“University under Erasure”, “Be like Water”, “Laugh like a Medusa” and other such moorings. (Part 1.)

This a series of quick bites from my experience of the CUS conference and learnings from it. This piece is part 1 of my reporting back. More pieces to come. Conference Booklet with abstracts can be found here.

Context Matters: A Critical Universities Studies Conference set in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is nothing and everything I imagined it to be. I imagined protests, lots of police, censorship, restrictions, possibly lots of American influence, and warm weather. It was all those things..but it had a lot more spirit than I thought. There’s a certain tension always in the air. The tension perhaps felt even more real to me owing to the closeness of the conference to HKSAR 27th year anniversary celebration .
After having spent the first day of my trip trying to sus out the place and context in which the conference was taking place in, I honestly didn’t know what to think of it. My main question going into this conference—-What is the “critical” part of “critical university studies”? There are all these people from all around the globe, what do they think of it? Perhaps you might see, like some of us at the conference in- there were sort of two different understandings of the word “critical”. Critical as in critique… but also critical also as in to criticise.

Setting the scene: University Under Erasure by Dr Eva Bendix Petersen

Day 1 of the conference. I feel quite giddy and special being an audience to some of the best higher education researchers in the sector. The opening is delivered in an unusual kind of lecture theatre- one where the theatre is horizontal with only for or five rows vertically. Interesting choice. Apparently, this decision was deliberate.

So, why Critical University Studies?
Eva, a dutch higher education researcher, invites us to see the university as one under erasure. Under Erasure in the literal sense, is a word on a page that is stricken through, as though deleted by the editor. However, having found no other word to replace it, it still stands on the page. The University, in all its glory and flaws, needs to be studied more than ever…. and done so critically. The study of the university is our duty of care. A study invites us to be transdisciplinary. This particular conference, formerly known as the Academic Identities Conference, recognised that need. Hence the broadening of the scope, the name change and the invitation to be critical and build on top of the university we have.

Opening Keynote “Be like water”- Bruce Lee.
The keynote on day 1 opens with insight into one Hong Kong universities’ current conditions for academics. Apparently, Hong Kong and China pumps out PHDs in the hundred-thousands. They point fingers at the neoliberal university, criticise the amount of labour in terms of publishing that needs to go in for academics to feel remotely confident to keep their jobs (btw, its a lot), and the struggle that is to keep their love for genuine research. Any attempt to self-care co-journeys with their burden to constantly sustain impact, implement, evaluate build, explore and engage.

At such time they draw inspirations from their gods- Bruce Lee. His famous saying - “Be like water, my friend. Be like Water”, soothes them. I loved the call to adapt, change course, be forceful enough to disrupt, and at other times gentle to make your course around things. I love more that Bruce Lee has made his way into academia—inviting us to navigate through an oasis rather a hostile environment.

I don’t understand the neoliberal university. Fortunately, that hasn’t been my experience of the university. Is it everyone’s experience? My fellow conference attendee and higher education stalwart Barbara Grant words over tea was a little more reasurring. "The university is a thousand tiny universities.”

I like her version better. I scratch my head about the neoliberal part, but the opening keynote’s message “Be like water”comes home with me. I 🫰Bruce Lee.

I remember now, how foolish one needs to be, to learn a language to the point of mastery.

You need to be really foolish to learn a new skill and think you can become extremely good at it fast. Learning languages is that skill for me. I don’t know how, but from some crevice in my under-confident mind, a gross level of confidence emerges. It begins with a thought—I can master any language because I have done it a couple of handful times before. And sure enough, when I embark on a new journey of language learning, I am knocked off my high horse and I face-plant into the muck where I belong. A speedy humbling, just as one deserves.

Every time I learn a new language, I forget the .

• That both your tongue and your mind need to unlearn how to speak before you learn anew.

• That learning with urgency over consistency will only leave you tongue-tied.

• To trust the teacher.

Day 1 of learning Mandarin was that all over again.

