Cafe #30: Edna's Place

Date: 9 December 2007, 4.40pm
Location: Glenhuntly Rd, near Carre St, Elsternwick
Coffee: $3.00 (didn't give it a try)

This is a great cafe. I'm sitting on a velvety olive-green couch in a window alcove, looking out at the busy street. The black-painted wood floor slants upwards to the window corner and there are three red-stencilled three-rose patterns on the window. Walls are yellow and maroony-brown and there is a standing lamp with bright multi-colour plastic flower chains hanging down the shade. In front of me is an oval wooden coffee table. Behind me the left wall of the cafe has shelves of chatchkes - dishes, teapots, jugs - and the counter looks like an old-fashioned general store's, with wooden cabinets. It's a cosy, lovely cafe, though I could do without the annoying radio station that is being played. I didn't get coffee but instead a chocloate scroll - I can't afford both these days. It was nice.

I wanted to go to the beach today, but of course it is now windy and chilly - just my luck. And I'm dressed for the beach.

The colloquium I helped organise happened on Monday and Tuesday. The papers presented were great, the panel was good, but not enough people came: for example, seven audience members for five panellists. The early morning papers had almost no one to hear them. Nevertheless, I was most impressed with the quality of the papers and enjoyability of their presentations. We are chalking the lack of crowds up to bad choice of dates and focussing on feedback that it was a relaxed and enjoyable colloquium.

I presented my first academic paper, which went well, though I didn't feel it was as highly intellectual as others. I'm glad the colloquium is over and that my confirmation report has been handed in. They were taking me away from my thesis. This weekend I have finally gotten back to work on Foucault after some days of fulltime work as a Student Advocate and doing invigilation at Melbourne Uni.

Cafe closing, so must go.

Cafe #29: ice-creamery and chocolateria

Date: 6 November 2007, 5.00pm
Location: Whitehorse and Burke tram stop, Balwyn (I think)
Coffee: $? , watery, but mini-chocolate chip cookie nice
Reading: An Archaeology of Knowledge

[Clearly I did not write down enough information about this cafe]

It has been a long time since I blogged. I've been caught up in study and for a couple of weeks was working as a dog walker and doing data entry, so had less leisure time. I'm more relaxed now as I've lost both jobs (really needed a car to get to the dogs and don't know about the casual data entry) and still am only getting one shift at the bookshop and my next writing isn't due to my supervisor until 24 Nov. My confirmation of candidature is on Dec. 11. That's what I'm working towards but I'm not feeling pressured for time at the moment.

Life has been truly fun for the past couple of weeks. Last night J and B were in town and came to Hawthorn for dinner. I also invited A4 (I've got too many "A"s in my life so am numbering them - you may not know who they are but at least you'll know when I'm writing of different people) to meet J because of a shared interest in Israel/Palestine. I made eggplant parmiagiana and Ann made a lovely salad and J did the garlic bread and J, B and A4 brought wine. It was such a good evening - I haven't been party to such heated lively (and respectful) discussion in a while and it was excellent to see J and B again. Lfe should be full of cosy, tipsy (only speaking for myself here) dinners like that.

Ann was away for a couple of weeks housesitting. And though we went to a few parties and I stayed over with her a couple of times it is nice having her back. We've been sharing lots of giggles and I appreciate her to no end.

What else? I've been gallery hopping with F, organising a colloquium, had two gals from the Writers Festival round for dinner, seen a few films, been out to a couple of dinners, am off to an evening of short plays with another Writers Festival gal on Friday and Ann has a medieval gig on Sunday with her ensemble. All I need is for the weather to get nice and (gasp) there possibly can't be anything to complain about! (Okay, I could complain about having to do dishes - which I seem to do all the time. And that I should be stressing out about my under-employment situation - 'cept its so nice not working much...).

I'm sitting in an ice-cream/chocolate cafe. It's the only thing open on this Melbourne Cup day. Had to take a tram and find an appropriate open place. It's cute, though over-airconditioned. I'm in a nook with ironwork garden furniture painted in either black or white. Purply-brown brick wall and light green-tiled floor. Pictures of an ice-cream sundae and truffles and there is a painted board clown holding a lollipop. A rubber plant in the window, a cabinet of boxed chocolates.

The truffle (caramel dark chocolate mudcake) wasn't anything special, nor was the coffee. I'll try to remember to come out when things are open...

Off to Foucault.

Cafe #27: Achillion Cakes Coffee Lounge

Date: Sunday, 9 September 2007, 4.00pm
Location: High Street, Preston
Coffee: $2.50 - latte, weak; Greek pastry - $3.00, beautiful (and not even chocolate!)

It is another sunny, beautiful day in Melbourne. I am in Preston and it is like small town NSW, except ethnic: one long main street of shops, mostly closed except for Asian $2.00 shops and Turkish and Greek and Asian bakeries and take-aways. I have yet to wander around a residential section of town, but I did darken the pathways of the large and empty markets, imagining the chaos, seafood and junk that would brighten the brick pavement on market days. After a couple of productive hours with Derrida this morning I went for a short walk with Ann in Fitzroy Gardens and then kept on my way up the train line to Preston to check it out. I felt with Derrida I was finally locating my problem - that in his attempt to overthrow the traditional phlosophical definition of truth as 'correspondence to reality' he tries to do away with reality rather than redefine truth reality or correspondence. Doing away with correspondence is the post-modernist project in general but this particular text of Derrida's (The First Session) attempts to get rid of the signified or imitated by first making it absent or nothing and then joining it with the signifier or copy so that they become two things that are no longer dfferent but the same, yet still represent or express difference. It doesn't make sense - how can you even work with nothing? At least Bataille's nothing has presence - it is presence without thinghood. Derrida's nothing doesn't have presence or thinghood so how can it exist as difference? Difference from what else that is not a thing or present? Because presence doesn't seem to exist either!

At the Lilith (Melbourne University feminist journal) fundraiser on Thursday evening I got talking to two American post-grads - male - about criticial theory and relativism and post-modernity. It was a culturally-awakening conversation. I felt condescended to. One guy
laughed at me at one point and questioned my application of complementarity after admitting that he wasn't familiar with the theory. When I talk with Australian males I do not feel condescended to, nor stupid, nor laughed at, nor disrespected. Often the guys know more than I do but they still honour my views and understanding within the stage of study I am at and I never feel like they think I am stupid or wrong. Such discussions can get fiery, but always enjoyable, respectful and informative. The experience with the American students made me feel glad I am here and not there.

Otherwise there is not much to report. Ann and I will be moving to Hawthorn in a few weeks and I want to book return flights to Canberra so I can pick up some more things (music!!, coffee plunger, more clothes) and figure out what to do with the rest of my stuff. I'm also hankering to visit friends.

The past couple of weeks have been productive in terms of thesis reading and writing. Now that house-hunting is over I feel much freer, though job-hunting and applying still usurps time.
Last weekend I interviewed at a bookshop in Brighton and said hi to the beach, but the bookshop owner has not offered me a job. Yesterday Ann and I saw 'Once', a nice but melancholy Irish movie about a songwriter who is approached by a chipper and stubborn Czechoslovakian girl. He find out she is a pinao player, singer and songwriter and they make an album together. The film is a feature-length music video for their album. The naturalism of the acting and cinematography is lovely and the songs quite good, if a bit sad.

Okay, I am off to explore the nonresidential parts of Preston before the sun goes down.


Addendum: I just found the Old Fire station Cafe and Gallery. There's a band with a female crooner and ladies knitting taking up most of the tables. A dull red-orange stone floor, vinyl chairs and laminex tables. A couch and a courtyard, brick walls, a big open space. Cool.

Cafe #26: il Fornaio

Date: Saturday, 11 August 2007, 4.30pm
Location: 2 Acland Street, St Kilda
Coffee: $3.20 - latte, very average
Reading: Truth: A Guide

This is an industrial-style cafe/bakery, with grey stone floors, silver stage lights hanging from exposed black piping and grey cement brick walls, although there is purple inch-thick attached walling behind the bar on one side of the upper level and shelves and a fridge on the other. Up a wide set of four wooden plank steps is the pastry counter, fronting a steel-screen backdrop from which wicker baskets of bread hang (supported by a shelf). Behind that I can see a sous-chef working and in front the 'il Fornaio' hangs dramatically in large, long matte-brass lettering. On the lower level there are grey plastic chairs and wooden tables, as well as low leopard-print benches on either side of the stairs. There is pounding industrial trance music in the background (not that I really know what industrial trance is but I think it must be this). The cafe is loud with vibrating voice waves, which is good for reading because no words are distinguishable and thus distracting.

I wanted the last little chocolate tart but someone bought it out from under me.

It has been a beautiful warm morning. I was out late at a party last night. It began as a work party on the Clayton campus, and after drinking wine and beer courtesy of the bookshop the leftover party-goers were locked out of the venue at 10.30. Several of us made our way to S's house - which turned out to be a real treat. He lives with an older man in an art deco pink-brick house with an enormous second-level balcony with a view, two enormous bathrooms (one a green and pink marble Barbie dream bathroom), a bar and generally full of stuff - strange instruments and statues of camels, worn oriental carpets and other assorted cool and kitsch clutter. It was a fun place to be in and we drank and danced and ogled the house. I went home with a fellow workmate to her house in Balaclava, right next to Glick's Bakery.

In the morning I bought latkes and perogies (YAY!) from a Polish deli and ate a sesame bagel and a slice of poppyseed cake at a bakery, then took a long tram ride home. After napping and showering and making latkes with a side of sliced soft-boiled egg and avacado for A and, I decided to say hello to the beach that I didn't have time to greet when I was in Balaclava. I walked to Smith St, picked up a few cans of Amy's refried black beans from Soul Foods, then caught the tram to St. Kilda. I meant to go t Port Melbourne but I didn't quite know when to get off.

