I grew up in Perth, Western Australia. This is a city where the temperature has, to my knowledge, only fallen below freezing once (to something ridiculous like -0.2C, if my memory serves me correctly), and we are much more accustomed to having hot summer days over 40C (well over the century, for my …
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On seeing snow fall for the first time at 25
There are many millions of people in the world who see nothing unusual in falling snow. It's a regular part of their life experience, something they've always known, and something that is probably often more of a nuisance than anything else. I am not one of those people. I can detail many of …
When racists get the wrong man (or woman)
Recently, I was chatting over lunch with a bunch of my social media students and they teased me for starting a story with "When I lived in Bratislava ..." (Apparently that's not something you hear every day down here in Perth! Cheeky people!). Anyway, after they settled down and I explained that the …