1. Spend less time on-line. Tonight is an example of what happens when I stay on-line for too long. I was “researching” hotel accommodation and then went off on too many tangents. I really can’t deal with random information over load. Now I’m suffering from insomnia, know too much about people I don’t want to know that much about and have a very sore back. The two hours of granny yoga (I went to a class run by my yoga teacher at her house and it was full of geriatrics) I did this morning – the calm I achieved…gone!
2. Do Pilates as well as Yoga. Was reading an article about how Pilates lengthens your limbs. Or at least creates the illusion of having longer limbs.
3. Reduce carbon footprint.
4. Be less suburban. Going to granny yoga today made me realise I really should go to the city to do yoga. I want more moves damnit.
5. Have a better sleep routine. I go a bit wacko when I don’t sleep.
6. Learn Chinese again. I have a Chinese tutor (former student). I have to call her in the new year. Maybe I’ll send her a text tomorrow.
7. Not worry about turning down play dates. L starts school soon. He will meet other little people.
8. Avoid buying stuff. I have a lot of stuff. I have way too much stuff. I’ve culled 4 bags of stuff. I am going to empty the junk room and keep it as a guest room.
9. Set up a blog. A real one. Under my real name. It’ll force me to think before I write.
10. Write this friggin draft of an exegesis by March so I can move onto other projects.
11. When i’m feeling fragile, I will avoid conversations with conservative naysayers.
12. I will drink more water and eat more blueberries.

The voice inside my head is very different to the voice I need to write in for academic component of my MA.
What I’ve realised is this. Those who love academic writing have a flesh and blood self that is closer to the projection of the academic self. My sister is one of these people. She speaks in structured full sentences. She thinks before she speaks and she speaks in grammatically correct sentences. There are no unfinished sentences or utterances that lack the conviction and confidence of a sentence you might find in an academic essay.
Me on the other hand? This blog voice is pretty much the voice in my head. It rambles, it’s insecure, it tests out hypothesis before the thought is complete and it has no respect for structure and the discourses I must engage in, in order to finish this friggin’ MA and get that piece of paper.
And I tell myself, well yeah sure I can write without being in an MA degree, but I like the support, the structure and that space I get to write when I have enrolled in a formal course.
But now that I sit down to write this friggin exegesis I’m thinking – what the fuck is an exegesis? Is it just a load of navel gazing wank that gives those who can’t write creatively an outlet to explain what they’ve tried to say in their creative component?

I know I must find this voice. I must channel my friends who have this voice. Those who can say, “A is A and B is B” with conviction and believe that what they have to say is important and matters. (Even if it doesn’t).

I’m so scarred by my last experience of formal academic writing that I consciously discarded, mind dumped and then blocked out that voice for fear of triggering PSTD.

That supervisor said, yes writing is painful.

Which is why I started to write creatively, to prove that it wasn’t painful and writing creatively isn’t painful. It’s like yoga and breathing. It’s a joy and you don’t notice time passing. The research component has also been a pleasure. I don’t notice time passing.
Taking notes, writing in short hand and dot point – also not taxing and quite enjoyable.
Filing also fun.

ARghhhh how do I begin this??

flaked out.
have learnt a lot about the tori amos/courtney love/trent reznor triangle this morning.
apparently courtney is the villain of the whole thing. courtney killed 90s music according to some websites.
listened to some more recent NIN music on ITUNES. Don’t like it.
I guess there’s only a window in musician’s lives where it all comes together.
started listening to chilli peppers in my 90s nostalgia. I really like “my friends” and “otherside”. Not sure what they did after Californication.
That’s a nostalgic CD for me. Even though by the time it came out, I’d already been a road trippin’ across the western deserts.
i really like sarah slean (canadian chanteuse) and her cabaret style shows.
ahh the 90s.
I really hope vit c and echinaceas can help me ward off this flu. it’s been a really long week with a sick toddler.
today he said to me when I gave him some juice.
“What does this taste like? – It tastes like honey. What does it taste like? It tastes sour..”
He surprises me with the things he comes out with.
I guess he’s quite eloquent and has a very advanced vocab because I didn’t know how to do baby talk and have always spoken to him like an adult. I just felt a bit retarded and self conscious when I tried baby talk. Also, he doesn’t see a lot of little people. He’s around big people most of his life.
i’m really not sure what the purposes of this blog is. I guess it’s a mind dump. i keep thinking i should turn it into a mummy blog.
i have a very sore throat. eating chocolate probably didn’t help.
i also am not sure what to do about a letter i received this week.

