I fell into this book with relish. From the first scenes of the suffragette rally gone bad to the denouement, I was hooked.

The narrative opens with the arrival home of newly qualified Dr Dody McCleland, who has returned from Edinburgh where she completed her studies.

The immediate summons to the first job in her new capacity throws the first elements of latent and overt conflict into the mix: a relationship that is long overdue for pruning, the suspicion and open hostility towards her as a woman in what has been a profession for men only, torn loyalties when confronted with her first autopsy cases…and that’s just the first few pages!

I enjoyed the well-developed characters and their contradictory humanity. I especially liked the central relationship between Dody and her sister Florence (who is equal parts frustrating and admirable). Sibling relations can be written with presumptively saccharine flavours, and Young avoids this while still conveying the sisters’ complex and fond connections.

Another key protagonist, Inspector Matthew Pike, is presented as the balancing voice in a very bigoted police force. Pike is a man with strong principles, some of which have left him in unfortunate situations, more often than not. In the story, he finds himself compromising these principles as he continues his investigations into the violence at the rally. The nuances of his predicament are compelling, with unexpected consequences.

Young’s deft touch with historical detail and social mores was enticing. She forewent slabs of exposition for tightly drawn scenes with telling conversations (loved those), non-intrusive urban context, and political conflict as demonstrated through personal relations and prejudices. I liked the fact that no character was without prejudice. Class issues and the privileges of wealth/position are consistently woven through the narrative, and Dody’s enviable position of being financially secure is made clear. So, her career, which is made up of a large portion of unpaid services, occupies an odd space. This context gives her the freedom to work for satisfaction and interest rather than the pressure of putting food on the table; it also brings home the point that paying for a woman’s professional services and valuing her expertise is still a novel idea.

I realised how deeply Young’s novel had embedded itself in my psyche when I kept wishing I had more of the book to read. I keep having to remind myself that I had finished it (over three days); there’ll be no more Dody till the next novel is released.

This phantom-novel feeling – that I had something I could get back to and keep on reading – also happened to me when I finished the five books in George R. R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series, but that was possibly more to do with the total immersion in Westeros for about three weeks or so. Reading till 2am most nights starts to wreak havoc with day-time living.

Perhaps it is just as well that the next Dody novel isn’t out for a while, and I have no massive back-list to work through. Just as well (though I am entertaining the idea of working my way through her other novels, the police procedurals…)

Another thing I’ve learned? Trust in Fair Dinkum Crime‘s recommendations!

This is my second book review for the AWW 2012 Challenge. My first, of Sulari Gentill’s A Few Right Thinking Men, is HERE.

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* TBR: to-be-read

The timelessness of the Dr Seuss books lend themselves to intergenerational bonding, and I can see how they retain their appeal.

Perhaps strangely, we never really had that many of these books read to us – or to read – as we grew up.

The one book I did have, a gift from someone in my family, was The Lorax. It’s a book I packed with us at each house move, and it has come to Victoria as well. Considering it was stored away haphazardly in the Brisbane suburbs for almost thirty years, it’s in fine form. The only damage it has suffered has been  recently at the hands of my kids: impatient fingers at the spine as they try to get it out of the shelves, sticky fingers swishing past a page and tearing off the tip. Small things. But things that remind me it’s now the property of the next generation, who will enjoy it for just about as long as I had it in storage.

Our kids have a set of Seuss books that are getting a workout these days. Each has their favourites, and the eldest is now starting to read the simplest ones by herself (i.e. Hop on Pop). They often quote Seussisms to us and each other.

Reading these books to the kids now – some ours, some from the library – is fun on several levels. I’m often reading them for the first time (e.g. I still haven’t read the proper version of Horton Hears a Who, only the abridged ‘baby’ version my son), realising where some pop cultural references come from, and generally loving the rhymes. I’m a rhyme freak.

I’ve always loved The Lorax because its contrasting bright images are embedded in my mind. If I’d had more Dr Seuss books, maybe I’d have more than one favourite, but this book was by far the one that I remember the most as a formative childhood text. It had so much that I responded to. The first time I read it to my daughter (when she was about 3-ish), I remember getting choked up and slightly teary at the end when I got to the why of “Unless”.

Recently, we all went to see the 2012 movie, The Lorax. It was the first movie we went to as a family (and our son’s first cinema movie ever). It had jaunty colours, superb animation, catchy scores and a witty, credible back-story.

