HA! Okay, you know that I usually avoid the rumour mill, and remain sedately incurious about who's saying what about whom. And I've probably got your hopes up that I'm actually going to pass a rumour here. But I'm not. I was just going to comment that I just got an email about an sms that was sent from a mutual friend about what another mutual friend had said another mutual friend had said about the person I got the email from. Heh.
3:15:00 PM

 
Hyper got back from up north yesterday (Narelle fully moved out in the morning). Housemates all home last night (I miss Narelle), and we cracked a bottle of red (or two). Got pulled aside by Hyper for an update on his deservedly somewhat tangled life. He does tend to create messes (literally as well). And am, on the whole, not sure if I need to treat him differently for how he's behaved (some of the things he's done do impact me and people close to me). Hm. Was slightly taken by surprise by some events. Not in a bad way, and there's really no reason I should've known, but yes, rather surprising. In an aside I also learnt there have been some separate house events of which I was also oblivious (no sarcastic remarks please - wish I could blame having Asperger's or something, but no... am just oblivious). Nothing terribly shocking, and mostly kind of none of my business, but it joined some dots for me.

Then the whole house went and had dinner with our exhousemate The Knitter and caught up. Was nice, I think she misses us.

Am meeting up with what_evolution for after work drinks tonight! yay!
7:39:00 PM

 
Lain and Egg and Ellen and Blister (in town again) and Dag all came round about 8:30 last night (the last three hadn't been to the house before). The plan was to have a drink at mine then all go into the city and rendezvous with Daria, to whom I'd been quite enthusiastic all day yesterday about meeting up with for a quick drink and dance. But by 9:30 I was all socialized out, and ready for bed, so I piked (was quite glad this morning).
11:37:00 PM

 
Hum.

Stopped by Fleur and Neiman's new pad last night. Rather swish. V new apartment building, occasional bits unfinished still, but the finished parts are very shiny - lots of glass, walls of mirrors, etc. Daria and her housemate Tania were also there. We played a game called Zombies and drank goon.
5:14:00 PM

 
-sigh-

Hate that feeling of juggling too many things, balancing on a knife-edge, etc. Otherwise known as coinciding DEADlines. Have three quite large ones coming up end of March. Must chain self to desk for next 6 weeks.
4:13:00 AM

 
On Sunday I went to Good Vibrations. I suspected I'd be thinking about work all day (more on that later... maybe). But happily I quite enjoyed some of the music, and also had some intense discussion with Bella (one of Haclev's best friends' who has just moved here from the City Beneath The Mountains). I think she thinks she's my new best friend - and who am I to gainsay her?

Wasn't really anticipating much. Haclev called me whilst over west and told me I should go with him, and I agreed to go, without thinking much about it. Was a lovely day, sunny, but not too warm. Xavier also came, and Bella's boy Hai. At the Music Bowl we met up with a couple more of Haclev's friends, Fiona and Donna. We had a small boogie to John Course (local DJ) - housey and a bit "yuppie-Melbourne". Then made the rounds of the various stages. Wasn't particularly taken with anyone until Arrested Devlopment came on the main stage - they were excellent. I'd forgotten. We mainly just sat and listened (although Bella was also trying to talk my ear off).

Handsome Boy Modelling School were kind of fun, but Bent were better.

Scissor Sisters were headlining of course, and they were fun (and looked like they were having fun) and I quite enjoyed them, but wasn't like blown away.

Although an enjoyable day, I was quite glad things finished up at 10pm.
8:23:00 PM

 
Read about this utter bastard a while ago in New Sci I think:
Origami as the Shape of Things to Come
"Erik Demaine received his doctorate at 20 and at the same age became the youngest professor ever at M.I.T. In 2003 he was granted a MacArthur "genius" fellowship.

Today, at 23, he has published over 100 academic papers..."
7:19:00 PM

 
Yesterday morning, when I got out of bed there was a single rose at my bedroom door. I knew people had been out late Sunday night, and so I assumed one of the housemates had been given roses for some reason and had decided to pass one to each of the rest of us. It was about lunchtime when a friend wished me a "Happy Valentine's Day" that I suddenly realized that was probably what the rose was for.

When I got home I discovered that it was Narelle who had actually bought us all roses as a deliberate Valentine's gesture - she's so sweet. Everyone was actually home last night because we had to sort out weird rent shenanigans, but after that was sorted, we all went to dinner. The Thai restaurant had quite a few couples. And our party of five. And then Chris paid for us all. Flowers in the morning, dinner in the evening. Sadly, we all agreed, it was The Best Valentine's Day Ever.
3:07:00 PM

 
The NY Times: "...the celebrity divorce lawyer who has facilitated the disassembly of thousands of marriages, has developed a theory on engagement theatrics: "The more dramatic and romantic the proposal, the quicker and angrier the divorce"."

(Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I always come this -><- close to not noticing the date. If it weren't for those pesky kids!)
8:03:00 PM

 
Last night went to a house (apartment) party. Large (5 person) apartment (a warren of corridors and rooms) above shops in a cool/busy area. Quite boho. The theme was "beatnik". Couldn't find my beret (Yes, I have a beret! Am not embarrassed! Much!). Borrowed Loud's patchwork corduroy almost beret hat (quite liked the look). With navy turtleneck and navy corduroy flares over black boots. Looked okay, not sure if I'd wear it out in public.

