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Home again?
When does one feel at home living somewhere new? The question surely yields as many answers as there are people who’ve ever found themselves trying to capture the essence of home, once it outgrows the notion of being tied to a single house. I’ll explore some of the ways I’ve started to find a home…
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Here’s what I learned when the muckrakers united
I stood or sat, phone in hand note-taking or exchanging contact info, in a sea of reporters listening to each other. I perched on cramped benches, sometimes on the floor, a chair if I was more punctual and decisive than usual about session selection. There we were, 1700 investigative journalists, academics, non-profit directors, students,…
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Looking for hope? Reflections from a climate campaigner and journalist
Tipping Points of Hypocrisy As about four million strikers took to the streets on Friday, a part of me felt relief. Here comes, surely, some kind of human-powered tipping point for climate action. It was a similar part to the one that felt elated and hopeful when Auckland University divested from fossil fuels in…
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After the rain – my first month in Sweden
A few days before class on my way home, I step off the train to discover a deluge. I have over a kilometre to walk, I’m wearing shorts and a light windbreakder, and the water gods are having a ball. The cold, unrelenting pelts are all I can hear and feel and I try not…
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My Faithful Travel Companion
As a familiar Irish lilt comes to life in a pub in Sweden I have never visited, I want to cry. Instead I pick up my flute to join in. This is the Irish trad (or traditional) session culture – all you need is a space (preferably a pub to quench the thirst), a…
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Leaving a trace through Gothenburg
It’s a balmy day by Gothenburg summer standards, 20°C and not too windy. Four of us, two Kiwis and two Finns, pause outside a café on a bustling Gothenburg street, long enough for me to register it’s the first café I’ve been to in Sweden. “I wonder if they have kanelbular here. The cinnamon buns?’’…
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Välkommen!
Nothing says välkommen quite like housemates who haven’t met you yet but all come out to pick you up at the airport anyway. You get back at 9pm, They show you around your room and the next day make you Swedish pancakes and smoothy for brunch. I’ll spare you the accommodation search saga for now…
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When in doubt, investigate
“You should study abroad,” they said. “It’ll be good for you. My parents met when both were overseas, and I’ve been reminded more than once that without that prerequisite, neither I nor my brother would exist. I’m not a chick reticent about fleeing the nest, but figuring out what I wanted to pursue…
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Alive
“Your ear is a muscle,” said Paul, the ukulele workshop tutor. To be alive is for the muscles of your ears to engage their most minute fibres to keep you balanced. Sometimes, you are a fiddler, balanced on a tightrope of septuplets and bodhrán with just enough give that you may make a calculated small…
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Oh, yeah, the toothbrush
It’s 10:54pm and my body is contentedly tired the way it always is after a long, sunny day at the beach. I wander into the bathroom and become conscious of my presence there when I stick my hand into my toothbrush/toothpaste cup and discover the necessary items are not there. Of course they’re not, didn’t…
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A Frame on Life 