The noise of the alarm is screeching. It's insistent, it’s ringing louder than my voice. Somebody else has to hear it. Someone has to find me.

Borrowed rods balanced between our fingers, lines disappearing into the dark like quiet questions.

So when I find my mouth drying up, when I want to substitute the sun for an egg yolk in the sky, I count it time to get to nature.

It would be easy to turn this into a story of uncomplicated pride. I resist that turn.

The noodles themselves bear marks of the careful, hand-made process; each strand varying in length and thickness, some tinted with a soft green from being steamed over banana leaves.

I grip my mothers hand tightly, not wanting to let go.

It is both hollow and alive, a refuge and a trap. For better or worse, this is the public square of Southeast Asia.

Monopolistic enterprises are not just concerned with selling their product. They also want to impose their culture and values on other countries to establish themselves as the true north of the industry and dictate the distribution of resources like water.

Our thirst for subculture has not been quenched, but finds new pathways to flow, as liquid as ever.

“I stumbled out of bed too quickly, one morning, and fell onto my Lego sets, sending shockwaves through Heartlake City.”

“This intensity that morphed into a sense of overwhelm so consuming I felt that nothing could be funnelled into a singular actuality. I let that feeling — whatever it was, consume me.”

So here I am, pussy out in the kitchen at 11:47pm, my left knee aching (I’d squat down too fast), and I am trying my luck with the back-of the fridge container.

Inner-West Ennui 

“Above came the rumble-tumble of trains, whines of whistles, the frantic blaring of approaching horns. From below the roars of old buses and the pop of a Porsche or broken-down Ford. A man in a green down jacket, young with spiky black hair, hurried through the soup of neon and sunset.”

Nicholas Osiowy wanders.

Piece by piece, Korea was sold.

With all the furniture removed, the house looked tired.

“You cannot dispel the song from your mind, it plays and plays on repeat.”

“Pondicherry possessed a preserved Eurocentric sense of relaxation that one can only imagine; harkens back to its colonial roots when the town served as a haven for French settlers seeking respite.”

“Did you know that this theatre is haunted?”

The Chinese campus canteen is an overlooked institution, providing sustenance and representing the deep-rooted tradition of communal eating.

The Sydney sulk followed me to the country.

There is perhaps one thing that unites every Australian town — an institution that has been embedded in our national story since the 18th century: the Australian-Chinese restaurant.

There is something unpretentious and humble about the Asian bakery.

In displaying that aspect of my identity as a funny spectacle, the chuckles I’d hear echoed discordantly within it, as I felt like I genuinely didn’t know enough about what I was talking about.

Holding a large pinwheel lollipop in his left hand, he ran his, undoubtedly sticky, other one along the shelves, displacing and muddling the displays.

What did the ghouls of King Street want from me?

Geelong City is convinced that Geelong-Korea will attract baseball fans to the region.

What I found far more interesting was the interesting nexus of community that this place attracted.