Oh dear, what can the matter be?

This blog is now on hiatus. It's been coming for a while. The somewhat overwhelming nature of my online (let alone off-line) commitments means that it's probably kinder to suspend this one indefinitely.

I'm keeping it alive in preparation for an idealised, uncluttered future where worthy and articulate posts will materialise...

For now, it's back to juggling endless emails, web-managing a couple of sites and a handful of discussion lists, popping in on Fb occasionally, and trying to get project work done as well.

2008 cometh

Yes, I know it's technically already here, but because the corridors are still relatively deserted and classes haven't started yet, most of us are still in holiday mode. The number of meetings now cramming my (dusty) diary are testament to the fact that some people are trying to shake off the summer lethargy, but I'd suggest they're working against the tide.

Major things for 2008 thus far:

• Continuing research and fieldwork for my core fellowship project, "Siting Differences." Field trips upcoming to Bendigo, Ararat, Beechworth, Cowra, and Young.
  
  
• Starting background research for ARC project with Dean Chan and Jacqueline Lo, "Being Asian in Australia and the United States." This 3-year collaborative ARC Discovery grant will mean some fieldwork in the USA and locally. Its outcomes include academic publications and events, as well as community/public sphere engagements.
  
  
• AASRN/ASAL collaboration on an Asian Australian literary studies stream at the Association conference in Wollongong in June/July. A CFP for this will be circulated shortly so please keep an eye out for it! I'm quite excited by this development because I've always felt a bit like I was fighting the good fight solo for AA lit.studies at ASAL conferences (and sometimes multiculti lit.studies in general) so this will be a fascinating change.
  
  
• I've re-joined the ACSANZ committee after taking a breather from it since 2005 (or so), and our first meeting for the year is in Sydney in a couple of weeks' time. It'll be really good to be back on this committee. I've always felt that it was a group that made things happen, and that its connections with the Canadian High Commission (in Canberra) resulted in real academic/cultural exchange. Because the Canadian Govt makes consistent funding available for postgraduates and other academics to carry out field work in Canada, or to collaborate with Canadian counterparts, the field of Canadian Studies grows and its networks are enviably well established. This cannot be said of Australian Studies and it's a sad thing.
  
  
• That said, I've re-nominated for the InASA committee (AGM to be held shortly) because I think there's good work to be done for promoting Oz Studies and its possible directions. The Journal of Australian Studies is under new stewardship at the University of Queensland (Martin Crotty and Melissa Harper).
  
  
• I'll be continuing as one of the editors of the Journal of Intercultural Studies. The potential for the journal is excellent, and the editorial team has worked hard these past few years to establish a clear direction and its core areas of interest. It always frustrates me how long publications take to exhibit change. It will happen (repeat as necessary).
  
  
• Ongoing things include being convenor of the AASRN, moderator/list manager for aa_discuss, editorial advisor for Peril...and, yeah, having a home-life.
  

Any hints on how to make 24 hours into about 30 or so would be welcome. I'll send you a cookie.

Epiphanies, plagiarism and ferrets

I had a conversation today that has inspired me immensely. This doesn't often happen. The last time it happened was when I met with my ARC co-chief investigators at Sydney Airport (yes, Sydney Airport...) - that was a fine and sparky intellectual day, as well as very important for catching up with various caches of academic goss.

Especially since having E., getting back into the full-powered professional groove has been a challenge. Chatting today showed me that it doesn't ever have to be that full-powered for my career to be satisfying and (truth be told) already producing more than many. It makes a world of difference to have someone on the same campus, in the same school, who has similar political and community passions. I haven't had that all the time I've been here thus far. This isn't to say that I haven't met great people, just that I've missed the closer sense of camaraderie that springs up when people work together on research (or can potentially do so). It feels fantastic and has made this return-to-full-time-work-week end on a definite high.

