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Postcards from Australia - by No Place Like Oz

...Even in Australia

October 10th 2006 03:15

Everything goes wrong sometimes, for all of us, please tell me not just for me!
Everything goes wrong and sometimes you just lack the drive to fix it. School has me in a funk today. I had an early class so i got up (earlier than i like) and i sat through the most tedious, useless lecture imaginable. And then I called home. And then I checked my email, and here I am at 1:30 in the afternoon and I haven't done any work on my lastest assessment. Its 1:30 in the afternoon which you would think would leave me plenty of time to get something done, but I can't find the motivation. I can't be asked to care about looming deadlines, and theories of international relations. North Korea may have just tested a nuclear device, arguable the reaction of the world community will have long-lasting effects on global security and especially security in my asia-pacific region and i can't be bothered to care. So where does motivation come from on a day like today? The sun is shining so I'm motivated to go out to lunch. The sun is shining so I am motivated to go on a run. The sun is shining so I am motivated to be doing anything but sitting in front of this computer any longer. And I want to fight the urge to blow off the day (who can afford to blow off an entire day of work!) but then I have to wonder if i'll be able to get anything done in this state of mind. Will anything go my way today should I try and make my own luck, coral my own fate, fight for my own internal threshold of procrastination to be crossed spurring my otherwise unmotivated butt into work-mode? Or, should I just heed the advice of the great Alexander (you know, Alexander of Alexander and the terrible horrible no good very bad day) and let today slide by, because in the end you have to waste some time, and sometimes things won't go your way, and no matter how much you fight it: SOME DAYS ARE LIKE THAT...EVEN IN AUSTRALIA!

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Posted By: No Place Like Oz - Category: travel writing

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MYspace Procrastination

October 8th 2006 05:48

Being far away from home has its advantages. Afterall, if i was not a perpetual traveler I would not have acquired friends around the world, and if I was not constantly dashing from one place to the next there would be no need to 'stay in touch.' I would BE in touch, literally. And thus, if my penchant for travel had not taken me around the world and back I would never have discovered the miserable , fantastic procrastination device that is: myspace!

An easy way for friends in any location, from any venue with internet access to have a quick update of what I'm doing, when the last time I logged in was, how many friends I have, how many pictures i've taken, and generally more information than you'd typically want one to be able to acquire without your knowledge

Nonetheless, we're all guilty of providing that information once we join. We caption our photographs, choose selectively the friends we want to display on our top favorites list, and generally continue to act as though we're close to people who we have long since lost touch with. Old friends become old strangers in a matter of yeasr, but this way, we still have the access to their lives without involving them, at all. What a clever invention of moderntity: Friendship without interaction, Procrastination, without distraction of another.

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An Inexplicable Truth

October 5th 2006 04:43

I am sad for my country today.

I saw An Incovenient Truth the other night. The Al Gore documentary on climate change... Anyway, I sat there watching the slideshow, listening to Gore go through the information and I was struck by something more powerful than the information he was conveying. This is a smart man. Here is a man who was introduced to a revolutionary (and less than mainstream idea) by a professor in his undergraduate training. Here was an Your text goes hereengagedYour text goes here man, someone who absored information, felt compelled by ideas, struggled to comprehend was sat on the verge of his absorption. Gore, for all his personality flaws, or campaign woes, is fascinated by knowledge, and he has the capacity to be changed by changing information.

In the course of the movie Gore points out to what lengths he's gone to really grasp the ideas at hand. He has distilled difficult scientific understandings, and put together conclusions in a way that they become available, know-able, to the general public. And yet, here is a man who is not the President of the USA. More moving than the faux sentiment running through the movie, more saddening than the news that one day soon we will be faced with dramatic climate catastrophes, was the thought that this man did not compel the people of the United States to vote for him. That the anti-intellectual sentiment raging within the borders of this super-power brought to power an igornant, bumbling, distainful, disasterous, administration. How do we stand a chance in realizing the potential for good embodied in the position we have in the world if we can't, as a country, put a smart man in power?

I want a president who is more captivated by learning than I am, than I will ever be. I want my fellow citizens to feel the same. But that is not Australia's strong suit, either. Intellectual curiousity doesn't win much of anything for politicans, anywhere it seems. And I am sad, for my country, my countries, this world and its future.

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Posted By: No Place Like Oz - Category: the arts

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CRIKEY!

October 2nd 2006 08:49

Has the news spread across the globe? I'm sure it has, how could it not have? Steve Irwin, Australia's own was killed in a 'freak stingray filiming accident.' I'm only sort of making light of the situation. This man was an Australian legend, and more or less and Australian ambassador around the world.

