Sprinkle of Ginger

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 [...]

Introversion and extroversion

Today I got a comment on this very blog from a guy called Jim asking whether I was an introvert or an extrovert. He cited characteristics that would fit into both categories and offered to conduct a “thousand-question-strong Voigt-Kampff test“. I’m going to politely decline the polygraph, Jim, but I thought the broader topic of [...]

A year in pictures

Good gracious. I have been living in this mad place for an entire year. How did that happen? In an attempt to come to terms with this swift passage of time, I am accounting for my whereabouts with a little pictorial recap. Here are some of the standout moments of the last 12 [...]

Fans and followers: The internet and self-obsession

LiveJournal-era camwhoring, circa 2002 The internet and I have a very complex relationship. Look, I adore the ol’ World Wide Web. It’s been a part of my life since I was 13, with innumerable positive effects. But at the same time, I resent it for the social and psychological shifts that it’s provoked, [...]

Five videos that’ll put a smile on your dial

Lately I’ve been amassing a collection of online videos that are guaranteed to make a bad day better. Here are a few for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to share your own favourites in the comments! Benedick and Beatrice getting tricked in Much Ado About Nothing This wondrous film was released in 1993. It’s [...]