"you're getting happier by the minute, and they wouldn't have a clue, bout what its like to be lazy when you've got too much to do..." (The Whitlams)

After hours, this place isn't nearly as scary as it should be. Sanitised fluroescent light chases the shadows out of every crevice along the abandoned corridor. I can hear fingerstrokes on a keyboard two rooms away from where I sit, and the streamlined vowels of two international students who sit, hunched over a single computer, whispering rapidly to one another in a language I don't understand.

I have set a trap for myself: I can't set foot outside this room until I have at least three decent ideas for freelance projects to take to my meeting with Fergus tomorrow. Fergus is the producer of ABC TV's spin-off digital radio station. I've had a week to come up with something but have spent my time frivilously: working, gigging, drinking, dining with mates, watching cartoons. Checking out the closing flick at this year's Melbourne International Film Festival (a stirring tale about Triads, the name given to the Hong Kong mafia). Standing on a balcony ten stories above Melbourne in the wee hours of a Monday morning, filling my lungs with aromatic herb and engaging in intense conversations, the content of which I will later forget entirely.

But no more. I'm here until I come up with something. Even if it takes all night. And it just might, at this rate...