Anyways, since returning to Vietnam, it’s been a bit of a circular run. First, my old company, where I’d planned to teach while seeking a job in the Vietpress, had taken a change of management who were apparently determined to find the worst of my employment record (I learned later they didn’t want to employ experienced teachers because of salary increment costs). Email reads “employment denied, no further review will be carried out, and additionally please concede making uninvited visits to centres to discuss your employment”. Typical.

So I had to go local for Vietnamese-sponsored language schools (which often means teaching classrooms full of sugar-powered, runny-nosed Vietnamese kids).

Meanwhile, my Vietnamese journo on-off girlfriend, Yen, was struggling to put me in touh with the Vietmedia. Unfortunately, because of the damnable press regulations in this country, the most I could do at the present time ws sub-editing, and permission from the media authorities will likely take a good long while.

My hopes weren’t high when we paid a visit to Viet Nam News, the national English-language tabloid, and I got a job at a local school in the meantime.

A royal shock when Viet Nam News got back to me to invite me for a five-day trial (incidentally, with the same working hours as my new signed-and-sealed teaching job – oops!)

So, of course at the beginning of my journo career, this was too good an opportunity to miss, so I stupidly cancelled my new job while neglecting to remember it ws just a trial at VNN with no guarantees (“sorry boss, only been two days but gotta go subediting – keep my salary.”)

Nothing compared to what awaited me in the Vietnamese newsroom. First trial day as rocky as they come. 2pm start, sat at empty workstation and walked through their computer network and software. Given a Vietnam style guide and introduced to other foreign sub-editors who generally welcome me warmly.

3pm to 6pm, given a Vietglish article so loosely-translated you could stick a bookmark in it and call it ‘How to murder the English language’. (No attribution either) Cut and subbed.

7pm-10pm. Subbing headlines and captions. Someone neglected to tell me the captions needed kickers. Incomplete pages given headlines because someone didn’t scribble on the far right whiteboard. Finally all done and given to last late-nite subber and off home.

Hope the trial gets a bit better. Even with all the hiccups, it’s still a prime position for us foreigners here in this country.

Day Five over.  More press releases and story ideas given to me.  More given right back after being researched, cut, slabbed, and pasted.  Another sports team, another community report, and a newspaper meeting I attended concerning the sure issue of the seasonal soon-to-arrive bushfires.

I’m almost sorry my internship is over.  It really was too short.  Smiles, handshakes, and email details all around as I packed up and left with my forms.  I was advised there was nothing left for me to do since Friday was a lazy day and the deadline wasn’t until after the weekend.  So I left early at 2 with the thanks of the news editor.

The Express Advocate was an interesting paper.  With so many people living in such a quiet area, it made sense that it wasn’t going to be so much about hard news as it was reporting for their people and for their benefit.  As the editor put it: the people really own the paper, not the other way around.

And then, after two days getting pampered, off to the Express Advocate for a week’s internship.  Arrival in the front hall and greeted warmly.  PA blares in the newsroom that Jim Aspinall is here to see Liz O’Hara, and out she comes.

I’m given a tour.  The enormous newsroom has two cubicles for the news editor and deputy, other journalists have grouped tables.  I’m introduced briefly to Editor Geoff Hawthorne with a handshake and put to work immediately.  I’m promptly given a desk and computer.  Expected to stay from 9 til 4.  I sit while Liz takes my documents and leaves, running over them for insurance so I can leave the office on assignments.

About half the chairs at the desks are empty.  I assume the journalists are out gathering information or doing interviews.  I suddenly see this green, four-legged reptile slithering past my foot.  The nice young journalist next to me says ‘Don’t worry, we always get the lizards in here.  Just can’t get rid of them.’

At first, I sit and think.  No opportunity to present any story ideas yet and no clue how they would take such a thing.  Probably best to just sit and keep quiet for now, so I don’t look like the over-enthusisatic, babbling, know-it-all rookie in the newsroom.  But at the same time, can’t decide if I look like a lazy fool simply sitting and wool-gathering.

Desk: several issues of EA stacked in front of me next to the keyboard, some so old they’ve turned yellow.  Old keyboard and industrial screen in front of me.  I don’t know the codes to unlock it.  Can hardly see to my right.  Nothing interesting there anyway, except the young journalist sitting at the opposite desk, who I overhear is called Emma.  Behind me, another sits next along, a woman named Leah.  Just about as young as me.  I ask her how to unlock the thing and get started.  She can’t remember the guest’s code and asks the sports reporter sitting opposite her, Steven.

