Books I read in 2023
I got back into audiobooks in a big way in 2023, after a total break from them last…
Rediscovering Ethan Hawke
I had a dream recently that I was hanging out with Ethan Hawke. We were sitting on either…
Whatever happened to Alternative Ann?
Compliant me, defiant me I have a friend who used to call me “Alternative Ann” back when we…
Under (or over) the influence
The difference between a celebrity and an influencer I’m not sure when we stopped using the word celebrity…
Brutality and humanity: a book you won’t want to, but should, read
Early inspiration I suppose that every writer, whether professional or amateur, has work from their past that they’re…
Incidentally Asian: why I have mixed feelings about Always Be My Maybe
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.
To tweet or not to tweet?
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 ...
House rules
To this day, I still remember the round of UNO with my old youth group in which one…
Pinch yourself and hit send
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?
Notes from a champion tickboxer
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.
Of vengeance and forgiveness
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.
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.
Anti-celebrity me
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.
The problem with American
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.
On Dev Patel’s hair
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.
My love-hate relationship with reality TV and the concept of marriage
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.
Any sport will do: absurd but awesome
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.
The Eurovision you know and love
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 ...
All About Evo
To commemorate the official start of Evo Morales’ third term as president, I thought I’d share a few images…
Meeting Moscow
Moscow was hot and muggy when we landed. She was temperamental – at times overcast, at times sunny.…