Renos

• Hi anyone who may occasionally check out the old buzz page. In case you were wondering i am currently:
  
• Mooching in the scenic art pad/thinkspace and occupational therapy centre that Miss J is ably running in the Blue Mountains.
• Procrastinating from a writing task I set myself out of pure love and a desire to keep the spanish up to scratch by redecorating a tired old blog.. lime green..i dunno
• Thinking about what might be a reasonable form of paid employment that can ward off insanity and moral collapse for a few more years
• Plotting to obtain a home with a garden. Inspired by baby eggplants at the city crash landing pad under the flight path (many thanks to Miss A and the absentee hosts for that one). Just need to decide what city/state/country to grow those little suckers in
• Waiting for rolls of film to be developed (Tip: kmart works out cheaper than the photo labs, and still has kodak equipment on site)
• Taking calls for Biz
• Cooking and doing craft for expectant mothers (a joy not a chore)
• Preparing for a sojourn down in Adelaide
• Pondering being 30 and still wearing novelty teeshirts (its the new 21 I hear)
• Listening to old time Tango, Johnny Cash and Nick Cave in high rotation
• Not watching TV

Get out of the Inner West !

The SMH tells me everyone still living there is failing the happiness test. Well that piece of info was quite useful actually, some support for my vague notion to settle somewhere near a beach..

"A new survey that compares the wellbeing of people in all 150 federal electorates reveals the safe Labor seat of Grayndler, covering Annandale, Leichhardt, Petersham, Newtown, Marrickville and Summer Hill, tops the national list for all-round unhappiness."

"The survey found that the electorate of Richmond in northern NSW, also held by Labor, is the happiest in NSW and second happiest in Australia, even though it has a much higher poverty rate and much lower average income than Grayndler.

"Home to Tweed Heads, Byron Bay, Murwillumbah and Mullumbimby, the seat
has one of the highest proportions of elderly people, as well as middle-aged sea-changers and younger people pursuing an alternative lifestyle."

hey there IS someone out there

Wow thanks crew for adding your thoughts. I am deeply deeply afeared for the nation whenever I log onto ABC or SMH at the moment... I would like to write a more considered post about it and about what we are learning just from looking and listening around Argentina. They had a military dictatorship here for around 20 years. In that time they handed over massive powers to the police who subsequently disappeared around 30,000 people, they don´t actually know the figures. They whisked people like the school teachers of playwrights who wrote seditious works off the streets and they were never seen again. Walking around some of the monuments, I have easy imagined the sick feeling in the pit of your stomach everyday, knowing that members of your family could be next.

It doesn´t seem in the slighest bit alarmist to rant rail and be very alarmed about Australia´s situation right now. Sometimes you have to go away to see your own home a bit clearer. "Disappearances" have already happened in Australia. Under the guise of DIMIA, through detention and deporation of Australian citizens.

They have now had a "democratically elected" govt here for about 13 years, but they still face massive corruption and a violent and secretive police force. The government took power away from the police through law changes, but they still haven´t got the balance back. The mothers of the disappeared still congregate every Thursday in town asking for prosecution of the guilty. Once you go down that road, it seems like its a long time before you can turn back.