What I really think universities should look like in 20 years

I had the honour of presenting my initial remarks at the Innovative Research Universities conference. I could say a lot about universities but I had 4minutes, so I wrote stuff down. Then, I had this idea to make public those remarks on the blahg. So, Ta Da!

——

Hi everyone! My name is Shivani, and I am currently a Master of Public Health student from Western. I’ve been a student for 6 years now. Three of which I have also been a student partner. I am a WSU Student Partners coordinating lead and I also sit on the strategic initiatives board looking at postgrad microcreds. That’s a quick wiki on me. 

Now, to my three points…

When you do student-staff partnership every day and long enough, you come to realise that shaping the university is not just the responsibility of staff. It’s ours too. We are the university too. You also realise that partnership can be transformative (and exhausting) and it is a curiosity tool that reveals the university in different ways.

So, what has my student experience and student-staff partnership work revealed to me?

Firstly, let’s start big and basic.  With the thing that students come to uni for— Degrees.   
We live in a time where the problems that surround us are complex and wicked. “Transdisciplinary problems”, they call it.  So, Higher Education is more important than ever!
We could make more transdisciplinary add-on degrees –we absolutely do need that.
You could unbundle or stack degrees— sure that too.   

The truth is, without students understanding their degree, and knowing that they can shape it, the work that we do in the “new and better degree space” is pointless.
Like rolling a boulder up a hill with a feather.  
You won’t get the enrolments that you are looking for. Or completion rates.

So, let’s start here- Focusing on helping university students and the Australian public understand what you could do in your degree.

Because, it would be a tragedy if we still heard students say-“my degree is a piece of paper; a recognition; accreditation.  It should be more than that. It needs to be.

So, what’s a first step? And this is my second point..

Start at the classroom level.  Student-staff partnership is a shift from seeing students as data points; from extracting from students, to seeing students as co-inquirers. As a low bar example, a student knowing or being invited to co-design their assessment topic with their teacher, is a small way to shape a good classroom and in turn a good degree.
20 years from now, I hope Student-staff Partnership is an obvious way of doing teaching and learning in classrooms.

Third and my last point, is a slight deviation but nevertheless, I have to say it.

Remember the point about helping students understand their university degrees and what they can do with them. While we do that, let’s also find more opportunities for gainful employment for students on our university campuses first and outside so we support them to get through. Student poverty and unemployment exists. Especially amongst my international student friends.

I am aware we ask a lot of universities. But I’ll leave you with this quote by Peseta and Salibury-
“Universities are these (magical) possibility spaces.”  They always have been.
I think my time’s up. Thank you.

Why, The Living Library?

I had a very wobbly start to university life in Australia. I remember distinctly, the feeling of walking in blind into my university life. I flew back home after a ten year hiatus living and schooling overseas, and I was about to enter the next most crucial phase of my life not knowing where to begin beginning. Like most high-school leavers I didn't have the usual orientation and induction into university or college life. I had arrived from a completely different world altogether and I had missed all that essential priming. With a little leg up from old family friends, I somehow landed in Western Sydney University’s campus.. and my instincts pointed me to the university library.

When you're in a place as expansive as a public university, where so much is being thrown at you from every single side, you can very easily be swallowed by its vastness.
I came up for air in the library.

To me, it seemed obvious, that knowledge and truth wouldn’t escape her. She became my crutch. If I am anything of substance today as a university student, it is because of her. It is because the library became my solace, my refuge, my place of great thinking, and collaboration, my social life and impact. She was generous, and she helped those who sought it with learning and support and some more.

It makes sense, that a place with such extraordinary potential, is the heart of the university.
That, when such a place needs attention and rejuvenation, a second is not spared.
That, the very thing that gives life to the rest of the university, is given attention when it demands it.
Hence, the living library.

The Living Library is more than just a project that I coordinate and lead within the student partner team. To me, it’s a very important part of the shaping the library of the future at Western. We think ambitiously about big questions. What is the role of the library for the rest of the university? What is the role of the library for the region? What role do academics, librarians and students play in the library of the future? What can we do to bring more life into the library?
We also care about the essential everyday. What resources exist within the library and how are they used? How can we communicate what exists in the library better?