The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that the Onceler was a human being; I relished the idea of the Onceler as some unknown and mysterious creature, of which we only ever saw a gruvvulous glove and sometimes his arms and legs. In the book, he had no face and we didn’t know what he was. I liked that. In the movie, he’s an initially likeable guy, who slowly becomes consumed by greed. The tone was about the same, I guess, but the effect of making him a normal guy… I was disappointed.

What the film did was show me what happened when someone acted on the “Unless”. I never realised how much I was waiting for this until we watched the movie and it took things past just getting the last truffula seed. It was probably too sledgehammery with the ending and the ‘message’ of the whole narrative was laid on thickly throughout, but I was happy to suspend my cynicism for it. I don’t always require a happy ending, but getting this one – after over thirty years – was satisfying in the extreme.

The Onceler – Lorax the Movie (2012)

In process (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

Since I last notched up a Write Night post, two things to report: one major, and the other minor and good.

1. MAJOR: The Write Nights, as originally envisaged, are no more.

That’s not to say the writing is no more, just that the one-evening-a-week schedule for #shutupandwrite sessions with a local buddy are no more.

The problem, right from the start, was a basic mismatch in expectation and will. I was dead keen on the format and was ready to get into it each time we met. She had just finished a full day’s teaching and wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the writing that she’d bring along to do. Thusly, she was much more interested in chatting than writing.

I’m a big fan of chatting, as anyone who has met me for coffee will know, but when I get geared up for a Write Night, that’s what I want it to be: a night devoted to writing. Not one where I feel I have to push a buddy into doing what she’d prefer not to, or watch the clock during ‘breaks’ because I know that she’ll find any excuse to not start up the next session.

Deciding that being up front was the best way to go, I wrote to her and suggested that we transform our get-togethers into catch-up chats over afternoon tea. She responded that she was very grateful for the suggestion as she wasn’t sure how to say (diplomatically) that she didn’t really want to do the Write Nights anymore.

So, no more Write Nights with a buddy. I just have them at home, and a consistent amount usually gets done.

2. MINOR but good: The guest-post I wrote for Rellypops about Learning to Read Properly was published the day before ANZAC Day. Many thanks, Narelle, for the opportunity to blog with you!

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My productivity will be glad to hear that we’ve finished watching all of Firefly (including the movie-length Serenity), The Walking Dead and Sherlock.

While I’m generally happy about what I’m writing, I do have some issues because I:

• Appear to be enamoured of backstory. As a reader, I’m not a huge fan of backstory. (What the heck, self?)
• Want to reverse-engineer some incidental characters I’d sprinkled into earlier scenes as players with more weight and narrative consequence (though not necessarily more page-space). This is the tinkering that I feel I’m always being warned against.
• Keep tinkering rather than writing.
• Am scared of writing the ‘big’ scenes. Because they might not be good enough. So, not-writing them helps how? (welcome to my interior conversation – BYO popcorn)

The largest problem with the whole project right now is that it is something I very easily shunt aside when other things are on, or a shiny distraction comes along. One of the shiny distracting things that led me astray recently was, ironically, putting the work that I had done into Scrivener (which had been recommended to me by several buddies). I haven’t touched it since.

I’m too used to treating the work as ‘hobby writing’, but ‘hobby’ in a dismissable way. I need to re-establish more of a routine; I’ve left writing nights loose during the week rather than setting particular evenings aside. Let’s assume Write Night 5 will be an accountability post!

>> Previous Write Night posts: 1 | 2 | 3

Emerging protea (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

I started this post wanting to write about the value of participating, and the context of not-participating.

It got a bit long.

When I was an undergraduate, meandering through my Arts degree and waiting for purpose to strike, I felt incapable of participating properly in tutorials. I hated them. I was happy to listen to the better lecturers and tutors discuss things about the subject, and I usually had no significant questions to ask during the smaller classes. If only there was more of an understanding of us introverted types (which seems all the vogue right now), and allowance for leveraging my listening skills as an introvert. Maybe I should’ve just faked it.

Dreading these forums for learning, and knowing that a percentage of marks were allocated to just showing up, my undergraduate years were conflicted. Being introduced to the scope of knowledge materials and the expert-led winnowing of topics (however biased) thrilled me, but the compulsory face-time that brought me very little insight and a lot of angst tempered my enthusiasm.

