hi
i had a good long weekend at the beach.
but otherwise
i've been rather pre-occupied lately.

see, i 've applied for this job; and now i've been short-listed along with 2 other people. and i really want this job - well, i want it PLUS after 5 years i really want a change from my current job and particularly the (mostly) uninspiring people i work with. and this is the first real job application & interview i've had to do for over 5 years. and i've been quite nervous about it all, and thinking about it lots.

anyhow, today i had an informal meeting with the woman who would be my boss if i got the job. she seemed pretty good. then this afternoon i had to give a talk, a seminar, for 45 minutes to a group of 20 or more people. powerpoint slides, then questions, the whole hting. i was understandably nervous about that, and i wanted to get it just right, and put a lot of time & effort into preparing for it, including practice run-throughs. anyhow, i think it went quite well, and i am glad that is over!

next, tomorrow morning i've got an interview, with a selection committee of six people! somehow i'm a little less nervous about that, right now at least. there's less preparation i can do for that at this stage as far as i can see. i've just got to turn up with the right attitude & a clear head & be mindful of what they're looking for, and sell myself and the ways i meet their criteria; and hopefully the rest should follow.

i want this job. i need a change! plus of course it'd naturally be good for my ego if it were offered to me, and deflating if it weren't! i don't know. i oscillate between confidence on the one hand versus nervousness & trepidation on the other. i know i fit the bill well and could do the job well - i just need to hope the selection committee sees that and don't prefer one of the other two candidates. i need to highlight my expertise & skills one more time, then leave it up to others to make their decision.

i don't know when i'll find out ... probably within the week. here's hoping i get it ... !

~

january 26 is known & celebrated as 'australia day'. this is the anniversary of the 'first fleet' of nine ships which arrived in australia in 1788, carrying the people, officials & convicts who comprised the first (recorded) european inhabitants of australia. they came ashore in a bay in what is now the greater sydney area, and claimed the colony of new south wales for the british monarchy.

many indigenous inhabitants had been living in australia for approximately 30,000 - 40,000 years or so. many of them got killed, raped, and/or seriously fuc#ed over in the coming years & decades and in some cases, right up to the present day.

anyhow, a full one-quarter of the current australian flag is the union jack, the flag of the united kingdom of great britain & northern ireland. this is now pretty much just a historical relic or artefact; a hangover. it reflects only one aspect of australia's cultural heritage. in recent times it has been used by some to incite not only fervent patriotism but in some cases, racism. in my opinion the austrlian flag, and nation, would/will seriously benefit from some changing, some updating; enhancement. other nations have done this, and moved forward with it - just look at south africa less than twenty years ago, when they finally dumped the racist apartheid government & policies, dumped the afrikaaner flag with them, and adopted their excellent new falg. here's a few options/improvements i'm proposing for the current australian flag:

here half of the australian aboriginal flag, and it's central yellow sun, shares the top corner with the union jack:


here we've got the famous southern cross flag used at the eureka stockade (a seminal moment in autralian histroy over 150 years ago), plus the sun from the australian aboriginal flag, in the top corner:


my favourite - here the australian aboriginal flag is central, and also it's red stripe together with the navy blue strip below it are key (british) colours in the current australian flag. the green strip at the top represents not only the irish heritage - irish settlers & convicts played crucial roles in initially establishing, then developing the colonies which later became states of australia, and now about 1 in 3 australians have some irish ancestry - but it also is the green which togehter with gold (as in the central sun) are our national colours which are worn by our sporting teams. and of course the southern cross (a constellation in southern hemisphere skies) is retained on the flag:


i am very happy, and often proud to be australian ... but we haven't reached some state of perfection; we haven't got it all right by any stretch of the imagination. some (rednecks) would suggest that the above content may be deemed un-australian. in my opinion this view is neither constructive, democratic, nor forward-thinking.

anyhow, i'm going to the beach for the australia day long weekend! i look forward to body-surfing, relaxing, and family time there ... ;-D

~

after a quite mild summer so far, that old hot & humid brisbane summer weather is making a comeback! u get out of the shower in the morning, and you basically start sweating even before you've finished drying yourself. walk outside from an air-conditioned building, and it feels like you just dove into a big pool of tom yum goong - a hot & sour thai soup. or at least, you're floating in the steamy vapour just above the simmering soup. get into your car after it's been parked outside, and it feels like you're stepping into a kiln in which you could bake small pottery items. and you could fry an egg on the roof (over-hard, please).

we've probably got at least a month and a half of this ahead of us, maybe more, before things hopefully settle down again and the weather starts approaching autumnal. everyone always says, "wait until february comes!" ... well, the february weather is here now. every brisbane maximum temp for the next week is forecast to be at least 30 degrees celsius (i think that's about 82 farenheit?). that temperature isn't so bad if it were dry heat (we are quite used to temperatures up to 40 celsius or 104 farenheit), but that combined with a high HUMIDITY (e.g. 70-80%) is what really gets you - hence the hot & sour soup phenomenon!

oh well, we've survived this numerous times before ... i just hope it's no worse than past summers; plus i hope we get a lot of showers of rain to boot, to ease the drought, keep all the plants green, and cool us off just a bit. but no hail or nasty electricity storms please! ;-D

~

this is a place on the great barrier reef to which i've been numerous times (and would like to be right now of course), and to which we will hopefully return again in september ...

and now, my first youtube thing on here: a clip of a song i like, from an australian band called the church - great song, but only so-so video:

..>


~

alright, today is my first working monday for the year and i am looking down the barrel of my first full working week in a month ... and IT SUCKS! well, actually it doesn't feel quite as bad as it sounds right now - i think i dealt with quite a lot of the associated frustration late last week.

anyhow, usually i really am not big on making definitive new years' resolutions, and i'm not going to change that now (and in any case, this year is already 2 weeks old!). but while thinking in recent times about a number of things - including thinking a lot about some possible alternative future career options - i have developed the thought that when all else fails or it's all getting too much, i should to remind myself of the following:

"as long as my wife, our kids and myself are healthy and together, that is the most important factor and everything else is secondary!"


