Oh, and...

...I'm not entirely sure, but I think my new and mostly-improved phone does not handle international calls/texts well. If you have tried to contact me and I haven't replied, I'm sorry; I simply haven't received whatever it was. So, again and some more, the best way to reach me is by e-mail.

[Sigh.]

Enter the Confessional 2: Angry Girl Music of Any Persuasion

Using music to hurt people. It's easy, it's a weapon. Mandy did it: when she didn't think the crowd was worth much, she'd telegraph that by playing her most commercial tracks (and bear in mind that in this context, 'commercial' would be more correctly spelled with a silent '-unt' after the first letter). I remember one night at Slide she played that fucking Sneaky Sound System song three times in one set, just to make the point... well, and because Micky particularly hated it. I remember Micky shaking her head and grinning just a little bit more each time. I remember laughing.

I once saw Armand van Helden do it too, in Boston, too many years ago to count. I was standing behind the DJ booth, watching while he played, and his disdain for the crowd was palpable. I don't know what we'd done to offend him, but whatever it was, he took it out on us for the full two hours, striking the final blow with Stardust's 'Music Sounds Better'. He knew this track would go over big, and fuck, did he resent us for it. It was all over his face and all over his hands as they moved across the decks, even going so far as to cut it for a few bars in that bit where the music drops out and it's just the chorus, to catch every single person in the capacity crowd belting out the lyrics. Except that it backfired: the moment was so perfect - strangers in harmony, lasers going mental, manic thronging bliss - that instead of showing us what commercial losers we all were, he showed himself up as a complete twat.

(Interestingly, I saw Paul Oakenfold at the same club two weeks later, and although he was by every measure a bigger deal than Armand van Helden - more skilled, more established, heaps more respected - he sang and danced along with his tracks like a teenager and generally looked to be having the time of his life, and the night was infinitely better for it. There's a lesson to be learned there.)

I do it too, but the battles I fight are mostly in my own head. 'Paper Planes' by M.I.A., that's a big one. I can't hear it without recalling the days/weeks/months when the lyrics of anger and explosions pushed a very particular button for me. 'Bulletproof' by La Roux, that's another one that carries a few connotations, some from the same time as 'Paper Planes', some from earlier. And 'Leaving Home' by Jebediah. Every angry teenager's wet dream of a rebellion song, to the point that I've integrated it into my own memories from years before I heard it. Ev, Amy and Kat used it as the themesong to a roadtrip they took years before I met them, a roadtrip to which I came no closer than seeing a single photo of the three of them at a waterfall, and yet in my head I'm there, in the back seat of Aims's little car, cheering along with a chorus I wouldn't learn for several years to come.

I guess it's not new, then, the way time gets lost in my head. The second half of 2008 doesn't exist for me. Much of early 2009 is a blur too, but late 2008, I honestly could not swear to anything that happened. It's gone, vanished. And I realised last week that the same thing has happened over the last six months: September 8th marked six months since I left Sydney, and I have no idea how that happened. I cannot account for the time, or the things I've done, or most of the people I've met. All I know is that I must be nearing the statute of limitations on the phrase 'just moved back from Australia', yet to me it feels as fresh as a torn fingernail. I still say 'heaps' and flatten my short 'a' sounds; I still write 's' instead of 'z' and say zed instead of zee; I've recently offered a chef I've never met in person very, very dirty sex in exchange for recreating the laksa I miss to the core of my being.

I don't know how to stop being the person I've been for the last 11 years. It's more than I can get my head around.

White Sambuca

Thank you for all the late late nights that turned into early early mornings and everything else too. It was a long time ago that I knew you - a couple of years have passed; it feels like more - but that doesn't mean I won't miss you. It means I miss you differently, and this way is so much worse I can't bear to think about it. I'm sad and angry and hurting for you and everyone you left behind.

You were so loved.

Nursing students smell like a combination of cheap berry body spray and cigarettes. Good morning, migraine.

If I have to wake up at 5:30 a.m....

...it's nice to be able to wake up to some good news.

Mo' money, mo' problems

So first of all, thank you to everyone who was prompted to write to me by my rather desperate appeal a couple of posts back. It's been so good to hear from you all, and I promise I'll reply properly soon. Work has gone a bit mad because the semester starts tomorrow, so I've been low on time and haven't had the chance to get back to everyone the way I'd like to, but I will.

In other news, it *looks* (fingers crossed) like I'll be getting my super back. For those who don't know (i.e., the non-Australians), your superannuation is your mandatory Australian retirement fund. If you're a foreigner who has been working legally and leaves Australia permanently, you are allowed to reclaim this money... but it's not quite as straightforward as that sounds. I want to put this down because I know a lot of you know people from overseas who are living and working in Australia, and for many of them their super will be a significant amount of money by the time they leave. So:

1. If you don't reclaim your super within six months of your permanent departure, it will be given to the Tax Office and you will have no chance of getting it back, ever. I cannot stress this enough: if you fall outside that six months, you've lost it, full stop.
   
2. Furthermore, this means that you must have COMPLETED the application process within six months. Nowhere I've seen makes that clear, nor do they lay out that it can take up to four months for all of the paperwork to be completed by all of the relevant agencies (the ATO, the Department of Immigration, and your super fund). Again, it doesn't matter where you are in the process when the six months ticks over, or whose fault the delay is: once that timeframe is up, it's up, and you've lost your money. I nearly lost out on mine because of this, and ended up on the phone pleading with a lovely woman in Hobart named Sue to queue-jump some of my paperwork. (Sue, if you're out there: you're my girl.) I got lucky in that she was sympathetic, but you can't expect that.
   
