the SMH backs me up...

From the SMH today

Investor loans to buy established homes rose 9.9 per cent, whereas loans for the construction of new rental properties fell 2.6 per cent, down 30 per cent over the past year.

A spokesman for Australian Property Monitors, Michael McNamara, said wealthy baby boomers nearing retirement were once again considering property as an investment strategy.

"It doesn't surprise us that many people are looking at property given that gross rental yields are rising and vacancy rates are so low," Mr McNamara said.

But a younger generation of first home buyers continues to struggle. The proportion of loans going to first home buyers fell to 17.5 per cent, below the long-term average of 20 per cent.

"If you have a look at gen X and gen Y, much of that generation has already stretched themselves quite significantly and in an environment in which there is much speculation about interest rate rises on the horizon," Mr McNamara said. "… The interest in investment properties would … mostly be coming from baby boomers."

bit of a rant

So.

Last night, Adam and I were going to meet up and see Sunshine at the Hurstville cinemas, house-sitting for my parents as we are. I thought I would take the opportunity to drop in on the Teggs, as I haven't seen them in far too long. A couple of glasses of wine later, Bron, Mike, Lutters, and Adam and I were all planning on seeing the 7pm session.

I can hear you're on tenterhooks. What happened? Well the film was great, but more on that later.

What happened was that at about 6.40 I got a call from Dominic (some minion from our real estate agents) with the somewhat upsetting news that our property is going to be put on the market. Just as we were starting to feel like it was permanent. Perhaps some of you reading are unaware of how many times Adam and I have moved house - 6 times in 6 years. Not because we're crappy tenants, and have been kicked out, but because either the house or the agents have been really awful. The one exception to that was the last place we were leasing, which was great, but then Warren got his job in Canberra and we couldn't carry the rent of his room as well.

Anyway. I was reassured to hear that Dominic thinks the chances of it being bought by another investor are very high, and that if this is what happens they will want tenants in the house anyway. Couple of problems here, however:

1. The Obvious (which fills me with dread) - The house is bought by an owner/occupier, and Adam and I (and Vanessa) have to move AGAIN, in a rental market that is even more vicious and cutthroat than it was last year when we were househunting. We spent 3 months looking, and 2 months staying with friends as we had no house to live in. No silver lining to this stormcloud of a possibility.

2. The Less Obvious - the house is bought by an investor who decides (quite rightly) to renovate, since the house is in a pretty appalling state of repair, especially the bathroom and backgarden. In which case we would have to find somewhere else to live while this was happening, and then no doubt we would move back in and The Bastards would start charging us exorbitant rent due to the improvements. This is not as bad as 1., just monumentally inconvenient.

3. Global Problem regardless of option - the fact that for the next GodKnowsHowLong we will have the great unwashed tramping through our house twice a week on inspections. This is not ideal. It's not relaxing, there's the fact you have to keep the house pretty much spotless, plus the fact that there's a chance stuff could be nicked. Dominic told me it's their policy to accompany all people on inspections of tenanted property (I should bloody well hope so), but I am still not comfortable with the idea. Even if nothing happened, which is very likely, it just doesn't feel like your house when it's filled with strangers, on top of the damoclesian dread that amongst them will be a nice young couple looking for a place to live.

Damn their eyes.

The ranty part of this? Well I think I have been pretty contained so far. But Adam and I were discussing it last night. All these things come together in one huge outpouring of venom for the baby boomer generation. Why? I'll tell you why...

The reason (I think) that the current rental market is so awful, in spite of the huge boom in developments, is because people of that generation bought heaps of property. Prices to buy and to rent have shot up in the last 2 years especially, because everyone's competing against everyone else in the market... the only people who seem to walk away scot free are the real estate agents. People of the younger generation have a couple of pre-fabricated black marks against them, none of which they can help. They are (often) carrying round a large debt in the form of HECS, or whatever prettier sounding name the government in its ineffable wisdom has decided to call it. My own HECS debt is something like 21 000. Not something to be sneezed at. My income, first year out of uni, is pretty good comparatively speaking, but there is no way I will be able to get a home loan until I'm on half as much again. Which is not going to happen for some time.

It's the selfishness and complacency of the baby boomers that pisses me off so much. As individuals, many are lovely, but collectively they have fucked up the planet and society in so many ways. The generation that got educated for free, charging us fees to get an education - when highly educated people are so valuable to the economy and should be supported as much as possible, it's getting harder and harder for less wealthy people to access tertiary institutions. That generation has also had the brainchild of WorkChoices, an hilariously inappropriate name for something that gives businesses all the power over employees. That same government has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and lobbied for an increase in the amount of emissions Australia was to be allowed to make in the coming years. This is the country, need I remind you, WITH THE GIGANTIC HOLE IN THE OZONE LAYER DIRECTLY ABOVE IT. That same government went to war with its ally, America, in Iraq, with no end in sight to that conflict. The wealthiest baby boomers pay the fewest taxes compared to income, and yet they get the most benefit and ease of living out of the country.

