All posts filed under: Thoughts & Opinions

Post #16: From A Land Down Under

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Welcome to the sixteenth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012. Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com. I am an Australian living abroad. That informs so much about how I see the world. I get to talk about Australia a lot with the people I meet. I love being asked. Gravitating to fellow antipodeans in the area stems the homesickness with a good ol’ yarn and an exchange of imported groceries from someone’s trip home. There’s some things you just can’t get anywhere else but home.  I’ve yet to find a place to pick up a ‘Dog’s Eye’ with ‘Dead Horse’, or some hot chips with chicken salt. Today is Australia Day. It’s “unAustralian” not to celebrate Australia Day.  It’s a day when you attend barbies. You eat until you’re …

Post #13: Tennis

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Welcome to the thirteenth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012. Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com. Love him or hate him (perhaps even in the same moment), Lleyton Hewitt is getting it done at the Australian Open. And I think it’s great to see. With the tennis courts of metropolitan Australia having been snapped up and turned in to townhouses during the housing boom of the 1990s, I’m surprised we even have any tennis players flying the red, white and blue. But apparently, we have at least one court left because we have a newbie in Bernard Tomic. He’s exciting, a little brash. He might be as (ahem) poorly behaved as Andy Roddick or Andy Murray, but at the moment, that’s irrelevant. The fate of the nation rests on …

Post #12: Jeopardy!

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Welcome to the twelfth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012. Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. Kudos to Maia for the suggestion. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com. Whilst every woman and her dog is in Salt Lake City for the Alt Summit, I “opted” to further a goal on my Life List: to be a contestant on Jeopardy. I have been watching Jeopardy for years, and I really get a kick out of just having a crack at it. So when I heard the yearly Jeopardy Online Test was rolling around, I set reminders. I set alarms for the reminders. I set email pop-ups. I was committed to the cause. Alex joins us each night for dinner each night and it’s the only program we watch religiously. So the opportunity to be here and …

Post #11: Belonging

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Welcome to the eleventh post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012. Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com. A friend at work surprised me with big gift last week. It was her way of saying thank you for helping her and her new Aussie husband with their immigration paperwork. And it was big! And heavy! I had thought myself immune to the giddy joy of unexpected gifts, but thankfully not! My friend had aced it: a bottle of red, some really hard-to-find Heinz beans and something I didn’t even know I was dying for: a jaffle maker (or as we always called it, a ‘toasted cheese sandwich maker’). At once, I could taste the toasted cheese sandwich-y goodness of my childhood. Scalding my mouth on tinned spaghetti jaffles. Easy Friday night …

Post #10: Sleep

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Welcome to the tenth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012. Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com. Sleep has rarely come easy for me, and now, as tonight’s deadline for bed has been and gone, I’m still here writing. Each night, I try every thing under the sun to not acknowledge my bedtime. But what part of this is because my body clock tells me we have hours before I’ll naturally be inclined to sleep, and what part of this is my 6-year-old inner self not wanting to be hemmed in by “boring nonsense” like a responsible bedtime? To be the very best I can be, my body requires sleep. I know that, but I just don’t want to sleep. There’s plenty more interesting things I’d rather be doing than …

Post #9: Puppies! (Part one of a zillion)

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Welcome to the ninth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012. Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com. Today, I spent a lovely day hiking the hills in Marin with Mary and puppies Patrick and Charlie. It was a beautifully clear day, and surprisingly warm: amazing weather for winter. There were numerous times on the trail where it as not marked, or poorly marked. So what did we do? We pulled out the iPhone and Google Mapped it. For most of the walk, we could see the city, and the top of the Golden Gate, so we were not super worried. But it just made me think about how we rely and turn to technology, instead of going to visit the Visitors’ Centre to pick ourselves up a map. So anyhoo, …