( All under here )

This index was last updated 11 MAY 2009

Yesterday was my appointment with the psychiatrist, which went pretty much as expected - me giving her a potted history of my life, and she asked a few questions and let me ramble. Then things turned to the serious business of what to be doing about the depression, and the decision was to supplement the meds I'm on with another one, rather than changing them completely.

So, I'm now taking half a 4mg tab of Edronax each morning, for the next couple of days, then I get to take half in the morning and half at night. One of the side-effects of this medication is that it can cause dizziness for some people, and it appears I'm one of them. I'm currently feeling a bit distanced from the world, like I'm having a low blood pressure day, and moving my head too fast makes me feel all wheee. Sort of weird. Of course, I've been sitting upright all morning in front of the computer, so that's probably why. I was thinking of getting back to the job search today, but I think I'll pass until I know whether this is going to be a constant thing or whether it'll wear off. If it's going to be a constant thing, I'll probably need to learn how to brain again before I can actually start thinking about working.

[Keanu Reeves]Whoa.[/Keanu Reeves]

I think I shall go have a bit of a lie down.

Because I haven't been posting lately, just a few quick lines to let folks know I aten't dead (although I am re-reading Discworld) and what's vaguely happening over here.

First up, we're trying to sell the house again. The bank insists on it, because they're wanting their money back, thanks. This means we have the standard aaargh of "home open" inspections, and people coming through at various times, which necessitates us pretty much removing any trace of individuality from the place, along with all small electronic equipment. This, for me, includes disconnecting the lapdog from the monitor, packing it and its power source (and the USB hub and the good mouse) into my backpack, and re-tidying the various cords remaining to make it look as though the PC box I have sitting on my desk actually does something. Over the months of trying to sell this place, I've gotten pretty good at this, but it's still annoying and I'll tend to put off things like re-connecting stuff if I'm feeling cranky.

Which (Second item) I have been, lately. According to my doctor, my last round of blood tests showed everything to be fine except my cholesterol level - apparently my LDL level ("bad" cholesterol) has gone up since my last test, so I have to work to reduce that. Which would be fine if I just knew how - so I have to be doing some research to find out how to lower LDL levels, and probably change a few things about my diet. Both of which I'm cranky about, along with just about everything else in the known universe.

Anyways, between the two of those, I haven't been doing much other than playing games. I've picked up Crisis Core again on the PSP (because that's portable and I can take it with me when I leave the house) and on the PS2 I'm playing my way through FFX2 (which is clearly the Final Fantasy Game Designed By Marketing To Attract Girls). So far in CC I have Zack up to level 50, and I'm putting off visiting Nibelheim for as long as possible (I'd like to finish a few more missions if I could, really bump up the level - I want to find out what happens if I'm strong enough to beat up Sephiroth in the reactor fight scenes. It'd be cool if that broke the game!). I've so far re-started FFX2 about three times, and I'm now working my way through it to try and figure out how to complete all the side quests (if only because it's more fun that way). Oh, and collect all the Al Behd primers, because while I currently have about eight letters of the language, I really need at least one more vowel to make sense of things.

Both the PSP and the PS2 are getting a lot more attention than the PC at present mainly because with both of them, I can take 'em into the warmest room in the house (the PS2 lives there, so it's even easier) instead of sitting in my little office and freezing. While it may well be Midsummer on WoW and in the northern hemisphere, down under it's winter, and for the past few days it's been blowing a gale, with patches of horizontal rainfall. Best time of the year to be curled up on the lounge with the PS2 controller, a blankie over my knees, and a nice hot cup of tea.

I've finally added another game to my "finished" pile. Yup, over the weekend I managed to finish playing all the way through Final Fantasy VII. All three disks.

I achieved this mainly by giving up on being a completeist - I didn't have all the materia, much less have them all mastered, and I'd left the Ruby and Emerald weapons alive. None of the characters had reached level 99 (although I'd reached the point where I'd run out of clock slots - it was stuck on 99:59:59).

So, in the interests of reviewing, here are my collected notes from the various times I've played FFVII, collated and assembled.
( Massive list under fold )

Obama seeks 'new beginning' with Muslim world
Khamenei slams US as Obama reaches out
Bin Laden wants long war against infidels

I read these two headlines, and their accompanying stories, and I could almost see the retorting headlines in the US media, and hear the statements of right-wing zealots in non-Muslim countries throughout the world. Statements about lack of gratitude; statements about lack of respect; statements about being slapped in the face as the US president holds out the hand of friendship. I can just about hear the rising tide of demands from US Christian right-wingers now, insisting this is just typical, and that you can't trust "those folks".

