photo credit: Armando Maynez

It’s natural that

while I’m hunting around for a job, I begin to think about what it is I’m going to do once I have found one. This will be the first time that I am involved in what will be my career, rather than my education. Not only that, but this will (hopefully) be the first time that I command a wage that can be considered in any way plentiful.

Realising this, I’ve been mulling over the ways in which we, as consumers, spend money. I had a delightful (and enlightening and challenging, as always) chat with Laurie yesterday and we talked a lot about what we do with money, and why we do it. Specifically with regards to the pressures of marketing and aspirational branding/living.

Aspirational branding and its social implications is a topic that has interested me for quite a while. His Holiness Charlie Brooker has produced a very insightful piece of documentary regarding aspiration within television marketing and programming, which covers most of the bases more quickly and with cleaner lines than anything I could, so I suggest you check that out if you’re interested.

What the conversation with Laurie and I centred around was the idea of living independently, sans aspirational consumerism, while engaging and building a community. Translated, that means: not buying stupid shit, not owning stupid shit, and using your finances to support creative endeavours by friends and colleagues. The definition of ‘stupid shit’ is, obviously, a subjective one, but for me it includes such things as label brand clothing, expensive cars, expensive televisions, etc. And I’m keenly aware that list makes me sound like an old man, but I just fail to see the point of these childish things. Why aspire to follow the cycle of fashion which exists purely to make you buy more clothes? Why buy a $50,000 car which is speed-limited to the same pace as a $2,000 one? The mind boggles at the transparent surface-level thinking that must go along with the use of money in this way. I am earning money; I am big and strong; choose me as your friend/mate.

There are exceptions. I don’t begrudge those who have an active mechanical interest in automotives their passion, for example. But I would much prefer to commission a student of film, or ask an artist to paint my family and friends, than own a big shiny chunk of materialism. But what is it that makes other people, particularly those with a large disposable income, follow through with such purchases? This is the kind of stuff that will tie in with the project that I have planned for 2012, which may or may not be an attempt at a novel. Okay, well, actually, it is an attempt at a novel. But no promises as to a completion date.

Anyway, thanks again to Laurie for the great coffee conversation. I’ve just spent the day garnering answers to the question of Kindle Direct Publishing, so expect a small post about that soon.

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photo credit: jonoakley

As the year

draws to a close, especially a year such as this one, I feel that it is a good idea to have a look back and etch milestones to memory in anticipation and preparation for the following three-hundred and sixty five days.

2011 started in the worst way imaginable: standing and staring incredulous at the message informing me of a good friend’s suicide. The blow felt within the group of friends was immense. Its initial, unimaginable impact blossoming into bruises that I am sure still yellow the minds of all involved. I think I am as yet unable to believe that he is truly gone, despite having seen him laying at rest within the coffin. It’s worth repeating that if you ever feel like you need someone to talk to—yes, you, whomever you are—I’m right here, and I’ll spend as long as it takes to help you out. Suicide is such an ugly thing.

It took a while after that to get back on track with my studies. My scholarship had run out three months prior, and so I was relying on a rapidly dwindling savings account to keep myself fed and watered (and not much else). Being poor and under pressure to finish a thesis isn’t the best place to find yourself in. Eventually my money ran well and truly out, and I was forced to find temporary gainful employment, eventually securing a full-time position at Synergy to help administrate their solar energy scheme. I spent somewhere in the region of six weeks working full-time and driving straight from work to university to tap away at revising my thesis manuscript. It worked though, and I submitted my thesis to the examination committee on June 9th: a mere four years and three months after starting.

I continued working at Synergy for around three months after that to save some money up, paying back the cash that had been lent to me by Louise and my Mum. It’s a good thing that I’m a bloody good saver, because I applied for and received a place interning at COSMOS magazine for five weeks. And five weeks spent in Sydney’s CBD doesn’t come cheap, even at a YHA. The time I spent at the magazine was really great, and I learned a great deal about the balance between information and communication with regards to science and journalism. It’s definitely something that I can see myself continuing, and thanks to the lovely, encouraging editorial staff (hi Heather and Becky!) I have been commissioned to write a couple more articles at their online news site since coming back to Perth. I ended up leaving the internship a week early in order to visit my Uncle, who has been a patron throughout my Ph.D. studies, and see their new farm and really have a good relaxing time there and at Mark and Monique’s place before heading back home.

