Kochi, formerly Cochin, was my first stop in India. I arrived late and woke to unexpected quiet. Preconceptions of bustling, burly India were subverted by a solar-panel corruption strike. Wandering the empty backstreets I ended up on a nearly deserted beach. It was covered in all sorts of fascinating objects, so I started an inventory.
Incandescent light bulbs, unbroken: 3
Single thongs in various states of disrepair: 57
Plant matter (kg est): 988
Roma tomatoes, firm but ripe: 0.5
Red onion: 1
Goat carcass: 1
Glass bottles with lids: 14
Glass bottles without lids: 38
Plastic bottles: 21
Messages in bottles: 0
Boys teaching pet dogs to swim: 14
White Labradors resisting swimming lessons: 2
Coconut hulls: 67
Spent WD40 cans: 1
Petrol cans, with lids: 9
Miscellaneous lids: 72
Empty laundry liquid packet: 1
Plastic laundry basket, unbroken: 1
Unidentifiable plastic particles: 6,347
Styrofoam, assorted chunks: 5,217
Lolly wrappers: 245
Funeral sari: 1
Colombo crows: 7
Oversized seagulls: 19
Spare rickshaw parts, rusted: 33
Scooter seat cover, some water damage: 1
Dinner is served at Open Table #8. Thanks Anthony.
Back in February Georgia and I were drinking wine on the verandah. We had both just arrived back in Melbourne, and were comparing travel stories and bank balances. She was starting to freelance as a designer and I was still looking for the right PhD; we were both staring down the barrel of fairly grim financial futures. Somewhere in-between the third and fourth glasses, and cabbages and kings, we got onto Soppa för Värme. Linking food waste streams with hungry mouths makes so much sense we naively agreed that we would replicate it in Melbourne.
Two broke sheilas with limited experience in food or community engagement. We called in some friends and started planning. Our vision needed surplus food, a welcoming venue, and local marginalised people. We started talking to council, local assisted housing residents, visiting possible sites, liaising with food organisations and ducking out for clandestine late night poster missions. And somehow we managed to create the organic, beautiful, accessible Open Table.
During the four months I was involved I had many beautiful experiences: from making firm friends with people I wouldn’t ordinarily feel comfortable chatting to, witnessing the love and energy that complete strangers poured into the project, and the way that the vision bought our motley band together. Every moment was uplifting.
The response was wonderful, you can read about our latest successes here (my favourite is being named as ‘one of the ‘hottest restaurants to eat in right now’ alongside Movida.) There is every reason to believe that Open Table will continue to share food and grow community spirit.
This is not a story about how much food goes to waste, or how important inclusive community is, or that many hands make light work. Even though these things are true. For me, this is a story about not waiting until you have a stable job, house, income; not waiting for the perfect moment. This is a story about diving in and doing something that you believe in. Carpe that Diem.
The gang: Liam, Georgia, Anthony, me and Viv. Thanks Viv’s parents.
I wrote a piece for The Conversation recently, about my MPhil jeans research. It was really interesting to fit my 45,000 word thesis into 800 words (the editors are strict!). The article had a great response: over 300 shares on facebook, 50 tweets and 30 comments – I love hearing about how different people make sense of this work, some of my favourite comments below.
Julie Leslie “I have to admit I enjoy freshly cleaned and sun warmed-clothes. I think I would rather go with out the tele than not be able to wash my clothes.”
Lydia Isokangas “Making necessary changes that benefit the environment seem far too hard to implement for the individual e.g. cycling instead of driving, installing solar panels etc. Sooner or later it impacts on our accustomed lifestyles and everyone has something that’s very difficult to give up. On the other hand, I guess that for many of us, doing less washing, drying and ironing would be a blessing and could be some very low hanging fruit that we could encourage our friends and family to adopt as well. Plus it saves money and time!”
William Hollingsworth “Lets get real, the western world from my experience has a totally self destructive ethos when it comes to cleaning. Nature is self cleaning. We weren’t born with showers (very bad for washing our natural oils away and the detergents used for washing should be left for washing machinery).We build no immunity in a sterile or perceived clean world. Washing has become an aesthetic not scientific exercise.”
