Possibly too much information

I know, a long time since I last posted. Can we not talk about that please?

Career0ne just sent me this personality profile. It doesn't take long, and was eerily accurate for both Lovergirl and I. Try it yourself.

Apparently I'm best in project type work where I'm in complete control and people will leave me to get on with the job. L is best in jobs where she uses her verbal skills and has authority, such as 'counsellor' or 'minister of religion'!

Me at work:

This is a person who can be very enthusiastic about an environment where they have a strong level of knowledge and where they can take hold of a project, own it completely, work on it from its initial inception and pursue it until a successful conclusion has been reached. Ideally, such projects are short-term in nature and are within an environment where they are an "expert" and feel very competent. Otherwise, they can become pessimistic, critical and doubtful, although, in the early stages of achieving the project, their enthusiasm and energy will keep them buoyant through some of the difficult moments.

A tendency to be so focused on quality can result in some time-management issues, and they can move between being highly distractible and wanting to interact with others, to then wanting to focus 100% on their work, to the point where they resent interruption. The key motivators are also varied. On the one hand, they need and love interaction with people; it is important for them to feel that they are a significant and well-regarded part of the team. On the other hand, they also need to have the opportunity to focus on their work and pursue it, preferably without interruption.

The need to feel secure and to have sufficient data and skills makes them, at times, somewhat pedantic about collecting information and spending quite some time in the preparation phases. Then again, another aspect is that they enjoy being in an environment which is very busy, ever changing, allowing them to work on issues that are short-term and which still allow them to juggle many priorities and be responsive to ever-changing challenges. Under pressure, this can lead them to over commit and take on too much.

Their work style can vary considerably. Ideally, they will enjoy a situation where they are completely on top of the challenges that might arise, familiar with the type of work that they are responsible for and experienced enough to ensure successful outcomes. They are most suited to short-term projects for which they can have total ownership and which require attention to detail, precision, awareness and the pursuit of high quality outcomes. The environment should also allow them to have a number of different projects on the go that can, once completed, be discussed with colleagues. The interaction aspect of their work is important, however, it is just as important for them to control when that interaction occurs.

These individuals can be quite volatile. Despite their genuine team orientation, it is not unusual to find them becoming quite annoyed and reactive when they find themselves under pressure or interrupted for what they perceive to be trivial reasons. They can also be quite pedantic, needing much detail and support, a great deal of time to get on top of their challenges and reassurance that they have the capacity to achieve what they have been set. When they feel on top of their projects and when they are in "people mode", you will find a very warm, enthusiastic and compassionate individual who's good intentions can override the irritation when forced to consider what they perceive as trivial issues.

Summary

An individual with this type of temperament is a scientist for the people, enjoys contact with others outside the workplace and prefers projects that can benefit society in the long run and provide security for them.

How to make a business phone call

1. You have to wait until both twins are relatively calm to begin with.

2. Put one twin in their cot and wind up the mechanical mobile as far as possible, to give yourself every available millisecond. Unfortunately the mobile will spin quite fast, and the music will play an oddly discordant version of its assigned tune; it sounds a bit like one of those horror carnival scenes, just before the madly grinning clown pops up and terrifies us all.

3. Move to other end of house. Discordant mobile tunes are unprofessional.

4. Put second twin on breast.

5. Make phone call. Don't spend too long on the small talk. Don't fall asleep from the oxytocin rush.

Perks of working from home.

It's hot here.

Yesterday I interviewed the CEO of a company while wearing a only an attractive flesh tone maternity bra and an orange and green sarong stretched over my belly.

Not a trace of lippy.

Home alone with no supervision

Remain focussed on painstaking editing job.

Do not blog.

DO NOT BLOG.

Do not check up on how favourite other bloggers are going, either.

That is NOT research.

Editing

God! 'People' and 'punctuation'! Who would 'ever' have thought that 'so many people' could use so many 'unnecessary' punctuation marks?!!?? It's' incredible!!!

More dad-isms (with the greatest affection)

<-- Dad & I spent the day in the Daintree. I can't tell you how tedious and awful it is to have to travel so often...

After a rough trip out to the Barrier Reef:
Me: 'Did you feel seasick?'
Dad: 'I was a bit skirmish, but not really sick'

Conversation over coffee with the Saturday morning papers:
Dad: 'The bubonic plague was started by Mormons, you know.'
Me: 'Mormons?'
Dad, 'Yes, from Asia.'
Complete puzzlement. I peer over his shoulder at the Australian Magazine to find that the plague was initially spread by marmots.

