europe

LES ARMOIRIES DE PARIS

Place: de la République Paris has a byline. It has been in use since the 1300s, variously carved or tiled into buildings in characters now weathered and indistinct. From Latin, it means "tossed but not sunk” in the sense of a boat being slapped sideways in rough water. It

travel

Moai, Hanga Roa and Welcomes

Place: Hanga Roa Fat globs of rain slap against the multi-coloured fishing boats at rest in the tiny harbour. They don’t catch much fish here, it is either flown from Santiago, or frozen and shipped on the boat that arrives once a fortnight, the day the stores have stock

australia

Hello George

First, a heave as the right wing dips and the intercom dings, "there's a little weather over Canberra, so we've been put in a holding pattern," and we do lazy loops in the clear blue sky before plunging down into the grey, a great

poetry

Spenseriana

Let's go get a burrito and debate our favorite pasta shapes as the crenelated bank across the way catches the sun. the late sun, the one that holds hands with the older trees. We're not the kind to exclaim at beauty, so we don't

Taking a belting

This has been a good week for those that love to talk about sci-fi. Yes, dear readers, we are indeed going there. Let’s talk Star Wars. The past couple of months have been a fascinating experiment in merchandising taken to its logical extreme. I posit that everything it is

The Shape of Work

“Let me tell you a story,” she says, “about work. About the shape of work.” She is tall, glasses too big for her thin face, although he doesn't think this is A Fashion Thing. “What shape is work?” he asks. “Well, it’s not consistent. It changes depending

writing

Hear the Wind Sing

Haruki Murakami, on writing: > For me, writing is extremely hard work. There are times when it takes me a whole month just to write one line. Other times I’ll write three days and nights straight through, only to have it come out all wrong. Nonetheless, witting can also

travel

Thoughts on running

This morning I clocked a thirteen km run as part of my goal to see if I can run 150 km in a month. This is absurd to me. I'm not a runner, I've never been a runner and, prior to six months ago, the thought

travel

Wandering Soles

I threw out my shoes today. This was not an easy decision, nor one rendered simple through the enforced time pressures that come with the intersection of an end of lease and the start of transcontinental wanderings. Skipped over in the flurry of labelling, stay, or, go, with red and

usa Featured

The Brewer's Art

The counter is massive. Its scarred face gleams in the soft yellow light of the chandelier above. A fireplace, set in the same marble as the counter, dominates the back of the room and the hundreds of bottles clustered on it and around it glitter in the semi-darkness. Above, stretching

The count of three

The leaves have done falling. The drips from under the eaves freeze into an icy crust on the hardened dirt. Once more the north spins, off, into the dark.

life

One White Brick

As a kid, I was convinced it was the white brick that did it. This was a carefully reasoned deduction that went as follows: walking directly past the house yielded no response; nor did skipping, jumping, or running; but touching that sole white brick, even for a second, would result

travel

A World Expo

He will win the next hand. I know this because from where I stand, under the soft blue glow of four enormous Chinese characters, set in neon, I can see his cards, both of their cards. There are two others here, standing in this crisp Shanghai evening, and they are

travel

La Camioneta

Outside, there is an apple orchard on a cracked hillock of sunburnt clay. The trees are loosely arranged, bent sideways from the salty winds that blow across the peninsula each afternoon. The fruit on these trees is small, and is distributed sparsely amidst the splintered branches. There is nothing on

trains

Those Graceful Hands

“Please stand back from the edge. Please be mindful of the yellow line. Please form a queue. Please be patient. Please stand back from the edge. Please…” The station is chaos. Somewhere upstream someone has either fallen or thrown themselves on the tracks, the official language is notoriously obtuse in

travel Featured

When the Levee Breaks

You notice the billboards first. They cluster around highway exits, illuminated in silver-grey floodlight, thrust hundreds of feet above this flat, wet country. The journey toward the Panhandle is marked by photographs of gleaming seniors, their full-service retirement villages and their for-profit hospitals, and by the slow transition as the

thailand

Socks for a cause

The roar of the rain against the metal roof is more effective white noise than anything I can produce in my tiny headphones. It circles and nibbles at the bottom end of everything, separating life into brash high frequency squeals and the rest, seething and unhearable. I step sideways to

asia

Mani/Pedia

You can sense its happening. A thickening of the air, a prickling of the skin, and the distant thunk of the generator all come a moment before the lights buzz on and the ancient aircon groans into service. It can only have been off for ten minutes, but already the

travel

Adalbertstrasse

Early morning Kreuzberg, blowing with the late night detritus of winter weekend Berlin. The police huddle in a circle outside the chicken stand, nodding in unison to the background hum of sirens and the mutter of the radios in their belts, which spew a stream numbers and street names to

travel

The White Light of Amman

The taxi driver, Hassan, uses my garbled explanation of where I think I need to be to apply an educated guess. He drops me at the side of the road between a shop selling sewing machines and another yellowed manuscripts covered in barely decipherable characters. Some of these are not

japan

Shimeji

The man stands motionless in a crush of white-shirted salarymen, as they swarm past him, toward the single escalator at the end of the platform. He is tall, and gaunt, and wears the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk. That colour, the ochre of earth and mud and outside faraway

life

The Lord of the Forest

Gnarled and pitted wood rests where it has fallen, shapes transformed by the tiny creeping filaments of the moss that covers everything, in this place so textured with age. It is in everything: in the soil woven thick with fibrous, sinewy roots, in the song of the tiny birds that

japan

Shinobi

The kid plonks himself down on the seat next to me and announces, “I’m going to be a ninja.” He does a seated kick for emphasis and, in the process, boots his bag across the floor of the bus, scattering its contents. His mother crawls around, picking up runaway

travel

Seishun Juu-hachi Kippu

The Seishun Juu-hachi Kippu (Youth 18 Ticket or 青春18きっぷ) is a little-known JR ticket that is a boon for the budget conscious traveler. It is especially great for those already living in Japan on Instructor or Student visas, who are unable to qualify for its bigger brother, the unlimited JR

thailand

It's because of China

I am unsure whether it is the wind, or the spray being kicked up by the boat, or whether it is conceivable that I am cold. This seems impossible, in Bangkok, at this time of year. Nevertheless, the driver has donned an impressive looking ski-jacket and is using the hand