UCFOAD(A)L

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 23

2011-04-30T03:48:00.000-07:00

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Charmed!

Date: April 2011 AD
Weather: Storm in a tea cup

The stint at Helena’s movie had certainly done me good. Shortly after that I was invited to participate in a play later this year. The play is not happening until later this year, so the cold hard fact is I have to go back to the library to earn some cold hard cash. Not the perfect scenario but they were accommodating when I did the movie, so in return I should go back and finish the project for them. But honestly the film with Helena did reignite my strong passion for the art and made me more willing to take risks in life than before.

During the filming Helena, Damien and I spent a lot of time together. They shared their LA experience with me, and how they struggled before they got their breaks. These are stories that a lot of people, who, from the outside did not see. Helena told me apart from the fact that she was crying her eyes out missing me (that breaks my heart even now) when she first got there, she was doing two bartending jobs to just get by to avoid ending up in the streets. She worked very hard to get her first agent and had to swallow her pride to do ridiculous small roles that required no acting abilities until she was spotted for a more substantial role and started snowballing her career. She said the time was hard but she told herself if she were serious about being an actor, she would have to brave through it. She did and now she is enjoying the fruits of her hard work.

As for Damien, he first went to New York to try his luck when he was 19. He worked as an usher at one of the theatres while running around getting to auditions. His passion for the theatre finally paid off after 5 years of ushering in the theatre when he scored his first Off-Broadway role. The first taste of successful did not bring the luck that he was expecting. The next role didn’t come until 2 years later. He told me those two years he felt he was in a black hole and didn’t know how to position himself in his life. The uplifting feeling of this first role had made him fell harder when there was nothing substantial to follow up with. It was hard for him to go back to ushering and wait for the next break. However he toughed it out with a lot of disappointments along the way and eventually was spotted by a casting director to audition for his break out role. Of course the rest is history.

The great thing about Helena and Damien is that they are both very open and caring. Damien knows about all the history Helena and I had and he still treats me as one of his best mates. As for Helena, what can I say? Without her the current opportunities will not be presenting themselves. I will be forever grateful to them and now it is up to me to decide how I want to go forward with my career. Hollywood and New York are definitely on the cards. Damien said if I want to try Hollywood out, I could crash with them so there is no need to worry about living expenses. I can feel that this year is a year of change – in what direction? It is up to me.

After saying goodbye to Helena and Damien, it’s back to the spaceship – for now. To be fair, not everyone came from outer space there. Claire and I have bonded really well at work and she did mention that she missed me there to fend off the witches together. So I when I went back, she was more than happy to see me. But of course those sentiments were not shared by anyone.

In Wicked you only have two witches battling out. But at this place it’s like episodes of Charmed playing out every day. Eva Cologne though had lost quite a bit of ground in the past had come back from the dead under her new manager. While everyone can see what kind of shit worker Eva is, her new manager seems to be happy to use her as her human torpedo around the place. Every time she wants something, she will send Eva out, if it fails Eva copes it but if it succeeds she takes credit. Even the dumbest knows that Eva is just a chess piece on the board. But Eva seems to be very happy with her “new found powers” and continue to exist as a strong force of destruction.

On the other hand, Alice the Thunderland seems to be on the rise. Her charms and spells – sucking up and brown nosing – seemed to have paid off big time during my absence. Alice has been networking around the campus like a social butterfly. She made sure that anyone important whom came across her path knows her name and plays her game. Her attitude towards Claire and I has changed quite a bit since we managed knock Eva out of the circle. However, that doesn’t mean that she would trust us. When did the last time you see the Queen Mother trusting Snow White? Anyway both Claire and I are just here for the money and to get things done. For Claire this is also a job to kill time and earn some pocket money before she becomes a full time mother. She said she doesn’t give a darn to those bitches.

The new witch on the block is the woman who came back after 6 months leave. I never had anything to do with her but roadside newsagencies had it that she took those six months off because her marriage was in trouble. So she took extreme measures to save her marriage by keeping close company to her husband and going on business trips with him to tend to his needs. At first glance she seems Ok and she always acts motherly to everyone saying how much she cares about everyone’s well being. But as an actor, I can smell a bad acting job from miles and she is one of them. It’s been said that due to her “motherly nature” she only likes to employ people who are married with kids. She thinks that these people are more committed to their jobs – in other words easier to manipulate. When you look at her department, that’s the truth because since her return the only single guy in her department was edged out and eventually left. Everyone knows that behind her warm smiley face is guillotine ready to drop when she spots the next victim. Whenever she sees people who are potentially logs in her eye, she will not hold back with her comments. Claire and I are both her targets in way that she thinks we are not “committed” to our job and only people who want to be a librarian should work in “her library”. Since I came back, at various occasions she started making comments like “why are they here when they are not committed?”, “I didn’t expect to see them still here when I came back” etc. On the surface she still acts professionally in front of us, but after 3 years of drama school training, I can identify a failed Acting 101 candidate the moment I meet one.

Claire and I can feel a storm is brewing.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 22

2011-01-21T17:11:00.000-08:00

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Stage Beauty

Date: Time flies
Weather: California sunshine

Working with someone you love is not easy. It is even harder when you are working with someone you love but you have to let go.

I am forever grateful with Helena for bringing me on board of this production. Time on set and on location brought back great memories of the drama school when we just spent time together making art (and making out). However making out is no longer an option as Helena is now in a relationship with Damien, one of the coolest guys I’ve ever known – great actor but no attitude. Watching him making out with Helena in between takes was not one of my greatest pass times, but I do feel happy for her. She had a hard time struggling in States at the beginning before landing her first break out role – and I was not there to support her.

Going to work with someone you care and love dearly is a delicate art. Every time I saw Helena on set feelings automatically bubble up and I just couldn’t help want to spend more time with her. However, I was at the same time well awared that now her heart is with Damien. Joking around and bantering was fun but I had to be very careful not to cross the line. The thing is Damien knows our history. Helena told him everything about us and that’s Helena when she truly trusts and loves someone. Because of that Damien cast his vote of confidence for us to work together and be friends again. So I really cannot screw everything up and destroy a friendship that I dearly care about. It’s lots of pressure and sometimes my heart ached when I needed to pull back from conversation or physical contact. But I know very well that’s what I need to do if I want the best for Helena. My heartache is nothing when compared to the happiness Helena can get.

Talking about arts imitating life, in the film I was playing Helena’s best friend who had a crush on her since high school. But because of his geeky nature, he remained as her best friend and in the process helped her to find her true love. The character was great to play, as he is geeky but romantic. The main flaw of the character was that his romantic side only works when it does not involve himself. So it was no surprise that Helena’s character never saw him as boyfriend material throughout. His heartache was keeping on helping the girl he loves to find “the one” but at the same time he was so madly in love with her that he had to turn on his geeky volume which further killed any chances between him and Helena’s character. It has been some time that I was offered such a varied and well-written role so I was very happy. And the process of building that character from pages of writing was so satisfying and enjoyable. The only pain was that it was so close to home that I had to be very careful when playing the character so I won’t mix up the character with my real life. However, having said that, my history with Helena helped me a lot when playing the characters. During the filming, I got nothing but praises from the director for my performance and he and the producer kept on saying that they want to work with me again. As for Helena, she said that my skills have improved so much that I should really consider trying out LA. She said they lack actors like me in LA and they will appreciate me more than the Australian industry. Damien even offered to hook me up with his manager and agent if I decided to go there one day.

The offers are very tempting and surely I do feel that I’m not going anywhere in Australia because of my colour and my look. Maybe when you lose something, you do gain something eventually.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 21

2010-10-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

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Hurtlocker

Date: Can’t remember…
Weather: Unpredictable

There are lots of land mines in one’s life. By that I mean people and things that can blow you up when you are careless or most unprepared. I have my fair share of life land mines and some of them blew me up pretty uglily.

You build up these land mines usually unconsciously. It could be a comment from your parents when you were young, a scar you got when you grew up or a failed relationship. Among them, failed relationships are the worst. This is because they are less time and place restricted. When you are out of a failed relationship, any time or places that have minor references to that relationship could blow up in your face, leaving you more scarred or licking your wounds for days or even months.

As a grown up man, I had my fair share of failed relationship. This is particularly true for actors who some of us have so much emotion to spare that we just fall in love thinking that we were falling in love. However, when those relationships broke down, they won’t just break your heart. They will break everything that you once related to in those relationships. And it is worst when you feel that you are going nowhere in your life and that land mine goes off.

Being an actor is a difficult thing especially when it comes to emotional stuff. My acting career is going nowhere at the moment and I am stuck in a god forsaken spaceship earning my dole for my mum’s care. I drag myself out of bed on those working days just to make sure that I got food at night (not because I’m broke but because this job has become the token for mum’s home service). Hugo has been working very hard for me but then still all I got were stereotypical odd jobs here and there. Hugo told me I am one of the better people on the book because due to my looks, I still have some stereotypical jobs coming my way. He has one of those once extremely hot evening soap stars on his book. After he left the soap, that guy couldn’t get anything, not even an audition. This used to be my comfort for “me not doing too bad”. This is until last week.

The other day I was in a local café have a latte by the sea thinking about life and career. Sometimes you need to “make plans” so you feel you are actually living. Then I heard a familiar voice calling my name. I looked up and it was Helena – my drama school sweetheart who broke up with me to go to Hollywood right after graduation. Helena is your typical blonde good-looking girl but she comes with a brain. When she decided to leave Australia right after graduation, she persuaded me to go with her because she felt that there is no future for her or me in the Australia industry. Me at that time being a hot headed graduate who thought I could take on the world, refused at point blank because I believed I should contribute to the Australian industry to repay the training I had. She broke up with me there and then and it took us both several years to heal the wounds.

Years have passed, I found out the Australian industry doesn’t really care about my repayment at all. Helena was right all this time. She did really well in LA and is landing roles after roles. They were small ones but they kept her going. Then she landed a major role in a hospital drama and became a hot cake for the Australian industry. So she got invited to come back to be the lead of a featured film. That is why she is in the country.

Don’t get me wrong, I was glad to see her doing well and back again. But she is back with her new celebrity boyfriend Damien – also co-star in the hospital drama. That was the first thing that blew up in my face. Looking at her and her boyfriend, I feel inferior for the first time in years again. She was telling me how happy she is now but all I was thinking about was all the happy things she is doing with her boyfriend now. And suddenly all the wounds that I thought were healed opened up and were gushing with blood again. My heart felt like being stabbed multiple times during the conversation but I kept myself enthusiastic and cheerful. After all I am an actor, I can put on a great show even when I am bleeding myself to death inside.

We talked for two hours and we said we have to catch up again with all the buddies at the drama school blah blah blah and then they left. I waved goodbye energetically but by that time I was almost dead inside. Then suddenly, every single land mine from our relationship was activated. Places near my place where we used to hang out with, places we had made out, phrases she used to say, and even colours she used to like. They just blew up all over the place and suddenly the whole world seems to be out of bounds for me.