I was dumped once because I was time challenged.
Dumped by a boy,
who now that I think about it,
is like a big dump,
down the S-bend and into the oceans.
It’s kind of horrible to think of what we’re doing to the waterways
Algae blooms, disintegrated bread and plastic straws.
Bread is okay
It’s organic.
An apple is most unnatural when accurately sliced.

Stomach bug
Still nauseous and can’t keep food down.
So am faint.
Eyes tired.
Looking at kitchen.
Am over the trying to have some boho cred in suburbia with a shitty kitchen. It’s kind of gross and dirty.
Worked my arse off this semester. Going to put all profits into the kitchen.
Kid does not need any more toys.
Had a stressful morning at the shops.
Will move to commune.
“Bad mother” the eyes spoke. “That mother can’t control the kid.”
“I want more cars. Thanks mummy for the car, but I want more cars please. I want more cars. I want more cars.”
Articulate- yes, but he doesn’t understand the concept of money exchange, capitalism and Christmas displays.
Tired.
Nauseous.
Writing…dead.
Brain….dead.
Desire…dead.
Sleep…my friend.
Kitchen. Without shitty floor.
A kitchen with a clean floor.
That’s what I want.

Just knowing Melbourne and Hong Kong are in my immediate life plan and that I’m going to go to both within the next 6 months has really changed my self-perception. I no longer feel as if I’m a mildly depressed housewife in the outer suburbs of one of a mining city.

I’ve decided to go to a conference in Hong Kong. I don’t get any funding from my university but it’s one that’s directly related to my research. That and I have been thinking about going back to Hong Kong for the past 30 years or so. It’s now or never. There were plans to take hubby and baby, but an 8 hour flight, Disneyland, mummy wanting to do some research/writing/work, Daddy’s first time in a big Asian city… just not doable in 5 days in the middle of the school term.
This will be my first trip overseas in 8 years. I had a really bad flight back from London back in 2002 and vowed never to fly beyond the equator again.
I don’t really know anyone in Hong Kong. It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to work and live, but hadn’t really thought too much beyond dreaming about becoming “real” again…which I know isn’t going to happen because I’m illiterate in Cantonese/Chinese.
I’m looking on the map from a brochure I got at Flight Centre…I’m so excited about going, never mind the barbwire looking purple border separating China from North Korea…oh and they’ve left out Xingjiang/East Turkmenistan – which makes it easier to forget the Dateline interview with the Guantanamo Bay Uighurs who were wrongly accused, released but denied entry to most countries around the world, including Australia, because of pressure from the Chinese government.

What I love so much about Perth is what I hate most about it. The isolation.
I’m probably in for a shock.

I’m just looking forward to being somewhere less isolated and suburban. I’m really hoping it will open my mind a bit. I do feel I’ve become parochial and boxed in since I came back to lead the life of a suburban housewife. Sometimes the most exciting thing that happens in my day is having to think on my toes when my kid decides he needs to poo and I don’t have any nappies, wipes, toilet seats, or a toilet around.

I think I will go on this conference even if it’s simply an exercise to take my studies more seriously.

My house is a mess because I have very little furniture! I need storage solutions…

Is this the humble Billy?

Ahh library book shelves…

* Coffee….the smell of a fresh brew makes me want to go on a long road trip…up and down the West Coast of the US of A…

* The Eaton Sisters …

I’m reading about the Eurasian sisters and writers Edith and Winnifred Eaton – who wrote under the pen name “Onoto Watanna”. I’m reading Diana Birchall’s biography on Winnifred at the moment and am completely fascinated by her life story. Birchall is Eaton’s grand daughter. Edith and Winnifred were one of 14 children born to a Chinese mother and English father. Both became writers but whereas Edith chose to identify with her mother’s people and write about Chinese people as an almost insider, and under the pen name Sin Siu Far, Winnifred chose to construct a half-Japanese persona and write about Japanese people and culture – though also as a Eurasian almost insider.
Reading about these two women reminded me of 1996 (?) Eric Liu’s musings, in The Accidental Asian, on how his Eurasian children will have the option to identify with, claim, discard their Chinese/White identities because they are visibly bi-cultural. I’m completely in awe of Winnifred’s audacity. She must have been quite a character. Birchall biography documents her later life and she had very sad and complex relationships with her sons. There’s the argument that Edith’s writing is more contemporary in that she writes about race and cultural issues the way someone in this era would, and that Winnifred’s plays into what we now identify as very Orientalised images of the East…but I don’t think that we have broken out of the latter. I can see how it happens. The audience almost expects it. Edith published one short story collection because she died relatively young. Winnifred died in her 80s. She also wrote under an Irish pen name later on in life.

