'Tis the season

I was totally going to bah humbug this. Really, I was. I have not been feeling especially festive; my bells have not, as they say, been jingling. But you know… it's Christmas! Well, near enough, anyways. Sparkly, shiny things have always been my downfall, and Christmas is the sparkliest season of them all. Presents, tinsel, ribbons, the small tree ornament we found in box that looks vaguely like it’s wearing a KKK outfit – I love them. They distract me, they are delightful (well, maybe not so much the white-supremacist mouse), and induce in me a reaction which borders on the epileptic. For but two weeks a year, I am consumed by things that flicker. Oh parents of Alexander, the small child forgotten at a Christmas light display, one day your pain will also be mine.

As I’m too lazy to really write much on this these days, in bad-sitcom style, I shall try and reflect back on all the year that was:

Last year, I was putting the final touches on a thesis that could only swim on the screen in front of me; this year, I have glasses. Last year I was 10 days off moving to a Belgian winter; this year I’m guiltily embracing the drought. Last year, I decided I was going to be a grown up, get a full-time job, and make some form of something from my life; this year I laugh at the pear-shapedness of existence and have started to grow my own vegetables.

So that’s my news, not so exciting perhaps, but, you know, in times of turmoil and economic crisis, I feel pretty lucky to be able to label this one a Good Year. Thanks for your company, kids, have a lovely and safe Christmas and New Year.

Yours,

Heroverthere.

Living the city

Wine with friends, with the heat on my back so strong I have to keep my jacket on. It was not made for these conditions and I have never dressed for the weather well. But covered or no, as we talk the sun chews slowly on us. Those across from me grow rosier as we drink, and not only from the alcohol.

I think something broke today, and maybe for the last time. Trust is a slender thread, a delicate filigree that can never be wrought too fine. Once, my favourite bracelet had a tiny tiger-stripe of a flaw: dropped, it shattered into 12 pieces. The same friends who counsel me now bought another, not from Venice this time, but one I treasure more than the first.

And so we drink, and we talk.

And then I wander home. I follow my sheep-track, the urban furrow I trace almost every day which winds from home to the city, and back again.

There are so many people. Girls are in dresses, impossibly short, and they stagger, emu-like in their high high heels. I watch a punk with a foot-long mohawk play on a giant chess-set. I think he makes a good move.

Men keep looking at my chest. I’ve gone up a cup size, my top is tight, and I’m tall. My breasts are at eye-height. I should know this by now. Buy new underwear; buy a new top. Or, at the very least, cross your arms.

I pretend to ice skate down the slope of the escalator. Not for the first time, people think I’m strange. But it’s cooler when I get out, like a fridge door opening on a hot, sticky day. With my bags I walk, past the commission houses, past the cemetery, and the callus on my foot rubs and my left heel is still sore from the shoes I wore the other day. And I walk, past your street and I walk into mine. And I turn the key, jiggle it, hoping that this time it will catch and I won’t be out here for hours, looking like I’m trying to jimmy the door to my own house.

And the wind lips at me like your kisses.

And maybe it's enough.

Four years to 30

It's the eve of my birthday and shock, horror, I'm writing on my blog. I'm not sure why, but after innumerable conversations about the fallen status of the world and the equally post-lapsarian descent of my chest, sometimes I just need to untangle things on the screen, to write it out, as it were, in some sort of attempt to get my head into gear. While I do try and take the Gordian knot approach to some aspects of my life these days, this time it's just not working.

When you get to a certain age, say, 26, do things start to make sense? I had always assumed so, but as I currently have about 45 minutes or so for the lightbulb to appear, it seems less and less likely that age will confer wisdom within the hour. Or, is ageing just a process of accepting? Do you just 'come to terms' with things, try and understand that they never really will add up, and make your peace with a small corner of the world. I'm not sure, but right now neither is working as one might hope.

It's just, there's something precious in my life right now, but it's also something that seems slightly out of reach. I'm not sure what to do, we're getting so good at banging heads that I'm worried we'll forget how to enjoy each other, how to live well. I want to hang on, but every time we clutch at one another in the search for something solid, we both seem to come away puzzled, empty handed, like participants in a magic trick that's worked too well.

Like Peter Pan, I've found my shadow but can't quite sew it to my feet.

Blahdy blah blah

So.

Life.

Huh.

It's been awhile. How's things? I hadn't really forgotten about you, I swear, I was just saving you from myself, I promise. Having spent the better part of the last two months on seek.com, all I can really say is, no-one needs to see, hear about, or have anything to do with that shit. Really. I'm sure the only thing that could be more boring than being a jobseeker, is being the poor ear continually bent by said doleista.

Having said that, however, I'll give it a go, just because we've got so much to catch up on, and I figure my friends have suffered enough. Basically, K Rudd's been giving me the occasional bit of pocket money to tide things over, but it's pretty slow. I did, however, score a job today. It was, however, the job that I think I wrote about in an earlier post - the 'positive attitude to data entry one'. I feel vaguely distressed by this - a job that I have seen advertised for years, which seems to feature only poor conditions, a bad wage, and what seems to be limited career development (and, which I applied for in a flurry of Newstart-requirement desperation) seems to be the only thing that has turned up after 3 degrees, higher education lecturing and tutoring positions, and international work experience.

Sigh.

Anyway, I have a couple of days grace on deciding whether to accept it as I actually have a medical 'reason' not to take it up. I've developed cracking migraines derived from - you guessed it - excessive, close computer work. Thus a neurologist has recommended that I don't take up this kind of work and find something out in the fresh air... or something.

Anyhoo, even though I feel like my brain is atrophying these days, apparently it's not. I had to have an MRI scan, one of the stranger experiences of my life, and came out with some purdy pictures. While I couldn't get mine off the 3D CD they gave me, one of them looks quite like this:




For those of you who don't know me, it's true.

I am this hot.

Shh... it's a secret

I have a confession to make. It’s a big one; you might not like it. In fact, you might not like me—it’s that bad. You know how we’ve been hanging out for a while, spending some time together …? It’s just that, well, I’ve met someone else. And we’re in love. Well, I am. It was an accident, I never meant this to happen … really, you’ve got to believe me.


It’s not my fault, he’s just everything I’ve ever looked for in a man: charming, funny, erudite … rich. There’s just one problem.

His politics.

Dear reader, I have abandoned you and everything we stood for, because quite simply, I am in love. Rapturously, mind-blowingly, heart-thumpingly in love. With Malcolm Turnbull. I don’t know how it happened. I mean, I love Kevin. I do. I just don’t love him, if you know what I mean. But Malcolm; Malcolm leaves me breathless, giggling like a schoolgirl into my twinset and pearls.


There’s just something about Malcolm; maybe it’s the hair, maybe it’s those rounded vowels, maybe it’s the way he made even the word ‘battler’ sound like it’s dripping with luscious blue blood. I really don’t know, but what I do know is that if there’s any more TV coverage of this particular silver fox, I may have to toss out my leftist sympathies for good.


So what’s a girl to do? If the situation were reversed, I know exactly how things would go. Malcolm would burst through my study door. His hair would be tousled; he would look wretched, tormented. He would possibly be wearing breeches. He would look deep into my eyes and say, through gritted teeth, “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. You must allow me to tell you how much I ardently admire and … love you”.


Upon seeing his magnificent grounds at Double Bay, or wherever it is he lives, and after much ideological foreplay, I would relent. I would ascend to position of stratospheric power and influence to prove that class is no barrier to success in Australia. And he, under the influence of my socialist tendencies, would give away his money to the poor. Well, not all of it; or, at least, not enough to make a difference to us, anyway.


It'd make a great book, eh?


As things stand, however, I don’t have much ammunition on my side. I can’t afford my health insurance, see, so my bright eyes have a bit of a squint these days; with my ill-fitting clothes I’m probably not quite handsome enough to tempt him; I could perhaps get my maid to cook him a seductive meal of tofu, but it might be a little bland, as fresh veg is kind of costly right now. At the very least it will be by candlelight (this will help save on utilities, too).


It kills me to say this, Mal, but it’s just not meant to be. I love you, I do, but you’re living, as I once read in a particularly bad Tolstoy translation, ‘in cloud-cuckoo land’. This doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. I’d do anything for you, really, you have to believe me. You can have my heart, you can have my soul, you can have my body, you can even, tempter that you are, have my self-respect. But my life’s darling, heart of my heart, source of all meaning in my world; it pains me to say this, but you can never, ever, have my vote.

xox

And so we return

I’m back. Well, sort of. I’m currently out in the Dandenongs and staying with my grandparents. It’s beautiful up here: the air is clean and fresh, yet still weighty with the scent of eucalyptus, mud, and jonquils. It’s a good smell, an Australian smell, and a smell that I hadn’t realised I’d missed until now.