Also, just on a general level, meeting someone who's lovely and normal in academia is a special bonus. Not that all academics are freaks but, hey, we know there's a fairly high ratio (and there's a divide between benevolent freaks and other types but that's a whole other story...).

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I've been appalled by some instances of plagiarism lately. All I can say is Google Books has allowed me to make assessments in record time. Of course, making the charge of plagiarism is something people are loathe to do so I almost always couch my concerns in terms of 'inconsistent referencing' or 'inappropriate attention to scholarly referencing.' It amazes me that people can undertake a PhD and not know when to throw things in inverted commas.

On a sniggering plagiarism note:

Apparently, Cassie Edwards, much published bodice-ripper writer of novels that have super-dodgey Native American protragonists (an overwhelming majority of her titles start with "Savage" or "Wild"), has been accused of plagiarising a whole bunch of texts. These 'lifted' sources include a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel and a naturalist's article about black-footed ferrets. Yes, she stole from the ferrets!

It almost made me want to write poetry

I'm still regularly knocking around on Facebook, even though my time on every online interface is severely curtailed at the moment. I'm feeling guilty about the lack of posts on this blog + the diminishing quality of my writing this year (having just done a quick jaunt down memory lane and skimmed a few entries from 2005...). People warned me about porridge-brain after having a baby and I just scoffed at them, heartily and often. Of course, being well acquainted by now with large helpings of humble pie, I now know what they mean and how deftly it sneaks up on a person. At the same time, I have gaps in the porridge-brain that allow me to write lucidly and well - I find these scraps of prose, and take time to feel all clever for 5 mins before realising the other things I haven't done and for which people are patiently waiting. I've spent a lot of time these days reading Who and Woman's Day (my mother's mag of choice; I'm learning too much about Bec'n Lleyton's love-life). A quick and pathetic defence of Who: reading this mag and catching the occasional 6pm news bulletin are the ways I keep up with current affairs these days. Reading newspapers means that E. and I wrestle with broadsheets till we're both covered in smeared ink. Or someone's crying (not always E.). I read a Time magazine on a plane trip recently but it was too US-centric (says I on the heels of singing Who's praises. Ahem). I think my issue with Time is that it purports to inform me of the deeper/heavier facets of what's going on around me and it doesn't for Oz material (except for one token article about the Kevin07 campaign, which was the cover and took up all of 3 pages or so, side-bars and all). I did like reading a bit about Barack Obama's current status in running for the Democrats ticket. If I had more time, I'd be reading a lot more about the lead-up to the next US election. Who, on the other hand, doesn't purport to do anything more than flash pretty pictures and present half-truths and sensational headlines so I'm at peace with that.

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I've been tracked down by quite a few rellies, acquaintances and old friends via Fb. As so many have said, it's a viral entity, but in a mostly good way...

One of my second cousins (son of my father's cousin...?) is a poet who lives in Singapore. He had published three books of poetry and is a regular at readings and events around the world. He's been in Australia a few times, and met me once, my parents a couple of times (I think). He found me via Fb and, after a series of Fb messages, sent me his most recent book. In it, I found a poem about our meeting in the Valley what seems like a life-time ago. The meeting was the first time I'd ever seen him, and arranging to meet an unknown Asian man in Fortitude Valley was perhaps not the most inspired idea.

The poem wasn't as much about seeing each other face-to-face as it was about the blood-links that we both had and felt, and the transport of emotion between generations. It made me re-live a time in my life that was fraught, common, and tragic. My father was very ill and died not long afterwards (in 2003). In the flurry of life movements since 2004 when I moved to Melbourne, I haven't spent much time thinking of my father beyond the regular sad longings. My 2nd cousin's poem re-built links for me between my father and his extended family, clarified perspectives on the clan in Australia, and widened the mourning circle to more than just my immediate family. As I say in the title to this post, it almost made me want to write poetry. To create a poetic conversation about memories and obligations and curtailments.

