Exam time

So my university preparation course ended today with a three-hour exam in Sydney University's New Law Building (a triumph of form over function). I answered four questions in three hours (having not pursued the extra time my disabling condition probably warranted). In order of writing I answered questions on T S Eliot, Crash, Beloved and Shakespeare's Sonnet 55 (ran out of time on that one.) I think I did well enough to achieve a distinction for the course.

When / if I enrol in the undergraduate course I'll need to aim higher. The target, 10 years from now, is to secure my PhD.

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus

Enjoyable, visually sumptuous (arresting even) at times. It's the product of a splendid vision in search of a weightier idea. Tom Waites steals the show, of course (but, when you think about it, the Devil has been stealing scenes since before Milton's Paradise Lost). Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell do good jobs filling in for Heath Ledger beyond the mirror. My guess is their presence adds to the piece, although (obviously) we'd all rather the hugely talented Mr Ledger was still with us.

I've seen many worse movies (plenty of them this year). It's worth the ticket price.

Kirribilli House

I was part of the 'national housing dialogue' on universal housing design, which took place at the PM's official residence in Sydney. Apparently HRH Prince Edward was staying next door at Admiralty House. It appears that some of the participants in our event thought there was something remarkable / of interest about the Royal presence over the wall. God ... we can be colonials when we set our minds to it.

We've been working towards this event for months, years in an odd sort of way. There's light at the end of the tunnel ... possibly. It's not an on-coming train but the very real possibility that within three years, maybe five at the most, there'll be a national regulatory framework that will require all new Australian dwellings to be at least visitable; probably more than that.

I sat on the flagstones beneath the eaves of the house looking out across Sydney Harbour on an uncharacteristically chilly, gray day. I had just finished a small Prime Ministerial quiche and was about to start on a smoked salmon fillet sandwich with cucumber and maybe dill and thought there are worse ways to make one's contribution. I thought too that it has been a decent contribution ... to Parts T & M of the UK's Building Regulations in the late 1990s and to the Building Code of Australia now. That ought to be worth at least one salmon sandwich over the garden wall from one of Windsors.

By the way ... when I say "we've been working" that's the Royal We. My colleague Amelia did all the detailed, hard yakka. Mostly I said, "good job Amelia; keep going."

Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, the Hon Bill Shorten MP, published this statement on today's work.
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Just write, Dougie

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

George Orwell, Why I Write

Orwell at Wiki
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