Common to many a YA novel is a male love interest who's dark and mysterious and in a position of power. At its most extreme, he's dark, mysterious and cruel. At its most tame, he's dark, mysterious and a bit of a loner. Somewhere in the middle, he's dark, mysterious and troubled. Getting the vibe?
Cool Ridge has an ad campaign with the tagline "When you can/When you can't". It both offended and intrigued me. And it got me thinking about the ethics of bottled water and why we do (or don't) good.
Crazy Rich Asians and Always Be My Maybe both caused quite a stir. The films have a lot in common, but also some significant differences, primarily around the role of Asian culture in the lives of their Asian protagonists.
When we meet someone for the first time, how often does it occur to us that they may become a significant part of our lives? What would change if we approached first meetings this way?
In thinking about the year just past, my first thought was that it was a boring year. Not bad as such, but I felt like I went through the whole year without a satisfactory answer to the perennial question: "How have you been?" In other words, I constantly had nothing new to report. Whenever I responded that I'd been "good", I meant it literally rather than as a polite non-answer.
2018 provided plenty of change in significant areas of my life so 2019 was certainly dull in comparison. And really in comparison to the whole previous decade of my life, which barely saw me doing the same thing for more than a year.
But I don't want to be ungrateful. If I pause to ponder the last 12 months a little more, I'm able to find a few highlights. They may seem simple, but they have nonetheless enriched my life and I am thankful for these little things.
Sometimes I wish I was good at Twitter. It would be proof that I'm not just intelligent but super witty and have something to say about the state of the universe. There may be no "I" in team, but there is definitely "wit" in Twitter.
If I was a tweeter, here's what I would tweet
Here are a few things that have crossed my mind to tweet but never made it to the Twittersphere ...
Here's a confession: I can't make eye contact with good-looking strangers. Once we're in a conversation I'm totally fine, but once I've assessed that you're a hottie I will try pretty hard not to look at you at all.
Just because you're handsome doesn't mean I want you, okay?
Dating and attraction is such a game - and a messy one at that. Valentine's Day and what you do or don't do is just an annual component of this game.
About a month ago I heard a talk about how God made the first move with us and goes to crazy lengths to woo us. Yet framing my relationship with Jesus as an epic romance is a bit, well, off. Friend, yes. Father, yes. But this?
I like to say my boyfriend is a recovering Anglican. He's actually not even Anglican, he just happens to go to an Anglican church and I just happen to enjoy having a go at Sydney Anglicans. What I really mean when I say he's recovering is that he is no longer doctrinal about his faith and how he practises it - in fact, he's ardently against legalism.
Similarly ...
One my favourite simple pleasures in life is rediscovering songs from the 90s - and in particular, the one-hit wonders. My most recent nostalgia hit is Pinch Me by the Barenaked Ladies. Remember them? Yeah!
Ten years ago to the day, I posted this brief status update to Facebook (in the third person - I guess that's how we did it back in the olden days).
Intriguing! So ... what was my youth all about again?
What does string theory have to do with the Resurrection? What's the difference between wanderlust and "wonderlust" (is that even a thing?)? Why do adverb particles matter?
This Easter I really went down the rabbit hole ...
String theory and the Resurrection
I was listening to a podcast the other day, an interview with a physicist who was explaining the holographic principle. Based on string theory, one of the concepts is that our lived reality is two-dimensional data expressed in three dimensions. In other words, reality is a hologram.
It made me think about dimensions in general. If two dimensions can express three, and it's generally accepted that we inhabit four dimensions (the fourth being time), what would 5D* projection mean? Because I'm convinced the material world isn't all there is to existence.
As a person of faith, I believe we exist in more than four dimensions. But for most people - Christians, followers of other faiths and those of no faith alike - our active engagement in the fifth is limited.
This Easter I was reminded that the Resurrection invites us to walk beyond the four dimensions and live a bigger, richer reality.
At the start of last year, I made a commitment to donate as much as I drank. Now, in the interests of accountability and transparency, I'll show you how I matched every cent spent on alcohol this year with donations to charity.
I was never much of a dreamer as a kid. Forget being a princess, pilot, pop star or police officer. All I ever aspired to was to be an accountant - a short degree with strong job prospects.*
I'm not even kidding. To tell you the truth, I was an unambitious and cynical child.
The funny thing is that somewhere along the way into adulthood, I did start dreaming.
I dreamed of changing the world. Perhaps it was born of a desire to prove that my unambitious and cynical younger self was so, so wrong.
