be better than this audio delight.

(life in the fast laaane)

Is a bit what it felt like as I sat on the back of a bike this afternoon whizzing through oncoming traffic, literally oncoming traffic as the guy riding the motorbike had a decidedly lase fair approach to *lanes* and *road rules* and many many times would swim upstream through a sea of bikes coming our way, to get to a short cut. That's me closing my eyes, squinted shut. That's me with eyes open and taking photos as we whizz by sea of bikes and dramatic overhead powerlines and cheesy advertising on billboards. I took a very fetching photo of a giant billboard close up photo of a beige man-shoe, I guess you'd call it a cousin of the hushpuppy loafer. Very photogenic.

(Glowing and burning blinded by thirst
They didnt see the stop sign
Took a turn for the worse)

Not true. Found dinner just fine. Didn't even fall down a drain.

(Life in the fast lane
Everything all the time
Life in the fast lane)

Well I think *everything* is an exaggeration. Sure we had quite a few beers and then admitted that neither of us were going to make it far from the very tiny plastic stools that we had melted into, so proceeded to use our best interpretive mime to order food (hey, you try miming a plate of chips, no mean feat), and then giggled ourselves silly at ridiculous stories, and did accents off the billl to ascertain which characters speak like who in the office (our actual office, not The Office) and I felt compelled to wax lyrical about strip joints, and post-colonial gender politics, and then we made toilet jokes and laughed some more. And then a random staff member came and leaned over our very small plastic table to squeeze lime over our stir fried greens, appropos of nothing, and we laughed more because we thought he was leaning in to tell us something or to steal our dinner away, but actuallly the lime was great and made it extra tasty.

Nice to have a silly fun night out.

Nice to know I'm leaving tomorrow.

Terribly pleased to be going home, woo hoo.

Oh also

I've added a few buddies to the sidebar. Welcome to the Sea Green lounge! Pull up a seat, no not there, that's where Bettty Sue and Meri Risa are perched sipping their rambutantinis.. ooh, no, be careful, next to that couch are BSharp's boxes that she's packing to go overseas, and her to do list which is scrolling down around her ankles and streaming back out the door. Ooh, and be careful of the baby, that's Mermaidgrrl and Little Mister's Seth doing his first caberet performance, accompanied by some spoken word by Tim, an advance reading I think from his new book. Aaah, that's better, just there, on that worn and comfortable green pleather couch (yes Eco chick, vegan, and second hand, and by the way, nice dress, did you make that?), and Tom, you may prefer this easel to stand at, all artist like, where you get a good vantage point and can do some sketches of the guests. I think Miss V is runnning a permaculture workshop over there in the chill out zone (well we like to call it a microclimate) sometime soon, but in the meantime why not just nestle in to your lovely spots and enjoy the atmos. And let's see about getting you a drink, shall we?

warning: you are about to start running on reserve battery power

My computer tells me this about itself sometimes, but it could as easily be talking about me.
Working across timezones is exhausting - not just the taxing mental effort of adding and subtracting hours (oooh, let me count those on my fingers) whenever you talk to someone about what time you'll send them something and have to calculate 'their time', or when they tell you what time they have to leave the office to go pick up kids from sport and you need to make that back into 'our time'... but also just being awake at random bits of the day to start working. I find I need to get online by about 7.30am at the latest (10.30 'their time') to coordinate the days work and plan who will do what when. Then I have to race out and grab brekky so I don't go all loopy by 11 ('my time') and before that remember to get dressed so I don't get arrested ('my time'). Then I try to do a chunk of work before 12 ('our time') to get to them by 3 ('their time') so they can do some work before they then go home at whatever time, leaving me with the rest to do in whatever time is left. I run out of batteries somewhere around 12.30 and 3.30 ('my time') and need a short intense nap to recharge (preferably while they are working on something that doesn't need me) ('nap time'). Then I read what they've done in the arvo (evening 'their time') and if possible add to it in the evening ('my time'). Somehow despite the long hours this all feels like there is 'less time' and that everytime I get a handle on something the egg timer is given a good random shake by the powers that be leaving me with 'who knows how much time' left on things, which in any case is not the only important decider in what gets done, because it is multiplied by 'battery power' to figure out what I can actually do, regardless of time ('time schmine'). Ooooh. the wrist watch equivilent of a house of funny mirrors, this. Very spooky.

Artistic response to climate change

Here is another show looking at climate change and what it might mean for us, this one from a Southern hemisphere type perspective. Think I might go to the opening. Anyone wanna come along? I think it starts at 6ish.

The Trouble with the Weather: a southern response. The exhibition brings together works by artists from Australia, the South Pacific and South America, which respond to the unsettling effects of climate change. As the media, climatologists, environmentalists and politicians vie to shape our understanding and emotional responses to global warming, this exhibition opens out a space for dialogue on our complex socio-cultural relationships to weather in the current context. The exhibition will be opened by Luca Belgiorno-Nettis on Tuesday 3 July and will run until 3 August 2007 at the UTS Gallery Level 4, 702 Harris St, Ultimo.

On the up side

Sitting in your knickers and hotel slippers typing emails to work. Aaah, can’t go to work in your slippers normally can you? (Ed. strictly speaking you can do that working from home - not sure if this counts as an actual benefit of being away*)

Never finding that you forgot to go shopping and have completely nothing at all whatsoever to eat for breakfast except for dry pasta or root vegetables (a strangely common phenomonen as I look in my pantry at home hoping to find muesli)

Having the world’s perfect excuse for not doing anything on your ‘life: to do’ list (in Vietnam, couldn’t possibly sort out my uni stuff from here, honest – time zones darling)

You can call someone else to change a lightbulb (not something I normally aspire to in life, but hey, I’m looking on the – no pun intended) (actually, this one is possibly not a nett positive, as I also had to watch with extreme consternation as he fussed about with his head in the fuse box in my cupboard – who would have known?- and made the lights flick on and off several times and making me worry that he would electrocute himself in front of my very eyes *)

The bed is actually very firm and supporting, I sleep like a log, a nice happy log that has fallen in a forest full of attentively listening trees and is being slowly grown over by very soft trilling moss and nestled in by a few mushrooms, not a logged before it’s time and bleeding sap and about to be pulped to create tabloid press or sticky notes so that people in offices can write ‘can you come and see me – Kevin’ or ‘out of sticky notes’ kind of log

*erm - that device of pretending to have an editor doesn't actualy work so well in a text which is routinely very clearly not edited does it? Hmm. (Ed. You're probably right, and by the way, actually has two 'l's)

** anyone know the difference between eyes and very eyes?

blergh

Did your parents ever tell you that 'only boring people get bored'?

