I swam for a whole hour and feel much better, havent' actually done much work, but I feel better about it, actually that doesn't sound so good, ha.
I should avoid lunchtime swims though, too many people. Plus far too many men who will not swim in the slow lane despite the fact that they are slower than a floating brick. I am no olympian but when doing freestyle I easily overtake slow breast strokers. Also the fast and slow lanes had about 8 people in each which is a lot for a 25m pool, but the slow lane was empty, so I just went there instead.
Now I absolutely have to do some marking, I am dreading it as I am so confused about the essay topics for this course, they are far too broad and just really bad. They are meant to be for research essays but neither really asks a research question. Plus I got no help for ages out of the course coordinators about how they wanted the essay plans marked, I would have assumed that we would mark them generously as they are more about giving students guidance than marking them on writing skills. I am still not sure really, I asked if they were to get letter marks or just out of 10 and no one knew. Grr.
Anyways I am actually bored of ranting about this subject, it is just endlessly rantable and it never gets better.
I feel a bit boring at the moment. Basically just sitting at desk and writing. The writing is going reasonably well though very slowly. I thought I was finished this chapter last week but then found I could not write a conclusion and decided that was because the second half was a mess and so it basically had no obvious conclusion. It has all been rearranged now. I am sure my supervisor will be amazed that it has taken me six weeks to edit 6000 words. When I began it was 12000!
In other news I have the uni break, hurrah. I can't believe the coordinator actually expected us tutors to come in for more long boring meetings during the break, especially when our next workshop is basically organised. It is about low vision and I think we are going to look through glad wrap or something and then consider how the world is different for vision impaired people. Excitement.
Went for a swim this morning. I managed about 1.1 kilometres I think, I always have trouble keeping track, especially because I mostly swam freestyle. Ran into my friend Juan on the way back who I saw briefly at the Art Fair but we were both very hungover and tired so we had a nice but brief chat.
Now I am determined (again) to finish this chapter, I thought about it a lot while I was swimming and I think I can see what it needs to be. I had to have a huge sort out last night because I couldn't find any articles anywhere, my old file boxes are falling apart and a lot of articles are shoved in piles which seemed to make sense 6 months ago. I really need a proper filing cabinet, it would truly change my life, that and some proper shoe storage. But considering i have only about 20 pairs of shoes and well over 500 articles I think there is a clear priority.
What else... I made a banana cake yesterday suing this recipe, but I add a little golden syrup which gives it extra moistness.
I am off to a lecture this evening on Eugene von Guerard.
I woke up very early this morning, for me anyway. I was wide eyed at about 8:30 so I decided to get up and go for a walk to Laurent to buy some pastries and to get a newspaper to gaze vacantly at fashion and feel hungry at food reviews and do the crossword and sudoku (not because I wanted to read Costello's memoirs).
It was a beautiful morning, so sunny and mild. I put some pictures of my walk on my other blog (HINT HINT).
But here is one because there is no way I could possibly express the delightfulness of the weather in words.
I am busy working away on footnotes at the moment. So frustrating, I always have sworn to not be lazy with them, I learnt my lesson in honours but nonetheless they still appear all crazy with big scary message sin capitals from me a year ago. "FIND EXAMPLE" "WHAT DOES KLEIN SAY" "GET THOSE DAMN PAGES".
What would really solve it is a visit to somewhere like the Kunsthistorisches in Florence. I wish we had a decent library like that in Melbourne, even a non specialised one that had a lot of art history.
The state library is aesthetically nice but has been badly arranged, plus you have to order the books which is not good for footnote checking, and it is full of people surfing the web, urgh. Mebourne uni has a lot of what I need but they have kindly spread it over four libraries in three locations and also whacked a heap of it in the store. grr to them.
Not necessarily in this order...
Enjoyed the sun.
Read some interesting analysis of the downfall of theatricality (Diderot did it).
Made a cheesecake
Made some chocolate truffles, a bit messy but should taste nice.
Went to Myrtle's housewarming
Went for a swim.
Sort of looked at my chapter for a long time while I thought about other things.
Enjoyed the sun and the blossoms.
I am just writing about our negative perceptions of theatricality and where they came from (I blame Nietzsche) and I love this quote.
I detest leaf blowers. Honestly they should be banned. Currently the caretaker of our block is doing his usual 25 minutes of leaf blowing and we don't even have any, oh maybe 2, just pick them up for god's sake. I saw them up the road the other day as well, sure they might be more useful in big areas, but it seems so wasteful of energy to chase one leaf for 5 metres. The drought stopped people sweeping with the hose, so shouldn't global warming persuade people to stop sweeping with leaf blowers?
Back to the thesis.
I feel better today. Mark found me in a miserable heap muttering crazily about "word formats being against me, and the world too" so he is going to help me with his keen proofreading eye on the weekend. I also had a nice day which made me stop and think about the fact that even though I am working about 6-10 hours a day every day on this damn thesis, I still get to be flexible and do things it would be hard to do in another job.
