Viva Forever

Oh hai.

University has started again, I’m doing courses that I love and hence, for once, I’m actually doing all my readings and listening to all the lectures. Textbooks this semester totalled to around $400, which equates to pretty harsh rapeage of my bank account. Couldn’t buy any second hand textbooks, and believe me, I’ve searched high and low for alternate sources. :( Other than that, I have been sick, mostly resulting in coughing and the loss of my voice. I was prescribed antibiotics that absolutely crippled my abdomen on the third day. I was told during a check-up with another doctor, that all I have is a cold and that the antibiotics were unnecessarily screwing with my system. Bah. I’m on the road to recovery now.

So there we go, boring stuff. Let’s talk about something interesting.

Law of Defamation
I cannot express how much I love this area of law. It’s just so… upstanding and practical and most of all, it makes a lot of sense. All the other law subjects I’ve done always have stupid exceptions and nonsensical distinctions. The one that jumps to mind is patent law, and its crazy distinctions between novelty, innovation and invention. The whole idea of owning information, which form the very basis of intellectual property law, just gets under my skin. So as much as I loved that subject, it was mostly because of how jurisprudentially inconsistent it is, in my opinion.

But Australian defamation law… it’s straightforward and awesome. Now, it could’ve been a huge mess. Australia doesn’t have a Bill of Rights (the only developed nation to not have one, hooray for us -_-), which means we don’t have an expressed and protected freedom of speech nor a right to privacy. However, the Australian law have recognised that both are important, and tries to reflects these values. It’s especially difficult to balance a person’s right to free speech and another person’s right to not be defamed.

One way that the law have tried to juggle the two is to make it rather difficult to have someone stop someone else (usually the media) from publishing something defamatory, so that recognises the right to free speech. However, the law also acknowledges that once such defamatory information has been published, the victim has a right to pursue damages. It’s a little clumsy I guess, but it’s an admirable attempt at reconciling the two conflicting rights.

Another cool thing about defamation is that it’s a full defence if what is published, while it might ruin someone’s reputation, is true. If, for example, someone was accused of having an illicit affair and that proved to be true, that person can whinge all they like about being embarrassed and having a ruined reputation, but since that actually happened and it was merely revealed to the public, then it’s not defamation. Hooray for recognising the value of true information.

Oh and also, you can’t sue on behalf of a dead person because someone else published something unseemly about the dead person. That’s an awesomely practical law. The law could’ve gone the other way, and protect the “sacred” or “revered” or whatever “rights” of the dead, but they didn’t. They were all like, “look, reputation is what living people have, not dead people, therefore they can’t get defamed”. That doesn’t stop people from complaining when things like the Eulogy Song gets aired of course, but the law doesn’t get involved and that’s the way it should be.

Modern Art
I was at the Art Gallery of NSW with my relatives the other day and we were making our way around the exhibits. We got to the “contemporary” art section, and I found myself looking for the placards that explained each exhibit before looking at the exhibits themselves.

I don’t get modern art, especially the really abstract *coughlazycough* type. Sometimes there are good ideas behind a piece of art, but it simply doesn’t show when the piece is so damn abstract. There was one sculpture thing, constructed with little bits of useless material (e.g. bottle caps, paper clips, bits of paper) that have been spray painted with very bright, pastelly colours. They were all arranged in no particular order on a table. The placard explained that it was supposed to represent a city, of modern life, and how many things around us, while looking valuable and pretty and nice, is in essence, just rubbish. It’s a neat idea, but I wouldn’t have picked it up just by looking at the artwork. And that was one of the more explicit pieces. There were plenty of canvases with just big sploshes of colour on them.

That’s why I’d love to just collect all these placards and just read what the ideas are being projected. The actual artwork, while perhaps having quaint and interesting aesthetic value, and perhaps adds a visual representation of the idea, is secondary in my eyes.

What is entirely awesome though, are the old paintings that date back centuries. I can’t help but be entranced by the idea of being up close to artwork that someone once spend many hours on, who are now long dead, painting subjects who were also once very much alive but is now also long gone. It’s a sobering feeling. Oh that and there’s so much talent in the way the scenery, mood and characters are captured in the art. Have I mentioned that one of my favourite artists is Carravagio? Yay, dramatic shadowy paintings. :D But yeah, museums are awesome.

The other day I was at a Subway that Tim and I often visit, and the young woman who frequently works there struck up a conversation with us as she was preparing our subs. She asked me, “where are you from?”, somewhat out of the blue. My answer came out as, “I come from Aus- err… ahem, uh, China…? Yeah…”, which undoubtedly made me sound pretty stupid.

My initial, gut reaction to the question was to answer with “I come from Australia”, an answer I’d give to anyone when I’m not actually in Australia. However, I had to stop myself when I realised how unhelpful and jerky it would sound to say that because obviously that’s not the answer she was looking for. She was, in essence, trying to ask me where in Asia I came from because I look Asian. And yet, I found myself having trouble saying “I come from China” because I really don’t associate myself with that country, having left it when I was five years old. I see it closer to being a place I had a really long holiday a very long time ago, and my stuttered answer had mostly to do with having to mentally grapple with then communicating a concept of “coming from” a country that I don’t feel affinity towards.

I imagine that if my brother was confronted with such a question, he’d have more difficulty with the answer since he was born here. I didn’t feel offended or anything by the question, especially since there was no malice behind it, but was just an interesting incident. It feels a little bizarre that although you may have identified and internalised to yourself that you are from a particular place, to some other people, they may have internalised the assumption that you are from elsewhere altogether.

