Lev Lafayette's journal

This past week has witnessed a great deal of the variation in my multidisciplinary life, but a dominant theme has been that it has been disciplined, and that even includes activities of pleasure. Part of it was spent doing the final calculations from my fundraising for the "Isla Bell Charitable Fund", which came to a rather pleasing $15689, even if there are a few payment stragglers. I believe this contribution will provide the initial steps to ensure that there is a practical legacy in her name. Another significant event was finishing off marking for the graduate course, "Cluster and Cloud Computing". For my own part, I've been working on an essay that combines interests in rhetoric - using the classic components from Aristotle (ethos, pathos, logos) and statistical analysis. One might be surprised how they are not that far apart and, as a practical example, my post from a few days ago on why Australian Liberals may wish to reconsider voting to empower Peter Dutton. In my regular linguistic activity, I found that I had topped the Diamon League in Duolingo, apparently for the 24th time, but more importantly, I have started an alternative built on Anki cards; "Liber Lingvo" (Esperanto for "free language"). Early days yet, but there's a solid start on Chinese there.

Speaking of Chinese matters, Sanda classes are back on, and I really enjoyed last Saturday's class. Sanda is just one of the exercise and dietary activities I have with my ongoing efforts to improve my weight, fitness, and musculature, all of which have resulted in weight loss just shy of 30kgs over the past ten months; yes, you read that right. I said that it was a lifestyle change, and I've kept to that commitment, because that's what I do. Still, I haven't neglected my social life with all this either. In the past few evenings I have caught up with my new friend and neighbour, Kate (a mental health nurse, which is truly an honourable profession) on a couple of occasions, firstly to see Michael Haneke movie adaption of Kafka's "The Castle", and tonight with Des, Robbie, and Josh to Eiko Ishibashi performing live to Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Gift". Haneke's production was a faithful expression of Kafka's unfinished absurd story of theology and bureaucracy, whilst Hamaguchi's movie is a deeply immersive tale of environmentalism and human interaction with nature. Ishibashi's experimental and sometimes almost industrial score contributed enormously to the experience, and it was a joy to exchange a few words with a person of such talent afterwards. But such is my love of art and beauty in all its forms.

Over the past few days, a significant number of people - around the four-hundred mark - have reached out to me to offer birthday wishes. The experience was quite beautiful and affirming in the sense mentioned by Erich Fromm: "love [is] a spontaneous affirmation of others on the basis of the preservation of the individual self", forming a bond of solidarity between the self and others. One does not seek affirmation (because that reduces the self to seeking approval from others as a directive), but rather one acts according to learned virtue without expectations, but nevertheless is joyous when affirmation is received. Which, in my own reflective way, is to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to all of you.

The day itself was relatively low-key, but I do like stretching it out into a week of celebrations. A good portion of the day and even the past week has been spent in the company of a young musician of quite incredible talent, Lani, who has also recently taken up paralegal studies. In the evening, Erica invited me over to watch Hayao Miyazaki's newest film "Kimi-tachi wa Dō Ikiru ka" (titled "The Boy and the Heron"), which literally translates as "How Do You (all) Live?" One is charmed by the autobiographical elements and, of course, the thematic bravery - it asks the fundamental question of what each of us is doing with our lives and how we treat others. Pretty appropriate viewing on one's birthday, really.

Last night, I attended the opening exhibition of upcoming artist Sarah Jennifer's "Opulentia" at Chapel on Chapel. I spent a good portion of the evening chatting with the artist, who seemed quite excited by the fact that she had accidentally made some highly appropriate popular culture references from the 1980s in her works. Her style is one of the great sweeping arcs, bright colours, and abstract surrealism, and I hope to attend the exhibition again soon.

To finish off the week tonight, I was a guest of the Chinese Consulate, attending a reception at Kooyong Tennis Club for the Chinese New Year. It was, as it always is, an astoundingly well-organised event with a truly impressive array of speakers, attendees, and performers. I was quite delighted to spend a good period of time with an old friend and former minister, Luke Donnellan. It's a long time since I've seen him, and he rather looks like a stylish older Roy Orbison these days. Another person whom I met for the first time and spent a good period of time talking with was Andrew Irving, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Australia. I am sure we'll be having a few more discussions in the future.

