Last night was the National IQ Test. Right Foot and I were both off to a flying start, getting the first fourteen questions right but it was downhill from then on. Arithmetic and rotating shapes in mid-air (why would I ever want to do that?) are not what we're good at. We both did well on the memory tasks which was reassuring. Why is it that when I see a column of figures my eyes glaze over and my brain goes into reverse? I have a Masters degree in Business after all. But the compulsory accounting subject in that course took years off my life. I had to get a tutor, an Indian girl half my age to get me through it. She always talked about rupees in her examples as I tried painfully to understand. Maybe if Eddie had talked rupees I would have done better, but I doubt it.

Yesterday was the funeral of the second of my colleagues to die of cancer in the last couple of months. Younger than me, this one. It is very scary and very sad.

Friday was my birthday. After the usual cakefest at work Right Foot and I went to a knees-up for TAFE librarians where I found myself at a table with my current boss and three of my former bosses. Sounds like an uncomfortable situation but we had fun. The venue was a student hospitality restaurant and the service was the usual off-the-wall stuff that you get in those places. On Saturday I had my real party with Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur who gave me a most bodacious blouse which I love. There's nothing like a well-chosen gift to make you feel cared for. Right Foot gave me a camera to replace my recently deceased Minolta which had consistently produced surprisingly good photos considering the approach and attitude of the photographer. It was a very different birthday than last year's which I celebrated at Denis', a tourist trap restaurant in Sarawak with only Right Foot to celebrate with me.

On Sunday, RF, Petite and I went to see 'In the cut', very gripping, very gritty New York edgy crime thriller. Best performances I had ever seen from any of the cast.

Z has sent me some photos of her recent trip to Melbourne including those taken at the NTEU rally. There she is, carry a placard and marching down Collins Street. A pinko Malaysian librarian. I wonder if she has shown the photo to anyone in Kuching.

Following on from the news that Petite and Grumpy both made it into the top twenty in the HQ short story competition, we now hear that Grumpy has made it to the final ten. They both write so well. I remember them reading their stories to me as children while I was rushing around doing housework and how they would stop me in my tracks with with an image, an apt phrase or a subtle twist in a well-constructed plot. Clever cloggs both.

Maternal Boast
The magazine HQ has been running a short story competition and yesterday Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur received news that they had both been shortlisted. Because of the identical surname and address the judges thought Petite had submitted two entries but she assured them that Grump is her sister so they said, "Well, she has finished in the final 20 stories too!" Grumpy's story is about how a map triggers the end of a relationship and Petite's story is about a Stop & Go Man who swallows a bird. Excellent reading both, I have copies should anyone be interested.

We are all still grappling with our amazing new phone system but this morning I mastered 'Call forwarding' which has made a big difference.

The Melbourne Cup
Yesterday Right Foot and I went to our first ever Melbourne Cup with three other Swinnie librarians, their Handbags and 123,000 others. I wore a skirt and jacket from Jigsaw (at Brandsmart), a silky tee from Ralph Lauren (also at Brandsmart), a rose in my hair (from Myer, city store) and completed my ensemble with a $2 pure silk scarf from Arthur Dailey in Swanston Street.
Right Foot wore his Country Road suit and looked very spiffing. However, he hated the whole thing. It was very crowded and got very hot. The only cool place was the lavoratories and there were groups of young women sitting on the loo floor, sipping Champagne and resting their feet. I got my best photos in there.
Right Foot's aversion to public toilets made him decide not to drink anything at all, not even water. He sat on the Esky with his back to the action reading a book called 'The history of Heidelberg and its people: 1838-1900'. I tried to get him interested in Paris Hilton, New York Party Princess, but he said he'd rather have a Party Pie. He went home an hour before the big race on a train packed with other poopers.
I soldiered on to see the housekeeping money come in at 4th, 5th and 6th places. Great. Of the three horses I had in the Swinnie sweep, one was scratched, one came in second and the other is still running. Six horses altogether and I won $7 and lost untold millions. Some tedious nag no-one had ever heard of won.
Within five minutes of the end of the race, all the Swinnie librarians and their Handbags were on the train back to Queen's Road where we watched the last two races on TV and polished off the rest of the food in coolth and comfort.
I am really glad I've been to the Melbourne Cup at last. I have it out of my system now. Actually, it's a bit boring.

Z is safely back home now and seems very pleased with her trip. She has gained a lot in understanding and had a few victories. She is also very happy with the 'stuffs' she bought, particularly the two sheepskin rugs for the floor of her new apartment. These should be an object of great interest in Malaysia.

Yesterday I mentioned to Right Foot that our little fingers were so small that they didn't serve much purpose at all and we could easily get by without them. This sparked a conversation about the things we couldn't do without a little finger. Three are:
that telephone gesture people do by folding down their middle three fingers and putting thumb and pinky to their mouth and ear;
the finger cocking that's required when drinking tea in polite society;
and punks who have HATE tattoed on their knuckles would have to settle for HAT or ATE.