Is it just me, or is there a whole generation of say 18-28 year olds champing at the bit to take over, to start fixing the problems of the world? People with degrees, working in bookstores or as cash in hand tutors, because those degrees seem to count for less and less. People who are looking at another 10 or 20 years of renting before they own a house - not an investment property, but a home that they can live in.

Personally, I would love to get a home loan, but as I said my income is just too paltry. I would love to buy an older terrace house in the inner west, to renovate it, to install solar cells on the roof and have a water tank. To use recycled materials and environmentally friendly paints, to make the best use of the location in terms of natural light and rainfall. It's such a tangible dream to me, I can see how well it would work.

In the wake of the bad news about our house, I had a scout around on domain.com. I found several houses in the inner west (for sale - none for rent below 400 pw) that looked like they needed a bit of fixing up to be live-able, but potentially okay. One, mind you, was about 2.8 metres wide - that's less than twice my height. Not much. Anwyay. These houses were all above 460 000, mind you. I say 'all', I mean the 2 houses that my search criteria returned to me.

2. 2 houses.

I extended my search criteria. I found one house for 530 000. In the listing... no, you have to be relaxed to hear this. It will have much more of an impact. Take off your shoes. Now lean back in your chair with your hands behind you head, and think about something pleasant.

Good. Now keep reading.

The house - I'll remind you that it was listed as 530 000 - was billed as "an excellent first home".

I'm sorry? First home for who, exactly?

That's more than half a million dollars, for a "first home".

HALF A MILLION DOLLARS.

Okay. Rant temporarily suspended.

~

*remove cobwebs*

so. it's been AGES. things have been busy busy busy.

i have now been working at the Lab for a year - a whole year - and it really doesn't seem that long. strange how these things go, and how you get used to working and thinking in patterns. i've become quite good at it, and was on the ABC's Catalyst last week in a short piece they did on the work we do here. big silver earrings and strong determined voice at odds with my somewhat small stature :P

went to the states in january - NY, then LA and SF, which was great. when i feel like i have energy i will write more about it, but some of my pics can be viewed here.

what else? um... writing lots, good stuff, too, and getting slowly back into the artistic thing after nearly a year of being out. my office is a huge mess, but what can you do. home is slightly more tidy. cats are good. i am full of news but with no way of ordering the information. suffice to say the last couple of months have been a bit of a whirlwind - travel, back surgery, home truths, crushing (and uplifting) realisations about a few things, physical and emotional turmoil. but i'm sure it's all on track now.

my friends are putting on a show in melbourne called Strangelove: The Musical and Ads et al are possibly taking Blank! on the road to Brisbane - will be cool. My big sis is coming down for my birthday, and my mum is buying me a sewing machine - hurray hurray, kahloo kahlay!

other things. stuff. blah.

wanky poem

today i finally started editing my thesis into two workable articles, one of which will involve much more research and one which won't.

of course, i got toally caught up again in thinking, and poetry, and meaning and words and language, and all of a sudden my brain is working again (hurrah).

so here's a wanky poem about this all.



reading:
sinking into the salt-bouyancy of words on paper

those letters, strings of thoughts, and tangled meanings
wrap around
like long strands of kelpweed
dark, slippery, inexorable

startling
but in their element.

the subtle shifts in movement,
balancing on what feels like nothing
that nothing that surrounds and comforts -
warm, and skin-licking,
mind-tickling

dancing light in shards on the clear water
light and wave refracting

seaweed thoughts heavy and submerging
beneath the surface
water is like air
and breath punches out of lungs
in a spray of sudden understanding

before the final slow burn of a thoughtself
drowning
peacefully

down time

so it's 4.30 and i am sitting in a syndicate room waiting for my group to show up. how many groups can a facilitator facilitate if the facilitator has no groups for facilitation? I ask you!

today has ended up going well, though i may love to regret words spoken in haste. this is the first i have sat down since lunch, which is only the second time today. this morning, horror of horrors, i realised that neither shayne nor bob had brought down the most up to date versions of the slide set they needed. following which was a confusing phone call to IT getting them to email our stuff across, which still wasn't the right set. but i had a copy in my inbox, which technically i should have deleted, from sending the files across to the print room.

so crisis averted.

then we started talking about facilitating the sessions and how we were going to do it, and only then did i realise that we were going to need to move 4 of the laptops we have hired into the syndicate rooms, after getting them connected to the MBS network as opposed to the Hire Intelligence network (which makes the IT guys here stroppy for some unknown reason, they don't seem to trust me with the authentication key for the network, which is mighty irritating, because what am i going to do with it other than exactly what i say!? ring all my student friends in melbourne and patch them illegally into the network? i mean, come on!).

