Why I could never celebrate Christmas

Regular readers will know that I am Jewish, this means that I don’t celebrate Christmas. No gifts, no trees, no decorations, no big feast (I do that one often enough). And no, as I outlined in the video below, Chanukah is nothing like Christmas. Nothing. The only similarity is that they both start with a Ch. Although some people spell Hannukah with an H.

Every year around this time I watch in awe and wonder as people get ready for the festive season. And with absolutely no disrespect to anyone at all, it reaffirms for me how I could never ever celebrate Christmas. [Read more…]

Sarah Haynes, nobody’s school is perfect. But we already know that

Recently Sarah Haynes, the school captain of Ravenswood made news by telling it like she saw it at her farewell assembly. My first thought was that Ravenswood sounded like a house out of Harry Potter but my second and subsequent thoughts were much more considered.

Sarah is young, she is in a privileged position of leadership and I believe she should take that position seriously. It doesn’t matter whether the school is private, public or part of Hogwarts.

When you are an adult and you work for an organisation you tow the organisation’s line. Sometimes you don’t agree with it but there are other things that make you happy so you shut up and accept it. Sometimes it’s too much so you pack your bags and go. At the farewell party you smile graciously and then, if you want to burn all your bridges, you send a tirade by group email when you leave. Hint: It’s never a good idea to burn all your bridges. There are better way to handle things than the element of surprise bomb when your nearest and dearest are gathered together.

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Not The Bachelor review you’re looking for

There’s s a strange phenomenon that seems to happen every time The Bachelor airs. Thousands of women sit down in front of the TV and tear apart other women under the guise of reviewing or live tweeting the show.

I don’t watch The Bachelor because I don’t agree with the premise, I don’t like the concept of dating shows and I am trying desperately to stop hate-viewing/reading in general. But by mistake I watched Twitter for a while last night.

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Oh Belle Gibson, I feel so sad

Last night after I watched the Belle Gibson interview on 60 Minutes I went to Facebook saying:

“I have left the Belle Gibson feeling really really sad. I know what she did was awful, illegal and immoral and there are people suffering real sickness that is way worse because of her. I do not condone her behaviour for a moment but it is clear that although she is physically well, she is clearly a very sick woman.

If we continue to listen to bloggers giving medical advice and get our “knowledge” through Googling symptoms and taking information from people with no medical qualifications, if we believe there is a cure that the medical profession is hiding from us, these kind of incidents will happen again and again.

GO TO A DOCTOR. Don’t look to the internet for medical advice.”

The Unani physicians prescribe medicines based on allergies, Alzheimer, antibiotics, antifugal, anxiety, cancer, hair loss, high blood pressure, insomnia, diabetes skin care and much generic cialis more of that. These issues are not cheap viagra canadian abnormal as it can happen often to stress or unhealthy lifestyle and as such. cheap viagra sales If you are willing to indulge in some productive sexual coital session. If you are soaking the petals in overnight delivery cialis red wine, then overnight soaking is sufficient. Today I argued with Kerri over the interview. And even though she ended with her customary “Bye Lana”, I know that I am right.

Did you watch? How right am I? What did you think?

Knowing stuff doesn’t make you smart. Or does it?

My husband is the smartest person I know. Not just because he knows a lot of facts (and boy does he know a lot of facts) but also because he’s compassionate and kind and generous and he has the second best sense of humour in the marriage.

I forgot to mention him in the video I made with Kerri yesterday because I am not as smart as he is.  But I hope I get across the real difference between knowing facts and being someone as brilliant as my husband.

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What do you think? Does knowing facts make you smart? Did you catch the bit right at the end of the video where we let you know the capital of Estonia (which I have already forgotten)?

I cannot believe this woman suffers from Imposter Syndrome

Screen Shot 2015-05-07 at 8.49.39 pmI had been experiencing a bit of a reading drought until late last year, I had become so absorbed in candy crush studying and so used to getting myself lost in an actual web of hyperlinks while I surfed the net for too many hours a day that I felt like I didn’t have time to read.

But then apropos of nothing I picked up a book, and as so often happens when you read something you love, I got stuck right in. As I turned the final pages I got that familiar addictive fear that I wouldn’t be able to find another book that transported me in quite that way from everything normal and ordinary in my life. That’s what I love most about a good book – the ability to transport myself completely to another time and place. To utterly lose myself

I was lucky, I found the books. I have been reading, and reading, and reading. I cannot explain how happy this has made me.

But then something happened which threatened to topple the weekly voyages I was taking into other people’s lives. My best friend Kerri Sackville sent me the manuscript that she has just submitted to her agent. That’s a good thing, right?

