Finally starting to feel at home here. So I thought I’d give a brief update of how things are going here in Rushcutters Bay.
We’re pretty busy these days. Mostly on purpose. I have found that being busy actually gives me more time to write. I can’t put it off as easily. So I started volunteering three mornings a week.
One day on my way home down the hill form the train station, I stopped by what I thought was the local church soup kitchen. It turned out to be the Jesuit Refugee Services –they focus on research and political support of refugees but they are also begining to actually visit detainees and help them to gather information for their cases. So I spend quite a bit of time tracking down current reports on the state of human rights and overall conditions in the various countries. It’s truely a world-wide problem with millions of stateless people living in “temporary” camps on borders of countries.
We also try to track down books in the different languages and scripts so that the refugees here in Sydney have something to read while they wait. They are basically waiting in jail for several years at a time –only without the facilities of prisons such as libraries, internet access, or even the knowledge of how long they might be there. They are not allowed to recieve faxes that are written in a foreign language for some reason and there have been several cases where a man has thought the rest of his family dead, only to find out months and months later that the facility has known all along that his wife and childeren are alive and being kept in another facility.
The nice thing about the office though, is that they take time for a tea break most mornings. We all stop what we’re doing and sit around the table and chat for 10 minutes or so. It is a great way to remember that it’s not all about work and it gives me, at least, a real feeling of being a part of something.
Charles’ and Richard’s company, digital Wranglers has really taken off. They now have an ongoing contract with Nickelodean and just won a big project with Nutrimetics –Australia’s number one skin care company. They beat out three other companies in a competitive pitch. So needless to say, they are busy these days. Plus they are about to move into a new office–I’ll have to suggest the whole tea break thing to them. Did you know that they used to have ladies go around offices in the afternoons and serve tea to people at their desks? Some of bigger, more traditional companies apparently still do. They are called tea ladies.
Tea seems to be a pretty big thing here. My writing class breaks for tea mid-way through each time to stand around on the covered porch and chat. It’s held at the Writer’s Center in one of many buildings of an old mental hospital grounds that spralls over several miles along the edge of the river. Apparently they liked to build these hospitals along rivers so they could deliver the patients by boat without disturbing the neighbors. It’s gorgeous. And somehow fitting for writing.
The class is on life writing and it’s been facinating to hear the other women’s stories (yes, it’s all women). There’s a woman who is writing about loosing her ability to run or move and the experiences she’s had with hosipitals along the way –her writing is hilarious. And there’s a woman who is about 80 now and had to fight each step of the way to be educated as a girl. And another woman who escaped the Nazi’s as a 12 year old by posing as a Polish Catholic in Germany. But also, the others’ simple memories of childhood and high school in Australia has been really interesting. We’re talking about continuing in some way after the class finishes.
What else? Oh, yeah. The radio show.
Our friend Michael (who we met in acting class), had a great idea for a show and asked Charles and I if we wanted to help. It’s about the life in a small town called Elverton Highwater. We hope to have running audio on the web site soon (www.elvertonhighwater.com) so you can hear it for yourself. I’m not even going to try to explain the ‘humor.’
And then I’ve made one other friend (besides Charles’ friends) from my zen group. Her name is Louis and she’s a writer and a surfer. She also writes about surfing. We meet most Tuesdays to write and chat, but end up mostly chatting. She is very nice.
So that’s about it. The good news is that I now have a bridging visa that will allow me to work on November 8th. Weeeeeeeeeeee. I will start by doing some freelance for digital Wranglers and then see if I can’t do some copywriting…