I felt like a piece of trash for days and days but still needed to pull myself together for the shitty people at a shitty job. Everyday I got home I just felt so exhausted emotionally and physically. Mum was very worried about me, and acted ultra nice to me. She even kept her close eyes on my sister so that she won’t piss me off. If I were my usual self I would have jumped on the opportunity to get myself off the hook from the library job. But I was not even able to do so. Dad and I had some father and son bonding time (obviously he was sent by mum) but I was too heartbroken to spill the beans (and who would have thought so?).

Then today, I got a call from Hugo. He said he got a call from the casting director of Helena’s movie. She said she got a recommendation from Helena about me and would like me to go in for a minor supporting role. My heart raced at 100 miles per hour. Should I take it? Should I not?

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 20

2010-09-21T18:32:00.001-07:00

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Date: Another day of full moon
Weather: Tropics of Thunder

The entertainment business is as quiet as a cemetery at night. Everything seems so dead and depressing. For people who never managed to make into the inner circles, it seems that it is forever for them to get their hands on to anything. To be honest, sometimes I do wonder what’s the point of going through three years of drama school training when all those parrots and puppets in early evening soaps get more jobs than I do? Hugo is a great agent. He manages to get whatever I can do for me but then it seems that if I want to get somewhere, I need a major plastic surgery make over. I do have some Asian parts coming by from time to time but they all required me to put on a thick “Asian accent” otherwise I was not convincing enough. It seems that for some power brokers in the industry, if you don’t look good fit into their lead looks, you are just doomed in the business.

Yes I do sometimes moan over this inequality in the business, but then when I compared myself with what’s happening to those great teachers at the drama school, I know that it is really nothing.

It has been rumoured for some time that Succubus wants to get rid of Peter, one of the prominent acting teachers at the school and in the industry, for a while. She sees him as a big threat as he knows a lot more than she does in terms of acting training. So she eventually convinced the now de-functioned and useless Board to terminate his employment with one-year extension. What does that mean? It means that Peter will still be employed for another year but his function is to teach the new person all he knows before he leaves. At one of the staff meetings, Succubus publicly humiliated Peter in front of everyone by announcing that: “As you all know, I will not be renewing Peter’s contract. We will employ better and more professional people for his position. But to show that we respect his expertise, he will extend his current contract for another year so he can teach his replacement what he knows before he goes”.

Everyone’s jaw dropped to the floor. Not because of Peter being fired so publicly but the disrespect Succubus showed in the whole thing. Succubus was so happy with her shaming stint that people said that she was in great mood for the rest of the week. Everyone felt very sorry for Peter but then there isn’t much anyone can do, as now the drama school is no longer a paradise people with creative passion but a torture chamber.

Torturing seems to be in fashion lately. In the case of the drama school it is the management against staff and in the library’s case it is the union against the management. I sometimes can’t really understand why people have that much time to play politics in workplace. Then again even in a production crew there are people who don’t like each other. The union saga at the library continued since the newsletter. George has now distanced himself from me completely since the last face off. But that didn’t stop him from going around campaigning against the management about the new wing. He even organised a meeting for a selected few (of his core supporters) as a public condemnation against the tyranny of the management over the consultation process. Out of 150 library staff, 12 turned up. 8 were his supporters 4 were people trying to find out what the hell he is doing. As reported back from people, the whole meeting was basically accusing the management of things that have no grounds to be accused of. When someone pointed out the opposite, George simply dismissed him or her as misinformed or shamed him or her as lack of support for the grass root people in the organisation. Seriously, I really have a stronger feeling everyday that the so-called union in the library is a just a scam program for idiots. There were times that I think George should start a cult with those 8 idiots at the meeting and he could be the next “big” cult leader. I have started documenting all these stupidities with the union and discussed with a few friends from drama school that maybe we can produce a satire out of it.

Anyway, I do think that some people need to be trained in a harsher environment to make their perspectives right. Maybe George and his followers should be thrown into the media world (or even the drama school now) and work their asses off there so that they can eventually appreciate how good a life they have in the library. As for me, they are just rich writing materials for personal pursuits.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 20

2010-09-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

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United or Divided?

Date: Labor's Day
Weather: Quaker

I have been a member of Equity for years now. As an independent actor, even with the help of a good agent, you’ll need to cover yourself from unlawful and shameless shams from certain people. Equity is where you place your trust in. They ensure that actors do not get ripped off by greedy media giants and we got what we deserved. Hugo is a huge fan of Equity and encourages everyone under him to join. With a major agent like Hugo and the protection of Equity, I can sleep well through the storms of the media industry.

However working in the library is something else – especially for a university library. Yeah I heard stories about people got redundant during bad financial times but then who doesn’t? Anyway since my uni days I’d heard a lot about university unions and some of their bullish behaviours. There was one semester that my friends at another uni told me that he couldn’t re-enrol because some stupid faculty members wanted higher pay (as if they weren’t paid enough already) and more autonomy (as if they were not autonomous enough already) so they refused to hand over their marks unless the university yielded to their demands. He told me these “academics” were giving out pamphlets outside the library asking for students’ support and condemning the tyranny of the vice-chancellor. The irony was they were terrorising the future of their students with the same tyrannic collateral damage approach. So who is the bigger terror, who knows? But I digress. Working at this space ship library never failed to amaze me. Lately we received a newsletter from the union, whom I’m not even a member of telling us how they are not happy with the management and demanded us to file complaints about the ill-practice of the management. I was really scratching my head when I got the newsletter. Being a part-timer and contract staff, I never really paid attention to what’s going on around me in the library. Partly because I’m not interested and partly because I don’t really hang around with people there.

So what’s the newsletter about? It’s about the extension the library is building to accommodate more students (nowadays universities are just opening up more full-fee paying seats to earn more income). Staff members will also be moved to the new extension so the current areas can be re-zoned for student use. So what’s the union fussing about? On the newsletter was a list of “charges” against the management. As usual, connotations of tyranny was littering all over the place. But some of the funny things I spotted were like “Don’t like that I need to go through another door to go to the staff toilets” (which is exactly what they are doing now) and “Showers should be marked clearly where it can get wet and where it cannot” (what the?). Oh another funny thing was “I heard that there will be CCTV to monitor our work and I don’t like that”. I couldn’t stop laughing when I read those accusations. All I could think of was these people really don’t know how good they are having and just want to waste their lives complaining about things that nobody cares. And the whole conspiracy of CCTV monitoring their work is just ridiculous. If they were actually doing work instead of spending time putting that kind of stupid newsletter together, why would they even be scared of being monitored. Further, the CCTV has nothing to do with the library but a security code the university has to comply with for the building. So where did that imagination of them being monitored by the management through the CCTV come from is beyond normal people’s comprehension. Sometimes I do think that these union people could use their brain power to write a good thriller and maybe that could become the next Australian blockbuster.

However, the union didn’t stop there. They even sneakily went around in the staff room during lunch hours to propagate their cause (which for me has no reason for that “cause”) to solicit support against the management. One day when Claire and I were chatting in the staff room during lunch, George the union leader in the organisation came to pester us to sign the petition. I told him I’m not interested and he immediately lectured me in front of Claire of how selfish I am and thinking that as a part-timer these important issues did not concern me. I was so annoyed that I told him to fuck off and said: “if you hate this place that much maybe you should go somewhere else to work. But then again, with your ability and attitude, I don’t think you’ll last a minute in the real world. Only a workplace like this will tolerate people like you who spend your day demonising the management while getting pay cheques from them every fortnight.”

The whole staff room went quiet and everyone was looking at me. Claire was trying not to laugh and working her ass off to pull a straight face together. Shocked by my remarks, George walked away embarrassingly. I never saw his face near me since then.

Back to the drama school. Things had gone from bad to worse since Leonard left. When I ran into one of the administration people there one day at the uni café, she told me that on top of a deficit, a number of high profile donors have retracted their support for the drama school and some well-known figures in the arts industry have informed the drama school that they have changed their wills and wrote the drama school off their lists. The Board starts to get panic about these but Succubus was not concerned. She said that the drama school doesn’t need these people as she knows other better industry figures. I don’t know how this whole fiasco is going to end but certainly from other people I know, none of them think the drama school has a bright outlook.

However, I don’t really have time to think about the drama school that much as I’m working hard to further my acting career – at least to get out of this space ship and do some real work in the real world. Went to a friend’s play the other night and ran into some important figure at the post performance drinks. We got along really well and were surprised to find out that we love the same things and have the same wicked humour. We exchanged our business cards and he told me to keep in contact cos he probably has something in the pipeline with a major Hollywood figure that I could get involved. I was ecstatic about the whole unplanned outcome. Hopefully this could mean a breakthrough of my acting career.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 19

2010-07-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

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Alice in Thunderland

Date: Days of Thunder
Weather: The clouds begin the thunder and crickets murmuring

Actors usually create characters by observing other people around them. They observe, deconstruct and recreate. That’s the art of character creation. However, when you are working in a place that is saturated with middle to post-middle aged women who thrive on pettiness in life, that won’t give you much advantage in your art.

I need to correct that statement cos I did get that gay bitch job by observing the cat fights of these women. But then if that’s all I got from them, either I will become a gay bitch myself or I’ll just be stereotyping myself further in the industry.

Alice the Thunderland has been parading her success over Eva Cologne in the project but that hasn’t made work easy for Claire and I. Despite the fact that she actually is not our supervisor, she has been showing up a lot without reasons but just to try to tell us her importance in the whole matter. Sometimes I did wonder whether she got any real work to do. Surely she has been telling people how busy she is all the time, from her own office to her ex-co-workers in the library, but then if she is so busy why would she have time to go around telling people about that? That is a paradox that Claire and I could never figure out. Another thing that puzzled us is that why does she always carry a sour puss face with her? Surely after her triumph on Eva, she would have something to smile on as they were life enemies. But then even when she smiles, it just looks like an upward crack on her sour puss face and every time she laughs her squeaky voice just makes things worse.

So you may wonder if she has such a squeaky voice why is she known as Alice the Thunderland? That is because of her temper. She is well known for her temper whenever things didn’t go her way. And at this point you have to know that her way is not always the best. But probably because this job is basically her life, she just wants everything her way to live an easy life. As far as I heard, she is never married, never had a man in her life and also no family. Her only family member is a sister who is doing much better than she is with a happy family and two gorgeous teenage kids. We’d met her once at a function she and Alice are like heaven and hell. Claire and I could never figure out how come they could be so different. Anyway I digress. Claire and I had witnessed her temper in several occasions such as meeting times didn’t suit her personal schedule. With her, she can cancel your meeting anytime she wants but you still have to organise things around her schedules. Failure to do so, you warrant an angry email from her condemning you to eternity of your incompetence. I feel lucky that I am not the person organising them but did feel for Sonia’s PA.