Well right now I must be the most paint dryingly boring person in the whole Northern Hemisphere (yes I learnt after last trip that Vietnam is actually not in the Southern Hemisphere. So Bridgett Jones of me).

Bored. bored. fucking bored.

Last night I ate pizza in the relative gloom of my half lit room after some exciting globe blowing action in a lamp seems to have thrown half the room's lights into a tizz making them go out in sympathy. I watched Zoolander on the inhouse movie channel (which features what must be pirate dvds as they have this eery tendancy to go all big square pixelated and have no sound in key points in the drama. Not that there is drama in Zoolander). I laughed out loud in such a way that I'm sure it scared my neighbours.

"HA HA HA Merman!"

"HAHAHAHA he thinks the model is the actual school"

"BHAHAHA he said eulogogies - EULOGOGIES!"

Was I on drugs? No. Just bored out of my brain and obviously overdue for a good laugh. The other evidence for this conclusion is that yesterday in a meeting with a colleague I laughed so much I had tears coming out when he told me that after watching a Nick Cage film in his room (gone in 15 seconds? Car movie?) he found himself imitating this strange pistol getsure in the air, wiggly hand thing that Nicholas Cage's character does to psych himself up, to psych himself up. AND that he did it in the mirror (as in my colleague did it in the mirror). I knew, and he knew, that this was just about as close to admitting that he was starting to dress up as Napolean and command small armies of room service canapes as is possible, which somehow made it even funnier. See - we are both clearly bored out of our minds, maybe literally.

I know that it seems incredibly ungracious, and unadventurous, and un-everything else to admit to being bored while overseas for work. But I am. I feel like I am stuck on some strange desert island where everyone else has an actual life, and friends, and family and a reason to be here, and I am just being humoured by polite serving staff and having to talk in the language we have in common, which is mine, because I've been too butt lazy to learn theirs, and as a result all we can talk about is things off the menu or have these ridiculous Faulty Towers style conversations where I have no idea what it is they think I've said because their responses are so seemingly unrelated that I am tempted to just laugh. And I'm sure they all think I'm my older workmate's secretary, or 'travelling companion' which irritates me, and then irritates me that I care. AND (oh, you've heard enough - finding this boring? well welcome to my world) I can't even just fuck off and go exploring and meet new people and see new things because I am bound to this hotel and this desk, to be efficient and in contact and be writing stuff and to be ready for meetings and such like.

I am so sick of room service I have started dreaming of toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches on dark rye.

I realise that being bored because you are stranded in a strange world of artificial opulance in a developing country is the equivilent of being on a life raft in the titanic and complaining that there's no in-boat entertainment and that the seats are too hard. BUT I CAN'T HELP IT.

I have actually started to feel empathy for all those horrible bloated expats who seem to shag and drink their way through stints overseas, because I'm thinking that maybe it's a legitimate(or at least understandable) response to boredom.

I have literally started to count down the days until I get home.

Funny that the last time I was speaking to someone who I know also wasn't enjoying their work trip OS was my housemate who was in an incredibly dangerous country where she has to stay in very simple and restricted accomodation and be accompanied by armed guards when in the city. It sounds like a physically and materially very different experience, but somehow the emotional landscape is similar.

Right.

I came back to room feeling absolutely crap, tired, demotivated. I started to feel kind of giddy and figured it was probably low blood pressure from being just about to get my period, but then I remembered the article we read at breakfast, you know the one, the one that said ‘Dengue Haemorrage Fever epidemic hits southern Vietnam’ that said ‘between 1,000 and 1,500 children are presenting with DHF each day to the Ho Chi Minh Hospital’. Gulp. But of course, I tell myself, I am in the North and just being oversensitive. But nonetheless, this all calls for decisive measures. I refuse to have this entire trip feel crap, to just be tied to my room and get back having seen nothing else, and having nothing nice to say about the whole affair. So, in a very small gesture of taking charge, I grabbed my dirty laundry and furiously washed it all in the basin using hotel bubble bath as soap (well… it smells nice and is easier to wash out than the bar of hand soap would be), then rinsed it all, then got red hands squeezing and wringing it all out, then used a combo of coathangers on backs of doors, towels over chairs and the metal rails in the bathroom to arrange for drying (it’s hot, they’ll dry tonight). There is a laundry service, but I feel like I need to do something with my hands, it feels so passive being fed and cleaned up after every single day, it feels nice just to do something*.
Then I went out. I was worried about going because I figured even if I started my work now I wouldn’t get it done before I’d be ready to go to bed, and the other person working on the project arrives tomorrow (9am on a Sunday!!!!) to start working with us, so it is fairly urgent to get it done before then. But then I thought ‘fuck it, it’s Saturday night, and I’ve got to get out’. So I went for a walk in the dust and enjoyed the heat fading and still radiating out from walls and footpath. I admired peeling paint. I saw bananas. I saw people sitting in narrow fashion clothes doorways. I saw the woman with the lit up stand alone cake stand on the street with white and yellow and pink and green decorated cakes with pandas on them. I heard the Saturday throngs of beeping bikes with ones and twos of jean wearing, mask wearing, heel wearing young and not so young people headed out. I ate ice-cream in a dingy foyer and got stared at, rudely I thought, by a western business man with short silver hair. I went supermarket shopping and felt even more giddy in the bright lights and happy house music that I have never heard quite so loud so sober. I saw bright orange shirted supermarket staff resting curved and cat like at the end of the ‘drinking water beer’ isle and refolding towels just to do something. Bought beer as a souvenir for my grandpa and wondered whether it would explode on the plane. Spent far too long in the aisle trying to remember what the rules about cans of beer and aeroplanes are. Bought it anyway. I got laughed at for having brought my own bag and realised that there was absolutely no way I could say ‘oh well, one less bit of plastic to go to landfill’ and have any chance at all of being understood so said nothing and just smiled and shrugged. They used plastic bags anyway and put them in my other bag. Aaah. I walked in my snappy sandals and felt uneven footpath and had people in the gloom ask me about bike rides, and glower at me and smile at me and wince at me and saw the most fleeting shy twitch of a smile that came out before someone checked it. I came back with my bulging bag of lotus tea and water and canned beer and coffee and a present for my housemates and it felt like arriving home. I went up the lift and saw myself mannish and inelegant in my all black utilitarian outfit, peasant in the fields style, and didn’t mind. I opened my room and smelt a rush of soap smell and liked it. Checked the clock. There is still some time. I’ll type now.

