Tinker Tailor Student Spy

Despite being currently 11,693 miles away from Dunedin, I am still very much invested in the goings-on of Otago University.

Anyone who has read my columns for the Otago Daily Times over the past year will realise that I have the tendency to be very sharp, cynical and sceptical, especially when it comes to religion.

When I was 7 years old, my family bought a tired old piano. I watched as four burly men hauled it up the concrete steps to our farmhouse. Soon, the piano became part of the family.

About a month ago, I was sitting on a bench at the Sydney waterfront, waiting for my friend James. A drunk man in an obnoxiously bright Hawaiian shirt and a boater hat sat down beside me.

Growing up as the eldest child of a Presbyterian minister, I was spoon-fed politeness and obedience along with my morning porridge.

Today would have been my brother John's twenty second birthday.

I'm in the exceedingly fortunate position of not worrying about my postgraduate education costs; I have a scholarship that pays my fees and accommodation over the next few years.

On Monday night, I received a curious letter. One might say it was a letter from beyond the grave.

A few Saturdays ago I had the immense pleasure of watching the Suitcase Theatre perform Mental Notes as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival.

It's very rare that I come across a film that stays with me past walking out of the cinema, or closing my laptop.

When I was 10 years old, a travelling brass band came to town. My primary school class trotted down to the town hall, and there we listened to a spectacular concert, our eyes wide and and our...

A recent Newshub Reid Research poll has revealed that the vast majority of New Zealanders support euthanasia.

Suspended in my little glass bubble between the frothy pink clouds above and the maelstrom of human activity below, I watched the sun set on Edinburgh.

Perhaps the biggest ''New Year'' story this year to come out from our sunny side of the globe was the tale of a woman called Madeline who was groped by a male reveller at the Rhythm & Vines...

As a quarter past three on Monday morning, I was floating on my back in the cool waters of Pilot Bay at Mt Maunganui.

Recently, there has been a great deal of hullabaloo on my Facebook timeline as people squabble over whether so-called ''hard'' subjects like calculus and physics are inherently better and more...

April 2013. I was an ickle first-year, adrift in the big wide world of university assignments, keg stands, noisy lecture theatres, goon bags and overenthusiastic health science students.

Four years ago, I was a skinny, struggling teenager in my first year of university. I hated what I was studying, where I was living, and who I was as a person.

Picture this: grey walls rising up on three sides of you as you sit, hunched over your schoolwork - a science worksheet repudiating the theory of evolution, using the Loch Ness Monster as an...