E is going off-line...

for a while. Just until she finishes some things.

Battered Melbourne Uni slashes 220 jobs.

Here it is: Link.

Miki Perkins

July 29, 2009

MELBOURNE University will slash 220 full-time academic and administrative staff because its financial position has taken a battering in the economic crisis.

In an email to staff, vice-chancellor Glyn Davis said the crisis had devastated investment returns and a so-called ‘‘economic response program’’ would result in 50 academic and 50 administrative staff taking voluntary redundancies.

Another 120 jobs would go in restrictions on contract renewal, a freeze on hiring, and attrition.

...

"Do you remember the time?"

The heading is a song lyric.

Michael Jackson is dead from a cardiac arrest. He was 50.

That's too bad, but not bad in the way that Michael Jackson was bad or in the way that I am bad. It's just too bad.

Writing!

Writing Writing Writing put a new post up: "What is a Name".

The Beanie would have put the post here (on this blog) but E wouldn't let Beanie have it.

Sheesh. I have to stop referring to myself in third person.

"Safer, cleaner and on time."

"The Government, reeling from a public backlash over the rail network's failings, yesterday dumped the French-owned operator Connex and replaced it with a consortium backed by Hong Kong's metro operator.

In a surprise move, the Government also dumped the French-controlled consortium behind Yarra Trams, replacing it with a group headed by another French firm, Keolis."

For the full article, go here: The Age.

The Beanie thinks that this is a good move... tentatively... because Beanie has heard many good things about E's trips on the MTR in Hong Kong, which was safe, clean, and on time; not to mention there was virtually a train every five minutes and the rails went to almost every part of Hong Kong. But Melbourne is not Hong Kong and the rails don't go everywhere and there isn't a train or tram every five minutes (a lot more trains/trams are needed for that type of service)... so we will see, we will see....

"How I Became an Accidental Slumlord" By Daniel McGinn

"I still hope to make money here, but I'm more aware that no matter how much I try to be the benevolent landlord, my profits are based partly on exploitation; what I've thought of as "cash flow" comes by allowing some discomfort in the lives of others."

And the residents don't even have beanies.

Read the full article here: Newsweek.

Scarred, scared and wanting to go home.

Excerpt from THE AGE, May 16 2009.

Sourabh had high hopes for a new life. Then he was bashed. Chris Johnston reports.

RAVI first saw Sourabh last summer — a thin young man sitting alone at night outside the Werribee station under a streetlight. Ravi was with his taxi at the nearby rank.

The pair discovered they were both from Chandigarh in northern India. Ravi Mishra, 29, drove to make money for his family at home. Sourabh Sharma, 21, worked menial jobs — in what the union movement has called an "invisible army" of international students — and studied at a CBD college. Both wanted to make something of themselves for expectant, distant families.

But Ravi soon discovered Sourabh (pronounced "Shoo-rab") was scared of the dark. A housemate, Aditura Manon, was bashed just before Christmas. Broken ribs. "I said to Sourabh, 'Why can you not walk home, it's not raining?' " said Ravi. "He said he was too frightened."

Sourabh sat like that outside the station just to be around other Indians. There were always taxi drivers there. He'd been in Melbourne only eight months then and felt alone. His father died suddenly when Sourabh was four. Sourabh is bright but, said Ravi, "very innocent. The first time I spoke to him he called me 'bhai', which means 'bro'. He wanted me to like him."

Ravi began to drive Sourabh home to the sparsely furnished house in Mallee Hen Street he shared with seven others. Sourabh slowly gained confidence as his jobs and studies went well. Sometimes he dared to walk home from the train.

Then last weekend Sourabh was brutally bashed and robbed, the latest in what a police source told The Age was an "epidemic" around western suburbs train stations. In just a few minutes his whole life changed again.

For the full article click here: CLICK.