6am - 9am: Wake up, work on thesis
9am - 9.30am: Bus to uni
10am - 1.30pm: Translate Homer
2pm - 4pm: Still translating homer
4pm - 5pm: Dash to supermarkets
5pm - 5.30pm: Still Homer
5.30pm - 7.30pm: Classics seminar
7.30pm - 8.10pm: Quick beer at the Wig & Pen
8.10pm - 8.45pm: Bus home
9pm - 11.30pm: Bake two cakes

Fucking insane day. Wouldn't have been so bad except that I got roped in last minute to provide dessert tomorrow night for a dinner thing, which meant some serious emergency baking. Really... I've been living off canned soup and frozen toast the past week, and I'm agonising over cake.

Came across a hilarious footnote in R. Drews' End of the Bronze Age: "On the practical requirements for burning a settlement see D. H. Gordon, 'Fire and Sword: The Technique of Destruction'." Hey I want a research grant to study how to burn a settlement too! Plus my own settlement to burn!

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It rained the whole of Sunday and I caught a short but nasty cold. Something finally gave, and I spent the entire day at home with housemate G and the dogs.

Things have imploded and I am glad that it's off my hands now. I knew no good could come out of it and I'd just been cold-heartedly concerned about my own advantage. But isn't this sort of angst supposed to end when one hits their twenties?

September is the month of birthdays. For some reason, half my friends' birthdays seem to fall in this month. So there really must be something to that whole astrology business about Virgos getting on well with other Virgos, not that I need more justification for my supposedly irrational belief in astrology.

My room is the messiest it's been for a long time. Piles of clean/semi-clean/dirty laundry all over, together with stacks and stacks of books and notes arranged in an arcane system which only I can understand. I haven't vacuumed for a week, the socks are rebelling under my bed, and I'm trying my best to ignore the dog hair on the sheets. I looked in the fridge last night and there was a bit of very old mango, some even older celery, and my tofu is going off.

This pretty much sums up my life/state of mind at the moment.

I forgot to mention. Housemate G sent me this absolutely hilarious text on Friday arvo: "Don't be alarmed when you open the fridge... I kind of got carried away bought a whole lamb! I have cut it into fridge-sized pieces. The fridge will be back in its usual state tomorrow! :-)" I replied immediately: "As long as it's not still woolly!" And his response was, "No wool, no guts and no head."

Thank god for small mercies. I came home and there really was half a lamb carcass in the fridge, and several trays of cut-up ribs and chops etc. It's very different from seeing small chunks of cooked meat on a plate, or even neatly little plastic-wrapped packs at the supermarkets. We are too desensitised to meat these days, but I believe it's important to know where our meat comes from - furry live animals - and to respect it. This might be very morbid of me, but some day I would like to slaughter a chicken with my own hands. Either I won't be able to stomache it and will come out of the experience a dedicated vegetarian, or I will have faced down this 'demon' and be able to eat my meat with a clear conscience from then on, without the current niggling sense of guilt I feel right now because I enjoy meat so much but yet I avoid thinking about where it comes from.

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Much thanks to my dear friends in Singapore who remembered my birthday yesterday. :)

I didn't expect anyone to remember the day either other than the handful of old friends from Singapore and one or two people here, but was pleasantly surprised by the slew of Facebook wall messages and texts. I have my birthday on my profile but I didn't think I was close enough to most friends here for them to mention it. It was just a fairly long day at uni as usual. I spent most of it at the classics cave, but did walk out in the afternoon to get some sun and meet some friends (and was roped in to sightread percussion for the chinese music ensemble's Open Day performance at the music school).

Later in the afternoon, Gari and P stopped by the Cave and surprised me with a homemade chocolate cake and candles. It was incredibly sweet of them. :D Gari, Nick and even housemate G had all made various offers to have dinner with me last night too, but unfortunately I just had way too much work and turned them all down. So I was very touched by the effort the girls made for this little celebration and one of the classics boys even dropped by the Cave in person to say hi.

I put in about 8 hours at uni but took the night off to go to the Phoenix with Gari and P for a couple of drinks. Sickboy was playing and they were really awesome - must look out for more of their gigs.

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Wednesday only, and I'm completely wiped out. It's been an intense three days! This week there were two visiting professors and three talks/seminars all in the space of three days.

Professor Francois Lissarrague gave a talk on Monday evening at the ANU about reading Greek vase paintings. Not knowing very much about Greek vases other than the little bit of pottery we studied in Artefacts last year, I wasn't awfully excited at first, but his lecture drew me in. I'm not always much of a visual person, so the lecture was a very useful introduction on how to approach vase paintings. Such as not always taking for granted what you see: Greek vases are often fragments pieced back together, and even the experts can get it wrong! Prof Lissarrague gave one example of a vase painting, which was described in catalogues as that of a woman welcoming a warrior, but if you look closely, the woman fragments actually show three arms, and taking away the mismatched fragment, the painting would have to be that of a woman running away from a warrior. Fascinating!

On Tuesday evening, Fiona and I went down to the Hellenic Club at Woden for Professor Lissarrague's second talk, "Body and Arms: The Heroic Warrior". After Monday's introductory lecture on vase paintings, this talk was a good progression. We looked at paintings of the heroic warrior and the symbology of the body and weapons and armour. It delved into the identity of the heroic warrior and how it is linked with his armour and weapons - how armour is like the 2nd skin and identity of the warrior, and can live on after the warrior's death, and be transferred from warrior to warrior. There was some exceptionally beautiful photographs of vase paintings of the fallen body of Achilles. Achilles isn't always a very pleasant man, especially when he's defiling Hektor's body (my hero!), but there is still something very noble and very heroic about him - he is a man who tries.

