First, sorry I've been away from this profile for a while. It's actually not because I'm particularly lazy but because I am on a roll with my novel at the moment and that is where most of my spare time is going. I'm not disappearing. I like this profile and a lot of the people I know here.

Second, as many of you know, I'm Australian. On most counts, it's a fairly unremarkable country, considered by many to be a smaller form of America with less snow and more desert. I'm also politcal. I actually met someone yesterday with whom I had a wonderfully enlightening conversation. This person put a nice new idea in my head: we are a collection of people of so many different ethnicities and yet we are a peaceful country with freedom of speech and a strong-enough government not just by appearances but in reality. If it is possible to meet and associate with a Japanese person, a British person, an Indian, an Austrian, a Lebanese person and a family from Saudi Arabia in one day...
doesn't that make world peace seem possible??
Not necessarily an academically credible idea but I like it.

**don't desert me, dev friends, I'm writing a novel!!**