also, we needed printers, which i had not been told either. so there will need to be either 4 printers, one for each room, or one on each floor (cos we're across 2 levels in this building at the moment), or something. argh. but i am not thinking about it at least until later tonight.

but since we started the beer game... actually since after lunch things have basically gone quite well. i am very tired, but the day hasn't turned out to be the wreck i had anticipated.

i think when i get back and have a couple of months to think about how to smooth out this whole process, nessa and i will be able to figure out some good process documentation, and contingency plans for if anything facilities related relly fucks up.

meantime, i am loving the weather (oddly good for melbourne), and the building, and the food. haven't set foot outside today at all, but pyncheon st was really nice to look at last night, lots of waiters basially hawking their food and trying to usher you in to sit at one of their tables. dan said he basically felt like he was walking through the red light food district, which seems fairly appropriate.

i finished devil wears prada last night. not as good an ending as i was hoping for. fiona p warned me that i probably won't like the movie a whole lot better, and apparently they smooshed two characters together and made them into one hideous frankensteinian character. but anyway.

peeps here. more later!

swans vs. crows, apparently

well, here in melbourne business school, things are going swimmingly. at least, my vision is after however many drinks i hav had this fine evening. which i think is three, but may be four. anyway.

so we're here to run the second pilot program through with iag, which is exciting, and which in a few months i may well be running myself, since shayne and bob won't have the time to spend 60+ days teaching on the ALL program, and do all the XP teaching and academic stuff they're meant to do, let alone fly to melbourne all the time. i myself, on the other hand, would quite enjoy it.

has been an interesting day though. dan was slightly late (which freaked me out), and when he did show up, was driving his own car, which i was completely taken aback by. the plan was that they would book a cab for 8.20 and come by my place and get me, but dan and ang decided instead to come in their own car and park in the long stay carpark at the airport. which turns out to be $63 for four days, which is incredibly ripoffish, but what can you do. although, as i pointed out to dan, mac bank who own sydney airport are one of our IPs, so we should ask for some in-kind payment. anyway.

so nice drive there, tho i admit to thinking that dan was on autopilot some of the time and vaguely heading towards the uni instead of the airport (which i think he was, but anyway). then a misjudgement of where the long-stay carpark was (near the airport!? pah! in another postcode to the airport, more like!!), then the long stay carpark itself. which i have to say is one of the more soul-destroying places i have ever been. a giant, flat field of concrete and asphalt and painted ywllow lines, filled with cars that look like mechanical corpses, all lined up for burial in one mass grave. all under lights. with the fairly hellish view of the airport behind, but mostly the landscape was pure awful.

anyway, the 'every fifteen minute' bus arrived 10 mins late, and took a grand tour of the Purgatory Carpark before taking us on to Terminal Three.

we walked in the door (having been dropped off at arrivals, as clearly all people WHO HAVE JUST PARKED THEIR CARS IN THE CARPARK ARE ARRIVING, NOT DEPARTING AT ALL) and up the escalators, to discover the kind of milling confusion normally only found in student union protests and cattle auctions. listening eagerly for any kind of instruction, and joining a queue in the hopes that the people at the front would have our best interests at heart, we waited. turns out, the airport was experiencing a power failure.

one word was on everybody's minds.

that's right. and i said it.

the t-word.

terrorists.

clearly they had a vested interest in creating the kind of low-level, attritive unhappiness in the large group of 10am till 11am flight catchers that only airport lounges are capable of inspiring.

eventually we got through. i swapped seats with ang (who had booked separately) so she could sit with dan, and sat next to Len, the Most Boring Man in the Cosmos, for the hour and a half flight. he started giving me relationship advice as though i were a jaded and lovelorn 50 something, as opposed to a married and spunky 20something, which i found disconcerting to say the least.

anyway, over soon enough, but not before i
a) didnt take the fruit and biscuits on offer because i thought they would ask me for gelt, so used am i to only budget travel, but thoughtfully did drink two cups of tea, only to discover that
b) i couldn't figure out which cupboard housed the toilet facilities, and only figured it out through careful observation of my fellow passengers. i assure you this observation was highly discreet, and in no way involved me swivelling round 180 degrees in my chair to view was what happening behind me, while casually leaning my book on the back of my chair with feigned nonchalance.

after all, i am far more worldly and knowing than that.

as always takeoff and landing where the highlights, along with the occasional burst of stomach-lifting turbulence.

then we got here. meetings, setting up of computers, some tetchiness, far too many coffees, some prescription medication, an italian dinner-plus-booze later, and i am reclining on my single (!) bed in the melbourne business school, thinking dreamily of a shower and my lovely husband back in sydney, and thinking this just wont do at all.

on the upside, tomorrow night i WILL be able to watch house, which is wonderful, since they have tvs in the rooms here.

