security issues

well, i'm finally back home & trying to recover from the jet lag. got to sleep around 3am yesterday & still feeling pretty woozy. i always find it harder to recover when i get back from an overseas trip than i do when i get to the place i was visiting. probably just because of the pressure of the daily routine when i'm home again.

as it happens, my home got broken into a couple of days after my last post. i was really lucky though, because the alarm went off and my watchful neighbours called the police. the culprit wasn't caught, but nothing was taken either, so that's a big relief. it made me a bit cautious about blogging though - not being anonymous, it's pretty easy for someone to follow my movements if i blog about them. i've mostly avoided mentioning when i'll be away from home on the blog, and of course this could be a total coincidence that the break-in happened when i had been open here about my absence from home. but it still feels a little spooky.

also spooky was the security as brisbane airport. we had a 40 minute transit there when flying back from brunei. in that 40 minutes, we had to take all our hand luggage with us, go through a full scan of the luggage & go through the metal detector thingy - all of this was about 10 metres from the gate we had gotten out of.

my elder daughter then got randomly selected for some extra checking in another room. i didn't realise it was random (just not paying attention to the people before me), so was probably a little more shirty than i should have been. they did ask me for my consent as her parent (wonder what would have happened if said no!) & the male staff member stepped out while the search was done.

i just thought it was totally over the top, but having seen the news since i got back and hearing about some gang violence at sydney airport, i guess they were on high alert. even so, it makes travelling through aussie a real hassle & can't be good for their tourism. having heard many reports of muslims being harassed at airports, i must say that the extra check on my daughter gave me a big scare (until i saw how quick and easy it was) & made me realise how helpless we can be in the face of authority.


on another note, i'm also less than impressed that the office of ethnic affairs (OEA) is using what appears to be training sessions on preparing select committee submissions as an excuse to push the national government's law and order programme. this certainly looks like an example of politicising the public service, and i also got a strong sense of this when i attended an OEA meeting for ethnic women recently. the law and order thing is especially nasty because most of the policies will not make anyone safer, but just plays on the insecurities of racial minorities who feel particularly vulnerable to hate crime.