After the article, The Work of Disobedience, was published a reader commented on the futility of the exercise for people who are unemployed. The basic notion is, if you have no work, you can hardly ‘disobey’. On first reading the comment made some sense but it kept niggling me and I realised, having had the…
On Master Chef Australia tonight (24 May 2017) a lawyer, an engineer and a doctor had to create a winning dessert to try and avoid elimination from the cooking contest/reality show. All three must have undergone years of training, schooling and working experience to become members of these stock migrant professions. It’s a cliché but being…
The paper that follows this is one I wrote a few years back and tried for months and months to have published by academic journals. As must be obvious, it didn’t happen and I’ll be the first to say it can be improved. In the end though, I decided to not pursue that part of…
I have never written and published in fiction so this piece in Peril Magazine is a first for me. I am grateful to Peril for accepting it. Titled, Latter-Day Danger Asians, it speaks to issues that have troubled me for a while but because of the genre of fiction (or should it be that neologism,…
Here’s a scooter to lust after (5000 W electric engine, 0-60 km/h in 35 seconds) … Czech pedigree, distinctive retro looks and all mod cons [bluetooth speakers, a reverse gear (genius, especially if you’re not a big, strong rider) and AC outlet], plus space for all my shopping, work bag, lunch box, files, laptop and…
Where do you start? It all depends on your point of departure, do you know which publisher you are sending the proposal to or is this a pre-approach proposal? If you know exactly which publisher you want to approach, visit their website, look for their standard proposal form (it’d be rare for publishers not to…
A couple of my friends (thanks Ange and Pey) have asked me recently how to put a fellowship application together and I thought after such a long hiatus this topic might make for a good post. However, I need firstly to qualify what follows with the caveat that whilst I have applied for many fellowships,…
A few weeks ago Tony Pua, MP for Petaling Jaya Utara, Malaysia visited Perth and gave a presentation titled, Malaysia in a Tragic Year. I’d not met Tony before and he was a pleasure to watch and listen to, with the ability to speak to a roomful of people as if each was a friend…
There are days when you wake up your head filled with words, phrases and titles that you struggle to put down on paper before they go pffft right out of your mind. And then there are days when you sit before the keyboard, fingers poised, readings primed and structure ready, only to be somehow unable…
So over the weekend I made my regular loop round the neighbourhood in a bid to fend off the pain hours of sitting at a computer inflicts on my back. I usually use these times to mull over whatever conundrum I am trying to figure out that day. That afternoon I’d been reading about the…