* Victorian Mental Asylums in Epsom, Surrey.

I spent some of my formative years in Epsom because my parents were migrant workers at the asylums there.

Here’s a BBC story about how typhoid female patients were locked up at Long Grove. They were sane to begin with… It would have been so scary being locked up with the criminally insane. I remember Dad said there were older patients there who weren’t mentally ill, at least not to begin with, but may have been placed there because they couldn’t speak English. He mentioned a Polish patient who remained in England after one of the wars.

The people we knew were all nurses or domestics from the hospital, and all were non-English. They did the work no one else wanted to do. My parents knew people used the work visa as a stepping stone to other occupations or life choices. In fact a few of them were so embarrassed that they ever wiped a mental patient’s arse and do such menial work, that they denied ever having lived in the town after they became bankers and stock brokers etc.. One of them was my bank manager uncle. Our family friends were Irish, Spanish, Italian, Hong Kong and Malaysian Chinese…There were possibly other ethnic groups but I don’t remember.

I’m looking for more information about these asylums as this is where I spent a lot of my childhood…waiting for my parents to finish work. I was in the creche, smuggled into the kitchens. I remember the Great Hall. I remember picking apples and chestnuts off the orchard trees. Maybe I’m romanticizing the English meadows, but I remember driving along a road lined with large oak trees or maybe they were willow trees. I’ve never been much of a botanist. Most of all, I remember being completely fascinated by the patients. There are two occasions that I remember quite vividly and I think it’s because they were the only occasions where people were acting “insane”. I remember hanging around one of my cousins who worked there briefly and taking swigs of his Guinness whilst walking in and out to watch him attempt to tinkle with the engine of his Morris Minor.

It’s funny how up until recently, I never really thought about my time in England. I seem to have more of a connection to a place I have no conscious memories of than I do of England. I forget that my experiences growing up here and feeling rather alien isn’t just because of my ethnic background – it was because not only did I look different, I also sounded different. That and I stopped hanging out at insane asylums.

The strangest thing happened today. I managed to hang out with L and get some writing done – albeit in my shorthand and on scrap pieces of paper lying at the bottom of my bag.
I discovered a small cafe near the local library. What’s great about it is that there’s a corner with old children’s toys. They’re dirty and not very exciting, but because we don’t have those toys at home…it’s all new to L. He kept himself amused for nearly 2 hours with blocks and foam numbers…he didn’t seek my company and was content just to build and explore.
We were supposed to be at playgroup but I gave him an option and he chose the library.
I know some people think it’s strange that I give him options…either…or…neither…nor… But he has likes and dislikes, and playgroup is not school. I’m not going to let him wag school. Hopefully I put him in a school that he gets a lot out of…
I sometimes worry about him not having enough contact with other kids. Not sometimes…all the times. But he seems to like older kids at the moment. He would have liked to have had a big sister I think.

I watched half of 21Up USA last night. I’m not sure how many kids they’ve interviewed, but I noticed that most of the kids who’ve been to university want to be writers. Interestingly, the ones who don’t have writing aspirations have the most interesting stories. They’re only 21 and think they know it all.

I was thinking about this when I was in my ESL class today. I have friends who really love the nuts and bolts of English grammar, explaining grammar and read grammar books, watching grammar video tapes in their spare time. I really don’t sure their enthusiasm. What I love about teaching (when I don’t have to deal with assholes) is the human interaction and learning about humanity.

Today as I was doing an exercise on neither…nor/either…or… we went off track and a student told me about the civil war in Togo. I felt so ignorant because I didn’t even know there had been a civil war there. Though she reassured me that not many people did because everything else overshadowed this war. One of my other students, a Vietnamese refugee who has been in Australia for 30 years, recounted her refugee experience and they compared notes on what the resettlement experience was like. They spoke of the meager rations they were given in refugee camp.

As they were talking, I thought to myself, “I wonder who is the refugee of tomorrow?” and..”God I’ve turned into one of these middle-class women who I used to find odd because they were so intrigued by things that were just part of my every day life.”

It made me realize we shouldn’t categorize each other by race/visual difference, but by how many generations removed from a peaceful, suburban Australian life we are. My husband and I are not the same race, but we are the same number of generations removed from the working-class migrant experience.

When I get some time weekend, I’ll finish watching 21 Up USA. It’s more interesting than the UK version because it’s more contemporary. The kid’s were born in 1985 – so I’m a decade older, but can still identify the “characters”. I’m intrigued by the Hapa kid. I’ve no idea what my son will look like when he’s older. I’m sure he won’t look like that Hapa kid, but it’s just interesting to see what older Hapa men look like.