Oh, no!

As a newly initiated member of the worker drone class, I feel it's my duty to compose poetry on company time. Thus, today's effort:



City

shivering grey stone
dark at floor, cold at ceiling
men run in between



Now, as we all know, Haiku is the light beer of poetry. Even so, I'm pretty happy with this one. And even though I'm going a bit Fight Club on y'all, today was a good day. I had sushi again (so good!). I did some interesting work on a defamation case, and as a result I'll be much more circumspect about what I write on this blog. For example I would never suggest that George is a practicing homosexual.

Laksa Time!

For the last three days I've been working at a law firm a stone's throw away from the central markets. On Monday, I had Suzuki Sushi for lunch. Mmmm, that's good sushi.

On Tuesday, I had Suzuki Sushi for lunch. Then I had Sushi King for tea.

By the time lunch came around today, I was (a) sick of sushi; and (b) hungry as all getup. There was only one solution: a Laksa House Large Laksa Noodle for $6.80!

I was a bit hesitant, because eating Laksa is generally a messy business, and I was wearing the suit that I'll be living in for (at least) the next five and a half weeks. Nevertheless, the call was too strong. I ordered from the friendly Laksa woman, and she looked at me like I was mad. She made a point of giving me extra serviettes. She said: 'I give you some extra serviettes'.

Suitably warned, I took my tray, and balancing a full bowl of steaming Laksa and a Peach Iced Tea, headed for a vacant seat. The food court was busy, and I sat down diagonally opposite a friendly looking man with no obvious signs of disease. I started to eat. VERY carefully.

I'm pleased to report that I managed to stay completely free of tricky laksa stains. I also got that amazing laksa high you get after a good laksa (try it, you'll see!). Tonight I went jogging, and the laksa helped overcome my lack of commitment to a regular training regime.

All in all, a good day.



In other news

Julian: Bottle Baby!

Jerry Falwell has died. I really try hard not to express happiness at the death of another human being, but perhaps there's an exception to every rule. Here's something funny related to this piece of news. Extract:

Buddha: I think he should go back for another few lifetimes. We could start him off as a tadpole.

Vishnu: That's your answer to everything, Buddha!

Buddha: Take it easy, third-eye.

Vishnu: Oh, go sit under a tree!

Jesus: Could we not talk about trees?

Classic South Aussie Bogan

No need to say more:
South Aussie Proud!


Also on a slightly less disturbing note here's a heaps good t-shirt:

Heaps Good!

All my guys, stoned, on the baseball field

I don't really have anything interesting to report about my life, so as a substitute I will strongly urge you to go and check this here thing out. It will be the funniest thing you'll see on the internet today, and will count as doing one interesting thing, if you are trying to follow George's plan of doing three interesting things every day.

Actually, if you've just gone to that link, and been having of the thought, that's not funny so much as weird, what I meant to say about a paragraph ago was that you have to give it a couple of comics for the story arc to kick in. This comic, Achewood, which I've mentioned before, is like Heroes - you need some time to mellow into it. Click the little arrow button to jump to the next comic, and keep going for about ten comics, or until you catch up to the current day.

Let me know your thoughts.

Philosophy and hamburgers*

Riddle me this, blog-o-phobes: is it just me that finds good customer service - and I don't mean extraordinary service, just friendly, helpful service - can lift you up and make you feel good for a couple of hours?

Just yesterday I had two positive encounters in the space of half an hour which left me feeling great! If it weren't for the Falcon** that almost rammed me on my drive home, it would've been a perfect lunchtime excursion.


Sadly, folks, my today has been less happy. The best I can sum it up is this:

Should you feel disappointed if someone's actions, reactions or even lack of actions indicate to you a failing of yourself or reveal a truth that you may not have wanted to know, or should you just be glad to be rid of that delusion?

Is the pain of that truth worthwhile pain? Should it be suffered with reminder of the overall good it achieves? Should it even hurt, since it may be doing you a favour?

And to make sure this ends on a happier note, here's a funny image, courtesy of Imogen:

*okay, I lied, there are no hamburgers
**the car, not the bird

P.S. - Oh yeah, I'm coming to Adelaide tomorrow for a week. I even have a gig on the 11th, which you should all come to.

This, that and the other

I just watched episode 20 of Heroes. Wow. I take back almost everything I said.

In other news, some people think Tony Abbott might be a human being, and not, as the prevailing view suggests, a conservative space alien in disguise. You be the judge:



Good grief.

Recent developments

Something is rotten in the state of Blogmark. No one's posted in over a week, and it's been two weeks since anyone other than me posted. There are two possible conclusions:
- everyone has been leading such interesting lives that they've no time to blog; or
- everyone has been leading such boring lives that they've nothing to blog about.

