Tales of the Fish

New job

2005-09-12T17:44:00.000+09:30

I'm off to work in a uni on the outskirts of Shanghai, in Songjiang.

Wiping history

2005-09-05T18:50:00.000+09:30

And in a little bit of historical revision, everything blogged since November has been wiped.
So, to get the potted history… I have moved, live in the ‘burbs, and have a job I like. And I am currently planning on leaving it all and working overseas again – I’ve got one job offer, which I’m stalling because the job would be ok, but I’ve had another phone interview for a job I really want and I want to see what happens with that job.
They rang for the interview Saturday morning; 7am on a Saturday morning is not a fabulous time for an interview, I am consistently useless before breakfast and I had been out the night before. I ended up shivering in the kitchen wrapped in a towel for the duration of my spiel on how wonderful I am. I don’t remember much of the interview, so I hope I made some sort of sense.

Pics

2004-11-30T19:46:00.000+10:30

Online waffle

2004-11-08T07:48:00.000+10:30

I did a pragmatics assignment on constructions of polite communication - using chatrooms/ bulletin boards as examples (yep, from theories of cognition to chatrooms). The main reason for doing a chatroom was that I needed to include evidence in the assignment, and chatrooms are typed in (some version of) English, a spoken conversation would have involved faffing around with phonetic notation. I spun an assignment out of it, with the predictable conclusions about computer-mediated communication.
Personal conclusions:

*There are some real nutters out there.
* I agree with Christopher Brookmyre about the language online being "syntax meets chaos theory".
* The chances of finding a meaningful relationship online are about as good as finding one in a bar - not impossible but not a good chance (maybe they need a similar warning to the ones in the tiny font on the lotto ads, "Chances of finding a meaningful relationship online are one in 100,000".)
* There are some really scary people out there - precisely what do they hope to achieve describing themselves as an energy-sucking bitch? To find another misanthropic nutter?
* Cybersex is an absolute crack up. And not remotely sexy because my keyboard just doesn't do it for me.

Feast

2004-11-06T11:11:00.000+10:30

The Hello Kitty vibrator. Cute in a scary kind of way.

Last night was the Feast launch, which kicked off with a parade down King William Street. I'm a lot of ways it was far more confronting than Mardi Gras because it was a 6pm start and still daylight, this is Adelaide and everybody knows everybody else, and I'm only out to a few people at work. It was a fun evening and I ended up walking the parade with a writers group and holding a giant pencil. We were walking behind the pagans, one was dressed up as a witch arising from the sea (looked like garden-variety devil to me) so we were a bland and boring lot in comparison.

The vamps again

2004-10-30T16:33:00.000+09:30

Following on from the last post;

The Smartass Guide to Vampire Personals and

The Smartass Guide to Vampire Personals, Part 2

Very funny stuff.

Life has become a mix of study, work, and a chaotic social life. Sleep is one of those optional extras I can ignore - until I do something like falling asleep on the train. I have got the Clowns of Decadence on the CD player and its keeping me awake.

I'm doing my tax return today. I had completely forgotten about doing my tax return but because the 31st falls on Sunday its acceptable to get returns into the ATO on Monday. Now I can remember why I describe myself as a word person and not a maths person. I kept pretty good records all year, now I just need to make sense of assorted tax forms. Tax fraud seems like entirely too much work.

Lonely vampires

2004-10-20T23:30:00.000+09:30

I'm sick of always feeling like I haven't had enough sleep, that I should be doing something else, that I have forgotten something. I want to be able to go out for an evening and then sleep in the next morning. I've taken on too much and now I don’t think I'm doing anything very well. I just want to survive the next month, and then I can catch up on sleep.

I think part of the problem is that I really don’t know what I want to do; go and live in a tipi, go and find a commune somewhere, go hang out in Bodhgaya, or make some sort of commitment to buddhism. I'm not happy in modern Australia, but I'm a product of modern Australia - there are aspects I want to reject (consumer culture mainly), but things I want to hang onto (the amount of freedom, and options, I have). The fact I can make this choice shows just how much freedom I have - do I drop out, and how do I drop out; it just isn’t an option if you are working for your next meal. A spoilt little snot suffering from existential angst.

And on cheerier note… vampire personals. Its amazing what is online :) "Intelligence is a must have. Sarcasim especially." Spelling appears to be optional.

Crying time

2004-10-10T11:15:00.000+09:30

The Liberals won. Right now I just want to cry. I'm happy to leave Australia, but that's because I know I can come back here after adventures in the big wide world; I can happily live somewhere with restricted freedom if I know can back to Australia at the end of my contract. Australia is ceasing to be a refuge of sanity and is heading in the direction of some of the more frightening places I've been. I'm horrified by the Liberals policies on health, education, foreign policies, human rights, the environment; right now I'm having a hard time thinking of something I do agree with. I still don't know if I should be crying, dropping out and moving bush, moving o/s, or sticking around and advocating in Adelaide. The Electoral Commission has a running tally, which is just depressing. The seat of Adelaide is now Labor, but that's not enough.