But I'm not a poet, and the last poetry I wrote was mawkish tweeny angst in high-school. The world already shuffles to the beat of too much bad poetry, so I'm choosing to not-write. For the good of our cultural communities.

I hope, however, that my inability to compose interesting, un-cringeworthy poetry doesn't detract from the surprising and ultimately welcome emotional work that my cousin's poetry put me through. I tried to convey as much to him, but I'm not sure it came out as I intended.

Fooding

I keep wanting to blog about great food I've eaten lately. I know this isn't much of a change from the usual. I just don't want to blog about the farce that is RQF, justifying my existence professionally all the time, or how much I'm behind on various work fronts.

Wise colleagues who've been down the baby/work juggling trail keep telling me to chill out because the behindedness never changes. In some ways, to be either full-time or totally stay-at-home seems to be easier (I know, I know. Grass is always greener) - doing the part-time thing means that I don't feel like I'm doing enough on either front. Now that we scored that ARC Discovery - and the funding/project begins in 2008 - my brain is full of pre-planning for the overseas fieldwork components that are involved. The thought of leaving E. behind for more than a day or so makes me melancholy. I'm such a tragic born-again parent, I tell you.

ANYway, let's tear ourselves away from that rivetting navel-gazing and get back to the important stuff.

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For family birthday shin-digs (which are almost always at our house at the moment because of E.), we seem to have started a hankering for novelty cakes. S. and I thought we'd get into some practice for E. This is what we came up with for my sister's birthday back in October:

We'd been having nostalgic conversations at various times about our addiction to Frogger, Space Invaders and Pac-Man. A space invader cake would've been...much space and less cake! That wasn't going to work. Oh, the cake was a fudgy chocolate cake that was delish on the day it was made and 5 times more delish a day or so afterwards (unlike the Malaysian sujee cake that is shite on the day it's baked [too hard and grainy] but meltingly fragrant a few days later).

The next family birthday is my brother's in a couple of days' time. We haven't brainstormed the next creation yet, but if it works out, you'll probably see it here soon.

Oooh, hang on. We just came back from a day's fete-ing (we've become primary school fete tragics...) and found the birthday cake baked: coffee and hazelnut butter cake. Mmm. Be still my beating arteries...

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Just up the road from where we live is the fantastic Oasis Bakery + Cafe. It takes us about 10 mins to walk there and the place is technically in Murrumbeena. It even got listed in the 2007 Foodies' Guide to Melbourne. I've loved this place from the first time I fought over the last pide in the basket. We found the place around Xmas last year. I was gleeful about the bins of nuts and glace fruit, parcels of so many types of grains and flours, freezers packed with take-away delights such as spinach and haloumi triangles or chicken and spinach pizzas, counters groaning (love that cliche, though it's usually the customer who's doing the groaning, in this case) with platters of baklava and pistachio swirls and Turkish Delight.

Though there are many things about this place that make regular visits a must, the thing I enjoy most is the labelling. Yes, the labelling. Of the goods. You must go there and find out for yourself why this is so. Otherwise, it wouldn't be as much fun. (Er, also cos I was going to scan in one that I'd bought but, alas, the items I ended up with didn't have the blurbs I'm talking about)

My last meal there was lunch with the family. I had the lamb/chicken plate and it was fab. A 'plate,' which sounded manageable enough, included:

• 2 pocket breads to DIY,
• a stack of fragrant, shaved meats,
• excellently balanced and textured tabouli,
• pickled cabbage,
• onion, tomato, and
• generous dollops of tahini and hummus.

And you wouldn't think we'd eat anything after that, right? Well...the sweets looked so inviting and the counter had a special jar of new morsels: chocolate covered dates (which are to be recommended!). Luckily, we walked there and home. Luckily, we had E. in her stroller so we could fill the bottom level of it with take-away pastries and rounds of za'atar-covered bread. My mother, as is her wont, got a big tub of hazelnut meal. It's a fact of life that anything made with hazelnut meal is delicious. Go forth and find the truth in this yourself.

