The Big Issue

The first problem is getting here. The second is getting permission to enter. Then asylum seekers living in the community must find somewhere to stay. Greg Foyster meets a group of people constantly on the move.

SORIYAN SPENT  a year and a half travelling on trains to nowhere. He would wake up early, haul himself off a bench at Cheltenham Station, in Melbourne’s southern suburbs, and shuffle, tired and cold, onto the six o’clock train. Dressed in jeans, sneakers and a red-and-black jacket – a gift from a friend – he would stretch out on a row of seats and close his eyes while the suburbs whooshed past the windows.

He would spend three, four, five hours on the train, travelling on almost all the lines, passing all the stations. Craigieburn, Cranbourne, Sydenham, Glen Waverley, Lilydale, Pakenham – this 28-year-old man from India has criss-crossed the city more times than most locals. At night he would return to Cheltenham or Watergardens Station, in the city’s northwest, and lie on a bench, a backpack under his head for a pillow, a brown blanket over his body for warmth. Sometimes, neighbourhood kids would come and abuse him, shouting racial taunts or trying to grab his bag. Sometimes, he would be left alone. At dawn the cycle would start again: another day riding the rails to pass the time; another night chasing sleep at a train station.

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Eureka Street

I WAS born in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. I was born in Kashmir, between India and Pakistan. I was born in Iran. I was born in Iraq. I was born in Sri Lanka.

I worked as an architect, building up my business. I worked as a negotiator, liaising with the government. I worked as an engineer. I worked as a veterinarian. I worked as an accountant.

I am a member of the Hazara ethnic group. I am opposed to the government’s occupation of Kashmir. I am a firm believer in women’s rights. I am a whistleblower for government corruption. I am an ethnic Tamil.

I was held down while I watched my father beaten to death. I was kidnapped by the government and taken to an interrogation room. I was knocked out with the butt of a rifle. I was shot three times. I was arrested and put in a camp.

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The Sydney Morning Herald, My Career

“We’re going to focus collectively as a group to streamline our growth so we can hit the ground running with a win-win. You know what I mean?’’

No. I have absolutely no idea. I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat in a meeting, heard a manager regurgitate buzzwords onto the boardroom table and then nodded as if what he said was perfectly understandable.

Enough!

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New Matilda

SIVAN describes himself as a “Tamil gentleman”. With his combed-down hair, tucked-in shirt and polished brown shoes, he looks every part the white collar worker. Except no one will give him work.

“I am a person with degrees and qualifications. I have been given work rights, but I can’t find work — not even part-time work,” he tells me.

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YEN (cover story)

CHANCES are you’re reading this magazine with your mobile nearby, switched on and ready for action. The second it beeps your attention will be yanked from this page, pulled by the invisible cord that connects us to friends and family, work and the web. It’s an electronic lifeline that nourishes with texts and tweets, news and gossip. It’s infiltrated every aspect of our lives and, according to some experts, it’s driving us to distraction.

So if your mobile beeps, just ignore it. Better yet, switch it off. Because for the next five minutes, we’re going to look at how technology saps your focus and what you can do to get it back.

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The Sydney Morning Herald

A HALF-EATEN sushi roll. Paperwork stacked in different-sized piles like a bar chart measuring inefficiency. A computer desktop strewn with the debris of some digital cyclone. These are the first signs of Obsessive Compulsive Multitasking (OCM), a disorder that affects hundreds of thousands of clerical workers around the country.

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The Big Issue

THREE o’clock at the office. The sounds of clerical work reverberate through densely packed cubicles. The familiar clackety-clack of fingertips on keyboards, the laboured breathing of printers under the duress of impending deadlines, and the mechanical slurping of a hungry paper-shredder form a percussion track that’s been playing since morning. Among it all sits a young woman, attuned to the rhythm of industry. She types, files, tends to chirping phones. She’s a typical office worker in a typical office, except for one important distinction: she’s not getting paid.

Talulah is a volunteer; one of a growing number of laid-off workers looking for something to fill the empty pages in their yearly planners. You might expect the recently redundant to be confirmed misanthropes, oozing spite from every pore. But, in some cases, the opposite has occurred.

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WAtoday

WITH all the hullabaloo about the Kindle™ and the iPad™, it’s easy to overlook the e-reader’s centuries-old rival. But the Book™ is alive and well, with a sleek new design, lightweight packaging and wireless mobility to suit today’s busy bibliophile.