The things you do for love - a photo essay

You go to the RSL for dinner and while you are there an appropriately plump Elvis impersonator starts up, crooning flirtatiously to the elderly ladies. You have the roast as it's the cheapest thing on the menu and it's Dad's shout. Dad pulls a plastic takeaway container from his manbag and frugally saves the leftovers for tomorrow.

After dinner you go upstairs to the hall for the Saturday night dance. You can't do any of the dances - except a dimly remembered Pride of Erin from your high school deb. Dad insists on dancing every dance with you anyway. Your feet get blistered and you look like a troll, tromping and stumbling around as the other couples glide by.





Dad wows all the ladies with his Mediterranean charm. Also there are always more women dancers than men. You finally convince him you will not die of loneliness if he gets up and dances with someone else.







You make a cup of tea. 'Is there any milk?' you ask Clara, who's sharing your table and has already offered some mixed lollies. She looks at you oddly. 'Yes,' she says. 'Where will I find it?' you press. 'We don't put it out until it's time for tea,' she says, in a voice that implies you were obviously not taught correct manners. No tea on demand? What restraint! In your immersion in the creed of instant gratification, you find this most odd.At nine-thirty precisely supper is served. Two sponges, a plate of egg-and-lettuce sandwiches, some butterfly cakes and a chocolate slice.

The Queen looks on from her royal box, high on the wall, next to the Honour Roll. She is most amused.

Amid glass bottom boat tours over coral reefs and rainbow fish, spectacular waterfalls, trips on chairlifts through tropical rainforest and accommodation in a luxurious hotel, it's the highlight of Dad's week.

Time waits for no man

<--Skyrail, Cairns Every time I see Dad, he seems older. Is he deteriorating suddenly, or is the picture of him I hold in my mind one of his younger days, strong and feisty and vigorous, so that every time I see him I am struck afresh by how doddery he is becoming? Apart from physically - and he was always a handsome Maltese man, not unlike Elvis, I used to think when I was younger (and so was he) - he seems so much less sharp, cognitively. I find myself repeating myself, several times. He tells me how to get into his safe 'if I'm not around', and where he wants his ashes scattered (off Malta, out to sea - past the breakwater). He hasn't decided what song he wants at his funeral but not Frank Sinatra. He's very healthy, considering he's 70 - he was a labourer from the time he arrived in Australia at 17 until he retired in his early 60s, so he's always been fit. He does Tai Chi and ballroom dancing and has many lady friends, has just finished a tour of Europe with Joan. He's not depressed by any means, just - planning his future I guess. Getting his affairs in order.

I love the way Lily Brett describes her Polish Jewish father in 'You Gotta Have Balls' and the one before that (title escapes me).

'I bought some Savlon,' Dad said last night, in a conversation about our culinary adventures. 'I am going to try to cook with that.'
'Savlon?' I said.
'Yes, Savlon, what the Asia people use. Is more expensive than gold.'
'Oh, saffron'.

Cairns is hot and gorgeous - green and damp and bustling with tourists. Dad's come to join me, so this training trip is really quite a touristic experience. We met at the airport on Tuesday night - him flying in from Melbourne, and me from Townsville. Yesterday we took the skyrail to Kuranda and the train back - frightfully expensive, and Dad slept all the way back, through 'Australia's most spectacular train journey'. I forgot about the need for an afternoon nap, in my itinerary planning.

There's something a bit unsettling about those experiences that are designed specifically for tourists. Vast hordes of us, all following the 'Guide to Cairns' to the letter. Kuranda itself felt odd; a small sleepy mountaintop village, encroaching rainforest on all sides, overrun by tourists, all of us wearing our neon-bright stickers that indicated which combination of skyrail up/train down or vice versa we were on. On one side of the street were bright friendly Aboriginal people playing didgeridu and dancing and stall holders exhorting us to buy corocodile skin purses and mango champagne; on the other side of the street in the unreconstructed pub, old white men in singlets watched the horses on sky TV while the blackfellas played pool. I felt like I was at a zoo. And there's an assumed lack of creativity - the commentary on the train, narrating on points of interest, says, 'And on the left we are approaching Bill's Falls, where the cascades tumble for a hundred metres...You will find the best vantage point for a photgraph is just after we pass the falls, looking back along the train.' A thousand tourists obediently wait until we pass the falls, and all take exactly the same shot of the waterfall.

