Well, Harry is over. (And boy, is he over!)
No spoilers, but I thought this book was a little retrospective – not as goal based as the other books but more into character development. I didn’t like it as much, although I can see that the information gained will be important for the next book (which I believe will be the final?)
Er, better go do that work now… looks like it will be a late night.
About 12 chapters in now, and to tell you the truth not a lot has happened yet. Character development is interesting though, a lot more to do with teenage relationships than previous books.
Enough said. Unfortunately I’ve got a stack of work to get through today so I can’t read any more yet.
… maybe just a couple of pages over a coffee 
I’ve been putting off reading the latest adventures of Harry because I know that once I start I won’t be able to put it down until it’s done. I’ve been putting it off, until today. I had to wait for a little while for an appointment and I couldn’t find Affluenza, whereas Harry was sitting, temptingly, on our coffee table, fresh from being read by our housemate Des. She came in one morning last week with the book under her arm and bags under hers eyes, sat at the table with a bowl of cereal and a coffee and opened up the tome announcing that she’d been up until four that morning reading but couldn’t sleep in because she needed to know how it ends. I have a fear of that happening to myself. Anyway, today I couldn’t get out of it – I had to start.
Six chapters down, loving every minute of it.
Perspectives on the World Christian Movement is a course I have signed up to do at our church this semester. We had our first lesson last night, it was really just an introduction but the course sounds like it will be very interesting and motivating. There’s also a fat reader and study guide to work through, so I’ll be reviewing lots of those in the coming weeks in lieu of having time to read anything else…
I went to the post office and sent my WISE gift. Finally! I even lashed out and got air mail to make up for my tardiness. So your parcel should arrive in three weeks, secret WISE giftee. And in a final very unsubtle clue my name’s on the back so you can tell who it’s from. And your name’s on the front, so you can see whose gift it is.
Hope you enjoy the contents!
I’ve got the WISE gift all ready to send, but it’s still here on my desk. It’s been sitting here for exactly one week and one day, waiting for me to get to the post office. Needless to say I haven’t managed it yet. I feel terribly guilty, but on the other hand I haven’t got anything in the post either, so I don’t feel that bad. Yet.
Well, I had my fourth and final class for the week today. Every class has been getting better – I hope it’s me becoming a better teacher rather than having progressively better groups of students.
I’ve also finally got broadband – hallelujah! It’s long overdue and I already appreciate it. I managed to download an entirely new operating system for Elicia’s computer yesterday, Ubuntu linux. It’s impressive. Much nicer than the last distro I was using, Mepis. Ubuntu is much cleaner in design and has just the right amount of programs pre-installed. Enough to be useful, not enough to be looking through the menus thinking ‘I don’t even know what that does and I’m never going to bother finding out’. Installing with broadband accessible is also much easier, it updates itself beautifully.
And let me tell you the best thing about it: there’s an installation utility that has a list of all programs available to install (there are hundreds), all I needed to do to install blender was choose it from the list. Ubuntu downloaded it, installed it and added it to the menu automagically. Fantastic! (I know regular linux users are used to such handy utilities and will think I’m getting excited over not much, but I’ve been a MS user for a long time. Anything that works the way it’s meant to is a bonus – being handy and useful is extra goodness!)
—
Look at the way the sun
shines, sparkling, on the
dark bitumen of the road.
Rain transforms matte
into startling gloss.
The two classes has turned into four, although it may yet go beyond that – or retreat a little – by the end of the week. I had my first two classes ever today, teaching Interface Design something-or-other (medium-level Flash) and Digital Audio. The Flash subject went well, the audio wasn’t quite as good – I am not so cluey when it comes to the subject matter. I’ll be doing a lot of cramming for that one before next Tuesday…
The students were great though, thank goodness. I had the same group for both classes, only a small number so that made things easier too. My next class is 3d on Thursday, should be good.
Otherwise, I’ve been enjoying the winter down here. It’s so different to Hotham. Up there, winter means extreme temperatures but also extreme fun – every time the thermometer goes down the excitement goes up. It’s not really wet either – snow brushes off clothes – and every building is heated so much that it doesn’t feel like winter at all when you’re inside. So I’ve been appreciating getting caught in rain showers and looking at a distorted world through wet windows, kicking leaves caught in the gutters and admiring how the roads glisten. I haven’t been appreciating having to crank the heater for 1/2 hour to get warm when I get home after work though.
Is something people in the southern hemisphere do occasionally, it lets us enjoy the hot, heavy foods that traditionally go with Christmas in a climate more suitable to their enjoyment.
We celebrated Christmas in July last night as my birthday party – my birthday actually occurred while we were in Hotham last week – we had lots of family around for a big roast, complete with plum pudding and custard to finish. Very enjoyable!
One of my presents was a book I’ve been after for a couple of months now – Affluenza by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss. Clive’s name is bigger than Richard’s on the front cover, so I’m assuming he wrote more of it. The book is about how the general affluence present in Australian society is not making anyone happier.
I sat up last night and read the first three chapters. Very interesting, a little confronting, and they ring very true. Here’s just a little taste:
Surveys in which respondents were asked to define their social position have shown fewer and fewer people willing to identify themselves as working class. Indeed, 93 per cent of Australians believe they are in the middle-income bracket (that is, the middle 60 per cent) and only 6.4 percent see themselves in the bottom 20 per cent and 0.7 per cent in the top 20 per cent. The consequence of this merging of classes and the confusion about the incomes of others is that emulation of the spending and consumption habits of the wealthy, which was once confined to the upper levels of the middle class, now characterises Australian society.
It goes on to talk about barbeques – the traditional Aussie icon – which would have been handmade from scrap materials in the 80s but can now cost up to $7000 for a top-of-the-line model. Unreal.
I’m enjoying the book, it’s got a good flow and easy style, and I’m also interested to note that it’s not intended to make us want to become poor – instead what the authors are saying is that we are among the wealthiest people in the world, let’s be happy with what we’ve got. I think there’s something in that for all of us.
I’ve been working through Possession by AS Byatt for a few weeks now. It’s a good bit of fun. Everyone probably knows the story, it’s a popular book and the movie did okay too I think: there’s two literary historians who travel around England in search of clues that the two objects of their study (19thC poets) were having an affair that no-one knows about. As they travel together there is, suprise suprise, lots of sexual and relationship tension. Not that any of that has been resolved in any way so far (I’m 281/509 way through the book).
One thign I like about it is the way the two stories are told. There is the contemporary narrative of the main character Roland and his female counterpart that in some ways mirrors the secret lives they discover of the 19thC poets they are studying. The story of the poets is told wholly through their letters to each other, which take up a substantial part of the centre of the novel. Anyone who has ever sent love letters to someone will recognise these immediately: the uncertainty, the representation, the continuation of previous conversation. The narrative that is formed by the letters is beautiful and interesting because of its highly personal quality.
And did you find – as I did – how curious, as well as very natural, it was that we should be so shy with each other, when in a papery way we knew each other so much better? I feel I have always known you, and yet I search for polite phrases and conventional enquiries – you are more mysterious in your presence (as I suppose most of us may be) than you seem to be in ink and scribbled symbols. (Perhaps we are all so. I cannot tell.)
I am enjoying this book for its escapism quality as much as anything else. I’ll write again when I’ve finished it.