The themes were familiar of course. Rampant crime. Oh and punishment, lots of punishment (eg there’s not enough of it in general). Hoons, a favorite bogey of the minute and biker gangs too, another classic that seems to have spilled over the border from shrill conservative South Australia. And not enough coppers. Plus more punishment.

The upshot is that you, the voter, should of course elect Ted Baillieu and you will be safe! Protected from the gangs of evil hoon bikies with the squillion coppers on the street. In additional criminals can now expect life for littering because we’ll sort those pesky judges out who dare to take any circumstances into account. Obviously it’s just a sickening, fear drumming, piece of reactionary bullshit which naturally enough did not resort to a single peice of actual cited evidence for anything, just a statement that these evils existed and they planned to do something about it.

Perhaps more ‘hilariously’ of all, there was even a little survey at the back. This is where you ticked boxes about all the things, as a layperson, you are obviously qualified to know about it like … are enough people being convicted and sent to prison long enough. Plus stuff about hoons, evil bikers and so on and such forth.

It’s depressing really. This cynical zooming in on a conservative demographic, kicking out all sorts of loaded statements of threat with loaded language backed up by nothing at all. I guess it’s just plain easier than being a engaged in a proper democratic process. Working out what actual difficulties people are facing, researching some policies and presenting them as adults. I, for one, am not at all concerned about the raft of horseshit they put on this pamphlet. I see the great evil as Australia going the way of the US, where everyone is afraid of all this stuff so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The biker thing is a classic example. The outlawing of a group of people before they have committed any crime. I’m struggling to see under what political science, philosophical or moral theory you are concocting that sort of policy. It’s utterly ridiculous. I remember exactly the same sort of hysteria 20 years ago in the NT, fearful right wing paper screaming that the evil baby eating bikers were coming to town. (Darwin River Rock, quite a pleasant weekend I found)

Back to the present, where is the discussion about the crisis of public transport, water conservation, and so on. The only remotely sensible thing I saw was discussion of setting up an anti corruption watchdog, something sorely needed in the cronyism infested waters of Australian politices (see Myki as an example). Although since the very nature of this sort of activity seems to attack the sitting government I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

I have never been quite so unimpressed with a political party in any country I have been in as with the Liberal party. Every time one sees their leadership on television to present an alternative view from the government it’s purely an attack job, no proferred solutions, no acknowledgement that not everything is the fucking government’s fault, and never any actual constructive policy. Unfortunately the Australian press seems entirely complicit in the sorry state of affairs too. Why perform some actual political analysis when you can write another peice about how the opinion polls have shifted a half point in some direction, as if this fucking MATTERS when there isn’t an election on. Show some understanding of the system you’re commenting on you talentless bunch of lazy retards!

The whole situation is just infested with this kind of horseshit. The country is full of members of parliament who think being voted in power is essentially a carte blanche reason to stand up and shout out any particular brand of lunatic opinion you have without any responsibility to consult with experts, consult with those involved, consult with anything at all other than your own vaguely held notion. The death of the ETS, of course, being a symptom of a massive failure of logic and reason in the stratosphere of Australian politics.

Harrumph. I had better calm down or I’ll be inclined to vote Liberal 

So the Chinese… Terrible Thursday has the hardest class with the dreaded listening comprehension class with the stern task master Mrs Gou. It seems I’m still utterly crap at it despite listening to the recordings from previous lessons over and over again, transcribing them. That was kind of disappointing, I hoped to do better but I studied my hanzi 10 times longer than I did listening comprehension, largely because I know I’m getting marked on it and because I had a major piece of homework. Re-listening to listening comprehension tests is a bit like podcasts, when you’ve worked out what something means it’s pretty easy to follow when you hear it again. I think this helps with phrases, I pulled off an impressive save purely on something that was in a Chinese Pod podcast once.

I did so well at writing this week, and still so bad at listening comprehension, that I think I’m going to switch the priority for the upcoming week. Strangely phrases I can bust out with fluency are actually things from podcasts too, they seem to have had this profound impact on me which I didn’t even register before.

There is one markable bit of work done in this listening comprehension where the teacher dictates some words and you have to write them down in Chinese. So it’s a test of listening and writing. I did very badly last week (only because I didn’t have enough time to write down the damn characters, I could have teased them out) but my intense study regime paid dividends and I got most of them right this time which I was pretty damn chuffed with. No telling off this week, I think she even said “well done”. Blimey!

