Columns

I once heard a wise man, friend and mentor say that “one should get a degree so that one might be able to contemplate.” But I’ll be honest with you. There have been more times than I care to count when I have thought that university was a waste of my time and I didn’t fully understand the meaning of that wise man's Zen-like statement until I found myself looking across a table at a musician with an impe [ ... ]

Remember The Game of Life? A strange little board game in which players push a plastic car around a pre-determined path representing the span of an adult life. It says something about the under-pinning philosophy of the game, created in the 1800s, that there are few deviations possible from the path, and that the player is forcibly hand-held through various unavoidable events: career-building, home-buying, spouse-cat [ ... ]

Let’s face it, it’s been a long time since I have written another Back Again for the First Time.

At first, this column was about my re-emergence into American life. It was a way for me to deal with the heartache of missing New Zealand and to cope with the adjustment of feeling like a foreigner in my home country. I have been back in America for over a year now that and with time, I have coped.

But that’s where  [ ... ]

A few days after I got back into New Zealand, a friend and I went to catch a movie at The Rialto.  Preceding the feature was the usual onslaught of ads, though on this particular occasion I was left with a sense of emotional manipulation even greater than usual.

It started with an ad for a national supermarket chain, I’m sure you’ve seen this.  Happy multi-cultural New Zealanders creating home-made musical ins [ ... ]

It’s 4.30 in the afternoon. My frozen fingers stumble across the keyboard which is illuminated solely by my computer screen. Today’s long-forgotten sun has done nothing to clear the ice that has turned negotiating London’s footpath into a slalom event.

Oh, and Christmas is cancelled.

Well, that’s how it felt a week ago when I realised that heavy snowfall had closed Heathrow Airport and after nearly two years a [ ... ]

Yes, Tokyo is idolised as one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. People picture this neighbourhood as ‘electric this’ and ‘neon that’, a place where  the world’s robots, gadgets and gizmos are conceived and created and which is more reliant on machines and devices.

These ideas about Tokyo are usually gleaned from movies, cartoons and stories, yet they are not far from the truth. Among [ ... ]

Arriving home, getting old.

I’m standing outside the Auckland International airport arrival gates.  It’s 12.35pm, I calculate that I haven’t slept in about 30 or 40 hours.  I took Valium at the start of the journey (actually, after I downed a couple, I noticed it was labeled Velium, and I started to suspect my over the counter purchase of unpackaged medications in Laos as shockingly suspect), but a particularl [ ... ]

The warm days of summer are disappearing rapidly. Time in the sun will be a rarity as we enter the end of November and the end of an unusually long summer that saw Tokyo reach a record breaking 37degrees.   I sported only a singlet, boardies and jandels for most of it and it is safe to say I stuck out like a sore thumb, especially as I was living in one of the business districts of Tokyo, Kamiyacho. But hey, when t [ ... ]

At the beginning of 2010 I received an invitation from a new art gallery (that shall remain nameless) opening in Hong Kong.  The gallery was “the best place to see International Art Shows and up-and-coming artists” and I was invited to be a part of their debut postcard themed show. Needless to say, I was ‘down like china town’.

Time went by and after working on my postcards, sending them  [ ... ]

Ten hours until Philadelphia. Rolling hills speckled with cattle, grain silos and run-down wooden barns whizz past the car windows. I’m on the road again. It seems I can never stay in one place for too long. Maybe I am running away from boredom, from ultimately living a life with a routine. I’ll have plenty of time for routine when my joints ache.

My travel companion is a lovely New Zealander, one whom I have gon [ ... ]