Together, my partner and I have two cats: both bengals, both ruining our sleep. Nala (the marbled one) talks too much, and Jon Snow (the white one) keeps getting into street fights with other cats in the neighbourhood. Nala’s a princess, and Jon Snow’s a very naughty boy.

Update (Sep, 2026): Sadly, our handsome boy, Jon Snow, was attacked by a hunting dog in the fields out the back of where we live. He didn’t survive the encounter. We miss him so much.

I was born in Australia, but then spent part of my formative years in Asia: Indonesia, Pakistan, and Singapore. When we finally came back to Australia, I was about 10 years old and was irrevocably changed and considered oddly ‘foreign’, strange, or just plain sissy, to my fellow Australians.

After that, the rest of my adolescence was spent learning an Australian accent so I could fit in with classmates (who all thought my international accent made me sound like a South African–pom hybrid) and surviving an all-boys’ school (which was made all the more difficult as a violin player – the antithesis of expectations to be a rugby boy). I graduated high school with some academic success and moved to Sydney to study further.

In my first degree at Sydney University, I studied Literature, Music, and Gender (BA). After this, I completed my second, third and fourth degree at Western Sydney University, where I trained to be a teacher and specialised in various areas of Education (MTeach, BEd Honours, PhD Education). Much of this education was completed perpendicular to working, first in restaurants and then later as a teacher.

Before I finished my PhD, I elected to go back into the international teaching circuit and managed to get a job in Germany. Since coming here and finishing my thesis, it’s become increasingly clear that a part of me has always belonged somewhere in Europe (even though this was my first time living here). In January of 2026, I became a German citizen and made a pledge to stay here. I wouldn’t change that for the world.

I’ve been writing tidbits here and there, be it short fiction or poetry, since I was a teenager. And I’ve been reading far longer than that. I try to write about things that interest me: music, nature, aesthetic, general observations. Much of what I’ve written will never see the light of day and remains buried in tatty moleskins hidden behind more reputable books on my shelves. What I consider share-worthy, however, is what I have chosen to curate in this website.

I tend to write short fiction sporadically, often fuelled by obsession that borders on mania. I write furiously and then… nothing. Poetry, on the other hand, seems to find me on the move. Or maybe it follows me. Either way, I can only commit it to paper if I’m fast enough to turn around and catch it. Otherwise it remains solidly locked away in my periphery. Sometimes, ideas come to me in a dream, and I write them down when I wake up. I’d love to branch out into fantasy and science-fiction one day, as this is what I love to read, but I’m very nervous to even try.

As I write more, I’ll add it here on the website. In the meantime, this is a little curation. And if you’re reading my work, I am for your time and generosity. I hope these stories and poems serve as some reward.

I started learning violin at the age of 6, though I distinctly remember asking to start much earlier (I was always told I was too young). I started writing music, both pop and classical, at the age of 14, when I started piano lessons and learned how to use Sibelius to notate everything. These were particularly active years for me, musically speaking, and much of what I am publishing here was in fact written at this age. Some of these pieces even went on to gain some acclaim in various competitions! After school, I studied music at university and spent some time writing songs for pop and various jazzy things. I just never sent it out into the world anywhere or shared them properly. I hope to give them the necessary space with this site.

I’ve always been rather average at art. I went to art school for a while when I was a kid, but was never really very good (for example, I got critiqued for choosing to paint clouds blue in a portrait of a clown… which in retrospect was a very fair critique). Nevertheless, I discovered new mediums to make art – ones that would hide any deficiencies of skill and lack of formal training reasonably well.

I photograph pencil sketches, digitally render as stamps in Acrobat, and use them in multilayered digital paintings. This technique has since prompted me to also integrate various textures and fibres from places around me, which I use to further layer the designs. Most of it starts the way the writing does: from a poem, a chance encounter, a dream, or even an accident. I once thought nothing I made was worth showing; now more than what I have to show has been lost.