The delightful Z is winging her way home today after two weeks in Melbourne. She made some interesting comments about the differences between here and Kuching. She thought our morale was much higher and the work ethic stronger. Staff here have initiative and don't require supervision. We also manage to have a lot of fun along the way.
The most unusual experience she had was participating in the NTEU industrial action last Thursday. She marched through the streets to the rally with the rest of the staff. Such opportunities are rare in Dr Mahathir's Malaysia. On the same day he made his infamous remarks about the Jews.

I'm not really into nostalgia but yesterday morning we got up at 8.30 to watch 'Basil Brush', a revival from the seventies we used to love about a fox and his humans. It is full of corny often predictable jokes. I remembered watching Basil in hospital in 1979, still in pain a week after a kidney operation and the agony of laughing as Basil visited Germany and was constantly greeted as Herr Brush. I still have the scar from that surgery and I'm certain it became wider during that episode of Basil Brush.

This time last year I had been in Malaysia for ten days and the Bali bombings had just occurred. I remember hating being away from home and people who felt the same sense of grief. There have been lots of commemorations over the weekend but I did not see much because, ironically, I was entertaining my Moslem colleague, the delightful Z while she is in Melbourne from Kuching.
Actually we had a wonderful day. It was very pleasant showing off the city and seeing things through her eyes: Victoria Market where she bought two large sheepskins for her new appartment, Southbank for lunch and a Charmaine's ice-cream, Chloe at Young & Jackson's, Federation Square, the Circle Tram up to the State Library, Bourke Street Mall, the arcades and laneways, the parks and finally, the casino where Z won a dollar on the fruit machine.
She is staying in the VIP suite on campus - magnificent! I wish that sadist who built our accommodation in Glasgow could see how we treat our guests.

It is now a year since we first went to Sarawak and coincidentially the permanent Information Resources Manager is currently visiting our Melbourne campuses. I have been catching up on all the news and things seem to be going swimmingly which is very gratifying. I would love to go back and see the results of my three months hard graft.
The delightful Z is clearly doing a great job.
She remarked on the different shade of our green and it certainly is much lighter and brighter than the jungle green of Kuching. I took her to Safeway where she bought crumpets, she seemed quite fascinated with those.

The planet Mars is relatively close to us right now so Right Foot and I went along with the masses to the sixth floor of the car park at Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre last Wednesday to view it through a telescope but we were late and it was cloudy and cold so we gave it up.
The next night, earlier and more warmly dressed we drove out to a park near La Trobe University with another group of hopefuls. Mars looked very pretty when looked at with the naked eye, in its brief periods of visibility. It was another cloudy night and another long wait but eventually we got our 30 seconds each at the telescope. And what did we see? I couldn't quite make out all the features I'd heard about but the polar caps were visible. I could see it was a planet not a star. It looked like a small disc, a communion wafer, pale and translucent.
And we made lots of new friends in the queue just like lining up for finals tickets

Today I have submitted a copy of our Elit conference paper, edited (i.e. slashed by 3000 words) for publication, we hope, in the International Journal of E-literacy. I hope they will accept it and won't want further ammendments because I am OVER IT bigtime. Time to move on.

Second week back at work after our adventures in Scotland and England so I have finally stopped saying, "This time last week we were on the London Eye or walking along Hadrian's Wall, etc." It was all so wunnerful that I have tried to hold on to it as long as possible.
Our paper went very well - there were lots of questions, lots of interest and a full house. All the Aussie presentations were very well attended. We rule at that stuff!

On Friday night I went to the Mary Owen Dinner. It was my second but there were women there who had been to all eighteen. The Moorabbin Town Hall was packed with women in the feminist colours of purple, green and white. Most were in their forties and fifties but quite a number were much older and there was a sprinkling of youngies too. I was introduced to Mary Owen Herself. Imagine - you have a retirement dinner and have to hold it in the Hawthorn Town Hall because there is no restaurant big enough. And then you hold it again every year in town halls around Melbourne and the dozens of people are turned away.

It was a fabulous night.

Well, I am sufficiently recovered from my dicky knee to accept Petite Soeur's invitation to walk in the Mother's Day Classic again this year. After all the treatments I endured:
acupuncture
boring exercises
painful physiotherapy
drugs
shark cartilege tablets
rest
fish at every meal
etc.
it is impossible to know which one did the trick so I am perservering with all of them except, for the time being, the physio which is expensive as well as painful.
I checked my collection of remedies and found only one is from the dodgy pharmaceutical lab - Heaven knows what's in it - it's like buying a chiko roll at the football.

Second day back at work after our six-day holiday in the Daintree courtesy of travel agent's muddle. It was wonderful to see North Queensland and snorkelling on the Barrier Reef was unforgettable, exhilarating and hugely satisfying. Great grub up there too, especially the barramundi.

Now it's back to lots of hard work including writing the conference paper. We're desperately hoping that SARS will not prevent us going to Glasgow. That would be too disappointing to bear.