Fingers crossed

2004-10-09T16:35:00.000+09:30

I've been, I've voted, and now all I can do is hope and ask any passing deities for a bit of intervention. I numbered all forty-something boxes below the line, and around me people came and went while I was still plodding along. I love the idea of democracy, but I think a basic requirement is that you have an educated, informed population, which we don't. I want a dictatorship led by Bob Brown, Australia isn't ready for democracy yet (want evidence? Try eight years of a Liberal government). I wish I didn't care about the outcome, then it would just be an interesting sociological experiment.
Time to go and have a chat with that deity.

Nutters on parade

2004-10-04T13:36:00.000+09:30

I usually assume that just about everything is online somewhere, but then I head back to online translation sites and I remember just how far they have to go. Being much more of a language person that an IT person, I really don't hold much hope for online translators. Yes, they will improve, but right now they are so awful it would be hard not to make some kind of progress. I hope I'm wrong though, I like the idea of a babelfish.

The election is less than a week away. Counting down with fingers crossed. I found a huge amount of information for my students - most of it is going to be too detailed for them, but I'll give it a go. The parties out there vary from people who just need to increase their medication to people that seem like rational, compassionate individuals.

There is a website with a plan to enslave NZ. That site is cute, Family First are a bunch of nutters as well, but the frightening thing is that people could actually vote for them.

The Australian Men's Party; "What most people fail to realize is that males... have been conditioned for birth to be protective of the needs of women and children. They have NOT been conditioned to be protective of men." Umm...

The CDP, Fred Nile's party, is still kicking on, despite people with functioning synapses laughing at them.

Citizens Electoral Council - makes Fred Nile look rational.

I have sneaking sympathy for the Communists and the Democratic Socialist Party - no chance of getting in, but I admire the persistence. The Socialist Equality Party and the Socialist Party are also around. And what's the definition of a faction?

The Hope Party website sounds like the mission statement of an independent school. Incidentally, they have the worst website design I've seen for a long time.

It will be interesting to see how the Nuclear Disarmament Party goes this time around, the political world has changed a bit since the last election.

People Power - another new party. The Shooters Party - the name says it all.

One Nation is going to be another party to watch, but I really hope that this election is their last gasp before expiring.

And a bunch trying to get people to vote informally. Somehow I don't think they are going to bring down the government. I have a vague sympathy for the anarchists, not a chance of getting in, and I wouldn't want them to, but they can't be accused of apathy.

And the major parties:

Australian Labor Party

Liberal Party /National Party

Australian Democrats

Australian Greens

Can't wait to see the platforms of some of the independents running in different parts of Australia.

They are out there

2004-09-30T22:17:00.000+09:30

In the last couple of weeks I have been in contact with an odd assortment of online denizens;
*someone who is into consensual stalking (offers were politely declined while I quickly backed away from the keyboard).
*a woman with at least five online identities, three of them on one bulletin board alone (It happens. But why on earth would you bother? And it seems really sad to see an 'argument' between the online identities of one person).
*someone who complimented me on my sentence construction in the middle of an odd exchange of email.
*a large number of garden-variety nutters and garden-variety offers of infidelity.
And academic websites seem to have the same proportion of nutters as sites that should be nutter-magnets, the main difference is that on some sites the syntax is deliberately convoluted, on other sites it's only incidentally torturous.

Interview #2

2004-09-29T20:55:00.000+09:30

I dragged my suit out of storage and trooped around the corner for an interview this morning; it was a second interview, the first was by phone and went for almost an hour, so I suspect the main purpose of the meeting today was to put a face to the voice and make sure I don't have two heads. I didn't walk out of the interview wishing I could surgically remove my foot from my mouth, which seems fairly positive, and I should hear about any job offers in about a month. I have run so many interviews it's difficult to see the process as anything more than acting out the roles of potential employer/employee, and if everybody jumps though the right hoops at the right time there might be the outcome of a job offer. My ability to communicate well with one person in the suburban community centre that was being used for the interviews seems a world away from working in a developing country, but it is part of the selection process.

Blurb

2004-09-27T08:15:00.000+09:30

I just sent off an online application that included a 1000 character speil on my recent work history. I was grumbling quietly to myself, until I copied and pasted my blurb into the appropriate box and promptly received a message that I was well over the character limit; the 1000 characters apparently included spaces, and I started grumbling loudly. They didn't want a full CV, just the 1000 characters. I have had so many jobs in so many places, and I'm supposed to condense it to about 12 lines?! Looks like they are trying to find people who either haven't worked much, or have stuck to one job for at least a few years.