Changing the world hardly seemed a dream to me, though. In my early-to-mid-twenties, I started to appreciate that changing the world is within reach of each of us, that the smallest gesture can be a part of a bigger picture. That it doesn't have to be dramatic or headline-worthy to be, well, worthy. To count as real change.
And since it was something I was already in the process of doing, it never seemed a far off reality. It never seemed far away enough to be called a dream.
So whaddya know - it seems I've been living the dream.
But there are also dreams I'm yet to live. These are not things I hope I manage to do before I die, nor will I feel unfulfilled if they don't happen. Far from being a bucket list, this is a set of six longings that speak to the core of who I am.
I'm sharing them with you here, to encourage you to discover (if you haven't already) and reflect on your own dreams.
I've always thought of myself as a beta kinda gal. Even as a child, it was mostly my younger sister who spearheaded our games and playing.
I was 26 the first time anybody told me I had demonstrated leadership.
Sometimes I think I might have made a great bureaucrat. But alas, I don't like ticking boxes. And so it is that since graduating, I've given up ticking the boxes and being boxed in. Instead, I'm beating the box and I'm boxing the ticks.
I'm halfway through my commitment to match my charitable giving with my alcohol spending.
See how much I've paid for booze so far. And see which charities are going to be better off for it!
Did anyone else catch the Jesus parallels in the Divergent series? All in all I was mostly disappointed with the trilogy, but at least there were some interesting ideas.
The books, however, did explore themes of guilt, regret and sacrifice. I suppose in that context, some Jesus undertones are unsurprising.
The other day after work, I was flowing with the peak hour crowd down Anzac Parade, when I witnessed something awful.
An Aboriginal man was heckling and shoving an East Asian man. The Indigenous guy was yelling obscenities and things like "Go back to where you came from!" to the suited up Asian guy, who was trying, literally, to shake him off. That was Awkward thing Number 1.
People just watched. And did nothing. That was Awkward thing Number 2.
By people, I mean mainly Asian people. The University of New South Wales appears to be predominantly Asian, even the law faculty - a contrast with the College of Law at my own alma mater. That was Awkward thing Number 3.
And I did nothing because, frankly, I'm both Asian and female. I actually thought I might get hit. That was Awkward thing Number 4.
It made me think about how Australia is not the place I thought it was when I was little.
The 2017 Ethical Fashion Report is out today. I had the great privilege and pleasure of being part of Baptist World Aid's research team.
Read the report ... and read some of my reflections, about what I've learned and why ethics in fashion matters.
If I could use my eyebrows the way Emma Watson does, everyone would know where they stand with me. Lumiere and even Cogsworth watched those eyebrows. The Beast dared to hope because of those eyebrows. Only good ol’ Gaston didn’t get that Emma was using those arches to give him the finger.
But where Lion for me was all about Dev Patel’s hair, the latest live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast got me thinking not so much about Emma Watson’s eyebrows, but about the nature of freedom and slavery.
It's been pop culture season on my blog lately! First it was Married At First Sight, then it was Dev Patel, followed by Jeff Daniels.
This week, I'm talking celebrities - the red carpet sort, and also the everyday sort ... And I'm looking at why I get so shy and unfriendly around them.
Last week, on my flight from New York back to Sydney, I binge watched Season 1 of The Newsroom. It’s a series created by Aaron Sorkin, the guy behind The West Wing, with Jeff Daniels playing Will McAvoy, an anchorman on cable news.
In the opening scene of the series pilot, Will is on a panel with a Democrat and a Republican at a university, when a student asks the panel: “What makes America the greatest country in the world?”
The question triggers an epic and rousing outburst from Will, who dresses down both major political parties and rails about why America is no longer the greatest country on earth.
“But it could be”, he then says in softer tones.
That first season of The Newsroom aired in 2012, before Donald Trump ever campaigned for president, promising to “make America great again”.
Coincidence? I doubt it.
My Oscars tie-in post is essentially an exclamation mark about Dev Patel's hair, not-so-cleverly disguised as a film review. This post contains zero references to La La Land and/or Moonlight.
Commercial TV is an evil genius. I don’t watch much of it these days, but somehow I got suckered into Married At First Sight. It’s just, y’know, I’m making dinner and my housemate likes to unwind in front of the box. So there I am, innocently frying my fish when she begins hooting with laughter. So I get drawn away from the stove (I am a walking fire hazard) and find it’s that show the boys were talking about the other day. The one I made fun of them about.