By the time I arrived at the beach around 3.30pm it was no longer warm and a bit windy so I only walked the beach for a bit and then found this cafe. I may walk a bit more along the tram line and then hop on when I'm cold. I expect to have a quiet night at home, hopefully finish this book about truth and maybe work on some Heidegger. I am still having trouble concentrating and still feel very melancholy a lot of the time. I don't feel like me. The party last night was a good distraction. I need more parties!

A and I are having one next weekend but we have little idea of who will come as only several of
A's friends have RSVP'd.

Alright, I'm off.

Cafe #25: Upper Crust Bread Shop

Date: Monday, 06 August 2007
Location: 206 Smith Street
Coffee: latte - $2.50, okay

It has been a while since I last wrote. I have been working, studying and being cold. I only have five hours of work this week, which feels like freedom, except isn't. I will have to find another job as freedom requires paying one's rent.

The past couple of weeks have been mixed. I went to see Ian McKellan in The Seagull wth A, S and F. It was lovely to be at the theatre and see Sir Ian, but the play was only okay and his part wasn't large. I didn't get a ticket to King Lear, which I will forever regret.

My thesis began to come together this past week as well. I will look at complementarity as a definition of postmodernism and play Badiou (ethics), Barthes (literature) and Derrida (Law and Literature) off each other, all through Copenhagen, showing different types of complementarities between and wthin the texts. I may organise the thesis around metaphorical/theoretical common concepts such as void, transgression, supplement, etc, and add some Bataille and Sartre in the mix as well. I feel much more settled having a plan and like I have more time to do paid work since I've done most of the reading already. Of course I will read these books again and again but the initial familiarity is there.

This week has been difficult because I found out my rent is going up in October. I have to move. If things work out A will move with me, but 'if' is the key problematic. I need to find a new job (this was the first week I was offered only one shift). And I've found out A has a new girlfriend and peace of mind, which despite my pleasure for him is hard for me. After a few phone conversations with S and my dad and my mom last night I'm feeling much better an am able to focus on study today.

Just earlier I had a meeting with a lovely young woman interested in doing some publicity work for lip as part of her university course, so hopefully that'll get lip some money for the next issue.

I am sitting outside today, which is lovely. Hopefully the worst of the winter is behind us and the days will remain edged with warmth.

My tabletop is painted with a red-headed girl in a blue bikini with white flowers, laying on a red, white and blue striped towel on the beach with water, mountains and a sailing ship behind her.

Cafe #24: Issus Cafe Bar

Cafe #24: Issus Cafe Bar

Date: Friday, 13 July 2007, 5.20pm
Location: 8 Centre Place, CBD
Coffee: latte, good
Reading: The Accursed Share

It has been on and off raining again today. I feel I should learn to enjoy rain, or at least not dislike it so much. After all it is only water. Yet I don't like having spotty spectacles and a wet hemline and worrying whether the books in my bag will get water-warped. Stepping over puddles. I wish it would stop raining, at least during the day. I do like the sound of the rain on our tin roof, which has still a comforting ring to it.

The cafes across the lane are closed up and the loud soul music has thankfully stopped. Apparently this evening music is an attraction of this particular laneway, but of course I was reading (Bataille) and didn't welcome it.

Issus is small, cute and dark, like the other cafes on these central lanes. Weathered granite floor and wooden tables, a row of square cushions and tables outside the open front, a gilded mirror written with menu and a red-jacketed waitress with a nice smile. I am distracted by all the people walking to the train or to occasions from work or shopping, hoping that I might see someone I know. I've had a quiet day and am planning on a quiet night - more reading, email, writing, maybe a video. Cook a big green curry.

Reading Bataille gives me more to work with on the whole French theory thing: absence, void, transgression. For Bataille, experiencing the freedom of being a subject (labour makes us objects) that comes from intense emotion such as laughter or pain is the experience of NOTHING. The object dissolves; the subject is a void; murder is the transgression of an object demanding subjecthood. It doesn't make much experiential sense to me but is a pretty mythology of modernism.

I had my first afternoon of work at the Caulfield campus bookshop. It felt better, probably because only five hours rather than 8 1/2. Next week is second semester rush. Can't wait to see if it is as chaotic as everyone makes out. Looking forward to the extra money the extra hours will bring. But not to waking up at 7am three days next week. Am practicing going to bed by 1am and setting alarm for 8.00am instead of ten. I was out of bed by 9.30 this morning. Progress!

Cafe #23: Invita

Date: Tuesday, 7 July 2007, 2.30pm
Location: Hardware Lane, near Bourke St.
Coffee: $3.00 - latte, beautiful (fairtrade) gluten-free foods available
Reading: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

When I sat down outside at this organic, vegan-y cafe the sun was out. The sky is cloudless-Canberra-blue, which is a pleasure and a joy after all the rain Melbourne's been gardens have been enjoying. However, now that the sun has moved from enlightening this part of the city it is chilly, a cold breeze bothering my neck. Still, it is a relief to have warmer weather.

I've been to the markets with E, relaxing and welcome as usual. Last weekend was an all-nighter with the CCLS department students and friends to farewell C. It involved three bars, the first loud and expensive and mainstream, the second quiet and baroque with $2.50 beers and friendly staff, the third a proper pub complete with young male rock band upstairs and a downstairs full of lounging drunk young people. Five of us ended up at Cafe L'Incontro on Swanston Street, drinking coffee until the first morning trains were due to depart Flinders Street Station around 5.30. Clearly I didn't have a very productive day on Saturday, though I forced myself to stay awake and read. On Sunday I wrote against Derrida, so I felt better.

Hardware Lane is cute - brick-streeted laneway lined with fancy restaurants, though the Bourke Street end is home to cafes rather than restaurants. Invita isn't the most charming cafe, what with its plastic rather than wicker chairs and contemporary look, but it did have the fairtrade coffee, and I couldn't aesthetically argue myself out of the ethics of that. I was rewarded for my moral fortitude by a beautiful cup of coffee.

Anyway, back to Weber.

Cafe #22: Moo Wine Bar

Date: 24 June 2007, 5.30pm
Location: Mooroolbark (shopping centre)
Coffee: $? - mocha, okay
Reading: Being and Time

Mooroolbark is the penultimate stop on the Lilydale line. The weekly tickets Connex has been giving me in place of the yearly ticket I lost have been zone one and two tickets, so I thought I should explore zone two - go to the end of a line - while I have a ticket to do so freely. On A's recommendation I chose Lilydale, as it is in the Dandenong ranges. Despite its hilly setting, it isn't an inspiring town. Strip-type shopping complexes and not very nice houses. I walked around a bit in the suburbs, skirting the sporting oval on which was being played a game of intertown football, then bought a couple potato cakes at the fish and chip shop, where I had a nice chat about my studies, outdoor toilets and other Melbourne-related trifles with a North Fitzroy couple on their way back from holiday in Marysville. When they said goodbye, off to pick up their boarding dog, I wandered back to the station and took the train back one stop. Mooroolbark is a bit nicer than Lilydale. The shops are slightly more upmarket - antiques and jewellery/arty knick-knacks - and the neighbourhood looks a lot like Canberra, with different trees. I didn't notice any fancy houses.

The wine bar is playing irritating music - new Michael Jackson, I think - and has dark wood veneer tables with cool black and cream chairs that loook a bit like a thigh-press machine: the back of the chair is a roll attached to the seat by two curling back steel arms.

Last night was a good night. I accompanied E to the National Institute of Circus Arts' second year BA student show. It was very sexy, with performers working on tissu (long ribbons hanging from the beams), rings (also swinging from the beam), trapeze and swing, tightrope and ropes (siimilar to tissu). There was a lousy clown cum magician; jugglers, including a body juggler; a trick bicycle and girls revolving in metal wheels; and a duo of boys who swung and threw weights on long strings around. Also tumblers. Aside from the fun of all the arial tricks, the music composed for the show was outstanding, giving it such a mysterious fun (Cirque de Soleilish) atmosphere, with undercurrents of primitiveness and Easternality. I LOVED the music - great beats, sound effects, ambience and sexiness - to accompany the rippling muscles of boys too young for me to be admiring. After the circus E and I went drinking and dancing. There was a great 7-piece funk band, Cold Sweat, playing at The Laundry on Johnston Street and I had a bit of a boogy.

The week ahead sees more Heidegger, Derrida and Weber. I need to get a significant amount of work done. Good luck to me!

Cafe #21: Suede

Date: 16 June 2007, 4.50pm
Location: Smith Street, near Peel Street, Fitzroy
Coffee: $3.00 - latte, okay

This is a red and bass bar, too dark to read comfortably and too boosted bass-y to read concentratedly. Nor is the coffee good. Nonetheless it is probably a good place for an intimate (alcoholic) drink, offering brown and red couches and cushions, a gold and red baroque-patterned bar, green wallpaper with a silver wheatish motif on a far wall and big, square navy-blue fabric lampshades overhead with a fruit and leaf design. There is muted red lighting behind the bar created with red bulbs shaded by plastic squares with convex and concave circles in the centre. There is an upstairs and palms in the windows, exposed brick walls, gilt mirrors, and bamboo-blinded nooks hiding soft lighting.

I have been sleeping in too long on these cold winter Melbourne days. Today, despite setting my alarm for 10.00am, I did not manage to roll myself out of bed until 12.30. I had a quick shower and rushed off to the Saturday coffee group. After people wandered off from the Lygon Street Cafe I walked to Smith Street in search of an op-shop bedsheet. The cheap op-shop was closed, the Salvo's didn't seem to have a Queen-sized sheet, but I got very lucky and found a shop selling light blue brushed cotton sheet sets (fitted, flat and two pillow cases) for $15.00! So I happily bought those instead. I shall be off home in a moment to change and wash sheets.