So, before the tirades start, I'd ask the folks on my f-list, particularly those from the US, to think a bit about the wider contexts of these statements. I don't just mean the immediate "this week in politics" context, or the "USA vs the rest of the world" context. I mean in the context of the history of the USA's involvement with predominantly Muslim nations across the past twenty to forty years, or even the past century or so. I mean in the context of the wider Western involvement with these nations over the previous centuries all the way back to the first crusades over a thousand years ago.

From the perspective of people in Iran, the USA not only supported the repressive regime of the last Shah, but also effectively propped this regime up. From the perspective of people in many other Islamic nations (and particularly those on the Arabic peninsula, such as Saudi Arabia) the governments of the USA have been spending most of the past century propping up one repressive regime after another. The actions of the government of the USA in Iraq over the past twenty years have been extremely contradictory - on the one hand, the USA's "School of the Americas" trained up Saddam Hussein, and supplied him with money and armaments in order to engage in a drawn-out war against the Iranians purely on ideological grounds; on the other the US army was instrumental in firstly defeating, then deposing, and then finally executing the man. In Afghanistan, the USA first supported the Taliban against the Russian invaders, then invaded to depose the Taliban, and then let the Taliban take control once again. The Pakistani government has been dealing with a steady flow of refugees from Afghanistan for decades, ever since the USA and Russia decided to make the country into a battleground. The repressive regime of Suharto in Indonesia has been backed by the USA (and was put in place through tacit US approval of a coup against a democratically elected leader). The record of the USA in the Middle East, particularly as the primary international supporter of the Israeli governments (no matter what various Israeli governments might be doing to their neighbours, including outright invasion) due primarily to a sense of repressed anti-Semitism, has soured their reputation throughout that area as well - particularly when various US governments have declared a number of Middle Eastern and North African countries (Syria, Libya, Iran) international persona non grata, and effectively banned their participation in the modern world via restricting trade in various technologies, such as computer software.

Given this history, which stretches back well over thirty years (I can remember the early stages of a lot of the current arguments happening when I was in primary school) I'd argue the various leaders of the Muslim world are well justified in any scepticism they hold regarding the motivations of the USA overall. Barack Obama is working against the combined economic, military and social policies of the past century of the United States of America, in countries where their cultural memory for past events and root causes is much more highly developed. In countries where intra-faith warfare over who should have been the second Caliph of Islam is still a regular thing; where the defeats of the Crusades and the Spanish Reconquistada (and resultant Inquisition) are still regarded as open wounds; where the majority of people are used to thinking of government policy as being something which is only alterable with the death of a particular leader; in countries like this, the past carries far more weight than in a nation where it sometimes appears the cultural memory stops a week ago last Thursday. If the leaders of the primarily Muslim nations reach out and take the hand of friendship offered by Obama, who is to say his successor will not turn around and slap them with it in four years time? How can they rely on the willingness of the USA to keep promises of friendship and assistance, when their past record says those promises will be ignored as soon as it suits the purposes of the USA?

From the perspective of the Islamic nations, they have good reason to distrust the USA. After all, it isn't paranoia when the other side is out to get you.

Well, let's see. First up, I have an appointment with a trick cyclist (psychiatrist) on the 30th of this month - which is wonderful since I was expecting to have to wait until about November. Secondly, I have a medical certificate for Centrelink until the 14th of July, which means I get to have a bit of time to deal with things there too. I've also been on a slightly higher dose of Zoloft, which has resulted in me being as tired as all get-out lately and spending a few days seeing the world through a dose of cotton wool. So I've skipped my meds for the past couple of days and I'm now feeling vaguely human again. I'm also back on a vaguely normal circadian, rather than heading off into the wonderful land of nocturnal living.

Tomorrow Himself is going to take a few minutes out and arrange for us to put the house on the market again. We're looking at hopefully being able to get as much money as we paid for the place three years ago, thus merely putting us in hock to the bank for the interest. Hooray.

