Not suitable for readers under 36 years of age.

Fucking fuck fuck fuck.

.....

............


..................

Fuck.


........fuckity fuck fuck fuck.


NZ was fabulous, came back to uni on Monday raring to go, got stuck in to it and got heaps of work done.

Tonight, Tuesday, I had to go to a farewell for a staff member at 6pm and play badminton at 8pm. There were 3 postgrads still in the office when i left, putting my beautiful little 12" ibook G4 to sleep for an hour until i came back to pick up my lappy, bag, bike jacket and helmet before scooting to badminton.

Went across the road and had a good time until 7.10pm when I wandered back across the road to uni and up to the locked and darkened office.

"Hmmmm, odd" thinks the Mad Hatter as she enters the postgrad office. "Someone has packed up my laptop and put it somewhere safe, thinking i wouldn't be back. They haven't done that before but it's nice that they care."

"Hmmm, even odder and slightly disconcerting" thinks the Mad Hatter as she scans her desk and opens possible hiding places for her laptop and notices that her schoolbag and the charger are also AWOL.

"Oh fuck" thinks the Mad Hatter, realising that some asshole has decided to use a key (!!!) to get into the locked room, steal her laptop, bag and charger and wander out the back door.

The Mad Hatter proceeds to verbalise this thought loudly for a minute or too - accompanied by slamming of filing cabinet door and kicking of chair.

The Mad Hatter then calls her mate who was the last one out. We have had the 'lock it or lose it' mantra beaten into us so of course she locked the room before leaving to catch the 7.13pm train.

She left the building after 7pm.

I came into the office at 7.15pm.

In 15 minutes some shit [nastier word edited out on recollection that several family members now read this blog!] with a key has stolen my thesis, my emails and my digital life.

Thank god for backups (the last of which was 2 weeks ago - one week of which was holiday and thus not working time) is all i can say.

Anyone on for a little vigilante crime busting?

Actually, I've got my rose-coloured lenses on for both sides of the Tasman.

I thought I might balance out yesterday's one-eyed but very satisfying rant with a little rave about just one of the things that makes Melbourne a bloody marvellous place to live (Noo Zulland will always be 'home' but the fact that I am living by choice in Melbourne speaks for itself). And that is (discussions about appauling immigration policies and latent racism aside for the time being), the fact that Melbourne has so many incrediblly vibrant cultural layers (and if you look at Melbourne's immigration history there are definite 'layers' or 'waves' of immigration over quite distinct time frames) co-existing and even, at times, blending, in a reasonably civil way that makes this city really quite special.

After getting up suitably late in the day today I went for a wander through my home suburb of Flemington to get some bribery bones for the dog who we will be leaving with a house-sitter for a week when we're in Noo Zulland (I doubt that he'll notice we've gone actually but we feel guilty nonetheless).

So I wandered past the Ethiopian restaurant full of taxi drivers mid-shift, past the Vietnamese & Malaysian food hall, past the Chinese doctor's surgery, past the Halal butcher (noting that they are now authorised Australian Camel meat purveyors as well) and into the 'authentic Australian' butchers - established in 1974 by the same Italian bloke who is still running it today. The butchers is before the KFC and McDonalds which are on the same side of the road, and which are also, bizzarely, Halal certified.

I got some extremely nice bones for the dawg and wandered back, past the cool old eccentric lady with the dog that can get dozens of sticks into its mouth by loading them up its leg (our dog often says hello and looks envious), and past a young woman from the Horn of Africa who was clearly on her way to or from Tae Kwon Do lessons (the white Tae Kwon Do outfit that beautifully complemented her headscarf gave it away).

I went to a lecture by Geert Hofstede last week, a 77 year old Dutch cross-cultural research pioneer who looks bloody good for his age and is still touring giving seriously entertaining lectures. This dude produced a piece of research so mind-bogglingly difficult to replicate about 30 years ago that he can still reasonably legitimately rest on his laurels and refer to it in his lectures - something all of us wannabe academics should aspire to!

Anyways, one of the things he reckons is that in an immigrant family, the first generation 'belongs' to their homeland (the place they emigrated from), the second generation is caught in the middle of the two countries and cultures so to speak and the 3rd truly becomes 'Australian' or whatever country they're living in. I think, in general terms, this is probably correct - the mates I know who have been 2nd generation Kiwis or Aussies have definitely struggled at times with their cultural identity and the family pressures that might accompany it.

But it was interesting to see it so fabulously demonstrated in the young woman coming from Tae Kwon Do who was, I'm willing to hazard a guess, either a 2nd generation Australian immigrant, or who immigrated with her first generation parents. Although with her there didn't seem to be any signs of struggle - she was just getting on with being fabulous on a beautiful Saturday morning in my fabulous suburb in my fabulous city :-)

What's strange and foreign for you might just be home for me.

Me and the boy are off to Noo Zulland on Sunday for another frenetic round of family and friends and decent cafe indulging. We decided a few weeks ago that it was time to do it, hopped online, got our tickets and called in the dog-sitter. When we go we will only take hand luggage with (and a few plastic bags for the mountains of my favourite breakfast cereal that will be coming back with us).

