I was phoned by two journalists today: one from my home town's local ABC radio, and one from my home town's local newspaper. The contrast between the questions of both was immense. The radio journalist asked for personal accounts of Christmas in an isolated environment, and was very interested by the fact that not many of us on base (including me) had heard any news of the recent devastating tsunamis in Asia that have claimed so many lives. Here, although we can access up-to-date news over the net, (a) interest is quite low (it's nice to be able to go "I really don't care" about all the news of corruption, war, etc), (b) it's not a topic of conversation like it is at home, and most importantly (c) it's really hard to gauge the exact import of certain pieces of news when you get them from so far away, to an isolated community, and only by printed media. We were talking about this in the office this evening and L. said how he saw this really powerfully when he arrived in Antarctica for the summer just after September 11 had happened; the people who had been down here over that winter had seen the footage over the internet but just didn't seem to get the real significance of the event - not until they got home and were confronted by very very ramped-up airport security and nervousness, and saw it mentioned in the media constantly and so forth. Increased internet and phone communications to isolated communities does not, therefore, necessarily compensate for geographic isolation. In a way I find that reassuring.

The newspaper reporter was totally different to the radio journo. His first comment on the phone to me was something like "omigod I can't believe I'm like, talking to someone in Antarctica!!! Are there penguins?" So that was fun, reassuring him we didn't have to eat dehydrated/ rehydrated food for Christmas but rather feasted on lobster and oyster and such; another thing that he didn't expect was that we had a climbing wall, could play badminton in the storeroom, had a little cinema...

So the media attention would make me feel quite important except for the fact that most people here on base have far more gruelling/important jobs than me, are far more experienced, more articulate, more insightful, know more about the science of the earth's magnetic field ...

In other news (involving me): we look set to go to the Chinese base Zhong Shan again tomorrow afternoon, for a four-day stay. Sam and Mike who just got back from a similar stint there, installing GPSs, assure us that the Chinese are heaps of fun to hang out with, that the Russians are always dropping by with vodka and invitations to hang out at their place (the nearby Progress II station), and that we have to remember that the Russian flag has the white stripe ON THE TOP and to avoid the faux pas they made by hoisting it upside down on the flagpole at the group of nearby Aussie apple huts we will be staying in, called Law Base.

So I may be away for New Years - without electricity or internet access, hanging out with Chinese and Russians in the Australian territorial area of Antarctica. Break out the champers.

~~~~~

Several Days Later: to the people who commented on how heartless I seem in this post: (1) When I say "it's nice to say 'I don't care' ..." I am talking about my wish to get away from news of Sydney councellors receiving bribes, incessant corruption, incessant news of politicians being idiots, aboriginal people being screwed over again, Bush being Time Man of the Year, and the world going generally crazy. I apologise if hating all this stuff makes me sound jaded. I think it makes me sound sane. (2) I don't mean to say we don't give a shit about all the 100,000 people who are missing due to the tsunami. What I mean is that to us, it remains headlines - sad, terrible headlines - until we phone home and everyone is in tears because the Christmas period has suddenly turned into mass death, mass terror, live pictures of people dying, hushed whispers about missing friends and media saturation of people grieving - and then we stop and go "oh". One of my friends asked something like, "I mean, you'd care if all 80 people at Davis were wiped out by a tsunami!" Yeah, but my point is that if that happened, you wouldn't be walking around weeping all day - you'd think, boy, that's really sad, and then you'd go and have your lunch.