One morning, I wanted to treat myself to a hot drink. I considered awarding my patronage to Gloria Jeans, Hudsons, Coffee HQ or some other coffee chain store but then I decided to support local business. I walked into a new coffee shop near the train station. Staff there had been trying to woo me in for weeks with their free raisin toast samples and mo’aves.

“One soy latte please,” I said to the attendant.

“Sure,” she said brightly. She tapped a fellow staff member on the shoulders to pass on the message. He got to work straight away.

“So,” she said in a friendly way, “What do you do?”

I was a little surprised by the directness of her conversation starter (What happened to ‘How are you today?’) but I proudly said, “I’m an environmental engineer.”

“Where do you work?”

“Just over there, in that building.” I felt the need to add something. “I only started a few months ago.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “So you did one of those degrees that actually gets you a job.”

Whoa. I stepped back a little.

“Um. Yeah. Environmental engineering. It’s quite vocational…”

“I did Arts. Lucas here did Graphic Design.”

Lucas stiffened and continued making my soy latte in uncomfortable silence.

“Oh.” I tried to nod understandingly. Quick! Say something not condescending! “…Do you find yourself using your skills now? This seems like a pretty… funky place.”

“Nah. Not really.” She looked at me expectantly.

(Cautiously) “Is that disappointing?”

“Yeah. I guess. But we all knew when we were at uni that we weren’t going to get jobs. We were expecting it. Now I want to do Education so I can get a job.”

“Ah… Some of my friends who did Arts have done that and they love Education now.”

“Yeah,” she nodded enthusiastically. “But, you know, I kind of look back on it and think, ‘What was the point of those three years?’ “

“Surely it wasn’t a waste of three years, though…” I murmured.

“One soy latte.” Lucas had spoken for the first time. He pushed my take-away cup towards me.

“Thanks.” I wrapped my fingers around the insulated hotness.

“See you next time!” she called as, stepping back onto the street, I walked towards my professional career.

I’ve been craving to buy something expensive. I want something electronic and/or complicated so that I can research it to death before I buy, feel the euphoria of picking it up in the shop, pore over the manual and delight in changing the settings. I want to make lots of little inconsequential decisions! I want to start with a blank slate then clutter it up with software/scratches/accessories that fulfill a purpose!

I don’t even have an object of desire. There is nothing I need. So I’ve just been walking through the last week of life, bewildered, fiddling with my phone and assembling a toolbox for work. What’s going on?

“You miss your camera, Joan,” Damjan said sensibly.

I miss my camera! I miss my camera!

My camera is still being fixed in Sydney. I’ve been without it for three weeks.

I keep waking up in the morning to sunrise-streaked skies. The leaves are floating down in their curled redness. There is a letterbox standing forlornly in front of a newly-demolished house. Dammit, people keep looking photogenic. All these visual snapshots waiting to be snapshotted and I’m missing them all! *WAH*

The camera technicians tell me they haven’t yet detected the camera fault. The focussing problem happened intermittently. Every time the technicians have looked at it, the camera has worked normally. (sad) They think I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. It really wasn’t working. I wish it would stop working and then they will believe me and then they will fix it and then I will have my overly-complex and uber-expensive toy back and then I can stop reading the Harvey Norman catalogues that arrive in our letterbox.

Look, I know it’s my “no e-mail day” but I had to get on the internet to do my homework. (Lame, Joan, lame.)

But have a read of this blog. http://darthside.blogspot.com. Read Darth Vader’s resumé…

Hee hee hee.

It was 10 AM and four suited figures had gathered in the centre of a derelict site. An exchange of weapons, drugs and cash could have easily taken place.

“This is it,” observed Ian. “This, here, is all contaminated.” I looked around at the twisted trees, uneven land and piles of illegally dumped construction debris.

“There’s asbestos scattered all over the surface,” Paul said. “Some of it might even be buried underneath.”

“What does it look like?” I asked.

