Cafe #32: The Terrace

Date: February, 2008, 4.15pm
Location: Melbourne Botanic Gardens
Coffee: $3.20 - latte, average
Reading: On Beckett

This is a dark cafe resembling a corporate cafeteria all beige and grey. The food is expensive and its outside surrounds lovely, but it is cold, cold, cold, cold for summer. It depresses me.

Despite the chill at my back, I walked through the very large garden with its multiple swathes of green grass. There are ponds and streams and miles of bitumen. The garden is much more public than the New York gardens - no entry fees or security staff and many wedddings (poor cold brides).

There is a free Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concert at the outdoor stage tonight. I am pondering hanging around for it. It has been a long, long time since I've seen a classical music concert but I don't think this one consists of music I am particularly keen on.

And here is how I plan to spend an evening getting work done and then don't. There is always tomorrow.

I don't have much to report. I've been working in E's office, reading grants. Her workplace is lovely and relaxed and friendly but I am over the full-time thing. It makes me tired and hence not very productive. What I do like is the Friday after-work drinks.

I've gotten what could be my ideal job - 20 hours a week working from home, project managing, community consulting and report writing for one of the secretariats that report to the Office for Women. I can't wait to work from home. At the office I am hungry and snacky all the time. It can't be healthy. And I'll get flown around the place for meetings. First off - Sydney. Hopefully I'll manage to put full effort into the thesis at the same time.

Anyway, cafe closing so should go.