With The Empress, Sirdan, and others, in Chinatown

This week’s featured archive post — July 2007.

The first of the month and the traditional day for Yum Cha going back to late last century — the July 2000 Yum Cha comes to mind especially. Sirdan felt the cold on his bald Rhodesian head so bought a red beanie in Chinatown, then DVDs of Happy Feet and The Birdcage. “There’s an empty space today,” he said. I knew what he meant.

Eventually ten of us attended Yum Cha at The Golden Harbour, and excellent it was too. Almost as per tradition we finished with the crispy calimari and mango pancakes — not together, I should add. A bit of reminiscing happened.

Reconstruction finished

And, after all, plainness and simplicity have won in the template battle. It all works smoothly now, and I commend these pages to you. Having read the lot again over the past week I am quite pleased with some of it.

Floating Life Apr 06-Nov 07 reconstruction

Be patient if at times you see odd things here. I am patiently rebuilding some of this blog, especially correcting a few small display issues. Everything still works though, but it will look better when I have finished.

New look archive here

This blog, as its title suggests, is an archive from my first WordPress blog covering the period April 2006 to November 2007. It continues “live” on New Lines from a Floating Life and on Ninglun’s Specials.

As of today the ten most popular posts and pages here are:

Two Australian poems of World War II 2,155 visits
Bill Heffernan! 1,819 — mainly for a picture of Elizabeth I
Assimilation, Integration, Multiculturalism 1,620
John Howard: bullying expert extraordinaire 1,523 — but not because of John Howard, I suspect
Does Tim Blair still do global warming jokes? 1,498
Book and DVD backlog 1,454
3 — Indigenous Australians 1,408
About 1,407
On the awkwardness (and fatuity?) of discussing religion 1,294
Friday Australian poem #17: Bruce Dawe, “Homecoming”  1,286

2007 in review: #2 — best pics used here in 2007

1. This one came from Creative Spark, an Oz in Singapore.

2007 in review: #1 — Best reads of 2007: fiction

There’s a tag for that so if you hit it you’ll find them all duly noted. Just as well, as I would never have remembered them all.

However, cutting out a couple of eccentric entries, I have pared the list down to a First Fifteen.

 

Author	Title	Post
Janette Turner Hospital	Orpheus Lost	Welcome to our nightmare
Elmore Leonard	La Brava	Contrasts in my recent reading and viewing
Andrew McGahan	Underground	The novel Andrew Bolt hates and Zadie Smith’s 21st century classic
Zadie Smith	On Beauty	Easily the best novel I have read so far this year*
Dai Sijie 戴思杰	Mr Muo’s Travelling Couch	Sino-Gallic firecrackers
Kate Grenville	The Secret River	May have been, very possibly…
Anne Holt	What Is Mine	Promised review catch-up
Reginald Hill	The Death of Dalziel	More reviews of good stuff from Surry Hills Library
Alexander McCall Smith	Blue Shoes and Happiness	Two very different works of crime fiction
Robert Drewe	Grace	Robert Drewe Grace (2005)
Michael Nava	Rag and Bone	Book and DVD backlog
Andrew O’Hagan	Be Near Me	Negotiating dangerous ground
Salman Rushdie	Shalimar the Clown	as above
Milan Kundera	Ignorance	Milan Kundera Ignorance (2002)
Karin Fossum	When the Devil Holds the Candle	Two crime fiction novels

 

The top five? Ignorance, The Secret River, On Beauty, Orpheus Lost, The Death of Dalziel.

Friday Australian poem #17: Bruce Dawe, “Homecoming”

Years ago I had a student just beginning Year 12 at a Jewish school north of Sydney; Bruce Dawe’s poetry was our first mission. Over the Christmas holidays (well, that’s what I’d call them ) he went to Queensland, found Bruce Dawe in the phone book and rang him up. “Hey, I have to study your poems!” Result? An invitation to come over for a cup of tea, and some good points to make in class…

An Air Force veteran himself, and veteran too of all manner of jobs, this very down-to-earth Australian poet found his voice and his anger during the Vietnam War. “Homecoming” is just one of many he wrote at that time, but is justly the best known.

M — another day, another country

Now he is off to San Pedro de Atacama – Chile.

Australian Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey 2

Jim Belshaw has posted on the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey 2006 from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, released just today. I have downloaded the full report, and to be honest have not had time to do more than browse.

Jim’s post does have a good historical introduction.

He then notes:

A second thing stands out when I look at the numbers. Those in the 15 to 19 age cohort had lower levels of literacy than the 20 to 24 year age cohort and by a reasonable margin.

The following graph captures that; I won’t even try to explain the five categories at this stage. The general trend is what Jim is referring to.

Surry Hills Library threatens restaurant

Nothing like a good parochial story.

You see, Sydney City Council is building a swish new community centre to include, among other things, a new Surry Hills Library, at the moment temporarily housed on the Northcott Estate. Next door to the new library site is an Indian restaurant.

An old bloke

Lovely story of Election Day in Coffs Harbour NSW from Pip Wilson.

Reckoning: The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush

Here are some extracts from a  Joseph E. Stiglitz article published in Vanity Fair two days ago.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

Serendipity

I thought it delightful that ABC had scheduled (unknowingly of course) Choir Of Hard Knocks Opera House Special for the first day of the Rudd government.

Twelve months ago Jonathon Welch brought together a group of Melbourne’s disadvantaged to form a choir, but had no idea what a sensation the choir would become. Now the 42 members of the Choir of Hard Knocks have been invited to perform in the Opera House concert hall.

Taking such a disparate group on the road is a risky venture, and the stakes are high. It’s a real show of faith in the Choir, and nerve racking for the organisers. It’s a massive logistical operation given the varied emotional and physical needs of the choristers. For most, it will be their first time on a plane or their first trip interstate.

Sirdan’s Sunday lunch

The Empress, E, Sirdan’s neighbour and I had our post-election Sunday lunch today. There was no weeping or gnashing of teeth.

The conversation did get around to a remarkable story that was front page news in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald even with that day’s election dominating: Lesson for the school of hard Knox, concerning the young man above.

IT TAKES a lot of guts at the best of times to stand in front of 1350 fellow students, 150 teachers and 600 parents in the school assembly hall and tell it as it is.

But when it involves accusing some of your year 12 classmates of being cheats, and fingering influential parents for bullying the school authorities into giving prestigious positions to undeserving sons, the effect can be nothing short of sensational.

Especially when the school is the well-respected North Shore institution Knox Grammar, which counts among its alumni the veteran broadcaster John Laws, Macquarie Bank chairman David Clarke, former editor of the satirical Oz magazine Richard Neville, Hugh Jackman and ethicist Simon Longstaff.

Did something happen last night?

Meanwhile, time for the seven day survey of the top individually visited posts and pages in the seven days to Saturday.

ENGLISH/ESL

Physical journeys and Peter Skrzynecki’s poems 615 visits
Workshop 02 — NSW HSC: Area Study: Imaginative Journeys 313
Studying the Gothic, or Emily Bronte? 215
How should I write up a Science experiment? 94
Physical journeys and Peter Skrzynecki’s poems updated 76

HERE

Bill Heffernan! 91
The connection has timed out — Firefox 85
Book and DVD backlog 80
John Howard: bullying expert extraordinaire 69
Is Australia a Christian country? 53

10.08 pm: John Howard concedes defeat

Mardi Gras Night 1996 – 24 November 2007

8.30pm: ABC computer delivers government to Kevin Rudd