Culpa

I'm guiltier about my disengagement than the sardonic glibness below implies. To name something and to joke about it is to make excuses.

Read this.

Jesus.

6 hours of election coverage later...

...I want to claw out my brain. So, we have a PM named Kevin. I don't know how I feel about that. hehe.

Current feelings: totally unsurprised, a little hopeful, a little apprehensive, and ready to take the piss. Rudd is an awful orator, so passionless. Also, count the number of times he said "nation" and "future" in his victory speech. Dude, they're called SYNONYMS!

eg. "This task as well, to remain ever vigilant in defence of our nation's national security."

Nation's national security! That's almost Bush league. Kevin '10, if you need a snarky apathetic speechwriter, I stand ready to serve.

I'm even vaguely sorry for John Howard (though I do not forget - oh yeah, VSU was dumb too!). My mum is in mourning. I don't really understand her almost visceral hatred of Labor and emotional attachment to the Libs. The Team A vs Team B battle isn't meaningful to me. I think the more crucial battle is The Little People vs The Powerful.Why be blinded by party loyalty? We've got to be vigilant against manipulation and use the powerful for our needs rather than vice versa. Everyone should be a swinging voter.

In response to one of Chez's points- with the balance of power, I think that the senate/reps division is more important than state/federal cos if one party dominates both houses, it's a legislative free-for-all (see also: Work Choices). So I'm very interested to see how the senate seats pan out - go go random third parties! With state/fed, I reckon that the states will act in their own interests rather than according to party lines (see also: kerfuffle over water policy) so there's no great threat to balance.

PS. Voted below the line again for the senate cos damned if I'll let other people decide how my preferences flow! 79 boxes, man. Gotta say, when you get beyond the top few parties, it's all a bit "eeny meeny miney mo". I may have accidentally voted for the Shooters' Party above the Carers' Party. Um, oops. Down the end it gets to "do I hate Pauline Hanson more than Fred Nile?" (Think I split the bottom spots between them)

The Election

So Chez wants me to write about the election. To be honest I've been paying attention to the form of ads more than the content (verdict: almost uniformly crapola). I'll be voting, as I think most people do, on vague gut instinct. I know, I know, the West Wing fan and former PoliSci/Law kid in me is ashamed at my lack of engagement but....INTEREST RATES ARE BORINGO! I can only bring myself to care about politics when interesting moral questions are at stake. I'll care about the economy when I actually have money. I think my leanings were set back at the time of my political awakening, circa Tampa. And what I remember from that period was the cynical fearmongering. The Pacific Solution was the most assbackward absurd policy ever. Labor was gutlessly me-too at that time though, I recall. WorkChoices also seems dodgy - where was this mentioned before the last election?

Sooo where does that leave us? I was a Democrats fan til they slowly went under - they're a little bit less lefty-loopy "pass the peace pipe yo" than the Greens. But I will prolly vote Greens anyway, preferencing Labor, reserving the right to bitch about whoever wins. Unless someone hands me a particularly pretty how-to-vote card tomorrow.

Man, I can just see Martin Sheen shaking his head sadly at me right now.

Updates

• Feh is the new favourite word of the week.

• It sucks being the lone singleton in a house of couples. Cue violins!

• Talked to my dad about the crazy grandpa thing a while ago. There's been some progress made on the "go to the damned doctor" front especially since my great-uncle has just come over from America and has been harping on at him. Today he had an appointment but backed out at the last minute - still, baby steps.

• On the JFSS/BMP project, I've decided that maybe it wasn't the blinding flash of genius that I always think my ideas are (snort). Sent it off to the National Rural Health Network who should be natural allies in this, and their council considered it and decided against. Sent me some (rather hollow) reasons why.
  

  The NRHN supports conference funding being available to BMP students, and does not believe that this should be replaced by other schemes. BMP students are currently eligible to apply for JFSS scholarships under the same criteria as other students and so the aims of the JFSS program ie to increase the number of rural practitioners is open to all interested students, are best met...The NRHN believes that should be avoiding comparison with JFSS, or attempting to get a BMP allocation of JFSS scholarships. The NRHN believes that we should be pushing for rural mentoring on an individual or small group basis, and expressing a need that face-to-face meetings with mentors is important. It would be hoped that face-to-face encounters would include some clinical time, but merely seeing the work environment may be sufficient to convince BMP holders to stay with the programme and not buy their way out.

  Bolded bit translated: "shut yo piehole, ignoramus!" Ok I concede that group mentoring is a good idea I didn't think of. But jeebus, they think EXCURSIONS are sufficient to deter students from bailing. And "pushing for rural mentoring" - hello, John Flynn is already in place and set up for that! Feh I say. Come to think of it, maybe my idea isn't pure inspiration, but their arguments aren't strong. It seems more like conservative guarding of their own position and protecting the sacredness of the JFSS (which isn't actually under threat, gah). Maybe I communicated badly. Will I take it any further? Meh. Drawing is funner. Being told to STFU grates though.

• On HES, Mauritius was my first choice but the grapevine says that even interns there hardly get to do any meddy stuff, just trail in the wake of senior docs taking notes and doing scutwork. So that's up in the air again. Que faire! ?
  

• My housemate's boyfriend doesn't know which party Rudd and Howard belong to. The election is in a week. He is a med student. Errrr. And dear Millionaire woman, "wherefore" is WHY!
  