Tonight I board the big silver bird with Lara to head to Darwin to finalise the purchase of our apartment. In the past fortnight, said co-owner has been in Melbourne, courtesy of the Territory's requirement that everything be done with pen-and-paper. The first step was getting the final signatories on the bank loan, which took three attempts as the bank made minor errors each time, which was mildly annoying. Now we head the great tropical north to get the keys and move in. In the meantime, it has meant that my dear rodent animal companions, Mayhem and Mayday, also need to have a little holiday. They have grown up so much in just a couple of months! As Mel offered, she is now the keeper of the little rascals for the coming week, where they are safely ensconced in her shower cubicle and seem to be thoroughly enjoying their temporary residence.

In work news, for the past two days, I have been buried in delivering two HPC and Bioinformatics workshops with some 64 attendees. These are similar to the standard workshops I deliver but modified to take into account the numerous applications and workflows, e.g., "Rattus Norvegicus ESTs with BLAST and Slurm". Part of the workshops includes tests which I worked with the University of Agricultural Sciences in Sweden and a workflow from Data Carpentry, modified for HPC systems, that use a long-term evolution experiment published in 2016 ("Tempo and mode of genome evolution in a 50,000-generation experiment"). The workshops will also feature in a presentation on HPC for Bioinformatics that I'm planning to give to eResearch New Zealand early next year.

As usual, my social life has been pretty full as well. In an effort to have some sort of narrative thread in this entry, I will mention an outing with Erica to the Sun Theatre in Yarraville to see the satirical speculative fiction film "The Substance" which has an excellent and comprehensive review from my old friend Andrew M, who accurately notes: ".. from a filmmaking point of view, it’s an incredibly well put together, intricately constructed, horrifically grotesque and sickening movie. There are incredible scenes, immaculate shots piled on top of each other, with no concern, with no regard for our well being whatsoever". It has thematic depth with its portrayal of the patriarchial beauty industry, its competition between generations, birthing metaphors, and whilst draws upon the body-horror of John Carpenter's "The Thing", David Cronenberg's "Videodrome", and with an over-the-top comic ending in the style of Peter Jackson's "Braindead". It is utterly grotesque and I loved it; and I certainly understand why others don't.

On Sunday I caught up with Anthony L and Robin M, for our semi-regular dinner and was quite delighted when they pulled out a couple of old bottles (from 1998) from Kirwan's Bridge Winery. More than 20 years ago, I created a website for the winery (now sold off, sadly) and received a crate of plonk for my efforts, the final bottles being quaffed more than 10 years ago. The 1998 bottles were past their best, but still very drinkable. A credit to wine, the company, and the people who kept it in careful storage! Perhaps in this way, aging red wines and red people are similar.

Hot on the heels of the visit to the Pharoah Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, the last few days have witnessed a couple of delvings into the dramatic arts. On Tuesday Erica H., came to visit and we went to the Malthouse Theatre (located five minutes walk away) to see "Macbeth (An Undoing)", scoring some pretty decent seats. It was quite a clever re-writing focussing mainly on Lady Macbeth as less of a villain and more of an opportunist. The rotating stage really worked well, creating the illusion of the many rooms of a Scottish castle, whilst the performers took the opportunity to break the fourth wall a few times. It was really quite an excellent performance.

Finally, last night Ruby and I ventured out to one of my favourite haunts, the Astor Theatre, to see Yorgos Lanthimos' latest work,
"Kinds of Kindness". This was a challenging and often gruesome triptych with more than a dash of magical realism, and thematically orientated around control and violence. It is certainly not to everyone's taste by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm quite happy to see disturbing films - or series for that matter - in a completely different subject, Erica H., and I smashed our way through "Baby Reindeer" in a single sitting, a rather tragic and painful tale which is full of wrong decisions by all parties.

Anyway, I'm composing all this at Melbourne Airport about to board a flight to Bali for several days. Lara D., has organised a small party of six to actually have a real holiday where we put work and Australian life on the backburner for just a short period of time. Whilst I am a bit of a seasoned traveller to the island, it has been several years since I've put foot on the place. I suspect that I will certainly. visiting my old haunts in Sanur and Ubud. Holiday time!