You may further wonder how she got where she is now if she is that bad with people. Well she might not be good with men or other staff, but she does have a superior skill at her disposal – brown nosing. In the last few years, she has been sucking up to people superior to her and presented herself as a capable person by organising trips for bosses including Sonia and the library director. She will go to the distance of beating information out of their PA’s to find when they are going on trips and “accidentally” book a trip that will run into them overseas or interstate and conveniently join them because of the coincidence. I don’t know how much the bosses like her but the fact is that she has been getting what she wants inside and outside of the library because of this superior skill. Maybe as an actor, I really do need to learn this skill to go further, but then do I want to go that low? The other day after another catastrophic meeting, Claire told me she finally knew why Alice always carries a sour puss face – because she brown nosed so much that every time she inhales she can only smell shit and thus the sour pussing.

On the home front, my sister has finally come out of her hiding. She finally faced the fact that she can’t sing. She has been pretty quiet these days probably still trying get over the mockery she got at the audition. But the good thing is that everyone in the house finally got the peace required. She also stopped pestering me with stupid ideas about her singing and dancing and let me get on with life. Hopefully she will find something she is good at and work on it. Mum is definitely happy that she gave up singing and back to her uni studies as she always prefers a “normal” career for her kids than anything arty farty.

As for me, Hugo has been working hard to sell me and I did get one or two odd jobs here and there but nothing substantial to keep my payroll coming. So it seems that I will still be doing this shithole library job for a while to keep my mum happy. Well at least I got my meals and laundry done when she is happy, so all is not lost.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 18

2010-06-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

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Greed…um…Greek…um…Greed Tragedy

Date: Labouring Day

Weather: Frosty and cold

Many things had happened since I last wrote two months ago. We got a new Prime Minister and Australia’s first female Prime Minister who is being commented more on her style than her work. Mum got really upset about the change as she loves the previous Prime Minister because he has a Chinese son-in-law. She basically voted for him because of that.

Mum: “Of course I will wote for da family!”

Me: “When did he become our family?”

Mum: “A Tzainese son-in-law is as gud as a family!”

Anyway politics isn’t anything that I’m interested in unless they developed a more friendly art and cultural policy that helps actors getting more work. Another friend of mine has moved overseas and saw that there are more opportunities in L.A. However the catch is you will need a Visa before anyone is interested in you. My friend is half American so there is no problem for him, but for me, unless I can get a sponsor, things are not as easy. And apart from that I don’t really have an extensively varied showreel that I can put together to impress potential employers about my versatility in my art. I met a Blogger of the Herald Post the other day at one of the functions. He said basically there are no well-trained Asian actors in Australia to do any roles so I should stop complaining about it and settle with stereotypical roles. I told him that I am Australian and for his information there is lots of Asian and ethnic actors graduated from drama school so it was very deluded of him to make that statement. He said he went to more casting than I had eaten pasta so don’t argue with him. I told him I know more well trained ethnic actors than the hair he lost on his head so don’t argue with me either. He was obviously offended by my statement and walked away. Why is the truth so difficult for people to digest?

On the drama school front, the saga continued to unfold when Angela finally resigned with an explosive email about “she doesn’t want to work in an environment that doesn’t treasure her contribution and experience”. Obviously the all staff email was sent directly against Succubus. The interesting part was that under Succubus’ strict curfew Angela still managed to get the email to all staff AND students. Succubus’ was furious about that but then there was nothing she could do. She tried to locate the culprit but the IT department refused to give in to her own private detectives – yes she has employed a company to investigate “ethical” issues in the drama school.

A few weeks later, Leonard, the founder and a current Board Member of the drama school announced his own resignation. There were fights at the Board for quite a while now. The two camps were Leonard and the teaching staff representing the artistic direction and Succubus and her main minion Little Tommy. The tug-of-war was an even game until the point that Little Tommy went around bad mouthing Leonard and his allies to the sleeping members and hypnotising them into surrendering their votes to them. Seeing that she will have sufficient majority votes, Succubus then moved forward to marginalise Board Members who were against her and eliminated them one by one. The Herald Post has long been following the story since dad broke that news on his program. So at the latest open Annual General Meeting, they sent a journalist into the auditorium. When Succubus and Little Tommy found out there were journalists in the hall, they asked security to remove them as “the meeting intended to discuss internal issues that should not be of journalists’ interests”. When being pointed out that since the drama school is federally funded by taxpayers and it is an open meeting, everyone should be able to attend, Succubus and Little Tommy called for “proximity removal”. However that kind of action didn’t go well with the media of course. A week later, there was an explosive coverage in the Herald Magazine on the front page titling “Dramas at the Drama School”. In the story, there were interviews from Leonard, Angela, Danielle etc. there were also whistle blower stuff from current employees within the drama school. Although no names were mentioned, everyone knows who are rebelling against Succubus silently. I was told that Succubus was furious about the coverage and called the paper demanding an apology. However, Herald said that they will only do so if Succubus turned in all the information they need for an extensive coverage of the school – including the accounting details about why the school turned from black to red in just two years. As expected, they never heard from Succubus again.

Against all advice, my sister did queue up for Australian Idol two weeks ago. As expected, she was completely mocked and ridiculed for her lack of singing talent and fashion backward taste. Mum had repeatedly told her that she sounds like a chicken being slaughtered but my sister insisted that the music industry needs a unique voice like hers. She reckoned she would be the multi-platinum singer who can even crack the US market. She also thought that if she threw dad’s name at the audition, she will get through. Dad was quite on arms on that idea as he knew that it will just tarnish his reputation in the industry if my sister did that. So the family was in war the week before my sister got bombed at the audition. After her epic failure at the audition, she locked herself up in her room for two nights and threw all her “Singstar” games into the bin. As for me, I picked them all up and sold them on eBay for a good profit. As mum always said, there is always something good from bad situations. This is definitely one of them.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 17

2010-04-10T07:47:00.000-07:00

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Dances with Cows

Date: A Day of My Life

Weather: Stuffy and stuffing

The New Year has been pretty slow in terms of acting work. I haven’t been back to the drama school lately as more and more teaching staff had joined the exodus from Succubus, tyranny, so there is no point going back. The latest victim of Succubus’ crazy regime was the library, which is now dissected into smaller sections to make way for her Board meeting room because “the library has the best view in the building”. Also the Australian play collection was further reduced with duplicate copies of unpublished plays being chucked out completely so that they can reduce the size of the compactus for more study rooms that are hardly used. The scenario is so depressing and even Angela is now seriously considering quitting too. She helped the drama school established the best library specialising in dramatic art in Australia, but now that is slowly slipping away as teaching resources seemed to be no longer a priority for Succubus. The drama school has just become one of the playthings she tatters with and leaves her mark to show people she was once there. As for all the teaching staff that left, she is more than happy to see them go. Now all she needs to do is to find a way to kick all the Board members that she hates out then her dictatorship will be completed. Honestly, the drama school has become such a depressing place that some stuff couldn’t even be bothered to go back and pack. Of course, as “accommodating” as Succubus is, she immediately employs people to pack the offices for them and send all the boxes to their homes as a grand gesture of “courtesy”.

Back to the library. Eva still hasn’t got over the fact that Claire and I are going to the conference at Darling Harbour. As for Claire us, we really couldn’t figure out what the big fuss is about. After all we are just going to Darling Harbour. However, as her scale of bitching expands further, we came to know that she and some other staff members see this as an index of how important they are in the organisation. I know, this sounds stupid eh? But then what we are talking about is a bunch of people who stayed in the same job forever without the willingness to really learn new skills but want to get a pay rise every year. Putting that factor into the picture, it immediately made sense to us. Originally Claire and I wanted to smooth things out a bit with Eva. At the end of the day, although she had been marginalised quite a bit in the project by the management, we still need to work with her from time to time. However, when we found out all the labels she gave us in front of the gang, we just thought “Up Yours!” We don’t really see eye to eye anymore and it really didn’t bother us. In fact it bothered Eva a lot more for she thought that we would make peace with her after she created such an “adverse environment” for us but that didn’t happen. Some people who couldn’t stand her told us that we can go to the management and complain about her bullying behaviour but then we sort of found it funny to watch a lady of her age acting like a kindergarten kid.

The fact that the library job is just for cash in pocket is good for me I reckon. At least I don’t really need to pay attention to some of those aliens who reside in this space ship. Sometimes I do wonder how a respectable profession like this could attract so many “idiosyncratic” personalities into one space. Anyway I am more concerned about my acting career. Apart from a few odd ads here and there, there hasn’t been a lot of work around for me. Hugo is working his ass off to fight of the effects of GFC on his agency so I have been networking like no tomorrow every weekend. Sometimes I felt like I’m prostituting myself for my art but then even Julia Roberts managed to score something big in “Pretty Woman”, so why not? In fact I do enjoy going to these events and functions. At least you are with a bunch of people who share the same passion and we can drink, joke and swear like no tomorrow. Something I definitely can’t do at the library or even at home...at least not in front of mum because it is “wulgar” and “not nice”.

Oh nearly forgot, my annoying sister told mum the other day that she wants to go audition for “Australian Idol”. Mum nearly threw her out of the window. Words were exchanged as I quietly finished all my sister’s favourite dishes on the table – just to piss her off more. Seriously she can’t sing at all and every time “Singstar” is on, I had to find an excuse to leave the house. The good thing about mum is she sees the flaws in her children and won’t hold back to tell them. When my sister was crushed by mum’s honest opinion about her singing, she just couldn’t take it. I personally don’t mind her going cos I think it’s about time for her to know that she is not artistically talented in any sense. Maybe she should still go and make a joke out of herself in front of the judges. I think it should be fun to watch. Sis is now trying to solicit dad’s support. See how well that will go down.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 16

2010-03-05T19:11:00.000-08:00

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For Better or the Worse

Day: In the Light of Day
Weather: Four seasons in one day

The new academic year didn’t really fare well for the academics. Shortly a month into the new semester, two prominent teachers at the drama school decided to quit. Danielle Lazarus, one of the voice teachers responsible for first year voice training decided that she had enough of the craziness from Succubus and submitted her high profile resignation – through a mass email. Succubus, well known for having no appreciation for voice work and reckons if audience can’t hear the actors on stage, she can simply mic them, gladly accepted her resignation. She then sent another mass email to all staff saying that Danielle has accepted an invitation to her farewell party to be announced at a later date for her contribution to the drama school in the last 15 years. Her high profile move was then backfired when Danielle, to Succubus’ surprise, replied with another mass email to all staff saying that she had never accepted the invitation and was amused that someone couldn’t understand the simple English word “No”. Publicly humiliated, Succubus sent another email to all saying that from now on anyone who wants to send all staff email has to get her prior approval or otherwise risk disciplining actions from her. On Danielle’s last day, Succubus sent a bunch of flowers to Danielle to show there were no ill feelings between them. However, later during the day, Danielle noticed that the vase holding the flowers was actually defective and water was leaking all over her stuff. In response to Succubus’ friendly move, Danielle sent one last all staff email thanking Succubus for the flowers and hoped that the leaking vase wouldn’t cost the drama school too much to replace the carpet in her office. Caught out again publicly, Succubus asked the IT guy to take the all staff distribution list offline completely. Danielle was snapped up by the second biggest theatre company in the city as their in house voice coach immediately after.

