A letter from the Office of the Prime Minister
I am sure the Prime Minister will not mind me sharing the letter I received today from her office. For security reasons, I have blocked out my address and the name of the staff member who signed the letter.
Letter from the Office of the Prime Minister
As readers know, I am, at the moment, one of those swinging voters. I am pleased to see, despite it being budget week last week, we have a Prime Minister who does communicate with the electorate. While Julia has not read Love versus Goliath, it seems obvious from the letter that someone in her office has read enough of it to personalise the letter. This is an entirely different approach to that taken by another politician when communicating with me. I draw the comparison merely as something for fellow Australians to think about.
I am very pleased to have Love versus Goliath acknowledged by the Prime Minister of Australia. I wrote this book to draw attention to what happens and the trauma that results. I hope others in senior positions will also see merit in my words.
Thank you, Prime Minister.
Book Depository now offering Love versus Goliath
I know many overseas readers have been waiting as the postage from Australia was a little high!
Book Depository have the paperback with free shipping worldwide! Of course, also no GST.
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Love-Versus-Goliath-Robyn-Oyeniyi/9780987483027
Book Depository
I have a paperback proof in my hand! Accepting advance orders!
I collected the actual physical book this morning from the post office. Excitement plus! Mr O Jnr 2 declared it “sick!”
Front
The book looks wonderful to me! Staff at work were impressed and I received many congratulations. My photos here are not at all professional – those will come when I let Mrs Bryson loose with her fancy photographic equipment. “Yay!”, I thought, “I can go home and write a great article announcing availability and offering an advance order opportunity to our followers!” I drove home wondering should I have a give-away for the 10th or 20th or something order email. 
I stopped off at the post office to price postage and handling costs for people buying directly from me.
At home I dug out the quotations for the various quantities and the email listing the items Lightning Source suggest paying special attention to when checking the proof. Yes, it says eproof, but as this is a colour interior book, it is actually a physical book proof, not an eproof as it would be for a black & white interior book.
A few items to carefully consider before approving your eproof:
1. Have your latest changes been incorporated?
2. Is the pagination correct: odd number pages on the right/recto and even numbers on the left/verso?
3. Is the text block and page items positioned correctly on the page (is the text getting cut off the top, for example?)
4. Does your proof contain spelling errors, grammatical errors, or typos that need to be corrected?
5. Is the ISBN included and correct / identical on both the cover and copyright pages?
6. Please verify the price on the cover matches the price in the metadata
Mummy’s got swag!
That is the kids’ assessment of my first speaking appearance resulting from our book, Love versus Goliath. Mummy’s got swag!
Mike Jeremy hired me as a guest speaker at a migration agent seminar. This was my first speaking engagement related to our book. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mike very much for taking the risk. Mike had never actually met me, he knew me only from social media. He had no personal experience of my public speaking skills, but he was intrigued by our case. I could tell over lunch he was nervous, but once I took the floor I do believe he was happy. Risk and reward – the risk paid off. 
I did warn Mike I would go over time – I ALWAYS go over time. Actually, I don’t think I was too bad, I did try to watch the clock!
I really enjoyed doing the presentation. It was an opportunity to share information and our experience to a wonderfully attentive and interested audience. I have noticed some search terms hitting the web site tonight that are obviously the result of people wishing they had written down my website URL at the time! 
So many of the course attendees came up to me at the end and thanked me, congratulated me and asked questions. It was really lovely.
Mike sent these Tweets:
Mike’s reaction
I am doing it all again tomorrow!
If this is feminism, you can keep it – Warning: discussion of rape and swearing
I think I might have been lying for 50 years. I’ve always considered myself a “feminist”: as in a firm believer in and fighter for gender equality. After the last 48 or so hours, I’ve changed my mind. Either that or my IQ must have recently dropped about 60 points or so.
Subsequent to a round robin of articles relating to feminist ideologies (you can get all the links from The battle of feminist ideologies), I had a discussion with an academic who was busy throwing names of experts around. The chosen writers of feminist bibles, I gathered.
Now, I’ve had a busy 50 years. I did IT and business degrees, not the humanities. I accept I am at an academic disadvantage here. Even so, for some weird and wonderful reason I tend to see the question of gender equality in VERY SIMPLE TERMS (not exclusive list):
- Equal pay for equal work
- Equal educational opportunities
- Equal employment opportunities
- Equal access to medical treatment
- Equal respect for the person (the gang rapes in India, the rape and murder of Jill Meagher, the “decal” in some idiot’s ute)
- Equality under the law, e.g. the right to drive, equal divorce rights, no need for two male witnesses
I am fucked if I know what the hell cyborg women have to do with stopping gang rapes in India or freeing the women of Saudi Arabia or stopping idiots having demeaning and rape-inciting decals painted in their bloody utes.
The battle of feminist ideologies
Interesting day, there seems to be an all out war of feminist ideologies. Interesting, because I do actually have a DtJ number and I’ve had a small debate with Helen Razer, author of Destroying the point, over physiology in the past. That resulted in my writing So what if male and female brains are different?
I’ve been pondering whether to disagree with Helen or not all morning. Jane Gilmore beat me to it in The point of destroying.
I’ve read Helen’s article twice. While I agree with some of her points I don’t agree with others and I do believe again Helen tries to convince us all men and women are all the same. I am convinced part of the problem we have is we refuse to accept we are in fact different. We refuse to utilise the strengths of each gender to the betterment of the human race while ensuring equality of rights. There seems to be this general push for everyone to believe equality means sameness. It doesn’t. I’ve addressed that question before too.
Yes, Helen is partially right when she says “Women are not nicer. Women are not a civilising influence. Women are just as capable of avarice and stupidity as anyone.” There are very few female serial killers, for example. In fact, Helen proved her own point – she didn’t write a “nice” article! I did find it interesting the number of men retweeting links to Helen’s article. Disproportionately high, I thought. I didn’t do a full mathematical analysis, I’ll leave that to someone like Chrys who is a whiz at such analysis!
A small point about female poverty, before I forget. I learnt this morning (emphasis added):
Prior to British rule, African women could own property and had legal rights. In 1927, British law declared them legal minors, dependent on their spouses.
http://womensenews.org/story/our-history/130307/time-honor-heroism-south-african-women
I think the above is worth noting in light of Jane’s words:
Changing the inequities of male dominance over public life does not change history, but it is a means of changing the world we live in now.
User pays or profiteering? Partner Visa fees
In principle, I have no problem with the concept of user pays. I have a major problem if someone takes money and I get nothing for it.
There are costs involved in applying for visas. Here I am looking at Partner Visas for Australia. The current fees are set out below (current as at January 1, 2013).
Partner Visa Fees
The fees booklet is found at http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/pdf/990i.pdf