I have just arrived at the Australian Institute for Marine Science near Townsville for a week of teaching high performance computing and parallel programming. This is a genuine working holiday, having taken a week's leave from my usual place of employment and taking up a one-week stint here. AIMS is a curious place; if you want to produce an image of an isolated scientific research facility this is it, this is it. Apart from the fact they are never even remotely as well funded as they are portrayed in the movies - not even CERN. We have already received our due warnings about regular visits of crocodiles and snakes, so this is no beachside holiday. The week's teaching dovetails quite well with the two days of usual workshops I ran this week at UniMelb, and will follow up with even more the week after that for the master's course and the week after that for the usual HPC training.

I managed to squeeze a couple of social events in this week but the absolutely unexpected highlight, which I must describe in some detail, was the screening of "Grass" (1925) at The Astor, which I attended with Liana F. The silent film, considered the first ethnographic documentary, starts in Turkey, goes across Iraq, and into Persia where some 50,000 Bakhtiari people (and 500,000 animals) engage in stunning and extremely challenging migratory quest for better pastures, across the Karun River and over the Zard Kuh mountains. The cinematography was absolutely astounding, and the narration provided many moments of comic relief among the often mortal dangers. The screening was shared with a live musical performance by ZÖJ who provided a perfect score. Little wonder that at the end of the show, the near-capacity attendance broke out into thunderous applause. It was, quite honestly, one of the best screenings of any film I have ever had to pleasure to attend.

The third major event of the week was attending my first committee meeting of the Australia-China Friendship Society (Victorian branch) and leaving the meeting as President of the group. An hour later I was putting finger-to-keyboard to compose my first President's report, which basically consisted of thanking the immediate past president, Anthony L., and secretary, Robin M., for their years of dedication as office-bearers, to highlight the need to get the organisation's membership and finances on a firmer footing, and thirdly (and most importantly) to reduce the poison of foolish bellicose voices in Australian public opinion. One can certainly express differences of political opinion, international and internal, without being a damn fool about it. Especially when one is discussing a nation that has extremely deep cultural and economic ties with our own, and especially when said nation will be absolutely pivotal when it comes to addressing the global matter of climate change; to think that even in this context, some lunatics seem bent on war? Obviously, my new position will do little to dampen my own political independence and opinion (for the record, Sun Yat-Sen is my favourite Chinese political theorist of the twentieth century, along with Chen Duxiu not far behind).

Every so often one must delve into the realm of aesthetic consumption, in its myriad of forms, as a form of active regeneration of the mind. Goodness knows I've had to deal with this of late as I progress through the necessary readings and writings for my master's research project on the developing Pacific island climate impacts, adaption, and funding. But that progress can wait until the next entry, for the following discusses some acts of enjoyment for its own sake over the past week, including visiting Brendan E., and watching the film "Equilibrium", going out to the old Deco Palace Balwyn with Alison B., to watch the recent film "Maestro", and having Louise F, Allan K, Alison B over for a long dinner with cocktails and the sort of conversation that could be expected (Louise used to run the former Victorian Gothic for about 20 years, so that side of aesthetics was certainly a subject of discussion).

As for the films in question, the dystopian SF action film Equilibrium (2002) came with some rather old tropes, some wooden acting, and hilarious "gun kata". To its credit, however, I thought some of the cinematography was well executed, and there was some sense of character development. As an example that couldn't have greater contrast, the biographical drama "Maestro" (2023) is based around American composer, conductor, and music teacher Leonard Bernstein and his actress wife Felicia Montealegre, with Bradley Cooper covering the roles of director, co-writer, co-producer, and playing the lead character. It deals more with his not-so-private life rather than his public fame, and it must be said Cooper's performance as Bernstein is pretty impressive. Nevertheless, it must be said that household dramas are not exactly my preferred genre, and when the subjects are excessively wealthy, I begin to lose even more sympathy.