Conversely, I loved lectures. They required minimal engagement with the lecturer or your peers, and I could get excited or confused at my leisure. Excitement I’d channel through assignments and reading, confusion I’d address by visits to the library to read around topics or terms of which I was ignorant. This dynamic suited my learning style really well. Plus: double-bonus if there was no project work (yeah, not a fan of that either).

Thinking back on my earlier university experiences now, I think I would’ve thrived very happily if social media interaction was an option for discussion and presentation. That said, would I have completed my degree(s) with the siren-call of Twitter, blogging, and IM technology so loud and clear before me?

For many years after the chronic disengagement I had in undergrad tutes, I was convinced that I was just not a participator, not the kind of person who’d volunteer for projects, or put my name down for events (though this latter one may have something to do with the fact that I didn’t turn up to a highschool ‘meeting’ about Sports Day and ended up as a contestant in the 800m race…).

What I’ve come to realise – with that magical 20/20 hindsight – is that I’m actually a big participator. I’ll put myself forward to do things all the time, as long as they don’t involve taking the stage (I’d never volunteer to be a key speaker). Part of my steadily increasing level of participation in various academic and cultural things is due to a basic consolidation of self-confidence and experience, but it is also the recurrent realisation across the board that unless I’m willing to show some initiative and commitment to something, I won’t get much out of it.

I do kvetch at times about the AASRN and how much time/angst goes into it (it’s all true, though complaining about it sometimes appears unseemly), but I’ve had immeasurable benefits from the connections I’ve made, momentum in the field that was created, and feeling of an intellectual community that has accrued. There are elements of it that still make me want to punch a wall (not always metaphorically) but, overall, it has been fab. I’ve felt similarly during my shorter involvement with organisations like ACSANZ and INASA.

From working with each of these organisations, I’ve gained excellent academic buddies and, it has to be said, their company was a major reason for me to stay in academia proper for as long as I did. Similarly, their company is what makes me hanker for academia every once in a while, even though work/life balance and day-to-day wellbeing is much better served by my current situation.

The current job grants me freedom after-hours. I seem intent on filling those after-hours with overly ambitious writing outcomes, but it channels me into productivity from which I can gain concrete and satisfying results regularly.

I’m also already embedded in building a new professional network within research development work – the Research Whisperer has kickstarted this process like nothing else. As part of a member institution, we are considered part of ARMS. I’ve yet to attend one of their conferences, though, and am waiting to hear back about the abstract Jonathan and I have submitted to this year’s conference.

Now that I’m such a convert to participating, I look back on how I was as an undergrad and see so many missed opportunities. I hadn’t thought beyond what was on offer and, because I was disappointed and didn’t seem to mesh with what the standard format was, decided it was probably my fault for being incapable of participating in those ominously quiet tutorials. My current habit of collecting roles and extra-curricular doings may well be me trying to make up for many years of removing myself from anywhere near the stage, even the wings (which are where I’m most comfortable and do my best work).

Anguli Ma (by Chi Vu; Giramondo, 2012) Image sourced from Giramondo Publishing website

It’s probably appropriate that the evening of Chi Vu’s booklaunch for her Gothic novella was a dark and stormy night.

On 24 April, upstairs at the Sidney Myer Centre, we were cossetted from the fickle weather and treated to drinks and nibblies before the main event.

The launch was hosted by Asialink and Giramondo Publishing, and was a full house.

Giramondo has published quite a few Asian Australian literary works to date, including Adam Aitken (Eighth Habitation), Kim Cheng Boey (Between Stations), Brian Castro (Shanghai Dancing, The Garden Book, and The Bath Fugues), and Tom Cho (Look Who’s Morphing).

Chi’s novella is part of a new series by Giramondo that focuses on shorter works (including poetry, memoir and fiction). Also included in the ‘shorts’ series are Eliot Weinberger’s Wildlife and Michael Wilding’s Wild and Woolly: A Publishing Memoir. There are many more in the pipeline, if the entries on Giramondo’s website are anything to go by.

The formal blurb on Chi (from Giramondo) reads:

Chi Vu was born in Vietnam and came to Australia in 1979. After studying at the University of Melbourne, she worked as a theatre maker, dramaturg, writer, artistic director and arts administrator. Chi Vu’s plays, which include the critically acclaimed and widely studied Vietnam: a Psychic Guide, have been performed in Melbourne and Sydney, and her short stories have appeared in various publications, including The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature.

Chi’s adept practice across forms and projects is infused with a consistent awareness of the constructedness of culture and language, a fierce engagement with emotion, and careful attention to the texture of interactions.