I have to admit being a little baffled by the Book™ at first. No matter how hard I looked, I just couldn’t find the ON button. After much fumbling I managed to start the device, and all it took was turning the front cover from left to right. No loading screen, sound effect or grand hurrah. It was an elegant beginning to what proved to be a charming piece of technology.

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New Matilda

CAN newspapers get any more desperate? Since Apple launched its newest bit of consumer electronics a week ago, newspaper editors everywhere have dedicated acres of space to the gadget, hoping to hold the attention of “tech-savvy” younger readers.

The day after the world’s least aesthetically pleasing dresser, Steve Jobs, released the world’s most aesthetically pleasing hunk of metal and glass, the iPad, the Age ran four articles in the “Focus” section, the Herald Sun ran a double-page spread asking if this product will “change the world” and the Australian ran three reports, an editorial and an online survey.

Overkill, anyone?

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Trespass Magazine

HI! I’m Greg, I was born in 1983, which kind of makes me Gen Y. Being Gen Y is really cool, ‘cos we’re ‘technologically savvy’ (I just looked up ‘savvy’ on my iPhone dictionary app) and ‘globally aware’ (I’m going to South-East Asia next year), and we’re the most ‘materially endowed’ generation, like, ever.

It’s true, I read it in The Age on Saturday, even though I didn’t finish the whole article ‘cos I had to check Facebook and tweet my friends to let them know what I was up to, just in case they were wondering. And then I got the BIGGEST laugh when I went back to the newspaper ‘cos the journo wrote that Gen Yers have ‘nomadic online tendencies’ and I thought, that is totally me right now.

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The Words We Found: The Best Writing From 21 Years of Voiceworks, Hardie Grant 2009

I KNOW two serious meditation practitioners. Half an hour after the first told me meditation gave him a calm and balanced mind, I heard that the second had been committed to a mental hospital.

Passing paramedics spotted my flatmate meditating on the footpath of Swanston Street and called the police. Recently he had been suffering from psychosis tinged with Buddhist altruism and had come to the conclusion that moving through the world ‘killed molecules’. He would suddenly freeze, mid-stride, to avoid colliding with nearby atoms. When the police found him he was rooted to the sidewalk, gawking at his own shadow.

I didn’t find out about his episode until returning from an interview with Mr Siladasa, the chairman of Melbourne Buddhists Centre, days later. During the session Siladasa, a respected neurologist, had spoken eloquently about the benefits of meditation. He was lucid, logical, sane and happy. How could the same technique have contributed to both mental states?

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Visible Ink

AFTER passing through throngs of poor Chinese outside the station and negotiating queues of rich Chinese in the ticket hall, you and I finally make it onto the train platform, which is crowded with both groups. Men, women and children are packed so tightly together they have become one seething mass of human flesh.

I imagine this entity as a person who is both male and female, old and young. The person is wearing a rich man’s jacket and a schoolgirl’s dress. Begrimed beggar’s fingers protrude from sleeves adorned with gold cufflinks. One of the person’s thighs is brown and cracked, desiccated like a dried-up riverbed, and the other is milky-white and youthful. The person’s skin is wrinkled under the chin and taut on the cheeks.

A train screeches into the station. We become swept up in the tide of bodies clambering for the carriage door. Somehow, we keep our heads above the surface of jostling shoulders, paddle past the flailing limbs and make it onto the train without being crushed alive.

I look at your shocked expression and know what you’re thinking. I had the same thought the first time I found myself part of a desperate mob in China. How can there be this many arms and legs in the one place? This many kicking feet, jabbing elbows and clawing hands?

As we fight our way to the dining carriage I note that you have not yet complained about the constant shoving. I broach the subject, almost apologising on China’s behalf. Rudeness is a necessity here, I explain. With so many people competing for so few resources, one needs to be pushy to survive. Politeness is a luxury enjoyed in rich and roomy nations.

A boy scampers past carrying a bowl of steaming noodles. Suddenly he slips, sending pasta tendrils snaking across the linoleum floor. From the volume of his crying, I assume he won’t be getting another bowl tonight. I know that you have a spare noodle packet and, given the circumstances, I expect you to hand it to him. Instead, your head morphs into a carnival clown’s and the carriage booms with cackling.

That was an extract from the full story, available here.