You can read the entire article (and comments) on The Conversation.
The stars are getting higher and harder, the air more acrid at the back of my throat and the flame tree fringes are starting to flash amber: Autumn is finally coming after the longest, most glorious Summer I have ever spent in Melbourne.
After the intensity of my thesis, and subsequent writing and conferencing, this Summer has been all about getting out of my mind and immersing in the physical and social world. I started working as a postie delivering mail everyday, lived in a beautiful mansion with 7 of the coolest people I know, started Open Table with my friends, hosted couch surfers, gone to yoga so much my teacher calls me rubber back and have not read a single academic book or paper.
During this time I have been writing short bursts in my diary, and in the tradition of Mary Schminch, I’m eschewing fears of being a self-indulgent twat and sharing them… Starting from… now:
• Enjoy life as a series of beautiful moments.
• Tell your friends that you love them as often as you can.
• Tell bad jokes frequently. Try and remember the punch-line before launching in. If you can’t remember the punch line laugh anyway.
• Remember that you are going to die one day. Live like that day is tomorrow.
• Don’t be cavalier with traffic. Bike vs Car scuffles have predictable casualties.
• Wear brightly coloured socks. It will make your colleagues smile.
• Look at people in the eyes. Ask questions. Listen. Really understanding someone is a deeply satisfying human experience.
• Caring about status is a colossal waste of time: people who you think you are too cool for may be the ones who open your mind the most; people who you think are too cool for you may actually really want to spend time with you.
• Don’t waste time curating photos of yourself on facebook. The popular girls from high school are too busy constructing heir own digital farces to care about yours.
• Sleep with your phone on flight-mode.
• Call in sick and go to the beach when the weather is good.
• Make jam. Label the burnt batches ‘caramelised’. Give the good batches to your neighbours.
• Write your neighbours letters. Try not to get issued with restraining orders.
• People get sick. People die. People will tell you they have cancer via facebook. This will be horrible, but at least you are now pre-warned.
• Cook for your housemates when they least expect it. Clean up at least 10% more mess than you made.
• Read poetry.
• Sing out loud while riding your bike. By the time people realise what you are doing, you will be too far away to see their reactions.
• Kiss like you are in love. Fall in love. Enjoy every beautiful moment. Always say good-bye, like it is the last time that you will ever see your lover.
• Things never turn out how you imagine, but what ever happens somehow manages to be exactly right for you, right now. Don’t waste time cursing serendipity.
• Don’t waste time dismissing everything that ever came from religion. Intelligent people worked for centuries on religious texts, they can be a useful short cut to living a good life.
• Think about what living a good life means for you. Experiment with the contribution you can make to the world.
• Watching Beyoncé videos is a valid contribution. So is ‘dancing’ along.
• Email people that you admire. Tell them why. Beyoncé writes back to fan mail.
• Keep your possessions to a minimum. Things only slow you down.
• Practice non-violence. Be vegetarian.
• Throw wild vegetarian dinner parties on Tuesday nights.
• Drink wine on the veranda.
• Text your parents at 3am to tell them that you love them. They probably already think you have a few screws loose.
• Have a chat with the homeless lady outside Aldi. Do not give her beer in a glass bottle.
• Shave your head at least once in your lifetime. Know that you probably won’t look as good as Natalie Portman. But at least you tried.
• Remember that you are not morally superior to anyone. Even if you are vegetarian and look like Natalie Portman with a shaved head. Humility is so hot right now. And always.
• See things from as many perspectives as you can. Make friends with people who have different backgrounds to you. They see the world in interesting and different ways.
• Host couch surfers.
• ‘Them’ is an illusion. There is only ‘Us’. The more strangers you meet, the more you know this to be true.
• Know that helping others is the only way to be happy.
• Never pretend to have the answers. Even if you do, life is much more fun lived in experimentation.