Oh, and we do appear to be having a winter this year in Perth. It's been raining on and off all day today, and I've responded to the whole business by beginning a pot of soup. I've had a few lamb shanks and some mutton chops simmering for a few hours, and the whole mess is now cooling to the point where I'll be able to skim off the fat tomorrow morning. Then it's just chopping up the meat from the bones, chopping up some veges and dropping in a few handfuls of pearl barley, and we have lambshank broth to eat and put in the freezer. I may also get carried away and look up details of various creamy soups, just to see whether I can figure out how to make cream of celery soup from scratch (I bought an entire celery, and I'd rather turn it all into soup than have most of it go to waste in the crisper). If I can't figure that out, I'll try Minestrone (to use up some of the dried beans as well as the rest of the veges) and Mulligatawny (to use up one rather ancient whole chook and a whole heap of red lentils) after getting some more veg from the supermarket. I'll also pick up some more gravy beef, and some beef bones to make up stock with, and see about making up some of my favourite beef, barley and vegetable soup. Yes, I do happen to like soups which can just about hold a wooden spoon upright, however did you guess?

Okay, things are... interesting at the moment.

First up, until the end of May, I'm not likely to be posting too much, because our internet connection has been throttled between the hours of noon and 2am - as in, cut back to dial-up speed. The reason for this is very simple: Himself has been bored. Bored enough to be watching entire seasons (as in every single one of them) of both Daria and Kim Possible on YouTube. He then acted surprised when I pointed out the amount of bandwidth such things would swallow, and when I pointed out I hadn't really been going overboard on WoW at all in the past three weeks. So, we're on trickle internet until the end of the month unless I get up early enough in the morning to beat the rush.

Second on my list: we're putting the house on the market. Again. Maybe this time it will sell (although I have to confess I hope not - I like this place, and the main option Himself is considering for the aftermath is moving in with Himself's parents). We had a nice man from the real estate people visiting today and taking snaps of the place (I managed to persuade Himself that while putting things away is all very well, if he packed anything he would be In Serious Trouble) and promising to call us back tomorrow. Yay.

Thirdly, I visited my GP today. Part of it was about the annual service (ie blood pressure, check everything is still functioning, make sure I'm not dead, rotate the tyres, etc and so on), which means tomorrow I get to go in again and visit the friendly vampires at the pathology collection station in the same building. Another part was about getting a repeat on one of my psych meds (this whole business of being on two different strengths of the stuff is irritating). The next part was getting an official Centrelink medical certificate regarding the depression, as accepted by our very persnickety agency of the Department of Human Services - I can't just send in a standard med cert, since they don't go into the appropriate level of detail, and Centrelink won't accept them. I'll be dropping that in at Centrelink tomorrow as well, plus calling in to speak with my Job Network folks. I also have the names of a half-dozen psychiatrists, and I have to find one who will firstly have an opening some time before November (no, I'm not exaggerating... or if I am, it probably isn't by much - I know the specialists in this town, and most of them do tend to be booked about six months in advance), and will secondly accept a Health Care Card as a legitimate reason to reduce the size of their bill (preferably by bulk billing).

The good news from the GP is my blood pressure is still at the low end of normal. I blame this on my mother's side of the family, who have genetically low blood pressure, to the point where Mum faints if she tries to hang out washing on the wrong days. In order for stress to register on my veins, I have to apparently be under enough of it to kill an elephant outright. Yay again.

Finally, tomorrow we're having dinner with Himself's parents. It's one of their regular "hello, how are you, haven't seen you in about a month, are you both still alive?" things (they live about five minutes walk away - gods know why they don't bother just dropping in to say hi). So we'll get to hear a lot about their friends and Himself's two brothers. Oh, and their grandchild. They've only told us the stories about their last visit to Canbrrra to see the kid about twice, so we're due a few repeats.

( Other news: game rambling )

BREATH

breath · n.
1 air taken into or expelled from the lungs. Ø an inhalation or exhalation of air from the lungs.
2 a slight movement of air.
– PHRASES breath of fresh air a refreshing change. catch one’s breath 1 cease breathing momentarily in surprise or fear. 2 rest after exercise to restore normal breathing. draw breath breathe in. hold one’s breath cease breathing temporarily. out of breath gasping for air, typically after exercise. take breath pause to recover normal breathing. take someone’s breath away astonish or inspire someone with awed respect or delight. under (or below) one’s breath in a very quiet voice. waste one’s breath talk or give advice without effect.
– ORIGIN OE br&th ‘smell, scent’, of Gmc origin; rel. to brood.