I really just transited through Melbourne for a couple of days, picked up a new phone, caught up with a couple of my close friends before heading out again. As the one thing I have right now is a flexible schedule, I decided before I arrived that I’d head out to see my family as soon as I could. Both my grandparents were hospitalised almost simultaneously while I was away, and I really needed to see for myself that they were actually back, that they were still mine.


My grandmother bared her wrists and showed me the red, puckering scar that ran up her forearms, a reminder of the time three months ago when they removed some arteries and inserted them into her heart. She opened her collar and showed me the seam that ran from the base of her throat to her stomach. She had a quintuple bypass and is still shocked that she feels tired, and that she has to nap sometimes in the afternoon. She still seems in awe of the fact that she, of all people, was for a while helpless and hurting and unable to maintain her sense of humour.


She is still here.


My grandfather was hospitalised on the day my grandmother went home. He was shunted into an isolation ward as they thought that the TB he contracted as a teenager may have resurfaced. Then they thought he had cancer. Today we found out that he will cough and hack until he dies, but it won’t be that which kills him. So we drank a bottle of champagne, of which he would only have half a glass. But he is skinny now, turtle-like, and his head extends more tentatively than it used to from his rounded shoulders. Now when I hug him, his vertebrae feel like dinosaur bones. My Omi tells him to go outside when he heaves and hacks, as the sound is not nice to eat with.


He is still here.


They live on a hillside block in an Austrian-style, A-Frame house in a town they moved to twenty years ago because it reminded them of their home in Slovenia. They live here alone, drive, do their garden as much they can, and, despite it all, still need to be convinced to substitute low-fat yoghurt for cream in their meals.


They are still here. It’s good to be home.

On being 'at one'

I love Bali. Until I came here, I never thought it would be quite my scene. I’d imagined a country resplendent with Bintang singlets and which boasted a 1000 Corbeys for every Corey. But I was absolutely and unequivocally wrong. Aside from the shit-scary feral dogs everywhere, Bali is a beautiful place, and, after fairly regular massages, great food, and some quality time with my mastercard, I’m about as zen as I’ll ever be this side of a lobotomy.

You know what I don’t love though? Hippies. I’m sorry; I know it’s wrong of me, but it’s true. Furthermore, not only do I not love them, I think I might hate them. Or perhaps it’s just the one. The one who sat next to me at dinner and insisted on ‘conversing’ in a language made up almost entirely of vacant glances into the middle distance. If you’ve never experienced hippie-speak in full flight, it can be a distracting and confusing linguistic mode to both the uninitiated and the uninterested. With its stream of dangling referents and nonsensical clauses and sub-clauses, hippie-speak has the power to dupe its recipient into thinking that a sentence has been completed, a meal can be consumed, and a conversation closed. Suffice to say, these will never occur. Ever.

It’s probably my fault, though. I should never have ordered dessert because as soon as he sat down, I knew I was in trouble. With Madonna-style arms, lustful glances at my tofu, and the slightly bugged-out eyes of someone who’s spent too much time contemplating the relation of their navel to the macrocosm, I knew a devotee of Guru Bullshit had entered my dharmic field.

Now, I think I’ve already discussed my particular gift for attracting strange, miserable men before, and tonight was a reassuring reminder that my madness mojo remains intact. And clearly, it’s a give and take relationship, as every time I encounter these people I seem to get one more stamp in my passport to Crazy Town. They stress me out with their need for me to deal with problems I know nothing about that involve people I have no connection with. And yet, despite the fact that they’re clearly a little bit on the strangeo-side, I’m always mystified by their continual and total inability to take a polite hint.

Why do some men think that a girl on her own automatically signals that she wants to talk to them? And why do attractive men who missed the headcase gene never possess this assumption? Furthermore, why do the crazy ones assume that, when they talk to me about their guru who channels Jesus (in Aramaic, no less), I have actually choked on my goreng, rather than being, as some more astute conversationalists may realise, on the verge of releasing both my inner child and my bladder?

I’m sorry, I do try to be a good person, but it’s not my fault: he told me to be “in trance with the dance”. The only reason I didn’t snort was because I had started to die on the inside.

But it never just stops there. In order to excuse the fact that they are sucking the life-juice from a total stranger, they must, in a token attempt to play by the rules of engagement, make a show of being interested in what I’m into. This is, of course, despite the evidence before them that what I’m clearly into IS MY BOOK. Furthermore, when it gets around to the fact that I worked in medieval literature, specifically on a rewriting of the Trojan War epic, rather than, say, accountancy, the explanations, plot outlines, and general defence of my existence become both excruciating and predictable.

‘Medieval literature, you say? Medeeyevaal … heh heh … like Harry Potter?’ For future reference, forty is never the appropriate age to try the ‘ignorance is cute’ hat on for size. Trust me, it will never, ever, fit, and will make you look like one of those bogans at the tennis who makes his headwear out of a VB carton. But it gets worse. Because after eliciting my ‘secret past’, they feel they have to make connections, show me how much they understand me, because we’re different, you know? And then, a hippie-style lightbulb moment occurs and they realise that they know of something similar that totally fits into their world-view, and if they’re lucky, might just fit into mine. Or my pants.

The horror.

Or, more precisely, The Ramayana. For your next dining experience, may I suggest an epic poem retold, explained, punctuated, and verbally footnoted by someone who

speaks

like

this.

After one hour, I wanted to vacuum my eyeballs out.

Lucky I’m having a full day-spa tomorrow; otherwise, I might just have to kill someone.

Homeward bound

When you plan to leave home, reactions are always mixed: excitement from friends, concern from parents, and, for the less geographically-inclined, puzzlement (or perhaps the last only applies when you move to Belgium; I had some questions about it too… like where it is). People ask if you’re nervous, if you’re worried about moving away, leaving family and friends, contending with another language and a new place. They’re full of tips on how to meet new people and how to ensure that you ‘really experience the culture’, all the while confiding different methods that will enable you to preserve a little bit of home. It’s all welcome, and provides a discordant medley to distract from that moment when the airport gates close, when you know that it’s going to be an awfully long time until you hear those voices again, face to face. With only two weeks to go, however, and excited about coming home, I suppose I’m also in a bit of a quandary. No-one dishes out tips on what to do when you return.

Looking back on the last year or so, I perhaps feel like I’ve been living in a bit of a vacuum. With ailing grandparents and other upheavals stemming from Melbourne-ways, all of a sudden my Belgian swaddling cloths are about to be, if not willingly shed, then well and truly stripped from me in about two weeks. Personally and professionally, life in rural Flanders was always going to be the equivalent of a rather bucolic black hole, and now, in my last port of call, Indonesia, the reality that this point in my life has ended is starting to hit: I’m going home. I don’t have a house. I don’t have a job. I don’t exactly, at the age of almost 26, have a discernible direction.

I also don’t have an excuse any more.

I know I want to write, but I’m not sure what, or for whom, or if anyone would take ‘what I do’, whatever that is. This blog was always a testing place, a space outside the academic context I’d been operating in for so long where I could produce work that I’m perhaps not rigorously able to defend, work that, being an anal, obsessive drafter, I’m frequently unhappy with, yet work that needs to stand up and, at the very least, be readable. I take comfort in cliches and tell myself ‘it’s all about the process’, all the while trying not to fiddle with posts too much, despite the fact that I find some incredibly flip, poorly expressed, or just, to be an articulate self-critic, plain dumb.

I realise this is a lot of angst to fit between beachside meanderings, but it’s the first time in the last few months that I’ve had time to think, and for the reality of home to be somewhat tangible. I’m here with one of my closest friends and we’re having a fabulous time, catching up, sounding things out, beaching, eating and drinking. But at the same time, it’s made me realise that while it’s true that nothing ever changes, equally apt is the notion that life goes on. My friends all have jobs, homes, and partners, whereas I feel almost like I’ll be setting up in a new place again, despite the fact that Melbourne contains so many of the people and places that I love.

