sleater-kinney are going on 'indefinte hiatus'?

this is far, far more sad than any football game.

on monday morning john howard was opening some building at sydney uni. the protest was fairly standardly ritualistic, but with rain. it could have been interesting if it hadn't rained & more people had come.

reports of howard's speech:

'Mr Howard says while the work on the brain diseases affecting the elderly are vital for an ageing population, the most important work is with the mental health of young people.

"The really gripping, arresting challenge is that of depression amongst the young," he said."'

Yep. if young people are depressed, there's something wrong with their brain.

i dreamt i had a pet bee. it was sick & i was taking it to the vet. when i got there i realised that maybe vets didn't know how to treat a bee. but the receptionist said one of the vets was a bee expert.

at job search training (that is, ritual punishment for the continually unemployed) today we were given a sheet on personal hygeine. for some reason it is titled 'HERBS AND SPICES'.
i quote: 'Scary hair. Extra unwanted hair on the face can be distracting. Eg. nose hairs, hair on the ears or the mono-brow. Particularly for girls who have side burns or extra hair above the lip. Waxing is the best way to get rid of unwanted hair so that it doesn't grow back thicker and blacker.'

if i have to go much longer i may resort to random violence.

re: white riot

& everyone i talk to is their own combination of angry, sad, sick & scared.

& now the reporting is of a general 'unrest', to-and-fro violence and law-and-order solutions, with the horrible spectacle of white-nation-racist-mass-attack forgotten, plastered over. it was being plastered over as soon as it began, reported in ready racist framework as a response to invasion, justified anger that just went a bit too far.

& last night's big how-the-hell-to-respond meeting was even narkier than such meetings usually are. though when it started with an official speech from some white boy telling his life story to explain why cronulla wasn't really racist, that only built the annoyance.

of course the trot response is to call a mass rally. big suprise. & of course a bunch of people don't feel like discussing that & head outside to discuss another action, (which is also, plainly, inadequate), and of course we are denounced. & everyone is tired.

i don't understand why one would want to whittle away the time before / between flights shopping... this airport's a gigantic mall. but then, i tend to find malls induce emotional fragility. as do airports. so, why not combine them... plus i already have way * too * much * stuff. i should've just dumped most of it a tokyo airport, if that wouldn't have triggered a full security shutdown.

in parts of singapore city i reckon i could live on the smell alone: food and spices and flowers and fruit and incense.
but the airport smells like airconditioning and perfume.

it's all a dream, right? i'm in singapore, and this morning i was in tokyo? and i was in japan for 5 months? and there's a place called sydney i'm heading for?
ok.

in narita airport a gaggle of tiny children in matching bright yelloy hats surrounded passengers waiting and in practised their english in high pitched chorus: 'what's your name? where are you from? what sports do you like?' i loved them, but couldn't linger for them to pick on me cos of my extreme anxiety about missing my plane.
and the people working at the check in seemed to have a very deadpan enjoyment of moonwalking on the conveyer belt.

when in finally got out of the airport it was storming.

while my adventures don't seem so adventurous as miss ali's, i agree with her on transit and home.

no more work for me!
so here are some teaching stories. they are fairly dull. but so is work.

1. [in which i channel gwen stefani]
there.s a beginner level lesson about giving phone numbers and email addresses. one of the sample email addresses is something like jill@go-bananas.net. the student was having trouble listening for letters, so i spent a good 5 minutes going b - a - n - a - n - a - s. no one shared the joke.

2. [pee]
my second last day i had a kids class, with a student taking a demonstration lesson. one of the regular kids did a squirmy little dance then started peeing and screaming. his parents were found, patted him on the head till he was calm, then left him in a puddle for the 10 minutes left of the lesson.

small moments of functional japanese use are so exciting. so was the shop i found in the middle of nowhere selling vintage kimonos for Y400. and eating shitake mushrooms nearly everyday.
there are all these small things i have to do. like find a shop that sells large backpacks. and work out if i'm going to go to kyoto from the 3-6, and then to hiroshima, then up north, as i planned, or try to go back to tokyo to see bands on the 5th and then who knows what.

. went to tokyo.
. went to a cheap bar. salarymen gave us small wrapped cheese.
. went to a gay bar. no one was there.
. went to karaoke, on smuggled in vodka and shochu and hepped up.
. went home, talked drunk shit, slept.
. went 2 train stations away on a dvd player buying mission.
. went to mcdonalds and threw up in the toilet.
. went home on the luxurious express train.

when i get back to sydney we have to find a kareoke box and go to it, ok?

today is beautiful clear. i can see the mountains from the library window. i'm going to tokyo today. i'm trying to work out travel plans and it seems too hard. it seems i don't need a visa for singapore? in japan i'm going to kyoto, then i'm going to go north. i want to go to nikko to see the naughty monkeys. then up to tohoku, maybe even to hokkaido. i don't know yet. i have a ticket for the studio ghibli museum! that's the most exciting thing.

the other night i went bowling. between the three of us we spoke 4 languages. japanese, english, portugeuse and spanish. more like, carlos speaks 4 languages, teaches sandro and me japanese and i help them with english. he's going to new york to study acting. we went to a games arcade with the craziest games- this one where you punch as hard as you can, another where you throw lots of basketballs, a mechanical horseracing game. i think the boys let me win bowling. we went to a shopping centre with so much stuff.

i bought a tshirt that says 'such tools are useful'. it amuses me.

. change of plans.

. my flatmate is moving away, so unless we get sent someone new soon, i'll be living on my own after 3 weeks. i've never lived on my own. it's strange and kind of attractive, but kind of not. it's not as fun cooking always for myself.

. but i'll only be there for a month or so. for reasons of reasons, i'll hopefully be back in sydney sometime in november.

. i told my boss i was leaving and i was sorry for the inconvenience, and he said, well it's not like it was possible to make things worse, so do what you have to do. and it's true: i'm not responsible for the chronic understaffing at our school, so i won't feel bad about it.

. and i can't feel bad, not for long.

. so if you want a decent japanese present, you better stop being a slacker and send me a letter. soon.

today i joined the video store just so i can watch buffy, though they only have the first two seasons.

(a very touristy entry, containing snippets about divorce, dead children & studio ghibli.)

so my cousin rachel was in japan, visting a friend of hers whose partner got headhunted by a japanese law firm (they live in an apartment with the nicest shower i have ever experienced.)
so i went to see her, which was great, and we went on a daytrip to Kamakura, which was great.

we visited Tokei-ji, which for 600 years or so was a nunnery known as 'divorce temple'. women who wanted to leave their husbands would run away to the temple, and they could stay there for 3 or so years, and then they were considered divorced. this was the only way women could get a divorce at the time. it's said that locals would point the way to any woman who seemed to be in a hurry.
the temple had the nicest cemetery i've seen: shaded by the hills and tall straight cedar trees, low mossy graves, cedarwood incense.

our major motivation for visiting Enno-ji was the line about the statues of the judges of hell: 'presiding over them is Emma ... a Hindu deity known as the gruesome king of the infernal regions.' we each have a sister called emma, and there are many other emmas in the world, and we hoped to get postcards to send them. there were no postcards but the statues were scary.

Daibutsu is the big buddha. like many australian big things you could climb inside. (for only Y20.) unlike, say, the big merino, you couldn't peer out of his eyes. it was very crowded. getting into the tourist spirit, i bought a hello kitty phone dingle of kitty sitting in the lap of Daibutsu.

