A few days ago Theresa and I were scanning the newspapers, it was the day after a horrific crash between a semi trailer and a train took place somewhere in Ararat, to the west of Melbourne in country Victoria. Two persons died and almost 40 were seriously injured.

Yet, the newspaper we were reading had, as its front page headline, the story about the soldier who died in Iraq. Private Kovco was shot under mysterious circumstances and died in his own room. Then the return of his cortege to Melbourne was bungled – he got stuck in Kuwait while some other person’s body was shipped to Melbourne. On Saturday his body finally made it to Melbourne and that was the front page headline story. Not that of the horrific crash.

Neither of us are journalists so we cant fairly comment but we both felt it was strange the story about the crash was not thought of as a better story than that of the late Private Kovco. No disrespect to that soldier, but the story of his death was already several days old. The only reason it had continued media interest was the bungling of the return of his body, and of course, how he actually died.

I don’t know if this cast any light on the Australian psyche, and as we were not media persons, we didn’t bother what the other papers carried as front page stories that morning. We had The Age and the Herald Sun is, I think, a more popular and better read paper.

When we had that dinner 3 nights ago (see previous blog), one of the youngsters used the term “potong stim”. One of the not-so-young asked what that meant. To demonstrate my relative youth I attempted an answer. The youngsters were respectful enough not to challenge my answer. I guess I was right.

That has given me confidence to now use this term to describe how I now feel about my present work. A colleague went on paternity leave on Monday. He was a litigation lawyer. As his files got distributed around, I landed a few – all of them litigation stuff, of course. One was an employment law matter so I was on less strange grounds, having done a little bit of employment law matters recently – enough to avoid looking like a complete goose. The rest were building dispute stuff. I know jack-all about building dispute. There are various types of building and construction contracts, various types of insurance policies for building constructions, even various types of builders warranty insurance. And then there are various bodies, including the Building Commission which itself is governed by a stadium full of rules.

Trying to wrestle with all these issues mean, of course, that my own work suffers. Like…potong stim. On top of that, the boss is his usual savage self in his review of my drafts, not entirely because I was wrong. I am so tired now. I’m tired of battling this sort of stuff.

Yet, I’m thrilled I have these battles. I’m thrilled to have these challenges every day. I guess I have learned (and continue to learn) the lesson of the no-shoe-better-than-no-leg story. Of course I yearn to do other types of legal work. I wish I could do some corporate/ banking/securities law again. Yet, to be able to do this is a blessing. I guess as long as I can, I will battle on. I don’t know how long. I guess I will just plod on for now, potong stim or not.