27 January 2026

When I get up in the morning, nothing gets me going like coffee from my Bialetti moka express. Accept no substitutes.

The brand with the cartoon man emblazoned on the side ensures three things: Design. Quality. Simplicity.

The moka pot is a perfect piece of design. It’s stylish. Angular, yet smooth. Apparently they haven’t really changed the original design much since the 1930s.

The quality is impeccable. It’s made of durable aluminium. There’s a plastic handle that doesn’t transmit heat from the body of the pot to your hand when you pick it up. Genius.

It’s simplicity to serve a function. There are only three pieces to assemble this shiny contraption at home: a boiler (fill with room-temperature water up to the valve); the middle tank that the ground coffee goes into; and the upper chamber where the coffee comes out.

I have three moka pots of varying capacity. My largest such device produces a sizeable eighteen cups worth. I typically make coffee in the evening and place it in a large jar in my fridge door and drink it cold with milk each morning - all year round. 

But, each to their own - I can, of course, assure you a moka pot also makes excellent hot coffee.

Frankly, I’m unsure how other people get by without a moka pot, especially given that Australians are obsessed with coffee culture. As an aside, having been to Europe in recent times, I can also confirm that coffee quality in Australian cities is up there with the best in the world. In fact, Australian coffee (at coffee shops and cafes) usually tastes much stronger than coffee overseas.

Whilst the moka pot is a somewhat popular device in Australia amongst those who know, it is a bit unfortunate that so many other coffee-drinkers here are unaware of the joys of making the drink at home on your stovetop. Spare a thought for them.

Many of us rely on strong coffee so that we’re truly awake and not just unasleep. We’re  prepared to pay over five dollars for a small cup of coffee from a shop multiple times a day  instead of making the stuff ourselves.

This is somewhat surprising to me because the delightful ritual of making your own coffee at home has essentially no barriers to entry other than getting yourself a moka pot and a bag of coffee. 

Once it’s ready, there’s a soft gurgling sound produced by the machine and your kitchen is filled with that glorious aroma: an initial scent of caramel, then comes the dark chocolate, before that smoky, toasty perfume hits.

Of course, there are other ways to get caffeinated, but I tend to regard soft drinks and energy drinks as not even being in the same league as coffee. That’s not to say that they won’t keep you alert - I’m sure they will. It’s just that these kinds of drinks are either full of sugar or sugar substitutes (super unhealthy) or taste horrible (or are both unhealthy and disgusting).

That’s not to mention there is a sense of sophistication that comes with sipping on a tiny cup of fragrant dark espresso (definitely never pronounced “expresso”) in the backstreets of the city, or the main streets of the suburbs. A kind of cultural refinement that cola or guarana are certainly not associated with.

So, what are you to make of all this? That coffee snobbery is alive and well? Yes, but also that the finer things in life don’t have to be very expensive or complicated. The “gourmet” stuff, as they say, is sometimes well worth it. There is nothing classier than enjoying a great coffee you made yourself amongst friends over at your own place. 

Or curling up on your couch with a cup in a quiet moment of contemplation amidst the chaos that is modern life. It’s a little bitter at first. You take another sip and close your eyes. You’re pondering what you’ve accomplished. You sigh.

Nobody will see you in that moment, but if you open your eyes again and look outside, you might just catch your own reflection in the window pane: and see the satisfied little smile of someone who has discovered the taste of style.

26 January 2026

I’m writing this memo from my standing desk. But my black, leather office chair is right behind me and could sneak up on me at any moment. It might be more comfortable to sit down; however, is that really the right thing to do?

The very existence of chairs is, of course, not my gripe. It’s much more that Western society seems to have done an exceedingly poor job of designing our lives so that being physically active is easy for regular people. It’s actually a systemic issue. In other words, it’s absolutely not your fault that modern life wants you to sit down all the time when you think about it.

Now, I’m not sure if standing in one place is much healthier than sitting - it does seem to be better for my back overall (though that’s just me). What’s clear is that being overly sedentary is unhealthy (for everyone).

Yes, I realise this is a first-world office worker’s problem and I’m not going to get preachy about fitness or regurgitate the facts here. Suffice to say that sitting down a lot increases your risk of several chronic illnesses, including being overweight, type 2 diabetes and heart disease - depression and anxiety too.

No doubt there will be some people - juiceheads - bewildered by this problem as if it were imaginary. They’re wondering why normal folks are so averse to sharing a gym with them, their egos, and the thumping drum and bass playlist at five in the morning and eleven at night. 

