i can now, with excellent authority, thoroughly recommend tafe trained cooks!!
i spent last night at the tafe awards night. i got all dressed up in my suit and blue silk shirt and shiny tie, and ran for the bus.
i was supposed to present an award as president of a students association. four of us were there, but it turned out there were only two awards to be given and sylvia and alex were it. rob and i were stuck up the very back of the hall on a half full table, and i decided my new mission was to not need to eat for a week.
grace was sitting down the front, and right when i was finding out from her that actually, alex hadn’t even remembered to come, allison was at my table grabbing rob to present the award. i got back to my even emptier table, and made full use of my dedicated orange juice waiter, who can’t have done much all evening but for keeping my orange juice constantly topped up.
the speeches were tedious, the keynote speech ended with ‘and god bless’, the entertainment was a little half-hearted, but the food was fantastic. there were two choices of entree, main and dessert, and thanks to the empty places next to me, i got to eat both of each. in fact, as three people ate the prawns off the top of one entree and left the delicious saffron linguine base, i effectively had four entrees. the chocolates at the end were also stunning, but they nearly made me sick – just too much. i can now, with excellent authority, thoroughly recommend tafe trained cooks!!
atheism: just not ‘cool’ enough today?
i was listening to a panel of speakers the other day at camp betty. it was called Barbarism Begins at Home, and whilst many interesting things were mentioned, and important issues raised, i found myself increasingly irritated by so many people’s lack of ability to talk about racism without making more generalisations. i think this is not a minor consideration, but a fundamental problem in how we deal with such issues.
unfortunately, due to the necessity of warmer clothing and my reliance on others in finding my way around, i couldn’t stay for the questions. on the way home, however, i thought more about another issue that had upset me. like the generalisations, i had sat there feeling irritated, but also feeling that i didn’t have the right to be. when i talked to others though, it came out as something important.
the second issue was with the very final statement of (i believe) Hegemony, Homonormativity and the ‘War on Terror’, which my memory has paraphrased as ‘maybe religious belief is the most radical thing left’.
i’ve heard this before. i’ve muttered about its obvious flaws of logic before. i’ve been scared that people actually seem to believe it before. there are some religious people you just can’t argue with, but when lefties and nonbelievers start saying things like this and expecting it to aid anti racism or religious tolerance, i start to get very uncomfortable.
i have two serious problems with this argument, as i have heard it previously. i wouldn’t want to make too many assumptions about this particular speaker, when i didn’t get to discuss it with him personally. the first problem is the smug belief of many people living within the bubble, that if something is not common within our little radical community, that actually makes it extra radical. i had trouble being accepted in the queer community when i had long hair. that is a serious problem, but it does not make my hair radical, even though hair does have the potential to be a radical issue. i felt marginalised when i lived in epping and nobody would come and visit, or help our campaigns at macquare because they said they needed a passport to get there, though i made the journey several times a week. maybe perservering with the losing battle at club mac could have been seen as radical; suburban living was just depressing. unusual does not mean radical, and we really don’t have enough hegemony to make something radical just because of its position within the bubble, when it is actually boringly common in the outside world.
i can understand that someone with a serious religious belief may also have difficulty fitting into the queer radical bubble of which i have become so fond since moving to newtown and achieving hair that gives out fewer wrong signals to this particular community. i sympathise, especially when that religion is one like islam, which is marginalised most places around here, not just in the queer community. though i’d like to think we’re better than some as we keep ourselves aware of the issues, there are certainly still many problems around inclusiveness which we need to keep dealing with. a difference, or a person, doesn’t need to be radical to deserve respect.
on to the second objection: i don’t want to rehash arguments against religion – there are many places you can read them, especially now we’re in a nice little nonbelief publishing boom. yes, religion tends to be heirarchical, patriarchal, warmongering, unprovable, incredible. what i want to know is why, when everyone knows these things, does noone stand up for atheism?
any left wing person, nonbelievers and religious people alike, can criticise the church. hillsong, opus dei, the mormons, jehovah’s witnesses, scientologists, catholics, anglicans, whichever form of orthodoxy they’ve even heard of. christian union, evangelical union, student life, css. the one one their neighbour adheres to, the one they were brought up with, the one they attend every week. the pope, pell, jensen, the archbishop of nigeria, fred nile, catholic labor parliamentarians, the liberals’ prayer group. conservatism, evangelicalism, evangelism, views on women, reproductive rights, discrimination loopholes, tax breaks. islam is a little tricky with all those issues relating to racism and imperialism, but we’re getting there now that spokespeople have been saying unfortunate things. in australia, judaism is fair game in some contexts, though in europe thoughtful people treat it just as carefully as islam.
why, then, don’t we stand up about our own fundamental beliefs about the world? there are stacks of atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, skeptics, rationalists, dissenters, deists, unitarians, pastafarians who profess to believe in the flying spaghetti monster, devotees of the invisible pink unicorn, adherents to jedi, even pagans, wiccans and satanists. almost anyone who identifies as any of these is a nonbeliever, or at least friendly.