I first encountered Mr. Irwin in an Engligh Literature course in South Australia. We were discussing stereotypes of Australian men as they were represented in text. My lecturer turns to me after the conversation got going and asked, "can you tell us what American women believe all Australian men to be?" I blushed, I hadn't really ever pondered the stereotypical Aussie bloke. I hesitated, and just as I was about to answer an Aussie bloke in the back of the tut chimed in, "you think we're all Steve Irwin, no, mate?" "Steve Irwin," I said out loud cautiously while racking my brain for why this name sounded at all familiar. "Yeah, mate, the Crocodile Hunter!" replied my oh-so-helpful friend at the back. "Um, yeah, I don't think so" I replied. "To us y'all are more like surf bums than rugged outdoorsy types

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Australia goes to the Theatre

October 2nd 2006 08:29

I remember long drive up the Eastern seaboard of the United States when I was a child. My family would pack ourselves into the mini (or the maxi) van, and drive all the way up the coast enroute to a ski-town for a weeks vacation. Mostly my dad would drive, and we would fill eight hours with discussion and music, but mostly music. We would listen to the soundtracks of many a broadway show, some of which would fill hours of our journey. We would listen to the words of these songs and we would analyze, delve beyond the words and find hidden meanings, contextualize the references, and debate over what the sub-text was supposed to illicit. The beauty of these musical operas lay not in their simplicity, or in their surface, the brilliance of the theatre was the interpretation of the experience, the meaning hidden below, which pulls you from complacancy and invites you to create meaning within the story.

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Second Coming of Age

September 26th 2006 08:25

I had a bat mitzvah 10 years ago. Ten years ago, the Jewish community accepted me as a woman. And there were speeches and I learned to lead an entire service in addition to chanting from the torah (the holy scroll). I particuarly remember one speech in which someone I quite respected reminded me to remember always, always, that 'home' is more often about people than about places. And this advice has been immesurably useful in places all over the world. Home has always been about people, and i'm lucky, therefore, to have many homes.

Each home of course has different people which make it warm, and safe, and hospitable. I have found myself now, in a home that is inhabited by some of the most diverse people I have ever encountered. And each one of them has rendered this place home

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Paris Hilton Hair

September 23rd 2006 06:20

Its always surprising when someone picks me out as foreign. I know i sound different, and as much as I LOVE the Australian obession with 80s fashion, i probably look different, I still can't figure out how people know, from a distance, and in an instant that I am not frome here. This is specifically disappointing to me as I struggle to become Australian, but the feedback people give me is wonderful. Stereotypes really can be useful in placing people it seems. I've been told that people knew I was not just American but from which coast and even which state of American I am from for some of the following:

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Bar Room Brawl

September 21st 2006 00:04

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of an argument when it suddenly dawned on you that you were neither going to win, nor were you making yourself look good? Have you ever witnessed someone else in such a position and thought to yourself how stupid they were making themselves look? Since having this experience, have you learned anything?

Last night I was in a small pub in my city with two friends from out of town, and two of their friends. It was a reunion, to be sure. I haven't seen these girls in 3 years and there was heaps to catch up on. So, over our pints and the din of a 'D-list' performer we happily reminisced, laughed, enjoyed. At the close of a really terrible song in which the performer attempted to rhyme the word potato with special, we applauded quietly but politely. Poor guy we thought, he must struggle to find work. And then he began to speak. We were sitting off to his left but he looked straight ahead and commented: "i like this space. Its very linear. And its perfect, y'know, because the quiet people have all congregated down, as far off from the stage as possible, at the door almost, and the loud people, well the loud people who want to have a conversation are all sitting by the stage."
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America Australia relations

September 19th 2006 06:47

I had the unique opportunity to induldge in my "own culture" this weekend. Ok, not exactly unique, any aussie out there can find a few americans and spend the night talking sweet fa, but i haven't done it in a while. I got to hang out with a group of Americans and all of a sudden i felt really conspicuous. I was no longer cute when I approached the bar, I was in a pack of slightly obnoxious people about to descend and cause chaos. And, let's face it, I was no longer unique, a novelty, I was one of a few, all congregating around a table at the bar, and no one had any reason to single me out to talk.

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Summertime Iced Coffee

September 15th 2006 06:17

The weather is finally warming again. I moved to Australia the first time having absolutley no idea that anywhere in the country would have a cold winter. I returned the second time with full knowledge of the facts and found myself surprisingly shocked by the onset of the cold in early june. But the sun is back and day-temps are climbing steadily. Celcius temps still mean very little to me and i find myself constantly doubling and addint 30 (is it 32) to aproximate a Farenheit temp.

Without exact degree measures, however, there is still no doubt, summer is on its way. And you know what summer means....ICED COFFEE. But of course, sadly, if you're Australian you do not know what iced coffee is. Iced coffee does not have ice cream in it, nor is it a flat white that has been chilled. You have not experienced the joys of $2 large Dunkin Donuts Toasted Almond iced coffee and you probably never will. Instead you will continue to maintain that iced coffee without ice cream is ridiculous and that a flat white is what is meant by iced coffee. And most of the time i want to accept Australian foods, words, and ways just as they are, but I am resolute in my proclaimation that iced coffee in this country is a disgrace! Iced coffe is french press coffee chilled (preferably overnight) for 12 hours. It is then combined with milk/cream/half and half and whatever type of sugar or sugar substitute you prefer. It usually comes with ice so you've got to drink it quick before your coffee turns to coffee-water in the sweltering summer sun. I can't tell you how much i'll miss iced coffee this summer. I can't tell you how many moments there will be, trapped at my desk, sunligh glittering through the floor to ceiling windows, tempting me away from work, tempting me outside, tempting me to find an American iced coffee. Still, I wouldn't want them here anyway, its a slipperly slope, afterall, and Australia should remain as uniuqe and individual, as far from American-pop culture as it can possibily remain. So, i guess in my ceaseless quest for Australia I will learn to enjoy iced cream in my iced coffee....

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October 2006

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