Warm notation

Reading over hand written notes I noticed how my writing looks more and more like my Dad's.

Similar square t's. Loopy y's and g's. A complete disregard for the form of 'w' or 'ing'.

Pen always held back from the nip, to allow for greater sweeps.

His m's were boxier.

He used to write birthday cards and fill all the available space with warm, anecdotal love and good advice (like, "always check the oil") next to a pen sketch or a cartoon.

Being like him, even in a little way, makes missing him easier.

Ankh Melbourne

645 pm in the office and the sun is just over Rottnest. The view looks like a cliched poster. I half expect to see curly writing expounding upon the existence of God, life or something similar. This is not to say it is not beautiful, nor vibrant, nor vaguely promising of something mysterious.

In a week it will be like this at 745pm as Western Australia enters the Australian daylight saving coalition (leaving Queensland and the Northern Territory stubbornly protecting their cows and curtains). No longer will Western Australia be 3 hours and 15 years behind the Eastern States. Now it will be 2 hours.... and 15 years.

I am too hard on my adopted city. I say this even having come back from Melbourne (which was just like a big, Australian Anhk Morpork, complete with river!) Perth has something more sinister to its suburban charm. Its claim to fame is serial killers, distance and desert beaches. Amongst its parks and neat rows of houses, even a housing boom, one can lose oneself and be reborn into someone completely different.

Perth is to Ankh Melbourne what 'Gremlins' is to 'The Shining'.

As I pad the pavement in the city and catch the train with the crazies tonight I may take a little of the city with me. Or it may be doing the taking.

Jon and Sav

in Margaret River, after I passed out....

9 Sleeps

until I go to Melbourne with Savia and Brandon (who'll fly in from Singapore).

39 sleeps until I go to Thailand with Alastair.

I haven't blogged in a while. Mostly because I've been in a bad space; bored, clustrophobic in Perth, lonely. A combination, possibly, of a knee injury which prevented me from playing soccer and a quiet period at work. Bad because, in their absence, the dark existentialist inside me probed these simple pleasures for real meaning.

At some point between bed tonight and the 39th sleep I have to submit a proposal to Co-Aid for an Oaktree program. The program will partner Australian high schools with South African high schools. The Australian high school will raise funds to implement the GoLD (Generation of Leaders Discovered) HIV/AIDs Peer Education model into its partner South African school. It's an incredibly hard sell - intangible benefits like AIDs awareness and peer leadership don't make as good photo opportunities as Cambodian orphans. But the importance of the program and challenge have kept me sane.

I asked a girl for her number in a nightclub. I only called her once and couldn't leave a voicemail. I have a new respect for men everywhere. How do you do it?!

I went to Margaret River with Jon and Savia for my birthday. See photo of Sav and I under the Australian flag: