Recrudescence

I am back in my hometown of Perth, Western Australia. It's a January that is sometimes quite muggy, sometimes rather warm and occasionally rather wet. I am eating irregularly and although I have been back for ten days and am living about three minutes walk from the beach I have not yet, in fact, visited the beach. What I am doing, mostly, is working at the UWA out-of-school-care centre, where I am now entering my ninth year of employment. Today was skate boarding day and we were blessed to get through using only six ice compression packs. I am also working, again, at the wonderful little bookstore in Oxford Street, rendering me economically stable, warmly happy, and well stocked with reading matter.

I recently played three on three basketball in the park against three Aboriginal guys from near Karatha. I was not wearing any shoes, and developed black blisters on my big toes which made it hard to walk for a little bit. I recently found out that the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh are run by a Japanese company who increased entry fees by 500%, started charging Cambodians to pay respects to their own massacred family members and who pay a rather tiny annual amount of money to the Cambodian government in return. I recently danced, enthusiastically, at the Amplifier bar, which is often called "the Muff" by a certain constellation of people, but which Stephen delightfully renamed "the Mump". I recently discovered I would be going to the city of Medellin in Colombia in July to direct another Seminar Camp, an offer which originally caused me internal conflict but which I am now already getting excited about. I will hereby be aiming to touch up my Spanish for the occasion. I also recently decided I want to go hunting one day. In fact here is a little list of impromtu abstract goals for two thousand and six.

1. Don't return from Colombia broke and/or in debt.
2. Spanish.
3. Arabic.
4. Defeat ingrained Mageirocophobia (fear of cooking).
5. Dance frequently.
6. Write even more frequently.
7. Continue maintaining blog.
8. Go hunting.
9. Witness the complete withdrawal of all Israeli troops and settlements from the West Bank and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
10. Finish reading The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Rising Up and Rising Down by William T. Vollmann and History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, the three bookmarked and unfinished copies of which combine to take up almost a full shelf of my shelving unit.
11. Warmth.

I am communicatable most of the time (when I am not in the shower, in the cinema, or engaged in some sort of child-care related activity which may put my phone at risk, eg: watersliding, skating, brawling, etc) on the following digit sequence: +61 415 491 084. If you're in Australia, of course, you can simply remove the +61 and stick a 0 on the front, and it'll work just the same.

I am actually working in the bookstore right now, and this is a quote I just heard:
"You can ask K____ all about it, she's a Muslim, yeah, well, she's from Bali so she's really a Hindu, but she married a Muslim so now she's a Muslim too. So she'll know. She can tell you all about... Muslimism? Is that a word? Muslimism?"
Oh, welcome back to Australia, Chris.