It's that time again: the annual crazy, hazy regional rendezvous that is the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
This year it's being held in Peru, where world leaders will soon hover awkwardly in host-country costume and share, once more, their unfulfilled dreams of a world where trade is free and bank guarantees are not required. With all those candy-collared Drizabones from Sydney now relegated to the backs of wardrobes across the Asia-Pacific, we await the next annual fashion atrocity. Last year Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did not qualify for the participants' goodie bag of Aussie clobber. Back then he was a mere Opposition leader, albeit one with a linguistic skill which could elicit cheers from visiting Chinese presidents and make incumbent prime ministers weep.
But last year's APEC was a marker for Rudd. It was the moment when, wielding a two-minute unannounced burst of Mandarin, the pretender stepped on to the world stage as the next generation and laid claim to what would become his prime ministership.
The day after tomorrow, soon after donning a Peruvian poncho (just a wild guess this year's couture remains a surprise yet), Rudd marks a year in office.
And if you don't count the small matter of a global financial crisis and its knock-on effects a roller-coaster stock market, a plunging Australian dollar and teetering businesses threatening a rise in unemployment it hasn't been a bad one.
Look at it in political terms. Rudd's domestic popularity remains in the stratosphere. He has also run a cohesive government no ministers sacked, nor needing to be, and little, if any, sign of division.
He's seen off an opposition leader in Brendan Nelson. And without too much fuss, he's begun to dismantle, as promised, some of the most controversial policies of the Howard era. He's changing workplace relations laws (though not fast or far enough yet to satisfy the unions). He's increasing the immigration intake and easing some restrictions on detention of asylum seekers, including ending the so-called Pacific Solution. A couple of boats have even arrived without a taser being applied to their occupants or the wider community. And he's promising to increase the pension.
Not everyone is cheering. Rudd's Government has continued the indigenous intervention in the Northern Territory, despite a thorough review (just one of the many) having recommended significant changes. And where is the Government response to all those recommendations from the 2020 Summit, promised by year's end? There is some frustration that the grandness of promises has been matched by a slowness of response.
Like John Howard and retiring United States President George W. Bush, Rudd's first months defined him as a leader. In 1996 it was the horror of the Port Arthur massacre, just six weeks after Howard won office, which forced the new prime minister to establish himself as a genuine national leader by pushing through new gun-control laws.
In 2001, the September 11 attacks on the US forced Bush to pull his nation together in the face of a greater threat, although his constituents have now passed judgment on his ultimate responses. For Rudd, the first big events were by his own hand the signing of the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and, more significantly, the apology to indigenous Australians for the past removal of children from their families on the basis of race.
But the remaining chapters are yet to be written and the back end can always make the opening look different. Now, at the end of his first year, Rudd faces twin challenges meeting the expectations raised by those early, heady days and dealing with his own unscheduled crisis afflicting Australia as part of the world economy.
These initial 12 months won plaudits this week from two former prime ministers.
Liberal Malcolm Fraser said it had gone better than most first years. (His own was not exactly forged in serene circumstances.) Former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke is also full of praise, acknowledging the description of Rudd as ''a control freak'' but insisting that's not necessarily a bad thing. Others disagree. The administrative approach within Rudd's Government is perhaps where the slowest-burning criticisms are to be found. Right now these are coming from inside. But eventually those kinds of smouldering problems turn from the inside, out. Then they can catch fire.
The ''control freak'' criticism encapsulates Rudd's desire to be at the heart of everything the guy with the big ideas. There is a sneaking sense that he prefers the ideas to come from him.
Some political observers who felt big international vision was lacking under the previous government say let a thousand ideas flow, and good on him. The representatives of some foreign governments, though, mutter that being caught unawares by new Rudd proposals is becoming a bit of a pattern.
His plan for a new ''Asia Pacific community'' received a lukewarm reception in parts of Asia, not least because he consulted other countries after floating it, not before.
Likewise, his proposal for a new anti-nuclear commission, now established and co-chaired by Australia and Japan. Again, little consultation before he used a visit to Hiroshima as the backdrop for announcing it. Closer to the ground, there's criticism about over-work. Certainly the demands on staff are unrelenting and responses to protest apparently unsympathetic. The risk with everybody working at full speed, all the time, is that things don't receive as much attention as they should, that twice as many things get done only half as well and take three times as long as they should, with more than a few souls burnt out and disillusioned along the way.
Administrative effectiveness is not a universally distributed gift of nature. (This correspondent's desk is testament to that.) Luckily, those who are so blessed can be employed to help things flow smoothly.
Trouble is, Rudd's penchant for wanting to sign off on everything personally has created more than a bit of a bottleneck in the documentary flow around his Government.
Part-way through this year, sections of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet stopped sending briefs across to the Prime Minister's office in electronic form. According to a departmental source, instructions were issued to send them over on paper instead so the backlog became a towering, teetering physical presence which was harder to ignore. At one point, senior officials from key government agencies were effectively staging sit-ins either themselves or by proxy in the office foyer until they got the signature they needed.
Even Rudd's own ministers have begun to look for creative ways to advance policy agendas, in the face of a lack of response from the boss.
Some ministers have actually approached community sector organisations to raise ideas with Rudd for them because they can't get his attention. In other words, the Government is having to outsource talking to itself. Not a great sign.
Once he gets home from Peru, Rudd has the final fortnight of Parliament for the year before there's a chance for a break over Christmas.
That would be a good time for a clear-eyed survey of the year that was and some resolutions about relying more on others and conserving human energy as well as the other kind.
Karen Middleton is chief political correspondent for SBS Television.