The only disappointment with these two talks was that far fewer classics students attended than I'd expected. I was especially disappointed with the later-year language students, because the Body and Arms talk focused so much on the Iliad, which is the classic of the classics, which any self-respecting half-way serious classics student ought to have jumped at the opportunity to attend. Not to mention the fact that Professor Lissarrague is on his way to the Getty Museum after his Australia tour, and is going to give the Body and Arms talk there as well - this was an incredible opportunity for us.

This afternoon, E invited Professor Trevor Bryce down from UQ to give us the honours seminor on the Hittite documents relating to the Mycenaeans. She'd received some funding last year, and decided to invite Prof Bryce because he's a renowned Hittitologist, and we're damn lucky to have this chance! Mat, Fiona and another 1st year who are very keen on ancient near-east history, as well as P sat in on the seminar too. The two-hour seminar went on for three hours: exhausting but so very worth it! Especially when Prof Bryce handed out a Hittite empire map and told us that was the latest version that he'd just updated recently... it's simply incredible to have this eminent researcher handing out his latest as-yet unpublished material! He also generously gave us a copy of Latacz's Troy and Homer for the CC, which costs AUD$130 in the bookstores. We thoroughly picked his brain for every last scrap of information and I only wish I'd actually known more about the Hittites just so I could make even more use of his presence. I'm definitely signing up to his opinion of the Iliad as the tradition of a series of Greek-Trojan historical incidents and quarrels conflated into a single event.

Afterward, Prof Bryce joined us in the CC for tea and a pleasant chat. He shared with us his experiences in undergrad and postgrad and how he made his way into Hittite studies, which was very very encouraging for me. E and P also shared some of their early uni days stories, and it's always fascinating to learn a bit more about our lecturers. E invited Steph and I to dinner with Prof Bryce at Lemongrass, which was another unusual opportunity to socialise with academic staff outside of school hours. Again, it was very inspiring: we spoke a lot about academic ambitions and the academic world, and the lecturers were very supportive of Steph's and my post-grad plans.

So all in all, it's been an incredible three days! Simply being able to meet these eminent researchers and person and to hear them talk! And I'm very struck by how approachable and sincere and learned they are. Prof Lissarrague has a very understated, wry sense of humour, a very congenial man, and he lectured so comfortably without any script or notes at all, more as though he were simply conversing with us about his favourite topic (it probably was!). Prof Bryce was just as easy-going and modest, very patiently answering our tedious questions (I swear I sounded like a fool), very generous about sharing his stories and experiences with us lowly undergrads.

This is what university and academia should be like. I never want to stop.

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I like living on my own, but sometimes this whole business of independence isn't what it's cracked up to be. Let's look at today's meals:

Breakfast - cereal
Lunch - Sunday night's leftovers and Friday's cake
Dinner - Friday's leftovers and Tuesday's soup

And tomorrow:
Breakfast - three-week old bread
Lunch - Sunday night's leftovers (still) and maybe more of Friday's cake
Dinner - two-week old leftover curry (frozen of course) and either some of housemate G's leftover rice or 2-month old frozen bread

(I freeze my bread because I can't finish one loaf before it goes stale.)

And THIS is when I've just calculated I've been spending $80+ per week this month on groceries alone. Price of food is insane. I spend all that money buying veg and fruit and tofu and I'm still subsisting on leftovers...

wwolf is miserable tonight.

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I'm at my wits' end. It's been a hell of a week. Translated far, far too much Greek: was driven insane by Thucydides and had my heart broken by the tragedy of Hektor. Most people think Achilleus is far too whingy and childish. I don't - I happen to think that he's a very thoughtful man caught in the dilemma of fate, honour and social values. I can admire his insistence on staying back from the siege as a moral protest. But I am absolutely distraught that he killed Hektor! Achilleus knew and chose his own fate to die, but Hektor...poor Hektor thought the Achaians were defeated and that Troy would triumph... Andromache's lament is moving and beautiful, but I find myself most affected by the incredible pathos when Hektor thinks he has got the upper hand and rages on brashly in his mighty fury, without a single inkling of his own death to come. And he loses all in the end: his wife, son, father, men, city, and his own life.

Did a presentation on Linear B inscriptions on Wednesday for my seminar. Nearly went crazy researching Linear B script, decipherment of ancient languages, Mycenaean trade, economy, government, what-have-you. I'm very out of my depth. Next week we're looking at the the Hittite Empire, and that's going to be even worse. Yup, Mum, you paid $9000+ this semester for me to learn how the Mycenaeans made and exported perfumed oil to Anatolia. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Anyway, yes, did too much Greek and uni this week and had to compensate with an outburst of wild socialising (for me anyway). Invited some people over for dinner last night at the eleventh hour on a whim, so I dashed home at 5pm and cooked up a storm for the next two hours. Honey sauce chicken, a couple of veg stirfries, and an eggless chocolate cake topped with chocolate ganache and served with strawberries, to mark Des's birthday. It made this very painful week much better. But next week will be worse, and correspondingly more severe measures will have to be taken. :S

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V6. 11 August 06
Blake and his Rose are by no means original, but it was time for Felix to go. Title graphic shamelessly stolen from O Rose I, 1996 drypoint aquatint print by Kristin Headlam.

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