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terryfrost at 07:28am on 20/08/2005
terryfrost at 07:28am on 20/08/2005I'm up early on Saturday morning, drinking sulawesi kalossi again and reading blogs.
I crashed early last night because I'd been up until 1.30 am on Friday morning. Sal and I went to an unscheduled Nova Mob gathering. Karen Joy Fowler was in town for the writer's festival, so a quorum was gathered at the Carlton Public Library.
The pre-talk meal was at the Kent Hotel across the road, a pub that seemed to be the habitat of marketing executives, mortgage brokers and retirement aged bolsheviks wearing Greek sailor's caps. My caesar salad was okay without being great. (There's a rule in Melbourne restaurants that only one in every ten eating places is allowed to spell 'caesar' correctly.) Sal and I arrived to find Rose Mitchell there. Rose has roped Sal into doing various bits of admin work for the 2007 Natcon so they talked about how Sally was Rose's bitch for the next two years. Julian Warner, Lucy Sussex and Karen Joy Fowler turned up presently, followed by Alan Stewart. We ate, talked and drank, then scurried across the road for the talk. The room was packed with the usual suspects including mondyboy and brucegillespie.
Karen's a very interesting person. She talked about her career, her books, the President that fate and a dumbed-down electorate had inflicted upon her (she has a couple of degrees in political science) and lots of other stuff.
An interesting aspect of the talk, apart from all the other interesting aspects, was the discomfort that several people felt when the subject steered in the direction of politics. In Australian (or maybe it's just Melburnian) society there's an almost neurotic phobia about talking politics or religion. (Better not, you may offend someone, or worse, challenge their belief system!) Some parts of fandom are outside their comfort zone when the discussion strays from SF. Of course, to a congenital shit-stirrer like me, this digression was interesting. I love the conversation ranging widely, except when it ventures into sport, a topic which has the same effect on me as a Mickey Finn.
Anyway, once the talk was over Sal, La Mitchell and I zip-panned back to the Kent where we stayed chatting until the staff started stacking chairs on tables. By the time we stopped for extremely overpriced petrol and drove back to Hoppers Crossing, it was way past bedtime, hence the crash last night.
Gonna tape a couple of episodes of Bibleman ( http://www.bibleman.com/bibleman/home.jsp )for Sal this morning off the Australian Christian Channel. Good for a giggle.
I crashed early last night because I'd been up until 1.30 am on Friday morning. Sal and I went to an unscheduled Nova Mob gathering. Karen Joy Fowler was in town for the writer's festival, so a quorum was gathered at the Carlton Public Library.
The pre-talk meal was at the Kent Hotel across the road, a pub that seemed to be the habitat of marketing executives, mortgage brokers and retirement aged bolsheviks wearing Greek sailor's caps. My caesar salad was okay without being great. (There's a rule in Melbourne restaurants that only one in every ten eating places is allowed to spell 'caesar' correctly.) Sal and I arrived to find Rose Mitchell there. Rose has roped Sal into doing various bits of admin work for the 2007 Natcon so they talked about how Sally was Rose's bitch for the next two years. Julian Warner, Lucy Sussex and Karen Joy Fowler turned up presently, followed by Alan Stewart. We ate, talked and drank, then scurried across the road for the talk. The room was packed with the usual suspects including mondyboy and brucegillespie.
Karen's a very interesting person. She talked about her career, her books, the President that fate and a dumbed-down electorate had inflicted upon her (she has a couple of degrees in political science) and lots of other stuff.
An interesting aspect of the talk, apart from all the other interesting aspects, was the discomfort that several people felt when the subject steered in the direction of politics. In Australian (or maybe it's just Melburnian) society there's an almost neurotic phobia about talking politics or religion. (Better not, you may offend someone, or worse, challenge their belief system!) Some parts of fandom are outside their comfort zone when the discussion strays from SF. Of course, to a congenital shit-stirrer like me, this digression was interesting. I love the conversation ranging widely, except when it ventures into sport, a topic which has the same effect on me as a Mickey Finn.
Anyway, once the talk was over Sal, La Mitchell and I zip-panned back to the Kent where we stayed chatting until the staff started stacking chairs on tables. By the time we stopped for extremely overpriced petrol and drove back to Hoppers Crossing, it was way past bedtime, hence the crash last night.
Gonna tape a couple of episodes of Bibleman ( http://www.bibleman.com/bibleman/home.jsp )for Sal this morning off the Australian Christian Channel. Good for a giggle.
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