So what to do? Find some form of gainful employ, a roof, and hopefully write, one would presume. But how will other things pan out? Will this blog have run its use-by date? Would I be better off channelling my energies into finding publications that will accept my miscellaneous wordy stuff? Shouldn’t I be working on a folio, gathering some examples of my communication skills that don’t involve a cocktail glass and a raised eyebrow? I just don’t know; it’s all a bit too hard.

Perhaps I’ll just work on getting out of my banana lounge first.

We meet again

So ... it's been a while. Having never had the foresight or the gumption to extricate myself from a relationship first, I've always wondered what it feels like to just stop calling someone. Now I know. You feel vaguely irritated, a little bit guilty, but not quite enough to actually do anything about it. After a while you stop thinking about the object of your erstwhile affections until you either walk past a particularly attractive form of statistician (and they, ladies, are definitely a rarity) or sit down at a keyboard that smells a little bit like hot chips and you think: shit. The blog.

It was never you though. I had some things going on, I wasn't really in a good 'place', you know. Maybe not now, but one day, perhaps, we could get it back together ...

Kidding!

I should be back on the wagon now.

I was just hanging out with one of my best friends in San Sebastian and Northern Spain for two weeks. In three words : Tapas tapas tapas. Well, that's really just one, so I'll add this: actual conversations with someone who's known me for longer than 2 days. It was so great.

What was less great was the return to Brussels in the midst of the baggage handlers' strike. Chaos has no meaning for me now. We're talking flights canceled, thousands of bags dumped anywhere, police bringing in emergency water for people, screaming, Linda Blair-style children. Adding to my crazy lady vibe, I lost my baggage receipt, and found my bag just by fluke 4 hours later. Because of the delay, I missed meeting up with one of my closest friends in Belgium, and didn't get to my hostel until after midnight. When I flew out to Frankfurt the next day I may, or may not, have flipped la Bruxelles the bird on my way up.

Furthermore, you'd never believe it, but the reason for the strike was that the baggage handlers find their workplace policies 'anti-social'.

The irony.

The Belgians.

V.O.P

It's come to my attention that an alien-life form is inhabiting Europe. They're everywhere, taking root - if Triffids wore trilbies I'd swear it was the second coming. But despite all appearances, they're actually not creatures from another planet - just from a few decades ago.

They're old people, and they're everywhere.

V.O.P., or Visible Old People, are a phenomenon I've really only encountered whilst on the continent. Wherever there's a fountain, a park bench, or somewhere that serves coffee that could power a Mac Truck, you're sure to find them sitting, staring, and occasionally smacking someone with their stick. While it can be unsettling to go about my business with forty replicas of my European granparents watching, I really like this aspect of the culture. I think there's more of an emphasis on the family, so the elderly aren't simply shunted into retirement homes where, if they weren't senile before they will be soon. Instead, they prop themselves in prime position, watching, and sometimes being watched by, the world around them.

Not to get morbid about things, and I know it's a kind of a horrible comparison, but it makes me think a little of the medieval 'danse macabre' theme, where death dances with kings, queens, infants, etc etc, making evident it's status as the one great leveller.




Or perhaps a less grisly comparison would be the 'ubi sunt' motif, which focusses on the transience of life and it's beauty, a popular theme in medieval Latin poetry and subject of my, ahem, erstwhile thesis. With the elderly so central to the daily comings and goings, it makes it almost impossible to remove yourself from the acceptance of, and understanding, of age, intellect, and experience -things I occasionally feel are totally lacking in Australian society. It does make me wonder too, whether if for our youth obsessed society, aging isn't taking on a similar role to the 'unknowability' of death that medieval artists tried to grapple with - one that, if we pretend enough, shunt them away, and use enough botox, it just won't happen to us.

Let's play a game ...

Imagine your favourite food.

No, wait. This is my blog, so here's a better one - imagine one of my favourite foods. Struggling? I'll help you out - a Portuguese custard tart.

Having no luck with the pastry p*rn? Try this:






Now imagine you are in a country where they are a national speciality.

Now imagine they cost a mere 85c.

Now imagine you have started dreaming about them every night.


Now imagine my arse.

Carlos' House of Horrors

I am currently writing this under my bunk. Well, technically speaking, not under my bunk, but under the bunk above me. It’s super comfy, my head is tilted almost at 90 degrees and the pins and needles in my arm are morphing into a whole sewing kit. Why would I choose such cramped surrounds to spin my textual tapestry, I hear you ask? Am I trying to ‘method write’ a Kafkaesque tale of confinement and constriction? Am I channelling the spirit of some long-dead literary genius - did Tolstoy work under such conditions? Did Barbara Cartland? Unfortunately no. I am running with the whole mind over matter thing because I have just stumbled into the hostel from hell. It’s true. I am currently staying in the worst, most horrible, seriously ick, hostel I have stayed in, I think pretty much ever. But, except for the unfortunate fragrance of eau de bin, it’s not the place; I’m going to be a judgemental beeyatch and put it out there: it’s the people.

See, this place was supposed to be relaxed. Chilled out, but not in filthpig fashion, just in a cruisey, friendly, nice easy place if you’re travelling on your own, sort of way. The kind of hostel where you meet people, have a few beers, hang out. You know. Normal. Easygoing. Friendly. Ja. Whatever. Apparently, it’s so friendly here that two of the inhabitants had sex outside my window on the footpath last night. But don’t worry, it’s ok – they can’t remember any of it. Nothing. That makes it alright.

Clearly I’m a geriatric prude stuck in the occasionally-maintained body of a 25 year old woman, but I truly hate these kind of hostels, hostels where there’s zero private space and people push and push for you to go out for 2 euro shots at whatever grotty club is down the road. I usually avoid them like I would sharing a toothbrush with someone who has oral thrush, so it’s unfortunate when, Colgate in hand, you realise that your bathroom buddies request was used to ameliorate his odd resemblance to Old Yeller. It’s just a really gross place. I travel in a way I enjoy – lots of reading, talking, and relaxing, and it’s annoying when all these things are made impossible by your choice of accommodation, particularly when you realise this after you’ve already paid.

What is it about some people that the minute they get on foreign soil they just behave like utter tools? I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here, and assuming they aren’t like this all the time. I really hope so, anyway. And these aren’t even just Australian bogans, who I could almost forgive, as they tend to get a little excited about the change of hemisphere thing—these ones are internationally sourced. And they're just as bad. I’m cranky, I’m going to bed. Ergh.

Postscript: the next day. I thought someone had cooked me fried eggs for breakfast this morning. But no, that was just the topless vision that greeted me of the girl who had sex in the bunk above me last night. Hurrah!

Will you be our mother?

Sound familiar? If you too have managed to attract enough Lost Boys to field a football team, we’re more similar than previously thought. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but over the last few years I’ve noticed a definite pattern present in the men who come a’knocking at my door. Either they are so old that they do it with a Parkinson’s tremor, need their food made denture friendly, and a microchip so they don’t wander off from the home again; or so young and miserable that they only want red wine, and will ask for the cork in order to plug their stigmata. Although a staple gun and a barcode can fix the elderlys without too much hassle, it is these guys my own age, these unhappy men, men with problems, men continually searching, that are tricky. It doesn’t seem to matter where I am or who I’m with, I always seem to find (or be found by, I’m not quite sure which) men who need someone to talk with, someone to lean on, someone to help them weather the storm. These are guys who don’t just have baggage; they have their own cargo hold.

Yet so many of the men I know have this fragility, a definite eggshell quality that lies beneath the occasionally-muscled façade. Perhaps that’s one of the joys of spending time with people who ‘think’ for a living, but I’m not entirely convinced that this is so. Rather, I wonder if it’s symptomatic of the general lack of communication and coping skills of so many men out there, something that is perhaps no great surprise to anyone who has a father, brother, husband, or boyfriend. Interestingly, men supposedly use (on average) less than two thirds of a woman’s spoken vocabulary. Thus they seem to be hardwired, or at the very least predestined, to work, play, and, of course, suffer in silence. In Australia, male suicides outnumber female by about 4-1.
A young Australian guy I met recently articulated this differences in a way both poignant and telling. We’d been discussing his family issues and relationships, when he said: “I don’t read, so when stuff happens or things go wrong, I want to talk about it, and, you know, express it, but when I really need to, I try and … I just don’t have … the words”. I knew he wasn’t the most ‘literary’ of my acquaintances, but he was clever and eloquent, and his confession left me genuinely floored. I tried to imagine a world in which my tools of self-expression—reading, writing, and talking—were either denied or out of reach, and simply couldn’t make it work. What would it feel like to look within and find a dyslexic game of Scrabble? How would you cope with a death, a break up, a friend’s betrayal, if all you had to work with was the equivalent of Pig Latin?