This is the noun. The verb is

breathe

.

breathe · v.
1 take air into the lungs and then expel it as a regular physiological process. Ø (of a plant or invertebrate animal) respire or exchange gases.
2 (of wine) be exposed to fresh air.
3 (of material or soil) admit or emit air or moisture.
4 allow (a horse) to rest after exertion.
5 give an impression of: the room breathed an air of hygienic efficiency.
6 (breathe upon) archaic or poetic/literary tarnish or taint.
– PHRASES breathe (freely) again relax after being frightened or tense. breathe down someone’s neck follow closely behind. Ø constantly check up on someone. breathe one’s last die. breathe (new) life into reinvigorate. not breathe a word remain silent about something secret.
– ORIGIN ME (in the sense ‘exhale, steam’): from breath.

The verb tenses are: has/have breathed, am/is breathing, can/will breathe.

This is one where people tend to muddle up the noun and the verb. The verb has the "e" at the end. This is a fairly common distinction within English, but there appear to be growing numbers of people who either don't know what the difference between the noun and verb forms is, or don't know the difference between a noun and a verb. For those who missed this in primary school: a noun is a naming word - it names an object, concept, idea or person; a verb is a doing word - it speaks of an action. In the classic sentence, "The cat sat on the mat", cat and mat are nouns; sat is the verb which tells what the cat was doing.

Okay, after spending most of the past week feeling like something the cat threw up then dragged in, I've taken the first steps toward getting my mental illness recognised by the Australian system.

I have an appointment booked with my GP for Monday morning, 10.30 am, where I'll be asking firstly for a repeat on one of the medications I'm on, and secondly for a specialist medical certificate explaining what I am and am not capable of with regards to looking for work. With any luck, I'll be able to submit that to the nice people at Centrelink, and get them to at least cut back on the job search requirements for me (if not actually drop them altogether). I've also seen the nice lady at PVS and explained how much job search I haven't been capable of this week (it's getting bad when just reading through Seek is almost more than I can push myself to do) and she's effectively given me next week off.

Yays.

Meanwhile, Hexy over at Hexpletive has been blogging about the joys of taking psych meds. I'm on two different strengths each of two different medications, one of which needs to be purchased on a monthly basis (so even on the dole, I'm looking at about $10 per month minimum). My biggest problem isn't so much paying for the medications (although that was a problem back before I got the health care card to go with the dole... $37 per prescription per month tends to add up over time) as taking the little bastards - for a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with a combination of the depression and the money-scrimp-and-save impulses I get when I'm low on income, I tend to have at least one day per week when I forget to take my meds. Which isn't good for me either physically or psychologically.

I am so fucked up.

If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, fanfiction or what have you, post one sentence/paragraph/whatever from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else--this is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

These are all in my FF7 "Works in Progress" folder (or rather, the folder I store everything I don't think is ready for publication yet - for whatever reason). Some of them are completed but don't quite ring true, some of them are incomplete and have remained stalled for ages, some of them are being actively worked on in between bouts of depression, and others are just scraps and snippets so far. You have been warned.

Oh, and if anyone wants to prod me about things, or start me talking about them, it will be cheerfully welcomed.

( waaay too much under here )

I'm starting to realise I'd be better off applying for DSP (Disability Support Pension). It may be a reduced rate of income, but it would mean I'd be able to look for the type of work which would suit me, rather than the type of work which would suit Centrelink's statisticians and PVS' (my Job Network Provider) placement rates. I'm realising this because last week was a rather busy one for me, with five days out of seven involving public contact (Monday was visiting PVS, Tuesday was a job interview, Wednesday was PVS again, Friday was PVS and stopping by at the markets to pick up some stuff, and Saturday was the writer's meetup I organise). I then spent the past two days feeling like hammered crap, and today was the third day running. I'm supposed to head in to PVS again today and provide evidence of job search, but the problem is I really haven't felt like doing much more than crawling out of bed and sitting upright. So I look at the job search opportunities before me (shyeah, right) and my brain is currently set to "maximum pessimism", which means I'm looking at them and going "nope, they wouldn't want me in a pink fit" the whole time.

