Filed under: Sydney, Travel Diary | Tags: ABC Radio National, Aussie Hip-hop, Hilltop Hoods, Homesickness, The Calling
I was listening to ‘The Calling’ by the Hilltop Hoods on the tube into work this morning. Nothing makes more homesick than that particular album. I can’t explain why, but it brings up images of days at the beach, living in Bondi, walking the streets of Melbourne, going out with friends, and many other great memories.
Every time I listen to that album I am overwhelmed by a love, first of all for Aussie hip-hop, and secondly for Australia in general.
Other things that make me homseick:
- streaming triple j
- watching John Clarke & Brian Dawe on youtube
- AM on ABC Radio National (although I never listened to it while at home)
- the Iron Chef (even though it has nothign to do with Australia
- and many more…
Bless!
Long live the Hilltop Hoods, long may they reign!
Filed under: Placeless, Spaceless | Tags: Advertising, La Haine, Laurie Anderson, Self-awareness, Self-expression, Selling-out
“Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper?
On his way down past each floor,
He kept saying to reassure himself:
So far so good… so far so good… so far so good.
How you fall doesn’t matter.
It’s how you land!”
The best years of my life are behind me. That kind of fatalism is something that you would expect to hear from a 30-something management executive during a “difficult breakup” involving the custodial loss of the family cat. However its something that I feel like I might almost be ready to say. Crack open a bottle of red wine, bang on some Smiths, give me a bunch of 30-something friends that will sympathize (though only slightly) with my existential crisis, and I’ll feel right at home … in five years. (more…)
Filed under: Activism | Tags: Australian Labor Party, Australian Liberal Party, Democracy In Action, Japanese Whaling, Stolen Generation
Recently I wrote a letter to my local Member of Parliament. Some of you may wonder if democracy works. Some of you may doubt that voicing an opinion actually gets results. Well, surprisingly, it does. My local member is Malcolm Turnbull, the Shadow Treasurer. I’m not even an Australian citizen, nor am I living in Australia at the moment, but I like to think that my letter played some small part in changing Opposition policy.
I wrote to Mr Turnbull to try to convince him to push Mr Nelson and others in the Liberal Party leadership to support the Government’s apology to the Stolen Generation. For those of you laboring under impressions of Australia as the happy sunny land, check out the wikipedia article for The Stolen Generation. We are the only country (apart from Nazi Germany, perhaps) to have a legal mandate for institutionalized racism in the form of the White Australia Policy. (more…)
Filed under: Placeless, Spaceless | Tags: Dreams, Goals, Reading, Writing
I find myself, of late, envisaging what it might be like to be someone else. I look around and find myself utterly unable to imagine what it might be like to be someone other than me. This is new.
For a long time (22 years, at last count) I simply assumed that everyone wanted to be what I wanted to be, strove for the same goals, had the same insecurities, and was inevitably working towards, well, being me. It occurs to me that this may have been the egocentricity of youth. (more…)
Filed under: London, Travel Diary | Tags: Brick Lane, East London, Old Truman Brewery, Photo Essay
Narrative has never been my strong suit. A quick scroll down the page would show that many of my posts are entitled ‘Part One’. This implies that at some point there will be a Part Two (at the very least). But at the risk of disappointing I’ll have to say that there probably never will be. I am wonderful at starting things, not so good at finishing them.
As a youngster I used to write stories (sometimes of my own volition, other times because I was told to ‘find something constructive to do’) about topics that interested me. Inevitably these stories were fantasies that put me right in the middle of the action – envisaging myself as a prince, a sorcerer, a hero. However I could never make it to the end. By the time I’d set up the narrative and the characters I was bored of the idea and gave up. Every story I ever wrote ended ‘not with a bang but a whimper’.
So narrative has never been my strong suit. I’m good with language, just not good with structure.
But a blog should have a narrative. It should be a story. It should follow a sequence of events/ideas/concepts/personae so that as one reads through the entries one begins to get a picture of a whole person, a three-dimensional entity.
Well here is my attempt to remedy my narrative deficiencies: A PHOTO ESSAY!
These pictures will say more than words ever could!
N.B. On a technical note, these photos were all taken on my shiny new phone. The wonders of modern technology!