... or something to that effect anyhow. it may sound very simplistic or obvious or whatever; but in my experience it is often all too easy to lose sight of such a perspective. i'd like to, and indeed i do, extend that to the rest of my family, and close friends ... but at its most simple or focussed my 'mantra' would/will be as stated above.

of course, i'll probably lose sight of it before long (please remind me if it seems i am or have!); and no doubt many other things will come to pi$$ me off and/or stress me out ... but i hope to i can continue to keep the above in mind (and preferablyt forefront in my mind).

and on a not-unrelated note: i should stop thinking too far ahead into the future, trying to devise career-related plans for years into the future, and consistently make efforts to live more completely in the here & now of the present moment.

let's see how i go with this ...

~

i'm hungry!

i cooked a pretty good thai lunch today ... but no there's none of that left!

what shall i have instead? ;-D

~

ok
i'm goin to be honest with u all:

today i have been mostly sad and indeed, quite depressed.
there are two principal reasons for this, and they are not totally unrelated to each other.
firstly, today i said goodbye to my cousin who returns to london on saturday after a month's holiday visiting family & friends back here in australia. i have loved hanging out with him over the past month, yet it seems likely that we won't see each other for at least another 1.5 years as he is largely committed with his job in london for that period. he has been away from australia for 4 years (this being his 2nd brief visit home in that time), and prior to this visit i hadn't sween him for 2.5 years.
sure, it can be a small world nowadays at times; but sometimes the thought of the sheer distance between here & the other side of the world can seem overwhelming. i always think of that phrase "tyranny of distance" from the split enz song. anyhow, it is what it is, and i'm sure the time until our next meeting will probably (seem to) pass quickly enough - but for me it was very sad to say goodbye to him today. reminds me of a line or two from a jack kerouac novel actually (will note that below if i remember).
and so: bon voyage dan - there's always a cold beer waiting here in the fridge for u mate!

the second key reason for my blue day is that my three-week holidays are now over. today was my first day back at work for the new year. I DIDN'T GO! haha ... couldn't be bothered really; fuck 'em! ... and there are only minimal chances of my absence today having any serious repercussions. i did check & answer a few work emails from home, and in reality i wouldn't have been doing much more than that today if i had gone in to work. i suppose i should be thankful at least for having this luxury of being able to get away with a no-show.
but nevertheless, in my experience it pretty much always SUCKS to return to work from any kind of break. plus, this being my 6th year in this current job, i am currently feeling quite disillusioned & over it, and indeed i am looking around here & there for possible alternatives (albeit there are not too many). anyhow - i'll survive this, as i have done numerous times in the past. the simple fact remains however: i am not happy that my holidays are over!

so that's it - these are the two main reasons for my being somewhat depressed today. there are a few others, but these are the two key ones. i'll be honest - there have even been a few quite tears shed today; it's only natural to be sad about these things.
but don't worry - i think (and hope) that i'm on my way over it already! ;-D

above i mentioned a jack kerouac quote. this is from "on the road" and i first read it over 12 years ago while in thailand:
"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people & they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

oh well then - here's to leaning forward!

~

let's rewind a bit - quite a lot actually. i'm going to take u thru a bit of fergal's 'journal' (maybe for want of a better term) from mid-1998!

in my last post of 2006 i mentioned a number of things which i'd like to explore a little further. one thing i mentioned was pot/weed/cannabis/[insert your preferred word for it here]. i used to smoke quite a bit of it; sometimes a lot. from memory, in mid-1998 i think i probably was typically having at least one little smoke a day on weekdays (in the evening) and a few a day on weekends. it probably shows when you browse through my journals from those times. this is not to say that i now regret any of that! albeit i also am glad to nowadays be only an occasional consumer of the wacky-tobacky ;-D

anyhow, let's take a look at my entry from july 11 1998, which actually is probably one of the relatively more coherent entries from that period:


"now never knows nothing
do you read?
do we communicate? do we under-
stand each other?
what's that?
what?
that?
what?
nothing
this? what? oh, yes ...
what to write? to write what?
what would you like to read? oh
yes; I can write that, alright
I will. How's this? Is this it?
It is.
A word and this, are both comprehend.
A meaning is attached to the concept
encoded in the letters, the wordform
The form arises from waveforms,
like patterns of ink stained onto
paper, there whilst the paper is
and here now; always written
right here - this is here forever
while you read it, comprehend it,
encode it, consolidate it,
reexperience and know.
I'd like to communicate with you,
and you with me; can you?
that's fine "

well ... yes, kind of interesting (maybe) ... i suppose i don't need to say much else on this topic right now (?).

let me add a scanned copy of the first part of this journal entry. the script at the start is thai script ... but that's another story! ;-D
(i didn't include the thai stuff in the above excerpt)



~

i'm back from the beach *

happy 2550!

'may all beings b happy'

- that's what the buddha said [allegedly] anyhow

so let's try to follow that, pursue that ... and that's not only the vino rosso talkin'!


* back with a new font colour ... and, despite no change on this front; as far as the backkground colour goes, it a case of "back in black [i hit the sack]!"

~