(624 characters, including spaces)

A plan

2004-09-26T16:44:00.000+09:30

I have decided what I want to do next year. I want to go and live in a tepee (tipi? A tent). No TV, and no radio. That little bit of insight didn't hit when I was out in the scrub, it hit when I was walking down Rundle Mall and I had my usual "I don't belong here!" feeling. Apart from books and plane tickets, I don't really do consumer culture very well. Wonder if I could find a good commune somewhere and just pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist? Haven't sorted out mundane details like how I'm going to fund that lifestyle (and I really can't see myself going self-sufficient). I don't think language/literacy consultants would be in particularly high demand in communes.

Grand final day

2004-09-25T13:15:00.000+09:30

I really hope that one team in the Aussie Rules grand final loses spectacularly badly and the other team is disgraced somehow, which sounds a bit harsh coming from a self-proclaimed warm-and-fuzzy person, the reasoning is that happy people are more likely to vote for the incumbent party in an election, unhappy or irritated people are more likely to be looking for change. So I'm hoping its cold and wet all over Australia on the 9th of October. I don't think the country can survive another term with a Liberal government. My prediction for the outcome is that the Liberals are going to squeak in for another three years, but I'm really hoping I'm wrong. It's just plain embarrassing to say I'm Australian at the moment; the Liberal government is an international liability. Wonder if I can drag up some tacky kiwi t-shirts from somewhere and claim to be from New Zealand?

Quotes

2004-09-23T21:24:00.000+09:30

Sitting watching the guy opposite me poking his desert, he asked what the difference between a raisin and a sultana is, another guy launched into a lengthy comparison of the relative wrinklyness of raisins, currants and sultanas. "And they come from different grapes" I said.
"Oh, yeah. That too. But sultanas are more wrinkly than raisins". And he is doing a degree in science.

Quote of the day. "I was writing to somebody online but they got a bit freaked out, stopped writing to me and left the site". Hmm, stalking might have that effect.

Apostrophes

2004-09-21T22:08:00.000+09:30

There is an apostrophe protection society. Which is reassuring to know, because it means that other people are more nit-picky than me. I'm entirely capable writing with free-form punctuation, but I think that things like books and newspapers should be written with consistent, standard punctuation. The Adelaide Advertiser is just dire. (Insert usual rant about the Advertiser, the lack of editorial skill and dodgy ethics).

When I first started working as an English for Academic Purposes tutor some Australian students were very self conscious about how they were talking, I think because there is a woman involved in the college who fits the stereotype of a grammarian and intimidates a lot of students, and they were expecting more of the same. They quickly worked out I'm just plain incoherent before breakfast, and my preferred reading material is a comic book - shouldn't be intimidating at all.

Warnings

2004-09-20T08:10:00.000+09:30

I've been told by a few people that now is not a good time to be heading overseas; my attitude is that anybody can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I agree, a healthy dose of caution doesn't hurt, but I can't live my life in fear of what might happen. I have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and been threatened with knives and guns, physically assaulted, there was an attempted kidnapping, …definitely experiences I don’t want repeated, so I know what I'm avoiding. The thing is that half of those things happened in Australia, supposedly a safer place than those countries that are a different colour on a map. Car accidents, dodgy wiring and malaria worry me more than bombs. 11 people were killed outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta a few days ago, and I think it is absolutely disgusting that anybody could even consider deliberately hurting or killing people, but on the same day far more people would have died in Jakarta from preventable diseases. I don’t think a person dying in a bomb attack is more tragic than a person dying from a disease that could have been prevented. I guess the difference is that a bomb can be blamed on a single person.
There have been times when I thought I was going to die, fortunately, I was wrong, but memories of guns, knives, rapids, trees approaching at 100km/h, and a number 800 bus all stop me from taking too much for granted. Which gets me back to my original decision. Right now I'm tempted to read the published warnings from DFAT, listen to the grumblings from my family, accept there is a risk anywhere in the world and then go overseas.

These are a few of my favourite things

2004-09-19T07:53:00.000+09:30

Neil Gaiman is a fantastic writer.
http://www.neilgaiman.com/

Christopher Brookmyre's site. Probably one of those writers that people either love or just don’t appreciate, but the humour makes it worth reading.
http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/

Online translation doesn’t really work, but it’s still a useful site (and a good experiment is to translate from English into two other languages, and then back to English, and see what sort of mangled mess you end up with).
http://www.omniglot.com/links/translation.htm

Culture Jammers.
http://adbusters.org/home/

Irshad Manji's website, the letters alone make for interesting reading.
http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

An index of links to sacred texts - it makes in a very good starting point
http://www.sacred-texts.com/index.htm

Jeanette Winterson is a stunning writer. Go read her work, now.

http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/

A site by Jack Chick, the evangelist who does more to advance the argument for atheism than just about anyone else I have ever seen.

http://www.chick.com/

Big shrugs

2004-09-18T14:19:00.000+09:30

Still not sure what I want to do next year. Rather, I know what I want to do, but the ideas are mutually exclusive; I want to go and live overseas AND to stay in Adelaide. I'm not interested just going overseas for a holiday, so if I was going to go it would be for a year or two. I want total immersion in another culture, so I really can't see the point in me going somewhere like the UK or North America - yes, they would be different from Australia, but generally it's going to be pretty similar.