“Greyish. Flat. About half a centimetre thick.” Nuno picked up a piece of masonite. “Like this but with tufts of white fibre at the edge. The fibre is the asbestos. If you bend it over, it’ll stay bent. As long as the fibres are bunched, then it’s fairly low risk. You’re in trouble if the fibres are free — that’s when you can breathe it in.”

“Here’s a piece!” Paul called from atop a grassed mound. He brought it over to show me. “The problem is if we leave it here and there’s a dry summer, then the sheeting will dessicate and crumble, releasing the fibres.”

“There’s a primary school there,” Ian pointed south. “A skate park to the north. A school for disabled kids to the east. You can imagine the kind of press that will get.”

We wandered around the site and soon Ian, Nuno and Paul had each found at least three pieces of asbestos.

“Joan,” Paul warned. “We’re not leaving until we all find some asbestos.” The other two grinned at me.

“That’s not fair!” I said. “I haven’t developed my asbestos eyes yet.” But I took the challenge with good humour.

I focused on the ground for another five minutes as the three men discussed the remediation plan.

“I found a piece!” I shouted triumphantly. Proudly, I held it up between my fingers.

“That’s it,” Nuno agreed. “Congratulations!”

“I’m part of the now club, right?” I said. “This bit of asbestos is my membership card. I can put it in my wallet and wave it in front of all my friends!”

Our group of trained Occupational Health, Safety and Environment professionals all started giggling madly.

I went to my brother’s graduation ceremony on Thursday. After the presentation, my family lined up for the obligatory family portrait. We waited in a noisy, crowded room with hundreds of other graduates clutching their degrees and billowing around in their black gowns and trencher hats.

We waited in the ill-defined line for a long time. Mum and dad were tired of standing. I stared unseeingly into the throng of people. Jason had ducked out for fresh air but soon came back, complaining about people who thought it was okay to infuse their rented gowns with the smell of cigarette smoke.

Suddenly, dad murmurmed, “Where did they come from?” An unfamiliar family was hovering beside us and slowly edging ahead in the cue.

We knew of course where they had come from. “Hey, they pushed in!” Dad was frowning.

I didn’t say anything. Confrontation. Today, confrontation made me feel uncomfortable.

Dad is the most mild-mannered person I know so I was extremely surprised when he tapped the person in front of us.

“Where did you come from?”

It wasn’t like he even asked. He challenged them.

“Oh, we were in the other line. We were in the wrong line for half an hour.”

“No,” dad shook his head. “No, you can’t do that. You should go to the back.”

“Look, we’re all in this together,” they said to defend themselves. “Just let us stay.”

Dad continued shaking his head and frowning. “We’re in a hurry. We have to go to dinner.” He waved over one of the photography company employees. “Excuse me, these people pushed in.”

The lady looked uncertainly at the accused.

“We were in the wrong line for 45 minutes!”

“No,” mum and dad said forecefully. “They should go to the back. Or at least go behind us. We’ve already let one person go in front. This is unfair.”

At this point, I was cowering, looking away front the situation. Confrontation. It made me feel icky.

In the end, the queue-jumping family were asked to line up behind us and the son and his girlfriend promptly went outside for a ciggie.

I’m proud of my parents.

I went to my first Toastmasters executive meeting in my capacity as secretary. As I sat there taking minutes, I felt a slight sinking feeling in my stomach. The familiar strains of extracurricular (extraworkular) responsibility had crept up. Oh dear. This was going to be some work.

The Toastmasters treasurer, Tianii, has just been posted to Malaysia for the next few years. This unfortunately timed event triggered the need for a new treasurer and a farewell celebration.

Despite my tenuous link to Tianii, I went along to her farewell lunch at an upmarket Malaysian restaurant. I had a delicious too-expensive seafood laksa, enjoyed humourous conversation with new acquaintances and left the restaurant with a frighteningly enthusiastic lady who works in the company’s International Group.

Half an hour after I had arrived back in the office, I was doing some calculations when I bolted up in my seat. I leapt out of our pod and rushed up the stairs to the ninth floor.

I burst into the meeting room where Tianii and John were talking.

