How very annoying. I got a phone call this morning asking me to work for the next week-and-a-half, and I had to say no because of my thesis reading. Erk. I would have loved the teaching practice, and I need the money after various recent shopping junkets, but there's nothing I can do. I just hope they'll call again ( Read more... )

I didn't realise it had been that long since I updated! In case anyone wondered where I was, I spent a month doing the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults), with the intent of being employable when I head to Europe later in the year. Hopefully my German passport will have come through by then...on my Australian one it's ( Read more... )

I'm feeling rather guilty at the moment. This evening I was at a Bryn Terfel concert with my mother, who'd got a couple of tickets from a work colleague who'd accidentally double-booked the show. Unfortunately, what we didn't know was that our seats were in the gallery directly behind the orchestra. A soloist in recital with a full orchestra is a ( Read more... )

My holiday, in a nutshell (listshell?)

The Good

• Meeting new people (particularly ones from the same city as me!)
  
• Catching up with old friends.
  
• Seeing the Dandenongs and the Yarra Valley, both parts of Melbourne I hadn't visited before.
  
• Strolling around the lake, wading in the Yarra (upstream), paddling at South Melbourne beach, taking landscape ( Read more... )

Just a quick note - I'm back from Melbourne, and trying desperately to wade through piles of e-mails and messages (a no-tech holiday is fabulous, but the aftermath is proving to be more than a bit messy.) Anyway, I should be posting again properly soon...and I'm looking forward to catching up on a backlog of stories. And ignoring the kerfuffle I ( Read more... )

Why, oh why, did I have to have a late afternoon meeting that required a pile of paperwork the night before I'm going away? Eeek - I *think* I've just finished sorting everything out...if not, they can wait for two weeks. It's not my fault the meeting's been rescheduled about five times (and the follow-up's now in the middle of my holiday - I ( Read more... )

A.S. Byatt, talking on BBC radio about Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen: "If you were really a good writer, you'd invent your own characters, and your own world, and your own scenes. I think it's the piggybacking I don't like. It's parasitical. It's like being a flea." (Reference from an article in the Spectrum section of ( Read more... )

At least I've finally managed to cure myself of the need to read just about every story involving Sirius and/or Remus that I've come across - I saw the summary for a truly appalling story where the pair of them were married (and a weepy Remus Lupin-Black had spent twelve years pining for his husband...words fail me...) and I DID NOT READ IT! I feel ( Read more... )

I was going to say that the New Year had got off to a rather pleasant start, as Mum and I had a nice evening together on the 31st, and Dad joined us on yesterday to see Master and Commander. Perhaps not my mother's favourite movie - she's not fond of battle sequences - but the naval nuts in the family enjoyed it a great deal. And the cricket's on, ( Read more... )

I think it'll just be me and mum this time - I'd love to be on the harbour, but I haven't got the patience to queue for hours and then sit in the sun all day just to have a prime position at midnight. And unfortunately, nearly all my friends are out of Sydney at the moment. Oh well - I'm going away myself in a week or so, and a quiet New Year's Eve ( Read more... )