Author: Joan

Frightened and inspired

Emerging from solitary weeks of writing, today I went to the first of three days of our dissertation conference. The thirty-six members of the class are presenting their research to date. Presentations are followed by questions.

I am frightened and inspired at the same time. I’m frightened because of the impressive amount of rigour in other people’s study design. I feel like a fraud in comparison. Somehow, I must persuade others that my results are valid and reliable.

I am also inspired by how interesting and useful people’s research is. For eight hours today, my brain was filled with non-Joan-shaped thoughts and that gave me ideas for my own work. I went home, eager to tweak my presentation, looking forward to my turn to present on Wednesday.

Before I started this course, I knew two things about research: that it often a lonely occupation, and that it is a hard slog. I was warned about this and I have experienced it to be true. I also knew that good research practice includes collaborating with people and sharing ideas to ward off loneliness and stagnation, and that the best way to slog through research is to work nine to five, even in the most uninspired times.

Despite forewarning, I did not follow these two guides and it has been to my detriment. Because I didn’t have the willpower to hack through the lows, I feel the pressure now. Because I am under pressure, I feel like I can’t spend the time to talk to people and socialise. Because I don’t talk to people and socialise, I am unproductive and low.

Maybe this conference, enforced interaction, is what I need to break the cycle.

Joan-shaped thoughts

My thoughts fit into my head comfortably. I’ve had nothing but Joan thoughts for days, maybe weeks. They’re all the same shape, they sound the same, they use the same words. They’re familiar, they don’t challenge me and I’m sick of them the way that one is sick of eating the same food every day.

I had a great day today. I wrote 2,500 words. I went for a walk at the cemetery. While I was there, I realised that the reason I felt so uninspired was because my brain is full of Joan-shaped thoughts, which I forced myself to pursue to wretchedness.

Someone once described to me what it is like when he meditates. It isn’t that his mind is empty. He lets his thoughts enter as usual. The difference is that he watches them drift by without following them. There is no need to follow thoughts. They can come in and leave as they want.

Di told me about a woman who would spill a bowl of rice grains on the floor. She then uses a pair of chopsticks to pick up the grains one at a time. When the bowl was full again, she pours the rice out and starts again.

In the corner of the cemetery, there is a little stone house. I thought a priest lived there because it looked like a miniature church. The house was open today and I went in. It turns out that it is the home and studio of an artist. While I was there, about ten other people came in to look at her prints and sculptures. The patterns in her work helped me not follow my thoughts.

It was nice to get a rest from thinking.

Treading water

I feel like I’m treading water. I have six weeks to get to the end of the pool but I feel like I’m not progressing. I am sick of it. So uninspired.

I have to present my findings on Wednesday. It’s a twenty minute presentation. I’m sick of thinking about this topic. I want to think about something different. I don’t want to read my own writing anymore.

AAAARGH. BUT I HAVE TO. I HAVE TO KEEP GOING.

Waaaaah….

Shame, Australia, shame!

The article on parental leave in Wikipedia gives the leave entitlement for new mothers (and often fathers) in different countries.

I never knew how generous other countries were! I scanned through the column, gobsmacked. I’m so ashamed that Australia is only one of three countries with ‘zero’ in its column for number of weeks of paid maternity leave. The other two offenders are USA and Papua New Guinea.

Shame, Australia, shame!

Joan and the flies

After the party last week, we accumulated twice as much rubbish and recycling as normal. Tomorrow is bin day so Alex, Di and I pitched in to move all the bins and boxes to the front of the house for tomorrow’s early morning pick-up. It was a bit of an operation and we congratulated ourselves once it was done.

Ten minutes later, I heard Di cry, ‘There are bugs in my room!’

Alex and I popped our heads into Di’s room.

‘Bugs?’ I said. ‘You mean ants? Spiders?’

‘Look!’ she said, pointing to her window. Zipping around in front of her sheer white curtains were dozens of tiny black flies.

‘They came from the bin,’ Alex identified. ‘I saw them come out when we opened the lid… What are you doing?’

Di was leaning over her desk to open her window. ‘I don’t know how they got in, since the window was shut. I’m opening the window. Maybe the flies will go outside.’

