Dear PR Company…

April 28, 2016 by 14 Comments

On any given day I would receive tens of emails (can you tell that I am not exaggerating here – just being honest?). Many of them are from PR companies. Lovely, hard working people who work in public relations and are “just doing their job”.

The problem is that most times doing their jobs is asking bloggers like me to advertise their client’s products to my audience. For free. Or, if I am particularly “lucky” for a free product that I do not want or need. In fact I get offered a lot of baby products. My son is 15. I need non-alcoholic alcohol not teething rings or baby food. [Read more…]

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The day the storm took away my lifeline

August 26, 2015 by

after the stormI woke up the morning after the storms to a disaster that the SES could not help. My internet was down. I spoke to a machine at Bigpond and then a woman in India who confirmed that the cables were damaged in the storm and would be not be fixed till the following day at 6pm at the latest. Two whole days without internet. This loosely translates to two days without oxygen for me.

I am not proud to say that I don’t know how to live without internet. How was I even supposed to phone Bigpond to confirm the calamity if I couldn’t look up their number? [Read more…]

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This one’s for you!

August 19, 2015 by 25 Comments

I was listening to a podcast by Wil Anderson the other day in which he was chatting to Charlie Pickering. Anderson starts the conversation with a rather direct and tricky question.

“Who are you? “ he asks.

Charlie replies very hesitantly with lots of pauses and ums and ahs “I’m Charlie Pickering, I’m a comedian from Australia. How about that is that a good start.” And then immediately he adds “Did you sit there quiet just seeing how uncomfortable I got and what other things I kept added … I’m a dog lover, I ride bikes, I think Picasso’s good and I really like the Doobie brothers.”

It’s the question that Anderson asks because he likes to see what people will say. He says most people on the show tend to qualify themselves by their career or by their profession but he admits that clearly not the whole world defines themselves by what they do.

[Read more…]

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Won’t somebody think of the children?

August 6, 2015 by

Maybe it is because I have the emotional maturity of a child that I can’t help seeing most things through the eye of a child. Some would counter that’s why I enjoyed Spelling Bee so much, others would point to my pre sugar-free sherbet addiction, others would just acknowledge my predisposition to the tantrum.

Perhaps it is this immaturity (or ability to see things through the eyes of the child) that reacted so badly to some advice given to women recently in a post headed Habits of Successful Women. Juanita Phillips was quoted as saying that she didn’t allow her children to do weekend sport because “it’s too hard”. “Weekends are for no schedule, fun, frivolity, flexibility and a slower pace” the article maintains.

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On writing for free and other hot button topics

July 17, 2015 by 30 Comments

Parenting has certain hot button topics, subjects which you know the mere mention of will incite and inflame “discussion”. So too does blogging, but Instead of sleep training, breastfeeding and childcare the issues that seem to incite the most opinion in the blogging world are advertising, PR requests and payment.

The payment thing is not reserved for bloggers alone. Any freelance creative will have something to add to the conversation, usually something derived from first hand experience because creative people are often asked to work for free.

So it is with this background that I am stepping ever so carefully onto the internet with my opinion borne from my experience. So consider it just that.
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