The proceedings formally began with a short introduction by Nic Low, who runs Asialink’s international writing programme. Peter Mares then spoke engagingly about how he found his own way into Anguli Ma via material about migration and refugee experiences. He confessed that most of his knowledge was channelled through statistics and policy documents. He contrasted this mode of understanding the issues with Chi’s work, which is defined by considered psychological nuances.

Chi Vu and her newly launched book, Anguli Ma (Giramondo, 2012) (Photo: Owen Leong - http://www.owenleong.com)

The launch ended with a second short reading by Chi, and plenty of applause.

The format was effective, with short but highly detailed conversations. Mares was an excellent launcher, and clearly had a respectful rapport with Chi. I remember reading Mares’ 2002 book Borderline: Australia’s response to refugees and asylum seekers in the wake of the Tampa and the profound influence it had on my understanding of asylum seeker and refugee politics. I must admit to being a bit of a Mares fangirl, so seeing him in person in his ‘launcher’ role was quite a bonus.

Anguli Ma is described on the cover as “a Gothic tale”, and it was interesting to hear Chi talk about how she thought she was writing magic realism, only to have others point out that the narrative was replete with the uneasy and (potentially) gruesome. She describes the story as addressing themes of “cultural amputation”, dislocation, and social exclusion.

Through her protagonists, Chi writes with a fresh and evocative directness about the highly filtered experiences of Vietnamese Australian communities.

For me, part of the attraction of Chi’s booklaunch is her connection with local Melburnian creative types, many of whom I know through AASRN. It was great to catch up (albeit briefly) with a lot of folk I hadn’t seen for a long time: Owen Leong, Amadeo and Carlos Marquez-Perez, Caitlin Nunn, Dom Golding, Karen Schamberger, and Oanh Tran. Owen and Armi are not long for Melbourne, so seeing them there was a lovely bonus. Caitlin shared with me the newest project her partner David Cuong Nguyen is up to, which delighted my undead-loving heart:

“Zombies is a theatre collaboration between young people and community artists that explores experiences of living in a stigmatised community where drug use pervades urban space and everyday life.” (Description provided by David Cuong Nguyen)

A performance of this project is planned for early June in North Richmond.

Although just formally launched last week, there’s already a very positive review about Chi’s book at the ANZ LitLovers LitBlog HERE.

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Chi Vu’s website: http://www.chi-vu.com/Welcome.html
Asialink: http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/
Giramondo Publishing: http://www.giramondopublishing.com/

Ten Little Mummies (Philip Yates & G. Brian Karas; 2003)

In keeping with my ‘bargain bin’ reviews (see previous one of Tyrannosaurus Drip), this one features Philip Yates and G. Brian Karas’ Ten Little Mummies: An Egyptian Counting Book (2003).

While the idea of a hieroglyphic counting book is beguiling, and this was my first thought about its contents, this book is a standard 1-10 counting book, but with a great twist on typical children’s themes.

The number of farmyard, vehicle, jungle or housey counting books is huge. We’ve been through so many of this type from the library, and ditto to styles of alphabet books.

Having a book that is clever and playful, with a satisfying rhyming rhythm and endearing images is a real bonus.

The pun-filled book (the best kind!) focuses on the misadventures of ten little mummies who just want to get out and have a good time.

Here’s an excerpt:

Deep underground in a dreary old tomb
10 little mummies were stuffed in one room.

Nothing to play with, no books on the shelves,
Just 10 little mummies wrapped up in themselves.

“This is the pits!” said a mummy one day. “I am bored stiff. Let’s go outside and play!

Of course, seeking a little fun just leads to disaster, whether it’s riding off on hippos, being kidnapped by baboons, or some shameful unravelling.

*SPOILER*

It’s ok, though, because there’s a happy ending.

The kids loved this book, but it’s definitely one that I love even more than they do. They were too young to appreciate the tomb-oriented riddles included in the book.

"Adopted by friendly baboons" (from Ten Little Mummies - Written by Philip Yates / Illustrated by G. Brian Karas)

Yates is known more for his gigantic joke books (co-authored most often with Matt Rissinger), and this his only other children’s picture book is A Pirate’s Night before Christmas (illustrated by Sebastia Serra; 2010).