I spent several hours yesterday reading one of my supervisor's books. It is a survey cultural theory text and as such is immanently readable. It was lovely to just read - not to have to re- and re-read in order to understand, not to have to take extensive notes to retain, not to have to read in small chunks of time in order to preserve concentration and interest. I hope I have more such easier texts to engage with throughout my study.

Ann and I went to see 'It's Not Your Day' last night at La Mama Theatre on Faraday Street. It was alright, especially for $10.00. The play was by a young playwright, and though a bit cliched and mainstream, it offered some funny moments and enjoyable acting by a few of the actors, including a particularly lively performance of a steely female wit. I should go to the (cheap) theatre more often...

Cafe #20: Melissa Cake Shop

Date: Friday, 8 June 2007, 4.00pm
Location: Smith Street, Fitzroy
Coffee: latte, poor - $2.50 (Greek sweet yummy)
Reading: Plato's Philebus

It feels good to be writing a blog again. I handed in my last bit of coursework yesterday - an exam for the Semiotics and Post-structuralism class. I am relieved to have the coursework over and should be able to blog more regularly again. I enjoyed taking classes but writing short essays is antagonistic to my grand thematising and meeting deadlines (which I did meet, while many others asked for extentions) and word counts (which I never met) stressful and not conducive to handing in my best work. I am excited about a next couple of months full of of reading and thinking about how to narrow my thesis topic.

It has been a stressful couple of weeks, finishing my last essay, the exam, losing my wallet and the cardholder I wear around my neck and breaking up with A. (This blog is probably not the place to discuss the latter. Suffice it to say I am getting used to the idea of myself as a more melancholy person. Perhaps that will go away soon or perhaps that is what life is meant to do to you?)

On Wednesday evening I went to a party in St Kilda with the folks in CCLS after working on my essay through the afternoon. I was out until 3.30am with a couple of very drunk men, a not-so drunk gal and a boy sober like me. I had a lovely time, chatting, drinking red wine and dancing to Blondie in C's apartment and to alternative rock at Cherry bar, but I was ready to go home by 2.00am afer we were thrown out of Cherry at closing hour. I did not go home in order to share the price of a taxi northwest with two others. The drunk blokes wanted to keep partying but after another hour of unsuccessfully searching for an open club in between fits of existential angst on the part of D, which saw him laying on pavements or floors, dragged around by J or throwing himself into a dumpster full of building materials or tipping over garbage bins, I was glad to go home. I admit to being somewhat amused with D's antics, his touchy-feely embracing of life and rapid alternation between optimism and nihilism, but I was also partly bored and exasperated, ready to leave to sleep on the floor for the night. I haven't been around someone that drunk in a long time, but he had his charms. The only problem with the evening was that when I got into the cab upon leaving C's apartment, I no longer had my purse. It must have fallen out of my bag. I am hoping it is at her place, but C hasn't been home to check.

On Thursday I had a lunch date with R, which was lovely - fake-meat noodle soup in the Target Centre - except that when I arrived at Parliament Station to go back home to finish my essay I realised my student card and yearly Met ticket were no longer hanging off my neck. It was very distressing, not only because I needed to be essay-writing rather than retracing my steps and asking security guards and staff if they'd found a blue cardholder, but because the best way I know not lose stuff is to keep it around my neck (unbelievably I still haven't lost my mobile phone). I haven't lost a key since college, when my senior house resident at Bard suggested the strategy after I kept locking myself out of my dorm room. The Metcard can be replaced for $12 but the Monash student card replacement fee is exorbitnat - $60 or $70. I filed a police report in the hopes that rumours of a fee discount with presentation of said report will prove to be true. I wouldn't care about the student card except that it is my library card as well.

I should remember not to leave the house when I haven't had much sleep and am stressed out. This is always when disaster strikes and every time I tell myself I shouldn't leave the house.

On Friday A arrived and we had a lovely weekend: with the Saturday coffee group that I've been inducted into (thanks to Ann), to a folky/bluesy gig with Ann, to Transport bar at Fed Square, the Moroccon Soup Bar, gelati with E, to the markets to meet A. I am distracting myself from the deep grief over the end of my relationship with A by socialisation. J is coming to play with me on Sunday, which I'm very much looking forward to. In the meantime, now I shall head off to Santucci's in Carnegie to see if any of the women I met a couple of months ago are haning out there tonight.

Cafe #19: Chocolateria San Churro

Date: Friday, 11 April 2007, 5.00pm
Location: Brunswick St near Victoria St, Fitzroy
Coffee: $4.90, Spanish mocha - delicious
Reading: Being and Time

I wrestled with Derrida again last night until close to 3.00am. I think I 'translate' about a paragraph an hour. I woke up at 11.00am today, which meant a late start on more Derrida. I don't think I got through more than two pages. This insistence on tackling Derrida seems a bit masochistic but I am a bit proud of myself as well. I still am not sure why it is necessary to be so complicated (Heidegger's language is much more straightforward) but I am not as sure as I used to be that the purpose of its difficulty is to hide the flaws in the theory. Still, it is difficult to argue with something so abstract as how the way we conceptualise meaning and thinking is affected by an idea of the unity of truth that we'd like to preserve. For this next essay, though I think I'm going to structurally analyse and deconstruct a Salinger story, maybe my interest will take me elsewhere - or distract me from my goal. I'm considering looking at the play Copenhagen instead of Salinger since it is a play about philosophical issues and it interests me more. Hopefully something comes together - with less grief than it did last time.

I meant to walk to Smith Street to treat myself to a cafe work-read, but discovered Gertrude Street, which is perpendicular to Smith and has many funky and artsy shops. I didn't find an open cafe however (as opposed to a restaurant or bar) and ended up on Brunswick St. I haven't been to this part of Brunswick Street yet while living in Melboune, and am not sure if I've ever been here. The chocolateria seemed the likeliest place to obtain a coffee only, given the dinner-time nature of the hour. The cafe is a long narrow shop all wood and brick, with orange baroque-patterned grating windows and frilly brown and orange aprons on sale. The mocha was thick, creamy, deep and beautiful.

It has been a good week. I didn't do too badly on that first paper (Derrida and Barthes) - 3 points only off a High Distinction, with the major comments being such that I should be able to fix quite easily for the next paper. Mainly the paper was marked down for being under-researched (which it was given the (now I realise) overblown claims I made in the introduction and conclusion). I was relieved the major issues were not with my argument or interpretation. The paper felt like a risk and I am glad the risk was one well taken.

I got to take centre stage in the feminism class of my Wednesday Critical Theory course as the only female in the seminar and, you know, actually knowing about feminist theory. I had a good chat afterwards with two other Masters students, talking about sexuality and Cisoux and gender. Yesterday I saw K at her apartment in Docklands. She cooked me a lovely frittatta and plied me with red wine. The highlight of the afternoon was scoping out a couple of fancy time-share luxury boats. They were beautiful things, replete with beds, fridges and barbeques. Check out photos of the boats here (http://www.leisureboating.com.au/Boats.asp?sessionID=), though I don't remember which ones we saw - two of the biggest, anyway, though I liked the smaller one better. I told K that if they do join the club she MUST take me out on the boat.

On Monday evening I went to a great feminist lecture (check out http://lipmag.blogspot.com for details). It made me understand that after this experiment with critical theory I will go back to feminism - so much more immediately relevant to what's going on in the world right now. Tomorrow night is a Frencham Smith gig.

I certainly could have gotten more work done this week but I'm going to try to do some significant hours of work over the weekend to make up for it.

Hmmm, need a new notebook...

Cafe #18: Koko Black

Date: Tuesday, 1 May 2007, 2.30pm
Location: Shop 4, Royal Arcade, Bourke St, Melbourne
Coffee: $5.50, chili hot chocolate - very chili
Reading: Thomas the Obscure

I'm feeling a bit dazey la-la from my cold. I worked at the bookshop yesterday, thanks to cold pills, and slept for more than twelve hours last night. Today I wanted for myself to relax and clean the house a bit, get done some personal activities - reading, writing, email. I cleaned the sink and shower this morning, then met E and A at the markets. Following our usual lunch and shop, A and I had our usual coffee at the market, and now I am here, nursing a hot chocolate.

Koko Black is one of the several chocolate lounges in Melbourne (one surely must love a city with several chocolate lounges). I am upstairs in the Victorian cathedral-roofed arcade, in the a tanny-cream space of chocolate vinyl chairs and couches, and orange and cream wallpaper. There is a a mirror and old black and white photograph of a chocolate factory framed in gilt and swirly tan granite-topped tables.

At 2.30 in the morning on Sunday I emailed in the second paper that I have been furiously working on for the past few weeks. I wasn't very happy with either paper (one 4500 words, the other 5500 words). My Critical Theory paper was about 500 words too long and the Semiotics and Poststructuralism paper I just lost interest in (plus, Petersburg is such a loaded book, every sentence symbolic, that I could not possibly do it any kind of justice in the time/space available. I'd needed to have read it again and taken very extensive notes - which is difficult when reading a book is fun). I wish the final papers had reflected how much work I actually put into them but I'm afraid they didn't, as much of what I put work into didn't actually make it into the papers (significant expositions of Peirce, Derrida and Bely). It Will be interesting to see what marks I get. The second paper, on Peircean semiotics, the novel Petersburg by Andrei Bely and Bely's theory of Symbolism struck me rather as an undergraduate effort, though I didn't feel that way about the Derrida/Barthes deconstruction essay. I've got one more 4500 word essay to do (will probably do more with Derrida and Barthes) and then I look forward to having a year to write a thesis.

