Don't you love when a run of really great things happen in the space of a few minutes?

I just got home from the office. It's late and dark and the house is empty which isn't an alluring prospect in this creepy house, especially since the cable TV has been cut off by the landlord. Last week, against my usual track record I got freaked out by ghosts (the woman who lives downstairs said she saw one already), so I was determined to stop being a big baby and fight the fear head on. Lo and behold, I realised I had the perfect antidote to my quiet house in my suitcase full of christmas presents. My new Ipod dock! Oh how the music flows! This little contraption makes a lot of noise. And to celebrate my joy, Ipod served up the Beach Boys and then The Shins as the first two tracks on shuffle! It quickly turned sour when Damien Rice turned up (how did I tolerate that angst in 2005-6?) but was saved by new music I haven't even listened to yet (acquired at inappropriate times and places in Australia: apologies to my friends who had conversations with my back as I huddled over my laptop).

Further greatness when I realised that a new hair parting created while mindlessly playing with my stupid haircut in the car actually worked and now it ever so lightly dances around the edge of cool haircut territory. Maybe that's a stretch, but at least it seems to have left late-90s unhip land. In the office today male colleague T told me he preferred the last haircut a lot (insert memory of the time the receptionist at RMIT said "What have you done? Your hair looks terrible!"), but male colleague F insisted that it looked lovely and that T's opinion is less important because he is gay. He argued that if my haircut is approved of by the guy who digs girls then everything is OK. I wholeheartedly agreed, hi fived F and realised that I represent all that my work tries to prevent. Oi vey.

Additional note, as much as I have tried not to be concerned by my haircut (It’s just hair, it will grow, etc etc) in the same way that a capitalist society inadvertently supports ongoing environmental degradation, I believe that modern society supports bad haircut obsessions. I know, it’s something we, as a world community probably don't want to face up to, but you know, I think we just need to draw on the strength of each other and stand up and say, "So you got a bad haircut, big F-ing deal! The world does not and you should not care either." Come on, let's all say it together.

One more pleasurable moment had in the last half hour…when I got out of the car I heard very faint music that sounded like Edith Piaf. What a beautiful sound to hear on a dark still night in Banda Aceh. So unexpected and unexplainable that it's even more mysterious and chill-inducing. As my ears focused I realised it was the call to prayer from a far off mosque, but I didn't study cultural studies only to concern myself with what is actually being produced. I heard Edith Piaf for a brief moment, so it might as well have been her. Death of the Author…hell yeah!