• Translated said housemate's letter for her HES in Madagascar to French this evening. And discovered that a) my français has gone down the crapper despite NINE HARD YEARS of study and b) despite a), translation is one of those things I love doing and can lose track of time. Even Latin. Hell, especially Latin, cos even though it's sometimes frustrating - "WTF is the verb doing 5 lines down from the subject?!" - at the end you get the "woah, I just understood something thunk up 2000 years ago and it's still funny or moving or beautiful despite my godawful mangling" feeling. I was always more into the process than the result...don't ask me anything about Tacitus now.
  

• Went shopping at Charlestown today. And in possibly the nerdiest development ever, the most exciting time was when I bought some 4B and 6B pencils for my new inner artiste. Resisted the temptation of sexy thick-papered sketchbooks because there's no guarantee I won't get bored of this hobby in like 3 days (as you can prolly tell, I have hot flushes of passion which quickly fizzle). When we got home, my friend and I plonked ourselves on the couch and sketched. Very therapeutic.
  

Pencil > sword

That's what I'm listening to at the moment. My mum copied some of her CDs to iTunes on her work computer, which I used to back up my collection. This is the music of my childhood - maybe not this exact song, they all sound the same to me. It evokes lazy summer Sundays at home, just mum and dad and I pottering around the house. I never listen to this stuff of my own accord but I'm always tickled when it comes up on random.

Two things have sort of rocked my world lately. First, I decided I'm learning to draw. Came across some excellent sites that say that anyone can draw and I figure it's just a perceptual and motor skill that needs to be practised. Talent schmalent. We shall see if my decidedly unvisual brain (see also: total inabilty to read a map or navigate any of the three cities I call home) can get the hang of it. There are these classic drawing texts available online by Andrew Loomis - oldschool but awesome. With the "Fun with a Pencil" one, you start drawing decent-looking cartoons within the first five minutes so tis very positively reinforcing. Just started last night and already it's changing the way I see things. Suddenly the view from my window is no longer just of my grungy neighbour's yard, but made of shapes. The sky is divided by the vertical lines of my Venetians, intersected at right angles by power lines. The best thing is that it's a hobby that only requires a piece of paper and pencil, superbueno. Slightly less involved than hang-gliding and less risk of gruesome death by gravity. Quite a bonus.

The other thing is mind mapping. I've always pooh-pooh'd it because it's so messy and imprecise. In Year 10 our teacher made us do essay brainstorming with spider maps and it was torture. I told her I think linearly and in hierarchies (internal: LIKE A RATIONAL PERSON) and she said she knew, I was too boxed in, that's why I had to try and EXPAND MY MIND and I said yes yes ma'am (internal: feh, BA hippies). But now I find they're actually useful, and more accurately reflect how people think. Sooo...Ms Tulk / BA hippies 1, moi 0.

La vie est spiffy at the moment. Exams done, nice weather, clean clothes and room, food in the house. Ahhhh. MedBall was...interesting. Good food and far too much good drink. Too much = 4 in 9 hours, stupid acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. Maybe those puritans are onto something. A firstie had to be ambulanced because of alcohol poisoning and we saw a drunk girl bashing up her boyfriend. She tried to steal our cab, but the cabbie was on our side- not knowing that moments earlier, my friend and I were plotting what to do if I had to puke (window? move my stuff to her bag and chuck in mine? luckily, neither plan had to be tested). Heh.

Oy, another pointless post. Can't give you a nice dovetail ending all the time peoples. Learn to draw is the point maybe.

Can't sleep

Cbf studying either. So so sick of my notes.

Let me tell you how med is ruining my youth and health. My room looks like a warzone and the kitchen bins are overflowing so that there's a tide of garbage gradually encroaching on the kitchen floor. Our resident cockroach population is booming. I can't remember the last time I had a fresh vegetable or fruit, slept 8 continuous hours, went to bed before 3am, or had any exercise. Today's diet consisted of instant noodles cadged from housemate Alex (who I thought was Israeli, but disappointingly isn't), fruity roll cadged from housemate Katrina (training to be a nutritionist!), Coke Zero cadged from housemate Mincho (#1 supergenius in all of med who is also cool, funny and nice so we can't even hate him) and packet pasta from my own collection. Usually not such a leech, but supplies are low. Somehow in my twisted mind procrastinating on the computer is ok cos I can start studying any moment, but going to the shops is verboten. There is no logic. On the plus side, haven't started talking to myself yet. HOWEVER, in about 9 hours....FRRREEEEEDOM! Dear god, pass my sorry ass.

Alex and I share a bathroom that connects between our rooms. Classic setup for slapstick, n'est-ce pas? A couple of days ago there was an almost-incident when I stripped off and bounded into the bathroom only to see that he had left his door open...and he was in his room! I will leave it to your sordid minds to imagine the rest of the story.

Random thought for the day: knowledge of other people's characters is never fact, it's just a hypothesis that's tested and tweaked every time you interact with them. Mostly I'm never that wrong. Even people I think are awesome never fail my ridiculously rosy image of them. There might some kinda cognitive bias there, but I think I'm open to all evidence. Then there are some peeps for whom hypotheses are totally useless!

Plenty of people are bad cooks....

...but it takes a special talent to screw up boiled eggs. I am talented.