As probably no one outside of Melbourne actually knows, last Saturday the city and surrounding suburbs were hit by a hailstorm and several hours of torrential rain. It was worst in the city centre, and even a week later you can still see the detritus of leaves and muck in fountains and on tram tracks, while parts of the National Gallery remain closed as repairs are made to damage caused by hailstones the size of golf balls.
I didn’t hear reports of anyone being severely injured in the storm, and by all accounts everyone with home and contents insurance thought it was all good fun in the way everyone does when something unexpected happens to break up the mononotony of a Saturday afternoon. I thought it was pretty cool myself, even when the hailstones disappeared in favour of a flood of water gushing down the steps of Degraves St subway while my boss ran to the door and barricaded us in before the worst of the water could seep under the edge of the door and flood Sticky Institute, where I work.
View from the Inside
So, yes, while I was technically present during the storm, I was also underground in a slowly flooding shop. But thanks to the fact that Sticky Institute seems to get flooded more than once every blue moon (and it’s already happened twice this year), our fearless leader Elle got all the stock off the floor and created a kind of barrier around our sacred photocopier just as the water started pooling around our feet. We took off our shoes (apparently the smell of subway water does not come out), turned up sodagreen on the stereo, and kicked back with our MacBooks while the water level rose outside the shop until people were all but wading through it.
After a few hours it became clear that no emergency services were going to rescue us, and it was only a matter of time before we’d have to switch off mains power and lose our internet. Elle toyed with the idea of calling Today Tonight to do some hilarious tabloid piece about poor subway shop owners and their frequently flooded holdings, but then even that idea lost its appeal in favour of going home. Only one problem: the water lever was a few centimetres in the shop, but shin deep right outside our door. The solution? Bin liner boots, of course!
And people think I'm weird, honestly.
And other than some slightly damp soles and one zine that randomly fell off a shelf into the water (and that stack of business cards I knocked with my elbow into same and later suggested could be used as Official Sticky Flood Headquarters® souvenirs), there was no permanent harm done. It would be days before the subway’s 1950s drainholes managed to suck anything up, and until then we could only hope someone with a giant pump would come down and de-saturate all the shops. After talking with some city officials looking after a boy who’d apparently thought a flooded subway was a great place to go exploring — receiving a broken ankle for his trouble — we climbed back up to the city where it was still raining, but only lightly, and I made my way home on a tram whose roof was leaking steadily onto the seat next to mine. Which pretty much guranteed my umbrella its own seat the rest of the way home.
All in a day’s work, really.
Maybe I’ve been playing too much Legend of Zelda lately, but something about all the hearts on this specials board in Tiamo on Lygon Street really look Skulltula-slashingly familiar.
Monday
Probably because I was in denial over being uni-bound the next day (and probably because I ate too much spanikopita at the Sydney Road Street Party), I didn’t check my university email or do anything vaguely preparatory before my first official day at Melbourne Uni. Not that it mattered, really, except I was late for my first lecture and everybody there seemed to actually know what the “media and communications” part of our Media and Communications course means. Huhn. Well, I still stand by my “enrol in things randomly and it will probably work out” method of life advancement.
Also, they used a lot of big words. Sure, I knew what all the words were; I’d just never heard anyone say them aloud before.
Lunch
Didn’t meet anyone from my course. Ate lunch near (not actually on) the South Lawn, trying to work out how many people gathered around the Young Liberal BBQ were actually young Liberals and how many were just there for free sausages.
Japanese Lecture
Met some nice international students from Malaysia and China while waiting for the lecturer to arrive. Determined not to f**** up my brain by speaking Mandarin minutes before I started learning Japanese, so we chatted in English. Not that it made any difference. The Chinese students sitting in the row behind me spoke Mandarin throughout the entire lecture until I could barely control myself from turning around, grabbing a fistful of their glossy salon hair and screaming 闭嘴!!!! at them and other assorted Chinese curse words, if I knew any beyond “pighead” (which made me sad I didn’t learn any swear words in Shanghainese while I had the chance). This spectacle was avoided when the lecturer announced that we were expected to have learnt all forty-something hiragana (Japanese phonetic script) by the end of the week. Shit.