Steven unlocks it for me cheerfully.  I thank him, and just then another journalist, whom I later learn is called Kate, walks over and says she has something for me.  She doesn’t have enough time to do it herself and asks me to do an entertainment article on an upcoming gig downtown.  At first, I’m flummoxed, but then glad for something to do.  I thank her and get started.

As I sit quietly, watch and listen, I learn that almost all of these journalists are working on pre-event articles from media releases and emails from correspondents in the local communities.  Not only that, but they’re also simply ringing up their interviewees rather than meeting them face-to-face, and stock up appointments to keep photographers busy collecting pictures for their stories.

Leah explains to me patiently that EA, because it covers a sleepy, suburban area, doesn’t often print hard news and instead reports events before they happen to help alert the local community.  Only one designated journalist covers the Gosford council and they hardly ever cover court at all.

What they say makes sense, and I’m not about to argue with these more experienced journalists.  My position is already precarious enough.  I’ve already asked too many questions.  Any more and they’ll come to the conclusion I’m totally green (which I am).

Instead,  I sit quietly and open the shared document software they use.  I read over the email Kate gave me.  The subject is a Central Coast teacher who hobbies on music throwing a gig on a New Age cafe downtown next Saturday.  After about five minutes, head pounding, I look up the cafe online, scribble some questions on my notepad, and pick up the phone.  I hate using phones.  It always seems harder to talk with dignity to someone I can’t see.  However, I’m pleasantly surprised.  The cafe manager, though seven months pregnant and on her way to Cranberry to take part in the homemother-delivery rally, gives me as much info as she can and the musician’s mobile (which I can’t use because he’s at work teaching).  I get started.  I type what I can for an article, slowly puzzling my way through the unfamiliar journalism processor.  I try to call him again.  “Optus wishes to advise that…” Snap!  I shut my phone closed before my headache gets worse.

Photos too.  Can’t get them.  Nowhere online or from the guy.  Obviously, he just hit the gig circuit.  In the end, I call the manager’s sister and ask her to send me what photos they have, which they do (blurry and small).

I leave, feeling exhausted, at 3:30.  Left early because they advised me there wasn’t anything I could do now because deadline time had just passed for this week’s Gosford edition.  Mum collects me as their office is out of bus and train route. “How was it?” she asks.

“Good and bad,” I reply. “Bad as in not what I expected, but good as in I’m not going to die of stress running round town either.”

It certainly was revealing compared to my vision of a busy journalist waystation.  I thought it must be so easy to make a paper that 20,000 read every week because that was it.

Second day.  Head still pounding but not as bad.  Get one or two media releases from Denice across the room.  She wants me to chop them down into sutiable small articles.  I’m slowly understanding my internship tasks will be taking article tasks of all kind from co-workers that they don’t have time for.  Leah also gives me a couple of school tasks, asking me to write an article in response to emails and a press release.  I obey without question, taking all tasks in an effort to help out.  Surprisingly, the Central Coasters, when I say I’m from Express Advocate, seem eager to tell all they can, be they school principals, small business owners, or musicians.

I curse as I realise that even though I narrowly hit my shorthand goal before leaving Brisbane, I still write nowhere near fast enough to keep up.  Leah laughs, tossing her head, and tells me she needed a 120-mark in shorthand to keep up with interviewees.  I groan as I realise Julie had never exaggerated in just how lenient 60-mark was.

Two solid articles and two modified press releases done at the end of day two, and Editor agreed to a short interview for my internship on Thursday afternoon.  Lucky I didn’t forget.

Third day.  Family dogs woke me up nibbling my toes.  Not enough sleep due to nightmares (emotion-related, not work-related).  I haul my carcass out and head to EA again.  This time, I stretch and ask Kate.  Before long, I find myself with another task.  This time another entertainment bio with a teen metal band gigging next week.  Battle of the Bands runner-up.  I look them up online, promptly laugh myself silly at the sight of the band boys half-naked in the woods with leaves in strategic locations ( the drummer girl fully clothed and posing scared out of her wits), and ring up the bass player.  He tells me all he can, and I arrange photos.  Smiles from Kate as I get it done in under three hours.