I listened to him continue with story, one not dissimilar from many men that I have known, and wondered again at what actually made him this time, and in this place, so haltingly spill it. Was it because we were both on our own? Was it the beer? Or was it just because I was female? And what was he looking for? Just the comfortable anonymity of a fellow country(wo)man who could understand right now but who would never turn up later in his ‘real’ life? Or was he seeking the opportunity to discuss and change the life that had led him thus far? Whatever it was, afterwards I began to ruminate on his admissions, and the strange fact that I often elicit such confessions from people, without ever been entirely sure why: I’m fairly sure that I wouldn’t go to me if I had a problem.

Unlike when I was younger, however, I’m also now more cautious of my entanglements with these people. I listen rather than expound, and facilitate rather than advise. After too many encounters with men on self-destructo, or those longing to be fixed, I find that I’m getting slightly wary of the Sati game, and approach such guys with an equal mixture of compassion and caution. It seems wrong sometimes to worry about how to extricate my own life from this unhappiness, and as I get older I wonder whether self-preservation is the aim of the game, no matter how uncharitable it makes me feel.

Perhaps it’s worth remembering who shoots the ´Wendy bird´.

On having some 'me' time

When is a little thinking time too much thinking time? When you think you’ve had enough time to think about it? Or when you know you’ve had enough time to think about it, analyse it, write a pros and cons list, and consider it as a possible phd topic? Funnily enough, this is something that, aptly, I’ve been thinking about lately. It’s one of the pleasures and the pains of travelling alone. On the plus side, you get to meet amazing, generous people willing to share a drink or a life story; on the down side those people can be few and far between, often leaving you with those who are all too willing to share the tales of their airline ‘pee-yuuwk’, complain about the heat (it’s Spain), and get you to read the map for them. That’s when the big guns, or at the very least, a big book, need to be pulled out in order to end all spurious, stultifying, or just plain stupid conversations.

I have done the long-term travelling alone thing before, and still recall those months upon months of having the same conversation -‘where have you been, where are you going, how long are you away for’ - with a bit of a shudder. I really didn’t want to do it again. This time, however, I’ve organised myself so that three weeks is all the time I have until I meet up with a friend. I know, I’m spoilt, but it’s still feeling a bit long.

I was very resistant to coming to Belgium in the first place, primarily because my Masters degree had been so incredibly isolating. I couldn’t imagine how topping two years of hardcore library time with a stint in a small village where I didn’t speak the language would improve my ability to make like a human, a skill I occasionally worry is getting rustier.

I’m not quite sure how, but over the last few years I seem, somehow, to have taken part in a pattern of ‘aloneness’. Not necessarily ‘loneliness’, although sometimes that follows; but somehow as I’ve got older, the things I enjoy doing (reading, writing, exercising, playing music) have all become things that one does alone [Stephanie Trigg has recently written on something similar here]. Furthermore, as I’m one of the few of my friends who doesn’t live with a partner nor have an all-consuming 9-5 (or 7-10) job, occasionally I’ve sensed that the line between time out and simply time passing is starting to blur.

I do wonder if this is just a part of my character type: a watcher rather than a doer, a thinker rather than a player, but I’m not entirely sure. I still remember on my year 12 school report, my English teacher wrote that I had ‘slyly never answered questions in class’ (yes, that was ‘slyly’, not ‘shyly’). I was gobsmacked, as I thought that I genuinely didn’t know the answers until I went away, thought about them, and wrote them down - very much a case of the old adage “how do I know what I think until I see what I say?”*.

I find that I need time away from things to understand them, shape them, and process them in a way that enables me and my world view to fit. Is this right though? Should I be down in the lobby of my hostel signing up for a bar crawl with all the eighteen year olds on gap years? I don’t think so, but I hope this doesn’t make me the human version of the cockroaches I just saw crawling all over the jambon in a window display: in prime position but still scuttling out of view.

At worst, at least I’ll have 400 million years to get it right.

* I should just point out here to those few people who read this blog who don’t know me – I am actually not as obnoxious as it, on occasion, makes me out to be. I swear.

Hola!

Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

As I’m currently sporting bad skin, frizzy hair, and a crooked spine courtesy of my heavy pack, I don’t expect a panting squawk of “it’s you!” a lá Catherine Zeta Jones. I do, however, have one nice excuse for my heat related frumpery – I’m in Madrid and it’s hot hot hot. I now have five weeks to slough the mildew from my skin, replace it with a tan, and acclimatise myself for a later jaunt to the tropics.

However, I’ve just spent the last four days in London, staying with a very dear friend who was visiting on a research trip. We’d both never really been before, and funnily enough, had the same reaction. Blergh. I’ve never been in a city that seemed to be so entirely characterised by ‘busyness’. There are amazing things to see, of course (the Tate Modern is incredible, and all the museums are free – hurrah!), and I’m sure there are wonderful areas to live, but in between seemed to be such a blur of rushing greyness. We did, however, unlike so many people visiting the UK, have no complaints about the food. Perhaps I have a slight predilection for all things potato, but we had some great stodge that fortified us for the days spent battling the tube.

However, one particular aspect of staying with this friend was food related, as she has a severe nut allergy. I’d always known this, but had never really appreciated how difficult it was for her until now. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but absolutely everything contains traces of nuts, possible traces of nuts, maybe one atom of a nut, and if that’s the case, she just can’t eat it. Food labels were read, products sourced and some were even brought over from Australia – thanks, lack of UK customs.

It really got me thinking about the way in which I travel, as for me, food is an integral part of the experience. To the detriment of my tailoring, I do tend to treat travel like a global buffet, sampling bits and pieces as I make my way. Thus I’m pretty excited about the whole tapas experience that Spain has to offer. Having zero Spanish (I didn’t even know the word for ‘beer’ – devastating), it’s such a pot luck, pointing to the menu and waiting to see what turns up. Add to this a night owl culture, super friendly (and, er, hot) people, and sangria by the cask, and I think I may have just found my home away from home.

XXX marks the spot

Say, perchance, you’ve just finished your stint in a very small town. You want to live it up a little, out your inner hedonist, and make a little crazy; but where to go? Contemplating my future post-Tiny Town and with Sin City on my doorstep, how could I resist? I scrubbed off that pesky wholesome visage and exchanged it for a sunken pallor and a pair of regulation DDs: it was time to visit the ‘Dam.

Although I wasn’t too enthused by the prospect, I have to say, I’m a convert (although not quite in the way my accommodation intended). I love Amsterdam. Love it. I had no idea that through the marijuana and neon haze it would be so beautiful. It’s an amazing city, vibrant, relaxed, and I would love to be able to take a speedboat to my friend’s house; it certainly beats the hell out of taking a tram. It had great walks, great drinks, and a great atmosphere.

But we will not speak about the food. We will not. Hot meals from a vending machine make baby Jesus cry. People do not eat that.

Tastebuds aside, Amsterdam and I rubbed along quite nicely in a non-contagious fashion. I was staying right on the edge of the red-light district, oddly enough, in what was a Christian hostel. This wasn’t just any Christian hostel, though. This was like the S & M, latex, leather spikes, and vaginal muscle display of Christian hostels: it was hardcore. I’ve stayed in Catholic hostels in Italy before and assumed this would be similar – bit of a curfew in exchange for church subsidised rates and a few creepy crucifixion pictures. Nothing doing. Instead I found myself in a terrifying parallel universe where people kept asking me to prayer club all the time. Where’s the charity in that?

My 16-bed dorm was also filled with 15 cheerleaderish missionary types (and I’m not talking about their post-marital position of choice, either, they were actually young missionaries) from Tennessee and myself. When I asked them what they were doing in Amsterdam, one of them trilled, “We’re just lettin’ peeyoople know how march Jeesus loves them; watch y’all doin’ here?” ‘Jesus’ and ‘y’all’ in one breath and one very well-packed dorm? My eyes started rolling back into my head and my mouth started to froth – grammar and God all in one sentence. It was just too much.

As I mentioned before, I am an atheist, and I find the whole young-religious phenomenon just a bit weird. I think it’s a lack of irony thing, and that so many young people I know who have faith are just missing that certain something … which I suppose, is doubt. They’re just so sure about everything in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable. I’m not anti-religion, however, and I don’t mind church. Perhaps I just love a bit of hierarchy and the razzle-dazzle of the Catholic mass, and it irritates me when the Hillsong yoof throw a ‘God bless you’, or ‘God loves you’ at me, every time I leave the room; I would never even presume to speak on behalf of my own father, let alone for everyone elses. But hey, I suppose that’s faith, and that’s why they have it and I don’t. At the very least, points for actually going to a place where maybe they are needed.