Once I got home, Louise and I had a week to move the last of our stuff out of our old house before jetting off to Thailand. Thailand was just an amazing experience, full of friendly people, stunning landscapes, and amazing activities. I’ve already dedicated something in the region of 5,000 words to the place in two previous posts so I won’t go on any longer about it. Suffice to say that it was another incredibly positive experience.

Which brings us to around about now. The last month or so hasn’t been a particularly great one for me, despite the festive season or perhaps because of it. I’m pretty much broke again, and the job market is rather barren at the moment. Staying at Louise’s folks place has made me feel like a bit of a burden (through no fault of theirs, they’ve been really supportive as well) and asking for help isn’t something I do without some degree of anguish. As a result, I’ve been pretty down about myself and my future, but Louise has been amazing as usual in a million little ways and a couple of big ones (e.g. I’m typing this in the study which she cleaned up and organised for me to use as a job hunting power-room).

So for me the new year can’t come quick enough. It represents a move away from the sedentary lifestyle I’ve been stuck in for the last three years or so, an opportunity to rediscover my enthusiasm for…well, for life in general. Making time rather than marking it. There are hurdles to get over in the short term, but I think 2012 will end up being a fairly drastic change in the way that Louise and I live our lives, and I can’t wait to arrive in that space.

Happy New Year everyone.

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photo credit: bernat…

The folks at

dotdotdash held an excellent series of events last week as part of their Subscribeathon, and if you are a writer or a reader, you should totally go to their subscriptions page and jump on board. It’s only $35 for four issues and you get to act smug and say “That? Oh, that’s dotdotdash, it’s a literary magazine, you know, like what smart people read?” when they point to it on your coffee table. Anyway, the marvellous man that is S. J. Finch (who, after having comprehensively beaten me at Super Smash Bros., departed from running the mag to work on his Ph.D.) invited me to speak at the ‘Home’ themed event, asking that I write something about my childhood home, and childhood in general. I found it again this morning, and it went down well enough with the crowd to think that maybe others might like to read it. Anyway, here you go.

———

While preparing for tonight I foolishly asked Twitter how I should go about writing something about home and childhood without falling into a giant pit of nostalgia. I got two responses, one of which was “Make sure you had a terrible childhood”, while the other was “Write about someone else’s” [Edit: that advice coming from Sam Twyford-Moore and Steph Convery, respectively.]. As I am ever a slave to the Internet, I decided to follow the advice of my somewhat cynical friends.

So the first thing I had to do was weigh up whether or not I had a terrible childhood. And while rummaging through the pile of dirty laundry that is my memories, I realised that the moments I remember of my childhood are somewhat unfairly dominated by my father. The reason for that being that my parents split when I was six, after my father essentially walked out on us. But we did still see him regularly at the insistence of Mum, and so my time was split between my home and a succession of houses, units, and apartments that my Dad occupied in the years following the split. My father was quite an angry man during that time, and that anger resulted in a number of incidents throughout my childhood which are still affecting my siblings and I to this day. And my feelings regarding him are the subject of a few of my stories and memoir-ish pieces, one of which you’ll find in the upcoming Gambit issue. Which is why, tonight, I don’t really want to talk about that side of my childhood. Because I think that while the days that we spent with him were damaging and awful, it shouldn’t eclipse the fact that, at the same time, I had a wonderful, loving environment created by my Mum at what I considered to be my true home. So instead of going over the bad stuff, I wanted to celebrate that place: 12 Priory Road, out in a suburb called Maida Vale.

I think I’m in the statistical minority in that throughout my childhood I lived in the same house. My siblings and I all went to the same primary school and high school, a fact that wasn’t lost on teachers who would take every opportunity to compare me to my predecessors. My brother and I played on the same sports teams at the same club five minutes down the road, and we have known all of our neighbours to varying degrees–one of whom spent a very determined afternoon trying to play kiss-chasy with me. So we grew up having a very well-defined sense of community and place, which I think may be a rare thing nowadays anywhere that isn’t a country town. My Mum actually still lives there, which means she’s been in that house for about 35 years. If you were to visit, you’d see a white wooden-clad house, built up on stumps that keep the insects out and provide cover for the occasional wandering echidna. You’d see the front half of a garden that she spends most of her weekends nurturing, while around the back there’s a wide strip of lawn that we spent most of our weekends destroying. Almost every bit of green on the property belongs to native plants, whose gleefully shed pollen never failed to make me hate them for what they did to my sinuses.