I thought what would Reija do, after being handed a media release from Ella Blanche Australia.  I shrug and clip it down to an article.  Leah gives me the email on the NSW schools knockout footy competition.  I ring up the coast champions’ principal, and he calls the coach.  Results and record online and the amiable coach agrees to a dispatched photographer.  I try not to think of him hauling the poor boys out of class to dress up in footy clothes and smile for the camera.  Still got more to do tomorrow, but it’s after 4 and the office closes soon, on the other hand, I already have tasks for tomorrow in that case.  No rush for publication since I’m not doing Wyong edition. 

Best day I’ve had yet.  Express Advocate isn’t the reporter of past events, it’s the informer of coming ones.

Ever wonder how someone could get so cream-crackered sitting behind a desk?

1. Remember traffic lights are there for a reason in this country.  Crossing the road and weaving through traffic doesn’t work back here.  And you know you’ve been living in Asia too long when you look both ways before crossing a one-way street!

2. Remember while the OBE (old brown envelope) is practically a written guarantee in Asia, it doesn’t work back home.  Likely the friendly token of your generosity to the authority figure will just make things worse.  Let the guy be a pain for a while until he clicks empty.  Then he’ll usually let it go.

3. Remember MSG isn’t the bad food fad here – that’s gluten!

4. Driving your vehicle onto the sidewalk to skip a jam is out of the question in this country.  Just honk the horn to make yourself feel better and display your proud overseas influence!

5. Hotel mini-bars aren’t quite the live-in torture chamber they are abroad, and the prices for the Heines and bags containing mostly thin air and only a few nuts are usually more reasonable.  Don’t bother replacing the ones you take with much-cheaper ones from down the street; spoilsports have rigged electronic scanners inside the fridge.

6. If you miss your bus, that’s it, you’re finished!  Don’t bother waving your arms and shouting loudly because no motorbike rider is going to offer you a run ahead to the next stop for a couple of dollars.  Catch a train instead.

7. Watch your unintelligibility.  If you start turning purple in the face and shouting loudly in the office in a ridiculously slow Chinglish or Vietglish tirade you used to scream down the locals abroad, then you may be reassigned to a position where your garbling is quite common.  And few of those carry any weight in hard economic times!

8. If your girlfriend takes you shopping in Brisbane, there’s (usually) no need to make that pre-mall phone call to mortgage the house!

9. If you ever walk past a local school, close your eyes until you’re away.  Aussie school uniforms are an even bigger eyesore (and there’s no young lovelies in long dress, sarong, or kimono on the first day of term to make it better).

10. Remember, stopping to watch the scene of a traffic accident or a public brawl is considered rude.  Rubbernecking doesn’t make up the local gossip.  Just walk on and duck into an alley.

11. If the Brisbane cop laughs at you, that doesn’t mean you’re starting to see eye-to-eye; it means you’re in trouble!

12. A slip on the newsprint is the end.  If you print, “PM struggles with diarrhea outbreak” in the Aussie media, Mr. Khai isn’t going to hand it to his experts and then start laughing!

The party’s leading members yesterday held a long ceremony reminding their people of all their country’s achievements in the last 20 years, as well as asking them to remember their great leader, Ho Chi Minh, and the soldiers and other people who made the ultimate sacrifice for the re-unification of Vietnam.

Today, the whole nation sits back and remembers all that was given for reunification on their own terms, and to keep optimistic hopes for the future of their country and its people following all that has been given.

Jschool’s the place if you want the hands-on j-education with no messing around (or at least not much).  Over a month’s grind so far, my new classmates and I have witnessed a political debate in the City Library, a staggering sharehouse performance in the Arts Theatre, and bureaucratic mud-fight in City Council!  All down on paper in the Jschool trial and error crash-course.

Classmates too.  A proverbial “union of like-minded individuals”.  Good fellas them.  No-one sent them.  We’re all here in Jschool ‘cos we want to be.  It’s an absolute pressure working with them.

Doing practical work during and alongside theoretical learning and j-skill development, Jschool paves the path to the media with long and rocky brickwork and plenty of pitfalls.  As in all practical professions, being thrown in the deep end is apparently the best way to get it done.

And what’s the difference between a journalist and a leech?  One’s a swamp-dwelling, blood-sucking parasite and the other doesn’t write in shorthand.  Boom-tish! Thank you and good night.