This fabulous 2005 interview with Yates by Cynthia Leitich Smith provides some excellent insight into this book, and about publishing processes in general. This book’s journey from idea to story to publication was seven years, with over 40 publishers’ rejections. Several years were also given over to rewriting it to the editor’s preferences (i.e. to use ancient Egyptian backdrops rather than the contemporary ones that Yates had initially envisaged).

Yates comments on making the changes to the setting:

“The story truly came together then, though it was only 250 words long. But to get to that moment took four years and sometimes spending as much as a month on two lines!”

That’s dedication to a project.

It was such a long time before he could say, “It’s a wrap!”.

(sorry)

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And while I’m here, I should point you to the “Top 50 Books for children (5 and under)” column by Lorna Bradbury (in the Telegraph; Feb 2012),which I’ve only just discovered.

Do you agree? The comments are actually worth reading!

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Other kids’ book reviews on the Banana Lounge: The Lonely Beast (Chris Judge) | Tyrannosaurus Drip (Julia Donaldson/David Roberts)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) - Source: IMDb

Quite a while ago, Book Boy talked to me about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TTSS; 2011). It has taken us a while to get round to watching it.

Our household tends to gravitate towards action, horror and sci-fi movies, anything with chop-socky, zombies, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or monsters. It’s an eclectic palette. And kind of timeless (I sez…).

Most recently, we’ve been immersed in The Walking Dead, Sherlock and Firefly TV series. Plenty to like and keep us fixated in those shows, even though I’m deeply unimpressed with the many of the main characters in The Walking Dead and wouldn’t mind a few of them ending up as walker tacos.

Committing ourselves to a serious movie, one that takes a bit to draw us into the narrative, was something we hadn’t done for a while.

Even so, I found TTSS extremely hard to get into, despite the stellar cast and – on paper – riveting narrative of spies, double-crossing and clever secrets. The acting was considered and nuanced, and we’re given plenty of time to appreciate each glare and jibe.

The pacing of the entire film was gentle, even when nothing particularly gentle was happening on the screen. No doubt the film was beautifully made, with finely detailed recreations of the pedestrian and highly unattractive 1970s secret service offices and officers.

There was a meandering and pensive air about the film that one doesn’t find in many spy movies. I would suggest that’s because meandering and pensive doesn’t really engage very well and a spy movie audience needs to be engaged to stay with the sometimes twisting storyline and character flips. Well, I do, anyway.

Today, while lunching in some glorious April sunshine in St Kilda, I discussed the film with various family members. They were unimpressed and bewildered by the film in general. My sis was particularly incensed that the whole movie didn’t feel like it had ended properly before the credits rolled. The sheer weight of implied information left us feeling like we’d come up short in the insight stakes.

I know Book Boy is very keen on John Le Carre‘s books; I must admit to barely remembering reading one. I do remember hunting down his newly published books for my father, who was a big fan; he also loved Martin Cruz Smith and Robert Ludlum. These blockbusters made birthday and Christmas presents very easy. Because they were my father’s favourite kinds of books, I’ve always had a soft spot for them, even though I’ve read no Cruz Smith and only one Ludlum (I think).

Having found myself at sea with the film, however, I’m contemplating reading the book. Maybe it will provide the plot details that will allow some narrative lightbulbs to flare. I’m not big on spy novels per se, even though I did like reading Jeffery Deaver’s Carte Blanche (Stephanie Merritt’s review in The Guardian captures the reasons why I liked it, as someone who has watched many Bond movies but hasn’t necessarily read Ian Fleming).

I never thought I’d find a movie that starred Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciaran Hinds, and John Hurt disappointing, but there it is.

In process (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

I felt a bit of a fraud writing the last post about work on my fiction and, for this one, I feel even more so.

After the household illnesses came the catching up, then the realisation that I’d possibly over-committed myself on the writing front. I used to over-commit myself on the academic front all the time, saying yes to committee work, events organisation, joining associations and doing project things. It felt good to be collaborating with a broad network of people, doing different types of work. That’s how I thought of the amount of stuff I said ‘yes’ to, anyway.

While shedding academic commitments, I’ve filled the space with writing and blogging ones, including a bunch of promised guest blogposts and other short pieces and interviews.

In addition, I’ve also racked up a truck-load more screen-time watching various TV series that seem to steal me (happily) away for way too much time. Luckily, shows like Sherlock and Walking Dead have a finite number of episodes for now. On a retro note, we’ve just started watching Firefly (yes, about 10 years after it came out) and we’re lovin’ it.