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My mother and I recently ate at chillipadi in Melbourne Central. We'd heard from a range of people what a great little place it was and, being ever-vigilant about good sources of Malaysian food, we thought we'd try it out. Executive summary of our meal: OMG GREAT.

I do want to write more about this but not right now - I took a couple of good interior shots on my mobile and the bluetooth device on my PC is not playing with Vista (#%&@* Vista...), so no photos at the moment. When I sort out techy stuff, I'll be back with more.

20 year reunions and other strange beasts

It's two decades out of high school for me.

2007 is our cohort's 20 year reunion. It's being held in Brisbane. I was planning to go, even if it was just a drop-in for the day. Then fiscal and temporal reality kicked in and I probably won't be attending. I was on the organising committee for the 10 year reunion and, while I enjoyed going to the dinner and meeting up with folks I hadn't seen for 10 years, I was fairly over the whole idea by the time it ended. I see a handful of ex-school people regularly, and there are probably reasons why I don't see others.

I received the last reminder notice for the reunion the other day. The email also listed those who were considered "MIA" - a fairly long procession of names, at least 30 people I didn't recognise at all. On a whim, I did a brief googling session on a few of the people with whom I had been friends of some description (and didn't keep in touch with), or those who were our year's distinctive characters. I managed to find several who had started their own businesses (and had websites), one who was a leading light in the FurWorld, the professional association listings of a few more, and a whole swag of names that turned up nothing. Because so much of my professional life is on parade on the web, I sometimes forget that people get by without a web presence...

I don't like how reunions make some people so very anxious about their achievements and where they are in their lives. Even though my vicarious interest in attending is filtered through the desire to know where people are at, I'm not particularly interested in comparing what they've done with what I've done. There was a time when I would have done so, but that time is not now. :P

And to top off a pretty fine day (see previous ARC'd post), I've just discovered that there's a shop in the student union building here that stocks yam chips, my #1 snack food of the moment! Oh happy day!

ARC'd

I wasn't planning on haunting the ARC website until closer to the stated "mid-October" release of grant outcomes for this year. So, JG (a cog in the Memes of Production) writing to congratulate me on the success of "Being Asian in Australia and the United States" confused me for much longer than I'm willing to admit. I thought maybe I'd published something and forgotten about it (cos this is so likely), or someone had quoted me, or a project was launched that I was involved in (that I didn't know about...). The heads-up has saved me a couple of times today, so Facebook has served me well - again!

I've been ARC'd. There was much in-office squee about this. In academia, and especially in the Humanities, landing an ARC grant is a Big Deal (for those not in AcasVille: ARC = Australian Research Council; there's an annual round of applications for Discovery project funds and the whole process is laborious and elongated). If one wants to contemplate a career as a research fellow, never having won an ARC is a big, smelly albatross around one's neck. My albatross, finally, has seen fit to abandon me. The ARC project team consists of me, Jacqueline Lo (ANU, ACT) and Dean Chan (Edith Cowan U, WA). This was the 2nd time we'd submitted this project proposal. What made the ARC gods smile on this one when they seemed lukewarm on it last year is anyone's guess. We'd refined it and tweaked terminology, updated it, etc, but the nuts and bolts are exactly the same. No, no, I'm not looking a gift-horse in the mouth. It's just one of those things one can't help wondering about.