It's the McDonaldisation of touring. That said, I have discovered that this is simply the best way to travel with an elderly person. Dad loves it. He loves the crowds of people all from exotic other locations, and he loves the sanitised history, with nothing confronting to tarnish the memories. Aboriginal people are a fascinating culture with a proud history chiefly made up of dancing and didgeridu-playing. Australia's role in war has been to send off brave young men who selflessly fought for what they believed in. We went to see 'Children of Men' at the cinema last night, set in a grotty dreary future London of 2027 - rubbish on the streets, air heavy with smog, hot and drizzling. On the way home, he said, 'Bit far-fetched that movie. The government would never let it get like that.'

The developmental task of old age is consolidation (sorry I can't remember the theorist - Klein?) - looking back over your life and deciding on the whole you've done a good job. Making sense of it. The alternative, the theory runs, is that elderly people succumb to depression, an overwhelming feeling of pointlessness. I suppose as you prepare to leave this planet, you have to assume that you are leaving it in reasonable condition, otherwise you are leaving your children in the s**t.

Greetings from Townsville

<-- View from hotel room

Went out drinking last night with strange man from another hotel room. Bruce manages a renovation company in Nth Queensland, cashed up bogan, odd but entertaining company. Lovergirl convinced I was in imminent danger of being raped and rang mobile about eight times over evening. Now awake at 4am with seedy gummy mouth and woozy stomach. No sound from townsville except relentless swooshing of sea onto shore. Got sick of my own company after about nine days on the road, with one night at home in the middle. Also getting sick of selection of clothes.Also staggered by the number of people who have the reading skills of a primary school child.

Job musings - rather a dull entry, I'm afraid

Life is a series of way too many options. Accepted wisdom is that choice is a good thing. But I wonder what my parents did with all the spare time that they gained through not agonising constantly over career directions.

My father was a builder's labourer. He worked for the same company, the State Electricity Commission, from shortly after I was born until it was privatised during the Kennett era, not so long ago. I don't remember my father ever musing about what he really wanted to do, and certainly the idea of being happy or fulfilled in a job - well, those concepts just didn't go in a sentence together. Not that he ever complained or intimated that he was unhappy - I get the impression that he quite enjoyed his work - but fulfilment and enjoyment weren't things it would cross his mind to expect from a job.

Not me. I keep mulling over what I'm doing, and is this what I want to be doing, or do I want to be doing that? At the moment I have three possibilities that interest me. All in Brisbane, unfortunately.

Jonathon is keen for me to continue where I am. At the moment he only has funding to keep me until October, but he's a smooth talker and fairly confident he's going to be able to find the money to keep me on. I like this job, I like having a statewide & national perspective, and I like the people I work with. I've lots of ideas of what I could do with this position if it continued, and I like the idea of being partly responsible for the transformation of the sector - which would be a bit of an accident of timing - it's all on the verge of lots of exciting change so it would be fun to be involved.

Ken is the CEO of another non-profit, with whom I've come in contact a fair bit since working with Jonathon. Ken wants me to come and work with him. I haven't talked particulars about it but I suspect that it would be financially a fair bit better than where I am now. I've never had to negotiate salary, have no idea how to go about it. I'll have to practice in front of the mirror before I see him again.

And then there's the least lucrative but possibly most appealing idea of starting up a business with Chris. I really liked having my own business, despite the stress of being completely broke for months followed by all the accounts being paid at once so for a brief golden moment I feel fabulously wealthy. I like the idea of getting out of mental health although I'm pretty much out of it at the moment - I don't want any job where I have to talk to any people about their problems ever again. (I think it's good to be clear about that. 'Ooh, it takes a special kind of person to do that,' people used to say when they heard what I did - well it does and that special person is not me) Small problems are okay, I don't mind small problems that come up as part of talking to people in the ordinary course of events, like 'I'm distressed because I had a miscarriage over the weekend' or 'my dog died'. It's more the rape/torture/flashbacks to childhood experience of watching mother kill father sort of problems I don't want to know about. I think that's okay. Is that okay? I feel selfish and uncaring all of a sudden.

Back to the business idea with Chris. We went in to see Danny at his work. Dan works for some gi-normous accounting firm that does whatever accounting firms do with multinational companies. He offered to meet Chris and I to talk about business structures.