Once inside, you’d immediately be aware of one of the main reasons why I always felt, and still do feel, safe and loved in that house; and it’s something that I believe comes from my Dutch ancestry. My mother is Dutch, she emigrated to Melbourne with her parents when she was quite young, and moved over to northern W.A. and then Perth once she’d completed her nursing training. So despite having lived here for most of her life she does still keep up the Dutch habits, and one of my favourite ones is the fact that Dutch houses are typically filled with a carefully curated collection of crafts and knick-knacks. Shelving overflows with seashells, daggy photographs, books from all stages of our reading careers, lolly tins, unironically decorative cutlery and crockery, framed embroidery, handmade runners and bowls, every woodwork or metalwork project that my siblings and I ever completed, wooden sculptures from overseas trips, and so on and so forth. There are no clean lines, no brushed steel, and certainly no minimalism: at last count there were five different clocks in the living room alone. Up until very recently above the kitchen bench there hung a cardboard fish coloured in with pastel crayons that my sister made when she was in grade two. My sister is now 32, and insisted that Mum finally cut the damn thing down when the kitchen got renovated [Edit: I have since discovered that it is still up in the house, it's just moved to my old bedroom.].

If you were to open up any of the drawers you’d find exercise books from every primary school class we ever had, along with yearbook photos and newspaper cuttings from our occasional excursions into local fame. It sounds redundant to say this, but it’s a very homely home. You know how you go to some people’s places and it feels almost like a hotel? Mum’s isn’t like that. The whole place just so perfectly represents the way that our Mum loves and lives for us kids. If there hadn’t been that feeling of warmth and safety that my home provided after visits with my Dad, I don’t think that I would have turned out nearly as well-adjusted as I have. And while my definition of home has changed over the years to encompass my girlfriend and a certain feeling to a place, I know that 12 Priory Road will always be my first home.

So after all that I think I can safely say that I had a pretty good life growing up, with only the occasional terrible-ness sprinkled on like chunks of licorice on an otherwise perfectly baked childhood cake [Edit: I interrupted myself during the night to declare this an absolutely abhorrent metaphor, and so it is]. And I think that, having reminded myself of that fact, it’s helped me to realise that I do have a tendency to cling on the bad stuff and relegate the good stuff to the background. So I’d like to thank the dotdotdash folks for prompting me to appreciate how lucky I really am.

Anyway, still following the advice of my Internet buddies, I am now going to play a game of a ‘Who Am I?’ with someone else’s childhood, and I’m challenging you guys to yell out when you think you know who it is that I am describing.

I was born by immaculate conception into slavery in the desert. It was a very hard life, but I made myself indispensible to the slave masters by quickly picking up the finer details of machinery. By age nine I was a gifted engineer, building engines and machines out of spare parts and eventually earning my freedom in a race [Edit: it was at this point that Liz Tan yelled out the answer, she's sharp that one!]. Recognising my ability, a wizard came to visit me, asking that I come with him to the city of wizards, so that I could be trained in their ways. With an automaton of my own creation by my side, I left my mother and travelled with the wizard to where the others of his kind lived. But when I finally got there, they refused me on the advice of a fortune teller within their ranks, who saw my future to be a dark one. However, when an army invaded, I proved my worth to the wizards by using my engineering skill and quick reflexes to route their most important forces. After the battle, an especially courageous wizard offered to tutor me, and the rest agreed, although reluctantly. I spent the rest of my childhood in training, until my masters sent me to investigate an assassination attempt on a queen.

[Edit: The answer, of course, being Anakin Skywalker.]

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photo credit: kevin dooley

I’ve been back

from my holiday and mired in the depths of unemployment for almost three weeks now. It’s often thought of as a paradise, but in reality it’s a little bit depressing, this not having anything to get you moving once you wake up. Or perhaps I’m just not the right person to appreciate large amounts of hours with nothing particularly pressing to fill them up with. For the first week or so, I had the task of getting my thesis resubmission process completed. Which I did, after spending a painstaking day re-jigging some images and chasing down signatures from various faculty members. So that kept me occupied. After I’d done that though, it’s been pretty much been a week or two of very little at all.