Language and Power in Asian Societies
Signing up for this seemed like a no-brainer, considering I’m currently learning two Asian languages. And it actually looks good. Really good. Especially once I get over the ferris wheel-like shift of lecturers and the fact that the subject has no textbook or reader or anything resembling hardcopy background reading material.
Tuesday
Tutorials don’t start until next week, so I actually had a day off. Finished reading Turnskin. Cleaned room. Taught my ESL kids how to structure an essay for one and a half hours, at least to those that managed to resist the doubtless temptations of the school swimming carnival and actually turned up.
Got home and stared at Finder no Shinjitsu scanlations until my eyes started bleeding, both from its incredible brilliance and borderline porno-ness.
Didn’t sleep until 1am. Woke up at 2am and wrote down first line of fourth novel. Double shit.
Wednesday
First Japanese tutorial. Discovered that several of my classmates already knew hiragana from primary school. Bah. Otherwise enjoyed Japanese’s omission of pronouns and articles. It makes life easier.
Chinese 2E
Which is apparently the level I’m at, at least according to the course coordinator and the one sentence of Chinese he heard me speak during the previous week’s paltry excuse for a placement test. The problem is my level is a lot higher than the textbook, or at least my vocabulary and reading comprehension is, but then I still struggle with the use of extremely basic grammatical particles like ‘了’ and ‘过’. Urgh. Do I stay or do I go?
Thursday
Double Chinese today. With a four hour gap in between, of course.
Wowed the listening comprehension teacher by knowing what 混血 meant (mixed blood) without having any myself. Managed to work Taiwanese idol dramas into the class conversation.
Was blown out of the water with the difficulty of our listening pre-test after half an hour of my classmates (some of whom have only been learning Mandarin for two years compared to my seven!) mumble out their names and occupations. Listening test speakers sounded like they’d had an all night bender at a sake bar.
Spent four hour lunch break eating cheap pizza and copying my scrawled lecture notes into crisp Korean cat-patterned workbooks I bought in Shanghai.
Chinese Writing Class
I got to do some translations, which were fun until one of my new “I liked Chinese in High School but what on earth possessed me to enrol for this” friends informed me that I couldn’t use my electronic dictionary on our end of semester exam. Not even a print dictionary. In fact, we are allowed NO DICTIONARIES. Hmmm. Must start practising how to write 电影 from memory again. And every other word I’m supposed to know.
Friday
Japanese writing class in the morning, which was fun and relaxing once our tutor had finished her requisite “this course is too big: if your email us, we won’t answer you” speech. She is excellent, though, in the way that all tough-but-fair teachers are. And I met a girl called Ember. Yes, Ember. I want a noun for a name too.
Had lunch with bff at Tiamo on Lygon street. Ate pumpkin pizza and bitched endlessly and cathartically about life and whatnot. As you do. Then we laughed ourselves silly in Borders’ Romance section and then I went back to Northcote High to once again expunge the benefits of good essay structure to an ESL student with impending exams.
Something tells me I’m going to start having nightmares about body paragraphs.
The Set Text
V explains to her class of 16 Chinese International students that she has not read their prescribed text, Euripides’ Medea. Much shock ensues after this admission, followed by much groaning as the students begin to realise she expects them to use their brain this afternoon.
V: “Can someome tell me how Medea starts, please?”
Likely-looking student: “Jason and Medea get married.”
V: “But they’re already married by the start of the play, aren’t they? Can you tell me what happens in the first scene?”
Unlikely-looking student: “Jason goes to find the golden fleece.”
V: “Yes, that’s right, but that all happens before the start of Euripides’ play. Remember, Medea is set in a city, where King Creon reigns. Can anyone remember what the city’s called?”
Class: *silence*.
V: “It starts with ‘C’?”
Class: “C-coh…”
V: (narrowly avoids face-palming herself) “Corinth.”
Suspicious-looking kid: “But you said you hadn’t read it, Miss.”
V: *stares*
The Synonym Game
After a somewhat unsuccessful half hour attempting to teach her charges what synonyms and antonyms are (only to belatedly realise that knowledge of linguistic terminology is somewhat irrelevant to their course), V introduces The Synonym Game, a mainstay of her primary school years in which a student stands in front of the class, back to the whiteboard, while their classmates throw descriptions and hints at the word written on it behind their head until they guess it.