Because, in this ever-changing landscape of work and society, university libraries need to be many things. It needs to be a refuge for students and it also needs to be a place of activity and activism. A library where students, staff and communities shape the library in partnership. Our university relies on it becoming all those things because the life of the university comes from it.
The future of the library is the future of university.

Hence again, the living library.

Tapestry of Tongues.

Life is too short to be apolitical about the things that you are passionate about and examine with devotion (or as some scholars would say, the thing that you would consider your “love object”) You run the risk of living a stale life before you die, when you fear the prospect of others testing your convictions, and poking holes in them.

For me, language is that idea. It has shaped my identity in more ways than I can imagine and I have only just begun to figure just how much.

I am both the person who can speak many languages and one who gets confused by them all.

I am someone who learnt and unlearnt the way I spoke English three times over in my most formative years as a child, teen and early adult.

My speech is more of a spectrum, than a box with the label of an accent. It changes unconsciously and continuously depending on who I am talking to, the context, and the mood of my brain.

The wiring is confused. Words and languages, more often than not, escape me.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I'd rather be stay blessed with the passing knowledge of several tongues, than remain well-versed in only one.
Because languages to me, are not just tools for communication.
They are living entities. Fed by values, beliefs, and experiences…. swell with tradition, culture and religion.
Like a mother carrying a child. A bit of an elaborate view but I am drawn to it.

As you may have gathered already, I can’t help but view it with intense curiosity… and be political about it.

So here goes-

• Making international students and migrant workers renew their TOEFL/ IELTS English proficiency tests every couple of years is ridiculous. It’s a scam and that is a fact.

• Countries with linguistically diverse populations don’t need a single national language. Periodt.

• Colonisers never did anyone a favour wiping out centuries-old indigenous languages. Always acknowledge that. A lot was lost and stolen.

• The English Language is an imposition on everyone else who doesn’t speak it.

• With AI language models, we no longer need a single language to be the main vernacular vehicle.
  We finally might be at a fork-road where a second option has opened up to us. Do we continue to live in a world imposing a colonisers’ tongue on everyone or can we finally begin to think about owning our tongues?—-controversial opinion? maybe.

There. I’ve said it.

Now feel free to do what you will, making sense of threads and textures of this piece.

As always, poke, prod and push it along.

A comeback writing exercise: stream of my consciousness.

To my concerned friends and netizens, yours truly is alive and back.
I think she is a bit rusty…. but nevertheless, here is a non-starter.
I hope you are alive and awesome too. Cheers, S.

How can a person go from writing intentionally everyday to not writing at all?
Perhaps they might be a procrastinator, with their affairs in complete disarray.
Or perhaps they might be busy playing adult.

—

Speaking of,

What does being an “adult” actually mean?
Is it someone who pays rent or mortgage? Knowing how to drive? Being eligible to drink? Or someone who is confidently opinionated about the world?
Or…

Is it you who is suddenly curious about Monopoly and Chess for concealed reasons?

Because I become increasingly aware each day, that growth can be temperamental and confused. Atleast it is to me.

With children being children
Adults acting like children
Children taking the roles of adults
And adults being adults

Its so strange.

——

Strangers are so strange.

I often get stopped on my way to somewhere by randos. It’s not uncommon. But I think I find it a little bit bizarre- how often it is that I get approached.

Often by blokes who need help with directions, or a hand with something.
Other times by strangers extremely curious about deep and personal things like my faith and political choice, sometimes ready to challenge me to a duel.

I like my sister’s response the most.

She says and I quote- “You just have one of those faces.”

———————-

Should I be concerned about how many dog handles I follow on instagram?
Not even dog people. Just dogs.

On Period Pay and Period Leave.

