Blogging the days away. Day 1-3…

Friday/Saturday

Right, so – flight. Not much to say I guess.  It was 5 tonnes of carbon into t’atmosphere…  Flew in an A380 the first leg, read a bunch of stuff from the Palgrave Handbook of International Political Economy and energy.  Very very good stuff it was.  Also read a lit review on transitions and public policy theory, also v. good, and the comments of one of my supervisors on one of my empirical chapters.  And then, brain saturated and grimy (Singapore Airlines does better hot face towels, just saying), I started watching a Hollywood schlocker called ‘Life’. The pitch must have been ‘it’s Jurassic Park meets Alien’).  Forty minutes in, not caring who lived and who died, I started skipping forward.  Yeah, it ended how I thought it would. Ho and hum, and only useful as several kinds of cautionary tale…  Mercifully short layover (this was one of the factors that got me away from SIA, but I won’t be back). Managed to blag a double seat at the very back, which made the 12 hour leg bareable for my too long legs.  I think the air steward took a shine to me – he kept bringing me beer unsolicited.  I am of course, old enough to be his da….  Having (I thought) run out of post it notes so unable to read more Handbook, I watched

• The Maltese Falcon – total classic of course. So much nasty dialogue!!  It was the making of Bogart, after ten years of gangsters. Apparently George Raft (who he?) didn’t want to be directed by some new schmuck called… John Huston).
• Guardians of the Galaxy – yeah, quite fun!!! The raccoon was great….
• Gifted – child prodigy tug of love. Trying to do a female Good Will Hunting?  Not as bad as it could have been, actually. Strong acting, reasonable if entirely predictable script.
• Three episodes of  some American TV show called Blindspot – clearly the pitch was ‘female Jason Bourne meets NCIS’.  Bravura opening – naked woman in Times Square, covered in tattoos that are a ‘treasure map’. Oh, and she has complete, chemical induced, amnesia.   The leads are strong, but the ‘geeky girl scientist who feeds everyone clues’ is such a fricking cliché.  And it exists in a world like the latest (terrible) Bourne film, where there are no consequences, no media and no paperwork.  I mean, these guys are having running gun battles every day, and nobody has to fill in ANY paperwork about discharging their weapon etc etc…

Right, through immigration okay (though Skynet couldn’t recognise me with a beard).  Parentals collected me, bless, and I forced myself to stay awake in the (vain) hope of getting a decent zonky night of shuteye.

Sunday.

Walked (sans backpack) down to the South Parklands and back.  Then watched ‘Insiders’ – a politics show chaired by Barrie Cassidy (who wrote a book about the 2010 election called ‘The Party Thieves’, which has some useful gossip).  Last week they had a spoof video of Theresa May and the Holy Grail that basically broke the internet in the UK, and justly so.  Guests were the estimable Katherine Murphy (whom I cite in my GBR work), David Marr (elder statesman journo, also cited re his stuff on Rudd and Abbott) and Gerald Henderson, right-winger/libertarian./whatever of the Sydney Institute (IPA offshoot/renegade outfit).  Stuff on Christopher Pyne whose indiscretions about the non-lunar wing of the Liberal Party and gay marriage had distracted the commentariat from the clusterfuck that is Australian climate and energy policy.  Also an interview with Lee Rhiannon of the Greens, who is suspended (perhaps) as part of the Federal Greens effort to overturn NSW Greens relative independence on policy making.

Then did a bunch of archiving stuff – methodically going through things already collected and making sure I know what I’ve got, and referencing it.  Tedious, but if I HAD BLOODY WELL DONE THIS TWO YEARS AGO I WOULD BE A LOT BETTER OFF.

Pumped up bike tyres and cycled off to the local shopping centre.  Then went and bought The Saturday Paper and also the latest Quarterly Essay, which looks mouth-watering.  Couple of hours at the fantastic local library, doing research for thesis and some writing.  Borrowed the following

• Kelly, P. 2014. Triumph and Demise: The Broken Promise of a Labor Generation.  I read this thoroughly a year ago, and only intend to skim/dip in.
• Swan, G. 2014. The Good Fight. Ditto
• Crabb, A. 2016. Stop at Nothing: The Life and Adventures of Malcolm Turnbull. Black Inc. Crabb writes brilliantly, and this will be a pleasure…
• Patrick, A. 2013. Downfall: How the Labor party ripped itself apart. ABC Books; Skim for anecdotes etc
• Tiffen, R. 2017. Disposable Leaders: Media and Leadership Coups from Menzies to Abbott. Sydney:  Newsouth Books; Skim, may include nuggets.
• April and May 2017 issues of the Monthly
• Corris, P. 2016. That Empty Feeling; Cliff Hardy!! Possibly one of the last, sadly…

Feeling pretty jetlagged and groggy, but got some reading done.  Then dinner with parents and neighbours plus brother and niece.

Forced myself to stay awake until 2130 and was as predicted asleep as head-hit-pillow.  But also woke a couple of times…

Monday

Walked around local oval, including press-ups and up and downstairs  times five.  Will do this daily with backpack of … logs (long story).

More archiving (see above) and a bit of writing (I figured out how to start my empirical chapters/keep my supervisors happy while walking around t’park.

Cycled into town, to bookshop.  Bought latest Arena magazine and also for five bucks a copy of a book that no library seems to have but will be super useful for The Thesis

• Oakeshott, R. 2014. The independent Member for Lyne: A Memoir. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

There’s a great epigram

“In political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”

Then to an ‘Accelerating Entrepreneurship Adelaide’ event, complete with free lunch.  Will blog about it in due course. Have written something short  on spec for an outlet I love. Fingers crossed…

Then off to university library, HUGELY helpful librarian.  Managed to reserve a bunch of useful books, and track down electronic copies of super-useful theses and other stuff that I didn’t even know existed until yesterday.

• Anon, 1991. Australia’s malaise in mining development policy. Mining Magazine, 164,.4, p248.
• Ayers, C. 2006. Australian Intergovernmental Relations and the National Emissions Trading Scheme.  Melbourne Journal of Politics, 36-55.
• Cass, V. 1998. Australia’s Greenhouse Challenge: An Industry-Government Cooperative Approach to Compliance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. PhD Thesis, University of California, Irvine.
• Chambers, J. Miller, A. Morgan, R. Officer, B. Rayner, M. Sellars-Jones, G. and Quirk, T. 2013. A review of the scientific evidence underlying the imposition of a Carbon Tax or ETS in Australia.  Energy & Environment, Vol 26, 6, pp. 1013-1026.
• Dodds, L. 2011. The virtuous circle of Gillard’s climate tax. Eureka Street, Vol. 21, 13, pp.  21-2.
• Hodder, P. 2009. Lobby Groups and Front Groups: Industry Tactics in the Climate Change Debate. Melbourne Journal of Politics, pp.45-81.
• Mildenberger, M. 2015. Fiddling While the World Burns: The Double Representation of Carbon Polluters in Comparative Climate Policymaking. PhD thesis, Yale University.
• Sharova, N. 2015.  Australia’s Flirtation with Climate Policy: Role of Industry Groups, Environmental NGOs, Think Tanks, and Public Opinion, MA, Department of Global and Area Studies, University of Wyoming.
• van Rood, S. 2000. The Heat is on – climate change in the new millennium. Habitat, August, pp2. 28-29.

Cycled home (bless my fluoro), did some thesis work (seriously, that is my life now)…
Watched a bit of some ABC news, now waiting for Q and A and Wimbledon…  (Goooo Roger….  (not playing until tmrw, I think)).