Conference day 2

Friday, 26 November 2004 (written 30 November 2004)

I awoke with no voice. Absolutely none. This, however, made it easy for me to get out of the apartment, since no one wanted to have a conversation with me. I met up with Chris and we set out to catch a bus. Having looked at the conference schedule, knowing what had happened the day before and Chris’ never having been to Australia nor seen Brisbane, she really wanted to go into the city at some point to explore. We got an early start so we could get back to the conference for lunch and the afternoon program. Kakali was chairing an afternoon sequence as well as delivering her own paper on decolonizing methodologies (huh what? Yeah, that’s what I said too.) so we wanted to make sure to see those.

Chris told me that Supriya had approached her the night before and asked what Chris thought of how the panel had gone. Chris said that she told Supriya she was disappointed that the times hadn’t been kept and that Lyn had spoken for 15 minutes. Supriya said that Lyn only spoke for five minutes, and Chris wasn’t going to argue with her. But, as I said to Chris, if she (Chris) spoke 7 minutes, Kakali 5, me 2, Dan 2, that makes 16 minutes. Once Lyn had finished, Supriya stated that we had only 20 minutes for questions. Out of a 55 minute session. So where did the other nearly 20 minutes go? Right.

We managed to get a bus going the proper direction this time, and I had instructed Chris, via whispers, to buy two tickets that would enable us unlimited rides on the bus and the ferry once we hit the city. See, I know stuff like this because I’ve been to Brisbane before. Chris said I was the “local” so I was again in charge of not getting us lost. We took the bus all the way in to the Queen Street station, and surfaced in the middle of the city. Looking at street names, I suddenly remembered Brisbane’s naming convention – male streets all run parallel to each other and perpendicular to female streets. Names, we’re talking. So Albert St. and George St. are parallel and they intersect Elizabeth St. and Victoria St. which are parallel to each other. Not that this helps you find your way around the city, but it’s interesting to know! We found a little café to get some breakfast and coffee. I thought I was starving, but after the food arrived, I had a few bites and just wasn’t hungry. Was I still feeling the ill effects of Wednesday night? Yuck. (I now think it was my current ailment coming on, but I didn’t know it at that point.) After breakfast, we wandered toward the river, passing a bookstore where I bought the book that Whale Rider is based on. Chris had suggested I read the book before seeing the movie, and promised it was a fast read. We walked through the botanical gardens, and down to one of the wharfs where we waited AGES for a ferry. Finally the right one came, and we boarded, bound for Southbank. We walked Southbank for an hour and a half. Most of it was as I remembered, but there was a beach section and rainforest walk that I’d never seen before; whether it’s new or I missed it, I don’t know. We stopped to get a cold drink. It was hot, but it was more the humidity and the fact that the air just didn’t move that made it so sweltering. We came upon the stadium exhibiting sculptures. This time, the collection of sculptures wasn’t nearly as phallic as last time! And that was pretty much it. Walked, talked (my voice was starting to come back a little bit), took pictures, savored the time, and then headed back to find a bus. We asked at the restaurant next door to the place we’d been the night before, and the woman suggested we go the opposite direction Chris and I instinctively thought to go. So we ignored her, and went the way we thought we should go. We were wrong. But, had we actually followed the woman’s directions, we would have completely missed the bus station, too, since we would have walked along the river too far. Luckily, we found the station, and our platform, and there was a bus for us coming along in ten minutes. Perfect.

Got back to the campus just after the huge lunch line had dissipated. We grabbed food and sat down on a bench to eat it. Tom came over and sat with us, but then another guy sat on his other side and Tom talked to him instead of us. (Not that I could talk, but whatever.) Chris and I did quick checks of e-mail on the Ecocentre Macs, and then went to the afternoon session. There were four papers being presented, including Dan’s and Kakali’s, and both Tom and Lyn were in the audience. There was some concern Dan would chafe under Kakali’s chairing and rigid timekeeping, but he was pretty good about it. Neither of the first two papers were groundbreaking. One was presented by the girl who had been rather obnoxious at dinner the night before, who carried her patronizing tone through her presentation. The next paper was a plea to continue modeling on paper instead of wholly within NVivo. I’m not sure quite what the big deal was. If you want to use paper, use paper! Then Dan’s paper. Dan got off to a rambling start, but was not helped by the fact that the people next door to us were being incredibly loud, and then were fighting us for the lights. We were in a “split” room, and apparently the people in the other half wanted the lights on, whereas we wanted them off… I felt rather badly for Dan in the midst of noise and light wars and trying to present his paper which really wasn’t geared for those in the audience. He was talking about teaching qualitative methods using NVivo. However, it sparked some interesting conversation about several things, including whether or not students should first be taught paper and pen coding. People were protesting they just couldn’t look at a computer screen all the time. Others said you have to know the basis for what you’re doing before you do it on a computer. Still others argued that English majors aren’t made to write a work of literature using paper and quill pens before they learn to type, or are awarded their degrees. I said that I thought people were smart enough to discover other ways to code, so I didn’t see why paper and pen coding should be taught before computer coding. Maybe a student would find she could code with a highlighter and then bring it to her instructor to show what she had “discovered”. Everyone laughed. Then Chris said that “surely”, the point shouldn’t be what is right and what’s wrong, but to introduce students to various options. She was right, of course, but she was getting very into the point she was making. Realizing this, she ended with a plea of “Surely! Surely!!” (You have to imagine her accent here, too.) More laughter. (Afterward, Chris asked me if she’d come across as too emotional!) Kakali’s paper was good, and I even started to understand what “decolonizing methodologies” meant! There were also a few little jokes in her presentation that were just for Chris and my benefit. (Particularly about how Kakali always uses many long words!) She did her promised “interpretative dance”, and I video-ed it on my camera. I was going to just take a picture, but I didn’t want the flash to go off, and I wasn’t sure that it would work. So I just silently taped it. J