I wrote this piece before. Twice.
Both times, I wrote (what I thought was) a very beautiful, emotional piece that emerged not only from the heart but also from the troubles of our wombs.
Both times, the page ‘refreshed' and all was gone before anybody else saw it. As if it wasn’t ever worth the effort. How ironical I thought.

But much like a recurring period, this written piece is back.

This time round, the piece retains the same tenderness and rage with which it was first written. But it also weighs heavy with exhaustion.

The message is still stands intact:

Menstruators* need to be compensated for their period. And we simply cannot welcome another generation where individuals are disadvantaged from the start for the sole reason that they menstruate.

*I say menstruators because I am aware of the diversity of the period and I’m already sure that I underrepresent in this piece.

Regardless, let me try and help you see what the period is like on the body. Perhaps for some individuals, this might be “graphic”. But I promise you, this will be nothing short of educational and is very real for some of us.

• The morning of the period, it’s quite common to experience “period poo”- a case of short-lived diarrhoea. Your hormones are sending prostaglandin to the intestine that makes poo soft. A few hours to a day before it’s also quite common to experience being a little constipated. Its finicky like that.

• The period itself. Is bloody uncomfortable.

• While your uterus is generally shedding itself, it makes it known to the rest of the body that it’s dealing with some thing quite consequential. The rest of the body-stomach, breasts, thighs, shoulders, (I’ve also heard of knees) ache for a time period that is again unknown.

• Hell if you’re in your menopause, even your skin, the largest organ of your body changes!

• The brain/mind might be at the opposite pole of the body to the uterus - Oh, but you’d be fooled to think it’s left alone!
  Periods can make you quite nauseus. I spend many a period with my head stuck in a toilet bowl and I respect my period enough to never dare discount this. I also know of people who completely blackout on their periods.
  Your body’s thermoregulator seems to be in overdrive, giving you the sweats and shivers as it wills.

• Emotions. Well emotions. One can be quite touchy and tender, depressed and hysterical and god knows what else the other kind of emotions are called.
  

This is by no means is an exhaustive list. I’m sure there’s more variations.
But see it with a sense of urgency, like researchers finally do these days- Periods are like cardiac arrests. The pain and emotion can be quite different for different people.
But it is a consequential occurrence. One that is consequential not just to the individual but humankind.
One that demands (not expects) kindness.

Hence,
The case for 12 days paid period leave and period compensation.

12 days paid period leave

Look, if you’re on your period, you do not need to be white-knuckling your way into work. I know for a fact people do. Because millions of women and other menstruators show up at work every day, every month, every year without having access to necessity that is paid period leave or compensation.

At the moment, they show up to working pain and discomfort to earn money. And then spend money in the hundreds that their counterparts would probably invest in their growth or upgrades annually. The trough of inequity deepens.

You might gather the opinion that those who menstruate might be “feeling sick” and therefore need to be encouraged to avail sick leave.
To that I want to remind us all- Menstrual leave is not sick leave!
Menstruation is not an illness. Sick leave is for when we fall ill.

If you are taking a day off from your sick leave for your period. Stop. Drop. Roll . You can and should ask for more.

Period compensation

Periods are political and the giants- institutions that hold society together with rules and policies (which I have no problem with) should shoulder the change.
Let me spell out an example:
Imagine a family with 3 female kids and one breadwinner (male or female).
An average female spends approximately 10,000AUD over a lifetime for her periods. If you care about the planet, and want to have a sustainable menstruation, costs add up. You can see how the burden of the period becomes very palpable.
If one can’t avail paid period leave in the workplace, there needs to be compensation/full rebate for period costs.

If you want your nation to grow…
Cover the damn cost. Free the period.

“Be Obedient.”

On the power dynamics of the student-teacher relationship

Here’s where I am coming from-

Teacher-student relationships in my life have always been murky waters for me.
And I mean it in the most humanly possible and beautiful way.
Some teachers became my close friends. Some student-friends who co-taught in study groups, became my colleagues. My mother was my class teacher in school for a while. My university teacher became my boss and role model. My high-school chemistry teacher became my life coach. And my high school physics teacher (and a few others) became the embodiment of “I don’t want to become anything like them or have anything to do with them EVER! ”.

