Dinner with my colleagues at a Chinese restaurant in Manly, owned by the father of a Chinese- Australian social work student. The job attracts a strange mix of migrants, misfits and dogooders- E, a middle- aged Argentinian with a handbag collection to rival Imelda Marcos' shoe stash: C, a stud in his early 50s with Indian parents and a freshly trimmed moustache that sits stiffly just above his upper lip like a broomhead: T., sexually abused as a youth and now involved in suspicious cult-like activities with a woman who promises to change his life (this information gleaned secondhand through another colleague who apparently invites confidence more than I do, though an indiscreet soul lies under that trustworthy face): D , a Maori woman with a consuming passion for cigarettes who has been heard to claim that she would rather die than give up, and her Fijian husband hiding at the corner of the table under his cap and occasionally muttering unexpectedly funny additions to the conversation; J, the social work student, and me. A motley assortment of human creatures out to save the world, make a living, and thrive on the proximity of extremity.

It's springtime in Sydney and outrageously beautiful Australian wildflowers are vying for supremacy with vulgar and excessive European imports.. our room has windows on three sides and I wake up every day before dawn with a feeling of possibility, girding myself for war with Soula and thesis. It would be a brave real estate agent who chooses to do battle with me at this time of year. (I have never seen her but from her name imagine a moustachioed Greek who grows squatter and more unattractive in my mind with every conversation we have). Love and life are reconstituting themselves slowly after the trauma of the move, though my thigh muscles still retain the memory of two thousand trips up and down the stairs. Perhaps everything will be alright after all.

Hard to imagine how love can survive a relocation without dying under the weight of strangeness and logistics. I go back at night to a stranger's house which has, by some miracle, been populated with my possessions, with a distant view of the city and an ancient Moreton Bay fig probing the foundations of the building with its curious old roots. What is home? Is it a lampshade, a chair, the fall of light or the view from a window; a habit, a person, a smell, a language? Currently I feel totally uprooted, and as if anything can happen in the hiatus between two zones of comfort- things can fall irreversibly apart in the chasm that separates Alexandria from Summer Hill. This general sense of disruption is compounded by the fact that we are fighting a rearguard action with Soula of Century 21 over being classified Dirty Tenants as well as (of course) over money, which only confirms my opinion that real estate agents are worms in suits.

I am terrified of my thesis supervisor. It's hard to imagine why, as he is a gentle and mild-mannered man who is also several inches shorter than I am (which means in evolutionary terms- I like this perspective-gaining exercise- that I should feel superior) . But this is the human jungle, where being bigger and stronger doesn't mean anything- and so, whenever I have to see him, I am overtaken by a completely irrational and strongly somatic attack of panic: pounding heart, sweaty palms, dry mouth, blank mind. He is more powerful than me (says who? The oppressive patriarchy, if not the law of the savannah) and I live in dread of exposing my stupidity.

So: it's the beginning of August and three months of hernia-inducing effort and panic attacks of the aforementioned variety lie ahead. Blogging for this period may be very boring, and I warn you in advance.