It has been a good week despite the papers. On Thursday my semiotics professor put the office to some effort to get in touch with me (via Canberra; my mobile was off while I was studying in the library) so she could offer me her spare ticket to opening night at the opera. It was Dvorak - Rusalka - and was an incredibly beautiful and sad production. It was, I think, the best production of an opera I've seen and I suppose my favourite as well - even better than Aida. The British singer, Sally Matthews, who played Rusalka was wonderful, a fine actress and dancer as well as singer. I believed her at every moment (think little mermaid; Rusalka is basically that story in its most tragic form). I feel so privileged to have been able to see that production and will always have a special place in my heart for my professor, despite our intellectual disagreements.

On Friday I met a friend of K's for coffee in the city and enjoyed chatting with her about theses, Bristol, Melbourne, slow food, etc. There was an art project launch going on under Flinders Street Station so I went down for free wine and to see whom I might see. I chatted with a PhD student from CCLS (the centre in which I study) and her friend, caught up with P from Is Not Magazine and L from Sticky. L gave me a heads-up about the Victorian arts grants and Is Not throws fundraising parties, so hopefully something fruitful will come of either meeting. On Wednesday night, after a full day at home, essay writing, I took myself to the pub. I couldn't bear not having spoken to another person all day any longer and by 8.30pm was desparate. I ended up at the Retreat, a florid old pub that I had not been to before. I ordered a Stella, saw a boy sitting by himself and asked him if he was alone. He replied in the affirmative and asked if I wanted to join him. I also replied in the affirmative and sat down at his table. I did most of the work pushing the conversation along and sometimes struggled to catch the words articulated in his very quiet voice, but he proved to be an interesting subject: a chef at Lentil as Anything. I chatted with him for a while then came back home to more work. I was very proud of myself for striking up conversation with a random boy.

On Saturday night was a 13th birthday party for A's cat and Sunday was home and essay writing.

How much lighter I feel without those essays. I felt incredibly stressed by them and worked long hours those last couple of weeks. I know I should get started on the next essay soon to avoid that problem again. I'll give myself this week off, though. I deserve and need it.

Cafe #17: I wrote this down somewhere...

Date: Tuesday, 24 April 2007, 1.45pm
Location: Kew
Coffee: $3.30, cappucino - good
Reading: Selected Essays of Andrei Bely

I took the tram and train to Box Hill today for an appointment at Family Planning VIC. I am considering changing my birth control from Implanon (the implant) to an IUD. I came all the way out to Box Hill (in zone two!) because I have always gone to family planning for birth control matters. I don't really trust anyone else. I had a good chat with a couple of doctors and have come out with an Implanon prescription if I choose to stick with that method and advice to go to the Royal Melbourne Women's Hospital for the IUD if I choose that method.

I expected to be advised against the IUD but I wasn't. The doctors (a trainee doctor was there as well) took no position. The Mirena IUD has a little bit of progesterone, which can stop one's periods altogether - really appealing. The copper one has no hormones at all - also appealing, and why I am considering an IUD (I haven't experience my natural hormone cycle since I was 21), though probably not as appealing as no period. Either IUD can stay in for 5 years, but the initial insertion is a bigger deal and more painful, requires more appointments than Implanon and I may not like my own hormones. I have time to decide what I want to do.

Following my appointment, I travelled the 109 tram towards Port Melbourne and have gotten off at Kew. There are many nice restaraunts and cafes but all seem quite expensive. I wanted lunch but didn't want to pay more than $10 - so I ended up at a cafe with baclava and coffee instead of lunch. I had hoped a cafe called ??? would have falafel on the menu. No such luck.

??? is a pleasant cafe with an old dark wood floor and heavy green marble-topped tables. There is a tube of multicoloured blinking lights around the windows and the walls are brown, cream-peachy and orange (different walls, different colours). There are bar seats in two windows and small white vases of fake rosebuds and lily-of-the-vally on the tables. It is a classy cafe with a Euroean feel, but I don't feel comfortable staing too long. Plus I have this essay due on Friday...

The baclava was alright - probably quite authentic but very nutmeggy and sweet.

It is a beautiful day outside despite the chilliness of the morning so I shall probably stay out a bit more, hunt for cheap falafel.

Café #16: Bigmouth

Date: Friday, 13 April 2007, 7.45pm
Location: corner Acland and Fitzroy Streets, St Kilda
Wine: $5.00, red - okay (no gluten-free)
Reading: Petersburg

I am sitting in a glass-windowed room with low lighting, leather window-benches, black-clothed tables, with candles and curls of red pinprick Christmas lights hung from the verandah roof on both sides of the corner cafe. There is a (fake) fern and flowers on top of the cake counter and a vase of peach lilies on the raised bar-style table traversing diagonally the centre of the room. There are copper-painted walls with black and gold swirly ferny designs in the corner window.

Previous to now I walked along St Kilda beach, reading Petersburg. I must get it finished tonight so I can start writing my essay tomorrow. I still have about thirty pages to go and am feeling drowsy. I suppose the red wine doesn’t help with that.

Reading Petersburg again has been a pleasure. However, I do now look forward to being done and embarking upon a previously unread book – and getting the paper done. It doesn’t really interest me; I like the book very much, but I don’t feel the need to write an essay on it at the moment. The Derrida/Barthes essay interests me more. Reading about Bely’s Symbolism makes me wonder if what I want to explore for my thesis is actually rationality and metaphysics: is metaphysics rational or religious? Does that depend on how you define metaphysics? Is it characterised by a sense of reality outside of the materially experienced world or is it the sense of transcendental meaning that exists outside of the systems of human meaning-making? I don’t know yet.

I wandered around the St Kilda Readings bookshop (After having potato cakes and chips – strange healthy-battered cakes that tasted brown-ricey. Great chips though.) feeling burdened by all the philosophy and modern classics I’ve still to read. Maybe I waste time reading random contemporary fiction. Hopefully there’s room enough in my life for both.

My week-long holiday is almost over. I have to get up at 7.30am on Monday to go to work. It’s been lovely: I got lots done – cleaning, organising, filling out forms, breaking dishware, cooking, op shopping (for some warm clothes and some cute clothes) and studying. Me and Derrida have spent a lot of time together over the past week, with Barthes interrupting at the end. I wrote an essay contribution for a Vibewire project, got to a comedy festival performance with Tony and Alison, who are visiting Melbourne for the festival and family. We saw Greg Fleet and Mick Moriarty. It was not a very funny stand-up routine and Greg told a joke about a husband who watched his wife give birth likening the experience to watching his favourite pub burning down. That put me right off. It boggles me that in today’s supposedly (post)feminist times such jokes still get told.

Anyway, I should be off home to sew up some holes in my clothes...

Cafe #15: The Local

Date: Good Friday, 6 April 2007, 3.10pm
Location: 22/24 Bay Street, Port Melbourne
Wine: $5.50, white - okay
Reading: Of Grammatology

Okay, so this is a pub and not a cafe, I'm drinking wine not coffee, but I've got a view out to the bay, a glass of cold drink and a pencil. It is a beautiful, sunny day after a week of rain and chill. There are idyllic puffy clouds in the sky and enormous puffy bluebottle jellyfish on the shore, often looking like a blown-up latex doctor's glove.

Today I am discovering Port Melbourne. The Port itself is boardwalks and trendy restaurants, but if you walk around it you reach the beach. The beaches are small but more inviting than St Kilda - less rocky and shallow - which is several beaches farther on.

I will be short because I'm writing with a blunt-leaded pencil. The past several days have been good. I've done some good thinking - phenomenology, Derrida, Barthes... The more I read those last two the more I find myself agreeing with them. Oi, such changes. (More difficult to write a paper in agreement...) Maybe I can figure out if Barthes theory of reading works with Derrida's theory of writing.

Oooh, 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' is emanating from the pub! It is a cute and oldish pub, upkept old, not crumbling old. Browny-grey, maroon and beigey-yellow. Richly patterned carpet, a stained glass panel topping the roof of the bar with antique books lined up on top.

Okay, pencil nearly dead.

Cafe #14: Friends of the Earth

Date: Saturday, 24 March 2007, 3.10pm
Location: Smith and Perry Streets, Fitzroy
Coffee: $3.50, latte - okay
Reading: The Dialectic of Enlightenment

I'm writing with my lovely felt-tip purple pen, the one that's yellow with white pinstripes!

I can't imagine that I deserve to have life feel this good. I now have: a great house, a great housemate, a bookshop job, a few fun and lovely friends, a bunch of engaged and smart people to share seminars with, and lots of spontaneity and sun. What more can a person want except not to have a job at all?

Now that I know when I work and when I go to class I think I may go to some social swing dances again or try to find some other sort of group-type thing in order to facilitate meeting more people. Maybe finding folk music nights or poetry slams or somesuch.

It has been an up-and-down week. I will not go much into the down. I completed my first assignment, a 2000-word class presentation, which I think went fine and of which I am curious to see what mark it earns. I wrote/talked about Foucault's notions of modernism - simulacra and transgression - and Lacan's mirror stage theory: Ideal-I, Gestalt, imago, ego. Then I used the theories to interpret a few of Picasso's renderings of Velazquez's painting entitled Las Meninas. It was a fun exercise to interpret art, but I am afraid I may have ran away with my concepts in the flow of writing. Did it all make sense, or was it mere linguistic flourish? This is a problem, I think, that many modern and postmodern theorists suffer from. Difficult and sometimes pretty to read, but sensible?