I’ve addressed my teachers as “Miss…”, “…Sir…”, “Madam…”, “Dr…” , by their first names…, and “Amma”.

Suffice to say, I have learnt to never be formulaic in the way I ‘be the student’ or ‘see the teacher’ in the relationship*
In other words, I will automatically assume that both the teacher and I are individuals with different powers in the same universe and that both of us are on a journey of learning and discovery.

Here’s the problem-

But, there is one thing I quite haven’t managed to wrap my head around yet.
I don’t exactly know how to respond to teachers who overtly assert and remind me of their expertise and experience in tricky conversations (while I am the student).
I find that the minute a teacher pulls out their “I am the expert” or “I have experience” card, they’ve have lost me as an active collaborator or as an engaged participant forever.

And then,
the teacher, will become the sage on the stage. And I, the student, will become the paralysed head-nodding disciple.

Let me clarify on what I mean.

The “Be Obedient” scene might look something like this-

• In a conversation with student about their assessment marks and feedback, a Teacher might say - “So what are you going to do next with the feedback I gave you. You are the student after all”.

Assessment conversations can be an especially vulnerable place for students. But there are other areas such as-

• conversations about the relevance of the content for the student(s), or

• what the subject might do for the engaged student, or

• conversations about teaching quality

• conversations about the subjects

All of these are very tricky and heavy conversations that truly need openness, curiosity and generosity.

And I don’t why.. but somehow we arrive at these conversations feeling the need to tighten our stand. We dig our heels in. We are more stubborn than ever.
Somehow, we think it to be natural to arrive at these conversations prepared to defend ourselves.

I don’t know how this looks for the teacher but the aftermath for the student is-
I, the student either retracts into my turtle shell and/or become a pufferfish and silently float away into oblivion…i.e. I, the student will ghost you.

If the university really is the “great foci for free and manly enquiry”, teachers and students really need to think long and hard together about how they may be unconsciously acting out their parts in the “Be Obedient” scene….

—>Teachers, because-
the “I have experience” card is the ultimate trump card to put students in their place
And how students in general and myself respond to that is - we tend to be obedient and go back to our place and I don’t think you want this.
(Maybe there is a place in the university for the “I am the expert” card….but what place is it? )

—>Students, because-
by being obedient, we giving the responsibility of our education to someone else.
And we know, at the end of the day, that doesn’t benefit anybody.

“University ….the great foci for free and manly enquiry”- John Stuart Mill

*I probably am the exception in thinking this way.

Dotted circles look like boobs.

I operate at the assumption that I am a whole lot of darkness, capable of light (sometimes).. and that characters when mapped across time are just a great deal of crests and troughs.
And so this, most people might argue, is my “dark writing” and I am possibly at a ‘dip’ …….I’m okay with that.

Re: Boob jokes 👀

A boob joke or vagina joke will almost always generate a laugh amongst the women in the room, so long as you are unconscious (sorry.. that’s sad), or unaware that you are making it.
And the earliest at which you will know that a good boob joke has been made in good taste is only a micro-second after other women in the room acknowledge the joke and have a communal-laugh about it.
Only then, do you have permission to laugh at it (terms and conditions still apply)

Then there is also this…..What if a penis joke is made?
I’ll be honest..I don’t know. You tell me.
How should women respond to penis jokes? and should they make them?

For now, let’s address the boob joke incident(s).

Boobs are fragile and funny. Each of them, like a weird shaped glass-blown trophy.
And women have to be careful about it all the time. From start to finish. Don’t believe me. Here.

1. The ‘bahoobies’ nourish the newborn…. but could be bitten off by them sweet little monsters

2. A “nip slip”… and could you could be chastised or projected to fame.
   That can very often become the highlight or downfall of one’s career at times.