Another reason I refused to be a jerk and answer with my initial reaction was because the whole thing reminded me of this series of horrible comics: [1] [2] [3] [4] See, the premise of the whole site was said to be raising awareness about Asian American “issues” but all it is is the blatant caricaturing of Caucasian men as lecherous, misogynistic and unpleasant people who are out to prey on Asian women. I shit you not. The comics are so bad in how unrealistic and strawmen-like the characters and situations are. I mean, seriously, to take the four comics I just linked, how likely is it that a random guy walks up to a complete stranger and pesters them about what kind of Asian they are?

And don’t even get me started on the small communities I’ve found, consisting mostly of angry/bitter Asian men who complain to each other about how Asian women are dating people of other races. But that’s for a whole other post. I’m going to bed, it’s 4:54am. This entry is incoherent enough.

Yay Minchin. This clip is only 1 minute and 52 seconds long, so I highly recommend watching it. Pure lolage.

I haven’t been blogging much, been a bit out of it online-wise lately. I’ve joined a second awesome D&D campaign where I’m a halfling ranger. I’m also more than halfway through Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and I’m baffled by the amount of teen drama exploding throughout much of the middle of the book. The imagery of Ron spending chapter after chapter basically just sucking face with a girl non-stop is a little nauseating. Hopefully the plot would pick up soon. I loled when one of the “random” passwords into the Gryffindor room was “abstinence”. Real subtle, Rowling. Also, I’ve started a new crafting project, fingers crossed that it’ll turn out to be a success.

My mother is a forum moderator. Lollerskates.

Two months ago my mother was completely computer illiterate. She didn’t even know how to turn the computer on and off. One day she received a phone call from a high school classmate of hers that she hadn’t heard from in well over 30 years. Apparently said classmate was trying to find people of their graduating year for some sort of reunion. A few phone calls later my mother was informed that there was an online guestbook set up where classmates of hers had been corresponding with each other.

My mother resolved to learn how to get on board the whole thing. I helped her create an email account, taught her the very basics of MS Word and she learnt by herself (quite quickly I might add) how to type pinyin. Before long, she typed up her first entry on the guestbook.

One day she came into my room excitedly, telling me that there’s been over 300 view counts on her entry and that many people told her that she should write more and they loved her writing. My mother had always secretly aspired to be a writer and so she was absolutely over the moon with the responses. I’m not actually sure what she wrote but it sure sounded like it was almost like group blogging. MY MOTHER WAS BLOGGING.

Class sizes back then involved upwards of 50 people per class and about 10+ classes per year so any reunion (online or otherwise) is pretty big. I guess the site coordinator saw how unwieldy the guestbook format was with so many people involved and s/he replaced it with a forum instead. And appointed my mother as a moderator of the “International” section of the board for classmates that now have left China and live aboard. It was so freaking adorable how bashfully exhilarated but happy my mum was to be given this e-responsibility.

It’s a pretty lively forum too. Peeking over her shoulder I see there’s always at least one or two people viewing the board at any one time. My mum excitedly shows me posts often, where she and other posters would post little messages to each other followed by what would be to us, rather tacky animated gifs (you know the ones of sparkly Korean cartoons or dancing babies) though my mum and her classmates think they are absolutely brilliant. Mum is also really proud of the fact that people tend to always reply to her messages more so than other people. xD It’s all so cute and endearing. One of the happiest times in my life is to see my mum happy. :3

Lack of posting due to it being exam season and like Chantelle, my last exam ends 21st November. One down, another three to go!

Anyway, my mum today was telling me about a family friend of ours, a chick about two or three years older than me, whose parents are close friends with my parents. I don’t remember her English name, let’s call her “C”. From the very beginning, when I first visited her house at the wee age of about six, I came to the lasting conclusion that C was a horrible bitch, mainly because she expressly refused to let me play with any of her toys. Anyway, being the older one, she started University about two years before I did, in some finance degree. Over the years, we’ve been hearing from her parents that she had academic trouble at Uni, but recently, we were told that she had finally graduated from her three-year degree in her fifth year.

Big twist time! Her mum told my dad a few days ago that C had been lying all along! She in fact stopped attending University after her third year (after what I guess were a series of very bad marks) and simply lied to her parents all this time about going to university, INCLUDING the bit about her graduating. I have no idea why one would make such a lie, I mean, sooner or later, you’re going to be quizzed about the existence of your degree. Her parents are absolutely devastated at the news and promptly have been going around telling everyone about how they are so ashamed and disappointed by the whole thing.

Now, as much as I dislike C, I really feel bad for her. I hate how some parents are so fucking sensitive about their children bring shame on them, and yet this “shame” they are so paranoid about simply wouldn’t exist if you didn’t go around complaining to people about it. C’s parents are quite traditionally Chinese in their absolute insistence on getting a University degree, and no doubt such pressure contributes to C’s decision to lie. C has had a continuous part-time job in the retail industry, can probably support herself financially (though still lives at home) and apparently she enjoys working and yet that’s probably not good enough for her parents.

Anyway, now that the cat’s out of the bag, C’s said she’ll be trying to get back into University to get some sort of tourism degree, though I don’t know how much THAT is influenced by her parents. It must suck so much balls to be in her position right now regarding her parents. :(