fatvegan

We went to Villawood yesterday. It was good fun. I really like spending time there. Everyone is all bunged in together and too bored I think to be rascist. So there are Indian guys babysitting Vietnamese children, and Albanian fat guys trying to force-feed skinny Cambodian journalists. And everyone is nice and friendly to us.

I brought some Vietnamese food to my Cambodian friends yesterday. They seemed to like it, though they'd already eaten so they didn't eat it while I was there. They said there was a freezer and a microwave inside, so they'd eat it tomorrow. But they kept saying "very thankyou" and they walked to the gate to say goodbye to us, so I think they thought they would enjoy it.

I met a lovely woman called Heather who goes to St Johns, but I've never spoken to before. She works for an international organisation that does micro-finance. She was cool. She told me a about a youth ambassador position in East Timor doing micro-finance projects. It's exactly the sort of stuff I'm going to uni to learn to do. But it's about 3 years too early, and kind of conflict with going to uni at all. It's a bit sad. Probably the East Timorese will be all set by the time I finish uni and there won't be any more work to do. But I guess that's the risk with making that sort of thing your whole purpose. We sorts would probably all be wise to have backup careers just in case we one day accidentily build a fair-dinkum utopia.

All I ever learn from love was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you. Jeff Buckley

I told Heather my idea about making a micro-finance ING Direct thing. At first she didn't understand, but finally decided it was a good idea. I might write a proposal and put it on my site. Or something.

Mr Howard said part of the problem was that the federal government had no say in the chairman's appointment.

"It's a bit rich. We fund (the ACCC but) we don't have a vote," he said.

There's a quote from John Howard in the paper, about appointment of the new chairman of the ACCC. He isn't supposed to have any real say in the decision, but I get the sense that everyone is meant to vote for the person he points at anyway. This time the trade union sorts haven't listened to him and have refusen to take his side. John's quite upset, wondering what the world coming to, when scungy state level leaders get to vote for the chairman of a federally-funded commission. Surely whoever pays for something should have control over that something. Sweat-shop labour is a good example. Why should this be any different?

"I think it's a pretty poor thing that the federal government funds but we have no effective say in the choice of a chairman."

Surely he can see how silly this sounds. By their very nature, stable democracies need to have pies that the government doesn't have any fingers in. Does he believe that the federal government should have a say in the outcome of judicial cases. You could equally say "We fund the judicial system, why shouldn't we decide who gets off."

We went to Villawood yesterday. I met some nice Cambodian people. I said I'd try and bring them some Vietnamese food, because they never have any inside the prison.

We took a lot of dates and some nuts. They nuts were very popular.