Moment to Moment

What I want to be when I grow up

Over at Crooked Timber recently there was an interesting post and on-going thread about what people wanted to do when they were young, and how it relates to what they're doing now.

This seems to fit into the current 'what am I going to do with my life?' gestalt here at Casa del Momento. Here's my list:

Primary school: archaeologist.
High school: archaeologist.
University: ... something?

My archaeology obsession, born when I was about 7 or 8, may have had something to do with Indiana Jones, but it wasn't just a year or two fad. It was something I still seriously considered as a career choice even in my first year of uni.

Only somehow I found myself studying English and Communication Studies and reading poetry and discussing Kurosawa films instead, with no clear aim in mind. Writing had always been choice number two, even when I was 15 and I wrote a 200 page novella on my Dad's old laptop, I figured I could be an archaeologist who wrote science fiction novels on the side.

Hah. Now I'm in this odd career limbo and I can't help wondering if I made the right choice. Maybe I'd have really liked being an archaeologist. Instead I fell into publishing and it seemed like a good fit, only here I am in Perth working at a cafe instead.

Anyway, dear readers, what about you all -- what did you want to do when you grew up? And how does it relate, if at all, to what you do now?

In lieu of content

Job knockback number... actually, I've lost count

Sigh. This is getting rather old.  I can see why the long-term unemployed embrace the life of pyjamas and day-time TVand substance use -- much easier than dealing with the unpleasant cycle of job applications, interviews, then knock-backs. Or, as is mostly the case, applications and then... nothing.

Ah well. At least I have a warm dry house, a partner who loves me, and a dog who likes to lie at my feet while I do job applications.

Humble Poetry

I just received the best spam subject line ever: 'how time doth flit; oh shit.'

Oh shit indeed.

New Bloggy Goodness

Look!A new Australian group blog called Sarsaparilla, put together by a number of illustrious Australian bloggers (writers, academics, and assorted other smaht and creative types).

The word 'Sarsaparilla' makes me think of long hot summer days at the pool, and buying potato scallops and redskins and cans of Sars and lying on the hot concrete to dry off. That's the smell and taste of summer for me: chlorine, deep-friend potato, and sticky purple soft drinks.

I don't think Sarsaparilla the blog will be at all sticky and purple, luckily for us, because then it might get on the books and things they're going to be talking about.

Just go and read it, 'cause you're not going to get much coherence from me today.

Friday Dog-blogging (on Thursday Night)

I have to work at the cafe today -- or tomorrow, as it happens -- so like a Roman centurion I gird my loins knee and prepare for the battle by ritually sacrificing a chicken and investigating its entrails for omens on whether the enemy customers will be murderous decent tippers.

More truthfully, I generally start the day with a coffee and  some muesli and yoghurt, and the usual amount of over-thinky trepidation, except that a few days back I broke my coffee press and haven't yet replaced it. Which means the mornings have been rather less caffeinated, but since I've been sick I haven't minded so much. Maybe I'll just quit drinking coffee altogether?

No. JW doesn't deserve to have caffeine-free me for the rest of our lives together. Plus, it makes the over-thinky trepidation even worse.

Anyway, today I leave you with images of Jasperella the Uber-hund on the last warm day we had a few weeks back. The weather has turned cold now and I doubt any of us will be swimming again for a while. Jasper loves the beach and she loves to swim, but she seems to lose her confidence in between visits and refuses to go out past the breakers unless we swim out with her. After we do that, she's usually fine, and would probably swim to Rottnest if we threw the ball for her all the way.

That's JW, BTW, I was wussing out on shore. I don't swim unless it's at least 30 degrees celsius.

This is Jazzy's preferred method of tackling the breakers: by leaping over them like hurdles. Fly little doggy, fly!

You'd think  a ball that orange would be impossible to lose, wouldn't you? And you'd be wrong.

I'd like to see a cat do that.*

Bonus photo with thongs and strange men, North Cottesloe Beach:

Coming soon to Moment to Moment: what happens when your superior at the cafe is 18 years old and thinks you are the eye-rollingest loser ever! Sigh. Have a good Friday, everyone.

*I jest, I jest, oh cat lovers! Don't send me hate mail. I totally respect all pet-related choices, unless you own a Small Fluffy White Yap-Yap dog, that is.

Water

I finally took Duckie's advice and went to see the beautiful and very sad Indian film Water last night.

In 1930s India, 7-year old Chuyia is widowed when her husband dies. She is sent to live in a delapidated ashram with a dozen other widows with shaved heads, as Hinduism discourages the remarriage of widows.

The women live a meagre life as outcasts: they are ignored by wider society or actively denigrated as unclean. Kalyani, a beautiful young widow, is prostituted by one of the older widows.

But things are changing in India: during the course of the film, it is announced that Ghandi has been released from jail. Kalyani also meets a handsome young man, Narayan, who seems to herald changes in her life and the lives of the widows more generally. However, the movie eschews simple romantic solutions for something a little more complex and, I'd argue, feminist as well.