Shortly after Danielle’s resignation, Luke McPherson, one of acting teachers there, decided to go too. He was sick of the change of curriculum from actual production experience into street theatres that jeopardise students’ learning from actual work. Under Succubus new curriculum direction, students will not be involved in any real productions until the second half of the second semester in their second year. Luke, who was passionate about students learning on the job to identify their shortcoming, was vigorously against this change. As a result, Succubus took him offline from the curriculum board and just assigned regular teaching duties with minimum hours with students – to avoid a bad influence on students’ mentality. When some third year students knew that, they called for a student council meeting to support Luke. Succubus, as iron-fist as she was, sent a mass email to all saying that if any student was found to organising activities without her approval, they risked expulsion even if they were in their third year – something the drama school will never do. Angry by her move, Luke file a grievance report to the board and to the Employment Ombudsman citing unfair and groundless bullying activities at the drama school. His filing caught the attention of the media and with the Board questioning Succubus on the bad publicity and her recent splash of cash for her own use, Succubus backed down to seek a settlement. Finally Succubus was made to send an apology to all staff and students over the misjudgement she made and apologised to Luke. Although Luke had scored a victory on this matter, he decided to go after the city biggest Theatre Company noticed the saga and offered him a job as the acting coach for their resident company actors. When I ran into Rena, another voice teacher there the other day, she said there the drama school’s standard is on the blink of collapsing. Probably Succubus will seek to get rid of all voice teachers there in the next year or so.

Back to the Library front, things were quiet for quite a while until one day my boss told Claire and I that we are going to a local conference at the end of next month. The conference is about application of modern technology in information services. Claire and I were fairly surprised by the notification but we gladly accepted the offer. Eva, however, was not that happy. She immediately started a personal campaign hoping to undermine Sonia’s decision by going around telling people about favouritism in the organisation. She even went to the HR manager to whinge about it. Basically she was complaining about that it is not fair full time ongoing staff like her were not chosen for the conference but part-timers and contract staff like Claire and I were chosen instead. At first people were trying to be nice to her and empathised her but then after two weeks of a campaign with a size bigger than the Academy Awards rallying, people started to get sick of her. Finally today at the tearoom, when she was saying out loudly “I don’t know why people like him, who isn’t even committed to the profession, should be given that chance.” Another manager overheard her statement, went over to her and said, “Just ask yourself, when did you last finish a project without screwing up? That’s why”.

Eva was shocked by that manager’s public comment. She immediately sculled (and choked on) her tea and left the room.

However, the damaged was done. Some of the staff members who have lower IQ bought Eva’s view and she had now successfully recruited a group of minions. Claire and I knew that the year ahead would not be easy with Eva.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 15

2010-02-07T04:41:00.000-08:00

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Ashes to Ashes

Day: Brand Old Day
Weather: Cats and Dogs

Shortly after the holiday the drama school was back in full swing. And Succubus hadn’t waited a second to perform her New Year slaughter. The first victim was my beloved Acting Head Timothy Hayes. Tim has been at the drama school for over 10 years and under him, lots of outstanding actors were trained. He had put in a lot of efforts to keep the acting course up-to-date without compromising the main element – acting training. However since Succubus came, she was trying to up root the acting course into a way that she thought useful for students. Instead of real theatre training, she decided to put in street performance and motion capturing etc., which means new students won’t be able to get on to the stage for real production training until halfway through semester two in Year 2. The Acting Department of course is not happy, as the basic purpose of the acting course was acting and theatre training. Meeting this resistance, Succubus was trying to reduce the influence of the teaching staff as much as possible.

First of all, she invited her friends to come to direct productions and kicked the acting staff out of rehearsal rooms. Then she unraveled a series of white terror in the meeting room belittling the knowledge of acting staff and sometimes even publicly humiliated them. When such news reached the students, a few year-3 students organized a student walk out to protest against the change. News reached Succubus through the minions, so she immediately sent warning letters to these students telling them that if they walk out they will be pulled from all final year productions and they will not be able to showcase their work for agents. When Tim heard he that was furious so he went to reason with her. Succubus was waiting for this opportunity to put him under the guillotine for a long time. After the meeting, she suddenly announced that she reverted Tim’s employment terms with the school because of “inappropriate and distressful behaviours” against her. To give her sufficient time to get someone in to kick Tim out, she put Tim on a temporary 6 months contract after 15 years of service with the school. Completely angered by this move, Tim complained to the Board directly which forced Succubus to extend the employment to one year pending to revision.

When Michelle Conroy, another much loved voice teacher of the school heard that. She was so upset that she decided to take 6 months’ long service leave before deciding whether she will continue to stay at the school. Meanwhile, Succubus is gearing up herself to kick board members who are against her out of the Board. Her partner in crime Molotov Lamia was busily ringing in votes from idle members presenting their own “facts” so that they could secure their non-sitting votes. The last Director Jarrod Campell and a few other concerned members were racing against time and Molotov to secure vote before the AGM in May. At this point it looks like the school is going to fall apart under Succubus, as she did with the so call art management company in UK before she returned to Australia.

While the drama school in the heat of another political storm, I was trying to figure out my way in my own career storm. Jobs were slow since the New Year. Apart from some isolated auditions that are scarcer than isolated showers at the Red Centre, there was virtually nothing. The current situation with the media is that people are inbreeding to secure their own jobs as the economy is still recovering. As a result that means a lot of actors were not called in for anything as most main and supporting roles were decided even before pre-productions started. There was once a call from a casting director asking Hugo to send me to a free gig for a limited budget feature. Hugo didn’t like the idea of free gigs but then would look at whether it would help my careers. It turned out it was another gig asking me to be a funny Chinese restaurant owner for a comedic scene. Hugo, who really hated the idea of me being stereotyped, turned the casting agent down point blank. In fact, lately Hugo had been discussing with me about going over to LA to try my luck. The main purpose is to secure an agent or a manager there to start up myself. He said Australian media is quite hopeless for non-Anglo actors, no matter they can act or not. He said for me who was well trained and can do the job well should break away from the chains of stereotype casting in this country. His words kept resonating in my head making me to seriously re-consider my acting future in Australia.

On the Library front, things were back to normal. Normal means dealing with all the extra-terrestrial behaviours of various personnel there. Recently Eva had been publicly disputing my commitment to the job and was telling people that it was a waste of money for the Library to keep me around. When she talked about that in one of the meetings with my boss again, I confronted her on her statement. She said she was commenting in a good will manner so I shouldn’t be upset about that. I told her to piss off and told her that if she was able to finish the job in time both Claire and I will not be here in the first place. Also I told her maybe the workplace thinks that it is better to keep someone with has other commitments but can do the job instead of relying on someone who claimed to have full commitments but could never get a single project finish on time. Also I told her to wake up from the illusion that she was a good worker and did everything fantastically because she sucked at everything she did and every time people needed to pick up her shit. Claire and my boss’ jaws dropped as I said that and the meeting room sank to a dead silence. Eventually my boss wrapped the meeting beautifully and professionally and everyone left. She had a word with me afterward but at that point although I understood her good intentions, I was very through and done with Eva’s stupidity. The good thing that came out of this was Eva left Claire and I alone and completely disappeared from our office. The only communications with her now were through email (which I preferred so I could have records) and she also stopped bitching about me to anyone anymore.

I thought the New Year would be a good one, but it looks like another rough journey is about to start.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 14

2010-01-20T03:02:00.001-08:00

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There and back again

Day: Day of most return
Weather: Pollen season without rose petals in the sky

Something I hate most is when the holidays are over. When you were a kid you dread going to school after the long holidays, wanting to leave school all the time. By the time you left school and went to uni, you started to enjoy the inhumanly long holiday periods and breaks and in between, thinking that you were in heaven. Then as with everything good, they will have to end it and throw you back into the real world cos it’s time to start an ever-lasting working life. Sometimes I wonder which is worse: to die young or to live and work to your pension age and found out either you don’t have enough money in your funds or you just couldn’t spend it all before you die.

I’ve been blessed with a successful dad and never really needed to worry about money…not really, but at least I have it when I needed it. Mum, as a traditional Chinese woman, doesn’t believe in kids living off their parents and sit on their bums. That’s why even with dad’s support I still have to go to work. If it is going to location or on set that’s fine, I can deal with it cos that’s what I want to do anyway. But going back to that Battlestar Galactica is really a bit too much.

I scored a few gigs after my spectacular gay bitch performance on the new TV series. The producers even said that they want me back again if the character returns to the series – which never happened, as I know they just wrap production for the second series. So after the gay bitch role, I was back to kitchen hand and restaurant waiter. It’s really depressing but then you got to throw yourself out there and prostitute yourself for art to look out for bigger roles right? It is the whole “looking out” process that mum doesn’t like. She said young people should never just wait but go out there to make money. That is why she insisted me to sign on for another contract at the Battlestar this year. I was devastated, but I’ve dried up my pool of excuses in the last two years, so I got no choice but to go back.

First week back was ok as all the hyena queens were still on holidays. So Claire and I were just busily catching up and having fun. Claire went back to the snowstorm city of London and told me about all the crazy things she did. She also insisted me that next year I have to go with her and she can introduce all her theatre friends to me. Obviously one of her exes before her current Aussie partner was a producer and thus through him she met all these cool people whom she remained friend with (even with her ex) after the break up. So the first week just cruised by happily without much disruption. However, when the jungle gang started coming back things just went downhill again. I don’t know what Eva did during the holidays but when she came back she suddenly had all those crazy ideas that she wanted to push through in relation to the project (which actually are not related to the project as far as Claire and I concerned). She is back with all her battle spirit and determined to take down Alice the Thunderland this year. Claire and I tried to stay amicable with her at first but after two days of harassment from her, all our nuclear missiles were out in the open again.

As for the drama school, the library has been downsized to make way for more meeting rooms in the building. So one of the compactus was gone and part of the library collection is now seeking refuge on the floor, in between stacks and under service desks. Also now they are recruiting someone to just do a few hours of night shifts to extend opening hour – and idea that Angela was pushing for a long time but then was turned down only to be revived as Succubus’ brilliant management decision right before she left for holidays. As far as I know several other teaching staff were over in London too, so whether Succubus will conveniently disappeared in the snowstorm is still unknown but I am sure that a lot of people will be cracking fireworks if that did happened. Oh one of the most shocking news before the holidays was one of her minions suddenly resigned and left. Nobody knew what happened but rumour has it that even he could not stand Succubus’ Stalinist rules. However, he is just a minor minion. The two main weapons of mass destruction are still loyally following Succubus waiting for a chance to strike. They are now like Dementors living a life just to suck happiness out of other people.

