If only my subconscious would apply itself more productively

I was surprised to find my brain asking of itself, this 2010 morning, ‘Who shot JR?’, but shocked to find it answered quite uncertainly, ‘Was it Kristin?’

For a few years when it was started, I was still young enough that I was supposed to be in bed when Dallas was on, so I had to watch it through the crack of my bedroom door being careful not to shift my weight on the creaking floorboard or, without a word, my mother would push the loungeroom door closed just to the point that I could no longer see the television. In such cases, I would go back to bed, my radio under my pillow because, for some reason I never understood, our local television station, GTS BKN could also be heard on the radio.

Now of course, I can watch Dallas any old time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0Se8NaYlE&fs=1&hl=en_US]

One foot in front of the other

Yesterday, as we were watching the final soccer trials, I moved from chatting to conversation with a woman I would count amongst my Abu Dhabi friends, though I don’t know her all that well. One thing led to another, as it does, and we were discussing fortieth birthdays. She is approaching hers and, as you know, for I am fairly certain I have acquired no new readers in the last three years, I had my 40th not so long ago.

‘Did you find it difficult?’ she asked. ‘Turning forty?’

And here is where I found another sign that my state of mind is greatly improved because I felt no need whatsoever to tell her of everything that happened in the year or so leading up to my fortieth birthday. What details I did tell her, I chose carefully and consciously with absolute awareness. As I spoke I was seeking no particular reaction or response and needed nothing from her.

This time last year, I would not have thought twice about what I told her. This happened, and then this happened, and then this and this and this and before I knew it I was living in Abu Dabi, I would have said. Confession was a compulsion. I have no idea what this compulsion was supposed to achieve, but there it was, all ready at the slightest hint of an audience.

My life, or at least my focus, has expanded.

The mister must have noticed things have changed, because last night, when he came home and I said, how was your day, he said, ‘You know, so-so.’

I don’t remember the last time he told me he’d had a bad day. Or perhaps I don’t remember the last time I heard.

One thing leads to another

On the same day my child had to go to school and tell the teacher, ‘My mom threw my homework out because she thought it was rubbish trash,’* because I did and so I did, I read this in the paper.

You really need to follow that link, yes, yes you do. Read on its own, that article actually gives a false impression of higher education here in the UAE. I don’t have the figures and things to hand right now, but young women are taking up higher education opportunities at a very high rate. I would tell you more about this, but I don’t have time right now. It’s 11.26 and I have promised myself that I will be at my desk – the one without the internet connection – ready to work at 11.30.

*serious language influences at work in youngest child’s vocabulary

Me and sport, we’re like this we are

I do know how those AFL players are feeling right now. In my first ever game of netball, the score was declared as forty nil, and for the rest of that week I believed that nil meant draw. Apparently oblivious to the fact that I had not witnessed our team shoot a single goal.

On smoothies, milkshakes and grenadine syrup

We were at Lips the other day after school (Lips is the one just on the right of the fountain after you’ve walked in the entrance of Marina Mall).

We had a long discussion about the merits of milkshakes versus smoothies versus juices. I know I’m kidding myself ever so slightly, but I feel that the smoothie is packed full of goodness – on account of using the real fruit – while the milkshake undermines itself with the use of that rubbish flavouring. In addition, in this part of the world, the milkshake or iced chocolate tends to arrive smothered in that dreadful fake cream. In short, apart from the milk, the milkshake is just a glass of fake food.

The conversation ended when I agreed that we would order milkshakes this time, smoothies the next time. Eldest child ordered strawberry rather than chocolate and tried to tell me that was healthy because it was strawberry. Yeah, not so much.

Anyway, we’d just finished the discussion and put in our order when a reporter from The National came and asked whether we could give our opinions about some new regulations (or rules or guidelines or legislation, not sure exactly which) governing foods in schools and interviewed my children about their school lunches.

After she had gone, I had to endure yet another conversation about how *everybody* else gets donuts and muffins from the store.

Youngest child’s current coveted foodstuff is ‘cheese dunks’ which is a packet, and you peel the top off and then you dunk your crackers in the cheese (and I’m sure that cheese is more ‘cheese’ than cheese).

‘No chance,’ I said. And then the milkshakes arrived.

