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Die Another Day
Day: Circus Day
Weather: Hot hot hot
The media circus around the drama school hasn’t die down at all. Different people are coming out to talk about things and despite Succubus’ iron wrist policy of no talking to the media without her approval, somehow people managed to break through the iron curtain and leaked more and more information to the media. Tim, the acting teacher at the school, told me that what Succubus was trying to do was to conduct a Communist like “Cultural Revolution” at the school. She continued to increase the size of her “Red Army” – the administrative staff to pry on the teaching staff. So anyone who’s not on her side, she will do her best to persecute them and kick them out. It is really a time of Bush fire – either you are with me or you are my enemy and I’ll burn you to hell. What was ironic was that, Succubus will also shamelessly use the people she persecutes to her own advantage. In a recent live interview on a morning show, the reporting was asking her what kind of change she saw that is actually making the drama school better. Of course by this time the whole world knows that the books are red except for the check books of all the ever increasing administrative staff at the school.
Succubus, now not even hiding her intent to kill, gave a creepy smile and said, “well under my administration, there are three teaching staff who further their education and try to obtain a doctorate degree, which is great because that will improve our teaching standards here”.
The reporter, then asked, “So is the drama school financially supporting them or giving them time off to pursue their studies?”
Succubus was caught off guard by the question, but replied, “No, but it was my inspiration and aspirations that guided them to the road of further education.”
The reporter continued to ask, “So they are on their own money and time without any support from the drama school while being ‘demonised’ as the ‘theatre purists’ who refused to move on? Don’t you find that a bit contradictory or lack of logic?”
Succubus’ face turned into a tomato and signalled her three minions to come and rescue. Of course as loyal as dogs, they immediately rushed over and told the reporter and the crew that the interview was over. However, as she hurried away, the reporter continued to yell out questions like, “You said you are involved in the next Olympic Steering Committee, how come we couldn’t find any information about your involvement on Google at all?”
Succubus was now even redder faced, don’t know whether it was because of the heat outside or out of embarrassment. She walked back and said, “How dare you accuse me of faking my CV?” The reporter was happy to get a reaction from her as Succubus continued with her rant, “I moan the future of journalism in Australia if reporters are just relying on Google. Not everything is on Google!”
But then the reporter smiled satisfyingly, “But didn’t you tell the library staff to stop over-servicing student by helping them? According to my information source, you once made a statement that everything is on Google, if it is not on Google it does not exist.”
Succubus had never thought that random statements she made to try to get what she wanted will come back to bite her. Her eyes were burning with fire and she did what she did best – twirled around and left with her troops.
Back at my library home front, Eva Cologne seemed to have forgotten about what happened in the past and has been “being herself” again. Sometimes I wonder how a woman at her age could be so forgetful about all the self-inflicted embarrassment and kept coming back for more. Claire joked that probably it is not because of forgetfulness like kids, but because of dementia. It seems that after working with me for a few months, I had completely corrupted Claire with my unpretentious but witty comments about stupid people.
The latest saga with Eva was that she was trying to push through another picture database into the performing art database (which is weird to mix up performing arts with graphic arts). What she wanted to do was to include images of art works of all museums around the world into our database. The concept was “brilliant” but then everybody knows the logistic problems associated with such proposal. The very basic thing is the acquisition of copyright of those images and of courses also the required skills to catalogue them. And in an Eva style she said “We have Claire. She was a curator at the British Museum, Aaaaaaaai reeeeckon she can do this”. Claire looked at me with her eyes wide open in terror. She mimed “What the fuck is she thinking?”
I replied said, “So how much are you going to pay her? This is an extremely specialised kind of work, and I think it is just outright exploitation to ask her to take on such a huge exercise on this pay while you just sit there taking all the credits telling people you are the person responsible for that”.
Eva Cologne shot a glance at me, and then without looking at me, said, “Aaaaaai’m just giving her a chance to show us what she got. She should thank me and be more appreciative”.
Claire smiled and said, “I think it is foooney that you said so when it was so obvious that Davesto and I had brought a long overdue project baack on traack since we joined the team”.
Alice the Thunderland let slip a convenient chuckle and shot a satisfying glance towards Eva from the corners of her eyes. “I must agree with the young ones. We better get what we need to do now done first and in the future if we do need to add new features to the database, we can let the young ones to do it. Then Eva we can release you back to do your original fulltime job and get your normal things done without piling up too much backlog as it is now.”
This is a huge blow to Eva’s ego as it looked so obvious that Alice is going to kick her off the ship. For Eva who enjoys free ride and taking credits during the process to make her look good, this is a public display of her incapability (which everyone knows except her). The meeting ended with Eva leaving the meeting room like a Chinese miner – completely black faced. Claire and I seemed to have found a new ally in Alice, but as both of us know, as in all office politics, no one could be trusted if you want to survive.