The second Chinese class is very hard core on writing. It’s basically an excersize in translating a bunch of sentences of ever escalating complexity into Chinese, writing it in Chinese. This is hosted by the wonderful Chinese coordinator Dr Zhou, I always thoroughly enjoy his classes. Notably he doesn’t bang on for minutes in Chinese when it’s apparent the class isn’t following. Dr Zhou had kind words to say the week before even though I was utterly painstaking at writing handzi. My improvement in this area was pretty dramatic, knowing most of the characters, writing them a hell of a lot quicker and in a somewhat legible manner. I was so busy at the task that I hadn’t really noticed how well I was doing, Dr Zhou pointed out how much faster I was and he’s right… I basically steamed all the way through and answered them all in the time we had.

I like this class even when I don’t do so well because I really enjoy sentence composition. Later I’ll type up the sentences properly and take a note of my mistakes. Incredibly the longest and hardest one of all I got 90% correct, only missing a 的. I’m still kind of shell shocked that I got it right, much less actually hand wrote the damn thing in Chinese. For posterity I think I’ll include it here.

E: The clothes that my mother bought me in China is nice on me, but a bit of loose. I would like to exchange it for something else but I don’t have the money to buy a flight ticket.

C: 我妈妈在中国给我买的衣服我穿着好看，但是有一点儿肥。 我想换别的东西，但是没有足够的钱买飞机票。

The marathon of  Terrible Thursday rounded off with a couple of lectures which were pretty interesting, occupying my usual first or second row  seat like a proper ‘square’. Inevitably this ends up meaning I sit right next to the tutors. I don’t really understand why you’d want to sit up the back but then I’m paying bloody thousands to be here so I’m a little more interested in what’s going on than chatting to my mates. (Not having any probably helps in this regard).

4.30 and it’s knock off time, down to a pub to swill a couple ales before the wife shows up. Then off to a gig to see one of my favorite female artists Imogen Heap. This was an absolutely amazing gig. Curious how I’ve gone to see a couple of gigs at The Billboard (a great venue in Melbourne to be sure) and they’ve both been female vocalists with a stage packed with innovative backup musicians. It was hands up right up there in the best gigs I’ve seen in Melbourne. After the disappointment of Massive Attack the week prior (they couldn’t be arsed to turn the music up, you could literally turn to the person to your left and just speak to them in a normal voice), I’m sworn off big gigs. They’re expensive and have mostly been a disappointment while smaller gigs have just been vastly better value for money. Up close and personal, surrounded by easy to get to bars and a fraction of the price. No brainer isn’t it?

Even the crappy rail replacement service that meant we ended up getting home at midnight couldn’t really put a downer on what was actually an exhausting but fucking excellent day. A better day, I might add, than I ever would have had if I was doing my old job. So for awhile at least I feel pretty good about this course. Jeannine also had her contract extended so our money woes aren’t apocalyptic and are merely disastrous. A good week then, all told

Then when we moved to leafy Belgrave,  40-odd  kilometers from Melbourne CBD, and got no Optus signal at all – I think it began to dawn on me that we had signed up to a third rate operator. Happily they charged me an absolute fortune to get out of my massive two year contract even after a year. Not a great experience so far and naturally sufficient that I shant be engaging their services again any time in, oh, my lifetime – and made pretty sure everyone else knew what a farce these guys were also.

So tail between legs we ran off to Telstra. No contracts, never again. Handsets owned outright, post-paid low-end plans. I also got one of Telstra’s fancy pants Next-G 3G dongles. The service overall has been excellent. The charges for data are absolutely astronomical, however, but hey I’ll take high charges for actual service than low charges for no service at all.

Circumstances changed when I started using a spangly new Nexus One. I was using the netbook and 3G dongle a whole lot less but a whole lot of data was appearing on my ‘browser pack’ on my phone. Today I called Telstra and disconnected the 3G dongle account and upgraded my browser pack to something they call “phone as a mobile”. Since I hacked the Nexus One to give me tethering I can either use the device itself or plug into my netbook (where it gets powered/charges) and sponge off the Net on that as required. I’m paying $59 for a 1GB allowance, which is probably, hopefully, more than I need and definitely more than I’d like to pay. However since if you go over they charge you 25c per megabyte, your break-even point is the 300MB pack with an additional 120MB downloaded pay-as-you-go which is 420MB. Nice.

Phoning Telstra up to get a service disconnected (when you have no contract) and upgrading the datapack on an existing phone was painless. What puzzles me though is why their website is just so diabolical. Once logged in half the functionality teleports you to disconnected websites. You have to piss about to sign up to monitor data usage, or to get online billing, all separate. You can’t upgrade your own plans, you can’t even buy a new plan although you can sort of upgrade phone and plan via their shop. It’s a terrible web site, reminiscent of also-ran operation in the UK rather than the incumbent in Australia.