The strangest thing about finally making it onto those congratulatory notices that Arts Faculties, nation-wide, love sending out is that it makes me feel legitimated here at my institution. It's daft that it takes that to make me feel so, but an ARC award is a hard, shiny form of professional currency that lifts my profile in ways that I didn't know it needed to be lifted. I've been working in Asian Australian Studies for nigh on a decade now, and while I think the field's growing and wonderfully dynamic, it's rare that the things I do in the area get a nod from my immediate managers. Scoring an ARC is a way for that work and my profile to be recognised. It feels good. And I say that with the full knowledge that the way ARCs are gained can, in many cases, be a bit of a lottery; there are so many hoops for the project (and its investigators) to jump through, including running the gamut of application reviewers (experts chosen using the keywords/field codes in your application) and the arcane rejoinder process. I've attended my fair share of pre-ARC workshops and seminars, mostly with a cynical and angsty heart. The cynicism remains, but the angst can disappear for the moment.

>> Next Anxiety of the Day: How will I get all these projects done?

Right now, I think I'll have to celebrate somehow. My fellow investigators are scattered around Oz - one's usually in Canberra (but is currently poncing around Denmark, as one does) and the other in Perth. We'll have to have a delayed raising of glasses when we manage to coordinate and be in the same city again. Meanwhile, I've got myself a little something from the student union shop. Nothing says 'celebration' like a pig-shaped mooncake.

A promise is a promise

So, I promised food porn and here it is. Hopefully, Blogger won't swallow it this time around. The pic I was trying to upload the other day is this one:


It's my birthday cake, and my cheffy bro did the honours with the decorating: strawberries and a gigantic parrot mango (Thai?) we found in Springvale that cost an obscene amount of money.

My mother made the actual cake; it's a Malaysian layer-cake, which is a variation on the Dutch 'spekkoek' (this is one version of a layer-cake recipe). Suffice to say that it's definitely a special occasion cake because it's pure heart-attack food. There are so many egg yolks and so much butter in this cake that my arteries are clogging just thinking about it (even as I salivate).

For our wedding, my mother had made a fantastic version of the layer-cake, with only a sparse studding of dried fruit, and lovingly bathed in rum. Under a simple chocolate ganache (prepped by my bro), it was decorated with a single spray of white Phalaenopsis orchid. It was a fine, fine thing.

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On a similar feasting note, I've always been enamoured of Galaxy's food posts and decided to document a waffle-fest that occurred a couple of weekends ago. My brother had bought himself a proper waffle-iron and came over with it (and a bowl of yeasty batter, and maple syrup, and bananas, and...we might've managed to provide the ice-cream) to share the joy.

A shot of bro filling the waffle-iron:


The crusty, fragrant waffles when they're done:


Shot of a partly prepped waffle stack:


Mmm. Completed waffle stack, with banana, super-creamy vanilla ice-cream and maple syrup:


There are no pictures of waffles being consumed. Sacrifices for art only go so far.

Cybertiquette

Now that I'm regularly kidnapped by Facebook, I'm seeing the similarities between it and the LiveJournal interface. In another life, I have an LJ and the 'friending' politics are something that I can see happening on Facebook, but in an even more intense way. The news feed thingie is so central to the profile that it tracks your every move. What if you were trying to hide from someone? Dodge an awkward email or wall posting? Feeling constrained by someone who's your friend but with whom you have little in common (and with whom you may not want to share that much)? There's no de-friending without pouty hurtness, I'm sure. I'm not throwing these out there because I'm facing any of these at the moment but they are elements of LJ that'll become salient on Fb. And while I'm mooching around talking about another interface in this interface, what are the "Groups" meant to do on Fb? Joining them doesn't auto-feed their content to you so it means you have to visit the Group constantly to see what's going on...and even then it's hard to tell what IS going on, unless the mods post a note or similar. They have discussion board capabilities but, really, a disc board within an Fb profile isn't the best way to use this kind of thing either. Hmmm. I'm not saying they're useless, they're just a bit useless to me right now. Blame lack of creativity.

Oh, and I have some lovely dessert pics to post sometime. My computer is being upgraded by my partner and it's disembowelled on the floor at the moment. When it's back on, it'll be so fast and furious, and I've graduated to a workstation with wireless k'board and mouse! Oh, the joy! I know, it's so 5 mins ago for everyone else but I'm slow'n steady.