Not necessarily.

I love Kerri’s writing, I’m sure you know she is a brilliant, expressive, often laugh out loud and enthralling writer. I love her columns, her blog posts, I devoured her last two books, hell, I even love her tweets. But this was her first novel and I’d never read fiction from her. I am very fussy about my fiction.

The manuscript arrived as a Word document. No e-book, no proof copy, no bound pages. Just a 229 page Word document. Saved as a PDF file. I balked. How was I even going to read that? It’s a very unfriendly format for someone whose favourite place to read is the bath.

I thought I’d use that as an excuse not to read it. “Sorry I can’t read it angel” I would say to her “I can only read in the bath and I can’t take my laptop into the bath, I’m sure it’s a brilliant book and I can’t wait to read it when it’s published in water-proof material”. I needed an excuse. What if I hated the book? What if I thought it was badly written, the story line weak, the characters limp? I wouldn’t be able to actually read it and how on earth would I tell her that she wrote a shit book?

I’d just have to tell her that I loved it. That’s what I would do. I would skim it and get an idea of some of the characters in case she asked questions and then I’d tell her it was “really lovely”.

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I read and I read and I read.

A while later I found myself thinking “I must tell Kerri to read this book – she’ll love it.” That’s the kind of thing I do with books I love, I get lost in them, I forget my real life and I think how much I want my friends and everyone I know to read this book. I want to share the books I love, I want other people to read them so that the characters stay alive for me and I can talk to my friends about them long after I have turned the last page.

I called Kerri. But really it was only because I wanted to find out how Rachel (the main character in her book) was doing. I missed her already and I was still reading the book (believe me if it wasn’t in PDF format it would be finished now).

It’s so easy to read, I love the characters, I keep laughing out loud, I keep feeling ALL the feels, I am reading and falling away from my world, that’s my favourite feeling in the world.

It’s weird to think that this was written by my friend. Weirder even that she suffers from “imposter syndrome” when she just wrote my new favourite book.

Watch her and I talk about imposter syndrome here and get ready to buy an absolutely stunning book when it is published. If you’re luckier than me you’ll get to read it in an actual book. In the bath.

Do you suffer from Imposter Syndrome? How many copies of Kerri’s book will you buy?

#5minutes with Kerri and Lana: The Compassion Edition

Today felt sombre and heavy. It was a sad day. A day of mourning and compassion. Not just for Andrew Chan and Muyaran Sukumaran, not just for the people of Nepal.

Kerri and I chatted about Andrew, Muyaran, Nepal, Kerri’s knee, compassion and much more.

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Tell us what you think.

Mentally ill or evil?

I am no Pollyanna, everyone who knows me knows that . I am the master of thinking of and fearing the worst possible scenario in my head, I am a nervous worrier and I often experience hideous anxiety. Especially when I watch the news. Or listen to people talk about the world.

Because of this lovely, sunny natural disposition of mine I have had to build up a few defence mechanism – ignoring people, changing the subject, crying to my husband and er, swallowing pills. Perhaps the way I perceive the world is another one of these defence mechanisms.

For instance when I hear that someone has done something heinous I assume (and I believe rightly) that they are mentally ill. Not in a “depressed” or “anxious” way but in a “completely out of touch with reality” way.

I never thought of it as a defence mechanism until I really spoke about it in some detail with Kerri.
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Take a look – Kerri feels very differently to me. For a change. Please watch the video so that you can see I REALLY don’t believe everyone with a mental illness commits evil acts (in fact I know that not to be true).

What do you think? Can people be evil or is it a mental illness?

The compromising photos we probably shouldn’t see

You know that a post may be terribly misinterpreted when you start to write the disclaimer before you’ve even really clarified your thoughts… but here it is. This post is not meant to stand in judgement of anyone who reads it, it’s my view which may be different to yours at best or wrong at worst.
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5 minutes with Kerri and Lana: The birth experience I never had

A couple of weeks ago there was a ridiculous meme making its way around the Internet written by an almost hilariously ridiculous group who are clearly either attention seeking, satirical or downright bonkers.

5 minutes with Kerri and Lana

The meme that caused the big stir was accompanied by the words “Pregnancy is a beautiful thing as it is the zenith of a woman’s role in a moral Christian society. If God has decided to call you home, it is not up to you or a doctor to reject Him. You may find yourself cast into the lake of fire for doing so. God’s Peace.” I laughed at the angst in that post but when I saw how much media attention it was getting I felt slightly uncomfortable that someone with clear issues was getting so much time in the limelight.
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