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Some of my regular readers and friends (and not just the non-Australian ones) have tentatively suggested that I might want, perhaps, to refrain from writing yet another one of my
yay-I'm-back-home-in-Australia musings. They're tired of my overly rose-coloured view of my home country and wish for me to start dishing the dirt. As one of them put it: "Australia's not perfect, you know. Nowhere is. Not even your precious Sydney. Write something critical for a change. I'm bored."
Their wish is my command. Here are my trivial (not in the mood for being serious) objections to my homeland:
I was back home for less than two days before I heard an ABBA song. Did you ...
Posted by Justine at 0:57, November 26th, 2004 under Food, Musings, Sydney/Australia |
good news from St Stephen's Cemetery
Posted by Justine at 0:56, November 25th, 2004 under Magic or Madness trilogy, Musings, Praising, Sydney/Australia |
As I write this I am home in Sydney, physically anyway. The jetlag thing is putting a glass wall between me and everything else; the world comes to me slowly and full of distorted echoes.
One of the pings that has gotten through is
the winners of the US
National Book Awards, and I got to thinking about awards and the judging process and the controversies that the major ones often seem to generate. I have been on the shortlist for three different awards and, more importantly, I have been a judge on a number of awards.
But first: I am so thrilled that
Pete Hautman's Godless won the young adult award. ...
Posted by Justine at 0:55, November 19th, 2004 under Musings, Reading, Sydney/Australia, Writing life |
leave her alone
Posted by Justine at 0:53, November 11th, 2004 under Magic or Madness trilogy, Musings, State of the World, Sydney/Australia |
until Justine goes home
Posted by Justine at 0:52, November 8th, 2004 under Cricket, Musings, New York City/USA, Sport, Sydney/Australia |
A few people who don't actually know me read these musings. One of them sent me an email asking if I would write a description of an average day in my life, since I appear to write about everything but. What do I do on an average work day? Is it different depending on whether I'm in Sydney or New York City? My reader found it hard to credit that an average day for me involves sitting around contemplating the differences between Sydney and NYC after attending a Liberty game or a science fiction reading or convention or handing out voter registration cards during a blackout.
Point taken. (Except about contemplating the differences between Sydney and New ...
Posted by Justine at 0:52, November 7th, 2004 under Musings, New York City/USA, Sydney/Australia |
One time
Scott was taking his niece Renee for a ride through Times Square in a pedicab. They'd just seen a Broadway show. He leaned back in the rickshaw and stared at all the lights around him, the neon, huge TV screens, advertisements several stories high. Scott's been a New Yorker a long time now, but living in the East Village he rarely does touristy things like Broadway shows or gaping at the electric splendour of Times Square, yet to his surprise he was loving it. From ground level, from the middle of the street, without having to crane his neck upwards, he could see how extraordinarily beautiful it was.
He sat in wonder staring, while ...
Posted by Justine at 0:00, November 3rd, 2004 under Listening, Musings, New York City/USA, Viewing |
I watched
Scott vote today. Went into the polling booth with him, pulled the curtain behind us, and watched him pull the big lever at the bottom from right to left, which turns on a light outside the booth to say there's a-votin' going on. Then he flipped little levers in a long column to indicate his choices for president, senator, and a whole raft of other stuff. When he was done and had checked it and doublechecked it and then checked it again, he pulled the big lever down the bottom all the way back to the left to make his vote good and turn the light off, clearing the way for the next voter.
...
Posted by Justine at 0:49, November 2nd, 2004 under Musings, New York City/USA, Praising, State of the World, Viewing |
