Category Archives: long

I’m about to set up my home-office desk again after taking three weeks’ leave from work. Proper leave; I haven’t checked my work email for two weeks (except briefly and by accident), and I’ve only responded to questions that have come directly to me through personal social media channels (I don’t think I’ve had a […]

Two weeks ago Mum was still at home, breathing with difficulty, moving around only with significant help. One week ago we were getting ready for her funeral. Today.

It’s been a long time since I have participated in any formal event, or fundraiser, but we had the opportunity to go along to the Sydney “walk to d’feet MND”; my sister and I decided to frame our fundraising as a competition, rather than a collaborative effort, and that seemed to resonate with some of […]

I’m studying a subject on law and ethics at the moment, and we’re trying to work out answers to complicated questions. What does it take to keep people doing the right thing? What consequences can be built in to a system so that people are motivated to do the right thing? We build giant, unaccountable […]

I’ve been burning the candle at both ends a little at the moment even after listening through to the excellent audio book of Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. The lessons of “the sleep book” were that sleep is been more important than I thought it was, and is linked to better and worse health […]

One of my favourite things to order from an eating establishment is a ploughman’s lunch. It sounds like an ancient meal, something from a simpler, agricultural time. I remember buying a book that collected a series of sermons from Charles Spurgeon from the 1800s – the John Plowman talks – there was a whole group of […]

I was surprised to see a facebook event invite from a uni friend to a memorial service for his wife. With his dark sense of humour, and their relative youth, I thought this was just an amusing way to get in touch. It was not. Life was, in this case, demonstrated as far more fragile […]

Normally a gap in the schedule would encourage me to take some time and write something up, but this time around – the end of my second uni subject and a few weeks’ break before the third one starts, my son’s tenth birthday party and the lead-in to Father’s Day, and full-time work – it […]

In this podcast interview with Moira Weigel surveying the landscape of dating apps, and looking back at the history of “dating” – how women joining the workforce changed the nature of courtship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one idea in particular stood out to me.  Measurement.  We are trying to make everything into […]

Ten years ago, I carved out a Saturday and invited whoever wanted to turn up to an all-day cafe crawl. For the transition from 39 to 40, life is a little differently structured. We had a couple of family events the weekend before my birthday, lunch with my coworkers on the day, an ice cream […]