So looks like this year will be shaping up as another colourful year both at the Battlestar and the drama school. For me I wish that it will be a colourful year for my acting career.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 13

2009-12-26T21:59:00.001-08:00

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Santa Claws is Leaving the Town

Day: Day of Tidings
Weather: Snowing, not snowing, snowing, not snowing, snowing, hm not snowing

See? There is no snowing in Sydney. So Lillian Succubus decided to go to UK to add a bit of coldness to her already frigidly frozen face for holidays. Unfortunately, a number of teachers at the school also decided to make their way to the Northern Island Kingdom at the same time. Of course when Succubus found out that she was not impressed at all. One of the teaching staff once went up to her in the corridors and cheekily asked her to go to the theatre with him (on school money) so that he can further educate himself and “move on” to new grounds. Extremely annoyed, Succubus turned down the invitation in a low demonic tone and said, “Just to remind you, I am supposed to be on holiday”, and then she picked up her pace and left.

The situation at the school had now become nobody cared to hide their feelings about each other anymore. So the teaching staff would openly tease Succubus outside staff meetings when she didn’t have the power to rule them all. Of course Succubus would not just lie there and do nothing. She continued to terrorise the teaching staff as much as she wanted to in meetings and at the same time claiming that she was under a lot of stress because of the chaos the teaching staff created at the school. The rift between Succubus and the teaching staff are now all in the open. Students are worried that if this continues the standard of the school will go down. As for the Board, the division was even wider. After one of the members posting a question demanding an answer for the 8 million debts that Succubus had incurred for the school, Succubus was busily trying to rally votes of dormant members on her side to kick “unsupportive” members out of the Board at the next Board Election. As for the Board members who wanted Succubus to be done with, they were racing against time in the vote rallying too. So what happened next is beyond anyone’s prediction.

While Succubus was handling the internal warfare, she still didn’t waste anytime to try to establish herself using the school’s name. The latest fanfare was her support for the local short play festival. She threw a party at the school foyer and talked about the importance of having local playwrights contributing to the Australian theatre culture. That was one shameless visage that she put on to try to establish herself on other people’s expense. The fact was she was never interested in Australian playwrights. At one of the staff meetings, after she listed a number of international plays that she wanted to put on for the following year, a teaching staff proposed to have a better representation of local work as it is after all an Australian drama school. She replied, “Hm yes, yes. Of course we should. I love Australian playwrights and their work. We should do so.”

So the staff asked her which ones would she want to consider so he could contact them, she stood their for 10 minutes as if she was under a “Petrificus Totalus” spell. Then with much difficulty she mumbled, “Hm maybe David Williamson.”

When the staff asked her for more names, she just said. “Well em, I think, em, we should, em, talk about this later, em, as, em, I have a very important, em, international call, em, I need to answer to.” So she ended the meeting abruptly and left the room. Everyone in the room was in awe and left the room quietly, although most of them were strategically holding back a laugh.

Another year had gone by at the drama school with lots of dramas going on. Although Succubus tried to execute her Santa Claws for a last time before the holiday started, it just ended in another fiasco with now one of her minions leaving just a year after reporting duty. Not that anyone cared, but people were speculating about what happened between them.

As for the library front, I had given up the idea that people there will change and just continued with my day in day out routine there. Nonetheless, the uni will be closed till after the New Year, so there will be a good old 2 weeks I don’t need to see the Cologne face. Claire is back in UK for Christmas with her family and I probably will just continue to attend parties organised by dad and try to make some new contacts for potential job opportunities. Hopefully, I will eventually score something in the New Year and leave that place for good. Of course mum still didn’t like the idea of quitting the job when acting jobs come but then she married an actor herself, so she couldn’t really complain too much, especially I’d endured a year of “old librarian madness” for her already.

Anyway that marks an end to one year. I better go and grab some of those potato salad before my sister devoured everything on the table.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 12

2009-11-22T14:06:00.001-08:00

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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.

the Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 11

2009-11-14T13:05:00.000-08:00

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Say You, Say Me

Day: Non-concessional Day
Weather: Meteorite Storm

The media report from my dad’s program had put the drama school into the public limelight once again. The media circus following the report was like waves of tsunami, forcing Lillian Succubus to apply policies to defend her position inside out. And to achieve so she despatched her three minions on a road to kill while waging an all out media battle with any media that, in her opinion, tried to paint an evil picture of hers. The thing she didn’t understand was the more she opens her big mouth, the more stupid she looks.

Her first attempt to counteract the damning report of my dad’s program was to, “surprisingly”, go on to another current affairs program on the rival channel. At that interview, she basically reiterated that she was there to improve the “chaotic situation” the drama school was having when she arrived. She also put herself on the pedestal by saying that she is the person who is helping the school to modernise into the media future, as the future of acting doesn’t lie in the theatre but the electronic media like motion capturing and acting in front of the green screen. Thus, basic comprehensive training is not as important but movements and physical training are of more importance. She also condemned the “theatre purists” in the school saying that they were just unwilling to move on with time.

However, her appearance not only failed to curb the coup but it triggered more reaction from other staff members of the school to come out and speak up. Eventually, it was exposed that the Board at the drama school was completely split. Some members although knowing that Succubus is dragging the school to hell, refused to admit they made the wrong decision, threw themselves behind her. But the opposite camp on the Board wanted her to be sacked before she finishes her term at the drama school. Then more explosive information came out when I found out that more and more detailed information about the financial turmoil of the drama school was actually released to the media by a few Board members as responses to the bullying behaviours of the Succubus camp inside and outside Board meetings.

Some other high profile graduates also weighed in to the public debate. Kathryn, the latest international sensation graduate of the school, at a recent media interview, revealed her disappointment with Succubus’ direction of the school. As an international film star who never forgets her theatre root, Kathryn, in her usual elegant mannerism, informed the media that she believes that traditional theatre acting training provides students all skill sets they need for life, no matter what media they chose to work with in the future. She took herself and a few other high profile graduates as examples of success. She also mocked Succubus’ believe that if you can move around in front of a green screen you will be able to act by saying “I look forward to see her receiving a year of movement training in front of the green screen will motion capture balls stuck on her face and then deliver Lady Macbeth’s monologue in front of the public next time when she goes on another current affair program”.

While the public media circus continues, the three minions were trying to suppress any opposite opinions inside the school through more irrational bullish behaviours. Angela told me that one day, Joanna Swinestye came into her office with a book in her hand and said “this book only had a few borrowing record, why did you decide to buy a book with such low circulation” Angela looked at her with an insincere smile that she had perfected in the last year, and said,

“This is what usually happen for library collections all the time because you can’t predict at what stage things are required but try to acquire things that will be beneficial to the curriculum. There are over 50 thousand books alone in this library that I bought in the last 30 years, if you have a year or so of time, we can sit down and go through every single one with you about my purchasing decision. When do you want to make the first appointment?”

Embarrassed by her lame and failed attempt to belittle Angela, Swinestye simply said, “As the library manager, I just need to know what’s happening around here”.

Angela smiles again and answered, “Oh maybe you should provide funding to reprint my business cards then, because on mine, it still said I am the library manager.” Swinestye did not respond to the comment but just stormed out of her office red faced.

As more and more people got dragged into the vortex of dramatic debate, my dad’s program came out as the clear winner. The initial interview’s rating went through the roof and the subsequent follow up reports continued to be rating success. Sponsor money flooded in with the cash register kept ringing every single second. My dad was so happy with the results that he bought me a new smartphone and gave me an “honest” cash reward that can support my acting endeavours for the rest of the year without worrying about work. However, when I told mum I am going to quit the librarian day job, she insisted me to stay on so that I can save that cash reward for the rainy days. She even threatened me that she will stop cooking and doing laundry for me unless I continue to stay on this job. Since these are no ordinary threats, as I hate cooking and laundry with a vengeance, I had no choice but to stay on the job and continue my battle with Eva Cologne et al. ☹

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 10

2009-10-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

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We Fit? We Fit Not?

Day: Day of Thunders
Weather: All hail hail storm

For the past week dad and his team have been working hard on the groundbreaking report about the drama school. Succubus was particularly tense about the report, as she knows that it will either make or break her. She had been calling dad’s team again and again through her legal team, basically emphasizing if there is anything damaging to her or the drama school (in that order) she will sue the shit out of them (exact wording).

The thing she didn’t know was that the more she did that, the less dad will give her a favorable report because his work thrives on “debatable materials” (dad doesn’t like the word “controversial” thinking that it was taggy). According to dad, there were things that were originally taken out from the report now being put back in. And thanks to Succubus’ persistence, the report is now aired in two segments over half an hour instead of the originally schedule of a 15 minutes “light” report.

The day for the report to go on air finally arrived. Mum is a big fan of dad (otherwise she wouldn’t marry him anyway) and she makes sure that we record every single episode of the program (despite I told her a million times that the station will have copies). For first time in a while I sat down in front of the TV with mum to watch dad’s program. The same melodramatic introduction music played through the surround sound system as mum pressed the red “record” button on the remote control.

Dad was in his usual navy blue business attire with that warm gentle smile on his face. “Today we are going to let you into an inside view of the most prestigious drama school in the country” He said “The power house that produced generations of high profile actors and media personalities.” He continued. “But is the power running out?”

The scene then cut to dad’s voice over report and interview with Samantha Purr, the ex-archivist. During that part of the program basically dad was talking about the division of the school Board over the recent employment of Succubus and then the subsequent failed petition from high profile graduates to sway the decision. It looked at the glorious times of the drama school with a montage of its successful graduates. Then the tone and music suddenly changed. The scene changed from colour to black and white with the image of Succubus and the drama school on a title card “Succubus Vs Art: Is the succubus sucking out all the creative juice of our prestigious Drama School?” Then it cut to Dad’s interview with Samantha Purr. Basically it was about how there were persecutions of teaching staff and experienced staff at staff meetings when they voiced their opinions against anything that Succubus said, the continuous downgrading of library positions and library budget cuts, and shockingly how publicity replaced quality of teaching at the school. Samantha said, there was once Michelle, the voice teacher, was doing a warm up before a production opening with students, Succubus suddenly walked in with a bunch of school kids in their school uniform and asked Michelle and the students to vacate the premise so that the school kids can take picture on the set with her. As I watched the program, I was just shocked how low Succubus had gone to put her own name above the school.