I was talking to people recently about whether I should apply for what seemed to be a plum job (which would put me back in academia), and I realised how enamoured I was with my current work/life balance, the ability to turn my hand to anything I chose, and freedom to spend my evenings/weekends as I see fit (guilt-free). I had never been guilt-free as an academic. Ever. Being in a continuing job, with regular hours (and no expectations for anything but), has enabled me to breathe easily for the first time in many, many years. As I’ve said to others, it’s like the boiling frog syndrome: I never knew how generally anxious and self-flagellating I was…until I wasn’t. One year down the track, I’m still reveling in it.

So, yes, over-committed with the writing recently, and it has been productive and satisfying. Besides weekly posts for this and the Research Whisperer blog, I’ve also written:

1. A guest-post for Rellypops, which will be published in a couple of weeks, and

2. A guest-post for Right Now for their focus on ‘Race and Discrimination’ in March – you can read it here: Validation and Solidarity. Many thanks to John Alizzi for the opportunity to write for Right Now. It’s a very interesting publication, with great things to say, so check out the other pieces in there, too. A bit about Right Now from the website:

Right Now is a volunteer, not-for-profit media organisation led by young people focused on human rights issues in Australia. We are committed to covering human rights issues through free, accessible, creative and engaging online, print and radio media. Our work begins with the belief that creating a positive, rights-respecting culture in Australia begins with the flow of information.

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After settling on the couch to work on the novel last night, I was waylaid by the watching of another couple of episodes of Firefly. Bad form.

I have, however, had moments of plot clarity and development in the midst of everyday stuff. Moments that had me running for materials to write down the ideas before they faded. The novel is a happy, constant weight that stretches usefully on my mind.

I’ve also realised, from recent conversations, that it is a part of my life that I would regret having to ‘give up’. More fully embracing writing as ‘me’, rather than within the constraints of ‘academese’, has made a huge difference to how I think of the process.

>> Previous Write Night posts: 1 | 2

I’ve acquired some bower-bird habits since becoming so dependent on Twitter. One of them is noting things for the different feeds I maintain (current count: 4), which is what I used to skim my email for. Usually, this noting doesn’t mean I intend to act on events/gigs myself. My weeks are usually fully subscribed with work, kiddie time, family time, writing, and occasional other things.

Lygon St bombing (Photo by Tseen)

Something that did catch my eye, though, was the Fiesta Malaysia the other weekend (23-25 March).

My partner and I used to be great food/culture festival people, then we had kids. But it’s not as if the kids kept us from going anywhere; we just ended up going to different events: local school fetes, shopping for an endless parade of shoes, library-runs, zoo trips…

Anyway, we thought this might be fun, and my mother would definitely want to go along, if only to declare that her char kway teow was better.

We made it to Fiesta Malaysia on its last day – Sunday – and arrived just as it started at about 11am. We’d parked at the Melbourne Museum and had a glorious stroll to Lygon Street, encountering some great yarn-bombing on the way (pictured left).

That day also happened to be the Melbourne City Romp and spotting marauding crazy-hatted / costumed teams can sure whet one’s appetite for roti.

Mamee Towers (Photo by Tseen)

When we rocked up, dragging the kids past the bouncy castle, a stylised martial arts demonstration was just starting near the twin Petronas towers made of Mamee noodles (one of the most visible sponsors; towers pictured right).

The event, held at Argyle Square, was organised by MASCA Victoria (Malaysian Students’ Council of Australia – Vic chapter) and you can visit their website here. The set-up was pristine and well-spaced.

Overall, we had a fun time, but there were major problems with the logistics of the food.

The entertainment included the noodle-eating contest (for which the grand prize was pretty damn fine: a holiday in Malaysia), various cultural dances, and the comedian Phoon Chi Ho.

I can’t say I saw much of it, though, because we were perpetually waiting for food. My sister, who met us there at about 1pm, was in the roti line long enough to consume two other meals that she managed to get while one of us kept her place in the queue.

I won’t go on about it too much (because there was the wait for the food, and the subsequent disappointment of the food), but if a Malaysian festival can’t come up with the goods food-wise, there’s a real issue.

Also, aside from the line of food-stalls and the stage, there wasn’t much else in the other stalls that we were interested in (they had stalls devoted to Malaysian travel and a local real estate firm…there might’ve been others but I don’t remember them at all).

Some things I would’ve liked to see:

• Faster, better food – maybe with more stalls that had immediacy in the food they’d be serving people (e.g. rojak, small paper cones of ikan bilis, rendang/rice [pre-prepared]).
• Wider variety of stalls (which means the event wouldn’t be as dependent on the food…?).