I have also started the year with a little delve into my old hobby, roleplaying games. Not only have I started a new "Call of Cthulhu" campaign for the year, and two reviews ("RuneQuest Empires" and "RuneQuest Empires (2nd edition)") have been published on rpg.net. Despite this, I am adamant that this is not so much a return to the sort of involvement I've had in the past with the hobby, but rather a temporary dalliance. As mentioned at the start of this post, my brain has felt the need for this sort of distraction from some rather challenging and detailed work that I am engaging in. But even these things I take with some seriousness and earnest engagement. Perhaps as it should be; projects are processes as well as goal-states.

Following the recognition of a moment's respite in my last entry, I have taken full advantage of a study break and a relatively quiet period at work (my main task is getting training documentation up-to-date) with a full set of thoroughly enjoyable weekend activities with some rather lovely good and true friends. It started with a regular op-shopping trip in South Melbourne with Mel S., where I picked up a lovely Chinese pine carved box, which now is at the foot of my bed holding linen. It followed that evening with a visit from Liana F., where, in accord with recent events I cooked up a collection of Eastern Mediterranean food including an entree of dates and figs, a course of fatteh, another course of shakshuka, a dessert of namoura, all accompanied by rose and lemon water). I am still writing up my thoughts the current conflict, and I would like to thank a couple of former state MPs (one Labor, one Liberal) for their somewhat biased point-of-view in inadvertently assisting me in this process.

The following evening I caught up with Des J., who joined me for an evening at Hamer Hall for "Blade Runner Live". The orchestra did a wonderful job, performing even the most minor sound-effects in the movie and with attention to the early-80s aesthetic. Appropriately we ate at well-known Japanese noodle bar (Mr Ramen San) beforehand. It was really such a Melbourne event - an excellent film and performance, and a great location, and with such attention to detail. The following day I caught up with Erica H., my favourite person for excellent taste in TV series and we finished off the highly-recommended modern gothic-horor, "The Fall of the House of Usher", which does a very deft job at integrating several of Poe's classic stories into one series. I rather suspect it will become a bit of a classic.

In other news, I have found myself in the Duolingo Diamond Tournament, which I am not taking too seriously but with a dedicated agenda of learning and combining Chinese, French, and English, I'm giving it a fair crack of the whip. Also, after a month of being more than a little under the weather and having an international trip, I've taken advantage of the spring-like weather that Melbourne is currently experiencing (ha! rain for the rest of the week) for a couple of nice bike rides around the city. If there is a message in all this, rather than just a documentation of my personal life over the past few days, it is this: appreciate the good times you experience, have gratitude for that opportunity, and never forget or ignore the suffering of those who have not had such good fortune.

This coming Saturday at 2 pm I will be presenting to the Melbourne Agnostics on "Neotopia: A Transhumanist Political Economy", a tangent that arose from my recent presentation to the same group on artificial intelligence. Without giving too much away, I will be speaking about what constitutes political economy, the trajectory of technology, social psychology, and especially the effects on the environment. Probably the most challenging part in writing this up will be navigating the most probable path between pessimism and optimism, because of an increasing divergence between what is possible and what is likely - and a lot of that comes down to how easily distracted we humans are from what is important.

Case in point; early this week a post I made ended up being on the front page of Reddit (increasing my preferred haunt). Was it to do with political economy? Civil rights? The environment? High performance computing? No, it was because the towns of Boring (US) paired with Dull (UK) and Bland (AU) almost ten years ago. I thought it was "faintly amusing", rather than important. But, apparently, "faintly amusing" is popular. I admit to being guilty of many such distractions myself. But we are, in Postman's words, "Amusing Ourselves to Death". Such a mood is probably not helped by my succession of entertainment choices in recent weeks; the Youtube channel "Dystopian Soundscapes" has been on constant play, and the Netflix series of choices have been the Belgian disaster series "Into the Night" and more recently "Salvation".

There have been other things going on; I ran two supercomputing workshops this week, and will have another two more specialist ones later this month, probably including high performance and parallel Python which is a bit of a necessity these days. I topped the diamond league in Duolingo on Sunday for the thirteenth time, and have taken up Greek as a new English (it's about time I at least learned the basics). The journal I edit, RPG Review, has moved from a quarterly publication to an irregular after more than ten years, and I have the Isocracy AGM to organise in the next few weeks.