‘Maybe more will come in,’ I said, worried.

‘No, they came from the black bin and that’s on the footpath now,’ said Alex.

We watched a short while. The flies made no visible move towards the open window.

‘I’ll leave it open for a while,’ Di decided.

I had an idea. ‘I know! Why don’t we put a cake or something on the window sill outside so that they will be attracted to it and leave?’

Di and Alex stared at me. I thought about what I had said.

‘Oh…’ I realised. ‘I guess a cake might attract more flies inside.’

As they shook their heads sadly at me, I protested, ‘I am smart! Really I am!’

A quiet evening walk

This evening, I went for a walk through Midsummer Common. I walked through the warm summer air and light breeze, and felt peaceful and comfortable. The old Victorian buildings seemed hyperreal against the blue sky. The cloud streaks were white when I left home and soon, were tinged with the orange of sunset. I took a photo of all this with my mind.

Midsummer Common is dotted with oak trees. There is an especially expansive one near the river. As I walked towards it on the path to the river, something shimmered at me from its branches. I didn’t have my glasses on so for the half minute it took for me to get near it, it was a shimmering, shiny red globe. Finally, when I was five metres away, I saw that someone had hung a red tinsel wreath from a slim looping branch.

It looked so pretty.

I took another mental photo.

Then it was time to go home.

A woman, a man, a baby, and a student

When I reached the pedestrian crossing, the ‘WALK’ signal had just started flashing. I stepped off the curb on to the black and white stripes. An old lady and a man cradling a baby were already in front of me.

‘WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU DOING?’ the man with the baby yelled.

My heart was pounding. A red car had decided to reverse back into the zebra crossing. It had only stopped when the man yelled.

I could have been run over.

At least the old lady and the man with the baby would have cushioned the impact.

Friend wheel


What is this? Do you know?

It’s my Friend Wheel!

Yes, indeed. Someone has come up with a nifty way to visually depict the relationships between my friends on Facebook. Every dot on the circumference of the wheel represents a friend. I’ve erased friends’ names, as well as mine in the middle.

You can see some interesting patterns. Recently, the network effect worked its magic amongst my high school friends from Melbourne. Consequently, that isolated patch of purple at 11 to 12 o’clock is the high school arc.

The pink arc at one o’clock is the beginnings of my university dancesport crowd. Facebook has only just started to ripple through them. I don’t think that blob will get any bigger, though. I didn’t have that many friends at uni 🙂

At 2 to 3 o’clock, the Friend Wheel application decided to place my un-networked friends. There are a couple of people from my university course, work, other courses, and truly random acquaintances.

Which leaves the mass of lines from 3 to 10 o’clock. This is, of course, the Cambridge arc of people who sucked me into Facebook in the first place. Now, as far as I’m concerned, there should be four main groups: my coursemates, my scholarship friends, dancing people, and college people.

However, it’s a mess. The Friend Wheel app has revealed how interlinked everyone in Cambridge is. I really shouldn’t be surprised that scholarship people dance, and that coursemates are in college with scholarship people.

Oh, there is also an interesting blue blob at around half past nine. That’s the Oxford dancesport people. Even though I don’t know them, many of them ‘friended’ me after I released photos from the Varsity Match in May. It’s very easy to make friends on Facebook. Currently, I have 212.

You would think that the lines that cross from one side of the circle to the other would represent the most unexpected relationships. They do to some extent. However, the application has chopped my scholarship group in half and the internal links there represent much of the crossover. Hmm, now that I look at the names, I don’t know why the application has done that. There’s an island of scholarship people at 10 o’clock. Also, for some reason, the Oxford group has bisected my coursemates (divide and conquer?).

Hehe. Kevin Rudd is at 4 o’clock, surrounded by Aussie mates. That’s right. I’m officially friends with Kevin Rudd. I looked, but John Howard‘s not on Facebook. Maybe he has a MySpace (read Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace).

Damjan suggested someone could make a Venn diagram application for friends. That’s the mental model I’ve always had for my friendship groups. I have Venn brain. However, now that I’ve seen what a mess that lines make, I think circles would be an impossible ask.