After a long absence in Melbourne Diaries

I haven’t written for a while, and the simple and boring reason for this is that I’ve been buried under a large, never-shifting pile of work, most of which is government/confidential/billions of dollars so I am unable to elaborate (moreover, I know of at least one person, now on PB, who was previously sacked for discussing their work issues on the former OpenDiary). I’m critically under-resourced and well behind on everything. A colleague and I concluded on Friday that even if a new calendar month were inserted between today and tomorrow with nobody but us alive during that month, we’d still be behind on our workload at the end of it. People in the office are getting sick (they even disinfected all the desks recently due to a combined shingles and pneumonia outbreak), though physically I seem entirely unaffected, my unwelcome record of one full sick day in five years remaining intact. It’s all pretty insane, and the only way to get my respectful attention at work is to scream and cry that you’re the priority and that you’ll lose your job if I don’t do x document by y time, and then, only then, will I prioritise my work on that matter.

The team I work with are now for the most part younger than me, and are a rarity in Melbourne: under 40s with decent incomes, houses and a prosperous career path in front of them. Almost of them (excluding me) are openly ambitious with glittering careers ahead of them, and some are very arrogant, particularly those who were formerly private sector lawyers. One of the issues I have to deal with is that I was transferred rather than hired into the team - they didn’t know me and would never have employed me, so there’s a great deal of distrust. That said, I have experience in my field they don’t have, have a workload of a size they’ve never seen before, and can do a type of legal work that nobody else in the team can, so much of the distrust is starting to fade. Most have identikit personal histories - private school, top-rated university, parachuted into a top job, and nepotistically related through school or uni or firm to somebody else in the team. When they go out, many get preposterously drunk, revealing their social naivete (and private school girl intolerance to alcohol) by blurting out inappropriate thoughts and hitting on inappropriate partners.

I’ll enjoy this while I can. The position looks good on what’s left of my CV, and the work is interesting. But the truth is that I probably don’t want to be a lawyer anymore, and there are other things I can do.

A team member who made some personal overtures to me over the last year which I ignored (this has been noted in previous entries) left recently for a Pacific island work appointment. I wish her well, as I feel that getting away from her tight ethnic family unit and seeing how the rest of the world lives will be beneficial to her; spending time in the same place for too long is always a bad thing. At her farewell party in the city, I met a woman in my field, K, who has a strong Mancunian accent, shoulder length blonde hair, a nice laugh and a very pretty face. I had to leave the party early, but at a conference last week she saw me, picked me out of a crowd and started engaging in close conversation on what were obviously random topics - I was unaware I had made that much of an impression. I think she’s seven years older than me, but since I shaved my head and lost a little weight I now look pretty age-ambiguous, and could seem anywhere between 30 and 50 years old, something my work colleagues never fail to openly point out.

Today marks one year since I bought my house, a decision I do not regret in the least. Due to lowering interest rates, my mortgage repayments are pretty much what I used to pay for rent. The Melbourne housing market is falling now, with the dubious ‘Chinese’ investors buying empty inner city apartment blocks starting to disappear. Inner city, they’ll probably be a crash, but as I bought my place as a home and not as an investment (and bought it at a comparative discount), this shouldn’t be an issue. But it may put an end to the ridiculous and depressingly ubiquitous sight of the proxy Chinese bidder at auctions raising his hands at any sum of money on behalf of some contact in Hong Kong who knows some unidentified person in who the f*** knows where with unlimited and ill-gotten funds who may be the buyer of the property. The major banks will no longer lend money to these guys, and they’re seeking properties that invade scrutiny by the foreign investment review bodies. It’s not like the US subprime crash but the end result will be the same: the rich investors sell off all their assets and retire early; nobody gets prosecuted; the government regulators plead ignorance; poor people lose their houses; and they’ll be worthless apartment blocks being bulldozed in inner city. I gotta start getting shares, ones that have nothing to do with the housing, mining or resources markets.