I teach two hiphop classes on Monday. One is meant to be an intermediate class and the other is for beginners. The intermediate class was to be made up of the beginners from last year, who were getting to be quite good. Only about five of them came back though, and now my intermediate class is flooded with people slightly better than beginners but not as good as they should be to join the class.

If I was stern enough, I’d have immediately told the newcomers to change to the beginners class an hour later. But I’m a softie I didn’t put my foot down.

I thought I might push the beginner-type people really hard to get them up to the level needed to be. I think I can do it but I’ll need at least another two months.

But now I have a problem. The advanced dancers have come up to me and said that they are bored with the class and feel it’s unfair that all these newcomers are holding them back. They really want to stay in my class (they like me) but it is frustrating to go over the same material each week.

My options seem to be:

1. Rearrange the classes to form a beginner/beginner plus class and an advanced class.
2. Start an advanced class.
3. Come in half an hour early each week to work with the advanced people before class.
4. Suggest my advanced people go to another teacher’s class.

The best option is number 2. That way I don’t have the trouble of a huge beginners class and teaching everyone new dance routines. But I am extremely loathe to teach three hours a week. Having three classes increases the amount of choreography, preparation, organising, costume-buying and paperwork I have to do.

I really don’t know what to do

On Thursday, there was a fire drill at work. Fifteen floors of workers had to evacuate down to Swanston Street in the middle of the city. As we milled around in the 35°C heat, I decided to take an early lunch. I slipped out of the crowd and took a tram to check out the Orientation Week festivities at university.

I was very happy to see my friends there. Being a working adult, I now feel a bit isolated from the social action so I was very pleased to catch up with everyone. But all good things must come to an end and after half an hour, Damjan walked me back to the office.

“Bye Joan!” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you, Damjan! Thank you for walking with me.” I waved happily and entered the glass revolving doors.

As I kept pace with the revolving doors, I was still absorbed in the pleasantness of my lunch break. I stepped out of the turnstile and immediately smacked my head against the glass — I had stepped out one pane too early!

The people behind me gasped. “Are you okay?”

I laughed feebly and waved off the helping hands. How embarrassing…

My tutoring student cancelled at the last minute so tonight was the first completely agenda-less night I’ve had in some weeks.

I had no idea what to do.

I began tidying my room and got to the piles of paper left over from my Tasmania trip. I started flicking papers into different piles: Keep, Reuse, Recycle, Bin.

Suddenly, I found in my hands a photography magazine that I had borrowed from the library more than a month ago to take to Tasmania.

Uh oh.

I haven’t had an overdue library book since high school. I wonder how big the fine will be?

It serves me right for not tying up loose ends immediately.

Every morning, as I travel into the office, I notice that most women carry two bags: One handbag and the other is almost invariably one of those cardboard bags from places such as Harrods or Kookai.

“Well, that’s just stupid,” I thought. “Why don’t they just get one bigger bag and that will leave one of their hands free? What’s the point of having two little bags when one bag will do the job?” (I realise that having one large backpack will leave both hands free but it will also crinkle my shirt.)

And so, I have always scorned the victims of the “Two Bag Phenomenon”.

This morning, I was trying to organise myself to carry an extra pair of shoes to work. You see, I have a lovely new pair of heels, which go nicely with my black skirt but I can’t walk very quickly in the silly things. The plan was to wear comfortable shoes to and from the office and change into the heels when I got there. However, just by looking at it, I knew that the shoes would not fit into my satchel.

Luckily, I had won a L’Oréal giftpack a week ago and it came in a handy dandy flat-bottomed cardboard bag with “L’Oréal Paris” emblazoned on it. I poured out the make-up, hair and skincare products and dumped my heeled shoes into it.

“Don’t worry,” I reasoned to myself, “I’m not really carrying two bags. I’ll get rid of my shoe bag as soon as I get to work. It’s like carrying a gym bag to school when you have Phys Ed. I’m really carrying only one and a half bags.”

My mum handed me my lunch. It was noodles. It had sauce in it. Instead of putting it in my satchel, it only made sense to make use of the flat bottom of my non-bag. (Remember the incident with the water bottle?) But I hesitated. Oh no. Putting my lunch into the non-bag would make it too useful, too functional, too necessary. My shoe non-bag would be verging on second bag status.

Closing my eyes, I quickly placed the lunch container in and rearranged my shoes on top. And then — “To hell with it, I’ve gone this far, I might as well put my jacket in there too.” Now there was no denying it — the bag was completely integrated into my work uniform.

And that is how I fell (fashion) victim to the Two Bag Phenomenon. We’re all doomed.

I was waiting for my train to go home when a man sidled up to me and said, “Nihao.” Nihao is “Hello” in Mandarin Chinese. I was quite surprised. I had never seen him before. He was a portly, balding Australian man in his fifties.

He smiled in an intensely friendly way. “Is that how you say it? Nihao?”

“Erm. Yes. Nihao,” I said cautiously. Should I be worried here? He seemed to be keeping a polite distance.

“So how long have you been in Australia?” he asked.

“Oh, a long time now.”

He looked a bit disappointed as I added, “19 years, in fact.”

“You must have come over when you were a baby.”

“Yes.”

“My name is John. I worked in China for a while.”

“Hello John.”

He handed me a pamphlet. “I’d like to invite you to join our church at Melbourne University.”