“Tianii! I’m so sorry. I meant to pay for my meal but Jenny distracted me and I forgot. How embarrassing! Please let me know who I owe money too.”

Tianii looked surpised. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Joan! Everyone paid too much and it ended up covering the bill. I even got an extra $10.”

“No, I really should give you some money.” I took out my wallet. She waved it away.

“Nah, it’s nothing. Don’t worry…”

I made a New Years Resolution yesterday. I decided that I was unhappy with my current lack of knowledge and that I wanted to become well read. My problem, though, is that I fall asleep on the train to and from work. That’s 80 minutes five days a week that could be used enriching my mind, “wasted” on napping.

To achieve my goal of reading more, and more widely, I’ve decided to give up the internet every second day. Reading and writing email and writing my blog are one of the great joys of my evening, however I suspect that these two activities are black holes for my time. If I spent less time in cyberspace, then I can sleep more, then I’ll be awake for the train journey so that I can read great literary works, negotiation and personal developments manuals, treatises of environmental economics and biographies of giants.

Yesterday was my first day without the internet (work internet use does not count). Oh, how I suffered. I stayed away from the computer at home but all the time, my mind was feverishly occupied imagining the scintillating social emails of which I was depriving myself.

I managed, though. I survived. Ha! I am your master, Cyberspace!

This blogging must tide me over for another night. Farewell, my readers. Sleep well.

Ha ha ha ha!

Jeff said to me, “I was looking around on the train this morning and I thought, ‘Isn’t it sad that people don’t talk to each other? Wouldn’t it be great if I had got onto the train or tram and everyone was just… speaking to each other?’ “

Yes, people on public transport do avoid eye contact and random conversation. I think that’s why Walkmans and iPods were invented — so that you can stare directly at others and pretend not to see them. And of course there is a protocol for the order of train seating. The polite order for seating yourself on public transport is:

1. Window seat, facing the direction of travel.
2. When all seating bays have at least one person in them, diagonally opposite the window seat, facing against the direction of travel.
3. Diagonally opposite anyone already seated.
4. Fill in other seats.

If there are empty bays in the carriage and someone chooses to sit beside or in front of you, you’re allowed to freak out.

I was the victim of a severe violation of public transport protocol today. I was reading the City Weekly on the train when suddenly, my ears were assaulted with not too-loud pop music leaking from headphones, but (gasp) live music! Sitting in the corner of the carriage, a man was strumming his guitar. He began quietly but as we rumbled by the stations, he abandoned all pretence of being ‘normal’ and played with the full power of his instrument’s acoustic body.

My first instincts were to be shocked and suspicious. Then, slowly, I was surprised to realise that I really didn’t mind. Live music on my 40 minute train trip — how… pleasant!

I smiled and went back to enjoying my magazine.

At about 10 AM, I noticed the people in my pod and the adjacent pod getting up and heading towards Meeting Room 8.07. Tim was leading the group. Tim is our tall white-haired air quality guru.

“Joan,” he said as he passed me, “We’re going into the meeting room to celebrate Scott’s newborn son with a Russian tradition. Would you like to join us?” I got up and allowed myself to be ushered into the meeting room. The door was shut behind us.

Tim put a bag onto the table and took out six little shot glasses and a jar of clear liquid. Oh! I looked at the adults around me. I could see where this was going.

Tim casually poured the vodka into the glasses, then gestured for us to take one.

“Is Junior on the phone?” he asked Scott.

“Ready and waiting,” Scott said as he turned up the volume on the speakerphone. We heard a distant gurgling and cooing.

Tim said, “Now, we all have to sing the traditional Russian song. There is only one word, which you sing three times. Then we repeat the whole thing another three times so we end up with three verses. I’ll start and I expect you all to join in by the end.”

Tim began singing with gusto and unexpected musicality.

We all began laughing and tried to follow. “Nemstrode…ta! Nimenostreta…um…taaaa! Namistrone…….ta!”

Then in unison, we all downed our shots of vodka.

I felt warm and fuzzy the rest of the work day.