3. You could be ‘a bit too booby or flat-chested’ your entire life.
   Even your clothes could be ‘a bit too booby or prude’ your entire life.

4. “Watch your necklines and cleavage.”- a yardstick of modesty

5. Boobs, and Busts….. got to get them right in art…otherwise they are “exotic” art.

6. We watch out for the lumps and orange-skinned boobs because they’re cancerous and “YOU COULD DIE!!”.

7. On your period? …Got tender boobs?

8. Are you cold?…. Got hard nipples?

9. Breastfeeding?…. Got leaky boobs?

10. Hold your girls. Wear a bra… (and a singlet if you’re cold)

11. “What kind of bra?”…. don’t even get me started…

12. Don’t wear a bra?…… You’ll get asymmetrical saggy boobs.

13. We watch out for “peeping boyfriends”….(heard that one before ladies? )….. i.e. not to be seen bra straps.

14. Boobs are groped and grouped. Harassed and carressed….

The list goes on….

And as you can see, a lot happens from the ears to ribs.

So when people, (and more often than not, men), walk right past it (figuratively and literally), eyes-wide open, without acknowledging them….that sets the stage for laughter. Almost always..

And that laugh could be either a quite chuckle or an uproar….
But I can almost guarantee you.. that laugh is innocent. And nothing more than a noisy or muffled sigh of relief.

Girls will know, I am not letting out girl talk or girl secrets. This is very much open knowledge.
I write this with the absolute surety that unless a man studies this piece of writing everyday, he will forget the open secrets in this. And he will continue to draw a circle with a dot inside completely unaware.

That too is okay…because hell, even as women we have no idea what other things are out there that are boob-lookalikes.

But we will continue to laugh at these gendered open secrets. That’s just the way it is.

B(oo)bs will be B(oo)bs.

Consolation for the Cynics.

Plato was a famous dude.
Plato was a famous dude-philosopher and he once defined “man” as a “featherless biped”.
And because he was plato and he generally spoke sense, his definition was well received.

Then came along little guy Diogenes, who didn’t take shit from anybody.
When nobody considered his argument, he plucked a chicken of its feathers and threw it into plato’s office…

and yelled out frantically……..

“HERE’S YOUR MAN!”

Hence proved and point taken. Thank you Diogenes.

“……You are not cynical. You sometimes like to problematise things so they aren’t ignored……” JJ Edwards, 2022.

Note: When I read the anecdote, I accidentally read “featherless biped ” as “fearless biped”…Both still work, don’t you think? :)

hip-o-crit-i-gal much?

I’ve been trying to focus on the design of my website the last couple of days and I can not make up my mind on things. The mind-muddle-puddle that I am in is probably driven by “perfectionism”.

Interestingly, this is the very perfectionism that I thought I’d won my battle against.

I know. First world problems.

Sweet Perfectionism. Do you know what its like?
Everyone has walked on a beach at least with slippers…Yes?
Its like that…. but a bit more frustrating.
Here I am, yet again, slipping and face-planting over and over again into this quicksand called perfectionism.
Embracing perfectionism has never been my goal. I don’t want to. Because I am impatient and I have a memory of a mayfly.

So I ask for advice……..from productivity books to productivity pals.
Outsource. It works out cheaper and faster.

Thats what they said.
Outsource?!!

Outsource my very expensive Australian, high-end level design tasks to the cheap available labour in Bangladesh and China or better…free? to my cousins in India?

Ah. You still don’t get it do you?

Exploiter! Looter! Hypocrite!

Where is conscience….yours and mine?
Hip-deep in this mound of a 1st World excuse called perfectionism.

There remains bigger things to worry about.

Nobody talks about envy.

I am dull at breakfast and more wiser through the day. Which means, there is a probability I might regret writing about this in the evening. Oh well.

“Some things are best not discussed”.

If you had a checklist manifesto of things you should be tight-lipped about,
family drama,
achievements
and envy
might very well be at the top.
"Don’t you dare touch them, because those things come with ‘boxes’— The gossip-monger, bragger and/or go-getter boxes.“
Just like how you’ve got to wait until the guest has left to open the present, you have to be shy and sly about them always. Shy and sly.

Envy is a misunderstood one, I think. It shouldn’t be on the list.
Because while the other things on the LIST are like chewing gum (a solo act; got great flavour at first; spicy; and when you chew on it a little longer, it just becomes harder to chew; so you have got to spit it out),
envy is like making wine (you need people to come get their feet into the grape-smashing basket and trample all over it, even if its gross. You’ll be grateful for the fine wine in the end).

P.S. I know nothing about fine-wine-making or tasting. This is just what I imagine it to be.

Envy looks like its got the potential to be a very productive and laughable conversation.
The best way to address envy, I think, is to voice it out loud and in great detail.
Because you realise which parts of it are valid enough to propel you to be productive, and the parts that are just so stupid to have in your brain anymore.

Remember, it is an exercise in self-esteem. So it has to be done with patience.
Start with one-on-one maybe (I can vouch for that). Then jump to group sessions.

Again, my boss might read this and this could backfire into an exercise I’ve got to do at work. Hi Tai :) You know I’m just fooling around. ;)

Nuke and Puke.

A half-arsed goodbye to microwaveable meals and maccas.

As I write this, I am becoming increasingly aware that I shouldn’t be the one writing this because I have sworn my allegiance to maccas, I swear by the healing effect of salty fries on bad days, and I am supremely unmotivated and untalented when it comes to making meals.
Regardless, I write.
Because the speed at which I have to live life, make and eat my meals is frustrating, and it is a problem of my own making. So it might be worth sharing.

You’ve heard this before an annoying number of times- “You are what you eat”. There is a lot of truth to that.
I am at the moment, salty and highly-processed. (As you can tell.)
(Just so we can make this an exercise for both of us, you might want to ask yourself- “What is my composition?”)

This is the crux of my salty and highly-processed situation-
Ambition and intentional slow-living seem to digest just as well as chalk and cheese. They don’t go well. (Atleast, I think they dont mix well in the current state of affairs.)
So almost always, I choose ambition and quick meals. In other words, I choose to nuke and puke my way through life.

Why do I choose this way of living?
Because I “choose” to live aggressively.
And I am ignorant to an alternative.

Am I about to change this situation and intentionally slow-live?
Maybe on the days I can afford to.
.

.

.

.

.

Of course I’m kidding.
Maybe, on days I “choose” to.

Back to nuking.

How global accents work

I had a chat the other day with a my best friend. I’ve known her since she was 10 and I, 8. I have a handful of long time constants in my world and she is one of them. So, it would be fair to say and assume that 13 years of practice would make me very, very familiar with her voice, intonations, pronunciations, rhythms of sentences, when her voice breaks with emotion and reverberates with joy and pauses for breath. So I thought too.
When I hopped on our monthly call, I though I was pretty confident and knew what to expect.

“Ooh I like the dutch coming out.”
She said, ashamed- “If you noticed it, it must be very obvious”

Now, this small exchange is interesting for a couple of reasons.

A)- Both she and I have a few similarities now, in that, most parts of our language sounds like different things to different people.
We have what I like to call “global accents”, wherein, the english language we speak can’t be placed on a map.
For instance, in my case, I sound British-Indian on most days. Most other days I sound Australian. And sometimes, I get the occassional - “you sound Irish today, what’s up?”.
That’s the quirk and superpower of a polyglots and/or migrants. They unconsciously adapt their tongue to the environment they’re in, and the language and culture they choose to love. But most people don’t know this and sometimes global accenteers themselves.
And new global accenteers, will go through the initial phase where once they realise that their tongue has evolved, shame will motivate them to do everything to resist that evolution.

and B)- It taught me about qualities I had that I share with other global accenteers. Like being pedantic about words I am dead-right certain I have the correct pronunciation for, and over-apologising for butchering words that I mispronounce like “itinerary”.

