Useful tip: Never purchase readymade Vietnamese agar drinks unless you want to spend the day vomitting and comatose. I thought it was too cheap...
Haven't posted in a while; new house has limited internet access. Things have been happnin' around here, a change from my other house. Home was great but I'm glad I got out on my own two feet. Discoveries so far, apart from the agar no-nos: #1- Everything costs money (yeah, no shit, but still) #2 - Eltham was really just a small suburb; the city is totally different. There are lots and lots of things to do and I feel like a boy from a country town.
Apart from these fairly predictable discoveries, I have managed to find a job (I hope) at a clever little magazine which distills lots of news sources down into nice neat chunks. It seems great. Also, I was lucky enough to get an internship (as part of my course) at a great newspaper. I'm excited, but scared out of my brain and wondering seriously about my competency. Time to bone up on everything that's happened in Victoria/Australia/the world, over the last, say, hundred years.
Notes from brief travels to South Australia just discovered:
Small town, nowheres. Modern brick, sleek lines, built on coarse earth. The kind grass won't grow on without superphosphate infusions. The lawn sticks tight to the houses, clinging to their providers, here and there daring to extend a line down the slope.
Other things I've been thinking bout:
All the animals we share our lives with in urban settings also share our unique flexibility and adaptability. Cockroaches, pidgeons, rats, foxes - the changable, the ones able to accomodate unnatural modes of being, living in concrete and walking on bitumen. We dislike them for their scrawny compliance with the rules of living in a foreign place, for the way they are willing to prostitute themselves in any way to stay alive. To live in a culvery, on top of a train station, to pioneer the city in ways we have not.
Notes from staying with my gran (a grand old woman, tough as nails)
- Arthritis bulbs blooming in her fingers
And finally, a little thought on mobility. It used to be that we had to go and find the methods of communication, to put outselves in their way. Home phone, posted letters require being in a place. Now, mobiles and email addresses follow us around. The power balance has shifted.
Haven't posted in a while; new house has limited internet access. Things have been happnin' around here, a change from my other house. Home was great but I'm glad I got out on my own two feet. Discoveries so far, apart from the agar no-nos: #1- Everything costs money (yeah, no shit, but still) #2 - Eltham was really just a small suburb; the city is totally different. There are lots and lots of things to do and I feel like a boy from a country town.
Apart from these fairly predictable discoveries, I have managed to find a job (I hope) at a clever little magazine which distills lots of news sources down into nice neat chunks. It seems great. Also, I was lucky enough to get an internship (as part of my course) at a great newspaper. I'm excited, but scared out of my brain and wondering seriously about my competency. Time to bone up on everything that's happened in Victoria/Australia/the world, over the last, say, hundred years.
Notes from brief travels to South Australia just discovered:
Small town, nowheres. Modern brick, sleek lines, built on coarse earth. The kind grass won't grow on without superphosphate infusions. The lawn sticks tight to the houses, clinging to their providers, here and there daring to extend a line down the slope.
Other things I've been thinking bout:
All the animals we share our lives with in urban settings also share our unique flexibility and adaptability. Cockroaches, pidgeons, rats, foxes - the changable, the ones able to accomodate unnatural modes of being, living in concrete and walking on bitumen. We dislike them for their scrawny compliance with the rules of living in a foreign place, for the way they are willing to prostitute themselves in any way to stay alive. To live in a culvery, on top of a train station, to pioneer the city in ways we have not.
Notes from staying with my gran (a grand old woman, tough as nails)
- Arthritis bulbs blooming in her fingers
And finally, a little thought on mobility. It used to be that we had to go and find the methods of communication, to put outselves in their way. Home phone, posted letters require being in a place. Now, mobiles and email addresses follow us around. The power balance has shifted.
posted by Doug @ 3/04/2004 02:34:00 pm
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