Joseph, Bobby, and Lisa

My studies this week have been hindering my following of Australian Idol. I was pleased to see Australian teenage girls have, in their wisdom, voted Joseph Gatehau and Bobby Flynn to stay in the competition. I'm quite liking Joseph's Jonathan Richman-esque innocent teen-blues; songs about gurls and his mum and stuff like that - makes me excited that Spring is arriving. I only saw a few seconds of Bobby's performance of "Under the Milky Way", but it looked interesting, and the missus reckons he's good.

I didn't see any of last night's performers, but my hopes are pinned on Lisa Mitchell, whose effortless naiveté won me over from the outset. I heard that she sang Ben Harper's "Diamonds on the Inside" last night, which I'm not real keen about. I'd love to see her do some Mazzy Star songs. Someone should slip She Hangs Brightly under her door, before she starts mining Jack Johnson's catalogue. We'll find out tonight if she makes it through to the Final 12.

Paragraphs

Blogger / Blogspot; why have you decided to ignore paragraphs all of a sudden?

Absence

Once again, it has been too long. Which is ironic, because just prior to my absence, I made a personal vow to write an entry every day until I finish this degree (357 days to go). Well, the vow has been reset, and begins from... now!

The subject on the history of Australian education has been completed. I submitted my last piece of work last Sunday. This week I have been studying for an exam which takes place tomorrow morning. It is on the history of newspapers. I am quite confident about this exam, as I've done well in the two essays I've submitted for the subject.

Half the Street is for Sale

Half of our street is for sale. The image below is from the Nelson Alexander (real estate agents) website. I've marked our house with a green cross. All the areas bounded by the red lines are up for sale in one hit. We went over and had a sticky-beak. The agent said "It's going to vastly improve this area", which I didn't really understand, because I love Brunswick East's mix of residential and light industrial properties, and our street is fairly indicative of that.

Another small step closer

I finished my essay on The Age. It's in Australia Post's hands now. My project for the next week is a reading folio for my History of Education subject - critical responses to 6 texts. I've already done one - Malcolm Vick's '’Their Paramount Duty’: Parents and Schooling in the Mid Nineteenth Century'. Today it's Michael Pusey's 'The Experience of Economic Reform', and then 4 more over the coming week. The week after next will be spend studying for an exam in the History of Newspapers subject, and then I begin the next semester's subjects. I'm a little bit drunk now, and totally feeling Wayne McGhie's "Going in Circles", the Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko", Silver Apples' "Oscillations", Françoise Hardy's "Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles", France Gall's "Laisse Tomber les Filles", the Flirtations' "Nothing But a Heartache", Gal Costa & Caetano Veloso's "Baby", and, erm, Simon & Garfunkel's "America".

Galaxie Blues

I had a nice Galaxie 500 moment yesterday. Part of my job is helping visual art students with technology - usually Macs. A student called Pete, who seems to be about my age, had made some video clips on his PC which he was having trouble opening on our Macs. I tried to open one file, which was called galaxie_blues.mpg. When I finally got it to open (using the ever reliable VLC Player) the first thing I noticed was his use of Galaxie 500's "Blue Thunder" to soundtrack his video art. "Oh man, I love Galaxie 500" I excitedly announced. And so we forged a quick bond. Which was nice.

Looking Forward

Looking forward to Extras starting tonight. Really looking forward to the new Michel Gondry film The Science of Sleep.

History of Melbourne

Door-to-Door

I was interrupted in writing my essay on the history of The Age last night by a knock at the door. Expecting it to be the census collectors, I answered the door with census in hand. Turned out it wasn't the census collectors but... someone from The Age! Well, he wasn't from The Age itself, but was no doubt doing commission work for a company outsourced by The Age to sell subscriptions. Or something like that. The missus reckons I spend too much time talking to door-to-door salespeople. I just can't shut the door in their face, which is basically the only way to end the conversation. I was pretty good with this fellow though, I told him I wasn't interested and started to close the door, but he kept talking, so I listened briefly before interjecting with "No, sorry, I'm not interested", and he kept talking, and eventually, I kinda (gently) closed the door in his face. The previous door-to-door visit I had was from Oxfam. He was an energetic young man, a bit of a hipster, obviously targeting the multicultural lefty enclave of Brunswick with his "Hey, are you down with Oxfam?" approach. Seeing as he was from an NGO I lent him my ear for a while. He wanted me to sign up to some deal where I'd commit to pay $1 a day, or as he put it - "the cost of a pack of chewy". I told him I'd be happy to make a donation, but I didn't want to commit to $365 over a year. He kept bangin' on, and I asked him if he could leave me with some brochures so that I could discuss it with my missus. He didn't have any brochures, which seems strange, unless they're relying on their oratorical skills to win people over before they can mull over the details. I couldn't get rid of this chap, and in the end I had to abruptly say "Look, I've told you numerous times that I'm not interested, now can you please leave". I felt bad about saying that, but he was really giving me the jimminy crickets.

