Review – The History Question: Who owns the past?

Today I’m reviewing one of the Quarterly Essays - The History Question; Who owns the past? by Inga Clendinnen. Quarterly Essays are 20,000 words published quarterly, with responses generally in the next issue. I’ve previously reviewed Clendinnen’s Dancing with Strangers, which is a detailed deconstruction and pieceing together of the history of the first five years [...]

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TV Meme

Elsewhere has created a TV meme, which I’ll have to answer – even though I haven’t been watching much TV lately. 
1. Earliest remembered television?
I don’t have a specific TV memory (my parents tried hard to make me remember the moon landing, but at 2, I was just too young). The memory I do have is that when [...]

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Walking in the rain

One of our favourite weekend excursions is to walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and take the ferry home. It’s been a while, so we did it again today, even though rain was threatening.

So picture us – three adults, with three small boys. They’d been cooped up a bit in the last few days, so they alternated between [...]

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Extreme Jobs

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review entitled Extreme Jobs – the Dangerous Allure of the 70 hour workweek (reported here) sums up again why I don’t think creating work-life balance is just about telling (asking?) employers to be nicer to their employees.
 Many people enjoy their work, and like working all their serious waking [...]

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Book Review: The world according to Y

Today’s book review is The World According to Y: inside the new adult generation, by Rebecca Huntley. I probably wouldn’t have bought this book if I didn’t have some flying to do (four hours each way to NZ  meant I needed more than just some magazines), but I’m glad I did.
I’ve been a sceptic about [...]

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Penguins under attack

I have yet to see the movie Happy Feet (which of course, given the name of this blog, I must). But I’m interested to see that it’s already come under attack for being “environmentalist propaganda”. As I understand it, in spite of the poles being more likely to warm up quicker than the rest of [...]

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Shoes

Last Friday, we were having our work Christmas party that afternoon – casual, outdoors, in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. It was a beautiful day, not too hot, but sunny. Unfortunately, I had an important meeting, so I couldn’t go casual, as most of my colleagues did, but I thought a skirt would be nice.
It’d been more [...]

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The new Jobs

AFR Boss magazine had a very interesting conversation about flexible jobs recently. The full transcript is here.  It was a moderated conversation between Dr Marian Baird, of the University of Sydney and Mr Stephen Bevan, research director, The Work Foundation. It’s a great conversation, but a few things really struck me. First Baird on the [...]

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Book Review: Teacher Man

Today’s Book Review is Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt. I read, and loved Angela’s Ashes, when it first came out. I had avoided Tis, as the reviews were mostly unfavourable. But I expected quite a lot of this book, given how good Angela’s Ashes was, and also given that I do love a good school [...]

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A vicious cycle(ing)

A few months ago, in Melbourne, a pedestrian was killed by a cyclist while crossing the road. It was early on a Saturday morning, when the local cyclists were out on their morning ride.  A friend told me that the cyclists on this ride are notorious for not obeying the road rules;  they effectively think of it [...]

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