Sikamikanico Blogs

Doing the household finances with DH, and realising that there was too much Christmas coming for our slender budget, we discussed how we were going to fix this. "Well", I said, "there's plenty of opportunity in this society for someone who's not afraid of a bit of hard work". And we both had a good laugh over that. The thing is with society, we're always hearing how it's broken down. To scroll through a Facebook news feed or listen to a taxi driver, children are running out of control, young people are binge drinking, the economy is a mess, there's no respect and crime is rampant. And who or what is the culprit? Variously feminism, permissive parenting, asylum seekers, the Greens (who manage to be both irrelevant and control the country at the same time...). Well if society is going to hell in a Kardashian handbag, we never hear of blame being assigned to the real culprit - economic rationalism. Economic rationalism - the notion that corporations

Dear Tony, We all know nothing solves international diplomatic fall outs like an open letter, so I'm writing you one now. I'm taking time from studying for my political science exam, but I don't think my lecturer would mind. He likes you. At any rate, he's a big fan of your idol and mentor, John Howard. I came to university greatly looking forward to all the brainwashing I'd receive from leftist academics, but there hasn't been any; the lecturer has taken a decidedly pro-Howard stance. But I digress. We've been caught spying on Indonesia . Oh dear. Spying is a bit like masturbation; everyone does it but it's frightfully embarrassing when you get caught. The thing to do here is for you to rock up to Jakarta, cap in hand, and do a little humble grovelling to the Indonesian government. We're so, so sorry. We didn't mean to spy on you and we never thought you'd find out and the Australian government doesn't even read the reports from our inte

I first heard "Advice to the Class of 1997" when I was in the class of 1997 myself. The writer  Mary Schmich lamented that the advice would be wasted on the young. As it was intended advice for a college graduating class, and I was only graduating high school, it was especially wasted on me. I thought it was a beautiful piece. But it expressed ideals, stages of life I was yet to experience, let alone long for. And now, half a lifetime later, I can still admire the beauty of this piece. I am nostalgic for the girl - young woman - I was - and so much I want to tell her. I understand this poem so much more, having been through so much in the past 16 years, I feel I barely know that child. And yet I also know that a later me, 57 years old or 75, is looking at the me of today and thinking she was young and naive really, and thought she knew all the ways of the world when she didn't have a clue. Either way, whether you're 17 or 35 or 59 or 81, this has a lot of good things

Trigger warning: contains discussion of abuse, medical procedures and birth trauma. So, I've shared a lot with my readers...from the year long quest to conceive Baby G , through to my dreams about pornographers . Probably I over share. But now I'm going to tell you a very personal story I've not shared even with people I know...a tale of medical incompetence and the not-so-delightful lead up to the birth of Baby G. And I'm telling you this because I want to add my voice to the brave women who say birth trauma is real, it does matter, and because what happened to me should never happen to anyone, if I have to shout a bit to make sure that happens. When I was pregnant with BabyG back in 2011, we were still living in inner Sydney, so I booked in to go through the birth centre at an inner city hospital. I have had some very bad experiences at the hands of doctors, so I thought the most natural birth safely possible was the best, least traumatic way to go. We had a doula, a