All I really want to do today is crawl right back to bed and hide. Instead, I'm going to have to phone my doctor and make an appointment, then start researching what's required to claim DSP through Centrelink. Then maybe I'll just crawl right back to bed, pull the covers over my head, and hide for a bit.

Well, Western Australia's just had its fourth referendum on Daylight Saving since 1975, and the voters have replied to this one the same as we did to all the others. We said "No".

I've lived through each of the trials of Daylight Saving in WA, and each time there's been a referendum about it, the answer has been "no". It's been "no" for a combination of reasons - one of which is that at least half of the land in the state lies north of the Tropic of Capricorn (and therefore gets absolutely no benefit out of daylight saving anyway), another of which is we're on the wrong side of the meridian our time zone is based on (so we don't actually need it in the first place), a third of which is that our summers are long enough and hot enough that we really don't need to save the daylight in the first place (we're too far north to get extended twilights). Each time we've said "no", however, there's been a break of about five to ten years, and we get it imposed again.

The people who generally want Daylight Saving over here are bankers, business types and such (most of whom work in air-conditioned offices on St George's Terrace, commuting to these offices from their air-conditioned homes in air-conditioned cars). They ask for it because Daylight Saving in the Eastern States (or rather, New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT and Tasmania) changes the gap between timezones from two hours (in winter) to three (in summer), and it makes it harder for them to connect with their counterparts on the Eastern Seaboard. To which the answer is, "well, you guys can always get up an hour earlier and finish an hour earlier - why should the rest of us have to do so?" Sadly, they appear to consider the response of the majority of the Western Australian population to be the wrong one - so about once a decade, we get another load of bitching about imposing daylight savings, and another trial, and another referendum.

Now, I'm waiting to see how long it takes before the business community starts telling the government that the voters got it wrong again, and that we're going to keep on repeating this process until we give them the right answer. Fortunately the current premier says it isn't going to be on his watch.

TAUT

taut · adj.
1 stretched or pulled tight. Ø (of muscles or nerves) tense.
2 (of writing, music, etc.) concise and controlled.
3 (of a ship) having a disciplined crew.
– DERIVATIVES tauten v. tautly adv. tautness n.
– ORIGIN ME tought ‘distended’, perh. from tough.

As distinct to

taunt

taunt
· n. a jeering or mocking remark made in order to wound or provoke.
· v. provoke or wound with taunts.
– DERIVATIVES taunter n. taunting adj. tauntingly adv.
– ORIGIN C16: from Fr. tant pour tant ‘like for like, tit for tat’, from tant ‘so much’, from L. tantus.

or

taught

taught past and past participle of teach.

One of the more common "mucking furds wuddled" mistakes I see online is the mistaken use of "taunt" for "taut". I'm never sure whether this is a mistake made by the original writer, or whether it's a "correction" forced on people by spellcheck programs (which will tend to be loaded with the more commonly used words). In any case, it helps to have a dictionary handy when using the spellcheck to ensure the words it suggests as an alternative are the ones with the correct meaning.

Please note, folks, that most spellcheck programs are able to be altered to take note of words you use frequently which may not be in their dictionary. There's usually a little button marked "add" on the list of options, and once you've double-checked your spelling, it might be worthwhile using it. Mine certainly gets a workout, because I have to add all the Commonwealth English spellings of words which are spelled differently in US English.

[I'm not 100% sure this is actually one of mine - however given I have a text file which shows a save date and time of 09 MAR 2008 at 3.23PM, and the fic itself shows up as being posted on 09 MAR 2008 at 4.21pm (local), I figure it's either great minds thinking alike, or I just didn't recall posting it in the first place. If anyone cares to claim it as theirs, though, let me know and I'll take this one down.]

The anon prompt which led to this fic may well have been a troll: sick faggots. Don't you have anything else better to do with your time? Fucking fangirls.

( Warnings for sex, mentions of Reno, cosplayers and a rather nasty head cold )

Lately I've been noticing that when I perspire, I do it very thoroughly. I've just returned from a job interview which required a bit of walking to get to and from (walk to Grant Street station, train to Subiaco station, walk to interview location; reverse to return home). In the course of said walking, I perspired. When I put the shirt I'd changed into for the interview into the washbasket, it was noticeably damp to the touch. The same has been the case when I've had a hot drink, or when I've had a hot curry lately (and by "lately" I mean any time these last few months).