Yesterday I had the very pleasant opportunity to see the Hayao Miyazaki Studio Ghibli anime film "Spirited Away" (2001) at RMIT's extraordinary Capitol Theatre in early art-deco style. Like many films from this truly exceptional director it includes a rich narrative and deep thematic content in a Shinto-inspired fantastic setting, along with a beautiful soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi. In the course of the story, Miyazaki includes concerns about environmentalism, and steadfast ethics of a kind, and naturalistic simplicity in opposition to greed and materialism. Hayao Miyazaki is, of course, known for his strong anti-war (c.f., "The Wind Rises", "Grave of the Fireflies", "Howl's Moving Castle"), socialist (c.f., "Porco Rosso"), environmental (c.f., "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind", "Princess Mononoke", "Pom Poko"), and feminist (c.f., "Spirited Away", "Kiki's Delivery Service") messages. It is, given the extraordinary range of work, difficult to pick a favourite, but I think there is something quite epic and complex in the historical fantasy of "Princess Mononoke", although in a very different style and for different reasons I find "The Wind Rises" very touching as well.

On reflection, I find that much of my own life follows similar thematic considerations which probably explains why I enjoy Hayao Miyazaki's films so much. Yes, the aesthetic is superb in its own right, but it is the themes and characters that provide the greatest inspiration. Sometimes this can be expressed in apparently mundane matters; after the film, I attended a Labor Party branch meeting, which was addressed by both the Federal MHR and State MLA, with notable discussion and plans for the Voice referendum, infrastructure development, and reform of the Reserve Bank - boring to some, but the sorts of things that actually change lives; the disparity between people's lives and institutional politics is perhaps the single greatest problem confronting contemporary societies. In a somewhat different manner, I'm powering along seeking to finish my Psych degree early (the final paper is effectively social psychology), so I can make a good start on the Climate Science degree. The trimester is supposed to start next week; I'm currently up to week four of the content! It may seem a long way from being trapped in a parallel universe trying to save a river spirit that's taken the form of a dragon - but the intrinsic motivation is very much the same.

After a couple of weeks of politics and study (more of the latter is impending) it was very pleasant to spend a lot of the last week engaging in some more light-hearted entertainment, in the form of music and film. For the former, I received a mid-evening message from Glenn K, inviting me to see Ride at The Forum. Whilst likable, I didn't really consider them to be my thing, but one should make use of the advantage of living close to the CBD. As it turned out, it was a great night out and I've said as much in my review on Rocknerd. It also provided a good juxtaposition to the Pop Will Eat Itself concert at The Corner a several weeks prior, both in comparison of the two venues and as a pair of thirtieth-anniversary touring albums; "Nowhere", and "This Is The Day ... This Is The Hour ... This is This!", respectively. I really have been quite lax in my music reviews this year (not to mention my RPG reviews), and with scant weeks left before the end of the year, I will endeavour to do something about that.

One fellow attendee at Ride was Erica H., making it the fourth evening in succession I had been in her company. In the previous three we, being of a certain age, followed our classic gothic predilections and made our way through the Wednesday Netflix series, which was thoroughly charming, and I'm really impressed with how Jenna Ortega describes taking on the role. Last evening another visit witnessed the viewing of "I Am Mother", a rather good Australian science-fiction thriller. Over the weekend, visited Brendan E., who is a regular provider of popular culture knowledge to me. I completely neglected to mention several weeks back he entertained with Everything Everywhere All At Once, a thoroughly good SF mind-bender with lots of comic content, and this weekend we delved in the Korean medieval naval war film prequel "Hansan: Rising Dragon", whilst finishing the "implausible but mostly true" story of the SAS, "Rogue Heroes". Finally, another entertaining event of the weekend was attending Penny A's "garden party", which Liana F., openly hi-jacked as her birthday party as well. Plenty of delicious food, and fascinating conversation, and I seem to have made a couple of new friends as well. For now, however, it's back to having the nose at the grindstone, I still have a psychology degree to finish!