Suffice to say, I had a grand couple of days and am now back in Belgium. More just passing through, really, spending the night in a hostel in Brussels. Which I think is how I think my relationship with Brussels should forever stay. See, Brussels and I, we have a few issues; we don’t always see eye-to-eye; we are not, by any stretch of the imagination, in lurve. I don’t know quite why, as I think it’s a cool city, but something about it just doesn’t work for me. Perhaps it’s the fact that every time I come here I get chronically, disorientingly, train-missingly lost; perhaps it’s because I still don’t really like waffles; or, perhaps it’s because every time I’ve ever been here it’s rained like a mofo. That’s right, even coming from a sunny 30 C in Amsterdam, Belgium was wet wet wet (but not wild – they definitely leave that side of things up to their northern cousins). And today I got caught short. No brolley. Stupid, idiot me. Stupid wet, idiot, wet, me, idiot. Wet.

It’s something that’s difficult to understand in sunny Oztralia, just how insidious the rain here can be. Absolutely everyone has SADs, and I’m fairly sure that if for no other reason this is because they are all be chronically afflicted with tinea (my hostel room was sporting a bottle labelled “Fungarest”. Ergh). It’s an amazing sight, though, when the sun comes out: people spend all day outside and turn themselves towards the sun like steadily reddening blossoms. Of course, as soon as a cloud comes along (and you know it will) they all close up a little, wilt, fade, get quieter and then go inside again, all the while planning their next solarium session.

I never thought it was possible to miss the drought, but even if it means we’re all showering in each other’s urine by the time I get back home, bring. it. on.

That’s sure to help with the tinea, too.

So it's come to this

I’m springing this on you a little, but tonight is actually my last night in Belgium. I’ve finished up my contract, and am heading off for 2 or 3 months of travel, gadding about Europe, and then Indonesia on the way home; I'll keep you updated on my adventures as they come to pass. However, I have to admit, it’s come as a bit of a shock to finally be leaving. When I first got here, in the depths of a European winter in a very small town, I thought it would never end. I had already had serious misgivings before I came, and when I first arrived I spent a lot of time looking for the escape hatch.

Truly, I never saw sunshine, and those evenings … long doesn’t quite cover it. I read a lot, and I wrote, and when nothing I was writing turned out to be fit for human consumption, I started to blog. I read a lovely quote early on, funnily enough, on another blog, where the author said that he was in danger of becoming ‘less a struggling writer, than someone struggling to write’; perhaps I hope that when everything else has been mired in the tarmac of my brain, this blog has, thus far, kept me on a bit of an even keel, creativity wise. Perhaps.

One thing I haven’t done on this blog, however, is paid my dues to the people I’ve met here. Now, very few of them know I write this, and I’m fairly sure that none of them check it, but I think that even under the cloak of anonymity, they are owed. After my time here, I’ve realised that you never understand how important the basics are until you're physically divorced from everything that is 'yours'. See, believe it or not, no-one actually has to be nice to you. They don’t. They can be pleasant enough, they can be actively un-nice, or, they can just try and do whatever they have to do in order for their own lives to go on untrammelled. And this is all fair enough; we all have our own courses to run.

But none of this is what I’ve experienced here. I’m not sure if it’s a small town thing, or a Belgian thing, but whatever it was I will always be eternally grateful. See, people weren’t just nice, they were welcoming, they were kind, and they were generous. And for no real reason except for the fact that I was alone, and I was new. It’s an incredibly humbling experience. I feel so very privileged to have met so many kind souls who really just wanted to make sure that I was happy, surviving, and not just living on canned soup. I will always be thankful that, in a time when I could have been utterly isolated, I lived and worked in a place where it wasn’t an issue for people to say good morning, ask about your day, and perhaps grab a beer with after work.

It really is the simple things.

Well, hot diggity!

It’s good news, folks, good news! If you’ve been feeling a bit directionless, or just a smidge aimless, don’t worry: I’m here to help. You can trust me; I’m qualified. See, the word is out, and apparently, I’m a Master. Well, almost. On condition of some small changes and alterations, my thesis has been passed. Hurrah! Master H.O.T., not bad, eh?

Although I can’t help thinking that, combined with the funny hat, this title isn’t quite as snazzy as I’d like it to be. Now, you know I’ll always fight in the femullet corner, but I think this is one of those times where non-gender-specification has really been a bit of a downer. Wouldn’t it be more fun to be a Mistress of the Arts and Humanities? It’s certainly less starchy-British public school, less gay-little-hobbits, and more kind of delectably-dominatrixy and a wee bit fun (and that’s wee as in ‘small’, you sick, sad, people). They could create a whole new graduation ensemble that would make the hours of sitting in the grand hall waiting for your moment infinitely more interesting. On the other hand, however, the Humanities already gets such a whipping in public, it probably doesn’t need to shell out for it in private too.

Yet truly, I am very excited about this. As with every extended project, it was a long, occasionally gruelling affair, and it’s nice to know that I’ve acquitted myself with relative grace and that my marks are good (and yes, in case you hadn’t already realised, I am one of those grade me! grade me! types. A scratch-and-sniff sticker can still make me swoon). Despite this, however, I’ve currently put myself in the ‘time out’ corner, academia-wise; I was completely burnt by the time the MA was submitted, so am now going to take a little time to explore a world that doesn’t revolve entirely around the reference section.

In line with this, and as my time in Belgium is rapidly winding to a close, I have begun applying for jobs. I have no illusions regarding my prospects, and I know I’m heading for entry-level territory; the kind of job where you look at your first pay cheque, add up how many years you’ve been at university, times that by your HECS debt, gurgle a little, and then wish like Christ that you’d become a tradie. Last time I tried to do this, i.e. actually looking for careerish type work, I spent a couple of months on the dole before dealing with it in the typical Aussie fashion and going backpacking for six months. However, I still recall my favourite job ad that I have seen reposted again and again in the last four years.

It was an ed assist position at a publishing house of what I would consider to be not-very-interesting-books. After detailing a multitude of achingly boring office tasks for extortionately low pay, it closed so: *MUST HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE TO DATA ENTRY*. Naturally, at this I laughed. A lot. What are they thinking? No one has a positive attitude to data entry. It’s data entry. I mean, I think I’m a moderately optimistic kind of person, but the idea of spending my life entering ISBNs for books that no-one will read leaves me feeling about as perky as Tori Spelling’s left boob.

I’ve seen it re-advertised on and off since then, and always in exactly the same way. Clearly there’s a lack of well-trained lobotomees around, and perhaps every other applicant has only had the good sense to feel sunny about such employ for the split second before they shoved two pencils up their nostrils and banged their face down on the desk.

It’s always good to have something to aim for, however, and I’m sure it’ll be re-advertised in 3 months or so when I get home. Perhaps if times are truly dire, I can apply for it myself.

I’ll just make sure I pack a good sharpener.

I beg yours?!

From today's Age (full article here) :

Brothel shut down in council sting

• Kate Lahey
• June 28, 2008

A MASSAGE parlour operating as an illegal brothel has been shut down after a suburban council paid two private investigators to uncover the true nature of the business.

The case comes more than a year after Melbourne City and Yarra councils admitted they had been paying investigators to have sex with prostitutes and dropped the practice. Glen Eira Council paid the two investigators a total of $2275 to separately visit Shanti House on Glen Huntly Road, Caulfield, on May 14.

This week, Moorabbin Magistrates Court ordered the business to close after hearing evidence from the investigators, who each paid $90 up front for a massage.

Both investigators gave statements to the court saying they asked the women, one of whom was nude, to stop when the massage became blatantly sexual.

"I stood up from the massage table telling her that 'I am embarrassed' and 'I have to go'," one investigator said.

"This female laughed, stating, 'How about a tip? I normally get $40 for that.' I gave this female $40 and commenced to rub the oil from my body."

Magistrate Anne Goldsbrough on Monday ordered the proscribed brothel be shut down, with business operator George Hamshari, of Camberwell, to pay $6000 in costs. Mr Hamshari's lawyer Tony Burns told The Age his client maintains he was running the business as a legitimate healing massage centre and that the women involved acted on their own.

