oz culture

We often receive TV broacasts relayed from Australia, it's the usual stuff you'd expect: Skippy re-runs, and repeats of Home And Away, Neighbours, etc.

Well suddenly all that has changed, and there's only one programme on, round-the-clock: bushfire caught on film, bushfire interviews, bushfire discussions, footage of half-singed koalas. You can see the whole of Orstrahya thinking "At last! Something has happened here."

With the permission of Albert, who lives in Australia,, here's a fragment of an email he sent me:

... strewth it's been hot here, too hot to think straight. For weeks we were sweating naked in front of fans. I bought an air-conditioner, but of course the electricians are all too busy installing for other people, so the machine's just been sitting there in the box. Now I've finally got a guy to come and do the installation this week, and the weather's suddenly turned cold and it's flamin rainin! Who needs the air-conditioner now?

Notice the complaining tone. The Aussies are no longer world-leaders at cricket, but they're still world champions in whingeing. To be fair, they're not whingeing at all about the firestrorms, they're crowing: g'day world, look at us, we've got world-class fires. Next week, they'll be bragging about their world-class floods.

For some reason they're not keen to talk about the cricket. A recent Australian newspaper article, headlined "Australian cricket will be back", actually spends only two sentences on cricket before wandering off topic to crow at length about Lance Armstrong racing his bike in Adelaide, Roger Federer playing in Melbourne, and Australia's world dominance of Australian football. Anyone would think their cricket team's recent performance wasn't worth talking about.

My friend Alec left a helpful comment for Ricky Ponting at the newspaper.

bushfires and bullets

Too busy to blog right now, what with dodging hazards, but all will be revealed. Back when the clairvoyant said I would die around now, I assumed he meant the black spot, not the burning bush or the assassin's bullet. As ion I think said, there's no point in worrying, because it'll turn out to be the bus back from the hospital after the all-clear that'll kill you.

ethical dilemma on day one

The first day of full-time work yesterday was disappointing. No, it was depressing.

When my guard was down I wandered into a meeting and then allowed myself to be drawn into a discussion. People were suggesting changing the beginners' course by giving it some of the horrible java classes that are normally taught only in the intermediate course.

When I objected that this was cruel and unusual punishment, the rationale offered was that the students who were destined to fail the intermediate course should instead be failed six months earlier. Call me old fashioned, but I still regard my work as helping our paying customers to learn something, not pissing them off as quickly as possible.

At this point, the meeting seemed to disintegrate, and everyone else mysteriously drifted off to do photocopying or whatever. I was sitting there alone for a while before I realised they weren't coming back.

So I left too, and got on with something useful myself. Walking by the room later on, I noticed that the meeting had mysteriously reconvened itself in my absence.

I'm in an ethical dilemma now. I could speak out against their unfair plan. For one thing this idea, of spreading the delights of java, completely ignores the fact that the official curriculum of the beginners' course contains no programming at all, let alone the more advanced programming they want to use to get rid of students.

But can I be bothered making all that effort? Writing memos, having more meetings, alienating colleagues, and straying into other people's insanity when I've got plenty of my own.

Another option is to step around the madness and go over people's heads. Which incidentally is what they did when they wanted to shaft an (admittedly useless) staff member. It would be satisfying to see them live and die by the sword, but then I would attract the same sword to myself next.

And a complication is that it involves the person I share a room with, who happens to have been a bit of a cow recently, and it has taken me all my time just being consistently rude to her. I think that's enough of a project to be going on with. I sometimes forget that all the toilet training and self-harm has left me incapable of achieving anything useful.

So a pox on all their houses. If I want, in a few months I can encourage the students to mount an official protest when they inevitably fail.

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Meanwhile, some unbelievers continue to deny the existence of the USB cable: