Hooray

Thank you for asking, all of you who have asked in various ways and in various media. Yes I did get the job. I can say it so calmly and quietly now - yes I did get the job, but there was a lot of screaming, yelling, laughing and yahooing. Of course, not while I was on the phone with the chair of the selection panel, but as soon as we finished the call.

My new job will involve some travel to some pretty intereting places and I'll meet some interesting people. I'll spend most of my time here in Canberra but will have to travel to the Kimberley and to the desert regions in South Australia, and I haven't been to either of those places before. I've been very lucky. For work I've travelled to most of the capital cities, to central Australia and even had a trip to the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land.

One of the things that strikes me when I travel to remote regions is how much it is ilke travelling to a different country. The landscapes and climate are different, the languages I hear around me are different and the cultures are different. It surprises and delights me every time.

Now, just to show I haven't been completely ignoring you for hte past couple of weeks, I have a couple of things to share with you.

1. A very silly but fun blog: www.runningfromcamera.blogspot.com . I challenge you to look at this blog and not laugh.
2. A book to recommend: The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle. This is by an eminent British Astronomer and is some science fiction from the late 50s. I read it first when I was in high school and re-read it recently. It is easy to reimagine as a story about global warming. I loved the book when I was 14 and I enjoyed it again 34 years later.
3. Something to listen to: something composed by Erik Satie. I'm on a journed through 20th century composers thanks to being given "The Rest is Noise" a book about music in the 20th century by my DB for my birthday.

cheers
SisterSticks

Distractions

I'm still waiting to hear if I got the job. The suspense is killing me. I had a second interview last Friday. It was longer than the first, and quite chatty. The person leading the team I'd be working with made some notes. It was down to a very short list for a number of positions. Now I'm swinging between optimism bordering on certainty and pessimism bordering on despair. From moment to moment my career is going from upward trajectory to downward spiral. So ... some distractions ...



1. A lovely blog to have a look at - http://www.thinkbuddha.org/ looks at life in England with a buddhist perspective and has a lovely tone and sense of humour.

2. Something to listen to - Leonard Cohen in London - sounds just like the concert I went to at A Day On The Green at Bowral in March, even the banter (it was obviously scripted). However, that's not a negative. The sound and arrangements are finely balanced. The songs and their presentation have a lovely sense of irony or at least whistful reflection. The concert was wonderful, the CD keeps the inspiration going.

3. Something to read - Homecoming by Bernhard Schlink. A good follow up to The Reader. Like The Reader it examines the effect of WW2 on contemporary Germany through the story and the inner journeys of the characters. Again it examines the nature of good and evil as it is manifest in its characters. I enjoyed it enough to now go and search out other things by Schlink. I know he was a drawcard at the last Sydney Writers' Festival. His reputation is built on more than one novel recently made into a movie.

There you are, some of my recent distractions. If I haven't heard by the end of tomorrow I'll be looking for some more to keep me sane and sensible over the weekend. I've got The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver sitting by my bed. I've been hearing people recommend it for years, and will finally get to it. I've got knitting projects to finish, a garden to dig and weed and start to prepare for spring, a house to clean and visitors coming to dinner on Saturday night. I could get back to rowing (then I'd be too tired to obsess), and I could even do some study. With all of that to do it's a shame I have to go to work.

All fingers and thumbs

This weekend I finally finished Annie's gloves. They're the Sock-it-to-me gloves by SSKnits on Ravelry, done in Lang Yarns Jawoll superwash sock yarn on 2.5mm bamboo double pins. I'm happy with the way they turned out but I don't think I need to knit another pair, now that I know I can. They were fun, but a bit like socks - you finish one and it looks very nice, but then you've got to do another one that's exactly the same. Now I have to move on to the next UFO.


Another thing I've been meaning to do for ages is take this radio for repair. On Saturday I actually ventured over to Duratone Hi Fi in Woden and booked it in for repairs. They did some obvious checking there an then, and after $48 for a new adaptor, the PAL is charging and working a charm and we have radio with lovely sound quality wherever we want to take it in the house. It sounds simple, but I know its a luxury.

While at Duratone I bought some raffle tickets. The prizes are all fabulous electronic goods. First prize is a high definition flat screen TV with built in high definition digital tuner and DVD recorder. I think raffle tickets are another way of making a donation and I never have any expectation or even much desire to win, but this one ... I'd like the TV. Our current TV is about 20 years old and sits on a wobbly trolley that we pull out of a corner each time we want to watch it. You have to be careful not to knock the set top box that balances precariously on top of the tv, next to the bunny ears aerial. I'm sure you get the picture. We're not a TV centric household, but I'm just about ready for an upgrade. I haven't won a raffle since 1970 when I won 3rd prize in the Hornsby Hospital Xmas Raffle. The prize was $144 dollars worth of Lego. In 1970 that was a lot of Lego - more than I knew what to do with. I'm sure I'd know what to do with the TV.

anxiously waiting

I'm waiting to know if I've got a new job. I had the interview last week. Thinking about it is driving me crazy, I swing between solid confidence and solid despair. The process will be quick by public service standards but I've probably got a couple of weeks to wait before I hear. I'm going to need some pretty solid distractions to stay sane so I'm planning a weekend full of therapeutic diversions. I'll be gardening and (as long as the weather is kind) getting back to rowing. The first row in quite a few months is going to be hard work so I'll probably come home and need a sleep for an hour or two. I'll clean and cook and maybe even fit in a movie. If I bump into any of you over the next week or two and say that I'm still waiting to hear ... distract me, please, distract me.

A weekend away and a book

I've been to Potato Point for a long weekend. DB and I took Friday off and skipped to the coast with the four puppies while everyone one else was still at work. Having a day off when everyone else is working is very delicious - even knowing that the email in box will take most of Monday to sort out. Driving down on Friday meant that as well as most of Friday and most of Sunday we got the whole day on Saturday to breathe in the sea air, listen to the surf, and just stay in one place without having to drive anywhere or do anything in particular, and watch the day unfold from morning light to night time. Aaahhhh.

One of the luxuries of being away is getting to sit and read without any interruptions. I read Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. It is a memoir of living in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution and the Iran Iraq war. It is a combination of personal memoir, literary critique, and political commentary. Nafisi tells a story about herself, about a group of her women students, about books they read, and about the strains of being women and living in a society that transformed itself from a progressive to a fundamentalist Islamic state. This transition was not straightforward. When the Shah was deposed the ascent of the Islamicists was not a foregone conclusion. The book tells very personal stories, says a lot about turbulent politics during times of revolution and change, as well as discussing several works and writers in western literature. I loved this book. I thought it would be a bit hard going, but my eyes slid across the page and before I knew it I engrossed along. It is finely crafted and beautifully balanced. Go find it in your library and read it. Tell me what you think.

So what do I read next? I'm very tempted to start working my way through some of the books discussed in Reading Lolita, but I have The Slap by Christos Tsolkos waiting on my bed side table. It will be very different. I'm facing it with a little trepidation. I loved Reading Lolita. It's going to be a hard act to follow.