V writes “apple” on the board.
Student in class: “Ping Guo!”*
Student in front of whiteboard: “Apple?”
V: “No, no, no! Only give hints in English.”
Another student writes “magic” on the board behind their friend’s head.
Students in class: “Kai Xiu! Kai Xiu!”
Student in front of whiteboard: “Oh, uh…Magic?”
V: “I said to only speak English!”
Student in class: “But ‘Magic’ is Kai Xiu’s English name.”
V: “But you still gave the hint in Chinese.”
Student: “But it’s his English name.”
V writes “fish” on the whiteboard.
Several students make swimming motions with their hands and bodies.
V dismisses the class.
*The Chinese word for apple.
Yesterday, between breakfast with friends from Beijing and a 19th birthday party at the strangely derelict patch of Melburnian harbour generally known as Docklands, I went to hear eminent YA author Garth Nix speak at the State Library of Victoria. I haven’t read anything of his since primary school, but that didn’t matter because Nix and co-convener Lili Wilkinson’s hour-long discussion was spoiler-free about his latest series of novels and touched on a wide variety of other topics, including what fruit Nix thought he would be, if he weren’t, you know, a human being.*
I really enjoyed dipping my tow back into the arena of young adult writing and publishing after over half a year of disconnect in Shanghai’s barren wasteland of uncensored book blogs, but the problem was I was also inspired. Inspired to write fiction. Now. And this is bad, because:
a) University of Melbourne Orientation Week starts tomorrow, and next week I start university, and university does not hold back its punches (4 hours of lectures on a Monday, anyone? Starting at 9am!!!)**
b) I have to prepare work and lesson plans for my 2-hour after-school ESL (English as a Second Language) class and my Year 12 student, who now wants four hours of tuition a week. And something tells me they won’t have done their homework from last week…
c) Reminding people of my existence. Yes, this is still going on even though I’ve been back in Melbourne for almost a month (!)***. And the only way to remedy this sad state of affairs is by regularly dragging people off for lunch or, failing actual contact, writing on their FaceBook wall. All of this takes time, and the lunch side of the equation is eating through my tuition money like a verbal phrase high on fairy sprinkles.
d) I’m supposed to be editing the last book before I start writing the next one, and
e) I still haven’t finished my latest zine, the Extremely Essentialized Chinese Pocket Phrasebook for Foreign Interlopers, and the bits I have finished haven’t been re-translated into Chinese yet. And I’m also volunteering at Sticky every Saturday for five hours. Bloody addictive, but it does tend to disappear my Saturday.
And then there’s this blog, which I insist on keeping up despite its current appalling stats in the hope that one day someone besides my mother and best friend will actually read it. *flicks away tear*
And if all of those reasons don’t convince you why I don’t have time for writing prose, I’ve still somehow been roped into acting out my ongoing role as Northcote High School’s one-woman propaganda machine. My latest act: coming up with a (non-disparaging) quote for some brochure aimed at reminding parents of prospective Year 7 students that their children’s education does not actually end at Year 7 and may, in fact, continue into Year 8, but only if they show particularly promising signs of delinquency.
Anyway, here’s what I came up with:
“Studying at NHS from Year 7 to Year 12 felt like a journey taken with good friends. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes it was hard, but it was never boring, and even now I can’t shake off the sense of community I feel every time I come back.”
At the time I thought it did a pretty good job of being relatively positive without saying “My years at Northcote High School were the best of my life”, which was what the Assistant Principal suggested, even after I pointed out to him that that would be faint praise seeing as a third of my life has been spent at Northcote High.
But some further deconstruction:
- going through high school did feel like a journey, as do most linearly progressive years spent doing the same thing.
- I lie, sometimes it was boring. Which I thought would have been pretty obvious to anyone wondering why I had the time or the patience to write a novel when I was fifteen. The answer: Geography. I swear I wrote the entire thing during Year 9 Geography, after our teacher had finished her rants about last night’s episode of the Bold and the Beautiful.
