Last day on air as a News Reader for Sky News Australia My column for online magazine Coping with Jane…. I want my old life back! You know the feeling right? That nagging little voice in your head -- sometimes it's not so little though, it's screaming out, desperate to be heard. I suppose it’s all par for the course when you’re catapulted out of your comfort zone into a foreign land where no one speaks your language and everything from the climate to the culture is about as alien as eating a fish ball on a stick! The initiation into expat life is not all that different to those frenzied days as a new mum. To say everything feels unfamiliar is probably a gross understatement right? Babies definitely don’t speak your language and working out their culinary desires can be a far cry from your usual dinner date. I copped a double whammy. From television news reader living the (sort of) glamorous life in the harbour city of Sydney, to the unknown fragrant harbour of Hong Kong, unemployed and up the duff! I’d been with Sky News for ten years and I’d worked hard for my dream job. I always assumed when or if I was lucky enough to have a family, I’d simply do what I’d seen the other mums do before me – come back to work after a year or so of blissful baby-dom, and slot into a few shifts a week on the tele. Perfect! That was until I threw a spanner in my own destiny. Click here to read more on Coping With Jane >>> … [Read more...]
I am woman, hear me roar… 24 Hours in the Philippines
Last week I went to the Philippines for 24 hours. You can do that kind of thing around these parts. For me, it's a bit like taking a domestic flight in Australia but hey presto, blink twice and I'm in another country. Another world! Yep! just me, myself and I. As any mother knows, as much as we would go to the end of the earth for our beloved babes, sometimes there are only so many play-dough pussy cats one can make. There are definitely only so many dirty nappies one can change before you need to down tools and take a well-earned sanity break. … [Read more...]
….all the tea in China
Two years ago today, my life did what you might call a 180 degree turn! At 38 years old I went from being a News Reader with national 24 hour news channel Sky News Australia, where I'd worked happily (mostly) for the best part of a decade, to being an unemployed housewife, smack bang in the middle of one of the world's most populated cities. Until then I had been living in a fairly comfortable apartment in Sydney's not so shabby Neutral Bay with my not so shabby hotelier husband. My close-knit family was just a hop, skip and a jump up the road in Queensland and the tight-knit sisterhood of friendships built on a lifetime of shared experiences, all within 'wine-quaffing' distance. So what happened? … [Read more...]