What really pisses me off is that to get a 1GB data plan on a 3G dongle would cost me $39.95 a month and they’d ‘slow’ access after that – which is great. However 1GB on my phone, same network, is $59 and if I go over they’ll rape me sideways. There’s a very clear bias in charges where “phone as a modem” is loads more expensive. I think this is because they treat 3G dongles as being incremental business so they’re competing on price. I find it frustrating and disrespectful that I already give them a standing charge in addition to this higher charge data pack, just to have a mobile phone account for telephone calls – of which I make maybe 5 a month. I still need to do it this way because it’s simply more economical to have the large pool of quota (and the more sane 6c a megabyte) in one place available for my phone and my netbook.

I’m weary of the terrible telecoms situation in Australia. Weary of Telstra being the only one to offer a service that works properly but using this as a license to rip you off completely while cowboy operators that can’t run their web sites or customer service numbers, let alone a functional telephone network – lie, cheat and steal by falsely selling capacity they don’t have. Why can’t we have some actual respect?

Telstra need to bring their services up to date, fix your goddamn web site. Lower your prices not hugely but just so you’re not being absolutely ridiculous. Third party operators need to stop offering bargain basement services which they fail to deliver. More than anything else there needs to be a goddamn regulator with teeth to get stuck into this situation.

First thing is first though. Telstra need to charge me $39.99 for that 1GB plan on my mobile instead of $59 just like if I had the plan on a USB dongle. On what basis should it be otherwise?

First of all there’s the whole complexity of finding the course you want to do, who offers the course including what campuses those are and then the true nightmare begins, working out how to actually apply. In Victoria there’s a sort of common application system called VTAC.

The frustrating thing is that there’s a wide gamut of different entry requirements for undergrad degrees for non year 12 students (that’s me) and while VTAC should tell you these, it doesn’t always because some Unis really don’t have their Shit Together. Some Unis don’t have any additional requirements (other than a Pi form which is basically a questionaire about work experience and motivation), some want you to sit a sort of idiot test (SAT) and others really don’t want you at all like Monash. Monash are legendary, these guys seriously only take someone who’s sat through a Cert IV at TAFE level – my inner-cynic assumes that’s something to do with the fact they want to flog you their ‘foundation year’ year 12 college thing.

Anyhow, some advice I got at an RMIT open night was that making a nuisance of yourself of yourself would pay dividends, particularly if you don’t get in. Applying that logic immediately  to RMIT itself I did find out, because they were good enough to tell me, that I really didn’t have a great chance of getting in to the course I wanted there. Lots of year 12 competition. Not a lot of consideration for Johnny Come Lately Old Blokes. Fair cop guv, thanks for telling me.

So now I’m exploring other options such as Deakin (I really like their approach, and their staff research but the campus location aint great for networking) or using the CAP program at Melbourne (Cynic mode: a thinly justified way to turn domestic students into full-fee paying students) with some off-campus from Deakin.  I’ve had a different favored scenario every couple of days as stuff comes to light, digging through variable quality Uni web sites and getting the odd nugget back from Uni staff who are good enough to reply.

It’d actually be quite a fun research excersize under normal circumstances but it’s me that’s got quite a lot to lose here. Eg being stuck without a substantial way to undertake the studies in my chosen area in 2010, or at least having to do them off campus. That’s a horrific outcome.

I’ll soldier on making a nuisance of myself in the meantime. On one hand I’m doing a pretty good job of maintaining a positive outlook because by Chris I will make this work… but it’s hard not to be a little frustrated when you’re willing to fork out astoundingly large amounts of cash, being hugely self motivated, studying exactly the shit the country needs to get ahead … meanwhile the Unis are crammed with foreign students. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be, I’m saying think I’m exactly the sort of person they need because likely it’ll be me ultimately kicking out those published academic papers they crave so much.

I’ll make it work, I just feel like it shouldn’t be this hard to make it work given my circumstances.

I guess I just need to get over myself, that’s one course prerequisite they don’t specify but which is surely as important as any other.

Really though? No, not this time. It’s just not a dance I feel like doing. I’m of the view that I’d like to properly settle down and dig myself into a good career that can make use of my skills in some area I find interesting. I’m pretty sure that’s something to do with International development/relations/politics relating to China. I don’t kid myself though, I don’t really have those skills to walk into some job. Hah, I want to work in some area I don’t really know that much about? I must be bonkers!

There is a sort of method to the madness though… I’ve banged on at some length about the difficulties I’m finding with pursuing Chinese as someone who works on a part-time, self-learning basis sort of thing…. the solution was always something like University. Well, there’s just not many other options. I had set myself up for a pretty gruelling couple of years enrolling in the TAFE part-time course at RMIT in addition to working full time. The only reason I’d subject myself to that is if really did need that nice full time high paying job. The thing is, I don’t think I do…

The ducks have sort of lined up pretty quickly. Work stuff is coming to a head to the point I’m not sure there’s a job for me and quite frankly I’m tired of feeling like that’s somehow my fault, which is a familiar frustrating feeling having been here before. Financially we’re okay, personally I mean. I can afford to pack it in and go to Uni. I mean, it would mean cutting back. A lot. Not many people are this lucky though and I’m pretty confident of my ability to pull in some wonga too, a happy side effect of being that jack-of-all-trades. As for course fees, they’re pretty cheap. I made significantly more share trading last year than what a degree course costs.

These ducks, though, couldn’t they have lined up a bit sooner? It’s now the 25th of goddamn November and a couple of days ago I had NO idea how the hell you apply and I can tell you I’m still not that sure. Australian University web sites, and the VTAC system etc, are what you might call… eccentric in usability terms. All sorts of deadlines have slipped by already but I think it’s still doable. Not at the Uni I’d really like to go to, but thems the breaks. Three or four years of learning very cool stuff, some overseas placement work, nice varied getting about to campus, doing some odd jobs for wonga, and studying out in the back yard with the parrots to keep me company. I reckon I’m mentally prepared for that, no not just that. I’m positively looking forward to it.

38 years old and student scum again. It’s going to be weird. Just as well I like weird eh?

It’s an hour’s flight or so. The joint is just over the border, geographically spitting distance in Australia. Melbourne being the car-loving mecca that it is, eschews the commonly held international view that it’s a good idea to connect your airport with your CBD with anything like, say, a rail line. Not when you can build huge carparks and charge people literally hundreds of dollars for parking their cars there – why build a rail line? You might have to cut down a tree or demolish an outdoor dunny, besides it’s hard work in the sun!

I digress… Can I get that late Friday flight back to Melbourne? Surely a crazy notion for returning businessmen and the like? Nope, pretty much all the flights stop at around 6pm. Hell, joints like Qantas wont even fly direct and will po-faced suggest a flight via Sydney. They’re taking the mick… so, how about some other method of transport like say the train?

The good news about the train is that it leaves from the city, meaning a scurry from work to the station is imminently suitable. The bad news, and honestly I’m still not sure I actually believe this, is that there really isn’t some form of viable direct train from Melbourne – you know, that close-by second largest city in Australia I mentioned – to Canberra. There are various sort of hilarious interchange services involving no small amount of bus travel from places with names like Cootamundra. These take about eight hours, involve changes and all that sort of jazz, and ultimately cost substantially more than just jumping on a goddamn Tiger flight from Melbourne to Canberra.

I’m not really familiar with Australia’s rail network however as I was born and raised in Darwin, I recall for a great many years the big issue was the recommissioning of a rail line from Darwin to Adelaide. A colossal rail line of 3000km with not a lot in between but red country and all for the purpose of hooking up a town with a hundred thousand people, give or take. Yet apparently that was worth doing and it exists today. Yet some sort of direct goddamn rail link from Melbourne to Canberra, the CAPITAL CITY and the CULTURAL CAPITAL of the goddamn country is not on the cards. Awesome.

There looks like there might be actual viable overnight journeys purely by coach. These, unlikely the trains, run proper overnight services and go door-to-door between the cities. This also costs more than it costs to fly, but it’s reasonable and ultimately since the only current alternative I have is to pay for a hotel night and then catch the first flight (which isn’t particular early) which then delivers me to Melbourne airport which isn’t actually in Melbourne or on a goddamn train line, meaning by the time I get to the city, then get onto a train to where I want to be it will be late Saturday afternoon.

That’s where we’re at. It’s not possible for me to be at a dinner function in Canberra on Friday night and be at home in an outter suburb of Melbourne on Saturday AM.

That my friends is a fucking joke only I’m definitely not laughing.