In the second half, it was Succubus’ interview with dad. I’d seen most of the interview in the original tape that dad brought me. But to my surprise, there were a few additions to them. There were more precise numbers in between interviews that I haven’t seen before. Succubus was basically saying the same thing about she brining the school forward and dismissing the resistance of teaching staff as nostalgic. But after Succubus denied the fact that she increased administrative staff number and funding, suddenly on the screen there were numbers coming up showing that the spending ratio of school budget in the last two years had dramatically changed with administrative budget went from 40% to 45% while teaching budget went from 35% to 30%. Obviously the numbers were obtained after the interview, as I haven’t seen them before. But even more surprising was the detail of these numbers, such as the corporate program branch of the school had gone from black to red in two years and the only income increase was the increased rate of hiring out theatres and venues (which explained why Tim said they have less and less time for tech runs in productions).

At the end of the report, it was obvious that dad had upgraded Succubus from a mega bitch to a giga bitch. But one thing that left me wondering was where did dad get those numbers? That’s something I really need to find out.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 9

2009-10-13T04:42:00.000-07:00

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There is nothing called Polite Politics

Day: Pre-judgment Day
Weather: Smoke? Haze? Or Fog?

The audience with Angela, Tim and Michelle continued to bug me for the rest of the week. I know I need to do something but with Eva Cologne breathing down your neck like an Alien Queen, it is difficult to think of a strategy. In fact she has been really testing Claire and my patience lately with all her ridiculous behaviours to teach us about her importance. At first we tried to be polite but then she didn’t seem to appreciate it so we started putting our annoyance more and more on our face. There were several times when I was leaving work, she came around and tried to get me to do last minutes stuff for her. If she was Claire, that would not be an issue, but Eva had never earned any friendship credit from me, so every time I just turned her down point blank. Today sick of being “disrespected”, she scoffed and said. “What kind of work attitude is that? Aaaaaiii never refuse work from maaaaaaaiii boss”. I shot a stare of death to her and replied, “Firstly you are not my boss, and secondly maybe that’s why you never finished any, cos you piled up too much overestimating your ability.” Claire by now is used to my honest attitude towards Eva, but still she couldn’t stop laughing when she heard that. Eva frowned and walked out, “Your generation is hopeless. What did Aaaaii do to deserve working with people like you two?” I looked over to Claire and said. “Probably because she did nothing, that’s why we are here”. Claire laughed so hard that tears were squirting out of her eyes. I felt good and left.

On my way home a thought struck me. If you want bring issues into the open, who do you call? Renaldo Bolingra!

My dad, Renaldo Bolingra is a renowned current affairs anchorman in Australia. He’s been around the block and around the clock. Any issues involving national politics, social politics, media politics, office politics, family politics and relationship politics, you can give his team a call and sure he will be there. His no bullshit and sometimes lack of neutrality attitude in his reporting is loved by the audience and had earned him a few accolades throughout his career. So I decided to enlist my dad’s help.

Turn out my dad was more excited than I am. He said the media has been hearing things about the school for a while but it seems that there was a united front blocking their way. It will be good to have someone from inside to break the defense and of course he will be delighted to be the person to bring justice and peace back to the school again (yeah right).

I sort of drop that hint to Angela during my next visit to the school and the timing couldn’t be better. Lillian Succubus had just sacked the school archivist claiming there was no funding for the position but then the next day advertised the same position on the same pay scale. The archivist was furious and vowed to sue the school (specifically Lillian) and let the whole world know what’s been happening. I gave dad a casual call and the next thing I knew was an interview was arranged with the archivist Samantha Purr.

However, as soon as someone leaked to Lillian that a potentially damaging interview was conducted with Samantha, she called the station trying to kill the story and said that she reserves the right to litigation against the program. But of course as experienced as dad and his team are, they already got clearance from the channel’s legal team and basically told her to piss off. Knowing that she couldn’t kill the story she then insisted to be interviewed too to provide “a balanced view” to the whole situation.

When dad told me that he accepted the offer to interview her, I was furious. However, as professional as dad is, my anger is nothing compared to potential ratings that the coverage could rake in. I knew that it couldn’t be stopped. I started it and it had gone out of my hands.

Dad showed me Succubus’ part of the interview tonight. It will still be another few days before it goes on air so it was an unedited clip. Succubus was in her usual “Shiny Hazel Collapsed Mushroom Look” completed with a “Bride of Chucky” smile. Basically she was saying that she was employed to bring the school into the future and by doing so of course some older staff who are resistant to change are not happy, but this is just a phase. When being asked about all the things I told dad and all the things Samantha said, she just brushed it off as someone tried to taint the name of the school and all she tried to do was to save cost while providing a better environment. Dad asked her if the school was trying to save cost why was a) the archivist position was re-advertised on the same pay scale, b) the school is giving a new opera teaching position at a much higher pay scale than all current teaching staff while the school doesn’t even have an opera singing program, c) there is an explosion in the number of administrative staff directly under her. Succubus didn’t really answered those questions but just kept on saying she is moving the school forward and that’s what she was employed for blah blah and a bad bra.

My anger was at boiling point. I said, “She’s a liar! She’s a bitch! Don’t believe her!” Dad gently puts his hands on my shoulders and said, “I know. I can tell from the interview already. Don’t worry son. I’ll make sure she looks like a mega bitch when it goes on air”.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 8

2009-09-30T17:16:00.001-07:00

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Google Goggle Gargoyle

Day: The Day Sydney Turned Red
Weather: Dust Storm

It was to my surprise that things at the drama school had hit such a low lately. So I took Angela, Tim and Michelle out for a coffee to cheer them up.

As we descended the steps of the familiar metallic staircase, red alert was on. Lillian Succubus had just entered the foyer. She is a lean lady in her early 50s who seemed to have jumped straight out of a failed Lean Cuisine commercial. Her skin was inhumanly dry and pale that everything on her face looked like a child’s drawing on an old canvas. Sitting on top of this was a shiny hazel perm on an outdated “collapsed mushroom” hairstyle, which is anything but complementing. Her face is awkwardly squarely with a hard protruding jaw line, resembling my dad’s old shoehorn. Mum always told me “Square-a dzaw peopo are vely dandzelous! Dey only care about demselves and will do anyfing to get what dey want.” Well you ought to trust the good old Chinese wisdom sometimes.

Tim hushed us to a quick turn as soon as we reached the foyer. We moved quickly under the shadows of the stairs behind the columns attempting to avoid an attack. It’s a déjà vu from “Alien” sans soundtrack. The shore was suddenly cleared when Succubus was distracted by a group of students who just came out of rehearsal. She glided towards them like a demon creeping upon her victims. Realising her presence among them the students reacted like a colony of sardines attacked by a shark.

We ordered our drinks in god speed and tiptoed away to a remote corner table where I found out more about the recent saga with the library.

Since the summoning of the three minions, one of them, Joanna Swinestye, the internal affairs “manager” had been working very hard for her master launching waves of attack on Angela. However without any prior knowledge in the library business, everything became a joke. She could come in on an afternoon while all students are at class and tell Angela, “Why isn’t there anyone in the library? And what is your staff doing at the computer? Don’t they have work to do? Like lending things to people?” When Angela told her that they were actually taking the quiet time to finish their cataloguing so that things are available on the library catalogue, she replied “Catalogue? Are we selling books? Why do we need a catalogue?”

Another classic case was Joanna came in with Succubus pressing for extending library hours while cutting back the number of library staff. When Angela told them that this is quite impossible, they required an explanation. Angela explained that if there were only two staff left in the library, nobody would be able to help the students in their research. Joanna immediately hissed and dismissed Angela, “Helping the students? Now that’s what we called over-servicing!” When Angela told her that’s what librarians do, Succubus laughed it off and said, “Don’t be ridiculous! They don’t need help. You can find anything on Google nowadays, if it is not on Google, it doesn’t exist!”

When I was still gasping on what I heard, Succubus had finished devouring the souls of those students and noticed our presence. Like a hellhound born to kill, she moved swiftly over our way. Tim whispered, “Shit, we are spotted”. She stopped at our table with an artificial smile resembling “The Bride of Chucky”. While Tim and Michelle were not in a mood chitchatting with her, Angela politely introduced me as an alumnus of the school. She looked over with disinterest and with a cold robotic C3PO tone, said, “Welcome back. Pity you’re gone already. Otherwise you can enjoy the better school that I am building.” I told her I liked the place as it is. She let out a geyser puff of laughter and said, “New management, new direction, boy. That’s how it works. You’re too young to understand this”. I asked her what were the grounds for changes. With pride she said, “I talked to students, they told me what they want and I implement them. I’m here for them.”

“By telling them Google is the only thing they need to finish their studies? That’s helpful” I smirked. “And how many students told you they want to take out the script archives for 10 more computers?”

“I solidly remember at least 10 students said they want more computers. It’s quite a prominent figure. Besides the script archives are just wasting space.”

“Great! A drama school that threw out its own script archives. That’s an attraction! And 10 out of 150 students? Have you even checked the usage of computers?” I prompted.

“If that’s what they thought and told me, that has to be true.” She replied confidently.

I broke into laughter, much to her surprise, “No offense, so if 40 out of the 80 people who work here think that you’re a dumb prick, it has to be true too then.”

For the first time I saw colour on Succubus’ face. Angela, Tim and Michelle downed themselves with coffee to maintain a professional visage. With much effort, Succubus squeezed a smile and suddenly in a strong bad RP, “Well, that was interesting. Nice meeting you.” Without missing a beat, she twirled around and walked away.

I looked at Angela, Tim and Michelle, “what’s with that accent? Are we still in colonial age?” Tim choked and spat his coffee and everyone burst into laughter.

It’s nice to hear them laughing again. But back in my mind I know more will come. I need to act quickly.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 7

2009-09-30T17:10:00.000-07:00

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The Bastardy of Administrative Ignorance

Day: The Day Playing Politics Became the Norm
Weather: Attack of the Cyclone Lillian

Knowing the conspiracy scheme of the University against the drama school, I decided to cross the road and be the mole.

It was really a bit exciting thinking about it. Getting caught in a massive evil acquisition scheme of those damn academics and working against them by working for them. It sounds so Casablanca.

I went to the library as my first stop to see my favorite librarian Angela Mitton. She has been there for years and she’s always the favorite of every student there. One can never forget her gentle smile and caring voice. She had helped us out from a lot of troublous situation in our researches. A little surprise was that both one of the voice teachers Michelle Conroy and the Head of Acting Timothy Hayes were there too - so can kill three birds with one stone. :)

Angela’s face glowed as usual as she saw me walked in. It was the same old caring soul that materialized on her kindly face. We gave each other a hug and she asked me to join in and catch up. I gave Michelle and Tim a hug each but then noticed something was wrong.

Timothy was not in his old chirpy self. In fact his eyes were red and despite Angela and Michelle tried to play down my “observation” I insisted to get to the bottom of the barrel. Reluctantly they started talking.

