Tonight I did my first ever standup comedy gig at an open mic night. It went pretty well actually. I was of course hell nervous. My hands shook, but I controlled my voice and got the delivery I wanted. People laughed! In fact, quite a big portion of the audience laughed at most of the jokes. (The person who laughed least was actually my friend who came, because she was offended by one of the jokes, which I have since re-worded to clarify that it is not intended as a racist joke). One woman...

I would like to share a story with you from my recent trip to New Caledonia (or Kanaky as the indigenous people call it). I passed a group of drunks sitting in the midday sun with red cask wine and a joint. I sat down and said hello, a little nervous because of the money in my bumbag. We started conversing and one of the guys told me about how he had just lost his job because he had had no sick leave entitlements. When he called in sick, the boss told him to get to work or he would find so...

The other week I spent several hours chatting with 4 refugees. 3 are Afghanistani, 1 is from Eritrea. This is the story of the third person. Before I start though, I just want to say, I have not written this series of articles as political articles (I know I put them in the politics category, but that was because I couldn't find another one that fitted). I don’t watch the news since I got back from my trip in January. Recently, I’ve let myself get distracted in a couple of my forums by le...

Australia is a lonely place to come back to. I just spent 3 and a half weeks in New Caledonia and I had the time of my life, possibly the best month of my life. I went because I was feeling stressed here and I felt I needed to get out of the country, take a rest and refuel for the new year at Uni. While I was there I felt like that was what I was doing. I did a lot of very restful things and I felt my entire body relax. The tension went out of my back. The headaches went. My breathing eas...