- Yes, there is a sense of community at NHS. Just as I’m sure they’d be among battery hens and enclaves of necromancers (one of whom came along to yesterday’s Garth Nix talk wanting to compare notes about reanimating dead corpses with the author himself).
But whatever. Busy is better than being bored, and with the power of Procrastination on my side, I’ll have probably finished the new book by next week.
*The answer, you ask with baited breath? A mandarin.
**Which is the middle of the night according to my current sleeping pattern.
***Oh, Taiwan, how I pine for thee. Ye and yer great preponderance of cheap manga.
The tastiest entrance to Degraves St subway
The biggest event of Sticky Institute’s annual Festival of the Photocopier (running all through February) was this year’s zine fair — five hours of writers, artists, craftspeople, hardcore zinemakers, small press publishers, the initiated and curious onlookers alike all crammed into Degraves Street Subway to celebrate independent art in Melbourne and the world. At least that’s the succinct version ;)
The Fairgrounds a couple hours before launch
Unlike previous years Sticky had planned to hold the zine fair in Melbourne’s City Square to attract, among other things, people who wouldn’t usually think of what’s underneath their favourite cafés and bars. Unfortunately windy and drizzly weather dictated otherwise and the Fair was moved underground again, and Sticky volunteers like me took turns sitting in the middle of the Square redirecting confused people wondering why such a big event had been reduced to two people and a sandwich board.
By the time I got off my shift and returned to the subway the fair was well and truly underway, and the atmosphere made that more festive by the presence of the Melbourne Tramways Band, who despite admitting no knowledge of what a zine was or even having been to the venue before, managed to fit into the subway like a natural and necessary part.
Melbourne Tramways Band at the far end of the subway
I took up my post at Sticky’s table, selling select stock from the store itself only metres away (and naturally devoid of people because of the main event), and was also conveniently located next to the Love Secretary and his personal love letter typewriter service, waxing lyrical about everything from dugongs to right ventricals for but a small coin donation.
The Love Secretary tapping out an amorous epistle for another unsuspecting member of the general public
Though I don’t know why any of us bother to sell our work, really, not when we’re in competition with the five-year-olds. Not that the little tykes don’t deserve all of their success, it’s just that we oldies start to look a bit redundant. And poor.
Maybe they should start a monopoly on little books too.
For a relative newcomer to the land of zines and Melbourne’s (literal) underground culture, the fair was a great opportunity to see what artists and writers all over the city, interstate and even internationally are doing with their ideas, and also what passersby are interested in and (perhaps more cynically) buying. But more than that is was just great fun.
Bring on next year, already!
*watching paranormal documentary*
Presenter: So you’re saying “automatic writing” is when the person begins to write freely on the page but without realising what they’re doing, almost — unconsciously?
Resident Expert: Yes, exactly.
Mum: Gee, I wish automatic writing would hit my Year Nines.
Or more accurately, where I managed to buy manga in Japan on my last overseas trip.
Kinokuniya (Shinjuku Main Store)
Shinjuku, 3-17-7, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo-to
What can I say? I love Kinokuniya, the famous Japanese bookstore chain that has managed to somehow make Sydney worthwhile visiting (as they have the only Kinokuniya in Australia, grr). I’m also very fond of the Taiwanese stores in the Breeze Centre (Taipei) and Hanshin Department Store (Kaohsiung, near the arena). I only managed to visit one Kinokuniya in Japan, but that was enough. 8 floors, a large English section including a good selection of Japanese as a second language books and two shelves of English-language manga (US prices, unfortunately), with the ground floor devoted to all things manga and anime. I was a bit too overcome with glee to check out the DVDs, but I had a good prowl through the enormous selection of manga catering to all genres and tastes, from shonen to shounen-ai, hentai to yuri and goodness knows how many other demarcations I managed to miss (and misread).
Bookoff
I passed this bookstore several times before I noticed the enormous shelves of manga within and later realised it was part of the second-hand bookstore chain called Bookoff (though they also sell DVDs, CDs and games). Unlike new manga none of their stock was wrapped in plastic, hence the ever-crowded aisles of old and young comic fans alike, reading after a tiring day at school and the office. Most of the manga I looked through was in excellent condition and ranging from about ¥100 to ¥350, which was definitely easier on the wallet than Kinokuniya. Here I bought several random BL manga and the first four volumes of Kuroshitsuji (黒執事). (Again).