What happened was the new director Lillian Succubus had been raging a political storm in the School since her arrival. She claimed to be an accomplished arts administrator from overseas but she had no idea how to run a drama school. Further, being surrounded by all the people who are cream of the crop in this area in Australia really magnified her incompetence in the School. So in order to combat this, she employed three trusty but equally inexperienced people to manage all the experienced staff in the School so that she doesn’t need to deal with them directly. At the same time she started playing a divide and conquer game on them telling different stories to them thinking that they would not talk to each other and share information. However, when her divide and conquer game was busted at several staff meetings, she turned sour against these staff and adopted a bullish policy towards them through her three minions.

The latest victims were Tim and Michelle. In order to buy over the students, she took them to exclusive lunches that none of the staff members could attend and provided “Director’s Critics” sessions that only she could attend and praise the students to buy them over. When one of the productions fell flat in standard lately Tim and Michelle decided to discuss it at today’s staff meeting. When they raised the issue, she told them flatly to their faces: “You guys only know about acting and voice, what else do you know about production?” The rest of the staff was shocked by her publicly bullish and belittling behaviour but before others could jump in to support them, she said: “If there are no more pressing issues, this is the end of today’s meeting. I’m not going to waste my time when people don’t know what they are talking about and what is good for the organization” And she stormed out of the meeting room.

Tim and Michelle were obviously hurt and especially Tim who had in the previous 20 years devoted his life to the School, teaching students with all his heart. He had taught some of the most influential actors in the world who went on to win various Oscars and Emmys, not to mention countless local awards. He was furious at the same time watching the School standard crumbling in such a short time because they could not give honest and constructive critics to their students’ work anymore.

This is the first time I saw this anger in these gentle and caring teachers. Anger not because we could not live up to and deliver the standards we are supposed to deliver in our art, but anger caused by the damning politics of an insecure piece of shit.

And there were more…

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 6

2009-09-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

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The Bastardy of Academic Arrogance

Day: The Day the Art Stood Still
Weather: Shit Storm

The shoot for the TV series was as enjoyable as ever. It is always great to be around all the creative people who have a passion for art. We had a blast on set but everything has to come to an end. So back to the 9 to 5 routines again.

Did I mention that the uni library that I’m working at locates on a campus just opposite to my drama school? But of course the relationship, at least for us, just stops there. We pride ourselves as artists not some academic loonies craving for social recognition by churning out papers after papers that have no social significance. To be honest, who the hell cares about a little girl’s diary uncovered during a backyard digging dated from 1820? Of course some academics will say that there is HUGE social significance because it tells us a fragment of what society was at that time. But I am sure that more people care about whether Buffy slay another vampire more than what a little girl ate for breakfast in the 1820s.

Anyway the reason I’m writing this in my diary is that I feel like Australian arts and culture are in serious jeopardy.

To recapture what I am doing at the library – creating an art database for performance and creative art in Australia. This is partly the reason that I’m willing to surrender my actor’s pride to work with Eva Cologne and “Alice the Thunderland”. However my opinion of certain academics hit new low when I met Alice’s bedtime buddy Peter Hellonme.

The meeting was about the direction of the database and how it helps to raise the research status of the University. It was supposed to be chitchat over a coffee or something. Who would have thought that an informal meeting at an outdoor uni café would be more lethal than those in meeting rooms where Eva and Alice repeatedly tried to rip the spines out of each other?

Peter himself looked very decent. Well mannered with respectable Tommy H fragrance (although I did feel he immediately aged the fragrance – I gave mine all away to dad right on that night). The most respectable part was he didn’t try to comb over his balding skull but just shaved it all off. That’s two points for bravery and self-respect. However, my respect for him stopped as soon as he opened his mouth.

He took a sip of his double shot mocha with additional chocolate and cinnamon (cinnamon?) and looked over to Claire and me. “I noticed that the project had progressed significantly after you two joined” Eva was not impressed. She smirked, closed her notebook on the table and folded her arms in front of her wilting breasts. Fumes were coming out of her ears. She was definitely ready to go. Claire and I just smiled politely tried not to unleash hell from Eva.

“I’m sure this database can help to cement our status as the prime research university in performing arts in Australia” he continued “ which will be helpful for us in the future if we want to take over that god damn drama school across the road.”

My jaw dropped. “Taking over the drama school?” I blurted out.

“Yeah, the university always wanted that piece of prime real estate. To be honest, those actors, directors and whatever and whomever they have there are just wasting prestigious land for no reason. They don’t add any value to the academic wellbeing of our young Australians.” He explained with a pride that was shinier than his shiny bald skull under the sun.

“But they produced generations and generations of cultural icons for Australia that have significant influence both nationally and internationally.” I replied. Claire was watching me, fearing that I might tear him into pieces. But as a curator herself when she worked at the British Museum, she could understand my anger to Peter’s statement.

“They are just celebrities to fill and fuel our tabloid pages” He laughed. “But it’s still good because it will add to the name of the university when it became a branch or faculty of the university. That can attract more students and hence increase our funding.” He laughed thunderously that the whole café was shaking.

I was fuming…and am still fuming. Need a glass of icy cold water before I can continue.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 5

2009-09-30T17:03:00.001-07:00

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The Tale of the Two Bitchies (Second Bitch)

Day: More Than Just Another Day
Weather: Lightning Storm

When the two most powerful bitches in the universe cross fire, you know the dark times are here.

“Alice the Thunderland”, the powerful bitch with a twisted smile raised her pen and started scribbling her spell on the whiteboard. The timeline of her march to the white tower “So Eva, I noticed that recently your long overdue project had made some significant progress”.

Eva shot a spark of energy from the corner of her eye and breathed a sentence of authority “Yes, aaas you noticed. Under my expert guidance, Aaai had taken this project to new grounds. Eeeverything is going fine under myyyy leadership. “

Alice deflected the attack with a twinkling of her thickly mascara’d lashes. A perfect defense exhibited. “Oh really? I wonder what dragged you behind six months ago then? Anyway, we don’t talk about the past. I only care about the future. Can you give me a new completion date on this? I’ll need to log it. Just to make sure things are delivered on time this time”. A shower of meteorites shot from her expensive diamond ring powered by the artificial lighting above rained down on Eva.

Eva dodged the offense skillfully by moving towards the white board in a liquid smooth manner, picked up a red marker and started defacing the timeline spell. A skillful move that even the most experienced Time Lord will have difficulty to counter. “Aaaas you know. The Library doesn’t wooork according to your timeline. We do understaaand on a graaaander scale you might need to know the progress, but when we are reeeeady we will let you know. As an ex-librarian, you should be the first person in your office to understaaaaand the complexity of the project. The research, the indexing, the data entry, the design of the user interface, they all require a lot of expertise from us to work on them.”

Alice seemed to have already predicted the move though. She summoned the Titans immediately. “You know what? I had a chat with Sonia (my boss) and Peter (the Dean of University Research Office). They seemed to expect that this could be finished by the end of the year. I am sure they have both communicated to you on that?” Eva took her tome out from her folder and ready to deflect, however, Alice was much quicker. She slightly moved her position ready to dodge and mumbled a few words to Claire and me. “I know you two are kinda new to the project, but with your involvement so far, do you agree with Sonia’s view?”

Claire and I looked at each other, hoping that our rubber raincoat could keep us alive from this attack on our innocent souls. However, it was a Class A puppet spell! Nothing had prepared us for that! We saw the puppet strings descending on us from thin air and we were defenseless. “What would they know? They are just working on things Aaaaai assigned to them. Aaaaai am the person in charge, so if you waaaant to know the full picture, Aaaai am the best person to ask.” The abrupt lighting storms from Eva formed an electrical shield above us. Though it looked like it’s an attempt to protect us from the puppet strings, the electrical shield could burn us to ashes to if we were not wearing our rubber raincoat.

At this point Claire started to draw her own spells on her notebook. A series of short hand notes that she and I invented to communicate without Eva’s understanding, not to mention Alice.

“When the hell would these two bitches be done?” She wrote in her cryptic spell. “How the hell would I know?” I replied. We felt trapped without Sonia the High Cleric and Valkyrie to protect us this time round.

Alice, as experienced as she is, obviously noticed our spell casting. “Oh I’m glad that someone is taking notes for the meeting. Looks like we finally have two pairs of good hands for this project.” We may be novel to the game, but apparently unconventional homemade spells helped us survived one of the epic battles in the meeting room.

The day ended with Alice slightly scratching Eva. But we knew Eva will not be licking her wounds for long and will be back in good shape for the next fight very soon. But for Claire and I, we had the next few days completely Eva-free and managed to do some work. It might not be a happily ever after situation, but at least the “Bitch of the Second Floor” is gone for a while.

As for me, I applied every single tactic and psychology I observed from Alice and Eva at my gay bitch audition. It was not flawless, but two days later I got a call from Hugo that I got the job.

Maybe like everything else, if you look close enough you can find some good in this job.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 4

2009-09-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

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The Tale of the Two Bitchies (First Bitch)

Day: Just Another Day
Weather: Uncalm Before the Storm

OK…everything started with a call on Monday night. I was in the shower as the phone rang. Mum was singing (or rather squeaking) some tunes from her Chinese Operas (yeah as far as I know she used to be a Chinese Opera singer) while doing the dishes. Something I could never understand: why do you do your own dishes when your husband already bought you a state of the art dishwasher? Anyway, as usual nobody in house picked up the phone except mum. “Hallo! Yes. Hoe on.” Even at the full strength of the shower and the music in my room, I could hear mum’s thunderous footsteps running up the stairs. She knocked on my door and yelled “Son. Your phone! It’s Hugo your Boss.”

As I made myself look decent, I could hear from the outside that mum was chatting with Hugo, my flamboyant straight agent. “Oh hoo hoo hoo. He is such a gud boy! Working hard at da libarly. Peaze. Take gud cair of him for me!” To ensure there were no further embarrassments from her, I quickly opened my door and took over the phone. I gave her a good son smile and said “Thanks mum. By the way, Hugo is not my Boss, he’s my agent.” Obviously that didn’t make a difference for mum. She laughed and smacked my shoulder “Ha ha ha, sutch a tzeeky boy!” and off she went returning to her operatic tunes.

It was both a good and bad news from Hugo. The good news was he got me an audition for a 3-episode guest role on a series. The bad news was I was playing a bitchy gay boyfriend of one of the main characters. Obviously in the story, he found out his boyfriend was cheating on him and the audition scene was the fighting scene between him and the alleged “the other man / bitch”.

No offense but why is it that when Asian actors (or Asian looking actors) are not playing illegal immigrants or restaurant owners, they are gay boyfriends of a lesser importance? And for fuck’s sake I am not even Asian! Surely my mum squeaks like no tomorrow when she sings her opera tunes, I’d never inherited that part of the genes.

However, this could be a break for me so that I can get other acting jobs and quit the Odyssey Space Station all together. I was grateful and worried.

I was not particularly in a mood to deal with Eva Cologne today and particularly not at our weekly meeting when my boss is on leave. That woman just went on and on and on. Claire (the Fooney British Girl) and I started timing her speech with our stop watches lately and charted them on a spreadsheet. That was the only fun thing to do in the meetings with her nowadays.