* Remind me of this next time I have a basket of washing looming in my bedroom back home.

Post script - how lovely, someone just came and brought me a fruit basket decorated with purple orchid flowers. Imagine bright yelllow nashi, pink and green dragon fruit, red and yellow striped apple, green small peach. An eyeful.

por favor?

Ok this is so using my blog as a collective cyber help desk, but I know that some (most!) of you out there in cyber space are more techie literate than me so if anyone can help me, please let me know (post an anonymous commment, no one need ever know you were ever here, and you will be making a little sea green much happpier).

Spell check.

Why would it suddenly swap to Brazillian (Portuguese) and therefore underline all reasonably spelt English words as bad spelling? And, more importantly, how do I change it back to English?? In Word. On a Mac.

oh it's the little things

So. I am feeling much happier and am keeping my self (nominally) sane by the judicious use of:

Bright and cheery lippie (pink! red!)

Music and singing (hey, one advantage of working in a hotel room by yourself, you can be noisy)

Assembling outfits to amuse myself (oh, look at that tropical resort wear inspired skirt print, oh hark now serious business woman - it's like playing barbie, but I'm it) (not that I like barbie dolls, well, I did, but you know, I turned out hairy and opinionated and not at all blow dried - then again I do wear lipstick to cheer myself up - that can't be altogether healthy? thanks a lot barbie)

Little naps. Oh the deep recharge half hour nap when you suddenly get odd jet lag or screen burn out. They are so so good (nap, not the other 2 things)

Writing all my crap into my diary

Cups of herbal tea, brought the herbal tea with me - absolutely inspired moment of shopping and packing that one

Yes, well, that's about it really. Well I did say little things. I guess you just weren't expecting nano scale.

Strange to be suffering sensory deprivation in a city that last time overwhelmed me with sensory inputs. Hope to head out tomorrow and have a much longer brisk walk, as gap between two project thingies. Maybe head over the other side of town for breakfast. Maybe do some looking and photo taking. Ooh, maybe find a bookshop or head back to Craftlink the fair trade-ish traditional crafts shop I went to last time. I think I promised 2 girls at work a scarf each, they were helping on the stuff. I'm sure they'll never believe it if I run out of time to go. No fuck it, will go. Can probably get there and back in 2 hours and have coffee at same time. Will pencil in for Tuesday afternoon I reckon. Sorry, this is now verging on acttually talking to myself. I'll let you go!

happy weekends all.

I am a gherkin (or hotel life in charades)

So, I order a salad - goats cheese salad from room service. Yah. When I ordered it I asked for extra lettuce because I had it yesreday for lunch too, there's not all that much vego on the menu, and it was nice, but there wasn't much in the way of greens and I had asked for extra lettuce and got it and it was great. So today I had to explain at length what extra lettuce means. It arrives, looks lovely, but has only 2 bits of lettuce and the rest is gherkin and goats cheese and all sorts of things that I don't mind eating, but are very strong flavours. So I call, and say, you know, sorry, I asked for extra lettuce, could you bring me extra lettuce, don't mind if you have to charge extra, whatever, could I please just have some extra lettuce. We both repeat the word lettuce backwards and forwards, several times. So. It arrives, and, I am pained to say, it is a mini bowl of exactly what arrived earlier. A replica in miniature, more cheese, more gherkins, and a teensy letuce leaf underneath. I actually started laughing until I realised that was really rude, so I tried explaining but the woman looked acusingly at me and said yes extra lettuce and put it on my table and left. So, I felt like complete goose, and worry that I am now the annoying and greedy woman in Room XXXX with an insatiable hunger for salad who keeps saying 'lettuce' all the time.

Message in a bottle

ie another post from 'away'.

Today I left the hotel! Whopedee do dah! It was momentus, because it meant I took a decent break, went for a wander and got some sun (locals thought I was bonkers for not having a hat on, and told me so, kindly, in Vietnamese and concerned body language) but I was just deliriously happy to be part of the day and the weather and the world outside buildings.

Oh before I go on let me preface this by explaining that I have neither head space, internet time, nor non-work time to luxuriate over a considered post so this will be a random spilling ('sheesh, yeah, just for a change... and there's always some excuse for your cruddy spelling and typos' I hear you say) without any decent point or story. Don't look for the point, or, better, if you find one, can you let me know what it is - it might be clearer to you than me.

Today was a creeping sense of physical pain as tension crept up my back and between my shoulder blades and into my neck. I wish I was dramatising for the sake of a story, but not so. Fuck I've felt stressed the last couple of days. At first I was relieved when the interviews out of town I was going to do were cancelled (read - never quite organised properly, but nothing to do with me) because I knew I could do with the extra time here to work on docs with my colleague, and to be honest, I find that kind of thing very exhausting, so many things to consider in how and what you ask and so many interpretations and politenesses to be kept in mind - let alone keeping up with the content, when all the acronyms etc are not first nature yet. So, woo hoo, no interviews. However this did not feel better yesterday when I realised that this meant my next 7 days were to be in this one hotel, working long days and really never leaving. It began to dawn on me that this is kind of like being in the office, except where your home doesn't exist, and the bed is 2 feet from your desk, and you have 3 mega deadlines and no admin back up. Hmmm. In fact my hotel was starting to feel a bit like a prison cell; sure, a clean, spacious and daily tidied prison cell, but still overly familiar and stuffy.

