National Pride

Happy Australia Day everybody!

To celebrate, I've organised a little Australian ex-pat get-together, with Kurt, Max, and David. We'll meet for dinner (probably in Fitzrovia or Bloomsbury), to be followed with Pam Ann's one-woman show, at the University of London theatre. A good choice, I think, to celebrate Australia Day, as Pam Ann is Australia's air-stewardess-extraordinaire.

While on the subject of drag queens, I have big news regarding my last short film, Murder's A Drag. I have been busily entering it into some of the upcoming 2006 gay film festivals, to "get it out there". Over the Christmas break it screened at the inaugural Tropical Fruits Film Festival in Lismore. Kevin caught the screening, and said he and his friends laughed a lot, and enjoyed it immensely. How much that had to do with the screening, I cannot be sure, as it was 11pm on New Year's Eve.

The big news is that Murder's A Drag has been accepted into the two big Australian festivals:
- Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival, screening on Saturday 25th February at 5:20pm; and
- Melbourne Queer Film Festival, screening on Wednesday 8th March at 7:30pm

As you can imagine, I'm thrilled to bits, and have rescheduled my planned trip back to Oz so that Paul and I can fly to Melbourne for the screening. Yes, I'm coming home!! Yay! My darling Kerby turns 30 on 26th February,and I'm flying home to celebrate. I arrive on the 26th, and will depart on 12th March. I'd have liked to arrive a little earlier, and stay a little later, to accommodate the Sydney screening and Big Gay Day, but The Firm has very strict rules limiting holiday leave which applies to contractors (even though The Firm doesn't pay for our leave). I can't complain really as I'm allowed 26 days per year, more than Australia, which I am trying to save for Paul's European trip later this year.

The job at The Firm is going well. I occasionally toy with the idea of looking for work elsewhere, but the plan quickly falls foul of my apathy to change. I'm unlikely to find another job within 12 minutes walking distance from home, which requires me to do so little and still get paid, so I'm reluctant to risk the change.

But The Firm does continue to provide me with a daily dose of entertainment. Lately, our DACEE office is the source of that humour. DACEE is The Firm's acronym to collectively refer to our offices in Germany, Austria, and Central and Eastern Europe. I know that spells GACEE, but apparently GACEE means something offensive in another language, so they've substituted Deutschland for Germany. The Firm's expansion into these regions came about through a merger, where the London office was the dominant entity. This hasn't boded well with many of the DACEE partners, fee-earners, and admin staff, who want to do crazy things like run Linux insteadof Microsoft software. At the time all this was explained to me, I was reading a World War II hypothetical text called "If Britain Had Fallen". When I pointed out the similarity between the DACEE region and the map of Hitler's Fatherland, I was mock-chided and promptly reminded "don't mention the war".