I suspect it's one of the symptoms of the long slow dive into menopause, to be honest. I can remember my mother describing her "hot flushes" and one of the things she mentioned is the amount of perspiration she put out as a result. Either way, it wasn't fun sitting in a little conference room, absolutely conscious of the fact that I could feel the drops of perspiration running down the back of my neck. I have a horrible feeling it made a bad impression on the interviewers, too.

Ah well, I was the first cab off the rank; and either they'll find someone better suited to the job, or they won't. If they do, I tried my best. If they don't... well, I'll cross that particular bridge if and when I get to it.

Well, that was relatively painless.

Turn up, wait about 15 minutes to speak to the nice lady at PVS (Job Nyetwork provider) and wind up with a nice shiny new Activity Agreement. The biggest mess up in the whole thing is that I have to keep track of how much time I spend doing the actual job-search related activities, and I have to turn up at their office at least twice a week to check in and get things signed off.

Oh, and 10 job searches per week - Intenet, newspapers etc. Double yay.

Plus provide documentary proof of all of these things, so the nice people at PVS don't get their arses chewed by the auditors, and I don't get my benefit suspended by Centrelink. More yays. I'm going to be printing a lot of stuff off for the nice people at PVS, it seems.

Time to get started on printing out my results for today's search. Hoo-flippin'-ray.

I've now been on the dole for twelve weeks (three months). My commitment to finding work is therefore being questioned, and I'm going to have to prove to the known universe that yes, I actually do want a job, and yes, I am trying to find one.

Sorry, I'm feeling just a little paranoid at the moment - a side effect of being pulled in for an interview with my Job Network Provider to organise an Activity Agreement. Yay. So I'm taking along a copy of my resume, and a copy of the template I use to write cover letters (saves me one hell of a lot of typing if I just put the standard blurb into a template and copy and paste it into the appropriate spots). I may also talk to the nice people at the Job Network about things like applying for Disability Support Pension (and whether it's worth my while to try for it, given the depression seems to be steadily intensifying every year I have it).

I have to admit, they're hardly going to great lengths to make it easy to arrange these things. My appointment is this morning at 11am. If I had to cancel, or if I had special needs such as accessibility issues (wheelchair, walking assists, etc) or intepreters/translators, I'd have to contact them. According to their letter I needed to do so at least 24 hours beforehand (which for me would have been Friday morning, 11am). I got the letter in Friday's mail - and admittedly, I don't watch the mailbox like a hawk and run out to intercept the postie, so I didn't actually open it until about 6pm that night. Fortunately I'd found out about the whole thing from Centrelink the day before - the message pops up on their system as well, and I'd had to hand in my fortnightly form last Thursday.

Ah well, I'm dressed semi-nicely (good top, good shoes, good jeans, newest of the bras had come to the top of the pile) and I've done my hair and things (heck, I might even go so far as to put on some makeup, thus being at my middle-class best) so I'll hopefully pass as "showing willing". If they grumble about the jeans, I'm going to point out that quite frankly, unless they have an employer wanting to speak with me sitting right there in the office (unlikely) I don't see the point in stressing out my few "work quality" pairs of pants by wearing them to these sorts of interviews, and the consequent washings and dryings. Particularly when I don't have the money to replace them at present, and won't have unless I get a job.

This is what I served for dinner last night. Recipe from the Woman's Day Curry-Lovers' Cookbook, page 42.

Ingredients:

• size 15 chicken [1]


• 3 tablespoons ghee


• 2 teaspoons ground cumin


• 2 teaspoons ground coriander


• 2 whole cloves


• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper


• 1 teaspoon paprika


• 1 teaspoon turmeric


• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg


• 3 cloves garlic, chopped


• 2 onions, chopped


• 1 tablespoon tomato paste


• 1 cup thick coconut milk [2]


• 1 cup chicken stock [2]


• 1/4 cup desiccated coconut

Method:

1. Cut chicken into serving pieces, pat dry with absorbent paper.


2. Heat ghee in large frying pan, add chicken and fry until golden brown, about 6 - 8 minutes. Remove from pan and drain on absorbent paper.