Then, and you'll love this, I heard yesterday that my colleague back in Oz who was working with us on deadline #2 project (in fact doing a significant chunk) was not just 'down with a flu' as of the start of this week, but HAS DENGUE FEVER, possibly related to her last trip here and to another SE Asian country on her way home. Poor thing, I can only imagine how exhausting and physically revolting that must be, as I've heard from others that it is draining and painfully achey like you can't imagine. Meanwhile here, I found my stress levels nudging the ceiling of my 7th floor room, as I realised that there was a chunk more work to now be done from here. Shit shit shit.

And no, the deadlines can't get nudged. And yes the clients are all ones that we're also here talking to about nexts stages of work so don't want to piss off.

But, there is a bunch of great stuff too, little things so far, but hey, they'll do...!

Like today buying the biggest bunch of long stem yellow roses from a woman on a bike with a basket at the back, and bringing them back, wrapped in newspaper and ending up with two women from housekeeping in my room and me working on the group project of taking leaves off and arranging in vases and also carefully taking off the sticky tape wrapped around each bud to stop them opening too quickly in the heat. It was fun doing that, and they seemed happy to help and I felt cheerier with greenery and colour in my room. Oh and a huge bunch of those little scaly fruit that I bought at the market on my outside walk today too. I figure if I can't get out much I can at least make my room feel a bit more alive.

And I had some nice mango icecream, the teensiest scoop with the teensiest spoon, at the bakery around the corner.

And I didn't fall down a drain or get run over! And I'm not even scared of the traffic this time around, and much less worried about people staring at me (mostly they're friendly or curious, not hostile or lecherous stares).

And tonight I'm going out for dinner down the street to a cool thai place with alfresco stool and low table arrangement that I love. And we've renegotiated if not the deadline then at least the quality (ie complete draft, not final draft) for one project, and I think #3 will be ok.. so it might just all work.

Phew. I think I need a drink.

The Secrets of Heaven and Hell

The old monk sat by the side of the road. With his eyes closed, his legs crossed and his
hands folded in his lap, he sat. In deep meditation, he sat.
Suddenly his zazen was interrupted by the harsh and demanding voice of a samurai
warrior. "Old man! Can you teach me about heaven and hell!"
At first, as though he had not heard, there was no perceptible response from the monk.
But gradually he began to open his eyes, the faintest hint of a smile playing around the
corners of his mouth as the samurai stood there, waiting impatiently, growing more and
more agitated with each passing second.
"You wish to know the secrets of heaven and hell?" replied the monk at last. "You who
are so unkempt. You whose hands and feet are covered with dirt. You whose hair is
uncombed, whose breath is foul, whose sword is all rusty and neglected. You who are
ugly and whose mother dresses you funny. You would ask me of heaven and hell?"
The samurai uttered a vile curse. He drew his sword and raised it high above his head.
His face turned to crimson and the veins on his neck stood out in bold relief as he
prepared to sever the monk's head from its shoulders.
"That is hell," said the old monk gently, just as the sword began its descent.
In that fraction of a second, the samurai was overcome with amazement, awe, recognition 
and compassion for this gentle being who had dared to risk his very life to give him
such a teaching. He stopped his sword in mid-flight and his eyes filled with grateful tears.
"And that," said the monk, "is heaven."

(thanks to a Buddhist e list thingie)

Seed disperser

There is this fruit, is it a lychee or a rambutan? Hard to know, it’s here without a label in my fruit bowl. Its tough and scaly on the outside like a lizard or a nut, you’d expect the inside to be hard and oily like a chestnut. But it’s not, just a little tear to the skin and a white shiny inner layer is revealed, it smells a bit like roses gone hot in summer and falling off the bush, it feels like what you’d expect an eyeball to feel like if you ever were to lick one (lizard like, brushing sand of perhaps). Then you bite in there is the most delicate rose and green flavour, alien texture of being completely full of liquid, completely turgid, shiny, every interface this watery smoothness, and yet not leaking juice, then your tongue finds the torn edge of the skin, which is still thin and dry and rough around the edges, and then you bite deeper and find the seed, a respectable sized seed, with some weight to it and you roll it round, pulling off the rest of the flesh and eating it bit by bit until you’ve spat out the skin and there is just this beguiling seed, with remnants of something rough stuck to one end, and the other end the smoothest, most pleasant shape and texture. It would be all to easy to gulp down this seed, not accidentally, but as a gesture of love. But I don’t, my mind overrules my senses and I spit it out, with some regret, into the lined wicker bin at my feet.

Got here, and getting there

Hey ho – I’m in Vietnam, exciting huh? Packed well, all the night before of course, partly before and partly after a lovely dinner with my housemates, and a DVD too. I like taking a small suitcase, it gets full quicker and means I can stop packing sooner and get to bed. Left early on a misty morning, feeling warm and cosy about home, feeling like it is a home.

Was also a bit tired when leaving, accumulated angst from the weekend I think. A close rellie from my home town came to stay, someone I have always considered myself generally liking, from a comfortable distance. Up close and personal this weekend I thought her particularly superficial, judging everyone on how they look and pandering after the trimmings of affluence, self-serving, with a loose grip on ‘reality’ and a tendancy to spin long winded drunken stories casting herself in a favourable, if rather fictitious, light. In particular I found her attitudes to our shared family past particularly difficult to swallow. Without going into dreary details, let’s just say that my mother came from an abusive and erratic family, and that, as is often the case with large families where abuse, mental illness and other things that mini series are made about have played a role, the siblings are fractured, competitive, grappling with guilt and blame and seeking the empathy they never had, but paradoxically not able to give it because they never got it and are still waiting. – sigh – Anyway, her particular brand of sibling rivalry came out and was directed at my mother , a few snide comments about my little brother, and they really gave me the shits. I didn’t say anything, because I’m still learning how to speak up around my family stuff* , but for one of the first times ever I actually felt angry, rather than just smoothing over and avoiding. Traditionally I am the quiet one who doesn’t take offense or sides and just tries to ignore all the talk – read, doesn’t let herself respond, even when it causes a strong emotional response. I guess the timing of just starting to see a counsellor do some family of origin work and then having one of the family members who is right in the middle of it all come stay, was fairly volatile. I think I’m starting to have a very strong emotional response to it all, and whoops, it might be coming out.