Disclaimer: Dan has this blog address - I gave it to him with the idea that it would be a nice way to communicate when we have the babies. A bit premature (no pun intended). So he might read this. I'm going to try and be honest anyway, although it's a bit excruciating. Because I have to say to the rest of you that he really was a good find! I can't believe how generous he is given how little we know each other. Not just with his (ahem) bodily fluids but also with his willingness to really commit to the whole process. Taking on a donor is a big thing - you're really choosing a family member. If the donating thing works out, we are stuck with each other in the long term, through thick & thin, regardless of whether we like each other in that moment or not. It's a big ask. We asked quite a few people we knew to be donors - about five - and were turned down by all of them. These were friends, and people who are supportive of the idea of lesbians having families. In theory. But it's a large leap from supporting it in theory to helping make it happen, and I guess we realised what a big ask it was after being turned down time and time again. They were all most polite and serious, giving the question great attention for some weeks before saying, 'No, I couldn't help create a child and then hand over repsonsibility.' So disappointing. Then there was the unsuccessful unknown donor sojourn, before our foray into the world of online sperm donor registries, which is where we found Dan (how curious - I just tried to find it so I could link to it in case you wanted to get a donor of your very own but it seems to have gone... I wonder if they have been closed down? I know nasty Families First had them in their sights last year.)

I've gotten off the point which is that Dan very kindly offered to give us some accounting advice . And the point of telling you that is that I wanted to tell you about his office, so we can all picture Dan at work. So now I'm going to sound like a country hick, okay?

The office is on the eighteenth floor, in the centre of Brisbane. The sky was purple and red out the window, with highrises lighting up, very pretty. The waiting room is all white leather couches and white leather benches and low sleek coffee tables and one wall taken up with a stunning artwork made of rocks, suggesting a wild abacus. The receptionist was immaculately groomed. I was very happy to notice that three years with my middle class girlfriend has meant that I can be somewhere opulent like that and not feel incredibly inferior, merely somewhat inferior. I did feel suddenly self conscious about my unruly hair and the fact that I hadn't touched my make up (such as it is) since eight a.m., but I didn't actually start listing all the ways I had failed to climb the corporate ladder. Impeccably groomed women - does anyone else find them intimdating? Why am I intimidated by a receptionist, for God's sake, just because she's a size 10 with a French manicure?

Ohmigod, it's midnight. I really must go to sleep. I have two students starting tomorrow (I bet ms perfect receptionist doesn't have students)

Sydney again

I'm in Sydney, I'm staying with M&M - let's call them Mel & Mona. Mel was my first girlfriend. She impressed me by quoting Alice in Wonderland at a Women in Student Unions conference back when we were fresh faced idealistic young student activists. Now here we are, wider and wiser and remarkably, still friends. She's been with Mona eleven years now. This is amazing, given that she was always much wilder than me. I was a stable, sensible young adult, not taking drugs or spending money on whimsical trips to the Northern Territory in a twenty year old ute, staying in my designated university course until I graduated. Mel was a wild little punk pixie with a skatebord and a flat-top (very short haircut) and a string of arty lovers. But here she is, regional manager of a NSW organisation, with a well-behaved dog (even the dog has matured), a mortgage and a deposit for the second investment property.

Tonight's entry is not going to be very literary as I have been fed two glasses of champagne, NO food yet, and Mel and Mona are talking at me non-stop as I type. So I don't have much brain space left for the blog. Now they are remininiscing about a bad party they had where Mel served Japanese Slippers - honestly they tasted like cordial. I drank too much - one of the three times in my life I had far too much to drink and will they let me forget it? They think it's the funniest thing - 'Do you remember the time we got Mikhela drunk? Ha ha ha!' Pah, who needs old friends with their ability to remind you of all the mistakes you've made along the way?

I've spent today running training for Mel's staff. Sometimes I am terrified training. I really have to stop myself fantasising about what all the trainees might be thinking about me or the training - 'this is really basic' or 'I'm so bored' and so on. it's like I can see these destructive thought bubbles coming out of their heads. Stop! now i am being neurotic.

Eggs
No news yet on the eggs. I have to admit it, I'm obsessing. I think about it all the time. Lovergirl, bad girl that she is, couldn't wait and did a wee test yesterday. Which of course came out positive. Which of course we knew, and it doesn't mean anything because she has been taking a pile of hormones. She's not meant to do a test til Saturday.

Dinner's ready!

Thinking about abortion?

I drove back from Toowoomba today after running a workshop out there. Toowoomba itself seems nice in a Ballarat/bendigo kind of way - big old stone buildings with ornate porticos (what exactly is a portico? I imagine it is the stonework around the verandahs or something), and lots of gum trees which are a rarity in my tropical existence - the dull green dusty trees make me homesick for the 'real bush', instead of this wet lush ever-growing leech-nurturing vibrant lime green rainforest I find myself surrounded by.