The film also caused a great deal of controversy in India even before it began shooting and drew the wrath of Hindu fundamentalists. In the end, Water was shot in Bangladesh and in secret after the original sets were destroyed by a mob and support for the film was withdrawn by the Indian government.

The 'problem of widows' isn't one that India has solved. In a country that still suffers so much grinding poverty, widows are often at the bottom of the social heap, and the film ends with the astonishing revelation that there are now some 33 million Hindu widows living in India.

Anyway, Water is visually stunning with a luscious soundtrack, and while it's an 'issues' film it is in no way heavy-handed or preachy. I think it's closing or has closed in most cinemas around the place, but when it comes on DVD you should see it.

The Nuclear 'Debate'

The SMH reports on a cabinet full of believers in global warming, with a solution that starts with 'N' and ends with 'uclear'. Clive Hamilton points out that nuclear power stations need lots of fresh water -- of which Australia has plenty, ha ha -- and hence need to be located near the coast. What about Port Stephens, he suggests?

Meanwhile, Mr Downer puts the kybosh on wind power as an alternative, as if windpower were the only other option to coal and nuclear. (What about solar, geothermal, wave power, etc, and reducing power consumption as other possible or partial solutions? I do note that there's a quote from the director Institute for Sustainable Futures in the story saying exactly that.)

The SMH also reports on the problems in France from their reactors. Namely, dealing with the waste. That story reports on irradiated dairy cows and polluted groundwater. Fabulous French cheese just got even better! Glow in the dark roquefort!

Obviously the debate about nuclear leaves a nasty taste in this nimby's mouth, and I'll put my cards on the table. I do not see nuclear power as a solution to anything.

The problem as I see it isn't with nuclear power: it's with people. History is filled with human endeavours gone horribly wrong, wars and unsinkable ships and 'cures' for diseases worse than the original ailment. What makes us think we're good enough, smart enough, precise enough, to harness nuclear energy? What makes us think we can make nuclear reactors safe enough? And storage solutions that will be permanent and unassailable for 50 000 years or until it's safe to go in there?

We're only bloody human. Look what we've done with our coal burning, deforesting, ecosystem destroying ways, increment by increment.

And if we do embrace nuclear power, aren't we simply replacing one unwanted waste product, greenhouse gases, for another unwanted waste product, namely, spent fuel rods? Isn't the goal of alternative energy to figure out ways of not sucking our planet dry of natural resources and making a terrible mess in the process? Or am I missing something?

Banning Bad

Samoa has banned The Da Vinci Code movie:

The Archbishop of the Catholic Church in Samoa, Alapati Mataeliga, said the film would affect the beliefs of young people whose faith was not strong.

Now that's just going too damned far. I'm so torn now between going to see it just to spite the Catholic Church of Samoa, or maintaining my staunch anti-DVC stance forever. Or at least until it's shown on free-to-air TV.

Snot machine

Last year I didn't get sick at all, not for the entire winter. This was because I worked entirely from home and I didn't have any friends in Perth. I was almost bubble-like in my seclusion from the outside world, and it meant I sailed through the cooler months with only one minor 24-hour bout of the sniffles.

This year, things have changed. I now have a job whereby I come into contact not only with hundreds of human beings, but also their detritus: cups and mugs and cutlery and napkins and so on, things I have to clear from the tables after they've left. Things which are no doubt smeared with pathogens. I'm also handling that most abhorrent of germ-vectors: money. Urgh. Every time I touch a bill I have visions of those ads on TV where a pretend magnifying glasses shows ordinary household items crawling with bacteria and viruses and other malign little organisms (or non-living structures in the case of viruses). And now they're on my skin! Arrgh aghhr!

*Cue the compulsive washing of one's hands, several hundred times a day*

I also have friends now and occasionally I even go to people's houses for dinner and drinks and things like that, which also increases the chances for the passing of contagion.

Simply, it was only a matter of time before my immune system packed up for its annual holiday in Fiji or wherever the hell it goes when I suddenly fall victim to a nasty cold. So I've been sick since last Wednesday and going through the various stages, from mild sore throat to full-blown 'would a drill to the temple release some of the goddamned pressure' head stuffiness and now to the blocked-everything living-underwater phase. I don't feel that sick now, but by god I sound it.
And the snot. Oh god the snot. I hate my nasal passages so much right now. My nose is raw and puffy, despite the fact that I've been using those aloe vera tissues.

Of course, my timing of this illness could not be better. I have two 2000 word articles to finish by Friday as well as two cafe shifts to struggle through -- I worked on Friday and Saturday as well, propped up only by Panadol and lots of cups of hot mint tea. I'd better get onto my editor while I still sound like death warmed over and ask for an extension, as there is no way I'm going to be able to write a story on Fair Trading legislation across Australia by then.

Edited: my lovely editor, bless her, has given me a week's extension.