3. Add spices, garlic and onion and fry until onion has softened, about 6 - 8 minutes.


4. Stir in tomato paste and cook for 1 minute.


5. Add chicken, coconut milk, stock and desiccated coconut, mix well and bring to the boil.


6. Cover pan with a lid, lower heat and simmer for 40 minutes or until chicken is almost tender.


7. Remove lid from pan and simmer for a further 10 minutes or until sauce is thick and dry.

Serves 4 - 6. Serve with rice.
All measures are Australian metric measures - 1 cup = 250mL; 1 tablespoon = 20 mL; 1 teaspoon = 5mL

[1] Can substitute 1.5kg chicken pieces, or 1kg chicken thigh or breast fillets.
[2] Alternatively, substitute in 1 teaspoon chicken stock powder, and 1 425g can coconut milk.

I spotted the headline and summary of this article sitting in my RSS ticker, and I wandered over to have a look:

Elite school's horrific cyber-bullying case
Two adolescent girls have been forced to leave one of Sydney's elite private schools because of cyber-bullying.

My first thought on seeing it was "I wonder whether the ones who were forced to leave were the victims or the aggressors", because let's face it, the usual pattern when any kind of bullying, harassment, standover tactics or outright aggressive behaviour occurs in a school setting is that the victims are the ones who move on. This one is one of those rare cases where the people who did the bullying are being expelled.

I read through the article and the accompanying comments, and the ones which hit hardest were the last couple - the ones from other girls who knew both the bullies and the victims. The ones which said that it was just all part of the whole school scene, and that having these anonymous aggressors mentioned in the media and being called "feral" by "randoms" was just plain nasty. Those made me really sad, because it speaks of a widespread acceptance of the way the social and political framework of the schoolyard is based on and supported by this sort of harassment and viciousness. It speaks of a lack of comprehension that there is any other way of handling social interactions between peers. It made me sad, but now it's making me angry.

It makes me angry, because I was one of the kids at the bottom of the social ladder. I spent my entire term at primary school and high school being effectively shat on from a height by my ostensible peers for the social crime of being different. My school experience was so marked by this harassment I wound up having a breakdown at university level because it wasn't present. I still haven't got over the anger I felt at realising the only reason I was bullied in my final years at high school was because the actions of my harassers were dismissed as being "kids will be kids".

So I say this: let the bullies face the full legal consequences of their actions. Make the schools legally responsible for ensuring kids know their actions have consequences - and if that means assault charges for kids who get into physical fights, or defamation charges for kids who perform cyber-bullying actions, then so be it. I realise it will take effectively an alteration of the entire schoolyard culture - first there's got to be a way of finding out what bullying is happening, then there has to be a way of preventing out-of-school retaliation for things like "dobbing" (ie telling a teacher you're being bullied); there also has to be a way of dealing with the provocateurs who tease a kid into striking out physically, or the ones who prod and prod and prod until someone lashes back. It means actually examining the culture which is being presented in a school, and it means the teachers all have to be conscious of their own internalised prejudices and preferences. It means pulling the whole thing to pieces and effectively rebuilding from scratch, and it means everyone in society has to be willing to support the effort, or it will fall apart.

First and foremost, we have to accept that while very young children cannot be expected to magically "know" the social boundaries, teenagers are not very young children. They are young adults, people who will soon be expected to take on adult responsibilities. There isn't a magic switch which is thrown at age eighteen, instantly turning a person from a child into an adult. By year eight and nine (ages thirteen to fourteen in Australian schools) teenagers are old enough to know what the social limits are - and they should be expected to behave within those limits, rather than pushing the edges of them to the point where they're committing crimes. Libel, slander and defamation are crimes in our society ("who steals my purse steals trash... But he that filches from me my good name/Robs me of that which not enriches him/And makes me poor indeed"), as are assault and battery, theft and similar. Maybe one of the earliest lessons at high school needs to be the nature of what our legal system defines as a crime - and what counts as one.

The failure in this case wasn't just with the two girls who were expelled. It wasn't just with their parents. It was with the school as well, for allowing their students to commit criminal actions (either with malice aforethought, or because they were bored) without pointing out where the limits of the law lay.

Don't worry, Himself is still alive and kicking. I just went on a nice long walk down to the beach and along the Cottesloe beachfront (Himself came along too), and I've just finished prepping dinner (mutton vindaloo, now sitting in the oven at a very low heat for a couple of hours to cook). But yeah, the walk was something I needed, and I'm feeling a lot less twitchy now.

A bit jittery - but that's a pretty normal response to exercise for me, simply because I do it so rarely.