First I went to a Writer's Festival event that Naomi had booked but had to miss because of sickness (get well soon!), it was good. It was an interview with Michael Burleigh and Orlando Figes who are experts on the Third Reich and Stalinist Russia respectively (I also really like Peter Mares who is the temporary The Book Show presenter). The session was about evil, but that concept was more or less summarily dismissed early on as not all that useful. I would have liked a bit more in depth probing of evil itself, and why perhaps we label these regimes as evil, while we don't with others. But it was interesting.
Then I was passing ACMI and as one of my friends has just got a job there I thought I should have a look see as I never go. The main exhibition is correspondences: víctor erice and abbas kiarostami . I didn't look at everything because there was a lot there, but some of the highlights were a parallel film by both filmakers about childhood, one in Spain and one in Iran, just exisiting alongside one another rather than making a didactic point. Very beautiful.
Then I went into the next room and realised the Kirostami's photos are some of my favourites! I hadn't put the filmaker togethr with the photographer for some reason.
Here is one that is in the exhibition:
I will go back again.
Then I did a bit of a cafe attached to library editing crawl. I had a flat white at Journal and edited 'Shows and spectacle', then wandered through Myer to try expensive hand creams, then went to Mr Tulk and had a radicchio and taleggio toasted sandwich and edited Illusions, the stayed for a flat white and struggled with editing 'Fake and Ephemeral Structures'.
I am skipping my scheduled supervision because I just don't have the drafts of my Introduction and Chapter One ready, sigh, I have worked on them very hard but I just can't meet any deadlines I set myself. I worked for well over 10 hours editing yesterday until my brain imploded and I was questioning everything. It is all very well to set these deadlines but it just feels like everything will in reality take so much longer.
On one hand the editing seems more straightforward because I have distance from the writing, but then after a few pages of re-writing every line I just get depressed about how crappy some of it is. I also feel sort of trapped behind some wall and I just can't push through to get these things done, I can see how they need to be and what I need to do but I just can't get there. Even straightforward things like finishing footnotes and I have the books and texts and I can't even get up to get the books and finish them.
I think all this feels compounded by teaching a ubject I feel is rubbishy and have zero enthusiasm for, which I also think represents the future of unis, including more of this badly paid teaching, but unfortunately being badly paid is better than being completely poor. Honestly, what is the point of having a PhD if all it guarantees is really badly paid teaching of subjects I don't even like?
I am so drunkity drunk, and I haven't even really drunk that much, just ate nothing all day, silly sillly. Had drinks tonight for my friends, it was meant to be a celebration of their civil union but the British High Commission didn't give back Huw's passport ( he is heading to UK for study) so they couldn't go to NZ for the ceremony. Damn you england 
So in the end it was just a happy boozy night. I have left Mark at it, I was literally falling asleep in the supper club. I also may have lost my most favourite scarf, which is also one of my most favourite possessions ever, I bought it in Florence! Eeek, I am hoping it turns up. sad times.
I did meet a hugely obnoxious person though, urgh, she talked down to me like I was 12, then I said something about 'when I started uni in 1998' and all these people said 'oh my, you make us feel so old', and they are all about 30. Ummmmm ok then.
Another week of teaching down. It is amazing how different groups of students can be. If I was only teaching my first group I would be seriously doubting my ability as a teacher, they sit there oh so silent. I have resorted to giving them group work, even group discussion, which goes against my tutoring ideal, but it is better than silence.
I am a bit frustrated with my thesis. I had a plan all done last Wednesday but I haven't got anything done, a combination of busy-ness and disorganisation. Yesterday was meant to be my day for writing my Introduction, I went in to un i to have a form signed, and then started worrying that I actually had no idea what an introduction should be like, I have an introductory chapter, but what goes in the introduction. I think ideally my recipe is "pithy quote that sums up problem" - followed by my intelligent yet well balanced insight into the existence of the problem and lack of research, followed by the more ho hum list of what is in each chapter but done in such a way as to seem like a seemless and persuasive progression toward a higher plane of understanding. Hmm. I looked at some other thesis online from the states and felt better about the appalling lack of grammar.
Then I went to the market and bought olives and bread and gave up on my plan of a burek as the crush was too intense.
I then felt tired and went home but I should have persevered in my plan to go to Journal and order green tea and write my introduction as I just ended up mucking around and tweaking things at home. I am so sure the convenience of word processing is far outweighed by the distractions provided by the internet, spider solitaire and so on. Maybe there was a window of oppurtunity between the coming of convenient computer word processing and the computer becoming a portal to procrastination. On the other hand I am pretty sure we had computers at home for games before we had them for work.
Off topic have other people ever noticed the delightful combination of homo-eroticism and homemaking in the Manchester Unity building in a scene I call 'Nude men buy houses'?