Glen Eira spokesman Paul Burke said the council imposed a no-sex condition on investigators and would continue to hire them as needed. "We don't have a huge problem with illegal brothels in Glen Eira as we rooted out most of them some time ago," he said.

Ahem.

What Would Jesus Do?

I was walking home from work this evening and saw two young men who, I’m pretty sure if I were my mother, I would say looked very nice. Neat. Clean cut. Clean. Weirdly young and yet incredibly well starched. I couldn’t work it out- had they just come from school? But they looked a bit old for that, and no-one here wears a uniform. Black shoes, black pants, white shirts … I’m sure you can see where I’m heading. By the time we got to the tie, I knew what time it was - it was Jesus time.

Now sometimes the fact that ‘ik spreekt nee Nederlands’ can be mighty handy. However when the Jehovahs spreading the Belgian Word are actually from America and totally up for a chat in the mother tongue, it’s quite easy to concede that perhaps today God actually isn’t on your side. Anyway, I’m not sure exactly what it was; perhaps I was called; perhaps I was feeling vulnerable; perhaps I was hoping they’d carry my groceries; but I have a terrible secret to confess: I spoke with the JW’s for 30 minutes. In public. I’m fairly certain I’m the only woman either of them has ever conversed with who either wasn’t related or hiding behind a sofa.

However, after we’d got through the obligatory acknowledgement of my own fiery future, they were actually very lovely, and the older (about 20) especially was up for a bit of chinwag. It went thus:

Older JW: “What are you doing here where abouts do you live oh you’re from Melbourne? I’ve got a friend in Sydney etc. etc…”

At which point, after this had been going for 10 mins or so, the younger, rather more earnest one interrupted. “So, have you heard the teachings of Our Lord?”

Older JW seemed a bit frustrated by this, and gave his mate a sort of, ‘just relax, dude, she’s a chick and she’s talking to us, and we’ll get back to the god stuff in a minute”, kind of nudge. I politely said that I wasn’t really interested and was actually “a bit of an atheist”. Older JW found this hilarious:

“Bit of an atheist, he he, thought that was pretty much all or nothing so what do you do in your spare time here do you like living here it’s a bit quiet but I don’t mind it …”

Slightly nonplussed by the return of the conversation to all matters secular, Young and Earnest waited as long as he could before again sticking up his pert little head to ask, “So, do you think any of your workmates would be interested in the teachings of Our Lord?”

At this, I saw a slightly sharper jab, more a “Dude, she’s a chick and she’s talking to us, we’ll get to the god stuff in a minute”, of the elbow variety. I duly noted the tragic ungodliness of everyone I knew, laughs all round, which was the signal for Older JW to amp up again:

“Have you been to the Netherlands the Netherlands is great I’ve stayed there for a couple of weeks already and I’m going to move there when I finish up here you really should go…”

Perhaps if nothing but concerned by his friend’s lack of proper sentence structure, Young and Earnest decided it was time - it wasn’t Jesus time; it hadn’t been that for the last 25 minutes or so- but time for drastic action nonetheless. One of the flock had strayed, and he was definitely up to the task of bringing its woolly ass back. Young JW shoved himself forward, puffed up his chest with his little name badge on it, took one last look at his still-rambling fallen angel, looked me square in my wanton eyes and chirruped, “Would you like to know about our website?”

Now, I’m not flattering myself here, and I am definitely not so far gone that I’ve taken to inventing the attentions of those sworn to chastity; that’s not really a level playing field, and kind of like getting a confidence boost from a frisky Labrador. But truly I have never seen anything like it. It wasn’t, ‘if looks could kill’; it wasn’t even ‘if looks could perhaps slice open your stomach with a rusty hacksaw and make dwarves dance on your entrails while force-feeding you egg salad’; this was something infinitely more nuclear, something along the lines of ‘if looks could turn an otherwise upstanding, godly young citizen into a slavering, raging, beast of the apocalypse whose last words would be a hormonal shriek of,

“DUDE SHE’S A FUCKING CHICK AND SHE’S FUCKING TALKING TO US!!!!”

before being transformed into the very mouth of hell and swallowing himself’, that might just about cut it.

Slightly concerned that shattered stone tablets were going to start raining from the sky, or at the very least that Older JW was going to need to buy some knee-guards for all the penance he’d be doing, I bid them good day and trudged home with my groceries, my hands all pink and sliced from holding them so long.

Here’s a lesson for you boys: really want to know What Jesus Would Do? He’d help a lady with her bags, that’s what.

On why someone should employ me as their subeditor

From Cleo, ninemsn.com:

'“People use the expression ‘I feel it in my gut’ in relation to knowing something’s right or wrong, but I don’t think that’s a sign of instinct or knowing,” says Butolucci. “It’s an instinct if you feel it everywhere in your body, but if you just feel it in the pit of your stomach it’s probably a fear.” If that’s the case, you need to find out where the fear has originated. According to Gunn, friends can often be the best counsellors.

They know you intimately and are usually able to see sense in a situation you’re freaking out over. [SUBS: Sarah needs to add a Gunn quote here, but will do that tomorrow when she’s back in the office]'

Heh.

But let's not ask why I'm reading this.

The horror ...

I’m so sorry to do this to you. I hate to worry you … but truly, I can’t fight this alone and time is of the essence. You see, I’ve just unearthed a disturbing new pestilence lurking in Villageville. If my research is correct, it should hit Australian shores in about six months and will prove infinitely more deadly than SARS, bird flu, and the Black Death combined. What’s a girl to do? After checking my sources and doing some quantitative analysis (read: serious googling), I’ve spread the word; WHO is onto it, quarantine measures have been put in place, and the good people at Border Security are on red alert.

Be warned: it comes in spandex form.

You see, I have just discovered a disturbing trend in the world of what I'll generously call ‘fashion’. While shopping today I unearthed what can only in the taste stakes be considered an anomaly. No wait, I was looking for that other ‘a’ word – I meant abomination. Perusing some new summer ensembles, not once, but twice, did I come across a garment that I was certain had gone the way of the cast of 90210. Well, just as Luke Perry’s eyebrows are apparently set for a small-screen resurgence, it seems that a small rip in the time-space continuum has allowed other, infinitely less amusing remnants from the early 90s to come back and say hello.

We’ve had the 80s revamp, and this I understand. It was cool. There was that whole David Bowie ‘Goblin King’ aesthetic going on that was definitely worth another look, even if it was just to see if I could try once more to wish my brothers, aged 20, 21, and 28, forever into the labyrinth. But the early 90s? Cardigans. Shoulderpads. Julia Sawalha in Press Gang. Need I say more? The penance was the offence. However, not everyone, it seems doth concur. Thus, it’s my sad duty to inform you that someone, somewhere, and for some ungodly reason, has decided to resurrect that most heinous of all 90s fashion trends … the bodysuit. Yes. The outerwear bodysuit.

For those of you either not old enough, or not stupid enough, to have let photographic evidence of yourself in a white leotard, novelty earrings, checked shorts, hiking boots, and scrunchie socks, into the wrong hands, I salute you. For everyone else, I think now is definitely the time for a Kevin ’07-style, one-piece related think-tank. Ladies of the world, we need to get philosophical. We need to start asking the big questions: Is it possible to create a garment that could be more unflattering? Who needs to be that streamlined to run to the shops? And why, of all the challenges facing the modern woman, do fashion designers believe it is the ability to wear a top and a bottom which is most in need of elasticised attention?

Furthermore, on a more basic level, what exactly is the point? There is but one job I can think of where having a press-stud crotch is guaranteed to grease the wheels of the working week. One. For everyone else, convenience isn’t perhaps aligned with the ability to divide their own zygotes when they reach for the top shelf.

I know it’s distressing, but I’m showing you this for your own good: know thy enemy.

Be alert. Be alarmed.

Where are my cats?

I have a confession to make. Yesterday, I had a moment. This was one of those moments that, if I were in a novel, a critic might perhaps call 'portentous'. Assuming said novel was any good, this moment would be studied in modern lit classes across the globe, and would feature as the pre-eminent example of the inescapability of death, the inevitability of ageing, and the tragic, bittersweet transience of life. As it is, with the rights to my existence currently going for the bargain price of .01 cent (AUD), I shall have to content myself with the knowledge that it was simply the time when I realised that one should never put off doing pelvic floor exercises until later in life. The future is now, people; the future is now.

