Red poppies and ethical storytelling
When I worked part-time and mothered full time, my garden suffered. I frequently allowed annuals to go to seed and hoped that they would sow next year’s display. I later...
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My Reading Chair & Writing Desk
The curious scribbler meets the rug maker
‘Would you like some tea?’ asks Najaf, the rug-maker of Mazar-e-Sharif. I accept his kind offer gratefully as I step into his shop – Afghan Traditional Rugs...
Acquiescent or assertive
Feature picture by Klein. August 2014, Salisbury Writers Festival, Adelaide For a towering figure of Australian literature, John Marsden is looking rather grey, his leg...
Creation and Destruction
After my interview last week with a Syrian refugee, I went to my local library and borrowed all the books I could find on Syria. One of the books I borrowed was The...
The Little Man Counts
Earlier this year, I stopped to read a commemorative board by a sandy footpath leading to Chapman’s Bar at Emerald Bay on Pangkor Laut. I learnt that the bar was named...
Seeing life through the lens of death
Since moving away in 2001, I have returned to Malaysia and Singapore each year to spend time with family. As the years passed, I have noticed loved ones growing old, often...
Lord Jim in Borneo
When I began reading Lord Jim, I was pleasantly surprised that Jim was not the Lord of an English manor as I had supposed. Instead, he was a seaman, disgraced by his desertion...
Capture them while you can
My aunt once told me of her older brother, who had loved her dearly. During World War II, he was taken away by the Japanese and never returned. ‘That day,’ she...
Iced coffee instead of bush tea
My friend Merrilyn remembers a wonderful Afghan family and has a visual picture of where she parked when she visited them twelve years ago. On hearing that I would like to...