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back into blogging

Hawai'i was lovely. I hope to put up an album of some of my photos on my blog. There is something about islands which can be just so relaxing. I also feel that when I visit my parents in Tasmania. When you live & work on an island, it's a different matter, and the best holiday is sometimes to escape the island - whether it's going to the Mainland (the Big Island) or to a smaller island like Maria Island.

I haven't caught up on all of my blog reading, but I did notice Meredith's latest contribution on the librarian shortage debate.

There are a lot of positive things to be said about choosing librarianship as a career - but the hope that you'll be inundated with job offers for librarian positions after graduating, that's not one of them. It's also not a very good reason to choose a career, even if it were true. Imagine this job interview.

Interviewer: Tell me, how did you decide to choose librarianship as your career?
Job applicant: Well I used to think it would be totally boring to work in a library, but then I heard that there's going to be a shortage of librarians, so I thought I might as well give this gig a whirl. Gives me better odds, doesn't it?
Interviewer: Really? Don't you have any other reasons?
Job applicant: Oh, and I really like books. And reading ...

signing off for a short break

I’m taking a little break from this blog while I’m away in Hawaii. I'm looking forward to do nothing for a little while and recharging my batteries. I won’t be reading any blogs or do any blog related writing while I’m away. I expect to have internet access – after all I’m going to be based in Waikiki (but hope to spend a lot of time on the Windward coast of Oahu, exploring some of the hiking trails and the quieter beaches), but don’t expect much in the way of replies to emails. Don’t count on prompt comment and trackback moderation happening either, and anything that’s too heavy will go right into my too hard basket to be dealt with upon my return in a little over a week.

unsmiling passport photos, returning resident alien

How quickly one year passes! It's almost time for me to make my obligatory annual visit to the US to re-establish my US permanent residency status. Or as it's worded in officialese:

A permanent resident alien returning to the United States from a visit abroad of less than a year may apply for readmission  by presenting an Alien Registration Receipt Card ("green card") to the immigration authorities at a port of entry.
[Returning Resident Alien Leaflet, U.S. Department of State]

Even more scary is how quickly the past ten years have gone by. My Australian passport has expired after ten years and it's time for me to renew it. I have discovered that by law, my new passport photo must be unsmiling. I gather that smiles cause problems with new face scanning technologies, where scanners in the airport try to match the faces with the passport photos. Maybe unsmiling passport photos are also a lot more realistic, especially considering how most people feel at the end of a long-haul flight.

So, I'm going to be visiting Hawaii between the 9th and 15th of September. Hawaii doesn't have the reputation of being a cheap destination, but it's the cheapest US destination for me to reach from Australia. It's weird to think that for the time being, I have to go Hawaii once a year, but I'm also looking forward to having a little break.

I like living in Australia and think it was the right decision for me to return. I have no plans to move back to the US, but I also want to keep my options open. At least for the time being.

possibly luddite confessions

1. I’ve never bought or sold anything on eBay. On a couple of occasions, I have browsed eBay and have been amazed at the sort of things which can be found there. I hesitate for a few reasons, although now I think that most of my security concerns have been allayed. But all the same, I’m in no hurry to pick up another computer-related pastime.
2. I like to subscribe to the print version of my city’s daily newspaper. Yes, I also look at local newspapers online and even on my mobile phone, but I’ve learned that not everything is published in the electronic formats. There is a difference between reading online and reading in print. The good thing about reading the paper version is that you are not dependent upon headlines to decide whether or not you’ll read an article. It is a experience which is more open to serendipity, finding interesting things by chance and getting out of one’s ruts. When I subscribed to the Sydney Morning Herald, I never realized I was being entered into a competition – and I ended up winning a whole lot of furniture. Which was very welcome for me because I had to give away or sell cheaply all my American furniture, when I moved back to Australia, exactly one year ago today.
3. I prefer to use travel agents to book flights. I have travelled between Tasmania and Minnesota many times. For this complicated international flight, which would involve up to 3 different airlines and several legs, it was always much cheaper and easier to go through a travel agent than going directly to the airline or trying the travel sites. If it’s a simple trip and there’s a good special for booking on the web site, then I will take advantage of this, and now that I’m living in Sydney, I imagine that this will happen more often. But even so, I am very interested to see how travel agents cope in this new environment. Travel agents and librarians (and journalists too) are particularly affected by the disintermediation trends on the internet. I don’t say endangered, because it doesn’t have to be like that. I think that disintermediation has hit travel agents first and hardest, and I wonder if there are any lessons which librarians can learn from the experience of travel agents.