3. You can't apply for a super refund until after you've left Australia permanently. Don't even try, because there aren't even any initial steps you can take. You have to be gone for good first.
4. I take that back, there is one thing you can and should do before you leave: If you have multiple super accounts (e.g., if you've had different jobs and some/all made you use their preferred super fund rather than allowing you to nominate your own), roll them all over into one. You have to lodge separate applications for each account, and there's no good reason for maintaining multiple ones anyway.
   
5. Start on the process as absolutely soon as you are able after your departure. (See point 2.) Both the ATO and the Immigration websites have the information you need (I won't give links because those websites get tinkered with a lot); you can also contact your super fund or check their website for help, but understand that your super fund can't do anything until you've sorted the paperwork from Immigration and the ATO.
   
6. The process will be streamlined if you have an Australian bank account they can pay into. They will do international transfers or bank cheques, but there are fees associated and they make it very clear that if anything goes missing, they don't give a rat's. Personally, I reckon that even if you don't have any other reason to keep an account open in Aus, this alone is worth the few months of extra fees.
   
7. Be aware that the government takes a cut of 35-45%. This is only to be expected and shouldn't put you off too much; apart from that, there's only one $55 fee associated with the paperwork, and whatever's left is better in your pocket than the government's. They'll only spend it on Tony Abbott's skin polish anyway. (Seriously, why is that guy so fucking shiny all the time? It's not natural.)
8. See point 2. Again. Really. I almost lost a LOT of money - the money that's going to clear my very substantial moving-related credit card debts and allow me to start looking to move out of my parents' house, thank Christ - simply because I didn't understand a) how long the process would take, and b) that they would be such hardasses about the process being completed within that timeframe. Mind you, I didn't understand it because it's not made clear anywhere (hell, the basic idea of reclaiming your super isn't really advertised, let alone the details; and let's not even start on how much harder this all would be if you weren't a native English speaker), and if I were the cynical type I'd say that it's awfully convenient that the government would impose these rules that make it more likely that the super will not be claimed within the required timeframe when they themselves will be the beneficiaries of any unclaimed super... but that's just me being suspicious, I'm sure.
   

I hope this ends up being useful to someone. I don't want to sound like too much of a humbug because as I said, it does look like I'll be okay; but the simple fact is that the process is obviously designed to make it less likely for departing workers to be able to access this money that they worked for and that came out of their paycheques, and that's pretty shit. Feel free to hit me with questions, if any arise.

XOXO

Enter the Confessional 1: Peccadillos

I am endlessly susceptible to café staff.

I've tried to give them up, I really have. I've tried stopping in too often in an attempt to inure myself to their charms. I've tried avoiding cafés altogether, thinking that cold turkey might be the only cure. I've even tried dating a couple, and while there's nothing more likely to take the shine off one's perception of any group than an extended close relationship with one of its representatives, I remain undauntedly smitten. (See also: musicians, sporty types, and barely-legals wearing 'Dyke in Shining Armor' t-shirts.)

I try to tell myself that I will not be ruled by my obsessions. Like any addict, I make excuses, bargains with myself: I'm just passing; it's harmless; one more pot of tea won't hurt. After all, I can give it up whenever I like. But like any addict, I know the truth. I can't say no, I can't turn away. It's a sickness. My name is Elena, and I'm a baristaholic.

It's hard to quantify the attraction. I'm not a coffee drinker, so it's not the Stockholm Syndrome relationship of a caffeine dependent and her supplier. And while I have a notoriously well-defined type (looks like a 15-year-old boy, fucks like a trucker), my usual requirements can go right out the window in a good café. Which is not to say that my eyes won't be automatically drawn to the one who most fits the profile; I just seem more willing to expand that profile in a café than anywhere else. In fact, the effect is so powerful that it can extend even to other patrons: my most atypical target of recent years was someone I wouldn't have looked at twice in the street - her hair was longer than mine, you see - but we happened to be sitting opposite each other at brunch and over the course of the meal I found myself admiring her striking eyes and shoulders for miles. But what had first made me sit up and take notice was the way in which she placed her order: she barely glanced at the menu before firmly stating her requirements (eggs Benedict and a latte, if you're wondering). No havering, no hesitation. As someone who routinely hems and haws for hours, narrowing the list to two choices before inevitably ordering something entirely else, this seemed to me the picture of self-possession. It's not too much to say that I swooned a bit in my chair.

I think that's a large part of what attracts me to café staff in general and baristas in particular: they - the good ones, anyway - convey a sense of dominance over chaos that most of us could only dream of. Watch her at the coffee machine: her hands fly; she tamps like she's punishing the grounds for some imagined transgression; she harnesses scorching hot steam without batting an eye. She's covered in that dark brown dust that gets everywhere and manages to make it look as sexy as engine grease. She is calm. She is unconcerned. She is Together.

And I bite my lip and get flustered and forget how to talk. I botch the order I've been making for years (you'd be amazed how many ways there are to fuck up 'large peppermint tea, please'). I fumble for money and blatantly overtip because basic math is way too hard for me in that moment. If I'm lucky I'll get a cocky, indulgent smile in return, but most of the time I'm far too busy praying for the ground to swallow me whole to be able to properly register it, let alone return it. All I want is to get out of there without spilling something on myself or babbling incoherently. Their singlets, their tattoos, their arms that are always stronger than they look... in the face of these I am as helpless as a kitten. Take pity on me, café dykes of the world. I'm only an addict after all.