Mandarake
I’ve already written quite a lot about my first trip to Mandarake’s Shibuya store, but that post was focusing on their huge array of doujinshi, when they also have an enormous collection of manga, CDs, DVDs, art books and other anime memorabilia (though they really specialise in yaoi and hentai). Their website describes coming into Mandarake as “treasure hunting”, and it really is like that. I could have spent hours going through their maze of stacks looking for rare gems and popular series alike, and probably would have if my time in Japan hadn’t been so short, and the things to see so vast. Definitely worth another visit.
Recently I was talking to an0ther_dreamer about some of the excuses and (let’s face it) bald faced lies we told our teachers during high school to get out of generally less-than-enjoyable and — dare I say it — diabolical classes we were timetabled into by the Evil Timetable Gods (who I later found out were real people, who hadn’t actually seemed to be particularly Evil before I found out their secret occupation). After comparing notes it came as no surprise to anyone that most of our best attempts at skiving off were saved for PE (i.e. running around the school’s basketball court playing some random sport and accidentally knocking out our classmate’s two front teeth).*
Now, we both freely admit to conforming to the Bookish Nerd With Practically No Hand to Eye Coordination Beyond Guiding Cereal Laden Spoon to Mouth stereotype, but I will add that I’m quite handy with a badminton racket and am a rather magnificent walker, so long as said walking is mostly done on well paved cement. (Though I don’t know how bookish I really was either, considering the only books I read every year were our three prescribed texts for English). Other than that, totally stereotyped.
Going over some of the excuses we used on our oblivious or livious-but-I-can’t-be-bothered-sitting-through-detention-with-you teachers, I kind of felt bad for them. OK, not really bad, but vaguely bad. And then I remembered how many soccer balls I managed to take in the face during high school and realised my guilt was needless. So here, for posterity, are my three favourite (mostly fail safe) methods for schoolwork-avoidance.
1. Aunt Irma (including PMT, PMS, and if you have a particularly squeamish male teacher, post-PMT).
This is the classic excuse for getting out of sport, and saved me from many a hysterical day at the school swimming carnival. Although I think we live in a more open society where men are more aware of the female reproductive system (at least theoretically), it never ceases to amaze me how even the toughest, buffest, macho man can be reduced to a jittery ball of disgust and terror at the thought of the women around them bleeding a bit from there every month. Add to this men’s understandable inability to empathise with this experience and you will find most male teachers willing to let you off your lacrosse lesson for the day if you clutch your abdomen and groan convincingly enough. Surprisingly this technique is also effective with about 40% of female teachers, who can empathise.
2. Temporary Excruciating Neck Pain
I only tried this on once, but faking a strained neck muscle during an otherwise gallant tennis serve worked a treat on the substitute teacher in Year 8, and by the time she began to become suspicious of my remarkable recovery, the bell had gone.
3. Sinusitis Attack
The funny thing about this one is I still don’t quite know what sinusitis is, only that is seems to be confined to the nasal region and occasionally comes over my mother after she’s eaten too much cheese, rendering her bedridden and unable to make me ravioli. From this fact alone you can see how terrible sinusitis is, and therefore ripe for both academic and physical class bludging. A word of advice, though: this technique requires some preparation. The most successful of my attempts involved staying up late the night before and cultivating a facial pallour worthy of the Latin teacher’s collection of chalk stubs. The teacher I actually used the excuse on taught music and wasn’t jaded by years of increasingly wild claims of indisposition, which probably also helped.
Brief moral conclusion (I’m hungry): Although getting out of doing work is fine every once in a while, it can also become a serious problem if you do it too regularly and begin to lose your grip on your workload (also, the teachers will start wondering how you managed to sprain both wrists in one week).
Brief amoral conclusion (still hungry): good luck! (Just don’t quote me. I’m innocent of all charges! *shifty eyes*)
*It happened, though not to me. Let no one tell you handball isn’t a game frought with dental peril.