[As an aside, it is a hard one to grapple with, isn’t it, being related to people who don’t treat well the other people you care about. I am musing on how much love relies on approving of other people’s behaviour (or not), how much you can enjoy spending time with someone who speaks with no respect at all about someone you care about, and whether you can enjoy spending time with people who don’t recognize things that have happened in the past or who have different allegiances in the whole messy, um, mess.]

So after my 13 hour flight and checking in like a zombie, sleeping like the dead, I did a complete bunker down yesterday and literally did not leave the hotel. All day. Allllll day. Why? Well, I was working, so basically didn’t leave my desk, except when Housekeeping rang me and asked me to leave so they could do my room! Then I went downstairs to drink tea and work some more. Hot though, I can tell from in here, and it was hot yesterday as we landed in Ho Chi Minh City, hot and wet like a breath out. I know this probably seems terribly unadventurous, but there will be time enough for fast walking along precarious footpaths and sweaty cab rides to meetings, coffees in cafes, and lots of talking and planning and thinking later in the week, so for now, it’s a gentle, tissue box surrounded landing, getting used to being away and to the honking and to the idea of being here as a professional, as a westerner, as someone wealthy in a fancy hotel – all weird roles to be thrust in, all a little uncomfortable, but, like ill fitting shoes or an itchy suit, you can acclimatise, if you give it some time.

Today, day 2, I am also working hard and having bouts of great energy and complete lethargy. I think I am getting my mid afternoon slump at lunchtime, which is weird. Oh body clock, sorry to baffle you with timezone changes.

Exotic tales of warm climes and so on when I actually leave the hotel.

*Partly because I've just been in denial, as I said to the counsellor dude, let's call him Bob 'I don't talk about it because I don't want to come from a fucked up family, it sounds like something from Days of our Lives' and I certainly don't want other people to think they can wade right in and talk about stuff that is quite personal any old time just because I've mentioned it once, or to smugly assume that I am defined by this and only this experience, when of course, there is much more than our family experience and their family experience that make us who we are, and even that experience gives us gifts as well as burdens, right? Right? Maybe.

Things to pack next time you go away for work

- A zillion pairs of knickers

- Lots of music to listen to on your computer

- Herbal teas

- A tiny plunger (if plastic) or a metal ‘dripper’ to sit on top of your cup and coffee (or buy local stuff)

- If it’s a long time, maybe a favourite mug, with a well designed handle, that doesn’t burn your fingers like tiny white hotel tea cups do

- Short stories or very easy bath reading

- An aromatherapty spray in orange, or mandarin, or lime, or lemongrass (if you’re going somewhere hot) or ylang ylang or lavendar or frankinsence or rose geranium if somewhere cold

Is It Getting Hotter In Here?

Info on new art exhibition as follows (and Betty Sue, I trust that this one wont be as naff as the textiles one panned out to be - sorry about that!). Sadly I will be in Vietnam, otherwise would go.

---

The ATVP Winter ’07 Show of the Season
June 21 – July 15, 2007
Opening launch Thursday June 21, 6pm-9pm.
565 King Street Newtown

Do contemporary artists care about global warming? Are contemporary artists engaged in the climate change debate?
The answer it seems is a resounding YES!

According to gallery Director- Brendan Penzer, ATVP’s winter showcase exhibition is testament to this. “We tested the waters by extending an open invitation for artists to propose artworks for our seasonal exhibition by responding to the phrase and exhibition title – Is It Getting Hotter In Here?” “The overwhelming response from the artists who made submissions demanded that the gallery curate a show thematically about global warming and climate change issues.”

Japanese artist Masaaki Ohno joins newly Scottish expatriate Tony Nolan and Sydney artists Jenny Brown, Anna Chase, Amanda Hills, Thomas Hungerford, Mitra Jovanovic, Daniel Kojta, Tom Loveday, Adam North,Brendan Penzer and Pickafight Books in a broad ranging inquiry and dialogue regarding issues pertaining to climate change and global warming. Artworks range in mediums from documentary, installation,painting, video making, drawing, object making, photography, book making and textiles.

“Is It Getting Hotter In Here? is a diverse exhibition where contemporary artists employ interactive,scientific, communicative, satirical,political, psychological and ecological frameworks and principles as they tackle such themes and issues as; water and salinity,the effects of rising sea levels on our Pacific Island neighbours, global warming,relationships between humans and the earth, climate change politics, the nuclear energy debate, land use and reconciliation in contemporary Australia and our current politic climate.”

As part of the public programs for the exhibition the gallery will be running an Art and Climate Change Forum titled ‘Temperatures Rising’ on Saturday 7th July from2.00-4.00pm. Join ATVP and the artists from the ‘Is It Getting Hotter In Here?’exhibition in a discussion outlining the work of artists concerned with issues pertaining to climate change.

Community members and fellow artists interested in participating in the forum can book a spot by contacting the gallery on 9519 2340 by 4.00pm Saturday30th June. Entry is Free. All Welcome.

Gallery hours Wed-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat-Sun 10am-4pm (or by appointment). Entry is free. All are welcome.

