Reading Underwater

Name:
Location: Sydney, Australia

I used to blog about books - until I got the complete Stargate boxed set.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Loop

I'm not going to talk about how the Socceroos woz robbed because I don't think they were and I don't want the lovely Lucas Neill to fell any worse than he already does, the poor pet.

I think we played well but the Italians were simply better. The refereeing sucked but that's not for the first time in this tournament. It was better than when we played against Brazil and I'm not just saying that because I was surrounded by 15000 screaming Australians during that game.

What is strange is that I'm still in that slightly twilit jetlagged state where things aren't quite real. For instance it seems VERY HARD TO BELIEVE that that Johnny Howard is interested in soccer. Everyone loves a winner I guess.

While I was away I only read the international press and feel badly out of the loop on Australian local news. You might be pleased to know that Our Nic's wedding made the International Herald Tribune and Macquarie Bank was in the Financial Times.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Geoff net

I've just returned from Germany, land of efficient public transport, cheap beer and excellent baked goods. It is truly horrible to be back here with jetlag.

Luckily the eight German classes I did before the trip gave me more practical words to use than the dim recollections of high school I employed so badly last time I visited. Still, 75 per cent of the questions I asked in German were answered in English...

One word that was new to me was 'geőffnet' which means 'open'. I have no recollection of this at school but sure enough when we went around the place it was on every public building, restaurant, bar, museum, hotel, everywhere. So much so that my Beloved, whose German language is limited to what I've told him, asked me whether Geoff Net was their patorn saint or somethin.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Glass Half Full day

Despite my dire predictions, that quasi-eugenics bill didn't pass in two weeks flat but was sent into committtee. This means there'll be a public debate now before the government does exactly as it wants. Phew.

I'm still reading about the hippies in 1968. Part of me keeps hearing Cartman's voice inside my head (freaking hippies!) but part of me is appalled that student sit-ins that were so completely matter of course in my day 20 plus years later were met with violence, even in the US. Appalled! It's like after the battles had been won we were still mindlessly following the dead rituals of protest even for far more trivial issues (fees, radio stations, VSU rather than the draft, academic freedom, civil rights) No wonder no-one took us seriously.

I'm off on holidays for a couple of weeks. I might even finish that book while I'm away.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Finally, a book for slow reading


I haven't posted for a while because I'm feeling slightly guilty about how long it's taking me to read 1968: the Year that Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky which is about the wave of civil rights and political activism that happened then apparently everywhere except Australia. My Beloved was besotted by Kurlansky's previous book called Cod (the fish that rocked the workd for centuries until the invention of trawling caused the fisheries to collapse throwing Newfoundland fishermen out of work) and begged me to buy 1968 for him when it first came out.

Alas, he read the first chapter, declared it boring and then put it next to the bed for about six months until it was relegated to a bookshelf.

I picked it up last week, read the first chapter and thought it was going to be a month by month account of a period I know very little about and sort of like a digest of all the newspapers. This would have been fun because I love newspapers. I get very anxious if I miss the news as if countries have no right to start civil wars when I'm not paying attention. But it isn't like that. After that scene setting about the first few weeks of January in Paris, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the US, it's structured more thematically and gosh even talks about things that happened before 1968. Like the Cuban revolution and stuff.

It's one of those books that explains things that have been that way all my life so I'm feeling very ignorant for not realising them. Things like before the six day war they didn't use the word 'Palestinian' but talked about Arabs. And what 'flower power' meant. And what the Black Panthers were. And, this is embarrassing, Eugene Macarthy who ran for president in 1968 is not the same guy who persecuted communists in the 1950s (and his name was Joseph). And that until then television wasn't everywhere so people didn't get to see battles the day after they happened in their living room.

So my mind is expanding but it's a very slow read.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Doctors do care

I was much relieved by this in the SMH today where doctors are claiming new legislation preventing the storage of prisoners' reproductive material was dscriminatory. It says:

Storing sperm or embryos was a standard procedure offered to anybody undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy, which are known to affect fertility, said Tony Eyers, a colo-rectal surgeon at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

"By taking this decision you are saying that people who have committed these crimes should not be allowed to reproduce. You could say that it smacks a little of eugenics.

"These people have been sentenced to a long period in jail but they have not been sentenced to never being parents," said Dr Eyers, who is also chairman of the clinical ethics committee at Sydney South West Area Health Service.


Nothing will happen but at least I'm not alone.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Mental Health Day


So today I stayed home (with permission) to write an application for a job I don't really want so that next time I have to apply for current job I'll have had a bit more practice than last time when I had a brain spasm in the interview and my boss suggested I go on a job interview course. This was doubly humiliating because I'd already been doing the job for the year and had aced my interview the the first time(Performance management by advertising people's jobs mightn't SOUND particularly fair but they promise us that next time will be the last, Scouts honour.)

So in theory I'm trying to get some real world job interview experience. Trouble is I like my current job so I'm only applying for things a few steps up the ladder. Things like CEO of CocaCola Amatil or Managing Director Nine Network. Strangely enough, the phone hasn't exactly been running hot...

With this level of enthusiasm, is it any wonder that I read a book until three o'clock this afternoon? But it was a goodie! Paranoia, by Joseph Finder whom, to my shame, I'd never heard of before. If Dan Brown was this good, I wouldn't mind that half the people on the train were reading his books. I found Paranoia in the cupboard at work and I had low expectations about. I picked it up because the cover was pretty (red whith noirish illustration, not like the US edition) but then couldn't really put it down once I'd started. It's a fast paced and funny thriller about hightech corporations and industrial espionage.

But no wonder Finder's good: it says in the back that his brother is a managing editor at the New Yorker. Goodness, I'm impressed by that for some obscure literary pretentious reason. Maybe they talked about the use of semi-colons at the dinner table. Bet Dan Brown's family didn't. Not that I care or anything....