And that was it. The conference was over. I filled out an evaluation form anonymously, listing my complaints fairly (I hoped), and gave them credit where credit was due. Then Chris cornered Jenine about her paper and whether it was or wasn’t peer reviewed. I slunk away as Jenine backed herself into a corner. When she and Chris were done chatting, I asked Jenine what the deal with the Australasian Journal of Information Systems May issue was, fibbing a little by saying that my boss was writing an end of the year summary and needed to know whether we could say the article was “in press” or “submitted” or what. Jenine basically said that they have confirmed that they will have space for five papers to be published, and that the QualIT committee was going to sit down in the next week or so to figure out which five papers those would be. She seemed to indicate that I had a good likelihood of getting in because my reviews were so good, but I think she would have said that to anyone! In any case, I hope to know for real what’s going on by the end of the year.

Chris and I sat outside and waited for Kakali. We discussed some interesting but highly confidential stuff. Heh. It seemed to me like half the time when Chris opened her mouth it was to tell me a “this is confidential, but…” thing. It’s okay with me! I enjoy the behind the scenes peak and brainstorming opportunities. Suffice it to say, we’ll be staying in touch. When Kakali came out, we walked back to the hotel, and then called a cab to go to the pub we’d gone to with Dan on Tuesday night. I’d forgotten it was Friday night and the place was packed. We looked at menus for the other restaurants in the same location, but they were either not appealing or too expensive, so we ended up back at the pub. After we ordered (you order at this counter and then go find a seat), I thought Chris had gone to hunt for a table, but when she came back to the bar where we were ordering our beers, I realized she’d just gone to buy a pack of cigarettes. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, “You make me feel guilty!” “Good,” I said, “Who’s going to make you feel guilty when you get home?” “I won’t be smoking when you see me in London,” she said. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” I retorted. Unfortunately, I was starting to feel really unwell. I hardly ate anything for dinner. My throat hurt very badly, and I was unable to project my partial voice over the din of the crowd. Chris and Kakali were excited and relieved to be going home the next day, and I knew the next day, I’d be shipping off to another country, not home. And alone. And I was feeling so miserable. Chris asked if I wanted to go home (meaning to the hotel), and I felt tears coming. I wanted to go HOME. But I didn’t want to go to the hotel because that would mean that our time together was ending. I stole Chris’ lighter again. When I came back from the bathroom, she had just borrowed the lighter of the guys at the table next to us. “I always find a way,” she said. “YOU,” I said, “have to keep better track of your possessions.” As I said this and held her eye, I reached out and swiped her pack from the table. She didn’t notice. We sat for a while longer, and then got a cab back to the hotel, where Kakali and I sat in Chris’ room for a little while, looking at all the pictures Chris, Tom, and I had taken over the past weeks. It was interesting to look at the pictures from Angahook, the first weekend, and re-evaluate them. At that point, I hadn’t know Chris at all, but there’s now something more to each picture since I know her and Dan better. Kakali was all about symbolism in one of them, explaining how we were close but far, moving but still, etc. Since I was the one with the laptop, I’d been periodically downloading Chris’ pictures and burning them to CD for her. That night, I also put on copies of my travelogue (such as it was), and the poem I had written on Tuesday night, an ode. Chris went to take a shower, so Kakali and I watched a bit of Ice Age on my computer. When Chris came out of the shower, we talked about meeting up in the morning – Kakali was sharing a cab with Dan; Chris and I were leaving a bit later. I went to the bathroom and realized I still had Chris’ cigarettes. I came out, wrote a note, and went back into the bathroom where I slipped the note into the pack, and placed the pack in the garbage. Then, we went back to our respective rooms for the night.

Epilogue (because I’ve already posted the 27th missive): The next morning, holding up her cigarettes, Chris said to me, “I found these in the bin again.” I grinned. “I saw you write the note,” she said, “But it didn’t occur to me to ask what you were doing.” She folded it, but unable to put it back into the pack, she put it in her purse. The note said something like, “Dear Chris – Even though I don’t like that you smoke, I respect your right to do so. I just worry about losing you earlier than I have to, when we’re old and grey. Love, Jen” What’s the statistic? Every cigarette you smoke decreases your life by seven minutes? What really gets me right now is that I have yet to meet a smoker who I really liked and respected as a person. Once I knew they were a smoker, I lost all respect for them. Yet, this time, with this person, all I do is feel sad.