No pet, I don't think so

"And if nobody reads me, shall I have wasted my time, when I have beguiled so many idle hours with such pleasant and profitable reflections?"
- Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592), French essayist. Of Giving the Lie, The Essays (Les Essais), bk. II, ch. 18, Abel Langelier, Paris (1595).

singular prt 2

Well, my romantic antics are few and far between these days as I continue to feel like
a) I don't want to be in a relationship just because everyone thinks it's what you should do
b) I don't want to be in a relationship if I'm not all that into it
c) I don't want to go on painful, insincere or boring dates ("dates" - whatever)
d) I'd like to sort a bit more stuff out in my life before I find myself accidentally in the midst of a long term relationship (stuff like life plans, like old family stuff etc)
e) I'm not going to shop around for a partner like I'm looking for a nice pair of winter boots, with a checklist of features, and a nose for a bargain
f) etc

So, amusingly, despite this (or maybe because of it) here are my most recent brushes with romance.
1. Boy in dark room at party sits himself by me and says 'I like you, you're mysterious' and offers to spend a week or two getting to know me better. Continues to sit himself down next to me at various locations asking me questions and suggesting that we should stop being so polite. -- I feel suspicious, then cautious, then vaguely enticed, but caution wins. After all he's young and likely flighty. Likely that accent alone and that nice rangy frame and youthful enthusiam wont be enough to sustain a meaningful relationship. I feel ever so protective of myself and give very little away. He leaves with someone else, someone who, as it turns out, he'd been seeing previously. Feel relieved at not having inadvertently made myself a social parriah by butting into to someone's recent fling. The next day I note that my caution has receded and interest is piqued, notion of young and flightly and impermanent no longer seems like a problem (too late she cried).
2. Walking home down the dark main road someone walks past me, we make frank but apropriate eye contact and just as he passes me he says 'I love you'. In the particular cadence of someone saying it to someone they've said it to a hundred times before and still mean it, a gentle utterance of a Sunday morning in with face bent down into hair on the way to make a cup of tea, said gently and without wanting a response, not at all like a crazed person yelling at strangers or creepy man trying to make a move. I smiled and kept walking, felt happy, strangely.
3. Taxi driver asks would I ilke to have coffee. I think he says 'have a nice coffee' as it is at the end of the ride, and I have said that I plan to go have coffee (hey, he asked me what I was up to) so I say 'mm, thanks' and he keeps looking expectantly and says 'so would you like to? Go have coffee sometime?' and I get a rush of 'whoops, oh, oh this is happening' and then I think 'hmm, ok, maybe this is ok' and tell him maybe and that he can give me his number, which he does, on a business card, which tells me when I peer at it minutes later, that he is tertiary educated and works in the finance sector. He is older and African and I am in two minds, one that says 'oh my goodness, do we date taxi drivers now, has it come to this?' (which sounds awful and elitist but just that I met him as my taxi driver, and there is something ever so slightly creepy about that mix of business and personal life) and one that says 'and how would having coffee hurt? isn't it about being open minded and anyway, maybe you should just say yes to everyone and you never know when or where you'll meet your soul mate'. And then some more of 'I don't think so'.
4. Random stranger who I chatted to* last year at a party bumps into boy I work with, at coffee shop, through their mutual friend and in chatting begin to talk about their workplaces. Party boy says 'do you work with seagreen?' and work friend says yes, and boy says 'get her to call me! I gave her my card!'. And when this is told to me I have to furrow brow to remember him giving me a card (I have no idea where it ended up but I think I stashed down my top with a flourish at the time - yes, yes of course I did) and then google him on a local university website to find out (he is a postgrad doing a very charmingly techie-nerdy-sciency thing). He is a bit young and possibly terribly earnest, and judging by his CV (oh google you have a lot to answer for) far more proactive and outcomes focused than me. He's done things that get media coverage, raised money for things, that sort of stuff. I feel a bit intimidated plus I don't know that I even liked him that much even when tipsy at party.

So. There you go. Hardly a Meg Ryan movie it it?

*flirted outrageously with, whatever, gosh you're so picky (I wrote that in a Napolean Dynamite knd of voice)

Website of the week

Well, several actually. I have spruced up my sidebar, put away some summer weight links and replaced with red hot cosy knitted website links of wintery goodness. Or something. Lucky I'm not in sales huh? Anyway, I quite like Post secrets, Dinosaur comics, Cecily, and Know one teach one, and a site I discovered thanks to an old work friend, 'Kiva' - you can go on line, lend $25 to someone in a poor region around the world setting up a business or repairing a home, and they pay you back when they get on their feet. It's microfinance with a personal touch that I think is really nice (no, haven't done it yet, but plan to next pay, will let you know how it goes). Hoping it's not a horrible Nigerian scam, but it doesn't look like it.

Still bitterly cold here, by Sydney standards anyway, but has stopped raining and howling with wind.

Congratulations due left right and centre for major milestones in the last week: Guitar Boy for hitting the big three oh (sorry I missed the day, sounds like it was a good one), A and Dr J for moving into their new digs, E-Chan and the B-star for both having their first birthdays. Big 'you rock's also to the lovely Amberguity for surviving her 2 week work trip to a dangerous Pacific locale which always means reduced freedom of movement (think armed guards to go vegie shopping), to Mermaidgrrrl and Little Mister for a spontaneous trip to the home town to visit friends and fams and show off bub, and to Miss B for winding down her Sydney work and packing up life and still managing to find time to socialise and share other people's big occasions with grace and only ever so slight mounting of tension as the to do list grows, and also to me (wha?) yes to me - for organising my next work trip to Vietnam and trying to get excited about it even though I kinda felt like staying home for a while, and for tackling some hard but lingering and important family stuff.