When they refer to the battle for the watercooler, this is exactly what they’re on about. Commercial TV has perfected the art of balancing the ridiculous and the relatable, the beautiful and the ugly, attraction and revulsion, to create programs like this. Shows you love to hate on and hate yourself for loving. Shows you can’t help but talk about.
Like I’m doing right now, on the night of Valentine’s Day, incidentally.
I love sport both on an emotional and a philosophical level.
Here’s why.
I love the contradictions in sport. I love how it is rational yet irrational, meaningless yet so imbued with significance, universal yet elite, aggressive and divisive yet a unifying force.
I wasn’t procrastinating – I actually wasn’t planning on ever reading the book. It was going to be one for the mantelpiece, to adorn the bookshelf. After all, I spent a year working for the organisation founded by the author, so I didn’t just know the content – I was living right amongst it.
It was a surprise, then, how much the opening chapters of The Locust Effect moved me. Two months back on board with International Justice Mission (IJM), now in Australia, and we’ve talked on a number of occasions about vicarious trauma. I’ve shared with my colleagues some of what I went through that year in Bolivia. They’ve shared about how advocating against cybersex trafficking has had a toxic personal effect on them.
This year, I made a few resolutions, a couple of which revolved around writing. I committed to writing weekly for the novel I’ve wanted to write since I was 13, and for this blog.
I also realised that it had been years since I’d been much of a reader - how I used to love it! - and that my writing was struggling to flow as a result. So I committed to reading a book a month in 2016. I’ve read 30 and will probably get a couple more in before the year is out.
Setting this reading goal has helped me enjoy reading again, as well as pushing me to reflect on the kind of writer I would like to be.
So for you readers out there, here are the books that impacted me this year:
You've been feeling jetlagged this last week although you never left the state, let alone the time zone. Sometimes the world and your past come to you.
It’s the second week of Advent and I’m not really feeling it.
Generally speaking, people slide easily into one of three distinct categories: (1) those who absolutely love Christmas; (2) those who find Christmas super stressful; and, (3) those who are indifferent to Christmas.
I love Jesus but I am planted firmly in the third camp.
So I scour the season, I scour Scripture, both for magic and for logic.
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of a good cuba libre. Or two. Or three. But despite it being my drink of choice, I never really thought much about the name of this basic cocktail until Fidel Castro died.
There was something about the festivities on the streets of Miami that felt wrong. Tasted sour. It’s a cuba libre, dammit - let’s reserve the sourness for pisco, whiskey and amaretto.
I’ve always been a cynic. From the time I was in primary school hearing about French nuclear testing in the Pacific, Aung San Suu Kyi being put under house arrest and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I didn’t have much faith in people.
Strangely enough, this dark view of the world eventually led me to Jesus, my hope. So now I am this walking paradox, being both a cynic and an optimist.
Two weeks ago, I blogged about democracy and the need for greater participation. On Monday, a bunch of us put that into practice by meeting with over a hundred senators and members of parliament in one day.
To avoid confusion, I generally insist that English is my native language. I received all of my education in English, it’s what we spoke in my family growing up and it’s what we speak now.
But technically, it’s not my first language.
What would happen if I were to relearn my first language? What might that unlock?
Five firsts for 2016
I have a friend who, at the age of 29, saw, smelled and heard the sea for the first time. And then, for his 30th birthday, he went ten pin bowling for the first time.
Which got me thinking: is this what my life has come to? Is there, as Solomon laments, nothing new under the sun for me? What significant “firsts” have I experienced this year?
I racked my brains and they are few but fine ...
This post was originally titled "Poems about boys". Then I thought that was too racy and also inaccurate. So I changed it.
There are two poems, both inspired by - but not actually about - boys. But this is poetry, after all, so who am I to tell you what my poems are "actually" about?
If you're still interested in my attempts at creative writing, please read on ...
Ten years ago, a lady named Debbie asked me if I was studying Spanish because I wanted to be a missionary in South America. At the time it was a seriously long bow to draw - I in fact had no better reason for studying Spanish other than Age of Empires and the Spanish national football team.
Once I started learning the language, I discovered how beautiful it was to the ear, the mind, the tongue. But even then I didn't have any particular interest in Latin American culture. I had even less interest in becoming a missionary.
Debbie and I are unlikely to cross paths again, but what she said turned out to be rather prophetic.
I grew up with a lot of positive reinforcement and believing in Jesus has both shrunk and supersized that.
On the one hand, ambition can be a bad word because it implies arrogance. I have become less self-effacing, more confident, over the years, but I doubt anyone I know would describe me as ambitious.
There is still this idea that ambition is a cut-throat attitude, seeking to elevate yourself regardless of the cost to others.
Um ... not me.
But y'know what, I am ambitious.
And I'm going to start owning that.
A personal atlas of alcohol.
Before you get the wrong impression, this post is not about booze-filled nights from my backpacking days. It's an anthology of anecdotes and memories, linked by a common theme: alcoholic beverages.
My discovery of different drinks parallels some important memories. These are what I'd like to share with you.
So let me take you from my childhood, all around the world and back home again. In this brief autobiography, I'll let the alcohol do the talking.
Thought I'd share something different this week. Here's a quiz for anyone who's ever lived abroad.
Which Bible expat are you?
Below is a quick questionnaire about your experience overseas. Each response links to one or more people from Scripture.
I am not a perfectionist. Not in the traditional sense of the word - I decided a long time ago that it was too difficult and painful to live that way, that I wasn't going to be needlessly harsh and demanding on myself, trying to get everything right down to a tee.
But I am, in my own way, a perfectionist. Deep down, I still believe in and long for perfection.
I once went on a date where I was asked to read some poetry aloud. It was one of the most awkward things I've ever had to do.
Reading out somebody else's poetry was intimate in all the wrong ways.
"How can you not like dumplings? They're little pieces of heaven!"
Okay, so this post isn't really about dumplings. But I'm going to talk a little about dumplings to launch into some thoughts about the little pieces of heaven on earth, the fragments of eternity around us.
It's hard to explain how learning Spanish has amplified and enriched my understanding of God and the Bible.
But I'll try.
In this post I'll teach you six Spanish words to show you what you're missing by only reading the Bible in English.
Stumbled upon this short video and thought I would share it as an appetiser to a post I'm currently working on, about the Spanish language.
It's just famous people saying their favourite Spanish word but it made me disproportionately happy :)
What's the difference between a tourist and a traveller? And how can we have more meaningful travel experiences even while traveling for leisure?
Throughout my experiences of being a tourist, exchange student, international intern and expat, I have been reflecting constantly on these questions of identity, foreignness and the assumptions bound up in the practice and concept of travel.
Now that I'm more than a month into my current unemployment, I’m starting to find it all a bit overwhelming. But not for the reasons you might think.
It’s 10am on a weekday and I’m sitting in a café, sipping my on-the-whole-pretty-decent large flat white, writing this. It’s not a bad life, really.
The Eurovision you know and love.
The song was perfect. The dress was perfect. The hype was perfect.
Okay, so in hindsight we were never going to win the thing. But for a long moment there they really made us believe it was possible.
And the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 is … a Korean-born Australian? One who would have celebrated not with champagne but with a glass of lemonade?
It was too good to be true. For all the logic that Eurovision famously doesn’t follow, this perhaps would not have been in the spirit of Europe - not the Europe of the twenty-first century ...
Apparently Margaret Thatcher was my hero. When I was in Year 6, each kid in our class had to nominate a female role model and I chose the Iron Lady. I don't know why I didn't pick Aung San Suu Kyi. Way cooler. And I mean, I'm possibly part-Burmese. Maybe.
Meanwhile, Alex - the boy I had a crush on - chose English nurse Florence Nightingale. My heart fluttered and sighed. This guy is beautiful and deep!
He chose a compassionate, determined, God-fearing woman. I chose a conservative politician (in)famous for being a hard-ass.
To this day, I think Alex had the right idea. And I'm starting to think I need to have better taste in women.
4,000m above sea level and 400,000m from the closest shore of the Pacific Ocean, playing beach volleyball every Sunday afternoon in the park somehow became one of the defining elements of my life in La Paz.
Now, at sea level and right on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, playing beach volleyball every Monday evening in Manly is becoming an anchor, a touchpoint, to each week here in Sydney.
It's funny, the unlikely things that make me feel at home.
The deepest level of communication is not communication but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.
Thomas Merton said that and I thought: well, this is rather ironic but there you have it - that's why I write.
The opposite of vertigo
Is your wings poised for flight
and your feet stuck in cement;
Is the skyward pull that makes
you ill to be on the ground.
Gravity versus your dreams.
The opposite of vertigo
Is conversations about the weather
and getting angry at traffic;
Is display windows taunting you
with things that won’t make you happy.
You can see right through them.
From the pit of your stomach
to the tip of your tongue
the air here’s thick,
swallows up inspiration.
The opposite of vertigo
Is the sickening sensation of settling;
Is being shackled when you should be airborne.