Hase-dera. there are hundreds of small statues of figures who help the souls of dead babies & miscarriages & abortions. women dress the stutues to keep them warm, in red cloaks or in baby clothes, and leave offerings of kids food and toys. there were hundreds of them, in quiet rows.
we saw the sea and went into a cave with more statues and got a bilingual fortune. (mine included the line: 'LIFE/DEATH: you will be alive', which was a relief.

our day also included a long meandering walk trying to find a tofu restaurant, which turned out to be closed.

then, when we were heading home and looking for a shop that sold souveneir beer, i saw a big wooden totoro and then a big stuffed toy of the cat from kiki's delivery service (what is his name?) and a giant stuffed catbus and i realised it was a studio ghibli merchandise shop and i got very excited and almost hyperventilated. much to the confusion of rachel. though she had seen spirited away so understood a little, once i could form sentences. and it was really cool, expensive but so exciting. i bought some badges and a catbus and kittenbus on a string.

. nelson pointed out that here the moon is the other way up.
. the bugs in the terrarium at the train station are killing each other. bug body parts are all through the sawdust. i find this very distressing.
. this week is not so bad: one day on one day off two days on half day training in tokyo then a day off.
. nelson & i went to shosenkyo gorge 'the most beautiful ravine in japan.' it was pretty cool. temperature wise too, the mountains are much more reasonable than kofu basin. there's a little shrine at the start with Y1 coins stuck in all the cracks in the rock face. the map had pictures of monkeys, but i didn't see any, though i spent much of the walk calling 'Watashi wa saru ga suki desu!', & 'Saru-san wa, doku desu ka?' (the japanese lessons are paying off in amusement for me at least, if not actual communication).
. i think i'll go make more gyoza now.

Sunil is aquitted! (& the Daily Telegraph upgrades his charge):

The Daily Telegraph
WED 17 AUG 2005,
Page 011
PASSPORTS AQUITTAL
A UNIVERSITY student accused of running a fake passport racket to help escaped asylum seekers flee to other countries was acquitted yesterday. Sunil Menon, 23, was one of the people charged in a series of high-profile raids on people assisting asylum seekers across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne in December last year. The judge ordered the jury to acquit Mr Menon after just a day of evidence at Sydney's Downing Centre yesterday, because he perceived there was insufficient evidence to proceed with the case.

. work sucks. especially today, when i was meant to be working early (10-5.40), so i schlepp myself to work on time, despite having not slept so well (i had a dream i was dead, though it wasn't a bad dream exactly), only to find out i wasn't on the schedule till late. 1.20-9.20. which means i can't call australia till 10.30 australia time, which is far too long to wait.
. and i have to make sure the house is clean for the flatmate leaving inspection tomorrow.
. i had a japanese lesson last night which was fun. using the new grammar feels mathematical in a good way.

. the subplot conference is looking good from here.
. the trial isn't. i wish i could go. as well as the obvious reasons, i'd like to be able to heckle certain labor-party student president alleged speakers (on the offchance they say anything especially bad). and the obvious reasons.
. there's going to be an election here. i know nothing about it except that it will mean vans driving round broadcasting party advertisements far more than they usually do. at terrible hours of the morning. also i always wake up when i hear them thinking that maybe it's some kind of emergency evacuation message, seeing as i can't understand and they sound so urgent. my flatmate sez she needs to work out how to say in japanese 'i won't vote for you because you woke me up!'
. mixtapes are the greatest invention of all time.
. i made a small zine. if you want a copy, please send me a letter or something:
Louise / 400-0024 Yamanashi-Ken / Kofu-Shi / 1-9-19 Kitaguchi / #205 Daita Kitaguchi Mansion A.
. it's hot. there are small earthquakes. i miss you.

. the irregular rhythm asylum. it's great.
. hey nsw, what's going on? i get headline emails, and prominant people just keep resigning. is some scandal about to break?
. more japanese stuff: self-managed tent village in Nishi-nari park, osaka.
. gotta go to work.

Jean Charles de Menezes the Brazilian shot dead in the head, was not wearing a heavy jacket that might have concealed a bomb, and did not jump the ticket barrier when challenged by armed plainclothes police, his cousin said yesterday.
Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Metropolitan police, Vivien Figueiredo, 22, said that the first reports of how her 27-year-old cousin had come to be killed in mistake for a suicide bomber on Friday at Stockwell tube station were wrong.
(The Guardian. story continues.)