(For the record, I ordered a drink called an Arabian Night which is fruit juice and I suspect a fair lashing of the grenadine syrup you often get with your lemon mint juice, a syrup to which I am more than a little partial).

PS The mister and I diverge even more wildly on the merits of fake cream than we do about Coke. The mister has something more than a soft spot for the kitchener bun and is outraged whenever a bakery gives him one that has real cream and not that other dreadful stuff. Myself, I am happy to dip my finger into the kitchener bun, remind myself about the fake cream and move on.

A bit of a scatty post, but I’ve still got very sore ears and it’s making it hard to concentrate

Being the penultimate footy weekend, we sat around most of the weekend watching it. It was well-timed for us, because being night games in Australia made them afternoon games in Abu Dhabi.

The mister dedicated himself fully to the watching-ness of it, but after the first quarter of the first day, I got a bit twitchy, so I worked on my Commemorative Election cross stitch which I’ve been meaning to get around to.

I like to have the footy and the cricket on in the background, it soothes me. I guess it takes me back to the safety of childhood or something. The mister is always shocked that I can have been apparently watching or listening to an entire football game and still say, ‘Oh, is it finished? Who won?’

The cross stitch will be hung in the boys’ room. There are people who let their children develop their own political beliefs. I am not such a person. I would be, but I’m so right about my politics, that they don’t need to develop their own thoughts.

A funny thing has happened, just as I’ve been putting this blog post together. I have realised that this is a lot less true than it used to be. Events of the last few years – living outside a democracy, the swearing in of our first woman Prime Minister, the fear of living with Tony Abbott as Prime Minister – have left me caring very much that they learn to be politically engaged, but less inclined to bludgeon them (cross stitch evidence notwithstanding). I have been noticing more and more lately, that in politics and political action, I am much more like my mother than my father. The personal is political rather than the explicit political action of joining parties and so on. And that’s not the person I expected to be, I always thought I’d be much more involved in a political party than I have ever been.

Actually, this isn’t the cross stitch I was planning. I wanted to take the opportunity to do my first person cross stitch. That is, cross stitch an outline of Julia, pearls and all, but I just haven’t organised it, and I knew I could get this finished before the next election.

Fittingly, I completed it during the Collingwood Sydney game, so I was working on something else when Julia’s team got whipped by the Saints.

So now, all that’s left is the grand final. We have to get up really early for that. If I recall correctly, it begins here at 8 am. Which is definitely an early time to be watching football.

From miscblogphotos

PS You’ll notice that I’m a bit of a sloppy cross stitcher, and I don’t go back and correct mistakes – like if I start a line too low, or do a run of stitches with the crosses reversed from all the others, I very often just leave it that way. Unless it’s a present. If it’s a present I do undo it.

Oh-kay, enough with the Oh jokes now

Snippets from home tell me that Oprah is going to Australia. As John Stewart says, we’ll have to start calling it Ohstralia (how many ways do I love that man, and how much time do I spend plotting ways to sort of bump into him and possibly have his babies).

Anyhoo, as I was blogsurfing my way through lunch today, I discovered a campaign I think you should join.

Anita Heiss for Ohpera House
“Oprah is coming to Sydney and there could be no better guest or representative of modern Australia than Sydney’s own ANITA HEISS.”

There’s details of how to email the shOh’s producers and ask them to include Anita Heiss as a guest over on Anita’s blog and website. I’ve never written to Oprah before, but I’m going to do it right now.

Always learning

I discovered an interesting thing when I was out on Thursday night. Did you know – and you probably didn’t, because why would you – that when I leave or enter the country, the HR person at the mister’s place of employment gets a text to let him know that I have left or entered. I think he gets a text about everyone whose visa is connected to the mister’s workplace.

Also, some misters receive the texts…I think this is an opt-in arrangement though, because the mister doesn’t get such a text (or so he says, and if he’s just saying it to save himself another conversation, well, I wouldn’t blame him, because how would it differ from any of the other conversations we have?).

I should, at this point, point out that this whole texting thing doesn’t hinge so much on being a mister as it does on being the person with the work-sponsored visa. If it were my employment which had brought us here, and I had subsequently sponsored the mister and the lads, then I would get the texts (we would also be living in a parallel universe where unicorns deliver toasted sandwiches and give foot massages, but that’s a whole different blog post, isn’t it).