The opposite of vertigo
Is the curse of those who come down from altitude;
Is the Icarus in you and me.
People always ask me about my time in South America. Some are genuinely interested, while for others it's the polite and logical thing to ask. In either case, the truth is that these conversations have started to get a bit repetitive and I'm often left wishing I could say more than: that Latinos are warmer; that Andean dishes contain too many carbs; that working with survivors of child sexual abuse was hard as you'd imagine but so rewarding; that I'm not sure how to answer your question about how good my Spanish is.
The worst thing is that I can't seem to do Bolivia and Ecuador justice - not in a brief conversation that could turn to a different topic at any given moment.
So below are a few noteworthy things I don't generally get to share about the impact that my time in South America has had on me as a person and who I am now.
Draw me out of stormy water
My first breath is marked by grace
Make me someone else’s daughter
Heart that doesn’t match its face
There is a blueprint to my heart
Chase it up my family tree
Peel away this royal mask
Disarmed, now trace me back to Eve
Fire within and it consumes me
Lift my hand, in for the kill
Fire before my eyes I see
Instantly the world falls still
Pack my bags and leave the road
Suddenly I’m homeward bound
Might and mercy that was showed
A destiny, a new hope found
Even pain it had a purpose
Rejection taught me who to trust
Didn't see it at the time
The diamonds being formed from dust
Here before this multitude
Seas will part and nations fall
Incongruent heart refreshed, renewed
Tuned in to the celestial call
I.
It was perfect in a bittersweet way
The overcast day
The fresh flowers
The waiting
The shades of black and grey
The Padre Nuestro
The father’s chanting
II.
They ushered him through a maze
of flagstones well-polished by the varnish of water
and the heavy footsteps of generations of mourners.
For fifty pesos a stranger sang
as we showered him with rose petals and rain.
Amidst her wailing and her brothers’ silent despair
and the cement mixed and laid thick to immortalise him,
the sky stops crying and its blue eyes blink
and I, for a moment, stare into eternity,
into sorrow, into loss, into hope.
Avenues upon avenues of memories
in this city of the departed;
yards and yards of carnations
doing their best to defy time -
but who can resist?
Grief made her embrace linger, made us angels
without wings, and stranded on earth,
but angels nonetheless.
III.
Another Padre Nuestro
Another sigh
Another moment without him
The first of too many.
I have a friend who used to say that there's no such thing as luck, only statistics.
It's all just a matter of chance and probability. What we're really saying when we say something that happened was bad luck is that the improbable (but not impossible) negative outcome happened. What we're really saying when we wish someone good luck is that we hope probabilities work in their favour.
Then there are those moments when you really see how the stars have aligned. Yes, it's still probability at play - but I don't believe statistics preclude God's involvement; indeed I believe God can work with probabilities and against them.
B, one of our clients, was diagnosed with cancer and given a 60-70% of responding to treatment and a 40% chance overall of recovering. Hospital A doesn't generally provide chemotherapy. They were going to send B home to free up a bed, and put her on the three-month waiting list at another hospital. It's Monday.
http://issuu.com/grantmemorialchurch/docs/world-mission-winter2015-v3?e=0/11016249 My article about a colleague of mine Jeshika, an IJM Bolivia social worker, is on page 6 🙂
Reproduced from the IJM Newsroom/Blog: http://news.ijm.org/ijm-internsfellows-top-ten-moments-from-2014 WASHINGTON, DC, December 31, 2014 IJM teams around the world are celebrating the end of…
Reproduced from the IJM Newsroom: http://news.ijm.org/more-than-140-criminals-convicted-for-violent-crimes-so-far-this-year Recent reports paint a dark picture of the violence facing millions of…
Bolivia is currently reforming its justice system. On October 31, the Bolivian Parliament passed a new piece of legislation, called the Law for the Decongestion and Effectivisation of the Criminal Procedure System. In case you were wondering, it's Ley de Decongestionamiento y Efectivización del Sistema Procesal Penal in Spanish - and "efectivización" isn't a real word in Spanish either, hence the weird translation.
Process is at the heart of justice - as important as a just result is a just procedure to arrive at that result. I'll confess I've forgotten a lot of what they taught me at law school, but this particular principal of justice has stuck with me. Working at IJM Bolivia, I am struck anew by how much of a paradox this often is.
Reproduced from the IJM Newsroom: http://news.ijm.org/in-bolivia-justice-for-3-year-old-mona-seemed-impossibleuntil-it-happened I didn’t write this one, but did provide the details and photos 🙂…