10.30pm on a Friday in Leicester square. The crowds are reeling from Butterworth’s The Ferryman, which after three hours leads you on and on before dumping you in a harrowing and unexpected denouement. I light up a cigarette and make my way down the snowy lanes. I push past ambler after ambler (how can people…
“It’s all about the tone” I was saying. “Find the tone, stick to it and you’re halfway there”. Dozens of faces stared up at me blankly, eyes glazed over. I spotted a few towards the back, busy scribbling in notepads, so I continued. “Avoid platitudes, at all cost, and ignore what they taught you in…
When I was young I felt infinite. Long summer days stretched lazily before me, fading mirage-like into the shimmering horizon. As far I was concerned, time was a concept invented by adults as an excuse to send me to bed. The future was an illusion because it didn’t really exist- the only thing I cared about…
Disclaimer: Pretentious and philosophical content I read a book today: A Tale for the Time Being. It was a fascinating take on the here and now and the human connection with the cosmos, and it really got me thinking. The far-fetched things we read about and watch in movies are labelled science fiction. But in…
“Hi, I’m a journalist from the Fremantle Herald”. My voice echoes down the phone, and my simple statement is met by instant wariness. I can sense it through the hesitant crackle down the other end of the line, and nervous breathing and the clammy palms. Well, I actually have no clue about any of that,…
So it’s already been four months to the day since I lugged my bags to Heathrow and waved goodbye to the surprisingly warm English summer. I then proceeded to spend a grand total of seventeen numbing hours airborne, with a quick layover in the ridiculously shiny airport in Doha. There’s even a gigantic teddy bear…
Despite being a landmass approximately 31.5 times bigger than the UK, Australia lacks its own unique cuisine. The Great Southern Land however makes up for this with several internationally-renowned eats that are far too delicious to miss… Vegemite This is perhaps the most Australian food one can get. Although it’s essentially tantamount to England’s…
“Let me tell you about the trouble with girls” was the beginning of the end for Nobel laureate Tim Hunt. “You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry!” This comment, said in a jovial manner, would have been quickly dismissed as a mild form of…
A billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has revealed that as part of the eight Millennium Development Goals, a global 15-year anti-poverty push, between 1990 and 2015 the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day has fallen from 1.9 billion to 836 million. The percentage…
A new treatment for cystic fibrosis (CF) could be available by the end of the decade, say leading scientists who have recently conducted a clinical trial involving gene therapy. “For the first time in the world we have seen a significant benefit in giving gene therapy to cystic fibrosis patients,” said Eric Alton of Imperial…
Curious Miscellanies 