Was a bit quiet when we got there 11ish, but got quite busy after a bit. Crowds in half the bedrooms, plus the main living room, and several more in back room with us. Am glad I brought a couple of people with me, because I think I was too intimidated to really mingle. The body language/seating for most of the groups was a bit cliquey. Don't know the host (blognym will be Boho) very well, he's a friend of Haclev's. I quite like him, he's smart (doing postgrad in some engineering), teases Haclev (which he deserves), and seems to like me. But sometimes he seems a bit pretentious, which could possibly be because he's trying to impress me (is it wrong for me to write that? Is of course on the assumption he never ever reads this, and none of you ever ever meet him), or I'm probably just totally reading things wrong.

The crowd was also quite physically attractive, which may have been part of intimidation, but this was combined with a bit too much posing, which may equally have been the offputting factor. So yes, I only talked to four people I didn't actually know, and didn't really go deep with any of them. But got to have a good chat with Bella, a friend of Haclev's I've met once before, who just moved to Melb last week. About 2ish Lain (half my posse) wanted to go home, so we left.
12:03:00 AM

 
So looks like lj will now be for random entries not actually about my life. Particularly if I actually want feedback on them (e.g.)! While I will reserve real blog for life recaps for own later perusal/reminiscence.
12:00:00 AM

 
Also - just got an email:

hhhheeeelllllooooooo terry!!
i want to thank you for dinner yesterday and lunch today. I really appreciated it and so did my tummy. now i have to go on a diet. hehehehehe
ciao ciao mein
joanna

um - it *could* be spam. Except there're no links or attachments. Also, it should've been difficult to automatically pull out "terry" from the email addy used. Also, I don't remember having dinner and lunch with anyone named Joanna in the past few weeks. Or indeed ever. But then I think: "it's within the realm of possibility that I'm just having a total mental blank and I did indeed have dinner and then lunch with someone named Joanna and it's just slipped my mind". I'm a bit absent-minded these days. Or I guess it could also just be an email addy typo - should I reply so they know it didn't go to who it was supposed to?
9:25:00 PM

 
Ok, bondageing with Ben. You'll be disappointed I'm afraid. Essentially, we haven't spent much quality time previously. Really I don't think we've hung out just the two of us before. So anyway, Friday night, I'd decided to spend a quiet night in, and was trying to catch up on albuming photos (3 years behind). Photos and albums spread all over bed. He came in a bit drunk after afterwork drinks. He checked out some photos and we had a few beers. Talked about family and friends and past. About relationships and having kids (!) and how he found it very hard to comprehend L's (sister's) assertion that she suspected none of us siblings were planning to have any. Life philosophy, etc. So we just had a really good talk till like 1am, when another housemate called us and told us to come to a bogan party where they'd had copious pills and it wasn't very bogan at all and they were playing techno and one of our boganest mates was actually dancing to it! So we went to a houseparty and met some mostly nonbogans and had a tiny bit of a dance and drank more and went home at 5am.
9:09:00 PM

 
The truth about aid, trade and poverty
"The PM is wrong when he says free trade is the key to helping the poor, writes Tim Colebatch.

John Howard went to Davos with one core message: trade, not aid, lifts people out of poverty. If European countries wanted to help the world's poor, he said, the solution was not to increase aid, but to remove their farm trade barriers. Some in his audience at Davos applauded him. So did many in Australia. I've no doubt the PM believes what he said. But is he right?

A new study by the World Bank suggests not. It finds that while reform of farm trade would clearly benefit the poorest countries, they would be only minor beneficiaries. The big benefits would go to land-rich countries in the new world: Australia, New Zealand, the US, Argentina, Brazil and Canada.

Suppose we could scrap all protection and subsidies to farmers in Europe, Japan, the US and the whole world. The bank estimates that global welfare would rise by $US385 billion a year in 1997 prices - about $A600 billion in today's money. But only $US32 billion or 8 per cent of that would go to low-income countries.

If every tariff and subsidy for farmers were wiped out it would lift incomes for the 2.5 billion people in poor countries by about $A50 billion a year, or $A20 each. That would lift their incomes by 1.9 per cent.

Would that be a good thing? Yes. Would it end poverty? No."

I would so have Tim's children.
3:42:00 PM

 
Reading

Am totally keeping up with the New Scientists (thanks L!) - sometimes they don't even come often enough! Yay Commute time!

Growth Fetish, Clive Hamilton: sensible, but not mindblowing. Lots of research for some common ideas. Attitude also perhaps a little negative or something, which may have rubbed me the wrong way, even though I agreed with everything he was saying, and I'm totally in the appropriate demographic for this book.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon: started and finished just last night. V readable. (L warned me I'd probably stay up to finish it). Feels like my first fiction for a while. Really thought I'd have read a whole lot more whilst out West.

5:05:00 PM

 
Okay - really should do proper entry - but what about?

Bonding with housemate Ben?

Accidental bogan party on Friday night?

Rushed Saturday night of cocktails and birthdays and dinners and Chinese New Year parties?

Presentation at airport to interstate bigwigs?

Long-term dance-drug study? (incriminating? I could've been a control!)

Also still have stuff from the West I could totally blog...

4:57:00 PM

 
How, um, expected:

Government change to drugs promise: "The Federal Government has been forced to adjust an election promise to cut the price of generic drugs after intense pressure from the pharmaceutical industry."

And they reckon the Pharm Co's are going to provide no pressure under the FTA?
4:32:00 PM

 
You stupid man: Habib could be charged: Howard
5:51:00 PM

 
Curses! Foiled again! Just got spammishness (not quite, prob put my email addy down somewhere last time I booked a flight) about $49 flights to Cairns, starting 10am for the first 20 customers today. A friend is getting married up there mid-July, so I rang at 10 sharp and it sounded like there were flights left, BUT they're only for up till June :(
3:02:00 PM