Anyway so happened that there was someone else attending the meeting today. A woman called Alice, who is the manager of the open access program at the Uni. She heard of our project and thus was interested in whether the product coming out of the program will be suitable to be incorporated into the open access program. I heard that she used to work in the library but then she scored herself a meatier job outside the library with the Power Central. Rumours were that she was sleeping with one of the deans who happened to be the VC best friends…more or less like the entertainment industry but less entertaining with not so goodlooking people (I checked all of them up from the staff directory).

Claire warned me to stay out of cross fires right before the meeting. She said Alice is also known as “Alice the Thunderland”. She basically blasts everything into oblivion if things don’t please her ears. For me I was more worried about the audition later in the afternoon. I was still thinking how could I pull off a gay catfight scene in a club? Especially when Hugo talked me up so much for the role? I am a well-trained actor from a prestigious drama school, but I haven’t done anything like that before. I must search for my inner gay bitch…

As I was contemplating my acting future, Claire and I heard the rolling “clarks” from Alice’s heels. The door swung opened and at the door was a woman in her late forties with a lemon sour face. As she pulled the corners of her mouth upward to “reveal” a smile, she reminded me of Jack Nicholson’s Joker, only with thicker make up and darker mascara. Eva followed to our office shortly after Alice’s arrival. They shook hands but under their friendly gazes were 1000 volts of sparkling electrical energy ready for a kill.

Claire and I looked at each other and sculled for rubber raincoats to stay alive.

Too tired now…need sleep…will continue later.

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting Librarian) Chapter 3

2009-09-30T17:00:00.001-07:00

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The 2009 Space Odyssey

Date: One Fine Day
Weather: Meteor Storm

Third week into the job. My boss delivered the first death sentence – I need to start working at the desk! I was thinking: “Hell no! I’m too good looking to be the “beep beep guy”! And I can’t let my acting friends see me doing that! They can be just 10k away shooting “Hospital Soap” at the studio!”

Well, turned out it was not the “beep beep desk” but the “Reference Desk” – no you don’t do referrals there (or do we?) but we help people find their way in the library. Be it finding the loo or getting something from the library system. Also found out that none of my friends are acting at the mo but waiting tables in Darling Harbour, Kings Cross and other prestigious Sydney suburbs.

The first shift was hell. It was with mighty Eva, who couldn’t stop telling me “Ai am the expert here. So listen to me and watch me. Ai won’t have time to teach you if you caannae understand how to work here. Ai am very busy. Ai am a very busy woman!” – “Ai waant her to shut the fuck up!”

During the whole shift I was trying to sit under the air conditioning vent hoping that the air curtain would fend off the shit water smell from Miss Cologne. Sometimes I really felt sorry for the students who needed her help…well basically she jumped on to my clients like a tigress devouring its prey every time they approached me because she rrreckoned that I knew nothing about my job.

So I was just playing around with the databases looking for free scripts to download.

Then suddenly an Asian student came to me. I looked up with my most good-looking self and smiled. And out from her mouth poured a string of gibberish that I could hardly understand. It’s like decoding the “Da Vinci Code” but without the pleasant company of Audrey Tautou…ah Audrey…Anyway why the hell would she think that I could understand her language? I might look Asian but I am a true blue Aussie with a famous Aussie dad who is earning millions on TV every night! Don’t they even watch TV here and learn English???? So I just casually smiled and said “Huh? I can’t understand you. Can you speak English?“ She stared at me in surprise and then uttered a few more whatever words to her friend behind her and walked away.

Ok – rule number one – if you are studying in an Aussie uni, you ought to speak English and understand the language. How did these people even get into uni nowadays? Rule number two – if you disturbed someone and found out that you don’t need or can’t afford his help, you should still say “Thank you!” Where are the manners of these people?

From the corners of my eyes, I could see the satisfaction on that bitch’s face saying, “Ai know Ai know, this kid caan’t even handle a single client. Ai am so much better. Ai am such an expert at the desk” I acted like I didn’t notice the distortion on her stupid face (well I am a fully trained actor after all) and continued to do my own stuff.

The clock struck 1pm and it’s time to go home. I couldn’t wait but to pick up my bag and leave. The moment I left the building I felt like I was back to the real world. That place was like a parallel universe that you just float inside a spaceship dealing with hordes and hordes of aliens. I couldn’t help but wonder, "did Stanley Kubrick get his idea of “2001 – A Space Odyssey” by working there?"

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 2

2009-09-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

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Date: The Day After Tomorrow
Weather: Eternal Sunshine of the Insanely Spotted Mind

Survived two days at work. Just like Jake survived “The Day After Tomorrow”.

The first day was just orientation. My boss is a nice lady in her 50s with a very quiet and calm mannerism that you can hear the sound of silence when she speaks.

The orientation is basically a garden tour around the place; meeting people and forgetting their names; having lunch at a canteen that serves plastic tasting food and of course being disorientated. Seriously the induction program was comprehensive that it is easier to remember the lines of a Shakespeare play than anything they told me in the program. And at the end of the day I need to fill in a 600-page questionnaire asking me how I felt about the induction. Seriously, at drama school the only thing I barely need to write is a 14-line sonnet that barely needs to mean anything at all. These people, they are so - serious!

Back to the job. Thank God! It’s just for six months with “possible extension” (which I hope won’t happen) on a project related to performing arts. So happened the library got some funding to set up an art related database and blah so they need someone with extensive art knowledge to help them. It’s 3 days a week (Ooohooo tomorrow is the end of working week ☺) and blah.

Anyway I told them upfront that I have to be flexible and need to go last minute to auditions and such and surprising they are very accommodating…must be hard to find good people like me nowadays ☺

Had my first meeting today and met two of the people I will be working with in the next few months. The first one is a woman in her 40s called Eva Cologne. From the moment I saw her, I knew she is a hell to work with. She is basically the elongated version of Margaret Thatcher with a 24/7 Madonna rage without a Madonna face. She treats other people like she was Eva Peron with her nose pointing to the sky most of the time. I wonder how could she not have a neck problem with her head permanently tilted upward? And she always speaks with an out of nowhere authoritative tone:

“Ai rrreckon that we don’t need someone else to kome in to hellp us. Ai rrrreckon that Ai alrrready have the experrtise for this. Ai have the expertise for everrything! Ai rrrreckon it is a waste of time and money. Ai Ai Ai…”

For me, “Ai rrreckon we should just send her to the firrrring squad!”

And her cologne! Really! I rrrreckon that if you can only afford $5 Paddy’s Market fragrances, you might as well extract water from your shit.

The other workmate was more human. Martha is a British girl full of energy and always wears a smile no matter what. She carries a “fooney” British accent and I already asked her to teach me so that I can make use of it when I opened up the UK market in the future. I am impressed that she managed to keep her sanity after 6 months with the mighty Cologne. She is currently engaged to her Aussie boyfriend whom you can see the pride on her face every time she mentioned him. More importantly she is around my age, so I have someone normal to talk to. Seriously, when you are working with Eva you really need someone normal to look at and make faces to lol Martha is like the team’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Insanely Spotted Mind”.

My boss explained the reason why they needed me in a very diplomatic way. But like all DVDs (& Blu-rays), you always have the "behind the scenes" stuff. So far every single person I met told me that Eva had completely screwed up the deadline and the project is already 6 months overdue. She keeps on spending more money and then telling people she is so busy because she has to do her own job and take care of the project. Seriously, judging from the day I worked with her, I think if she shortens her “Ais” every time she opens her mouth and spend the time she purposelessly boasting about her deluded ability to do some work, she would be able to finish everything on time.

But who am I to complain? I got a job (like it or not) and mum is happy. She is telling every one “My son is a laibearlian at da university!” Judging from the improvements in the quality of my laundry, I think I will just take advantage of the next 6 months…hm maybe get some materials out of this for my next play…

The Unnecessarily Catalogued Fulltext Open Access Diary of an (Acting) Librarian Chapter 1

2009-09-30T04:27:00.000-07:00

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The Beginning of the End

Date: One day in my life
Weather: Sunny and great outside. Thunderstorms rolling inside

I know it. It’s karma. I know it right from the beginning.

Dad is an established Aussie TV reporter. And mum? Well she is a Hong Kong woman who plasters $100 notes on her face for facial. Me? A guy at a racial crossroad with nowhere to go.

Being a mixed kid is really a matter of luck. If you are in Hong Kong, no matter how you look they will still treat you with awe. But if you are in Australia but you look more like a Chinese than a true blue Aussie you are doomed! Curse to the dominant Asian genes.

I got an extremely European name – Davesto Bolingra – but that name doesn’t match with the face. I remember when I first started school, my kindergarten teacher called my name, I put up my hand and every kid was laughing at me thinking that I didn’t know my own name. Early years in primary and secondary school were similar, only that the magnitude of verbal abuses increased by year. “Don’t be ridiculous! You are Asian! Asians don’t have cool names like that!”

Anyway that’s history.

I always look up to my dad. He’s so cool on TV. He covers current affair stories that nobody cares but Aussies seem to love them. So I decided that I want to be an actor so that I can share the TV screen with dad. It will be so cool that every night after dad’s program, mum sees me on a soapie parroting lines and chasing hot blonde chicks on the beach. Ah hot blonde chicks! I always have a soft spot for them...

Anyway when I told mum my plan, she was freaked out thinking that I am going to ruin my life: “You luk like Tzainese! Nobody hireya Tzainese on TWee. You betta fine somefing usefow to study. So you can have poppa income!”

I went to library school after completing theatre school to please mum. Not because I liked it but because it required minimal effort to pass but still sounded professional. I also got meself an agent – a cool flamboyant straight guy who knows everyone in the industry. Also know as an old pal of dad’s. I jumped into the fantastic world of acting after graduate school and thought that I will never look back.

Turned out works are scarce and far between, and I continue to withdraw money from Bank of Parents. Then mum came to my room one day: “You need to find a poppa dzob so dat you are not dzus sitting he-ya when no one ars you to act”. What kind of mother will say that to her child? She should be supporting him and encouraging him!

The next week, through her friends at the uni, she found me a librarian job.

That’s when the reality kicked in. Me? A librarian? I stalked my school librarian just to find out where he lives so that I know where to get my overdue fines back! I certainly don’t want to turn into an old pathetic being like him!

My sister was excited though. She kept on asking: “Are you going to be one of the ‘beep beep guys’? Can I come to see you do the beeping?” I told her to piss off as usual. For fuck’s sake I finished graduate school. Beeping books at the desk? You must be joking me!

I tried to get out of it, but in Chinese manner, and to be honest, being short on cash and still living at home, you need to do what your mum told you. Or nobody will be cooking your meals, do your laundry or iron your clothes. But deep inside, my heart is bleeding so much that I think I’m going to die before tomorrow comes.

I hope tomorrow will never come! This is the record of my life before I got crushed to death by falling books.