I just don't know what to do with my self

Are any of you folk list writers? I must confess to keeping a running weekly list in pencil at work on A4 paper and getting great satisfaction when I get to cross off tasks. I used to be a bandit for the personal to do list, and have exhumed copious old lists in a recent 'mm, I moved house 6 months ago why do I still have some cardboard boxes of paperwork not yet unpacked' moment. They are often part list part random note paper part doodle. These lists, now, I find hilarious. They include every 'should do', 'wouldn't it be nice to do', and 'eek still haven't done' that crossed my mind. Many say things like 'ring Davo, ring Constanze, card for Lucretia'. Others say 'call uni, superannuation (underlined), file tax info' or 'call community garden, Africal drumming workshops Wednesday 6-7.30, Bryan, Community Centre.' Others are now completely unfathomable - kists of authors who seem to have no real relation at all now that I look at them like: 'Bernard Shaw, Italo Calvino, Virginia Woolf' or the funnniest I found in a recent box clean out was the following very useful cooking instructions: (written in very short lines, like a poem)

soak overnight
drain and use water
leave in jar drained all day
cover w t towel
rinse and strain at night
+ every night for 2-3 days
pound and bake in 130 oven
oiled pan or dish
bake for 4 hours

This had me laughing out loud, because nowhere, absolutely nowhere on the sheet of paper on whoch this was scrawled in a corner, was there any hint as to what food item it is that should be prepared in this way. As I read it I thought 'aah, sprouts' to start with and then 'hmm, maybe adzuki beans'. But the pounding and baking really gets me - what the? Now a day or so after finding it I have the ever so vague inkling that it might have been a recipe for a sprouted rye bread or similar - maybe even supplied by Meri Risa - maybe in my approximately 4 minute long raw food revolution? Although baking is not raw, maybe I was feeling particularly anti wheat or similar.

The other weekend my housemate and I were having coffee at the breakfast table talking about what our Saturdays had planned (rather what we had planned for them but you know what I mean). He said 'I have a list' I said 'can I see it?', he unfolded and help it out, and I laughed (not a very nice girl am I?) because it had three things on it, one of which was a meal. In reponse to my laughter, he added 'breakfast' (which led to an interesting discussion about the role of backdating in lists, addding things that were never on there just because you've done them and feel like you should get credit for them) and some 'tick boxes' and kindly let me photograph it. As follows.

Day off and a new old jacket

Queen's birthday weekend here in Oz which means Monday public holiday and a general sense of low-key relaxation with no particular family rituals, gift giving or urge to travel that some of the other public hols bring with them. I am tooling around at home. Mended a jacket, lovely old jacket that I've had for years. Lent it to some gay boys once in Adelaide and lost it for a few years but they grew apart, one of them got married, and I got my jacket back. Had a big soft plush black and shiny fur collar when I first got it, and I was always a bit confused about how it made me feel. On the one hand the whole jacket seemed so 1940's so regal, so elegant, on the other hand I'm not a fan of the fur trade where fur is used simply for adornment, cruel, unneccessary killing etc (although kind of think it makes sense if living somewhere cold and eating animals anyway, and killing them with respect and gravitas and gratefulness, in a subsistance, sustainable kind of way - but that aint exactly how fur gets done for the western rag trade), and even though the collar bunny had been long dead, wearing it in effect was glorifying the look and adding to a general climate of fur=groovy, which I wasn't so sure I wanted to do. Plus if I'm honest I suppose there was a lingering sense of dread that I would find myself at dinner next to an animal cruelty activist who would stand up and point at me between courses saying in a shushed whisper 'can you see what she's wearing??' and me and dead bunny would find outrselves social ostracised,left alone with the tiramisu, the horrified stares of other restaurant goers and the bill.

So... just a couple of weeks ago the housemates and I had a fairly major non-seasonally-specific clean, and went through clothes, knick knacks, books etc (more on this later- it was fun, and I have photos) and so in a moment of decisiveness I grabbed the stitch unpicker and decoupled jacket from collar (there was an ordinary collar underneath fur) and sent the collar to the local second hand clothes shop and the jacket into the wardrobe. Collar is now someone else's ethical problem! Jacket was then my mending problem, as it's life as a glamorous nightclub accessory had resulted in a little tear up the side. Some careful, slightly random, made-up darning later (there was also a bare unravelled patch that I kind of had to weave back into being a fabric) this morning and viola! I have a new old jacklet for these rainy Sydney wintery days. Am feeling very industrious, thrifty and re-useful, as passsed by many nice (but lets be honest fairly shittily made and entirely synthetic so liable to melt near open flames) jackets earlier in the week and didn't buy them. I'm all for 'classics' from any era that stay cool in their own right irrespective of any fashion tide. as a result I will not be buying a royal blue pinnafore with giant buttons on the boobs, or a 2007 trench coat anytime soon (apologies for those in other fashion timezones, this is a particularly east coast australian phenomenon I imagine).

a rainy arvo

Enjoying a rainy blustery Sydney winter day while snuggly and warm at my desk. Feeling relatively uninterrupted as I plough through translated material which I am now feeling mostly upbeat about synthesizing (rather than despairing that it would never get done as was my experience a week ago). Have to giggle sometimes at the sentences I come across and as I do this I know that I am a terrible person sneering at someone else’s use of English when I can’t even get myself fed in their Mother Tongue. But noodle-packet English can be so funny! (I say in my defense). And then I read something about poor children not getting to go to school, or about families selling land and houses to cover medical expenses and I feel bad for ever thinking it was ok to make fun of even the most dense and obscure sentence. After all, this is my little piece of helping, right? I should be glad I have it and, you know, mostly I am. I find tasks like this much easier to engage with when I have cleared some blank space in my week and on my desk for them to expand out and get proper attention. Having too many wailing tasks on a to do list means I just don’t get right into the detail and nuance of any of them. (Don’t get me wrong, I can keep plates spinning, but not everything wants to be just a spinning plate). Right now I have nice wintery sh-boots (like sk-pant), a healthy pot plant and cheery tea cup in front of me, nice people at work to talk to, a window with city view, a comfortable house to head to at the end of the day and a lovely weekend in front of me. What’s a few errant sentences to wrangle?

Sending NSW down the mine

Apparently NSW Government has approved the Anvil Hill coal mine, a hotly contested proposal to establish a new mine in the Hunter and then double Newcaste's coal exports. I don't know the ins and outs of this proposal (housemate 3 weeks ago: 'If you want to go away for the weekend you could always go to Anvill Hill', me; 'Where's Anvill Hill?', housemate: 'you know, the proposed new coal mine. There's a giant protest there this weekend.' Me: 'oh, *that* Anvill HIll, right you are...')