My first day of paid employment was yesterday and I trained at the Caulfield campus bookshop. On Monday I begin at the Alfred Hospital branch, which I understand is to be my working home. It was a good first day as far as first days at new jobs go. I am very lucky to have avoided first semester rush. But second semester rush will happen. I was also lucky to have begun work on the day of a big end-of-rush party. This involved a lovely zen-ish cafe venue with a separate function room, an open bar kindly payed for by my employer, lovely finger foods (including a huge bowl of only-okay baba ghannouj), and two fellow employees (men) with guitars and a classic rock repetoire. S opened his time as entertainer with Wish You Were Here, so I felt sure I was in the right workplace. After the men with guitars put away their guitars, the bar put on dance music and several of us, mostly women, danced and danced. It was a lovely time. I left around 9.15pm to take Ann out. We went to a cute local pub, with ratty couches and a leg-kicking lamp on the bar, and listened to a good band with an awesome slide player. All I need now is to sleep better - been a bit insomniac - and all will be perfect.

Friends of the Earth is a hippy joint - all organic and fair trade and bulk. It is a big wood shop, with books and t-shirts, candles and vegies and hippies cooking lunch. The background music is quiet and bell-like, which is a nice change from the usual cafe jazz. There are hardly any people here, but there is a child.

C S Peirce's Trinomy [cafe 13 blog is previous post]

I’d like to present my understanding of Charles Sanders Peirce’s “trichotomy”, which, I gather, is his answer to the question of life, the universe and everything, and which he modifies from Kant and defines through Aristotle.
I know that I understand a theory if I can rewrite or explain it in formal but generic language. In other words, if I truly understand a concept, I can replace one set of unfamiliar signifiers with a familiar set. If I cannot do this then I obviously have only a very partial mental image, or interpretant, with which to work. (I like to mix up Ferdinand Saussure’s terms with Peirce’s, because by use of the term ‘signifier’ I am clearly talking about language rather than another sign system and I do not have to clarify whether my signifier is an icon, index or symbol). My process of translation allows the first set of signifiers to become more powerful representations, as their indexicity and iconness grow to allow the signified to function as an effective symbol for me. But more of this later.
As a test of my understanding of Peirce’s concept. I attempt a translation of Peirce’s theory into words I know better. This understanding is only entry level, of course. Keeping in mind that Peirce’s theory of trichotomy can become very complex and layered and that it is not elucidated in one overarching work, I have read a selection of writings that apply the trichotomy to different systems or epistemologies. This essay presents understanding gleaned from the following works: “On a New List of Categories” and “What is a Sign?”, published in The Essential Pierce, Selected Philosophical Writings, published by Indiana University Press.
Peirce’s theory of trichotomy is a metaphysics, as well as ontology, phenomenology and epistemology, for the theory defines being and knowledge, can be applied to different types and categories of phenomenon and explains the role experience plays in knowledge. Indeed it is a belief system because it is a guide for understanding.
Throughout his writings, Peirce clarified and refined his trichotomial theory and offered varying definitions and examples for his categories of symbol, index and icon. Some of these definitions and examples I find easier to conceive, or comprehend, than others. The definitions I use here are from the essay “On a New List of Categories".
In order for me to make sense of Peirce’s conception of being (writing this talk is an exercise in tautology: Peirce’s essay explains what conception and being are, yet I must use the terms before they can be explained because there are no other words that evoke the same concept.) So, to begin again, in order to make sense of Peirce’s conception of being, I have had to separate the idea of existence and being as understandings of consciousness rather than as concepts of existence outside the human’s ability to perceive. A tree may exist without a human’s conception of it, but I believe that is a completely different matter to what Peirce is discussing. He is solely discussing existence and being as a perception of the human mind. He may not believe that existence does exist beyond the human mind.
Peirce begins “On a New List of Categories” by explaining a few concepts that the reader must understand and accept as metaphysical givens in order to make sense of and believe in his theory. At the outset these givens raise questions. In addition, I find that these givens cannot be fully understood without an understanding of Peirce’s theory and its terms in general. Therefore, my explanation is a paraphrase and translation of Peirce’s specific words on the given concept and the words I have found to represent my larger understanding of its meaning based on further reading within the same text.

Given 1: We think in order for specific things to exist in our consciousness. Without thinking, or conception, we would only be conscious of everything in existence as an undifferentiated mass of possibilities in the present. Thinking differentiates a thing from this mass of existence, or “manifold of sense”, to existence as a particular thing defined and differentiated from those possibilities. This thingness is called “unity”.
I like to use the word “thing” because it seems to me to be, in an ironic way, an icon (a word representing through likeness) for the concept of “manifold of sense”. The word “thing” in one usage is a symbol representing the idea of anything—it can be all possibilities of the present. The concept that this word represents is an icon of “manifold of sense” because they are alike concepts of possibility, or of similar meaning to each other. Yet by being an icon of the concept of “manifold of sense”, the concept “thing” would cease being similar, because once it is a sign, it is like a differentiated, existing thing rather than an infinity of possibilities. I wonder if a sign can be a sign of not-signness. But that, for the moment, is by the by. (Oh, dear, plain language or not, I feel I am getting as complicated as Pierce himself!).

Given 2: This is an epistemological statement: A concept is valid because without it there is no thing. The system creates its own truths.

Given 3: Sense is not a conception.

Given 4: Attention is an action without conception. Attention as a Piercian concept is the mind’s power directed to something, a thing. Attention does not know what that thing is. If you couple attention with conception, you have thinking, understanding of a thing. Thinking is the next step after attention—to describe, understand, contextualise a thing.