Despite this, however, it started out as a normal evening. I left work at 6 and was exiting the begijnhof (a kind of convent), leaving through the front gate as I always do. Birds were chirruping, the sun was out, and all was well with the world. Suddenly, however, a whizzing, bumping noise, a sound often connected either with imminent death or the BMX Bandits arose behind me. I turned just in time to see a kid of about 12 fly past me on his bike, careering slightly out of control on the cobbles. I jumped back and he whooshed through the narrow gate, nearly collecting both me and my bag on the way.

Now, on such an occasion there are many things I could, nay, should have done –my screaming banshee, my foul-mouthed fishwife, or even my shrieking strumpet, perchance – all would usually have gone down a thespian treat in such circumstances. But I choked. I flailed. In the face of such impertinent youthfulness, I had nothing, and not even the slightest whisper in the international language of anger could escape my pursed lips. Thus against my will, I was forced to pull the theatrical equivalent of the silent-but-deadly; the angry girl’s hara-kiri … I released my inner crone. That’s right. In a moment of preteen-induced trauma, I heard it, the voice in my head (not the voices, let's at least make that distinction. This one sounds like my own voice, but is infinitely less nasal and usually more culturally au fait), uttered the fatal words that distinguish the living from the living-on-canned-goods: “kids these days …”.

I couldn’t believe it. Just in case you didn't get it, and seeing as that’s what old people do, I’ll repeat myself: at 25 years of age, I said, “kids these days”. If I’d just been holding a carpet-bag, used the word 'varmints', and smelled a little like cheese, I'd have made a fully-fledged transition from moderately eccentric young woman to that weird lady who sits on your tram and tries to make you eat her sandwich. Now I know I am not old, I have only been walking, staggering, and occasionally, when the money’s a bit tight, loitering around this earth for the last quarter of a century, but this made me realise that perhaps I am no longer exactly young, either.

This realisation of course sent me into a spiral of despair and self-doubt: what have I done with my youth? Did I leave it somewhere? Do I still have the receipt? Even though all I really wanted was a nice cup of tea and a backrub, I decided that it was time for me to do something crazy; something exuberant, youthful, something that would make the world sit up and take notice.

I was high on life, my adrenals were a’pumping; or at the very least, there was definitely a pulse... Where to go? What to do with all this new-found vigour coursing through my veins? So, any guesses, ladies and gents? Hands up - what did I do? What couldn't you do, I hear you chorus?! I’ll tell you what I did: I left work, I went home …

I fell asleep on my bed.

For three hours.

You read it here first.

A testament to pseudoephedrine

This week I have been sick. Sick, sick, sick. It's just a Belgian 'summer' (and I use the term advisedly, today it's been raining and a chipper 15C) cold, but I feel disgusting - puffy face, grotty nose, and my ears keep popping - all of which gives me the appearance of a slightly unbalanced, alcoholic garden gnome. Hardly the most clear-sighted perspective from which to weigh in on the battle of the sexes. Or to be thinking, really, but I love you guys so I'm going to give it a crack.

Now, what really got the brain bells buzzing on this was the somewhat unwanted comment from a male coworker on my new cold-induced and apparently 'sexy' husky voice. At the best of times, I am many things; at lesser times, I am a few; when I've just spewed something unmentionable into a tissue and broken into a sweat at my keyboard, I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, sexy (unless, perhaps, you thought that 'Two Girls and One Cup' posed a viable alternative to the recycled sewage debate). I have to say, this comment made me a little uncomfortable, and when the only response I could muster was, "I sound like a man, man", I did hope that my (apparent) lady-loveliness would be dimmed by a subliminal reference to The Crying Game. Yes, even in imaginary form, mine is bigger than yours.

Now, after the ick factor of having the 's' word mentioned at work had subsided, this comment got me thinking about gender roles in this day and age. I have to say, I don't worry about being female too much myself. While we seem to be rather lacklustre about supporting feminism in Australia, I do believe that it has a place in current Australian society, and am mystified by women who think that the mere discussion of equality will entail their forced submission to a compulsory razor buy-back scheme. Three words, ladies: Paid. Maternity. Leave.

That said, on a daily basis I don't find the life of a woman of comparative leisure that difficult to cope with, and indeed, the only times I ever really think about it are when I'm flirting my little bluestockings off, or if, as posted below, some little ferret decides to show me his wares on my evening walk.

However, I have worked primarily in either female dominated or 'knowledge' industries, so presumably my relationship to gender in professional terms is generally relatively easy to negotiate. But what if this wasn't the case? What if I had desperately wanted to be an engineer, or a miner, or, let's say citizenship and the desire not to link myself with an economic and moral black hole wasn't an issue, to run for the American presidency? In relation to the issues of 'racism vs sexism' that the US democrat campaign has barely contained, Waleed Aly has argued that while, "Obama discovered the acceptable black man [...] Clinton could find no acceptable way of being a powerful woman".

This made me think: if I was willing to take responsiblity for the lives of more than the small collection of fungi in my shower, what version of myself would I have to present to be a contender? Would I need to start calling the cloudfree sky of rural Australia deliberately barren? Would I be perpetually worried about the contents of my 'fruit bowl'?

I'll be very interested to see how the media portrays Rudd's female cabinet powerhouse now that the honeymoon period is well and truly over. I wonder, how restrictive are our understandings of Australian women in power, anyway?

Cyber slavery

Look, I'll put it out there: there are some areas of thinkingness in which I am rather deficient. I know that everyone has a few life-arenas in which they wouldn't want to play gladiator, whether it be fixing taps, driving on the right side of the road, or remembering to put their knickers on before they leave the house. In my case, tecknologee and fiscal management are always precursors to a case of blown fuse. I just can't help it, no matter what I do, cash and computers simply gravitate towards the segment of my brain that thought 'Impeded View' was a support act, rather than an unfortunate seat, at the Radiohead concert.

Now, I'm quite happy to admit that I'm not up with the latest in techno-wizzbangery, I don't do my own tax, and I've always thought that economics seemed to be the antithesis of good ole fashioned common sense: how the price of bananas can transform a biro into a luxury good remains a mystery. Thus, as I'm sure you can appreciate, when the combination of the two popped up on my facebook notifications, I was mighty puzzled. Apparently, in the Gospel According to Mark Zuckerberg: "X now owns you as a pet! You were bought for $556, earning you $25 in profit!". I had to look at this twice, and not only because the appearance of two exclamation marks so close together tends to hurt my eyes.

It seems that I had earned money for doing sweet FA; a novel experience for someone who has passed their time in such lucrative industries as retail, administration, and higher education. Free money! Visions flashed before my eyes - designer clothes, a cool haircut, and perhaps a new tin of lentils had all been made possible by my unthinking descent into servitude ... huzzah!

And yet, in the midst of being measured for my new harness, I spat out my bit and had a sudden thought: what does this all mean? What are the ramifications of being a cyberpet? Do I now have to wash my hair through a mobile grooming service (which, on second thoughts, could actually be quite good)? More importantly, can I still roam the interneighbourhood at will, leaving my mark on other blogs around the block?

As I pondered these existential issues, I also began to have some doubts about the fitness of my owner for the task. To put it in context, X is a lad I don't know too well from school, whose friend request was accepted in a fit of late night facebook-induced frenzy. X also publishes status updates which detail his drink driving charges, and photos of himself with a gun ...

Um, actually, on that note, I think I might go edit my profile privacy.

A short sojourn

Have you been missing something in your life? The short, pithy, effortlessly wry commentary on the life of a young woman you may, or may not, know? Well fear not, luvvies, after a wee holiday I have taken off my travelling boots and been recalled to both my cyber duties and my Tiny Town.
While my trip did start off with a work-oriented tour of two of the lesser-known cosmopolitan hubs of the UK (Bradford and Hull, anyone? Think Billy Elliot without the hot men in chicken suits), after that things got a little more exciting. Why? Because, after stopping in London to collect two friends, I went to Paris for the weekend. That's right, you heard it. Paris. Me. Weekend. Friends. English-speakers.
Bliss.

We had SUCH a great weekend, truly, it was everything a Parisian experience should be: we laughed; we cried; Companion No 1 got the squirts; we bought him lemonade; we laughed again (with him this time, instead of at him), and so on; it was just very, very fun. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what we spent our time doing; I'm pretty sure that we just indulged in incredible food while sipping on the better part of a vineyard. The time in-between must simply have passed in a digestive haze.

