I'm Old

Well it was my birthday yesterday. Am thoroughly unimpressed to have shifted demographic into the mid-twenties range. Eurgh.

Yesterday was actually a pretty interesting day. My boss was hosting a National meeting of her fellow Ministers and there were some international guests from the Pacific invited.

I was entrusted with the responsibilty of collecting the Tongan Attorney General and her aide from the airport. Because of crappy planning by the Federal Government, I had to do som fast-talking and fast-rearranging to accomodate the poor visitors who unbeknownst to them were supposed to be joining a formal dinner after around 12 hours on aeroplanes.

Anyways, long story short, this woman is the first woman to be appointed to the Tongan Cabinet, and I told her how I was a (pretend) lawyer, and she said to me "We need young women like you in Tonga. You should come and work for me if you get the chance". I was like, "Yes Minister! Very well Minister, whatever you say Minister."

That is not one word of a lie - I have a job waiting in Tonga, should I lose interest in the current one! Hilarious! I told the Chief of Staff and the boss that they have to be nice to me all the time now, otherwise I might pack up and hit the Pacific.

Meanwhile, I sat at the same lunch table as the guest from the Solomon Islands. There are no women in the SI Parliament, but she is the highest polling woman ever in their most recent elections. She was really interesting to talk to. I have to pinch myself sometimes and be thankful that at least I am able to pursue the opportunities available to me, cos in places like SI and Tonga, they are stuck back where Western women were 70 years ago.

Well that's that then. Am busy learning vocab vocab vocab for the GRE that I have to take in around a month. It's the exam you have to take to get into grad school in America. I also have to revise all the irritating maths stuff that fell out of my head years ago....

Vocab examples:

Apocryphal - of dubious authenticity, fictitious

Germane - applicable, pertinent, relevant

Stentorian - extremely loud and powerful

Jejune - vapid, uninteresting, childish, immature



Welcome to my hell. :)

Obsessions

I am obsessed with The Shins. Where have they been my whole life?!

Bol-bol-bollywood

Well, am finished work for the day - but not for the week, because tomorrow the Bollywood film that is in production in Adelaide right now, needs to use my office balcony for camera work!!! So we need to do shifts "minding the office" and I am on the 10.30 to 1.30 shift. If it wasn't for a Bollywood film I would have been totally annoyed about working on the weekend, but it is so i'm not. And since it will likely overlap with the footy, I will be watching that here too, cos I ain't missin a minute! ;-)

More tomorrow - including pictures hopefully!

Hear hear

John Howard is not known for his open-armed approach to "foreigners" (unless they have the initials GWB!), but today's comments about Muslims in Australia "needing to learn the language, and treat women as equals" are about the most unstrategic I can remember in recent times. Talk about dropping a bomb.

I think this article from Crikey sums it up very well.

4. Muslims aren't the only migrants in Australia who resist integration
Former Federal Liberal candidate Irfan Yusuf writes:

There's a tiny minority of migrants resisting integration. They don't accept Australian values, don't treat women as equals and won't learn English.

I know elderly Indian Sikhs who've lived here for decades but can't speak English. I know Lebanese Catholics who'd disown their daughters for marrying outside their ancestral village. They're a tiny minority. But they do exist.

So why does Mr Howard only mention that segment of this multi-faith church? Why focus on such people from the Islamic population? Let's apply his tests of integration.

This weekend, Muslim women from across Australia gather in Canberra for a Federally-funded national women's conference launched by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward.

Goward should brief Howard on how oppressed delegates are forced to work in demeaning fields like academia, legal practice, primary and secondary education, journalism, publishing, social work, film production and police.

Delegates will discuss unAustralian topics like film production, law enforcement, publishing and women in business. Conference proceedings will be in that foreign language called English.

Such women are the rule, not the exception, in Muslim communities across the Western world. Muslims in North America have just elected an all-American woman to lead their peak body.

Howard's term "Islamic community" is as meaningless as speaking about a "Christian community". What kind of Christians? Christadelphians? Low-church Anglicans? Roman Catholics?

Migrants have many layers of identity. Religion is only one of them. Usually the most important identity layer is the one where they feel most vulnerable. My parents arrived in Canberra in 1965. My mum's first friend here was a Hindi-speaking Jewish woman. Language was the primary source of my mother's identity. It was also the area where she felt most vulnerable.

What possible gains in national security or integration are achieved by singling out one group from the multi-faith broad church of insufficiently integrated Australians? Why identify this group according to one aspect of their identity? And why make ethno-religious heritage a vulnerable point?

Millions of our tax dollars are spent on national security. John Howard frequently says that Islamist terrorists fight us because of our way of life. But when he singles out Muslims for adverse comment, he's manufacturing a larger pool of marginalised Muslims. This only benefits extremists in the long run.