June 29, 2004
The Work/Life Collision

I first saw this book by Barbara Pocock sitting on top of a stack of books on my kitchen chair. They appeared to belong to my cousin who was intending to return them to the library.

When he emerged from his room, I asked, "You're reading this book for your course?" He said, "Yeah had to work on that for a management assignment."

"Really?" I found it surprising that a management course might even consider this issue worth studying. "Wow."

It was the title that caught my eye; being a person who is passionate about many things, I know all too well about the time constraints one encounter in the act of balancing commitments.

The introductory paragraph provides a good summary:

This book is about the collision between work and care and its consequences for life in Australia. It is about the interactions between the spheres of work, gender relations, consumption, community and family.

Further on ...

Chapter 5 discusses how the changes in work and households on the one hand, and the resistance to change in the distribution of housework and in cultural constructions like "proper mothers" on the other, have effects well beyond workplaces and kitchens: they reach into the bedroom. They impose hidden costs on intimacy and love. The gendered mal-distribution of domestic work and care is persistent — entrenching a ‘double-day’ — and affects an increasing number of women. Women have turned to the market to get domestic work done, finding it easier to buy help than to change men's behaviour. Intimacy is crowded out by the pressures of paid work and the strain of navigating and negotiating workloads.

Based on qualitative and quantitative studies, this book is very well-written and presents its findings in a balanced, readable manner. The author, Barbara Pocock, was an advisor on work, industrial, family and women's issues to the former Leader of the Australian Democrats, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja. I've so far recommended it to a few friends. While this study was solely based on Australian lifestyles and cultural values, it would be interesting to see how much of this compares with the change in work/living habits of people around the world.

Having watched my parents, the parents of my cousins and my peers struggle with work and home life whilst I was growing up, and now reaching a time where many of my own friends are beginning similar journeys, I can't help but to be interested in the wider picture and how, perhaps, there are certain things we have gotten used to accepting because we are not able to see how they can change.

Posted by sniffles at 01:11 AM | Comments (1)

June 28, 2004
WSG in Melbourne

What do you do after 6 hours of brain-draining programming trying to make a Swiss army knife out of a Perl script that has to be as efficient as possible? You come home, dump your stuff, find out that you've missed rsvp'ing because you didn't read the whole page (oops) but decide to turn up anyway ...

After we each introduced ourselves, a very entertaining Cameron Adams (who was apparently running on one hour's worth of sleep) talked to us about his approach in designing "The Man In Blue", as well as principles behind his soon-to-be released online portfolio. Then I had the good fortune to discuss with some Melbourne designers and developers about their work and talk about what's going on behind-the-scenes at the Web standards project, and also a little about MACCAWS. Regretfully, as tend to happen at such gatherings, I didn't have the opportunity to talk to everyone. However, it is always a priviledge and a morale booster to talk to others in the field and compare challenges we all face. It was great meeting you all!

Thank you to David and Andrew for organising tonight's meet.

Posted by sniffles at 11:00 PM | Comments (2)

June 23, 2004
Small pleasures

Today I learned a few things about coffee, including how it originated from Ethiopia, and how by the time the coffee trade reached Rome, Christians called it the devil's drink and called for the Pope to outlaw it. Thankfully for the Christians, Pope Vincent III loved it — and baptised it instead.

My sister got me a pair of Chinese iron balls as an early birthday present, given that I've been having some trouble with muscle tension in my hands. It came with a little instruction booklet. It wasn't the part that said "a treasure necessary for the aged to build up physical strength" that had me in awe. Instead, it was the bit that said: If you keep on taking exercise exeryday for months and years, you can get the fine results of keeping your brain in good health with high intelligence and good memory, relieving your fatigue, drowning your worries, and moreover, prolonging your life.

Oh wow.

Posted by sniffles at 10:18 PM | Comments (6)

June 15, 2004
The Metropolis Bookshop

The Metropolis has reopened in its new location in the middle of Melbourne's CBD just over a week ago. Formerly found in St. Kilda, it's now obscurely located ("until the new sign arrives," said Molly of the shop) at Level 3, Curtin House, 252 Swanston Street.

The new-old room looks huge and oddly bare compared to the old Metropolis I remember, the books sitting back on the original bookshelves against vivid red walls, the light flooding through the warped old glass of the third floor windows, even on a grey day.

I didn't quite find the time to sift through their (new) collection of books on art, design and architecture, so perhaps another time ... It looks as if they will have a gallery too, in the other room across the hall. (Thanks, Chris, for showing me how to get there :))

Posted by sniffles at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2004
A last goodbye

Through the window, the light stole inside in waves of red-orange. Or perhaps it was merely the effect of the beer, then the terrible wine. I was almost through with the wine and thinking about leaving when she walked in from behind the bar, presumably because she'd come in through the other entrance, from the other room. Her spectacles caught the light from somewhere and glimmered under the straight blonde of her hair. She said a round of hi's and, after some hesitation, sat down in an empty chair next to mine. We must have chatted for some time about nothing in particular, as wine-soaked conversations tend to go. Try as I may, I remember almost none of the words that were spoken. At some point she said, "I'm just studying until I figure out what I want to do with my life."

For some reason, that stuck. Some 36 hours after I heard the news, those words are still ringing in my head, and the irony — the senselessness of it — strikes me very hard. What disturbs me most is that I will never know her any better than those few words which slyly escaped her shyness that evening months ago, and that memories which we can't build upon will eventually fade. We miss you, Andrea.

Posted by sniffles at 11:35 PM | Comments (3)

June 13, 2004
Craving for brainfood

It's stocktake sale season here in Melbourne, which makes it a very dangerous time of the year. I was on my way to Chapel Street one morning, when out of a corner of my eye, I saw a big sign screaming "S-A-L-E" hanging in the window of one of my favourite bookstores. Before my brain digested this bit of information, my feet were already headed towards the shop's open door.

This quote is for Martine, taken from an introduction of a book I couldn't say no to:

How can anyone possibly read a film script? A script is not writing. A script is a ghost of something not yet born. It is by nature imprecise, inchoate, and provocative rather than evocative.

Screen prose is rigorously functional. Its focus is very narrow, narrower than a haiku, and its purpose is very limited. And yet it is not functional in the simple way that the owner's manual of a motorcycle is functional. Screenwriting is hybrid prose, mutant prose, chimaera prose — part matrix, part blueprint, part shadow play, part prayer.

Its proper audience is a motley assortment of actors, directors, agents, producers, financiers, studio executives, and movie production personnel, none of whom will actually be reading the script for pleasure. The production of pleasure in the literary sense is not a goal of the screenwriter. The inducing of the birth of a film — that is the best a screenwriter can hope for.

— "Collected Screenplays 1", David Cronenberg.

Posted by sniffles at 11:17 AM | Comments (3)

June 09, 2004
The WaSP survey

The Web Standards Project has launched a survey (which will be open until July 8th):

Here is your chance to let our project team members know who you are and which challenges you encounter when working with or using web standards.

Posted by sniffles at 08:53 AM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2004
Nothing funny ...

... has happened to me lately. Has it happened to you?

Posted by sniffles at 11:02 PM | Comments (6)