2007-11-03

Conventional wisdom

The hardest thing about blogging consistently is not the sitting down each week to tap it out, but the going back to it a fortnight later when when you miss one. Apologies.
Two of our house mates - Ili and Conrad, have got their own place round the corner and have moved out of our Besant Street house in Brisbane, so we are only sharing the place with Marina & Co. - which has immediately made it feel less like a student shared house and more like the poor man's pied à terre that it is.
C's extended contract finished on the 26th with doughnuts but sadly, no beer, given she's 7 months pregnant.
My long-anticipated weekend in Nimbin was not to be, as an unexpected offer of a bursary to attend the ASTC's Novacon in Sydney was impossible to turn down. With only a few days to arrange everything, I booked the cheapest flights and room I could find. I ended up not only flying from the Gold Coast rather than Brisbane airport, but also at inhuman times - I had to set my alarm for 2.45am to catch the return flight. The conference was smaller scale than I expected but with several high-calibre speakers from industry and academia, and excellent opportunities to chat with communications professionals from other parts of Australia. The conference also helped me develop a clearer idea of the tertiary courses in communications studies on offer in Oz - I'm considering enrolling in a communications course over the next year or two.
The art of conference attendance, of course, is skipping the right sessions to maximise your free time. I didn't get it quite right, but still managed to check out a good chunk of Sydney's China Town, Liverpool, Surry Hills and King's Cross districts. I also made my way back to Circular Quay, where C and I spent New Year's Eve 2006/2007 with Dom and Michi, and this time I made it into the Museum of Contemporary Art! Ah Xian's remarkable busts which had delighted me in Brisbane were on display here, alongside some new ones. MCA's highlight for me though, had to be Julie Rrap's Body Double - a great, memorable, un-hectoring, political exhibition!
Gold Coast airport is next to the motorway as you drive South from Brisbane. C picked me up on Sunday morning en-route from Brisbane to Nimbin, and I had my first full week in Nimbin - which seems to have passed in blur of work, except for the two wonderful thunderstorms which we enjoyed from the deck, and the friendly young wallaby joey who joined us for lunch most days.
Somehow this week ended up being a "tie up loose ends" week, so on top of my two day-jobs, I caught up with the stuff I'd promised to do for my Kiwi mate's website, got my mum's B&B website back online and finally got around to installing the IDE and source control software on my PC that I've been meaning to install since August.
The bathroom project continues apace - a snail's pace that is - and as I write, we've got to the point where we can begin sanding the floor tomorrow. I'm still getting a lot of satisfaction out of getting the details right, and the fact of doing work that's less abstract than my day job. Nonetheless, it's starting to feel like the project that will not die.
Its been a great week in Nimbin, and best of all I've got another ten days straight here.

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