Sprinkle of Ginger

What I’ve been doing with my life

Oh, hello. I hope things are well in your corner of the earth. When last we spoke, I looked a little something like this: Right now, I look more like this: You would not believe the influence that a ten-dollar box of hair dye can have. This one simple change, from red to almost-black, has been received with [...]

Coming home

I’m currently working on a book of personal essays. This is an example of what I’ve been writing. “Welcome home (if you still call it that)”. That was the subject of a friend’s email that arrived in my inbox when I landed in Sydney for a recent trip. The echo of his words, and the perennially [...]

What to do when you feel numb

Pic by KatB Photography Know what really, really sucks? Feeling absolutely nothing for anyone or anything. Emotional disengagement is an understandable strategy when faced with an overwhelming world. But when numbness goes beyond being a temporary coping mechanism and becomes your default state, something needs to be done. You need to bring yourself back. So, [...]

Silent sufferers: Why you’ve got to speak up

Pic by -mrsraggle- I went through an irresponsible phase when I was around 19. My mother and sister had moved to New York and I was still in Sydney, trudging through a law degree and working as a retail pleb at an electronics store. I had been a bit of a zombie since finishing [...]

Schoolday memories

Pic by dcJohn At the age of about nine, three friends and I formed the Friends-4-Ever Club. Heavily influenced by The Baby-Sitters Club, we would collect “dues” of one or two dollars each every week and produce newsletters photocopied at the office of someone’s dad. The content of these newsletters was always slight, consisting [...]

Scrambled thoughts on London

Pic by night86mare Recently I made my fourth visit to London, this time courtesy of the good folk at CheapOair. (I won a competition that relied on chance and required absolutely no skill. Ego boost activate!) The trip was of the whirlwind variety — five days — but I still managed to pack in a [...]

The ups and downs of being a freelancer

My life is ridiculous. In a good way, mostly. And it has been that way for the last year and a half. To illustrate, here are some of the activities I engaged in over the span of a recent week: Took a tour of a decaying castle on an island in the [...]

How to cope when people hate you

Let us turn now to the analysis of hateration. (How great is that word? I believe it was made popular via this brilliant Mary J. Blige song.) Sometimes I’ll visit one of my videos on YouTube and be met with feedback like this: This is so gay. not funny at all. you’ll never make it please just give [...]

And now for something completely different

Pic by tochis I recently finished reading Atonement, which put me in the mood to do a bit of the ol’ creative writing. So I challenged myself to write a little vignette-type thing without thinking too much or going back to fix and tweak and obsess. (I recommend this, incidentally. You will surprise [...]

The pizza story

Pic by Amarand Agasi When I was about 10 my sister and I hosted a sleepover and, in a moment of uncharacteristic audaciousness, ordered a pizza to the home of a schoolmate we found mutually disagreeable. Being relatively obedient children, it was the most mischievous stunt we could think of. But, unaccustomed to such [...]