phew! the rest of the argument needs more composition – not an easy question. watch out for the rest of the post!
three weeks of holidays!
i consider myself officially on holidays. i don’t quite feel like it, but maybe by the time it’s legitimate, i’ll have gotten used to the idea.
you see, i still have one exam left. they moved it from today to monday, which i actually consider quite rude. i’m usually all in favour of extensions – i live by them – but the way they do it here is ridiculous. we’ll all be in a fix when they actually do want something on time for once.
still, i’m not letting it worry me. every other exam – monday, tuesday and wednesday, i procrastinated for hours and still only did half an hour’s worth of flipping through the books. if i wanted to be serious about this next exam i would spend the weekend holed up in my room pursuing such exciting activities as constantly refreshing my email to see if anyone loves me, but i really don’t think it would help.
so i’ll try to fit in half an hour of work somewhere – it’s on my to do list – but otherwise, i’m being an extra in my housemate’s short film, meeting the Atheist Meetup people, dressing up in business drag to present an award at the tafe awards night, doing a dumpstering mission and a mission to reverse garbage, putting on a film night an having a painting day at NewQ, and hopefully having lunch with katharine and going to my dance class. not to mention organising a bunch of things, cleaning my room and the house, mending my clothes, holding house interviews and probably helping people move in. why would anyone work? it’s so unproductive. i want it to be holidays every day!
what do i do for fun?
i got asked this the other day, and i couldn’t answer. i’m often asked questions like that when people find out i don’t drink, and it’s hard to give an answer that i think the person challenging me will like. to ‘well, what do you do?’ the answer used to be ’student politics’. when presented like that, most people could understand that it was as much of a destructive, time absorbing vice as getting trashed every weekend. so that was ok. i wasn’t really a freak.
but fun?
i do plenty of things that are fun, but i don’t do them just for fun. most things are primarily for interest, for satisfaction, for a challenge, for necessity, or just because. there are some, though…
i will walk down the street in an outrageous outfit for fun.
i learn to dance for fun
i have adventures and hitchhike and drive for fun
and in a weird way, i enrolled in mechanical engineering for fun.
hardware terminology
It seems Dr. James Holsinger Jr. who bush is about to nominate as next Surgeon-General of the US, wrote a very homophobic article for the Committee to Study Homosexuality of the United Methodist Church. in it, he used a metaphor “In fact, the logical complementarity of the human sexes has been so recognized in our culture that it has entered our vocabulary in the form of naming various pipe fittings either the male fitting or the female fitting depending upon which one interlocks within the other.” Hugh Robertson tells us this, in a blog snippet i came across, and argues well the importance of holsinger keeping his views out of his public office. of the quote, however, he says ‘Now I do not propose to argue hardware terminology…’
now i do propose to argue hardware terminology. wow, in a blog i can expect you to hear me out, before you tell me that i’m being a bit silly and trivial.
as a student of mechanical engineering, i am under a constant bombardment of gendered context. i spend my days in a class full of teenage boys, listening to male teachers make ‘harmless’ jokes at their wives’ expense, then having them accost me in the break to tell me how much they love and respect their wives, because they saw me roll my eyes. the kid who wears the ‘lesbos, where every man wants to be’ tshirt every week, didn’t really understand why i was amused the first week, and really wouldn’t understand why i get irritated now. the graffiti on the tables is of penises. i pull people up on their use of ‘gay’ as a term of abuse, but the gendered insults are too thick and fast and besides, i’m getting to know these people, and want to get along with them. i’m in conflict as to whether it’s better when we are addressed as ‘ladies and gentlemen’ or just ‘gentlemen’, as these are often the choices. am i being included or singled out? the only female staff member teaches computers and communications, a subject from which i am exempt, and which is generally considered light weight. when i get top marks in something, my gender is commented on. sometimes the teacher is expressing pleasure at having a girl in the class. that kind of sex distinction can occasionally feel like a mitigating factor, until it turns out i’m expected to do better because i must be more careful. sometimes the expression is of suprise, which simply makes me feel dirty. i’d hate to think what would happen if i did badly at much.
and fittings which are useless without their counterparts, and categorically don’t fit with their equals, are named ‘male’ and ‘female’. just because it is entrenched doesn’t mean it is benign.
that pesky public
thinking of the imagined public, i used to have big problems with you. when i was young especially, i used to become paralysed with perfectionism. i always felt i was being watched and judged, and being a kid, i couldn’t live up to these imagined expectations – even though it was my own imagination that created them.
now that i’ve lived my life under your gaze, and grown up enough to actually do some things well, i think i’ve learnt a little better how to let you motivate but not overwhelm me. sometimes.
you are all in my head – at least until i let any of my friends know the address. enjoy the decor!
