“I have to write 500 words on why I want to be a teacher.  Any things I should say?”

I was asked this by my sister this afternoon.  As well as being a crucial part of the first sentence above, the word ‘why’ also happens to be one that Beth hears a supernumerary amount of times a day from my toddler nephew.  As infuriating as that can be, ‘Why?’ is ( Read more... )

Have you ever had a revelation that seems so obvious with hindsight that you’re not sure if it was something you once ‘knew’ but had long since forgotten?

I was thinking today about George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Winston Smith lives in a world in which the larger-than-life Big Brother (who Winston sometimes doubts is a real person) is always ( Read more... )

Following on from the previous blog entry: my life as summarised through the lens of five years of Facebook status updates...


( Read more... )

My most-abhorred cliché at this moment is ‘swings and roundabouts’.  It seems to have resurged of late, despite the fact that it makes no semantic sense to anyone who is either hearing or speaking it.  The phrase tends to be used by economists and businesspeople and politicians, such as this statement last week by ousted Queensland Minister for ( Read more... )

Hamlet is William Shakespeare’s longest play.  (Well, unless The History of Cardenio or Love’s Labour’s Won was longer.)  For anyone who didn’t read or see Hamlet at school or sometime since (or for anyone who was supposed to read it for school but was actually busy doing something important), here are the HapaxNotes:

Act I scene i.

BARNARDO: A ghost ( Read more... )

Some Stuff I Love Unconditionally:

1. Lukewarm coffees with two sugars.
2. The smell of my current hair conditioner (Schwarzkopf Extra Care Hair Repair Liquid Silk® Gloss Conditioner For Brittle, Dull Hair.  I don't think I necessarily have brittle, dull hair - it was just the best value conditioner I could find.)
3. Specific friends and family ( Read more... )

I’ve neglected this blog for the past few months, under the impression that I had to wait for a profundity or something worth reading.  But I realised that may be missing the egomaniacal point (or pointlessness) of blogging.  So from now, I’m going to just write what comes into my head.

One of the B-sides of Tori Amos’s first solo single was ( Read more... )

A rugby game was played last night.

I know this because at about 7pm some drunk guy outside my office shouted “New South Wales!”  He shouted it a lot.  And in my experience, the only time anyone does that is when either the Waratahs are playing or State Of Origin is on.  On the other three-hundred-and-fifty-odd days a year, basically no one in New ( Read more... )

It is with great redundancy that I announce that I have started a blog.  The reasons for this are onefold: the Internet wastes my time like this simile wastes yours.  Thus, if the Internet is going to siphon my time regardless, this blog will be one of those strainer things at the bottom of the sink that stops the bigger chunks from going down the ( Read more... )