Young families are plentiful. Kids play on bikes and tradies dash about. Seemingly everybody has a dog. The area is much like a maze, but you finally arrive at the outer rim of a newly built housing development site. Look outwards, and behind you are individuals living simple lives in their simple homes, unaware that…
"Farkkk. Well, there go our winter holiday plans.”
As Gladys announced the NSW-Victorian border closure, I felt my heart sink. It wasn’t unexpected, just another shitty trick in the shocking magic show that has been 2020. I closed my eyes. The spark of hope that had been a planned roadtrip during an otherwise dreary year…
“A Cacao what?”
This question, accompanied by a quizzical tilt of the head, was the standard response I received when I told people I’d spent a casual evening attending a cacao ceremony in Sydney.
Long before the threat of Covid-19 cast a dark cloud over the possibility of social activity, I embarked on a solo…
Staring down the shot glass of yet another pre-10am mezcal, I push any thoughts of What about my life productivity? aside and focus on what’s happening in front of me in the dirt-floored kitchen nestled within the lush, wet mountains.
My mates and I are in San Pedro y San Pablo Ayutla (or Ayutla, to her…
If you were to find yourself in streets of Helsinki in the midst of a Finnish winter, don’t be surprised by a shower of snow falling gently from the sky without a moment’s notice.
Following a successful thrift of (definitely) ugly Christmas sweaters and a tipsy game of Cards Against Humanity in a nearby pub,…
Six o’clock. Greeting her in the dim light, the mirror on the far wall can only fit a proportionate view of her features. It is small and inornate, but she can see a pair of eyes and ears, a nose and lips. She is a writer, but nobody the likes of Virginia Woolf stares back…
This year, I cast aside the dirt-encrusted vouchers for disappointment and bought the VIP Backstage Experience for the United States 2020.
In late August, I boarded a desolate flight from Heathrow to Boston to pursue my Master’s degree. My first morning in the city had me tuning into the local news channels to scope the…
It was the night before the Thai new year festival of Songkran, and we were spending it in the luggage hold of a bus. We curled side by side, facing each other, hemmed in on every side by holdalls, suitcases, and backpacks. Even in the darkness, we could feel the sticky heat of the Thai…
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said.
We were drinking champagne from the bottle, wearing only bathrobes in the suite of a 19th-century estate turned hotel two hours south of London.
As the alcohol and dopamine coursed through my system, I managed to dig up a fact I’d heard in a science podcast months earlier:…
In front of the hills of Arthur’s Seat, Margherita Nerini-Garcia stands before the Mornington Peninsular shore. Margherita, my nonna, pulls off her dress and throws herself into the water like a puppy without a lead. She lifts her feet, kicking the buckle of the current from underneath her. It is here, in the surge of…
Crystal clear waters. The wings of a giant manta gliding above me while I float, weightless, in the ocean. This was how scuba diving was sold to me. So how did I end up throwing up over the side of a boat with blood trickling out of my right nostril?
That morning I was sitting…
Cozmoz arrived with his usual perky walk, wearing flip flops that belonged to two different pairs and red plastic shades lifted over his head. He always had them, even at night. We arranged to meet in a small bar run by Italians in one of the side streets of Watamu's centre, because it was the…