train station
maybe i write because i’m a failed photographer. everywhere i go, i miss shots i want to record, through hesitation or a broken camera. and if i don’t, i lose the camera. and if i don’t do that, i lose the photos or files. from about seventeen months of hard travel, i own about two sets of prints, one cd and a few random files. hopefully one set of photos and an undeveloped disposable, half full of photos await me at an acquaintance’s house an hour from prague, though i’ve been waiting about four years to get that bag back so can’t set my hopes too high. my ex, who i travelled with for about eleven of those months, agreed to burn some discs of everything she has. i can’t hold my breath for them either, as she’s an inveterate traveller and is about to disappear again, for another year or so, if she hasn’t gone already. not to mention that when i asked her, she started her reply with “I’ve deleted a lot of photos of you lately, but I can probably send what’s left.”
the photo i want today is a view of the train station at veliko tarnovo, bulgaria. i had to think hard to locate the fragment, but that’s the only place in eastern europe that we went by train, and left again the same way. it was a deserted, dusty station in the middle of nowhere. i can’t remember if it was bitterly cold or blindingly hot. i had a pillow. flaking red paint on the one bench seat. the platform at the same level as the tracks. walking behind the station house, a dusty carpark and a bus stop which has no information.
i don’t know if these shards are accurate, but i can see them. i’ve been through a lot of stations.
why am i here? no, right here.
why am i writing a blog? it’s not like i don’t have other things to do. i guess it’s so i don’t lose the good bits – i actually make sure i have lots of little choc chips in the icecream of my life, actually some aren’t so small, but they can all melt into the mush if you don’t pay attention. writing about my travels changes the way i look at them, for the better (www.travelpost/travel/hanaleah if you care). my experiences, many of which were actually painful, difficult and frustrating at the time, become comic, amusing and interesting in the retelling. and the story is not actually untrue at all. it was all in there, so much so that when i got used to writing while i travelled, or preparing my memories to be able to write later, i actually dealt with adventures with much more humour, and got far more out of them, than i had before.
i don’t generally do that at home. i configure the stories of my life for my close friends who let me whinge and vent, rather than the imagined public. that’s you. will you help me deal with my rollercoaster life? maybe i’ll just try.
harness fame
heh! i was at the sly fox last night, and one of the performances featured a harness she had made in my workshop. it looked good! in some strange way i feel validated, after my last workshop at camp betty being such a disaster. a disaster that nobody noticed because they were all so busy enjoying it, but i felt bad nonetheless.
i suddenly felt the urge to tell the world… good pomegranates can actually be found in sydney!
i’ve had a lovely day. i think this is the first time since i’ve been living in newtown, that i actually walked the length of king st, in the daytime – shops open, people about – and enjoyed the place. i was on a mission to buy latex, paint and rope, and came back victorious, also having snaffled polystyrene balls, a shirt and over the knee black and yellow stripy socks.
but that was not what prompted me to start a blog. oh, no! a pomegranate did that. foodworks at marrickville has seconds shelves at the back of the fruit section, and on it i spied tow pomegranates for 69c. perfectly good pomegranates! quite little, but a good colour, and solid-feeling. i also bought two custard apples for 99c, but as delightful as they are – or at least, the half of them that are good – they’re too squishy to leave the kitchen so did not prompt me to proclaim to the world. this is what pocketknives are for – so one does not have to leave the nice warm room in order to open pomegranates.
i meant to leave some for my housemates, but my will does not easily withstand fruit. it was as good a pomegranate as i would’ve found in turkey; strong tasting, bright red sections. maybe not as juicy as some, if i am to be overly critical. but very enjoyable. i tell the world: good pomegranates can be found in australia!
otherwise, i ate pumpkin burek for lunch – nostalgic, but oddly sweet – encountered friends and ex-acquaintances on the street, made friends with a person working in a shop, who will hopefully come to my next tap dancing workshop, got a tour of the aviary, a share house and venue on king st, which is madder than ours! then i went off to centrelink, where they nicely took me off reporting, so i don’t have to do anything for my money, but study. oh yeah, that…
she told me my $422 would be in the bank on monday, and as i turned to leave, she said ” how can anybody live on that???” i agree. and what a good time for a spending spree. sigh… $30 today on latex and related stuff for the workshop in melbourne, then the pomegranates, custard apples, grapes, dried apricots, dates, pineapple and fancy figs, and three bags of maltesers. well, they were $2 for 330g – when does that happen?? yesterday i also spent $80 on all sorts of studs and rings and eyelets from Birdsalls… i expect i’ll get that all back at some stage, but still. it might be some time before i get my act together and see if people actually want to buy my rubber chokers.
now, what was on that to do list? clean my room, do my assignment. write up minutes from the NewQ meeting last night. oh yes, that was something else noteworthy. we decided to try a discussion group. aparrently what a discussion group needs, more than advertising, a time and topics, is a name. we got on to drag queen/king names, stripper names… specifically the formula of your first pet’s name and the street you grew up on. i’m familiar with mine, the topic came up at home not long ago when tash bought, and insisted on wearing around, a very dubious wig. Shaggy Barons was very well received. everyone had good names then, and we were almost on the floor with laughter, but the NewQ meeting wasn’t such a goldmine. it was decided, without really asking if i was happy with it, to name the discussion group Shaggy Barons. Shaggy Barons’ Salon was offered too, but i think the former won out. well… i’m the one writing the minutes…