Eureka Street

THE sun beats down upon the necks and arms of 200 people facing a brick building by the banks of Melbourne’s Yarra River. The rays don’t seem to worry the onlookers. The sun’s power is, after all, the reason they’re here.

The building houses Solar Systems, a company that was, until recently, developing a way to put sunlight to good use. A world leader in its field, the renewable energy start-up spent 15 years and $150 million designing and demonstrating a 154-megawatt solar farm in Mildura that would have produced electricity for 45,000 homes.

Then the dark day came.

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ON LINE Opinion

IT sounds strange, but the attacks on Indian students in Australia really should have made for boring headlines. Despite the media reports of “curry bashings”, the true culprit wasn’t prejudice bubbling to the surface, but policy buried deep in our bureaucracies. Laws and regulations are to blame, and they need to be subjected to the same scrutiny as the spineless thugs who punched, kicked and stabbed their way into the limelight.

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Crikey

ACCORDING to recent reports, the Brumby government plans to export brown coal to India. For those who don’t know, brown coal is one of the most emissions-intensive ways to generate electricity  — even more polluting than oil, gas or black coal. The Brumby government is desperate to capitalise on Victoria’s abundant coal reserves before a global emissions treaty or carbon price takes effect. After that happens, burning brown coal will be socially unacceptable and considerably more expensive.

But isn’t there a simpler way to offload the stuff? After all, how do most people get rid of a dodgy product in a hurry? They auction it on eBay, of course.

So that’s what I’ve done.

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Harvest

I’M a writer who can’t read. When I plunge into a novel, I don’t stay submerged in the fictional world for long. After a few minutes some snag in the text will deliver me back to the present, and I’ll find myself staring at the page, confused. Sometimes I’ll feel a sudden need to check my email or send a text message, watch television. Reading makes me restless, thirsty for fresh stimulation.

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New Matilda

STEP right up folks, and witness the amazing energy-producing properties of Chocolate-Coloured Fossilised Carbon! See how this ancient substance magically turns black and vanishes under increased temperature! Marvel as a beautiful Dioxide Mist materialises before your very eyes!

What will the Victorian Government come up with next to describe the process of burning brown coal?

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Crikey

ON Wednesday, while deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in India defending Australia’s dodgy colleges, foreign students were in Melbourne doing some campaigning of their own.

They gathered outside Parliament House, unfurled banners with the words “Fair Fares” and demanded transport concessions for all international and postgraduate students.

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The Age (A2 section)

IT’S a Chinese tale to gong the heart: two young lovers, taken before their time, are married in the grave. But beneath this story’s romantic surface rots a putrid secret. The couple never knew each other in life. He was a bachelor who died alone. She was a peasant from a neighbouring province who was murdered and then sold to his family as a sacrificial bride.

This is the macabre plot of minghun, Chinese afterlife marriage. Grief-clobbered parents, desperate for their dead son to escape the shame of eternal singledom, arrange for a female corpse to be buried next to him. They then marry the couple post mortem. She becomes his wife in the spirit world, his ghost bride.

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Page Seventeen

‘THIS burger is scrumptious Dad.’

At the time I didn’t really know what the words meant or what the repercussions were. But Dad did. He bolted upright, dragged me to the sink, scrubbed my mouth with soap and water and then picked up the phone.

‘Boy’s sick.’

‘Words.’

‘Take look.’

‘Tomorrow?’

Dad slammed the receiver and turned to face me.

‘Shut it,’ he said.

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Voiceworks

THE governors of the country with the largest population, longest wall, largest dam, biggest Buddha, longest sea-crossing bridge, highest railway, largest airport terminal and soon to be tallest tower (the Shanghai World Financial Centre) tend to take a single idea just a bit too far.

We’re all familiar with some of the schoolbook examples of Chinese single-mindedness. The Great Wall was a 2000-year-long obsession that cost millions of lives and made a better courier path than barricade. Then there was the Cultural Revolution from 1969 to 1976, when the entire population became possessed with the urge to modernise. Students tore about the country trashing temples, tearing up ancient texts and tormenting the elderly.

But few people know that this organised insanity also extends to the environment.

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The Age (travel section)

UNTIL I visited Linfen, a coalmining town in central China, I never considered black to be a colour. But in Linfen, where the sky is bluish black, the trees are greenish black, and the dirt is brownish black, black is more than just a colour. It’s an entire palette.

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