With these givens, we can now discuss the process of conception, which uses the tools of representation to bring something into existence, from the manifold of sense. This defined thing that the mind conceives can be material or immaterial, concrete or abstract, thought or physicality. The process of conception begins with recognition, and this recognition is what Peirce terms the “universal conception”.
The universal conception is the recognition of the state of existence, every possibility of the present. Pierce calls the state of existence “what is present, in general”. “What is present, in general” is a state because it is only sensed, it receives the mind’s attention, but is not a thought or a thing because it is not conceived. What is conceived is that there is a state of existence to be sensed. Peirce uses the term “recognition”. Recognition is attention with conception.
The universal conception is a priori, or a condition of humanity, and therefore I call it “the first”. It is the original conception because there is no conception before the understanding that the present exists. It is the only conception that exists without the process of conception as mediated by signs. It is outside the conceptual system of trichotomy, as it is not a conception in relation to any other conception and it is the only conception that arises purely from sense (sensation, perception). All other conceptions are concrete separations out of this awareness of “the present, in general”, so that being is the state of being recognised as existing within, as part of, but defined from, “the present, in general”.
The first conception is true only because everyone has it. This, I believe, is an epistemological argument. We cannot know the cause or beginning of the first, or universal, conception because it exists before being does. It cannot be proven – it is only true because it is so.
I think a clearer way of expressing the universal concept is to say that human consciousness begins with the inherent understanding that there is existence. Because there is no direction or differentiation in this understanding, nor is it itself differentiated from existence per se, it is not a thing. Only things can exist, be differentiated from the possibilities of the present. Only things can be signs. Therefore, the universal conception is not a sign. However, it has a sign, and this sign is the word “substance”. So, “substance”, in Peirce’s theory, means the first conception, the recognition of “the present, in general”.
“Substance and being are the beginning and end of all conception,” writes Peirce. Since there is a beginning and an end, there is a middle, or at least a process of getting from beginning to end. This process involves further orders of conception beyond the conception of being. From this first conception of existence, or the substance, the mind brings other things into existence, or thingness, or unity, through the process of conception, utilising the tools of recognition. The process of conception is the movement from the manifold (all possible existence) to the unity (one example of existence). A thing exists, is differentiated from the manifold substance, through the mind’s attention to three aspects of existing: the thing itself, or subject (which can be actual or potential), the verb or action word, which is recognition that there is a thing (beingness), called the “copula” or “the function of the expression of being” and its predicate(s), the quality(ies) of the thing itself (something/s that distinguishe or differentiate the subject through comparison to other things).
Predicates describe qualities of objects, and objects become things because their qualities are different or similar to other things. Ie, I know a horse is a horse because it shares qualities with zebras and leopards, but has different qualities than cars and silverware.
I think that predicates are the way we understand abstract concepts such as colour or personality—we understand them by repeated recognition of the same qualities in similar objects, for example the redness or blueness of red or blue things, or the anxiousness of anxious people. The fact of being becomes a function, because it has a performative role to conjoin the qualities to the thing itself, thereby differentiating this particular thing from the totality of substance. The statement of something’s existence is called a proposition, and Peirce’s example of a proposition is the sentence, “The stove is black”. The stove is the thing, blackness is its quality and the conception of being (“is”) bestows the blackness onto the kettle.
Peirce writes that, “The conception of being arises on the formation of a proposition”. I am unsure if the conception of being is the same as the conception of “the present, in general”, in which case I would think there is an epistemological problem because the conception of being seems the foundation upon which a proposition would form (rather than the other way around), or if it is another, next, universal conception. I suspect the latter, because it seems to me “the present, in general” is recognition of the possibility of being, whereas being itself fulfils the possibility. Nevertheless, the conception of being seems to both result from and create the recognition of particular existence.
A proposition alone does not bring something into full existence. A thing has become distinct from the manifold, but without other things having been distinguished, this distinction is irrelevant. Peirce identifies five conceptions required for a thing to pass into substance from being. To understand the full concept of the term “substance” we have to understand that “substance” refers to both to the “present, in general” and the present, in specific (or the subject). Or, put another way, thingness. Or as Peirce calls thingness, “it” or “it, in general”. There is reasoning behind the equivalence of the substance of the manifold and the substance of the it. Before differentiation, or abstraction, can separate things into existence—or distinguish them in the present—from the substance that exists in the present, the substance has to have been recognised to exist (which it has, through the first conception). Because the substance is an “it” before everything else can be an “it”, it “cannot be made a predicate”. In other words, it cannot bestow quality or definiteness on something in order to give it thingness because it has no qualities because qualities can only be defined in relations through differentiation, and the present, in general has no differentiation—it is everything possible all at once. Thus, Peirce writes, “This it is thus neither predicated of a subject (no qualities defined by likeness define “it”), nor in a subject (nothing consists of its qualities since it has none), and accordingly is identical with the conception of substance. That is why “it” needs to be borne from a proposition.”
“Being” is the first of the five conceptions towards existence; “Quality”, which I have described, is the second, but I have not talked about the existence of the quality so that it is an available concept to be joined in the proposition. In order for a quality to be joined to a subject by the conception of being, it must be a distinct conception itself: blackness must be a concept first and then it can be applied to “kettle”. However, it is an abstract concept. An abstract concept is one that can be applied to other subjects but still be the same concept—indeed this ability to apply the abstract concept to other subjects is what makes it a quality, or a conception that can be used to distinguish other conceptions through comparison. Pure abstractions are given the term “ground”. So the definition of the category “Quality” is “reference to a ground”.
The third conception is Relation, or “reference to a correlate”. This category arises out of Quality, because a Ground is only a Ground in comparison to other Grounds (its correlates), ie, black is only understood as black because it is not red, blue, green, etc.
The fourth conception is called Representation, and this is defined as “reference to an interpretant”. Just as Grounds are already conceptualised abstractions, inerpretents have already achieved substance as well. An interpretent is an idea that is used to give understanding to what the Grounds mean to the Subject, and it is also an act of comparison. An example would be that you recognise a crying child in the middle of the supermarket as a child who has lost her parent because you have seen other children crying in open spaces when they have lost their parent, or indeed you remember it from your own childhood. So the interpretant is an already defined existence that is use to explain something coming into existence. A linguistic example would be if I don’t know the meaning of phenomenology, but I do know the meaning of the words “study”, “of”, and “experience”. So my concept of studying experience is the interpretant for me of phenomenology.
Substance itself is the final, fifth category.
It is hopefully clear from my explanation that a ground, reference and correlate serve different functions that work together to create being or “what is”.
The ground is of the subject, the correlate is of a different subject and the interpretant is already a subject and puts the ground and correlate into relation with each other. So you see this is a familiar pattern, just like the subject, predicate and copula. This pattern is the key to Peirce’s phenomenology and the idea of “thirdness” – or the necessity for an interpretant – is his key idea.
There are three terms needed to propose that something exists, three terms that create that existence and three terms that enable other things to help create existence. These three terms that define existence are Quale, Relate and Representamen and they are categories of thingness, now called objects. Objects, once they exist, can be used to conceptualise new things. A Quale is a thing that is used as a descriptive to give a subject a quality (“reference to a ground”); a Relate is a thing that is used to define quality through another like thing (“refers to ground and correlate”); and a Representamen is a thing that is used to define another thing by being similar to a third or many other things with similar qualities (“refers to ground, correlate and interpretent”).
In my understanding of this trichotomy, an example of the three categories of objects would be as such: I am walking down the street full of parked cars and pass a boy laying sprawled on the street and, next to him, a blue bicycle on its side with one wheel spinning and the other bent. The entire tableau is the Representamen, because it causes me to generate a mental image of the boy riding his bike, which is how I know the meaning of the Representamen is a bicycle stack. My internal image is the interpretant. The parked cars help generate my interpretent because one way I know the bike is a bike is because it is not a car, so the parked cars are acting as one of the Relates I use to construct my interpretant. The blueness of the bicycle is a Quale, as well as the bentness of its wheel, because these aspects of the bike let me know that this particular bike got into this particular crash. It is not anyone’s bike – it is this boy’s blue bike. What has just come into existence is my knowledge that a boy had a stack on his blue bike.
Lest you think we have been through the basic trichotomies – of conception and of objecthood – which join together to create understanding of objecthood, or the direction of attention to something specific—there is still another level of trichotomy needed to complete how existence is represented to the mind: that of representation. Which, of course, makes yet another trinomy for consciousness: conception (which requires quality, relation and representation), objecthood (which is composed of quale, relate and representamen) and representation (which is composed of likenesses, signs and symbols). All three of these processes rely in turn on the trinomial of ground, correlate and interpretant. If we think back to the first trinomial of proposition (subject, predicate and copula), we see that representation is an action, it is a verb, the copula. Representation is what allows us to use an object as a Relation to create an interpretant. So you can see that representation is thirdness, it is a third step of any bringing into being that brings the other two steps into relation with each other and also requires another process of three steps to indicate how that third step already exists, which appears to make thought an infinite chain of understandings preceding out of each other.
A representation is something that creates the connection among ground, relate and correlate, or how we know what qualities a thing has in relation to everything else. This is the most complicated aspect of the trinomial theory. Peirce asserts that there are three kinds of Relates, or a thing that puts the subject’s qualities in relation to other subjects’ qualities. The first type is an internal relation, whereby the ground, or defining characteristic of the object, can be considered distinctly from that object (is prescindible) and the second is a relative relationship, whereby the relation of the defining characteristics (determined by reference to a ground) cannot be understood in separation from the subject. An example of the first relation is the black kettle. Blackness is a concept separate from kettle. The Relate (concept of blackness) is the same as the correlate (the blackness of a different object). An example of the relative relationship would be adultery. The Relate would be having a sexual relationship and the Correlate defines the Relate as a sexual relationship with a person who is not one’s spouse. A kettle still makes sense without it being black, but adultery doesn’t make sense without a husband.
An internal Relate is based on sameness or harmony between relate and correlate – the blackness of the kettle, the blackness of a tyre. But the relative relate requires there to be a “correspondence of fact” between the relate and correlate or relate and interpretent. My husband’s sex with another woman corresponds to my understanding of my best friend’s sex with a man not her husband, and thereby I understand my husband is committing adultery.
Internal and relative relations are between ground and correlate. There is another type of relation between ground and interpretant. In this type of relation a thing cannot exist without an interpretant. An example of this type of sign is a stoplight. The yellow, red and green lights would not mean anything to a driver who did not already have a conception that red means stop, green means go and yellow means slow down. The stoplight would not exist to a person who does not have access to this interpretent – that person would merely see a pole with coloured lights on it. These three types of Representations are Likenesses, Indices (or Signs) and Symbols.
This is the last key trinomial, a process of representation, in addition to the development of understanding and qualities of objecthood. All three are necessary to think, for representation allows us to give meaning to objects that we have directed our attention to.

Peirce considers the trinomies to be numerical, there is firstness, secondness and thirdness, or singleness, duality and plurality. This should make sense in relation to the forumulas elucidated above: firstness is unrelated existence, secondness is that existence related to itself through abstraction and thirdness is a thing defined by its abstractions and given meaning through relation to yet another thing. He defines firstness as beginning and freedom, secondness as determined, object and reactivity, and thirdness as becoming.
Thinking is made of nested trinomies and Peirce continues the nest, expanding his thirdness through modes of thinking and expression. These modes involve signs, which Peirce defines as “a third mediating between object and consciousness”. A sign mediates by being a representation of an interpretant, either through use as a Likeness, Indice or Symbol. In his essay “What is a Sign?”, Peirce delves into another trinomy of thought. Thought does not only involve being able to conceptualise through signs, but it also involves being able to relate our experience to our conceptions. There are three states of mind that interact in a linear or numerical process to take the mind from ignorance to knowledge: Feeling, Reaction and Thinking. Feeling is equivalent to substance in that it is the awareness of a particular emotion defined from the mass of all possible emotions. But pure feeling is a state of oneness because the feeling bears no relation to anything outside itself. Reaction is a twoness because it involves “two things acting upon another”, which Peirce examples as both “the breaking of one feeling by another feeling” and the sense of “acting and being acted upon”. Thinking is the awareness of learning. What has been learnt is how reaction relates to and brings about results of action and it requires thirdness because this learning—discovering the rule or process of a phenomenon that brings about a result—requires mediation, the help of conception. Peirce calls learning “a means to an end” and is “the means by which we pass from ignorance to knowledge”. This is similar to how the interpretent is the means by which we move from consciousness to awareness. Peirce says this mental state of mediation “involves three states of Feeling”.
Having got that explanation out of the way, Peirce moves right on to the three types of sign and gives us an important explanation with which to work for our understanding of his semiology. He writes that we have three types of interest in things. The first interest is for the thing in and of itself. The second is in the thing because of the way it reacts with other things. The third is interest in the thing as a mediator in conveying an idea about a thing to the mind, or in enabling a mental image. Only things used in this way are signs. This is important because it indicates that things are only signs if they are used as such. I can notice a bag on a hook. The bag is just a bag. But if the bag on the hook reminds me that I have forgotten to put my wallet in my purse, the bag has acted as a sign for the functionality of a container.
The three types of signs—icons, indexes and symbols—have been described above. In relation to consciousness as awareness of objects, the signs acted as representatives of interpretants so that meaning can be attached to an object. In relation to consciousness as aware of thought, signs act as references to ideas. In this case the symbol is thirdness. The icon is first because it is not directly connected to the thing it represents. The Index is second because it bears a direct relation to its object, that to which it indicates. The symbol is third because it requires the “symbol-using” mind to make the connection between the sign and its object. So the symbol acts as interpretent between the symbol and the mind’s idea. Peirce believes we “think only in signs” and describes thought-symbols as concepts. His examples of concepts include marriage and law. These are symbols because as a concept they refer to a set of ideas that together create understanding. Understanding of the concepts of marriage and law do not come from their likeness with a relate (what qualities do the concept of marriage share with another thing?), though I would argue that they could be indices as well as symbols. Marriage as an indice would point to the idea of two people sharing their lives together, while the law indicates your relation to the government.
Feeling becomes thinking through reaction and ignorance becomes knowledge through reasoning. Reasoning is the process of using signs (for which Peirce feels the use of the word symbol is appropriate because symbols are the key signs used in reasoning) to discover truth. Indices can point to contexts and mental diagrams can be icons for the structure of the problem being reasoned through, but most of the work of reasoning is done through signs – or things that cause us to think of the ideas we know.