And how jealous am I of the MIFFers and BIFFers out there? Through various media, I'm hearing about the films everyone's going to see. It's a good way to survey the program vicariously. When I was a regular filmfest goer, I used to see only about 5 films max anyway - otherwise, I felt too much like Hans Mole Man. I knew folks who had festival passes and went to at least 3 films a day. Man, that's a lot of Maltesers!

Disappearing food and yumchas I've known

I had composed a post that included food porn and then Blogger ate it. Musta been the yum factor. I seem to have trouble posting photos to Blogger without regular image disappearances and, sometimes, whole posts. I know there are much better, more flexible ways to blog...but now I'm attached to my URL (tragic, I know). Will attempt to post the foodporny entry again soon.

Since I've been in Melbourne - about 3.5 years now - when our family did yumcha, we'd almost always end up at one of the Shark Fins in Little Bourke Street. Usually, it's the Shark Fin Inn. A couple of times I went to the Shark Fin in Burwood with Som, but I think that place has now gone adios. Because of the increase in hassle in getting our family into town these days (with bubs in tow), we've started frequenting a yumcha place on our side of town (southeast). It's in Springvale: Gold Leaf Restaurant. It's on the top floor of one of the shopping complexes that front Springvale Road. My sis' partner, who made the journey to Springvale for the first time for my birthday yumcha, commented that the shopping area was fantastically dynamic and engaging but incredibly unaesthetic. I think the way Springvale is is the way most 'ethnoburbs' are - thinking here of Darra, Sunnybank and Chinatown in Queensland - where maximum content is jammed into minimal area. Shop-fronts mostly emphasise the functional and are piled high with teetering goods that threaten anyone who use the footpath.

The roast meat shops often have mysterious codes of ordering, usually no queues (just a blob of customers ready to shout), and machine-gun ordering exchanges. I'm always intimidated by these roast meat shops, and my mother tries to counsel me about what (and how) to order so that they don't give me the burnt, fatty ends of roast pork, or the overly lean and dry sticks of char siew, or try to give me the roast duck without its aromatic, luscious juices that spill onto the massive chopping boards when I inevitably ask for the duck to be cut up (which is already a faux pas, really, because all dedicated foodies would take the whole duck to reheat in their own ovens so that the meat didn't dry out too much). Because I don't speak Cantonese or Mandarin, I know I already sound and look uneasy during these encounters. Once, when I said, "No, not the back end of that pork; the middle of that other one", the woman behind the counter smiled at me and said, "They're all the same!" Which was annoying because I know they're not and I could tell that she was telling me this because I didn't speak the lingo and, therefore in her mind, I must have no clue about the quality of Chinese foods and who cares if she sells me something dodgey because I'm hardly going to be a bread and butter customer... (which, unfortunately, is very true. My mother is her bread and butter customer because she goes into those places and orders a few sticks of char siew, a couple of roast ducks, and some slabs of roast pork).

The fruit and veg shops in Springvale are jostling and packed; I know most of the items but there are always boxes of greenery that defeat my ability to name them. The buildings are often well used, a little grubby, and with bodgey signage.

Anyway, back to the yumcha: Gold Leaf is not bad at all. Good variety of offerings, very fresh for the most part (we've been there half a dozen times and only had dishes that tasted slightly "pre-made" a couple of times), and lots of it - we're often witnesses to trolley-jams. One of the best things I like about Gold Leaf is their wide range of good Chinese desserts. I know this sounds like an oxymoron but there ARE good Chinese desserts. Here, I can choose from the old faithful egg tarts or different milky jellies (including a coconut and green tea combo that's damn fine), or - my favourite - tou foo fah (tofu custard with pandan and ginger syrup). This attachment to dessert means, of course, that we can't eat ourselves completely insensible or we wouldn't be able to fit in one last sweet dish. It's a whole new discipline for yumcha...