I know which way I'm betting. As for my boring life, I've been firing off job applications in the small amount of free time left to me after my two jobs and university commitments. This morning I got a call from a law firm to set up an interview on Thursday. Already I am hella nervous, as if those damn butterflies all been drinking of cheap bourbon. (Recently I keep slipping into Roast Beef mode when I'm writing).

The interview's with a firm that I would REALLY like to get a job with. I'd be very happy to end up there. Actually, I was kinda hoping I'd have a couple of interviews with some of the 'also-applied' firms first, so that I could work up to this one. Alas, it's not to be. I'm generally pretty crap in job interviews. I think maybe I'm not too good at self-reflection, at least not in a high-pressure time-critical environment.

Apparently the secret to legal job interviews is to act arrogantly, to give the impression that you're doing the interviewer a favour by attending. This apparently makes you look like you're confident, and you've had offers from other firms. That's the theory, but I've never tried it because I can't get past the sneaking suspicion that it would also make you look like a wanker. As all you non-lawyers are surely now aching to point out, perhaps being a wanker is not such a drawback in the legal profession...

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.


Anyone got any tips for job interviews? Note that I already imagine everyone in their underwear. All of the time. Including you.

The facts of life

For a while now, Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) has had a penchant for detailing recent acts of bestiality. He also holds opinions on copyright law, and expresses said opinions from time to time. So his latest post is, I suppose, the inevitable next step. He’s likened violating copyright to having sex with someone else’s goat. I for one think that comparison needed to be made.

Byron Wrapup Pt 3

follows on from this post

Day Three: Saturday
By now I was living the blues. Saturday's lineup didn't present as many big names as the previous two days, but I was keen to get to the fest and make some discoveries. In the end, I hung out with my cousins, got drunk, met some nice hippy girls, ate some more Langos, and had a great day.

Amos Lee
Word on the street was that this guy was worth seeing. He plays laid back bluesish tunes on his acoustic guitar, and matches it with a great soulful voice. My only criticism would be that he was a little too good. He was so talented, he made what he was doing look effortless. I want to see people suffer for their music. If you'll permit me a rather bizzare metaphore, It's like I can't get a musical erection without a bit of S&M. The blues usually gives me what I need.

Amos Lee: Too goddamn perfect

Wandering Around
Those readers with excellent memories will recall the schedule I posted in part 1 of this series. There's a bit of a gap between Amos Lee, which finished at 3:00, and the next act I saw all of, which began at 7:00. Where did these missing hours go? Well, I remember drinking, and wandering around with my cousins. I caught 20 mins of Fred Eaglesmith's set. He's a Canadian who sings country music, and has an unhealthy preoccupation with guns, trucks, trains and dogs. He sings a song called "I think it's time to go buy a gun", which is fantastic.

While waiting with my cousin Jake while my brother went to the toilet, we were, unbeknownst to me at the time, approached by three good looking females. I was daydreaming when I heard Jake say something like, 'go on, he loves it!'. The next thing I know, I receive a whack on the arse. Yelping, I turned around to see three girls run past me and into the crowd. Jake recalled the moment later on the family blog: 'Favourite moments of the fest - Three girls debating whether they should smack Andrew on the arse - I leaned over and said 'He loves a smack' - so they gave him a short, sharp whack." Love it I did.

It seems awfully decadent to pay $squillions to fly across the country (not to mention the cost to the planet in C02 emissions!) to attend a music festival, then ignore the musicians to wander around and get drunk. But sometimes you've got to take a bit of a break to refresh the musical palette. And sometimes, random girls smack you on the arse.

My brother (top), my cousin Jake (right), and two lovely girls we made friends with

Fishbone
My cousin Adam dragged us back to mojo to see these guys, who I'd never heard of. They're a black American group reminiscent of the Cat Empire, and they rock. The crowd were restless when they started out with a 10 minute, very cool jazz spoken word piece, but I was digging it. Soon, though, they launched into some high energy numbers (still very jazz-influenced), and suddenly everyone was dancing. The lead singer kept stage diving into the huge audience, getting passed round the mosh pit for minutes at a time, singing all the while. Big respect to the roadie who basically had to treat the guy's mic cable like a fishing line. When he came back towards the stage, the roadie would reel in the cable to stop it getting tangled in the crowd.

Soulman
Now I had a decision to make: did I want to check out rock legends Eric Burdon and The Animals, or stay at Mojo to wait for Ozomatli, who Adam informed me would rock? I knew that it would be a sin not to see the Animals, who are undisputed music icons. On the other hand, I was drunk and wanted to party with the young people. In the end, I resolved to head over to Crossroads, where the Animals were playing, check them out, and stay if they blew my mind. I did so and lasted five minutes before I lost concentration (I am a terrible man). As I wandered back to Mojo, I passed the Apra stage, where I saw Adam and my brother checking out Soulman. I stopped for a listen.