Peirce has expanded this theory of trinomy beyond philosophy and semiotics to other fields, including logic, psychology, physics. One example is expression:

Expression is a thirdness because it functions as a sign to bring a mind in relation to an object. Expression, in turn, works as a sign in three ways of association. The first is language, the second is action and the third is art. Art is an icon because it refers directly to its object through likeness and it allows the mind to live in an “ideal” world where the reality of the object represented isn’t relevant. Action is an index because it points to the real. For example, a shout points to my feeling of pain. Language acts as a symbol because it requires purely a mental association between words and the reality they represent.

I may present other systems of thirdness if I have the time, but this little essay here has taken me as many hours as I can spare at the moment. I wonder if anyone has made it through to here?

Café 13: Animal Orchestra

Location: Grattan Street, across from Melbourne University, Carlton
Date: Thursday, 08 March 2007, 4.00pm
Coffee: Morrocan mint tea - iced, $4.00, outstanding
Reading: selections of writing by Roland Barthes

First, apologies for posting this a week late. It is only with much thanks to Allan that I now have dial-up internet at home. I’m definitely an addict, having found myself quite lost and time-wasteful without having it at home, having to travel to libraries and universities to get on the internet, having to choose what and what not to do within limited time.

Animal Orchestra is a fantastic café, exactly what you want out of a café in a city on the uni/alternative side of town (though I suspect everyone else thinks so too and others might find it too popular). The café’s home is a traditional Melbourne house. The dividing wall between counter and dining room is wall-papered with images, mostly of people, from different eras and styles, in colour and in black and white, wall to wall. The other walls are white on the upper half, grey-blue on the bottom, with a thin maroon stripe in the middle. The near corner of the small dining room has a Victorian(?)… antique! corner settee upholstered with a faded green decorative flower pattern. On the wall above the settee is a long, narrow, three panel mirror and above that a yellow curtain. To the left is a wall of mirrors held in differently shaped thin wood frames. The tables are mostly quite tiny, imitation grey-streaked marble, round, with brass edging, and some bigger square and wooden tables as well. There are bare light bulbs hanging low from the ceiling, pointing down to a distressed wood floor. The café is a bit dark and there has been good music playing quite loudly – first a folky-country singer with a great throaty voice, then crooner jazz.

The mint tea is gorgeous – several sprigs of fresh mint piled in the glass, a lemon slice, lots of sugar, cloves. Must have that again and again. It has been a while since I last wrote so there is much to report, but I’ll try to summarise. On Friday I met a guy from Pittsburgh: he is my age, a reader, and very funny and personable. On Wednesday I forgot to bring my student card with me to uni so I couldn’t take all the books I had searched for out of the library. I was pissed off, because it meant I had to go all the way back to Clayton on Friday. I discovered there was a postgraduate coffee networking thing on Friday afternoon so I figured I’d go to that, giving a little more meaning to an essentially unnecessary trip to the suburbs. I hit it off with H right away, because my Dad’s family is from close to Pittsburgh, so I could enjoy reminiscing about my times spent in the city. In the end, I stayed all night with H, drinking red wine and talking into the night at his house in Fitzroy. We talked until 7.00am…and then had to deal with the day… I feel so glad that I found a friend so quickly!

On Monday I moved into Ann’s house. My room is big and I’m sleeping on a sofa bed, which means I can fold it up and, wallah, I have a sitting room. The biggest problem with the house is that it has a crap shower – England crap! But its fun living with Ann – we talk about our studies a lot and giggle often too.

Yesterday Ann and I met H for dinner. We planned for Mexican and an art gallery, but ended up at a Columbian restaurant and ate and chatted right on through the gallery opening (ie. we didn’t make it there.). It was a lovely evening with the three of us interacting really well together—all talkers, all interested in travel and other cultures and acculturation. Ann suggested we make it a regular weekly thing. The Columbian food was like home – fried plantains, red beans in tomato sauce, yucca (not like home – this was pan fried rather than boiled). I also had a fried egg between two corn cakes – they weren’t tortillas – they were more bready – delicious. There was salsa music on in the background and no one else in the restaurant.

I’ve been reading interesting Marxist theorists from the Frankfurt School. They are easy to read and clear. Adorno is anti capitalist culture to a fanatical degree – culture is an industry to keep people working and reproduces the mental conditions of labour – repetition, mindless attention. Althusser gave an interesting Lacanian reading of ideology – it serves to make people feel like individuals in a State/system that only requires depersonalised workers and works through the symbolic order – our conceptions of reality (once we can conceptualise through language we no longer live in the Real but only through our sense of our relations to the Other). I also read a psycholoanalytic version of Marxism whereby the State works through repression of desire and people’s belief in ideology is a neurotic displacement of thwarted desire. Interesting stuff!

If you are curious, ask me to tell you in an email about my second Structuralism and Postmodernism class.

Before arriving at the café, I did find myself in the huge used bookshop across the street. I bought two books: a hardcover for $5.00 about why overmedicalisation is bad for you – taking on received wisdom about breast exams and heart bypass surgery and chronic pain—and a $1.00 paperback of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a book I have wanted to read for years, ever since reading a James Agee story in tenth grade.

On Monday I went to see Little Children, which really moved me. I came out of the movie upset and somewhat disoriented and in a funk. It was the ending, but I don’t want to say any more – you should see it if you haven’t already. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is also putting me in strange melancholy emotional states. I cry a bit when I read it, either because things are awful or wonderful, but either way beautiful and surreal. I would like sex to be like in a D H Lawrence novel but I don’t think it is quite so….divorced from the rest of consciousness (once you let it be). Perhaps that’s just me.

I am putting my little essay on C S Pierce on this blog as it seems the easiest thing to do. I'm not sure if my essay is any more understandable than the original, but I know from writing it that I mostly understand the original! Good luck if you attempt to get through it. I suggest not reading it in Blogger as it is fairly long. Long live copy and paste...

Cafe #12: Cafe Sienna

Location: 2/402 Chapel Street, South Yarra
Date: Thursday, 01 March, 2007, 7.30pm
Coffee: $3.30(!!!!), very good (Dimattina coffee)
Book: Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (T.S. Eliot)

I was at university all day today. When I finally called it a day I decided I would get off the train at Malvern to see what was there. I didn't see much that looked interesting from the train, though, so I wnet another stop and got off at Armadale instead. I walked to High Street, which was lengths of ritzyness - galleries, umparket houseware and fashion, lots of shops selling wedding dresses. But, alas, no open cafes. I walked to Malvern Road, down a wide street playing host to some rather excessively large houses, some quite old. Malvern Road is simply a big thoroughfare, so I caught the tram through Prahran and got off at the intersection of Chapel Street.

Cafe Sienna is a large, light wood floored cafe, open on two sides and spilling out onto the enclosed sidestreet sidewalk. The tables and chairs, also yellowy wood, are arranged loosely diagonally throughout the space. There is a deep greeny-blue section of wall made from mosaic-sized tiles at the entrance, hanging, long, red glass lamps over the cafe counter perpindicular to the entrance and counter separating off the pizza oven at the back; wood-slatted wall baskets of bread loaves following and wall boxes of wine and spirits behind the cafe counter. There are several wandering waitstaff in, naturally, all black.

Today was the first day of my Semiotics and Poststructuralism class. It is a fourth/fifth year undergraduate course, which is why, I suppose, there is an exam. I hadn't realised. I am the only Master's student. The other five are getting started on their Honours thesis. It is a much more gender-balanced class than my other. Probably there are more girls than boys. It was a slightly daunting first class. I came out feeling like I had made myself seem a bit dim. The undergrads, though much younger than me, have read a lot more theory. The seminar ran more like a lecture than a discussion, with the tutor explaining summarising concepts rather than encouraging discussion. I tried asking questions about C.S. Peirce's theory but was met with surprise that I hadn't hear od him before since he is American. I was told his theory is too complicated to explain and I should go read it. What happened is that I had done the wrong reading for the class. There is actually a course book - a compendium of photocopied chapters - which I hadn't realised. I guess the readings online are supplementary. The Peirce readings in the course book were much less difficult than the Freadman chapters I had read.

I spent my time in the library reading Peirce and I think I am getting my head around it. Some of his writings are fairly easy to understand, while others, the ones about how signs work, are much more idfficult. But I was getting somewhere today - I may put a little essay online about what I understand if anyone is interested - I'm writing the thing for my own benefit. I'll give you a link if I do.

Yesterday's critical theory class was great - just like I remember! It was a true seminar style with lots of discussion, me dominating. Luckily there was another talker, another Master's student who had a couple quite intelligent sounding things to say (though I couldn't tell if they were his own words/ideas or poached). I don't usually have intelligent sounding things to say - only to write. And I don't think I write so that they sound as intelligent as they are: other people, male usually, have much more elegant, formal, metaphorical words for the same idea. My words, possibly, are more accurate in their less floweriness. Theirs are more memorable and aha-like.

In any case, it was a good class discussion in response to Harold Bloom. A couple of other students piped up occasionally as well.

Cafe #11: TenRen's Tea Time

Location: Swanston Street, near Little Collins
Date: Sunday, 25 February, 2007, 10.20pm
Meal: $8.80 - excellent

This is a jelly tea establishment that also serves fake meat! It is difficult to find cafes open in the city at this time of night, though maybe I'm not looking in the right place. Starbuck's is open, and McDonald's and Subway and Chinese and Vietnamese restaraunts, and kebab/pizza joints. And bars. I passed over Max Brenner's as I passed by on my way out of Melbourne Central, which in hindsight was probably dumb. But fake curried meat is healthier than an overload of chocolate. And the place is a good find. And the cafe search brought me a lot of extra walking.

