Miscellaneous shades of grief

Growing up, my dad’s cousin, his wife and their daughter were the only family we had in Canberra. We only caught up with them once or twice a year, typically at a restaurant for Chinese New Year. I cherished those occasions﹣and not only because they were bookended by two of my favourite pancakes, commencing with Peking duck pancakes and concluding with red bean paste pancakes. … Continue reading Miscellaneous shades of grief

2019: Highlights from a humdrum year

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. Continue reading 2019: Highlights from a humdrum year

Reclaiming convenience

If you’re anything like me, you’ll occasionally stumble into extended conversation with a random. It doesn’t happen quite as often as I’d like, but last week was one such instance. I was checking out a guitar I’d found advertised on Gumtree. The seller and I talked at length about his many guitars. And his guitar collecting habit. So when he asked me about my own guitar history, … Continue reading Reclaiming convenience

Freeing the Beast

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. Continue reading Freeing the Beast