For the rest of us, we find ourselves in a predicament: we live lives that are literally too convenient for our own good.

Nine to five jobs where you don’t have to work early and/or late (not to mention weekends) are becoming less common in Australia. Even without doing any overtime, that’s still seven and a half hours a day sitting down. Trying to commit to regular team sport or get into a gym at lunch can be hectic and there’s all of the other before and after-work commitments holding us back from exercising as well (let alone our ‘roided up friends).

It’s no use just whining about the problem though. Let’s get to the heart of the matter…

There is another group of less-conspicuous people who are also bewildered by the problem of sedentary living: the people who want us to sit down for at least seven and a half hours a day at work.

I’m not sure who decided that sitting down for most of the day is still a good idea in 2026. Why should it be that you have to sacrifice your physical and mental health to do your job in one continuous block? Is it reasonable that we should have to increase our risk of developing some kind of chronic illness just to do an office job?

Last century’s logic needs a little bit of a re-think. A re-design for a healthier life.

The onset of the pandemic in 2020 saw workplace flexibility challenged in a way that the world hadn’t seen before, with working from home becoming the new norm. For most office workers, working from home at least once a week (if not more often) has remained the standard practice long after the pandemic. 

Though there has been some resistance, ultimately most employers either changed their policies to permit and facilitate working from home or lost their best employees to employers who did. It’s also about productivity. In order to get the best out of employees, they need to be happy and well-motivated - I don’t think that’s controversial.

I foresee that the design of modern work life is primed for another correction. The nine to five work day is next on the chopping block. Given the instant nature of modern communications, there is no reason why we all need to be contactable at the same time for the vast majority of jobs.

Does anyone actually care when you are working any more as long as you get the job done? No.

At the moment, most employers appear to see work as a commitment of time. And that makes sense for some jobs, but for most office jobs what employers should really be caring about is outcomes. Why should one person get paid the same as another if they get better results in half the time? Why should one person work the same hours as another if they can accomplish their tasks in half the time?

Employment law will, of course, be slow to reflect the reality of what is going on in the workplace, but the change is inevitable. And if it leads to increased flexibility in working hours as well as the increased prevalence of task/outcome-based remuneration, we might all get time to stand up and exercise more often too.

25 January 2026

There is something quite satisfying about writing with a pen and paper. An almost serene feeling of disconnection as the ballpoint smoothly rolls across the page. There was a time when being disconnected meant you were an outsider, an outcast from society even. Now it strangely seems something to which to aspire. Ah, yes, the feeling of being free of notifications, emails and countless short videos about not anything in particular…

The advance of technology has pushed us closer together and, at the same time, alienated us from each other to an extent. We can now listen to music, watch videos and send messages in the group chat, all on demand. As much as I have some nostalgia for browsing the movie rental store, these changes are positive developments. However, one such development that has been undoubtedly negative in my mind is that of social media - or, at least, in the state as it is at present. And it’s not getting any better.

I, like an increasing many people, tend to think "social media" is a misnomer. Using the same sort of psychology that keeps gamblers addicted to poker machines, the endless brainrot reels of these websites seem to be unashamedly trying to monopolise people’s time, decreasing productivity and interrupting any moment of true social connection (or sleep) they could otherwise be enjoying. All the while, some corporation is harvesting your data to serve you targeted advertising from third parties, as well as more and more of whatever content will keep you on their site. 

It all sounds a bit dystopian.

Australia has recently begun its social media ban for under-16-year-olds, which has been widely lauded by commentators on the subject (though the effectiveness of its implementation remains to be seen). The sky has not fallen in, and I will be surprised if kids’ wellbeing and school grades don’t improve as a result if the ban works. It was probably about time that society took steps to recognise that social media can be deleterious to people’s health - especially young people.

Another highly unattractive aspect of social media is who is making the content. It would seem that many people remain obsessed with the attempts of so-called “influencers” to use inflated versions of themselves to sell products, as if their fake personas are actually real. What’s more, many consumers of social media don’t appear to realise that there’s a difference between perception and reality. 

Perhaps I have a low tolerance for superficial people. But wouldn’t we all be better off without being bombarded by projections of fake and embellished personalities every second of every day? 

Disturbingly, even some people that I regard as being quite intelligent appear to think that there is some kind of talent or legitimacy in being a glorified advertising spokesperson. There isn’t. There is nothing profound about a cesspool of buzzwords shouted by fools who have forgotten that self-aggrandisement has never truly made anyone bigger. 

