I haven’t been blogging lately and it’s because of my PhD. Oh, the PhD. Well, you know what they say: “What doesn’t kill you only makes you more insecure”. Or something like that.

At present, I’ve been working on the theoretical component of my PhD (the exegesis). The exegesis challenges me because it forces me to face my insecurities around theory - my relative lack of skills and background in this area as compared to the creative part of my PhD.

Throughout the years that I’ve been doing the PhD, I’ve never quite been able to shake my feeling that I’m an artist who has somehow been given entry into the academy. It’s a sense of ‘I don’t belong here’ and ‘theory is a whole other language that I don’t have a command of’. Now, in this period of the last six or so months of my project, it’s time to confront this particular set of insecurities. (Read more)

I turned 34 recently. While I celebrated this event in quite a low-key way, I think I will always remember this birthday because of what I did that day: after months of work, I completed the revised draft of my short story collection.

The next day, I read over and made some minor changes on a hard copy of the manuscript (OK - so I wasn’t quite done revising yet). I didn’t want to sit in my office at uni to do this task. I had always pictured someone buying my book and reading it in a cafe or something anyway. So I took the manuscript to various cafes in my local area (I didn’t want to exhaust any one cafe’s hospitality by staying there for hours and hours). After months of working at home or uni revising the manuscript, I really enjoyed being somewhere different and working on paper instead of looking at a computer screen. So I had quite a good time reading over the printed pages and eating and drinking in heated comfort.

It’s been about 7 and a half years since I began this project. (Read more)

It’s been years now since I did the MWF parody project. In fact, this project first began all the way back in August 2002. Updates on what had been happening with the project were previously on the original post explaining the project. However, future updates will now appear as blog posts on my website (right here, in the ‘Writers’ Festival parody’ category).

MWF has changed somewhat since 2002 and yet, occasionally, I am surprised by how people can still be amused and interested by the MWF parody. I think this is the main reason why I have retained the write-up of the parody project on my website - there are still people out there who find the parody funny and relevant.

These days, I don’t actively discuss this project much. But there have been some exceptions. (Read more)

I’m appearing in an event to promote the new anthology ‘Growing Up Asian in Australia’. I have a piece in this anthology. Here are the details of this event, as well as some other events for this book (including more detailed info on the Sydney launch which I mentioned in my last post):

Melbourne Event
Join editor, Alice Pung and local contributors Tom Cho, Tony Ayres and Shalini Akhil as they discuss this irreverent collection with Triple J’s John Safran.
Date: Tuesday 3 June
Time: 6.30 pm
Venue: Sidney Myer Asia Centre, University of Melbourne, Swanston St, Parkville
Price: Free
Bookings: Bookings essential. Book through Asialink. Phone 03 8344 8474 or email events@asialink.unimelb.edu.au (Read more)