Wait, sorry. ‘After I’d done that’ is probably a little too glib for what it actually represents. I am now officially done with my thesis. It’s complete. Finished. Kaput. I never have to look upon its smug, papery face ever again if I don’t want to. Well, that’s a lie, I’m currently flicking through it for table scraps that I can try and mash together into some semblance of a meal that a journal editor might like to chow down on. But the main thing is that I have passed and I will never have to do something so incredibly hard ever again. So yay for that. Alright, back to the main point of the post.

In order to keep myself from going completely insane at home, I’ve been trying to make sure that I have goals to achieve each day. These range from the mundane (make sure I get the dishes out of the dishwasher and put on a load of washing) to the necessary (go for a run so that I at least leave the house once a day) to the creative. And strangely enough, the creative ones haven’t yet included writing. I have yet to write any new fiction since before I left for Sydney, back in September. This is probably the longest I’ve ever gone without writing something, anything, for a few years. And the urge still hasn’t taken me. I have no doubt it will come back eventually (and hopefully in time for my resolution to write a novel in 2012) but for the moment, I’ve got nothing going on in the writing department with the exception of a COSMOS article or two. Oh, yeah, I’m an occasional paid science journalist now (:.

Anyway, so instead of writing, I’ve been turning to other forms of creative output. One which has turned out to be surprisingly rewarding is that of programming. Now, I’ve tried to program before, and you’d think my background in disciplines that use logic as their main way o’ doin’ stuff would result in me being an apt pupil. But the language I chose to pop my “Hello world!” cherry was Fortran, and Fortran can be a little difficult for the newbie. So this time around I’ve been easing myself into it by adopting Python as my tutor. And so far, the results have closely resembled this xkcd comic. I’m following the excellent Python for Absolute Beginners book by Michael Dawson, which walks you through a number of game-based programs and teaches everything from basic programming workflow to more advanced techniques. It’s already got me dreaming of all kinds of text-based adventures that I could create.Of course, I’ll need to figure out a whole heck of a lot more stuff before I get that far, but the possibility is firmly embedded in my head now.

The other thing I’ve turned (or should that be tuned?) back to is playing around with sequencing. As previously mentioned, there’s a (FREE!) tracker known as Buzzmachines that offers a complete digital solution for making a song from beginning to end, with one of the most elegant graphical interfaces ever devised. And it’s been really fun to mess around with sounds and such. So far I’ve been playing around a lot and not making a whole heap of songs, but here are some little tunes that I’ve been happy enough with to upload to my Soundcloud:

Peachy keen — Trying to emulate the arpeggiated style and substance of chiptunes, though I did use a lot of sounds that are ‘illegal’ for the genre (i.e. delays, etc.). Still, I think it came out okay.

Shred test — I was linked by wauterboi to this excellent VST called Shred, which emulates guitars rather bloody well. So I ended up playing with that and a rhythm gate to make something a bit more driven.

Little mountain & Easte-reverb — These are part of an ongoing attempt to make some music that I can share with my fellow writers as songs that aren’t going to distract them. Kind of like the Ghostly ‘Music for creatives‘ album (which you should definitely get if you haven’t already).

So that’s a few of them. I’ll be trying to get maybe one per month done, as the mood takes me. But really its all about enjoying the process, rather than any kind of output.

And that brings me to another point I wanted to make in that, for me at least, I think it’s important to have multiple outlets for creativity. I don’t think I could exclusively stick to one way of bringing ideas into reality; I’d get either bored or stale in my methods. Even from just the two examples I’ve put here show how bringing learning into your life can result in new ways of expression: I now have the ideas of a text adventure and a themed album floating around my head. And who knows how those ideas will interact with the rest of the stuff that gets thrown in there? And before anyone gets any misconceptions, no, I’m not looking to make money out of these things. Of course I’m never going to get signed to a label or picked up by EA (not that I’d want to in the latter case), but it’s fun to try new things! And that’s what I’ve been feeling like doing lately, trying out new stuff.