Look, although this specific post relates mostly to migrants and polyglots today, I suspect that people of the world tomorrow (more like a couple of decades, I mean) will have accents that you will no longer be able to box into countries. And the chaos of that won’t be too bad as you might think it is.

Is that too soon to say? I don’t know we’ll see.

Wheatish.

Having spent my life between two countries and never feeling at centred in either one has its benefits. So it seems. And life on the sidelines makes you laugh if you’re in the moment.
Indians have an interesting way of describing complexion and this struck me as unusual thing only recently.
When I realised it, I went - “Ha that’s different for the rest of the world”.
Ask a majority of Indians and they will tell you that they are “wheatish” in complexion. Others might describe themselves as “chocolate” boy or “caramel”.

I’m not making this up, I swear. It’s an actual thing.

I find it hard to find a place in conversations about race when its black and white (or brown). Because, I couldn’t tell you what colour I am on the colour/race spectrum.
Am I black because I am not white?
Am I brown because I am neither white or black?
Or am I a ‘miscellaneous’ or ‘other’ on the colour spectrum?

172cm, female, wheatish. That’s what I am. I am pretty certain about that.

I think race is a more inclusive conversation when you use food to describe it. Or atleast I think this is an idea that is worth experimenting. - That’s the simple, smaller thought.

People can remember all sorts of complex information about sport and pop culture and other stuff. Why is it hard for people to catch up with race and gender? Why is it always “hard to wrap one’s head around” or “complex”? - That’s the bigger thought for today.

(Now, wheatish is not an actual word by “American English or British English standards” and it bugs me to see a red line under my text, but wheatish is a legitimate word in the Indian English Dictionary. Most people forget Indian English is actually an actual kind of English with an actual dictionary. I will take every opportunity to help bridge the gap for it.)

When one thing is something else elsewhere.

Ever heard of SlumDog Millionaire? Growing up its theme song, Jai Ho, was a big deal. I always new of it as AR Rahman’s super successful tribute to India as the country. and I thought what I knew was all there was to it.

Then suddenly, in another country, this song was the pussy cat dolls’. I find it fascinating how one thing is another thing elsewhere.

The last lecture before breakfast.

I am in the middle of writing a transcript for a keynote with my colleagues.

Giving a keynote is a great responsibility, and it does give me the pre-performance nausea and performance jitters all the time.
Both my relief and grief is that I don’t remember much of what was said in the last academic keynote I watched.
Most keynotes or speeches are like that. Forgettable.

And so, what helps me with taming the nerves is knowing that my keynote has a structure and delivery that is very similar to the great speeches of our time. And sometimes I come across some very unforgettable ones. One such great speech is the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

Randy gave the world a really special gift. A lecture. And the passion and joy and optimism he delivers it is unlike anything Ive seen before.

If those of us lectures, speeches and academic keynotes could match this guy’s enthusiasm…My word.. the world would be a different place I think

Elaborate excuse for not showing up.

This is what I realise after think week.

Taking an intentional ‘think week to think strong’ didn’t work for me. This one was a failed experiment. Also, ridiculous.
Who am I kidding? It was a very elaborate excuse for- 'I don’t feel like writing and I need a good reason for my readers ”.

Also, I read everyday. I consume information everyday. I don’t need a week off to just read and think.
But what I did need and end up doing is taking a week where there was no pressure to show up.

And it helped HEAPS with writing.

To have an occasional no pressure to show up week just for the heck of it, is good reason enough.

Let that marinate a bit.

Think Week to Think Strong.

Reading develops character. Writing completes it.

Which is why I’m going away for a while …. to focus on making reading me a better experience for my reader.

Back by the 1st of September latest. I promise.

Where I want this to be in 3 years

• Have a “brand” (as much I detest the word)…I like to think of this as what people come to this space for. In other words, my message.

• Be at a really good place with the look and aesthetic of the website.

• Have a way to make this writing everyday a self-sustaining (or better and if I’m lucky income-generating venture)