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I was born in Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia, the third child of four with three brothers. My grandparents were hoteliers, and that is how my father met my mother. My father was a football player (rugby league) with a reputation for being rather speedy. His club held their weekly raffles and fund raising events at the hotel where my mother worked for her parents. After they married in 1959, my father joined the Royal Australian Air Force. Most of my childhood memories are of those early years living on various RAAF bases throughout Australia. My grandparents had also left Rockhampton having bought a hotel at Mirriwinni in North Queensland (population 100), which was a great place to go for school holidays. Apart from the year my appendix was removed, and the year the boys burnt down the shed, our holidays up north at my grandparents' hotel were the best. The Babinda Boulders and Thiele's Pool were our playground—pristine watering holes in the midst of a rain forest where the water is always pure and chilled (my inspiration for Lake Como in The Glass Table). While we were living in Townsville on the Aitkenvale RAAF base, my eldest brother, John, fell off a cliff at Mount Louisa and broke his leg. He was ten at the time. Paul, who was nine, ran five miles for help. This was not uncommon for Paul—he was kind, caring, and thoughtful. I broke my wrist that same year, playing human catapults in the backyard with my brothers. Sadly, a girl in my class at the Aitkenvale Primary School, Judith Mackay, and her younger sister, Susan, were abducted and murdered in 1970. I recall our teacher explaining to us that Judith would no longer be at school, but I, we, as seven-year-olds, had little appreciation of what it meant. My mother sold Avon at the time and Mrs Mackay was a customer. We had been at their home not long before I saw Judith and Susan for the last time. We returned to Rockhampton in 1970. My grandfather died suddenly, which was a massive loss for my mother who worshipped her father. Paul was tragically killed in March 1979, and life for all of us would never be the same again. What we did not know then, and only learned after John died in 1996, was that he had blamed himself for Paul's death, and this posthumously explained much of his behavior after Paul died. They had been together at a party down the beach (they were the best of friends) and had an argument. Paul sped away on his motorbike, a tire blew-out, he lost control and a steel rail pierced his chest. He died instantly. Pink Floyd's, Wish You Were Here, seemed written for him ... "So, so you think you can tell, Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain, can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail, a smile from a veil ..." At the time John died, he had met a lovely girl with a young daughter, and had found peace and happiness. I think of John's as a wasted creative genius, and as the cliché goes, he could have become whatever he chose. I remember his drawings, his poems, and John sitting on the edge of his bed playing "House of the Rising Sun," on his guitar. He also had a wicked sense of humor. I met Steve in 1981 when I was eighteen and he was twenty. He was a sporting star in our hometown, and played soccer with my brother. I thought he was amazing then and still do. He is my love, my life, my reason, and it is because of Steve, that I have become me. We are the same in ways we need to be the same, and different in ways we need to be different. We laugh a lot for the most part of every day from morning to night. We have lived in Singapore for the past seven years. I love everything about Singapore, in particular, the weather—no winter. I love the rain and thunderstorms. I love that it is clean and green, and civilized—where else in the world do you have queues to join a queue, and officials who monitor them to ensure queue rules are followed. Prior to moving to Singapore, we lived in Sydney for five years and in Melbourne for the five years before that, having left our hometown in 1994.
I am a lawyer by profession, but the majority of my career has been as a senior executive for various public companies in Australia. For five years while living in Melbourne, I was the CEO for the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia, holding a concurrent position as the Secretary-General of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration. After leaving Melbourne for Sydney, I was the Executive Director for the Australian Institute of Project Management. For a short time after I arrived in Singapore in 2004, I was Director, Operations & Finance, Asia, for a business unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers. My earlier years were with a law firm, Swanwick, Murray & Roche, in Rockhampton.
I have three masters degree: an MBA (International Management), Master of Commerce (e-commerce major) and a Master of International Trade and Investment Law. I also have a law degree with honors, a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (required to gain admission as a lawyer in Australia) and a Diploma in Project Management.
Writing My writing style is very much all or nothing. Writing can be an excruciating process requiring an enormous amount of self-discipline, which is why I have to mentally and physically prepare for it (like going to the Olympics). Once ready, it's a matter of writing and nothing else from start to finish. During these phases, there is a very high consumption of chocolate ... more than usual that is. Re-writing is a different 'technique'. Although I try to do it in one solid period over a matter of weeks, the process is not as rigid as writing a first draft and I am allowed to leave our apartment. I have writing faults/quirks primarily related to em-dashes (—). They are everywhere in my work. I am however trying to curb the impulse to insert them and therapy is helping. In an attempt to rid myself of the dash, I've started abusing the colon (punctuation I mean). On the other hand, I use exclamation points sparingly, much like Elaine's boyfriend, Jake, in the Seinfeld episode, The Sniffing Accountant.
Interests We like to travel, especially with our good friends Donna, Terry, John, and Char who live in Pittsburgh. We (try) to maintain a focus on exercise and healthy eating even though we would prefer to dine out, drink red wine, and eat chocolate. Living in Singapore makes it easier though since the weather is always warm and conducive to being active and outdoors. Otherwise, it would be hibernation for the winter months, and an extra three kilos or so.
Favorites Favorite colors: blue and green, the colors of nature, and this website. Favorite music: Linkin Park, Live, Pink Floyd, One Republic, Matchbox Twenty, Kasabian, Jet. Favorite TV: Californication, Sons of Anarchy, 30 Rock, Mad Men, The Mentalist, Project Runway, Master Chef, The Apprentice. Old favorites: Seinfeld, Arrested Development. Favorite movies: Bandits, Wedding Crashers, Terms of Endearment, The Castle, Crash, Mississippi Burning (although I can't bear to watch it). Favorite Seinfeld character: George Costanza. Favorite Seinfeld episodes: The Hamptons on the issue of shrinkage, and The Apartment, "I am Costanza, Lord of the Idiots!" Favorite actors: Russell Crowe—how did he not win Oscars for A Beautiful Mind and The Insider! Johnny Dep—my kind of quirky. Leonardo DiCaprio as he is now—older, more rugged than cute. Note: there are three em-dashes in this paragraph! Favorite places in the world: Melbourne, Rome, Noosa, Istanbul, Warsaw, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City. My last meal would be: wood-fired gourmet pizzas (several), Australian Shiraz, a ton of chocolate ... maybe gelato as well. I plan to die first from over-consumption.
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 Babinda Boulders
AIPM national conference 2003
We'll always have Santorini
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