Alright, well that’s enough rambling from me for the moment. I hope you’re all enjoying the lead up to the holiday season. Let me know your plans in the comments, or tell me some of your alternate creative hobbies, I’d love to hear whether your outlets have interacted with each other in unexpected ways.

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photo credit: CW Ye

The holiday is

fast disappearing from my memory, although we have yet to go through our photos properly–I’m sure that’ll help. Anyway, while it’s all relatively fresh in my mind, I wanted to go through what I thought were the best bits of our trip. A top five seems appropriate, but since everything was so great, I won’t number them.

Cave Lodge — Not strictly an activity, but more of a hub where you have access to activities. The lodge is located just by the Burma border and is run by John. John’s a bloke who left Australia for Thailand 20 years ago and has never looked back. He’s mapped the region extensively and knows just about everything there is to know about caving and exploration. His book, ‘Wild Times’, makes for an impressive read. I would absolutely recommend staying here: not only is it a central location to a huge number of caves, waterfalls, and villages, but the atmosphere of the place is friendly and enjoyable. All of our nights were spent around the fire, having a laugh and a beer with fellow travellers. We made some great mates and ended up doing things like caving and kayaking/trekking that we never thought we would be able to do. Take my advice and do caving (2) — extreme caving. You’ll never forget it.

Diving in Koh Lanta — We really ummed and ahhed over doing a diving course while we were over. Our main concern was the expense which, even in Thailand, is significant. We were also a bit hesitant about the quality of the courses, as there were rumours that some of the centres were graduate mills that just want you in and out as quickly as possible. Eventually we decided to go for the Scubafish dive training centre in Ko Lanta. Definitely worth paying a wee bit extra for, as we were put in a group of three and given as much help and advice as we wanted to get us through the training. Huge thanks to Corinna and Natalie! The diving itself (near Koh Ha) was just spectacular. Crystal clear waters and a huge number of fish and coral that was just begging for a return trip. Even if you don’t want to do a dive course, the trip out there for snorkelling would be a great day out.

Elephants in Chiang Mai – This should really be enough said at that. However, there are a LOT of elephant parks around Chiang Mai, so I’d like to give some info about the one we went to. It was called ‘Elephant Nature Park’ and its aim is to buy ex-working elephants from around Thailand and give them the best treatment they can get before they die. Most of the elephants were blind or injured. We didn’t go on rides or see any of the elephants do any tricks like other elephant parks (we were informed that in fact an elephant’s spine can’t comfortably take much more than one average adult–it isn’t built for that). Instead, we learned about each individual elephant’s story, and spent the day feeding and washing the elephants. Much more friendly to the elephants, and we knew that every baht that we put towards that day was going to be spent on helping buy more elephants and pay medical costs for the current ones.

Emerald Cave in Koh Muk – Emerald Cave is frankly the most beautiful place we found ourselves in. It’s a naturally formed beach with a miniature jungle located amid soaring limestone cliffs. The only way to get in there is to swim from the ocean through a pitch-black cave, the water in which glows an eerie green with the light from outside. There aren’t too many words to describe it; we’ll be putting a video up on YouTube as soon as Louise cuts it together, so keep an eye out for it. Suffice to say it’s a must-see.

Scooter riding in Pai – Really this could read ‘scooter riding in X’, because scooters are fucking awesome, and the countryside in Thailand is a blast to ride through. Roads are either long and straight or wind smoothly up mountains. The sun on your helmet, the wind through your hair, and a girl on the back seat of your (child-sized) motor. It’s also to do with the sense of freedom you get when you have a vehicle to get you around. All too often you might spent an entire holiday at the whim of taxi drivers and public transport, but hiring a scooter for a day is a reminder that there are other ways and means to get around.

Alright, I think I can stop at five different activities. Of course there were other aspects of Thailand that were consistently great: the food, the people, and the weather being three I can immediately point to. We never felt harassed (well, not in the regions where we didn’t expect to be harassed), and could always make ourselves understood to the locals. And the food, my life, the food was amazing. So that’s Thailand. Highly recommend everyone go there at least once in their life — like John at Cave Lodge, you might find yourself staying for a lot longer than you planned!

Related posts:

1. Thailand: Diary
2. Self-publishing and emerging writers: some extra thoughts