I mention this, because the other day, I met a woman who has just arrived here, and we got to talking and one thing led to another and it turns out she is living in the same apartment building as another friend of mine used to live. So I said to this new woman, ‘Does your husband work for [insert name of large employer who has the tenancy for a lot of that building]?’. And she said, ‘Well, actually, I’m a single mother.’

I was mortified and of course I apologised. But my goodness me. I mean, on the one hand, sure I live in a society where such assumptions are more likely to be correct. But, far out, to have so quickly become someone who accepts such assumptions. And who voices them.

Must away, tennis parties to attend, gins to drink, that kind of thing.

this time with less laziness

That was nothing more than extraordinary laziness that last post. Goodness me, what would my self help books think of me?

Fifi and Pen raise the questions to which I should have posted the answers, so let’s see the question again. When considering whether or not to include someone, or something someone has done, in my blog or memoir, a question I sometimes ask is:

Does the person have right of reply?

Rather than providing me with a yes/no answer, the question acts more as a prompt, giving my thinking some direction. Probably, I could draw you a flowchart of sorts, but I’m too lazy for that.

As an aside, much of this thinking is instinctive, subconscious or unconscious, but when I do need to take the time to sit and think it through (for example, every now and then I think, ‘Oh, I wonder why I have never mentioned such and such’), I find that I have made this a consistent starting point.

So, back to the question. Does the person have a right of reply?

Because the people I write about do not have their own blogs or write for publication, or speak publicly, I often consider that it is enough if that person has the right of private reply.

Consider the mister. He would never start his own blog or publish a piece of memoir or have the funds to plaster his comments on a billboard, but he has every opportunity to say (but rarely does), ‘Erm, do you not think the way you related that story was a little, you know, one-sided’. I guess the mister’s ultimate right of reply lies in my commitment to our relationship and the kind of relationship that we have.

My parents have a different kind of right of reply. For obvious reasons, they couldn’t actually write or say anything, but they’re my parents – I might be forty years old and they might be dead, but nonetheless, I am constantly seeking their advice and their opinions and chatter with them constantly. Of course, there is a danger in imagining the way in which someone exercises their right of reply, but I am confident that I come to those relationships with enough honesty that if I do make a mistake in how they actually would respond, it is an error of judgment and not one of defensiveness or lack of generosity or revenge. Also, my father gave me explicit permission to say whatever I wanted to say.

Anyway, when it comes to my parents I use a different kind of question, based around whether or not I have the right to tell the story, and the parent-child relationship is, I think, a unique one in our ‘rights’ to a story. Perhaps I will talk about this another day.

Some people do have a right of reply, but I still choose not to write about them. For example, an alarm bell rings if I imagine that person exercising that right, and even as I am imagining it, my heart races and my breath shallows. This is a sign to me that I can not write about that person with sufficient objectivity, which is, in turn a sign of other things, for example, that I am unable or unwilling to write with honesty or generosity. In such a case, we all lose. I am limited in expanding on this point by providing examples, because it would immediately mean that I have to write about people and events I have already decided I don’t want to write about. Sorry bout that.

What if the answer is no, no the person does not have a right of reply? Sometimes, I might decide that doesn’t matter and write about them anyway, perhaps because they are completely unidentifiable or sufficiently anonymous. But generally, if they do not have a right of reply, I proceed with caution, because it is so often a sign of a power imbalance (this is where a discussion about the rights to a story would be useful, and I really will come back to that another day).

In this case, I might consider the consequences. For example, in telling this story, is there more gained than lost? As a human rights activist, I have very often made the decision that yes there is more to gain by discussing this situation publicly, but as a blogger or potential memoirist wallowing in middle class privilege, I have to know that ‘giving voice’ is fraught with opportunities to patronise or appropriate. Am I doing either of those things?

In my previous life, this was less of a problem, but at the moment, I am definitely having to weave my way through this. Luckily for you, this is one piece of angst and over-thinking you will be spared.

I do have other things to say, and I know that this is all a bit superficial, but this cough I’ve been fighting for the last few months seems to be developing into one of those pre-sinusitis infections which means my ears are ringing and I’m quite light-headed (not in a good way), so I’m going to lie down and possibly go back to sleep for the afternoon.