So surely we must be missing out on some ameneties? Well, not that I can see. The high street of Belgrave has all your usual sort of shops, cafes and restaurants and it’s an extremely short walk. So what about broadband? We’re 700 meters from the exchange, ADSL2+ enabled and loaded with a fair bit of third party telco equipment meaning the choice of ISP is pretty wide and I’d expect the same connection or better than our inner Melbourne abode. And what of the commute? It’s a short walk to Belgrave train station and the train runs right into the city with no changes. Basically the same station I get off now. Instead of 30 minutes on a train it’s a bit over an hour. Now granted for this distance the train really should be more of a long distance train, with tables and such, and in fact it’s just a usual metro train so not as comfortable as it could be. Yet at afternoon peak hour last week I checked out the train from Flinders to Belgrave and it must have been a quarter full, if that.

That goes to what I’m saying, despite the fact this is prime commute, work in the city on a city wage, live in the country on a block of land in the middle of a forrest and pay half as much as a bloody 2 bedroom apartment (I’m not kidding), people just wont do it. I thought about it and maybe it’s the suburban kids thing? The kids can’t play on the road with the neighbours, it’s kinda windy busy roads with no footpaths. Maybe it’s schools, I expect they’re a drive rather than a school walk. In truth, I don’t really know.

All I know is their loss is my gain. Personally I absolutely revel in an hour train commute. It’s a prime time to switch off from the Internet and read a book, write a book even, or study Chinese. I’ve made spectacular progress in Chinese by just doing an hour a day of flashcards on the train. Imagine when I have more than two hours a day… it’ll be bliss.

So the city dwellers can keep their scrappy looking graffiti covered town houses. You might have more restaurants in spitting distance but the food at the locals in the leafy suburbs is cheaper and better, because they want you back. In fact, this is all the same sort of arguments I recall about moving out of London to the country in the UK a few years back. Only thing is back then London wasn’t commutable at all and we had to find a way to do it. All the commuter towns on the fast rail lines were virtually as expensive as London. The situation in Victoria is very different. I don’t actually understand the profile of someone who wants to spend $850,000 on a three bedroom townhouse.

It occurs to me that this whole phenomenon is actually a reason why there’s no proper rail network, virtually no expansion of the rail network even during the massive boom years continuing in Australia’s fastest growing city. Folks just don’t want to do it. It’s in tram range or it’s not worth doing. Funny old place.

Firstly, the Telstra call came in bang on dinner time and I was in a restaurant. I explained I was in a restaurant and the guy carried on and asks if he can have some of my time. Erm, no pal you can’t because, you know, sat on your mobile to some fucking mobile phone salesman plankton in the middle of a restaurant is clearly not socially acceptable behavior… He then actually harumphs at me and there’s no mistaking his theatrical huffy exclamation that he’ll try call me some other time. Fucking right on pal, top attitude. Wont even pick it up next time. If you don’t understand that you are calling at our sufferance then it strikes me you don’t have a very good grasp of your job…

The second call, from Optus, was an entirely different beast. Perfectly polite operator but clearly wasn’t a native English speaker. That’s okay, there’s plenty of migrants in the country and obviously this sort of job probably has more than it’s fair share. That said, you know that this call centre isn’t in Australia. The diabolical call quality is a giveaway. I seem to be getting this a lot, people calling from companies with just abominable call quality presumably via some cheap-ass VOIP solution. One particular outfit, calling after I ordered stuff online, called me half a dozen times and I said clearly down the line each time that I couldn’t understand them – the line quality was unintelligible. Eventually they gave up.

So, the Optus call. They’re trying to get me to move my Internet and phone service to Optus. As usual with these calls it starts off by them asking me how much I spend. As usual with these calls I have no intention of telling them. I don’t know. Just approximate. I don’t know, those details aren’t to hand. Right well did you know… click. Now that click wasn’t me, though you know that is something I might consider, the click was them. The (shitty) line just went dead. No call back either. So it was either them not being arsed (they asked about types of calls I make and I said “Skype”), or their shitty VOIP system again.

This is the same Optus that sends extraordinarily trashy adverts via SMS to my phone unsolicited. To be fair I texted them to stop and they did. And charged me for the message texting them to stop too, which is nice of them. They also charge me money to send a paper bill. Which is amusing because their online service is broken almost all of the time in new and interesting ways and the whole issue of getting a simple fucking log-in to it required weeks and calls to their customer service. I get the paper bill because it looks like you can’t fuck that up and then you charge me for it? Niiice.

The takeaway from this is that I didn’t want the calls in the first place (who does?) but accepting that these are inevitable is it not at least a good idea to put your best foot forward? After all, I’m even more hacked off with these companies than I was before. Alright, probably not strictly speaking possible with the incompetent pack of fuckwitry that appear to constitute Optus but still…

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The same outfits that extol the virtues of how great it is to communicate in all their advertising but then replace human beings with diabolical automated voice mail systems were never really ‘on message’ with their own business goals were they?