meeting in the aisle

Top 5 - If I could be everywhere at once

A couple of weeks in Sydney meant I was too busy being right where I wanted to be (family, friends and the whole she-bang) meant a hiatus on this post.

But now I’m ba-ack and buzzing with all the things I want to get into, like these:

• The impact of climate change on humans is the focus of a photography exhibition in Melbourne by Rodney Decker. I’m planning to make it to The tides of resistance, and no doubt get all nostalgic for Bangladesh and South Asia. (Obsucra Gallery, St Kilda until 18th Nov).


• My heart skipped a beat when I read that Annie Liebowitz: a photographer’s life is being hosted at Sydney’s Museum of Contemorary Art this summer.


• It’s no secret that I love a lentil or two, and the thought of chowing down on veggie delights for World Vegan Day at the famous Abbotsford Convent gets my mouth watering (Sunday, October 31).


• I know it’s a long way off yet, but the next TED Melbourne event is happeniing on 20th November, with the theme Community and Youth. It sounds to me like this is just the kind of place where good ideas might come from.


• And as someone who is always just a little bit in love with Oscar Wilde, I would like to be in the audience for The Importance of Being Earnest production at Sydney’s Darlinghurst Theater (until Nov 7).

[image: the importance of being earnest]

Sydney too violent for women - SMH reveals

It was a Saturday, around midday, and I was catching the train into the city with a girlfriend. We were excited - I was on my way to a photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Real Women” project, and that was something different for me back then.

I was 20, I was from Blacktown - only rich, thin, pretty girls got into the pages of a magazine, not short, pudgy, plain girls like me. I was going to get my makeup done professionally, and Kristy and I were chatting away, lost in our own worlds when he leant over the back of the train seat and pulled out a blood-filled syringe.

It all happened so quickly. The syringe, the demand for our money and mobile phones. The promise that he would stab me in the foot with it because he’d just got out of jail, and that’s where he’d be going back to, and he didn’t care if he made us sick, he just wanted his next hit, and “you’re just some dumb girl.”

We were scared. This was Sydney! It was the middle of the day! There were other people in the carriage! Not that they came to help.

We were lucky though. All we lost was some money, our phones, and a big bucket of naivety. In the nine years between then and now, I have gathered more stories like this, but none have had quite the same impact.

There is something about a ‘first time’ in this, but I’m not going to say it.

Instead, I’m going to track the stories about violence against women that hit the papers in Sydney and Melbourne for the next few weeks.

Thank you (!?), Sydney Morning Herald, for making this first post so easy with FIVE stories about violence and sexual harassment of women.

Monday 27th September brings us:

• League star accused of assaulting pregnant girlfriend
• Stewart charge absolutely totally unbelievable
• Sex assault on babysitter
• Home invader attacks woman with crowbar
• DJ $37m claim publicity-induced psychiatric illness in Kristy Freser0Kirk court told

Related posts:

- Think violence against women is something that happens ‘over there’ - think again.
- How unsafe should you feel?

Top 5 - if i could be everywhere at once

It’s been a damn busy week, and as I type I’m curled up on the couch, the soothing voice of David Attenborough on the TV telling me the world is weary of all the humanity weighing it down, and I’m all worked up over a TV program which was debating the ban of the burqa*.

It is under these circumstances I bring you my top 5 places I would be this week if I could be everywhere at once.

1. The UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York (Sep 20-22). Two of my dreams colliding - watching the sun set over skyscrapers listening to this song, and halving extreme poverty by 2015 - would be about as close to heaven as I could imagine getting this week. Sigh.

2. This is not art festival in Newcastle (Sep 30-Oct 4, Aus) sounds pretty darn cool. Writing, theatre, criticism, sounds and sights and colours and, no doubt, full of people you’d love to have in your phonebook.

3. Not to be outdone, the shiny city of Sydney is throwing up Art and About. I’d make sure I saw the bike bike, probably enroute to the oh-so-Melbourne sounding:

check out the oft-neglected Sydney laneways - a maze of history and urban appeal…Are You Looking At Me? breathes new life into these dark alleyways as nine contemporary Sydney artists inject them with sound, light, imagery and projections.

4.One of my new favourite songs is by a Melbourne band called The Spoils, and they’re playing at Old Bar tonight. I’m not there, but I wish I was.

5. And last but not least, with all the cement in my life lately, I would love nothing more than to get lost among the trees, fall asleep to the sounds of a waterfall, and wake up to a herbal tea and a hike in the Dandenong Ranges. Bliss.

*No, I don’t in any way support the banning of the burqa, in case you were wondering.

p.s. That’s me admiring the sun rising over the Annapurna Ranges in Nepal. More bliss.

A typeface for every city in the world

A very cool project by CitID where a typeface is designed for each city. Find your city’s ID.

(via PSFK)