Textbooks

I've just uncovered a secret 'casserole cabal' here at work. There are about 5 members, and each Monday they take it in turns to bring in a homemade casserole to share for lunch. Sounds a bit communist to me - yet another example of The Left infiltrating academia :) Two textbooks for next semester arrived today. Michael S. Neiberg's Warfare in World History clocks in at a whopping 98 pages, and cost me $45. If I had've known it was this slim, I'd have just photocopied the State Library's version. The other book is Jonathan R. White's Terrorism and Homeland Security, and is a bit more substantial at 346 pages ($76). The two subjects I've got lined up next semester are:

HST220 - War and Peace in World History This unit examines warfare and conflict between human beings. Wars have been fought in the name of national freedom, religious crusade and political justice. This unit explores ways in which war is the arena in which national and imperial memory is forged. Students will study ten war settings including: The early west; The Crusades; The Renaissance and Reformation of Europe; Revolutionary Europe; Imperial and frontier wars in Australasia; The American Civil War; The Great War of 1914-18; The Pacific from 1941; Algeria and the wars of national liberation; Women and Greenham Common. PAC30 - Terrorism: Its Causes and Consequences The Unit is divided into three modules. The first presents an overview of the history of terror and highlights the difficulties in arriving at a consensus about an effective definition of the term. It also evaluates the causes of terrorism. The unit also looks at the strategies and objectives of a number of organizations that have been labelled terrorist and their regional political and economic contexts. The third module describes a number of impacts of terrorism for global security and the international political economy. The ethics of terrorist approaches will also be discussed.

Home-front

Not much to report today. The furthest I've ventured is to the 7-Eleven to buy some milk. I've been slowing hacking away at this essay. Here are some reports from the home-front - from the 20 February 1942 edition of The Age. Tomato growers trying to circumvent wartime regulations on tomato sales face tough penalties.

Officers of the Commonwealth Investigation Branch took drastic action at the Melbourne wholesale fruit market yesterday morning by direction of the Government. They received instructions to arrest on the spot any growers or dealers who commit breaches of the regulations. It was emphasised by the supply department that such action was taken solely for the purposes of ensuring that adequate supplies of canned tomatoes were available for the fighting services. The main difficulty at present being encountered was the continued picking of green tomatoes by some growers. Green tomatoes were useless for canning purposes and consequently were being rejected by canners. Some growers were deliberately picking the tomatoes green in the hope that they would be rejected and then be available for sale to retailers. A warning was issued by the department that appropriate action would be taken at once in co-operation with army authorities to check such practices. Investigation officers would also visit retail fruit shops. If tomatoes were exhibited for sale in shops they would be confiscated and action taken against the shopkeepers concerned.

In another article, prams are banned from trams, because in the instance of an air-raid over Melbourne, trams would be used to quickly get people back to their homes.

From Monday week the Tramways Board will refuse to carry prams on trams with the exception of those used for taking infants and children to hospitals. In addition, the special pram bus on the city-Northcote route will be transfered for other use elsewhere. The chairman of the board (Mr. H. H. Bell) said yesterday the board was most reluctant to introduce this ban, but it was believed that, with the possibility of daylight air raids, it was in the interests of the safety of the mothers and children themselves to enforce it. In the event of a raid over the city the function of the service would be to move the public as rapidly as possible to their homes, and the less congestion prevailing the better for all concerned. Referring to the same subject, one of the Railway Commissioners (Mr. M. J. Canny) said yesterday that no alteration in the present practice of carrying prams in off-peak periods would be made on the railways as yet.