The real “talent”, to use the term loosely, lies in the creation of a brand: marketing to people to get them to do things when you have no aptitude for anything other than maintaining your appearance. All this vapid noise just makes it harder for real people to use technology to express themselves uniquely and meaningfully relate to each other.

Having rid myself of almost all social media some time ago, I must confess that there was initially a small feeling that I could be missing out on something. That feeling was quickly displaced by an almost-euphoric sense of freedom. Once you realise that doing anything else with your day would be a better use of your time, the choice to quit becomes easy. I haven’t looked back.

But that’s not most people. The majority still seem obsessed with meaningless content that is entirely lacking in substance and quality, but are paradoxically craving disconnection at the same time. Terrible quality is strangely sometimes what makes media attractive content. People want to switch off. And, yes, you don’t have to be “on” all the time. Despite my critique, even I enjoy a good nonsense meme. But it doesn’t deserve hours of my time. 

Soon, human-generated content will be indistinguishable from AI slop (if it isn’t already) and the flow of garbage media will become truly endless and even more meaningless. I tend to think there is ever-increasingly a time for disconnection, and a space for good quality content too, amidst all that. I will still have my pen and paper, at least.

24 January 2026

My crisp, white shirt is sitting in a bucket of cold water. The whitening laundry powder is doing it’s good work. For the stains of this morning’s iced latte will not remove themselves. They were made with music. As I strut down the street in near-forty-degree heat, I somewhat belatedly noticed some spillage from the edge of my cup. And so, with my mind on the song I was listening to, a record streak of keeping all my white shirts untarnished came to a brown, blotted end. I blame the boogie.

I loathe music that pushes some kind of “misogynist gangster” message. Call me “old-fashioned,” but I just can’t relate to, or get behind, the glorification of the objectification of women, violence against women, illicit drug dealing, or killing people to rise up through some sort of gang. These things all happen in society, no doubt. And we should write songs about these things. Sure. After all, they are just as much a part of the lives some people live as the good things. But to glorify them? Not okay. In fact, there are plenty of amazing songs about these things that don’t make them out to be cool. I’m not in favour of censorship of the “gangster misogynists” – people can continue to produce misguided, tasteless songs extolling the virtues of all of the above – I just won’t be listening to them.

The second category of music I dislike is pop trash. Most pop music of the past is actually great stuff made by talented artists with relatively original ideas. But I have no time for today’s plastic, homogenous beats. With all the sonic and lyrical depth of the baby pool, there is no doubt that the current top forty is a clear regression from the hits of the past. I feel that it is only natural as you get older to think that old music was better, but I think that is also objectively true if we’re talking about mainstream music. Don’t get me wrong – there is still a lot of great music around right now, it’s just not going to be found in the charts or on your radio. Speaking of which, the imminent death of commercial radio will be mourned by few. Why would anyone listen to that lowest-common-denominator garbage when they have a rich and diverse world of choice at their fingertips with access to music streaming? 

The third and final category of music I don’t take any pleasure in listening to is anything that is too abrasive for my ears to handle. I’m not a fan of death metal or any monotonous electronica that just sounds like white noise. I like rhythm. Light and shade. Texture. Few people appreciate being screamed at for five minutes straight. I think these styles are hard to listen to, as well as boring. You may have different preferences – and that’s quite alright. It’s important to remember that this is just my personal taste. We’re all different. Some of us have clean shirts and, for others, that is no longer the case.

But what a great privilege it is to live in an age where virtually all of the compositions ever made are available to you at the touch of a button. Unfortunately, I don’t now recall the song that was playing in my inexpensive, wired earbuds at the time my shirt was soiled. Perhaps an instance of one of the categories of music I despise infiltrated its way into my playlist and disturbed me so? Of course, I can’t really blame anyone but myself for my lapse in concentration.

Today's iced latte spill is just a symptom of a bigger environmental issue. It seems increasingly normal for me to want to score each moment of my life, from dawn ‘til dusk, as if I’m a character in a film. Why walk, when you can stride? Why drive, when you can cruise? Having returned home I used my over-ear headphones to play some trip-hop. Why rest, when you can relax? It’s better for you, you know? Clear thoughts seem to flow more freely when my ears are engaged with something else. In any case, I wish the fallen shirt all the best for a full recovery so that it may ascend upstairs and join it’s fellow shirts in my wardrobe, to be worn another one of these blessed, soundtracked days – once again braving the risk of collateral damage in the sonic breach.