Nonfiction
Tooti Fruity
The correct way to break a rambutan open is to use a knife. I call that the coward’s way. If you’re a lawless rebel like me, you bite into it whole, cringing at the sudden bitterness the break in the skin fills your mouth with, then use your teeth to rip the rest of it away.
12 December 2019
Diaspora Dilemmas
In an age where we can barely last the year without
buying a new smartphone and throw ageing possessions before they have a chance to decay, it’s puzzling why we still refuse to throw away the remnants of the toxic colonial mindset.
All that Glitters is not Gold
While it is a privilege to be able to afford an education abroad, many unspoken costs like underpaid wages, homesickness, cultural shock, financial instability and underemployment came as a surprise. But as an international student, I’m not sure if these costs are worth the price our parents pay.
12 December 2019
Regulating Language
Language has faced an onslaught of changes in the face of globalisation, as influences from across the world fight against local ideals of what a language should be. Language academies—organisations that act as regulatory bodies of different languages—are leading the fight against changes to language they perceive as illegitimate.
12 December 2019
Kiss and Tell
After my breakup with the Michael Clifford lookalike, I started seeing more people of colour. Not that Michael Clifford ruined white men for me, I just felt more comfortable around people like me.
12 December 2019
Living Well When You’re Unwell
Welcome to Living Well When You’re Unwell, a column that answers all your questions about navigating uni, life, relationships, and jobs with disability and chronic illness.
28 November 2019
M——
It was on the fourth of these dates that I met M——. M—— was a large, wide Croatian man. His belly peered ahead of him, and his hair was badly balding, with only the too-long stragglers remaining around his crown. He pulled a seat out across from me at the Lindt Café on Little Collins Street and seemed to fill the entire window we were next to. He looked down at me and shook his head, letting out a sputter of air. He pushed his palms out in the shape of a cross, perhaps to cover my cleavage, and gave another distressed sigh.
28 November 2019
For & Against: Eyebrows
FOR By Katherine Anastasatos Imagine the terror of one day arriving home, opening up Snapchat to rant to your friends about your first-world problems, flicking to a filter that instructs you to ‘raise your eyebrows’ in order to activate it, and… nothing happens. No cute furry ears, no amusing spectacles, no floating pink hearts; just […]
28 November 2019
For & Against: Bats
FOR By Tilli Franks There is only 80 million years of difference between humans and bats. The common ancestor of all placental mammals is estimated to have lived around 400,000 years after the dinosaurs met their particularly nasty end. One could argue that bats got a reasonably good deal from the evolutionary lotto: they […]
8 October 2019
Regulating Language
To many of us, the idea of languages tied to a country seems normal. People in England speak English, people in Japan speak Japanese, people in Croatia speak Croatian, and so on. Is this a hard and fast rule? Of course not, but to some extent it’s still considered the norm. But why does this perception exist when it’s not the case with the majority of languages?
28 September 2019