He's a Jamaican living in Perth, and sings fairly easy listening rocky acoustic pop. But he's got a really friendly, happy vibe, and you can't help but be won over by him. A pleasant way to spend 20 minutes.

Soulman

Ozomatli (Best crowd experience of the fest)
These guys were awesome. Another Cat Empire-style ensemble who knew how to get the crowd dancing and happy. At the end of their allotted hour, they needed to let the roadies set up for the next performance, but didn't want to stop playing. So they all jumped off the stage and started a procession through the audience - drums, horn section, singers, and girls on stilts dressed as flamingos. George and Alice will recall that a similar thing happened at the Batacuda Sound Machine performance last year; that was at Jambalaya, a small stage. This was in Mojo, and the crowd just couldn't believe it.

The band formed a circle right in the middle of the tent and started a chant. Each time they did this, from where I was standing you could hear the chant faintly at first (no mics), then it grew louder as the audience nearest them caught on. The chant would ripple back from the middle of the tent, till you could hear everyone in the tent and the people outside on the grass getting in on the action. An almost religious experience.

Ozomatli gets down with the massive crowd at Mojo

Bo Diddley
After Ozomatli I felt exhausted and energised at the same time. I stuck around to see if The Roots would be any good. The writeup in the program described them in much the same way as Ozomatli: large group with ecclectic influences including hip hop. In the case of The Roots, ecclectic meant borrowing from both Eminem AND 50 Cent. They stunk, and people started to float away from Mojo, myself included.

By then there was only one option, and that option was Bo Diddley. Half blues man, half blues legend, he's really really old but still very cool. Most of his songs are centred around how great he is, including 'Hey Bo Diddley', where he sings 'Hey Bo Diddley' and the crowd answers 'Hey Bo Diddley', and the 'Bo Diddley Rap', wherein Bo Diddley recounts his success with the ladies. A feel good end to another day in Blues Paradise.

Melbourne, Day Four

This post will have nothing to do with Melbourne, but rather just a random collection of thoughts that have been going through my head over the last 24 hours.


First and foremost, I've learnt something over the last four days or so - there is no substitute for a good newspaper. I can just sense Andrew raising a huff about this when he reads this, but the main thing I'm missing while in Melbourne is that I haven't found a chance to pick up a paper, buy a coffee, and sit down and read about the news in the world. I know that there's plenty of sites that give me news, whether global or local (Well, probably not local, but Australia-based, at least). There's a difference, though, between reading the news, and enjoying the news. You can read the news from an LCD monitor, but it takes a good paper, and a nice flat white to be able to enjoy it.

Right now, I'm missing that, unfortunately.

The next thing that's been going through my mind is Kevin Rudd's new workplace policy's (Apologies for the News.com link). I've been reading through the general gist of the article and, so far, the two main points that have stood out for me are unfair dismissal laws, and also proposed laws regarding industrial action. In regards to the unfair dismissal laws, unfortunately, I just can't say whether I think Rudd's laws are a good idea or not. In regards to unfair dismissal laws not applying to new employees of a company for 6 months, I'm not actually too adverse to that, believe it or not. Consider that most companies usually hire on employees for a probation period of three months regardless, so another three on top of this, while not being ideal, is not a doomsday prediction either.

It's interesting to note, however, that Rudd's still scrapping AWA agreements all together. To quote a piece Rudd wrote for the Labor eHerald, "Our laws will abolish AWAs – and we will do so without apology." Presumably, this means that Rudd is of the opinion that there is no element of the Australian workforce that can benefit from AWAs, or, if there is, it is not a sizable enough percentage to warrant the existence of AWAs. The alternative that I can see is that, while there is a sizable portion of the workforce who could benefit from AWAs, it's just too difficult to implement a system that will ensure that individual bargaining is not forced upon workers. Given that the Bureau of Statistics reported in 2003 that approximately 18% of the working population had Bachelor's Degrees or higher, I don't think Rudd would honestly put the working conditions of 1 in 5 Australians in the 'too hard' basket.

I am of the opinion (And I think most of you are too) that people should be allowed to negotiate individual working conditions, if that's their choice. If they want to engage in collective bargaining, that's understandable too - I am all in favor of workers joining together to provide greater bargaining power against a vastly better resourced employer. I just also think that individual bargaining should also be allowed, if the employee wants it. Embarrassingly enough, I'm not sure how much, if any, leeway exists for individual bargaining under a government that's banned AWAs. I'll try and find out by my next blog post - I just wanted to throw a contentious idea out to you all, and get some discussion going.

Lastly, but definitely not least(ly), can someone please deny an ugly rumor I've heard going around - is it true that the Mall's Balls have gone walkabout? Please, Andrew, Alice, Kate, Jono, Daniel, anyone, say it ain't so!