Then he talked about the wonderful people I could meet and activities I could do at this church. He talked for about two minutes and I kept nodding. I didn’t really mind being evangalised to. It would have been a boring 10 minute wait for my train, otherwise.

“So please do come,” he concluded earnestly. “Is that your train? No? Okay, let me give you my phone number.” He scribbled it almost illegibly on the back of my phamplet.

I thought, “Hey, this isn’t bad. He’s nice enough, only a little bit pushy. I suppose you have to be, when you’re recruiting for your church.”

But then things got a bit weird. “Let me give you some advice just because I know,” he inserted, just as I thought he was going to leave me alone. “Even if he’s a millionaire, don’t marry an Australian man. Marry your own, a Chinese man. It will save you a lot of trouble. You’ll have the same food, the same culture…”

I gaped at him.

“Zaijian!” he nodded, waved and wandered off to look for his next victim.

I sold my car today! It’s a very nice car, quite new, runs perfectly. It’s driven me to uni, parties, holidays and jobs for three years.

Why did I sell it then? For the past two weeks, I’ve been walking to the station and catching the train to work. I did the same coming home. I only used my car in the evening and on the weekend. It seemed pointless paying $1000 a year for car insurance and registration when I could borrow my mum’s car out of business hours.

Now I get to make some pretense of being environmentally friendly by getting rid of my car and spending $1500 on public transport (ouch!).

I’ve come out of my stint of car ownership at break even. That is, I’ve sold the car for more than I’ve been paying mum and dad for it, if we ignore complications like running costs, interest and inflation. Now I’ve got all this money! Yay! More shares for me! It feels like an enforced savings plan has suddenly matured.

I am reminded of the debate on house ownership versus shares. A good proportion of financial planners say that instead of spending $400,000 or whatever on buying a house, you’ll be much better off if you rented and invested the extra money in the sharemarket. It’s far less risky to spread your money amongst equities. Just think — would you buy $400,000 of shares in the one company? That’s crazy! (Pretend you’re not a millionaire.)

Still, financial planners encourage people to invest in houses. The simple reason is this: Very, very few people would have the discipline to put aside the money they would have paid to their mortgage. Let’s face it, if you’re renting, then the temptation to spend the extra money on having fun and buying new gadgets would be overwhelming. Buying a house and paying a mortgage is like having an enforced saving plan. People are forced to put money into an asset and in a few decades, they own something worth a few hundred thousand dollars.

So. Humans are weak. Buy a house.

I’m in a funny mood, not my usual cheerful self.

I was with my parents at our local library. There was a little boy, maybe three years old. He was quite cute, very inquistive, running around to investigate the behaviour of the automatic doors. I watched him for a bit and suddenly, I imagined pushing him really, really hard so that he would fall over and bounce on his head.

I know that’s really cruel. Don’t worry, I would never actually do it. It was just a bit of a thought experiment. Still, I think it would have been funny. If I could forget that he was a live, thinking, feeling creature, the simple physical response of a small unstable figure to being shoved by a bigger one would be visually amusing. Especially the bouncing part.

I was sitting at the train station, waiting for my 7:30 AM train to take me to work. I was thirsty, so I took a swig of my water bottle and plonked it back into my bag. After a minute, I felt a coldness in my lap. I lifted my bag and saw dark blue patches of wetness on jeans. How strange!

Furrowing my eyebrows, I looked at the bottom of my bag — it was all wet! I yanked the flap open and pulled out the water bottle. Sure enough, the previously full bottle was empty and the bright yellow cap lounged rakishly on the lip. I reached into the bag and grimaced as I felt the wetness.

At that moment, the train arrived.

I’m quite proud of what I did next. Normally, after doing something extremely silly, I flail about uselessly, berating myself. However, this time I calmly began pulling everything out of the bag. I flipped the empty bag inside-out and shook out a drink bottle’s worth of water. I wiped the bag down with my tissues and quickly began replacing its contents. Then I hopped onto the train.

I discovered an interesting thing that day. Nearly everything in my bag is waterproof. Isn’t that wonderful?

1. Since Monday, I’ve been at a training seminar. I’ve had fun learning, taking tests, eating catered food and hanging out with young environmental professionals from other companies. My company has paid the equivalent of half a semester’s university fees for me to attend the three day course. I hope I’m worth it!

2. My university called me today to invite me to a breakfast function at the Hotel Sofitel. I get to hear a guest speaker and network with other university alumni.
3. Motorola called me to tell me that I had won second prize for a random competition I entered last year.
   

   Joan,
   Congratulations!
   You are a winner of the GIRL CRAZY Competition.
   Your answer to, “What is the best thing about being a girl?”, was brilliant and has won you second prize which is a bag of L’Oreal products. The prize pack includes makeup, hair colour and skin care, to keep you looking your girly best.”

   I think I wrote something about beating the boys at their own games (engineering, skating etc.) while looking gorgeous, goregeous, I tells ya. Mmm, very silly and very marketable…

I was wandering around the center of my neighbourhood at 10 PM tonight. I had to return my library books.

It was a hot, balmy night. As I neared the gelati store, the world was suddenly populated by lovers. Under the warm pools of yellow lamplight, couples gazed at each other and shared gelati. The dark nooks of buildings were filled with low murmurings of sweet talk, committment and the slurping of gelati. Other partnerships leaned in together under the protection of trees. They held onto each other — and their gelati cones. Another pairing walked towards me, their arms hooked together. Obviously, they were heading towards the gelati store.

I was a library-bag-carrying intruder in the field of love.