Microfilm

Headed into the State Library this morning, as I had to scan some more issues of The Age (from April 1915, February 1942, December 1974, and October 2002 - can you guess what significant Australian events occurred at these times?). I had all sorts of troubles with the microfilm readers, but got there eventually. My USB flash-drive was playing up, taking about 2 minutes to save each page. Then I had a quick lunch at Don Don (where the quality is starting to go noticeably downhill - but still, you can't help but love the staff) before coming home and mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, which leads me to this present point in time. This week, I've been really feeling Galaxie 500's cover of Buffy Sainte Marie's "Moonshot" (from the Peel Sessions). Also getting by on Jackie Mittoo's "After Christmas", John Martyn's "Glory Box", Flower Travellin' Band's "Satori Part II", Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings and Food LP, Daniel Johnson's "Story of an Artist", and Lloyd Cole's "Perfect Skin". I think it must be whiskey o'clock.

David Syme on his colleagues

David Syme, proprietor of The Age (1860-1908), writing on Arthur Windsor, editor of The Age (1872-1900) - from Ambrose Pratt's David Syme: the Father of Protection in Australia;

Mr. Windsor was a man of rare ability and an experienced journalist. He was a graceful writer and at the same time an incisive critic. He was more at home with a rapier than the bludgeon. He remained editor until 1900, when he retired. He was a lovable man, full of humour, but very shy. He invariably declined all invitations to parties and made very few acquaintances. That was no advantage to him as editor of a newspaper, but very much to the contrary, as he was totally unconversant with the views and idiosyncrasies of the people around him and, as a rule, had little respect for them. He took little interest in commercial matters, but threw himself with vigour into social and political questions...

Incidentally, the copy of Pratt's David Syme: the Father of Protection in Australia at the State Library of Victoria was printed in 1908. It was originally given to the North Melbourne Mechanics' Institute and Circulating Library "With compliments of the Executors of the Late Mr. David Syme" (as a small label on the inside cover states) - so I'm guess that this might have been Syme's own personal copy. Yet considering Syme died that same year, it can't have been in his posession for very long. Also on the inside cover, a small label from the North Melbourne Mechanics' Institute and Circulating Library, which states that "This book is not to be kept longer than fourteen days", as well as information on membership costs; "Subscriptions per annum - Gentlemen - £1, Ladies & youths under 18 - 10s. Furthermore, here's Syme on another contributor to The Age, Professor Henry Charles Pearson;

In conversation he was full of anecdote. Tactful and dignified though he was in his relations with members on both sides of the House, he, nevertheless, was not popular. He was modest and reserved. He had none of that loud, assertive manner which goes a long way with many people. It was said of him by those who knew him best that he was so far above the average member in capacity and knowledge that he was disliked for that very reason. He was a man who would have been a credit to any Legislature in the world. He returned to England after his resignation and died shortly after his arrival there. He is best known in the literary world by his History of England in the Fourteenth Century, which though published in England, was written before he left Melbourne. The colony suffered an irreparable loss when he left its shores...

The East

Back when the East Brunswick Club was just called 'The East', and you'd never find things like 'warm tofu salad' on the menu, I used to prefer calling it the 'East Brunswick Hotel', which was its original name (just like I prefer to call Piera Street by it's pre-1950s name, Nicholas Street - and of course, suitcases should be called 'Swedish lunchboxes'). But now that it's been hipster-ized and renamed the 'East Brunswick Club', I prefer to call it 'The East'. Anyway, I went there last night with some friends for cheap parma. I forgot that it was Jess Ausculture's trivia night, and so the place was packed. I had a couple of essays returned to me recently, and I'm very happy with the results. One was on the impact that telegraphy had on The Times newspaper throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. The other was on the formation of national identity through schooling throughout the twentieth century.

Budget

Another eBay purchase. From this week, I'm sticking to a personal budget in order to reduce the amount of part-time work I'll have to do when I study fulltime. So no more eBay purchases for a while.

Bummer in the Summer

RIP Arthur Lee

Monash Open Day

On Friday evening we hired the complete series of We Can Be Heroes on DVD, and ended up watching all episodes in one sitting. Brilliant. Nathan and Daniel remain my favourite characters, but Ricky Wong's up there too. Ricky's most poignant scene occurs when he's dismayed by the limited opportunities open for Asian actors in Australia - "Sometimes I forget that I'm Chinese" he says. Ricky feels so 'Australian' that he overlooks his Chinese background, and it's only when confronted with the cultural construction of white Australia that he remembers he's an outsider, still somehow locked out of Australianness by hidden cultural forces. In this sense, there's nothing absurd about a young Asian university student performing the role of an Aborigine in a theatre production. In fact, it makes total sense. At one point Ricky says the Chinese can identify with Aborigines, because both share very old cultures - but there's more to the connection than just that - there's the exclusion they share from the cultural production of Australianness. Went to Monash University Open Day this morning. Attended an information session on teaching, which was, yeah, kinda interesting. Afterwards, the audience were told that staff would be on-hand to answer questions in another building. We headed straight there, and found ourselves in a queue. Half an hour later, we were still in the queue. The Grad. Dip. Ed. queue was trailing out the door, and there were only two staff members there to answer questions. Meanwhile, the undergrad Bachelor of Education queue never had more than 3 people, and there were 7 tables set up for questions. I took on my mature-age-student role, and complained to someone, who quickly got the postgrad queue moving along. Anyway, the woman I spoke to about my plans made me feel like I was following a rather difficult path. She implied that there are so few Dip. Ed. places for History majors that it was almost impossible to get into, whilst the most feasible option is to combine anything with English, because there is always a demand for English teachers. I don't have the prerequisite subjects under my belt to get into an English Dip. Ed. stream, and I have no great desire to be an English teacher. So the whole experience left me feeling dismayed. Still, I plan to attend other Open Days over the next few weeks, so we'll see where they take me.

Typical Melbourne weather

Today is one of those days that Melbourne is famous for; grey and rainy one minute, sunny the next. I'm at home, working on an assortment of assignments. I headed up to Tom Phat for lunch, arriving just before the rain began to pelt down. I was a good place to do some reading; cosy and relaxed, until the lunch crowd started filling up the place, and they put Tom Jones on the stereo. That ain't 'cool', not even in a kitsch way - it's just annoying. Walked home again during a sunny patch, picking up some chocolate from Barkly Square on the way. And now it's raining again. Woah - it just started hailing! Lately, I've been thoroughly enjoying Virginia Astley's From Gardens Where We Feel Secure LP, Nurse With Wound's "Rock and Roll Station", Ricardo Villalobos' "Hireklon", Juana Molina's "Martin Fierro", The Pastels' "Unfair Kind of Fame", Roxy Music's "If There is Something", Art Ensemble of Chicago's "Theme de Yoyo", Pere Ubu's "30 Seconds Over Tokyo", Golden Avatar's "Seers of the Truth", Pearls Before Swine's The Use of Ashes LP, and Kode9 & Daddi Gee's "Sign O the Dub".

Bollywood wedding

The guy in the office next to me (let's call him Ian) works for a different department. His boss (let's call him Jim) just got engaged. Ian suggests to me that he send Jim an email saying that some elephants have been booked for the wedding. I replied that I didn't follow what he was talking about. "Well, Jim's Sri Lankan and his fiancée's Pakistani" (it must be noted that Jim is quite removed from Sri Lankan culture, having lived in Australia for almost his entire life). "Have you seen Bride and Prejudiced (sic)?" asks Ian. I reply that I haven't. "Well, it's a Bollywood film, and they have a big wedding with elephants n' everything". He's busy laughing his head off at his own joke, then asks me if I think Jim would find that offensive. I reply that the film in Indian, Jim's Sri Lankan, his fiancée is Pakistani, and thus we're talking about three entirely different counties, so making this joke might imply that Ian thinks that all South Asians are the same (which is beside the fact that Jim is quite culturally removed from his Sri Lankan origins, so the joke is based solely on the colour of Jim's skin, in a sense). But Ian's too busy enjoying his own humour, and 5 minutes later, I hear him still going on about it over a video-conference with other work colleagues of his. UPDATE - Now he's talking about it on the phone to someone else, and he's doing a mock Indian accent. UPDATE - He's just shown me a card he's made in Photoshop, where he's pasted Jim's face onto a scene from Bride and Prejudice. UPDATE - In come the call-centre jokes. I should add that Jim is on leave at the moment, which is why this is all allowed to happen. We'll be keeping you informed on this issue as updates come to hand.

Cellar Door

Stocked up for August.