What was really creepy, however, was driving through the harsh dry flatlands of middle Queensland. There's a billboard about halfway out, a whole huge billboard that says 'Thinking about ABORTION? Call 1300-xxx-xxx for free confidential counselling'. The picture on the billboard is a small child and an adult holding hands. I can just imagine the free confidential counselling...It's not just the one billboard, it's what it says about this quite weird state that has a statewide holiday for MAY DAY but bans Brokeback Mountain in North Queensland cinemas because there are no gay cowboys out there (there's no SNOW out there either but they haven't banned movies with snow in them)

Wilds of Toowoomba2

Okay here I am out in the middle of nowhere. Now I'm sure Toowoomba is a nice place if you have friends here, cool and crisp and surrounded by the kind of Australian landscape you see in art galleries. The Heidelberg School of Australian landscape. You know that triptych of the couple in the bush - it looks like it's the turn of the century, she's in a long ragged dress and he looks like a woodcutter or something. In the first picture she's holding a baby, in the third she's kneeling in front of a grave. Both the baby and the woodcutter are missing from the third image. Who died? Both of them? Or have they just gone for a walk and left her at the grave of a much loved kitten or something?

I have a pile of reading and jobs I could be doing tonight but I suspect I will just go and get takeaway and read my very trashy novel. It's about a fashion journalist who's trying to solve a crime. Poorly written, overly flowery. No one says anything, it's all 'he exclaimed' and 'she gasped' and 'they chorused'. Tiring, all that declaiming with great energy.

I'm not sure whether I came up with this thought - i suspect not, I suspect it's something i read in one of my 'how to write' books, but I think good writing is like a window. You don't notice it unless it's all grubby or bad quality. The reader should be able to look straight through the writing to the story beneath.

This leads me to Jeanette Winterson who is a beautiful writer, her writings are works of art. But I can't see through them to the story behind. i like her stuff anyway, it's like looking at a stained glass window. but it's the writing I'm reading, not the story.

I want to write a trashy novel. Not trashy as in badly written but trashy as in popular. None of this high literature for me. I want a lot of people to buy it and devour it, not be able to put it down, stay up til 2am turning pages, their partner crossly mumbling, 'Turn the light out, wouldja?'

The group I was training today was fine. I only had nine. i find once the group gets below twelve, it's much harder work - there's not enough variety and energy to keep the conversations flowing. As alwyas, I'm teaching them stuff they basically already know - principles of working with people with mental illnesses - even if people haven't had much training, they don't stay in the field for long unless they are basically on the right track. although maybe I'm getting a skewed sample. Probably the duds self-screen out - they sya, 'training ha! I don't need training' or words to that effect.

I'm already fantasising about my evening curled up with my book and takeaway dinner - maybe Thai. I will do some of my jobs but not enough, not as many as I should. I always have too many jobs on.

I'm the organiser of the film night this month. The film is ordered (although I can't remember what it is), organising basically means doing the publicity and setting up on the day. Unfortunately it clashes with something else i really want to do...how typical. It's strange. I don't have things on every Saturday evening (those days are well and truly behind me!) but the film night always seems to clash with something else.

The films are held in a draughty little hall in the nearby town. It's very cute. The seats are incredibly uncomfortable so we all have to remember to take cushions. We get in old films (partly because new ones are prohibitively expensive - I wanted to get some foreign recent releases but they cost thousands to use for a night) like original Pink Panther or 2001 Space Odyssey or Alfred Hitchcock...it's a good way of watching some films that I wouldn't otherwise borrow. But mainly I go to connect with the local community. Living in a country area is not the hive of connection that it is reputed to be. We all live on our properties hidden from view and drive everywhere - down to the shops, to visit friends and so on. I try and go for a walk each morning so there are a few people I regularly bump into, the other walkers. But mostly we are all in our little hidden away worlds. There is only one local shop, a general store that sells one of everything, so people drive half an hour to shop in the nearest town. I suppose the people with children would meet people through the schools, but even then, many of the people I know don't send their kids to the local 35-kid school, but to the bigger schools in town.

My point is that I imagined that living in the country would be a lot more connected than it is. I had an image of everyone knowing each other...Lovergirl and I went away for a few days last week and we were wracking our brains trying to think of someone nearby to come and feed the goldfish! We have lots of friends, I don't want to give the impression that we are sad sack loners sitting at home polishing our home made bombs and planning the next high school massacre, but all our friends are a decent drive away. Half an hour is a long way to drive to give one flake of fishfood to a goldfish (probably cheaper to buy another goldfish than spend the money on petrol....)

I'm wishing i had some deep insight into the world to offer right now. i'd love to do one of those sharply observational satirical columns, on the existential angst of the modern person, but tonight there is no depth to me.

Best go and get my takeaway Thai then I think!