It is interesting though that we are so wedded to economic growth (not just econmic security, not just well being, not wealth, but GROWTH, never ending spiralling growth - towards what final end exactly? How many fridges and shoes and spare cars does our hazily defined future shangrila have, that we should be so enamoured with chasing it? ) driven by mineral exploitation, that we (collectively) don't pause and think 'hmm, but what will we do when it runs out?' Or 'hmm, wont burning all that coal be bad for all our coastal dwelling folk?' or 'what exactly will be left in the ground for our children to dig out and sell?' or 'hang on wasn't there talk of trying to harnass some clean renewable energy like sun or tides or wind - aren't we all very resourceful and clever, can't we lead the world on funky new technology if we give it a modicum of funding somewhere in the ball park of what we give to subsidise coal related industries, and then share it with that rapidly growing China and India so that they don't disappear under a smog cloud?'.. or whatever...

The locals are not happy...

"It just goes to show what a sick joke the Planning laws of NSW are, when a mine like Anvil Hill can be approved and meaningful community consultation be dammed. Threatened species, water catchments and alternative industries in the Hunter be dammed. To hell with climate change, says the Iemma government, there's coal to be mined.

"The Iemma Government has conducted 10 months of consultation with the community about the Anvil Hill coal mine proposal, and then ignored it all. They have received thousands of public submissions demanding that the Anvil Hill mine be rejected due to the major amounts of greenhouse pollution it would create – the equivalent of the entire NSW transport sector. They were told by the horse breeding and wine making industries that the coal mine should not go ahead, because it would threaten other industries in the Hunter. They have ignored all these concerns, because they are too gutless to say 'no' to the coal lobby."

"This mine would have massive impacts on threatened species in the Hunter Valley, destroying one of the largest tracts of bushland remaining in the region. It would destroy a large area of water catchment for the already stressed Hunter River. The 10 million tonnes of coal from Anvil Hill will wreak irreparable damage on the global climate, tipping the planet further towards dangerous, runaway climate change. In the face of such massive impacts, the Iemma government still couldn't find the guts to say no to the coal lobby."

- From Rising Tide in Newcastle, a commmunity group against global warming: www.risingtide.org.au

(Ooh. Political. Just when you thought this blog was a never ending reflection on fascinating minutae and ever so slightly developmentally delayed teen angst...)

Tell G8 that climate change action would be great, mate.

Advocacy group Avaaz has a campaign against global warming, very quick and easy to add your name if you are keen. (and yeah, petitions, hey, that's so 20th century, right? but realistically it doesn't hurt to try - right? just think of those poor polar bears):

"Our campaign against global warming is on fire! World leaders meet at the G8+5 summit this week--and they're listening to us. Friday morning, we put boxes of 265,000 names down on the top German negotiator's table in Berlin. Taken aback, he promised to bring our voice into the negotiations, and said he'd track how fast our petition grows. On Saturday, with another 10,000 signatures overnight, we marched at the head of the climate march in Rostock, with tens of thousands peacefully demanding urgent action. Now we're in touch with top officials from France, the UK and Brazil, all following our campaign as they decide on a strong stand. The petition now has 346,635 signatories.

Let's turn the heat up even higher. Can you help us get to 375,000 voices for change--the biggest global climate petition ever--before the summit decision? One last push, together, to avert a planetary catastrophe. Take a moment and tell five friends to go to this page--
http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_summit

The energy here in Germany is electric. Every few hours, new reports come in as governments manoeuvre. Amidst the politics, our campaign draws a clear line: a swift global agreement with binding emissions targets.
When we met with Chancellor Angela Merkel's top representative who chairs the talks, he promised us Germany wouldn't compromise-- then on Sunday Merkel came through for us, the Brits followed suit, and now Brazil and China have joined the call for a global UN-led process. Bush has started to move but his proposals would be a step back, the US people and Congress are already way ahead of him.

The summit leaders can tell a global movement is brewing. Our petition, this simple list of names from every corner of the globe, is a sign politicians can see and touch. These talks always come down to the wire-- so it's crucial for world leaders to know how much the global public wants them to stop the climate crisis.

The summit opens Wednesday, ends Friday. This is crunch time. So just for a moment, put aside whatever you're doing and help us get to a third of a million signatures-- urge your friends and family to sign the petition here:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_summit

We know leaders are watching. Let's make their jaws drop.

With hope,
Ricken, Paul, Ben, Graziela, Iain, Hannah, Galit and the whole Avaaz team

PS: For more information about the G8 summit and the climate change negotiations, see here:
http://www.ft.com/indepth/climatechange

And for more about Avaaz's work on climate change at the G8 see:
http://www.avaaz.org/blog/en/climate_change/"

Bird brain

"Among talks focusing largely on birds, Professor Giorgio Vallortigara from the University of Trieste in Italy (and an Adjunct Professor at UNE) discussed evidence that complex cognition in young chicks is, in some respects, on a level that human infants do not reach until they are four months old. Professor Nicola Clayton from the University of Cambridge described experiments indicating that some birds, in their food-storing activities, can actually plan for the future. Professor Gisela Kaplan from UNE, using the example of alarm calls and mimicry in Australian magpies, showed that vocal communication in birds may involve complex cognition. Talks by Professor Russell Gray from the University of Auckland, NZ, and Dr Nathan Emery from the University of Cambridge dealt with the ability of some birds to make and use tools. Cognition in primates was also discussed."
More: http://www.une.edu.au/news/archives/000781.html

This sustainability business

In an article 'How much can we give for all that we get? (Regerative commerce and the new entrepreneurial spirit)' William McDonald and Michael Braungart reflect:

"Jerry Garcia, who has perhaps not been given the credit he deserves for giving sharp business advice, captured this confluence of calling, vision and leadership quite well when he reportedly said, "You don't have to be the best of the best. Just do what only you can do.

What do you do? There are literally millions of answers to that question. No single vision or leader can possibly build a truly sustaining world. It is going to take all of us.

'When we ask…

"What do I do?"

"How can my work make a better world?"

"How much can I give for all I get?"

…we can begin to become powerful catalysts for change and take the first small steps toward creating a world of fairness, hope and sustaining abundance.'

Some interesting case studies, and other great articles on cradle to cradle design etc at: http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/how_much_can.htm