But one of the Oztralians from the office is also going there in a month or so, and another Oz mate is there at the moment. The office mate has been planning her week at a conference in Christchurch for months - flight bookings and accommodation through an agent, travel insurance yadda yadda yadda. The mate that is there now emailed me 2 weeks before she left to ask if Noo Zulland has the same power supply and plugs as Oztrailer! (the answer is 'yes you bleeding idiot' BTW).

So that got me thinking in a minimalist non-theoretical way about what is foreign to us - I am off to Vietnam again in late June and have been planning for yonks - travel insurance, travel plugs, guidebooks, visa etc etc etc. But my mate whose family lives there is just as likely to do what I do with Noo Zulland and grab a ticket at short notice and pop over.

Now if I was Hammy or Tezza I would probably start raving about globalisation and shrinking worlds and conceptions of the 'other' and probably some social inequality (if I was Hammy) for good measure.

But I couldn't care less cos' I'm going on holiday!

And what's more, I'm going 'home' - where people pronounce the letter 'H' properly, don't drive like they're on a pedestrian assasination mission, have a decent version of the warehouse instead of the anemic piece of crap they have here and where you would get slapped if you asked for a Chicken Parmigiana in a decent cafe (and they're all decent!).

Rose tinted glasses? Hell yes! But it's my blog and there's nothing you can do about it :-)

See ya in a week!

On the basis that secondary school students would probably not respond to the concept...

This was in today's Noo Zulland Herald and they in turn stole it from a little poxy suburban paper...I wonder if the reporter was able to keep a straight face while writing the last line...
_________________________________________________
Hugging grannies soothe meningococcal jab fears

10.05.05 2.00pm

Coming to a school near you: granny cuddlers armed with a stack of warm hugs.

Red Cross volunteers, or granny cuddlers, have been dishing out a bucket load of cuddles to Northland primary school children as they get their first meningococcal B jabs.

Northland Health vaccinators moved into schools last week to deliver the meningococcal B vaccine. They have been accompanied by Red Cross volunteers on hand to deliver the comfort of a gentle cuddle and to wipe away any tears.

Maureen Moseley, Whangarei's Red Cross service centre manager, said the organisation had been approached at the start of the campaign to assist the programme.

"They asked if Red Cross could provide volunteers who would be able to cuddle a kiddie or allay their fears if they were a bit afraid of getting an injection," Ms Moseley said.

"We call them granny cuddlers and poppa cuddlers. They've had children and grandchildren and the little kids just respond to them."

The granny huggers are only visiting primary schools on the basis that secondary school students would probably not respond to the concept.

- NORTHERN ADVOCATE (WHANGAREI)

Dealing on furniture, plastic.

In the absence of inspiring blogs from Mouse who was meant to hide the fact that I have become even more slack of late, I have decided to plagiarise an email that came through my inbox this morning.

It read as follows:
__________________________________________________________

From: cmiec_group@tlen.pl
Date: Tuesday, 10 May 2005 1:13 AM
To: cmiec_group@tlen.pl
Subject: Work From Home As Our Representative

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am Mr.Liu Peijin ,managinig director of China Metallurgical Import & Export Henan Company (CMIEC HN). we are a company who dealon Furniture,plastic and export into the Canada/America and Europe.

We are searching for representatives who can help us establish a medium of gettingto our costumers in the Canada/America and Europe as well as making payments through you to us.

Please if you are interested in transacting business with us we will be glad.

Please contact us for more information,Subject to your satisfaction you will be given the opportunity to negotiate your mode of which we will pay for your services as our representative in Canada/ America and Europe.

Please if you are interested forward to us your phone number/fax and your full contact addresses.

Thanks in advance
Mr.Liu Peijin
Managing Director
CMIEC HN
WWW.CMIEC.COM
________________________________________________________

"Wow!" I said.

"All my life I have dreamt of becoming a medium ofgetting to costumers in the Canada/America and Europe, but especially for being a money laundering/subsidy service for a dodgy company with a polish email address that purports to be Chinese. How is it possible that all my dreams could have been answered at once?!"

So I clicked through to their VERY impressive website, www.cmiec.com, complete with scrolling pictures of business people, a computer generated building and Chinese language dead links. Sinosteel Trading Company was truly a partner to aspire to!

If anyone else is interested in joining me to do this exciting business venture ofgetting to costumers, simply send me your bank account details, eftpos card, PIN number and home address...oh, and your passport would be handy too :-)

N.B In the spirit of plagiarism I also have to acknowledge the inspiration of Max the uber-time-waster who amused himself by doing this late last year. The saga continued for some weeks and some blog entries - you can seach on fighting talk to see the whole deal if you're really keen.

Back to thesis procrastination.

Another addition to the blogosphere.

I would just like to welcome Mouse - a fiesty friend of long-standing who will brighten up this blog no end - I am looking forward to rants about taiwan, useless boys, shoes, shopping and yes, scooters :-)

Stay tuned for her debut blog!