Advantages to going overseas

* Immersion in a totally different culture.

* I get to feed my adrenaline habit daily - who needs bungee jumping if you tackle buses in a developing country every day?

* A job that might have some positive impact in the local community. Might.

Advantages to staying in Adelaide

* Family. Friends.

* Less chance of having my visa cancelled or being stoned if I pick up the wrong person.

* Cafes. I tend to end up in places overseas that don’t have cafes, which is fair enough - if I go looking for a different culture why should there be aspects of Australian culture that I do happen to want?

* A good live music scene. Ok, I haven’t been to a gig for a while because I just haven’t been able to squeeze it in between everything else, but the music scene does exist.

* Salad

* Being able to show my shoulders and legs in summer.

* I don’t really want to pack up and move yet again. I've moved at least annually for the last 10 years. Quick count on my fingers and toes… I've lived in 22 places in six countries since 1993.

* I can blend in here, I'm not always the outsider (not unless you are counting a happily daggy, 'I refuse to participate in mainstream culture' outsider status).

Non-Believer

2004-09-17T07:37:00.000+09:30

I asked a woman at work to be a character reference for me for a job that requires four written statements. I burbled a bit about the job just to give her some background, her response was she would be happy to write a reference for me, and the she would pray for me to get the job "even though I know you don’t believe in that". I thought the intention behind that was lovely, but the comment does raise all sorts of interesting questions about perception and identity. We work in a Christian organisation, so I do try not to say any thing too contentious, (definitely don’t wear my "Dear Lord, Please save me from your followers" t-shirt), but she has me pegged as a Non-Believer. Funny thing is that I'm the only person in my circle of friends who ever attends anything even vaguely spiritual apart from weddings and funerals.

Am I still standing upright?

2004-09-16T21:59:00.000+09:30

I'm starting to fantasise about getting enough sleep. Trying to open a door with a (used) train ticket instead of a key is probably another pretty good indication I need to get a decent sleep. And now I've got an idea of what I'll be like when dementia catches up with me; in the early hours of the morning when I've been doing a quick trip around the corner to the 24 hour bakery I've been coming out with an unintelligible mix of languages that nobody else has a hope of understanding, phrases from Chinese, Tagalog, Portuguese, and some that I'm not even sure of the language. It's going to be a real pain in the neck for people around me trying to understand that lot (the people in the bakery know me and and mumbling inarticulately doesn’t seem to be a barrier to grabbing some brain-food).

Debate

2004-09-13T21:31:00.000+09:30

I saw in the paper that more people watched Australian Idol than the election debate last night. I'm not sure if I should be celebrating or wandering around saying "we are doomed" a lot. I tried to watch it on the delayed telecast, but I was going to throw something at John Howard's head if it wasn't switched off, and I don't think frequently yelling 'you are an evil bugger' would have made me very popular with the guy next door.

Words of a drunk

2004-09-12T10:10:00.000+09:30

Waaaay too many years of uni and I finally got to quote a drunk. Ok, I've definitely quoted drunks before, but they were people who had done something notable or written articles (and being drunk would definitely explain some of their ideas). I got to quote somebody because they were drunk. Got to love studying linguistics.

Job hunting again?!

2004-09-11T09:44:00.000+09:30

Its not like I'm looking for something to do - I have a demanding part time job, ('three mornings a week' morphs into three days plus work at home and lost sleep...) another part time job, and full time study. And now I'm adding job-hunting?! Hassle is that both work contracts will finish in December and I don't want to have a gap between one job and next. Seems greedy - two jobs and looking for another. Ah well.

I had a phone interview yesterday for a job overseas. The job is overseas but the interviewer was in Melbourne. I'm not the rapt in phone interviews but it seemed to go alright, at least, it went for about an hour, and that seems longer than a polite, going-through-the-motions interview. The question that floored me was if I knew how AIDS was spread; the organisation sends people overseas, including to areas with high AIDS rates, so before a job is even offered the safety considerations are mentioned.

Day One

2004-09-02T04:13:00.000+09:30

Day one of getting in touch with my innergeek, (not that my inner geek has been neglected so far) I updated my website with works in progress. Stay tuned.