One thing I do recall, however, was my absolute highlight: the Centre Pompidou. For those of you even considering heading to gay Paree, you simply must go - I'll never communicate with you in pseudoanonymity again if you don't. It's a contemporary art centre that houses a permanent exhibit, films, galleries, etc, and it's simply amazing. It has a fab collection of art post-1905, and has a huge focus on both great curatorship and public accessibility - when I was there, it was busy with a lot of school groups, some aged about as young as five.

Now, I love the little people (not in the way they're saying Bill Henson does, but you get my drift), but as a rule, the combination of chiddlers and contemporary art does not a happy Her maketh. However, the Pompidou simply has to win best practice as an art space that not only engages the public, but inspires and entertains the most finicky of audiences. Hell, I even saw teenage boys in there who weren't speaking Gruntish.
It was just the perfect balance between both traditional gallery presentation and interactive sectors: a personal favourite of mine was the very fun Galerie des Enfants (my French is bad, but I do know that means the 'kid's gallery' ... I'm sad to say that building blocks were involved), but the whole centre was just incredibly well presented and run by people who seemed so passionate about what they did. Definite points, Frenchlanders.

However, after spending four days with mates from home, it was a bit dire to catch my train to Belgium on Sunday, even though I'm heading back to Melbs in the not-too-distant future. I woke up this morning, thinking about my first day back at work and how far I was from home, and had the distinct, sickening, feeling that somewhere in the night part of my bowel had been removed. Did my friends take it back with them on QANTAS? I thought I just gave them some excess luggage; perhaps it would have been more socially acceptable for them to take my heart instead ...? Oh my, alone again, alone again, jiggedy jog.

On second thoughts, perhaps it was just the duck tartare.

Quack quack.

Some food for thought

For the latter half of this week, I've been ruminating on an article I read in The Age online. It was just a short little factoid in their lifestyle section, but its opening line has stayed with me for the last few days. Under the heading, 'Women turned off by extra kilos', it begins thus: "Sixty per cent of women prefer to have sex in the dark and the reason, they admit, is poor body image". (For the full, albeit tiny, article see here)

Now, I'll be the first to admit that this survey is problematic - it's hosted by Jenny Craig, weightloss supremo, so odds are that the women surveyed are more likely to have weight-related issues than the average bear. And yet, despite this, I can't help coming back to that number - 60%. Even assuming this might be a bit of a blowout from the statistical norm, that's still an awful lot of couples trying to play Blind Man's Bluff ... in the buff.

Body image is a huge problem in Australia. According to the Butterfly Foundation website, approximately 10 % of women are, have been, or will be affected by an eating disorder (including anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder) in their lifetime. I've been pondering these statistics, particularly in regards to its relationship with the 'thin is beautiful' culture that pervades the Australian/American media that so many of us, as it were, ingest.

Since arriving in Europe on this and other sojourns, I have wondered whether women on the continent possess a different relationship with their bodies and what they put in them. Although European culture is fairly activity-centric, (people ride or walk to work more, they join sports clubs for 'fun' and cycle on weekends), I also wonder whether *if* there is a difference (it's currently conjecture on my part), this difference exists because, quite simply, in most European cultures there is a bit more flesh around. By this, I don't mean Europeans are fatter - I'm fairly sure there are some fairly comprehensive, rigorous, and scientific studies, studies like French Women Don't Get Fat, which would suggest that this is not the case. What I am talking about, however, is the nude culture that, for anyone from Australia or America can come as a bit of a shock.

Now I haven't spent the last 5 months on a German naturist reserve (it was a very cold winter and I did have to save something up for July), but what I am talking about are the very small differences - communal showers in the gym, naked saunas, and of course the generally cavalier attitude to the need for bathing suits at most European beaches, that I think must make a difference. I wonder whether this fairly constant exposure to other female bodies - bodies that are hairy, fat, thin, lumpy, lovely, and strange - specifically bodies that are not 'perfect' - has a significant impact on women's attitudes to food and to themselves. There certainly seems to be less pressure to be the thin, toned, and hyper-plasticised image that I think we're in danger of believing is somehow achievable (and desirable) in Australia. Don't believe me? Try looking for your friends on a Croatian beach where the only directions provided are an SMS that says, "behind woman with saggy boobs". Hours of fun; it was like Where's Wally 2.0: The Fleshpot.

Without wanting the size-zero debate to rear its lollypop-esque head, I can't help wondering how often it is that Australian women actually view themselves in relation to one another in ways that are not either competitive (i.e. 'well, at least I'm thinner than her') or negative (i.e. 'she's thinner than me'). I'm not suggesting that every office should become some kind of Spencer Tunick love-in, but I think that it wouldn't hurt for there to be some way of gaining greater exposure to the differences, delights, and deficiencies that make up 'normal'. Apparently, the Dove 'Real Women' ad campaign was a great success; hopefully, seeing this, other companies will follow suit and use real bodies to depict their product.

To close, here's an image of one of my favourite things - the 'Venus de Willendorf' an 11 cm fertility/fecundity figurine that dates from about 24,000 -22,00 BC, and is currently situated in the Naturhistoriches Museum in Vienna. Knowing I loved it, my parents bought me a replica in Vienna, and now it's come from Melbourne to Belgium with me. It fits just perfectly in the hand, and I like to think of it as my own little piece of portable Earth Mother. Beautiful, eh?

The awful truth

So. Today I had one of Those Days. You know, those days where nothing goes that right but nothing goes that cataclysmically wrong, either? It's like you just stub your toe all day long until by 3 pm you’re willing to try the farm-dog style of self-help: you either relocate under the back porch with the intention of either heading up to that great big kennel in the sky, or you lie low until you re-emerge as the beautiful, shiny, non-cranky butterfly of yesteryear. I am generally of a sanguine temperament, so this state of mind was puzzling, and forced me to delve deep into my subconscious to discover what exactly was going on. In the process, however, I stumbled upon a fairly unpleasant realisation. Apparently, I am very vain. It’s true. ‘Oh,’ I hear you cry, ‘but your style of humour is so delightfully self-deprecating, so self-mocking, it simply cannot be!’ Sorry to rain on your parade, kids, but it seems that in the mirror-loving stakes, all that Glitters is not just Mariah Carey.

Technically, my appearance-induced funk of today actually began on the train to Paris yesterday. As I watched the woman next to me strap herself into an industrial-sized girdle in the middle of the train, I was vaguely fascinated by the sight of someone a) putting their underwear on in a public place, and b) wearing a contraption so antiquated that I’m pretty sure was still made in the original whalebone. In the midst of my youth-fuelled, rather self-congratulatory ruminations on this flesh-coloured harness, however, I got the tingle. Now, before you stop reading, never fear: you are not about to see some ridiculously good looking people walk across this blog and suddenly start talking about genital herpes. Rather, this was one of those, 'that's odd, it must be a mozzie bite' forehead-oriented moments of vague concern. But really I should have guessed: chic city, semi-important meeting ... yes God, I admit it; sometimes you can be very funny. By the time I arrived at Gare du Nord, I was sporting one mind-bogglingly enormous pimple smack between the eyes.

Now, I will never write in an impassioned manner about beauty issues, because not only do I find the idea of putting something made out of a dead baby rabbit on my face a little repulsive, I simply am fairly low-maintenance in my morning routines. However, like every girl of the Dolly generation, I know the blemish commandments: don't touch, don't pick, don't squeeze. In this case, whoever said that rules were made to broken was just plain wrong. After one very painful session with a cotton bud, I now appear to be have modeled myself on Fiona Horne and her stick-on attempts to take part in the Hindu caste system. At any rate, with a blaring stop-sign on my forehead, I am definitely feeling untouchable ...

Isn’t this normal (albeit self-interested, neurotic, middle class) behaviour, though? I mean, doesn’t everyone who has a conjoined twin on their face for two days crack the shits? And truly, it's big; I could even feel grown men backing away in the fear that bodily fluids were going to be exchanged before we even got to 'hello'. However, knowing how ridiculously vapid and self-obsessed this was, I decided to do what anyone with a vague desire for self-respect might do: I went for a run, had some beer, and ate lots of chocolate. After this little combo, I’m now feeling so beatific that I could give Pope Ratzinger a run for his money. Whilst I realise that this sweat/alcohol/fat combination is the equivalent wearing a peanut-butter face mask to bed, and that, odds are my second head will have developed a whole new circle of friends by tomorrow morning, I’m willing to take the risk. What can I say?

Life in Belgium. Life on the edge.