Explorations

Yee Hah...

The last week was spent savouring the delights of the New England region in the company of my octogenarian grandmother. My paternal line is firmly rooted in Tamworth, located about 8 hours train ride north of my current home, and best known for the Australian Country Music Festival that takes place there each January. However, although I do consider the Golden Guitar to be one of the few “big” landmarks in Australia that has a right to exist, for me visits to Tamworth will always be about family. I disembarked at the same station where my father used to watch trains as a boy, drove past my grandmother’s old high school, attended the church where she married my grandfather, and saw where my grandfather lived in when he was one of the first students of the University of New England. It turns out that even his grandparents were residents of Australia’s “country music capital”. Having such long-term connections with the place, I did feel justified in buying a cheesy country-music-festival cap.

Outside of the festival season, however, the area is far from lively and exciting, so I spent a lot of time reading & watching films. Apart from introducing my grandmother to the delights of my favourite trashy nineties movies (I will be forever grateful to the post-modernist movement for enabling me to argue convincingly that such films are a valid and interesting form of cultural expression), I also continued to pursue my interest in films from other cultures. Together my grandmother and I watched
- Khabi Kushi Khabi Gham, a frighteningly cheesy Bollywood love story, that still gives some interesting insights into Indian self-perceptions and values despite its complete lack of realism
- Kandahar, an Iranian film about Afghani women that’s worth watching for the excellent cinematography, albeit rather depressing. It feels that much more legitimate when I consider that it is a non-Western film made prior to 9/11
- Whale Rider, having studied South Pacific literature I was particularly eager to see this film, which is based on a novel by a famous and pioneering Maori writer. It really is well acted and beautiful. Colour is used very well and the exploration of Maori culture and life is far from naïve or essentialist
- Keeping Mum- Well, not exactly foreign. It was thoroughly British, but judging by my mother the implacable determination to solve every problem by the consumption of tea appears to be a colonial cultural trait as well.

Now, of course, I am running around that unpleasant place in between holidays and return to normalcy. This is the section of the space-time continuum reserved for the storage and processing of all the things which you were too busy to do during the year, and put off for the holidays, during which you procrastinated and found much more enjoyable ways to employ your time. (L)uni returns on Monday, but by a lucky twist of fate I won’t be returning till Tuesday. For those of you who don’t know, I’ll be studying for a Graduate Diploma of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at the University of Wollongong. Since most post-graduate students are good hard-working citizens with jobs, all my classes this semester are on during the late afternoon/evening. This means that there won’t be much incentive to exchange my common-nocturnal-species-otherwise-known-as-university-student-on-holidays body clock for that of an ordinary human being any time soon.The real test of my resolution to keep my blog up-to-date will come with the return of everyday stress and clutter to my life...but I’ll do my best.

posted by Foodfairy @ 2:54 AM