Tag Archive for 'travel writing'

Lazy Sunday! (Thesis finishing edition)

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Brisbane, Education, Film, TV, Video etc, Life, Photography and Urbanism
. 35 Comments

Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!

Although it’s been uni break over the last week, I’ve been a busy boy. I now have a date with destiny for my doctorate – I’m presenting to a final seminar on 30 October. This is the internal examination stage of phd completion according to the QUT rules – it’s a bit like a viva voce where you talk about what you’ve done and found and are questioned by a panel of senior academics (and the audience!) – in my case from QUT’s Humanities Program (once was a Faculty…) I more or less wrapped the thing up on Friday, did a little revision yesterday, and lazed around last night and watched Maggie Cheung movies on dvd, and today and tomorrow before the teaching and marking onslaught resumes, I’m giving the thesis a final spit and polish.

So I’m very chuffed!

Folks might also remember I’ve been doing a bit of travel writing – of the insider’s guide to where you live variety. I filed my copy for that and sent in the invoice on Tuesday arvo, and it was a really neat gig. On Monday, I went for a wander around Paddington and took some photos – not for the project itself – but as an aide memoire. It turned out to be a dodgy day to be walking – 35 degrees maximum. But it did also prompt me to decide that walking for about an hour a day was a good custom to be revived – so I’ve been doing that ever since – in the late afternoon on cooler days and at night on hotter days. Anyway, here’s the photographic record of my Paddo perambulations. It’s a really nice part of the world, and somewhere I wouldn’t mind living. But the real estate market would really have to collapse before I could contemplate buying there!


White picket fence II by *phenomenologist on deviantART

If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.

Continue reading ‘Lazy Sunday! (Thesis finishing edition)’

Writing the city

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Brisbane, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Life, Media, Photography and Urbanism
. 10 Comments

No, this is not, as you may expect a post about the recent Brisbane Writers Festival. They deserve a few brickbats in my opinion, for always scheduling the event just before the uni break at the very time when folks associated with universities find it very hard to find any time for extra-curricular stuff. A couple of weeks later, and they could instantly solve that “getting teh yoof” to attend thing and magic themselves up a crowd of uni students. Maybe some marketing wiz is reading this – if so, please take note!

What I actually wanted to share was a writing experience I really enjoyed. I was auditioning – as it were – providing a writing sample on demand – for a gig (which I got, and which I’ll talk about later on when I can link to the finished product). The brief was to write about something in Brisbane in a hundred words – a restaurant, a bar, a street, whatever. It’s really quite a neat exercise to try, particularly because what you are attempting to do is convey something of your own city, and something about the bits of it you love, to people who might have varying levels of knowledge and perhaps varying preconceptions.

So here’s my 98 words about The Alibi Room. I haven’t gone back and edited the passage, as I will be doing for the rest of what I’m writing for this project.

Continue reading ‘Writing the city’