I don't think I ever recorded the story of my birthday bracelet so belatedly I will. When I was in Kuching, Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur sent me a bracelet for my birthday but it never arrived. They were both extremely upset and so was I. I told them I would prefer not to even know what the gift was so they didn't tell me and bought me another very similiar one for Christmas. Very nice, very me.
A month or so earlier I had received a card from Pos Malaysia telling me a parcel was waiting to be claimed. Thrilled and relieved I sped to the PO only to find not the bracelet but three tubes of Vegemite which a dear friend had sent to alleviate our homesickness. It was wonderful to have it but, at the time, something of a disappointment.
When we arrived at Melbourne Airport nearly two months after my birthday, Customs took some of our stuff for fumigation. The same thig happened to Petite when she arrived couple of days later. Another two months went by and Petite received a card to say her fumigated goods were now available for picking up at Balaclava PO. When Right Foot went to get the parcel for her there were TWO. One was the fumigated cane balls as expected but the other was the bracelet! It had taken four months for it to go to Malaysia and back and the parcel had obviously been opened but the bracelet lay unharmed in its wrapping. I can wear the two together, they look very well.

My wounded knee feels a little better. Maybe it's the powdered shark, maybe it's the acupuncture.

The physiotherapist tried acupuncture on me this morning but it doesn't seemed to have helped much. He has also suggested I buy some powdered shark whch is supposed to build up cartilege. I will get some tomorrow: I am very sick of not being able to walk.
Yesterday I limped around the Ned Kelly exhibition at the State Library feeling more sorry for myself than poor Ned, martyr that he was.

We are trying to cobble up funds so that Susan and I can both go to Scotland to present our paper. A is sending begging letters on our behalf to all the cashed up departments who could conceivably cough for us. Here's hoping.

Lefty
Susan and I submitted an abstract for a paper to be presented at a conference in Glasgow and we found out this morning that we have been accepted. Great excitement for half an hour and then the harsh realities of who would pay for us surfaced, as we knew it would. I am determined to go somehow. We have both given papers before but not overseas and I am NOT going to miss this chance - not sure when I will get time to write it though.

I'm soldiering on with the orthotics in my shoes - they seem to be helping to make me walk straight and I am sooo sick of limping and languishing.

Lefty
We went to see 'Ned Kelly' which isn't bad but Righty was irritated by the unintended anachronisms. The major problem was with the carriages of course, as Righty is the world expert on Australian horse-drawn vehicles. If you have seen the film you might remember the scene where Naomi Watt's horrible husband stumbles as he clambers into the carriage. Well no wonder he stumbled! The klutz was getting in the wrong side and not only that, everybody was sitting in the wrong seat. The children were facing the horses. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. They should have had their backs to the horses and Naomi should have been in the 'seat of honour', facing the horses and on the right hand side. Klutzy should have got in from the left and sat on the left. But it gets worse. In another scene we see a carriage stored inside a stable with the horses. According to Righty, the ammonia in the horses' dooings would have had a major deleterious effect on the carriage's varnish and no-one would have subjected their carriage to such treatment. So there.

Lefty
Last Friday Susan and I went to a cocktail party hosted by the PVC to bring together all the Kuching veterans, wannabes, soon-to-bes and backroom boys. A very blokey occasion, there were about four women and 60 or so men, mostly engineers. Hmmm. Good grub though and a passable white wine.

This morning I paid (boy, did I pay!) my second visit to the physiotherapist who repeated the pummelling he gave me last week. I hope it is helping - my knee stills feels very dodgy. He told me there was a lot of tension in my body (what else is new?) and that I should walk like a West Indian, loose, limber and relaxed. So we practised together, large Sri Lankan physio and small, fair-skinned woman in surgical gown walking like West Indians around the tiny office with its panoramic views over St Kilda Road. Suddenly a window cleaner appeared in one of those contraptions they sit in, swinging gently in the breeze and staring unswervingly at his sqweedgie.

The Left Foot
Back at work at Lilydale today still smarting about the loss of our holiday in China but greatly relieved to hear that SR has gone to Kuching to take care of User Ed and the cataloguing backlog. I spoke to her on the phone and it was really weird to visualise her sitting at 'my' desk while I was alone in our usually shared office. My Kuching adventure is over but I was thinking of them all today and suppose I will for quite some time. I hope the first hand experience I had will have long-term benefits for the library there and for me as well.

This will be the last blog from the Frontier Librarians as we return to the normal pattern of our lives, beginning with the celebration of our 33rd wedding anniversary on Thursday 16th. We will take the blog down in early February. Thank-you for all the positive feedback we received: the number of readers made us aware of our wider audience and changed the nature of our entries from the family orientation we had anticipated. Our daughter, Meredith, aka Grumpy Girl set up the page for us so we could easily keep in touch with her and our other daughter, Hilary, aka Petite Soeur.

When Hil was studying German in secondary school she learnt that the word for mother was 'mutter' and began calling me that, soon abbreviating it to Moot. By extension, that made her father 'Foot' and the plural obviously 'Feet'. I am left-handed and left-footed so it was not hard to tell who was who. None of you guys ever needed to know this piece of family lore but as some have been curious, it was time to explain.

I will miss the blogging experience but there is nothing more to say except maybe Salamat Datang or should that be Auf Weidersien (or something).