I have been hanging out with Ann. We took the train to St Kilda and ate steamed vegetable dim sims on the beach and had drinks (red wine for me) at a restaraunt/bar. I spent all of this morning trawling through job websites and sent off a few cover letters and resumes. I decided Sundays will be my day off - no uni work on Sundays at all.

Mmm, the food has just arrived and it looks beautiful. Just like meat in curry sauce. I still find that uncanny. In addition to a small white square heaping bowl of meat, I was also brought a bowl of rice and a three-dished tray of fried tofu skin, warm marinated lettuce and salad bits. Yum.

I had a bit of a meltdown on Friday. I was reading a very difficult article for my Semiotics and Poststructuralism class that I barely understood. Anne Freadman (so glad she's a lady, as she is proof that women can be just as abstractly smart as men) explaning the theory of C.S. Pierce on the system of signs. This theory is so difficult that it took Pierce 20 years of revising to sort it out. The theory has something to do with trichotomy in how signs are meaningful. Signs are either an icon, an index or a symbol and meaning is made from the interaction of those types of symbols (an icon is represention of something that may or may not exist - the example in the text is a centaur, which is mythical; an index points to or situates - the example is a weathercock - something that exists; and a symbol directly stands in for something that exists - a word is a symbol). At least I think, something like that. Also, signs are not just language, but also mathematical and Pearce's theory comes out of logic. That's about as much as I can attempt to explain.

Here is a lovely quote from the text: "The argument is a representamen which does not leave the interpretant to be determined as it may by the person to whom the symbol is addressed, but separately represents what is the interpreting representation that it is intended to determine. This interpreting representation is, of course, the conclusion."

Totally clear, right? Yeah, so while reading the Freadman articles I was feeling like maybe I'm not smart enough to ace this degree after all. I am reminding myself that I might understand the theory better in its original (ie reading Pierce himself) and as it relates to a theoretical tradition and if it seemed interesting enough or relevant for me to pursue. At the moment I can't figure out how theorising these exactitudes of something so difficult it can't be explained actually affects overall how we understand things. Though I suppose the question of whether the notation involved in language and mathematics are actually comparable systems could be interesting.

Pondering all this, I came up with a good definition for (postgraduate) study: A process whereby a student learns to figure out whether she is confused or the theorist she is reading is confused.

Kirsten was the lucky one to get my near-to-tears email. I am okay now. It is not good for me to be so much on my own. When I am alone all day and evening I can take myself too seriously.
Meanwhile I'm reading Saussure and next to Pierce he is a breath of fresh air - someone who writes to be clearly understood. I can really engage with Saussure as I cannot simply accept all of the the bases on which he builds his theories. For example, “language is a system of pure values which are determined by nothing except the momentary arrangement of its terms.” I don't think language has to do with values at all and I feel sure that its "terms" are determined by more than a momentary arrangement. If language is only momentary how can there be any continuous "value" (meaning)?

Also I feel that Saussure has maybe been instrumental in solidifying the structuralist binary thing, which I hate so much (I love Wikipedia - it's so much easier to read that and find out that I probably am actually into dialectics and am also probably post-structuralist than reading theory itself). Saussure writes that a meaning of a word is determined by its relation to its opposite. And once you start throwing the word "value" around indiscriminately, you can see how one might get man (good)/woman (bad) or dark (bad)/light (good) or white (good)/black (dark). My problem, though, is what happened to child, baby, hermaphrodite, trangendered or dawn, dusk, halflight or blue, green, red, pink and grey? Words are not in opposition to each other - they complement each other.

On Friday I went to uni. I meant to go to a seminar on communities using soundscape to promote environmentalism (or something like that) but I didn't time the trip correctly and arrived on campus too late. I did, however, get to the library and borrow a few books - Saussure, Lacan and a collection of writing about Weber and rationalism. Since I was already out and about, I got off the train at Carnegie,to see what Melbourne's Carnegie is like. It was alright. Cafes and shops and such, but not spirited like Balaclava. However, I did have a glass of white wine at an awesome cafe that I'd like to go back to. It was big and blueish with little pictures lining the wall eye-height - framed cards, sketches, paintings, collages, all sorts of interesting little bits and pieces. There were huge heavy wooden tables and a courtyard out back. The cafe is called Santucci's and it is on 94 Koornang Road. Maybe I'll take my journal there one day soon and write it up properly!

Cafe #10: Cafe Trevi

Location: 294-296 Lygon St, Carlton
Date: Thursday, 22 February 2007, 9.50pm
Coffee: $3.00, latte - excellent
Reading: Interpretation as Pragmatics

This is a restaraunt, really. Pizza, calzone... Hmmm, should try a calzone some time. The place has an old-fashioned, elderly type feel to it, with speckle tile floor, lacquered wood tables, black vinyl chairs with rounded back panels, wood panelled walls, a bar down the side, pizza ovens in the back right quarter and framed football jerseys on the walls. A pleasant people hum is all around. There are large cakes in the front window and a blue and pink neon sign. A short distance from my table there is a line of four short black containers on the floor, flush with the wall, catching air conditioner drips.

Erin and Duncan left for New Zealand this morning. I attended a little "reception" for the commencing postgrads in the Critical and cultural theory department. There are 10 or 12 or so of us, only three women and only three (I think) Masters students. My superviser, who is also the graduate convenor, seems lovely, smile-prone and concerned for everyone. The Head of the Department, a youngish woman, was there as well and she also seems enthusaistic. Other students are doing Phds and Masters on creating inter-faith dialogue (or something bringing religions together), Houllebec, and, well, that's all I remember. While I was entering an elevator next to one of the other women, young, also a Masters student, I mentioned to her, that we seemed outgendered, but she didn't much respond to the comment. Later, the other woman, older, said to me she had been waiting for the two of us (other females) to arrive (I was late). I think i'll like her.

So I am now enrolled and underway. My first class is next Wednesday - Critical Theory: A Survey. I opted for a 9.00am course on Thursday, Semiotics and Poststructuralism, because I want to learn those concepts well, rather than the other course choice, also on Wednesday so much more convenient on Walter Benjamin on violence. I hope I didn't make a mistake - not only will I have to wake up at 7.00am to get there on time, but the reading looks tough: Foucault and Lacan and Kristeva and Deleuze and such. Mostly I am familiar with these theorists, but not properly. The 5500 essay topic choices are full on and there is also a 2000 word presentation to be marked on and a 1500 word exam, which can be taken home.

I still haven't properly checked out the campus. I spent too much time waiting in line for that. The student union building is pretty institutional looking and there was no air conditioning in the office where the "reception" was held. Tomorrow I will go to a seminar at 5.00pm and check out the library beforehand.

I did lots of reading today - finished a Harold Bloom chapter that is reading for my first class. It pissed me off. Bloom thinks writers who want to be canonised want to be immortal, that reading does not lead to social change or make anyone a better person, that literary theory destroys literature by not appreciating its aesthetic purpose, and he hates the people who want to 'open up' the canon because, you know, a black female writer doesn't write well enough to deserve to be there. She's not Shakespeare! Fuckwit.

I did some vaccuming, cleaned the toilet and shower and took a walk with Ann. I'm going to move in with her. Probably next weekend.

Cafe #9: Melbourne Central Station Food Court

Date: Sunday, 18 February, 2007, 3.10pm
Location: Melbourne Central Station, Melbourne
Ice cream: $3.70 - one scoop waffle cone, my favourite

I intended to find a tucked away cafe on my return from galivanting about the southeastern suburbs, but on my way out of Melbourne Central I saw a Baskin Robbins sign. A Baskin Robbins sign means one thing to me: peanut butter chocolate ice cream. This is a flavour difficult to find down under, outside of the purveyors of 31 flavours, as Australians don't have the same relationship to peanut butter as Americans do. Those Australians, however, who have discovered Reeses peanut butter cups are hooked for life.

Last night was a quiet night. I made Erin dinner - Mexican beans (canned), stir fried capsicum and spring onion, avocado, Cheddar cheese, rocket and sour cream on crunchy corn tortillas (I added mushrooms to my mix). We also went out for gelato, though the gelato bar was out of the jasmine flavour that Erin particularly wanted me to try and particularly wanted to eat herself. She was very annoyed and I had green apple and walnut flavours instead. The green apple was candy-flavour green apple but the walnut was goodly nutty. Still, not like Italy's gelato.

Today I attempted one incarnation of possible commuting combinations from Abbotsford to Monash. I took the train to Jolimont from Victoria Park, walked to Richmond and took the train to Malvern, then changed to the Pakenham line. All up it took me about an hour and fifteen minutes, and I have to add on the 10 minute bus ride from Huntingdale station to Monash campus. It probably wouldn't take quite that long because I'm pretty sure I didn't walk the most direct route to Richmond station across the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground, for the Americans). I had trouble reading the map - barely-there dotted line paths with no street names... In any case, I don't think the walk saves any time compared with taking the train all the way into Flinders Street Station and coming back out again on the other line.

On the way back from Huntingdale station I hopped off the train at around 4.30pm at Windsor to view another sharehouse. Another lovely renovated house with shiny hardwood floors and whitewashed walls and a new kitchen and bathroom. This one had the added bonus of being full of bookshelves and books. One of the housemates knew me from lip radio (she was a guest presenter on one show) and recognised me from TINA. She had been an English major. Both girls worked in publishing - for Penguin. (Hmm, handy...) The other, whom I didn't talk to much because another girl was there checking out the house as well, had studied theatre and art history. So it all sounds like a good match in theory, but I knew it was too good to be true. The girls were a bit over the whole interviewing thing, as, frankly, was I, so the talk didn't exactly flow and I didn't stay very long. They had already seen around 25 people.

It's another hot, hot, hot day - I've been drinking rather than eating - 'til now.