Is what I am eating, vanilla tea with cherry and cream cheese strudel. Yum.
Had the fusion panel today, it went fine, I may have spent quite a lot of it pretending to take notes and in fact writing my new thesis intro.
This weekend holdeth:
Breakfast get together, slightly frightening but I am sure I can get up, then there is my fear of crossing the river, argh!
Drinks for a new doctor, hurrah, I must let it be inspriing and celebratory and not feel down because of my slowness.
Winter feast at mum and dad's, I will make chocolate brownies and huddle in front of the fire.
I wandered off to the art fair at the exhibition buildings on Sunday. It was good. I had a hangover. Maybe that helped to filter the enormous amount of information.
I haven't really been to an art fair before. The space was chock full of art, a lot to take in, people seemed to be having real trouble with their spatial awareness, possibly spatial awareness actually switches off in cases of visual over-stimulation.
I found it both fun and overwhelming to look at so much art, especially in the short time I had.
Good and bad and just stuff about the art fair.
- Boring or shit artwork looks much worse, when you can look over your shoulder and see something that is better and more engaging I just don't feel the need to try and engage with anything that is pretentious or dull.
-Looking at how much art costs is fun, the art fair is about selling after all. I had fun reflecting on the way a monetary value might be arrived at for different works of art. It is also just fun thinking "$24 000, for THAT SHIT", teehee.
-Looking at how galleries present themselves is fun. Apparently the fashions on the field were not so exciting on Sunday, even Anna Schwartz had dressed down to jeans, black of course.
Some art I took photos of for various reasons, my lens had a splodge so excuse that. Oh and I didn't exactly record what everything was, but hey labels aren't all that.
A sculpture for the Top Gear team. Don't know which gallery or artist but it was called Red Octopus.
Everyone took photos of everything. I did too. Are people looking at the art or just collecting it on their camera phones? Maybe that could be a good way to collect. Will they ever look ath the photos. It is as though the camera has become a necessary part of identifying something which interests you, some people were even starting to get distressed when the image wasn't any good, as though they were losing the experience of seeing it. I need to think more about this.
Jeong Yong-Kook Organic Garden (detail).
Exhibition Buildings in the sunset.
I am checking my spam, usually gmail is so reliable but lately important emails have ended up in there. Someone who wanted to book for an event wnet straight in there, but then I say that is deserved as she just wrote "I want to book a place on your walk", no Dear Katrina, etc.
Some of the real spam is just too hilarious, in gmail you get the subject and the first sentence.
Some of my favourites are the fake news.
from Oswaldo subject slim and goo from this tap
from walder subject huge tool please lassie (never knew that dog was into crowbars and the like but there you go.)
from pat subject privacy mans mail!
from holberg subject Cannibalism in USA first sentence "Elvis is found alive"
from Marcus subject Pope shot!
from Orin subject CHEAP FUEL IN TEXAS! first line "Statue of Liberty set on fire" (hmmm)
from HOwett subject Elton John dies in rocket ship first line "See secret nude photos"
from arnaldo subject Image does not put up with dilettanteness. Watches of famous... (is this a haiku of some kind, a haikuist trapped in the net maybe?)
Back to uni today. It is ever so nice not to have to write lectures.
I found out all about eyes, fun stuff. Though the talk of cutting open eyes and squidging lenses made me queasy. That activity is NOT going into the workshops. I really want to make pinhole cameras in one of the workshops. What fun that would be.
After feeling pleased at not having coffee for three days i had three today and I am all jingle jangle.
I had my tutor induction today, went well, I just hope they don't cut the tutes back to five between three tutors because I worry I will only get to do one instead of two. What else...
I am trying to finish a chapter this weekend, not sure if I am being suitably ambitious or overly optimistic, I guess I will know on Monday, ha.
Had a nice weekend at Daylesford. On Saturday I got up too late and had to somehow make/drink coffee (yes that was another lapse), bake brownies, shave my legs and pack clothes all at the same time. Caught the train, always fun, I love trains, if I had to read novels as a job I would just catch trains all day and read. We were picked up after admiring the wonders of Woodend, such as its amazing abilityto be absolutely bloody freezing. And this clock.
Then we went to Curly Flat to try wine and it was all cosy with a fire a dog called Gus who hurtled at us with his solid brick like body and then sat on my feet.
We had a nice dinner and sat by the fire and drank wine. Yum.
Jarrod and stuart fell asleep on the couch.
On Sunday Tara and Jarrod and I left Mark having his beauty sleep and went out to an organic farm with stripy organic pigs and bought vegetables including a brussel sprout tree. In the afternoon we went to another winery, with a fire, but this time it also had cheese and a grandad who sat by the fire with a short interlude when he chased some sheep.
Came home Monday and don't really know where the rest of the week went...
it is only 12 degrees inside.
