31 "free" digital channels!

Am typing this in the middle of the night because wireless internet here is seven bucks a day and being miserly and Chinese, I don't want to waste it. Anyway, I'm now in Launceston (a city so often ignored, my spellcheck adds a red line underneath its name.) I'm staying at a hotel for a night before driving up to Cradle Mountain, and the town clocktower next door chimes actively and almost enthusiastically every 15 minutes — yep I'm gettin' lots of sleep here.

Also: hypothetically speaking, would I apply to an organisation that insists you operate on Netscape (in a javascript pop-up) every time you log in to submit form after form? (I mean, come on guys, who uses Netscape now anyway?) Additionally, submission deadlines don't agree with each other on different pages, the site's periodically down, etc. (and I have to deal with all this in a hotel room in Tasmania... brilliant.) But it's fine, I can do my own soul-searching on the mountain.

In happier news, check out what I've been up to for the past week! Includes: suspension bridges, kayaking in a frigid drizzle, walking on rocks, and eating rhubarb pie. Mmm.

My Vacation Rules

1. No Facebook, except when uploading photos. Even then, one has to contemplate On Photography while watching the upload bar.
2. When not doing anything, read a book. One may do chapter summaries if absolutely necessary. 
3. No creamy salad dressings, even when labelled organic. 
4. It's OK not to miss home. Not missing home is a grown-up disposition.
5. It's OK to eat Chinese food in Melbourne, but only with a critical attitude towards immigration policy.
6. It's Not OK to buy koala and kangaroo themed items, unless purchased for kitsch tastes.
7. Do not make comments about the retardedness of something or other, except in the company of people with a similar sense of humour.
8. Do not attempt do watercolour painting while on Cradle Mountain. One cannot paint in watercolours, and to do so will only result in frustration and self-doubt.
9. Be nice to the children on board the plane, and only burn effigies of them in the privacy of the lavatory. (If naked flames are prohibited, the pressure-activated flush is violent enough.)
10. It's OK to get fat on holiday, as long as fatness is not induced by McDonald's, Hungry Jack's Wendy's, frozen dinners, airline pudding, etc.

WELCOME TO CAPS LOCK LAND 3

I'M SUPPOSED TO WRITE MY ESSAY NOW BUT AS USUAL I AM DOING EVERYTHING BUT THE ESSAY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO:

STALKING NATALIETRAN (WHO IS IN SINGAPORE THE DAY I'M FLYING OFF, FML)

DRINKING LEFTOVER MUJI SODA. FOUL.

BLOGGING. (!)

ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK

From Easy A:

Brandon: Is there an Olive here? 

Rosemary: There's a whole jar of them in the fridge!

 Rosemary is my favourite character.

notes

Things I'm reading in Australia:

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

The Believer, September 2010

The Bible

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Being Alive (poetry anthology)

The Consolations of Philosophy

I also feel that I might suddenly, intensely, start to miss all the people back home while kayaking in a remote corner of Tasmania. 

Angela McRobbie (from Postfeminism and Popular Culture):

When in a TV advertisement (1998/9) another supermodel, Claudia Schiffer, took off her clothes as she descended a flight of stairs in a luxury mansion on her way out of the door towards her new Citreon car, a similar rhetoric is at work. This advert appears to suggest that yes, this is a self-consciously “sexist ad,” feminist critiques of it are deliber ately evoked. Feminism is “taken into account,” but only to be shown to be no longer necessary. Why? Because there is no exploitation here, there is nothing remotely naïve about this striptease. She seems to be doing it out of choice, and for her own enjoyment; the advert works on the basis of its audience knowing Claudia to be one of the world’s most famous and highly paid supermodels. Once again, the shadow of disapproval is introduced (the striptease as site of female exploitation), only instantly to be dismissed as belonging to the past, to a time when feminists used to object to such imagery. To make such an objection nowadays would run the risk of ridicule. Objection is pre-empted with irony.

A word I like: genuflect

Are physical spaces commensurable? Yardsticks are necessarily reductive (?)

Looking for local scholarship opportunities opens up depressing future after depressing future...

To bake: savory caramelized onion muffins

streams of consciousness + drowning

Ow my head hurts but I'm not terribly upset about it, because I got baptized today! V. glad my grandparents came down, as well as my fwenz A & J. My family went to Zhou's kitchen again, because it's a near a taxi stand, which supposedly helps my grandparents get around painlessly. I spent the entire afternoon shopping with parents around Novena, which was weird, because who shops at Novena anyway?? The whole family bought Salomon hiking shoes for trekking in Cradle Mountain, except me, because I am a simple man who can be content with comfortable Muji shoes. Speaking of holidays, we're all very excited and my sister now expends most of her intellectual energy on making wardrobe decisions (e.g. ensembles that revolve around the cable-knit jumper originally owned by my mum in the Eighties) and cool places to shop. Once again, being a simple man, all I am asking for is a visit to the state library in Melbourne, UNESCO City of Literature. I am looking forward to taking photographs with my cousin's DSLR + posing next to trees in the woods. Also, my head still hurts. And I need to pack my bag. I'll take a photograph of the pile of books that I'm bringing along to read. 

taffy

Things I miss: the debaters, baking, conversations with Mrs H, birthday surprises

Things I worry about: an intellect on the decline, drowning in the baptismal pool, looking out of the plane cabin's window and seeing the wing on fire, detecting nervousness and fear over the cabin intercom

Things I have eaten today, in chronological order: one grape, peanut butter on toast, wholemeal banana walnut muffins, a café latte, Hokkaido ramen, gyoza, chicken karaage, ice cream (matcha, vanilla and mango sorbet), molten chocolate cake, cubic Japanese candy, brown rice, sautéed sugar snap peas with baby corn, grilled cod and onion, Unsettling Grey Herbal Soup (opaque and nutty, thin and grainy)

Things I am looking forward to, not necessarily in any order: getting baptized finally, eating barbecued chicken, jetting around Sydney and then Melbourne and then Launceston and then Cradle Mountain and then Freycinet and then Hobart and then Melbourne and then Sydney again (while picking out gifts along the way), watching The Rocky Horror Show, finding a job/internship, macarons, YF camp 2010, Universal Studios, *secret santa*, not learning how to drive, "serving the nation", loaning books to the KI library, Christmas dinner

notes

!!!!! THE As ARE OVER !!!!!

Cheese consumed: none

Dream: I bought a small puppy and played with it all day. It learnt how to jump, and jumped right out of my window on the 12th level. It landed on a car. Blood, everywhere.

In other news, I've learnt how to operate the espresso machine at home. Caffeine habit for the holidays, here I come.

career plan (draft 2)

filmmaker

activist

cultural theorist