Thank you for indulging these brain blurts, I loved every minute of writing. Like Mary Schminch I absolutely encourage everyone to try writing a personal essay. It is a brilliant way to spend a Sunday morning.
Predictably I’m off to India to practice Ashtanga Yoga. I am still unsure about what my future holds after that. I know that my PhD is lurking there somewhere and I am nearly ready to embrace it with my newly flexible arms.
Is thinking about the world in abstract, generalised terms useful? What is the point of spending years arguing over nuanced and sophisticated understanding of society? Does applied theory exist? To make theory ‘work’ do you have to add too many factors, caveats and contextual consideration to actually be generalised? Does anyone, even elite professors, really understand theory? Is ‘understanding’ theory valuable?
Since starting this academic caper I am constantly surprised at how much I really don’t know. There’s more research after a PhD?!? It takes six months to publish an article?!? The study on Balinese cocktailology got funding?!? The more I know, the more I know I don’t know, yet the unknowing cultivates an appetite for knowledge and to me it seems that having a whole life to explore wisdom frontiers is one of the most luxurious affordances of our world.
The pursuit of wisdom so far has been signposted with some very inspiring characters, and after an immersive encounter with several during last week’s Beyond Behaviour Change symposium at RMIT I am feeling tipsy with ideas and my fingers are champing to spill impressions.
Beyond Behaviour Change is easily the most intimidating conference I have ever had a paper accepted at. Twenty-five world leading social theorists from Australia, Denmark, America and England presenting on sustainability transitions. Elizabeth Shove, Yolande Strengers, Gordon Walker, Cecily Maller and Theodore Schatzki together for three intense days. These thinkers are inspiridating in myriad ways, not only for their proliferation of seminal social concepts since before I was born, but also for their fresh and relevant worldviews. During the course of the symposium I felt humbled and encouraged by the interest, humility and patience that the big kids in social practice theories extended to each other, and the constructive feedback lavished on the younger generation of researchers.
I was also happily awed at the positive outlook and the humility of these doyens, outside the professional realm. The more important the person, the less important and blustery the demeanour. Theodore Schatzki (pictured) epitomises this; one of the most widely cited social practice theorist, he was perhaps the most unassuming, generous and encouraging with his comments. This is an impression I cherish, and hope like him, to both contribute in meaningful ways to sustainability discourse and also inspire the same confidence and motivation in future researchers being born today.
One of the things that impressed me most about Europe is the cosmopolitan lifestyle. Cafés on every corner, parks, bike-lanes, families outside – the cities feel so vibrant and alive.  I think one of the reasons that this is possible is the urban density; mid-rise apartments mean that more families can live closer together, and support more small shops and restaurants and thus fuel the vibrancy.  Density also means more frequent public transport, more hospitals, more libraries, and more schools within walking distance.
Some would say that living in an ‘ant-hill’ is unAustralian and grumbling about pollution move further out, clinging to the house and yard dream/fallacy.  However the suburban lifestyle is drifting further away from utopia with limited public transport and longer commutes leading to lack of access to everyday conveniences, community facilites, less free time, higher rates of obesity and can be extremely isolating.
After seeing how dynamic, clean and healthy city living can be I am all for increasing density in Australia. Â Next time an apartment block is proposed nearby, don’t be a nimby, just think ‘Awesome more small shops, more bike-lanes, public transport, schools, hospitals, libraries and public spaces!’
If you get super excited about it you can email your local member for urban planning. Or even  liveable.cities@infrastructure.gov.au to let them know what you think.
Here are some of my European apartment living photos.
“Why Wash Cold? It’s simple. Save Energy. Reduce CO2. Save Money.”
– Parsons Fashion Marketing and Communication Design Students 2011
An amazing student video that tackles some environmental issues around washing. Contains nudity.
Wash Cold from 560 Parsons Fashion on Vimeo.
At the beginning of the year I took a series of photographs of laundry aisles all around Melbourne. Â I had totally forgotten that I had them until Charlotte told me about a series of photos she took of supermarket lighting. These photos were taken during my fascination with cleanliness in Australian everyday life.