Something I would’ve loved to see:

• A Lat exhibition!

Brunetti's mint chocolate (Photo by Tseen)

In the end, feeling a bit robbed of a satisfying feed, we strolled to Brunetti’s for afternoon tea.

After fighting to find our way to a table, we browsed over ricotta pastries, chocolate and pine-nut biscuits, and my sister found the most fantastic creme de menthe chocolate (pictured left).

The kids were in a saccharine Nirvana, and the hardest thing was making a choice. Or maybe it was listening to the children at the table behind us go into a doozy of a meltdown in an enclosed and echoey space…

Even while packed and frenzied on a Sunday afternoon, Brunetti’s food + coffee did not disappoint.

One of these is not like the other (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

The issue of career interruptions is a difficult one in higher education. Particularly given the gendered nature of many ‘interruptions’ (i.e. maternity leave, and who often ends up as the carer for family), I think this is a facet of life that funding bodies – and promotion systems in universities in general – don’t handle particularly well.

Major funding bodies churn through a lot of applications and are most often desperately under-staffed. So, in writing this post, I’m not looking to blame them for not being incredibly considerate of every snowflake situation.

I do wish, though, that there were more effective overall systems in place to consider the nuances of people’s track-records. Or at least a smidge more honesty in what they’re really looking for: unproblematic high performers without ongoing (or potential for) negative issues/conditions.

It bothers (and angers) me that accommodating the interruptions that life sometimes throws at you is often inadequate and perfunctory in research and higher education. Because some basic processes are in place, it feels as if this is assumed to take care of things.

The opacity of how funding bodies decide what counts as an ‘eligibility exemption’ (whether your career interruption justification is accepted) is frustrating.

For example, the funding body accepts one researcher’s justification for having an extended ECR (early career researcher) status because she had maternity leave at the right time for the right amount of time, yet another researcher who was working in a non-research role in industry gets declared ineligible (with no reasons given – I think they could save themselves a lot of pain by providing a short standardised reason for why they’d ‘desk-reject’ a grant application). These are contexts that can be backed up by ‘proof’, yet the process of deciding whether to accept a justification remains a mystery.

Then you have the greyer situations: researchers who don’t take formal leave, but are carers for sick partners, parents, or children; or those who have ongoing conditions that affect their work life but aren’t technically ‘bad’ enough to take a block of time off (e.g. mental health issues); or still others who have had a string of casual or part-time appointments that never gave them the ability to focus on building a research track-record in the midst of worrying about rent and groceries. There’s little paperwork that can ‘prove’ these, or present a neat administrative solution to the question of how much time it takes out of a research life. Can you imagine putting in an amount for how much ‘lost’ time a dying parent might take out of your research productivity?

There has been a relatively recent development in the UK where the quality assessments now ‘allow’ women who’ve taken maternity leave to have one fewer publication their track-record. While this is a step in the right direction, it appears to be a small, tokenistic step.

I can’t help feeling that the institutional modes of rewarding research productivity depend on the figure of a researcher who has no hiccups with work, health, or relationships. While the consideration of people’s circumstances are ostensibly in the system, these are blunt instruments at best. Even now, with a section that supposedly addresses people’s work circumstances (and to which assessors and panel members are meant to give appropriate weight), I’ve heard professional advice given about how to ‘game’ it. Instead of presenting honestly what your opportunities and challenges have been, people are advised to use that section to showcase how fantastic they are despite years’ worth of sick or maternity leave and stupidly high teaching-loads (for example).

The fact is this section is meant to give assessors an idea of why your track-record is what it is, and for them to duly adjust their expectations of it. Applicants are being encouraged, instead, to use it as a section that sells their awesomeness. I think this is seriously screwed up.

Given a choice between a high-quality, high-output performer with no career interruptions and a high-quality, high-output performer with career interruptions, I think I know which track-record would be judged as ‘better’.

Am I railing against the injustices perpetuated by a faceless bureaucratic system and crushing expectations surrounding research output? I guess I am.

Do I have a magic solution for compassionate consideration of the vagaries that affect people’s lives and, therefore, their ability to produce research? I guess I don’t.

What I would definitely like to see, though, is less hypocrisy about judging academic productivity and circumstances. What’s often being judged is how consistent, unproblematic, and healthy researchers’ lives are.