the MBS is lovely, far nicer than the AGSM, and the city is within walking distance. i am totally going to put my hand up to be chief facilitator on the melbourne courses. it's gorgeous.

anyway. more of my adventures anon.

ciao bella bellissima! *airkisses to all*

so, been a while since i have written anything up on here. not much happening, yet in that insanely busy kind of way. arts revue was great (adam of course stole the show, along with benny), and after party was even better... work is going well though HR and the FCE integration are causing us a bit of a headache in getting nessa hired which is tiresome. going to melbourne next week which will be interesting, at least on this residential i will have company! especially in the form of vicky, who is fabulous.

nadin and vicky and i are going to the brett whiteley studio, probably with nessa and possibly with jade if she's up for it. who has moved in with ben, and is now working on the north shore as well, happy as larry :) which is awesome, though i miss her and need to catch up with her.

let's see, a list of people i would like to have coffee with... and who should come drinking on thursday night at kuletos if they are free:
- nessa and adam and joe, of course
- jade, ben maybe
- ben, alex, mark, benny, simon, hugh, faustine, dave, viv, sarah and trent...
- tim, billie, jared
- lutfi, though he's driving, of course :)
- maybe dan and ange
- vicky, other vicki, pete, willow

i'm sure there are many others. and i really should invite penny and emfin and andrew and victoria as well, been ages since i have seen any of them.

what else should i do?

paint more.
write more.
take more photos.
do a stencil graffiti run :D
get my thesis published.

oh, all sorts of things!!!

*hugs y'all.

~sayfin

... sounds like "repression"

so what's been happening in fionaland...

well. lots and little at the same time. it was my birthday not long ago (which was totally shit cos i was sick and miserable), and had the party last friday night at the nude bar in the aussie youth hotel. which was cool, very nice venue, lots of plush leather chaise lounges and studded armchairs and the like. ali went crazy with presents and cake, and evnike and james gave me a great digital camera, so that was good. adam took me to see the harvard kroks, and warren bought me a very nice fountain pen. so a good birthday event, if not the day itself.

it's been raining for probably a week now. and it's making me very short tempered and unhappy. which is silly, and i try to keep a lid on it, but i can feel the cranky sort of surfacing behind my eyeballs somewhere. i think partly it's that there are only a certain number of fun things to do when it's grey and raining.

1. read in bed/nap constantly. well, been doing plenty of the latter lately, that's for sure. the downside being i don't eat properly, don't get any exercise, and don't clean the increasingly messy house.
2. have showers. again, been doing that a lot. but, then there's the fact that our bathroom doesn't have a ceiling fan in it to take the steam away, so that when you're not actually in the shower the walls are constantly cold and damp. so the paint's mouldy and peeling, and it's not a nice venue for a shower. i dream of clean white tiles, and a sunken bath, and stainless steel taps...
3. watch movies while rugged up on the couch with Sig Oth. *sigh. you would think this was the easy one. but part of my cranky means that i am much more jumpy and irritable about being touched, which is highly counter-intuitive and means i just get more miserable. plus, we don't spend many nights together, really, and there's not much on telly, and we only go to the video shop on some thursdays... ah me, oh my, what a silly situation.

it's really bugging me, this constant being bugged. to the point of developing some really rash countermeasures that are not great habits to be in. like, eating out all the time. or not eating. or eating too much. not reading, that has been a big and unusual thing recently too. normally i am the devourer of books, but not lately. though i started reading tim flannery's the weather makers and am most of the way through that in a couple of days. however, not the ideal pick-me-up choice in literary gustatory appetites, given it's alarming and apocalyptic subject matter.

see. just a big whinger. and anyone who thinks otherwise is being optimistic.

i want to crawl inside my favourite movies and just sort of hang about. or shave my head. or do something radical. the blade temptation isn't so much there, but the food control and exercise ones are both looming. i need to figure out some exercise regime that will get me out of bed at 6am every day, but that doesn't involve anything but myself, or common household items. i could use adam's weights, but that's the only 'home gym' type stuff we have around the place.

ali, please, if you read this, email me some such regime!

i am kinda desperate at the moment, and i don't know why or what for. i don't think i am hugely unhappy, but the speed of weeks is sort of freaking me out right now, and i want to travel for the same reasons everyone does (i think it will make me more interesting, to myself and other people, even though i know this is not necessarily true...)

i also want to be somewhere that makes use of whatever talents of latencies i have in a useful way. like helping kids build schools in new guinea or something. it would give me some perspective. i just don't know how to hook into these sorts of things.

my job is going well, though the last week was a bust because of being boringly free of people. mainly my boss, i miss him. he is a good boss and he makes you feel invigorated. left to my own devices (in the total absence of other people i mean) i seem to plateau much more readily.

this is starting to sound like depression. boo.

ah, boring boring whinger that i am.

~se fin